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The Infernal Triangle (w/ Rick Perlstein)

🕑 Added 2024-10-25 16:07:54 +0000 UTC

Comments

Ann

This episode was so therapeutic for me to hear. The part that sang to me was young Matt thinking inside the beltway was filled with bright shining stars only to age and realize they are mediocre intellects. This episode nailed so many things.

Tim Combes

Perhaps outside the scope of an sub-hour episode particularly interested in the media’s treatment of Trump and MAGA?

Tim Combes

Mediacrity

Richard Seabrook

Very interesting , insightful and , culminating with the last observation that so many people want what Trump is offering , very dispiriting .

drizzly_november

A discussion about the mainstream press’ failings this past year without a single mention of its shamefully inadequate reporting on Gaza and our government’s role there, is disappointing, and emblematic of the media myopia that this conversation’s otherwise sharp on.

Tzvi Mackson

Looking forward to both!

desdinova

As Reich said, 'why do people desire their own suppression'?

desdinova

How does one seperate the wheat from the chaff though? When 95% of the content is horserace drivel the actual reporting is subsumed. You have to have a spine more than 1% of the time to be able to complain about being maliagned.

Know Your Enemy

Honestly, I genuinely suspect we will do one at some point. I've been interested in him from way back, and a former professor of mine has sent me some work he's been doing on him recently. An episode on him is the kind of thing we'd be inclined to do during a more placid period in our national life, should one occur again. (Matt)

Tzvi Mackson

His mention of Peter Viereck raises the question— when will you do a Viereck episode?

Ian Faucher

So much great stuff here, but I’m always confused by this critique of the NYT. On the same day this episode dropped, the Times was in the middle of a news cycle about Trump’s associates calling him a fascist, and Maggie Haberman did an interview urging listeners to take Trump’s threats of violence and political persecution seriously and literally. It’s obviously not perfect, but the suggestion that it doesn’t engage with the awfulness of the modern right strikes me as bizarre (that seems like 80% of what it does to me). What am I missing?

Henry Bachofer

True. Tho I'm referring to the center and center-left people that Harris is trying to appeal to. The right has a robust infrastructure for engagement but I don't really see much to counter that. Sure there's netroots but it doesn't get much visibility.

Garett Smith

I think the problem is that the voters ARE involved in civic engagement. For fascism. They genuinely are committed to the project of an ethnostate. That's bleak.

Henry Bachofer

Great discussion ... toward the end (around minute 50) you get to talking about how Trump says what he's about and yet 50% of voters seem to want him to be elected. In all of the media hand waving/wringing about Trump being called a Fascist the concern seems to be this will alienate voters who think they are being called Fascists. It seems to me, and this isn't really a new suspicion, that about 60% of Trump voters and 80% of the MAGA faithful are fascist or at least fascist-friendly—whether they know it or not. Trump simply let them come out of their closets. But does realizing this really change anything — specifically does it suggest how to build a pro-democracy constituency and movement. Rick's point about civic engagement is critical but I'm not sure anyone has a plan to provide pathways to engagement for the growing number of people who are caught in the middle.

Eric Quirk

I wish someone could force every inside-the-Beltway, Tiger Beat-on-the-Potomac “elite” journalist to listen to and take seriously this searing critique, Rick Perlstein is a national treasure

lewie spearman

I loved that thought experiment: imagine there's no polling....it's easy if you try...

Taylor

Highly recommend everyone read Rick's article on undecided voters in Am Prospect before the election.

Steven Carson

Greatest episode of KYE ever? Many people are saying

Blackford Oakes

Rick…this is the bastard who got me into this crap! Before the Storm was the gateway drug!!

Isaac Suárez

Great episode- y’all lay out what drives me nuts about American political “journalism.” Keep up the good work!

Nik

You really "let him cook" here! It's hard not to be very doomer-ish about militias, police and border patrol as a faction of society that not only poses a danger now but could easily mobilize most strongly and lethally against a revitalized social democratic project—and equally hard to think of how to build an offramp from those tendencies that isn't grossly conciliatory (though ironically the Democrats' attempt to do just that with their border policy seems to be paying no dividends at all).