Podcasts about reaganite

* Racist Macca?* Some bad names* In praise of (trans?) Pee Wee* Does Long Duck Dong denounce his past?* Was that a Reaganite video game?* Trade war nonsense: the court says…maybe not* Moynihan's $700 dress (including a $250 tariff) * Kmele on CNN* The end of Elon* Just like Reagan and Thatcher but not all* No suspects, no DNA, no fingerprints, no leads * MI:7 DEI This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wethefifth.com/subscribe

How historic are Trump 2.0's first few weeks? For the veteran correspondent, Nick Bryant, the longtime BBC man in Washington DC, what the Trump regime has done in the first few weeks of his second administration is as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It's the end of the America we haver known for the last seventy years, he says. Bryant describes Trump's rapprochement with Russia as Neville Chamberlain style appeasement and notes the dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine and European allies. He sees Trump's actions as revealing rather than changing America's true nature. Bryant also discusses the failures of the Dems, the role of Elon Musk in the administration, and structural changes to federal institutions. Despite all the upheaval, Bryant suggests this isn't so much "goodbye to America" as a revelation of the cynically isolationist forces that were always present in American society.Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Nick Bryant:* Historic Transformation: Bryant sees Trump's second term as a pivotal moment in world history, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, with rapid changes in global alliances and particularly in America's relationship with Russia, which he characterizes as "appeasement."* Democratic Party Crisis: He analyzes how the Democrats' failures stemmed from multiple factors - Biden's delayed exit, Kamala Harris's weak candidacy, and the lack of time to find a stronger replacement. While Trump's victory was significant, Bryant notes it wasn't a landslide.* Elon Musk's Unexpected Role: An unforeseen development Bryant didn't predict in his book was Musk's prominent position in Trump's second administration, describing it as almost a "co-presidency" following Trump's assassination attempt and Musk's subsequent endorsement of Trump.* Federal Government Transformation: Bryant observes that Trump's dismantling of federal institutions goes beyond typical Republican small-government approaches, potentially removing not just bureaucratic waste but crucial expertise and institutional knowledge.* Trump as Revealer, Not Changer: Perhaps most significantly, Bryant argues that Trump hasn't changed America but rather revealed its true nature - arguing that authoritarianism, political violence, and distrust of big government have always been present in American history. FULL TRANSCRIPT Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. About eight months ago, we had a great show with the BBC's former Washington correspondent, Nick Bryant. His latest book, "The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself," predicted much of what's happening in the United States now. When you look at the headlines this week about the U.S.-Russia relationship changing in a head-spinning way, apparently laying the groundwork for ending the Ukrainian war, all sorts of different relations and tariffs and many other things in this new regime. Nick is joining us from Sydney, Australia, where he now lives. Nick, do you miss America?Nick Bryant: I covered the first Trump administration and it felt like a 25/8 job, not just 24/7. Trump 2.0 feels even more relentless—round-the-clock news forever. We're checking our phones to see what has happened next. People who read my book wouldn't be surprised by how Donald Trump is conducting his second term. But some things weren't on my bingo card, like Trump suggesting a U.S. takeover of Gaza. The rapprochement with Putin, which we should look on as an act of appeasement after his aggression in Ukraine, was very easy to predict.Andrew Keen: That's quite a sharp comment, Nick—an act of appeasement equivalent to Neville Chamberlain's umbrella.Nick Bryant: It was ironic that J.D. Vance made his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Munich was where Neville Chamberlain secured the Munich Agreement, which was seen as a terrible act of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. This moment feels historic—I would liken it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're seeing a complete upending of the world order.Back at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were talking about the end of history—Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis suggesting the triumph of liberal democracy. Now, we're talking about the end of America as we've known it since World War II. You get these Berlin Wall moments like Trump saying there should be a U.S. takeover of Gaza. J.D. Vance's speech in Munich ruptures the transatlantic alliance, which has been the basis of America's global preeminence and European security since World War II.Then you've seen what's happened in Saudi Arabia with the meeting between the Russians and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, completely resetting relations between Washington and Moscow. It's almost as if the invasions of Ukraine never happened. We're back to the situation during the Bush administration when George W. Bush famously met Vladimir Putin, looked into his soul, and gave him a clean bill of health. Things are moving at a hurtling pace, and it seems we're seeing the equivalent of a Berlin Wall tumbling every couple of days.Andrew Keen: That's quite dramatic for an experienced journalist like yourself to say. You don't exaggerate unnecessarily, Nick. It's astonishing. Nobody predicted this.Nick Bryant: When I first said this about three weeks ago, I had to think long and hard about whether the historical moments were equivalent. Two weeks on, I've got absolutely no doubt. We're seeing a massive change. European allies of America are now not only questioning whether the United States is a reliable ally—they're questioning whether the United States is an ally at all. Some are even raising the possibility that nations like Germany, the UK, and France will soon look upon America as an adversary.J.D. Vance's speech was very pointed, attacking European elitism and what he saw as denial of freedom of speech in Europe by governments, but not having a single word of criticism for Vladimir Putin. People are listening to the U.S. president, vice president, and others like Marco Rubio with their jaws on the ground. It's a very worrying moment for America's allies because they cannot look across the Atlantic anymore and see a president who will support them. Instead, they see an administration aligning itself with hard-right and far-right populist movements.Andrew Keen: The subtitle of your book was "America's Unending Conflict with Itself: The History Behind Trump in Advance." But America now—and I'm talking to you from San Francisco, where obviously there aren't a lot of Trump fans or J.D. Vance fans—seems in an odd, almost surreal way to be united. There were protests on Presidents Day earlier this week against Trump, calling him a tyrant. But is the thesis of your book about the forever war, America continually being divided between coastal elites and the hinterlands, Republicans and Democrats, still manifesting itself in late February 2025?Nick Bryant: Trump didn't win a landslide victory in the election. He won a significant victory, a decisive victory. It was hugely significant that he won the popular vote, which he didn't manage to do in 2016. But it wasn't a big win—he didn't win 50% of the popular vote. Sure, he won the seven battleground states, giving the sense of a massive victory, but it wasn't massive numerically.The divides in America are still there. The opposition has melted away at the moment with sporadic protests, but nothing really major. Don't be fooled into thinking America's forever wars have suddenly ended and Trump has won. The opposition will be back. The resistance will be back.I remember moments in the Obama administration when it looked like progressives had won every battle in America. I remember the day I went to South Carolina, to the funeral of the pastor killed in that terrible shooting in Charleston. Obama broke into "Amazing Grace"—it was almost for the first time in front of a black audience that he fully embraced the mantle of America's first African-American president. He flew back to Washington that night, and the White House was bathed in rainbow colors because the Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal across the country.It seemed in that moment that progressives were winning every fight. The Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare. You assumed America's first black president would be followed by America's first female president. But what we were seeing in that summer of 2015 was actually the conservative backlash. Trump literally announced his presidential bid the day before that awful Charleston shooting. You can easily misread history at this moment. Sure, Trump looks dominant now, but don't be fooled. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in two years' time the Republicans end up losing the House of Representatives in the congressional midterm elections.Andrew Keen: When it comes to progressives, what do you make of the Democratic response, or perhaps the lack of response, to the failure of Kamala Harris? The huge amount of money, the uninspiring nature of her campaign, the fiasco over Biden—were these all accidental events or do they speak of a broader crisis on the left amongst progressives in America?Nick Bryant: They speak of both. There were really big mistakes made by the Democrats, not least Joe Biden's decision to contest the election as long as he did. It had become pretty clear by the beginning of 2024 that he wasn't in a fit state to serve four more years or take on the challenge of Donald Trump.Biden did too well at two critical junctures. During the midterm elections in 2022, many people predicted a red wave, a red tsunami. If that had happened, Biden would have faced pressure to step aside for an orderly primary process to pick a successor. But the red wave turned into a red ripple, and that persuaded Biden he was the right candidate. He focused on democracy, put democracy on the ballot, hammered the point about January 6th, and decided to run.Another critical juncture was the State of the Union address at the beginning of 2024. Biden did a good job, and I think that allayed a lot of concerns in the Democratic Party. Looking back on those two events, they really encouraged Biden to run again when he should never have done so.Remember, in 2020, he intimated that he would be a bridge to the next generation. He probably made a mistake then in picking Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate because he was basically appointing his heir. She wasn't the strongest Democrat to go up against Donald Trump—it was always going to be hard for a woman of color to win the Rust Belt. She wasn't a particularly good candidate in 2020 when she ran; she didn't even make it into 2020. She launched her campaign in Oakland, and while it looked good at the time, it became clear she was a poor candidate.Historical accidents, the wrong candidate, a suffering economy, and an America that has always been receptive to someone like Trump—all those factors played into his victory.Andrew Keen: If you were giving advice to the Democrats as they lick their wounds and begin to think about recovery and fighting the next battles, would you advise them to shift to the left or to the center?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question because you could argue it both ways. Do the Democrats need to find a populist of the left who can win back those blue-collar voters that have deserted the Democratic Party? This is a historical process that's been going on for many years. Working-class voters ditched the Democrats during the Reagan years and the Nixon years. Often race is part of that, often the bad economy is part of that—an economy that's not working for the working class who can't see a way to map out an American dream for themselves.You could argue for a left-wing populist, or you could argue that history shows the only way Democrats win the White House is by being centrist and moderate. That was true of LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton—all Southerners, and that wasn't a coincidence. Southern Democrats came from the center of the party. Obama was a pragmatic, centrist candidate. Kennedy was a very pragmatic centrist who tried to bring together the warring tribes of the Democratic Party.Historically, you could argue Democrats need to move to the center and stake out that ground as Trump moves further to the right and the extremes. But what makes it harder to say for sure is that we're in a political world where a lot of the old rules don't seem to apply.Andrew Keen: We don't quite know what the new rules are or if there are any rules. You describe this moment as equivalent in historic terms to the fall of the Berlin Wall or perhaps 9/11. If we reverse that lens and look inwards, is there an equivalent historical significance? You had an interesting tweet about Doge and the attempt in some people's eyes for a kind of capture of power by Elon Musk and the replacement of the traditional state with some sort of almost Leninist state. What do you make of what's happening within the United States in domestic politics, particularly Musk's role?Nick Bryant: We've seen American presidents test the Constitution before. Nobody in the modern era has done it so flagrantly as Donald Trump, but Nixon tried to maximize presidential powers to the extent that he broke the law. Nixon would have been found guilty in a Senate trial had that impeachment process continued. Of course, he was forced to resign because a delegation of his own party drove down Pennsylvania Avenue and told him he had to go.You don't get that with the Republican Party and Donald Trump—they've fallen behind him. FDR was commonly described as an American dictator. H.L. Mencken wrote that America had a Caesar, a pharaoh. Woodrow Wilson was maximalist in his presidential powers. Abraham Lincoln was the great Constitution breaker, from trashing the First Amendment to exceeding his powers with the Emancipation Proclamation. Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional—he needed congressional approval, which he didn't have.There's a long history of presidents breaking rules and Americans being okay with that. Lincoln has never been displaced from his historical throne of grace. FDR is regarded as one of the great presidents. What sets this moment apart is that constraints on presidents traditionally came from the courts and their own political parties. We're not seeing that with Donald Trump.Andrew Keen: What about the cultural front? There's talk of Trump's revenge, taking over the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., revenge against traditional scientists, possibly closing some universities. Is this overdramatic, or is Trump really taking revenge for what happened between 2020 and 2024 when he was out of power?Nick Bryant: Trump is in a vengeful mood—we always thought Trump 2.0 would be a project of vengeance. Republican presidents have always thought parts of the administrative state work against them, and Trump is dismantling it at warp speed. Elon Musk is going into various government departments acting like he's heading a hostile takeover of the federal government.Reagan launched a rhetorical assault on federal government, which was really a creation of the New Deal years under FDR. That period saw massive expansion of federal government into people's lives with Social Security and the welfare net. We haven't seen this kind of assault on federal government since then. Trump is also trying to dismantle what he regards as America's cultural establishment, which he sees as too white, too elitist, too intellectual. He's trying to remold America, its government, and cultural institutions in his own image.Andrew Keen: You've mentioned Reagan. I came to the U.S. like you—you came as a grad student to study American history. I came in the '80s and remember the hysteria at UC Berkeley over Reagan—that he would blow up the world, that he was clueless, a Hollywood actor with no right to be in politics. Is it conceivable that Trump could be just another version of Reagan? In spite of all this hysteria, might this second Trump regime actually be successful?Nick Bryant: You can't rule out that possibility. The mistake made about Reagan was seeing him as a warmonger when he really wanted to be a peacemaker. That was the point of ending the Cold War—he wanted to win it, but through gambles on people like Gorbachev and diplomatic moves his advisors warned against.There are analogies to Trump. I don't think he's a warmonger or wants to send U.S. troops into countries. He's described some surprising imperial ambitions like taking over Greenland, though Harry Truman once wanted that too. Trump wants to make peace, but the problem is on what terms. Peace in Ukraine, in Trump's view, means a massive win for Vladimir Putin and the sidelining of the Ukrainian people and America's European allies.There wasn't a big cost to Reagan's peacemaking—the European alliance stayed intact, he tinkered with government but didn't go after Social Security. The cost of Trump is the problem.Andrew Keen: The moral cost or the economic cost?Nick Bryant: Both. One thing that happened with Reagan was the opening of big disparities in income and wealth in American society. That was a big factor in Donald Trump's success—the paradox of how this billionaire from New York became the hero of the Rust Belt. When the gulf between executive pay and shop floor pay became massive, it was during the Reagan years.You see the potential of something similar now. Trump is supercharging an economy that looks like it will favor the tech giants and the world's richest man, Elon Musk. You end up worsening the problem you were arguably setting out to solve.You don't get landslides anymore in American politics—the last president to win 40 states was George Herbert Walker Bush. Reagan in '84 won 49 out of 50 states, almost getting a clean sweep except for Mondale's home state of Minnesota. I don't think Trump will be the kind of unifying president that Reagan was. There was a spontaneity and optimism about Reagan that you don't see with Trump.Andrew Keen: Where are the divisions? Where is the great threat to Trump coming from? There was a story this week that Steve Bannon called Elon Musk a parasitic illegal immigrant. Is it conceivable that the biggest weakness within the Trump regime will come from conflict between people like Bannon and Musk, the nationalists and the internationalist wing of the MAGA movement?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question. There doesn't seem to be much external opposition at the moment. The Democrats are knocked out or taking the eight count in boxing terms, getting back on their feet and taking as long as they can to get their gloves up. There isn't a leader in the Democratic movement who has anywhere near Trump's magnetism or personal power to take him on.Maybe the opposition comes from internal divisions and collapse of the Trump project. The relationship with Elon Musk was something I didn't anticipate in my book. After that assassination attempt, Musk endorsed Trump in a big way, put his money behind him, started offering cash prizes in Pennsylvania. Having lived at Mar-a-Lago during the transition with a cottage on the grounds and now an office in the White House—I didn't anticipate his role.Many people thought Trump wouldn't put up with somebody who overshadows him or gets more attention, but that relationship hasn't failed yet. I wonder if that speaks to something different between Trump 2.0 and 1.0. Trump's surrounded by loyalists now, but at 78 years old, I think he wanted to win the presidency more than he wanted the presidency itself. I wonder if he's happy to give more responsibility to people like Musk who he thinks will carry out his agenda.Andrew Keen: You've been described as the new Alistair Cooke. Cooke was the father of Anglo-American journalism—his Letter from America was an iconic show, the longest-running show in radio history. Cooke was always very critical of what he called the big daddy state in Washington, D.C., wasn't a fan of large government. What's your take on Trump's attack on large government in D.C.? Is there anything in it? You spent a lot of time in DC. Are these agencies full of fat and do they need to be cut?Nick Bryant: Cutting fat out of Washington budgets is one of the easy things—they're bloated, they get all these earmarks, they're full of pork. There's always been a bloated federal bureaucracy, and there's a long historical tradition of suspicion of Washington going back to the founding. That's why the federal system emerged with so much power vested in the states.Reagan's revolution was based on dismantling the New Deal government. He didn't get that far in that project, but rhetorically he shifted America's views about government. He emphasized that government was the problem, not the solution, for four decades. When Bill Clinton became president, he had to make this big ideological concession to Reaganism and deliver Reaganite lines like "the era of big government is over."The concern right now is that they're not just getting rid of fat—they're getting rid of expertise and institutional knowledge. They're removing people who may be democratic in their thinking or not on board with the Trump revolution, but who have extensive experience in making government work. In moments of national crisis, conservative ideologues tend to become operational liberals. They rely on government in disasters, pandemics, and economic crises to bail out banks and industries.Conservatives have successfully planted in many Americans' heads that government is the enemy. Hillary Clinton saw a classic sign in 2006—a protester carrying a sign saying "get your government hands off my Medicare." Well, Medicare is a government program. People need government, expertise, and people in Washington who know what they're doing. You're not just getting rid of waste—you're getting rid of institutional knowledge.Andrew Keen: One of the more colorful characters in these Trump years is RFK Jr. There was an interesting piece in the National Review about RFK Jr. forcing the left to abandon the Kennedy legacy. Is there something symbolically historical in this shift from RFK Sr. being an icon on the left to RFK Jr. being an icon on the libertarian right? Does it speak of something structural that's changed in American political culture?Nick Bryant: Yes, it does, and it speaks to how America is perceived internationally. JFK was always seen as this liberal champion, but he was an arch pragmatist, never more so than on civil rights. My doctoral thesis and first book were about tearing down that myth about Kennedy.The Kennedys did inspire international respect. The Kennedy White House seemed to be a place of rationality, refinement, and glamor. JFK embodied what was great about America—its youth, dynamism, vision. When RFK was assassinated in California, weeks after MLK's assassination, many thought that sense of America was being killed off too. These were people who inspired others internationally to enter public service. They saw America as a beacon on a hill.RFK Jr. speaks of a different, toxic American exceptionalism. People look at figures like RFK Jr. and wonder how he could possibly end up heading the American Health Department. He embodies what many people internationally reject about America, whereas JFK and RFK embodied what people loved, admired, and wanted to emulate.Andrew Keen: You do a show now on Australian television. What's the view from Australia? Are people as horrified and disturbed in Australia as they are in Europe about what you've called a historic change as profound as the fall of the Berlin Wall—or maybe rather than the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's the establishment of a new kind of Berlin Wall?Nick Bryant: One of Australia's historic diplomatic fears is abandonment. They initially looked to Britain as a security guarantor in the early days of Australian Federation when Australia became a modern country in 1901. After World War II, they realized Britain couldn't protect them, so they looked to America instead. America has underwritten Australia's security since World War II.Now many Australians realize that won't be the case anymore. Australia entered into the AUKUS deal with Britain and America for nuclear submarine technology, which has become the basis of Australia's defense. There's fear that Trump could cancel it on a whim. They're currently battling over steel and aluminum tariffs. Anthony Albanese, the center-left prime minister, got a brief diplomatic reprieve after talking with Trump last week.A country like Australia, much like Britain, France, or Germany, cannot look on Trump's America as a reliable ally right now. That's concerning in a region where China increasingly throws its weight around.Andrew Keen: Although I'm guessing some people in Australia would be encouraged by Trump's hostility towards China.Nick Bryant: Yes, that's one area where they see Trump differently than in Europe because there are so many China hawks in the Trump administration. That gives them some comfort—they don't see the situation as directly analogous to Europe. But it's still worrying. They've had presidents who've been favorable towards Australia over the years. Trump likes Australia partly because America enjoys a trade surplus with Australia and he likes Greg Norman, the golfer. But that only gives you a certain measure of security.There is concern in this part of the world, and like in Europe, people are questioning whether they share values with a president who is aligning himself with far-right parties.Andrew Keen: Finally, Nick, your penultimate book was "When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present." You had an interesting tweet where you noted that the final chapter in your current book, "The Forever War," is called "Goodbye America." But the more we talk, whether or not America remains great is arguable. If anything, this conversation is about "hello" to a new America. It's not goodbye America—if anything, America's more powerful, more dominant, shaping the world more in the 2020s than it's ever done.Nick Bryant: It's goodbye to the America we've known for the last 70 years, but not goodbye to America itself. That's one of the arguments of the book—Trump is far more representative of the true America than many international observers realize. If you look at American history through a different lens, Trump makes perfect sense.There's always been an authoritarian streak, a willingness to fall for demagogues, political violence, deep mistrust of government, and rich people making fortunes—from the robber barons of the late 19th century to the tech barons of the 21st century. It's goodbye to a certain America, but the America that Trump presides over now is an America that's always been there. Trump hasn't changed America—he's revealed it.Andrew Keen: Well, one thing we can say for sure is it's not goodbye to Nick Bryant. We'll get you back on the show. You're one of America's most perceptive and incisive observers, even if you're in Australia now. Thank you so much.Nick Bryant: Andrew, it's always a pleasure to be with you. I still love the country deeply—my fascination has always been born of great affection.Nick Bryant is the author of The Forever War: American's Unending Conflict with Itself and When America Stopped Being Great, a book that Joe Biden keeps in the Oval Office. He was formerly one of the BBC's most senior foreign correspondents, with postings in Washington DC, New York, South Asia and Australia. After covering the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, he left the BBC in 2021, and now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American history from Oxford.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.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 Monday's Mark Levin Show, if you want to learn about birthright citizenship, the wrong place to go is the Sunday shows. Listen to this show if you want to understand the 14th Amendment, its history, what it was based on, and the people who were involved. Margaret Brennan is on Face The Nation to advance her leftwing ideology. She claims a Reagan Judge in Seattle shot down the Trump executive order on birthright citizenship. That Judge was appointed by Reagan as part of a compromise. He's a liberal activist and a Biden sycophant – not a Reaganite. Also, Acting Attorney General James McHenry has fired the prosecutors who worked for special counsel Jack Smith. This is a good first step, but only a first step. Smith must be held legally and ethically responsible for what he did to our country. Later, today is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. So many millions lost their lives as they were horribly and systematically murdered. It's being reported that 8 of the remaining 26 hostages being held by Hamas are dead. The left will blame Benjamin Netanyahu for the dead hostages because he wouldn't give into Hamas' demands. Sick.  Afterward, Republican RINOs in the Florida legislature, led by the hapless House speaker, watered down Governor Ron DeSantis's immigration enforcement bill intended to support President Trump's deportation policy. DeSantis calls in and explains that this watered-down bill should be called the swamp act – it doesn't help Trump at all. The DeSantis immigration deportation reform agenda needs to be pushed and passed.  Finally, President Trump should get the cabinet he wants. If this is the team he wants, he should get it after his enormous victory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, how the party has changed.  At a moment when the Republican Party has shifted dramatically from its Reaganite roots, I talk with Washington Post columnist Max Boot, whose definitive biography of Ronald Reagan arrives with particular resonance. Through a decade of research, Boot reveals a pragmatic leader who would likely be puzzled by today's GOP—a president who supported immigration reform, worked with Gorbachev to reduce nuclear weapons, and prided himself on compromise, getting "80 percent of what he wanted" rather than demanding everything. Boot shares with me a fascinating exploration of Reagan's true legacy.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveOn the eve of Donald Trump's second inauguration, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic sit down to discuss the state of the Right and the Left in American politics. The conversation picks up where the last podcast episode left off, in a discussion about Damir's apparent rejuvenation in the wake of Trump's victory. Given that he didn't vote for Trump — in fact, he didn't vote for anybody — why is Damir smiling?Shadi suggests that “Democrats needed this defeat to learn important lessons.” Damir is not so sure that they will learn them. But one of the reasons he is giddy is that they will get their comeuppance for the political “villainy” of Russiagate, the Biden health coverup and other misguided Democratic gambits. Shadi, in turn, notes that many of his center-left acquaintances seem surprisingly at peace with the new government, and ready to entertain new ideas. “Very rarely did I hear despair,” he reports.Both Shadi and Damir go deeper by asking about the status quo of the Left and the Right. Damir thinks that Trump has “cleared the field” of the conservative movement's Reaganite past, and that the Right is now ready to debate issues in a more realistic way. Shadi laments that the Left has become boring by being too certain that they are correct about everything: they are the party of “facts, data and progress,” and think that they have “resolved all the big ideological debates.”In our bonus content for paid subscribers, Damir discusses what he means by “tragic liberalism,” Shadi explains why he thinks atheism is over, and our hosts discuss the best and worst things that could happen during the second Trump presidency.Required Reading and Listening:* Damir, “We'll Have to Rethink Everything” (WoC).* Shadi, “Trump's ‘madman theory' worked in Gaza when all else failed” (Washington Post).* Christine, “Zuck is the Zeitgeist” (WoC).* Santiago questions Damir about his newfound conservatism (WoC).* Tara Isabella Burton, “Believe for Your Own Sake, Not for ‘the West'” (WoC).* Ezra Klein and Nate Silver on “peak Trump” (X).* Elon Musk is an ‘Evil Person,' Steve Bannon Says” (New York Times).* “Corporate America embraces a new era of conservatism under Donald Trump” (Financial Times).* “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge” (Wall Street Journal).* David Brooks, “Why People Are Fleeing Blue Cities for Red States” (New York Times).* Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Amazon).This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets.Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

Happy new year! And what better way to celebrate the freshly torn calendar page than by welcoming one of Derek's favorite writers to the show to tell us what's in store for the 2025 economy. Michael Cembalest is the chairman of market and investment strategy for JPMorgan Asset Management, and the author of the truly spectacular newsletter, 'Eye on the Market.' Today, we start with stocks and describe the truly historic—and historically unprecedented—dominance of the so-called Mag-7 tech giants. Then, we draw the connection between Big Tech's historic run and the surge of AI spending. After a discussion on the history and future of nuclear power in America, we do a pit stop on the European economy, where we evaluate the continent's tradeoff between safety and growth, and move on to China to disentangle that economy's slowdown. Finally, we connect it all back to a Trump agenda that is a fascinating brew of old-fashioned Reaganite deregulation, newfangled crypto enthusiasm, mid-19th century tariff obsession, mid-20th century industrialization policy, and ... a bunch of other ingredients that I think I'll just let Michael tell you about. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Michael Cembalest Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mark Lazerus on X: "Every year, it boggles my mind how a world-class, kick-ass, unrivaled city like Chicago has the lamest New Year's Eve in the world. It's always some Holiday Inn meeting room in Schaumburg or some shit." / X Bob Smietana on X: "The most famous Sunday school teacher in America--and a heck of a carpenter— had died. Peace to the memory of Jimmy Carter, the best ex-president we've ever had. https://t.co/dhqP9bCmn2" / X (1) Michael Horton on X: "In my early teens, my grandmother and I would spar every time the evening news came on. She was a dedicated Democrat and Carter was her man. I was a Reaganite. Yet someone sent my Putting Amazing Back Into Grace to the President and he replied with a kind note. Jimmy Carter was" / X (1) That Trad Gal on X: "Pastor of mega church, worth $2.5 million, says it’s hard to admire Catholic priests for being committed to poverty. He claims chaste men don’t inspire men. What do you think he’d say about Jesus? https://t.co/H5V1SwnfSP" / X In 2025—Let’s Abide. – Bible Study Nerd See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ivana Stradner is an analyst of international relations. She is affiliated with the School of Advanced International Studies, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and other institutions. She was once a Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Serbian-born, she is an admirer of Ronald Reagan and an advocate of freedom and democracy—one with […]

Ivana Stradner is an analyst of international relations. She is affiliated with the School of Advanced International Studies, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and other institutions. She was once a Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Serbian-born, she is an admirer of Ronald Reagan and an advocate of freedom and democracy—one with clear, properly cold eyes. With Jay, she discusses her life and some of the pivotal issues of our time. 

Jonah made one singular endorsement this election season; he cast his presidential ballot for Paul Ryan. To thank Jonah for his lonely, intrepid work on the Ryan '24 campaign that wasn't, the former Speaker joins Jonah for a very special live taping of The Remnant from this year's Dispatch Summit. They discuss the pitfalls and peaks of Trump's economic plan, why incumbent parties continue to lose (and ways to avoid an infinity of single term majorities), how to solve the debt crisis, and the fame game in Congress—but the party doesn't stop there. Later in the show, Jonah and Paul debate the durability of American institutions, consider Trump's proposed cabinet appointments, and determine how Reaganite conservatives can walk the line between supporting good policy and descending into MAGAness. Show Notes —Yuval Levin's latest Dispatch piece The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including Jonah's G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Note: This was recorded prior to the results of the 2024 presidential election. With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to Donald Trump and author of Surrender is Not an Option and The Room Where it Happened. They discuss why Trump is so susceptible to the blandishments of foreign dictators like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un as well as his abysmal level of basic knowledge of how the U.S. government actually works and international affairs more broadly. They discuss the likely makeup of a Trump national security team in a putative second Trump term and what a Trump victory would mean for Ukraine and the future of NATO. They also discuss what a Harris team might look like and whether a Harris foreign policy would be a continuation of the Biden policies or whether it might be more reflective of the more Reaganite rhetoric she has used on the campaign trail. Finally, they discuss the two or three international security issues that Ambassador Bolton believes will require the most urgent attention from whoever wins the election. Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to Donald Trump and author of Surrender is Not an Option and The Room Where it Happened. They discuss why Trump is so susceptible to the blandishments of foreign dictators like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un as well as his abysmal level of basic knowledge of how the U.S. government actually works and international affairs more broadly. They discuss the likely makeup of a Trump national security team in a putative second Trump term and what a Trump victory would mean for Ukraine and the future of NATO. They also discuss what a Harris team might look like and whether a Harris foreign policy would be a continuation of the Biden policies or whether it might be more reflective of the more Reaganite rhetoric she has used on the campaign trail. Finally, they discuss the two or three international security issues that Ambassador Bolton believes will require the most urgent attention from whoever wins the election. Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

As president-elect Donald Trump moves to build his second administration, will he follow the Reaganite path of smaller government and lower taxes, or will he instead break from traditional Republican doctrine to focus on industrial growth and pro-family policies? Will his national security team be hawkish or dovish? And just how serious is he about his proposed tariffs? In this episode, Jacob Heilbrunn speaks with Daniel McCarthy, the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. McCarthy is the author of a recent New York Times essay on the 2024 presidential election, “This Is Why Trump Won.”Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay

What is America's role in the world? It's a hotly contested question in American politics that cuts across the left-right divide. Whereas a Reaganite policy view of a strong and robust national defensive capability coupled with American-led diplomacy around the world used to be the norm, leaders on both the left and right can now […]

What is America's role in the world? It's a hotly contested question in American politics that cuts across the left-right divide. Whereas a Reaganite policy view of a strong and robust national defensive capability coupled with American-led diplomacy around the world used to be the norm, leaders on both the left and right can now be found on either side of this issue. This episode explores three groups that go along with John Bolton's view of strong American leadership. Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, explains the evolution of the think tank from its origins in the Cold War to today. From a newer group, Vandenberg Coalition, Carrie Filipetti delves into the organization's mission and the way it uses its powerhouse advisory board to advance a stronger America. Finally, Alexander Hamilton Society executive director Gabriel Scheinmann emphasizes the importance of cultivating future leaders in the space through AHS's programming.

Hour 2 for 9/26/24 Drew prayed the Chaplet with Elizabeth Simutis (:20). Then, Retired Lt. Col. Dakota Wood covered the risks of war the world faces (26:58). Callers: I disagree with guest (39:51), nuclear readiness (444:26), and we have squandered Reaganite peace (47:38). 

For a much-needed break from the 2024 election news cycle, Jonah visits his Floridian friend, Dr. Will Inboden, who serves as the director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. Jonah and Will discuss UF's unique approach to higher-education reform, preach a sermon of Reaganite revival, and project some fears regarding the future of foreign policy. Show Notes: —Learn more about the Hamilton Center —Will's book: The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including Jonah's G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Jonah predicted in the outro of yesterday's Remnant episode, everything is indeed on fire. To help interpret what is perhaps the most chaotic news cycle in recent memory, Jonah is joined by Bulwark contributor Damon Linker. Tune in for Jonah and Damon's referendum on newly selected VP candidate J.D. Vance, the state of the GOP at the 2024 convention, and the conversions of conservative think tanks. To close it out, they discuss the great Republican schism and the fallout of the Trump assassination attempt. Show Notes: —Damon's Substack: Notes from the Middle Ground The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including Jonah's G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ron Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, grew up in Los Angeles and Sacramento while his father served as Governor of California from 1967-1975. After a brief career as a classical ballet dancer, Ron Reagan has spent the past 40 years as a correspondent, host and political commentator in television and radio, chiefly for MSNBC and Air America. He has written for many publications — Esquire, Newsweek, The New Yorker and Playboy among them — and is the author of the New York Times bestseller, My Father at 100. He is a board member of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and has spoken frequently in support of the separation of church and state. Ron and his Italian wife, Federica, divide their time between Seattle and Tuscany.Adam sits down with Ron for a deeply personal interview with the son of the 40th president to everything from growing up as a Reagan, differing with his father on politics, being an atheist, and writing a poignant memoir about his father's formative years called “My Father at 100,” which was published in 2011. Of course, Adam and Ron also discuss how the party of sunny optimistic Ronald Regan could devolve into a den of lies, autocracy and a disdain for the rule of law in the thrall to Donald Trump.Thanks for helping us save democracy one episode at a time! Join the Dirty Moderate Nation on Substack! Tell us what you think on Twitter! Check out our YouTube channel! Are you registered to VOTE?

William Inboden is Professor and Director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, and Peterson Senior Fellow with the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  He joins Adam in a discussion centering around his latest book“The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan in the White House and the World.”Inboden's masterly book provides a definitive account of  Reagan's strategic approach to diplomacy, his nuanced statecraft, and the impact of his decisions on the global stage. This compelling book is a must read especially for its analysis of Reagan's policies of peace through strength. An examination of Reagan's military buildup and tough rhetoric towards the Soviet Union are central to Reagan's legacy, but Inboden goes beyond the surface to explore how Reagan the “cowboy” became Reagan the diplomat,  and emerged as arguably the most consequential 20th century president next to FDR.Thanks for helping us save democracy one episode at a time! Join the Dirty Moderate Nation on Substack! Tell us what you think on Twitter! Check out our YouTube channel! Are you registered to VOTE?

It's been some 24 hours for Donald Trump. In one evening, he scores a major win as the Supreme Court kicks the election inteference case down the electoral road. Plus, a major congressional thorn in Trump's side, Reaganite senator Mitch McConnell announces he's stepping down as Senate Republican Leader. Trump is ever so close to total ownership of the Republican party.We digest in this bonus episode of The News Agents - USA.Editor: Gabriel RadusVideo Production: Shane FennellyThe News Agents USA is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/You can listen to this episode on Alexa - just say "Alexa, ask Global Player to play The News Agents USA".

In this episode, Dinesh tries to comprehend how elected officials could give greater importance to protecting Ukraine's border than our own border.  Dinesh asks whether some Republican leaders are infected with “Reaganitis,” which Dinesh defines as a false application of Reaganite principles to today's world which is very different from the one that Reagan faced.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former actor and SAG President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as Governor of California just after midnight on 2nd January, 1967: the end of the beginning of a hugely successful political career that would propel him all the way to the White House. Reagan's used oratory to gain prominence, notably his 1964 speech ‘A Time for Choosing', supporting Barry Goldwater's Presidential campaign, which established the Reaganite themes of anti-communism, limited government, and individual freedom.  In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly discover how Reagan's Governorship led him to Commander In Chief; demonstrate how his political evolution from liberal Democrat to conservative Republican showcased his adaptability and pragmatism; and consider how he used charm and wit (oh, and astrology…) to connect with the public and beat Jimmy Carter at his own game… Further Reading: ‘Ronald Reagan nominated for governor of California, June 7, 1966' (HISTORY, 2009): https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-nominated-for-governor-of-california ‘Biography of Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the U.S.' (ThoughtCo, 2019): https://www.thoughtco.com/ronald-reagan-fast-facts-104885 ‘"A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan' (Barry Goldwater Campaign, 1964): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY Love the show? Join

Tonight, we'll be talking a set of films that almost form a genre of their own.   These films were often, though not always, “respected” by critics and the general public at large, but all bore that dark, almost despairing claustrophobia and realistic feel of what I and others were living every day out on the streets locally, far from the dayglo nonsense of the 60's reruns or the sunnier Hollywood based fare of the day.   The streets were crowded, filthy, filled with the detritus of the post-hippie era – the junkies, the odd artsy types, the gangs, the whores.  The days where you were damn glad to see Curtis Sliwa's Guardian Angels on a subway…if you were crazy enough to use them at all. Everything covered in graffiti, buildings collapsing into tenements, crack houses, illicit hookup spots for rough trade cruising types.  Garbage in the streets, and decay in every sense of the word.   These are films that wallow in what in later years would be referred to as urban blight, but not so much “celebrating” as providing a window into all the palpable danger and decline of an impoverished post-blackout Manhattan in the days after the Watts and Newark riots, not long past Ford telling the mayor and city to go screw ourselves when asking for Federal relief.   These were the days of Studio 54, CBGBs and the original Saturday Night Live – but filled with menace. Hard drug use was rampant.  Muggings were so commonplace as to be a shrug of the shoulders.  Nobody in their right mind stepped into Central Park after sunset.  Washington Square was known for decades as Needle Park.  And the East Village?  Forget about Alphabet City, the Bronx or Brooklyn.   This was a special breed of film, that focused on crooked, flawed cops working outside a busted system…but not with the heroic vibe of Reaganite action heroes.  These guys paid for painting outside the lines.  The denouments were never triumphant, all victories were pyrrhic.  Vigilante justice and community action were about as fantastic as these films got, and as close to actual comeuppance as anyone got.   This is the story, in a way, of our childhood and early youth to young adulthood, as told in some very memorable films. So join us as we go dumpster diving in the back alleys of most dangerous of neighborhoods, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 111 (11/30/23): Take a Bite of the Rotten Apple - NYC cop/crime films of the 70s https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) TheThirdEyeCinema @Threads https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https://(open.spotify.com)/show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast Take a Bite of the Rotten Apple - NYC cop/crime films of the 70s  

It's almost Thanksgiving, Queerdos! And we're so thankful for this show. As a token of our gratitude to the Queerdos, we've got two heaping helpings of stories for you. First, in our True Crime Story, Kevin tells us about world-class Reaganite nepobaby Alfred Bloomingdale (of Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale) and the people he harmed along the way. Next, in our Spoopy Tale, Edie takes us back to Melted Film School to learn about 2019 body horror masterpiece CATS. So establish a safeword, practice your cat-like movements, and get ready for this week's show. Let's dive in! True Crime Story Starts @ 00:10:07 Spoopy Story Starts @ 00:54:00 Check out Edie's Xmas/Holiday deep cut Spotify playlist! ⁠HOLIDAZED Source notes: www.creepyinqueeriespod.com Follow on Instagram: @CreepyInQueeriesPod Send Us an Email: creepyinqueeriespod@gmail.com Listen on Youtube: Creepy InQueeries Pod Follow on Facebook: @CreepyInQueeriesPod

A conversation with Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, about the economy, politics, and life.

A conversation with Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, about the economy, politics, and life.

Today, The Two Mikes spoke with the renowned German author and economist Rainer Zitelmann about the troubled western economies, including that of the United States. Dr. Zitelmann said he had come to defend capitalism and to warn of the dangers that it currently faces. He said that in Europe and the United States capitalism is now seen as serious problem that needs to fixed – with a socialist remedy -- rather than as the reliable regime of growth and ever broader prosperity that it always has been. It almost seems, Dr. Zitelmann said, that few recall the economic “accomplishments” socialism. At the time of the USSR's collapse, for example, East Germans wanting to buy a car had to wait 12.5 to 17 years for its delivery, and then the car they received was all but worn out. At the same point in time only 27- percent of East Germans lived in a place where toilet facilities were not shared, and only 16-percent of East Germans had their own telephones. A refreshed Reaganite world economy would create societies where individuals could again become masters of their own fate and not just exist as self-pitying victims. In such a scenario, consumer choice we again be a dominating power and planned economies would receive the scuppering they merit. As an example of the process, Dr. Zitelmann said that he just returned from giving a seminar in Vietnam, where he found it was harder to find a Marxist that it was in the United States our Europe. He also said that polls in that country find that 80-percent of the Vietnamese admire Americans who have the courage to make capitalism work in their interests.--Dr. Zitelmann's essay on some of the above issues can be found at: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/one-of-germanys-top-businessmen-delivers-a-scathing- verdict-on-the-merkel-era--Dr. Zitelmann also has made two videos documenting and depicting life under a Marxist government. See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBIhsZ9GNHc&t=8s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZNSL9fT74QSponsorsCARES Act Stimulus (COVID-19) Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERC): https://www.jornscpa.com/snap/?refid=11454757 Cambridge Credit: https://www.cambridge-credit.org/twomikes/ EMP Shield: https://www.empshield.com/?coupon=twomikes Our Gold Guy: https://www.ourgoldguy.com www.TwoMikes.usSubscribe to this show on Rumble and Apple Podcasts. For all of our shows and articles, please visit https://freedomfirstnetwork.com Join pickax, the ultimate social media platform! Unleash your voice without bowing to Big Tech! Amplify your content with cutting-edge algorithms! Monetize your creativity like never before! Don't settle for less, be heard with pickax! https://pickax.com Beef prices skyrocketing? No worries! Get ahead of the game and stock up on premium, shelf-stable, freeze-dried cuts from Freedom First Beef! Level up your prepper game and order now. https://freedomfirstbeef.com Safeguard your wealth against Biden-fueled inflation! Level up your investment game with gold from Our Gold Guy—the ultimate power move! Protect your assets, make a statement, and stay ahead of the curve with this timeless, stylish choice. Don't miss out on this opportunity to secure your financial future. Embrace the trend, secure your legacy, and join the elite. Get your gold today! https://ourgoldguy.com Start your day with a steaming hot cup of freedom... Freedom First Coffee, baby! It's the real deal – 100% organic and fire-roasted to perfection. And oh, the taste! Pure bliss. Sip it and feel the liberation course through your veins. This ain't just any ordinary coffee, it's like a sip of pure freedom. So seize the day and satisfy your cravings with every bold, flavorful sip. Get your daily dose of freedom, get your Freedom First Coffee now! https://freedomfirstcoffee.com Cleanse your body. Release heavy metals and toxins with the incredible zeolite detox, endorsed by the renowned Dr. Sherri Tenpenny! Revitalize yourself and reclaim your health now! Get $50 off your first order by simply clicking here: https://freedomfirstnetwork.thegoodinside.com/pbx-trial-offer-10c2020/ Pre-order Jeff Dornik's book Following the Leader, which explains how the intelligence agencies use cult tactics to brainwash the masses and push propaganda through cult mentality. https://jeffdornik.com/ftl Strengthen your immunity now, before the impending wave of any new Covid variant the powers-that-be are already telegraphing will be released this fall. Boost your natural defenses with Dr. Zelenko's cutting-edge Z-Stack. Unlock vitality and resilience within using discount code FREEDOM for an order that empowers. Stay healthy! https://zstacklife.com/freedom

Most of the GOP field is conflicted over Trump ... Is the Republican Party an America First party or a Reaganite party? ... Why DeSantis became an afterthought ... Is Vivek angling for VP? ...

Most of the GOP field is conflicted over Trump ... Is the Republican Party an America First party or a Reaganite party? ... Why DeSantis became an afterthought ... Is Vivek angling for VP? ...

Today, The Two Mikes spoke with the renowned German author and economist Rainer Zitelmann about the troubled western economies, including that of the United States. Dr. Zitelmann said he had come to defend capitalism and to warn of the dangers that it currently faces. He said that in Europe and the United States capitalism is now seen as serious problem that needs to fixed – with a socialist remedy -- rather than as the reliable regime of growth and ever broader prosperity that it always has been. It almost seems, Dr. Zitelmann said, that few recall the economic “accomplishments” socialism. At the time of the USSR's collapse, for example, East Germans wanting to buy a car had to wait 12.5 to 17 years for its delivery, and then the car they received was all but worn out. At the same point in time only 27- percent of East Germans lived in a place where toilet facilities were not shared, and only 16-percent of East Germans had their own telephones. A refreshed Reaganite world economy would create societies where individuals could again become masters of their own fate and not just exist as self-pitying victims. In such a scenario, consumer choice we again be a dominating power and planned economies would receive the scuppering they merit. As an example of the process, Dr. Zitelmann said that he just returned from giving a seminar in Vietnam, where he found it was harder to find a Marxist that it was in the United States our Europe. He also said that polls in that country find that 80-percent of the Vietnamese admire Americans who have the courage to make capitalism work in their interests. --Dr. Zitelmann's essay on some of the above issues can be found at: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/one-of-germanys-top-businessmen-delivers-a-scathing- verdict-on-the-merkel-era --Dr. Zitelmann also has made two videos documenting and depicting life under a Marxist government. See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBIhsZ9GNHc&t=8s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZNSL9fT74Q Sponsors CARES Act Stimulus (COVID-19) Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERC): https://www.jornscpa.com/snap/?refid=11454757 Cambridge Credit: https://www.cambridge-credit.org/twomikes/ EMP Shield: https://www.empshield.com/?coupon=twomikes Our Gold Guy: https://www.ourgoldguy.com www.TwoMikes.us

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.insurgentspod.comBy now you've probably heard Oliver Anthony's totally organic viral sensation song Rich Men North of Richmond. Maybe you're even already sick of the discourse around it. Perhaps you might have even found yourself liking or enjoying it because of the way it ostensibly is about the rich exploiting the working class, or the feeling of hopelessness and alie…

What would happen if former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie went head-to-head with President Trump in the 2024 presidential race? In this intriguing episode, we discuss the recent announcement of Christie's run for president and the potential implications of a rematch against Trump. We also explore his strategy in taking on both Trump and his former friend-turned adversary, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has been consistently in second place in Republican primary polls.We shift gears to delve into the concept of systemic racism and its impact on people of color in America. Progress can be measured in generations, from our grandparents' experiences to the present day where African-Americans have held positions of power in politics and business. Join us as we examine the metric of progress problem, weigh the pros and cons of the Reaganite school of economics, and consider how we can help all Americans achieve the American dream.Lastly, we tackle our responsibility to call out the lies and deceit that Trump has brought to the White House. We discuss the limited opportunities available for success in America and the underlying systemic racism that prevents many from achieving their goals. Listen in as we explore the implications of 'cute' black stereotypes and how this affects perceptions of black people. Don't miss out on this engaging and thought-provoking conversation.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/us/politics/chris-christie-2024-presidential-candidate.html?https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-investment-fund.html0:00Christie Criticizes Trump, Announces 2024 Run8:38Chris Christie's 2024 Presidential Candidacy19:45Systemic Racism and Progress in America30:10Metric of Progress Problem45:25Systemic Racism and Political Responses55:04Tim Scott's False Narrative on Racism1:05:42Upcoming Topics on Darrell Mcclain ShowAcross the Counter Across the Counter exists to create space for real people to have honest...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Support the show

Last week saw two more entrants into what is already a crowded Republican primary field: Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) are officially in the running. Polling suggests that DeSantis is the only real challenger to Donald Trump, but the party base can only hope that his glitchy Twitter announcement doesn't belie a deeper weakness in the candidate's campaign. Tim Scott, by contrast, has embraced a more traditional roll out and uplifting Reaganite rhetoric, but enjoys far less popularity right now. There is a fine line to toe in the Republican primaries – too few challengers may cede the field to Trump; but too many entrants could fracture the non-MAGA voting bloc into ineffective camps, also handing the primaries to Trump. Meanwhile, the Democrats are hedging their bets with a “known known” and sticking with Biden… so is a Trump-Biden rematch inevitable? If not, does the GOP have the political dexterity to capitalize on this unique election cycle and an increasingly diverse voter base? Josh Kraushaar is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider. He is also a Senior Political correspondent at Axios, Fox correspondent, and host of the Against the Grain podcast. Previously, he was Editor in Chief of the Hotline, and a co-author at the Almanac of American Politics.Download the transcript here.

In this episode, Rob & Ruairi examine the ways in which our dying Reaganite era may be skewing the trajectory of AI technology in unfortunate directions. We'll discuss how the principles of deregulation and free markets may be hindering efforts to regulate the development and use of AI. We'll also explore how the focus on individualism and wealth creation may be contributing to inequalities in access to AI and its benefits, and discuss how alternative economic frameworks could help ensure that AI technology is used for the benefit of all. Join us for this thought-provoking conversation about the intersection of AI and economics, and the ways in which our economic systems may be limiting our ability to fully realize the potential of this powerful technology, and may even be making some of the darker predictions about the technology more likely.

Did U.S. President Ronald Reagan end the Cold War? Or did the war end because Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev abandoned it? William Inboden argues forcefully for the former interpretation in his new book, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. Reagan's strategy in dealing with the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War involved reviving the U.S. economy, restoring American self-confidence, rebuilding American military might, and working closely with our democratic allies. He then pressured the Soviet Union into an economically unsustainable arms race, engaged in proxy battles with them around the globe, and waged a successful propaganda war that pitted the political, religious, and economic liberties of the “free world” against the bankruptcy and tyranny of the “evil empire.” But when liberalizing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR in 1985, Reagan saw sooner than most of his advisors that here was a reformer with whom he could work to bring peace.  William Inboden is the Executive Director and William Powers Jr. Chair of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. He previously held senior positions with the State Department and in the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. In this podcast, Inboden describes his work on Capitol Hill, his graduate study that focused on both U.S. diplomatic history and American religious history, his service in the Bush White House as well as with the Legatum Institute in London, and his return to academia. He details the factors that inspired him to write The Peacemaker, the declassification of Reagan-era documents that enabled him to arrive at new historical insights into the Reagan presidency, and his own change in perspective that led him from being intensely critical of Reagan (particularly with regard to his support of authoritarian anti-communist regimes and insurgencies in Central and South America) to holding a more favorable assessment of his legacy.  Inboden also discusses how former Republican president Dwight Eisenhower exerted a more significant influence on Reagan than most historians have recognized, how Reagan's conception of the Cold War differed profoundly from that shared by his predecessors, how the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka “Star Wars”) was at the heart of his strategic vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and why he is confident that the Reaganite tradition in the Republican Party can be revived. Inboden also argues for the value and relevance of history for policymakers, as well as why he believes that public universities need to uphold their end of the implicit social contract they have long maintained with American society.

"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority'” and commitment to “‘service' and ‘sacrifice' and ‘honor'” — Clinton responds to the extremes of free-market ideology by imagining that “American community” can be rebuilt through the practice of what he calls “old values,” or what Hillary Clinton calls, in a 1993 speech, the “politics of meaning.” In this sense, Clintonian rhetoric offers a particularly clear, particularly influential example of the kind of centrist “communitarianism” that would shape American writing and politics – including the politics of the party's next president, Barack Obama, a self-described “New Democrat” – for at least a generation." – Ryan M. Brooks, Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (2022) What happens when the right scholar expands his doctoral research to insightfully engage with the pressing issues of a fragmented American society by drawing together and contrasting visions of Reaganite and Clintonian neoliberalism and its implications for literature and politics moving forward? The answer is Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (Cambridge UP, 2022) by Ryan M. Brooks, professor of English and podcast host for Humanities on the High Plains. Professor Brooks' book is the latest in the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture which describes his efforts this way: Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers – including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others – grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift – including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values – Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus. Some of the other writers discussed in this interview: Bret Easton Ellis, Sesshu Foster, Sapphire, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead William Davies, Nancy Fraser, David Harvey, Georg Lukacs, Joe Klein, Robert Reich Ryan's critical and literary studies recommendations: Walter Benn Michaels - The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History; Daniel Zamora and Michael Behrent, ed. - Foucault and Neoliberalism; Melinda Cooper - Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism; Nancy Fraser - Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis; Janice Peck – Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era; Eve Bertram - The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from New Deal to New Democrats Nonsite.org - a peer-reviewed online journal of arts and humanities scholarship Ryan M. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of English at West Texas A&M University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been published in Twentieth-Century Literature, 49th Parallel, Mediations, The Account, and the critical anthology The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television. He hosts the podcast Humanities on the High Plains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority'” and commitment to “‘service' and ‘sacrifice' and ‘honor'” — Clinton responds to the extremes of free-market ideology by imagining that “American community” can be rebuilt through the practice of what he calls “old values,” or what Hillary Clinton calls, in a 1993 speech, the “politics of meaning.” In this sense, Clintonian rhetoric offers a particularly clear, particularly influential example of the kind of centrist “communitarianism” that would shape American writing and politics – including the politics of the party's next president, Barack Obama, a self-described “New Democrat” – for at least a generation." – Ryan M. Brooks, Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (2022) What happens when the right scholar expands his doctoral research to insightfully engage with the pressing issues of a fragmented American society by drawing together and contrasting visions of Reaganite and Clintonian neoliberalism and its implications for literature and politics moving forward? The answer is Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (Cambridge UP, 2022) by Ryan M. Brooks, professor of English and podcast host for Humanities on the High Plains. Professor Brooks' book is the latest in the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture which describes his efforts this way: Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers – including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others – grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift – including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values – Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus. Some of the other writers discussed in this interview: Bret Easton Ellis, Sesshu Foster, Sapphire, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead William Davies, Nancy Fraser, David Harvey, Georg Lukacs, Joe Klein, Robert Reich Ryan's critical and literary studies recommendations: Walter Benn Michaels - The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History; Daniel Zamora and Michael Behrent, ed. - Foucault and Neoliberalism; Melinda Cooper - Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism; Nancy Fraser - Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis; Janice Peck – Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era; Eve Bertram - The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from New Deal to New Democrats Nonsite.org - a peer-reviewed online journal of arts and humanities scholarship Ryan M. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of English at West Texas A&M University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been published in Twentieth-Century Literature, 49th Parallel, Mediations, The Account, and the critical anthology The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television. He hosts the podcast Humanities on the High Plains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority'” and commitment to “‘service' and ‘sacrifice' and ‘honor'” — Clinton responds to the extremes of free-market ideology by imagining that “American community” can be rebuilt through the practice of what he calls “old values,” or what Hillary Clinton calls, in a 1993 speech, the “politics of meaning.” In this sense, Clintonian rhetoric offers a particularly clear, particularly influential example of the kind of centrist “communitarianism” that would shape American writing and politics – including the politics of the party's next president, Barack Obama, a self-described “New Democrat” – for at least a generation." – Ryan M. Brooks, Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (2022) What happens when the right scholar expands his doctoral research to insightfully engage with the pressing issues of a fragmented American society by drawing together and contrasting visions of Reaganite and Clintonian neoliberalism and its implications for literature and politics moving forward? The answer is Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (Cambridge UP, 2022) by Ryan M. Brooks, professor of English and podcast host for Humanities on the High Plains. Professor Brooks' book is the latest in the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture which describes his efforts this way: Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers – including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others – grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift – including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values – Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus. Some of the other writers discussed in this interview: Bret Easton Ellis, Sesshu Foster, Sapphire, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead William Davies, Nancy Fraser, David Harvey, Georg Lukacs, Joe Klein, Robert Reich Ryan's critical and literary studies recommendations: Walter Benn Michaels - The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History; Daniel Zamora and Michael Behrent, ed. - Foucault and Neoliberalism; Melinda Cooper - Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism; Nancy Fraser - Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis; Janice Peck – Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era; Eve Bertram - The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from New Deal to New Democrats Nonsite.org - a peer-reviewed online journal of arts and humanities scholarship Ryan M. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of English at West Texas A&M University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been published in Twentieth-Century Literature, 49th Parallel, Mediations, The Account, and the critical anthology The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television. He hosts the podcast Humanities on the High Plains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority'” and commitment to “‘service' and ‘sacrifice' and ‘honor'” — Clinton responds to the extremes of free-market ideology by imagining that “American community” can be rebuilt through the practice of what he calls “old values,” or what Hillary Clinton calls, in a 1993 speech, the “politics of meaning.” In this sense, Clintonian rhetoric offers a particularly clear, particularly influential example of the kind of centrist “communitarianism” that would shape American writing and politics – including the politics of the party's next president, Barack Obama, a self-described “New Democrat” – for at least a generation." – Ryan M. Brooks, Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (2022) What happens when the right scholar expands his doctoral research to insightfully engage with the pressing issues of a fragmented American society by drawing together and contrasting visions of Reaganite and Clintonian neoliberalism and its implications for literature and politics moving forward? The answer is Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (Cambridge UP, 2022) by Ryan M. Brooks, professor of English and podcast host for Humanities on the High Plains. Professor Brooks' book is the latest in the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture which describes his efforts this way: Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers – including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others – grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift – including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values – Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus. Some of the other writers discussed in this interview: Bret Easton Ellis, Sesshu Foster, Sapphire, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead William Davies, Nancy Fraser, David Harvey, Georg Lukacs, Joe Klein, Robert Reich Ryan's critical and literary studies recommendations: Walter Benn Michaels - The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History; Daniel Zamora and Michael Behrent, ed. - Foucault and Neoliberalism; Melinda Cooper - Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism; Nancy Fraser - Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis; Janice Peck – Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era; Eve Bertram - The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from New Deal to New Democrats Nonsite.org - a peer-reviewed online journal of arts and humanities scholarship Ryan M. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of English at West Texas A&M University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been published in Twentieth-Century Literature, 49th Parallel, Mediations, The Account, and the critical anthology The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television. He hosts the podcast Humanities on the High Plains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority'” and commitment to “‘service' and ‘sacrifice' and ‘honor'” — Clinton responds to the extremes of free-market ideology by imagining that “American community” can be rebuilt through the practice of what he calls “old values,” or what Hillary Clinton calls, in a 1993 speech, the “politics of meaning.” In this sense, Clintonian rhetoric offers a particularly clear, particularly influential example of the kind of centrist “communitarianism” that would shape American writing and politics – including the politics of the party's next president, Barack Obama, a self-described “New Democrat” – for at least a generation." – Ryan M. Brooks, Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (2022) What happens when the right scholar expands his doctoral research to insightfully engage with the pressing issues of a fragmented American society by drawing together and contrasting visions of Reaganite and Clintonian neoliberalism and its implications for literature and politics moving forward? The answer is Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (Cambridge UP, 2022) by Ryan M. Brooks, professor of English and podcast host for Humanities on the High Plains. Professor Brooks' book is the latest in the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture which describes his efforts this way: Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers – including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others – grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift – including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values – Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus. Some of the other writers discussed in this interview: Bret Easton Ellis, Sesshu Foster, Sapphire, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead William Davies, Nancy Fraser, David Harvey, Georg Lukacs, Joe Klein, Robert Reich Ryan's critical and literary studies recommendations: Walter Benn Michaels - The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History; Daniel Zamora and Michael Behrent, ed. - Foucault and Neoliberalism; Melinda Cooper - Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism; Nancy Fraser - Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis; Janice Peck – Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era; Eve Bertram - The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from New Deal to New Democrats Nonsite.org - a peer-reviewed online journal of arts and humanities scholarship Ryan M. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of English at West Texas A&M University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been published in Twentieth-Century Literature, 49th Parallel, Mediations, The Account, and the critical anthology The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television. He hosts the podcast Humanities on the High Plains.

"In other words, like David Foster Wallace — who celebrates McCain for his display of “‘moral authority'” and commitment to “‘service' and ‘sacrifice' and ‘honor'” — Clinton responds to the extremes of free-market ideology by imagining that “American community” can be rebuilt through the practice of what he calls “old values,” or what Hillary Clinton calls, in a 1993 speech, the “politics of meaning.” In this sense, Clintonian rhetoric offers a particularly clear, particularly influential example of the kind of centrist “communitarianism” that would shape American writing and politics – including the politics of the party's next president, Barack Obama, a self-described “New Democrat” – for at least a generation." – Ryan M. Brooks, Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (2022) What happens when the right scholar expands his doctoral research to insightfully engage with the pressing issues of a fragmented American society by drawing together and contrasting visions of Reaganite and Clintonian neoliberalism and its implications for literature and politics moving forward? The answer is Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era (Cambridge UP, 2022) by Ryan M. Brooks, professor of English and podcast host for Humanities on the High Plains. Professor Brooks' book is the latest in the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture which describes his efforts this way: Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers – including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others – grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift – including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values – Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus. Some of the other writers discussed in this interview: Bret Easton Ellis, Sesshu Foster, Sapphire, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead William Davies, Nancy Fraser, David Harvey, Georg Lukacs, Joe Klein, Robert Reich Ryan's critical and literary studies recommendations: Walter Benn Michaels - The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History; Daniel Zamora and Michael Behrent, ed. - Foucault and Neoliberalism; Melinda Cooper - Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism; Nancy Fraser - Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis; Janice Peck – Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era; Eve Bertram - The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from New Deal to New Democrats Nonsite.org - a peer-reviewed online journal of arts and humanities scholarship Ryan M. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of English at West Texas A&M University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been published in Twentieth-Century Literature, 49th Parallel, Mediations, The Account, and the critical anthology The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television. He hosts the podcast Humanities on the High Plains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's episode, we discuss the legacy of Frou-Frou in fashion, from its Belle Époque origins to the (New) Romantic taffeta explosion of the 1980s to the coquettish hyper-femininity of today's thotwear and couture alike. Over the course of over 150 years of fashion history, we weave together the can-can harlots of the Moulin Rouge, Princess Di's flounced and frilled wedding party, and the subversive stylings of Cafe Forgot.   Links:Fashion History Timeline: 1860sLe Frou-Frou magazine coversDown with Frou Frou by Elizabeth Taylor and Lou WilsonJohn Duka on Reaganite fashion in the NYTThe Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion: 1981"Setting Free the Frou Frou" by Barbara Ehrenreich and Jane O'ReillyThe Laura Ashley Collab UniverseFanci Club's Lethal Roses collectionFabian Kis-JuhaszSophia Dowling on The Return of 1980s Decadence  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nymphetalumni.com/subscribe

In this week's episode, we discuss the legacy of Frou-Frou in fashion, from its Belle Époque origins to the (New) Romantic taffeta explosion of the 1980s to the coquettish hyper-femininity of today's thotwear and couture alike. Over the course of over 150 years of fashion history, we weave together the can-can harlots of the Moulin Rouge, Princess Di's flounced and frilled wedding party, and the subversive stylings of Cafe Forgot.   Subscribe to our Patreon

While Saving Elephants is targeted to younger Americans, more and more Millennials cannot be counted among “the kids these days”.  Today's college students belong to Gen Z, and they are coming of age in one of the most turbulent political shifts and ideological realignments over the past half century.  What are conservatives to make of this next generation?  What challenges and opportunities do they present?  Joining Josh to delve into this and more is Scott Howard, Gen Z representative and student at the University of Florida who possesses a remarkably Reaganite approach to politics in spite of his young age.   Josh and Scott discuss whether Gen Z is truly more woke than older generations, what's it like being a conservative on campus, the challenges “conservative” organizations like TPUSA and spokespeople like Charlie Kirk present to those who believe conservatism is about more than spreading liberal tears, the influence of nationalist populism among the young, and whether DeSantis is a viable alternative for the Trump-skeptical Republican.   About Scott Howard   Originally hailing from South Dakota, Scott Howard is a political science major at the University of Florida.  He's a contributor to Lone Conservative, guest contributor to National Review, and writes his own newsletter The Conservative Muse.   You can follow Scott on Twitter @ConservaMuse  

VYS0009 - Show Notes We got one! Before there was Hellier, before there was Twin Peaks there was Ghostbusters. In this special Halloween episode Hine and Buckley take a deep dive into this cherished classic - the movie that launched a thousand ghost hunting expeditions and at least one podcast about weird stuff. At the remove of 38 years and examined through the lens of Vayse, is Ghostbusters a beloved and harmless comedy blockbuster, a Lovecraftian cautionary tale, or a technicolour Reaganite super-dream? See you on the other side. Recorded 26 October 2022. (Warning: Throughout this episode we operate on an all spoiler no explainer basis. But if you haven't seen Ghostbusters, perhaps it's time to carefully examine your life choices...?) The Texts Ghostbusters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hDkhw5Wkas) Ghostbusters II (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weIqC-oUGmA) Ghostbusters: Afterlife (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZFCF--uRY) Music Discussed we talk a lot about the music in Ghostbusters in this episode - here are some choice cuts: Ghostbusters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe93CLbHjxQ)by Ray Parker Jr (...?) I want a New Drug (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6uEMOeDZsA) by Huey Lewis and the News Elmer Bernstein's fantastic score (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kAGy76e6dw02QWx_nw6xqD-4Pdgneqws8) Magic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkpvtHe2MI4)by Mick Smiley (and as a special treat the very 80s MTV Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SPtlxcS8Ik)) Savin' The Day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqDBYlDpBkY) by the Alessi Brothers In The Name of Love (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X97WAN3Ce7Y) by The Thompson Twins Vayse Soundtrack (https://vayse.bandcamp.com/releases) by Polypores Other References Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/ghostbusters-the-ultimate-visual-history/9781783299669) by Daniel Wallace Ghostbusters: The Inside Story (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/ghostbusters-the-inside-story-stories-from-the-cast-and-crew-of-the-beloved-films/9781858758541) by Matt McAllister Spook Central (https://www.spookcentral.tk/) Ghostbusters Fandom Wiki (https://ghostbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Ghostbusters_Wiki) Ghostbusters.net (https://www.ghostbusters.net/) Ghostbusters.net on Twitter (https://twitter.com/GhostbustersNet) Welsh Ghostbusters on Twitter (https://twitter.com/welshghostbust) - Seemingly random but a really great account Necronomicon (https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31337622778&searchurl=kn%3Dsimon%2Bnecronomicon%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title3) by Simon Close up of the doors to the temple of Gozer (https://www.gbfans.com/images/pb/moviemaker29/GB%20Props_TempleDoor1.jpg) The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-call-of-cthulhu-and-other-weird-stories-penguin-classics-deluxe-edition/9780143106487) - a fantastic Lovecraft "Greatest Hits". The Exorcist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDGw1MTEe9k) The Evil Dead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL6mioAlpJk) The Magical Revival (http://www.starfirepublishing.co.uk/the_magical_revival.htm) by Kenneth Grant - probably the place to start with Grant. Discusses the idea that Lovecraft was, in fact, a psychic and that the Cthulhu mythos was a revelation. The Real Ghostbusters – The Collect Call of Cthulhu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEfk5KAOOwo) VYS0004 | The Uncanny Vallée and the Unreal Keel - The Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis Pt.1 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0004) and VYS0005 | UFOnauts and Inverted Crosses - The Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis Pt.2 (https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0005) - Our episodes on the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret by Jacques Vallée and Paola Leopizzi Harris (https://www.amazon.co.uk/TRINITY-Best-Kept-Jacques-F-Vallée/dp/B0B8BPCK1R/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2BPIOE8BNL4KK&keywords=trinity+the+best+kept+secret&qid=1667156884&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjQ4IiwicXNhIjoiMS4zOSIsInFzcCI6IjAuOTIifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=trinity+the+be%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-1) - Our neoliberal overlords at Amazon seem to be by far the cheapest place to get this book at present. Speaking of Neoliberal overlords, the New Economic Foundation (https://neweconomics.org) did a great series of podcasts about neoliberalism (https://neweconomics.org/2019/05/a-beginners-guide-to-neoliberalism) which Hine borrowed from heartily to fuel the frenzied final third of this episode. Life After Death: Eighteen Years on Death Row (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/life-after-death-eighteen-years-on-death-row/9781782391227) by Damien Echols - eye opening account of his time on death row following his wrongful and how Magic and love saved his life. Making Ghostbusters (https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31063591133&cm_sp=SEARCHREC-_-WIDGET-L-_-BDP-R&searchurl=kn%3Dmaking%2Bghostbusters%26sortby%3D17) by Don Shay - unfortunately long out of print and now ridiculously expensive. A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/a-convenient-parallel-dimension-how-ghostbusters-slimed-us-forever/9781493048243) by Jr. Greene James

Vineland is hardly anyone's favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. Marking Pynchon's return after vanishing for nearly two decades following his epic Gravity's Rainbow, it was initially regarded as slight, a middling curiosity. However, for Peter Coviello, the oft-overlooked Vineland opens up new ways of thinking about Pynchon's writing and about how we read and how we live in the rough currents of history. In Vineland Reread (Columbia UP, 2021), Coviello reads Pynchon's offbeat novel of sixties insurgents stranded in the Reaganite summer of 1984 as a delirious stoner comedy that is simultaneously a work of heartsick fury and political grief: a portrait of the hard afterlives of failed revolution in a period of stifling reaction. Offering a roving meditation on the uses of criticism and the practice of friendship, the fashioning of publics and counterpublics, the sentence and the police, Coviello argues that Vineland is among the most abundant and far-sighted of late-century American excursions into novelistic possibility. Departing from visions of Pynchon as the arch-postmodernist, erudite and obscure, he discloses an author far more companionable and humane. In Pynchon's harmonizing of joyousness and outrage, comedy and sorrow, Coviello finds a model for thinking through our catastrophic present. Interview by Christian B. Long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Vineland is hardly anyone's favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. Marking Pynchon's return after vanishing for nearly two decades following his epic Gravity's Rainbow, it was initially regarded as slight, a middling curiosity. However, for Peter Coviello, the oft-overlooked Vineland opens up new ways of thinking about Pynchon's writing and about how we read and how we live in the rough currents of history. In Vineland Reread (Columbia UP, 2021), Coviello reads Pynchon's offbeat novel of sixties insurgents stranded in the Reaganite summer of 1984 as a delirious stoner comedy that is simultaneously a work of heartsick fury and political grief: a portrait of the hard afterlives of failed revolution in a period of stifling reaction. Offering a roving meditation on the uses of criticism and the practice of friendship, the fashioning of publics and counterpublics, the sentence and the police, Coviello argues that Vineland is among the most abundant and far-sighted of late-century American excursions into novelistic possibility. Departing from visions of Pynchon as the arch-postmodernist, erudite and obscure, he discloses an author far more companionable and humane. In Pynchon's harmonizing of joyousness and outrage, comedy and sorrow, Coviello finds a model for thinking through our catastrophic present. Interview by Christian B. Long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Vineland is hardly anyone's favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. Marking Pynchon's return after vanishing for nearly two decades following his epic Gravity's Rainbow, it was initially regarded as slight, a middling curiosity. However, for Peter Coviello, the oft-overlooked Vineland opens up new ways of thinking about Pynchon's writing and about how we read and how we live in the rough currents of history. In Vineland Reread (Columbia UP, 2021), Coviello reads Pynchon's offbeat novel of sixties insurgents stranded in the Reaganite summer of 1984 as a delirious stoner comedy that is simultaneously a work of heartsick fury and political grief: a portrait of the hard afterlives of failed revolution in a period of stifling reaction. Offering a roving meditation on the uses of criticism and the practice of friendship, the fashioning of publics and counterpublics, the sentence and the police, Coviello argues that Vineland is among the most abundant and far-sighted of late-century American excursions into novelistic possibility. Departing from visions of Pynchon as the arch-postmodernist, erudite and obscure, he discloses an author far more companionable and humane. In Pynchon's harmonizing of joyousness and outrage, comedy and sorrow, Coviello finds a model for thinking through our catastrophic present. Interview by Christian B. Long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Vineland is hardly anyone's favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. Marking Pynchon's return after vanishing for nearly two decades following his epic Gravity's Rainbow, it was initially regarded as slight, a middling curiosity. However, for Peter Coviello, the oft-overlooked Vineland opens up new ways of thinking about Pynchon's writing and about how we read and how we live in the rough currents of history. In Vineland Reread (Columbia UP, 2021), Coviello reads Pynchon's offbeat novel of sixties insurgents stranded in the Reaganite summer of 1984 as a delirious stoner comedy that is simultaneously a work of heartsick fury and political grief: a portrait of the hard afterlives of failed revolution in a period of stifling reaction. Offering a roving meditation on the uses of criticism and the practice of friendship, the fashioning of publics and counterpublics, the sentence and the police, Coviello argues that Vineland is among the most abundant and far-sighted of late-century American excursions into novelistic possibility. Departing from visions of Pynchon as the arch-postmodernist, erudite and obscure, he discloses an author far more companionable and humane. In Pynchon's harmonizing of joyousness and outrage, comedy and sorrow, Coviello finds a model for thinking through our catastrophic present. Interview by Christian B. Long.

In this episode, Dinesh reveals the new phenomenon we are dealing with, donkey fascism, and provides a precise definition.  Dinesh unpacks leftist Nicole Hemmer's argument that Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Dinesh and others are responsible for undoing the Reaganite formula.  Actor and director Isaiah Washington joins Dinesh to talk about his new movie, Corsicana, and about making movies Hollywood won't--and can't--make.  Dinesh discusses the unusual structure of Homer's Odyssey and why it is a strength, not a weakness. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Screenwriter Stuart Wright talks to filmmaker LIAM REGAN about his new film EATING MISS CAMPBELL Catch the World Premiere at Frightfest 2022 - Ticket information here https://frightfest.nuwebgroup.com/Follow Liam Regan at https://www.instagram.com/refusefilms/Stuart also spoke to Liam about...5 GREAT TROMA FILMSBloodsucking Freaks (1976), directed by Joel M Reed “As a cultural artifact, and as an example of the worst uses of creative energy, however, Bloodsucking Freaks is a must-see. Just remember, if you are offended by it, the joke is on you.” From Classic-horror.com Rob WrigleyCombat Shock (1984) directed by Buddy Giovinazzo Anton Bitel writes on VODZilla - Combat Shock is a downbeat, depressing film, dripping with a persistent pessimism that runs counter to the prevailing Reaganite ideology of the day. For here, instead of conspicuous affluence and yuppieism, we get an alternative view of street-level life on the destitute, desperate margins of Eighties America, comparable to the hell of war itself.Surf Nazis Must Die (1987), directed by Peter Gorge “"Surf Nazis Must Die" is the sort of film Ed Wood might have made if he were active today, except he'd be the only one not in on the joke.” David Lazarus, Salon.comCannibal! The Musical (1993), directed by Trey Parker of South Park fame… Jenn Dlugos of Classic-Horror.com wrote: “I could go on about amateur screen shots, poor cuts, and very obvious continuity issues, but this is a film that you just don't care. And if you do care, it's probably not for you.”Fatty Drives the Bus (1999), directed by Mick Napier Gordon Maples of Misan TROPE y.com wrote “Fatty Drives the Bus” is not a good movie in any conventional sense of the term, but there is some strange enjoyment to be had out of it. You can buy me a cup of coffee & support this independent podcast that I host and produce at https://app.redcircle.com/shows/ae030598-6b83-4001-8a29-5e5dd592ed26/sponsort Please consider leaving a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts if you enjoyed this. It really helps the Britflicks Podcast grow and others to discover it.CreditsIntro/Outro music is Rocking The Stew by Tokyo Dragons (www.instagram.com/slomaxster/)Podcast for www.britflicks.com. Written, produced and hosted by Stuart WrightSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/britflicks-com-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTubeReactionary Minds is a project of The UnPopulist. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell. Produced by Landry Ayres.The following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with writer Damon Linker, founder of Eyes on the Right, a Substack newsletter. The transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity. Aaron Ross Powell: I'm Aaron Ross Powell, and this is Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. The mainstream of the American right, as well as the Republican Party, looks quite a bit different today than it did 10 years ago. Trumpism's rise and its near-total take over the GOP has fundamentally changed our political landscape.To talk through what's going on and to explore the best ways to approach understanding the evolution of the liberal right, I'm joined today by Damon Linker, author of the Substack Eyes on the Right. He's also a senior fellow with the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center and a weekly participant on the Beg to Differ podcast at The Bulwark. Both of our projects, Eyes on the Right, and then this podcast Reactionary Minds, are about understanding the forces of illiberalism that appear to be more threatening today than they seem to have been in the recent past. What's your approach to getting at that deeper understanding?Damon Linker: First of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. I value quite a lot what you're trying to do and do think it's a shared project that we have here, and the more the merrier, the more the better for our politics. I guess what I try to bring to the discussion and analysis, it was something I talk about in my inaugural post for Eyes on the Right, which is a kind of empathy for what is driving people to embrace the populist right.Now, by that, I do not mean making the case for them. What I mean is trying to think our way into the minds of people who will find these messages appealing. What is it about the liberal order that has them feeling discontented? What has them receptive to these severe critiques of the liberal order? The method behind the madness, the goal of this approach is to construct a more effective response, to actually try to meet the populist right where it is and speak on the basis of its premises, rather than always begin from liberal premises where what you end up with is just talking past each other and rejecting each other's starting points without ever actually engaging with them directly.I guess the rationale would be, you have to move the two parties a little bit closer together before they can really duke it out over what's really at stake. That's, in abstract terms at least, what I'm trying to accomplish.Aaron: In that opening essay for Eyes on the Right, I had underlined that part about empathy because it sometimes feels hard for—I have a lot of friends who are deeply involved in gay rights and trans rights, for example, and to say to them, you should approach with empathy, understanding of people who are labeling you groomers and saying you can't have pictures of your same-sex spouse on your desk if you're a school teacher, or people who want to institute a Catholic theocracy over the country, these are really threatening things and really immediately dangerous things; Proud Boys showing up at pride events. It can be hard to say, if you're in that situation, just to think I should be trying to understand at an empathetic level, the people who are calling me groomers.Why Empathize With Extremists?Damon: Yes, I totally understand that, and it's a natural human response. In that respect, what I'm advocating is difficult. It's a challenge, and it works against the instincts that are provoked by our politics where both sides—I am guilty of often using the formulation "both sides", but I don't usually mean a kind of moral equivalency. It's a formal mirroring that tends to happen in partisan politics. What I mean is that both sides in our politics have an activist sensibility these days where the goal is not simply to really persuade the persuadable. It's also to provoke your enemy.You try to say the most outrageous, insulting thing, the most caricatured version of your opponent in the hopes that they will then lash out against what you are saying in an extreme way which will then help you in your own position. You see this a lot obviously in the entire right-wing media edifice that is out there constantly. Part of it involves something else I talked about in my inaugural post about the fallacy of composition, where the fallacy involves you take one part of a whole that is particularly provocative or outrageous or insulting, and you direct huge amounts of attention to that and treat it as if it is exemplary of the whole.Is it true that professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences on the whole lean to the left? Absolutely true, indisputably the case. Is it true that all professors or nearly all professors are left-wing activists who have contempt for conservatives and centrists and want to humiliate students who come from those ideological starting points in the classroom? No, not at all.Yet, we now have a whole infrastructure on the right where a series of websites are out there trolling, asking for young conservative students to send examples of particularly outrageous left-wing professorial, pedagogical transgressions, which then get promoted on those websites, that then get picked up by Tucker Carlson, who then runs a 15-minute segment on prime time for 4 million viewers on Fox News, the premise of which is, "Look at how terrible all these left-wing professors are. Don't send your kids to college because they're going to be brainwashed to be leftist authoritarians." That's the process in a nutshell.There is a way in which it also works in reverse where the left will fasten on to the most egregious, fascistic statement of someone on the right and then try to make it seem as if everyone from Liz Cheney on over to Trump and then past Trump to Proud Boy, neo-fascist like this guy Nick Fuentes. Everything between them is all equally terrible. Now, why would someone who's a Democrat or another kind of progressive want to say that? Well, because you want to win the election. You don't want anyone anywhere to vote for the other side. You try to collapse the distinctions and assimilate everyone who's your opponent in an election to the worst example of the other side. It's a temptation that I think does need to be resisted. Maybe not always at the level of political contestation where this can be a very effective tactic, but at the level of intellectual reflection. For understanding's sake, we need to try to not let ourselves be triggered in the way that our political opponents very much would like us to be for their own benefit.Trump’s Unique DangerousnessAaron: When we're approaching that task, should we be distinguishing—let's just stick to assessing the right, although I think this argument applies, as you said, to looking at ideologies more broadly, but should we be distinguishing, say, conservatism generally as a political ideology from the base of people who think of themselves or ordinary voters who think of themselves as conservatives, but may hold as we know from political science data, people's self-described labels often affixed to wildly diverse viewpoints that are often in direct conflict with other people affixing the same label to themselves, versus the people actually in power: the ones who are controlling or have access to the levers of the state and how it directs its coercive forces. Because it seems like one response to what you've just said is yes, of course, we shouldn't pick out the most extreme examples of bad stuff on the right and say that's representative of everyone, just like we shouldn't do that for the left or any other group, but it does seem like one thing that's happened in the last say six years is that the most extreme parts of the right have gained control of the levers of power. They're the ones who are setting the broader agenda for what happens when the right is in control, even if the base is much more moderate.Damon: Yes. I take the point and I'm glad you brought up the topic of distinction making because that's yet another thing that I’m impressing in the Substack and in my writing lately. I'd love to talk through that. I'm actually working right now on a relatively short post in response to an op-ed that the writer and columnist Max Boot published in the Washington Post today, which is Wednesday, July 6th, in which he says, in effect, looks like Trump might not be the nominee in 2024 after all. It could be Ron DeSantis, and actually, he's worse because he's more disciplined and smarter, and so forth. He's a bigger threat than Trump.I'm pushing back on that on the basis of distinction-making. Let's walk this through and it touches on a lot of what you raised in your question. I don't think there is anything written in stone that what conservatism or right of center politics in a liberal democracy, what its policy matrix has to be. From Ronald Reagan through, say, the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012 in the United States, what did conservatism mean?Well, it pretty much meant suspicion of big government, support for cutting taxes whenever possible, generally in favor of free trade, in favor of pretty much open immigration policy, a muscular foreign policy directed towards spreading democracy around the world, and opposing authoritarianism, and then finally, a principled moral traditionalism on social issues that ranged from appointing judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, which has recently been a success after 49 years of trying, to opposition to the series of reforms that have come up on the progressive left from racial issues through to women's rights, gay rights, trans rights, and so forth.That's what it meant to be a conservative until pretty recently now with Trump—it became with Trump and is now becoming the broader consensus among conservatives, that actually what it means is, yes, cutting taxes in government, on the whole, is good, but if those things can be used to help working-class Americans, then maybe those things aren't so bad.For similar reasons, free trade is often not good because it hurts working-class people supposedly. Similarly, immigration isn't usually good because that's also not good for that economic consideration, but also for broader identity reasons. The ethnic and racial makeup of the country changes in ways a lot of Americans don't like, at least conservative Americans don't like, and then a much more—well, also suspicion on foreign policy using American power for moral goals is suspicious now.Finally, the moral traditionalist argument on social issues hasn't really changed, but it's more aggressive and it's metastasized, and touched more areas of policy. Is there anything illegitimate about that latter group of policies in and of itself? Should that not be permitted within liberal democratic politics to have the right side of the spectrum be defined that way?I actually don't think there is any principled reason to think that that should not be allowed to be the right-leaning contesting party's position. Now, the problem is that some of those positions brush up against moral commitments that put into question some of American principles, but those principles themselves evolve over time. So I would prefer that those policy questions get debated in the political arena as has always been the case. I do think it's okay for the right-leaning party to change what it cares about.Where things get really dicey is when those policy shifts get combined with what we see, actually, I think in the United States more acutely than any other country contending with this shift, is that the right-leaning party that has shifted in this way can barely win elections because those positions aren't that popular, and the way they are interacting with America's peculiar electoral system with multiple levers and all kinds of counter-majoritarian trip wires leads us to a situation in which we get January 6th and everything that led up to it.People talk about Viktor Orbán and Hungary a lot as an exemplar of how dangerous he's at the leading edge of where this is going. I don't like Orbán. I would never vote for him. I think he's pernicious, he's done all kinds of negative things, but I think Trump is actually much more dangerous than Orbán. Orbán actually, even if he puts his thumb on the scale a little bit in various ways to give him and his party, the Fidesz party, an edge in an electoral contest, he actually does, and his party does, win votes.His party won in 2010 before he became a full-on populist and made a lot of those reforms. His share of the vote and his party's share of the vote hasn't changed markedly between then and now. He doesn't win 90% of the vote like Saddam Hussein or another dictator or Soviet dictator would've in the old days or even Putin today. He wins a little more than half. Then there are all these jiggered things within the electoral system that then enhances that slight edge into a much stronger majority within the legislature, but that's common. It happens in the UK, where in the last election, the conservatives won a bit more than labor, but they won way more seats than labor because you get amplification.Whereas in this country, not only is the Trumpist populist impulse a little troubling because it does push the policy matrix a little bit away from the consensus liberalism that preceded it, but that is combined by the fact that Trump and the Republicans can barely win power given that their position isn't overwhelmingly popular and has a huge, very strong opposition. They then combine that marginal ability to win with contempt for the very institutions that would freeze them out of power if they lose.That institutional attack, I think, is more profound than what even someone like Victor Orbán is attempting in Hungary, and we need to distinguish between all of these things. The last point before I stop blathering, to go back to my original statement about the Max Boot column, I think Max is wrong on this, that actually as bad as DeSantis would be, and again, I would not vote for the guy, I would be a critic of his from beginning to end if he actually became president, but would he do what Trump did on January 6th? I doubt it. Maybe he would. I guess we don't have a huge track record on the guy, but in general, I don't fear that with him in the same way that I do with Trump.That means that Trump shows and displays a contempt for the rule of law and instinctual authoritarianism that is sui generis to him, and he's spreading it to his most devoted followers and supporters. But it is so far still relatively contained to that sub-segment of the right. If we could run various scenarios about 2024 in which the Democrats can't win again because of inflation and other problems, I would vastly prefer DeSantis, Tom Cotton, Nikki Haley, any number of the mini-Trumps that are out there on the right over Trump himself again. Trump himself again is a toxin to liberal democracy that makes him a unique threat. All of these distinctions, I think, are important to make between bad, worse, and worst of all.Aaron: Well, let me pick up on that then because it is the case that, at least as of right now, Trumpism is the dominant force on the right and within the GOP. There's this constant cycle of hopeful articles from centrist and left political commentators saying, "Ah, it looks like his hold on the party is slipping. This is a handful of candidates he picked out, didn't win, his hold is slipping," but they always seem more wishful thinking than reality.Going into 2024, it seems like Trumpism will be the dominant thing whether he's the candidate or not. Certainly, people like DeSantis continue to present themselves as Trumpists or inheritors of the Trumpist mantle, but there's long been this question of whether Trump discovered his audience or created it, discovered his base or created it.What I've wondered and I'm curious for your thoughts on is how much of Trumpism, however we define that, and it could be hard to pin down what the ideological characteristics of Trumpism are, but how much of Trumpism as a movement within the GOP is an ideological movement that can be inherited, say, by someone like DeSantis or that it is effectively a cult of personality, that it is just this fealty to this man, this investment in the Trumpists or whatever it is about Trump they really like, and it doesn't really matter what the ideas are behind it, it's more of just his personality such that if Trump disappears from the stage, so he chooses not to run again, he's indicted, whatever the case is, that this older style GOP, the Reaganite GOP that you talked about earlier, can reestablish itself. Does Trumpism disappear when Trump disappears or is this a fundamental ideological characteristic now of the right?Damon: Great, great question. There's so much in there, so much that could be said. It's obviously a very complicated [chuckles] situation. All right. At one level, clearly, if you know the history of the American right, you know that the general dispensation that Trump represents ideologically has been there for a long time. There's one story you can tell about the right that had been told for many decades by people in the National Review circle.I think an heir to that would be Matt Continetti's new book The Right which is a new history of the right in America. That version goes something like this, that the right prior to, say, World War II was paleocon. It was suspicious of alliances and trade and very knee-jerk traditionalists about morals and suspicious of Washington and government. It was a folk libertarianism to quote my former colleague Bonnie Kristian who is now writing as an independent author and had a Times op-ed about this recently. So that was the right.Then after the end of World War II with Buckley founding National Review, you have the attempt to found a more internationalist right. It ends up taking a side in the cold war very hawkishly in favor of the United States and democratic capitalism against Soviet communism.It sort of cosmopolitanized the right a little bit. Now, the original paleocon instinct remained there and it remained there all along. Buckley tried to police the margins of it, tried to excommunicate the Birchers and other small groups that were more rooted in that more conspiratorial folk libertarian attitude, the kind of people who thought that Eisenhower was a communist, the great general who won World War II in Europe, who was president and a Republican, he was a communist plant. This kind of an attitude.That Buckley-ite policing of the boundaries and then expanding what conservatism could appeal to and the electorate reached its greatest apotheosis in the victory of Ronald Reagan, and from Reagan, once again through, say, Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, you have—conservatism is that. The paleocon stuff's still there, still showing up usually on election day to vote for the head of the party and to vote for local offices for the Republicans, but yet a little disgruntled, not very happy, going along. You get moments of populist rebellion, like 1992, Pat Buchanan challenges George H. W. Bush in his reelection campaign and gives this blood-thirsty speech at the Republican Convention.That's the narrative that leads to a conclusion that Trump didn't make this. He saw that establishment Republicanism that had governed the party and the country often starting with Reagan had weakened and was ripe for being toppled. He tapped into the increasingly angry rest of paleocons who had been there all along for about the last 90 years, grumbling in the background, and became their champion, and what we've seen over the last six years is a revolution in which that base of paleocons over through the Reaganite elites, and they're now in charge. A lot of that is tied up with the policy matrix that I mentioned earlier, the shift on trade and immigration and foreign policy, and all those things.There's another argument too, another tendency, which you also mentioned and talked about, which is just Trump as a person embodying a populist impulse, which is not limited to the American scene, but is a perpetual threat to liberal democracies everywhere. Which is a demagogue who comes up and gains power through deploying very hostile rhetoric against the establishment, against those people in power, whether they're allied with my enemies politically or my allies, whether they're in politics or business or entertainment, it doesn't matter. It's them, the elites, and I am the champion of the “true people” and want to overthrow them.Trump was, it turned out to be, one of the greatest demagogues in American history and maybe world history. We can't judge that yet, let's see how all of this works out, and I say greatest in the sense of incredibly talented, but execrable. The guy is a genius at fastening on to the thing that will make the crowds cheer and mixing in a kind of humor with it at the same time, that makes it sound like he's not taking himself too seriously, winking about how it's all an act at the very moment that he's doing the most vicious things possible with language, attacking the press, journalists, seeming like he's stirring up violence against them, while joking that like, "Well, of course, we're not going to let you attack the journalist, let her go." He's just very, very good at that.Now, your question to set this up was which is it? What is it that has infected the Republican party? The truth is it is a blend, I think, of the two. One of the problems I'd say that Tom Cotton has, Tom Cotton also would love to run for president in 2024. He has given speeches, including at the Reagan Library several months ago that I wrote about, that are very clearly Trumpian speeches on the side of the first category that I just ran through. Very conservatism inflected with paleocon themes on the "new correct side" on all of these issues of foreign policy and trade and immigration and social issues, very rabidly engaged in the culture war in a way that is redolent of Trump.In all those ways, he sounds like a Trumpist, but he's boring as hell and has no charisma. He sounds like a wet noodle standing up there and looks like a geek who tried to make the basketball team and was cut in the first round of cuts. That makes me very skeptical that he could succeed in this environment. DeSantis on the other hand has been shrewd enough and talented enough to combine or tried to combine both in a way that I haven't seen in another candidate. I think it's one reason why so many on the right like him.He stands abstractly in favor of a lot of the policy changes that Trump brought in, but as the governor of a state, he has more power than one of a hundred senators like Cotton to actually do certain things to show, "See? I'll use power to achieve these things." Then he also combines that with a really swaggering obnoxious populist demagogic rhetoric that includes him getting up on a stage in front of some high school kids wearing masks during the worst pandemic in a century and berating them in front of the cameras to "Take off your damn masks. Freedom."I don't know what your language rating is for this podcast, but I'll at least stoop to say, you can bleep me out if you need to, he's performatively an a*****e. That is part of his schtick. That I think makes him a more plausible successor to Trump because you do need both. You need that kind of anti-cosmopolitan issue conglomeration that Trump has now put at the center of the right, combined with a pure populist and demagogic attack on the people who would police us morally in positions of power, to basically stick a middle finger up at them and say, "I'm going to say anything I want. F you. I don't care."You need both, and Trump has both, and DeSantis among all the options out there I think comes closest to matching that. He might not have Trump's instinctual genius at it, but he clearly I think—he at least understands that he needs to include that in his message, not just the what, but the how in the message, and has enough talent at the latter that he can at least be a potential rival as the leader of that faction.The Global Rise of the Populist RightAaron: I want to pick up on another thing in your inaugural essay for Eyes on the Right because I liked it quite a lot as a statement of purpose for the broader project. One of the things you mentioned is a pushing back on what we might call American provincialism, which is to analyze all of this in the context of what is happening in America. You mentioned Orbán, who's an example of this populism in Europe, but this rise of far-right reactionary populism is not limited to the United States. It's not limited to Donald Trump.We have seen it happen in other countries in forms that look—they're distinguishable from Trumpism, but they share a lot of common features. What has happened in the last decade or so to lead to this renewed movement of right-wing reactionary populism on a more global scale?Damon: Well, another great question, and another big answer, which I will try to keep within reasonable limits. I mean, it's obviously very complicated because now, we're not only talking about a continent-wide liberal democracy of 330-odd [million] people, but now we're talking about the broader world with all the differences across countries and regions and histories and so forth.I do think there are certain commonalities that we can point to. Clearly, after the end of the cold war, there was kind of a consensus in countries across the free world that, if not full Francis Fukuyamaism, which I've also written about on the podcast, as an exemplification of a certain form of this, but at least that consensus that, well, obviously, far-right politics including fascism and totalitarianism on the far right, that is off-limits.Most countries, say, 30 years ago, thought that was like not even open for debate, but now with the fall of the Soviet Union, it appears that the leftward side of the spectrum has now been cut off as also legitimate. What we're dealing with is that politics going forward in free societies will take place within the 40-yard lines. There will be contestation, there will be elections, and they will be between a center-right party or parties and a center-left party or parties.They will be about whether to cut taxes or raise taxes a little bit, expand government, or cut government a little, whether to choose this or that battle with a revanchist authoritarian state somewhere, maybe in the Middle East or elsewhere, whether to get involved in this war or that war, whether we'll all get together in a coalition of the willing to do battle with them and show them they have to join the club, start taking loans from the World Bank and the IMF and so forth, and whether immigration should be completely open and free or somewhat limited, whether it's going to be for like Canada does for the sake of meeting certain demands for labor within a country for a certain period of time, or it's just going to be open to all comers.These will be our debates. Yes or no, little more, little less, again, within the 40-yard lines of the field, and that's about it. Now, this worked pretty well through the '90s and even into the 2000s, though in the United States because of 9/11 and then eventually Europe, when they had terrorist attacks, this was jolted, it was pushed, but it was pretty resilient, at least until after the financial crisis of 2008, which began in the United States, and then rippled throughout the global economy, caused loss of a lot of wealth.Of course, one of the big economic changes in the post-Cold War world has been the opening up of the finance sector to small-time investors in the form of retirement accounts, and then the companies that handle pensions abroad, investing in the stock market around the world, global markets, and all of that took a big hit in 2008. That bred resentment, then added to resentment about immigration in a lot of countries.It's a little different in Europe than it is in the United States. Here, there always has been more openness to a harder right-wing critique of some of these neoliberal trends. I'll use the term "neoliberal", which no one can seem to define to describe the Fukuyaman tendency of the 40-yard lines defining politics. In this country, there always have been people on the right, they were allowed to make a critique and say, "Maybe we should cut back on immigration. Maybe we should care more about rising crime rates. Maybe we should make certain other changes," but in Europe, Muslim immigration, for instance, in France has been much, much higher, much higher percentage of the population there than here, partly because of the colonial history of the country and allowing immigrants from, say, Algeria in over other countries and then some of it is a result of guilt over the legacy of this.For various reasons in different countries, Germany has a lot of Turkish immigrants for historic reasons because of labor. In the post-war decades, they brought in a lot of Turks to, again, like Canada to fill holes in the labor economy in the country. Because of the history of fascism on the continent and shame about colonialism and its moral legacy, there was more of a sense in Europe that you can't really object to having, say, high Muslim immigration because then you're evil, you're a racist, and that's not allowed.Maybe in Europe, it became not between the 40-yard lines. Even on the right, it became like the 45-yard line. You combine that kind of limiting of the margins with resentment over in this country about how the war on terror was waged and our inability to actually decisively win these battles around the world and wondering why we even did them in the first place and why the intelligence about weapons in Iraq was so terribly flawed, and then add in terrorist attacks in Europe after 9/11 in Spain and France and other places, and feeling like the elites here who are in charge defending those margins, the 40- or 45-yard lines, are inept. They won't actually allow us to debate these things. The anger about the lack of a justice-driven response to the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008.You get the sense, looking back, it's clear there was a boiling pressure building up from the lower classes, from people who are not members of this neoliberal elite consensus of the government is not responding to our anger about these things. You have to listen to us and you have to listen to us and you have to listen to us, saying it over and over again.I do think that whether it's the rise of what Orbán has done in Hungary or the perpetual return of the same Le Pen challenge to the French center, the Brexit vote in the UK, the rise of Trump, the rise of the League in Italy, you go around the world, Bolsonaro in Brazil, what's ended up happening in Turkey with Erdogan where he's ended up versus where he started, Modi in India.In all of these contexts, you have variations on this same story of, "We let you neoliberals run the show for a couple of decades and we're not happy with the results, that you are illegitimately marginalizing the boundaries of political debate." I think one way of understanding what we've been living through is to see that those boundaries have to be fluid. They have to be permitted by the institutions of liberal democracy to shift leftward and rightward, even if they threaten to begin to touch up against something that looks a little like illiberal communism on the left or illiberal fascism on the right, because the attempt to forestall that, to prevent it, to say, "You can't have that opinion, it's illegitimate, it's racist, it's immoral," doesn't make it go away. All it does is increase resentment toward the very institutions that are preventing it. We need a more supple understanding of the fringes if it will, that if you don't let some of it in, you risk a more turbulent reaction against the rules that prevent it from getting in.The last thing I'll say is that an interesting case study, the German situation is a little sui generis both because of Germany's incredible power economically and politically within the EU structure and also because of their distinctive shame over national socialism, which is almost in its own category of awfulness, but it is interesting that the Alternative for Germany, the AfD party, cropped up in the same period, middle of the 2010s, really scared a lot of people, rightly so.It surged to around 15% nationally in Germany which was enough again to scare a lot of people and to throw the coalition government there into a little bit of unsettledness because 15% is enough to mess with coalition formation if all the parties refuse to make a deal with and govern with that party because it means that now your total set of potential coalition mates is a lot smaller because 15% of the votes are now off the table for negotiation.The interesting thing is that Germany did not ban the AfD party, they didn't allow it to sit in a government, but they did allow it to be the main opposition party to the Christian Democrat-led Merkel government at the end of her very long reign. The result is that the support for the AfD has come down. It's now getting 9%, 10%. Can a liberal democracy survive with a far-right party that gets around 10%? I think, yes. Maybe it's better to just allow it to be there, make its case, and then lose by the normal rules of democracy.Germany also has a 5% electoral threshold. If it sinks a lot more, it could even wink out of existence at the level of the Bundestag, which would be a very good thing. Because it could come back if it got more support, but it shows that the system is open to those who are angry on the margins. Again, that can be scary for those of us who would like the—we don't want the 40-yard lines to be enforced from the top. We would prefer, at least I speak for myself, I would prefer it to be roughly within the 40-yard lines but by free choice. [chuckles] I want the electorate to want politics to take place in those somewhat narrow terms. If there starts to be rebellion on those margins, you can't keep it within the 40-yard lines by imposing it from the top down.Aaron: Then bringing this back to the context of the US, our final question, I'll ask another that I fear might be a big one, as far as combating illliberalism in the US, one disadvantage that we have is we don't have a multiparty democracy, so we can't relegate it to a 10% or 15%. We have two parties, and that 10% or 15% can take over one of them and then effectively—and then achieve White House, achieve dominance in the legislature, and so on, be able to exercise power well beyond their 15% support within the electorate.The real worry, I think, is—one of the perennial questions about Trumpism is, does Trumpism represent a genuinely fascist movement? Fascism is another thing that it's awfully hard to come up with a single definition of it, but it does seem to have a lot of legitimately fascist characteristics, and there's a real concern that, say, if Trump wins again and has the control and is able to exercise more control, that he'll push things even in…I Trump would be an authoritarian if he were able to get away with it. Within the US context, how do we take those lessons that you just articulated on the international scene and apply them looking forward two years, 10 years, to try to make sure we don't slip into something that we can't easily recover from?Damon: Yes, again, another great question, and you're completely right that the US situation—I began in one of my first responses and talking about how we have to make distinctions and Trump is worse than DeSantis. There's a way in which the American situation is uniquely alarming in the international context precisely because of what you're saying. We are not a parliamentary system in which the executive sits in the legislature and really has no independent power apart from the multi-coalition government that is in charge at any given moment.That makes our president much more of a potential dictator if he can get away with it. Then we also have a two-party system where it's either one side or the other. If one side, namely the Republicans, becomes devoted to a fascistic leader, then it could potentially control the whole ballgame. Especially with the way upcoming Senate elections are looking, it is at least within the realm of possibility that in 2025, we could have a reelected Donald Trump as president with 61 Republicans in the Senate, which is a true horror show scenario, and it really does scare me.I don't have any great magic bullet response to this. My response is to give a version of the popularism argument that is often made about the Democrats because we haven't talked much about the Democrats in our conversation, but they are the other party. As commentator David Frum said in a very pithy tweet the other day, I won't be able to quote it from memory, but to paraphrase the point he was making in the single tweet, that because of the shape of the different electoral coalition, if the two parties in the US, and the way that those coalitions at the present moment are interacting with our uniquely, distinctively weird American systems, which are really not built for ideologically sorted parties in the way that we have them now. We're in a situation where the Republicans are able to run a politics that is geared toward placating its most radical, committed elements in a way that the Democrats cannot do and win.The Republicans can win by becoming ever more extreme, and that parenthetically, just so your listeners grasp why this might be, it has to do with the fact that both the Senate and the electoral college involve winning states, and Republicans are spread around many more states than the Democrats tend to with a majority. There are more people living in blue states, in states that vote for the Democrats, but there are fewer states that vote, so they get more electoral votes, but not enough to compensate for the fact that the Dakotas and Nebraska and Kansas and all these largely empty states vote for the Republicans, giving them an edge in both of those institutions.That's one-half of the equation that Frum talks about. The other half is that the Democrats, although they cannot placate their left-wing agitating base as much and win, their potential winning coalition is much larger. It's very unlikely that the Republican, say, presidential candidate in 2024 is going to win, say, 55% of the popular vote. That's almost impossible to imagine.It is possible to imagine that a Democratic candidate could do that. Now, I don't know if it would be Biden or Harris or who it could be, but in terms of potential, the Democratic message appeals to more Americans. To see how this interacts with their institutions, all you have to do is look at the results of the 2020 election. Biden won seven million more votes than Donald Trump, but if 50,000 of those votes flipped to Trump in three states, Trump would have won anyway.That is a horrifying prospect for the legitimacy and stability of American democracy because it means that—George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 while losing the popular vote in one state by a very small number, like a few thousand votes. Trump won in 2016, winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote by almost three million. If Trump had managed to flip those 50,000 or 60,000 votes in three states, he would've been reelected president while losing seven million.These tendencies are increasing over time. It's conceivable that in 2024, you could have a Trump or DeSantis win the presidency while losing the popular vote by 8 million, 9 million, 10 million people, which is going to be very dangerous for American democracy because I do think there are limits to how much losing the Democrats are going to be willing to take if they're actually getting that many more votes in the aggregate.My medium answer to your very complex and important question is the Democrats need to do whatever it takes to prevail. If that means moderating on some social issues, that will alienate some of their more agitated activist base, they should do it for the promise of winning more votes away from the Republicans in the center. Because, really, that's the only thing that the Republicans are going to understand and that could moderate them over the future, which is to realize you can't actually win power saying and doing the things that you're doing.They need to learn that lesson. If they keep being able to squeak out victories doing this, they're going to keep doing it out of simple self-interest. Anyway, that's my unsatisfying answer. I'm never entirely satisfied with how I answer those kinds of questions, including in the post that went up today I made a version of this argument, and after I do it, I think, "Oh, no wonder nobody likes me." [chuckles] It's not very satisfying to say that we have to be the reasonable ones. We have to be the ones to say, "Sorry, you passionate supporters on my own side, you got to sit on it so that we can win later." I get why that pisses some people off.[music]Aaron: Thank you for listening to Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. If you want to learn more about the rise of illiberalism and the need to defend a free society, check out theunpopulist.substack.com.Accompanying Reading:Damon Linker, Eyes on the Right’s inaugural post From The UnPopulist: Shikha Dalmia, Populism Sans the Popular Vote: A Dangerous Formula H. David Baer, CPAC Is Going to Hungary, Never Mind Viktor Orban’s Attacks on ChurchesGarvan Walshe, Angela Merkel Helped Defeat Germany’s Populist Far Right Without AppeasementAndy Craig, Trump’s Next Presidential Run Could End the Peaceful Transfer of Power This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theunpopulist.substack.com

This week's review of the news is more wide-ranging than usual, starting with the question of whether the release of Top Gun: Maverick will turn out to be one more small indicator that the backlash against the cultural left is gaining steam. After all, the left hated the original Top Gun in the 1980s, because it was said to be an emblem of Reaganite jingoism, and since the sequel involves... Source

This week’s review of the news is more wide-ranging than usual, starting with the question of whether the release of Top Gun: Maverick will turn out to be one more small indicator that the backlash against the cultural left is gaining steam. After all, the left hated the original Top Gun in the 1980s, because it was said to be an emblem of Reaganite jingoism, and since the sequel involves... Source

On this edition of Parallax Views, former black metal journalist turned labor reporter "Grim" Kim Kelly joined me to discuss her new book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor. We discuss the book, the role of women in the labor struggle from the beginning, how Kim got involved in labor organizing and unions, the neglected voices of labor history, and much, much more (including Kim's favorite black metal band). Then, in the second half, "The Rogue Scholar" Steve Grumbine, founder of Real Progressives and host of the Macro N Cheese podcast, joins me for a conversation about how he went from Reaganite boot-strap believer to believing in labor struggle after the Global Financial Crisis, explaining MMT, his thoughts on Chris Smalls and the Amazon Union Labor victory, and resisting the "doom pill". From the "About the Book" section for Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor on Simon & Schuster: A revelatory and inclusive history of the American labor movement, from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly. Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America's civil rights movement. These are only some of the working-class heroes who propelled American labor's relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law. The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories get cut from the final copy: those of women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, sex workers, prisoners, and the poor. In this assiduously researched work of journalism, Teen Vogue columnist and independent labor reporter Kim Kelly excavates that history and shows how the rights the American worker has today—the forty-hour workweek, workplace-safety standards, restrictions on child labor, protection from harassment and discrimination on the job—were earned with literal blood, sweat, and tears. Fight Like Hell comes at a time of economic reckoning in America. From Amazon's warehouses to Starbucks cafes, Appalachian coal mines to the sex workers of Portland's Stripper Strike, interest in organized labor is at a fever pitch not seen since the early 1960s. Inspirational, intersectional, and full of crucial lessons from the past, Fight Like Hell shows what is possible when the working class demands the dignity it has always deserved.

Eric and Eliot host British author and historian Andrew Roberts and discuss his revisionist account of King George III and how a good man was nonetheless the monarch under whom the American colonies were lost. They discuss his new podcast Secrets of Statecraft, the most important characteristics of leadership in wartime, and the role Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is playing today and its Churchillian and Reaganite overtones. They also talk about Vladimir Putin, the role of individuals in history, and more. Shield of the Republic is co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric and Eliot host British author and historian Andrew Roberts and discuss his revisionist account of King George III and how a good man was nonetheless the monarch under whom the American colonies were lost. They discuss his new podcast Secrets of Statecraft, the most important characteristics of leadership in wartime, and the role Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is playing today and its Churchillian and Reaganite overtones. They also talk about Vladimir Putin, the role of individuals in history, and more. Shield of the Republic is co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

C & V delve once more into the mysteries of Simpsons history, covering Season 1's disappointing There's No Disgrace Like Home and Season 9's Trash of the Titans! How does this Season 1 episode foreshadow the terminal decline of The Simpsons? What did the rejection of 80's Reaganite family ideals eventually morph into? And did The Simpsons really need a 200th episode spectacular? Subscribe and find out! https://www.patreon.com/posts/c-v-rank-episode-63830977

Inflation is rising because the US has no output.

PATREON BONUS - https://www.patreon.com/posts/60215138 What exactly is “national conservatism” and to what extent does it represent a break from the post-Reaganite consensus as we've known it? Luke talked to Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell (cohosts of the Know Your Enemy podcast) about the recent National Conservative Conference (NatCon), the so-called national conservatives, and where the Right may be headed in the coming years.

On this week's episode, Jamelle and John discuss the strange, surprisingly sleazy 1987 thriller No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young. Topics of discussion include Costner's strikingly bland persona, the contradictions within Reaganite conservatism, the futile quest for national unity, and the late 1980s as the last hurrah for the idea of the carefree white man. Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times front page for August 14, 1987New York Times reviewTrailer for The Big ClockBob Dole's Washington Post obituary

Dimitri and Khalid speak to The Wub (@the_wub_) about the history and deep cultural influence of punk rock, including: Lester Bangs' “The White Noise Supremacists” 1979 article about racism in the CBGB/new wave scene, the 3 children of CIA bigwig Miles Copeland Jr. dominating the 80s music scene, the “young people are a class” psyop, hardcore kids spouting Reaganite talking points on Donahue, grossout king GG Allin's intimate friendship with John Wayne Gacy, and the pernicious influence of the nihilistic dirtbag chic “punk mentality” on the western left. The Wub's blog: thewublies.wordpress.com Twitter: @The_Wub_ For access to full-length premium episodes and the SJ Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe to the Al-Wara' Frequency at patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share This week on Unsupervised Learning, researcher, blogger, and essayist Tanner Greer joins Razib to consider the challenges facing conservatism in America today, the future of China and its relationship to the US. Much of Tanner's extensive research and analysis are featured on his excellent weblog, The Scholar's Stage, and the conversation also touches on the current state of blogging (and its past).  Razib and Tanner first tackle the evolution of a new strand of modern conservative thought that has labeled itself the ‘New Right' which, despite the recycled name, was not intended to suggest any relationship to the previous ‘New Right' of the 1960's through the 1980's – that culminated in Reaganite conservatism. Apparently, the 25-year-old staffers and writers who are promoting the New Right have no clear memory, let alone awareness of the movement of the same name that dominated the last third of 20th-century politics in America. Either that or they lack the creativity to come up with something original.  Rather than being a reaction to a movement that young conservatives don't remember, the 2020's New Right grows out of a rejection of the Neoconservatism of the turn of the millennium and the libertarianism that failed to meet the challenges of the 2008 financial crisis. Tanner and Razib draw on the works of historians David Walker Howe and David Hackett Fischer to examine how the constitution of the New Right may have its roots in American history. But the New Right is less a grassroots movement than a collection of intellectuals gathering around journals and think tanks. It takes a suspicious view of the valorization of individualism that typified 20th-century conservatism, but its relevance to populist mass politics remains to be seen. Tanner believes that the New Right is a positive development. He argues that different generations may require different means to tackle disparate problems and that the lack of political and economic power enjoyed by the young often leads to a tyranny of orthodoxy that eventually fades and disappears. Reaganism will only exhaust itself when the generations that remember Reagan retire from the scene. Eventually, the conversation forays across the Atlantic for a brief look at China's current prospects.. That nation faces its own set of challenges due in no small part to its own generational divide and disparities between rural and urban demographics.  Razib asks Tanner why everyone in DC suddenly seems to be a China hawk and whether we are headed into a new Cold War. Though today Tanner is writing about the American political scene, he was until recently more well known as a China watcher and observer. Finally, they wrap up the conversation by discussing blogging, and the indispensability of a private and informal intellectual space for exploring ideas and interacting in some depth.   Subscribe now Give a gift subscription

In the thirtieth episode of Season 4 (The Horror, The Horror) Kyle is joined by fellow podcaster Zax Protzmann (of the West Coast Popcast) and novelist Reagan Osborne (Short Stories I Wrote When I Was Young/The Getaway) to discuss Wes Craven's meta slasher genre rumination on the monsters that emerge when distracted by petty nonsense in the overprotective Reaganite era in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

In the twenty-seventh episode of Season 4 (The Horror, The Horror) Kyle is joined by fellow podcaster Zax Protzmann (of the West Coast Popcast) and fellow horror fan August Gummere to discuss Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg's collaboration to thoughtfully reflect on America's historical trauma, the failure of escape into suburbia, and the changing Reaganite 80s in Poltergeist.

Episode Notes Greg and Kyle talk about all the newsworthy things in the last week, first touching on the supposed turmoil in Cuba, a particular non-profit that is staffed by nothing but Reaganite monsters, how the US has managed to completely change the meaning of what Nelson Mandela stood for, and finished with a reading series about a group of Nebraska Burger King employees who decided to all quit, due to horrid work conditions and low pay.

Perhaps you've heard of Jon Meacham, a former editor in chief at Newsweek and author of many popular histories about the United States. His books are ubiquitous and regularly make bestseller lists. Yet the ideas in them are frequently reductive, incorrect, and strangely in thrall to a distinctly American version of the great man theory. Meacham is committed to fetishizing the role of the president and the men who have filled it, arguing that the office ennobles its occupants more than it corrupts them. Meanwhile, he conspicuously ignores the bottom-up social movements and profound economic tensions that historians have long recognized as crucial forces in American history. That is how Thomas Frank sees it, anyway. In his combined review of Meacham's new book, The Soul of America, and the HBO documentary based on it, Frank skewers a centrist hero who has become expert at whetting the MSNBC crowd's thirst for neoliberal platitudes. For Meacham, once a staunch Reaganite, the close alliance he enjoys with President Biden is only the latest evidence of a commitment to subordinating matters of policy to a nebulous politics of character and “soul.” This week, Frank explains to web editor Violet Lucca Meacham's overly romantic approach to history and what it elides, his connections to President Biden, and how his popularity reflects a larger shift away from the projects that once defined American liberalism. Read Frank's review: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/07/jon-meacham-thomas-frank-soul-of-america/ This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins.

Listen as Mike and Tom discuss the 1985 sequel Rambo: First Blood Part II. You'll hear them discuss exactly how 80's and Reaganite this movie is, the greatness of Charles Napier, whether or not Sly Stallone is a good or bad actor, and how this movie manages to hit the bullseye when nothing about it should have worked.

History teaching is within the confines of a curriculum and under the pressure of examinations is riven with unfortunate compromises and unintended outcomes. The question of the civil rights movement in America is a case in point. Textbooks in the UK tend to focus on the 1950s and 1960s, centring mainly around the story of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the south. The narrative becomes more complex after the passage of the Voting Rights Act 1965 and then after 1968 most textbooks shift to an examination of the black power movement and nod towards progressive changes that happen during the 1970s. We learn that America saw a generation of black sports stars and entertainers in the 1980s and a smattering of politicians, judges and civil servants. Most students are left with the firm impression that the civil rights struggle ended in success, that black America’s problems were largely resolved by the advent of civil rights and freedoms and that liberalism triumphed. Would that it were.Most UK teaching of the civil rights movement ignores the fact that many of the gains of the 50s and 60s were stripped away in the 80s and 90s by Reaganite welfare cuts and urban decay in black neighbourhoods (the blame for the resulting deprivation and criminality being dumped on impoverished black communities), and mass incarceration under Bill Clinton. The explosion of anger against endless police brutality last summer has reawoken interest in Britain on the subject of systemic injustice and state violence against black Americans and here I talk with Larry Auton Leaf about the problems of teaching a truncated and ahistorical view of the civil rights movement. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Back to the Future films were among the most popular choices on Netflix this year, and for good reason: We can all use a few extra doses of Michael J. Fox right now. As he publishes his fourth memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, we look back on his truly iconic career, from Reaganite teen Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties and rebellious time traveler Marty McFly to crusader for Parkinson’s Disease research. Through it all, he’s remained bitingly funny and refreshingly honest about his own Parkinson’s diagnosis, incorporating it into stellar performances on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Rescue Me, and The Good Wife and The Good Fight. In this episode, we break down what’s so appealing about Fox, what makes his legacy so special, and why he's the legend we need right now.

In this week’s “A Reagan Forum” we present our virtual conversation with Congressman Carl Curbelo, the son of political refugees who fled tyranny and oppression in Cuba, rising to hold office in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Congressman representing Florida’s 26th congressional district. Congressman Curbelo joined our Reagan Institute Policy Director Rachel Huff for a conversation on how conservatives should approach climate change and how his bipartisan approach to politics stems from Reaganite principles. Let’s listen.

Former Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo discusses how conservatives should approach climate change, #40's connection with Cuban Americans, and how his bipartisan approach to politics stems from Reaganite principles.

This week on The Spectator Film Podcast… Time Bandits (1981) 4.24.20 Featuring: Austin, Maxx Commentary track begins at 15:44 — Notes — We watched the Criterion Collection release of Time Bandits for the show this week. It’s a solid release with strong supplemental materials and an engaging commentary track recorded by the filmmakers in 1997. “Time Bandits: Guerrilla Fantasy” by David Sterritt — Here’s the accompanying essay with the Criterion Collection release of the movie. “‘Time Bandits’: The Ever-Lasting Importance of Terry Gilliam’s Best Fairy Tale” from Cinephilia and Beyond — As usual, Cinephilia and Beyond proves to be one-stop shopping for anyone looking to learn more about the films they enjoy. On this page you’ll find a PDF of Gilliam and Palin’s Time Bandits script, Gilliam’s original storyboards, and other material from the production and marketing of the film. Britton on Film: The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew Britton by Andrew Britton, Ed. Barry Keith Grant — Here’s the link to a published collection of Andrew Britton’s film criticism. We’ve only relied upon Britton’s writing in our preparation once before, but the precision of his insights is genuinely remarkable. Britton avoids over-reliance on structuralist language, and the clarity of his arguments make his writing very enjoyable. We’ll include some of the relevant passages from his essay “Blissing Out: The Politics of Reaganite Cinema” below: “Artifacts which tell us that we are being entertained… also tell us that they are promoting ‘escape,’ and this is the most significant thing about them. They tell us that we are ‘off duty’ and that nothing is required of us but to sit back, relax, and enjoy. Entertainment, that is, defines itself in opposition to labor, or, more generally, to the large category ‘the rest of life,’ as inhabitants of which we work for others, do not, in the vast majority of cases, enjoy our labor, and are subject to tensions and pressures that the world of entertainment excludes. It is of the essence that entertainment defines itself thus while appearing, at the same time, as a world unto itself. It does relate to ‘the rest of life,’ but only by way of its absolute otherness, and when the rest of life puts in an appearance, it is governed by laws which we are explicitly asked to read as being different from the laws which operate elsewhere. The explicitness of these strategies—the fact that they are always mediated by some form of direct address—is the crucial point. It is a condition of the function of entertainment that it should admit that the rest of life is profoundly unsatisfying… Entertainment tells us to forget our troubles and to get happy, but it also tells us that in order to do so we must agree deliberately to switch life off” (100-101). “The feeling that reality is intolerable is rapturously invoked but in such a way as to suggest that reality is immutable and that the desire to escape or transcend it is appropriate only to scheduled moments of consciously indulgent fantasy for which the existing organization of reality makes room. The ideology of entertainment is one of the many means by which late capitalism renders the idea of transforming the real unavailable for serious consideration” (101). “It leaves out everything about the existing reality principle that we would prefer to forget, redescribes other things which are scarcely forgettable in such a way that we can remember them without discomfort (and even with uplift), and anticipates rejection of the result by defining itself as a joke. Thus, Reaganite entertainment plays a game with our desire. It invites us to take pleasure in the worlds it creates and the values they embody, but because it is also ironic about them, it confirms our sense of what reality is and leaves us with the anxieties and dissatisfactions which leave a space for Reaganite entertainment. The films continually reproduce the terms of ‘the world as it is’ while also a yearning for something different; if people go back to them again and again, it is perhaps because of the lack of satisfaction the films build into the pleasure: they regenerate the need for escape which they seem to satisfy and provide confidence of a kind which leaves us unconfident. By at once celebrating and debunking the ‘good old values,’ and addressing them both as viable norms and the conventions of a fantasy, Reaganite entertainment perpetuates a paralyzed anxiety and institutionalizes itself” (110-11). Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan… and Beyond by Robin Wood — We’ve referenced Robin Wood a great deal on the show, and this may be one of his most significant contributions to film criticism. This book is tremendous. We’ll include the quoted passages from the chapter “Papering the Cracks: Fantasy and Ideology in the Reagan Era” below: “It is important to stress that I am not positing some diabolical Hollywood-capitalist-Reaganite conspiracy to impose mindlessness and mystification on a potentially revolutionary populace, nor does there seem much point in blaming the filmmakers for what they are doing (the critics are another matter). The success of the films is only comprehensible when one assumes a widespread desire for regression to infantilism, a populace who wants to be constructed as mock children. Crucial here, no doubt, is the urge to evade responsibility—responsibility for actions, decisions, thought, responsibility for changing things: children do not have to be responsible, there are older people to look after them… don't worry, Uncle George (or Uncle Steven) will take you by the hand and lead you through Wonderland. Some dangers will appear on the way, but never fear, he'll also see you safely home; home being essentially those ‘good old values’ that Sylvester Stallone told us Rocky was designed to reinstate: racism, sexism, ‘democratic’ capitalism; the capitalist myths of freedom of choice and equality of opportunity, the individual hero whose achievements somehow ‘make everything all right,’ even for the millions who never make it to individual heroism (but every man can be a hero—even, such is the grudging generosity of contemporary liberalism, every woman)” (147). “Spielberg's identification with Elliott (that there is virtually no distance whatever between character and director is clearly the source of the film's seductive, suspect charm) makes possible the precise nature of the fantasy E. T. offers: not so much a child's fantasy as an adult's fantasy about childhood” (158). Lacan and Contemporary Film Edited by Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkle — We’ve used Todd McGowan’s book The Impossible David Lynch during some previous episodes in order to structure our Lacanian analysis, but this is the first time we’ve used this particular book. I’ve yet to finish reading it, but this book seems like an adequate intro to Lacanian film analysis; I except it would remain challenging for newcomers.  We’ll include the quoted passage from the introduction below: “What was missing in this Lacanian film theory was any sense of the power of film to disrupt ideology and to challenge—or even expose—the process of interpellation. This was the result of its too narrow understanding of Lacan, an understanding that elided the role of the Real in Lacan’s thought. According to this way of understanding Lacan, the signifier’s authority is absolute, and its functioning is flawless. But this fails to see the signifier’s dependence on failure—the role that failure plays in the effective functioning of the signifier. Failure is necessary because the signifier must open up a space through which the subject can enter: a perfectly functioning system allows for no new entrants, no new subjects. As a consequence, if the symbolic order is determinative in the path that it lays down for the subject, it doesn’t lay down this path smoothly but in a way that is fraught with peril. That is to say, the symbolic order continually comes up against a barrier that disrupts its smooth functioning—a barrier that Lacan calls the Real. This barrier is not external to the symbolic structure: the Lacanian Real is not a thing in itself existing beyond the realm of the signifier. Instead, the Real marks the point at which the symbolic order derails itself, the point where a gap occurs within that order. The symbolic order cannot exist without gaps at which its control breaks down. These gaps not only hinder the working of the symbolic order, they are also essential to its working. Without the hindrance, the mechanism cannot function. In order to function properly, the symbolic order must function improperly” (xvi-xvii) — Listener Picks — Do you want to pick a movie for us to discuss on the show? Here’s how: Make a donation of $20 or more to ofwemergencyfund.org Check your email for a donation receipt, and send a screenshot of your donation to austin@spectatorfilmpodcast.com or @spectatorfilmpodcast on Instagram In your email or DM, include 1.) your name 2.) the movie you’d like discussed on the show and 3.) a brief overview of your thoughts on the movie. That’s it!

I talk to Jeremy Doan, a former Reaganite Republican who now identifies as a Marxist. Also discussed: Homer, Oscar Romero, why you should turn off the news and read a book.

Perri Pierre introduces himself and his goal with this podcast. He then introduces Peter Ellinas, a friend, and former classmate at Pepperdine University. They talk about the 80s with a focus on Reaganite cinema. What is Reaganite Cinema? What are the characteristics of a Reaganite film? There are some of the questions that are answered in this episode. They also list the highest grossing films of the 80s plus the ones that won an Oscar for best picture. #80sMovies #ReaganiteCinema #Bradpack #StevenSpielberg #TravelBackToTime #BackToTheFuture #Nostalgia #JamesCameron #SpikeLee #ComingToAmerica #EddieMurphy #BackToTheFuture #RagingBull #MartinScorcese

The first National Conservatism conference was convened at the Ritz Carlton in Washington D.C. two weeks ago. It was a coming out party for the rising nationalist wing of the conservative movement, with attendees laying the groundwork for a more intellectual version of Trumpism. Many mainstream conservatives were in attendance, along with paleoconservatives, figures from the religious right, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and a popular Fox News host. In the era of Trump, mainstream conservatism is making room for hardcore nationalists, economic populists, illiberal theocrats, and others—this conference was a chance for them to find common ground. Matt and Sam discuss the conference, what it means for the present and future of conservative politics, and how the left can combat the nationalists' appeal—which is, in many ways, much more powerful than that of the dying Reaganite consensus. Here's what we read and watched: Video and text of Senator Josh Hawley's speech Alexander Zaitchick's profile of Hawley in the New Republic. National Conservatism 2019 YouTube channel (videos of many but not all speeches) Zach Beauchamp's original write-up at Vox. NYT's write-up. Osita Nwanevu (New Yorker), Conservative Nationalism is Trumpism for Intellectuals Jacob Heilbrunn (NYRB), National Conservatism: Retrofitting Trump’s GOP with a Veneer of Ideas Daniel McCarthy's (TORY ANARCHIST) take. Damon Linker's contrarian take. David Walsh's take on the conference and fascism Douthat's NYT column. Daniel Luban's profile in the New Republic of Yoram Hazony. Criticism from the right: The Federalist and Jacobite takes.

Rabbits, red suits, and Reaganite food programs! Confused? Well it won’t get much clearer as we dive deep into Jordan Peele’s Us.

Hr 1: Rep. Keith Ellison gets a pass on sexual assault & domestic abuse allegations... because??? Liberal hypocrisy? ConservaRican Julio Rivera, of Reactionary Times, weighs in on the hypocritical handling of accusations against Rep. Keith Ellison vs. SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Hr 2: Forecast modelling expert Dr. Gerard Lameiro explains what happened to that 139 year old Democrat stronghold in San Antonio, Texas. The Blue Bubble burst! Hr 3: Did Former FBI Director James Comey actually say he was a Communist and a Reaganite? How does that work?!? AND... ProjectVeritas exposes avowed socialists embedded in our U.S. State Dept actively working to subvert the current administration. AND... Juanita Brodderick BLASTS Hillary Clinton. Have you had your healthy dose of reality lately?

Join Ronald Reagan behind enemy lines in a North Korean prison camp so terrifyingly coercive, even the U.S. Military did not want the public to see it! Filmed with the full cooperation of the Pentagon, the Cold War brass revoked their imprimatur after viewing the final product. You might say this one was declared off-Nimitz, if you were a certain kind of HELLCATS OF THE NAVY-centric punster.  PRISONER OF WAR actually dares to put a viable socialist critique of the new U.S. World Order in the mouths of its cartoonish villains, demonstrating just how ideologically blinkered North American audiences were (and are). As Rita Hayworth states in the immortal STRAWBERRY BLONDE: "I refuse to listen to advanced ideas!"  If you're in the mood for pointless 6th dimensional intrigue, laconic Reaganite philosophizing about human frailty, harrowing psychological torture experiments, canines in trouble, a cavalcade of brilliant character actors (Oscar Homolka, Paul Stewart, Henry Morgan) slumming it in the Red Scare District, and a vision of midcentury geopolitics as one gigantic sting operation, this is the one for you!!      Now is a time for choosing. Choose RED TIME FOR BONZO! Follow us at: Facebook Follow Romy on Twitter at @rahrahtempleton Follow Gareth on Twitter at @helenreddymades Follow David on Twitter at @milescoverdale   Intro Theme: "Driving Reagan" by Gareth Hedges

Join Ronald Reagan behind enemy lines in a North Korean prison camp so terrifyingly coercive, even the U.S. Military did not want the public to see it! Filmed with the full cooperation of the Pentagon, the Cold War brass revoked their imprimatur after viewing the final product. You might say this one was declared off-Nimitz, if you were a certain kind of HELLCATS OF THE NAVY-centric punster.  PRISONER OF WAR actually dares to put a viable socialist critique of the new U.S. World Order in the mouths of its cartoonish villains, demonstrating just how ideologically blinkered North American audiences were (and are). As Rita Hayworth states in the immortal STRAWBERRY BLONDE: "I refuse to listen to advanced ideas!"  If you're in the mood for pointless 6th dimensional intrigue, laconic Reaganite philosophizing about human frailty, harrowing psychological torture experiments, canines in trouble, a cavalcade of brilliant character actors (Oscar Homolka, Paul Stewart, Henry Morgan) slumming it in the Red Scare District, and a vision of midcentury geopolitics as one gigantic sting operation, this is the one for you!!      Now is a time for choosing. Choose RED TIME FOR BONZO! Follow us at: Facebook Follow Romy on Twitter at @rahrahtempleton Follow Gareth on Twitter at @helenreddymades Follow David on Twitter at @milescoverdale

This week on The Spectator Film Podcast… The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) 7.5.18 Featuring: Austin, Drew

Rafael Khatchaturian joins the podcast again.  Today, we are talking about the bizarre circle that took Paul Manafort from the apex of K-Street to post-Soviet Eastern Europe and back. Mantefort was briefly the campaign manager of the Trump campaign and now is a major target of Robert Mueller's investigation. Franklin Foer, now a national correspondant with The Atlantic, describes Manafort's rise as an influential Washington lobbyist to his work on behalf of an international rogues gallery including former Ukranian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. In this way, Manafort's career mirrors the arc of history since 1980:  the rise of neoliberal, Reaganite conservatism in 1980, the exportation of US style democracy and campaigning to Europe after 1991, and the dubious rewards that both the US and Europe are now reaping. One programming note:  You can hear my cat, Imogen, on both this and our last episode. Rafael's breakdown of an anti-soviet cartoon. Sean Guillory - Sean's Russian Blog. Franklin Foer, "The Plot Against America," The Atlantic (March 2018). Masha Gessen, "The New Politics of Conspiracy," New York Review of Books (November 2nd, 2016).

Vin Weber is a former congressman from Minnesota, a respected political strategist, and a thoughtful analyst of American politics. In this Conversation, Weber reflects on Reaganite conservatism and makes the case for continued American leadership in the world. Kristol and Weber also discuss the Trump presidency, its implications for the Republican Party, and whether Trump's election portends a breakup of the two party system.

Vin Weber is a former congressman from Minnesota, a respected political strategist, and a thoughtful analyst of American politics. In this Conversation, Weber reflects on Reaganite conservatism and makes the case for continued American leadership in the world. Kristol and Weber also discuss the Trump presidency, its implications for the Republican Party, and whether Trump's election portends a breakup of the two party system.

Vin Weber is a former congressman from Minnesota, a respected political strategist, and a thoughtful analyst of American politics. In this Conversation, Weber reflects on Reaganite conservatism and makes the case for continued American leadership in the world. Kristol and Weber also discuss the Trump presidency, its implications for the Republican Party, and whether Trump’s election portends a breakup of the two party system.

Synopsis: In this play spanning 30 years and six presidential administrations, Hester Ferris throws Georgetown dinner parties that can change the course of Washington's politics. But when her beloved son suddenly turns up with an ambitious Reaganite girlfriend and a shocking new conservative world view, Hester must choose between preserving her family and defending the causes she's spent her whole life fighting for. Taken from www.samuelfrench.com/ 7.5 out of 10 Average Show

Word's a Mess Episode #5-- Today Alex and James are joined by long time communist partisan and provisional intern Sam Pritchard. The gang raps about the slow leeching of America's greatest national resources, as well as. . .Mostly bowel movements. Then we talk about more fast food fights, crocodiles, and dumb marijuana crime. Theme is "World's a Mess" by X. #ButtLife #ButtBombs #Reaganite #Sasquatch #Florida

“Most of us were looking for a theoretical and political rationale for dealing with the world. Many of us came out conservative because as we argued our way through lots of facts and ideologies, […] it became clearer and clearer that The Great Society wasn’t working” […] By the time Reagan showed up, half the team had become Reaganite conservatives before the fact.”

Brief look at how Mexican political leaders are implementing the Reaganite policy mix of sequencing monetary/fiscal goals liberalizing a resurgent emerging Mexican Middle Class.

So let's see: Romney's running mate is not an Ivy League establishmentarian.  He doesn't even have a graduate degree, let alone a law degree.  His first important job in Washington was as a speechwriter for Jack Kemp, the last genuine Reaganite to run on a GOP presidential ticket.  He speaks without embarrassment about the influence of Ayn Rand -- the spiritual founder of libertarianism -- on his political views, and has even encouraged his staffers to read Rand's works.  

So let's see: Romney's running mate is not an Ivy League establishmentarian.  He doesn't even have a graduate degree, let alone a law degree.  His first important job in Washington was as a speechwriter for Jack Kemp, the last genuine Reaganite to run on a GOP presidential ticket.  He speaks without embarrassment about the influence of Ayn Rand -- the spiritual founder of libertarianism -- on his political views, and has even encouraged his staffers to read Rand's works.  

Tom Pauken...former Reaganite and Texan tells about "Bringing America Home"...explains the Bush-Perry tension in Texas.  Then,  why do ethanol advocates have a tough time explaining the basics to the rest of us?