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give us a like and review on your favorite podcast

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app. With all that out of the

0:21

way, on to the show. What's

0:49

your agenda, Shadi? Your

0:53

article bothered me a little bit. Yeah.

0:55

But before we

0:58

get into that, maybe you should just

1:00

share with our dear listeners and viewers.

1:03

What exactly you wrote and why

1:05

you wrote it? And

1:07

maybe help us understand your

1:09

state of mind a little

1:11

bit better at this point in

1:14

your life, at this point in American

1:16

politics. Why do you want to

1:18

hurt Shadi so much? Tell us, Demir. Are

1:21

dark place? No.

1:24

No, why? Was that a dark essay? It

1:27

was not. It was good. I thought it was pretty positive,

1:29

but go on. Please tell us. Ends with Lincoln. Lincoln

1:31

is good. Lincoln is the best. I

1:35

don't know. I guess

1:37

it's complicated. It's sort of

1:39

like many things, like usually

1:41

when you end up writing anything. I

1:45

don't know. I feel like it's something we've been

1:47

discussing for a very long time on this podcast.

1:49

So it's actually not an essay out of character

1:51

at all, which is that I

1:55

don't know, that Trump is

1:57

sort of a symptom, not a

1:59

cause, a symptom of

2:01

deeper things in society. And

2:05

I guess, I guess I was prompted,

2:08

Shadi, I think it was, we

2:10

were at that dinner at our, at

2:12

our friend's house and we, you

2:14

might have even brought it up on a

2:17

podcast once, I don't remember, but I think,

2:19

I definitely remember at the dinner, you said,

2:21

no, come on Demir, you think. you know,

2:23

all this Trump stuff's terrible. And I just,

2:26

you know, sort of over -protested saying, no,

2:28

no, it's great. I'm still in for the

2:30

ride. But I was sort of trying to

2:32

think through that. And like I said in

2:35

the essay, someone on Twitter challenged me about

2:37

my earlier sort of ebullience about what Trump

2:39

represents, especially for conservatism. and

2:41

whether I regretted any of that early

2:44

ebullience. And I guess it's

2:46

less about enthusiasm, but more about this

2:48

feeling that... The ebullience means happiness, by

2:50

the way. It means enthusiasm for those

2:52

who are wondering. Shoddy

2:55

GPT. Yeah,

3:03

so is it fair to say to me

3:05

that you were happy in the early days

3:07

of Trump? I guess what I'm

3:10

saying is that I was giddy,

3:12

and I'm still sort of giddy, I think is the

3:14

right way to put it. I think that's probably

3:16

a fair way to put it. Giddy,

3:19

dizzy with joy. Yeah, you

3:21

are the only one who's giddy at

3:24

this point, Tamir. I'm not sure that's

3:26

true. I mean, the Trumpists are giddy. They're

3:28

happy. Okay. Stephen Miller is giddy. I'm sure

3:30

he's super happy. Put aside the

3:32

dyed -in -the -will mega types.

3:34

Yeah. Look, I

3:36

mean, I guess my challenge to you

3:38

guys is, do you think we could

3:40

be existing in a different world? And

3:43

I think that's where the essay is.

3:45

is the jumping off point is, you

3:47

know, could it have been otherwise? And

3:51

certainly, I mean, I grant that it

3:53

wasn't such an overwhelming victory. It's very

3:55

easy to imagine that, you know, had

3:59

things just played out somewhat differently in

4:01

the campaign, had Biden stepped down

4:03

earlier, had they had a, you

4:05

know, different candidate, but even

4:07

not even a different candidate like

4:09

just it had things lined up

4:11

somewhat differently lined up somewhat differently

4:14

you could have a President Harris

4:16

right now and I guess my

4:18

contention is that that That would

4:20

have solved nothing in the bigger

4:22

picture and we'd be in some variant

4:24

of where we are right now Maybe not

4:26

with Trump alive. Maybe Trump would be dead

4:28

at this point or in four years from

4:30

now or or however But it just feels

4:33

like All of this stuff is, you know,

4:35

in the mail and we have to go

4:37

through it. We can't avoid it. I guess

4:39

is my my ultimate feeling that was driving

4:41

the essay. Now, the essay sort

4:43

of, I mean, we can talk about the specifics

4:45

in it. Yeah. And of course, link

4:48

to this link in the show notes,

4:50

everyone should take a look and give

4:52

it a read. Before we dive in,

4:54

though, can you just give us a

4:56

sense of your assessment of Trump's first

4:58

hundred days if you had to condense

5:00

the experience? in just,

5:02

you know, 30 seconds to a minute,

5:05

what would be the overall Demir take?

5:07

Just so I know. Tough assignment more

5:09

precisely where you're coming from. Idiots,

5:11

I think that's my one my one word

5:14

take on like a bunch of fucking idiots.

5:17

I think, you

5:20

know, two more

5:22

words, drunk revolutionaries, stupid drunk revolutionaries,

5:24

maybe those three words for you.

5:28

I it's

5:31

But there have been many surprises and

5:34

they've all been on the level

5:36

of, wow, I didn't think we

5:38

could really put people that stupid, that high open

5:40

power. And while

5:43

it's been fascinating to watch what

5:45

exactly happens if you pull on

5:47

that lever at just that time

5:49

with that much violence and what

5:51

destructions comes of it, but ultimately

5:53

I think that's my main assessment

5:55

of it. Just

5:59

you know mind -boggling decisions With at

6:01

the heart of it being I think

6:03

the the whole tariff song and dance

6:05

which just continues to amuse and amaze

6:07

But yeah, that's that's my assessment. I

6:09

don't know how about why don't you

6:11

guys give give me yours as well

6:13

since we're doing this. Let's not Who

6:16

cares about my assessment? What do you

6:18

think Christine? Well, how do you how

6:20

did you how did you live through

6:22

the first hundred days? Well,

6:26

first of all, I just want to

6:28

clarify, do we mean drunk in sort

6:30

of a metaphysical sense? Or like, you

6:32

know, Pete Hegseth asked, just like,

6:35

actually drunk? Because I he's a

6:37

teetotaler, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's

6:39

the main thing. I mean, one trusts Pete

6:41

Hegseth more than Donald Trump in that regard.

6:44

Never trust someone who doesn't drink as

6:46

a matter of principle, right? That's

6:48

messed up, Demir. I'm not sure I'd

6:51

go that far. I'd say

6:53

trust neither of them. I

6:56

think that

6:58

the first

7:01

100 days have

7:03

been, the first word that jumped

7:05

to my mind was tiring. And

7:09

I think that the first 100

7:11

days of the first Trump administration

7:13

were tiring too. But

7:16

in a sort of like

7:18

shock and all way, like there

7:20

was too much happening from the Trump

7:22

administration, but also too much happening from

7:24

or rather a lot happening on the

7:27

resistance side and so like just everything

7:29

seemed to be happening all at once.

7:31

This time there's too much

7:34

happening from the Trump administration

7:36

and the public is mostly

7:38

just tired period. Too

7:40

tired to resist, too tired

7:43

to follow the news, just sort

7:45

of exhausted by it all in

7:47

a way that feels different from

7:49

the first Trump administration. And then

7:52

the second thing, I

7:56

would also say cruel. I

7:59

think, and again, this, you

8:01

could have said this about the Trump administration, the

8:04

first Trump administration, but that administration

8:06

was kind of hapless. Like

8:09

it was trying to do things,

8:11

but like some of its policies

8:13

were enacted kind of accidentally. And,

8:15

you know, if they had sort

8:17

of cruel outputs, they were almost

8:20

accidental. But this administration

8:22

just seems determined

8:25

to be visibly,

8:27

mimetically unkind on

8:30

purpose, is not

8:32

a bashed at it at all,

8:34

is in fact doing more than

8:36

last time. And I

8:38

think that's also a

8:41

visible shift from the last time

8:43

and something that this 100 days spent about.

8:45

could come up with that cruelty as the point

8:47

last term, right? So... He did, yeah.

8:49

And I actually think that he... Jump the

8:51

gun. Might have jumped the gun on that.

8:56

Shadi, what's your what's your quick take

8:58

before we start picking stuff apart? Yeah,

9:02

so I might disagree with Christine a little

9:04

bit about the lack of resistance. I thought

9:06

that initially in the first few weeks. But

9:09

I do I have sort of

9:12

been heartened by there is a kind of

9:14

energy that's returned. It's not in the same

9:16

way that it was. during

9:18

the first term, which was much

9:20

more vocal and public and in

9:22

the form of protests, large protests.

9:25

But when I look at what the courts

9:27

are doing, how they are

9:29

the kind of line of defense against

9:32

the Trump administration's excesses, and how that's

9:34

kind of inspiring that I wake up

9:36

every day now and I think to

9:39

myself, thank God for the judicial branch,

9:41

thank God for judges. And

9:44

I mean, there isn't really a third

9:46

branch anymore. So we're now in this

9:48

kind of odd moment of only two

9:50

branches of government that are co -equal.

9:53

And now they're sort of at loggerheads

9:55

with each other, as we've talked about

9:57

in previous podcasts. And

10:00

I think there is an energy

10:02

in a certain part of the

10:05

Democratic Party. It's really not the

10:07

Democratic Party at all, considering that

10:09

it's mostly Bernie Sanders and AOC

10:11

and a few other folks. going

10:14

across the nation and bringing

10:16

out these very large crowds,

10:18

10 ,000, 20 ,000, 30

10:20

,000 in places you wouldn't

10:22

expect, a massive rally in

10:24

Salt Lake City of all

10:26

places. So I

10:29

think that people understand

10:32

the gravity of the moment in a

10:34

way they didn't a few months ago,

10:36

and that's leading people to say, well,

10:38

okay, we're tired, we're exhausted.

10:41

But we have to do something

10:43

and I'm sort of in that camp

10:46

that I would never consider myself a

10:48

resistance person I was actually very critical

10:50

of the idea of being in a

10:52

resistance mode, but I've been radicalized by

10:55

the last couple months and I've sort

10:57

of I feel I feel

10:59

myself returning to my roots as

11:01

kind of a left -wing populist

11:03

that I'm again enamored by Bernie

11:05

Sanders and what he represents that

11:08

we need something vigorous and unapologetic

11:11

And this sort of gets to what you said in

11:13

your, wait, actually, it's not your piece.

11:15

I've read a bunch of pieces at the same

11:18

time earlier today. Sorry. It

11:20

was actually Ross Douthat's piece from last year,

11:23

Donald Trump, Men of Destiny, where

11:25

he says that Democrats, if

11:28

they're serious, have to return

11:30

the favor, that Democrats, that

11:32

Republicans and what Trump represents

11:34

is world historical. And

11:37

Democrats can't just be the party of

11:39

normalcy. They have to be able to

11:41

strive for something that meets the moment.

11:44

And I feel like whatever you think

11:46

about someone like Bernie Sanders, he does

11:48

aspire to something greater. So anyway, just

11:51

to say, I've been, this

11:53

is, this is all worse than I

11:55

thought. And I have to maybe acknowledge

11:57

that. I did get some things wrong.

11:59

I maybe underestimated Trump. no

12:02

I mean no wow Oh,

12:04

congratulations. Come on. We

12:06

were saying that. Sorry. Wait, Demir, what

12:09

do you you don't think that's that's

12:11

not I'm just saying you should never you should

12:13

never never admit anything. This is one thing you

12:15

could have learned from Trump, I guess. Whatever.

12:19

But I think on the podcast, the

12:21

point, this is not the new podcast.

12:24

Fair enough. Go on. Be honest. Be

12:26

honest with your failures. Not yet. No

12:28

promises. I thought Trump would be bad

12:30

and I thought he would be authoritarian.

12:33

I didn't but I didn't think he would go as

12:35

far as he did and on the speech stuff. Would

12:38

you say that you didn't

12:40

imagine that the leopards would

12:42

eat your face? Okay,

12:46

I don't know exactly what that means in

12:48

this context. Okay.

12:51

Can you say a little bit more, Christine? No,

12:55

I mean, it's a meme going

12:57

around. Oh. You know,

12:59

actually, I think it's been going

13:01

around for a long time, but,

13:03

you know, women who voted for

13:05

the leopards eating people's faces party,

13:08

sobs. I didn't believe that the leopards

13:10

would eat my face. think I

13:12

know what you're talking about. And this

13:14

is why I try to remind people

13:17

who maybe have misremembered the past. I

13:19

came out publicly reluctantly for Kamala Harris,

13:21

including in a debate that we did

13:23

here on Wisdom of Crowds with our

13:26

friend Haroun Mogul, where I laid out

13:28

the case for why Arabs and Muslims

13:30

and progressives and anyone else should just

13:32

suck it up and vote for Kamala,

13:35

despite all of their reservations. So I'm

13:37

glad. So I can point

13:39

to a record, granted I wasn't enthusiastic

13:41

about Kabla Harris, but I think that's justified. Nor

13:43

should you be. Nor should you be Yeah, exactly.

13:46

Nobody in America was enthusiastic

13:48

about her, and that's what

13:50

we get, maybe to Demir's

13:52

point. Right, it gets

13:55

back to that question, right?

13:57

It's like, I agree

14:01

with you, Shadi,

14:03

about the only

14:06

energy being AOC. and

14:08

Bernie. And

14:10

quite frankly, they're insofar

14:12

as they are only

14:14

rallying people at this point. They're doing it

14:16

the right way, which is just, I

14:19

mean, it's the way

14:21

that the Russian opposition

14:24

leader, Alexei Navalny, basically did

14:26

it, which is just called these people

14:28

thieves and crooks and liars, and not

14:30

really you know, lean into whatever positive

14:32

agenda I think Bernie and AOC have,

14:34

which is not likely to be all

14:37

that popular, quite frankly. So,

14:39

you know, just to sort of do that, it is

14:41

sort of a mystery why other Democrats haven't joined them

14:43

in that. Like, and

14:46

maybe that's for a different episode, we

14:48

can talk why, why Democrats are so,

14:50

so ham -fisted on it. But I

14:52

think that where I agree with you,

14:54

and I don't know, Christine, if you're

14:56

there as well, is this idea that,

14:58

and this is really is what I think

15:00

is driving was what drove my piece that

15:02

I just wrote is this idea that there's

15:04

no going back, that

15:07

even had we elected Kamala

15:09

Harris, not

15:11

sure that that

15:14

would have stabilized things in any

15:16

meaningful way. And so this idea,

15:19

especially after what Trump has been

15:21

able to do to sort of

15:23

the institutional balance in this country, The

15:26

idea that we can have like normal

15:28

politics after this is just not very

15:31

likely so you know the the biggest

15:33

losers in this is the Democratic

15:35

Party of Nancy Pelosi like that

15:37

that entire sort of institutional thing

15:39

and We still don't know

15:42

what's what's going to take its place if it's

15:44

going to be the the party of AOC or

15:46

like the party of a different kind of authoritarian

15:48

like Rahm Emanuel or something like that, but Well,

15:51

so I want you to elucidate a little

15:53

bit more for our listeners. What exactly do

15:55

you think couldn't go on like this? I

15:57

mean, I understand what you're saying that Kamala,

16:00

electing Kamala would have been sort of

16:02

kicking whatever issues America is struggling with

16:04

right now, you know, down,

16:07

kicking the can down the road and administration or

16:09

two, they would still be there. What

16:11

are the specific things that would be

16:13

there? Is it immigration? Is

16:15

it economic inequality? Like

16:18

what are... Just the sort of

16:20

general feel. There's two,

16:22

I mean. The The vibes, yeah. Yeah,

16:24

I mean. vibes. I don't know,

16:26

vibes. But I suppose, I suppose

16:29

if you have to use like

16:31

that term for something, I

16:33

guess I just put

16:35

it the extent to

16:37

which Steve Bannon's, what the

16:39

speech that he's said to

16:41

have written, the American carnage

16:44

speech, I think that

16:46

that is a rallying cry. the

16:48

salience of that as a rallying

16:51

cry would not have been eased

16:53

by four years of, you know,

16:55

old guard democratic rule. I guess

16:58

that's the simplest way to put

17:00

it. And the

17:02

question, I think it's

17:04

the wrong question to ask whether

17:06

Trump

17:09

slash Bannon's American carnage

17:11

speech reflects an

17:13

objective like scientific reality of

17:15

what America is. It's whether

17:17

it's politically potent. And

17:21

as long as it's politically potent, I

17:23

think that you have this kind of

17:25

politics existing. You can't wish that

17:27

away. And I don't think that the old Democrats,

17:30

not just because Biden is old, but

17:33

I think, you know, that entire party

17:35

was capable of defanging any of that.

17:37

I just, I guess that's my sort

17:39

of feeling. So yes, immigration, economics,

17:41

I'd add to that all sorts of

17:43

foreign policy. questions

17:45

that would have come up over time.

17:49

I mean, quite frankly, we saw Gaza

17:51

rip apart Democrats. And,

17:54

you know, I think like

17:56

Ukraine on on life support for

17:58

another four years, that would have probably

18:00

blown up at some point, the whole question of Europe.

18:03

And those are the things that I follow

18:05

very closely. So I could like go more

18:08

in depth on that. I mean, none of

18:10

that would have been. like

18:12

even moved a little bit to being solved under

18:14

Democrats, I guess, is my feeling. I

18:17

do feel that you're looking at

18:19

like a slow kind of grind

18:22

for four more years and then whatever

18:24

comes after that also bad, I guess

18:26

is my prediction. I mean, it's an

18:28

assertion. I can't prove it, obviously. I

18:30

mean, also bad, definitely. I

18:32

do think I'm joking, but not

18:35

totally joking here that like four

18:37

to eight years of sort of

18:40

Kamala Harris led Democratic Party with,

18:42

you know, a tech alliance could

18:44

have eased us into a sort

18:47

of brave new world desk, Soma

18:50

-induced quiescence, once AI had grown up

18:52

a little bit and the internet was

18:55

given, the internet and sort of mega

18:57

tech corporations were given even more power

18:59

over our lives. But I guess that

19:02

doesn't escape the issues. That

19:04

just sort of buries them.

19:06

in an uglier way. a prediction. That's

19:09

how the politics of that would work out.

19:11

Again, that's really hard to predict. And I

19:13

mean, we may see it now, you know,

19:15

as these things sort of hit their stride

19:17

under Trump, right? And then who knows what

19:20

that'll do to that? I mean, I think

19:22

those are like exogenous factors. But sorry, Shadi,

19:24

were saying. But Damir, here's the quibble, though,

19:26

that if Kamala had won, it would mean

19:28

that there wouldn't have been a second Trump

19:30

term. And that could have made maybe not

19:32

all the difference, but a lot of difference.

19:35

And because no one in the Republican Party

19:37

is able to replicate what Trump is able

19:39

to do. And I think

19:42

that authoritarianism of the sort that

19:44

many Republicans now believe in, it

19:46

needs to be tempered by a

19:48

kind of humor, a lightness,

19:50

a charm, the charisma that only

19:53

Trump has. I don't think JD

19:55

Vance could do exactly or something

19:57

even similar, really, at least

19:59

with the same success that Trump is currently

20:01

doing. And so I do feel that

20:04

there is something so unique and singular

20:06

about Donald Trump and what he is

20:08

that if we had just been able

20:11

to cordon him off for four more

20:13

years, it wouldn't have solved problems. But

20:16

it would have prevented it. We

20:19

would have just had a very

20:21

different future for the Republican Party

20:23

and and for the next kind

20:25

of stage of leadership. That's

20:27

one thing I would say. But

20:30

just to kind of drive

20:32

a certain point home a little

20:34

bit more, I don't think your

20:36

argument, as I understand it, Damir,

20:38

at least in your piece, is

20:41

just that it couldn't have been otherwise. I

20:44

mean, the title of the piece is We

20:46

Deserved It. So I think you're

20:49

saying something a little bit more

20:51

provocative that there's something that

20:53

we have committed sins as a

20:56

nation and you actually do use

20:58

the word sins and you use

21:00

religious language and imagery and you're

21:02

making a quasi religious argument that

21:04

there is a kind of like

21:06

cosmic justice a kind of

21:09

mystical reality that we have

21:11

to acknowledge that Trump in

21:13

some sense was ushered

21:15

in by forces beyond our

21:17

understanding, and we can

21:19

call them spiritual, yeah, spiritual, cosmic,

21:22

religious, whatever it might be, and

21:24

he would have been ushered in

21:26

because of what we had done. You

21:29

say that, I think fairly explicitly, and I

21:31

want you to account for an argument which

21:33

I think is a little bit nuts. Like,

21:37

it's not a reasonable argument. I

21:39

mean, it's a very clever one.

21:41

It's an interesting one. It's interesting

21:44

and not disprovable, most importantly. I

21:46

mean, it's mystical, so it doesn't have to be

21:48

reasonable in the way that you understand it, Shadi.

21:51

Yeah, true. But also, Demir's not a

21:53

believer, so it's just interesting to me

21:55

that all of a sudden now he's

21:58

appealing to religion to explain Trump. Well,

22:00

I mean, I think

22:03

you can get at this. Like

22:09

2018 I wrote that an essay

22:11

that I sort of keep coming back

22:13

to which really I do feel like

22:15

aged pretty well Which is about that,

22:17

you know, you can trace Trump's antecedents

22:19

going back to I mean you can

22:21

chase trace it back to Nixon if

22:24

you really really want to but you

22:26

can pretty much trace it back to Pat

22:28

Buchanan speech in 1991 And

22:30

so then there's like a logic, sort

22:32

of a bipartisan political logic that plays

22:34

out since then. And I think that

22:37

would be the, an argument

22:39

I've played many a time before,

22:41

and that's the secular version of

22:43

the argument. And so one could

22:45

say that, you know, this is

22:47

another attempt at writing this out

22:49

in a different register. If you

22:51

want to strip away all the

22:54

religious stuff, that's your argument there.

22:57

And it's one of you

23:00

know, total complicity and about political decay

23:02

and that this is the end result

23:04

of political decay. Again, I don't know,

23:06

you guys know me well enough. This

23:08

is sort of the stuff I end

23:11

up swimming in. But then,

23:13

you know, the, it's

23:16

a friend was reading Jeremiah and I

23:18

had not read it. So I went

23:21

and jumped ahead in

23:23

my Bible reading and read that book of

23:25

the Bible, and there's some good stuff in

23:27

there. You know, basically

23:31

Old Testament, old

23:33

timey prophet, unhappy, very

23:35

angry God, wrathful. Yeah,

23:38

Old Testament stuff, as they call it. And

23:41

some, you know, good stuff. And it just got me,

23:43

again, thinking about how, you

23:45

know, we think about

23:48

and talk about politics, especially when

23:50

catastrophe befalls us. And

23:53

again, like I said in the essay, then I

23:55

ended up reading another, you know, I

23:57

guess, he can be,

23:59

he can be classed as a

24:02

religious writer. He certainly thought of

24:04

himself as, you know, a proud

24:06

Catholic after the French Revolution, Joseph

24:08

Domestika, but, you know, he's also

24:10

well known as a sort of,

24:12

you know, one of

24:14

the great grandfathers of, you know,

24:16

proto -fascist kind of thinkers. And

24:20

he's writing about the French Revolution, which

24:22

to him is like one of the

24:24

greatest catastrophes ever. But he comes up

24:26

with an even more interesting sort of

24:28

way to think about it, which is

24:30

tied to lack of free will. And

24:32

again, as you guys know, since we've

24:34

talked about it, that's another little fascination

24:36

of mine. The whole question

24:39

of, you know, insofar

24:41

as we think about things in religious

24:44

terms, how do you, how do you

24:46

account for free will? And, you know,

24:48

there's different traditions. Different traditions do it

24:50

different ways, but I'm always Attracted to

24:52

it when when in the Christian tradition

24:54

There's less free will and then that

24:56

just took me literally the day I

24:58

was writing I think it was Jason

25:00

Willick said to me so I go

25:03

you this sounds all really interesting You

25:05

should go reread Lincoln's second inaugural and

25:07

I did and that it's it's just

25:09

incredible It's really worth rereading Every so

25:11

often and just reading it closely just it

25:13

jumped out at me even more and I

25:16

think Lincoln does you know Probably,

25:19

you know easily

25:21

our greatest statesman our

25:23

greatest political order our

25:25

most intelligent, you know

25:28

thoughtful philosophical president How

25:30

he weaves together a

25:32

lot of these themes

25:35

about providence About the

25:37

unknowability of God's will I

25:39

think that's probably the most

25:41

important thing that I wanted to

25:44

take away from this and and

25:46

therefore, you know maybe this

25:48

is Christine, why you said, you know, you didn't find

25:50

it all that depressing, is that like, you know, what

25:53

I took away from rereading the second

25:55

inaugural there and sort of trying to

25:57

think through the fact that, you know,

26:00

we're all complicit in the politics that brings

26:02

us Donald Trump, is that as long as

26:04

we hold on to this idea that, you

26:06

know, we all share some complicity and don't

26:08

fall into a kind of righteous mode of

26:10

like, you know, However,

26:14

again, however obviously repellent and grotesque

26:16

the Trump administration is, but as

26:18

long as we share in some

26:21

of the responsibility of how we

26:23

got here together, that's our way

26:26

out. And so that's basically

26:28

the essay. So I'm not sure what

26:30

you didn't like so much about Shadi,

26:32

except the lack of free will, which

26:34

probably the... Yeah, that's a big issue. Yeah.

26:37

Tell us more about that, Shadi. Yeah.

26:40

Well, I mean, I'm a... strong

26:42

believer in free will. I

26:45

do worry that certain

26:48

kinds of arguments are

26:50

cop outs by attributing

26:52

to these impersonal

26:55

forces like history and

26:57

saying that history moves

26:59

in particular ways and

27:01

we don't have control

27:03

over it, that we're

27:05

almost slaves to a certain

27:07

kind of historical trajectory, whether it's

27:09

progress, whether it's regression, whether

27:12

it's something in between. And

27:14

this idea that we

27:16

don't really have agency

27:18

and that individuals don't make

27:21

choices. I

27:23

mean, basically to me, as far as I can tell,

27:25

you're saying that we're prisoners

27:27

to world historical forces beyond our

27:29

control. So that's my major objection

27:31

that I simply don't believe that.

27:34

Well, are you saying I have

27:36

actually two questions there one for you shoddy

27:39

and one for Demir a clarifying one

27:41

for Demir first in this piece then

27:43

are you actually saying that we're prisoners to

27:45

sort of world historical forces or simply to

27:47

just like mistakes that have been made in

27:50

the past of American politics that were just

27:52

probably going to come haunt us at some

27:54

point and now they're here like maybe they

27:56

didn't all have to show up at the

27:58

same time in the person of Donald

28:00

Trump and in this administration, but they

28:03

were all They're like, we kicked a

28:05

ball at one point in American history.

28:08

It's going to roll back

28:10

around in one way or

28:13

another. Or are you ascribing

28:15

the arrival of Trump in

28:17

this administration as part of

28:19

a greater sort of, I

28:22

know, world revolutionary kind of

28:24

trend in history? You

28:27

want me to answer that I

28:29

don't think obviously. Yeah, there's anything

28:31

like that. And anyway, look, yeah,

28:33

let me let me let me

28:36

just answer it that way again,

28:38

this is why why the the

28:40

Lincoln You know rereading the second

28:42

inaugural is so good is because

28:44

you know, it's it's an incredibly

28:46

elegant way to I

28:50

think preserve the right amount

28:52

of agency and preserve the

28:54

right amount of humility, because

28:56

I think what's particularly repellent

28:58

to me about modernity and

29:00

the sort of way, you

29:03

know, I think that you can boil

29:05

down what you said, Shadi, into kind

29:07

of, I think... -dimensional or like a

29:10

very two -dimensional sort of way is

29:12

like we are agents we are you

29:14

know agents of control in history and

29:16

we are change agents we have intimate

29:19

personal responsibility for all this at the

29:21

other and therefore we must you know

29:23

like I don't know it's that it's

29:26

that kind of like I don't know

29:28

dumb individualism now I know you didn't

29:30

I know I know you didn't say

29:33

that but I'm just saying that's the

29:35

danger of you know of your counter

29:37

to what I'm getting at. That's all.

29:39

I didn't mean that you're that. And

29:43

what's so remarkable

29:45

about Lincoln's formulation

29:47

is that he

29:49

is, in the

29:52

same breath, acknowledging

29:54

the unique evil

29:57

of slavery, in

30:00

the same breath as

30:02

acknowledging the horrific evil

30:04

of, you know, war

30:06

of pitting brother against

30:08

brother and and in

30:11

no way ultimately saying

30:13

we in the north

30:15

are the righteous ones

30:17

in this but in

30:19

fact the entire country

30:21

is being punished by

30:23

this war for a

30:25

collective you know sin

30:27

that that that we

30:29

have that we have

30:31

perpetuated and so Ultimately,

30:34

it's that passage where he says, you know,

30:37

we all fervently pray

30:40

that these horrors will

30:42

end soon. But,

30:44

you know, our prayers

30:47

may go unanswered because actually

30:49

the actual scope of justice

30:51

and how it will play

30:53

out is not visible to

30:55

us. So it injects

30:58

a level of humility to

31:00

it, which is to say,

31:02

We don't know, basically, what

31:04

the actual plot is, and

31:06

it would be very presumptuous

31:08

to assume that we do.

31:11

Whereas, you know, that

31:13

level of humility, just, I

31:15

mean, you know, even in

31:18

normal folk understandings of the

31:20

Civil War, that level of

31:22

complexity and nuance doesn't shine

31:24

through. like, but it's very

31:27

much there in the second

31:29

inaugural. It's really impressive. So

31:32

that's my answer to Christine, I guess,

31:34

is that, no, it's not like some

31:36

sort of world historical thing, or I

31:38

mean, I would just maybe put it

31:40

differently. It's more like, I'm

31:42

not sure that it would be

31:45

akin to blasphemy to declare one

31:47

way or the other on it,

31:49

or at least hubris,

31:53

not blasphemy. It'd be hubristic to declare one

31:55

way or the other because we have no

31:58

claim to be able to know of like

32:00

where all of this is going. And

32:03

at the same time though, you know, back

32:05

to Lincoln and the other part that I think

32:07

is important, he was not saying,

32:09

therefore, oh, there's nothing we can do with this.

32:12

This is amidst the war. The war continues

32:14

and we have to continue fighting the war.

32:17

So it's not like a council to helplessness

32:19

and be like, ah, well, you know, let

32:21

the good Lord decide, let fate, let providence

32:23

just take us where it is. Passivity,

32:27

and this is where like,

32:29

you know, I think one

32:31

can productively talk about free

32:33

will and yet not claim

32:35

for oneself ultimate sovereignty. I

32:37

guess that's the thing. And

32:39

that's something that I've been

32:42

wrestling with and pushing back

32:44

and forth for some time

32:46

now. You know, for

32:48

the longest time I've not felt really

32:50

comfortable with the idea of free will.

32:52

It doesn't make like full sense to

32:54

me. Yet obviously it exists to a

32:56

certain extent because we order our lives

32:58

and our inner selves around the concept

33:01

that we are sovereign. So there's like

33:03

a kind of partial sovereignty to it.

33:06

Lying in between like the the experience

33:08

that each one of us have and

33:10

then something one might call history or

33:12

providence or whatever you will and That's

33:14

existence. I guess is is the way

33:17

I'd put it. Does that make sense?

33:19

I Yeah, it does and I have

33:21

to say I'm I'm really loving your

33:23

your openness to the mystical workings of

33:26

Providence these days to me, right? I

33:28

I want to talk more about that

33:30

but I mean actually this leads me

33:32

to my question for shoddy,

33:34

which was, you know, as you

33:37

said, you're extremely invested in the

33:39

idea of free will of our

33:41

making choices. But you continue to

33:43

talk about Trump in a way,

33:46

you know, actually, before we

33:48

started recording this podcast, we

33:50

were sharing and talking about

33:52

an old rust outfit piece

33:54

about Trump as a man

33:56

of destiny. And the way

33:58

that you talk about Donald

34:00

Trump before the election and

34:02

even now, somewhat more begrudgingly,

34:04

I think, that you

34:06

no longer sort of believe that

34:09

he might be fine, is that

34:11

he is like this figure of

34:13

like charisma and like massive, not

34:16

totally understood skill. And

34:18

like once he happened on the scene,

34:20

like there's nothing you can do about

34:22

it. Donald Trump is here. Like J

34:24

.D. Vance couldn't have pulled this off.

34:26

Josh Hawley couldn't. But this one man

34:28

is able to do all of this,

34:30

which seems, I mean, I

34:32

don't know if this is what you

34:34

intend, but it almost seems as if

34:36

you're like letting yourself or others off

34:38

the hook a little bit. Like, is

34:40

it, are you really celebrating your free

34:42

will if you're like, well, I have

34:44

free will, but this guy is just

34:47

so mystical, so special. There's

34:49

just something about him like, I can't

34:51

do anything about it now. He's

34:53

here. Like this idea

34:55

of Donald Trump is just a

34:57

very, very special man who is

34:59

causing all of these things. To

35:02

me, he feels like it's giving

35:05

him actually perhaps more power or

35:07

more agency, more respect, in fact,

35:09

than he actually deserves in this

35:12

moment. He is charismatic, sure.

35:15

He like has good animal instincts

35:17

around politics, but he's also just

35:19

like a weird old guy who

35:22

is getting older and is prone

35:24

to gaffes and makes incredibly stupid

35:26

decisions. Yeah,

35:29

so that's... probably,

35:33

yeah, I have a different view of Trump

35:35

than that. I do sort of see him,

35:37

and maybe this is where Demir and I

35:39

kind of come together. And

35:41

maybe we're both falling into

35:44

some kind of great man

35:46

fallacy. I don't think that

35:48

believing in free will means

35:51

you can't also believe that

35:53

there are individuals who do

35:55

momentous consequential things. So

35:58

I don't think it undermines my free will point. Can

36:01

it lead to a certain kind

36:03

of passivity to kind of think

36:06

of Trump in these terms? I

36:09

suppose it could, but the way that

36:11

I see it is that if Trump

36:13

is a singular figure in contemporary American

36:16

life, that means that the

36:18

rest of us need to rise

36:20

to the occasion, that normal politics

36:22

and normal answers won't

36:24

be enough that Trump is a

36:26

revolutionary. And that means

36:29

the other side must also have

36:31

a kind of revolutionary spirit. So

36:33

I don't think it forces us

36:35

to resign ourselves to some kind

36:37

of Fate and say

36:39

oh my you know Trump Trump

36:41

is so special. So there's nothing

36:43

we can do It just means

36:45

that there is something we can

36:47

do. It's just a lot more

36:49

than what we've done And may

36:52

yeah, but I think I think

36:54

this is where myself doubt that

36:56

Demir and I think that Ross's

36:58

piece Ross doubt that its piece

37:00

really gets at this very well,

37:02

and I would highly recommend it

37:04

to our listeners that There

37:08

is, I don't know, I'm sort of

37:10

in awe of him. But I

37:12

don't think, but I think that - great man,

37:14

like Trump. The

37:17

great pundit of history, Ross Douthat. No, no,

37:19

I bet in awe of Trump, not Ross,

37:21

but I mean a big fan of Ross.

37:24

I think he misunderstood that. I

37:26

think Ross Douthat think Douthat is

37:28

- is the Napoleon of punditry,

37:30

absolutely. He's not the Trump of

37:32

punditry, he's the Napoleon of punditry.

37:35

Anyway. Yeah

37:39

You're in awe of Trump you

37:41

said Yeah, and I just have

37:43

to admit that that just that

37:45

is how I feel I think

37:48

that he There is I'm undermining

37:50

my own points now, but there

37:52

is almost there does seem to

37:54

be something really crazy about the

37:56

fact that he's been able to

37:59

bounce back from The fact that

38:01

he doesn't seem to be able

38:03

to lose the fact that he

38:05

seems Like impervious

38:07

to the kind of normal currents

38:09

of human life like anyone who

38:12

had done the things that Trump

38:14

did Would just be out of

38:16

it. It would be done. We

38:18

could sort of close the chapter

38:20

on that Okay, so the that

38:26

now indulge my argument a little bit

38:28

because like because I mean and I

38:30

mean again Let me let me just

38:32

also underline that that that you know

38:35

My argument such as it

38:37

is is really just like

38:40

a kind of Literature survey

38:42

I would say you know

38:44

of trying different ways to

38:46

say the same thing You

38:48

know the the Old Testament

38:50

way the sort of like

38:52

arch reactionary You know post

38:55

revolutionary sort of sense of

38:57

things and then and then

38:59

you know a much more

39:01

Modern let's say but still

39:03

very religious Lincoln way all

39:05

saying the same thing which

39:07

is the check is in

39:09

the mail Now now now

39:12

like you you tell me

39:14

Which part of that makes

39:16

you uncomfortable after everything you've

39:18

just said right now, which

39:20

is that you know is

39:22

Trump Is Trump himself how

39:24

about this is the question

39:26

is Trump himself a uniquely

39:32

don't know how do you

39:34

put it like powerful individual

39:37

who you know is talented

39:39

at politics and is sort

39:41

of like a passing storm

39:44

to all of us who

39:46

are just fine otherwise or

39:49

Is there something bigger wrong? I guess

39:51

is the question, because that's really all

39:54

I'm getting at. You know, you can

39:56

strip away all the religious, all the

39:58

providential stuff, but that's really all I'm

40:00

getting at in all of this. Is

40:03

there something bigger off that gives us

40:05

a Trump who is a uniquely talented

40:07

politician? I will never cease pointing that

40:10

out. We're not likely to

40:12

see another one like him. No,

40:15

I do want to also quibble with

40:17

something you said shoddy about about authoritarianism

40:19

does is is something like Trump required?

40:22

I mean, I don't know like Maduro

40:24

seems like a like a dull piece

40:26

of shit and you know No, in

40:28

a country like ours is a name

40:30

in Syria. Yeah in a country like

40:33

ours that doesn't really have a long

40:35

and obvious tradition of authoritarianism from our

40:37

two parties that for

40:39

someone, for someone to popularize it and

40:41

to make it mainstream and to have

40:44

his entire party go along for the

40:46

ride, I think you need to be

40:48

a man or woman of special

40:50

talent to kind of make that happen.

40:53

And the fact that he is

40:56

charismatic and funny and occasionally hilarious,

40:58

I think it takes the bite

41:00

off of it. It

41:02

makes it more palatable for a

41:04

kind of audience that normally wouldn't

41:07

be so willing to go along

41:09

with it. I would agree with

41:11

that. So let me just push

41:13

you both then. I guess my

41:16

instinct is that We

41:18

were headed towards authoritarianism and that the

41:20

the actual the actual strands were all

41:22

there And it took someone like Trump

41:25

to maybe gather them more quickly together

41:27

Congress has been declining for a very

41:29

long time As an actor within our

41:32

politics the executive has been getting stronger

41:34

these fights have been going on for

41:36

a very long time One can even

41:38

trace them to the the history of

41:41

the Republic how they've been like playing

41:43

out But they've certainly been sharpened into

41:45

this for this point. So we're headed

41:47

to a point with an increasingly stronger

41:50

executive, an increasingly more defiant executive of

41:52

the other branches. Again,

41:54

yeah, I think Trump is

41:56

a unique specimen and he's

41:59

particularly talented, but

42:01

you know... Rule

42:04

by executive order has been a thing

42:07

over the last three presidencies Increasingly now

42:09

again, you look at the charts Trump

42:11

is off the charts for this but

42:13

so an accelerant but certainly not an

42:16

innovator in any of this sort of

42:18

stuff The questions about the executives prerogative

42:20

over the executive branch likely would have

42:22

come up at one point or the

42:25

other Don't

42:27

know you know like I do

42:29

think that that it's a kind

42:31

of perfect storm. I'll grant you

42:33

that but like And maybe we're

42:36

talking about the difference between a

42:38

category one and category three hurricane

42:40

But like I I'm not I'm

42:42

not I'm not so sure that

42:44

that we're looking at at at

42:47

something so unique and unimaginable I

42:49

feel like the decay was there

42:51

now again, whether this is you

42:53

know Providence or

42:55

not is sort of irrelevant to me and

42:58

it's irrelevant to my question here and this

43:00

is what I mean by you know like

43:02

deserving it. I think we've all been complicit

43:04

in the decay of all of this. The

43:07

decay is deeper. The decay is not just

43:09

institutional, I'll also say. It's another topic that

43:11

we've been kicking around here a lot. Liberalism

43:14

as an organizing ideology is hollow and has

43:17

been hollowing out all a bunch of other

43:19

stuff in the world. And

43:22

into the breach, you get a bunch

43:24

of other toxic lame shit. That

43:27

means all of this. Yeah.

43:29

I mean, so what you're saying on a

43:31

lot of this in the sense that I've

43:33

long argued that Trump is a symptom and

43:36

not a cause. And, you know, we've been

43:38

talking about decay on this podcast for for

43:40

years now, and we're both very critical

43:42

of the way things were. I think we're

43:45

both liberals who are critical of liberalism and

43:47

so forth. Yeah. So

43:51

yes. You've

44:03

been talking about it for years how

44:05

how well you get long ideas I

44:07

just finished it. Yeah, I'm sorry I

44:10

came back to me and let me

44:12

just so I don't forget this I

44:14

was gonna say and here's me playing

44:16

devil's advocate with myself because I wrestle

44:18

with this internally which is that for

44:21

all the decay that we've been talking

44:23

about, America is pretty damn awesome. And

44:25

it was pretty damn awesome. And I

44:27

know we're not supposed to say this,

44:29

but America was already great. And

44:32

if you look at a lot of the metrics, America

44:35

was somewhat unique in terms

44:38

of economic growth among Western

44:40

democracies that where the European

44:43

Union had stayed largely stagnant

44:45

in terms of GDP growth

44:48

and overall GDP from the

44:50

financial recession in 2008 onwards,

44:54

our GDP had almost come

44:56

close to doubling just in

44:58

the matter of 15 years.

45:00

It's really a remarkable growth

45:02

story and I know that

45:04

we don't judge, we can't

45:06

measure America's health based on

45:09

these very narrow economic metrics

45:11

and obviously all of that

45:13

belies the kind of sadness

45:15

and general aimlessness that a

45:17

lot of Americans feel, but

45:19

in terms of material conditions.

45:22

America is a pretty great success

45:24

story. And I think that for

45:26

a lot of us, and unfortunately, a lot of

45:29

us tended to be in the Democratic Party. And

45:31

this is why I've argued the Democratic Party became

45:33

the party of the establishment, the party of the

45:35

status quo. We're the ones who

45:37

benefit from the status quo, people like

45:40

us. And the fact that we couldn't

45:42

see that so many Americans that had

45:44

been left behind was our own blind

45:46

spot. But still, at the end of

45:49

the day, it's not like we were

45:51

an authoritarian regime that had Like

45:54

a declining economy Like we also

45:56

have to be fair. It wasn't

45:58

that bad if we compare to

46:00

other countries, but we have to

46:02

well, that's the I mean This

46:05

is also a thing that we've discussed

46:07

many many times on this podcast Yeah,

46:10

first of all, I mean we can

46:12

be relatively great compared to other countries

46:14

and things can like still kind of

46:16

suck in the lived experience of many

46:19

Americans lives You point to GDP numbers

46:21

like yeah, there's incredible GDP growth As

46:24

you acknowledged also a second afterwards, it

46:26

was, you know, extremely poorly

46:28

distributed and most of that GDP growth

46:30

occurred to a small sector of the

46:32

population. So many people are actually like

46:35

not doing that great. I

46:37

think you're allowed to say, I think we're

46:39

in era of free speech now, Shadi. You're

46:41

allowed to say that America was already great.

46:43

Like there's no one holding you back from

46:45

saying that already. And the other thing, but

46:47

I mean, I think we can all

46:50

agree that citizens had not been

46:52

necessarily like beating the bounds of

46:54

democracy, that liberalism had in fact,

46:56

you know, turned people inwards. We

46:59

were perhaps not paying attention to

47:01

the increasingly accrued power of the

47:03

executive branch, etc., etc. Like all

47:05

of this, like there

47:07

are all of these discontents that were

47:09

still very much alive and moving in

47:12

the United States, despite how many TVs

47:14

we had or how big our SUVs

47:16

have gotten. Like, I

47:18

think it's patriotic to

47:20

say that America is great,

47:22

like America is an economic

47:24

powerhouse, et cetera, et cetera.

47:26

But there are many other

47:29

things that go into the

47:31

success of a state or

47:33

republic. And yeah, America

47:35

has been falling down on a number of

47:37

them, and many citizens were discontented. I think

47:39

that's... obvious at this point. Can we also

47:41

say, though, that we didn't realize how lucky

47:44

we were? Like, yeah, oh, yes, everything was

47:46

so bad, American carnage, America that was going

47:48

through this... No, I will totally hand it

47:50

to you that we didn't realize how relatively

47:53

calm and we had it

47:55

like that's that's 100 %

47:57

true too, but remember

48:00

like, argument's not about GDP

48:02

or like Gini coefficients or

48:04

anything like that Uh,

48:06

talking about like political

48:09

or at least I'm

48:11

talking about political decay. That's

48:13

it for part one, dear

48:15

listeners There's a lot

48:18

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