Garry Kasparov and Jerusalem Demsas: Democracy Can't Defend Itself

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Hey, everybody, I could not have enjoyed the double header podcast we have ahead for you anymore.

Two just wonderful, delightful guests.

I hope that your ears appreciated it as much as mine did.

Really quick, I should just say I mentioned this yesterday, but in case you missed it, this Toronto show is coming up in September.

It's going to sell out.

I think it's going to sell out today.

So if you want to come hang with us in Toronto, I guess maybe I'll wear a Jamal Murray jersey or something, or maybe a Canadian hockey team jersey.

And we can feel our Canadian pride pride together as they stand up against Donald Trump.

If you want to experience that with us, you should get your tickets today.

Up next, we've got Gary Kasbarov and Jerusalem Dempsey.

Stick around.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

First up, we have a former world chess champion and Russian dissident.

He's chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative.

And in April, he launched the next move on Substack, which offers in-depth analysis of the shifting front lines in the battle against authoritarianism and strategic insights on what to do next.

Couldn't be more excited to welcome Gary Kasparov.

Hey, Gary.

Thanks for inviting me.

I assume that our listeners and viewers are, at minimum, familiar with your, you know, decade and a half long reign as the grandmaster chess champion of the entire world.

But maybe give folks a little backstory on

the dissident part of your background and your political activism.

I was born and raised in the Soviet Union,

62, so grew up in a family of engineers.

And if you want to look for the roots of my dissident views, you have to dig deep to

look at my family education.

My father died when I was seven, but still I was surrounded by family members who were critical about Soviet life.

And as a chess prodigy, I traveled early.

First time I went abroad, I was 13 in 1976 to visit France, representing my country, Soviet Union, as the junior champion under 18.

And I quickly recognized the shortcomings of the Soviet political system, even being at a young age.

And most importantly, I saw the gap between reality and propaganda.

and as the youngest world champion at age 22, so I thought that was the right moment for me to invest my popularity and my credibility as the chess world champion into what was Gorbachev's Perestroika and I was in and out not that I just you know I ever wanted to drop chess and I thought that in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the job was done so shared the

the belief or joyful belief of many millions hundreds of millions of people that the the past would never come back but by the end of the that decade in the 90s I saw the signs that the past was returning.

And eventually in 2005, I stopped playing chess, decided that my chess career had to come to a glorious end.

And I joined pro-democracy opposition, trying to stop Russia from sliding into backsliding in the KGB dictatorship.

You can guess how successful I was because now I live in New York.

Today I'm in Croatia, in my summer home, because I'm not afraid of the COVID-19.

You're about as a cross-the Never Trumpers advocate.

Yeah, okay.

Don't say that, please.

Yeah, actually, things are somehow connected.

But those are things we do.

Thanks for raising, by the way, this.

It's because it's the right thing to do.

That's why I was always very skeptical.

People asked me about my chess experience and how it helped me to navigate in these murky waters of Russian politics.

I always told them it did not help me because in Russia, unlike in chess, you know, this is the

rules.

kept changing, but the result was the same.

We are now, it's experienced in America, and I would probably bet my bottom dollar back then when I recognized that we were just, you know, we were desperate trying to stop Putin's rise to power and Russia turning back into KGB dictatorship, that one day we would have this conversation in the United States.

So, and I think it's,

I don't want to say inevitable, but probably, you know, it was a logical development,

global development, because

the world, free world, became so complacent after the end of the Cold War.

And we recognize the very simple truth that the evil doesn't die.

It could hide, it could disappear, it could be buried for a while under the rubble of Berlin Wall.

But the moment we lose our vigilance, the moment we become complacent, the moment we do not recognize that the values are just everything and

they're not transactional, So we open door for this for the new forms of evil.

And it's not surprising that the the last 20 years is a steady decline of democracy in the world and it's the attack of authoritarianism.

And now, again, who could imagine it?

Now America is facing challenges that we, people like myself and my dissent friends, face back in our countries.

Given the backsliding you saw in Russia, it's hard for me to come up with a coherent path out of this trajectory that we're on towards authoritarianism.

I mean, there would be one thought, if you had asked me this five years ago or six years ago, I would have said, you know, if things get bad enough with Trump or if things get bad enough in the world with some of these leaders, you know, if there's enough bad actions, then people will wake up and there will be, you know, a reaction against it.

But, you know, we went through COVID.

We've gone through this invasion of Ukraine.

We've seen the negative effects and nothing.

And I mean, the people of Russia have suffered far greater than we have so far here in America.

And you don't see a big uprising.

Do you have any any wisdom on that, on the path out?

I wouldn't compare Russia to America.

They're different traditions.

Sure, of course.

It's basically different cultural and political code in our genes.

I live in America.

I'm just, I can say I'm partial American and I fully support.

Actually, I've grown on American values.

While most of my competitors, they have very different

genetic memories.

And it was not difficult for Putin to turn it back because, you know, if we look at the current Russian predicament, actually the sufferings that Russia imposed on Ukraine, it's the war of aggression and the genocidal war that is being carried on against a neighboring country, it somehow also was predictable because that was a trajectory.

Because every regime like Putin's regime, it's starting with a soft authoritarian rule, eventually runs out of enemies inside the country.

And

they always have to double down, raise the stakes.

And country, country as big as russia would inevitably turn from looking inward it's outward right so it will it will start looking at other targets and and ukraine was a natural target i when russia attacked the republic of georgia back in 2008 i wrote in my wall street journal article in mid-august that next would be ukraine And when I was asked how did I know, I simply said because I looked at the map.

And also I listened to Putin.

Putin was never very secretive about his plans, which is also an interesting phenomenon with many would-be dictators and eventually dictators.

They always lie about what they've done, but very often they tell you exactly what they're going to do.

After all, Mein Kampf published in 1925 was a blueprint.

But in 1925, Adolf Hitler was ahead of the small nationalistic party, and nobody would imagine that eight years later he would be in charge of Germany.

When Vladimir Putin said

bluntly, yes, it straightforward message in 2005 at the joint session of Russian parliament and Russian Senate on April 25th, 2005, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

He was already president of Russia, second term, you know, in charge of Russian nukes and having control more money than probably any other individual in the history of mankind.

So it was a clear strategy.

It's not that he was trying to hide it.

So the problem of restoring the Soviet greatness, the problem of taking revenge for what Putin believed was World War III, the Cold War, and winning not because Russia had the best military, but because the West was weak.

So everything has been laid down.

And now we just, you know, we are paying the price for us not

listening for these very direct warnings from Putin.

And unfortunately, Russian population proved to be incapable of building the strong resistance.

I'm here now just trying to tell Americans that, you know, no one is safe.

Thinking that democracy can defend itself, it's a wrong narrative.

Democracy is a piece of paper.

It's a constitution.

It's a piece of paper.

It's what you believe in and how far you're willing to go to defend it.

And I think now, it's even by my friends, many American friends who have nothing but contempt for Trump, I think they do not recognize the seriousness of the threat to American democracy coming from Trump's seconds coming.

I totally agree, and it's sort of silly to make comparisons at some level between the American tradition and what you saw, what you experienced in the Soviet Union.

But there's certainly lessons you could learn or echoes.

And I'm just, I made a little list here of things that we've seen in the U.S.

in this second term that are maybe even a little different from his first term.

The oligarchy.

developing and kind of the richest, you know, the leaders of the biggest companies kind of coalescing around Trump, starting to erase unflattering history.

Internal police force consolidating with ICE.

There's a culture of fear, I think, now, more so than the first term.

People don't want to criticize him or else he will lash out at them.

A firing of non-loyalists from the government, taking stakes in private companies.

I mean, that's a list of things.

Like there are definitely some parallels, and it's certainly not the same, but what do you make of that?

Oh, absolutely.

And the list could be longer, but I think this is

one

common theme for all of them.

And that's what Trump has been successfully, unfortunately, successfully doing for more than a decade now.

I pointed it back in 2016, 2017.

Donald Trump has been successfully normalizing things that were unacceptable.

He has been single-handedly changing American political culture.

So today, I mean, mentioning Watergate is kind of a joke.

I mean, we have Watergate every hour.

Donald Trump, when you look at so many things he did, I mean, it started with something like innocent.

Oh, everybody released taxes.

I don't want to release taxes.

Sue me.

So step by step, he pushed American public, you know, just one, you know, one milestone to another.

And today, you know, he talked about many things that 10 years ago would be absolutely unimaginable.

The way Trump deals with any crisis is he doubles down and goes even with a bigger lie, with a bigger challenge to the constitution.

So he talked about the third term.

Oh, I remember I had an interview with, I was interviewing the Preet Barara just a month after Trump's elections.

And I asked Preet about it.

He said, ah, it's impossible.

I said, this is pretty, you know, slow down.

Yeah, I think it's impossible.

But he already raised this issue.

And now, again, I don't think it's going to happen, but the fact is that you already have some members of the House publicly calling for Trump staying in power for life.

And are they being criticized?

Are they being expelled from GOP?

No, nothing is happening.

That's why everything else, taking stakes in not just a private company, is a major private company.

So where the government decision can basically influence the value of the stock.

And, you know, it's the attention of the Trump's world is on Monday.

Of course, we don't want to have the government-run grocery stores in New York.

But obviously, the threat to American democracy

from this, you know, failed socialist experiments and the unfolding oligarchy, they are incompatible.

Yeah, a trial run of four grocery stores run by the government that will probably fail is not great.

I'm against that.

But literally, the president just was taking a 10% stake in a big chip maker and says he's going to bully other companies that don't buy chips from the government-approved chip company.

I mean, that is straight out of

authoritarian playbook.

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Well, let's talk about the state of play in the Trump's favorite word, the tri-lat, his desired tri-lap between Russia and Ukraine and us.

What do you see as we sit here today on Thursday, August 21st, as like the state of play in the negotiations between Russia and U.S.

and Ukraine.

Yeah,

if this is a triangle trial at so the two ends are not connected, I don't think Putin will ever meet Zelensky.

And Lavrov made it very clear.

So he just comes up with tons of the conditions.

One of them is we're not sure Zelensky is legitimate and they can meet only when the all issues and root causes have been resolved, which means why they're meeting.

So basically, Putin says, I will meet Zelensky if he's willing to capitulate.

That's it.

That's bottom line.

The rest exists in the Trump's fantasies and in Trump's world that trying to pretend that Trump is doing the greatest job.

I give him credit.

He's trying.

So I'm not here to analyze why he's so flattering to Putin.

So there's clearly the case of dependence, whether it's psychological dependence or there are other material reasons for his dependence.

I'm not here to just speculate.

Clearly, Trump in the presence of Putin is melting down.

That's a fact.

That's what we all can see.

Yes, of course, you can spin it and you can say that Trump, you know, forced Putin to make concessions.

Okay, but it's the

in the daylight.

So this is, it's, you can see that is this Alaska was a big triumph for Putin.

And actually domestic triumph, because Putin proved that he could basically, he could

not control Trump, but he's back.

So this the whole idea that he's totally isolated and yeah, he's Trump, you know,

rehabilitated Putin.

And what he got in exchange?

Nothing.

Zilch.

That's important.

Now, the whole idea that this, you know, that says it's the America now is just, is, is playing a key role there and it's this, and he's trying to be kind of objective dealer, it just doesn't work because Trump made so many conditions and Ukraine eventually accepted most of them.

Putin spat on all of them.

They just didn't even care.

So America's credibility is fairly low.

I had mixed feelings when I saw European leaders flanking Zelensky in Washington.

Why?

Because

I think it's a shame that leaders of the free world have to flatter Trump.

Again, I don't want you to make comments of his intellect and other things, but

it's

almost insulting for

democracy as an institution.

I mean, the real people, the serious people running the largest democratic countries,

and the leader of the country that has been suffering from the invasion, Russian invasion, and paying huge price every day, every hour.

And they had to flatter Trump.

But what else they could do?

I mean, Europe was weak.

So Europeans have no means to help Ukraine to win the war.

So they need American weapons, they need American support.

So they had to do it.

And Zelensky had no other choice.

So that's just, he thinks about his country.

So he had to do these things, you know, to wear a suit.

So just to play, you know, with Trump's ego.

But the fact is that Trump's ego becomes the centerpiece of American politics and also global politics, I mean, it's not going to end well.

Because at the end of the day,

all we know about Trump is that everything he does, everything he says, has only two points of interest: monetization and glorification.

That's it.

There's nothing else.

So, for anybody who wants to analyze it, and I'm telling you, look,

don't try to search for black cat in the dark room because it's not there.

So, Trump cares about Trump, not about Ukraine, not about Russia, not about America, only about Trump.

And two interests: monetization to make money, to become rich, richer, and glorification.

Now he's paranoid with the Nobel Peace Prize.

He's not going to get it, but still it's paranoid.

He's the greatest peacemaker of all the time.

And the fact is that American political system proved to be incapable of shifting away from this, you know,

from being centered on paranoia of one person.

That's again, that's bad news.

But I cannot blame Europeans.

That's why I said it's a mixed feeling.

They succeeded in taking Trump away from Putin's narrative.

They changed the narrative.

It's no longer about Ukraine giving up territories, but about them buying American weapons.

I don't know whether they have this money to buy weapons, but at least they made Trump talk about something else.

To that point, I don't know.

Trump has sent two posts this morning about Russia on social media.

Have you had a chance to see them yet?

I'm excited to show them to you live here, if not.

Okay, show me live because I saw one in Colorado, so that's why I just say

too many Trump purposes.

Yeah, he's posting all the time.

He's very prodigious.

One of the posts I think you're particularly suited to reply to, he posts a picture.

It's a dual picture.

One was, you remember the picture of Nixon poking his finger at Khrushchev's chest?

And he posts a side-by-side of that with himself pointing his finger at Putin.

But the difference is Putin is smirking at him in his picture.

And Khrushchev is like, has his eyes closed and is grimacing at Nixon.

It's hard to get inside Trump's Trump's head, but I think that my interpretation of this is he realizes people are making fun of him for being weak, and he thinks this is going to make him look better.

He also posts, he goes, it's very hard if not impossible to win a war without attacking an invader's country.

There's no chance of winning.

It's like that with Ukraine and Russia.

Joe Biden would not let Ukraine fight back, only defend.

How did that work out?

Regardless, this is a war that would have never happened if I were president.

Interesting times ahead.

I don't know.

How do you interpret it?

Absolutely.

No, the comparison with Nixon and Khrushchev, yeah, he wants to look like a strong leader, you know, opposing Soviet Union, Soviet Empire.

He was not on Alaska.

Alaska was an indelible spot on American reputation.

It's a shame that will probably not be erased anytime soon.

I think that Alaska's humiliation was much worse than stampeding Kabul, which was terrible.

But it was far away and again, it was poorly managed.

It's obviously the fault of the Biden administration.

Though we should remember that it it was Trump who made a very bad deal with Taliban.

So, the peace deal was done by Trump, and Trump's administration, First Administration, negotiated with Taliban without the government.

There were seeds already in the fertile ground to sending a message that America would walk away and

Taliban would be in charge.

But still, the stampede from Kabul, total disaster.

But I think what people saw in Alaska was much worse.

And it will require giant effort to recover the reputation because again, Trump looked

weakest from the wrong word.

I mean, he looked totally unpresidential.

So that's why I think now he analyzed it, well, probably analyzes the wrong word.

He had enough data submitted by say sycophants who tried to explain to him that something probably was not as perfect.

It was not 10 out of 10, or it was 10 out of 10 for Russia, actually, not for him.

So yeah, that's why Trump is trying to come back.

So Nixon picture is clearly, you know, it's about him trying to look strong, you know,

in historical timeline.

Now, as for the second one, I.

It didn't really work because Putin's smirking.

This Putin's smirking is so funny.

He's like, I think I looked up here, but Putin's laughing at him.

Anyway, sorry, the second one.

Yeah.

Second one is, I think it's not bad because, again, it's obviously he repeated the same lie.

The war would have started if I were the president.

There are no indications.

The only reason it would not have started is because Trump would probably force Zelensky to give up his country.

Putin was about to destroy Ukraine.

That was a plan.

It's not about Trump, it's not Biden.

Putin has been building his military force because his plan was to take over Ukraine, not part of Ukraine, all Ukraine.

Ukraine had become a Russian vassal state, period.

Not I'm telling you.

He has been saying that.

That was a Russian propaganda machine and that has been repeating since 2014.

And that was a Russian.

official line that has not changed.

Even now, Lavrov talks about Ukraine not being a sovereign state.

So that's why the war of aggression was inevitable, as long as Ukraine wanted to preserve its sovereignty.

So, but Trump criticism was partially correct.

Biden administration restrained Ukraine from responding against Russia's vulnerable infrastructure.

Ukraine has not received weapons that could destroy the Crimean bridge, and Ukraine could definitely take advantage of Russia's retreat in 2022 or could have far more successful operation 2023 if America would have supplied weapons and also lift all restrictions on use of American weapons.

So here is Trump is right.

What kind of interesting times are ahead?

I don't know.

We read about new Ukrainian missiles that are being built.

Some say it's probably the result of the joint cooperation, not with Americans, but with Europeans, Germans, and Greeks.

So Ukraine is now having very capable, probably one of the most effective military productions in the world.

And it's quite interesting that America now is looking for Ukrainian drone technologies because the Russian-Ukrainian war made a lot of American weapons in the storage obsolete.

America has more than 10,000 tanks sitting somewhere in Nevada in California in the desert.

And they are totally irrelevant now.

Instead of sending them to Ukraine,

they eventually will be cut in metals and we, American taxpayers, will pay Lockheed Martin or whoever, you know, just Raytheon to do the job.

It'll be a museum.

It'll be a museum.

No, no, there are thousands of them.

So this is the, you have to cut them.

You don't have museums that big.

But they could be on Ukrainian frontline.

But the

drone war now changed everything.

So that's why now

it's for America to basically learn from Ukrainians.

And I think the interesting times are ahead.

But what is American gapeline in Ukraine?

I don't know.

And I don't think anybody knows.

Of course, Trump doesn't know because he can change.

Yeah, I mean, I'm skeptical that the interesting times ahead are that Trump will actually fully support Ukraine's efforts to go on offense.

But it's a better position than we were in a week ago with him and his strange behavior.

There's no doubt Ukraine, under current circumstances, does not have manpower to kick Russians away, you know, just on an open battlefield.

It doesn't have to.

All you have to do is to destroy Russian infrastructure.

Russia is suffering now.

Russian economy is not in a good shape.

Actually, it's almost free-fall.

So, what America can do is

to also force Europeans to take more decisive steps to cut to absolute minimum Russian oil export.

And

it can be done.

And also to lift restrictions on the Ukrainians using weapons.

Crimean bridge.

This is the main artery that supports Crimea.

So if Ukrainians can actually attack it with the missiles, that will change the logistics games.

Plus, there are so many targets.

Russia is a vast country and now the vastness of Russia works against Russia.

It always helped against invaders, but it does not help actually it opposite against drones or missiles.

So destroying Russian infrastructure, the facilities, and Ukrainians do not attack, attack civilians.

It's very, very important.

The difference is put it exclusively attack civilians.

So civilian infrastructure.

Ukrainians attack either military targets or oil depots,

I mean, everything that is related to war.

There's some casualties, but minimal casualties.

Even Russian propaganda cannot blame Ukrainians for

committing committed crimes against civilians.

Oh, Canada.

Hey, y'all.

We're going on tour this fall.

We're going up north.

I demanded it.

I wanted to support our Canadian listeners and friends being attacked by this administration.

So we're going to do the whole deal.

Mounties, Tim Hortons, maple syrup.

I'm going to be drinking Seagram's on stage.

Is Seagram's Canadian anymore?

I said that in the last episode, and I think they might have been bought by a multinational corporation.

Anyway, I'm going to have a Canadian cocktail on stage.

You guys can tell me what I should do.

And

we get to all be an allyship

against our terrible mega president.

So come check out me, Sarah Longwell, Canada's favorite, Sam Stein.

We're going to be in Toronto in September.

Want to see you there, especially if you're Canadian, but if you're American, you want to go support our friends up north and come hang?

Would like to see you too.

If you aren't up for stamping your passport, you can catch me, Sarah, and JVL in DC or New York City in October as well.

Anyone can grab tickets or more information now at thebulwark.com slash events.

They didn't tell me to tell you this in the ad read, but since you're a friend, since I'm looking up for you, I'm letting you know that I was looking at the pre-sales.

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I have to play this for you.

I have no choice because the vice president was on Fox last night discussing his assessment of Putin.

And I just would like to hear your response to that.

Let's listen.

What's it like meeting Putin?

What was he like just one-on-one?

So I've actually never met Putin.

The president did that meeting.

I've talked to him on the phone a number of times.

You know, it's interesting.

He's more soft-spoken than you would necessarily expect.

You know, the American media has a particular image of him.

He's soft-spoken in a certain way.

He's very deliberate.

He's very careful.

And I think fundamentally, he's a person who looks out for the interests as he sees it of Russia.

And I think one of the reasons he respects the President of the United States is because he knows the president looks out.

for the interests of the American people.

And while they often disagree about issues, and obviously the president has been very critical of Vladimir Putin, the president's also willing to work with anybody if he thinks it's going to accomplish an important goal for America.

What say you to that?

I would like to challenge Vice President and just to bring one quote, one quote from Donald Trump that was critical of Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump said terrible things about virtually everybody.

About,

I'm not sure he said something about Jay Devance.

When Jay Devance called him Hitler nine years ago, or like Hitler, I don't think Donald Trump noticed Jay Devance.

He was too small.

But he insulted every competitor, you know, within the Republican Party, every American politician, every leader of the Democratic country.

He even went very critical, not as dramatic, but still critical about dictators.

Psychologically, he feels more comfortable with dictators than with democratic leaders, but still, you know, he was critical, you know, even about the North Korean dictator or Xi Jinping, Erdogan.

So occasionally he said something bad about them or critical about them.

I maybe I missed it.

I never heard Trump saying anything negative about Vladimir Putin.

And of course, he never did anything that that could harm Vladimir Putin.

So here I think vice president was

exaggerating.

So

that's one.

Now two is soft-spoken.

Stalin was soft-spoken.

I don't know about Hitler, but this is, I mean, you're talking about worst dictator.

I mean, this is the guy who is responsible for hundreds of thousands, most likely millions of lives.

who has no allergy for blood.

It's a vicious, brutal killer that's living on the planet.

Soft-spoken?

Now, speaking about the interest of Russia, okay, Mr.

Vice President, I mean, just, you know, stop selling this nonsense.

I don't know whether you pretend to be an idiot or just, you know, you feel comfortable because that's way too just to stay in the Trumps, you know, on Rush.

Vladimir Putin caused tremendous suffering for Russia.

You have more than millions, million casualties for what?

For, you know, a few square miles, you know, for what?

of totally scorched earth that's interest of russia

are you serious the Russia is now

is turning into a Chinese colony.

It's a Chinese gas station with nukes.

That's interest of Russia.

And as for Donald Trump taking care of America and just American interests, I leave for American voters to decide.

But again, it doesn't seem to me that Donald Trump does anything that may

hurt his interest.

to promote the interest of America at large.

Speaking of pretending to be an idiot, I also am obligated to pick your brain about, there's a video going around this week of the Tucker Carlson show.

He has a guest on, and Tucker agrees with his guest when he says, it turns out I think the story we got about World War II is all wrong.

One can make the argument we should have sided with Hitler against Stalin.

What do you think about that?

Look, it's the, yeah, I saw it, yes.

Look,

the problem again is that it's an attempt to distort historical facts because America sided with with Great Britain, who is the one remaining stronghold of democracy against Hitler.

Hitler was the greatest threat.

Yeah, Stalin was bad.

I mean, it says the Stalin-Hitler combination was horrible.

And many European nations still, you know, recovering from being squeezed between Nazis and communists.

Ask the Baltic nations.

It's tragedy.

Some of them had to make a choice.

And Putin's propaganda is still blaming, oh, look at this Latvians.

They sided with Nazis.

Yeah, but they had Soviets on the other side.

So it's, you know, it's the, yeah, it's terrible.

So this is many European nations suffered because of this horrible dilemma and impossible choice they had to make.

So, but siding with Hitler against Great Britain, it's against Great Britain, that's important.

But it's a slide, you're sliding down.

And by the laws of physics, you know,

when you're sliding down, there's only one direction.

And the speed keeps increasing.

So I'm not surprised that the Tucker, you know, who at one point praised Putin and took, no doubt, you know, just took a very hefty compensation for his services.

Now he is fairly comfortable, you know, talking about standing with Hitler, which is, by the way, it's a great illustration that we have to connect the dots.

It's the, let's stop saying, oh, Hitler is impossible.

No, by the way, in 1938, when European democracies, Britain and France, gave Hitler Sudeteland, most important defendant part of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was not Hitler from history books.

Hitler was in 1938, even before Kristallnacht, it happened in November, in September, he has not started a single aggressive war.

Of course, Hitler was bad, but it's not Hitler in 1945.

So today, Putin is much worse than Hitler in 1938.

Taker, you know, who likes Putin, so he talks about Hitler with some sympathies.

That's natural, because Putin and Hitler belong together.

So thank you, Taker Karlos.

Your sub stack, you talk about on the next move, which people should check out, about strategic insights on what we should do going forward on authoritarianism.

Do you have anything right now, people who are listening, as we think about the state of play in August of 25, that we should be doing here in America that you're not seeing enough of?

Again, I think it's important to understand that the threat to American democracy is real.

And I think

it's not yet time to talk about 2028.

It's not even time to pay attention to Trump's murmuring about his term and some of the Republicans know, just offering him, you know, powerful life.

I think the top priority is 2026.

It's gerrymandering in Texas, it's just the beginning.

And Trump's attacking male vote, it's also just the beginning.

Because Trump has reached a point, I think it's probably a point of no return.

He cannot lose the levers of power.

The only institution in America and it's Article 1 of the Constitution that could stop Trump is the Congress.

So Trump will be the number one priority to help his firm control of the Congress.

That's a key.

So in an ideal scenario, Democrats could find four Republicans, highly unlikely, that could shift sides and they can take over the Congress.

Unlikely, but still, let's fantasize.

Maybe, God knows.

But in 2026,

the

battle lines will be as clear as the sky in a good day.

Because remember, Trump doesn't lose elections.

If election is lost, lost, it's rigged.

So he must win elections.

So we have a person who never recognized his loss in 2020 and tried to overrun the public will by more or less

a coup on January 6th.

First thing he did, he pardoned these people.

That's again a very important message.

And now in 2026, he'll have all levels of power.

including DOJ and FBI and statistics

in his sides, so to protect his majority majority in the house.

So we have to work, you know, day and night to make sure that American people will have a chance to take part in the free and fair elections.

It will be free, but I'm afraid it will not be fair because I'm afraid, and you, if you don't trust me, if you think I'm paranoid, okay, fine, I'm Russian, I earn my rights to be paranoid.

So just ask one question: if you know, it's at the crucial moment on this day, imaginary day X.

Will Pombondi and Cash Patel follow Constitution or Donald Trump's orders?

When you answer this question honestly, you understand why we all should worry about what happens next year.

It's the 205th anniversary of the greatest event in history, the Declaration of Independence, birth of the United States.

Let's make sure that the Republic that was won back then will not die now.

I have one really quick thing I have to ask you about.

One other thing.

Have you seen this video?

I'm not a big chess watcher, I have to admit, but Magnus Carlson has been a a five-time world champion has captured people's attention there's this video going around two months ago where he loses this match and he gets so angry yeah yeah yeah he throws it down and many people like like we're sharing this and even those of us who don't watch chess because just the emotion in the moment was so fascinating and i was just wondering what you thought about that match and and his reaction actually it was a good promotion for the game of chess let's let's agree on that so okay yeah because it became viral now look it's it's i understand emotions I mean, it's the Magnus is the strongest player, but he's no longer the world champion because he decided not to defend the official title.

And he just plays

for money and for fun.

And again,

he's a tremendous player.

And he faced the young Indian who is now official world champion, but not as strong or as impressive as Magnus.

And Magnus wanted to win.

And he was absolutely winning.

That's important.

He outplayed Gukesh completely.

He was winning.

It's the couple of correct moves.

The game is over.

But Gukesh kept fighting.

And Magnus

lost his vigilance.

He became complacent.

Sounds familiar.

Sounds familiar.

And all of a sudden,

and it happens.

So instead of having just an easy win, he had to work hard to win.

And every time

you see that your difficulties kept increasing.

So you became nervous.

And he lost control of the game.

And at one point, he had to already basically

step on his pride and say, Okay, let's make a draw, let's, you know, just uh, but he pushed, push, push, and he lost.

And I think it's it's he was so emotional, overwhelmed, he just banged, you know.

So, but okay, emotions.

Yes, it's a very emotional game, very cruel game.

It was really captivating to watch.

Um, anyway, Gary Kasparov, thank you so much for coming on the Borg podcast.

Share your wisdom.

Thank you.

Uh, let's do it again sometime soon.

Absolutely, thank you.

Always available for you guys.

Thank you.

Up next, Jerusalem Dempsis.

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All right, and we're back with an opinion journalist formerly at the Atlantic and now editor-in-chief and CEO of a new outlet, The Argument, a publication that aims to push back against the populist moment and strengthen the ideas of modern liberalism.

Delighted to welcome back to the show, Jerusalem Dempsis.

Hey, girl.

Hi, how are you?

Thanks for having me.

I'm just so excited to have you back.

I was excited to see the news about the argument.

I was excited to see all the blowback that you got on X.

You know, nobody, you're not doing anything good if people aren't shitposting you.

So,

why don't for folks who are listening that

might not be as very online as us,

give them a pitch on what the new outlet is and what you're trying to do.

Yeah, if you're the one person who has not yet heard about the argument, so the argument is a new liberal media company, company and our goal is to revitalize American liberalism for the 21st century.

And by liberalism, you know, I think that that word is used like very differently in the US than in other contexts.

We don't just mean, you know, left-wing,

we mean like basic principles around protecting individual rights, egalitarianism, freedoms of speech, but also that the government should provide the basic framework to allow people to achieve those things.

And so what we're doing is we are creating not just, you know, another place for you to get lectured at by political scientists about the importance of liberal democracy.

You have to care, but actually a place where we're actually.

That is important.

And there's a time and a place for lecturing about the importance of the world.

I think, and

too much time, too much place at this point.

But I think that what's really important is that there are issues people care about.

They care about, you know, they care about housing.

They care about the economy.

They care about

tariffs.

They care about immigration.

They care about gender and gender equality and all these different things.

And like, instead of just saying you need to care about liberal democracy, we should just explain and argue for the things that we think would make the world a better place in that vein.

And so, what we're going to do is we're commissioning a bunch of really great writers, folks like Matt Iglesias, Matthew Brunig,

Rob Meyer, who's at Heat Map News, all over the kind of political spectrum, but all people who believe in like positive sum, pro-growth, pro-equality, a system of government.

So, you're living out.

We are living out.

We actually trademarked living out.

I want you to know that.

Really?

Congratulations.

No one else had done it.

I'm shocked.

What's the process for trademarking the phrase living out?

Well, to be fair, we have applied for the trademark.

I want to be very, I want to be very

precise here.

We hired a lawyer and I go, hey, can we do this?

And she was like, I don't see why not.

But we'll find out in like six months when the Trump administration gets back to us.

Are you capitalist shills?

Like,

are you planning on shilling for the tech oligarchy?

Like the left?

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, how could we not?

You know, they're in charge.

No, I mean, I think this is so funny because I think it's like,

there's this weird sense that like, there's no way to think about, I mean, most normal people you ask them, like, hey, do you think economic growth is good?

They'd be like, yeah, economic growth is great.

Hey, like, do you think that we should have like business-friendly policies that make it easier for people to start businesses?

Like, you know, the argument that we want to create low prices, that you should have access to consumer goods that are like cheap, that you want like a cheap dishwasher, you want a TV that doesn't cost $1,000.

Like they're like, these things are good.

And of course, that comes along with regulations to make sure these companies don't destroy our brains.

I think in particular when it comes to like what's happening with

AI right now, it's really important to think about how the regulatory frameworks we're creating are going to make sure that either we are immiserated because they've taken away every single job that we can do or that they've made our lives a bunch better.

And like that's a question of what government does.

And so what we're doing is thinking through what is it that policies should actually do?

What should individuals do?

What should companies do to shape our future in a positive some way?

I mean, the core belief I think that we all have at the argument is that it is possible to have things that benefit everyone.

That when an immigrant comes here, it's not taking away from someone else.

It's actually adding and creating a better future.

When a new company comes out with a new product, it's not necessarily hurting you because someone else is making money.

These things can be positive some.

Someone else is making money off something that benefits you.

So I think to me that that's really a big part of what we're trying trying to do.

All right.

I know that you specifically said in the rollout that you're trying to make positive arguments for things rather than arguments against things, but I got to tell you,

I'm pretty motivated by negative partisanship these days.

And so we're going to have to talk a little bit about the arguments against things.

You wrote this.

I'm largely focusing on the post-liberal right for a couple of reasons.

First, they're currently in power and represent the greater threat to humanity.

Second, they're more coherently organized.

This is not to let the post-liberal left off the hook at all.

Much of my writing, The Atlantic, has been critical of the anti-growth, anti-individualist parts of liberalism and the left, whether it comes from tariffs, a love of localism, minoritarianism, decentralization, antipathy towards open debate and empiricism, poorly reasoned anti-immigration attitudes, or NIMBYism, post-liberal ideas have sprouted up.

from the furthest left and right corners of the internet, all the way to the center left pages of the New York Times.

So I want to get to the,

we agree on everything in that sentence.

I certainly care more about the post-liberal right more, but let's just talk a little bit about the post-liberal left.

Like what exactly worries you about the post-liberal left?

Like what are the elements that you think are pernicious?

Yeah, and I mean, I think it's hard.

I mean, like, there are people on the right who will call themselves the post-liberal right.

You know what I mean?

Like, they're like, we bar post-liberals.

This is our manifesto.

Like, they're like, I mean, literally the vice president of the United States, for example, who we're getting to in a second.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, like, you know, that's a much more like coherent movement that is developing in that way.

But I think with the post-liberal left, I mean, it's like really a bunch of ideas I think often are contradicting inside of people.

Like many people on the left would say things like, I think that it's really important that we are open to be a pluralistic society.

We want diversity.

And then they're also supporting anti-growth policies that make it impossible for that to be true.

Like, how can you be pro-growth, pro-immigration, if you're against housing in your backyard that's affordable for immigrants?

Like, you know, these things don't actually work together.

So in many ways, I think it's often like a bunch of contradictions happening within people who have both some, you know, some good values and others that are opposed.

And I think there's also, though, people who are actually have an intentional project of doing kind of honestly what is looks like a red-brown coalition to me.

Like one of the big critiques that came out of the argument literally, like, I think day two was from

King of the Post, one of the kings of the post-libs, Sorab Amari.

And I heard from Compact.

It's hard to decide whether that's a critique from the post-liberal left or right, because he's been both.

No one knows.

I mean, in a year from now, he could be a neolib and we would, you know, wouldn't be surprising.

But like that critique gets retweeted by people like David Sirota and like other people on, who are like very clearly on the left.

Like that's like David Sirota's like, you know, former Bernie staffer, and he's retweeting this guy who's most famous for going after Drag Queen Story Hour.

Like, I mean, that's that kind of like coalition that I see forming on a couple on issues where they're pretending like they're being pro-worker, but in reality, they're supporting kinds of tariff policies and are clearly hostile to the kind of open, free society that has like made America great.

I mean, to me, like that is a big concern.

It's not a big concern because I think that they're in power.

I think it's a big concern because if there's going to be an alternative offered to the American people in response to post-liberal right, and I think my biggest concern is what alternative will that be?

Will it be the version that is anti-growth, that is negative some, that views someone else's gain as your loss, that is a pro-tariff, that is anti-building more housing and making it easier to access the best basic qualities of human life.

Which alternative are you going to get?

So, at the argument, we're trying to provide an alternative that isn't the version that's being proffered in the pages of like, you know, whatever Sirota's magazine is called.

I don't even know.

My New Orleans body's current affairs, maybe.

Let's put a little meat on that, though, then, because, right, it's like the question is, is this a left-center debate?

Like, or is it kind of an up-down debate, if you will, like about liberalism and statism and et cetera?

We'll use Zoron as an example, just because, you know, and he's the most, I think, prime candidate right now that's sort of navigating this line, right?

And I think that there in some ways, I don't know, well, I guess I'll let you say there's probably some ways that you see him as part of a post-liberal left, but he also has expressed openness to abundance ideas and openness to the fact that, you know, government needs to provide better services.

And

when you look at the actual candidates out there instead of like the meta online debate,

people like him or, I don't know, Dan Osborne or whoever the other kind of avatars are for the populist left.

How do you assess what you've been seeing from them?

I think this is a really good question because a big part of what I'm trying to do is like change the cleavage everyone talks about is like everyone's like, oh, mod versus left.

But I think it's not actually the most relevant cleavage.

It's like pro-growth positive sum versus anti-growth negative sum.

And that transcends the left and right, right?

So, like, with someone like Zoron, for instance, right, that's someone who has a very pro-growth vision of New York City.

Like, he's very clear about wanting to build more housing.

He's very clear about wanting to actually tackle the very basics of what makes New York City a difficult place for people to live in.

Like, that to me, like, that kind of, and he even like, I think has referenced like sewer socialism, which in many ways is a version of pro-growth liberalism.

I mean, to me, liberalism does not mean that you're like in the center, right?

Like, if you look at writings from like the most famous liberal people, like, they sound like they're, I mean, I think they're arguably socialists.

And Matt Brunei is someone who's writing for us.

Like, Mills, like Rawls, like, these people are like arguably socialists.

Like, and at the level of, and when you go read them, like, they're very, very radical.

And there's been, I think, the turn in liberalism, like the 1970s or whatever that people often call like the neoliberal turn, but like, no one knows what the hell everyone means when they're saying that.

But, like, I often think it's actually just people making it all milquetoast.

And what we're trying to do is like revitalize.

So, the one I Zone on, I think, is very much someone who I could see as being a part of this.

I think it's really hard because there's obviously, again, in every individual person, a ton of mixes.

So, like, who knows?

Like, is he going to empower a bunch of the people who are in his coalition who are really skeptical of business, really skeptical of capital?

Like, we're going to see what happens when I think he becomes mayor of New York.

But I'm like, cautiously optimistic at this point.

But then, like, I think that getting more granular about other people, I mean, like, I think that a lot of the people that I see as being, you know, part of the populist left on the sort of, you know, pro-tariff,

really concerned about globalization, really concerned about tourism,

environmental, totally, I mean, I mean, to me, like when you see how these environmental groups have opposed clean energy being built, transmission lines being built, I mean, this, I mean.

It is genuinely going to become a huge problem, A, as we see electricity prices rising for people.

I mean, that's going to be a huge problem coming down the pipe, not just because of AI, but just like, we're just electrifying a bunch of stuff right now.

You know what I mean?

Like there's a lot of demand coming on and like people are either not going to be able to get access to stuff they expected or there's like a genuine risk of like at some point blackouts becoming more common in the American landscape.

And so like to me, like the parts of the left that are doing this, whether it's certain environmental groups or it's, you know, some of these groups that are, that are, you know, very anti-business and anti-trade, like that's, that's really who concerns me.

Again, just to use this as an example, so people kind of process this, because I do think it's hard.

It's like, what if we just get in this dimensional view?

And it's because our politics was like this for so long.

For a long period of time, everybody was a liberal, basically, right?

And it was

in the global sense of the word, right?

And it was just degrees, right?

And we're on this sort of left-right spectrum where it's like this more big government liberalism versus small government liberalism.

Now you had some anti-liberal SOCONs and like a small number of commies on the left.

Like among the elected officials, it was mostly this left-right spectrum.

And that is like changing now.

And one example of that is, so you give what seems like at least maybe consciously positive thoughts to what Zoron's been talking about.

You've got Karen Bass out in Los Angeles.

God.

Don't trigger me right now.

Who is more of like an establishment dead?

Like she was on the Biden VP shortlist, right?

So not like a far leftist by any stretch of the word.

Dude, I've been a bass hater for like years now.

I've been.

Okay, well, let's explain to people why.

So here was yesterday she signed a city council resolution opposing this new California housing bill, SB 79.

She wanted an exemption for Los Angeles for the housing requirements.

Talk to people about what that was and why you're triggered.

I mean,

why am I triggered?

Why is she triggered?

That's actually the whole magazine.

So, I mean, at a very base level, it's about building housing near transit in Los Angeles.

And Karen Bass has now like a long history of like pretending to be pro-housing and then like actually taking steps that make it harder to build housing in Los Angeles.

And I mean, to be clear, like the only arguments that are being made about why this is a problem is like local control and too much, too fast type rhetoric about what's going on.

I mean, the most galling thing was that Los Angeles actually landed upon a way to build affordable housing very quickly.

And Karen Bass stopped it because it was happening too fast in exclusionary neighborhoods in richer neighborhoods in in los angeles like this is like the democratic party in los angeles supposedly a very very liberal city a very very left city is like literally making it harder for working class people to live there because they're so opposed to growth because there's anti-developer sentiment that like dominates anyone's ability to think clearly about housing and housing markets like this to me is the like apotheosis of like post-liberal left economics thinking that you can somehow get to a better world by blocking every changing thing that could possibly come into your community and that it'll be fine in the end.

Like, yeah, no, as you can tell, very triggered.

She got me.

I'm mad.

Put it in the papers.

Yeah.

You should be mad.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

And it's, it's, it's irresponsible.

I also just think, like, she's also like, she's also like tweeting online about how Trump is going after these black cities.

And I'm like, if you care so much about racial justice, like, why are you upholding exclusionary zoning?

Like, it's just like, are you joking?

Like, you can tweet all you want and get your retweets about Donald Trump, but maybe you should do something in the city that you actually govern.

My two cents.

I'm snapping because this is a lip, because we're living out, so we're snap.

We snap now.

We're living out.

I have a troublemaking question, listening to that answer.

There were elements of that answer that sounded kind of like what you would hear in the free press, their critiques of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

You hate to hand it to the free press.

Talk about how you would see the arguments maybe

compare and contrast for me.

Compare and contrast, the free press and the argument.

Well,

I think that the free press has a different view of liberalism than I do.

I mean, first of all, I mean, we're not going to talk a lot about foreign policy because it's not really the focus of what I write about.

But I have pretty strong views about Gaza and what's going on in Israel being both obviously a genocide and unacceptable.

We should not be giving them money.

And I don't think that that is the line that the free press has been giving.

I think that's a very big difference that I think I have with people who are writing there.

But in terms of domestic policy, I mean, I agree that there has been a right-wing critique that has existed for a while about left cities that, you know, a lot of right-wing people will go like, oh, you're suddenly waking up to the problems of liberal governance.

And I'm like, yeah, okay, like clean hit a little bit.

But also, at the same time, like the alternative they're offering is not exactly what we're going for.

Like, yeah, I don't like my cities, but I also don't want to live in a state that denies basic access to reproductive freedom or denies basic access to, you know, health care.

Like, I'm just like, these are, this is this alternative you're offering me is also not super attractive, honestly.

And so, to me, it's like, I'm not saying that, like, the best idea would be to replace Karen Bass with like, I don't know, Greg Abbott or whatever.

I think that's not like the goal.

But, like, I think you can dream better than that.

I don't know.

Who would be the dream free press candidate?

Tom Cotton as mayor of South Head Los Angeles?

No idea.

But I just think that like the difference here, too, is that like, in many ways, I think, you know, the free press has really focused on the wrong things.

But I think that like the focus, the editorial focus in the editorial line has really been on like

what you're actually pushing for.

Often, I think the impact has been to essentially push up Trump

because by default, even if I think they would say that they are not pro-Trump.

And so, to me, I think Trump and the post-liberal right and everyone he's a part of is like the biggest stuff to this country.

And so, like, anything you're doing to make that more of a reality is a big problem

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Yeah, all right, I'm going to get to the postal right next, but that sparked another troublemaking thought I I have.

Because another thing they write a lot about over there, which is a major urgent issue for the country, is woke on campuses.

Yeah, like it's just too woke.

You know, if there's a teacher at UT San Antonio, you know, who has been

critiqued, you know, for being too woke, that might be something you have to look into.

What about that?

How much woke talk do you think that there will be at the argument?

How much woke talk?

Very little woke talk.

I mean, I think people often don't separate these things out out cleanly.

I think it is definitely true.

I saw it both in myself.

I mean, I was in college at like kind of the peak of what people call like the woke revolution, or was it the great awokening?

That's what it is.

And so, like, I find myself even like saying,

I regret in many ways, like, views that I held that were, I think, what I would call illiberal now in terms of just like not wanting to hear different opinions.

But I think there's a false equivalence that people draw here where there were

private actions that I think were illiberal and bad.

And that's different from the state coming in and now going, we're going to send a letter from Russ Vought to the Smithsonian saying, like, don't talk about slavery or whatever he wrote in that letter.

He's like, these are like, these are not the same things at all.

And I think there's like false equivalency that's being drawn here.

Like, I think that, like, as a culture of people who care about living in a pluralistic society, like, we as liberals need to do much better and should have done much better at like, both A, caring about persuasion rather than just browbeating people who disagreed with us because I think it's actually not effective at our goals.

And also secondly, like just being more tolerant to the fact that like stuff is kind of confusing for people.

Like

I have to explain how, you know, trans stuff to my father and he is like a very loving, very wonderful person, but like it took him a while to get it and to become more accepting of like how you would talk to someone who seems different than you.

And like, and maybe he doesn't like fully get what the thing is now, but like he's.

a very wonderful person and I love him a lot.

And like, you know, I think that like approaching these kinds of conversations that way, and I don't think it's true that like all the left was doing that, but it was a significant loud part of the left, and people who would call themselves liberals who were not interested and not available to tolerate this kind of debate.

But that is different than, I think, the larger anti-woke critique that I think has existed in a bunch of places now in conservative media.

That, like, any focus on diversity, any focus on equity, any focus on Black Little Mermaid is woke.

Got to get

Cracker Barrel's terrible rebrand is woke.

How are you blaming this on the wokes?

This is fucking corporate America sucking.

That's what this is.

I went to school in Southern Virginia, and so I am also mad about the rebrand.

Yeah, we can all unite together.

Maybe the Cracker Barrel rebrand will be the thing that finally brings this country together and bring in our post-racial future that Obama didn't deliver on.

Sorry.

Sorry, President Obama.

It wasn't your fault.

Okay.

Let's talk about the post-liberal right for a second.

I was on vacation when JD Vance gave probably the most alarming speech of the decade, of my lifetime, maybe even.

I don't know.

Maybe that's overstated, but he was with the Clare Monsters out there in california and um i want to play a clip for you about how we define what an american is let's listen if you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an american is i hate to say it very few of our leaders actually have a good answer is it purely agreement with the credible credible principles of america if you think about it identifying america just with agreeing with the principles let's say of the declaration of independence that's that's a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time.

What do I mean by that?

Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Must we admit all of them tomorrow?

If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you.

But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists.

Even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

And I happen to think that it's absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying you don't belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025.

I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong.

I guess I'll just let you cook on that.

What do you think about the post-liberal rights definition of an American?

Who counts, who is an American, who isn't, who we should honor, who we shouldn't?

I think this is at actually at the center of what the post-liberal right is trying to do.

And I think that people should not confuse this as just like, oh, like, this is just like classic racism, like, you know, like just your classic run-in-the-mill bigotry.

Like, this this is a little bit of racism.

You do notice that he talks about how, you know, we should honor somebody that is deeply American if they do not believe in the principles of the Declaration, but their ancestors did fight in the Civil War.

And I would note that he doesn't say which side all of that.

He's like, if your ancestors fought for the Confederacy, either side, either side, and you don't believe in America, and the

Declaration of Independence about equal rights for everybody, you're more American than than somebody who's here recently that does believe in the Declaration.

That's basically how I'm interpreting them.

Yeah, to be clear, I would definitely say there's racism on the postable, right?

But I'm just saying, like, I think that there's often this like, oh, it's like, this is the same thing, just a return to racism.

Like, this is a complete abrogation of like what has meant to be an American for like decades.

Like you can go back to like speeches people are making.

Like, obviously, we have not lived up to the promise of America for a very long time.

This is a very common theme of like civil rights leaders, like activists pointing out that, like, hey, you have all these values in this here constitution.

Like, doesn't seem like you're really doing this for everyone.

Like, that is obviously true.

But there's a difference between like, oh, like someone saying they're for egalitarians and they're for a vision of America that is expansive and that we can absorb people from different places.

And then we take the greatness of the world and we make it our own.

Like, there's a difference between that.

and not living up to it and going like, actually, we don't want any of that.

What we actually want is like blood and soil nationalism like i'm like actually so serious i read that speech and i'm like this is the precursor to someone who really believes that the fundamental thing about america is just

have you spilled blood here and have you died and do you have like parents who have like died and have are in cemeteries like when he says and he evokes like oh seven generations of his family in cemeteries in kentucky um like what he is saying is that is more important than anything else that you're doing and like i think that he's also setting up a straw man for libs here, right?

Because like no person believes that like, oh, if you like the Declaration of Independence, that automatically makes you an American.

Like,

obviously not.

Like, no one is saying that.

The question is, like, do we believe in a type of nation that can absorb new people and new cultures and new ideas and make it our own?

Or do you want to like stagnate and die in like 1955 brain America?

Like, it's just so absurd to me, but I do think it's very dangerous that he feels so comfortable saying this.

And I think that sometimes white supremacy gets thrown around willy-nilly a little bit on the left, but like this is pretty, I mean, he's essentially saying whiteness.

Like he's essentially saying like, that's what he's talking about.

And it's not as if there were non-white people that came in the Mayflower and were fighting the revolution and there were slaves and white people, right?

By modern definition, essentially.

So that's he's talking about white people.

You can see how radicalizing this is, but just in how J.D.

Vance has gotten radicalized, right?

I mean, 10 years ago, he literally wrote a book about

how his ancestors were trash, kind of.

I mean, honestly, like the purpose of the book was that it's the purpose of the book was like, my parents and grandparents, like, didn't like my one Mima did, but like the rest of my bloodline, my recent bloodline, didn't really add anything to America of value.

And we need to revitalize that.

And now here is brutal, yeah.

Yeah.

And now here he is talking about how it's only his Kentucky dead ancestors that have been the things that have added things to the cultural fabric.

Like he's just, he's been, he's been radicalized by essentially white nationalist ideology.

I don't think that's overstated.

I think it's like, I mean, to me, it's like, I have no idea what is sincerely in J.D.

Vance's heart.

I can't, I have no idea what he's at.

Because like, maybe he's just a power-hungry lunatic who like all he cares about is just like whoever seems like they're in charge.

Oh, Peter Thiel.

I mean, he has changed his name three times, changed his religion a couple of times, changed his political ideology.

So I'm up for change and growth, but that points towards

sociopathy.

That's points towards sociopathy.

So, like, I don't know, but it's just like to me, I think what's relevant is that, like, someone who's clearly very, very successful at reading where the tides are going to end up in a powerful position thinks the tides are going towards this.

Like, that's like, and if you just even like track the way he's talked about this, he used to be a lot more subtle.

Like, I went back and I was looking through his other speeches, like, even his speech

at the convention, I believe,

accepting the nomination or either accepting the nomination or the one where he gave it after the victory party.

I mean,

he was much more muted in how he talked about post-liberalism.

He was like, oh, like my parents died in Kentucky.

I mean, he like referenced it, but like this level of analysis, even calling himself part of post-liberal right, sitting next to people like Patrick Denin, all these other thinkers who have much more radicalized views on this.

Like, I actually think he thinks this is where the ball is going.

And the question is, what alternative will be there?

So that's a great point because if Patrick Bateman,

Republican Patrick Bateman, thinks that this is where things are going,

I mean, maybe he's wrong, but it's not an accident what he's doing.

It's not strategic.

He's not doing it out of some purity of heart.

You brought in your intro video the example of Mahmoud Khalil, which I thought was interesting that you mentioned that in particular,

because I agree with you.

I find a lot of a lot would be overstated.

I find some of the things that Makhlut Mood Khalil has been saying to be

not my cup of tea,

to say the least, about it, right?

Like, I find some things he says are offensive, frankly.

There are other things he says I think are obviously right about human rights, et cetera.

You know, humans are complicated.

But it's an interesting point, right?

And it's about the difference between the J.D.

Van's view of America and what you guys are espousing on liberalism, that you specifically mentioned this case as an example of illiberalism when he's not a native-born American, right?

But yet he still was not treated with the rights that he was merited as somebody that was here legally.

Talk about why you brought that up and about that case in particular.

Yeah, I mean, I brought it up in part because I knew that there was a lot of,

I mean, there's rightfully a lot of controversy over the stuff that he's said and has believed.

I think that FIRE, the

free speech organization by Greg Lukianov is like a really great example of this.

I mean, like dear under under Democrats, people thought they were really anti-Democrat, anti-left, and now under Republicans, they're getting like hit for being anti-right wing and being so super woke.

But like really the thing is that like the reason why we evoked that case is that really unpopular speech has to be acceptable.

Like the entire point of liberalism, I think that the simplest way that I can think about what the point of liberalism is, is How do we live with each other when we're so different that those differences could lead us to kill each other?

Like literally, like if I think that the right way to live is to be, you know, a Christian living in a big city, like and a feminist, like that's like, that's who I am.

And like, that's what I think people should be.

And then someone else thinks that the right way to live is to be in rural America and to be Muslim and like whatever, like, and like those were two like actually incompatible worldviews about what a good life is.

Like, I like cannot also

fulfill that and what I think is right.

But how do we not kill each other?

Because the entirety of the human species and like all of history has been us us killing each other because our views are so different and incompatible, even in homogenous societies, right?

Like even in like Europe, when they're like literally all Christians, they're killing each other.

Like it's everywhere throughout history, people who will find ways to make each other different and then they will kill each other over it.

And so what do we do about that?

Because I don't want to live that way.

I want it to be okay that I feel very differently about what a good life is and I'm still able to live in a society with other people.

And so someone like like Mahmoud Khalil, like some people may view all the things that he says as completely reasonable and right, others may view him as like someone who we should never have led into this country because of his beliefs.

Either way, like, how do we set up systems where both of those views can exist in society and not like devolve into chaos?

And so, the reason why I evoked that case is just because I knew that there were gonna be like a lot of people who were just like, I mean, I had people messaging me, like, why would you include this person?

Why wouldn't you say someone else?

And I'm like, because even that view should be respected.

It doesn't mean you lose due process.

It doesn't mean you lose basic freedom of speech.

I think Romeza is another great case, the tough student who wrote not bad and literally got, I mean, picked up by, it looked like kidnappers in the middle of street in Boston.

Like, I mean, yeah.

You don't get jailed without due process.

You don't just set to rot in a prison because you have bad opinions.

In her case, I don't, she didn't even really have bad opinions, but like, that's just not.

Yeah.

Not how the American way is supposed to be.

Listening to your answer, I do feel like you've recently read Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama before you started.

Not recently.

I'm a Fukuyama head for years, buddy.

I've been on this.

Okay, so it's just

burned into your subconscious.

It's just kind of coming out a little bit from time to time.

All right.

That's it.

Anything else that's triggering you in the news right now you want to pop off on?

Wow.

I think you already, you expelled it all out of me, really.

So thank you.

Congratulations.

Good luck in the job.

We'll be checking in.

The argumentmag.com.

Check this out.

The argumentmag.com.

And come back soon.

all right?

Yeah, for sure.

Bye, Tim.

Thanks so much to Gary and Jerusalem.

Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

We'll be back tomorrow with a fun weekend podcast.

We'll see you all then.

Peace.

under the night sky.

Tomorrow means nothing.

I

was only a child then,

feeling barely alive when

heard a song from the speaker of a passing car

and bring to a dying star.

The memories fading,

I can almost remember seeing the light, the light, the light of life.

The light, the love, the love of life.

You

could never predict it

that it could see through you.

Cast a lot of deep blue in 1996.

Your mind is playing tricks now.

Show is always all you take about.

We're living in the shadow of

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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