Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

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

Episode Summary In a generic sense, everyone knows that politics is about power. But when you look at how America’s two major parties use the power that they have, there’s no question whatsoever that Republicans understand power politics while Democrats have a much more passive attitude toward it.This has been true since at least 1964 when a dedicated group of reactionaries took over the Republican party and installed their extremist candidate Barry Goldwater and proceeded to systematically cancel and remove anyone who stood in their way. Now during the second administration of Donald Trump, his extremist administration is pulling all the levers of power it can to cancel budgets, cancel people, and threaten anyone who stands in its way.In response, congressional Democratic leaders have mostly resorted to writing strongly worded letters which obviously isn’t cutting it. But what can be done?Karen Attiah, my guest on today’s episode has been thinking and writing a lot about power and why it’s necessary to protect freedom. And she has direct experience at what actual canceling looks like, having been fired from the Washington Post for accurately quoting the late Charlie Kirk. This came after she had a course canceled by Columbia University following her speaking out against Israel's genocide in Gaza and in favor of racial equality.Since the Columbia incident, Karen has started Resistance Summer School, a new effort to teach the history of democratic rights movements which she started after Columbia University canceled a course she was teaching after the university was targeted by dishonest attacks from far-right activists trying to censor students and instructors.And since being fired by the Post, Karen will be redoubling her writing efforts on Substack, so be sure to subscribe. This is the exactly correct response to authoritarianism. Dictatorship is not inevitable, but it wants you to think that it is. The American people did not stand for Disney’s suspension of its late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, and after millions of people canceled their subscriptions, it had to reinstate him.Important Note: Our conversation was recorded September 10, 2025, before Kirk was shot at a public event in Utah so we do not discuss her reaction to it.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—After centuries of intellectual dominance, liberalism has become uninterested in defending itself—Far-right media will attack the broader left for any reason, even completely fabricated ones—Trump beat Harris because Republicans have an ecosystem while Democrats have a coalition—JB Pritzker’s tough response to Trump’s authoritarian acts and his progressive policies are pointing a better way for Democrats—Americans want big ideas, even if they’re terrible ones—Republicans treat politics like viral marketing, Democrats don’t—History shows that right-wing activists never believed in free speech and that ‘cancel culture’ panic was only about seizing powerAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction10:30 — Universities' lost touch with the people is why many keep folding to authoritarianism16:48 — The political right understands what power can do much better than the political left22:01 — How living in Texas made Karen not suppose that reactionaries were serious about their ideas31:01 — Liberals stopped explaining their ideas in an easy to understand way39:18 — Democratic and other left leaders underestimate the power of religious community and knowing47:09 — The personal, cult magnetism of Donald Trump52:23 — There's little need to reach out to right-wing leaders, but some of their followers can be persuaded59:56 — Fascism isn't inevitable, but you have to have a vision and a realization that power mattersAudio 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 you've got a number of interesting things you are doing lately, but one of them is you've got a class that was canceled by the actual cancel culture of Donald Trump from Columbia University that you are teaching independently now. So why don't we start off with you telling us about that.KAREN ATTIAH: Sure. Yeah. It's been such a wild time on so many, in so many levels. Yeah, probably most people might know me as a journalist and a columnist and editor for, the Washington Post, but deep down inside have always wanted to teach. I've always wanted to be an academic. Actually, I ended up a journalist, but but yeah, most people might not know.My background is actually in international affairs, so I went to Columbia as a graduate student and wanted to basically like work in the UN or World Bank or maybe, diplomatic service, that sort of thing. But that experience really made me question a lot about our systems, particularly our international affairs development systems.And while I was a grad student at Columbia School [00:04:00] for International and Public Affairs, I definitely questioned like, wait a second. Why aren't we learning anything about how race intersects with development and how we see the world, how people relate to one another?And I definitely was aware that what we were being taught was a very, very, very, not only Western centric, but a very kind of American centric view of the world. And I was going to school with people from all over the world. So I just saw that as a gap. And so ever since then, I was like, man, I would love to be able to teach.What I didn't get taught as a student, so probably in the pandemic. Yeah. Columbia was like, Hey would you teach specifically with the School of International Public Affairs was like, Hey, would you like to come teach? And I, I kind of did the Heisman on him, kept them at arms distance for a little bit because I, I was like, I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready.But I was working on a syllabus on race and journalism. So I developed a syllabus for about two years or so before I finally said yes. Before I said yes to the dress, I guess, and decided to teach in 2020 for the spring of 2024. So a bit of context to that. I decided to come up with a course that explicitly looked at the development of kind of our ideas about race. Like all the way from. So 12th and 13th centuries to today, right? And looking at how this has always been a mediated process. So part of how, at a very basic level, how we develop ideas about who is us and who is them, who is like us and who is not, is through what we read, what we watch through photographs, all that stuff.So I basically explained to my students particularly when it comes to American media development of American media, that there's always been a link [00:06:00] between the relationship particularly of white colonists and European colonists and settlers with writing about non-whites without including them.And there's, there's evidence and, and really great work done about how. These early colonial papers actually made a lot of money pedaling stereotypes basically. So I ask a lot of my students, I'm like, huh, this sounds familiar, right? So fast forward a couple of months, of course went well and over-enrolled great reviews.And then I got a text message saying that my class was not going to be renewed for 2025. And obviously I was crushed. I mean, I never quite got a reason actually, whether it was. I mean, my costs over enrolled. I was also quite vocal about what I saw as Israel's assault on Palestinians during the time of the encampments and the protests that were happening at Columbia.So, and just in general, Matthew, I mean, I, I think I knew I, I cover race, I write about race. I've written about the attacks on critical white race theory and anti DEI, all of these sort of bogeyman attacks on anyone teaching about, and in particular the history of different racial groups. So I think I always kind of had a, I don't know, a bit of a, a, a, not a cloud per se, but just an, an awareness of the political climate, even at a place like Columbia.Right. I'd covered. Anti CRT efforts in Texas, in Oklahoma. And in my, the back of my mind, I think I always knew they're going to try to push this campaign all the way to the [00:08:00] top. And of course, as we've seen, it's reached the Ivys, right? So I think yeah, they canceled the costs. I was told to be quiet about it basically.So I sat on it for a couple of months, didn't say anything. People were like, you're going to hurt your career. Do you want to teach again? Don't, just wait, wait it out. And, then I saw, after Trump's victory and then I saw the attacks on DEI, I saw the, the pressure on campuses to basically, stop any programs on diversity, on DEI stop, anything that could be considered anti-white, basically, if we're going to be--SHEFFIELD: Or pro Palestinian. Yeah.ATTIAH: Or pro-Palestinian. All of that to me is connected. I don't see these things as, separate issues at all. So yeah, earlier this spring, I just was like, wait, why am I sitting around waiting for permission to basically do, at the heart of what teaching is, me talking to a group of people, like at the heart of it, it's like we all teaching and education is, is just gathering a group of listeners, having a speaker and transmitting, communicating to them.And I'm like, I don't need telling me to do that. I, I can gather people under a tree, like, like, so yeah, I put it on in Bluesky., Would anybody be interested in, in taking this version of this course? And honestly, I would've been happy with 20 people. I would've been happy with 30 people.And something like. Two or 3000 people responded. So I was like, okay, we're onto something. And just kept pulling, on the threads, put out an interest form. People were really willing to actually sign up, willing to actually, and, and what I did was offered on a sliding scale because part of the, I think injustice of what I saw even teaching is just not only are people going into crushing debt, right, to be able to [00:10:00] afford an Ivy League education, particularly in a shaky job market.But then adjuncts or a lot of people may not know is a lot of them are paid basically poverty wages and have no protections, no sort of, benefits, right? I've met adjuncts who can barely pay their rents, but they're teaching at these elite institutions that are trading off of their. Knowledge and their labor in order to power the whole thing.So for me, I was--SHEFFIELD: They can certainly afford to pay better.Universities' lost touch with the people is why many keep folding to authoritarianismATTIAH: Yeah. Right. I mean, and that's, the thing. I mean, a lot of people have probably seen the news about how big the endowments of these universities are and and how much they have in real estate. And it's just like, this doesn't make sense. At the heart of it is people who want to share knowledge and other people who want to receive it.But it's, as I said before, it's, it's almost like. And these institutions have become credentialist institutions that are hedge funds with a side of education. Right. So for me, I think it was an interesting experiment in jailbreaking that and saying, well, what if people didn't have to go into lifelong debt?And what if, as an instructor you could actually support yourself by going outside and kind of cutting out the middleman to an extent. And yeah. So we did our first class. 500 people sold out in 48 hours. We were able to do, we were able to give people scholarships and stuff. And yeah, it's been such a cool, such a cool experience.And I guess for me it's been freeing that I don't have to worry about. Some, administrator getting a chilling letter from the Department of Education or the Department of Justice and being investigated for teaching wokeness or that I can freely teach and provide a space for people about Israel Palestine because people are really hungry for that sort of, not only knowledge, but a space to be able to ask questions.So yeah, it's been [00:12:00] such a, it's birthing something out of, community outta cancellation has been, has been my thought. And, for me, like I said, I just. Seeing people? Well, it's cool that people actually really want to go back to school. I have readings of a syllabus, I have guest speakers and everything.But it's also just really cool to see people make friends, make connections, make like, just like in school, like meet new people. It's so hard to do that after you've left school. So many of us have, we're busy with our jobs and busy with our family. So I do this on Zoom, right? And I let people either watch on Zoom and then watch the recordings when they can.So I try to just make it as easy and accessible to people as possible. So. Yeah, it's been a lot of work, that's for sure. But it's definitely, I'd hope, provide a model of that. We don't have to take a lot of this lying down, and that there's no reason that, we should be banned from speaking to one another.And about history and about telling people, particularly when it comes to media, and particularly when it comes to, race. I tell my students a lot of times, I'm like, look, like I didn't learn this in school. Some of this stuff I did not learn until I was a journalist. So you shouldn't feel ashamed or guilty.You didn't, we're all taking remedial history. Yeah. So, and it doesn't matter how many degrees you have, I have PhDs in my class, I have people with master's degrees. The youngest student is 17, the oldest student is almost 80. Right. So, this is just something that everyone, everyone should know. I, I teach about the league of Nations in Woodrow Wilson and the attempt by Japan to introduce a racial equality clause at the beginning of the League of Nations, and how that was rejected actually in 1919.And for a lot of people, they're like, how do we [00:14:00] not know this? How do we not know that, that there was this effort that this was, actually a huge, huge deal for the quote unquote colored peoples of the worlds and the west just ignored it. Right. So it's a lot of that, it's a lot of unearthing history that we all, I think, should have known.But if I get the chance to reach more people this way before I was teaching 20 people, now I'm teaching 500. Then to me that's a win. So,Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, and that's, it is a, great way to, to get, make something good out of something bad that was done and, and there's a, have you ever thought about that there's a, bit of a parallel, although talk about structural inequality between what you are doing and what Barry Wes is doing?ATTIAH: I, it's so funny you said that. I think I just posted on Bluesky about her not only Free Press, but they're setting up, what is it? The, the, setup of the University of Austin, that kind of weirdo university, which is not too far from me, two and a half hours away from me. And I, I, I did think about that, right?Like, to an extent it was cool that the announcement that I made went viral to an extent about creating this out of Columbia. But I, I think, and I write and I speak all the time about the asymmetries of resources and funding when it comes to the right and the left or liberals and stuff. So, Barry Weiss being able to corral millions upon millions of dollars.me not so much. Literal millionaires. And so I'm also just like, and it's, it's, not to complain, but more so as just an observation that here is someone who, and I don't know, maybe, maybe I need to learn her dark arts and I should study [00:16:00] her instead of complaining, but rather it's, so stark to me that, she was able to corral the resources and funding to be able to do something like that. Whereas, I'm doing this still largely on my own and very much grassroots supported. So, and again, it's not just me, but I'm sure you've saw the kerfluffle over liberal influencers receiving money for for promoting kind of, or not even promoting, but rather just receiving monies, receiving $8,000 a month, some of them.And meanwhile, again, Bari Weiss, reportedly, we'll see what makes out of, but reportedly being offered hundreds of millions of dollars to be absorbed into CBS.The political right understands what power can do much better than the political leftATTIAH: So it's just sort of, I mean, I can whine or we can whine about. The right and they're doing this and doing that. But I've seen firsthand, particularly in my own reporting in, in Texas, that they put their money where their mouth is literally, literally. I'm seeing how millions of dollars gets poured into school board elections gets put into folks like Bari Weiss and these podcasters, and they seem to actually, maybe they actually, actually, the right believes in what they're doing, so much so that they're willing to fund it.So there are times when I'm like, does the left believe in what they're doing? Right? What's the, what's the starkest, what's the best way to show that you're committed to something which is putting resources and cash behind it? And until the left sort of works that out I'm not sure how we match what the right is doing. We have to stop being afraid of power, right? And not, and not just like moral victories and not just, but actual, you need cash, you need [00:18:00] organizing power.You need discipline. It's not enough just to be right. It also, you also have to be resourced and organized. And it's something that like fills me with dismay. Like when people seem to think that if you care about. Human rights or if you care about social justice there's this self-defeating narrative that like, you'll never make money doing it, it'll never work.We're supposed to be scraping for pennies all the time, and I'm just like, I don't think that helps our side. Martin Luther King, all of these people understood and believed in power. You have to have that in order to advance your values and in order to persuade people effectively of your vision.Without that, then, then you'll lose. Anyway, that's just me.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, you're, yeah, no, that's a really, important point. And I think you're right that in the broader left, it's not something that people. Get because, like I, and I, I think in some ways they took the wrong lessons from the civil rights movement because the civil rights movement was a multi-pronged political movement that not only were they just out there, protesting in the street, stop mistreating us.They were also seeking political power. They were running candidates, they were endorsing people, they were giving money to candidates. They were, putting people into, getting people into the, into judgeships. Like they were pushing at all levels of political power in American society.And it wasn't just simply, please stop being mean to us. Please stop hurting us. And obviously, that was important to let people know that this was happening. But if, all you're doing is saying, please stop hurting us, you're not going to [00:20:00] win.ATTIAH: You are not going to win. And like it or not, we're in this sort of. Political apparatus where largely there are two parties, and I don't think about this as only a, a, an electoral politics issue. But that being said, regardless whether it's putting more money towards a media apparatus whether it's thinking through, how do we actually build better institutions, right?I mean, that's not explicitly politics, but it is political. you need resources and you need power. And and people I have these conversations with, people who seem to think that power is bad, power is neutral. It depends on how you--SHEFFIELD: what you do it.ATTIAH: It's what, it's what you make, it's what you make of it.It's like, anyone who likes superhero movies or comics aren't like, oh my gosh, Superman is bad 'cause he has power. Like he used it to help save cities, even if it's flawed or whatnot, any of the heroes, right? Like so, I just, I think about these things. I think about these things a lot and it will require a lot of people to have like, almost like very personal kind of relation, like conversations with themselves about like their own narratives about power and why they think they don't deserve it or shouldn't have it.And 'cause the right definitely thinks they should, whether it's divine power. Some of like, plenty of them are motivated by literally God told them to do this and so this is what we're going to do. Or again, some sort of deep seated. Conviction that this is the world you want to live in, and in order to build that, you need power.So we'll see.[00:22:00]How living in Texas made Karen not suppose that reactionaries were serious about their ideasSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and yeah, that's, it is a really good point. And, I, and we were talking before this, I, think that part of why you were able to really understand this on such a gut level is that you're from Texas, you'refrom Dallas, and you have seen up close for all of your, for so many years of your life that.You are, that this is what these people want. They want to do terrible things to society. and you've seen that you, saw this coming a long time before. And whereas I think a lot of people in the kind of, commentary of the left or the, and the political operative class and the donor class and the politician class, they don't have direct contact withright wing extremists the way that you personally have.And I think that's, part of what, that's a big part of your analysis here. And, and it's also a big part of why they don't understand how to deal with Trump effectively. I think. 'cause when you think about when the Republicans are in the congressional minority. They're still able to cause all sorts of problems.And including, government shutdowns like hell, they shut down the government when Trump was the president, the congressional Republicans did. So like, and yet that, and the Democrats are not willing to, exercise the, they, they constantly talk about, oh, we have to protect democracy. We have to, this is a national emergency, Trump's a want tobe dictator.Well, if he's, if that's true and you really believe that, then why aren't you shutting down the government and demanding to protect people's healthcare or, a variety of things like protecting their, vaccines from RK Junior, like, or just demanding the, the restoration of all these funds that were illegally impounded against all these agencies.Like $500 million stolen from cancer vaccines. Like if Americans knew about that. They [00:24:00] would be really upset, you know, as the, you don't, you're not the president, so you don't have the bully pulpit, but if you shut down the government, people are going to be covering what you have to say.ATTIAH: Yeah, for sure, I mean, I think there's a lot of things going on in terms of, well, two things. It's like, it's almost sometimes like, not only not believing in your own. Values. So, not being committed in that, but it's almost like a, a, a disbelief that Republicans are going to, or, or conservatives are going to do what they say they're going to do.And they've been saying that they've wanted to end abortion end abortion access for, what, 50 years almost? Or, or at the very least four, yeah. 40 ish years. And being willing to align with the religious right in order to, achieve that. A lot of this, for a good chunk of America's history, abortion wasn't as salient in issue as it is now.And that was deliberately. Done through explicit alliances and again, resources, money and them saying, I grew up in these churches and, and the alignment of political figures and the religious anti-abortion kind of movement where ever since I was a kid, they're like, this is what we're going to do.This is what we're going to do. We are going to overturn Roe v Wade. And it's almost like the left being like, Ugh, that can't happen. Ugh, that can't happen. And I think for me growing up here, growing up in Dallas, where actually where I'm, I am right this second, it's like, are you like why? And it's not just what republicans say they're going to do.They organize, they give money, they are doing the thing. And so they've been praying for this. And so I think for, for me it's, and [00:26:00] not just praying for this, but altering the rhetorical battlefield, winning the narrative, I suppose, on these issues, having very simplistic narratives about any of their, their issues, right?And it's very hard. I see up quite often the left either seeding narrative grounds or just simply not believing that these people. We'll do what they want to do. They are willing to play the 50 year game. And I, I, I remember asking even some of my as we were talking beforehand, I, I grew up in the evangelical church.I was very, very, I was a youth leader, used to play piano for the youth groups was very deeply involved, I'll say that. And I remember, and then I left the church when I was in grad school, actually. And then I remember asking, or, or observing some of my former church friends, like, why, why did they vote for Trump?And for a lot of them they're like, ah, yeah, we don't really like him. But God's agenda is more important. And on God's agenda ending abortion is what is going to save this country from going to help, basically. So to your point about. Extremism particularly, coming from the Christian, explicitly Christian nationalist right?Is to them they don't see it as evil. They see it as saving us. Actually, they're doing us a favor. And that trickles into even sort of, and it's hard to understand. I, I know for people who haven't grown up in it. But I think that also extends to even the anti-vaccine stuff that we saw during COVID, the anti masking is, and for sure there are plenty of people who are sadistic and want to use their power to hurt other people and believe that, these people should go to hell.I've seen that sort of [00:28:00] vitriol, but I've also seen, and this is harder to dislodge the people who actually think they're doing good. So even with the vaccines talking to folks, they think that we who believe in science are the ones who are misguided. They're saying. We are trying to save you from ending your life or affecting your life early because you've been lied to by science.So it actually is pretty compelling because it seems to come from a deeply sincere place, if that makes sense. Not and it's, again, it's so easy to car caricature these folks as like, ugh, they're just stupid, or they're just ignorant. But. At least from what I've seen, it's like I've seen people who are like, no, no, no, don't, don't pay attention to science.I I really, I actually want to help you. Here's this other protocol. Because if you do what they say, they'll shorten your life. So, and we, we want to help you. Right? And so it's, a very we're living in extremely different information, completely different information worlds, right? Completely different realities.And I don't really know exactly how that gets bridged. Unless we come, I don't know. I, think about this a lot, but coming at these things from a place 'cause they're coming at this, it's weird to think about, but they're coming at it from a place of care. Just, it's weird to think about it though, but aSHEFFIELD: Yeah, a lot of them. I mean now JD Van, somebody like him, I don't think that's whathe's doing,ATTIAH: No, he's just a craven opportunist who is basically a puppet of Peter Thiel. He has no soul or no convictions, but people like that are able to move. People who do, and again, I won't deny that there's not a streak of destructive nihilism. Right.SHEFFIELD: And some of them, Yeah.ATTIAH: And, and, and plenty of them whose, whole [00:30:00] ethos is just own the libs that they would have no sort of reason to be if it wasn't for beating down on who they perceive to be as misguided and weaker and, and annoying them because we talk about.We think people should not be judged on their pronouns. Like, and we think that black people deserve to vote and have jobs like it's not, there are plenty of racists and there are plenty of bigots and, all of that. But I, it is hard. Yes, there is a destructive streak. And there are not just religious, but even from the sort of tech billionaires who, who don't particularly believe in humanity.And so, I, I look at these things as being like, are you wanting to fight for a nation that is pro-human or not, basically. But alas, we're not there yet.Liberals stopped explaining their ideas in an easy to understand waySHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, you And that point though about yeah. That a lot of people are kind of motivated by a, an altruism that has not been grounded properly. Like that to me is that it, it hits to a, to a difference between what, why the, that we, should dis make sure on the broader left to distinguish between conservatives and reactionaries.Like somebody like JD Vance or, or Steve Bannon, or, Steven Miller, like these are reactionaries, they're trying to. Tear down America and put it back to the Well, huh. In some cases, the confederacy, it looks like they Sure. Talk about the Confederate generals a lot now. And, but, but there are people who just have a more conservative moral viewpoint and they think, as you said, you know that they're doing the right thing.And in a lot of ways, that separation between, them and the, [00:32:00] institutions that the reactionaries are attacking. The reason why there's this gulf, I think, is that for, science stopped trying to explain itself in basic terms. And, in so many of the advances that we've had in society, the people who, who made them forgot to bring along everyone else.So in the same, and that same thing is true. I think with feminism. You know that a lot of the timism is no threat to men. That having women being able to choose what you want to do with your life, that's also, is means that men should have that choice as well. It doesn't mean that men should not have that choice.But, and, and that phrase, that famous phrase of that, a woman needs a, a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Well, that also works the other way around, that a man needs a woman the way that a fish needs a bicycle in, in other words, that you are your worth, your, you're worth your own.You, you don't need somebody to complete you. Your value comes from yourself. But I think in a lot of ways we, kind of stop saying that these kind of first principle arguments, 'cause like, I always see it from people saying, oh, I don't want to, a scientist saying, oh, I don't want to debate some anti-vax person, because if I debate them, then I'll be giving them credibility.And it's like: these people have millions of followers, like they have more credibility than you. And among, from people who have heard of them, like more people have heard of them than have heard of you. So who really has more credibility now on the science? You obviously you do, but in the public mind they.ATTIAH: Correct. And I'm glad you said that because I, think right now to, to deal with what's happening is like, it's a battle for the public's mind. And it's, no longer the case that expertise, hidden expertise is enough. If anything, the sort of [00:34:00] hidden expertise makes people in this country sort of feel like, oh, you must have something to hide.You must not be, but right now look, we're in a fight. We're, we're in a, we're in an absolute war and part of the war for people's minds and imaginations means that people will have to get out there and, explain. I mean, I think in terms of, And builds like I said, like bring people together, those podcasters or whoever, those people with audiences hate 'em all you want, and we'll see where the podcast economy goes or, and all that.But like, what they've basically done is they've been able to bring people together through their audience and, organize them and, and bring them back from day to day or week to week or whatnot. So this notion that you can just stay above the fray means that you're, yeah, you're seeding the imagination battleground to others.And I think there's a bit of, I think particularly on the left, and I'm not trying to bash the left, I've just been thinking about this a lot. 'cause again, I just think about like, what does it take to. Deal with this, to survive this. At the very basic, some of us are literally just trying to survive all of this.Other people, who, who might be less targeted right now should be thinking about these things. But it's this question of not only like what are you willing, what are you willing to do, what are you willing to, put your time and energy and resources into? But it's we're going to have to stop wanting to be perfect right now.I think there's a lot of, almost like perfectionism and purity. And again, caveat, caveat, I don't, certain things I don't believe are. Purity test. Personally, I think when it comes to people literally living or dying [00:36:00] whether it's in Gaza or whether it's people whose lives are being torn apart and broken by ice and you say, okay, like this candidate is supporting these things.Like, I personally don't see people being blown apart as, and caring about that as a purity test. But that being said people are going to have to learn to work with people and engage with people that they don't like. And I'm not, again, I'm not saying to engage with people who want to kill you because that's kind of different, but but it's just like, what does it look like to act, not just talk about building a.Broad-based soar across very, very, very different groups with very different kind of priorities. But again, to come together and actually build. Power. And I talked to lots of different groups amongst the sort of so-called left, and there's such wide disparities between groups who have no structural wealth, basically, who don't have the billionaires to be able to fund groups to certain groups that are maybe just in the beginning stages of trying to figure out what does it look like for maybe, Arab American groups who are like, okay, like this has shown we need to build actual power to advocate for the causes that we believe in.So I just, I think that consciousness is coming because things are so bad. Yeah. But but yeah, it's, we're literally in a, and then we haven't even gotten to AI and social media platforms and how actual facts and truths are, are, being warped. So how do you even build when we can't even agree.On whether or not what we saw on our phones coming outta the White House is real, right? As well as media organizations that are not only caving, but are sort of both sides, seeing what's happening, minimizing, averting their eyes [00:38:00] altogether. So yeah, I think this is a time for a lot of people to be out there in the public sphere and be, truthers to an extent and to, we're going to have to do a lot of persuasion work and a lot of like, work on people's.Minds And how do you organize around? Basically, like I said, for me, I think a lot of it comes down to I want a world that does the least amount of harm to people basically. And to, I think also one thing the w right has done is co-opted the language of freedom and liberty. Whereas I think for many of us who believe in humanist causes and that people should be actually free to not have to deal with systemic oppression.I'm like, I think we are the freedom fighters. Actually, you shouldn't, it shouldn't matter whether you're trans, it shouldn't matter whether you're Latino, it shouldn't matter. You should be a free. Human being in this country. So I think, I think it's just, it's going to take a lot of us being kind of creative in how we frame what we're actually fighting for and about.Democratic and other left leaders underestimate the power of religious community and knowingSHEFFIELD: Yeah that's right. And. And, also being able to, and being willing to reach people where they are, so not just so obviously as you said, like with podcasts and things like that, definitely we need a lot more of those. and not so many of these, wasteful television political ads got a wasted like $750 million on those in the campaign, the Harris campaign did.And there's other people who probably did too. So like, we need less of that because we, there's no return on that investment. All that money's flushed down the toilet now. Whereasif somebody had paid some of that to start, to fund people who are podcasting or start new ones, like they would still be here, [00:40:00] we would still be getting value out of that.So, but, also, there's. There is also, I think in the broader left, a, a lack of, of interest in trying to talk to people in a religious way as well and, and elevating people who have, a religious perspective that does align with with a liberationist at Ethos. We don't do that as much as we should, and, and that's a big blind spot because the majority of Americans are Christians.And so if you are not willing to present voices that can speak to them in language that they are comfortable with and that resonates with them, then how are you going to get anywhere?ATTIAH: Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and, and I, again, as a former evangelical, even though it's such a powerful group, and, and often they, they dominate the conversation about Christianity. They're not the only ones. There are and I, and I don't even want to say that this is just about. Christianity. There are obviously plenty of other religious groups that have been very involved in social justice and human rights in this country for a long time.And thinking about the Jew, the Jewish community during, especially like the Civil Rights movement the Quakers, the gosh I, I know of a very influential imams who are here in Dallas who are obviously very vocal about social justice and human rights. And these are, these are people, these are churches.These are institutions that again, are able to connect people and their politics to a bigger, a larger picture, something bigger than themselves. And as humans, that is just how we find meaning and significance. And that's what gives [00:42:00] people the sort of stamina, the spiritual stamina too. Not only fight for what they believe in, but to sustain it for a long time.I, I, like I said before, with abortion and Christianity, when people believe that they're working on this sort of eternal project to to save people from, damnation and hell fire, that's a pretty powerful reason. Now, I know it's going to, what people are going to say and what's going to happen is, is people are like, oh, keep religion outta politics.Keep spirituality outta politics. Particularly with the church and particularly with religious spaces that have not been welcoming to particularly L-G-B-T-Q people, all that is very, very, very much there. But there are religious groups explicitly, and again, I'm sitting here in Dallas, Texas, which actually has the largest L-G-B-T-Q mega church in the world.And they have long been fighting for justice and human rights. Here, there are these groups that are like, this is not what we believe. Or even some that they're like, okay, we don't understand this, but we, believe in your right to be safe. Right? So I just think about that a lot, that whether it was Malcolm X and Islam or Martin Luther King Jr.And of course himself being a pastor, I just, I am not sure how there would be a successful civil rights sort of counter to what's happening without people not only tapping into a deeper sort of spiritual well and com and community, but just the very basic pragmatic organizing power of religious communities.These are groups that are able to amass people in person usually every week, right? To be able to come together. They're able to collect money and channel resources into [00:44:00] projects. They're, they have, and not only an infrastructure, but ties in their communities that political consultants flying in from Washington DC just don't have.So I, I think about that a lot. And again, back to, I think there has been this disdain for religion. But in this country, this is what motivates people spirituality, spiritual groups working in concert with one another in order to advance their view of the world. So, we'll see. I'd, I'd be, I'm very, even though I'm no longer, I think.Practicing question. I, I find myself as being from that culture, right? And I see the power of it. And to me, again, I'm just interested in how do we use power? And if that comes from places we may be uncomfortable with, are, we going to place our discomfort over progress or over building power? A lot of people have to answer that for themselves.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and, and, and it's also that, the other thing about churches is that they. They help build community of a place where you don't, so you don't have to be alone inthe people move now so much for their jobs. Like they, they're in a city and they don't know anybody.They don't know their neighbors. They're neighbors are never home. They're never home. Like they just, there. It's, it's very difficult to meet people, you know at once. You're not in going to college anymore. And a friend, of course, the majority of Americans never went to college. and so like for them, those connections stopped when they went, stopped going to high school.And so, like, so, so, so religions do provide that kind of anchoring in a lot of ways. And, and there's an interesting. [00:46:00] Dynamic with regard to black Americans, that for black Americans the stats have shown that black Americans who don't go to church, are actually more Republican.And they're the only reli, they're the only demographic group where that's the case. Non-religious black Americans. and it's because the political culture of the black church by and large, does it, it, teaches the history of this is why we are voting, sup tending to support.And it's not even necessarily to supporting the Democrats. It's, this is why we are suspicious of the Republicans because here is how they've hurt our community and history and you should know it. And like, so this, this shared space, this shared history that you get like. That's so much of the, I feel like the appeal of Trumpism for a lot of people is that they do get to feel like that they're part of something that they're part of a community that, you know, and like from to a lot of us on the outside that we look at that and they're like, who the hell would want to be a part of worshiping that turd?The personal, cult magnetism of Donald TrumpATTIAH: But you're onto something like, I mean, and I've, I, think I wrote about it on Facebook at, one point, I wish I had written a, sort of deeper essay. I have been, I've had the, is it a privilege and experience? I don't know, being in the room with Trump personally at this 0.3 times in my life and what people need to under.have you ever met him or,SHEFFIELD: I have been in the room withhim yet.ATTIAH: You have. Okay, so maybe what I say won't be so surprising. This was my take when he met with the Washington Editorial Board and I was in that room, and Trump has a charisma, has a larger than life like, presence. Like this man is like a large human being.So there's that. He [00:48:00] is tall. He just, he takes up space and I've, I saw him. Sort of, work the room. And again, he's, this is someone who's been in the sort of the public culture for a long, long, long, long time. Those in New York? Yes. We'll say we've always hated him. We've always known he's a crook, all of that.But for those of us who grew up outside of New York, I grew up with Trump being a showman. Being on home alone. He was in Sex in the City, he was in music videos. And then I watched a lot of pro wrestling. Yeah. The Apprentice, and then of course The Apprentice. So he grew up, or I grew up with a, with Trump as a rich reality TV show like almost like this kind of brawler man with who represents, who still represents power.Right.SHEFFIELD: Well, and he had, a lot of crossover with hip hop too.LikeATTIAH: lot of crossover with hip hop.SHEFFIELD: timeATTIAH: Yeah. Limp Bizkit. I'm still thinking of Limp Biz's break stuff, video. He was in the break stuff. So he had,SHEFFIELD: talked about him all the time.ATTIAH: yeah, so he had, he built in a way, a sort of a profile a coalition of people from pro wrestling fans to to hip hop, to, sex in the city, which is supposed to be this feminist like cultural artifact.Yeah. Anyway, point is, is like to see him then come in person, Hess, how to work people. He has a personal like magnetism and power that I feel a lot of people on the left don't understand. So I remember being in those rooms and thinking just the way that. He made people kind of like, he's funny also, he made people laugh like he made.And I just remember thinking, and then he went into a bunch of lies and a bunch of like, nonsensical things and I was like, oh, here we go. But he charmed the room and I remember thinking like, [00:50:00] we are screwed if he has this level of, kind of hate him or love him, or, or at the very least you'll pay attention to him.You can't not pay attention to him. I remember thinking that, and then the second time when I really was like, oh, this man's going to win, was seeing him at the Republican National Convention and the way that he moved that crowd speaking about, lock her up, speaking about how terrible America was and bringing the way that that crowd responded to him.It was a religious thing to, it was they, it was almost like they had caught the Holy Spirit, what I used to see in the megachurches. And I remember coming back and seeing people just. Entranced and I was like, oh my gosh, this man is going to win. Because he has a, level of, and I know people hate to admit it, but he's been able to win twice, right.He's been a, there's a reason why he does so many rallies like that moves people. And to your point, and I've seen this in people I know, even close to my own family, who Trump is both a hero and an outsider. And he does, he's both powerful and powerless, hated by the establishment, just like Jesus, right? So if you're a follower of Trump, you then by extension are also someone who is somehow, it seems twisted, but yes.Marginalized and, I've seen how. People felt particularly in the beginning, that they couldn't be out and open with saying that they liked Trump. So it's almost like they would have like almost sort of secret chats with one another. Yeah.He built,SHEFFIELD: especially in black communities. ForATTIAH: yeah. And so now it's just that people are more open about it, right?Or are more open and comfortable. At the very beginning, if you remember, people were getting Disinvited left and right for liking Trump. Like you were kicked out of, family dinner [00:52:00] invite. So it's taboo. And now it's not so taboo, but there's, there's this, he's created a, a community, almost like a, a cult-like, sort of community where people who feel alienated by society in general gravitate towards a sense of belonging under him.There's little need to reach out to right-wing leaders, but some of their followers can be persuadedSHEFFIELD: For sure. Yeah. And like, and, I see there, there's a, that's a good parallel because when it comes to colts, other than Trump, people have a, more rational attitude in how to deal with them. So in other words. If you go and join Scientologists or some, one of these other groups, people, they don't necessarily impute moral failings or intellectual failings to you.They think, oh, well there's something that person is vulnerable right now to this message. And the problem with dealing with the cult of Trump, I think for people who are trying to get people out of it, is that, that we miss that, that, we miss that personal, not necessarily, and obviously, Hillary Clinton was right, that many of them are deplorables.We gotta say that, right? For sure. That's true. But it's still also the case, as you were saying, that a lot of people are not doing, are not supporting him for malicious reasons, like they. They, they have their own reasons that might not be terrible. They like, we, we might disagree with them. But you know, like, and, and so like, and I think that's another thing that you get as somebody who, who is from Texas, that you know you have from fans in your family.You understand that there's, that there, these are not evil people. And I think that there's, well, not necessarily evil and like there's, there's, a problem with I think with a lot of center to Left people that they want to [00:54:00] com they want to compromise with the elites of Trumpism. Those people, you can't compromise with them because they are irredeemable, like they're theATTIAH: should have known. Oh, those are evil. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Like, and, like, they don't get that the, outreach happen should happen at the, personal, voter citizen level. That's where we need to compromise the outreach, the, the talking and the care. Like, we don't, the, you don't gain anything by saying, oh, let's, let's understand Steven Miller and, maybe he's a good guy underneath it all.And it's like, no, we don't have to do that. But we do have to think about the people that are tricked by him. And Ithink that's the right emphasis, I think.ATTIAH: Yeah, I think, there are, like the folks like Steven Miller who is Peter Thiel, Alan Car, like the ones who are actually, in my opinion, the ones who should be dragged out to debate floors. Those are the ones that are actively shaping the society and, and in these sort of dark rooms with, their very sociopathic mentalities.And I think, that's why I, I, I don't, I've never loved the sort of hyperfocus on the kind of Trump voters in a diner sort of thing. Because even. Trump himself. Who is he listening to? Who is he influenced by? Who is, who is he being used as a vessel for? What are we being dis like, to an extent?How is Trump, I won't say exactly being used as a distraction, but definitely being used to advance certainSHEFFIELD: Yeah.ATTIAH: Yeah. Like, he's not, he is not, he's a showman, but he's not this evil genius. We actually have evil geniuses in this society who are [00:56:00] able to sort of operate, I think largely outside of, of public view.Those are the ones who do not deserve rest. Right. Like, and it's I find it strange that sort of there's this wanting to beat up on the tomato cans of, of like most, a lot of people like sort of low information voters. And we haven't even discussed like. Fox News and its dominance in the right wing, media, sphere and all that.But that aside, to me, the people who are advancing a white supremacist society with no checks and balances, who actually have openly said they do not care for democracy, basically, who do, who have actively said, I mean, Vance has said this, that he believes that the endowments of the higher higher ed colleges or elite colleges are basically war chest for the enemy.Like, this is how these people speak. And for some reason we are so hyper-focused on the people that it's in some ways like easier to beat up on than those powerful folks. Right? And part of it is, that's just how power works. It operates in the dark and operates in the shadows. And again, this is where the media should have, should be, should have been.Better in directing our attention and our span on who these people, not only who these people are, but how do we oppose not only who these people are, but they have a lot of money and are using their, their money and their influence to literally buy candidates to buy media. So it's yeah, I mean, obviously the game of politics is you're supposed to persuade as many people as possible to give, to punch the ticket in your favor.There is that, but the other realm of politics is the manufacturing of, of narratives and the advancing of, [00:58:00] worldviews and them deciding who's going to be the useful vessel for, that, for their business interests, all of that stuff. But that's just very hard to communicate very well to people who are in this society, especially.Just trying to get by on multiple, sometimes a lot of times multiple jobs, the economy's not so great right now. How do you even think about convincing people to think about these sort of higher brow issues when they're just trying to, A, put food on the table and B, realizing that if they miss a day of work, it could lead them on the street?Right. And to me, we are in an, in an age as well where power and money is so concentrated at the top and Americans in general are getting poor and more housing insecure, more food insecure. And yet we have so much access to information and yet literally in so many ways we are poor, particularly as middle, class, we are no longer my generation, especially and below, no longer thinking that the American dream is within.Reach home ownership, marriage, kids. so to me it's also, I mean, I think, I think a lot of these things are deeply spiritual questions, but I think it's also about what is the narrative of America now? What is the story of America now, I am not sure that the Republicans have a compelling one right now.Rather it's been, as you said before, obstruction and let's beat the liberals and let's be reactionary and claw back progress from, groups. But overall, what is the vision? What is the visionSHEFFIELD: From any side,ATTIAH: from any side.Fascism isn't inevitable, but you have to have a vision and a realization that power mattersSHEFFIELD: Yeah. That's, a great point. And, I [01:00:00] think the only way that vision can develop. Toward a anti-fascist direction is it, we have to reorient ourselves as well. And, that kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of the recording here, that, not just about understanding power is, important and why you should use it, but also what do you want and,ATTIAH: What do you want?SHEFFIELD: And what you know, and like, and like I I, I think so much of the Trump second term is about kind of this sort of desire to emotionally blitz, cre, everyone who opposes them and to, make people think, oh, fascism is inevitable.Totalitarianism, this is our fate in America. I'm just going to sit back and doom, scroll on whatever websites I'm using. And that's what they want you to think.Um, and so like we have to figure out. What is watching the news a form of inter of entertainment. Like is that why you're, is that why you do it or is because you want to do something?ATTIAH: Right. And it's, it's I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I mean, I think very generally it's, a profound shift that will need to happen. Within people themselves and, and within the society. I think a lot about how I, I come from a more like a sociology background. So like, I think a lot about how our country and our economy is very much a consumerist economy.Very much on anytime something is going wrong for America, our leaders come out and tell us to go bye bye bye. And, and that we can somehow rely on others to create the things and we consume the things, which means it's very easy for activism and resistance to be packaged in such a way that it looks easy so that we can consume it on our phones.Same with news, like, just speaking of someone from the from the information [01:02:00] pedaling business, which is journalism, but that part of the reason even that I wanted to go into teaching right now is that we're, people are consuming this information. Not necessarily being able to have the opportunity to figure out how to apply that knowledge in their own lives.How to like I said, I think it's back to the drawing board with a lot of things. I think we all need reeducation in so many ways on, how we got here, but it's going to require Americans in general to get out of a very passive consumer consumptionist attitude towards how, towards a better society.We're not going to buy our way out of this. Yes, we're going to need to pull and organize resources. That takes a lot of work. And I think for a long time, particularly the white majority in this country has relied upon. Black people to do the organizing and to do the labor has relied upon learning from the marginalized groups.And now we're in a situation where like white folks are going to have to learn how to be in community and to organize and to probably abandon a lot of this cultural preferences for perfectionism, for well if I, I'm too scared. I, I don't want to get something wrong, so I'm not going to do anything at all.I'd rather just sit on the sidelines 'cause I'm just going to let others speak and I'm like, you have to get out there and try. Right. Because so many, so many people we're facing, particularly for black people, but I think for, a lot of targeted groups, it's like a lot of people are literally having their livelihoods blown apart right now.And we're seeing decades of losses ahead of us. So some people are just trying to survive, but the others who. Who really have the stam and the privilege. Like, it's not the time to crash out and wait for somebody else to do the [01:04:00] social justice, hard labor of it all. They'll have to, and, yeah, some of it'll be protesting fine.Some of it will be civil de disobedience. Fine. Some of it will be, it'll have to come in a lot of forms and we don't all have to do the same thing. Not everyone can be a general, not everyone can be a pilot. Right. But but yeah, it's, going to take a profound in a different way of thinking of how we do things.Again, it will come down to do you really believe, what is the story that you believe in America and what are you willing to do to make that a reality? Instead of yes, just sitting, on the internet or just. Doom scrolling. And people are doing the work. People are doing the work and have been, and have been on the grounds.Again, being in Washington seeing neighborhoods rising up against ice actively driving folks out using lawsuits, lose, using whatever levers of power that they have. So it's the work, A lot of that work is being done. And I think that there's room for, or ace necessity for putting more of those stories out there.'cause a lot of the stories out there are about how terrible things are, what the Trump administration has done. What they're doing is not to say that that's not important, but like there are stories of people who are fighting back and who are doing what they can to protect the marginalized. So.And just examples from history and from around the world, like we need hope as well. We definitely, at the very least, need to see examples, embodied examples. Even well credit where credit is due if I'm, I'm remembering correctly Epstein list. The. Accusers, having very real, real fears of retribution and being sued into oblivion if they speak.But I believe, and you may [01:06:00] correct me if, is it Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey maybe being willing to use their powers of, of speaking on the floor, basically like finding like a loophole in some of the procedural protocols to be able to still get that information out there. Yes, these are Republicans.I do not. Eh, eh, But it was not even just a Republican. These are just people who I, but credit where credit is due. It's like, all right, they're being creative. This is what resistance could look like. Yeah. So, so yeah, I just am very I. It's going to, it's going to have some uncomfortable conversations.What do we do with the Marjorie Taylor Greene, who all of a sudden is kind of criticizing Trump or saying the right things about Gaza? Now what do we do with figures like that who are like, oh, are they turning the page? Are they turning the corner? Or are, could they be allies on this issue? I don't know.A lot of people will recoil at that, but these are the really difficult really difficult questions when you're also looking at like, okay, where does hope like come from?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, Lot. There are lots of questions that need to be asked for sure. And we'll keep asking them. Well, so we're just over an hour here in the recording here.So I try to we could do this a lot longer, obviously, clearly but we don't want to do that to the audience. So, but for people who want to keep up with your stuff, Karen what are your recommendations for them?ATTIAH: Sure. You can also follow me on substack at karenattiah.substack.com. And my substack is called The Golden Hour. And I'm on all the social media platforms. First name Karen, last name Atiya. And for those of you who are interested in taking my class on race, media and international affairs, I will be hosting a [01:08:00] fall session beginning October 6th and October 8th.So you'll be able to see me lecture and see me do my thing and be with a merry band of resistant students who are coming to. And we, we talk a lot about these very issues that we discussed today, right? When it comes to learning from history and how media has both helped and hurt resistance movements.And it's just a good time. It's a great group of people. So would love to have folks sign up and come be in school with me.SHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good. All right. Thanks for being here.ATTIAH: Thanks, Matthew. I appreciate it.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today.I appreciate you joining us for the conversation. If you want to get more, you can go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes, and we also have paid and free subscriptions as well. If you want to support the show and stay in touch, that would be great. We have an option on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/discoverflux and you can go to flux.community for the Substack option as well. And if you're watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button to get notified whenever we post a new episode. That would be awesome. Stay in touch. I'll 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 I don't get to do a lot of ancient history episodes on this show, but I always love it when I get the chance, and that's because history is a mirror of the present. Not because we judge or even fully understand the people who lived in ancient times, but because they were humans just like we are now.Ancient Egypt has always had a magnetic pull. In ancient times, people were very interested in what the Egyptians were doing, and with good reason. In more recent times, Egypt has developed an aura of mystery, especially for followers of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-day Saint movement.But there’s something even deeper than the hidden tombs and eternal life legends: A lesson of what makes us human, and what justice means.I'm pleased to be joined on this episode by Kara Cooney. She is a professor of Egyptology at the University of California Los Angeles, and she's written a number of interesting books on its history.We’ll be talking about some of the themes in one of these books in particular called The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. She's also the host of the podcast Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, which will soon be appearing in the Flux podcast feed.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--Kara’s “Out of Egypt” mini-series--The ancient Greek Skeptic traditions have renewed relevance in an age of misinformation and propaganda--Why pluralism was the biggest Renaissance invention--Inside the demon-haunted world of Christian fundamentalism--The desire to submit to authority is as old as humanity itself 🔒--Susan Sontag’s essay, “Against Interpretation”Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction04:40 — Ancient Egyptians were regular people, even though it's easy to forget14:11 — A brief overview of ancient Egyptian history20:35 — The Exodus narrative and historical evidence28:33 — The fall of civilizations and modern parallels32:11 — Mormonism's Book of Abraham and Egyptian lore38:53 — Religious neo-orthodoxy and Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation"45:08 — Akhenaten's religious revolution52:16 — The Ma'at goddess and wisdom traditions01:02:17 — Universal human understanding of fairness01:05:55 — 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: It's great to have you, but for people who don't know you, Kara, tell us give us a little background on some of the research that you've done. What do you do in Egyptology?KARA COONEY: I've been in the field now for 30 years, which is terrifying, but I started my PhD work in 1994. So there we are. My work started with Social competition and rich people competing with each other. And I did that through the lens of coffin research. So I will forever be associated with coffins and I call myself ‘Coffin Girl’ sometimes, which is strange.But, it's amazing what you can learn from a coffin as a social document. And that's been the gift that keeps on giving because I now am embedded in coffin reuse research. So I look at how rich people would take other rich dead people out of their coffins, and they might have been related to them, they might not have been, but they will reuse those coffins for—SHEFFIELD: Oh my God.COONEY: —freshly rich dead people. And it's very much associated with collapse and crisis and ripping up social contracts and, drought and collapse, which I think are very much on the mines. Of people today. And so that work on coffin reuse has been very topical and helped me to see what we're going through, what it means, how long such collapses last, when they're the worst, things like that.[00:04:00] And then the more—I won't say it's happy and fuzzy because it's not—but the more popular side of my work is on women in power. I teach a very popular class at UCLA called Women in Power in the Ancient World. And that has driven me to work on a number of books. One on Hatshepsut, another on six queens of the ancient world, five of whom became king.And then I'm working on a book about Nefertiti right now, which is damn is it hard to get through all of that scholarship and try to determine what my story shall be. I feel the weight of that book as I'm working on it now. So that's me in a nutshell.Ancient Egyptians were regular people, even though it's easy to forgetSHEFFIELD: Okay. And then, so all, if you could also talk about just like some of the challenges that are kind of unique about studying Egyptian history compared to some of the more well,COONEY: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Longer known historical please.COONEY: There, there are so many I, shall start with the over idealizing of Ancient Egypt. By us, by them, by everyone. It's a place that Herodotus said was more religious than any other, that the Egyptians were more religious than any other people. It's a place that perfected political propaganda through religious means.And because of that, we're, it's hard for us to then pull the veil aside and see authoritarianism instead of religious belief and freedom of religion and or to see a more cynical, brutal patriarchal taking rather than a fatherly guidance. And that is indeed why I wrote the book, the Good Kings, which annoyed many of my colleagues.But that book is about how we egyptologists and really the public at large, particularly in the western world, since the discovery of Alman and before that, since [00:06:00] Napoleon entered Egypt and created the description on do we really feel like we, we are connected to these people. But to have me come along and then say, you're drinking the Kool-Aid, you're becoming an apologist for these ancient kings.It's, a problem. So, I am exposing something. That is our positivism of this history at the same time, then what do you do? This is what people will say. Students will say it to me. Other colleagues will say, well, we have all of this documentation, we have these written records. How do you then parse them if what you've been given is not necessarily something that you can trust?and I say to that, well, what do you do with the Romans when they give you, you know that they're lying to you half the time? You know that every speech that somebody is giving, whether it's Mark Antony, or Cicero, has an alternative agenda. So how do you deal with that? And we need to deal with the Egyptians more in that way, but not with the politics we understand in our gut, but with a religious politics that really tries to transcend any sort of worldly grappling.And I think that's been something that I'm very much drawn to working through. But it's not easy. It's not easy to do. It demands a lot of hypothesizing from me, which means. Other scholars are like, well, now you're just making stuff up. And I have to say, well, what do you think you're going to get from King Kim Jong-Un's regime?what do you think you're going to get from a closed authoritarian regime where things happen seriously in a back smoky incense filled room? What do you, how are you going to solve this? And so that has been the really, the purpose of my career, revealing power that does not want to be revealed in a way that breaks many of the rules of scholarly training.And I, take joy in doing that. So,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And let's talk about this a little bit more though, because, I, I think an [00:08:00] unsophisticated critique of what you're doing, Kara, is that you're engaging in presentism, but in fact, not what you're doing.COONEY: No, it's not. no. I've been, accused of being universalist. And one, it was a very important book review written by Christina Riggs in the Times Literary Supplement of my first popular book on Hot. She, and she even quotes the scene that made her think that I was being universalist, where I talk about Hatshepsut's birth of her daughter.And, I made it a human visceral experience. And I talked about the blood and the shit and the screams and what any birth is like. And tried to imagine hot shep's, it's emotional state when she gave birth to a girl. I can't know any of these things. I say in the text that I don't know any of these things, but I was accused of being universalist, which you take to heart because it means that you're imposing your own scholarly ideals on or present way of living upon the ancient world.And what it instead I am trying to do is to un-fetishize The ancient Egyptians have been wholly separated from us as these people, as Zhi Haas would say. The, most famous egyptologists right now are people of magic and mystery. And, if you're a people of magic and mystery, then you've set them aside and you, don't treat them as we are. They are somehow different.And we do this with the ancient world quite a bit, but particularly with the ancient world, we feel less connected to. We particularize them. We, make the work about that particularism and we demand it. We say that, oh, you can't compare this and that because this is within this space.And these people were of their time and thinking of their time. And then I come up around and say. No, I can use the word harem. I understand it's an oriental imposition. I understand it was created by the Ottoman regime to explain their collection of young women for one man and the intensification of his birth [00:10:00] regime.But I think that the ancient Egyptians had a similar system. Was it different in particularities? Yes. Should I compare it? Yes. Because the same thing is happening to women in both places. and I'm going to take it further because I have a book contracted with Rutledge that I'll be working on later in 2026.That will compare all of these harems to what Epstein created to a, serial monogamy of Donald Trump going from one woman to another to this idea that, or Elon Musk gives us a great example too, right? Where he is creating all of these children, with different women and it is a kind of harem in a sense, and they present their masculine power in late stage patriarchy in that way. I think all of these things can and should be compared.And one of my main points when people accuse me of Presentism is to say that we are them and they are us. That they gave us this patriarchal system. They help create it. There are some of the primary foundational creators of it. We are, it's last recipients. Is it more complicated? Do we have computers now and phones we carry around in our hands, yes, but it's the same system, and if people reject that and think that they have this modern exceptionalism, one would hope that COVID would school them on that one would hope that the difficulties that we're dealing with right now in terms of women's rights and freedoms and, job security and payment would school people on that.But it doesn't, one would think that the way we treat the foreigner, the, nation state boundaries, I mean the, all of these things are in the ancient records. You could compare the Book of Exodus to ice kidnappings and, people saying, oh, they will replace us and white supremacy. There's too many of them, so let's move them aside.And, other people are saying, we need to return to our place of origin. I mean, it's all, there is what I'm saying. The ancient world gave us all of the stories, and we can learn from the past to deal with the extraordinary problems that we're going through. They're not [00:12:00] different. They're not separate. That's, my main point.SHEFFIELD: Other thing is that, saying that ancient people had the same emotions and many of the same social structures or biological needs, it's saying that they were human. That's what it is.COONEY: Yes, it's, that's what it's saying and people, their heads explode. They're like, how dare you? I'm like, so I can't say Egyptians are human. I can't say ancient people are human. That's what they're saying. Yeah. They had shorter lifespans. Yeah. They had diseases we don't have, but I think we're going back to those shorter lifespans in those diseases that we used to not have, and maybe it's time to learn from those things too.SHEFFIELD: And you can see a lot of the mentality, in with regard to diseases or, medicine, with a lot of people's approaches to COVID or vaccines, like they have a genuine mystical worldview of health that it is a spiritual thing rather than a, medical or scientificCOONEY: Interestingly,SHEFFIELD: so it's fair to say, to draw theseCOONEY: It is, but Well, but you're, saying that we don't have that spiritual worldview now, or they knowSHEFFIELD: No, I'm saying someCOONEY: itself. That we do Ah, yes.SHEFFIELD: that some people have it and you can see it, that there's an innate, be, because I mean, the, reality is that, how the brain works or why it works is still a mystery. And so therefore, there's always going to be some inherent there's the, temptation to say, well, there's something magical about us.And then the further back in history you get, the more magical people become. And, this is not helpful.COONEY: No, it's not. And the distrust of the modern medical community, I think is. Real right now for a variety of reasons. That's a different podcast. so it's, it would be good to talk about these things and make ourselves more human and less robotic, less, having to fall into certain parameters.Everyone will lose weight by following this diet or that diet. It's, we're, we need, by looking at the ancient [00:14:00] people as people, I think we can find our own, humanity better that I think we've lost in the modern age, that of the last a hundred years that we have lived through.A brief overview of ancient Egyptian historySHEFFIELD: I think that's a fair point. Yeah. Well, okay, so for people who haven't really read much Egyptian history, tell us, the, major periods here for, so for people, I just want to give them a quick overview so they can have some reference point in what we're talking about here.COONEY: Yeah. We're talking about a land that became the first regional state on the globe about 5,000 years ago, so around 3000 BCE Before Current Era. You can still use BC if you like. I don't really care. They're all arbitrary times. We saw Egypt coalesce into a centralized state with one man ruling it one and that became the first dynasty.You have a proto dynasties before that. You have a pre dynastic. It's a long history before it's complicated. But where I start and where my work starts is really with the centralization of power and with that creation of patriarchal structures in a state capacity. However you define the state, that's also super interesting question to ask because it changes through time.And then you go from that early dynastic period to what we know is the old kingdom, the, time period when the pyramids were built. Third pyramid, third dynasty of the step pyramid built by Djoser fourth dynasty. You have Khufu building the Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau, old Kingdom Falls. And you have the First Intermediate Period, which is the first time of civil war crisis collapse economically, socially, environmentally.That then re coalesces in a bigger form. Every time it collapses, it becomes more complicated as it re coalesces. You could argue that's a truth for all of humans on the planet until now. We can, get to that. But you have the Middle Kingdom, then as Egyptologists call it, dynasties 11, [00:16:00] 12 and 13.Those that involves kings Senusret III, the third, that might be the, big shot of, that set of dynasties that falls apart with the second intermediate period, which is known as a time of foreign occupation.And that's when the Hyksos come in. So be like 16th century, 17th, 16th century BCE. There was then a coalescing of power in the, what we call the New Kingdom that took its shape in the military expulsion of a group of people called the Hyksos. And they'd set that up, these Theban kings of the 17th and 18th dynasties as a freedom expulsion, a way of making Egypt great again and bringing native power back to Egypt.Yeah. And, then you're in the New Kingdom, which is really a period that most people know. Like even, the people listening to your podcast will be like, oh yeah, I've heard of Thutmose III, I've heard of Hatshepsut, maybe who, ruled with and alongside him I've heard of Ramses the Great, Ramses II, right, of the 19th Dynasty. There, there are known Akhenaten in between right late 18th Dynasty, the man that arguably invented monotheism. His great hymn finds its way into the Psalms of the Hebrew Bible, which is pretty cool. And when the New Kingdom falls apart, you have what's called the Bronze Age collapse, which is very much in the zeitgeist.I think. Eric Klein's book on, on 10 77 BC and the year Civilization collapsed, I think is, important for many people and. That's a period that I really spend a lot of time in. That's where the coffin reuse data is that, that I work on so much. And this 20th to 21st dynasty collapse of society is I feel it. I see it.and I'm always telling my grad students, and anyone who will listen like your listeners, to not try to solve 20th Dynasty problems with 19th Dynasty solutions. So make sure that you're not using an old way to try to deal with [00:18:00] something that is being swept away. These, our systems are crumbling and, they will be replaced by us as we create workarounds and, are exploited and decide not to be exploited.it's a whole thing. but the Bronze Age Collapse is a place that I dwell a lot, and then after that Third Intermediate Period, that's what we call that, that time after the Bronze Age Collapse, you have what's called the late period. You have the 25th Dynasty. When the Nubian Kushite rulers come in and rule Egypt for 100 years. And then 26 Dynasty, which is a puppet of the Assyrians who came in and had sacked Egypt.And from that point on, Egypt is very much a, in the control of one empire or another. And you can list those empires off. So you have the Assyrians came in and sacked, and then you get, before it was the Cushite, then the Assyrians.Then, you have a brief foray with the Babylonians. The Persians come in and occupy and set up Atropy, and, they're driven out by Alexander the Great. You have the Ptolemys, it is its own occupation in a sense, and of Macedonian rule.And then after that you have the Romans, and then after that you have Islam, right? There's the Arabians. And, it arguably still continues to some extent to this day by Saudi and UAE, but that's, the history of Egypt in a nutshell.SHEFFIELD: It is. Yes. Very, a very quick tour there. I like it. Yeah, so, and one of the, things. It is interesting though about Egypt as a historical influence is that because the language was not read in the modern era for so long and not read in the medieval era, and that, a lot of people were not aware of just how much influence that it had.And, you can see that that because of that language gap, so many of the popular terms Hyksos itself is a Greek word and like a lot of the pharaohs that, or that people know [00:20:00] of, or like Memphis, that's not the word for it. And, and like, so, so many of our, of of what we think were Egyptian words or names, they're not. And they were known through the Ptolemys primarily.COONEY: I mean those, yeah, those colonial occupiers, those empires that took them over either the Greeks or the Romans. You're exactly right. And that's why, we used Thutmosa, or Thutmoses instead of Djehutymose, right? And if I started writing about Djehutymose III, I think people's heads would rather explode. So I try not to do that.The Exodus narrative and historical evidenceSHEFFIELD: yeah. But at the same time, a lot of cultures also want to insist that they have these links. So, and like we can see that obviously with the Exodus story. And, to this day, I mean, and, there's no record that there were Hebrews in large numbers in Egypt as a population. It didn't seem to have happened--COONEY: Oh, I opinion on that. I have a--SHEFFIELD: I want to, yeah. Well, and I to hear it, like, and like, but, and then, and, but of course the identity of who the Hyksos were, that is kind of one of the, big debates. So, maybe if you can talk, give us some context on that.COONEY: The Egypt is right next to the Levant, the Sinai, pop over, and you're, there. The East Delta is filled with people who have Levantine connections and it always was. And can't be today because there's these big state created blockades and, borders and other things that keep people apart, right.The Gaza border at Rafa being a case in point, but. In the ancient world, you didn't ha you had guarded, manned towers and fortifications and such. But you people, me went back and forth across these borders and you could argue, and that Niv Allon article that you sent me about Seth being Baal, mentions that the Ramesside kings associated themselves [00:22:00] very much with the Levite world were of from the Eastern Delta and, were named Seth, right?Seti the first, his name is the one of Seti or the one of Seth, and he is associated with a Levantine past. He's Egyptianized, that's a scarer word, but we'll, touch that third rail and use that word. Right now he's egyptianized, but he's still bringing in a Levantine self. So the Hebrews being a people that are not noted in any large numbers, that is correct. Right.There are no Israelites being mentioned. The, first mention of Israel is on the Meesa, and it's him going to them, right? Not them coming to him, but he does talk about bringing live captives back from all of these places. So it, it seems that there's a cultural unification of what it means to be Israelite or Hebrew happening vis-a-vis another place, which my colleague, and UCLA alumna, Danny Candor, describes really well with a comparison to Italian immigrants.Italian immigrants who came over in the 19th and early 20th century to the United States, thought of themselves as an Napolitan or a person from Sicily, or a person from Abru, abso, or something like that. When they came to the United States, then they were Italian. Right, and you have this centralization of what it means to be Italian.You could argue that Egypt created that for the Levantine person of the highlands at least, and created this idea of a Judean or Israelite ethnic or cultural identity that then helps to, place them within their own cultural milieu. But it is created vis-a-vis another. It's Egypt that's the grindstone that sharpens that ethnic identity.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well,COONEY: there were tons of Levite people in short, so there, there were, they were there and they're named. And, but this, is a [00:24:00] story of, them then leaving, right? So it's a, and that story being of the state being diminished and that's also there. It's happening in real time.The Bronze Age, col, it's in the Bronze Age Collapse. Egypt is being diminished. Its army is literally being swallowed. In a sense. Pharaoh is making boneheaded decisions that no one can figure out. People are trying to square why this is happening in their minds. How could the greatest state of the ancient world collapse like this?It has to be something supernatural. This is a way of understanding that Bronze Age collapse.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, that's why, the, Exodus narrative, it is important as a, anthropological self story. But you know, it's, and I, think for people that, they might have of a sort of, they might have a more secular interpretation of the Bible, and they're saying, well, these stories are probably not true.But, the, you guys actually know that that, there wasn't a large people that suddenly left. There were these plagues, like they're not documented. And, but it doesn't mean that there weren't Canaanites.COONEY: But there, the plagues are, I mean, from my perspective, the plagues are a way of explaining the diminishment of Egypt. And Egypt was horribly diminished from the 20th into the 21st and 22nd dynasty. So that it's, a, it's analog set of analogies to understand how this worked. And in the, you could also argue, and there does seem to be push-back against people from the Levant.There are some texts that talk about a distrust of people from the Levant of people with Semitic names of people that they don't [00:26:00] necessarily want there anymore. And there is evidence that when Egypt is thus diminished, that a lot of people go on the move and leave and go to other places, maybe return to a homeland that, serve them better. They still have connections with, so there's to say, oh, we know it's not true. I wouldn't say that. I think it's absolutely true in describing a larger human process, but within a moment, a story creates a moment.But we're talking about a process that took two, 300 years. So if you look at it from that perspective, it's, allSHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. But going back to what you were saying about we don't really fully know the motivations or the, veracity of anything these people say. That's what you have to think about with this story as well, because that. It means that there may, that there was something, there were periods where people were moving in and out in large numbers of Egypt.And so, there might be something there, and this may be multiple stories combined into one.so like the hio obviously, where's the second intermediate period? And you're talking about the third. So, like, and that's the, that is the, problem of historical documentation in the ancient world is that everybody has their own agenda.The, knowledge of what was happening was so imperfect much more worse than now. And we'll talk about Mormonism in a second, when I was growing up as a fundamentalist Mormon, I would always hear people say, oh, there's always so many, so much more disasters and famines.Now this is a sign that Jesus is coming back. And eventually as I got more aware of the world and technology, I would say, well, how do we know that's just not us becoming more aware of things that were always there. And they would say, well, don't talk about that, Matt.COONEY: I mean, but, and don't get me wrong, Egyptologists right now do not touch the Exodus. They don't want to, by and large, they don't want to think of it as a story that has kernels of truth in it, [00:28:00] because we are still a product of the modern secular world view. And that the person who tries to prove the Exodus as a historical truth is like seen of as a 1920s William Flinders Petrie type, and we're not going to do that.and so we now avoid connecting these stories to truth. Not every Egyptologist does that, but it's not something that people who study the third intermediate period in the Bronze Age collapse or not necessarily using the Exodus as a historical source.SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. And,COONEY: an impression.The fall of civilizations and modern parallelsCOONEY: It's like, how could it happen? People are like, how could this happen? How could Egypt fall? How could it happen? And that's, what the story is also trying to answer. And we're discussing the same thing in places like the United States or Britain. It's like, how could this state with so much power and so much money, how could it fall?How could everyone make these boneheaded decisions? Well, we're watching it in real time and we are also writing our own stories about how it could happen. Bringing a supernatural answer to the question, I think it, it helps people to understand what's going on better.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and yeah, and it was, I mean, it's a, it is a natural thing to do,COONEY: Yeah, it is. Certainly is. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: But going back to this idea of, trying to oneself or one's ideas in the ancient past, because that is a natural human tendency to think. And, we see it now, with people saying, oh, well, my, scam medicine that I'm selling, ivermectin or whatever, that it's, it, was sold in the, in, it, comes from ancient China, or ancient India, or, like, so this idea that things that are old are more true, this is a very pervasive narrative.when, and, it's a, it is dangerous because it, the, entire f. Achievement of society is to have done things that are not natural. Like medicine is not natural. Like having having living in a city and having sanitation, these are [00:30:00] unnatural things. So that's not a good argumentagainst ipsoCOONEY: know because I read just recently about, I can't remember if it was a gorilla or a chimpanzee, but I think it was a gorilla who was, had a, skin infection and used a leaf of a plant and rubbed it on themselves. And that was to heal the infection. And they knew what plant to use and it was a repeated thing.And so it's pretty damn natural for a gorilla to go out and find a, tree leaf or a plant leaf, put it on an A wound and try to do something with it. We are still, this is the other thing what's natural. We are natural, we are products of this world which makes the computers we work with a product of this world too.So a lot of these separations we make between natural and unnatural are also hugely problematic. But yes. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, well, and that is my point, that our reason and our faculties and our cooperation, those are natural things. And so when we, make a medicine like a COVID vaccine or something like that, these are natural products. And so, and they're not any less natural than somebody who has a poultice that, know, that there, that some ancient tribe had discovered was effective on a certain malady, like are all natural.COONEY: Yeah. I think you're right that this idea of natural versus unnatural is brought in when really it's about restriction and boundaries of the one that you have to buy or you have to have a PhD to know how to make, or you have to work in a lab or the poultice that you can grab from a tree and get an essential oil and put on and do by yourself at home.And so there's also a, social liberation in involved with this, that becomes that much more challenging for people who are in the halls of power saying, well, no, you can't do this, you can't do that. Which is why ivermectin took off, right? Because people are like, well, I can get this, I can get this myself.It's meant for animals. It's, I mean, I can order off of Amazon or whatever. And they did. As opposed to the COVID shots, which were very hard to get at the beginning, if you remember. And people didn't know what was in them and who made them and what, there was a lot ofSHEFFIELD: And they didn't explain it[00:32:00]COONEY: no, they didn't.They really didn't. There's a reason that we distrust our, medical community, and I think that needs to be discussed by them internally. But but yeah. I see your, point.Mormonism's Book of Abraham and Egyptian loreSHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, so, but in, so, the idea though, that, again, like people trying to root their culture or their religion within Egypt. And Mormonism obviously is the best example of this that, so, so for, just as a review for people who are not, super famili fresh on this stuff that, so Mormonism, in addition to the Book of Mormon that is more famous, that they have, they have a couple of other smaller books, one of which is called the Book of Abraham.And that book was said to be a translation of some papyri that Joseph Smith bought from a guy who had, long chain of custody. Somebody had stolen it in one of Napoleon's soldiers had stolen it out of a grave in Egypt and was selling stuff or giving it away as they got back. And, and eventually he came into the hands of the Mormons.And, Joseph Smith said that these papyri, he had translated them and that they were the literal writings of Abraham. And that he had some other ones that were the writings of Joseph from the Bible as well. And that. That's, for me as somebody who wa was a very fundamentalist Mormon, it gave Mormonism a magical truth to me.And I took a college class and in Egyptology and I was so excited that the professor, I knew he, that he was going to talk about the Book of Abraham. And then about halfway through the course, I realized, oh, he's not going to talk because he doesn't and like, this is, this Mormonism trying to, has since then, trying the, now we have the papyri, and they're examined they areCOONEY: It's a book of breathing. it's a late Roman period. Book of the Dead, So, Or maybe not Roman [00:34:00] Greco Roman. I'm not sure of the date, but it's late. It's late later than what I work with.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is Ptolemaic for sure. And and, but at the same time, Mormons have been trying to. Try to come up with any possible alternative reading of these documents. And it's, something that every Egyptologist, it's, always there in the background, isn't it?COONEY: It is. And I will say that many people are attracted to Egypt and have been attracted to Egypt. So you can think of Cambyses and the story of him losing his army as he goes to Siwa to try to talk to the oracle. And you can think of Julius Caesar stationing his regiments in Alexandria, and that's where he meets Cleopatra. You can think of Mark Antony as he tries to become the next Alexander the Great. Egypt is a feather in his cap, and it's gotta be one, one step on a long journey to becoming king of the world, literally.And so Egypt seduced many. Egypt has this, and that's what my book The Good Kings, is partly about too, that Egypt has this power to make people think if they get a hold on this, if they can grasp it, if they can somehow own a part of it, that their power will thereby be enhanced.And I think Joseph Smith was, it worked for Napoleon until it didn't. It worked for the British Empire, and they still have many beautiful things in their museum. The Louvre is one of the most in Paris is one of the most amazing exhibition spaces of Egyptian objects in the world. So colonial powers have very much found their ownership of Egypt, their pieces of Egypt to be very important too.So I would put Joseph Smith into that-- into that milieu of time into that white European colonialism because he's just doing what everyone else around him is doing, which is finding ideological power through this antiquity. And he does. He does so and, it works for millions of people and millions of people around the world think that this [00:36:00] ancient Book of the Dead as it had holes in it.So he put in certain things that, that he thought were there rather than what was actually depicted. He misunderstood a scene that shows a man being mummified as a scene of human sacrifice. And there are Mormon Egyptologists who do studies on human sacrifice so that they can, and they can prove that the Egyptians actually did sacrifice that man, that it's not a caretaking of a mummy, it's something else.And. And so right now, it's funny that the modernism, the secularism that drive that Petrie, if you don't know who William Flinders Petrie was, he was essentially an archeologist to prove the Bible true. We went to the Near East, he went to Egypt, he found these ancient cities. He's like, look, the Bible's true. Right?And the last a hundred years, we've had all of these people saying, oh my God, look, the Bible's true. Joseph Smith is. he's holding on to, he's created his own Bible. And now you have a bunch of Mormons who have PhDs in Egyptology who are saying, look, the book of Abraham is true.And when you do that, and then you find the real Book of Abraham, you're able to study the actual thing. You have somebody like Robert Ritner write a, an excoriating a series of chapters about why this isn't, a sacrifice and why it's not what Joseph Smith represents. You're painted into a corner and then you can't use secular modernity to get your way out of it.You have to then use ideology or just lie to people. Just lie. Get your PhD. Say: 'I have a PhD from UCLA, I have a PhD from UPenn." And then you go to people and you say: "I have this PhD. Would I lie to you with this PhD I've been given this by the halls of modernity, the halls of secularism? They granted this thing to me. I'm looking at the same documentation. Those people aren't telling you the truth. I am.'And so now it's like a, they're using the same tools of secular modernity and it's, it is in my [00:38:00] opinion, blowing up in people's faces. But it's interesting to see the conversation evolve in that way.it was one tactic that Mormons and high positions of power obviously tried to do because they helped to fund these send them, send these young men out to, and sometimes women out to different universities to get these scholarly, accutrements and then to go out, back to the Mormon fold. That's where they, exist. They bring them back to Brigham Young or they go to Brigham Young, Hawaii or some place, some temple space.And then they become those people who use their secular modernity, little tokens to say, oh no, this is, actually real. It's actually true. And when somebody like me points out, wait, you're lying. Then, I'm, anti-religious freedom, but it's fine.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Religious neo-orthodoxy and Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation"SHEFFIELD: and, the other thing is that as they've been doing, kind of filtering back they've created what I call Neo Orthodox Mormonism. And we see this also in, with regard to Christian apologetics as well, that essentially, so Susan Sontag had a very famous essay called “Against Interpretation,” which I will put in our show notes for everybody to read.It's an interesting, fascinating essay. And her thesis in the essay is that interpretation is distortion against a text. and it kind of dovetails very nicely actually, Kara, with what you have been saying here. That, so for, her, she says, we, we need to look at literature and, she was doing it in the context of literature, but this makes a hundred percent with regard to all ancient documents because they were all literature, they weren't, they, almost no one was saying they wanted to be a historian or and so, but anyway, so, so for Sontag, when you look at ancient documents or, something that someone else made and you say: 'this is what it really means.' And then you invent your own, version of [00:40:00] it. And that is completely divorced from what they intended. So, in other words, and she traces it with regard to like stoicism trying to reinterpret, various ancient mythologies or the way that, Judaism, evolved to start saying, well, the Bible isn't it wasn't meant to be true.It was really just these metaphorical things and this is what it really means. And the guys who wrote it, ah, they, this is not what they meant. And so, and she's saying, look, you can't do. You need to read ancient documents, how they were intended to be by human beings and what they wanted.And so, and this sort of neo orthodox interpretation of the Book of Abraham is doing the same thing. What they've done is that instead of saying, well, okay, yeah, even though it says in the Book of Abraham that this is, was written by the, by Abraham's own hand, even though it says that, well, it actually wasn't Abraham who wrote that scroll.It was some later Jewish scribes who were just copying it. and they, and and then they've created this other idea that they called a catalyst theory. That Joseph Smith, yes, he got these documents and he thought that they were from Abraham, but God knew that they weren't from him. And, he used the documents in front of Joseph Smith to give him a spiritual interpretation of the Book of And so therefore, there's no conflict, Kara, between the scrolls are just a regular funeral document and the book of Abraham saying all this false history, there's no conflict because it was a catalyst.COONEY: It is extraordinary. I mean, it's almost like you have a spirit guide who's like, no, you're not ready to know that information yet. This is the information you can know, which means it can always change. So it, doesn't, it's a floating narrative that never can be pinned down, but I know Egyptologists who got PhDs in topics [00:42:00] specifically associated with the Book of Abraham, I'm sure to prove it right.as you were thinking when you were a Mormon in, the Egyptian class, you're like, oh, we're going to, you know, I'm going to see how this is right. And these people are people like Kerry Muhlestein, John Gee. They are accepted into the halls of Egyptological power because they're willing to do service.Mormons are really good at service. They roll their sleeves up. They, can do a spreadsheet, they can organize things. Mormons are very good at this. You would agree?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I credit them for that, yeah.COONEY: Yeah. Yeah. So, you're willing to do service that a lot of people in this dying higher education system can't take on. And so you see them running committees and in important positions of power. With an a priori agenda of using that power to further proselytize and or, and, or maybe proselytization is the wrong thing, but to have power over their, the, Mormon population in their community in whatever way. And--SHEFFIELD: To provide an answer. Yeah. No matter how vague it is. To, sorry. To give a, it's just to give an answer. Like, it's what they say would never be convincing to anyone who is not an LDS Mormon. But this father and son duo, they wrote a paper in which they purported to use Bayesian statistical analysis to prove that the Book of Mormon was true.COONEY: I love that. I love that. They should try it on the Bible. They should do that because it's not going to work. But you know this idea of truth T Capital T truth. You know what, is that? I don't, you were asking me how do you use ancient Egyptian sources? We're never going to find a capital T truth for all of this stuff.You're just pa you're just walking around in the dark, feeling around [00:44:00] trying to get the best understanding of the story that you can. And you're not trying to find capital T truth. They're dead, they're gone. It's about us. We're doing it for us. We're not doing it for them. We're doing it so that we can figure out our place in the world.I'm not telling all the historians in the world to go and make up shit because it doesn't matter because it's all about us. No, we're trying to find what kernels of truth exist in this narrative to help us to muddle through the world that we're in now. So, until we get that trusty time machine to go back and even when you're living in the present day and there's been, an Iraq war run by W. Bush.Do you know why? Do you know who started it? Do you know the mechanisms of it? No. It takes years and years to sort all of that out and there will still be disagreement. Oh, it was because of this. Oh, it was because of that. So even when you live in the actual space and time of where the history is occurring all around you, it doesn't mean that you can parse it out with any capital T truth. We humans are messy. It doesn't exist.Akhenaten's religious revolutionSHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And, but it is nonetheless true that the ancient Egyptian cultures and religious practices and beliefs absolutely did have a lot of in the ancient world. And, you mentioned Akhenaten maybe give us let's come, back to him in that regard.COONEY: Yeah. So we're dealing with the mid 14th century, BCE 1300s. He, ruled for about 17 years. That's the highest reign date that we have for him. He was not the first choice of his father. Amad Tip III, it seems there was another son by the name Thutmose who was preferred. He dies for whatever reason.Maybe there was plague, maybe there wasn't. But this. Akenna-- this man, Ahmenhotep was his name. He was the fourth of the Ahmenhoteps. He becomes king as an adult, not as a child like his father, Ahmenhotep III, not like a [00:46:00] a possible usurper like Thutmose IV, his grandfather. But as a full fledged adult and one who seems to have been steeped in solar religion for whatever reason, in whatever way was he a priest of Atum Re at Heliopolis? Maybe some suspect he had a part to play there.But as soon as he hits the ground as king, he starts running towards this solar theology that his father had already started. But he tries to perfect and propagate to some extent, but really it's more about the perfection of it.He's not interested in a grassroots spreading of the word necessarily. He's interested in a communication of his message and getting that message right, even if it doesn't bring along followers. he wasn't interested in creating followers. He didn't make this a religion that was a happy, fuzzy, inclusive connection to God.The connection was to him and his wife and the royal family. he told people explicitly that he and his wife, but particularly him, were the only ones who understood God. But he was the first one to really sit down with his pen and papyrus, and whether he wrote it himself or he dictated, he's trying to understand what divinity is, how it works, what it sources, and how.One then. Works with it, how it connects to the earth and the solar aspects are, prioritized. He includes the earth and the rain and the other natural elements, but it's very much a naturalistic present moment, philosophy of life and death. But, he, his, creation is definitely still reverberating today.And you could argue that what he created found its way, it certainly found its way into later Egyptian [00:48:00] philosophizing of religion and others who are religious scholars who have written much more on this than I, and much better obviously, Jan Asman eor. Both of them deceased but ha have written amazing things.But he affected how Egypt thought about God and moved them towards a monotheistic way of seeing divinity so that they could write a text like, ray is the face pat is the body, and almond is the, oh, I'm not getting it right. is somehow the spirit of it. But you, put all God into one and they actually say, all Gods are one.And then they, divide how, it works. And it's embarrassing that I can't get it right here. I'll, I could find it. But what he said also made its way into the Psalms. Psalm 104 scholars argue is a phrase for phrase connection to the great hymn of the Aten. and that's Akhenaten’s contribution.there's later Egyptian contributions from wisdom text that find their way into the proverbs and other things. But Egypt is always there in the creation of. Of Biblical wisdom. And biblical wisdom also finds its, or many of its stories, find their origins in ancient near Eastern tropes that go back millennia.Right. So it's, a collection of a, of ancient world material that works for these people called they, who called themselves the Israelites, among other things. But, yeah, Akhenaten is there. He haunts the discourse in a very interesting way. Joseph Smith would've loved him Too bad. he didn't really know about him.SHEFFIELD: He hadn't got to it yet.COONEY: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And just as a just as a little historical or philological note that, he literally changed his name to a—COONEY: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: honorific to other [00:50:00] gods to, of the Aten, the solar disc, which—COONEY: Yeah. AtenSHEFFIELD: Specifically a god—COONEY: He kind of, it's complicated. So, people discuss this, but in his year five, he moves his capital, his capitals were Memphis Helios and Thieves. And he moves to this out in the middle of nowhere place in middle Egypt, very remote and starts a new capital city. And at that point, he changes his name, but he had already given his God the Aten, that is the physical manifestation of the sun in the sky.A set of kingly names, contained in cartes, those long ovals with a little lion at the bottom that signifies the solar circuit. And he also, auten has his names in cartouches. So it's Don Redford who said that. That Anaan lowered the level of divinity and raised the level of kingship. I think it's a reasonable way of looking at it, but it's also, he's somehow taking the humanity away from God by taking the anthropomorphizing out.There's no hawkhead man, God that represents the son anymore, but he's trying to humanize the God in our terms, in terms of rule and, kingship that maintains Maat and things like that. So tho that those elements are, there, it's, not always clear what Okana was trying to do, but because he's changing things throughout his reign, you can tell that he's dissatisfied with some of his first attempts and.And he changes them like the name, he includes the name of the God, Ray Harti and the first attestation of the name he creates, or that is channeled to him or he receives whatever for the Aten. And he's not satisfied with that. He's like, no, the, there is only one. We can't use Ra Harti in here. I can't use the name of the God's shoe, the for light filled air, so I need [00:52:00] something else.And then he removes those elements and he's constantly trying to perfect what it is that he sees as God.SHEFFIELD: Yeah,it was like the a theologian very clearly I think we couldCOONEY: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. Very muchThe Ma'at goddess and wisdom traditionsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, now you mentioned Maat, that was, that's something I, is another big influence culture. I think and, one, but one that's not as nearly well known. Like people, I think a lot of people have some idea about Akhenaten, and monotheism.But Maat is much less famous. But even though to the Egyptians, that principle and the goddess who represented it—they were central. Tell us about Maat.COONEY: Maat is balance, truth, justice. We even have a hard time defining it. Ask five Egyptologists what Maat is and you will certainly get five different answers. And it's not something that you can easily pin down. And I think it's purposefully so, right? When you ask somebody what's justice, it's, not going to be easy to, it's like, well, what's right?Well, what's right for whom? In, in what circumstance? When you say law and order to a white CEO of a rich company, he's going to be like, yes, law and order. I like that. When you say law and order to a disenfranchised black person in East Baltimore, they're going to have a very different perspective of what law and order means to them, right?I think I have the same hesitations with Maat. I, understand that she's there as a divinity an element of that needs to exist. We need balance in the world. you don't want to have everything imbalanced and even, the more we learn about quantum mechanics or, [00:54:00] and I'm no specialist in physics, but you see that things are out balance and they try to come back into balance, right? Out balance, but then they need to come back into balance and there's this constant attempt to, find some sort of balance.That is something that a society needs. You can't have people running around lawless. However, when you have the concept of Maat and it, I'm not exactly clear on when it, this word was first written down.I would suspect the pyramid texts 2,400 BCE, but may find a verbal origin before that. But I suspect the concept of Maat is much older. I can't prove it. but let's say that it goes back to 4,000, 5,000 BCE, that there was this word, right? But when you create an unequal social system in which a few men are able to hoard and exploit and control a massive population, and contain them as shareholders and take, a massive pro part of their proceeds and just have the, this.I mean, Egypt is a top down society. Egypt is a still is. But in the ancient world, we think of it as this, as the top down society par excellence, the king gets what he wants and everyone bows down in gravels, right? It's that idea of a God king. As soon as you create that social inequality, and this would be around 3000 BCE, 3,500 BCE took some time for that to develop, right?But then you have to co-op the idea of Maat and, here's where I'm conflicted about the term, because I think our neurological human brain implicitly understands what balance and fairness means.SHEFFIELD: Animals have that.COONEY: Yes, exactly. Like if they've proven that if you take some snacks and you give it to a bunch of birds or, a bunch of chimpanzees and you give one a whole bunch to one and nothing to the others, they'll freak [00:56:00] out. It's not fair, it's not right. And when you're feeding the ducks, don't you try to like be fair to which ducks are getting what? But anyway, that's, maybe that's my game, but, our neurons understand what Maat is. Our 250,000 year old human brain understands that. But as soon as you develop the agricultural revolution or the domestic revolution, herding or farming, and you develop the social inequality that goes along with that for men, for women, with regards to men, for children with regards to adults for the disabled, with regards to the able bodied for the, non-binary sexually regards to the, with regards to the binary who can associate with the binary.As soon as you create that with the agricultural domestic revolution. Maad has to be co-opted. Maad has to be changed. And that's your conundrum. That's why the Egyptians wrote and wrote about it. That's why Y Oman's book is like this damn thick. because he can't figure it out because you're dealing with a concept that is co-opted.Every time a new king takes power, every time an elite man says, I get the big house because I inherited it, And you have to grovel before me because, so we lie to ourselves constantly about what law and order are, and we're constantly confused by it because it doesn't jive with who we are as humans. And that's exactly what I think we're going through right now. We are going through an anti patriarchal revolution. The earth isn't getting bigger. We're not going to be able to have another coalescing into an ever larger, more complex patriarchal scheme that gets more stuff to distribute to the, their lieutenants, because there's no more earth to go around.She's, given all, it's like the giving tree. She's like there as the stump. She's like, what do you want from me? I'm done. And, so given that reality, we either figure out a real Maat, like universal income and like AI is going to help us with that one too. But we're going to either figure out a real income, or we're, or real Maat, or we're going to, we're going [00:58:00] to perish as a human species.And it's a, it's damn, but it's an interesting time to be alive. But Maude is, it's, yeah, I know you're trying to go to the biblical part of it, and ISHEFFIELD: Oh, well, no,COONEY: butSHEFFIELD: It's more, it's bigger than that. But Yeah. I do want to come back to what you're saying though. But yeah, just real quick, like the idea though of, because I mean, Maat, it was both a principle and also a goddess, and there's no certainty as to which came first or whether they were the same regarded as the same exact thing.And it's all very, not undefined. basically it was what you, it was, you believed it when you knew it when you saw it.COONEY: Yeah, I mean, Maa and Maat, when you add a T to something in the Egyptian language, you nominalize it. So you take an adjective that is balanced, right? Something's balanced, something's fair, and then you say It is what is fair. It is what is balanced. You've added the T. And when you add a tea, you're also feminizing.So there's Amun, the God of hiddenness, and then there's is his female counterpart, Ammunet, right? And, so when you take Maa, what is fair, and you add the T, Maat, it is that, which is fair. You can then take a feminine divinity or a feminine avatar, as I know you like that word to encapsulate the concept of what it is. Is she a goddess? There's not any temples built to Maat.She doesn't really do anything. She doesn't have sex with anyone. She's not married to anyone. She doesn't have any sort of divine family. She's more of a concept. She's a concept. She's like a thing, an idea.And, so there, it's, even more complicated. And, Ana uses this word to go back to Ana. He's like, wait, she's, he's asking exactly what you're asking. He's like, is she a goddess? Is she not? And you know what his solution [01:00:00] was? He used the word Maat and would have the little. Figure of the divine woman after it when he first had his text done.And then he is like, no, we can't include the figure of the woman, the figure of the goddess. And he had his chisel bearers go and erase that image of her as a goddess and only keep the phonetics of the word Maa. And so for him, that distinction was very real. He was like, no, we can't have it personified.It's not divinized, it's just an idea. Because all di that is divine is of the Aten. All that is divine is of the sun God for him. So he even, he had some problems with that. But that doesn't mean that the idea of Maat didn't then spread out to other parts of the world and become subsumed into other people's philosophies that are better preserved to us, as you say. And the Egyptian origination texts are not, and so we think of it as, as something that is Greek or Roman or, or something else.SHEFFIELD: Or like Ḥokhmáh as the consort of, God as wisdom. And some, and, even, but even Ḥokhmáh is, she's very, also very ill-defined. In Judaism, in classical Judaism, what is Ḥokhmáh Is she God? Is she a part of God? What is, who the hell is she? No one knows.COONEY: So what is, balance for whom? Because the Egyptians grapple with that too. it's tough. I, think that one of the main problems with, did the Egyptians, I, create the idea of Maat, or truth or justice or whatever that is. I think that any culture, any human being anywhere inherently knows what's fair.And I think we've proven that-- cognitive scientists have proven that, right. But. And so I don't think you need to have a, an idea of fairness than being diffused around the world. However, if that idea of fairness takes a feminine principle and is there depicted as a [01:02:00] goddess, then I would go, Ooh, maybe the Egyptians did have something to say about how this was, how this concept, that concept of the feminine element of fairness was transferred. So that, that's I think where a lot of the main debate goes for the Egyptologists at least.SHEFFIELD:Universal human understanding of fairnessSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And let's, maybe end here by circling back to what you were saying about, just the idea of balance, of justice, of fairness. This is a universal human need and a universal human knowledge. We all know what's right. We all know what's fair. We all know that, the some guy getting up into, like Donald Trump apparently is putting posters of himself in Washington, dc at while having soldiers patrolling the streets.Like everyone knows that these things are wrong. We know it in, in who we are and, our history and in our cognition. And, and, I'm reminded what you were saying earlier, it reminded me of that line from, from WH Auden where he said that:Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police.We must love one another or die.And that's, I think that's, that is the theme kind of that you're, you are reaching toward here. And we were talking about it in our pre-discussion here. But I think that's, I think that's what we're talking about here, is that right.COONEY: Yeah, I think that's beautiful and I think that everything that. These systems have co-opted, whether it's a goddess of great power and strength like Hathor, or Isis, or Kali, or Durga in the Indian system, but Hathor and Isis, of course, Egyptian or Maat these, beautiful things when they're co-opted or in the Mormon situation, right? You take a, a text about re-creation after death and rebirth [01:04:00] also a beautiful concept of how do you deal with death? How do you face that mortality and, find a way through it? When they're co-opted, where some people get it and other people don't. Then it subverts all of it. And I think that these things have gone on long enough where we have all of those apologists saying, no, but let's parse it. Let's interpret it a particular way. It doesn't mean it exactly this, but not that.But really, I think you're right. it comes down to our care for each other and, and where that, authentic balance is to be found because it's not in this social system that we're living in now. It wasn't in the social system of Ramses II, it wasn't in the social system of Akhenaten.It is this constant search that people are trying to find for perfection. It's not in the domesticated sphere of farming or, herding. Those exploit and abuse too many people. What is it? That's what we're all asking. What is it? And that's why we're looking to the past. what did they do? How, did they.Solve this and we need to look further back. A shaman once told me that we need to remember what we have forgotten and forget what we think we know. And that's, kind of everything. So all of the systems that we, oh, we think we know this. Oh, this is how you solve disease. Oh, this is how you deal with psychological distress.Oh, this is how you deal with whatever. We, none of it's working. None of these systems are, working for us, whether it's education, or mental health, or healthcare or retirement accounts that we can go on. How do we care for ourselves and each other going forward? The answers are very different from the system we have now.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And they have to come from inside of all of us. It isn't one person talking or another person listening. It has to be dialogic.COONEY: Yeah.ConclusionSHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, all right, well, I think that's a good place to end it. We could definitely do [01:06:00] this much longer, but I, but well, we'll, we will save that for another time for us.But so, so, you we're going to be including your podcast in the Flux Podcast Network. So tell, us about it so we can look for it here.COONEY: Yeah. I have a podcast called Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, and we host it on a Substack platform. So if you search my name, Kara Cooney on Substack. you can find all of the episodes there, but you can also listen to it on Apple or Spotify or wherever you, listen to your podcasts and it's me with two co-hosts, Jordan Galczynski and Amber Myers, and we talk about everything ancient and try to make a connection to the modern world and why it matters, and what's, I, just made I'm making wine right now because my husband planted a merlott grapevine that's gone gangbusters after four years.And so we just did an episode we just recorded, haven't released an episode on wine making in the ancient world. So that was fun. But whatever we, feel the spirit to talk about, we release probably every two weeks or so. And I'm also on Substack where I just released a screed about my displeasure with how scholars, Egyptological scholars of women in power, have tried to create this positivist narrative of girl bossing and it pisses me off. So I had some things to say about that, and you can find all of that on yeah, on Substack and, wherever you listen to your podcast. So it's called Afterlives of Ancient Egypt.SHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good. All right. Well, it's been great. Great discussion, Kara. I'm glad we had it.COONEY: Thank you, Matthew. Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun.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 are a paid subscribing member, you get unlimited access to the archives and I thank you very much for your [01:08:00] support.You can join the show on Patreon or on Substack. We have free options as well. If you want the Patreon option, just go to patreon.com/discover Flux. And then you can subscribe on Substack if you go to Flux Community. So thank you very much for that. If you are able to do so, and if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode or a clip.That would be great as well. All right, so that'll do it for this one. I'll 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