Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Liberals vs MAGA | Steven Bonnell aka Destiny
373 Plays7 months ago
Join us for a discussion with Steven Bonnell, also known as Destiny, streamer and commentator, as we explore the challenges of battling the rise of MAGA extremism. Topics covered include:
- What’s the difference between liberalism and leftism in today’s political climate?
- Where do advocates for socialism go wrong, and what transformational ideas do liberals offer?
- How deep does Russian influence go in right-wing media, and what role does it play in MAGA narratives?
- How should liberals counter MAGA and pull people away from political extremes?
- What will the political landscape look like post-Trump?
Join Project Liberal founder Joshua Eakle and steering committee member Micah Erfan of Project Liberal for a deep dive into the ideological and political battles shaping America’s future.
Follow Destiny at https://www.destiny.gg/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Project Liberal Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome everyone to the latest episode of the project liberal podcast. My name is Josh Eckle. I am your host, uh, the president of project liberal. I'm joined today by Micah Erfan from our steering committee. Hello, Micah. Hey guys. Thanks for taking the time to join me. And today we're joined by somebody who I'm a huge fan of who I've been watching for years. Um, who, uh, who is it? He's a commentator. He's a streamer. Steven Vanell, AKA destiny, destiny. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
Defining Liberalism and Progressive Ideologies
00:00:30
Speaker
Absolutely. like So today we wanted to talk about a variety of topics, many of which that you've talked about publicly. I was going to maybe kick us off with just some of the summaries then hand it over to Micah to maybe drill into the specifics. So we want to talk a little bit about leftism versus liberalism, the difference between those two ideologies. We want to talk a bit about some of the stuff that came out of the tenant indictment, Russian influence in our elections, and then close it off with kind of the downfall of the Republican Party January 6th and kind of the trajectory right now of the American right. But to kick us off, I was gonna hand it off to Micah to maybe frame things and then we can kind of go into the conversation. Right. So a lot of the work that we do at Project Liberal is about trying to recapture the liberal identity of the United States. ah We feel like it's been forgotten and there's a lot of a conflation between liberalism and progressivism. So the first question we had for you is what does liberalism mean to you and how is it differentiated from leftist ideologies?
00:01:21
Speaker
I guess liberalism is like very broadly like kind of, um oh god, the the end the truth is the answer to that question really depends on who I'm talking to. But I mean I would say that a broad defense of liberalism is a broad defense of classical liberal values, um like things like freedom of speech, right to private property, you know democracy. um These types of things I think are very, very broadly like your defenses of of liberalism. Obviously these these play out a little bit differently depending on which country you're in.
00:01:47
Speaker
um I would think that the difference between liberalism and leftists probably have a lot to do with your tolerance for different opinions in a liberal society. You tend to tolerate a pretty wide array of different political opinions. I think in anti-liberal societies or illiberal societies, like in a leftist or like a communist or socialist society, oftentimes these might be, I guess, like Vietnam or China, where it's a single political party and no alternatives are allowed.
00:02:10
Speaker
Um, the deployment of private capital is either explicitly banned or it's like heavily regulated or controlled by the government. Um, the government might have ownership or say, yeah in terms of like how things are actually, you know, ran itself, um, like ownership and businesses and then saying how those businesses are run.
Liberalism's Role in Society
00:02:25
Speaker
Um, but I would say on a very broad level, I would say that these are the big differences, but then obviously the specifics can play out differently depending on what we're talking about. Yeah. Right. It's like individual freedoms, skepticism of using coercive force against others.
00:02:36
Speaker
Of course, it's not completely dogmatic and extreme, ah but that's what's not dogmatic or extreme. ah ah You know, liberals are not completely dogmatic. or I am dogmatic and we should be more dogmatic about liberalism. Um, I think we need to be way more ardent in defending liberalism and in espousing the importance of liberalism, that the good things that liberalism has done. Um, and we need to be way less tolerant of the fucking insane people, especially in this country, but around the world that are incredibly illiberal and want to threaten or attack, I guess like kind of that liberal order.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'll actually chime in on that because that's one of the things that I've appreciated about the way you approach these conversations. Now, I typically don't maybe go as dogmatic as you might do. ah You might have gone in some ways, but i'll I'll throw it this way. I feel like right now the ah the values among young people are like we have really radical like Nazi, basically Nazism on the on the ascendant. We have really radical socialism on the ascendant.
00:03:29
Speaker
And it feels to me like liberals kind of have this very, I don't know, they they tend to kind of approach things in a very, a lot of the times in a very academic way or in a very, ah I don't know, so a skeptical way. And they have a hard time like really fighting for their values. And obviously liberalism is too is the reason why society has been as prosperous and free as it's been. It's like the dominant force in American society. I feel like liberals kind of have forgotten how to argue in favor of their values.
00:03:55
Speaker
um Yeah, I think liberalism is really good at kind of hosting its own criticisms, which is fine. It's also good at absorbing its own criticisms too. But yeah, I think sometimes we kind of forget that liberalism is a good thing and it's okay to be proud of your country and be proud of your political organization and you don't have to hate your country and hate yourself and everything all the time. So yeah.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think a lot of liberals are like kind of caught in this whole evidence-basedism, pragmatism, kind of this moderate politics. And they don't talk about kind of the informing values, which kind of structure our view of the world. And i mean you know this very well. Politics is not based on an array of specific policy views. It's based on certain broad narratives. right The right wingers talk about how the immigrants are destroying us, and the foreign countries are taking advantage of us, and the deep state. And the left talks about,
00:04:37
Speaker
ah the ruling capitalist class, which is to blame for at least a lot of our problems. And like, I feel like it's so important for us to tell um our own story of politics. Now, this is on the agenda, but but I am curious, what would you say like the most simple liberal story of politics would look like?
00:04:54
Speaker
Oh, the liberals beat the Nazis and the Soviets in the Cold War. Okay. Um, I don't know. I think that liberalism has done a really good job at becoming this kind of world culture and it's this thing that can absorb and adapt to so many different people, so many different ideas, so many different types of businesses, um, so many different cultures. Like in a way, liberalism has kind of become so ubiquitous ah across the world that it's, it's almost like disappeared, right? And that people can't see it and then they take for granted, I think some of the benefits of it.
00:05:24
Speaker
But um I remember arguing you know in the Fresh & Fit studio that you know as much as you guys are simping for you know the the the Emiratis or or whatever other weird country you want to simp for, you know like there's a Haitian immigrant or a descendant of Haitian immigrants, I'm a descendant of Cuban immigrants, Myron's descendant of Sudanese immigrants. like All of us are here in a studio you know on Miami Beach like shouting at each other on the internet, ah you know thanks to an American business that is hosting all of this. like This is a really unique, cool, special thing that I'm not sure if at many other points in human history, you know, something like this or the opportunities like this have existed. And this is in part due to, or not in part, but but almost solely due to liberal values or liberal ideas.
00:06:03
Speaker
Well said. So, okay, so then let me dig in a little bit to the broader topic around liberalism versus leftism. So that is the thing that we have, you know, we often combat is the kind of confusion between those things. I think, you know, I've done a lot of travel overseas and it seems to me like liberalism, at least in Europe, has a distinct identity, right? It's it's distinctly different than these like far left ideologies, but there's all these kind of confusion around that. so We talked about how socialism and kind of these radical ideas can kind of get ascended among young people like do you feel like Like give me thoughts on maybe where you feel like socialists might go wrong And where they are absolutely in contra and contradiction with liberal values
00:06:44
Speaker
um the demon is Narratively, I would say it's like the demonization of wealth and success, um and the demonization of every liberal country, that like they're the most racist, they're the most evil, and they have to be criticized more than anybody else, can all this or whatever. I think that that's really bad on ah on kind of a narrative level.
00:07:03
Speaker
I think on a policy level, um depend it depends really on how far left you go because you get, you know, from tankies that would, you know, do a a single party rule and killing everybody that disagrees all the way up to kind of like fake socialists like, um like Vosch, I think calls himself like a market socialist where they basically just want like, socialists yeah yeah, or they just want like a little bit more like welfare, which is not really socialism. But I i guess today kind of people say that. um On a policy level, I think people who want to ban private capital, people who want to ban private ownership, people who want to ban you know the ability for companies to exist independent of the government, um or ban you know people's rights to to own capital, I think that that's a pretty stark policy contradiction. yeah
00:07:43
Speaker
Right. And I think there's like their meta-narrative is basically that the bourgeoisie, the ruling class is the cause of all of our problems. And they're the thing that leads to the government making bad decisions. And so every time you point to the government to maybe being incompetent or bad at doing something, they say, well, that's because capitalists exist. I think it's, it's such an interesting talking point because I feel like we have so many examples where that's not the case, right? Like like with housing, NIMBYs, they're local, they're usually old ladies.
00:08:08
Speaker
right they're It's the developers that are on the opposite side. um like you You might know, do you know the Jones and Dredge Act? I mean, these terrible protectionist measures we have all over the place, um which increase shipping costs, they destroy the economy of Puerto Rico, raise costs for Hawaiian families by thousands of dollars. And it hurts most capitalists, right? um Do you think that there's a there is a way we can make kind of these more wonky ideas that a lot of like liberal academics have talked about more accessible to people?
00:08:39
Speaker
Um, maybe my mind's not there at all right now. Unfortunately, I think the number one issue, I think it's like an existential threat that we're facing right now are people like Candace Owens and Tim Poole. I think that our, we exist in completely and fundamentally separate realities right now. We can't even begin to have conversations about policy because any conversation about a policy starts with a realization of what's actually happening around you and Half of this country right now, at least, lives in a totally different world. So how do you even begin to have that conversation? How can I talk to you about reforms, maybe, for the FDA when you believe that the FDA is controlled by Fauci and Bill Gates to do gain-of-function research to shove you know bad vaccines into your children and make them autistic?
Political Reforms and Challenges
00:09:13
Speaker
like they like We can't have a conversation. there's There's no talking to be done there. Right.
00:09:17
Speaker
do i Yeah, go for it, Micah, go for it. Okay, a connection point to this is, um yeah you talk about like how our politics is fundamentally broken. You see all these right-wing extremists ah advance and win their primaries and give be given this huge platform, and of course the entire Republican party operates.
00:09:34
Speaker
ah Echoes their narratives like Trump made the entire Republican Party protectionist and nationalist and populist ah Since 2016 do you think that there's a certain series of in institutional reforms? Maybe like changing our voting system changing our primary system ah Maybe changing campaign finance laws ah that we need to pursue to maybe structurally fix the brokenness at the heart of our politics um There are probably some things I would be in favor of, some reforms. so The issue I think sometimes is people, like you can't make any system foolproof. At the end of the day, you know dictatorships can have bad dictators, democracies can have bad voters. ah If your population is fucked, no amount of structural reform is going to save you from from that fuckatness.
00:10:16
Speaker
um There are some things I think that would help I feel I'm a big fan of Supreme Court term limits just because it makes it so the um Like one president gets one Supreme Court nomination or something or one term is one nomination. I think that would be really healthy um There's probably other things I would see done maybe like that that interstate um Compact for voting or whatever the fuck they call it the idea that the popular vote maybe might determine the president That might be probably something I'd be okay with ah maybe adding more representatives to the house I think are things I'd be okay with and I think right now there's way too much like government institutional DEI for conservatives and I think most of that needs to be stripped the fuck away immediately. um They've abused it and and basically shit on that ah good faith that that institutional advantage they've had for way too long and I think they need to pay more political prices for how unpopular and insane they are. So I think that a good place to start is by getting rid of all of the ah basically like affirmative action that they have in and the House of Representatives and with the electoral college and they can keep the Senate is fine.
00:11:11
Speaker
The thing that I'm concerned about, and I couldn't agree more with many of the things that you laid out, the thing that really concerns me goes back to what you discussed about truth, because there's no real way we're going to achieve broad-based, serious systematic reforms to our democratic systems until we can kind of build consensus around those things. And when we're operating in two different realities, like two different Not only political realities, but like truth. we have completely like As you mentioned, Tim Pool, the reality they're living in is completely based on falsehoods. Do you think there's any way to tackle that? i mean Before you joined the studio, we were talking about this idea of like AI community notes. right things like you know Is there any way that you think, institutionally, we can pull ourselves back to truth? i mean Are we just going to be living in a post-truth world?
00:11:56
Speaker
I mean, institutionally, it's really hard. This is more of a cultural thing. But one of the scary things is now one of the like one of the biggest bad actors that has their fingers on the cultural levers is Elon Musk, who is also anti-liberal and lives in an insane fucking fantasy world. And now he controls one of the largest social media platforms on the Internet for news. um There is no way to institutionally get around that. So yeah, we haven't really seen like a social media company.
00:12:20
Speaker
actually be what conservatives accused them of being before, which is when you have a huge social media company that's controlled by an avowed outward partisan who is openly and blatantly supporting one candidate um and then amplifying voices that are attacking one political party on a platform like like we've seen with Elon and and X.
00:12:38
Speaker
Right, right. And it's a real challenge too, especially it looks like Mark Zuckerberg ah might be joining him in the crazy house. Who knows ah whether we're freaking out a little bit prematurely. ah But it it does seem to me that like there probably has to be some sort of institutional answer here. I mean, it seems like ah Twitter is a particularly bad example, but our social media algorithms are amplifying the problem. And I know a lot of people have called for social media regulation. I imagine we'd all agree that I'm not very optimistic about its prospects.
00:13:05
Speaker
I suppose i'm I'm confident in the free market ah to to offer alternative social media arrangements. And maybe that's ah that's an example of the liberal thought process where um I think very frequently people look to the government to save them. They look at a problem of a free society and they say, the government needs to solve this. And often liberals have said, well, why can't we form our own social institutions that could solve this problem ourselves? Once I ate a piece of bread.
00:13:38
Speaker
You were supposed to chime in with something that's so awkward. Thinking that the free market will solve the misinformation problem, I think is akin to thinking that like socialism or communism can do like a human economy and solve every problem.
00:13:51
Speaker
At the end of the day, firms optimize for revenue, and revenue is usually by delivering a product that people want, and people have this huge disconnect. They have this big bad assumption that human beings are like these truth-desiring, truth-seeking creatures, and we're not. We just like things that usually make us feel good or provide us some level of comfort.
00:14:10
Speaker
or things that can reinforce a narrative or whatever, or that that does those the prior to things I mentioned. um The free market will only deliver systems that are increasingly good at that. The idea that expecting the free market to deliver some type of like system that prioritizes truth or fact is just, there's no reason why it should. It doesn't happen. and like and it wanted but and Yeah, which they don't, which they clearly don't. So yeah, unfortunately.
00:14:33
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I have had the exact same thought that you, and it's actually very concerning for me because when I look at, I think you're actually touching on something that I don't have an answer to whatsoever. When you're looking at like what market incentives are pulling people to, they're pulling people towards misinformation, right? And so in this case,
00:14:49
Speaker
you know A liberal solution is not apparent to me. I know that there we there is likely a solution to this, and we need to find a solution. Otherwise, we're going to be fucked as a society and a civilization. But I don't necessarily know exactly what that solution is. um And you know I do think anecdotally that there could be... market-based solutions if we're dealing with good actors. like as we mentioned like they you know as Despite the fact that Elon Musk is incredibly illiberal, the Community Notes function, I think, has actually been a pretty damn good function. and he's gotten fact checkcked a couple times
00:15:22
Speaker
um now ah The answer is not clear to me. Well, let me have it with some— The problem, even, is just on that. The issue, though, is that because conservatives are so divorced from reality at this point, they are able to effectively incorporate every criticism as a furtherance of the the conspiracy that they live in.
00:15:39
Speaker
Like, if you go to a conservative and you talk to them and say, wait, well, I know this is bullshit, then you're like, how do you know this is bullshit? It's like, well, it was literally fact check. The fact checkers, yeah those are all liberal bias. You know Snopes is just liberal bias, right? You know fact check, that's like a liberal tool. That's like a liberal bias. Like, they they don't believe things called fact checking anymore. They don't believe in that. They have their own world. I don't know how they feel. It's unfortunate. All radical ideologies seem to do the same thing. I mean, Marxist-Leninists talk about ah hegemony, capitalist hegemony, which makes the Soviet Union look bad.
00:16:07
Speaker
um I think, I mean, ultimately, it's a problem that has to be solved. It doesn't seem like the government will solve it. It seems like in order for the government to solve it, the public would have to be convinced to demand the government solvent, which seems also very unlikely itself.
Social Media and Misinformation
00:16:20
Speaker
Now, I'm optimistic about something called the Fed averse. Right now, social media is naturally monopolistic because network effects Why do I not leave Twitter? Because all my friends are on Twitter. I don't lose my followers, right? But I don't like how Twitter is. Threads sort of maybe join this. It's kind of like what Mastodon is. Social media could become a user interface that allows you to connect to something bigger, just like Chrome allows you to connect to the internet. And that can allow people to freely change social media sites while carrying their followers with them and still be under seatposts on other sites.
00:16:51
Speaker
um Does that solve every problem? No, because people would still have to move to the better platforms. But I'm somewhat optimistic about that prospect. Do you think that's even possible that we could convince people to like demand better and move to better kinds of social media firms?
00:17:05
Speaker
No, because people I think that one of the big problems you have right now is people have this assumption that every single person is the same in terms of their engagement with reality right now. So any time you and push in a direction where you're punishing like a like a bad thing ah that's not tied inherently to a political party, conservatives will always accuse you of being heavily biased and they won't participate.
00:17:28
Speaker
like If you try to say, OK, guys, for today, we're just going to make it so that on this platform, you're not allowed to say any verifiably untrue statements about whatever topic. Conservatives are all going to rise up and say, you're biased because they're going to be the ones getting hit the most. And they're just going to cry about it. They're going to say, oh, this is all liberal bias. right We can't say that that fucking Fauci made $700 billion dollars off the vaccine that you know killed my child. like Fuck you. Obviously, this is a liberal platform. right And you're like, oh, well, fuck us, I guess.
00:17:53
Speaker
And then you could play into the what the media unfortunately has done, even the left has done over the past eight years, um like the liberal media, in that you try to hold both sides accountable like they're the same, but then that just lets conservatives be increasingly delusional because they don't actually give a fuck about any criticisms coming from the left ever um because they they they're authoritarians, right? So why the fuck would you care about the people that you want to subject? Right. Um, so you, so nothing that you say matters to them. And then when you shut on the left, the left obviously cares, right? Like the conservative media can attack Trump all day. Trump's never stepping down because the liberal media attack Biden, Biden stepped down in, in how long was it after the debate a week or two? Like, yeah. So it's like, there's not even close to the, yeah, it's it's just, you can't live in worlds where you have such dramatically different standards. It's not functional and there's no moral and there's no good and there's no effective way to navigate that world. So the first thing you have to do is aggressively
00:18:38
Speaker
even up the standards because you can't exist in a world where your opponent is allowed to fart in an elevator next to you and then tell you that you did it. Like you can't live in that world. What does it look like to up the standards? When you say that, are you mean like really be radical, like, be like call out the bullshit unabashedly? Is that kind of the model that you're, you're saying? Like, yeah, there needs to be more unabashed. Yeah. Like hardcore, like when you're in a conversation with a conservative, like they need to admit some things up fucking front for me right now. Obviously it's the J six stuff, but it should be more too. Like, Hey, didn't you say we were all supposed to have a vaccine passports right now? Oh, Hey, didn't you say that COVID was a giant hoax? Oh, Hey, didn't you say that there was supposed to be massive like deaths from vaccine injuries or how, Oh, Hey, didn't you say that we were going to like, uh, give all of our money to Ukraine and go bankrupt or, Oh, Hey, weren't we supposed to have communism after eight years
Russian Influence and Authoritarian Threats
00:19:21
Speaker
of Obama? Hey, weren't we supposed to have communism after four years of Biden or Hey, didn't you say the DOJ was corrupt? Why do we have a conviction? on Hunter Biden. Why do we have um the New York mayor or whatever? Hey, there's no accountability for any of these things, ever. Meanwhile, these guys will say, what about when that guy wiped Hillary's email server?
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I think you're completely correct. um Okay, well then why don't we, because I do want to talk a bit about the left, but actually one of the things I'll say is that i I actually just, you know, went on a show with some social Democrats and talked to them about this thing. I think in this political moment, despite the issues that liberals might have with the left, there's a, we're in a moment right now where we need to kind of fight to defend liberal institutions. Oh, absolutely. So I think absolutely the biggest threat to liberal institutions right now is MAG authoritarianism, it's dominating the Republican Party.
00:20:06
Speaker
It's a big issue. I do want to come back to that, but maybe we could talk a bit about Tenet and about Russian influence because part of, let me just frame this a little bit for you, Steven, so that I can kind of i fill you in a little like of where I'm coming from. I was kind of spent like 10 years in the liber the libertarian movement, okay? There have been articles that have come out and I've since, I don't use the word libertarian anymore. I use the word classical liberal. I just use the word liberal actually to define my viewpoint. i think I watched the libertarian movement get like totally co-opted by like pro-maga groups a couple years ago. I have read articles ah that have that have alleged that like Ron Paul's entire 2012 campaign was like astroturf by Russia. And then now we've got all these stories about ah the DOJ, not a stories, this indictment, this tenant indictment from the DOJ basically saying that Lauren Chen was like giving money from the Russian government in order to boost Russian narratives. So how much do you think this these MAGA narratives are like astroturfed and this Red Bull movement is astroturfed and like just do you have any like broad thoughts on that on like why why it's so ascendant right now in society?
00:21:13
Speaker
People need to stop seeing these as dichotomies and they need to see them as like like um multiplicative or additive or whatever, right? People sometimes will come in and they'll say, is that movement astroturfed or is that like legitimate belief? No, no, no, no, no. You astroturf to create the legitimate belief. sure Both things are happening simultaneously. I think that a lot of the MAGA stuff especially, I mean, like you look like the, um the trans boxer shit or any of the fucking, any, basically any of like big culture wars thing, which we saw from the molar diamonds from the Russian investigation where molar showed by the way that Trump's campaign was colluding with people in Russia. Um, you saw that Uh, how Russia operates these accounts, how they push on these social issues in order to divide us on these like particular topics. A lot of it can be astroturfed and pushed, but then once it's astroturfed, um, conservatives, since their mind is so ripe for intellectual rape, okay. Since you can mind fuck them so easily, they take to these narratives and then they legitimately go out into the world and then they propagate it, you know, like it was told to them by their great, great, great grandfather. Um, so yeah, I think a lot of it begins astroturfed, but conservatives are just so easy to yank the chain on and then they'll chase it like a cat going after a laser pointer down the hallway.
00:22:20
Speaker
ah They'll just run as as hard as fast as they can for this. So it matters might might have started off astroturf, but a lot of it is legitimate now. Yeah
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's definitely correct. I mean, you see like all these like right wing nationalist populist groups, which came about. And like very quickly, you've seen like, look at TP USA, what's their catchphrase, free markets, limited government, like individual liberty? Like, is that visible in any of the rhetoric? I don't know if it was before, but it certainly isn't now. Journal never even says the words free markets anymore. He talks about tariffs. And he talks about all these social cultural issues. And it seems like, you know,
00:22:55
Speaker
ah The Trump movement created just a couple talking heads, like Tucker Carlson, and very quickly all these people just flipped on a dime. You see Vivek Ramaswamy trying to, um I think, ah tie the bow and and connect it. he says And J.D. Vance has the same stuff, which is, um you know, whenever times are good, yeah, we can have freedom, but times are bad now. And so now now we we can't afford actually all this freedom stuff. We need the state to support us in this war, you know, fight for our very existence.
00:23:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's super cringe that the it's like when you think of like history books and you read it You're like, how do these fucking idiots like fall for Hitler like lol? How stupid must the Germans have been and then like you look at Donald Trump and he's like the media is the enemy of the people and it's like oh Like it's like it's like the most fashy 101 type of state but you could ever make like Jesus That's a pretty extreme thing for the president of the United States to say I'm gonna sue all the media so they can't criticize me Okay, that's kind of weird. Yeah, it's just it's it's it's beyond like ridicule. Yeah, I Yeah, no, I agree. And it's it's honestly really shocking to me to watch. I mean, I guess it's it's very disturbing to me to watch the mainstreaming of authoritarianism and then just see it regurgitated. The thing that blows me away is like I see it regurgitated to your point about things being astroturf, like them breaking into the national consciousness and like being part of just everyday discourse for decades. Like I have family members I interact with that are repeating these narratives that are completely like
00:24:18
Speaker
well-meaning people that just read these things online, like they get caught into these kind of like pipelines and then it is just part of the dominant discourse. And I've heard these things for years and they get more and more and more and more radical and more and more and more authoritarian. It's very, very concerning.
00:24:34
Speaker
um Do you do you feel like a lot of this stuff on the right? Like I mean the engagement numbers that these people are getting is crazy um Do you think that I mean this I I have an assumption about this I could assume where you might go with this But like this Russian money this whole nexus of Russian money the I mean this has got to be a bigger Machine and a bigger infrastructure than what's come out with this DOJ and a diet Well it is didn't they say in another release in that and the and the was it an FBI? Not a report not an affidavit Well, they put out something, but they said there were like 600 influencer operations in the U.S. that they'd identified up to that point, right, where they haven't named them yet. So, yeah, I mean, that's it's not surprising at all, but... Okay. um Why don't we talk about January 6th? Mike, you got something to comment on? Yeah, let's let's transition to January 6th. I think it's directly related to this. um you Speaking of relatives, talking to so many people um that refuse to acknowledge that Trump tried to overturn the last election.
00:25:30
Speaker
or alternatively refuse to acknowledge um that it's very clear it was not stolen. like What would you say, like what is your go-to pitch whenever you speak to like kind of that standard, like well-meaning family member who just doesn't get it? Catch you on the other side of the Civil War.
00:25:49
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. I mean, like your it's it's delusional. Yeah. The fact that like you want the left to take ownership over like some random fucking pet project that or some, you know, trans person who shouldn't have been trans and you guys are responsible for this and blah, blah. But they won't, they won't even acknowledge like the reality of what's happened in past events is like, this is fucking, it's, it's a joke. It's an actual fucking joke.
00:26:11
Speaker
Right. Right. I mean, I suppose the evidence is just in the court cases. Right. I mean, that's that's what I always point to. It's like, well, you know, you lose every they come out like every week and they're like, undeniable evidence is yeah, the evidence. The problem is that none of them believe this. Don't stop. Stop fucking doing that. Don't do that. They're doing it and Pisco does it and everybody does it. Stop pretending like they're making real arguments. They're not. It's that Voltaire quote or whatever where they delight in like playful argument. They don't give a fuck about any of this. right a conservative will will A conservative will tell you, oh, you can indict a ham sandwich. okay Oh, a conviction? Yeah, well, the courts are rigged. And then they'll come out and they'll show you a fucking affidavit from some state court in a case that wasn't even fucking filed and they'll pretend it's as good as gold. okay They don't give a fuck about the standards for any of this shit.
00:26:54
Speaker
Oh, is it conviction? Was it bad? ah Well, I don't know. Was my guy convicted or was their guy convicted? Oh, well, when they convict their guys, that Hunter Biden case, ah that was 100% good that they convicted him. I'm glad all the Trump ones, the Trump ones, though, those are totally fucking phony and bullshit and bogus. The Trump impeachment is is bullshit. I can't even believe they would try that. The Biden impeachment is good. I can't believe the House is voting on it. It's evidence of corruption. Like it's there's no consistency whatsoever. Well, there is. I'm so sorry. I fucking lied because I'm an idiot.
00:27:21
Speaker
There is consistency. The consistency is just, if it's on Trump's side, it's always good. And if it supports Trump, it's always good. And if it's against Trump, it's always bad. And if it's not on his side, it's always bad. That's the only consistency. Don't pretend, don't ever play into the conservative delusion that there's any other type of argument that they're proffering there because they never are. It's always bullshit. Sorry. well No, one of the things that Michael was touching on, because I don't know, part of me feels like this is going to be one, like a lot of this stuff is one in a
Navigating Political Identities
00:27:48
Speaker
decentralized way. Like, don't get me wrong, like i ah your your narrative on when you're going after these influencers, these people that have mega, mega platforms, like that's absolutely the way I think you should go for it. I'm thinking of like when I'm talking to like my dad or like a friend of mine, like, you know, they don't really have a deep or rich understanding of all the nuance here.
00:28:07
Speaker
And I feel like if you can kind of put some really clear evidence in front of them and say, look, this is bullshit, the thing that you just watched on TikTok the other day, and here's some court cases that you can look at or some evidence, I think those people could be won over. And and that's really what I'm curious for you. I mean, for me, it's like the false, the the fake electors scheme, I think, is like the clearest example of Trump trying to subvert the election. But I'm curious just to like, in those types of conversations, you feel like there's just any piece of information that if you put in front of somebody that is able to be moved.
00:28:37
Speaker
It's just super clear. i Um, I'm in the okay. I'm in the influencer world. So I'm like arguing people online So my takes are a lot more doomer than what a normal person should be. I'm so sorry I think that if you can get if you can get in front of a person and show them um People like Candace Jones and temple should legitimately be stripped of their citizenship and deported to a fucking island I'm not joking. I'm not joking when I say that um Joe Rogan. I'm like 50-50 on okay, but the um would If you can get enough evidence and it has to be an abundance of a lot of evidence in front of a person and and Like have an open mind and not be combative and you're friendly and like you have a whole last conversation Most the problem is is it's not the fault necessarily of most conservatives, right? Are you guys both atheists? Agnostic agnostic atheist. Yeah, if if you heard God talking to you in your head right now Would you assume that it was really God or would you assume that you're like going crazy?
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, i even if I was a Christian, I would not assume that God was just talking to me. Yeah, that's like it's an issue. It's it's actually really strong. show I'm a big atheist, um but it's a really strong challenge to an atheist. It's like, Oh, okay. You believe in God, right? It's like, yeah, of course I would have some fucking evidence for it. Okay. Well, let's say that God comes down and appears in front of me and talks to you. Do you believe in God now? Well, no, I actually, I probably assume I'm going insane. Okay. Well, what if your friend comes in and he's talking to your friend and I'm like, what's probably more likely that I'm dreaming that what, that God actually comes up, right?
00:29:53
Speaker
Well, at some point you realize, okay, holy fuck, I'm actually so into this like materialist, physicalist, atheist world. I don't know if I actually could ever be shown evidence of God existing. yeah And the issue with conservatives is they built up such an epistemically powerful echo chamber that like, okay, we'll look at these court docs. Well, the courts, they're rigged. Okay. Well, what about when like the people in Congress, really politicians, congressmen? Okay. Well, even people like McCarthy, he's a rhino now. We don't trust him anymore. yeah Okay. Well, what about like when even the Supreme Court rolled the courts, the ones that we even hear, Texas v. Pennsylvania, and they didn't even look into the evidence. Trump's already told me that those are corrupt. Okay. Well, fuck like you're fucked. like every Depending on how strong they're in it, like every single evidence piece you show them is always furthering whatever thing they believe in. There's nothing, there's no way to pull them out. You can't show them or do anything. They're trapped, but they are that you can, you can pull them out. You just have to try harder. I'm doomer. I'm sorry. I'm online. Okay. i don't know it's a good but I understand why you would be in that mindset. I don't blame you for that at all. i'm the I'm from the Deep South, so I'm surrounded by Trump supporters all the time. I've got some of them in my family, right? So I'm thinking about like, how do you make those compelling narratives that can maybe pull those people away? And Micah, you may want to chime in on this.
00:30:59
Speaker
One of the things that, one of the groups that I really appreciate right now is Sarah Longwell from the Bulwark and the work that the Republican Accountability Project is doing because what they're basically doing is they're giving Republicans like an anti-Trump identity, but they're not forcing them to be Democrats.
00:31:16
Speaker
So they're allowing people that off ramp. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the work that they're doing, but I mean, I'm convinced that like they're basically putting out all these ads that are like, Hey, I voted for Trump for three times that after January six, three times or two times. Sorry. Yeah. I voted for him twice. ah You can vote a primary. You can vote in a primary. There's my three times. You know, these basically giving them an identity saying, look, January six was really bad. They're running these ads in all these swing States. And I think it's really, really important work.
00:31:40
Speaker
um And I'm convinced, center-right voters, if you peel enough of them away in these swing states, you can win, you can you could defeat Trumpism at least this time. and yeah This time? Yeah, this time. And and and that gets into another question, ah which is, where do you think our political coalitions go post-Trump? Okay, let's say the election comes, and as God wills it, okay? um Kamala wins, Trump's done, bam, like but she wins 300 electoral votes, okay?
00:32:09
Speaker
What happens to Trumpism? What happens to the Republican coalition? What happens to the Democratic coalition, you think, over the next couple of cycles? um I mean, that i the Democratic coalition, I have no idea. I feel like the Democratic Party is actually pretty strong and pretty unified. We're like very big tent. We're all kind of on the same page right now, as long as we have Trump to fight with. um There's a lot of fighting that we, it appears, we're more divided than we actually are, but it's just because on Twitter it's like college students um and irrelevant dipshit said, bought half their viewer base like Hassan anyway, right? These people like seem like they're the voice of the Democratic Party, but they're not. They're just like popular online with people that don't vote. The actual like mainstream like Democratic Party is a huge tent party. You look at the lawmakers in Congress, um they're all pretty chill. um
00:32:45
Speaker
The Republican Party, I have no idea where the problem where the Republican Party goes from here. They have to like completely rediscover themselves, because I don't think that anybody can replace Trump. right People like Vivek tried it. People thought maybe DeSantis or yeah we could go back to something more true, tradition and that didn't work. So Trump can't be replaced, I don't think, unless like Trump Jr., maybe. But I don't know. I've seen him speak. I don't think he can. I feel like the primary foot voters have been ah primed for some sort of populist ah narrative. And I really don't feel like the old kind of neocon ah rhetoric is going to come back. I don't think Eniki Haley makes it through, um unless there's like a really concerted effort amongst the Republican media to do that. But right now, the ah red pill content is just so expansive that I don't think they can do it. And so what I think is interesting, and maybe gives me a little bit of optimism, is I think Republican ideology is extraordinarily malleable because it's all centered around one man.
00:33:34
Speaker
Trump comes out and he's like, I love price controls. Now they love price controls. A week earlier, they're like, come on, she wants price controls. This is terrible, right? And it's like, yeah, these guys could literally believe anything. And so, you know, it's certainly possible that, yeah, maybe a new Republican candidate comes around and they're talking to populist talk, but their actual policies aren't, um, you may be as corrosive or extreme as Trumpism.
00:34:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's possible. i You just have to find a way to make people reckon with reality. Like the idea that people are trying to say that Kamala Harris, you know, she should have fixed all these problems as vice president. um So therefore that's why they're attacking her. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was the president with the Republican Congress yeah and a Republican Supreme Court. And he didn't get any of his agenda done. Why the fuck?
00:34:24
Speaker
Would Republicans even have the goal have the audacity to try to say that Kamala as the VP should have done this when your own miserable fucked seven times divorce 50 times Bankrupts, whatever fucking dude this guy this loser fuck away like 400 fucking pounds. Okay without makeup on another 200 with makeup, right? This is the guy that you're saying can hold Kamala accountable for not single-handedly doing everything as the vice president when When Trump was the president there was no wall you failed on the ACA yeah He didn't control the budget when the economy was built booming and roaring. Um, he didn't do anything about what was going on in Crimea with Ukraine. He sat by and he watched as a Saudi Arabia got attacked by Iran. Uh, like, well, I mean, like what, what, where did this guy succeed at? Right? Um, I don't know. I just, that's crazy to me. God, I hate conservatives right now. I'm sorry. I just absolutely fucking hate them. My bad. One of the things, though, that actually really concerns me, this is the reason why I feel like this, I mean, ever I really do think this this election, for for the institutional reasons we talked about, is is very existential, but there's also a bigger thing happening that I think is ah related to the Democratic coalition that also caused me a bit of anxiety. Kamala Harris right now is in the middle of a moderation. like not that Not Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party is kind of moving a little closer to the center. So we talk about what could happen after Trump, but if Trump wins,
00:35:38
Speaker
My concern is that the Democratic Party is going to have the basically what's going to happen is the economic populace on the left flank of the Democratic Party are going to say, look, moderation and moving to the center was a failed strategy. And the Democratic Party is then going to kind of rubber band back to the far left. think, are we really moving to the center or anything? I think so. I think so. Because look at Biden's platform, and then look at Kamala's. Kamala's platform is now EITC expansion. The CTC expansion is center stage. That's like a pretty centrist policy. Wait, how are we defining centrist policy? Giving thousands and thousands of dollars to poor people from government is a centrist policy? I feel like it's a pretty left-leaning policy, no?
00:36:20
Speaker
ah So I think there's ah economically populous policies, which are kind of like zero sum with how they view things. It's very much like ah vindictive towards business. And then there's maybe redistributive policies, but this is like a tax, this is like a redistributive policy framed as a tax cut. So I think it probably is definitely in the center left space.
00:36:38
Speaker
I think EITC is like a Bill Clinton thing. And she's talking about cutting taxes for businesses, occupational licensing deregulation, like YIMBY, like building three million homes by getting rid of red tape that's obstructing housing development. um Like, do you think that's kind of a move?
00:36:54
Speaker
versus there maybe from the rent control that that buying was talking about right before he got out. um i I don't know. I guess maybe I feel like they're to the left of me right now in economic policies. So interesting. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I am a full on Nazi now in terms of econ, but. um Well, well it's it's not so much that, I mean, of course, ah it is maybe not like we've got like the idea, like the flirting with like the weird wealth tax stuff, like yeah the taxing unrealized gains. We've got this stuff about like, um I feel like the child tax credit is stuff. I don't know, to me. that cause well So the capital gains taxes changed completely before it was 44%. That was Biden's plan and it she cut it down to like 30.
00:37:31
Speaker
his ah corporate tax hike was supposed to go back to the pre-Trump tax cut days. She's taking it back up to like 28. So like she clearly moderate on those positions. And I mean, you remember the 2020 primary. Wait, what do you mean when you say she moderated on positions that were never passed?
00:37:48
Speaker
No, these were Biden's positions, his campaign's positions. Yeah, but he never passed any of these, right? We didn't get a 44% capital gains rate. So I don't know, is it kind of just moderating? if you want If you're coming back, but you haven't even passed any of those policies and it's still to the left of... Well, but that's what he was promising when he was campaigning against Trump. And like, she's changed the promise to like a more moderate promise. I think a more clear example, and I think that the move away from the higher rates, I think, is is a good thing. Obviously, I agree with you. like I'm not a fan of taxing unrealized capital gains. I think it's lunacy. But I will say, like one of the things that I think stands like the most clear example was Kamala and Barack Obama at the DNC talking about how they want to tear down barriers to housing. like Talking about deregulation, ah embracing narratives around like patriotism and like Owning the flag and owning the American identity, like, her foreign policy is standing up to Putin and and and really, like, leaning into this Reagan-esque rhetoric. I'll agree. It's all rhetoric. But it seems to me to be a moderation from the farther extremes. And I mean, Israel is a good example of this, too. I mean, she tried to walk that line, right? um
00:38:55
Speaker
That's what I look at, and I go, it looks like there's this broad-based shift closer to the center, rather than a... I mean, I guess i would I just wouldn't view these as, like, like patriotism. I mean, traditionally, it was kind of on a left-right paradigm, but I don't know if I would view that as, like, moderating or being more left or more right or whatever. I just... I don't... Yeah, I'm thinking, I guess, just economics when I think of that. It seems to me that... I don't know. when When I think about the 2020 primary, I think of, like, a lot of very economically populous time, and the 2020 election, kind of a very pretty populous focus of ah Biden's kind of economic agenda.
00:39:24
Speaker
And over time, i I agree with you that like in substance, how much has changed? I think a little bit. I think vibes have changed. She's talking about middle-class. like It sounds very Obama-esque and Clinton-esque. I mean, keep in mind too that when Kamala was running in the primaries, she's running clearly as an option to the left of Biden. Now she's running to assume his presidency basically for the next term. So of course she has to adopt some of the more moderate positions of of Biden, right? But even Biden is fairly to the left, right? Like he seems like a guy who he was okay with. Um,
00:39:51
Speaker
I feel like I hear protectionist talk around American jobs a lot. Arguably part of the CHIPS Act was that. Now, I mean, there are also national security concerns as well, for sure. No, it's tragic. No, it's tragic. I mean, so many industrial subsidies for, I mean, they call it industrial policy, but it's just subsidies for domestic industries and all kinds of different industries. And there's already tariffs on Chinese imports. And it's like, okay, well, there's one problem, which is getting stuff out of China that's different than getting everything in the United States.
00:40:21
Speaker
and Why can't we trade with more with your way? Why can't we trade more with South Africa? Why can't we trade more with ah plenty of other countries that we don't have free trade agreements with? i mean we can' We don't even have a free trade agreement with the UK, which is kind of a travesty, in my opinion. Sure.
00:40:35
Speaker
um i mean it's I mean, I'm just saying I think you can make, and they they would would be national security arguments, so they're not going to be economic arguments, or they might even be economically deleterious, right? But you can make our national security arguments for why we should manufacture processes in the United States while simultaneously acknowledging they're probably going to be more expensive if we do so. I just think it's possible to do it, but yeah.
00:40:54
Speaker
Right. I think, I think a lot of this is economics. Like I think they, they, it's, it's unfortunate Trump, uh, shifted the paradigm and the electoral college amplifies voters in certain rust belt sweat states, which are super important. And it's, we found out that this is a very salient issue for them. And so protectionist rhetoric hits them well and protectionist policies disease is popular with them, even though like the basis in economics of like subsidizing every single domestic industry and like terrifying, like imports all over the place is not very sound.
00:41:21
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, economically, I would agree. I'm not a big protectionist. I'm not a big, uh, based. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, then maybe this could be the the last topic we touch on because it's, it really want to go back to some of the, just like the, like really lean into this conversation around the kind of the divides on the left. So I, to, to put a cap on it, when I did watch the primary debates in 2020, I felt like the democratic party was moderating a lot or moving a lot farther to the left.
00:41:46
Speaker
I feel like the vibe shift is is seeming like things are moving a little bit closer to the center. We'll see how that plays out policy-wise. I think it's a complete—you know, who the fuck knows what's going to happen with that. One of the things, though, that we've talked about is housing. And Micah, I think you wanted to talk a little bit just about the housing issue and talk about how liberals look at it differently than the left.
00:42:08
Speaker
Right. So we actually, we do have a quote for you and we just wanted to see what your response was to this. um ah The quote is, if I'm the government, I'm coming in and I'm saying Chinese style communist takeover, imminent domain, that shit's mine now. We're making this into a permanent shelter. We're taking every single person from Skid Row and every single homeless person and we're putting them into that fucking luxury high rise condominium. And that's from a streamer you may know. his say is His name is his son, Piker. We were wondering what your response would be to that.
00:42:37
Speaker
um
00:42:41
Speaker
it Yeah, i it's just it's not even wrong. It's just it's so I don't even know what you're nationalizing ah all housing and like centrally planning and like redistributing it.
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was a common view that drinking mercury would cure your disease in the 1700s. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that. Yeah, it's retarded like it. It's built on this idea. There's this myth that leftists and um people on the right perpetuate um that there are all of these empty apartments and all of these empty houses and just rich people by them and just sit on them to like watch them appreciate in value and poor people could move into these places and be fine. But it's just this is retarded and it's not true. And the idea of moving a bunch of crack heads into some apartment and thinking that would fix their problems is also fucking retarded. um Dealing with homelessness is ah is ah it's a challenging issue that requires like a whole bunch of coordination. We need different types of services, um and you know emergency medical services, addiction counseling, people that help you. they A lot of these people need long-term care and support. um like There's just a lot going on there. The idea that it's just, but when your whole worldview is just like fuck rich people, yeah or I'm sorry, for Hassan's worldview, it would be fuck the other rich people, then obviously you're going to be devoid of any actual argument you're making. yeah
00:43:46
Speaker
It's funny to me how similar the mindset is when you're talking about economic or just populist in general. It's like on the far left, it's like, ah you know, rich people are to blame for all the problems of society. On the far right, it's like immigrants are to blame for all the problems of society. And at the center of this is this like desire to boil down everything into this one group and pin all the issues on this one group.
00:44:06
Speaker
rather than actually wrestling with the incentives that cause these problems and the the actual systems that can lead us to more prosperity. I wanted to ask you this because we have a bunch of people in our audience, Destiny, that ah consider themselves yimbies. Do you consider yourself a yimby and part of that movement?
00:44:23
Speaker
um um listen i'm such a yimby i'm not even a yimby okay i don't even have a backyard right wherever wherever the city builds high density housing is where i go okay that's where i am all right let you are miami too so they they've that they they've gone crazy on that high density stuff ah destiny yimby confirmed i do have one last is that true i don't know if any place I'm not sure where you're from, if you're in the United States or not. I don't know if you can say any place in the US is going crazy on high density. Yeah, maybe not crazy enough. I live in a high rise, but right across the street, our building after building of like their condos, at least I guess, or not condos, I'm sorry, um duplexes, or there's like four units to a building. But I mean, it could be way, way, way, way, way, way, way, well way more dense. Austin's doing very well. Austin's doing very well. They got rid of parking mandates. They got rid of, they changed their compatibility standards, up zones, a lot of stuff like that. We've been doing some stuff here in Houston.
00:45:08
Speaker
We do some stuff well. Now, I do have one last question for you. We talked about this earlier. There is this common allegation that liberals are boring. They're centrists. They're moderates. They don't have big solutions. And I think a lot of young people are attracted to kind of extremist ideologies because they promise that things can be way different and way better.
00:45:25
Speaker
um What do you think about that? And do you think there's any examples of like really big liberal ideas that we could use to inspire people and attract them to liberalism? No, you have to do the homework and you have to understand what the fuck is going on. The issue right now is um that we're in a society where we have largely solved a lot of simple problems. Okay. We typically don't lynch black people. We don't send gay people to conversion therapy. um Women are allowed to vote and go to school. Like a lot of the very simple stuff,
00:45:50
Speaker
We've more or less solved or we've made a fuck ton of progress on. So now the the questions that are before us are far more complicated and they require a more complicated answer.
Addressing Modern Societal Issues
00:46:00
Speaker
You're you're you're taking a guy, you know, who's in the year 1920 who weighs 400 pounds and he's expecting an Ozempic when what he needs is two years of like diet and exercise. When you talk about fixing problems in in Like say, like the black community, like the answer is going to involve caring for the family so that it's not just like a single mom working three jobs. It's going to involve like education at an early age. It's going to involve funding for childcare. It's going to probably involve some nutritional or dietary component. It's probably going to involve some changing of like transportation in the city. like There are all these things that have to be addressed, and people are just looking for like the silver bullet. like Why would I waste all this time on ah on ah on a black kid you know when he's zero to 18 when I could just give him affirmative action when he's 19? Like, boom, that should solve everything, right? No. it's just all of it And that's just one of like a million things, you know whether we're talking climate change or vaccine policy or whatever else. like Everything is very, very, very complicated now. And the solutions are are equally complicated. And you have to have a good understanding of these things. But when you can just get up there and promise a simple solution to things,
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's way more attractive and populists are very good at doing that, especially Donald Trump right now. am i I actually think I know I couldn't agree more. The like the incentive structure is incredibly complex and it's way it's like 10 times harder to get people to buy in. But I think there's ways like from a communications perspective to like brand complicated policy solutions as something simple and digestible. right And I actually think the YIMBY movement has done a good job of this, because YIMBYism as a philosophy is a diverse slew of different policy options. And many of them, you know even YIMBYs in the movement, don't like have full kids like they're not all aligned around the their ideal solution. But they basically branded it like, oh, we're about building homes, hard stop, and this is how we fix the problem. It's a supply side solution. um So that's kind of the way I think is best to approach it. and i like down like
00:47:42
Speaker
It's land use regulatory reform. like What is a parking mandate? Most people don't know what that is. yeah i mean I'm optimistic. i think that there's I think you're totally right that the truth is complicated. right The world doesn't come with like some sort of simple ideological solution. But I think there probably is like a simple liberal story you can tell about like individual empowerment and choice, um which can be helpful.
00:48:01
Speaker
And I think that you see that sometimes, right? I think people that advocate for basic income, people that advocate for the child tax credit, that is redistribution. That is redistribution that puts power in your hands. And there's a lot of examples of that. You could talk about healthcare, right? In a lot of countries around the world, liberal parties have created healthcare systems that are universal, but you still have choice. And that's a really, I think, American thing. The left talks sometimes about- Yeah, but since conservatives are allowed to live in another reality, a conservative will shamelessly tell you that Those healthcare systems are all broken and don't work. They'll just tell you this. They'll just say it. No, no, no. I mean, conservatives, that's by far the most pressing issue. But I think there's also an issue in certain blue states where the ideology's wrong. You look at a place like California, they get a lot of things wrong.
00:48:50
Speaker
And I think there's special interest group capture and things like that going on at play, but there's also just the ideology of policy makers where they like they do think of things in kind of like a, um maybe like a more paternalistic sense. Like there's these problems of like people's choices and we need to come in and like intervene and control them. And maybe there's like a liberal story we can tell about people are the best authors of their own and destiny and the government's role should be to empower them and protect them from one another, ah which could be effective and and lead to a lot of interesting policies like ah Universal basic income or a mean states of basic income or you know universal health care choice and stuff like that Yeah, I don't disagree at all. um You just have to be able to frame it that way that yeah, generally you're just giving people more options You're giving people more control, but but anytime more government is involved Yeah, people just feel like oh you're actually it's actually more restrictive and it's like okay. Yeah, it's never that simple Okay, so then let let me just throw like to take us out because I think we're about at the hour and
00:49:45
Speaker
You spend a you spendt a lot of this is again one of the reasons why I'm a huge fan of your work is you spend a lot of time going to war against illiberalism going to war against this complete batch it insane ideology of MAGA and I think it's existential in this moment that people of our political persuasion Find a way to crack the code to pull people out of these fringe ideologies and back into normalcy So I'm curious as to just in the broad strokes you touched on this a little bit But how do you feel like we can get better at doing that? um
00:50:16
Speaker
just in the broad strokes like Anything that you found that just works or doesn't work?
Controversial Ideas for Political Solutions
00:50:20
Speaker
but Treat conservatives like they deserve to be treated. Treat them like children. When they when they say stupid shit, they need to be called out and held to account for these things, and they can't be allowed to walk out. you shouldn't you there's just There is no reasonable conversation to have with a conservative who won't live in reality, and people shouldn't pretend to do that anymore. Find other people to to bring on and have the conversation with. um It's just ridiculous.
00:50:38
Speaker
And then if that fails and we you know we end up splitting, I think I'm also in favor of, I'd vote yes on this. Let's split the country in two and we'll go 20 years. Okay, all the maggot dip shits can go to one side and all the the other people can go to the other side and we'll see in 20 years where we're at and then whoever's doing better, um you get to rule the other country and the other side loses the ability to vote for a generation. Fuck you.
00:50:54
Speaker
And we'll just do that. We'll see how, when you have people like Alex Jones as the head of your fucking science department, when people like Joe Rogan are the heads of your media and cultural centers, um when you ah you know your Giuliani's and your Sidney Pals are the heads of your Department of Justice, we'll see what you guys can do. We'll see what you accomplish. We'll see what you get done. And you know if your country sucks shit in 20 years, um if you end up being a massive fucking drain, like all the red states are and the blue states are right now, economically, yeah, if you end up being that, then in 20 years, you just lose your right to have a fucking say in things. And you just sit down and shut the fuck up and let everybody else try to move the country forward.
00:51:23
Speaker
Because right now it's like trying to drive the fucking Titanic with with seven boat anchors. I mean, when you look at the metrics from red states, I think you're objectively correct and RFK as in charge of like anything related to health is a horrifying prospect. Absolutely horrifying prospect. Um, okay. Well, listen, I will try to moderate with RFK. That's the guy who was, uh, who is crying recently because he's trying to get his name back on the ballot and states that will hurt, um, ro that will hurt Democrats. Right. Yeah. Supporting the same party that was crying about playing games with the ballot before and saying it was anti-democratic. Right. Just checking. Right. That RFK that's what you're talking about. Yep, New York. okay New York, I just saw that article like a couple days ago. It's absolutely insane. The guy who had brain worms that died of starvation in his head? I remember that guy. okay
00:52:06
Speaker
The guy who has like five different dead animals came down each week. The chainsawing of the humpback whale and traumatizing his kids. What a great role model. Steven, I just want to say thanks for coming on and chatting with us. The work that you're doing fighting against some of this stuff on the right is incredibly important in this moment.
00:52:29
Speaker
Uh, you know, ah for the sake of our audience, I don't know if there's anything you want to tell them. You've got a way bigger audience than us, but if, if they want to go do anything, take any action, you know, is there anything they should, they should think about? Uh, yeah, we're canvassing and Wisconsin, um, is the first one we're
Call to Action for Liberal Values
00:52:45
Speaker
doing. We might do an event in Pennsylvania after, depending on how this one goes, we'll see, but we're doing an event in Wisconsin. I want to say like in a week and a half or two weeks, somebody link me in chat. Um, yeah, show up. We'll go knock on doors, canvas, get people to vote and go to Democrats and, uh, have a great time.
00:52:59
Speaker
Rock on. Rock on. All right. Well, let's hope we can make it past November. um I appreciate for our audience listening in on this episode. You can check out more about our project, projectliberal.org. We're building a broad-based cross-partisan coalition to defend liberal values against authoritarianism in pursuit of a free and open society. Learn more at projectliberal.org and get on our mailing list. Micah, thank you for taking time. Absolutely. Thanks so much. Even thanks again, man. Godspeed. I'll see you after November. Yeah. Thanks for having me. See you guys.