Wisdom of Crowds

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Mana Afsari is a writer and sometime contributor to Wisdom of Crowds, whose career has taken her from the RAND Corporation, to a job as an assistant to a great American poet, to the position of Research Associate at the Aspen Institute’s Philosophy and Society Initiative. In January, Mana published an essay titled, “Last Boys at the Beginning of History,” a fascinating reported piece about the young men with intellectual ambitions who joined the National Conservative movement and voted for Donald Trump. The essay went viral and earned praise from both liberals and conservatives. Damon Linker of Notes from the Middleground called it “a remarkable essay that’s generated considerable (and well-justified) buzz.”

Mana joins Santiago Ramos and Shadi Hamid to discuss the essay and the general question of why ambitious, inquisitive and searching young men are attracted to the MAGA movement. “I am not a right wing zoologist,” Mana says, but it is important to understand where these men are coming form. These young intellectuals are not your average Trump voter. They are not the “DOGE boys,” either. But they are becoming a significant part of the GOP leadership class.

Shadi wants to know why an interest in culture and ideas has led these men toward right wing spaces. Mana responds that right wing spaces, at least until recently, had a less politicized approach to culture. Many of these young men are interested in things, like history or cartography, which some suggest are “right-coded.” “Most things that are supposedly right-coded should not be right-coded,” Mana says.

And what do they think of Trump? “They don’t think of Trump as Odoacer, they see him as Julius Caesar. They don’t see him as a barbarian, but as a restorer of the republic.”

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Shadi talks about going to a recent right wing party and says it was “a safe space, it was inclusive”; Santiago asks Shadi if he ever went to right wing parties during the War on Terror; Mana distinguishes the desire for free and open discussion versus the desire to “say whatever you want,” i.e., slurs; and Santiago argues that the Israel-Palestine conflict has made all political sides rediscover the importance of freedom of speech.

Required Reading and Listening:

* Mana Afsari, “Last Boys at the Beginning of History” (The Point).

* Santiago Ramos, “Let Us Now Praise the Supermen” (WoC).

* Santiago Ramos, “Do You Know What Time It Is?” (WoC).

* Damir Marusic, “Barbarians at the Gate” (WoC).

* Shadi Hamid, “Why Half of America is Cheering for Chaos” (Washington Post).

* Wisdom of Crowds podcast episode, “The Masculine World is Adrift” (WoC).

* Henry Kissinger quote about Trump (Financial Times).

* Vittoria Elliot, “The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover” (Wired).

* Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt and Norman Mailer (Amazon).

* C. P. Cavafy, “Waiting for the Barbarians” (Poetry Foundation).

* Odoacer (Britannica).

* Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, What are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice (Amazon).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

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With the Gaza ceasefire possibly collapsing any minute, we return to the topic of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in the Holy Land. Specifically, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic discuss the tension between a belief in universal human rights, on the one hand, and allegiance to one’s ethnic and religious roots, on the other.

Joining Shadi and Damir is friend of the pod Peter Beinart, contributing writer for the New York Times and editor-at-large of the magazine, Jewish Currents. In recent years, Beinart has emerged as a leading Jewish voice wrestling with the moral questions surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict. His new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, describes the different ways that Jews have wrestled with the morality of the war in Gaza. Peter is an observant Orthodox Jew, and this book documents how his criticism of the war has affected (and even broken) several of his friendships in his community.

Peter affirms a belief in the universality of human rights and obligations to all human beings. But, he confesses, “there’s another voice inside my head: don’t be naive, this is a world of power in which people either look out for their own, or nobody looks out for you.” Is it possible to reconcile these two thoughts?

Shadi argues for the universalist point of view: given the high number of civilian deaths in the Gaza war, shouldn’t it be obvious that our allegiance to universal values should take priority over everything else? Shouldn’t we have more “sensitivity for civilian deaths”? Damir presses from the opposite, particularist perspective. He’s been reading the Bible. There is, Damir says, a biblical sense for “the destiny of the Israelites to the land” of Israel. Moreover, Damir argues, even if Israel is powerful today, and even if Israel did not need to wage war on the scale that it did in Gaza, not too long ago, Israel actually was existentially threatened by its neighbors. Moreover, Iran is still a real threat today.

This is a heart-wrenching, wide-ranging episode that covers several controversial topics: the parallels between the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza; whether Israel can be called an Apartheid state; how to interpret the historical books of the Bible, in particular the Book of Joshua; and much more.

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Peter and our hosts discuss why the Israeli Left is dead and why Yair Lapid supports Trump’s Gaza mass expulsion plan; how liberal Americans internalize the ethnic framing of the Israel-Palestine debate; Israel’s right to exist; ethnonationalism on the rise around the world; what Steve Bannon really thinks about American Jews; and how to maintain friends with whom you might have deep disagreements.

Required Reading

* Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (Amazon).

* Peter Beinart, The Beinart Notebook (Substack).

* Peter Beinart, “Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return” (Jewish Currents).

* October 2023 podcast episode with Peter: “Peter Beinart on Israel, Hamas, and Why Nonviolence Failed” (WoC).

* July 2020 podcast episode with Peter: “Arguing the One-State Solution” (WoC).

* “Lapid presents Gaza ‘day after’ plan in DC, urges extended Egyptian takeover” (Times of Israel).

* The Book of Joshua (Bible Hub).

* David Ben-Gurion (Jewish Virtual Library).

* Yeshayahu Leibowitz (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

* Micah Goodman, Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War (Amazon).

* Amoz Oz, In the Land of Israel (Amazon).

* Simone Weil, The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (Amazon).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

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J. D. Vance delivers a seismic geopolitical speech at the Munich Security Forum. Vance, Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy get into a shouting match before television cameras. Relations between the United States and Europe are deteriorating before our very eyes. In one of our best episodes of the year so far, we invited the great Ivan Krastev to help us understand what is happening.

Ivan is one of the brightest minds in Europe — an incisive analyst, historian of ideas, and ever-present track-two diplomat who is always talking to absolutely everyone. He is chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria and Albert Hirschman Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He writes regularly for the Financial Times and the New York Times.

Ivan tells Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic that Trumpism, and its policy toward Europe is not conservative or isolationist, but “a revolutionary movement.” This revolution is what reconciles the populist and libertarian elements of Trump’s administration: “You’re trying to fight bureaucracy by concentrating power in a charismatic leader. Less state, more emperor.” You can see this, Ivan argues, in the way Trump runs his coalition like an imperial court, where opposing figures — like Steve Bannon and Elon Musk — vie for the attention of the emperor. You can also see it in the fact that Trump himself says contradictory things: “A charismatic figure can contain contradictions.”

What does this mean for Europe? “Empires fall when the center sees itself as a hostage not as a hegemon,” Ivan argues, and Trump, along with Republicans, long to divest themselves of the Empire. This means applying pressure on Europe to bend to its demands — be it about Ukraine, or Greenland, or immigration. It also means that, inadvertently, Trump has reawakened European nationalism: “The new European politics is nationalist, the populists are internationalist.”

This is a rich episode, full of insightful koans from a longtime observer of international affairs. Damir takes the conversation in the direction of what exactly fuels the Right and its “enthusiasm for destruction.” Shadi presses Ivan on the recently overturned elections in Romania, and what this means about the future of European democracy.

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, the three men discuss why charismatic political leaders can live with contradictions; the “fast track between [political] office and prison”; how Trump has inadvertently created a new US-European consensus on immigration and state intervention in the economy, and why “you can’t stop a revolution by defending institutions. You need your own version of tomorrow.”

Required Reading and Viewing:

* J. D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Forum (Foreign Policy).

* Zelenskyy, Trump and Vance press conference (C-Span YouTube page).

* Ivan Krastev and Leonard Benardo, “Democracy Has Run Out of Future” (Foreign Policy).

* Shadi Hamid, “Why Half of America is Cheering for Chaos” (Washington Post).

* “EU parliament votes to condemn overturning of Roe v. Wade” (Axios).

* German Revolution of 1918-1919 (Brittanica).

* Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism” (archive.org).

* Daniel Kehlmann, German writer (Wikipedia).

* “The Gender Gap is Growing and it Bodes Badly for American Politics and Culture” (The Hill).

* 2024 Romanian Elections (Wikipedia).

* Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (Amazon).

* Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 (Amazon).

* N.S. Lyons, “American Strong Gods: Trump and the End of the Long Twentieth Century” (The Upheaval).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

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“Something is happening here and you don’t know what it is,” goes the Bob Dylan track from 1965. That song was directed at the squares who weren’t yet hip to the Sixties. It sounded foreboding then, and it sounds foreboding now, because something is happening, again — something perhaps as great and consequential as the cultural changes of Dylan’s time. For several years now, people have been speaking about a cultural “vibe shift.” The MAGA electoral victory appears to have been the culmination of that shift. The Trumpist victory has ushered in a new political elite and with it, a cultural style that is more transgressive, crude, and rude than the once-liberal American mainstream.

Helping us understand what’s happening is this week’s special guest, Sean Monahan, one of the most perceptive cultural forecasters of our time. If you’ve ever used the term “normcore,” or if you’ve heard someone talk about a “vibe shift,” you’ve been influenced by Sean. And if you haven’t heard those terms, then you’re about to learn a lot about American culture in this episode. Sean is a writer, trend forecaster and brand consultant, whose Substack, 8Ball, is an oracle of cultural insight.

Sean joins Christine Emba and Shadi Hamid and they all get deep about vibes. What is a vibe? Can it be defined? If it can’t, then how is it a useful concept? Is it based on material conditions? How long does a vibe last? But the conversation soon ventures beyond these theoretical generalities. Shadi wants to know whether American culture has fundamentally shifted to the right since the rise of Trump. Christine detects a mean streak to this new culture: a certain cruelty or at least, ruthless competitiveness. Sean puts things in perspective, explaining how generations create, condition, and then abandon trends, and how the weird period of Covid lockdown had a unique effect on trend creation, one that still affects us to this day. He also describes the new aesthetic of the Trump era, which he believes is based primarily on desire for money, and which he has dubbed, “Boom Boom.”

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Sean discusses why religion has become attractive to young people, especially young men, whether he sees good vibes or bad vibes in the near future, and whether he believes most Americans actually like Trump and DOGE.

Required Reading:

* Sean Monahan’s Substack, 8Ball.

* Sean Monahan, “Anatomy of a Vibe Shift” (8Ball).

* Sean Monahan, “Boom Boom: Anatomy of a Trend” (8Ball).

* Sean Monahan, “The Counter Elite Won the Meme War” (8Ball).

* CrowdSource: “Truth and Vibes” (WoC).

* Famous 2022 article from New York Magazine: “A Vibe Shift is Coming” (New York).

* W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change (Amazon).

* Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Amazon).

* Mana Afsari, “Last Boys at the Beginning of History” (The Point).

* Saddle Creek Records.

* Bright Eyes (Saddle Creek).

* “Cottagecore Aesthetic, Explained” (Country Living).

* MySpace.

* Matthew Walther on the origin of “Woke Capital” (American Conservative).

* “Dimes Square” (Know Your Meme).

* Alex P. Keaton (Wikipedia).

* Gordon Gecko (Wikipedia).

* Patrick Bateman (Wikipedia).

* Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (Amazon).

* American Psycho film (YouTube).

* Graeme Wood, “How Bronze Age Pervert Charmed the Far Right” (The Atlantic).

* “Yosemite Locksmith: 'The People Who Fired Me Don't Know What I Do'” (MSN).

* “Garry Tan for mayor? ‘Never, or 20 years from now,’ Y Combinator chief says” (San Francisco Standard).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

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“I am done saying, ‘impossible’,” announces Damir Marusic. At least, with regard to what Trump might do or could do in the near future. We are still in the midst of a major shakeup in the administrative state. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is combing through Treasury data and cutting government personnel. Trump is delaying the distribution of federal funds. Trump’s policies have full support of the GOP-majority Congress. Meanwhile, the White House foreign policy agenda has upended three years of support for the Ukrainian war cause and, apart from that, is strikingly imperialistic — annexing Greenland and “owning” Gaza are stated objectives. Will Trump become a dictator?

Shadi Hamid believes that Trump won’t become a dictator — America is too big for a dictator — but he very will might signal the end of the “liberal” part of our liberal democracy. Damir fears that, by the end of Trump’s second term, Congress will become a vestigial representative body with littler power, like the Senate in the Roman Empire. Both worry that the demise of democracy could come in a subtle, slow way — a “boiling frog” scenario.

Shadi and Damir move on ask whether what’s happening is what Trump’s voters asked for. Why is Trump popular right now? Why do people want to break the state? Shadi says, “[Trump voters] believe that the system is fundamentally broken. Certainly, for a majority of Americans, the system is broken.” Damir partially agrees, but adds: “It’s a lot more resentment-based … Not really an idea that ‘the system is broken’ for me, but that it’s populated by those people over there, and it’s time to hurt them.” But why so much resentment?

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Shadi talks about the Democratic Party’s potential to resist Trump and why the working class likes Trump (hint: it doesn’t have to do with economics). Damir brings up the famous book, What’s the Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank, and explains why he thinks it misses the mark.

Required Reading:

* Shadi Hamid, “How to Break Up with the News” (Contentions).

* CrowdSource about the possible constitutional crisis (WoC).

* Democratic Party favorability ratings among young people (YouGov).

* “How Biden is continuing to cancel student loan debt despite Supreme Court ruling” (CNN).

* Tyler Cowen, “Trumpian policy as cultural policy” (Marginal Revolution).

* Christine Emba’s piece engaging with Cowen’s article (WoC).

* Shadi’s post about the “The System is collapsing” meme (X).

* David Polansky’s reply to Shadi’s post (X).

* Lee Hockstader, “In Germany’s elections, a last, best chance to hold off extremists” (Washington Post).

* Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas (Amazon).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk are moving quickly, so we decided to release this episode a few days early. In a half-week of alarming developments, Trump has announced that the United States might send troops to Gaza to transfer the Palestinian population to Egypt or Jordan, and to aid in reconstructing the country. Elon Musk has become the undertaker of government agencies, the wrecker of the civil service. Through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has effectively shut down USAID, offered payouts to members of other agencies, and more.

In an effort to make sense of all this, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic are interrogated by WoC executive editor, Santiago Ramos. Is Trump serious about Gaza? What do his statements suggest about the possible endgames for the Gaza war and the future of the Israeli-Palestinian question? Was Shadi wrong to suggest that Trump might be better on this question than Biden was? Is Trump acting according to what he thinks is the national interest? Or is this a random shot in the dark?

The second issue — DOGE — prompts a more serious set of questions. Are we in a constitutional crisis? If not now, then will we be one in a few months time, when the judiciary steps in to check DOGE? Why exactly are Trump and Musk interested in hollowing out the administrative state? Are we in a watershed moment in American history? Is there anything that we can do to preserve the rule of law?

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Shadi explains why he believes that ideology is driving Trump and Musk, rather than just the desire for power; Damir argues that he concept of punishment is essential to justice; and Santiago describes the difference between Louis XIV and Napoleon.

Required Reading

* “Trump Proposes U.S. Takeover of Gaza and Says All Palestinians Should Leave” (New York Times).

* Shadi Hamid, “Why an Arab American who backed Trump stands by his choice” (Washington Post).

* Marco Rubio on Trump’s Gaza comments (NBC).

* Rich Kushner’s February 2024 comments on “waterfront property” in Gaza (The Guardian).

* Shadi’s post about Trump v. Biden on Gaza (X).

* Damir Marusic, “Brushfire of the Vanities” (WoC).

* Liam Cunningham post (X).

* Patrick Deneen (Communia)’s two X posts: first and second.

* Patrick Deneen, Regime Change: Towards a Postliberal Future (Amazon).

* Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (Amazon).

* Francis Fukuyama, “The end of history will be a sad time” (“The End of History?, PDF UCSD).

* John Ganz, “Groyperification” (Unpopular Front).

* Gabe Fleisher, “When I Will Call Something a ‘Constitutional Crisis’ ” (Wake Up to Politics).

* Thomas Edsall, “ ‘Trump’s Thomas Cromwell’ Is Waiting in the Wings” (New York Times).

* Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer, “The Trump Executive Orders as ‘Radical Constitutionalism’ ” (Executive Functions).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

“The weird right wing men are coming out to the fore in joy,” announces Shadi Hamid. “They’re strutting more than they did in 2016,” observes Damir Marusic. “The counter-elite is becoming the elite,” says Shadi. “There is gonna be a bloodbath,” says Damir: “They will soon be drinking from a fire hydrant of sewage.”

Two weeks have passed since the Trump inauguration, as well as its attendant galas, balls and parties. Damir and Shadi have trained their weary eyes upon the new class of upstart right wingers arriving in the capital for a punchdrunk power-hungry scramble. There are the tech bros, the trad intellectuals, the libertarians living in unrecognized mini-states, the crunchy RFK-supporters, and who knows what else. All want a piece of the pie that Emperor Trump is slicing before them.

Shadi believes that a cultural shift has taken place — that Trump is not only a new president, but the usher of a new moment in American culture. “Something has changed,” says Shadi. “Liberal dominance of instutions seems weak and pathetic,” in retrospect, he adds. “The perception of dominance can collapse quickly.” Damir disagrees. “It was not a cultural shift,” he says. It was a repudiation of liberal overreach on cultural issues, and a “light-to-heavy insanity and a lot of stress on our institutions.” The Right is reactionary, Damir concludes, and as soon as they propose a positive program, their popularity will drop.

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Damir and Shadi discuss the difference between “mysterious cultural forces” and “the wisdom of crowds,” Damir further explains why he believes the Right is not as powerful as they think they are, and Shadi tells us about an upcoming spiritual quest.

Required Reading:

* Liberland official website.

* Curtis Yarvin interview (New York Times).

* Mana Afsari, “Last Boys at the Beginning of History” (The Point).

* Who is Chris Rufo?

* Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan Experience (YouTube).

* Christine Emba, “Zuck is the Zeitgeist” (WoC).

* The Harper’s Letter (signed by Shadi).

* Richard Reeves on the podcast: “The Masculine World is Adrift” (WoC).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.live

Last week’s episode dealt with the state of the American Right post-election. Today we ask: Where is the American Left going? How will it respond to Trump? “There is a palpable sense of passivity on the Left,” says Damir Marusic. “What I’ve seen is resignation or weird, detached analysis,” says Samuel Kimbriel. Is there more going on than we see? We invited WoC contributor Osita Nwanevu, writer for the New Republic and author of an upcoming book about American democracy, to tell us more.

Osita begins by distinguishing between the Democratic Party and the movement Left. While the Democrats are a loose coalition in broad disarray, the Left simply stands for “a grand reform of political economy to empower workers.” The Left, Osita argues, was not surprised that Trump won. The problem lies it how it can create a platform that will appeal to American voters. There is too much despair. Too many on the Left, Osita argues, have been left in a state of “political hopelessness” after the election, wondering what to do in a country where most people voted for Donald Trump. But such an attitude is “antithetical to democratic thought and what we need to do for practical politics.”

Damir and Osita go on to engage the question of whether a Left that stands for universal human values, rather than in-group, national concerns, is able to win. Osita argues that there is not necessary contradiction between a universal value and a local interest. When it comes to climate change, for example, the Left isn’t asking voters to care about “the Maldives,” but about “fires in LA and storms in Florida.” Damir is not so sure.

The conversation touches on symbolic politics versus real politics, whether protest movements can actually transform society, whether Trump is the true revolutionary force in American politics, and whether the Left actually has intellectual leaders and a utopian vision today. In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Sam argues that the Left needs an idea of transcendence, Osita talks about transcendence without god, and Damir pushes both on whether personal philosophical convictions actually have any bearing on real-life politics.

Required Reading:

* Osita’s website.

* Sam on why the Left needs ideas (WoC).

* Damir’s post-election reaction (WoC).

* Osita on BLM (Pairagraph).

* Osita’s debate with Oliver Traldi about democracy and ideology (WoC).

* Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (Amazon).

* “Nancy Pelosi Insists the Election was Not a Rebuke of the Democrats” (New York Times).

* On the Gushers BLM post mentioned by Osita (New York Times).

* “Costco Teamsters vote to authorize US-wide strike, union says” (Reuters).

* “Costco shareholders just destroyed an anti-DEI push” (CNN).

* History of hospitals (Britannica).

* Scott Alexander, “Everyone’s A Based Post-Christian Vitalist Until The Grooming Gangs Show Up” (Astral Codex Ten).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

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On the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic sit down to discuss the state of the Right and the Left in American politics. The conversation picks up where the last podcast episode left off, in a discussion about Damir’s apparent rejuvenation in the wake of Trump’s victory. Given that he didn’t vote for Trump — in fact, he didn’t vote for anybody — why is Damir smiling?

Shadi suggests that “Democrats needed this defeat to learn important lessons.” Damir is not so sure that they will learn them. But one of the reasons he is giddy is that they will get their comeuppance for the political “villainy” of Russiagate, the Biden health coverup and other misguided Democratic gambits. Shadi, in turn, notes that many of his center-left acquaintances seem surprisingly at peace with the new government, and ready to entertain new ideas. “Very rarely did I hear despair,” he reports.

Both Shadi and Damir go deeper by asking about the status quo of the Left and the Right. Damir thinks that Trump has “cleared the field” of the conservative movement’s Reaganite past, and that the Right is now ready to debate issues in a more realistic way. Shadi laments that the Left has become boring by being too certain that they are correct about everything: they are the party of “facts, data and progress,” and think that they have “resolved all the big ideological debates.”

In our bonus content for paid subscribers, Damir discusses what he means by “tragic liberalism,” Shadi explains why he thinks atheism is over, and our hosts discuss the best and worst things that could happen during the second Trump presidency.

Required Reading and Listening:

* Damir, “We’ll Have to Rethink Everything” (WoC).

* Shadi, “Trump’s ‘madman theory’ worked in Gaza when all else failed” (Washington Post).

* Christine, “Zuck is the Zeitgeist” (WoC).

* Santiago questions Damir about his newfound conservatism (WoC).

* Tara Isabella Burton, “Believe for Your Own Sake, Not for ‘the West’” (WoC).

* Ezra Klein and Nate Silver on “peak Trump” (X).

* Elon Musk is an ‘Evil Person,’ Steve Bannon Says” (New York Times).

* “Corporate America embraces a new era of conservatism under Donald Trump” (Financial Times).

* “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge” (Wall Street Journal).

* David Brooks, “Why People Are Fleeing Blue Cities for Red States” (New York Times).

* Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Amazon).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

A new year is before us, and soon, a new president will assume office. What does the future have in store? Trump supporters are happy, and his opponents are full of foreboding. Many people also feel that a new era in American history is about to begin — for better or worse.

Damir Marusic and Santiago Ramos discuss the nature of this new era. They begin with the question of fear: Are you afraid of the second Trump term? Santiago explains why the Trump phenomenon seemed more frightening in 2016 than it does in 2024. Damir asks whether finding historical analogues for Trump actually illuminates anything about the man, and makes him less scary.

Santiago then asks Damir about two of his latest pieces for Wisdom of Crowds, in which Damir seems almost giddy about the collapse of the liberal establishment and Trump’s rise. What exactly is Damir happy about? What good does he see coming from this historical moment? What is changing? While not defending Trump himself, Damir argues that Trump’s crushing of liberal illusions, and the exposure of the hypocrisy of our political class, are good things. What he hopes for is a new “positive program of skepticism and humility,” and a more limited version of liberalism.

In the course of the conversation, Damir and Santiago cover wide variety of topics: Damir’s newfound conservatism; Trump and Andrew Jackson; Kissinger on Trump; the USA and Latin America; NATO; Greenland; and the Cold War. Because this is our first podcast of the new year, and season-opener of sorts, we are making this episode free for all subscribers.

Required Reading and Listening:

* Damir, “The feeling of limitless possibility ahead of Trump's inauguration is dizzying” (WoC).

* Damir, “The Peasants, the People and God” (WoC).

* Santiago on Latinos and the election (Commonweal).

* Santiago on Trump and Latin America (Commonweal).

* Black Mirror episode Santiago mentions: “The Waldo Moment” (IMDB).

* Henry Kissinger: “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences” (Financial Times).

* Jason Willick on Trump and Andrew Jackson (Washington Post).

* Samuel Goldman on why the US is more like Latin America than Europe (The Week).

* Antonio García Martínez on why the US is like Brazil (X).

* Our podcast episode with Yuval Levin (WoC).

* Video of Trump and Stoltenberg (YouTube).

* Jon Stewart on Nancy Pelosi’s “legal corruption” (The Wrap).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe