← The Good Fight
The Good Fight
The Good Fight Club: The Vibe Shift That Wasn’t, White Identity Politics, and “When They Go Low, We Go Low”
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- [00:00]
A
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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B
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com and like the Psychology of Trump is about revenge seeking. It's about vengeance. It's about the addiction to revenge seeking.
- [00:38]
A
And now the Good Fight with Yasha Monk. Welcome to the 15th episode of a Good Fight Club. I'm really excited to have a star studded cast of people to help me think through the this very strange cultural moment in the United States today. I have with me Amanda Ripley, who is the founder of Good Conflict and a writer of many books I have really enjoyed. I have here Jesse Singel, who is the co host of Blocked and Reported and he gave me all kinds of other inappropriate ways to introduce him that I'm gonna skip. And I have here Thomas Chatterton Williams who is a staff writer at the atlant. And of course they've all written wonderful books and so on as well. All right. Well, you know, it strikes me that we're in a strange frenetic moment in American culture that also is a kind of weird interlude. You know, it felt around 2025, 2024, as further was this much discussed vibe shift. And that is part of what got Donald Trump elected. And when I look at other countries in which figures who resemble Trump in certain ways came to office and some of them, they really were able to enjoy a kind of cultural victory, impose their values on a large swath of the public, become the kind of default mainstream way of thinking about the country. I would argue, and I'll see whether you agree or disagree with me, that in the second year of his presidency, it is already quite clear that Trump has failed at doing that. Whatever the vibe Shift felt like 14 or 15 months ago with a lot of young people of Latinos, et cetera, voting for Trump, it does not feel like Trump is remaking all of America in his own image. Even though obviously his administration is using executive orders in its power very aggressively to change institutions and do all kinds of things. It doesn't feel like Trump is managing to remake the country in his image. So where is American culture going, how should we think through this politically?
- [02:56]
C
I agree with you. On a cultural level, though, I think one of the lasting impacts of this new Trump era, this Trump 2.0, is that white Americans have gone all in on claiming a standpoint position for themselves, getting involved in the kind of battle royale of identity and declaring that we're not neutral, we're not the atmosphere. Everybody, white culture, white identity is not the atmosphere everybody moves in. And race is a deviation from an invisible white norm. But we're all in. White identity is racialized, and we want to advocate for ourselves as such. You know, I think like Jeremy Carl's, you know, testimony before the Senate when he was asked by Senator Murphy of Connecticut, you know, what do you mean by white culture, white identity? And he said something very interesting. You know, he said, I'm advocating for, you know, heritage Americans, and I think that we've been really harmed by all this immigration and stuff like that. I think this is going to be a lasting change that white says there a diminishing majority, but still a very large numerical part of the population are now going to be participating in the game of anti racism that was really installed in the past 10 to 12 to 15 years when the great awokening was happening. And I think that's going to be lastingly to the detriment of the society.
- [04:21]
A
That's really interesting. Eric Kaufman has this point in Whitelash where he talks about asymmetrical multiculturalism. So, you know, the idea is that there's this kind of encouragement of taking pride in your group for all of the minority groups. And Kaufman's point was that's unsustainable. Right. Eventually the white majority group is going to say, if that's the way the game is played, then we're also going to take pride of place. And, you know, I think Eric Footville is kind of a natural downstream effect, and we should just embrace that. I was much more worried about that. But perhaps it turns out that he's right about just what the natural tendency of the society is. I think that's kind of what you've been saying, Thomas, that we've now gotten to the point where multiculturalism is no longer asymmetrical. Whites as an identity group are playing the same game. Amanda, that would be bad for American society, would it not?
- [05:10]
B
Well, I mean, I feel like what we're saying is in some ways, Trump has imposed some lasting, potentially lasting cultural shifts on the country, and in other ways he has not. Right. I think one of the, maybe the biggest challenge of Dealing with someone like Trump is that you can, in trying to oppose him, end up playing the very same game and thereby perpetuate that game. It's very, very tricky not to do that.
- [05:42]
C
Right.
- [05:43]
B
But we know that this cycle, I think, I think more than anything else, the thing that I'm frustrated by in the way that we're covering the culture and politics in general, is that we're not talking about the psychology of it. And like, the psychology of Trump is about revenge seeking. It's about vengeance, it's about the addiction to revenge seeking. And it's not just Trump. Right. I mean, this is why Fox News is successful. It's why many media outlets are successful. It's less about, I think, outrage and more about revenge. And revenge operates in a really interesting way. The brain, and we're just kind of starting to understand this, but it does. It is addictive. There is a way in which you can see everything as a grievance. And then we all normally, when we feel aggrieved, then seek revenge. And a lot of our media outlets and politicians on the right and left are now not just giving us grievances, which they've done for a very long time, but also serving up a revenge fantasy.
- [06:46]
C
Right.
- [06:46]
B
And I think that's what you see with the gerrymandering kind of race to the bottom. That's what you see with coarsening of the rhetoric. If you did it, then I'm going to do it. This sort of tit for tat beefing that just leads to endless revenge cycles. So to get out of that, the research is also very clear that you have to play a very different game. You can't just do the same thing or you perpetuate it. So we can talk about what that might be. But I just wanted to say I think the ways in which Trumpism is likely to endure have to do with that psychological piece as much as the kind of big, more obvious changes that he's imposing on our norms and our institutions.
- [07:29]
D
Yeah. I mean, just on this sort of white lash thing, I think I'm maybe skeptical of the extent of it. I think people, persuadable voters who voted for Trump voted for him for a lot of reasons. And I think a lot of those reasons are a little bit obscured to people like us. This won't be news to the panel or to anyone listening, but, like, voters just make these decisions in a very different way from the way we do. It's less ideological, it's more vibes driven. Looking at this graph of Trump's disapproval rate on Nate Silver's website. And he's having an extremely bad presidency from a public opinion standpoint. So I think if there was like any real appetite for asserting, you know, a white identity, maybe I'm just skeptical that. I think there are some creeps in and around his administration who want that. There are certainly some online influencers who like that, who want that. And I do. The vice president too, not least the vice president. I mean, the memes alone pose hosted
- [08:26]
A
by
- [08:28]
D
DHS and stuff are very creepy and are very white nationalist coded. And I say that as someone who's often skeptical of claims of racism. They're bizarre and they hearken back to an America that never really existed. But I think there's this problem that a lot of politicians have between telling the difference between what the people want and what their creepiest online fans want. I don't think there's a huge market for this stuff just among the people. So I think we're seeing, I don't know, what feels like a little bit of an exhausted democracy that's going to keep sort of barely electing people, then quickly getting mad at them, then moving on to the next guy. It's all pretty dark, but I think it's maybe more complex than white identity reasserting itself.
- [09:10]
A
Let's separate out two different things, right? I mean, one point is that the vibe shift when it was happening was remarkable in part because it went beyond white voters. Right. That the number of black voters who voted for Trump in 2024 was double who had voted for him in 2016. The number of Asian American voters who voted for him was going up a lot. And obviously numerically, the most important group that increased the vote for him was Latino voters. Right. So that's one kind of remarkable thing. But there was this kind of feeling like the whole society was sufficiently disappointed in the Biden presidency and perhaps saw something in the second promise of Trump that made him willing to make that jump. Right. I mean, the second point is perhaps we have to distinguish between the kind of white nationalist creepy DHS images, etc, which I think is a very real theme of this administration. But I think I'd agree with Jesse that that's certainly not the driving force of most of the people who have voted for Trump and a broader kind of social logic, right. Where like, it's just become such a part of American life that, you know, what Gary Steingart used to call the, as a phrase, essay X and Y. I think this. Right. Like so many institutions now run on this natural reference to identity over time that perhaps it becomes natural for white people to identify themselves in that way. It doesn't have to be as creepy as the DHS memes, right? Like the form of that white self identification takes doesn't need to be as extreme as that. But I personally would still be quite worried if that becomes the default form of expression in the country in general, but particularly for the white majority group, even if it doesn't take the form of kind of a craziest meme on the DHS Twitter feed.
- [10:54]
C
I think that's right. I think that's what J.D. vance is trying to slip into the common parlance when he talks about heritage Americans and this desire to be able to speak as a heritage American and make claims to grievance that then get you special privileges or consideration in the, in the, in the zero sum competition for status and prestige in the society. You know, I think it operates along the lines of the logic of mimetic desire that Rene Girard talks about. You know, it's after all of this time that groups have been advocating for themselves as a group. A lot of white Americans, I think, simply want that too. Now, you know, that desire has become mimetically replicated among a lot of whites. And I think Trump really did act as a kind of tribune for these people, even as he excited some, you know, some working class and downwardly mobile minorities and less educated minorities as well. And let's not forget, I think, you know, whiteness is really much more complicated in the 21st century than it was in the previous eras in American history. You know, one of the most prominent spokesmen for white nationalism is Nick Fuentes, who admits to his followers that he's not only part Mexican, but may very well have African ancestry. So, you know, this stuff is, this stuff is complex.
- [12:10]
A
Jordan Bardela, who may well be the next president of France, is mostly an Italian immigrant to France. So it's already interesting that the leader of the far right is an immigrant, but from a neighboring European country. But a little known fact in the United States is that he's also partially of North African ancestry.
- [12:25]
C
I mean, this stuff is going to get weirder and weirder. But I think that, you know, Trump in many ways, you know, I think some of the, the voices of white identity would agree with Ta Nehisi Coates that he is the first white president.
- [12:39]
D
I think what concerns me just in terms of trying to figure out how the hell this happened again, is some of this talk maybe distracts from one of the biggest drivers of Trump's second election, which was the border crisis. We did have a border crisis. And it's not like a white point of view to just want a secure border. My sense is most Americans want us to actually have a secure border, maybe deport some people, but are not comfortable with what Trump is doing. And my worry is I'm not directing this at you guys, but there's generally this, a lot of talk of the connection between Trump and white nationalism. And I get that, especially in the second creepier term. But maybe the let one of the lessons is just we need like normal moderate immigration policy, which people in Biden's orbit by the end of his presidency realized they had aired catastrophically. And I think that maybe brings the conversation down to normal. What can Democrats do? How should they message? Whereas this white identity stuff, which, which I agree, I find menacing and weird, but I find it maybe a little tricky to pin on to specific political outcomes.
- [13:45]
B
Well, I mean, I think what Thomas said earlier, he said a couple things that I think are important, which is zero sum thinking. Right. And like the search for status and that can take a lot of different forms. And sometimes in our country especially, it is about race. In other countries it's more about religion, other things. Right. Class. So to, to also bring us back to sort of reality. Jesse, I think you're right. I mean the Lee Drutman, a political scientist whose substack I really love, who wrote Breaking the Two party doom loop a couple years ago. He, he recently was arguing that the biggest mistake Democrats are about to make is thinking that a backlash against Trump and the GOP means endorsement of the Democratic Party. This is what we keep seeing over and over, this kind of ridiculous, nauseating swing back and forth. And in fact public op always moves against the party in power. That is a never ending cycle. And every president since FDR who's had control of Congress has also lost seats in the midterm. So then what? Right? To Jesse's point, now what, what do we do instead? What do not just I hate to say we, I don't mean what did we the Democrats do, But what does anyone who cares about this country and wants to get out of this just never ending cycle do? Well, we know a couple things. We know that about 80% of Americans believe we're in a political crisis. Almost half the country now identifies as independent. So we know that Americans, they don't just dislike both parties, they want more of them. Right? And this is what Lee has been arguing for a very long time, that the way to get One way to exit this roller coaster is to promise, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, whatever, to promise that if you're elected, you will give Americans more parties and you will move toward proportional representation, which we could do, is actually not that hard. Doesn't require a constitutional amendment. Go ahead, Yasha.
- [15:46]
A
Well, so, I mean, I have a post. Lee is an old friend, and we were colleagues at New America for many years. I think the idea of proportional representation in America is deeply foolish for two reasons. The first is that I think the causes of the political fragmentation are much deeper than the electoral system. And you see it just as strongly in Germany, in Spain, obviously, in Israel, obviously in Italy, countries that have systems of proportional representation, or in the case of Italy, ran away from a system of proportional representation because of a chaos that was so more fundamentally, I just think it's a complete pipe dream to think you can have proportional representation in the United States because the only chamber in which you could have it is the House of Representatives. And to have a system of proportional representation in one chamber, which is the least powerful chamber, which probably means we have five, six, ten different political parties in the House of Representatives. But in the Senate, you still have a control of two parties because those, by definition, you're electing one senator per state, per election. And at the presidency, you have a very bimodal outcome. I think would just make America way less governable than it already is. But, you know, I should have Lee on the podcast sometimes to sometime to really hash this out. That's kind of a side note. But I think, you know, the more profound question is, I agree with you on the thermostatic voting, which is the political science term for this. I think it's a dumb term, actually. It's one of those terms that political scientists think when they're coining a term that explains it. And actually, like, what does a thermostat have to do with this? I really don't understand. But the idea is that public opinion always moves against the president. And absolutely what we've seen is because of gerrymandering, because of a primary system, because of social media, because of the donor class, each party always goes way overboard putting in place what the activists want rather than what average voters want. And so the extent to which people are like, I hate the guys in power, let's give the other people a try. And the other people go, way too extreme. And so then the voters go, no, no, no, I hate this even more. Let's put the original people back in charge. Is A huge problem. And I think that's a huge, huge danger for Democrats in 2028. I, at this point, think the Democrats will likely win the midterms, may well win 2028. I'm very worried about what on earth is going to happen in 2032 if they get that wrong once again. But I guess I have a more fundamental question which is like, has the basis for any kind of social cohesion just gone away? Is the problem? In my optimistic moments, I want to think, like, look at the opinion polls and on immigration and on America's relations, its history, and on what should be taught in schools and on trans rights and on all of these issues, the average American has a very reasonable opinion, right? And Veron is pretty tolerant, pretty sensible. Like perhaps we can just finally find somebody who actually governs in the name of, of that majority of Americans and, and, and, and, and, and escape this kind of spiral of polarization. In my less optimistic moments, I think, is our society now just so fragmented with so many different ideological tribes, so many different people getting information from such different sources, the basic mechanisms of our public discourse driving people towards polarization such an extent that we're just never going to have the big enough mainstream to actually keep our politics together again? What do you think about that?
- [19:08]
B
Well, since no one else is talking, I'm going to talk again, which is to say that, yeah, I totally agree, Yasha, that our problems run way deeper. Right. Than a winner take all system. Totally. I also think that you're right that in many countries that have proportional representation, you still see very serious polarization. On average, countries that have multiple parties and proportional representation are less polarized than countries that don't on average. But there's so many factors there, to your point, and I think that it's not, you know, this the solution. It's one of many, many, many things that we need to do that are getting outside of the game that we're in, right? Like get outside of this trap, man. Like, we can't keep doing this. So we have to do something very different that Americans can see as very different. Because right now, to your point, you said, you know, average Americans tend to have reasonable, you know, thoughts on many, many things. Average Americans are not represented in our Congress. They're not. That's not how primaries work. They're not represented in our Congress. And one of the reasons primaries are the way they are, right, is because of these gerrymandered districts. And I want to point out this has been happening for a very long time. The phrase Gerrymandering comes from a Massachusetts Democrat whose last name was actually Gary, who carved up the districts into something that political cartoonists thought looked like a salamander. And he combined those words to make the word gerrymandering. So this has been going on a long time, but there's three big differences now, right? One is the sophistication of the mapping and the tools used to carve up districts. And the second is our profound contempt for one another, which is these revenge cycles that we are in, right? Which make us very, very vulnerable to thinking that the only option is sort of scorch earth extreme measures like gerrymandering. And also the Supreme Court, which has sort of abdicated any role in keeping things both in campaign fundraising but also in gerrymandering under. So a lot of these things need to get fixed. But one way to prevent splitting, which is what we are doing, we are dividing the world cleanly into good and evil, is to have to mix it up to have more than two choices.
- [21:28]
A
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- [23:18]
C
I think it can. I really think it's really dependent on having the right kind of politician who can articulate ideas in a way that reach that broad and sensible center. I think there is a center left and center right that's not entirely comfortable with the kind of extreme rhetoric and the kind of constant warfare of contemporary political culture. But I think it would require somebody who has a lot more talent than what we've been seeing. I mean, Barack Obama clearly was able to reach Americans on a rhetorical level that certainly inspired a certain amount of hatred and animosity, but also really inspired a lot of Americans to wish to exercise their better kind of tendencies especially
- [24:06]
A
and allowed him to win two big electoral victories.
- [24:08]
C
Yeah, and he's still quite popular. I mean that's asking a lot of a candidate, but I don't see that kind of talent on the Democratic side at all. But you know, I would also think that a lot of Americans could be relieved to vote for somebody with the sensibility of a Mitt Romney if that was on offer from the right too. I think a lot of people would like to turn the temperature down. What do you think, Jesse?
- [24:30]
D
Well, it's interesting that a lot of the most charismatic politicians, and I'd put folks like AOC and Mamdani in that camp, have a lot of baggage of just having said radical stuff and they don't really do the Obama. They're probably capable of that sort of rhetoric and I think we're going to see them shift toward it as their ambitions get higher. But yeah, who? I mean Obama is a generational political figure, but I mean, to answer the question, I don't think there's any. We're not so broken that we couldn't see another Obama type who talks in sort of sweeping unifying terms from like a center left perspective. I do think in other ways we're experiencing runaway fragmentation that is not going to get better. And like the idea of a truly shared culture beyond the super bowl and Bad Bunny. There's going to be a few like super culture attractors that most people know what they are. But I don't think we're going back to any sort of shared culture in terms of people's day to day consumption of music and art and political figures and stuff like that. And to the extent there are, you know, superstar political streamers and all that, I think they tend to be hyper partisan, which is a problem. So yeah, mostly. Mostly I'm pessimistic about this whole America thing.
- [25:49]
A
I'm gonna run a. I'm gonna run a little experiment here to, to hopefully illustrate Jesse's point. We'll see whether it does or not. Amanda, name a famous Hollywood actor or actress. The first that comes to your mind.
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B
Brad Pitt. I'm aging myself.
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A
All right, Jesse, name a famous Hollywood actor or actress.
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D
George Clooney was the first that came to my mind.
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A
Thomas, who first came to your mind?
- [26:12]
C
I would have liked to say George Clooney because Michael Clayton is the greatest movie of all time. But I'll say Matt Damon, Timothee Chalamet. I give two.
- [26:20]
A
Right. So this may illustrate the age of this panel, but I don't think it does, actually. So I've seen some surveys which show that in the 1980s, the most famous actor, when you ask people, was in the 20s. In the 1990s, the most famous actor was in their 20s. And then the eight started going up. And the reason for that is that when Matt Damon, George Clooney, those figures were first, you know, in the big movies. Everybody was talking about those movies. Those movies were central to American culture. And so they reached a degree of celebrity that goes beyond what Timothee Chalamet now enjoys. Right. And so the kind of common basis for that culture has eroded over the last years because of those technological developments. Right. Which is sort of a fascinating point. I want to segue into the second kind of topic that I loosely thought we would talk about today, which is how are the Democrats reacting to all of this? Right. So we have the failed vibe shift of a few years ago, the recognition that I think, as I've argued in a recent piece, Trump is actually starting to fade. He's certainly, I don't think, managing to, perhaps he's managing to remake a part of Americanism, but he's not winning an all out victory where it just feels like everybody's now on board with Trump. There was a few months when it felt like that might happen. I think that danger is now quite clearly banished. But how have the Democrats reacted to this? And I thought that the first Trump administration, clearly part of the reaction from Democrats was to fully embrace this new ideology on the left that felt sort of very new and exciting and was able to sweep through institutions quite quickly this time around. It doesn't feel like Democrats have sort of explicitly gone back to like fully fight for woke. In fact, in some ways they've sort of surrendered, at least superficially on some of those issues. It's surprising that not Many Democrats are going around saying, first thing we will do is to nominate Supreme Court justices who are going to put affirmative action back in place. Perhaps that is, in fact what they would do. But it's not sort of a big, you know, calling card of what they want to do. At the same time, it feels like they've sort of inverted Obama's line. Right. I think it was Michelle Obama's line said, when they go low, we go high.
- [28:42]
C
Yeah.
- [28:42]
A
It sounds to me like one of the lessons the Democrats seem to have taken from the Trump era is he won because he won, he went low. And this time we're going to go low as well. We're not going to be played for suckers, we're not going to play for fools. You know, we're gonna embrace the extremes on our left. Campaigning with people like Hassan Piker, who's an actual tankie, I mean, just, you know, in the old fashioned description of the left, you know, one of the people who actually defend the dictators with tanks running over other countries, you know, we see Democrats making excuses and getting very angry at people who criticize something. Like Graham Platner, who had a Totenkopf tattoo embroidered on his chest for over 10 years before became a campaign issue. You know, you even see it in some of the institutional fights. Amanda mentioned earlier, the gerrymandering, saying, well, if that, if the Republicans are gerrymandering as hard as they can, like, we're not going to be played for sucker, we're going to German as best as we can as well. How should we think about the evolution of the Democrats? Is it fair to say that that's the lesson they've taken and how do we feel about that?
- [29:49]
C
It certainly is the lesson that Gavin Newsom has taken, at least stylistically, and I found that extraordinarily off putting. I think the strength would be to model the kind of political behavior that we all would recognize from the past and many of us miss, as opposed to kind of, you know, memetically replicating Trump's online behavior and trolling and being extraordinarily vulgar. I just find that deeply, deeply depressing that you have to fight fire with fire that way. I'm a little bit more agnostic about whether you have to accept that people are flawed and you don't have to forgive, but you have to find ways to reconcile with previously flawed candidates if they have a chance of winning and they have rejected the previous behavior that you find problematic. So someone like Graham Platner, he doesn't stand by The Totenkampf, he. He says, whether we believe it or not, it was a mistake. He got rid of it. He says it's not what he stands for now. And I think that realistically, there has to be a path towards reconciliation, especially when somebody has momentum, because the alternative would be that you don't support him and you empower Donald Trump to have one more advocate in the Senate. So I think it's like there's not one response to that question. It depends on the situation. I think gerrymandering also. Also presents another set of calculations.
- [31:18]
B
Yeah, I think it's interesting, right? I mean, it's hard to generalize about Republicans or Democrats, but if you look at some of the loudest voices, like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries keeps referring to maximum warfare everywhere, all the time. When it comes to gerrymandering, this is literally, as Thomas said, mimicking the behavior of your opponents. It doesn't get you out of the trap that you're in. Platinum is a really interesting example. Right. Because I also feel like, okay, so we know from the research on human behavior in these kind of revenge addiction cycles, one way out is to is. I mean, I know this is going to sound incredibly squishy to people, and I apologize. It sounds squishy to me. But it is backed up by the research. And so, like, one way out is you gotta start fucking forgiving people. Like, that is the only way. And so you got to do it, even internally, even if you never say it out loud, it actually has an effect on that kind of addiction cycle. So, yeah, I think he's spoken enough to that. The whole issue of the tattoo, I mean, I just, you know, we. We can't keep doing this.
- [32:25]
C
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- [32:56]
A
I'm a little like, you know, when Barack Obama had sort of the most serious crisis of his primary campaign in 2007. Perhaps it was early 2008 because tapes of Reverend Wright were released in which he was saying, you know, I damn the USA, etc. Etc. No, Obama did a major speech in which he laid out his relationship to race. This is not. It wasn't Obama who was on tape saying these things? It was the pastor of a church he went to, right? And he said, let me take this really seriously. I understand why a lot of people are going to be upset about that, and they're going to be right to be upset about that, even as I also am going to lay out what the pastor's perspective was and where he came from. And I think he threaded the needle in both a beautiful speech, which I often assign to my students, and in a serious way, not hiding who he is, not, you know, debasing himself, but explaining it and also recognizing why it was so upsetting to people. I have to say, I have seen nothing like that from Graham Platner. All I've seen from Graham Platner is this is trolls on the right who are weaponizing something. I didn't know what this was. You know, there's very clear, you know, his story does not add up. You know, there's. His chief of staff has said that he's referred to this tattoo as my turtlekopf years ago. And then later on he claims, oh, no, I never knew what it was. So he hasn't actually explained that in a very satisfactory way to the public. Like, you know, I certainly am against cancel culture. And I've said that many, many times. I don't know that being concerned about an extremely erratic political candidate who has a history of very, very erratic remarks, who literally had a tattoo of, you know, a symbol associate with Vss on his chest for 10 years, covered it up once it became a national political issue, never addressed it in what I think is, you know, I mean, you know, nobody has a political talent of a rhetorical talent of Barack Obama, but, but no serious attempt to do that. You know, 90% of what he said about it is, oh, this is just right wing people who are trying to exploit this against me. Like, like, is. Is that, like, I'm, I'm open to him, perhaps pate, being a great senator, and I'm open to him, you know, to, to forgiveness. But, like, like, has he actually, in a serious way, explained what it is, where it comes from, why it's upsetting to people taking seriously why a lot of people are concerned about that, what it means for the Democratic Party. And aren't we being deeply hypocritical? I mean, if somebody on the right had a Totenkopf tattoo, do we really want to exclaim that we would all be like, oh, no, it's perfectly natural to forgive that? You know, yeah, of course, J.D. vance had the Totenkov tattoo for 10 years, but he's not really a Nazi. Why should we? I mean, like.
- [35:38]
D
No, I mean, it seems disingenuous. David French sort of complained about the slide in decency and Standards. He wrote, quote, the slide begins when you tell yourself that the stakes are just too high for normal politics. Of course I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't support this candidate in better times. But now American democracy is at stake, you know, and he's saying that. He's saying, don't go down that road. I sort of get it. Given. Given how tight the Senate is and given what one seat means, I found it demoralizing that people act like it's this crazy cancel culture campaign to be concerned about a Nazi tattoo. In many cases, it's the same people who, before the vibe shift, were calling for people's careers to be ruined over much lighter offenses. Yeah, there's a degree of disingenuousness on display that I just don't. I don't. I don't like.
- [36:33]
A
And the same thing, by the way, about Hassan Piker, where people completely mix up two different things, which is, you know, when somebody has a big media platform, should you go and make your case in front of that platform? Sure. Should Democrats go on Fox News? Should they go on Joe Rogan? Should they go on those shows and be authentically themselves and try to reach those audiences for the cases? Yes. And if somebody wants to go on Hassan Paiker's stream and argue for the substantial political views on Hassan Paiker's dream, I didn't have a problem with that, even though I am deeply concerned about Paiker's views. And I have some strategic questions about whether that, in fact, is going to be very useful because his audience is very different from the mostly apolitical audience of some naked Joe Rogan. But, you know, let the consultants make that call. That's different from campaigning with him. That's different from saying he's the future of a Democratic Party.
- [37:20]
B
So I was just gonna say. Look, look. What I was gonna say is I do not think litigating back and forth about the tattoo at this point is super helpful. What I do find revealing about Platner is that he hasn't, while he has apologized for that, and I think, in a more believable way, apologized for some of the things he said about sexual assaults in the military, he still uses the tool of revenge seeking. He still, in his rhetoric, it's just different subjects, different scapegoats, different targets of blame. But it's still the same mindset, right, of splitting the world into good and evil. And you are on the side of good and anything is justified. Right, because the other side is so evil. So that's the piece of his behavior today that gives me pause. Less so. I mean, I just. I know people who've gotten idiotic tattoos in their 20s that they didn't know what they meant. So, I mean, I don't know that we can expect a sort of Obama level reflection from this guy, but I do think we could expect people to start getting a little bit critical in their thinking about this constant cycle of oversimplifying and blame. Like, it's just. It just never ends.
- [38:35]
C
I agree with all that. I don't mean to. I understand the arguments that Yasha and Jesse just made and the point Amanda's making. But at the end of the day, you know, if you are actually concerned about things like antisemitism, I mean, look at the. I mean, if you have familiarity with German culture, look at the kind of memes that are, I'm sorry, coming out underneath the banner of the White House and. And the Department of Homeland Security. I mean, they are actually. They are not things that are being rejected or covered over. They are actually emulations of actual Nazi propaganda and rhetoric on purpose. So if anti Semitism is your thing, I just don't think that Graham Platner is where you start channeling all of your outrage. And unfortunately, we do have a binary choice in some situations. There is no kind of nuanced.
- [39:31]
A
No, but I think. But that's where Amanda is saying, like, why do we debase our standards in that way? Like, why can't I both be outraged at the DHS Twitter feed?
- [39:38]
C
Oh, yeah. Then I 100% agree.
- [39:40]
A
And the symbolism of Trump and all of that, and say, like, excuse me. You know, like the party that, as Jesse was saying, was, you know, canceling people. I mean, you know, I wrote about this electrician in San Diego who was actually of Latino heritage who had his hand dangling out of the truck and somebody thought it looked like the okay sign, which they thought must be a white suit. Supremacism. The levels of absurdity are extreme. He lost the best job he ever had over that. And those same people are now telling me, how dare you be upset about a guy who had a totenkopf tattoo for 10 years. I mean, excuse me if I find that a little bit galling.
- [40:14]
C
There's hypocrisy to go all the way around. And excuse me if I got Amanda's point. Wrong. I just solely disagree with Jesse.
- [40:20]
D
I'm easy to disagree with.
- [40:23]
B
Look, people will justify anything, anything because they feel they want to feel right and that the other side feels threatening. I mean, it's like never, it never ends like this is. I do it too. I mean, you know, you come up with reasons why. Like, when I think about one of the things that has most made me most ashamed of this country that I was born in and that I'm a citizen of and that I love ever was the way we withdrew from Afghanistan, right. At the time, I was angry at the Biden administration about that, but I didn't necessarily blame Biden personally in the way I now very quickly catch myself blaming Trump for most things. Like personally. Right. Like, I mean, so you can catch yourself doing this. And the trick is to at least notice it and try to try to, as Yasha's pleading with us to do, right? Try to reflect on the ways in which we are debasing ourselves and having a huge set of excuses and benefit of the doubt for our side and not for the other side or the other person.
- [41:33]
A
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- [41:43]
B
It's a way to design with our
- [41:45]
A
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- [41:50]
B
of your thing, make decks or presentations
- [41:53]
A
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- [41:55]
B
be done for your thing.
- [41:56]
A
Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing.
- [41:59]
B
Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing.
- [42:04]
A
Two more thoughts on Main and I promise it's not about Vedanta 2. I mean, the first thing is that I do think it just shows the really terrible field in so many of these Democratic races, right. On the one hand you have this person who just doesn't have any very clear achievements in his life, clearly a history of very erratic political opinions, who sort of looks like the image that people drinking coffee in Brooklyn, half of what appeals to the country in a way that I'm not sure it actually really does, right? On the other hand, you have a governor who by all accounts is perfectly competent and decent, who is 78 years old and who has no charisma, no real ability to tell what the campaign is about. And people are given those two choices. And so I understand why some primary voters ended up going for grand platinum when that was the alternative. I mean, I felt the same on the day of the mid. Midterms, you know, when, when a couple of pretty reasonable governors were elected in New Jersey and Virginia, and I tried to watch a victory speeches, and they're really damn boring. And, you know, on the one hand, you have John Mandani, who has a bunch of policies I disagree with, but who clearly is a talented, charismatic politician. And so, you know, I think that's a real concern for where the Democratic Party is. The other question I want to ask about this, you know, when they go low, we go low. FO is like, is this actually a sensible electoral calculus? I think it sort of relies on this idea a that what Trump's appeal is is that he goes low. And it's not clear to me that that's what it is that people like about him. I think, you know, perhaps it is. It's not obvious that it isn't that, but I think that it deserves thinking through. And secondly, that if without the same charisma, without the same political cause, the same political coalition, you embrace the same style, that's going to benefit you. And I'm just very, very skeptical about that. I think Gavin Newsom going around being like, look, I control social media, that obviously appeals to the base. Is that gonna win over independence in the way that Trump, for whatever reason, has been able to win over independence in 2016, particularly 2024? I guess I just have my doubts.
- [44:20]
C
I couldn't agree with you more. I think that for the people it does appeal to, they can get that thing from Trump, and he does it better than anybody who's trying to mimic that behavior. He certainly does it better than Gavin Newsom. So if that's your thing, I don't think replicating that will convert anybody to your side. But you can repel a lot of people who don't like that in Trump, but put up with it because they like certain other things that he's delivering.
- [44:44]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. Is the lowness what people are. I mean, some people are actually attracted to that. It feels genuine. It feels like this guy's fearless, you know, it feels like. Because, again, people feel like the whole system is rigged and they are correct. Right.
- [45:00]
C
That's the problematic part.
- [45:01]
B
I mean, you look at this is like, right, they're not wrong. And so they're finding the wrong solution, in my view. But, like, you know, they're not wrong, that there's something very effed up and there's a lot of distortion and corruption and people not being honest in their dealings with the American people. So this is a kind of proxy for honesty and courage. Right. It's a. It's A absolute false idol, obviously. And it's very dangerous, but it looks courageous, right? Even. And it's incredibly cowardly. So I think, I think all sides can play that game and have tried to play that game. But to Thomas's point, Trump is much better at it for a bunch of reasons, including his addiction to vengeance. Right. I mean, this is a guy like, this is not a normal, like, this is not a healthy person, right. I think it's easy to forget this, but like most of us did not, were not involved in 4,000 lawsuits before 2016. I mean, before he even ran for president. This is a guy who used the criminal justice system, used the justice system as a tool of revenge. And if you talk to any seasoned lawyer out there, they know people like this, right? This is not a healthy person. This is what he is still doing in modern history. We do not have another example of a president who is in office routinely suing news organizations he doesn't like. I mean, this guy has sued Trevor Noah, BBC Washington Post, you know, on and on and on. And it's like, this is not normal behavior. But this is what Trump has always done. His behavior is not going to change. This gives him a, he's a very fragile person, Right? And so lawsuits are very, they're like self medication. They're a way to temporarily feel better. So I think that is the behavior that I want to look for. And I almost, I mean, the party doesn't matter to me that much anymore. You know what I mean? Like, that's the behavior that really scares me. And the fact that we don't see it like we have to be able to recognize this conflict, entrepreneurship behavior and be less vulnerable to it.
- [47:07]
A
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Good Fight Club. In the the rest of this conversation, we talk about free speech in America under Donald Trump. Is Trump succeeding in narrowing the confines of public discourse as he's clearly trying to do, or is he failing at that attempt? And finally, I ask the panel for their prediction of what America will look like in May 2030. To listen to that part of the conversation, to get full access to all of our episodes, to stop hating this annoying paywall or having to listen to those annoying ads. Please become a paying subscriber. And I'm doing a special offer today. The biggest special offer. I give 30% off if you go to writing.dashmonch.com2026 that brings the cost of your subscription down to about 50 cents an episode, about a dollar a week. Writing to dashamon.com 2026. Some follow the noise.
- [48:27]
B
Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com.