Michelle Goldberg

Welcome to The Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. Before we dive in, a quick word about who I am and why we're here. I'm Jim Bier, corporate lawyer and restructuring professional. I've spent the last two decades helping companies navigate their toughest transitions. And about eight years ago, I found myself having fascinating conversations with clients and friends about everything from venture capital to the broader shifts happening in our economy and society.

Those discussions were simply too good, so the puck was born. Now while we started on venture capital, hence the podcast name, the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, We've naturally evolved to focus more on the beyond portion of the title. Today, we explore how business intersects with the bigger forces shaping our world. I still run my restructuring practice by day, but now I get to host these conversations by night. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

Today's guest continues that tradition. This country is in real trouble. If you had taken most mainstream Republicans from twenty years ago or even ten years ago and just sort of put them here without the kind of ten years of acculturation and ten years of getting used to Trumpism, they would also think that the sky was falling. On this episode of The Puck, I sit down with Michelle Goldberg, journalist, author, and op ed columnist for The New York Times. Michelle has written for several major outlets, including The Nation, Slate, and The Daily Beast.

We take a deep dive into the political landscape of the Trump era, explore how Democrats can revitalize their leadership and engagement, and discuss the vital role of local communities and civic trust in addressing polarization and widespread despair. It's a timely and important conversation, so let's get into it. Michelle Goldberg, welcome to the puck. Thanks for having me. So before we jump in, can you tell our listeners just a little bit about your background?

Sure. Well, I have always been a writer. You know, V. S. Naples, the novelist, he his biography always said, you know, something like mister Napel is a writer.

He has or miss mister Napel is a novelist. He has pursued no other profession. And that's you know, I I mean, I had waitressing jobs when I was a kid, but I've basically been doing this since I was 22. I've done kind of nothing else. And so I've written for all sorts of publications.

I wrote three books. And then, like, seven and a half years ago, I at the time, I was writing for Slate and also sometimes contributing to the times, you know, contributing to the New Yorker or other publications. And a media reporter called me and said that, you know, I heard a rumor that you're being considered for this New York Times columnist job, and I said, no. That's sorry. That's ridiculous.

But then when I got a call from James Bennett a few weeks later, I was like, oh, maybe that's what so I've been at the Times now for, seven and a half years. Wow. So you have built a reputation for what I would call incisive commentary, and I think you've been described, you know, from a feminist left leaning perspective. Can you share what first inspired your approach to both political and cultural analysis? Yeah.

Well, that's easy. I mean, I think a lot of it was where I I don't know if this inspired my approach to analysis, but it definitely shaped my politics, which is that I grew up in Buffalo, New York. And when I was a teenager, our mayor invited the spring of life. I don't know if you remember that. It was in a kind of a radically anti abortion movement that had first shut down all of the clinics in Wichita, Kansas, and they sort of used their bodies to physically make it impossible for these clinics to open.

You know, they would just swarm them. And so they came to Buffalo, and, you know, I was really angry and outraged and so would go very early in the morning with a ton of other people. It was the first kind of real activism I'd ever done. And everybody would link arms and, like, physically repel them, you know, and it was and then when somebody wanted to come into the clinic, you would, you know, sort of open your arms, do this, and they could run-in. Right.

And so well, you if, you know, you would sort of make a tunnel for them to run-in. And at the and then, you know, and at the end of the day, the clinics did stay open. So this was my introduction to activism, and it was, you know, in some ways, the best possible introduction because you don't realize that, like, usually, you don't win at the end of the day. But it also shaped my fascination with the religious right. You know, later on, one of the doctors whose clinic I used to do clinic defense in front of, Barnett Slepian, was assassinated in his kitchen.

And so it gave me both this, like, deep fear of the religious right, but then also later on as I got older and became a journalist, a sort of interest in, like, who they were and what they believed. And that, I think, was in some ways the spark that led to, you know, my first book, which came out in 2006 and which I now can you know, I now consider somewhat prescient was called Kingdom Coming, the Rise of Christian Nationalism. Well, that that that's certainly topical and certainly a big issue that we're we're all struggling with today. Mhmm. Going back to kind of these big issues that you've written about, one of the things that I think you wrote about was this notion of this great capitulation.

And and for those who haven't read it, how is this approach different from, for instance, the traditional show of respect that business leaders and others typically give a president-elect? Well, I mean, part of it's just different in, you know, kind of financial terms. You know? These business leaders didn't give these sorts of donations to Joe Biden. They didn't give these sorts of donations to Trump the first time around.

They didn't give these sorts of I mean, they you know, people they've donated to politicians, but these, you know, million dollar donations to the inauguration, these were just something fundamentally new. This, you know, kind of total remaking, I'm thinking of Meta in particular, of their content moderation policies. Right? Like, usually, I don't think a company completely tries to shift its internal culture to match what they think is the vibe of the incoming administration. And, you know, frankly, you don't usually see businessmen and let me say this again.

I don't think you usually see you know, there there's always there's always an incentive to cozy up to members of a new administration, but I'm not sure it's as existential as it is here where people sort of know that their business is going to succeed or fall on the basis of Trump's whims and their ability to ingratiate themselves to him. So we're talking about just, again, much more extreme and changing the whole fabric in which I mean, moving towards a patronage system. Yeah. I think it's I think it's it's different in not just degree, but in kind because it just is a fundamentally different expectation about the way the rule of law works in America, which obviously filters down to business operations. So this so that makes sense.

And so a different type of capitulation or a way of looking at it, people have criticized, for instance, Gavin Newsom for his recent conversations with conservative media folks like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. Do do you view that trend as genuine outreach, or would you say that it's closer to capitulation you warn about? So to be honest, I don't know what the hell Gavin Newsom imagines that he's doing. Like, I'm all for engagement. You know, I think Pete Buttigieg is extraordinarily good at this.

I think Gavin Newsom has sometimes been good at this. Right? He was able to sort of get a lot of attention when he decided to debate Ron DeSantis in 2023. And so, you know, I think that the kind of the ship has sailed in many cases of Democrats saying we're not gonna platform these people. Like, they're platforms.

They're their platforms, in many cases, are much bigger than ours. And so, you know, if you sort of want to if democrat I think democrats need to get better at going on podcasts and doing kind of long form discussions where they sound a little bit more not a little bit more, a lot more authentic, where they're not, you know, relying on talking points, where they need to improvise and really, you know, kind of show people their worldview. I you know, so I just I think Democrats should be doing a lot more of that. That said, I do not understand the strategy by Gavin Newsom of not just inviting these guys on this podcast, like, fine. That's you know, if he wants to spar with them, if he wants to, you know, even sort of explore where their fundamental disagreements are, but just it just he sounded supine.

You know? He sounded ingratiating. He and I also think that, you know, again, I don't mind Democrats kind of tacking to the middle on these culture war issues. I mean, I don't mind it substantively in many cases, and I definitely don't mind it politically. So I've been writing about some of the tensions between certain kinds of feminists and certain kinds of trans activists since 2014 when I wrote this big New Yorker piece called what is a woman.

And there's some parts of trans activism that I've never been on board with, even though I think, you know, at a time when trans people are under such sustained attack and have been singled out for persecution, they really, really need to be defended unreservedly. So, okay, so so if Gavin Newsom and kind of any democrat wants to pivot on girl on on trans girls and trans women in girls and women's sports, I think that's a good idea. I think it's a good idea politically, and I think it's a good idea as a matter of fairness. I mean, my own view is that there should is that there should we should be more liberal with this at the lower levels. You know, my daughter's in elementary school.

She can definitely handle any elementary school boy. I think things change both as sports become more elite and as kids go through puberty. So that said, if Democrats or, you know, if Gavin Newsom wants to roll out a more nuanced way of talking about these issues, I don't think the way to do that is in a friendly dialogue with someone who described trans people as, quote, disgusting, mentally ill, neurotic, predatory freaks. Right? Like, that is not the person that you should be seeking common ground with on this issue and kind of, you know, like, chuckling along about how much you have in common because I just don't think you I mean, I don't think you can overstate how frightened a lot of trans people are in this country right now.

And I also think it just looks it just looks weak. You know? I'm I mean, there I think that, actually, there is a position, like, morally, I think it's wrong, but also politically, you know, everybody says this is an 8020 issue, and I think that that's probably right. But I all but I also don't think that most Americans, I could be wrong, are really this obsessed with persecuting trans people and and driving them out of public life. I actually do think that probably there is both a a position that's both morally and politically viable.

That is we need to recognize these special cases, and we need to stand up for the fundamental, like, dignity and rights and humanity of trans people. Yeah. And and I by the way, I have not heard Charlie Kirk use the exact terms you you just said, but going back and listening, for instance, things that Vice President Vance have said when he's made really aggressive critical comments, you know, we're living in this world where people are saying pretty egregious or aggressive things, and it's it's pandering to their base and so forth. And what you're you're asking for is for people of good faith, right, that that are not caught seeing these extremist things coming together in a respectful way and having these discussions. And I I think that makes complete sense, and and not something I thought about when I was listening to Gavin talk to Charlie Kirk or or to Steve Bannon.

I guess one of my questions is in terms of people that have these large audiences, like Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman and Bannon and Charlie Kirk. The question is, are there people out there, again, like David Brooks, who are more conservative, but that have a more politically sensitive way of discussing these issues that that can take, you know, part in these debates. Because if you're trying to reach a lot of people, you have to have an audience, and that that seems to be the paradox here is how do you find those people to have those discussions with? So I'm not even sure that I can answer this question. I mean, in part because all of the different figures that you list that are somewhat you know, there's actually a pretty big difference between, say, a Joe Rogan and a Charlie Kirk even if the distance between them in some cases is shrinking.

You know, sir I mean, look. Obviously, it's not hard to have a discussion. It's not hard for me to have a discussion about this with my colleague, David Brooks. But, you know, and I don't know how much you know, David Brooks, I don't know, has that much more purchase on an audience of young men or young alienated young people who are getting their information through social media, you know, than I do. And I also you know and part of the difficulty too is that what sort of does really well on a lot of these channels seems to be conspiracy, kind of apocalypticism, you know, the idea that there's some secret cabal or secret knowledge or secret key to why everything is going so wrong.

I think that what you're seeing in Joe Rogan's case, you know, he's recently platformed to, like, very virulent antisemites, like, you know, kind of classic, you know, and the most recent one is, you know, an absolute his Hitler apologist who has described his politics as fascist. And in some ways, that that's sort of the inevitable outcome, I think, of this politics that is both extraordinarily skeptical, I mean, sometimes right rightly so, of of received wisdom and all sources of scientific and academic authority, but also really credulous when it comes to, you know, kind of, quote, unquote, alternative voices. You know, as I'm hearing you frame that issue, one of the things that comes to mind is why have we moved in this direction of being willing to entertain conspiracy theories and other issues that a while ago would would have never reached the level of of dialogue that they have. And I guess one of my questions is, is it because the real issues that Ezra Klein brings up, like homelessness or housing or the ability to build high speed rail, that that that the Democratic Party has not been able to be effective on the real economic issues facing Middle America.

And when people feel gaslit and they don't feel like, you know, they're being heard, meaning everything the economy's great. Wait a minute. You know? But but the stock market's up. Well, but but people are not feeling good.

And so to me, the issue is I'm wondering is we know these voices are getting louder out there that are dangerous. But if we're gonna counteract that, don't we have to come back with some kind of authentic message as to how we're gonna be effective going forward? Well, let me separate that out because, I mean, I I I absolutely agree with you about, you know, the failure of the Democratic Party to build and to govern effectively in many cases. You know, high speed rail is is a good example of that. You know, I live in New York City where we you know, it took so long for us to get congestion pricing and, you know, kind of that can be used to fix the subway and, you know, we have kind of declining infrastructure all over the place.

I think all of that is true. Whether that is the cause of what we might call this epistemological crisis, I'm more skeptical about partly because it's global. You know? This kind of rise of conspiratorial populism, something you see all over the place in countries with very different economic situations. I think it has more to do with social media and the death of gatekeepers, you know, that there's kind of nobody now who can credibly say that's beyond the pale.

And and in a way, we're in a spiral because the more the people in kind of remaining traditional institutions try to quarantine these views that are, you know, either conspiratorial or just outright false or deeply bigoted. The more we try to quarantine them, the more we give them this kind of the glamour of hidden knowledge, which then makes them, like, extra attractive to the Joe Rogans of the world, and so it's a real conundrum. And then at the same time, you know, I just think that we're in a time of such systemic failure across so many different avenues, and elites have not performed admirably across, you know, a whole bunch of different areas of American life. So, of course, there's going to be a crisis of trust and authority. But, also, in a way, it's, like, more comforting to imagine that there is a conspiracy than that really no one is in charge, and things are falling apart, and kind of no one knows what to do about it.

That's interesting. And and when you're looking at no one knowing what to do about it, how how do you you've been a fan of Gretchen Whitmore in in Michigan. I mean, what Mhmm. What's refreshing about her approach? Well, I don't know if I would talk about her right now.

I mean, I think, you know, I think she was a very effective governor. She, you know, she led trifectas in a red state and was able to get a lot done. I mean, this particular moment calls for you know, the people I've been most impressed with in this particular moment are, like, governor Pritzker of Illinois, senator Chris Murphy, the people who recognize, I think, the scale of the civic emergency that we're in and, you know, and are sort of ready to are are you know, I think what we need are fighters, and too often, we have a you know, the Democrats are a party that's, like, extraordinarily risk averse. And, you know, if if you look at the way, say, Chuck Schumer has handled Donald Trump compared to the way, you know, Doug Ford in Ottawa, not someone whose politics I'm a fan of, but somebody who knows how to handle a bully. And I think that, you know, you've seen one of those approaches as much more effective than the other.

So from your perspective with what's going on now in terms of the control and and the the bullying that you you point out? What specifically do you think people like Chuck Schumer should be doing? Like, for instance, there's a vote in the senate today where there's there's calls to shut down the government, and and Chuck's come out and said, no. We actually have to, you know, go along with this, for instance. I mean, do you see that again as capitulation and and and not fighting in the way that they should be fighting?

I see it as not fighting in the way that they should be fighting. I mean, I understand his logic a 100%. Right? I understand why a shutdown would be super dangerous for Democrats. I mean, bad for the, you know, bad for the country, but also why the politics of it are really bad.

I think he's right when he says that, you know, right now, Donald Trump owes owns all this chaos. Democrats you know, if you could have a shutdown that you could pin on Democrats, it would give Trump kind of a foil. Like, I hear all that. But I also just think that the damage that they are doing to our institutions, to kind of constitutional structure of our government is so extraordinarily severe, and this is the only point of leverage that Democrats are likely to have for the next six months, if not more, that, like, you have to be willing to take big risks, and you have to be willing, frankly, to fight and to absorb some negative publicity and to, you know, and to kind of stand together in in the face of that. I mean, I just I cannot tell you the amount of rage and despair among ordinary Democratic voters.

I mean, people I see in the neighborhood, people who email me, they feel like no one is standing up for them. You know, you see it in these town halls, and people feel like there is just they feel like their country is becoming an unrecognizable kleptocracy, you know, that that we've basically changed sides in terms of the global order from being, you know, a member of a club of liberal democracies to joining, you know, a sort of modern day access powers. And they don't know what to do, and, again, they just don't feel like anybody is there to lead them. And I think you're gonna see a lot of primary campaigns against Democrats who haven't been who haven't been willing to fight. And I also think you're gonna see, well, let me say this.

I think you're gonna see, you know, sort of, like, the democratic version of a tea party movement going into the next midterms. So what so let's let's let me push back in this notion for a second because the notion of fighting from my perspective for the sake of fighting doesn't make as much sense as, again, fighting and and being effective. And from my perspective, you know, going back to some of the stuff that you wrote about. Let let let's go back to that article where you wrote. I wanna go all the way back to your debut column for the New York Times eight years ago where you wrote, since Donald Trump's cataclysmic election, the unthinkable has become ordinary.

We've grown used to naked profiteering off the presidency, an administration that calls for the firing of private citizens for political dissent, and nuclear diplomacy conducted via Twitter taunts. Here in my debut as a New York Times columnist, I wanna discuss a structural prom that both underlies and transcends our current political nightmare. We have entered a period of minority rule. Mhmm. Now how are you feeling about that introduction now?

Well, I think that in some ways I mean, obviously, you know, Donald Trump won the popular vote in the last election. Right? So I still think that it was outrageous that we had two Republican presidents in pretty close succession that were able to become president without winning. But, you know, I still I I stand by everything I've ever said about the electoral college creating really perverse incentives, and I still think that the structure of the senate I mean, the our politics would look very different if Donald Trump had to worry. I mean, let's say Donald Trump's popularity goes down to, like, 30%.

You know, let's say Americans really decide that they just hate everything that he's doing. Even in if that happens, the structure of the senate means that Republicans would still probably hold the senate in the next election in the in in the midterms. And that does create some pretty perverse incentives, you know, not just in terms of national politics, but it means that a lot of voters know you know, a lot of a lot of these senators know that that that they're sort of protected from, you know, that how do I put this? It means it it it makes senators less responsive to and concerned with shifts in public opinion. Well and and and as I have these conversations with people on both sides of the aisle, and and my brother, for instance, who who's who's more conservative than me and and and really does typically just vote vote Republican.

Mhmm. One of his issues is he's like, okay, Jim, let me get this straight. Okay? You don't like the electoral college. You you don't like this.

You don't like that. But my position is that New York and California, right, and Illinois are these liberal states where the cities are not working well, where crime is bad, where housing is unaffordable, where homelessness is crazy, and I don't like that part of America, and therefore, the fact that the red states have a disproportionate control where they're not cities, I I find that comforting. Well, I guess. But Go ahead. In a way, I would say I commend your brother for his honesty in saying that, like, yes.

I like this system because it disenfranchises people I don't like or because it gives less power to people I don't like. Right? I mean, that is fundamentally the justification for the electoral college, not some sort of, like, great wisdom of our founders because as you know, the electoral college was a compromise that was, you know, in part to placate the slave states. So, yeah, of course of course, if you don't like big cities and you don't like the culture of big cities, you would prefer a system that get that disenfranchises them. I don't think that that that can be justified in democratic terms.

I just I think that even if you don't like, you know, New York City housing first of all, crime crime shot up aft in the wake of the pandemic. I think for people outside of New York City have a vastly distorted idea of what day to day life here is like. You know? My kids are in elementary school and middle school, and I don't hesitate to let them walk around the city by themselves, you know, let my son take public transportation to his middle school. It's not something I really worry about very much.

It's not something I worry about nearly as much as I worry about, say, the time that they spend on YouTube. But, you know, nevertheless, I also just think that, like, as a matter of basic democratic fairness, I don't understand how you make an argument that people in New York City or Los Angeles or Chicago deserve less representation. Yeah. I think I think I I I agree with you. I think where where I hear people coming from is there there's fear on both sides, where the left feels that the right is an existential threat.

I when I talked to Frank Bruni on on the podcast, we were talking about the, you know, the right sees the left as an existential threat. The left sees the right as an existential threat. You know, I'll hear from my Republican friends a lot of times, you know, that we have a one party state in California, for instance, and we don't want the whole country to have a one party state, for instance. And there's and and, again, people are in their echo chambers. And what I've been trying to do is get people out of the echo chambers to to see critical thinking in the nuance, right, that there there are good things about having a republic.

There are also good things about having checks and balances, you know, and and giving people the vote, including giving the woman women the vote. And and it's it's it's having those discussions around, okay, what are what are the Republicans doing right? What are the Democrats doing right? And how do we kind of build that consensus back? Well, I just I'm not sure that you can build that.

I mean, maybe you can build that consensus with some people, but I also think that you have to take seriously the fact that people have very, very different visions for the kind of country that they Right. Want to live in. And so, you know, I'm not sure that we all have the same goals, but just different ideas about how to get there. I think we have pretty different goals. I I agree.

And I think that going back to the algorithms and the social media and these echo chambers, I think that we are given a a greater sense of this disagreement than may actually exist. Meaning that, again, using David French as an example, there's this majority of what he calls the exhausted majority that that oftentimes do agree on a lot of issues, but the the noise on the left and the right because the algorithms get disproportionate attention. And and the question then is how do you fight back and realize to people that this you know, maybe this guy isn't falling. I think the sky is falling. I mean, I don't get me wrong.

Right. I I mean, I think that we are in a state of you know? And, again, that's why I don't I don't sort of like this mode of analysis of, like, well, these people say this, those people say that. The, you know, the kind of truth must be somewhere in the middle. Right.

I just I don't think that that's a useful way of of looking at the situation. I mean, I think that that this country is in real trouble. And I think that if you had taken most mainstream Republicans from twenty years ago or even ten years ago and just sort of put them in this put them here without the kind of ten year of ten years of acculturation and ten years of, getting used to Trumpism, they would also think that the sky was falling. So I do I I I wanna bring us back to optimism at some point or realism at some point. But Mhmm.

Talking about the skies falling from, you know, different perspectives, I I know after October 7, many Americans were stunned by what they perceived as the silence from part of the American left, and and you've been willing to write about Israel and the kind of Jewish community and the backlash. What what motivates you, for instance, to keep addressing these issues that are so intense right now? Well, it's hard because there's a lot of different things. I mean, you know, like many people, I was, you know, not just horrified by October 7, but horrified by the people who justified it or the people who started protesting Israel even before Israel had dropped any bombs on Gaza, you know, or the people who sort of demand that left wing American Jews, like, disavow Israel as a condition of participation in, you know, various aspects of public life. Like, you know, I again, I kind of condemn all that unreservedly.

I also think that, you know, I wish that more American Jews would visit the West Bank and would see it for themselves because I just think there's no substitute for that. And I often tell people you know, I remember the first time I I'd been to the West Bank before, but the first time I was in Hebron, which is, you know, just, like, the most kind of distilled concentrated version of the evils of the occupation. The first time I was there, I remember feeling almost as if I had I mean, I guess this is what right what people in the right talk about when they say they've been red pilled, you know, that you had kind of gone through this looking glass and, you know, realize that so many of so much of what you had been told, in my case, as someone who'd been brought up as kind of a liberal Zionist, was just not true. And also not knowing exactly how to communicate that to people who hadn't seen it, because knowing that I wouldn't have necessarily believed if I hadn't seen it myself. And so the horrors of the occupation, I think, are not something that I can ever I think a lot of American Jews are willing to acknowledge them, but treat them as something that's not central.

You know, being like, yes. Yes. Yes. That's bad. But not see but not seeing that as something that kind of colors everything about this debate, I should say.

And then the other reason that I've been writing about this over and over again, and this is something that I think I've been right about, is that, you know, I was I was in a weird position maybe a decade ago or a little a little more recently in that, I both thought that kind of, quote, unquote, cancel culture was really bad and the panic about it overwrought. You know? So there was people who I thought had a degree of hysteria about it, and at the same time, I thought that, you know, the left was extremely stupid to disavow free speech, I mean, both for moral reasons, but also just strategically. The idea that if you that that kind of the removal of free speech positions wouldn't let me say this again. It it was always it should have been obvious that, you know, the left does not have a lot of power in this country and that if you remove free speech positions if sorry.

If you remove free speech protections, that was ultimately going to be used in the service of repression of the left. And the one place you've seen that very that one place you could see that really early on was in the repression of pro Palestinian speech, the use of, you know, genuine law breaking and genuine terrible things that have happened at universities to kind of completely remake our idea of academic freedom. You know, at the day we're taping this, the Trump administration has sent a letter to Columbia basically demanding that they put various ethnic studies departments into receivership as a condition of receiving federal funding for things that have nothing to do with these departments. And so, you know, you've seen it it to me, it feels very much like the Red Scare. And just as it you know, the Red Scare, there was there was real communist spies during the Red Scare.

Right? Like, Alger Hiss really was a communist spy. Julius Rosenberg really did pass nuclear secrets to the Soviets. And yet most people remember the Red Scare as this time of repression and unjustified hysteria and kind of, frankly, un American behavior because the reaction to it ended up being so much more damaging than the problem itself, And I think that's something very similar. Like, a lot of people hated those protests and and, you know, for reasons good and bad.

Right? They a lot of people there was genuine violence. There was genuine antisemitism. There's also people found you know, there's kind of elements of Palestinian nationalism that I think a lot of American Jews find more threatening than they should, but, you know, whatever. That that aside, the reaction to it, the kind of complete dismantling of academic freedom, you know, the fact that somebody like Mahmoud Khalil, this Syrian born Palestinian activist who is part of the protest at Columbia, the idea that someone with a green card married to an American citizen can be picked up and put into detention solely for the things that he has said means that we're in a very new chapter in America.

And I and and, again, I think this was pretty easy to see coming, but it's why I've, you know, I've written a lot of columns about, you know, kind of things that are somewhat obscure, like which definition of antisemitism universities should adopt in their disciplinary codes. But I think, ultimately, this these all these the the groundwork has been laid for what we're seeing right now. So we it feels like we've been on this trajectory. And and, again, going back to your piece that you wrote when you first started writing for the New York Times, we've been on this trajectory. And from my perspective, when when things switch course, there there's usually a pretty big reason for that.

And so from from looking at it from a perspective of somebody that's a critical thinker and that really has has written about change and how it comes about, what is it that you think the the Democrats or the next leaders, right, of of of a movement that counteracts us? What are they gonna have to put forth to inspire Americans to get us to swing back to a more healthy balance? You know, it's difficult because it's not just in America that the center left is in crisis. Right? The center left is in crisis really all over the world, and that makes it hard because you you there aren't a lot of workable examples, you know, that you can point to and say, well, this is a country that's doing it right, or that's a country that's doing it right.

I mean, there are left wing examples. You know, there's Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. But in terms of something, so and I and I actually think that, you know, the right has really invested. Right wing donors, right wing activists have really invested in this deep and sustained intellectual infrastructure where they have spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of society that they wanna create, fleshing it out, fleshing out how you could use the bureaucracy. I use the levers of the bureaucracy to create it.

You know, you sort of know basically where they wanna go. I mean, there's some difference. You know, some of them wanted want something more like the ultra libertarianism of Javier Millet. Some of them want something more like the statism of a Viktor Orban. You know, some of them want some sort of, like, unimaginable techno feudalism, but but whatever.

You basically you can basically they have ID you can imagine, in many cases, the society that they wanna create. I think for a long time, Democrats were so focused for obvious reasons on trying to hold at bay the worst excesses of the right, you know, sort of wishing that we could just go back to the Barack Obama without kind of understanding that some you know? And I love Barack Obama. Don't get me wrong. But a lot of the failures of the Obama administration, the failures to respond adequately to the financial crisis, to punish bankers, to make people whole, to keep people in their homes.

Failures to do all that set the stage for what came next. And so this is maybe not a satisfying answer because I'm just an I'm just saying that there's a kind of a a void there. Avoid you know, there are very few credible visions of the future. I mean, in some ways, this is like my colleague, Ezra Klein, I think, has tried to to start fleshing this out with his his idea of abundance liberalism. But this is what we need, a version of you know, the left has we have a lot of dystopias and not a lot of visions of of utopia.

And I've really been trying to focus on if if as thought leaders, you have to inspire the next generation. I mean, telling people again that the sky is falling when it is falling, I think, is important. But as an as an early lawyer, I was told there aren't problems, there are challenges, and you come up with, you know, solutions because you wanna bring people together. And one of the ways I frame it for myself is this notion that the West, because you you rightly point out it's just not America, that there's been this huge shift to building bringing up the third world. I mean, look what we did over the last twenty years with globalization and Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat.

I mean, we brought more than a billion people out of poverty. I mean, it's it's an amazing accomplishment. But there are people in this country dying of fentanyl, and there are people dying in this country from, you know, deaths of despair, and there is there is an unhappiness, a malaise that I think the Europeans have as well. And we always say Bill Clinton was good at feeling people's pain. I mean, it seems to me part of if if the Rocanas of the world are gonna build a new future for America, it it has to be an ability to get young people inspired and give the middle class a hope that they're not gonna all be, you know, outdone with AI and lose lose lose their jobs?

And and how how do we inspire people to get through this period? So, I mean, look. Obviously, if I had an answer to that, I would be, you know, kind of running for office instead of just, you know, kind of typing away and wringing my hands. The answers that I have are much smaller. I mean, look, I think Ro Khanna is great, and I really appreciate his willingness and kind of eagerness to take a left wing populist ideas to places that have not traditionally listened to Democrats to take really seriously the problems of people who vote for Donald Trump and to kind of offer progressive solutions to them.

You know, I think he's, like, a really important figure. He's a little bit cross pressured now because he comes out of Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley you know, in the past, maybe there wasn't much of a contradiction between somebody being a progressive leader and the congressman from Silicon Valley. Now that Silicon Valley has become so reactionary, he is little cross pressured on issues, I think, like crypto, which to me is just something that's absolutely pernicious. So that said, I think that in the short term look. There's a mantle out there that just you would think as a matter as a matter of political entrepreneurship.

Somebody is going to grab it. Right? You can't have a political void like this where you have millions and millions and millions of people desperate for a leader. I think eventually a leader emerges. In the meantime, I think it's really important for people to focus locally and focus on their own communities.

I wrote this on Blue Sky, but one of you know, I live in Brooklyn. One of my neighbors has recently just started getting people on my block together every week to talk about, you know, opportunities. You know, it's usually a few minutes of commiseration, but then talking about opportunities for activism, you know, fundraising for people affected by various aspects of of this regime. And I would love to see that model replicated because, first of all, it's just such a comfort to know that your neighbors are in this with you, that you're you know, when you when you're really terrified and you feel isolated to know that, you know, you're going through this with the people around you. You know, we we have such a lack of community in this country, and and I think loneliness is you know, Hannah Arendt wrote in the in the origins of totalitarianism about, you know, kind of loneliness and atomization as a precondition of the sort of mob politics.

You know, it's so nice. You know, you have kids running in and out. I think reweaving some of that civic fabric because people get involved in politics, you know, not just because of the issues, but because of the people. And so, you know, something that I think right wing politics has been good at is it gives people a sense of community, a sense of meaning. I mean, partly, this is because it's been so intertwined with the evangelical church.

And, you know, there was a time when left wing politics had that through unions and through big city urban machines. But, you know and there was lots of bad things about big city urban machines, but they did give people a sort of a a a structure that tied their politics to their community. And that has to be rebuilt in some sort in a in some sort of new way. And that's a, like, a be beautiful thought. And I think we had a discussion about the book, The Upswing, and the whole issue of the breakdown of communities in the broad Republican's book, Bowling Alone.

And I I think you touch on something incredibly important is that, you know, doing a bunch of Zoom calls and and being in these echo chambers, we we've lost something with with the lack of numeracy. I think that's a beautiful thought. Michelle, when I have conversations like this that are as thoughtful as they are or conversations with people like Frank Bruni and another of your colleagues, for instance, you know, it it's so clear to me that critical thinking and really working through these complex issues is incredibly important. And I'm I'm just frustrated by the echo chambers that we've created in this country with social media. See, it's funny because I actually don't think I don't think I don't think the problem is so much echo chambers.

I I I think that because and I I've written about this before. I actually think the problem in some you know, I wrote this column once that that the headline has kind of become a meme is my understanding that was head that was called we should all know less about each other. And part of the problem is not so much I mean, you could say that that their people are in a bubble, but part of the problem is that people are the more people are exposed to the other side, the more and especially to the extremes of the other side. I mean, if you look at Libs of TikTok. Right?

Like, Libs of TikTok has become such a cultural force just by saying, this is who they are. And, like, some of it, I'm like, well, I've never seen anything any of this before. And some of it, I have seen that kind of stuff, but I'm like, well, you know, that's you used to just be able to have these subcultures that existed in relative isolation, and people could kind of leave each other alone just as how you know? And and, you know, I didn't have to know living in New York that some people had their whole family armed to the teeth on their Christmas cards, and they didn't have to know that, you know, some, like, bored moms take their kids to drag queen story hour. And so we kind of have these we have these threat you know, we're kind of constantly bombarded with parts of other cultures within America that seem alien and threatening to us?

So I say critical thinking is important. Maybe I'm gonna criticize myself by saying maybe I wasn't clear enough in when I said echo chambers. I think what I'm seeing with my friends is that if you depending on where you get your news, whether or not it's TikTok or it's The New York Times or it's, you know, it it it it if you click on things that have a certain point of view, the algorithms keep giving you more articles with that point of view. Oh, for sure. And because there's For sure.

And because there's an incentive to make you afraid and angry Mhmm. The words that they use, existential crisis. Right? This will be the last election we ever have. And, again, both sides are saying the same thing.

The Republicans are saying this will be the last election we ever have, and the Democrats are saying this is the the last election we ever have. Again, but, like, critical thinking means that just because both sides are saying the same thing doesn't mean that it can't be true in one case and not true in the other. 100% agree. And and what's fascinating to me is when I have that discussion with people on both sides that I consider reason you know, bright, they both spend the entire time arguing to me why the other side is wrong and they're right. And what I've realized is that part of it is is being able to hold two things in your head at the same time.

And and instead of trying to convince the other person that you're right, just to hold the space to hear where they're coming from Mhmm. And then somehow it moving into some kind of common ground. Yeah. No. I think that that's right.

And I think that, you know, I mean, it's it's also just interesting to sort of once you once you can understand the structure of belief that leads you to a conclusion that seems, you know, at first glance, like, bizarre or incomprehensible. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Michelle, we're gonna keep doing what we're doing. Mhmm.

I mean, I I I always look forward to reading your column and, you know, bringing the dialogue that you do. Oh, thank you so much. Michelle, it was wonderful. Thank you so so much. The top Venture The top Venture Capital and Beyond is produced by CMVG Advisors.

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