Keen On Democracy

The 2025 Trump was supposed to be a more refined version of the 2017 original. But according to National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn, Trump 2.0 has fizzled into Trump 0.2. 2025 will be remembered, Heilbrunn argues, as the beginning of the end of Trump's authoritarian aspirations. MAGA has fractured, the administration is incompetent, and Trump himself is running what Heilbrunn calls an "absentee landlord" presidency. And things, Heilbrunn predicts, are only going to get worse. In 2026, he suspects, there will be a serious economic downturn—even an AI-triggered 1929-style crash—that will only formalize the dismal failure of Trump's second regime. Perhaps. Although Trump always seems most resilient after being written off by DC pundits like Heilbrunn. The old pugilist, albeit only a “quasi-Caesar”, still has a few more rounds in him. Three more years, to be exact. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Whither America? For the Canadian writer Stephen Marche, that's no longer the question. America in 2025, for Marche, has already withered. The Toronto-based author of The Next Civil War argues that the future has already arrived in the United States. And it's a violent, regressive future - which is only going to get more dismal in 2026. That's the view from Toronto where Marche is enjoying a front seat on the arrival of the American future. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The best fiction seems real, the best non-fiction books read like fiction. That, at least, is Bethanne Patrick's take on the best books of 2025. Selecting her favorite four fiction and four non-fiction books, the LA Times book critic suggests that all eight of these books brilliantly blur the line between fact and fiction. Take, for example, Murderland, Caroline Fraser's new non-fiction linking 1970s serial killers to environmental toxins from mining. “People love true crime as if there's something called untrue crime”, Patrick notes. “Fraser shows that what really happened and the way it blows up in our minds—that's where fact and fiction blur.”Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Might 2025 turn out to be the new 1925? In other words, are we currently in the Roaring Twenties and on the brink of another Great Depression? This historical analogy, according to the Financial Times' chief economics commentator Martin Wolf, isn't entirely fanciful. Economic history doesn't exactly repeat itself, Wolf acknowledges, but it has a rhythmic quality. We are living, he suggests, in a “slow-motion” interwar moment. And while FDR is Donald Trump's mirror image, perhaps the most similar President to Trump was Warren Harding whose administration was deeply tarnished by the Teapot Dome scandal. Crypto, Wolf suggests, might turn out to be Trump's Teapot Dome. And 2026, Martin Wolf warns, might turn out to be significantly more turbulent for both the US and global economies than 2025.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

“If they want to put on my tombstone ‘The Last Idealist', that's fine,” the iconic (and I don't use that word lightly) American journalist Ray Suarez tells me. But even Suarez's idealism was tested by Trump's America in 2025. It was a “jaw-dropping” year, he tells me, astonishing for a veteran journalist like Suarez. In some senses, he says, America has reverted to being a 19th century colonial power. So what happens when you “repeal” the 20th century? For all his idealism, Suarez is a realist, particularly in economics. So it's worth noting his warnings about the “devils of inflation” in 2026 which he sees as a likely consequence of Trump's economic populism. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

So what does the latest Time Warner brouhaha tell us about the state of America? According to Daniel Bessner, host of the American Prestige podcast, it reflects the imminent death of Hollywood itself. Having written a recent Harper's cover story about “The Life and Death of Hollywood”, Bessner is no stranger to the existential struggle of America's dream machine. And for Bessner, the latest Netflix-Paramount drama is just one proof point not just of Hollywood's last dance, but also the imminent crisis of American capitalism. It's the canary in the coal mine, he argues, about the future of every industry. His apocalyptic take would, of course, make a great movie. The only problem is that Hollywood won't be around to make it. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

It's been quite a week in tech. The Australian social media ban, the Netflix vs Paramount fight over Warner Bros & the Disney-OpenAI deal. That Was The Week's Keith Teare and I try to explain all this in the broader context of the future of media in 2026 and beyond. Has Australia really gone Orwellian in its teen social media ban, who should own Warner and will movie theaters & serious journalism have a future in the AI age? Our answers aren't always what you'd expect. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Mount Rushmore, with its images of four Presidents carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota, is America's most identifiable monument. It might also be its most monumental contradiction — which is saying a lot, given the country's gaping contradictions. According to Matthew Davis, the mountain's biographer, the history of the Rushmore project captures both the remarkable engineering achievements of early 20th-century America and the country's bloody colonial and racist past. So Mount Rushmore, Davis suggests, is indeed as American as cherry pie. Only that pie and those cherries aren't quite as sweet as the MAGA crowd might like to think. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

George Packer is one of the most celebrated non-fiction writers on contemporary America. So why, in his new book The Emergency, has he turned to fiction? You'd think, after all, that MAGA America's surrealism would be an ideal nonfictional canvas for a writer with Packer's observational gifts. But, as Packer explains, when facts fail a society, then - like Orwell or Atwood - a writer might be obliged to turn to fiction. This emergency, then, begot The Emergency. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The CNN anchor Carol Lin was on air on September 11, 2001 when the first plane hit the tower. So, in that now seemingly distant broadcast media age, she was the world's first television journalist to break the news. But as Lin notes in her new memoir, When New Breaks, 9/11 broke traditional news media, both then and now. That morning was CNN's finest hour — a network built for exactly this moment, with deep resources, high standards, and global reach. Yet it was also the beginning of the end - both for Lin's career in journalism and for the mainstream television news industry. What followed was the rise of opinion panels, personality-driven shows, ubiquitous social media and the slow erosion of trust that leaves us asking: who do we believe anymore?Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Jessica was the good Mitford sister. The English aristocrat who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, then came to America and dedicated her life to social justice. According to her biographer Carla Kaplan, Mitford had the fierce, unruly life of a great muckraker. She was a Troublemaker in the best sense of the word. Unlike prudes like Upton Sinclair or Ralph Nader, she was hysterically funny—her voice as distinctive as Jane Austen's or Virginia Woolf's. She understood that bullies are driven by insecurity and paranoia, and she knew exactly how to punch them in the nose with her sharp upper-class English humor. So where are you now, Jessica Mitford? When the left desperately requires a good dose of humor and the right needs to be laughed at?Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The American economy is a numbers game and those numbers are becoming more and more unfair. “30 years ago, if you were born in the bottom 25th percentile of wealth, you had about a 25% chance of dying in the top 25th percentile.” notes the venture capitalist Seth Levine. “Today you've got a 5% chance.” So what to do? What Levine wants is more rather than less capitalism. As he argues in his new co-authored (with Elizabeth MacBride) book, Capital Evolution, “if we want more people to have a stake in the economy, more people have to have a stake in the economy.” Thus the case for what he calls stakeholder capitalism. Only capitalism can save capitalism, Levine argues. Whether that's Davos-style tautology or the way to right the wrongs of American capitalism is a more complicated question. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Numbers often tell the story best. Yesterday, we discussed today's 95/5 reality in which 5% of Americans control 95% of the wealth. Today, in our conversation with Patrick Markee, author of Placeless, the key number is 2%. That's the number of Americans who, on any given day, are homeless. But it's a number, Markee insists, that doesn't have to be. Mass homelessness, America's most shameful open secret, is a modern phenomenon, he explains, triggered by Reagan's neo-liberal policies. There's nothing inevitable or necessary about it. And just as economic and political policy caused the crisis, it can also solve it. What's most chilling is how normalized it's become. Two-thirds of Americans are too young to remember a time when large numbers of people weren't sleeping on sidewalks. In New York City alone, 35,000 children sleep in shelters every night—numbers not seen since the Great Depression. Future generations, Markee suggests, will look back at us the way we look back at those who tolerated slavery. How could we all have just walked on by? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Forget Pareto's 80/20 rule. What AI is doing is producing a new rule in which 5% of society captures 95% of the value of this revolution. That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare calls this the “Great Compression”, describing it as the new math of our AI age. It's creating a winner-take-most society of increasing inequality and outrage - the kind of situation which, historically, governments have stepped in to redistribute the rewards of a great technological leap forward. That isn't happening today, however, thereby creating what Keith and I describe as a Code Red emergency for humanity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Is the idea of “progress” the propaganda of the ruling class? Yes, according to Samuel Miller McDonald, author of Progress: How One Idea Built Civilization and Now Threatens to Destroy it. McDonald traces this “narrative formula” back 5,000 years to the first market empires in Mesopotamia—societies that were parasitic from the start, extracting from nature for profit and expansion. The Mesopotamian epic Epic of Gilgamesh, McDonald argues, is essentially a celebration of deforestation. Fast forward a few thousand years and modern industrialization didn't corrupt this system; it supercharged it. His solution? Sortition, agroecology, and dissolving elite power. “I have more faith in the general public,” he tells me about a contemporary world dominated by what he sees as extractive billionaires like Bill Gates and Peter Thiel, “than in people who seek positions of power and control.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

They certainly are an odd couple. Silicon Valley veterans Dave McClure and Aman Verjee have been friends and business partners for 25 years — first at PayPal, then at 500 Startups, and now at Practical Venture Capital. Yet they have quite different styles, personalities and, above all, politics. What they share, however, is an unvarnished take on the world — especially on the much mythologized Silicon Valley. In this refreshingly unfiltered conversation, they assess tech's two most dominant titans: Sam Altman and Elon Musk. McClure describes Altman as someone he'd never want to face across a poker table — “there's probably three layers of chess going on in his head.” Verjee breaks down the competitive psychology driving Musk as OpenAI's valuation leapfrogs SpaceX. Plus Verjee makes sense of Google's Gemini challenge to ChatGPT domination and McClure leaves us with one of his trademark blunt takes on Trump's crypto conflicts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

If you think the American Dream is dead, then you probably don't know the story of Lu Zhang. Born in Mongolia and educated in China, Zhang came to Stanford as a graduate student, struck it rich as a young tech entrepreneur and is now managing partner of her own early-stage venture fund. In our conversation, Zhang makes a compelling case for why Silicon Valley remains the world's most important innovation ecosystem—even as she warns that restrictive immigration policies threaten to strangle the very talent pipeline that made her remarkable success possible. She's bullish on AI, bearish on energy infrastructure, and refreshingly candid about the capital market bubble that everyone in tech pretends doesn't exist. So does Zhang really exist or is she a bot designed to promote the American Dream? She says she's real. I believe her. Do you? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

We all know about the broken American Dream. But according to the American-based China scholar Minxin Pei, China's dream is equally broken. In his new book, The Broken China Dream, Pie argues that the party-centric reforms of both Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping have, by definition, revived totalitarianism. So while he does acknowledge some material achievements of the communist revolution, Pei is ultimately skeptical of its long-term benefit to the Chinese people. The party is the problem, Pei suggests. It has broken the Chinese dream. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

For Peter Wehner, American politics is a tale of two Kellys. On the one hand, there's the moral resistance of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly to what appears to be the gratuitous violence of American forces overseas. On the other hand, there's the conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly who has openly fantasized about this bloodthirsty behavior. For Wehner, Megyn Kelly's immorality is an excellent example of both the moral and intellectual decline of the right. Once a serious journalist who challenged (and upset) Trump in the 2015 debates, Kelly has devolved into what Wehner calls “darkly deranged” territory - a trajectory that mirrors the broader conservative movement's abandonment of Burkean and Madisonian principles for Kelly-style shock jocks and neo-Nazi clowns like Nick Fuentes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Dick Cheney died four weeks ago, but his dark legacy lives on—quite literally—at Guantanamo Bay. The human rights lawyer Joshua Colangelo-Bryan was among the first attorneys to enter the notorious prison in 2004, and what he found there shattered every official justification for its existence. The “worst of the worst”? Most detainees were never even accused of acting against America. Many were simply sold to the Americans for bounties. The sophisticated interrogation program? Techniques copied from Chinese and Soviet methods designed to extract false confessions, not intelligence. In his new book Through the Gates of Hell, Colangelo-Bryan tells the story of his unlikely friendship with Jaber Mohammed, a Bahraini detainee who spent years in captivity for the crime of being an Arab man in the wrong place (Afghanistan) at the wrong time (post 9/11). Released without apology or compensation—just a form asking him not to “rejoin” organizations he'd never belonged to—Jaber now lives in Saudi Arabia with four children, focusing less on bitterness and more on those rare moments when American guards showed him unexpected kindness. As the Trump administration revives the “worst of the worst” rhetoric against immigrants and once again sends people to Guantanamo, Colangelo-Bryan's account is a warning from recent history: demonize a racial or religious group, and you will inevitably destroy innocent lives. The gates of hell have once again been opened. Will they ever be closed? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Who's winning and losing in AI plays like a wacky race in that every week there seems to be a new leader. But that's actually the wrong way of thinking about today's AI revolution. The right questions are about the three Cs: Capability, Capital and Civics. That's the lesson of Keith Teare's latest That Was The Week tech newsletter which focuses on what he calls “the Year in Intelligence”. Nobody is winning the AI race, Teare argues, because it isn't a race. Instead, it's an endless innovation cycle without either a start or finish line. The three key questions are whether AI capabilities are solving real social and economic problems, whether we can fund a $200 trillion industrial rebuild, and whether the rewards can be equitably shared. Those are the questions we should be asking. Not who is winning or losing.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

“May you live in interesting times,” is supposed to be a Chinese mantra. But according to Cambridge University China expert, Christopher Marquis, our current interesting times are actually a curse for businesses seeking stability rather than disorder. Is this, then, a moment for “strategic hibernation” Marquis asks in a provocative Harvard Business Review piece. Yes, he mostly answers. Businesses are indeed frozen by a perfect storm of uncertainty—overhyped AI, tariffs, and climate disasters. And speaking out in these turbulent times, he warns, can carry severe consequences -such as Jack Ma's “cancellation” and the NBA's exile from Chinese TV demonstrated after political missteps. Marquis, author of Mao and Markets, draws on his decade observing Chinese corporate survival tactics to counsel American companies navigating the stormy Trump waters: continue vital work like DEI internally, but avoid publicly poking the political bear. The Prohibition playbook offers a historical model—1920s brewers pivoted to soft drinks using their core bottling capabilities, hibernating their alcohol-making assets until the environment changed. The exception? Brands built on moral values, like Patagonia and Dr. Bronner's, shouldn't go silent—but even they should seek strength in collective action rather than standing alone. Rather than poking the bear, Marquis concludes about our interesting times, become the bear and hibernate. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Few journalists, certainly non-Italians, know Italian football as intimately as The Athletic' James Horncastle, co-author of The Soccer 100. For Horncastle, Italian football presents a fascinating paradox: a nation celebrated for beauty, fashion, and La Grande Bellezza built its footballing identity around winning ugly. Forged in post-war austerity, the Italians embraced a minimalist, counter-attacking style—yet their greatest defenders, Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi, were anything but ugly players, mastering their craft with elegance and brilliance. Italy, Horncastle reminds us, has also produced a remarkable lineage of world-class goalkeepers, from Dino Zoff to Gianluigi Buffon. And despite its defensive reputation, the position Italians venerate most is the creative number 10—the fantasista embodied by Roberto Baggio, the subject of an upcoming biography by Horncastle. Then there's Maradona, the “spiritual Italian” who found his perfect home in Naples, a city with a magical realism quality that matched his unique genius. Unlike England, where football loyalties follow class lines, allegiances at Italian clubs like Roma and Lazio are drawn along political divisions—a legacy of Cold War tensions when Italy hosted Western Europe's largest communist party. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Keen On America! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Should we be giving thanks today for our capitalist system? Maybe. But we should certainly be thankful for a 1100-page book about the history of capitalism published this week by the Harvard historian Sven Beckert. Entitled Capitalism: A Global History, this magisterial history, which took Beckert 8 years to write, covers the last thousand years of our increasingly dominant capitalist world. In fact, Beckert suggests, capitalism has become so ubiquitous that most of us can't imagine an alternative economic system. If we are fish, then it's our water. So what, exactly, were the origins of capitalism? And is there really an alternative economic system? What, if anything, will come after capitalism? A happy (capitalist) Thanksgiving everyone. 1. Capitalism Isn't Natural—It's Historical Capitalism is a radical departure from previous forms of economic life, not the default state of human exchange. Because it's historical, it had a beginning—and anything with a beginning can have an end.2. The Death of Capitalism Has Been Wrongly Predicted for 200 Years From Marx onward, critics have forecast capitalism's imminent collapse. Beckert is skeptical of these predictions—most of capitalism's history came after someone declared it finished.3. There's No Going Back to the Pre-Capitalist Village The nostalgic alternative—returning to some pre-modern arrangement—is both impossible and undesirable. Feudal lords extracting surplus from peasants, subsistence farming at the margins of survival: there's nothing romantic about scarcity and exploitation.4. We Have the Means to Solve Our Problems—We Lack the Political Will The capitalist revolution has given us unprecedented productive capacity. We could feed everyone, educate everyone, provide universal healthcare. The obstacles aren't material—they're political choices.5. AI Could Liberate Us or Concentrate Wealth Further—It's a Political Decision If artificial intelligence delivers massive productivity gains, those gains could go to a tiny elite or be distributed broadly through shorter work weeks, better wages, expanded education. The technology doesn't determine the outcome. We do.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In The Soccer 100, the Athletic's list of the greatest footballers in history, Lionel Messi is ranked number one. Perhaps. But he might also be its most boring—at least as a man. For Michael Cox, a contributor to The Soccer 100, Messi is undeniably great, but compared to his fellow Argentine Diego Maradona, he's a nonentity. Football is theater. That's why it's the world's game. So it's the tragic narratives of a Maradona or a Jimmy Greaves we most remember and cherish. The game is beautiful because of the poetry, not the prose, of its stars. * Messi has ticked every box except one: being interesting. Cox voted for Messi as the greatest, but concedes Maradona and Cruyff “go above and beyond everyone else” in terms of personality. Messi left Argentina at thirteen, never had Maradona's volcanic connection with his country, and may never be held in quite the same esteem at home.* Di Stefano was stolen from Barcelona by Franco—and the theft created football's greatest rivalry. Before the heist, Real Madrid's main rivals were Atletico. The loss of the era's best player helped transform Barcelona vs. Real into what it is today.* England doesn't produce geniuses because English football is suspicious of them. Cox: “There's often been a desire to amalgamate mavericks into a system rather than bringing out the best in them.” The culture values hard work, scrappiness, physicality. Jimmy Greaves—perhaps the greatest English player ever—was left out of the 1966 final and later sold without his knowledge.* The 2026 World Cup may be a logistical and competitive disaster. Forty-eight teams, three countries, more group-stage matches than any previous tournament just to get down to thirty-two. Cox: “There'll be a few teams there who with respect just won't be able to compete.”* The greatest goal in history wasn't Maradona's solo run—it was Pele's pass. Cox prefers the Carlos Alberto goal: team football as poetry, five number tens on the same wavelength, and the simplest possible finish after exhausting Italy with collective brilliance.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Maradona, Pele or Messi? It's the eternal debate. Who is the greatest footballer of all time? According to The Soccer 100, The Athletic's new book ranking football's hundred greatest players, the answer is Messi. But the North London based contributor Amy Lawrence cast a dissenting vote: she chose Pelé, deferring to those who witnessed the Brazilian king's dominance firsthand. The book's official ranking places Maradona second, Pelé third, then Cruyff, Ronaldo, and Di Stefano. But the list reveals something more interesting than rankings: the impossibility of comparing eras. How do we judge players like Alfredo Di Stefano or Ferenc Puskas we've only seen in grainy footage against those, like Messi or Ronaldo, whose every touch has been televised? And why do great footballers like Diego Maradona —masters of intelligence on the pitch—sometimes become such flawed and tragic figures off it?1. The Pelé Problem: Why Nostalgia Matters Amy Lawrence voted for Pelé as number one, even though The Athletic's collective ranking placed Messi first. Her reasoning? “When I grew up, when you spoke to people who were older than you, there wasn't a debate. Pelé was the best.” She deferred to those who witnessed him live—a rare admission that nostalgia might actually be wisdom, not sentimentality.2. Maradona's Genius Was Inseparable from His Madness Lawrence describes Maradona as playing “with a madness...there was something of the kind of intense creative artist about him.” He was a street footballer thrust into Italian mafia management, hacked and kicked because defenders “couldn't stop him by playing football.” His 1986 World Cup remains the most dominant individual performance in history—but his life became the cautionary tale of what happens when raw genius meets extreme celebrity.3. Cruyff Was the Anti-Ronaldo Johan Cruyff “encouraged everybody to think instead of just watch”—a philosopher-footballer who “was a bit of a rebel” and famously skipped the 1978 World Cup (possibly because his wife didn't trust him with the ladies). Contrast that with Cristiano Ronaldo, whom Lawrence describes as “built by design”—the AI-generated footballer, all machine, no poetry. If Ronaldo represents modern football's corporate efficiency, Cruyff embodied its lost intellectual soul.4. Women Journalists Don't Play the Gender Card—But Maybe They Should Lawrence, possibly the only woman among the ten journalists who compiled The Soccer 100, says she “never played the women's card” when arguing for players. But she admits that being a woman in a male-dominated field made her “just a bit more memorable” and perhaps allowed for “a slightly more sensitive line of questioning” that helped players relax. It's a fascinating tension: rejecting gender as relevant while acknowledging its subtle advantages.5. The Impossibility of Comparing Eras Makes These Lists Meaningless—and Essential How do you compare Di Stefano (whom most people have only seen in grainy footage) with Messi (whose entire career has been televised)? Or account for the fact that modern players rack up goals against Lithuania and Andorra, while older players “never got able to pick up goals playing against” minnows? Lawrence acknowledges “there was never any pretense that this was some kind of definitive list”—yet we need these lists anyway, because they force us to articulate what we value in greatness itself.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Whither America? It's the question that the Swedish writer Johan Norberg examines in both a recent Washington Post op-ed as well as his new book, Peak Human. What we can learn from history's great civilizations, Norberg argues, is that they decline when they turn inward, away from both the outside world and innovation. “All Sparta, no Athens”, as he puts it. So what does that tell us not only about Trump's America but also Putin's Russia and Xi's China? And what should we make of Europe, which is neither Sparta nor Athens? And when compared with China, Russia and Europe, Norberg's vision of the American future seems relatively sunny. So maybe, with or without MAGA, the 21st century really will be the American century. * MAGA doesn't fit any traditional conservative or liberal framework. It's a radical ideology built around a strongman who has no patience for democratic process, rule of law, or compromise—precisely the institutions that classical liberalism and genuine conservatism have always sought to protect.* Declining empires are the most dangerous. Russia is “all Sparta, no Athens”—a society that builds barracks rather than innovation, extracts resources rather than creates wealth, and fears any neighboring democracy that might give its own people ideas. Putin may sense this is his last chance to rearrange the world order.* China's split personality may doom its long-term prospects. Deng Xiaoping borrowed from Athens—openness, experimentation, “crossing the river by feeling the stones.” Xi Jinping has reverted to Sparta—centralized control that can build electric vehicle factories fast but stifles the strange surprises that drive real innovation.* America's saving grace may be its constitutional limits. The courts are the only branch doing their job right now, striking down unconstitutional overreach one case at a time. Republicans know there's life after Trump—and after two centuries of championing the Constitution, they can't simply throw it aside.* Europe is Rome without the military power. The EU's great idea—an open continent that experiments with different solutions—is undermined by a Mandarin class in Brussels that insists on standardizing everything. That's why great European startups keep moving to California.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

I've spent this week in Washington DC where most people seem suspicious and sometimes even downright hostile about the future. Especially the supposedly “abundant” AI future being built in Silicon Valley. So where is this abundance going to come from? Some optimists, like The Great Progression's Peter Leyden, believe there's an emerging coalition of smart technocratic elites who will construct a more efficient state to engineer a new progressive era. That Was The Week's Keith Teare, however, is suspicious of this kind of new New Deal, arguing that reform from above is, by definition, flawed. That's all very well. But then, if the future isn't going to be built by a new kind of smart government, then where's it going to come from? The defiantly anti-top-down Teare believes, without much evidence, that it will somehow percolate up from what he calls “the masses”. I'm not so sure. Do we really want to trust our AI future to a vengeful digital mob?1. The Policy Gap is Real – But No One Knows How to Fill It Keith Teare identifies a critical void: while AI and automation may create unprecedented wealth, there's no coherent framework for ensuring that abundance benefits everyone rather than concentrating in the hands of tech monopolists. Both left and right lack a practical manifesto for this transformation.2. Innovation Will Happen – Distribution Won't Keith Teare argues that technological progress and wealth creation are inevitable, driven by curious entrepreneurs and scientists working through the night. What doesn't happen automatically is the flowering of society or the reallocation of resources. That requires something more than market forces alone.3. Government as Currently Constituted Can't Lead This Transformation Despite Peter Leyden's call for “state capacity,” Teare remains deeply skeptical that bureaucratic governments can play a progressive role. He sees them as enemies of innovation, prone to regulation and rule-making rather than enablement. He prefers Trump's hands-off approach to Democratic regulatory instincts.4. The Bottoms-Up Revolution May Be Inevitable When pressed on alternatives to government action, Keith Teare suggests people power rather than state power will drive change. As AI displaces workers, those made unemployed will demand society provide them a living standard – creating pressure for transformation that could be peaceful (as Marx predicted for wealthy America) or disruptive.5. Some Tech Leaders See Beyond Their Own Pockets Contrary to cynicism about Silicon Valley greed, Keith Teare points to Elon Musk's vision of money becoming irrelevant under true abundance and Sam Altman's WorldCoin project as evidence that at least some technologists can imagine distributing wealth beyond their own fortunes. Whether these visions are “childish fancy” or prophetic remains the debate.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Call it the Zakaria paradox. We live in revolutionary times, the CNN host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria explains, and yet it's the reactionary MAGA politics of resentment that is currently ascendant. It's this paradox that laces Zakaria's 2024 book, Age of Revolutions (just out in paperback), a narrative that traces the history of liberalism from the 17th century revolutionary Dutch Republic to today's reactionary age of populist strongmen. The Trump playbook is clear, Zakaria notes: “the Chinese Are Taking Your Factories, the Mexicans Are Taking Your Jobs, the Muslims Are Trying to Kill You.” So how should progressive liberals, in our age of TikTok and OpenAI, respond with a more optimistic, forward thinking message about our revolutionary times? What is Fareed Zakaria's escape from the Zakaria Paradox?1. Trump's Genius Was Sensing the New Republican Base Trump was the only candidate in 2016 who abandoned the Reagan formula (free trade, balanced budgets, interventionist foreign policy) and recognized that the Republican base had become white working class voters deeply resentful of globalization, immigration, and cultural change.2. We're Living Through a Long Backlash, Not a Moment Zakaria argues that massive technological and economic transformations—from industrialization to today's AI revolution—always trigger prolonged cultural and political backlashes. Trump's re-election confirms we're in this for decades, not years.3. The Dutch Revolution Invented Modern Individualism Painters like Vermeer and Rembrandt revolutionized Western art by depicting ordinary people and daily life rather than religious subjects—marking the birth of individualism that defines modern liberalism. To understand revolution, look at art, not just politics.4. TikTok Is Enlightenment Liberalism on Steroids Our fragmented, personalized media landscape represents the logical conclusion of individual autonomy and choice. But this creates a “hole in the heart”—people miss the certainty of faith, tradition, and community that pre-modern life provided.5. Liberalism's Biggest Threat Comes From Both Sides Zakaria warns that illiberalism threatens from the reactionary right (Deneen-style restrictions on women's rights, immigration) AND from the progressive left (DEI ideology, extreme socialism). True liberals must hold the center and resist sacrificing liberal values to achieve political goals.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Did American eugenics really fuel the murderous euthanasia programs of the Nazis? Yes, according to Susanne Paola Antonetta, author of The Devil's Castle, a history of Nazi eugenics and euthanasia. According to Antonetta, pioneering American eugenicists not only influenced Nazi thinking—Hitler himself corresponded with them and praised U.S. sterilization laws in Mein Kampf—but the New York City-based Carnegie Institute proposed gas chambers in 1918 as one solution for dealing with what eugenicists called the ‘hereditarily tainted' population. While Germany's response was uniquely brutal, Antonetta argues that American psychiatric thinking provided the conceptual framework for deciding whose lives had value and whose didn't. Moreover, the notorious Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program killed 300,000 people with neuropsychiatric disorders, yet it was never properly prosecuted by the Americans at Nuremberg and remains largely unknown today.1. American Eugenics Provided the Blueprint The U.S. passed sterilization laws in 1907—decades before Germany's 1933 laws. Hitler praised American eugenics in Mein Kampf, American eugenicists taught in Germany, and the Carnegie Institute proposed gas chambers in 1918 for the “hereditarily tainted.” The conceptual architecture was Made in America.2. Action T4 Killed 300,000 and Was Never Prosecuted The Nazi euthanasia program murdered roughly 300,000 people with neuropsychiatric disorders in gas chambers built into asylums. Because Nuremberg only tried international crimes—not crimes against a nation's own citizens—this program escaped proper legal reckoning and remains largely unknown.3. Doctors Could Say No—But Didn't Some asylum doctors, like Carl Kleist, simply refused to participate in T4 and faced no punishment. This makes the complicity of other doctors—many of them idealistic, not monsters—more damning. The system allowed for refusal; most chose collaboration.4. Psychiatry Still Assigns Value to Lives Antonetta argues that psychiatry's troubled legacy persists: rigid diagnostic categories inherited from German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, neurotransmitter theories that haven't improved outcomes, and a system that still decides whose consciousness has value. The DSM itself was created by self-described “neo-Kraepelinians.”5. Neurodiversity Is the New Civil Rights Frontier From autism to schizophrenia, our public discourse about neurodiversity remains “relentlessly negative.” As CRISPR and gene editing become reality, Antonetta warns we're facing the same eugenic questions—but now with the tools to act on them. We need more honest and nuanced conversations about different forms of consciousness before we start editing them out.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

On November 20, 1925, Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. A hundred years later, Bobby might matter more than ever. Chris Matthews, longtime host of MSNBC's “Hardball”, is already the author of one bestselling RFK biography, Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit. And today, to celebrate the centennial of his birth, the pugnacious polemicist has a new book about RFK's abiding relevance. In Lessons From Bobby, Chris Matthews gives us ten reasons why Robert Francis Kennedy still matters. Matthews' favorite lesson? Bobby's willingness to concede defeat. After losing the 1968 Oregon Democratic primary to Gene McCarthy, Kennedy graciously acknowledged his loss and paid tribute to his opponent. Matthews argues this is essential to democracy. “The loser is the only one who can give credential to the winner,” he notes. “Without that, the American people always have doubts.” Yes, in November 2025, Bobby matters more than ever. 1. Bobby's Vulnerability Was His Strength Unlike JFK's aloof, almost royal demeanor, Bobby identified with victims rather than observing them from a distance. He “seemed to have identified with people's troubles and thought of himself as one of the victims,” making him relatable in ways his more polished brother never was.2. Personal Experience Transformed His Politics Bobby's commitment to civil rights deepened dramatically after his assistant John Seigenthaler was beaten nearly to death during the Freedom Rides in 1961. “Something turned in him,” Matthews notes—he realized someone close to him had been left to die in the streets, radicalizing his approach to racial justice.3. The Kennedys Became Liberals Strategically Neither Jack nor Bobby started as liberals. After narrowly losing the 1956 VP nomination, JFK realized “I got a lot of Southern support, but I don't have any liberal support.” The Kennedys understood that power in the Democratic Party was liberal, so they “married” figures like Arthur Schlesinger and John Kenneth Galbraith to reposition themselves.4. Bobby Could Separate Good from Bad Matthews emphasizes Bobby's ability to “granulate the good from the bad”—whether distinguishing corrupt labor bosses like Jimmy Hoffa from reform leaders like Cesar Chavez, or understanding how riots after King's assassination could be both morally motivated and criminally wrong. This nuanced thinking set him apart.5. Conceding Defeat Defines Democracy Matthews' most important lesson: Bobby's gracious concession after losing Oregon to Gene McCarthy exemplifies democratic virtue. “The loser is the only one who can give credential to the winner,” Matthews argues, contrasting this sharply with Trump's 2020 election denial and warning that without honest concessions, “the American people always have doubts.”Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

25 movies and 0 hits: it's been a particularly rough quarter for Hollywood. But as I discuss with the cultural commentator David Masciotra, it's actually been a pretty strong quarter in terms of movie quality. From Paul Thomas Anderson's “One Battle After Another” and Jennifer Lawrence's astonishing performance in “Die My Love” to a glitteringly bald Emma Stone in “Bugonia” and Ethan Coen's “Honey Don't!”, Hollywood is producing high quality, relevant material. One problem, however, is that Gen Z has abandoned cinema. Another is that Hollywood's penchant for movies dominated by memorably uncompromising female leads like Stone and Lawrence might be out of step with a broader culture still imprisoned by a nostalgia for a dominant masculinity. Perhaps that's why “One Battle After Another”, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as a pathetically redundant Sixties radical, is the one hit of the season. And it may also be why the excellent Springsteen biopic, “Deliver Me From Nowhere”, featuring a clueless Bruce trying to find himself by recording “Nebraska”, was such a flop. No, men don't matter, either in Hollywood or in life. Even when they do. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) The season's sole commercial success ($70 million) works because it satirizes everyone. DiCaprio's incompetent ‘60s radical provides comic relief, but it's Chase Infinity's cynical Gen Z daughter who steals the film (even if Gen Z'ers have given up going to the movies). Anderson's Pynchon adaptation makes absurdity central to American identity, both then and now—the villainous Christmas Adventures Club in golf attire perfectly capturing MAGA's ridiculousness.Die My Love (Josephine Decker) Jennifer Lawrence delivers an astonishing performance confirming she's among Hollywood's greatest actors. The film died at the box office despite critical praise—perhaps because audiences resistant to female-dominated narratives won't show up even for exceptional work like this. Her assertiveness and complexity highlights exactly what's missing from contemporary male performances.Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos) Emma Stone continues her fearless run in this cultish, visually striking film. Her performance demonstrates creative risk-taking unavailable to today's male leads. Jesse Plemons plays the archetypal basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist—masculine id of our internet age. Its commercial failure suggests audiences aren't ready for cinema that interrogates rather than celebrates American mythology.Honey Don't! (Ethan Coen) Coen's lesbian B-movie homage to film noir, which David Masciotra loved, deserved better than its catastrophic box office. Margaret Qualley's detective becomes a feminist hero fighting idiotic patriarchy without losing entertainment value. Set in Bakersfield and focused on religious hypocrisy, it feels both familiar and innovative. Its death proves even clever, relevant films can't entice Gen Z'ers back to the movies.Deliver Me From Nowhere (James Mangold) The season's most revealing failure. The film captures Springsteen's Faustian bargain—trading artistic integrity for superstardom, making “Nebraska” his final serious work before “Born in the USA”'s commercial conquest. It depicts fierce masculine anxiety through Bruce's mentally ill, violent father and his own depression. Yet it bored audiences with its introspective approach—ultimate proof that even films about masculine crisis can't reach audiences imprisoned by nostalgia for an imaginary American masculinity that never existed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

It's the ultimate financial nightmare. Kristin Collier, a young student in Minnesota, woke up one morning to discover that her mother had taken out $200,000 in Kristin's name. Collier tells this story in What Debt Demands, a book about America's student debt crisis that is both personal and political. Collier, who proudly defines herself as a “democratic socialist”, believes that student debt is a form of modern American serfdom. So what to do? She argues for massive debt cancellation, free public higher education funded by taxes on stock trades, and restoring bankruptcy protections that existed before 2005. But with the average American now carrying $105,000 in debt and one in four households living paycheck to paycheck, can any political initiative—a Mamdani democratic socialist style or otherwise—actually address this crisis before it triggers a nightmarish financial crisis in the broader economy?1. Student Debt Has Become Inescapable Serfdom Since 2005, student loans—both federal and private—are nearly impossible to discharge through bankruptcy. Borrowers must meet an “undue hardship” standard so stringent that people are literally having their Social Security payments garnished in retirement to pay off loans taken out at age 20. Unlike mortgages or credit card debt, education debt follows you for life.2. Private Student Lenders Operate Like Subprime Mortgage Predators During the mid-2000s, banks offered “direct consumer private loans” up to $30,000 with no school certification required, transferred straight to bank accounts, with interest rates of 10-12%. A $30,000 loan could balloon to $100,000. Collier's mother was able to take out eight separate loans totaling $200,000 using only a Social Security number and forged signature—the system had no safeguards because lenders prioritized profit over verification.3. Biden's Big Moves Failed, But Smaller Wins Succeeded Biden's signature executive action to cancel $10,000-$20,000 in federal student debt (which would have freed 20 million borrowers) was blocked by courts, as was his generous SAVE income-driven repayment plan. However, his reforms to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, existing income-driven repayment programs, and borrower defense protections have canceled billions in debt—demonstrating that incremental administrative changes work better than bold executive action in our current legal landscape.4. The Debt Crisis Extends Far Beyond Students With average American consumer debt at $105,000 and one in four households living paycheck to paycheck, we're potentially heading toward systemic economic collapse. The issue isn't just student loans—it's medical debt, rental debt, and a broader affordability crisis. Collier's organization, the Debt Collective (born from Occupy Wall Street), treats this as a collective action problem requiring a union of debtors across all categories.5. Debt Creates Psychological Haunting, Not Just Financial Burden Collier describes debt as both “presence and absence”—a constant bodily heaviness and dread. She feared her credit card would be rejected at grocery stores, dreaded checking her bank account, assumed every unknown phone number was a debt collector. This shame is culturally reinforced: Americans are taught that unpayable debt reflects personal moral failure, even when the system itself is predatory. One borrower told her he avoided dating entirely because he was too ashamed to reveal his debt burden.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

There are those who ask why so many Americans speak Spanish. But according to the Latino media entrepreneur and historian Javier Marin, you might as well ask why so many Americans speak English. Over the last half century, the Hispanic community in America has risen from 3.5 to 62 million. In his new history of Latino media, Live From America, Marin charts how networks like Univision and Telemundo drove the meteoric rise of Hispanic America. This IS America, Marin insists - there are now 62 million Latinos shaping the country's politics, economy and culture. Rather than a demographic trend about some curious minority, it's the core reality of 21st century America.1. The US is now the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country Only Mexico has more Spanish speakers than America. The US has surpassed Spain and Argentina. This isn't an immigrant enclave - it's a linguistic and cultural reality that's permanent and growing. As Marin puts it: “Even if you deport three million, we still have 57 million.”2. Univision and Telemundo are America's most powerful political engines - and they're not owned by Latinos These networks reach 60+ million people and absorb massive political advertising dollars from both parties. But Univision is controlled by private equity, Telemundo by NBC Universal. This creates a fundamental tension: are they serving their community or their shareholders? The Jorge Ramos ejection-to-Mar-a-Lago-interview arc tells you everything.3. “When you lose dignity, you lose your vote” Marin's thesis on why Democrats gained with Latino voters in recent elections despite Trump's 2024 inroads. The harsh treatment and “physical aggressiveness” of deportation policies cost Republicans votes. Dignity and political loyalty are directly linked. This matters more than economic messaging.4. Richard Nixon invented the word “Hispanic” - as a political strategy In 1969, Nixon commissioned a committee to encapsulate all Spanish speakers with one word to create a political constituency. Reagan embraced it further with Hispanic Heritage Month. The term “Hispanic” isn't organic - it's a government-corporate construct designed to make 60+ million diverse people politically legible and commercially targetable.5. Spanish-language media has always faced censorship and “English-only” movements From Theodore Roosevelt promoting English-only in the early 1900s to Desi Arnaz being censored on I Love Lucy, there's been consistent pressure to suppress Spanish. The FCC nearly cancelled Univision's predecessor over foreign ownership. The current anti-immigrant rhetoric isn't new - it's the same 100-year battle. The difference now: the numbers make it unwinnable.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The big news in Silicon Valley this week of a supposedly orchestrated “Panic Campaign” against AI. According to the researcher Nirit Weiss-Blatt, the campaign about the apocalyptical inevitability of AI is being driven by doomers like former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Weiss-Blatt's analysis are now being taken seriously in a Silicon Valley not adverse to conspiracy theories - particularly against itself. But how credibly should outsiders take her warnings? Keith Teare takes it seriously enough to dedicate his That Was The Week newsletter to it. I'm not so sure. And in the midst of our jousting, we were joined by Weiss-Blatt herself whose analysis of this moral panic, I have to admit, isn't entirely absurd. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

“Predictions are hard,” Yogi Berra once quipped, “especially about the future”. Yes they are. But in today's AI boom/bubble, how exactly can we predict the future? According to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Aman Verjee, access to the future lies in the past. In his new book, A Brief History of Financial Bubbles, Verjee looks at history - particularly the 17th century Dutch tulip mania and the railway mania of 19th century England - to make sense of today's tech economics. So what does history teach us about the current AI exuberance: boom or bubble? The Stanford and Harvard-educated Verjee, a member of the PayPal Mafia who wrote the company's first business plan with Peter Thiel, and who now runs his own venture fund, brings both historical perspective and insider experience to this multi-trillion-dollar question. Today's market is overheated, the VC warns, but it's more nuanced than 1999. The MAG-7 companies are genuinely profitable, unlike the dotcom darlings. Nvidia isn't Cisco. Yet “lazy circularity” in AI deal-making and pre-seed valuations hitting $50 million suggests traditional symptoms of irrational exuberance are returning. Even Yogi Berra might predict that. * Every bubble has believers who insist “this time is different” - and sometimes they're right. Verjee argues that the 1999 dotcom bubble actually created lasting value through companies like Amazon, PayPal, and the infrastructure that powered the next two decades of growth. But the concurrent telecom bubble destroyed far more wealth through outright fraud at companies like Enron and WorldCom.* Bubbles always occur in the world's richest country during periods of unchallenged hegemony. Britain dominated globally during its 1840s railway mania. America was the sole superpower during the dotcom boom. Today's AI frenzy coincides with American technological dominance - but also with a genuine rival in China, making this bubble fundamentally different from its predecessors.* The current market shows dangerous signs but isn't 1999. Unlike the dotcom era when 99% of fiber optic cable laid was “dark” (unused), Nvidia could double GPU production and still sell every chip. The MAG-7 trade at 27-29 times earnings versus the S&P 500's 70x multiple in 2000. Real profitability matters - but $50 million pre-seed valuations and circular revenue deals between AI companies echo familiar patterns of excess.* Government intervention in markets rarely ends well. Verjee warns against America adopting an industrial policy of “picking winners” - pointing to Japan's 1980s bubble as a cautionary tale. Thirty-five years after its collapse, Japan's GDP per capita remains unchanged. OpenAI is not too big to fail, and shouldn't be treated as such.* Immigration fuels American innovation - full stop. When anti-H1B voices argue for restricting skilled immigration, Verjee points to the counter-evidence: Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Max Levchin, and himself - all H1B visa holders who created millions of American jobs and trillions in shareholder value. Closing that pipeline would be economically suicidal.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

America is not only a good country, but it can also make the world a better place. That's the somewhat surprising conclusion of the progressive Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, whose new book, The Case for American Power, argues that America remains the one great power that can improve the world. Hamid, once a militant anti-Iraq War campus activist, has undergone a striking ideological journey in the quarter-century since 9/11. The moral arc of his life now bends towards a practical, imperfect morality. This son of Egyptian immigrants champions American dominance over Chinese and Russian dictatorships—while insisting that hypocrisy, far from being a fatal flaw, is actually the homage that vice pays to virtue. The gap between American ideals and reality, he argues, is where moral progress happens. He even has a word for this: asymptote. Meaning that American idealism, while it can never fully be reached, is still of great value. 1. The Left Has Lost Faith in America—And the Numbers Prove ItIn the early 2000s, 85% of Democrats were extremely or very proud to be American. By 2025, that number has plummeted to just 36%—one of the most precipitous drops in modern polling history. Hamid argues this self-loathing among progressives is dangerous, leaving a vacuum that allows illiberal powers like China and Russia to fill. The alternative to American power isn't no power—it's worse power.2. Hypocrisy Isn't a Bug, It's a FeatureDrawing on French philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld, Hamid insists that “hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” America is accused of hypocrisy precisely because it aspires to ideals it often fails to meet. China and Russia are rarely called hypocrites—not because they're more honest, but because they make no pretense of moral purpose. The gap between American ideals and reality is uncomfortable, but it's also where progress happens. Close the gap by abandoning ideals, and you get pure cynicism.3. George W. Bush Got Some Things Right (If You Take Out Iraq)This is Hamid's most counterintuitive argument. While the Iraq War was an unjustified disaster, Bush's Freedom Agenda—pressuring allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to open their political systems—represented a fusion of power and moral purpose that Hamid admires. Bush spoke eloquently about universal human dignity and Arab aspirations for democracy. The problem wasn't the idealism; it was the catastrophic application of military force where it wasn't warranted.4. Conditional Aid Is the Answer—Even for IsraelHamid advocates suspending military aid to Egypt ($1.4 billion annually) and Saudi Arabia until they demonstrate meaningful reform: stopping journalist executions, allowing local elections, releasing dissidents. The same principle applies to Israel. Biden's failure to condition aid during Gaza's mass civilian casualties—what Hamid calls a genocide—represents an abdication of moral responsibility. These countries depend on American weapons. Washington should use that leverage to demand they share our values, not give them carte blanche.5. Asymptote: The Mathematical Concept That Explains American IdealismAn asymptote is a curve that approaches a line but never quite intersects with it. This, Hamid argues, is America—perpetually striving toward ideals we'll never fully achieve, but getting closer through incremental progress. We'll never be perfect, but we can curve toward perfection. The right under Trump has abandoned even the pretense of aspiring to higher ideals. The left's job is to reclaim that progressive tradition: reminding Americans that moral progress is possible, even if completion isn't.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

We've done shows before on how contemporary America resembles late-stage Soviet society. But none quite as intriguing as with the Russian-born, US-based journalist Mikhail Zygar. In The Dark Side of the Earth, his new history of the Soviet Union's demise, Zygar underlines the moral exhaustion of its citizens. People no longer believed in anything, he reports on the collapse of this vast Euro-Asian empire. And that's the analogy Zygar makes with contemporary America which, he suggests, is equally exhausted. From the Soviet Union to the United States, a descent into a morally bankrupt nihilism defines the end of empire. Zygar even identifies the idealistic Obama with Gorbachev and the pugnacious Trump with Yeltsin, implying that a self-styled Putin-like “savior” lurks in the dark shadow of the American future. 1. Putin's Russia is worse than the Soviet Union The Soviet Union had dozens of political prisoners in the 1970s; Putin's Russia has thousands. Putin threatens the West with nuclear weapons far more aggressively than Soviet leaders ever did. What we thought was a victory over totalitarianism proved short-lived—Putin has built something more oppressive than what collapsed.2. The 1991 coup failed because of one woman History turns on ordinary people, not just great men. Emma Yazov, wife of the Soviet Defense Minister, spent three days crying in her husband's office, demanding he withdraw tanks from Moscow and resign from the junta. On the third day, he did. Her belief in democracy defeated the KGB and the Soviet military.3. Soviet citizens stopped believing after 1968 The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia killed whatever faith remained in communism. Afterward, Soviet people became perhaps the most cynical on earth, practicing “internal immigration”—pretending to participate in official life while living secret, clandestine private lives. When no one believes in an empire's ideology, collapse becomes inevitable.4. Solzhenitsyn's ideas shaped both Putin and the American New Right The author of The Gulag Archipelago evolved from Soviet dissident to fierce critic of liberal democracy. He wanted to preserve the Soviet empire by replacing communist ideology with Orthodox Christianity—precisely what Putin is attempting now. His attacks on Western liberalism's “weakness” and “woke culture” have found new audiences among American conservatives.5. Dick Cheney's approach to Soviet collapse enabled Putin George H.W. Bush and James Baker believed preserving a democratic Soviet Union would create a reliable partner. Dick Cheney disagreed, preferring “15 little dictatorships instead of one mighty Soviet Union.” Cheney's view prevailed. Without a Marshall Plan for post-Soviet states, Russian nationalism flourished, and Putin portrayed the collapse as Western conspiracy—the foundation of his power today.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The world is a remake. Yesterday's show featured the MAGA remake of The Handmaid's Tale. Today it's Dr Strangelove 2.0 and the remaking of the trillion-dollar military-industrial complex in Silicon Valley. As William Hartung, co-author of The Trillion Dollar War Machine, notes, Dwight Eisenhower's old military-industrial complex has migrated west to Silicon Valley. It even has a Strangelovian anti-hero: mad Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and the Curtis Le May character behind other Silicon Valley military start-ups. No wonder current American foreign policy—with its Monroe Doctrine meddling in Latin America—also appear to be a giant remake.1. Silicon Valley Has Become the New Military-Industrial Complex Dwight Eisenhower's old guard defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman—are being displaced by tech companies like Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX. The “military-industrial-digital complex” represents a fundamental shift in how America builds and profits from its defense apparatus.2. The Defense Budget Is Out of Control—and Growing America spends roughly $1.5 trillion annually on military defense when you include the Pentagon budget, nuclear weapons, veterans' care, and interest on past war debt. This dwarfs spending on social programs like nutrition assistance and represents a stark trade-off: F-35s or feeding children.3. Peter Thiel Is the Curtis LeMay of Silicon Valley Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel embodies the dangerous fusion of tech innovation and military hawkishness. His companies profit from government surveillance and defense contracts while he promotes an ideology that treats Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as a superior form of human being who should colonize space and reshape foreign policy.4. The “Rebels” Narrative Is Corporate Propaganda Silicon Valley defense contractors style themselves as disruptive rebels challenging Pentagon bureaucracy, but they're simply a new generation of war profiteers. They're not democratizing foreign policy—they're making weapons more efficiently and lobbying for more aggressive military postures to justify their business models.5. America's Foreign Policy Has Become a Dangerous Remake From Monroe Doctrine-style meddling in Latin America to increasingly bellicose rhetoric about China, American foreign policy is recycling Cold War playbooks with 21st-century technology. The merger of Silicon Valley's move-fast-and-break-things ethos with Pentagon power creates genuinely Strangelovian risks.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Back in 2021, Margaret Atwood came on the show to give her dark take on the American future. Four years later, Atwood's prescience, particularly in her 1985 classic The Handmaid's Tale, is increasingly self-evident. As the journalist Irin Carmon notes, MAGA America has become an Atwoodian dystopia of trad wives and state fecundity. But it is also, Carmon warns in her new book Unbearable, a place that actively discriminates against pregnant women, especially those of color. American women are dying in childbirth at three times the rate of their peers in other wealthy nations. Even in liberal New York City, Black women are nine to twelve times likelier to die than white women. So MAGA America is simultaneously fetishizing and punishing fecundity—celebrating “Trump babies” while jailing pregnant women who test positive for drugs. Forget the trad wives. The problem lies with the trad men making pregnancy so unbearable in America today.1. America's Maternal Mortality Crisis Is a National Disgrace American women die in childbirth at three times the rate of their peers in other wealthy nations. In New York City—one of the world's wealthiest cities—Black women are nine to twelve times likelier to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. For every death, there are 60-70 cases of severe maternal morbidity, including hemorrhage, sepsis, and hysterectomy.2. MAGA's Pronatalism Is Rooted in White Supremacy The natalist ideology espoused by RFK Jr., JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Trump himself is explicitly linked to eugenics and deportation. As Carmon notes, “We want our people to have babies” is something you hear openly from MAGA leaders. They celebrate “Trump babies” while considering children born to immigrants as not truly American—making fertility central to their white supremacist project.3. Pregnancy Has Been Criminalized in America Since Dobbs, there have been 412 pregnancy-related arrests in the United States, about half of them in Alabama alone. Women are being jailed for testing positive for drugs while pregnant—not offered addiction treatment, but arrested and held on impossible $10,000 cash bail. Some women don't even know they're pregnant until they're tested upon admission to jail. Their pregnancies become evidence against them.4. The Handmaid's Tale Was Always About American Slavery As Carmon points out, the dystopia Atwood portrayed was already the reality for enslaved Black women in America. The “father of obstetrics and gynecology,” J. Marion Sims, experimented on enslaved women—Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy—for years without anesthesia or consent. American pregnancy care was founded on the torture of Black women's bodies, and that legacy continues today.5. The Trump Administration Is Erasing the Evidence Trump has effectively canceled PRMS (the pregnancy research monitoring service) that tracks maternal morbidity and mortality nationally. Research grants studying how to improve maternal health are being cut as “DEI violations.” CDC pregnancy data is being deleted from websites. As Carmon warns: you can't solve a problem you're not allowed to document or even count.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

How to fix today's epidemic of loneliness? For the New Yorker cartoonist and author Sophie Lucido Johnson, the answer involves both pigeons and polyamory. As she argues in her brand new book, Kin: The Future of Family, Johnson provides the tools to forge kinship in everything from asking for help on a grocery run, to choosing to have roommates later in life to combat loneliness, to living in modern day “mommunes” of single mothers sharing bills and responsibilities. And the pigeons and polyamory? Johnson draws on pigeon behavior—how pair-bonded birds navigate home more successfully than solitary ones—as a metaphor for human interdependence. Her own polyamorous life, detailed in her popular 2018 memoir Many Love, exemplifies her broader argument: that intentional, non-traditional relationship structures can provide a much richer web of connectivity than the isolated nuclear family. So the future of family goes way beyond traditional family. It's pigeons, polyamory and mommunes. * The nuclear family is historically recent and economically failing. Johnson argues the isolated two-parent household is a post-industrial phenomenon—barely 150 years old—that leaves people emotionally and financially overburdened.* Loneliness is deadlier than obesity or alcoholism. Research shows chronic loneliness increases mortality more than smoking 15 cigarettes daily, primarily because isolated people lack support networks to catch health crises early.* Small acts of connection matter as much as close relationships. “Loose ties”—knowing your neighbors' names, chatting at the grocery store—provide significant mental health benefits. Johnson advocates borrowing a bundt pan from a neighbor instead of ordering from Amazon.* Polyamory isn't just about sex—it's about intentional kinship. Johnson's polyamorous practice means cultivating multiple committed relationships with extensive communication, creating a web of support that nuclear families can't provide alone.* We need new language for chosen family. Johnson proposes “kin” for people who are more than friends but outside traditional family structures—roommates, co-parents in “mommunes,” neighbors who share resources—arguing blood ties shouldn't define our primary support networks.* Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Lawyers usually like the law. The more the better. But in addition to his life as a top corporate lawyer, Philip K. Howard has made a second career out of criticizing the invasion of law into American society. In books like The Death of Common Sense, Life Without Lawyers and his latest, Saving Can-Do, Howard argues that a uncontrolled thicket of legal red tape is undermining innovation in America. The lawyer's central thesis is against the law: America has morphed from a can-do nation into a can't-do society where individual judgment has been replaced by legal central planning, and where citizens must ask lawyers for permission before acting. Too many lawyers and too many laws, Howard says, are transforming America into a dystopia caught between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But isn't that a bit rich, perhaps even Orwellian, from the Senior Counsel at one of America's most illustrious law firms?Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.1. America's transformation from can-do to can't-do spirit Howard argues America has abandoned individual judgment and self-reliance for a system where citizens must seek legal permission before acting. The “spirit of America” — the ability to make choices and associate freely — has been replaced by legal central planning.2. Law has become a secular religion Rather than a practical tool for ordering society, law has become something Americans worship and defer to reflexively. People can no longer make basic judgments about character, competence, or risk without consulting legal frameworks — transforming citizens into dependents.3. The legal profession needs radical reduction Howard believes America has far too many lawyers acting as gatekeepers in daily life. His solution isn't reform but elimination: get lawyers out of routine human interactions, contracts, and decisions. Let people negotiate directly and make their own judgments about trust and risk.4. This isn't partisan — it's about human agency Howard rejects the “conservative” label, arguing both left and right have created their own legal straitjackets. Progressives impose legal controls through regulation; conservatives through litigation and status quo protection. His concern transcends ideology: can individuals still exercise judgment and take responsibility?5. The contradiction is the point Howard embraces the irony of a successful corporate lawyer attacking his profession. He's spent his career in BigLaw precisely because he understands how the system works — and that insider knowledge fuels his conviction that legal overreach is suffocating American innovation and freedom. The question isn't whether he's hypocritical, but whether he's right.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

My neologism-du-jour is “enstatification”. It's what is happening in MAGA America with Trump's Gaucho-style swaggering into the economy and his reversal to autarky and a back-to-the-future Monroe Doctrine. With the growth of a 19th-century style state power, America is trying to become the new China. Meanwhile, as Keith Teare notes in his latest That Was The Week newsletter, China is the new America in its embrace of technological innovation, particularly its trebling down on clean energy. That's why the “Too Big To Fail” debate about OpenAI is so heavily laced in irony. It's not just Sam Altman's chutzpah in trying to simultaneously become the punter and the house in his multi-trillion-dollar bet on ChatGPT. But it might actually reflect the new realities of second-quarter 21st-century America. We've been wondering for a while now what comes after neo-liberalism. In a neologism: enstatification. * China Has Already Won the Clean Energy Race—And That Changes Everything Keith Teare confirms what The Economist reported: China's clean energy capacity dwarfs America's by a decade or more. This isn't just about being green—it's about controlling the energy infrastructure that AI requires. China is becoming the 21st century's combination of America and Saudi Arabia.* Jensen Huang's Verdict: China Will Win the AI Race Because It Deregulates While America Bureaucratizes The NVIDIA CEO's provocative claim isn't just marketing—it reflects a real competitive advantage. While four Democratic states pursue AI regulation at the state level, Beijing is loosening regulations and slashing energy costs for data centers. Democracy's decentralization may be its Achilles heel in rapid technological competition.* OpenAI's “Too Big to Fail” Status Reveals the New Age of Enstatification Despite David Sacks' denials, OpenAI's strategic importance means it effectively cannot be allowed to fail—not because of systemic financial risk like 2008, but because of national competitiveness concerns. This isn't neoliberalism anymore; it's America's version of state capitalism.* The Real Convergence Isn't US vs China—It's Both Nations Embracing State-Directed Economies Trump's Intel investment, Sacks and Andreessen's push for centralized AI policy, and China's directed innovation represent a global trend toward what Keith calls state involvement in “procuring and distributing wealth.” Alibaba and Google, Huawei and NVIDIA—they're becoming more alike than different.* Keith Teare's Optimism: “Everyone Will Win” in the AI Economy—But Some Pigs Are More Equal: Keith argues this isn't a zero-sum race with winners and losers, but a rising tide lifting all boats through reciprocity. America and China will both capture massive value from AI's potential $26 trillion GDP boost by 2035. I remain skeptical: history suggests great power competitions don't end in shared prosperity.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

One big story captures all six books selected by the Financial Times for their short list of best business books of 2025. As the FT's Senior Business Writer, Andrew Hill, notes, it's the story of the shift in global economic power from the United States to China. It's game over. From Dan Wang's Breakneck, which contrasts China's “engineering state” with America's “lawyering nation,” to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Abundance, chronicling America's inability to build infrastructure, the shortlist reads like an autopsy of American decline. Edward Fishman's Choke Points examines the new age of economic warfare, while Eva Dou's House of Huawei reveals how Chinese companies vaulted past Western competitors. Even Stephen Witt's The Thinking Machine, ostensibly about NVIDIA's triumph, ultimately focuses on the US-China technology race. The judges, Hill admits, “very clearly narrowed in on this highly consequential US-China theme.” Whether chronicling rare earth minerals, clean energy dominance, or regulatory sclerosis, these books ask the same uncomfortable question: Is the American century over?* China's “Engineering State” vs. America's “Lawyering Nation” - Dan Wang's framework in Breakneck captures the fundamental difference: China builds (pouring concrete, clearing regulatory obstacles), while America litigates, creating layers of bureaucracy that prevent infrastructure development.* The Abundance Paradox - Klein and Thompson's bestseller reveals America's core dysfunction: a nation that once defined progress now can't build a high-speed rail link between its two most important California cities, spending billions for thirty yards of track.* Economic Warfare Replaces Free Trade - Edward Fishman's Choke Points documents how sanctions, tariffs, and supply chain control have become the primary weapons of statecraft, with “choke points” entering the policy lexicon as the new language of power.* China Already Controls the Future's Raw Materials - From rare earth minerals to clean energy technology, China has made strategic bets on tomorrow's economy while America remained wedded to oil and coal, creating dependencies that may be impossible to reverse.* Even American Success Stories Are Really About China - NVIDIA's $5 trillion valuation, chronicled in Stephen Witt's The Thinking Machine, isn't purely an American triumph—it's fundamentally about Taiwan, China, and the geopolitical competition for semiconductor dominance.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

We all have our roles. I'm the smug San Francisco intellectual and the Orlando-based Dr Chloe Carmichael is the fearlessly authentic psychologist. She's also the author of Can I Say That?, a feisty defense of free speech in our time of cancellation and unfriending. Most of us are too scared to say what we think, Carmichael argues about this anxiety-ridden, intolerant age. Such self-censorship is damaging our mental health, she worries. Liberals are more likely to defriend people over political differences. And yes, women sometimes lie. Imagine that. I'm a touch skeptical about some of this psychologizing—particularly whether any Americans are truly being silenced. But the good Dr Chloe has the “data” (who doesn't?), the slot on Fox, and the cheek to nail me as a smug San Francisco intellectual. Even if such straight talk nearly got her unfriended by an anonymous woke reviewer at Publishers Weekly. Probably another smug coastal elite. Can I say that?1. The Mental Health Case for Free Speech Dr. Carmichael argues that self-censorship creates psychological harm—elevated cortisol, repression, and denial. She claims that when people can't express themselves authentically, they either resort to violence, passive aggression, or damage their social relationships. Her clinical case: a client denied a promotion in favor of a woman who couldn't process his anger directly and began unconsciously “acting out” distrust toward women in his life.2. The “Five D's” of Liberal Intolerance Carmichael presents data showing people who identify as liberal are statistically more likely to: defriend, disinvite speakers, decline to date, distance in real life, or drop contact altogether over political differences. She insists this isn't “in the DNA” of liberalism—conservatives led censorship campaigns in the 1980s against rap music—but claims it's the current snapshot. She argues liberals genuinely believe limiting speech reduces hate and misinformation, but it actually has the opposite effect.3. The Violence Red Line Despite defending provocative speech (including Tucker Carlson interviewing neo-Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes), Carmichael draws a clear boundary: incitement to violence, fraud, defamation, and libel are not protected. She distinguishes between “viewpoint discrimination” (canceling someone for saying “a man can't become a woman”) and legitimate social distancing from those celebrating political violence. She's also fine keeping trans women out of her locker room.4. The Skeptic Pushes Back Andrew remains unconvinced there's actually a free speech crisis. He doesn't see evidence of widespread self-censorship among his (mostly liberal) San Francisco friends, questions her survey data, and challenges her claim of political balance—pointing out she appears frequently on Fox but never on MSNBC or CNN. He suggests the Publishers Weekly reviewer might be right that her book is a “slanted polemic” with a conservative bias, despite her protests.5. Dialogue, Not Deplatforming Carmichael's most compelling example: Daryl Davis, the Black R&B musician who collected dozens of KKK hoods from members who quit after having conversations with him. Her argument: pushing prejudice underground makes it fester; exposing it to dialogue and rational examination allows people to distance themselves from toxic thoughts. Even former jihadi recruiters, she notes, have been deradicalized through conversation, not censorship.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A week is a long time in American politics. I did this interview with Alex Zakaras last week, before the midterms and Trump's slide in the polls. But in spite of Mamdani's victory earlier this week, the left still needs to figure out how to successfully reinvent itself in the MAGA age. That, at least, is the argument that Zakaras, a progressive political philosopher, makes in his new book Freedom For All. What could a liberal society be in 21st-century America, he asks. Zakaras' answer is an unambiguous left populism that defiantly reclaims freedom from libertarian conservatives, challenges economic elites head-on, and stops defending the pre-Trump status quo. But can progressives really build the broad coalition necessary to win power while staying true to their principles? Yes, Alex Zakaras trumpets. By pursuing freedom for all in a post-neo-liberal America. 1. The Left Can't Just Play Defense Zakaras argues that liberals have adopted a defensive posture—protecting institutions, defending the pre-Trump status quo—which positions them as guardians of a system many Americans are deeply dissatisfied with. This allows the populist right to claim the mantle of change while liberals appear as defenders of an unequal economic order.2. Reclaim Freedom From Libertarian Conservatives The right has dominated the rhetorical battle over “freedom” for decades, defining it as absence of government interference. Zakaras insists left liberals must contest this term and articulate their own vision: freedom requires not just negative liberty but positive conditions—economic security, opportunity, dignity—that enable people to live freely.3. Left Populism Means Offending the Donor Class A genuine left populism requires the Democratic Party to adopt positions that alienate wealthy donors: stronger labor rights, wealth taxes, expanded public investment, even proposals like universal basic income. Zakaras argues this is essential to speak authentically to working-class economic suffering and build a winning coalition.4. The Coalition Will Have “Warts and All” Building a broad enough coalition to win power means welcoming people with views that make progressives uncomfortable—Catholic Latino voters with conservative social positions, working-class voters alienated by elite cultural politics. The left must abandon “politics of purity” for strategic coalition-building.5. Younger, Non-Ivy League Leaders Are Essential The Democratic Party is run by aging, Ivy League-educated lawyers who lack the media savvy to reach young voters. Zakaras points to figures like Zoran Mamdani who master TikTok and performative politics. The Chuck Schumers need to step aside for a new generation that can compete in today's media landscape.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

If money is supposed to make you happy, then why do tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen seem so miserably angry? That's the question at the heart of Jacob Silverman's new book, Gilded Rage, an expose of Silicon Valley's angry plutocracy. The weird thing is that a lot of these billionaires behave little differently from the apoplectic lumpen commentariat on X or Reddit. Sure, they might own X, but they share all the right-wing conspiracy theories infecting the online mob - from trollish racism and anti-semitism to a bro style paranoia about female power. According to Silverman, their rage is a form of exhaustion with the world itself. These men don't just want to own everything—they want to exit society entirely, by inventing new cities, buying private islands, and founding Martian colonies. Unlike the Gilded Age robber barons who happily built universities and libraries, today's miserable tech elites sit in their palatial basements and rage against society. Maybe we should take away their money. It might cheer them up. 1. The Radicalization is Real and Different This isn't just typical Silicon Valley disruption rhetoric. Silverman argues we're witnessing an unprecedented fusion of corporate power and government under Trump, with tech CEOs like Musk acting as virtual co-candidates rather than mere donors. Unlike previous eras of money in politics, this represents CEOs directly occupying the political stage.2. Childhood Trauma Shapes Billionaire Rage Musk's abusive upbringing in apartheid South Africa, Thiel's grievances dating back to Stanford, and personal family conflicts (like Musk's estrangement from his trans daughter) have profoundly shaped these men's worldviews. Their “woke mind virus” obsession often traces directly to feeling their children have been turned against them by progressive institutions.3. The Apartheid Connection Matters The South African origins of key PayPal mafia members—Musk, Thiel, and David Sacks—isn't coincidental. Growing up in a “highly engineered chauvinist racist society” has influenced their authoritarian instincts, comfort with hierarchy, and reactionary politics. Musk's companies have faced multiple racial discrimination lawsuits, suggesting these patterns persist.4. They're Literary Fundamentalists, Not Intellectuals These billionaires obsessively reference science fiction and fantasy (Musk's Asimov fixation, Thiel's endless Tolkien companies), but they read these works as blueprints rather than allegories. They lack humor, self-reflection, and genuine intellectual growth—Thiel still complains about the same grievances from his 1995 book “The Diversity Myth.”5. There's No Liberal Tech Counterweight Don't expect Tim Cook, Reid Hoffman, or other supposedly progressive tech leaders to mount serious opposition. Most are opportunists going along to get along, while others have their own scandals (Hoffman's Epstein connections). The choice isn't between left and right tech elites, but between an active right-wing faction and a passive center-right majority.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Bell Curve author joins the intellectual mob (Peter Thiel, Jordan Peterson, Ross Douthat et al) and finds GodCharles Murray, the infamous co-author of the Bell Curve, has joined the crowd and is Taking Religion Seriously. But what if God doesn't take him seriously—or worse, finds his work on cognitive elites sufficiently annoying to sentence him to give powerpoint presentations on IQ for eternity? Murray doesn't seem too stressed by these Dantesque scenarios. Instead, he's eager to keep up with his Quaker wife, Catherine Bly Cox, who has taken religion far more seriously than Murray himself. Even Murray's discovery of God feels slightly detached and skeptical—as if the social scientist is laughing at himself for doing such an unverifiable and perhaps even low IQ thing. So if Murray can't take his own faith seriously, why should God—or fellow skeptics of today's mob fashion for religion—take him any more seriously? 1. The Intellectual Zeitgeist Has Shifted on Religion Twenty years ago, the New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens) dominated intellectual discourse. Today, figures from Peter Thiel to Jordan Peterson to Ross Douthat are taking religion seriously again. Murray sees this as the West emerging from “intellectual adolescence”—no longer assuming our Enlightenment parents were wrong about everything.2. Science Has Flipped from Religion's Enemy to Its Unexpected Ally For centuries, scientific discoveries (evolution, psychology, astronomy) delivered body blows to religious belief. But Murray argues that 20th-century science—from the Big Bang to near-death experiences to the hard problem of consciousness—has created new mysteries that materialism can't explain but religion can. We've moved from a “god of the gaps” to genuine scientific anomalies that challenge pure materialism.3. Spiritual Sensitivity Is a Trait, Not an Achievement Murray believes sensitivity to spiritual matters is like musical ability or artistic appreciation—a genetically grounded continuum from low to high. His wife has access to spiritual insights he doesn't. This isn't about intelligence (both Christopher Hitchens and Francis Collins are brilliant) but about a distinct cognitive capacity. Smart people at Harvard don't believe because they lack this trait, not because they're smarter.4. Murray Is Chasing His Wife's Faith (and Losing) Catherine Bly Cox began her religious journey after feeling she loved their baby “more than evolution required”—sensing she was a conduit for mysterious, superfluous love. Her faith has slowly evolved “like a light on a rheostat.” Murray, the empiricist, can't access what she experiences. He's stuck investigating historicity and near-death experiences while she explores meaning and the human condition. He's envious but can't catch up.5. Murray Won't Apologize for The Bell Curve—Even to God When pressed about whether guilt over his controversial work might motivate his religious turn, Murray was emphatic: “Not the slightest. I am not only proud of the bell curve, I think that the bell curve contains the germ of a lot of the arguments I've been making to you today.” He insists God cannot be anthropomorphized or placed on an IQ scale. But his refusal to reckon with how his life's work might look from a divine perspective—or from the perspective of Christian love and universal human dignity—suggests his religious journey remains fundamentally intellectual rather than transformative. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Lea Ypi's new book about her Greek-Albanian grandmother is a philosophical meditation on dignity, a history of Ottoman collapse and Balkan nationalism, and a warning about our own indignant age of manufactured identities and resurgent tribalism.Back in January 2022, Lea Ypi came on the show to discuss Free, her brilliant account of growing up in communist Albania. Now Ypi, who teaches political philosophy at LSE, is back with her follow-up, Indignity, an equally compelling biography of Leman Ypi, her maternal grandmother. “A Life Reimagined” is its subtitle, but it's not just her grandmother whose life Ypi is reimagining. The book is a retelling of the modern stories of Greece, Turkey and Albania as well as a sly backwards glance on the court politics of the late Ottomans. Indignity is a Balkan story, in the grand tradition of Rebecca West. And like West, Ypi shows us that Balkan history is never quite dead - instead, it's prophecy for our own age of resurgent nationalism and manufactured identities. Things don't die in South Eastern Europe, Ypi suggests, they just fester, creating more and more indignity. No wonder the Dracula myth is a Balkan creation. 1. Dignity is what we chase, indignity is what we photograph. Bob Dylan wrote that “dignity never been photographed,” and Ypi iterates an entire philosophical framework around this insight. A 1941 photo of her glamorous grandmother in the Italian Alps sparked the book—but also online accusations that she was a spy. For Ypi, following Kant, dignity is an immaterial ideal we pursue; indignity is the empirical reality we live in. The book oscillates between the two, asking: how do we think about the dignity of the dead when all we have left are degraded facts and hostile interpretations?2. Salonique the Magnificent died in 1912—and took cosmopolitan possibility with it. Leman Ypi was born in 1917 in Salonica, an Ottoman melting pot that was, for a time, considered a potential homeland for European Jews. When it became Greek in 1912, the Hellenization project began dismantling centuries of multicultural coexistence. By the time the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI, rising nationalism had replaced cosmopolitan possibility. Leman, an “Albanian” who'd never been to Albania, was told her identity must align with the new nation-state project. The book is a lament for this lost time—not a lost place, but a lost way of being.3. Nationalism is a zero-sum game for dignity. In the world of nation-states that emerged from Ottoman collapse, individual dignity became inseparable from collective identity. To be Albanian meant dignity only as part of the Albanian nation-state project. This homogenizing, exclusionary logic forced people into boxes they'd never inhabited before. Ypi shows how this nationalist manipulation of dignity—promising it while destroying it—ran from the 1920s through fascism and communism. And it's back now, in our age of deportations, border walls, and politicians demanding: “What are you? Where do you really belong?”4. The stoic suicide versus the Kantian fighter—two philosophies of dignity. Leman's aunt Selma, forced into marriage with a German businessman, killed herself on her wedding day—the ultimate stoic assertion of control. “If you see a room full of smoke, do you wait for help or just leave?” Throughout her life, especially during her husband's 15-year imprisonment under Albanian communism, Leman wrestled with this question. Her answer was Kantian: suicide is a betrayal of our moral responsibilities to others. Dignity means staying and fighting, even when the struggle seems futile. But Ypi doesn't romanticize this—Leman's principled decisions often brought tragic consequences.5. Identity is always more complicated than politics pretends. Writing the book forced Ypi to confront how constructed and contingent identity really is. Her “Albanian” grandmother was born in Greece, had never been to Albania, grew up in an Ottoman cosmopolitan elite, and only became Albanian through the accidents of collapsing empires and rising nationalisms. This complexity matters now, Ypi argues, when contemporary politics—from migration to deportation to calls for deglobalization—depends on simplistic, homogeneous notions of identity and belonging. The archive lies; borders shift; people contain multitudes. Any politics built on forcing people to “belong in one place and nowhere else” is both a scam and historically illiterate.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A former US ambassador to Russia warns of America's slide into autocracyAs American ambassador in Moscow between 2012 and 2014, Michael McFaul had a front row seat on Russia's slide into autocracy. But in his new book, Autocrats vs Democrats, McFaul warns that it's not just Putin, but also Xi and Trump who are fueling the “new global disorder”. And the intended audience for his jeremiad against autocracy is, of course, in the United States, rather than China or Russia. McFaul, who now teaches at Stanford, is warning about democracy's dangerous flirtation with autocracy, especially in the United States. The parallels are chilling. Putin used the law to target enemies, reorganized property rights to silence independent media, and cultivated a patrimonial relationship with supporters who saw him as their protector. Trump, McFaul argues, is following a similar playbook—though America's deeper democratic traditions and more autonomous institutions provide stronger resistance. Yet McFaul sees cause for alarm in Trump's rapid moves to “bulldoze” democratic norms, from weaponizing the Justice Department to attacking press freedom. The question, for Michael McFaul, isn't if America could slide into autocracy, but whether its citizens will recognize the threat before the current flirtation is consummated. 1. Democratic Expansion, Not NATO, Turned Putin Against the West McFaul demolishes the Mearsheimer thesis that NATO expansion provoked Putin. As ambassador, he was in every meeting with Putin and Medvedev for five years—NATO simply wasn't a major issue. What terrified Putin were democratic revolutions: Serbia 2000, Georgia 2003, Ukraine's Orange Revolution 2004, and especially the 2011 protests when a quarter million Russians demanded reform in Moscow. Putin blamed the CIA and saw American-style democracy as an existential threat to his autocratic rule.2. Trump Is Following Putin's Autocratic Playbook—With One Crucial Difference Like Putin, Trump weaponizes the Justice Department against enemies, attacks independent media through property rights reorganization, and moves fast to “bulldoze” democratic norms (making reconstruction nearly impossible). But America has what Russia lacked: deeper democratic traditions going back centuries, autonomous state governments, genuinely independent media, and even a functioning opposition party. McFaul notes Trump's failures—unable to silence critics like Kimmel—suggest democratic antibodies still work, though the threat remains real.3. Xi's Slow Game Is More Dangerous Than Putin's Imperial Aggression Putin exports illiberal nationalism, seeking ideological allies in Europe and America who share his contempt for liberal “decadence.” Xi plays differently: he's not trying to destroy the liberal international order but to increase Chinese power within it while building parallel structures (BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organization) where China serves as anchor for an autocratic world. McFaul warns this evolutionary approach may prove more dangerous precisely because it's less visible than Putin's tanks rolling into Ukraine.4. America's Fatal Post-Cold War Mistake: We Stopped Selling Democracy to Americans The West assumed democracy was inevitable after 1991 and stopped doing the hard work. Political elites in both parties said “we got this” and stopped explaining to middle America why global engagement, free trade, and democracy promotion serve national interests. This created a vacuum Trump filled with isolationism. McFaul argues the book is written not for Cambridge and Palo Alto, but for the entire country—an attempt to restart that abandoned conversation.5. The Choice: Lead the Free World Collectively or Watch Dictators Dominate America will never regain the hegemonic power it held after World War II, and attempting unilateral dominance risks dangerous overreach that pushes wavering democracies toward China. But if democracies unite, they collectively have more economic and military power than China and its autocratic allies. The alternative to collective democratic leadership isn't Chinese hegemony—it's anarchic disorder where the powerful do what they can, a return to the chaotic map of European history where borders constantly shifted and weak states got swallowed. If democracies fail to organize, dictators will dominate the 21st century.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A Nobel laureate on why we should sometimes trust scientists, and not politicians, to fix the futurePeter Agre won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2003, but he's not interested in playing God. Or even know-it-all. “When Nobel Prize winners start predicting what the stock market would do, or who's going to win the World Series, they may be beyond their specialty,” he says. Yet in his new book, Can Scientists Succeed Where Politicians Fail?, Agre claims that scientists have succeeded in defusing international crises where politicians have failed. He uses the 2015 Iran nuclear accord as an example, arguing that it only happened because two MIT-trained physicists spoke the same scientific language and brought presents for each other's grandchildren. Then Trump canceled it. Now, with RFK Jr. running American health policy and the CDC “decimated,” he fears for catastrophe. Peter Agre may not quite be God. But he's about as close as we will get in our polarized and paranoid world. * Science diplomacy works when politicians deadlock. The 2015 Iran nuclear accord succeeded because two MIT-trained physicists—Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi—could speak the same technical language and find common ground where politicians like John Kerry and Javad Zarif had reached a standstill. They started by bringing presents for each other's grandchildren.* Trump's cancellation of the Iran deal exemplifies political failure. After scientists brokered a successful nuclear agreement involving the P5+1 nations, Trump withdrew from it, believing the deal wasn't “tough enough.” The result: “we're back to round zero,” undermining years of scientific diplomacy.* The bipartisan consensus on science has collapsed. During the Sputnik era, Republicans and Democrats united to fund NASA and transform American science education. Today, that unity is gone—COVID politicized science, Fauci became a lightning rod, and the traditional respect for scientific expertise has eroded across the political spectrum.* RFK Jr.'s health policies reflect “a lack of fundamental understanding.” Agre warns that Kennedy's anti-vaccine stance and the decimation of the CDC under his leadership are “dangerous” and “counterintuitive.” Measles, virtually absent from the Western Hemisphere, is now returning without leadership response. Catastrophe, Agre suggests, is not a question of if but when.* Scientists must inform policy without becoming know-it-alls. Agre argues that scientists shouldn't make all decisions but must make information accessible to those in power. The challenge: maintaining credibility and trust in an era when Americans are increasingly skeptical of expertise, and when standing up for science risks becoming unavoidably political.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe