Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

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Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

Flux is a progressive podcast platform, with daily content from shows like Theory of Change, Doomscroll, and The Electorette.

  1. 24 ФЕВР.

    The SAVE Act: The Biggest Voter Suppression Bill in U.S. History? | A Deep Dive with Eliza Sweren-Becker from the Brennan Center for Justice

    Congressional Republicans have fast-tracked the SAVE Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act)—legislation that could disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters by imposing strict new citizenship verification requirements. Is this bill really about election integrity, or is it an unprecedented voter suppression effort? Host Jen Taylor-Skinner sits down with Eliza Sweren-Becker from the Brennan Center for Justice to break down the dangers of the SAVE Act, who it targets, and how it could reshape American democracy. From hidden costs to criminal penalties for election workers, this bill is more than just restrictive—it’s a direct attack on voting rights. This episode of The Electorette explores what’s at stake, why it’s happening now, and how you can take action before it’s too late. Learn more about the SAVE Act from The Brennan Center for Justice: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/house-bill-would-hurt-american-voters 📢 Call your representatives and tell them to vote NO on the SAVE Act. ✉️ Subscribe for more in-depth discussions on voting rights, democracy, and justice. #SAVEAct #VotingRights #ElectionIntegrity #ElectorettePodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    30 мин.

  2. 20 ФЕВР.

    Transforming Postpartum Care: Addressing America's Maternal Health Crisis | Natalie Davis of United States of Care

    Natalie Davis, CEO of United States of Care, joins The Electorette host Jen Taylor-Skinner to examine the critical postpartum care crisis in the United States. Despite being a high-income nation, America’s maternal mortality rates highlight significant gaps in postpartum support. Davis discusses The 100 Weeks Project, a groundbreaking initiative designed to transform postpartum care by providing comprehensive, personalized support from conception through the first year postpartum. This initiative addresses the physical, mental, and social needs of mothers, fathers, and partners alike. The conversation shifts to the challenges of healthcare access for families, focusing on insurance disparities that disproportionately affect mothers. Davis and Taylor-Skinner explore cultural and societal barriers that hinder progress and discuss the need for a reimagined healthcare system—one that recognizes diverse family structures and guarantees essential care for all mothers. The discussion also highlights the emotional toll of navigating the healthcare system, particularly for mothers facing early motherhood struggles and NICU experiences. With the Supreme Court case Braidwood v. Becerra threatening to dismantle free preventive healthcare services under the Affordable Care Act, Davis underscores the urgent need for advocacy and systemic change. This episode offers an insightful and urgent call to action, emphasizing the importance of healthcare advocacy and the need for accessible, equitable postpartum care nationwide. 📢 Subscribe for more insightful conversations. Timestamps: (00:01) - Postpartum Care Crisis in America (14:06) - Reimagining Healthcare for Postpartum Mothers (24:47) - Threat to Free Preventive Health Services (34:59) - Healthcare Advocacy and Resources Episode Chapters: (00:01) Postpartum Care Crisis in America Maternal mortality rates and lack of support in postpartum care addressed through innovative 100 Weeks Project. (14:06) Reimagining Healthcare for Postpartum Mothers Insurance disparities and societal expectations hinder mothers' access to adequate postpartum care and highlight systemic issues in healthcare. (24:47) Threat to Free Preventive Health Services Mothers face emotional challenges in postpartum care, while a Supreme Court case threatens women's healthcare accessibility. (34:59) Healthcare Advocacy and Resources United States of Care addresses healthcare issues such as the 100 Weeks Project and the Preventive Services Court Case. #PostpartumCare #MaternalHealth #UnitedStatesofCare #NatalieDavis #HealthEquity #AffordableCareAct #BraidwoodvBecerra #HealthcareAdvocacy #Electorette #ReproductiveRights In this Episode United States of Care 100 Days of Care Listen to All Electorette Episodes https://www.electorette.com/podcast Support the Electorette Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4 Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette! WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media. Electorette Facebook Electorette Instagram Electorette Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    37 мин.

  3. 18 ФЕВР.

    The NAACP’s Fight for Democracy: Patrice Willoughby on 2024, Project 2025 & Black Voter Power

    For over a century, the NAACP has been a driving force in the fight for civil rights, shaping American democracy through groundbreaking legal victories, grassroots activism, and political advocacy. From dismantling segregation in Brown v. Board of Education to championing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the NAACP’s impact is undeniable. And today, their fight continues. In this episode, I sit down with Patrice Willoughby, Chief of Policy and Legislative Affairs at the NAACP, for a powerful conversation about the organization's modern-day advocacy. We discuss their efforts to protect democracy during the 2024 presidential cycle, their response to Project 2025, and their strategy to mobilize Black voters. We also dive into the Kamala Harris campaign, the evolving role of Black women in politics, and how future campaigns can authentically engage with Black communities. In this Episode NAACP Our 2025 NAACP Our 2025 Toolkit NAACP Black Consumer Advisory Listen to All Electorette Episodes https://www.electorette.com/podcast Support the Electorette Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4 Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette! WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media. Electorette Facebook Electorette Instagram Electorette Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    44 мин.

  4. 9 ФЕВР.

    Liberalism’s epistemic crisis enabled Donald Trump’s victories

    Episode Summary  Donald Trump is now once again the president of the United States, but his victory in 2024 was more than just a victory for himself or the Republican Party, it actually is part of a larger advancement that is happening across many different countries around the globe for right-wing reactionary parties who are sometimes incorrectly referred to as populist. (These parties are not populist, in fact, because their policies that they pursue have no material benefit to the people who vote for them. But instead they use vulgarian rhetoric to pretend to be populist.) Despite the fact that these far-right parties have policies that are hurtful to their own voters and to their countries that have elected them, they have been able to win because the center-left and the further-left are caught up in a philosophical crisis of liberalism itself. And that's because liberalism as a philosophy has never actually been able to fight successfully against reactionary philosophy in the political realm in the English-speaking world. Instead, the last time that it won was 200 years ago when it defeated monarchism, which was an explicitly king-based approach. But reactionaries like Donald Trump and his henchmen are not explicitly pro-monarch—at least to the public. They certainly are that way in private, as many of their political theorists like Curtis Yarvin and JD Vance have freely admitted. That is why understanding how to defeat a form of monarchism that argues through democratic means is proving to be an incredible challenge for liberalism and socialism. On today's episode, I talk about some of these challenges and the historical origins of them with Matthew McManus. He’s a lecturer in political science at the University of Michigan, a previous guest on the show, and he’s got a new book out now called The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. The video of our January 21, 2025 discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page. Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch. Related Content Inside the extremist ideology of JD Vance (McManus’s previous appearance on Theory of Change) The ‘post-left’ is the latest right-wing scam How Republicans became the party of the John Birch Society The Christian right was a theological rebellion before it became a political cause The disinformation techniques used by Trump and today’s Republicans were invented by tobacco companies in the 1970s How 90s libertarian billionaires transmogrified into the neo-reactionary extremists of the 2020s Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 11:30 — How liberalism and the left grew apart during the Cold War 17:52 — Nietzsche and liberalism's meaning crisis 23:21 — Socialist traditions' better understanding of marginalization 30:49 — Charles Mills and critical race theory extend rather than reject Western philosophy 32:33 — Thomas Paine vs. Edmund Burke 36:54 — How socialists failed to build institutions 41:37 — Radical leftists haven't realized the necessity of persuasion 47:56 — Democrats also refuse to explain or persuade 53:12 — Liberalism has never developed the ability to politically defeat reactionism Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: I think before we get too far afield into that into the actual contents of the book, let's talk about what do you mean by liberal socialism as distinct from liberalism and as distinct from socialism. MATT McMANUS: Sure. Well, there are a couple of different things to say about that just being very simply. I follow people like Alan Ryan or Michael Friedan or Peter Lam on the socialist end of things who point out that it's very easy to take narrow understandings of what liberalism and socialism entail. And to say that they just are one thing or, you know, whatever flavor of liberalism or socialism I happen to be committed to that's the real flavor. And what all the authors I mentioned stress is that these are big ideologies that have a lot of different permutations, members attitudes that you can see within them. And that's reflective of the fact that they've been around for hundreds of years now. So there are a lot of different people who have identified as liberals and socialists [00:04:00] at event calls. quite different things about that. Now that doesn't mean that just anybody can be a liberal or anybody can be a socialist because they say the odd liberal or they say the odd socialist thing. You know, think about the people's public of North Korea, right? Nobody would exactly call North Korea either a people's republic or any kind of. Republic, really or, you know, National Socialism, right? For example, you know, Fascism is quite a different ideology to certainly Democratic Socialism or even Authoritarian Marxism but these groups have, these different philosophies and ideologies have family resemblances to one another and in the book I point out that, broadly speaking we can say that All different liberals regardless of their specific convictions tend to be beholden to principles like liberty for all, equality for all, certainly formal legal equality for all and certainly in the European tradition solidarity for all would also be another important liberal principle. Now what I point out in the book is that liberals have understood this commitment to liberty and equality and potentially solidarity and fraternity for all in very different ways. Just to give one example Ludwig von Mise, the great Austrian economist fierce defender of capitalism said, look, all that equality should mean is equality under the law. All right. We don't take this kind of old aristocratic approach suggesting that some people should be entitled to more rights, more opportunities More, you know economic advantages than others because that's not exactly conducive to the kind of market society that we want to see instantiated but beyond that, you know von Mises and many more right wing liberals would follow him in this would say once you kind of allow market functions to play themselves out. Obviously you're going to see extraordinary forms of inequality emerge. And that's a okay as long as, you know, we've established this initial respect for each individual by ensuring that they have equality under the law, but, you know, Von Mises perspective is by no means the only one that you see in the liberal tradition and I would say in many ways it's not even particularly representative as a lot of historians of liberalism will tell you. Going all the way back to John Locke, but certainly when you look at people like Mary Wollstonecraft or Thomas Paine let alone John Stuart Mill, who I write a lot about in the book [00:06:00] they'd all insist that being a liberal means that you have to be committed to a much deeper kind of equality than just pure formal equality under the law. So And we can get into a lot of the reasons for this but these kinds of liberals, obviously historically and down to the present day have been a lot more friendly to the suggestions or arguments of figures in the socialist tradition who also have stressed that formal equality under the law is restraining for an awful lot of people, not least And then just to move on the other end we can say very similar things about socialism. Socialism is a mature enlightenment doctrine very much like liberalism in that respect. Socialists saw themselves as trying to carry on in many ways the enterprise of liberalism by ensuring that Equality and freedom weren't just formally achieved but were achieved in material practice for all. And socialists understood what that was going to mean in very, very different ways also, right? Obviously some extremely brutal socialists like, say, Stalin understood this to mean, well, we're gonna have a command economy where everyone's behavior is gonna be very tightly restricted because that's gonna be the only way for us to secure a sufficiently high level of economic growth in one country to save socialism from the imperialism and imperialism. Of the Western powers. And we all know how that story ended up, right? Ah, there's absolutely nothing liberal you can really cause to say about the Soviet union or other authoritarian command economies. Ah, but there are other kinds of socialists Democratic socialists Social Democrats, etc. etc. Who are much more insistent that, no, to be a socialist means to be committed to the basic canon of liberal rights, indeed, many socialists would insist that, them. One of the good things about socialism is that they could take liberal rights more seriously than many liberals did, particularly things like the right to freedom of assembly which many socialists emphasize should mean that if you want to form a union, for example you should be able to do so without the state stepping in to crush that and These figures are obviously, of course, much more friendly to liberalism and the institutions of representative democracy than the kind of command economy socialists that [00:08:00] more people are probably more familiar with at least in in the United States. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and as you discuss in the introduction that in the, in the current moment there, there's really neither side of this, you know, dialogue that's now been going on for more than almost 200 years between liberalism and socialism. Neither side really fully understands how to deal with a politicized, non explicitly, know political system. Street violence filled right, you know, so, so reactionism, as we have it today is a different, it's, it's a different flavor compared to how it was from and Hitler. and it's more democratic flavored, or at least, you know, is less overtly y

    1 ч. 5 мин.

  5. 7 ФЕВР.

    Will Texas Ever Turn Blue? Brianna Brown of the Texas Organizing Project Discusses the Power of Black & Latino Coalitions

    Is it possible to turn Texas Blue? Especially considering the large Latino, and Black voters in the state who share political interests like climate justice, housing justice, and immigration reform. Brianna Brown of the Texas Organizing Project, or TOP, joins Jen Taylor-Skinner, on The Electorette, to discuss how they are using collective organizing to build community, grow political power, and build unstoppable coalitions in Texas. We also discuss how the organization seeks to repair fissures created between Black and Latino communities that were widened during the 2024 election cycle. In this Episode Texas Organizing Project Listen to All Electorette Episodes https://www.electorette.com/podcast Support the Electorette Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4 Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette! WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media. Electorette Facebook Electorette Instagram Electorette Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    45 мин.

  6. 3 ФЕВР.

    Trump’s looming attack on higher education

    Episode Summary The second term of Donald Trump has officially begun, but despite all the things he’s unveiled in the past several weeks, we don’t know fully what his policies are going to be over the next four years. That is in part because Trump himself is a very erratic figure who says things that are nonsensical, even by his own standards. While there are documents such as Project 2025 which were created by Trump's ideological allies in the reactionary movement, that document itself is not particularly detailed in a number of ways. But one thing we can be sure is going to happen in the second Trump administration is that he will conduct a full-scale assault on America's colleges and universities. As a candidate, he promised repeatedly to create taxes on private university endowments. And he also talked about removing the funding for universities that don't bow to his various censorship demands, which are already being imposed on federal government agencies such as the National Institute of Health. Unlike a number of other Trumpian boasts and threats, he is very likely to follow through on his promised attacks on higher education because Republicans in a number of states and localities have enacted many of the policies that Trump talked about on the campaign trail. Joining me today to talk about all this is Nils Gilman, a friend of the show who is the chief operating officer at the Berggruen Institute, a think tank in Southern California that publishes Noema Magazine. He is also the former associate chancellor at the University of California-Berkeley, where he saw first-hand just what the [00:02:00] Republican vision for education in the United States is. He’s also the co-author of a new book called Children of a Modest Star, which we discuss at the end of the episode. The video of our December 18, 2024 discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch. Related Content —The forgotten history of how Republican college students invented “canceling” people —Inside the right-wing plan to ‘seize control of the administrative state’ —Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA are building a reactionary cult for young people, does anyone on the center-left care? —MAGA media figures previewed Trump’s extreme priorities for his second term —Inspired by Trump, reactionary comedians are the most popular media figures in the Republican party —Jordan Peterson and the far-right’s war on education and sound epistemology Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 03:31 — The Milo Yiannopoulos incident at Berkeley 13:34 — Trump has learned from other authoritarians' playbooks 22:36 — The crisis of legitimacy in higher education 32:24 — The role of sports in universities 34:55 — DeSantis's attack on Florida universities will be Trump's model 39:52 — Historical parallels: Germany in the 1930s and the rise of the American university 43:39 — Despite the right's wholesale assault on education, many academics still don't take it seriously 46:43 — The deadly myth of "non-partisanship" in an era where the far-right is assaulting all knowledge 51:17 — Liberalism's epistemic inability to use power politics 55:24 — 'Children of a Modest Star' and a future-oriented liberalism Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So before we get too far into the topic of discussion for today, let's just briefly talk about your own personal direct experience with some of these issues and some of the ideas and people that are surely going to be a factor in what Trump is going to do with education. NILS GILMAN: Sure, well the last seven years, I've been working at a. Research center and think tank in Los Angeles called the Berggruen Institute. But my previous job to this was working as the associate chancellor and chief of staff to the chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, where obviously I dealt with a lot of local issues. But I also saw and had conversations with many people across the higher education landscape in the United States. So I have a lot of experience knowing the way in which universities operate as well as some of the ways in which they've been targeted. As you can imagine, Berkeley is kind of a symbolic lightning rod for a lot of opinions that people have about higher education, particularly on the right, has been that way since at least the 1960s. And so I've seen the way in which Berkeley has been targeted, particularly, but I think it's just emblematic of the way in which, you know, the right regards higher education more broadly. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And specifically, like, some of the things that you encountered, can you talk about a couple of, well, The Milo Yiannopoulos incident at Berkeley GILMAN: One of the first real encounters I had with this was actually just 10 days after, maybe 12 days after Trump was inaugurated in 2017 for his first term. At that time the, I think it's fair to say provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos was doing a kind of and the previous stop and he had, he'd been scheduled by the young Republicans at Berkeley to give a talk on February 2nd, 2017, and that had been scheduled before the [00:04:00] election had been scheduled back in September, I think, of 2016, and this proved to be an extremely controversial episode on on numerous different levels. First, there were quite a number of faculty and especially students who. Wanted him to be banned from campus, and I have to say the administration was adamant that he be allowed to speak. Berkeley has a long tradition of free speech and any accredited student group or faculty member is allowed to invite anybody they want to speak on campus. And that's been a, you know, a standing policy on the part of the University of California, Berkeley, since the free speech movement back in 60 years ago in 1964 now. You know, there are some limits on free speech, the so called time, place, and manner restrictions. You can't, you know, bring a bullhorn into class and start yelling at a professor that way. Obviously, that's disruptive. But these are all sort of established. The limits on free speech are well established by Supreme Court jurisprudence, and particularly University of California, because it's a public university is required to have a you know, an open an open posture towards any political opinion that might that might be expressed 1 of the political opinions that got expressed. Of course, it was many people on campus wanted Milo not to be allowed to speak. And we said, no, he will be allowed to speak. And and then what unfolded on the evening of February 2nd, 2017 was really quite quite a striking episode because You know, we tickets have been sold for the main auditorium in the student in the brand new student union. I think there were about 500 people who were planning on attending this thing. Berkeley, as you know, with protocols for this kind of thing, we'd set up a line for people to line up to get into the venue. And there was also a separate space that had been cordoned off for people to protest. You know, we had about, I think, maybe 100 police officers University police officers who were there to make sure that good order would be would be maintained at 1st, you know, up until nightfall. The talk was set to go on. I think it's 30 or something like that. So, you know, it was in it was in [00:06:00] February. It was quite dark. And everything was going fine. You know, there were people lining up to go listen to Milo talk. And then there were people who were in the Kordendorff area that were protesting, and it was all sort of going according to protocol. And then right as it became completely dark, an unexpected, an unprecedented event in the history of Berkeley took place, which was About 150, that's an estimate anarchists from Oakland came and arrived using black block tactics to shut the event down. They came on the campus from, you know, it's an open campus in an urban setting. They just. Float onto campus from the south side of campus and basically started attacking the building in order to disrupt the event. And by the way, there were thousands, literally thousands of people who had gathered around Sproul Plaza, which is the main square at the center of Berkeley to see what was going to happen. And with that many people, there were not enough cops to do crowd control and to make a long story short, the cops decided for the safety of Milo himself. That they had to, they had to pull the plug on the event. Milo was whisked out of the building in an unmarked vehicle, and he drove off immediately to the Fox News studios in San Jose. By the way, you know, a riot broke out that were. Television television helicopters— SHEFFIELD: Wasn't there also dumpster fire ? GILMAN: There was a fire that was set in the middle of campus right next to our brand new student union. I was really worried. I was in Spall Plaza observing this this all unfold. I mean, the scene, Matt, I have to tell you, is the closest approximation I've ever seen to what I imagined hell would be like. You know, there was fire burning. There's helicopter music. People had like plugged in and were Playing death metal. There's a riot breaking out. It was really it was a terrible scene. You know, this made national news. It was a huge embarrassment for the university that we had failed to properly prepare for to be to be fair and unprecedented event. But we, you know, in the event, we were not able to pull that event off. But what happened next, I think, is really characteristic and telling and really gave me a clue right at the very beginning of the [00:08:00] fi

    1 ч. 12 мин.

  7. 29 ЯНВ.

    Can We Stop the Gun Violence Crisis Even With a Legislative Gridlock?

    The gun violence crisis in America has shown little signs of slowing, and even though most Americans are desperate to stop the violence, congressional gridlock prevents us from making progress. Guns Down America—an organization focused on building a future with fewer guns, weakening the gun industry, and building political and cultural support for policies that will keep us safe from gun violence—has a plan to circumvent that gridlock. Morgan Avrigean of Guns Down America discusses the organization's strategy, and how they've achieved victory's despite decades of inertia. In this Episode Business Must Act: Are your favorite businesses keeping you safe from gun violence? The Deadliest Places to Grocery Shop in America Business Gun Safety Scorecard Listen to All Electorette Episodes https://www.electorette.com/podcast Support the Electorette Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4 Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette! WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media. Electorette Facebook Electorette Instagram Electorette Twitter Resources A video from writer, and content creator, Franchesca Ramsey on grief was mentioned in the intro of the episode. The video can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    58 мин.

  8. 23 ЯНВ.

    Trump won’t deliver for voters, but do Democrats actually want to defeat him?

    Episode Summary As Donald Trump’s second presidential administration takes shape with a host of controversial and unpopular executive orders and numerous unqualified and bizarre nominees like Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, it raises the question, is this what his voters asked for? That question is actually a lot more difficult to answer than it may seem, because people voted for Trump for a variety of different reasons, some of which were even contradictory. We'll get into that on today’s episode and also discuss why Democrats have been unwilling and unable to offer a different alternative to the politics of credentialism that they've been creating for the past several decades. My guest on today's episode is Chris Lehmann, the Washington bureau chief for The Nation magazine. He's also the author of the 2016 book, “The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream.” The video of our December 17, 2024 discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. Related Content --Centrist elites stalling necessary change made room for the reactionary right --Why January 6th was the inevitable product of the Christian Right’s hatred of America --How Pentecostal Christianity is taking over the world of religion, and why it matters --Ezra Taft Benson and the tangled history of Mormon and evangelical extremism --Lehmann article: Trump’s inauguration revealed whom he really serves: the billionaires and the crypto bros --Lehmann article: A guide to the lesser-known movers and shakers of Trump’s administration --Lehmann article: What happened to the Democratic Party? Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 06:09 — Ultra-libertarians and religious zealots think the same way 09:09 — Friedrich Nietzsche is the ultimate inspiration for today's tech oligarchs 15:51 — Democrats don't know how to advocate against religious zealotry 19:55 — Far-right people lost in the marketplace of ideas, so they're trying to overthrow the marketplace 24:38 — Hypocrisy isn't a vice to rightwingers, and the left should stop using it as an argument 27:58 — Democrats refuse to retire failed leaders 31:01 — Despite Democrats' problems, progressives have not learned to persuade 36:03 — Democrats want to win at politics, but hate actually engaging in it 40:25 — Democrats' dilemma with working class representation 41:56 — Have wealthy Democrats reduced race and class advocacy into symbolic gestures? 48:46 — Adlai Stevenson as a Democratic archetype 49:53 — Will the new Democratic National Committee chair shake things up in the party? 55:49 — The role of employers in immigration issues 58:42 — Conclusion Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Your book, I believe, kind of prefigured the final form of Trumpism which is what we're seeing now, a cabinet of oligarchs, despite the fact that he ran on being a populist supposedly, and this is not at all what people thought they were getting. So, just give us a little synopsis overall of the book if you could, and then we can go from there. CHRIS LEHMANN: The Money Cult is a sort of reinterpretation of American religious history. I won't bore you with the full sweep of the argument, but it's an argument that basically what we now see as the prosperity gospel, which is a Pentecostal tendency to equate wealth with Christian virtue is actually, it's long been sort of dismissed as a Huxley's grift, and the Elmer Gantry kind of, mode of fast [00:03:00] talking revivalists who take everyone's money, get embroiled in a sex scandal and then disappear. And my view it's much more central to religious and political history in America. And we've seen over time very pronounced movement of first sort of ambivalence about market capitalism in the early settlement of the country. And then starting basically with the second great awakening, this massive drive to imbue the market with mystical properties. We see it in the revival work of Charles Finney. We see it actually in the rise of Mormonism, which is a story you know well. And there's this tight equation of worldly success with divine favor. And there's also this tremendous imaginative effort to put America sort of at the forefront of Protestant virtue and success, to make it a prophetic nation, even though there obviously is no [00:04:00] mention of America in the scriptures. That involves, again, Mormonism is a big, plays a big role in shifting the scenery around here. So by, the sort of later phase of American capitalism, The most popular preacher in the country is, Joel Osteen who significantly, has no theological training was a communications major at the Oral Roberts University and is a pure exponent of this, kind of model of faith where divine favor rains down on you In the form of wealth. So Joel Osteen has actually written that God has found him great parking spots, and God engineered a deal in 2007 so he could flip his house and make a significant cash return on that and it's also a sort of. Healing [00:05:00] ministry, Osteen comes out of this seed faith tradition in Pentecostalism that involves sort of a mind cure model of spiritual healing. And yeah, we have, my book came out in 2016 ahead of the election and we've seen All of these forces converge around the figure of Donald Trump, and it's often a mystery to the secular sort of pundit class, which I live in the center of here in Washington. Why Does Trump why is the most ardent faction behind Trump white evangelicals, he is, womanizer of serial sexual assaulter. A very erratic church. SHEFFIELD: Nonbeliever. LEHMANN: Yeah. And I do think, this larger story of how American Protestantism merged with American capitalism is that story how, people who are absolutely convinced they are four square true believing Christians can line up behind a figure like Donald Trump. [00:06:00] Capitalism is ultimately what explains that and the peculiar spiritualized version of capitalism we live among here in the U S Ultra-libertarians and religious zealots think the same way SHEFFIELD: Well, and so, and you don't talk about this in the book, but obviously Ayn Rand was a big figure in the present day cult of capitalism the money cult, but in a different form in, some ways, while she obviously was not a religious believer what she was doing was creating a religion of capitalism. And I think ultimately that's what these more non religious people like Mark Andreessen have decided to join up with the religious cult aspect because, hey, it's a cult, they're both a cult, so might as well team up. LEHMANN: And they, feed off each other symbiotically and in a way that, I mean, Silicon Valley is all about synergy. So, yeah, and I do think That figure like round is, quite pivotal and it. She's a reminder not to sort of [00:07:00] get bogged down and, conventional categories of secular and observant Christianity, because this is a much more fluid kind of popular faith that is very syncretic and absorbs all kinds of influences because, the one consistent through line and, Iron Man grew up in the Soviet Union and she was a devout atheist throughout her life, there is no hint of religious belief in her work. And yet, yeah, she herself is the object of a cult. And she created this sort of imaginative cult of heroic, mogul driven capitalism. The Howard Rourke figures, like, The hero, of the fountainhead, her first breakout novel who are also, rapists. So, there's a lot going on there that does again fit in neatly with, the Trump moment. And I think Rand is this kind of I don't know, you could say she's a John the Baptist figure [00:08:00] in the Trump prosperity faith. She's certainly prophetic in, putting forward this model of, kind of the Caesar businessman who is a solitary genius who, no social convention or conventional morality applies to him. He, as Howard work does, he blows up his building at the climax of the fountain head. He's just that kind of a guy and all of these. People in Silicon Valley. I mean, I shouldn't say all, but a pronounced segment of them, the Elon Musk's and the Mark Andreessen's, the Peter Thiel's, they are steeped in this kind of fiercely anti statist, fiercely libertarian ideology where any, the end always justifies the means. I think that's, the Randian morality that we, are seeing. Run rampant right now. As you mentioned, and in Trump's cabinet and, the oligarchic cast of Silicon [00:09:00] Valley and a media that is already sort of capitulating to a second Trump administration. It's it's a worrying time. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. It is. Friedrich Nietzsche is the ultimate inspiration for today's tech oligarchs SHEFFIELD: And, I, the other kind of, uh, let's say pre history person of this moment, I think also is the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche um, as well, LEHMANN: We're really playing all day. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's where I mean, that's cause, and he's also interesting though, because not only does he sort of pre figure Trump ism and Randism. But also, his innate reactionary authoritarianism because it was unbounded by, bourgeois morality or religion. It also explains why we've had this recent cast of characters who had for many decades, such as Matt Taibbi for instance, identified as leftists have now ended up jumping on the [00:10:00] Trump train because in fact they were, Nietzschean leftists is what they were. And they just hated, they hated America. They hated bourgeois morality. And in some ways Trump is who they are. LEHMANN: Yeah, I think there is a lot of overlap there. That hadn't occurred to me. And it's interesting because, Taibbi did, sort of come up journalistic age in post Soviet Russia, which was a playground of Russian oligarchs. And he was very cynical about all that,

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Flux is a progressive podcast platform, with daily content from shows like Theory of Change, Doomscroll, and The Electorette.

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    Flux Community Media
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    2019 - 2025
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