“When you use humor to degrade people, you can get away with it—but you’re also doing something that’s completely devastating.” — Rae Lynn Barnes


Donald Trump’s recent retweet of Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as apes was dismissed by his supporters as “just a joke”—another example, they claimed, of liberals lacking a sense of humor. But Princeton historian Rae Lynn Barnes argues that this kind of “humor” is anything but innocent. It draws on a centuries-long white supremacist tradition of dehumanization—one that stretches back to the origins of American mass entertainment itself.

In her book, Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, Barnes traces how Blackface minstrelsy became the quintessential American cultural form—America’s first great entertainment export—shaping music, comedy, performance, and politics from the 19th century through the 20th. Barnes explains how P.T. Barnum helped popularize the grotesque “scientific” spectacle of Black people as the missing link in evolution, and how the Barnum model of hoax-driven mass media foreshadows Trump’s own relationship with controversy, “fake news,” and attention.

Barnes argues that Blackface wasn’t merely a fringe theatrical practice. It was normalized—then institutionalized—through schools, churches, civic clubs, and even the federal government. The result was an intergenerational system for teaching white supremacy through catchy songs, jokes, and seemingly harmless performance.

For Barnes, the most important chapter of the Darkology story is the Black resistance minstrelsy triggered—from Frederick Douglass’s campaign of dignified self-representation to NAACP organizers and Black veterans who fought to remove minstrel shows from schools and public life. Rather than anti-American, Barnes insists that confronting this censored cultural history is the patriotic duty of all Americans. That’s America’s defining story, she says. The pursuit of freedom—and the ongoing struggle to live up to it.

 

Five Takeaways

1. Racist Humor Has Deep Roots: What gets dismissed today as “just a joke” belongs to a centuries-old tradition of dehumanizing caricature that masked cruelty as entertainment.

1. Blackface Was America’s Cultural Foundation: Minstrelsy shaped American comedy, music, performance—and even political campaigning. It was the quintessential American entertainment form.

1. Barnum Invented the Spectacle Model: Hoax-driven media sensation fused with racial pseudo-science and spectacle long before modern political showmanship adopted the formula.

1. White Supremacy Was Taught as Fun: Catchy songs, simple dances, and comic routines created an intergenerational system of racial socialization embedded in schools, churches, and civic clubs.

1. Patriotism Requires Historical Honesty: Confronting this censored past strengthens democracy. America’s defining story is the pursuit of freedom—not the denial of injustice.

 

About the Guest

Rae Lynn Barnes is a historian and professor at Princeton University. She is the author of Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment.

 

References

Previous Keen On episodes mentioned:

1. None

 

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 

Chapters:

 * (00:00) - Introduction
 * (00:25)

Racism as Entertainment: Rae Lynn Barnes on Darkology and American Culture

“If you disestablish Christianity, then Christian leaders need to make Christianity a consumer product. They need to give the American people something they want.” — Matthew Avery Sutton



Over the years, Keen On has done many shows on the relationship between the United States and organized religion. Daniel Williams argued that smart people still believe in God. Jim Wallis warned that a false white gospel is threatening America. But we’ve never quite done a show on Christianity as “the thing in itself”—the force that made America what it is, for better and for worse. That’s what this conversation is about.

Historian Matthew Avery Sutton [https://www.matthew-a-sutton.com/]’s new book, Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity [https://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Land-Christianity-America-Americans/dp/1541646339], is a sweeping argument that Christianity is not just part of the American story—it is the American story. The founders created a godless Constitution not out of principle but pragmatism: they couldn’t pick a winning denomination. The unintended consequence was to open the floodgates. Powerful Protestant groups seized even more power, building an unofficial establishment that shaped everything from westward expansion to the Civil War to the rise of the religious right.

Sutton’s most provocative insight is that disestablishment turned Christianity into a consumer product. Forced to compete for adherents against entertainment, sports, and media, American churches became entrepreneurial, technologically savvy, and relentlessly current—reinventing themselves every generation. That’s what sets American Christianity apart from the rest of the Western world. It also helps explain Trump: a president who uses Christianity in a “crass, overt, and hypocritical” way, but who is doing something that generations before him built the infrastructure to enable. Whether this is Christianity’s last gasp or the prelude to another great revival, Sutton says, nobody knows. But the air we breathe in America is Christian air, and this book explains how it got that way.

 

Five Takeaways



•       The Godless Constitution Backfired: The founders couldn’t pick a winning denomination, so they disestablished religion. It was pragmatic, not ideological. But this opened the floodgates. The Christians who already had the most power—Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians—seized even more, creating an unofficial Protestant establishment that determined who was in and who was out.

•       Christianity Became a Consumer Product: Disestablishment forced churches to compete for adherents. They had to be aggressive, entrepreneurial, current—competing with entertainment, sports, and media. They became masters of new technologies and communication, reinventing Christianity every generation. That’s what sets American Christianity apart from the rest of the world: an unintended consequence of the First Amendment.

•       The Civil War Was Christians Killing Christians: Presbyterians killing Presbyterians, Methodists killing Methodists. It exposed the fragility of the effort to build a Christian utopia when you can’t settle the question of slavery. The Confederates actually wrote God and Jesus Christ into their constitution—they believed the Union had gone off the rails because its Constitution was too godless.

•       The Liberationists Are the Heroes: Indigenous preachers who saw Jesus as liberator, Black Christians, gay rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s, Barack Obama. There have always been alternative visions of Christianity in America. Sutton’s heroes are those who see Jesus as a radical figure who wants to overturn hierarchies and bring equality.

•       This May Be Christianity’s Last Gasp—Or N

A Chosen Land for a Chosen People? Matthew Avery Sutton on How Christianity Made America and America Remade Christianity

“We keep telling you there’s an eviction crisis, so organize with us. Feel free to come into our meetings. Feel free to learn about the lives of people who have been here for a long time.” — Manissa Maharawal



Yesterday we spoke with anthropologist Ida Susser about France’s Yellow Vests—provincial truck drivers, nurses, and teachers who drove hours to Paris, furious about decades of disinvestment in their economy. So does America have its own Yellow Vests? You might find them in (of all places) the San Francisco Bay Area, the setting of a new book by a former student of Susser’s about what happens when the same disruptive economic forces hit an American city.

Anthropologist Manissa Maharawal [https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/manissam.cfm]’s new book, Anti-Eviction: The Fight Against Tech-Led Gentrification in San Francisco [https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Eviction-Gentrification-Francisco-California-Anthropology/dp/0520423356], chronicles the grassroots movement that rose up against big tech during the boom of the 2010s. Like the French Yellow Vests, these were ordinary people from the San Francisco Bay Area—teachers, bartenders, nurses, copy editors—who refused to accept their displacement as inevitable. Like the Yellow Vests, they grew out of no political party or even ideology. The anti-eviction movement emerged from Occupy, just as the gilets jaunes emerged from the roundabouts outside Paris.

Anti-tech activists in San Francisco’s Mission District watched Google buses roll through their neighborhoods and decided to blockade them. But where the Yellow Vests defied the left-right spectrum, Maharawal’s activists have a clear target: the neoliberal market logic that justifies gentrification as the result of “inevitable” market forces. She is sharply critical of the abundance argument advanced by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, arguing this supposedly free market has given the Bay Area a glut of luxury housing and almost no affordable units. The real crisis, she says, isn’t too few homes—it’s too little regulation on the homes we already have.

Fifteen million sit vacant in the United States, Maharawal reminds us. Private equity firms are buying up a quarter of the housing on the market. Even Trump has woken up to this. In a moment of political pessimism on both sides of the Atlantic, both Susser and Maharawal offer evidence that ordinary people can both organize and, at least, shape the political conversation.

 

Five Takeaways



•       Tech Gentrification Is Modern Colonization: Activists in San Francisco’s Mission District compared Google buses to conquistador transportation—rolling through their neighborhoods, stopping at their bus stops, letting in only young white tech workers while longtime residents stood by with their children. San Francisco had become a company town for the tech industry, with the city rolling out a red carpet—including massive tax breaks—while people in surrounding neighborhoods were evicted.

•       The Market Will Never Solve This—And That’s the Point: It’s never going to be profitable enough to build the deeply affordable low-income housing we actually need. That’s why all the housing built in the past fifteen years has been luxury housing. New York City has entire half-empty skyscrapers. San Francisco consistently meets its targets for luxury construction but fails on low-income housing. Market-based solutions alone are insufficient.

•       Rent Control Stabilizes Lives, Not Just Rents: Maharawal grew up in a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City—it’s the reason her family could stay. Rent stabilization gives people a chance to imagine a future somewhere. The real foil isn’t small landlords; it’s private equity firms making billions off rental housing. A statewide rent cap proposal in California didn’t even

American Yellow Vests? Manissa Maharawal on the Fight Against Tech-Led Gentrification in San Francisco

"He's blundered here. He's trying to set policy for the government on the use of AI through a sales contract." — Keith Teare on Dario Amodei



There's only one story this week: Dario Amodei's refusal [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/technology/silicon-valley-anthropic-trump.html] to let the Department of War use Anthropic's best technology for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Silicon Valley rallied behind him. The New York Times covered it. Sam Altman publicly supported him—while quietly cutting his own deal with the administration. But Keith Teare [https://thatwastheweek.com/] thinks Anthropic is wrong.

Keith's argument is simple: vendors don't set policy. If you want to sell to governments, you can't then dictate what they do with your product. That's not your job. And by trying to do it, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. Andrew is more sympathetic. In his view, Amodei is taking a political position against Trump—and in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, that's just the nature of things.

The debate cuts to something deeper: the power shift between corporations and the state. Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals. Meanwhile, Citruni Research [https://citriniresearch.com/] released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy and destroy white-collar jobs. Jack Dorsey just cut 40% of Square's workforce. The stock jumped 25%.

 

Five Takeaways



●      Keith: Amodei Has Blundered: Vendors don't determine the use of what you buy from them. By trying to set policy through a sales contract, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. He hasn't read the Art of War.

●      Andrew: This Is a Political Stand: Amodei isn't naive—he's taking a position against Trump. And in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, the fact that he's willing to take the government on publicly is astonishing. He's kept his job. The investors are fine with it.

●      The Power Has Shifted: Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. What Anthropic has at its fingertips is not something the government has. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals.

●      Silicon Valley Is Split: Right libertarians are small-government supporters of the administration. Left libertarians are bigger-government supporters of welfare. Vinod Khosla is a hybrid—pro-America militarily, fearful of China. Tim Cook does whatever governments tell him. NVIDIA is navigating best.

●      Jack Dorsey Cut 40%—Stock Jumped 25%: Citruni Research released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy. Noah Smith called it a scary bedtime story. But Dorsey just did it for real at Square. If AI succeeds, lots of white-collar jobs go. The social contract between capital and labor is breaking.

 

About the Guest



Keith Teare [https://thatwastheweek.com/] is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and publisher of That Was The Week [https://thatwastheweek.com/], a weekly tech newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and has been a fixture in Silicon Valley for decades.

References



This week's reading:



●      Ezra Klein's interview with Jack Clark [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/opinion/ezra-klein-jack-clark-anthropic.html] — Andrew ca

Is Anthropic Wrong? Andrew vs. Keith on Amodei vs. Trump

"You can't wear a yellow vest on a demonstration anymore because you get arrested as soon as the police see you." — Ida Susser



In November 2018, something strange happened in France. People from the urban periphery—truck drivers, nurses, teachers, plumbers—drove seven or eight hours to Paris wearing yellow safety vests. They weren't students. They weren't union members. They weren't organized by any political party. They were furious about a diesel tax, but really about something deeper: decades of disinvestment, cut services, shuttered bakeries, and a government that had abandoned them.

Anthropologist Ida Susser [https://www.gc.cuny.edu/people/ida-susser] spent years studying this spontaneous movement for her new book, The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQXMZJ8K]. Like so many other observers, Susser sought to identify them on the traditional left/right political spectrum. The uncomfortable truth, she discovered, is that many had never voted. Many didn't care about consistent ideology. They mixed and matched political ideology, bricolage-style. Marine Le Pen tried to claim them. So did Mélenchon on the far left. Neither succeeded. The Yellow Vests didn't want either fascist or communist leaders.

Theoretical comparisons with MAGA and the Tea Party are tempting. We find the same rage, the same economic disinvestment, same feeling of political abandonment. But, for Susser, there's a crucial difference. The Tea Party was mostly an astroturf movement—manufactured by economic and political elites. The Yellow Vests, in contrast, are authentically grassroots. And these days, in Macron's France, you can't even wear a yellow vest on the street without getting arrested. So an incredulous Susser watched a 75-year-old man, innocently going about his business, taken away by police. His crime? That bright vest.

 

Five Takeaways



●      They Weren't Left or Right—At Least Not Initially: The Yellow Vests didn't come with a consistent ideology. Many had never voted. They mixed and matched political ideology, bricolage-style. Marine Le Pen tried to claim them. So did Mélenchon on the far left. Neither succeeded. The Yellow Vests didn't want either fascist or communist leaders.

●      The Diesel Tax Was the Trigger, Not the Cause: The real issue was decades of disinvestment in rural France. Trains cut. Buses cut. Schools moved further away. Bakeries and post offices shuttered. People had to drive everywhere—then the government taxed their diesel. Macron became enemy number one. They called him Jupiter. They called him king.

●      MAGA Comparison Is Apt—But There's a Key Difference: Same rage, same abandoned communities, same sense that elites have forgotten them. But the Tea Party was mostly an astroturf movement—channeled by economic and political elites. The Yellow Vests, in contrast, are genuinely grassroots.

●      They Refuse Leadership on Principle: The Yellow Vests are part of a horizontalist movement going back to the World Social Forum. They write their messages on their backs. They won't name leaders. Susser didn't put a single name in her book—they wouldn't allow it. With surveillance cameras everywhere, it's also safer not to be known.

●      You Can't Wear a Yellow Vest in France Anymore: An incredulous Susser watched a 75-year-old man standing quietly get taken away by police for wearing one. The other man without a vest was left alone. The movement lives on in the pension strikes, in the songs, in the rage. But the vest itself has become a crime.

 

About the Guest



Ida Susser [https://www.gc.cuny.edu/people/ida-susser] is an anthropologist at the City University of New York and the author of

Why You Can't Wear a Yellow Vest Anymore: Ida Susser on the Battle for Democracy in France

"He lied more than I thought he did—and I thought he lied a lot." — Tom Wells on Henry Kissinger



In our Epstein age, everyone seems to have access to everyone else's dirtiest secrets. But half a century ago, in the Watergate era, it was harder to get one's hands on the secret files, phone calls and other private data. But historian Tom Wells [https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tom-Wells/author/B001HCXQS6] has done exactly that with the private phone calls of Henry Kissinger. Wells' new book, The Kissinger Tapes [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK3JZCXN], is based on transcripts of Kissinger's secretly recorded phone conversations—recordings he made primarily for his memoirs and to keep track of what he told to whom.

Wells came to the project as a Kissinger critic but found himself respecting certain things about him: particularly his stamina, the work ethic and political skills. What Wells didn't expect was to discover that Kissinger lied even more than most of us assume. Especially about Vietnam and Cambodia. The most damning revelation is his callousness. Kissinger reveled in body counts, Wells reports. He even supported American planes indiscriminately bombing Vietnam so as to hit something. Anything. Anyone.

So was Kissinger evil? Or was he, to borrow from Arendt's account [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem] of the Adolf Eichmann trial, banal? Whereas Eichmann might have been following orders, Henry Kissinger was following his own career. One was an efficient bureaucrat, the other a supreme networker. Neither had any sensitivity to human suffering.

 

Five Takeaways



●      He Lied More Than Expected: Wells came to the project already critical of Kissinger. But going through the transcripts, he discovered Kissinger lied even more than he'd assumed. About the secret wiretaps of government officials and journalists. About the false reporting system for the Cambodia bombing. He kept saying he didn't know anything, had nothing to do with it. He did.

●      The Callousness Is Stunning: Nixon and Kissinger reveled in body counts. Nixon said, "I don't care about the civilian casualties." During the Laos invasion, he said he didn't even care if they lost 10,000 South Vietnamese troops. Kissinger remarked that if American planes just dropped bombs out the door without aiming, they'd have to hit something. This wasn't indifference. It was gratification.

●      Morality Was Not Part of the Calculation: Kissinger saw most conflicts through the lens of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. The balance of power mattered. The human cost didn't. They secretly armed the Pakistani military during the Bangladesh genocide—between 300,000 and 3 million dead—because they needed Pakistan as a channel to China. The opening to Beijing was more important than the slaughter.

●      He Was Supremely Two-Faced: Kissinger was always deferential to Nixon's face, always addressed him as "Mr. President." Behind his back, he said nasty things. He trashed Secretary of State William Rogers constantly. He and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird were rivals, both master leakers, both devious. They came to respect each other for it.

●      Evil or Banal?: Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil after covering the Eichmann trial. Some apply that framework to Kissinger. But there's a difference. Eichmann was following orders. Kissinger was following his career. One was an efficient bureaucrat. The other a supreme networker. Neither had any sensitivity to human suffering.

 

About the Guest



Tom Wells [https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tom-Wells/author/B001HCXQS6] is a historian and the author of The [https://www.amazon.com/War-Within-Americas-Battle-Vietnam/dp/0595007252]

Was Henry Kissinger Evil? Tom Wells on the Kissinger Tapes

"They are fundamentally bound at the hip, because the Trump age is a conspiratorial age and a backlash against global wealth inequality... Epstein facilitated the rise of Trump." — Jason Pack



Late last year, Disorder [https://www.disorder.show/] podcast host Jason Pack [https://www.jasonpack.org/] came on the show and predicted that Mark Carney would be the "orderer" of 2025 and Jeffrey Epstein would be 2026's "disorderer-in-chief". Pack was uncannily right. Although, as he admits, such prescience gives him no pleasure.

Pack is no conspiracist. He thought QAnon was a hoax; he saw the antisemitism baked into its bizarre theories. But he's come to believe there was a genuine cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein case—not orchestrated by the CIA, but by prosecutors who didn't want to go after powerful people, journalists comfortably ensconced in Epstein's world, and a system where too much wealth has accrued to too narrow a sliver of global elites.

What haunts him most is what the emails reveal about how the world actually works. Favors exchanged for favors in a network of infinite back-scratching. Noam Chomsky (!) and Leon Black busy trading intros for access to Epstein's underworld. The emails reveal completely amoral elites, Pack says, nihilists without even the pretense of moral scruples.

Trump and Epstein, Pack argues, are bound at the hip—not because Trump is guilty of Epstein's crimes, but because both are products of the same angry backlash against global wealth inequality and the collapse of institutional trust. Trump is, in Pack's memorable phrase, "a legal Epstein"—someone who gets things done through connections, who can appear the most elite Wall Street type to bankers and the most common man to coal miners. The evil genius of doppelgängerism. For Pack, the Epstein files may be a tremor before the big one—AI or crypto could bring the real 1789 style earthquake—but they've already destroyed something of priceless value: the illusion that elites are working on the behalf of the people.

 

Five Takeaways



●      The Cover-Up Wasn't a Conspiracy—It Was the System: Cases sat on prosecutors' desks in Florida in 2003 and weren't filed. Journalists were tipped off in the early 2000s and didn't run with it. Pack isn't alleging CIA orchestration—just that too much wealth and power had accrued to too narrow a tranche of global elites, and they were able to cow journalists and prosecutors into silence.

●      Trump and Epstein Are Bound at the Hip: Both are products of the same backlash against global wealth inequality and the collapse of trust since the end of the Cold War. The irony: Trump is himself a member of the elite who benefited from these networks, but his political appeal lies in his promise to dismantle them.

●      "Order" vs. the Law of the Jungle: The world Epstein built wasn't ordered in any traditional sense—it was the logic of the jungle, based on blackmail and compromat. Russian intelligence running a financial sex trafficking influence scheme at the heart of the Anglo-American establishment. When they needed a service, they got the service.

●      The Collapse of Social Trust: Pack contrasts our "low-trust" Anglo-American society with Scandinavian models where people still believe institutions work on their behalf. The Epstein files reveal completely amoral elites who believed in nothing—no religion, no moral code—and had no compunction about harming young women or stealing pensioners' money.

●      A Tremor Before the Big One: Epstein won't bring down neoliberal capitalism. But AI making five families wealthier than the rest of the world combined could. Or crypto going to zero and 300,000 people realizing their life savings are gone. The true significance of the Epstein files is tha

Trump-Epstein: Jason Pack on the Axis of Disorder

"The House hasn't reorganized committee jurisdictions since the early 70s—before the internet existed." — Maya Kornberg



America is stuck stuck stuck stuck. Almost exactly a year ago, I interviewed the Atlantic's Yoni Applebaum [https://www.theatlantic.com/author/yoni-appelbaum/] about Stuck [https://www.amazon.com/Stuck-Privileged-Propertied-American-Opportunity/dp/0593653696], his influential critique of the housing crisis. Now we have another Stuck [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324076453]—this one by Maya Kornberg [https://www.brennancenter.org/experts/maya-kornberg], a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. Only her subtitle is about Congress, not housing: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress.

This is, Kornberg argues, one of the toughest times in modern American history to sit in Congress. Members are forced to spend most of their time making fundraising calls. They face record-high threats against themselves and their families. And the media incentivizes spectacle over policymaking—what she describes as "Kings and Prophets"—where members have the power of the megaphone but not the power to drive legislation.

One fact captures Congressional stuckness: The House hasn't reorganized its committee jurisdictions since the early 1970s—before the internet existed. Half the Senate, then, questioned Mark Zuckerberg because no single committee is responsible for tech. Not even mad libertarians like Elon Musk could make that one up.

Kornberg recently ran for New York City Council in Park Slope [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/nyregion/shahana-hanif-maya-kornberg-council-race.html] and, as a friend of Israel, discovered firsthand how media latches onto the most salacious angle. That said, she's not giving up on Congress. Kornberg is hopeful that a fresh wave of reformers, like the Watergate babies of '74 or the class of 2018, can unstick it. But she is, nonetheless, clear-eyed about what we're facing: a four-alarm fire for our democracy.

 

Five Takeaways



●      This Is the Hardest Moment in Modern History to Be in Congress: Members face astronomical campaign costs, record-high threats and violence against themselves and their families, and a leadership-driven system that has stripped rank-and-file members of real power to drive legislation.

●      Money, Media, and Violence Keep Congress Stuck: Members spend every mealtime making fundraising calls. They pay "dues" to the party just to get on good committees. Media incentivizes spectacle over policymaking. And threats against members have risen year after year.

●      Congress Hasn't Reorganized Since Before the Internet: The House hasn't reorganized committee jurisdictions since the early 1970s. Half the Senate questions Mark Zuckerberg because no single committee is responsible for tech. When everyone's responsible, no one is.

●      More Chairmen Named Mike Than Women Committee Leaders: The pay-to-play system in Congress disadvantages women, communities of color, working-class Americans, and young Americans—anyone who faces greater barriers to fundraising faces greater barriers to power.

●      Waves of Reformers Can Unstick Congress: The Watergate babies of '74, the Republican Revolution of '94, the class of 2018—frustrated reformers have reshaped Congress before. The midterms could bring another wave, if the public frustration is deep enough.

 

About the Guest



Maya Kornberg [https://www.brennancenter.org/experts/maya-kornberg] is a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice [https://www.brennancenter.org/]. She holds a PhD from Oxford and is the author of

Stuck, Stuck, Stuck, Stuck: Maya Kornberg on Congress as a Four-Alarm Fire

"We didn't have to grow up with that." — Ross Greene, on school shootings



One of the most persistent worries these days is that our kids aren't okay. With most of the blame, of course, now being placed on the ubiquity of social media. But psychologist Ross W. Greene [https://www.livesinthebalance.org/about-ross-greene], author of the bestselling Lost at School [https://www.amazon.com/Lost-School-Behavioral-Challenges-Falling/dp/1501101498], has a new book out today called The Kids Who Aren't Okay [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982198397] which doesn't place all the blame on social media. Indeed he argues that if we focus only on the internet, we'll fail to understand the broader psychological struggle that many of our kids face today.

It's not that Greene is in total denial about the destructive nature of social media. But none of his leading reasons for today's crisis in schools are associated with technology. His top three:

●      School shootings

●      High-stakes testing

●      Zero-tolerance policies with a focus on punishment rather than empathy

The new book, Greene impishly promises, has things in it that will offend just about anybody on both the left and right. He calls out teacher unions for failing to support legislation against restraints and seclusions—pinning kids to the ground, dragging them to locked rooms. And he criticizes both parties for bipartisan policies that have made it harder for educators to educate.

The definition of good teaching, Greene insists, is meeting every kid where they're at. Standard testing is exactly the opposite. If you try to treat everybody exactly the same, he warns, you will meet nobody where they're at. We need to get busy teaching kids how to collaborate on solving problems, he says—otherwise they'll turn out like us—only worse.

 

Five Takeaways



●      Social Media Isn't in the Top Three: Greene's top factors making it harder to be a kid: school shootings, high-stakes testing, and zero-tolerance policies. If we focus only on social media, he says, we'll miss the rest of the picture.

●      We're Still Pinning Kids to the Ground: Schools still use restraints and seclusions—pinning kids down, dragging them to locked rooms. Legislation has been available since 2011. The two largest teacher unions have yet to support it.

●      High-Stakes Testing Is the Opposite of Good Teaching: Good teaching means meeting every kid where they're at. Telling every kid they have to get over the same bar by the end of the school year is exactly not what the doctor ordered.

●      Fairness Means Treating Every Kid Differently: If you try to treat everybody exactly the same, you will meet nobody where they're at. Meeting each kid where they are isn't unfair to the rest—it's fair to everyone.

●      This Book Will Offend Just About Anybody: Greene calls out both political parties, teacher unions, and policies on both sides of the aisle. Somebody's got to wade in, he says. Somebody's got to call it.

 

About the Guest



Ross W. Greene, PhD [https://www.livesinthebalance.org/about-ross-greene] is the author of Lost at School [https://www.amazon.com/Lost-School-Behavioral-Challenges-Falling/dp/1501101498] and The Explosive Child [https://www.amazon.com/Explosive-Child-Understanding-Frustrated-Chronically/dp/0063092468]. He is the founder of the nonprofit Lives in the Balance [https://www.livesinthebalance.org/] and the inventor of the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions approach. He has worked with nearly 3,000 kids and their caregivers.

References



Books mentioned:



<

No, It's Not Only Social Media: Ross Greene on Why Our Kids Aren't Okay

"I wake up at 3 AM, check my phone to see what fresh hell has come out, and it's usually two words: 'Trump threatens.'" — Peter Bale



We're reversing the lens today. Rather than examining America from the inside, we're peering at it from the outside in—from New Zealand, at the bottom of the world. Peter Bale [https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterbale/] is a longtime media executive who's had senior positions at CNN, Reuters, and News Corp. He's now back in his native New Zealand, waking up at 3 AM to check his phone. The news, he says, is usually two words: "Trump threatens."

Much of our conversation centers on the former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacinda_Ardern]. She led New Zealand's COVID response, Anthony Fauci style, with daily press conferences and a scientific mastery of the facts. An estimated 20,000 lives were saved. But she also became the target of profound misogyny and physical threats that no New Zealand Prime Minister had ever experienced. She now lives in Boston—teaching at Harvard's Shorenstein Center [https://shorensteincenter.org/]—because she can't safely live in her own country.

Bale describes a dark MAGA-style underbelly in New Zealand that surprised him when he returned after 50 years abroad. Christian nationalists, anti-Maori sentiment, "Christchurch skinheads." US platforms—especially X—have given permission to speak in ways that would have been unacceptable. When the President uses that rhetoric, Bale notes, the permission for personal calumny is quadrupled.

We also discuss the Epstein files [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein] (the media failed to connect the dots), Will Lewis's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Lewis_(journalist)] destruction of the Washington Post ("utterly reprehensible"), and whether America is finished. Bale's answer: "I don't think America is ever done. Every time people perceive it to be done, it has a political or economic renewal." The question is who comes after Trump—Vance or somebody even more threatening—and who will keep waking Peter Bale at 3 AM.

 

Five Takeaways



●      The View from 18,000 Miles Is Punch-Drunk: Bale wakes at 3 AM to check his phone. The news is usually two words: "Trump threatens." Small countries like New Zealand depend on the international rule of law. When that breaks down, they feel it acutely.

●      Jacinda Ardern Became New Zealand's Fauci: She led the COVID response with daily press conferences and saved an estimated 20,000 lives. But she became the target of profound misogyny and physical threats. She now lives in Boston because she can't safely live in New Zealand.

●      "They Are Us" Was the Right Three Words: After an Australian livestreamed himself killing 51 Muslims in Christchurch, Ardern flew there immediately, wore a head covering, and said of the victims: "They are us." It hung in the air as exactly what needed to be said.

●      Trumpism Has Gone International: New Zealand has its own dark underbelly—Christian nationalists, anti-Maori sentiment, "Christchurch skinheads." US platforms have given permission to speak in ways that would have been unacceptable. When the President uses that rhetoric, the permission is quadrupled.

●      America Is Never Done: Every time people perceive it to be finished, it has a political or economic renewal. Its ability to rebuild itself constantly is astounding. The question is who comes after Trump—Vance or somebody worse.

 

About the Guest



Peter Bale [https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterbale/] is a longtime media executive based in New Zealand. He has held senior positions at CNN, Reuters, News Corp, and the Center for Public Integrity. He ran

Fresh Hell at 3 AM: Peter Bale on the View of America From Down Under

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