What Comes After Trump?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "What Comes After Trump?"

Offline with Jon Favreau | Date: December 20, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this thoughtful year-end episode, Jon Favreau hosts author and journalist George Packer for a far-reaching conversation about the state of American democracy in the second Trump term, the cultural and technological shifts driving polarization, and what comes after the Trump era. The discussion draws on Packer’s recent Atlantic piece, America’s Zombie Democracy, as well as his new political novel, The Emergency, exploring the roots of authoritarian drift, the challenges of rallying Americans around democratic ideals, and the possibility of a future built on renewed commitment to equality and unity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. American Authoritarianism: What It Looks Like Now

• Packer’s Core Argument ([11:55] George Packer):

  • 21st-century authoritarianism wears a “veneer of democracy”—no jackbooted troops, but a steadily eroding system of checks and balances as institutions fail to contain an all-powerful leader.

  • Congress, the Justice Department, the military, and the courts are becoming tools of the president or are too fractured to mount real resistance.

  • Public passivity persists, partly because most Americans do not encounter direct repression in their daily lives.

    “It looks more like 21st-century authoritarianism, which is a sort of veneer of democracy and of freedom, but gradually an erosion of all the ways in which the citizenry and the institutions can check the power of the leader.” — George Packer ([11:55])

2. Why Doesn’t It “Feel” Authoritarian for Most Americans?

• Favreau’s & Packer’s Analysis ([15:20]):

  • Americans’ day-to-day experience doesn’t match the warning signals—the slide is gradual, and most feel untouched unless directly targeted.

  • Most people’s concerns remain rooted in practical issues like the economy and public safety; democracy feels abstract, and people are conditioned to think “it can’t happen here.”

  • Mass mobilizations (like the “No Kings” rallies) hint at underlying broad unease but also show people often lack concrete ways to oppose anti-democratic drift.

    "It's very hard to imagine something that has never happened happening. So you just assume the thing that has always happened will go on happening until it hits you in the face." — George Packer ([15:20])

3. The Political Challenge: Mobilizing Against Authoritarianism

• Election Messaging ([18:47]):

  • Democrats focus on material issues because threats to democracy rarely motivate swing voters, who feel democracy hasn’t delivered for them.

  • Both sides claim democracy is in danger, but for conflicting reasons—leading to a hollow debate.

    "If one side is saying we have to save our democracy, a lot of people think, well, our democracy isn't working because of X, Y and Z in my life." — George Packer ([18:47])

4. The Deeper Roots: What Made America Vulnerable?

• Packer’s Big Three Causes ([24:51]):

  1. Economic Change: Loss of an industrial economy, rise of the knowledge economy, and stark division between college-educated “winners” and the left-behind.
  2. Cultural Change: The legacy of immigration, rights revolutions, and rapid redefinition of norms—leading some to feel displaced.
  3. Social Media: Tech platforms amplify division, reward outrage, and “drive us to our worst selves.”

  “The greed and wickedness of the tech oligarchs... has driven us to our worst selves because that’s what keeps us glued to the screen.” — George Packer ([24:51])

5. Democracy as a ‘Way of Life’ and the Role of Civic Virtues

• The Tocqueville & Dewey Vision ([30:29]):

  • Democracy depends not just on laws but on shared cultural habits: restraint, responsibility, tolerance.

  • These “habits of the heart” are not natural; they must be instilled and practiced face-to-face.

    “Tocqueville wrote that they are not natural; they're nothing that we're really born with. Democracy in many ways is not natural... To prevent [a return to authoritarianism], I think we have to practice it.” — George Packer ([31:36])

6. Beyond Screens: Technology, AI, and the Threat to Human Connection

• Generational Backlash and New Fears ([36:20]):

  • Some schools are removing smartphones; there’s hope that younger people will reclaim focus and real conversation.

  • AI may pose greater threats—potentially “replacing us in so many different sectors,” and even tempting people with visions of algorithmic leadership.

    "If social media was like a bunch of choppy waves that nearly drowned us, here comes this tsunami [AI]." — George Packer ([36:20])

• Silicon Valley's Philosophy vs. Democracy ([39:42]):

  • Tech elites often see government as obsolete and clumsy, favoring technical over democratic solutions—a mentality that’s become even more anti-regulation and detached from broader society.

    "The most powerful people in Silicon Valley have decided that... the Democratic Party is this stupid and wicked organization that needs to be put in the corner so that they can save the world and make a lot of money..." — George Packer ([39:42])

7. Entertainment vs. Ideology: How Trumpism Differs from Historic Authoritarianism

• From Amusing Ourselves to Death to Real Nationalist Radicalization ([47:13], [48:42]):

  • Trumpism is less ideological than historic fascism; it’s spectacle and performance for many, leading to passivity.

  • The next right-wing wave (e.g., J.D. Vance) may be more ideological, explicit in its blood-and-soil nationalism, and more appealing to young people seeking meaning.

  • Young people’s political hunger can be drawn toward charismatic, action-oriented movements—on both the right and left.

    “There is a sense of exhaustion with being human. It’s hard, it’s burdensome... [AI] provides a way not to have to deal with the messiness of other human beings.” — George Packer ([44:07])

8. Can Pro-Democracy Forces Inspire?

• The Search for a Positive Narrative ([54:12], [57:39]):

  • Liberal democracy struggles as an “exciting” mission but must reclaim the moral high ground of equality, agency, and shared narrative.

  • A narrative rooted in the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s vision must be bold, hopeful, and include recognition of progress and unfulfilled promise.

  • The left’s self-defeating pessimism or cynicism about America undermines this; hope and unity are indispensable.

    "If America is the America that the academic left thinks, then we’ve lost nothing under Trump. He's just exposed it. So what's your argument against Trump? You don't have one." — George Packer ([61:28])

9. Fiction and Feeling: Why George Packer Wrote The Emergency

• Art and the Emotional Truth of Crisis ([65:38]):

  • Packer wanted to escape stale political language and get at the feeling of America’s moment—its boredom, division, and the search for meaning—by returning to fiction.

  • The novel imagines an empire dying of stagnation, with young people in city and country striving to build new ideals in the void.

    “I wanted to get away from all of that. Not to escape, but to try to go deeper into not the news of what it's like to see America in this crisis, but the feeling of it.” — George Packer ([65:38])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Why Warnings Fall Flat:
  “Most Americans are lucky enough not to encounter [authoritarianism] in their personal lives... We're just this big, distracted, divided, commercially minded, busy, noisy country.”
  — George Packer ([15:20])

• On Practicing Democracy:
  “We need to, face-to-face, not just on screens and cameras... talk to people who we think we have very little in common with and figure out how we can talk to each other.”
  — George Packer ([31:36])

• On Patriotism and Liberal Ideals:
  “The most patriotic speech I ever heard was the first time I heard Barack Obama at the 2004 convention… patriotism rooted in the founding ideals of the country that we have never quite lived up to, but have always pushed us forward.”
  — Jon Favreau ([60:14])

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Timestamps of Key Segments

| Time | Segment / Topic | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:39–02:22| Jon Favreau’s year-end political summary | | 11:53 | Packer defines today’s authoritarianism | | 15:20 | Why most Americans don’t feel authoritarian drift | | 18:47 | The politics of “saving democracy” vs. bread-and-butter issues| | 24:51 | Underlying causes of American malaise | | 30:29 | Democracy as “habits of heart” | | 36:20 | Screens, youth backlash, and the tsunami of AI | | 39:42 | Tech vs. Government: Silicon Valley’s anti-democratic impulse | | 47:13 | Trump’s entertainment authoritarianism; new nationalist right | | 54:12 | Can democracy offer an equally “exciting” vision? | | 65:38 | Why Packer turned to fiction in The Emergency |

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, candid, and (often) self-deprecating, with both Favreau and Packer balancing deep concern for America’s future with critical perspective on their own side’s blindspots.
• The discussion alternates between analytical, historical, and philosophical reflections and concrete accounts of present-day political behavior and cultural change.
• Both host and guest challenge fatalism, insisting on the need for hope and renewed civic practice.

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Final Reflection

Favreau and Packer close with a call to recommit to America’s founding ideals—not out of naïveté, but as the only possible rallying point for a deeply divided, diverse, and sometimes cynical nation. They warn that democracy requires active maintenance—through both policy and culture—and that the fight for a better America is far from over, if only we’re willing to make its promise real for a new generation.

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Recommended for listeners interested in:

• The practical mechanics and cultural psychology of American authoritarian drift
• The limitations of current left and right narratives
• How digital technology and social media undermine democracy—and what a future backlash might offer
• Rebuilding a positive, inclusive vision of citizenship and patriotism

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Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Hannah]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[John]

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[John]

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[John]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Hannah]

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[John]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[George Packer]

We're just this big, distracted, divided, commercially minded, busy, noisy country, and it takes a lot to break through the noise of our lives so that we can actually see clearly. And I think there's a human temptation just to say, well, how bad can it be? It's never happened before.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau and you just heard from our last offline guest of 2025, author and journalist George Packer. One of the big themes of the.

[John]

Show this year has been the future of American democracy in a world where.

[Jon Favreau]

So many forces, technological and otherwise, have made it so much harder to sustain.

And I couldn't think of a person.

Who'S written more eloquently and brilliantly about the topic than George Packer. He wrote a piece for the Atlantic a few months ago called America's Zombie Democracy that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. And he's returned to fiction with his latest book that's also about this topic, the Emergency. It's one of my favorite discussions we've had. But before we get to it, I.

[John]

Want to set it up with some thoughts I had about the year we we just survived.

[Jon Favreau]

In politics, as in life, things change gradually. Then suddenly, Donald Trump began 2025. At the peak of his political strength, he was more popular than he'd ever been, more powerful than he'd ever been. No other president in recent memory has.

Had such free reign to implement their.

Vision for the country. Trump had a Republican Congress ready to do whatever he asked a Supreme Court that had just granted him immunity, businesses, law firms, media outlets and colleges that capitulated to his demands. He installed loyalists that gave him direct control of the military, law enforcement, and just about everything else.

[John]

Trump got his tariffs, his big bill.

[Jon Favreau]

His deportation force with a budget the size of most armies. He still whines about Jerome Powell and a few court rulings he didn't like. But 2025 has been the golden age of Trumpism. MAGA in its purest form. And guess what? Most Americans don't like it. Most people don't think the president is doing a good job. They don't think he's doing a good job managing the economy. They don't think he's doing a good job managing the government or immigration or a relationship with the rest of the world. That's what most people tell pollsters. That's why most people voted against the president's party in this year's elections, including a not insignificant number of Trump voters. I'm not saying Trump is imploding in magazine shambles, Even if our YouTube titles might suggest otherwise. But things are not going great for them. Trump is still quite popular with Republicans, but the cracks are starting to show. The guy lost Marjorie Taylor Greene. The House has revolted over everything from health care to the Epstein files. A bunch of state legislators in Indiana just told him to fuck off on redistricting, and it doesn't seem like he's losing sleep over any of it. He obviously cares a lot more about his home renovation projects than the debate over whether MAGA should make a play for the fans of Nick Fuentes and the I Love Hitler group chat. And the president's certainly not interested in even acknowledging most people's biggest concern, let alone actually doing something to make life more affordable. Now, obviously, economic conditions could improve. People's feelings about their own financial situation can change. What's much harder to change is Trump not really giving a shit. And even if he did, a year from now, the first 2028 presidential candidates will be preparing to launch their campaigns. And for the first time in more than a decade, Donald Trump won't be one of them. I'm not trying to get anyone too excited or even suggest that there's finally light at the end of the tunnel. We just don't know. We can't know and right now, three more years with Trump in the White House feels like an eternity. I also worry that a politically weakened Trump will be a more dangerous Trump, that the potential for him to cause damage on a much bigger scale than we've seen so far is high. An unpopular American president still wields more power than anyone else on the planet. But again, we don't know what will happen. What we do know is that, at least on the right, the debate about what comes after Trump has already begun. The early frontrunner, J.D. vance, doesn't yet have a policy agenda or a campaign message, but he does have a very clear vision of America based on the idea that for some of us to win, others have to lose. That here in one of the largest, wealthiest democracies on earth, life must be a constant battle over scarce resources, and that the people with the strongest claim on those resources are the people whose relatives have been here the longest.

[John]

If you're not one of those people.

[Jon Favreau]

You either have to leave or shut up and be thankful that you get to stay. And if you are one of those people, you need a government that can protect you from different groups of outsiders who are always threatening to take and destroy what's rightfully yours. Stephen Miller said it best. America is for Americans and Americans only.

[John]

What he left out is that the.

[Jon Favreau]

People who get to define what it means to be an American are the people who look and talk and think like him. Of course, this country was founded for the very purpose of breaking free from that kind of rigid hierarchy and zero sum thinking. But almost 250 years later, Lincoln's argument that America is dedicated to the proposition that we're all created equal is far from settled. It never has been. Generations of Americans have to keep making it and renewing it and fighting for.

[John]

It to be true.

[Jon Favreau]

And if we're being honest, the Democratic Party hasn't done that in a very long time. Midterm elections are a referendum on the party in power. And it's very possible, Even likely, that 2026 will turn on the simple question of whether or not people are happy with with how Donald Trump and the Republicans are running Washington. It's also true that what people want most from their leaders right now is a recognition that living in America has become too hard and expensive. So Democrats should, of course, focus their campaigns and their policies on how to best change that. But there's a difference between supporting a policy proposal and believing that a politician can deliver on it, and that reluctance to believe that a better country is still possible, that well earned Cynicism that's devolving into nihilism, especially among younger Americans. That's at the core of what the Democrats who want to be president have to address. The Vances and Millers who want to.

Stay in power, have their answer.

Keep us in charge. Go live your lives, and we'll protect people like you from people like them. So what's our answer? Why should people trust us to be in charge? What kind of country do we want to be? Over the last year, not many people have actually challenged Donald Trump to his face. There's the occasional tough question from the few real journalists who are still allowed to cover the administration. He won't meet with many Democrats, and when he does, they either try to play nice or get brutally trolled after they leave the Oval. In this term especially, he's surrounded by only the most sycophantic loyalists who tend to shield him from the reality that.

[John]

Exists just outside the White House gates.

[Jon Favreau]

And so the only sustained moment of confrontation that anyone has had with Trump all year took place on the day after he was inaugurated. It's when he and Vance and their families had to sit quietly at a prayer service in the National Cathedral and listen to a sermon from the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Reverend Marion Edgar Buddy. The coverage after the service focused on her final plea to the president, where she asked him to have mercy on the people in America who were scared by Trump's election, especially immigrants, as well as gay, lesbian, and transgender children. It was a plea that enraged the president and vice president. But they looked agitated and uncomfortable throughout the sermon, which was nothing more, in the words of Reverend Buddy, but a prayer for unity as a nation.

[Reverend Marion Edgar Buddy]

She went on to say, unity is not partisan. Rather, unity is a way of being with one another, that it encompasses and respects our differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect, that enables us in our communities and in the halls of power to genuinely care for one another, even when we disagree. I'm a person of faith, surrounded by people of faith. And with God's help, I believe that unity in this country is possible. Not perfectly, for we are imperfect people and an imperfect union, but sufficient enough to keep us all believing in and working to realize the ideals of the United States of America, ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, with its assertion of innate human equality and dignity.

[Jon Favreau]

Reverend Buddy is the one person all year who looked Trump and Vance in the eye and made the argument for that other America, the one that we've never fully realized but never stopped fighting for either. And now, as we head into this experiment's 250th year and let ourselves start to imagine the end of the Trump era of American politics, my prayer is that we realize the only way to get to the other side is by confidently and courageously making that argument, too. And now for more about what that argument might sound like in 2026, here's my conversation with George Packer. George Packer, welcome to offline.

[George Packer]

Good to be with you, Jon.

[Jon Favreau]

So I'm a big fan of your.

[John]

Writing, and I've wanted to have you on for a while because I'm constantly wrestling with questions about what America has become, what we used to be, what we could be. And I feel like you always have something very smart and poignant to say about that. The piece that's really stayed with me recently is the one you wrote for the Atlantic back in September titled America's Zombie Democracy that begins with this sentence, we are living in an authoritarian state. For people who haven't read it, why.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you think that?

[George Packer]

I just went through all the sort of boxes of things that could check the power of the leader. So it's not authoritarian in the sense that we have jackbooted troops marching through the streets. The offices of the Atlantic are not being raided, our computers aren't being smashed. So it doesn't look like what you might call 20th century authoritarianism. It looks more like 21st century authoritarianism, which is a sort of veneer of democracy and of freedom, but gradually an erosion of all the ways in which the citizenry and the institutions can check the power of the leader. And if you go through them, Congress know, because the Republican Party has become a tool of cult of personality. And since September there been there's been a little movement on that. And maybe we should talk about that, but only by comparison with the utter toadyism that was going on before. The Justice Department has become a tool of the president's own whims and grievances, doing favors for friends and punishing enemies. The military is becoming more and more partisan, with speeches by the president and by Hegseth treating the military as if it's part of the Republican Party and part of the administration's political outlook. The courts, I mean, the lower courts have been fighting hard, but so far I don't see much sign that the Supreme Court is willing to challenge the president on the really important cases that come before it, the ones that have to do with executive power. And the public has been in some ways paralyzed. Again, I wrote this before the November elections, and that showed a sign of public dissatisfaction with the president and his party. But we don't see the kind of demonstrations and mass discontent that you would expect of Americans when they watch their 250-year-old democracy slowly, or not so slowly, erode. In fact, Trump has done in 10 months what it took Viktor Orban 10 years to do in terms of co opting media corporations, co opting law firms, co opting some, not all, universities anyway. Those are all the institutions that should be applying pressure on an out of control leader. And so far, at least, I think they've done a poor job of it, if they've tried at all. So when I began to go through all that, I thought, this is what authoritarianism looks like. We just have to get out of our heads the images we have from the 20th century, because it's a different kind now.

[John]

I've wrestled with this throughout the Trump era, especially last year and into this first year of the second Trump term. Why do you think for most people who are not news and political junkies like you and I, and probably a lot of the people listening to this, why doesn't it feel like we are living in an authoritarian state? And what is the value in trying to get people to feel like we're living in an authoritarian state as a way to alarm them into action?

[George Packer]

I think it doesn't feel like it because most Americans are lucky enough not to encounter it in their personal lives. Most Americans are not undocumented immigrants who might be swept up off the street or show up to a court appointment and, and get taken away by ice. Most Americans are not getting sued by the president because they're publishing things that he doesn't like. So we're just this big, distracted, divided, commercially minded, busy, noisy country, and it takes a lot to break through the noise of our lives that so that we can actually see clearly those things that I talked about a minute ago, if they're not hitting you in the face, I think there's a human temptation just to say, well, how bad can it be? It's never happened before. It's very hard to imagine something that has never happened happening. So you just assume the thing that has always happened will go on happening until it hits you in the face. And the high electricity prices are not enough to tell people this is authoritarianism. That seems more like just maybe bad management or corporate malfeasance. And we're used to those. So we don't think that this is necessarily anything new. I mean, human beings just want to get along with their lives, and not have to think too hard about these, these big abstractions called democracy, authoritarianism, rule of law, institutions. It's just not the way we're wired unless that's our job, like you and me.

[John]

Well, to that point about, you know, rising electricity prices, the political advice is always to, you know, try to convince people that it, in fact he has managed the economy poorly, that their lives would be better materially if we threw out some of these Republicans and ultimately Donald Trump and had the other party back in power. And I've done enough focus groups myself. You sit with people, of course. People are not talking about threats to democracy. They are talking about their financial struggles and maybe the safety of their communities. Maybe there's some discussion about politics just being broken and awful and everyone's corrupt. Right. That's as far as you get. And I understand that advice to discuss people's economic well being. And I do think it's the right political tactic. The stuff that keeps me up at night is what we were just talking about and what you've written about in your piece. And it's weird for me to think that, like, we are sliding into authoritarianism, but that the way out of it is to just try to eke out an election based on talking to people about affordability. And I can't tell if the whole discussion about authoritarianism is something that those of us in politics and media talk about and worry about together, but doesn't necessarily matter beyond that to most people.

[George Packer]

I don't think it's quite that bleak. I mean, the no Kings rallies, the last one, I guess it was mid October, drew Something like 7 million Americans to the streets all over the country. And I happened to be visiting our son at a small town college. And this town couldn't have had more than, I don't know, 30,000 residents. And there must have been 3,000 people in the streets. So the fact that it's happening across the country, not just in New York, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, tells me that there's a broad, it's not majority, but a broad popular unease that is enough to get 7 million people to come out on a Saturday. And who knows how many more they sort of speak for, but who aren't coming out. I don't want to overdo the, you know, we're just a bunch a herd of sheep who can't be bothered to pay any attention to the fact that the Constitution is being trashed on a daily basis. I don't think it's that bad, but it's very hard to know how to oppose it. What do you do? I've been asked that over and over. I'm sure you are too. John. What should we do? Aside from voting, or in my case, writing, in your case, writing and speaking, what should we do? And most people don't have a thing to do. There isn't a kind of clear structure or instrument that they can pick up in order to resist the erosion of democracy. It's too big for that. But as for whether the price of your electric bill and your groceries is the way to get elected, it seems pretty clear that it is. And your healthcare costs, which is about to become a much bigger 1. Last year's presidential election sort of taught us that if one side is saying we have to save our democracy, a lot of people think, well, our democracy isn't working because of X, Y and Z in my life. And it hasn't worked for a long time. So why is this the issue? Why should saving democracy be the thing I vote on when democracy hasn't done anything for me lately? So there's a kind of hollowness to the big abstract language we use that doesn't speak to the thing that is hitting someone on the most personal level. And the other side thinks that democracy is in danger too. Weirdly enough. I mean, the polls showed that Trump supporters were just as concerned about democracy as Harris supporters. They were just concerned for the opposite reasons. So in itself, it just doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that if you're in the politics business, which I'm not, you want to make your message because it just doesn't have a clear effect that's going to favor your candidate.

[Jon Favreau]

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[John]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[John]

Well, the point you just made about people feeling like, okay, well, democracy hasn't really been working for me, you know, has made me think of how we got to this place. And people have been saying some version of Trump is the symptom, not the cause for a decade now. And what would you identify as the cause of why people feel like democracy hasn't been working? And really what made the world's oldest, wealthiest democracy susceptible to authoritarianism?

[George Packer]

That is the big question. And I've been trying to figure it out for well over a decade. I wrote a book in 2013 called the Unwinding that it was kind of a big panoramic narrative Rather than a polemic or an analysis. But it essentially showed a landscape on which someone like Trump was very thinkable. And a couple years later, there he was because of the level of alienation, the cynicism about the elites, about business elites, government elites, media elites, the loneliness, the fact that Americans seem to be cut off from one another, the lack of any institutional sort of foundation for people's lives to support or maintain a middle class life. I was kind of left behind parts of the country and was seeing that everywhere. This was really the post financial crisis years. So it was Obama's first term. And while Obama, as you know, John, was struggling to pass legislation that could address these things, it just didn't seem to be reaching people and making them feel as if, yeah, this is going to change my life and he cares. Instead, it felt very far away and slow. So I would say there are three reasons, and they go back to the 70s, some of them the end of the industrial economy and the rise of the knowledge economy, which created categories of winners and losers that were more extreme than anything we'd seen since before the Great Depression. So college degree, that's the big dividing line. If you're comfortable with symbols, with words, with computers, you have a future in this country. If you're in a rural area, in a small town, in an industrial town, if your industry is leaving, if you've been working with your hands all your life, if you didn't go to college or even finish high school, decade after decade, your chances are bleaker and bleaker. So we all know that story. My book kind of portrayed it in the lives of ordinary people. The second is cultural change, dramatic cultural change, beginning, I would say, with the 60s and the late 60s, the change in immigration laws that brought in large numbers of people from the global south, in a phrase, changes in family, in rights, in sexual mores, in identity groups, which gave some people a place at the table for the first time. So not bad, good. But over time, the speed of it, the scale of it, made other people feel as if their America was disappearing and that they were somehow not counted, not respected. And then the third is more recent and it's social media, which has, because of the greed and wickedness of the tech oligarchs, to be blunt about it, has driven us to our worst selves because that's what keeps us glued to the screen and that's what amplifies the most extreme and hateful voices. And those three things together created a kind of cold civil war that is sort of a class war. Between the educated, less educated, urban, rural. It's sort of a generational war. By the way, this is what. I don't know if we're going to get to talk about it, but this is what my. My new novel is all about. It. It is about class and generational conflict, but in an allegorical story, the emergency. So those are the three factors. They've all played a part. I don't know how to weigh them, but one thing I'm sure of is when Trump was elected in 2016 and progressives decided that he was elected because America is a white supremacist country, full stop, that was a big mistake because it was analytically insufficient, didn't explain too many things, and it was politically stupid because it alienated people who might have been persuadable. And it turned out that we are not a country divided into identity groups that vote according to their race or gender. In fact, especially on race, it's become more and more fluid, as the last couple of elections have shown. So that's a long answer, but you asked me the hard question.

[John]

It is. It's the hard question. It's the one I think about all the time. I think the answers are vitally important because they sort of show us the potential way out. On this show, we talk about the social media technology aspect all the time. That's why I started the show. And, you know, I have come to think that our screens and the algorithmically driven social media platforms, they are incentivizing habits that are antithetical to a functioning democracy. And what really stuck with me in your piece in the Atlantic was, you know, you quote de Tocqueville talking about.

[Jon Favreau]

The habits of the heart.

[John]

Right. American democracy is not just our Constitution and our laws and our institutions, but it's like, it's what we value and it's how we behave. And you mentioned John Dewey's belief that democracy isn't just a system of government, but a way of life. And it made me think that because democracy depends on these sort of individual values, and I think de Tocqueville says, you know, the emotional capacity for restraint and responsibility and tolerance, then sort of making an argument for why we should have democracy and why we should have a functioning democracy, seems like it requires talking about some of these cultural values and behaviors that have always sustained democracy. And what I'm getting at here is I do think, even though I just said it's the right political advice for people to talk about the economy and cost of living and people's material concerns, I don't know that we solve the larger problem without actually making the argument for why this is a better way of life. Regardless, people.

[George Packer]

And I think you're right, and those may be two different activities that go on at the same time. Running campaigns and arguing to the whole country and not to the 51% that you need in order to get elected. And maybe not. Not even just an argument, although that. But also a practice, a, A kind of way of treating one another and talking to one another that we have to learn again, that we almost have to be put into rooms with one another in order to re acquire those habits of the heart. Tocqueville wrote that they are not natural, they're nothing that we're really born with. Democracy in many ways is not natural. And throughout human history it's been a blip. It's been a kind of brief little interlude in long periods of authoritarianism. And I don't want to think that our little interlude is coming to an end. But to prevent that, I think we have to practice it. And how do you practice it? I don't have a whole map or a plan for this. I hope someone does. And some people talk about it a lot. But we need to face to face, not just on screens and cameras, but face to face. Talk to people who we think we have very little in common with and figure out how we can talk to each other. That doesn't mean we like each other or agree with each other. It just means the basic recognition of the humanity of the other is something we've lost. And it shows every time Trump gets up to say something about Rob Reiner. And that licenses all the other wannabes to try to compete in the moral collapse. As if getting as low as you can is the way to show that you're on top. Well, we've gone very far. If you compare the language we use, the discourse to 10, 15 years ago, there's been a real degradation. And I think we have to almost start again and recognize that we have a problem and take the 12 steps that someone should lay out to becoming recovering authoritarians and learn how to be Democrats again.

[Jon Favreau]

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[John]

Are you at all hopeful that the backlash against screens and social media that we've been seeing the last few years will sort of keep growing and help us change our habits?

[George Packer]

I am hopeful. My daughter is in ninth grade and her school has taken the phones away at the start of the day and gives them back at the end. And that's a new thing. And I've heard no complaints. And I hope it allows her and her classmates to focus more and to talk to each other more. But then, John, there's this thing coming called AI, which is like a tsunami. If social media was like a bunch of choppy waves that nearly drowned us, here comes this tsunami and it's people ask, is it going to be good or bad for us? Well, of course there'll be ways in which it's good for us. But you can't have lived through the social media decade or decade and a half and be sanguine about what a much bigger intrusion of technology into our lives is going to do. Because it's not just a mouthpiece. It's not just a way for us to algorithmically yell at each other. It Replaces us in so many different sectors and fields, and what is that going to do to our humanity and to our ability to live together? I heard Sam Altman say to Joe Rogan, wouldn't it be awesome if we had an AI president? And he began to imagine what that AI president could do and how he could drill down into every single citizen and know exactly what they wanted. Then somehow the mathematical total of all those drillings down would give the president the right policy. And I'm just thinking it's a nightmare. I mean, admittedly Altman then kind of backed off. It said maybe there'd be some problems with it, but you could tell that for him this was a sort of tempting vision of the future.

[John]

Even back in the heyday of Silicon Valley, the early social media years, when we were friendly with them in the Obama White House, I was always struck by the view from tech leaders that government was a nuisance and that there's no real problem in society that government could actually solve better than just a good technological solution. And there was always sort of like a looking down at governments and that, like, that's messy and slow and bureaucratic and we're just gonna, we're gonna disrupt our way out of this problem. And that was, I mean, like I was feeling that in what, 2009, 2010, that has grown exponentially, going way into the social media age. And now with the advent of AI and you know, Sam Altman's comment that you just mentioned made me think that what do you think it is about these, the folks who work in tech and especially these tech leaders who, they embrace this vision of like an AI president or AI driven leadership, but they, they really either dismiss or don't have a lot of faith in sort of democratic institutions.

[George Packer]

That's a good question. And by the way, maybe 12 years ago, I interviewed the lieutenant governor of California, whose name was Gavin Newsom, because he had just published a book about how to improve government through technology, and.

[John]

He was Citizenville, right?

[George Packer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. I mean, he's a very fluent speaker and he had all the lines down. He's got different lines now. They're all about our common humanity. But back then it was all about the machines and how the machines could solve these problems. So, yeah, it was the Democrats as well as the Republican, maybe even more because the Democrats were so close to Silicon Valley Valley, and a lot of your colleagues at the Obama White House ended up going to Silicon Valley. What is it about Silicon Valley? Well, I grew up there, but it was not called that I'm old enough to precede Silicon Valley. Once it came, you just felt a combination of utopianism, that kind of countercultural, beloved community they were creating that was really part of the origins of it. Certainly the zeitgeist that was around Apple, the incredible success and money that it's produced. And these are engineers. They're impatient with human flaws and messiness. They want an elegant solution to every problem, including the problem of how to govern ourselves. And this is something, actually, when I was writing about Silicon Valley, that Ben Horowitz, partner of Marc Andreessen, said to me, he said, there's a kind of similarity of Marxists and libertarians, because what they both have is a perfect system that explains everything, in which, if you do it right, everything will work for the best. And so, of course, in that divide, they're libertarians, and libertarians think of government as this pathetic, developmentally delayed problem child that is just constantly getting in the way and needs to just be put in a corner so that the smart people can do their thing. And now I think that thinking is much stronger because it's become so partisan. The most powerful people in Silicon Valley have decided that the party of government, the Democratic Party, is this stupid and wicked organization that needs to be put in the corner so that they can save the world and make a lot of money and defeat China in the AI race and everything else. So I think they have a messianic sense of their own mission, and now they're driven by a really spiteful partisan bias that says any government intrusion. I used to hear they were willing to accept some regulation 10 years ago, 15 years ago. It wasn't like they thought all regulation was bad. Marc Andreessen said, it's going to come. We have to accept some of it. Now Marc Andreessen and others see regulation as being suicide. So those ingredients, I mean, they're so successful and they're so isolated from the country, they live in such a splendid kingdom, that it's hard for them to imagine what could be the problem.

[John]

Well, and I think the reason they're so excited about AI is that AI is sort of the embodiment of this philosophy towards government and other people, which is, you know, you point out that it's trying to replace us. And even with these chatbots right now, they're trying to eliminate the friction of interacting with other human beings, the consciousness. Right. Like the idea that you're going to have a conversation with someone and you might disagree and they might not tell you everything you're thinking is Great, and everything you're doing is great. And you might not be able to find the answer you're looking for immediately. And you might have to settle for some sacrifice and some disappointment once in a while.

[Jon Favreau]

And I can see how tempting that.

[John]

Is, right, for people to just sort of disappear into those, into our, you know, relationships with our chatbots. They're going to just make everything easier for us. I think that could actually just make all of our problems in the country much worse.

[George Packer]

Far worse. Far worse. That's just right. Again, a big theme of the emergency. There is a sense of exhaustion with being human. It's hard, it's burdensome. And if we've now invented these machines, I see AI as sort of the successor just to the Internet connected device, which also provides a way not to have to deal with the messiness of other human beings and how annoying they can be and how hard it is to get them to do what you want. Instead, if you're online with them, you just talk at them or you find the right people in your chat room and you all agree with each other and all the others are stupid and you feel like a kind of elect group, which is how maybe clubhouse was when it got started a few years ago. So AI is a huge advance, but I see it as sort of a continuation of this escape from being human that I think the ubiquitous totalitarian thing in our pocket began 15 years ago.

[Jon Favreau]

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[John]

You sort of describe modern authoritarian regimes, and I think this would be true of the Trump regime, that they're not as driven as the old authoritarian regimes by the kind of sort of intense ideology that people will fight and die for. And you know, in some ways, you know, I've thought that Trumpism does feel more like, you know, what Neil Postman warned us about in, you know, amusing ourselves to death. It's entertainment. Performance, you know, leaves us passive and indifferent.

[Jon Favreau]

But then I've been thinking a lot.

[John]

About lately, like what comes after Trump and which is already being fiercely contested on the right. And I don't know if you read Vivek Ramaswamy's New York Times piece this week, but he directly took on the blood and soil nationalism that J.D. vance has embraced. And I know you've probably read the Claremont speech. My staff jokes the Claremont speech was very important. I've asked like every guest about the Claremont speech. They always were like, oh, when is he going to get to it? But I thought it was interesting that at least Vivek was trying to contest that. But the J.D. vance version of power in America seems much more ideological and radicalizing and what do you make of people's potential appetite for that kind of thing, knowing that there is this sort of desire for indifference and passivity, but that I feel like J.D. vance's, you know, heritage Americans requires cries a little more fight from people.

[George Packer]

It is ideological. He's a thinker, he's a reader. He Went from being a kind of Hitchens atheist, Ayn Rand libertarian, to coming under the influence of Peter Thiel and Donald Trump and his own political ambitions, and ended up as a pretty far right MAGA populist. And that's how he became vice president. It was a good career move. But he also likes to think of himself as still having one foot in the tech camp. He likes to think he kind of unites the populace and the techno futurists because he worked very briefly, very briefly in Silicon Valley. But he has essentially placed his bet on what they call national conservatism, which is at its heart fundamentally anti democratic because it requires a degree of executive power and kind of trampling on individual rights, free speech, due process, equal rights, and you could say objective empirical truth that I think of as sort of the basis of liberal democracy. It's anti liberal democracy because what it wants is to take a country that really is a multicultural country from all over the world and turn it into something that in their fantasy it should be and used to be. And that's such a huge warping of what kind of country we are. If you just look around, if you go to the store, if you watch a movie, that it has to be done coercively, has to be done, like by taking away, as I saw in the paper today, the citizenship of people who you think were somehow naturalized in the wrong way. That seems to appeal especially to younger people. That's the worry. Just as the illiberalism of the left that I fought against for years seem to be coming from the young, from, like the younger staff of magazines and universities and nonprofits. The much more extreme liberalism of the right is coming from the followers of Bronze Age Pervert and Raw Egg Nationalist and Tucker Carlson and, and Nick Fuentes. And it seems to offer something more exciting than just good old fashioned MAGA offered. Trump didn't ask anything of people. He didn't say, give me your support and together we will build this and destroy that and go to war with this and take over that and become a great world empire, which is essentially what the totalitarians of the 20th century did. No, it is entertainment. It is more Aldous Huxley than George Orwell. I would say it's more Brave New World. And that's because we're not a totalitarian type country. We are more a country whose greatest risk is that we will amuse ourselves to death. And so people would walk away from Trump rallies before they were over because they were bored and had something else to do. And that just did not show a level of commitment that you would expect from a great authoritarian state. Whereas I do think young people, especially young men, with a sense of isolation and meaninglessness. I've been to Charlie Kirk conferences. I went to one in Phoenix a couple of years ago for Turning Point USA and he was thrilling 13,000 young people, mostly young men, with his sort of calls to action because young people want to be told you can do something and it's going to be a great adventure. And so I don't think J.D. vance has the rhetorical or charismatic power to get millions of people to throw themselves at his feet. Charlie Kirk might have, if he were running for president, if he had not been tragically killed and if he were running for president, I think he could, with his mix of Christianity, nationalism and kind of self improvement, could have gotten quite a galvanized support among the young. But I do worry that they are looking for it. They're looking for some leader to tell them, here's the great cause and it's going to make you sacrifice, it's going to make you suffer. You'll have to go through some terrible things, but at the other end will be a world that you can only dream of. That's an exciting thing for young people to hear.

[John]

Do you think that the pro democracy side needs an equally exciting mission for people, especially young people, to get people participating, excited, paying attention?

[George Packer]

It's a great question, John, and a kind of core question about liberal democracy. I think Francis Fukuyama, at the end of his misunderstood essay the End of History, said the problem with the victorious liberal democracy is that people are going to get bored for just these reasons, because people actually want more than just a good time, more than just the right number of calories and a wide array of streaming video. They actually have higher and deeper aspirations. So what does liberal democracy offer, or what can it offer that can compete with what is essentially a kind of fascist appeal coming from the right? Not that these are fascists, they're not. They're actually not as serious as the fascists were, but. So they're less than fascists. It's an insult, but they have an aspiration to lead in that kind of way. So what can liberal Democrats offer? Does free speech and due process get people to the barricades? Is the rule of law what will make young men and young women get up at 4 in the morning and go out and, and train and canvas and whatever? I don't have a good answer. I do think an exhaustion with how low we've sunk just as young people today are now trying to get rid of their phones. This is a. You probably hear about this. It's a new movement. I see it in my, to some extent, in my own kids. I see it in campuses just as they are finally saying, how could you have conducted this experiment on this? It's been terrible. We're going to try to save ourselves. It may be that the moral collapse which starts with our highest leaders might so disillusion young people that they will look for some leader who says, can we start with common decency? Can we start with treating each other like human beings? Can we stop with the vile discourse that might actually. It won't excite people to work 20 hours a day, although it might some. But it will at least appeal to that sense that there is something higher. There's something higher than just winning or losing elections or winning or losing fights on social media. What do you think? Do you have an answer to your own question?

[John]

I want to ask you about the emergency, but before we get there, I think a lot about the Last Best Hope, which is an essay that you wrote that you turned into a short book. And I've gone back to it several times over the last couple years because of this very conversation that we were just having. Because I think about your conclusion that the most compelling narrative to sustain American democracy has to be rooted in a commitment to equality, back to the Declaration, back to Lincoln. And I wonder if you think that Equal America still has a chance against zombie democracy.

[George Packer]

That's a very potent way to put it. I think so. I think right now Trump is giving it new life because his America is so unbelievably unequal and his favors and his corruption are so blatant and so in favor of the 0.01% that although Americans normally don't go for a politics of class resentment, we're much more likely to be appealed to by a politics of race resentment or educational resentment. It's there waiting to be used, and I think a successful politician will know how to use it, but will not use it by appealing to the same degree of bitterness and resentment and ugliness that Trump has appealed to in order to turn working class Americans against more upper middle class Americans or educated Americans. Instead, it should be done with a sense of hope and a sense of commonality. Maybe there will be a little class of people who won't be included in Equal America and they will be the 0.01%. I'm okay with that. They've had it good. They can handle that. But I think part of Sanders problem, although his class focus has been powerful, it's always seemed like it's being addressed to a different country. Like, not a country of people who are aspiring to rise, but instead to a country where there's fixed classism. They've always hated each other, and they'll always hate each other. So I think it can be, I think equal. America can be a powerful narrative, but it has to be a narrative that's hopeful and that appeals to common values.

[John]

Yeah, I mean, to answer your question about how I think about this is I think there's been a lot of advice that Democrats need to, like, reclaim patriotism. And I agree with that, though I think when some people say reclaim patriotism, they're talking about, like, you know, talk about how much you love America and the flag, and those are the symbols of patriotism. And, you know, I. The most, the most patriotic speech I.

[Jon Favreau]

Ever heard was the first time I.

[John]

Heard Barack obama at the 2004 convention when I was not working for him at the time. And that was a patriotism rooted in the founding ideals of the country that we have never quite lived up to, but have always pushed us forward. And right now, the JD Vance's of the world are contesting those very ideals.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[John]

I mean, like the Declaration. Maybe we shouldn't go by the Declaration. You know, maybe this is. And I think that gives Democrats an opportunity to step into the breach and say, no, no, we are going to make an argument for the America that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration, that Lincoln talked about at Gettysburg, and that at our best moments in this country, we have come close to realizing. And like, I just think wrapping ourselves in the ideals of this country is maybe the only thing that can sort of connect an extremely diverse, disparate country that has become, you know, divided and.

[Jon Favreau]

Detached from one another.

[George Packer]

Amen, brother. I'm with you. But let's be honest, will mean that the left of the Democratic Party, and let's say the academic left and other powerful activist corners of the party are going to have to realize that by creating a picture of a country fundamentally sinful, fundamentally hypocritical, and a history of betraying those ideals makes it impossible to do what you just said. My feeling is if America is the America that the academic left thinks, then we've lost nothing under Trump. He's just exposed it. So what's your argument against Trump? You don't have one. Because he's just proving that you were right. Instead, without falling into the trap of the celebration of American history as a continuous story of success? Of course not. No. We're grownups. But people have to believe in something. They have to be given a vision that makes them proud. That makes them proud to be American, which is not something you would hear at a Democratic Convention. The dnc, still at its conventions, is a series of identity caucuses. That's how the schedule is divided. If you look at the, like, the three or four days. That is not my vision of equal America, because mine, like yours, goes back to the first words of the Declaration, but also has a strong component of equal opportunity. Not just equal rights under law, but equal opportunity, which means, among many other things, having some power over the tech companies that seem to be taking our children away from us. So all of that is just a wide open field that the Republicans have abandoned.

[John]

I also think that that view of America as, you know, a fundamentally sinful place that has just, you know, oppressed people for. For centuries, it sort of robs all of those different identities and marginalized groups of agency and sort of ignores that. It is those Americans over the course of the last 200 years that have actually done the work to make most.

[Jon Favreau]

Of the progress for themselves and for the country.

[John]

And I do think that's sort of the way out of it to recognize. To both recognize the great diversity of the country and the fact that, you know, we haven't been equal America for the last 200 years. That there have been, you know, so many moments in history, including this one, where. Where some people are, you know, seen as the other and put down and disadvantaged. But the promise of the country is that even when you've been subjugated and oppressed, it's possible to fight for that better version of the country that you believe in and those rights for yourself.

[George Packer]

Absolutely. Absolutely. There has to be a sense of agency and there has to be a sense of, yes, diversity, but diversity toward what ends? It should not be an end in itself. It should be a form of inclusion that allows for greater unity. But if unity is not the end, then we're actually kind of the mirror image of the right, because the right also is practicing identity politics. It's just of a particularly sinister kind. White Christian identity politics. But in the end, it has the same effect of. Of leaving us separate from each other and eventually hating each other.

[John]

Yeah. So your latest book is a return to fiction. It's a political fable about a lot of what we have been talking about called the Emergency. Why did you want to write it? And also when you were writing it, what Were you most hoping that people.

[Jon Favreau]

Took away from it?

[George Packer]

So I love fiction. I always wanted to be a novelist. After those first two novels in my 30s, I decided maybe I'm actually more of a journalist and spent 25 years at the New Yorker in the Atlantic. But you know, John, after the 2020 election and January 6th and writing last Best Hope, I felt like I had said what I had to say. And we in the. In journalism were just saying the same thing over and over. We were. There was this sort of political and media stagnation, like the same arguments, the same language. The language had kind of gone dead on me. And as a writer, I need living language in order to be able to communicate with you. And I began to imagine a story. This came out of the pandemic when I was driving back and forth between New York City and a place in farm country a couple of hours north of the city where my family had kind of retreated during the pandemic. And I began to feel the immense distance that just those two and a half hours left in me between this kind of hollowed out city. And at that point it had become a bit unfriendly rural area because we were coming from the city and maybe carrying the plague with us. I started to think, what if there were checkpoints on the Taconic Parkway? What would that be like? And the checkpoints were not friendly checkpoints, but were looking for things and wanted to know what you were doing there and why did you leave your city. And that all began to put in mind a story about an empire that collapses out of boredom. It dies of boredom. And in the vacuum, these movements of young people emerge new political ideas and formations. And in the city it's a sort of utopian, egalitarian movement. And in the countryside it's more like male power and physical strength and even violence. So the burghers in the city are moving in one direction. The yeomen in the countryside are moving sort of in an opposite direction. But in both cases, the young are responding to the failure of this empire by trying to create something new. And the main plot is about a family in the city, a doctor, his wife and their two kids. And what happens to the family as a result of this. Essentially, the division in society also becomes a division in the family between the doctor and his daughter, his teacher, teenage daughter, who gets caught up in this new movement, which he finds in some ways frightening and seems alien to him, like he doesn't know what place it holds for a middle aged doctor. So all of this is set in no named time or place. And there are none of the landmarks of our time and place. There's no digital technology, there's no Trump figure, there's no political parties. So I wanted to get away from all of that. Why? Not to escape, but to try to go deeper into not the news of what it's like to see America in this crisis, but the feeling of it. What does it feel like for a father, for a daughter, for someone, for a farmer in the countryside? So there's, I think by getting rid of the kind of the signposts of 2025America, it made it possible for me to explore more deeply the emotions and the, the sort of larger philosophical questions that we should all be wrestling with.

[John]

I couldn't agree more. That that is, that is a great way to get people thinking about that because I think there is something in the feeling of what this is that everyone has sensed over the last several years that is sometimes difficult to articulate and certainly not reflected in the public debates that we have. So I'm really looking forward to reading that. I have not been, I've been reading too many nonfiction books this year. And so I'm gonna dive into the emergency for the two weeks that I have off finally after this.

[George Packer]

Let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear them. But I do think fiction has a kind of clarifying, cleansing effect on our minds if we can just pull ourselves out of the minute to minute updates on our phones.

[John]

It's necessary.

[George Packer]

So thank you.

[John]

George Packer, thank you so much for joining OFFLINE and for all of your writing and wonderful thoughts on this country and what it could be. So I really appreciate that.

[George Packer]

I appreciate your work too, John, going way back to the 2000s, early 2000s, and good luck to you in the work you're doing.

[John]

Thanks. Take care. One quick note before we go. And just so you all know, we.

[Jon Favreau]

Are going to be dark for two.

[John]

Weeks while we all finally take a.

[Jon Favreau]

Vacation, if anyone can remember what that's like.

[John]

But before we do that, if you're.

[Jon Favreau]

Not sure what to get your friends.

Or family this year, couple days left.

Go ahead and skip the socks.

Give them a Friend of the Pod subscription.

[John]

Well, what do you get for a.

[Jon Favreau]

Friend of the Pod subscription?

[John]

You get ad free episodes of all your favorite crooked shows, exclusive shows that are only behind the paywall, like Dan's show Polar Coaster. We have a few more brand new shows coming in the new year that are going to be behind the paywall. We have a lot of fun in some of these subscriber only shows, so you should check them out. You don't want to miss anything.

[George Packer]

And also you get to know that.

[Jon Favreau]

You'Re supporting independent media, which we love.

So think about giving the gift of Friend of the Pod subscription to your family and friends. If you're not a subscriber yet, think about subscribing yourself. You can go to qriket.com friends and get yourself a subscription right now. As always, if you have comments, questions or guest ideas, email [e-mail] and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad free episodes of Offline and Pod Save America, exclusive content and more. Go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. If you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Illich. Frank Austin Fisher is our Senior producer. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Jarek Centeno is our Sound Editor and engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America. America east.

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[George Packer]

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[John]

You brought it back.

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