No Mercy / No Malice: The Reckoning

As read by George Hahn. https://profgmedia.substack.com/p/the-reckoning Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:18Speaker 02

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• 1:39Scott Galloway?

  I'm Sky Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. Breaking laws and blowing past norms has consequences for society. America is in the middle of a long-running crisis. Sooner or later, we'll face a reckoning that will either heal the breach or harden the schism. The Reckoning, as read by George Han.

• 2:08George Hahn?

  Minutes after a gunman attacked the White House Correspondents Dinner last Saturday, millions of Americans on the left and the right theorized the attack was staged. This is only the latest example of our worst instincts run amok, leading us to ignore Lincoln's urging to call on the better angels of our nature. So far, those calls have been sent to voicemail. I believe the US, after a decade of breaking laws and blowing past norms, is headed for a reckoning. In my NYU Brand Strategy course, I teach a section on crisis management.

• 2:50George Hahn?

  The playbook: acknowledge the issue, take responsibility, and over-correct. As anthropologist Victor Turner observed, leaders perform rituals to repair social breaches. In his 1957 book Schism: And Continuity in an African Society, Turner laid out the four-act structure of his social drama theory: breach, crisis, and redress, followed by either reintegration or recognition of a schism. Observing the Ndembu people in what is now Zambia, Turner witnessed an ambitious young

• 3:33George Hahn?

  man trigger a social drama by publicly refusing to share meat from the hunt, a violation of tribal norms, and a direct challenge to his uncle, the chief. The breach spiraled into a village-wide crisis, forcing everyone to take sides and exposing tensions in the group's social structure. In the end, rituals meant to repair the breach failed, and the young man left the group to form his own village.

• 4:05George Hahn?

  Over the course of his career, Turner built on his social drama theory, applying it to his understanding of political contests, legal disputes, and other social conflicts. According to Turner, "Every crisis pits our ties to the larger group against our deeper loyalties to individual leaders or factions." In other words, "The most devastating fractures aren't caused by outside enemies, they come from within." Future historians will debate where to locate Act 1, "The Breach," of America's current social drama. When the country elected a man who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals?

• 4:50George Hahn?

  Or when we re-elected a convicted felon and insurrectionist? Or when masked federal agents started murdering and disappearing people? Maybe the breach occurred earlier, with atmospherics that made Trump's election possible. The 2008 financial crisis blew up the housing market, sent unemployment above 10%, and reduced household wealth by 26%. The result? Wasn't prison sentences, but bonuses. Obama. Two breaches occurred on George W. Bush's watch. He responded to 9/11 by lying about weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq,

• 5:32George Hahn?

  the biggest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor, while losing momentum in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The bungled response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Bush's tone-deaf remarks, crystallized the image of an indifferent and inept government. Bill Clinton lowered the Oval Office bar. Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra affair was a modern triangle trade that sent arms to Iran in exchange for hostages, funded a secret war in Central America, and, according to journalist Gary Webb's reporting, inflicted the crack cocaine epidemic on American communities. Another Reagan breach?

• 6:16George Hahn?

  Turning his back on the tens of thousands of people who died of AIDS on his watch. The list of executive breaches goes on.

• 6:28George Hahn?

  If the executive branch is the monster, Congress is Dr. Frankenstein. Since World War II, the legislative branch has slowly delegated its powers, acquiescing in the face of presidential expansion, washing its hands of wars, scaling back oversight, outsourcing rules and regulations, and weakening its authority to tax and spend. Meanwhile, a seat in Congress has become the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme, as lawmakers are effectively immune from insider trading prosecutions. In 2024, Republicans David Rousher and Susan Collins registered returns on their investments

• 7:12George Hahn?

  of 149% and 77% respectively. Democrats Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nancy Pelosi performed slightly worse, at 142% and 71%. The S&P, a decent proxy for your retirement portfolio, returned 25% that year. The question isn't why Congress's approval rating is so low, at 10%, but why it's that high. 14 of the past 20 national election cycles have been "change" elections, with the out party retaking the White House

• 7:55George Hahn?

  or at least one chamber of Congress. But the only real change since 2000 has been a three-times increase in the share of Americans who say the government is the most important problem facing America. In a recent interview, former Senator Ben Sasse said government is a tool of the people. Imagine a power drill becoming sentient and coming for our eyes.

• 8:26George Hahn?

  Healing from a breach requires what Turner called "redressive action." Modern societies deploy legal and political processes, rituals, to balance competing forces — truth, justice, forgiveness — as they attempt to repair the rift. After apartheid, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided a healing framework by giving citizens the opportunity to bear witness. "Whites can no longer deny what took place," Afrikaans journalist Anchi Krog wrote. "The commission revealed the extent to which apartheid dehumanized, and it introduced a

• 9:09George Hahn?

  moral language in which the past could be confronted." After World War II, the Allies secured justice via the Nuremberg Trials, but the healing process continues through the concept of "Wergangenheimsbeveltigung," the "struggle of overcoming the past," which shapes German political culture to this day. After reunification, Germany repeated the exercise, creating the Stasi Records Agency, so citizens could read their secret police files, providing healing with relatively few prosecutions.

• 9:47George Hahn?

  U.S. history provides examples of healing, but our record is schizophrenic. After the Civil War, federal troops occupied the South, providing a "very limited umbrella of security for free black people, and, with the help of three constitutional amendments, the promise of a more just and democratic society." Three years into Reconstruction, however, President Andrew Johnson issued a blanket amnesty to former Confederates, including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, taking treason off the table.

• 10:25George Hahn?

  A few years later, to promote reconciliation, Congress restored voting rights for most former Confederates. After the contested 1876 election, former Confederates leveraged their restored political power to end Reconstruction. As historian Eric Foner noted, "Reconstruction, in some ways, is still alive because the issues of Reconstruction have never been fully resolved in American society." Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and the recent fights over Confederate monuments illustrate how that unresolved breach marches on like a zombie, infecting today's politics.

• 11:07George Hahn?

  In the wake of Watergate and President Nixon's subsequent resignation, Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor. "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over," Ford said in his 1974 inaugural address. "Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men." In pardoning Nixon, Ford was performing a forgiveness ritual in the form of a legal process. It didn't work. Two-thirds of Americans at the time disapproved of the decision, and Ford's approval rating dropped 21 points

• 11:51George Hahn?

  within a month of taking office. The crisis caused by Nixon's power grab endures, casting its long shadow over opportunities to hold Trump accountable, including the decision to prosecute him for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Ultimately, voters rejected the legal process in favor of a political one, and re-elected Trump, who immediately sought retribution against his political opponents and pardoned his J-6 insurrection gang. Zooming out, our failures to confront history have contributed to a half-century-long erosion of trust in our institutions.

• 12:35George Hahn?

  The periodic exceptions? Trust briefly recovers when your party wins, making every election feel existential. Because it is.

• 12:48George Hahn?

  The midterms may provide a reckoning, but it won't be the one the US needs. Our divisions run too deep. One example: prosecuting the rampant corruption of Trump's family and associates will deliver justice, but if we fail to also address congressional corruption—insider trading, Citizens United spending—we're putting a Band-Aid over a wound that needs to be cauterized. Does our society have the courage to go deeper in the attention span to see it through? My Yoda on American history is historian Heather Cox Richardson. Last time we spoke, I was struck by her optimism.

• 13:32George Hahn?

  "We've renewed our democracy in the past," she told me, "and we have the tools to do it again." Her advice: "Channel Lincoln, who navigated a period of political instability and violence and renewed our democracy by appealing to the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence." Although Lincoln didn't just appeal to values, he presided over 600,000 deaths first. The question isn't whether the US can renew itself. History says yes. Americans yearn for better leadership, but this misses the point.

• 14:16George Hahn?

  The people running the country aren't stupid. They've been incentivized to continue to engage in corruption, demonization, and the trampling of institutions and norms. We don't have a leadership crisis, but a consequence deficit.

• 14:37George Hahn?

  Life is so rich.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12.

• 15:22Speaker 05

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• 16:01Speaker 06

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