Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

Arthur MacMillan, a veteran political journalist and former head of AFP's fact-checking unit, discusses the chilling effects on media during Trump’s second term. He highlights how media organizations are kowtowing to the administration, evidenced by CBS's controversial hire of Bari Weiss. Beyond that, MacMillan addresses the decline in trust, the rise of partisan outlets, and the impact of tech owners like Bezos reshaping news organizations. He predicts a shift toward smaller, niche publishers as traditional local news continues to fade.

Episode Summary  Like people, ideas have histories, even when we’re not aware of them. Living in an age of uniquely advanced science and technology, we don’t always perceive how our allegedly most rational beliefs can actually be based on ancient legends and stories. That certainly appears to be the case with many Western medical and psychological beliefs about women’s health, sexuality, and pain.From the Garden of Eden myth casting childbirth as a curse to Greek philosophers describing women as inverted men, these cultural frameworks have deeply influenced how female bodies are perceived, researched, and treated. For generations, women’s pain was normalized, their pleasure dismissed, and their experiences left out of medicine altogether.My guest today, Suzannah Weiss, has been writing and speaking about these issues for years. In her first book Subjectified (which we discussed on Theory of Change last year), she explored how women are socialized to see their sexualities through the lens of shame and stigma. Now, in her new book Eve’s Blessing: Uncovering the Lost Pleasure Behind Female Pain, she takes on the cultural inheritance that tells women to expect suffering in their bodies, from menstruation to childbirth to sex itself.In our conversation, we trace how myths and religious teachings became medical dogma, how centuries of ignoring women’s health needs still show up in research gaps and dismissive doctors, and why ideas like the “orgasm gap” persist. We also talk about what happens when women push back—when they reclaim pleasure in childbirth, resist the narrative of inevitable period pain, or simply insist that their symptoms deserve serious attention.It’s a balancing act. Culture shapes the mind and how we live in our bodies. But it’s also true that how we think to our situation can affect how our bodies feel generally. Pain and suffering are real–and so is pleasure. If old ideas can teach us to expect suffering, then perhaps new ideas can help us find joy, intimacy, and freedom.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content—Women are discovering how to become a sexual subject rather than an object (Suzannah’s previous TOC appearance)—Why the right-wing freakouts about sorority dancing are about so much more—Reactionary gender messages are trying to poison kids’ minds, here’s what parents are doing in response—The ‘world’s oldest profession’ is attaining new relevance in the internet age—How Republicans became the party of misogynist online trolls—Science and sex are obviously different but what they have in common is why they’re both hated by reactionariesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction09:53 — The one-sex and two-sex models13:36 — Medical dismissal of women’s pain20:50 — Suzannah’s personal health journey23:42 — Cognition as an embodied act34:39 — Contradictions in male attitudes toward female sexuality36:53 — Gender non-conformity and the myth of brokenness42:44 — Trauma and its physical manifestations50:17 — ‘Sexy but not sexual’58:10 — Mindfulness and body awarenessAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Suzannah Weiss. Hey, Suzannah. Welcome back to Theory of Change.SUZANNAH WEISS: Hi. Thanks so much. I’m so glad to be back.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So you’ve got another book out. The last time you were on, you were talking about your first book Subjectified, and this one is called Eve’s Blessing, which is about society and it’s particularly Western society, focusing on women’s pain and seeing it as sort of destination and inherent to women. Can you walk us through just kind of the origin of that belief in Western culture? Because that’s where you start the book off. And I think we should start off here with that.WEISS: Yeah, so my book is called Eve’s Blessing: Uncovering the Lost Pleasure Behind Female Pain [00:04:00]. And it’s about experiences of mine and other women of having their pain normalized, including period pain, childbirth, pain during sex, and even pain associated with chronic illness, along with what I call pleasure-lessness, meaning sex without an orgasm, sex without pleasure, even painful sex, and how this ties to different ideas, particularly the curse put on Eve in the Garden of Eden, and ‘thou shalt give birth in sorrow.’ And how in some religious communities, this is considered a curse, not just on childbirth, but on menstruation, even on first time sex. There, there’s, other parts of the Bible and I focus mainly on Judeo-Christian religions. like in Deuteronomy being, This passage about use blood on the sheets as a symbol of painful, of like virginity. the idea that sex for the first time is inherently painful and there’s a whole history behind that. The idea of the hymen, which is not actually like some medical professionals call it the vaginal corona because hymen is not.Really a, accurate term with the association we have with it is that it’s this seal that you need to break. And that’s not true. It’s just part of the vagina that naturally stretches. And yeah, there’s all these experiences women have had, I my own was dealing with various symptoms of chronic illness and being told that a lot of it was normal.Also, going on antidepressants and being told and having difficulty orgasming because of that. I’m being told a lot of women deal with that. Just use a vibrator. And, my book also shows how women are living the opposite life. That these ideas would suggest how women are [00:06:00] having pleasurable childbirth, pleasurable periods, pleasurable, orgasmic sex and pleasurable childbirth is a weird concept to many, but I interviewed a lot of women who indeed had this experience and, Yeah, just how we, underestimate like how good it can be to live in a female body, but thankfully women today are waking up to that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that’s right. And the idea though of women’s bodies as being somehow destined for pain obviously that’s, as you said, clearly a, genesis type, belief.But also, you talk about that there was that this belief was pretty common in, some, Greek cultural stories as well. in addition to the idea that, I, that women were sort of destined for pain the Eve, the Adam and Eve myth, it also is inherently blaming women for trying to get knowledge.Also, I think that’s worth talking about as well,WEISS: Yes, there’s actually, it’s really interesting today we have this idea that women are less sexual and more pure. And that actually arose around the 17 hundreds. And before that it was thought women are like lascivious and desirous because ate the apples.So women are hungry and curious and sin prone. So it is really interesting no matter what, we take from that story, we take something negative about women.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and then of course there is, and she’s not in the Bible, but of course there’s the, Lilith character as well within the Judaic legends as well.Right. You, review that for people who dunno the story. Yeah.WEISS: Well, our friend Kaitlyn Bailey talks about that in her show, Whore’s Eye View. She says Lilith was the one who wanted to fuck [00:08:00] Adam on top, and Adam was intimidated by her. So we went with Eve then. She represents the dark feminine, so she was the witch, the bitch and the whore.And, I think Jewish mythology and we, kind of cast out that aspect of women because we, demonize Lilith.SHEFFIELD: Well, literally in her case. And it’s hard for cultural historians to kind of pinpoint the amount of influence that her story had because she was cut out of the Bible.But there’s a lot of these extra-biblical characters who you see them crop up in art a fair amount over the Renaissance and even some medieval times. So these stories circulated even though they were not given canonical status.And, I think that there’s, that there’s reasons for that because they were meaningful.WEISS: I, I worked with a Jungian therapist last year who taught me something about Lilith because I kept telling her I was having psychedelic trips and dreams where I kept seeing a black snake. And she showed me this image, this painting of Lilith with a black snake wrapped around her, and it represented the dark feminine.And she suggested that was what I was accessing in the symbolic realm, was this dark, feminine figure that needed to be brought into the light.SHEFFIELD: I don’t know how much I buy into Jungian psychiatry, but that there is something there that, people do have these—there is something, I think to the idea that there, that ideas resonate because we do have common experiences as human beings and, I mean, that’s what this book is about.The one-sex and two-sex modelsBut you also do talk about just the idea [00:10:00] within Greek philosophy proper that that women were not quite even the same species. It seems like, when you look at as you do, talking about, some of the, ancient, the original doctors and things like that.Right. Tell us about that, if you would.WEISS: Yeah, so there’s a famous book called Making Sex by Thomas Laur that tracks, and some historians have challenged it because it’s not this simple, but what he argues basically is that from the time of the ancient Greeks, until around the 17 hundreds, scientists followed what’s called the One Sex Model where male and female bodies are considered basically the same.So the ancient Greek philosophers. Said things like, women are like, men turn inward, and women are like, women’s genitals are like mole’s eyes. They, they’re there but they don’t really have a function like mole’s. Eyes didn’t see. And so there was this idea that women were smaller men, or inferior men, or like inverted men.And it caused this gap in research where research. Was done primarily on men, and it was assumed to apply to women also. And we see this today, we see, for instance, certain health trends like intermittent fasting or high intensity interval training don’t work as well for women. And all the research is done on men and it doesn’t factor in things like the menstrual cycle in women’s hormones.And then on the flip side, around the 17 hundreds, due to a variety of political forces, specifically the Victorian era in England, saying that women were pure and Medford domesticity and also the, French Revolution saying, that women, [00:12:00] there was sort of a feminist movement, but then there was backlash saying women need to stay at home while the men are revolutionaries.And so all of these sort of, these factors, and then there were scientific discoveries, like the idea that actually women did not need to orgasm to have a child, which was actually not, widely believed around, the 16 or 17 hundreds that was discovered, that used to be believed that women like needed to orgasm, to conceive, and actually the clitoris was more valued.And so all these different factors led to what’s called the two sex model, where women and men are seen as opposites. And basically that contributes to ideas like the normalization of the orgasm gap that men can orgasm so easily and women cannot, or basically that men are made for pleasure and women are made for pain.So right now we, we see both of. The influence of both of these ideas. We see this research gap between, male and female bodies, and we also see where like women are assumed to be exactly like men. And we also see, this idea that men and women are opposites. And like, testosterone is this hormone that causes you to be really horny and angry, and estrogen causes you to be warm and nurturing, which isn’t the case.They both have many roles. And we also erase people outside the gender binary, intersex people, two-spirit people, et cetera. And that’s all tied in with colonialism. That’s my, like, that’s my two minute version of that whole story. Mm-hmm.Medical dismissal of women’s painSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and yeah, and, absolutely like within the medical context it, it did, it was also that, that, as you talk about that, women’s.Pain was not believed to be real in some sense because, well, all the doctors were men. And so, when women were talking about, period pain or, various, [00:14:00] complications with pregnancy, they were not believed in some sense, right? Or just assumed, well, this is how it is. And, as, and as you talk about the pregnancy for at least for, for some women, not, we can’t say for everybody obviously, but for some women, they, they don’t see it as that way, as something, inherently or obviously destined to be painful.Right.WEISS: Yeah, there was a tension in writing this book between acknowledging women’s pain as real and also as not natural or inevitable. Because it is a reality today that many women live with period pain, that for most people giving birth, it is painful. And so I definitely don’t aim to invalidate that pain.My goal is to explore where it comes from and for instance, period pain. There’s not a ton of research, but there is some research tying it to things like household chemicals, things like the modern American diet. Things we kind of take for granted in society. Overworking, sedentary lifestyle stress.It’s kind of a, society-wide problem that is contributing to certain forms of pain, women experience, and of course un undiagnosed illnesses, misdiagnosed illnesses, lack of research on women, and, even childbirth. There is a lot of pain that is connected to childbirth, trauma to deprivation of choice, to unnecessary interventions, and to a medical system that prioritizes doctors’ interests that wants you to give birth as quickly as possible so the doctor can leave their shift, et cetera.And so, we need to both take women’s pain more seriously and also question where it comes from and whether it’s natural and whether we can do something so that it is not so common.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Well, and you do talk about, in that regard about how many doctors will push for women to [00:16:00] have, cesarean sections.Much more than they used to. And that, that, that does seem to be driven not necessarily by medical needs of the women, right? Or the people. Mm-hmm.WEISS: Yeah. Not just cesarean sections, but a lot of, inducing labor, for instance, Pitocin, which actually makes contractions more painful. episiotomies where there’s a cut made between the vagina and the anus are still sometimes done without consent, though less so now there are a lot of interventions that are done, like to prioritize the hospital’s interests or even they might, may not see it that way.It may be to be very careful. And, just, but the thing is, there is some research showing if a hospital has more than a 15% C-section rate, like there’s actually more maternal deaths and more complications. So there is this. Almost this patronizing view, like that women can’t give birth on their own or that they can’t give birth with just the amount of interventions that they decide on.And that actually backfires because like our bodies do have an innate wisdom and there is a lot of overprotection, excessive interventions that it can actually lead to more pain.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I mean it, but it is a balancing act as you’re saying earlier, that that pain is real. but, it doesn’t perhaps always necessarily have to be something that happens.Sometimes people cause it. And yeah, I mean, so there, there’s, now you, talk about, some of your own experiences in other women in regards to pain that, that. had been sort of forced on you and, others. So maybe talk about one of the [00:18:00] experiences of your own first, if you would please.And then maybe we can talk about some of the other ones.WEISS: So, I have not had. The experience specifically of having pain normalized. Thankfully, I never had super painful periods. I haven’t given birth. I did not have painful sex ever. What I did have, as I said, was the normalization of Lessness. It started off that my first sexual experiences I was on, Zoloft and then No Prozac, and then Zoloft. And I had like a lot of trouble orgasming, especially with a partner. And I was, convinced because of magazine articles and whatnot that the female orgasm is elusive. my college nurse just said like, have you tried a vibrator?Which yes, like vibrators are great, but if it’s necessary there could be something else going on. And I just, Realized it, it wasn’t just the medication, but it was also just this culture where we prioritize men’s sexual desires where it’s not normalized for women to speak up and communicate in the bedroom.There are a lot of societal factors that make it seem normal if women do not orgasm. And and I realized that’s not the case at all. It doesn’t have to be the case. Like if a woman is empowered, if she is healthy and is empowered, then she should be orgasming like just as much and as easily as any male partner that she has.And there, yeah, and my experience, also my health journey, didn’t quite line up with the ideas about menstrual pain being normal because it wasn’t specifically reproductive, but I have a complicated array of issues due to chronic Lyme disease and was told a lot. If you have symptoms that [00:20:00] a, a shit ton of things were attributed to anxiety that like happens to a lot of women. Like, especially if you have symptoms like anxiety, heart, or not anxiety, like insomnia, heart palpitations, muscle twitches, like things that can be symptoms of anxiety. I was just told, like again and again, I don’t know what it is, must be anxiety, maybe like go on psychiatric medication.And then, I was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease and there’s like a lot of, there’s a lot of conditions that women get told are anxiety or depression and, that’s sort of a separate but related issue that we’re, well yeah. we’re not really being helped. We’re just, we’re still, it’s not necessarily normalized, but it’s also not really looked into or taken seriously.Suzannah’s personal health journeySHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I mean, I would say that. That, is a normalization of pain, but more of a, psychological pain that’s saying, well, you just, you, have anxiety. Like there’s get over it. That chill out or whatever like that. That’s what I mean in the sense that, people, it, it’s too easy I think for a lot of, I mean, it is naturally easy for a lot of doctors to kind of go for something like that instead of trying to explore something from a either medical or psychological standpoint that they may not be as familiar with.Especially in regards to if it’s things that, that women are, that, because it’s harder for them to understand it because even, even now I think within the, a lot of the medical schools and the literature, there’s just not as much focus. and with the Trump administration, they’re, they now put in a formal rule, With the NNIH, that research proposals that have the word women in them are going to get extra scrutiny because we can’t have [00:22:00] that.WEISS: Yeah. Like even if someone is experiencing anxiety or depression, then it should be looked into why, like, do you have trauma? Is something hurting you? Like it shouldn’t just be brushed off either way.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I mean, thinking about, some of these other things that are often associated with anxiety or whatever, you, also do talk about the, this idea that is, is super common and really destructive, that, women are more emotionally or hormonally driven than men.When in fact, as you note. A lot of the times when women are accused of being more emotional or hormonal driven is actually, when, when there is less, more, there are fewer hormones, especially estrogen. Right?WEISS: Yeah. There was a famous quote by Glorias that like, it’s around women’s periods when they’re considered to be most hormonal, that they actually have the ma most testosterone.So then like, what does that say about men? it’s just illogical. And we could also say about men. there’s a sperm si genesis cycle that takes, I forget the exact number, like a few months I think. So their hormones shift. There’s also a sort of day-to-day shifts in hormones that men’s testosterone often rises in the morning.So are we going to say, man, men can’t serve office? because they may need to make morning meetings when their testosterone’s high and they’re angry. Like, we could make the argument for men just as much as we could for women, but we don’t do that.Cognition as an embodied actSHEFFIELD: and then also you talk about post-menopausal women as well, having having less estrogen than men their age.Right. Which I thought that part, when I read that, I thought that was, I, hadn’t heard that one before, but it’s, kind of funny. But, very true. obviously,WEISS: yeah, that was [00:24:00] from the podcast. You’re Not Broken by Dr. Kelly Casperson. She and I communicated about that. Yeah, there’s a lot of illogical assumptions about hormones.because hormones are so complex. Each hormone has many different roles depending on a lot of things, where it is in the body, what receptors it’s targeting, et cetera. And so it’s just really hard to make any argument. I also talked to, one researcher who was saying basically. It’s not even that clear that hormones are what causes PMS.She was actually saying that, it’s more likely inflammation and inflammation can be influenced by things like diet, lifestyle, hou household chemicals, all the problems that I brought up as causes of period pain. So I think that’s really interesting. There are also certain countries, like in Asia where women don’t report PMS, so that’s another thing we think of as natural that might not actually be.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Well, and, yeah, just the, the idea of it becoming, as a kind of a psychosomatic cultural product. you do talk about that as well, that, as, because I mean, the idea of PMS, that was a pretty recent invention term. And so as knowledge of that term became more common.People saying, oh, well she has PMS or I have PMS. That obviously, probably is going to increase a aware, the, diagnosis of that, if you will, or the, self-diagnosis.WEISS: And again, it’s not to gaslight women, like a lot of people do have that experience, and I’m sure there always is a physical reason, whether it is a hormonal thing, whether it is inflammation, whether it is another factor can be an underlying condition that’s undiagnosed mental or physical that is being exacerbated at that time.It’s [00:26:00] important. We don’t gaslight women about it. And it’s also actually the way women are treated. It’s if women are discriminated against because of their periods taught to dread their periods, that is also another factor. So it’s like important to simultaneously hold, yes, it’s happening. And also the reasons why it may not be so inevitable, it may be something preventable.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Well, and that, yeah, trying to make sure to keep these, a series of ideas that are in some sense conflicting. I mean, that is a. A theme in the book that you are, you do develop repeatedly that, people have to stop assuming that only one thing is always true one thing or the other.That in fact, we’re complex beings and we shouldn’t reduce people to such deterministic categories.WEISS: I just think we need to find a way to get back to the Garden of Eden where just everyone’s happy in their bodies. I think psychedelics are the way.SHEFFIELD: Well, okay. Well, tell, us more what you mean by that.Go ahead. Go for it.WEISS: I’m speaking mostly from personal experience. I had no idea my body’s capability for pleasure until I started working with plant medicine and having all these experiences like touch free orgasm and vaginal orgasm and breast orgasm and that I like didn’t think were actually possible.There’s something about them that just restores your body to its natural state or opens your body up to pleasure. I’m not sure what it was I, what it is. I would love to see more research. I think it almost just like makes us more open and receptive and definitely heals the body at the core level. And I also noticed a difference in things like I mean in my physical health through my work with plant medicine.So I just think that’s something I’m half joking, but I think it’s something worth researching.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. [00:28:00] Well, yeah, I think it is because, I mean, from my view in my view consciousness is, sort of the constant amalgamation of our, neurons in our body, in our brains. because we have, many millions of neurons in our bodies that are outside of our brains.And how our self model is constructed and our, and what that means in terms of pleasure that’s people in a lot of ways it’s happenstance that people, may not be aware of a pleasurable sensation because they just never experienced it through whatever circumstance they had developed a model of pleasure.And so in some sense psychedelics can help you experience those other that other variety of sensation that you may not have gone for it. But, obviously they can be harmful for people as well, and I think we should, make sure to say that because especially if you have family members with schizophrenia or something like that, there can be severe damage that people have from those things as well.All right. So, so, but you just keeping in this general theme though, like the, idea of the going back to the, elusive female orgasm, that’s I mean, for a long time people didn’t even believe that it existed. So, and, and, we can kind of see that, for instance, looking at the Bible that within the Hebrew Bible, there’s no prohibition on, women.En engaging in sexual activity with women. because they didn’t even think that was possible. Wow. And so, but it, I think it goes back to the idea of what you were saying that, women were not believed historically, at least in the, Western canon, so much of it to have any sort of sexual nature.And [00:30:00] that really did that idea propagated even as medical science, detached itself from religious belief and tried to develop its own ontology of the body.WEISS: I do sometimes wonder if, people didn’t believe in women’s capacity for pleasure or if they’re just in denial. One of my interview subjects, I really liked her quote, her name was Ayelet.She was talking about ecstatic childbirth, and I asked her something about the medical system and whether, the way in which childbirth is forced into this controlling healthcare system that sort of deprives women of decision making, whether that reflects an overall distrust of women, the same distrust that leads to restrictive abortion laws.And she said, I don’t know if people, if men in charge distrust women or if they actually trust women too much. Like if they’re afraid of how trustworthy women are when it comes to their own bodies and how powerful women are. And I, really like that idea because I don’t think it’s that people don’t see women’s sexuality or women’s power, or women’s beauty or women’s light.I think it’s that it is impossible not to see, and that’s why we have all these restrictions against women standing in their power. And I, just think that’s a more empowering stance to take that like women have always had power that’s just been undeniable, especially in the childbirth process and in sex and like, and that is why we have these, opposing myths.It’s, like to, like I said about Eve, there was this idea of women as super sexual, so we needed to create all these beliefs to restrict that. There, there’s always been an understanding of women’s potential. It’s just like something we’re afraid of for some reason. I’m not sure why. Maybe because of paternity anxiety and this idea that we could, have babies with different men and can’t track who our [00:32:00] children belong to.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and you do I was actually, I’m glad you, mentioned that because I was going to ask you about that, that, you do talk about the idea of, that perhaps monogamy arose, or at least female monogamy arose from that imperative because people didn’t want to raise somebody else’s child, or men didn’t want to raise somebody else’s child.and, when we look at our, closest animal relatives the, where they have a, the, that have a more sort of democratic social structure, the Bonobos, they, this idea doesn’t really exist for them. And, I don’t know. it’s interesting to think about it and I’m, glad you do talk about it.So, but can you, expand on that a little bit here if you would please.WEISS: Yeah, so one theory about why we restrict women’s sexuality and reproduction so much is that there has been since agricultural times this effort to track who the father of every child is so that we, they know how to pass down property.And that is something that you see in the Bible, like this whole line of father so and so, we got so and so. We got so and so. And it also became, a way to track who belonged to which tribe. And so there’s another book that I recommend Sex Ed Dawn, that talks about how this fucked us up as a species and how in the hunter gatherer days the theory put forth in that book is that actually women’s sexuality was not restricted and it didn’t matter so much who, like there’s evidence of sperm competition, meaning that there is in semen, a chemical that kills other sperm, and there’s also the shape of a penis like scoops out other men’s sperm, which suggests actually women were having multiple partners.[00:34:00]At like very close together. And there are also some tribes where it’s normal for a baby to have multiple men taking care of them. because they actually don’t even know who the father is. And that just sounds like a much healthier, happier society where there isn’t this obsession with controlling women’s sexuality with, is the bride a virgin?And it’s more, just about allowing the sperm competition to take place. And like, everyone’s kind of non-monogamous and kind of slutty and, we just, everyone, takes care of the kids.Contradictions in male attitudes toward female sexualitySHEFFIELD: Well, and, it is an interesting thing to think about, I think in our current moment as well, because, there’s I mean, as people are surely aware, by now there’s a lot of angry, men out there who are straight.Who are well or straight presenting, we’ll say that are, wanting to have more sex with women, but then at the same time also are condemning women who are not monogamous. And it’s like, well, you can’t really do that guys. That if you’re saying that you don’t want women to have sex, but then you complain that they’re having, or that you don’t have sex, it’s like, it’s not really how that works.There is this contradiction, I think, and it’s, and as, but as, women, have, and, which is something you talk about in your first book, that as women have taken more power over their bodies and and sexualities that.Men haven’t adjusted to that. And obviously non-monogamy for women seems to be a pretty readily a ready solution for that. But people are still against, it seems side.WEISS: There is a view, something I’ve encountered a lot is there’s a view of women who are open about their sexuality as [00:36:00] indiscriminating as, having low self-worth.And it is an interesting contradiction that it’s like men want women to be sexually liberated in the sense of sexually available, but they don’t, and by men I mean like unevolved men, like red pillar men. I think that like manosphere men, like they, they want women, to be sexually available, but they don’t really, when confronted with a woman who’s really sexually empowered, they’re afraid and they feel intimidated and they feel like she, if she is very sexually empowered, but she is discriminating then and she is like, I am super sexual, but I don’t want to have sex with you, then it’s considered the ultimate insult and it’s like a lot of men want a sexually liberated woman until they’re confronted with what that actually is.Gender non-conformity and the myth of brokennessSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, they, want a woman to be liberated, but only for them. Not for herself and, not for somebody else that she chooses to be involved with. Yeah. And, there, but there’s also, this tendency also does kind of wrap around on the other side, that for people who don’t conform to gender binaries that, there’s this, and which a sense which you talk about in the book is, people that they’re broken, that there’s something wrong with them.even though historically we can see, like from within the. the Hindu tradition of Hera, and, two spirits, like this, the idea that heteronormativity is ingrained in humanity is just obviously not true from a scientific standpoint or, an anthropology standpoint. But this myth really does persist.And it’s, and I think in the many ways, the modern reactionary movement has organized itself around this in so many ways. like they, they are obsessed with hunting down trans people who exist in public [00:38:00] and, try to participate in society where whether it’s, I mean, even in the case of like sports the president of the NCAA had said that out of more than 550,000 athletes, there were fewer than 10 trans athletes in his entire organization.So here we were having this national panic. around pe fewer people than could fit on the, on your fingers if you’re counting like obviously this is not a national concern. It doesn’t affect hardly anyone. But they want, but they, really psychologically want to believe in this idea that, you must conform to the, heterosexual gender norm.WEISS: Yeah, that was important to point out. because I talk a lot about women feeling broken for very, for being women basically. And there’s also this feeling of brokenness. I think a lot of trans, non-binary, two-spirit gen, gender non-conforming, et cetera, people can relate to, especially I talk about intersex people whose bodies don’t fit the typical definition of male or female and how they’re.Sometimes surgically operated on without consent, often when it’s medically unnecessary and even medically harmful to look quote unquote normal. And so this, that there is a big movement to stop that, but they’re still felt, they’re still made to feel as if their bodies are broken or, trans people because of this, two sex model.This idea that you have a male mind or a female mind, or a male body, or a female body, and you can’t have a mix of both or something in between. It’s as if everyone who doesn’t fit those categories has some kind of defect. And it’s actually the social stigma that’s worse than any physical problem that actually exists.And if we remove the stigma, life will be a lot easier for all those populations.SHEFFIELD: [00:40:00] it would, and, but it would also be easier for people who are not in those populations as well. And I think that’s something. that should be talked about more because, there’s I, just as a, cultural character since King of the Hill came back as a show, you’ve got the character of Bobby Hill, the son, and I don’t know if you ever watched it, so pardon me if you have, but you know, Bobby Hill, the son of Hank Hill he’s generally, presenting as, a boy.And, but, and, he’s interested in girls, but at the same time, he doesn’t have all the same stereotypical, male traits. So like, he likes a purse. He has a purse and other things like that. And, people can, people have the right to like stuff, like, there’s nothing wrong with you if you are liking things that you know, you are as socially assigned.Gender says that you shouldn’t like. whether it’s, a boy who likes pink, or just, or girls who like to play with, army figures or whatever. Like we sh people have the right to be however they want to be, and, experiencing life in the way that, that feels good.Like, that’s who you shouldn’t be against that. I think even if you are not in, in the, in the, a gender or a sexual minority,WEISS: I agree. Like nobody, nobody perfectly fits in. I also talk about research showing most people have what’s called mosaic brains, that some parts of their brain are more typical of what’s considered male, or some are more typical of what’s considered female.Like most of our brains are a mix, and so nobody is really, like, if we’re going by social stereotypes, nobody is 100% masculine or feminine. So it’s just important to normalize that for everybody.SHEFFIELD: Absolutely. And I think, one of the [00:42:00] other I don’t know, just like, one of these other basic things that, that should be talked about more and I’m glad that you do talk about it in the book, but also you, and is that, that everybody has, inner traumas or past trauma experiences and that also does impact a lot of how they see themselves and how they see, the world and that, and in a lot of ways, these unresolved traumas especially are kind of at the root of, Of issues that people have that may manifest in medical or psychological ways. And that and that’s something that you talk about pretty much at length and, also you do outside of, the, of your book as well. You want to talk about that if you would?Trauma and its physical manifestationsWEISS: Yeah. So when we talk about what is actually contributing to many women’s pain, there is a connection between emotional trauma and physical pain.There are many different connections. anxiety and depression are related to physical symptoms like headaches. They can affect the immune system trauma. The book, the Body Keeps the Score explains this. That trauma can actually weaken your immune system or cause a autoimmune condition where your body is essentially attacking Its.Self and there is some research showing, different reproductive health issues are related to sexual trauma. The connection, it’s not exactly clear why. Some of it could be, if you have trauma around your genitals, your womb, your pelvis, you may not seek care as much because it is triggering to go to the doctors.Some of it could actually be physical trauma. Some of it could be just emotions get stored in the body. I interviewed one woman named Josephina Bashau, who talked about her journey with Prec cervical cancer, and, she believes it’s related to having been molested as a child and that it had to do with the [00:44:00] shame and trauma she experienced from that.And it’s not clear exactly like how those two things are related, but there is a. Research showing those who have been sexually abused are more likely to develop cervical cancer. And she talks about actually how studying sacred sexuality, and this is where it gets really woo. But for, her, that was a real thing that a big part of her healing process was healing her relationship to her body.And I do believe when we love our bodies, we take better care of them. And that does promote health. When we, when we believe that our bodies are valuable, that they, valuable is a strange word, giving my last book, like deconstructed that idea of a woman having quote unquote value. But when we believe, like, that our bodies are worth taking care of, that has an enormous impact on our health.When we believe that our bodies. Are sacred or however you would put it, that they are just something to appreciate that does affect how you treat yourself and a lot of women. not just in terms of being sexually harassed or assaulted, but just being told, your body isn’t good enough, you’re too fat, your boobs aren’t big enough, et cetera.Like this body hatred, I believe is related to the epidemic of women who experience chronic illness. And yeah, I think I mentioned, I wanted to plug my psychotherapy services. I like working with people with mysterious health issues and seeing if we can pinpoint the connection between physical and mental health.because there are many ways in which they intersect.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, you also talk about PTSD being linked to, a number of other chronic dis I mean autoimmune disorders as well.WEISS: Yeah. PTSD and, childhood. A childhood adverse events [00:46:00] such as, sexual, physical, or psychological abuse are also connected to someone’s likelihood of developing many different illnesses.So there, there are many theories about why, but the bottom line is that like, if you’re not treated well, that is going to have an impact on your body. And that is why it’s so important that instead of normalizing women’s health problems, we create a world that treats women better and women will be healthier.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. yeah, absolutely. And I mean, and, it is really important to have that, focus. Now just to circle back to something you, you, said though, like the, idea though of, normalization of rape culture also, that does have an impact on that as well. can you tell us what you meant by that in the book?WEISS: Yeah, a lot of women are chronically traumatized, even if a woman doesn’t experience a rape. By the standard definition, if you live within rape culture, if you see media image constantly of women being objectified, of women being dehumanized, if you are cat called on the street a lot, if you are constantly having men try to push your boundaries, that contributes to this feeling of unsafety in your body and it makes your nervous system hypervigilant.It can actually, and when your nervous system is hypervigilant. That in of itself can lead to a whole host of health problems. because like your body needs to be in a parasympathetic state to really heal. So if you’re kind of always in fight or flight your body, your immune system is going to be suppressed.You’re going to be more susceptible to chronic illness. Your body isn’t going to heal as easily. And I think we live in a world where a lot of women are hypervigilant and that’s also going to affect our [00:48:00] sexual experiences. It’s hard to orgasm or let go or like enjoy sex. If you are monitoring the scene, like, okay, is he going to push my boundaries?Is everything going to be okay? and. If you, and it also impacts mental health. And I talk about, a disorder called borderline personality disorder that is more commonly diagnosed in women, though. it may actually be as common in men, but it’s basically characterized by emotional instability, anger outbursts, self-harm, suicidal ideation, difficulty, kind of push-pull dynamics in relationships.And a lot of research shows that’s related to trauma and may actually be misdiagnosed complex, PTSD, which is when you are exposed to low grade trauma or high grade trauma, like throughout a period of time and. That I think is very, underdiagnosed complex, PTSD, and that’s something a lot of women may experience just by being criticized, growing up by living in a culture that just doesn’t take women seriously.I think that is a big factor in women’s physical and mental health problems and sexual problems is this low grade trauma and, any oppress group that we’re constantly exposed to. Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and another thing that is kind of related to that also is that while, or I guess but it’s on the opposite side, is that you, have a chapter later on in the book called Sexy But Not Sexual that examines the idea that, that sexiness or sexuality is.It’s confined to people who have, are a certain age or a certain weight and that this is extremely damaging. And I, and this is damaging also to, men as well, obviously that, men, a lot of male sexuality, especially in pop culture, is presented as just kind of disgusting. And, you talked about that in your other book as [00:50:00] well.But you know, like within, this context especially with age, that’s where you focus on that, that women’s bodies are, have no sexual value. And that a lot of women as they get older, become invisible and as many have said or they feel that way,‘Sexy but not sexual’WEISS: yeah, there, there’s a lot of bias in the medical system for women who have sexual or reproductive issues that often their sexiness is prized over their sexuality.And what I mean by that is, for instance, There are many examples. I interviewed one woman who had endometriosis and it caused painful sex, and the doctors didn’t really take her seriously until her boyfriend attested that she couldn’t have sex. There’s also some, birth control is one example of something where I think we prioritize men’s sexual desires over women’s, women are kind of, many women think that if they want to have sex, they, need to be on birth control.And some women experience side effects, not all. Some actually like, have positive side effects, but some have depression, lower sex drive, even painful sex, and they feel like it’s their duty to be on birth control so that they can have sex ultimately for immense pleasure, because that’s. Women having painful sex is seen as less important than just men being able to come inside you without a condom.And there I also talk about a procedure called leaps that removes prec cervical or precancerous cervical cells. And how many women are reporting it actually interferes with their sexual function. There are horror stories like some women saying they could not orgasm afterward, and doctors, it’s still taking a while for doctors to take it seriously.because there isn’t a ton of research yet. There is some research showing it happens, but, we just live within this larger medical system where women’s sexual complaints aren’t taken seriously. And we also [00:52:00] see that with antidepressants. I wasn’t even told that they could have sexual side effects.And that ties into this larger culture where like if a woman can be sexy and offer pleasure to a man, that is seen as more important than the woman having pleasure herself. And that ties to aging, as you mentioned, because women’s, often older women’s sexuality and sexual complaints aren’t taken seriously.They may be told to just use lube if they’re having sexual pain or dryness. And actually a lot of older women have a sexual awakening later in life because they realize their body may work differently. But it’s a chance to explore other forms of sexuality, to explore sexuality, outside penetration, to have a deeper connection with a partner.And so that’s also something, that needs more attention is the needs of post-menopausal women, specifically their sexual needs that are often erased.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. I’m curious, what you think in, this regard in terms of just like cultural output. Because I, personally think that, we’re seeing more, not, enough, but we’re seeing more films and television that are, a, admitting the reality that people have sex, in their seventies and eighties and, that’s a good thing and that they shouldn’t feel ashamed for having desire or, seeing themselves as sexual.And, we’re still not there, but you know, as much as we should be. But I think there has been some improvement, but I don’t know what you.WEISS: I think so there’s, I interviewed a woman named Joan Price, who’s an activist, a sex educator who’s older and has written books about this topic. And she said actually, she’s talked to other women who say that after menopause and after their children leave the house is actually a time [00:54:00] when they live more for themselves.And it’s actually not, not being like considered an ideal object can actually be a positive thing because they realize their sexuality should be for themselves. And it’s not that they can be an object to someone but there is this greater sense of agency and empowerment and living for oneself that arises.And there, there is research showing like a lot of women’s sexuality and, men’s as well gets. Even better with age. And I, think we need more resources and education on that, but I can recommend Joan Price’s books as a good starting point for anyone who wants more information on that.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Yeah.Awesome. Well, and to, toward the latter part of the book, you do talk about also trying to get people to reorient how they see medical functions like Well, I don’t like how I said that. and toward the, latter part of the book, you also do talk about encouraging women to try to, get beyond, the sexuality or, the body as this painfully destined or non pleasurable thing.To, as you put it to, to live orgasmically, what do you, mean by that?WEISS: That’s something that I learned from my mentor, Josephina Bahr, who’s interviewed in the book. She talks a lot about living orgasmically or the orgasmic life, which, or the way she called it was life is one giant orgasm.So she talked, she talks about things like, drinking coffee can be ecstatic or just going outside and feeling the breeze against you can be ecstatic, can even be orgasmic. And that’s a difficult concept to explain to some people [00:56:00] who haven’t done psychedelics. But it’s like, if you. I actually like to teach people an exercise.Sometimes if you can tune into the sensation in your genitals and just kind of like breathe into that sensation, and this is woo, but often you can actually feel even without sexual stimulation, even when you’re not having sex. There’s always pleasure coursing through your body, and there’s an exercise I teach people where if you like.Breathe into that area. You can imagine it expanding like a balloon and you can sort of feel like your whole body has lit up and you can feel like there are pleasure receptors all over your body. And there are many people who experience pleasure or even orgasms from stimulation of parts of the body.You would not expect like the ears or the breasts more commonly, or even the lips. And the more you can develop body awareness, body attunement and just general presence, you can experience things like taking a shower as orgasmic, just the feeling of the soap and the water against your skin.a lot of people are living in kind of a dissociated state where they’re outside their bodies and they’re not experiencing a pleasurable life on a daily basis. And I think meditation is helpful for that. I think different. I think breath work is really helpful for that. anything that cultivates presence within the body.And yeah, a lot of us just aren’t living and, then that translates into the bedroom that every sensa sensation feels more intense and a lot of people aren’t living up to their sexual potential because they’re so crushed under their work. They’re glued to their computers. They’re not taking the time to do things that are pleasurable in their bodies.Even if that’s, just like going outside and putting your feet on the ground or eating food that feels enjoyable. All of these things add up to a more, more orgasmic sex and a [00:58:00] more orgasmic life. And according to many women better childbirth experiences as well, because they just have greater body awareness.Mindfulness and body awarenessSHEFFIELD: Yeah. So it’s, being able to experience pleasure or it’s see it where it is more and. In your own experience is a way of deriving greater enjoyment from life. And that is a process that would also affect your sex life as well. That it would make it everything, if everything feels better than so would that, right?WEISS: That’s always what I teach people at first who are struggling with arousal or orgasm is practice mindfulness in your daily life. Practice noticing the texture and taste of the food you eat. Practice simple things like putting on lotion and noticing how it feels on your body because that kind of awareness is going to help you in the bedroom more than any specific technique, just to actually fully feel like you could use a vibrator with a higher setting.And that’s also valid. But there are also ways to feel more with less just by being more, body aware.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Cool. all right, well, so, for people who want to keep up with you, Suzannah, tell us your recommendations.WEISS: You can follow me on Twitter. Suzannah Weiss, S-U-Z-A-N-A-N-N-A-H-W-E-I-S-S. that’s also my website, susanna wise.com.My Instagram was sadly taken down, because they’re kind of anti-sex on there, but if it comes back, you can find me, Suzannah Wise. WI, SE and, yeah, I offer sex therapy and psychotherapy now and sex coaching. So if you are interested in that, please go to my website.SHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good.[01:00:00] Thanks for being here again.WEISS: Thank you.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you are a paid subscribing member, you have unlimited access to the archives and thank you very much for your support.And if you can’t afford to subscribe right now, I understand that. But, we do have free subscriptions as well that you can go to patreon.com/discover Flux or you can go to flux.community, where you can subscribe on substack. So whichever one you prefer, you’ll get the same content over there.And, thanks very much and if you’re watching on YouTube, please click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode. Thanks a lot, I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. 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Episode Summary One year after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats are still trying to figure out what to do for the next time around and what to do in the 2026 midterm elections as control of Congress is once again at stake.There were a lot of people offering advice to the Democrats in this regard, and certainly the most well-funded of those people are the ones who say that the party has become too liberal and has to modify its stances to become more popular and resonant with public opinion.And at the same time, there are people on the further left side of the coalition arguing that the Democrats have become too conservative and that they have alienated people who want a more radical change in society to fix things that are broken, and not to step back at all on defending abortion access or trans rights.Each side of this intra-left debate offers worthy points, but both groups tend to understate the immense effect that media have on people’s political opinions. That is the central topic of my new e-book, What Republicans Know, so please do help me out and purchase it if you haven’t yet.Someone else’s work you should consider in this regard is our guest on today’s program: Dave Karpf is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, and he’s written several books on the role of media and public opinion.Last week, he wrote an article in the New Republic about a new report from a group called WelcomePAC, which argued that Democrats need to become more moderate, but which also largely ignored how many people don’t know about candidates’ policy views.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Free excerpt from “What Republicans Know”--How much do political party elites know about their own voters?--Reactionaries built an infrastructure to attack democracy, their opponents must do the same to defend it--Americans want big ideas, but Trump’s opponents aren’t providing them--Democratic losses stem from their failure to communicate--Trump’s insult comic shtick and the right’s new media shock troopsAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction11:01 — Policies are far from the only thing that matters to voters17:03 — Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantage through inaction22:11 — Political parties need permanent infrastructure34:55 — Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?43:20 — The perils of thinking that polling alone is political science53:11 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.Matthew Sheffield: And joining me now is Dave Karp. Hey Dave. Welcome back to Theory of Change.Dave Karpf: Okay. Thanks. Having me again.Matthew Sheffield: So, you had a great thread on the WelcomePAC report, which I have to say is when I read that, I instantly was like, oh man, these people like “Welcome Back, Kotter,” the seventies TV series.Dave Karpf: It does.Matthew Sheffield: So, but you know, in fairness to them, I, do want to say that there are some things, there’s a bunch of stuff in this report that’s high-quality and that does match established, well-confirmed political science. And this is, in my view, the highest-quality, more centrist-leaning document that we’ve seen since 2024.Do you agree with that?Dave Karpf: Yeah, I mean the, when I opened this, the first thing that I noticed, they, they have a list of people that they’re thinking and it includes a number of political scientists who I know and deeply respect. It also includes a [00:04:00] number of people who are immediate red flags for me, Nate Silver is on this thing, like Nate Silver was a great person to talk to five, 10 years ago. Lately he’s mostly seems to be playing poker.So there were a couple of immediate red flags, but also there were a number of people who I was like, okay, if you are, like, if you’re talking to Aaron Strauss and Chris Warshaw. I’m interested in what you have to say. And I think they took seriously that they wanted to gather the data and see what it told them.I have some things we can get into about what data they decided to look at and what they didn’t decide to gather. But I think they, at least took it seriously.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Absolutely. And, and there were a couple of other red flags for me with a, like they cited James Carville and their title page and a Republican pollster. How does that make you look better? I, don’t think that it does guys.But nonetheless there are some points in here that are true and like one of the, things that I try to do with my writing and podcast [00:05:00] is to, show the various factions of the, left that, nobody is a hundred percent correct in, understanding elections.Like each side actually has viewpoints that are true and each one has ideas that are false. And so one of the, there are a couple of things that are true in this report is that irregular voters are not ideologically committed compared to people who are regular voters. And, that’s, I, that’s, something that I think people on the progressive side might struggle with that concept or accepting That seems like.Dave Karpf: Yeah. And I, the thing that I tell my students at the beginning of every semester is, the answer to any question worth asking is, well, it’s complicated. And as political scientist, that’s where I feel comfortable sort of exploring the complication as a pragmatic strategist, well, it’s complicated isn’t a good answer, right?So the hard questions of things like, should the Democrats try to nominate more centrist or more progressive candidates, [00:06:00] what people would really like is there to be a clean, easy answer to that. And that includes progressives. Who would really like to think that, when you nominate a bold progressive, they’re likely to win.And what the data shows is, well, it’s complicated. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a centrist. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a bold progressive. In either case, it would kind of be nice to have somebody just dripping with charisma and lacking in scandals. But those people are few and far between, and so it’s all complicated and that like that is, I think some of the use of a report like this is sort of reminding us that the simple story you’d like to tell yourself is also not quite true.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other things that they noted in here that is true is that political donors or activists tend to have more polarized opinions than the general public or even their own co partisans in their party. Now the Democrats have a much wider range of opinions compared to Republicans.And so that makes things a little more difficult as well, in [00:07:00] particular for them. And, and so the, these are real challenges that the Democratic Party, there are unique challenges that the Democratic party has that do make things harder for them compared to Republicans and I, think that’s fair. We have to say that.Dave Karpf: we do the, bit that I want to quibble on there, because when I read that passage from them, I was annoyed. Is.​If we start from the premise that politics is complicated and the answer to everything is, well, it’s complicated. Part of what that sets up is like, I think it’s okay for your party elites to be more interested in some issue portfolios than the mass public. If the reason they’re more interested in them, I’m thinking particularly with climate change, isn’t because they’re, died in the wool I ideologues, but because they’re looking at it and having spent a lot of time wrestling with it, they say, well, no, this is really bad and we as policymakers really need to care.Right. Historically, foreign policy is something that the masses [00:08:00] mostly don’t pay attention to. And so it’s really important to have people in government who do pay attention to it, even if they’re going to be out of step with the masses. Because the masses aren’t tuning in. So to the ex, like when you have elites that are out of step with the party base or the mass public that they want to get to vote for them, we’re not out out of step with them.Because they have sort of different ide, ideological priors. That’s a thing that we want to remind ourselves of and sort of, sort of check our instincts. But when they’re out of step, because they’re more well informed, because they’re the people who are actually paid to develop expertise and wrestle with the complications.Like I, I think it’s important to remember that like we run elections and, win elections in order to govern, and a lot of the stuff that goes into governing is in fact going to be unpopular just because governance is complicated and a lot of it sucks.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, another issue where that’s very relevant what you just said is, the, the issue of democracy, quote unquote. So, the average person, I don’t [00:09:00] expect them to care about political systems and, the, Overton window and, political theory like, oh, that’s, they have better things to do in their lives than obsess over those types of things that you and I are thinking about.And, so, but yeah, like it, the doesn’t mean that they don’t matter and in fact, argue, I think we could say that climate change and democracy are probably the the most. Important issues from an objective standpoint because they determine whether you have a future of the polity.Dave Karpf: Right.And also if, the party, I’m particularly annoyed on climate both because I come out of the environmental movement, but also because Matt Yglesias keeps on beating this drum and I just think he’s wrong. Like Yglesias seems to have concluded that climate is a loser issue. Democrats should stop talking about it.Just assume that some technology will save us. because it, it’s a loser, so don’t do it. And A, I disagree with him that’s a, the route that they should take. [00:10:00] But B, I would also say pragmatically, if you just let climate change keep getting worse in order to hopefully win some more elections in the near term, you’re also going to end up living in a hotter, less safe, less stable world in the future.Where it is difficult as the governing party to keep on getting reelected. Like the inattentive public is just going to blame you when things go wrong. So you should take governance choices that in the medium and long term, hopefully make it less likely for things to go wrong. Otherwise, what’s the point of democracy to begin with?And I like, I just think some of these elector editorialists or the, like, they’re calling the missiles populists now, like I, I think they seem to have forgotten that like, you don’t need to, you don’t need to campaign in, prose. You can campaign in poetry, but if you’re going to be trying to win elections, you then actually need to do the policy work that leads to a more stable and hopefully prosperous nation.Otherwise when you do win, you’re going to be living, you’re going to be governing in such a manner that like they kick you [00:11:00] out next time.Policies are far from the only thing that matters to votersMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And that I think was one of the critical flaws in this report is that they, have a absurd viewpoint about that the public knows about issues and cares about them. And, and, the reality is, I mean, Kamala Harris, she, she ran her campaign and her policy positions to be maximally popular,Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Like the people who’ve, some of the people who were financing this report were also financing and directing the Kamala Harris campaign. And so like we tried their idea and we’ve tried their idea for the past several decades and, it actually hasn’t worked. And, like the thing with Joe Biden in 2020, the, problem with this, popularist approach to me is that it’s not actually popularist, it’s not popular.And like, and Trump won [00:12:00] because people, oh, sorry. Biden beat Trump in 2020 because Trump was really horrible and, we had a, he was a disaster. Like it wasn’t that people thought Joe Biden was great, and his policies were awesome.And that’s the problem with these guys is that they don’t like, they, it’s Bill Clinton won because of Ross Perot. Obama won not because of his strategies, but because he was a really good candidate who spoke really well. And so the, problem that Democrats have is that you’ve got this consultant class that sort of glommed onto these two candidates. Like, what, happened to Organizing for America?Nothing. What happened to all of this local movement that they had built that had arose around him? Nothing.Dave Karpf: Yeah, though I, one thing I would add in is. Obama also won because he was running against a Republican after two Republican terms when things were like, we both had foreign wars that had gotten unpopular and the economy imploded. Right? So like there is [00:13:00] historically, there’s what we call sort of like a like a thermostatic or a sort of a back and forth phenomenon where people tend to vote in presidential elections based on their opinion of the incumbent president or incumbent party.And it tends to go back and forth. there’s, no world in which the Democrats win normal elections for the ne for the next like 40 years, like eventually Republican wins. And that it particularly happens once people decide, like in political science we call it, they, call it I think the time for change model.I haven’t looked at thisMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, I was just going to say that. Yeah.Dave Karpf: Yeah. But like, part of why Obama wins, like it helps that he is historically charismatic, but it also helps that he is running against the Republicans after George w Bush’s, like, I think Republican party approval was at like 20 something percent at that point.And John McCain like,Matthew Sheffield: too. Yeah.Dave Karpf: yeah. Like, and you had Hurricane Katrina and then also the great financial crisis. Like, like of course Bane didn’t win that election. I’m pretty sure Kamala Harris could have won under those circumstances too. Like there’s some candidate quality, [00:14:00] but a lot of it’s actually the broader circumstances, which again is why there like, sure go ahead and campaign in poetry, but you need to govern in a manner that makes it less likely that objective conditions suck.Because when objective conditions suck, then inattentive voters will just cast your party out. Assuming we have normal elections, which I hope we have those in 2028, but yh I had another thought. It’s coming back to me. Yeah. Oh, here’s the other thought. There, there’s a turn of phrase that I coined for when I’m cri criticizing the, tech barons, but it’s useful here, I think which is the, reverse Scooby-Doo.Now the reverse Scooby-Doo is when you sort of imagine yourself as the villain in Scooby-Doo and say like, we would’ve gotten away with it, if not for, insert thing. And we see this from the tech barons a lot where like, like crypto, like, Ava for a long time has like insisted that the entire economic system is about to collapse in six months and Bitcoin will rise.If it doesn’t happen, then it is, [00:15:00] the government’s fault for interfering. And so it’s like his, it, creates sort of a pressure release valve where he can loudly predict this and people can listen to him. Then when it doesn’t happen, he is like, well, no, it was, I like included a reason why, like, I’m not wrong, even though it didn’t happen.And, with these centrist consultants, like they talk a lot in this report about how Democrats need to talk about kitchen table issues. And if they just talk about it, then they will do better. And their evidence is asking the electorate, polling the electorate after the 2024 election and finding the electorate says, yeah, they don’t really talk about kitchen table issues.They’re mostly talking about like, I don’t know, climate and trans people. And so they then say, oh, that must mean that they talk too much about climate and trans people. They just talk different than what happened. But if you do a content analysis, it turns out that Kamala Harris was constantly talking about kitchen table issues.She was not constantly raising trans people, that she was not constantly talking about climate. My God. And so this idea that like, yeah, they tried our thing, but like if you just try it harder next time, like surely it [00:16:00] wasn’t like even though she took our advice when we failed, it’s somebody else’s fault that’s always in there.To me, the lesson here is really the Democratic party does not get to control what people’s impression of the Democratic Party is. This, they, had more control of that 20 or 30 years ago when we still had the broadcast media ecosystem. And you would develop sound bites that would get played on CNN, right?Like there was a, logic of this stuff in the James Carville age that political consultants, including Centrus political consultants, really had figured out. And they know that doesn’t quite work. They don’t really know what’s replaced it. But part of what’s replaced it is social media. The other part of what’s replaced it is like, my God, right-wing billionaires have bought up both all the mainstream media outlets and all the social media outlets.Like the reason why everyone thinks that Democrats talk about trans people all the time is that Fox News and CNN and Politico constantly talk about what are Democrats saying about trans people? Oh, they’re [00:17:00] defending their position instead of throwing ‘em under the bus, or, oh, they threw them under the bus.Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantageDave Karpf: Let’s talk about that like. It th 30 years ago, there were leftists who were like, oh, the, problem is corporate media is controlling everything. And I was actually back then one of those people being like, it’s a little more complicated than that. Like, give him a break, understand the rules of the game and play towards it.And now I find myself saying like, oh no, like Larry Ellison’s son, David just bought CBS and put Perry Weiss in charge and now he’s trying to buy CNN. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and is now saying, no, I’m going to have a very strong hand in what it says and what it does. Like the owners are now making very clear that they have an ideology and the press is only going to print that ideology.And they’re also buying the social media companies. They can rejigger the algorithms. If you follow every word of this report, the Democrats are not going to become known for the things that deciding to win or WelcomePAC wants them to be known for. because no one will hear that. because people aren’t tuning in to watch your stump speeches, they’re not reading the party [00:18:00] platforms, they’re getting incidental knowledge of, the party from what they’re sort of vaguely seeing in the background.And all that is getting set by a bunch of sent billionaires who like Trump or at least want to serve Trump and are buying up all the outlets. Like you gotta compete with that.Matthew Sheffield: You do. Yeah. And and that’s one of the central points in, my new ebook what Republicans know, like, so as from my own, experience in Republican politics they’re just, they have been so much better at politics because, and they have to be because, you, they’re, these reactionary positions are hated by most Americans.Like most Americans want to protect social security, They want to have civil rights. They, they, want have Medicare. They want to have, they, want to have jobs programs, they want to have education, student loans, and, they want all these things and they want to protect the environment.Yes. In fact, they do. And and so they’ve, had to, Republicans had to home or reactionary Republicans after they. After they took over, the party [00:19:00] really had to develop an infrastructure for themselves. And, that’s something that in the US left, that just hasn’t been done.And, it’s because as I have the graph graphs in my, in the book that, like the Republican ecosystem is circular, every piece of it creates new inputs for the next step. So the activists are created by the media. The media created by the parties, funded by the parties, and then the parties are funded by the donors, and the donors come from the activists.And so whereas, and in the democratic side of things, they’re blowing more than half their money on TV ads local TV ads, like, but number one, young adults are not watching local television at all. Like,Dave Karpf: people aren’t watching tele like it is. Only my parents’ generation are watching live television for anything other than dancing with the Stars and live sporting events. Like, no, no one just turns on NBC anymore.[00:20:00]Matthew Sheffield: No. No, they don’t. and then, the wor even worse of this strategy an even worse aspect of this strategy is that many of these local stations are owned by right-wing billionaires. So the Democratic party is literally funding right wing media.That’s what they’re doing. And they’ve been doing it for decades now.Like if you add up all the amounts over the, decades, like just, since Obama, they have given Sinclair Fox and Nexstar more than $1 billion.Dave Karpf: Yeah, And again, I, what stands out to me is like to me, this is a failure of planning for the medium term instead of the short term. Because in the short term, I can understand you need to win an election. If the audience is, if the audience you’re trying to hit is on local television, you gotta go spend on local television.Read them [00:21:00] like go win the election. because that’s going to determine the shape of the next two years. And you do need to do that. The problem is that’s kind of only what they do. Like the, way that I remember sort of coming to this realization since I’ve been in politics and organizing since the nineties like I remember in 1998 people talking after the congressional election about how well we really need to build party infrastructure at the state and local level.And Republicans are doing that. They’re running people for school board. We need to do that too. And everyone agreed like, oh yeah, we should do that. Then 2006, 2008, we’re still having that same conversation as though it’s a new conversation. And even at times, people would launch initiatives and those initiatives would get some funding and they would get some interest.And those initiatives would last like four years, six years, show some results. ButMatthew Sheffield: Dean, actually to hisDave Karpf: yeah, I mean, Howard,Matthew Sheffield: state strategy.Dave Karpf: right, he, like, he did it. So it’s not that we’ve never even tried it, but when we try that, [00:22:00] it doesn’t last for very long because the, impulse to defund that and put all of the money just into the short term thing means that we never build up that media infrastructure.Political parties need permanent infrastructureDave Karpf: We never developed that party infrastructure. Like it just ends up being sort of a hollow party organization and hollow media outlets where like you, every two years they’re like, oh, let’s go find some social media influencers to talk to, like. You need to spend a decade creating a pipeline so you can have your own Ben Shapiros and then eventually like try to have your own real equivalence of like CNN and the Washington Post.Now that the Republicans have bought those too, that requires both a lot of money and a lot of commitment, but also a lot of time and planning up for the medium term or even the long term instead of just thinking, what are we going to do in the next two years?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, it isn’t that there is not the money for this though. That’s the other thing. So, in, in the, between [00:23:00] the, hard campaign direct donations and dark money groups, Kamala Harris had more than $2 billion at her disposal. And the New York Times reported that, she was getting so much money and that they were basically desperate to spend it.So they were just literally buying any random thing that they could, advertising that they could. So they, they blew a million dollars on the Las Vegas sphere advertising and, they did drone shows and, and instead of just giving that money to local parties and say, Hey, this is for you to use for the next four years, any way you see for.Do it, and, and, that’s the kind of time commitment that they need, and the same thing like with, like you mentioned Ben Shapiro, like his Daily Wire website that was funded by Ted Cruz’s top donors, that they were directed to fund it because they had basically maxed out [00:24:00] as much as they wanted to give to him directly.So then the, cruise people were like, Hey, go fund this new daily wire thing. And so they did, and they, and they stuck with it and it workedforhim.Dave Karpf: Part of the difficulty here is. There, there is the money for it if we’re counting what comes in elections. But I think particularly since a lot of that money is small donor money and small donors tend to show up only when there’s an emergency and you need the cavalry, like the lack of like a handful of centi-billionaires.Like I, again, this is a, like a dream from 15 years ago, but one of my dreams 15 years ago was, wow. It would be incredible if some of the old climate activists who went and started clean energy companies, like if they got exceptionally rich, it would be amazing to go to them and say like, Hey, we need money for organizing and trainings.because they would get it because they used to do that work. Like if we could just have more good billionaires who [00:25:00] understood organizing infrastructure and media infrastructure and valued it, then that medium term problem gets more easily solved. Whereas the challenge here is even though there, there’s enough money for it, if you could sort of hand of God a portion of it better, like part of the challenge is that there isn’t as much funding in between election cycles.And that’s where it really hurts that, it’s like, like Michael Bloomberg will fund some stuff, but, and like George Soros will fund some stuff. Pierre Mjr will fund some stuff. But we’re, you’re talking about a handful of names who are usually single digit billion dollars. Bloomberg is double digits, I guess.Like the sheer aggregation of money. Like towards people who were libertarians and so they invested in crypto 15 years ago and have ridden that wave has just made it so that there’s like the funding pie for people with large piles of money who will invest, can invest on a 10 year basis, I think has gotten more and more slanted in a way that just makes me [00:26:00] depressed.Like it’s not that it’s impossible, but like the playing field keeps on getting more tilted while the need to do something about this. Like to, have donors act something in the long term gets more, becomes more of an emergency.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I, and that’s a very realistic and important point to make. But, and it does also indicate though the, need for a more populist rhetorical and policy stance on the part of the party. I mean, and, that, that does, there is a, big difference. Probably the biggest difference between the Republican ecosystem, the democratic ecosystem, is that the Republican donor CL class and activist class they’re not loyal to the party per se. They’re actually loyal to their ideology. And so the Republican party is their vehicle, whereas the people who donate to the Democratic party tend to be donating it to the Democratic party or as [00:27:00] a charity, sort of. I’m helping civil society, so that’s why I’m giving this money. They don’t have a specific, and, this is probably why, these more partisan type groups like Searchlight or like, WelcomePAC that they don’t have, like, they, they’re specifically trying to make almost a, post ideological politics.But that’s not possible. And, I don’t think that they get that. Because, for the people who pay them, that’s what they want. They absolutely seem to want that. But we don’t live in that world and maybe we never did it.Dave Karpf: Yeah. It’s also, I mean, if there’s two things I’ll grant, the snarky thing I’ll say is there’s always going to be money in telling large donors, Hey, like, here is a magic wand. If people just use these phrases or just elect these proper candidates, then we will all be saved. I’m going to share these [00:28:00] insights with you.You are so smart, you’ll get it. Give me money and we’re going to get it done. And when it doesn’t work, again, it’s the like, it’s the reverse sc we do where they can say, ah, it would’ve worked if not for. Those goddamn activists who got, now they’re calling ‘em the groups. Oh, the group’s got in the way, but it’ll work next time.because we’re going to get the groups out of here and then we’ll do it. Which is like, they kind of want a smaller and smaller democratic party until it’s small enough for them to control. And like guys, that’s not going to win in the mass, elections. I’m sorry. So like there’s that bit, which is like mean of me, but I think true the other bit, and here, like I’ll, criticize myself a bit.Donors do want, I mean, particularly rich donors do want to hear a story that tells them, here’s how we’re going to win, right? Like, here is the realistic thing. If you give money to this thing, I really believe, and I can show you in a slide deck that it is going to produce results and it’s all fixable.Like, I, am up in arms looking around at the current media system as it gets, [00:29:00] bought out from under us saying this is just going to make. An already hard job, even harder. And the pro, like the easy solution there is we need liberal sent billionaires to start buying up media out outlets too.And the problem is that there aren’t any media liberal sent billionaires, right? Like, there, there are some billionaires, but there the other side has more money than we do. And so I’m left sort of calling attention to the problem. But if someone were to say to me like, okay, give me a five step plan and if we do it, we’re going to win.I would’ve real trouble there because realistically like what I like realistically, everything’s bad and I, can mostly just say like, here are all the ways that everything’s really bad, that’s depressing. And people would rather hear the WelcomePAC. People say like, no, if we just elect moderate candidates in every district and never mention climate change or trans people or like anything else that, bums.[00:30:00] Centris who aren’t paying attention out, then we’ll win on a landslide. Totally. And it’s like, guys, you’re run, like if moderates demanded that much, then Donald Trump wouldn’t be the president, like the man, bulldozed the East wing of the White House during a government shutdown. And people are like, yeah, but I don’t know.Democrats seem a little too liberal to me. Like if Democrats seem a little too liberal to you when that’s happening, what that’s largely telling us is you’re not learning about politics by closely watching the President and the Democrats. You’re learning about it through a background information ecosystem, which is now wholly owned by conservatives.Matthew Sheffield: That’s lying to you.Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Well, I mean, so I would, I mean, I agree with that analysis except for the point about more money. So, again, if you look at the Brennan Center’s reporting and open secrets there’s actually more democratic money. Now whether, but, there is an asterisk. There is an asterisk in the Elon Musk, [00:31:00] buying Twitter for $44 billion doesn’t technically count as a campaign experience. So, expenditure. So like I grant that. So my point being though, like just in terms of hard campaign cash Democrats because of a more engaged and fired up base, actually they, the base wants to do big things.They would like somebody to offer them opportunities to give to something big. Lots of things. I mean, like, we don’t even have a, TPUSA alternative. What the hell? And. No, but it’s not, also not youth focused either. Like, and I like, and I’ll say like, I like invisible and I like what they’re doing, but that can’t be our only thing.And and that’s, that is another core difference I think between the US left and the right that, I can see uniquely having been inside both of them. Is that in the right, they believe in they don’t believe in [00:32:00] centralization except under the leader of the, presidential leader.That’s it. In terms of operational centralization, they don’t do it.There’s, D-P-U-S-A, but there’s also, four or five other right-wing youth oriented groups. And they are all out there doing things and they all have conferences and they’re all giving people jobs and they’re all helping people earn in livelihood.And then the same thing is true on the media. Like they’re, people who have money they stick to. Their things and don’t expect instant profitability out of them the way that Air America or current TV was. It, they expect them to make a profit or, you look at a lot of the left oriented media like Huffington Post or Daily Beast or Salon or bunch of these websites, they’re owned by corporations.And they’re not necessarily, those corporations are not necessarily interested in our values. And so, the [00:33:00] grassroots I think would love a more directional oriented media. But, nobody’s presenting that to them. I.Dave Karpf: Well, and, and there is, I think there’s some really great stuff out there. It is all characteristically small, right? Like the challenge. And part of the challenge is when it gets big. If you have a media operation and it gets really big, then private equity might just decide to come and buy it from you for way too much money.Right? And then we need like to have people who decide to say no to the big check and hope that they’re not public. So they’re public, then they can, get tossed out anyway. And these days, if you get really big, then the Trump administration might try to sue you out of existence in a court that, has a judge will just say yes to them, right?Like they, there’s a thousand different ways that they can now try to weaponize the state against you when they get too big. All of which is very depressing of me, which is the reason why I’m a terrible person to bring to parties. But I would say is like that, doesn’t mean that nobody’s doing interesting things.It means that right now there’s a thousand pretty small, really cool [00:34:00] flowers, brooming. The challenge of scale. What happens once you go from audiences of tens of thousands to audiences of tens of millions is that the challenges get, get a lot more difficult and a lot harder to see the way through of them.Particularly when, I mean it’s, been less than a year since Trump won his election, certainly less than a year of him being in office. Like things are falling apart pretty quick and what we really want is good answers. Now. So like my, technological solution to all of this continues to be time travel.I’m going to start a time travel company investments. because I think with the time machine, I’m going to go back to the 1980s, fix the tax code and from that boom, everything’s going to be better. But lacking on technological solution, everything’s like, it’s not that nobody’s doing good work, it’s that all the really good work is too small for what we need right now.And it’s hard to see how it’s going to get bigger, at least in the timeline that we have.Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well one of the, other unique [00:35:00] challenges I think of the left compared to the right is that the, everybody on the left wants agreement on everything. So, and that, I feel like to some degree that harm has harmed me sometimes in that I don’t especially particularly, line up exactly with any faction.And so that I get, people off, people are, get angry at me because I’m like, well, Gaza wasn’t a really much of a factor in 2024. But then at the same time, I’m perfectly willing to say that WelcomePAC, they, should have polled about Gaza now because everybody else who’s polled on it has certainly found that a majority of Democrats, think that Israel has committed a genocide and, that they’re, that they should have their aid cutoff.So like, that’s a report supposedly about the Democratic coalition probably should have polled on that one. Kind of, kind of bad that they didn’t. but, aside from that though, like, the, there’s just like in the Republican side, as long as you support Trump, they will let you [00:36:00] debate anything else inside of the coalition.So, they, like, I mean they, as we’re seeing right now as we’re recording this on on Halloween that, the, Republican Party is having an active debate right now. Whether to have an open Nazi Nick Fuentes in their coalition and whether it’s okay to associate with a Nazi. Like that’s the level of extreme openness that they have.Now, obviously we don’t want to have Nazis in our coalition o open Nazis, but at the same time, if somebody has a different viewpoint from you on taxation or on, any given issue, you probably shouldn’t try to throw them out on your ear, on their ear because they don’t a hundred percent agree with you.And, Republicans seem to get that better, I think.Dave Karpf: So I’m going to push back on that a little, which is.The, that premise of so long as you 100% back Trump means that like, like nothing else matter. Like the reason why they can [00:37:00] debate should we let Nick Fuentes in, like into the party in good standing? And it seems like they’ve just come down on and Yes. Which like I’m aghast by, but also not entirely surprised.But the reason why they can do that is because like they can disagree about everything. So long as they all agree that whatever Donald Trump says today is what they believe on whatever he’s decided matters. Like, besides that, they’re just sort of arguing like color and shade preferences for the drapes, right?Matthew Sheffield: Well, they don’t have policies. I think that’s fair.Dave Karpf: Right. So like, like Democrats can disagree with each other. Like I, I’m a basketball fan and I really don’t like the Boston Celtics, and I really like Boston Celtics fans to know that I do not like their team, that I find their team being morally reprehensible, like I like to make a big deal about it.The Democratic Party Coalition obviously includes me and Celtics fans, despite me finding that objectionable because in every way that [00:38:00] matters. My disagreement about BAS basketball like is meaningless. that’s, just like ways to pass the time and the Republican Party Coalition. because we’ve seen it over the past decade, right?Like one of the most important differences between Trump won and Trump two is Trump won, still had people who disagreed with Trump, right? He had like members of the joint chiefs of staff who said, no, we’re not going to have our, like military try to fire on protestors like domestic protestors, right?He had, John McCain turning down his signature healthcare bill. So like he had a number of people in the party coalition who were not the Trump faction. And in the intervening years, like I remember during the, Biden years, one thing that I was yelling about and I was. In retrospect quite right to yell about it, to be mad about it was they drummed Liz Cheney out of the party, right?Like she’s running for reelection. She couldn’t even use the win red fundraising system when she was running as an incumbent for reelection because they had decided you are a critic of Trump and that means you are not actually [00:39:00] a Republican despite being Liz Cheney. That purification, once they have reduced the party coalition to just like, like, aggressively positive Trumpists, they can disagree about everything else.because everything else doesn’t matter. Democrats can disagree with each other on stuff that doesn’t matter. But what makes it hard is that since we still care about policy, there’s so many things that matter and that makes the disagreement like much harder. And also, let’s be honest, within the party coalition, many of us can be total assholes about it, which is also not great, but how it works.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Yeah. I mean that, that nihilism that Republicans have, definitely it, can be an advantage for them. But I think it also can be aDave Karpf: cult, a lot of things would be easier. Like the problem is we would be a cult, but it would be a lot easier. Like if all of us were just devoted to one dear leader, then many things would be simpler. The problem is we would be devoted to one dear leader, and that would be very bad, and also makes it hard to actually govern effectively.But lots of simplicity. Sure.[00:40:00]Matthew Sheffield: Well, that’s true. And but at the same time, yeah, like at the same time just airing these disagreements. I think that’s. That’s what doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened in the left side of the aisle outlet. A lot of people will have this idea, well, so and so has a different view about this, so therefore I won’t allow them to be on my podcast, or I won’t, quote them in my story.and that’s not acceptable. And, it’s certainly not a way to resolve your differences and to, grow the party. Because again, like if, you’re trying to cast out people who disagree with you, then you’re going to end up with a very small party eventually. And so that’s where I would say that, we don’t have to say it doesn’t matter these disagreements, but we have to say, look, I am entitled to my belief and you’re entitled to your belief.And, but we’re united in trying to stop authoritarian, Christ of fascism, and that’s the, like, that, that negative polarization, I think is, or negative partisanship is, [00:41:00] that’s a very strong component that the Republican Party has. And I think that has to be imported more and taught more within advocacy media on the left, because I think to, to a very large degree, whether it’s with WelcomePAC or when you read, Jacobin or these other ones, like in their viewpoint almost all their content that they’re directing is attacking the other side of, their party coalition member.and like, that’s, not how you win. You don’t have to agree with them. and I would also say like with regard to campaign effectiveness strategy, when we’re, what we’re seeing is that being effective and working hard and being quick on your feet with social media and saying yes.These are not ideological viewpoints because the where Momani is doing it very well in New York, but also, Gavin Newsom’s doing pretty well on social media as well. So like, and, people are liking what they’re seeing, from him in Pritzker. And so ideology isn’t the barrier here. I don’t [00:42:00] think it’s, competence and openness.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I think there’s still an element. I, to me there’s a shift in like, competence has always mattered. The bit that matters more. I think like Pritzker, I, talked to some about Greg Sargent about this yesterday. Pritzker really, I think of all the governors understands the assignment and that’s both because he’s standing up for his, for values, but also because he’s standing up for them in moments that will actually extend beyond the attentive public.Right? Like he, he made a demand of Christy Noam saying, can you have ice take the weekend off of gassing our children for Halloween so they can go to their Halloween parades? And then she was like, no, absolutely no, we’re, going to be out there and like. Then becomes a story. And I think sort of figuring out how to craft stories for this moment when all of media is fracturing and collapsing is I think the new challenge.Whereas I like you’re right about competence. That’s also sort of like when I teach classes on this stuff, [00:43:00] we, the first half of the semester is the evergreen stuff that would’ve been true in the nineties and is still true today, or was true then is true now. And then the second half is all the stuff that has gotten weird and new now.And so I think that there’s a bit, there’s a bit there of like the competence part has always been important and always been difficult. And then there’s some new difficulties that we don’t really have figured out.The perils of thinking that polling alone is political scienceMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and, to that, or to that point, one of the other challenges I think that there, there’s a real divide between democratic political operatives and political scientists. I think because Democratic strategists like to say that they’re data driven, but when you look at the things that they write and like, and, I’m not, this WelcomePAC report is one of many examples I could cite, but, just putting a bunch of polls in a document, like that’s not data analysis.I’m sorry to tell you [00:44:00] guys. That’s not how this works. And like. And so after this, I mean, a couple of the New York Times tried to try to say, well, moderate candidates do better and here’s why. and they just keep getting lacerated by actual data scientists. And it’s just like they think that they’re doing data, but it’s not data.because if you’re not understanding the ultimate cause of something, then when you poll about the proximate cause, or you’re relying on self-identification, like within social science, self-identification, it’s like several steps down from what is a good indicator of somebody’s behavior or somebody’s opinion.And I, I just, I don’t see these things being known in Democratic politics.Dave Karpf: So I, have two things to say. One is, yes, I agree. Like there’s definitely an element to this report of like. They get enough correlations that if they like group together [00:45:00] enough correlations, they can be like, oh, causation. And it’s like, guys, that’s really,Matthew Sheffield: No.Dave Karpf: I think I’ll say in the defense is like the, political scientists who lacerated that New York Times report that’s Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach.And like, I like, I’m a mid-tier political scientist, like my PhD is in political science. I’m a tenured professor. I’m pretty good at the stuff that I do. I think like Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica are so much better at this stuff than I am. So it is like. Like the, thing I want to say in defense of the political practitioners is, this is like saying, oh, you think that you can play basketball?Well, there’s Victor Ana, and it’s like, well, you can’t play against him. Like, no, you can still play. It’s just some people are extremely good. Like tho those two guys are so fucking good at data and like serious data analysis that takes causation seriously in ways that I can read and understand. But like, I couldn’t pull that off either.And like, I’m an actual, like, I’m an actual political scientist. I’m so impressed by those guys. So like, I [00:46:00] do want to note like the, like these guys are going up against world class political scientists, not just sort of like everyday like Dave Karpfs of the world. Like when I can wreck your data analysis, that’s really embarrassing for you when Adam Monica wrecks your data analysis, it’s like, ah, you, went up against a pro. That happens.And like the, also the critique of political scientists is we can do tremendous data analysis focused on causality. Often are left with very little to practical to say about, well, here’s the thing that you actually need to do today.Like, my career has mostly been about trying to bridge those two worlds and understand the serious data analysis well enough to be able to say, here’s the practical, pragmatic stuff to focus on. Or sometimes just saying there isn’t anything to focus on it. They’re, right, but you can’t do anything about it.So like that gap is there and it’s real. But yeah. Also there’s a bit of play acting in this report where like there’s a lot of charts to really impress you of how much data they gathered. And it’s like, these are all correlations that you decided to look for. you’re missing all the hard stuff.[00:47:00]Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, there’s plenty of other correlations somebody could find too, on the opposite side. And and, but it does I mean, speaking of. Really good political scientists. So Lee, Drutman has weighed in on this report as well. And, one of the things that, that he had said was that, that when you look at the, variance between a house candidate and the presidential race in their district and a senate and, the race in their district, what you find is that 98% of all house races have the same margin outcome as the presidential race in their district.And 91% or 92%, I forget which one of Senate races have the same outcome as the presidential race in their district. And so what this means basically is that the, larger political environment is so baked in that campaigns [00:48:00] mostly do not matter. Is what that means. And so if you actually really, and this, goes back to what we’ve been saying in this with regard to media effects in the environment, is that to really have a large agenda setting viewpoint to actually massively change America, you have to focus on the bigger picture.Because telling candidates to say this or that, it just doesn’t work. And the numbers are there that it doesn’t work.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I mean the, when I was in grad school, the big debate in this field was do campaigns matter? And the outcome of that was they do, but only in, like, only at the very tiniest margins. And we now live in an age where elections tend to be raised or thin. And so campaigners can say like, yeah, but the margins where the power are, so let’s pour all this money and energy into doing it.And then Lee comes along and says, like, or you could change the entire electoral system and make it not so stupid. And he’s, right about that. And, I’m coming along and saying, maybe worry about the media system because that’s a dramatic [00:49:00] effect going in the wrong direction. And that’s right.But you know, if you say to Lee like, great, how do, how are we going to do that this year? Then his answer is like, it’s, going to take longer than a year. And if you were to ask me like, Ooh, are we going to do it? I need a time machine, which is like, right. Kind of funny, but not at all helpful. But no, like in, in the, like if you want to fix democracy, you’re not going to do it with just the right candidates saying just the right stu speeches, like, we know that’s not the case.So like, again, my takeaway is not like, oh, they’re wrong. You need to do leftist candidates up, up and down the board. My takeaway is like, my God, stop talking about stump speeches and party platforms and just the right candidate profiles. There’re all these bigger things that matter more. We need to actually pay attention to them.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Or to put it much more crudely, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or rather change the game because like, that’s, that I think is the diff, like it was very damaging that the and I’d have nothing against him. But Sasha Issenberg’s [00:50:00] book, The Victory Lab, it excessively valorize the opinions of people about these campaign operatives and made people think that they were more expert than what they were. Because while we can have actual data about politics, especially in the presidential realm, the n is so tiny that really there’s nothing you can say about it that with any real confidence.And so that is, so there really are limits in terms of what data can give you and what you can know from it. And that’s the difference between the analogy that was Moneyball for baseball, that this politics as Moneyball.Well, no it isn’t because in baseball, you have the rules and that’s it. And you have to play with the rules. There’s not going to be another base added. You know, they’re not going to let you have two pitchers. They’re not going to let you have two batters to hit the same pitch. That’s not happening. But guess what? In politics, [00:51:00] you can change the rules.And that’s the difference between having I call it data and mirage essentially, that they’re, chasing data mirage. And, it’s, so, it’s, not to say that nothing is possible or nothing is real. It’s to say that changing the larger, changing the shape of the river matters more than chasing the current.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I, so I do want to say I have always loved The Victory Lab. I still teach The Victory Lab. I think like I, I like Sasha’s book a lot.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I have nothing against him, but yeah.Dave Karpf: And, but like the thing that I agree with you on is I now teach it as a moment in time to sort of explain there was, a like, I think he was accurate to the time at, that time many people, including myself, really believed that we are bringing science to campaigning.It’s, it is the data scientists against the James Carville to like bring us back to being and to bring against the James Carvilles of the world [00:52:00] and having data science on your side, like running these experiments and AB tests and everything is going to matter. And it’s not that you shouldn’t do ab tests or experiments anymore, but there’s a humility that’s said in the past 10 years of oh, even if that’s helpful, that’s helpful within some strict limits. because the, the party that does that more is not winning. They’re not necessarily winning all the close elections and all of their findings end up being time bound. Right. Like the, thing that worked really well in 2012 doesn’t necessarily work well in 2016 because of the changing media environment or some other changes to the environment.So like, I do love that book, Sasha. If you’re, if Sasha happens to be listening, like, man, still a real fan. And also like it’s a book that when I teach it, I have to sort of explain to students like, this is what it was like in 2012.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and again, it just, it all comes back to the, low number of ends. And so there are [00:53:00] things that we can induce and things that are true within an iteration, but whether they’re true across iterations, all bets are off and you shouldn’t make any.Dave Karpf: Yeah.ConclusionMatthew Sheffield: yeah. And so, and that’s, you know that, I don’t know, excessive faith in data like that is something that you did. So you, had a, blue sky thread responding to the WelcomePAC report in which you also converted into a New Republic article. So, I mean, in terms of, are there specific points from the report that, we haven’t covered here yet that you think we should on thisDave Karpf: No, I, think we’ve handled, we’ve hit the, big points, right? Like the main thing is. If you just read their executive summary, they are stating upfront that what they want is more moderate candidates who deprioritize climate trans people like, like social issues or social identities. And instead talk about sort of bread [00:54:00] and butter kitchen table.They want the Democratic party to be anti elite, but not in a way and like, like, like anti corporations and rich people, but like not sound at all socialist. It sounds very sort of blue rose coded like popularist. Figure out what. Phrases sound good to people, and then say them a lot and just wait for everybody to then like you.And that’s a model of politics that imagines that the public is paying attention to you like they are in their focus groups. And that model is just not the way the world actually works, right? Like people’s impression of the Democratic party does not come from your stump speeches or your platforms.It comes from their incidental information that they’re getting through their social media streams and, like rant TV on in the background. So like at some point it just really bugged me, this report, it’s not, again, like I don’t want to engage in the fight over like, should we be sound, sound more leftist or more, right?Like I, I think that’s the wrong argument to be having and it’s kind of the easy argument to have is fighting [00:55:00] over, what do we, what words come out of the party’s mouths? And instead, I really think people need to have the harder conversation about how do you build up infrastructure to actually compete in a world where the other side has an infrastructure advantage that keeps on getting bigger.Matthew Sheffield: Well, because ultimately your message doesn’t matter if no one can hear it.Dave Karpf: Yeah, no one can hear it. And if instead they’re hearing like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes characterizing your message, then it really doesn’t matter what words you decided to say. People are going to hear their version of your words.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. and in many cases doesn’t even require your words. Like, that’s, the other thing that I think that the popularist do not get, and when they downplay media, because, as we saw with the, in 2024 that, JD Vance forwarded a complete lie about Ohio, that people were eating cats and dogs that immigrants were eating cats and dogs. This was not happening. [00:56:00] And obviously the Democrats were not in favor of people eating cats and dogs. None of this had anything to do with either the Democrats or reality, and yet it was still something that Republicans were talking about constantly and, using to mobilize their party. So, so this, it is infrastructure matters.In, this day and age, it matters so much more because there is no central media node anymore. The mainstream media is irrelevant to most Americans. Now, they might be sort of the grist for the mill that all of these, so like Joe Rogan, or any of these podcasters or even Fox, like, they constantly are like, oh, the New York Times, we did a report about X.So like it, but it’s just, for their mill. Like they’re not telling you what the time said in their report. So fixating on what the time says in their headlines about this or that. It’s not really going to help very much, I don’t think. Like if you are really upset about the times, then you need [00:57:00] to be bankrolling more media.That’s what you need to do. All right. Well, man, I actually, I’m surprised we actually hit this so tight. Dave let me see here. Surely. Okay, I’m going to obviously cut this part out here, so, oh. Okay. Actually let’s maybe end on, let’s, so just to circle back to something in the final segment here as we wrap up I want to go back to something that, that I raised in the beginning, which is that, that the activist and donor class of each party.Has different priorities than the public does. And that this is another reason why you have to spread your message. Like, I think there’s a significant advantage that re Republicans have, and this is wasn’t mentioned in the WelcomePAC report, all which is religion. Republican religion [00:58:00] is their local organizing method.and, that’s, the indivisible is absolutely great, but I want, like five or six things that are out there that are like them and that are targeting different groups. and, to people’s credit, I like people are having to do this with regard to like ice watch things.And and some people are, raising that mutual aid organizations, but like. These things would work a lot better if, the political class of the Democratic Party would get behind them. And people would really love it. Like, we’re, it, we’re, talking about right now with the shutdown, federal snap food benefits are, Trump’s going to cut them off?I mean, it would be so incredibly useful if there was money that had been set aside that, could have just been used to give to families to feed their, to feed themselves and to, and then give ‘em a, pamphlet or something.Dave Karpf: Yeah, it what it brings to mind is an old organizing an [00:59:00] old saying which is that every problem is an organizing opportunity. And, that’s sort of like a, gallows optimism note to end on is if nothing else, 2025 and I expect 2026 are chockfull of organizing opportunities. Everything is getting worse, right?Like turns out federal workers are now probably going to need to go to food banks because they’ve shut down the government for a month and he seems to show no interest in opening it back up. That’s an organizing opportunity. We would rather have fewer of them, but the least we can do is try to build organization that can then serve as counter power.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And absolutely. And like as Republicans attack civil society through that’s government run, there’s an opportunity to step in and make it more explicitly ideological civil society organizations.And the same thing’s true on the internet, as these billionaires are actively trying to [01:00:00] enact “dead internet,” that’s an opportunity for small communities and for people to create the “cozy web” as my friend Venkatesh Rao calls it. And I think that’s right. This is an opportunity for cozy web politics.But it still sucks. Like, I’m not going to say it doesn’t, but this is the—I think this is the only way forward.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I think that’s right.Matthew Sheffield: All right. Well, well, it’s a conversation that that we will, we’ll have to be thinking about that in the days, weeks, years, et cetera, to come. So, butDave Karpf: Should be continued. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. All right. Well, good to have you back, Dave.Dave Karpf: Yeah. Thanks for having me.Matthew Sheffield: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you like what we’re doing, we have. Free and paid subscriptions on Patreon and also on Substack.If you want to subscribe on Patreon, just go to [01:01:00] patreon.com/discoverflux. And if you want to subscribe on Substack, just go to flux.community. And if you’re a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support. I really appreciate it.And if you can’t afford to subscribe right now, that’s okay. But you can help out by us tweeting the links or, and if, you are unable to afford a paid subscription right now, that’s okay. 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Episode Summary One year after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats are still trying to figure out what to do for the next time around and what to do in the 2026 midterm elections as control of Congress is once again at stake.There were a lot of people offering advice to the Democrats in this regard, and certainly the most well-funded of those people are the ones who say that the party has become too liberal and has to modify its stances to become more popular and resonant with public opinion.And at the same time, there are people on the further left side of the coalition arguing that the Democrats have become too conservative and that they have alienated people who want a more radical change in society to fix things that are broken, and not to step back at all on defending abortion access or trans rights.Each side of this intra-left debate offers worthy points, but both groups tend to understate the immense effect that media have on people’s political opinions. That is the central topic of my new e-book, What Republicans Know, so please do help me out and purchase it if you haven’t yet.Someone else’s work you should consider in this regard is our guest on today’s program: Dave Karpf is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, and he’s written several books on the role of media and public opinion.Last week, he wrote an article in the New Republic about a new report from a group called WelcomePAC, which argued that Democrats need to become more moderate, but which also largely ignored how many people don’t know about candidates’ policy views.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Free excerpt from “What Republicans Know”--How much do political party elites know about their own voters?--Reactionaries built an infrastructure to attack democracy, their opponents must do the same to defend it--Americans want big ideas, but Trump’s opponents aren’t providing them--Democratic losses stem from their failure to communicate--Trump’s insult comic shtick and the right’s new media shock troopsAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction11:01 — Policies are far from the only thing that matters to voters17:03 — Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantage through inaction22:11 — Political parties need permanent infrastructure34:55 — Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?43:20 — The perils of thinking that polling alone is political science53:11 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.Matthew Sheffield: And joining me now is Dave Karp. Hey Dave. Welcome back to Theory of Change.Dave Karpf: Okay. Thanks. Having me again.Matthew Sheffield: So, you had a great thread on the WelcomePAC report, which I have to say is when I read that, I instantly was like, oh man, these people like “Welcome Back, Kotter,” the seventies TV series.Dave Karpf: It does.Matthew Sheffield: So, but you know, in fairness to them, I, do want to say that there are some things, there’s a bunch of stuff in this report that’s high-quality and that does match established, well-confirmed political science. And this is, in my view, the highest-quality, more centrist-leaning document that we’ve seen since 2024.Do you agree with that?Dave Karpf: Yeah, I mean the, when I opened this, the first thing that I noticed, they, they have a list of people that they’re thinking and it includes a number of political scientists who I know and deeply respect. It also includes a [00:04:00] number of people who are immediate red flags for me, Nate Silver is on this thing, like Nate Silver was a great person to talk to five, 10 years ago. Lately he’s mostly seems to be playing poker.So there were a couple of immediate red flags, but also there were a number of people who I was like, okay, if you are, like, if you’re talking to Aaron Strauss and Chris Warshaw. I’m interested in what you have to say. And I think they took seriously that they wanted to gather the data and see what it told them.I have some things we can get into about what data they decided to look at and what they didn’t decide to gather. But I think they, at least took it seriously.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Absolutely. And, and there were a couple of other red flags for me with a, like they cited James Carville and their title page and a Republican pollster. How does that make you look better? I, don’t think that it does guys.But nonetheless there are some points in here that are true and like one of the, things that I try to do with my writing and podcast [00:05:00] is to, show the various factions of the, left that, nobody is a hundred percent correct in, understanding elections.Like each side actually has viewpoints that are true and each one has ideas that are false. And so one of the, there are a couple of things that are true in this report is that irregular voters are not ideologically committed compared to people who are regular voters. And, that’s, I, that’s, something that I think people on the progressive side might struggle with that concept or accepting That seems like.Dave Karpf: Yeah. And I, the thing that I tell my students at the beginning of every semester is, the answer to any question worth asking is, well, it’s complicated. And as political scientist, that’s where I feel comfortable sort of exploring the complication as a pragmatic strategist, well, it’s complicated isn’t a good answer, right?So the hard questions of things like, should the Democrats try to nominate more centrist or more progressive candidates, [00:06:00] what people would really like is there to be a clean, easy answer to that. And that includes progressives. Who would really like to think that, when you nominate a bold progressive, they’re likely to win.And what the data shows is, well, it’s complicated. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a centrist. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a bold progressive. In either case, it would kind of be nice to have somebody just dripping with charisma and lacking in scandals. But those people are few and far between, and so it’s all complicated and that like that is, I think some of the use of a report like this is sort of reminding us that the simple story you’d like to tell yourself is also not quite true.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other things that they noted in here that is true is that political donors or activists tend to have more polarized opinions than the general public or even their own co partisans in their party. Now the Democrats have a much wider range of opinions compared to Republicans.And so that makes things a little more difficult as well, in [00:07:00] particular for them. And, and so the, these are real challenges that the Democratic Party, there are unique challenges that the Democratic party has that do make things harder for them compared to Republicans and I, think that’s fair. We have to say that.Dave Karpf: we do the, bit that I want to quibble on there, because when I read that passage from them, I was annoyed. Is.​If we start from the premise that politics is complicated and the answer to everything is, well, it’s complicated. Part of what that sets up is like, I think it’s okay for your party elites to be more interested in some issue portfolios than the mass public. If the reason they’re more interested in them, I’m thinking particularly with climate change, isn’t because they’re, died in the wool I ideologues, but because they’re looking at it and having spent a lot of time wrestling with it, they say, well, no, this is really bad and we as policymakers really need to care.Right. Historically, foreign policy is something that the masses [00:08:00] mostly don’t pay attention to. And so it’s really important to have people in government who do pay attention to it, even if they’re going to be out of step with the masses. Because the masses aren’t tuning in. So to the ex, like when you have elites that are out of step with the party base or the mass public that they want to get to vote for them, we’re not out out of step with them.Because they have sort of different ide, ideological priors. That’s a thing that we want to remind ourselves of and sort of, sort of check our instincts. But when they’re out of step, because they’re more well informed, because they’re the people who are actually paid to develop expertise and wrestle with the complications.Like I, I think it’s important to remember that like we run elections and, win elections in order to govern, and a lot of the stuff that goes into governing is in fact going to be unpopular just because governance is complicated and a lot of it sucks.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, another issue where that’s very relevant what you just said is, the, the issue of democracy, quote unquote. So, the average person, I don’t [00:09:00] expect them to care about political systems and, the, Overton window and, political theory like, oh, that’s, they have better things to do in their lives than obsess over those types of things that you and I are thinking about.And, so, but yeah, like it, the doesn’t mean that they don’t matter and in fact, argue, I think we could say that climate change and democracy are probably the the most. Important issues from an objective standpoint because they determine whether you have a future of the polity.Dave Karpf: Right.And also if, the party, I’m particularly annoyed on climate both because I come out of the environmental movement, but also because Matt Yglesias keeps on beating this drum and I just think he’s wrong. Like Yglesias seems to have concluded that climate is a loser issue. Democrats should stop talking about it.Just assume that some technology will save us. because it, it’s a loser, so don’t do it. And A, I disagree with him that’s a, the route that they should take. [00:10:00] But B, I would also say pragmatically, if you just let climate change keep getting worse in order to hopefully win some more elections in the near term, you’re also going to end up living in a hotter, less safe, less stable world in the future.Where it is difficult as the governing party to keep on getting reelected. Like the inattentive public is just going to blame you when things go wrong. So you should take governance choices that in the medium and long term, hopefully make it less likely for things to go wrong. Otherwise, what’s the point of democracy to begin with?And I like, I just think some of these elector editorialists or the, like, they’re calling the missiles populists now, like I, I think they seem to have forgotten that like, you don’t need to, you don’t need to campaign in, prose. You can campaign in poetry, but if you’re going to be trying to win elections, you then actually need to do the policy work that leads to a more stable and hopefully prosperous nation.Otherwise when you do win, you’re going to be living, you’re going to be governing in such a manner that like they kick you [00:11:00] out next time.Policies are far from the only thing that matters to votersMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And that I think was one of the critical flaws in this report is that they, have a absurd viewpoint about that the public knows about issues and cares about them. And, and, the reality is, I mean, Kamala Harris, she, she ran her campaign and her policy positions to be maximally popular,Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Like the people who’ve, some of the people who were financing this report were also financing and directing the Kamala Harris campaign. And so like we tried their idea and we’ve tried their idea for the past several decades and, it actually hasn’t worked. And, like the thing with Joe Biden in 2020, the, problem with this, popularist approach to me is that it’s not actually popularist, it’s not popular.And like, and Trump won [00:12:00] because people, oh, sorry. Biden beat Trump in 2020 because Trump was really horrible and, we had a, he was a disaster. Like it wasn’t that people thought Joe Biden was great, and his policies were awesome.And that’s the problem with these guys is that they don’t like, they, it’s Bill Clinton won because of Ross Perot. Obama won not because of his strategies, but because he was a really good candidate who spoke really well. And so the, problem that Democrats have is that you’ve got this consultant class that sort of glommed onto these two candidates. Like, what, happened to Organizing for America?Nothing. What happened to all of this local movement that they had built that had arose around him? Nothing.Dave Karpf: Yeah, though I, one thing I would add in is. Obama also won because he was running against a Republican after two Republican terms when things were like, we both had foreign wars that had gotten unpopular and the economy imploded. Right? So like there is [00:13:00] historically, there’s what we call sort of like a like a thermostatic or a sort of a back and forth phenomenon where people tend to vote in presidential elections based on their opinion of the incumbent president or incumbent party.And it tends to go back and forth. there’s, no world in which the Democrats win normal elections for the ne for the next like 40 years, like eventually Republican wins. And that it particularly happens once people decide, like in political science we call it, they, call it I think the time for change model.I haven’t looked at thisMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, I was just going to say that. Yeah.Dave Karpf: Yeah. But like, part of why Obama wins, like it helps that he is historically charismatic, but it also helps that he is running against the Republicans after George w Bush’s, like, I think Republican party approval was at like 20 something percent at that point.And John McCain like,Matthew Sheffield: too. Yeah.Dave Karpf: yeah. Like, and you had Hurricane Katrina and then also the great financial crisis. Like, like of course Bane didn’t win that election. I’m pretty sure Kamala Harris could have won under those circumstances too. Like there’s some candidate quality, [00:14:00] but a lot of it’s actually the broader circumstances, which again is why there like, sure go ahead and campaign in poetry, but you need to govern in a manner that makes it less likely that objective conditions suck.Because when objective conditions suck, then inattentive voters will just cast your party out. Assuming we have normal elections, which I hope we have those in 2028, but yh I had another thought. It’s coming back to me. Yeah. Oh, here’s the other thought. There, there’s a turn of phrase that I coined for when I’m cri criticizing the, tech barons, but it’s useful here, I think which is the, reverse Scooby-Doo.Now the reverse Scooby-Doo is when you sort of imagine yourself as the villain in Scooby-Doo and say like, we would’ve gotten away with it, if not for, insert thing. And we see this from the tech barons a lot where like, like crypto, like, Ava for a long time has like insisted that the entire economic system is about to collapse in six months and Bitcoin will rise.If it doesn’t happen, then it is, [00:15:00] the government’s fault for interfering. And so it’s like his, it, creates sort of a pressure release valve where he can loudly predict this and people can listen to him. Then when it doesn’t happen, he is like, well, no, it was, I like included a reason why, like, I’m not wrong, even though it didn’t happen.And, with these centrist consultants, like they talk a lot in this report about how Democrats need to talk about kitchen table issues. And if they just talk about it, then they will do better. And their evidence is asking the electorate, polling the electorate after the 2024 election and finding the electorate says, yeah, they don’t really talk about kitchen table issues.They’re mostly talking about like, I don’t know, climate and trans people. And so they then say, oh, that must mean that they talk too much about climate and trans people. They just talk different than what happened. But if you do a content analysis, it turns out that Kamala Harris was constantly talking about kitchen table issues.She was not constantly raising trans people, that she was not constantly talking about climate. My God. And so this idea that like, yeah, they tried our thing, but like if you just try it harder next time, like surely it [00:16:00] wasn’t like even though she took our advice when we failed, it’s somebody else’s fault that’s always in there.To me, the lesson here is really the Democratic party does not get to control what people’s impression of the Democratic Party is. This, they, had more control of that 20 or 30 years ago when we still had the broadcast media ecosystem. And you would develop sound bites that would get played on CNN, right?Like there was a, logic of this stuff in the James Carville age that political consultants, including Centrus political consultants, really had figured out. And they know that doesn’t quite work. They don’t really know what’s replaced it. But part of what’s replaced it is social media. The other part of what’s replaced it is like, my God, right-wing billionaires have bought up both all the mainstream media outlets and all the social media outlets.Like the reason why everyone thinks that Democrats talk about trans people all the time is that Fox News and CNN and Politico constantly talk about what are Democrats saying about trans people? Oh, they’re [00:17:00] defending their position instead of throwing ‘em under the bus, or, oh, they threw them under the bus.Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantageDave Karpf: Let’s talk about that like. It th 30 years ago, there were leftists who were like, oh, the, problem is corporate media is controlling everything. And I was actually back then one of those people being like, it’s a little more complicated than that. Like, give him a break, understand the rules of the game and play towards it.And now I find myself saying like, oh no, like Larry Ellison’s son, David just bought CBS and put Perry Weiss in charge and now he’s trying to buy CNN. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and is now saying, no, I’m going to have a very strong hand in what it says and what it does. Like the owners are now making very clear that they have an ideology and the press is only going to print that ideology.And they’re also buying the social media companies. They can rejigger the algorithms. If you follow every word of this report, the Democrats are not going to become known for the things that deciding to win or WelcomePAC wants them to be known for. because no one will hear that. because people aren’t tuning in to watch your stump speeches, they’re not reading the party [00:18:00] platforms, they’re getting incidental knowledge of, the party from what they’re sort of vaguely seeing in the background.And all that is getting set by a bunch of sent billionaires who like Trump or at least want to serve Trump and are buying up all the outlets. Like you gotta compete with that.Matthew Sheffield: You do. Yeah. And and that’s one of the central points in, my new ebook what Republicans know, like, so as from my own, experience in Republican politics they’re just, they have been so much better at politics because, and they have to be because, you, they’re, these reactionary positions are hated by most Americans.Like most Americans want to protect social security, They want to have civil rights. They, they, want have Medicare. They want to have, they, want to have jobs programs, they want to have education, student loans, and, they want all these things and they want to protect the environment.Yes. In fact, they do. And and so they’ve, had to, Republicans had to home or reactionary Republicans after they. After they took over, the party [00:19:00] really had to develop an infrastructure for themselves. And, that’s something that in the US left, that just hasn’t been done.And, it’s because as I have the graph graphs in my, in the book that, like the Republican ecosystem is circular, every piece of it creates new inputs for the next step. So the activists are created by the media. The media created by the parties, funded by the parties, and then the parties are funded by the donors, and the donors come from the activists.And so whereas, and in the democratic side of things, they’re blowing more than half their money on TV ads local TV ads, like, but number one, young adults are not watching local television at all. Like,Dave Karpf: people aren’t watching tele like it is. Only my parents’ generation are watching live television for anything other than dancing with the Stars and live sporting events. Like, no, no one just turns on NBC anymore.[00:20:00]Matthew Sheffield: No. No, they don’t. and then, the wor even worse of this strategy an even worse aspect of this strategy is that many of these local stations are owned by right-wing billionaires. So the Democratic party is literally funding right wing media.That’s what they’re doing. And they’ve been doing it for decades now.Like if you add up all the amounts over the, decades, like just, since Obama, they have given Sinclair Fox and Nexstar more than $1 billion.Dave Karpf: Yeah, And again, I, what stands out to me is like to me, this is a failure of planning for the medium term instead of the short term. Because in the short term, I can understand you need to win an election. If the audience is, if the audience you’re trying to hit is on local television, you gotta go spend on local television.Read them [00:21:00] like go win the election. because that’s going to determine the shape of the next two years. And you do need to do that. The problem is that’s kind of only what they do. Like the, way that I remember sort of coming to this realization since I’ve been in politics and organizing since the nineties like I remember in 1998 people talking after the congressional election about how well we really need to build party infrastructure at the state and local level.And Republicans are doing that. They’re running people for school board. We need to do that too. And everyone agreed like, oh yeah, we should do that. Then 2006, 2008, we’re still having that same conversation as though it’s a new conversation. And even at times, people would launch initiatives and those initiatives would get some funding and they would get some interest.And those initiatives would last like four years, six years, show some results. ButMatthew Sheffield: Dean, actually to hisDave Karpf: yeah, I mean, Howard,Matthew Sheffield: state strategy.Dave Karpf: right, he, like, he did it. So it’s not that we’ve never even tried it, but when we try that, [00:22:00] it doesn’t last for very long because the, impulse to defund that and put all of the money just into the short term thing means that we never build up that media infrastructure.Political parties need permanent infrastructureDave Karpf: We never developed that party infrastructure. Like it just ends up being sort of a hollow party organization and hollow media outlets where like you, every two years they’re like, oh, let’s go find some social media influencers to talk to, like. You need to spend a decade creating a pipeline so you can have your own Ben Shapiros and then eventually like try to have your own real equivalence of like CNN and the Washington Post.Now that the Republicans have bought those too, that requires both a lot of money and a lot of commitment, but also a lot of time and planning up for the medium term or even the long term instead of just thinking, what are we going to do in the next two years?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, it isn’t that there is not the money for this though. That’s the other thing. So, in, in the, between [00:23:00] the, hard campaign direct donations and dark money groups, Kamala Harris had more than $2 billion at her disposal. And the New York Times reported that, she was getting so much money and that they were basically desperate to spend it.So they were just literally buying any random thing that they could, advertising that they could. So they, they blew a million dollars on the Las Vegas sphere advertising and, they did drone shows and, and instead of just giving that money to local parties and say, Hey, this is for you to use for the next four years, any way you see for.Do it, and, and, that’s the kind of time commitment that they need, and the same thing like with, like you mentioned Ben Shapiro, like his Daily Wire website that was funded by Ted Cruz’s top donors, that they were directed to fund it because they had basically maxed out [00:24:00] as much as they wanted to give to him directly.So then the, cruise people were like, Hey, go fund this new daily wire thing. And so they did, and they, and they stuck with it and it workedforhim.Dave Karpf: Part of the difficulty here is. There, there is the money for it if we’re counting what comes in elections. But I think particularly since a lot of that money is small donor money and small donors tend to show up only when there’s an emergency and you need the cavalry, like the lack of like a handful of centi-billionaires.Like I, again, this is a, like a dream from 15 years ago, but one of my dreams 15 years ago was, wow. It would be incredible if some of the old climate activists who went and started clean energy companies, like if they got exceptionally rich, it would be amazing to go to them and say like, Hey, we need money for organizing and trainings.because they would get it because they used to do that work. Like if we could just have more good billionaires who [00:25:00] understood organizing infrastructure and media infrastructure and valued it, then that medium term problem gets more easily solved. Whereas the challenge here is even though there, there’s enough money for it, if you could sort of hand of God a portion of it better, like part of the challenge is that there isn’t as much funding in between election cycles.And that’s where it really hurts that, it’s like, like Michael Bloomberg will fund some stuff, but, and like George Soros will fund some stuff. Pierre Mjr will fund some stuff. But we’re, you’re talking about a handful of names who are usually single digit billion dollars. Bloomberg is double digits, I guess.Like the sheer aggregation of money. Like towards people who were libertarians and so they invested in crypto 15 years ago and have ridden that wave has just made it so that there’s like the funding pie for people with large piles of money who will invest, can invest on a 10 year basis, I think has gotten more and more slanted in a way that just makes me [00:26:00] depressed.Like it’s not that it’s impossible, but like the playing field keeps on getting more tilted while the need to do something about this. Like to, have donors act something in the long term gets more, becomes more of an emergency.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I, and that’s a very realistic and important point to make. But, and it does also indicate though the, need for a more populist rhetorical and policy stance on the part of the party. I mean, and, that, that does, there is a, big difference. Probably the biggest difference between the Republican ecosystem, the democratic ecosystem, is that the Republican donor CL class and activist class they’re not loyal to the party per se. They’re actually loyal to their ideology. And so the Republican party is their vehicle, whereas the people who donate to the Democratic party tend to be donating it to the Democratic party or as [00:27:00] a charity, sort of. I’m helping civil society, so that’s why I’m giving this money. They don’t have a specific, and, this is probably why, these more partisan type groups like Searchlight or like, WelcomePAC that they don’t have, like, they, they’re specifically trying to make almost a, post ideological politics.But that’s not possible. And, I don’t think that they get that. Because, for the people who pay them, that’s what they want. They absolutely seem to want that. But we don’t live in that world and maybe we never did it.Dave Karpf: Yeah. It’s also, I mean, if there’s two things I’ll grant, the snarky thing I’ll say is there’s always going to be money in telling large donors, Hey, like, here is a magic wand. If people just use these phrases or just elect these proper candidates, then we will all be saved. I’m going to share these [00:28:00] insights with you.You are so smart, you’ll get it. Give me money and we’re going to get it done. And when it doesn’t work, again, it’s the like, it’s the reverse sc we do where they can say, ah, it would’ve worked if not for. Those goddamn activists who got, now they’re calling ‘em the groups. Oh, the group’s got in the way, but it’ll work next time.because we’re going to get the groups out of here and then we’ll do it. Which is like, they kind of want a smaller and smaller democratic party until it’s small enough for them to control. And like guys, that’s not going to win in the mass, elections. I’m sorry. So like there’s that bit, which is like mean of me, but I think true the other bit, and here, like I’ll, criticize myself a bit.Donors do want, I mean, particularly rich donors do want to hear a story that tells them, here’s how we’re going to win, right? Like, here is the realistic thing. If you give money to this thing, I really believe, and I can show you in a slide deck that it is going to produce results and it’s all fixable.Like, I, am up in arms looking around at the current media system as it gets, [00:29:00] bought out from under us saying this is just going to make. An already hard job, even harder. And the pro, like the easy solution there is we need liberal sent billionaires to start buying up media out outlets too.And the problem is that there aren’t any media liberal sent billionaires, right? Like, there, there are some billionaires, but there the other side has more money than we do. And so I’m left sort of calling attention to the problem. But if someone were to say to me like, okay, give me a five step plan and if we do it, we’re going to win.I would’ve real trouble there because realistically like what I like realistically, everything’s bad and I, can mostly just say like, here are all the ways that everything’s really bad, that’s depressing. And people would rather hear the WelcomePAC. People say like, no, if we just elect moderate candidates in every district and never mention climate change or trans people or like anything else that, bums.[00:30:00] Centris who aren’t paying attention out, then we’ll win on a landslide. Totally. And it’s like, guys, you’re run, like if moderates demanded that much, then Donald Trump wouldn’t be the president, like the man, bulldozed the East wing of the White House during a government shutdown. And people are like, yeah, but I don’t know.Democrats seem a little too liberal to me. Like if Democrats seem a little too liberal to you when that’s happening, what that’s largely telling us is you’re not learning about politics by closely watching the President and the Democrats. You’re learning about it through a background information ecosystem, which is now wholly owned by conservatives.Matthew Sheffield: That’s lying to you.Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Well, I mean, so I would, I mean, I agree with that analysis except for the point about more money. So, again, if you look at the Brennan Center’s reporting and open secrets there’s actually more democratic money. Now whether, but, there is an asterisk. There is an asterisk in the Elon Musk, [00:31:00] buying Twitter for $44 billion doesn’t technically count as a campaign experience. So, expenditure. So like I grant that. So my point being though, like just in terms of hard campaign cash Democrats because of a more engaged and fired up base, actually they, the base wants to do big things.They would like somebody to offer them opportunities to give to something big. Lots of things. I mean, like, we don’t even have a, TPUSA alternative. What the hell? And. No, but it’s not, also not youth focused either. Like, and I like, and I’ll say like, I like invisible and I like what they’re doing, but that can’t be our only thing.And and that’s, that is another core difference I think between the US left and the right that, I can see uniquely having been inside both of them. Is that in the right, they believe in they don’t believe in [00:32:00] centralization except under the leader of the, presidential leader.That’s it. In terms of operational centralization, they don’t do it.There’s, D-P-U-S-A, but there’s also, four or five other right-wing youth oriented groups. And they are all out there doing things and they all have conferences and they’re all giving people jobs and they’re all helping people earn in livelihood.And then the same thing is true on the media. Like they’re, people who have money they stick to. Their things and don’t expect instant profitability out of them the way that Air America or current TV was. It, they expect them to make a profit or, you look at a lot of the left oriented media like Huffington Post or Daily Beast or Salon or bunch of these websites, they’re owned by corporations.And they’re not necessarily, those corporations are not necessarily interested in our values. And so, the [00:33:00] grassroots I think would love a more directional oriented media. But, nobody’s presenting that to them. I.Dave Karpf: Well, and, and there is, I think there’s some really great stuff out there. It is all characteristically small, right? Like the challenge. And part of the challenge is when it gets big. If you have a media operation and it gets really big, then private equity might just decide to come and buy it from you for way too much money.Right? And then we need like to have people who decide to say no to the big check and hope that they’re not public. So they’re public, then they can, get tossed out anyway. And these days, if you get really big, then the Trump administration might try to sue you out of existence in a court that, has a judge will just say yes to them, right?Like they, there’s a thousand different ways that they can now try to weaponize the state against you when they get too big. All of which is very depressing of me, which is the reason why I’m a terrible person to bring to parties. But I would say is like that, doesn’t mean that nobody’s doing interesting things.It means that right now there’s a thousand pretty small, really cool [00:34:00] flowers, brooming. The challenge of scale. What happens once you go from audiences of tens of thousands to audiences of tens of millions is that the challenges get, get a lot more difficult and a lot harder to see the way through of them.Particularly when, I mean it’s, been less than a year since Trump won his election, certainly less than a year of him being in office. Like things are falling apart pretty quick and what we really want is good answers. Now. So like my, technological solution to all of this continues to be time travel.I’m going to start a time travel company investments. because I think with the time machine, I’m going to go back to the 1980s, fix the tax code and from that boom, everything’s going to be better. But lacking on technological solution, everything’s like, it’s not that nobody’s doing good work, it’s that all the really good work is too small for what we need right now.And it’s hard to see how it’s going to get bigger, at least in the timeline that we have.Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well one of the, other unique [00:35:00] challenges I think of the left compared to the right is that the, everybody on the left wants agreement on everything. So, and that, I feel like to some degree that harm has harmed me sometimes in that I don’t especially particularly, line up exactly with any faction.And so that I get, people off, people are, get angry at me because I’m like, well, Gaza wasn’t a really much of a factor in 2024. But then at the same time, I’m perfectly willing to say that WelcomePAC, they, should have polled about Gaza now because everybody else who’s polled on it has certainly found that a majority of Democrats, think that Israel has committed a genocide and, that they’re, that they should have their aid cutoff.So like, that’s a report supposedly about the Democratic coalition probably should have polled on that one. Kind of, kind of bad that they didn’t. but, aside from that though, like, the, there’s just like in the Republican side, as long as you support Trump, they will let you [00:36:00] debate anything else inside of the coalition.So, they, like, I mean they, as we’re seeing right now as we’re recording this on on Halloween that, the, Republican Party is having an active debate right now. Whether to have an open Nazi Nick Fuentes in their coalition and whether it’s okay to associate with a Nazi. Like that’s the level of extreme openness that they have.Now, obviously we don’t want to have Nazis in our coalition o open Nazis, but at the same time, if somebody has a different viewpoint from you on taxation or on, any given issue, you probably shouldn’t try to throw them out on your ear, on their ear because they don’t a hundred percent agree with you.And, Republicans seem to get that better, I think.Dave Karpf: So I’m going to push back on that a little, which is.The, that premise of so long as you 100% back Trump means that like, like nothing else matter. Like the reason why they can [00:37:00] debate should we let Nick Fuentes in, like into the party in good standing? And it seems like they’ve just come down on and Yes. Which like I’m aghast by, but also not entirely surprised.But the reason why they can do that is because like they can disagree about everything. So long as they all agree that whatever Donald Trump says today is what they believe on whatever he’s decided matters. Like, besides that, they’re just sort of arguing like color and shade preferences for the drapes, right?Matthew Sheffield: Well, they don’t have policies. I think that’s fair.Dave Karpf: Right. So like, like Democrats can disagree with each other. Like I, I’m a basketball fan and I really don’t like the Boston Celtics, and I really like Boston Celtics fans to know that I do not like their team, that I find their team being morally reprehensible, like I like to make a big deal about it.The Democratic Party Coalition obviously includes me and Celtics fans, despite me finding that objectionable because in every way that [00:38:00] matters. My disagreement about BAS basketball like is meaningless. that’s, just like ways to pass the time and the Republican Party Coalition. because we’ve seen it over the past decade, right?Like one of the most important differences between Trump won and Trump two is Trump won, still had people who disagreed with Trump, right? He had like members of the joint chiefs of staff who said, no, we’re not going to have our, like military try to fire on protestors like domestic protestors, right?He had, John McCain turning down his signature healthcare bill. So like he had a number of people in the party coalition who were not the Trump faction. And in the intervening years, like I remember during the, Biden years, one thing that I was yelling about and I was. In retrospect quite right to yell about it, to be mad about it was they drummed Liz Cheney out of the party, right?Like she’s running for reelection. She couldn’t even use the win red fundraising system when she was running as an incumbent for reelection because they had decided you are a critic of Trump and that means you are not actually [00:39:00] a Republican despite being Liz Cheney. That purification, once they have reduced the party coalition to just like, like, aggressively positive Trumpists, they can disagree about everything else.because everything else doesn’t matter. Democrats can disagree with each other on stuff that doesn’t matter. But what makes it hard is that since we still care about policy, there’s so many things that matter and that makes the disagreement like much harder. And also, let’s be honest, within the party coalition, many of us can be total assholes about it, which is also not great, but how it works.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Yeah. I mean that, that nihilism that Republicans have, definitely it, can be an advantage for them. But I think it also can be aDave Karpf: cult, a lot of things would be easier. Like the problem is we would be a cult, but it would be a lot easier. Like if all of us were just devoted to one dear leader, then many things would be simpler. The problem is we would be devoted to one dear leader, and that would be very bad, and also makes it hard to actually govern effectively.But lots of simplicity. Sure.[00:40:00]Matthew Sheffield: Well, that’s true. And but at the same time, yeah, like at the same time just airing these disagreements. I think that’s. That’s what doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened in the left side of the aisle outlet. A lot of people will have this idea, well, so and so has a different view about this, so therefore I won’t allow them to be on my podcast, or I won’t, quote them in my story.and that’s not acceptable. And, it’s certainly not a way to resolve your differences and to, grow the party. Because again, like if, you’re trying to cast out people who disagree with you, then you’re going to end up with a very small party eventually. And so that’s where I would say that, we don’t have to say it doesn’t matter these disagreements, but we have to say, look, I am entitled to my belief and you’re entitled to your belief.And, but we’re united in trying to stop authoritarian, Christ of fascism, and that’s the, like, that, that negative polarization, I think is, or negative partisanship is, [00:41:00] that’s a very strong component that the Republican Party has. And I think that has to be imported more and taught more within advocacy media on the left, because I think to, to a very large degree, whether it’s with WelcomePAC or when you read, Jacobin or these other ones, like in their viewpoint almost all their content that they’re directing is attacking the other side of, their party coalition member.and like, that’s, not how you win. You don’t have to agree with them. and I would also say like with regard to campaign effectiveness strategy, when we’re, what we’re seeing is that being effective and working hard and being quick on your feet with social media and saying yes.These are not ideological viewpoints because the where Momani is doing it very well in New York, but also, Gavin Newsom’s doing pretty well on social media as well. So like, and, people are liking what they’re seeing, from him in Pritzker. And so ideology isn’t the barrier here. I don’t [00:42:00] think it’s, competence and openness.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I think there’s still an element. I, to me there’s a shift in like, competence has always mattered. The bit that matters more. I think like Pritzker, I, talked to some about Greg Sargent about this yesterday. Pritzker really, I think of all the governors understands the assignment and that’s both because he’s standing up for his, for values, but also because he’s standing up for them in moments that will actually extend beyond the attentive public.Right? Like he, he made a demand of Christy Noam saying, can you have ice take the weekend off of gassing our children for Halloween so they can go to their Halloween parades? And then she was like, no, absolutely no, we’re, going to be out there and like. Then becomes a story. And I think sort of figuring out how to craft stories for this moment when all of media is fracturing and collapsing is I think the new challenge.Whereas I like you’re right about competence. That’s also sort of like when I teach classes on this stuff, [00:43:00] we, the first half of the semester is the evergreen stuff that would’ve been true in the nineties and is still true today, or was true then is true now. And then the second half is all the stuff that has gotten weird and new now.And so I think that there’s a bit, there’s a bit there of like the competence part has always been important and always been difficult. And then there’s some new difficulties that we don’t really have figured out.The perils of thinking that polling alone is political scienceMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and, to that, or to that point, one of the other challenges I think that there, there’s a real divide between democratic political operatives and political scientists. I think because Democratic strategists like to say that they’re data driven, but when you look at the things that they write and like, and, I’m not, this WelcomePAC report is one of many examples I could cite, but, just putting a bunch of polls in a document, like that’s not data analysis.I’m sorry to tell you [00:44:00] guys. That’s not how this works. And like. And so after this, I mean, a couple of the New York Times tried to try to say, well, moderate candidates do better and here’s why. and they just keep getting lacerated by actual data scientists. And it’s just like they think that they’re doing data, but it’s not data.because if you’re not understanding the ultimate cause of something, then when you poll about the proximate cause, or you’re relying on self-identification, like within social science, self-identification, it’s like several steps down from what is a good indicator of somebody’s behavior or somebody’s opinion.And I, I just, I don’t see these things being known in Democratic politics.Dave Karpf: So I, have two things to say. One is, yes, I agree. Like there’s definitely an element to this report of like. They get enough correlations that if they like group together [00:45:00] enough correlations, they can be like, oh, causation. And it’s like, guys, that’s really,Matthew Sheffield: No.Dave Karpf: I think I’ll say in the defense is like the, political scientists who lacerated that New York Times report that’s Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach.And like, I like, I’m a mid-tier political scientist, like my PhD is in political science. I’m a tenured professor. I’m pretty good at the stuff that I do. I think like Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica are so much better at this stuff than I am. So it is like. Like the, thing I want to say in defense of the political practitioners is, this is like saying, oh, you think that you can play basketball?Well, there’s Victor Ana, and it’s like, well, you can’t play against him. Like, no, you can still play. It’s just some people are extremely good. Like tho those two guys are so fucking good at data and like serious data analysis that takes causation seriously in ways that I can read and understand. But like, I couldn’t pull that off either.And like, I’m an actual, like, I’m an actual political scientist. I’m so impressed by those guys. So like, I [00:46:00] do want to note like the, like these guys are going up against world class political scientists, not just sort of like everyday like Dave Karpfs of the world. Like when I can wreck your data analysis, that’s really embarrassing for you when Adam Monica wrecks your data analysis, it’s like, ah, you, went up against a pro. That happens.And like the, also the critique of political scientists is we can do tremendous data analysis focused on causality. Often are left with very little to practical to say about, well, here’s the thing that you actually need to do today.Like, my career has mostly been about trying to bridge those two worlds and understand the serious data analysis well enough to be able to say, here’s the practical, pragmatic stuff to focus on. Or sometimes just saying there isn’t anything to focus on it. They’re, right, but you can’t do anything about it.So like that gap is there and it’s real. But yeah. Also there’s a bit of play acting in this report where like there’s a lot of charts to really impress you of how much data they gathered. And it’s like, these are all correlations that you decided to look for. you’re missing all the hard stuff.[00:47:00]Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, there’s plenty of other correlations somebody could find too, on the opposite side. And and, but it does I mean, speaking of. Really good political scientists. So Lee, Drutman has weighed in on this report as well. And, one of the things that, that he had said was that, that when you look at the, variance between a house candidate and the presidential race in their district and a senate and, the race in their district, what you find is that 98% of all house races have the same margin outcome as the presidential race in their district.And 91% or 92%, I forget which one of Senate races have the same outcome as the presidential race in their district. And so what this means basically is that the, larger political environment is so baked in that campaigns [00:48:00] mostly do not matter. Is what that means. And so if you actually really, and this, goes back to what we’ve been saying in this with regard to media effects in the environment, is that to really have a large agenda setting viewpoint to actually massively change America, you have to focus on the bigger picture.Because telling candidates to say this or that, it just doesn’t work. And the numbers are there that it doesn’t work.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I mean the, when I was in grad school, the big debate in this field was do campaigns matter? And the outcome of that was they do, but only in, like, only at the very tiniest margins. And we now live in an age where elections tend to be raised or thin. And so campaigners can say like, yeah, but the margins where the power are, so let’s pour all this money and energy into doing it.And then Lee comes along and says, like, or you could change the entire electoral system and make it not so stupid. And he’s, right about that. And, I’m coming along and saying, maybe worry about the media system because that’s a dramatic [00:49:00] effect going in the wrong direction. And that’s right.But you know, if you say to Lee like, great, how do, how are we going to do that this year? Then his answer is like, it’s, going to take longer than a year. And if you were to ask me like, Ooh, are we going to do it? I need a time machine, which is like, right. Kind of funny, but not at all helpful. But no, like in, in the, like if you want to fix democracy, you’re not going to do it with just the right candidates saying just the right stu speeches, like, we know that’s not the case.So like, again, my takeaway is not like, oh, they’re wrong. You need to do leftist candidates up, up and down the board. My takeaway is like, my God, stop talking about stump speeches and party platforms and just the right candidate profiles. There’re all these bigger things that matter more. We need to actually pay attention to them.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Or to put it much more crudely, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or rather change the game because like, that’s, that I think is the diff, like it was very damaging that the and I’d have nothing against him. But Sasha Issenberg’s [00:50:00] book, The Victory Lab, it excessively valorize the opinions of people about these campaign operatives and made people think that they were more expert than what they were. Because while we can have actual data about politics, especially in the presidential realm, the n is so tiny that really there’s nothing you can say about it that with any real confidence.And so that is, so there really are limits in terms of what data can give you and what you can know from it. And that’s the difference between the analogy that was Moneyball for baseball, that this politics as Moneyball.Well, no it isn’t because in baseball, you have the rules and that’s it. And you have to play with the rules. There’s not going to be another base added. You know, they’re not going to let you have two pitchers. They’re not going to let you have two batters to hit the same pitch. That’s not happening. But guess what? In politics, [00:51:00] you can change the rules.And that’s the difference between having I call it data and mirage essentially, that they’re, chasing data mirage. And, it’s, so, it’s, not to say that nothing is possible or nothing is real. It’s to say that changing the larger, changing the shape of the river matters more than chasing the current.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I, so I do want to say I have always loved The Victory Lab. I still teach The Victory Lab. I think like I, I like Sasha’s book a lot.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I have nothing against him, but yeah.Dave Karpf: And, but like the thing that I agree with you on is I now teach it as a moment in time to sort of explain there was, a like, I think he was accurate to the time at, that time many people, including myself, really believed that we are bringing science to campaigning.It’s, it is the data scientists against the James Carville to like bring us back to being and to bring against the James Carvilles of the world [00:52:00] and having data science on your side, like running these experiments and AB tests and everything is going to matter. And it’s not that you shouldn’t do ab tests or experiments anymore, but there’s a humility that’s said in the past 10 years of oh, even if that’s helpful, that’s helpful within some strict limits. because the, the party that does that more is not winning. They’re not necessarily winning all the close elections and all of their findings end up being time bound. Right. Like the, thing that worked really well in 2012 doesn’t necessarily work well in 2016 because of the changing media environment or some other changes to the environment.So like, I do love that book, Sasha. If you’re, if Sasha happens to be listening, like, man, still a real fan. And also like it’s a book that when I teach it, I have to sort of explain to students like, this is what it was like in 2012.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and again, it just, it all comes back to the, low number of ends. And so there are [00:53:00] things that we can induce and things that are true within an iteration, but whether they’re true across iterations, all bets are off and you shouldn’t make any.Dave Karpf: Yeah.ConclusionMatthew Sheffield: yeah. And so, and that’s, you know that, I don’t know, excessive faith in data like that is something that you did. So you, had a, blue sky thread responding to the WelcomePAC report in which you also converted into a New Republic article. So, I mean, in terms of, are there specific points from the report that, we haven’t covered here yet that you think we should on thisDave Karpf: No, I, think we’ve handled, we’ve hit the, big points, right? Like the main thing is. If you just read their executive summary, they are stating upfront that what they want is more moderate candidates who deprioritize climate trans people like, like social issues or social identities. And instead talk about sort of bread [00:54:00] and butter kitchen table.They want the Democratic party to be anti elite, but not in a way and like, like, like anti corporations and rich people, but like not sound at all socialist. It sounds very sort of blue rose coded like popularist. Figure out what. Phrases sound good to people, and then say them a lot and just wait for everybody to then like you.And that’s a model of politics that imagines that the public is paying attention to you like they are in their focus groups. And that model is just not the way the world actually works, right? Like people’s impression of the Democratic party does not come from your stump speeches or your platforms.It comes from their incidental information that they’re getting through their social media streams and, like rant TV on in the background. So like at some point it just really bugged me, this report, it’s not, again, like I don’t want to engage in the fight over like, should we be sound, sound more leftist or more, right?Like I, I think that’s the wrong argument to be having and it’s kind of the easy argument to have is fighting [00:55:00] over, what do we, what words come out of the party’s mouths? And instead, I really think people need to have the harder conversation about how do you build up infrastructure to actually compete in a world where the other side has an infrastructure advantage that keeps on getting bigger.Matthew Sheffield: Well, because ultimately your message doesn’t matter if no one can hear it.Dave Karpf: Yeah, no one can hear it. And if instead they’re hearing like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes characterizing your message, then it really doesn’t matter what words you decided to say. People are going to hear their version of your words.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. and in many cases doesn’t even require your words. Like, that’s, the other thing that I think that the popularist do not get, and when they downplay media, because, as we saw with the, in 2024 that, JD Vance forwarded a complete lie about Ohio, that people were eating cats and dogs that immigrants were eating cats and dogs. This was not happening. [00:56:00] And obviously the Democrats were not in favor of people eating cats and dogs. None of this had anything to do with either the Democrats or reality, and yet it was still something that Republicans were talking about constantly and, using to mobilize their party. So, so this, it is infrastructure matters.In, this day and age, it matters so much more because there is no central media node anymore. The mainstream media is irrelevant to most Americans. Now, they might be sort of the grist for the mill that all of these, so like Joe Rogan, or any of these podcasters or even Fox, like, they constantly are like, oh, the New York Times, we did a report about X.So like it, but it’s just, for their mill. Like they’re not telling you what the time said in their report. So fixating on what the time says in their headlines about this or that. It’s not really going to help very much, I don’t think. Like if you are really upset about the times, then you need [00:57:00] to be bankrolling more media.That’s what you need to do. All right. Well, man, I actually, I’m surprised we actually hit this so tight. Dave let me see here. Surely. Okay, I’m going to obviously cut this part out here, so, oh. Okay. Actually let’s maybe end on, let’s, so just to circle back to something in the final segment here as we wrap up I want to go back to something that, that I raised in the beginning, which is that, that the activist and donor class of each party.Has different priorities than the public does. And that this is another reason why you have to spread your message. Like, I think there’s a significant advantage that re Republicans have, and this is wasn’t mentioned in the WelcomePAC report, all which is religion. Republican religion [00:58:00] is their local organizing method.and, that’s, the indivisible is absolutely great, but I want, like five or six things that are out there that are like them and that are targeting different groups. and, to people’s credit, I like people are having to do this with regard to like ice watch things.And and some people are, raising that mutual aid organizations, but like. These things would work a lot better if, the political class of the Democratic Party would get behind them. And people would really love it. Like, we’re, it, we’re, talking about right now with the shutdown, federal snap food benefits are, Trump’s going to cut them off?I mean, it would be so incredibly useful if there was money that had been set aside that, could have just been used to give to families to feed their, to feed themselves and to, and then give ‘em a, pamphlet or something.Dave Karpf: Yeah, it what it brings to mind is an old organizing an [00:59:00] old saying which is that every problem is an organizing opportunity. And, that’s sort of like a, gallows optimism note to end on is if nothing else, 2025 and I expect 2026 are chockfull of organizing opportunities. Everything is getting worse, right?Like turns out federal workers are now probably going to need to go to food banks because they’ve shut down the government for a month and he seems to show no interest in opening it back up. That’s an organizing opportunity. We would rather have fewer of them, but the least we can do is try to build organization that can then serve as counter power.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And absolutely. And like as Republicans attack civil society through that’s government run, there’s an opportunity to step in and make it more explicitly ideological civil society organizations.And the same thing’s true on the internet, as these billionaires are actively trying to [01:00:00] enact “dead internet,” that’s an opportunity for small communities and for people to create the “cozy web” as my friend Venkatesh Rao calls it. And I think that’s right. This is an opportunity for cozy web politics.But it still sucks. Like, I’m not going to say it doesn’t, but this is the—I think this is the only way forward.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I think that’s right.Matthew Sheffield: All right. Well, well, it’s a conversation that that we will, we’ll have to be thinking about that in the days, weeks, years, et cetera, to come. So, butDave Karpf: Should be continued. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. All right. Well, good to have you back, Dave.Dave Karpf: Yeah. Thanks for having me.Matthew Sheffield: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you like what we’re doing, we have. Free and paid subscriptions on Patreon and also on Substack.If you want to subscribe on Patreon, just go to [01:01:00] patreon.com/discoverflux. And if you want to subscribe on Substack, just go to flux.community. And if you’re a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support. I really appreciate it.And if you can’t afford to subscribe right now, that’s okay. But you can help out by us tweeting the links or, and if, you are unable to afford a paid subscription right now, that’s okay. Appreciate your help anyway for staying in touch and you can share the episodes on social media and like them when, if you see me posting them or somebody else, that would be really helpful. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode.All right. So that’ll do it for this one. I will see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary After language, the scientific method is probably humanity’s greatest achievement; it’s a veritable engine of invention that has allowed us to bend rivers to our will, split the atom and cure many diseases. But while scientific progress has given us the tools to reshape the world and even change our bodies, we haven’t yet figured out how to rewire our mental hardware. The same cognitive instincts that helped our ancestors survive in the wild are now making many of us vulnerable.Although we think of them as separate today, science and superstition were one and the same. For the vast majority of human history, astronomy and astrology were together. Alchemy and chemistry were coeval.Over the centuries, however, science separated itself from pseudoscience, but the old beliefs never went away; they just went underground. As science became increasingly specialized and isolated from the general public, however, these “undead sciences” began gathering political power, a development that far too many advocates of progress did not perceive.In the second Trump administration, superstition has seized control of America’s executive branch in the person of Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist extremist who has been manically destroying as much of America’s scientific achievements as he possibly can, assisted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a deranged lawyer who has been slashing and burning medical research and treatment.Let’s not sugarcoat it. There are a lot of terrible things happening in science today. But there are also a lot of courageous people standing up to tell the world what’s happening, and standing up for the reality that science and democracy depend upon each other.I have two guests joining me in this episode to discuss: Jenna Norton is a program director at the National Institutes of Health, where she studies the disparities in urology and kidney health, and Mark Histed. He also works at NIH, where he is a senior investigator studying neural computation and behavior. Each is here in their personal capacity, and as members of the Science and Freedom Alliance.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is available. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content—As science faces external attacks, it needs to look within to defend and reform—The sociology behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’—How ‘intuitionist’ thinking became political—and weaponized by the global far right—Government has a duty to teach critical thinking and science literacy to both kids and adults—Why tech billionaires decided to team up with creationists to attack democracy—Right-wing pundits don’t generally try to make arguments, they try to affirm emotions—How liberalism lost touch with the public, and its ability to defend itself—Why Trump is attacking universitiesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction12:16 — The importance of science communication and community-participation science23:01 — Politics as the master science27:54 — Jay Bhattacharya and the weaponization of objectivity32:51 — Scientific truth and the Great Barrington Declaration42:30 — Open versus closed epistemologies47:53 — The destruction of American scientific leadership52:59 — The value of curiosity-driven research57:00 — The false promise of AI replacing human scientists01:00:41 — Organizing scientists and the Bethesda Declaration01:03:59 — Science and Freedom Alliance mission01:07:12 — Building institutions for public engagementAudio TranscriptThe transcript of this episode is available separately. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary   Even though they don’t intend to, many people who oppose Donald Trump are unintentionally helping him by saying that his authoritarian policies are actually conservative.It’s obviously true that both reactionary authoritarianism and conservatism are right-of-center political philosophies, but they are definitely not the same thing: Conservatives want to keep things how they are; authoritarians want to centralize power and destroy dissent. That means then that when you label them as the same, you’re engaging in the exact same kind of error that Joe McCarthy did when he equated communism and liberalism.But it’s not just promoting inaccuracy to say that conservatism and authoritarianism are the same. It’s making the job of the authoritarians much easier. That’s because extremist movements throughout history, including Islamists, have frequently used a propaganda technique called “entryism” to disguise their radical agenda in the rhetoric of more mainstream political ideologies.Robert O. Paxton is one of many historians who have noted that 20th century fascist regimes relied upon conservative voters and parties to open the gates to power to them because they didn’t have enough votes on their own.In this episode, I’m joined by former conservative radio host Charlie Sykes to talk about all of this in the current moment. We also discuss the right wing’s free speech ruse, how authoritarianism has always been present within the modern American right, and how Republican consultants promoted extremism within their party until it became a monster that they could no longer control.There’s no doubt whatsoever that the pre-Trump Republican elites bear responsibility for encouraging the growth of authoritarianism within their party, but it’s still important that we avoid telling conservative Americans that Trump’s dictatorial policies are the same as theirs. Joe Manchin is a conservative. Donald Trump is an authoritarian.You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Poll finds most Trump voters don’t support his big cuts to medical care--Far-right pastor brags that his Bible study class led to millions of Americans losing health insurance--How Trump’s censorship efforts are giving extremist Republicans what they’ve always wanted--Trump’s war on statisticians and the ‘liberal bias’ of reality--The ‘cancel culture’ myth was always about censoring the center-to-left--How Trumpian Republicans rebuilt Christian nationalism in the philosophical image of the atheist Friedrich Nietzsche 🔒Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction08:23 — Two political strands within the Republican party13:26 — How extremist groups hide themselves within mainstream ones using ‘entryism’18:28 — Private actors versus government censorship23:05 — Did liberals give up on persuasion after same-sex marriage rightfully won?26:10 — Charlie’s and Matt’s encounters with right-wing extremism during their Republican years31:44 — How Republican campaign operatives encouraged racism and conspiracism37:34 — The criminalization of Christianity narrative41:24 — Final thoughtsAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, today’s topic that we are going to be discussing is, what I’m calling the rate Republican free speech hoax.And it is something that has been going on for many decades now. And both you and I came out of the world of right wing media. and so we’re going to get a little bit inside baseball today in a way that you don’t typically get to do on MSNBC or other places, I think, right? But I want to go behind the curtain a bit because one of the, key points about Trumpism and the far right tradition of reaction that he comes out of is that.They also lied to people like you and me, like, oh, just as much as the [00:04:00] voters who will vote for Trump and have no idea what he stands for. They also lied to the talk show hosts like you and the conservative bloggers, former conservative bloggers like me. CHARLIE SYKES: Well, you know what, I’ve been thinking a lot about, the, argument that you will sometimes hear that, that Trump, that Trumpism is somehow a logical extension of American conservatism. which of course is not. It is a radical break. We, it is not conservative in any sense. It is in fact a radical right wing ideology.But to your point, for years, and it really peaked, I think in the last couple of years, Republicans and the MAGA world dawned the cloak of being free speech absolutist, that they were the champions of it. Now, this was a reaction I think to some of the excesses that we saw in recent years, on academic university campuses. And one of the through lines, even though I described myself as a conservative, one of the through lines of a lot of [00:05:00] what I did and what you did as well, was to try to revivify classical liberalism that classical liberalism that was deeply invested in academic freedom and free speech.And you had people know the absolutist like Elon Musk, who decided that this was going to be the banner that they were going to, go into the 2024 election with. That I think has been exposed as a complete and total hoax. It is one of the biggest bait and switches ever. Doesn’t mean they’re not still principal conservatives who are part of that classical liberal tradition, but people like Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, JD Vance have completely abandoned that.And I know we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but they have embraced. A, rather ranked illiberalism, and I think you and I have talked about this before there have been illiberal attacks on free speech from [00:06:00] the left and from the right, but right now, you are seeing the most aggressive illiberal use of state power to suppress speech that we have seen in decades, if ever in this country.SHEFFIELD: I mean I would say that the closest analog that we’ve had was the Japanese internment. And Trump, he’s saying he wants to lock up people who are-- who he accuses of being part of Antifa, quote unquote. But Antifa doesn’t exist, it’s not an organization nobody can get. Like no one can give them money. It’s literally not possible to give antifa money because they’re anarchists. You cannot have an organization of anarchists, and antifa hates the Democrats. So the idea that the Democrats are somehow setting up this little puppet of antifa super soldiers like it, it is just complete garbage.And it’s an obvious lie. But it’s, they don’t want you to think that through.SYKES: Yeah. But they, but it’s convenient for them. To take some of [00:07:00] the protestors and, obviously there’s a certain symbolism about Portland, there is no such thing as an organized antifa, but there are people who go under that banner and they’ll often wear masks and, they will behave badly.But you know, what Trump has done is he has inflated them because he needs an enemy, right? He needs a pretext for the deployment of truths and for the suppression of various kinds of, speech. And so this has become his pretext. If that doesn’t work, he will simply shift some other target because again, it’s all a pretext.So it may be antifa today it will be somebody else tomorrow, but it’s all a pretext to go after George Sorrows, to go after other critics and to declare various kinds of emergencies to gave him super presidential powers, which by the way, speaking of non-conservative, I mean, are you old enough to remember when conservatives were in favor of small government and they emphasized constitutional protections [00:08:00] and it was all about individual liberty, and the Second Amendment was all about people being able to resist tyranny.Now it’s like, bring it on. Bring on the super state, right? Bring on the dictator, who one day for one one term. It’s a tremendous abandonment of everything they said they were for 10 minutes ago.Two political strands within the Republican partySHEFFIELD: Absolutely. And and, I think we do in historical accuracy, standpoint that this tradition, it was always there.Some of these people were into authoritarianism from the very beginning, including William F. Buckley in his early years. In the beginning he wrote a book explicitly saying, look, there should be no free speech on college campuses.SYKES: Yes.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, God and Man at Yale. And that professors who don’t believe in Jesus should be fired, and professors who are atheists or professors who are Jewish and want to-- he wasn’t even saying that they were [00:09:00] promulgating their specific beliefs. He was just saying they don’t believe in the resurrection and so they need to be fired. Like that was, and then he wrote a book defending Joe McCarthy and saying he was great, and that you should leave him alone. Like it was, in many ways, Buckley was kind of the. With McCarthy, he was like an anti McCarthy.That’s essentially what he was doing. And a lot of people, they, it wasn’t just him like that this whole idea of Dwight Eisenhower as a communist. And that we have to stop him. Like that was a, very big thing. And the whole paranoia about United Nations, which Trump, of course is buying into as well.SYKES: Right.SHEFFIELD: So, so that stuff was always there. And, I’m curious though, from your personal experience as a former conservative talk show host like how often did you see that facet of, this authoritarian reactionism when you, when your callers and the people that you dealt with?SYKES: Well, it was always there. And I’ve described this as the recessive [00:10:00] gene of conservatism, that it was always there beneath the surface.And you can go back even further than that. So, I would encounter it, although, the conservative movement that I was part of was, I think, more aligned with classical liberalism. So let’s talk about, I want to go back to your comments about Buckley, because you’re absolutely right. But Buckley grew, he went through evolutions on race, on speech, on a variety of things.And eventually, a decade after of defending Joe McCarthy, he is playing a crucial role in expelling and excommunicating some of the far right you to some of the John Birch Society, the Robert Welch’s, the KKK, the antisemites, et cetera. He also played a significant role in exiling, at least temporarily, people like Pat Buchanan from the conservative movement because of their antisemitism.But, as you point out, there’s a long tradition of this in American culture. In fact, we can go back [00:11:00] you were mentioning McCarthy era as one of the worst areas. Keep in mind that Joe McCarthy was not president of the United States. We talked about this is the worst sinces McCarthy, well, let’s talk about that, because Dwight Eisenhower was the president, not Joe McCarthy. Imagine Joe McCarthy with the power of the presidency, the power of the FBI, the power of the Department of Justice. What, the would have looked like. We’d gone through a previous red scare, believe it or not, under Woodrow Wilson, kind of forgotten about that American nightmare where we had the Palmer raids, where we had a, an extremely weaponized department of justice that we now and suppressed free speech, particularly socialist speech in some of the most aggressive ways. For some reason, that’s all been memory hole.But I always think going back with your question, there was always a push and pull on the right. Where some of the people, and again, you’re seeing the same thing right now where you have this sort of nationalist nativist right [00:12:00] versus what I thought was the ascendant part of conservatism, and this is what I got wrong. I thought the, reformist, wing of the party that embraced classical liberalism, that brace Cree speech, academic freedom inclusiveness was in fact the future of the party.You look back on that now, and it was clearly a delusion. Donald Trump and MAGA decided that, no, that’s a dead end. We’re going to go with blood and soil. And blood. And soil also means that we’re going to use the state to shape the culture in our own image as opposed to what conservatives had argued for a half a century.That government has a very limited role, and what’s crucial about small government. Is that the smaller government is the greater the sphere for individual freedom. The larger government was the more that sphere of individual freedom [00:13:00] is truken. Well look at Trump and JD Vance and the FCC right now. They are expanding government power and ly every corner of American life and culture, which again, is so diametrically opposed to what we were told.Conservatism was back in well again from, since the end of World War II.How extremist groups hide themselves within mainstream ones using ‘entryism’SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. So you have these two ideologies, conservatism and reactionism, and, a lot of people I think don’t understand that there are, that these are different things.And from a historical standpoint, the analog is looking at the Soviet Union and liberalism. So with McCarthy both, he was saying that everyone who was a liberal was a communist. Right. But also the communists were saying that they were just good liberals.SYKES: Liberals in a hurry, right?SHEFFIELD: Liberals in a hurry. Yeah. That was their catch phrase. That was [00:14:00] this phenomenon of extremist groups trying to label themselves as part of a mainstream, nonviolent, free speech associated movement. This is called entryism political science, where that’s what they do, is that they wrap and this happens across the world, across ideologies.This also happens in, in Islamic dominated countries where Islamism is an ideology which says there should be no democracy. There should only be religious authoritarianism. And, but I’m just a regular Muslim. This just happens over and that’s what the key to Trump’s continued support is. That he’s lied to conservatives and told them I’m one of you.But he is a reactionary authoritarian who as you said wants a, gigantic government and he literally is taking pieces of private businesses like Intel and and doing everything that they said Joe [00:15:00] Biden was tiring for. Donald Trump is doing it. And then the same thing with, all of these I conspiracies like of Alex Jones, about all the globalists are taking over the world.They’re trying to get rid of American sovereignty. Well, you know what? There are people that are doing it, and it’s people like Peter Thiel. It’s people like Bellagio, Serena Bassan. It’s like, these tech oligarchs, they’re the ones that are doing it. And the same thing with the NRA. And the government’s coming after you and wants to round you up as a citizen.Well, yeah, they are. And it’s your side that’s doing it. Like that. What they, that’s what they tell you.SYKES: Well, I radically agree with you. I think this is an important point for, progressives to realize because, and again, I am frustrated with the people who are saying that there is this straight line through all conservatism that you know, that, if you supported MIT Romney, supported John McCain or any of the Bushes or wild Reagans that you created Donald Trump, this plays into.the Trumpian hands because it normalizes what’s happening now. [00:16:00] It says that it’s just a continuation it, that it’s just the same old, and I think you and I are arguing here. I think this is very important that. It is a big mistake. I think this is the same old, or that this is normal or that this is a continue.It is a very radical break. Now, again, there were these recessive genes. They were always there, but it was not the whole story. And I think the distinctions that you know, that are so important, it is important to make a distinction between say Hubert Humphrey and she guvera. It is a major, it is very important to make a distinction between-- and again, I’m dating myself-- between, an A CLU liberal, and Trotskyites they may do all on the left and to the right. They all look as alike.Well, the left is in many ways making the same mistake. They look at the right and they think, well, all of you people have the same, essentially have the same ideological roots.That [00:17:00] is not true. And by the way. And th this is related to a, maybe it will sound like a digression. Here’s another thing that frustrates me, is the, is that Donald Trump and Maga will often wrap themselves in the cloak of conservatism. And you’re right, they told people, go along with all of this because for years you considered yourself a Republican and you cons conservative.See what we’re doing in your name now. A lot of us are saying, no, that’s not what we’re doing. But think about the whole doctrine of constitutional originally, that they’re, constantly talking about to justify many of the things that, that they’re doing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent time going back and reading the Federalist papers and reading about what the founding fathers were thinking and what they were doing and what is not originalist, what Donald Trump is doing right now, the original focus of that constitution was to prevent tyrants. They were obsessed with blocking tyrants, limiting tyrants, [00:18:00] keeping tyrants out of office, and then constraining their power if anybody became tyrants adjacent. This was the fundamental original of originalism. And yet somehow you have a lot of people who are going into the ballot box voting for Donald Trump, calling the pollers.They support what Donald Trump is doing, but they would consider themselves constitutional conservatives. I mean, I think we need to call bullshit on them.Private actors versus government censorshipSHEFFIELD: Absolutely. Yeah. And another thing that they’ve also done that is a key lie for them is that. They equate private actors with, government actors.So if somebody is on, is criticizing some, if a bunch of private citizens are criticizing some, somebody for doing something racist or doing something, sexually harassing somebody that’s not the government, that’s not a violation of free speech. Right? If a whole bunch of people say, you are a jerk [00:19:00] and you did something awful, I don’t like you, that’s not censorship.That’s somebody saying that this is, these is private citizens in using their free speech. that’s, the difference between what Donald Trump is doing with, with scientists. I mean, he literally issued a a list of prohibited words to scientists, words that have nothing to do with, politically correct terms.Like they, they, flag scientists who use the word woman. And, yeah. And that’s the difference. Like they want you to think that this is the same. Like that’s, they just do this over and over that they equate everything and try to muddy the waters and trick people who don’t pay attention.SYKES: Okay. I want to agree with you and disagree in, part, okay. I want to agree that it is a, crucial distinction. Private actors versus government actors. There’s a reason why we [00:20:00] treat them differently. I mean, first of all, the Constitution treats them differently because government power is so great because government power is coercive because the government can take away your freedom and your life and, can and destroy you.So that’s why, the First Amendment says that private individuals can engage in the suppression of speech, but the government cannot. Now, having said that, the, that the distinction is important. I do think that that the, cancel culture that existed for the last what decade or so was primarily private actors, but it was an attack on free speechIt was not an attack on the first amendment. And those are, there’s a slight distinction and the attack on free speech. I think serve to hollow out the support for the values that you and I are talking about here. You, I’m watching [00:21:00] this juggernaut attacking pre expression and the lack of effective pushback, and I’m afraid that what happened was there was a tenser movement from the illiberal left and the illiberal, right?Basically saying, yeah, we think it’s okay to suppress speech. Let’s call, let’s equate speech with violence. Let’s say that words make me feel unsafe. let’s say that there are certain things that you know mean that you should be driven out of light society or lose your job for, and, I think there, there has been a sense that, yeah, I, I’m, we’re actually in favor of censorship of the ideas we don’t like.And so when the right comes in and says, well. You folks on the left have been saying the speech you don’t like is violent. We’re going to do the same thing. So I think this is where we kind of need to step back and go. We need to have this relearning of what [00:22:00] liberal tolerance is about. Again, the distinction between government and private is absolutely essential, but on the other hand, there is a connective tissue there that if you become intolerant of ideas that you don’t like.Don’t be surprised when it leeches out the way it is now into government action. Are you following me? I’m, because the, these distinctions I think are very, important. I mean, I, lemme tell you what I’m thinking about. Few years ago, do you remember that, Harper’s letter you had a lot of senten sent center, right center left.Writers write a letter, talk to you about, Hey, we ought to have vigorous debate in this country. We ought to have free speech. We ought not to destroy people’s lives because of what they say. There was tremendous blowback against that declaration of free speech. Almost all of it from the left, from the Identitarian left, so that now I do think that they have [00:23:00] eroded some of those values that’s made it easier for what Trump is doing with governmentDid liberals give up on persuasion after same-sex marriage rightfully won?SYKES: And I’m sorry to have gone on for so long then.SHEFFIELD: no, that’s all right. I mean. Yeah, it’s there, is something there that I agree with. For sure. And it’s, I think what it, but I’m not, I don’t think I agree with everything. But you know, what I would say is that the idea that I would like the left to go to, to learn from how same-sex marriage became the law of the land.and people were voting for it because that was a movement that, and I know a lot of the people that were involved with it. They were saying, look, we’re, we are going to make all the arguments for what we want and what we believe is morally right, including arguments that are not morally based at all.So we’ll make practical arguments. We will make legal arguments, we will make pragmatic arguments about in terms of family so, so [00:24:00] they, they just offered. All possible arguments, including religious arguments because in fact there’s, a strong case for religious, viewpoint of same sex marriage.and, they won by doing that. And there’s, so after that though, people did not pay attention to how that movement won. And instead they said, well. We’re just going to only make moral arguments, about our subsequent beliefs. So whether, it was things like, transgender rights, which I support a hundred percent.but like, you can’t bully people into supporting a position that they don’t understand. So it, but if you can phrase it in a way that is saying, look, from your standpoint, this makes sense and it doesn’t hurt You And because you know the reality is. The percentage of people who are trans in the world is, way less than 1%.So, and Charlie Baker, the [00:25:00] NCAA president, said, look, there’s, there were fewer than 10 trans athletes in the entire ncaa. This is more than 550,000 people, less than 10 of them. So this is not a thing to get upset about if you have people that are trans in sports, like it’s a distraction. That’s what it is.And, but we have to be able to make these arguments that don’t require people to, because we have to be able to separate between the reason for wanting something and, people should be able to agree with you for a different reason. and I think that was the flaw of, the pre-Trump left, if you will.SYKES: Well, yeah, I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole to tell you about the, trans issue in, any depth. But, there was this attempt to, impose this orthodoxy that you must believe all of these things, otherwise [00:26:00] you were, going to be cast in outer darkness. And I think that backfired badly.that. Rather than having an open discussion about it they tried to shut it down and I don’t think it’s working.Charlie’s and Matt’s encounters with right-wing extremism during their Republican yearsSYKES: lemme take the conversation in a slightly different direction. And I know you and I have had this conversation before and I was thinking about the question you asked about when I was back in conservative media, did I see some of these other trends out there?And, the answer is that, yeah, I, remember in the before times that there was the stream of the Christian right. It felt like it was from a completely different intellectual tradition than the one that I thought was becoming dominant conservatism, by the way, I was wrong about that, obviously, and I mean, I remember having discussions where I was very much taken aback by the sort of latent authoritarianism on the part of many people who clearly did not like the idea.A [00:27:00] separation of 13 state would deny that it actually even existed or that it should exist. I remember a caller, I can’t even remember what decade it was, who it was kind of challenging him. He said, so do you think that school should have, prayer in school? Yes, he did. I said, which prayers?good. The good prayers. Okay. Would it be appropriate for a public school to require students to say the Hail Mary every single day? He said Yes, I think that would be a really, good idea. And I’m thinking, okay, well wait. We are a long way from sort of, I, I think the general consensus opinion on all of this.But there were people out there who took a very different view. The other area that I always found kind of disturbing and I-- look, I mean, we, have a, very complicated history in this country, including in places [00:28:00] like Wisconsin about race, and there were latent attitudes, particularly about immigrants and about other issues. And every once in a while that would break through and somebody would say something that was, egregiously, bigoted back in the four times you could push back against that.And if you listen to, and whatever you think about George W. Bush or MIT Romney or John McCain, they did throughout their careers would say, wait, This is not who we are. We’re not going to engage in that kind of racism or bigot tricks. We need to appeal to our better angels. And again, for a long time, I felt, and I’m not sure I was totally wrong about this.When you did that, people would go, okay, That was sort of in the back of my mind, or that’s what my uncle might say. But yeah, I don’t want to be that person. I let’s think about this differently. So there was an alternative pen out for conservatism when you had [00:29:00] leaders were morally based.And again, whatever you think about their politics. Remember how George W. Bush handled the question the question of anti-Muslim bigotry after nine 11. You remember how John McCain pushed back against somebody at a rally that said that, you got a accused Barack Obama being a Muslim terrorist or something.Those voices are gone. So now what you have is you have people like Donald Trump and Stephen Miller who are, and JD Vance and others. Ing on the worst impulses. They are giving permission to people to indulge in the kinds of, I don’t hate his that we thought that we had exiled from the movement.And this is the other big law. I think ofSYKES: all of the efforts for years that people had to. Up right wing [00:30:00] politics or conservative politics, and the Trump era has just completely blown that up. So again, I get frustrated with the people who say, well, you’ve always been raised.I mean, look at what Buckley wrote back in the 1950s. Look at the Southern strategy. Look at various other things. All of that was there, but I thought that the arc could have been bent the other way. Clearly it didn’t. Maybe I was wrong, but it’s not a straight line continuum.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it isn’t. And again, that’s a great point.And and I personally also encountered that in as a conservative blogger that I Had colleagues that they would write posts saying that they would get mad at, CBS for having a character that was a lesbian Yeah. On their show. and they would, write that up and I would look at that and say.This is, junk. Like, I don’t want this on my site. who cares if they have a lesbian [00:31:00] character? Who cares if there’s a gay couple on this show? Like, if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. You know it. They’re not doing anything to you by having these characters and, they’re not saying, oh, you have to be gay.No, they’re not saying that. They’re saying gay people exist. And you know what? They’ve been alone. You don’t have to support same-sex marriage, whatever their existence is not an oppression. And and, but they continued to have those opinions and I continued to see ‘em and that was, it was a source of friction for me with, some of my former colleagues because they didn’t believe, and they still don’t so I did see that, that it, was like two strands that were always there, but even,How Republican campaign operatives encouraged racism and conspiracismSHEFFIELD: This idea, of this recessive Eugene, as you’re calling it, or, what I call the reactionary tradition, it’s the political operatives, the, they knew it was there and they encouraged it a lot more. They exploit it.SYKES: [00:32:00] Yes, they did.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and I think that’s something also that, a lot of people on the, center to left don’t quite understand is that people like you and I, we were also Duke.That people lied to us about what they were doing and who they were courting, because while they might have while a lot of them would publicly say, oh, I don’t want this racism stuff, they would also want them to vote for that. Like they would, or they might say, well, don’t say the Christian nationalist stuff in public, but make sure to vote for me.And like, so it was like they created this. Well, Frankenstein Monster in a lot of ways. Well, they, didn’t let us know that they were doing it and we didn’t we had no idea.SYKES: Well, in fairness, okay. I would like to agree with you on that. But I think at some level we did, or I did you need that they were going on because.I mean, again, I mean, I, can go back and find things that I wrote and I was like, [00:33:00] we need to fight against these people. We need to, distance ourselves from these people. We can’t be the party of idiots anymore. We need to, I did a cover story for a public policy magazine before Tom saying we need to get rid of the crap poss and everything.But I think part of what was going on though, and I’m, I wish I could say they all lied about it. But I think that a lot of us simply made that sort of, let’s look the other way, let’s look the other way because this is the coalition and we needed the coalition. We needed all of those votes.So there was a little bit of wink win. I mean, I, remember going to certain meetings and there’d be some craziest person. I mean, just there out off the wall. And it was like, okay what am I going to do about that person? Am I going to throw them out of the room? Or they’re going to end up voting.For the candidates that I was supporting. So I, think that there was a moral feeling on the part of people like me that we knew that was going on, [00:34:00] and yet thinking that this is just part of, this is the way, this is the way it works. I mean, the southern strategy was not a secret.some of the stuff that, some of the, so Who was, who was the Bush? actually, I’m sorry. Forgetting his nickname. Water Thelia. We kind of knew what Leet waters were up to and it was like the game playing and, this is something I worry about in politics today and in the media, which I call a hack application of the media.Is that we have too many political operatives and too many political consultants who we now treat like somehow as if they are legitimate journalists or pundits. And the reaction is these are hired guns. These are people who basically, you bring in, you give them the money when you go out and say, get the job done.And I don’t really want to know how it’s, I don’t really want to know all the stuff you do. And so I [00:35:00] think that. Unfortunately, there’s some, not a real distinction between the people who are sitting around thinking what is right, what is wrong? What do we believe, what do we not believe? And that we’ve seeded a lot of that to what works, what is effective, what moves the dial?How can I raise more money off this outrage? But yes, for years and years. I think, politicians, Republican politicians tended to be one thing while exploiting something who was below them, and they were very surprised that what was below them was uncontrollable.The analogy that I’ve used is imagine. You’ve been growing, you’ve been growing ba at a baby alligator in your bathtub for years, and then suddenly you were really surprised that it got big and it crawled outta the bathtub and it’s going down the street and it’s eating people. It was your alligator.You should have known. Right. But you are somewhat responsible for the baby alligator. [00:36:00]SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. Yeah. That’s and definitely a true point. And, like Bush when he was going against John McCain, his people put out a false rumor that John Mcgain had a black child out of wedlock.and of course they, denied that it was them, but yeah, it was them. Yeah.SYKES: But it was, yeah.SHEFFIELD: And and so, yeah, so like there, there was this, continuous operation. And the same thing I remember also seeing, some of this Christian nationalism that like for me, ‘cause I left this world before Trump. And it was a lot harder, I’ll tell you, because there was no infrastructure out there saying, okay, what’s happening to the Republican party? Nobody was, nobody wanted to, pursue that story when I was trying to tell them about it.But, I remember watching Tony Gherkins, the, the head of the American, family or whatever it is and he was saying, that Christians who believe in same-sex [00:37:00] marriage, they don’t deserve religious liberty because it’s just fake. It’s fake. They’re lying. They’re not real Christians. And so if they want the religious right to perform same-sex weddings, well, they shouldn’t have it because they’re not having a traditionalSHEFFIELD: belief, so therefore they, to get I religious liberty and I thought these guys were marginalized.SYKES: See, this was my mistake. And I think a lot of our mistake, we thought those voices were on the fringes and were marginalized. It turns out well, they certainly are no longer, people like that. Now they’re at the table.The criminalization of Christianity narrativeSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And so like for most of my career as a conservative operative and commentator I didn’t really pay attention to the people because I thought, well, they’re dumb. their arguments are crap and who cares whatever. eventually I realized, oh gosh, these people actually, comprise plurality of the voters, and, but it’s also that the conservative be, a lot of them [00:38:00] became more radicalized because they were lied to because so many people who are religious conservatives, they don’t understand that just because people don’t agree with you doesn’t mean that you are going to be criminalized.And that narrative of the criminalization of Christianity. Like they really have sold that to people and it’s been very, effective to them. They tell you that disagreement is oppression. Well, it’s not.SYKES: Well, and very, effectively what MAGA has done is it has really played the victim card.And again, this is very, convinced their supporters and particularly Christians, that they are persecuted, they’re coming for you and you are the victim. The irony is, and this was, I’m dating myself of course. Is that back in the early 1990s, I wrote a book called A Nation of Victims.This new culture that everybody wanted to be a victim because it gave you political clout. provided a certain amount of innocence. But I never imagined that [00:39:00] conservative Republicans would embrace that culture of victimization as aggressively as they have, or frankly, as effectively as they have.In fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, and he has done this very, effectively. When he was being charged criminally with all those indictments, he would say, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you, or they’re coming after me because they want to get you and identify I am in the way.and in the, on the Christian right, this, sense that you’re talking about, that that, they are somehow under siege all the time. It’s critical to understand their radicalization and their politics. It’s also important to understand why they’re willing to tolerate so many things it seems so aggressively unchristian, which is they’re basically saying we’re huddled in the basement. They’re kicking down the doors. We can’t afford to have qualms about these other things other, and they’ve convinced these people, [00:40:00] in the absence of any evidence, that in fact that’s going on.SHEFFIELD: They have and they’ve just completely turned around the ideas of Jesus saying that my kingdom is not of this world, so, oh my God the entire point of what he was saying was, look, people are going to, most people will disagree with you. Most people won’t like you. The government isn’t going to implement your ideas, and you should be okay with that because that’s not what you’re here for.You’re not here. To put your values into the law. You’re here to be a good person and to, do good works. That’s the point of what this is.But they’ve, switched it. They’ve completely inverted and said, no, my identity is what matters. And that was always one thing that I always thought was interesting when Trump was very first coming along in the Republican primaries in 20 15, 20 16, that I predicted in 2015 that he would win.SYKES: Did you?SHEFFIELD: Everybody thought I was nuts. but I was Right. And I mean, one of the things that I noticed was that the [00:41:00] people who were the most supportive of Trump in the beginning were the, self-identified Christians who never went to church.SYKES: yes.And I thought, yes,SHEFFIELD: And that, that’s really what has kind of become, because it makes sense Trump himself, of course, doesn’t, church doesn’t know anything about Christianity, doesn’t know anything about the Bible.SYKES: He doesn’t seem to bother with it.SHEFFIELD: No, because it’s about power.Final thoughtsSYKES: So for, to underline your point about the complete switching about what Jesus said about, government, it, it is interesting watching the, these right wing evangelical Christians now embrace what’s being called Red Caesar. That they want their own Caesar, but as long as he is the red Caesar, they’re all in favor of it.And I think that once you begin to understand. That we also understand, again, going back to our original theme, the radical rate from values that used to be taken for granted, or at least I thought it was to be taken for granted [00:42:00] or maybe had been in a subterranean way or maybe you and I had simply you less than me.I mean, because you paid attention to all of this. We’re always sort of there and latent sort of like a chronic disease.So this is not going to go away. Donald Trump leads the scene we’ll, we won’t have a cult of personality, necessarily, but, things have been un unleashed in our culture and in our politics that are not going away anytime soon, because they have some pretty deep roots.But again, please, for the listeners of, this discussion, don’t make the mistake, don’t buy the MAGA lie that this is normal conservatism. Do not buy Trump’sSYKES: bait and switch that somehow what he is doing is a continuation of, legitimate reformist conservatism. Because it’s not.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly.All right. well, I think you, have, a hard out here in the [00:43:00] next couple minutes, so. Thanks, for being here. So tell us what you’re doing, real quick or any, anything you want to promote here before we head out.SYKES: Well like you, I’m on Substack putting a little most of my energy into independent media these days.So if you, if you have a chance to subscribe to, the contrary newsletter and the to the Contrary podcast. we have been putting out a newsletter pretty much every single day trying to remind everyone that. We are not the crazy ones. Even though it does feel like the world’s losing its mind.SHEFFIELD: All right.Yes, absolutely true. Right. Cool. All right, well thanks for being here, Charlie. Good to see you.SYKES: Thank you so much, Matthew. Anytime.SHEFFIELD: All right. Thanks everybody for watching.SYKES: Yeah, thank you. This is a public episode. 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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.communityEpisode Summary If you pay any attention at all to American politics, you have heard by now about the death of Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist who was killed at one of his events. No one deserves to die for their political views, of course, but there is no question that Kirk was a complex figure and far from the saint that reactionary media and activists have been portraying him as.There is one thing, however, that everybody agrees on, and that is that Charlie Kirk had a phenomenal grasp of how to organize and fund-raise for his beliefs. He was able to turn his group Turning point USA into a political behemoth with tentacles that reach into all major political issues.For years here at Flux, we’ve been trying to warn people about what Kirk was up to and how he was growing his groups. And so I thought it would be good at this point to catch up with a friend of the show, Matthew Boedy, to do an update about his reporting on Turning Point and what he found out since he appeared on the show in 2022.Matthew is also out with a new book that describes the Christian supremacist movement that Kirk was part of called The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy, and it’s very much worth checking out.In our discussion, we talk about Kirk’s organizational prowess—and his split presentation to the public as a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist while also working tirelessly to censor and suppress the speech of people he didn’t like, including Matthew himself.We also talk about the future and what left-leaning people can learn from Kirk and the organizations that he created.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch!Related Content—Christian nationalist author hails Charlie Kirk killing as opportunity to repress ‘evil presence’ of liberals—Charlie Kirk audience member once asked him: ‘When do we get to use the guns?’—How Evangelicals turned politics into a Bible action movie starring themselves—Turning Point USA is a religious cult, does anyone on the center-left care?—As Oklahoma’s schools flounder, state superintendent asks far-right video studio for teacher purity test—Far-right conferences are radicalizing millions, with almost no mainstream media coverage—How Pentecostalism is taking over American Christianity—Trump’s effort to rewrite history and censor opponents is exactly what reactionary Republicans have always wanted—Former Trump coup lawyer John Eastman and allies claim Satan is behind efforts to hold him accountable—“Jesus Camp,” free with ads on YouTubeAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:52 — The Seven Mountains Mandate explained09:56 — Kirk’s evolution from free speech to militancy11:20 — Democrats’ failure to respond to reactionary organizing14:05 — The power of events and community building17:20 — Evangelical zeal and political colonization19:25 — Kirk’s rivalry with Nick Fuentes22:46 — TPUSA’s “Professor Watch List” censorship and Kirk’s hypocrisy29:28 — Kirk as martyr, not thought leader34:48 — International expansion to South Korea and Japan36:33 — Kirk’s bizarre fear of imaginary witches43:57 — The irony of gun violence and asymmetrical rhetoric49:06 — The future of Turning Point and American politicsAudio TranscriptIn order to keep Theory of Change sustainable, the full transcript for this episode is available to paid subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. We need your help, so please support our efforts on either Patreon or Substack.

The U.S. federal government shut down on Wednesday morning with both parties unable to come to a budget agreement. It’s the fourth budgetary shutdown of Donald Trump’s presidencies as he and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought are trying to aggregate as much power as possible to rebuild the administrative state in their image as they unilaterally seize funds allocated by Congress and try to circumvent civil service laws to fire public employees.Being mostly a con artist and grifter, Trump is primarily interested in being praised and using the public treasury as his personal piggy-bank. But Vought has much larger ambitions, ones that are far more dangerous.In a 2023 interview with a far-right Christian podcast, Vought said that his public policy was motivated out of a desire to force America to “understand the reality that it has to obey God.” New York Times reporter Coral Davenport profiled earlier this week the many ways in which Vought is implementing this fanatical vision, even as she (unfortunately) downplayed its religious origin.While Vought is historically talented as a Republican administrator, his larger vision of a government that focuses its spending on military and policing rather than public service is very much in line with decades of reactionary Republican tradition. In this podcast discussion, we give an overview of what Vought and Trump are doing and how it fits within the “unitary executive theory” which was developed within the Reagan Administration during the 1980s.We also discuss how shutting down the government seems to have been forced upon Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as his popularity among the Democratic base has plummeted to such a degree that more of his voters disapprove of him than approve. It’s clear that the American people need and want a real opposition party to manifest as Trump and Vought are assaulting American liberty and public administration.Please visit Matthew’s website, Flux, and Don’s website Can We Still Govern, if you would like to hear more from us individually in the future.Audio TranscriptYou can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. this is another Live Theory of Change episode. Thanks for being here and, thank you to Don for being here. so, Don, just if you can, for let’s maybe give a little brief introduction of ourselves to our respective audiences, just to let people know. so why don’t you go ahead and go first.DON MOYNIHAN: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining. I’m Don Moynihan, I am a professor of public policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. I study government, I study public administration, and so I’m very interested in what’s happening right now.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. It’s, this is definitely a time for your field of research, no question.Hey everybody, I am Matthew Sheffield, and I am a, podcaster and writer, and I write about the, psychology of politics and the history of religious authoritarianism. And so, Intersects well with, who Russ Vought is, and we will talk about that, as we get into it. so, but why don’t we, kick off here as we’re getting started with, let’s just do a bit of a lay of the land.So, today’s Thursday, October 2nd, and the government was shut down as of midnight on Wednesday Eastern time. So, where do things stand right now, Don?MOYNIHAN: So, a shutdown has commenced, what is standard at, this point is that some percentage of federal employees are deemed as essential and they continue working, but without pay.Some federal employees are deemed non-essential, and they are basically told to go home. Do not open their computer, do not perform any tasks until the shutdown is resolved.SHEFFIELD: Yes, that’s right. And, are they being paid during this shutdown or.MOYNIHAN: They are not being paid. [00:02:00] And typically we assume that federal employees will get back pay, after the shutdown ends.So Congress will usually pass some sort of legislation to ensure that they do not lose out financially as a result of it being unable to pass, appropriations bills on time. But currently, if you’re a federal employee, you are not getting paid.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that’s right. and, during the, or leading up to the shutdown and as it’s been continuing, the, Trump regime has been saying that they’re going to use the, shutdown as an opportunity to engage in massive layoffs, as a threat to kind of attempt to force Democrats to, reopen the government, at their, with the Republican demands and.It’s a, it looks like at least as of now, that the, Senate Democrats, and this is the Senate Democrats who we’re talking about here because the house already passed the continuing resolution, the de Democrats have said that they believe that Trump was going to do these layoffs anyway. And that’s a very good surmise, I would say.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. and this is where we start to move from what is typical with shutdowns to what is now, I think, pretty unprecedented. so we don’t have any previous shutdown where one of the negotiation tactics on the part of the president was to say, if you don’t go along with me, I’m gonna fire a bunch of employees.Like that is completely new. And from a legal perspective, there is nothing happening with the shutdown that requires Russ Foul or Trump to fire employees or reduce services in, in that way. Right? There’s no legal mandate. And I think this is an important point because there’s gonna be a lot of disagreement about this in the coming days.You heard [00:04:00] Trump, I think yesterday saying If, there’s a shutdown, there has to be layoffs. Not true. The layoffs are a choice. They are not required by law, and we certainly don’t see them in precedent. and so this moves the ball much further of away from what we’ve seen in the past. Senate Democrats are the only actors here with a real opportunity to negotiate because they are the only ones who can filibuster continuing resolution at this point.And they’ve chosen to make healthcare subsidies. the thing that they’re going to argue over, whether that’s a good strategy or not, we’ll find out. but that, as of a week ago, the dynamics were basically, you have Senate Democrats saying. Extent healthcare subsidies, they’re very popular.You cut them during the summer. and Republicans say no. And now we have Democrats saying the same thing and Republicans saying, not just no, but the longer this goes on, the more we’re gonna fire public employees and increasingly the more we’re gonna cut money going to blue states. So this is another thing that is new vote is also, impounding spending going to blue states, billions of dollars in infrastructure to New York City, billions of dollars in environmental spending going to eight blue states. and so this sort of aggressive one ups one upmanship is really a break from the past.SHEFFIELD: It is, yeah. And one of the other aspects of in which they’re doing that is that they are forcing, or I guess they’re not forcing yet.But they are advising employees and administration officials to put up anti-democratic messages on their websites or in their auto out of office replies. and that is unprecedented. And, it’s, it is using the gover, the machinery of [00:06:00] government to, for explicitly partisan ends.And, everybody often talks about the Hatch Act, quote unquote. but that’s, it’s obviously dead, but, to be in, in, all honesty, it was never really enforced, the way that it should have been. And this is one of the results of it, I would say.MOYNIHAN: I think it, it can be selectively enforced.I mean, there was a period not so long ago where it was sort of enforced, but imagine if you were a federal employee and you posted on the government website that Trump was to blame for the shutdown. You would probably be investigated for Hatch Act violations. You’d probably be fired first, and then maybe investigative for that, or imagine that your emails contained anti-Trump messaging.And that was deemed to be a violation of the, norm and legal expectation that federal employees don’t use resources for campaign purposes. you could expect to be investigated. And so partly it feels like the Hatch Act is a, like a sort of dead letter, not because the law has been repealed, but the Office of Special Counsel is just not going to implement it any longer.We saw numerous violations in the first Trump administration, and it became clear that Trump political appointees could basically. Do whatever they wanted. but if I was a federal employee, I would still be very worried that saying anything negative about Trump would get me fired. And we know, for example, before the election, tens of thousands of federal employees had foer requests for their emails from a heritage funded, set of actors.So the Heritage Foundation wanted to go through these emails, wanted to see if someone had said something negative about Trump, and then I think convey that information to the administration to help fire these employees. what we’re seeing now is sort of a step beyond that, which is where, if you go to government [00:08:00] websites, there’s explicit language blaming Democrats.So it’s very partisan. These government websites are public resources. You also have the administration telling employees in your communication with the public, please use this language that blames the Democrats. And so it feels a lot like coerced speech. it’s, putting words in the mouth of these public employees that is intended to help Trump in his negotiations with Democrats.and so it goes beyond, I think, even Hatch act violations to really weaponizing the administration. So they become this sort of partisan set of soldiers in Trump’s army.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And, and it is, yeah. And it is unprecedented. And, and I, and it goes to something that, we’ll get into a bit later, but I wanna kind of preview it here first is that, the, rank partisanship, the vicious hatred.of fellow Americans, to weaponize government directly against them in a way that deprives some of their livelihood, of forces them to say certain things. these are all things that, republicans have imagined, has been going on to them, for many decades, when in fact it never did.that, and, but they’ve been imagining this for many, years, because, well, I guess we can get into it a bit more. So, so on your, on your site, you published a, piece from two authors that really did, talk about this from a governing standpoint that, that, talked about that the, two parties have fundamentally different viewpoints of government.And so, we’ll, get into the sort of philosophical and moral one later, but let’s talk about the, governance side first, if you would. It may not be.MOYNIHAN: Yeah, so [00:10:00] you’re talking about a piece by, Terry Mo at Sanford University Hoover Institution. He’s written a lot of critical work about public sector unions, for example, so not a died in the Will progressive by any means.I think more center right as a writer and a Will Howell, who’s the dean of the Policy School at Johns Hopkins University. They have a new book about the presidency. They’ve written about that topic for a long time, and typically they’ve, written the argument that presidents should have somewhat more authority, and in this book they’re saying, let’s revisit that argument and see, why Now that has become sort of a dangerous topic when you have a proto authoritarian like Trump saying, if you give me this authority, I’m going to use it in really abusive ways.And they make basically. One big point about how the parties think about government. The presidents that come from a Democratic or Republican party have a shared interest in accumulating power to achieve certain goals like that. you want more authority, you want more political appointees, you want more control over policy implementation, and that’s been true of both parties.Clearly since the 1970s, like both parties have been centralized in authority in the White House, adding more political appointees. So that’s the symmetric symmetrical part of how Democrats and Republicans think about government. The asymmetrical part is Republicans have become, especially since Nixon, just deeply suspicious of the administrative state, assume that the administrative state is there to undermine their authority.So have built up sort of theoretical frameworks and legal frameworks to try and work around that suspicion. and so if you think about something [00:12:00] like the unitary executive theory, which maybe you haven’t heard of before, but, and certainly 10 years ago, none of us were talking about this is this novel theory about the constitution that, effectively the presidents have king like power over the executive branch.And so the Republican solution to this problem of distrust of the bureaucracy is to put more and more power into the person of the president, at least when it’s a Republican president. when Joe Biden is in power, then maybe that’s a different story. The risk of that is that it’s also a recipe for authoritarianism.If you put immense power into the hands of a single individual, that is going to lend itself very much to centralizing authority in the way that an authoritarian would want. And so this theory of government is coinciding with the arrival of Trump on the world stage and in particular in the presidency, and taking control in a way that I think is quite dangerous for democracy.And one thing I want to point out, you mentioned the weaponization, argument. so Rual, Rusal will talk about him a lot. I think about shutdowns when he finishes first. Oh,SHEFFIELD: and I’m sorry, we should say he’s the office of management and budget director. Just for people who don’t know.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. he is again, in a normal administration, a person you would never hear about, right.And he was in that position at the end of Trump’s first term, left government, created the center for Renewing America. and basically articulated a lot of the blueprint for Trump’s second term in documents he published there. And also, as part of project 2025, but the weaponization of government. trope really comes from votes, like if you can see [00:14:00] that language in his center for Renewing America publications and documents.You can see him push that language into Congress. You can see Jim Jordan then taking it when he’s creating the weaponization committee. and so there’s this incredible irony. I think Vol has done more to weaponize government than almost anyone with the possible exception of, Pam Bondi. but he’s also the person who’s probably most responsible for creating the, nomenclature around this idea of victimization of Republicans that the government has been weaponized against us in the last few years.SHEFFIELD: yeah, exactly. And that is an, important point. And, this, what he’s doing, there is a historical parallel, in the, well, the Nazi Germany government. They had this concept that they called, glide, she toon, which, was for them, that was, that they needed to take control of the administrative state, and so they were going to fire as many people as they could fire.and they were going to seize control of the bureaucracy and use it to their end. And, this was a systematic, approach that they followed. and, and I think that’s, it’s a, critical thing to know that historical parallel because again, like, and this is why I wanted to do this space with you, because you understand this institutional history and the power politics of administration in a way that I think most, American Center left people really don’t pay attention to the politics of governance and what it means.And, Russ Vought is. The, the person really since the beginning of the administrative state to, he’s, he has a, masterful understanding of how this works and he is executing it, [00:16:00] in every way possible.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. Thi this is an important point, I think right after Trump was elected, you had a lot of voices saying, well, they were elected before.How bad could it be? They’re pretty incompetent. They’re not gonna get stuff done. And one of the big lessons is that the time that Trump was out of office was dedicated to learning the rules of the game and learning how to subvert those rules. And so I think, votes and Stephen Miller are two prime examples of people who are very competent, very loyal to Trump’s agenda, can actually get things done.I think some cases are. behaving illegally, but have created an infrastructure where those illegal actions are moving forward and having an impact. And, we can look at history, but we can also look around the world today. If you look at countries like Hungary or Turkey, their current administrations performed the same sort of checklist for con taking power.You seize control of the bureaucracy, you seize control of the legal system. And once you have that, you are in a very strong position to take control of the rest of society. I think we saw this week also Trump. Checking through another one of these items on the checklist of authoritarians, which was to try to weaponize the military against, his political enemies.and we’ve seen cases where in places like Poland and Brazil where those patterns have been reversed. And so there is hope there if, elections still matter, it’s possible to unwind some of that, weaponization of government. But once the bureaucracy has been sort of moved to your side and is full of loyalists and they’re the ones who are shaping how government works, it is much harder to undo that than it is [00:18:00] to prevent it from happening in the first place.SHEFFIELD: It is. and one of the other, one of the points that was in the piece, that you published also was that this idea of. That, sustaining a governing path is much easier, than changing it. and so, and, and I would expand on what they were saying in the, this is also the fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is that the Democratic party is functionally a conservative party in terms of how it understands, the politics of governments and the, the way in which it explains itself to the public because, it, because the Republican and the Republican, ‘cause the Republican party, for the first part of the 20th century, at least a significant portion of them, like Dwight Eisenhower’s administration and others, and had they, they participated in the building of the administrative state.they wanted it to be this way. and even Richard Nixon, created the Environmental Protection Administration. And, it had extended it in a number of, well, frankly, positive way. and so, this was a joint bipartisan project. And the Democrats in their, they, lost, the message of what was happening in the Republican party, that it was being taken over by a reactionary faction that wasn’t just wanting a slower expansion of government or a non-expansion of government, but was actively seeking to destroy government, because it side as some sort of parasitic entity that was harmful to the economy and, also to the morality.and I’ll get into that after, you, talk about just this, dynamic here.MOYNIHAN: Yeah, the, periods of growth of the administrative state sort of happened during periods [00:20:00] of national emergency, and then you have some more incremental growth in between. But like, a lot of administrative capacities were built during the Civil War under Republican President Lincoln.the civil service, was created, or at least it was signed by Chester Arthur, who was Republican president. certainly the post World War II period, saw an expansion of the administrative state where things like America’s investments in science and sort of building up the scientific infrastructure.That was, I think part of the backbone of the actual greatness of America during that time was very much light.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.MOYNIHAN: Led by the interstates. Yep. the interstates, and I think it’s after that point, like then in the sixties and the seventies, you see this sort of bifurcation within a Republican party where you have people who just become a much more suspicious about the role of government in their lives and the damage that they’re doing.and, picks up steam during the Obama administration and the tea Party movement. But I think Trump is really the first national political figure to take advantage of that while holding a leadership position within the Republican party.SHEFFIELD: he is. And his key ally, who we’ve been discussing already is, Russell Boat.And, the, thing about Vote, and the New York Times did a, profile of him, which I will put in our, show notes after we’re done when we publish this. that is definitely essential reading. they did however, downplay one, the most important aspect of Russell Vought, his, which is that Russell Vought is a religious extremist.Russell Vought literally has said in public that the, that America has a duty [00:22:00] to obey God, quote unquote, is literally what he believes. So he is trying to impose a religious fanatic vision. and, that’s, that cannot be emphasized enough about when people, there, there are people like Ezra Klein and other, more center left people that have recently been saying, well, we share our country with these people.We have to. Dialogue with, well, Russell Vought believes that you are satanic if you don’t agree with it. You are a literal servant of Satan in the mind of Russell Vog. And this is not me exaggerating. and like that’s, that is the, that level of extremism and fanaticism that hasn’t been, we, that has never had access to the adminis modern administrative state, in American history.and so it’s, there I think a lot of people who have more sheltered lives and haven’t really had to deal with the implications of removal of civil rights. so if there were black, black people have much more of an understanding of this because black people are directly impacted.Buy these policies every day. And if you’re, and if you’re a woman, and this is why women in the us, especially young women, are, have become much more, left wing in recent years because they know directly what will happen to them. They have something immediately at stake. Whereas, white male pundits like Ezra Klein, like Mattius, they have nothing at stake directly in these policies.they just don’t like them. And so they don’t understand that this is a much more existential battle than you may wanna realize.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. I, think the VO is a good example of someone who has explicitly talked about Christian nationalism as a guiding force for the country and not just a series of personal beliefs that he’s articulated.The idea that [00:24:00] people in policymaking roles should. Be driven by a Christian worldview and when they come to make policy. and I think if you’re inside the fold, that might sound great, but if that means your rights and access to power and influence are going to be reduced as a result of that. And you mentioned women, like if you were, if you care about reproductive rights, then obviously there, this is a really bad time.I also think it’s not just Christian nationalism. If you look at research on the sort of worldview and belief system, there’s also a really strong element of race and views about race that’s built into that. And so. Some researchers will talk about white Christian nationalism to distinguish it from other sort of Christian world views.and so again, if you think about this, from a sort of theological view, it doesn’t make a ton of sense, right? There isn’t a lot of empathy. There isn’t a lot of actual Christian, behavior in, in many cases when it comes to things like, let’s say getting rid of U-S-A-I-D, which will probably kill millions of people, was created by conservative Christian president.That the sort of anti-age policy under George W. Bush, was massively beneficial in terms of protecting lives and now doesn’t exist. But it does align with a Christian nationalist perspective, which, would take into account, We’re not going to help people who are outside of the fold, who are outside of the United States, who are immigrants, who are not part of our broader tribe.And I, I do think this sort of gets back to some of the founding concerns about freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Like the idea that you didn’t want your government to [00:26:00] impose a theological worldview upon you, you just wanted it to leave you alone so you could practice your religious beliefs in peace.Yeah.SHEFFIELD: yeah. And in votes case, there is, there has long been a right-wing Christian tradition that says, that is built around, I think it’s a verse in, it’s either first or second Thesal. Alones, I believe, that says, if you do not work, then you should not eat. and that is.Really. and so, Ralph Dinger, who is this, right-wing Christian minister, he is, he leads prayer meetings on Capitol Hill and also in the White House. So he’s, he’s created this network, this private network in which he, feeds, the, these, far right propaganda messages in religious voting to Republican politicians.And he recently posted that his view of how people who are lazy don’t deserve anything that’s now becoming law. He, said, this is our prayer meetings becoming law. so, this is, like that’s why I, and it’s, for people who don’t have a direct exposure in your personal life or you’ve never seen it up post, it, the, these rightwing religious doctrines kind of seem like they’re a waste of time to think about it to.But in fact, obviously as we’re seeing now, they, are extremely relevant to the way that Republicans govern.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. And as someone who was sort of raised Catholic and was an altar boy in church on, Sundays, like, it’s very interesting to see the tensions between, the Pope for example, either the current Pope or the previous Pope and American political leaders where, the Pope has Pope Leo and [00:28:00] Pope Francis before, have basically articulated a social justice inflected view of Catholic teaching, which involves empathy, which involves, pre protecting the most vulnerable.And then they sort of clash very much and are subject to criticism by wor the worldview of many Catholics in the US as well as the broader evangelical movement. And so it, it does reflect a tension there where. The idea that, let’s say, let’s pick adding work requirements to Medicaid, right? The idea that you shouldn’t get access to health insurance in the country where, paying for healthcare is the most ruinously expensive thing you could possibly encounter.that, that is conditional on you. Being able to document that you worked 20 hours a week does not feel Christian for many people. But if you have a theological worldview that says, actually no, this is just, and this is fine and this is fair and it’s rooted in the Bible, that might make it a lot more palatable.I do think, like, again, let’s stick with the example of work requirements for Medicaid. We have a lot of research about these, the effects of these requirements now, and they’re pretty straightforward. If you add a bunch of bureaucracy into these administrative processes and ask people to, log on.Upload a PDF of their work in the last week. A lot of people just struggle with that. And the people who struggle the most with that are people in poor health, like people in poor, physical or mental health perform really poorly on these administrative tasks. And so you’re going to make it harder for those people to actually get access to healthcare because of all of these new administrative burdens that you’re imposing upon them.Most of the people who will lose access to health insurance because of work requirements will be working. They’re not [00:30:00] failing because they’re lazy or because they’re sitting on the couch playing video games all day. They’re failing because of the administrative barriers that are being placed in front of them.And again, from historical irony perspective, if you are a Republican who hated red tape, you are also weaponizing red tape and imposing it on millions of Americans in an unprecedented way.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that is a very important point. because yeah, that, they, and, but what we see, I think is that they want no red tape for businesses, but they want lots of red tape for citizens.because, and again, this goes back to their, idea of, so within, the history of humanity, there’s this larger through line of what I call the sort of authoritarian epistemology. and essentially how it, and it’s evidence in every, historical tradition and region of the world and in different ways.But, in, in, the west. It manifested through this idea of the great chain of bee. and which is what, which they, based on Aristotle. And that was developed within, Catholic theology and then later developed, within pro various Protestant theologies, which is that, you were born into a certain state in this world, and you have to accept your fate.This is who you will always be, and you can never improve this. You can never improve your station. Or, maybe some people who are geniuses and amazing, wonderful people like Elon Musk, as they, as he tells, wants people to believe, like, or, the billionaires, the, what few of them that actually, had, didn’t inherit their wealth.they are the only exceptions to this rule. Everyone else must accept how you were [00:32:00] born, because that’s who you are, and to try to improve the situation for the public. That’s actually destabilizing and will destroy the world, because it violates the natural order of things. And that’s also why women should not have rights.That’s also why we shouldn’t have same sex marriage. That’s also why transgender rights should not exist. Transgender people are faith. They don’t ex they, it’s a lie in this world because, so it, all comes down to that. And, you can see it once you have that understanding, everything that they do makes sense.Whereas before, I think if you don’t have that understanding, it kind of seems random what they’re doing.MOYNIHAN: Yeah, this is so interesting because like these are part parts of the world that I don’t fully understand myself, but it does help me understand, and so, I’m a social scientist.If I bring to you a bunch of studies that says actually giving people access to healthcare or giving people access to food stamps, we can show you without a doubt that makes people more prosperous. It makes people healthier, it makes them more likely to live a better life like that. These benefits have an empirical effect.On, being good citizens, being economically productive, being more peaceful. for example, people when they get access to Snap are less likely, to engage in criminal behavior downstream, right? So I can show you all of those empirical studies, but if that contradicts your religious worldview, that somehow, giving people food stamps is upending the natural social order of things, there isn’t gonna be enough, research in the world that’s gonna change your mind.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it won’t. It won’t. And, so that’s why they’re doing these things. That’s why Russell Vought has been so [00:34:00] fanatical, in trying to break down, the bureaucracy and destroy the Department of Education. and it’s also that, they see, and, so recently, Elon Musk.Had said he’s gonna start his own Wikipedia alternative. He’s gonna call it Wikipedia, if I remember it. or some other stupidly named thing because Stephen Colbert in his comedy Central Days, he actually coined the perfect phrase to describe what we’re, talking about, the epistemology.He said that, things are true. when he was doing his right-wing character. Things are true. My beliefs are true because I believe that, and that really is the, animating, proposal, behind what they’re doing. And so, like, to go back to what you were saying, that all people are going to be harmed by these, by the healthcare, removal of the subsidies that the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans pass just recently.The people who will be harmed probably most directly by this will be. Trump voters. and we keep seeing that over and over with Trump policies, is that the people in many cases who suffered the most or the first are his own voters. And we’re seeing that with the, tariffs and, the, soybean farmers, US soybean production was, al overwhelmingly reliant on Chinese buying.And since Trump did his tariffs, they haven’t bought anything. and so, and it has absolutely decimated the, soybean market in the us And, this is just going to happen over and over. And it keeps happening. tourism to various states has just dropped off a cliff from Mexico and Canada, and, and, the Trump voters.But the thing is, they, and this is, this goes back to what I was thinking about the problem that Democrats have [00:36:00] had is that they haven’t understood. You have to explain to people why things. And how things, how things work, you can’t just assume that they will understand and then they will like it, or that they will be upset about something bad.You have to tell, you have to give them a narrative because people have other things to do. They’re not political professionals. They’re not political scientists, they’re not politicians, they’re not policy analysts. there are a variety of other things, whatever it is that they do. And politics for most people is not a hobby.That’s, like, that’s the thing that Democrats have failed to understand. And so they built, originally in cooperation with, SANE Republicans, they built this, great achievement of the administrative state, which is remarkably efficient, at, sending money to people, compared to many other, states around the world.but they never explained to, people why it was good and what it was doing for them. And so now you’ve got this, the tens of millions of people in this country who hate government and think it does nothing for them, even as they collect social security checks or even as their child, their receives, federal funding for autistic, children or disabled children, they, have no idea how much good it does for them because no one ever told it.MOYNIHAN: Yeah, I, think that’s a crucial democratic question. it’s what political scientists would think about as a policy feedback question. Do people see. The consequences of these policies. And then do they change their mind when it goes, when they go to the voting booth the next time? And like the classic example of this from the Tea Party area, era was the protestor, holding the, sign saying Keep your government hands off my Medicare.Yeah. Where, there, there was just this dissonance between, [00:38:00] I really enjoy and value this government program to the point where I’m willing to go out and protest about it, but I don’t see it as government. And there, there’s a, brilliant political scientist, Suzanne Metler, who sort of characterized this as the submerged state.So partly the administrative state has been the victim of its own success, and partly because it’s accommodated traditional. Conservative views, which is that we want to hide as much of the state as possible. So people, for example, when they get private health insurance, typically don’t think about that as a government subsidized program, but it absolutely is, right?It, your employer gets tax subsidies to give you health insurance. The government puts a ton of money into those programs. And so we miss this relationship between what the state does for us and how we think about the state. and you’re, you’re absolutely right. If you look at the distribution of food stamps, those are going to be mostly, not exclusively by any means, but many, Trump supporting counties are going to be affected by this.The question is whether voters will, connect that loss of benefits with Trump. And we’ve seen these extreme examples where a husband sees his immigrant wife deported and as a result of Trump policies and will say, I don’t think this is what President Trump wanted. I don’t regret voting for him.Like this really extreme sort of example of dissonance. But then you have to go to your question was, which is how do you make. These folks understand when, they have other lives, they’re not, reading the New York Times every day. How do you communicate them to them? What’s at stake?And the ways in which they’re materially being heard with, also, without also talking down to them or condescending to them. And I think that’s also a challenge that [00:40:00] progressives have been struggling with where, maybe I’m not the ideal spokesperson to go and communicate to a community because I work at a fancy college.But there have to be other ways that you can speak and engage in an authentic way about the government that your tax dollars are going for and what it is that it does for you. And why destroying it is actually not in your interests.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. yeah. And it’s really important and it’s, and it is why.A huge reason why we are where we are today. and there’s another dynamic as well that, this is a partisan, or dynamic or of the, within the, congress. So, the Republican Party for, since let’s say the 1960s has been, this uneasy coalition between reactionaries and conservatives.and that, that dynamic is very important. I think also for people who have a center left perspective to understand that these are not the same viewpoints and that when you call Trump a conservative, when you call these other people conservative, where you call them a populace, you actually help them, you help them with their authoritarian agenda when you use those words to describe them, they’re not conservative.Conservatives want to keep things how they are. They want stability, they want order. Donald Trump is anything but order and stability and, conservatism. so, but aside from that, this, coalition that developed in the party, the Republican elites like Mitch McConnell in particular, they took advantage of senate procedure with the filibuster and whatnot like that.They block the reactionary nut jobs from forcing through various laws that they wanted to do, like get rid of the Department of Education or, any number of these policies that Trump is implementing now. the elites [00:42:00] like McConnell, they never wanted to do battle with the reactionary. So they enabled them, but they stymied them.And so basically you had this movement that was becoming ever more extreme because they never touched the stove. In their decades of the time when they had the governance because the republican elite stopped them. and so now they, they just developed this burgeoning, raging hatred of government, and now they’re going all after it.and this will harm them electorally. very well. I mean, we’re seeing the polls that it will harm them. but, it would’ve been better for this country if they had seen that harm earlier. And when we look at parliamentary systems where the, where there is a huge amount of vested power within the, elected officials.I mean, the prime Minister in any country is overwhelmingly more powerful than the president in this country. but they l right wing parties learned that you can’t get rid of national healthcare because the people will overthrow you if you do that. And so therefore, we were not going to do that.And so that it, that moderated. Conservative parties, in other parliamentary systems in the way that, the Republican party never really saw those pressures, I would say.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. And I think, like another good comparison with parliamentary systems is that if politicians cannot pass a budget, the government fails and then they have to go for reelection.Like, so they are the ones who actually get punished if they can’t get their s**t together to pass a budget on time. In America, the people who get punished are. The federal employees who don’t get paid for a while or, now potentially get fired. meanwhile, Congress sort of stays as it is. There’s no real direct penalty until the next election.and so that is like one institutional difference that I think makes [00:44:00] parliamentary systems, more moderate in general. they, they realize, and we saw this when, the UK system was cycling true prime ministers, once you got very radical governments started to collapse very quickly in a way that’s not happening in, in our presidential system.And so the self-interest of the politician aligned more with being a moderate, whereas I think, you point to McConnell being a great example of someone who’s, on the one hand an institutionalist in many respects and instinctively doesn’t want to tear things down, but on the other hand, never had the courage to actually go against the radicals in his own party.Even after January 6th, when I think the conventional wisdom was that Trump as a political force was done, there is like an oral history of McConnell saying, well, if, if we vote to get rid of him now, he will not be able to come back. He will be basically barred from running again. But he didn’t pull the trigger on that.Like he ultimately decided it’s too damaging for me to vote against the president of my own party, even though he understood a hundred percent how big of a threat Trump was. He, decided it was someone else’s problem. and, part of the problem we have now is that someone like Vote is as knowledgeable about how government works as Mitch McConnell was, but is using that knowledge to undermine the administrative state rather than to make it function.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. and now let’s, go over to the Democratic side of things. So, as you noted at the top of the recording, the Democrats have made healthcare, subsidies, their centerpiece, demand. which, I, think is they should have made more [00:46:00] demands than just healthcare.but, this is what they’ve done. So, and it’s a good issue. people, it will immediately, if they don’t get what they want, healthcare costs are going to skyrocket for everyone, including people who are not on a, healthcare exchange funded by the government, because these markets are all interconnected.but, anyway, that nonetheless, they’ve gone for it. and, it’s, I think it, this is. This is something that kind of seems to have been forced on Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, because, re the Pew Research Center recently came out with a poll that showed that, the, he’s more disliked by democratic voters than, than he is liked.and this is the first time I can think of that this has ever happened, for a Democrat. And, democratic voters are, they have been desperate for a, party leader that would confront Trump after all of the horrible things that he’s done. I mean, there’s, so many layers of power that Mitch McConnell, was it seized when he was the Senate minority?Correct. like stopping up various businesses with unanimous consent, things and like, the, all of these nominations that Trump has pushed through, Democrats could actually have done many things to block them, but they didn’t. And so now. Finally at long last, the party is, finally trying to challenge Trump.so, that’s a good thing. But, we’ll see if they can maintain their resolve. I mean, I think that’s the thing why Trump and voters saying they’re trying to, they’re gonna start firing a lot of people.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. I, so the big question is, what is the end game for Democrats? I think you’re right.Schumer is. Currently in a position where everyone wants him to do [00:48:00] something, but what that something is, not clear. And he’s also in a position where he is trying to maintain his coalition and potentially his job, like the idea of continuing to pass another continuing resolution while you have troops invading cities.while you have like really radical action coming from the White House, such as, again, the messaging to the military that seems inadequate. On the other hand, it’s not clear how you stop that true budget negotiation process. And you can absolutely see the path that Schumer would’ve taken. Someone would’ve shown him some polls saying, aca a CA subsidies are very popular.This is an issue to take a fight on. It’s a specific ask. and it was one of the things that I think was also sort of missed when, the big, beautiful bill was passed the summer, like it was so much in that bill. That the public didn’t really understand the most of what was passed. And so you’re adding salience to this one topic so that even if you lose next year when people’s health insurance costs double and millions of Americans lose health insurance, you can say, we at least fought for you on this.But again, it’s not clear what the end game is here. Like when do you decide to fold? And I, think for now republicans are feeling very comfortable. They can just raise these continuing resolutions and Democrats will have to vote against them. I do think Republicans are overplaying their hand with the threats of firing employees and with fault.Now impounding funds going to blue states. To me that feels like you, you’ve. Major self villain in the way that you don’t have to, it changes the message from, well, Democrats could just reopen governments to, we’re [00:50:00] going to use this shutdown to inflict a lot of partisan pain. and so I, I actually think vaults political instincts are bad here.And it’s a mistake for Trump to decide to go along with him as Trump has. He wasn’t messaging this a few days ago, the last couple of days he’s gone all in on the vault messaging. and so I think that gives Democrats a little bit of rhetorical leverage. But after 20 or 30 days of this, and I think the last shutdown was something like 35 days, there’s going to be a real desire to, get back to the table.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I mean, we’ll see how that goes. and the other thing with Trump, drawing closer to vote publicly, re just today he, he noted. The, very obvious fact that Russell Bo was, one of the key architects of the project 2025 plan, which when he was running, for against Kamala Harris, he pretended that he thought it was extreme and was a lie and terrible.and, and it was, I mean, he made absolute fools of the mainstream media, because he said those things and, and they repeated it, oh, well, Trump says he’s not part of it. Well, like it, the, it was an obvious lie even at the time, because again, vote was his budget director.So, and he also had, said explicitly in a tape recording, I’ve been in, in constant contact with Trump and his people, and, he’s gonna do whatever I say. So the media completely failed the public. and, it was, that was a bright spot of the Harris campaign. When she started talking about that, and it, just, the public needs to know how horrible the far right wing of the Republican party is, and Democrats [00:52:00] must not shirk that duty.They have to go and point that out all at all times. Even if it seems tiresome, even if you’re, you think it’s annoying to have to repeat yourself. This is what Trump does. Like, Trump repeats his message all the time, and this is how politics is. And if you don’t like that, well then you should get outta politics.MOYNIHAN: Yeah. I, think, if you, I don’t think Trump ever read Project 2025, but the idea that he was disconnected from it was on its face, obviously untrue. And I think it, it reflects one tendency of media coverage. which is to put, Trump says as a headline, Trump says this, Trump says that, like Trump says a lot of stuff that’s not true.It’s not your obligation to reprint that as if it’s factual or to give the impression that it’s factual. And then in paragraph 13, say, oh, by the way, project 2025 is written by a form, a group of former Trump employees and people who will be back in his second administration. and so the, the message Trump sent out that, explicitly named Ruvo as a project 2025 leader, and he was like, vote was not just the author of the chapter about how to change the executive branch.He also wrote the secret playbook, which to, to, as my, as I understand it has never been published of like, here’s what we’re gonna do for the first few months of the administration and like breaking it down by executive order. But now Trump is sort of embracing that idea. Oh, by the way, this is the Project 2025 guy that everyone warned you about.I mean, hopefully there’s a little bit of a lesson there to be taken from people covering government, about communicating like what’s actually happening as opposed to Trump’s version of what’s happening.SHEFFIELD: [00:54:00] Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it that this kind of failure to do that correctly in the media, it, it goes back to that larger, kind of failure liberalism.I would say that, within politics, this, this, idea, liberalism unable to advocate for itself. and, when, even in the face of a political movement that is actively anti-modern, like is literally attacking modernity. if you don’t stand up for it, then who, who’s going to?You have to do it. You have to, and you have to do the hard, you have to read, the, public administration stuff. You have to read the philosophy. these are not things, I guess, seems like that, we’re very common, in a lot of center left, political and media professionals for a lot that,MOYNIHAN: yeah, I, think there is, or there should be a realization that the playbook of, we’ll do some polls, we’ll figure out what’s popular and then we’ll run a bunch of TV ads has not been a sustainable way to build a movement over time.And I’m not, a political consultant. I don’t do communications, but it feels actively inadequate. at this point. when, if you’re a progressive voter and you’re getting another text message. My guess is like half the time, this just makes you more embittered towards the party that most closely represents your values.and so I think that the communication part and the engagement part has to look different from what it’s done before. and one thing, Trump has done is he has represented a set of views that didn’t have a big platform inside a major political party. He’s given voice of those views.He’s also changed those views along the way. [00:56:00] Like he’s used his voice to change the beliefs of people, and you don’t really see modern progressive leader is being able to pull off that combinationSHEFFIELD: or even trying to, yeah. So, all right, well let’s maybe end with, all of this chaos is happening and I think maybe people, might wonder if there are things that they can do, to kind of.the situation, if at all possible. What do you think?MOYNIHAN: I mean, the traditional, the traditional route, it still matters, still makes a difference, but call your congressman. a lot of folks are not going to be in, DC for the next few weeks, so, go to their town hall meetings. If they’re still offering those, go contact their staff.representatives do respond to that sort of pushback. And one of the things that did make a difference, and led to I think, the demise of Doge as a powerful political force is that people went to town halls and they heard a lot of pushback from people who were saying things like. I’m worried about my social security.So I think being able to articulate, I’m worried about how this shutdown is affecting X and I want you to get back to the table, would be useful. And I think there are, probably a bunch of Republicans who would like to extend the a CA subsidies. So don’t think that the Democrats are asking for something incredibly radical because they are gonna be blamed for that next year when the cost of health insurance goes up.And so maybe using that example as the specific thing that you would like to see changed would be the way to communicate.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s good. And, also, I use that point with the apolitical people in your lives as well, because people a lot, most people don’t pay attention to the news.They don’t [00:58:00] know what’s going on other than the broad brush strokes of what’s happening, And so if you tell them, look. Republicans are going to make our health insurance costs go up. And the Democrats said they are trying to shut down the government to stop that. that they, to keep costs down.Like that’s something that anybody, and at least would pay attention to that. it doesn’t mean they might believe you, but it’s something that they can understand, versus, abstract arguments about presidential powers. And, what if court rulings or whatnot, like those are not things people have time for regular people, but they do have time for if you tell them your healthcare costs are gonna go up and Trump’s doing.Yeah.MOYNIHAN: and I think, this is one of those moments of like civic reeducation where for most of our lives we don’t pay a ton of attention to government because it, mostly works. It might be irritating sometimes when things start to fall apart. It is a moment of opportunity to sort of engage in a conversation about.What is it that we wanna get from government and why destroying that is not actually gonna make our lives better. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: exactly. All right. Well, this has, been a great discussion, Don. I think, we covered a lot of bases here. Are there any, is there anything else that you wanted to add before we end up?MOYNIHAN: I do think we are in unprecedented territory, but I keep saying that, so it feels like the water is really boiling at this point. and I do think if federal employees, please recognize that they’ve faced, probably the most grim period of their work lives over the last eight months, where that, they’ve had to work in this toxic work environment that, votes and Elon Musk and others created.And so hold a little bit of thanks and a place in your heart for them, [01:00:00] because most of them are just trying to serve the public.SHEFFIELD: Yep, that’s right. All right, well, we’ll have the, well, I’ll publish this with the transcript then some show notes later in the day. And so anybody who, missed earlier parts in it, we’ll be, you’ll be able to get them and, hopefully, share it if you’d liked it.So thanks for being here, Don. Thank you, Matthew. All right. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary Since he became president for the second time, Donald Trump has launched the largest assault on free speech that we’ve seen since Japanese Americans were interned because of their family origins. Among many other things, Trump signed an executive order classifying “antifa” as a terrorist organization, even though there are no actual antifa organizations. The regime has also launched investigations against private citizen organizations like the George Soros-founded Open Society Foundation. Trump has stolen billions of dollars from private universities like Harvard and Columbia because they dared to tolerate student protests against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.Trump has even demanded that all late night television comedians be fired for making jokes about him, and his FCC chairman’s threats against broadcast television companies have led to the cancellation of the number-one host, CBS’s Stephen Colbert, and the suspension of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel until public outcry forced Disney to bring him back.All of these attacks against free speech—and this is only just a short listing—must be fought tooth and nail. But censorship opponents must also realize that Trump’s censorship agenda is actually the fulfillment of what far-right Republicans have wanted for 70 years, as exemplified by the infamous Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, and his number-one defender and proponent, William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review magazine.Buckley’s love of censorship and his contemporary allies’ love of it as well should be more widely known, especially because the anti-freedom agenda that they had for America is now being enacted by Donald Trump today. Joining me to discuss this and a lot more is Seth Cotlar. He’s a professor of history at Willamette University, where he teaches and writes about the American right and early American history. He’s also writing a book on a white nationalist activist who became the chair of the Oregon Republican Party.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content—William F. Buckley fought for control over the American far right rather than trying to exorcise it—How Fictitious Republicans hide right-wing extremism from the media and the public—The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the long history of Republicans pretending to be the real liberals—How right-wing college students invented canceling professors—Trumpy cultural products are horrible, here’s why—The mainstream media were ‘sanewashing’ far-right Republicans long before Donald Trump—Big Tobacco pioneered many of the propaganda techniques used today in the 1970s—Fitness has always been politicized, even if you didn’t realize itAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:52 — The Republican party’s entwined relationship with reactionaries11:05 — Do reactionaries distinguish between private criticism and state censorship?15:45 — William F. Buckley’s legacy of censorship22:33 — Antisemitism and conspiracy theories in reactionary thought25:15 — Ben Shapiro’s appearance on a white supremacist podcast30:29 — Taking Trump seriously and literally35:45 — The Antifa terrorist designation and its origins40:10 — Ezra Klein and the problem of engaging with bad faith actors47:02 — Thomas West and the absolute poverty of reactionary historiography54:45 — PragerU’s bizarre AI history videos01:00:58 — The anti-Americanism of the reactionary right01:06:32 — Trump’s declining poll numbers and the informed electorate01:10:37 — The pleasure some take in illiberalism and cruelty01:18:29 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So I wish we were talking under better circumstances, but the long and short of it is that the the recent assault on free speech and civil liberties that Donald Trump has been conducting, it’s come as a surprise to a lot of people. But for historians like yourself, this is actually the fulfillment of what the reactionary right in America has wanted since the very beginning.SETH COTLAR: Yeah, no, there’s a long history of this on the right, not necessarily inside the Republican party. But you know, as the Republican Party has moved rightward, it has kind of moved closer to those voices on the right. [00:04:00]They usually, at least since World War II, justified it in terms of anti-communism, was the way they understood it. So they, they thought, that communism was an existential threat to the United States, and hence communists should not have free speech rights in the U.S. And so, that’s how they justified their various efforts to run the kind of McCarthyite movement in the fifties, but then it continues on into the sixties and so on.And so, this is why when contemporary politicians refer to center-left American politicians as communists, it’s simultaneously kind of laughable, but it’s also kind of ominous. Because that it is the rationale that historically was used by people on the right to justify squelching free speech.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, It really has. And and I mean, and I guess we could say that it kind of started with the Red Scare, in the early 20th century. And they’ve never really gotten a different tactic since then, which is especially ironic considering that the Democratic party, economically speaking, has moved quite a bit to the right. And only recently, maybe has had some kind of pushback from their own voters against that.But you know, like the idea of Democrats being communists is just laughably stupid, but it’s effective, I think, for a lot of people.COTLAR: It is. Well, and, this is part of the deal with kind kind of right-wing propagandists, the charge of communism never really had to have much legitimacy to it, or heft. The John Birch Society famously regarded Dwight Eisenhower as a communist. Robert Welch claimed that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist, which at the time most people were like: Wait, seriously, you’re, kidding, right? And he wasn’t kidding.Like he really meant it. Yeah, he did. And somehow, I mean, at the time they were an object of great ridicule. But [00:06:00] enough people were kind of willing to plausibly believe it. And in the the late fifties and early sixties, reason why that charge sometimes stuck with some, particularly kind of deranged people, often it it had to do with the Little Rock Nine.And that Dwight Eisenhower sent troops to integrate the Little Rock School 1957. And And so by communism. Communism is is like a great floating signifier, right? And what, what, people meant by communism was like the integration of schools, for example, is one thing people associated with communism or that that Dwight Eisenhower might be, slightly okay with the existence of labor because of this, therefore obviously he was a communist, right? Because he was willing treat labor unions as if they have a right to exist. And so the charge of communism on the part of these right-wing activists has nothing to do with the actual understanding of the. They haven’t read Marx and they don’t understand communism is.It’s, a, it’s just a a smear that they can then link to other causes that they know maybe their audience isn’t happy about, doesn’t agree with. Common charge is that the L-G-B-T-Q movement is part of a communist effort demoralize and undermine the morality of Americans. Right? So communism just becomes this kind of catchall term that you use to explain why particular group or this particular movement is not just other Americans who are maybe different from you, but rather there are other Americans who are your existential enemy who must be silenced crushed in order to save America.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.The Republican party’s intertwined relationship with reactionariesSHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And, Trump, I mean, he’s made that viewpoint very explicit. It in the elite circles of the Republican party, [00:08:00] these types of expressions, they were, they tended. And you’ve done a lot of research on your own scholarship about how the, Republican party in Oregon and elsewhere had kind of, they relied on these reactionaries for votes and for money.But they always tried to keep them from having power and from the public knowing fully who they were. It was like they were the crazy wealthy aunt in the attic who owned the house, but they didn’t ever want to let her out. And that’s kind of the model that they followed for a long time, I think.COTLAR: Yeah, no, for sure. And there was a real so it’s been interesting to see people like Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz and Carl Rove speak out against what happened with Jimmy and I don’t know how much credence to give this, I don’t know how much faith actually making these arguments, but, they are saying what is the the right thing to say, which is that the FCC putting pressure on private companies to fire people because of their speech is, it’s like the low hanging fruit of Civics 1 0 1, right.That every educated American should know. And so, Princeton educated Ted Cruz, and I don’t know where Tucker Carlson college, but you know these are not unintelligent people—SHEFFIELD: Somewhere expensive.COTLAR: —So, yeah. yeah. So, so, and they’re now saying the right thing. Who knows? Why they’re saying it or what the impact will be But but, this is where having someone who is the head of your party who either doesn’t know or just doesn’t care, right. That, like, as the president, you don’t issue a statement telling NBC who who they’re supposed to hire and fire for their late night shows. I, believe according to the tenets of originalism that was in article two, that the president gets to decide on those late night shows.It’s so just facially, ludicrous, and authoritarian. But the GOP used to be dominated by [00:10:00] people who would immediately clock that and call it out and say, no, this is not the role of the president to do this. But now the party is comprised of a large number of people who are perfectly fine with the president doing this apparently.And then a couple people who are willing their neck out and say, this is bad, but who obviously are not going to do anything about it. And let alone. Criticize the president and the head of their party for doing it. So it’s the political culture of the party isn’t a really bad authoritarian place.And I, my worry is that, if we congratulate Ted Cruz too much right now for saying the right things can imagine a future, a few months down the road where Cruz is is like, well, I, this isn’t good, but, these people are communists. And so, free speech is a difficult issue.And so, we need to, in hard times, we need to rethink our principles. I hope he doesn’t do that. But as we’ve, the, past track record Republican politicians over the last 10 years should not give us great hope that they’re actually going to, stand up for principle.Do reactionaries distinguish between private criticism and state censorship?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it should not.The other thing also in the right wing reactions to Jimmy Kimmo getting suspended indefinitely by a, b, C it’s also been kind of fascinating in that I think a lot of them do not distinguish between private actors criticizing somebody and a government official with force of law power criticizing someone and ordering someone to be fired.they don’t seem to like, they, make no distinction. So like I often I’ll see them say, oh, well, you guys got Gina Carrano, the actor, fired from Star Wars. And it was like, well actually those were private citizens expressing their opinions. Right. And the government had nothing to do with her being fired, But they, genuinely seem to place no distinction between, private media actors or [00:12:00] private citizens and the Democratic Party. Like, and this is also why, for instance, they impute any violence done at a left wing protest. that’s actually the Democratic party. The highest people in the party are responsible for that violence, even if they condemn it and don’t support it.It’s really astonishing. And, it’s not, I don’t think it’s an act though, which is weird. I don’t know. What do you think?COTLAR: Yeah, no, no, and it, right, it’s the distinction between civil society actors mean, there’s a long history of boycotts in the US right? I mean, yeah. Saying of course on the American Revolution right now.I mean, that was basically how the mobilization for the American Revolution worked, is that organized boycotts. They ostracized people who broke the boycotts. If you were caught drinking tea, your neighbors would tut at you and tell you shouldn’t do it. And sometimes if you refused, could get a little ugly, So, the history of civil society functioning in such a way as to persuade slash encourage people to alter their behavior in the name of contributing to a kind of broader project is hundreds and hundreds of years old. It’s like the most common thing in the world. And. Yes. That is a very different thing than someone with political power who has the ability to revoke an FCC license for a multi-billion dollar company telling you, telling that company what they should do.Right. are are completely things. The other thing thing that I will point out is that, back in, I think 20 18, 20 19 McKay Coppins wrote this great article for The Atlantic that was was all about this coordinated network of cancellation organized by Donald Trump Jr. And coordinated with Breitbart and, eventually lives of TikTok, I think was involved with this, where they collect all of this data on journalists and other a activists who they don’t in preparation for the time when they might have to cancel them.[00:14:00]So the the idea that like, this is such a terrible thing, is is like this is exactly their modus operandi, right? This is what they do in terms of their approach towards trying to use intimidation, et cetera. And oftentimes the information that they select is sometimes wrong, sometimes very like decontextualized, et cetera.But the, the idea that like they’re opposed to the cancellation of private citizens for what they say is just. Ludicrous. I mean, that’s basically, so, that is one of the main things that they do in as part of their, I mean, that’s what they’re doing now with like, people who said things they don’t like about Charlie Kirk online, they’re collecting, names of and trying to get them fired.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And also government officials saying that as well, JD Vance telling people call and inform on your coworkers and your friends family if they criticize St. Charlie the beloved,COTLAR: right?Yeah. And like, and there is a difference between the president’s son coordinating these networks with the owners of some of the largest, right-wing outlets in order to coordinate their messaging in order to target people.That’s a bit different than just some citizens on Blue Sky being like, man, I don’t Disney. I’m going to cancel my Disney subscription because I don’t like that they made this, decision. So, the the dynamics of power at play here, both economic power, but more importantly political power when the president does it or the vice does it, or the FCC chair does it. Yeah, completely different different things.William F. Buckley’s legacy of censorshipSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and then going back further in the history. I think a lot of people who are educated today have this false concept of William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. That they, often, I [00:16:00] oftentimes people say, gosh, I wish the Republican Party was like, it was when Buckley was alive.And it’s like. You guys have paid attention to his actual life and the things that he did. I mean, his first book, God and Man at Yale, is literally him saying: ‘Yale, you’ve got to stop these commie and Jewish and atheist professors who like racial integration and writes for women and say, the Bible’s true. You got to fire him because we can’t have this, this is wrong.’That’s the whole point of his first book. And then his second book was a defense of Joe McCarthy called McCarthy and His Enemies. That basically it was effectively a well you don’t have to like McCarthy, but gosh, he’s sure going after the right people.And this is literally the same arguments that are being made now by many of these sort of Quisling Republicans for Donald Trump. They, claim not to like him, but You know, they also seem to think that even though Donald Trump is actively attacking the free press and trying to revoke licenses and censor teachers and history and revoke science budgets, that even though he’s doing all these horrible, illegal things he’s still somehow not as bad as some grad students who have purple hair. That’s seems to be what they think.COTLAR: Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s Buckley, I I mean, one of the things that I learned was kind of shocking to me is when is when he writing God and Man at Yale, there was a woman named Lucille Cardin Crane, who was running this organization called Educational Information Incorporated, that was basically looking through textbooks that were being used in school and identifying them as secret communist Trojan horses.These were like pablum social studies textbooks. But she had sussed out that these were [00:18:00] actually secret communists who were trying to brainwash children into communism. By which, and oftentimes the sign that these were communists had to do with the fact were pro racial equality was one of the offs her.And the person who funded her work was none other than bill Buckley, Sr. F f Buckley’s father. He was the guy bankrolling this entire project, which was actually quite, it’s kind of the Moms for Liberty 1.0. kind of, and it led to this kind of movement of women often sort of working in local school, boards to intimidate local superintendents, school superintendents teachers to drop certain textbooks that they considered to be communistic.was was especially potent in the South as white southern women tried to thwart this kind of imposition of a certain idea of America as a multiracial democracy. That was. You know, becoming kind of the the norm amongst social scientists and other kind of public figures post World World War II era, for understandable reasons, given what we just fought the war about.And so fighting off those efforts to kind of teach American history in such a way that sort of treated white people and black people and Native American people as equally human was a really important strategy for those sort of grassroots women activists. But it was also part of a broader kind of national network funded by people like William F. Buckley Sr. That provided those women the kind of ammunition to go into their school boards and explain to them why these books had to be taken outta the library, why they needed to be removed from the curriculum, et cetera.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, the other thing also about William F. Buckley Sr. is that he also for seemingly the, entire latter part of his life funded a local newspaper in South Carolina that was in support of segregation.And, and that obviously filtered into his son’s [00:20:00] views. the father said that his son was a hundred percent in support of segregation. And in subsequent decades after that passed through, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and some of the other cases got rid of segregation formalized, Buckley later admit said that, well, okay, yes.I think that those were good ideas, but then he still kept, there was a vestige of his former attitudes in that he opposed any sort of attempt to put embargoes or pressure on South Africa. National Review was till the very end, a very strong supporter of the South African segregation regime.And that’s a, it’s an important part of the magazine’s history that I think should be more widely known.COTLAR: For sure. And the Sam Tannenhouse biography just came out is really great on all of this. And sort of, you know, just, he’s the one that think has discovered this tie to this South Carolina.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, he did.COTLAR: Yeah. Um, which was amazing research find on his part. does really out elements of, Buckley was one of these figures who is. Able kind of just straddle that line the kind of liberal conservatism and illiberal conservatism orSHEFFIELD: Conservative and reactionary as I call it.COTLAR: Right, right. That’s another way to think so that so that he be in in dialogue with friends with who were on that other side the line, people who were comfortable with actual, like government censorship, while could sort of maintain sort plausible position as well, not calling So, or his relationship to segregation. Wrote Why South Prevail in 1957 segregation.But he, he defends it in this kind wiggly sort way. And then says like, well, just that like for now, whites are the [00:22:00] advanced race. So he is claiming he didn’t believe in fundamental necess permanent racial inequality. It’s just now he wanted to protect black people from themselves, Right, right. That’s his argument. then makes this specious claim oh, he’d be in favor disenfranchising poor, uneducated white people too.Which he knew was never going to but he, that is way he. Justified his support for disenfranchisement black by claiming wasn’t about race. just, it’s about education him. Anyway,Antisemitism and conspiracy theories in reactionary thoughtCOTLAR: to me, part of what’s really out in that tannin house biography and think is important for our current understanding of why people are willing to consider acts that are to infringe upon speech is conspiracy theories heart of are.Really important, For understanding what makes so father was bucket. Antisemite, right? And, it’s important us to recognize that antisemitism in the 1930s, forties and fifties didn’t mean that one was just personally rude Jewish people. it’s a totalizing theory about how world this idea Jews are communists, Jews behind communist conspiracy.that that Jews further that communist is through their control of higher education. brainwash children that way their control media. brainwash children that way and through their control Hollywood and entertainment, another way which they brainwash So goes that and this is just. Empirically baseless ludicrous, but it’s, it, taps into the, that kind of antisemitism. And oh, also Jews were behind the civil rights movement as was the kind last piece this. so you can explain to people why is that we need to maybe some these media [00:24:00] outlets or some of these professors so on.Because they’re not really like us. They us. out destroy us, therefore this is just purely defensive. we silence these voices, so so the, con, the theory gets people look upon a pretty, like normal looking, professor the of Oregon like a new deal, FDR Democrat and say, oh no, that actually is part this shadowy secret conspiracy that seeks destroy and seeks to freedom and to destroy America.And that Buckley, very much participated in, but also tried distance himself bit from like, when criticized Robert Welch of Birchers, right?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. but never the Birchers.COTLAR: Never the Birchers themselves.SHEFFIELD: VeryCOTLAR: fineSHEFFIELD: people.COTLAR: All very fine people. It’s just Robert Welch who’s the problem, right?And so is where he, kind of, he allowed that conspiracy obsessed dimension of the American, right, which is to my mind, a very defining feature of the reactionary version of conservatism. He allowed that to flourish. Yeah.Ben Shapiro’s appearance on a white supremacist podcastSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and and he was, in many ways, I think one could say so the, term that I use to describe people like Buckley is a fictitious Republican.Somebody who knows how to use a salad fort, who’s a well-dressed white person. And so therefore, what they’re saying, can’t all be bad. And so we have to be in dialogue with these people because look at them: They know how to dress well!And and, we see that recently with Ezra Klein did a, an interview with Shapiro. I mean, Ben Shapiro has literally gone on a neo-Nazi podcast and bashed Jews. Ben Shapiro done this. Yes. I’ll, I’ll, actually play the audio for the listener here. Let me I’ll, pull it up him.COTLAR: Who was the host? [00:26:00] What was the podcast?SHEFFIELD: Um, It was the Red Ice show with Lana LokteffCOTLAR: Gosh. on that.SHEFFIELD: He went on that, yes. And he bashed Jews in Hollywood and said that they were conducting a war on Christianity.COTLAR: Oh my god. oh my, oh my gosh. The title of it straight up, I mean, I’ve got a million things in my archive that are just that title from, the White Aryan Resistance Newsletter or William Luther Pierce.Ben Shapiro: BEN SHAPIRO: There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood that they have a perverse leftist view of history pushed by the Soviet Union that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity. It was not fascism, it was not communism, it was not leftism, it was Christianity. And therefore, the cure to intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity.And so, there’s a war, there certainly is a war on Christianity, it’s coming from some people who are secular Jews, it’s coming from a lot of leftists. But yeah, I mean, there’s no question that evangelical Christians support Israel at a much higher clip and much more substantially than most Jews in America do. Because most Jews in America don’t care about Judaism. (Cut in source video)Ben Shapiro: BEN SHAPIRO: I mean, everybody who’s bad is by nature a member of the white patriarchy, and everybody who’s good is by nature a member of a minority group. This is why you have the stock character who is the wise black friend, right?It’s never the wise white friend, it’s always the wise female friend, or the wise gay friend, or the wise black friend. Because the impression is that the only wise people in our society are members of minorities.Which is not to say, of course, that there are not wise black people. There are plenty of them, right? I mean, Thomas Sowell is a very wise black man.But the idea that every person on television who is wise must be of minority persuasion is really a very subtle war on the white males in our society. Which, [00:28:00] of course, white males can take, but it does pervert the American mind as far as how we view certain segments of the population.Lana Lokteff: LANA LOKTEFF: Conservatives are always racist, sexist, homophobic. Right now, they’re pushing this anti-nuclear family, anti-white, anti-Christian, so what is it that they want here?Ben Shapiro: BEN SHAPIRO: Well, I mean, what they want is they want to destroy the foundations of American society. And there’s no question that this is what they want.I mean, this has been the case for the left since the 1960s, and they’re just part of the broader left culture, which suggests that American culture is deeply evil, that bourgeois are deeply evil.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.COTLAR: that’s a sentiment I’ve read many times over the course of doing my research and every time I’ve seen it in the past, that’s usually been said by a neo-Nazi type.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Not by a Jewish person.COTLAR: Yeah, not by Jewish person!But anyway, I mean, That, yeah, that is truly shocking that someone. it’s really really complicated the relationship between Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians around Israel as an issue. think most orthodox Jews have a very um idea about this alliance and don’t really care about the theological reasons why evangelicals might be pro-Israel.Which usually involves a kind of vision of the End Times in which Jews go to hell. But but you know, if, you, and they’reSHEFFIELD: Burned alive, actually, right?COTLAR: Oh, nice. nice.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.COTLAR: So yeah, but you know, if you don’t believe that, if you don’t share that belief then know, what do you care what reasons people have, right?For supporting political interests? Yeah. So that, alliance is a really, opportunistic and strategic one. But it, involves not taking the Christian nationalism of some of these Christians seriously. And not understanding that for a lot of folks, what they like about Israel is that it is a religiously exclusionary state. And so therefore they imagined [00:30:00] that America could be like that.And the people that that they would want to exclude from their ideal America would be people like me and Ben Shapiro. And so Ben Shapiro apparently doesn’t take that that seriously as a potential future or potential threat. If knew much about American history, he would know that probably not some energies you want to be like just kind of toying with and playing in in the name of just advancing a particular foreign policy goal that you might have.Taking Trump seriously and literallySHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, you wouldn’t. And I think that attitude also certainly does extend to Donald Trump as well, because there’s that phrase that a lot of Republicans now have as a platitude regarding him. They say, well, you need to take him seriously, but not literally.And it’s like, well, his crackdowns on free speech and his going after licenses and demanding people be fired, demanding people pay him money in order to get approval for certain things. When he says it should be illegal for you to do something, he actually does mean that.And I think that a lot of these conservatives, they have this concocted version of Donald Trump in their head, who doesn’t take anything seriously, who has, and it’s true that Donald Trump, isn’t smart enough to have an ideology. But nonetheless, you he has a personal totalitarianism and peevishness is about him. It’s, it is a, totalitarianism, born of pettiness, but it is nonetheless a totalitarianism.COTLAR: It’s, and I think the reasons for poo-pooing it is because they take for granted the existence of liberal institutions that they themselves are also working to to undermine, but which they just take for granted.So, yes. Donald Trump doesn’t currently have the power to wave a wand and get people fired yet. Right. and in in part he doesn’t, because all these things have go through the courts and then the the courts will make a a rulingSHEFFIELD: Certainly trying to do that federal reserve.COTLAR: Well [00:32:00] right, right.So he, like, he pushes all of this stuff. And then there are these various guardrails in our system that are still, to some extent, limiting what he can do. And so The audience of of people who want you to think that, like, oh, the people warning about Donald Trump, they just have Trump arrangement syndrome, right?Like, they don’t know what they’re talking about. And to the extent that they are right, that Trump hasn’t successfully done all of these authoritarian things that he wants to do. To the that that hasn’t happened, it’s not because of anything about him, it’s because of of something about these institutions that the people saying, oh, don’t worry about Donald Trump.They themselves don’t care about institutions. They They themselves are undermining those institutions. And so to the, once those institutions are this is why, like for example, I don’t trust Carlson when he talks about this stuff. Like he’s been participating in the undermining of our judicial system and the legitimacy of the judiciary of anyone who doesn’t rule in the favor of Donald Trump, right?So like the idea that somehow he’s, he is contributing to the situation in which it may become possible that there are no guardrails stopping a president from just. To squelching the free speech of individuals. And and so, so that, that to me is the part that is really, frightening is how those guardrails that most, people who don’t study politics for a living or don’t study history for a living, like there’s there’s no necessary reason why they should know how our judicial works, right? Or how the Supreme Court rules.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It’s not relevant to their lives at all.COTLAR: Right. They’re busy, they’ve got other other things to do. Right. And so this is where, the fact that like just about everybody who studies this for a living is raising major, you know, warning flags about what’s happening.And that’s why they’re trying to undermine the universities trying to undermine, [00:34:00] academics. Because these are people who actually know stuff. This is why they’re trying to undermine, people like Tony Fauci or other, sort of experts around vaccines or other things.Is that. want to impose their particular vision of the world their their use of federal power. And anyone, or anything, journalists, academics, who stand in the way are their targets. And it’s just right out of the authoritarian textbook. and the, battle is for. The The minds of ordinary American citizens and whether or not, like what will they accept, right?will will they be willing to accept? And what they learned through January 6th is that 77 million Americans are willing to accept watching a coup happen on their television screens in their own US capitol. And then they will accept the idea that this was okay, and that the people who did it should be pardoned and that it was simultaneously an inside job by the FBI and also an a Day of Love by Patriots.And so if they they can get 77 million people to like, be okay with that, right? Or to get get a whole people to to accept the idea that COVID vaccines killed more people than they saved if they can that out there. What else can they tell us? What else can they tell the American people that they’ll just accept?journalist wasn’t actually a journalist, but was really a domestic terrorist. And so this is why this journalist has locked up, not because they were, taking footage that was embarrassing to to the government, rather because they were there as part of a domestic terrorist organization, so.The Antifa terrorist designation and its originsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and that’s what the the designation of antifa, quote unquote, as a terrorist organization is about, because of course um, as you certainly know, there is no national organization of [00:36:00] antifa and legally speaking, there is no local organization of these are anarchists. They have no organization by definition, they have no leaders.They hate the Democratic Party. They are not funded by the donors of the Democratic Party because they despise the donors of the Democratic Party. And to the extent that anybody ever helps them from a legal basis, it’s just purely a support for individual civil rights.And so hopefully the best case scenario that this is Jeffrey Epstein or Q Anon, as a sequel of that conspiracy theory that, they, allege there are these, there’s this giant, secret cabal that’s all running everything, and doing all these nefarious things. And then when they actually have the power to investigate it-- like they were very convinced that Patriot Front, which is a white nationalist group that holds marches across the country, they’ve been convinced since its beginning that it’s an FBI front.Well, that means then that Ash Patel is running Patriot Front then, is that, really what you believe, guys? But you know, like, it doesn’t have make sense because it’s all about identity rather than about logic.COTLAR: Right. So the, in terms of the, this designation of, antifa a domestic terrorist organization, I have a very Portland specific angle on So in 2019, in the summer of 2019, you probably remember this, there was A March A right far right March organized in Portland, and it was led by two guys named Joe Bigs and Enrique Terio, who who at the time were just kind of known as like, oh, maybe proud Boy adjacent and kind of right wing grifter types.We, both of them then were eventually convicted for their actions on January 6th, kind of important organizers of 6th, but obviously we didn’t know that in the summer of 2019. So two future January Sixers organized this March in Portland and they, there’s video of of of our local Portland [00:38:00] kind of far right activists involved with a group called Patriot Prayer who were recording themselves live on Facebook Live, saying to all of the kind of rank and file people who are going to go and join far right March, take video of what’s happening, be sure that that you tweet it at Ted Cruz and at Donald Trump.And tell them that they need to declare Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. So So is is 2019. Right. And I don’t know how they had identified. Ted Cruz as, I mean, Donald Trump makes sense, but I don’t know why Ted Cruz. But so this was the message that they sent out followers, was their goal this, action that they were taking on the street to Portland, was to record images of violence, send ‘em to Ted Cruz so that he can then pass a bill that would declare their local enemies in to to be domestic terrorists so that they could then be locked up.And so this has been part of this kind of far right activist communities agenda for quite a long And so, yeah. Yeah, and at the time, in 2019, it didn’t go anywhere and the president didn’t, I mean, there was talk about it, but it didn’t actually kind of result in, a bill as far as I know. Is just like, much like with many things in Trump 2.0, it’s a kind of continuation and an intensification of something.That was That was already kind of in place in Trump 1.0. But there were at also, at the time, there were guardrails, there were probably people in administration or in the Senate who were like, you can’t just just declare vague entity domestic terrorists and and go after them. Like, that’s obviously not constitutional.But anybody who would’ve said that is now pretty much gone. Right. the the Trump administration.SHEFFIELD: Yes, they are. this reactionary takeover of the re Republican party and the cancellation of, conservatives and moderates from within the party. This [00:40:00] has of course been a long running trend that really did begin with, Buckley and uh, the Goldwater takeover.But of course he failed so badly that they were set back with that.Ezra Klein and the problem of engaging with bad faith actorsSHEFFIELD: But just going back to Ezra Klein and his, friendly chit chat with Ben Shapiro, and he went to a, he’s has a conference called Abundance where he had, it’s sponsored by Marc Andreessen, a guy who hates democracy and has said as much, and Peter Thiel funded that conference, if I remember right.And so, and so like a bunch of these right-wing oligarch billionaires are, funding Ezra Klein’s endeavors now. And I don’t, it’s hard to say what’s in his, mind or in his heart, whether he actually agrees with these people or not, or if it’s just some pathological desire to know, oh, well we have, we share America, I mean, that’s what he says publicly. He says, well, we, share this country with these people, and so we have reach out to them.And this is the, the wrong way to understand outreach. Because the individual Republican voter. A lot of them are tremendously ignorant of what the party wants, and they don’t actually know.and you can, anyone can see that if you talk to a regular Republican voter, they don’t know what Donald Trump stands for most of the time. But the elites absolutely do, and they want him to be even worse. So the idea that you would engage with them is just ludicrously backwards. But it seems kind of common within a lot of the mainstream media.Like, you see CNN hiring that Scott Jennings guy some of of these other people who just constantly lie. Like Scott Jennings has nothing substantive to say about anything ever. And he doesn’t give, even, give you his own thoughts. He gives you what the talking points of the party are. So he adds nothing like engaging with these people who are the elites, gets you nowhere.And, in fact, these Jennings types or Shapiro, [00:42:00] they’re hated by the far right. You’re not actually deradicalizing anyone by, pretending that Shapiro is smart or that Scott Jennings honest. You’re, you, accomplish nothing by doing this.COTLAR: Yeah, no, I, mean, yeah, I think think you’re right.I mean, it’s, such a hard situation because like theoretically Yes, indeed. Like in a democratic society, our our job is to engage agonistic with people with whom we disagree. Like that is what a healthy democratic society like. like. the other hand when you have a party that is basically kicked out of its coalition, anyone who actually is a legitimate intellectual, I mean, so then who do you engage with?So what Curtis Jarvin. You’re supposed to like sit down and have a argument with Curtis Jarvin, who like doesn’t know anything about anything. Like I’ve read some of his stuff. It is so. Just laughable. Like if this dude was actually in conversation with people who knew things, maybe he would like have something to contribute and some insight.But like he’s just replicating the oldest, dumbest like right-wing memes that I’ve seen a million times in this stuff in the fifties and sixties from the newspaper edited by this like, know nothing chair of the Oregon Republican party I’m writing a about Right. Like so, so, if you’re you’re Ezra Klein, like, and you want to have an engaged, want to have a conversation with like thoughtful, engaged, knowledgeable, like right winger, who is it?Right? Like, Like, because they’ve kicked out of the party. Everyone who is like that over the last 10 Right. And And so creates just a structural problem, which is a problem that is a function of the dysfunction of the institution that is the Republican party. there’s the problem of our media e ecosystem, right? Is that if you want to reach just ordinary, voters who I agree with you are not. If you were to share with them Project 2025, most of ‘em would be like, what? They would would either read it and be able to [00:44:00] suss immediately. This is incoherent nonsense. This sense. Or they would find it repulsive, right?But they don’t know, of the of the media that they’re imbibing as part of this Republican culture is telling them this. And so, but they’ve been so kind of ensconced into this media world where they’ve by Donald Trump not to trust anything that NPR or PBS or NNBC or any of these companies, tell them any other media outlet, the New York Times, et cetera.It just just becomes a incredibly. Like challenging communications problem for the Democrats or for anyone on the left where huge swaths of our fellow citizens have been pre inoculated believing anything we would say, and somehow anything that they see in a reel from Tucker Carlson or whoever they’re willing to believe, right?Or Scott Jennings, they’ll just instinctively believe what he has to say even even though he’s lying most of the time. But so I, yeah. and so this is where it, I don’t know. don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. if you believe in democracy is I do. Right? You should believe in a culture of like open and free expression in which people with different perspectives kind of talk with each other, right?And hash it out. the other hand, what do you do when part of the, folks who are part of your democratic culture don’t believe in a culture of open expression and want to destroy it in the name of, creating a in in which their voices are the only ones that get amplified or have any reach.And yeah. Uh Wish I had an answer for it, but,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, it, it, certainly is tricky. I mean, I would say, as somebody who came out of that world of right-wing media and activism and intellectualism before it was purged by Trumpism, I would say that having debates with those who are in it still really is not productive.But on the other hand [00:46:00] actually quoting their arguments at length and debunking them in a comprehensive fashion. I think that’s how you engage with these people. Because when they’re on the air and having to defend themselves, they’ll, they just lie all the time.COTLAR: Right.SHEFFIELD: Like, they say, oh, I don’t believe that. Oh, I didn’t say that.Well, no, you did. And we have it on, tape right here. Um, And, like, and like with the, thing with Shapiro, like here he went on a neo Nazi podcast, like he has never been challenged in the mainstream media for, going on a podcast that argues for white nationalism and antisemitism, uh, and in fact, the podcast--COTLAR: He signs Matt Walsh’s paychecks, doesn’t he? I mean--SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it’s a, and yet they’re never, so they’re not asked about these things, but even if they were just lies. So you got to look at their arguments and dissect them.I think that’s the answer. and, when you do, it reveals just how shallow, how uninformed, how uh, self-serving these arguments and these individuals are.Thomas West and the absolute poverty of reactionary historiographySHEFFIELD: You did a Twitter thread a number of years ago about a book that I think that still lingers with me. I loved your dissection of it Seth, of book, Vindicating the Founders.COTLAR: Oh, god!SHEFFIELD: Yeah! By Thomas West. and, it was, it, what’s so revealing about it though, is that right wing intellectualism doesn’t really exist. It’s an oxymoron, basically.And so they can’t succeed. the, horrible irony, which they never get called on, is they have failed in the marketplace ideas. Their ideas, their history, their science, their governance. All, everything that they have argued, that they try to do. Whenever they come into power, they fail. So, like Oklahoma is run by, the most MAGA Republican secretary Education, they’re also the 50th in, [00:48:00] educational attainment.And instead of doing something about it somebody just introduced a bill Oklahoma to require every higher institution of learning in Oklahoma to have a shrine to Charlie Kirk. And that’s what they’re spending their time on and apparently watching porn in their meetings. Uh, This isCOTLAR: That probably happen, or it was, I don’t know.I, or I’ve read some stuff that suggested that it has a kind of innocent explanation. Not that I Oh, I know. Yeah, guy. But like, like, I don’t think, yeah, Yeah. But,SHEFFIELD: But, just going back to Thomas, so like, Thomas West though, like essentially, this is why they have such a militant hatred of, affirmative policies, right.Which in fact are not always about race. In fact, there’s lots of disadvantaged white people who benefit from affirmative action and DEI programs. But they don’t know that. And, so they hate these programs of inclusion though, because they want quotas for themselves. That’s what they want.And when, and they’re, the things they make like Thomas West, like. And I, this is me, my very long-winded way of asking you to tell us the story of his book Vindicating Founders.COTLAR: Man. So, so Thomas West is a, he’s a Plato scholar. I know nothing about Plato. So he, may be perfectly adept and good as a scholar of Plato.I haven’t, assess the quality of that work, but he he did write a book that’s all about and it was published in the late nineties and I, was asked to review it in the late 1990s when I was finishing PhD and I read the first 30 pages of it and I wrote back to the journal and I said, I don’t think this is a book that’s even worth reviewing. Like there’s just nothing there. This is just I, we we didn’t have the word troll at the time, but if we we had the word troll, I would’ve said like, this is just a book trolling the entire historical profession by someone who clearly has no idea what they’re talking [00:50:00] about. So like, this isn’t even worth seriously enough to review.And so I ended up not reviewing it but I did read it. then in the age of Trump, suddenly Thomas West became this like oracle for Hillsdale College. And as this great far seeing man who has been trying to tell the truth about American history and just no one’s been listening to him.And I was like, wait, Thomas West, that name’s familiar. And then I looked it up and I was like, oh my God, it’s that guy. Holy cow.And so in this book, he, I mean it just, even at the front step he refers to, and I can’t remember which historian it is, but some very mainstream conservative historian as a radical leftist.And it was the kind of thing where it would be like someone calling Joe Manchin a radical leftist, right? Where like when you read it, you just think, okay, this person just has no idea like what they’re about. And they completely misrepresent every historian and their interpretation that they talk about.And there’s also this very strange moment in the chapter on slavery where it seems to be suggesting that, the founders were white nationalists, but not in a derogatory way. Right? So it it seems to be saying that like in a good way hey, I’m not saying this is good, but like this is what they believed in.They had a right to believe that, but also they hated slavery. So don’t you dare accuse them of being racist. But also they probably thought America was only for white people, but they weren’t racist. And So it’s this really. of incoherent. I mean, it all starts just from the premise that that anything a white founder did in the 18th century must have been good.anybody who who would criticize them for anything obviously hates them and hates America, right? And be trusted to teach our And in an entire world in which historians were trying to bring and successfully did bring a ton [00:52:00] of nuance to how we understood the thinking of the founding generation and these white founders in ways that didn’t just.They were all racist. Therefore, America is a racist country like that. That’s his presumption of what people were saying. But that’s his misreading. It has that, was, it was far more nuanced and complicated what folks were doing. So it was just propaganda, right? It was just, a guy using the dress of the fact that he had a PhD and taught at a university.I could write a a book about Plato and show how Plato teaches us that like Donald Donald Trump is the worst person in the world and it’s our to like impeach him. I could, I could probably string together some quotes from Plato that would like, make that argument, but that doesn’t make me a Plato scholar.That just makes me a propagandist, right? A cynical propagandist. And that’s basically what this guy did with his book. But and he is the person who trained at one, and I think a few more of the professors who now teach at Hillsdale. So, and and Hillsdale College is basically the Harvard of the Trump administration.Now. They’re the ones who are running the one, one one of the groups running the two celebration of the 250th anniversary, producing a ton of content for effort. Prager You is another organization that, again, like if you know anything about the history and you watch PR u content, it’s so obviously misrepresenting and sometimes just outright making stuff up.And strangely enough, always on one side of the political aisle, weirdly, it always serves only one side they when they get things wrong. But this organization is now basically driving the way the, federal government is encouraging people across the country. And so they’re, abusing the trust citizens should rightly put in their their federal government, right, to not lie to them. They’re, abusing that trust with a, an assist [00:54:00] from from the Trump administration. So they are I mean, national memory is a complicated thing. It’s not like during the all of the of the content produced the bicentennial was, rigorous and historically accurate and wasn’t saturated with propaganda so on.So it’s as if we’re measuring it against some like perfect ideal that has existed in the past, but it’s just, just egregiously bad the way they’re approaching this now and egregiously partisan, which was not the case in with the bicentennial uh they were scrupulously bipartisan or or non-partisan in the way that they approached telling the history of the country back then.PragerU’s bizarre AI history videosSHEFFIELD: Which, yeah, I mean, you would think that that’s the basic standard, yeah. You had a, post recently where you noted how that one of the prager u well, PragerU has a whole series that the White House is putting out for them using absolutely bizarre, bizarre, freaky AI generated videos. One of which basically portrays John Adams as some sort of a predecessor to Ben Shapiro, actually.Uh, these videos, you’ve got to it. So to I’ll roll clip, here for the audience for that.AI John Adams: I am John Adams, blunt, stubborn, and the indispensable voice for independence. In the Continental Congress, it called me obnoxious and disliked. I call it telling the truth. Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes or inclinations, they cannot alter the state of facts. In other words, friend facts do not care about our feelings.While Jefferson penned the declaration, I drove the debate, [00:56:00] won the votes, and dared to speak when others hesitated. I stood on principle even when it cost me popularity.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so I mean, this is just bizarre stuff. And this is was what why I said earlier that, they cannot succeed in the marketplace of ideas.Their scholarship is trash. It’s, it is childish, amateurish stuff that even many high school students would realize is bad history historiography.COTLAR: Oh, for sure. and I I’ve, I’ve, showed several of these videos in my classes for students and asked them to kind of analyze them and, talk about them.And yeah, it’s not It, it, is where the, I think this is connected to their fantasy that like high school teachers and college professors are brainwashing students, and I think they have, which is false. Anyone taught knows that it doesn’t work that way. And, actually anyone who’s ever been a student knows that it doesn’t work that way.But I think they have this weird like well, because this is what leftists doing successfully brainwashing people. If If we just put out this content, we can get kids to love the founders with these incredibly boring and crappy AI videos. I think think going to work that I don’t think that is so, it’s simultaneously like embarrassing and horrible and I, don’t don’t like it and I don’t think our government should be doing it. But I’m also not sure we need to be that worried about it because they are so bad. Right. And. it’s, not good propaganda. It’s really boring and ineffectual propaganda.But it’s, I, think they’re interesting to analyze in terms of what they are trying to accomplish with it, which, and analysis of the entire [00:58:00] project is that basically. They’ve selected pe all the people who signed the Declaration of Independence and, created a little biographical AI generated video of them.Most of these people are, no one that anyone’s ever heard of before. They’re 50 some people who signed the Declaration of Independence. Some are famous, most are not. And for good good reason, most of them led I don’t know not particularly exciting lives.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, they signed the declaration. That’s it. Right?COTLAR: Which is something, that’s an important historical event and, it’s worth remembering, but there’s a reason why, like, no, most people don’t recognize most of the names on there, but I think the goal is to encourage kind of ordinary rank and file Republicans identify with the American Revolution a positive way in the sense of like the violent part of the Revolution Right. And the sense and the part that involved alienating their affections from what had previously been the kind of ruling authority under which folks had lived. Right. So the brave thing to do, much like Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage said it’s we’re, in American Revolution 2.0.That’s what Trump is, and it it will be bloodless as long as the left will allow it. Right. That was, those are his words. And there’s a lot of talk about invoking the American Revolution as seeing Trump as the continuation of it. The 3% militia stuff is kind of bound this. And so in other words, it’s, encouraging people to kind of gird their loins, put on the armor of God as JD Vance said the other day.And be prepared to what, what followed after the Declaration of Independence. Right. Like what, are they asking people to prepare themselves for and sacrifice themselves for? Yeah. And, they would never explicitly own this right. As what their project is. But it’s basically encouraging people to identify with ordinary, regular people [01:00:00] who decided that at that historical moment, they had no choice to Prepare themselves to fight, right. For the thing that they loved in which they were against. And in this case, they’re trying to frame the left as the British And to frame themselves as the Patriots. And, you know, it’s it’s so ironic given that they’re the ones who are sending military troops to occupy American cities.The left’s not doing that. Last I checked you know, if, if, you run through the list of grievances and the Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump’s ticked off a whole bunch of ‘em at this point. Yeah. But anyway, they’re supposed to. Yeah, right. Republicans are supposed to think of themselves as the Patriots in this scenario.And the left is supposed, even though the Republicans in control the entirety of the federal government, it’s apparently the left that is actually in control of everything and who are to to destroy you and squelch you. So you really have no other obligation but to fight back. I think that’s the kind of implicit here.The anti-Americanism of the reactionary rightSHEFFIELD: I think is.Yeah. And, and, it’s. This is a deeply anti-American message. Like these people actually hate America as it is, and they have this imaginary version in their heads in which they claim to like the founding generation, but they also like Confederacy. Donald Trump is very big on restoring the confederate uh, na, you know, military bases and putting back Confederate memorials, even though they were literal traitors to America, literal traitors, some many of whom, well, some of whom were actually killed for their treachery.And so this is, it’s, this is something that I think the, the, broader left has to take more seriously. That they really actually do want violence. They have wanted it, as you’ve seen in your own research on these radicals decades, this this is their fantasy.They, many of these reactionaries have fantasized about [01:02:00] killing their fellow Americans for over a hundred years.COTLAR: Unfortunately, that has has been a threat in American history. I mean, and I mean, another piece of it of it that I really want to also name is, a attack on empathy, right? And the ability to empathize.So like, for example, the, there’s, sympathy for the Confederacy is part of the kind uh, what historian David Blake called the the romance of of reunion, Where the Civil War gets turned into just a battle between brothers, a tragic battle between brothers and as a battle between white people and where white people have to come together and forgive each right?And say nice things about Robert E. Lee, that he was such a, and so, and you put the nation back together at the of of doing what was necessary to provide equal rights and opportunities for former, formerly enslaved people, right? So they get erased outta the picture. People to sympathize are the poor slave holders, right?Not formerly enslaved people with the revolution. It’s really notable that there are very few black people who figure in these PragerU videos. There’s, two and the, to the extent to which slavery is mentioned, it’s usually mentioned in the form of like the good, like good white people who freed which is usually technically true.But the actual reality of how that happened was far more but are are so many stories that they could tell from the revolutionary era about enslaved black people fighting for their rights, fighting for their freedom, and successfully gaining it. During the revolutionary era that would, you would think if these people actually wanted to present a form of America in which racism is not permanently embedded in the system, but is actually something that like white and black people have worked together of undo.You could tell the the story of own a judge who was an enslaved woman who got her freedom when [01:04:00] she ran away from George Washington. Uh You could tell the story of Prince Whipple, whose owner willing Whipple is one of the people whose stories is told by Prager, but they don’t tell the story of Prince Whipple, who was an enslaved man, enslaved by Will Whipple, who sued for his freedom, signed a petition with a group of other black enslaved people in New Hampshire, and eventually successfully gained his freedom.Not thanks to the generosity of William Whipple, but thanks to Prince Whipple’s concerted efforts to gain his freedom because he sow wanted to be free. Right? And these are super patriotic stories that one could tell right about aspirations for freedom in the revolutionary era by black Americans, but.They don’t tell those stories. Right. Those are not stories they tell. And maybe that’s that probably know this stuff, because they don’t anythingabout historySo, I mean, might, that’s probably the easiest explanation for why that’s not there. And they regard reading black history as somehow, I don’t know, it makes you, turns woke or anti-American.Right. But these these are not hard stories to find. they’re books about right This is, is, there’s plenty of information out there. went looking for it, an undergraduate intern could find it in 30 minutes with a Google search. Right? Right. But and so by not. Bringing, surfacing these which, if, we we had a Democratic administration in power, those stories would be part of how the history would be remembered in the 250th, on on the 250th But I guess we’re not, we don’t believe in inclusion anymore. Right. We don’t believe in diversity either. Right.And so, to me is a is a sign of how implicitly, if not explicitly uh, white their vision of American history is, um and their vision of the American future is. And, that’s pretty much the definition nationalism. Which runs counter to I was socialized to think [01:06:00] about what America was, that it’s it’s a multiracial democracy.That’s what made that’s that’s what World War II supposedly was about, right? Is what what during the the Reagan era I was taught, that’s what makes us exceptional, right? That’s what makes us special as a nation. And so to see one of our of our two parties kind of, walking away from that vision of what America was and should be would hope would be more alarming to our fellow citizens it seems to be.Trump’s declining poll numbers and the informed electorateSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, the good thing in polling lately though does seem to be the case that, Donald numbers since he began his power grabs really have gone into the toilet. And I mean, from when you look at the data, he won in 2024 on the basis of lying to uninformed people.Basically people who didn’t pay attention to news, like the, less attention you paid to the news, the more you supported Trump. And so his, goal was to expand the electorate with people who didn’t know very much about politics and lied to them a lot because the people who already had paid attention, they didn’t like him.And so the, people who paid it, who followed the news the most, the majority of them were against Trump, right? And so his only shot to win in 2024 was to lie to a bunch of people who didn’t, who hadn’t paid attention or were too young. Right. And so now, and, we can see that especially with his numbers, with Hispanic Americans, that they have just absolutely cratered since he began uh, you know, papers please authoritarian policy and, literally sued in the Supreme Court to say, we should have the right talk to anyone we want who looks Hispanic, right?And sadly, they, won that case, but, like that’s so, people have to pay attention. I mean, and that’s, I think that’s ultimately [01:08:00] why the reactionary right? Thinks that the education is liberally biased. Because when you know stuff you don’t like what they’re doing, that’s the long and short of it.COTLAR: Yeah. And, their messaging has now just been, it’s pure propaganda, most of which has no correlation with empirical reality. And so anyone whose antennas have a, any kind of sensor for BS can obviously pick up right on this on the lies and, distortions. And and so this is where I feel like a lot of, the social media controlled by Musk and controlled by Zuckerberg and other other folks are part of their goal is to basically stymie and kind of, kill the parts of people’s psyches that are like BS detectors, right?And of an environment in which people will be willing to believe anything, right? And when you create that sort of. Epistemological environment. It just makes it easier for shameless liars to, create whatever vision of reality they want to create and get people to accept it. Right.And, buy into it. But I do believe that most people don’t want to live in a world like that. most people don’t like getting lied to. Most people don’t like duped by people with great wealth and power. So most people like having a house or having healthcare, right? Yeah Or like not dying from an actual disease that really is dangerous to them.Like, people don’t like it when their kids die from measles, and they they especially don’t like it if their their kid gets measles then they find out that there was a vaccine that would’ve. Probably prevented but Someone they trusted told them that the vaccine wasn’t necessary. you know, knows how this will play play out or, the millions of stories of now, or I don’t know, millions.But there was a story in Politico [01:10:00] recently about some farmers in central Pennsylvania who are shocked that like the mass deportations have created a situation in which the undocumented people they used to rely do work on their farms aren’t available to do work on their farms, now they’regoingto losefarms. it’s it’s like, well, what, did you think to happen when guy who ran on the platform of doing doing mass deportations told you he was going to do that? So, people vote for sometimes quite irrational or idiosyncratic reasons but maybe. At At some point will put two and two together, right.The pleasure some take in illiberalism and crueltyCOTLAR: and recognize the kind of incoherence of But there, so there, there’s one thing though that I want to really emphasize, which is that this of, and I call it a liberalism. I know you call, it reactionary kind of conservatism. uh, a great book by Stephen Hanh called I Liberal America.It’s a History of America over the last 250 years, and he makes the argument that, know, this, thread has always been a part of our political culture. This expulsion is a a liberal thing. And the thing that we sometimes don’t recognize about is that for a lot of people, they really enjoy it and it’s meaningful to them.Like so to to folks who don’t enjoy watching, people being frog marched into a prison in El Salvador, which is I think the majority of us. It’s hard for us to get ourselves in the minds of someone who watches a video, a like a torture video like that and gets pleasure from it. Right. And I think that’s the part that’s a little bit harder to sit with.Right. That there are people, or, when Jimmy, when a late who you don’t even watch fired due to pressure for the president, most people, like, if this happened to some like right wing talk show host who I don’t follow, and and if Joe Biden had somehow like arranged with the FCC to get Greg Gutfeld fired, [01:12:00] would be like, terrible.Like, I don’t like Greg Gutfeld, but like the president should be, shouldn’t be arranging for him to get fired. That’s ludicrous. Yeah. Right. Or the very least you wouldn’t like it.Right. It wouldn’t gimme pleasure pleasure be right. And I think but for the folks who are getting pleasure somehow from Jimmy Kimmel getting fired that of of being in the world is really hard to like.Real people back from Right. My sense is that most people just probably don’t care, or they don’t even know. but the people who really do take pleasure in that, I don’t know what you say to that. Like, I don’t know. Or, likewise, people who get pleasure out idea of sending a person who’s undocumented in the US to some third country that they’ve never set foot in, where going to be up in gulag possibly for the rest of their lives.Who would want that for another human being? Like what, why would you want that? And and, if we, and there’s the impulse to be, well, this isn’t who we are. And it shouldn’t be who we not who most of us are. it it has been who some of us are. Right. And unfortunately, like that segment has been kind of cultivated.Amplified corralled into this like media safe space that the Republican party has created for those folks. And I find it to be incredibly just offensive and horrible what these people who know better are doing to their fellow citizens by lying to them so shamelessly. But it’s a a free country.I don’t know what, what, there is to stop it other than to to try to kind of just pump out counter messaging that tries to be accurate true. And like like you said, putting in people’s own own words what it is they’ve said and allowing people to make up their own minds about it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Well that’s. That’s, why a lot of the pushback for people criticizing, [01:14:00] accurately, the things that that Charlie Kirk said, right. That’s why they were so against people doing that. And like, one of the guests on the program that we just ran an episode with Karen Attiah, she was fired by the Washington Post for quoing Charlie Kirk and not saying anything about him otherwise.And just saying, he said, these particular black women, uh, have no merit and stole their slots from white people, and presumably that they knew that Barack Obama was going to marry a, white woman or something. Like, I, don’t know what the hell that even means. How, is he, they, she stole a spot from a white person.I don’t know that, But that’s why they don’t want you to know what Charlie Kirk said. They don’t want you to know that Charlie Kirk demanded the execution of Joe Biden. They don’t want you to know that.COTLAR: Right.SHEFFIELD: They, that’s what this whole idea of fictitious republicanism is about. Right. And so they, that’s why they hate real history and real scholarship, because their ideas are not grounded in reality.And, and this, mentality that you’ve been, you were just talking about here, it is so foreign, so shocking that, a decent person doesn’t want to believe that their fellow human beings actually have these viewpoints. Right. And, so that I think, does cr create a lot of reticence. And I call this pathological liberalism. That’s what it is. That, you have to be able to stand up for your own values. Because if you don’t, then who will?COTLAR: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, I mean, it’s a, to to my mind, I’ve come more and more to think that the the internet was a mistake. Social media, I mean, I love, there’s so much I love about it.There’s so many positive but that,SHEFFIELD: That’s how we know each other.COTLAR: Oh, exactly. Right. And that’s that’s I’m, obviously mostly I know and there’s not can do about it, it, but um, uh,you know, [01:16:00] the way that we’ve just created a, political culture where entertainment, it’s just become about entertainment and about attention and anger and emotion.And so it’s just 99% heat and 1% light, and that’s just not. What a a healthy, democratic culture should look like. It oftentimes be kind of boring, right? Like politics is kind of boring. If you get into the weeds of it, it’s really technical and detailed, It’s like it’s not going to be able to be easily sensationalized.And it’s not about like good versus evil. It’s about weighing all kinds of of like, complicated different considerations as to where train line is goingtothrough when we try to be able build high speed rail between these two cities and the, all the messiness that comes with the actual like.What politics is for, right? That all just gets pushed un under the rug, and it just becomes about identity and especially relational identity. And who do you hate and who do you like? Who’s your friend? Who’s your enemy? style of politics is very conducive to the reactionary, right? It’s like that’s what they want politics to look like because that serves their interests and folks on the left who actually want to, like, use government power to make everybody’s lives better.Doing that doesn’t involve identifying who your enemy is and owning them and crushing them. It involves like environmental studies to like see which chemicals are being produced by what factories are potentially harming kids. And so that. That approach to like governance in the public good just not well served by a political media environment that just prioritizes hot takes and memes and rage.And right has just really benefited from [01:18:00] the the way that our politics has become almost entirely defined that and and by the voices who amplify that and promote that with great pleasure and glee and with no sense at all of like, we’re we’re not actually making anybody’s lives better, right.By doing this. That just, that makes me really of enraged that folks are doing that, even though I though I just said we’re not supposed to be enraged. But anywayConclusionSHEFFIELD: Well. I think that’s a good place to leave it, Seth. So for people who want to keep up with your stuff what are your recommendations for that?COTLAR: I’m on, Blue Sky which is a very, a nice short form way to say things. It’s, we’re during the semester, so I, most of my time is devoted to teaching and grading my my work. But occasionally I get a chance to do some things on Blue Sky. And I also have a newsletter on which I’ve moved from Substack onto Ghost, which is called Right Landia.And that’s where I stuff related to the research project that I’m working on, which is about a. White nationalist anti-Semite with ties to domestic terrorists and neo-Nazis who became the chair of the Oregon Republican Party in 1978 in 1979. And it’s a kind of history of right-wing radicalization inside one state’s Republican party that runs from the 1950s the early two thousands sort of focusing on this one figure who almost nobody has ever heard of before.Who played a really important role in kind of pushing had once been a very moderate Republican party in Oregon to the far right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Sounds like a good book. We’ll look forward to having you on to talk about it when you get it ready. Thanks. All Alright. Good to have you.COTLAR: Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today.I appreciate you joining us for the conversation, and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where we have [01:20:00] the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes, and we have subscription options on Patreon and on Substack. If you want to subscribe on Patreon, go to. patreon.com/discover Flux.And if you’re a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support. That means a lot. And if you can’t afford to do a page subscription right now, I understand that. But give us a written review over on iTunes or Spotify that’s very helpful. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified when we do another episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.communityEpisode Summary  Whether it’s the SwiftBoat Veterans or Moms for Tyranny, right-wing groups are notorious for popping up overnight in American politics, but this past year saw something very unexpected, an organization and collection of people saying they support a politics of “abundance” headed by people who are often perceived as being on the leftward side of the political spectrum, writers Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein.With its unhealthy obsession with bipartisanship, abundance politics is yet another example of pathological liberalism, but unfortunately, it’s worse than that. Scratch even a bit beneath the surface and you’ll realize that this endeavor is nothing more than neoliberalism rebranded—and paid for by the same reactionary billionaires who are bankrolling Donald Trump’s fascistic policies.Even worse, far-right activists are using the “abundance” branding as an attempt to market policies that harm Americans and democracy. The guest list at the Abundance Conference in DC earlier in September made this clear, featuring a speaker calling for “deportation abundance,” a governor who banned fluoride in public water, and a talk from an advocate of Trump’s illegal “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant prison.Warmed-over libertarianism is not the answer to what ails America, but it is nonetheless the case that governments at the federal, state, and local levels are failing to serve the public in many ways. It’s too difficult to start businesses, it’s too difficult to receive public assistance, and it’s far too expensive to get college degrees.Kate Willett, my guest on today’s episode, has done the hard work of digging into the funding and the origins of the Abundance movement. She’s also a standup comedian and the co-host of the Dystopia Now podcast.This audio-only episode is for paid Flux subscribers only. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Paid subscriptions are available only on Patreon and Substack.Related Content—The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the long history of right-wing re-branding—Republicans set up fake left political candidates for decades, here’s how they did it—How the ‘No Labels’ movement tried to divide and conquer Democratic voters—Americans want big ideas, but Trump’s opponents aren’t providing them—Inside the far-right origins of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency 🔒—After labeling themselves as ‘centrists,’ Silicon Valley libertarians are embracing overt authoritarianism—How centrist elites blocked necessary change and enabled the far right 🔒Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:14 — Major ‘abundance’ figures and the perpetual influence of libertarianism11:49 — Abundance is the libertarian attempt to re-brand neoliberalism15:41 — Silicon Valley billionaires have rejected ‘small government’ approach18:55 — The religious nature of techno-post-libertarianism24:31 — Peter Thiel’s Antichrist obsession and René Girard29:21 — ‘Dark Abundance,’ an explicit attempt to include fascism in the movement39:24 — How corporate interests hijack positive YIMBY movements43:43 — Building effective political coalitions48:59 — Toward a fusionist left policiesAudio TranscriptAvailable only to paid subscribers