Heather Cox Richardson appeared on Jon Stewart's Weekly Show podcast a few days ago and talked for about an hour. Thanks Mary, for letting me know! There were more things that I agreed with her on, in this one. Although I have to say, I agreed with Jon even more. Especially in the frame of mind that seems to have informed his questions. Jon actually began the whole thing, before introducing Heather, by acknowledging that Trump had won this election not by any trickery or intimidation or cheating, but by getting more votes. I think that was an important way to start. Jon went on to introspect a bit about "just what it was that made what you think your world is and the things that you were certain about, not certain." But (and this is why I'll always like Jon Stewart), he continued, "Man I still believe in this country and I believe in individuals. And I believe in the power of change, and organization, and goodness...competence." I do too, and I appreciate Jon's sincere desire to understand people rather than to demonize them for not behaving the way he had hoped they would.
When she got on air, Heather got right to what I think is her main thesis about this election: that "we're in a swirl of disinformation in this country so that a lot of people who voted for Trump really truly voted for things that were the opposite of what they say they wanted." Heather's view of reality seems to be quite focused on particular items she says the media (and thus the people) have overlooked. I'm skeptical, but willing to be convinced. Fro example, Heather claimed that Joe Biden's administration had "deconstructed" Neoliberalism and focused on the effects of the national economy on working class and middle class Americans. Jon pushed back on this a bit and Heather responded that she was frustrated it wasn't more obvious. "Biden has been out there every day" working for the average American, she said, and the media had ignored that fact.
Heather said that Americans have always been able to trust "the guardrails" that kept American democracy on track but that they are now gone. She tells Jon she'll come back to this...I don’t think she ever really did.
Heather says this is the best economy America has had since the 1960s. Real wages are up, she says. I assume she has a Labor Department statistic to back this up, but I still insist that the economic issues need to be drilled down into in much more detail than the type of top-level aggregate measurements she's using. Her point seems to be that people are grabbing the statistics that suit their arguments to make "people" feel the economy is worse than it "really" is, "and every economist will tell you that's exactly backward" (really? Every economist?). This is a place where Jon's curiosity about why people feel the way they do might be valuable. Heather doesn't seem to want to consider this question; instead at this moment she introduces the Russian "technology" of getting people to vote for the candidate they want by skewing their perception of reality.
Jon asks, what if we cite a bunch of statistics about how well the US economy is doing but people don't feel it in their personal lives and homes? He tries to get into the mindset of people who are feeling "the System is not delivering what they need." Heather countered that the system we have had in recent decades (Neoliberalism, from 1981-2021) was the problem (which I agree with, to an extent) and that Joe Biden "very deliberately deconstructed and replaced with the system we had had before that, that did work for everybody." I'd like to hear more about how she thinks Biden did this; maybe I missed something but the administration's economic policies didn't seem that deliberate or based on a new philosophy to me.
Heather would be right to point out there's a lag and it's not really fair to credit or blame an administration for the economy it inherits, which could be years or decades in the making. But she says Biden has been running around "every day" trying to fix the economy and compare what he's doing to FDR, and it's the fault of the media that this message hasn't "cracked through". She also claims (as if its obvious and doesn't need proof) that the next administration will be autocratic and that Biden had worked against corruption and crony capitalism, which I found really odd in light of stories (suppressed in the mainstream media but visible nonetheless) about Biden family activities in places like Ukraine. Finally she sort of warned that the lesson people in power might be getting is, "don't do anything for the middle class because they won't appreciate it."
Jon then brought up a moment that had confused him, when Trump was in a barber shop talking to regular people while Harris was embracing Dick and Liz Cheney. Heather countered that Trump hadn't told the barbershop owner he was filming a campaign promo (because the cameras and lights were so well hidden??) and then called the embrace of the Cheneys a bipartisan, Eisenhower-like or Teddy-Roosevelt-like coalition. Sometimes you have to rewind and listen twice to these types of statements that sneak into the conversation, and unpack them. She then praises Tim Walz's practical policies in Minnesota and says, "I think we have learned in this moment that that realistic approach to politics cannot stand against the modern techniques of propaganda that are enabled by social media." This position echoes her opening thought, that Americans have been bamboozled and may need to be protected from these forms of discourse that confuse them. But what just happened in the thirty seconds of her response? She conflated the embrace of the Cheneys with Walz's practical governance and tried to slip that bundle into the conversation as a positive future for the democrats or America.
A bit later came the parts that I agreed a bit more with. Heather said the question of whether democracy is actually viable in a 21st-century America of 335 million diverse people, is a legitimate question. I think this is true. Heather suggested that the autocratic leaders of Russia and China are claiming democracy is a thing of the past. She also seems to believe the party that has just won the election agrees with them. Heather pointed to the capping of representation in the House in 1929 as an anti-democratic move. She also blamed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts for systematically working to erode voting rights and undo the democratic (participation) gains of the 1960s. These are both interesting historical references that I'll investigate (they're probably in her latest book, which I'll get around to reading soon). Finally, she suggested that the newly-elected government will move to restrict freedom of speech. I sure hope not, but I find it odd she makes no mention of the current government's efforts to limit and punish speech. And where exactly is the destination of her critique of a media that has so confused the American people that they've begun voting against their real interests?
Toward the end of the interview, the issue came up of local and state institutions and elections functioning as a protector of the democratic form. This was hopeful and reminded me a bit of David Graeber's ideas about different types of organizational ideas being used at different scales (we're all communists in our families, etc.).
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