Latest / Pod Save America / Heather Cox Richardson on Donald Trump, MAGA and How We Fight Back

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Heather Cox Richardson on Donald Trump, MAGA and How We Fight Back · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 4: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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  Speaker 5: Reading the news these days can be depressing and deeply alarming.
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  Speaker 5: It can feel like all is lost amidst Trump 2.0.
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  Speaker 5: I feel this way too often. I know many of
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  Speaker 5: you do too. One of the ways that I stay
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  Speaker 5: optimistic is reading history to be reminded that America has
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  Speaker 5: faced very dark moments before and always come out on
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  Speaker 5: the other side. With that in mind, there was no
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  Speaker 5: one better to talk to than Heather Cox Richardson, a historian, professor,
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  Speaker 5: and the author of the wildly popular substack Letters from
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  Speaker 5: an American. Her long view approach is the perfect prescription
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  Speaker 5: for this short-sighted era. I wanted to have her on
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  Speaker 5: the pod to get a perspective on how we got
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  Speaker 5: to this moment and if there's anything that fuels her
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  Speaker 5: optimism in this dark chapter of American history. Heather Cox Richardson,
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  Speaker 5: welcome to Pod Save America.
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  Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 5: I'm very excited for this conversation. I've been wanting to
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  Speaker 5: talk to you for a very long time. Yours is
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  Speaker 5: the first Substack I've ever subscribed to. A hundred Substacks later,
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  Speaker 5: but you were the first.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you.
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  Speaker 5: Members of my friends and family are all huge fans
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  Speaker 5: of yours and your Substack. They are very excited for
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  Speaker 5: this conversation. And I have no doubt that most of
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  Speaker 5: our audience is very familiar with who you are. I'm
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  Speaker 5: sure many of them subscribe to you, given that you're
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  Speaker 5: one of the most popular Substackers in the world. But
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  Speaker 5: I kind of want to start with your journey before
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  Speaker 5: we get into current events. How did you become such
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  Speaker 5: a media person where you write the Substack, where you're
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  Speaker 5: interviewing presidents, former presidents? How did you make the leap
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  Speaker 5: from historian, professor to Substacker?
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  Speaker 6: I'm laughing a little bit because when you call it
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  Speaker 6: a journey, it sounds like there was a plan involved
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  Speaker 6: and there certainly was not. Listen, I'm a historian and
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  Speaker 6: what I really am interested in as a human being
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  Speaker 6: is what creates change. That's what historians study is how
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  Speaker 6: societies either adapt to change, create change or reject it.
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  Speaker 6: And that's what I'm really interested in. And that's really
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  Speaker 6: all I do. And in order to understand those things
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  Speaker 6: as a historian, You need to be able to take
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  Speaker 6: a really clear look at what is happening. And so
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  Speaker 6: I'm very good at research, at figuring out what just happened.
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  Speaker 6: What are the rules by which things just happened? Where
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  Speaker 6: were the rules broken? How did this change society? And
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  Speaker 6: that's really all I do and all I have ever
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  Speaker 6: done in front of a classroom, when I write a book,
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  Speaker 6: when I write the letters from an American, when I
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  Speaker 6: interview people, is to try and see how they think.
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  Speaker 6: to see how they are changing society because that's what
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  Speaker 6: I'm really interested in is the way ideas change society.
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  Speaker 6: So the transition, I don't think there ever really has
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  Speaker 6: been a transition. I still do what I have always done.
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  Speaker 6: I'm just doing it with a lot more people now.
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  Speaker 5: Did you have any idea in the early days how
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  Speaker 5: quickly you were growing? I mean, I don't know if
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: you were checking the Substack charts or you had any
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: sense of how many people were reading, but you very
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: quickly became the most prolific, most popular Substacker in the world,
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  Speaker 5: huge audience. I'm sure you didn't intend that when you started,
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  Speaker 5: but when did you sort of figure out how big
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  Speaker 5: an audience you had?
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  Speaker 6: I didn't start on Substack, remember. I started on Facebook,
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  Speaker 6: where I had been for a long time. And what
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  Speaker 6: happened was almost exactly six years ago, I had been
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  Speaker 6: writing an essay about once a week or so, and
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  Speaker 6: I hadn't written since July 18th. And on September 15th
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  Speaker 6: of 2019... I was actually stung by a yellow jacket
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  Speaker 6: and I'm allergic and didn't have my EpiPens. So while
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  Speaker 6: I was sort of waiting to see how bad my
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  Speaker 6: reaction would be, I sat down and figured I might
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  Speaker 6: as well write to my people on Facebook who are
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  Speaker 6: nervous about the fact they haven't heard from me. I'd
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  Speaker 6: heard from a number of them through Messenger and I
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  Speaker 6: had about 22,000 followers there. So I wrote and just
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  Speaker 6: sort of said, here's what the United States looks like
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  Speaker 6: to me right now. And there was just this overwhelming
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  Speaker 6: response of people asking questions and following me and sharing things.
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  Speaker 6: And I actually had gone viral twice before writing from
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  Speaker 6: that page and had really pretty much let it drop.
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  Speaker 6: But in that case, I wrote to answer their questions.
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  Speaker 6: And it was very clear within about two to three
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  Speaker 6: weeks when my following numbers, and this is not scientific,
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  Speaker 6: this is just sort of how I'm remembering it, when
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  Speaker 6: I believe over a million that I wrote to my
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  Speaker 6: administration where I teach and said, hey, listen, something's going
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  Speaker 6: on over here and you all need to be aware
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  Speaker 6: of it. And then Substack was just starting and they
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  Speaker 6: came to me about a month later and said, we
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  Speaker 6: think you would be a good fit over here. And
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  Speaker 6: you gotta give them credit. I said then that I
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  Speaker 6: never wanted to do this as a job. I never
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  Speaker 6: wanted to do it for money because it was a
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  Speaker 6: labor of love. And they said, we will do it
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  Speaker 6: on faith with the expectation that you're gonna grow enough
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  Speaker 6: that you're gonna have to change that. And I was
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  Speaker 6: there for more than a year before I started taking-
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  Speaker 6: money for writing. And I had to do that because
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  Speaker 6: I started to need an assistant to handle my email
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  Speaker 6: and scheduling and all that. And they never complained in
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  Speaker 6: all that time. And so that's how I ended up there.
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  Speaker 6: And I think the fact that I was early on
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  Speaker 6: Substack made all the difference, that there are a lot
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  Speaker 6: of really terrific people that started later that just didn't
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  Speaker 6: get the oxygen I did because I happened to be
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  Speaker 6: there on the ground floor and with such a large
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  Speaker 6: back wave coming to Substack with me from Facebook.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I started on Substack in 2020, in the summer
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  Speaker 5: of 2020. I'm much further down the charts than you,
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  Speaker 5: but similar thing is there was so much less content
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  Speaker 5: on there. If someone went there, it was sort of
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  Speaker 5: a narrower menu. And now there are so many people
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  Speaker 5: on there that it really has changed. You've described your Substack,
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  Speaker 5: and I thought this was really interesting, as a 19th
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  Speaker 5: century model to educate, inform, and build a community rather
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  Speaker 5: than a modern day business model.
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  Speaker 4: What did you mean by that?
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  Speaker 6: What I meant by that is a lot of people
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  Speaker 6: complain about modern media because they say that it is
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  Speaker 6: corporate driven. And of course, it does need to have clicks.
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  Speaker 6: It does have an uneasy relationship with money and with
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  Speaker 6: the impetus of those people with a lot of money
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  Speaker 6: who are backing it. That is a really modern model
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  Speaker 6: for media in the United States. In fact, the older
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  Speaker 6: model was what I do. That is somebody who has
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  Speaker 6: an idea they think is important and starts to write
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  Speaker 6: about it. in whatever manner they possibly can. In the
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  Speaker 6: 19th century, which is my happy place, people literally would
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  Speaker 6: buy a printing press and they would start to print
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  Speaker 6: a sheet of paper that had you folded it in half,
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  Speaker 6: so each newspaper was four pages long, and you hoped
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  Speaker 6: you got enough printing contracts or enough subscribers to put
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  Speaker 6: food on the table. It was never a huge money-making proposition.
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  Speaker 6: But because those things were mission-driven as opposed to we
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  Speaker 6: need to have a huge following driven, they became really
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  Speaker 6: important drivers of political opinion. And that's really what I do,
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  Speaker 6: is I'm interested in the world, and I care about
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  Speaker 6: American democracy, and I believe that American democracy rests on
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  Speaker 6: the principles of the Enlightenment, the idea that if people
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  Speaker 6: understand what is factually happening, they will make good decisions
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  Speaker 6: about it for their own lives. Maybe not the same
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  Speaker 6: decisions I would make about my life, but they will
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  Speaker 6: make good decisions And that particular mission is really different
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  Speaker 6: than saying, I'm going to have the most eyeballs in
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  Speaker 6: the world. And that difference in this moment is one
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  Speaker 6: that has made what I do and people like me do,
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  Speaker 6: I think, have a huge following and a very important following.
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  Speaker 6: There is really terrific stuff going on right now in
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  Speaker 6: independent media, in smaller media. that looks to me like
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  Speaker 6: a media revolution that mirrors that of the 1850s, for example,
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  Speaker 6: when we get the rise of a newspaper like the
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  Speaker 6: New York Times, or the 1890s when we get the
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  Speaker 6: rise of things like McClure's Magazine, which ended up being
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  Speaker 6: instrumental in pushing back against the takeover of our government
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  Speaker 6: by a few very wealthy people, and instead reforming American democracy.
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  Speaker 5: I take it that gives you some optimism about media
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  Speaker 5: in America, this sort of rise of independent journalism, whether
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  Speaker 5: it's on Substack or... YouTube or somewhere else that there's actually,
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  Speaker 5: there's hope there when it comes to media?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think a lot of people
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  Speaker 6: are not, when they complain about the media, looking at
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  Speaker 6: the larger media ecosystem that is not just the big
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  Speaker 6: legacy media outlets, which continue to be important for a
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  Speaker 6: number of reasons. First of all, they have very deep
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  Speaker 6: pockets so they can fight back against lawsuits. But second
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  Speaker 6: of all, a number of them really seem to be
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  Speaker 6: hedging their bets about What the future in the United
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  Speaker 6: States is going to bring. So they look in some
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  Speaker 6: ways as if they're kowtowing to an authoritarian administration, but
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  Speaker 6: they are also supporting really terrific journalists who are really
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  Speaker 6: doing the work. So I'm not ready to throw any
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  Speaker 6: babies out with any bathwater. but I do think the
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  Speaker 6: media ecosystem is one heck of a lot larger than
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  Speaker 6: those who are tearing their hair out and saying, the
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  Speaker 6: media has failed us, are giving credit to.
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  Speaker 5: You know, when you sit down at night to write
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  Speaker 5: letters from an American, I imagine you wrestle with what
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  Speaker 5: we wrestle with here at Positive America all the time,
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  Speaker 5: which is.
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  Speaker 3: Of the barrage of news.
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  Speaker 5: Of the day that Trump has done, how do you
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  Speaker 5: sort through and separate the signal from the noise? What
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: are the most important things that people need to know about?
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: How do you avoid, you know, we always worry about
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  Speaker 5: chasing Trump down a rabbit hole he wants us to
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  Speaker 5: chase down. How do you just sort of make decisions
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: about what it is you're going to write about basically
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: on a nightly basis?
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  Speaker 6: So I maybe have a bit of an advantage there
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  Speaker 6: because I am a historian looking at the stories that
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  Speaker 6: change society. And that's not to say I get them
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  Speaker 6: right all the time by any stretch of the imagination,
• 10:47
  Speaker 6: but when you write a book or when you teach
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: a course or when you think broadly about the issues
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  Speaker 6: you care about, some things matter and some things don't.
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  Speaker 6: So one of the things that I do is if
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  Speaker 6: there are a number of stories, the days I hate
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: are the days when you get what I call B
• 11:04
  Speaker 6: minus stories, you know, 14 B minus stories. There's not
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  Speaker 6: a lead, but there are a bunch of things that
• 11:08
  Speaker 6: are important enough. what I tend to do is take,
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  Speaker 6: I think of it like an onion. I take a
• 11:15
  Speaker 6: step back and I say, how do these things fit
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  Speaker 6: together in the story of America? And if that doesn't work,
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  Speaker 6: then I take another step back and do the same thing.
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  Speaker 6: And so, you know, for today, for example, when you
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  Speaker 6: and I are recording this, which is Friday, September 5th,
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  Speaker 6: I've actually written a lot of tonight's letter because there
• 11:32
  Speaker 6: were major stories that came out in foreign policy in
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  Speaker 6: the president's assumption of power to essentially kill people, let's
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  Speaker 6: call it that, and because of the economy. Now those
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  Speaker 6: look like three very different stories, but if you take
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  Speaker 6: a step back in the onion, what it says to
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  Speaker 6: me is that we have had in the United States
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  Speaker 6: for at least 40 years now, this image of what
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  Speaker 6: it means to be a strong American leader and how
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  Speaker 6: one constructs a strong American state. And the mega Republicans
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  Speaker 6: are putting that image, that mythology into place. And it's
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  Speaker 6: completely failing. So the story to my mind today, as
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  Speaker 6: I look at the United States as a snapshot, which
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  Speaker 6: is what I try to do, sort of a la
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  Speaker 6: Alistair Cook and his Letters from America, it is the
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  Speaker 6: story of how the United States is having to grapple
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  Speaker 6: with the conflict between the ideology that a certain group
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  Speaker 6: of American citizens have embraced now for a long time
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  Speaker 6: and how that ideology is clashing with reality. And at
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  Speaker 6: the other end of that, I find that story absolutely fascinating.
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  Speaker 6: intellectually as well as living through it, because what does
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  Speaker 6: one do as a human being if the world that
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  Speaker 6: you have constructed in your mind turns out to be fake? Like,
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  Speaker 6: what does one do? And that larger story to me
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  Speaker 6: certainly sweeps in all the many new stories of today,
• 13:02
  Speaker 6: but the story of humanity behind that is what does
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  Speaker 6: America do when its 40 years of mythology are proven
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  Speaker 6: to be wrong? But even beyond that, as a human being,
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  Speaker 6: What does one do when one has created a false
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  Speaker 6: sense of who we are and is forced to decide
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  Speaker 6: that you're either going to have to push that ideology
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  Speaker 6: to the exclusion of reality, which seems to be what
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  Speaker 6: the president is currently doing, or forced to say, crap,
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  Speaker 6: I was wrong for 40 years and I need to
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  Speaker 6: reorganize my brain and my country in such a way
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: that I can move forward. I don't know which one
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  Speaker 6: of those is going to win out. But I think
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  Speaker 6: they are profoundly human questions as well as national questions.
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: And at the end of the day, that's what I
• 13:48
  Speaker 6: look for.
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  Speaker 5: When you say, this is fascinating, when you say this
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: 40-year image of a strong America, I take it that
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: some combination, because of the news of the day, which included,
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: we're recording this on Friday, very bad employment numbers coming
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: out this morning. Is it a combination of sort of
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: America as a strong economy, America as a strong military?
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: And then what are the other elements of that that's
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  Speaker 5: the image that you see Trump pushing?
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  Speaker 6: So remember that I am trained as a political historian,
• 16:11
  Speaker 6: but my degree is, my doctorate is actually in American culture,
• 16:17
  Speaker 6: in looking at American society as a whole. My master's
• 16:19
  Speaker 6: is in literature, for example, in American literature. And that
• 16:22
  Speaker 6: matters because in this context, because What really happened after
• 16:27
  Speaker 6: World War II was with the expansion of the government
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: to regulate business and provide a basic social safety net
• 16:36
  Speaker 6: and promote infrastructure and to protect civil rights, what happened
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: were those people who didn't want to do those things
• 16:43
  Speaker 6: doubled down on the idea that if a government became
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: powerful enough to do those things, it would become a
• 16:49
  Speaker 6: socialist government in that it would begin to redistribute wealth
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: from hardworking white Americans to undeserving minorities, in this case,
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: black Americans. And that would be a form of socialism.
• 17:01
  Speaker 6: And that image picked up directly from the period after
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: the Civil War when the former Confederates who ran up
• 17:09
  Speaker 6: against the 15th Amendment and the creation of the Department
• 17:16
  Speaker 6: of Justice in 1870 to say that they could no
• 17:20
  Speaker 6: longer discriminate against their black neighbors on racial grounds, began
• 17:25
  Speaker 6: to say, hey, listen, we never had any problem with
• 17:27
  Speaker 6: the fact our neighbors were black. Our problem is the
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: fact that they are poor. And if you let them
• 17:32
  Speaker 6: have a say in the government, you let them have
• 17:34
  Speaker 6: a vote, they are going to work together with poor
• 17:37
  Speaker 6: white Americans to elect leaders who will promise them roads
• 17:41
  Speaker 6: and schools and hospitals, and those things can only be
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: paid for with white tax dollars because white people in
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: the American South were the only ones really who had
• 17:49
  Speaker 6: taxable property. So that image that letting minorities, and that's
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: gonna expand in the 20th century to include women and
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: gender minorities as well, but that letting minorities vote, have
• 18:03
  Speaker 6: a say in their government, is by definition a form
• 18:06
  Speaker 6: of socialism. It's a political understanding more than an economic understanding,
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: the way socialism becomes defined in the late 19th and
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: early 20th centuries. But that construction, which really takes off
• 18:18
  Speaker 6: in the United States in 1871, is countered immediately in
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: that period by the image of the American cowboy, who
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: in reality, about a third of American cowboys were men
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: of color. They depended on the government more than any
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: other region of the country in the West. There are
• 18:34
  Speaker 6: many ways in which the myth of the American cowboy
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: doesn't stack up against the reality. But that myth of
• 18:39
  Speaker 6: the American cowboy, that the cowboy is a true American
• 18:43
  Speaker 6: and wants nothing from the government but to be left alone.
• 18:46
  Speaker 6: He dominates women. He dominates the minorities around him. And
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: he's good with a gun. And he just wants to
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: be left alone. That image of the American cowboy really
• 18:56
  Speaker 6: is central to pushing back against the government that expands
• 19:00
  Speaker 6: after the Civil War in order to promote black rights.
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: and to some degree, brown rights, but mostly black rights.
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: In the 20th century, that image of the American cowboy
• 19:09
  Speaker 6: does the same thing. So those people who were trying
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: to destroy the modern American government after World War II
• 19:15
  Speaker 6: really don't get anywhere until Brown versus Board of Education,
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: the 1954 Supreme Court decision, which says that segregation in
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: public schools is unconstitutional. With that, they begin really to
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: lionize the idea of the American cowboy, which had fallen
• 19:30
  Speaker 6: out of American culture during the Depression and the Dust
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: Bowl when, in fact, people in the American South and
• 19:36
  Speaker 6: the American West were really keen on federal help because
• 19:39
  Speaker 6: they were losing their land and starving. That image comes
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: back in the 1950s. By the end of the 1950s
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: and the early 1960s, Westerns dominate television, which is a
• 19:49
  Speaker 6: new medium, for example. Bonanza, that incredibly famous western, is
• 19:54
  Speaker 6: the first TV show in color. It goes international. That
• 19:58
  Speaker 6: idea of the American cowboy as being central to what
• 20:01
  Speaker 6: it means to be an American becomes a political statement
• 20:05
  Speaker 6: by 1960 when you get the rise of Arizona Senator
• 20:08
  Speaker 6: Barry Goldwater with his stance as an American cowboy. He's
• 20:11
  Speaker 6: always out there with a white hat saying, I came
• 20:13
  Speaker 6: from Arizona before we had any of these stupid regulations.
• 20:17
  Speaker 6: His family, by the way, depended on government money. That
• 20:20
  Speaker 6: image of the American cowboy as the central figure of
• 20:23
  Speaker 6: American history and of America really becomes this political statement
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: for the people who take over the Republican Party that
• 20:31
  Speaker 6: a true American wants nothing from the government. You should
• 20:34
  Speaker 6: get rid of business regulation, get rid of a basic
• 20:36
  Speaker 6: social safety net, get rid of government promotion of infrastructure
• 20:39
  Speaker 6: and so on. and dominate others with force. And that
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: was a rhetorical thing for Goldwater and for people like
• 20:49
  Speaker 6: Ronald Reagan who did the same thing. Even George W.
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: Bush picks it up. But in this incarnation under MAGA,
• 20:56
  Speaker 6: it has become the driving force. It has gone from
• 20:59
  Speaker 6: being rhetoric to being an image of what America should
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: be that is driving their behavior in any number of ways, right?
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: So you're seeing this attack on the, This alleged attack
• 21:12
  Speaker 6: on the cigarette boat that theoretically, according to the administration,
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: was smuggling drugs. We're having the report that just came
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: out in the New York Times today of the Navy
• 21:23
  Speaker 6: SEAL attempt in 2019 to bug North Korea that ended
• 21:28
  Speaker 6: up in the unacknowledged death of two to three Korean
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: fishermen who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: You're seeing this idea that the government can simply do
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: whatever it wants to assert its will by force. And
• 21:40
  Speaker 6: at the same time, this concept that if you get
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: rid of the government intervention in the economy through regulations,
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: for example, and social safety nets and so on, you
• 21:50
  Speaker 6: will return America to this great past is, I think,
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: where you're seeing the extraordinary attempt of the administration to
• 22:00
  Speaker 6: throw its weight around and simply dictate what the government wants.
• 22:03
  Speaker 6: thinks should be happening with the economy when the actual
• 22:07
  Speaker 6: numbers are devastating. So that's what I mean by the
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: idea of the mythology coming up against the reality. And
• 22:14
  Speaker 6: I will say one of the things that I think
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: is fascinating in this moment is that image of the
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: American cowboy was always just an image. We have these
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: wonderful reports of people who knew Buffalo Bill, for example,
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: and he knew quite deliberately that he was constructing an image.
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: He would literally wear certain clothes when he went to
• 22:31
  Speaker 6: perform some great feat of bravado so that he could
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: then go on stage and say, these are the very
• 22:37
  Speaker 6: clothes I wore. But there was another image in that
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: same period of what it meant to be an American
• 22:42
  Speaker 6: that was much more true to American history. And that
• 22:45
  Speaker 6: was to be somebody who believed in community and believed
• 22:48
  Speaker 6: in making sure that you protected your weakest members and
• 22:51
  Speaker 6: made it possible for everybody to have a shot at
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: equal access to resources so they could work hard and rise.
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: And the replacement of the cowboy image with that image
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: of America is one that has real possibilities, I think,
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: for our future.
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: I mean, isn't that sort of, I mean, the tension
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: or the back and forth we've been going through in
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: this country for a long time, right, between those two things?
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: Like you have George Bush, who really did, George W. Bush,
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: who modeled a cowboy in so many ways, invaded the
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: country for basically no reason. He was clear and brush
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: all the time. Like that was a big part of it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: And then you pivot, then you go to Obama, who
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: is sort of the opposite of that. Community was the
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: core part of his message. He was a community organizer.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: Red states and blue states, we care about our neighbors
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: in the red states. So much of his message from
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: when I worked with him was like, why you have
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: to care about the homeless veteran three states over, or
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: the kid who's not getting educated, or the family who's
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: going hungry, why that matters to you, even if you're
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: not that person. And then you revert back to Trump, right?
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: Is that sort of the push and pull that we've
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: been in for centuries now, basically, as a country?
• 23:55
  Speaker 6: I wouldn't go as far back as centuries. I would
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: say since at least the 1950s. But there's a critical
• 24:02
  Speaker 6: piece that goes back to what we were talking about before.
• 24:04
  Speaker 6: And that's one of the real strengths of the movement
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: conservatives who took over the Republican Party was their sense
• 24:10
  Speaker 6: of narrative, was their storyline. You know, the little guy
• 24:14
  Speaker 6: against the empire, right? That's Star Wars, 1977. That's Reagan rising.
• 24:18
  Speaker 6: That's exactly the sort of ethos that Reagan picks up
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: when he runs for office for the president in 1980.
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: And that's a really powerful myth, the idea that you
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: are in charge of your destiny, even though the reality
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: is that you're deeply tied in our era into so
• 24:33
  Speaker 6: many different parts of a global economy, for example, a
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: global political system, health systems, climate change, and all of
• 24:40
  Speaker 6: the different ways in which we are reliant on and
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: reflect a larger national and international community. That story is
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: really important. And from the 1980s, at least, 1987, after
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: talk radio, which did not begin as political. That simply
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: began as a way to use the AM radio dial
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: as the FM dial was taking off much more effectively
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: because of its higher quality. You had the right wing
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: pushing this image that every man, and that was a
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: deliberate word, can do it on his own. What we
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: are seeing now, I think, with the rise of independent
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: media and people like you and so many individuals articulating
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: a different vision of the country is a narrative pushback
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: to that other powerful storyline. So even though people like
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris talked a
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: lot about the importance of community and people who are
• 25:41
  Speaker 6: within those communities believe it, it simply was not getting
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: the national grip on the imagination that the individual imagery did.
• 25:51
  Speaker 6: And one of the key aspects, I think, of what
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: I do and one of the things that I think
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: is most important about American history that has been stripped
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: out of it for a long time It's a sense
• 25:59
  Speaker 6: of agency. You know, the idea of community is not about,
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: you know, here we're all sort of in this mush
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: together and, you know, somehow the government will help us.
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: The idea of community in our history is that if
• 26:16
  Speaker 6: you are an individual, you have the power to change
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: the country. You have the power to change your life.
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: You have the power to change the country and you
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: have the power to change the world. by working together
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: the way the people did during World War II, or
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: the strikers did in the late 1890s, or the civil
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: rights workers did in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1960s and 1970s.
• 26:39
  Speaker 6: And that concept that you actually can play a heroic
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: role in the world as part of a community, not
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: simply as part of the cowboy riding off into the sunset,
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: I think that focus on agency is a much more
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: engaging narrative than one that simply says, hey, we need
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: to be nice to the kindergartner three states away.
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a very, very important point. It is,
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: I guess the, and I want to get to more
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: Trump stuff, but this is fascinating, exactly why I wanted
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: to have you on the podcast, is, I mean, the
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: Republicans really, or the conservatives, I guess is the way
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: I say it, latched onto an existing American self-image, right?
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: The cowboy, the individualism, the frontiersman, go West, young man,
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: all of that, and sort of have taken that to
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: their own... They've latched onto that and made that their
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: own ideology and sort of fit their conservative policy preferences
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: under that. I take it that 1950s is when this
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: started is because it's once... Now there is Brown v.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: Borg, right?
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: It's that now all of a sudden, the quest of
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: a democracy becoming a multiracial democracy is what sort of
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: leads to the conflict here?
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: Yes, but I'm going to take exception to the use
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: of the word conservative to encompass this radical right, because
• 27:57
  Speaker 6: they have been radical since the very beginning. And by that,
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: I mean that traditional conservatism as it was conceived as
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: an ideological principle by Edmund Burke during the French Revolution
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: said that it was a grave error for any country
• 28:11
  Speaker 6: to try and govern based on an ideology, because pretty
• 28:14
  Speaker 6: soon you were going to start trying to make people
• 28:16
  Speaker 6: fit the ideology rather than ideology to fit the people.
• 28:20
  Speaker 6: And instead, he argued that government could be used as
• 28:23
  Speaker 6: a positive force, not simply as a negative force the
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: way it had been conceived previously, and that leaders should
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: govern according to what would create stability. So in his day,
• 28:33
  Speaker 6: that meant the aristocracy, that meant the church, that meant
• 28:36
  Speaker 6: the property systems that kept people having a stake and
• 28:41
  Speaker 6: believing in the enforcement of the law in his country.
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: In our day, what creates stability is different. And one
• 28:49
  Speaker 6: of the things that created stability in the 20th century
• 28:52
  Speaker 6: was the New Deal slash middle way government of FDR
• 28:57
  Speaker 6: and Eisenhower, a Democrat and a Republican. And the people
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: who came in and wanted to destroy all that were
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: sort of enfants terribles. They were the people who wanted
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: to tear up the things that were creating stability in
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: order to do exactly what Burke cautioned against, to impose
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: an ideology on the country and to force people to
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: fit into it. And that is precisely what we're seeing nowadays.
• 29:18
  Speaker 6: They are not conservatives. They are radical extremists.
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a point well taken, especially when you think
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: about Trump and this image of the government not being
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: involved in the economy and you have the Trump administration
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: now taking in the most technically, by definition, socialist as possible,
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: taking stakes in American companies now, right?
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: Whether it's NVIDIA or elsewhere.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Bonkers.
• 29:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: There is what? There is the actual philosophy of it.
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: And then there's, I guess, radical right, I guess is
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: probably the proper way to describe it.
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: Yeah, they use the word conservative as a title. That's
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: why they're called movement conservatives, because it's a political movement
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: that uses the title, rather like the Fox News channel
• 29:56
  Speaker 6: calls its signature show, Fox News. It's not news. It
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: was never news. But that's the name of it.
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• 32:12
  Speaker 5: One of the reasons why I love your writing is
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: it really helps me take what is happening on a
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: day-to-day basis here and put it into larger historical context.
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: Because a term you hear people like me use and
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: you hear on the news all the time, people just
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: reacting to the craziness of Trump, whether it's Trump 1.0
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: or Trump 2.0, this is unprecedented. These things have never
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: happened before. Because it feels, we obviously have a short-term
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: memory problem as a country right now, but some of
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: this stuff feels impossible to imagine. And your writing helps
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: me understand that not all of this is unprecedented, that
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: this is part of a larger American story. So what's
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: your reaction when you hear people say, this is unprecedented?
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: What are the historical parallels you see to the moment
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: we're in right now here in the US?
• 32:53
  Speaker 6: Well, you know, it's a trope to say history doesn't
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: repeat itself, but it rhymes. And there are ways in
• 33:02
  Speaker 6: which we're in an unprecedented time, because by definition, all
• 33:05
  Speaker 6: history is unprecedented, or all modern affairs are unprecedented. And certainly,
• 33:10
  Speaker 6: the fact that we have sitting in the White House
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: a president who seems determined to destroy American democracy is unprecedented.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: That's new.
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: But he comes from a long line of right-wing reactionaries
• 33:25
  Speaker 6: who are eager to instate a situation in the country
• 33:28
  Speaker 6: where a few wealthy white men rule over everybody else.
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: So in the larger scheme of things, there are certainly
• 33:36
  Speaker 6: continuities in this moment. The thing that always sort of
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: surprises me is the degree to which Americans look toward
• 33:43
  Speaker 6: Germany for their precedence in this moment. And I am
• 33:46
  Speaker 6: a scholar of America, so I know about as much
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: about Germany as anybody who reads sort of generally, which
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: means not much. But of course, we've had a movement
• 33:56
  Speaker 6: in the United States that looks very much like the
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: movement we're in right now before. And that was, of course,
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: in the American South from about 1874 to about 1965,
• 34:09
  Speaker 6: the reaction to the expansion of a multiracial democracy after
• 34:14
  Speaker 6: the Civil War led to the very pattern we are
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: seeing today, the argument that if people of color vote,
• 34:21
  Speaker 6: they are going to want a redistribution of wealth from
• 34:24
  Speaker 6: white people to black people to do things like build
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: roads and schools and hospitals, which is what I said before,
• 34:29
  Speaker 6: and I will add to that now. Fun prosthetics, because
• 34:34
  Speaker 6: after the Civil War, the United States becomes a leader
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: in prosthetics because of the amputations and the losses of
• 34:40
  Speaker 6: eyes during the war, something not a lot of people know,
• 34:42
  Speaker 6: but I think it's kind of cool. We are again,
• 34:46
  Speaker 6: by the way, because of Iraq and Afghanistan. But they
• 34:51
  Speaker 6: argue at that time in the 1870s and the 1880s
• 34:54
  Speaker 6: that you should not permit men at this point of
• 34:58
  Speaker 6: color to vote because they are essentially going to create
• 35:01
  Speaker 6: a system where poor people are gonna run the government
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: and that's going to destroy the accumulation of property. And
• 35:07
  Speaker 6: from that, you start to get this increasing idea that
• 35:10
  Speaker 6: those people who support black voting who support the Republican
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: Party in the American South are anti-American. They are dangerous.
• 35:19
  Speaker 6: They are polluting the body politic. From that, you get
• 35:22
  Speaker 6: the idea that they should be purged from American society.
• 35:25
  Speaker 6: And that tangles up with our incredibly ugly history of
• 35:28
  Speaker 6: racism to turn into really high numbers of lynching from
• 35:33
  Speaker 6: about 1888. There was a lull between the 1870s and 1888.
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: Between 1888, 1889, and into the 1930s, you see this
• 35:43
  Speaker 6: attempt to purge from the United States people who are racial, ethnic,
• 35:49
  Speaker 6: and to some degree religious minorities in order to create
• 35:53
  Speaker 6: a pure America. And of course, that dovetails beautifully with
• 35:56
  Speaker 6: the rise of the Nazis in the United States. as
• 35:59
  Speaker 6: well as in Germany in the 1920s. And so when
• 36:03
  Speaker 6: people look to Germany and say, oh, we look just
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: like the Nazis. Maybe, maybe we do. Maybe we don't.
• 36:07
  Speaker 6: I don't know. I don't know that much about the Nazis.
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: But we sure as hell look a lot like the
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: former Confederates in the American South after the Civil War.
• 36:15
  Speaker 6: And then when you turn around and you look at
• 36:17
  Speaker 6: the fact that the administration has just ordered the rehanging
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: of a portrait of Robert E. Lee at West Point,
• 36:23
  Speaker 6: and is talking about renaming all the military bases back
• 36:28
  Speaker 6: to Confederate names and complaining about the removal of Confederate statues.
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: It seems to me that that's the comparison that has
• 36:35
  Speaker 6: real teeth.
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: You know, it's just, it's so interesting, right? Like these
• 36:40
  Speaker 5: MAGA types, it's like, we're so America first, America first,
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: America first. And what we celebrate are the people who
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: waged war against America, right? The ones who lost the
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: war And it's hard to see that through anything other
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: than a purely racial lens, right?
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: Yes, although I would add that the rise of the
• 37:00
  Speaker 6: concept of the Confederate soldier as being a symbol of
• 37:05
  Speaker 6: the United States of America really takes off in the
• 37:08
  Speaker 6: late 19th century. And that's when you start to see
• 37:11
  Speaker 6: those statues going up. They do not go up immediately
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: after the war. They go up in the 1890s and forward.
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: And the argument behind that at the time was, is
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: that it's those men who were trying to preserve the
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: idea that the government should stay small, it should not
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: get involved in racial issues, it should not become, and
• 37:30
  Speaker 6: they use this word, a socialist government. So it's the
• 37:35
  Speaker 6: entwining of the racism of the Confederacy and the post-war
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: objection to the idea of an active government that defends
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: civil rights and defends economic rights, that's important too, those
• 37:50
  Speaker 6: really can't be untangled. And that's one of the ways
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: I think that the MAGA movement became possible. And you
• 37:59
  Speaker 6: saw this back in the Nixon administration when they talked
• 38:02
  Speaker 6: a lot about this. that you could hide racism under
• 38:06
  Speaker 6: an economic argument, which is precisely, of course, what the
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: former Confederates did in 1871 when the Department of Justice said,
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: you keep killing off your Black neighbors, you're going to
• 38:17
  Speaker 6: go to federal court, and you're going to lose, and
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: you're going to end up in prison. And they said, oh, no, no, no,
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: we don't have any problem at all with race, which
• 38:24
  Speaker 6: was just ridiculous. I mean, literally the same people before
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: and after the argument changes. But our problem is when
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: you let poor people vote, they vote for a redistribution
• 38:34
  Speaker 6: of wealth, and that we can't put up with. And
• 38:36
  Speaker 6: that's the sort of argument that you have seen take
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: over our political discourse really since Nixon.
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: It sort of feels like this movement, it happens in
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: fits and starts over time, right? It's a reaction movement,
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: happens in reaction to something. Is the, like, you know,
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: to go from a Republican like, Republicans like John McCain
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: and Mitt Romney in 2000, although there were obviously candidates
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: who were heirs to the future MAGA movement, like Sarah Palin,
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: or political figures like Sarah Palin in 2008, you know,
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: maybe Rick Santorum or someone else in 2012, is the
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: rise of Trump only possible because of the election of
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: Barack Obama? Like, is that the triggering event, do you think?
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: Or am I oversimplifying it? And you can say yes
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: to the thought that I'm oversimplifying it.
• 39:20
  Speaker 6: No, I don't think you're oversimplifying it. But I want
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: to answer that. But let me ask you something first.
• 39:26
  Speaker 6: Because I think this is a really central and interesting question.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: What?
• 39:30
  Speaker 6: Do you think drives political change? Do you think it's people?
• 39:33
  Speaker 6: Do you think it's ideas? Do you think it's money?
• 39:36
  Speaker 6: Do you think it's foreign affairs? What do you think
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: creates the kind of shift that you just identified? I.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: I don't think it's foreign affairs.
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: It can be a big international event with huge implications
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: in the United States like 9-11 or a war like Vietnam.
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: I think there's no simple answer to this, at least
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: that I can come up with. I think the economic
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: situation in any one moment can drive change. It creates
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: the conditions perhaps where people are looking for change. I
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: think the economy in 2008 and 24 and inflation. I
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: don't know that Trump gets elected in a different environment
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: where people are feeling so stressed that they're willing to
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: take risks. And I think individual people can... I'm not
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: an obscriber to the great man of history, but sometimes
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: you need a figure who can mobilize a movement. And
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: so I think what happens in 2008 doesn't happen without
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: Barack Obama. What happens in 2016 probably doesn't happen with
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump. And you can say similar things about I mean,
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: you know better than me, but throughout history. So I
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: think it's probably a little bit of all of the above,
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: I guess.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: What do you think?
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: So I think ideas change history. I think ideas change society.
• 40:53
  Speaker 6: And all the things you identified are effective only in
• 40:58
  Speaker 6: how they are defined by a society. And that means
• 41:02
  Speaker 6: that the people who tell the stories, who tell people
• 41:06
  Speaker 6: how they should interpret different things, make all the difference.
• 41:10
  Speaker 6: So if you go back, before I go back to
• 41:14
  Speaker 6: what you asked about with the election of Barack Obama,
• 41:17
  Speaker 6: which is crucially important, let me explain what I mean
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: by comparing, and I'm probably going to make people's heads explode,
• 41:26
  Speaker 6: but comparing Lyndon Baines Johnson to Ted Cruz.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: I can't wait to hear this. This is interesting.
• 41:34
  Speaker 6: Well, think about who they are, right? They are both,
• 41:39
  Speaker 6: they're both supremely self-centered politicians who care deeply about how
• 41:46
  Speaker 6: they're perceived by other people. They are very strong personalities.
• 41:52
  Speaker 6: And they both come from Texas. And one of them
• 41:58
  Speaker 6: used his power, twisted arms, I mean, quite aggressively, to
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: make the United States more responsive to those who had
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: been marginalized or left behind. The other one amassed power
• 42:17
  Speaker 6: by doing the opposite. So what makes the difference between
• 42:22
  Speaker 6: the two of them? Why did one try to garner
• 42:27
  Speaker 6: attention and power by doing good and the other one
• 42:30
  Speaker 6: by doing the opposite? And the answer to that for
• 42:34
  Speaker 6: me is the way a society defines what is a
• 42:37
  Speaker 6: way to get power, what is a way to get popular.
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: So if you start there with the idea that the
• 42:47
  Speaker 6: intellectual trains that a society lays down, the intellectual ideas
• 42:53
  Speaker 6: that a society lays down, are central to the way
• 42:56
  Speaker 6: that people interpret politics and the way people react to politics.
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: And you take a look at this idea that I
• 43:03
  Speaker 6: laid down early on from the movement conservatives that individuals
• 43:09
  Speaker 6: should not be hampered in any way by the government.
• 43:12
  Speaker 6: And they should be free to amass money. They should
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: be able to dominate people of color and to dominate
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: women and should just be able to do whatever they want,
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: which is, by the way, a very gendered look at
• 43:21
  Speaker 6: the way the world should work. You see within the
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: movement conservatives who take over the Republican Party an increasing
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: emphasis on the idea that anybody who disagrees with them
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: should be purged. And by the 1990s, after the Motor
• 43:38
  Speaker 6: Voter Act of 1993, and this is when Newt Gingrich
• 43:41
  Speaker 6: is running around. I mean, he still is running around,
• 43:44
  Speaker 6: but I mean rising in the political movement. You see
• 43:49
  Speaker 6: the attempt to use language to purge from the political
• 43:52
  Speaker 6: system Democrats. That is, Republicans are asked by a PAC
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: associated with Newt Gingrich to refer to Democrats as traitors, weak, socialists.
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: and to refer to Republicans as strong, powerful, American, patriot.
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: After the Voter Voter Act of 1994, Republicans begin to
• 44:12
  Speaker 6: start talking about the idea that Democrats can only win
• 44:15
  Speaker 6: through voter fraud. That's when you start to see them
• 44:18
  Speaker 6: talking about voter fraud. There is no evidence of voter
• 44:21
  Speaker 6: fraud then or now. There's a lot of evidence of
• 44:24
  Speaker 6: election fraud, which is a different thing. But they begin
• 44:27
  Speaker 6: to attack the legitimacy of Democrats to hold office. And
• 44:31
  Speaker 6: that really takes off with the election of Bill Clinton,
• 44:35
  Speaker 6: whom they go after for being corrupt from the very beginning.
• 44:39
  Speaker 6: Remember there was a scandal from the very beginning about
• 44:42
  Speaker 6: a travel agency? I don't even remember what.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: It was about.
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: There was the travel agency. There was Whitewater. I mean,
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: there was the Vince Fosters. I mean, it was all
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: like sort of right-wing fever dreams for a long time
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: up until obviously the very.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: Very end.
• 44:57
  Speaker 6: Right. And then at the very end, in that next election,
• 45:01
  Speaker 6: in 1998, after a Miami mess of a mayoral election,
• 45:08
  Speaker 6: Florida began to purge the voter rolls. And they purged
• 45:11
  Speaker 6: about 100,000 voters off the voter rolls in Florida before
• 45:15
  Speaker 6: the 2000 election. And we know how the 2000 election went.
• 45:19
  Speaker 6: It came down to a recount in Miami-Dade County that
• 45:21
  Speaker 6: was stopped by the Brooks Brothers riot. Roger Stone was
• 45:25
  Speaker 6: a player in that. in which he later said in
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: an interview, you know, the Democrats thought it was about
• 45:31
  Speaker 6: protecting the constitutional norms. We knew it was a battle.
• 45:34
  Speaker 6: And interestingly enough, black observers of that fight in 2000
• 45:39
  Speaker 6: saw it as a political struggle that mirrored the worst
• 45:42
  Speaker 6: of the KKK years. Then that's 2000. And then when
• 45:49
  Speaker 6: you have George W. Bush in office and the Republicans
• 45:52
  Speaker 6: start to think that they really have gotten a lock
• 45:55
  Speaker 6: on the system. through voter suppression primarily. But then they
• 46:00
  Speaker 6: also believe through their ideology and through their control of media,
• 46:03
  Speaker 6: which has a long history as well. But then you
• 46:06
  Speaker 6: get in 2008, the election of Barack Obama. And this
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: is complete anathema. This is how you get On the
• 46:14
  Speaker 6: night of his inauguration, Mitch McConnell, joining together with a
• 46:18
  Speaker 6: number of the leaders of the Republican Party, saying, we
• 46:21
  Speaker 6: don't care if we agree with anything he does, our
• 46:23
  Speaker 6: only goal is to make sure he's a one-term president.
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: Because the idea is that the Democrats, who are now
• 46:30
  Speaker 6: defined within the Republican Party as being illegitimate in terms
• 46:33
  Speaker 6: of governance, must be purged from power. So that's 2008.
• 46:38
  Speaker 6: He takes office 2009. What do you get in 2010?
• 46:42
  Speaker 6: You get Operation Red Map. You get the redistricting of
• 46:46
  Speaker 6: Democratic-dominated states that has been supported by an enormous amount
• 46:50
  Speaker 6: of Republican money with that explicit goal of taking over
• 46:54
  Speaker 6: the states and making sure that the Democrats cannot control
• 46:57
  Speaker 6: the House of Representatives so they can't legislate about anything.
• 47:00
  Speaker 6: You also get Citizens United that same year, which again
• 47:04
  Speaker 6: was about the use of media in favor of the
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: Republican Party, 2010-2012. And then in 2013, you get the
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: gutting of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County versus Holder.
• 47:13
  Speaker 6: And there you're starting to see the dramatic skewing of
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: the political system in favor of the Republican Party. That,
• 47:21
  Speaker 6: of course, hurts the Democrats, but it also badly hurts
• 47:24
  Speaker 6: the Republicans because in those gerrymandered districts where a lot
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: of people cannot vote unless they are Republicans— what Republicans
• 47:31
  Speaker 6: become afraid of is not losing a general election, but
• 47:34
  Speaker 6: rather being primary to the right. And that's when you
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: start to see that Republican right really turn hard right.
• 47:43
  Speaker 6: So from that, of course, you get the rise of
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: the MAGA movement, in which Trump is pretty clearly adhering
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: to the rhetoric of, you know, women and minorities shouldn't
• 47:55
  Speaker 6: have rights. but also quite visibly demonstrating his dominance of
• 48:01
  Speaker 6: them through mocking the disabled reporter, through his words about
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: sexual assault on women, through his very thinly veiled promises
• 48:10
  Speaker 6: to appoint only the best people. Well, you know who
• 48:12
  Speaker 6: the best people were. Was his election inevitable because Barack
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: Obama was elected suggests that there's simply a racist backlash
• 48:25
  Speaker 6: against Obama's election. But I actually think it's less that
• 48:31
  Speaker 6: than the fact that Obama's election indicated to Republican leaders
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: and to their followers who had been raised at that
• 48:39
  Speaker 6: point on at least 20 years of a red meat,
• 48:42
  Speaker 6: right wing media diet, that they must find a way
• 48:46
  Speaker 6: to keep Democrats out of power. And they skewed the
• 48:49
  Speaker 6: system very badly, sending it further to the right, at
• 48:52
  Speaker 6: the same time that in order to keep people behind them,
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: they really doubled down on the racism and sexism. And
• 48:58
  Speaker 6: that then gave us Trump 2016. And just as a reminder,
• 49:04
  Speaker 6: in 2016, Trump was the most economically moderate Republican running.
• 49:10
  Speaker 6: I mean, that all got jettisoned very quickly, but But
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: people tend to forget that now. He really was the
• 49:15
  Speaker 6: logical outcome of those 40 years of Republican rhetoric, the
• 49:20
  Speaker 6: skewing of the mechanics of the system. And then in
• 49:23
  Speaker 6: August 2017, with the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia,
• 49:27
  Speaker 6: he tossed over the traditional Republicans or the movement conservatives
• 49:30
  Speaker 6: in the Republican Party and started to create an authoritarian movement.
• 49:34
  Speaker 6: So there you go.
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is. I mean, it's very helpful, I think,
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: to understand... that.
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: The history here, I mean, obviously it's always helpful to
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: understand history, but there is like, there is, I think
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: we are sort of past this now, but so much
• 49:47
  Speaker 5: in like the 2017 to 20 until basically January 5th, 2021,
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: there was still this idea among a lot of people
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: that Trump was this anomaly, that he was just like
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: this guy who hijacked the party briefly. And then he
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: was going to be here for a little bit and
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: we could survive him. He would go away and we
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: would get back to the Romneys and the McCain's and
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: the Bush's after that, as opposed to seeing Trump as
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: a lodge, as a, is sort of the end result
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: of a long process.
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: Within the Republican Party.
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: So I think that's just a very helpful thing for
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: us to say. I'm not sure people are still, now
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: they see, now the Republican Party is entirely in his thrall,
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: although I do still think there are some Democrats on
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: Capitol Hill who just think if we can just survive
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: this next four years, all my Republican friends in the
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: Senate will come back. I think that's a deeply naive view.
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: I think there may be fewer of them every day,
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: but it continues. So I think it's very helpful.
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: So one of the things that really interested me about
• 50:35
  Speaker 6: Trump when he rose in 2016, was, you know, and
• 50:41
  Speaker 6: you got me talking about history, so this is all
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: on you.
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: No, this is why I wanted you, yes.
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: One of the things that I think is enormously slippery
• 50:49
  Speaker 6: in American history, but in anybody who talks about this,
• 50:51
  Speaker 6: is what populism is. Because some people like populism, some
• 50:55
  Speaker 6: people hate populism, sometimes about economics, sometimes about race. And
• 50:58
  Speaker 6: it's like, it's really slippery. And one of the things
• 51:01
  Speaker 6: that I really thought was interesting about Trump's rise is
• 51:04
  Speaker 6: it occurred to me for the first time that at
• 51:06
  Speaker 6: least in the United States, which is all I'm qualified
• 51:08
  Speaker 6: to speak about, Trump seemed to me not to be
• 51:12
  Speaker 6: a politician, but to be a salesman in that he
• 51:16
  Speaker 6: was reflecting the American people at a certain moment as
• 51:19
  Speaker 6: if he was holding up a mirror to them, to
• 51:22
  Speaker 6: a certain group of people who a lot of observers
• 51:25
  Speaker 6: called populists. And it's the first time it ever occurred
• 51:28
  Speaker 6: to me that maybe, and this is how I now
• 51:30
  Speaker 6: think of it, populism is less about a movement and
• 51:35
  Speaker 6: less about principles than it is about the moment when
• 51:39
  Speaker 6: a group of people recognizes that they have been lied to.
• 51:43
  Speaker 6: So on the one hand, Trump really echoed the rhetoric
• 51:47
  Speaker 6: that they'd been hearing for a long time. And at
• 51:50
  Speaker 6: the same time, he said, but it didn't work for you,
• 51:54
  Speaker 6: so I'm gonna make your economic situation better. So it
• 51:57
  Speaker 6: felt kind of to me like the moment when the
• 52:00
  Speaker 6: tide was shifting, that rather than populism being a longer,
• 52:04
  Speaker 6: some movement that we could fit into, conservatism or whatever,
• 52:08
  Speaker 6: that it was more a moment in a population when
• 52:12
  Speaker 6: the rhetoric no longer matched the reality and people were mad.
• 52:16
  Speaker 6: What they were gonna do about it was unclear. But
• 52:19
  Speaker 6: that's why I thought he was interesting in 2016. And
• 52:21
  Speaker 6: of course, now that ship has completely sailed.
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: More of my conversation with Heather Cox Richardson in a moment.
• 52:27
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• 55:03
  Speaker 5: One of the things I was hoping you could put
• 55:08
  Speaker 5: into political context for us was President Trump deploying troops
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: first to LA, then to DC, and now to maybe
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: Chicago or New Orleans in the coming days. What are
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: the historical parallels for what we're seeing right now?
• 55:19
  Speaker 6: One of the interesting parallels between the past and the
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: present is the use of federal troops against American citizens.
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: And the whole concept of the Posse Comitatus Act that
• 55:32
  Speaker 6: you're reading about in all kinds of places is an
• 55:34
  Speaker 6: important reflection of that attempt to consolidate power, among a
• 55:41
  Speaker 6: really small group of Americans who are running the government.
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: So a lot of people get the Posse Comitatus story
• 55:47
  Speaker 6: a little bit wrong. And that's that the reason we
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: get the Posse Comitatus Act is actually a deeply political story.
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: So what happens is in 1876, there is, if you will,
• 56:00
  Speaker 6: a hung election. It's not clear who has won the
• 56:03
  Speaker 6: presidential election of that year. It comes down to the
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who appears to have lost the
• 56:09
  Speaker 6: popular vote to the Democrat Samuel Tilden, a reformer from
• 56:12
  Speaker 6: New York. And in the attempt to figure out who
• 56:15
  Speaker 6: had actually won the four states that were in question,
• 56:18
  Speaker 6: one's in the West, we all forget about that, but
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: there are three states in the American South, it's not
• 56:24
  Speaker 6: at all clear whether the Democrats won those states or
• 56:26
  Speaker 6: the Republicans won those states because the elections are a mess.
• 56:30
  Speaker 6: And in the three Southern states, the states send back
• 56:33
  Speaker 6: competing slates of electors. What happens then is that a
• 56:38
  Speaker 6: number of people working for Rutherford B. Hayes go to
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: those southern states and say to the people running the states, listen,
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: if you will just back off and let Rutherford B.
• 56:48
  Speaker 6: Hayes become president, we will make sure that you get
• 56:51
  Speaker 6: stuff like a cabinet appointment for patronage positions and money
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: for railroads. And the reason that that's important is because
• 57:00
  Speaker 6: The guy who makes the most promises and is one
• 57:02
  Speaker 6: of the most effective in getting the Southern leaders to
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: drop their support for Tilden is a guy named Thomas A. Scott,
• 57:09
  Speaker 6: and he is one of the major railroad leaders in
• 57:12
  Speaker 6: the country. So it looks, over the winter of 1877,
• 57:16
  Speaker 6: as if the United States is going to go back
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: into a civil war. In fact, the Southern states throw
• 57:23
  Speaker 6: their support to Hayes, and Hayes is inaugurated in March
• 57:27
  Speaker 6: of 1877. That date's important. because in July of 1877,
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: America has its first national strike, and it's a strike
• 57:39
  Speaker 6: on the railroads that starts in Tom Scott's biggest railroad.
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: When that happens, Rutherford behaves, puts down the strike by
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: calling out the army. So if you are a Democrat
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: who has just watched the Republicans essentially steal an election,
• 57:59
  Speaker 6: And then you're watching the president call out the army
• 58:02
  Speaker 6: to support the positions of his biggest supporter against his workers.
• 58:08
  Speaker 6: You feel like you have watched the destruction of American
• 58:12
  Speaker 6: democracy truly once and for all with the help of
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: the army. So in 1878, when the Democrats take control
• 58:21
  Speaker 6: of Congress, they push through the Posse Comitatus Act, citizens
• 58:31
  Speaker 6: for domestic law enforcement. And that concept that the military
• 58:35
  Speaker 6: can't be used against American citizens holds for every group
• 58:40
  Speaker 6: of the U.S. military except the military under the Department
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: of Homeland Security, which is a brand new, under George W. Bush,
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: department of the government. And because within it is the U.S.
• 58:54
  Speaker 6: Coast Guard. And the Coasties, in fact, are charged with
• 58:58
  Speaker 6: protecting domestic law enforcement. So that watching troops back in
• 59:05
  Speaker 6: the streets in apparent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: as a judge in California has said, really conjures up
• 59:14
  Speaker 6: that moment again during Reconstruction when the president was using
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: the military power of the United States against the American
• 59:23
  Speaker 6: people to concentrate power among himself and his cronies. And
• 59:27
  Speaker 6: I think that aspect of the Posse Comitatus Act is
• 59:30
  Speaker 6: important enough that it shouldn't keep getting blown over as
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: they're not supposed to do this. The reason they're not
• 59:37
  Speaker 6: supposed to do this is if you put the disposal
• 59:39
  Speaker 6: of the military into the hands of a president who
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: uses it to protect his cronies, you've lost our democracy.
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: You know, so much of your writing, the book you
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: wrote is about democracy, the struggle for democracy, the struggle
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: to have our democracy represent the ideals we want it
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: to represent. As we sit here today, we have troops
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: in the American streets. We have masked ICE agents disappearing
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: people to torture prisons. You have the President of the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: United States on the official White House Twitter account declaring
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: that he wants to revoke the citizenship of an American
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: citizen like Rosie O'Donnell. You have the President totally ignoring,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: essentially with the assent of Republicans in Congress, any sort
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: of spending passed by Congress, just doing sort of closing
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: agencies as he wants. He decided to rename the Department
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: of Defense, even though that was named by statute the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: other day. it kind of feels like democracy is losing
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: right now. And what I think is so alarming to
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: so many people about it, particularly to me, is that
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: it feels like so many people are okay with that, right?
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: You know, you have a plurality of the country who
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 5: is with Trump throughout all of this. You have, you know,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: just thinking about this last night as Trump is, you know,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: we're finding out about this bombing on this boat, this,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: you know, extrajudicial killing, the, you know, the Rosie O'Donnell
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: stuff is happening as all of the tech CEOs are
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: gathered at the White House for a celebratory dinner with Trump.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: You know, just, The Republican Party is with him. It
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: feels like a lot of people are just kind of
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: okay with democracy fading away. Is there a historical parallel
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: for that where just Americans may be willing– some percent
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: of Americans are either too afraid, too self-interested, too disinterested
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: to care about democracy going away? Have we been at
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: this moment before?
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: 100%. So more than once, yeah. I mean, 1850s, 1890s, 1930s,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 6: all of those times looked like they do today or worse.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: And that's one of the things that I think gives
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 6: me great hope. But let me explain to you what
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 6: I mean, at least in the 1850s, because I think
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 6: that's the most dramatic. During the 1840s, especially, with the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 6: trail of tears that forced indigenous Americans out of the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 6: Southeast and the opening up of the very rich cotton
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 6: lands in the American Southeast. In the 1840s, especially 1840s
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: and 1850s, you get a huge boom in cotton and
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: in the value of land in the American South. And
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 6: you also get the rise of a very small group
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 6: of elite planters who depend on a system that permits
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 6: them to continue enslaving human beings, even though the vast
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 6: majority of Americans who live in the North don't think
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 6: this is a very good system. But they managed to
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: take over the Democratic Party, and then they managed through
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party to take over the American government. And
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 6: by 1853, if you are a Northerner, you're probably not
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 6: paying much attention. Or if you're many Southerners who aren't
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: benefiting from the system, you're maybe not paying as much attention.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 6: Certainly in the North, you're not. It's there, but you're
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 6: probably not thinking about it. You're moving to the cities.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: You're trying all this new technology that is coming out.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: You're moving to the Midwest. You're doing new stuff. You're
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 6: cutting down trees. You're doing all the things that were
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 6: contributing to what was a boom and bust economy. So
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: the government, you just weren't paying that much attention to it.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: So if you were paying attention, you looked at the
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 6: fact that the elite Southerners had gotten control of the
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: White House. They'd gotten control of the Senate. And they
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: got in control of the Supreme Court, but by God,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 6: you had the House of Representatives and always would because
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 6: there were so many more Northerners, so nobody cared, right?
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: And then in 1854, the Southern elite enslavers pushed through
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: Congress with the help of the president, the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: And the Kansas-Nebraska Act says that the land in the
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 6: American West that was acquired under the Louisiana Purchase would
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 6: no longer be held aside for free labor for non-slaveholding settlements.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 6: But in fact, enslavers could spread slavery into that part
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 6: of the country. And what that would mean is that
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 6: with new slaveholding states in the American West, the American
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 6: West and the American South would overhaul the American North
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: and the entire country would be a slave-owning country. People
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 6: forget that this happened because you think, Kansas-Nebraska Act, who cares?
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: It's that act that wakes Abraham Lincoln up. He paces
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: all night.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: He's a.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: This is, we're in real trouble now. So the North
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 6: begins to wake up to the fact that the system
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 6: has been taken over by essentially an oligarchy. That word
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 6: goes around a lot. They don't know what they stand
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: for yet. They just know that they don't agree about
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 6: what is happening to the American government. And the day
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 6: after the Kansas-Nebraska Act passes the House of Representatives, a
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 6: number of representatives gets together in Washington and they actually
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 6: meet in the rooms of Edward Dickinson from Massachusetts. whose daughter, Emily,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: you might have heard of. She wasn't a recluse at
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: that point. She would actually visit him there. And they
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 6: come together in that room and they say, it's actually
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 6: in the boarding house that has the best food in Washington.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: And they say, listen, we don't agree with each other
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: about immigration or internal improvements or finances or any of
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: this stuff, but by God, we can agree that we
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 6: need to protect democracy. And they spread out across the
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: North and they start to talk about the issues that matter.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: And in the elections that year and in the elections
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 6: the next year, those people who are anti-Nebraska, they call themselves,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 6: dominate the elections. They force out the Northern Democrats in
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: huge numbers and take over the elections in 55 and 56.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: But it's not a cakewalk. By 56, you've got not
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 6: only a civil war starting over whether or not Kansas
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: is going to be a slave-holding state or not, you've
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 6: actually got a Southern enslaver beating almost to death a
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 6: Northern senator on the floor of the Senate. There's blood everywhere.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: And all these senators are standing around. And somebody later says,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: why didn't you step in? And they said, we didn't
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: think it was our fight. So increasingly, it looks like
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 6: this oligarchy is going to take over the system. And
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: by 1858, you've got Abraham Lincoln starting to talk about
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: what it means to be an American with the idea
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 6: that he is the true conservative by standing and protecting
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: the Declaration of Independence against those elite enslavers who want
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 6: to make the country a slave country, you know, everywhere.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 6: So by 58, you've got Lincoln beginning to articulate this position,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: and then in 59, He articulates a new vision of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 6: the American government, the idea that the government should not
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 6: simply protect the property of the slave owners, but rather
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 6: should work for ordinary Americans, making sure they have equal
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 6: access to resources and that they are not going to
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 6: have to work for these elite enslavers in the future
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 6: who are going to be taking over these states and
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 6: concentrating wealth and power. 1860, Northerners elect him to the presidency.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 6: By 1863, he has.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 6: Signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending the system of human enslavement.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 6: And by November of 1863, he is given the Gettysburg
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 6: Address in which he calls for a new birth of
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 6: freedom and the idea that Americans come together to protect
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 6: the idea that government of the people, by the people,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 6: and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: So in nine years, you go from the elite enslavers
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: get it all to We're going to have a new
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 6: birth of freedom that creates a government that works for everybody.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: And at the time, the only people who could vote
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 6: were white men. So if you look at that comparison
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 6: to where we are today when we have modern media
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: so people understand what's going on, much faster communication, more
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: voices involved, more voters involved, it does not look as
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: helpless and as hopeless to me as it does to
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: many people.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: So if you look at that, whether it's the 1850s,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: you said the 1890s or the 1930s, what are the
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: lessons or ingredients you think are necessary to push back
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 5: against this and save democracy? What are the lessons you
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: would take for that that we should be applying today?
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 6: In every one of those periods, what made the difference
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 6: was that individuals made sure that their neighbors understood what
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 6: was going on. That's why the media is so important.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 6: That's why meetings are so important. That's why protests are
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 6: so important. Because what you just said when we started
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 6: that part of our conversation was that a lot of
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 6: Americans seem not to care. In fact, they care very,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 6: very deeply. They just are not aware of what is happening.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 6: When people know what is happening, they are against it
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 6: in huge numbers. You look, for example, at Project 2025.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 6: When people knew what was in Project 2025, a whopping
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 6: 4% of Americans wanted it to be put into place.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 6: Now it's being put into place around us. People just
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 6: aren't as many people who need to be are not
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 6: aware of what is happening. And the way you make
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 6: them aware is just to make sure that everybody is
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 6: talking about it, which I think is what people like
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: you and I do.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 5: And in that case, do we, we need, we need
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 5: leaders also who can meet that moment, right? Like there is,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: is it, like, we obviously, we need, we need our
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: version of Abraham Lincoln as well. We need someone who
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: can speak to the moment. You know, I think it's,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 5: it's not just the, you know, obviously you need smart people,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 5: you need brave people, you create, but we also need people,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: particularly in this media environment who can communicate to solve
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: that problem you're talking about, right? Like that is like,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: when you look, I guess, I guess I would say
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: it this way. If you look back at the 2024 election,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: without getting into tactics of political strategy or anything like that,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 5: one of the reasons that Trump was able to prevail
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: is that he was able to dominate the information space, right?
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: So that people did not know what necessarily Democrats, what
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: Kamala Harris wanted to do, or maybe didn't know what
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: we thought Donald Trump wanted to do because we couldn't
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: get that out there. So we need to inform people.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: We need leaders who can help us inform people, right?
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm less worried about the leader thing as well
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 6: than a lot of people are. In 1857, very few
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 6: people had heard of Abraham Lincoln. He came out of nowhere,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 6: not because he was waiting in the wings so much
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 6: as the people created him. He listened to what people
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 6: were saying, and he put that into an ideology that
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 6: became one of the driving ideologies of American history and
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: of the American psyche. There's somebody out there doing the
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 6: same thing right now. It may be a name we know,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 6: it may not be a name we know, but that
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 6: person is going to arrive or those people are going
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 6: to arrive. And it worries me, the only thing that
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 6: worries me a little bit is when people are right
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 6: now saying, you know, X is my guy, is my person,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 6: that's who we're going to elect because we just don't
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: know who is going to come out of the woodwork
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: and be the voice of the future. And one of
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 6: the things that happened in the 50s, 1850s, 1890s, and
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 6: the 1930s that is happening again now is a dramatic
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 6: generational change, especially in the 1890s. That's from the 1880s
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: into the 19 aughts. There's a generational change. And the
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 6: new leaders in that era were people like Henry Cabot
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 6: Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt or fighting Bob La Follette from
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 6: Wisconsin or Albert Beveridge from Indiana. They're... They were people
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 6: who weren't really on people's radar screens. They were watching.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 6: They were listening. But they really vault into importance when
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 6: that generational shift happens. And you saw the same thing
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: in the 1850s, like I say. And I think we're
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 6: seeing the same thing now. We're seeing new voices. And
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 6: I don't necessarily mean young voices, although young usually goes
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 6: along with that. And they're going to bring new ideas.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 6: Some of them are going to be good. Some of
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 6: them are going to suck. That's just the way it's
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 6: going to be. From that, we're going to get a
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 6: whole new crop of leaders. And they will embrace a
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 6: new America, which we need to have. We need to
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 6: change an awful lot of what we have lived with
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 6: with the past 40 years for this country adequately to
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 6: answer the 21st century and its extraordinary crises of things
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 6: like climate change. So I'm actually optimistic about finding those
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 6: leaders because the more we speak up as individuals who
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 6: are not involved in the political sphere, the more we'll
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 6: create them.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: I think that is a perfect place to end it.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 5: So many of the conversations we've had, particularly since January
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: of this year, have felt on this podcast and elsewhere
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: have felt very dark. This is one that was both
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 5: illuminating and hopeful, and I'm very grateful for that. I
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 5: know our audience will be very grateful for it. So
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 5: thank you so much for joining us. This was fascinating.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 6: Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: That's our show for today. Thanks to Heather Cox Richardson
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 5: for joining, and John, John, and Tommy will be backing
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: your feeds on Tuesday.
• 1:12:39
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  Speaker 8: episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save
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  Speaker 8: America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers are David Toledo,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 8: Emma Illich-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
• 1:13:02
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• 1:13:04
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• 1:13:08
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• 1:13:11
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