Offline with Jon Favreau - Why You Should Love America

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

Progressives are highly critical of America, and for good reason. But we are losing more than problematic idols and ideals when we abandon patriotism. Jerusalem Demsas, founder and editor of “The Argument,” argues that if we’re going to save America, we’ll have to start loving it first.  She joins Offline to explain how liberals have ceded patriotism to the right, why No Kings is starting to fix this, and how to talk about our country’s issues without undermining hope that America still holds promise.

Offline is brought you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. Just nothing but good things to say about Zbiotics. Genuinely love Zibiotics. Another weekend where I was forced to drink. So I never want to do it myself. Never. And, you know, the Zbiotics really helped. Just felt better the next day.

You always feel better. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic biobiotic. byproduct in the gut. It's a build up of this byproduct, not dehydration that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly,

and you will feel your best tomorrow. Please try this product if you drink, and especially if you were drinking and you're just a little bit older like our age. That is the perfect, and you're just going to have a couple drinks. Hoof! Yeah. That Zbiotics will make you feel great. Go to Zibiotics.com slash offline to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use all. offline at checkout. Zbiotics is backed with 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to

Zbiotics.com slash offline and use the code offline at checkout for 15% off. Instead of just being like, yeah, we're all wear American flags. Like you're not just going to let that be like the American, the far right symbol. We've just been like slowly seeding it. Like, oh, they're wearing it. I can't wear it. But you don't see the opposite happening. Like you see these no kings rallies everywhere and they have American paraphernalism. And like, no one on the right is like, oh, well, now I've got to take down my flag. And so there's this weird unilateral disarmament because I think people on the left don't want to accidentally be understood as being a far right person.

Whether or not you think this is analytically or descriptively correct that the American flag or these symbols of American heritage have been used to do bad things, what is the endgame of a country where the entirety of the left decides that being positive about your nation's history, heritage, future, symbolism is a bad thing. Like, is that going to end in a good place for us? I just think obviously not. I'm John Favra, and you just heard from today's guest, writer and founder of the argument substack, Jerusalem Demsus.

Jerusalem recently wrote a great piece for the argument titled, You Have to Love America to Save It. Basically, she traces how liberals have come to abandon patriotism and argues that reclaiming it is crucial for building the kind of. country liberals want to live in. She notes that many of America's greatest orators, from John Winthrop to Martin Luther King Jr., to Barack Obama, have all embraced a vision of patriotism that's about confronting America's failure to live up to its founding promise, but then challenging Americans to make that promise true. I figured with America's 250th around the corner, Trump's 80th in the

rear view, and the opening of Obama's presidential center on June Teeth, this was the perfect time to talk to Jerusalem about why liberal patriotism is so important and what it should look like. We'll get to that conversation in a moment, but before we do, one way to show you love America is to support independent media companies doing their best to protect it. You can tell I just read that now for the first time. And the best way to do that is to become a friend of the pod subscriber. Subscribers get access to this show and all of your favorite crooked media podcasts ad-free, as well as special behind-the-paywall shows like Pod Save America Only Friends and Dan's

Polarcoaster and also action. to all of our great substack newsletters. Plus, again, you get to feel great about supporting pro-democracy independent media, and that's about as patriotic as it gets. Head over to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe today. All right, here's Jerusalem, welcome back to offline. Thanks for having me. So in honor of America's 250th, Trump's 80th,

and Obama's Juneteenth library opening this week, I wanted to talk patriotism with you because you just wrote what I thought was a fantastic piece about the top. for the argument. And it seems to have been inspired by an anecdote that your old Atlanta colleague Yoni Applebaum told, he apparently dropped the word patriotism in a closed-door room of liberal jurists, professors, journalists, and it apparently landed like a live grenade, he said. One person said it made her feel excluded. Another said it connoted violence and racism. I guess the facilitator wouldn't even write it on the easel.

What was your initial reaction to that story? And why was it the thing that made you sit down and write this? Yeah, I mean, I was reading it. And at first I was just kind of like, you know, I'm not like shocked that people have complicated feelings around loving your own country at any moment in history, right? Like, especially a country like the United States, that's so powerful. It means that even if you're doing powerfully good things,

at any point you're probably also doing powerfully bad things, even if they're just mistakes. So these are things that are just not confusing to me. But I thought the idea that you wouldn't even want to reclaim patriotism or the idea that you wouldn't want to have a positive vision for the country that, for better or for worse, you're stuck in. Like, this is the nation that you're a part of is something that I find really difficult to reconcile with.

I mean, particularly I'm an immigrant. And so I think sometimes I'm, like, inoculated from some of the pathologies of, like, self-hating Americanism. I just have never had that kind of impulse, even when I've had critiques of the United States, of which there are, of course, many. And so to me, I mean, particularly coming from a context where, you know, there's just like a lot worse countries to live in as an individual. It's just not something that I've ever really understood why it was so deeply rooted in so many parts of the American psyche, particularly among academics.

Why do you think patriotism is important? I think that if you don't have a positive vision for your country, you're doing. to repeat a negative vision for it. So if you have really low expectations for anything, whether you have low expectations for yourself, low expectations, or a story that you tell about your kids, your friends, your partner, whatever it is, you're kind of almost like dooming yourself to reliving that narrative over and over again. And I think that like it's really, really bad to have this view of America as like irredeemably terrible because, A, that that kind of excuses then bad actions that happen in the future, what you're

you're saying it's like, oh, it's almost inevitable that this bad thing's going to happen. There's really nothing you can do. So I think it dampers a lot of really positive sentiment that you can have, or positive actions you can take and to make the world a better place. But I think secondarily, I think it's just like incorrect. Like patriotism as an American, I'm patriotic because there are a lot of amazing things about America. Like America is like extremely unique in the world as a place that decided not just, okay, we're going to try to have good things for people who live in our borders,

but we're going to redefine what it means to be a member of a nation. We're going to say that even if you're from somewhere that you weren't born here, you came here, you made great things that you get to be an American, you get to be here. I mean, I just think that people who have not spent a lot of time outside this country can't really tell sometimes how the feeling that that can imbue in you as a person to feel ostracized from the place that you grew up in, to feel like you're never going to be an Italian. Like my grandmother has lived in Bologna most of her life.

Like nobody, she doesn't consider herself Italian. Nobody there considers her Italian. I mean, I have family members and friends who immigrated to the UK and to Sweden. Things are, you know, variable in different places. But, you know, my Swedish relatives do not, they're not Swedish. They don't think of themselves as Swedish, really. They speak Swedish, but it's just not the same thing. And that just is something that is really unique to this country.

And so I'm patriotic in part because I'm patriotic in part because I, I actually recognize that there's something really amazing that we've created here. And I don't want to just have this posture that, you know, okay, well, you know, we have to pretend it's good for no reason. Like, no, it's amazing what's here. And also we need to keep telling that story. Otherwise, worse stories will be told and those will be the ones that we live out. One of those stories we're living out right now. You might argue.

You argue in the piece that the most powerful patriotic tool and, you argue. And the one that the left has basically stopped picking up is something called the American Jeremiahd. For everyone who just heard a word they've never used, but what is it? And what are its hallmarks? So the American Jeremiahd is a type of speech. I mean, people may have heard of some of these speeches. They may not have heard of it as categorized as a Jeremiah before. But things like John Winthrop's City on a Hill speech from pre-revolutionary days, you have Martin Luther King's speeches, you have Abraham Lincoln speeches, his second inaugural address. Basically, the Jeremiah is a three-part speech. It's a speech that does a few things. First, it really lays down all the problems that are going on in society, whether it's talking about

racism, whether it's talking about inequality, whether it's talking about people straying from God. I mean, again, the word Jeremiah literally comes from the prophet Jeremiah who gives that kind of blistering speech in the Old Testament, you know, book. And, you know, the first part is it's pretty damning. You're damning people. You're saying, look, look at all the ways that you fail to live up to some ideal. And that's the second part, which is that it lays out an ideal. It says there is this thing that you're supposed to be living up to, whether it's America as a land of opportunity or it's America as a land that's supposed to treat people equally. I mean, Martin Luther King's speeches were particularly great at this, at showing that, you know, laying out the ways that America had failed

black Americans. And then finally, it points a path towards redemption. It says, you can live up to this ideal if you do these things. So for Frederick Douglass, it may have been abolition. From MLK, it was economic justice and fairness for African Americans and all working class people. For John Winthrop, it was, we need to make America as a city on a hill. We need to be a beacon of light for as God's people. And so this kind of tripartite speech is something that has characterized American political speech for a long time. The first time I heard about it was in college. I took a class on race and poetry, and this is where I first learned about this. And, you know, it's something that is unique to America in many respects in that we have this tension where obviously at no part

are we living up to this ideal we've set up for ourselves, right? Like it's impossible to to have perfectly lived up to this notion of a nation that treats each person equally, that recognizes the inherent equality in each person and throughout history never have made any mistakes there. And yet, this ideal is something that we remind ourselves of in political commentary all the time. But it's kind of gone out of vogue. This is just not how you hear politicians speaking on the left anymore. I mean, I wrote in a piece that the last American Jeremiah, it is probably given by Barack Obama. And that is something that I think is really a reflection of how much the left and liberals have become uncomfortable with this notion of the

ideal. I mean, I think a much more popular framework that's developed is this idea that America is sort of irrevocably broken in some way. And that really makes it difficult for you to call people to action in a much more positive light. If you're saying America is irrevocably broken and that at the core of it is white supremacy at the core of it is structural inequality, that it's very difficult to say, we're fighting to make America, you know, this ideal nation because what are you fighting for then? And so that's sort of the like very, you know, one-on-one history of the American Jeremiah had. It's funny. So I've heard the word Jeremiah had before in relation to, you know, speeches, but I didn't really know. I wasn't really familiar with what it was. And then now I have

seen it twice over the last couple weeks, once in your piece, and several times in Ben Rose's new book, always say, which I talked to him about for POTS of America, he selected 15 speeches that sort of capture the American, the story of American identity and the argument of over-American identity, and there's quite a few Jeremiah ads in there. Also, as I was reading yours, and you mentioned Obama, I'm like, I guess maybe I didn't recognize what it was because I thought all of our speeches were that. Like, when you talk about it. You talk about it. You talking about like that is the structure of a jeremiah i'm like yeah that was the structure of all of our speeches that we did or at least all of like the kind of big speeches it's like that david dr wallace

like saying about like this is water it's exactly right yeah yeah it's like that is sort of like like this the central theme of american rhetoric at least like when i was starting to learn to write speeches for obama like looked at king looked at um like you know king's promissory note and i have a dream speech is maybe the best, one of the best examples that sticks out in my mind. A lot of some of the Roosevelt speeches, the Kennedy speech is Lincoln, for sure. But since I'm too close to this on the Obama side, but I've wondered the same thing myself. Like, why do you think he was the last liberal practitioner we've had? I know you said that we've devolved into this other story about America is irredeemably broken,

but like, what was the path? What happened from Obama to that sort of? of prevailing notion that America is irrevocably broken, or even if you don't think that, no one actually trying to replicate that kind of Jeremiah. Yeah, I mean, I think a few things. One, I mean, I made a joke about this earlier about feeling like as an immigrant, you know, and a black woman like kind of inoculated from like anti-American kind of sentiment. I think in some ways that Barack Obama as a black president was able to.

able to make arguments about America having this core ideal vision that we're trying to fulfill over generations because, you know, he's obviously not dismissing the legacy of racism and harm that has happened in this country, the original sin of the United States, which is the harm that it's done to African Americans. And I think that like for people who are coming from the majority, there's often a desire. And I think, you know, a desire I understand to explain that they're not writing that all off, right? I think particularly post-2016, we see a lot of people recognizing, okay, there are a lot of real big harms that America has done to people, whether it's immigrants. I mean, especially we were watching that during Trump's first term and now, of course,

is second as well. But, you know, in the 2010s, you're watching this happen under Trump. You're like, how can our country have done this? And there are a lot of arguments being made about, you know what, this is what America is. Like, look at Trump. There is a long line of politicians who have pushed America toward this reactionary version, an illiberal version of who we are. And there was this effort, I think, both to understand, and these are people who are diagnosing what's going on under Trump. And there's also an effort to treat that as somehow part and parcel of the American story. And a lot of that is just literally correct. Like, it's obviously true that there are people before Trump who were, you know, illiberal we're talking about, you know, throughout the 1900s, 1800s,

You had white supremacists, of course, who were like a vowed white supremacist who were pushing against basic civil liberties in the United States. And I think that like sometimes that can come into tension with how do you tell a story about your country? Because there are so many data points. There's so many narrative points you can tell at any given moment about what America is, what its founding story is. And that is a fight that's happening right now where you have people on the right trying

to say like actually no. birthright citizenship is wrong we understood. All of these things are not actually part of the American story. And so to get back to your original question about why the left abandoned it, I think it was, there was such a shock when Trump won. There was such a real, um, visceral feeling of, well, if we could have elected this person who says this about women, who demonizes Mexican immigrants, who is really oppositional to this founding story that the previous president, Barack Obama had just been telling, then doesn't that mean that actually there's something deeply wrong and rotting at the heart of the United States? And I think that that's an understandable impulse, but it's like a self-defeating one, as I've said.

And so I think right now the question is, you know, can there be more a different story being told by future politicians? I mean, we're just going to watch in 2028 to see what kind of rhetoric there is. I mean, you see this at the DNC every time. Like there is an attempt to reclaim patriotism. I mean, Kamala Harris's DNC speech, the whole hall is littered with red, white, and blue flags. I've been to the reporting on the no king's rallies. I mean, you see unbelievable levels of patriotism at these rallies happening. I'll note that, like, those are much older places than I think the average person

electorate is. And so there's this open question about whether young people will kind of follow in this tradition. But I do think there's like a lot of potential latent patriotism waiting to be tapped by someone who is able to hold all of these strands together, who can recognize the harms that have been done while still saying there is something good, a story that we're all a part of, that you can be a part of too in making this country better. And that to me is just like an open question at this point. Yeah. When I read Yoni Applebaum's story and that anecdote, I was not necessarily surprised that

in that room that he was in, there was this resistance to patriotism or even to the idea of reclaiming patriotism because it feels like this idea that America is irredeemable or, you know, that the original sin of slavery is somehow something we can't overcome and actually we're just bad. It started in academia. And I'm not faulting people because like there's something in their constitution that made them more pessimistic. But when you study history that closely, I can understand why analyzing America, history and especially history that is not often told would lead you to a more pessimistic place.

But it has clearly spread beyond academia now into sort of the population. And especially on the left, I mean, there's some, you know, because America's 250th is coming up, there's a bunch of new polls out on this. And I think like PPI has 51% of Americans say they're extremely or very proud to be American. that's down from 82% in 2013. There's like a long trend line in Gallup. There's a record low, 58% extremely are very proud. And it's 2025 read.

That's down nine points in a year. And then for Democrats especially, it's only 36% of Democrats are proud of their country. And that's the lowest gallops ever recorded for that group. And a generational floor of just 41% among Gen Z. So as you're getting younger and more liberal, it's somehow, It's somehow getting worse. And I'm trying to figure out why that is on the left especially. I mean, part of this is just that Donald Trump is president right now.

And so people here are pollster asking them, are you proud to be an American? And there's a conflation of that with, are you happy about the direction this country's going in? And so if you look at any questions that are about kind of the direction of the country, about like how things feel on the economy, on politics, international relations, I mean, you just see obviously depressed rates among liberals. because, you know, we, we are concerned about what this president is doing. But I think that that's not the only thing that's going on. I think that you're right that there is also like a generational and, you know,

ideological divide here because even when a Democrat is president, you don't see the number go down as much for Republicans or conservatives as it does for for Democrats. And I just actually do think here that people are having trouble with this tension. They just hear this idea of being patriotic as being synonymous with wiping away every bad thing America has done. And I really do actually fault elected official leaders, academic leaders, thought leaders in general, for constantly conflating these two things. I was just talking about this with a friend of mine. But I remember I was, I must have been like a teenager or something like that.

And I'd gone to Boston for the first time. I'd gone on the Freedom Trail. I don't know. I was kind of like an idiot. I didn't really know about the, like, general. symbolism about some of these things. And so I got the yellow don't tread on me hat, which I was just like, yeah, that's like a part of the American store.

I had no idea that there was some like larger significance here. And I come back to D.C. and I'm like wearing, or Maryland and I'm like wearing this hat. And someone's like, what are you doing right now? What are you wearing this like tea party symbol? And I was just like, what do you mean? This is like an American like history, like, you know, symbol or whatever. And, you know, I then never wore that hat again, obviously, because I was just being told that this was a tea party symbol. But I just, there's like been a co-option by various far-right elements in society of like parts of America's symbols in American history.

And we just like let it happen. Like instead of just being like, yeah, we're all wear American flags. Like you're not just going to let that be like the American, the far right symbol. we've just been like slowly seating it like oh they're wearing it I can't wear it but you don't see the opposite happening like you see these no kings rallies everywhere and they have American paraphernalia and like no one on the right is like oh well now I got to take down my flag and so there's this weird unilateral disarmament because I think people on the left don't want to accidentally be understood as being a far right person like that's just such a you know cultural harm to them and so I think that there's like this asymmetry here where there's just been like like a real pullback from these symbols of American history to the point where, you know, yeah, like if you do see someone wearing American paraphernalia now in public, I think people assume most of the time that that person's either on the right or on the center, but they would not assume that that was like a neutral expression of like pro-America spirit. And so while you're right,

like we don't want to lay everything on the feet of people in academia, I just think that like everyone needs to be more critical here about whether or not you think this is analytically or descriptively correct that the American flag or these symbols of American heritage have been used to do bad things? What is the end game of a country where the entirety of the left decides that being positive about your nation's history, heritage,

future symbolism is a bad thing? Like, is that going to end in a good place for us? I just think obviously not. This has driven me nuts for a while because Trump isn't the first time that we've dealt with this. Like, I can remember during the Bush years, like, still wanting. to be very patriotic. And then liberals went through a whole thing then when they were like,

no more flags. Flags are about Bush and Iraq and you have to be, and, you know, the Patriot Act, all the because I'm like, well, just because he took all those things and tried to reappropriate them for the right and for his vision of the country doesn't mean that we should abandon them, which is why then when Obama gave that speech at the 2004 convention in Boston, which I thought, and I didn't know him at the time, but I thought was like the most patriotic speech I had heard. But it was like patriotism, it was patriotic in a different way, which brings me to your point about elected officials today. Like, you don't hear a lot of elected Democrats saying, oh, America's awful and irredeemable, and that's why we're not patriotic. They talk the language of patriotism.

But basically the story is Trump is bad and the Republicans are bad and Republican policies are bad. And America's great. And I'm going to align myself with America. And that's that. And in a way, that's sort of, I mean, I'm shortcutting it, but they're shortcutting it as well. It's like there's a missing part of the Jeremiah ad in there, which is that actually there are, this country does have real issues, that we've had issues throughout history. But the point is not to either airbrush them away or ignore them, but to actually confront them, be honest about what we've done wrong and what our weaknesses are and what our challenges are. and then realize that the structure of our government and the exceptionalism that is America

allows us to sort of overcome those challenges. And I do wonder why so many Democratic politicians shy away from sort of that deeper analysis of both what is wrong with America and then how to make it right. I think it's very difficult for people who are kind of disconnected from the narrative arc. of that MLK, Obama, all these people were able to do to make this connection themselves. Like to be clear, like, Jeremiah is like hard to give. Like a good Jeremiah is like hard to give. Like a good speech in general is hard to give. And so the fact that like most elected officials are like not as good at giving speeches as Barack Obama is perhaps not that surprising. But I think the thing that's, that's we're witnessing right now during the World Cup, I mean, there's all this discourse

online right now, right? If like these Europeans coming to America and being like, oh my God, Costco's so cool. Oh my gosh. Like everyone is so friendly. They're all smiling at me. That's so nice. Like I had this horrible vision of the U.S. and like now I'm witnessing these things that make America really cool and amazing. And this is like doing well. Like a lot of Americans are reacting positively to this kind of content because it's reminding them of things about America that we tend to take for granted. And again, like that doesn't mean there aren't problems. But if you can't be proud of this specific difference, you also can't fight. to protect it. And so I think part of what's happening too is, I mean, the academic community is

very small as a percentage of the population, but they have like a really outsized impact on, of course, the people who go on to work in Congress, the people who go on to work on, you know, various think tanks, et cetera. These people often have like master's degrees or are planning to go to law school or have gone to law school. And of course, journalists, et cetera, like are all in this very, like elite world and space. And so you have this problem, right, where like the stories everyone in this space are telling are ones of America has failed in these really structural core ways and we understand ourselves this way.

And then the elected officials are being asked to construct this, you know, different narrative that's more patriotic. I think it's actually like very difficult to do when it's just not the language everyone else is speaking. And, you know, Obama, you know, you know, the. Jeremiah's you were working on or that he was giving even before you were there, these are building on an intellectual and rhetorical history and community that he was embedded in, that you guys were embedded in, even though you didn't even know that term, like you were embedded in that

kind of thinking. And so elect officials today are embedded in a new kind of discursive environment where they are not having everyone who is, you know, talking in the same way that people were, even at that time. And like, you're correct. Like this whole thing, like, why isn't the left patriotic, like, isn't new? But when you're looking at these polling numbers, these are much lower than what we were talking about before. Like, I mean, this is a perennial thing where the left is, I think, very, is central to pointing out the flaws of the United States not being able to meet its promises to everyone that it has made. But it is unprecedented at this point. The number of people who can't just say, yeah, I love this country. I am patriotic. I am proud to be an American. And that's, that's bad. Offline is brought to you by three-day blinds. There's a better way to buy blind, shade, shutters, and drapery, and it's called three-day blinds. They are the leading manufacturer of high-quality custom window treatments in the U.S. We can shop for almost anything at home. Why not blinds?

Three-day blinds has local, professionally trained design consultants who have an average of 10-plus years of experience that provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your home. Just set up an appointment and you'll get a free, no-obligation, quote, the same day. With three-day blinds, you choose from thousands of options that fit any budget or style. Plus, from light filtering and blackout blinds to motorization and smart blinds that work with Alexa, three-day blinds is a real upgrade to your home, not just a replacement. Blinds that work with Alexa. Wow.

Hey, open the blinds. That's a great idea. And now close them. That's cool. Not very handy. The expert team at three-day blinds handles all the heavy lifting two. They design, measure, and install so you can sit back, relax, and leave it to the pros. I'm not very handy, so I had three-day blinds come install blinds at my

house way back when, even before they were a sponsor of this and loved the whole process from beginning to end. It was super easy. They were super helpful and cannot recommend three-day blinds enough. Right now, get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three-day blinds. Head to three-day blinds.com slash offline for their buy one, get-one, 50% off deal on custom blind, shade, shutters, and drapery. For a free, no charge, no obligation consultation, just head to three-dayblinds.com slash offline. One last time, that's buy one, get one, 50% off when you head to the number three, D-E. AY-Y-Blines.com slash offline.

Offline is brought to you by Green Chef. Where fad diets fail, Green Chef delivers real food and recipes that make healthy eating an easy and sustainable part of your routine. With Green Chef every week, you get over 40 recipes made with organic produce, responsibly sourced proteins,

and nothing you can't pronounce. That's quite a guarantee. Pick what matters to you, Mediterranean high protein, or their new longevity line built around brain and gut health. Meals come pre-portioned and ready in minutes, and if you want guidance,

Beyond the plate, they include free, unlimited one-on-one nutrition coaching that helps you stay on track. Green Chef is the only certified clean meal kit tested by the Clean Label Project and the most sustainable meal kit with 20% less food waste and 100% offset delivery emissions. So our wonderful assistant Naomi has been using Green Chef. She said it was super easy to choose her meals and filter by dietary options. She said the prepping the meals was a breeze. The instructions were super easy to follow. And she liked that all the ingredients came pre-portioned in their own serving package.

which makes it much easier and lets you put it all together in no time. So head to greenchef.com slash 50 offline and use code 50 offline to get 50% off your first month, then 20% off for two months. That's code 50 offline at greenchev.com slash 50 offline. So there's a more nuanced critique of the Jeremiah that I've been wrestling with myself, which is, you know, I came up through the Obama years, sort of genuinely, believing in the arc that the American story was fundamentally one of overcoming slavery, Jim Crow, the long bend toward justice.

And after the last decade in the Trump years, I have wondered whether that triumphalism was its own kind of complacency. So whether believing too hard that progress was inevitable is part of what left people like us sort of flat-footed for what came after when Trump was elected, not once, but now twice. Does the, do you think the Jeremiah risks reproducing that? Like the comfort that,

yes, we have faults, but we can overcome them. We have before. And so everyone should just chill out. Yeah, I mean, I think the part of the Jeremiah we haven't talked about as much is what the path to redemption actually is, because it's not just this sort of, you're failing

right now and here's, you know, the ways that you're failing relative to this ideal. It's also, here's what you need to do. I mean, Frederick Douglass is like very blistering speech about what to the slave is the 4th of July, which if folks have not heard that, they should go either listen to the, yeah, it's incredible. And there's also something you can, you can also read it in its entirety. And, you know, he spends most of the time talking about the ways that the country has failed. And yet, like, it's clear what he's advocating for is that abolition is the way forward. And that's not an easy path. And he's not like giving people a white paper or like,

you know, exactly the legal definition or jargon for what they should do. He is explaining to them that like abolition is the only way for us to meet our obligations to what you all say that you believe. He's talking to this to this audience. He's saying you all are telling us that all men are created equal while you're enslaving people like me and hear all the harms that you are doing to both your own to these people, but also to your own self image and to your own ability to think of yourself as a good person. And so

I think the problem can be with kind of a naive patriotism, right? Like one that just is blissfully happy about being an American and like they'll do the Fourth of July like barbecue thing and you'll be excited about that and you'll say like wow, America's so great. We went to the moon

first and isn't that amazing? Is that it can engender complacency if there's not a clear tie to what you're supposed to do with that, you know, with that difference, with the difference between what you want to be and what you are, it should lead you towards some sort of action. And right now, I think that's part of what's so difficult to construct, you know, for these politicians, if they're, you know, if they're attempting to do this, to construct this kind of positive vision is that there's a real difference of opinion about what that path forward is supposed to look like. Abolition was,

you know, obviously a very controversial move. I mean, what Martin Luther the king doing was very controversial. I mean, these were not easy choices to make. The, you know, the vindication of the rights of women when you're talking about the suffragettes and the women who were arguing for the vote. These were very difficult things to organize society around. But right now, it seems like there's actually a lot of differences of opinion right now among the left about what that next step is supposed to be and what that's supposed to look like. And I think that can lead to a lot of confusion from politicians where they're like, we know what's wrong. We know generally what it would be like for things to feel good,

but how do we get there? Like, what is that path? You're right. Like, without that, it is. We go to white papers. You're right. Yeah. We have a lot of words. No, it is. I mean, it is. It's like, it's, I always think about it as like we have the 50,000 foot version and then we have, like, just endless details and policies. But there's no story or theory or moral case that sort of connects the big happy 50,000-foot version of what America should be with all the white papers. Yes. And it feels like no one has actually connected those things. I do want to talk about sort of the reactionary version of the Jeremiah at on the right.

Partly, you know, last time we spoke, I think it was September of 25. Most of the episode we talked about J.D. Vance and his Claremont Institute speech. and you had just gone to the National Conservatism Conference where we heard plenty of versions of that. And it seems like they have come to realize that they should try to take the founding and take the story of America and repurpose it for their own ends,

especially the parts that seem problematic for their narrative. The most obvious one being that we are all created equal and the Declaration of Independence, seems like a real problem for them. You wrote about how Orrin Cass, who's a new right econ guy, sort of flips the founding logic. Declaration says equality comes first,

and citizenship follows from it. Cass uses the same Jeremiah, had structure to argue that citizenship is what creates equality. You say this is fundamentally un-American, I agree. Post-liberals would say, you know, their interpretation is right,

and the creedal story is, is the recent invention. So how do you adjudicate whose America is the real one and what the founding really means without just asserting that ours is? I mean, I think that this is one of those things where

if you're just even an amateur who's willing to go read some of these documents, it's extremely difficult to imagine that the creedal story isn't what that they meant. I mean, even the idea that the Declaration says

equality is before, is before citizenship, that it recognizes the equality of every single person. Like that was a radical statement that really is different than how many people thought about what equality was. Equality A, the idea that people were equal wasn't a widely shared sentiment. I mean, obviously, even the founders clearly did not live that principle out totally. But this idea that, you know, countries are constituted. by specific peoples that are there because they were there for generations and they tilled the land

and your father's father's father was there. It is literally impossible that the American story could have been that way, given that the people who were laying claim to the country were largely newcomers. They were displacing the people that were there before. So clearly the story they had to tell about America was one that said, even if you're coming from very different countries, from very different faiths, from very different backgrounds, you're all now, here and we need to fight the British. Like, that's the entire point of what the founding was. And then when you go through generations of people reifying this story, right, like when we're talking about the people that everyone claims as obviously American, whether you're on the right and you're

talking about people like Abraham Lincoln or you're talking about people like Abraham Lincoln or you're talking about people like Elizabeth Katie Stanton, like whoever it is throughout history, these American giants are individuals who are trying to expand the way that we treat individuals in society to ensure that equality is actually shared among larger groups. This now move from the post-liberal right to constrain it, to say, actually, some of you aren't really Americans, or you're not Americans in the same way. I mean, the idea of heritage American, which is something that has been really popularized by the Vance Right, this is something that has, of course, there have always been impulses

like this American history to restrain. this. But that's not been the American legal history or the intellectual foundation of what most people in power have believed. And to make this clear, I mean, like, one of the clearest examples of this is the Dred Scott case, which is one of considered one of the most, you know, wrongly decided cases in history, which is that slaves have no ability or standing to even sue because they have no rights that the white man is bound to respect. And this is something that when it's decided, Abraham Lincoln himself is like this can't be right because we know that everyone has rights that exist before anyone can even talk about them in a court of law or in the Supreme Court or

whatever, that those rights precede their citizenship. They precede their identity as American individual. And at the time, Abraham Lincoln is saying this. This is not. an invention of like woke academia 200 years later. This is the president of the United States who is fighting to keep the union together at the time that this is being decided. And so I'm not a historian and historians can do like, you know, much better work than I can on detailing this. But I actually don't even think you need to be one. If you want to go read the documents yourself, like you can do that both in person at the National Archives or on in the internet. And you can ask yourself if it's possible that what these rag-tag bunch of like individuals from various backgrounds,

some of whom Alexander Hamilton himself, obviously an immigrant, I mean, these are not individuals who could possibly have been founding a country whereby you needed to have kind of like a blood and soil relationship to the land in order to be a real American. Yeah, this is why immigration for me has become like so central to everything that we're fighting about. Like I used, I think coming up through politics, I used to see. as another issue that the politicians talk about.

And so you have your immigration policy, like you have your health care policy and you have every other policy. And, you know, sometimes it's tough for Democrats. So we got to tiptoe around immigration. But clearly around Trump especially, it became like central to the MAGA movement and to Trump's presidency and now to the new right. And I think that for liberals and for progressives and for the left, it's still seen as either an issue where we have to prove that we're, you know, for borders and security and also

we want to be welcoming. But there is something deeper about immigration that is sort of fundamental to the argument that the left and right are having about everything right now. And part of that is because even when you talk about sort of the size of the welfare state, you know, you look at countries that have generous welfare states like the Scandinavian countries. And, um, The reason they can do that, one reason they can do that is because they always haven't been the most diverse countries. And as they become more diverse and there's more immigration, they're facing these same challenges too. And I say this because what we are trying to do in this country, a multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy, where everyone still has opportunity to get ahead. And there's over 300 million people.

It's a really fucking hard thing to do. And it hasn't been done ever. And that's why we're exceptional, I think, because we're trying to do it. We're still trying all these years later. But I do think that the right has at least landed on immigration as central to something deeper about the argument we're having about American identity than the left has at this point, which I still think the left sees it as like an issue we just have to figure out and move on to the issues that we want to talk about. But I think it is so connected to everything else. I totally agree. I mean, even I think the flashpoint of what happened in Minneapolis is such a microcause.

of that entire story. I mean, you have Americans of all stripes coming together to defend their immigrant neighbors in like direct response to this idea that you only really care about people who are, you know, long hands in your community, et cetera. Like these people were like, no, like I'm going to put my body on the line

to defend immigrant neighbors who I may or may not personally know but are Minnesotans just like I am. And in that they're defined. what a Minnesotan is. People were getting together to put their bodies on the line to prevent ICE agents from hurting people that they saw as part of their community. Like the idea, I think this is like just such, such a radical thing and also just such an American normie thing. Like the people around you, they're your neighbors, they're your family, they're your community. Even if they weren't

born there, if they went to your kids' school, like you know who they are. It's almost like ridiculous to imagine like an American going like, oh, let me check to see like, were you here, generations ago before I care if, like, you know, a federal agent shoots you. Like, it's just, like, so ridiculous that I think it really shows how much the, uh, the, this like anti-credal story is, like, out of sync with how everyone actually lives. Like, no one is checking people's papers when they meet them at their kid's soccer game. Like, no one cares about that. They're like, are you nice? Does my kid like your kid? Like, are we going to have a good time chilling here talking like that's way more important to people and way more a core of how people decide who

their community is. I think that's actually why the post liberal rights story is just going to fail. Like I just think this is not going to work in America. There are too many generations of immigrants who are defining what who gets to be an American. Like people have stories of their grandparents being Irish immigrants or Italian immigrants or Polish immigrants. That's not going to go away because J.D. Vance tells us that the 14th Amendment was wrongly under. Well, and for them, I also think it's not just about immigration as we understand it. It's about the notion of citizenship itself and who gets to decide, like, who the, like, what citizens have more rights than others, right? Like, J.D. Vance, and he, he started this in the Claremont speech, and we might have talked about this, but there's that line that got less attention where he is attacking Mumdani.

Yeah. And Mamdani had some, like, nice Fourth of July message last year where he was like, you know, I love this country and I think we can do better. Like something very simple like that. And J.D. Vance attacks it because he's like, how can he not be grateful to this country? And of course, the idea is because he is an immigrant that he, you know, he needs to be more grateful to this country. But he also said it, like I just watched him on TV last night. And he was saying that one of the reasons he thinks Democrats are terrible people, which is, amazing to just say, is because, like, we're not grateful and we don't show enough gratitude

to this country. And, like, my response to that is, like, who are we supposed to show gratitude to? Who are we thanking? Like, do we need to thank J.D. Vance? And, like, why are we thanking him? Like, but it's clearly in his mind, immigration, people who are different, people who have different political beliefs, like, they're all, they can be in this country, but they have to be grateful to, I guess, the people who are here first or the people who are heritage Americans or something. But like, I think what he's getting at there and the new right does this too is that somehow, like, citizenship in this country needs to be tiered, even once you become a citizen. And I do think that like, and the immigration issue sort of flows from there, but I do think

that is central to their view of what the country is. And I also think it's like a real opening for the left to be like, no, no, no, no. the whole purpose of this is we're all created equal. We all have the same inalienable rights. And when you're a citizen, you get treated equally. I mean, there's like this Mott and Bailey, which I never remember, which is the Mott and which is the Bailey. But there's like, there's always this, this idea that, okay, well, shouldn't people be

thankful to be Americans and happy to be Americans? And shouldn't you feel gratitude to the troops or people who died to protect your rights and veterans and, and, you know, people who were before you who made your life. possible. It's like, yeah, obviously everyone is thankful that like, you know, people died for them and made their lives a better or possible or people who worked hard for their rights or, you know, you'll notice that they never like point to activists that we should be saying thank you to who made it possible for us to have voting rights or, you know, access to clean water or whatever it is. That's never part of the gratitude story on the new right. But then it's like actually this is the real thing that they're,

I think, actually saying is you are here on. on like temporary basis. Or like you are here at the will and generosity of some original authentic heritage American. And so if you step out of line, if you are not willing to be in this kind of hierarchical, you know, set up of how our country's supposed to work, then, you know, we'll take it away.

So the idea is like, you know, women, you should be grateful that we let you vote. I mean, right now, I mean, there's actually a legitimate discourse happening around whether or not the 19th Amendment, whether women having the right to vote was actually a good thing because of the gender polarization in between the parties. There are more women who vote for Democrats than for Republicans. And I mean, these are just ideas that I think that, like, again, most normal people find ridiculous. It's like a 90 by five issue of the idea

that women should get to vote. It's just like not a real thing. But again, because these elite spaces tend to have like really strange, discursive norms, you have like people like J.D. Vance talking themselves into the most bizarre politics on the planet, where it's like, it's good to talk about how, like, half the country is actually not legitimately American or at least insinuate that they're not and they don't have the same rights or privileges or sentiment. And I mean, apparently he has a book coming out, which, you know, I haven't read, but allegedly he says he's sad about his or he regrets his childless cat ladies comment. I'm like, yeah, did you forget that women vote?

Like, we do we still have that option to vote. And, I mean, I'm glad that he regrets it. it's good for people to like decide that that was like a wrong thing to say. But I think that like that was a, uh, not an accidental comment. It was, I think, emblematic of a worldview where certain kinds of life choices, ones that many, many people are making are make you less of a worthy citizen to the point where a vice presidential candidate, the person who actually is a heartbeat away from the presidency can denigrate you that way. I mean, it's really just something that I think we've we've normalized it in like media and in like the way that people talk about like you're treated as like naive or stupid to have any kind of like reaction to comments like that because now they're so common. But I think again, normal people who are not in politics every single day find this sort of discussion and behavior like baffling. It's just like not how they talk about each other. It's not how they talk to each other. It's not how they think about politics. They're focused on like inflation and we're like, you know, now you have the post of the right saying, well like, okay, was your grandfather buried in Kentucky? It's like, okay, what do you? What do you?

talking about. Like, who cares? It's so crazy. Offline is brought to by Quince. In the summer, I don't want to overthink what I'm wearing. I just want light, breathable pieces that are easy to throw on,

but still look put together. It's not a lot to ask. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials and well-made basics, but without the luxury markup. They made the kind of rare, elevated pieces that consistently create effortless looks.

Quince European linen pants and shirts are the perfect warm-weather upgrade to add to your rotation, starting at just 311. $34. Their teas are soft and easy to wear and their lightweight cotton sweaters are perfect for cooler summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Just got some great polos from Quince. I got some of their lightweight

cotton sweaters because it does get a little cool in L.A. at night in the summer. And I love Quince. Go all the time there. Great stuff. Go to their website. Check it out. There'll be something for you. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash offline for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash offline for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash offline. I'm in Chicago this week for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center,

so I'm pretty deep in nostalgia right now. But aside for my own nostalgia, there's also something nostalgic about the idea of rhetoric and speeches having a real impact in an era of 15 second clips and sort of reality TV politics. Do you think that the Jeremiah, the long rhetorical flock gathering speech, is still a tool worth investing in? Yes. I think there are a couple of reasons why I'm very bullish on long form content. One is that short form content comes almost entirely from long form content, right? Like, I mean, in speeches that people are hearing of these clips from politicians, whether they're 15 seconds or 30 seconds or whatever, I mean, the John Ossoff speech that recently

went viral, like, people, I was in an Uber and this guy was just like watching this like 30 seconds speeches. And then I saw, and this was so bad. He was like driving. So I'm not like, I'm not in, this is not like a positive story totally. But he, like, I saw, I watch him, like, like, go into YouTube and then type in John Ossoff's name and then find like the full speech and like play, which, you know, maybe that's just like a weirdo random Uber driver, but I just mean like, in general, these are... Yeah, that's something. I know.

But I just, I think that, like, even when you're watching normal political commentary on TikTok or Reels or YouTube shorts or whatever it is, it's often, like, derivative, right? Like, it's someone talking about a New York Times story or it's someone talking about an Atlantic story or talking about discourse that was spurred by a speech someone gave on the floor of the house. And, like, these are often, like, it's like a derivative of a derivative of a derivative, but it's still, like, there's a core thing there that had to have happened to spawn all of this extra commentary. And while it is different, obviously, the mass communications has changed a lot,

it's not really that removed from how most people were affected by speeches in the past. Most people did not watch or ever hear or read Lincoln's second inaugural address. That was not like common. I have no stats or facts to point to, but I will stake some money on the fact that most Americans have not and did not read that or hear that. But it affected their politics because the people who did hear or people who did read it or heard segments of it were affected by it. It changed how they thought. But also like speeches are ways that we affirm stories that we then act out. Right. Like it affects the policy choices that you make. Like the types of things Lincoln was talking about affected the political decisions he made as president of the United States. He himself would have to think through that and create kind of a political community among his, you know, people he worked with, his party, the country, the troops, whenever he was, you know, addressing them, et cetera. These were things that he needed to work through. And I think often, you know, some, as a writer, as writer myself, like, I often write to think through and figure out what I believe

about things. And so the purpose of the long-form content is not that 100% of people will ever read, you know, every article that or any article that it gets written or published. It's that it's important to go through that process that someone needs to go through that process so that we can advance the society. And then, you know, the fact that political commentary is derivative of longer form commentary, I don't think is a problem. I mean, it's long form content. We've been talking for a while here, but I think at the same time, I mean, it's based on an article that took me much longer to write than we are talking for. And I don't think that that is necessarily a problem. So I think that people, when they talk about short form content, there are a lot of problems with it. And people's

attention spans, et cetera. It's like, I think now you have to have cuts every second in order to keep people's attention, which, you know, doesn't feel great. But at the same time, don't let that be an excuse for you not to do the long form work, because whoever does that will have a way outsized impact on everything else that comes out. Just made me think of another question. Do you think that they have a simpler story to tell? They have an easier job, the right, and Trump, and then, and I don't know about just them, because obviously, in this way, I'm not necessarily talking about J.D. Vance and the new right because they have their own sort of weird theory that I think we both agree is not going to work that well. But Trump's is very

easy. They're bad. I'm good. Everything is this maniacian struggle. Everything's very simple, good and evil, black and white. And the liberal story has never been that. And this is another thought I had walking around the Obama Presidential Center and listening to the speeches and thinking about how he approached governing and the last 250 years of America and how complicated it is and how nuanced the story is that we've been talking about just today. And I wonder if we just have a more difficult job telling the story than the forces who want to just say, you know, we're right and you're wrong. And that's it. Yeah. I do think it's a much more similar. I mean, simple, it's, I think the simple story is populism, right? Like, this is why I'm so concerned about

populism on the right, which is really dominant on the left, which is brewing, is because it's essentially telling you that there's a, there are good people and there are bad people. And that politics and the struggle that we're having is a fight between these two groups who are like, in some ways, like they're naturally good or bad. I mean, on the right, often these are, you know, Democrats are the bad ones or women or childless cat ladies or immigrants or whatever. it is. On the left, it's often like it's billionaires and rich people. And while like, you know, like a lot of the policies I may like support on like taxing, you know, higher taxes on the wealthy or corporate taxes or whatever, like that kind of set up or that kind of view often engenders a type

of politics and type of story, which really makes it impossible to follow in the American tradition, right? Because if the idea is that like they are just good people and bad people, then the entire fight is who gets to define who's good and bad. Like that's. what that is. But if politics is actually, there are lots of different groups of people, they have different interests, some of them can be accommodated in society, some of them have to be shifted through policy, through laws, through norms, or whatever. And then it's like, okay, yeah, we have a pluralistic society where there are different kinds of ways of living that are acceptable and we need to figure that out. And that's like a completely different

framework. That's a liberal framework. And that's a very, I think, difficult one to tell when people are really upset because what it's asking you to do is accept that there are people that are different than you who are making way different choices than you are that are totally legitimate in those choices. That someone who is a trad wife is totally legitimate in her choice and someone who is, you know, a girl boss like in New York, totally legitimate in her choice. Someone's spending their entire 20s and 30s in a PhD program totally legitimate, having children. Like this is a difficult thing to do because obviously you're making the choices you make because you think they're better. than other choices. And that's fine. Like people should like, you know, argue about which choices are better for people to make and like we live in a free society. But it's much more difficult than to tell a story that's there are good people and there are bad people and you want to be on the side of the good people. And that goodness is impossible to take away even if they make bad actions. And then for the bad people, they're irredeemable no matter what they do because of something that they have already been categorized as. And that to me, that kind of phrase,

framework, whether it's on the left or the right, and obviously it's way more dangerous on the right right now, is just a really bad way to do politics. I think it's the thing that we've been fighting as small L liberals throughout American history is to like make politics not about there are good and bad people. And you're right. It's just like a really difficult thing to do. Yeah, because I think that the central tenet of liberalism is that there is good and bad, but the good and bad exists in all of us, in each of us. We all have the potential to do good, and we all have the potential to do bad, which is why you can't make decisions about the government based on one group of people being right and the other being wrong. You have to have laws and

values that are universal that everyone adheres to because we all have the capacity for good and we all have the capacity for evil. And it is very difficult to get people to believe that when they think the other side is so bad. But all you have to do is think, am I always good? Is everything I do wonderful? No, of course. I make mistakes. I can do very bad thing. Like, you know, It's just I think that I agree with you on the populism issue is that it is so tempting. And it can be tempting in the left because, you know, you can pull it and people are mad and people are, like, we need a villain. Every story needs a villain, right? And so, of course, the villain should be the billionaires.

And, like, maybe that works for a while and maybe you can pass great policies. But, like, it doesn't lead you to it. And it's the same thing about, like, you know, we just got to get rid of MAGA and Trump. It's like, we're not going to get rid of the other half of the country, right? Or if we are, then we're basically just them in another form, right? The whole point of this is to figure out a way to live together and not necessarily agree with each other, not even like like each other. We don't even have to like each other. We just have to live together and respect each other and all sort of agree to adhere to the same laws and values.

That's all. Exactly. I mean, and that's like hard. It's like hundreds of years of people trying to do that. And I think, you know, the real problem too is that populism doesn't work. Like it might work for some election cycles. It might get you into power. It might get people. people happy and riled up. But at the end of the day, no, all of society's problems are not caused by a small group of bad people. It's like not true. And there are difficult problems, whether they're resource constraints, whether like we

have an in it. Like we needed to invent a COVID vaccine. There was no railing against a pot, like an elite that was ever going to get you a COVID vaccine without the liberal institutions of scientific organizations. The fact that we had an immigration system that brought in, these scientists that were able to do it. The fact that we had like a governmental. all of government push to actually get vaccines in arms.

Like I had a National Guards member vaccinate me at the Baltimore M&T Stadium. Like that was a marvel of liberal institutions coming together over hundreds of years to construct both the legal fiscal and like, you know, economic paradigm that would allow that to happen. Like there is no railing against some rich person, some Jewish person, some like, you know, immigrant that would ever have gotten us there. And so I think the big problem here, is that people fall into the economic populism story because, as you said, it pulls well. And then they're like, and now what do I do? It's like, well, you have to actually solve these

problems. And like, you can't do that by just getting mad at some small number of people. Yeah. So last question, your piece ends at the National Archives on the fourth. You walk out into the July Sun having stood in line next to people in MAGA hats. And, you know, all of you are looking at the same document, the same piece of paper. what do you actually want an uneasy liberal, uneasy with patriotism to do differently this 4th of July? If you live in Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia or Boston, I think it's actually like really easy to go to some, you know, American history event. Like one time on July 4th, I was in Philly visiting my sister and I went to the Philadelphia. I forget what it was, but it was the Philadelphia Museum.

I think it's Independence Museum. and every single one of these that I've gone to, I've gone to one in Boston. I think I've been to something, I've been to one in San Francisco too. I mean, if you're in a major city, it's like really easy for you to find some sort of historical museum or, you know, event to take part in. And what's really great about these things is that it just situates you as part of this American story. Like I remember when I was in Philly, there's like this long, like, there's a long video that

they have you sit through at the very beginning of the museum. tour. And it's just sort of like all of history, all of these different people fighting for you to be able to sit where you are right now. And it really just makes you feel like a bigger part of this American story. And there are times in my life where I haven't been in some of these bigger cities. And in those moments, I go back and I read these documents. Like, I will go back and I'll listen to the Frederick Douglass speech. And it makes you just feel like not only am I a part of this long running story, but also because of what this guy, did. Like, I don't have to fight that same battle. Like, that one's been one. We abolish slavery as a

country. Like, that's no longer an issue for us. And I think that reflecting on that, whether it's in person or whether it's you're going to go, like Google online, Redrick Douglas is, what to the slave was the Fourth of July or whatever is you're going to do. I mean, just spend a few moments actually sitting with the history of this country. And it really does make it difficult to feel depressed about where we are when you think about all the work that's been done to get us here from much worse situations. And so that's all good. But the other thing, which I think most people have more taken me up on, is just go have fun

with people in your community, like just go have a good time, like whether you're throwing a party, whether you're going somewhere, whether you're going to a parade, whatever it is. And when you look around, like, you're not going to know who anyone voted for at this parade or at this party or whatever it is, like, you will see lots of different kinds of people, and they won't all look like you, and they won't have the same beliefs you do. Some of them will have gone to college. Some of them will have, you know, have jobs. Some won't, like, whatever it is.

And, like, that is unbelievably cool. It's so cool to be celebrating whatever it is that you're celebrating in a group of people that is so diverse and different and still be united by this one thing, which is, like, we're going to have a good time. And, you know, being patriotic, part of it is you have to have a good time. So no depressed posts on July 4th. That's one thing I'll say. I don't want to see any, like, dooming on timeline.

I love that. I love that. That's a great place to leave it. Jerusalem, thank you so much for joining. It's always wonderful to talk to you, and thanks for writing that piece. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Offline with John Favro is a Crooked Media production.

Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Emma Ilich-Frank, and Anisha Banergy. Our team includes Dilan Villanueva, Mia Kellman, Charlotte Landis, Eric Schute, Rachel Gieski and Will Jones with support from Adrian Hill and Matt Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.