Destiny Introduces JVL to the Wild World of Streaming

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast

Episode: Destiny Introduces JVL to the Wild World of Streaming

Date: July 24, 2026
Host(s): JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Guest: Destiny (Steven Bonnell)

Episode Overview

JVL, a longtime political commentator, rides into unfamiliar territory by joining Destiny, a celebrated political streamer, for a candid, cross-generational conversation about the current state of politics, media, and culture. The discussion explores the "uncomfortable hello, fellow kids energy" of JVL entering the streaming world, and together they dissect asymmetric media treatment, economic misunderstandings, partisan dynamics, and the broader decline (or transformation) of political culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. JVL’s Streaming Experience & Generational Culture Gaps (00:00–01:28)

• JVL's Introduction to Streaming:

  • JVL expresses the oddity of feeling like a "zoo attraction" in the streaming world, describing Destiny's audience watching him try out a new medium.
  • Quote (JVL, 00:15): "It's a little like, I'm a zoo attraction and the streamer and his audience are all looking at me. But it was very nice, I think."

• Generational Disconnect & ‘Hello Fellow Kids’ Energy:

  • JVL admits it’s a meandering experience and pokes fun at feeling out of place.

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2. Economic Illiteracy & Political Narratives (01:28–03:32)

• Writing That 'Nobody Reads':

  • JVL shares his frustration with writing deep-dive economic analysis (e.g., demand externalities) that garners little public attention.
  • Quick interruption by his 10-year-old son, adding a relatable “dad-at-work” moment.

• Econ 101 & Political Illiteracy:

  • Destiny and JVL lament the widespread economic ignorance among politicians and their audiences, focusing on oil and housing price narratives.
  • Quote (Destiny, 01:47): "There are so many things that are said... absolute nonsense."
  • JVL references his disputes with Sarah Longwell over deflation and why voters' desire for falling prices is based on misunderstandings.
  • Quote (JVL, 02:22): "Deflation is terrible. If deflation hits and prices go down, it means we are mired in an economic catastrophe and these people will be out of work and losing their houses."

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3. Asymmetric Media Standards & ‘Both Sides’-ism (03:32–09:10)

• Media Double Standards:

  • Destiny describes frustration with center/center-left media treating wild right-wing ideas seriously and "debating the merits" of fringe positions.
  • Quote (Destiny, 04:25): "So many things said out loud where I'm like, did you really just say that... I just couldn't believe it."

• Comparison: Fauci vs. RFK Jr.:

  • JVL critiques how right-wing figures get benefit of the doubt (“maybe he says microchip stuff, but he also thinks kids should exercise”), yet credible people like Fauci get discredited over minute inaccuracies.
  • Quote (JVL, 05:33): "If Anthony Fauci ever said one thing that wasn't 100% verifiably true, well then you can't trust anything he says."

• Destiny’s Take on ‘Conservatives as Children’ Analogy:

  • The metaphor that conservatives are treated as children with no agency (“How could they know?”), while Democrats are held responsible like parents.
  • Quote (Destiny, 06:41): "Conservatives are treated like Chinese children... and Democrats are treated like parents."

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4. The ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Effect & Liberal Self-Policing (08:23–09:52)

• Weaponizing Critique:

  • Destiny suggests conservatives effectively shamed liberals into minimizing criticism of Trump by labeling it “Trump derangement syndrome.”
  • Liberals began second-guessing even major scandals for fear of seeming obsessive.
  • Quote (Destiny, 08:59): "They did that with Trump derangement syndrome, where the liberals were like, should we really be impeaching him again... Maybe we are kind of deranged."

• Both Sides Fallacy:

  • JVL satirically compares the scale of Democratic and Republican “bad behavior,” highlighting absurd false equivalency.
  • Quote (JVL, 09:10): "On the one hand you have the President... that is more funding than the Marines... On the other hand, some kids at Oberlin... held up some signs."

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5. Liberal Moderates vs. Partisan Echo Chambers (10:47–15:34)

• Media Ecosystems:

  • Destiny details how MAGA and far-left ("tankie") media launder talking points top-down, creating coherent narratives, while "lib left" or moderates self-criticize until effective messaging is dead on arrival.
  • Quote (Destiny, 12:03): "When I'm looking at it, what I'm seeing is — no, the reason why it works is it doesn't really matter what the message is... they're all accepted because they were all seen up here and you want to be part of that ecosystem."

• Vibes over Reason:

  • JVL wonders if politics is about messaging or just “vibes,” and whether people rationalize desires after settling on beliefs.
  • Quote (JVL, 15:11): "People want what they want and they make up what they want and then they backfill and justify their decisions and their desires and urges after the fact."
  • Destiny agrees, noting personal experience with family in MAGA circles and the power of algorithmic social feeds.

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6. Social Media & Platform Amplification (17:36–19:26)

• Platform Problems:
  • JVL and Destiny debate whether the root is the platform (Twitter, TikTok, YouTube) or broader media dynamics.
  • Fox News v. Dominion Lawsuit:
    • Destiny: Despite clear evidence Fox hosts knowingly misled the public about election fraud, this barely registered compared to left-leaning scandals.
    • Center-left can’t amplify stories; right-wing media is structured for relentless message discipline.
    • Quote (Destiny, 19:19): "If you hear somebody say, this candidate is really, really bad at messaging. That is a comment that will come from the center left because on the right they understand that they are the messaging."

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7. Declining Democratic Institutions & Societal Health (20:27–25:23)

• JVL: Bearish on America:

  • Cites institutional collapse: separation of powers, Supreme Court partisanship/corruption, entrenched rural bias, and wealth concentration (e.g., “once you have a trillionaire, it’s just different”).
  • Quote (JVL, 20:46): "We have a bunch of institutional problems... separation of powers has been exposed as having a lot of weakness... Supreme Court, which has become sort of nakedly partisan, but also corrupt at the same time."

• Destiny’s Pushback:

  • Argues that cyclical pessimism is normal in history; optimism persists because things sometimes do get better.

• JVL’s Counter:

  • “Sometimes societies fix themselves, but those aren't things you can really engineer... you get a reformation movement... you can't predict them.”

• Unfair Blame Allocation:

  • JVL and Destiny rage against how voters and media apply highly nuanced skepticism only when politically convenient (e.g., forgiving Trump on COVID, blaming Biden for Afghanistan/Russia/October 7), often with little factual grounding.
  • Quote (JVL, 23:49): "People become like super reductive when talking about the Biden years, but incredibly sophisticated and able to apportion blame versus non blame during the Trump years."

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8. Media Perception, Nonpartisan Myths & Cultural Decline (25:23–29:41)

• “Shit Painting” Analogy:

  • Destiny likens efforts to treat both sides equally to art critics reviewing a child’s wall-scratching as if it were impressionist art — a scathing rebuke of media bothsidesism.
  • Quote (Destiny, 25:30): "Then the shit painting is like, well, Monet had a lot of like, really interesting, you know, pieces of art..."

• Public Perception of Media:

  • Destiny notes the public views Fox as ‘the right’ but lumps CNN, NYT, and others as ‘the left,’ failing to account for actual ideological differences or partisanship.

• Is American Culture in Decline?

  • JVL: While “the human condition is persistent,” societies and cultures shape collective character profoundly. Asks if American society is “immeasurably worse” than a generation ago.
  • Quote (JVL, 28:10): "Do we think that the American society as a whole is like, better and more healthy than it was in one generation ago, in 2006? Do I think it's worse? Like, observably, immeasurably worse?"

• Generational Reflections:

  • Destiny (age 37) and JVL (early 50s) reflect on generational nostalgia, noting every cohort laments the present versus their formative years.
  • Destiny, citing the late ’90s/early 2000s, shares that social discourse and media representation seemed to peak before becoming more polarized.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• JVL on Streaming as a Boomer:
  • "I'm a zoo attraction and the streamer and his audience are all looking at me." (00:15)
• Destiny on Economic Nonsense:
  • "There are so many things that are said... absolute nonsense." (01:47)
• JVL on Deflation:
  • "Deflation is terrible... it means we are mired in an economic catastrophe..." (02:22)
• Destiny on Media Bothsidesism:
  • "We try to treat both sides equally. The lighting isn't quite done... Monet had a lot of interesting art..." (25:23–25:30)
• JVL on Institutional Failure:
  • "The system of government itself... exposed as having a lot of weaknesses..." (20:46)
• Destiny on Right-Wing Media Discipline:
  • "On the right they understand that they are the messaging." (19:19)

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Conclusion

In a wide-ranging, off-the-cuff conversation, JVL and Destiny deliver a sobering yet energetic look at the collapse of media objectivity, the rise of partisan echo chambers, cultural nostalgia, and the dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. JVL’s “hello fellow kids” foray into streaming becomes a springboard for two generations to commiserate, dissect, and at times darkly joke about the state of the nation — all while wrestling with the uneasy feeling that the “before times” aren’t coming back.

Transcript

[A]

Hey there, it's jvl. I, I went on a streaming show yesterday. This is, this is new for me. Streaming, it's what the kids do these days. And I was invited on the show by a gentleman named Destiny. Not, not his real name. His, his real name is just Stephen, but his gamer tag was, was Destiny before he became a political streamer. Anyway, I, I went on and tried to do the streaming thing. It's a little like, like I'm, I'm a zoo attraction and the streamer and his audience are all looking at me. But it was very nice, I think. Anyway, I'm not sure if you guys are interested in this sort of thing or not. It's a little bit meandering, but it's, it was fun. And if you enjoy some uncomfortable hello, fellow kids energy, this is, this is gonna be right up your alley. Have a look.

[B]

Well, how are you doing today?

[A]

I'm okay. You know, I wrote 2,000 words that nobody will fucking read because it's about demand externalities and the possible labor market implications of. Yeah. Hey, Gabe, I'm on a life thing. It's okay, bud. Love ya. Sorry. 10 year old coming in.

[B]

You're fine.

[A]

It's g. Money, right? Anyway, you know, I love writing about. Nobody reads. It's great.

[B]

I've, I, I'd say I feel the pain, but I guess I don't write as much. But is it. Do you have a background in finance or.

[A]

No, I like economic. And I, I mean, I did minor, I did a minor in economics at the Johns Hopkins University.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I'm not sure what that counts for.

[B]

Well, if you're talking about economic stuff today, I guess it counts for more than 99% of the Internet conversation. So. It's funny you mentioned writing something. There are so many things that are said. I'm sure you know this in our current political climate where they're just, it's like absolute nonsense. Like every time I hear Trump say we're fine with oil in the United States because we make enough oil here so prices around the world don't impact us, and it's just like, I don't even know how to begin with. Yeah. Are we banning all exports or global market? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so on his face. Absurd.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. The, the extent to which people are basically economically illiterate. Like, I mean, I spent all of 2024 fighting with my, my best friend Sarah Longwell about deflation and she was explaining to me like, the voters just want deflation. I was like, no, they Don't. Deflation is terrible. If deflation hits and prices go down, it means we are mired in an economic catastrophe and these people will be out of work and losing their houses. Like we're supposed to just pat the voters on the head when they say, well, I want prices to go down.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that. Like, I don't know if you'd call it a revealed preference or proxy issues where people say they want one thing. I think housing is another huge topic that is never really touched much because everybody wants lower housing prices. And it's like, well, 70% of Americans live in an owned home where the house is like. And for most Americans, your house is your biggest investment. Do they really want housing prices to go down? Yeah.

[A]

And Trump said this, I don't like three weeks ago or something. He's like, housing prices have to go down and for everybody who owns a house, the value of their home is going to go up.

[B]

Yeah, right. There we go.

[A]

Sure, man. Rock and roll.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It is what it is. Okay. I want to ask you, we love you in my audience, but I have to figure out now if we should or if it's an act. Okay. One of the huge issues that I have today and my audience has today and I think there's a decent chunk of people have, is it feels like we're living in a reality where stuff is so unbelievably crazy and you kind of look at the people that are supposed to be your cheerleaders and it feels like the. I don't want to say we should be outraged, but it feels like sometimes there's just a little bit too much acceptance of the stuff that's happening and then it makes me feel a little bit crazy. I think probably one of the strongest reactions I've had to content on your guys platform recently and I was happy to see you feel similarly. I think was that horrible, horrible conversation that Tim had with that all in podcast guy.

[A]

Oh my God, that fucking guy.

[B]

It was so many things said out loud where I'm like, did you really just say that they actually like the authoritarian because they're friends with him and they can get personal favors from or. I just couldn't believe it. It was like when people say eat the rich. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just insane to me. And then I feel like there's so much pressure, I guess on all the center left media when they're engaging with these people to treat it seriously like, okay, well let's debate the merits of random 2 digit, 3 digit tariffs on every single country on the planet and see if this will be good for our economy going. And it's like,

[A]

this is like the. One of the many asymmetries where when you. We're talking about people on the right, we're supposed to dismiss everything crazy they say, and if they ever said one thing that was like halfway sane, we'll just engage with that on the merits. This is. I remember the Free Press writing a piece about RFK Jr. That was like, sure, he says people are having microchips implanted in their brains, but also he

[B]

wants the kids to exercise this other

[A]

thing that was, you know, that in France they do, and France isn't crazy. So maybe we should just start taking him seriously. And then in the other way, it's like, well, you know, if Anthony Fauci ever said one thing that wasn't 100% verifiably true, well then you can't trust anything he says like that. That's like this asymmetric trap we're in. And I don't. It drives me a little bit insane. I don't know how to deal with it. Yeah, I think it's because, I mean, this is like largely a media problem, I think, where, you know, normal media is still trapped in the before times where they're like, all right, we gotta assume that basically most people are working on good faith and people will shade and spin, but they won't outright lie. And. Yeah. That. That world is gone, man.

[B]

Yeah. Can I. Real quick, can I make a request? Are you able to turn your mic up at all?

[A]

Yeah, I got gain on this thing. Hold on.

[B]

All right, it's a little quiet.

[A]

You tell me. Is that better? Do you want. Am I too hot? More?

[B]

Little bit more.

[A]

Give you more.

[B]

Oh, no, wait, that's good. Whatever you just said there is perfect.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, there. Yeah, that's good.

[B]

That's good. There's a. Somebody in my chat will say this. There was like a law that somebody cited, like a little political speech thing. But it's this concept that conservatives are treated like Chinese children always, and Democrats are treated like parents. So whenever things are happening, Democrats have all of the autonomy. And then when the Republicans have no agency. Yeah.

[A]

No agency at all. How could they.

[B]

And it's so crazy, like when you. This happens. It happens a lot in the UK when it comes to Brexit, when you ask a conservative what's going on with the country today, why do you think things are kind of like, messed up? Nobody brings up Brexit it disappears from the conversation for some reason. Or when you ask, people are so keen to bring up. Biden's economy had so much inflation, and it's like, why? Well, government spending and Democrat. What else? What else was happening? I don't know what else was happening. And then I think I even did this live in a discussion. I think I even said to the audience, watch this. And then I asked the guy, why do you think Trump had such a bad economic record at the end of his. And they're like, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid. And it's like, what? Yeah, it drives me insane. And you use that word asymmetry. And it's funny because you use a lot of the same examples that I do too, where Fauci maybe, I'm not even sure if he did. He maybe said one wrong thing about masks one time. So now the person who is infinitely skeptical and they' lost our trust. Well, who do you trust now? The guy who fucking drinks blue food dye and thinks they solve fucking autism by telling moms not to take Tylenol or Alex Jones. And it's like, there are so many wrong things. I'm still waiting every day. I wasted $2 million on term life insurance because I thought I was going to drop dead from my boosters three years ago. And it still hasn't happened yet. There's been no mass casualty event. Everybody says. I remember that Joe Rogan quote where you're like, well, the conspiracy theorists ended up being right about a lot of stuff. No, they were wrong about everything.

[A]

Wrong about everything.

[B]

But you wouldn't get that impression when you watch the media today, even on the left. And I feel like a lot of it is they got brain broken from 2017 to 2021 with this term. We do this in the YouTube world when somebody's criticizing us too much and we don't want them to criticize us, we go, you're obsessed, bro. Why are you talking about me so much? You're so obsessed. And they're like, oh, shoot. And then they stop talking about you. And I feel like the conservatives did that with Trump derangement syndrome, where the liberals were like, man, should we really be impeaching him again for trying to insurrect the government? Didn't we already impeach him once for trying to stuff from Ukraine to get dirt on political opponents? Maybe we are kind of deranged. And it's like,

[A]

yeah, I. I mean, there's something to that. There's also the, you know, everything's both Sides, Stephen. Everything. You know, they're, they're, they're problems.

[B]

My cortisol just spikes so much when you said that.

[A]

I had to.

[B]

Sorry.

[A]

There are, there are problems with both sides. I mean, on the one hand you have the President of the United States controlling a mass secret police force that is more funding than the Marines. And they, they often execute people on the streets of America. On the other hand, there are some kids at Oberlin who. Who wrote some really mean things and put held them up on signs at this protest once. So you tell me.

[B]

It's. It. It drives me insane. Do you watch a lot of Ezra Klein's pieces?

[A]

No.

[B]

Oh, well, my bad. Ezra Klein did a two hour interview.

[A]

Not a huge Ezra Klein fan.

[B]

Okay, that's fair.

[A]

It's okay.

[B]

I can imagine why that's okay.

[A]

I think that shouldn't stop you. I know who he is. I'm familiar with his ofra. Okay. I don't hate the guy or anything like I don't. He's not in the Ross Douthed place with me or anything like that.

[B]

He's not in the what place? The Ross Douthat place for my audience. Because I know what that word means. What does that mean?

[A]

Ross. Ross Douthet. You don't know Ross Douthat from the New York Times?

[B]

Oh, oh yeah, Ross Douthit. Ross prestigious New York Times guy.

[A]

The prestigious New York Times columnist. The reasonable conservative.

[B]

The reasonable conservative. Oh, wait, he. He does a show. He does a. Yeah, okay, nevermind. I do know this guy. Okay.

[A]

That's the guy I am unhealthily obsessed with.

[B]

Why are you unhealthily obsessed with him?

[A]

Because he's like the biggest fraud in America and I hate him so much. Okay, jeez.

[B]

Okay, I'm trying to think.

[A]

Ezra Klein.

[B]

No, no, you're good. I only do adversarial conversations, so I'm having a cathartic conversation. I don't navigate these as much. I remember listening to Ezra talk to Ben Shapiro and I know you've heard these talking points before and it was just phenomenal to me to hear Ben Shapiro talk about how Obama just rubbed so many conservatives so wrong. And given the opportunity, Ezra Klein asked, what were the things that Barack Obama did that got you guys so riled up? And the two things that Ben Shapiro cited were. One, he spoke too quickly about the Henry Louis Gates thing. I think it was the Harvard guy who got the cops showed up because he was trying to break into his own house.

[A]

The beer summit.

[B]

Yeah, the beer summit. Yeah. Imagine that.

[A]

Huh?

[B]

And then when Obama said that Trayvon Martin looked like he could have been his kid. And I'm like, that's the level of like, we could take a single day. Yeah, I know, but even they wore the tan. The tan.

[A]

Remember when he bowed to the Saudi king? Oh, yeah. He inclined his head to the Saudi king.

[B]

Not good. Meanwhile, Trump is saluting the North Korean military. Yeah, it's such a joke, man. I have. Okay, here's. This is where. Okay, this is where I'm at.

[A]

Sorry, I've never done a stream before, so maybe I'm just doing this all wrong.

[B]

No, no, you're good, you're good, you're good. Usually, yeah, I'm just freaking flowing my thought here. Okay, here, this is a, this is a thing I would like your feedback or opinion on. Okay. I am of the mindset right now and I've been screaming at a lot of people about this that I feel like right now there is a media ecosystem that is really well understood by the MAGA movement and it's really understood by. I don't know what you guys are calling them now, but we call them ML types, Marxist Leninists or tankies or, or the socialists. But like the, the real socialists, not like the I want medication trap house guys. Right, sure, yeah. The very, very left people, the anti Democratic Party people who are on the left. And the way that this media ecosystem works is you plant ideas in the top where they're allowed to basically resonate through a bunch of people in an uncritical fashion, and then those kind of percolate to your mid tier alternative media streamer people. And then they're all accepted because they were all seen up here and you want to be part of that ecosystem. And then they make it to the for you pages on everybody's social media where now the opinion has been fully validated and laundered and this is your reality and this is done so well in MAGA and so on the far left. But I feel like when I'm looking at the lib left or moderate left people analyzing the media environment, they keep seeing the stuff that comes out of the bottom of that funnel and they think, how can we replicate that bottom thing? So they'll see something like, Trump was able to message really well on this because he hit this point and this point and this point, or Mamdani is able to message well on this because he hits this point or this point. And when I'm looking at it, what I'm seeing is. No, the reason why it works is it doesn't really matter what the message is. It matters a little bit. But what helps is that when Trump has this initial thing, we'll say it's something related to Russiagate. You have Tulsi Gabbard that will make the rounds on every Fox show. All of them will uncritically repeat it. All of that credibility then falls to the alternative media people who then essentially uncritically repeat it because they're, I don't know, when you're showing you say retarded, but they're fucking retards. And then that makes it to the average person who watches it and now they believe it all. And all of that opinion is from top to bottom is how it works. And then on the moderate left to the lib left credit, we're a more self critical people, but we end up needling ourselves to death over here. So there's no way that any coherent messaging or opinion from the Democratic Party can even get out of the crib. It's killed in the crib immediately, basically. I don't know how you feel.

[A]

That sounds probably about right. I mean a lot of it is to, I mean the center left and the center right, to the extent the center right even still exists. I mean the center right now is like the center left from 10 years ago, like the same people, right? And the center left has shifted a little bit to the left. Not a lot though. And a lot of it's like those are, I mean those are not the kind of spaces that like have their own niche because they are by definition centrist and not, not fringes. They don't have their own, their own like boutique niche media. Right? Because by definitely you're, you're with the normies. With the normies. And so I don't, I don't know how this all works. I. So much of it, really. Well, I don't know. Let me ask you, because this is something I go back and forth with. How much of it is about messaging and how much is just vibes. Like people want what they want and they make up what they want and then they backfill and justify their decisions and their desires and urges after the fact.

[B]

I think a lot of it is vibes. But this is the thing that I think is so hard for people to understand. So my mom and dad are ride or die maga, 100% of the answer. My mom is Cuban and Cubans are all crazy in the United States. But I think what people don't understand sometimes is the everything today on your Social media feeds is so heavily algorithmically curated to match the other stuff you've seen that if you try to argue with somebody about a thing, even if you argue it the best way possible, and I don't mean just like, oh, you make all the logical points, but you're compassionate, you break through and everything else, you might be able to come through really, really well on a point and maybe even make them reconsider, possibly on a thing. Maybe the vaccines weren't a mass extermination program. Maybe. But even if you do that, the microsecond they leave, it's like an addict coming out of rehab and going right back to skid row. They're back on. Well, what did Joe Rogan talk about today? Oh, it's four and a half hours with Dr. Robert Malone about how Covid lab leak happened. Oh, it's Ian Carroll to talk about how Churchill was the bad guy in World War II. Or, oh, it's the other guy who was talking about the lost city of Atlantis and how the JFK assassination was fake. And it's just Dave Smith to talk about how Iraq. And it's just that environment, when you're in it, there's no way that you're ever getting your mind changed unless you have to be totally removed from that environment. So insofar as you say, is it vibes, I do think that the media you consume can heavily dictate even how you feel about a thing. There are people, when you talk about them, I think some people will describe problems as opportunities or opportunities as problems, depending on who's in office. But I think that those vibes are very heavily and very inorganically controlled on the far right. And I would argue, well, the far right is all of Maga. And then I would argue, now the Tanki people on the left have figured out how to do it pretty well as well. But the lib left people are completely and totally clueless and cannot do a message from top to bottom at all.

[A]

Are you describing a platform problem or a media problem? I think it feels a little like a platform problem. Like this is what Twitter and YouTube and TikTok are. They see something that flits across your screen that you pause on for a minute and then they just start giving you more.

[B]

I think it's a bit of a platform. I think the platform problem definitely amplifies it, but I think that. Did you ever read any of the slides from the Fox News v. Dominion? That civil suit? Yeah, everybody at Fox News knew that that story was a fucking lie. That was used to push the insurrection and everybody was complicit in selling it. I don't think you could get anybody. That story is what they accused the left of doing with Biden's health, basically, is what they thought. Yeah. And look at how big of a story the Donna Brazile thing was when Hillary got the one question in advance. I think people still talk about it to this day. Bernie supporters will talk about that. I don't even know how many Americans. My guess is less than 3% of Americans are even aware of that Dominion Fox News lawsuit. If that happened at cnn, oh my God, it would be. Do you remember the shadow voting app in the Iowa caucuses between people who. Yeah, these are stories that everybody. Because it gets amplified by these sites. But the lib left, the moderate left people, they cannot amplify a message partly because of the platform, but partly because people have this understanding of what the mission is on the far left side and on the MAGA side, but not on the lib left side. The one example I always use is if you hear somebody say this candidate is really, really bad at messaging. That is a comment that will come from the center left because on the right they understand that they are the messaging. Sean Hannity is never going to criticize how the Republican administration messages. He understands that it's his job to message for them at all costs.

[A]

That's an excellent point. Yeah. Nobody will ever tell Mike Johnson, like, oh my, Johnson's not great at messaging because they do their own thing. Yeah, yeah, that's. Yeah. Well, this is the point for having like the difference having partisan and nonpartisan media. Right. Like we have, we have partisan media and the partisan media is basically all of the MAGA stuff. And then we have the non partisan media, which is like everything that's mainstream. It's the New York Times. It's, it's like it's not the Washington Post anymore. Cnn, it's all these things. And I, you know, I don't know what to, I don't know what to do about any of this, you know, and we, I don't know. I mean, it's, I am bearish on America. I don't know how much you read my newsletter, but I think a lot of the traps we're in right now are really, really hard to get out of. I don't think the before times are coming back.

[B]

Okay. Well, I feel like there have been a lot of times in history where people are like, this is the worst time in history. We've managed to bounce back. So I have to hope that. You have to have some underlying. No, you. Deep down, you have some underlying optimism. You must. Otherwise, why do anything right, really?

[A]

Not really. I mean, like, it is true, like, sometimes things get better. Like, sometimes societies fix themselves, but those aren't things you can really, like, engineer. You know, like, you get a reformation movement or something like that. Like, those things tend to be sui. Generous and you can't predict them. You can't engineer them. It's not a button you can push. I don't know. I mean, I, you know, I. I had David Fromm on the podcast yesterday. I was sitting in for Tim, and, you know, David was doing, like, his hopeful thing about, you know, America can get better. And it's true, could. But we have a couple problems happen. I'm at the very, very most macro level. We have a bunch of institutional problems where the system of government itself that we have has been exposed as having a lot of weaknesses to it. For instance, the separation of powers has been exposed as having a lot of weakness. Right. Congress not doing its job. The. The electoral process, which has always had a bias built in towards rural citizens that has become, like, sort of supercharged and leveraged to levels which I think make it a difference in kind, not just a difference in scale. We have the Supreme Court, which has become sort of nakedly partisan, but also corrupt at the same time. It's just a bunch of problems. And then we have, in the realm of economics, concentrations of wealth, which, again, once you, like, have a trillionaire, it's just. It's different. It's different even in, like, Gilded Age America. So you have stuff like that all happening at the same time, that you have the public itself becoming basically accepting of America turning into a banana republic. I mean, that is the. The thing about Trump is that he won twice. You know, the second win is the. Is the big one. Yeah, it's. And it isn't like he. Twice. Because the first one was like, well, you know, it actually worked out pretty well. We didn't see anything bad. We had a global pandemic and a million Americans died. A million Americans died. And this is like the one time in the history of America that all of a sudden voters supposedly have this very highly nuanced understanding and aren't just focused on results. Right. I mean, this is. I hear this all the time. People say, well, you know, you can't blame Trump for the pandemic because, you see, there was this global thing, and, you know, the infrastructure only moves so fast then. But of course, the Economy was terrible under Biden and Biden did that, right. So people become like super reductive when talking about the Biden years, but incredibly sophisticated and able to apportion blame versus non blame during the Trump years.

[B]

I said on a quick thing on that, oh my God. One of the worst things I read in my entire life. I spent so much time in the COVID years arguing, arguing so much nonsense pseudoscience on the two big drugs were hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Just absolute dogshit. Never worked out for anything I saw. I think it was under Desantis here in Florida. They published something about rescinding trans healthcare. It was either to everybody or at least to youth. And I saw on their printed statement where they're like, we have not seen any study of sufficient size that meets our gold standard criteria of being a double blind control study or whatever. And I was like, oh, so you guys, you motherfuckers do know what good research is?

[A]

Where the will, they need that.

[B]

And I know what you mean. Yeah. When you talk about like Trump couldn't control the pandemic, but Biden sure as hell was responsible for the Afghanistan pull out catastrophe that was negotiated under Trump, by the way. He was responsible for Russia invading Ukraine. I don't know why or how. And he was responsible for the October 7 attacks. Even though the Abraham Accord. We were told peace in the Middle East. I don't think we've ever had more peace in the Middle east more times than under Trump. I don't know if he's trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize. I think he's just spammed the achievement or something. But yeah, yeah. Not to interrupt you, but yeah, that, the, the double standard thing. And, and the thing I just interrupted. I'm sorry, the thing. Because you said a few times, I agree this so much. It's, it's this desire to seem like a reasonable person. And you have like a kid like smearing all over the wall and then you've got another guy who's like tried to paint something and maybe like the, the figures aren't like perfectly anatomically correct. And, and you're, and you're like, it's like you're two children. You don't want to choose which one is your favorite. So you try to be like, I

[A]

feel like the perspective's kind of off on that one. Jimmy, your lighting isn't quite done. The chiaroscuro is not.

[B]

And then the shit painting is like, well, Monet had a lot of like, really interesting, you know, pieces of art that he did. And it's just like, are you fucking. I feel like I'm fucking insane here. And. Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, it's. The asymmetry is impossible to deal with because I think the average American looks at it because the average American, nobody has time to chase all these stories to the ends of the earth. Even researching one of these stories can take weeks of time, depending on how deep you want to go into things. And, and you look at the media and you. Have you said something earlier, it triggers me so much because it's true, but nobody views it that way. The moderate left people really too try to be nonpartisan. And then the MAGA media is the most hyper partisan trash in the universe. But that's not how the average American, they're explicitly partisan.

[A]

They're literally, they're not even ideological, they're just partisan.

[B]

Yeah, but the American public views. Fox News is the right. And then CNN and Ms. Now and the New York Times and watch what. They're the left. And it's like, yeah, I don't know

[A]

how you fix any of that. And so I, I mean, here's a real question for you. Has American society gotten worse? Like, like have the people as the organize gotten worse? And this is so. One of my beliefs is that like, the human condition is real and persistent and that in all times, in all places, individual people in the human condition is the same. Right. You know, the, the sort of base desires and the, the virtues and all those things. They are the same today here in Florida as they were a thousand years ago in like, I don't know, the steppes of Asia or something. People are people. But societies change a lot, right? Once you start amalgamating people, the societies and cultures they build, they can take on very different char. And they can move in ways, I mean, imperial fascist. Japan of 1925 is very different than Japan of 2026. Right. Germany of 1940, very different than Germany of 2026. Like, it isn't like the people are the same. Like, you know, they're just human beings, but they build cultures and they build societies. And I, I mean, I. Look, I, I don't want to go through all of American history because I can't speak to that, but do we think that the American society as a whole is like, better and more healthy than it was in one generation ago, in 2006? Do I think it's worse? Like, observably, immeasurably worse?

[B]

Can I.

[A]

The people are worse?

[B]

Yeah. Can I ask how people are rotten? Yeah, I understand. Maybe. Or maybe I don't know. The people. The culture may be a little. Feels different.

[A]

That's what I mean. Yeah, that's right. When I say the people have gone rotten, what I mean is culture.

[B]

How old are you? Can I. Do you ever say that?

[A]

I'm in my early 50s?

[B]

Early 50s? Oh, I would have never guessed. So nice.

[A]

Thank you. Oh, man, I know. I liked you.

[B]

I'm 37, and I try one thing I have to constantly check myself on because I've gotten to the age now to where I can say, well, when I was a late teen, early 20s, everything on the planet was better. And my understanding is basically every single generation, from the first homo sapiens that stood up, was already complaining about how when he was on all fours, it was better or whatever. His last. When in his teens or whatever. I do feel like in a lot of cultural ways, the late 90s and early mid 2000s, which would have been when I graduated high school, was peak for social discourse, was peak for a lot of cultural stuff. We had women representation better in media, but we didn't quite have the crazy. I don't know how much I want to get into the culture stuff. We were trying to be more woke on racial issues, but DEI wasn't the center point conversation thing, or we weren't pushing for land acknowledgments or whatever, or we were trying to bring more awareness to stuff. Like the beginning of the MeToo movement, I think, was really good. It's a whole side story. But I actually think the Epstein story has been one of the most annoying things in the universe for me, personally, to watch, because I think it's been a way for men to offload what has historically been the most normal behavior in all of human history, which is just men in power trying to have sex with all of the women that are trying to come up underneath them and then abusing that role. And they tried to write it off as, oh, that was just a crazy, weird pedophile problem, instead of, like, this is a problem that's existed basically everywhere. But then that kind of morphed into, like, I remember the. I feel like the peak. Horrible for this. Was that. Is it Aziz Ansari? Is that how you say his name there? Was that article written about. It just seemed like kind of like an awkward bad date slash hookup. And, yeah, everything kind of got crazy at that. And then the conservative hijacking of, like, when the woke stuff got too woke, and it was like, okay, I think it's really cringe that you guys are pushing for stuff that's a little too woke. So now we need a $90 billion fund at ICE to start assassinating American citizens and to be protected by the federal. Else happens like, holy, what the fuck?