The Daily Beast Podcast - Who’s the Worst Politician of 2024? Hard to Argue Against Donald Trump

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

It would be hard to argue that anyone had a bigger—or worse—impact on the world this year than President-elect Donald Trump, The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy argues on this week’s episode. Then, Ed Zitron, journalist and author of the Where’s Your Ed At? newsletter, explains the "rot economy," where growth-at-all-costs drives exploitative business practices in tech and beyond. Plus! Deepa Iyer, activist and author of We Too Sing America, joins the program to discuss the challenges facing progressive movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What a great show we have for you today. We're all on a

break celebrating the holidays and we hope you're having a great one too, but that doesn't mean we didn't record an excellent episode in advance just for you. Today we have Ed Zetron, journalist and author of the Where's Your Ed At Newsletter, explaining the rot economy where growth at all costs drives exploitive business practices in tech and beyond. Then Deepa Ayer, activist and author of We Too, San America, discusses the challenges facing progressive movements from grassroots organizing to fostering cross-community solidarity in an era of political exhaustion. But first, let's have some fun. So as is new abnormal holiday tradition, what we like to do around here is ask you some

questions to let the listeners get to know you guys a little better. So let's start off easy. This year, who's the politician that made you the most angry? Oh. Yeah, that's not easy. that is not easy who is the politician that made oh fuck like recency bias wants me to say nancy mace but oh man i'm going to say something unpopular honestly joe biden i think about this if joe biden had come into office saying that he was going to be that

transition president and we had started from letting him clean up Donald Trump's mess deal with COVID, blah, blah, but we knew we're going to begin the search and pipeline and all of these things instead of waiting for the last 100 days until the election to step aside and just his softballing with the appointment of Merrick Garland who did nothing for two fucking years around Donald Trump like so I'm going to say yeah it's for me it's it's Biden interesting yeah I think you make good reasoning here no absolutely oh my god I mean look I'm not going to say I mean maybe I will just say Trump I mean the idea here is not to be like clever it's supposed to be the person you thought was the worst and I guess it really does all come back to Trump I mean there's a lot of other strong

candidates, you could go down a list on the Republican side. Vance, MTG, Cruz, there's just too many. But it all really does in the end. It comes down to Trump. And none of those other people would be in the positions they are or saying the things that they say or doing the things that they do if it weren't for Trump. So I'll just go with the obvious. Chop at the root. Yeah. Who came on your political radar this year that really impressed you? Interesting. It's not. Not that they came on. I just think that they really found like their zone. And I'm going to go with representative Jasmine Crockett. A strong contender. Yeah. I think that she just the way that she handled

herself, the questions that she was asking in committee, the way that she then became a spokesperson for the election, she's about it. She is so clear. She is so sharp. And, passionate and I think that she is a rising star. Yeah, no, that's really good. For me, I still stand, Governor Tim Walls. I think he's a great messenger and a great politician. And I think he came on my radar a little bit before the year. But as he came into focus, I still stand by that Governor Walls is the rare politician that

I buy what he's selling. That's a good one. Yeah. I mean, look, again, I don't know that you would say they came on my radar in 2020. before, but Maxwell Frost seems like a good person who, you know, could be very much the future of the Democratic Party, along with Jasmine Crockett and a bunch of other young members of Congress. So, yeah, I think I'll go with, I agree with both of the ones that y'all said, and I will add Maxwell Frost to the list.

Okay, now we're going to have a little fun. Oh, dear. No, I'm being real here. We're not in clips anymore, Daniel. You don't have to doubt me. You're right, you're right. Let me let me let go of the Trump. Let me let go of the trauma.

Deep breaths. Listeners, I'll make an excuse for Daniel. We were just recording clips before this, so she's still traumatized by what I've done to her. What's some of the best TV you watch this year? Oh. And this includes streaming. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so mine was a three-body problem. Oh, that was really good. On, what was it? It was Netflix. Yep, yes. And it was just wild. like a wild kind of space, you know, sci-fi thriller about, you know,

the takeover of Earth by, that was like in this slow roll process over like the last 50 years. The story was just mind-blowing. And basically these aliens can create a matrix-like feel. And so you don't know what's real and what's not. And yeah, three-body problem.

really, really good. It's slow to start, but it ends really well. Loved it. Yeah, I loved it too. What we do in the Shadows wraps up this week. I think one of the greatest comedic runs of all time of any show. Dune Prophecy is also, while the finale has not yet aired, it will have aired by the time you hear this. That has been just an absolutely jaw-droppingly great show. Ooh, I don't know that one. What is that? It's the Dune series continued in television form, but it's a prequel of the Dune movies.

And it is doing it. it justice. Okay. All right. So I'm way behind on TV, but a few things. The fourth, I think it was, and last season of Evil, which has been, somehow became one of my favorite shows over its four years, one of the few TV horror shows to actually be good. And this is a show that started on CBS and then moved to Paramount Plus. And when they moved, the show just got bat shit. And, in such a fun way, and it was really fun to watch. I really liked Ripley on Netflix, and Silo, I think season one was 2023, but season two has just started, or started like a month ago, and I don't know if a lot of people are

watching that, so I think it's really good on Apple TV. Yeah, I know there's some others, but I'm totally blanking on them because someone thought it was a good idea not to give us these questions in advance. Okay, how about a book? Here we go. I have a couple. So one of them that I have loved is Hope for Cynics. So this is nonfiction.

And actually we've had the author on this show a couple of times, Dr. Jimielsacki. And the book is so good. Just the storytelling mixed in with the science of hope is for a person who has considered themselves a cynic was really inspiring. So that one. I'm going to go with only fiction books because I don't want to offend anyone I had on for a nonfiction book that I'll forget the name. Wow. Okay. Great. Look at this diplomat.

Unlike Danielle, who doesn't mind doing that opinion. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But a book by Paul Tremblay, who's an incredible horror writer. He wrote a book called Horror Movie, which is absolutely fantastic. And it is sort of a, I guess, sort of a meta novel that contains within it, the screenplay of a movie that was made. He is an amazing writer, and I read a lot of horror,

and I can usually read it any time of day. This was a book that I found myself not reading at night because it just made me really anxious. There's like just so much going on, and it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like scary, can't have the lights out kind of thing, but it's just the feelings of anxiety that it engendered were fairly strong, So there's that.

I would say the best book I read this year that didn't come out this year is a book called Babel by R.F. Kwong, which is an unbelievable book. It takes place in the 1800s in mostly in England at Oxford, but it's a slightly different world from our own where silver working, it turns out that in this world, silver has sort of magical problems. when infused with the right words. So it has sort of a little bit of a fantasy science fiction base, but it really is a book about language. It's a book about colonialism because so much of it revolves around how England acted in China. And it was just one of those books where I was really, really sad when I finished it because it was just such a beautifully written thing.

What is the rot economy and how does it affect everything from the price of groceries, to the constant updates and changes that are made to the way our computers and phones work. Joining me now to explain is someone who's been making a big splash in the world of tech writing and podcasting, which I like to think I had something to do with, even though by every conceivable metric I absolutely did not, my old friend Ed Zittron. He's the CEO of EasyPR, writer of the tremendous tech newsletter, Where's Your Ed at, and the occasional business insider column and host of the IHeart Radio Tech podcast Better Offline. Ed, thanks so much for coming back, man.

My pleasure, and I do owe literally everything to you. You are the reason. I'm not going into detail why, but this is the truth. God, I wish that were true. Okay, so before we get into specifics, what exactly do you mean by the rot economy? Am I pronouncing that correctly? Rot? Yeah, rot. That's correct. Not Root. Okay. The rot economy is something that manifests a lot in tech, but it kind of hits everything. It is this growth at all costs, short-term thinking, where everything must grow at all times. impractical speaking, this means that you'll get capitalism, not saying it's good, but just saying the idea is it's a profit-seeking thing. The rot economy at times doesn't even care about profit. It just cares about more. Revenue growth, metrics, engagement, everything must increase. Prices as well. But prices increasing are usually a sign of, well, we need to make revenue growth happen. And it's something where, and even those price increases can reduce the amount of things that are sold,

which makes things less profitable, which then raises prices. It is a truly awful thing, but it really hits software because software is something that so easily hands itself to growth. You can grow metrics, but you can also, especially in businesses like Google's and Metas, you can do things to the customer to make them more profitable without them actually ever having to give you a credit card. You can make Google search worse, for example, as Papagal Rajavann did, starting in 2020, long story there.

Or, I mean, look at Instagram and Facebook when they kind of make the product worse, harder to use, buttons move around, things are intrusive and interfere all the time, and that's so that you spend more time on the app, which allows them to show you more ads, which grows revenue, which grows the engagement numbers, regardless of the fact that that engagement is because the product sucks. I want to get heavy into the tech stuff in a minute, but I also want to ask you, does this have anything to do with the price of eggs in El Paso? We've been told over and over again that one of the reasons Trump won is because the prices

are higher, grocery prices are higher in particular, and we keep hearing this from the media. I'm just wondering, does the rot economy factor into any of this? Yes, to an extent. So the price of groceries going up is kind of a symptom of what is letting the rot economy go, which is the complete lack of real, meaningful price regulation. This country allegedly has price fixing guidelines. It allegedly has anti-monopolistic things. Reagan, of course, stopped a lot of that.

America actually has tons of anti-competitive anti-monopistic laws. It's just the Reagan-era judges decided, Yeah, let's not really use them. Nevertheless, the price of things going up is, of course, growth. Those grocery chains need to show growth to the stock market. Why not just increase the price of something that someone needs to buy? Most people kind of need things like eggs and milk. So increasing the prices, of course that happens.

Does it make society worse? Yes. Is this inflation? Not really. I wrote a thing back in November about how the media had really failed the public, I think, where the media kept running these stores where it was like, oh yeah, well, actually, you may think things are worse, but actually things are better. Check out this chart we have.

Is there really price gouging happening? I don't know. And then literal stories came out about grocery stores actually fixing the prices. The media kept putting stories out saying, actually, the economy's great. The economy's great. You feel bad for some other reason that is your problem, not theirs. The kind of Will Stansel-level philosophy where it's, oh, well, the numbers are good, so the people aren't bad at all. People experience the broad economy every day.

And as companies aspire to and lust for growth, the natural effects are going to be that everything gets worse and more expensive because the ultimate value here is not about any kind of exchange of value. It's about trapping people and interfering with the things they have to do or want to do every day. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I want to read a quote from one of your latest pieces over at, Where's Your Ed at? This piece is both very long and stupendously good. It's called Never Forgive Them.

And in it you write, you are the victim of a con, one so pernicious that you've likely tuned it out despite the fact that it's part of almost every part of your life. It hurts everybody you know in different ways and it hurts people more based on their socioeconomic status. It pokes and prods and twists millions of little parts of your life and it's everywhere. So you have to ignore it because complaining about it feels futile like complaining about the weather. First of all, Morpheus much? But second of all, is the con that you're talking about here, the rise? economy? Yes, and specifically its effect on the tech ecosystem. So what makes software so very attractive and where the rot economy is really grown is that you can make little changes

to software. There's no regulation around user interfaces, a user experience. There's nothing that says a tech product even needs to be good. While an electricity company can't just blow up your house, a grocery chain can't give you spoiled meat. They are on the hook to make sure that the things they sell are good and healthy and somewhat fairly priced, though, as we've discussed, not necessarily. In the case of software, pretty much every app you use is tweaked by someone in a growth team, a growth hacker in many cases. And what that means is moving butters around and saying, okay, if we put this here, they'll spend more time on the app. Or if we put these buttons over here, then they might click one of them. And then we could potentially sell them something. Uber being my

favorite example. You go on Uber now and there's like 16 different buttons for courier services and eats, and you click one of those, and it loads effectively a full screen ad for them. So the Rot Economy loves this because all of these companies have found ways to monetize their customer beyond the initial transaction, if there even is a transaction. The amount of money that Google makes off of just watching what you do on the internet is insane. The amount of ways that Google search got changed so that the results are worse so that you spend more time on it. Facebook, Instagram, are intrusive. The ads interrupt you. They show like a three-second video so that you can't really see what it's about. So you have to click it. So you have to engage with it. They make notifications.

And I wrote a story earlier in the year about this. Facebook deliberately has worse notifications so that you have to click through and see the thing on the other end. They've even changed the definition of what a notification is for. It's not about notifying you anymore. It's about titillating. And software is so pernicious in everything that it's every app you use. fantasy football, Instacart, Uber Eats, Amazon, Google, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat. Every one of these apps is tweaked and twisted to in turn tweak and twist the journeys that a user takes so that they can provide more value to the company, despite the fact that the company is meant to be providing value to the customer. And because there is no regulation to

stop this, these companies are high growth. These companies are able to spin up more and more money by making the user experience worse. And they've grown to a point where, especially in the case of Google and meta, well, they effectively have monopolies over parts of society. They're authoritarian's in another hat. And as you said, all of this is done not for the benefit of the consumer, i.e. the user, i.e. us, but more for the short-term gain of the investors or shareholders, right? Correct. So Spotify's a great example. Middle of last year, I believe, Spotify changed their entire user interface. I'm an Apple music guy, you know, I'm a pig. I have all my Apple, my Apple slop. But Spotify changed their UX deliberately so that

they could show you more videos and more podcasts. Now, Spotify, the famous music platform, now instead of just having like a list of things you click, it's got a bunch of full screen tabs that you can swipe away like TikTok so you can scroll through it like TikTok because they want TikTok like in. They want TikTok like revenue. They want to keep people on the app. In the process, Spotify is now harder to use to listen to music, which is the reason most people pay for it. The result is the product's worse. And there's nothing. that can be done to these companies other than consumers walking out by consumers having more choice. However, that's why they have these monopolies so that consumers don't have choice.

With a lack of choice, they can do whatever the hell they want. Yeah, it is absolutely wild. I'm curious, is this, I'm making up a word here, but is the subscriptionification of everything a part of this? Like, you used to just buy Microsoft Outlook or Word and then you owned it. Now you have to pay a monthly fee or whatever to subscribe to it. Obviously, Adobe does the same thing. And it feels like more and more software companies have moved to this subscription model. It sucks, Ed. It really sucks. It does. And it's a sign that we're toward the end of the ad economy. So a lot of the internet is held up by digital ads. And I actually am deeply worried about that because digital ads are becoming less effective and

there's a bunch of ad fraud. Putting that aside, these companies just want to squeeze whatever revenue they can. And subscriptions are just a neat little way to trick a consumer into thinking they're getting more. Sonos is right now they had a huge, huge scandal. a few months ago, I believe, where they redesigned their app. And the theory that Wyatt said is that they're planning subscriptions too. It's just another way to grow. It's another way to take more from customers and taking something that was originally a noble idea, which is a product, and hey, you pay a little extra and you get some premium features. But you start looking at what premium features are these days, and the answer is they're just the thing that you would have

kind of got for free before. And the subscriptionification, which I think is a good term that I'm never going to be able to say again, not good and not good with the brain stuff here. But you're seeing that because it's a, it is, actually it's a rock economy thing. It's a trick stolen from a boom in the 2010s called, it was the SaaS boom, software as a service. It was enterprise software that really proved that software could have these remarkable capital gains from stocks. And in turn, consumer software companies went way, we could also charge a rent of sorts for something. And indeed, while this is a noble idea, what's happened over time is when companies, companies build their products, they think, okay, here are the free things I can give them,

and here are immediately the things that I can charge them for, rather than it being a gradual thing where they say, okay, we're a company, we're growing, we're going to find something, we're going to build something special for people. It's no longer something special. It's just something that they have intentionally thought this is going to be how we turn the screws on the customer. Yeah, yeah, it really sucks. I don't know if I said that. You know, you've been writing a lot about how a lot of the things that have been going on with tech are very frustrating for us, for users, and how a lot of people have sort of come to the conclusion. They're like, oh, I don't really, you know, I don't get tech. I'm not good with tech. You did a little

experiment recently that involved buying a new sort of off-the-shelf laptop. What did you learn from that? I learned that I think anywhere from a few million to 100 million people are experiencing the computer in the most insane way possible. It was a $238 dollar Acer Aspire, one and it had a four-year-old seller on processor. It was the best-selling laptop on Amazon. Very reason. I was like, you know what? I'm going to see how people experience it. It took like an hour to set up. It's slow. It's bad. But also, it's full of slop. It's full of ads. There was ads in the start bar now. There's, if you type something in to search for it on your computer, it searches the web and brings you up more slop, just low quality content. And on top of that,

on top of the fact that this laptop is insanely slow, these laptops are running something. called Windows Home in S mode, which means you can only install things from Microsoft's App Store, which is a not very well-run store full of more slop. When I say slop, I just mean very clunky, poorly designed software that's built to exploit. And indeed, throughout using this laptop, I just realized that the average person's experience of the computer is hell. It's slow. You load up your first browser. There are four different ads for like QVC and QuickBooks and eBay. And so you have laptop companies selling things. Like, you, you know, you have laptop companies selling things. You used to just buy a computer and then you'd use the computer and experience psychological damage every day, the normal way using the internet.

But in this case, you load it up and you're actively being monetized already. You're being shown ads of a sort, sponsored content, sponsored ads in your operating system. They want, and these companies, they want everything from you. They want to monopolize not just the experience of selling something to you. They want to have every moment of every software journey optimized so that you do more for them, even though you've already given them the money. It's crazy to me. Yeah, it's wild.

The piece you wrote on this was unbelievable and the various different things that you were forced to sign into or sign up for just to start up this computer and make it work the way a computer did, you know, like you said, maybe 10, 15 years ago where you would take it home and plug it in and boot it up and you would download the software you wanted and you'd be good to go. One other detail as well with this laptop. Yeah, go. Really important to add. So, you mentioned Microsoft Outlook. So that was also in the start bar, but when I clicked it, it wasn't even downloaded. It didn't even have the normal software. It didn't have, like, it was able to show me ads far more than it was capable of showing me the software that you'd use on the computer.

It's just mind bending. I jokerified me all over again. Yeah, no, it's absolutely. wild. There's another thing you wrote about, and that is the need to be constantly aware of scams and outright misinformation, both on social networks that don't really care to stop it, and on what you call the chumbox advertisements below major news publications. You use CNN.com as an example. Tell us what you're talking about here. So if you go on CNN.com and you scroll down, they have a paid advertisement section, a paid content section, and it's run by a company called Outbrain. There are other companies like Tabula do the same thing. You'll see them on NBCNews.com, and I believe the verge even has them.

And these two companies, they sell fake content. They sell content that is meant to look like it's real people writing something real. What it actually is, is these third-party adjacent-looking companies like finance buzz that are trying to trick you into thinking they are a normal blog written by journalists who care about stuff and what they're actually doing is affiliate marketing stuff for car insurance companies and for credit cards. So they exist in this way where you go on CNN as a regular person and say, okay, I, I the customer, the normal person, I will be looking at CNN for high quality content. Oh, at the bottom it says the five mistakes that rich people make. I'm going to click that and think this is a regular person writing this versus someone who is literally running an affiliate marketing arm.

And this gets dangerous because finance buzz is the specific one I was looking at. They advertise on there, and they really should not be allowed to live for what they've done, they have a thing on there talking about how you could really win money playing slots or gambling on your phone. And the companies in question are run by a company called Papaya Games that has been sued, sued for misleading customers and using bots to scam them. This is on CNN.com and NBCNews.com. This is where they are being pushed. and it's actively harmful.

And you can kind of snare at it and say, you know, you know, like whatever, like, oh, just I'm smart enough and most people are smart enough. Most people aren't. And if you can mock them for not being computer literate, but they're still victims of a con. No, absolutely.

And a lot of this isn't even, you know, you say people are, you know, people will say, oh, you have to be smart about this. A lot of very smart people will fall for stuff like that because it's not their area of expertise. They're going on to CNN.com to read the latest. about politics or whatever, and, you know, they're not on there thinking they're going to be scammed at an established news site. Exactly. And it's, it's sickening because they're doing,

this is still a rot economy. It's because CNN needs to show revenue growth. They need to grow revenue at all costs, even if the costs are directly harming their readers. And if those, if those demands weren't so pernicious, if more people were, if more companies, if more companies, were run ethically, this wouldn't happen. And if there was actually regulation, companies like Tabula and Outbrain would not exist. These companies are evil. And the fact that major news outlets are willing to make money using them is actively disgraceful. Like, it's disqualifying to the outlet. So I only have like a minute left, but I want to talk to you about the role of tech journalism in all of this, because you've been, I think it's fair to say you've been pretty harsh on a lot

of tech journalism. What do you think the failings are here? So there is a problem where you have tons of talented writers who know what they're talking about, who really care about the stuff, and see that something's wrong. And then you have editorial remits from higher-ups who don't understand what they're talking about, who think that the tech companies should win, and honestly just don't care about the state of tech. So tech journalism is currently really held back by upper management people who don't care and don't think about the customers. But you also have people in tech journalism who want to make friends with the rock stars. You have people that want Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Ormond to be their friends. And as long as this keeps happening, consumers will

be failed by a lot of tech journalism. And in many cases, it isn't even the fault of the tech journalists themselves, but the editorial remits. It's always wild to me. Every time Elon Musk says, we're going to do this in two years, or I can do this for 70 bucks, it gets reported in a lot of places almost uncritically, even though he is a proven pathological liar. It's wild. And it's because that there are some outlets that are slaves to the market. They report what they think the market wants to hear is that everything Elon says is news, even though he lies all the time. And until we learn these lessons, people like Elon Musk will continue accumulating power. And tech journalists need to realize they have some of the most important jobs in the world right now. And they could be doing them

differently. I wish the editorial side would get out of the goddamn way. Yeah. And it does really sound a lot like political journalism and with the reporting on Trump that lets him get away with a lot of things. So it really, the whole rot economy is just so pernicious throughout our entire system. Ed, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. You are just absolutely killing it. And everybody, go read, where's your Ed at and listen to Better Offline? And you've got a big interview coming up next week, don't you? Yes, I do. Lina Khan.

We go on the show. Yeah, that's wild. That's excellent. Ed, thanks again for being here, my friend. Always a pleasure to talk to you. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Folks, I am very excited to welcome back to the new abnormal writer and advocate for justice, Deepa Ayer, who you may have seen her work. We Too Sing America. Also, social change now, a guide for reflection and connection. And then her children's book, We Are the Builders. Deepa, it's always so great to be in conversation with you. This has been particularly trying year.

I think, for so many people. We've heard a lot of refrain following this election and this election loss, a lot of exhaustion. People just feeling disconnected and downtrodden and in some ways, hopeless about the future. And I just wanted, you know, as the Trump regime is, you know, just weeks away from taking over. When you think about this year, 2024, what comes up for you? What reflections are you having about how our country has shifted? One of those big questions, right? Well, first of all, Daniel, thank you so much for holding space for these conversations and for inviting me on. It's always good to be here. I think that one of the words or phrases that I've been sitting with a lot is contradiction and complexity and how to hold those.

because I think one of the ways in which this year has been so devastating for many of us is that it seems as though, at least I think this is true for many of us in like the movement's side of things, that in a way, the rug just got kind of taken from underneath our feet. Not just the election loss, but everything that's been happening in the country this year are revealing a lot about our institutions, our different sectors, our industries, what it means to do social change, community change work. So I think there's a lot of reflection happening right now in terms of different organizations, networks, movements.

And one of the things that keeps coming up that I hear is how do we hold space for contradiction and complexity rather than try to find binaries and linear ways of thinking about change? So that's one of the pieces that I'd love to talk more with you about. but that's what I keep hearing and for myself, him also sitting with as well. I think that what is really true of this moment is that the linear way of thinking is no longer. That first comes A, then B, and then C. That somehow I think that we have been lulled into this place that progress is linear,

that we had come, you know, and this is something Diba that I've been sitting with, is kind of my naivete around the Obama years. And thinking that that victory was the beginning of a new America. And thinking that the hardships were behind us because we had struggled so long to make it to this point that it never occurred to me that we would backslide. And yet, all of history shows us that every time there are significant marks of progress,

particularly around race relations, that there is always a considerable white lash. And so how do you reckon with the stark reality that we want things to be neat, we want them to follow order, but that they do not? I have a really hard time with it too. I think, you know, and it's also the sense of, you know, you are working hard in terms of whatever institution or movement you're part of. And you want to see that you're able to hit results. You want to see those results come to fruition because it is a lot of hard work that folks have been doing, whether it's on climate change or dealing with racial injustice or dealing with

human rights and Palestine. I mean, there's so many issues that folks have really been focusing on for decades, right? Then to feel like was it worth it or where are the wins? They're is not consistent. I think one of the small pieces of this that I've been sitting with is how, going back to your point, we had this sort of belief maybe that a multiracial democracy was in our sites because the demographics obviously were there. And while we know that demographics are not destiny, et cetera, et cetera, there's still this hope that I think many of us held and also this reality, right, that yes, we're in a multiracial democracy in this country. And so it's going to, we're going to see that pan out in terms of who's in power, who's in leadership, in terms of

dealing with disparities and inequities through law and policy change. I think a lot of us have been sort of like, wait, double take on a lot of this, right? One place that I've been thinking of that in my own community in the Asian and South Asian American community is seeing pockets of our communities, even though, again, we voted, you know, overwhelmingly Democrat as I think our communities have in the past, we began to see pockets of our communities who were voting for Trump. And it was, I think, an important revelation to recognize that for many people, you know, the idea of a multiracial democracy or even the loss of a democracy were not really as important to them, whether it is their jobs or their access to health care or sending their kids to college or whatever

it is, right? So I think it's about recognizing that, the privilege that often comes with being in a place where we're talking about fighting for our democracy and how that can be disconnected from the realities of a lot of people who are focused on, you know, other important things. So I think that is something that came up as, wait, we got to stop for a moment. And how do we course correct in terms of community outreach, in terms of the language that we're using to reach people, in terms of changing. the way in which we do our programs. And I think a lot of folks in the nonprofit sector and in the movement space are in that space of course correction, while also getting ready for having to mount

tremendous community defense initiatives. So how do we kind of recognize where we are and sit with those realities and defend our communities? It's a really hard place to be in. Yeah, I think that where we find ourselves is in a deep sense of friction. where all of these different layers and spaces are bumping up and rubbing up against each other. And where on one hand, we wanted to believe, to your point, by sheer numbers, the demographic shift that we'd been talking about, oh, 2030, 2050, these year numbers, these markers, that that in it of itself was going to define a multiracial democracy. And I think that what was revealed in the re-election of Donald Trump is that we were not taking into consideration our differences. And I think that, you know, by virtue of that, we said, well, because you happen to be from a marginalized community that, oh, you obviously are going to link arms. Except what we've always known is that the proximity to whiteness,

is one of the most addicted drugs that you can ever have. And that I don't think that there was a strategy that was in place to mitigate that because we hadn't really thought about it. And so now that we see it deeper, like what do you make of the change and the maneuvers that need to happen in order to recognize that truth? That just because you happen to be part of said group, that may be from a marginalized, you know, community or an underserved community or what have you

and not part of the white mainstream, that the allure to the white mainstream is stronger than whatever bonds that you could find with people who may look like you. Exactly. I think it's definitely that what you're saying there about the, you know, the proximity to whiteness. I think the other thing that also was revealed is that a lot of communities of color feel that they're not being reached out to or their issues are not being seen, that things are just sort of been, there's like an airbrushing of all these issues. There's an assumption that we all feel the same way about every issue and that communities are all the same. I think there's a flattening that happens with communities of color in this country

that doesn't recognize how there are differences, not just in points of view, but there are differences maybe in our community histories or differences in terms of how policies may have impacted us. Even within like the Asian American community, right? I mean, there are so many differences to even call it an Asian American community. Often is again going back to my initial point contradiction. And so I think that the ways that we look at this is one, I think we have to check our assumptions and just sit with the discomfort of that. Another is I think we really have to think about how do we build connections and

commonalities across people of color without flattening all of our differences and unique experiences. And that we have to sit in space together. We need to, before we even talk about issues, we need to talk about like, what are our biases towards each other? How do we see each other? And there's one story that I often tell, which is something I learned from a group in Wisconsin that is called Freedom Inc. And they organize like in Southeast Asian and Black neighborhoods.

and they were trying to bring like these communities together. And they found that there was no way to like even have a community meeting at first because people had so many different ideas about what should happen in the neighborhood and about each other. And they spent a year having separate meetings like black folks and Southeast Asian folks separately. And they worked through like political education and all of these different pieces. And then they brought the communities together. And after that they were able to organize, do things to.

for their community. But I think that hard work has not been done in a lot of places because we've just skipped some steps because we've assumed we're all on the same page. So I think that deep organizing and base building listening to people has to happen. And then a third piece I think is around narratives. You know, we have to, I think, think about how the words that we're using may not be relating to a lot of people. So, you know, words like multiracial democracy or fascism, authoritarianism. I mean, I don't know that all of these white supremacy, I'm not sure that these words necessarily mean the same things to people. And oftentimes, folks can feel like they're being patronized and talked down to. So I think that it's the base building, the narratives and checking

our assumptions are at least three, you know, potential steps that might help us to kind of course correct in this moment. It's heartening to hear this happening from an organizational community building standpoint. I think where I find myself really concerned, however, is the fact that the establishment Democrats don't seem to be doing this kind of self-reflection. They seem to be doing the same thing over and over again. Appointing the same people to positions of power inside of the party,

that it is really concentrated with the elderly. as opposed to refocused and reimagined around the younger, vibrant voices of the party. And so I wonder how you think that this kind of self-reflection and reckoning that is happening as a larger community is actually going to show up in or not in the actual hard politics of the party. Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I similarly have that same viewpoint. There's been blame thrown around. there's been even like blaming the movements or, you know, which are severely under-resourced, right,

compared to like the political party regime. What I've seen is a lot of that blaming and then coming back to doing the same thing over and over again that has been done before that really doesn't work. And that's why I think a lot of people are so disappointed with, you know, the Democratic Party and are disappointed with leadership in the party because that, that kind of self-reflection we were just talking about, which I do hear in, you know, institutional and movement spaces a lot. It just isn't actually percolating or permeating into the political party structure. I do think that I see some of that at the state and local level more where I think that there are some of these conversations happening. And especially when we can get like political party leaders and community leaders together to have these hard conversations,

that that might be an opening. But I think it's happening perhaps more locally than it is at the national level. With just a couple of minutes that we have left, you know, I just want to switch gears and get your thoughts on. So we're headed into 2025. We're headed into the second Trump regime. Donald Trump has shown us who he is and with his announcements of his appointees, what he thinks about the country. It is evident that we have transitioned from. a democracy into a broligarchy.

And I just wonder how you think we need to be positioning our mindsets moving into this new year and this new regime. Yeah, exactly. So I've been hearing, and I'm sure you have too, from a lot of people who are talking about how exhausted they are, burned out they are, or even that they're not going to do anything this time around because the country voted a certain way. I think that these are not helpful responses. And what we really need to do is really start to gear up for what is going to come.

And a couple of ways to think about responding, whether you're an individual or organization, anything like that, is like who are the most vulnerable people in our local communities, whether they're undocumented immigrants or working class folks, who are they? And then to number two, look at what kind of community safety and defense mechanisms. need to exist in our local communities to support those folks. So does that mean like legal infrastructure? Does it mean some form of community coordinated messaging that happens or a local task force? Whatever that is, what can be set up at the local level to shore those folks up? And then I think after that there are tears of like the actual resistance. So community defense and

safety is one piece that I think some of us are thinking about. are thinking about resistance in the way that we saw perhaps during Trump 1.0. So that could be rallies, protests, direct action, be straight up litigation, whatever the case, to at least stop the harm a little bit, try to delay the harm. And then I think a third piece is going back to what I said earlier, like actually doing that grassroots base building, because we can't stop doing that generative work that would yield, years from now. Not all of us can do these three things. And I know in the past we've talked about these different roles that folks can play. I think this is a moment to identify like one to two

that we can hold and do it for like the four quarters of the year. Take a breather after the first, you know, reset, what worked, what didn't, do I need to switch my role? But those are the three arenas, you know, at least that I would offer community safety and defense, resistance. and generative base building and bridge building as potential ways of thinking about next year. Well, we will have to leave it there today, Deepa, but I just, you know, I am so grateful for the work that you do to really engage in community building, to really be the architect in many ways of how we reimagine what community looks like. And it has been, you know, eye-opening, I think incredibly powerful. and it will be needed as we enter into this brave new world.

So I appreciate you so much for making the time for The New Abnormal. I love being here and talking with you and appreciate you for actually getting all of this information out in a timely way. So thank you for having me. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and

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