America Under Occupation: Truth, Power, & Imperial Decline | Jonathan Kirshner

Episode 435 https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/america-under-occupation-truth-power-amp-imperial-decline-jonathan-kirshner is the eighth episode in the Hundred Year Pivot podcast series. In it, Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams speak with leading realist scholar Jonathan Kirshner about how eroding cultural norms, weakened political guardrails, deepening polarization, and the collapse of shared narratives and belief structures are leading to a break-down in the American-led order, paving the way for a new moneyed elite to seize power in Washington. Their discussion begins with a deep dive into the realist tradition: its origins, how it differs from other ideological schools, its various interpretations, and why classical realists grant primacy to uncertainty and the inherently unpredictable nature of world events. They explore what it means for states to define and pursue their national interests at a time when the American-led world order is fragmenting and deep domestic polarization is weakening the institutional checks and balances that once constrained presidential power. Jonathan also educates the audience on the parallels between the United States today and France in the 1930s—politically fractured, inwardly focused, and increasingly unable to act with purpose on the world stage—and why Kirshner believes the situation may now be closer to France in the 1940s, marked by a willingness to collaborate with the occupying forces of a new plutocracy. Grant, Demetri, and Jonathan also grapple with how the politics of scapegoating, the collapse of shared narratives, and the deliberate erosion of truth claims are undermining the foundations of participatory democracy. Jonathan explains how this epistemic breakdown accelerates America's imperial collapse, undermining its political influence abroad, weakening its alliances, and threatening the long-term stability of the dollar-based global financial system. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe https://hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe https://hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces, SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces, CastBox https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539, or via our RSS Feed http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334 & Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io https://hiddenforces.io/. Join the conversation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/, and Twitter https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas https://twitter.com/kofinas Episode Recorded on 08/07/2025

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Demetri Kofinas?

  What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. What you're about to hear is the eighth episode in a podcast series hosted by me and my co-host, Grant Williams, titled "The Hundred Year Pivot." In it, we speak with some of the smartest and most plugged-in people we know to help position ourselves, our organizations, our families, and our portfolios for the once-in-a-century economic, political, and geopolitical reordering that we believe is currently underway.

• 0:44Demetri Kofinas?

  In today's conversation, Grant and I speak with leading realist scholar Jonathan Kirshner about how eroding cultural norms, weakened political guardrails, deepening polarization, and the collapse of shared narratives and belief structures are leading to a breakdown in the American-led order while also paving the way for a new moneyed elite to seize power in Washington. Our discussion begins with a deep dive into the realist tradition, its origins, how it differs from other ideological schools, its various interpretations, and why classical realists grant primacy to uncertainty and the inherently unpredictable nature of world events.

• 1:25Demetri Kofinas?

  We explore what it means for states to define and pursue their national interests at a time when the American-led order is fragmenting and deep domestic polarization is weakening the institutional checks and balances that once constrained presidential power. Jonathan also educates us on the parallels between the United States today and France in the 1930s, politically fractured, inwardly focused, and increasingly unable to act with purpose on the world stage, and why Kirshner believes the situation today may be closer to France in the 1940s, marked by a willingness to collaborate with the occupying forces of a new plutocracy.

• 2:05Demetri Kofinas?

  We also grapple with how the politics of scapegoating, the collapse of shared narratives and the deliberate erosion of truth claims are undermining the foundations of participatory democracy. Jonathan explains how this epistemic breakdown accelerates America's imperial collapse, undermining its political influence abroad, weakening its alliances and threatening the long-term stability of the dollar-based global financial system. The episodes in this series are published a week ahead of time on both the Hidden Forces and Grant Williams podcast subscriber-only feeds. If you want early access to these conversations, go to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join

• 2:45Demetri Kofinas?

  our premium feed so you can listen to this episode and other subscriber-only content on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to [email protected] and I or someone from our team will get right back to you.

• 3:27Demetri Kofinas?

  And with that, please enjoy this deeply insightful and historically grounded conversation with our guest, Jonathan Kirshner.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Welcome, everybody, to another edition of The Hundred Year Pivot. Joining me, my co-host on this little journey, the wonderful Dimitri Kofinas. Hello, Dimitri, how are you, my friend?

• 3:50Demetri Kofinas?

  I'm great. How are you, Grant?

• 3:52Speaker 01

  I am wonderful. I'm really looking forward to this conversation we've got coming up. I heard our guest on your podcast first and I found him compelling and captivating in equal measure, so I'm thrilled to get the chance to talk to him on this podcast with you today.

• 4:05Demetri Kofinas?

  Me too, man. I'm a huge fan of Jonathan's work. I don't remember how I discovered his book. I think it was called An Unwritten Future, but he's a classical realist, as I think you mentioned, and... You know, people, a lot of people became familiar with the realist school after the Russian invasion of Ukraine because John Mearsheimer went like super viral with like a speech he gave that he delivered to, I think it was Chicago University where he teaches. And John's been on the podcast before, as has Stephen Walt, another prominent realist. But what was so interesting to me about Jonathan's perspective on realism, and he calls himself a classical realist, is that it resembles much more the sort of early thinking of

• 4:44Demetri Kofinas?

  the early political economists and philosophers. And specifically, he gives an enormous amount of latitude to uncertainty and to those. Who was the British statesman that said, they asked him what happened, and he said, "Events, dear boy, events."

• 4:58Speaker 01

  That was Millet. Was it Millet?

• 5:00Demetri Kofinas?

  I don't know, but I mean, that's really, you know, events, events. And I say this over and over again to people that ask me. Sometimes I have friends in my life who know what I do, and they assume that I have the answers to all sorts of questions, you know, readily available. And I always say, actually, the truth is, I'm comforted by one thing. When I think pessimistically about the future, I'm so comforted by the fact that I've almost always been wrong about everything. Like, when I actually look back and look at what happened, it's always other events that I could not have foreseen that impede on reality and shape the future trajectory of the world or the system that I'm trying to understand. And so I really deeply appreciate Jonathan's fealty to uncertainty. And I think investors in particular, if I recall also, this was a very popular episode with those in our

• 5:43Demetri Kofinas?

  audience who are investors or interested in financial markets, and it, I think, adheres very well to the kind of thinking that we might describe as humble.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, humble. Something worth searching for in this great world is humility, Dimitri. I have a friend that calls uncertainty the default condition. And it's a great pains to point out the difference between uncertainty and risk. And I think that's a really important distinction to make. And I'm really looking forward to talking about uncertainty and so much more with our guest, Jonathan Kirshner.

• 6:14Demetri Kofinas?

  Let's do it.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Well, Jonathan, welcome to this little project of Dimitri's and mine. We're extremely glad that you've found the time to sit and chat with us today. Thank you.

• 6:23Demetri Kofinas?

  It's a pleasure to be here.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  You know, we were talking off mic and explaining to you that this kind of wandering that Dmitry and I have set off on, and it's gone in all different directions so far. And we have no idea where it's going from here, but we have you to talk to today, and we're both delighted about that. And so I guess what I'd like to do, if we can, just to start the conversation, is just talk about this idea of realism. Because when I listened to your original conversation with Dmitry on hidden forces, it rang so many bells with me and actually got me thinking about an awful lot of things, because I had assumed that realism was the default condition, and that people may stray from being realists and may be a fantasist, or maybe an idealist, but realism was basically the default condition,

• 7:07Speaker 01

  and you had to move away from it rather than find it. But I found myself listening to your conversation and was really, really interested in this idea that realism is something people come to. So perhaps you could just talk a little bit about realism as an idea, and give us some sense of its place in the world with regards to what I just said about my own misguided belief in it.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Sure. I think it's important when talking about realism to distinguish between two very different things. So principally, what realism starts out as, and what it's best at, is describing, explaining, and understanding the world. So that in that sense, it's not telling you how the world should work, it's rather a vision of how to conceptualize how the world works. And it's not a theory, it's like a paradigm, it's a worldview, it's an approach to understanding the world. And in that sense, although realism has many different branches and incarnations, most realists tend to share some foundational assumptions

• 8:11Speaker 02

  about where their understandings of how the world works come from. And that starts with the notion of anarchy, which simply means there's no ultimate authority to adjudicate disputes. It doesn't mean chaos. Anarchy can be orderly, or it can be disorderly, but anarchy is a technical term, simply meaning the absence of a sovereign. So what does that mean? It means that there are no assurances That commitments will be kept or that behaviors will be restrained. And from there, if you look at the course of human history, you see that humans often organize into groups. And sometimes when they disagree, they settle those disagreements by their resort to force. Sometimes that force is horrifyingly barbaric and unrestrained.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  And so that, in a sense, that really encapsulates the kind of points of departure of realism as a descriptive theory, right? Anarchy in a world in which groups organize and interact with each other and in which the possibility of war, even a brutal war, is, if not necessarily imminent or even very likely, necessarily informing the way people are thinking about their behavior. And from there, we see, realist that is, tend to see countries, we call them states, dwelling in this situation of anarchy, trying to both survive, because it's a dangerous world,

• 9:34Speaker 02

  and then pursue what they imagine to be the broadly based interest of the state. And that's the stuffing of international relations from a realist perspective. States interacting in world politics in an anarchic environment, often disagreeing with each other because they have competing aspirations and objectives. So they have conflicts of interest in which neither side is necessarily right or wrong, but rather one side wants one thing and one side wants the other. And because it's a dangerous world in which the use of force is a possibility, they need to be alert to the fact that if they get into a scrape, right, there are no guarantees that behaviors will be restrained.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  And then from there, there are various sub-branches of realism that we don't need to draw and drag ourselves into that emphasize different aspects of the consequences of that world. We also see many people, unwisely in my view, insisting that a certain foreign policy choice is quote unquote realist. And that is often sort of a caricature of realism. Whereas if you see states behaving badly, then you say, well, they're just following realist theory. And that is not true. There are lots of behaviors that are consistent with a realist vision of how states should behave, which is a very, very different thing than how we're describing how the world is working.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  But really, it's easier to say what is not a quote unquote realist foreign policy than what is a realist foreign policy. And I can't emphasize this point enough. There is no singularly correct realist foreign policy. What I mean by that is there are good, smart, card carrying realists who can look at a foreign policy situation and come to divergent views as to what the best course of action for policy is. Okay, they'd both be rooted in good, solid realist foundations, but the policy implications of that can be quite different. And I think that is something that escapes the popular imagination,

• 11:42Speaker 02

  who imagines realism as a world in which, you know, schoolyard bullies go around knocking heads and say, oh, that's realism, man. And I really don't think most realists sign up for that sort of foreign policy.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  I think perhaps, Jonathan, after Dimitri and I began this whole little journey of ours, when I listened to your conversation, it really resonated with me. And then what you just said there has maybe perhaps crystallized a little bit for me. It's this idea of the difference between how the world should work, or how the world does work and how it should work. And I think, for me personally, that feels like one of the key natures of this feeling of change is that, even if you weren't, to use your wonderful phrase, a card carrying realist, there's been an ability for the longest time to have an understanding of how the world should work, and it didn't feel as out of sync with the way the world was working.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  And I think suddenly for me, the chasm between those two things has opened up. And you're now being confronted with this idea that even if you thought you were a realist, but you were mistaken, it didn't really matter so much. Now you're kind of marooned and cut adrift because your idea of how the world should work and the reality of how it does are now poles apart. Would that be an accurate assessment?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Yes, but I don't think that is necessarily limited to realism. In that we are living, as you said earlier, or maybe that was when we were starting our conversation, living in a world of change. Now, that's a cliche, we're always living in a world of change. But I think we're living in a world in which, and this is a real problem for students of international relations, we're living in a world in which the recent relevant past is unlikely to be a good guide to the coming future. And almost all of our theories really depend on the idea that the recent relevant past

• 13:51Speaker 02

  is where we've generated our kind of theoretical understandings of how the world works have come from. But if those relationships have changed, then the recent relevant past is not necessarily going to be a helpful guide to better building theories and understanding how the world is going to be working in the upcoming future. And so I think that is a crisis for realists, but I think it's a crisis for almost any school of thought in the kind of the study of international relations. Now, most people who study international relations have an abundance of self-confidence, and they tend to be able to do a good job saying, oh, yes, this fits exactly well with my pre-existing worldview. My own position is that they're probably deluding themselves, that we are indeed

• 14:36Speaker 02

  at a moment in which our off-the-shelf theories are need to be reexamined with care if we're going to understand what's going on now.

• 14:46Demetri Kofinas?

  I don't know if this resonates with you, Grant, but I feel like this is also a dilemma that faces investors today. You know, many have had to retreat from the models that worked during the last 30 or 40 years and in so doing have to develop new models or new ways of looking at the world. I'm going to do my best to articulate this question, Jonathan, because as you were talking, I drew out something here. I put nation-state in the middle, and then I put Washington on the far right, and then I put corporations around the nation-state. And the way that I think of foreign policy, at least during the unipolar period, for most nation-states within the US orbit, is that they were essentially middlemen. I mean, they were taking direction from Washington, and then they were also engaging in, I guess,

• 15:28Demetri Kofinas?

  retail politics and working with big businesses and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But there was no real independently formulated notion of the national interest, or maybe "no" is too strong a word, but I feel like the world we're living in today is one where nation-states have to do a lot more heavy lifting to figure out what is in their national interest and for each of them to develop idiosyncratic foreign policies. One, do you agree with that? And two, what are the implications of that in terms of how the world looks?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  I do agree with that, and I think that the reason why, and that's a very subversive thing, if countries are looking out the window and saying, gee, I'm not 100% sure what my national interest is, that's really bad for realism. Because one of the points of departure of realism that I think I touched on but didn't elaborate is that realists' disposition is to expect that countries are able to articulate and pursue some version of what they see as their national interest. And so that has to be able to be identifiable and therefore pursuable. Even if they pursue it poorly, or even if it doesn't work out well for them, the national

• 16:41Speaker 02

  interest is distinct from a kind of cluster of individualist interests within a society. It rather reflects kind of historical concerns that we can understand and have a lot to them, and we can trace through how states are trying to advance that interest. Now, as you said, I'm agreeing with you again. During the last many years, let's just call it from the end of the Cold War through shortly after the global financial crisis, most countries in the world didn't have to think a ton about what their quote unquote national interest is because most could understand or recognize that the world sort of was functioning in the context of an American orchestrated

• 17:25Speaker 02

  international order. That sounds a little tidier than it was in practice, right? Order sounds orderly and the order was often, you know, loose and the norms and rules and behaviors associated with that order may have often been violated. But nevertheless, you look out the window and you say, yeah, the international system seems to be, some scholars call it a hierarchy, right, to distinguish between anarchy and say in which there's a kind of an American orchestrated way of doing things. That may be a little arrogant and there may be parts of the world for which that was less relevant. But if you look at the kind of great power system or the large countries, things like that, that made sense and they

• 18:08Speaker 02

  understood how to operate within it. And that order is now, I mean, I'm on record as insisting this, over. And so it's natural that people, that is states, are somewhat confused, right? Because, well, if we no longer are operating with a baseline background understanding that we're all groping our way to advance our interests in the context of an American orchestrated order, then what is the order? You know, how do we conceptualize and best understand our interests when we're in a state of tremendous flux, when the very definition of interests and the way that great powers are defining their interests are up for grabs? That is a very confusing moment.

• 18:54Demetri Kofinas?

  So I don't want to overstate the extent to which we had a formulated foreign policy consensus during the Cold War because obviously there were differences of opinion. But I would say at the very least, we had a sense of What our position was in the world, what if not our role, certainly what the structure of the world was. And it was defined heavily by our antagonistic relationship to the Soviet Union and the bipolarity of the Cold War. It seems that today, there is no sense of the structure, what our role is, nothing at all. In fact, it feels like we're in a moment where if you were to ask someone on the street, what is America's foreign policy, even if that person could have told you what it was 20 years ago, they wouldn't

• 19:35Demetri Kofinas?

  necessarily be able to articulate it today. And I guess my question is, do we need to have a foreign policy? Does America need a foreign policy? Or are we in the unique position as a country that we can retreat behind our two oceans and sort of exist in this more isolationist utopia, not to oversell the word utopia, but in this sort of isolationist realm that a lot of people, it seems in the country, want to return to?

• 20:03Speaker 02

  So those are two very different questions. I guess I'm going to break them apart. Does the US need not a foreign policy, but a grand strategy, right? A vision of the world, how it works, how America fits in it, and what it should be doing everywhere and every place at all times. And this is debated among my peers. And I lean toward the comfort of having a grand strategy, simply because it's helps me organize my interests and know what is important and what is not important, and how to prioritize, because foreign policy and grand strategy is about, you know, attending to living in a dangerous world in the context of constraints. It's the constraints that define your strategy. Absent constraints,

• 20:46Speaker 02

  you could do everything. And so you don't really need a strategy. And there were those who say that the US is large enough and safe enough and powerful enough that it can simply operate its foreign policy on a very ad hoc basis. And so it doesn't really need a quote unquote grand strategy or a foreign policy. And then there were those who were skeptical of the very notion that any state is really well capable of executing a kind of thoughtful and purposeful grand strategy. So that part of it is up for grabs. I think it's productive to have an overarching foreign policy vision if you're not locked into it in a way that prevents you from seeing kind of dangers and opportunities that were outside of the framework of that foreign policy. The second part of your question is,

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Well, isn't the US safe enough to just throw its hands up and say, "Why should we bother with engaging the rest of the world with a vigorous kind of internationalist-oriented foreign policy?" And that's a very different question. That's also debated vigorously among international relations scholars, although they hate, those who favor what you just described as isolationism hate to be called isolationists. They prefer to be called restrainers to have the US foreign policy be a much more cautious and modest one and not get around in the world's, muck around in the world's problems. And here's an example where, again, there is no realist answer to this.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  There are good realists who prefer a disposition of restraint for the reasons you said. The US, it's extremely powerful, it's protected by oceans, its neighbors are not threatening to it. It has a massive military. It really need not go shopping around the world looking for trouble. And I think phrased that way is certainly true. The US need not go around the world shopping for trouble, and I strongly believe in that. But my brand of realism is called classical realism. And classical realism is skeptical of law-like statements. But we maybe have one or two things that approach law-like statements. And one of them is power fills a vacuum.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  And so if US power recedes from the world, and I want to emphasize there are places I think it should be receding from the world. Personally, I feel very strongly the US should be out of the Persian Gulf business entirely. But if even there, as the US recedes from the world, other actors will fill in those vacuums. And those actors may have interests that are amenable to the interests of the United States, or they may not. We don't know. It's a world of uncertainty. But I think When people say, does the US need to be fully engaged in the world? You know, is it to assure its physical security?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Probably not, right? The US is probably, the borders of the US from invasion by foreign countries is pretty secure. Again, massive military, two oceans, robust nuclear deterrent. I don't anticipate the US in the foreseeable future being invaded by a peer and conquered by a peer power. But most of the time, most of world politics is not about conquest. Most of the time, most of world politics is about political influence. If we get back to that idea of what is world politics about that I kind of started with, it's actors dwelling in anarchy trying to advance their competing objectives on the world stage. And so in that sense, even though realists can say war is always possible, again, most

• 24:25Speaker 02

  of the time, we're not in war. And most of the time, the US is not vulnerable to a sudden military strike. But the currency of international relations therefore is political influence. And that sort of political influence has two components to it. One is, that means the US needs to have some level of engagement in world politics in order to advance its political interests. But the other is a repeat of what I said about withdrawing from the world. If the US political influence recedes from other centers of the world, then other actors will, almost in a law-like way, fill in that empty space and advance their political interests.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  So if we go to, you know, a red button issue like, you know, the US-China relations. Personally, I don't sit up at night worrying about a US-China war, although no realist wouldn't be alert to that possibility and the rather frightening consequences of what that would look like. But nevertheless, what we're seeing in the Pacific region is more of a political competition between the US and China. And then you have to ask yourself, is it in the US interest for China to come to dominate? Dominate not through conquest, but through increased political influence. Is it in the US interest for China to politically dominate the entire region of East Asia?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  My assessment is it's not in the US interest for that to happen. And therefore, my assessment would be that the US ought to be pursuing international politics in a way that keeps its hand in the international politics of the region in a significant and sustained way, which again is something very short of getting into a big old arms race with China and trying to be militarily dominant in the region. That's a very separate kettle of fish, as it were, so we're talking about the South China Sea, than understanding that the day to day workings of international politics is political influence. Political influence is the currency. And most of the time, that's much more important than warfighting.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Jonathan, I have about 50 fragments of what feels like one question flying around my brain. So I'm going to try and pull them together into something that makes a little sense, but it may take me a few sentences to get this, so just bear with me. You know, there's an old quote from Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary in the early 19th century. And one would imagine that being a Foreign Secretary, you have to be some kind of realist, although you are dealing with politicians and personalities. But the quote, which is a very old quote, but it seems to be coming up in conversations I have and things I read more and more recently, and I'll be bastardizing the quote horribly. But what he said was that we have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  It's our interests that are both eternal and perpetual, and it's our duty to follow those interests. And so when thinking about that, every country has a set of national interests. And generally, they are, they begin with security, both from invasion, but food security and the sanctity of the population and all these kind of things, which are very easily defined and simply understood, I think. Then you have to throw on a layer of the personalities involved, who are from time to time changed, but they're all supposedly carrying out those same perpetual interests.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  So I think what I'm struggling with at the moment is that I had this feeling that if we are going back to a period where national interests are the primary driver of all this thing, it should therefore make things easier to understand because the interests are perpetual and eternal and so therefore definable.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  And yet, in an age of us going back supposedly to national interests, we are inundated with complicated personalities, complicated short-term, what feels like personal rivalries, which are kind of pulling at these interests. So I'm kind of struggling for a way to think about this that recognizes the ultimate ends are pretty clear to understand, but right now, the means by which they're achieved or the path that we take to reach them is almost impossible to define. I think there's a question in this somewhere, even if it's what the hell do you think about all that nonsense, but I'm just, it's one of these things that I'm wrestling with.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  There's a great question in there, and I think it's a two-part question. So let's start with your Palmerston quote, which is a very attractive realist quote. And what he was referring to was the fact that what is Britain's national interest in this geopolitical setting? And what it was, was that no single country come to dominate Europe. Because if a single country could dominate the entire continent of Europe, it could then pose a significant military threat to Britain. If there was a division of power on the continent, then they would be busy balancing

• 29:48Speaker 02

  against each other and they would not represent as significant a threat and Britain, you know, just off the continent as an island, would be very secure. And again, security is job one. I think states want more than security. I think states are ambitious, but security is job one. And so all he was saying in a nice realist way was that our policy in preventing one power from dominating the continent is to sort of team up with whoever seems weaker in the coalitions that emerge on the continent at that time. And so in that sense, it sounds like, you know, we have no permanent friends. We only have permanent interests. But I think that was smart. I didn't think that was right.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  I think it was a very attractive articulation of a thoughtful, a well thought through grand strategy. Boom, look at this, you know, which are often hard to define. But I would hate to see that be used as an excuse for other actors in other settings, saying, we are just transactionalists. We may be your friends today, but tomorrow we won't be. Because I don't think most of the time, for most countries, that's a good way to run a railroad. Because if you're going to have relations with countries, especially sustained alliances, your alliance partners need to have some sort of confidence that your word is good, that it is more than simply, well, you know, we'll do this for six months.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  And then for all you know, I'll just be your enemy in six months. That in most settings in international politics, that's not going to be the best way to advance your interests. So that's the first part of your question, in which I want to genuflect before the grand strategy of Britain in that period and how it was articulated. But I want to acknowledge its contextualized limits and not build, you know, permanent rules based on that. But I also want to take issue with your phrase, we're returning to an era of national interest, or to use a word you didn't use, an era of the naked pursuit of the national interest in a way that was different than before. I don't think that's the case. I think, let's just sticking with the US for a moment.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  And the US is kind of the elephant in the room of international politics and of change. In my assessment, the United States right now is not pursuing the naked national interest for the first time in more than 100 years. The national interest Is debatable, it is contestable. And as I said, it can be pursued in a variety of ways with different foreign policy dispositions. So there's variation there. But nevertheless, it is the national interest. So every president, I'm going to say from Wilson, but this probably applies to Teddy Roosevelt as well, so it's going back a while.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  What they thought they were doing was saying, here is America. Here is America's place in the world. Here's my vision for what I think would be good for America. And here's how I think we should therefore orient our foreign policies to best advance those interests. Even the isolationists in the 30s thought, however misguidedly in my view, that they were doing what was best for the American national interest writ large. And so we've already talked about variations in American Cold War policy during the Cold War, right, from 1945 forwards. And we say, well, you know, it was a Cold War, but you still saw shifts in foreign policy behaviors across the US during that time.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Well, that was because different presidents and administrations had different visions, even within the context of understanding that the Cold War was sort of the main thing as to how to best advance the American national interest in the context of the Cold War. And I think that held true, you know, all the way up through very recent times. Again, even presidents who pursued, who made foreign policy choices that I thought were profoundly misguided, I think nevertheless thought they were pursuing the American national interest. Let's take an easy one. I really think that LBJ, who made a series of catastrophic errors throughout the way

• 34:07Speaker 02

  to go to the Vietnam War, I think he thought he was doing what was best for the American interest, you know, with a twist of domestic politics mixed in, certainly, but you know, presidents are politicians and so that's true. What we have today in America, for the first time, you know, in memory.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Is something closer to the pursuit of a foreign policy that looks like the way a personalist authoritarian would pursue a foreign policy. And so it's no longer the national interest that's being pursued, but it's the interests of the ruling clan and its intimate affiliates. And very commonly, the economic interests, the material interests of the ruling clan and its intimate affiliates. And so if you look around the world and see the behaviors, they're less consistent with what we would understand as the pursuit of the quote unquote national interest. And we're seeing more and more the pursuit of some version of a personalist type interest.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  I think it's radically new. Now, you can wrap it up in language of thuggishness, selfishness, transactionalists, naked pursuit of power, but I don't think it is properly defined as the pursuit of the quote unquote American national interest.

• 35:26Demetri Kofinas?

  I want to play devil's advocate here, Jonathan. So first of all, just to clarify here, is the pursuit of the national interest, since we don't all agree on what the national interest is, is the litmus test for determining whether or not a state is pursuing the national interest, whether or not the ruling party or the head of the country has articulated what he or she thinks that interest is and then pursues policies that are consistent with it? Is that how we're defining the pursuit of the national interest?

• 35:54Speaker 02

  So this is a great question. And as I've emphasized, and I'm not trying to weasel out of this, the national interest is contestable. And also, it's rare for presidents to address the nation and say, and here now is the national interest. So what I would say is, the national interest is something that can be identified by outside observers looking at a country and examining its place in the world and having the ability to articulate what international environment would be the most conducive to its thriving.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  And how it could plausibly pursue efforts at thriving. But again, the problem is because we do not have a singular theory of how world politics works, and we never will. Two well-intentioned people, each eager to pursue the national interest, may have different theories about how to achieve those ends, even if they agreed exactly on the ends they wanted to achieve. So you can't really look at the behavior and say, oh, that's the national interest behavior, and that's not the national behavior, although there are behaviors you could look at and say, wow, that was not in the national interest. Nevertheless, there are a kind of broad range of behaviors that could be consistent with it.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  What most important element of the national interest, what distinguishes the national interest, is that it cannot be reduced to a collection of individualist interests. It has to kind of transcend that. So, secure borders is an example, and here I'm talking about military invasion, of a kind of national interest in which everybody behind the wall, everybody behind the border of a country, benefits if that border is secure. It's not that, you know, or nuclear deterrence, the same thing. If I'm enjoying nuclear deterrence, chances are you're enjoying nuclear deterrence. And so these kind of broad-based benefits that a nation can enjoy reflect the interests

• 38:02Speaker 02

  of the nation as a whole, and can have historical and geopolitical elements to it. But again, people can disagree about how best to define the national interest, and the more you tug at the thread of the national interest, I think the more easily it can unravel. I'm going on and on a bit here, but if you look at the interests of the United States in the 19th century, was that the national interest? I mean, the US was very sectionally divided in terms of its political economy and its political distribution in much of the 19th century. And the grand strategy or the foreign policy pursuit of the national interest of the United

• 38:43Speaker 02

  States in the 19th century may have reflected northern industrial interests more than southern agricultural interests. And so, again, you're asking for trouble when you pull really hard at the threads of the quote-unquote "national interest." However, I'm sticking with my story that we can distinguish between

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Countries that are pursuing what we as outside observers can understand to be the national interest versus countries that are pursuing a narrowly regional interest, a narrowly clan interest, and the interest of some subsegment of the society, or most notably of a ruling regime, you know, especially when you talk about regimes that stay in power through draconian authoritarian measures, oftentimes their foreign policy will be rooted in the domestic security of the regime itself. And that's not really the pursuit of the national interest, that's the pursuit of regime security. So we can distinguish that.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  But to actually be able to map out on a piece of paper, if they're doing this, that's the national interest, and if they're doing that, it's definitely not. Again, there'll be examples where you could do that, but there will be too many times when variation in the strategies proposed by well-intentioned policymakers will diverge from each other, even if they each favor what we would agree is a vision of the national interest.

• 40:13Demetri Kofinas?

  So this is consistent with my initial objective when I started this line of questioning, which was to play devil's advocate. So it seems to me if I had to do my best right now to articulate what US foreign policy was in the period between the end of the Cold War and the 2008 financial crisis, or shortly thereafter, it was essentially to create a world in which the citizens of the United States could thrive, even if the United States was not the most powerful actor or most powerful state in that world, and a world that could increase wealth primarily for Americans, and obviously for a particular group of Americans, and for the world at large. And bolstering international institutions

• 40:53Demetri Kofinas?

  was a big part of that. It seems that if I had to articulate what the foreign policy or grand strategy is of the Trump administration, so that was an affirmative vision of the world. The Trump administration's vision seems to be very much built around ripping that down. And that's articulated with words like, "America is no longer going to be ripped off." Ripped off by basically paying the premium to support the building out of this panoply of institutions that everyone else is able to benefit from, but we're not able to benefit from. And it's also expressed in the form of bilateral trade deals with nations where the United States can point to specific income that it's able to generate from these individual bilateral

• 41:38Demetri Kofinas?

  trade deals, and also the closing of borders. Can we view that as a legitimate foreign policy that's in the national interest? And if it's not, why is that not in the national interest?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  So again, I want to break this down into two parts. I think after the end of the Cold War, and I think we're in a moment that's similar to the moment after the end of the Cold War, there was a period of confusion. And I don't think it's surprising that it was the 1992 presidential election that first saw insurgent outsiders make progress. I think of Patrick Buchanan and the Republican Party, but then obviously the Ross Perot movement. And we saw that again in 2016 with almost revolutionary movements within both major political parties. Because when the game, or when the rules as we understood them were changing, there was space for reassessment.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  And so from 1992 to 1994, I think the US was scratching its head about what its national interest was and how best to pursue it. And it did pursue ultimately, and I think overreached in many ways, what you described, but what I would describe as a globalization project. That it would pursue policies that would advance the development of economic globalization, assessing that the US would thrive in that environment and that potential peer competitors would not. And part of that toward the end of the 90s was a hopeful bet that China's economic liberalization would also

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Contribute to China's political liberalization, which was a very reasonable bet to make and which didn't turn out that well. And again, there was a lot of hubris and overreach in that project. And it had to do with the fact that the US was so incredibly powerful. You know, they stopped calling it a superpower or started calling it a hyperpower. And that led to things like, you know, the Iraq war and not unrelatedly, in my view, to the global financial crisis. And we are now, again, in my view, living in a world defined not so much by the global financial crisis, but by the aftermath of the global financial crisis,

• 43:52Speaker 02

  in which a lot of people very reasonably felt that the system was indeed rigged against them. And really, it was in how the distribution of the pain of the post-global financial crisis era was distributed, to repeat myself. And that in which the people who caused the global financial crisis, they ended up being just fine. And the people who had nothing to do with the global financial crisis, they were fed the long and stubborn Great Recession. And this fueled populist backlashes in both political parties. In one political party, that backlash completely overturned it. And so you had the emergence of Trump and Trumpism.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  And that was, to some extent, a bottom-up phenomenon. But there was importantly charismatic leadership associated with it. What we are seeing now, however, is... I want to be cautious here because I'm going to use words that sound irresponsible. But in my own view, as a professional analyst of world politics, it would be irresponsible, in fact, to try and normalize what we're seeing.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  And so, in my view, this populist backlash that has led to the emergence of what Martin Wolf at the Financial Times, very accurately, in my view, called Pluto populism, which is plutocrats kind of masquerading as populists in the figure of a person who is untutored and mercurial. So the policies you've described do not seem to me to be part of a thoughtful and coherent foreign policy vision, but rather the mercurial and

• 45:48Speaker 02

  often individually perhaps plausible, but collectively incoherent, policy kind of bouquet, which, when seen collectively, will not make America better, stronger, prouder, safer in the world. Let's go back to my original comment about how the currency of international politics is political influence. Are these behaviors increasing or decreasing the global political influence of the United States? My own view is we are witnessing collectively

• 46:30Speaker 02

  in these policies a geopolitical self-immolation of the type that I have difficulty finding precedent for. So that in my assessment, contra being able to understand this Copernica of policies as a version of the national interest, rather I see them as undermining of almost any possible conceptualization of what the American national interest is.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  It's so interesting, Jonathan, because I think a lot of us, I thought your, the use of the word mercurial was both perfect and carefully considered. I don't think that's going to flame anybody. But again, as an observer of what I'm seeing in the United States now, I can't help but feel as though international interests, there is an awful lot of confusion about what Donald Trump and the agenda that he is pursuing. And I would just say as a sidebar, that we All of us, I think, we put this confusion and this mercurial behaviour onto one person. But there are a lot of people involved in this administration.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  And I'm pretty sure that this is not just a whole bunch of people who are given marching orders by Donald Trump, and this is all he's doing. So one would like to believe that somewhere there is a plan formed by a group of people, the collective IQ of which is high enough to be making such decisions, but maybe we shouldn't pursue. However, it does seem to me, as an observer from outside, that on a domestic policy basis, at the very least, one would have to say that Donald Trump is pursuing and executing upon things that his base demanded and things that he promised them.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  One can argue about the manner in which he's achieving these goals and the manner about which he's setting about attaining them. But it feels to me there is a clarity about domestic foreign policy and an awful lot of confusion about the international policy. And I'm not sure if the interests should align or shouldn't align, but I can't see a through line that allows me to understand the two of them. I either have to choose to notice the, I'm going to use the word, even if you didn't, the chaos of foreign policy, but admit to seeing the logic of domestic, or the other way around, but I can't see a through line for both.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  I think that's fair. I want to take issue with small parts of that.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Please do. I've never been disagreed with so politely. I'm enjoying every minute of it, so please carry on.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  But with regard to whether or not the US has, you know, some thoughtful people constructing a thoughtful grand strategy vision for the United States, you know, I immediately thought of the last line of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, right? Wouldn't it be pretty to think so? I think the president His instincts are somewhat isolationist and xenophobic. I think he views the world in very zero-sum ways. I don't think he's a sophisticated foreign policy thinker. And so I do think foreign policy here is the residual of domestic policy. I think, I agree with you in that regard. Again, I want to get back to my issue of personalism and the personalist regime.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  I'm reminded constantly by furious people that Jimmy Carter, poor Jimmy Carter, was forced to sell his peanut farm because the idea that the president of the United States would have an economic interest that was part of his life while he was president was inconceivable. And yet now the president is kind of nakedly selling, you know, access to the White House or traveling abroad and promoting his own personal business. Like so many things in the United States, this would have been simply inconceivable for any previous president. And these presidents were not saints, right? You could scratch at a lot of these presidents and say, oh, you look underneath the surface there, there's a little bit of corruption down there, and that was really wrong and maybe even criminal.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  But it wasn't the way the business was conducted, right? I mean, they knew that if these things were revealed, it would have been catastrophic on the end of their career as opposed to business as usual. And so I do not think, I do not think you can see coherence to this foreign policy over and over again. You know, one, one very smart scholar has said, well, Israel is spheres of influence guy. And what he wants to do is have the US dominate North America and let the rest of the world's great powers dominate their regions. And that's a vision, man. And we may not think it's wise, but that's what he's doing. Well, but he's also subverting US relations with Canada. I mean, if you want to dominate your hemisphere, picking a fight with, you know, the ally with

• 51:23Speaker 02

  whom you've had the warmest relations in international relations history. One of the things that has made the US so fortunate as a great power, and the precedents again are hard to think of, is its uncommonly warm and close relations with its nearest neighbors. And the president has managed to undermine that. You know, go to Canada, ask around. It's shocking the differences. And also picking a fight. Unnecessarily, in my view, with Brazil and other countries in the region, and also with his economic policies. And this is really where we get to the question of coherence. If the US either wants to dominate its sphere of influence, then it would not be inviting China and the European Union

• 52:05Speaker 02

  to swoop in and make a kind of economic compacts with the countries of South America undermining American influence there. You know, Trump is essentially de-friending, as we would say, the countries of the Western Hemisphere, one by one, and they will search for friends elsewhere. So I don't buy the whole spheres of influence thing. And then you say, well, Trump is engaging in the pivot and wanting to gear up for an understanding that China is the new bad guy, and so we have to orient our foreign policy towards wariness of Chinese power. But then again, you have the tariff policies that are just slamming the key countries who would have to be part of any political coalition

• 52:49Speaker 02

  that would want to be pushing back against China's political influence. You know, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, you know, even the small nations of Southeast Asia is just raining down tariffs on Laos for reasons that are hard to figure out. So when you say coherent foreign policy vision, well, you know, the tariff hand seems to be undermining what the China hand would be thinking. And I think if you go around the world from location to location, you don't see that coherence. You know, Europe, again, another very strange example. You know, one would have thought there's a really good debate to be had among serious people as to how committed the US should be to Ukraine in its war against Russia. But there was very little debate

• 53:33Speaker 02

  as to which side the US was rooting for in that war. And when the Trump administration comes to power, suddenly it's like, well, I don't know, which, you know, that changes now on a weekly or monthly basis. That's, again, back to chaotic, back to mercurial, back to bizarre. I cannot see the world in which we can look at the sum total of the foreign policy and say there is any vision there other than... A general tendency to want to enrich the ruling clan slash give a finger to people they don't seem to like abroad. So I agree with you, however, that we are seeing the

• 54:13Speaker 02

  primacy of domestic policy. I would just want to remind everybody that this is bifurcated, that the Trump administration is delivering to its so-called base on culture war issues, but not explicitly not on economic issues. And so if you look at the big, beautiful bill, or whatever the heck it is they call it, that is a wealth transfer up, right? From the working class to the wealthiest. And I don't think that is really delivering what the base wanted on the economic front. So yes, you definitely have the full promised

• 54:56Speaker 02

  payoff on the aggressive pursuit of culture war issues. And that there, the goods are being delivered. Personally, they're not my goods, but yes, you know, those are the goods promised, those are the goods delivered. But this is where I think I want to return again to Martin Wolf's book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, in which he, I think, invented the phrase plutopopulism, in which plutocrats use culture war issues instrumentally in order to provide cover for their economic agenda, which is redistributive

• 55:33Speaker 02

  away from the working class toward the wealthy. And on a totally tangential note, many of those policies are not going to make the US stronger in the long run. Trump's war on science, Trump's war on universities, 10, 15, 20 years from now, will the US be stronger or weaker as a result of those domestic wars? It seems obvious to me the US will be weaker. And the metaphor I used elsewhere is if you think about the auditoriums full

• 56:14Speaker 02

  of Nobel Prize winning scientists who came to the United States in the 50 years, say, after the Second World War, that it was a magnet for the talent of the greatest brains in the world and that those contributed to American strength in very tangible ways. Those auditoriums in the next 20 years will be empty.

• 56:38Demetri Kofinas?

  And not just after, during, as you know.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:40Demetri Kofinas?

  Importantly, during the war.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  And so in a sense, when you talk about the American national interest, is America going to be stronger as a result of these policies? You know, my answer is no, it will be weaker. This is, again, in issue after issue, we are seeing a purposeful self harming of American power and interests. So I just can't buy into the idea that there's some alternate grand strategy out there that, you know, we're just not hip enough to understand and that they're pursuing it aptly and thoughtfully in some coherent way.

• 57:16Demetri Kofinas?

  So Jonathan, I'd like to first validate something you said, then I'd like to share a very quick opinion and then ask a question about a historical comparison that you and I've talked about in your appearance on Hidden Forces several years ago, which is pre-World War II France and maybe get an update on your opinion about to what extent today's America resembles France in the 1930s. So first of all, I couldn't agree more. I find myself trying to constantly normalize the Trump administration's policies or to find a charitable interpretation of the things that Trump does. But it feels much more procedural. I don't know that I actually buy it. And in fact, recently, he was asked about Puff Daddy and whether or not he would pardon him, and he said, well, I don't know, you know, maybe, but he did say some bad things about me.

• 58:00Demetri Kofinas?

  And we're all sort of forced to pretend that this is just normal. And obviously, it isn't. And I think that what motivates Trump, to be honest with you, I've always, not always, but I've come to this view and I've expressed it openly. And I'm always sort of wincing at the feedback I need from people that think that I'm somehow biased or I hate Trump. Is that it's showtime. You know, for Trump, this is season two of the Trump presidency, and it's got to be action-packed. There's got to be more explosions. There are going to have to be just more things happening, more sources of entertainment, because what matters most to Donald Trump is attention. He's very attuned to whether or not he's dominating the headlines. And what I would say, this is not, we cannot look just to

• 58:42Demetri Kofinas?

  Trump. To understand this phenomenon, we also have to look to his supporters. And his supporters are looking, among other things, to be entertained. And it isn't just his supporters. I mean, the broader Trump coalition finds him entertaining. Even I find him entertaining. And so, in some sense, part of what has, I think, supported his presidency and his political success has been his capacity to entertain. And America is in this moment of sort of, it does feel, and again, many people feel this, it isn't just me, it's also Trump supporters, that we're in a place of late imperial decline, and this fits into the bread and circuses analogy. So my question that I was going to ask you about historical comparisons is the comparison between pre-World War II France and America today. And of

• 59:26Demetri Kofinas?

  course, you know, France collapsed spectacularly in the face of the German invasion. In fact, I think it was maybe 10 days of the German invasion that they had already partitioned the country. The German army went all the way to the English Channel. A remarkable collapse and occupation of France. And this was at the time quite a shock. And when I read in your book, and I'm going to quote two passages here from your book, two quotes, one of Raymond Aaron, who was a classical realist, and one of William Schreier, who, of course, he was one of Edward R. Murrow's boys, and he wrote The Collapse of the Third Republic. I read both of these in our conversation together on the Hidden Forces Podcast, but I want to read them again for those who need a refresher, and also for all the people in Grant's audience who may have not heard that episode. This is about pre-World War II France, people

• 1:00:11Demetri Kofinas?

  who understand why I'm reading them. And I'd like to ask you, coming out the other end of this, how this comparison holds today? So the first quote by Raymond Aaron is, quote, "In essence, France no longer existed. It existed only in the hatred of the French for one another." And the second quote by William Schreier, which he wrote in The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940, he wrote, and of course, William Schreier, by the way, people don't know, he lived in Germany during the 1930s, during the rise of Hitler, and he wrote famously The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And Schreier writes, quote, "I loved and worked in France for a good many years, beginning in 1925, when the country was not only the greatest power on the continent of Europe, but to me at least, the most civilized and enlightened.

• 1:00:56Demetri Kofinas?

  In the ensuing years, I watched with increasing apprehension the Third Republic go downhill, its strength gradually sapped by dissension and division, by incomprehensible blindness in foreign, domestic, and military policy, by the ineptness of its leaders, the corruption of its press, and by a feeling of growing confusion, helplessness, and cynicism in its people." Even when I read that now, the hairs on my arm stand up. And I don't know if other people in the audience are having a similar reaction. So I read these passages to you two and a half years ago when we did our episode on Hidden Forces together, and I saw those similarities to American society then. I see them now, and I'm just curious, as a historian, have we moved more in that direction

• 1:01:40Demetri Kofinas?

  in the last two and a half years? Like, what would be the updated perspective that you could provide here?

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Well, once again, I want to break your comments down into two parts. The first part about Trump's behavior and his followership, and that I think is relevant to my answer to your second question. Because I do think you're right. You used the word entertainment, and you didn't use the word followership. But again, those who find Trump appealing, Trump's charisma is obviously lost on me, but he is a very charismatic figure, okay, for many, for a very large number of people. And this is a different... Governance style, it's not really the American way, where a charismatic leader dominates the policy.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  And what the leader says and does is what matters. So if the leader says A, then everybody agrees it's A. And then if the leader, three weeks later, says not A, then everybody agrees, of course, it's not A. That level of charismatic leadership. I mean, we have had charismatic leaders in the past in the country, but we have not been defined by the presence of a charismatic leader as our governance form. And I think that's important to observe because the one thing that has surprised me about the second Trump administration, more than the president's authoritarian tendencies, which is that is more than the presence of someone who wants to be an authoritarian,

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  is the presence of how many people are willing to participate in authoritarian followership. I did not think that was something that Americans were really about. And I'm wrong about that. There are a large number of people out there who are content to be authoritarian followers. Now, that's not irrelevant to my answering of the question you built up to, which is France in the 1930s. I do think the analogies hold distressingly, but I'll be very on brand here. I think, if anything, it's worse than that now. So that if we used to be France in the 1930s, a nation kind of so polarized

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  that we were unable to behave in a purposeful way because we were so locked in to these polarized domestic political conflicts. Now, and I had not given this any thought until this conversation, until right in this moment, so I reserve the right to withdraw this comment at any time. Now-

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  If anything, the US seems more like France in the 40s. France under occupation, France that has rolled over. In that, for me, another shocking thing, and it turns out that I'm quite naive, is the extent to which the Republican Party has rolled over. So that the institutional prerogatives of the House and the Senate, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, these institutional bodies used to be led by people who saw as part of their mission a defense of the institutional integrity of their branch of government.

• 1:05:00Demetri Kofinas?

  They were institutionalists.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Yes, and you know, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, they would all agree, you know, you don't tell the House what to do, or you don't tell the Senate what to do, right? We are a co-equal branch of government, and if you want to govern, you have to engage with us as well. Both Houses of Congress are now under Republican majorities, and the Republican Party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the President. And so, again, this fundamental check on presidential authority is absent. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the President's man, serves at the pleasure of the President.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  I'm not an expert in Congress, but I find it very hard to think of another moment in American history in which that was the case. Coincidentally, we also have a, we are in a setting of great judicial permissiveness of certain types of exercise of executive authority. So there were other periods with regard to the Supreme Court, again, conservative or liberal, left or right, in which there would have been more institutional pushback against the exercise of presidential authority. And this was directed against both Democrats and Republicans. And now, I think partially just by circumstance, we have a supermajority on the Supreme Court that is very permissive of presidential power.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  And so, we are now living...

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  In a world that looks a lot like, again, to use my phrase, personalist authoritarianism. And so, yes, I think we got here because we used to be like France in the 1930s. But now, we're much closer to a situation where we're a country that is willfully collaborating with the occupation. So again, if you thought I was gloomy about America being similar to France in the 30s, I'm even gloomier now.

• 1:07:05Demetri Kofinas?

  Okay, who is the occupier? Who is occupying the White House? I don't mean the individual that's inhabiting the presidency. I mean, what is the coalition? What is the power structure that is occupying the United States, in your opinion?

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  That's a great question. And as I said, I have formulated this theory six minutes ago. So I don't really have a fully formed answer to your question.

• 1:07:27Demetri Kofinas?

  I think it is a new collection of moneyed interests.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  Yes, but that's what I was going to reach for, a new collection of moneyed interests. And again, back to that word plutocracy, that we are drifting towards some sort of autocratic, oligopolistic autocracy and plutocracy. But what's more shocking to me about that is the tolerance for it in a critical mass of the American public. You know, I do a lot of stuff with film, and I just want to invoke one of my favorite filmmakers, Jean Pierre Melville, who fought as a member of the French Resistance and made some films about it. And he was lauded for this. And he said, don't forget, there were more people who

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  weren't in the Resistance than who were. And so France's unhappy history extends from the 1930s into the 1940s with the docility of their humiliating collaboration with their occupiers. And so I do think we're drifting into a period in which we're seeing an adequately critical mass of Americans.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Being permissive about a governance style and governance policies that are a noticeable breakpoint from anything we've experienced in the country. I mean, I can really only go back to 1898 in terms of my understanding of American history. So maybe they say, oh, it's just like Andrew Jackson. Well, okay, maybe, but I can't really speak to Jacksonianism with that kind of expertise. But this is different. And I believe unprecedented. And I think more shocking in its followership than its leadership. And I do think it is oligarchic, moneyed plutocracy, as Dimitri you suggested.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Jonathan, it's interesting because, again, as an outsider, I've noticed all that in the UK where I am at the moment, we have a whole set of problems around over here, believe me. But the one thing I've noticed in America, which has really struck me because of my love for America that is born from a deep seated appreciation of what it stood for, how it was founded. And essentially, the document which governed its development, you know, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights are extraordinary pieces of work. And I have been truly shocked that you use the term permissiveness. And as I've watched, and I have no dog in the hunt, and I, depending on what

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  I say, I get accused of being pro Trump or anti-Trump, which is just the way of the world these days. But I try just to observe it because I find it fascinating and concerning at the same time. But there's this, as you say, you use the term permissiveness. I've watched things happen, which to me, the sensible reaction to would be, hey, come on, you're our guy, but that's not how we do things here. There are limits and yes, you're our guy, but America comes first. And the idea of America comes first. And we want you in there, but you got to do things the right way.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  And in my experience of America, as I say, I have a deep love for the country that goes back to the first time I went there as a nine or 10 year old child and just found the place to be awe inspiring. It's always been that way. And whatever was happening at home in the UK or wherever I was in the world in all the various places I've lived around the world. You could kind of always rely on America, no matter who was in that seat, that there were guardrails. It's like being in the bowling alley and you pull the rails up. And it just seems like those rails have now been put down. And that the argument that, hey, you're our guy, but this is America,

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  has been changed around. So it's now, hey, you're our guy, so. And I, for one, find that deeply troubling because it's not just a general thing that I've observed in news stories and, you know, heavily biased media trying to paint events in a certain light and the other side of the media countering it. It's people that I know and respect who I would expect a different response from. It's people who I always believed would be, you're our guy, but. And they seem to have gently turned into, you're our guy, so.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  And they're two very simple words, but and so, but the weight that they carry between them, I've found to be truly astonishing and remarkably confronting. And at the end of the day, for me personally, deeply upsetting.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yes. All I can say is you're pouring my heart out here. You know, I, I agree with 98% of what you just said, and I'll give you another story because I'm something of a storyteller. I mean, what we are witnessing, in my view, and what you've articulated, is the collapse or vanishing of what could be called a certain type of American civic nationalism. And I would define American civic nationalism as what you were talking about. The idea is that there were, there were certain ways that, you know, you're on this team, you're on that team, you're my guy, you're not my guy. But we all agree that this is the way in which we are supposed to behave. And my story here is one of Barry Goldwater.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  And Barry Goldwater is a very, very conservative guy, way more conservative certainly than I am, and known as Mr. Republican. And the, at the time he did this, perhaps the senior representative figure of his party.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  And it was he who finally told President Nixon that he had to go. And there were two beautiful moments in which this occurred. One is when then Nixon's chief of staff, Al Hay, called Goldwater on the phone with some information and Goldwater responded with the line, "Tell the president he has lied to me for the last time," which I thought was a pretty good line. And then there was a meeting of Goldwater with some senators in which Nixon is trying to assess his chances of surviving an impeachment trial in the Senate. And Nixon says something like, you know, "How many votes against me are there?" And Goldwater responds with something like, "This number," and then he said, "including

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  mine." And we don't have that anymore, you know? There is no Barry Goldwater.

• 1:14:15Demetri Kofinas?

  So, first of all, I'm going to state this. It's not a question, and I want to see if either, how either of you feel about it. The politicians are just taking cues from the electorate. I think the reason that this has happened is that we've impoverished our citizenry. I don't just mean that people have less money today. They're culturally and mentally impoverished. And we're a democracy, so we depend on an informed citizenry to be able to operate our government. Do you agree with that, Jonathan?

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  I think, first of all, let me say, I passionately believe in democracy, and I don't believe that there's any other plausible system of government that can replace it. I just want to be very clearly on record as saying that first, because I'm about to say this, which is, recent events have certainly exposed the limits of democracy. I mean, so, yes, I do think this is a bottom-up phenomenon and reflects a collective failure of the functioning of American democracy.

• 1:15:10Demetri Kofinas?

  And the moral character of the citizenry. So much so that I would say a significant number of people don't even seem to share common ethical standards are on what would have once been considered permissible for people in public office, or any office for that matter.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, you know, realists are very cautious about calling moral balls and strikes, but it's not a good look for the country. I will agree with you on that.

• 1:15:34Demetri Kofinas?

  So let me, let me go to the question I had. First of all, I think there might be an opportunity here to explore another historical comparison, which is that between Britain, or certain Brits within elite circles of British society during the 1930s, and Nazi Germany. And the choice that I think you've talked about that many of those people made between whether or not they'd like to live in a Nazi-dominated world or risk the possibility that the USSR could gain influence over Europe and what that meant for their own economic standing. I want to though point out something specific that's happening now, which is that for the first time, the Trump administration is experiencing a scandal. Like, and I'm not talking about, you know, it's, yeah, no, it didn't happen with grabbing

• 1:16:17Demetri Kofinas?

  them by the pussy, or the meme coin, or any of that stuff didn't work, but the Jeffrey Epstein situation, and I think also, to a certain degree, the support of Israel by the administration, that I think also is, in many ways, rides along the Jeffrey Epstein story, which is really the more important one. I think the Jeffrey Epstein story, I think, is important because there does seem to be, and I think this is where we can learn some things about what matters to the MAGA base and where their values are independent of the president's personality. And I think that has to do with transparency and sunlight. There is a deep desire among those who support Trump to bring transparency and sunlight to the, quote, "deep state."

• 1:17:01Demetri Kofinas?

  And I think what Trump's response to, and sort of words and policies and actions and statements around the Jeffrey Epstein story have done is they have splintered his coalition. And we are seeing people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, now I can't remember all the people I've seen, but people that were vociferous advocates of the president, it has made them openly opposed to his policies. So I'm curious if this, to you, may be a sign that things aren't all that lost, that there is an independent sense of, an independent moral grounding in the country and in the citizenry that is independent of the head of the party.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  I don't know, and I'm reluctant to speak confidently to some of these situations. As a non-expert outside observer, I guess my instinct would be if part of your success was in convincing people that their appreciation for bizarre conspiracy theories was right, and that you were going to be the savior of those who were the victims of these elaborate conspiracy theories, whatever they may be, and there are endless amounts of them, then

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  if you act in a way that seems to be inconsistent with that, it would probably rub that subset of your following that kind of signed on for the whole, you know, you will save us from bizarre conspiracy X thing. And so I can see why that would weirdly be the one thing that would dent the president's Teflon. But literally, there have been 100 things in which a friend of mine, or my mother-in-law, or somebody would say, oh my God, now that this has happened, that's the end. No politician could survive the exposure of this thing

• 1:19:03Speaker 02

  to them, and yet, the president survives. And so I'm very reluctant to say, ah, well, now he's been tripped up, maybe hoisted on his own batard, because there's a certain type of black magic here that is incomprehensible to me. Trump has survived the exposure of things, scores if not hundreds, that would have ended the political career of any other national figure in American history. And merrily, he goes along. So I just don't know.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Is that perhaps because he doesn't really have a political career? I mean, he doesn't have a political, but I mean, he doesn't, right? His political resume is basically president. That's it. You know, it's extraordinary when you, when you think about it. But Jonathan, I want to go back if I can, some forty minutes ago, to something you said when we were talking about national interests. And that was this idea of being a reliable partner on the world stage. And you know, the, the kind of angle of both Dimitri's and my podcast primarily has a financial bent to it. And so I'd like to talk about an event in the financial world that I'd be curious to get your view as a classical realist on.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  And that was the move by the Treasury to sanction Russian central bank assets back in February of twenty twenty two, when the Russians crossed the Ukrainian border. Because that move, you know, at the time, just to take us all back there, there, there were sanctions being thrown every day to try and ratchet the pressure up, hopefully to find the breaking point that would deescalate things without any success whatsoever. And then this move happened where the Treasury sanctioned the Russian central bank assets in the SWIFT system, essentially freezing three hundred billion dollars of sovereign assets. And at the time that happened, I was a surprised it got as little coverage as it did.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  The importance of that act didn't seem to register, certainly with the mainstream media, which I understand to an extent, but also the financial media, I thought were pretty scant in covering it. And my contention at the time was that act was an absolute game changer. Because to your point about being a reliable partner, no matter what's happened in the past, sovereign reserves were sacrosanct, as, as they realistically should be. Particularly given the construction of the global financial system and the importance that SWIFT plays in it, the United States has its thumb on the scales of every single country in the world and their, and their reserves. So for them to make that move so quickly without flagging it, without doing anything, I thought was a, a massive overstep and a potentially fatal error.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Because now the incentives have completely changed for every single central bank in the world that, that holds dollar reserves, which is every single central bank in the world. I'd be curious as to your thoughts on, on that. I don't know how closely you've followed that. I feel certain that you, you understand it better than most. So I'd be very curious as to your thoughts on that move and the potential ramifications for it.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  So this is a subtle and sophisticated point. And it would have been, I think, a lot more important in normal times. And I do want to respect it because I think for students of international relations, it's something that has come up actually a lot. It did come up in the 1930s. It came up with the sanctions against Rhodesia during the 60s and 70s. I think it came up during the Iran hostage crisis. And even before the episode that you mentioned with Russia's central bank assets, the question of whether the US was overreaching with regard to its position in the SWIFT

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  system and the ability to interrupt countries' access to international finance. And many people expressed what you expressed in all of those episodes and in this one as well, which is you really have to understand that that must be separate from normal politics. Because if you try to introduce normal politics into the functioning of the international financial system, then you will undermine the credibility of that system and it will stop functioning. Or, you know, let's say you can do it once and then that will be the end of it. That is a debate worth having. I don't know if it hasn't been superseded by several other things.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  People like me, not with my classical realist hat on, but with my student of international money and finance hat on, have been anticipating the erosion of the international dollar order for a very long time. And we've been serially wrong. So I'm kind of gotten out of the business of being a gloom and doomer about the dollar, simply because at a certain point you have to say, well, you've been glooming and dooming for decades and yet there the dollar still is. And so you have to respect the fact that you got that call wrong. And I think that's a very important thing to do. This relates to your question in that. As with so many other things, the Trump administration seems to be doing everything it can to undermine the international role of the dollar.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  And I think that the episode you're talking about nested in that larger phenomenon does suggest to me, with the qualifier that I've always been wrong on this issue, that we see more factors contributing toward at least a demand for alternative money and payment systems globally. And that would be to the detriment of the international role of the dollar. So I think that that point that you raised about the Russia episode was an important one and things that international relations scholars could argue about, yes or no on the other side of it.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  But I see it more as nested into this larger question of the future of the international monetary and financial system and the role of the US and the dollar in it, which I do think, as with everything else, is being purposefully, if foolishly dismantled by the Trump administration.

• 1:25:16Demetri Kofinas?

  So I want to bring us back to this conversation about Epstein and conspiracies, Jonathan, and to explore a larger point. So I feel like, first of all, let me point out something, that we have seen some of the largest media figures on the American right, speaking about and exploring and rehashing and rethinking all sorts of historical events around which we had pretty firm narratives. 9/11 is one example. Building 7 has come up quite a bit now in popular discourse. Tucker Carlson recently had on someone, just a couple of days ago, this episode aired. I haven't watched it yet, but I look forward to watching it.

• 1:25:59Demetri Kofinas?

  And it has to do with the bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVeigh. And were there other people collaborating with him? Was the FBI involved? Was the CIA involved? What's the real story? The Trump administration was elected, promising to bring more transparency to RFK, JFK, to release the, quote, "files," the CIA's role and involvement in Martin Luther King's death, Russiagate, Iraq, Vietnam, even World War II. And who was the principal villain in World War II? What I think is interesting here, what I think sort of ties this all together, is first of all, let me make an observation, which is to say that almost everything that we know, or think we know, we don't actually know. We know it because we've taken it on

• 1:26:42Demetri Kofinas?

  authority. And when people's trust in institutional authority breaks down, their sources of canonical truth also dissolve, and they begin to reach in different places for a new truth. In fact, there's this interesting theory that, I have the book sitting on my shelf, I bought the book some years ago, it's called, I think it's called Rape of the Mind. And if I'm not mistaken, the theory is essentially about how people become radicalized. And it has to do with trauma. The trauma of an experience, let's say, like 9/11, where your entire notion of safety gets upended. And because the framework that you have to operate in the world collapses, you cannot live in the world without some sense of order in your mind, and so you reach

• 1:27:25Demetri Kofinas?

  for something else. And in those instances where people's worldview is upended radically, they are, become very vulnerable to a new framework, or a new way of viewing the world, or a new villain that they can pin an explanation on. So I think first, it's important just to recognize that, that most of what we think we know, we don't actually know. And so what, I think a part of what's happening here is that all of these conversations about, quote, conspiracies, just really reflect people's lack of epistemological understanding about whatever it is that is being discussed. And that what we're really experiencing here is a new collective myth-making process underway. You know, the question of what happened, what happened on 9/11, is really a question about, give me a new story that helps me make sense

• 1:28:06Demetri Kofinas?

  of the world. And then the next question that follows that is, who am I? And that's where also the scapegoating is part of the process. I mean, I think at the end of the day, in order for us to get through this, there needs to be some sort of scapegoating mechanism. And what we're seeing in the sort of Epstein, OKC bombing stuff, is the attempt to try and scapegoat some kind of, quote, "deep state" or elite, sort of, group of people that are responsible for the Iraq War. And, and so I think that's actually what we're seeing. Now, putting aside, you know, what really happened on 9/11, or what really happened to get us into Vietnam, I'm not interested in necessarily debating that. I think there's interesting conversations, I don't know that we can ever really get to the bottom of who actually killed JFK.

• 1:28:51Demetri Kofinas?

  Or what really happened if it wasn't just Oswald. But I'm curious, like, as a historian, when you view what's happening here, do you have a nuanced sense of other historical examples? Well, societies underwent something similar. And what conclusions or further insights can you draw from those examples?

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  So I don't have direct historical parallels for you. You know, this all goes back to, you know, in America, Richard Hofstadter's, the famous essay on the paranoid style in American politics. So without, therefore, answering the question you wanted me to answer, I want to make two observations. One that essentially is in accord with what you said, but one that I think pushes back against part of it a little bit. The one that's in accord with what you said, I think, is that what's fascinating about conspiracies is, or conspiracy theories, is that they are comforting. And they are comforting for the reasons that you suggested, which is if I'm walking down the street and horrifying things can happen for no reason, that's very psychologically unsettling to me.

• 1:29:55Speaker 02

  But if actually, the reason why that horrifying thing happened is because there's an identifiable evil force out there that perhaps someone can expose for me. And actually, it wasn't just a random and inexplicable thing, but part of some deep and sinister project, that's actually very comforting. You know, that I can understand. And that actually is protective of me in a certain way. Because if horrible things happen totally randomly, then I'm very vulnerable. But if horrible things happen because there's a nefarious cabal of people who are executing these horrible things, well, then, A, that probably won't happen to me. And B, well, maybe I can be in the business of exposing them. So conspiracy theories, I think, are popular, again, because they bring order to disorder.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  I mean, the world is a radically uncertain and disorderly place. Humans do not like that. Humans prefer a tidier and understandable world. And weirdly, crazy conspiracy theories actually provide a logical coherence to the world. And so I do think that that's why they tend to be so attractive, especially in American politics, but I suspect in many other places. But I want to, again, as is on brand, put a darker edge on the question of some of the stories you told about media figures pitching bizarre new theories of this or that. Here, I do think, this argues against what I was saying earlier, I do think there

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  is a coherent project involved. And that is the project of undermining truth claims. You know, this gets us back to Orwell, one of the great anti-authoritarian thinkers of the 20th century. If you undermine people's belief in the existence of a truth, then anything goes, right? And this is why what seemed like an inside baseball thing of Trump firing the head of the Statistics Department for reporting a statistic he didn't like, right? That is a very Orwellian moment. So if you can remove from people their belief

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  that there are relatively inviolable truth claims, then you've really got them by the political throat. And again, this is, I want to go back to Nixon administration again. Nixon, you know, I'm not, I'm not, was not a fan of Nixon. He's actually the man I love to hate. He's a very fascinating character. So I'm not, you know, I don't want to speak of him reverently. And Nixon was a liar. Nixon was a epical liar. Nixon was a Guinness Book of World Records liar. But Nixon knew the difference between his lies and the truth. And when Nixon got caught in lies, he understood that he was getting caught in lies. He did

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  not make claims that the truth did not exist. And I do think that the claim that the truth does not exist is a very important part of the authoritarian project. And so I do think that that is the common thread that weaves its way through much of what you're saying when you're talking about media personalities trying to undermine our beliefs in the received wisdom about what we would have thought was what we used to call in the old days, settled science. For example, the Nazis were the bad guys in World War II. I mean, I don't consider that to be a really complex question.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Right, right. Jonathan, look, before we wrap up, I'd love to To get a sense from you perhaps of how, because the more people I talk to, the more people will preface a conversation with something like, well, look, I'm a realist, but, and the fact that we now have proven through this conversation, there is a definition of being a realist and a set of characteristics, traits and principles that surround it. I'd be grateful if you could give people a little help in how to think about this and how to think about the change that we're feeling, about how to, I don't want to say remain sane, because that might be beyond you, me, Dimitri combined, let alone putting all of

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  you on your own. But to give people some kind of framework they can use to pass the information that's coming out. Dimitri and I's mutual friend Ben Hunt gave me one of these a long time ago, where he just said to me, you know, whenever you're reading anything in the newspapers or seeing something on TV, ask yourself, why am I reading this now? Or why am I seeing this now? And that simple exercise has been a godsend to me, and it has profoundly changed the way I view the world. So if you could help the people listening and give them any tips as to how to think about this in a true realist way, that would be incredibly helpful.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know that I have quick and easy tips.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  No, I'm sure there aren't any.

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  But I think one of the cornerstones of realism writ large is the acknowledgement that there are a range of possible things that could be going on, that you can't necessarily, you have to be open to the idea that things that happen may be inconsistent with your worldview, and you have to be prepared to acknowledge that. So realism requires, I think George, all the realists say it, but I think George Kennan said it, or perhaps it was E. H. Carr, said it first, which is realism is about seeing the world as it is and not as you wish it was.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  So I think that's an important rule of thumb for all schools of realism. You really need to acknowledge what is happening. And I think that that also means, I live in the academic world. The academic instinct is to normalize and contextualize. But there are moments in which things are not normal. And again, I think it is academic malpractice to try and normalize the abnormal. So what I would urge people who wish to think as a realist does is to recognize that

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  there are things that are happening that are outside of the realm of what we would normally consider the possible. And to try and desperately shoehorn them into some sort of logic or normality or comfort is a mistake. We are in a period of astonishing flux. And these periods, you know, the world is always changing, but it's not always changing in a fundamental way. Things are very different, and I would urge people not to allow themselves to be lulled into the comfort of normalization.

• 1:36:55Demetri Kofinas?

  I don't know if you guys noticed this, I've got a cup here of all sorts of presidential slogans and campaign slogans. My favorite is a return to normalcy, which was Warren Harding's campaign slogan during his first term. He didn't survive, unfortunately. So I just want to just make a couple of points before we wrap this up, guys. First of all, we never, you and I never talked about Peter Pomerantsev's book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, did we, Jonathan?

• 1:37:21Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:37:22Demetri Kofinas?

  Have you read the book? Are you familiar with his work?

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  I have not, no.

• 1:37:24Demetri Kofinas?

  I really, I highly recommend this because this speaks exactly to what you were talking about with the undermining of truth claims. And it's a historical reflection of Peter's time in Russia during the period in which Putin consolidated power.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  I will acquire it.

• 1:37:41Demetri Kofinas?

  It is an incredible book, and so when you do read it, please send me an email, because I'd love to talk to you about it. So I do think we're seeing an unraveling of narratives here and truth in the form of narrative structure, because that is the way in which we understand most things. Very few people actually put in a significant amount of work to understand things more epistemically. I just wanted to make one point before we wrap this up. And it goes back to this, let's just take the example of World War II and the claims that have been recently circulating from both a Joe Rogan interview and a Tucker Carlson interview of Daryl Cooper, who I've met, by the way, very nice guy, where he came on their show and he claimed that it seems, again, to be candid, I I haven't sat to sort of investigate the claims very clearly, but it seems that his

• 1:38:25Demetri Kofinas?

  claim was that Churchill may have been the chief villain of World War II. And if that's in fact what he said, you know, obviously, I think that that's ridiculous. I think is the way I would describe it. But I think, though, there's this sense on the right, and it's very unfortunate that very popular figures, people like Joe Rogan have, and Tucker Carlson, of course, makes this argument that, you know, this is just about free speech, guys. We're genuinely just investigating. We're just asking question. We're investigating these truth claims. And there's nothing wrong with investigating truth claims. But I think there's also a kind of gleeful celebration that you see among folks on the right when it comes to their irreverence for some of these founding mythologies. So there's a

• 1:39:08Demetri Kofinas?

  reason why we feel the way we do about the stories that we have surrounding World War II. It's not simply a matter of, well, you know, let's just, let's revisit this. Maybe in fact, it turns out Churchill was the primary villain. I guess my point is that, and this goes back to my larger point about, we're sort of in this place of genuinely, we don't know who we are. And one of the things that I think is so dangerous about a time when you don't know who you are, is that someone else is in a position to tell you who you are. And I think that these myths are important. They do matter. They're not just mythologies. They're not just narratives that we just made up. I mean, there's substance behind them. And, you know, it's just like, for example, I mean, not to go too far this show, but it's also like people that nitpick how many people died in the concentration

• 1:39:49Demetri Kofinas?

  camps, as if the point is to decide whether the number is accurate and not the intentions behind what was going on and the evil that was being perpetrated and the darkness that descended on the world. So anyway, I just, I think these stories are important. They matter to me. My grandfather fought in World War II. He fought in the Greek Resistance to the Nazi occupation. And I just think it's beyond reprehensible that we pretend as though it's no big deal. And even if you want to discuss these, I'm open to you discussing these topics, but the idea that it shouldn't be a big deal shows a real lack of appreciation for what the world experienced collectively in some of these instances. And I think that that's, that's wrong. So anyway, I just wanted to make that statement.

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  Let me just make one additional comment on that because it helps with answering the question about what realists do. And I think what we also do is we stare the facts in the face, no matter how unpleasant they may be. And so they may undermine a myth or two, but we insist that they are the facts. And that's the difference between some of these stories that you've been sharing about people who are undermining myths. They're not undermining myths, right? They're undermining facts. And so, again, on the one hand, yes, nothing can be sacred. If new information comes to light and we find that information discomforting, too bad. We have to stare at it and we have to live with it and we have to process it.

• 1:41:16Speaker 02

  This often happens when someone who we looked up to with reverence has found out to have done something horrible. That happens in history and we can't pretend that that information doesn't exist. But that is a very different enterprise than trying to undermine the facts that are there. And so a lot of this nonsense about World War II, for example, is purposeful, and I think the word you used gleeful, garbage, and it is designed to undermine the basis of truth claims.

• 1:41:47Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, I just want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that these are just stories, but for example, there was one anecdote that was provided to Tucker Carlson interview that the Nazis simply didn't have anywhere to put the prisoners of war and that's why. And maybe that was true for certain cases. The point is that that doesn't fundamentally alter the fact that there were specific projects to literally wipe people out, their entire nations off the face of the planet. It is a very different type of evil than simply occupying and putting people into camps. And so, anyway, I don't want to necessarily go down this road, but I think that, and I just, I made the point already, I think that there is something happening here. There's an unmaking going on, unraveling of stories that are central to who we are. I'm not suggesting by the fact that there are stories that there aren't facts tied

• 1:42:29Demetri Kofinas?

  to them, but they still are stories with a very powerful generative force behind them and an affirmative force. And if we just simply tear things down without replacing them with something new, then we create a vacuum in which other people can come in and tell the stories for us. And that's what's very frightening about the world we're in today.

• 1:42:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  Amen. Jonathan, this has been an absolutely terrific, terrific conversation. I'm so grateful to you for taking the time to come and chat with us both today. I've enjoyed it immensely.

• 1:42:56Speaker 02

  That's been a blast. Thanks so much for having me.

• 1:42:59Demetri Kofinas?

  Thank you, Jonathan. It was really wonderful having you on.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Oh, boy, oh, boy, Dee, that was so much fun and so thought provoking. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be lying awake thinking about a lot of that now. Thanks for that.

• 1:43:10Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, that was really amazing. I have to say, I get there's certain, when we venture to certain areas of these discussions, I do feel myself getting rather emotional.

• 1:43:19Demetri Kofinas?

  Man, I don't know how much of this also has to do with the fact that we've lost most of the World War II generation.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, very possibly, very possibly, which is what happens, right? It's only when you lose those generations that the stories die. You know, that's part of the problem. That's why these fourth turnings happen every 80 years, because that's

• 1:43:35Demetri Kofinas?

  Right, exactly. Way to bring it back on the pivot. Way to bring it back.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right. But that's it, right? That's why it happens that way. It's, it makes sense and you can see through time that when the stories die, to your point earlier, which you made so beautifully, the vacuum is created for other stories to fill them. And, you know, I don't like the way our stories are going any more than you do. And this isn't a Trump thing at all, although sadly, I'm sure parts of that conversation will be framed that way. You know, people will make judgments based on a stance that someone takes against their guy, you know? And it's a shame, because as Jonathan said, to be a realist, and I think most people would like to define themselves as that, even if they don't mean it in the clinical

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  sense, you have to be able to hear other people's points of view and not take it as a personal affront and not take it as they're against me because they think differently to me. And that's one of the key things that we seem to have lost.

• 1:44:33Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, I mean, and it's also important, as I'm sure you'd agree, that it matters whether the interlocutor you're facing is arguing in good faith. And I think, you know, that's also part of the problem that so much of these, again, the point I was making about the irreverence for the stories is that there is a kind of gleeful enjoyment that people have in stepping and trampling all over things that matter to other people.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Demetri Kofinas?

  And this goes back to the way in which we, so many people can sit and listen to Trump pontificate about whether or not he would pardon

• 1:45:03Demetri Kofinas?

  P Diddy, because he didn't say something nice to him, or, you know, did Sydney Sweeney, what did she say? Oh, I kinda like her. I kinda like her now. Or like, you know, the entertainment value, it's scary. It's like, it's like it doesn't matter anymore. We don't have a view anymore of the presidency and the president's role being a sacred role, and the seriousness of that role. We just, it's like, oh no, he's just another stand-up comedian to fill my time. As if the system is just gonna go on and on on its own, and we're not gonna pay the consequences for our lack of participation.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you spoke about this in the series before, you know, it used to be the office of the president, and now it's the president. And that's a big difference, you know, because once you make it about the man and not about the office, the integrity that comes with the office reverts to being the integrity of the man, and the integrity of different presidents is different. And so the integrity is not consistent. And that's something you need in something like the office of the presidency of the United States, you know? Without it, what do you have?

• 1:45:57Demetri Kofinas?

  I'll tell you what, though, I'm excited to hear the feedback for this episode.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we'll put our helmets on and assume the fetal position.

• 1:46:05Demetri Kofinas?

  I'm excited. I have more courage, because I'm with you on this flight.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Thanks, buddy. Safe for your numbers. I'm easier to find than you.

• 1:46:12Demetri Kofinas?

  You know, I was, again, not to drag this out, but I was speaking with someone about courage. And, you know, for me, I define courage as the affirmation of love in the face of fear. Action affirmed by love in the face of fear. Because it's not necessarily courageous to sit and sort of, you know, fist punch a lion in the face if it's, you know, it's got its jaws wide open. That doesn't necessarily affirm your love. But, you know, throwing yourself in front of a moving car to save a child, that's an affirmation of something that means something to you. And so I think that at the end of the day, when it comes to these conversations, there are things that I'm willing to speak about because they're meaningful to me, and I'm willing to take a position because it means something to me. And we obviously don't see that with many of the cowards that inhabit political

• 1:46:57Demetri Kofinas?

  office. But I think that we all need to work on developing our courage, and our willingness to speak out when something affronts a deeper affirmation that we hold.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  Amen. Amen to that. And that, you know, that's the first stage of two, unfortunately. The second stage is being able to listen to someone challenging those things, and listen in good faith as well, and ultimately disagree if you want to, but at least hear them out, and not just immediately shut down because they took that other stance. But more power to you, my friend. Well, look, that's it for another episode. We've got a lot more things to think about and a lot more people to talk to. Neither Dmitry nor I have any idea who's going to be next, but rest assured, there will be someone because we've both got so many questions. Before we disappear, though, Dmitry, just let people know where they can list all the awesome stuff that you're putting out.

• 1:47:43Demetri Kofinas?

  They can go to hiddenforces.io and they can find everything they need to learn about the show, the episode library, how to subscribe to the content, everything.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  That's exactly what they should do. And they will also find there your previous conversation with Jonathan Koshin, which I really listened to the other day. And it's, again, just fantastic. What a wonderful guest he was then and what a wonderful guest he's been today. So again, thanks to Jonathan.

• 1:48:04Demetri Kofinas?

  Episode 298, that one.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  There you go. I have no idea how you remember all that stuff. It's extraordinary. You can always pull these numbers out.

• 1:48:09Demetri Kofinas?

  I'm good with numbers. I'm good with remembering numbers. It's weird.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  It's amazing. All right, my friend. Until next time. I'll see you again soon.

• 1:48:15Demetri Kofinas?

  Wonderful. Thank you, Grant. I look forward to it. If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces.io. You can follow me on Twitter at Kofinas and you can email me at [email protected]. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.