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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:37]
B
Welcome to the Compact Podcast. Today we'll discuss the State of the Union address. I'm joined by Ashley Frawley and Jeff Schoellenberger. And I'm Matthew Schmitz. So you both watched the State of the Union? I am sure, yes. Can you confirm it?
- [00:55]
A
Of course. Of course. I watched with great interest. And to be fair, it wasn't actually, it wasn't actually two hours because if you take out all the applause. I didn't watch it live because it would have been like, I don't know, 4am or I am, but I watched it in the morning and I was able to zoom past all the applause and it was really like half an hour it took me to actually watch it.
- [01:15]
B
I get the feeling Ashley's covering for Jeff because she gave a instant and fluid response, but Jeff's just kind of back there silent.
- [01:24]
C
Yeah, I just watched the highlights and read. Skimmed through the transcript, I'm afraid.
- [01:32]
B
What did Trump say?
- [01:36]
C
Everything's awesome. The Democrats are traitors and Iran won't say the magic words and therefore we might bomb them. So, yeah, the, that, that, that's roughly my summary. I think it was. It was sort of triple. Yeah.
- [01:57]
B
Talk about. Okay, go ahead. Tripartite.
- [02:03]
C
It seems that he started on a high note of talking about winning and brought on the US Hockey team, Sakhona, Canada.
- [02:15]
B
So at the beginning he said we're winning so much. One of the ways in which he said we're winning is that we're getting 18 trillion in foreign investment. And we also hear about, we hear people denounce Chinese actors buying up American land, or we don't want to sell American steel companies to Japanese steel companies. Well, I mean, that is foreign investment. And more broadly, I wrote about this in a kind of quick reaction for the New York Times. Foreign investment is a reflection of the US Trade deficit. So the larger the trade deficit, the greater foreign investment in our country will be. So if we were to revive American industry, if we were to balance trade, that foreign investment would decline. So when Trump says we got $18 trillion invested from foreigners, first of all, it's not really clear that that figure is accurate. But whatever the figure is, the size of that figure basically reflects the fact that Americans are buying goods from abroad. And then those people who are selling those goods from abroad are using that money to buy capital in the United States. And it's not. I just thought that was maybe the most dissonant note in terms of Trump's own agenda and what he is supposed to stand for. I mean, it sounds nice and I'm certainly not of the opinion that Trump's always laboring to be consistent on these matters, but I thought it was quite off.
- [04:03]
C
Well, and I suppose one concrete illustration of this dynamic was when you had the Hyundai plant in Georgia, I believe, that was raided by ice and you know, a number of Korean worker, I think maybe 100 or so Korean workers were, were, were arrested by ICE. And so, you know, the point here is partly that when you have these kinds of foreign investment, which, you know, do I, I mean, well, first of all, they suggest, okay, Americans want to buy these Korean made cars. And so a Korean car manufacturer is going to set up a factory in order to deliver these cars to the US Market. But they are still, you know, it is still a foreign corporation. So and then at the same time they're also bringing in foreign workers to work at that plant, as is not, not entirely uncommon. So yeah, there are some kind of interesting tensions and contradictions there. The, the one that struck me was the, you know, there was the boasting about the Dow and the S P which obviously, I mean the, the stock market after the, you know, there was a period of kind of freak out after the Liberation Day tariffs are imposed and then there were a number of kind of walk backs and, and modifications of those tariffs, at least the more, the more extreme ones. And since then the, the stock market has mostly been, you know, continuing to soar. But it was interesting because the MAGA line, you know, when the stock market was tanking immediately after Liberation Day was we're about restoring the real economy, not this fake stock market bubble stuff. And so again, there is kind of an interesting tension there that, that the argument was, you know, cry more about your stock portfolio like what we care about is building in America. Well, of course, if you look at the overall manufacturing employment numbers, they haven't been, you know, they've been in decline over the past year and meanwhile the, the Dow has been going up. So it's, it's, it, it's interesting again that there isn't a great tendency towards, towards consistency here. But it's interesting that what you see is this kind of having it both ways tendency where, you know, know if things look bad, there's a way of selling that if things look good, then there's a way of sell, you know, good buy. What are supposedly the old measures, the thing that, you know, the sort of fake economy, you know, that, that preceded Trump, where it was all about inflating these fake assets and not building the real American economy. Well, that can still be celebrated anyway, so it's just. Yeah, there is just kind of a. A puffery to all of it.
- [07:04]
A
Yeah.
- [07:05]
B
So I didn't think that the winning passage really resonated until the US Men's gold medal winning hockey team came into the chamber and led everyone in a USA chant, which always feels good, I
- [07:21]
C
think, especially at the expense of Canadians Juvenile, our national. Our national nemesis.
- [07:30]
B
And so, Ashley, you didn't rejoice in that moment as our Canadian?
- [07:35]
A
No, I have been actually sad, like very deeply sad for several days. And you, you don't even care. That's the thing that kills me. You don't care. Neither of you even watch that game. I watched it while marching in a parade on my phone.
- [07:52]
B
You were double tasking. That's not caring. Come on. You were double. Ashley admitted you were double tasking.
- [07:58]
A
This is how much I love you and my family, that it's like you apocries like it's carnival and everybody's all dressed up. And I was like, no, but the game. I have to watch the game. And my watching the game influenced the result, you see, So I had to.
- [08:13]
B
Well, think of it this way. Think of it this way. It's like the old Jesuit joke about smoking and prayer. Can you smoke while praying? No. Can you pray while smoking? Of course. So you weren't distracted from the game. You weren't marching disloyally marching during the game. You're watching the game while marching, which you had to do. So. Yeah, I mean, I'm obviously a huge hockey fan. I knew the match was on and I thought maybe I should put it on. But it was a Sunday morning, I was watching our kids and I thought, well, it'll distract me a bit from the kids. I'll end up yelling at them. So I was unable to. But I was aware it was on. And I think that shows a lot of interest and commitment on my part.
- [08:59]
A
I used to go to sleep at night listening to hockey games because the sound made me feel happy and comfortable and relaxed. I didn't even care about the result. I just need to hear the sound of the rink in the skates anyways. But I've been really sad about this for a number of reasons because that happened, right? And then out of nowhere, I'm sorry, I'm going, I'm going to take us off topic for half a second because this has really troubled me. But out of nowhere on X, there are all these Canadian flag accounts coming out in droves. Defending maid. And I just. And then you got that B.C. human Rights Tribunal, kangaroo court saying like, basically, there's no freedom of conscience making the most ridiculous comparison, saying you don't have to be a Christian to believe there are Christians. Like, what? And therefore denying Christian is like, is like denying people's ability to be Christians. It made no flipping sense whatsoever. But, and I was just like, that's it. The whole country's fallen. And I, and I was so upset. And I was thinking like, because the hockey symbolized it for me. I was like, we don't deserve to win. I'm glad, I'm glad America won because this country is a piece. Like it's, it's. And it exposed so much. How much that kindness, like the Olympics exposed that kindness as being so faux. Because when we play sports, we're jerks. It's totally true. You've never met a meaner girl than a Canadian soccer player. Like, you never, you never seen a parking lot fight like you do after a soccer game. Women playing soccer. It's all fake. It's all fake. And, and the thing is that that faux kindness allows us to lie to ourselves and create this, this sense that we're, we don't know who we are, but we know we're better than those people, those Americans, and therefore adopt any kind of horrendous policy that can be framed as caring and compassionate and free. Free health care, even if it means we're killing off patients. Sorry, I'm very upset and em about this, but I honestly, I've been really, I, I, I've been really concerned about the state that Canada is going. And you know, at the very least, Americans don't lie to themselves. Well, let's. Now let's go on to the, the State of the Union because, well, I do, I do think quasi communist and its ability to lie to itself.
- [11:20]
B
So the, the Canadian men's hockey team, you know, it, you know, labored valiantly. You don't want my patronizing words, but I mean that, that, that is noble. So that's, that's what Canada stands for. And you can stake your claim on that. I, in terms of the Olympics, our quick recap of it, I was transfixed by the curling controversies. I don't know how much you Followed this as a Canadian, but I, I just couldn't. Couldn't stop watching these things. And I guess I loved the fact that this sport is so small and everyone knows each other so well, seemingly, and it's a kind of gentleman's sport, so to speak, but it's so intensely competitive, and the accusations of various felonious actions, cheating, fly so readily, so that I thought that was totally fascinating in the Olympics.
- [12:19]
A
Oh, it, it exposed us completely. Because I recognize that kind of defensiveness is so. And it's like the facade is the gentleman sport. Right. But the reality is, like, it wasn't called Go bleep yourself. Essentially. That's, you know, that's how we are. But you know what? Yeah. So I feel like Americans will just come out and say things, and it strikes us Canadians as very rude, whereas we'll, like, dance around. Oh, I'm sorry, but, you know, maybe you could do this instead of just sort of being like, it just sounds really brash to us. But on the other hand, I, I feel like lying to yourself is an also a great American sport, because I think someone had mentioned that they were expecting this speech to be the State of the Union address to, to kind of articulate a sense of Trumpism, and instead you get all this, like, bluster and, and puffery. But is that not obviously Trumpism, that, like, if you can kind of spin something in your favor, then it does work and whatever. It's like, it's like still 1980s salesman's salesman tactics. But it also reminds me quite a lot of, like, it's like Brezhnev, Right. In the dying days of the Soviet Union, you get these speeches where it's like you have stagnation beneath and triumphalism above these celebrations of achievement, no acknowledgement of decay. Everybody kind of knows it's not. Not true. But, you know, you have this lengthy, lengthy speech about history being on our side and the future is radiant and that sort of thing. I'm not. I know I'm not the only one who's. Who's compared Trump to, like, the, the dying days of the Soviet Union, but it does sort of strike me as such a weirdly American. And it's like Horseshoe theory. It's so American, it becomes. It's its opposite. In the end, you wind up sounding like the thing that. That was your nemesis for half a century or more.
- [14:18]
B
Yeah. Certainly there was no Trump doctrine. I remember Bush, when he would give his State of the Union addresses, he would try to articulate not just a list of accomplishments, but a kind of rhetorical vision, a sort of broader drama. Whether that's spreading a freedom agenda opposing an axis of evil, it sort of tells a broader story about the nation. And Trump's story is not as clear, I think, as the Bush one was. America's winning, this is good, he told us, but there wasn't a kind of ideological framework, given that makes sense of how he's going to interact with Iran, how he has dealt with Venezuela, I guess beyond the immediate American self interest. But you do need higher. You need to articulate a higher principle or a doctrine by which you can judge your own actions. So I think that's something that really remains to be done. In terms of the best moment of the speech. I mean, I think far and away the men's hockey team was the best moment of the night. And there's not really any competition substantively. Maybe the one where I think Trump had some real success was when he said that the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. The line didn't land perfectly in the moment, just the flow of the speech. But I think that was a just point at which Trump indicated he's not going to yield ground on immigration to Democrats. Democrats are feeling emboldened during Trump's very controversial enforcement actions in American cities. But I think the issue is still fundamentally a strong one for the gop. And Democrats still have serious problems because they haven't yet come to terms with immigration issue and articulated how they're going to avoid falling back into kind of effective open borders policy where everyone needs to be welcomed and turning them away is something to be avoided. I think Democrats are at risk of going back to that kind of early Biden approach, especially as Trump continues to polarize opinion on the issue. So I thought that was a good moment from him.
- [16:56]
A
You had mentioned before, like, you need to articulate a vision. I mean, I think implicitly the vision has always been that people should have more money in their pockets. Like, and that has been what Trump has above opponents who for such a long time had been like, America is great. As though this is like the end of history. And now we all just need to focus on like, charity and humanitarianism or something like that. Like, and we can now start focusing on like, social justice. And people are like, well, I don't really think that this is the end of everything that, you know, I still have problems, I'm not financially secure, this sort of thing. And so people are feeling this insecurity and yet they're being Told that actually they, they have every, everything is great for you and the pie isn't growing anymore. And you even, and that sounds like hyperbole, but, you know, degrowth became a very powerful idea on, like the left and center left for quite some time and very mainstream or at least zero growth. These ideas were being bandied about, which was like, the pie is not going to grow anymore, so we're going to just going to, we're just going to share it out differently implicitly. Things aren't going to get any better for you. And Trump has always had this awareness of that, that this, his finger on that pulse. And he comes back to this in the address where he's like, and this means that, you know, I've cut taxes and done this and that, da, da, da. And even though it's not true on the ground, because, you know, economists seem to agree that tariffs are, at the end of the day, are paid by the basically become regressive forms of taxation. So, yes, you're not going to be, you're going to have more money from your paycheck in your pocket, but you're going to spend more. Even like, no, tax on tips is essentially like subsidizing businesses and paying part of those wages at the till. So these are all regressive forms of taxation. But at the end of the day, you have more money in your pocket from your paycheck, so you feel a little bit richer. So even though it's, but even though it's not true, rhetorically, constantly signaling to it is the one thing that I, for some reason Democrats just cannot get through their heads that that is part of what makes Trump so appealing. Even lying about it shows that he at least understands that it matters, whereas they cannot get over this idea of, like, no, but we should be good and nice. We should, you know, be kind to immigrants and, and, you know, try to reduce inequality not by growing the pie, but by sharing it out. They have like this. I'm not saying they never say these things. It's obviously not true, but there is a sense that it's almost like they have an allergy to the idea that the average person's person should get richer, that actually the greater quest is essentially humanitarian and really people have enough. And that is absolutely repulsive to most people. So I think that at least that rhetorically is the vision. There is something there.
- [19:45]
C
Yeah. And I think this is what this sort of abundance argument is an attempt to correct within the Democratic coalition this, you know, this, this argument has been, which, I mean, it was originally framed within the, you know, during the Biden administration and you know, sort of seen as a deficit that there was not this vision of abundance. And so, yeah, I think that that's, you know, that is quite central. You know, I think there is at least a kind of, if nothing else, you know, even, even the sort of nakedly self serving kind of ambition at least suggests some kind of aspirational quality to, to the project, you know, that. Yeah, that there's, you know, getting rich is good, you know, and people on the left will sort of make fun of this, you know, as like, well, you know, this idea that like every average American thinks they'll someday be a millionaire. But you know, I think it can't quite be dismissed so easily as far as the, the other point about the, you know, the moment in which he sort of asks people to stand up in agreement with this principle about, you know, prioritizing American citizens over foreigners. And obviously on one level this is kind of polite. You know, this is clearly political theater. He was trying to get, to get this display in which the Democrats would remain seated.
- [21:22]
B
And they're not, and they're not gonna, they're not gonna stand, they're not gonna, they're not gonna jump up and sit down on his cue. You know, they're not kindergarten.
- [21:30]
A
Also, the way that he, the way that he phrased it was like, you know, stand up if you stop beating your wife kind of thing. Like, it was like there was really nothing that Democrats could, could do. You know, they, if they stood up, they were screwed and if they sat down, they were screwed. It was actually quite smart.
- [21:47]
C
Yeah, no, it was, I mean, it was a, it was a clever piece of political theater. And I think again, it did. It, it spelled out a relatively simple and I'd say overall pretty uncontroversial principle. The only weakness. So I think I, I agree it was overall a kind of re. Articulation of a principle that was an attempt to, to kind of reassert the, the Republican position within this debate at a moment when they've sort of been on the defensive. But you know, I think the one weakness in it is of course that the two most prominent victims of this most recent enforcement effort were themselves U.S. citizens. And so, and, and this is, you know, part of the controversy. And there were other factors like the fact that officials claimed that they were justified in shooting one of them by the fact that he was carrying a handgun, which of course, you know, created problems within the Republican coalition because it suggested that simply being out in public with a gun would be a reason for law enforcement to, to shoot you dead, which obviously isn't something that the NRA sort of part of the coalition is, is going to get behind. So I think it did also raise a problem perhaps, which is, you know, on one hand it articulated a, a simple principle, but I think there is also this kind of enemy within discourse within the, within the MAGA coalition that will justify these kinds of kill. I mean, regardless of the, the details of these particular shootings, I think it's, it's fair to say that they weren't overall something that pulled, well, that, that, you know, galvanized support behind the administration's efforts. And, and yet, you know, there is this kind of enemy within rhetoric within the Trump coalition that, you know, suggests, okay, there aren't, you know, there are people who are, who may be US Citizens, but who's, you know, whose, whose protection or rights we can't guarantee or take particularly seriously. And so I think that's, that's sort of the ambiguity within the Trump coalition around that, that assertion. And it's probably where the point at which they are going to weaken themselves is, is when it goes in that direction, as we saw in Minneapolis, when they were essentially forced to, to retreat from their operations.
- [24:34]
A
So what did you find to be the, the, the key moment for the, in the speech?
- [24:41]
C
Yeah, I would say the one we were just discussing would obviously be a key moment. I think it was the most effective articulation of a principle and combined with political theater that I think did. I mean, I agree with Matthew that it did sort of reassert the strength of the GOP and kind of reveal the weakness or potential weakness of the Democrats on this, on this position.
- [25:09]
B
Yeah, I think Democrats need to just avoid, I mean, right now the wind is in their sails on the issue. I think undoubtedly public opinion has been moving away from Trump on immigration, but I think, I think so. I think that the Democrats can take pleasure in that and be encouraged by it, but they really need to avoid overplaying their hand. And they, they need to recall just how weak the Democratic approach to immigration has been, that there is a more popular and more moderate position than Trump's out there that could be claimed and held. I'm skeptical that the Democratic Party will manage to claim and hold it, maybe unless they receive a shock, something like the GOP did in 2016. But I think that's really the challenge for Democratic lawmakers now is to try to work their way toward that center ground. Because, yeah, I Don't think Americans enjoy the theatrics and the confrontations we've seen more recently, that they obviously are recoiling from it. And so if the Democratic Party could reject that without falling back toward that kind of early Bidenism, they would reap the electoral rewards.
- [26:41]
A
The key moment for me, I would say, is, do you remember where he mentions that this example, this woman who homeschools her kids during the day and then works as a waitress at night while her husband operates heavy machinery and that's his job. I thought I found that so interesting because it struck me, it reminded me of that old documentary. It was a documentary like. And it was one of these, these things that followed two families. Do you remember that? And it was like a working class family. They get married young, they have their kids, wife stays at home, it all looks really nice. And then the husband loses his job and she has to go out and work. And she finds independence in her work. But they're like ships passing in the night in the end, like, it's all just horrible. Their lives fall apart. And it reminded, I think about that documentary all the time because you have this kind of problem quite frequently in lots of different societies where the economic nature, the way that work is structured, means that as a condition of having these kids, she homeschools, right? So there's supposed to, supposed to be this, like, idyllic thing where you're spending all this time with your kids, but then she has to go out to work in the evening in order to sustain something like a middle class existence. And it's like, oh, we have like so much more money in our pockets because of no tax on tips. Like, if that's making a substantial difference, you know, you're, you're close to the line. And, and that is very. This is like, corrosive of families. And yet this is something that I noticed that he completely kind of celebrated. And you see this, you know, this is a really, really common problem. And it, and even a complete blind spot for governments and groups that supposedly put families first. They do not prioritize the, the, the ability of that family to stay together. The fact that both parents working is a condition of having a family is just completely, completely accepted. The quality of the work. I mean, does the woman really. Does she. Is she finding herself and her meaning and purpose in waitressing in the evenings, which takes her away from her relationship, which is corrosive of that relationship. You know, if you're working shifts, you're not seeing each other. And this is something that's just a complete and total blind spot. I just felt like that was worth kind of bringing up because nobody questions that. And it sounds like so, it sounds so right wing to be like, oh, actually working a crap job outside the family is really bad for the family. And it's not really anybody's idea of fulfillment. But no, this is supposed to be like women's lib. And the right doesn't care either. The right completely doesn't question that instead celebrates, oh, now she doesn't have tax on her crappy tits.
- [29:28]
C
I was going to say one other thing that struck me about the lack of articulation of a clear kind of unifying vision is the way that it was inevitably pegged to the 250th anniversary of the founding. And I mean, I suppose one thing that struck me about there are various things that struck me about this one is that it's very easy to imagine a different Republican president who really would have oriented the whole speech around the kind of cult of the founders and the founding and the Constitution and all these, you know, the sort of founding documents. And it's interesting to me, and obviously there are many in the Republican Party who are still very invested in all of that, but it's interesting to me that I still, you know, maybe I will be proven wrong. But it does seem like the 250th anniversary is this clearly very significant landmark that Trump has the opportunity to really tie his, his presidency to. And I didn't see evidence in this speech of him articulating a vision that would allow for this kind of landmark anniversary moment to be a defining one in terms of what his vision for the country is. It just seemed kind of absolutely.
- [30:56]
B
And I don't think we need, you don't need a Bush style freedom agenda that ties the national purpose to a universal principle in that direct way. That's not necessary. Not what I had in mind when I identified this lack in Trump's speech. I think of Andrew Jackson's first annual message to Congress, basically a State of the Union at the time, though they weren't given in person. Then he said, it is my settled purpose to ask nothing that is not clearly right and to submit to nothing that is wrong. And this was an articulation of national honor, you could say, drawing on his Scots Irish upbringing. You ask nothing that is not clearly right and submit to nothing that is wrong. Because America's rights had been disrespected on the global stage in many ways. And so Jackson asked France to pay reparations for damage it had caused to American assets in previous conflicts. He insisted that America's rights not be trampled on. And so that was a principle of national honor, really. But notice that it not only gave Jackson ground for claiming rights, it also articulated a principle of restraint. It said, we can't do anything that is not clearly right. Now, obviously, listeners can judge for themselves how well Jackson abided by that principle, but I think he certainly earnestly aspired to do so. And Trump's often called Jacksonian, but there's really, isn't that clear attempt to live, to have the nation abide by a kind of principle of honor. In the same way, I love the idea of annexing Greenland, it just brings me joy, the idea of enlarging our territory. But if you're going to ask nothing that is not clearly right. I mean, threatening war against these Greenlanders is not clearly right. I think one could say so. I often think that Trump could stand to be a little more Jacksonian than he actually is, and that maybe some people who hate and fear the name of Jackson would find him a little more sympathetic if he were.
- [33:49]
A
Yeah, it's an enormous missed opportunity, but it's not one you would expect that Trump would ever be able to take up. Maybe you could gesture toward it as all that he did, essentially, but instead of this, like, extraordinary legacy of 1776, you get what is essentially managerial populism. And maybe that's all that we can expect of our governments now. I mean, it's. How far have we fallen popular managerialism with a populist spin. But he. It's. It's a shame because as I was listening, I was thinking to myself, how much? Instead of saying, wow, these people are crazy, but don't worry, we stepped in, we stopped him. How much you can go back to that, those original kind of enlightenment, propulsive, revolutionary ideas about. About human beings and freedom and so on, to really drive home why these people are insane. Why it is a. Why taking children away from parents and, and, you know, hiding things like transition and so on, all these things that he brought up. You know, you could talk about that as an extraordinary departure from power of the subject of the individual, of the citizen and so on, and self determination, all that sort of thing, and the fear of, like having the executive having too much power, or the fear of institutions having too much power, the fear of a morality that determined from on high and imposed on people outside of the freedom of their conscience, all these sorts of things, you'd get none of that at all. And yet you could. You could. I guess I say this as a Canadian who sees this rotting away in Canada as well and just wishing that there was some ability to put forward an essential humanist ethos as against progressive anti humanism. But it seems like nobody really believes in that anymore. I feel like a lot of the time we killed God, but we didn't kill God to put humanity in its place. We killed God to kill both at the same time. You know, we killed man and God and all that's left is animals. So if you're gonna kind of put, put up a stand for all these, these great. You really can't. It'll all sound empty. Like when someone stands up and gives a speech about freedom, it doesn't mean anything anymore because there's no subject that can bear that. You know, Trump may not have the chops to be able to do that or even try. But even if someone did try, what scares me is there's just nothing there. There's no the, the foundation on which all that, all the great things that were said 250 years ago has disintegrated before our eyes. And it all sounds meaningless now. Like, I talk about like the value of human life. People go, oh, that sounds so religious. That sounds so empty. There's nothing. There's just nothing there anymore. So I don't know how, how you can possibly have a governance that re. Articulates that Trump is knit, obviously. But like, it's an enormous uphil battle. And I, I don't know. It strikes me is that if you are going to remind yourselves of what, of what it's all about, then you have to, you know what the American project was. You have to have a sense of the human that, that carried it, which is gone now.
- [36:55]
C
So I was just going to bring up something I don't, I don't think got significant airtime as far. Again, I, I didn't listen to the whole thing, so maybe I missed it. But, you know, it, it is notable. I, I wrote something recently that will come out soon about AI and post humanism and anti humanism, which are these trends in 20th century thought, you know, philosophy and were sort of, you know, trendy ideas in academia. But I think it's, it's important to note in relation to what Ashley just said that the thing that is driving the American economy and these great heights of the stock market to which Trump alluded is really the current AI boom. And it's important to note that the AI industry is informed by an explicit philosophical anti humanism or Post humanism. And so in other words, by, by the ambition to essentially render humanity obsolete and move on to the next stage, which is essentially a kind of, you know, a, a different great replacement of, of, by the sort of the sort of digital Ubermensch or whatever. And so it's important to note, and this is kind of an, I will also say, I think this is an interesting and overall kind of underplayed tension within the current Republican coalition, which is that you have the AI accelerationists of the tech industry who have significance presence within, within the administration and the figures of people like David Sachs. And then on the other hand, you have social conservatives and religious conservatives who have obviously good reasons to be skeptical of this agenda. In fact, I just listened to, and not just social and religious conservatives as traditionally understood, but even sort of original MAGA populists like Steve Bannon. I just listened to a podcast interview with Bannon on a podcast about AI called the Last Invention, which I recommend to people. And the title of the episode was Build the AI Wall. And so, you know, Bannon kind of articulates there and on his show a version of MAGA populism, which is dead set against AI accelerationism, for which that's really the enemy. But that's an enmity within the currents MAGA coalition, within the current ruling coalition. And so I think that tension between post humanism and humanism, which, you know, in my sort of academic training I thought of as kind of this conflict between different philosophical positions of like 20th century thought is really kind of at the core of, of the economy and the, the ruling kind of conservative coalition at the moment. So I think that's, that's kind of an underplayed and in a sense like it relates back to, you know, 1776, as Ashley was just saying, where you had a kind of certain articulate key articulation of humanist ideals. And then on the other hand, you have a deep anti humanism that, that is extremely powerful and has adherence not just in, you know, humanities, academia, but in, at the heights of the American economy.
- [40:32]
A
That's why I wrote that piece for, for Compact last week, Epstein's Necrophilia, because I wanted people, and it sounds mad, but I wanted people to feel the horror that I feel when I think about what we're building, when I think about the absence of a human centered ethics. Now that, and I, I believe perhaps I extend this too much to explain everything, but I really think that absence of the human is sometimes gestured to like when I say that Trump says, you know, he recognizes at the end, or Trump recognizes at the end of the day that what matters is money in people's pockets and a feeling of prosperity. He's gesturing toward an ethics that I think most people still have, which is that the purpose of anything is to make our lives better, more enjoyable, longer, healthier. It seems like obvious that's what you do, but that what people don't realize is that ethic is actually gone. It's, it's, it has no real material expression in the public sphere. It's, it's some if it ha. If we manage to do things for humans, that's great, but at the end of the day we are not able to act directly on that. And in order to kind of make things work on paper, make the spreadsheets work, make the administrative machine roll over from one, you know, period to the next, make the economy roll over, you have to push human beings out. And we're not really recognizing or grappling with that contradiction that, that and, and, but people, people do, people recognize that every day they're like, hey, there's all this money and all this wealth and I'm constantly being told that like I'm consuming too much and the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. And yeah, I don't feel my life is getting better. Shouldn't I then have security? Shouldn't I feel something good out of that? And it's like, and for years so called progressives or people on the left were like, no, how dare you. And at least Trump and some people who have like started talking about abundance and all this have recognized that, but there isn't any. We're not at a point we're able to articulate a coherent politics on its basis and instead it just becomes a weird kind of mishmash and maybe a rhetorical gesture here and there.
- [42:38]
B
With that, thanks to Ashley, thanks to Jeff and thank you listeners. For more compactmag.com subscribe.