Breaking History: Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting
Podcast Information:
- Title: Breaking History
- Host/Author: The Free Press
- Episode: Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting (From the Honestly Archives)
- Release Date: January 14, 2025
- Description: Breaking History delves into the news by examining historical contexts, featuring insights from historians, authors, and reporters to interpret the present by mining the archives of human experience.
1. Introduction and Context
The episode opens with Bari Weiss setting the stage by referencing a previous episode that drew parallels between the tumultuous 1968 Democratic convention and the current political climate. She introduces reporter Eli Lake, who continues to bridge past and present to illuminate current political phenomena.
Notable Quote:
- Bari Weiss [00:01]: “Sometimes the news moves so fast, you have to look closely to know if you’ve seen it before.”
2. Kamala Harris Ascends as Democratic Nominee
Eli Lake discusses Kamala Harris becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Despite her lack of recent interviews, Harris gains momentum, while critics and supporters alike observe a strategic rewriting of her political history by the media and party loyalists, aided by tech companies.
Notable Quote:
- Eli Lake [02:13]: “Today, Eli argues that this has happened before, and not in America, but in the Soviet Union and also in the works of brilliant writers including Milan Kundera and George Orwell, who imagines something, he argues, like what we're seeing right now.”
3. Rewriting History and Memory Holing
Lake draws parallels between the current media landscape and historical attempts to rewrite or erase inconvenient truths. He references Milan Kundera’s and George Orwell’s insights on how regimes manipulate memory and history, suggesting similar tactics are at play in contemporary American politics.
Notable Quote:
- Eli Lake [03:09]: “It will require much laughter and forgetting. Keep it locked Democrats say Kamala Harris is creating a new excitement for voters in Florida.”
4. Comparative Analysis: Soviet Union and Literary Insights
The discussion deepens with references to Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and George Orwell’s 1984. Lake uses these works to illustrate how political narratives can distort and manipulate collective memory, drawing eerie similarities to current events.
Notable Quotes:
- George Orwell [08:00]: “We have memory hold the fact that it's unclear who is running the US government in light of the President's mental and physical decline.”
- Czeslaw Milosz [09:33]: “In late Soviet Russia, nobody believed anything the party said. And cynicism, indeed a black humor about the propaganda was everywhere.”
5. Media’s Role in Shaping Narratives
Lake critiquizes how major media outlets, including Axios and GovTrack, manipulate or obscure information about Kamala Harris’s past positions and Joe Biden’s current fitness for office. He highlights instances where previously reported facts are being downplayed or erased to serve the party's current narrative.
Notable Quote:
- Eli Lake [10:56]: “The memory holders can try their best, but the Internet remembers anyone can still find the video of Kamala mouthing leftist pieties in 2019...but the Internet platforms, the search engines, and those that create the algorithms can easily obscure recent history.”
6. Joe Biden’s Health and Presidential Fitness
A significant portion of the episode focuses on President Joe Biden’s declining cognitive and physical state. Lake discusses the administration’s efforts to conceal his struggles, drawing historical parallels to past presidents who masked health issues. He underscores the potential dangers of hiding such critical information from the electorate.
Notable Quotes:
- Joe Biden [02:17]: “I'm not going anywhere.”
- Eli Lake [22:44]: “Biden himself promised voters in the 2020 campaign that he would be a one term transitional president.”
7. The Concept of the 'Captive Mind'
Eli Lake explores Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind to explain how intellectuals and journalists can become complicit in manipulating truth under societal and political pressures. He argues that modern American intellectuals mirror those described by Milosz, accommodating and perpetuating false narratives to maintain social conformity and political stability.
Notable Quotes:
- Neil Ferguson [28:59]: “Most people don't become dissidents. They find ways to accommodate.”
- Jonathan Rosen [30:17]: “They thought they were giving themselves a voice in this new dispensation. But they were erasing themselves.”
8. Conclusion: The Future and Laughter as Resistance
As the episode wraps up, Lake reflects on the necessity of recognizing absurdity as a form of resistance against manipulated narratives. Drawing from Kundera, he suggests that humor and awareness are vital in maintaining individual and collective integrity in the face of pervasive misinformation.
Notable Quote:
- Eli Lake [33:38]: “Recognizing absurdity is itself a form of resistance, and that the best way to remain human when all the truth tellers and sense makers are spouting nonsense, is to laugh.”
Key Takeaways
- Historical Repetition: The episode underscores the cyclical nature of political manipulation, drawing direct parallels between past regimes and current American politics.
- Media Complicity: There is a critical examination of how mainstream media and tech companies contribute to rewriting or obscuring historical and current facts.
- Importance of Memory: Emphasizing George Santayana’s adage, the discussion highlights the dangers of forgetting history and the mechanisms through which history is altered.
- Role of Intellectuals: The episode posits that intellectuals and journalists, under societal and political pressures, may inadvertently support authoritarian narratives.
- Resistance through Awareness: Encourages listeners to remain vigilant, use humor as a coping mechanism, and recognize the absurdity in manipulated truths to resist societal control.
Notable Timestamps and Quotes
- Bari Weiss [00:01]: “Sometimes the news moves so fast, you have to look closely to know if you’ve seen it before.”
- Eli Lake [02:13]: “Can we take a minute to reflect on the last five weeks?”
- Kamala Harris [03:05]: “You all helped us win in 2020, and we gonna do it again in 2024.”
- Neil Ferguson [09:33]: “This is Free Press columnist and economic historian Neil Ferguson. He wrote a recent column exploring the parallels between America in 2024 and the late Soviet Union.”
Final Thoughts
"Breaking History" offers a profound analysis of the current political landscape by intertwining historical insights with contemporary events. Through Eli Lake’s exploration, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind political narrative manipulation and the essential role of historical memory in safeguarding democracy.