Some of the angriest denouncements of the Democrats’ election performance have come from the left. If I were a lefty, I’d be mad, too. They were not well-represented by Kamala Harris’s campaign, to put it mildly. So I reached out to one of my favorite men of the left for this week’s conversation, Daniel Bessner, associate professor at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and co-host of the American Prestige podcast. Danny has a sophisticated critique of liberalism, and he sees Trump’s electoral success as more evidence that the mid-twentieth century project of liberal governance and expansionist foreign policy has exhausted itself.
Over the course of the hour, we talk through many different topics, from Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis to climate change under capitalism to the limits of social science to the media’s obsession with polling. Danny’s sees Trump’s victory as a middle finger from exasperated voters to a sclerotic Democratic Party. America’s involvement in Ukraine and its ambitions in East Asia are both, he argues, highly unlikely to work out. And we end on a real debate: What is America’s responsibility to populations that have been immiserated, in part, by our country’s own actions?
This post is free and available to the public. To receive early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.
1:21 Have Glenn’s intellectual shifts been misread?
5:45 Danny: Francis Fukuyama was right
10:30 Capitalism won. Is that a good thing?
14:18 The climate under capitalism
20:24 Danny: “People said 'fuck you' to the Democratic Party”
23:51 Why the “Trump is a fascist” argument makes no sense
27:53 Whither the working class coalition?
33:10 How the US foreign policy establishment won the argument and lost Ukraine
36:28 Danny: There is no way the US can maintain influence in East Asia
38:26 Does Jewish survival require a Jewish state?
43:50 The limits of social science
49:36 The media’s obsession with polling
53:55 Is the US reaping what it’s sown on immigration?
Recorded November 9, 2024
Links and Readings
Dann’s podcast, American Prestige
Danny’s conversations with Glenn about his intellectual history, parts 1, 2, 3, and 4
Francis Fukuyama’s Financial Times piece, “What Trump Unleashed Means for America”
Danny’s Nation essay, “The Liberal Discontents of Francis Fukuyama”
Adam Tooze’s podcast, Ones & Tooze
Danny’s Harper’s essay, “The Life and Death of Hollywood”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s manifesto, The Communist Manifesto
Danny’s Harper’s essay, “Empire Burlesque”
Danny’s Boston Review piece, “Mass Destruction”
Glenn’s recent conversation with Rajiv Sethi
JD Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
John Murray Cuddihy’s book, The Ordeal of Civilization: Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity
Yuri Slezkine’s book, The Jewish Century
Share this post