Podcasts about trumpist

SEASON 3 EPISODE 128: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump wants – and his Republican Whore House of Representatives could give him, as early as today, more likely tomorrow – a LAW letting him not only ignore the courts and their injunctions or temporary restraining orders - but immunize himself and his minions from even BEING subject to CONTEMPT CITATIONS. The law, cutting the legs off every judge in this country including all of them on the Supreme Court, is sitting deep in the MAGA multi-trillion dollar budget bill, curled up like a snake ready to attack and poison the judiciary. At Trump’s sole discretion. Any court issuing a T-R-O against Trump or his pack of wolves with titles decimating safety regulations or firing tens of thousands of essential government employees; any court issuing an injunction against Trump kidnapping and renditioning people off the street; any court doing anything Trump doesn’t like could rule whatever IT likes but when it came to the only teeth such orders have – the threat of putting somebody who ignores them, IN jail, FOR contempt, would be GONE. The gist of this is the Trumpists found another loophole, about a cash bond requirement if you seek to enjoin the government. It’s normally set by the judge at Zero Dollars. This bill would make any such Contempt of Court findings or Injunctions set at zero… unenforceable. SO ICE has accelerated the renditions, now dismissing old charges that are currently being ajudicated and seizing the defendants at the courtrooms and putting them on flights to South Sudan or Libya or wherever because, if there's no Contempt of Court, who's going to stop them? ALSO: Kristi Noem having no idea what "Habeas Corpus" is? That was the SMART part. She also doesn't think "suspend" means "enact." Why is Trump investigating Andrew Cuomo? So if he gets elected Mayor of New York they can blackmail him into selling OUT New York. CBS is warned by Senators that its "settlement" with Trump may be a criminal bribe. And the bad news for CNN is, it's become a 24/7 Shopping Channel selling Jake Tapper's crap book. The good news is, they'll be televising George Clooney's live Broadway show about Murrow, "Good Night And Good Luck" so at least there'll be some pretend journalists on the network. B-Block (40:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Musk's "Grok" thinks Kristi Noem was talking about the WNBA. The guy Jeopardy fired as host after a week is now running Ben Shapiro's Propaganda Channel. And karma gets Bill Maher back for praising Trump and dissing Larry David: his "uncancellable" podcast studio? Cancelled. C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The arrival of a piece of the fabric roof ripped off Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg last October by Hurricane Milton has inadvertently reminded me why I do this podcast, because it reminded me of the day nearly half a century ago when my dad the architect warned me not to go into an arena with another fabric roof that he (correctly) predicted was about to come off because of bad weather.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Célia Belin of the European Council on Foreign Relations tells RFI that Donald Trump's administration is treating Europe less as a partner and more as a rival. In backing nationalist movements and undermining multilateral institutions, it is exporting a political mode of operation that risks fracturing European unity. The impact of Donald Trump's second term in the White House is being felt far beyond US borders. Observers say this ripple effect can be seen across Europe, not just in policy but in the continent's political culture itself.For Dr Célia Belin of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the stakes are nothing less than the future of European liberal democracy.In her latest ECFR report, MAGA Goes Global: Trump's Plan for Europe, Belin warns that what might appear to be chaotic decisions from the Oval Office are, in fact, part of an ideological project.“There's actually a strong direction, a clear destination,” Belin told RFI. “Trump, surrounded by loyalists and MAGA Republicans, is ready to implement his plan – to push back on liberal democracy, and to push back on Europe."According to her, he sees Europe as “an extension of his political enemies – liberals and progressives” and views its institutions as bureaucratic hurdles rather than allies in global leadership.Culture wars without bordersTrump's administration – bolstered by figures including Vice President JD Vance and media mogul Elon Musk – has also made overtures to Europe's far right.They have voiced support for Germany's far-right AfD party and France's Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, including on Musk's social media platform X (formerly Twitter) – helping to disseminate nationalist and populist rhetoric across the continent.“We're seeing a systematic attack on the liberal model that Europe represents,” said Belin. “This ‘Trumpian wave' has fired up nationalist opposition in Europe, even if it hasn't created a united front."‘Free Le Pen': US conservatives rally behind French far-right leaderNon merci to MAGAHowever, some of the European political parties that share Trump's scepticism of liberal institutions are treading carefully when it comes to embracing his brand of politics.While leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary openly welcome MAGA-style backing, others see it as a double-edged sword.Following her recent legal conviction, Le Pen received support from MAGA-aligned figures. But her party responded with conspicuous silence.“They don't want or need this Trumpian support,” Belin noted. “Their political strategy is not about aligning with MAGA America – it's more French, more sovereignist."Embracing Trump too openly could risk undermining years of effort to mainstream the National Rally's image. “Nationalists are realising that now – it brings fuel to the fire, yes, but it also complicates their own domestic positioning," said Belin.Trump's first 100 days: Revolution or destruction? The view from FranceEurope respondsFrench President Emmanuel Macron was among the first European leaders to sound the alarm on the changing nature of the US-European alliance. "I want to believe that the United States will stay by our side but we have to be prepared for that not to be the case," he said in a televised address to the nation in March.I January, in a speech to French ambassadors, he said: "Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany."German Chancellor Olaf Scholz followed suit, criticising Musk's decision to give the AfD a platform just weeks before Germany's federal elections.However, Belin points out that the European response is still taking shape. “It's brand new as a phenomenon,” she said. “Europeans were prepared to be challenged on trade, on security – even on Ukraine. But this cultural challenge is unprecedented.”Meloni positions herself as Europe's ‘trump card' on visit to White HouseStill, as Belin notes, Trumpism is not a winning formula everywhere. “Turning fully Trumpist would derail Marine Le Pen's strategy. It's not a winning strategy in France,” she said. “But in more insurgent political systems, it might be."And there is concern too that Trumpism could outlive Trump himself.“There's been a transformation in the perception of America's global role,” Belin said. “And that will stick around. It will be pushed by some of the nationalist parties in our countries. That is the Trumpist legacy”.

The authoritarian right loves to talk about how they're upholding democracy. Trump didn't lose the 2020 election, because if he had, democracy would've been against him. So instead it was stolen from him, his loss a subversion of the democratic process. Now, as a deeply unpopular second-term president, he and his loyalists pretend they are executing the will of the people, instead of horrifying most Americans while circumventing the people's elected legislature.My guest today has written a terrific book, The Reactionary Spirit, about this odd contradiction in contemporary autocratic rhetoric: On the one hand, far-right anti-democratic regimes speak in the language of democracy and popular will. On the other, they are, well, anti-democratic regimes. Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers challenges to democracy in the United States and abroad, right-wing populism, and the world of ideas.If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Australia's federal election delivered a clear and in many ways stunning victory for the incumbent centre-left Labor government led by PM Anthony Albanese. Coming a week after an even more astonishing victory by the centre-left Liberal Party in Canada, Darren is intensely focused on the extent to which President Trump, and Trumpism, played a meaningful role in Labor's victory, and what this devastation means for the future of conservative politics in Australia. Darren is joined again by good friend and journalist Eliza Harvey, who is Executive Producer of the ABC's Q&A program, to talk things through. Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning. Relevant links Daniel Jeffrey, “Gina Rinehart calls for Liberal Party to embrace Trumpist policies, laments election result”, Nine News, 5 May 2025: https://www.9news.com.au/national/federal-election-2025-gina-rinehart-statement/573c7c24-c4a0-4be4-8d99-6c25ffc4b8dc “Outgoing MP Keith Wolahan outlines Liberal Party's urban challenge” (Video), Insiders (ABC News), 4 May 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kUS3m_j4_w Sinners (film): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinners_(2025_film) Say nothing (TV series): https://www.disneyplus.com/en-au/browse/entity-ada252dd-714c-4c2c-b15c-f1ed93cdf5b0 Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days: https://www.hachette.com.au/geraldine-brooks/memorial-days

FASCIST ATTACKS ON JUDGES & A MAYOR * CINCO DE MAYO * WINNING ECO-BATTLES   We start with “Kidnapping the Rubicon” from our Poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN.   The duly elected MAYOR HEIDE LAMBERT of Waldport, Oregon has been arrested by a fascist city council in an attempted coup; the activist progressive Mayor shares her amazing tale as we hear her plans to get re-instated.   Our co-convenor MIKE HERSH assures us all that the fight-back will inspire deep regrets among the Trumpist attackers.   LAProgressive.com editor-publishers SHARON KYLE & DICK PRICE give us the scoop on the Trump attack against Wisconsin Judge Hanna Dugan and many others like her who are standing up for actual justice & the law.  Such judges, says Kyle, have been subjected to DOXing and other forms of Nazi-style attacks.   Emmy-winning documentarian DAVID SALTMAN explains the key elements to maintaining a lawful society.   Climate activist DIANE CAMERON talks about defeating a new highway proposed for Maryland.   Green campaigner MARGARET SCHOAP OF US-PIRG expands on the great grassroots work happening in Maryland to preserve what's left of the state.   Long-time no nukes activist MYLA RESON reminds of the major fightings against atomic power in New Mexico.   Rockville (MD) resident ALEX WILLIAMS advocate for mass transit & an end to new highways.   From Ohio we hear JAY WARMKE updates us of the surprising progress of new solar farms in the Buckeye State.   Solar pioneer PAUL NEWMAN checks in on the state of corn-based ethanol.   Legendary eco-founder MARION EDEY visits us with her great wisdom.   Legendary computer pioneer LEE FELSENSTEIN contributes the suggestion that upcoming rally organizers use business cards with secret color coding, recycled paper & union labels to provide attendees with QR codes they can use to link back to websites established for moving America's activist mass to true criticality.   Legendary no nukes strategist KARL GROSSMAN decries NY Gov. Kathy Hochul's support for nuke bailouts.   Erstwhile engineer STEVE CARUSO gives us the latest from central Ohio.   Indivisible activist MIMI S concludes with California's ridiculous new attempt to build new nukes.   Next week we'll do a deeper dive.  Meantime, HAPPY CINCO De MAYO. 

7. mail toimus Facebooki otsesaade, kus said läbi võetud kõik viimaste nädalate põletavamad teemad alates RFK Jr. kannapöördest, Trumpist, Iisraelist, Ukrainast, Venemaast, laborilekkest, uhhuu-jahist ja hitlerjugendist kuni ravimite raskete kõrvaltoimete ja pandeemialeppeni.   Muidugi tuli kõne alla ka see, et Katy Perry käis omast arust kosmoses ja fakt, et sind järgitakse juba sünnist saati igal päeva ja öösel? Kes seda teeb? Eks ikka see inimene, kes sinu elu ja heaolu eest vastutab… Vihje – sa saad seda inimest alati valida, aga mitte valimisjaoskonnas. Lisaks loosime kõikide live´i FB-video jagajate vahel välja kasti Lumiorava magneesiumivett.   Vaata videot: https://www.telegram.ee/ajaviide/fb-live-7-05-25-globaalmangud-uhhuu-jaht-kiirgused-pandeemialepe-ja-sind-jalgitakse-24-7  

As we've talked about a fair amount on the show, gender is at the center of the ideological clashes defining our political moment. Trumpism is, at its heart, a misogynistic movement, and the fractious coalition of philosophies within the Trumpist tent all agree that increased freedom and opportunities for women have been very upsetting for right-wing men.My guest today brings gender into dialogue with the structure of the economy has it has manifested in the developed world. And, in doing so, she offers an intriguing challenge to libertarian and radical liberal economic priors. It's one worth engaging with and thinking through.Alysia Ames is a CPA who has spent her career as an accountant in and around government. She lives in Iowa with her husband and two daughters. Her writing can be found on her newsletter, Accounting for Taste. See the link in the show notes. You can also find her on Bluesky as @fakegreekgrill.Discuss this episode with the host and your fellow listeners in the ReImagining Liberty Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReImaginingLiberty/ If you enjoy ReImagining Liberty and want to listen to episodes free of ads and sponsorships, become a supporter. Learn more here: https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/upgrade I also encourage you to check out my companion newsletter, where I write about the kinds of ideas we discuss on this show. You can find it on my website at ⁠⁠www.aaronrosspowell.com⁠⁠. Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠.

Back after a year on hiatus! Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast They, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...Sokrates: The people find some protector, whom they nurse into greatness… but then changes, as indicated in the old fable of the Temple of Zeus of the Wolf, of how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other sacrificial victims will turn into a wolf. Even so, the protector, once metaphorically tasting human blood, slaying some and exiling others, within or without the law, hinting at the cancellation of debts and the fair redistribution of lands, must then either perish or become a werewolf—that is, a tyrant…Key Insights:* We are back! After a year-long hiatus.* Hexapodia is a metaphor: a small, strange insight (like alien shrubs riding on six-wheeled carts as involuntary agents of the Great Evil) can provide key insight into useful and valuable Truth.* The Democratic Party is run by 27-year-old staffers, not geriatric figurehead politicians–this shapes messaging and internal dynamics.* The American progressive movement did not possess enough assibayah to keep from fracturing over Gaza War, especially among younger Democratic staffers influenced by social media discourse.* The left's adoption of “indigeneity” rhetoric undermined its ability to be a coalition in the face of tensions generated by the Hamas-Israel terrorism campaigns.* Trump's election with more popular votes than Harris destroyed Democratic belief that they had a right to oppose root-and-branch.* The belief that Democrats are the “natural majority” of the U.S. electorate is now false: nonvoters lean Trump, not so much Republican, and definitely not Democratic.* Trump's populism is not economic redistribution, but a claim to provide a redistribution of status and respect to those who feel culturally disrespected.* The Supreme Court's response to Trumpian overreach is likely to be very cautious—Barrett and Roberts are desperately eager to avoid any confrontation with Trump they might wind up losing, and Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Thomas will go the extra mile—they are Republicans who are judges, not judges who are Republicans, except in some extremis that may not even exist.* Trump's administration pursues selective repression through the state, rather than stochastic terrorism.* The economic consequence of the second Trump presidency look akin to another Brexit costing the U.S. ~10% of its prosperity, or more.* Social media, especially Twitter a status warfare machine–amplifying trolls and extremists, suppressing nuance.* People addicted to toxic media diets but lack the tools or education to curate better information environments.* SubStack and newsletters may become part of a healthier information ecosystem, a partial antidote to the toxic amplification of the Shouting Class on social media.* Human history is marked by information revolutions (e.g., printing press), each producing destructive upheaval before stabilization: destruction, that may or may not be creative.* As in the 1930s, we are entering a period where institutions–not mobs–become the threat, even as social unrest diminishes.* The dangers are real,and recognizing and adapting to new communication realities is key to preserving democracy.* Plato's Republic warned of democracy decaying into tyranny, especially when mob-like populism finds a strongman champion who then, having (metaphorically) fed on human flesh, becomes a (metaphorical) werewolf.* Enlightenment values relied more than we knew on print-based gatekeeping and slow communication; digital communication bypasses these safeguards.* The cycle of crisis and recovery is consistent through history: societies fall into holes they later dig out of, usually at great cost—or they don't.* &, as always, HEXAPODIA!References:* Brown, Chad P. 2025. “Trump's trade war timeline 2.0: An up-to-date guide”. PIIE. .* Center for Humane Technology. 2020. “The Social Dilemma”. .* Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, & John Jay. 1788. The Federalist Papers. .* Nowinski, Wally. 2024. “Democrats benefit from low turnout now”. Noahpinion. July 20. .* Platon of the Athenai. -375 [1871]. Politeia. .* Rorty, Richard. 1998. Achieving Our Country. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. * Rothpletz, Peter. 2024. “Economics 101 tells us there's no going back from Trumpism”. The Hill. September 24. .* Smith, Noah. 2021. “Wokeness as Respect Redistribution”. Noahpinion..* Smith, Noah. 2016. “How to actually redistribute respect”. Noahpinion. March 23. .* Smith, Noah. 2013. “Redistribute wealth? No, redistribute respect”. Noahpinion. December 27. .* SubStack. 2025. “Building a New Economic Engine for Culture”. .&* Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. .If reading this gets you Value Above Replacement, then become a free subscriber to this newsletter. And forward it! And if your VAR from this newsletter is in the three digits or more each year, please become a paid subscriber! I am trying to make you readers—and myself—smarter. Please tell me if I succeed, or how I fail… Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Ostatnie działania Donalda Trumpa w kwestii ceł powodują globalne poruszenie, chaos i częste nieporozumienia. Jakie poglądy na globalny system handlowy i finansowy ma otoczenie Donalda Trumpa? O co chodzi Trumpowi i czy cła są istotnym narzędziem z punktu widzenia ostatecznego celu Trumpistów? Czy celem długofalowym Trumpistów jest stworzenie nowego systemu handlowo-finansowego? Jakie zarzuty względem obecnego systemu formułują Trumpiści? Czy ich częste powtarzane hasło o „okradaniu Ameryki” ma pokrycie w rzeczywistości? Jak to wszystko ma się do geopolitycznej rywalizacji USA z Chinami? Te zagadnienia poruszał red. Damian Adamus w swoim autorskim komentarzu.-35% od ceny okładkowej na książki wydawnictwa Prześwity z kodem: nowyładKsiążki do nabycia na stronie: https://mtbiznes.pl/

It's official. The American Dream is dead. And it's been resurrected in Europe where, according to the FT columnist Simon Kuper, disillusioned Americans should relocate. Compared with the United States, Kuper argues, Europe offers the three key metrics of a 21st century good life: “four years more longevity, higher self-reported happiness and less than half the carbon emissions per person”. So where exactly to move? The Paris based Kuper believes that his city is the most beautiful in Europe. He's also partial to Madrid, which offers Europe's sunniest lifestyle. And even London, in spite of all its post Brexit gloom, Kuper promises, offers American exiles the promise of a better life than the miserable existence which they now have to eek out in the United States. Five Takeaways* Quality of Life.:Kuper believes European quality of life surpasses America's for the average person, with Europeans living longer, having better physical health, and experiencing less extreme political polarization.* Democratic Europe vs Aristocratic America: While the wealthy can achieve greater fortunes in America, Kuper argues that Europeans in the "bottom 99%" live longer and healthier lives than their American counterparts.* Guns, Anxiety and the Threat of Violence: Political polarization in America creates more anxiety than in Europe, partly because Americans might be armed and because religion makes people hold their views more fervently.* MAGA Madness: Kuper sees Trump as more extreme than European right-wing leaders like Italy's Meloni, who governs as "relatively pro-European" and "pro-Ukrainian."* It's not just a Trump thing. Kuper believes America's declining international credibility will persist even after Trump leaves office, as Europeans will fear another "America First" president could follow any moderate administration.Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello everybody. It's Monday, April the 21st, 2025. This conversation actually might go out tomorrow on the 22nd. Nonetheless, the headlines of the Financial Times, the world's most global economic newspaper, are miserable from an American point of view. US stocks and the dollar are sinking again as Donald Trump renews his attack on the Fed chair Jay Powell. Meanwhile Trump is also attacking the universities and many other bastions of civilization at least according to the FT's political columnist Gideon Rachman. For another FT journalist, my guest today Simon Kuper has been on the show many times before. All this bad news about America suggests that for Americans it's time to move to Europe. Simon is joining us from Paris, which Paris is that in Europe Simon?Simon Kuper: I was walking around today and thinking it has probably never in its history looked as good as it does now. It really is a fabulous city, especially when the sun shines.Andrew Keen: Nice of them where I am in San Francisco.Simon Kuper: I always used to like San Francisco, but I knew it before every house costs $15 million.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm not sure that's entirely true, but maybe there's some truth. Paris isn't exactly cheap either, is it? Certainly where you live.Simon Kuper: Cheaper than San Francisco, so I did for this article that you mentioned, I did some research on house prices and certainly central Paris is one of the most expensive areas in the European Union, but still considerably cheaper than cities like New York and San Francisco. A friend of mine who lives here told me that if she moved to New York, she would move from central Paris to for the same price living in some very, very distant suburb of New York City.Andrew Keen: Your column this week, Americans, it's time to move to Europe. You obviously wrote with a degree of relish. Is this Europe's revenge on America that it's now time to reverse the brain drain from Europe to America? Now it's from America to Europe.Simon Kuper: I mean, I don't see it as revenge. I'm a generally pro-American person by inclination and I even married an American and have children who are American as well as being French and British. So when I went to the US as firstly as a child, age 10, 11, I was in sixth grade in California. I thought it was the most advanced, wonderful place in the world and the sunshine and there was nowhere nice than California. And then I went as a student in my early 20s. And again, I thought this was the early 90s. This is the country of the future. It's so much more advanced than Europe. And they have this new kind of wise technocratic government that is going to make things even better. And it was the beginning of a big American boom of the 90s when I think American quality of life reached its peak, that life expectancy was reached, that was then declined a long time after the late 90s. So my impressions in the past were always extremely good, but no longer. The last 20 years visiting the US I've never really felt this is a society where ordinary people can have as good a life as in Europe.Andrew Keen: When you say ordinary people, I mean, you're not an ordinary person. And I'm guessing most of the people you and your wife certainly isn't ordinary. She's a well known writer. In fact, she's written on France and the United States and parenthood, very well known, you are well known. What do you mean by ordinary people?Simon Kuper: Yeah, I mean, it's not entirely about me. Amazingly, I am not so egomaniac as to draw conclusions on some matters just looking at my own situation. What I wrote about the US is that if you're in the 1% in the US and you are pursuing great wealth in finance or tech and you have a genuine shot at it, you will achieve wealth that you can't really achieve in Europe. You know, the top end of the US is much higher than in Europe. Still not necessarily true that your life will be better. So even rich Americans live shorter than rich Europeans. But OK, so the 1% America really offers greater expansion opportunities than Europe does. Anywhere below that, the Europeans in the bottom 99%, let's say, they live longer than their American equivalents. They are less fat, their bodies function better because they walk more, because they're not being bombarded by processed food in the same way. Although we have political polarization here, it's not as extreme as in the US. Where I quote a European friend of mine who lives in the American South. He says he sometimes doesn't go out of his house for days at a time because he says meeting Trump supporters makes him quite anxious.Andrew Keen: Where does he live? I saw that paragraph in the piece, you said he doesn't, and I'm quoting him, a European friend of mine who lives in the American South sometimes doesn't leave his house for days on end so as to avoid running into Trump supporters. Where does he live?Simon Kuper: He lives, let me say he lives in Georgia, he lives in the state of Georgia.Andrew Keen: Well, is that Atlanta? I mean, Atlanta is a large town, lots of anti-Trump sentiment there. Whereabouts in Georgia?Simon Kuper: He doesn't live in Atlanta, but I also don't want to specify exactly where he lives because he's entitled.Andrew Keen: In case you get started, but in all seriousness, Simon, isn't this a bit exaggerated? I mean, I'm sure there are some of your friends in Paris don't go outside the fancy center because they might run into fans of Marine Le Pen. What's the difference?Simon Kuper: I think that polarization creates more anxiety in the US and is more strongly felt for a couple of reasons. One is that because people might be armed in America, that gives an edge to any kind of disagreement that isn't here in Europe. And secondly, because religion is more of a factor in American life, people hold their views more strongly, more fervently, then. So I think there's a seriousness and edge to the American polarization that isn't quite the same as here. And the third reason I think polarization is worse is movement is more extreme even than European far-right movements. So my colleague John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times has mapped this, that Republican views from issues from climate to the role of the state are really off the charts. There's no European party coeval to them. So for example, the far-right party in France, the Rassemblement National, doesn't deny climate change in the way that Trump does.Andrew Keen: So, how does that contextualize Le Pen or Maloney or even the Hungarian neo-authoritarians for whom a lot of Trump supporters went to Budapest to learn what he did in order to implement Trump 2.0?Simon Kuper: Yeah, I think Orban, in terms of his creating an authoritarian society where the universities have been reined in, where the courts have been rained in, in that sense is a model for Trump. His friendliness with Putin is more of a model for Trump. Meloni and Le Pen, although I do not support them in any way, are not quite there. And so Meloni in Italy is in a coalition and is governing as somebody relatively pro-European. She's pro-Ukrainian, she's pro-NATO. So although, you know, she and Trump seem to have a good relationship, she is nowhere near as extreme as Trump. And you don't see anyone in Europe who's proposing these kinds of tariffs that Trump has. So I think that the, I would call it the craziness or the extremism of MAGA, doesn't really have comparisons. I mean, Orban, because he leads a small country, he has to be a bit more savvy and aware of what, for example, Brussels will wear. So he pushes Brussels, but he also needs money from Brussels. So, he reigns himself in, whereas with Trump, it's hard to see much restraint operating.Andrew Keen: I wonder if you're leading American liberals on a little bit, Simon. You suggested it's time to come to Europe, but Americans in particular aren't welcome, so to speak, with open arms, certainly from where you're talking from in Paris. And I know a lot of Americans who have come to Europe, London, Paris, elsewhere, and really struggled to make friends. Would, for Americans who are seriously thinking of leaving Trump's America, what kind of welcome are they gonna get in Europe?Simon Kuper: I mean, it's true that I haven't seen anti-Americanism as strong as this in my, probably in my lifetime. It might have been like this during the Vietnam War, but I was a child, I don't remember. So there is enormous antipathy to, let's say, to Trumpism. So two, I had two visiting Irish people, I had lunch with them on Friday, who both work in the US, and they said, somebody shouted at them on the street, Americans go home. Which I'd never heard, honestly, in Paris. And they shouted back, we're not American, which is a defense that doesn't work if you are American. So that is not nice. But my sense of Americans who live here is that the presumption of French people is always that if you're an American who lives here, you're not a Trumpist. Just like 20 years ago, if you are an American lives here you're not a supporter of George W. Bush. So there is a great amount of awareness that there are Americans and Americans that actually the most critical response I heard to my article was from Europeans. So I got a lot of Americans saying, yeah, yeah. I agree. I want to get out of here. I heard quite a lot of Europeans say, for God's sake, don't encourage them all to come here because they'll drive up prices and so on, which you can already see elements of, and particularly in Barcelona or in Venice, basically almost nobody lives in Venice except which Americans now, but in Barcelona where.Andrew Keen: Only rich Americans in Venice, no other rich people.Simon Kuper: It has a particular appeal to no Russians. No, no one from the gulf. There must be some there must be something. They're not many Venetians.Andrew Keen: What about the historical context, Simon? In all seriousness, you know, Americans have, of course, fled the United States in the past. One thinks of James Baldwin fleeing the Jim Crow South. Could the Americans now who were leaving the universities, Tim Schneider, for example, has already fled to Canada, as Jason Stanley has as well, another scholar of fascism. Is there stuff that American intellectuals, liberals, academics can bring to Europe that you guys currently don't have? Or are intellectuals coming to Europe from the US? Is it really like shipping coal, so to speak, to Newcastle?Simon Kuper: We need them desperately. I mean, as you know, since 1933, there has been a brain drain of the best European intellectuals in enormous numbers to the United States. So in 1933, the best university system in the world was Germany. If you measure by number of Nobel prizes, one that's demolished in a month, a lot of those people end up years later, especially in the US. And so you get the new school in New York is a center. And people like Adorno end up, I think, in Los Angeles, which must be very confusing. And American universities, you get the American combination. The USP, what's it called, the unique selling point, is you have size, you have wealth, you have freedom of inquiry, which China doesn't have, and you have immigration. So you bring in the best brains. And so Europe lost its intellectuals. You have very wealthy universities, partly because of the role of donors in America. So, you know, if you're a professor at Stanford or Columbia, I think the average salary is somewhere over $300,000 for professors at the top universities. In Europe, there's nothing like that. Those people would at least have to halve their salary. And so, yeah, for Europeans, this is a unique opportunity to get some of the world's leading brains back. At cut price because they would have to take a big salary cut, but many of them are desperate to do it. I mean, if your lab has been defunded by the government, or if the government doesn't believe in your research into climate or vaccines, or just if you're in the humanities and the government is very hostile to it, or, if you write on the history of race. And that is illegal now in some southern states where I think teaching they call it structural racism or there's this American phrase about racism that is now banned in some states that the government won't fund it, then you think, well, I'll take that pay cost and go back to Europe. Because I'm talking going back, I think the first people to take the offer are going to be the many, many top Europeans who work at American universities.Andrew Keen: You mentioned at the end of Europe essay, the end of the American dream. You're quoting Trump, of course, ironically. But the essay is also about the end of the America dream, perhaps the rebirth or initial birth of the European dream. To what extent is the American dream, in your view, and you touched on this earlier, Simon, dependent on the great minds of Europe coming to America, particularly during and after the, as a response to the rise of Nazism, Hannah Arendt, for example, even people like Aldous Huxley, who came to Hollywood in the 1930s. Do you think that the American dream itself is in part dependent on European intellectuals like Arendt and Huxley, even Ayn Rand, who not necessarily the most popular figure on the left, but certainly very influential in her ideas about capitalism and freedom, who came of course from Russia.Simon Kuper: I mean, I think the average American wouldn't care if Ayn Rand or Hannah Arendt had gone to Australia instead. That's not their dream. I think their American dream has always been about the idea of social mobility and building a wealthy life for yourself and your family from nothing. Now almost all studies of social ability say that it's now very low in the US. It's lower than in most of Europe. Especially Northern Europe and Scandinavia have great social mobility. So if you're born in the lower, say, 10% or 20% in Denmark, you have a much better chance of rising to the top of society than if you were born at the bottom 10%, 20% in the US. So America is not very good for social mobility anymore. I think that the brains that helped the American economy most were people working in different forms of tech research. And especially for the federal government. So the biggest funder of science in the last 80 years or so, I mean, the Manhattan Project and on has been the US federal government, biggest in the world. And the thing is you can't eat atom bombs, but what they also produce is research that becomes hugely transformative in civilian life and in civilian industries. So GPS or famously the internet come out of research that's done within the federal government with a kind of vague defense angle. And so I think those are the brains that have made America richer. And then of course, the number of immigrants who found companies, and you see this in tech, is much higher than the number percentage of native born Americans who do. And a famous example of that is Elon Musk.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and you were on the show just before Christmas in response to your piece about Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid in South Africa. So I'm guessing you don't want the Musks and Thiels. They won't be welcome in Europe, will they?Simon Kuper: I don't think they want to go. I mean, if you want to create a tech company, you want very deep capital markets. You want venture capital firms that are happy to bet a few billion on you. And a very good place to do that, the best place in the world by far, is Silicon Valley. And so a French friend of mine said he was at a reception in San Francisco, surrounded by many, many top French engineers who all work for Silicon Valley firms, and he thought, what would it take them to come back? He didn't have an answer. Now the answer might be, maybe, well, Donald Trump could persuade them to leave. But they want to keep issuing visas for those kinds of people. I mean, the thing is that what we're seeing with Chinese AI breakthroughs in what was called DeepSeek. Also in overtaking Tesla on electric cars suggests that maybe, you know, the cutting edge of innovation is moving from Silicon Valley after nearly 100 years to China. This is not my field of expertise at all. But you know the French economist Thomas Filippon has written about how the American economy has become quite undynamic because it's been taken over by monopolies. So you can't start another Google, you can start another Amazon. And you can't build a rival to Facebook because these companies control of the market and as Facebook did with WhatsApp or Instagram, they'll just buy you up. And so you get quite a much more static tech scene than 30 years ago when really, you know, inventions, great inventions are being made in Silicon Valley all the time. Now you get a few big companies that are the same for a very long period.Andrew Keen: Well, of course, you also have OpenAI, which is a startup, but that's another conversation.Simon Kuper: Yeah, the arguments in AI is that maybe China can do it better.Andrew Keen: Can be. I don't know. Well, it has, so to speak, Simon, the light bulb gone off in Europe on all this on all these issues. Mario Draghi month or two ago came out. Was it a white paper or report suggesting that Europe needed to get its innovation act together that there wasn't enough investment or capital? Are senior people within the EU like Draghi waking up to the reality of this historical opportunity to seize back economic power, not just cultural and political.Simon Kuper: I mean, Draghi doesn't have a post anymore, as far as I'm aware. I mean of course he was the brilliant governor of the European Central Bank. But that report did have a big impact, didn't it? It had a big impact. I think a lot of people thought, yeah, this is all true. We should spend enormous fortunes and borrow enormous fortunes to create a massive tech scene and build our own defense industries and so on. But they're not going to do it. It's the kind of report that you write when you don't have a position of power and you say, this is what we should do. And the people in positions of power say, oh, but it's really complicated to do it. So they don't do it, so no, they're very, there's not really, we've been massively overtaken and left behind on tech by the US and China. And there doesn't seem to be any impetus, serious impetus to build anything on that scale to invest that kind of money government led or private sector led in European tech scene. So yeah, if you're in tech. Maybe you should be going to Shanghai, but you probably should not be going to Europe. So, and this is a problem because China and the US make our future and we use their cloud servers. You know, we could build a search engine, but we can't liberate ourselves from the cloud service. Defense is a different matter where, you know, Draghi said we should become independent. And because Trump is now European governments believe Trump is hostile to us on defense, hostile to Ukraine and more broadly to Europe, there I think will be a very quick move to build a much bigger European defense sector so we don't have to buy for example American planes which they where they can switch off the operating systems if they feel like it.Andrew Keen: You live in Paris. You work for the FT, or one of the papers you work for is the FT a British paper. Where does Britain stand here? So many influential Brits, of course, went to America, particularly in the 20th century. Everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to Christopher Hitchens, all adding enormous value like Arendt and Ayn Rand. Is Britain, when you talk of Europe, are you still in the back of your mind thinking of Britain, or is it? An island somehow floating or stuck between America, the end of the American dream and the beginning of the European dream. In a way, are you suggesting that Brits should come to Europe as well?Simon Kuper: I think Britain is floating quite rapidly towards Europe because in a world where you have three military superpowers that are quite predatory and are not interested in alliances, the US, China and Russia, the smaller countries, and Britain is a smaller country and has realized since Brexit that it is a small country, the small countries just need to ally. And, you know, are you going to trust an alliance with Trump? A man who is not interested in the fates of other countries and breaks his word, or would you rather have an alliance with the Europeans who share far more of your values? And I think the Labor government in the UK has quietly decided that, I know that it has decided that on economic issues, it's always going to prioritize aligning with Europe, for example, aligning food standards with Europe so that we can sell my food. They can sell us our food without any checks because we've accepted all their standards, not with the US. So in any choice between, you know, now there's talk of a potential US-UK trade deal, do we align our standards with the US. Or Europe? It's always going to be Europe first. And on defense, you have two European defense powers that are these middle powers, France and the UK. Without the UK, there isn't really a European defense alliance. And that is what is gonna be needed now because there's a big NATO summit in June, where I think it's going to become patently obvious to everyone, the US isn't really a member of NATO anymore. And so then you're gonna move towards a post US NATO. And if the UK is not in it, well, it looks very, very weak indeed. And if UK is alone, that's quite a scary position to be in in this world. So yeah, I see a UK that is not gonna rejoin the European Union anytime soon. But is more and more going to ally itself, is already aligning itself with Europe.Andrew Keen: As the worm turned, I mean, Trump has been in power 100 days, supposedly is limited to the next four years, although he's talking about running for a third term. Can America reverse itself in your view?Simon Kuper: I think it will be very hard whatever Trump does for other countries to trust him again. And I also think that after Trump goes, which as you say may not be in 2028, but after he goes and if you get say a Biden or Obama style president who flies to Europe and says it's all over, we're friends again. Now the Europeans are going to think. But you know, it's very, very likely that in four years time, you will be replaced by another America first of some kind. So we cannot build a long term alliance with the US. So for example, we cannot do long term deals to buy Americans weapons systems, because maybe there's a president that we like, but they'll be succeeded by a president who terrifies us quite likely. So, there is now, it seems to me, instability built in for the very long term into... America has a potential ally. It's you just can't rely on this anymore. Even should Trump go.Andrew Keen: You talk about Europe as one place, which, of course, geographically it is, but lots of observers have noted the existence, it goes without saying, of many Europe's, particularly the difference between Eastern and Western Europe.Simon Kuper: I've looked at that myself, yes.Andrew Keen: And you've probably written essays on this as well. Eastern Europe is Poland, perhaps, Czech Republic, even Hungary in an odd way. They're much more like the United States, much more interested perhaps in economic wealth than in the other metrics that you write about in your essay. Is there more than one Europe, Simon? And for Americans who are thinking of coming to Europe, should it be? Warsaw, Prague, Paris, Madrid.Simon Kuper: These are all great cities, so it depends what you like. I mean, I don't know if they're more individualistic societies. I would doubt that. All European countries, I think, could be described as social democracies. So there is a welfare state that provides people with health and education in a way that you don't quite have in the United States. And then the opposite, the taxes are higher. The opportunities to get extremely wealthy are lower here. I think the big difference is that there is a part of Europe for whom Russia is an existential threat. And that's especially Poland, the Baltics, Romania. And there's a part of Europe, France, Britain, Spain, for whom Russia is really quite a long way away. So they're not that bothered about it. They're not interested in spending a lot on defense or sending troops potentially to die there because they see Russia as not their problem. I would see that as a big divide. In terms of wealth, I mean, it's equalizing. So the average Pole outside London is now, I think, as well off or better than the average Britain. So the average Pole is now as well as the average person outside London. London, of course, is still.Andrew Keen: This is the Poles in the UK or the Poles.Simon Kuper: The Poles in Poland. So the Poles who came to the UK 20 years ago did so because the UK was then much richer. That's now gone. And so a lot of Poles and even Romanians are returning because economic opportunities in Poland, especially, are just as good as in the West. So there has been a little bit of a growing together of the two halves of the continent. Where would you live? I mean, my personal experience, having spent a year in Madrid, it's the nicest city in the world. Right, it's good. Yeah, nice cities to live in, I like living in big cities, so of big cities it's the best. Spanish quality of life. If you earn more than the average Spaniard, I think the average income, including everyone wage earners, pensioners, students, is only about $20,000. So Spaniards have a problem with not having enough income. So if you're over about $20000, and in Madrid probably quite a bit more than that, then it's a wonderful life. And I think, and Spaniards live about five years longer than Americans now. They live to about age 84. It's a lovely climate, lovely people. So that would be my personal top recommendation. But if you like a great city, Paris is the greatest city in the European Union. London's a great, you know, it's kind of bustling. These are the two bustling world cities of Europe, London and Paris. I think if you can earn an American salary, maybe through working remotely and live in the Mediterranean somewhere, you have the best deal in the world because Mediterranean prices are low, Mediterranean culture, life is unbeatable. So that would be my general recommendation.Andrew Keen: Finally, Simon, being very generous with your time, I'm sure you'd much rather be outside in Paris in what you call the greatest city in the EU. You talk in the piece about three metrics that show that it's time to move to Europe, housing, education, sorry, longevity, happiness and the environment. Are there any metrics at all now to stay in the United States?Simon Kuper: I mean, if you look at people's incomes in the US they're considerably higher, of course, your purchasing power for a lot of things is less. So I think the big purchasing power advantage Americans have until the tariffs was consumer goods. So if you want to buy a great television set, it's better to do that out of an American income than out of a Spanish income, but if you want the purchasing power to send your kids to university, to get healthcare. Than to be guaranteed a decent pension, then Europe is a better place. So even though you're earning more money in the US, you can't buy a lot of stuff. If you wanna go to a nice restaurant and have a good meal, the value for money will be better in Europe. So I suppose if you wanna be extremely wealthy and you have a good shot at that because a lot people overestimate their chance of great wealth. Then America is a better bet than Europe. Beyond that, I find it hard to right now adduce reasons. I mean, it's odd because like the Brexiteers in the UK, Trump is attacking some of the things that really did make America great, such as this trading system that you can get very, very cheap goods in the United States, but also the great universities. So. I would have been much more positive about the idea of America a year ago, but even then I would've said the average person lives better over here.Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it. Simon Cooper says to Americans, it's time to move to Europe. The American dream has ended, perhaps the beginning of the European dream. Very provocative. Simon, we'll get you back on the show. Your column is always a central reading in the Financial Times. Thanks so much and enjoy Paris.Simon Kuper: Thank you, Andrew. Enjoy San Francisco. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The hypocrisy of Trumpists cheerleading the president's assaults on free speech makes it clear that they have no idea why free speech ever came to be valued in our society in the first place. Reading by Tim Foley.

Co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly dive deep into Henryk Grossman's model and theory of capitalist breakdown. They discuss Andrew's upcoming new article on Grossman, and Andrew's dialogue with a Grossman defender. MHI has recently published an article by Michael Rednitz, “Grossman's “Correction” of Marx's Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit,” and the co-hosts also discuss its contributions to the critique of Grossmanism. This episode is a continuation of MHI's prior engagements with Grossmanism, including two prior episodes of this podcast series. In episode 53 we first discussed Grossman's model and theory of capitalist breakdown, and in episode 69 we interviewed author Ted Reese about his book on Grossmanism. Additionally, Andrew led three class sessions on Grossmanism last fall. Plus current-events segment: The co-hosts discuss the Trumpist tariffs, and the conspiratorial, outdated economic thinking that inspired it. They consider the serious risk of a Trump-induced global recession.

Preview of Part 2 in which we talk more with Jarrod and Zhana about the pitfalls of performatively moving on from identity politics, the Bukele-prison model of the fascist future, the historical anti-revolutionary basis of the 1798 Enemy Aliens Act, how a union protection racket in Chavez's Venezuela became the gang Trumpists believed were poised to takeover major metro regions of the United States, and why we should've been siding with the "woke left" all along.To listen to the episode and all our bonus content support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada

Co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly welcome Franz Schaefer, a Communist and political activist in Austria, on the show to discuss Trumpism and the rise of the far-right. The discussants consider how Trumpism in America threatens democracy everywhere. They also discuss the rise of the Freedom Party in Austria. Franz explains the fascist roots of the Freedom Party and how a coalition government was formed to keep the far right out of power and the chancellorship. Plus current-events segment: The co-hosts discuss the latest Trumpist assault on the civil liberties of immigrants—including the illegal arrests of Mahmoud Khalil and Dr. Rasha Alawieh, and the mass deportations to an El Salvadorian prison—and the lackluster response from Democrats. Radio Free Humanity is co-hosted by Gabriel Donnelly and Andrew Kliman, and sponsored by Marxist-Humanist Initiative (https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/ ).

Today on Upstream, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg dive into the wide-ranging effects of technological change on media and society. They cover the AI debate, blogging's social impact, AI's influence on search and data, the changing news industry, foreign aid cuts, and the rise of new tech elites. This episode originally aired on The Riff (March 11, 2025). —

We Are New Britain's Anna McShane joins Democracy Sausage to talk British politics, the return of President Trump, and the power of visible change in uniting public support.With the Australian federal election on the horizon, what can we learn from the leadership styles of politicians across the world?Should UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer take on a ‘Trumpist' approach to wielding executive power? And why are quick wins so important for building long-term support for a political agenda?On this episode of Democracy Sausage, Anna McShane joins Professor Mark Kenny and Dr Marija Taflaga to discuss the flow-on effect of a Trump presidency on foreign affairs.Anna McShane is the Director of We Are New Britain, an independent progressive think tank focused on bringing in more women and front-line voices into policy making.Marija Taflaga is the Director of the ANU Australian Politics Studies Centre and a Lecturer at the ANU School of Politics and International Relations.Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute. He came to the University after a high-profile journalistic career including six years as chief political correspondent and national affairs editor for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times.Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to democracysausage@anu.edu.au.This podcast is produced by The Australian National University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 101: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced him with a junior officer he brought back from retirement whom HE claims once wore a MAGA cap in his presence. Then he fired the Judge Advocate of the army, the Judge Advocate of the Navy, and the Judge Advocate of the Air Force. What you have been told by news organizations – even ones that still have good reporters – that this is part of the Trump Racism Orgy. The fired Joint Chiefs Chairman Charles Q. Brown is black. The Chief of Naval Operations was a woman. Their identities are cover stories and red meat for the Trump cult. Trump looked at the top lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force, the ones who would tell him, no, you can’t have the Army shoot civilians, and you can’t have the Navy blockade Vancouver and Greenland and the Panama Canal, and you can’t bomb the next Democratic convention… and he fired them. At least six different reporters and commentators on the military beat said the same thing. Firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is bad and a red flag. Firing the T-JAGS, the Judge Advocates, the lawyers who tell you when something you are going to do with the military is illegal… can mean only one thing… you are planning to do something with the military that is illegal. You fire the people who would SAY it’s illegal and replace them with people who would say it ISN’T illegal. There are degrees of nightmare ahead. They all amount to different versions of Trump's plot to permanently take over the government by using the military. B-Block (26:20) THE FIRING OF JOY REID: Yes, firing her is racist and maybe worse yes it is designed to keep out people who might think differently and it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like party chairmen and press secretaries. But most of all, since they also fired Alex Wagner, it means that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows ON MSNBC and all four of them have now been fired. C-Block (58:00) SPORTSBALL CENTRAL: I could not have been more wrong about hockey's Four Nations Faceoff. But at least I wasn't as wrong as Wayne Gretzky, now under deserved attack in Canada as a remorseless Trumpist, and rapidly becoming The Man Without A Country. (1:11:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Thom Tillis begins to suck up to Trump. Jared Polis, "Democratic" governor of Colorado, should resign. So too should Phil Murphy, "Democratic" governor of New Jersey.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live“Something is happening here and you don't know what it is,” goes the Bob Dylan track from 1965. That song was directed at the squares who weren't yet hip to the Sixties. It sounded foreboding then, and it sounds foreboding now, because something is happening, again — something perhaps as great and consequential as the cultural changes of Dylan's time. For several years now, people have been speaking about a cultural “vibe shift.” The MAGA electoral victory appears to have been the culmination of that shift. The Trumpist victory has ushered in a new political elite and with it, a cultural style that is more transgressive, crude, and rude than the once-liberal American mainstream. Helping us understand what's happening is this week's special guest, Sean Monahan, one of the most perceptive cultural forecasters of our time. If you've ever used the term “normcore,” or if you've heard someone talk about a “vibe shift,” you've been influenced by Sean. And if you haven't heard those terms, then you're about to learn a lot about American culture in this episode. Sean is a writer, trend forecaster and brand consultant, whose Substack, 8Ball, is an oracle of cultural insight.Sean joins Christine Emba and Shadi Hamid and they all get deep about vibes. What is a vibe? Can it be defined? If it can't, then how is it a useful concept? Is it based on material conditions? How long does a vibe last? But the conversation soon ventures beyond these theoretical generalities. Shadi wants to know whether American culture has fundamentally shifted to the right since the rise of Trump. Christine detects a mean streak to this new culture: a certain cruelty or at least, ruthless competitiveness. Sean puts things in perspective, explaining how generations create, condition, and then abandon trends, and how the weird period of Covid lockdown had a unique effect on trend creation, one that still affects us to this day. He also describes the new aesthetic of the Trump era, which he believes is based primarily on desire for money, and which he has dubbed, “Boom Boom.”In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Sean discusses why religion has become attractive to young people, especially young men, whether he sees good vibes or bad vibes in the near future, and whether he believes most Americans actually like Trump and DOGE.Required Reading:* Sean Monahan's Substack, 8Ball.* Sean Monahan, “Anatomy of a Vibe Shift” (8Ball).* Sean Monahan, “Boom Boom: Anatomy of a Trend” (8Ball).* Sean Monahan, “The Counter Elite Won the Meme War” (8Ball).* CrowdSource: “Truth and Vibes” (WoC).* Famous 2022 article from New York Magazine: “A Vibe Shift is Coming” (New York).* W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change (Amazon).* Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Amazon).* Mana Afsari, “Last Boys at the Beginning of History” (The Point).* Saddle Creek Records.* Bright Eyes (Saddle Creek).* “Cottagecore Aesthetic, Explained” (Country Living).* MySpace.* Matthew Walther on the origin of “Woke Capital” (American Conservative).* “Dimes Square” (Know Your Meme).* Alex P. Keaton (Wikipedia).* Gordon Gecko (Wikipedia).* Patrick Bateman (Wikipedia).* Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (Amazon).* American Psycho film (YouTube).* Graeme Wood, “How Bronze Age Pervert Charmed the Far Right” (The Atlantic).* “Yosemite Locksmith: 'The People Who Fired Me Don't Know What I Do'” (MSN).* “Garry Tan for mayor? ‘Never, or 20 years from now,' Y Combinator chief says” (San Francisco Standard).Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

Eric and Eliot try to parse the fire hose of news emanating from the Trump Administration. They discuss Eliot's Atlantic article on the American antecedents and causes of Trump's ascendancy and whether there is still some point in looking at the European autocrats like Viktor Orban on whom some Trumpists model themselves, as well as Ruy Texeira's article in the Free Press arguing that defending USAID is not the hill to die on for Democrats. They also discuss Richard Danzig's Washington Post article on how Elon Musk's DOGE might constructively help reform DoD's broken and dysfunctional acquisition process. They discuss the problems with Trump's Gaza proposal as well as the fact that it highlights how all other approaches to the issue of Gaza's relations with Israel have heretofore failed. They discuss Trump's executive order on Iran as well as General Keith Kellogg's preparations for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and Trump's offer to resettle White Afrikaaners who have been disadvantaged by majority rule in South Africa. Eliot's Latest in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/trump-historical-analogies/681561/ Ruy Texeira on USAID https://www.thefp.com/p/defending-usaid-is-political-suicide Richard Danzig on Pentagon Reform https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/06/doge-pentagon-tech-innovation/ Bret Stephens & Gail Collins on Trump's Second Term So Far https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/opinion/trump-musk-cabinet-education.html Steven Levitsky on The New Authoritarianism https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/trump-competitive-authoritarian/681609/ Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

How broken the Trump administration and GOP really are; Kanye West has a bad weekend; Trump aluminum tariffs; Fort Bragg name restored; Trumpists turn their derision on the Pope; Timberwolves ownership debate appears to be settled; F. Scott Fitzgerald statue stolen; UHG threatens retaliation against critics; White House press conference; Boundary Waters threatened again’ Minnesota…

It's been less than two weeks since Donald Trump returned to the White House. What can we make of the flurry of edicts and presidential decrees signed, the actions of Elon Musk and how do we look beyond the noise to explore what Trumpist strategy in 2025 is? Hopefully this episode can shed a bit of light.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 90: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: To repeat myself - because I’m RIGHT - File motions to impeach Trump NOW. Move to impeach Trump today, AND KEEP MOVING to impeach Trump every day through next year’s midterms. Impeachment is UNDEFEATED. UNDEFEATED in American history. House Democrats: he handed you TWELVE, maybe FIFTEEN new counts on Friday night alone. Blatantly, brazenly illegal dismissals of Departmental Inspector Generals, just as Project 2025 promised, and the School Safety Board. Elimination of oversight. Elimination of legal protections against the mass murder of children. In the old days you might’ve arrested Trump. Now you are limited to impeachment bills that will all fail EXCEPT THEY WILL ULTIMATELY SUCCEED. Impeach him for the Friday Night massacre. Impeach him for circumventing the 14th Amendment. He just ramped up the migrant arrest quota to 1500 a day and started raids in Chicago yesterday: Impeach him for violating the 4th Amendment. And if I hear one more piece of blowback to my PREVIOUS call to impeach him no matter the outcome, one more head-shake from a cowardly Democrat, and especially one more factually inaccurate claim that it doesn’t work, one more self-absorbed loser saying ‘Impeach? Yeah, sounds good. How did it work out for us last time? Pretty effing well, actually. The mere TALK of impeaching Trump helped the Democrats win the House in 2018 and break Trump tri-partite control of government. The FIRST impeachment was followed by keeping the house in 2020 and after the Georgia election, taking the senate in 2020, and oh by the way the White House in 2020. The SECOND impeachment crushed any lingering attempt by Trump to overthrow the Biden Government-In-Waiting in 2021 and provided the impetus for the January 6th prosecutions. In fact, since Nixon, every party that impeached or TRIED to impeach a president won the next elections. House, Senate, White House. Thirteen straight. IMPEACHMENT – EVEN FAILED IMPEACHMENT - IS UNDEFEATED. ALSO: The Media capitulation continues. Acosta's show cancelled by the latest CNN job who hasn't been able to keep a job since 2000. And how did appeasing Trump work out for you ABC, CBS, and NBC? Trump's FCC reinstated license challenges against your stations, Trump wants Maddow jailed, and at Disney: ESPN's Stephen A. Smith just made a Trumpist idiot out of himself. B-Block (35:12) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump has too many Bennies to keep them all straight: can't remember the Chairman of the January 6th Committee he wants to jail. Even the NFL is sucking up to Elon "It Only LOOKED Like A Nazi Salute" Trump. And the first baseball player since like 1877 to get the mouth sores and skin rashes of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease just endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. C-Block (46:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: You know what it's like in this country right now? It's like we all just woke up from the anesthesia in the MIDDLE of a medical procedure. You know how I know this? Because I'm one of those people who actually DID wake up in the middle of a medical procedure - and I'm having the same procedure TOMORROW.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 8 AM Hour: Larry O’Connor and Julie Gunlock discussed: WMAL GUEST: 8:05 AM - INTERVIEW - Alfonso Aguilar - former Chief of the Office of Citizenship under DHS, and the current Director of Hispanic Engagement with the American Principles Project SOCIAL MEDIA: https://x.com/amigoaguilar Shock and awe: ICE sweeps up record number of illegals in U.S. Feds round up 50 Tren de Aragua members at ‘makeshift nightclub’ in Denver as DEA, ICE hit cities across US Tom Homan urges illegal immigrants in the US to 'leave' before they are arrested Trump Pledges to ‘Take Care’ of Recovery in Los Angeles After Wildfires After CBS activist Margaret Brennan recites National Review's plea to prevent Tulsi Gabbard from fixing the politically weaponized intelligence bureaucracy, @JDVance says anti-Trumpist publications have "lost relevance" Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify. Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @Jgunlock, @patricepinkfile, and @heatherhunterdc. Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Monday, January 27, 2025 / 8 AM Hour See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is This Democracy is back! And what a time to be discussing the conflict over how much democracy, and for whom, there should be in America. We reflect on the Inauguration and the first 72 hours of the Trump regime: What stood out from the transfer of power on Monday and Trump's speech(es)? Most importantly: What have we learned from the onslaught of presidential executive orders and proclamations? We try to establish a framework for how to think about what is happening around us: This is not merely a presidential transition, but an attempted regime change. The Trumpists want to change the rules of how the system works and how power is being wielded; they seek to roll back the post-1960s civil rights order; and they aggressively set out to redefine the boundaries of who gets to belong in America, who has a right to be part of the polity. This is an inflection point - a test for the Constitution, the courts, the system. In the regime's early initiatives, MAGA has, once again, revealed its true face: An ideologically driven project seeking to roll back much of the racial and social progress of (at least) the past century. Follow Lily Follow Thomas Follow the podcast on social media Read Thomas' weekly newsletter Democracy Americana

Today, Luke discusses his appearance on Tim Pool, Trump's wild speech, and more! Get connected below! Twitter - https://twitter.com/lukepbeasley Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lukebeasleyofficial/ TikTok - https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdSfpPHw/ YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM05jgFNwoeXvWfO9GuExzA

In her new book titled Is It Racist? Is It Sexist? Why Red and Blue White People Disagree, and How to Decide in the Gray Areas co-author Betsy Leondar-Wright, through remarkable research, found Trumpists are not all racist and sexist The post We Thought We Knew Racism and Sexism appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Dark money for dark times Nick Cohen talks to investigative reporter & author Peter Geoghegan, the UK's leading journalist exposing the dark money and cash from right wing extremist billionaires that's been driving UK politics since the ill-fated 2016 Brexit referendum.Brexit & Trump-related funding that have poisoned UK & U.S. politics Peter @PeterKGeoghegan explains how Donald Trump's election victories, Brexit and the failed Liz Truss experiment have helped fuel a crackpot anglocentric extremist right wing movement that has taken root either side of the Atlantic. In London, Tufton Street so-called "think tanks" a-wash with dark money mainly from U.S. billionaires and corporations have been influencing UK politics - helping to drive a number of right wing culture wars from climate denial & Europe to Ukraine and the NHS.This UK-U.S. phenomena was recently best exposed by the "National Conservatism Conference" in London in May 2023 which heard from a number of extreme right voices from either side of the Pond. Peter tells Nick: "You have a growing link between that sort of Trumpist right, the MAGA right, and ... the Right to the Conservative Party, Robert Jenrick, Liz Truss, people like that, all have strong links."Farage, Reform and the Elon Musk fanboyPeter says even if Trump stooge Elon Musk does not or cannot make good on his promise to bung Nigel Farage & his Reform gang a reported £100 million, the story has already boosted the radical right in the UK.Labour doing "sweet F.A" as dark money floods inBut Peter is despondent about the prospects of stopping foreign cash fuelling extremist politics in the UK. The Tories castrated the Electoral Commission, & Sir Keir Starmer shows no appetite to tackle the issue. Peter says Labour will reportedly not change electoral law because it "could stoke populism" if the government is seen to react to the threat posed by Trump, Musk & Farage. Peter adds, "I think is a completely crazy position to take, to say that we're not going to do something that we are actually philosophically in favour of ...because it, it might create a couple of bad headlines.Read all about itPeter Geoghegan's must read Substack is Democracy for Sale & his best selling book Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics is published by W.F.Howes Ltd.Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Na zeven jaar bij Meta verlaat Nick Clegg, voormalig vice-premier van het VK, zijn rol als topman voor mondiaal beleid bij het bedrijf. Zijn positie wordt overgenomen door Joel Kaplan, die als uitgesproken Trumpist en Republikein bekend staat. Kaplan diende al eerder voor het Witte Huis als plaatsvervangend stafchef in de regering van George W. Bush. Sinds 2011 werkt Kaplan voor Meta. Hij is uitgesproken Republikein en krijgt binnen Meta kritiek van collega's omdat hij een conservatieve agenda zou aanhouden. Dat tast volgens mensen binnen het bedrijf de politiek neutrale status van Meta aan. Toch schuift Zuckerberg nu juist Kaplan naar voren, om goede sier te maken bij aankomend President Donald Trump. Kaplan heeft goede banden met het Trump-team en was onder andere aanwezig bij de opening van de beurs door Trump en J.D. Vance in december. De CEO van Meta deed al meerdere pogingen om een goede band met Trump op te bouwen. Hij doneerde een miljoen dollar aan de inauguratie van Trump en ging langs voor een diner bij de man. Daarnaast werden vorig jaar alle sociale media-accounts van Trump opengesteld, zonder beperkingen, nadat Trump in zijn vorige presidentstermijn juist werd verbannen van de platforms. Verder in deze Tech Update: Apple geeft flinke kortingen op iPhones in China Apple schikt in privacyzaak voor 95 miljoen dollar TikTok geeft adverteerders een 'verbod-garantie' Zometeen in De Schaal van Hebben: Sony Bravia Theatre U nekspeaker See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I ugens Småt Brændbart går vi igen til stålet. En hel række socialdemokratiske ministre er gået amok i royale ordener, efter partiet i starten af året, besluttede at lade ministrene selv bestemme om de ville modtage ordner eller eg, modsat tidigere tiders royal orden-modstand. Men er det god kommunikation, at de mange S-ministre blærer sig så meget med de fine ordener på de sociale medier? Klimaaktivister og fagforeningsbosser har fået kolde fødder i Teslaen efter Elon Musk er sprunget ud som full blown Trumpist. Men dog ikke mere end at de vælger at vise deres forargelse i form af gode gamle klistermærker (et overset kommunikationsmiddel) frem for at sælge øsen. Er det god eller dårlig kommunikation? Gamle venner til skuespilleren Robert Hansen stiller troligt op og giver ham et slags forsvar, mens et kendt PR bureau har strøget den politi-aktuelle skuespiller af kendis-listen. En TV2 redaktør er kommet i problemer, fordi hun har skrevet en kontroversiel kommentar til kendis-plagiatoren Diez. Hun sletter den dog hurtigt, men internettet glemmer aldrig og redaktøren kommer i problemer. Martin Martensen-LarsenAnna Thygesen

SEASON 3 EPISODE 75: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN Special Edition (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Some time over Thanksgiving in Nantucket the light bulb went off over Joe Biden's head and he finally realized that no, the norms and traditions and institutions to which he and most of the rest of us have dedicated our lives did NOT miraculously re-grow, did NOT suddenly spring, fully restored and intact, from the ground. He saw that not only was his son about to go to prison because of his own foolish decision to not interfere with an enfeebled Department of Justice, and because of the dictator it let get away, who would now aim his DOJ at Hunter Biden - and Joe Biden - and anybody else - for personal revenge. The President figured this out and pulled his son out of harm's way. And much of he left attacked him for it. They are Morons. I don't care about Hunter Biden, particularly. I care about the fact that we are 48 days away from a nascent military dictatorship taking over this government, supported by an unknown percentage of the population that wants to see Hunter and Joe Biden hanging from construction cranes parading through the streets, and wants to see Trump in power for life. A We JUST got one more guy out of their sights and we JUST shoved one more plotline up Trump, and up Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller and whichever other lunatics Trump wants to take over the asylum. And countless liberals – and anti-Trumpers – think this will actually provide cover for Trump pardoning the January 6thinsurrectionists because apparently for the last ten years they have been hallucinating and thinking Trump has ever bothered to seek cover for anything. Or they think we should be "better" than them. The Trumpists are planning to put us in camps. I don't care if we are better than them or worse than them or monstrous to them. If somebody's going to go to camps, it ain't going to be us, it's got to be them. End of debate. In addition to explaining why this was not just the right decision but should be a template of thousands of further pardons, permit me to excoriate a bunch of the clowns who cannot see the forest for the trees. Or the fact that the forest is on fire. And then for giggles we have the moronic comments of Nate Silver and Dinesh D'Souza, complaining about pardons when he himself got an undeserved pardon. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ralph welcomes Vani Hari, also known as “The Food Babe,” to tell us about her campaign against Kellogg's to stop using artificial dyes in their cereals that have been linked to various health problems and have been banned in Europe. Plus, noted labor organizer, Chris Townsend gives us his take on the AFL-CIOs obeisant relationship to the Democratic Party.Vani Hari is an author and food activist. A former corporate consultant, she started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and she is the co-founder of the nutritional supplement startup Truvani.It is a game of whack-a-mole because we get these corporations to change, or they announce that they're going to change, and then they go back on their commitment. And that is what's happened with Kellogg's.Vani HariChris Townsend is a 45-year union member and leader. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW.These workers who have been betrayed, lied to, wrecked, destroyed, poisoned, all of these things—this becomes the breeding ground for Trumpist ideology. And the Democrats won't face this.Chris TownsendOur media largely ignores the labor movement. Our small labor press—left press—generally subscribes to the “good news only” school of journalism. So these endemic problems and even immediate crises are never dealt with. Now, some of that is because the existing labor leadership generally is not fond of criticism or is not fond of anyone pointing out shortcomings (or) mistakes.Chris TownsendWe're a cash cow—and a vote cow— to be milked routinely and extensively by this Democratic machinery… The leadership today in the bulk of the unions is an administrative layer, business union through and through to the core. The historic trade union spirit that always animated the unions in various levels is not extinguished, but in my 45 years, I would say it is at a low ebb. In the sense that we just have been sterilized because of this unconditional and unholy alliance or domination by the Democratic Party. And there's no room for spark. There's no room for dissent. There's no room for anyone to even raise the obvious.Chris Townsend[Leaders of the AFL-CIO are] basically bureaucrats in that building on 16th Street, collecting their pay and their nice pensions. Completely out of touch with millions of blue collar workers that have veered into the Republican Party channels—the so-called Reagan Democrats, which have spelled the difference in election after election for the Senate, for the House, for the Presidency.Ralph NaderIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 11/20/241. In his new book Hope Never Disappoints, Pope Francis writes “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” and called for the situation to be “studied carefully…by jurists and international organisations,” per the Middle East Eye. These comments come on the heels of a United Nations committee report which found that Israel's actions are “consistent with characteristics of genocide,” and alleged that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The Catholic pontiff has long decried violence in all forms and has previously criticized Israel's “disproportionate and immoral” actions in Gaza and Lebanon, per AP.2. On November 14th, the AP's Farnoush Amiri reported that more than 80 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Biden on October 29th, urging the administration to sanction Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Only made public after the election, this letter called for sanctions on these individuals “Given their critical roles in driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank.” This letter was principally authored by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and in addition to dozens of House Democratic signatories, was signed by no less than 17 Senators.3. Another remarkable post-election Israel story concerns outgoing Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted from his seat by a flood of AIPAC money. In an interview with Rania Khalek, Bowman relates a remarkable anecdote about the presidential campaign. Bowman says he specifically requested to campaign for Kamala Harris in Michigan – where he was so popular his AIPAC-backed primary challenger disparagingly said “[Bowman's] constituency is Dearborn, Michigan” – but the campaign ignored him and instead deployed surrogates that seemed almost designed to alienate Arab-Americans: Liz Cheney, Ritchie Torres, and Bill Clinton who went out of his way to scold these voters. These voters were likely decisive in Kamala Harris' loss in that state.4. On November 13th, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he intends to bring Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to the Senate floor. As Sanders writes in a press release, the “The JRD is the only mechanism available to Congress to prevent an arms sale from advancing.” Unlike previous efforts however, Sanders no longer stands alone. According to Reuters, “Two of the resolutions, co-sponsored with…Senators Jeff Merkley and Peter Welch, would block the sale of 120 mm mortar rounds and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS). A third, sponsored by Democratic Senator Brian Schatz, would block the sale of tank rounds.” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen have announced their intention to support the JRD. Certain heavy-hitting Democratic-aligned institutions have also bucked precedent to back this effort, including the massive Service Employees International Union and leading Liberal-Zionist group J Street.5. In the House, Republicans and many Democrats are pushing H.R. 9495, a bill which would grant the executive branch the power to unilaterally strip non-profit organizations of their tax-exempt status based on accusations of supporting terrorism. As the Intercept notes, “The law would not require officials to explain the reason for designating a group, nor…provide evidence.” The ACLU and over 150 other “civil liberties, religious, reproductive health, immigrant rights, human rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+, environmental, and educational organizations,” sent a letter opposing this bill in September, and celebrated when the bill was blocked on November 12th – but it is back from the grave, with Nonprofit Quarterly reporting the bill has cleared a new procedural hurdle and will now advance to the floor. Yet even if this bill is successfully blocked, little stands in the way of Republicans reviving it in the next Congress, where they will hold the House, Senate, and the Presidency.6. Back in October, we covered Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib's letter to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen expressing grave concern over the company's decision to roll out facial recognition-based price gouging technology. According to Tlaib, Kroger has stonewalled Congress, so she is leading a group of House Democrats in a new letter demanding answers to the critical questions that remain, such as whether Kroger will use facial recognition to display targeted ads, whether consumers can opt out, and whether the company plans to sell data collected in stores. This letter is co-signed by progressives like AOC, Barbara Lee, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, among others.7. In new labor news, the NLRB has issued a rule banning anti-union “captive audience meetings,” per the Washington Post. This report notes that these meetings, in which employers warn workers of the risks in unionizing, are considered highly effective and are commonly used by companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and Trader Joe's. According to the Post, Amazon alone spent more than $17 million on consults to do exactly this between 2022 and 2023. On the other hand, Bloomberg Law reports a federal judge in Texas has blocked a Labor Department rule that would have expanded overtime eligibility to four million mostly lower-level white collar workers. This was seen as among the Biden Administration's key achievements on labor rights and foreshadows the rollback of worker protections we are likely to see in a Trump presidency redux.8. Donald Trump has signaled that he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy will likely face a difficult confirmation process; his past environmental activism is anathema to Republican Senators, while his more recent vaccine-skepticism is unpopular among Democrats. Yet just as Donald Trump emerged as an improbable RFK ally, a surprising opponent has emerged as well: former Vice-President Mike Pence. In a “rare” statement Pence writes “For the majority of his career, RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade. If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history…I…urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination.” As with other unpopular Trump nominees, many expect RFK to be appointed on an acting basis and then possibly installed via the recess appointment process.9. In some positive news, Drop Site reports that in Sri Lanka, the Leftist president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who wrested the office from the corrupt clique that has ruled the nation since independence has won a resounding victory in the recent parliamentary elections. Reuters reports that Dissanayake's coalition won a “sweeping mandate,” with enough seats to pass his anti-corruption and poverty-alleviation agenda. More shocking is the fact that Dissanayake's coalition ran up the score in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the country. As Drop Site notes, only 15 years ago the Sri Lankan government crushed the Tamil Tigers and carried out large-scale massacres of the Tamil minority. Dissanayake has vowed to end the occupation and release Tamil political prisoners, as well as take on the International Monetary Fund which is seeking to impose economic control on the country in exchange for a fiscal bailout. Neither goal will be easily achieved, but the size of Dissanayake's victory at least provides the opportunity for him to try.10. Finally, AP reports that three of Malcolm X's daughters have filed a $100 million lawsuit against the CIA, FBI, and NYPD. This lawsuit alleges that these agencies were “aware of and…involved in the assassination plot,” and that law enforcement was engaged in a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional [relationship with]…ruthless killers that…was actively concealed, condoned, protected, and facilitated by government agents.” Two of Malcolm X's alleged assassins were exonerated in 2021 after an extensive re-investigation found that authorities withheld crucial evidence, per AP, and new evidence reported earlier this year by Democracy Now! supports the theory of an assassination plot involving collusion between the FBI and NYPD, if not others.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

From Marco Polo to Marco Rubio – the West keeps rediscovering that China is a big Asian landmass with a mind of its own. So is Trump's hawkish new Secretary of State about to get himself tangled in a Chinese finger trap of tariffs? Meanwhile, back on the Europe thing, Multipolarity's pet punching bag Ursula von der Leyen is about to be put through four years of BDSM, as the Trumpists resile from the European frontier even while picking fights with its leadership. Is Ursula's post-election pledge to buy more US natural gas just the first of many times she will be called upon to kiss the Don's rings?Finally, we'll be raising a glass to the death of the polling industry, long predicted on Multipolarity. Far from dining out on their prowess, the Nate Silvers and Anne Seltzers of this world will have to figure out whether they can eat excuses. Is there a grift still to be had in a world where the alleged experts can't just +4 for the Shy Trump Effect? *** Be excellent to each other, and -Get us on Twitter. https://www.x.com/multipolarpodOn Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity Or on our Substack. https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

What do the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a sweeping victory for President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, mean for the U.S. Jewish community and Israel? How did the Jewish community vote? What are the top takeaways from the Senate and the House elections? Get caught up on all the latest election data points and analysis in this week's episode, featuring Ron Kampeas, JTA's Washington Bureau Chief and guest hosted by Julie Fishman Rayman, AJC's Managing Director of Policy and Political Affairs. AJC is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. AJC neither supports nor opposes candidates for elective office. The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. AJC's Policy Priorities: AJC Congratulates President-Elect Donald J. Trump Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: with Hen Mazzig, Einat Admony, and more. People of the Pod:  The Jewish Vote in Pennsylvania: What You Need to Know Sinwar Eliminated: What Does This Mean for the 101 Hostages Still Held by Hamas? From Doña Gracia to Deborah Lipstadt: What Iconic Jewish Women Can Teach Us Today Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript: Julie Fishman Rayman:  Hello, I'm Julie Fishman Rayman:, AJC's managing director of policy and political affairs. Today, I have the pleasure of guest hosting people of the PA and speaking with Ron Kampeas, JTA's Washington bureau chief, to discuss the results and the implications of the 2024 US presidential election as the nonpartisan global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, AJC congratulates Donald J Trump on his election as the 47th president of the United States and Senator J.D. Vance as vice president. AJC looks forward to working with the president-elect and his administration on the domestic and foreign policy concerns that are AJC advocacy priorities to learn more about our policy priorities for the incoming administration. Head to the link in our show notes as a reminder. AJC is a 501(c)3 non partisan, not for profit organization. AJC neither supports nor opposes candidates for elected office. Ron, welcome to people of the pod. Thank you for being here Ron Kampeas:  Of course. Julie Fishman Rayman:  Well, I'd like to start in asking you if you have a sense about the Jewish vote, because there have been a number of different exit polls, which, I guess, not surprisingly, because exit polls are what they are, say vastly different things. There are some that say it's the biggest Jewish vote in support for a Democratic candidate ever, and then also the highest percentage ever for a Republican candidate. What do we know to be true? And what would you sort of be looking at in terms of, you know, as we're examining this moving forward? What are we looking for? Ron Kampeas:  So first of all, I know I've seen those very extreme assessments as well, and I know what they're based on, and even when what based on what they're based on, and we, I'll talk about that too. That's just not correct. So they're talking about a 79% turnout, according to a poll the consortium of a number of organizations like the CNN and the New York Times. And that poll is not reliable yet. It does show 79% and think 21% in other words, an even split. Nobody seemed to have voted for at least among the Jews for third party candidates. And I'm not sure what number of Jews who were included in that poll were. I mean, it's a vast, vast poll. They do talk to a lot of people, but even they will say, and I think they put it on their things, that it's just preliminary, the more reliable analysis is considered to be the one that came out of the Fox AP analysis that showed 66% 67% for Paris, 32% 31% for Trump. And I think that's what the Trump people are talking about in terms of the highest for Republicans. It's just not the highest for Republican. I think if you count in the margin of error, that's not even like recently the highest for a Republican. Nothing's changed in the last four years. I think what it is showing is that whereas Republicans, when I started at JTA in 2004 they were happy to get 25% they've gone up from 19% with George W Bush in 2020 to 25% with John Kerry a few years later, now they can comfortably say they're getting about 30% of the Jewish community. People love to attach everything that happens to the very current politics of the day. So however you count it, nothing seems to have changed. Julie Fishman Rayman:  So interesting, because for I think a lot of Jews around America, we feel as though so much has changed. But when you go to the voting booth, Jews consistently aren't necessarily thinking just about either Israel or antisemitism, AJC does a survey looking at American Jewish opinion, not every year, but almost every year. And we did it in June, and asked questions about political affiliation. Who are you going to vote for? And one of the things that we asked was, what drives your vote, and foreign policy is always low down on the list. On election night, CNN asked that same question, of course, to all Americans, and I think 4% said that their vote was driven by foreign policy. Has there been a moment where the American Jewish vote is more focused on issues that feel perhaps a bit more parochial. Ron Kampeas:  No, certainly within the Orthodox subset, and it's always difficult to tell, because it's the smaller the subset, the bigger the margin of error. But when there's consistency over time and survey after survey after survey, I think you can conclude that, yes, Orthodox Jews do attach. Of more importance to the US Israel relationship and how it's manifesting, how they're perceiving it. The only time that a Democrat, at least since FDR, I think, a Democrat, didn't receive a majority of the Jewish vote was Jimmy Carter, who, in 1980 got a plurality of the Jewish one, I think, about 45%. People sort of conflate things in their head. In his post presidency, Carter became very identified with being very critical of Israel, and it's true, in 1980 he'd had difficult relationships with Menachem Begin, but he brokered the most important peace treaty in Israeli history. He saved a lot of lives. So I don't think people were feeling bad about Carter in 1980 because of Israel. I like to tell people, Jews are like everybody else. You know it's true that a majority of us vote for Democrats, and there are other subsets where, like a majority vote for Republican more majority for Democrats, but we vote for the same reasons as everybody else. Our votes will get more enthusiastic for a Democrat on one circumstance, just like everybody else's will, or might get less enthusiastic just like everybody else's will. We're susceptible to the same things. Julie Fishman Rayman:  It's really interesting. So at this moment, there's so much Monday morning quarterbacking happening, and I don't want to look too far in the rear view, but I do want to ask you for your take on this question of, would the result have been different had the Vice President selected Shapiro, Governor, Shapiro from Pennsylvania, as her running mate. Ron Kampeas:  Maybe it's hard to say vice presidents have had such a little impact on nominations. But on the other hand, Pennsylvania was close enough, and Shapiro is popular enough that perhaps it might have made the difference. She might have had Pennsylvania, and then if she had Pennsylvania, I don't know, she would have gotten to 270 but you know, Nevada and Arizona are still being counted. They might still go in her column. If they do go in her column, although I don't think they will, I think it looks like they're going to go into Trump's column if Nevada and Arizona go into her column and she missed out on Pennsylvania, you could say that her decision to go with Tim Walz instead of Josh Shapiro was faithful. On the other hand, everybody's a cynic. Nobody actually believes anything anybody says. But I tried to get away from that. I try not to be too much of a cynic. And when Josh Shapiro said afterwards that he had second thoughts about taking other thing because he's he's like a hugely successful governor so far in Pennsylvania is this is two years into his first term. You know, if I'm Josh Shapiro, I'm thinking about my legacy, and I'm thinking about running for president in the future and two years, just, yeah, I'm not going to make an impact in Pennsylvania in just two years. If I'm the 60% governor who can get Republicans to vote for me in the middle of the state, I'm thinking two terms will make me like, well, you know, get me a statue in some building at one point, there's this whole narrative that there was an anti semitic pushback. It was an anti semitic pushback against Shapiro. It was anti-Israel at times. I really believe it did cross over antisemitism. I'm not sure that that had the effect on the Harris campaign in terms of its decision making. She clicked with Tim Wallz. Shapiro wasn't so eager. Shapiro was going to be a co president. Walls wanted to be a vice president. He made that very clear. He had no intentions of ever running for the presidency. So if you're a Harris, do you want to have a Dan Quayle, or do you want to have a Dick Cheney kind of thing? You know as somebody who who's prone to take over, or somebody who's prone to do what needs to be done to be vice president. And obviously she preferred the latter. Julie Fishman Rayman:  It's a great analogy. Can we talk for a minute about sort of Jewish representation in Congress where Israel was on the ballot? What are your perceptions there? Ron Kampeas:  I think that it might have made a difference in Mark 17th, where Mike Lawler defeated Mondair Jones. Mondair Jones was perceived when he first ran into 2020, and he was elected. He was perceived initially as somebody who would be very different from Nita Lowey, who he was replacing because she's a very solid, long time pro-Israel and an AJC board member and an AJC board member. He actually declared before she retired, so he was a little bit confrontational with her, which happens, obviously, I don't know if Israel came up in that equation, though young progressive people thought he'd be a squatter, but he wasn't. In his two years in Congress, he wasn't a member of the squad, and he went out of his way to align with the pro-Israel community, and this because it was so important in his district. But Lawler is just like he's been. He's a freshman, but he's been out front. He's been very good at cultivating the Jewish people in his district. And he's not just led on a number of Israel issues, but he's always made sure to do it in a bipartisan way, partnering with Jared Moskowitz in Florida, or Josh got him or in New Jersey, and you know, that might have helped him in the district. It was a close race. He won by a close margin. So I think maybe that was definitely a factor there. I think that one of the group's decision desk that declares winners just declared for Jackie Rosen in Nevada. She's been reelected, according to them, but we'll wait. We'll see if and when AP calls it. But again, a state with a substantial Jewish population, she is, like, one of the premier Democrats. She's Jewish, but she also is like, very, very upfront about Israel. She co chairs an antisemitism Task Force. She has a bill that would designate a domestic antisemitism coordinator. So in such a close race or such close margins with the Jewish community, that's actually much larger than the margin that might have helped put her over the top. On the other side, you. Know, you have Michigan, which might have also, like we looked at Pennsylvania and Josh Shapiro, Michigan also might have cost Kamala Harris the presidency because of her support for Israel, because, you know, President Trump managed to peel away Muslim American and Arab American voters in in Michigan, in a kind of a weird slate of hand, because he said that he would be more pro their issue than Kamala Harris was, even though he's more pro Netanyahu, definitely than Kamala Harris is. But also, there were third party voters, people who voted for Jill Stein. Julie Fishman Rayman:  Pretty significant numbers for Jill Stein from Michigan. Ron Kampeas:  Pretty significant numbers for Jill Stein. But Elissa Slotkin over the top, very pro Israel, centrist Democrat Jewish. Very much a foreign policy, you know, specialist. She came out of the CIA and the Defense Department. Also very partisan. She was meeting with red constituents, like veterans, and she was doing a good job of it. She had that appeal. And I think that's why she ran for Senate. I think that's where Democrats are excited to have her run for Senate. And then October 7 happened, and she had to navigate a very difficult situation in her state, which has a substantial Jewish community, has an even bigger Muslim American and Arab American community. She had meetings with both leaders. She put out sensitive statements after the meetings. I think one of the most interesting sort of developments with her is that Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American Congresswoman attacked Dana Nessel for prosecuting people who were violent were allegedly violent at protests. She put out a statement that, without saying it was because Dana Ness was Jewish, she was said that Dana Nessel had other sort of considerations. When she brought these prosecutions, Dana Nessel outright accused her of antisemitism, and then Rashida Tlaib was the subject of a lot of Islamophobic, anti Palestinian vitriol. And it was interesting because there were two letters that went out at the time from Congress members, one condemning anything that insinuated that Dana Nessel had dual loyalties, or anything like that, and one condemning the anti Islamic rhetoric that Rashida clade faced, and the only person who signed both letters was Alyssa Slotkin. That was interesting. Julie Fishman Rayman:  I want to to turn a little bit if we can, to the expectations for for the next administration, even for the next Congress. When we last spoke, right after the Republican National Convention, JD Vance had been selected as the running mate, and you and I, we talked about what that means for a Trump foreign policy in the next administration. Will it go in a more isolationist direction, more aligning with JD Vance's world view? What do you think now and what might we expect? Ron Kampeas:  But still a potential for sure, there are names being rooted about for Secretary of State. One of them is Rick Grinnell, who's completely a Trumpist, who will do what he wants, his former Acting CIA director. And the other is Marco Rubio, gave one of the best speeches at the convention, I thought, and who is very close to the pro Israel community, who's an internationalist, but who has tailored his rhetoric to be more to make sure he doesn't antagonize Donald Trump. He was, you know, he was a came close to being the vice presidential pick himself. I mean, if Marco Rubio becomes Secretary of State, I think that's a good sign for internationalists. I mean, you know, Israel has kind of a buffer, because the Republican Party is very pro Israel. And there are people like JD Vance says, who say, you know, Israel is the exception when it comes to what I think about pulling United States back from the world, even though he says it's not so much the exception. And then there are people like Marco Rubio who are internationalists. Does Marco Rubio get to run an independent foreign policy? That would be very good news, I think, for for internationalists, if, if Donald Trump doesn't get in his way. But I don't know if that that happens. There's a view of pro israelism that says internationalism is necessary. I always like to say when a pack used to have its policy conferences, and it's a shame it doesn't any more, they would have a little brief talk before on Tuesday morning, before going up to the Hill, they would have, like, some prominent Senator come out and give a rah rah speech, and then like, three officials would come out on the stage Howard core, late Richard Fishman, and Esther Kurz. And Esther Kurz had handled Congressional Relations, and they would talk about the three items they were bringing up the Hill, usually two laws in a letter or a resolution or something like that.  And she would always say, and this was like the one moment like they would sort of reveal this. They'd be very candid about this. You have to push not for assistance for Israel, but foreign assistance generally, because there is no such thing as sort of singling out Israel and saying, Okay, we're going to take care of Israel, but nobody else in the world that it's all it's all interconnected, and it's such a true thing now, because you can say, you know, let's just cut off Ukraine. But if you're cut off Ukraine, you're bolstering Putin. If you're bolstering Putin, you're bolstering somebody who has a substantial and military alliance with Iran, if you're bolstering Iran, that is not good for Israel. And it's like it's kind of circuitous to get there, but it's also very substantive point. I think those are the things the pro Israel community is going to be looking at with genuine concern. Julie Fishman Rayman:  Indeed, it's all about sort of the strength of the American global leadership regime. And when you start to whittle away at one, the overall package ends up being weaker. Speaking of Israel, I can't speak to you this week and not ask you about the news out of Israel, about Netanyahu firing the defense secretary, gallant and what that means. And also, if we can extrapolate, if we can prognosticate what might happen vis a vis Israel in this lame duck session, while we still have Biden as president, but moving through the transition towards a future Trump administration. Ron Kampeas:  Yeah, you know, there a lot of Israelis are actually worried about that. Like, Oh, Biden's gonna take his frustrations out on VB in the lame duck doesn't have anything stopping him. I don't think that's going to happen. I think what's interesting is, like, you had a couple of instances in American history where a lame duck president used the fact that he didn't care, you know, what anybody thought of him, to push something through in 1988 Ronald Reagan recognized the PLO because it's something George H W Bush wanted him to do. George H W Bush wanted to push like more Israel Palestinian peace he did with the Madrid Conference, but he didn't want to be the one to invite the PLO into the room, so he got Ronald Reagan to do it in his last two months in office. In 2016 Barack Obama allowed through a Security Council resolution of that condemned the settlements. The United States didn't vote for it, but it also didn't veto it. That really kind of shook Israel up. But was interesting. I've done the reporting on this. When he was taking advice, Should I, should we vote for the resolution? Should we veto it, or should we just allow it through? There were people voicing opinions on all sides. Joe Biden and Jack Lew, who was then the Treasury Secretary, is now the ambassador to Israel, both said, veto it. Don't let it through. Don't let it through because, partly because it's going to really upset our Jewish supporters. If you let it through, you're not going to be president anymore, but somebody in the room is going to probably try and be president. I think that Joe Biden still has that sense of responsibility. I could be wrong. You know, four years or a year of like, from his perspective, being very strongly supportive of Israel and not getting anything back. From Bibi, from his perspective, might have changed his mind. Something might occur now. But the question is, like, you can tell Israel if they hit anything, but if they hit, if they hit anything, if they elevate it at all, they're going to need US assistance. And Trump hasn't said he's going to give that. Biden has. Biden's proven he's going to give it. So you've got two months of a president who will, who will back up Israel with American might, and then you have a president who has isolationist tendencies and who doesn't want to get involved with wars for another four years. Julie Fishman Rayman:  Is there anything else that you're hearing, perhaps, from the Israeli perspective, about Gallant departure, and what that signal? Ron Kampeas:  I think, that Netanyahu, you know, he's just trying to keep his government intact. Gallant is very vocal in opposing or in supporting drafting the ultra orthodox the Haredi orthodox Netanyahu government relies on Haredi orthodox parties. So there's that he's also facing a kind of spy scandal from his own circle. Just a weird, weird story. Somebody who's in his circle is alleged to have tried to help Netanyahu politically by leaking highly classified documents and altering them as well to foreign news outlets. The allegation is that whatever the guy's motivation was, he's actually put Israel at risk. So Netanyahu is suddenly in a position of facing allegations that he put Israel at risk. Now he's faced a lot of scandals in his time. Israelis have a high level of tolerance for people who are alleged to have skimmed off the top, alleged to have helped themselves, and that's what the scandals are about. They have no tolerance for anybody who puts Israel's security at risk. So if this comes back to Netanyahu that could be more damage than than any other scandal that he's endured so far and so notably, I think, you know, when he was firing Galant, he said he accused Galant of leaking information, although, I mean, what he was seemed to be referring to was Galant didn't leak anything. Galant openly said that he disagreed with Netanyahu on certain tactics, and that, you know Netanyahu is casting is putting Israel at risk, which is not to say that Netanyahu is necessarily going to be implicated by the scandal, but it's certainly not of a piece with leaking, actually classified documents that reveal methods and sources can put Israel's intelligence gathering methods at risk. Julie Fishman Rayman:  As always, there's so much more to the story, right? Ron Kampeas:  Yeah, yeah. There always is. Julie Fishman Rayman:  Ron, we could probably talk for a very long time about the American elections and what's going on in Israel and the degrees of various scandals and how populations will take them, and what the future of our country in the region looks like. But I know that you're very busy, especially this week, and I just want to say how grateful we are they always make time for AJC and for people of the pod. Ron Kampeas:  Of course.

SO, HOW DID WE ALL GET IT SO WRONG?Pollsters and pundits predicted a close-run race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but the consensus was that Harris had led consistently in the polls and that her victory seemed assured given the massive financial resources at her disposal, the apparent momentum and the slickness of her campaign, particularly compared to the bizarre circus of her opponent.THE LEFT - IN A BUBBLE RAP?Nick Cohen chats again to Washington DC-based journalist and podcaster Ben Cohen about Trump's shock landslide. Two weeks ago, Ben told The Lowdown he was confident that Harris would win - based mainly on so-called quality polling. Ben agreed that journalists from the left can operate inside a bubble and can often fail to realise how much people outside the bubble disregard or even hate them and their views. Leftist idealism and a belief in the stupidity and mendacity of the opponent can sleepwalk you into believing that people share your worldview, and are motivated by the same values.FAILURE TO TACKLE WOKE & FACE UP TO REALITYBen @thedailybanter said Trump's opponents - buoyed up by the polls and the huge Harris crowds - possibly indulged in wishful thinking but they also made the mistake of not clamping down on the more wokeist tendencies on their side that played into Trump's hands and helped him scare voters away from Harris. "The left has eaten itself," Ben tells Nick."It's become a kind of parody of itself ... I've been writing about this for years, that identity politics is going to cost them the ballot because most of the country doesn't understand it."Nick also says Joe Biden should have made it clear 2 years ago that he would only serve one term. Where did the predictions all go wrong and how much blame can be laid at the feet of the Democrats? In the end, Biden was forced off the Ticket after his calamitous presidential debate performance leaving Harris only 100 days to turn things around for the Democrats. Ben says, "it was... an insurmountable task."THE INEVITABLE TRUMPIST TSUNAMI OF REVENGE AND STUPIDITYBen says everyone is filled with dread at the coming tsunami of Trumpist lunacy. Ben predicts Trump's regime will combine brutality with his trademark incompetence. He expects Trump to rip the U.S. - yet again - from the Paris Accords, undermine Nato and other international alliances - possibly fatally - betray Ukraine to Vladamir Putin and set up detention camps for immigrants - and that's just for starters. "We're in for a very scary few years, I would say," Ben tells Nick. "And we'll see how well American institutions can withstand the assault that's about to happen."Ben adds, "The guy is a cockroach. He survived two assassination attempts, he survived two impeachment trials. He survived the democratic machine that raised, you know, several billion dollars, over a billion and a half dollars in two months, that's what Kamala Harris raised, and it was to defeat him."Read Ben's The Banter Substack here and listen to his podcasts here.Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 64: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yeah, I heard it too. I heard him he "shouldn't have left" the White House when his term ended. And I heard him say AT his rally that he wouldn't mind people shooting at the reporters COVERING his rally. And I guess it's shocking. Except he's been saying these things (a little more coded) since 2015, and he said the shooting thing about Liz Cheney last Thursday night. And after all he is going through what the shrinks call “disinhibition” AT the rallies where he loses all sense of what he should say in private not public. But that's not what got me. I heard something I have never heard before. WHEN he said he wouldn't mind people shooting the "fake news," he said he wouldn't mind them shooting THROUGH "the fake news" - THROUGH it - AT him. Doesn't that sound kind of… what's the word? Suicidal? Plus: I understand that we are inside the 48 hour bubble before the election and the pressure is like 887 Atmospheric Units and our rage against this creature and his cult that wants to burn this country to the ground – burn this world to the ground – and our amazement that there is ANYBODY voting for him – that RAGE is at unbearable levels – but… didn't he sound kinda dead yesterday? At one point he was inaudible. At another, in North Carolina, he thought he was in Pennsylvania. Throughout, he sounded exactly like Hal the Computer in the movie “2001” when they unplugged him. PRACTICALLY SPEAKING on the eve of the election, the polls continue to support a Harris victory (size TBD) and this shocking poll where she's up by 3 in Iowa hides an even more shocking number (she's ahead by 20 among women in the whitest part of the midwest). And the reaction to the pollster who published this 21 point swing from June tells you all you need to know about polling. They have previously insisted Ann Selser was an immortal. Now they're saying she's making the rest of them look bad by not tailoring her poll to fit their narrative. B-Block (30:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A Trumpist has vowed to "castrate himself on camera" if Harris wins Iowa (if you're a Trumpist, haven't you already castrated yourself?). Chris Cillizza 2024 mocks everybody who didn't buy the conventional wisdom about the vice presidency (evidently including Chris Cillizza 2020, who had disproved it), and courtesy Tim Alberta in The Atlantic, we find a new reason to hate Trump. This is the real reason he's so mad Biden dropped out. Trump thought he had the perfect nickname for the President - and it's appalling. C-Block (37:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I call it The Annual Day I Get Trapped Inside My Home Day. You know it - and may have seen it on TV yesterday - as "The New York City Marathon."  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Which ethnic group will MAGA Trumpists enrage next? Singer Nicky Jam revoked his endorsement of Shitler after the hate rally at MSG. Fascist ghoul Ann Coulter blathered the roast jokes pro-Trump comic Tony Hinchlcliffe wrote for her for the Roast of Rob Lowe were terrible. Comic for bros, Joe Rogan said he told Hinchliffe to not do the Puerto Rican joke at Nazi fest. Speaking of Nazis, oligarch and X Czar has been using his non-woke AI to promote disinformation about the election. The worst duo ever assembled, MAGAT Milo Yiannopolis and price-gouging pharma demon Martin Shkrelli are scheduled to speak together at Penn State. Shitler mumbled and slurred his way through a tale where the bleach blonde butch body Rep from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, tragically burst into flames in a hydrogen car explosion. The Virginia SCOTUS gets an "F" for allowing a voter registration purge. Pundit and failed politicion from Hades, Laura Loomer launched an aggro attack upon MTG regarding the racism at the recent Hitler rally in NYC. Arizona voters don't give a crap about vampire Kari Lake. Terminator and former Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. A bigly earthquake smacke the Pacific Northwest.

Nick Cohen chats to Washington-based journalist & substacker Ben Cohen about the November 5th presidential election - considered the most fateful and important poll in recent U.S. history, possibly since the election of 1861 that ushered in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.Ben @thedailybanter says dodgy billionaires and rightwing pollsters are trying to con people into believing that the election is still incredibly close with dubious polls and betting odds in order to help facilitate a determined Trumpist post-election "stop the steal" campaign to put the fascist Hitler fanboy and multi-convicted felon back in the White House.But Ben says the quality polls still show Harris in the lead across the country and in the so-called "swing states" and that she "win comfortably". "I could fall flat on my face and be, and be laughed at by the rest of the industry," admits Ben to Nick. " But, I'm not convinced that it's going to be as close as people think it's going to be. I think Kamala Harris is going to win comfortably."Ben is sure that the women of the U.S. will turn out in big numbers to vote for Harris - mainly thanks to the decision by the Trumpist Supreme Court to overturn Roe-Wade and give individual states power over abortion rights and IVF access. This election has become a fight not only for the White House and the fate of the free world - particularly Ukraine - but also over women's bodies. Ben tells Nick, "I think what people are underestimating is the women vote, who are going to come out. This is a post Roe-Wade environment where Donald Trump is widely regarded as being responsible for repealing abortion rights in America."But how can the election be so close when it's between a distinguished public servant like Kamala Harris, who has run an immaculate campaign, and the preposterous sociopath Donald Trump, indisputably the stupidest man ever elected president and one who attempted to overturn the 2020 election through violence and lies? Ben blames the emergence of the radical right media in the U.S., "I couldn't understand it, but having lived in America for decades now, the infiltration of the Murdoch media and the right wing hate radio and the industry, the conservative media complex is powerful, he says."So, could we be seeing a re-run of the so-called "Red Wave - that wasn't" saga of the November 2020 mid-terms when the Republicans talked up the prospects of a crushing defeat for Biden's Democrats, only for the washing ashore of a large damp squib?Read Ben's The Banter Substacks here and listen to his podcasts here.Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond explores the recent humiliating capitulation by the @washingtonpost proprietor & Amazon boss @JeffBezos to Donald Trump. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a democracy, we expect to have our own say over how we are governed. There's a great grumbling throughout America because many don't feel listened to. That's the impetus behind today's Trumpist populism. This populism is the voice of The post Heather Cox Richardson: Yes Democracy IS Awakening appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.

-- On the Show: -- Republican Senator Tim Scott tries to defend Donald Trump's economic policy on CNBC and it does not go well -- Melania Trump reportedly demanded $250,000 from CNN to be interviewed -- Donald Trump supporters appear to fight each other before his event in Saginaw, Michigan -- Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris in his latest demented rant, this one in Waunakee, Wisconsin -- Fox News host Neil Cavuto admits to and almost seems surprised by Donald Trump's crimes -- Republican Congressman Jason Smith appears on CNBC and has no idea how they will pay for Donald Trump's tax cuts -- CNN guest Keith Boykin crushes CNN for allowing Trumpists like Byron Donalds to lie about crime -- This week's Friday Feedback -- On the Bonus Show: A very special bonus show ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Use code PAKMAN for up to 40% OFF at https://shopbeam.com/pakman ⚠️ Try Ground News and get 40% OFF the Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman

in his "How to roll trolls and stump Trumpists", Jeremy has outlined his own approach to disappointing Trump's followers. Jeremy lays out his fascinating analysis of the 'herobot' the follower who avoids self-doubt by attaching to the 'dumbergogue' Trump. As usual, Jeremy is eloquent and spills over with ideas that will make you smart. Jon suggests an approach to deconverting Trumpsters. Watch for some excited moments as we find that far from playing three-dimensional chess, Donald Trump is simply eating the pieces.

Remember the bleach drinking episode? Remember ‘alternative facts'? Remember ‘I have the best words'? These elements of the Trump presidency spoke to a fundamental part of his politics: truth and science were not prime among his considerations. Given this, one may assume that academics would have been especially unlikely to be drawn to the Trump presidency.  Yet, in his fascinating book The Academic Trumpists: Radicals against Liberal Democracy (Routledge, 2024), David Swartz outlines a group of public intellectuals who supported, and largely continue to support, Trump. These 109 Academic Trumpists are not marginal to American academia but rather can be found in middle to high-ranking schools and sometimes have backgrounds in elite institutions. Swartz demonstrates however how they cluster in particular disciplines and institutions and make use of a significant network of populist conservative thinktanks. By comparing these Trumpists with 89 conservative professors who are anti-Trump, Swartz is able to show the distinctive political positions the Trumpists adopt, especially concerning ‘liberal' campus culture and the appeal of Trump as a ‘wrecking ball'. This populist politics and their distinct networks differ them from their conservative peers who see Trump as a threat and fundamentally not conservative. In our conversation we discuss who these academic Trumpists are, the details of their positioning and why, despite everything, they continue to support Trump. We also consider what possibility there maybe for an allegiance between liberal and anti-Trump conservative professors in the US. Your host Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow with research interests in social theory and the history of sociology. He is the author of a number of books, including G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan) 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

Remember the bleach drinking episode? Remember ‘alternative facts'? Remember ‘I have the best words'? These elements of the Trump presidency spoke to a fundamental part of his politics: truth and science were not prime among his considerations. Given this, one may assume that academics would have been especially unlikely to be drawn to the Trump presidency.  Yet, in his fascinating book The Academic Trumpists: Radicals against Liberal Democracy (Routledge, 2024), David Swartz outlines a group of public intellectuals who supported, and largely continue to support, Trump. These 109 Academic Trumpists are not marginal to American academia but rather can be found in middle to high-ranking schools and sometimes have backgrounds in elite institutions. Swartz demonstrates however how they cluster in particular disciplines and institutions and make use of a significant network of populist conservative thinktanks. By comparing these Trumpists with 89 conservative professors who are anti-Trump, Swartz is able to show the distinctive political positions the Trumpists adopt, especially concerning ‘liberal' campus culture and the appeal of Trump as a ‘wrecking ball'. This populist politics and their distinct networks differ them from their conservative peers who see Trump as a threat and fundamentally not conservative. In our conversation we discuss who these academic Trumpists are, the details of their positioning and why, despite everything, they continue to support Trump. We also consider what possibility there maybe for an allegiance between liberal and anti-Trump conservative professors in the US. Your host Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow with research interests in social theory and the history of sociology. He is the author of a number of books, including G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Some signs of tech progress are obvious: the moon landing, the internet, the smartphone, and now generative AI. For most of us who live in rich countries, improvements to our day-to-day lives seem to come gradually. We might (might), then, forgive some of those who claim that our society has not progressed, that our lives have not improved, and that a tech-optimist outlook is even naïve.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with economist Noah Smith about pushing the limits in areas like energy technology, how geopolitical threats spur innovation, and why a more fragmented industrial policy might actually be an advantage.Smith is the author of the popular Noahpinion Substack. He was previously an assistant finance professor at Stony Brook University and an economics columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.In This Episode* Recognizing progress (1:43)* Redrawing the boundaries of energy tech (12:39)* Racing China in research (15:59)* Recalling Japanese economic history (20:32)* Regulating AI well (23:49)* Rethinking growth strategy in the EU (26:46)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationRecognizing progress (1:43)Pethokoukis: Noah, welcome to the podcast.Smith: Great to be here!Not to talk about other podcast guests, but I will very briefly — Last year I did one with Marc Andreessen and I asked him just how tech optimistic he was, and he said, “I'm not sure I'm an optimist at all,” that the most reasonable expectation is to expect the future to be like the past, where we have a problem building things in the real world, that some of our best ideas don't necessarily become everything they could be, and I think a perfectly reasonable baseline forecast is that, for all our talk about optimism, and “let's go,” and “let's accelerate,” that none of that happens. Does that sound reasonable to you or are you more optimistic?I'm optimistic. You know, a few years ago we didn't have mRNA vaccines. Now we do. And now we have a magical weight loss drug that will not only make you lose weight, but will solve half your other health problems for reasons we don't even understand yet.So much inflammation.Right. We didn't even have that a few years ago. That did not exist. If you told someone that would exist, they would laugh at you. A magic pill that not only makes you thin, but also just solves all these other health issues: They would laugh at you, Scott Alexander would laugh at you, everyone would laugh at you. Now it's real. That's cool.If you had told someone a few years ago that batteries would be as insanely cheap as they are, they would've been like, “What? No. There's all these reasons why they can't be,” but none of those reasons were true. I remember because they did actually say that, and then batteries got insanely cheap, to the point where now Texas is adding ridiculous amounts of batteries for grid storage. Did I predict that was going to happen? No, that surprised me on the upside. The forecasters keep forecasting sort of a leveling off for things like solar and battery, and they keep being wrong.There's a lot of other things like reusable rockets. Did you think they'd get this good? Did you think we'd have this many satellites in the low-earth orbit?AI just came out of nowhere. Now everyone has this little personal assistant that's intelligent and can tell them stuff. That didn't exist three years ago.So is that, perhaps, growing cluster of technologies, that's not just a short-term thing. Do you think all these technologies — and let's say particularly AI, but the healthcare-related stuff as well — that these taken together are a game-changer? Because people always say, “Boy, our lives 30 years ago didn't look much different than our lives today,” and some people say 40 years ago.But that's wrong!Yes, I do think that is wrong, but that people's perception.When I was a kid, people didn't spend all day looking at a little screen and talking to people around the world through a little screen. Now they do. That's like all they do all day.But they say that those aren't significant, for some reason, they treat that as a kind of a triviality.Like me, you're old enough to remember a thing called “getting bored.” Do you remember that? You'd just sit around and you're like, “Man, I've got nothing to do. I'm bored.” That emotion just doesn't exist anymore — I mean, very fleetingly for some people, but we've banished boredom from the world.Remember “getting lost?” If you walk into that forest, you might get lost? That doesn't happen unless you want to get lost, unless you don't take your phone. But the idea that, “Oh my God, I'm lost! I'm lost!” No, just look at Google Maps and navigate your way back.Being lost and being bored are fundamental human experiences that have been with us for literally millions of years, and now they're just gone in a few years, just gone!Remember when you didn't know what other places looked like? You would think, “Oh, the Matterhorn, that's some mountain in Switzerland, I can only imagine what that looks like.” And then maybe you'd look it up in an encyclopedia and see a picture of it or something. Now you just type it into Google Images, or Street View, or look at YouTube, look at a walking tour or something.Remember not knowing how to fix things? You just had no idea how to fix it. You could try to make it up, but really what you'd do is you'd call someone who was handy with stuff who had this arcane knowledge, and this wizard would fix your cabinet, or your dresser, or whatever, your stereo.Being lost and being bored are fundamental human experiences that have been with us for literally millions of years, and now they're just gone in a few years, just gone!So why does that perception persist? I mean, it's not hard to find people — both of us are probably online too much — who just will say that we've had complete and utter stagnation. I don't believe that, yet that still seems to be the perception, and I don't know if things haven't moved fast enough, if there are particular visions of what today should look like that haven't happened, and people got hung up on the flying-car, space-colony vision, so compared to that, GPS isn't significant, but I think what you have just described, not everybody gets that.Because I think they don't often stop to think about it. People don't often stop to think about how much the world has changed since they were young. It's like a gradual change that you don't notice day-to-day, but that adds up over years. It's like boiling the frog: You don't notice things getting better, just like the frog doesn't notice the water getting hotter.Do you think it's going to get hotter going forward, though? Do you think it's going to boil faster? Do you think that AI is such a powerful technology that it'll be indisputable to everybody that something is happening in the economy, in their everyday lives, and they look a lot different now than they did 10 years ago, and they're going to look a whole lot different 10 years from now?Utility, remember — back to econ class — utility is concave. A utility of wealth, utility of consumption, is concave, which means that if you get 10,000 more dollars of annual income and you're poor, that makes a hell of a lot of difference. That makes a world of difference to you. But if you're rich, it makes no difference to you. And I think that Americans are getting rich to the point where the new things that happen don't necessarily increase our utility as much, simply because utility is concave. That's how things work.In the 20th century, people escaped material poverty. They started out the century with horses and buggies, and wood-burning stoves, and freezing in the winter, and having to repair their own clothes, and having food be super expensive, and having to work 60-hour weeks, 80-hour weeks at some sweatshop, or just some horrible thing, and horrible conditions with coal smoke blackening the skies; and then they ended in nice, clean suburbia with computers and HDTVs —I guess maybe we didn't get those till the 2000s — but anyway, we ended the 20th century so much richer.Basically, material poverty in rich countries was banished except for a very few people with extreme mental health or drug problems. But then for regular people, material want was just banished. That was a huge increment. But if you took the same increment of wealth and did that again in the next century, people wouldn't notice as much. They'd notice a little bit, but they wouldn't notice as much, and I think that it's the concavity of utility that we're really working against here.In the 20th century, people escaped material poverty. They started out the century. . . having to work 60-hour weeks, 80-hour weeks at some sweatshop. . . and then they ended in nice, clean suburbia with computers and HDTVs . . .So is economic growth overrated then? That kind of sounds like economic growth is overrated.Well, no. I don't know that it's overrated. It's good, but I don't know who overrates it. Obviously it's more important for poor countries to grow than for rich countries to grow. Growth is going to make a huge difference to the people of Bangladesh. It's going to be life-changing, just as it was life-changing for us in the 20th century. They're going to have their 20th century now, and that's amazing.And, to some extent, our growth sustains their growth by buying their products; so that helps, and contributing to innovations that help them, those countries will be able to get energy more easily than we were because they're going to have this super-cheap solar power, and batteries, and all this stuff that we didn't have back in the day. They're going to have protections against diseases, against malaria, and dengue fever, and everything. We didn't have those when we were developing, we had to hack our way through the jungle.So growth is great. Growth is great, and it's better for the people in the poor countries than for us because of concavity of utility, but it's still good for us. It's better to be advancing incrementally. It's better to be feeling like things are getting better slowly than to be feeling like things aren't getting better at all.So many things have gotten better, like food. Food has gotten immeasurably better in our society than it was in the '90s. The food you can eat at a regular restaurant is just so much tastier. I don't know if it's more nutritious, but it's so much tastier, and so much more interesting and varied than it was in the '90s, and people who are in their 40s or 50s remember that. And if they stop to think about it, they'll be like, “You know what? That is better.” We don't always stop to remember what the past was. We don't remember what food was like in the '90s — I don't. When I'm going out to a restaurant to eat, I don't think about what a restaurant was like in 1994, when I was a kid. I don't think about that. It just doesn't come to mind. It's been a long time.In Japan I noticed it a lot, because Japan had, honestly, fairly bland and boring food up until about 2010 or so. And then there was just this revolution where they just got the most amazing food. Now Japan is the most amazing place to go eat in the world. Every restaurant's amazing and people don't understand how recent that is. People don't understand how 20 years ago, 25 years ago, it was like an egg in a bowl of rice and sort of bland little fried things. People don't remember how mediocre it was, because how often did they go to Japan back in 2005?It's better to be feeling like things are getting better slowly than to be feeling like things aren't getting better at all.Redrawing the boundaries of energy tech (12:39)Your answer raised several questions: One, you were talking about solar energy and batteries. Is that enough? Is solar and batteries enough? Obviously I read about nuclear power maybe too much, and you see a lot of countries trying to build new reactors, or restart old reactors, or keep old nuclear reactors, but over the long run, do we need any of that other stuff or can it really just be solar and batteries almost entirely?Jesse Jenkins has done a lot of modeling of this and what would be the best solutions. And of course those models change as costs change. As battery costs go down and battery capabilities improve, those models change, and we can do more with solar and batteries without having to get these other things. But the current models that the best modelers are making right now of energy systems, it says that we're probably looking at over half solar and batteries, maybe two thirds, or something like that. And then we'll have a bunch of other solutions: nuclear, wind, geothermal, and then a little bit of gas, we'll probably never completely get rid of it.But then those things will all be kind of marginal solutions because they all have a lot of downsides. Nuclear is very expensive to build and there's not much of a learning curve because it gets built in-place instead of in a factory (unless it's on a submarine nuclear plant, but that's a different thing). And then wind takes too much land, really, and also the learning curve is slower. Geothermal is only certain areas. It's great, but it's only certain areas. And then gas, fossil fuel, whatever.But the point is that those will all be probably part of our mix unless batteries continue to get better past where we even have expected them to. But it's possible they will, because new battery chemistries are always being experimented with, and the question is just: Can we get the production cost cheap enough? We have sodium ion batteries, iron flow batteries, all these other things, and the question is, can we get the cost cheap enough?Fortunately, China has decided that it is going to pour untold amounts of capital and resources and whatever into being the Saudi Arabia of batteries, and they're doing a lot of our work for us on this. They're really pushing forward the envelope. They're trying to scale every single one of these battery chemistries up, and whether or not they succeed, I don't know. They might be wasting capital on a lot of these, or maybe not, but they're trying to do it at a very large scale, and so we could get batteries that are even better than we expect. And in that case, I would say the share of solar and batteries would be even higher than Jesse Jenkins and the other best modelers now predict.But you don't know the future of technology. You don't know whether Moore's Law will stop tomorrow. You don't know these things. You can trace historical curves and forecast them out, and maybe come up with some hand-wavy principles about why this would continue, but ultimately, you don't really know. There's no laws of the universe for technological progress. I wish there were, that'd be cool. But think solar and batteries are on their way to being a majority of our total energy, not just electricity, but total energy.Racing China in research (15:59)Does it concern you, in that scenario, that it's China doing that research? I understand the point about, “Hey, if they want to plow lots of money and lose lots of money,” but, given geopolitical relations, and perhaps more tariffs, or war in the South China Sea, does that concern you that that innovation is happening there?It absolutely does concern me. We don't want to get cut off from our main sources of energy supply. That's why I favor policies like the Inflation Reduction Act. Basically, industrial policy is to say, “Okay, we need some battery manufacturing here, we need some solar panel manufacturing here in the country as a security measure.” Politicians always sell it in terms of, “We created this many jobs.” I don't care. We can create jobs anyway. Anything we do will create jobs. I don't care about creating specific kinds of jobs. It is just a political marketing tactic: “Green jobs, yes!” Okay, cool, cool. Maybe you can market it that way, good for you.But what I do care about is what you talked about, which is the strategic aspect of it. I want to have some of that manufacturing in the country, even if it's a little inefficient. I don't want to sacrifice everything at the altar of a few points of GDP, or a few tenths of a percent of points of GDP at most, honestly. Or sacrifice everything in the altar of perfect efficiency. Obviously the strategic considerations are important, but, that said, what China's doing with all this investment is it's improving the state of technology, and then we can just copy that. That's what they did to us for decades and decades. We invented the stuff, and then they would just copy it. We can do that on batteries: They invent the stuff, we will copy it, and that's cool. It means they're doing some of our work, just the way we did a lot of their work to develop all this technology that they somehow begged, borrowed, or stole.. . . what China's doing with all this investment is it's improving the state of technology, and then we can just copy that. That's what they did to us for decades and decades. We invented the stuff, and then they would just copy it. We can do that on batteries. . .The original question I asked about: Why should we think the future will be different than the recent past? Why should we think that, in the future, America will spend more on research? Why do we think that perhaps we'll look at some of the regulations that make it hard to do things? Why would any of that change?And to me, the most compelling reason is, it's quite simple just to say, “Well, what about China? Do you want to lose this race to China? Do you want China to have this technology? Do you want them to be the leaders in AI?” And that sort of geopolitical consideration, to me, ends up being a simple but yet very persuasive argument if you're trying to argue for things which very loosely might be called “pro-progress” or “pro-abundance” or what have you.I don't want to whip up any international conflict in order to stimulate people to embrace progress for national security concerns. That wouldn't be worth it, that's like wagging the dog. But, given that international conflict has found us — we didn't want it, but given the fact that it found us — we should do what we did during the Cold War, during World War II, even during the Civil War, and use that problem to push progress forward.If you look at when the United States has really spent a lot of money on research, has built a lot of infrastructure, has done all the things we now retrospectively associate with progress, it was for international competition. We built the interstates as part of the Cold War. We funded the modern university system as part of the Cold War. And a lot of these things, the NIH [National Institutes of Health], and the NSF [National Science Foundation], and all these things, of course those came from World War II programs, sort of crash-research programs during and just before World War II. And then, in the Civil War, of course, we built the railroads.So, like it or not, that's how these things have gotten done. So now that we see that China and Russia have just decided, “Okay, we don't like American power, we want to diminish these guys in whatever way we can,” that's a threat to us, and we have to respond to that threat, or else just exceed to the loss of wealth and freedom that would come with China getting to do what it wants to us. I don't think we should exceed to that.I don't want to whip up any international conflict in order to stimulate people to embrace progress. . . But, given that international conflict has found us. . . we should do what we did during the Cold War, during World War II, even during the Civil War, and use that problem to push progress forward.Recalling Japanese economic history (20:32)You write a lot about Japan. What is the thing you find that most people misunderstand about the last 30 years of Japanese economic history? I think the popular version is: Boom, in the '80s, they looked like they were ahead in all these technologies, they had this huge property bubble, the economy slowed down, and they've been in a funk ever since — the lost decades. I think that might be the popular economic history. How accurate is that?I would say that there was one lost decade, the '90s, during which they had a very protracted slowdown, they ameliorated many of the effects of it, but they were very slow to get rid of the root cause of it, which was bad bank debts and a broken banking system. Eventually, they mostly cleaned it up in the 2000s, and then growth resumed. By the time per capita growth resumed, by the time productivity growth and all that resumed, Japan was aging very, very rapidly, more rapidly than any country has ever aged in the world, and that masked much of the increase in GDP per worker. So Japan was increasing its GDP per worker in the 2000s, but it was aging so fast that you couldn't really see it. It looked like another lost decade, but what was really happening is aging.And now, with fertility falling all around the world right now in the wake of the pandemic, probably from some sort of effect of social media, smartphones, new technology, whatever, I don't know why, but fertility's falling everywhere — again, it looked like it had bottomed out, and then now it's falling again. We're all headed for what happened to Japan, and I think what people need to understand is that that's our future. What happened to Japan in the 2000s where they were able to increase productivity, but living standards stagnated because there were more and more old people to take care of. That is something that we need to expect to happen to us, because it is. And, of course, immigration can allay that somewhat, and it will, and it should. And so we're not because of immigrationWill it in this country? In this country, the United States, it seems like that should be something, a major advantage going forward, but it seems like it's an advantage we seem eager to throw away.Well, I don't know about eager to throw away, but I think it is in danger. Obviously, dumb policies can wreck a country at any time. There's no country whose economy and whose progress cannot be wrecked by dumb policies. There's no country that's dumb-proof, it doesn't exist, and it can't exist. And so if we turn off immigration, we're in trouble. Maybe that's trouble that people are willing to accept if people buy the Trumpist idea that immigrants are polluting our culture, and bringing all kinds of social ills, and eating the pets, and whatever the hell, if people buy that and they elect Trump and Trump cracks down hard on immigration, it will be a massive own-goal from America. It will be a self-inflicted wound, and I really hope that doesn't happen, but it could happen. It could happen to the best of us.There's no country whose economy and whose progress cannot be wrecked by dumb policies. There's no country that's dumb-proof, it doesn't exist, and it can't exist.Regulating AI well (23:49)Do you think what we're seeing now with AI, do you think it is an important enough technology that it is almost impossible, realistically, to screw it up through a bad regulation, through a regulatory bill in California, or something on the national level? When you look at what's going on, that if it's really as important as what perhaps the most bullish technologists think it is, it's going to happen, it's going to change businesses, it's going to change our lives, and unless you somehow try to prohibit the entire use of the technology, there's going to be an Age of AI?Do people like me worry too much about regulation?I can't say, actually. This is not something I'm really an expert on, the potential impact of regulation on AI. I would never underestimate the Europeans' ability to block new technologies from being used, they seem to be very, very good at it, but I don't think we'll completely block it, it could hamper it. I would say that this is just one that I don't know.But I will say, I do think what's going to happen is that AI capabilities will outrun use cases for AI, and there will be a bust relatively soon, where people find out that they built so many data centers that, temporarily, no one needs them because people haven't figured out what to do with AI that's worth paying a lot of money for. And I have thoughts on why people haven't thought of those things yet, but I'll get to that in a second. But I think that eventually you'll have one of those Gartner Hype Cycles where eventually we figure out what to do with it, and then those data centers that we built at that time become useful. Like, “Oh, we have all these GPUs [graphics processing units] sitting around from that big bust a few years ago,” and then it starts accelerating again.So I predict that that will happen, and I think that during the bust, people will say, just like they did after the Dot-com bust, people will say, “Oh, AI was a fake. It was all a mirage. It was all useless. Look at this wasted investment. The tech bros have lied to us. Where's your future now?” And it's just because excitement about capabilities outruns end-use cases, not all the time, obviously not every technology obeys this cycle, for sure . . . but then many do, you can see this happen a lot. You can see this happen with the internet. You can see this happen with railroads, and electricity. A lot of these things, you've seen this pattern. I think this will happen with AI. I think that there's going to be a bust and everyone's going to say, “AI sucks!” and then five, six years later, they'll say, “Oh, actually AI is pretty good,” when someone builds the Google of AI.Rethinking growth strategy in the EU (26:46)To me, this always gets a lot of good attention on social media, if you compare the US and Europe and you say, the US, it's richer, or we have all the technology companies, or we're leading in all the technology areas, and we can kind of gloat over Europe. But then I think, well, that's kind of bad. We should want Europe to be better, especially if you think we are engaged in this geopolitical competition with these authoritarian countries. We should want another big region of liberal democracy and market capitalism to be successful.Can Europe turn it around? Mario Draghi just put out this big competitiveness report, things Europe can do, they need to be more like America in this way or that way. Can Europe become like a high-productivity region?In general, European elites' answer to all their problems is “more Europe,” more centralization, make Europe more like a country. . . But I think that Europe's strength is really in fragmentation . . .I think it can. I wrote a post about this today, actually, about Mario Draghi's report. My bet for what Europe would have to do is actually very different than what the European elites think they have to do. In general, European elites' answer to all their problems is “more Europe,” more centralization, make Europe more like a country. You know, Europe has a history of international competition. France, and Germany, and the UK, and all these powers would fight each other. That's their history. And for hundreds of years, it's very difficult to change that mindset, and Mario Draghi's report is written entirely in terms of competitiveness. And so I think the mindset now is “Okay, now there's these really big countries that we're competing with: America, China, whatever. We need to get bigger so we're a big country too.” And so the idea is to centralize so that Europe can be one big country competing with the other big countries.But I think that Europe's strength is really in fragmentation, the way that some European countries experiment with different institutions, different policies. You've seen, for example, the Scandinavian countries, by and large, have very pro-business policies combined with very strong welfare states. That's a combination you don't see that in Italy, France, and Germany. In Italy, France, and Germany, you see policies that specifically restrict a lot of what business can do, who you can hire and fire, blah, blah, blah. Sweden, and Denmark, and Finland, and Norway make it very easy for businesses to do anything they want to do, and then they just redistribute. It's what we in America might even call “neoliberalism.”Then they have very high taxes and they provide healthcare and blah, blah, and then they basically encourage businesses to do business-y things. And Sweden is more entrepreneurial than America. Sweden has more billionaires per capita, more unicorns per capita, more high-growth startups per capita than America does. And so many people fall into the lazy trap of thinking of this in terms of cultural essentialism: “The Swedes, they're just an entrepreneurial bunch of Vikings,” or something. But then I think you should look at those pro-business policies.Europeans should use Sweden as a laboratory, use Denmark, use Norway. Look at these countries that are about as rich as the United States and have higher quality of life by some metrics. Look at these places and don't just assume that the Swedes have some magic sauce that nobody else has, that Italy and Greece and Spain have nothing to learn from Sweden and from Denmark. So I think Europe should use its fragmentation.Also, individual countries in Europe can compete with their own local industrial policies. Draghi talks about the need to have a Europe-wide industrial policy to combat the industrial policies of China and America, but, often, when you see the most effective industrial policy regimes, they're often fragmented.So for example, China until around 2006, didn't really have a national industrial policy at all. At the national level, all they did was basically Milton Friedman stuff, they just privatized and deregulated. That's what they did. And then all the industrial policy was at the provincial and city levels. They went all out to build infrastructure, to attract FDI [foreign direct investment], to train workers, all the kinds of things like that. They did all these industrial policies at the local level that were very effective, and they all competed with each other, because whichever provincial officials got the highest growth rate, you'd get promoted, and so they were competing with each other.Now, obviously, you don't want to go for growth at the expense of anything else. Obviously you'd want to have things like the environment, and equality, and all those things, especially in Europe, it's a rich country, they don't just want to go for growth, growth, growth only. But if you did something like that where you gave the member states of the EU more latitude to do their local policies and to set their local regulations of things like the internet and AI, and then you use them as laboratories and copy and try to disseminate best practice, so that if Sweden figures something out, Greece can do it too, I think that would play to Europe's strength, because Draghi can write a million reports, but Europe is never going to become the “United States of Europe.” Its history and ethno-nationalism is too fragmented. You'll just break it apart if you try.The European elites will just keep grousing, “We need more Europe! More Europe!” but they won't get it. They'll get marginally more, a little bit more. Instead, they should consider playing to Europe's natural strengths and using the interstate competitive effects, and also laboratory effects like policy experimentation, to create a new development strategy, something a little bit different than what they're thinking now. So that's my instinct of what they should do.Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Micro Reads▶ Business/ Economics* Behind OpenAI's Audacious Plan to Make A.I. Flow Like Electricity - NYT* OpenAI Pitched White House on Unprecedented Data Center Buildout - Bberg* OpenAI Executives Exit as C.E.O. Works to Make the Company For-Profit - NYT* OpenAI to Become For-Profit Company - WSJ* Mark Zuckerberg's AI Vision Makes Metaverse a Slightly Easier Sell - WSJ* Intel's Foundry Shake-Up Doesn't Go Far Enough - WSJ* OpenAI CTO Mira Murati Is Leaving the Company - Wired* Meta unveils augmented reality glasses prototype ‘Orion' - FT▶ Policy/Politics* The Schumer Permitting Exception for Semiconductors - WSJ Opinion* Biden breaks with environmentalists, House Dems on chip bill - Politico* Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics - NYT▶ AI/Digital* I Built a Chatbot to Replace Me. It Went a Little Wild. - WSJ* Meta's answer to ChatGPT is AI that sounds like John Cena or Judi Dench - Wapo* Want AI that flags hateful content? Build it. - MIT* The Celebrities Lending Their Voices to Meta's New AI - WSJ▶ Biotech/Health* Why do obesity drugs seem to treat so many other ailments? - Nature* Antimicrobial resistance is dangerous in more ways than one - FT Opinion* Who's Really Keeping Ozempic and Wegovy Prices So High? - Bberg Opinion▶ Clean Energy/Climate* Microsoft's Three Mile Island Deal Is Great News - Bberg Opinion* China's accelerating green transition - FT* Microsoft's Three Mile Island Deal Isn't a Nuclear Revival — Yet - Bberg Opinion* A Faster, Cheaper Way to Double Power Line Capacity - Spectrum* A Public Path to Building a Star on Earth - Issues▶ Space/Transportation* Hypersonic Weapons — Who Has Them and Why It Matters - Bberg▶ Up Wing/Down Wing* Trump Offers Scare Tactics on Housing. Harris Has a Plan. - Bberg Opinion* The Sun Will Destroy the Earth One Day, Right? Maybe Not. - NYT* How supply chain superheroes have kept world trade flowing - FT Opinion* Can machines be more ‘truthful' than humans? - FT Opinion▶ Substacks/Newsletters* America's supply chains are a disaster waiting to happen - Noahpinion* The OpenAI Pastiche Edition - Hyperdimensional* The Ideas Anticommons - Risk & Progress* Sam Altman Pitches Utopian impact of AI while Accepting UAE Oil Money Funding - AI Supremacy* The Government's War on Starter Homes - The Dispatch* NEPA Nightmares III: The Surry-Skiffes Creek-Whealton Transmission Line - Breakthrough Journal* Dean Ball on AI regulation, "hard tech," and the philosophy of Michael Oakeshott - Virginia's NewsletterFaster, Please! 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 fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

News of MAGA influencers outed as paid assets of Russia hit the headlines today as we learned Tim Pool and a herd of Trumpist turds got paid with piles of Russian cash. Of course, their constant pro-Russia propaganda had nothing to do with that, according to them. The Harris campaign fundraised over $300 million in August, and the Trump side is filling their diapers. Shitler's sentencing date for the hush money case was scheduled for after the election. Man-baby put his legal team on blast over their lack of winning. MAGAT swamp creature Kandiss Taylor, who is a woman who ran for Governor, said women shouldn't be in government. Boebert E. Lee was shellacked in a debate by her rival. The Catholic Church has used Pacific islands as a dumping ground for diddling priests.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 17: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is now claiming that the White House rigged the presidential election in 2020. HE was president in 2020. HE was in the White House. "Zuckerberg admits the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden laptop story, in other words the 2020 presidential election was rigged," Trump writes. I'm telling you: Mijni-strokes. SPEAKING OF WHICH: There's way more to Trump exploiting Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to take smiling thumbs-up selfies while literally standing on the graves of American heroes. An Arlington official tried to stop the photography; a Trumpist allegedly shoved him; the Trump Campaign decided the correct response was to claim the Arlington official was "suffering from a mental health episode."  JACK SMITH OUTWITS THE SUPREME COURT: This one weird trick actually works. He filed his superseding indictment in the Insurrection case in Washington. It's a little more complicated than this, but basically he got around SCOTUS by changing every reference to "President Trump" to "Candidate Trump" and calling the 1/6 Call To Arms a "campaign speech." RAGE IN THE MACHINE: Thousands of newspaper columns were deleted (hundreds at The New York Times alone) when Kamala Harris agreed to her first sit-down interview. It's with Dana Bash on CNN so she still hasn't scheduled one anybody will SEE. The Cook Political Report has moved two more states from "Lean Democrat" to "Likely" and moved North Carolina from "Lean Republican" to "Toss-up." Maybe that's why Trump has agreed to the September 10th debate - or seemed to. The actual words in his acceptance never says he'll actually be there. And we have the first polling on weirdness by party and while the GOP is accurately seen as more weird, the lead is hardly big enough. B-Block (23:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: RW troll blasts Democrats for "not being interested" in the Trump assassination attempt. Turns out all the Democrats on the House committee went to the site survey Monday. Only three of the seven Republicans bothered to. Trump makes the list too after what HR McMaster revealed about the Taliban Trump ordered released. And somebody who made this list in 2007 for indiscretions as a tv reporter is back for mocking Gus Walz while not merely a right wing media nut but also the volleyball coach at a high school with a praised and cherished program for learning-challenged kids. C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 43 years ago now, my television career starts because the late Lou Dobbs had issues keeping his pants on. It's still amazing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jon Tyson, founding and senior pastor of Church of the City in New York, joins me to talk about the urban church in today's world. Tyson discusses:How to deal with the constant population churn in the city?The differences between pre-Covid and post-Covid New YorkHow Covid wiped out 70% of what Tim Keller and others built over the previous 35 years in terms of New York City church plantsThe flow of church planters into New York drying upWhat's unique about Generation Z? Includes that they don't want to plant churches.Why New York is not as different from the rest of the country culturally as it used to be.The impact of the migrant influx on ManhattanThe future of the cultural engagement model of churchWhat he thinks of Trumpist culture war ChristianityHow he talks about flashpoint cultural issuesAdvice for church planters thinking about New York City.Visit Church of the City: https://www.church.nyc/Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Last week, as Israel continued to prosecute its eliminationist war against Palestinians in Gaza, an eclectic group of right-wing bigwigs gathered in Washington, DC for the fourth iteration of the National Conservatism conference — convened by Yarom Hazony, an Israeli-born writer, activist, and former speechwriter for  Benjamin Netanyahu. As our guest, historian Suzanne Schneider, explains, Hazony aspires to export Israel's model of illiberal democracy and dispossession to the nations of the world. And if the embrace of NatCon by American conservatives is any indication, he is succeeding. Nations, for Hazony, derive their legitimacy not from the consent of the governed (which, for Israel, would include disenfranchised Palestinians in the West Bank) but from God, who designated the land of Israel as the home of the Jews. All nations are born of divine covenant, not consent; political community is based on unchosen and inherited obligations extending outward in concentric circles of coercion, from the nuclear family, to the clan, to the tribe, and so on. This slipshod political theology authorizes a world of sovereign, militarized ethno-states, intensely protective of patriarchal prerogatives, and with no obligation to international law, human rights, judicial interference, or constitutional guarantees for religious or racial minorities. If Israel is the God-given home of the Jews, why shouldn't America be the God-given home of white Christians? It's not difficult to perceive the appeal of this vision for NatCon's attendees, including Trumpist senators like Josh Hawley and Mike Lee, Catholic integralists like Gladdin Pappin and Chad Pecknold, racist nativists like Stephen Miller, or Viktor Orbán propagandists like John O'Sullivan. These figures may not all acknowledge or recognize their debt to Israeli Zionism, but they all look with admiration on the impunity with which Israel has treated its Arab subjects, seeing in Israel's contempt for liberal norms, universal rights, and human dignity an aspirational model for America and the globe.Further Reading:Suzanne Schneider, "Light Among the Nations," Jewish Currents, Sept 28, 2023— "How Israel's Illiberal Democracy Became a Model for the Right," Dissent, Spring 2024. — "Beyond Athens and Jerusalem," Strange Matters, Spring 2024.— "A Note on Means and Ends," Dr. Small Talk (Suzanne's Substack), Feb 4, 2024.Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism (2018).— Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022).Sarah Jones, "The Authoritarian Plot (Live from NatCon 4)," New York Magazine, Jul 14, 2024.Further Listening:KYE, The Rise of Illiberal Right, Jul 2019.KYE, Return of the National Conservatives, Nov 2021....and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

SERIES 2 EPISODE 183: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is becoming increasingly obvious that Trump and the authoritarians seeking to overthrow democracy in the United States and install him as dictator for life and then enact the equivalent of ethnic cleansing… have made the choice to let everybody KNOW… that they are seeking to overthrow the democracy in the United States and install him as dictator and then enact the equivalent of ethnic cleansing. You may recall him summoning most of the fossil fuel industry of this country to Mar-a-Lago in April and essentially demanding they put one billion dollars into his campaign so he can eliminate virtually all the restrictions on their businesses as they try to destroy the planet faster. Now The Washington Post reports that early THIS month he summoned most of the big money donors to the Republicans and other fascists to the Pierre Hotel here in New York and was essentially demanding they increase THEIR donations by a factor of 25 or 50 so he can eliminate virtually all TAXES on their businesses and incomes… A businessman, he told them, had offered a donation of a million dollars to his campaign, in exchange for lunch. The Post's sources quote Trump as replying “I'm not having lunch. You've got to make it 25 million.” Then there was the donor who normally gave two to three million. “He told the donor that he wanted a 25 million dollar or 50 million dollar contribution or he would not be, quote ‘very happy'. It's blackmail. Give me the money I want – 25 times as much as you planned – or else. It's kinda Robert DeNiro, in "The Untouchables," playing Al Capone, carrying around a baseball bat. Which is funny because who showed up at the trial yesterday but DeNiro and suddenly the Trumpists are enraged that anybody would dare bring people TO the courthouse! If this unvarnished, unrestrained, undeniable corruption were not obvious enough that Trump just doesn't GIVE a shit any more – you're not going to shame him, you're not going to restrain him, you're not going to prosecute him – he's decided it's us or him… there's the SECOND part. Trump posted a video – another one of these fig leaf deniable videos: HE didn't MAKE the video, he just POSSSSSSTED this video. And so the threats in the video, nominally directed at Joe Scarborough, that Trump will "get rid of all you offing liberals; you liberals are gone" aren't Trump's threats.  Except, of course they are. Because Trump has called his opponents vermin and vowed to get rid of them. And expel all the immigrants. And put them in concentration camps. And use the army. And use the cops. And if you can do that, you can point at Joe Scarborough and say "YOU are now defined as an immigrant. Get in the camp." And that... is ethnic cleansing. B-Block (30:49) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Renfield-ification of Lindsey Graham is complete. Speaker Mike Johnson is stalling on the installation of a Capitol plaque honoring the police from January 6th. And Pastor Shane Vaughn has news for you: Jesus was a millionaire. C-Block (41:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since yesterday was the saga of the 45th anniversary of my college graduation, today must be the saga of the class I nearly failed because the professor was mad because the quarterback of his favorite football team fumbled away a victory in the final minute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 183: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Today would be a good day to convict Donald J. Trump. The jury in his Stormy Daniels Hush Money/Election Interference case may get the case as soon as this afternoon and then they could deliver the only verdict not materially interfered with by a judge – or JUDGES – that Trump himself appointed. The country, the world, keeps emphasizing in succession the unprecedented nature of Trump's indictment, arrest, arraignment, mugshot, trial, artist sketch, jury selection, defense, witnesses, objections, fart-naps and today, closing statements… but for some reason they leave the other unprecedented reality OUT – that our court system IS rigged, that it IS rigged, BY Trump, FOR Trump, with three judges HE put on the Supreme Court until they die or resign delaying and subverting justice in THOSE cases, and an unqualified former Yoga Correspondent for the Miami Neuvo Herald he appointed to FEDERAL Court brazenly and openly stalling and trying to SABOTAGE the espionage case against him in THAT case. THAT is what is unprecedented about the prosecution of Donald Trump. THAT his appointees are interfering with the attempts to bring him to justice and we may never know if he appointed them only on the assurance that they would do EXACTLY what they are doing now when and if it came to this… and what Trump means when he says the New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office and Justice Juan Merchan's courtroom are rigged against him – what he MEANS is… they are NOT rigged for him. I'll look at the legal stuff as the case moves inexorably towards the jury. ALSO: We get comic relief from the Libertarian Party (Trump came close to - in an Aphasia haze - calling them The Libyan Party) and we find out that The Washington Post was good enough to sit on the Alito Flag story for just 1,222 days (the final nine AFTER The New York Times had already broken it) and wouldn't even run it even on the soft premise that it really WAS Martha-Ann Alito's dispute with the neighbors.  I will sing about it. B-Block (29:47) SPORTSCENTERCENTRAL: In memory of perhaps the most beloved man in sports: Bill Walton. Everyone has their Bill Walton story, I'll tell you mine. (36:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rishi Sunak's campaign handlers clearly want him to lose reelection in the UK. Nick Fuentes complains J.D. Vance isn't white enough (never realizing that none of the Trumpist really think anybody named 'Fuentes' could be white). And Fred Trump praised Hitler? I heard it on C-SPAN! C-Block (43:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 45 long years ago today I shocked my professors and relieved my suspicious parents by graduating from Cornell University. And I've had the dream where I DON'T graduate an average of once a week every year since. It used to be a stress dream. Lately it's turned into an amazing revelation about how your mind really works (or at least: how mine does).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brad Raffensperger, who holds the usually low-profile office of secretary of state in Georgia, became famous after he recorded a phone call with Donald Trump. Shortly after the 2020 election, Trump demanded that Georgia officials “find 11,780 votes” so that he could win the state. The recorded phone conversation is a linchpin in the Fulton County racketeering case against Trump. Refusing that demand, Raffensperger—a lifelong Republican—received death threats from enraged Trumpists, and the state senate still wants to investigate him for it. But the politician tells David Remnick that he hasn't lost faith in his party. He believes he can convince election deniers of the fairness of Georgia's methods. And, by the way, that story line on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” about the Georgia crime of giving a person water while they wait in line to vote? Raffensperger has a suggestion for Larry David.