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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
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- [00:21]
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- [01:33]
Mike Pesca
Hey, you got a parenting question? Who doesn't? I guess non parents. But I've got an expert for you. If you've got a parenting question or maybe you're interested in exploring therapeutic psychedelics or you want to quit drinking but AA hasn't worked or you're looking to enter a competitive eating contest. Do you have a question? I've got an expert. I'm not the expert, but I've got an expert. There is a special project, but I need your questions because I've got an expert. Email us at the gist@mike pesca.com maybe you want to know how to master AI prompts. Who doesn't? Maybe you want to become a private detective. I've got an expert and I've got an expert. Experts for all. Email us at the gist@mike pesca.com hit us up with here's a great one. How to make a perfect apology. Or do you have like seven or eight brothers and sisters and they're not getting along? I've got an expert. The gist@mike pesca.com I'm going to pair you with the experts, answer your questions, and you're all going to find out why very soon. It's Tuesday, February 10, 2026. From Pete Fish Product, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Are the English better than us, the Brits? I never thought so. I mean, I know about history and, you know, the MAU MAU rebellion and the Zulu Anglo war didn't cover themselves in glory. Plus, you read about English boarding schools or anything that George Orwell wrote. It doesn't reflect well on the British as a particularly moral people. I know they have the thick upper lip, but I'm telling you how their leadership is handling the Epstein thing. Well, let's just reset. So Keir Starmer, who is the UK Leader, the prime minister, came very close to being ousted because he appointed a guy who appointed a guy who had some interactions with Jeffrey Epstein, less interactions, we should say, than Donald Trump had. And we're talking about the chief of staff of Keir Starmer, who's gone because he appointed the ambassador to the UK of the chief of staff of Keir Starmer and the ambassador to the UK Is gone. All these guys are gone. They had much less interactions with Howard Lutnick, who's still there. But most importantly, they had much less interaction than Donald Trump. And there's no chance that anyone thinks Donald Trump is going to go. I mean, it's like if a lion escaped the zoo and everyone said, well, we got to fire the zookeeper. We're probably going to fire the assistant zookeeper. And the third guy in charge of the lion's den, he's going to go, but the lion is still on the loose. And no one is saying, yes, shouldn't we try to track down the lion? You know what? In this analogy, the lion's Donald Trump and that maybe flatters the guy. So let's make it a baboon. So the baboon escapes and the baboons wreaking havoc. And rather than concentrate on the baboon, it's everyone associated with baboon husbandry, which is my analogy for the British. Hmm. I don't know if there are better people. Maybe just our current iteration of people are much worse than, than anyone could imagine on the show today. I'm going to contemplate, as I did by implication in that show open, I'm going to contemplate the entire world. I'm going to talk to one of my favorite people to talk to about this because he's both knowledgeable and wise. Yasha Monk keeps things in perspective. And I want to talk about just democracy and civil war and autocracy because Yasha is one of the best thinkers about this and not someone who will set his or your hair on fire. Yasha Monk up next.
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- [07:05]
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- [08:07]
Mike Pesca
Hi, I'm Mike Pesca and I don't think there is going to be a civil war. Now this marks me as naive, unsophisticated, giving the Trump administration administration a free pass. No, I don't think any of those things. I've seen the definition of civil war and I'm just assessing that it won't happen. Not that I'm blase, but I have been like you, following all the predictions and fretting about the slide into autocracy. And during the first Trump administration, these worries were legion. Then they abated. If you look at references like the Freedom House or other measures of democracy, America was in danger of becoming not truly free. And then for some reason, during the Biden administration, we were free. And now we're not free again. But some of that stuff is real. We all know that Donald Trump would like to become something like an autocrat. I don't know if he'll be able to or if he'll have the follow through. Now, I do have to say when I say these things, I don't usually convince people that I'm taking things seriously enough and I feel a little resentful about this, that I'm in a bind, that I have a true assessment of where things are going that isn't the most dire yet. On the other hand, I want to communicate. I am cognizant of everything that's going on. The person I check in with to steer me on this, and he doesn't know this because Yasha Monk is here. He is what, what I do is I listen to him. The Good Fight podcast. I read Persuasion. If you're watching this on video, you can see that's reflected in the T shirt he has. So we're doing some branding. But Yoshua wrote a book in 2018. He's written five books and it was called the People versus Democracy, why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It. And I thought that that was the most clear eyed assessment of dangers, but not a situation so dire that there was no coming back. But lately on the Good Fight, he's been maybe saying some other things. Yasha, welcome back to the Gist.
- [09:57]
Yasha Mounk
Thank you, Mike. Always a pleasure.
- [09:59]
Mike Pesca
All right, so give me a letter grade or scale of 1 to 10. No, I don't mean that. But are you more worried than you were even on the day that Donald Trump won reelection?
- [10:09]
Yasha Mounk
I was worried on the day that Donald Trump won reelection. I think I'm a little bit more worried today because the actions that he has taken in the first year in office have been more extreme on a number of counts than most people expected. At the same time, I think there's also some good news in that there's starting to be real pushback against Donald Trump. And while a year ago it still felt like there was this kind of vibe shift in which Trump had won re election much more convincing than he'd won election the first time around, had managed to move a lot of demographic groups towards him, you know, Latinos and other minority groups, a lot of young voters. That vibe shift has really gone and it's starting to feel a little bit like he's going to be a lame duck eventually. But you know, I think we're still in an, in a reasonably unprecedented, at least in loving memory, assault on democratic institutions in the United States. And the way I'm thinking about it at the moment is that it's a kind of unstoppable force of what the White House is trying to do to the United States. We're seeing in the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere. And on the other hand, the real institutional strength, the kind of immovable obstacle that our democratic institutions represent, which I think are much stronger than in countries where similar populist leaders to Donald Trump have been able to really undermine democracy. And so you have an extreme force barreling against these defenses, but the defenses are also really strong.
- [11:32]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [11:33]
Yasha Mounk
And how those two things are going to measure up, we're going to discover over the next three years.
- [11:37]
Mike Pesca
Right. Many of the other experts just look at the offense, the offense that Donald Trump plays, and that is unprecedented. And I'm glad you said in our lifetime, because I think Andrew Johnson and Andrew Jackson and maybe OVI Andrews. Yeah, everyone named Andrew and Andrew Carnegie, and yes, they all, you know, went very far. But we were a burgeoning democracy and not what we are, not where we are now. So I want to talk about our institutions and the defenses. But do you think the fact that Trump has tried some of the things that would be the hallmark of an autocracy, like trying to jail or at least prosecuting his political enemies on clear pretexts, that was bad? I didn't know that that would happen. I think if asked, I would pre predict some version of that would. But my question is the fact that so far, it's not working. How much sucker should we take from that?
- [12:32]
Yasha Mounk
Glass half full, glass half empty? I mean, it is remarkable that the Department of Justice has now basically become an accomplice to Donald Trump's revenge plans. Whether that's against Jim Comey, against Letitia James, you know, against Jerome Powell, who's, you know, I, I get why Trump is angry at Letitia James, and I somewhat get why he's angry at Jim Comey. You know, Jerome Powell just, you know, isn't setting interest rates the way he wants, but he had a series of binary choices, and suddenly there's a completely frivolous FBI investigation into, you know, the renovation of the Federal Reserve building, and it's a criminal investigation. I mean, that is really serious. Right. I mean, the most extreme power that the state has is to turn up at your doorstep and to put you in jail. And the fact that Donald Trump clearly wants to jail political opponents because he wants to take his revenge on them or because they're in his way, because they don't want to implement policy the way he wants them to in the case of Jerome Powell, and the fact that the Department of Justice is going along with that is really bad. Now, at the same time, as you're pointing out, you know, in the case of Jim Comey and Letitia James, those legal processes lasted a few weeks. I mean judges looked at it and thought this is ridiculous, we're throwing it out. They're not in jail. Still, obviously a huge chilling effect. Still really, really concerning but a very good sign that he wasn't able to get his will, that that Jim Comey and James are not in jail at his say so.
- [14:03]
Mike Pesca
And also that a series of, I mean you say the Justice Department is now doing his bidding, but that's what the Justice Department is now. Right. It's like there's not a permanent thing called the Justice Department. It's made up of people and the people who knew well this isn't what the Justice Department should be series quit that actually set the conditions for why the especially Comey case was thrown out because of the ill gotten appointment of the prosecutor is gone now. And by the way, if they hadn't thrown it out on that charge, they could have thrown it out on half a dozen others. But again, I'm not blase, this is important to note, but the fact that the institutions have been robust and the fact that who knows what will happen. But it seems like Trump is accepting that verdict with Comey and the fact that in other cases, appeals courts, we haven't seen a big Supreme Court decision that's gone against him. I think we will. Lisa Cook There is another one that we could talk about. The fact that he doesn't like it, he tries to delay, he blusters, he says some things and then he accepts or at least doesn't take it to constitutional crisis, I think is why I'm coming to my conclusion that we're not at burgeoning autocracy yet.
- [15:12]
Yasha Mounk
Well, let me say a few things. The first is, you know, I do a bunch of European media and I'm often asked, you know, are you afraid to criticize Donald Trump? You know, like what is it like teaching in Trump's America? You know, and I'm not afraid to say my opinion. I don't get the sense that any of my students are afraid to say their opinion about Donald Trump. We have an extremely vibrant and free media. I mean, I've done reporting in Hungary and seen Viktor Orn give a speech and the next day all of the newspapers of a newsstand literally have the same photo of him or slightly different angle perhaps, or to make him look great.
- [15:46]
Mike Pesca
Right. The paper is not owned by the state, but they're owned by autocrats, all of them by autocrats who are trying.
- [15:51]
Yasha Mounk
To gain and it's all like fawning write ups of a wonderful speech he gave right like you look at the New York Times or for that matter, at the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post that, you know, perhaps have changed in certain ways. But, but still, there's a lot of very critical coverage of the administration. And so I, you know, I think it's important to be accurate and realistic in part because, by the way, if you exaggerate the nature of a threat, you also encourage a form of anticipatory obedience, right? Say, oh, it's so scary to criticize Donald Trump. Well, actually, if people take you seriously, if you're not just trying to get clicks or selling books or subsequent subscriptions or whatever it may be, and people actually believe you, well, then they should have good reason to stop criticizing Donald Trump. And that's actually exactly the wrong thing. That's not what we want to happen.
- [16:38]
Mike Pesca
Right. It's sort of like if the boy who cried wolf did such a good job that everyone went inside and shut their doors and didn't go on wolf patrol, there might be some more wolves.
- [16:47]
Yasha Mounk
I have certain academic colleagues who, you know, claim to have fled the country for more northern pastures, you know, because fascism has come to America. And, you know, a, it turned out that some of them had accepted those positions before Donald Trump was reelected. But, you know, be like, if you really think that fascism is upon America, well, isn't it your moral obligation to stay and fight for fascism rather than to, you know, sit in a cushy place somewhere else? So I agree that it's very important not to be accurate about as best we can in a very fluid situation about the threat we face. Now, on the other hand, I will say we're a year in, right. Like, we're recording this, you know, a year and 10 days or something after Donald Trump took office. There's three years of his left. And if in the course of a year he's been able to subvert the Department of Justice to this extent, you know, there is a question about what's going to happen next.
- [17:43]
Mike Pesca
And usaid, which maybe rebounded a little bit, but it's plausible that hundreds of thousands, I think it's likely that hundreds of thousands of people probably died because they didn't get their AIDS medication, their HIV medication in time. And we don't really talk about that. In fact, little side note, Saturday Night Live was doing a bit about the Trump Awards, and it was, here are all the things that Trump has destroyed. And they went through a list and there was NATO and there was something more abstract and. But there wasn't the real thing. The real worst thing that he did, which is, you know, kill maybe a million Africans, let's say. Yeah, yeah. All noted. However, if there is free and fair midterms, which I don't think will just happen, but I think that when one side tries to pull chicanery, actually all sides always do. But when there is an attempt at canary, there's counter mobilization. There is a lot of the effects that we have seen in past elections. There's free and fair elections if the Democrats win. And I'm not saying that from a partizan perspective, I'm just saying that as proof of concept, if the Democrats win and are allowed to take office, that is certainly a data point, that it's not autocracy.
- [18:47]
Yasha Mounk
And that's certainly what happened at the much less consequential mid midterm elections.
- [18:51]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [18:52]
Yasha Mounk
November.
- [18:52]
Mike Pesca
Now the argument is they were such overwhelming results for the Democrats. He knew not to get in there and meddle, but maybe it was. He would have. I can't. But we can't rebut these hypotheticals.
- [19:03]
Yasha Mounk
No, I mean, look, I agree. And this is one of the sources of institutional strength. You know, you look at Hungary, they have a central electoral commission. I forget whether that commission has seven people on it or nine people on it. Right. But if you manage to replace five of them and have your own guys in there, well, then the electoral commission is going to systematically try to skew the elections in your favor. And that's happened in Hungary in a number of ways. Both with. With changes to the electoral system, with, you know, fining the opposition parties very large amounts of money for practices in which the governing party also engaged but somehow wasn't investigated and wasn't fined.
- [19:39]
Libsyn Ads Voice
Right.
- [19:39]
Yasha Mounk
In the United States, you know, elections are really decentrally administered and that makes it easy to have chicanery here or there. Right. Like for some local election officials somewhere in America to be a weird partisan hack who really doesn't do their duty, you know, for mishaps like the hanging chats in Florida in 2000. Right. Because it's a little amateurish because it's not one big central apparatus. It's all of these different local instances figuring out how to administer these elections. But contrariwise, that also makes it really hard to capture it in a systematic way because you don't just have one commission and five people can do the job. You have these 10,000 different really complicated things. And to actually, in a systematic way, subvert that is hard.
- [20:26]
Mike Pesca
Although I remember the chatter about Brazil, which does have the central election system and one pretty much one extremely important judge who rightly thought Bolsonaro was engaging chicanery. This was seen as heroic among the same precincts that now look at our more federalist diffused system and say something like you're saying, which is, well, this is good. We have some protections built in.
- [20:48]
Yasha Mounk
Yeah. I mean, you know, I have a friend and colleague who has argued that we need to nationalize the electoral system because it's so dysfunctional and it's so open to local abuse and local incompetence. And I, I just disagree. And I've disagreed with that. You know, when he suggested that Biden pursue this. Yeah. And I disagree with that now. I just think that for the real downsides that the more chaotic and sometimes less professional system in the United States entails, it has better protection against tyranny, which is ultimately the more important thing. Bill, you talked earlier about the courts. To get back to that for a moment, I think by and large, what the Supreme Court has done so far is to rule roughly in line with what the Federalist Society would have advocated around 2014 before Donald Trump entered politics.
- [21:33]
Mike Pesca
Which is not surprising given that six of their members came with Federalist Society approval or even more.
- [21:38]
Yasha Mounk
Yeah, exactly. So on certain cultural issues, they've ruled in a very conservative way and the way in which the conservative legal movement had advocated for a long time. But when it comes to clear, bedrock questions of the Constitution, I think by and large you can be upset about this or that ruling. But by and large, I think they very clearly stood up for common sense interpretations of the Constitution on those things. And that has reined in Donald Trump in a variety of ways on some of the Supreme Court judgments. Much more so on lower courts. You've seen they've perhaps tried to sidestep a few things. I mean, they've had this hearing about tariffs a long time ago, and it sounded like they're very skeptical about Trump. And the judgment hasn't come down. Hasn't come down. Hasn't come down. And sort of, I don't quite understand when it's going to come down. I mean, I don't really understand the schedule of the Supreme Court, but I know that people, you know, at persuasion want to be timely about this. And people keep telling us, you know, it's going to happen this week, it's going to happen that week, and now that sort of seems to happen. So perhaps they're trying to sidestep, you know, a few of the big fights. But certainly so far, the courts have not just done the bidding of Donald Trump. And as you've pointed out, you know, the Trump administration on a few important but small things has tried to defy the courts a little bit. You know, they're in the middle of deporting somebody and the court said, you can't do it. Oh, you know, it was a little too late to stop it. Right. And perhaps they're a little insincere about that, but those are kind of minor scuffles. They haven't yet said, you have said we can't have this executive order. Well, screw you. We don't care. How many divisions does the Supreme Court have. We're just going to go ahead with it. That's reassuring. But again, with three years left and you know, it's imaginable that that'll change.
- [23:14]
Mike Pesca
So we'll be back with Yasha Monk in a minute to talk about the state of our democracy and democracies. Stay tuned.
- [23:30]
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- [24:30]
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- [24:35]
Yasha Mounk
Hi there.
- [24:35]
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- [24:37]
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- [24:40]
Mike Pesca
Nah, I'm just kidding.
- [24:41]
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- [24:42]
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- [25:02]
Mike Pesca
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- [25:09]
Mike Pesca
Now T Mobile is available in US Cellular stores. Best mobile network based on analysis by Ookle of Speedtest Intelligence data@2H2025 bigger network the combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details. We're back with Yasha Monk, host of the Good Fight, proprietor of Persuasion, lots of other credentials. And before we were talking about some of the tactics, what's sometimes called a Mott and Bailey tactic about how to get the maximum amount of attention about the impending civil war or decline of autocracy and then the retreat to, well, civil war is actually defined quite narrowly. So I want to ask you, Yasha, you made some references to scholars. I took them to be perhaps a Timothy Snyder, a Jason Stanley, a Barbara Walter type. And they do this some more responsibly than others. I've read them. I think they mean it, but they think they're doing us a service. That if they raise the alarm and even if they get it a little wrong, it's far preferable to being overly sanguine and being blind and marching into an autocracy without thinking about it. But also maybe that sets a dynamic of that they, what they're saying is unfalsifiable. So what's your sense of all of that? Their arguing tactics, the substance of their argument? Yeah. Then you're doing a Martin Bailey. So do you think. And you made some oblique references to scholars. I will just throw out three names. Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley and Barbara Walter. And they have raised exactly some of the specters that you're talking about. I read these people and I think they're earnest. They think they're doing us a service and they think that if they're raising the alarm and even if they get it a little wrong, it's far preferable to being overly sanguine and being blind and marching into autocracy. Maybe that's setting up a. Maybe that's setting up a dynamic that of course they'll always win. But what's your sense of that? What's your sense of this is really bad and if I get it wrong, I get it wrong, the costs of being wrong on the other side are much greater.
- [27:34]
Yasha Mounk
Well, look, I think it's helpful in the public sphere to have people who stake out clear positions, because otherwise we can all become lazy and assume that whatever the mainstream view is true, you know, is. Is true, and often it won't turn out to be true. So I think if people are generally convinced of a position that I find to be a little overstated and they're making the case for that, and there's people on the other side and perhaps they go a little bit too far saying nothing is concerning and perhaps that enriches our public debate. I have no problem with that. I do think that there is sometimes an instinct in journalism which I don't think is true of those three people where, where journalists hugely overestimate their ability to influence and frankly manipulate the public. And they say, oh, there's some problem out there, but if people think too much about that problem, perhaps it'll help the far right, you know, mobilize. So let's not cover it because that's just going to make it easier for them to exploit it.
- [28:32]
Mike Pesca
Right. I'll interrupt and say the Greg Abbott policy of shipping migrants to northern states, I think that falls into that category because though there was cover of it, I think real coverage would have indicated that it was extremely destabilizing to the extent that we just saw, once that policy changed, homelessness in Chicago decreased by 60%, according to the statistics. Yeah. So the point is sometimes there are those in the media who say, yeah, there is some problem at the border, but let's not give an issue to bad faith actors.
- [29:11]
Yasha Mounk
Well, in a really stupid way. Right. I do think that there's a lot of people in the mainstream media who fought, let's not go too hard on the story that Joe Biden seems to be senile because, you know, we're going to be stuck with Joe Biden and if we undermine Joe Biden, then Donald Trump gets elected, and that's really worse. And of course, it doesn't tend to work out because people aren't idiots and people aren't blind. I really think a lot of journalists are decent people who want decent things for the world and often do very hard work, but somehow think that they're smart and the average citizen is stupid. I think that's actually the greatest moral failing, much more so than being sort of of great schemers. And of course, what happened is that the fact that there was so little coverage of Biden's senility was one of the reasons why he ended up being a candidate for far too long and why Democrats didn't have a chance to actually run a competitive primary and why they ended up with what I thought was quite a poor candidate for the presidential election and why that candidate didn't have a lot of time to run her campaign. And in general, what happens is not that perhaps this all would have worked in 1963 when there really wasn't very many choices in the media. But today, it's not that people don't recognize that there's problems in the world or that Biden may be senile. It's that they think, if you guys aren't covering this, I'm going to stop trusting you. And it just leads them to switch off those media. So to get back to the original question you asked, I mean, it's great for people to make strong arguments and we can have disagreements, et cetera. I do think the problem is that when everything is a five alarm fire and when fascists are always knocking on the door, people aren't able to distinguish between actually terrible things that the administration does that are really bad and the tasteless, disgusting, but ultimately inconsequential posts that Donald Trump puts in truth social on today. And we're not going to be able to distinguish between when there's actually a danger to our democratic institutions because we've heard that warning so many times. But the moment someone said our democracy's in danger, they already, like, you know, roll the eyes like, yeah, yeah, there you go again.
- [31:22]
Mike Pesca
Yes. So recently we saw an issue where I think what turned out to be bluster was covered with a lot of seriousness. And I still haven't, I don't know if I fault anyone. I maybe fall into the camp of someone who took it too seriously, which was the proposal to take Greenland. Nothing really happened. Mark Ruta of NATO worked out a fig leaf type solution that Trump seemed to have bought or wanted to buy because he just wanted to have a few talking points. Then again, you could also say that, that the seriousness of opposition played some part in pulling Trump back from the brink.
- [31:58]
Yasha Mounk
Well, astonishingly, you know, France, Germany, the Netherlands, a bunch of countries send soldiers.
- [32:05]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [32:05]
Yasha Mounk
To Greenland.
- [32:06]
Mike Pesca
They took it seriously to, you know.
- [32:08]
Yasha Mounk
That'S not what they officially said, but like to protect the, you know, European territory against the United States. I mean, it's like the way that NATO used to do joint exercises to like show its seriousness about defending the alliance against, you know, Russia or China or something. I mean, it is astonishing. Right. So on this particular one, I don't know whether it was never meant seriously. And in the end, nobody in the White House ever seriously considered invading Greenland or whether actually some of a counter response made the White House desist from either a concrete plan or perhaps more realistic, something of saying, you know, let's do these trial balloons. If it looks like the Europeans roll over, perhaps we can actually do it.
- [32:46]
Mike Pesca
Are there any countries in history that fall into the example of, if you believe the ratings, went from a free country to a mostly free country, this is one of the ratings during Biden administration, I talked to Brendan Nyhan of Bright Line Watch. These are all subjective, but let's say it really happened. It was free, then it became less free. Is there any example of them becoming free again?
- [33:07]
Yasha Mounk
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely countries that go through significant periods of democratic erosion and then come back. I mean, one example of this is India, which was ruled for a number of years under the emergency by Indira Gandhi as a kind of temporary dictator. And then there's pushback and she had to rescind the emergency decree. And India became much more free and democratic again.
- [33:37]
Mike Pesca
Although now, of course, it's definitely not quite free.
- [33:41]
Yasha Mounk
Now it's back in the party free category. Anuranandra Modi, More broadly, of course, there's a lot of countries in Latin America that had periods of genuine democracy in the 50s and 60s. Then most of those countries, or at least a lot of them, had between six or seven years and 20 years of military rule, when we're certainly unfair. Yeah. Chile, Argentina, Argentina, Brazil, a lot of big countries in Latin America. And then definitely we're back to being free. And some of them, again now are somewhat threatened by this new political movement again as well. But so, yeah, absolutely, there are countries that move from democracy into a form of competitive, authoritarian regime, or what my colleague Roberto von Eisenhower called dirty democracy, an illiberal democracy. There's different terms you can use and then sort of gain back some of the democratic institutions. And so I think that is, you know, one very plausible trajectory for the United States. And it's important to note. Right. Because sometimes we do talk about this as though. So if bad guys win, they win once and it's over. Right. Like, the American democratic experiment is done forever. On the more pessimistic timelines, I find it easier to imagine a scenario where Donald Trump, for the next three years or a successor of his, does damage democratic institutions sufficiently, gets control over institutions like the Department of Justice to a sufficient extent, is perhaps able to nominate judges that do his bidding much more than the ones that he's nominated so far, and starts to really undermine the judiciary as well. And where we're going to read in history books in 50 or 100 years that we went through a genuine period of democratic backsliding in which America was partly free. Does that mean that America is never going to return to its democratic traditions that have lasted 250 years imaginable, but.
- [35:40]
Mike Pesca
I think less likely so, and this is Mike reflecting on that conversation a week later. Things haven't improved, I would say, but I want to know, and I will ask Yasha in a bonus question or two, what could be or could have been done differently? What's the part of the Constitution maybe to rewrite Pesca plus members get all of this for the price of their subscription and none of the ads. We also have just an ad free version to subscribe go to subscribe.Mike Pesca for continuations of extremely informative conversation to help keep the show afloat and to save you some time. Whatever you gain in content will zap out of there and ads subscribe.mike pesco.com. And that's it for today's show. Corey War is the producer of the Gist and Kathleen Sykes runs the Gist List. You could see and read more of my super bowl analysis on the Just list. Michelle Pesca is COO of Peach Fish Productions. Put her in the middle because she's in the middle of everything. Jeff Craig runs all of our social media and our video and is doing some editing for us as well. And we're pleased to announce Ben Astaire is our new booker. Ben as their Is It One Name? Is It Two? You'll find out more about Ben Astaire in upcoming days. And thanks for listening.
- [37:12]
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