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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
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Sam
Sam.
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Matthew Schmitz
Welcome to the Compact Podcast. Today we are celebrating belatedly America's 250th birthday. Looking back on the commemorations this weekend, we're also discussing the rights woman problem about which Ashley Frawley wrote in our pages. And we're discussing the latest allegations against Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. I'm joined by Ashley Frawley and Jeff Schulenberger. And I'm Matthew Schmitz. So happy birthday, America. Good job, everyone. This country is still going, going strong maybe. Jeff, how did you celebrate?
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Jeff Schulenberger
Well, I went to a barbecue, which was, you know, the usual thing. So let's see the day of the 4th, I was thinking of going to see the top tall ships parade on the Hudson, but it was extremely hot. I think it was around 97 degrees or so that day. So I figured it was better enjoyed in the comfort of air conditioning on television. So I did that with some of my family and that was interesting and enjoyable. And then subsequently went to a barbecue and then enjoyed the fireworks from the roof of my building, which had a pretty decent view of them. So all in all, it was a pretty ideal way to spend the day.
- [02:32]
Matthew Schmitz
Adam Rowe wrote in Compact about our America's eerily quiet 250th birthday, comparing the relatively subdued nature of the celebrations this year to the more exuberant displays in 1976 and and coming into the weekend, I did feel that quietness. Like you, Jeff, I live in New York. At the bicentennial in 1976, there was a very famous kind of parade of the tall ships that went through New York that was on my mind as well. On the 5th, I took my older sons down to the South Street Seaport to visit the tall ships, feeling some obligation to give them a sense of the great occasion our nation celebrated this weekend and celebrating this year. And I had a lot of fun with them. The one thing I didn't try to explain to them was my own surprise at a placard as I boarded the Eagle, the US Coast Guard ship that's used for training Coast Guard cadets. And there's this placard as you enter the ship saying, the Eagle was built in Germany in 1936. Obviously, that's when Hitler was in power in Germany and was originally named the Horst Wessel after a member of the German socialist movement. And for listeners who don't know, Horst Wessel was a member of the early Nazi paramilitary who was killed under somewhat confused circumstances by communists and turned into a martyr for the Nazi party. And a song he wrote became the party's anthem and in due course, an anthem for Nazi Germany. So he's really this sort of child martyr of Hitler. I just thought, okay, a member of the German socialist movement. And we're just going to say that and move on. I thought, okay, that's. That's one way to put it. And anyway,
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Jeff Schulenberger
it's very odd. I mean, you think they could just say it was a Nazi ship, but we won that. We beat the Nazis, we won the war, and we took it as spoils. I mean, that would be a perfectly good narrative.
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Matthew Schmitz
Well, there was some exploit. I mean, there was some explanation of the fact that we received it after the war as a matter of. Not of spoils, because that would be kind of unjust, but as a matter of war reparations.
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Jeff Schulenberger
Yeah.
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Matthew Schmitz
But anyway, I just thought that was. It's very hard to do anything historical without immediately putting your foot in some kind of involved historical controversy. And I guess the Coast Guard hasn't been canceled yet for its somewhat curious description of horse vessel. So I got to recall not just our sailing glories, America, land empire and a maritime nation, but also our defeat of the Germans. Hooray.
- [05:49]
Jeff Schulenberger
One thing I thought was interesting, because I have been following the World cup, was the way that this display of the tall ships was this other kind of spectacle of international comedy and, you know, a sort of, you know, moment of where, you know, the different patriotisms of the world could come together. And it was. It was kind of fascinating in that regard. And, I mean, there's some, like, ludicrous MAGA poster on X. You know, there were also these air Force jets flying over, you know, doing some displays, flying overhead and, you know, shooting out red, white and blue chemtrails or whatever they're called. And the. There was some MAGA person who was like, you know, Trump just did this to own the Communist Mamdani, you know, flying the Air Force jets right over New York City. I believe the Air Force jets in question were actually from like the uae, you know, the United Arab Emirates. Like, they weren't actually, like quite a few of these jets were not actually American planes. So anyway, it was sort of like Trump, you know, the MAGA response was, well, Trump, you know, know, put the Air Force right over New York City to show the communists who's really in charge. Not, not seemingly what happened. Most of these jets, as well as ships were from other countries. So that was kind of interesting. And then the. There was a speech by J.D. vance on, you know, during this tall ships parade which was televised. And I mean, it was an extremely un. Trumpian speech. It was quite sort of in the weeds in terms of American sort of maritime history and the rev, you know, the sort of maritime back battles of the revolution. And it was extremely, you know, it, it avoided any kind of Trumpian polarizing rhetoric. So that was kind of, that was kind of interesting that I think a lot of the narrative around this 250th, which Roe sort of complicates is, oh, we're too divided to come together as a nation and celebrate this. Roe argues, you know, we were, we were just as divided in 76. But that didn't, you know, that, that didn't mute those celebrations. But it was interesting to see the way that this, this particular spectacle anyway represented this convergence, you know, both of nations and of different kind of patriotisms that could be seen to be complementary and of, of countries, you know, that seem to want to show goodwill towards the United States and, and vice versa in terms of our sort of inviting all these countries to participate. And so, yeah, that was kind of interesting. Vance's speech again, was, was basically just a kind of historical, you know, excursus into, you know, U.S. maritime history going back to the Revolution. And so it was interesting to see him not in this kind of culture war pugilist mode, but in this much more kind of, you know, kind of unifying, you know, celebratory of American history mode and that. So that was, that was interesting. And then, you know, I think it's true that the, the overall mutedness around this was striking. Obviously, I didn't, I didn't live through the bicentennial. I remember hearing a little bit about it from my parents. In fact, I was watching the tall ships with my father on TV and you know, he was reminiscing a bit about having seen the previous iteration of this in 76. But I do think the other film that's kind of fascinating, that I happen to have seen recently and is kind of a great document of that era, if people want to relive it, is Robert Altman's Nashville, which is set around the bicentennial year in 76, and just really kind of shows the pervasiveness of just the iconography and the. The sort of visual invocations of the bicentennial in that era, which I would say was relatively muted in comparison, even if, you know, some of these displays that took place here Saturday were quite impressive and, you know, seems to give the occasion its due.
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Sam
Well, for me, the highlight was actually Friday night when Trump gave a speech, I believe, at Mount Rushmore, where he said what will now be famous lines. You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both. Love that. I wonder if he's aware that Karl Marx was a huge fan of America and the American Revolution, that upon Lincoln's election, he said he wrote to him to congratulate him and said from the commencement of the titanic American strife, the working men of Europe felt instinctively that the Star Spangled Banner carried the destiny of their class. And I would say, quite contrary to Trump, that you can only be loyal to America if you are a Marxist. You can only be a Marxist if you are loyal to America. But he. Now, he's not wrong, okay, I will say he's not wrong, because socialism has a long history and it long predates Karl Marx. And yes, today's socialists are absolutely anti American, but they're also anti Marx. You know, like, if I remember, like when I was in university, the people who are most hostile to me were these like, proto gender goblins who were like, talking to me, oh, you're a Marxist. Oh. And like, you know, they hated this idea of like, oh, you have a coherent understanding of political economy. Gross. Like, let's all just like talk about our sex organs or, or the fact that they're just actually pieces of performance art or something. So, like, the legacy of today's socialism is. Has more in common with the New left, with anti imperialism, with this kind of third worldism, and it's largely abandoned the 19th century politics of Marx. And they'll do a lot of sort of bending over backward to explain away how positive Marx and Marxists were about the American Revolution. Because if you think of like, if you go back to, like Hegel, for instance, you know, one of the most famous lines that people remember from Hegel is from his lectures on the philosophy of history, I think, where he says the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. So this is, you know, freedom is. Once people have it, once you sort of rolling forward with it, it's very, very difficult to claw it back. And what the French Revolution, what the American Revolution represented was this continuing expression of man's grasping for freedom, which is the ongoing project of really humanity. Like we are beings that are conscious of having a free will, but have always been living in circumstances that we don't control. And this is the, the, the difficulty that we always have. You go back to the ancient Greeks, they have this sense of themselves as being free beings, but also within a world that was still thrown about by circumstance, you know, plagues and, and weather and volcanic eruptions and so on. And so they projected all of that kind of desire for, or their, their recognition of themselves as free subjects into a, an imaginary realm of the gods and so on. And all of the unfolding of history is us making that real in the world of, you know, trying to figure out this project of how to live together in freedom. And this is what the American Revolution represented. And if you are not, if you forget that, that, that sort of human base to it, if you can't be a patriot, if you don't. Marx, I don't think anybody truly believed in human freedom to the degree that Hegel and Marx did, because constantly we're told, no, you can't have that. That's the limit. That's the end of it. You know, oh, we can have democracy in this sphere, we can have democracy in that sphere. But once you have a sense of yourself as of a free being who can decide the circumstances of his life, you're always going to want to do that. You're going to grasp further and further. Democracy is going to push further and further. And at a certain point, capitalism is going to say no. It's saying no all the time. It's saying no. That's for the technocrats. That's not for you. You actually don't have the expertise for that. Actually. Human nature is very weak and so on. Actually, you're not really a good candidate for the possession of freedom, actually. It needs to be curtailed everywhere. But if you believe in the human subject which is at the base of those radical, of those revolutions, then you're always going to push for it. You're not going to let anybody hold you back. And you're going to push for the ideals of the American Revolution to see their fruition, to see beyond what everyone tells you you can't have, or beyond the limits of, of capitalism to toward a future of human freedom. Now, we have not been able to do that. We have, we have failed miserably at that over and over and over again. And it's completely understandable for humanity to be in an extraordinarily pessimistic place. I get that. But the left has elevated this pessimism to a kind of virtue and a backward looking desire for they, they've seen, okay, we can't go forward, so the only way is back. And let's all romanticize, you know, tribal people and the other and all this sort of thing. And the spirit is to push forward beyond what seems like an impasse. And that's the challenge that we have set for us for the next 250 years is not, is to sort of spurn this constant invitation to say, no, we've gone too far and to go a little bit further. And I think that that's actually what the project of Marxism is about. If you actually read and engage with Marx, which people on the left do not, they have completely abandoned Marxism. And you can see that because somebody like Trump can look at today's socialism and imagine that Karl Marx must have been anti American, but he wasn't. You know, today's left is very, they've left behind materialism for moralism. So it's just they ask like they have two sides of something. They go, who's the good guy, who's the bad guy? Marx never did that. He asked what, what material forces do we, does each side represent? And regardless of, you know, because he's taking a world historical view, he's not, you know, playing like he's not watching a baseball game or something where he's cheering for a team. He's looking at, well, who is progressing the project of human freedom forward here? And that's the question that you ask and it leads. And for Marx, the American Revolution was doing that. It was the most powerful expression and for Hegel too, it was the most powerful expression of human freedom in the world up to that point. Now we're in a phase of like backwardness and we're all lost. We don't know where we're going. But, but it's very much worthwhile to remember that powerful force of human freedom unfolding in the world and to recognize that while there can be setbacks once you have it, once the genie's out of the bottle. It's very, very hard to put it back in. Very hard to put it back in. And I think Marx and Hegel understood that, and that's why they love the revolution.
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Matthew Schmitz
You can also read Chris Cottron's piece in Compact, published on July 3, why Marxists loved the American Revolution. It's striking to see the left's forgetfulness of this tradition of pro American sentiment. And I think the only place where there's any real understanding of these arguments, though in grossly distorted form, is on parts of the kind of multipolarist or illiberal right. You know, you get kind of, you know, a duganist person saying basically that, you know, America is the gae, the globalist American empire pronounced gay. So that's a kind of negative way of acknowledging the ties between America and a mission of human freedom. And I don't think any American patriot would want to accept that framing. Um, but there's maybe just a vague echo of this older Marxist insight there, which has now disappeared from the left.
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Matthew Schmitz
Ashley, you write in compact this week about the rights woman problem. What is the rights women problem? Exactly?
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Sam
So it's a really common complaint in conservative circles that they just can't seem to attract enough women. You go to conferences and people will joke, oh, it's like a gay bar in here. There's like, you know, we love women. Why? Where are the ladies? And you know, this we. There was a conference recently I went to, like, how to attract women into conservatism. And you know, they were trying to find speakers. It was, it was, you know, quite difficult. And, and so there's the one. On the one hand, there's a difficulty of attracting women on the other hand, or like, I suppose in that vein there is, you know, questions like, why do women vote left? Why. Why do men seem to be the left behind? Why is it that women are disproportionately going into the professional classes and you have, you know, situations where towns where there's a disproportionate number of working class men and the women will, will leave. This creates a problem where the women left behind can't seem to find good husbands and the men left behind can't seem to find good wives or wives at all. And this creates a ton of resentment. Just generally, you know, you have all of these complaints on the Internet whenever a woman, a famous woman, does something like Anne Hathaway getting pregnant at 43. And you had all these complaints like, oh, well, this is sending a message to women that, you know, you can damage the next generation. And, um, you know, women are taking birth control and it's screwing up with their frontal lobe. And it's just basically like there's something wrong with women and it's bringing society to ruin. And this is the mirror image of the right of the left version, which is like, there's something wrong with the men and it's bringing society to ruin. And I've written about, I've written along these lines a few times when I'm sort of banging my head against the wall and trying to explain to you. And people would be like, trying to understand, like, well, it must be because at some point on the Savannah grasslands, men did this and women did that. There's just. And I'm like, no, it's, it's a, it's a form of governance. You can see this, you can see this everywhere if you study, like supernational organizations since the 90s, like the UN, they've been obsessed with quote, unquote, empowering women. When they do, when they give money out, they don't want to give it to the men, they want to give it to the women. Because the men are irresponsible, they're unruly subjects. The women are supposed to be responsible subjects. And you'll go back to like the 19th century. Marx writes in Capital, Volume 1, that the capitalist actually loves women because they're desperate and they do what they do what they're told. They stay in line because they've often got children. They've got kids to feed. And actually, to be fair, I mean, the, you know, even like the sort of liberals of the Enlightenment were like, actually, we really need the family because men are kind of unruly. We need to tame them a little bit. So to give some balance there. But generally there has been this move to empower women because the idea is that women are make more docile subjects, that they are less violent, less unruly. But we shouldn't forget that the most unruly movements of men were the movements of working men. These were, you know, the. The working classes that were demanding freedom, demanding more of the social product, demanding things like the right to work, demanding things that they could not have and must understand that they cannot have. And so you can see why women emerged, you know, in the last, say, three to four decades as the ideal kind of subject that is being increasingly empowered by the institutions of global governance. Because this kind of stereotypical femininity is useful in terms of it being quite docile and. And easy to govern, rule following and so on. You know, the famous line is something like, you know, men are in the pulpit, but the women are the ones sweeping the pews. The women are the guardians of morality, the rule followers, the rule keepers. You know, men might, you know, give the speeches, but the women are the ones who ultimately enforce the rules. But this, it should be noted, has been utterly rejected by generations of feminists because also, you know, you empowered men in society in the 18th century because you needed them to fell feudalism to the ground. You needed to empower people. You need to say, like, actually you deserve more and so on, but then they keep wanting, right? And so you need to kind of, as I said before, put that genie back in the bottle. You need to kind of like dampen them down. But women were not seen as well suited to the public sphere. They were well suited to the home because they were supposedly emotive. They were closer to nature, whereas men were closer to God, this sort of thing. And women were like, no, that's ridiculous. There's, you know, feminists, really, there's nothing in my nature, even like John Stuart Mill said this, like, it's, it appears as nature because this is what society is doing. But free women, and you will see that they can do all sorts of things. Virginia Woolf said that we would know women are free when they're free to die as young as men do, because that means that they would be free to take risks instead of being a protected sex class. So this, this idea of like the docile emotive subject had always been used against women. Then suddenly, when it was useful to global governance, it kind of turned around, was like, hey, ladies, all that stuff that you. That we were kind of insulting you with before, about you being emotional, like close to nature and qu. All the time, actually, that's great. That's so good. It's actually fantastic because you're like, body conscious and reflective and a rule follower. And so we can actually use your emotiveness to express your frustration and then easily dissipate it we can use your rule following. You can use your tendency to doubt yourself, your lack of reason and so on, actually to make a much more docile subject that's easier to govern. That's actually fantastic. And men too, you should be more like those women. Men too should be. You know, you can see this in health policy discourses as well. There's a wonderful paper by Sarah Moore published in 2010 called Is the Healthy Body Feminine Or Is the Healthy Body Feminized? She talks about how, like, in. As we swift. As we shifted toward a public health model of like, behaviorism and so on, the ideal subject became more and more feminized because women are. Are constantly worrying about their bodies, which is so bad and horrible that they're like, actually, that's great. Men, you should be testicle aware. Men, you should be, you know, focusing on your body. You should be body conscious, you should be reflective, you should be emotive. You should be all these sorts of things. So what I'm arguing is that what is actually happening is that the right is feeling this kind of new feminized power structure, this new ideal of selfhood and personhood that is very therapeutic and feminized and feeling it as a powerful imposition on them, because it is an imposition and it is a form of control. And, and they're reacting against it quite rightly. But the problem is that they're seeing it as women themselves. They're seeing the problem as women. And so they're lashing out at the faces of this kind of feminized managerialism as instead of actually recognizing that it's a structure because it's not. It's not women per se, like Tim Walls, they call them like tampon Tim and all this kind of stuff. They're sort of like making fun of these people for being excessively feminized. But. Or like just. Or like Justin Trudeau is another one. But what, what people are recognizing there is that this kind of feminized mode of power doesn't need to be held by women. It can be just. It can be exercised just as powerfully by men. And in fact, if you're going to be, at least up until now, until maybe the last five years, where there's been a backlash against this, to be a successful man, you had to adopt this posture. You had to have a masculinity that was emotive and expressive and, and fought the. The cliche of the stiff upper lip and, and shed publicly and make sure the cameras are on Justin so that they catch your Tears flowing. And so this was a kind of performative femininity that was never, never really had to be performed by women. And so I think that, I think that a lot of the ire that you can feel coming from the right towards women is, is to a certain extent justified because you can see how women are the ones who are more likely. The women are getting degrees, they're more likely to move into the professional classes and so on. They're getting pulled up out of the working class much more than men are. And then they return to these areas as kind of handlers, as like instruments of soft rule, not as wives, but as like controllers. And you could see how there's. And it's a faux kind of care. This, this soft power. It's exercised through a very fake kind of condescending, caring attitude and they resent it. And it's completely understandable. But what I'm trying to argue is like, do not mistake this for women. Like, you want to talk to the manager, but we just work here, you know, we, we're. Women have been enlisted into a feminized order, but it's not women's fault, you know, and it's, it's really powerful like how much this, there's a reaction against this. Like, you can see like MMA fighting is like the perfect example of them being like, I hate your soft power, I hate your faux care, I hate your faux peacefulness. And I'm going to show you the most masculinized display possible to really stick the, stick the finger up to you essentially. And it is completely understandable. And it's actually a healthy, I think, assertion of an older kind of masculine, quote unquote, stereotypical masculine form of subjectivity that was powerful for both men and for women. And I think generally we should reject this kind of therapeutic self governance as highly backward and pre liberal in really important ways.
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Matthew Schmitz
Does the left have a woman problem? I guess that's one way to transition to our next topic. Graham Platner faces new allegations reported in Politico that he really broke into a woman's house and then sexually assaulted her. Raped her. You know, his new accuser was quoted in the previous New York Times story that was widely dismissed, but not while making these allegations. Platner put out a video. Seems very morose. Basically signals that he's weighing whether or not to stay in the race. So, yeah, Jeff, what do you think? Does this indicate the left's woman problem? Is Platner still the candidate who's rejecting Democratic Party HR lady politics? As the pundit Matt Stoller said, so,
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Jeff Schulenberger
yeah, I do think he represents the sort of equal and opposite situation of what Ashley describes in this argument, which is in her essay, which is that the left, because it is largely on the side of this kind of feminized managerialism, it is not going to do well with someone like Platner who, you know, it's, it's not. You know, people have sort of talked constantly about his class background and, oh, he's actually a sort of downwardly mobile elite. Fine, whatever. The point is that he's his. The sort of cultural signifiers that he has are, are ones that would be uncomfortable within most elite institutions, which is why he has largely spent his life outside of those, even though he may have started out going to a fancy, you know, one of the fanciest New England private schools from which I believe he was expelled, and then going to a lesser private school after that. But, you know, since then, he's basically been sort of outside of that institutional framework. And so the question is whether somebody with those kind of priors is able to exist in this sort of realm. And, you know, I will kind of connect this to some of the discourse around Jacob Savage's piece on the lost generation and the way that these institutions became hostile specifically to white men. And, you know, Platner is a millennial white man, so he does sort of fit into that framework. I can't remember exactly what his age is, but I believe he's within the millennial generation. And so he does fit into that framework to that extent.
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Matthew Schmitz
Yeah.
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Jeff Schulenberger
He's 41 yeah, so he, he does, he does kind of have a, have a connection to that whole story. I mean, one of the things I wrote about is, subsequent to Jacob's piece was the role of kind of the dirtbag left and these kind of brash male pundits who are often known for vulgarity and shitposting. And it's worth noting, you know, one of the things that Platner got in trouble for was he sort of had this Reddit history of saying seemingly offensive things online. Now, if you go back to the origin story of figures in like Chapo Trap House and these other kind of dirtbag left groups, a lot of them have this background on this forum, something awful, which is known as a sort of forum for, you know, extreme offense and you know, not. Not unlike 4chan, although a. To a somewhat different sociology. And many of these people who became the dirtbag left did have a background in these online spaces that were known for kind of crudeness and vulgarity and sort of competitive offense giving. And so it seems that Platner sort of has that same history and that was, that was part of what, you know, made him a sort of uncomfortable figure. Obviously the biggest problem he has is the Totenkopf tattoo, which, you know, again, I think is. Is another sign of him being part of this culture of sort of edgelord, you know, of sort of edge lordery that interestingly does have a place within a certain current of the. The left. Actually, specifically, again, the dirtbag left, which, you know, was often. And I don't know, if you go back to these obscure left controversy, intro left controversies and scandals of 10 years ago, you'll find plenty of people saying, oh, like, you know, some Chapo Trap House host or somebody in that general zone like, you know, used to post like Nazi memes on something awful or things like that. Like there, there's plenty of stuff that was claimed. I don't think any of them had tattoos, but, you know, there's plenty of this kind of stuff going on back then. And I'd say particularly, I'm not sure exactly when his tattoo dates to, but I'd say particularly before sort of the mid 2010s, you know, there were all kinds of weird edge lordy behaviors and, and kind of statements that, you know, were not yet kind of fully parsed into, you know, if you have this or if you've said this, then you must be a fascist or a right winger. They were just kind of a certain type of, of. Of, you know, extreme, you know, sort of attention seeking, performance so it's interesting to me that he fits into that. And, you know, my basic argument in the. In the piece I wrote called Bernie Bro Elegy was that, you know, by and large, these figures had to kind of first of all figure out, you know, figures who kind of had this background and sort of made their living off of being brash and vulgar and combative and were white men, had to figure out how to carve out a space for themselves outside of institutions that are dominated by this kind of feminized managerialism. And therefore they became podcasters and, you know, basically lived off of Patreons and things like that. And second of all, you know, that. That they had to often tone some of this down or figure out how to, you know, particularly like, take up certain issues, you know, pay lip service to certain identitarian causes just so that they could kind of get the, you know, they could kind of get some relief from what would other be otherwise be a kind of relentless attacks from within the left. And so you see that with these figures from, you know, places like Chapa Trappas, that they basically kind of became, if not, you know, primarily focused on, at least sympathetic to most of the identitarian causes of the era, whereas people who remained persistently sort of anti identitarian and had this kind of white male profile tended to end up being, you know, canceled and excluded in various ways. So I guess the big question for Platner was whether somebody with this kind of rough, messy history of being a sort of, you know, an edge lord and a vulgarian of some sort could exist within the Democratic Party to some extent. Obviously he managed to win a primary. And this seemed to me, along with these victories in. In New York City, from Mamdani to the more recent candidates for Congress, you know, a sign that the Democratic Party's ability to crack down on and control, you know, the. The primary process in particular was. Was much weaker than it had been in previous cycles. And that sort of. The DNC blob is no longer quite able to determine outcomes in part because of, I think, the. The broader disillusionment that followed from its catastrophic choices leading up to and around the 2024 election. And in part just because in some ways the whole project that kind of comes out of the Clinton and Obama administrations that, you know, bequeath this whole generation of staffers that sort of control the institutions of the Democratic Party has sort of run out of steam. But it is interesting to see with Platner, they were able to, I mean, obviously, you know, he he had much worse sort of baggage than, than some candidates. At the same time he, I, I mean it, it was just striking to me this, the way this entire kind of melodrama was rolled out. I have to say I'm, I'm, you know, I don't dismiss any of these things off out of hand, but I do think I, I've been surprised to see how quickly many people who had supported him briefly sort of fell in line after this most recent report there, the first expo supposed expose of him that was published in the New York Times. Just like incredibly weak tea sort of pseudo me too. I mean, I think I described it in a substack as a sort of pseudo me too expose. I mean it was essentially like he was a bad boyfriend level stuff. And then obviously that sort of failed. I mean, you know, I don't want to be too conspiratorial about it. I think these processes are diffuse and complex, but it seems that this was the publication of these exposes is tied to, to some sort of DNC blob effort to quash his candidacy. And so the second, the second expose was clearly a sort of necessary follow up because the first one hadn't quite done the job. And so it is striking to me. I, I'd say beyond the fact that, you know, despite us having gone long past peak MeToo within the Democratic coalition, you can still basically get most of the people, including the sort of progressives who consider themselves opponents of the DNC blob, to fall in line as soon as these sorts of accusations are, are made. And I think that is a sign that these sort of HR lady politics remain dominant and difficult to, to circumvent. And you know, I, I don't necessarily think, I mean, obviously Platner was sort of a, a very messy and problematic candidate. Nonetheless, I guess my overall feeling, and this I think echoes something I said before, is he did win the primary and I, I sort of think he should just continue to run and let the voters decide. That's my, that's my view and that that would be in line again with what, that would be in line again with what, you know, Donald Trump did after the Access Hollywood tape. The voters chose him. He won primaries. There are plenty of, you know, salacious accusations against Donald Trump, including accusations of rape against him. And nonetheless, you know, the voters continued
- [41:09]
Matthew Schmitz
to, I mean, Trump was actually judged, he was found kind of liable for rape or to have, effectively to have committed it by a jury against Eugene Carroll. This was the woman who claimed that, you know, Basically decades before, or maybe, I don't know, maybe not decades before, but some time ago, Trump had assaulted her in a fitting room at Bloomingdale's. And what I most recall about that was Trump offered two defenses. He said, basically, she's too old. I never would have desired such a woman. And then he said, I own the Plaza across the street from Bloomingdale's. Why would I do something in a dressing room there? That's disgusting. I would go to my own hotel. So there, yes, there was, but he was found effectively guilty of that and, and liable. So that's, that's much, goes much farther than anything that's occurred with Platinum.
- [42:08]
Jeff Schulenberger
I suppose seeing MAGA people sort of gleefully, I mean, you know, it's like, fine, they're, you know, they've shown themselves to be unprincipled in all kinds of ways, but it's like if they want to just be sort of ruthlessly partisan about this and like, find glee in the sort of humiliation of a, of a left wing candidacy, fine. But what's interesting is to see them actually, to see MAGA people actually doubling down on believing women in this particular case and sort of say, you know, we must believe this accuser. I mean, that's actually quite fascinating given the past 10 years.
- [42:47]
Sam
It's totally coherent though, because on the left, as I said, they've abandoned materialist politics for moralist politics. Right? So that, that is how you're going to fall. Because you're holier than thou, so you can't have a dirt bag leftist. I mean, I agree with you. Let the people decide. But the only way that he would, I think is gonna serve, would be able to survive in a dream world is if he went to the Republican side. Because that's the only way you can survive a thing like this. Because the whole point is to be against that kind of moralism. Like, it's totally. It. I, I said it's coherent, but it is in its own incoherent way. It's, it's coherent with its incoherence. Because the point is that yes, it's unprincipled, but it's like, screw you guys, you would cancel a candidate for this. It just makes him more based for us. You know, that's, they, they fall by that moralism. Because if that's all you have for politics, all. Anything in your candidate's history is going to make them fall. Because there's no, there's no principle there either. Like I was thinking about this, you know, like Mlk for instance, the FBI was on his case, you know, following him to hotel rooms and this sort of thing and tried blackmailing him with his indiscretions and all of this stuff. And you know, they drip, drip, drip some of this information to the press. But I don't think even for a minister, the revelation that he was cheating on his wife, let alone a socialist or someone who was like on the cause of civil rights at the time and so on, that would even taint him even then, because there was still the remnants of a kind of material, principled politics that was wouldn't fall on a man's indiscretions because you kind of expect that among great men to be honest. And the right still kind of holds that. And the left is like, no, the whole thing is purity politics. And there isn't really anything else. It's just this moralism. Let's use the state as a great. There's this huge charity and that's how we'll solve the world's problems. That's the extent of it. You can't survive in that political world if you have dirt, if you are a dirt bag. Literally. Not literally, figuratively. You get the idea.
- [44:53]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah, it's very striking. Most of the oddest critics of MeToo, I'd say, are the people who reject it most fully are on their right. I'd include myself in the group of Me Too critics, having written early and at length on the accusations against Harvey weinstein. But really MeToo is always a phenomenon that was centered on kind of the liberal left. And within liberal institutions it really had a much more limited blast radius outside those institutions, the powerful dynamics instead, whatever. The shitty media men list was not populated with the names of National Review writers. And that may reflect maybe more of them are pious guys who got married at age 21 to their first or second girlfriend or something, or they're Mormons or whatever. But also I think it just has to do with the political atmosphere and sort of gender dynamics within these non liberal spaces, which are very different. So you have that irony that the Me Too critics are very distinct from the Me Too victims. And a much more typical Me Too victim is someone like Platinum or someone in a left liberal space who is a straight man. Me Too victim. I mean, that's not maybe the best, most well chosen phrase. I mean, when these, this allegation against Platner, it's interesting that it was judged to be credible instantly by people like Ro Khanna, Elizabeth Warren, you heard that phrase, this is a credible allegation. Repeated over and over again. There was also a pretty serious allegation against him offered in the New York Times by this Republican operative, Lindsey Fifield, but effectively it was deemed not credible because she was Republican. And that's the logic there is perfectly clear. But it's still so interesting that really, you know, it's only when, you know, a woman of this kind can say that something happened and that is to be dismissed. But if a woman of this other kind says that happened, then, yes, we need to accept her word. And just seeing that difference play out is really fascinating. You know, it's not clear that Platner has any reason, just from his own perspective, to drop out. I mean, if he drops out at this point, he will really be conceding the idea that he's guilty of what he's accused. If he stays in, he will end up being the Democratic nominee and important elements of the party will be forced to rally around him if he just brazens it out. And it's going to be. I mean, I think it's going to be quite interesting to see what he chooses, because if he does choose to drop out, I think that will reflect basically psychological and social pressure, which is real, but I think it will actually be a choice against his own immediate interest, at least in political terms. Now, maybe that choice could make sense if he knows that there are many other shoes that are going to drop if he stays in the race, many other accusations that will come out that might be a reason to leave the race, but otherwise, I don't see why, from his perspective, he shouldn't just continue in.
- [48:31]
Sam
Would also be a test of whether or not that that kind of purity politics is a institutional issue, a problem of the party establishment, or if it's something that's actually held on the part of the electorate, like it'll kind of decide, can you have a populist, a based populist left, or is that something that has been entirely taken over by the right? That that's the space now for. The space now for pushing back against some of these broader currents in society. Is it a party issue or is it a societal issue? You know, is that. Is that where pushback is now? It just belongs on the right and the purity people are the left, and that's the divide we've drawn as a society? Or could something more interesting happen?
- [49:16]
Matthew Schmitz
You know, the partner case reminds me a bit of Andrew Cuomo, which. Which I think was a much weirder and more disturbing case, I have to admit. I'm not hugely high on Platner or his candidacy. But something about the accusations against him reminds me of what happened with Andrew Cuomo. The accusations against Cuomo, then the governor of New York, were less serious, but still it was an accusation against a Democratic politician that were quickly credited in Democratic circles. Cuomo's case that led to his downfall. And what was so strange about that was that suddenly Cuomo, the elected governor, was no longer the governor, and some woman no one had ever heard of. Kathy Hochul, was the governor. She's since been elected, but until she was elected on her own seam, I just felt that there was something odd about that. And my feeling with Cuomo was that he had effectively run out of rope politically. He was seen to have mishandled Covid. He rubbed lots of people the wrong way, and that didn't result in some conspiracy against him where at that point the establishment decided to launch allegations against him. But it just meant that when those allegations came, no one was inclined to defend him. There just wasn't really any reason to hold on to this guy. I wonder if something like that is true of Platner. I've seen reports that he hasn't released his most recent fundraising totals, which is often an indication of weak fundraising. If you haven't published your figures, that's because you don't have anything good to tell. So maybe he's looking a little weak. And one thing behind the people now choosing to distance themselves from him, it's just a sense that this guy can't pull it off, even if it weren't for the allegation. So, Graham Plattner, Republican. That'll be something to see with that. Thanks, Ashley. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks, listeners. You can subscribe now. We're still running for a short time only. Our best ever deal. Get a full year of compaq for just $10. Go to compactmag.com sale.
- [51:37]
Sam
Sam.