C (2:43)

Yeah, well, I'm glad you thought that because I think I am probably a better person to write a book like this than, say, you're a kind of normie white guy who's in the foreign policy establishment. And I. I'm glad that you're a little bit confused or there's a kind of dissonance between what I've written before and what I seem to be arguing in this book. I want people to be caught off guard a little bit. I want this book to be kind of unpredictable. And I do consider myself of the left. I consider myself, at least in some sense, a progressive. Still to this day, I've been extremely critical about America's involvement in the war in Gaza. And that's been a big kind of moral reckoning for me is how could my own country facilitate war crimes that are happening against the Gazan people, against Palestinians? And I've been a longtime critic of, of America's involvement in the Middle East. We have a terrible record. We have undermined democracy in the Middle East. We've supported dictatorships for the better part of seven decades in the region. And as someone who is of Middle Eastern background myself, I'm born and raised in Pennsylvania, but my parents came from Egypt. And the US has supported Egypt's dictatorship for a long time. So some of this is also kind of personal to me. And I can say all of that and still say that America is. This is the. Is the last best hope. It still is the best available option compared to the other options. We're not living in some ideal world where we can sort of compare America to a perfect America. There is no perfect America. There's just us. And I think we have to be realistic about what's possible. America is not an ngo. It's not a human rights organization. It's not always going to act morally, but it can act morally. And I'm trying to make the argument that it can still act more morally going forward. I want America to change. I want America to improve. I want us to have a better foreign policy. And I think I want to be the guy who doesn't whitewash our sins. I want to account for our sins in the past, but also say that America is morally superior to other countries and that we as Americans should be fine. Not just fine. We should actually be open about saying, hey, we're America. This is our country, we're proud of it. We think it's better, and we want it to be better. So that's maybe there's more to say on that. And, you know, in terms of my own background in the anti war movement is also a critical part of the book story that that's sort of how I came of age. So I've kind of gone through an evolution over the last 20 years and this is sort of where I've ended up.

B (5:47)

Yeah. And I think the critical thing that I want left progressive skeptics of American power to reconcile themselves with is that the critical problem between, let's say, post2025America and debates over power and the first 25 years of the American, you know, experience this century is that there just is no alternative. So look to the immediate sort of post war 1945 situation. FDR's alternative to American power was the United Nations. The United nations that was empowered United nations, where you could see international issues, you know, adjudicated and sort of worked through. There isn't anyone who would very seriously say that the way we're going to resolve the war in Ukraine or the war in Gaza or Israel and Iran's relationship is at the un. So at the end of the day, the lack of that alternative is something that even because it's, you know, if you look at sort of left critics of the Iraq war, a lot of that focuses on the UN Security Council and how the Bush administration was interacting with the un. There isn't anyone serious who says, actually there's the UN alternative. So that seems to me to be the prime awkward position that we're in right now.

C (6:55)

Yeah, I mean, the world's problems, the biggest problems we face, can only be resolved by America. So even the end to the war in Gaza, the ceasefire as, as flawed as it may be, that was only possible with the Trump administration putting pressure on Israel to kind of make certain concessions and to accept a ceasefire. No other country could have done that. And you look at any, any of the, any other major problem and I think you come to a similar conclusion. Europe is not going to step in. Europe follows the lead of America. And then the other options we have, the competitors we have, are Russia and China. And these are brutal dictatorships that suppress their own people that don't share any of our values when it comes to basic freedoms and human rights, to expect them to be more moral on the world stage than America, country that was founded on moral purpose. Again, I don't want to whitewash anything. We haven't always lived up to that moral purpose. But at least we pretend, at least we try. At least there are American policymakers who are working day in and day out, and they wake up and they actually think to themselves, we want to make the world a little bit better. There is this kind of, there is that sense of mission, maybe less so under the Trump administration than under previous administrations, but there still is that anim, that animating purpose that defines who we are as a country. And I just think that's all we have. And there's also this fact that power is a reality, someone must wield it. So there is no option of, well, okay, let's just wash our hands from all this. Let's kind of restrain ourselves in the world and get out of conflicts and not be involved. I just don't see how that's a viable option considering that that would leave a vacuum that would be open to other countries and then they would wield that power. So it's really, in some sense, I don't love thinking about this in zero sum terms, but in some sense it is zero sum. If we're not playing this role, someone else will try to play it. And we have to ask ourselves, would we be comfortable with that alternative?

B (9:13)

Yeah, and I think the awkward thing with the realignment topic, one of the big realignment themes of the past decade has been the idea that there's this left, right, populist horseshoe that's skeptical of America's role in the world. And a lot of people tried to make a lot of hay out of that. But I think it's much easier to be a conservative, right wing, non interventionist skeptic than it is to be a left progressive one. And this is also a case where focusing on the word power, rather than focusing on the word pro war or anti war is actually more helpful. Because if you are a, and I'm not sure it'd be unfair to people here, but I think this is fair to say Trump's conservative base doesn't care that USAID was cut. You know, at the end of the day, like, there are quite literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of African children who are going to die because of the aid cuts. And this is why I always was frustrated by a lot of the leftist pushback against USAID over the past year, which is basically like, well, look at the history of the Cold War and look at how USAID has done all these interventions. And it's a front for the CIA and it's this like, really negative thing that's been used harmfully on the American side. So when you're confronted with the USAID cuts, and once again, this question of power we have Resources, we have excess like agricultural products that we can just send to people and help them not starve. We have the ability to support governments overseas in ways that don't cost that much for the American people relative to, I think, the benefits and the stability you get with that. If you are on the right and you're skeptical, it's just easier to say philosophically in terms of the things that motivate your politics. Yeah, that's just not our business. But left progressives do not hold the same pov. This is something you pointed out in the book. So I'd be curious how you think about this dilemma as we kind of see the ways that the horseshoe theory has been limited by its actual how it actually plays out in the world.

C (11:01)

That's a really good point. I don't think that if you're a proper leftist, you can just say let's get out of it, let's not care, let's just kind of shrug our shoulders. Because to be a progressive means you want things to progress, you want to improve the world around you. You do have solidarity with people in other countries. You don't just say, oh well, they're non American citizens so therefore we don't really care what happens to them. I don't think that you can really say that as a self respecting progressive. So this is where I think if progressives want to be moral, they have to contend with power. And what's been very concerning for me really from when I was an anti war activist in college and I was someone who was very skeptical of the very idea of power I was always opposing. I was the guy who went outside the White House and put up signs and said we don't want to get our hands dirty. Power is inevitably messy and look at what they're doing with it, the Bush administration and all of that. But I think at the end of the day you have to get your hands dirty, otherwise you're just abdicating your moral responsibility. And there is something that feels morally pure about not being involved, of not actually being in positions of influence or power. When leftists say to other leftists, you shouldn't take a position in government, you shouldn't serve in the Defense Department, you shouldn't serve in the State Department, that's the easy way out because it's basically prioritizing your own moral righteousness over the practical work of helping people. And I think that's an untenable position. And we should call people out because that they think that that is the morally pure position is oftentimes the easier position. What I want to, what I want people to contend with is actually take the harder path. The harder path is to actually, is to actually contend with the realities of power. And that's messy. And it might actually make you feel like you're not always a good person. But ultimately, if you think that you're able to help people, if you are helping people because you have a position in the State Department, even if it's along the margins. Margins, I would rather that person be in there than say, actually, we're just resigning and we're not going to actually take any position.

B (13:35)

Yeah, it's interesting. My sort of, not even my theory, but my sort of understanding of what's happened here is that post 1968 and Vietnam, and obviously all those morally reprehensible, terrible choices and decisions that were made then it became easy for left liberal people to just paint themselves permanently in opposition. Sort of. Your perspective is our job in the sort of ecosystem of American politics is to oppose. America is bad in many ways. America has all of this bad history. And they would say, actually these are the serious sort of scholars and theorists of American power. No, Shadi and Martial, this isn't just that America made these bad decisions here, here and there. It's that inherent to the project, inherent to the nature of having a superpower state, is that you are going to do bad things. And I just fundamentally reject that. Like, I fundamentally believe that it was not inherent that the United States went to war in Iraq in 2003. It was not inherent that we went into Vietnam. It was not inherent that we did all sorts of bad overthrows of regimes post 1945. Those are specific, specific choices. And this sentence that you wrote in the book really spoke to me, which you said, you know, essentially combining two sentences, because America is an idea, that means that ideas can change. They could evolve, they could grow. It's not inherent in our cultural DNA that we do bad things. But then, B, just because we've made bad choices in the past doesn't mean we have to make bad choices in the future. So my thing is just because we invaded Iraq, which was a disastrous, horrible decision, I was in fifth grade, I opposed it. That doesn't count. I was in fifth grade. But my takeaway is I think I'm someone who gets. Because I just sort of so viscerally reacted against it. Even as an uninformed fifth grader, I think to myself, hey, if I were in power, I would also not pursue a war of choice built on really, really bad Theories that you could have articulated were really, really bad before the act. So I think these ideas are perfectly compatible.

C (15:28)

Yeah, that's a really good point, because I hear this from leftists all the time. Well, Shadi, what about all these things that we did in the past? And then they'll give me the long list of Chile, Guatemala, South Korea, the Middle East, I mean, all the places where we got involved and the CIA overthrowed elected governments. I mean, that list is real. And I was influenced by that discourse when I was in college. I was reading Noam Chomsky. Like, a lot of us go through that phase. But there's something that's very presumptuous about that argument, that just because we've done bad things in the past, it means we're doomed to repeat them in the future. And I think that precisely as you said, there is nothing inherent about American power that requires us to do bad things. There is nothing intrinsically bad about American power. That is up to us, how we choose to use that power. And if more of us get involved in politics and we organize and advocate and participate and actually involve ourselves in the halls of power, then we can actually push American policy in a better direction. We can actually get our leaders to have a more responsible foreign policy that is more respectful of people's rights abroad, that is more respectful of democracy abroad. The idea that we have no say over that and that it's always going to be bad, I think reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how democracy works. It assumes that we're not a democracy, but in fact we are, however, flawed. And this is what I come back to in the book time and time again. This is part of what makes America better. We are not an autocratic regime. The fact that we're a democracy means that if we as citizens are angry about something, we can actually lobby our leaders. If you're a Chinese or a Russian citizen and you don't like what China is doing abroad, in some part of the world, you have no avenues of redress. You have no real ways of changing that, because it's the leader who decides. It's either Putin or President Xi who decide this is what our policy is going to be. So I want to be able to here remind American readers and listeners that there is still something very special about being able to change your government's policies. Now, it's not a direct one to one relationship. It's not as if we can change US Foreign policy overnight. But on Israel, for example, I think there are signs that US policy will change in the coming 10 to 20 years, we see that Americans under the age of 50 are much more sympathetic to Palestinians over Israel. They're very critical of Netanyahu, they're critical of the war in Gaza. So if those people are able to influence policy more in the coming years, then maybe we will have more of a balanced policy. We won't cut off Israel altogether as an ally. That's not even something that I'm advocating. But can we have a more balanced policy that takes into account the needs and the rights of the Palestinian people? Yes, that's something that we can change by electing leaders who are more sympathetic to that position. That is within our agency as American citizens who participate in our politics.

B (18:51)

And this is just where it gets awkward. And this is where I could speak to your Egyptian background. I think the thing that's awkward for progressives, liberals, centrists, whatever, this is an increasingly large number of people who don't like the US policy towards Israel and don't like the US policy towards Gaza and want a better outcome for the Palestinian people. But at the end of the day it seems to me that any, if we're to sort of like take a whiteboard out and like write out good outcomes for Palestinians, those good outcomes are probably going to be backed by the fact the United States has power and the United States did not just wash its hands with the situation. Like look at, you know, one of the big achievements of Jimmy Carter, Rest in peace. And also I could support that we shout out like those achievements that are uncontested is that for the first time since 48, he settled peace between Egypt and Israel. That was not just him sort of washing his hands of the situation or just saying, okay, Israel, Egypt, walk it, you know, work it out together. We were very actively engaged and then actually spent the next 30 to 40 years to the present day actually using our power, our resources, our military, our economic and diplomatic and cultural power to actually maintain that stable situation. So that's the degree of nuance I want for people to bring into the what does the forward facing policy towards Gaza, Palestine, Israel look like?

C (20:13)

Yeah, if it's not backed by American power. Exactly. It's probably not going to happen. In fact, if the US washed its hands of Israel entirely, there's a chance that Israel would be even more brutal than it, than it actually was. I mean, this is not the max of what Israel could have done. And it's worth keeping in mind that Israel still has to operate with some sense of constraint because they know there are probably limits. I Mean, they couldn't just drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza even if they wanted to, because that would probably be a red line for the U.S. so in that sense, the U.S. is still this reminder to people. It's still a reminder to other countries that you can probably get away with a lot, you can maybe even get away with murder, but there are still limits. So we have to compare, like what we actually had in the Gaza war to what we, what we would have had if America completely was out of it. And I don't know if you can make the argument that it would have been better if the US Was uninvolved entirely and the US Said we're not going to be involved in the Middle East. So I think that we always have to make that comparison between the world as it is and then the fact that it could be worse instead of comparing America as it is to this kind of idealized version of America, because when you're making that comparison, you're always going to be disappointed. And I don't think that's always the best vantage point. And I think it's also just worth noting that just because you hate what the US Facilitated in Gaza, that shouldn't affect how you view America as a project. And I worry those two bleed into each other that people say, look at what we did in Gaza, therefore America is bad, America is evil. And you see this reflected in some of the opinion polling, which is really disturbing to me. Maybe you've seen this. It was shared on Twitter. It's been shared on Twitter quite a lot in the last few weeks. But the Gallup poll that shows that Democrats in the early 2000s, about 90% of them said they were either extremely or very proud to be American, that number has dropped down to 36% of Democrats who are either extremely or very proud to be American in 2025, that it's such a crazy result polling wise, that I almost like I had to check again this morning and make sure that it was accurate. It's one of those things like, is it really possible that so few Democrats feel this strong pride towards their own country? But I think in part because of the Gaza war, because of the Forever wars over the past 20 years, you've seen a lot of young Democrats completely lose faith in America. And I think we have to distinguish between our foreign policy and America as a concept. And that's one of the major messages of the book, that you don't have to kind of fall into this self loathing, this mode of self hatred. And if we do fall into that mode of self loathing and self hatred, then how are we going to be able to advocate for our country? How are we going to be able to play a constructive role if we've just given up on the American idea entirely? But that's where I think a lot of Democrats are and. And more of us need to push back against that.

B (23:45)

Yeah. And this is where another quote from the book becomes relevant. So you specifically say, you know, if, and this isn't a word for a quote, but essentially your love of America and like, your faith in the American project should not come down to a single election. So if you know someone, if one person wins the presidency, then America is over as a project that just can't stand. But two, and this is where I'm getting increasingly concerned. So I'm sure you've seen this in the discourse. But after Biden and then Harris ran on, quote, democracy, they made it so central to their understanding of why they would win in 2024, they made it so vital to their understanding of the role of the Biden presidency. You've now seen it very conventional wisdom in democratic policy and political circles, the idea that you can't talk about democracy because it doesn't work. And I think that's actually like the definition of like DC Beltway blinders that are really sort of separate from the actual experience of people who are in the rest of the country. Because, like, one of the benefits of being in Austin and not D.C. is I just like, and obviously Austin, its own unique, specific problem within Texas in terms of not being with it. But I'm at least a little more directionally closer to people. And the same thing too is when I co host Breaking Points and talk to people after the show, I actually think if you actually talk to the people who say they have less and less faith in America, if you actually talk to them, their concerns actually come down to democracy. So if we talk to, let's say, a zoomer or a millennial who says that they don't have faith in the American project, or they're not feeling patriotic, their actual concerns would come down to them feeling like, I don't have agency, the status quo doesn't work, and no one's fixing it, we do all these bad things in Gaza, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they would list all of their basic concerns, and then they would say, I don't see any leaders or political parties or movements that can really speak to that. But the thing that people who work at mainstream institutions like us need to really do there is say, well, actually the answer to everything you're describing. It's not like a perfect policy plan. It's not sort of a policy paper or a set of polling and focusing groups. It's really just democracy. So if you don't like the way our country is run, you actually can just elect someone. If you don't like how Andrew Cuomo is running for office, you know, as an accused sexual harasser and just an overhill politician, you could support this guy named Zoran Mandani who only has 1% of the vote, but then you can just win. Like, there is actually this process. And I think if people started talking about democracy, not in the msnbc, Heather Knox Richardson sort of baby boomer sense, but in this idea of like, hey, you can participate, you can just do things, you could organize and you could actually represent a movement. I think that language of democracy and then relating what that democracy is to what America is, to your point, that's not what Russia is. That's not what China is. That's not what a lot of European countries are, that could really instill people that, oh, wait, there's something in this project that could help me address what I'm so worried and frustrated by.

C (26:48)

You're exactly right. And this is where I agree with you that the whole discourse around this is the most important election of our lifetimes, which is factually untrue. You can't have every election be the most important election of your lifetime. We have this kind of catastrophism, this alarmism that a lot of Democrats fall into, which actually makes people less optimistic about our country. It makes them want to participate less because it feels like so much is at stake. It's so existential, and they get depressed about it. The argument we have to make is to persuade people that they have agency and that American democracy is alive and well, however flawed it might be. And we do get the government we deserve and we get the policies we deserve. So if Donald Trump wins, it's not actually a negation of our democracy. It actually shows that, hey, people were angry about the status quo. They didn't like the establishment, and they expressed themselves accordingly. And the fact that they were able to reelect Donald Trump a second time after everything actually shows that our democracy is responsive to a wide range of views. Like, no one would have thought that someone like Donald Trump would win not once, but twice. So I think that you can also compare that to Zoran's win. And I have to say, Zoran winning actually helped renew A lot of my faith in the very arguments that I'm making. Because sometimes, like, on a bad day, I'll have some doubts about my own argument. I'll be like, wait, is our democracy actually responsive to what citizens want? But Zoran's win shows whatever you think about him, even if you hate him, you think his policies are crazy, he's a communist, whatever it might be, the fact that he could go from just single digits of polling against a scion of a political dynasty like Andrew Cuomo and win and become the mayor of the largest city in America and one of the most important cities in the world, it shows us that there is another way. And I think it's remarkable. I'm still sort of, like, reeling just out from the reality of his win. Like, wait, did that actually happen? Or are we allowed to have good things? Are we allowed to actually have a democracy that is responsive to us? So I think that if you replicate that on a national level, and instead of people saying, oh, my God, our democracy is dying because Donald Trump is a dictator and it's hopeless, let's just kind of, like, disappear into the void. I think that what. What they should be doing is saying, actually, it's. Let's. Let's vote on the local level and let's actually run candidates on the local level. Maybe I could run for, like, local dog catcher or whatever the equivalent of that is. There are things people can run for, and oftentimes these. These local offices are uncontested because they're not very popular. People don't actually take them all that seriously. But it shows that if enough people want to, they can actually change their local and state situation. And that can start to filter up to the national level over time.

B (29:59)

Yeah. And I think this is why, to make the democracy point I'm making clearer when I talk to my politician friends, when they explicitly tell me that they are skeptical of democracy language, I put aside the sort of headline of skeptical of democracy language after 2024, because what I'm trying to make clear, especially since most of these people are centrists, that talking about democracy and making your own meaning of it, or being a talented politician and understanding what Americans say when they say they're skeptical of democracy, especially if they're millennials and zoomers, is that it leads to all these actual weaknesses from the political center. If you are not placing democracy, maybe not on all of your campaign ads or flyers, but at the forefront of your political thought. So, a perfect example. So Alyssa Slotkin, Senator from Michigan, she at the start of the second Trump presidency, you had the big oligarchy tour. You had Bernie and AOC turning out hundreds of thousands of people. And you know, Senator Slotkin was explicitly like skeptical of that, skeptical of the word. She said, quote, like, I'm, I don't think most Americans know what the word oligarchy means, which if I were a politician, what I would have said, despite being a centrist, I would have said like, look, there are a lot of people who are turning out and that's really, really, really huge. Because in a democracy we need people to participate and make their voices heard. But that shows that there's a system and people like me who are in office need to respond to those voices. And yeah, there are some people in that crowd who think, abolish the oligarchy. You know, abolish the oligarchy or the tour itself. They think that that means a wealth tax or Medicare for all, no questions asked, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And those are policies that I might not support as a centrist. But what I also know because there's a lot of people in that crowd, is that some people who see that say, hey, like, why is it that because Elon Musk spent the most money on the election, he gets to place throughout the entire government over all of our people's like control and bureaucracy, 18 year old cultists who know nothing about anything, no one elected. Like that is a way that I would talk about anti oligarchy from a centrist perspective. And when I've told people this anecdote and private thing, I'll say, yeah, like your answer, like we could make it a little shorter and chop it up, but your answer is a better answer for a centrist to give than just sort of, oh, that oligarchy tour is silly. The American people don't know what the word oligarchy means. I though came to that better answer because I was thinking about democracy and participation. And then another big challenge for my centrist crowd that I hang out in is like, we are not good at activating people. We are not good at doing big tours. We're not good at getting people excited or basically believing in something. Understanding that democracy and participation are the core to like a populist, like anti status quo moment. And not knowing that's a problem for you is just such a, such a big, big, big, big problem. So I want my crew to think harder about this. I do want to push you on something. I want to know your thoughts on this. So you said you were skeptical of the 2024 is the most important election of our lifetime language. Here's a thought for you. Since the late 90s, during our sort of formative years, I actually think we've had a bunch of most important elections of our lifetime. So it was never not factual. So, for example, the year 2000 didn't feel like it. The America that alex Al Gore vs. George W. Bush is a fundamentally different America on a million different levels. 2008, fundamentally different America, especially when we focus on the Supreme Court. 2016, 2020, 2024. So my defense in the literal and empirical is that what makes this political moment so awful is we've had five most important elections of our lifetime, and it has actually been accurate to make that statement. So what do you think about that?

C (33:42)

Yeah, Well, I would just say that it's all five can't be the single most important election of our lifetime. You know what I mean? Like, only one of them can be.

B (33:52)

The most important moves forward. So I think about it this way, right? So 1932, in terms of refounding America around the New Deal, that was an incredibly, incredibly, credibly important election. And then 1968, that was an actually incredible, incredible election. 1980, Reagan, I wouldn't say 1992 qualifies. So just like if you were born in the year 19, let's say 1912, so you were a voter in these elections. All three of those elections arguably could have been the most important. So maybe we need different language. But I think what people are trying to get at when they say that term, which sounds dismissive and know it all. So I get why people object to it. If you're just sort of like thinking about politics, you don't want to be talked down to. But it's getting at. We are having consistently high stake elections, and people need to act accordingly.

C (34:41)

Yeah, look, I just worry that kind of rhetoric, it raises the existential stakes to too high, that it creates a certain kind of pressure to conform. Because Kamala and Joe Biden were using that kind of language to say, even if you don't like the Democratic Party, you have to vote for us because the other guy is so dangerous. It kind of relieved them of the responsibility to make their own affirmative case for why they were the better option. It was almost like they were trying to browbeat us into voting for Kamala when actually there were legitimate reasons to not vote for Kamala. I ultimately did. I was torn about it until the very end, and I had mixed feelings about it. But at the end of the Day. I did vote for her, and I think it was the right decision. But I also respect people who felt that they couldn't make that decision, in part because of Gaza for other reasons, whatever it might be. And I think that Democrats would just be much better off as a party if they said, actually, you know what, don't just vote for us because Donald Trump is a potential dictator. Vote for us because we actually have a national message that is inspiring. This goes back to your earlier point about what Slotkin said about oligarchs. We have a leadership of the Democratic Party that is actually afraid of its own base. It suppresses, it almost wants to suppress the kind of organic grassroots organizing that comes out of the rank and file of the party. And this is where not being able to endorse Zoran and Chuck Schumer's unwillingness to do that and the tepid endorsement from Hakeem Jeffries and others, it was almost as if they weren't comfortable with the outpouring of enthusiasm that was coming from Zoran supporters. We have a party that doesn't respect its base. And this is actually where I respect Republicans more, that they actually listen to their base. And if the base is angry about something, that's like a legit topic for the leadership of the party to engage with and take seriously. And I. So that's kind of. That's kind of how I view it. I've just been very disappointed in Democrats. I think they're a feckless, weak party. And honestly, they don't really deserve to win unless they actually change for 2028 and bring us a candidate who is inspiring, who actually deserves to win. And in other words, what I'm saying, Democrats should not take their supporters for granted. And that's what I worry about most of all.

B (37:21)

Yeah. And I think we can see in the middle, I think we can meet in the middle here. And it's useful that you invoke the Republican Party, because here's the thing, and this is, you know, coming from the right and now being in center, the center left, I kind of still have in my DNA sort of how things work on the right versus things work on the left. The Republican Party conservative movement are just as existentialist as the Democratic Party. So, like, so when you're saying telling people there's no other choice, you have to vote for us, Republicans do that too, and conservatives do that as well. But, and this is the key thing, you sort of thread the needle here by pointing out their party is more responsive to the base. So I think the thing you need to do here, because I. And this is why I think it's so important that the book you've written is not the case for a trillion dollar budget or the case for fighting China. It's the case for American power. And when I think of the word power, I think of responsibility and I think very practically in reckoning with the reality of the world. And I think a reckoning. So let's put aside Gaza for a second, because that's the most, I think, contested one. I think the fact that there's a ceasefire under Trump, and also, if you're sort of practical about the skepticism we should have over Biden administration officials who could not get a ceasefire and could not exert American power. I'll give. I'll. Let's just put that issue to the side. I think it may be uncomfortable for a trans activist to hear you have to vote for us because we are obviously better than the Republicans are on this issue. That was just the truth. It was just true. And there were a lot of people who felt. I think. Let me put it this way. The problem is it feels so cool to say that everything that there's a lot of nihilism. And it feels very cool to say everyone's the same and both sides are corporate. And it's like, no. And that could be true to a certain degree, especially aesthetically, but on immigration and LGBTQ rights, sorry, this just was uncontestably true. And sometimes you have to tell the base things that are uncomfortable about that reality. I think people need. I think leaders need to be able to tell their base what time it is and the seriousness of the situation. I think you need to have leaders who say, hey, read Project 2025. Look at the rhetoric of Trump administration officials or future Trump administration officials. ICE is coming. And you may be mad about Biden's border deal, but here is the deal. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. And that's something that I think will make people in the base uncomfortable. But what you could also do and what the Democratic Party leadership is not doing a good job of doing is also making clear that you're also listening. So I think. I think it takes two to tink. And I think you get more credibility to say what time it is as a leader, if you make putting the base. I don't want to say putting the base first because the country needs to come first, but you need to make clear that you see yourself as responsive in listening.

C (40:15)

Yeah. And I think it's that sense that Democrats weren't listening that they. People just want to be heard. They want to feel like they matter. This goes back to the democracy point. They don't want to feel powerless. We all want at least a little bit of power and feel that we can kind of control our own destiny. And Democrats, I don't think are. I don't think they're great at giving people that sense, but I totally take your point. I mean, knowing what we know now, there is no doubt that a Kamala Harris administration would have been a lot, much, much better than what we have now. I think it was also hard for people to anticipate just how bad the second Trump administration would be on things like weaponizing ice to terrorize people throughout the country or deporting people on that.

B (41:06)

Sorry, guy. This is a. So I'm limited by the fact that this is a 501c3 podcast, so I can't get too political. This is at the Niskanin Center. But Mike, sorry, this is pretty obvious in September. Do you know what I mean? I don't think if I just totally could say whatever I wanted and not imperial the tax status of the organizations. I'm, like, sort of, sort of out. Like, every single thing that's happened was predictable. So I want to push you on that.

C (41:31)

Yeah, look, it's fair. It was predictable, but I think it's hard for people to actually get their heads around, like, they can maybe talk about how bad it would be, but to actually see it happening. I think there was always this sense that. That when push comes to shove, there would be more constraints, more limitations on what the Trump administration could actually pull off. The fact that they've had so little resistance and they've been able to basically, you know, bludgeon universities into submission in ways that will affect our elite universities for decades to come. Like, there's things like that that we knew they wanted to do that, but I think we didn't really. We were having trouble imagining what it would actually look like in practice. And maybe that's my own fault, that I should have had a better imagination, but I think it's. It's hard sometimes to actually get your head around the reality of what's. Of what's to come until it actually happens, because everything is theoretical until you actually see it being implemented. But I take your point. We should have known. A lot of people did know. I have to say that I didn't think. I thought it would be bad. I just didn't think it would be as bad as it actually was. And maybe that just shows that I gotta next time around I gotta expect the worst.

B (42:54)

No, and the thing, and the thing is, right, like to your point, I'm not trying to even just perfectly contradict you because if we just did a whole segment on the fact that Democratic party leadership has no credibility with voters left, right and center. If I were to cast the people to make clear how bad things were going to be and be taken seriously, this is not the cast of people but I would select so like, because I think that's actually very well taken. Your point about how? Like, because for example, I knew things were going to be bad because like I still have lots of friends on the right and you know, I, I'm not outing anybody. I don't like leak my group chats. Like I'm very like legit and like good faith as an actor. So I just knew what the deal was. I see people and they say what they say in private. But to be fair, that's not the reality for your everyday person or not even everyday person, like your average DC staffer who works at a center left organization is not seeing right wing group chats where people are basically saying like, oh yeah, this is going to be crazy. I do think though, you know, Kevin Roberts is in the news. I think Kevin Roberts during Project 2025 summer saying that like there could be blood in the streets. Like that was a real like O this is. That personally was a moment. But this is also frustrating because I've had some sort of center left friends ask about the Kevin Roberts debacle and controversy at Heritage and when you explain what's happening with Wright Groipers and Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, they all basically say, oh, that sounds silly, this doesn't matter. I mean it's bad that he's saying you should platform Nazis, but whatever. This all just sounds silly. And the thing that I think I want to make clear to people is who aren't on the right is that things that seem really silly and inside baseball, should we actually actually matter? Like it actually matters that one of the central institutions of the American right, which is, you know, is a very small and insider like driven world. The fact that they now think that they have to platform Nick Fuentes is crazy and says something about the actual like state of the moment and sort of what time it is.

C (44:57)

Yeah, so I actually, you know, I'm still on some of those right wing group chats myself because I think they see me as an interlocutor who's like, who tries to understand where they're coming from. I do make an effort to do that. I was actually at a right wing house party like two months ago, and I was like one of the only liberals there. And a few people were talking about how Nick Fuentes was the future of the conservative movement. And I remember thinking to myself, nick Fuente, I mean, I was familiar with him, but I'm like, he seems still pretty fringe. Are these people getting ahead of themselves? What are they actually talking about? There's no way this guy is going to break into the mainstream. But they anticipated what would happen by a few weeks, a few weeks later after that party. I'm like, whoa, those guys at the party, they were right about this. They saw it coming. And I do think in that sense it's very important to be in those conversations, to have people, to have friends and acquaintances who are on the right, because then you get to see, like, you get a preview for what's to come. And it's, it's my own fault that I don't always take those conversations seriously. The Nick Fuentes thing, I have to say that caught me a little bit off guard.

B (46:13)

Yeah. And I will say this is another way of explaining this, which basically people have been genuinely confused by why Nick Fuentes has had so much influence. And the answer I've come to is that, yes, like, he gets a lot of streaming views, but I doubt many of those people are turning out in elections in either direction. Right. Like his. And this is why it's a terrible idea for conservatives to like, take him as literally as Kevin Roberts took him, which is that Nick Fuentes, his politics are not the politics of, like, we're going to turn out in midterm and local elections and support our move in party. That clear. Nihilism. Right. Like, it's going to lead to like, nihilism and all those different things. It's not going to be like a political movement with legs, so people say. So why are they listening to it? I'm sort of like, well, because Nick Fuentes is winning arguments. Like, do what? I mean, so, like, it's like saying to. It's like saying to someone in 1968 or 1966. Why are people starting to listen to National Review, Goldwater, Conservatism? National Review doesn't have that many readers. Goldwater just lost the 64 election. Why are people listening? I think what people struggle to understand is that there are actually just people that on both sides. And I think in a weird way this is admirable. Even though in Fuentes it's a disaster who actually just believe in ideas and believe in arguments. And what I think you're seeing on the right is that Nick Fuentes is actually beyond just like the Holocaust stuff and the comments about women and everything. He's actually making arguments, right? Like he's making arguments about what it is to be an American. He's making arguments about assimilation and H1BS and policy and whether we put the economy over culture, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that are actually winning people over. I mean, like Senator Eric Schmidt, like, he gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference where he straight up said, like, you know, Kazakh can, like not be an American. Like, that is a, like Fuentes like idea like that. That is actually like an idea that he's not being politically rewarded for saying that. Right. It's not, it's not like he gave that speech and he just got a bunch of money or he got the best staff ever. Like that is him actually being influenced towards a far right, I think, fundamentally anti American worldview. But that's because that argument is winning. So, like, that's why, you know, the friends of ours who said that Fuentes is the future, I think they are reading the clear fact that if you skate where the puck is going, these arguments are actually influencing people in a real way and that the traditional GOP establishment is not actually. They're not actually winning the argument at an ideas level.

C (48:42)

Yeah. I do think as. As abhorrent as he is, that we have to take Nick Fuentes seriously as representing something real. He has tapped into something. And if we don't understand what that something is, we. We ignored it at our own peril. And this is this. I think that understanding radicals, understanding extremists on either side, we have to understand what drives them, what animates them, because we are in a moment where radicalism is popular, where things that did not seem possible five years ago are now becoming possible because people are so angry and disaffected. I personally don't feel super angry. And I mean, I think America's pretty fucking awesome. And so it's hard for me sometimes to relate to the anger that people feel about the status quo. I know that things aren't great, but my parents also came from a dictatorship and I know what the alternative is. I've also lived under dictatorships, granted, as an American citizen, so I had some protection. But still, it is a scary thing to live in those kinds of situations and to see what the alternative is. And oftentimes I think that we as Americans take what we have for granted because a lot of us don't have that direct experience with what the alternative actually is. And this is where I think children of immigrants actually have a lot to bring to the table. Because our parents. Our parents knew. We saw what our parents had to go through, whether economically and politically in places like Egypt. So I think that reminding people of that, hey, you guys think it's bad? Yes, it might be bad in certain ways, but again, trust me, it could be a lot worse. And America is still pretty good, all things considered.

B (50:35)

And it's funny, your whole point about the difficulty of relating to anti status quo politics. I mean, real quick, you're at the Washington Post, I work at think tanks, right? Like, we're not. We are not the obvious people you would draft into sort of, how do you understand populist America? But, you know, to borrow, you know, phrasing from the cultural left, like, I think actually what people like you and I can just do is, like, check our privilege unironically, which is that, like, okay, so I'm a dude who gets to work at think tanks and go to fancy dinners and go to fancy conferences. I got to buy a house. I get paid to read books and talk to people. I feel like a winner, right? In the most, like, 1990s. What was the sort of. What were my parents hopes and dreams for me? And I'm just sort of like, oh, wait, there are a lot of people in our age cohorts who don't feel like winners, who I don't feel. And here's the thing, too, also, I get to work for D.C. institutions, but I get to live in Austin. That's because I get to do remote work. I'm one of, like, the last remaining holdout, you know, final soldiers fighting for Japan in the 1970s. After World War II. It gets to just work from home remotely, right? Like, and that's because every single thing about my background and experience has made it so that, like, I was set up to just have a really great life. And I just encounter way too many people who are sort of in my social cohorts or like, on my social scene who just, like, could not articulate the ways that I just did that. Like, here are some, like, unique things that, that make you feel like everything's going great for you, but that obviously would not extend to other people. And way too many people who I sort of, like, hobnob with in centrist circles. They could not do what I just did, which is say, like, here Are all these, like, specifically individualistic things that make me feel like I have a great life here? For example, I got to buy a house, and it's really great and it's awesome, right? Like, all these, like, obvious, like, great things. I got to meet my spouse at a house party and not, like, swiping through Tinder for five years on end. Right?

C (52:29)

No, you are lucky in that. Yeah, right.

B (52:32)

That's a unique thing. And if you just say to yourself, like, okay, so that's you benefiting from the economy, from the diploma divide, from, like, working in, like, sort of the knowledge space. But guess what? Like, how would someone feel if they didn't have any of those privileges I have? It's very easy to see. Oh, yeah, that's why they'd be radical and they'd be radicalized if I just sort of said, why can't everyone be reasonable, everything's great. And if these populists would just, like, quiet down and shut up, they could see how great life is when it's like, dude, obviously life's great for you, Marshall. So I think that is just such an instinct that you just really need to have if you're going to be in the position we are.

C (53:10)

Yeah, that's a really good point. At the same time, I would say that outside of material comforts, the basic keys to happiness, and this is maybe a bit of a digression, the basic keys to happiness are pretty much available to everyone. I. I kind of would talk about as the three Fs and the C, friends, family, faith and community and that. So even if you're not doing well, even if your political tribe isn't winning, even if you're not buying the house, you don't necessarily need high, you know, you don't need a lot of material comfort to feel grateful. And I think that this is where the role of religion plays an important role. That if you're a believer in God, you have a faith tradition, you value your local community, you try your best to find a spouse. As difficult as it's becoming, that, like, there are ways to live a meaningful life outside of politics. What bothers me a little bit when. Is when people think that politics is the path to a meaningful life. Politics is a site of imperfection and dissatisfaction. If you put all your hopes and dreams in politics, you're inevitably going to be disappointed. So I think at the end of the day, I just want to remind people life is elsewhere. And the people who, like, fall in love with the arguments of Nick Fuentes, I just worry they're seeking meaning in a place that will never give them the ultimate meaning that they really crave. Yeah.

B (54:42)

And I think before we get to the last question, taking us back to the book, I think what's so important there is that in describing your three Fs in a circle, I think the starting point that isn't just something that political leaders need to say, but anyone should just say is just agency. I think the worst thing about Fuentes and a lot of the Red Pill Manosphere podcast, right, is that their entire framework is about telling pissed off people who I think, frankly, should be pissed off, who I think haven't been given tools. So I don't think they've been given the cultural language or the abilities or the training or even, frankly, the leadership models and the role models to embody this idea. But I think we just need to talk more about agency, Right? So I like what you did there, where you said, here are all these material things that are off about your life right now. So, for example, if you are a zoomer who doesn't feel like you could buy a house, who doesn't think the American dream is successful to you, there are specific political and policy choices that people in power have made over the past 50 years that have made that true. And we could say that while also saying outside of that thing, you have agency and you can do things right. Like, I've been doing a lot of reading about the, you know, 19th century Anglo American. I think what's been really inspiring about it, like, there was just something about Victorian muscular Christianity and that. Like, it was all about agency. Theodore Roosevelt's dad takes him into his study when Theodore is like, you know, in his early, early tens and just says, like, hey, like, you're really smart. You read books all the time, but you're an asthmatic child who's weak. You need to build your mind and build your body. And Theodore Roosevelt famously says, I will build my body. And then he just becomes Theodore Roosevelt. And I think that type of anecdote is genuinely, like, really inspiring to me because the idea is like, you can just do the thing right? Like, you can just do things. And that's what agency is for me. So I think we need to bring agency. And this, this isn't a policy proposal to your point. So, like, this exists outside of pure materialist politics, but just sort of like, hey, if your situation sucks, you can actually do things. And at its core, Nick Fuentes, politics are about saying, like, your life sucks materially and culturally. And the reason for that is like a bunch of Jews in New York who run everything. Not once do they say, you know what? Like, you go for a walk and if you get what and if you do like, and if you're overweight, if you go for a walk every morning, you can lose weight. You can do the thing. You can do X, Y and Z, you can start taking care. This is why it's so on trial. Helpful. The Jordan Peterson, like, went off the deep end because, like, the good.

C (57:20)

Literally think about Jordan Peterson, right?

B (57:22)

This was the Jordan Peterson's, like, 2017 good iteration was like, take agency over cleaning your room and you could extend them to doing other things.

C (57:32)

Yes. Yeah. Amen to agency. I'm with you.

B (57:35)

So here's the closing question, taking us back to the book. So I think if we make the case for power as liberals, both to people, to mostly to people who are left who are most skeptical, and then also to people on our team, we're slightly more to the center who feel just sort of a lack of confidence. I think this is also a huge problem for people. I think we have to say what the end of American power is. My answer to what the end of American power is is I desperately. We need sexier language, but I just want the status quo preserved. At a core level, like the single triumph of Post World War II policy has been the fact that we have not had a world war. We have not had millions of men enlisted to go fight and die in trenches or in beaches in the Pacific. There was no use of a nuclear weapon. The Soviet Union never invaded Western Europe. Those things didn't happen. And that is. It's so easy to focus on every. This is what to your point listing. Because this meme goes around Twitter, all the 20 interventions America did and the cost of that. You also have to do a difficult thing of looking at the cost of not caring about things which could have been World War iii, which could have been more great power war. But I desperately want a status quo preserve that doesn't involve great powers behaving the way they behave before World War II. So that is what I want with American power. What do you want with American power?

C (58:57)

I want some of that too, for sure. I mean, I think it's really important for us to think about the counterfactual history if America was not dominant after World War II, what the world might have looked like if the Soviet Union had won out in the Cold War, we wouldn't have had the third wave of democratization that happened throughout the 1990s at the end of World War II, only about 8% of the world's countries were democracies. By the 1990s it was around 50%. This is one of the greatest gains in human history and we just don't even pay much attention to it. Again, we take it for granted, the number of battlefield deaths decreased significantly when the US was dominant. 80s going into the 90s when America was the sole superpower. We did have a decade of relative peace and prosperity. America's dominance actually leads to good outcomes. That said, I wouldn't want us to rest on our laurels either because I think that going to what we were talking about, populist anger, the system hasn't worked for a lot of people. And the system helped create the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Great Recession. There's been a number of things that happened over the past 25 years that signal a kind of failure of elite policy making. So I think we also have to be just very attuned to the fact that the world as it is. Yes, sometimes I wish we'd go back to the 1990s and the liberal world order, the rules based order. But the rules based order wasn't working for all countries, including in the Middle East. And this is where, if I'm making the case to my fellow Arabs and Muslims to believe in American power, I have to be able to give them an affirmative case of how the US can actually improve. That means moving away from our policy of supporting dictatorships. It means being more balanced on Israel, Palestine. It means not getting into stupid wars again. It means not supporting more aggression towards Iran and having an all out war with them. I do think that we, that being comfortable with the status quo, it's got to be a little bit more sexy than that because the status quo, this is the problem with, with centrism. And I actually like, I appreciate centrists and centrism and I totally get that's where you're coming from. And there's a lot to say for that. But it's not enough to rally the troops, so to speak. You know, centrism just doesn't get the juices flowing and the emotions like, you know, you need to get people's emotions engaged. And this is where I think we have to be able to present a more optimistic version of where the world can possibly go. And that's a world that is more moral and more just now what that looks like in practice. We can disagree on the specific policy prescriptions, but I do think, especially if you're a progressive, you're still bringing it back to where we were in the beginning. To be a progressive means that you think that the world can improve, that America can improve, and that American foreign policy can be better than it actually was before.

B (62:18)

Yeah. And I think to close us out, I would say that I take your comments about and to be honest, I usually describe myself as more center left liberal than centrist. But what I'm trying to push the center on, especially during a moment like this where we actually, I'd say my political objective is we've just had swing elections between both sides every single cycle for the past 20 years. And I think that has to stop. There actually needs to be a consensus solution that moves us forward. And I think what I've gotten to is that, like, I have a moderate personality, so I'm reasonable and I can be talked to. And I like talking to people on different sides. I see myself as like a conciliator, but that is different than me saying so my public policy positions are just right in the center of everything. I think centrists who have personalities like that should root themselves in that personality, but get uncomfortable with recognizing that things need to change. And this can't just be like, we throw Michael Bloomberg's ideas on the table as if that's like, the solution to what we're doing here. So, Shadi, this has been really great. The book is the Case for American Power, and I hope everyone checks it out.

C (63:21)

Thanks so much, Marshall.