Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyLast week, televangelist, businessman, conspiracy theorist, and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson died at the age of 93. Though mostly known today for his deranged comments about homosexuality, abortion, feminism, and other "sins" causing everything from natural disasters to 9-11, Robertson had a major influence on the evolution of the Republican Party and the religious right. Where did Robertson come from, and what was distinctive about Robertson's theological and political views? What were the innovations of the Christian Coalition, the group he founded in 1987, in organizing conservative believers for the GOP? How did he respond to the end of the Cold War and adapt his message for the 1990s and the supposed advent of a "New World Order"?In this episode, Matt and Sam take up these questions and more, plus offer a discussion of James G. Watt, Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, who died in late May. An evangelical Christian known for railing against the Beach Boys, his offensive comments about Native Americans and others, and using the supposed imminent return of Christ to justify destroying the environment.Sources:Pat Robertson obituaries: NYT, Washington PostJames G. Watt obituaries: NYT, Washington PostDaniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (2016)Jacob Heilbrunn, "His Anti-Semitic Sources," New York Review of Books, April 20, 1995Pat Robertson, The New World Order (1991)James Conaway, "James Watt, In the Right with the Lord," Washington Post, April 27, 1983John Taylor "Pat Robertson’s God, Inc." Esquire, Nov 1994.

"Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling," Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said at the National Conservatism conference in 2021. "And that's not just a crisis for men. It's a crisis for the republic." Some version of this sentiment — that men are in trouble, adrift, or falling behind — is shared by writers and thinkers across the political spectrum. It's nearly impossible to open a magazine without finding an article about the state of manhood in America. Brookings Institution scholar Richard Reeves' 2022 book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It is a best-seller. Figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate attract huge audiences, serving as reactionary self-help gurus for young people eager to be told what a man is and how he should behave. One doesn't have to accept the right's framing of the problem — nor any kind of gender essentialism — to acknowledge the statistics: boys and men are falling behind in education, in work-force participation, and succumbing to drugs, alcoholism, and suicide. Hawley — apparently having stewed on the topic for two years — has just released a book on "manhood," which advises a revival of biblical virtues to guide the aimless young men of 21st century America. To pair with Hawley, we  read Harvey Mansfield's 2006 book on "manliness." Putting Hawley's evangelical Christian preaching in conversation with Mansfield's Straussian philosophical playfulness proved very constructive. Along the way, we talk about our own relationship to manhood and try to decide which (if any) of the virtues associated with maleness are worth preserving, defending, or even advising young men to embrace. Further reading: Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness, Yale University Press, 2006.Joshua Hawley, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, Regnery, 2023. Joshua Hawley, "America's Epicurean Liberalism," National Affairs, Fall 2010.Becca Rothfeld, "How to be a man? Josh Hawley has the (incoherent) answers," The Washington Post, May 18, 2023.  Phil Christman, "What Is It Like to Be a Man?" Hedgehog Review, Summer 2018.Martin Amis, "Return of the Male," London Review of Books, Dec 5, 1991. Martha Nussbaum, "Man Overboard," New Republic, June 22, 2006. Idrees Kahloon, "What's the Matter With Men?" The New Yorker, Jan 23, 2023.Zoë Heller, "How Toxic Is Masculinity?" The New Yorker, Aug 1, 2022. Lisa Miller, "Tate-Pilled What a generation of boys have found in Andrew Tate’s extreme male gospel." New York Magazine, Mar 14, 2023. ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyMatt and Sam take the pulse of the 2024 presidential race: Is DeSantis already doomed? Does Trump still have the juice? Can Biden handle a full campaign schedule? And how do you solve a problem like Kamala?The answers to these questions and more! Enjoy some rank punditry!SourcesNate Cohn, "Why Ron DeSantis Is Struggling," New York Times, May 5, 2023Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan, "Why Ron DeSantis Is Limping to the Starting Line," New York Times, May 13, 2023Reid J. Epstein & Shane Goldmacher, "Biden’s Slow Start Worries Democrats. Aides Insist All Is Well," New York Times, May 14, 2023Sam Adler-Bell, "The One Thing Trump Has That DeSantis Never Will," New York Times, Apr 10, 2023Matthew Sitman, "The 'Weekend at Bernie’s' Primary," Commonweal, Mar 3, 2020.

With the Writers Guild of America strike underway, the plight of television writers—especially their treatment in the age of streaming and artificial intelligence—is garnering new, and overdue, attention. Matt and Sam are joined by two friends of the podcast, Will Arbery and Dorothy Fortenberry, who write for major television shows: Will is a writer for HBO's Succession, and Dorothy for Apple TV+'s Extrapolations. They discuss how they write about political topics and themes, such as rightwing political candidates or the effects of climate change, in these fraught times, when the demands of good art can seem in tension with a simplistic and moralistic culture. Also discussed: parents, children, and families, now and in the coming climate crisis; how and whether people can change; and, of course, the WGA strike and why it matters.Sources Cited:Michael Schulman, "Why Are TV Writers So Miserable," The New Yorker, Apr 29, 2023Alex Press, "TV Writers Say They’re Striking to Stop the Destruction of Their Profession," Jacobin, May 3, 2023.Sam Adler-Bell, "Succession's Repetition Compulsion," The Nation, Nov 10, 2021.Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (“On Care for Our Common Home”), May 2015Listen to previous Know Your Enemy episodes with these guests:"We Can Be Heroes" (w/ Will Arbery), November 11, 2019"Suburban Woman" (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry), October 29, 2020"Living at the End of Our World" (w/ Daniel Sherrell & Dorothy Fortenberry), September 2, 2021...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyThe boys discuss Matt's recent Dissent essay on the 845-page report of the "Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol." What did the Jan 6 report — and the committee's work — achieve? Was the report a missed opportunity? How should political actors navigate the relationship between historical constraints and contingency? And is there a way to wed the Democrats' eagerness to "defend democracy," as such, with a more robust program for social and economic justice? We puzzle it out.Sources:Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, Apr 18, 2023.Jill Lepore, "What the January 6th Report is Missing," The New Yorker, Jan 9, 2023.David Sirota, "The Long American Meltdown Led to the January 6 Insurrection" Jacobin, Jan 6, 2022Sam Adler-Bell, "Is the January 6 Committee Really Saving Democracy?" New York Magazine, Jul 11, 2022.Executive Summary of the Jan 6 Report

Gillian Branstetter (of the ACLU's Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project) returns to Know Your Enemy for an episode on the strange case of Ron DeSantis: what is his ideology and vision for America? And why do his political aspirations involve inflicting wanton cruelty upon LGBTQ children and adults in his home state? For our sins, we read DeSantis's new book — a campaign book, though he has not yet formally announce his presidential run —  The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival. (You heard it here: it sucks.) Along the way, Gillian provides an update on the conservative war on so-called "gender ideology" and "wokeness," how organizations like hers are fighting back, and why superficial expressions of sympathy for trans people by major corporations and banks — which so outrage the right — are themselves a trap and a means of evading real justice.  We also discuss Sam's New York Times piece on DeSantis as an anti-woke technocrat, an embodiment of the twin cults of expertise and meritocracy, even as he disavows and demonizes the "ruling class" and it's irksome cultural mores. Finally, we identify the violent underpinnings of DeSantis's political impulses, discussing his alleged involvement in detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay. As Gillian summarizes DeSantis's worldview, “It’s just cold efficiency and shared enemies. That’s what he’s selling. It’s like getting a moral lecture from a gun."  Sources:Gillian Branstetter, "The Gender War Is A Forever War," The Autonomy, Mar 5, 2023.— "When Biology Needs Some Help," The Autonomy, Feb 9, 2023.Ron DeSantis, The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival, Feb 2023Sam Adler-Bell, "The One Thing Trump Has That DeSantis Never Will," NY Times, Apr 10, 2023.Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley, Oct 2020.Zack Beauchamp, "Ron DeSantis is following a trail blazed by a Hungarian authoritarian," Vox, Apr 28, 2022. Angelo Codevilla, "America's Ruling Class," The American Spectator, Jul 16, 2010. Jasper Craven, "The Sunshine Imperium: The militarism of Ron DeSantis," The Baffler, Mar 2023.Daniel Luban, "The Belligerent: Angelo Codevilla and the ideological origins of the New Right," The Baffler, Oct 2022. Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, Jul 2019.Joseph Darda, The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism, Mar 2022. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, "Identity Politics and Elite Capture," Boston Review, May 7, 2020.Michael Kranish, "DeSantis’s pivotal service at Guantánamo during a violent year," Washington Post, March 19, 2023....and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!   

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyThe great Sam Tanenhaus (author of Whittaker Chambers: A Biography) returns to the podcast for a spirited and gossipy discussion of everything we missed — or only briefly mentioned — in our main episode on Chambers, including: his religious faith, his sexuality, his ideological position in the National Review crowd, Hannah Arendt's review of Witness, and much more.Plus: we extract from Sam Tanenhaus an update on the status of his HIGHLY-anticipated biography of William F. Buckley Jr... This one is for real heads. Enjoy!

"That’s the problem with a lot of things these days," wrote Bob Dylan in 2022, "Everything is too full now; we are spoon-fed everything. All songs are about one thing and one thing specifically, there is no shading, no nuance, no mystery. Perhaps this is why music is not a place where people put their dreams at the moment; dreams suffocate in these airless environs." This mournful attitude — for a lost age of artfulness, mystery, and hope — pervades Dylan's 2022 book, Philosophy of Modern Song. In this sense, it's a quintessentially conservative book. But decline and nostalgia are not its only themes.  In short bursts of prose reflecting on sixty-six totemic songs (from Webb Pierce's 1953 hit "There Stands the Glass;" to The Fugs' 1967 proto-punk romp "CIA Man;" to Nina Simone's unimpeachable "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"), Dylan conjures a country — and canon — defined most of all by mutability, motion, and menace.  Dylan's America never stops moving, reinventing itself, or rebelling against its own strictures. Things get better; things get worse; what they don't do is stay the same. To help us make sense of Bob Dylan's idiosyncratic vision of America and American song, we're joined by Know Your Enemy musician-in-residence (and Bob super-fan) Will Epstein. Besides providing the music for our show, Will is a song-writer, composer, and improvisor; his latest album, WENDY, is out from Fat Possum records. (Download it or buy the vinyl here.) Music may not be the place where most people put their dreams these days, but it's still where we put ours. And there is no better way to understand America's dreams than by listening — closely — to its music.  Sources:Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022)Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One (2005)Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America (2010)Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited (2003)Martin Chilton, "Bob Dylan and the Great American Songbook," May 24, 2022Raymond Foye, "Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song," The Brooklyn Rail, Nov. 2022.Hua Hsu, "How Nam June Paik’s Past Shaped His Visions of the Future," The New Yorker, Mar 29, 2023.John Szwed, Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith, coming Aug 2023....and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy In the second (and final) of Matt's Lent-related conversations with theologians, he's joined by Dr. Nichole M. Flores of the University of Virginia, where she is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and researches the constructive contributions of Catholic and Latinx theologies to notions of justice and aesthetics to the life of democracy. This conversation focuses on her recent book, The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy, and considers the promise and perils of using particular religious symbols, imagery, and language in a pluralistic, democratic society. Sources:Nichole M. Flores, The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy (2021)

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy This conversation is the first of two that Matt recorded to be released during Lent, the forty-day season when Christians prepare for Easter Sunday by fasting and giving of their time and treasure to those in need. This episodes features Catholic theologian and Emory University professor Dr. Susan Bigelow Reynolds discussing her new book, People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury. In the book, she draws on years of ethnographic research about St. Mary of the Angels, a small, urban parish near Boston's Egleston Square, to understand how that religious community "constructed rituals of solidarity as a practical foundation for building radical solidarity in the face of racial and economic injustice."  Sources:Susan Bigelow Reynolds, People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (2023)Susan Bigelow Reynolds, "Ways of the Cross," Commonweal, March 14, 2023