Unclear and Present Danger - The Saint

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

In The Saint, Kilmer plays Simon Templar, a professional thief known as “The Saint” for using Catholic saints as aliases. He steals a microchip from a Russian oil company but is caught by the owner’s son. He is then hired by the owner, a billionaire oligarch named Tretiak, to steal a cold fusion formula discovered by Emma Russell, an American chemist. Tretiak plans to use the formula to monopolize the Russian energy market. Once he obtains the formula, he also plans to kill Simon.Simon seduces Emma but falls for her. He abandons his plan to steal from her until Tretiak threatens to kidnap her. At this point the plot becomes a little convoluted to me but here’s what I think happens.Simon does end up stealing the formula but when analyzed, Tretiak finds that it is useless to him. His plan now is to sell the incomplete formula to the Russian president and then attack him for spending billions on worthless technology, using the resulting chaos to make himself president. Emma finishes the formula, Simon delivers it to a scientist who hopes to use it for good, and in a confrontation in Red Square, Tretiak is exposed as a fraud when it becomes clear that the formula works. Emma and Simon reunite, they start a relationship and it is revealed that Simon has donated billions to charity using money from Tretiak’s accounts. All ends well!The taglines for The Saint were “A man without a name, can never be identified. A man who doesn't exist, can never be caught. A man who doesn't love, can never truly be alive.” And “Never reveal your name. Never turn your back. Never surrender your heart.”You can find The Saint to stream on demand on Amazon Prime or for rent or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV.The Saint was released on April 4, 1997, so let’s check out the New York Times for that day.Don’t forget our Patreon, where we watch the films of the Cold War and try to unpack them as political and historical documents! For $5 a month, you get two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the entire back catalog — we’re almost two years deep at this point. Sign up at patreon.com/unclearpod. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on the 1979 thriller Hardcore.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.

A man without a name can never be identified. We've put a handful of false identities used on visas, passports. My name is Bruno Halton Faust. I am... You're on the knowledge. I'm Tony. Tony Stubbins. A man who doesn't exist can never be caught.

I've been chasing him for nearly two years. He eluded a hit squad this morning in Holland Park. in Holland Power. A man who doesn't love can never truly be alive. This woman has discovered something that will revolutionize the world. It's a formula for creating energy. You will steal it for me. How did you do that?

Magic. When we master this technology, then we dictate terms to the West. Give it up! You got no place to go! I escaped, I always escaped. Paramount Pictures presents... Nicholas Owen, Louis Guinella, Peter Damien All the names of Catholic saints.

From the director of clear and present danger and Patriot Games. The army must be mobilized. The balance of power is about to shift. Val Kilmer. Tell me about me. Elizabeth Shoe. Who are you?

The saint. Welcome to Unclear and present danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on Popular Front. And I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Conmen, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked

Up in the Early 1990s. Which you can find everywhere books are sold. I believe your book was on Best of the Year list for the New York Times and publishers weekly. So congratulations, John. Thank you so much. And everyone should check out the book. as I say every episode. It's a great book, a very useful book, given recent political circumstances.

Yeah, unfortunately relevant. We might talk about that later. For now, on this week's episode of the show, we watched The Saint, a 1997 action thriller directed by Philip Nois, and loosely based on the character of Simon Templar, created by Leslie Charteris in 1928, for a series of books. I didn't know anything about the background of this character, but there was, essentially, there is a ton of stuff about the saint. The saint is like a long-running character. There are the original books by Charteris, who was an Englishman of mixed English and Chinese descent from Singapore. Oh, yeah. That makes sense that the movie kind of begins in a British colony. it seems abroad.

Right. Yes. So those books were adapted into a film series made by RKO pictures between 30 and 41. And there's like, there's like eight of them,

the saint in New York, the saint strikes back. With the George Sanders playing the saint in most of these films, the saint in London, the saints double trouble, lots of stuff. The saint in this iteration

is just like a suave thief, kind of like James, James Bond cross. with Lupin the third, or Lupin, the French character. I'm thinking of the anime based on the character, but Lupin is the character. There's in a radio program starring Vincent Price that runs from 44 to 51.

There's a comic strip that runs from 48 to 61. There's a British television show starring Roger Moore, running from 62 to 69. There's another British television show that ran in 78 and 79. there was a 1987 pilot called the Saint in Manhattan, kind of an American, you know, iteration. There was a whole other TV series in the late 80s, early 90s,

that ran essentially six made for syndication TV movies starring Simon Dutton. And then we have our 1987 film starring Volcomer. And then there's more sense. saint there's more saint you know stuff there was a movie released in 2017 wow uh yeah this is like a thing um in a way that i didn't quite realize but in any case this movie again from 97 stars kilmer elizabeth's shoe and uh rage serbaja uh with cinematography from phil at mohoo uh who also i'll say shot 1980s a long good friday a great movie 197's the fourth Protocol, a former unclear and present danger film you can find in our archive.

1991's Highlander 2 The Quickening, a bad movie that I nonetheless quite like. I was about to say that sounds like something you would be really into. Golden Eye, and then he went on to shoot The Mask of Zorro, a great movie, and Casino Real. Pretty good movie. So, real talent behind this film, not a good movie, but real talent behind it goes to show that talent does not necessarily make a good film. In the saint, Kilmer plays Simon Templar, a professional thief known as the saint for using Catholic saints as aliases.

He steals a microchip from a Russian oil company but is caught by the owner's son. He isn't hired by the owner, a billionaire oligarch named Tretiak, to steal a cold fusion formula discovered by Emma Russell and American chemist. Trettiak plans to use the formula to monopolize the Russian energy market. And then once he obtains a formula, he also plans. plans to kill Simon. Simon seduces Emma, but he ends up falling for her. He advances his plan to steal the formula from her until Trediak threatened to kidnap her. I have to admit at this point, the plot became kind of convoluted to me. I don't know what's happening here, but as far as

I can piece it together, Simon does eventually steal the formula trying to protect Emma. Trediac finds, however, it's useless to him because it's not yet completed. His plan now, now is to sell the incomplete formula to the Russian president, who is under kind of political seeds because there's an energy crisis in the country, and then he will attack the president for spending billions and worthless technology, using the chaos to make himself president. Emma finishes a formula, Simon delivers it to a kind of friendly scientist who hopes to use it for good, and in a confrontation in red square, a Trediac is exposed as a fraud when it becomes clear that the formula works.

Emma and Simon reunite. They start a relationship, and it's revealed that Simon is donated billions to charity using money from Trediac's accounts. And that's the film. The taglines for the saint were, a man without a name can never be identified. A man who doesn't exist can never be caught. A man who doesn't love can never truly be alive. And never reveal your name, never turn your back, never surrender your heart. you can find the saint to stream on demand on Amazon Prime

or for rent or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV and the saint was released on April 4th of 1997 so let's check out the New York Times for that day Okie dokey Well here we go Israel withdraws bid to extradited chief of Hamas jailed in U.S. 21 months Nittanyahu government field

feared reprisals by terrorists Suspect may go free citing fears of terrorist reprisals. Israel today withdrew its request for the extradition of a leader of a Palestinian militant organization who has been jailed in New York for the last 21 months. In its 900-page extradition request, Israel has said it wanted to try the militant Musa Muhammad Abu Marzuk, who is said to be the political leader of Hamas on charges of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, harm with aggravating intent, and harm and wounding under aggravating.

circumstances and a conspiracy to commit felony. But the prospect of Mr. Aber Mouser's extradition confronted the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ninhayahu, with the highly publicized trial that would pose constant threat from retaliatory attacks from Hamas. It would also come at a delicate time for the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort, which, as we all know, does not exist anymore. The decision not to bring Abba Mazzik was a relief and something of an embarrassment to Israelis. while Mr. Netanyahu hoped this action would be perceived by the Palestinians as a conciliatory gesture, they were also certain to note that Mr. Dynanah was effectively releasing a Hamas leader on the basis of political situations, even while sharply criticizing Yasser Arafat for releasing Palestinians charged in terrorist activities.

Mr. Netanyahu has demanded that Mr. Arfot put the militants back in jail. Now, what's interesting to me about this is the position, of the right and Israel, and particularly Nintyahu, and their political maneuvering with regards to Palestinian opposition, has always been that Hamas is a preferred partner in a certain way because they feared, essentially, they wanted to divide the Palestinian opposition for one thing. They also felt like Hamas was less likely to get a sympathetic ear in the West, that the secular, socialist, social democratic, fata, was something that, you know, Westerners could understand and sympathize with, and the Islamist Hamas would frighten them. And for all of these

reasons, oh, Abu Marzok is still alive, by the way. He was not assassinated by Israel, unlike many other members of Hamas' leadership. Nitya's governments and the right, and Israel in general has sort of promoted Hamas, and they've become perverse partners with them and the kind of destruction of peace in the Middle East. So, you know, that's kind of a secret context to this, maybe being a little bit more likely to go easy on members of Hamas, at least back then.

There's a photo of Bill Clinton looking very sad, tears for a friend on the first anniversary, of the death of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown in a plane crash, administration officials joined the Brown families and other victims at a memorial service. Do you remember this plane crash? I don't remember, but I read about it recently in the Lichtenberg book on the Clinton administration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know very much about Brown.

I did not finish that book, but I was enjoying it before I put it down again. A felon's donation to Democrats was sought in Cuba, inquiry says. Jorge Cabrera, a drug smuggler who has emerged as one of the notorious supports of President Clinton's re-election campaign, was asked for a campaign contribution in a unlikely locale of a hotel in Havana by a prominent Democratic fundraiser. Congressional investigators have learned the investigator said the fundraiser, whom they identified as, Vivian Manorood, a Cuban-American businesswoman for Miami, told Mr. Carbera at a meeting at the Copacabana Hotel in Havana, that in exchange her contribution, he'd be invited to a fundraising dinner and honor of Vice President Al-Gar in an exclusive neighborhood near Miami. Mr. Manorud owns the airline broker's company, an airline charter company that operates among Havana, Bahamas, and the Mexico.

Now, this story obviously is not something that's widely remembered, but I will say, in light of recent elections in 2016 especially, Republicans made a very big deal about this kind of stuff. I mean, you know, as, as, you know, you would imagine the political opponents would of the, of the, of the president. But this kind of dirtied up the Clinton name and made them seem, um, uh, made them seem corrupt.

And in certain ways, you know, you have to say that they might be. I would say it's fair to describe the Clintons as being a little corrupt. I think it's a totally legitimate thing to say. I mean, what's, of course, interesting is how no one cares about corruption anymore. Or at least no one cares about corruption from people who openly parade that they're corrupt. Yeah. Well, the problem is the hypocrisy, right? Right.

The problem is the hypocrisy. So if Bill Clinton had just been like, yeah, I'm a corrupt adulterer, maybe no one would have cared, especially if, like, Democrats kind of went all to the wall defending him for it. Yeah. Only Republicans can get away with that kind of shit. Right, right. And I think only, only one specific Republican. I'm not sure that, like, Ted Cruz could get away from it, right? Like, I think it's precisely because one specific.

Republican is unexpected to be any kind of paragon of virtue that no one really cares. No one sees it as particularly important and they also see him as sort of like this this figure who can produce prosperity for them and so in the face of that what does it matter? Yep for sure. Anything else?

Nah. No, yep. there's another thing about helping out a Clinton helping out a buddy so that just goes moreover what we were saying but all right so the saint uh John have you seen this film before not only have I seen this movie I may have seen this more than once I know I saw I definitely seen it more than once because I saw it in theaters as a kid I was like 12 and I saw it in or I was 11 um I saw it in uh theaters I think probably with my dad. And I like the movie a lot. It's sort of like kind of cashing in on similar things that were going on in Golden Eye and Mission Impossible, right? So it's not maybe as good a movie

as those movies, but it's got enjoyable parts of it. It's definitely one of the classics of the Nokia Wave canon, like this kind of like shitty mid-90s tech thriller where they have like he's I love his like old macbook that he has in this movie and they're like bad Nokia cell phones I have a lot of fondness for this aesthetic in films so I really did enjoy it the movie's fun it's there's very silly parts of it but it doesn't take itself too seriously although the world that it describes and the atmosphere at conjures is not so silly as to make it like completely you know a mindless Hollywood thriller that you just are like this is too dumb it has some kind of interesting political background like he's facing off against an evil

billionaire oligarch and who's trying to take over Russia and and it has an interesting background of like Russian nationalism research in Russian nationalism um attacking a kind of reformist president and he i think he shows yeah um i like valcomer a lot so i like watching him um it's got some all the kinds of silly things you expect from movies of this era it has we've seen and there are many tropes that we've seen in other films like cold fusion being like this panacea to solve the world's energy problems it's got like this kind of post-historical, oh, science, just science itself will fix the world. Like, we're about, we're about to turn the corner and it's just a few brilliant people, you know, who will, who will fix

everything, a few romantics who will fix everything against, you know, these cynical and evil gangsters and oligarchs and so on and so forth. So, yeah, the movie's really appealing to me. I also, like, The soundtrack rocks, like, it's got this, like, what we used to call back then electronica. So it's like, you know, electronic music, I think, and it's got some, like, trip hop on it. I, which I loved. I owned the soundtrack to this movie. I was not, this is like, this was around the time of my life when I was, like, starting to get into popular culture as a child. So, like, the soundtrack to this, to hackers, and I was, like, really thought this kind of music was really cool.

And now I go back to it. I'm like, yeah, I still enjoy it. I'm not embarrassed to say that I do. I listen to the saint soundtrack sometimes. Sometimes when I'm writing. So, yeah, I like it. I don't think it's the greatest example of the genre, but I think it's pretty fun movie and has some very cool action sequences, a cool atmosphere. And it's just a lot of fun.

What do you think? I do not like this movie. Oh, really? You're, wow. I like a bad movie. And Trevelle thinks it sucks. Okay, go for it. I just, I mostly just find it kind of incomprehensible.

It's nostalgia for me. I like the incomprehensible. Go ahead. Yeah, no, it's mainly that. It's just I can't really, like, I've seen this before. And the first time I saw it, I was thinking it's like right on my alley. And then I watched it. I was like, this is just kind of gobbledygook to me.

The plot becomes so kind of convoluted by midpoint that I just sort of lose interest in it. And I'm just like not into Val Kilmer's like let me put on disguises and use funny voices. It's silly. It's silly. Yeah. It doesn't really appeal to me. I totally get.

I very much get the appeal of the movie because you're right. It sort of is like a classic like Nokia wave film. Yeah. It has it totally has that aesthetic. It's like it's like cold, cold Russia, Eastern Europe. Yeah. You know, you know, old computers, old cell phones, old technology. It very much, I get hits that sweet spot, but I just do not enjoy watching this movie.

I will say that it is, I mean, it does try a little bit to speak to the politics of the moment. As you pointed out with the kind of central villain, not just being a Russian billionaire oligarch, but kind of coded in a populist way. Yeah. When first sort of see him, he's at like a rally for himself, but his face on a big poster behind the podium and a big audience chanting as name. He's very much coded as like a populist billionaire oligarch. The poster behind him says in Russian democratic reforms now. Yeah, yeah. But of course he doesn't really seem to believe that he's trying to like get his own power. The observation about that all we need to get a good ending is the power of science and technology being set free. It feels very 1990s, a very

very sort of like, you know, we can now say naive faith in just like the spread of information and the spread of science to improve things. No politics involved. And in fact, it's sort of like the plot here. Not the plot doesn't imply of the story, but the plot of the villain to leverage the technology to coerce the government into doing what he wants. Feels actually a little more realistic um than most plots for these sorts of movies tend to be um and uh i found that i found that interesting not that this is like very realistic but just sort of like the notion of technology being first and foremost like something that has to be engaged with through politics um and its use and its power comes out through politics feels like very true to me uh um but yeah as a film

not the biggest fan i do think it looks good i mean again, I think it's a competent, it's like competently made on a technical level. I just think that like on the level of like script, it's just sort of, it kind of falls apart. But that's, that's my own kind of like assessment. But I posted about watching this on a social network and people go, love that movie. It's like one of my favorite. So I think I might just be like in the minority here. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I find it to be fun and nostalgic.

Yeah, no, I know what you mean. I think like this funny thing like he's trying here's the thing about the politics of the movie though which make them unrealistic is like this Russian oil tycoon is hiding oil and the Russian government wants to develop like the good Russian president wants to develop cold fusion it is not in the interest of anybody who is the leader of the Russian Federation to wean the world off oil one of their biggest natural. resources. So even a good quote-unquote Russian president would be like, I don't know about this. I'm not funding this cold fusion project, even though my people may be, for the time being freezing, because also it's absurd that he was hiding the oil and gas reserves under his big evil tower in Moscow. Like it spills out at the end. They're like, they were hiding all the gas under his oil. That's the amount of heating oil that would need to like to to warm Russia is not something you could hide under one building. You know, like it's it's just that that's sort of

absurd. But yeah, I know you mean like this idea of like manipulating the public by withholding something that you actually have in order to seize power. Yeah, I mean like when we see evil billionaires take over with manipulative populist and nationalist appeals, obviously that kind of thing doesn't seem so crazy. The idea that they could be defeated through the cleverness of a few very nice people, or one guy who kind of redeems himself and one other person, But essentially people who are kind of romantic individualists feels naive in old school for sure. This motif of giving donations to charities

once you've like Robin Hooded the evil guys. That's also we saw in hackers. I mean, in sneakers. This movie like is a little bit of amalgamation of earlier movies we've watched. It's a little bit like hackers. It's a little bit like, what's that Cold Fusion movie we watched with? chain reaction chain reaction it's a little like chain reaction it's a little like golden eye it's a little like uh mission impossible so it is very much like a genre picture and and and and includes all those

things but in ways that yeah again i find really charming still um but it's not it's not on the level of those other movies and and yeah the i can suspend disbelief with the disguises and shit. I just find it funny, even though it's silly, but it's pretty, it's pretty corny. This movie doesn't like quite make up for its corny. I get what you're saying. It doesn't quite make up for its cornyness and how cool it looks, but it gets, in my opinion, it gets kind of close. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think also like the world, the post-Cold War, post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe was a real topic of fascinating. in the West and it's funny that these movies I mean it was just from observing the politics that

was developing like these movies have some kind of idea pre notion that there is a possibility of kind of revanchist populist nationalism becoming the political temper of that region and I think Americans learned about that in Hollywood much more than they learned about in reality. Like, you know, people weren't reading the article on page three of the Times that talked about some, you know, obscure, relatively obscure to Americans, like far-right nationalist politician in Russia, but they watched plenty of these movies, which prime them, perhaps, for the idea that such politics could be popular.

I think there is a very good case to make that just the portrayal of far-right nationalism, of far-right populism of authoritarianism as in some way effective even if it isn't like morally correct actually has like prime people to think that like these sorts of politics might be necessary you know maybe yeah I mean

I definitely think like it's funny what's funny is like the naivity of the Hollywood movies is like the cynical corrupt businessman become demagogue would be easily exposed as a fraud. But as we can see, like, exposing people as a fraud doesn't work. You know,

it's not people want the fraud. The desire for the image is much more powerful than this kind of liberal, I think it's fair to say, fantasy of unmasking, right? Where you can just say, look, like, we have a piece of information that this guy is not on the up and up. But that's not the root of the political appeal. The idea that these political appeals can be just dissipate overnight because some individuals' bad qualities are revealed to the public is obviously something that we just can't really believe it anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. So, and I do, I think that that primes people, primes people in a bad way, too, because it, it, It depoliticizes people in the sense that they don't think in terms of, like, they don't, they didn't think in terms of, well, I don't think this is totally fair. But there was definitely a current in American liberalism that was very, and I use this term, advisedly, bureaucrat and hero-worshipping that somebody would descend and save us from Trump, an individual of extraordinary talents. integrity who was smarter than him and could outfox him but that's not the way the world works you know right and also that doesn't you know like it doesn't show the power of lies essentially like the power of lies is not just that they conceal the truth but that people want to believe them and they they come up with an appealing an appealing version of the world to people which is always

why I didn't like I guess we're just transitioning to general free-floating political thoughts. I need it's inevitable. We're recording this on the Thursday after the election. Donald Trump is soon to be the next president of the United States. The idea of the big lie

because I didn't like the idea that it was simply lying in the sense that I mean it was but it was like there's a truth and there's a lie. It's like it's not that exact approach to reality. It's something more symbolic, something more mythical, is being represented in those kinds of statements,

then merely they can be fact-checked and be like, well, as a matter of fact, that's not true. And you're like, yeah, they don't think it's true per se, or it's a different form of truth and untruth. They're always symbolic. And I think that the ignorance of the or the mistaken strength of, of understanding of symbols here, is something that we need to really think through in the aftermath of this total catastrophe. I think that's right.

I mean, I think what is... I think that was... That is... All right, sorry. I just read something as I was speaking that just, like, filled me with Jill's. It was just sort of like... Apparently some MAGA commentator on CNN said on election night,

democracy is a luxury when you can't pay your bills. don't like that. But so people understand their world through stories, not through facts. They do not understand their world through facts through what is true empirically. They understand their world through stories that make sense to them. And I think that we are living in an age when the story. that makes sense to people is that someone is getting over on them in one way, shape, form or another. Someone is taking something that doesn't belong to them, that taking someone, I mean,

they ought to have, that someone, whether it is some set of perfidious elites, whether it is, you know, some group of people who don't belong here in the first place, they're taking something from you and that what they want to know is how you are going to punish the people who are responsible for the taking so that you can have the thing. And we can obviously talk about this in terms of, I think, the present election and Donald Trump's message. But I want to say you can see this in other kinds of discourses. So one thing I'm really interested in, and I've been for some time, it's just like housing policy. Why are housing units, whether they're single family homes or apartments or whatever, why are they so expensive in metro areas around the country? And the very

straightforward, simple, factual answer is just that from 2009 to like 2019, the country essentially stopped building new houses and barely built enough to keep up with population growth. And this is true everywhere. That we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we basically built maybe I think actually less than less we built fewer homes relative to population growth than we should have which just means that like there's less to go around and so like prices go up that's that's kind of just how it works in a market economy and so that the the solution is just you just got to build more houses that's just the only real option you have but no one wants to hear that what people want to hear that what people want to

is that landlords are jacking up the prices to make money. What they want to hear is that Black Rock and other mutual funds are buying up all the homes and keeping them from you. They're keeping the homes empty so that you can't be in them. What they want to hear is that immigrants have come and they've taken all the homes. And if there weren't any immigrants around, there'd be more homes available for you to buy. And like none of those things are either true or to the extent that they're true,

they're vastly overstated, right? Like private equity, I think the last time I checked, they own like 3% of the rental stock in single family homes. And it's concentrated in a few metro areas, but on the main, you could confiscate all of that and you wouldn't make a dent

in the housing crisis in terms of like the availability of homes. Immigrants tend to live actually packed in like one unit, right? So it's actually just the opposite. Like they're not, they're actually not really affecting supply at all in places where they are. And then in places that are receiving influxes of immigrants and population decline, they're actually like, you know, generating more housing construction.

So it kind of just kind of balances out. The truth of the matter is that like if you want to fix the housing problem, there is actually no singular villain to point to and say punish that person. And there's just like a lot of stuff we have to do, a lot of boring stuff you have to do to make it possible. But it's just like not a thing people want to hear. And they'd much rather hear someone tell them that someone's getting over on them. That's a story that makes sense. It's a story that sort of like flatters.

They don't mean this in sort of a pejorative way, but it like people's people view of themselves. They view themselves as working very hard. They view themselves doing everything they're supposed to do. And so they want the world they live in to be fair. And if it's not fair, if they cannot get the things that they want and give them the amount of effort they're putting in, then the stories that are being told, the language that's been provided is that there's someone taking something from you, getting over on you. Yeah. There's got to be a villain. There has to be a villain.

Yeah. And, you know, with the election, that was kind of, that was. That was the message of Trump's campaign, that there are, that your problems, that your money isn't going as far as you wanted to, that you're, that you're not as upwardly mobiles you'd like to be, that like women won't fuck you, right? But, like, those things have, there are villains responsible here. It's immigrants. It's, you know, Joe Biden. It's, I mean, it's for the latter. It's just, it's women.

It's feminist. And those things are responsible for the problems you perceive in your life. And if we can punish them, then things will go better for you. We'll remove all the immigrants. rent and you can buy her home will restrict will restrict women's rights and then like they'll have to fuck you right um which i don't think is going to work but i mean it's an absurd theory of the case but yeah the the i yeah what you're saying is right i i think it's also yeah it's also there's a lot of years of of resentment and frustration built up and the idea that you know

yeah very here's why i i i always liked using the term although, you know, maybe it's not perfect. I thought fascism was a better term than some others because it's very mercurial who the enemy is in a fascist mindset, and it shifts, right? Like, you know, there are obviously forms of fascism that are highly racist, right? You know, that have a very racial view of the world.

There are others that are more about, you know, relative national decline and don't have an internal, the same kind of eternal racial politics. But they have an idea of an internal enemy who's responsible for national decline and needs to be punished and destroyed. And I think that Trump's movement has this mercurial relationship where it's a catch-all movement for people with grievances. Some of them are absolutely racial, but you can't win. I mean, America is not as wide a place as it used to be. And you cannot just win on white grievance. You have to win on a broader set of grievances.

Trump can't go up there and run quite as David Duke or even Pat Buchanan, right? He has to expand the franchise, unfortunately, and create something that can include, paradoxically, all the racial resentment that he still represents and, space for people who, um, you know, those other members of his coalition may not think highly of, but are maybe okay with so long as they can, they are down with them on some other issues. I went back, but shortly before the election read this book, uh, that was written by two Frankfurt School sociologists in 1949. It was like written as part of like a study of prejudice in America, a whole series of books of study of prejudice in America. It's called profits of the state a study of the techniques of the American Agitator. And, you know, a lot of

it's very dated. But one thing, they have this funny section where they decode the message of what a populist agitator actually means when you take away all the dress up of his speech. And this, I believe, I was shocked and I felt stupid that I hadn't found it returned to this earlier because it could have helped me a lot articulating what I was trying to say. This is their translation of an agitator. That's their word for these kind of right-wing populists of their era speech. My friends, we live in a world of inequity and injustice. But whoever believes that this state of affairs will ever be or can ever be changed is a fool or a liar.

Oppression and injustice as war and famine are eternal accompanies of human life. The idealists who believe who claim otherwise are merely fooling themselves, and worse still, are merely fooling you. To indulge in gestures of human brotherhood is merely bait for suckers, the kind of thing that will prevent you from getting the share of loot available to you today. Doesn't your own experience tell you that whenever you were idealistic you had to pay for it? Be practical. The world is an arena of a grim struggle for survival. You might as well get your share of the gravy. instead of joining with the oppressed and suffering with them come with me i offer you no promise of peace or security or happiness i hold before you no chimera of individuality whatever that word might mean i scorn even the cat which words that i use when convenient if you follow which my god if you follow me you will ally yourself with force with might and power the weapons that ultimately decide all disagreements we will offer you scapegoats jews radicals plutocrats and other

creatures conjured out by your imagination. These will you will be able to breathe and you will be able to berate and eventually persecute. What difference will it make whether they are your real enemy so long as you can plunder them and vent your spleen on them? Not utopia, but a realistic struggle to grab the bone from the other dog. That is our program. Not peace, but incessant struggle for survival.

Not abundance, but the lion's share of scarcity. Can you realistically expect more? To win this much, you'll have to follow me. We will form an ironbound movement of terror. We will ally service with the powerful in order to gain part of their privilege. We will be with the policemen rather than the prisoners. And I will be the leader. I will think for you.

I will tell you what to do and when to do it. I will act out your lives for you and my public role as leader. But I also protect you. In the shadow of my venom, you will find a home. Now, the shadow of my venom is a mixed metaphor. But otherwise, I find that to be a really compelling, de-sublimated articulation of exactly

what Trump's message is which is the world is red in tooth and claw and you're going to get yours I think so I think that's right yeah I also think though and this is something I've been trying to figure out the language to articulate I also think that

that's an element of the message I've been trying to figure what exactly what specifically makes Trump so compelling such that both the work like the some of the like this is that's a part of his message and that

appeals to like a certain set of his voter base maybe his core voter base like the people we describe as the MAGA voting base they hear that and they're like yes absolutely this is the way the world is this is the part of his supporters who are really attracted to the kind of like patriarchal

masculine energy that like he represents but there are a lot of voters I think who are essentially projecting what they want onto Trump, irrespective of what he says. In fact, what he says ends up being what he actually says is just dismissed as essentially meaningless to what the meaning they want to impose on them. Like it often feels, and I've been watching these videos and stuff of like interviews with voters,

especially younger Trump voters, since there's a big swing to the right among young voters. and you're, it's sort of like, you can, you're telling people, he said he would do this that you say you don't like, and they say, well, he doesn't mean it, but he will do the thing that I want him to do. He will do the, he says he's going to lower prices, and that's what he's going to do. He says he will sign minimum abortion standards, and I don't want him to do that, so he's not going to do it. And the extent to which Trump is like this blank slate that people just,

project on which i actually kind of think is a product of his of his dishonesty and his incoherence right sort of being super mercurial too right like he's so mercurial and yeah uh and he's such a giant bullshitter and he is um uh he's such a incoherent figure that nothing he says registers as being real, but he represents. So it's sort of like the man Trump, the actual living human being Donald Trump, is ignored. But Trump is the symbol and has been for a long time for a kind of vulgar prosperity. Yeah. And it's that. It's that that people latch on to. That's absolutely true. The prosperity gospel, if you will, of it is a huge part of it. Also, Perrault was like that because everyone didn't care what he was actually saying, which was not much.

Like, everyone just projected their views on him. You had pro-life, pro-vot voters, and pro-po-o is pro-life. I mean, pro-choice, because that was not that uncommon for a southern kind of conservative person of Protestant background back then to have some pro-choice leanings. That's changed a lot. But, you know, he, uh, but a lot of. his followers were pro-life and thought he was pro-life. They projected a lot of things onto him just because he was this charismatic figure who they felt would rescue them and save them

from the world going to hell as far as they saw it. So yeah, it's not, that's the thing about Trump. It's not all darkness and gloom. He does have a positive message of prosperity. and fun. Some of that fun is absolutely at the expense of other people, but some of that fun is also just being like, you know, let it all hang out. We're up here and I'm just riffing. You know, I'm so mad at myself because I let myself get so yelled at by people on the internet. Like I, when people were saying in the last week of the campaign, he looks listless. He looks deflated. I just was like, he looks the way he always does.

He's just doing his thing. And everyone says, no, it's different this time. And I was like, oh, maybe. Maybe he looks a little more tired. But, I mean, the presidential campaign is a long thing. I just think, like, his ranty raveness is a lot of fun for a lot of people. And they get to do it. And I don't think they take a lot of, I mean, I think they should.

There's always that stupid take seriously, literally, whatever thing. I think a lot of people just don't take it seriously when they don't want to. like they hear something that they don't like and they're like well he's probably not going to do that kind of stuff you know because you know and he has a talent of not not being in his case not being a serious person is a talent because he would have otherwise be too scary and trump has this gangster's ability to kind of wink and slap you on the back and give you a hug and a kiss that makes his actual bad things seem funny and not so bad and he uses all these funny euphemisms the way a gangster does like when you hear euphemisms of a gangster in a movie you laugh like when they're like

yeah he sleeps with the fishes now you know like you're like that's funny and it makes it seem less evil right they're doing uh and it but like that's the whole world of gangsterism is it makes and it they talk about this in goodfellas he's like you know it just seemed all really natural to us it makes kind of like doing this kind of stuff and being a crook and even potentially a murderer not seem so morally serious and trump gives people a break from moral seriousness and people need a break from moral seriousness because it's hard to live as a morally serious person it sucks like to constantly to constantly put yourself under this Kantian morals where you're like if I if I say or think this what does it mean for me as a person you know like what does it

like very few people live that way anyway people who say they do are often hypocrites but the stress of trying to maintain a moral existence is too much and then if somebody comes along and says fuck it you know you're like ha ha what a relief it's in the same way that laughter is a relief yeah you know what laughter is a relief from being a serious person and and Trump is not a serious person and he uh and that helps him you know it's not if he was more sinister he wouldn't have a chance it's the it's the lightness of it that gives him a chance too i think i think that's absolutely right and that's sort of what comes from him being kind of a long time, like natural entertainer.

Yeah. I'll also say that, you know, people, there are real problems people have, right? Like, I think a lot of people feel rightfully that they just don't have enough money in their pockets to do the things they want to do, right? It costs too much money to work, like car insurance or bus fare, whatever, cost too much money to work, cost too much money to save up to own a home. which is still a long-standing dream for people, right? They don't have enough money.

And the language, but they, but like people are not necessarily sophisticated. They just like express this in the language that they're given. The language they're given is it's the economy, it's inflation, it's, and from Trump, it's immigrants. And so it's this sort of thing, like he, like Trump is doing this thing where he's drawing audiences in, which sort of buffoonery, but also. giving them a language for expressing a discontent that they have. And then this is all kind of like tied up in his own, again, his like, the symbol that is Trump, this symbol of wealth and of prosperity, all that's tied up together for, you know, a let's say a low information voter, right? They just associate in their minds.

Trump means money. Trump means money. Absolutely. And I think I'm stuck on this because, you know, it's, we're recording this, like I've mentioned before this, the Thursday after the election. The election basically called early, early Wednesday morning. And now we're at the point where there's lots of recriminations and backbiting and all that stuff.

Everyone's like, you know, if only Kamala Harris had done X, Y, and Z, she would have won. If only she had listened to me, she would have won. If only she had, you know, taken the line of Jacobin magazine in 2015, she would have won, like, all that kind of stuff. But then you look at the precinct level data, like how people voted, and what you see is just like a uniform swing across the entire country. Like, it's not even, it's not, it's not a 2016 kind of thing where like, like, you know, Clinton narrowly loses in a handful of districts, basically, and that's the ball game. this is everywhere and because it's uniform this is making me think that we just have to look for these broader explanations this isn't like this isn't tactical this isn't a question of like tactics if it's a question of strategy it's been long in the making right sort of the

piece into which like there is no there it there simply is no ecosystem delivering liberal liberal and progressive messages to people it does not exist so like but that's that's a problem three decades in the making. So it's like, for my mind, the actual results suggest we have to look broader. We have to look both at whatever structural things are happening. I think there's a structural problem with the media ecosystem. Like if you are a young man interested in weightlifting, for example, you're going to get right-wing politics along with that. Like, I'm half thinking about like starting to do weightlifting TikTok specifically so I can sort of like, you know, lift weights on camera and then also talk about why solidarity is important.

But so there's that. There's this, you know, this fact that incumbent parties around the world are kind of losing because of basically post-pandemic delays in inflation, which are tied up together. But then there's an also just thing about like, about how do, how have Americans understand, understood the world around them and how does Trump kind of fit into that how does Trump shape that and I think it's just like like I said at the beginning of this of this of this turn on our conversation there there is a story about the world that has been actually quite dominant in this country which is that someone is getting one over on you

and Trump basically his whole message is I will get one over on them yeah yeah well I said this before, but the Madison Square Garden rally was professional wrestling, which is he's going to beat up on the heel, but he's not going to be polite about it, you know? He's the guy who cheats, the good guy who cheats, right? He's like, I'm not very nice. You know, and that is very appealing to people. And I think. I think like I've been trying to get people to understand for a long time that there were positive, not positive in the sense that I like them necessarily, but there were positive aspects of Trump's message, not merely, there is a lot of animus and hate and very nasty things for sure. But there is also a sense of possibility, a sense of prosperity, a sense of fun, and a sense of fuck you, I am so tired of, you know, being lectured and so on and so forth.

And this is just an outlet. And you can see that this appeal goes, as you were saying, across a political board. I think, here's my whole thing. In 2008, Democrats reacted too slowly to the financial crisis. They thought essentially the intellectual consensus of the previous couple of decades was true. It just needs small revisions. I thought, oh, we are now. in the end of the neoliberal order, and this is going to be a new deal type situation.

Not so. In like manner, in 2016, my complaint is, and to a certain degree, I went along with it because it seemed to be working in certain small things, and this is a big lesson here, because this always seems to be working thing as a mistake. I don't think that Democrats and liberals responded strongly enough in a certain way to the arrival of Trump in the sense that this is a crisis of our entire intellectual, uh, political, moral understanding. And we need to generate a new approach. And then that seem to be confirmed when you have superficial victories against this new force. And you say, well,

you know, basically made some small authorations, but we got it. It's the same thing to me, to my mind, of Clintonism, seeing the success of Reaganism, making some small alterations, things seem to be coming back in order, and then there's another catastrophe. What I'm saying is this tactical small ball, we're going to make little tactical, we're going to pull this issue and pull that issue, and we're going to make small changes around the edges of our program, but basically we don't need to feel the need to make huge changes, is a mistake. And it's going to lead to further and further catastrophes because you're not fixing the underlying problems. With that being said, I will say to their credit,

and it is strange, I think I have a story about why this is true. It is strange that, you know, okay, after years of neoliberal consensus about the way we do an economy, Biden does begin to change some of those things. I think it just happens too late. And it was too little too late. And by that time, the damage was just too severe. And I think those things are great. I'm glad they did them. I don't think that the Democrats should banning them because they didn't deliver immediate um electoral success i think that mindset of going election to election being like we're going to find these fucking charlatan consultants and pollsters who give us some kind of electorate that kind of work sometimes no you have to have a theory a whole story about what america is

where it's going you may lose elections on it and it may not seem to be winning But you have to have a strategic long-term, thoughtful approach to the United States and where it's going. I don't think until maybe Biden's late adoption of industrial policy, say, which is still kind of wonkish and elite, that Democrats were doing that. And Trump, for all of his faults, represented even for Republicans, and in some ways it's not. not true and it's a lot of tax cut bullshit but he said the country's not doing well and i have a story about why and here's to blame and here's how i'm going to fix it it's that simple what what is the story that democrats are telling that is that simple and i just don't think they they've gotten there yet and i've been i've been overly tolerant i feel of the patchwork um fixing of little

problems and then being relieved. Like, it's the same thing as like, oh, Clinton won in, in 1992, and things seem to get better, so we're fine now. And he gave up, I mean, like, you know, obviously there are things you just can't do because you don't have the political power to do them. But I don't think that Democrats are imaginative enough and deep enough is basically what I'm saying. Yeah.

They're shallow. They're shallow. They don't have, they don't like to. do deep thinking. Not to say that all the thinking on the Trump side is deep, but they have some people who sound like crackpots, but they have visions. And those visions are bad ones and insane ones. But who has visions on the Democratic side? I mean, I don't want to start fucking this whole. I'm sorry, Matt Iglesias does not have a vision. You know, like I don't want to shit on people because people are doing that so much.

But he is not, we need more crackpots. So, you know, like, yeah. So I'm very, I'm very sympathetic to this. And I think, but I think there's kind of a basic asymmetry here, which is that, or maybe there's not. Okay, there isn't an asymmetry here. Part of what is happening on the, on the right is that it's a combination, if you have this figure at the top, who is this blank slate for many people, you do have crackpots offering

a variety of visions and the figure of the top has like generated this sort of like cult of personality around him but you also have very real um like the the the the trump turn is actually rooted in like a coherent social base there are evangelical churches right there are these community organizations that kind of help translate trumpism to ordinary people. You go to a megachurch, an evangelical Protestant megachurch, and you are kind of wrapped up in the milieu of Trump from the kind of preaching that's happening at the pulpit, but also just into sort of the social world in which you exist. It's not like an accident, right? Like when you look at who, which Latino voters are becoming Republicans the fastest,

it's evangelicals. And in fact, you know, I'm in L.A. right now. And I went to like a little, you know, humble papusaria to have lunch yesterday. And there was like, there were like, you know, brochures for a nearby kind of very clear evangelical church. Things like they were saying like in Spanish, like, you know, the path to the Lord is through like being saved through Jesus Christ, like a very clear evangelical message. And this was run by, this place was run by Salvadorans. And that, I mean, if they're attending like an evangelical church, there's a certain message about Trump that's being both consumed there and articulated out there that, like, leads to connection to the, to voting for him, to voting for the Republican Party

in addition to whatever, like, material things exist as well. And I think, and it's not to say that the Republican Party is some sort of like coherent, strong party organization, very much it's not. And it'll be interesting to see, you know, if Trump ever leaves the scene, right? Like, if we do if this if we do have future elections which i'll say as a parenthetical i'm actually a little more optimistic about this than i was before for the simple reason that trump won the popular vote and just sort of like if they think they can do it they may not go like the the we have to you know they'll like they're likely erode access to the vote the way republicans always have been doing consistently but sort of like i won't leave i think him winning the popular vote actually is the

thing for his ego that will keep will make sure that he leaves but this this is a separate conversation um but i think the republican party is still like it's it's so centered around trump there's no real republican party outside of trump right now but there is this so this coherent social base i think part of the problem with the democratic party in addition to not having a story to tell um a story to tell that doesn't reinforce the they're getting over on you story this is kind of this is kind of my critique maybe of the Bernie story the story he has is that it's like a version of the same but I'm not sure it lends itself well to the kind of like kind of like the kind of solidarity needed to to build up a um I'm not sure FDR was very very hostile to to bankers and well I mean he was

friends with a lot of them too the thing about FDR was he combined I mean he combined I mean it's a very different era. It's a different era thing I want to get to, which is like there is no, who is the social base of the Democratic Party? What are the organizations that are producing that can produce Democrats, right?

Yeah, it's got none. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. And the Democratic Party isn't the kind of like coherent, integrated party organization, structure that can create those for itself, right?

There's no energy. within the Democratic Party to like build media outlets or or or they would do such a shitty job if they tried or or or anything that sort of like connect people um to kind of anything that be ideals associated with the Democratic Party and so there's like there's there's there's active work happening that produces Republicans or produces Trump voters right and that does not exist on the other side yeah And at a certain point, you're kind of just going to run out of people who are like, have been produced to be, to vote for Democrats. Some people will always be socialized that way, you know, but like the people, we're running out of libs, folks.

I mean, yeah, we might, we literally might be running out of libs. And I, and you just have to get, you had to create the kinds of institutions and structures and communities that can like produce more lives or produce people who find. that kind of approach to politics appealing and want to vote for it. And that's like a long, that's like a long term project that it does not seem like anyone with the money

on, within the Democratic Party is like interested in pursuing. I think the, yeah, the one last thing I'll say on this point is that I think this is going to have to come from the bottom up in the same way that people connect trump to wealth and to prosperity

on almost like a subconscious level like no one you don't have to really articulate the claim the people that just kind of believe it there's no there's been there's there's no one doing the work or demonstrating the connection between democracy and prosperity yeah which i think is a real connection right like i think the two are actually tied up together Yeah. But I'm a little friendlier to the Bernie appeal because I do think someone needs to come along in I think that the Democratic leadership, my toleration for the Democratic leadership was predicated on their ability to win, right?

Right. And if they can't win, fuck them. Right. I think that's, yeah, absolutely right. I was like, I'll listen to your, your, your, your bullshit, you know, kind of cobbled together or whatever, because you're being pragmatic and you're going to win. If pragmatism doesn't receive results, it's not pragmatism, it's garbage. So I just have no patience, like I was like, all right, look, if the elites who pretend to competence are incompetent, then enough already. There needs to be the problem was, and I know that both you and I have ways of thinking about

this, which we were like, you know, well, having the party decide on candidates is not the worst thing in an era, you know, because previously it produced kind of, you know, some really good candidates. It doesn't work anymore. Like, we are in the primary age. We have to listen. like there is much more democratic feedback and demand the old elite ways of designated successors and stuff like that are going to rankle people even though there are virtues of them so competitive process was really important to choose a candidate and we the Trump the thing about Trump is that he attacked the Republican Party from outside and his core and his movement and feel enthusiastic about him

and have a loyalty to him that's not party-based. It's something else. I just don't think like we can just defer to the wisdom of our betters in the Democratic Party anymore because they're not doing what we need them to do. And they need a little kick in the pants

from some kind of populist revolt from within the party that tells them, Like, we're your bosses, you know, and not be like, you know what, I love these guys. They've been doing so great for me. I mean, there are a few people in the Democratic Party who obviously have, like, are great political talents and thinkers, and the deference of our, of Democrats to their wisdom is earned, like Nancy Pelosi, for example, like who is like, yeah, okay, maybe she's not the most left-wing

person in the world, but she's like a knowledgeable figure in American politics who seems savvy. You know, obviously Obama has a great talent for politics. You know, I can understand the wish to defer to the judgment of these leaders, but their judgment has failed. And now Democrats need to grow up and say we want a different kind of leader. We need a new round of leadership that we're going to decide upon and not do this baby thing that they do, which is hope that the great people of our party are going to help save us. There are no adults in the room, quote unquote. They are, their limitations are their limitations. We've seen them. And we need to move on. I just don't have this confidence anymore in anybody who's a leader in the Democratic Party. They may survive through their political ingenuity and their adaptation, some kind of shakeup of the party, but they need to be put to the test. They need to be put to the test. I just think like there needs to be much more internal strife in the Democratic Party to

weed out the people who are just free riders, you know, and to see what really survives true We thought, oh, well, the whole theory of the case that I had before was Trump is a catch-22 for Republicans because he can make it out of the primary system, but he can't win in a general election, really, is not true. The primary system was testing, tested something with real Democratic legs, and the Democrats have to see internal democracy of their party as perhaps being able to do something similar is my case yeah yeah more internal democracy yeah well let me clarify what i mean when i said okay my my bernay comment real quick which is not that i think like populism is like not useful and i think bernie is a very talented and important political communicator but i do think that it's like there's a bit of a thing thing has to be navigated. I'm not sure anyone's been able to navigate that yet, which is both

the simultaneously provide a story that is legible to people, but that a story that cannot be as easily co-opted by the kind of us against them mentality, which I just think ultimately doesn't lend itself well to building out the kind of political culture we need to accomplish the things we need to do. It's like, I'll put it this way. For as many of the people who came out of the 2016 campaign who became even more committed to pursuing progressive change, there were people who came out of it, like, you know, some prominent voices from that 2016 Bernie campaign and the 2021 as well, who are now like right-wing cranks. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think either groups of people have perceived themselves as having changed,

but I do think sort of like the oriented, the, the kind of someone's getting over on you, orientation can easily go towards the right wing crank path as can something more constructive yeah but we used to get those sorts of people they it has to have some popular not to say populism can't curdle into very nasty things I mean that's my main interest and I'm not without my skepticism or worry about populism for sure and I know exactly what you're talking about I know exactly what you're talking about and in fact I was reading something very interesting earlier today, reading old conservative, Peter Vierich, who was a critic of McCarthyism and the new right that was emerging around National

View as being too tolerant of McCarthyism. And he said, you know, these people used to be New Dealers and now are against the New Deal. And he said it was people who, that the McCarthy Coalition was a people who were in social decline and social assent. And he said too fast social decline collided to make this kind of populist anti-elitist movement. Yeah, so I know what you mean that that kind of againer spirit and pure unalloyed populist anger is apt to turn into something very ugly. And I don't like that either. And in fact, it's something that I'm concerned about and write about.

But the fact of the matter is, is that those people exist as that's a political tendency in American life. And the Democrats need to tell a story to that kind of people, too. And they used to more. I feel like they had a cranky wing. Or at least a populist wing that was viable. And, you know, that's just something that we haven't regenerated. I agree that the dangers of encouraging those things are many. But Bernie himself has never allowed that to become...

I mean, he had hangers on and people around him and part of his movement that seems... Yeah, there are truly unattractive parts of it. But he's never given himself over to that kind of hateful shit. He speaks, I think, a very persuasive message. And one, that was very popular with a lot of people. I don't think he... I think it's possible to speak an anti-establishment language that's rational. That's what I'm saying.

All I'm saying is, I guess this is how I'd express it. anti there's too often in liberal discourse anti-establishmentarianism is coded as irrationality yes often it's not always irrational sometimes sometimes the establishments of the party are um have problems and the entire way of thinking about leaders and and and the ruling apparatus. And a certain amount of hostility or pressure towards them is a healthy part of politics. And it's not something that needs to be shut down or necessarily contained. I was aghast by Trump's, the Republican Party not being better at shutting him out of their

structures and opening the door for them, I still think that that was malpractice on some on some real level. And it wasn't just that they were scared of his voters. They knew that he had energy behind them. They couldn't afford to turn away. So I don't know. It's very frustrating. It's hard to say what to do. I just think like openness to new ideas, openness to new voices a willingness to not just go back and this goes for everybody don't and i tried to say this after 2016 don't just immediately get lost in the recrimination games it may require some serious open-minded thought of where to go next that doesn't involve anybody who raises concerns shouldn't necessarily be written out of the movement because they're heretics or

their or they're bad people like there needs to be a space for discussion after what happens obviously that discussion is going to be heated and people are going to get angry at each other but like obviously something's not working you know and the answer that can't be and I don't believe it is America's just a bad place full of bad people yeah it's a complicated place full of complicated people and you know we are going to have to rethink about a lot of things but electorate changes the electorate is not static it's not and that's the other thing this whole idea which republicans fall into too with this replacement theory bullshit is no set of voters is ever going to be forever one way yeah you can't take it for granted this whole

idea that Democrats can take for granted minorities or take for granted this people or take the last thing people want us to be taken for granted and even a small sliver of them being like I don't like to be most of it might be like yeah it's a little annoying they take us for granted but on the on the whole I can rationally see that we're better off with them I still believe that well even losing a few people who say I'm pissed off of being taken for granted and being condescended to is a severe problem when you're on small margins. So I just think like more thought, more openness to new possibilities, more curiosity, interest in what's going on, interest in what the electorate actually looks like, an openness that the electorate could, that there are, that not looking at the electorate and seeing something scary, but seeing possibilities there too.

I'm a victim of this as a kind of my own self-criticism is I look at the electorate in a very cynical way sometimes where I'm like these people are all fucking morons you know like yeah and it's not the right way to approach things that the right way to approach things is like what do they try to tell us yeah it could be that some people some some some there are ugly look I'm the last person to say that there are not genuinely ugly things being expressed here But it's also things that maybe if someone else came along and put in a different way, it could work. And that was what I felt, and I didn't see it at the time, because I'm overly, I was being overly pragmatic, was kind of the, the picture of the Bernie movement was there's a less ugly, there is a more constructive, there is a more, open way of answering a lot of these concerns and if we don't make it something

uglier is going to make that case yeah so that's my only that's my only thing is just like I plead for people to try to be open-minded um and try to be not necessarily turn on people who say something that you may find to be um you know it doesn't fit with the way you wanted to view things before and I think everybody just they lose an election and their pet their pet enemy comes up my only pet enemy is the people who don't get the job done you're supposed to win if you don't win you're a loser that's it you're a loser and you you should you should take one on the chin and say you know I got to hire new people I got to listen to other people I got to get rid of these people.

Maybe this guy had a point. Maybe that guy had a point. Maybe I didn't look at this. Like, you got to think, you got to think again. That's my only case. It's time to rethink on a more fundamental level, not on a tactical level. I think, no, I completely agree with that. And something we chatted about yesterday off mic, it's just sort of like, what is the role of people like us in that task?

I think, you know, I'm at this place where. And again, I said this to you. I am not interested in recriminations. I was scrolling through this website, I follow that, like, kind of, you know, aggregates political news. And it's just full of the various recriminations of, like, various people from various parts of the Democratic coalition. Yeah. You know, John Chait going on about how it's like Democrats got too woke or, you know, you know, people in the left saying, well, Democrats move too much to the center. You're like, I just don't, it all feels very naval gazing to me, in part because the, the stakes of what happened this week aren't just about what happens to the Democratic Party.

It is about what's going to happen to the federal government and to what that means for all of us. Like, we're just in for, you know, conservatives have their chance. Really, they have their chance to basically roll back. Yeah, that sucks. the great society, roll back the New Deal, roll back the last of these things. Social democracy. Right. Just like, roll it back to the 1920s. Yeah. That's what I'm going to do. Roll it back to before there was federal protection for all these things before there's federal support for people.

Yeah. Roll it back to when the states were empowered to kind of act on their citizens in however way they want to. And although that opens up, you know, some possibilities, I think, for progressives. Yeah. If the states it's again become kind of like the locus of action. Right. This progressive federalism thing was something that came up very briefly after Trump won. Right. It also is just going to be like an unmitigated disaster for a lot of people. And I think it's important to take that seriously. Yeah, absolutely. And like focus on that rather than, you know, get the knives out for the people that you don't like. Having said that, though,

it's like what I'll put it this way I don't think I'm persuading any voters in any ordinary voters like that's not that's not what my writing is ever going to do maybe my TikTok could do that but even that's like doubtful

like I'm not sure I'm persuading anybody in that regard I'm not sure and I and I think about my writing over the last couple years and I think of like what what am I what have I accomplished have I like misled

Normie lives into thinking one thing or another I don't think I have because I don't you know I'm not writing about the success of democratic strategy that's not really I kind of don't really touch that stuff much anymore and I think that for people in our position maybe be

the thing for us to do is to try to try to help try to participate in a more open conversation

in constructive ways to try to reveal things perhaps that might lead people who are in the business of doing strategy

and doing tactics to maybe think more broadly and more creatively to try to try to try to like expand the political

imagination a bit absolutely but I you know I know for me I I'm just not going to get involved in the woulda, shoulda, shoulda, couldas of all of this. Yeah. I don't, I don't know.

Like, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't have an answer. I don't know. We don't have a clear idea of what the electorate, I mean, we never really, that's, another lesson is like, the electorate is a big mystery. And there's a certain, there's a certain thing about it that you just never understand until election day. And then, ever after, you're going to argue about why it did what it did, but it did what it did for somewhat mystical reasons that, like, right.

Political scientists, economists, sociologists, historians are always trying to understand. And we think we understand electorates of years past, but kind of don't. Yeah, we kind of don't. And so the electorate is always a weird thing to figure out. And then you think, oh, well, this politician had some mystical read on the electorate. Sometimes they get lucky. Sometimes it's a very specific part of their message resonates in a very specific place. In this case, it's a little bit more like, oh, he was having a message that was doing well everywhere.

So you got to think about that, as you mentioned. Yeah, I mean, like, I really just hope my writing is, okay, here's, here's my point with all this stuff. Pay attention to things that you discount because they're important. Don't write off things that are, that are, um, that are looney tunes. Like, I just saw this tweet. I'm not, I'm not meant to be on Twitter, but I still look. And it says, people need to read when the clock broke. I'm not trying to shit on this person.

People need to read When the Clock Broke by John Gans. The Dems ability to purge nuts when the GOP didn't in the 90s with decisive in our ability to build a party and we should learn from it while repairing the party going forward.

I don't know how you could read my book and get that message from it. The nuts won. The nuts won. And not to say that we need our own nuts, but my point was the people with the extraordinary broad vision, eventually win out over the people with a narrow, pragmatic election to an election

strategy. It wasn't that we need to purge people. And the Republican purge of their nuts didn't work ultimately because the nuts were, the nuts were closer to where their voters were actually at. And that is, you know, so I just don't get it. I mean, like, yeah, no, that's like exactly the wrong message that I want people to take away. I want people to, as you say, expand imagination, expand their imaginations of what's possible politically. Pay attention to things you might otherwise discount as fringy, not to say you have to like it,

But don't dismiss it as being powerless or without legs. You know, it's so easy to be, I mean, obviously, RFK fucking Jr. is an idiot nightmare. But, like, people listen to this kind of shit. Like, it's a constituency. I think you have to be serious about constituencies, that there are real constituencies for a lot of these things. What they are really responding to is a little bit of a mystery that, you know, we have to think about. But the answer to it is not going to be.

be the answer to it is not going to be that you know you're necessary everyone has a pet picture of the world and they reify it they make it into a thing they say these types of voters exist and therefore we must push this button and get rid of these people and listen to these people no it's an evolving picture there is a world to be built and made politicians form the world with their appeals as much as they are responding to it, which is, to me, what the statics, the stats popularist, if I'm going to take it out on anybody, I'm going to take it out on the popularists, is because they think of the world of politics as being a reified thing and not something that a politician is shaping with their campaigns and their rhetoric.

like there is something that they are picking up on and then they're building on. And then I kept on saying that these people. I said sometimes a politician has to go out on a limb and say something because they feel like there's a vote out there for it because they've been in the room with people. And they said, well, there's no real evidence for that working actually in the world. I was like, enough, enough.

I'm tired of all the surveys. and the stats. I mean, there's a place for them and the polling. Enough. Think. Think. Don't.

And that might be that there are categories that we don't think of in terms of yet that will help us to understand things. The old categories might not be right.

The old categories might be mistaken. Dividing the electorate up into the categories we have, white working class, Latino working class, class, this type of voter, that type of voter, Obama to Trump voter, Trump to Obama.

You know, like, these categories might not be useful categories. Maybe there are new ways of dividing up the electorate and thinking about the public that we need to take seriously and come up with and experiment with is just what I'm saying. Like, let's have a little experimentation to get some FDR spirit. Old category, it's not like we need to reshift the old categories. No, maybe the old categories are bad categories. Maybe we were, maybe our theory of the case requires a renovation, not on the level of the understanding.

So we had the pieces in the wrong places, but we had the wrong pieces to begin with. That's the type of imaginative thought that I would like to see happen among political professionals and commentators which i don't think everyone is capable of i don't i hope i am i know that i had a certain i have certain categories that were too fixed and they need revision um i feel the same way i i i hope that i am capable of that kind of more creative and expansive thinking i like my my principal goal as a writer is that for people to come away reading me having learned something new about the world i have become for a long time very like reticent to make predictions to make to say this is how things ought to be this is what this is what people should do

because I don't necessarily know that I have the knowledge or capacity to make those kinds of judgments. A younger me thought he did me for the last like five or six years does not think that really I have that capacity. And yet even as I think about that, but I'm still sort of like racked with this sort of like what am I like is my aim here doing enough? to help people engage constructively with the world around them. This person is a jerk. Someone sent me an email. So I'm like aging Berkeley hippie because they left their name and address. The other email signatures are just like look them up and it's like some

literally like, you know, 70 year old like Berkeley boomer. But the email is sort of like your writing has no purpose. you are a careerist with no moral center. Now, I don't think the latter two things are really true at all. Yeah. I think I very clearly have a moral center in my writing. And what I'm not like, there's no other career. Like, what career thing am I trying to get at this point?

Sort of like I kind of have the thing. But I have been thinking about like what is my, like, what is my, like, what am I doing? What, what am I doing here? And, like, as per your assessment here, John, like, what I want to do is, again, to help people think constructively or above the world around them. Can I do that? Like, do I need to, you know, expand my own horizons of, like, what I'm writing about? But then I don't want to get into this game of, you know, like, I'll put it this way. I am, and we've, we've talked about this before.

I am not a ton of hossicoats, right? Like, I'm not that guy. I'm not a guy here to provide, like, moral or ethical guidance in that way. I'm not a political strategist. I'm like, I'm a guy who reads and uses history, try to understand the world around us. Is there a way I can,

do that that is more constructive and productive for people who are engaged in these more tactile and concrete endeavors. And that's like the question I am asking myself out of this. And the other thing, I mean, just by the nature of the kind of job I have, the thing is it will include, you know, writing about things that are actually happening in the world, too. it'll be hard for me if and when a mass deportation program begins it'll be hard for me not to write about this and not to not not to let people know that like this is a thing that's happening but in between doing that is sort of like how can I you know not I both don't want to engage in fights among Democrats about like particular strategies and tactics I do want to engage in what does our own

history, how can our own history inform attempts to rebuild kind of a consensus around liberalism and democracy? And is that, I mean, kind of the bigger questions, like, is that do you have to set your horizons a little lower? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I I've been going back through my writing and seeing what stands up and what doesn't and trying to trying to see where I could have improved things and where I was maybe wrong.

Yeah, I mean, I really just want people to think, have a reading of a political situation that picks up on things that may be less obvious and other people miss. and is sensitive to things that seem in the moment that are easy to ignore, look over and not important, but they've actually had some kind of incipient groundswell behind them. And that lost movements that losers, they kind of... are worth paying attention to, too.

They're often worth paying attention to too. That to say, I don't think losers in the sense of a major party apparatus that's running a campaign with pragmatic terms. It's more like the loser who has some kind of ideological visionary campaign that loses, you have to wonder. And they're like, well, that obviously doesn't appeal to the American people. Well, maybe with some alterations it will, you know? So that's what I'm just, just pay attention to, to things that you may, may otherwise dislike, not think are important. I just think it's bad idea. This whole weird and normal thing, I mean, sure, it's, it's tempting, but like, okay, well, maybe a lot of people are a lot weirder than you thought they were and you're going to have to either learn to tolerate them or come meet them to where, where they're at.

Not to say you have to tolerate things that you find hateful or disgusting, but, you know, this tendency among liberals to pathologize people that are not exactly speak every word the right way is bad. And I experience it too. And I'm going to get angry for a second here. I was not totally thrilled with Harris as a candidate and I was very worried and I said this and I got a lot of shit for it and I think and I'm not a person who's easily I hope and in my own attitude about myself and the way I carry myself I think of myself as a person who's like yeah fuck you you can't tell me what to think but I was like well these are my people they're upset with me so maybe I should chill out a little and I wish I had been the

I mean, not to say it would have made a difference, but just in terms of having the courage of your conviction sometimes, it's important to remember like, yeah, dude, you may, and this is what politics is all about to you, you may go through long periods of time where your pet political idea is ridiculed and attacked and in ways that are unfair, and you just have to fucking deal with that. And yeah, you're going to have to compromise and meet people where they're at and learn to and adapt it to other audiences because that's just the nature of politics. But you also have to not be, when you feel like you have a read on something and you feel like you're right, you have to stick by your guns and not be swallowed up into a consensus

necessarily, especially if you're, I mean, I'm talking to other people who aspire to the same position or profession is like, you know, sometimes you're going to buck your consensus of your party or your movement and they're not going to like it and they're going to call you all kinds of names and call you an idiot and say you don't know what you're talking about. It's not fun, but you kind of have to go through it. I mean, that's the other thing. The thing that sucks about politics is very often it's not, and this I think will happen a lot in the next few years. the other side is the other side but they're going to be focused on their own struggles

it's going to be your side a lot that's telling you to shut up because there are more powerful people who don't want hear what you want to hear say necessarily or there's a power struggle within your movement so it's hard but you know and not to say you're going to be just because you're insistent you're right either But you have to be, and I think this is something that Trump campaign understood more,

or Trump's movement understood more. It's like, you have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to look stupid. You know, like, you have to be willing to have people be like, that's an insane idea that won't work. Or your read on things is loony tunes. And, yeah, so being a little more unconventional is important. Republicans, Democrats have become very conventional. And I think you can be a conventional person, that's fine, but don't always be convinced.

I don't think it's always healthy for us and something I'm definitely guilty of too, because the temptation is to be like, I'm not a pathological case. They're the pathological cases, is to just be like, you know what, conventional, and I think there's absolute wisdom. But this is what it means to be conservative in a certain way. Yeah, of course there's wisdom and conventional thinking. Of course there's wisdom and conventional thinking, but conventional thinking also needs to be revised. So anyway, I'm saying the same thing over and over again. I'm just encouraging people to be more open-minded and imaginative about the possibilities of the future, less, uh, I, my category is got to, I'm going to apply them and get the people who don't like, you know,

right, right, less crabbed. Right. No, I think that's right. And I think, I think, yeah, I think that's right. And I think that just thinking about my own role, it's like maybe, you know, what I can do with the, where the opportunity afforded me, with this sort of like tenure I have as a columnist, it's just to kind of like continue doing my research and study and trying to bring some light to how, you know, people understand the world and not worry to, not worry too much about getting into kind of like factional fights or anything. But also, yeah, try to try to think more expansively about about what actually existing politics in the United States. And I think we're going to wrap up this conversation about 1997's The Saint.

Yeah. We're good. I want to wrap up and I want to say this, which is that like it is very easy to get bogged down in. despair. And I think it's important to say that the next four years is going to be full of bad things. We cannot say how bad they will be yet. If Trump attempts to do everything he's promised, it'll be a nightmare. Part of me thinks that his popular victory in a weird way may end up moderating him a little bit. I don't know. But there'll be a lot of awful stuff. I do firmly believe that we're kind of like the world of robust social insurance

and federal protection for civil rights and that stuff is gone and we'll be dealing with the fallout of that. Having said all of that, nothing is permanent. Not even authoritarianism is permanent. It gets very bad, but it's not permanent. Yeah.

And I think one thing I'm taking away from what you said in our conversation today, John, it's just that in the same way that our categories need to be more flexible, we need to experiment more. we also have to recognize that politics like history is very contingent and things can change on a dime he could fucking keel over tomorrow he's not in good health you know right not to say that it's all over but he's he could die any minute now and part of what we need to prepare are part of the i think the task those of us who are going to be in opposition have to prepare for is like what happens when the opportunity to turn on turning the dime provides itself yeah exactly um And that means, yeah, being flexible and being like, yeah, you know what? Like, there's an opening here. And, yeah, I totally agree.

Yeah. All right. That's our show. The Saints slash election post-mortem. That's our show. If you don't subscribe, please subscribe. Please leave a rating or review on iTunes if you have the, or Apple TV or Apple podcast, whatever it's called. If you are so inclined, you can find the podcast to listen, wherever podcast

are found. And you can reach out to us at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. We have a little bit of feedback, but I'm actually going to save it for the next episode since this was a pretty long one. So we'll set the feedback aside for the next episode. And I'm sure we'll get a lot of feedback for this one. So we'll just, we'll do more feedback. I did not even bother to see what our next movie is going to be for the main feed. So let me look back. And up real quick real quick unclear and present master list oh this will be fun oh this will be fun our next film is the 1997 science fiction thriller men in black directed by bonnie sonnfield and starring will smith and tommy jones after a police chase with an otherworldly being a new york city

cop is recruited as an agent in the top secret organization established to monitor and police alien agent activity on earth the men in black Agent K and new recruit Agent J find themselves in the middle of a deadly plot by intergalactic terrorists who has arrived on Earth to assassinate two bastards from opposing galaxies I love this movie

I'm really looking forward to watching again I think it is a perfectly crafted little film only 90 minutes it's barely 90 minutes so next episode men in black awesome

on the Patreon we have an episode on the 1979 thriller by Paul Schrader, Hardcore, and our next episode of after that will be taxi driver by Martin Scorsese. The Patreon, of course, is where we watch the films of the Cold War

and try to unpack them as political and historical documents. It's $5 a month. You get two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the whole back catalog. So you can sign up for that at patreon.com slash unclear pod. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Our artwork is by Rachel Eck, and for John Gans, I'm Jimal Bowie, and we will see you next time.