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Austin Fisher
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- [02:15]
Jerusalem Demsis
instead of just being like, yeah, we all wear American flags. Like, you're not just going to let that be like, the American, the far right symbol. We've just been like, slowly ceding it, like, oh, they're wearing it. I can't wear it. But you don't see the opposite happening. Like, you see these no kings rallies everywhere and they have American paraphernalia. And like, no one on the right is like, oh, well, now I gotta take down my flag. And so there's this weird unilateral disarmament because I think people on the left don't want to accidentally be understood as being a far right person. Whether or not you think this is analytically or descriptively correct, that the American flag or these symbols of American heritage have been used to do bad things, what is the end game of a country where the entirety of the left decides that being positive about your nation's history, heritage, future symbolism is a bad thing? Like, is that gonna end in a good place for us? I just think obviously not.
- [03:17]
Jon Favreau
I'm Jon Favreau and you just heard from today's guest writer and founder of the Argument substack Jerusalem Demsis Jerusalem recently wrote a great piece for the Argument titled you have to Love America to save it. Basically, she traces how liberals have come to abandon patriotism and argues that reclaiming it is crucial for building the kind of country liberals want to live in. She notes that many of America's greatest orators, from John Winthrop to Martin Luther King Jr. To Barack Obama, have all embraced a vision of patriotism that's about confronting America's failure to live up to its founding promise, but then challenging Americans to make that promise true. I figured with America's 250th around the corner, Trump's 80th in the rear view, and the opening of Obama's Presidential center on Juneteenth, this was the perfect time to talk to Jerusalem about why liberal patriotism is so important and what it should look like. We'll get to that conversation in a moment, but before we do, one way to show you love America is to support independent media companies doing their best to protect it. You can tell I just read that
- [04:17]
Austin Fisher
now for the first time.
- [04:19]
Jon Favreau
And the best way to do that is to become a friend of the
- [04:21]
Austin Fisher
POD subscriber subscribers get access to this
- [04:23]
Jon Favreau
show and all of your favorite crooked media podcasts ad free, as well as special behind the paywall shows like POD Save America only Friends and Dan's Polar Coaster, and also access to all of our great substack newsletters. Plus again, you get to feel great about supporting pro democracy independent media, and that's about as patriotic as it gets. Head over to crooked.com friends to subscribe today. All right, here's Jerusalem Dempsis. Jerusalem, welcome back to offline.
- [04:48]
Jerusalem Demsis
Thanks for having me.
- [04:49]
Jon Favreau
So in honor of America's 250th, Trump's 80th and Obama's Juneteenth library opening this week, I wanted to talk patriotism with you because you just wrote what I thought was a fantastic piece about the topic for the argument, and it seems to have been inspired by an anecdote that your old Atlanta colleague Yoni Appelbaum told He apparently dropped the word patriotism in a closed door room of liberal jurists, professors, journalists, and it apparently landed like a live grenade. He said. One person said it made her feel excluded, another said it connoted violence and racism. I guess the facilitator wouldn't even write it on the easel. What was your initial reaction to that story and why was it the thing that made you sit down and write this?
- [05:42]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yeah, I mean, I was reading it and at first I was just kind of like, you know, I'm not like shocked that people have complicated feelings around loving your own country at any moment in history, Right. Like, especially countries like the United States, that's so powerful. It means that even if you're doing powerfully good things at any point, you're probably also doing powerfully bad things, even if they're just mistakes. So these are things that are just not confusing to me. But I thought the idea that you wouldn't even want to reclaim patriotism or the idea that you wouldn't want to have a positive vision for the country that for better or for worse, you're stuck in, like this is the nation that you're a part of is. It's something that I find really difficult to reconcile with. I mean, particularly I'm an immigrant. And so I think sometimes I'm like inoculated from some of the pathologies of like self hating Americanism. Like, I just have never had that kind of impulse even when I've had critiques of the United States, of which there are, of course, many. And so to me, I mean, particularly coming from a context where, you know, there's just like a lot worse countries to live in as an individual, it's just not something that I've ever really understood why it was so deeply rooted in so many parts of the American psyche, particularly among academics.
- [06:53]
Jon Favreau
Why do you think patriotism is important?
- [06:56]
Jerusalem Demsis
I think that if you don't have a positive vision for your country, you're doomed to repeat a negative vision for it. So if you have really low expectations for anything, whether you have low expectations for yourself, low expectations, or a story that you tell about your kids, your friends, your partner, whatever it is, you're kind of almost like dooming yourself to reliving that narrative over and over again. And I think that, like, it's really, really bad to have this view of America as, like, irredeemably terrible because a. That that kind of excuses then bad actions that happen in the future. What you're. You're saying is like, oh, it's almost inevitable that this bad thing's going to happen. There's really nothing you can do. So it. I think it dampers a lot of really positive sentiment that you can have or positive actions you can take and to make the world a better place. And. But I think secondarily, I think it's just, like, incorrect, like, patriotism. As an American, I'm patriotic because I know a lot of amazing things about America. America is extremely unique in the world as a place that decided not just, okay, we're going to try to have good things for people who live in our borders, but we're going to redefine what it means to be a member of a nation. We're going to say that even if you're from somewhere that you weren't born here, you came here, you made great things, that you get to be an American, you get to be here. I mean, I just think that people who have not spent a lot of time outside this country can't really tell sometimes how the feeling that. That can imbue in you as a person to feel ostracized from the place that you grew up in, to feel like you're never gonna be in a. You know, you're never gonna be an Italian. Like, my grandmother has lived in Bologna most of her life. Like, nobody. She doesn't consider herself Italian. Nobody there considers her Italian. I mean, I have family members and friends who emigrated to the UK and to Sweden. Things are, you know, variable in different places. But, you know, my Swedish relatives do not. They're not. They don't think of themselves as Swedish really. They speak Swedish, but it's just not the same thing. And that just is something that is really unique to this country. And so I'm patriotic in part because I actually recognize that there's something really amazing that we've created here. And I don't want to just have this posture that, okay, well, we have to pretend it's good for no reason. No, it's amazing what's here. And also we need to keep telling that story. Otherwise worse stories will be told and those will be the ones that we live out.
- [09:15]
Jon Favreau
One of those stories we're living out right now, you might argue, you argue in the piece that the most powerful patriotic tool and the one that the left has basically stopped picking up is something called the American Jeremiad. For everyone who just heard a word they've never used, what is it and what are its hallmarks?
- [09:39]
Jerusalem Demsis
So the American Jeremiad is a type of speech. I mean, people may have heard of some of these speeches, they may not have heard of it as categorized, the Jeremiah before, but things like John Winthrop's City on a Hill speech from, you know, pre revolutionary days. You have Martin Luther King speeches, you have Abraham Lincoln's speeches, his second inaugural address. Basically, the Jeremiah is a three part speech. It's a speech that does, does a few things. First, it really lays down all the problems that are going on in society. Whether it's talking about racism, whether it's talking about inequality, whether it's talking about people straying from God. I mean, again, the word Jeremiah literally comes from the prophet Jeremiah, who gives kind of that kind of blistering speech in the Old Testament book. And you know, the first part, it's pretty damning. You're damning people. You're saying, look at all the ways that you fail to live up to some ideal. And that's the second part, which is that it lays out an ideal. It says there is this thing that you're supposed to be living up to, whether it's America as a land of opportunity or it's America as a land that's supposed to treat people equally. I mean, Martin Luther King's speeches were particularly great at this, at showing that, you know, playing out the ways that America had failed black Americans. And then finally it points a path towards redemption. It says, you can live up to this ideal if you do these things. So for Frederick Douglass, it may have been abolition. From mlk, it was economic justice and fairness for African Americans and all working class people. For John Winthrop it was we need to make America as a city on a hill. We need to be a beacon of light as God's people. And so this kind of tripartite speech is something that has characterized American political speech for a long time. The first time I heard about it was in college. I took a class on race and poetry. And this is where I first learned about this. And, you know, it's something that is unique to America in many respects in that we have this, like, tension where obviously at no part are we living up to this ideal we've set up for ourselves. Right? Like, it's impossible to have perfectly lived up to this notion of a nation that treats each person equally, that recognizes the inherent equality in each person, and throughout history, never have made any mistakes there. And yet this ideal is something that we remind ourselves of in political commentary all the time, but it's kind of gone out of vogue. This is just not how you hear politicians speaking on the left anymore. I mean, I wrote in the piece that the Last American Jeremiah, it is probably given by Barack Obama. And that is something that I think is really a reflection of how much the left and liberals have become uncomfortable with this notion of the ideal. I mean, I think a much more popular framework that's developed is this idea that America is sort of irrevocably broken in some way. And that really makes it difficult for you to call people to action in a much more positive light. If you're saying America is revolving, broken and that at the core of it is white supremacy, at the core of it is structural inequality, then it's very difficult to say we're fighting to make America, you know, this ideal nation, because what are you fighting for then? And so that's sort of the, like, very, you know, 101 history of the American Jeremiad.
- [13:00]
Jon Favreau
It's funny, so I've heard the word Jeremiad before in relation to, you know, speeches, but I didn't really know. I wasn't really familiar with what it was. And then now I have seen it twice over the last couple of weeks. Once in your piece and several times in Ben Rhodes's new book, Always say, which I talked to him about for Pods of America. He selected 15 speeches that sort of capture the American. The story of American identity and the argument of over American identity. And there's quite a few Jeremiah ads in there. Also, as I was reading yours and you mentioned Obama, I'm like, I guess maybe I didn't recognize what it was because I thought all of our speeches were that, like, when you talk about, like, that is the structure of a Jeremiah, I'm like, yeah, that was the structure of all of our speeches that we did, or at least all of, like, the. The kind of big speeches.
- [13:50]
Jerusalem Demsis
It's like David Foster Wallace, like, saying about like, this is water.
- [13:54]
Jon Favreau
It's like, that's just exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like, that is sort of like the central theme of American rhetoric, at least. Like, when I was starting to learn to write speeches for Obama, like, looked at King, looked at, like, you know, King's promissory note in the I have a Dream speech is maybe the best, one of the best examples that sticks out in my mind a lot of some of the Roosevelt speeches, the Kennedy speeches, Lincoln for sure. But since I'm too close to this on the Obama side. But I've wondered the same thing myself. Like, why do you think he was the last liberal practitioner we've had? I know you said that we've devolved into this other story about America is irredeemably broken, but, like, what was the path. What happened from Obama to that sort of prevailing notion that America's irrevocably broken? Or even if you don't think that no one actually trying to replicate that kind of. Jeremiah.
- [14:56]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yeah, I mean, I think a few things. One, I mean, I made a joke about this earlier about feeling like, as an immigrant, you know, and a black woman, like, kind of inoculated from, like, anti American kind of sentiment. I think in some ways that Barack Obama, as a black president, was able to make arguments about America having this core ideal vision that we're trying to fulfill over generations. Because, you know, he's obviously not dismissing the legacy of racism and harm that has happened in this country, the original sin of the United States, which is the harm that it's done to African Americans. And I think that, like, for people who are coming from the majority, there's often a desire, and I think, you know, a desire, I understand, to explain that they're not writing that all off. Right. I think particularly post 2016, we see a lot of people recognizing, okay, there are a lot of real big harms that America has done to people, whether it's immigrants. I mean, especially. We were watching that during Trump's first term and now, of course, his second as well. But, you know, the 2000 and tens, you're watching this happen under Trump. You're like, how can our country have done this? And there are a lot of arguments being made about, you know, what this is, what America is like. Look at Trump. There is a long line of politicians who have pushed America toward this reactionary version, an illiberal version of who we are. And there was this effort, I think, both to understand and these are people who are diagnosing what's going on under Trump. And there's also an effort to, to treat that as somehow part and parcel of the American story. And a lot of that is just literally correct. Like there are, it's obviously true that there are people before Trump who were illiberal. We're talking about throughout the 1900s, 1800s. You had white supremacists, of course, who were avowed white supremacists who were pushing against basic civil liberties in the United States. And I think that sometimes that can come into tension with how do you tell a story about your country? Because there are so many data points, there's so many narrative points you can tell at any given moment about what America is, what its founding story is. And that is a fight that's happening right now where you have people on the right trying to say, like, actually no birthright citizenship is wrongly understood. All of these things are not actually part of the American story. And so to get back to your original question about why the left abandoned it, I think there was such a shock when Trump won. There was such a real visceral feeling of, well, if we could have elected this person who says this about women, who demonizes Mexican immigrants, who is really oppositional to this founding story that the previous president, Barack Obama had just been telling, then doesn't that mean that actually there's something deeply wrong and rotting at the heart of the United States? And I think that that's, that's an understandable impulse, but it's like a self defeating one, as I've said. And so I think right now the question is, you know, can there be more a different story being told by future politicians? I mean, we're just, we're going to watch in 2028 to see what kind of rhetoric there is. I mean, you see this at the DNC every time there is an attempt to reclaim patriotism. I mean, KAMALA harris, DNC SPEECH the whole hall is littered with red, white and blue flags. I've been to the reporting on the no Kings rallies. I mean, you see unbelievable levels of patriotism at these rallies happening. I'll note that, like, those are much older places than I think the average person in the electorate is. And so there's this open question about whether young people will kind of follow in this tradition. But I do think there's like a lot of potential latent patriotism waiting to be tapped by someone who is able to hold all of these strands together, who can recognize the harms that have been done while still saying there is something good a story that we're all a part of, that you can be a part of, too, in making this country better. And that, to me, is just, like, an open question at this point.
- [18:53]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. When I read Yoni Appelbaum's story and that anecdote, I was not necessarily surprised that in that room that he was in, there was this resistance to patriotism or even to the idea of reclaiming patriotism, because it feels like this idea that America is irredeemable or, you know, that the original sin of slavery is somehow something we can't overcome and actually we're just bad. It started in academia, and I'm not faulting people because, like, there's something in their Constitution that made them more pessimistic. But when you study history that closely, I can understand why analyzing America's history, and especially history that is not often told, would lead you to a more pessimistic place. But it has clearly spread beyond academia now into sort of the population and especially on the left. I mean, there's some, you know, because America's 250th is coming up, there's a bunch of new polls out on this, and I think, like, PPI has the 51% of Americans say they're extremely or very proud to be American. That's down from 82% in 2013. There's like, a long trend line in Gallup. There's a record low 58% extremely or very proud in its 2025 read. That's down nine points in a year. And then for Democrats especially, it's only 36% of Democrats are proud of their country. And that's the lowest Gallups ever recorded for that group. And a generational floor of just 41% among Gen Z. So as you're getting younger and more liberal, it's somehow. It's somehow getting worse. And I'm trying to figure out why that is on the left especially.
- [20:43]
Jerusalem Demsis
I mean, part of this is just that Donald Trump is president right now. And so people hear a pollster asking them, are you proud to be an American? And there's a conflation of that with are you happy about the direction this country is going in? And so if you look at any questions that are about kind of the direction of the country, about, like, how things feel on the economy, on politics, international relations, I mean, you just see obviously depressed rates among liberals because, you know, we. We are concerned about what this president is doing. But I think that that's not the only thing that's going on. I think that you're right, that there is also, like, a generational and, you know, ideological divide here. Because even when a Democrat is president, you see, you don't see the number go down as much for Republicans or conservatives as it does for. For Democrats. And I just actually do think here that people are having trouble with this tension. They just hear this idea of being patriotic as being synonymous with wiping away every bad thing America has done. And I really do actually fault elected official leaders, academic leaders, thought leaders in general, for constantly conflating these two things. I was just talking about this with a friend of mine, but I remember I must have been like a teenager or something like that, and I'd gone to Boston for the first time. I'd gone on the freedom trail. I don't know, I was kind of like an idiot. I didn't really know about the, like, general symbolism about some of these things. And so I got the yellow Don't Tread on me hat, which I was just like, yeah, that's like a part of the American store. I had no idea that there was some, like, larger significance here. And I come back to D.C. and I'm like, wearing. Or Maryland, and I'm, like, wearing this hat, and someone's like, what are you doing right now? Why are you wearing this, like, Tea Party symbol? And I was just like, what do you mean? This is like an American, like, history, like, you know, symbol or whatever. And, you know, I then never wore that hat again, obviously, because I was just being told that this was a Tea Party symbol. But I just. There's, like, been a co option by various far right elements in society of, like, parts of America's symbols in American history. And we just, like, let it happen. Like, instead of just being like, yeah, we all wear American flags. Like, you're not just gonna get. Let that be like the American, the far white symbol. We've just been, like, slowly seeding it. Like, oh, they're wearing it. I can't wear it. But you don't see the opposite happening. Like, you see these no kings rallies everywhere, and they have American paraphernalia. And no one on the right is like, oh, well, now I gotta take down my flag. And so there's this weird unilateral disarmament. Because I think people on the left don't wanna accidentally be understood as being a far right person. Like, that's just such a cultural harm to them. And so I think that there's this asymmetry here where there's just been a real pullback. These symbols of American history to the point where, you know, yeah, like, if you do see someone wearing American paraphernalia now in public, I think people assume most of the time that that person's either on the right or on the center, but they would not assume that that was, like, a neutral expression of, like, pro America spirit. And so, while you're right, like, we don't want to lay everything on the feet of people in academia, I just think that, like, everyone needs to be more critical here about whether or not you think this is analytically or descriptively correct, that the American flag or these symbols of American heritage have been used to do what is the end game of a country where the entirety of the left decides that being positive about your nation's history, heritage, future, symbolism is a bad thing? Like, is that gonna end in a good place for us? I just think obviously not.
- [24:20]
Jon Favreau
This has driven me nuts for a while, because Trump isn't the first time that we've dealt with this. Like, I can remember during the Bush years, like, still wanting to be very patriotic, and then. And liberals went through a whole thing then when they were like, no more flags. Flags are about Bush and Iraq, and you have to be. And, you know, the Patriot act, all that good stuff. And I'm like, well, just because he took all those things and tried to reappropriate them for the right and for his vision of the country doesn't mean that we should abandon them. Which is why then when Obama gave that speech at the 2004 convention in Boston, which I thought. And I didn't know him at the time, but I thought was, like, the most patriotic speech I had heard, but it was like, patriotism. It was patriotic in a different way. Which brings me to your point about elected officials today. Like, you don't hear a lot of elected Democrats saying America's awful and irredeemable, and that's why we're not patriotic. They talk the language of patriotism, but basically the story is Trump is bad and the Republicans are bad and Republican policies are bad, and America's great, and I'm gonna align myself with America, and that's that. And in a way, that sort of. I mean, I'm shortcutting it, but they're shortcutting it as well. It's like there's a missing part of the jeremiad in there, which is that actually there are. This country does have real issues that we've had issues throughout history, but the point is not to either airbrush them away or ignore them, but to actually Confront them, be honest about what we've done wrong and what our weaknesses are and what our challenges are, and then realize that the structure of our government and the exceptionalism that is America allows us to sort of overcome those challenges. And I do wonder why so many Democratic politicians shy away from sort of that deeper analysis of both what is wrong with America and then. And how to make it right.
- [26:13]
Jerusalem Demsis
I think it's very difficult for people who have. Are kind of disconnected from the narrative arc of that MLK Obama. All these people were able to do to make this connection themselves. To be clear, like, Jeremiah are, like, hard. A good Jeremiah is, like, hard to give. Like, a good speech in general is hard to give. And so the fact that, like, most elected officials are, like, not as good at giving speeches as Barack Obama is perhaps not that surprising. But I think the thing that we're witnessing right now during the World Cup, I mean, there's all this discourse online right now, right, of, like, these Europeans coming to America and being like, oh, my God, Costco's so cool. Oh, my gosh, like, everyone is so friendly. They're all smiling at me. That's so nice. Like, I had this horrible vision of the US and, like, now I'm witnessing these things that make America really cool and amazing. And this is, like, doing well. Like, a lot of, you know, Americans are reacting positively to this kind of content because it's reminding them of things about America that we tend to take for granted. And again, like, that doesn't mean there aren't problems, but if you can't be proud of this specific difference, you also can't fight to protect it. And so I think part of what's happening, too, is, I mean, the academic community is very small as a percentage of the population, but they have a really outsized impact on, of course, the people who go on to work in Congress, the people who go on to work on, you know, various think tanks, et cetera. These people often have, like, master's degrees or are planning to go to law school or have gone to law school. And of course, journalists, et cetera, like, are all in this very, like, elite world and space. And so you have this problem, right, where, like, the stories everyone in this space are telling are ones of America has failed in these really structural, core ways, and we understand ourselves this way. And then the elected officials are being asked to construct this, you know, different narrative that's more patriotic. I think it's actually, like, very difficult to do when it's just not the language everyone else is speaking. And you know, Obama, you know, you know, the Jeremiah you were working on or that he was giving even before you were there. These are building on an intellectual and rhetorical history and community that you, he was embedded in, that you guys were embedded in, even though you didn't even know that term. Like, you were embedded in that kind of thinking. And so elected officials today are embedded in a new kind of discursive environment where they are not having everyone who is, you know, talking in the same way that people were even at the time. And like, you're correct. Like, this whole thing, like, why isn't the left patriotic? Like, isn't new. But when you're looking at these polling numbers, these are much lower than what we were talking about before. Like, I mean, this is a perennial thing where the left is, I think, very essential to pointing out the flaws of the United States, not being able to meet its promises to everyone that it has made. But it is unprecedented at this point. The number of people who can't just say, yeah, I love this country, I am patriotic, I am proud to be an American, and that's. That's bad.
- [29:21]
Austin Fisher
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- [32:08]
Jon Favreau
so there's a more nuanced critique of the Jeremiah that I've been wrestling with myself, which is, you know, I came up through the Obama years sort of genuinely believing in the arc that the the American story was fundamentally one of overcoming slavery, Jim Crow, the long bend toward justice. And after the last decade, in the Trump years, I have wondered whether that triumphalism was its own kind of complacency. So whether believing too hard that progress was inevitable is part of what left people like us sort of flat footed for what came after when Trump was elected not once but now twice. Do you think that Jeremiad risks reproducing that like the comfort that yes, we have faults, but we can overcome them, we have before and so everyone should just chill out?
- [33:03]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yeah, I mean, I think the part of the Jeremiah we haven't talked about as much is what the path to redemption actually is. Because it's not just this sort of, you're failing right now, and here's, you know, the ways that you're failing relative to this ideal. It's also, here's what you need to do. I mean, Frederick Douglass, very blistering speech about what to the slave is the Fourth of July, which if folks have not heard that, they should go either listen to.
- [33:30]
Stacey Abrams
It's incredible.
- [33:30]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yeah, it's incredible. And there's also something you can. You can also read it in its entirety. And, you know, he spends most of the time talking about the ways that the country has. Has failed. And yet, like, it's clear what he's advocating for is that abolition is the way forward. And that's not an easy path. And he's not like, giving people a white paper or like, you know, exactly the legal definition or jargon for what they should do. He is explaining to them that, like, abolition is the only way for us to meet our obligations to what you all say that you believe. He's talking to them, this audience. He's saying, you all are telling us that all men are created equal while you're enslaving people like me and hear all the harms that you are doing to both your own. These people, but also just your own self image and to your own ability to think of yourself as a good person. And so I think the problem can be with kind of a naive patriotism, right? Like one that just is blissfully happy about being an American. And, like, they'll do the Fourth of July, like, barbecue thing. And, and you'll be excited about that. And you'll say, like, wow, America's so great. We went to the moon first. And isn't that amazing, is that it can engender complacency if there's not a clear tie to what you're supposed to do with that, you know, with that difference, with the difference between what you want to be and what you are, it should lead you towards some sort of action. And right now, I think that's part of what's so difficult to construct. You know, for these politicians, if they're, you know, if they're attempting to do this, to construct this kind of positive vision, is that there's a real difference of opinion about what that path forward is supposed to look like. Abolition was obviously a very controversial move. I mean, what Martin Luther King doing was very controversial. I mean, these were not easy choices to make the vindication of the rights of women. When you're talking about the suffragettes and the women who were arguing for the vote, these were very difficult things to organize society around. But right now it seems like, like there's actually a lot of differences of opinion right now among the left about what that next step is supposed to be and what that's supposed to look like. And I think that can lead to a lot of confusion from politicians where they're like, we know what's wrong. We know generally what it would be like for things to feel good. But how do we get there? Like, what is that path? You're right. Like, without that, it is.
- [35:52]
Jon Favreau
We go to white papers. You're right.
- [35:53]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yeah, we have a lot of white papers.
- [35:55]
Jon Favreau
No, I mean, it is. It's like it's. I always think about it as, like, we have the. The 50,000 foot version and then we have like, just endless details and policies, but there's no story or theory or moral case that sort of connects the big happy 50,000 foot version of what America should be with all the white papers.
- [36:16]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yes.
- [36:17]
Jon Favreau
And it feels like no one has actually connected those things. I do want to talk about sort of the reactionary version of the Jeremiad on the right, partly. Last time we spoke, I think it was September of 25, most of the episode, we talked about JD Vance and his Claremont Institute speech. And you had just gone to the National Conservatism Conference, where we heard plenty of versions of that. And it seems like they have come to realize that they should try to take the founding and take the story of America and repurpose it for their own ends, especially the parts that seem problematic for their narrative. The most obvious one being that we are all created equal. And the Declaration of Independence seems like a real problem for them. You wrote about how Oren Cass, who's a new right econ guy, sort of flips the founding logic Declaration says equality comes first and citizenship follows from it. Cass uses the same Jeremiad structure to argue that citizenship is what creates equality. You say this is fundamentally un American. I agree. Post liberals would say their interpretation is right and the Creedle story is the recent invention. So how do you adjudicate whose America is the real one, and what the founding really means without just asserting that ours is.
- [37:47]
Jerusalem Demsis
I mean, I think that this is one of those things where if you're just even an amateur who's willing to go read some of these documents, it's extremely difficult to imagine that the creedal story isn't what they meant, I mean, even the idea that the Declaration says equality is before citizenship, that it recognizes the equality of every single person, like that was a radical statement that really is different than how many people thought about what equality was. Equality, a. The idea that people were equal wasn't a widely shared sentiment. I mean, obviously even the founders clearly did not live that principle out totally. But this idea that, you know, countries are constituted by specific peoples that are there because they were there for generations and they tilled the land and equality, your father's father's father was there. It is literally impossible that the American story could have been that way, given that the people who were laying claim to the country were largely newcomers. They were displacing the people that were there before. So clearly the story they had to tell about America was one that said, even if you're coming from very different countries, from very different faiths, from very different backgrounds, you're all now here and we need to fight the British. That's the entire point of what the founding was. And then when you go through generations of people reifying this story, right, like when we're talking about the people that everyone claims as obviously American, whether you're on the right and you're talking about people like Reagan or you're talking about people like Abraham Lincoln, or you're talking about people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, like whoever it is throughout history, these American giants are individuals who, who are trying to expand the way that we treat individuals in society to ensure that equality is actually shared among larger groups. This now move from the post liberal right to constrain it to say, actually some of you aren't really Americans or you're not Americans in the same way. I mean the idea of heritage American, which is something that has been really popularized by the Vance right, this is something that has, of course there have always been impulses like this in American history, history to restrain this. But that's not been the American legal history or the intellectual foundation of what most people in power have believed. And to make this clear, I mean, like one of the clearest examples of this is the Dred Scott case, which is one of considered like one of the most wrongly decided cases in history, which is that slaves have no ability or standing to even ensue because they have no rights that the white man is bound to respect. And this is something that when it's decided, Abraham Lincoln himself is like, this can't be right. Because we know that everyone has rights that exist before anyone can even talk about them in a court of law or in the Supreme Court or whatever, that those rights precede their citizenship, they precede their identity as American individuals. And at the time Abraham Lincoln is saying this, this is not an invention of like woke academia 200 years later. This is the President of the United States who is fighting to keep the union together at the time that this is being decided. And so I'm not a historian, and historians can do like, you know, much better work than I can on detailing this, but I actually don't even think you need to be one if you want to go read the documents yourself. Like, you can do that both in person at the National Archives or in the Internet. And you can ask yourself if it's possible that what these ragtag bunch of like individuals from various backgrounds, some of whom, you know Alexander Hamilton himself, obviously an immigrant. I mean, these are not individuals who could possibly been founding a country whereby you needed to have kind of like a blood and soil relationship to the land in order to be a real American.
- [41:48]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, this is why immigration for me has become like, so central to everything that we're fighting about. Like, I used, I think coming up through politics, I used to see it as another issue that the politicians talk about. And so you have your immigration policy, like you have your healthcare policy and you have every other policy. And, you know, sometimes it's tough for Democrats, so we gotta tiptoe around immigration. But clearly around Trump especially, it became like central to the MAGA movement and to Trump's presidency and now to the, the new right. And I think that for liberals and for progressives and for the left, it's still seen as either an issue where we have to prove that we're, you know, for borders and security, and also we want to be welcoming. But there is something deeper about immigration that is sort of fundamental to the argument that, that the left and right are having about everything right now.
- [42:45]
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- [42:46]
Jon Favreau
And part of that is because even when you talk about sort of the size of the welfare state, you know, you look at countries that have generous welfare states like the Scandinavian countries, and the reason they can do that, one reason they can do that, is because they always haven't been the most diverse countries. And as they become more diverse and there's more immigration, they're facing these same challenges too. And I say this because what we are trying to do in this country, in multi ethnic, multiracial democracy, where everyone still has opportunity to get ahead, and there's over 300 million people, it's a really fucking hard thing to do. And it hasn't been done ever. And that's why we're exceptional, I think, because we're trying to do it. We're still trying all these years later. But I do think that the right has at least landed on immigration as central to something deeper about the argument we're having about American identity than the left has at this point, which I still think. I still think the left sees it as like an issue we just have to figure out and move on to the issues that we want to talk about. But I think it is so connected to everything else.
- [43:50]
Jerusalem Demsis
I totally agree. I mean, even I think the flashpoint of what happened in Minneapolis is such a microcosm of that entire story. I mean, you have Americans of all stripes coming together to defend their immigrant neighbors in the like, direct response to this idea that you only really care about people who are, you know, long hands in your community, et cetera. Like, these people were like, no. Like, I'm going to put my body on the line to defend immigrant neighbors who I may or may not personally know, but are Minnesotans just like I am. And in that they're defining what a Minnesotan is, people were getting together to put their bodies on the line to prevent ICE agents from hurting people that they saw as part of their community. Like the idea, I think this is like just such, such a radical thing and also just such an American normie thing. Like the people around you, they're your neighbors, they're your family, they're your community. Even if they weren't born there, if they went to your kid's school, like you know who they are. It's almost like ridiculous to imagine like an American going like, oh, let me check to see. Like, were you here six generations ago before I care if like, you know, a federal agent shoots you? Like, it's just like so ridiculous that I think it really shows how much the this like anti creedal story is like out of sync with how everyone actually lives their lives. Like, no one is checking people's papers when they meet them at their kids soccer game. Like, no one cares about that. They're like, are you nice? Does my kid like your kid? Like, are we gonna have a good time chilling here talking? Like that's way more important to people and way more core of how people decide who their community is. And that's actually why the post liberal rights story is just gonna fail. I just think this is not going to work in America. There are too many generations of immigrants who are defining who gets to be an American. Like, people have stories of Their grandparents being Irish immigrants or Italian immigrants or Polish immigrants. That's not going to go away because J.D. vance tells us that the 14th Amendment was wrongly understood.
- [45:55]
Austin Fisher
Well, and for them, I also think
- [45:57]
Jon Favreau
it's not just about immigration as we understand it. It's about the notion of citizenship itself and who gets to decide what citizens have more rights than others. Right. Like, J.D. vance. And he started this in the Claremont speech, and we might have talked about this, but. But there's that line that got less attention where he is attacking Mamdani. And Mamdani had some, like, nice Fourth of July message last year where he was like, you know, I love this country, and I think we can do better. Like, something very simple like that. And JD Vance attacks it because he's like, how can he not be grateful to this country? And of course, the idea is, because he is an immigrant, that he, you know, he needs to be more grateful to this country. But he also said it, like, I just watched him on TV last night, and he was saying that one of the reasons he thinks Democrats are terrible people, which is amazing to just say, is because, like, we're not grateful and we don't show enough gratitude to this country. And, like, my.
- [46:58]
Austin Fisher
My response to that is like, who
- [46:59]
Jon Favreau
are we supposed to show gratitude to? Who are we thanking? Like, do we need to thank J.D. vance? And, like, why are we thanking him? Like, but it's clearly in his mind. And immigration, people who are different, people who have different political beliefs, like, they're all they can be in this country, but they have to be grateful to, I guess, the people who are here first or the people who are heritage Americans or something. But, like, I think what he's getting at there, and the New Right does this, too, is that somehow, like, citizenship in this country needs to be tiered even once you become a citizen. And I do think that, like, and the immigration issue sort of flows from there, but I do think that is central to their. Their view of what the country is. And I also think it's, like, a real opening for the left to be like, no, no, no. The whole purpose of this is we're all created equal. We all have the same inalienable rights. And when you're a citizen, you get treated equally.
- [47:56]
Jerusalem Demsis
I mean, there's like, this Mott and Bailey, which I never remember which is the Mott and which is the Bailey. But there's, like, there's always this. This idea that, okay, well, shouldn't people be thankful to be Americans and happy to be Americans, and shouldn't you feel gratitude to the troops or people who died to protect your rights and veterans and, you know, people who were before you, who made your life possible. It's like, yeah, obviously everyone is thankful that, like, you know, people died for them and made their lives a better or possible. Or people who worked hard for their rights or, you know, you'll notice that they never, like, point to activists that we should be saying thank you to who made it possible for us to have voting rights or access to clean water or whatever it is. That's never part of the gratitude story on the New Right. But then it's like, actually the real thing that they're, I think, actually saying is you are here on, like, temporary basis or, like, you are here at the will and generosity of. Of some original, authentic, heritage American. And so if you step out of line, if you are not willing to be in this kind of hierarchical setup of how our country's supposed to work, then we'll take it away. So the idea is, women, you should be grateful that we let you vote. I mean, right now, there's actually a legitimate discourse happening around whether or not the 19th Amendment, whether women having the right to vote was actually a good thing because of the gender polarization between the parties, that there are more women who vote for Democrats than for Republicans. And, I mean, these are just ideas that I think that, like, again, most normal people find ridiculous. It's like a 95.5 issue. The idea that women should get to vote, it's just, like, not a real thing. But again, because these elite spaces tend to have, like, really strange discursive norms. You have, like, people like J.D. vance talking themselves into the most bizarre politics on the planet, where it's like, like, it's good to talk about how, like, half the country is actually not legitimately American, or at least insinuate that they're not, and they don't have the same rights or privileges or sentiment. And I mean, apparently he has a book coming out which, you know, I haven't read, but allegedly, he says he's. He's sad about his. Or he regrets his childless cat lady's comment. I'm like, yeah, did you forget that women vote? Like, we do still have that option to vote. And, I mean, I. I'm glad that he regrets it. It's good for people to, like, decide that that was, like, a wrong thing to say. But I think that, like, that was a. Not an accidental comment. It was, I think, emblematic of a worldview where certain kinds of life choices, ones that many many people are making are make you less of a worthy citizen to the point where a vice presidential candidate, the person who actually is a heartbeat away from the presidency, can denigrate you that way. I mean it's really just something that I think we've, we've like normalized it in like media and in like the way that people talk about like you're, you're treated as like naive or stupid to have any kind of like reaction to comments like that because now they're so common. But I think again, normal people who are not in politics every single day find this sort of discussion and behavior like baffling. It's like not how they talk about each other, it's not how they talk to each other. It's not how they think about politics. They're focused on like inflation. And we're like, you know, now you have the post liberal right saying, well like okay, was your grandfather buried in Kentucky? It's like, okay, what are you talking about? Who cares?
- [51:19]
Jon Favreau
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- [53:53]
Jon Favreau
I'm in Chicago this week for the opening of the Obama Presidential center, so I've I'm pretty deep in nostalgia right now. But aside from my own nostalgia, there's also something nostalgic about the idea of rhetoric and speeches having a real impact in an era of 15 second clips and sort of reality TV politics. Do you think that the Jeremiah the long rhetorical flock gathering speech is still a tool worth investing in?
- [54:22]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yes, I think there are a couple of reasons why I'm very bullish on long form content. One is that that short form content comes almost entirely from long form content, right? Like, I mean these speeches that people are hearing are these clips from politicians, whether they're 15 seconds or 30 seconds or whatever. I mean the Jon Ossoff speech that recently went viral. Like people, I was in an Uber and this guy was just like watching this like 30 second speeches and then I saw and this was so bad, he was like driving. So I'm not like, I'm not like a positive story totally. But he like I saw I watch him like go into YouTube and then type in Jon Ossoff's name and then find like the full speech and like play. Which you know, maybe that's just like a weirdo random Uber driver, but I just mean like in general.
- [55:02]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, that's something I know.
- [55:04]
Jerusalem Demsis
But I just, I think that like even when you're watching normal political commentary on TikTok or Reels or YouTube shorts or whatever it is, it's often like derivative, right? Like it's someone talking about A New York Times story, or it's someone talking about an Atlantic story, or they're talking about discourse that was spurred by a speech someone gave on the floor of the House. And like, these are often like, it's like a derivative of a derivative of a derivative, but it's still like, there's a core thing there that had to have happened to spawn all of this extra commentary. And while it is different, obviously, though, like, mass communications has changed a lot. It's not really that removed from how most people were affected by speeches in the past. Like, most people did not watch or ever hear or read Lincoln's second inaugural address. Like, that was not, like, common. I have no stats or facts to point to, but I will stake up some money on the fact that most Americans have not and did not read that or hear that, but it affected their politics because the people who did hear, the people who did read it or heard segments of it, were affected by it, changed how they thought. But also, like, speeches are ways that we affirm stories that we then act out, right? Like, it affects the policy choices that you make. Like, the types of things Lincoln was talking about affected the political decisions he made as president, United States. He himself had to think through that and create kind of a political community among his, you know, people he worked with, his party, the country, the troops, whenever he was, you know, addressing them, etc. Like, these were things that he needed to work through. And I think often, you know, someone, as a writer, as a writer myself, like, I often write to think through and figure out what I believe about things. And so the purpose of the long form content is not that 100% of people will ever read, you know, every article that or any article that it gets written or published. It's that it's important to go through that process, that someone needs to go through that process so that we can advance the society. And then, you know, the fact that political commentary is derivative of longer form commentary, I don't think is a problem right now. This podcast is us. I mean, it's long form content. We've been talking for a while here, but I think at the same time, I mean, it's based on an article that took me much longer to write than we are talking for. And I don't think that that is necessarily a problem. So I think that people, when they talk about short form content, there are a lot of problems with it and people's attention spans, et cetera. It's like, I think now you have to have cuts every second in Order to keep people's attention, which doesn't feel great. But at the same time, don't let that be an excuse for you not to do the long form work, because whoever does that will have a way outsized impact on everything else that comes out.
- [57:42]
Jon Favreau
Just made me think of another question. Do you think that they have a simpler story to tell? They have an easier job, the right and Trump then. And then I don't know about just them because obviously, and in this way, I'm not necessarily talking about J.D. vance and the New Right, because they have their own sort of weird theory that I think we both agree is not going to work that well. But Trump's is very easy. They're bad. I'm good. Everything is this Manichean struggle. Everything's very simple, good and evil, black and white. And the liberal story has never been that. And this is another thought I had walking around the Obama Presidential center and listening to the speeches and thinking about how he approached governing and the last 250 years of America and how complicated it is and how nuanced the story is that we've been talking about just today. And I wonder if we just have a more difficult job telling this story than the forces who want to just say, no, we're right and you're wrong and that's it.
- [58:45]
Jerusalem Demsis
Yeah, I do think it's a much more similar. I mean, simple. It's. I think the simple story is populism. Right? Like, this is why I'm so concerned about populism on the right, which is really dominant on the left, which is brewing, is because it's essentially telling you that there's a, there are good people and there are bad people and that politics and the struggle that we're having is a fight between these two groups. Groups who are like, in some ways, like, they're naturally good or bad. I mean, on the right, often these are, you know, Democrats are the bad ones or women or childless cat ladies or immigrants or whatever it is, on the left, it's often like it's billionaires and rich people. And while like, you know, like a lot of the policies I may like, support on, like taxing, you know, higher taxes on the wealthy or corporate taxes or whatever, like that kind of setup or that kind of view often engenders a type of politics and type of story which really makes it impossible to follow in the American tradition. Right? Because if the idea is that, like, they are just good people and bad people, then the entire fight is who gets to define who's good and Bad. Like that's what that is. But if politics is actually, there are lots of different groups of people. They have different interests. Some of them can be accommodated in society. Some of them have to be shifted through policy, through laws, through norms or whatever. And then it's like, okay, yeah, we have a pluralistic society where there are different kinds of ways of living that are acceptable, and we need to figure that out. And that's like a completely different framework. That's the liberal framework. And that's a very, I think, difficult one to tell when people are really upset. Because what it's asking you to do is accept that there are people that are different than you who are making way different choices than you are, that are totally legitimate in those choices. That someone who is a trad wife is totally legitimate in her choice. And someone who is, you know, a girl boss, like in New York, totally legitimate in her choice. Someone spending their entire 20s and 30s in a PhD program, totally legitimate, having children. Like, this is a difficult thing to do because obviously you're making the choices you make because you think they're better than other choices, and that's fine. Like, people should, like, you know, argue about which choices are better for people to make. And like, we live in a free society. But it's much more difficult than to tell a story that's, there are good people and there are bad people, and you want to be on the side of the good people. And. And that goodness is impossible to take away, even if they make bad actions. And then for the bad people, they're irredeemable no matter what they do, because of something that they have already been categorized as. And that, to me, that kind of framework, whether it's on the left or the right, and obviously it's way more dangerous on the right right now, is just a really bad way to do politics. I think it's an. I think it's the thing that we've been fighting, as, you know, small l liberals throughout American history is to, like, make politics, not about there are good and bad people. And you're right. It's just like a really difficult thing to do.
- [61:33]
Austin Fisher
Yeah.
- [61:33]
Jon Favreau
Because I think that the central tenet of liberalism is that there is good and bad. But the good and bad exists in all of us, in each of us. We all have the potential to do good and we all have the potential to do bad, which is why you can't make decisions about government based on one group of people being right and the other being wrong. You have to have laws and values that are universal, that everyone adheres to because we all have the capacity for good and we all have the capacity for evil. And it is very difficult to get people to believe that when they think the other side is so bad. But all you have to do is think, am I always good? Is everything I do wonderful? No, of course I make mistakes. I can do very bad things. Like, you know, it's just I, I think that I agree with you on the populism issue is that it is, it is so tempting. And it can be tempting left because, you know, you can pull it and people are mad and people are like, we need a villain. Every story needs a villain, Right? And so of course the villain should be the billionaires. And like, maybe that works for a while and maybe you can pass great policies, but like, it doesn't lead you to like. And it's the same thing about like, you know, we just got to get rid of Maga and Trump. It's like, we're not going to get rid of the other half of the country. Right. Or if we are, then we're basically just them in another form. Right. Like, the whole point of this is to figure out a way to live together and not necessarily agree with each other. Not even like, like each other. We don't even have to like each other. We just have to live together and respect each other and all sort of agree to adhere to the same laws and values. That's all.
- [62:59]
Jerusalem Demsis
Exactly. I mean, and that's like hard. That's like, it is hard. Years of people trying to do that. And I think, you know, the real problem too is that populism doesn't work. Like it might work for some election cycles. It might get you into power, it might get people happy and riled up, but at the end of the day, no. All of society's problems are not caused by a small group of bad people. It's like not true. And there are difficult problems, whether they're resource constraints, whether, like we have an in it, like we needed to invent a COVID vaccine. There was no railing against a pot like an elite that was ever going to get you a COVID vaccine without the liberal institutions of scientific organizations. The fact that we had an immigration system that brought in these scientists that were able to do it, the fact that we had like a governmental all of government push to actually get vaccines in arms, like I had a National Guards member vaccinate me at the Baltimore MT stadium, like that was a marvel of liberal institutions coming together over hundreds of years to construct both the legal, fiscal and like, you know, economic paradigm that would allow that to happen. Like, there is no railing against some rich person, some Jewish person, some like, you know, immigrant that would ever have gotten us there. And so I think the big problem here is that people fall into the economic populism story because as you said, it polls well. And then they're like, now what do I do? It's like, well, you have to actually solve these problems. And like, you can't do that by just getting mad at some small number of people.
- [64:26]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. So, last question. Your piece ends at the, at the national archives on the 4th. You walk out into the July sun, having stood in line next to people in MAGA hat, and all of you are looking at the same document, the
- [64:38]
Austin Fisher
same piece of paper. What do you actually want an uneasy
- [64:42]
Jon Favreau
liberal, uneasy with patriotism, to do differently this Fourth of July?
- [64:48]
Jerusalem Demsis
If you live in Washington D.C. or Philadelphia or Boston, I think it's actually really easy to go to some American history event. One time on July 4th, I was in Philly visiting my sister and I went to the Philadelphia. I forget what it was, but it was the Philadelphia Museum. I think it's Independence Museum. And every single one of these I've gone to, I've gone to one in Boston. I think I've been to something. Yeah, I've been to one in San Francisco too. I mean, if you're in a major city, it's like really easy for you to find some sort of historical museum or, you know, event to take part in. And what's really great about these things is that it just situates you as part of this American story. Like, like I remember when I was in Philly, there's like this long, like, there's a long video that they have you sit through at the very beginning of the museum tour. And it's just sort of like all of history, all of these different people fighting for you to be able to sit where you are right now. And it really just makes you feel like a bigger part of this American story. And there are times in my life where I haven't been in some of these bigger cities. And in those moments, I go back and I read these documents, like, I will go back and I'll listen to the Frederick Douglass speech. And it makes you just feel like not only am I a part of this long running story, but also because of what this guy did, like, I don't have to fight that same battle, like that one's been won. We abolished slavery as a country. That's no longer an issue for us. And I think that reflecting on that, whether it's in person or whether it's. You're going to go like Google online, Frederick Douglass's what to the slave was the Fourth of July, or whatever it is you're going to do. I mean, just spend a few moments actually sitting with the history of this country. Country. And it really does make it difficult to feel depressed about where we are when you think about all of the work that's been done to get us here from much worse situations. And so that's all good. But then the thing which I think most people more take me up on is just like, go have fun with people in your community. Like, just go have a good time. Like, whether you're throwing a party, whether you're going somewhere, whether you're going to a parade, whatever it is. And when you look around, like, you're not going to know who anyone voted for at this parade or at this party or whatever it is, like, you will see lots of different kinds of people and they won't all look like you and they won't have the same beliefs you do. Some of them will have gone to college, Some of them will have, you know, you know, have jobs. Some won't, like whatever it is. And like, that is unbelievably cool. It's so cool to be celebrating whatever it is that you're celebrating in a group of people that is so diverse and different and still be united by this one thing, which is like, we're to have a good time and, you know, being patriotic, part of it is you have to have a good time. So no, no, no depressed posts on July 4th. That's one thing I'll say. I don't want to see any, like, dooming on timeline.
- [67:36]
Jon Favreau
I love that. I love that. That's a great place to leave it. Jerusalem. Thank you so much for joining. It's always wonderful to talk to you and, and thanks for writing that piece.
- [67:45]
Jerusalem Demsis
Thank you. Thanks.
- [67:58]
Jon Favreau
Offline with Jon Favreau is a crooked media production.
- [68:01]
Austin Fisher
Our show is produced by Austin Fisher,
- [68:02]
Jon Favreau
Emma Ilik, Frank, and Anisha Banerjee.
- [68:04]
Austin Fisher
Our team includes Delon Villanueva, Mia Kelman, Charlotte Landis, Eric Schutt, Rachel Gajewski and Will Jones. With support from Adrian Hill and Matt De Groat, our staff is proudly unionized
- [68:13]
Jon Favreau
with the Writers Guild of America East.
- [68:31]
Stacey Abrams
In moments like these, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and even easier to feel powerless. But we are neither. I'm Stacey Abrams, and on my podcast, assembly requires I take on each executive action, legislative battle and breaking news moment by asking three questions. What's really happening? What can we do about it? And how do we keep going together? This is a space for clarity, strategy and hope rooted in action, not denial. New episodes of Assembly Required Drop Tuesdays Tune in wherever you get your podcasts and on on YouTube.
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