Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt, and today to
Speaker 1: kick off the new year, we're talking to longtime progressive
Speaker 1: organizer Max Berger about two really big questions for climate
Speaker 1: how do you build an effective movement? And what do
Speaker 1: we do about the unraveling of democracy in America. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Berger in particular about these questions
Speaker 1: because he's been involved with some of the most effective
Speaker 1: social movements in recent history, the Sunrise Movement and Occupy
Speaker 1: Wall Street. And he's also worked in politics for a
Speaker 1: wide range of folks, including Howard Dean, Corey Bush, and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren. Today, Berger works with More Perfect Union, an
Speaker 1: advocacy group that helps working people be seen and heard
Speaker 1: in media coverage. We spoke back in November twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one for a wrap up episode of Seen on Radio's
Speaker 1: Climate season, focused on what needs to be done now
Speaker 1: to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.
Speaker 1: I'll link to that episode in the show notes. It's
Speaker 1: well worth a listen. But I also wanted to bring
Speaker 1: folks this longer conversation because I think it's just so
Speaker 1: relevant to the task at hand as we start a
Speaker 1: new year. Hope you enjoy the conversation. It's coming up
Speaker 1: right after this quick break.
Speaker 2: So I was hoping maybe you could start with just
Speaker 2: a little bit of your own personal background. I knowe
Speaker 2: you've been an organizer in progressive spaces for a really
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 3: be on. Yeah. So I have been doing progressive and
Speaker 3: left politics for what now, it turns out to be
Speaker 3: quite a long time. I first started when I was
Speaker 3: in high school actually doing organizing against the war in Iraq,
Speaker 3: and I started a little group called Freedom Not Empire,
Speaker 3: which I'm still very proud of the branding. And it
Speaker 3: was actually a pretty formative experience for me because I
Speaker 3: grew up in a small town in central Massachusetts that
Speaker 3: was pretty evenly split politically and about as normal as
Speaker 3: could be. And it really helped me, I think, understand
Speaker 3: how to try to take what could be considered radical
Speaker 3: ideas and try to make them very approachable in mainstream,
Speaker 3: which I think I've tried to do and everything that
Speaker 3: I've subsequently done. After that, I was actually at an
Speaker 3: anti war protest and somebody gave me a fly this
Speaker 3: flyer for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and I thought to myself, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's a plausible that's a plausible theory of change, that
Speaker 3: if that guy won, we could actually end the war.
Speaker 3: And so I went and I worked for his campaign
Speaker 3: as an intern in Burlington, And so that kind of
Speaker 3: set up the two main threads of my career, I
Speaker 3: guess is sort of social movement stuff more in the streets,
Speaker 3: and kind of left of the democratic part and trying
Speaker 3: to bring some of those same values and ideas into
Speaker 3: mainstream politics. I sometimes joke I've I've worked for every
Speaker 3: tea Party of the left organization that has ever existed,
Speaker 3: even like putting like all these deep cuts that like
Speaker 3: no one's ever really heard of before. But you know,
Speaker 3: so I worked for Rebuild the Dream, which was a
Speaker 3: move On spinoff that was supposed to kind of be
Speaker 3: the counterweight to the Tea Party that was started by
Speaker 3: Van Jones. I worked for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee,
Speaker 3: which is one of the first organizations I claimed to
Speaker 3: be doing what a lot of the groups on the
Speaker 3: right do around elections. And then eventually most I tried
Speaker 3: to start with myself in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen with
Speaker 3: a bunch of people who have since gone on to
Speaker 3: do a lot of really cool and interesting things. And
Speaker 3: then that group, which was called All of Us, we
Speaker 3: ended up merging with Justice Democrats. So I was around
Speaker 3: when Justice Democrats was first kind of getting started, and
Speaker 3: I had a chance to meet some of the folks
Speaker 3: there and work with Corey Bush in twenty eighteen, and so, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was early to that organization. And then on the
Speaker 3: social movement side, I could tell this chronologically, but I
Speaker 3: sort of story is kind of bouncing back and forth
Speaker 3: between these two kind of bodies of work.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, that's great.
Speaker 3: On the social movement side, so while I was at
Speaker 3: Rebuild the Dream, they were like, can you go help
Speaker 3: start a social movement against austerity? This was in like
Speaker 3: twenty ten, after the Tea Party took over. They're like,
Speaker 3: can you start a youth move movement against austerity? And
Speaker 3: I was I remember thinking myself, I know, I don't
Speaker 3: know how to do that. That is really hard, but
Speaker 3: I agree that that's needed. And that was my job.
Speaker 3: When Occupy Wall Street broke out, and I was living
Speaker 3: in New York at the time, and I went down
Speaker 3: the first week and I remember thinking myself, Okay, like
Speaker 3: here these guys did it. I'm just gonna jump on
Speaker 3: this thing. So I threw down pretty hard with Occupy,
Speaker 3: and I think I was one of the first kind
Speaker 3: of NGO connected folks who had been working in politics.
Speaker 3: So I ended up helping, I think, bring some of
Speaker 3: those types into the movement and planning some of the
Speaker 3: big mobilizations that we did, the big days of mobilization,
Speaker 3: and after Occupy, you know, my mind was kind of
Speaker 3: blown because I very clearly saw both how this random
Speaker 3: ragtag group of folks had started this global movement that
Speaker 3: was so bigger and more powerful than anything that the
Speaker 3: NGOs that I had worked for had ever been able
Speaker 3: to come up. But also, as anybody who was part
Speaker 3: of Occupy Wall Street could tell you, it was an
Speaker 3: absolute shit show, disaster shambles in its own right. And
Speaker 3: so I spent some time thinking about what it would
Speaker 3: take to create a social movement that had more structure
Speaker 3: and strategy and had a chance to actually win the
Speaker 3: things that I was fighting for. And through some of
Speaker 3: the things I was exploring at the time, I ended
Speaker 3: up getting connected with Carlos Savadra and Paul and who
Speaker 3: were students of Yvonne Maravich, who was one of the
Speaker 3: lead organizers of the Serbian Revolution that overthrew Slovanan Loosovich
Speaker 3: and Paul and carlos are you know, Americans who had
Speaker 3: a lot of movement experience and were studying Yvon's ideas
Speaker 3: about movement building, and I sort of agitated them, and
Speaker 3: together the three of us ended up starting with a
Speaker 3: lot of other folks an organization called the Momentum Training
Speaker 3: Organization that has a theory of organizing or or teach
Speaker 3: us some practices around organizing that help folks think through
Speaker 3: how to have more structure and strategy so that you
Speaker 3: can have highly autonomous movement where people can operate without
Speaker 3: central command or organization, while at the same time having
Speaker 3: clarity around what the goals are and how to achieve
Speaker 3: those things. Together and the Momentum Organization ended up training
Speaker 3: a lot of people. After we started Momentum, the Warren
Speaker 3: Gaza broke out, so I kind of took the ideas
Speaker 3: that we had been starting to cook in Momentum and
Speaker 3: applied that to the sort of nascent Jewish left, where
Speaker 3: I helped start If Not Now, which is a Jewish
Speaker 3: American movement against the occupation in Palestine and learned a
Speaker 3: lot about how different it is to apply a theory
Speaker 3: than it is to come up with one, But very
Speaker 3: proud of the young people who created that, who really
Speaker 3: led that movement. And then I think when we were
Speaker 3: doing all of us, I wish I referred to previously.
Speaker 3: It's a very small group of people at that time
Speaker 3: who were taking this momentum stuff seriously. A lot of
Speaker 3: the people who I was personally most invested in were
Speaker 3: these kids who ran the Divestment Student Network, which you know,
Speaker 3: I thought was the coolest climate organizing happening at the time.
Speaker 3: And I remember Varsh came to me in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. I was like, hey, we want to do
Speaker 3: we want to front load, we want to plan a
Speaker 3: movement coming out of DSN. And we were hoping that
Speaker 3: like the folks from if Not Now could train us
Speaker 3: and how to do that really absolutely, like let us
Speaker 3: know what we can do, do anything to help you guys.
Speaker 3: And that movement became Sunrise. And so I feel I
Speaker 3: sometimes joke, like with the Sunrise kids that I'm like
Speaker 3: the uncle that's like prouder of the movement than like
Speaker 3: even the parents or like the kids themselves like, no,
Speaker 3: I will not hear you talk badly about yourself. Okay,
Speaker 3: I don't want to hear. I worked on the Warren
Speaker 3: campaign in twenty twenty doing progressive outreach, and after that
Speaker 3: I helped start with Fazshakir, who is the campaign manager
Speaker 3: for Bernie's campaign. I helped start an organization called More
Speaker 3: Perfect Union, which is a media advocacy organization that builds
Speaker 3: power for working people. And that's why I work now
Speaker 3: as the editorial director.
Speaker 2: Can I help you define front loading also for people
Speaker 2: that don't know that term.
Speaker 3: Yeah, frontloading, it's this term of art that we came
Speaker 3: up with in momentum. It essentially just means planning, but
Speaker 3: it specifically means planning for a movement that you hope
Speaker 3: will decentralize. So if you look at movements like Occupy
Speaker 3: in Black Lives Matter that broke out spontaneously or somewhat spontaneously,
Speaker 3: you know, they may have a group that really helped
Speaker 3: kick them off and get them started, but it basically
Speaker 3: went viral without a plan to operate at scale. And
Speaker 3: so what ends up happening, in my experience is those
Speaker 3: kinds of decohere very rapidly because there's not really especially
Speaker 3: when you're talking about the actual institution of the movement,
Speaker 3: there's very little holding it together because it wasn't really
Speaker 3: planning to get as big as it got. And so
Speaker 3: basically front loading is just a process by which you
Speaker 3: spend time thinking about what do we do if this
Speaker 3: gets huge? Right, And so as people are entering into
Speaker 3: the movement, you can arm them with the knowledge and
Speaker 3: the frameworks that they need to operate as part of it,
Speaker 3: even if it gets really big. And I think that's
Speaker 3: something that has served Sunrise really well in that they
Speaker 3: had a pretty not that you don't have to answer
Speaker 3: a million different questions, and it's not like this just
Speaker 3: kind of like unfolding protein that just then, you know,
Speaker 3: collapses into the shape that it needs to be. But
Speaker 3: it certainly allows you to It guides your decision making
Speaker 3: once the movement is unfolding in a way that I
Speaker 3: think it can be really helpful both for leaders and
Speaker 3: for even new people coming in the front door to understand, Okay,
Speaker 3: if I sign up for the movement, this is what
Speaker 3: I'm signing up for. This is why they believe what
Speaker 3: they believe, this is what we're fighting for, This is
Speaker 3: how we're going to fight for it. And so it
Speaker 3: allows you to then take leadership in your local community
Speaker 3: and be make decisions that make sense for your local
Speaker 3: context while still being part of something much much larger
Speaker 3: and more coherent.
Speaker 2: The thing that has always struck me about Sunrise too
Speaker 2: is that that it does have this this way of
Speaker 2: I don't know, just of flattening hierarchy in a way
Speaker 2: like there are leaders, and there are people who take
Speaker 2: on that mantle, like like Varshnie and whatnot. But but
Speaker 2: then that have this ability to kind of step back
Speaker 2: and just be part of the movement again. And I
Speaker 2: wonder if that's a planned thing, like if that's something
Speaker 2: that you I don't know, that that gets sort of
Speaker 2: set up up top.
Speaker 3: That's sort of the that's always the goal. I think
Speaker 3: it's not. I mean, we could spend the whole hour
Speaker 3: just on the kind of organizational theory stuff. So I'm
Speaker 3: this is less my strong suit when it comes to
Speaker 3: different areas of the movement. But you know, the folks
Speaker 3: who help come up with these ideas spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time studying different organizational structures, reading about Honestly, one
Speaker 3: of the biggest inspirations is the Evangelical Church and the
Speaker 3: way that they can create these kind of small groups
Speaker 3: that really foster leadership and create tiers of engagement for
Speaker 3: people to move up that give people a ton of
Speaker 3: agency and autonomy, but within a structure so that as
Speaker 3: you're going about your journey that you are you're part
Speaker 3: of something bigger and it's kind of laid out. So
Speaker 3: the goal is not necessarily to completely do away with hierarchies.
Speaker 3: It's not a kind of anarchist like flattening of all difference,
Speaker 3: but to allow for the hierarchies to emerge in ways
Speaker 3: that serve the movement and that allow people still to
Speaker 3: have a lot of choice and freedom in kind of
Speaker 3: like how they want to participate in what that means.
Speaker 3: And I think especially that helps create a culture in
Speaker 3: which there's a lot of accountability and the people at
Speaker 3: the top are understanding their role as kind of servant
Speaker 3: leaders in fostering fostering a movement that people actually want
Speaker 3: to be a part of and that feels good to
Speaker 3: be a part of. And I think that's one of
Speaker 3: Sunrise as many great successes, is in taking the culture
Speaker 3: aspect of that really seriously and wanting to invite people
Speaker 3: in and to make it feel friendly, and the Left,
Speaker 3: I think doesn't always do that, and I think, more importantly,
Speaker 3: doesn't even really try a lot of the time. And
Speaker 3: I think Sunrise has. The folks who helped start it
Speaker 3: have been a part of the left enough to know
Speaker 3: that that doesn't work, right, Like, if you don't create
Speaker 3: a welcoming space for people that folks actually want to
Speaker 3: be a part of, then they'll go home, because there's
Speaker 3: a million other things that they could do, and this
Speaker 3: stuff is really hard. I think that they took that
Speaker 3: seriously in a way that a very few other groups
Speaker 3: do and have, and I think it's a significant part
Speaker 3: of their success.
Speaker 4: I have been hearing a lot of people recently talking
Speaker 4: about systems change, but talking about it in this way
Speaker 4: of like making tweaks to the existing system.
Speaker 2: Rather than sort of a more like an actual change
Speaker 2: of the system or a replacement of the current system.
Speaker 4: And I've seen you at least tweeting a.
Speaker 2: Few things recently like the it might not be possible
Speaker 2: to just improve the system that we have, that there
Speaker 2: might actually be a need for what some would call revolution,
Speaker 2: And I'd love to just I don't know hear you
Speaker 2: expand on that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a great question. I'll be honest that my answer
Speaker 3: here is going to be very preliminary. I think I'm
Speaker 3: in the process of trying to figure out what it
Speaker 3: would look like to engage with these questions more serious
Speaker 3: as is for the broader momentum community. And I would
Speaker 3: not claim I'd say in the same way that like
Speaker 3: eighteen months out, Sunrise was kind of like, Yeah, we
Speaker 3: like want to start a new movement that's not just
Speaker 3: about ending the fossil fuel industry, but that has a
Speaker 3: sort of positive vision of what we're trying to fight for,
Speaker 3: and we want to frontload it, and we want it
Speaker 3: to be big, and we want it to be political
Speaker 3: and not just a social movement, but we don't really
Speaker 3: know what it is yet. That I'm sort of in
Speaker 3: that kind of a place with this conversation. So with
Speaker 3: that caveat that I'm still early in trying to figure
Speaker 3: out how to talk about and think about this stuff,
Speaker 3: I would say I think, well, first, let's like define
Speaker 3: the problem, right, because I think my intuition, hypothesis sense
Speaker 3: of where this is going is that essentially it's not
Speaker 3: really so much a question of should we keep the
Speaker 3: current system that we have, or should we throw it
Speaker 3: aside and get a totally new system. Unfortunately, I think
Speaker 3: this decision has some already been made for us, and
Speaker 3: that I don't think that this current system will can
Speaker 3: sustain itself through the course of the decade. Because what's
Speaker 3: fundamentally happening here is the United States is a country
Speaker 3: we like to think of ourselves and historically have you know,
Speaker 3: really been very different from a lot of other countries
Speaker 3: and sort of the pre eminent whatever American exceptionalism. But
Speaker 3: if you just were to step back and look at
Speaker 3: the US as a country, it would be very clear
Speaker 3: the current constitutional arrangement is not long for this world.
Speaker 3: You have a significant subset of the population, particularly the
Speaker 3: white population, although not only that, is really terrified about
Speaker 3: the transition away from a white majority population to a
Speaker 3: multi racial majority. And that's happening in the context of
Speaker 3: world historic inequality. Right, So, you really do have the
Speaker 3: conditions for ethno nationalist authoritarian politics right like call it
Speaker 3: fascists call it ethno nationalist authoritarian white supremacist politics, in
Speaker 3: which there is a significant number of people that are
Speaker 3: willing to use violence and do not really subscribe to
Speaker 3: the beliefs that are required of participating in a democracy
Speaker 3: because they're afraid of losing power within that democracy to
Speaker 3: other ethnic groups. That's the kind of beginning of my
Speaker 3: analysis here. And if you take that as a kind
Speaker 3: of skeleton key for what's going on, you're a lot
Speaker 3: becomes more clear in that that group of people, that
Speaker 3: kind of white supremacist plurality, is not big enough to
Speaker 3: govern the country, but it is big enough to take
Speaker 3: over the Republican part as Trump showed, and through their
Speaker 3: control of the Republican Party, are able to take control
Speaker 3: of state and federal governments because we have a very
Speaker 3: anti democratic political system, because our political system is the
Speaker 3: result of a compromise with slaveholders and so vastly over
Speaker 3: represents small rural states that white people have more power,
Speaker 3: and so that white supremacist plurality can take over the
Speaker 3: federal government, state governments with a minority of votes, and
Speaker 3: because of other aspects of our anti democratic political system,
Speaker 3: the Senate, as we're seeing now, the electoral college, as
Speaker 3: we are kind of threatened with every four years that
Speaker 3: there's going to be another instance in which the winner
Speaker 3: of the popular vote does not become president that has
Speaker 3: happened recently in a number of times, and the two
Speaker 3: party system which allows for that, let's say, twenty five
Speaker 3: to forty percent of the population to govern, we are
Speaker 3: not We're not going to see the multi racial majority
Speaker 3: have an opportunity to turn its will into law in
Speaker 3: the next ten to fifteen years. And I think the
Speaker 3: amount of tension that that will generate will break the
Speaker 3: political system. I don't think that. I don't think that
Speaker 3: the amount of friction that will be created in the
Speaker 3: in the in the popular will of being steymied in
Speaker 3: that way, particularly when the people in power are taking
Speaker 3: active steps to move us away from competitive elections and
Speaker 3: limit people's rights, I cannot imagine a situation in which
Speaker 3: the multiracial majority takes that lying down. And I also
Speaker 3: don't think that the white nationalist plurality is going to
Speaker 3: become less vociferous in their opposition to multiracial democracy. So,
Speaker 3: and if you were to talk about this with a
Speaker 3: comparative political scientist, they would tell you, if you have
Speaker 3: this kind of demographic transition happening, the worst case scenario,
Speaker 3: our political system is basically designed as poorly as possible
Speaker 3: to manage that kind of a demographic transition because the
Speaker 3: two party system collapses all divisions in society into a
Speaker 3: zero sum, all or nothing competitive existential conflict, and when
Speaker 3: that gets racialized or ethnicized, it can become dangerous very quickly.
Speaker 3: We're as polarized as any time since before the Civil War,
Speaker 3: and in addition, with the separately elected presidency and a
Speaker 3: bi cameral system, we have what a political scientists referred
Speaker 3: to as a profusion of veto points right. So it's very,
Speaker 3: very difficult for bills to become law, as we see
Speaker 3: with anything. But the example I always use is gun control,
Speaker 3: and after name a massacre, people always ask, if this
Speaker 3: stuff is eighty five percent approval rating, why can't it pass?
Speaker 3: And the truth of the matter is that very little
Speaker 3: can pass, very little, very few laws make it through
Speaker 3: the our system. And there's a stat that I think
Speaker 3: is not bode well. I tweeted this the other day
Speaker 3: and people thought I was saying not in jest, but
Speaker 3: you know, there's there's a stat that the United States
Speaker 3: is the only system that has a separately elected executive
Speaker 3: branch that is not at some point collapsed into dictators
Speaker 3: because in presidential systems, systems with a separate, separately elected executive.
Speaker 3: What happens is there's a conflict between the president and
Speaker 3: the Congress and there's some external crisis that requires action,
Speaker 3: and the Congress is incapable of or unwilling to respond,
Speaker 3: and then the executive takes the authority to do so
Speaker 3: without the approval of the legislature. And once that is broken,
Speaker 3: it's very hard to take back. And I think some
Speaker 3: version of that is more or less inevitable in the
Speaker 3: next five years.
Speaker 4: So I.
Speaker 3: The way I say it is like, look, we're going
Speaker 3: to get a new political system. The question is does
Speaker 3: it happen before authorityitarian authoritarianism, and civil war or after?
Speaker 3: And I would love for it to be before. As
Speaker 3: an American, I would love to not have to experience
Speaker 3: those things, but I don't. I don't think we're going to.
Speaker 3: So I think we're looking more at a post dictatorship,
Speaker 3: post conflict situation and less at like how do we
Speaker 3: organize a political revolution before? But it's not so neat
Speaker 3: and tidy as that, right, Like I it's there's probably
Speaker 3: a little bit more overlap in those scenarios than I'm
Speaker 3: given credit for.
Speaker 4: Well, it's interesting that you say that because I feel
Speaker 4: like people.
Speaker 2: Are seemed to be actually increasingly calling for Biden to
Speaker 2: do that, you know.
Speaker 4: To just just use executive power to do X y Z.
Speaker 2: And I think out of this frustration with the fact
Speaker 2: that votes are being suppressed and then even when you know,
Speaker 2: you do kind of elect someone that you think is
Speaker 2: going to pass different palsy. Not that I mean I'm
Speaker 2: under no, I was not, like I was not excited
Speaker 2: to vote for, but like that, it's it's difficult to
Speaker 2: get any kind of significant change past, right, and then
Speaker 2: that there's this sense of, oh, well, who knows if
Speaker 2: this will stick, because in three years time someone else
Speaker 2: will come in and change it back. I think people
Speaker 2: are yeah, I just.
Speaker 4: I just yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't really see how that continues without some kind
Speaker 2: of boiling point and then restructuring of some kind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not, it's not. We don't live in a democracy.
Speaker 3: Like the thing. The thing about the kind of common
Speaker 3: liberal story around this that I get incredibly frustrated with
Speaker 3: is that and this gets to sort of where I'd
Speaker 3: like the conversation to go, and where I'm you know,
Speaker 3: only beginning to try to figure out how to bring
Speaker 3: it there. But you know where I think it needs
Speaker 3: to go is we cannot simply make this about defending
Speaker 3: the existing constitutional order, because it's precisely the existing constitutional
Speaker 3: order that was failing that led us to this point.
Speaker 3: Trump is not aberrant in that respect. He is. Actually
Speaker 3: there's a way in which you could argue he is.
Speaker 3: He is a defender of the underlying structures of the
Speaker 3: constitution right they serve him. So despite his willingness to
Speaker 3: get rid of the parts of the constitution that don't
Speaker 3: benefit him, he doesn't want to change the underlying political
Speaker 3: arrangements because they're good for Republicans. So I and like
Speaker 3: you said, I mean, like in most other countries, the
Speaker 3: way that democracy works, the way it's supposed to work,
Speaker 3: is you vote for a new government. The government passes
Speaker 3: the laws based on what they said they were going
Speaker 3: to do in the election. Then voters get to decide
Speaker 3: did that work for us? And depending on whether it
Speaker 3: did or it didn't, they get rid of the people
Speaker 3: in power, or they give them more opportunities to do
Speaker 3: other things that they promise that they're going to do.
Speaker 3: In our system, none of it works like that. People,
Speaker 3: when you elect a new government, no matter what they
Speaker 3: ran on. They probably can't actually do the thing that
Speaker 3: they said that they were going to do. And it's
Speaker 3: not because they weren't super committed to it or that
Speaker 3: they don't really believe in it or whatever. It's because
Speaker 3: literally our institutions make it impossible for them to do that.
Speaker 3: And then people get mad because stuff isn't happening, because
Speaker 3: things are going bad, and our system makes it damn
Speaker 3: near impossible to figure out whose fault that is right,
Speaker 3: whose fault is it that build back better got watered down?
Speaker 3: I mean, I follow this stuff super closely, about as
Speaker 3: closely as anybody could, and I get confused sometimes. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine how working class people who don't follow politics
Speaker 3: that closely and just want to understand what our politics
Speaker 3: to do more to help people like them, why they don't.
Speaker 3: They can't tell who's that fault for these things, who
Speaker 3: they should be angry at, who they should reelect. It
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense. So the accountability mechanism is completely broken.
Speaker 3: And to your point about wanting Biden to take more,
Speaker 3: to just do more, this is the trajectory of the
Speaker 3: past forty years. Is the Congress is less and less
Speaker 3: able to pass laws, and so what that means of
Speaker 3: the presidency is it has to just do more, do
Speaker 3: more through executive action, do more through what existing authorities
Speaker 3: it already has. And some people talk about that in
Speaker 3: terms of the imperial presidency, and it is. It is,
Speaker 3: It is dangerous, and it is part of it is
Speaker 3: one of the many threads leading us towards authoritarianism. But
Speaker 3: it needs to be seen as a result of the
Speaker 3: failure of Congress to govern. And Congress's failure is again
Speaker 3: not simply the result of kind of people with bad
Speaker 3: ideas or insufficient will, but the result of a political
Speaker 3: system that is this Rube Goldberg device that simply can't
Speaker 3: sustain itself. And I think it's really important here also
Speaker 3: to give some credence to the founders while also recognizing
Speaker 3: just what the hell we're talking about here. Like these
Speaker 3: guys were, it was the first modern republican democracy in
Speaker 3: the world. They had no examples to draw from, and
Speaker 3: they had a lot of beliefs that now we would
Speaker 3: think of as aberrant, and they didn't have anything to
Speaker 3: compare themselves to. And so I think there's a way
Speaker 3: that we can come down on the Constitution and the
Speaker 3: kind of original political institutions of the country in a
Speaker 3: way that both recognizes that there were real innovations and
Speaker 3: real leaps forward for human liberation, while not ignoring the
Speaker 3: reality that many of these people were slave holders, and that,
Speaker 3: in a very practical sense, that the institutions that they
Speaker 3: created were the result of compromises with the power of slaveholders,
Speaker 3: and that those compromises still live with us today. That
Speaker 3: we can kind of not throw out the baby with
Speaker 3: the bathwater, like constitutional democracy is still worth fighting for,
Speaker 3: and many of the ideals that we consider to be,
Speaker 3: you know, American ideals are worth fighting for. But I
Speaker 3: would argue that the spirit of the founders would augur
Speaker 3: in favor of us creating a new constitution today in
Speaker 3: the same way that they did and not paying fealty
Speaker 3: to the work of long dead men who don't understand
Speaker 3: the world that we live in today. So I think
Speaker 3: we can talk more about this some other time. But
Speaker 3: I think that trying to imagine what it would look
Speaker 3: like to create a new constitution is not as impossible
Speaker 3: as people think. Again, because the United States is a country,
Speaker 3: and other countries have constitutions that are significantly better than
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 4: And that are significantly more flexible. Like other countries change
Speaker 4: and update their constitutions all the time, and it like
Speaker 4: never happens here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, right, not only not only I think that's
Speaker 3: so key. We not only do we have a kind
Speaker 3: of uniquely badly designed political system, but we also have
Speaker 3: one of, if not the hardest constitution to change. So
Speaker 3: it's this. It's like, imagine if you had the oldest,
Speaker 3: like the literally the first indoor plumbing system that was
Speaker 3: ever created in the world, and you could never change it.
Speaker 3: You'd be like, well, this house is pretty nice, but
Speaker 3: holy shit, it's always flooding and leaking and maybe it's
Speaker 3: just time for a new plumbing system.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time. Thanks as always for joining us.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with another bonus episode and
Speaker 1: back with part two of our season on the gas
Speaker 1: industry just as soon as we can wrap it up,
Speaker 1: hopefully by the end of this month, but it might
Speaker 1: be a little bit later, just depending on you know,
Speaker 1: this never ending pandemic. Do you want to give a
Speaker 1: shout out to our latest Patreon supporters, Tanna Morgan, Katie
Speaker 1: will Gollihu, Maureen de com and Gerhardt le Abracadabra Daniel Stubbs,
Speaker 1: Sarah Ventry, Robbie Michelson, Tam vou Zane, Selvin's Wryder, Bergrad,
Speaker 1: Philip Bell, Courtney McNaught, and Rebecca Schwartz. That support and
Speaker 1: the support of our many other patrons is absolutely critical
Speaker 1: to the continuation of this podcast. If you would like
Speaker 1: to support our work and get access to ad free episodes,
Speaker 1: bonus content, and ex exclusive merge while doing so, please
Speaker 1: check out patreon dot com. Slash Drilled. Drilled is an
Speaker 1: original production of the Critical Frequency podcast network. Music This
Speaker 1: Week is by Martin Wissenberg. The show is written, reported,
Speaker 1: and produced by me Amy westerveldt Our producer is Jules Bradley,
Speaker 1: Audio engineering by Peter Duff. Our First Amendment Attorney is
Speaker 1: James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. Thanks again for
Speaker 1: listening and we'll see you next week.