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The Realignment
589 | Danielle Lee Tomson: When the Story Breaks: MAGA, Liberalism, and the Battle to Define Reality
01:15:26
Dr. Danielle Lee Tomson, author of the Failure to Communicate Substack and the forthcoming Under the Influence: What's Real When America Feels Fake, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Danielle revisit her concept of the "authenticity gap": the growing mismatch between our expectations and lived reality, and its defining role in America's turn to populism, why technocratic campaigning and politics crowds out meaning, culture, and first-order questions, why effective storytelling is a critical candidate and movement skillset, and why the next phase of left-liberal politics will require fusion between feuding camps, not factional warfare.
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- [00:00]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode is a sequel of sorts to last fall's conversation with Dr. Danielle Lee Thompson, where we discussed her concepts of the Authenticity Gap, world rebuilding, storytelling, and a lot of the big themes the Realignment wants to cover moving forward as we look at a center left liberal progressive politics that finds itself in the place the right found itself after the 2012 election. Going to rehash some of that fall conversation, but in terms of directing people where the show is going and where a lot of my editorial focus is going to be, the themes we cover, everything from fusion in between feuding factions on the center left to the left, and the broader conversations about where the American people are relative to the ideas, policies, polls, and sort of procedures and tactics that come out of D.C. are really at the center. So I hope you all enjoy the conversation. And if you haven't listened to the previous episode of Danielle, it's number 573 and it came out in mid September. Hope you all enjoy the conversation. Danielle Lee Thompson, welcome back to the Realignment.
- [01:16]
B
Thank you, Marshall, and Happy New Year.
- [01:18]
A
Happy New Year. This will be the second episode of the Realignment this year, and this is episode I'm actually really psyched to put together. So you and I spoke in August and I released our first episode back in September. And not to gas you up too much, but out of all of the episodes I've done over the past, like two years or so where I was really sort of coming to the realization that the first few years of the Realignment sort of reached an end point and the story was going to evolve. So I was really just interested in taking the show a bunch of different places. Your episode received just like the most, just sort of positive go down this lane feedback from people I love. I won't name names, but there are very significant and important people in D.C. world who've literally said they pulled over on the side of the road after listening to you speak about these issues and called me wanting to articulate their thoughts. So I really want to make clear here and plant a flag that, like, you and I have been working together. We are going to work together. And I really just want this whole Authenticity Gap worldview story building, what's the future of ideology Conversation to really be the Realignment's bread and butter. So with this episode, we're going to sort of hopefully chart new ground, but in other ways, because it's the start of the year, I want to really just sort of make clear to people in a way they'll notice, like what the deal is here. So before we kind of get into discussing a lot of your work and my shared thoughts on it, there is one announcement that folks saw on Substack but maybe didn't hear in the audio version after the episode you actually announced your book that's going to come out some point in the near future. So I'd love for you just to give a quick intro to that and relate how that book in many ways just seems to be ready made for the realignment's audience.
- [03:03]
B
Absolutely. So I'm really happy to announce that I have a book with Oxford University Press coming out. It's called under the Influence, should be out either later this year or at latest early in 27. And it's about my time doing doctoral research that turned into a proper book of hanging out with MAGA social media influencers in and around and including Steve Banner. And so I think a lot of folks in the past 10 years have analyzed these folks as dis and misinformers. But what really intrigued me about them was their performance, their storytelling, the ways in which they created reality. And for me it came down to this idea that I expound in the book and also a little bit on my substack, which is called Failure to communicate. And it's something called the authenticity gap. And so this is when our expectations of reality, which are shaped by the stories we tell ourselves, the culture, the aesthetics around us that tell us, you know, how the world works, no longer align with our lived experiences of reality. So if that story or that expectation doesn't live up to what's happening around you, it can feel like it's unraveling. And I think that something that Bannon et al and MAGA generally did over the past, like honestly, 15, almost even 20 years, was explain, hey, there's a story here of powerful people, oligarch, a world order that is no longer living up and serving Americans. So America for Americans is the sort of core instinct of maga. And you know, I go into this a little bit in the book and also in my substack as well. Like when we think of authentic, you might just think of something as like original or real, but like what really is reality? And I think there are a lot of folks who critique Magaland as crude or crass and all of these things and a lot of other words that we could use, especially after the invasion of Venezuela. But I think that like, I really go back to even just like the core use of the word authentes, which means acting on one's own authority. But in real, if you're really into classical Greek, it actually means murderer. So there's something life or death about the. About being authentic and something really tangible and somatic and, like, tells you, like, what is the good life? What is the bad life? What is real, what is false? What can I touch? What can I think? And that's where stories are not just like some, you know, something purely intellectual or not real. It's something that we. That explains and intervenes in your reality. And so I think, like, yeah, like, liberalism used to be something quite somatic and primal. It, like, I think of liberalism as the definition that Lionel Trilling gives. Like, something that we've lost the primal imagination of liberalism, because it's the first time a state organized. Was a state has been organized to essentially use state power not for a king, not for an empire, but for individual and group human happiness. So you have to have a definition of what's happy and good. What's the good life, is there, Is there, God? Is there? What's your relationship to sexuality? What's your relationship to your material reality? What's your relationship to each other in order to even begin down the policies, the solutionism, the economic and the economic system. So, yeah, I went a bit there. And so I hope that you all buy the book in the future because it's very exciting and definitely more of like, an analysis of how these influencers create an alternative worldview to contest and collect people and bring people along into creating this new reality for not just America, but a lot of other countries around the world.
- [07:07]
A
Yeah. And to dive into a couple things there. So, one, let me just kind of give my example that comes to mind when it comes to an authenticity gap, because I want to make this very clear to people. So you and I are children of the 1990s millennials. So you can think about it this way. So I would imagine, and this person definitely exists. People in the audience definitely know them in their own lives. Imagine you are a person who grew up in the 1990s, and you grew up in the sort of Bill Clinton work hard, play by the rules, American dream, go to college, get a job, find a spouse or partner. And if you do those things, you'll wake up in your own American dream. Nice white picket house in the suburbs. However, there are a lot of people who are in that sort of storyline who are going to wake up and in their 30s, realize they actually can't afford a house. And Actually there are downsizing going on at their employer because AI jobs are sort of coming to the fore and people are losing their actual jobs and there's no clear path for them. Another example would be, and this is sort of the Gen Z version of this, there's been a lot of great reporting and how entry level jobs are getting wrecked right now, especially in tech. So imagine you were a zoomer who followed the like STEM learn to code thing and not ironically in the sort of disparaging way we all dunk on learn to code for like justifiable reasons, but you just actually like went to high school, picked up stem, you did your calc and pre calc, you go to college, you get a STEM degree because that's the whole future. And now you're on the job market for one to two years because the entry level jobs are getting eaten right now. My version of the authenticity gap and so pushback at this is not the right framing for people who are sort of coming to these concepts for the first time is that you're just going to find yourself saying like, whoa, the life I'm living, multiple roommates, no path to home ownership, very a real lack of anything that looks like, quote, the American dream is going to just really be destabilizing and unrooting. And what's so effective about the populist left and right is that they just have ready made stories like the populist right one is going to blame elites and immigrants and wokeism and all those different things. The left one is going to focus on like the oligarchy and capitalism. But you as this unraveled person, to use your wording, we just have two different ideologies that will ready made offer you a way of rooting and understanding yourself and where things need to go next. So we love to hear like your feedback and thoughts on that.
- [09:37]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I think for me, I talk very early on in the book about my own personal authenticity gap with the death of a really dear cousin of mine in western Pennsylvania, where I'm from. I'm from very close to where Trump got shot in July 2024 near Butler Butler County, Pennsylvania. And I had a cousin pass away about 10 years ago now from an opioid overdose. And to me, like it was a time, it was sort of like still in Obama years where apparently we're so progressive and the world's getting better. But yet, like I noticed I was fresh out of college. Jobs are difficult. This was, I didn't necessarily see the past that had been promised in some ways in the American story, if you just like work hard, go to a good school, you're going to get set up and like somewhere in your 20s, you're going to buy a house. Okay, there's that, there's like the economic side of it. But for me, it was also like this very real life and death thing of these companies, whether or the way that drugs move. And these were pills, right? Like these are prescription pills, pharmaceutical companies, right? That something about our government, our economy, our systems of regulation were not necessarily out to, for Americans, they were out for somebody or something else. And that feeling of loss, like when you literally lose someone in your life can be super destabilizing. And you start thinking, well, maybe someone isn't looking out for my welfare or my well being. So my personal experience can also be reflected in a more national one where that deals not just with economics, but with pride, with family, with love, with life and death. And enter folks like Trump, Steve Bannon, who were telling a story about how not only these elites, these pharmaceutical overlords, these or these immigrants bringing drugs and crime into the country are creating these life and death problems for American and that our systems of government, society and economy are not equipped to deal with it. And then they offer this all because they already meet you where you're at in that place of pain. They can take you on a new journey and say those old systems aren't working. We're going to go out and build a new system. And you could say, oh well, what is that system? That doesn't, that isn't clear to me yet. Okay, but it's better than what you got now. And I think like going back to that, especially in this moment where Trumpism in its own way is taking a turn and shifting and there's a lot of different direct, like I don't know if the storyline has shifted from America first isolationism to America first imperialism, perhaps. But like, I think we need to revisit that moment of about 10 years ago and rethink the story, especially as liberals or progressives rethink the story that has unfolded and the authenticity gap that has emerged and also the future authenticity gaps that will come as a result of some of the choices and broken promises of Trumpism.
- [12:51]
A
So in your authenticity gap piece that I will link to in the show notes, you specifically talk about the fact that the populist left and right without because once again you coined the term authenticity gap. But you cannot look at populist left or right messaging, storytelling, main characters, et cetera, and not understand that they at a vibes level understand this authenticity gap problem. Why does the center, the establishment, the center right, the center left, not just intuitively get that this is sort of the dynamic that people are experiencing. I'm sort of interested in like the sociological sort of analysis there.
- [13:32]
B
I think part of it is just that liberalism, and especially technocratic liberalism has been like the hegemonic force in America for, for most of our lifetimes and our parents lifetimes. I speak as a millennial, right. And so there's like a sort of assumption that democracy is good, that American internationalism is good, that there we should use government, efficient government, and that to, to make people's lives better. Especially if you're saying like a Democrat or and I think like to a certain extent those words, those ideas, those experiences have been taken for granted. And so there's of course there's like a matter of, okay, maybe 90s deregulation didn't work, maybe this like super efficient government doesn't work. It's what Dana Boyd, a great sociologist I love, calls the Jenga politics, where you're trying like maybe from the left more people are demanding certain things of government, and then from the right you're demanding that government is more efficient. And the whole system, the tower keeps like having pieces pulled from the bottom with more burdened on the top until this whole thing could fall down. And so we keep, I think liberals keep taking for granted that this Jenga tower that they've built through the years is, it could fall apart. And they're taking for granted that liberalism itself as a system could and is being contested right now. And we don't necessarily have like the first order thinking or even the language sometimes to, to that is not so impoverished and hollowed out to really describe what's happening. So that's why when you have these alternatives, of course you have the benefit of being the underdog. Whether you're a populist left or populist right. You, your ideas, your policies, your way of viewing the world hasn't maybe been tested in the same way that liberalism and then economic systems like neoliberalism have been tested in the past 30 to 50 years. So they have that sort of advantage of being the cool oppositional thing. But liberals are now, I would say, in that oppositional situation. And it's a very important and very exciting time to rethink those first order principles of like, what are we doing here? What is the good life? Why do we want this to happen? And to engage some of what Arlie Hochschild, another amazing sociologist who had that. That book Strangers in Their Own Land come out about 10 years ago about deep stories, right? Like, these are stories that tell narrative. It's a narrative that feelings tell, as she says, like, what does this feel like to me in my body? And is this story explaining how I feel, what's going on? And, you know, for. For a government system that's designed for individual human happiness, such as liberalism, we. We don't talk a lot about happiness. So that's something where I think it's an important moment to. To rethink those principles.
- [16:32]
A
So here's where I love what you just said, is that we're now in a post 2024 world. And the thing that happened here from a storytelling project perspective is, is that after Trump won in 2016 and Bernie and the populist left overperformed in the primary, you had a situation where a lot of people told themselves, okay, so that was just an aberration because you had Russiagate and Hillary ran a bad campaign and she'd been unpopular for 30 years. So maybe there was a different person who could have run. Joe Biden should have run in 2016. If we didn't have a limit on the number of times people could run for the presidency, Obama could have run again, and Obama obviously would have beat Trump. That's something I actually believe too. So what they would then say is like, so if all the things that I just said are true, then how much is the world really collapsing? How broken were things after 2012? It just seems like we're in this weird situation. So then you have 2020 and Biden wins campaigning on normalcy. You have Covid, where we highlight everything that was wrong with the first Trump presidency. So you have a lot of folks who could just say, like, okay, we're getting back to the path from this aberration. But after 2024 and after all of the different cultural vibe shifts and narrative dynamics, no one is. No one serious is the way I'll put it, is pretending we can go back to 2014 again, or that everything was just like hunky dory in that sense. So now you're finding yourself as anyone outside of the populist maga, right? You're now the counterculture to the culture. This is something you said on the episode that people really, really liked, and I should have taken it on the road. It's been very, very engaging. Where this also explains what you hinted at with MAGA evolving into something else over the past year, which is that MAGA is at its strongest when it's the counterculture critiquing things. So critiquing factlessness of the Biden administration, acknowledging the bad vibes, pointing out that the Democratic Party in many ways and still is a party of hall monitors and apple polish people who just sort of strive up the ladder of success and just can't really hang in a way that a podcaster would like. That's MAGA at its best. At its worst, though, when it's in a governing position, MAGA becomes about a ballroom which people hate. It becomes about petty acts of corruption and self dealing that don't relate to people's actual things. There's been a really fascinating polling about how like a lot of the young men who swore, who swung towards Trump, especially the zoomers, are now incredibly unhappy. And once again, that's because you're now. They are now seeing that the culture, now that MAGA is in charge of things that they've built is not a culture they're particularly interested in. Imagine you're just sort of a reality gap zoomer and you see the White House ballroom or you see the gold bars or all the CEOs in the Oval Office, and that has nothing to do with you. That's why all the sort of like Trumpy podcasters are sort of running other direction, because they can kind of see this. So I think it's both exciting to know that if you are a liberal, if you are a progressive, if you're a lefty, or even if you're a traditional senator or Republican opposed to what's going on, in many ways, you are the counterculture. The problem though is because to your point, a lot of people, especially in a very hierarchical Democratic party, are still rooted in the technocracy and meritocracy of the 2000s. They just like cannot think counterculturally. And if anything, they then undervalue the importance of stories and vibes in those dynamics. Like, it's been really funny. The one place where you're in my work has not vibed well, has been in very, very wonky empirical spaces. So when I've been on this sort of roadshow the past few months, right, when I've talked about our dynamics, I hosted a conversation around abundance and I directed abundance towards this. I'm not going to say who this was, but it was Chatham House, so I could actually refer to this. This person was like, wait, why are we talking about stories and liberalism? We need to talk about single stair reform in Florida. That's what we need to be doing here. And for my perspective, I'm like, 2010's called, they want their vox takes back. That's not the thing. That's actually everything. Matt Iglesias went on Joe Rogan and the performance went incredibly poorly and the audience didn't like him because like that style of politics, the like, we read the studies and we know all the facts and we explain things to people. Doesn't resonate, it doesn't work. And this is where I want to be really, really precise. I'm not saying empirics and metrics and truth don't matter, but this is why we're talking about performance and storytelling. And this is why if you're actually in government, you need to really, really care about the studies and the research. And you should probably call a blanc who covers immigration policy before you call us when you're trying to, like, formulate the, like, dials and knobs of what we're doing with refugee admissions moving forward. But if you're trying to actually create a popular politics that resonates with people, the Walt crowd should be near the back of the line for who actually is going to vibe and actually lead and lead and dictate a counterculture.
- [21:51]
B
And it's something very interesting that we talk about a lot of how the right will use facts and not just the right, like climate scientists have known this for a long time. How the fossil fuel industry will create its own science to support its real stakes in fossil fuel extraction and also in advertising, that there's something about Rees Peck in his books, Fox Populism talks about the idea of the populist intellectual tactic. Let's bring in an expert who has data and polling in order to back up our claims. And one of my favorite pieces, I have a whole chapter on Kayfabe in my book, which is it comes from wrestling in the early 20th century of performing a scripted storyline as if it were real. And of course, fight promoters would use this tactic to make sure that their favorite fighter wouldn't be injured and then not go on the next circuit in the next town. So you'd have to build up these stories. And in 2011, Eric Weinstein, right, like, this is the Eric Weinstein of Teal Capital wrote a piece in 2011 what scientific concept could improve everybody's cognitive toolkit. And he talks about Kayfabe and the ways in which, like, people try to perform or assume a truth or play a role in a knowledge ecosystem. And everyone sort of like tries to play that role. And I think, unfortunately the. In more liberal circles, or Matt Iglesias, as you were saying, like, forgot that this is also a kind of theater in its own way, like liberalism or neoliberalism or being a Democrat, There is also a theater. And if you're not aware of the story of the good guys and the bad guys, the faces and the heels, if you want to use wrestling terms, I love wrestling, these kinds of things, then you're going to lose the plot. And I think that's kind of what we got to get back to is what is the plot? Where are we in our narrative arc historically or generationally? And I think that's why folks are going back, especially on in left circles, to socialism, which has this, you know, Marxist story. And that has been interpreted or misinterpreted for better and worse because it has a vision of what history is and where it's going. Or on the flip side, people are drawn to religion. Or in my circles, millennial female with, like, costar and the pattern app. Right. I talked about this last time, like astrology. People are looking for other ways of narrating where they're going. And if you don't have that in liberalism or, or progressivism, then you're going to fail in the wake of other folks who have really figured out this story, especially on the right.
- [24:42]
A
Yeah. And it's really funny because we talked about this a little bit in the September episode, but a cool thing that happened for me was I've told this story on the podcast too many times, so I won't overdo it here, but I had my big interview at welcome Fest with Derek Thompson and Representative Jake Auchincross, and I just noted, hey, you know, I'm at this centrist gathering, and I've spent most of my time in left and right populous faces. And the biggest difference I'm noticing is that there's just like, no story here. There's lots of talk about polling and messaging and tactics and how do we defeat the groups, but the ratio is just totally reversed. So at a populist left or right gathering, maybe 10% is focused on tactics. The other 90%, though, is the stuff that you and I are interested in that we are talking about. And obviously there is some policy. But to your point, the policy is we're then bringing in this expert to really, as a cherry on top to show that what we're doing is real here. So I just basically said, what do you two think about that and what is the story? So this was cited in New York Magazine in their issue on the future of the Democratic Party is just like a coming attraction of where this is going. So that was really validating for me from like, where does my project go? Because I want to make my project about this story. And before I sort of go deeper on that, I also want to say it's very interesting. So I'm writing a piece on this and someone basically said, I notice in your writing on this, you yourself, Marshall, are not saying what you think the story is. You're kind of talking about the need to engage in a storytelling project. So I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on this because, like, my takeaway from being in these populist rights spaces and populist left spaces after 2017, 2018 is that if a person had walked in at the start of either of those projects and been like, okay, here's the thing, here's the deal. They both a wouldn't be taken seriously. They also probably would have been wrong, but they would have kind of missed the point of what the actual thing was. Because like I said, I used the word project very specifically because, like, if you were hanging out on the populist right as a 20 something in D.C. in 2015, we would just get together. Some of these people now work in the White House in the Vance office and just be like, hey man, like, America's pretty fucked up right now and what do we feel about that? And hey, do you notice that our bosses at our Center Right think tank seem to really be off about something? And it's not just the fact that, like, we're young people who like, obviously think that we know better than our elders. Like, we actually think there is something wrong about their understanding of how politics and policy works and their sort of temp check of the, of the country and the election. So we just talk about that and that to me, over the years, then built into an actual white project. And there are all sorts of dead ends. My favorite favorite dead end that my wife still dunks on is I went to a conference that was titled Aristo Populism, which is beyond. It's exactly what you think it is. We're in this populist revolt. We need a strong, mostly Catholic, aristocratically inclined elite to rule over this populism that was left in 2018 for a reason. I didn't agree with it at the time, but once again, that was just a part of the evolution of the project and that got ditched once. I think the existential level of cringe attached to it was clear to people. So I just Want to really suggest to people, I don't want the point of this episode to basically be okay, Marshall, Danielle, you guys are talking about story, story, story. What's your story? If you don't have a specific story, you're illegitimate. I think what I'm trying to do is inspire people to just basically say like hey, like what authenticity gap do I notice in my life or my neighbor's life or my constituents lives? And how can I articulate something that gets at that? But then the last thing on the Derek and Jake thing, but I'll throw it to you is I was since I'm doing some writing on this, I actually looked at the transcript of both of their answers and they were both very interesting. So Jake specifically said I don't know this story and I think that this story is going to get told over the course of a Democratic primary. And I obviously just sort of disagree with that because like I know a lot of like a tier politicians, you know, a tier politicians. This just isn't the type of project that's easy to actually go through while you are in office trying to navigate things. So that's important to know. But then B, in Derek's answer, Derek's answer was one that was printed in New York Magazine. Derek specifically said if I were on a primary stage with you, Marshall, and you pointed out this lack of story, hypothetically I would say stories are for children. What America needs is an actual plan that's actually real. Most stories are bullshit. And then he went a little further and I'd forgotten this part because I wasn't reading the transcript. He said specifically like as a politician I would not conceive of my role as that of a storyteller. My role is to actually get things done. And I think that's actually as I'm thinking about this out loud, my biggest objection to Derek's conception of what politics is because I actually think like in the same way that after the invention of television we had to have politicians got more attractive, right? Like after we moved on from like the late 19th century. The politician role is to give like a three hour learned, you know, like very like Greco Roman classical speech on virtue and values. We went to something different then became the radio. FDR wouldn't have been good at the Greco Roman thing. He was very good at the radio thing. Like politicians and their skill sets, like Chinese change as things evolve. And I actually think that if you are a politician who does not conceive a part of your job being a storyteller, you're not going to make it. So I'd love to hear your broad thoughts on this.
- [30:29]
B
Yeah, I think it gets down to the idea of, like, politicians saying, oh, well, I'm here to get things done. What things? What things are you going to get done? And why and for whom? And that's what storytelling does. And I think to, like, go back just a little bit, I've been thinking and asking other friends who are historians or literary scholars, like, what were some of the times where we didn't really have a story or an answer. But then looking back, we could see, like, moments of profound creativity. Because the creative process, it doesn't come out of nowhere. You can't just, like, magically pull a story out of a hat, even though Hollywood would love to do that now by asking ChatGPT to, like, tell me a story about, like, a superhero who is, you know, whatever. But that creative process is. Is very collaborative. It's very somatic. It deals with, like, life or death questions. It deals with, like, the unknowingness and getting together and hashing it out not in focus groups or tests or all of these other kinds of scientized ways, but in true, like, artistic processes. And I think, you know, the 1830s, 30s and 40s in America, like the transcendental movement, these, like, wild and wonky moments where Americans were trying to figure out what do we do now that we have a country, like, what is this about? Or Even the early 20th century where you have this, like, modernism and then, you know, like, trying to figure out modernity and what that means and where to go as technology changes, as wealth consolidation is happening, as there's great migration as a result of technological changes and geopolitical strife. And, like, these are moments where they're. They're kind of dark but profoundly creative. And you suggested this great book to me, and I really hope you have them on the show. Sometimes a blank space halfway through that book right now. And I'm really enjoying it because it really talks about this move from this countercultural, anti capitalist, almost grunge movement of the 90s, and then how abundance itself in some ways, or entrepreneurship or making it, to making it and capitalizing your life, become the millennials, which is so funny compared. You know, you go from this 90s and early 2000s downtown scene of essentially like, sing girls and hero heroine and Terry Richardson, and then moving that into, like, more like the Strokes and Taylor Swift and Beyonce and. And it's like, it gets more sanitized our culture. And I think about how so much art and culture of the past like 10, 15 years has been. So it starts feeling like copies of itself. It's like a simulacrum. Simulacrum. And that feels somehow not exciting. And so I think in these moments I actually am looking for these kind of news stories by mining places where we do talk about life and death. I think there's interesting stuff going on in the environmental movement. There's interesting stuff going on around the contestation of data centers. There's interesting stuff going on in. I think folks really are thinking about health care and like what the point of how healthcare and health insurance work. Like there are. And also in religion, people are going to traditionalist religions and revamping and rethinking them while they're trying to find minds and deep stories if you will, to bring about this next thing. And if you're a liberal and you're just out here trying to find more policies to get things done, you're, you're going to miss building that deeper story. And so to that point I think of something like centrism. I was thinking recently there was a New York Times about like spicy centrists. And I thought, well, what is this centrist? A centrist is just someone who, it's a tactic. Centrism is a tactic of working with people you don't agree with. But what do you actually believe? And I'm sure listeners might say, okay, well Danielle Marshall, what do you actually believe? Like what is your story? What's, why are you not offering us a story right now? And I would say to them, we're working on it, we're figuring it out. Like, I definitely don't want to live in this like hyper capitalized world where every step of my life is mediated by some sort of like AI or computer or agent. I want to live in a world where I can talk to people and live in community and in beauty and like, you know, like I want to do those things and I can figure out how to do them down the line by using all the tools that experts and non experts can create together. But I, we still have to have a conversation about is that a good thing or not. And so yeah, I think of like, you know, we, we talk about, well what about abundance as a story for liberalism? And I think like abundance is a kind of meme or a branded tactic. Like a, it's a really good branded tactic about maybe like how to go about like getting people housing or food or shelter, these sorts of things. And the idea that everyone should, should have these things. Which is great, but it has some of its own challenges. I think of, like, well, who is the face of it or who is behind that? Or, you know, I think some of you would say you critiqued me earlier today. There is a critique sometimes of abundance as well. It's just post neoliberal, like, neoliberalism dressed up in a new way. And I hear that that isn't necessarily the case. But I think there are a lot of folks who experienced a lot of abundance advocates and at least in my life, like the Bay Area, who say, okay, well, yes, you can deregulate and do all of these sorts of things in order to. To create more housing that's so sorely needed. But are you sidelining community organizing groups and black and brown folks in the process of this alleged, like, numeric, like, we created X number of more houses and we created X number of this. And I think of that. I recently came back from Mexico where I was talking with a designer who works in indigenous communities in Mexico using, you know, making corn, using corn and agave to make these collectible furniture things. And we're talking about how they're like, the capital, the money in the village. Wasn't it necessarily, like, there was a real pride in being seen and acknowledged for one's craft and that? Like, yes, they were being remunerated for it. But more than anything, there was a recognition that there's something good and that pride and participation in a system is as much a currency as capital itself or money itself. And I think that that's where, like, when you're thinking of, like, abundance, it's like, well, what are we abundant of? Like, what is abundant? Is it money? Is it happiness? Is it joy? Is it recognition? Like, there are a lot of other things there. So it's abundance. Yeah, it's hyper technocratic. It's very outcome oriented. How many units of this and how many houses of that? And, you know, it's. You have to ask, though, well, what kinds of houses for whom and where? And like, does it look good and who's building them and who's considering that? And those are less quantifiable, Which I know freaks people out sometimes because, again, they want to get things done. They don't care about the story. But I think that's where, you know, my entree in some ways, I grew up in a very conservative environment and family, but I kind of got into the conservative world vis a vis aesthetic and conversations around aesthetics and culture. And I think, like, that's a, you know, the weird intellectual side of the conservative and also MAGA movement. But I think that there's something to those conversations that need to be reclaimed on a mass level. And I know, like, yeah, and liberal arts schools, folks are talking about aesthetics all the time and art history and la la, la. But how can you take that and bring that to other places and invest in that? And I think that's also a thing when you think about what liberals fund and what do progressives fund and where, you know, where are people's experiences of the beautiful happening and that, that's like, it's not as tight and there's not like ROIs and RFPs and all these other acronyms in order to measure beauty and living a joyful life.
- [39:00]
A
You know, I love about this. So two things. So one, you actually just explained something that really took me like eight to nine months to understand, which is that, you know, the stereotype of, you know, the right is that it's anti intellectual. Lots of history on this. And that the left, because of the diploma divide in higher education, is where intellectual things are. But my weirdest discovery this year has been how anti intellectual center left spaces are. And by anti intellectual, I really mean ideas free. But you just do not talk about ideas in center left spaces. Laura K. Hillman has, and this is another joint interview. It'd be great to do with you once your book stuff calms down. But she just did a book on the MAGA New Right and all the different permutations of it. So the West Coast Straussians, the East Coast Straussians, the Post liberals, all the different crews of people that like really make clear that the New Right is actually like a bunch of like other different things. Yeah, the books. Danielle, just if you're listening, Danielle brought up the COVID It's called Furious Minds. And the thing that she talks about is that like new right spaces are quote, ideas first. And there are some problems that come from being ideas first. But that just like the second I read that, I was like, yes, like that's exactly what I'm talking about. And I think my big problem with wonkery is that at a certain point, because wonkery elevates empiricism and do you know the facts? And what paper are you citing? What is like the real world direct implication that you could just explain in 10 seconds or less or turn into a blog post. Here you become anti intellectual because you crowd out so many other things. Like the conversation like what is the good life? Is not like a empirical question. There's actually a lot of values and debates and there's a lot of tension there versus the question of like, okay, what do we need to do to create single sterile reform in Florida to create X number of new units in the next three years?
- [40:59]
B
Right.
- [40:59]
A
That's like a very wonky thing. And my point, what so funnily happens though is that like that becomes anti intellectual very, very, very quickly. And it also sort of my sort of critique of like the wonks that there were as with some like right wing people. And like I made this joke which is that like at its worst, like vox wonkery just turns into like ChatGPT7 in the sense of like how do we need to create an X number? Then they're going to produce it and like that's actually really a job that's going to get outmoded at a certain point there. I'm not naming names here, but people could sort of guess where I'm going with that. And I don't think of that as an intellectual thing. I think that's the definite. Writing a hundred word blog post on single stair reform in Florida is like the definition of an intellectual job, quote, unquote. But I'm totally comfortable outsourcing to AI because ultimately that's work that a policymaker needs who's trying to do. The person who needs to read that blog post is a person who's working in the Florida state legislature. So on the spot, here are the inputs, give me the outputs and then I turn into a speech. Automate that away. Great, go for it. What won't be automated away is like, hey, how do we get along together? What's the purpose of all this? And I think that has to be inserted into more of the mix. But then secondly, I really am glad that you took my recommendation and started reading Blank Space because Blank Space, I wreck a lot of books on this show. Blank Space was the best book I read this year on a couple different levels. So a, it's not just like a traditional history, which I do, which is most of my reading, and it's also like not a policy book. And I think it's like really important that you have like a really like diverse like intellectual consumption. It's a book about culture and art and pop and those different things. I have not read enough of those books. And one of my actual goals is to read more of those books this year. But the book was just so revelatory because I think to brag about myself for a second, the thing I'm just best at is I'm mostly very Very, very good at sort of seeing where. Skating. Where the puck is going. To quote Gretzky on this. And what's great about the book then, is it really sort of reinforced my instincts here. So the book starts to make this tangible. It starts by introducing a problem. And the problem that W. David Marx is introducing is that if we look at the cultural outputs of the first 25 years of the 21st century, they pale in comparison to what was produced between 1900 and 1925. So this means everything from music and art to movements and ideas just pales in comparison. And what I love about looking at this question through the lens of art is. And culture is that it doesn't fall into, like, useless, like, nostalgia. Trap. Trap, right. So it's not like, man, back in the 1950s, everything was great. And like, that airline in 1970 used to have steak meals. And like, with both those cases, with the 1950s one, it gets very quickly into the like, come on, dude, you died of polio the next day. Or in the 1970s one, it's like, yeah, you're right. There were steaks and, like, lounges on the planes. The ticket also cost $5,000, and no one got fly. So it's very easy. Both of these examples. But the cultural one, you're just like, oh, wow. Yeah, right. It is just empirically true that there's not a single artistic or cultural movement with, like, the level of quality of those different moments. Like, there is not just. And here's the thing, too. This isn't just to, like, no one reads anymore, but there is no Fitzgerald, Right. Of, like, this period. Like, there's no, like, lost generation of writers. Even people are reading less. Like, the work itself was not at this different level. So his question is, like, what explains this gap? And he gives the best ever articulation of what neoliberalism is and what its cost is. And what's so funny about it is he's so good at articulating the cost in neoliberalism because he's not looking at it from a wonky perspective. Sweet. He's not the type of guest I've had of Kamaran, who's talked about neoliberalism where they're like, in 1980, we had the New Deal order come to a close. At the end of the New Deal Order, we saw that the Borkian transformation of antitrust policy led to industry concentration and consolidation that led to the repeal of the classic. That's the way they talk about. And you're sort of just like, it doesn't fuck, right, to quote you. Right. It's just. Yeah, it's real and it matters. But like, I think it loses people and it's not visceral. But he talks about and defines neoliberalism as the elevation of market money oriented outcomes over everything else. And that's his definition of neoliberalism. It basically means what matters is how much money did you make, how many people consumed, what you put out there. And that defines whether you're cool, whether your work is valuable, whether your time is well spent. And he illustrates this change by giving the story. I haven't listened to enough early 90s rock music, so apologies if I butcher this, but he tells this through the story of the str of Pearl Jam. In the early 90s, basically, they released their first album and it's a surprise success, blows up, gets really, really big. It's all remtv. They're on the Warped Tour and they've reached all these pinnacles of success. They're very set up to be sort of like the successor to Nirvana. And the thing is though, they hate it. They hate it, they hate it, they hate it. And they basically say, we're never doing this ever again. And there's this really funny anecdote of how their producer makes a critical mistake during their second album. They're jamming, they're listening. Imagine sort of the movie version. And the producer goes, man, this thing's going to be a hit. And they're like, nope, junk it. We don't want that. That's not the vibe we're going for. And you know, W. David Marks basically says, like, think about how alien. That's the definition of the 1990s. Like, don't sell out idea. Right? Which is easy to parody, but that's like the most specific example of like, we will artistically limit ourselves and produce an outcome that we don't like if we make the most money, if we sell the most albums and we're going to pursue a different path. And the author's point is that over the next few years, as neoliberal values. So put aside just policy and I'm ranting you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Danielle, because I was really curious, as I was because I knew you'd stick with this book. As we sort of start getting more of a. Because neoliberalism is about, like, the market and outcomes. As we start shifting to. Everything is about popularity and scale and how much money you make. It's actually very hard to do what Pearl Jam did and just say, like, actually, we don't want to be successful in that conventional sense. Because guess what? Like, your, your band is going to drop you. Sorry, not your band, but like your, your, your, you know, your label will drop you, your bandmates will be confused that we understand the language, and you will actually lose the ability yourself to articulate with clarity what you're trying to do there. So then this really crescendoes with this real disaster we're going through now. And you see this with, I think, one of the biggest disasters of the past year, which is how a lot of people. So this is everything from Chris at MSNBC writing his book about attention. Everyone's like, it's the attention economy. And everything is about attention. And you need to get big, big, big, big, big. And politicians need to do stupid, silly, like TikToks where they're sort of like doing silly little games, doing silly little virality things. And that determines the use of your time. And people just don't understand that, like, that value set does not produce good quality work. It doesn't produce good music, it doesn't produce good political ideas. Because, like, the conversations that, like, think of the DSA where the DSA was the DSA 2015, well, that stuff was going viral. Would that have been cool? Was AOC ready to be on camera? TikTok no, it wasn't that. So he actually ends the book with like a set of recommendations where he straight up says, if you are artistically inclined, and that's very like, broadly defined, start building in a niche, start finding, building a community of people. And you very much Arvis like partner for me. This is why I really appreciate our friends now of like, people who are not setting as their default. Your worth is determined by how popular you are. And the reason why, to close this out, the reason why this book just made me feel so much better like in 2022, when I was just getting super viral breaking points, live shows, really, really big episodes, I was sort of like, hey, this work is kind of garbage. I've had Eric Weinstein on for the third time. It got hundreds of thousands of views. But actually I didn't learn anything from this. My audience didn't learn anything from this. And we're just sort of like schlocking out the greatest hits. And I could do this kind of forever. But actually this isn't the type of work I want to really do. And the work I do now gets far fewer views. But, like, guess what? Like, that's good because this is actually really, really, really helpful. And if I was in 2022 mode driven by, like, how do I make my YouTube studio contractor help me happy? I never would have said, hey, Danielle, let's just, like, do a podcast together. I just met you, we had an interesting conversation because, like, then the actual audience I care about resonated and loved your work. So that's why the book was just so important to me, because it's sort of like we were already doing this thing that really, really matters. And I want more people to think this way, so rant over. But you could tell I love this book.
- [50:23]
B
No. And I'm so happy you suggested it to me, Marshall. I'm so happy that we've connected, honestly, through one of those 2015 trends where we all sat around together and asked, like, what's happening here? But I think, like, this gets down to the importance of subculture and cultivating subculture. And I think what a lot of people, especially in more, like, elite spaces, don't understand is, like, you're not trying to, like, there is a certain, if you want to call it intersectionality of culture, like centering the periphery. But no, you have to cultivate periphery. And that's where like, cool and weird and mixed up ideas that aren't entirely true are, Are happening. And, and I think, like, you can't just create something in a lab by testing it. That's going to work for everybody because that's not, that's not authentic or in the original definition, acting on one's own authority. True art, culture and meaning is acting on one's own weirdness. And like, you're not going to please everyone. That's why even, like, some folks who I know, you know, may, may not like Zora for some sort of, whether it's Israel policy or housing policy, but the man is freaking clear about some of the things that he's for. And then we can have a conversation because I might disagree with you on X or Y, but on Z we're aligned and it's clear. And I think, like, it gets back to, like, do you have something real that I can fuck with? So you bring back our whole, like, idea in my first podcast that I accidentally stumbled into, like, does it fuck? Like, is this thing real? And I think if you look at the art of the of the past 15, 25 years, the first quarter of the 21st century, so much of our art, if, like a meteor struck the earth tomorrow and all of the data centers were wiped out and all of the servers went down, it's not lost on me that most of our art would be completely destroyed. That there is not an artifact left of this society that of the past, like 25 years that may be beautiful in the same way. And that's really interesting that like there's something anti life or anti vital in all of this that we, we've outsourced all of our art to these, these to the cloud literally. It exists in the vapor of society. And there's something real about that negation of materiality. And I know like after the show that I was on with you back in August, I wrote a little substack extolling and breaking down like what does it mean for something to fuck?
- [53:08]
A
And one of those really quick note, this is important. We do have a ban on. We only refer to this concept every like three months. So we will not. This is, this is what we're saying.
- [53:18]
B
So please, yeah, we will not make this a brand because then it will kill the vibe. It'll kill it. So I'm not going to go deep on this, but one of those things is really about like vitality, the somatic, the physical, like a relatability that it speaks your language, it looks like something familiar and then goes an extra mile that you can build on it. And I think like the art of the past 25 years, like in, in Marx's book, it really shows it. Art used to be about not selling out and then art became like the goal of art became selling out. Which is insane when you think about it. So I don't know, like, I think there's also, I know like there was an entry for many folks into the MAGA movement in like the nerdy spaces around beauty and about aesthetics, right, Conservative aesthetic. But I think there's also this weird and interesting split in the MAGA or conservative world of like between the tights who are buying their, their MAGA hats from China and they're made of polyester versus those who would never imagine putting polyester on their bodies or those people who want to eat or organic grass fed meat that's essentially factory produced versus learning how to butcher it yourself. I say that as someone who's currently learning how to do kosher butchering. So it's like I think for if you're in, if you're someone listening to this and your day job is working in economics where like GDP is still an important measure, like growth is still an important term or maybe you're in media and attention and traffic and virality are still important terms for you and all of these are abstractions on abstractions on abstractions. Like what about your life that is physical, that you can reintegrate and reground your, your res on debt, like your purpose in like that weird hobby that you have of knitting can suddenly make. Actually can you bring you back to something real and tangible and physical that isn't so removed from those other professional concerns that you have? So that's what I mean by like bringing back and cultivating subculture and being honest and bringing that into the conversation. Because it's actually a lot more important than we realize.
- [55:33]
A
Yeah. And then last thing before we get to our last section on fusionism. And I just, everything you were saying just reminded me of like a really, really disappointing experience I had. So I'm not going to once again name names here, but let's just say I was talking to like the staff of a prominent Democratic politician around the themes of abundance and you know, sort of gave the abundance pitch, talked about it, talked about the ideas and like the first response out of the staff was, do you have any polling on this? And like that was like the same thing. And that was actually, once again, this is what I meant by like, there's a deep lack of like intellectual seriousness within center left spaces despite the diploma divide, where that is just not the way that anyone talked on the populist left or right. Like we could have beasts with like Zoran's like public groceries things or like so many things that he does. And same with Trump. But like in both cases, do you think someone said before Trump went down that escalator in 2013, how does building Walpole. It's just sort of like, it's just like it's so sterile and it's not dynamic and it's not interesting and it's not compelling. So here's the thing, and I know there are political hacks, they refer to themselves that way, who are going to say, sorry Marshall, like my job is to ask about polling. So I'm not to say that you have to throw it all out of the bathwater. But what I will say is I would like to live in a world where the staff said, here's how I respond to the pitch you just gave me. Or here are some experiences that during our term in office we've experienced that either do or don't sync with that here's a flaw that I just have an idea and then you get to the polling. Because the thing is, and this is why I like using the word project rather than answers. I think one of the biggest mistakes that Abundance did, and this is sort of a coordination problem, was because it was presented in a book and obviously Derek and Ezra are very individualistic and focused. This should have been presented as an open project that everyone gets the view to at a fusionist level rather than a perfectly set answer. So the answer that I wish I had come to, and I didn't have this because I was more just shell shocked by the fact that I had to answer about seeing polling and this was in December of 2024. So just like there was no polling. That was a ridiculous question to ask. But what I would say now is these ideas are not set. We've just started, right? Like, yep, we.
- [57:53]
B
Yep.
- [57:54]
A
You pull something once you've actually built the thing. So like, after we spend a few years. So like, my take on this is so what I'm. I'm co producing the abundance conference in 2026. So I'm saying this for personal accountability purposes. One of my goals when it comes to bringing more people into the abundance 10 is saying, like, this is not about us having like a checklist of like, you have to agree if this, this, this, this there, there, there assumption or I want to frame Abundance around like open questions. So, like, why does the American government struggle to like, achieve its objectives separate from what you think the objectives should be? What are the actual roots of like the housing crisis? What are ways that we could talk about increasing supply but aren't just sort of giving more subsidies? But those are like, I think fair assumptions to hold that are not the same thing as saying, here is the set gospel and we're going to pull that. Maybe the word bottleneck, like in all the polling, the thing that's pulled the worst in abundance is the bottlenecks framing. So it's like, hey, look, maybe bottlenecks isn't part of the pitch. I don't know. I don't really care. We're just talking about this thing. So I just want to encourage people to just understand that this is a moment where these stories and ideas are so at their bottom level that you have to be intellectually inclined to be contributory to them. So, yeah, that's just like a real suggestion. So to throw the last real question to you because you and I were chatting about, you were just like, so great about this. So my real theme that I've come to this year, talk about skating where the puck is going. I made a bet that all of the factionalism that came out of the 2024 election was like a short term thing. And everyone instead was going to have to start fusing together because this is where coming from the right, huge difference between right and left spaces on the right, people will sort of raise beefs with like different people in their coalition who they disagree with, they have different objections to or whatever. But it's sort of premise that ultimately we need to coalesce together to win and beat our opponents. You very rarely in a right wing space. It's a little different during the Trump era because, like, there was an effort to kick like the George W. Bush, like, center right out of the party so they would be like dunking on them. But if you were part of that, like, next stage of Trump thing, very little time was spent on factual infighting. That's kind of changing with like the podcasters. But like, I'm talking about, like the prime of 2018, 2019, I entered center less spaces. In centerless spaces, there is more time spent dunking on the left than they're spent dunking on Trump and maga. And that was just like a real shocking. If you explained this to like a no kings marching, MSNBC watching Normie, they would be pissed as hell about that. That's real. Don't know what time it is politics. So I really am. I'm not like, this is. I know that there are big people who are going to listen to this episode because they like hearing your thoughts. So I want them to listen. This is my real feedback for you on this case. Like, the left punching. And to be fair for the left who's like, there are a bunch of lefties on Twitter who spend their time beefing of Matthew Iglesias. And I'm sort of like, there's like a bigger problem. I just sort of shove, like, this was all silly. Fusion is going to be the answer. And a lot of people even in the centrist crew have. Now, I'm not going to say who told me this, but a senator's staff recently said, you know, we win where we win, the left wins where they win. Ultimately, we just want to get good things done and beat Trump and beat MAGA. You didn't have to waste 2025. You should have come to that conclusion in January. It was very obvious this is what was going to happen. So the point is I was just sort of whining to you about my beef about fusionism. And you actually just gave an articulation of an actual process that people should think about when it comes to actually fusionism. So would love for you to give like. And I cited this in an essay you gave, but I'd love for it to be like on a transcript somewhere. So I'd love you to just like close this off by talking about that.
- [61:49]
B
So yeah, I think what's interesting about you and I, Marshall, is that we have both experienced left and right spaces, grew up kind of, and both have had one foot in each. And so for those listeners who might not be familiar with like the three legged stool of, you know, right Republican fusionism of like anti communism economic, like free trade and also like religious or social right conservatism that sort of, I think fused right, to use Nash's term, the conservative movement of most of the 20th century, like this idea. These were three groups that did not necessarily always get along with each other. In fact, there was a lot of infighting, but there was a question of like, what could fusionism be tactically and ideologically speaking for a left or liberalism? And the way I see fusionism is this fusionism is a set of ideological factions that are clear about what they want to see in the world. Not necessarily how that's going to happen, but clear about what they want with enough overlap and a common enemy in order to bind them together and get things done. So you don't necessarily have to agree, you just have to be clear about what you want. And that's why I don't like this idea. But centrism sometimes becomes this metaphor for liberalism, which I don't like because centrism is just a tactic of different groups getting together and like working together. But you have to be clear about what you want in order to be, to even do that. So I, I think like being honest about that. Even if it's quote unquote unrealistic to have, I don't know, state owned supermarkets or something like that, being clear about what you want is, is okay, that's authentic, that's real. Like we can negotiate, we can get somewhere with that. I think that there are a lot of things in American society that can be and seem completely delulu at times, right? Like that going to the moon could been have have been seen at some point. Crazy Social Security at one point would have just been seen as a communist plot. Like the very idea of like government backed banks, like these were crazy ideas at some point, but if you have at least a vision, you know, shoot for the stars, reach the moon, and other people kind of almost agree with you, or at least share a common enemy, you can get somewhere. And that's what fusionism is. It's not about, oh, we're all getting along on everything. It's like these are very clear factions that are clear about what they want and when they can work together and when they can overlap and who has a common enemy. So, you know, that's why I really loathe popularism, because who would have told you that like a furry little animal with a lot of hair and teeth would have been popular with American kids? But the Labubu is freaking amazing. And you know, like they're little stuffed animals like, like you can't tell people and pull them for what they want all the time. Of course there's some of that in certain things, but you also have to be clear about the creative process, about desire, about value, about all these things that are harder to pull on because a lot of 21st century polling doesn't really work like that. So I that's where I'll sort of end on that. So I don't go down some sort of popularist rabbit hole. That's for another podcast.
- [65:17]
A
And two things here as I close out then. So one, and this is where something I really appreciate about both the fact that I'm in my mid-30s, so I just actually know people as peers who are starting to run for office and win and take power and think about their future. What I wish more of the popularist DC centric group had the empathy to realize is that this poll driven thing is genuinely really confusing for actual elected officials who are thinking about things, especially when things are really complicated. So once again I really appreciated the Deciding the Win report and I love the welcome Fest crew. But if you actually look at the report, there's all this list of popular policies and that's actually important to know that and it's actually important to talk about here's what's actually popular, here's what's not actually popular. And if a wackadoodle 2010s immigrants Rights groups come in and says that mass amnesty and no Borders are super popular and you have to do it or else you're a racist. Like it's actually helpful to have like a empirical tested like nobody's like three bs. So like this is not attacking welcome Fest, but I think the additional work that needs to be done here is remind people though that especially if you're critiquing liberal politicians, center left and centrist ones especially one of their biggest weaknesses is their caution and their lack of dynamism and aggression. So what? And this is where like the fact that it's wonks who come up with these ideas not like, no offense, people who are more like dynamic and like run for office and are like actually in the world is that you have to say like guys, if the Democratic party and liberalism's problem is that people are scared and afraid and don't take risks. And when they're on stage in 2019 and they see everyone else raising their hand saying that like, like they have to saying that you have to decriminalize the border. So then they also raise their hand because they're afraid. And then Joe Biden's one last true moment of glory is when Joe Biden is like, no, I'm like a main character. I do what I want. I'm not gonna raise my hand like that was like a real thing. But most Democratic politicians are not a part of that. What actually happens is when you throw polls at them that then shift, right? So first immigration was unpopular, now it's popular. You're just promoting fear and caution and an actual just like literal human weakness that like frankly the right and left do not tolerate. So just I want the populist to like think very. If you are a popularist, like actually sit down with a politician. It's easier to do this with state and local people because you never have time with like the Congress, the members of Congress or senators. And basically what. Because they've told me, I've done these calls with people, they will talk about how the polls caused them to freeze up and really tells them like, you gotta wait to get that. That's why, you know, the Democrats after like what are the polls on this abundance idea? Because they've been told by the populars that the end all in the end all be all politics is what does it poll. And that is just like sterile and weak. And that is. And voters do not like that. And then because by the way, they're all doing this based on shifting polls. That's why they can't go on Joe Rogan. They can't go on Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan has a four hour storytelling routine. And if like, and if what you're. And if you're coming on, like if you're coming on Joe Rogan because you've been told that like it's been bold that like black men want to talk about like our marijuana legalization results, like this literally happened. This is one of the topics on the list you wanted to talk about. That's not something you could actually talk about versus like think of me ranting about like how 21st century culture talks. I could talk about that for five hours, because I care about and I'm motivated about that. And what you should be trying to tell politicians is find something that you are that excited about that speaks to you and is real and talk about that. And actually it turns out that like voters and Joe Rogan are going to resonate with that versus like you just going through this weird process of picking things. So the last thing I just want to say this too is that this is why I want to like really focus your. My work together on storytelling. Because I got a bit of feedback from someone who was saying like, okay, so I directionally agree with you and you then too on fusionism. We just tactically do not understand how you actually do it. That's where the gap.
- [69:30]
B
Yes.
- [69:30]
A
And the thing that I said is, well, the starting point in this project is the storytelling. Because the thing is, when you are in a right wing space from your first Buckley seminar at Yale, I'm sure in your experience, to my experience of a ti. In her tongue, you are told the fusionist story. So from a norm. So think like this is what you're talking about, like the reality gap, like, of like, like outside of the authenticity gap where like these are all the like stories you're told a story you are told as like, you know, a young person on the right is, hey, within our movement there are people who you don't agree with, who you might not even like interpersonally, ultimately you work together with. Because that's what we do. Because there's this big, scarier, awful thing. And it's Obama and it's Hillary Clinton and it's New Deal liberalism and it's organism. But that is just like a story that you are just told. And what I would like to live in is a world. And once again, like, you and I aren't here. Our, our vibe is not tactics, right? Like, that's not our picture people. My pitch for people is like, when you walk into a space where there are people to your ideological left, if you're a centrist, or to your ideological right, if you are a leftist, have the first thought be, this is just something that we do. This is what politics looks like. Because that's what the right does, right? That's what they're saying. Hey, there's plenty of disagreement. Because this is my other beef here too, because I've heard centrist beef with this fusionism idea and these are very prominent centrists. By basically saying what you're describing is a process by which everything gets sanded down and we take the lowest Common endowment. That is not at all Reagan's presidency. Refusionism came to an accord. There were intensive debates on Reagan's desire to make peace with the Soviet Union. There are intensive debates in the late 70s about rollback, detent. Like there are huge, huge, huge debates on the right. The point though is because they have a framework for we're going to have a knockdown, drag out, fight on this issue. Their story lets them straighten their ties afterwards and say, okay, I got this, you got that? We agree enough on this big topic. Because the key thing is thinking of, like, the Reagan example I gave in both cases, whether we're making peace of the Soviet Union or like they're the evil empire, they're going to get rolled back, are spending a lot of money on the Pentagon. Right? So, like, there was there, was there. Yeah, there was actual over. There was actually like enough overlap. Like, they're like, look like obviously this is better than whatever Walter Mondale or Jimmy Carter would do. So this is why we're on a team together. So, like, that's just like my answer. Like, it's actually like a very unconstructive idea that just talking to people who are on your team who you disagree with equals, right? And frankly, to go there, if your process leads, if talking to other people leads to like weak and juiceless takes that mean nothing, then sorry, you have, you're a shitty moderator. You are a bad leader. And whatever set of institutional leaders and politicians are representing the different sides are not good at their jobs. Because, like, that is just like, that's, that's the, that's a you problem. That is not like a problem that I've ever experienced in like, these different cases. So, Danielle, feel free to close this out.
- [72:47]
B
Yeah, no, thanks so much. I think that very metaphor, though, of getting in the room with people who you disagree with, but you're fused together by at least some common, like, overlap or enemies. But clarity about what you stand for is something that takes work and investment. And I know for much of the 20th century a lot of the conservative movement was in opposition to liberal hegemony, but there was a lot of investment, whether it was on campus organizing like YAF or even like the cpac, like all those little constituencies of bringing together people in media who have different ideas or to hash it out with their straw, with the, you know, other panels and other rooms debating all these subcultural interests on the right. Like, there was always that cowboy that says, like, legalize heroin, you know, and like, which would totally scandalize the evangelical it was there, but they could. But they could hang in a room. And I would, I'd like to say I'd love to plug my friend's book, A.J. bauer. It's called Making the Liberal How Conservatives Built a Movement against the Press. He talks about how actual anti communists looked at how progressive, you know, fought the newspaper industry and like, you know, wanted regulations like the Fairness Doctrine so that there could be more viewpoints to actually debate, you know, liberalism versus progressionism, progressivism and communism versus socialism. And he shows how the right actually took the tactics of this subcultural progressive movement and applied it to their own media activism and created, you know, the idea even that the liberal, the media was liberal. So, like we've been here before the left, the beginning of the 20th century, the left had a lot of different factionalism and a lot of vibrant debate. But you have to invest in those subcultures and in that factionalism in a way, and have a disagreement, in service of heaven, if you will, a concept in Judaism of creating like what I could say translate roughly to a good faith disagreement. And I think, like, you have to invest in those spaces that are not just about policy and polling and this, but like the actual first order ideas. And. And that's where you got to go up the funnel, and that's in arts, culture, politics, beauty, like health, food, all these sorts of things, and go up that funnel and have those conversations and have those debates and know that we're all in it for a better America. But yes, thanks, Marshall, I appreciate it.
- [75:19]
A
And Danielle, thanks for joining me on the realignment.
- [75:23]
B
Thanks, Marshall. Have a good one.