The strength and weakness of JD Vance is that he he he he at least used to be a dedicated reader of the Matthew Iglesias plug.

And it's it's good.

I I to be not like.

Because he, you know, secretly agree with me whatever.

But like he is a.

Smart, widely read person who is genuinely interested in politics and public policy just like I.

Welcome back to posting through it.

I'm Mike.

I'm Jared.

And we have a very exciting episode for you today with Luke Savage, a Blogger, podcaster of the left, I would say, who is a critic of centrist neoliberal pundits.

He's going to talk a little bit about Matt Iglesias, a guy who needs no introduction to most of our listeners because he is arguably the most famous Blogger of the non Trump MAGA world.

I think that's fair.

I'm still hyped up from our first premium episode.

That was so much fun to just kind of take a little bit of the Sheen off and and just make a little bit more raw of an episode.

Especially the conversation about Cracker Barrel, just like sent me into a fit.

So good your impression of your mom.

It was so much in that episode was fun.

Yeah.

And we'll be recording another one next week with a little bit of extra stuff from Luke in there on a discussion about chorus and probably How would you describe the chorus situation, Jared?

It is a what's the language they use?

Like a a Democratic influencer incubator operation or something.

I don't know.

Luke knew more about it than we did, so like Mike said, in addition to the interview you're going to hear today, we also talked to him a little bit about that, and you'll find that in this week's premium episode.

And we're going to talk a little bit also about Chicago.

I just want to ask really briefly before we get into this episode, how you're feeling on the apparent eve of some sort of mega occupation.

It doesn't feel good.

The sense I get from living here and from talking to some of the people, you know, some of my friends here is that a lot of people just kind of don't know what to expect yet.

Is it going to look like it looked in DC?

What will the scale be?

Where are they going to be?

A lot of stuff, you know, as we're recording this now is largely unknown.

But if there's any protests or anything next week, I think I'm going to grab a a field recorder and try to get out in the street and and bring back some footage for for next week's episode or something.

Yeah, we're going to get on to our episode, but before we do, we have to do a shout out for some of our new Patreon subscribers, people who gave a little bit extra this round.

In the Executive Club, we have Christina Stevens.

Thanks, Christina.

And in the platinum we have Michael Bazico.

This one just says the starting pitcher for the Gold team and the bassist from Secretion.

What the fuck?

Thank you, whatever that is.

Robinson de Lager and Mia's Sylveon I.

De la guerre.

De la guerre, if I mispronounced any of those, please send us a message on Patreon.

I'll do it again with the correct pronunciation.

Yeah, it it means the world to us that that people are supporting the show.

Every time I get the little e-mail notification that someone new is signed up, you know, it really warms my cold, dead heart.

I love the $5 subscribers as well.

So this is an episode about professional opinion hammers and are.

We in that category.

I don't have any opinions, I'm just.

We're like amateur opinion hammers.

Exactly so Matthew Iglesias, sometimes referred as Maddie because you put the Y at the end of Matt.

Born May 18th, 1981.

Grew up in New York City and studied philosophy at Harvard University, where he was editor in chief of the Harvard Independent.

He graduated there in 2003.

But before he graduated, he started blogging about politics and public policy, which is probably how most people know about Maddie today.

After school, he joined the American Prospect as a writing fellow, soon became a staff writer.

There he went on to write for publications like The Atlantic, Think Progress, Slate.

At Slate he authored a column called Money Box that was pretty popular at the time and in 2014 he Co founded Vox Media with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell and he served there as the senior editor and Co host of the podcast The Weeds.

He left Vox in November 2020 to start a Substack newsletter called Slow Boring, which now earns according to some reports.

I'm not sure where that's at today, but the ones we found were $1.4 million annually from his nearly 18,000 subscribers.

He also joined the Niskanen Center as a senior fellow in 2020 and is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

Iglesias has authored books including 2012's The Rent is Too Damn High and 2020 is 1 Billion Americans.

For someone so successful, you'd expect Iglesias to have some pretty good takes.

Well, that has not always been the case.

He spends a lot of his time criticizing progressives.

He sort of punches left, I think is the way to describe what he does.

And he doesn't always land a punch when he throws it.

So how does a guy like Matt Iglesias rise up to become such an influential voice in politics like he is today?

The opinion pages of the national press and now a new rank and file of independent writers have made millions churning out Milktoast takes just like Maddie has.

Contrast that to so many talented journalists and news analysts who are out here just struggling in between their one off freelance gigs, you know, trying to take whatever they can.

What gives?

Was a monstrous thing, grotesque and inhuman.

I'm floating downstream into the arms of my Box River.

Grave.

We're pleased to have on the podcast Luke Savage, who is not a professional wrestler.

He's a political writer that you might have read in outlets like Jacobin, The Washington Post, Toronto Star, New Statesman.

He's the Co host of the film and politics podcast Michael and Us.

And he does some independent writing for his own publication.

Luke, thanks for joining.

Thanks for having me.

I, I made a joke before we started recording.

We have Matt Iglesias written down in our show notes so many times that I'm terrified I'm going to call you Matt, but but I've been reading your work for the longest time and I'm really excited to to have you on the show.

Oh, cheers and and likewise.

And talk about great takes, great takes.

So we're all here today to discuss our hero, Matt Iglesias, who you wrote a profile of on your sub stack.

Well, not quite.

So before you came in, we did just a quick look at Matt's career.

But I want to start out by talking and hearing from you about the blogging years of liberal media, because that is where Matthew Iglesias really cut his teeth and made his name.

This was like Bush era sort of, you know, I guess social media was around but but what was that time like?

And in what role did blogs play in media at the time that Matt was coming up?

So like early mid 2000s?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's really interesting because it feels like everything is blogging now.

So it's like, you know, I guess this will come up later, but you know, well, the Free Press and various other sub stacks that are just, you know, I mean, are essentially blogs are now also kind of media organizations.

So we need to step back a bit in in time.

All of this feels very anachronistic now, but in the early 2000s, you know, the blogosphere was greeted as kind of this, you know, utopian, radically democratic thing that was going to revolutionize citizenship and, and democracy and all that.

And I think particularly within the Democratic Party, you know, which was kind of rudderless through much of the Bush era, people were really looking for, you know, as they are now in different ways.

What is our what is our one simple trick?

And the answer for many was the bloggers.

You know, the bloggers are going to save us.

It wasn't just Matt Iglesias.

It was also people like Marcos Melitis actually is a very good piece about this published some years ago in Jacobin by Dan O'Sullivan about Marcos Melitis.

I mean, he he really captures what this era was like this was going to be.

Just interject, that was the Daily Coast, right?

Daily.

Is that how you pronounce that?

Yeah, the Daily Coast or costs and and this was this was a populist vanguard.

This was going to be, you know, yeah, this, this was going to be the, the thing that was going to finally, finally neutralize the right.

And actually the, you know, the, the, the coast heads had a, you know, they did have one real, if you know, in retrospect, pretty small political victory because they, and somewhere I did this on my podcast years ago, there's a, a, a documentary about it where they primaried Joe Lieberman successfully.

They found a, a guy who I is possibly currently the governor of Connecticut.

I can't remember Ned Lamont.

And they just got him to say, Oh yeah, I'm against the Iraq War, I guess.

Sure, defeated Lieberman and the primary Lieberman of course ran as an independent and and and and and rinse them.

But so that was kind of the high watermark of like the liberal bloggers as far as I know, in terms of like a real world electoral impact.

But I was interested in in this, I suppose, and dealt with it in my piece because I think this was conducive to a this environment was conducive to a particular type of writing.

And Dan O'Sullivan as well captures this really well in in that old essay of his because this really was the birth of the modern take as we understand it.

You know, it was, this is before Twitter and social media, obviously, but it's inherently an inherently reactive way of thinking about and writing about politics is just responding to things very often, very, very quickly.

So it favors a kind of generalism where you never really become an expert in anything but the people who were good at it.

And Matt Iglesias, in his own way, was very good at this.

They were able to convey a kind of aura of expertise, right, and, and, and of authority.

And when they were done with one thing, they just moved on to something else and kind of didn't really talk about that previous thing again.

So, you know, 1 morning you wake up and you're at Harvard.

I guess he went to and you're a pro war Blogger.

And then, I don't know, a few years later, you're a health policy wonk.

And then, I don't know, a decade on from that, you flirt with supporting Bernie Sanders and you're like, there's actually an interview or a conversation with Matt Iglesias and Liza Featherstone and Vascular Sinkara and an issue of Jacobin, I think in 2019 or 2020.

And you just cycle through this stuff.

And it's, I would say humbly not not conducive to kind of intellectual consistency or being right about many things.

But at least for some people that it's been the foundation for a very successful kind of media career.

And in Iglesias's case, right, it's it's led to real world political influence.

Like, he was one of the guys in the Biden White House, which, if you read his takes, is kind of an amazing thing to contemplate and, you know, explains a lot.

I also think it's it, it sort of says something about the Democratic Party in general.

When you look at Matt's, you know, sort of the, the, the way he flits between different viewpoints, right?

Anyway, he just goes to different places.

This this sort of inconsistency of the Democrats seems to that seems to highlight be highlighted by the fact that Matt is a favored pundit.

Now I want to ask you about that, which is, you know, what, how would you describe his ideology?

Are you, I mean, are you able to do that even?

Because I mean, I think that's one of the the more challenging things he's often portrayed by, by opponents of progress, for lack of a better word, as being kind of a liberal leftist.

But is that like really what Matt believes?

Is that really who he is?

You know, it's, it's really interesting and it's, I think this is a question in some ways best left to philosophers.

I mean, it's, it's very.

That was his major.

Apparent.

Wasn't that his major in Harvard?

Speed department back at Harvard.

This is it was his major, but not yeah, I don't know what the platonic form of of Matt Iglesias is.

You know, I, I, I think if there is an ideology, I mean, obviously, and there's there, you know, there's a crude answer to this, which is his ideology is just, he's, you know, he's, he's, he's part of the neoliberal left or whatever you want to call it.

He's a, or he's a yeah, or he's just a neoliberal proper.

But I think his ideology is his ideology, I think is dictated by his relate primarily by his relationship to institutional power at a given moment and by the imperatives of, you know, a media career that is very much has very much been been guided by the guided by institutional power, by a desire to have influence within an influential, but in other ways quite parochial kind of sect of Beltway thinking.

So I think trying to pin down the ideology of someone like Matt Iglesias in terms of like, fundamentally, this is what his philosophy is like.

Fundamentally, this is what he thinks about, I don't know, human nature or, or justice or something like that.

I, I, I, I don't, I don't know if that's possible.

But I do think if there's a consistent through line, it's in, you know, this constantly shifting relationship to, yeah, to institutional power, to establishment opinion and that kind of thing.

And I think you see with, you know, his very brief and kind of only ever partial flirtation with Bernie Sanders, like you, you can just see in a, in a more basic sense, there's just, there's just opportunism there, right?

Like if something sort of seems like it's maybe ascendant, some intellectual or political tendency or or whatever, you know, he, he kind of thinks.

So I want, I want a piece of this, you know, I maybe I'll just kind of put, you know, put my toes on this or, or, you know, plant my flag here, at least temporarily.

And then I mean, I think with, I can't exactly remember when that Jacobin issue was that Iglesias appeared in, but I mean, within a few weeks of Super Tuesday, as I recall, he was, he was, he was kind of back to his old tricks, so.

That, that really feel like, I feel like the Biden years there was this I, you know, there was this sort of suggestion online or this feeling for, for some people at least that like we were getting like a, a neoliberal facade, but it was like a really a Bernie administration at the core.

But I I feel like in retrospect, it's actually reversed where where there was like there is like some symbolic Bernie is this around the around the edges, but ultimately the same neoliberal whatever.

You know, you could somebody could even argue that Bernie himself is a neoliberal in some ways.

It depends on your your definition of it.

But I want to just read this one thing from you, which is you said vapid contrarianism, off the charts dorkiness.

Love that this is really true.

An obtuse penchant for moral and ideological in curiosity that frequently slides into intellectual malpractice.

These have been the long standing hallmarks of Iglesias rather insipid style, and for what it's worth, they form the constituent ingredients of a very successful and lucrative career.

So.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Yes.

I thought it was such a great description though, like that.

I mean, that's really like the heart of like why?

I was like, Oh my God, we got to get we got to get him on.

It's such a it's such a great description.

And I, I just curious, you know, in your read of the American public where where, you know, sort of just left thinking is, is, is is punched, punched upon so, so frequently where people are just constantly trying.

Why is this popular?

Why does he have, you know, why is he so successful?

I mean, the guy has like is, is making a fortune on his sub stack still.

He was able to, he was able to found Vox, which is a company that still exists.

It's still going.

He's really successful.

And, and and you see, like everybody on the from from the liberal center to the left is really struggling in this media landscape that is dominated by Trumpism.

So what is it about Matt that's able?

Because.

Because everything we've heard so far is that he's very wishy washy.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right.

I think that he has been maybe a little savvier in, in a crass sort of way when it comes to how he's maneuvered because obviously he's always been a liberally coded figure.

And I mean, as we saw, you know, with the, you know, the Biden era, I mean, he was, he had the ear of the Biden White House as, as I already alluded to, but I don't think, I think he plays, you know, his, he, the, his perception is different from that of someone like Ezra Klein.

I think, you know, obviously, who is his, his colleague at Vox, who I think is more explicitly or overtly a liberal and, and kind of more like a, a sort of big D Democrat.

I feel like, and, and like functionally that's what Iglesias has tended to be as well.

But I I think he is much better at.

I think there was a phrase I used earlier in the piece to this effect.

He's much better at kind of speaking in this register of of transgressive free thinking.

Like, you know, like I exist in the neutral ground of on the neutral ground of Wong Curry.

And I'm just giving you like the facts and that's, and then the facts that the, you know, that, that, that that aren't allowed or permitted within the sclerotic partisan binary of of America's political conversation or something.

And then of course, the arguments are just, you know, they're just often kind of the center right arguments you get anywhere else or in the Obama era, the kind of centrist arguments in favor of like why the Affordable Care Act is actually revolutionary or whatever, you know, whatever The thing is or why it's better than single payer healthcare, etcetera, etcetera.

But I think that that I think that that style has an obvious appeal because, you know, there's lots of I guess if I'm being to give a non cynical read of it, I mean, I think a lot of people who are curious and and politically interested, you know, they're kind of put off by the partisan binary the way that so much of American media there's is so bifurcated between like team red and team blue.

And you know, a lot of people rightly don't feel represented by that.

They they feel that there's certain subjects that are, I don't know, taboo or, or that aren't being discussed properly.

And so because of that, there's, you know, a whole parasitic ecosystem, some of it very good independent media, some of it, you know, good independent left media and some of it media that gives you the same orthodoxies that you would get in kind of the, you know, traditional Beltway media.

But now it's just served to you with this different gloss where it's this is, you know, independent mindedness and, you know, yeah, transgressive free thinking.

And I think I think Iglesias has has been more in that style of pundit than someone like Ezra Klein or, you know, we came up earlier, Marcos Melitis, right?

Who's you know who once when when was that that he brought, he brought Nancy Pelosi like 2.

How many red roses was it?

You know, I Iglesias.

Iglesias will be on the phone with the White House, but I don't think he would be bringing, you know, Biden red roses.

You would expect somebody at that kind of stature who's on the phone with the White House, who, you know, policy aides are reading the his slow boring blog to have some some pretty important contributions to the discourse.

And from what I've seen with Full disclosure, I'm not a mad, you know, a Maddie boy.

I'm not I'm not a die hard subscriber to slow boring or a reader even.

You know, these wonky takes always seem to align with like the hot take is like, well, according to the data and whatever, we should let housing developers run buckshot on all American cities.

Or, you know, the situation in Gaza was completely overblown by hysterical activists.

But now I've seen the data and well, it's not ideal.

You know, in your piece, which is beautifully titled The Agony and Ecstasy of Iglesias, you, you also talk about he kind of through this wonkery, through this sort of reflexive surface level contrarianism.

Matt also has this knack for just being prophetically wrong about things or, or just like really carving himself out on on positions.

Can you tell me about that?

And also, do you think that sort of rhetorical style lends itself to doing that?

Or is this like, you know, stars align kind of thing?

This guy who happens to have gotten just a lot of really big issues terribly wrong throughout his history, is also adopting this style, Or do you think there's a relationship there?

I mean, I think being completely shameless about like, like you argue something with great conviction one day and you say all the data supports this and then you make a different argument like a few months later and you don't really acknowledge or engage seriously with the fact that you seem to be saying something quite different.

I mean, The thing is in, in the past that would not have been I, I don't think in previous media environments that would have served you very well.

I mean, in earlier eras, I don't even think the technology really existed to to do that because there were only a few TV networks and a few newspapers that sort of guided the national conversation and, and we're really consumed by a mass public.

But now in the social media era where everything is so transitory, like, like a news story can be the biggest thing for a few hours and then a day later, nobody even remembers, you know, what happened.

And meanwhile, yeah, the media itself is so fragmented.

It's so fragmentary.

It's so diffuse.

And it's I think that really lends itself to or it makes advantageous this style of commentary where you can just kind of say some, you know, you make one argument one day and then a few months later you say something kind of completely different.

And that's that's advantageous, right?

Because the vibes shift the, the preferences and the tastes, if you want, of media consumers, like those are also kind of ephemeral and shifting now in, in a way that they weren't before.

And so, yeah, it's advantageous.

I just don't think it's, you know, in, in a, in a sort of in the sense of like getting subscribers and being being talked about and getting media appearances and so on.

And in his case having political influence.

But it's not it's not conducive to any kind of intellectual or ideological consistency.

And as you're just saying, Jared, I mean it, it lends itself as well to just being spectacularly wrong.

So, I mean, I run through a few examples in in the piece and I won't, I won't like read my own paragraph here because people can just read it for themselves.

But I mean, my favorite one just to highlight it was if you look at the two positions that Matt Iglesias has taken on the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, you know, the first was that this is a great campaign.

It's like this is, you know, centrist patriotism, all that all that wokeness stuff and all that left wing stuff.

And, you know, that there's a slippage with those terms often in this style of commentary.

Like sometimes those are the same thing, sometimes they're different things.

You know, again, that kind of shifts as needed.

But yeah, at at one point, you know, sort of around the time of the DNC, so just over a year ago, I suppose, Kamala Harris is running this great campaign.

I think I've got it here.

The this is Iglesias on the DNC.

The themes were joy and freedom.

The economic message was aspirational, the visions of diversity emphasized inclusion and equality, and the discussion of environmental issues was overwhelmingly focused on clean air.

We got the version of Harris that we should have had in 2020, the career prosecutor who put criminals in jail and as attorney general tackled a wide range of wrongdoing and who fundamentally believes in imposing sanctions on bad actors.

After he tweeted, Kamala Harris gave a convention speech that embraced patriotism, reaffirmed the American alliance with Israel and recommitted the Democratic Party to an ethic of liberal pluralism in America's top centrist culture war publication pivoted to economics.

So I'm actually not sure what he's complaining about at the end there.

But then, you know, later he's says that the Kamala Harris campaign was actually captured by the groups.

You know it was the left wing of the groups.

By the way, a phrase I had never heard this is.

This is great too, and I guess this is probably a function.

How many all like the groups y'all?

Ever heard y'all Ever heard of groups?

This is, I mean, this, this also speaks to like the, and this is like a feature of I think the contemporary kind of media environment as well.

And the information environment.

There's like a memetic quality to it.

We think of memes as images, but like they're also just turns of phrase, right?

I had never heard of the group until like centrist apology after Kamala Harris lost started coming out.

It's the same way you see this on on the right.

And like Jared, I'm sure you encounter it in your work all the time where there's always a new bet noir that's just it's really the same performs the same function as something you heard previously.

So you know, it's cultural Marxism, it's critical race theory, it's or you know, it's 2015.

It was political correctness.

You know, it's just constantly shifting thing.

But it's this like floating signifier for for for something that's just kind of the same.

And the groups is like that for neoliberalism, right, Because it's just the same.

It's it's Bill Clinton's like sista soldier moment, you know, which is all these people know how to do.

It's you win by distancing yourself from the left.

And it's extremely funny that that they're kind of still trying to repeat that formula in a Democratic Party where the left is like less powerful than it's maybe ever, ever, ever been.

Anyway, Now I'm now I'm now I'm digressing.

But yeah, just to, I guess to return to the basic point to, yeah, to sort of say 1 moment that Kamala Harris is running this great campaign, you know, that's built around all these things.

And then, you know, I've got the tweet here.

This is March 2025.

So this is less than a year after what I just read you, He says, I understand that leftists have a self-interest in saying Harris, quote, ran a moderate's dream campaign, UN quote.

But I think a more journalistic method would be to ask moderates whether or not Harris ran the campaign of their slash our dreams.

And it's like, well, we have the receipts.

We know what you said, we know what you wrote.

And you know, I'm not even to be fair, I'm not even saying you can't sort of change your mind about things or you like, you can't make an argument for something one day and make a different argument for the next.

We all do that.

That's a necessary part of, you know, this business and of of writing about politics.

But you need to acknowledge it and engage with the fact that your ideas have shifted.

And I feel like Iglesias is uniquely non introspective when it comes to doing that.

It seems like a different flavor of Trumpism in a way with different politics.

I don't want people to mistake what I'm saying.

I'm not comparing him ideologically to Trump or even as a person, you know, to Trump.

I.

Will fuck it, we ball dude.

Jared over here but.

But yeah, I mean, like, you know, Trump comes in with the with the hat that says Trump, Trump was right about everything.

That is like the the more fuck you version of of this not willing to deal with one's previous statements about things, right?

I mean, it's just almost the same thing.

Like Trump will always just run over anything that he said two days ago.

And just just so you know, he'll just tell you like, no, the sky is green actually.

And whatever.

This is a more passive, softer approach where he just kind of, you know, just ignores the things that he previously said and just starts to speak, you know, write sweetly about his new opinion.

Well, this, this, this analogy hadn't really occurred to me, but I think you're right that these are these are certainly parallel things, even if they express themselves somewhat differently.

And I think they are both in some ways products of the same sort of media environment because again, everything is so fragmentary and diffuse.

Now, you know, the news is something we go, we get by just scrolling on the slot machines we all carry around in our pockets all day.

And so, yeah, that doesn't lend itself to in the in the same way we've been talking about that not lending itself to, you know, consistency of of ideas in in writing.

It doesn't lend itself to political or ideological consistency either in the realm of politics.

And of course, Trump is, you know, originally just a, a product of, of, of TV, right?

And then later of, of posting like he's a guy who posted his way into the Oval Office, which my knowledge is not something any anyone had ever done before.

And yeah, now he's a second term U.S.

President.

And yeah, as you say, he's he's just like even his signature policies and initiatives, he's completely inconsistent about what the rationale is for them.

So I'm talking to you guys from Canada, where, you know, Trump has variously threatened to annex the country, make it the 51st state, and then next day he's dealing cordially over the phone with, like, the Prime Minister of Canada.

Sometimes the justification for this global trade war is we're going to reindustrialize the Midwest.

Like, factories will spring up like dandelions if you just put up the right tariff barriers.

Sometimes it's a negotiation.

It's a shakedown of other countries, of US allies.

And sometimes it's, it's supposed to reflect the tariff revenues are supposed to replace income tax.

You know, there's no consistency.

But again, in this environment, that can be quite advantageous, you know.

100% I, I, I want to bring up one example that we get into in your piece, because it's not Matt going back and forth over the course of six months or a year.

It's him going back and forth over the course of minutes and and like.

You hate efficiency, Mike.

This is this the you think so boring blog incoming.

Don't.

Don't you, don't you think as a writer people should be able to adapt to an evolving situation?

Yeah, he changed his mind.

Mike, what's the problem?

Well, well, one thing we get into a lot on posting through it are these these moments in recent history that really shift people's brains in major ways.

And obviously October 7th is one of them.

It's obviously a really dark, a dark moment, but it really changes you can just the way so many people speak and and behave.

And Matt is is one of them.

And I think he gets really crossed up here.

So I and I feel like this exchange he has on in on Twitter with Matt Breunig, who's a I guess a policy analyst, is the best way to describe him.

He's he's most famous for he's got he always had a big Twitter presence.

He's.

He's like, he's like, like the non dark kind of wonk, you know, He's like the good wonk.

And yeah, I mean the socialist, I think he's, you know, outspoken socialist is a good, good way to describe his point of view.

And they they they kind of get into it a little bit about Palestine.

This guy Noah opinion, I think I'm just going to call him that because he calls himself.

He says that like leftist primarily use Palestine as a wedge issue to gain power, right?

Like I said, that's what his point is.

And Breunig, I think accurately responds by saying that like actually they've been agitating for it a lot, a lot longer than this.

They've been going back way before October 7th.

It just happened that the issue became much more central in the discourse really is what he says.

And then Iglesias jumps in to say that quote, leftist don't really care about anything they talk about.

And then, like after another exchange says actually left politics relies on idealistic young dupes.

Yeah.

So, so, so he goes from being like, you know, these are some they're cooking up these strategies, doing all this, you know, adopting these issues insincerely to pursue their own power.

And then they're like, but it actually they're just a bunch of dumb college kids.

They don't know anything that that fall for nonsense.

And it's like, which is it?

Which is it?

Yeah, I.

I found this.

Is this a gang of idiots?

Or is it like a powerful cabal you must counter?

I feel like this is this had to have like inspired you doing it because there's just like it's sort of like an enough is enough moment when when people when people go into like a psych ward and stuff like that, it's it's not usually just like one thing that happens where they go crazy or whatever.

It's usually like a build up of a very long time and then something hits like a really pitch point.

So I feel like this is like, it's like, OK, I need to blog because this is he changed his opinion within two posts.

Well, Michael, you are peering directly into my soul because this is exactly what made me write the piece.

I did not wake up on that particular morning and think I must write about Matthew Iglesias.

But I saw that and honestly, this unlocked this exchange really did unlock something for me.

I feel like I understand Matt Iglesias so much better after seeing this exchange.

And, you know, you asked me earlier about one of you asked me about, you know, what is, what is Iglesias ideology?

And in the last part of my piece, you know, I, I'm, I'm trying to grapple with that question just in the last few paragraphs here, because I really think that, you know, there's, there's a, there's a, a fundamental, there's an, there is an underlying consistency in this exchange that he has with Matt Breunig, I think, which is that, you know, so obviously there's the, the, the, the clear inconsistency that Breunig points out where, well, we've talked about it already.

I don't need to rehash it.

But I think there's a, you know, there's the consistency is that Matt Iglesias just assumes that because he thinks and behaves in a certain way, everybody else must do this too.

So because he belongs to a political faction that sort of periodically gets together in for, you know, the recent version of this was Welcome Fest, you know, these sad Convention Center or hotel ballroom events that are always sponsored by, you know, venture capitalists or dark money groups.

You know, Welcome Fest.

I think they're, I think Michael Bloomberg was was part of that.

You know, you get together every five years or whatever, and there's, you know, there's a rebrand and you're like now telling a different story about, you know, the same kind of neoliberal agenda that you were aligned with before, but now it's got new branding and these kinds of things.

And and you know, Welcome Fest is a good example of this.

They're quite literally attempts to build factional power, right?

They are, you know, they are attempts to win factional disputes, right, right.

And and like, and that's what's so funny, right, because this is the groups, right?

Like, this was a room full of people whose entire premise is that the Democrats lose because they are captured by by these, you know, yeah, these very powerful, you know, this powerful constellation of like these cloistered kind of interest groups that make them take unpopular positions.

And like, we need to, we need to build.

Like we need to have a response that's based on common sense then.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, it's like, OK.

And who's sponsoring this?

It's like, it's like a small constellation of, you know, dark money.

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's finance capital, it's real estate, it's it, you know, it's Bitcoin, it's whatever.

So, yeah, I mean, so they, it is very much just the, you know, the the, the, the mirror image of the thing that they or rather the actual image of the thing that they claim to be to be fighting, but.

Yeah.

I think in this exchange, you really see something really important comes out here because you see a type of thinking that is unable to understand or comprehend the fact that like not everybody just thinks in terms of like immediate factional power or builds their takes kind of like reverse engineers their takes based on what they think may be advantageous in a particular time.

And I mean, I think when it comes to Palestine and Gaza, right?

Like that's the, the seriousness of that issue and the reality of what's going on, I think really brings all of this into so much sharper relief, you know, because like it like Palestine, Gaza is just another factional fight really.

Like, Iglesias can't comprehend the idea that people feel moral outrage about, I don't know, death squads, like shooting people who are getting aid, you know, trying to get aid or any other number of horrors I could list off here.

So I think that this is a really important exchange that tells us a lot about how, you know, some people's minds work.

Well, I want to stay on Palestine for one second because this one, this one is the one that really that really bothers me like in a deep way.

And I think it's is most indicative of the, the, the, the reactionary core of this type of punditry because I just think it's, it's it's really important to, to, to kind of pull apart here.

So here's here's what he said about Rasheeda Talib, that she's Palestinian.

It makes perfect sense for her to be mad at Israel and fired up about it.

What SUS is all the people who aren't Palestinian and seem to care 1000 times more about this than any other humanitarian issue.

I once met a a a Syrian Christian who told me with passion and and detail about how his people had been wronged by American policy and I took it very seriously.

But it would be weird but I it would be weird if some average college student was obsessed with this.

Now the reason why this is so upsetting to me?

This is not in your piece, but this I pulled from elsewhere.

The reason why this bothers me so much is, you know, it's like, I am allowed to be upset about Gaza.

My mother is allowed to be upset about Gaza, but Jared is supposed to be like, oh, that sucks man.

It seems, it seems like the argument is like the way I should feel about it is like, damn, sucks for those brown people.

Good thing I'm white.

You know, It's like like that seems to be the thinking or the rationale offered here.

But like, am I not allowed to feel, you know, that's, you know, something is horrible, you know, going on in Ukraine.

I'm not allowed to feel that like something for the for the, you know, for conscripted, conscripted soldiers who were sent to die in that war, you know, on on both sides.

I mean, like, am I not allowed to feel like something should be done about it?

I mean, that's crazy to me.

And are we not allowed to feel like something should be done about genocide in general, right?

I mean, isn't isn't it in the most urgent human phenomenon, right?

Like when it starts to happen, it's a very urgent phenomenon.

Like all of humanity when we find out about it reacts.

I feel like that is like the the thing or should right.

That was the whole point of never again rhetoric, right.

So it's.

Just hard for me to imagine him going out and trying to apply this argument on a different issue like the Rwandan genocide, right?

Is like, imagine if he was like, why are Americans so concerned about Rwandans?

It would make sense that this Rwandan person is upset, but why should we care, you know?

Or why would people be mad about that on a large scale?

It's just like if you put it in a different context, I feel like it sounds even more ridiculous.

Well, I'm interested to hear Luke's thoughts, but I mean, for me and what I what I hear in this to sort of tee you up is, is that like there's there are democratic there, there's policy with the Democratic Party, there's positions of power that are very closely tied with Israel.

And like, you know, like the let's let's not, let's, let's not get crazy, like getting too involved in this, in this matter.

It's OK.

We can, we can not throw Arabs under the bus.

That's the nice thing to say.

It's the it's that's, that's the only way this differs from Trump is.

I mean, yeah, there's a lot that could be said here.

And I think there's a number of ways to interpret this.

So first of all, would Iglesias have made that argument about, I don't know, like Arab, Arab Democrats in Michigan during like, the last presidential election?

Like, is it was it OK for them to refrain from voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz?

Like, I don't know this, this feels like another example of inconsistency.

You know, I suppose that goes without saying.

I think this is also maybe kind of a learned reflex.

You know, this is, this is kind of, this is a sort of standpoint theory argument that I feel like you might have heard in a different context from like a Hillary Clinton supporter during the 2016 primary or something like that.

Like only people directly affected by an issue can be concerned about an issue, something like that.

This was also, I mean, I saw this from kind of Democratic DNC aligned influencers and commentators and so on.

Like last year during the, the election, like this was kind of a line that like, while you're allowed to care about this if you're Palestinian, if you're directly affected by it, if you're not, like it's, it's weird and it's actually evil and it's helping Trump.

If you don't, you know, if you if you, if you're outraged that like children are being killed in, in, in air strikes or, or whatever anyway, like, yeah, the obviously the the assertion that you can't care about something like this.

You know, if you like, if you're not like directly affected in it, like if you don't have relations in, in Gaza City or whatever is absurd on its face.

But the entire premise of this is just wrong because, you know, the US Israeli relationship, the, you know, U S S specific relationship under both Biden and Trump to what's going on in Gaza.

Like this isn't some peripheral issue.

This isn't some like arcane or esoteric thing that, you know, students on, on Columbia campus or people who protested elsewhere just picked at random.

Like this is this goes to the heart of so many things that are so fundamental to, you know, the the problems people have with the US government and with the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy and on Israel, Palestine especially.

So you know, that all of this is just is just wrong on its face.

You know, and it's, it's not as if the entire US political class and the leaderships of both parties don't talk about this incessantly and don't have a very, you know, say the least one sided view of it.

So the idea that, you know, people reacting to all of this is, is the problem or is, you know, illegitimate or invalid or disproportionate in some way.

You know, that's that's as absurd as everything else we've talked about here.

I want to zoom out a bit because we've been talking about Matt Iglesias.

He is one of the most successful people to take up this kind of posture in opinion writing or wankery that reflexive contrarianism.

But there are like a whole roster of kind of quote, UN quote, anti woke, ostensibly liberal people that are seemingly beloved by establishment news media by, you know, key figures in politics.

And it just kind of it's hard not to get the sense that any kind of progressive or leftist thinking is treated in major newsrooms as a kind of riff raff.

And it it seems that speaking out against it or positioning yourself against it is understood by executives and leadership and by a bunch of influential people in this country as proof that of somebody's like neutrality.

Sure, maybe you say the Republicans got this wrong, but also these college kids are crazy.

Like like then it's you become this like curiosity or this like sort of it's not a few from nowhere, but it's like it it makes you more curious, right.

And I think a prime example is some of this reporting that's been going around this week as we're recording about and this may go through, maybe will not have gone through by the time this episode comes out.

But CPS Paramount looks like it's going to buy the Free Press, which is a sort of contrarian, reactionary publication headed up by Barry Weiss, who used to work at the New York Times.

Should also note, CBS Paramount settled with Trump for $16 million over a frivolous lawsuit alleging, I guess, what, election interference, defamation or whatever.

They say an interview they aired with Kamala Harris was edited.

Everything's edited.

Idiots like this guy used to work in TV.

Of course he like duh, it's edited.

OK, they have like 5 minutes and the interview was 20.

It's edited.

Sorry, but but I'm just kind of curious your thoughts about like the state of the media landscape And you know, you talked earlier about, you know, kind of the non cynical take on why, you know, audiences might be attracted to this kind of posturing from columnist and writers.

You know, they feel, you know, part of it is this like forbidden fruit dynamic, right where it's like they're discussing things that aren't normally discussed or maybe the audience feels aren't properly discussed elsewhere.

People are are tired of that sort of bifurcation, red versus blue media stuff.

But it in terms of the industry itself, media, news media industry that also plays a.

Huge role.

In propping these people up.

And I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about that as somebody, you know, a loud and proud leftist writer who's who's making it out there?

Sure.

I mean.

You know, we talked about, you know, Iglesias lineage in in early 2000s blogging.

And I think what, what you're talking about here also has kind of roots in the Bush era, right?

I have to think more about it, whether these are the roots of it.

But there's, you know, there's certainly parallels to the present day because, you know, in the Bush era, particularly as you know, the, you know, there are all these liberals, writers and and politicians and so on who quite enthusiastically supported, you know, the War on Terror in the early years.

They supported the invasion of Iraq.

And, you know, I think to do that was a little uncouth, particularly if we're talking about media audiences, right?

George Bush was not somebody who was well liked, you know, particularly by sort of, I don't know, 2000 and two, 2003 by a lot of, you know, readers of liberal newspapers and, and things like that.

And that was really the heyday of these sort of, you know, people who came out of the new atheist movement.

They, they were these kind of right, liberals who were, you know, basically neoconservative and how they talked about the world.

They, they essentially shared the, the Bush administration's kind of Manichaean view of the world, but they gave it a liberal gloss, right?

It was about sort of humanitarianism and and you know, the spreading of Enlightenment values and it made, you know, the like the bogeyman was, was a religion, which was useful because it sort of created distance from the, you know, the would be dim witted southern southerner president who was, you know, an evangelical Christian and so on.

But it also allowed you, you know, put a liberal gloss on on Islamophobia as well.

And and I think there's, you know, the parallels could be questioned or, you know, kind of interrogated in detail here.

But I think there's something analogous with, you know, what a figure like Barry Weiss does.

What the people, I'm forgetting, all the people that were included in that awful New York Times article about the Intellectual Dark Web, you know, some years back.

Oh my God.

Flashbacks, dude.

I I feel my blood pressure go up because because a lot of these people.

Right.

They start out in these pretty mainstream, like these often liberal, you know, newspapers like Barry Weiss was a columnist at The New York Times or, you know, you also have the Never Trump conservatives, which is, you know, certainly related or Jason phenomenon, though it has, you know, some some some differences as well.

But I, yeah, I really think what's going on here is this is just a way you can kind of package right wing ideas for a liberal readership.

And I think that is an especially useful thing in the present day because Trump is just such a loathed figure, right?

Like, you can't, you can't be a liberal and like Donald Trump.

But there are also a lot of, you know, particularly, I don't know, affluent, maybe older liberals who really don't like certain things about the Democratic Party.

There's things about contemporary culture and social progress that they are very suspicious of and and don't like.

They're maybe suffused in kind of the idioms of the Cold War and of just like earlier eras of American politics.

And I think that creates an audience that's very primed for, for conservative ideas.

But in this sort of anti Trump package or, or if not explicitly anti Trump in a kind of package of, you know, I used the phrase earlier, yeah, transgressive free thinking.

Because you're not, you're not.

This isn't Fox News, You know, this is, this is smart.

It's in the New York Times, you know, sure.

I I I think.

Like it, it really makes me think about how challenging it is to overcome this media environment because there's like, you know, one, one example.

I don't want to go too deep into his, his work, but Jesse Singal is for an example, a guy who's like, you know, superficially, like liberal, you know, Democrat type, you know, that's his, that's his punditry brand.

And then, but most of his career is really based on trying to poke holes in, you know, trans pro trans arguments and, and, and, and that sort of thing.

And he's sort of known for being an anti woke guy.

And that's really the choice that a lot of very casual people see if they go into X or something like that.

They're really looking at Nate Silver, a guy who's has has a perception for people who are not really locked in of being a liberal right.

And Jesse single and and these guys no opinion.

I'm not going to call him by his actual name.

Just keep calling him no opinion.

And you know, these, these these type of figures.

And that's sort of is the choices that and Jack pozobic and it really has a way of elevating Trumpism to me because, you know, it's really a a choice.

It it they're sort of the wash.

I've used this metaphor all the time, but the Washington generals to the Harlem Globetrotters of MAGA, it just it just sort of kind of just getting their donation money and and making these little arguments that kind of in in small ways help help the right.

I don't know if that's if you agree with that analysis, but that's just kind of the way I feel when looking at the landscape.

Yeah, I mean, I'm familiar with.

Single only by reputation.

I haven't, I haven't read his work.

So I, I, I don't think I can comment on that specifically.

I mean, I guess one thing I would bring in here though, which I alluded to already, was, you know, again, I think the Never Trump conservatives are an important part of this story, even though they are a little bit different from some of the other things we've been that we've been talking about.

Because, yeah, I mean, they're they're they are officially, they're officially conservatives in the way that somebody like obviously Iglesias is not.

But, you know, all of these people like, you know, also given platforms by by big, by big publications and newspapers, these figures like Bret Stevens or my fellow countrymen, actually also a former editor or at least contributor of the same student newspaper at the University of Toronto that I once edited, Mr.

David Frum.

You know, these people that they were, they were anti Trump, but they didn't want to, you know, they didn't want to say I'm abandoning conservatism.

And I think it's it's really important, you know, liberals have become their audience.

But I think it's really important to under score that to to a certain extent, writers like that liberals have always been like a big part of their audience.

Like these publications like National Review or The Federalist, which are ostensibly like, like these are the the like the, the, the outlets of the conservative intelligentsia.

You know, I think in some ways that's true.

But historically, the the role they've played is is really just to sort of represent conservatism in this idealized form with this kind of cerebral intellectual gloss for an audience that is partly a liberal one because, you know, there's so.

Many.

Kind of.

Democrat brain people who even if they don't like the Republican Party, they also have all these very like idealized impressions of it and they want it.

They like, they crave a politics that is, you know, 2 respectable interlocutors sort of going going back and forth.

And so, yeah, like I said, I'm realizing this is somewhat unrelated to the other things we're talking about.

But since the general theme here is is sort of media grifts, you know, this is another one and it's certainly related.

They just wish that like mom and dad.

Would stop fighting and I was going to say quickly.

About your your.

You reference David Frum, I'm just going to give you a little fact to keep in your back pocket about him since you have this, you know, you you guys are countrymen and etcetera, etcetera.

Frum actually wrote a blurbed Peter Brimlow's book Alien Nation, which is now like a Seminole text of the racist right.

Brimlow, of course, famous white nationalist and was just basically like calling him a genius in so many words.

So a lot of people don't know that.

But I mean, for the Toronto Star, I think I, I was not aware of that particular.

From take I will, I will have to check it out as a bit of a from aficionado, but you know, I, I, I don't know how many years ago now, but I reviewed from well, I think the first of the two sort of big anti Trump books that he wrote, which was a you know, they were, they were big best sellers.

In fact, I still sometimes see them.

I think they're still in print, or at least the second one is.

And I I think the first one was called Trumpocracy.

That's the one I reviewed.

And this was a book that, you know, some various older people who are sort of like politically like like liberal left type people in my life.

They, they, they got this book.

They like, they approached me with it.

They were like, if you read this, it's really good.

It's a really powerful critique of Trump.

So I decided I'd read it.

And I mean, the stuff he he was able to put in his book that again, the audience for this is entirely like anti Trump liberals.

He compares Black Lives Matter.

He says Black Lives Matter and MAGA are like equivalent movements.

He talks about how like one of his big criticisms of Trump is that he's such a mercurial figure that, you know, he's not going to be able to get the, the, the coveted tax cut for, you know, billionaires and millionaires that Republicans have been seeking for generations.

And, you know, Dave, if you're listening, Donald Trump has you beat there.

They, they got it done.

There's elsewhere a section where he's talking about he's, he's talking about Bernie Sanders and the, you know, younger people who are attracted to the Bernie Sanders movement because of things like Medicare for all.

And then he he compares this to the brown shirts.

So, so this was this was a book that like all of our like liberal, you know, grandparents or whatever were reading and thinking, wow, this is a really powerful critique of Donald Trump.

And and again, you know, this is a bit of a different kind of media guy, a different kind of funded than some of the other ones we've been talking about.

But again, and you know, this, this is very lucrative and influential in its own way.

It's almost like if you.

Think less.

You can get published more.

I'll have to store that away in the back of my head for my own future endeavors.

I Luke, thanks for spending some time with us today to talk about Maddie Boy and the this sort of realm of media.

You know that he is a powerhouse within.

Where can people find your writing, find your work, yell at you about takes?

You know, where can the Matt Super fans reach you to say that?

Actually, according to the data already in the comments of his post by the way, I don't.

Know if you saw that, but there's a lot of people rushed in to to defend Matt well, and we haven't.

Talked about it yet, but you know, I'll do.

I'll give you the plugs in a second.

But yeah, Iglesias, you know, he tweeted about the piece and actually I just saw this morning or maybe I think this piece came out yesterday.

You know, you guys should look this up because there's no description of it that I could give that would really fully do it justice.

You need the headline thumbnail combination.

But he's written a piece that is, I guess occasioned by my piece and also by an essay in current Affairs about him by Nathan J Robinson.

And the piece is called I've Been Right About Some things.

Is Matt Iglesias always wrong?

An investigation.

And then there's this picture of him where like, so he's put a picture, so he's referring himself in the third person.

And then he's got like a picture of himself in his own post on slow boring.

And the picture is, I mean, you have to kind of see it for yourself.

It's like his his face is he's looking up at like into the heavens and his face is sort of like shrouded in light.

And yeah, he looks like a guy who's just he's he's achieved wonk enlightenment.

He's so cool.

He's come back to Earth to to.

Share his.

Kind of wonk truths with all of us, you know, all of us mere mortals.

But I haven't read the piece, but he the you know, he named drops me.

He named drops Nathan.

And he says something about how like I'm, I was, I was plagiarizing Nathan because you know, you can't, there can't possibly be two pieces about how I'm bad and wrong.

You know, there there's only allowed to be one.

That's that's the rules.

But anyway, people can check that out if they're interested.

You can find me on Sub Stack at Luke W Savage.

I'm also on the artist formerly known as Twitter under the same handle.

You can find me there.

You can check out my podcast at patreon.com/michael and us.

I think.

I think that's all the plugs.

I just looked up this.

The slow boring posts that you referenced and it is truly incredible.

I'm gonna have to put a link to it in the description just so people can see this.

And I like that.

In the opening line of it, he refers to his critics as the leftist hater brigade, which which I guess this podcast is has entered, has entered the chat, the new groups.

Good to speak.

With you, Luke, and.

And join you in this coveted brigade I've heard so much about.

Always a pleasure.

It may be a long.

Road.

But in 20 years, we will build the necessary factional power to take over the Democratic Party, and from there we will.

Ensure that high rise condos are constructed on every street corner.

It's my favorite group.

So like we mentioned at the top of the.

Show.

We also talked to Luke a bit about Chorus, which has been in the news.

This is a, what would you call it, a marketing firm, a media operation that has been paying some left-leaning content creators online as much as $8000 per month to push the Democratic Party line more or less.

He has some interesting thoughts to share, but if you want to hear those, you'll have to come join us on the premium feed next week.

Yeah, come join us.

I'll be.

Caffeinated We record these at night.

It's going to be exciting if you want to support the show and.

Get access to those premium feeds.

We've got a link to the Patreon in the description.

We hope you'll join us there, but I think that about does it for this week.

So all right, guys, we'll see you next time.

Good talking to you.

I'm floating.

Downstream into the arms of my Fox River dream.

I'm going into you where my true love lies, waiting for me.

To my Fox River dream.

To my Fox River dream.