TRIGGERnometry - The Best Breakdown of America You’ve Never Heard - Richard Miniter

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Richard Miniter is an American investigative journalist and author, known for his work on national security and foreign policy. | SPONSOR. We use Ground News to escape the echo chamber and stay fully informed. Go to https://ground.news/triggernometry to save 40% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan. SPONSOR. Shipstation. Go to https://shipstation.com and use code TRIGGER to sign up for your FREE trial. SPONSOR. Get timeless looks with modern comfort from Mack Weldon. Go to MackWeldon.com and get 25% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code TRIGGER. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Introduction 04:32 The English Civil War And The Puritans 13:45 How Does This Impact America Today? 22:48 The Balance Of Power In America 27:00 The State Of The Four Utopias In America Today 33:36 Why Is Christianity Surging Across The US? 41:49 The Left's Fear Of The Religious Right 52:50 The Non-Religious Right 01:04:20 How The Differences Between The Two Groups On The Right Will Play Out 01:11:39 The Republicans Captured The Left's Main Weapon 01:16:40 What's The One Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The way to understand America, it was founded as four separate, somewhat coercive, religious utopias that come from different time periods in Britain's past. So the more you understand the past of your country, the more you understand the English of war especially, the more you'll understand America. So the ideas of the village these people are from becomes the idea of the village they settle in. Well, hundreds of years later, those ideas have. continue through those same social networks, families, and so on. And so that puts America at odds with itself. So the cultural shadow of these events in America is quite long. It's all but forgotten

in your country, but it's alive here in a cultural sense. We are your past. Richard, great to have you on the show. Great to be here. Thanks so much for coming on. You are someone who's written for every publication in the world. I've written a bunch of bestselling books. We met by complete accident, and I just happened to go, hey, can you tell us a little bit about the history of America and how that ties in? And you just like unloaded on us for about two hours. And I just sat there, we both did and just took it all in. And we thought it was a fascinating conversation. And we'd love for our audience to hear so many of the things you talked about because it is genuinely fascinating.

So the history that you told us starts with the English Civil War. It does, yes. So the way to understand America is it's four, it was founded as four separate, somewhat coercive, religious utopias that come from different time periods in Britain's past. So the more you understand the past of your country, the more you understand the English of war especially, the more you'll understand America. And consequently, since no one teaches this in schools these days on either side of the pond, We're a mystery to each other because we don't understand this very important shared past.

So New England is, which is Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, parts of upstate New York culturally, is settled by the people, the Puritans who are primarily from East Anglia, that hump of England that points out into the English Channel at the Netherlands. Virginia and Maryland, the shores of Maryland, not the big city of Baltimore, the North and South Carolina, parts of Georgia, Kentucky are settled by people from the southwest of England. They were on ultimately the losing side of the English Civil War. They favored the crown. They believed in hierarchy. They believed in farms and incredibly indentured servitude, which is how slavery becomes It begins in Britain with servitude of Welsh and Irish people. And in America, since there's a shortage at the time of Welsh and Irish people in the 1600s, they turn to African sources out of the Caribbean. And people can romanticize this culture.

It has some very interesting elements, but it has some profoundly evil elements as well. But each of the four subcultures that make America have both good and bad, light and dark. in them. The Puritans of New England are legalistic, arrogant, right? I'm talking about this time period. I'm not making a statement about today, although you can draw your conclusions. The people of the, what are called the Middle States, New York, Pennsylvania is essentially a middle state, the Delaware Valley, the state of Delaware, New Jersey. They are settled from the West Midlands of England. So these people have, and then the borderlands near the Scottish border in Northumbria in that area, those people settle the Appalachian Mountains, which are a rocky spine that runs from the state of Maine all the way down to Georgia.

And you've probably heard of the Appalachian Trail. People do that tremendous hike. It usually takes about a year. That's a great walk. But anyway, on both sides of that, of those mountains, settle the people from the English side of the Scottish border. And so each of them have different ideas about what freedom is. And most importantly, they have different religious ideas. And because they have different religious ideas, they have different political ideas.

Well, let's talk about that. So first of all, we started the English Civil War. Tell us about the roundheads, the Cavaliers. And you also explained to us, you know, why the Puritans remind us of some things that are happening today, et cetera. So break all of that down for us in more detail. Sure. Well, it would take hours to give you an adequate history of the English Civil War. but short version is after Henry V. 8th, Britain becomes a Protestant country. But Henry,

with the exception of his minister, Thomas Cromwell, who's ultimately executed, does not want it to become a very Protestant country. So a lot of Catholic traditions remain. And among the Puritan wing, they're very anxious to translate the Bible a day. English, which is how we get one of the great achievements in the English language, the King James Bible, which is still, you can find it in any bookstore in the United States to this day, right? Maybe not the original, but the new King James, which is functionally the same. And it's where we get the book of Common Prayer, which is the second largest source of idioms in the English language comes from that one book. The largest source of idioms, obviously comes from the plays of Shakespeare, which is also around this time period, right? Which is the second largest source of idioms in the English language comes from the English language, comes from that one book. Which is why I asked you the other day, Francis, about what you thought of Shakespeare's politics, right? So the Crown is support, the Puritans suspect the Crown has Catholic leanings and wants to return England to Rome. And this creates a culture of suspicion and paranoia that ultimately leads to a battle between the Parliament, which is dominated by urban dwellers and Puritans against the

the king, the royalists, otherwise known as the cavaliers, who are rural, traditional, have a very traditional view of Christianity, right? They don't want big changes in their faith. And these two, the battle is essentially, yes, it's one elite broken into two pieces at the top, but the people who are doing the fighting and dying on the roundhead side, so-called because of the hats the young clerks wore in London at the time. These are young men who are very ideological, very sure of their beliefs, very intolerant of dissent, who are willing to use political violence even before the war starts

to advance their views. So the king at an early stage of the war was hanging on because votes in the House of Lords, before the 1920s, the House of Lords was an important force in your country's politics. The House of Lords was fairly divided, but the bishops would vote uniformly for the king for various reasons.

But they would come by boat, right? The Thames is a highway in this time period. So all long traffic or anything where you're heavy carrying anything heavy would move up and down the Thames, which is why even to this day you'll see old docks in front of houses on the Thames where people, that's how you would get to work or get to market or whatever. So the bishops would come down in their long boats and the roundheads would be waiting for them and try to sink their boats, throw rocks at them, bring on other boats, throw them overboard. So they would swim to shore and not be able to show up at the House of Lords to vote in favor of the king.

So the king is at that stage early in the war, hanging on by a thread. Ultimately, the king, now I'm going 20 years later, is executed, gives a famous speech, which is called the scaffold speech, where he makes a plea for individual liberty, ironic, and that he's about to be the first and only assassinated king in English history, assassinated by the parliament. But that speech was required in American public schools in southern states until the 1960s in many places. So the cultural shadow of these events in America is quite long. It's all but forgotten in your country, but it's alive here, or it was alive a generation ago.

So all of our founding institutions, when we talk about the war between North and South, we're really talking about the war between the Puritans, the Russians, the Roval. roundheads and the Cavaliers. And the University of Virginia's sports teams to this very day are known as the Cavaliers, right? And the fighting pilgrims or whatever that team is up there, same thing, right? So it's these two cultures totally at loggerheads. But in between are two other English cultures, right? So the culture of the Appalachian Mountains, which is Hatfields and McCoys, the hillbillies, you know the lore. These are people from the board. Their idea of freedom is not the freedom to impose virtue, which is the Puritan idea,

or the freedom to maintain a social hierarchy, which is the cavalier royalist idea. Their idea is the freedom to be left alone. But before your libertarian heart fills with joy and say, these are my people. They're also deeply opposed to education, especially of women. So it's a very mixed bag. This is not a story with good guys on one side and bad guys on the other. People have elements of both. And then what we now call the Middle States,

which is from the West Midlands of your country, this is yet another perspective. And they want the freedom to make money. And they want to be left alone to make money. But they do want law and order to punish corruption because they think in commercial markets and financial markets, people will steal. And then Cromwell dies and the Puritan, you could say, dictatorship ends. We're now in the 1660, 1661, and it is set for the glorious restoration. You probably

remember this from your history books. But in that time period and immediately thereafter, all the institutions that you recognize as English today, the Bank of England, the major, the beginning of certain sports, such as the origins of cricket, all these things come from this time period. But at this point, America has been settled for 80 years, right? So they are still living in different pasts. The Puritans who came here in the 1620s, when they fled, the royalists were in the ascendancy, so they fled to go practice their religion here. They, their view is still that they, they, they, they're There are a desperate religious minority fighting oppression.

Meanwhile, they're also carrying out witch hunts, literal hunting for witches. There are something on the order of 350 people accused of witchcraft in the colonies, almost all, with a few exceptions, all in New England, right? And including people being executed for being witches. The only place you see witch trials in the UK in this time period is East Anglia, place these people come from, right?

So little side note, I'm sorry, I'm not giving you a very good answer, but anyway, there's no such thing as immigration from country A to country B. Social networks move. So the ideas of the village these people are from becomes the idea of the village they settle in. That becomes the idea of the inherited country,

of the next country. So all immigration is the movement of social networks and ideas move in social networks, right? Well, hundreds of years later, those ideas have continued through those same social networks, families, and so on. And so that puts America at odds with itself. You have four different ideas about the relationship between the citizen and the state, between the citizen and God, which is an historical question in most parts of Europe,

but it is very much a live question here because, again, we're founded by coercive religious utopians, right? So I, so I, that is, that is, so what is America today? Yes, there have been other waves of immigrants that have come and changed things, the German immigration, the Irish immigration, the, the Asian immigration, the immigration from Mexico and South America, all are important, right? But essentially, it's a compromise between these four different cultures, which is why to a people that continued to evolve, we seem strange because we are in a cultural sense. Obviously, our technology is cutting edge,

but in a cultural sense, we are your past. And that is incredibly interesting. And just the way you picked apart of it, picked that apart was beautiful. How does that impact America today and its politics? Why is Trump popular? For me, it's because, he's pushing back at what people perceive, and I perceive to be the excesses of hyper-liberal

progressivism? That's definitely a layer of it. That's what people say. But let's look at the cultures, right? So let's go back to those four cultures. People win the presidency by getting their own culture and one or two of the other subcultures to go along with them, right? And that's how Jimmy Carter got elected. It's on Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, so on, right? The Democrats have been very successful in the last 40 years when they'd have a southerner on the ticket or someone who seems congenial to southerners because that is a culture outside of their home base. That is the cavalier culture, right? I don't mean to be reductionist. Not everyone is, we're not all marionettes of our great grandparents, right? That's ridiculous. But it plays a role, right? It plays a role

in norms and moors and so on. So Trump wins because the people who have ideas, is about individual liberty is to be completely left alone and not helped what you could call the proto-libertarian impulse in American life. They are, they are, they are, they're, they're, COVID was a watershed moment for them. Suddenly, the government would invade your private life and tell you who you could socialize with, where you could go to work, when you could work, uh, all, how you could worship, um, what products you could buy. Remember that was governor of Michigan said you could go to use this lane in the hardware store, but you couldn't go to this shop out in this lane.

I mean, it's this aisle, right? So it's just crazy, right? From the perspective of the proto-libertarian strand, right? So Trump has that. Trump has the hierarchical idea of liberty strand as well, right? So even though he's criticized as a populist, he's a, Trump is a fully paid up member of the elite. I mean, he went to Warden, one of the most elite,

schools in this country. He comes from a rich family. He has been a celebrity for more than 40 years, right? He was important enough to be ridiculed by spy magazine in the 1980s as a short-fingered Bulgarian, right? It's impossible to imagine that kind of ridicule against the president today. He has become a bigger figure, but he has done it by a assembling these subcultures. Where Trump's support is the weakest is in the northeast, Massachusetts, New England area, California, which was settled predominantly by the people of the Northeast, and Oregon and Washington, which was settled predominantly by people from New England, right? So Portland, Washington is named after Portland, Maine, right?

And they actually had a coin flip, and they were deciding the name of that city because they we're going to call it New Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. So you can see that he gets three out of the four cultures. That's why a deep cultural level, that's why Trump is popular. Up here is issues, and issues are important, and economic issues especially important. But underneath that is, do you feel comfortable with him? And if you are in one of the subcultures

that feels comfortable with him, you are very very comfortable with him. He is familiar. He embodies what you see as your virtues and values. On the other hand, Kamala Harris is also somebody who embodies certain virtues and values of her subculture, but it's a subculture that couldn't win any allies, which is why she lost so badly. That and the idea of incompetence. Americans love victory, like the Romans did, and will not tolerate incompetence. If you're going to go do something big and you pull it off, everyone applauds. If you fail, they quietly walk away, right? There's second chances in life in America, in business, sometimes among celebrities, definitely among pastors. You can be caught in the biggest scandal and

have a big church five years later, right? But in political life, if you're going to involve the energies of our great economy and direct it in some direction and fail, that's just not tolerated, right? So that's another component to it. But the cultural fit is something that no one talks about that is extremely important. The world is changing fast, and it's not enough to just know what the news is.

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It's a major story when you think about how far governments might go with AI and surveillance. And on the other side, this story about how more than 60% of CEOs expect a recession in the next six months, currently has no coverage in right-leaning media at all. That's a pretty big blind spot when you're trying to understand where the economy might be headed. If you're someone who values nuance over noise, ground news is essential. It's no wonder they have over 10,000 five-star reviews. Right now, Trigonometry Viewers can subscribe and and get 40% of their vantage plan.

That's the same one I use. Click the link in the description and visit ground. news slash trigonometry. Start thinking for yourself and subscribe at ground. News slash trigonometry. And we're talking about culture, and I find J.D. Vance very interesting

in terms of culture because he hails from those Appalachian roots that you've mentioned, yet he's also different because he's a Catholic, commonly associated with the Italians, the Irish, and the Latin Americans. Yes, that's an important point. That would have been shocking a generation or so ago.

There were protests in 1960 when John F. Kennedy won the nomination among the Democrats. They thought that America wasn't ready for its first Catholic president. And this is a time period where even Protestants were reluctant to marry outside their denomination. I mean, a Methodist and Episcopalian marrying. Oh, my gosh, right?

But I think America has changed so fundamentally. And let me make this clear. When I'm talking about culture, I don't mean what people on the left mean, which is race. There's no racial component here, right? There is an important aspect

of American culture that comes from the African diaspora of enslaved people, right? Not saying that. But functionally, you have three African-American cultures. You have the African-American culture of the South,

which is, very much in line with this hierarchical idea of liberty. You have the African-American culture of the North and of the Midwest, which is a different kind. And then you have the third, which is recent immigration from West Africa. If you look among West Africans or people from the Caribbean, they voted much more for Trump than other Black Americans. So this is not a point about race. I'm actually being literal word of culture here, right? It's interesting that you say that because we experience the same thing in the UK. Those cultures who have come over, you know, West African, particularly Ghanaian, Nigerian, first-generation immigrants from the Caribbean, stonchly conservative and very, very traditional in their ways.

And then you look at black people who have been in the UK for three, four generations, far more likely to vote Labour as opposed to conservative. Yes. And more interestingly, on the very... jubilees of the crown, especially the queens, you will see many people from the Caribbean cheering her on when she was alive, I mean, right? And they almost didn't hold the jubilee in the 70s. They thought no one would turn. The great and the good thought that no one would turn up. And yet millions of working class people did, including people from the Caribbean and from West Africa. Yeah. I was curious the way you addressed Francis answered to your question when

you asked him why is Trump popular and he said the push back against hyper-liberalism. Because you actually seem to me, at least, said almost the same thing in a way, which is the Puritans are the one group that Trump didn't have and the one group that was starting to get on everybody's nerves, essentially, right? Like, for example, like the freedom-loving people. I mean, I instantly thought of Joe Rogan, for example, right? Somebody who I think it's fair to say really changed a lot of his perspectives because of COVID, because of the way, you know, tyrannical restrictions were. imposed, right? So I guess I'm curious about that, but also I think what I'm very interested in is, are these four utopias equally powerful and influential in American society? How would you rank them in terms of influence power? The balance of power among them shifts all the time, right? So, I mean, Charleston, South Carolina was one of the richest cities in the United States in the early 1700s.

You would not say that during most of the 20th century. The middle states were manufacturing powerhouses after World War II up until the early 70s. And interestingly, the people who settled that area tended to be Quakers and other people who were not part of the Church of England, but also not part of the Puritan wing, right? When those factories began to be closed, steel mills, especially in Pennsylvania in the 1970s, they accused environmentalists from Massachusetts. Why did they say from Massachusetts? Right?

It's an echo, it's a memory of a cultural divide that in 1970 was still enough to make a distinction. I mean, whenever, and I meet younger people who think that this is all structural racism, I ask them the Star Wars question, right? Did I try this with you guys last time? So here's the question. Do you ever see the first Star Wars movie

and New Hope when the original Star Wars movie? You've seen it, right? Yeah. Do you remember the scene with Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi and they walk into the bar with all the crazy aliens and the two robots are with them, R2C3PO?

Do you remember that? Yes, yeah. What does the barman say? Can't remember. I can't remember. He points like this, and he says, we don't serve their kind, right? Why does he say that?

Because he doesn't serve robots. He only serves living beings. Why do you think he says that? I imagine it's a cultural reference. It is. So in May 1977, 11 years after the Civil Rights Act, everyone in the theater knew that was a reference to bigoted Southerners,

who were segregating their bars and restaurants and not serving black people. And this was George Lucas's way of making this point. But I asked this question now, here in 2025, for a different reason, that cultural context of segregation is so far behind us, you didn't think about it as an explanation for why the barman says that.

And for people younger than ourselves, they're really puzzled. right other than the robot fall back they're trying to figure out what does this mean right so i think america has i mean do i think all racism is gone of course not there's a a terrible part in every human heart that dislikes those who are not like them right um but i think bigotry has dropped to its lowest ebb in america in our history right and the star wars question, I think, kind of gets at that, right? So coming back to the power ranking, so to speak, it shifts over time. How would you analyze the state of those four utopias today, as we said here?

I think Florida and Texas are attracting the most internal migrants, people moving from California, the Northeast and so on into those states is happening very rapidly, right? Other states with similar values like Wyoming, Utah are also growing, not quite as rapidly, Idaho. You know, there's a sign outside of Bozeman, Montana. There's so many people have moved in from Los Angeles that when you leave Bozeman and you're heading into the countryside, it says, welcome to Montana. So these cultural divides are still there. But the deep red states, especially those in the cavalier tradition, which, to be clear,

is a very mixed tradition. I'm not romanticizing it anyway, are now very attractive. So their power is surging. The power of the Puritan New England has faded considerably in the last 30 or 40 years. So, yes, all the elite universities or almost all the elite universities are located there. And they still have enormous cultural power. But I've seen even that cultural power has declined. I mean, the anti-Semitic riots at Columbia, the censorship at Harvard, these have hurt these institutions.

And yes, there are tech startups there, but not as many as in California or let alone Austin or now windward in the windward section of Miami. So the cultural power of that region has definitely declined in the last 30 or 40 years. And economics is a part of it, but culture is the rest of it, the idea that there used to be a desire throughout the country, our country, to emulate New England. That just isn't around it. And what about the other two, the other two cultures? So the middle states and then arcing into what we call the Rust Belt, the industrial era, formerly industrial era of Ohio. Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, around the Great Lakes. That was, that still determines close elections, of course.

That's where three of the, four of the swing states are. But those are turning more and more to the right. Ohio was a swing state until a few elections ago. Pennsylvania may be, it's on the bubble, it could go either way, but it may be heading red. Michigan, it's a jump ball, it's gone back in front. forth. But that region has now seemed to have hit the bottom and is climbing back up. There's more innovation there. They're losing fewer people. We look at cultural power just at who rents a U-Haul van to go somewhere else. That's a pretty good indication. But also how these regions are

portrayed in popular culture, right? There's not a constant cultural criticism of that region. 30 or 40 years ago, people looked at great admiration for, say, Pennsylvania and its industrial capacity and its ability to create middle class life. And there's a great longing there to return to those days. So when you say make America great again, in Pennsylvania, what that means is, wait a minute, we had it just a generation ago. Like, why can't we have it back? And the Appalachian? The Appalachian region, I mean, I would not say it's rising. I mean, it's leveled off.

So it feels like the battle is really between the cavaliers and the Puritans and the others are kind of the swing in the middle. Is that? For now, yes. At the moment. But, you know, a few decades from now, it might look very, very different, you know. And there's also a part of when we talk about Christianity, which is the side of Christianity, that J.D. Vance represents, which is this resurgence of Catholicism, which I find fascinating, because you don't really see it in Europe, but you come here and the Catholic Church has real power to it.

You see it increasingly in France, especially in rural France. But yeah, I take your point, France. But I think this is a COVID effect. I think COVID made a lot of people in their 20s, and one of the things about being in your 20s is you think you're going to live forever, right? All been there. And you suddenly realize like, oh, wait a minute. There's this mysterious pathogen that the media has been telling us could kill large numbers of us very suddenly, right? And you can go one of two ways when threatened with sudden random death, right?

You can say, I'm going to live for today and party like crazy, and people did that. But I think a lot of people started looking online for other alternatives ways of thinking about their life. So there was a big surge in people under 35 in getting interested in the traditional Latin Mass. There was a great interest in the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches here. The traditional Anglicans saw new converts who found them on the web. But the more liberal faiths didn't because what attracts people

a crisis is certain, clear answers. And so the more the religion imposed upon them, the more it was attractive, right? The same thing is true in Judaism, where orthodoxy is seeing young converts, but on the other end of the spectrum, the reform element, you know, there's a wonderful joke about this involving Donald Trump and what's the difference between a reform rabbi and Donald Trump?

Donald Trump has Jewish grandchildren. Right, and they're kind of fading way. So there's a great, and there's something, it's harder to make comparisons inside Islam, but you see a lot of very educated people in the Arab world attracted to the Salafi version of Sunni Islam. Again, a search for certainty. And one thing that we've both noticed since being here

is, and it's reminded to us, is how religious this country is. And not only how religious it is, but we're seeing a resurgence not only of Catholicism, but I think of Christianity across the U.S. as a whole. Yes. Why is that? Is that the COVID effect or is something else going on here? So a COVID is a catalyst, but there's other long-term trends here, right?

So one is, there is, and I assume this is true in Europe as well, incredible social loneliness. especially among young men, right, but also young women. The social isolation, right? The dictatorship of the small screen and has put women into competition with each other, make-believe versions like, oh, her life is perfect on Instagram, my life should be like that. And that creates a kind of nihilism.

And also, in addition to the loneliness, the alienation, there are a great number of people who grew up in single what you would call lone parent homes single mother's homes and they are trying to figure out how do I for the men how do I become a man right it doesn't just happen automatically you have to you have to try and fail at a number of things to find out who you are and what you're made of and there are no easy to turn to cultural touchstones for how you make that journey and become a man. So they're seeking very traditional answers largely because those are the only ones on offer, but also those messages work and have worked for decades, right? For younger women, I think it's much, much harder. There is no female Jordan Peterson, right? And maybe there can't be. But all of that has political and religious effects. So when you start attending a more traditional church or synagogue,

you get to join a social network that meets in person that makes demands on you that forces you to change in small and sometimes in big ways. But in exchange for that, you become part of a group larger than yourself. And it's not so lonely. and suddenly the things that you are suffering, you realize that other people are suffering similar things or the same thing. And there's a power in that.

So it's a... Francis, I think you put your finger on a profound social change. I think it's not just happening here. I think to a lesser extent it's happening in Europe and Australia, but it's definitely happening here in a big way. And that is also going to have effect society, both positive and in some instance negative. But it's also going to have an...

effect on your politics and not only your politics, because let's be fair, your politics affects our politics and it affects global politics. Yes, right. By your, you mean America's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, right? No, I mean, look, we're all billiard balls on the same table bouncing off against each other, right? So, you know, Vance might say what he wants about Europe, but does America want to be alone in the world as the only island left of this civilization, right? It is highly unusual in world history to have two enormous continental economic powerhouses inside the same civilization, right, in different geographies. It just hasn't happened before.

and if Europe were to fall and disappear, I think there would be, I don't think the average American is saying, you know, the heck with the Europeans. On the other hand, I mean, there is a feeling that NATO especially has been like the brother-in-law living on your couch that won't go get a job, right? Even though he's got a Ph.D., right? And so the Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced some serious thinking. But ultimately, the Europeans have to decide if they want their politics to be captured by some aging boomers and a large number of school teachers. I mean, I'm speaking mostly of Germany here, that they have run German politics since the 1980s, since Herman Cole's last days. And they are the force behind the Green Party and the social Democrats. And I think that society in Europe is starting to realize they're not making, they're

kind of toxic people and they're not making the best decisions for all of us. They're making the best decisions for themselves. And I think that's the problem that Democratic Party has in the United States. I think ordinary people could say, well, okay, we understand why you like censorship. It makes it easier for you. You think you're better than us, right? And what the censorship wing of the Democratic Party, and it's not all Democrats, I'm just the censorship wing in particular, is they haven't realized that the average person has realized that political correctness is really a form of class warfare. Yeah.

When you're correcting people's words and phrases, what you're really saying is, I went to university. I learned the magic words. You didn't. And I'm going to correct you, and I'm going to improve you, and I'm going to school. you and I'm going to scold you because I am better than you. It's class warfare. And it took a while for people to work that out. But I think on both sides of the Atlantic, they have. And they resent it. Right. The inability to recognize the humanity of people with different education levels and different income levels is profoundly destabilizing. And this is a problem caused by our elite. If you cannot see

people with fewer years of education and fewer dollars in their pocket as equal to you as someone you could potentially learn from. It's certainly that you could engage as an equal and have a back and forth. If you don't have that, you are on the road to anarchy or civil war. And neither one of those things is good. Back when we launched our first bit of trigonometry merch, we thought we could manage the shipping ourselves. Let's just say the local post office staff,

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home, Hawaii starts here. Coming back to the religion point, I think it's fascinating for us becoming aware, spending time here, how important religion is in American society, and how much, as you say, that fuels the political debates that you have. And one of the things that I think as an outsider is actually somewhat easier to do, maybe, is to be the translator a little bit between the two perspectives. I know for a fact that one of the things, that really drives the left in this country is the fear of the religious right. And I think for a lot of people with Trump, it was possible to pretend that the religious right isn't a big deal because he's, I mean, he's clearly not. I mean, I don't presume to say,

but he doesn't strike me as the most God-fearing Bible-bashing type of character. And many of the other people around him haven't been. But at the same time, as Francis mentioned, Dadey Vance and others. And frankly, you know, the religious right does exercise a lot of power. So what's the right way to think about all of these things from your perspective? How influential are these movements?

What do they want? And so on. So, I mean, I haven't heard anybody say the religious right in a very long time. Yeah. I hear young people saying, you know, that's why I bring it up. Young people are bringing it up now. Well, I think there is more of an attraction to it now. I mean, would the religious right be bigger if we didn't have co-ed dorms, right, on college campuses?

Because that forces a lot of people who come from religious homes to stop being religious, right? And so it was a big social fight in the 60s. And all of the things they said would come of it were just dismissed. But that absolutely had a political change. You mean when you get young men and young women together in the same space, things happen that end their religious? Yes, right? I mean. Very strong centrifugal forces begin to take effect.

Yeah, human nature takes its course, but then you, as someone from religious home, don't feel comfortable going to church because you were in the wrong, right? Right. And so if you, I was talking to this professor from Wheaton College, which is a Christian school some years ago, and he said, yes, and dorms have ended more Christian lives, and have taken more people out of the faith than anything else, right? And no, I do not think there's any political move to unscramble that omel. I don't think we'll have single-sex dorms in American campuses anytime soon. I'm not making a prediction.

I was making an observation with the past. But, and you've probably seen this meme, Jesus is still the most radical word, right? Christianity in America, as opposed to Christianity elsewhere, is more about pointing the finger at yourself, saying, all right, you need to fix certain things in your life. You're falling short of the glory of God. It's not, I'm so great, I go to church,

not in the more stricter conservative churches, it's about you're falling short, you need to improve. And so everyone who's active in those churches is on some kind of self-improvement journey. But the political issue for people on those spiritual journeys is they come to rely on themselves and they do not like dependence on the state or on the school to shape their souls. And that puts them at odds with the left, which has a very different program for shaping the views and the values of ordinary citizens.

and they think that the school should impart values and government programs should create economic handcuffs making sure that you stick to those values. So when they complain about the religious right, they're complaining about people seeking self-reliant lives, at least spiritually, if not economically. So you can make arguments on both sides here, but the fact is that this group,

which you're calling the British right, wants to break free and live according to the principles they found in the Bible. And, you know, to use the phrase from the prayer book, the clean, upright, and sober life, right? That's a threat because you're ignoring the materialism and the preference over the now, as opposed to later, right? that you're pushing a life of deferred gratification, not instant gratification. That's part of it. But the other part of it is the religious worldview, naturally, and some people would argue rightly, has a rigidity around certain things, around when life begins, let's say, around what marriage means, around other issues.

You know what I'm getting at, right? Of course, yeah. And I think the concern for a lot of people on the left is that rather than desiring to be left alone, some people on the religious right would like to use the power of the state to impose their vision of those issues, which comes from the Bible, on everybody else. Yes. So among the religious right, there is actually a debate on this. There are, it's not just a left-wing boogeyman. There are people in what you would call the religious right who absolutely do, and both, Catholic and Protestant who want to impose religious values, right? Just the fact that they think the world would be a better place if we shut down the strip clubs and only fans didn't involve, you know, teenage impressionable girls being trafficked or exploited or whatever, you know, maybe marijuana is not such a great idea.

All these bundle of things. But there is another group that I think is more numerous on the British right that says, wait a minute, if we politicize this. religious message we destroy it because the appeal of Christianity is that it it doesn't make education income racial cultural distinctions and everyone has to in the traditional Christian babe has to go on their own journey to find you know to be to to manifest Christ in their life, to discipline themselves, to be fine, right? And if you get into politics and you're imposing your will on others, how do you know?

I mean, this is a serious question that I've heard people among the real just right, ask themselves, how do you know that you're actually imposing God's will and not the devils or your own, which is functionally the same, right, in their eschatology? So we do know that if you stick to non-coercion, non-violence, the path is open for conversion if people choose to convert, and you are free to pursue your spiritual journey. And so these people caution those who want to impose a theocracy. Theocratic people, I think, are a very small minority, and I cannot imagine them winning any election in even the reddest of red state. I do not think they are important political force. And I can't, and I've been wrong before,

but I can't imagine that they are the future of the Republican Party. I don't think so. But isn't J.D. Vance, the future of the Republican Party? He seems to be, his vice president of the United States. Absolutely. I think 2028 is probably a fight between DeSantis and Vance. And that is a, to go back to. our four cultures, that is the Scottish borderlands transported Appalachia culture, which is

J.D. Vance to a T. And DeSantis, which is a mixture of the cavalier and the immigrant, Italian and Hispanic cultures, that is modern-day Florida. And that's a vision of, two different visions of where the Republican Party could go. Because we're looking at Project 2025, and I know Trump distanced himself and disavowed it, but he appointed many. people into his government who have worked on it, who have worked on Project 25 or with them. And we interviewed one of the main people behind it. And he was saying to us that their ambition and one of their goals is to take abortion to a three-month term and then eventually a six-week term. So whilst I do accept your point that this is maybe not a majority of Christians,

It nevertheless represents a sizable minority, many of whom are actually very powerful politically. They're powerful politically because they win elections. And if you look at what has happened in every election since the Roe v. Wade case was overturned at the Supreme Court, those who wanted to restrict abortion lost those elections, lost those referenda, and those who wanted a wider aperture generally won. Okay. So politicians follow where they think the votes are going, right? So you can have a handful of influential people,

but they are surfing a wave of public opinion. And there is not a great public desire to ban abortion. That's why Trump felt completely safe, saying he wants to do nothing on abortion. and he did not take any criticism from the right for that. And as a practical matter with the abortion pill delivered through the internet now, you could shut down some abortion clinics, but you can't stop the abortion pill. So I think, look, this is an incredibly fraught and complex issue.

I don't think the answer is a single national abortion. policy imposed from Washington. And I think that is one thing that across the Republican Party spectrum that they all agree. They think it ought to be done at the state and local level. And as a practical matter, I would not expect to see abortion ban in a single state. And my evidence for that is, you know, the Roe v. Wade's been overturned for more than three years, four years. And no state, no county, no city, no village as far somewhere, has banned abortion. What's interesting to me as well, moving forward, is there is a very significant now and very powerful non-religious, right, the tech pros, who are very powerful in the current administration.

How do you see those differences in distinctions playing themselves out? Okay, so the tech pros, which were, I hate the term, but we'll call Silicon Valley, those people were largely in favor of the Democrats in 2016 and even in 2020. But I think what they've realized is that starting at the New Deal in the 1930s, we had a managerial revolution in the entire industrial world. This accelerated after World War II. By that, I mean that people who are not owners, people who are not accountable, ran things. They ran culture. They ran business. They ran labor unions. And they ran governments. and gradually in the 70s, 80s, 90s, early 2000s, a lot of institutions return to health

by becoming a lot more accountable, right? Let me expand on that a little bit. So there's an accountable and an unaccountable world and they're at war with each other, right? When I say accountable, I'm not talking about an income level. I mean, is your pay tied to some specific result? Are you getting a commission as a shoe salesman for selling shoes, are you know, are you being paid by the number of people who can actually

pass a reading test after you've taught them to read, right? So is there a real world result that you are paid on the basis of? Or are you paid simply for showing up, right? And so in the accountable world, these are the people who are doing most of the working and paying most of the taxes. In the unaccountable world, you have the unemployed, you have retirees and pensioners, you have people on various social support programs, students, graduate students, right? And the unaccountable world largely votes left. And the left-wing managerial revolution has been to insert layers to insulate people from accountability. And that has been, that has worked for them. That's how they've built their institutions. And now the accountable class,

the people who live by results have been just be deviled by regulations and taxes and cultural hatred and so on and they're sick of it, right? Add to that, Silicon Valley says, well, hang on, why is the federal government the largest purchaser of fax machines on planet Earth? They're still sending documents by fax machine and by mail, by post, right? And then they have handwritten forms for things. Like these things 20, 30 years ago in the private sector moved to online forms, right? And back in computers talking to each other. I had dinner a few months ago with the former Secretary of Labor who said he fought a four-year battle in the first Trump administration to just move these forms to an online form. And I said, well, how were you doing it before?

He goes, well, fax machines, but also when we had to send documents to the State Department, they would only accept it by mail. So they're printing these things out, putting a physical stamp on it, having a postal carrier show up, carry it, you know, a few blocks across town. The State Department would solve,

and this is why, like, work permits and immigration application takes so long. The departments are literally mailing it back. And by the way, the same document, I moved back and forth three or four times, right? So Silicon Valley looks at all this, and they say, okay, first of all, we have to expand

the accountability class and shrink the unaccountable class. Second of all, there's tremendous opportunity to digitize government. So when the truest thing that Mosque said that no one seems to understand is he says, we're just tech support. Yes, if you look at the problem

of administering the federal government, you say, well, how would we drag that? Forget about it into 2025. How would we drag it to 2005? Right? How would we digitize government, right? So for Silicon Valley, obviously that proves it's an enormous financial opportunity for, not for Musk himself, but for others in that world. But Musk himself is frustrated. He has to get FAA permission, which is an agency meant to regulate airports and airlines for rocket launches.

And he has to fax the form. Right. And it takes days or weeks for them to respond. He's like, why is that? That's crazy. right and they ask us for data like we could we could just simply give them a data room and they could have online real-time digital access to the very data they care about rather than sending us another letter so there's two things going on at once but the the revolt of the accountable class so last 30 years or so we've made companies a lot more accountable right not as accountable as burney sanders would like perhaps but I think customer service is far better in America than it is other parts of the industrial world. Yep. Can confirm. Yeah.

You know, I mean, at least the person who calls is going to pretend to care that you had a bad time, right? It's mostly a digital experience, and it's a customizable digital experience. You know, so you can tell them, you know, the chatbot, I want to be called Susie. They'll call you Susie, right? It's, right? And there's just a frustration with the rigidity of government. And then I think the aha moment, and Mark Andreessen has said this, the aha moment was, wait a minute,

in order to maintain your insulated, unaccountable class, you want to create cartels, and you want to create cartels in tech, pick winners and losers. And that would be bad for the industry, but bad for the country. And, you know, the old joker, we left the keys in the Moon rover, you know, the car they drove around the astronauts,

because we're going back, why haven't we been back, right? There's a great longing for technological progress and growth and things that make people feel proud to be Americans. And when I was living in Europe and people would criticize me for not liking the metric system, They would say, it's not very scientific. And I would just say, when you metric people land on the moon, let me know. Right?

So it's this, it's a confluence of factors. The idea that Musk is doing it to put money in his own pocket or that he has nothing better, it's just ridiculous. But the very fear of the unaccountable class is accountability. Right. Tell me five things you did last week. why is that terrifying? Because if you lived an unaccountable one,

to us it's ordinary, right? We would ask that question of ourselves, right? I'm sure each of us has had a time at the end of a day, like, did I get enough done today? But if you've lived this unaccountable existence where it doesn't matter whether you come into the office, no one counts how many forms you are, you know, how many stamps you approve or disapprove of things,

you're just in this government office, if you come in at all, then suddenly you're going to have to live an accountable life. That's terrifying. So the anger you see, and yes, I understand it's sponsored, paid for by various left-wing billionaires and trade unions and so on, the attacks on Tesla. But if it weren't organized by those groups,

it might happen spontaneously because unaccountable live in fear of accountability, and it's terrifying. No, it's never as bad as they imagine. But that's what keeps them in place and to be knocked out of place is terrified. You know what it's like this time of year. One minute you're sweating through your shirt, the next you're regretting not bringing a jacket, especially when you're out and about running errands for chasing after the kids.

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understated, timeless and comfortable in a way that actually makes a difference, whether I'm writing at a meeting or just grabbing a coffee. I feel like I've made a good choice without overthinking it. Give your closet a breath of fresh air. Go to mac weldon.com and get 25% off your first order of 125 bucks or more with promo code trigger. That's M-A-C-W-E-L-D-O-N.com. promo code trigger. It's actually a very profound distinction you've made. I'm glad you bring this up because to let people know a little bit of how the sausages made, we met you the other day and weren't able to record this interview. But we had to move things around.

And as a result, we ended up with a day extra in D.C. And we had a choice of sitting around doing nothing, you know, going for a walk, having a beer, whatever. But because this is our business and because we have to like make things work, we kicked everybody's asses, kicked our own asses, got stuff done. Right. Right, France has got ill, as you can see, from all the effort. But like, we scrambled around, we got you, we got the equipment. And that's how the real world works.

If we were working in an office, there is no chance of any of that happening. Because it's, why would you make that extra? Big companies can be just as unaccountable. Absolutely. There are plenty of jobs. And I don't just mean HR, there are plenty of jobs inside big companies were. if you have no, you're not moving the needle at all, no one might notice for years.

But that instinct exists within every human being. I feel it within myself too. It's like I could chill out here or I could actually get something valuable done. And it's the incentive structure that makes you do the things that you need to do to succeed. The growth of innovation in America has been this accountability. Sure. Right. And the slow death of Europe has been that the unaccountable class has become dominant.

100%. So it's really not about, you know, Brexit or the EU skepticism. It's really about how much of your life do you want dictated by a class of people who are not accountable to you or even to themselves. And how much money do you want to give them to? What I was asking, though, is that's fascinating. And I love that you broke that down. It's really interesting is how the differences between these two groups within the right. are going to play out over time because right now

there's a new presidency, new administration, everyone's excited, they're moving at a fast pace, things are getting done, you know, dosges cutting things, left, right and center.

But we all know that over time, tensions that are inherent in a group tend to manifest themselves more as setbacks occur, as time goes by, as there are power struggles, as all sorts of things. And so there is a very big,

philosophical chasm, I would put it to you, between those two parts, the tech right and a more religiously minded right. How do you think that is going to play out? I don't think that matters. Really? Because the structure of the parties is fundamentally different. Okay. So the left is a coalition party in all countries where there's a left, right? And so that's why they talk about intersectionality, right? So, but in reality, what does the steel worker who's a proud member of his union have in common with the vegan woman studies professor and the fitness nut who you know has living off the grid somewhere and and and right you you end up with this enormous coalition and so you need a leaders of that kind of a party need a skill like

that bill Clinton had in abundance right which is the ability to synthesize to make compromises, to hold the different parts that don't naturally cohere together. Nancy Pelosi was absolutely brilliant at this. Probably one of the great politicians of the last 80, 90 years in the United States. I'm not a fan of her policies, but just her sheer skill in holding together that's coalition. Republican Party, and the media always reports fights within the Republican Party as, oh my gosh, the whole thing is going to fall apart. assume it's a coalition party it is not it is a consensus party and in a consensus party people fight

until about 80% of them share of you and then the other 20% either go along or change their minds right so the consensus there so this fights among factions is actually very healthy because that's what moves the consensus around right inside the party but the It is, and we know that this consensus model is working for the Republicans because they're drawing in new people, right? So the African-American vote went up for Trump, but not by a lot, but it went up statistically, importantly. The Asian vote was about flatter, went up slightly for Trump, but in key blue areas like San Francisco, the Asian vote actually went up. But the Hispanic vote changed dramatically. Part of it is that a lot of Hispanic men and women, both, are in the accountable class.

If you do not turn up for work and if your work is not seen as valuable, the kinds of jobs that many of them have, you don't give it. So they resent the crime and the taxes and small business regulation because many of them are small business owners as well. and immigrants lower their wages. They just increased competition for them. So they shifted for Trump. But the fact that this consensus party with its movements, constant movements, is drawing people in.

It's not a rigid consensus where people are flooding out. That could happen, but it doesn't seem to be happening. Among the left, there are incredible splinters. It's hard to believe that America, this oldest political party, the Democratic Party, is actually thinking about replacing Chuck Schumer, a man of considerable fundraising skill and legislative skill, with AOC.

Like, a serious political party doesn't do this, right? And she has never won a high turnout election in her own congressional district. Right? In her district, more people vote in the Democratic primary, generally speaking, general election. So she's not drawing in new people. And that is a suicidal move. I mean, forget about the issues. Yes, they've chosen badly on a lot of issues. They've ticked a lot of issues

in which maybe 10% of the people agree with them and 90% of them do not, right? Forget about the poor issue choice. When you start taking out leaders and having purity tests and so on, that's death to a coalition party. And how do they, how does the left recover here? I don't know, right? I mean, I was asked by a serious Democratic donor that question a few months ago. And my flip answer is, look, you have all these big cities. Make them better than Dubai, right? Make them cleaner, safer, more modern.

Make them attractive, right? People will choose West Berlin over East Berlin, make them gleaming, right? where they're producing jobs or attracting entrepreneurs and innovation, right, and show that blue governance is a wonderful thing. And it, you know, people are, would be attracted. People are, Americans are attracted to success, right? And, and that just got dismissed out of hand by the donor because he said, well, yeah, I understand what you're saying, Rich, but, you know, how do we get the unions to go along, right? How do we get this question? group to go, it's always the problems of coalition. So they have to transform themselves

into a party that cares more about its voters and their lives and their outcomes, right? And they used to do this supremely well. They did this from, let's say, 1932 to 1966, just to pick two more or less random years, right? You have to care more about the people who you want, to support you than about the different coalitions fighting for power, right? Trump would absolutely cancel a defense contract with Boeing or McDonald-Douglas or whatever, a big Raytheon, a big donor. That would happen. And in fact, that decision might be taken several layers down.

That's not good for the country. He would absolutely do it, right? He's not captive, and certainly because he can't run again. The next Republican might find it harder. But the dynamics inside the Republican Party mean that these fights are just fights for readjusting, not fights for dissolution. One of the challenges the left faces is that the Republican Party have captured that old-schooled left-wing economic policy of protecting workers' rights and tariffs. And that, I always thought, was the main weapon the left have. once it gets over its identity, politics, madness.

But the fact that the Republican Party have taken that away from them, and I'm looking at the left and I'm going, what else have you got? Right. And also, immigration control was a lift-wing issue for decades. That it would destroy the lives of working people. Not that there was a hatred of foreigner,

it's just that when you make people compete for entry jobs and trade jobs, you're making their lives harder or not better. right? You know, I don't understand how they would throw away a winning hand on these issues, except that they're incredibly dominated by the thoughts of the campus. Yes. And the campus is a Disneyland of intellectuals, right? It's unrealistic. It's run by the faculty have enormous power over the administration of this campus life and over the, under the students. And there's no accountability for whether their ideas work or not or very little accountability.

And that is where the, that drives the intellectual life for the Democratic Party. But there aren't enough of them, right? Even if every person who went to college voted for the Democrats, three-quarters of America doesn't have a four-year college degree. Two-thirds of America doesn't have a college degree of any kind or, you know, so, you There's no majority there, right? You have to look at the views and values of the big parts of the country, right, of the big parts of the population. And another thing that's missing, and the Democrats need to bring this back, this was a big word in the civil rights era, dignity.

You have to be a party, and this applies to both parties, but especially them right now, the dignity and worth of each individual. You have to not dismiss people as deplorables or, you know, anything like that. You have to start to have chew sympathy for the people that you're trying to attract. When you say all men are trash, you're inviting men not to vote for you. That's a large proportion of the electorate, right? Right. And then you keep cutting more and more pieces out. you're not left with an electoral majority

except maybe in campus towns. I always find it really interesting the Democrat attitude to black voters in particular because I wouldn't use a verb racist but it's certainly paternalistic, isn't it? It is. It's an idea that black people cannot survive without them. But their view of black people is

I'm talking about particular Democratic politicians with whom I've had longer conversations. It's really trapped in the past, right? There is a great deal of interracial marriage in the United States, more than ever before, right? Not just black-white, but Asian black, Hispanic black. I mean, a lot of race is, I mean, the marriage market is wide open probably for the first time in our history.

And it's unthinkable that it would ever go back. So when you're talking to what you think is a black audience, some of those children will have mothers or fathers who are not black. So the racial solidarity argument is a lot more complicated. And there are many, I mean, one of the businesses that I own supplied news to African-American newspapers across the United States. And we pointedly did stories of entrepreneurial success, of which there are many, many examples.

Somebody born to a middle-class family or born of the projects makes it, and just fantastic stories. And we got letters from the publishers of those black papers thanking us. And this one woman writes to me, I think she owned the Philadelphia Tribune, which is a black newspaper. It's just thank you for covering the 99% instead of the 1%.

In other words, most of us are not living in projects. Most of us are not criminals, right? So the reality of black American life, it's not in 1965 anymore. It's just not. And if a Democratic Party insists on seeing them that way, they will suddenly realize that, oh, you're talking to my grandfather, not me. Richard, I feel like we've just tapped a tiny, tiny percentage of your wisdom and knowledge.

So I'm sure if you're willing, we'll be delighted to have you back many times to talk about all sorts of different things. It's been great to have you on. Before we go to Substack, where we ask you questions from our supporters, what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be?

I think I should mention David Hackett Fisher's book, Albion's Seed, which is where a lot of this research, and he publishes his book in 1989, it's where a lot of this thinking about the different regions what he calls the folkways of America come from. He's a very careful scholar. He won the Pulitzer Prize for a different book.

And he is, I assume, having read his work, center left, but is very insightful. So if any of your viewers want to go deeper, I would recommend David Hackett Fisher's book, Albion's Seed, or frankly anything by that author. Or another book by a Yale scholar called Seeing Like a State, which is a whole other conversation. Well, we'll have that come.

hopefully at some point. Head on over to Substack. We'll see you there with your questions. How will traditional newspapers survive with such big payrolls and seemingly not enough to offer above the new media to keep advertisers paying? Will they all end up with rich benefactors effectively bankroll in them for fun or propaganda?