Tocqueville noted that Americans forever brood over advantages they do not possess, but now our grievance culture has run amok. From the aggrieved-in-chief, Trump, who just can't catch a break, to the social justice warriors who apply the same lens to every situation, we're losing the line between what is righteous and what is bratty. Frank Bruni joins Tim Miller today.
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In the 1999-2000 TV season, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" held the top three slots (it aired three times a week). "Friends" was number five. Here's the whole list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-rated_United_States_television_programs_of_1999%E2%80%932000
The only show on the whole list that I watched regularly was "Spin City", which was tied for 24th with "The West Wing".
You're a good man, Tim Miller. It's a pleasure to watch you grow and mature. Your Mimi would be proud of you. Love the section on being humble/humility.
Loved this! Two of my favorite people. I’m not very vocal on The Bulwark but I really enjoy Tim. He does a great job and Frank Bruni is ALWAYS brilliant.
Great podcast. Would love to hear you interview Arthur Brooks on this same topic
Without getting preachy, gratitude and humility are the forgotten virtues of the modern age. We need to embrace how good we have it.
Tim! I listened to your interview on The Dispatch. I thought you were perfectly delightful. Purposefully lighthearted, one might say. But ohhhhhh nooooo, not according to those Dispatch comments. (Just one step short of National Review comments, if you ask me). According to The Dispatch commenters you were endlessly condescending. I did not pick-up any trace of condescension. And I think this is what makes the difference between Bulwark and Dispatch people: Dispatch people are SUPER sensitive. I think it’s because they kinda…sorta…aren’t really offended by Trump the way us never-Trumpers are. Like…Dispatch people think Trump and Biden are equally as bad, but they subconsciously know how fucked-up that analysis is, and feel ashamed, and therefore the sensitivity to criticism. Am I wrong?
I was disappointed in this and other Bulwark podcasts that include discussion of the anti-Jewish/Israel/Zionist protests at Columbia and elsewhere and the Hamas war in Gaza. I am tired of non-Jews opining about what is and isn't anti-semtism or a pogrom or reminiscent of Nazism or anti-Zionism. Your characterizing the protesters holding a Pesach "seder" as welcoming to Jews is irony to the max. Part of that is because you don't have any context for what a seder is all about and why we have them every year. It's like only talking to white people about anti-Black racism. Please get folks on the pods like Einat Wilf, Barack Ravid, Allison Kaplan Somer, Noah Efron, Yonit Levy, Jonathan Freedland, Rabbi David Wolpe (he is a prominent rabbi who is at Harvard this year & was/is on the antisemitism committee there). I can also put you in touch with hostage family members who have spoken to US politicians from the President to Congresspeople. None of these people are screamers but are very knowledgeable about what actually happened in the Hamas massacre, the historical and political contexts. Many if not all are critical of the current Prime Minister.
Many thanks to both of you, Tim and Frank, for a discussion that encouraged your listeners to pause and reflect, rather than to simply react. I found myself thinking about words and phrases such as "elevate," "take the high road," "breathe," "listen."
I closed my social media (Facebook and Twitter) accounts in 2016 during the run up to the election because I had found myself posting my most heated thoughts, unrestrained screed, in response to the anxiety I felt about the future should Trump actually be elected. I realized that if I was contributing anything as I screamed into the abyss, it was to add to the tendency for those holding different views, grievances (nod to the book), beliefs to figuratively "throw" rocks containing their anger across a wide expanse from one side to the other.
Ken Blanchard, in his book, "Situational Leadership," illustrated this issue when he wrote about "autocratic" and "democratic" leadership styles. He correctly pointed out that different situations require different styles of leadership. This observation also applies to interactions between students, protesters, politicians, neighbors, etc.
I loved the part of the discussion where Frank talked about the fragility of our unprecedented, democratic experiment, that is the United States. It is easy to make fun of Donald Trump. There is no limit to the material he makes available (just watch Jimmy Kimmel).
An example of the "Trump effect" is the flood of golden visa applications coming from Americans (something I have considered) who are considering fleeing to (where will we/they go?) different shores should Trump be re-elected. This is the case even though the populist movement is rising virtually everywhere, and those who love this mess that is our wounded democracy know in our hearts that, whatever the result of the election, whatever damage may be done should Trump be elected, we must stay and (figuratively!) fight for our country, as we prize and promote the obvious and seminal advantages of diversity, immigration, progress.
A word just for Tim - I listen to the Bulwark podcast every day, and think of you as a fellow traveler. I must say, however, that the Tim who relishes a good Trump "fart" joke, or laughs at Trump's latest gaffe (again, there is unlimited material) is not the Tim I enjoy the most. The Tim I most enjoy is the thoughtful, open-minded, courageous advocate for our higher purpose(s) and useful "wokeness." We must always remember Theodore Parker's quote - "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." And yes, thank you internet, I once thought Dr. King was the author of this quote.
This was a such a great interview/convo. Frank and Tim both bring up a lot of points I've discussed in the comments here in the past. The part where you guys discuss the lack of struggle in American lives who have the majority of what they want--physically secure, financially stable, materially well-off, etc., etc. (Maslow's hierarchy of needs being met essentially)--leading to having enough space in their lives to argue over what Tom Nichols calls "the narcissism of small differences" is so key to where we are in our political polarization. The same goes for the lack of a shared set of facts between an American public who gets their "facts" from a fractured media environment. You can see this on both the hard left and MAGA right daily.
Also key to the convo is the pivot to pessimism/doomerism, which mostly comes from economics. Yes we're a country of abundance, but that abundance is increasingly going to the upper tier and while everyone else struggles to afford housing and children. That's a huge driver of national pessimism and it's even more visible and in our faces now via social media and tiered pricing. When people can't afford housing because we *don't* have abundance in the housing supply, then it sends up rents and makes home ownership--core to the American dream--feel out of reach. The same applies to having children if you can't afford a house large enough to raise them in and you also can't afford childcare while having a dual-income household necessary to afford said house.
Side Note on Squid Game: if there's no draft and nobody had to go to war over the last 20 years--except for the very small slice (<1%) of Americans who were part of the contract force-- and never actually got to see extreme violence up close, then they won't develop a distaste for it and they will fetishize things like extreme violence and civil wars because they've never experienced it themselves in real life.
It's kind of like how young boys get obsessed with sex until they've had enough of it to where that initial emotional rush wears off and it stops feeling so special and so you stop chasing it like it's your everything. The same applies to extreme violence once the fantasizing wears off when compared to the reality of the actual thing.
100% this.
shout out to the microprivileged Bulward Founders!
Thanks to Frank Bruni for recognizing, all too briefly, that it is painful to see the weakest of the four Trump indictments going first. An acquittal will just fuel the notion that this is a political prosecution – a persecution – making subsequent prosecutions increasingly difficult.
The hush money indictment requires Bragg to prove a crime within a crime. Media coverage, especially from the left, focuses blindly on the seedy understory and the effort to “interfere with the 2016 election.” But a candidate's effort to suppress negative information is not, by itself, a crime.
The hush money indictment requires proof that records were falsified with the specific intent to defraud someone and to do so by concealing the commission of another crime, in this case, disguising an illegal campaign contribution. That is a stretch, at best.
I pray that I am wrong, that Bragg has a better underlying crime, but based on what I have read so far I would have trouble convicting him on these particular charges and fear a jury will too. I say this based on 40 years as a federal prosecutor and Wisconsin Circuit Court judge.
Meanwhile, the most compelling of the four cases – the Mara Lago documents indictment – Is poised to go last and, sadly, maybe never. That case is a prosecutorial slam dunk if there ever was one, so strong even Judge Aileen Cannon cannot wave it away.
By the way, thanks also for one of the finest bulwark podcasts ever. It finally inspired me to take out an annual subscription.
The analysis on Lawfare makes me hopeful: they're complimentary of both the prosecutors' skills and their focus, which is on the election connection, not the seedy side. It may be the weakest of the cases, but that doesn't mean that it's weak. The jury seems attentive and educated, and the judge is no-nonsense. Trump is getting something that he's avoided all his life, a fair trial.
This was an AWESOME conversation. AWESOME I say!
Start to finish, Bruni (and Tim) so eloquently articulated my "grievance" (sorry!) with the overall American and Internet culture.
I will be forcing my young children to listen to it. Hopefully they are able to get the full understanding of it. And maybe (fingers crossed) I can get them to sit through reading Bruni's book.
Sorry, but did Tim just "both sides" one professor making a historical comparison (and, uh, maybe study Germany in the late 20s and early 30s before dismissing the comparison) with students forming human chains to prevent Jewish kids from moving throughout campus and hurling antisemitic slurs, screaming "bomb Tel Aviv" and "Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets, too" and "Go back to Poland," with signs posted referring to the world's only Jewish state as "a nation of pigs"?
I don't support everything Shai Davidai has said or done, but he's not the reason the university has shut down. Their refusal to protect their Jewish students from the tsunami of antisemitism on campus is. A little moral clarity, please.
I’m sorry this is bad as I’ve covered both the past two days but it’s not in any way akin to a “pogrom”. Nor were the Georgia election laws Jim Crow. And it would be inappropriate for me to say the Florida don’t say gay bills were like aids. Shai has been treated poorly by the school and the protests have disgusting rhetoric but he is not helping by escalating this into nazi germany.
Completely agree that he's not helping. But you used an intentional "both sides" framing that I didn't think was appropriate in this case as one side is obviously doing more to escalate. It seems to me that the anti-Israel protesters have the ability to de-escalate in a way that the Jews don't. Shai Davidai being more circumspect with his rhetoric won't actually change the intolerable situation on the ground.
Don't let the sun go down on your grievances. thx for the intro to the song
It’s on a tribute record to daniel Johnston that is really wonderful
Trump not only deserves to be mocked and that needs to be done by everyone from Biden, Haley and Pence but also by CNN and NBC and the NY Times. actually by all of us on zFB, X, tic tic whatever
During the podcast Tim made a passing mention about people being reluctant to have children because of their fears of the effects of climate change. Several other Bulwark commentators including Mona have made similar statements in the past. Apparently Tim and others have information that leads them to believe that the effects of climate change will not be very bad. I truly wish they would share that information with the rest of us. I, for one, am very concerned about climate change and the fact the we and the rest of the world are not doing nearly enough to limit and mitigate its effects in a timely manner.
Loved that you had Frank back on the pod! Thanks to you I read his book The Beauty of Dusk and really loved it. I admire his command of the English language and I am thinking he will be adding Doomerism into his vocab. It’s a fabulously descriptive word.
Same—I just finished listening to The Beauty of Dusk as well. It was a profound and beautiful book, made all the more beautiful by listening to Frank narrate it.
Oooh, I might have to listen to the audiobook then!
I always loved reading Frank, but, I never heard him speak...really enjoyed you guys.
Tim, question and comment.
Question: when people say “I wish the hush money case didn’t go first” can you ask “what if I told you it was the only criminal prosecution to happen before the election?” It’s not that I want a gotcha question at all it’s that it’s kind of obvious that everyone on the pro democracy side would want j6 to go first or maybe the classification case but we live in this world and that isn’t our choices anymore. I’m actually more interested (maybe others aren’t so ignore me) if it was this or nothing what would they say? It’s curious to me because I think I tend to land where you are that it’s a net negative for trump, but to be honest, I’m actually not confident in that position.
With respect to kids and grievance, hasn’t this been true forever? Isn’t the biggest difference the internet and social media (aka media environment…maybe the nationalization of news). I remember the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. Do you remember how parents hated rap or video games or punk music? I remember my dad saying to me how his father was so pissed at my dad for liking the Beatles in the 60s. I remember the debates on illegal immigration and guns (cali born and raised). It’s no different now than it was then (arguments that is). It’s just ramped up to a 1000. To put this in perspective I grew up in San Jose, an hour from San Francisco and Oakland. We were huge niners, giants and warriors fans (lots of brothers) so we would go to games all the time. I never once heard anything on the news or from my parents about drugs in sf or gangs in Oakland. Now I watch national news about sf (where I live) and there are national stories on our school boards. It’s crazy. I’m like “why does anyone in Indiana care about what my children are learning in sf.”
The biggest change on a national issue that u saw growing up was immigration. It was a huge issue here in the 80s but then California’s kind of…moved on? We didn’t care much by the late 90s. Then I went to college and all my friend’s parents were so concerned about immigration. They were from Wisconsin, Oregon, washington st, Tennessee, North Carolina, etc. I always asked my buddies “so like how diverse was your school? Why do your parents care so much about illegal immigration?” They were, I’m not joking, going to schools that were 90% white. My school was majority minority and I couldn’t care less. I just never understood how people in Maine or Wisconsin who never met a Mexican cared so much about illegal immigration. I feel like it’s the same today but on like 20 issues.
Re: your point about student youthful grievance of the past... I attended a university near an Army base toward the end of the Vietnam War and witnessed a lot of atrocious behavior targeting anyone in uniform who showed up in a bar, restaurant or grocery store near the campus. I can't fault protests against the war itself and the decision-makers waging it, but the kids who were drafted to fight in it did not deserve the vitriol coming from those who were only able to avoid it thanks to student deferments or being female (or bone spurs etc.) So yes, youth and tribal grievance has been going on forever, it's just amplified now.
Agreed. Not saying the kids are right (often they are…to a point but often make things worse given their behavior).
The media environment is just so toxic though. The amount of coverage on Columbia and a 1000 protesters (I think it’s closer to a 100) seems ridiculous.
Tim,
I just listened to your ‘The Dispatch and The Bulwark Walk Into a Bar…’ podcast with Jamie Weinstein. Nicely done.
I don’t believe you ever need to apologize to The Dispatch crowd for ‘snark’, considering their level of ‘smug’. It’s a level of smug that compares with one of my favorite South Park episodes, Smug Alert (S10 E2).
Apparently, The Dispatch’s view is everything will be fine and dandy with the Republican Party, whether Trump wins or loses in 2024. It’s kind of like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Now I have to go listen to this. When I found Substack I had two choices, The Dispatch or The Bulwark. After a few months, I committed to The Bulwark. That choice is vindicated daily.
I had been thinking that the anti-antis were memoryholing J6 for reasons of cognitive dissonance, but have come to think of it as more of a cynical and deliberate downplaying so they can maintain their need to see themselves as 'too cool to care.' And I've read JVL's thoughts on Ross D being a 'shy Trumper' but wonder if it's more a question of his wanting to be cool enough to be one of this crowd.
Love the show as usual. One little item. Tim seemed to dismiss what California is doing with regulations on Clear. I applaud California.
It's very true that stratification at the airport security line isn't the biggest problem in the world. However, it is emblematic of some of the things that are wrong in the America of today. I certainly don't mind TSA pre-check. It does cost money, but it has its own lines, so, at best it's making the non-TSA lines shorter.
Clear is a whole different animal. At JFK, Clear doesn't have dedicated lines. Instead, when a Clear customer is coming through, they are escorted to the front of either a TSA pre-check or a non pre-check line, escorted in front of the people who were waiting there previously. I heard a lot of people cursing under their breath while a Clearee cut in front of them.
When the airport is busy, a non-Clearee might have to wait for two or three Clear customers before they get to go through security.
Clear and non-clear customers both pay the taxes that fund the TSA. Why should the customers of a private escort service get to go ahead of other tax payers whose tax money should be just as good as that of Clear customers. It strikes me as a form of rent-seeking--using government services to enrich a private company.
If Clear were given permission to set up their own lines with their own clearance agents, the story might be different...but it's not.
Recently, I was coming back from France and Charles DeGaulle Airport was just as busy as JFK, but there's no pre-check, and no Clear. Everyline was a line for everybody. It moved much quicker, was a lot less complicated, and no one seemed especially frustrated.
As an aside, "Clear" is the term that Scientologists use for someone who has reached Scientology nirvana and broken themselves free from negative emotions and reactions. (As you can tell from the above, I have a long way to go before I meet the Scientology definition of "clear.")
I’m out of the mainstream in the comment section with CLEAR. My Husband becomes incredibly agitated when traveling. He has not been willing to go the TSA route. We have Clear which we pay through the nose for. We really only fly once a year but it is worth every penny to get my Hubby through the airport without massive doses of anti-anxiety meds. I get the diss but I understand why it exists.
Agreed. I'm far from an equality extremist, but Clear seems to be specifically engineered to be as offensive as possible. The more places that ban it, the better.
Nice point on the use of Clear by Scientologists.
I got sick of being approached by CLEAR sales personnel. I was "clearly" entering the TSA Pre Check line and they tried to tell me I should have both. What BS. It was easy and cheaper to get TSA Pre Check. I've had it since it was first created.
Otherwise I liked Mr Bruno! I’m not a hater. And I’m not a sports person or a person of color but like ok im gay maybe that’s why Brittany Griener being held as a symptom of unjust advocacy or misguided concern is just irritating. Like, it’s just why go there? It’s confirmation bias looking for a counterpoint, and finding it in the far reaches and by contorting the narrative just so to make that point. And that’s annoying because it’s pointing a finger and saying “you’re the problem” and equating it with some very dark, very different prerogatives. Apples not to oranges but to like, semi trucks. Not comparable.
Bruni my bad! Autocorrect!
One of the smartest things that I ever did was to turn that thing off on all my devices. I can make enough problems on my own, without any additional help.
Yeah. Yep. I was just looking in the mirror and thinking that might be a good idea. Oopsie. My partner always tells me “it’s ok if someone on the internet is wrong.” And yeah. I need to chill. 🙂
Leaving aside that Russia criminalizes homosexuality, and leaving aside that Griener was, like many other political prisoners, just an innocent person caught in a bad scene through no fault of her own…ok I forgot where that was going. Point# 1 is that it’s a bit cringe to hold Grieners advocates out as unnecessarily aggressive and claiming “it’s cuz she’s a lesbian that you hate her!” Did some people maybe throw that into the internet ether? Maybe, I didn’t see it but ok. People were alarmed cause she was gay and a person of color in RUSSIA. But ok, say we give that a plus one in the category of crazed narrow mindedness, of crazed unwillingness to compromise with the other side. That’s one. How many are in the other direction? Ten thousand? I just get a real twitch in my thumbs when people use other people’s misfortune and the efforts to end it or make it less terrible as equal to grievance about tds. I’m a millennial and not thriving in the way I wanna be, I’ve got my grievances, but I can have those and still want asylum laws to be clearer and for minimum wage increases to follow the same trajectory as cost of living expenses go. There are grievances in which the aggrieved wants some sort of justice, some resolution, and there are grievances in which the aggrieved feel they are owed something from the world, they aren’t seeking broader solutions, they’re all about chaos, they want a nuclear war because they live in a prison and see it as their only means of changing their life position, their prospects. To say that a person who has been unjustly imprisoned and who undoubtedly faces much more danger in that context because of their sexuality and skin color, to say that advocating for that persons freedom is a form of grievance unfettered and blind to all the other unfairly imprisoned people is stupid. It’s sus, as the kids say. And no one calls them social justice warriors, like as a version of that myself, that’s not a term used, we don’t have that title on the cards. It’s a term you pick up from cough cough aggrieved and privileged people who experience equality and feel oppressed by it. And you know who’s not making fun of them, endlessly? Me. And people who’s brains aren’t melted by the internet.
She wasn't exactly "an innocent person", and she didn't find herself in that situation "through no fault of her own", but there's no question that her treatment was out of proportion to the offense, and her celebrity in all its facets had a lot to do with it.
True. Totally true. But just …is that equal to jd Vance yelling about the border? Like the comparison didn’t feel fair; maybe some folks were mad at the times and claiming it was due to racism, but that’s - even if totally factually incorrect in terms of BGs case being a bigger story - I don’t know that such criticisms of the Times or of the Administrations investment in her return were wholly just people seeing oppression and calling foul for the sake of reveling in grievance as much as I’d think that kind of grievance has historical/social/cultural context, like it’s coming from a place of irrational fear, but that fear is only as irrational as you believe the threat of racism and homophobia to be. It’s a different sort of gripe I guess, and I think we can or pundits can sometimes overthink and want to equate things because that’s a safe place to opine from, it’s a safe distance. I don’t doubt that the grievance of jd Vance’s followers or political allies or cultural peers is real, it absolutely is and that’s important to be accounting for and looking for solutions to, but Bgs plight is so singular and Brunis argument ignores the fact that like 60-70% of all incarcerated people are people of color, like he isn’t recognizing the context from which the gripe is being made, he’s minimizing it. Oof. I should get off line! Thanks for chatting ! 🙂. But yeah, best advice: let it go.
First, two unimportant but sensitive points:
1. I believe almost any accusation I hear against the NYT, because I HATE them!, and
2. I believe almost any accusation I hear against JD Vance, because he's such a total and complete phony.
I don't really disagree with your other points. I think that Griener was an unfortunate poster girl for any cause, because she did something that was really dumb, and there was a more important issue than all the identity nonsense: she was an American citizen imprisoned by a dictatorship on what amounted to a trumped up charge, whatever the technical violation. That should have been a good enough reason for the Administration to work hard for her release, and that should have been all the explanation they felt necessary to offer to anyone.
Matt Yglesias, with whom I don't always agree but I ALWAYS recommend had a great piece yesterday in Slow Boring whose title says it all, "Ask How to Solve Problems, Not Why They Happened":
https://www.slowboring.com/p/ask-how-to-solve-problems-not-why
It made a lot of sense to me. Nice chatting with you, too.
And illl def check out the article, Ty!
I just realized you replied! And yeah, not to pile on I’m bashing the NYT too much, I was often having this thought of “wait, but this guy writes for the times..” whiplashes while listening. I guess - now that it’s the next day and I just woke up to thinking about this again - I think the essence of Brunis thesis felt somewhat …irritating to me? His point about us collectively becoming an increasingly aggrieved body public and that it is in that misguided or misappropriated grievance that we are blinded and start to shout past each other - it pares the universe of what Bruni is loosely defining to be a “gripe,” and tells us all to stop that and be more adult. Like, we all could do to listen, read a book, be better informed about the truth of the world we exist in. Ok, shrug emoji, thanks Dad. That’s fine advice, perhaps, but I struggle to imagine a world in which it lands and shakes that “student who just claimed “white nationalism must be the answer, like a robotic social justice warrior “ into recognition of the folly of their blind allegiance to a side. But it’s much more than that his tone is patronizing and both-sides-issing - those two examples - BGs advocates frustrated and screaming like radical banshees at the Times and the Biden Administration and Brunis own student who burped up a canned reply to one of his lectures in which he really hoped they could be independent thinkers, blah blah blah - the grievance in question, the primary one I could spot wasn’t these particular lefties as much as it was Brunis grievance for having to defend against their claims. They both personally implicated him, he was frustrated that these BG people weren’t more thankful about the coverage of the times to BGs plight and he was frustrated that his student drank the “white supremacy is bad” kool-aid. He has the facts and so he’s happy to prove that these people are incorrect, he does this without any regard to the universe from which such beliefs may have been formed, because he’s already decided that they are purely in it for the luxurious righteousness being aggrieved allows them to bask in. And he tempers this, tries to not be annoying by topping this with broad reassurances that he very much understands that there is historical oppression, that people have been racist, that charlatans will play on the fears people have about race, about sexuality, but it comes off as self serving, at best. Non self reflective Grievance, or misplaced grievance is his theoretical boogey man, truth and restraint his theoretical henchman in crusade against it. He is very clearly, tho very not at the same time, against us all being aggrieved and polarized, because bad grievance is, I’m not sure, unfair? Mean? Stupid? Why does Bruni believe his student was indoctrinated by the woke professorial elites and to stupid to see herself as such? When she said “white privilege was the problem,” was she expressing a grievance? Maybe she was being ironical. Maybe she had actual real life experiential reasons for the answer but was too flustered to clarify her point. And even if it was her Go-to because everything bad is white supremacy - who is aggrieved in this example? The student? Or Bruni by her lack of getting into the topic de jour with a more “open” mindset? Bruni frames it as grievance. And then in the case of what must have been a fairly small segment of a population of people who care about their sports stars and advocated for BGs release who berated the Times, who is aggrieved? I’m sure Bruni could site figures that would show that “nu-uh, we wrote 52 stories about the gay basketball lady and she had weed!” And ok, cool. I imagine him walking up to this hoards of social justice maniacs and telling them all how wrong they are about the honor of the New York Times, how dare they! How could they call it racist, homophobic, and school them on the ways in which they have no basis to feel the way they do about his fine paper, and share his sage advice about letting go of their mindless anger at nonexistent racism and homophobia. It maybe never occurred to them how unfair they are, and if their misappropriated grievance is pointed out as being the actual problem driving their worldview and making it seem like “racism is everywhere, it’s in the coffee, in the paper, they have one lens so watch out!” - im sure they’d appreciate the wisdom of this depiction of their motivations and lack of self awareness and thank him for setting them straight. Its irritating to say “im not doing this, im not equating, im not painting with a broad brush, im simply saying we all need to take the temperature down a few notches” when you’re equating, when you’re grossly assuming that you understand where all people are coming from and portend that it’s laudable and in an effort to unite people, to help them see each others humanity. The aggrieved in Brunis examples are fundamentally one dimensional and inhuman, they are robots, they are dumb or brainwashed. I can’t think of anything anyone could jump into the current universe of political debate and say that is more unhelpful and pointless than wagging a finger and telling the mob to read a book. It’s the koolaid that got drunk on its own supply of supposition and Twitter pundit groupthink and projected it onto the world, it’s sufficiently undefined so as to apply however one feels, and that makes it a useful rhetorical obfuscation to toss around when someone is mad at a group you are in some way affiliated with. As grievance is bad, complaining is counterproductive, inherently lacking in nuance and self reflection. To which I just want to say “ok dad.”
Hmm. Now considering if I should post this… yeah ok YOLO! 🙂
Omg and last point- my father, who has since passed, was drafted into the army and fought in the Vietnam war. He never talked about it, it was a dark time for him and he very much wanted to distance himself from it. One insight he did share with me tho about living in that time and about that war was that, in his view of how America understood the effort, what distinguished Vietnam from all other previous American wars was that we had television, that the brutality and the visceral destruction of the war was suddenly inescapable for most Americans who read the news or tuned into it every night, and it was because of this, because the depiction wasn’t one of valor and heroism defined solely by the military, the political powers, that this awareness brought people into the streets, made people question the political powers that told everyone that this was a war America was just to involve itself in. I took his point a bit further and apply it to the context of what is called “cancel culture run amok” or tds, because in todays information universe there is so much more information to be found, and in arming people with the resources to be heard, many more people who haven’t been heard have a voice, and that will bring people to the streets, not forever, but empowerment works its way into an equilibrium. It’s not so much that we need to wag a finger at people who portray themselves as aggrieved, it’s that we need to realize that like all wars before it, vietnam was brutal. People will have complaints, which is ok, they help us evolve. We don’t need to throw up our hands and tell others that they’re being big babies.
Yes, I replied. I always try to reply to people who really seem to want to have a constructive discussion. Sometimes other things hold me up a little. 😄
There's a lot to unpack here. I get you what mean about Bruni's attitude. I think that what it shows is how much frustration has grown for everyone over the last quarter century, and especially when it became clear that 35-45% of the voters believe outright lies, and can't be reached by facts. And the Left -- at least the democratic Left -- has its own frustrations, that since 2016 it's had to put some of its dearest policy priorities on the back burner in order to maintain a coalition with us Center and Center/Right squishes to preserve democracy and the Constitution. How much longer can a "crisis" go on before people are so fatigued that they just want it to end? If this one were a kid, she'd be in second or third grade already! Everybody has reason to be frustrated, and it's showing. And that's without even talking about the aftermath to the Hamas attack, which has caused more rifts faster in my own family in a few months than MAGA was ever able to do in nine years, and I know that we're not alone in that.
Every person is entitled to respect, but not every idea is: some ideas are stupid and wrong, and some of them are evil, and we should be willing to recognize and make those distinctions. When Bruni got the answer to a question from a student in a college classroom that “white privilege was the problem,” I can't blame him if his first thought had been along the lines of "Everybody who should have been teaching this young woman how to think, from her parents through her pastor to every teacher she ever had has let her down, and now what am I supposed to do with that?" We don't know exactly what he thought, and we don't really know how he reacted to her; we just know his reflection after the fact, as recounted to Tim. Maybe he did better. It wouldn't surprise me. But if he was caught flat-footed, that wouldn't surprise me, either. Most of us are on our last nerve these days, at least sometimes.
Yascha Mounk over at Persuasion (https://www.persuasion.community/) explains the weakness and danger of identity-based thinking better (and more charitably) than I ever could. “White privilege was the problem” only works as an explanation if you truly believe that there has been no progress toward equality, diversity, or expanded liberty for everyone AT ALL since pick-a-date. There ARE people who believe that, but in order to do it, they've had to seal themselves off from facts and history as completely as the MAGA people have in their way. To my way of thinking, they're just as wrong.
In the Greiner case, a lot of people were making fools of themselves screaming that she was being neglected for identity reasons, and after she came home, a lot of other people were making fools of themselves screaming that she got to jump the line in front of other hostages for -- identity reasons! Meanwhile, the government was working quietly to get EVERYBODY home, and I can't believe that anybody's screaming helped much. The Russians got their arms trader back, and got one more propaganda tableau of America in Disarray.
Thanks for bringing your Dad up. I'm probably not much younger than he would be, and I think that his evaluation of the war was basically correct. In fact, I think that he was generous.
I was quite conflicted about that war, because I thought that it was a just war being waged stupidly and unjustly. Your father and his buddies were let down by a government that sent them into a war without a clearly stated war aim, a strategy to win, and a plan to get out. Under those conditions it ended far too late, and should never have begun at all. And judging from Afghanistan (I don't even mention Iraq because THAT outrage should never have happened at all), we still haven't learned the lessons that we should have learned.
Millennials are the first generation since the Great Depression to be projected to have less wealth than their parents. That with housing and education costs being as high as they are directly impact this mentality.
We can’t have as many kids. We have to work so hard just for entry level jobs.
It’s hard out here. And we look at the wealth and opportunity disparities the pessimism is valid to a point.
Truth!! Yeah i sometimes get pangs of “omg, I have no kids.” And don’t get me started on boomers not supporting their millennial kids making families of their own… but yeah, every parent in my Los Angeles neighborhood is 40+, like there are no young parents. And we all rent, or got some inheritance to help with a down payment on a small apartment. And we’re all taking care of elderly parents, which I also think is going to be a much bigger drag on society in coming years. Like so many people my age have dropped their own lives to help parents. Oof.
I have four kids in an apartment that costs more than either my parent’s or in law’s mortgages. And my wife works two jobs, I work two and have a VA pension. Neither of our mothers worked. But we have to just to qualify for our apartment and hopefully a mortgage this year.
I realize that it won't be much comfort to you, but the 30s are a tough age for a lot of people. My 30s were the toughest years of my life, and I'm a Boomer. We supposedly had the best of everything in unlimited quantities, but when I hit my 30s, the world came crashing down on me just the same, and I was at the poorest and most hopeless I've ever been before or since.
Now, the Millennials in my family sound a lot like you. I admire them greatly, they're people who have done everything right: no college debt because of very good decisions, good jobs, most own their own homes, but they're still anxious and depressed and feel stretched. So I'll say to you what I say to them. Hang in there. Keep making good decisions and good choices if that's what you're doing now -- they'll pay off eventually. If you're not, don't be afraid to change course. Stay in the game and believe in yourself and in those you love and who love you. Things are going to get better.
https://youtu.be/MEC2Nq7Z6lc?si=uGNcLoWdQcgE4xd_
No it’s not the same as it was in your 30s.
Our education costs are much higher. Our earning power is lesser due to wages not matching inflation. And housing costs are a much much larger portion of our income than it was at the same time for your generation.
Your generation holds more comparative wealth than your parents did and much more at the wealth at our age than we do.
Those are facts.
Disregarding that is a problem.
“ Even though the US economy is growing -- according to a recent CNN poll, 76% of Americans think it's doing better than it has in decades -- not everyone is prospering. Millennials are on track to be the first generation not to exceed their parents in terms of job status or income, studies show.”
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/11/politics/millennials-income-stalled-upward-mobility-us
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/more-than-half-of-us-wealth-belongs-to-baby-boomers:-will-other-generations-catch-up#:~:text=Breakdown%20of%20Wealth%20by%20Generation&text=Here's%20what%20they%20found%3A,Generation%3A%20%2418.6%20trillion%20(11.9%25)
https://www.thetitlereport.com/Articles/Redfin-Gap-widens-between-baby-boomer-and-millenni-90419.aspx
Also the tiers of life are starting to be applied to things like healthcare, car insurance, housing, and education. It follows as those costs keep skyrocketing that more resentment starts to seep in.
I know I’m struggling with my own.
I share it! Resentment. But yeah, it’s not a fun feeling. Like, I’d rather be hopeful. But you’re def not alone!
This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I liked the stuff about taking things down a notch and listening to the other side more. I think social media is definitely fueling and exacerbating extremism on both the right and the left.
But I didn’t think Tim and Frank did very well with the discussion about pessimism or doomerism. It sounded like two British Aristocrats puzzled why the poors are complaining.
“Frank do you think perhaps they are angry because they have too much?”
“Why..yes Timothy, methinks you have the right of it. I mean..we aren’t making them forage for their own food after all. What’s to complain about?”
“Indeed. Indeed. Perchance they are doing too many power point presentations at their office meetings and are unfulfilled..”
“Yes, they should pray more.”
Good lord..really guys? As though Amazon warehouse workers or Walmart employees or Uber drivers are doing power point presentations in the Facebook offices. Or anywhere else for that matter. People feel doomed because it feels like capitalism has left a lot of people behind.
Trump and MAGA are a symptom of the larger problem, not the cause. And while the specifics of Trump’s conspiracies are complete fabrications, he isn’t wrong about there being a shadowy network of corruption in Washington working against the people. He’s just wrong about who they are.
It’s the revolving door of lawmakers and lobbyists making decisions to help corporations get wealthier, squeezing more and more work out of the bottom for less buying power from their largely stagnant wages. People in their 40s suddenly having to find roommates because they just can’t afford to live alone anymore. People getting second jobs later in life just to survive.
Tim brought up the diminishing of optimism over the last 20 years. The cost of college tuition has increased about 136% during that time. Median cost of a home about 160%. Have wages increased that much? Avg household I think is like 20% over the same time period.
It feels like we are living in another gilded age where you have industrialists like Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos..but no FDR on the horizon with a plan. It’s just an endless series of people willing to let the inequality continue to expand while the middle class vanishes.
The MAGA crowd today wrongly believes Trump will fix a problem we all agree is there, although they mischaracterize it. People on the left and in the middle know Trump will actually make it much worse so we are trying to stop him. But even we don’t see anyone in the wings ready to fight against the true enemy, which is the corporate capture of American democracy…to the detriment of us all.
And until we find someone to address that corruption and bring back some semblance of equity for all Americans and expand the middle class again, the pessimism Tim spoke of is going to continue. And so is the parade of MAGA maniacs ready to give American Democracy a final hard shove, toppling Lady Liberty into the dustbin of history.
So, the "vanishing middle class" is more of a political trick (though a good one) that is reliant on the general public's lack of understanding of percentages and history (which makes it doubly good tactic, because no one will ever know). Whenever there is a new technology, say computers, the first people in have free reign in an uncontested marketplace, and thus quickly become very rich. That exclusive marketplace doesn't last more than a couple of generations, as more and more people move into the space. But while it lasts, there are a few that have a lot of wealth, and the "Middle Class" being a group in a flat percentage band below the top of the wealth chart, there is a "Vanishing Middle Class." aka, the wealth those few rich people are getting isn't from the poor, it's from lack of competition from other rich people, and that wealth bottleneck wrecks all of the simplistic percentage-based modelling designed for media quick hits.
In real terms, though, we started tracking wealth in the 30s because of the 30s, and Keynes had a dream of a distant future of wealth and prosperity. And the crazy wealth numbers he dreamed of, we achieved those in the 80s, and the amount of wealth people have has actually continued to increase since. And because of the systems but in place back then to track all this, we know that the period of greatest poverty in the US was... the 50s. And the period with the greatest deep poverty was... the 50s. The amount of racial violence back then was absolutely horrific, that was one of the last gasps of lynching after all, cops beating protesters, etc. Followed by KKK bombings and all the assassinations of famous people.
Notably FDR stayed president by making a number of bigoted appeals to the MAGA Nationalists of the time, who also marched through the streets with MAGA placards, but very different hats. It wasn't just the WWII camps, either. Strict anti-immigration, some of it anti-semitic. His comments about mixing blood are pretty horrific and MAGA-esque too.
All of which is to say, Trump ran an FDR-style campaign in 2016. So, that's what an FDR style savior figure looks like. Never look for saviors. They don't exist.
There was a very good article in this weeks Economist, "America is Uniquely Ill-suited to Handle a Falling Population" that discusses the hollowing out of big areas of the country, the despair that's brought, and how that convinces some people to turn to MAGA just searching for someone to pay attention to their plight.
There are undoubtedly a lot of people in the prosperous coastal regions and the upper reaches of the income brackets who spend a lot of time complaining about trifles. There's a whole other population that they never see, who can't think about trifles because they're just trying to make it to tomorrow.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/04/18/america-is-uniquely-ill-suited-to-handle-a-falling-population
Deborah Burks's moment; "Want to get away!Have a Snickers bar".
Ah that quote from Trumpster brought back memories of Truly Trumpian idiocracies.Remember when he called for beaming light into the body to defeat covid. Or taking ivermectin. (a drug for horses or cattle) Or how about his solution to the California wild fires of a few years ago: "All you have to do is rake the forest floor". Or how about the idea of exploding a nuclear device in the eye of a hurricane. Now there is a concept known as the Dunning/Kruger effect where a person ties to make up for their lack of knowledge basically be using BS.But what is the word for a person who is the dumbest in the world who thinks they are the smartest?
Re: farting and Trump. Adam Kinzinger HAS said that he smells bad. I see this as possilble corroborating evidence for Adam's observation.
Trump is rumored to be a heavy user of Adderall, whose possible side effects include diarrhea. Trump is also rumored to wear adult diapers . . .
I enjoy the Bulwark pods of my choosing, but I wonder why I need to be reminded of Tim Miller's sexuality in every single episode? It comes up when its not relevant. Why? It's not wrong, it's just not necessary. What other show does that without it being part of the brand?
In the context of this conversation it made perfect sense for Tim Miller to mention his sexuality.
IKR?
I'm sure someone can come up with a better comparative scenario than I
Sorry it bothers you but not changing so feel free to find another show. I do wonder if you feel that straight people are mentioning their sexuality when they mention their spouse or children…it’s not like I’m talking about intercourse on the show. Anyway lots of podcasts in the sea ✌️
Walk up to a cat and just aggressively pet it backwards, like back to head over and over and yeah that very flustered cat is exactly how I feel about this.
Tim, it's just that you are hitting your stride right now and it sounds kinda immature. Also, booting members for reasonable opinions/ questions. kinda hostle aggressive, no?
Not booting anyone! Just saying that there are lots of other podcasts where people don’t talk about gay stuff if that is a problem but nothings gonna change on that front on this podcast
Also my reply was to John not ogdog
Tim, I appreciate your reply, I meant no offense, and I don't feel booted. I'm a tiny fish in the sea of pods, so my comment doesn't deserve any extra weight. I'm not turned off by "gay stuff". It's just that if I don't recognize the context, it makes me do that tilted-head-confused-dog thing. (There's probably a better name for that). I enjoy all of the Bulwark pods and I will gladly continue to listen and subscribe. Peace.
Appreciate that John!
but seriously how the f*** do you lose that tambourine?!
Robert Reich also has a good set of agreements he worked out with his students about moral clarity in terms of agreement.
The joy in my heart was so great when I logged on and saw you had Frank Bruni today! Really fine exchange throughout the conversation - ennobling would be the word I'd choose.
Thrilled to see Franks's name today, and he did not dissapoint. Really thoughtful and nuanced conversation about the college protests, and thank you for mentioning Dr. Birx's face during the intro - as a molecular biologist by training, I felt her horror viscerally in that moment. Btw, typo in title on the YT version.
we're in the age of intolerant ideological purity... or something.
God, Frank Bruno is good.
Such a completely different view of things.
Brilliant get Tim!