Just did a livestream discussing Trump’s trip to the Middle East, and a new Free Press piece on the influence of Qatar. I go over the differences between campaigns by foreign governments targeting Elite Human Capital and Low Human Capital. Later, I discuss some further thoughts on my article on Yarvin’s case for populism, and whether we can build a decent case for the idea that something like MAGA is needed to check the power of American elites. I note how Yarvin, at this point perhaps the most prominent independent figure still actively defending Trump on broad intellectual grounds, starts from the premise that his movement is made up of people who are stupid and crazy. I played that role a bit before the election, but I think the difference is I had a plausible case of how the stupidity gets us to better outcomes, while now it’s much harder to see the path. Moreover, I didn’t defend authoritarian populism itself; I thought it was a cancer that could be minimized, and we would otherwise get many sensible right-wing policies in a second Trump administration. Yarvin, in contrast, defends MAGA as preferable to normal conservatism.

There was a connection problem here unfortunately and the video quality is not very good. The audio appears unaffected.

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