The Daily Stoic - Are We In A Post-Shame Society? | Elliot Ackerman (PT. 2)

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

What happens when politics becomes performance and politicians become influencers? In today’s Part 2 episode, former Marine and NYT bestselling author Elliot Ackerman joins Ryan to talk about the idea that “everything’s a racket,” the collapse of institutional trust, and why restraint used to define real leadership. They talk about how cancel culture morphed into shamelessness as a superpower, why we might be living in a post-shame society, Ambrose Bierce’s wild literary exit, and why modern media feels more like professional wrestling than journalism.Elliot Ackerman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels 2054, 2034, Halcyon, Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. Elliot’s books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, and a veteran of the Marine Corps and CIA special operations, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. Be sure to check out Elliot’s latest book, SHEEPDOGS. Apple Studios has actually bought the rights to develop the book as a series with Tom Hanks production company.  Grab signed copies of Elliot’s books 2054 and 2034 at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/Follow Elliot Ackerman on Instagram and X @elliot.ackerman🎙️ Listen to Elliot Ackerman’s first time on The Daily Stoic Podcast: Elliot Ackerman on Storytelling and the Cyclical Nature of History🎥 Head to Ryan Holiday’s YouTube channel to see what books he recommends to guests who come on The Daily Stoic Podcast | https://www.youtube.com/@RyanHolidayOfficial📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can, be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down,

be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily. Stoic podcast. I hope all of you are doing well. Yesterday was rough for me. It was just a rough day with the kids. It just felt like not a single thing was easy or went well. And I was thinking about stoicism as not necessarily a thing for making things go well. Like it just was what it was. But I was thinking about it as a philosophy that helps you bounce back from those things.

Like, how do you go in to today, which is what I'm thinking about and go, today is going to be better. Here are the changes I'm going to make. I'm not going to dwell. I'm not going to ruminate. I'm not going to write it off. I'm not going to give up. I'm going to focus on how we can do better today. To me, that's really what it is.

I don't think the stillics never lose their temper. I think they do. I don't think they never get depressed. They never get frustrated. They never get pissed off. They do all these things. To me, it's about how quickly you recover, how quickly, you get back to it.

How do you find some of the humor in it? How do you laugh at it? That's something I talk about with today's guest. I've raved about Elliot Ackerman before, just like an incredible guy with an incredible history. I mean, CIA, the Marine Corps, he did five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the Silver Star and the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

He's been nominated for a National Book Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction. I mean, he is a great writer. in addition to having this whole other career before that. He writes for The Atlantic. He's a fellow at Yale. And then his books have also sold super well. He's a New York Times bestselling author.

He's written these two really great novels with Admiral Stapritus at 2054 and 2034, which are sort of like imagining the future of this kind of sci-fi, like, predictive, sort of. Here's what war in 10 years. Here's what war in 20 years will look like. Here's what the world might look like in those years. But anyways, in the episode, one of the things we talked about was sort of gallows humor. I thought that was really interesting. The Stoics have some interesting things to say about gallows humor.

And then we talk about the quote that he uses as an epigraph for his new book, Sheep Dogs, which Apple Studios just bought the rights to alongside Tom Hanks to produce. But this idea that war is a racket. What is a racket? There's this great quote from this guy, Spendley Butler, who is a general in World War I, about how we can define a racket. it's something that isn't what it seems to the majority of the people, but a sort of select few know what's really going on. That's his definition of a racket. I think it's a pretty good one.

And obviously, rackets are very common today. Corruption is very common today. And so we sort of talked about all that. It's a great episode. I think you're really going to like it. You can listen to part one. And then Ellie and I walked around the bookstore actor and recommended a bunch of books. If you want to watch some of those bookstore tours, head over to my personal YouTube channel. I'll link to that in show notes. Sometimes we put him on Instagram too. I really appreciate Elliot coming out. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at elliot.ackerman. You can grab sign copies of 2054 and 2034 at the Painted Port Sheep Dogs wasn't out yet when he came by. But I really recommended a bunch of his books and I've read a bunch of them. He's awesome. And we've talked on

the podcast a bunch of times. So check out both of those. I got to go pick up my kids. So I'm cutting this intro a little bit short. I'll talk to y'all soon. it's funny the epigraph of this book i used it in um in my media book i'm interested in i'm lying uh i think it's one of the great quotes of all time war is a racket and he defines racket as a thing that only a small inside group knows what it's about and it's conducted at the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many that definition of what a racket is i feel like is a thing they should teach in school they should because you realize how well there's a lot of fucking rackets. A lot of rackets. Yeah. The open secrets where everyone in the space,

they all know how this works and they have private misgivings about it or they all complain about it or they wish it was otherwise. But like to the public, it's something else. Yeah. And it's often, it's often like, you know, the racket is like the mystery that's right in front of your face. You know, like everybody, everybody knows this is going on, but no one can exactly see the mechanisms by which it works. You know, it's almost like the, you know, it's the old kind of like David Foster Wallace saw, like there's, you know, from his graduation, it's like there's two fish swimming along when fish says, you know, the water's great in here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't even know you're in the water that you're in until, you know,

you take a step back. Yeah, or I remember I was working for this client this one time and some media outlet had said something very unfair and I wrote into them and my client was very upset and it was this whole thing and then the writer responded and he goes like, I don't understand. He's like, I thought we all knew this was professional wrestling. That's what he said. And I was like, wow, okay. Like, that's the racket.

you're under the impression that we're all in this playing this thing and like I didn't know we were playing this thing but more importantly like they don't know this is happening yeah and uh you just kind of realize a lot of things that are like that and I think I do think it's hard uh you know we live in a world of like conspiracy theories and misinformation a lot of distrust in institutions it's hard once you see one racket to not start to think that everything's a fucking racket and that's where the cynicism and the sort of negative spiral comes in Yeah, and it's just sort of postmodern thinking that, you know, everything becomes sort of relevantism. And yeah, it's really, I mean, you know, I was even watching like all like the Trump Elon stuff like exploding everywhere.

And I'm like it's so. And then so my, you know, I'm looking through like my social media feeds and I'm getting, you know, just mainlined all of that stuff. And the other thing I'm getting mainlined is, you know, the, you know, stuff, the, you know, or content that's sort of very nostalgic content for the 81st anniversary of, you know, of the D-Day landings. And I'm like, these are so such, like, there's so insanely opposite versions of America. It's like tough to, it's tough to hold those two realities in your head. Yeah. Although, you know, McCarthy's not far off from that version of America.

Like, there's nonsense then too. Right. Yeah, I'm not saying there's not nonsense then. And, and not, you know, not kind of not engaging in sort of golden age thinking. Yes. But more all of that sort of World War II medium is sort of like the height of, you know, black and white, good versus evil, like not muddled. We all, you know, institutions save the world. And then, you know, and then you kind of look at so much of like our, you know, the political discourse today and the distrust of institutions and this feeling of like complete relativism and that everything is a racket.

So get what you can while you can. Yes. Yeah, it's hard to read wars and a racket and then like look at pictures. of D-Day, and you go, was that a rack? Was that a racket? And you know in some level that's not. But I think that's the point when an institution reveals itself to be corrupt or self-serving or, you know, not what it seems.

Right. It's hard not to see that everywhere, even when it's not there. And then I think it's really hard if you grow up and all you have seen is the racket over and over and over again. Like if I'm 21 years old right now. Yeah. Like what's an institution that is not? either failed or utterly fucked me over.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's tough to say, you know, what are the ones that in American life, I mean, are still revered? I think, you know, I think the military is still revered. But I would also argue it's revered because, you know, it's become sort of a subculture in American society instead of one that's, like, integrated throughout the fabric of

our society. Yes. And it's one that I think is not well understood. Right. I'm surprised. You know, just there's such a. huge chunk of America that does not understand the military. I mean, and then there's obviously a slice of America that understands it all too well and that lives with it. But like in sheep

dogs, like one of the things I wanted to do is I want to show like it's funny. Like war is actually very funny. Yeah. And I've absurd. Absurd. Yeah, absurd. But it's it's almost like the, the humor is this like through line. Like when I would, you know, I've written like several books that are all deal with war. And what I would notice was like when I would get together from, you know, friends of mine from that time and we would, you know, inevitably having drinks or, you know, talking about, inevitably, we would always just be telling funny stories. Like, just laugh. We wouldn't be telling serious stories. It always reverts back to the funny stories. And I was like, you know, none of these funny stories are ever in my, anything that I write.

Like, it's always the serious stuff. Yes. I was like, and I want to write something that's like in the spirit of those funny stories because there's a lot of truth there because it's like, it's a coping mechanism. Yeah. Like, you know, you have to have the humor. You have to have it. And it's, you know, and in the theme of, you know, your work, I mean, it's almost a sort of sort of form of like stosa, like the one thing you can control, yeah, is how you're going to react to these events. Yeah. And the ultimate way of showing that you're going to, you know, that you're going to, you know, react in a positive way or that you have control of your reactions. I'm just going to cut a joke. Like right now, I'm so in control, I can cut a joke.

Yeah, one of my favorite writers is Ambrose Pierce. Yeah. And he's funny hilarious, but it comes out of his profound sort of civil war trauma. Yeah. And his civil war stories, some of them are beautiful and tragic, but most of them are like, funny like there's a weird punchline to them he's exposing the contradiction not to be like look at these hypocrites exposing the contradiction to be like life is ridiculous subtle yeah absurd and he has one i don't know if you're familiar i love this his passing is one of this sort of more glamorous literary passings i love i guess what he was he was in dc correct me if i'm wrong here he got an assignment to go cover the war in mexico i think he just went or anything he just whacked i think he

He had a death wait. Yeah, he just went. And as I've read, I think it's it. Then the last time he was seen was under a tree at Shiloh where he'd fought because he went by Shiloh. Do you know the, okay, I'll tell you that. Okay, I'll tell you. Yeah. Okay.

So Civil War veteran, sort of Civil War hero writes a bunch of books about it. It becomes an editor on the West Coast, sort of a contemporary Mark Twain. And then he goes to Washington and is sort of like the Gilded Age muckraker columnist guy gets very disillusioned. It's funny. He's known as the cynic, right? But like most cynics are scorned idealists. Right. So he's the scorned idealist. Actually, this crazy connection. His father is named Marcus Aurelius Beirce. And his uncle, who is also a Civil War general, is named Lucius Veris Beers, which is Marcus. So anyways, I think at some point he's decided he's done with life because he does a tour of all the Civil War battlefield that he fought in. And then he writes a letter to, his daughter, nephew, niece. He writes a letter to someone and he goes, hey, I'm going to go to Mexico.

I want to see what this Poncho Villa thing is like, he's like, I'll probably end up blindfolded in front of a wall somewhere, like a firing squad, but it's like, I want to see what happens. Yeah. And he was executed by a firing squad in Mexico. And he's one of the first of those sort of modern celebrities that people don't believe the accounts of his death. So he's seen all over. Like his,

is Ambrose Pierce really did. Yeah, he was seeing, like, he was seen, like someone saw him at Shia. Because his fame is, like the battle he fought at, what I saw at Shiloh. Yeah, yeah, what I saw Shiloh. It sounds like, oh, we saw, like, see the old man Beers, like, at Shiloh.

And then, you know, I mean, he disappears. Yeah. I mean, he goes to Mexico and is killed. Yeah. And I think the reason we think that is that's how an Ambrose Beers story would end. Of course. It's very romantic.

Well, it's always the twist. right? Like the occurrence at All Creek Bridge is one of great stories of all time. It's always the twist. Yeah. So the idea of him just predicting his own death and then going exactly that way is too on the nose. It has to be a twist. Yeah. Yeah. No, he's great. I don't know how many times I've gotten blood drawn over the years, gone to different doctors, had different tests. And I don't really know where this information is. Maybe my health insurance provider has it. Maybe they don't. I know I don't have it. And I sometimes worry, like, what if there is a trend in there? What if there's something that these different specialists

aren't looking for because they're only looking for what they're a specialist in? Well, that's where today's sponsor comes in. Function consolidates all the blood work and scans that you've gotten and looks for new or interesting information about your health. Function is the only health platform that gives you access to the kind of data most people will never see, and then insights to actually take action. You can test over 160 biomarkers from heart to hormones to toxins, inflammation, and stress. You can also access MRI and CT scans all in one secure place over time. It's basically an enhanced view of everything that's happening in your body, and it's why lots of different top health leaders are all behind function health. Lab visits are fast and

convenient at 2,000 locations across the U.S. And the good news is function isn't going to push supplements or pharmaceuticals. It's just powerful, unbiased health data designed to help you own your health. And you can learn more by using the link. I'll put that in today's show notes. And the first 1,000 people will get a $100 credit towards their membership. You just visit functionhealth.com slash daily stoic 100 or use code daily stoic 100 at sign up to own your health. I don't know how many times I've gotten blood drawn over the years, gone to different. doctors, had different tests. And I don't really know where this information is. Maybe my health insurance provider has it. Maybe they don't. I know I don't have it. And I sometimes worry, like,

what if there is a trend in there? What if there's something that these different specialists are looking for because they're only looking for what they're a specialist in? Well, that's where today's sponsor comes in. Function is an app that consolidates all the blood work and scans that you've gotten and looks for new or interesting information about your health. Function is the only health platform that gives you access to the kind of data most people will never see, and then insights to actually take action. You can test over 160 biomarkers from heart to hormones to toxins, inflammation, and stress.

You can also access MRI and CT scans all in one secure place over time. It's basically an enhanced view of everything that's happening in your body, and it's why lots of different top health leaders are all. behind Function Health. Lab visits are fast and convenient at 2,000 locations across the U.S. And the good news is function isn't going to push supplements or pharmaceuticals. It's just powerful, unbiased health data designed to help you own your health. And you can learn more by using the link.

I'll put that in today's show notes. And the first 1,000 people will get a $100 credit towards their membership. You just visit FunctionHealth.com slash Daily Stoic 100 or use code Daily Stoic 100 at sign up to own your health. Did you see, speaking of muckraking journalism, there was a great, if you ever read Balzac's Lost Illusions? No. It's really worth it. It was a great novel. It's one of his like, you know, doorstoppers and the condition, um, but they remade it as a film, um, uh, in France.

So I'm probably not doing a good job selling it right now. But if you want to write, we'll watch like a three hour French movie. It's an adaptation of a Balzac novel. Go check out Lost Illusion. It's on Apple. But in all serious, it's actually great. It's so good. You know, it's all about kind of, you know, France, 1830s, you know, post-Napoleonic war. So everybody's just exhausted. Everyone's very cynical at this point. And it's about, you know, a very idealistic poet who comes from the countryside and he moves to France to kind of make his way. And he kind of quickly points it becoming like the greatest muckraking journalist in all of Paris. And it's sort of his journey of Los Angeles. delusions, but it's very like speaks to this time, kind of this media escape. And, yeah, so I'd recommend it. Really well done. That Trump, Elon thing you mentioned, I think it's so interesting, I was thinking about that. I was looking at some of the tweets and I go, here are the two most powerful people in the world, essentially, or two of the most powerful people in the world,

and not an ounce of discipline or restraint between them. It's pretty remarkable because usually you become that way by having a lot of restraint. Yeah. And I can't tell if, are they, anomalies, are the exceptions that prove the rule? Or is this the new world that we live in, which is a terrifying world in that there is no one who needs more restraint. Power is primarily about what you don't use, right? Like, I think when you think of great leaders, there's all the things that could have done and the things they prevented from happening. Like, Eisenhower's greatest accomplishment is not using nuclear weapons in Korea, right? Washington's greatest accomplishment is resigning after two terms.

the decision to not do things that Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's primarily about restraint what you didn't do. And to watch two people who have so much power and so much discretion reveal themselves to be utterly incapable of not acting on an impulse is both terrifying. And then if that's the trend, well, then we're definitely fucked. But I think it's, I mean, I don't know, I sort of tend to believe the, you know, you know, Trump is, and again, this has been said many times, like, Trump is the symptom. Trump is the symptom. Like, he is not so, so he's symptomatic of the challenges that our society is facing in which there is, you know, massive distrust of, you know, massive distrust of, you know, systemic reasons for that distrust, you know, a social contract that kind of like doesn't work as well as it used to. So if Trump had like or had come on the scene, you know, I mean, he was. on the scene for a very, very long time, then like the moment, if he finally met his moment,

so the question becomes, you know, what, you know, what events or series of events will sort of be corrective and whatever they are, I mentioned, they will probably be very painful. Yes, right. What is the- Because you need to have the restraint, you need to have felt the pain. Yes. Right. Yeah, to have restraint, you need to be shown the costs of excess or the lack of, you have

regulations because laws I fair. failed. Right. And so, like, much of what we had in the 20th century was a reaction against the gilded excesses of the late 19th century, right? And so the reason you had those, you had Eisenhower and Truman and Kennedy is that they were profoundly shaped by the, how bad it could get. Yep. And yeah, if you have someone who has 200 million followers and says whatever pops in their head with very little concern to what people might do with this information or how it might seem, it's very hard then to expect, I don't know, a 22-year-old kid to be like, I've got to take my responsibilities soberly. Yeah. What I think some of that too is if you look at like, I mean,

we'll just talk about wars, like kind of cataclysmic world-altering wars have seemed to occur in 80-year cycles, right? And I would go back as far, you know, like Napoleonic wars, you go, you know, 80, 90 years, you wind up sort of with the first and second World War, which I would chunk together, I would chunk together as one sort of, you know, massive shakeup of the global order. And you don't have Peloponnesian War and Peloponnesian War, too. Too, right, exactly. Well, and you also have, like, a global consciousness now in a way like that you, you know, didn't, you know, a thousand years ago. But, you know, and then we project it. Like, we're sitting there right now, like, you know, we're kind of similarly, like, at that mark.

And I would say, why is it, you know, why is it 80 and 90 years? it's I think you are you are ripe for that type of a massive global social upheaval at exactly the moment when everyone who can remember the last one is dying off and there's no living memory of it anymore and we're at that point there's really no living memory of how horrible that was and no one would want to live through that I would argue at least in America there's some of that wisdom like I was reading this article and it was saying that there's like one combat veteran in China like one general has any combat experience and it's like it's like not particularly impressive combat experience. It's just like token experience. And you're just like,

okay, so what does it look like when your main geopolitical opponent is not particularly personally aware of the costs? And then when you have, I think the trend in the U.S. is a lot of sort of belligerence and play acting about things without the historical understand. It's weird because that we actually do have the knowledge, but we've just decided to unlearn or to make light of that knowledge. Yeah. And the, um, our problem is actually our leadership is too old, right? So it's actually there is, the learned wisdom is there. There's just some, on some other level of flippancy about some of this stuff. And when some of it is like is, is decadent behavior. And I don't mean the word decadent like great parties and all that, but like decadent likes it. When

societies become completely risk-averse, they just start to repeat themselves because they don't want to take on the types of inherent risks that you need to make something new. Yeah. You know, it's why we're like, you know, afflicted by, you know, Mission Impossible six, seven, or Ghostbusters, 10 or, right, because no one, no one's going to take the risk to do the whole new Ghostbusters. Right. You know, and then that applies, like, culturally, it applies politically.

So you wind up with this type of decadence. But what you don't realize is that actually it's much riskier to just keep repeating yourself because then you become a sclerotic society that is non-adaptive. I mean, like, looking at this stuff. the attack in Russia, you know, the Ukrainians launched. It's like, you know, there are a lot of U.S. defense systems that we poured a lot of money into that are, you know, every day of the passives, they're looking more and more obsolete. Because they're on floppy disks and shit. Yeah, they're on, because they're on, because they're like big aircraft carriers or bombers or, you know, if you saw there was like a meme going around where it was like it had a picture of like the, the Truman carrier, or U.S. carrier, you know, 15.

billion British carrier, four billion French carrier, seven billion Ukrainian aircraft carrier. It's like a box truck. It's like $70,000. But, you know, there's a lot of truth into that. And the danger for society is to be so decadent that you, you know, refuse to or don't have the appetite for risk that you need to, you know, to innovate and to stay on the cutting edge. I mean, I'm not, I'm still bullish on the U.S. and I think, you know, we kind of always muddle our way through. And I think we have a couple of years ago, people thought Microsoft was, you know, like old and past five, and now it's easy to underestimate the value of resources and talent and, you know, you could always turn things around. But yeah, I was just struck by, it's interesting

that the right is talking a lot about virtue these days. Yeah. And then has actually embraced a kind of, like a platform and a cast of characters that is about as close to anti-virtue as you can imagine. Not that, like, I think the left is full of these, like, wonderful people. Yeah. But, but I'm just saying it is weird to think, like, what do you have to do to get kicked out of this? It sort of depends who you are, too, right? Because I think there's some people who, you know, the ex, you know, I mean, it's the classic Trump saw. Like, I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and no one would do anything.

Because I think, like, the cardinal sin of a politician is being disingenuous. So if your brand is completely outrageous, you'll kill someone on Fifth Avenue, or do whatever, you know, or like when even Elon was saying, like, I've got the goods on Trump, he's in the Epstein. Well, everybody knows Trump's in the Epstein file. I know. I think like, I think if that came out tomorrow would be a news story for like six minutes and nobody would care. Yes. Also, we know you don't care. You just spent $300 million to get him elected. You don't care about that. You don't care about it. And Trump doesn't care about it because it's, and it doesn't hurt Trump politically because it's totally on brand for Trump. Now, if something like J.D. Vance was

in the Epstein files, like that would be a problem. I mean, I don't even know if it would. No. You don't think so? No, because I think when your entire identity is sort of built around a grievance against someone else, you're disinclined to kick allies out of your, like, I think it's interesting, right, when someone gets canceled. Yeah. Like, let's say you or I were to do something bad right now. The safest strategy would be to be like, I'm actually super Republican now. Right. Right. To have any cultural availance to anymore. Yeah, there's, you know, like, okay, that's a direction. When Russell Brand knows he's going to go down for stuff, he's like, I'm going on Rumble.

Right. Right. Because that's a tribe that's not discerning. Yes. As long as you agree to a handful of stipulations, right? It's like the gang will invite you as long as you're willing to abide by. You can play, yeah, you can play in their sandbox with that. Yeah.

And I think, um, you want to have a society. that goes like, no, no, these are the rules. These are the, these are the things that we have decided are beyond the pale. And we don't care if you agree with us or not. Like, I mean, look, the left is flirting with this right now with Andrew Cuomo. Like, how badly do you want to win? Do you decide to throw all that out because this person is, you know, X, Y, or Z to you? So it's a very human thing for sure.

But it's like, what do you, how do you have a society that doesn't, have the ability. Like, people have made this whole thing about cancel culture, which, you know, I think did get excessive. But, like, yeah, you want to have some device other than jail where you go, eh, you don't get to do this anymore. Yeah. You know? But I think the, I mean, do people still get canceled? Is that still like, no, that's what I'm saying. That guy doesn't really happen anymore. But it's amazing to go. What do you do as a society that can't go, hey, this person was reasonably accused of this, even if they don't get convicted of it. No, but think how quickly this has happened, right?

Like, I mean, I remember being in my living room with a bunch of friends and, you know, we were like having some dinner. And I was like Friday night. Like we had like six people over for dinner or seven people, all who kind of worked in newspaper or media, whatever. And it was when the shitty men and media list came out. Remember that? Yeah.

I think that was like 2017 or something. Yes. And I remember everyone's sort of looking at it. And we're all, like, everyone's good friends. But everyone just sort of, I'm like, you know, you're not on it. Yeah, hopes you're not, hope, whoever is, like, oh, you know, and not, and just this sense of, like, oh, my God, like these people, and knowing one or two folks who were on him, and it's as though they had died, like, they had truly just died, and then not knowing what to do with our newly

debt, and I feel like that just couldn't happen today. Yeah, and that's probably good. Yeah, no, and that's probably good. And then now it's like you could do something, it's probably the opposite, where it's now it's like, what would someone have to be accused of? But I think they're interrelated. I think the shitty media list gets you to this point where now you can do anything. What's the over-prescription of antibiotics?

Yes. And then you get super bugs. Exactly. Exactly. I think you get a world where shamelessness is a superpower. And because it's the pushback to the over, you know, to the sort of the over-correction. Yeah. But it's also for me, too, it's like psychedelic to remember this world.

Like, I remember, there were a couple of presidential elections. I remember the 1996 presidential election really well because it was just like such a non-thing. It was Bob Dole versus Bill. Like, who cares? You know what I mean? And I remember the 2001 because there were all of these questions. You'd been through the Lewinsky stuff. And there were questions of Bill Clinton's marijuana use held in contrast with the idea,

did George Bush ever try cocaine or something? You know what I mean? And like, and people were lit up about this stuff. Yes. Which just seems so. well it's weird it's weird to be like how lit up they were and then also there's this sort of collective memory that things were calmer then no but they were they were wild i mean you know yeah it's not that like they were wild given right don't you i don't know what you think i remember it as they were wild given what norms were at the time but if you took that same set of events and transposed them on today you'd like who cares it's so snoozy yeah yeah yeah yeah you would kill for a scandal of that level of insignificance right but those scandals of that level of and significance evoked a response as strong, if not stronger, than some of the scandals we have today because I sort of think we're beyond, it's, I don't know, it almost feels somewhere beyond

scandal. Yeah, I know, I think, what do you do when you're in sort of a post-shame society? I just ran with my buddy on Town Lake Trail here in Austin, did 10 miles in, roughly 70 minutes. And then I ran with his brother, his twin brother. This is my best friends from middle school. I ran with his twin brother when I was in Greece. He was there with his wife's family. We ran outside Olympia. And then in between these two runs, I ran the original marathon. I ran from Marathon to Athens. And you know what shoes I used? I used today's sponsor, Hoka. They actually have a new shoe, the Rocket X3, which is a race day shoe that's engineered for speed when every second counts. The Rocket X3 is built to meet the demands of race day.

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Go to Kachava.com and use code Stoic for 15% off your next order. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A.com code Stoic for 15% off. I think what I have learned is that When you read about the founders, despite their raging hypocrisy and secret shames and whatever, there was a profound sense of propriety and honor. And there was this self you were aspiring to be, right? This sort of classical self. And that's why, I don't know, Washington decides not to take a salary.

There's one scene in the Revolutionary War where his overseer, again, shitty person overseeing a slave plantation, but rushes out and tries to make a deal with the British to protect Washington's plantation. Washington's like, I would rather be burned to the ground than get special treatment. It's not like he was somehow less self-interested than we are today. Right. It's just there was this sort of norm, this culture that said, like, you don't want to be a person. He probably knew at a certain level, right, like if it would be worse for him. Yes.

You know, trust me, you do not want to hold on your plantation if you hold onto it that way. Yes, exactly. And he probably meant that as far as, getting in with his peers, but also his sense of self, like his sense of honor. And so I think we have seen ourselves as this constitutional republic, and we saw the courts. We overestimated the value of the machinery and the laws and what they said. And actually, the system was operating much more on norms, customs, but also individual restraint. Like, I am not the kind of, I could do X, Y, and Z. I would just never do X, Y, and Z. And we, we just presumed that it was the system

keeping those people in check. But actually, it was all this, it was this cultural edifice, like the books we read, the stories we told, the statues we looked at. And when all that goes away, you're like, oh, we're really just hanging on by, like, whether or not the person is willing to commit Harry Carey or not. You know, like that, that and I think you all should combine it like politically at a moment when you just look at our politics where um you know the machinery of just the very snoozy machinery that like no one wants to ever look at because it's really boring but like the difference between like a 527 a 501 c4 or 503 you know it is you know so like post citizens united yeah like a guy like Elon Musk and like he was tweeting about like oh we need

another party like he can roll in like if he wakes up and decides next election he wants to dump $5 billion into some initiative or on, there used to be legal, like, you couldn't do that. Yeah, there was a reason. They can now. Like, he can't. He could go get someone on the ballot on his new, you know, party, a candidate that's the must candidate. Like, I could be on the ballot in all 50 states, totally funded, ready to go because the DNC and

the RNC don't have the same power they once had because super PACs now can raise so much more than they are. So they have more power. So it's, you know, the ground is like shifted beneath our feet. too without us necessarily noticing. And, you know, it's the same way in our media. We're like, I mean, you know, you once had these sort of story tastemaking institutions and they don't, you know, what's a New York Times first link versus any other link?

But it just comes down, but I think at the end of the day it comes down to this sort of personal thing of like, we've always had influential media figures, but some believed that that bestowed a certain responsibility and restraint. And then now people are like, I don't know. people are interested in it. That's what I'm going to talk about. You know, so what do you think is like, like, we always had muckraking journalism, right? So, but why do we think, or that a hundred years ago that do those degrees of... Well, I think there was a strong sense of identity of what the job of the journalist was.

Yeah. And the responsibilities. And there was a culture around it. And there was, I mean, it's like, D.C. is like the only city left in America with a press club. Right. But, like, you wanted to be able to show your face at the press club. Right. That's why you wanted to double and triple fact check your stories. Right. You know, it wasn't the fact checker that's the lone line of defense. It was the sense of like, I want to get the story right.

Right. You know, but I think that's a big part of it. And then so as that goes away, you get a new culture. And the new culture is like, I have a lot of substack followers. And they pay me a lot of money. So that's my main job is giving them what they want, not these are the things that I would rather die than do. You know what? like, there wasn't a legal framework that said, hey, if you get special treatment protecting

your farm, George Washington, you're ineligible for office. It's like you're the mayor of New York and you are indicted on corruption charges and arrested by the FBI, that you're like, no, I'm going to continue to do the day job. Again, whether you're convicted of the charges or not, the sense that, like, hey, I temporarily possess this job and I'm in this job in the service of others. And I have lost fairly or not, I have lost the moral authority possible to effectively do that job. So I therefore have to resign. That's gone. And then, oh, I'll just go make a deal with the president who I disagree with to get those charges tossed out. And then I'll just keep being mayor. Like we live in a world, we live in an upside down moral universe where that's a possible story. A possible story.

I think maybe it's a possible storyline because, like, what is the, what is the currency of the realm? Attention money. Well, attention. Like, I was at this, I mean, I was at a thing with some members and their staffs and they were talking about it. It was like a bipartisan thing, but they're talking about, you know, work they're trying to do across the aisle and, you know, and they're listening. And one of the staffers got up and was talking about, like, a tough boat that their member had had to make. And this was, they were really proud. Like, this was a real act of courage.

They were, you know, willing to reach across the aisle and do this. and, you know, so much so, such an act of courage. And this member did it and lost 10,000 followers on Instagram. I was like, whoa, whoa, this is the act. This is the act of courage. But said totally straight face, like, took that vote and lost 10,000 of their followers. Like, what an act of courage. I was surprised, but shouldn't have been surprised.

Like, yes, that's the currency of the realm. The mass is slipping a little bit. Right. But it's like, it's like, it's attention. It's followers. That is the racket, right? Yeah, that's the racket. It's something that makes sense to a small.

group of people, but is not what it seems to everyone else. Because everybody else is still like postured as though it's this sort of, you know, or many are posthing themselves as this sort of traditional version of American virtue and civic, civic minded. They are acting as though winning or losing elections, the main thing, although that wasn't the main thing. It's supposed to be the main thing either. But they're going, no, actually this is like every politician is just an influencer playing the game of politics. Right. instead of selling you fitness tips or showing their Ferrari or whatever, that's what they are. They're all angling toward, most of them are angling towards some sort of book deal or Fox News contract.

That's right. Or they are effectively media personalities that occasionally gather in the Senate or House chambers to cast votes, but primarily our media personalities. And that's why it's so interesting when you talk to them personally, they're like, oh, what Trump's doing is awful or I totally disagree with that. Like, I had this thing at the Naval Academy. Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. And I sent it to someone I know who's in opposite. And he's like, yeah, it's such a shame. And it's like, dude, you're one of the votes that put in the person who put in the policy.

Like, literally you voting differently on this, on added confirmation hearing would have made this not happen. It's not a shame. It's like, it's a shame for me because I'm a citizen who has to lament this thing happening. You're one of the hundred people who's supposed to make it not a shame. And the only way you can behave that way is if you really, if you believe it's all theater. And that actually doesn't matter. Yes. The racket to you is none of the votes matter.

It doesn't matter. I'm a media personality. Well, and none of it matters in the country is just always going to be here. And the big bad thing can never happen. We fly above that. So what does it matter? I might as well get my Fox News deal. Yes.

Because this is just a show that we're putting on. Totally. And so, no, and it's very cynical. Yeah. It's a very cynical view. And a very dangerous. Because the history teaches, it always, always ends the same way. Yes.

It's in a titled view. Yeah, it's a very entitled view. You are taking for granted the stability of something that you are, you know, what's that, it's that famous picture where someone's like sitting something and then they're like sawing out the, like the support beams underneath it. Yeah. It's like you can only, like maybe you get away with it. Maybe the, the janga tower falls after you're gone.

No, but you're pulling the pieces out of the tower every day and it teeters and. I mean, listen, it's, it'll be. I mean, in our lifetimes, I'm certain the U.S. will, like, we will face some cataclysmic. I don't, you know, who knows what it will be, but there will be some type of challenge that, that demands a degree of national unity. Like a pandemic that kills a million and a half people. Yeah. I mean, this was what was interesting, right? Because, like, the pandemic obviously didn't in no way elicit that type of national unity.

The closest thing that I felt that did was right after Russia invaded. Ukraine like you get but you know like six months maybe gave him six months and you could feel it yeah I mean then it quickly obviously dissipated but the fact that even we had that sort of convulsion you know showed like we're capable of it it's also hard I think one of the one of the benefits of history is you realize like it wasn't as united as you thought it was even in we go like how would we pull like you know today being the anniversary of day you're like what was it sometimes you read like I'll read memoirs or I'll read fiction from that period and you're just like wait world war two was happening then yeah and it's not in

here yeah because some people lived in fucking idaho and we're just hanging out and it like it wasn't it it feels like it was central to everything and everyone and there were the same entitled checked out disinterested whatever people as there are now you know and we weren't all on the same page. In retrospect, we all act like we were, but we weren't. No, and you guys I mean, the World War II is a three-year time horizon, which is like nothing. And right up until Pearl Harbor, it was incredibly divisive, you know, how the U.S. should be dealing with the war that was going on in Europe. And so Pearl Harbor happens and we kind of have, you know, three, you're right. It's like three years of unity. But we think it's World War, because World War II is actually

like, you know, the 30s to the mid-40s, but definitely in America we were not. I mean, they were having Nazi rallies. No, I know. I mean, psychologically, you know, yeah, it's, you know, three years it psychologically takes up three decades, I think, in how we think about the United States. Yeah, there was a brief period and you go, okay, if would we be able to marshal this if there actually was a real existential threat? You would hope so? I would hope so if it was, you know, existential and clearly articulated. But, you know, I don't know. I mean, the things, the ones I worry about are like are threats like economic threats. Like, you know, you go through another 2008 or something like that. I mean, you know, how does the country respond to that? I don't know. You know, I think though

we are certainly in a time of massive, yeah, there's like massive, massive, massive distrust of institutions and lots of weak leadership at the helm and tons of uncertainty in the air. And we're just kind of dottering our way through it. Well, that's a happy note. You want to go check out some books? Yeah, let's go check out some books. I'll pick out some stuff. Can we sign this one for me? Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

Thank you.