Politics, Burnout & The Great Unraveling with Evelyn Quartz
This week I talk with writer and former Capitol Hill staffer — and my old co-worker — Evelyn Quartz about the strange afterlife of political work: how two people who once believed in “hope and change” ended up disillusioned with the system they helped run. We trade stories about burnout, ideology, and how a job that’s supposed to “change the world” can quietly drain your sense of meaning. Evelyn traces her path from congressional communications director to Substack essayist, and we get into money in politics, media grift, the post-2024 hangover, Tucker Carlson’s odd influence, and what it means to live an honest life after leaving Washington.
Follow Evelyn's Substack here: https://quartzevelyn.substack.com/
Please show some support for the podcast and get access to some extra content by subscribing to the Patreon page: http://www.patreon.com/onefjef
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onefjefpod/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@onefjefpodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@onefjef
Email: onefjefpod@gmail.com
You can also call the podcast and leave a voicemail at 1-669-241-5882 and I will probably play it on the air.
Thank you for listening, please do it again, but with more heterodoxy.
Onefjef is produced, edited & hosted by Jef Taylor.
Transcript
We never actually met in person until I think it was maybe one of the debates or one of
the elections or something.
2
:But I remember meeting you and you were just as jaded about the whole thing as I was.
3
:And that's why I liked you.
4
:oh
5
:We were authentic, Jef.
6
:I always like to gravitate towards the authentic people.
7
:Right, were the two people who were like, what is all this bullshit, This is episode 19 of
onefjef.
8
:19 is a prime with a mystical streak.
9
:It marks the 19-year metonic cycle that sinks the moon and sun, structures the Baha'i
calendar into 19 months of 19 days, and features in the Quran's cryptic line, over it are
10
:19.
11
:In tarot, it's the sun, symbolizing renewal, and in numerology, one plus nine reduces back
to one, suggesting completion and rebirth.
12
:a number that quietly closes a loop while beginning a new one.
13
:Hello again my friends.
14
:I'm not going to apologize this time because I've decided that I Don't need to release the
episodes every Tuesday.
15
:I can release them Whenever I want during the week As long as they come every week, that's
good enough for me and hopefully it's good enough for you It'll be a surprise.
16
:So that's exciting.
17
:Who doesn't like excitement?
18
:Little excitement in your life gets the heart pound in
19
:Little sweat on your brow to wipe off dramatically.
20
:I have still been sick though.
21
:I've been sick for like a week and a half now and uh it's starting to drive me slowly
insane.
22
:I think that knock on wood I'm finally like coming out of the woods.
23
:Is they say?
24
:Is that what they say?
25
:But like Monday I felt great.
26
:I was like, I'm done.
27
:I'm cured.
28
:I'm fixed.
29
:I'm better.
30
:And then Tuesday I woke up feeling fine.
31
:And then by noon I was feeling like shit again.
32
:So.
33
:But today I feel like I've blown all the remaining snot out of my head and I'm feeling I
would say 85 to 90 percent better.
34
:So here's hoping that tomorrow gets me up to 95 or 100.
35
:Anyway, today's guest is Evelyn Quartz.
36
:Evelyn Quartz is a political writer and former Capitol Hill staffer known for sharp
critiques of the Democratic Party and U.S.
37
:political establishment.
38
:Based in Oregon, she's written for outlets like Jacobin and Courier Newsroom and runs a
sub stack focused on democracy, inequality, and elite capture.
39
:Her work blends insider experience with an outsider skepticism about how power and
messaging operate in American politics.
40
:Evelyn and I worked at a high profile super PAC together.
41
:I cannot name the high profile super PAC because we both signed non-disclosure agreements.
42
:I think I do actually slip and mention the name of the organization at one point during
this podcast.
43
:So if you're a good listener, you'll actually be rewarded in a sense.
44
:Maybe I should cut that out, but I don't know.
45
:It's like a little Easter egg for the careful listeners.
46
:As always, thank you to my new Patreon subscribers for supporting the show.
47
:I've been releasing some Patreon only episodes on there and people have been loving them.
48
:So if you'd like to enjoy them as well and support the show, please go to patreon.com
slash one F Jef and sign up for as little as $5 a month.
49
:You can help support the show and get some extra exciting content.
50
:I'll be putting out extra content fairly regularly.
51
:So if you love the podcast and want more, patreon.com slash one F Jef and add infinitum.
52
:Thank you for listening.
53
:Thank you for being here.
54
:Here's my conversation with Evelyn Quartz.
55
:with Evelyn Quartz.
56
:Thank you for coming onto the podcast.
57
:I know Evelyn from a job that will not be named.
58
:We both worked at a political job that I worked at for four and a half years.
59
:How long were you there, Evelyn?
60
:Um, a year and a half.
61
:Wow, you're only there a year and half, that's crazy.
62
:And you came on my radar, like I didn't really, I mean I knew your name, because we never
actually met in person until I think it was maybe one of the debates or, don't know, was
63
:it the debate or one of the elections or something, but I remember meeting you and you
were just as jaded about the whole thing as I was, and that's why I liked you.
64
:We were authentic, Jef.
65
:I always like to gravitate towards the authentic people.
66
:Right, were the two people who were like, what is all this bullshit, dude?
67
:uh Yeah, yeah.
68
:So anyway, uh thanks for coming on.
69
:How has it been since you?
70
:We also got laid off at the same time.
71
:We also got laid off uh earlier this year, both at the same time, and we were both equally
pissed off about it.
72
:uh And we kind of formed a support group, the two of us, about getting laid off.
73
:And I think it worked out well.
74
:I mean, I think we did a good job supporting each other during that horrible period.
75
:Yeah, I think anyone who's had that experience, which unfortunately is like more and more
people these days, ah knows that it's very cathartic and nice to have a friend who you can
76
:talk to.
77
:So yeah, I appreciate you, Jef.
78
:I feel like we got to know each other even better just because we both got laid off at the
same time.
79
:Yeah, it's a bonding experience, no doubt.
80
:was.
81
:Yeah, yeah.
82
:were basically just shitting on the organization on text messages all the time.
83
:I remember I would text you and be like, Jef I'm going to yoga class, I'm going to be off
this for an hour and you were like, good for you.
84
:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was very cathartic.
85
:Yeah.
86
:So uh how's it been since?
87
:How have you been doing since?
88
:I've been doing actually pretty well.
89
:I've been in this kind of weird like career transition, I guess you could say.
90
:I think like due to the nature of our jobs, right?
91
:Like it was quite just the history, like the time that it all went down.
92
:This was like around the 2024 election.
93
:And we were working for a group supporting the Democrats.
94
:I, in January, when it all kind of ended,
95
:went on kind of a personal like journey to figure out.
96
:uh So, okay, so I'll back up.
97
:I started a sub stack like, everybody does when they get laid off.
98
:Sure, started a podcast, you started a sub-step.
99
:Yeah.
100
:And first I'm like, this will just be kind of cathartic and I'll just like, you know, have
something to do and whatever.
101
:Um, and I started writing about politics.
102
:kind of thought it was going to be like a resistance kind of like Trump 2.0.
103
:That was very much like the worldview that I was in.
104
:Um, but I now am, uh, very far from that.
105
:I'll say that we can get into more about that.
106
:but I think I feel like I've gone through quite a political.
107
:transformation just like intellectually.
108
:Um, it's been really interesting.
109
:Um, in college I studied, uh, philosophy.
110
:Yeah.
111
:And I was really interested in a lot of these things that I write about now.
112
:Um, and, instead of going to graduate school, which I was not, it was not something at the
time.
113
:I kind of regret it now, but it was not something at the time that I wanted to do.
114
:I wanted to like be, um, I was so set on being like in the like quote unquote real world.
115
:So I moved to Washington DC and started working um for, I worked for like a polling firm
and then I worked on Capitol Hill for six years.
116
:m Yeah.
117
:So I feel like I spent most of my twenties kind of in this world of sort of the DC scene,
I guess you could say like.
118
:What did you do in capital?
119
:What were you doing?
120
:I started off as the press intern.
121
:did communication stuff.
122
:And then when I left, I was the communications director um for a progressive member of
Congress.
123
:uh
124
:You would go to the, you would like work in the Capitol every day.
125
:Yeah, yeah, it was.
126
:Wow.
127
:Yeah, I mean, for when you're like 24, that is, you you feel like you've won the lottery
in a way.
128
:Yeah, yeah, you get a job like that.
129
:And I had a lot of reverence for like the institution.
130
:And I think this is something I've been trying to figure out.
131
:Like, did I start believing in all of it?
132
:Because I definitely, you know, I went into it skeptical.
133
:think.
134
:I know we're slightly different ages, but I grew up in the kind of Obama.
135
:um Everything was going to be managed and fine.
136
:It wasn't too dark.
137
:And I graduate.
138
:Yeah.
139
:So that was kind of my like worldview and politics growing up.
140
:Not super political.
141
:um
142
:Right, mean there was no need to because it wasn't like a political time.
143
:was like everything's just kind of working it seemed like.
144
:Yeah, like it's like hope and we're good kind of thing.
145
:But when you're when you're like, you know, a teenager, like I wasn't explicitly
political, I think it would be different now.
146
:And I know that like in the Bush era, a lot of young people were.
147
:But it just felt like more of like a until the Occupy kind of movement.
148
:Nothing really felt particularly dark.
149
:Yeah, and even during Bush, like I, you know, kind of grew up during that era and like
even during that, certainly there was like a lot of like protests and stuff, but it was
150
:nothing like what's going on now.
151
:Yeah.
152
:Exactly.
153
:So I ended up uh starting in the Capitol Hill in March of 2017.
154
:So that was like two months after the first inauguration of Trump.
155
:Yeah.
156
:So that was like all I really knew.
157
:uh And it felt like there was like amongst the liberal kind of progressive uh people who
worked there, there was like a renewed sense of meaning almost.
158
:know, if they were like
159
:I think they were shocked, but they were also mobilized pretty quickly.
160
:And you know, remember that whole era we had like the resistance movement and the women's
march.
161
:Yeah.
162
:Yeah.
163
:Yeah.
164
:Yeah.
165
:Like I really believed all that ah up until pretty recently.
166
:Yeah.
167
:And I've, I've started to kind of unravel a lot of these, em I guess, beliefs that I used
to have.
168
:It's like the best analogy I can come up with is like the matrix, I think is like in
retrospect, one of the best works of art when you're thinking about this kind of stuff
169
:where you take like, I don't want to say I take the red pill because I haven't become a
conservative, but I've become very jaded by like ideology and pro politics.
170
:Yeah.
171
:Yeah.
172
:Yeah.
173
:And why did you want to go into politics in the first place?
174
:I think I saw, I always really liked political philosophy in college.
175
:And I feel like um the kind of big questions about how society governs and just being able
to work like in this sort of halls of power of the government, it just was very enticing
176
:to me.
177
:But I was under no illusion that like the system was broken.
178
:think I always thought the system was broken and I, but I became a believer and it's
really interesting.
179
:I think that's what happens.
180
:Like a lot of idealistic.
181
:young people think they can go in and still hold on to this sort of radicalism that they
have.
182
:But what happens is you become absorbed by the system.
183
:Well, it's like Obama.
184
:It's like Obama, right?
185
:Yeah, it's kind of like the entire story of Obama who you know His campaign was all hope
and change and truly stuff that was really inspiring to me I mean, I remember like crying
186
:watching him get inaugurated exactly, you know He got sucked into the system and it all I
mean there's more more at play there than that But I think a large part of it is just the
187
:system, you know You know makes you conform to the brokenness I suppose
188
:Yeah, it's like somebody comes in with a binder and is like, no, this is the way it is,
you know, or
189
:well there's a Bill Hicks joke.
190
:He's like, think when every president gets elected, they put him in a room with a bunch of
like industrialist smoking guys in a dark room and they pull down a screen and they show
191
:him a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle that he's never seen before.
192
:And they're like, any questions?
193
:Exactly.
194
:Exactly.
195
:Yeah.
196
:And then he starts supporting all the like Bush era surveillance and wars.
197
:Yeah.
198
:Yeah.
199
:Yeah.
200
:And I think it's a bigger question of it.
201
:Like how the system, uh how you get sucked in and then you become like the kind of uh just
pageantry of it all.
202
:You become like very much.
203
:um
204
:That's very enticing, I think, to a lot of people.
205
:And I certainly found that too.
206
:It's a lot of like...
207
:you feel like important, right?
208
:Yeah.
209
:Yeah.
210
:And I think that once you walk away from that, you see it all as just so disconnected from
what politics should be for.
211
:And when you talk to people like right now, I live in the middle of Oregon and by no means
is like politics,
212
:a part of my daily, like it's just, just have conversations with people and if it happens
to come up, it comes up and it just feels like, you know, when we talk to people, it's so,
213
:DC feels like such a insular and almost self-obsessed kind of world.
214
:Yeah.
215
:Yeah.
216
:Thinking back to your days like working on Capitol Hill, like what was it?
217
:I mean, you were probably starstruck when you started, of course.
218
:And then was there anything that I guess ah was surprising to you or was or was profoundly
like, was there a moment you remember being like, oh, that's that that's not what I what I
219
:imagined this would this would be.
220
:I think there was a really interesting moment when I got to go to a meeting that was like
the Democratic leadership.
221
:So it was like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and then all of the committee chairs.
222
:So it was like the most powerful people in the house.
223
:Yeah.
224
:And it was like a small, small meeting in the Speaker Pelosi's office.
225
:There's something about that moment that I always think like, they're just human beings,
know?
226
:I mean, a lot of that place runs on just, um, like human interactions, where like all the,
kind of behind the scenes stuff.
227
:It really is.
228
:I mean, a lot of people make the joke that it's like Veep, but that's what I think of to
be honest, when I like look at those.
229
:sort of interactions and like we would staff members uh and they would all like, you know,
it was very political of like who gets to stand where and like who gets to talk first.
230
:So you think like on TV you see them, you know, just speaking at these press conferences
and stuff, but behind the scenes you're like, wow, that was a very scripted, you know, set
231
:of talking points that had to be approved by, you know, seven different people and.
232
:Right, right, right.
233
:You see.
234
:Yeah, you see it just really for what it is.
235
:Was it a slow process of getting jaded by it or was it kind of just I mean did you go in
starry-eyed You know everything and then kind of as you were working there You started to
236
:see things or was this all that happened after you got after like the in this the past
year?
237
:Was it most of it?
238
:I think that makes sense
239
:Yeah, I think it was both.
240
:Like, I think I went in jaded and then em bought into the system.
241
:So I was like, then I became a defender of the system.
242
:And then I got jaded after doing that for two.
243
:think during COVID really was when we all like, were forced to, you know, sit at home and
kind of ponder if there's a meaning of life beyond work.
244
:Those of us who were like, especially me, like, I like come from a generation where we
were told as like young women that
245
:You work was the most important thing.
246
:So you're sitting there and like, my gosh, you know, I've really let this absolve so much
of my personality and like life.
247
:Uh, and then that's where I think I became, I was like, this place just feels, um, it
feels really hard to impact.
248
:Like you can have an impact.
249
:I'm not saying that there aren't well-meaning people who are necessary for that place to
run.
250
:And there's something like really important about people who
251
:are still there doing that.
252
:But I think if you really zoom out, you think like, you know, am I really having an
impact?
253
:Is this really what I want to be doing?
254
:And so, yeah.
255
:What was the goal though?
256
:Like where did you see yourself when you first started working on Capital Hill?
257
:Um, well, I think everybody, every young staffer just dreams of like, you, you, it's very
hierarchical.
258
:So like you start as like a staff assistant and you get paid nothing.
259
:Um, and like a lot of people work at like the bar down the street so that they could make
enough money.
260
:Um, and then the chief of staff is making, you know, I think the max salary is like
$210,000 or something.
261
:Yeah.
262
:So you, it's like a wild and the majority of people there, I don't know the exact age
breakdown, but it's run by people under 50 basically.
263
:Like it's a lot of young people.
264
:You'll see chief of staffs who are like, you know, late twenties, early thirties.
265
:That's very common.
266
:Yeah.
267
:So it's a bizarre, the incentives are a bit bizarre and there's really no, I don't know if
people know this about Capitol Hill too.
268
:There's no like HR.
269
:Every office runs like a small business.
270
:Um, so you have a lot of offices, where the staff and the members, becomes very toxic and
there's no, um, sort of one to, like, there's no formal system, uh, necessarily.
271
:So a lot of the time it's, it's a bit of a mess.
272
:Mean that explains a lot about the organization that we worked at together because that
was the same kind of situation for most of it and and there was a lot of pageantry about
273
:HR but Yeah, it never was actually enacted in any real profound way uh So that's
interesting, but it makes sense because these are all people coming from politics going
274
:into politics So I always kind of wondered why there was never any Thought put into like
HR or anything there and then now that you tell me that I was like, now it all makes sense
275
:You know, they didn't
276
:work in HR stuff, why would they have HR?
277
:Right, and I think there's another thing that in these types of, think it's very common in
like high level political, whether it's like the super PACs or the, you know, elected em
278
:offices or campaigns where there's like a sense that you should just be grateful to be
there.
279
:Right, right, that was the same with the organization we worked for.
280
:Yeah, yeah.
281
:And so you think, well, you know, I get to do this really cool job and like it's
prestigious and whatever.
282
:uh Yeah, like it's OK.
283
:I can deal with this.
284
:But yeah, obviously no workplace should run on toxicity.
285
:So why did you decide to get out of Capitol Hill?
286
:What was the decision there?
287
:Um, well, I had been wanting, I grew up in California, been wanting to come back to the
West coast, um, just for kind of a change of, you know, pace.
288
:And I've always felt more at home on the West coast.
289
:Um, and so that was partly it.
290
:And, um, yeah, I just felt, it felt like the time I had just turned 30 and spent all my
twenties in DC and just was ready for something different.
291
:Right, right.
292
:So then you ended up at the organization that we worked for which seems weird to say I
don't we should have a different like group or something, but whatever uh How did you were
293
:you looking to get in back in politics in some way or did it just kind of fall in your
lap?
294
:fell in my lap.
295
:So I have no idea how you came to it
296
:I think it fell in mine too.
297
:I think it's interesting like what happens when you acquire a set of skills, right?
298
:And then in this kind of job market, it's almost like your options are selected for you in
a way, I think.
299
:I know your story was actually kind of different.
300
:You'd never worked in politics, right?
301
:Yeah, no, I was just I had moved to Columbus for a job as an art director at Hollister,
the teenager clothing company.
302
:Yeah.
303
:And doing video stuff because I went to school for video stuff and got laid off during
Covid and was like, well, shit, I moved to Columbus.
304
:Why did I move to Columbus now?
305
:What am I going to do?
306
:And then, like, I don't know, couple, two or three weeks later, a friend of mine from New
York called me and was like, hey, I know this guy at the Lincoln Project, which at the
307
:time was like blowing up like this is 2020.
308
:and this is just when they were starting to explode.
309
:ah And they was like, I know what guy works for LingQ, they need a new editor.
310
:And so before I knew it, I was signed on to like a three month contract and then it just
kept going.
311
:It just kept going and going and going.
312
:Yeah.
313
:Yeah.
314
:And now I never want to work in politics again.
315
:What has your journey been like I've talked a little bit about how I am I consider myself
now like I guess the word I would use like heterodox I don't really like any sort of
316
:ideology em and I think I mean that's not to say I don't have like beliefs right and like
moral right and moral orientation around this stuff, but I think that em When people
317
:adhere to ideology as like
318
:dogma like in a like almost a religious sense they become like The the amount of things
that you're able to think about becomes very Like a closed feedback loop ah and I mean, I
319
:think the echo chambers on the sort of center left Are often just as bad if not worse as
those on the right?
320
:Absolutely.
321
:think that yeah and the 24-hour media companies are to blame for a large large percentage
of that Yeah, anyway, don't get me started on that Because it makes me upset to think
322
:about that ah But yeah, yep.
323
:Sorry you were saying
324
:I was gonna ask you, like, how do you see your role as just like a political, like, a
citizen in this country post working at that job?
325
:That's an interesting question.
326
:Growing up, I remember seeing, I saw Bill Clinton um speak in Cleveland when I was
younger, and we were all very inspired by him.
327
:um And I was a liberal growing up, was all, you know, very, because it was, I think it was
uh early internet, pre-internet, there was so much less, I really think the internet is
328
:the cause of most of the things that are happening now, because we just didn't have the
amount of information that we have now, and they didn't have the tools, the algorithms to,
329
:to siphon us into our own little silos like they do now.
330
:And I think that, I don't know, working at that organization for four and a half years, at
first I was very excited and it was a fun job for most of it, honestly, because I got to
331
:make just wacky Trump videos for a lot of it, which was super fun.
332
:And then they were on MSNBC and it was like, you know?
333
:It wasn't until he won again.
334
:in 2024 after everybody at that organization said he wasn't gonna win, like everyone.
335
:And I thought, and when they said that I thought, well he can't possibly win.
336
:These are people who worked in politics for years.
337
:Of course they would know.
338
:And they didn't seem to have any idea.
339
:uh But yeah, that really was a, I mean, it wasn't a profound surprise to me, but it was
also a profound surprise to me.
340
:I don't know how else to put that.
341
:uh And that kind of shifted my thinking at all.
342
:oh
343
:Honestly, the shift had already been happening because COVID, I think, shifted a lot of
things.
344
:But like, I'm at a place now where I can't, I can't subscribe to either of these parties.
345
:And I kind of think that, I mean, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm kind of nihilistic in
the sense that I feel like it's fairly broken at this point.
346
:And I don't really know how we're going to find our way out of this.
347
:I'm actually curious to hear what you think, what you think might get us out of this,
because I really don't.
348
:And that's what scares me the most is I'm like, how do we get out of this hole that we are
digging ourselves into without like a profound economic crash, some disaster or some war
349
:of some sort that shifts society in some way?
350
:I just don't know how we suddenly get turn the turn the ship around in a way that's going
to uh rescue us.
351
:So I forget what your question was, but yeah, I'm pretty cynical about the whole thing
now.
352
:And mostly I think that it's fascinating uh
353
:A great show like I don't get I don't get emotionally involved in it anymore.
354
:Um, I think working in it for so long did that to me.
355
:So I don't I don't think that I do anyway.
356
:I don't really get triggered or upset by it.
357
:I'm just kind of like, whoa, how crazy is this getting?
358
:This is getting nuts.
359
:I mean when I start being affected personally by it, that's when maybe I'll start to get
truly emotionally affected by it.
360
:But, um, it all seems like a weird reality show at this point, which makes sense
considering the president, but I don't know.
361
:I
362
:I don't feel a lot um of hope at this point and I don't know if there's any real...
363
:The fact that the organization that we worked at that I truly believed in for a period of
time, truly turned into, I mean, it was always probably in my mind a profound grift.
364
:That to me is like a microcosm of the bigger picture.
365
:It's all kind of a giant shell game grift.
366
:uh Yeah.
367
:I mean, Trump's the biggest grifter of all time.
368
:So, of course, he's the one who's now in charge because like, of course, right?
369
:Yeah.
370
:And yeah, I just don't know.
371
:I mean, there's so many levels of it right now, like there's so much going on that's so
bad that I don't even know where to begin sometimes.
372
:Like, I don't even like to talk about politics on this podcast because it's like.
373
:uh
374
:It's so many, it's like layers and layers upon layers of fucked upness.
375
:You know, I don't know if you saw that article in the Times today about with the justices
who they'd interviewed like early on in his term and they asked like how much, how bad
376
:they thought it would get, how bad, blah, blah.
377
:And then they interviewed him now and there was like nonpartisan group of judges.
378
:And like now they're like, it's way worse than we ever could have possibly imagined.
379
:And that's, that's hard to, you know, but we hear these things every day now.
380
:That's the thing.
381
:Like it's not just once in a while that like it's like day after day after day of America
falling to pieces and And yeah, I don't you know, I don't know.
382
:I don't know how you stop it.
383
:I don't know what you do I don't know if that answered your question, but how do you think
this ends?
384
:How do you think that we get out of this mess?
385
:Yeah, that's no small question.
386
:um So it's funny, it's interesting.
387
:I am finding myself in quite a dark head space a lot of the time.
388
:um But it's not for the reason that I used to be um when I believed the stuff that you
were just talking about.
389
:This kind of worldview where
390
:The system was presumed to be pretty much fine under someone like Biden and probably
someone like Harris, but Trump was seen as the, um, and the big bad evil.
391
:and if we had just read the system of Trump, would be democracy.
392
:Um, that's the narrative that I've become.
393
:quite skeptical of because em when you look at the history and there's a lot of people who
have uh been doing really good work and writing on this often pretty thanklessly for,
394
:excuse me, for a long time, you start to learn about the ways in which over the last 40,
50 years, the economy has taken a turn towards what
395
:people would often term neoliberalism, this sort of Reagan, Thatcher uh idea of this very
kind of twisted idea around free markets and individualism.
396
:uh When in fact, the state ends up just kind of reverting into itself and uh basically
like getting into bed with.
397
:with corporations and with globalization, right?
398
:So it's not so much that there is like the free market thing is in that way very much a
myth.
399
:uh The state is quite involved uh in the sort of the financialization of uh different
sectors of our society.
400
:uh Then you had the nineties with globalization.
401
:And then you have Trump who was speaking to a lot of the pain, the very real.
402
:economic pain that people felt as a result of those policies, which were happened under
both parties, right?
403
:They happened under Reagan, um Clinton, Bush and Obama.
404
:uh And the sort of liberal, I call it liberal.
405
:um But what I mean by that is the sort of centrist kind of Harris voter, which it
incorporates a lot of the
406
:conservative and new conservatives, kind of old one, the old ones, the older like
generation ones, not, what it's become now.
407
:Um, so that's what I'm talking about when I mean that, but yeah, if you frame Trump as the
singular villain, you absolve, em
408
:everyone who has been complicit in upholding a system that has been em inherently
undemocratic and very unfair for a long time before Trump.
409
:to me, Trump is the results of these policies.
410
:And I have a lot of regret in amplifying narratives in which em we called his voters em
411
:kind of irredeemably racist and stupid and ignorant.
412
:We did that in service of this greater narrative that was basically just all a pawn, like
a ploy to give the keys back to this old group of elites, basically, whether that be
413
:financial elites, political elites, this consultant class who had really wrecked the
system in a lot of ways.
414
:Even if that was not their intention, that was the outcome of their policies.
415
:ah And in doing that, we dismiss sort of the humanity of millions of Americans.
416
:And I'm not saying that Trump is not racist and fascist.
417
:There are certainly elements of his personality and his movement that are.
418
:I'm saying that we really missed the point, I think.
419
:And now my work tries to look at this a lot more critically.
420
:um and outside of these sort dogmatic worldviews.
421
:I don't feel like they wanted to see the point.
422
:I kind of feel like some people saw the point but deliberately like ignored it or
obfuscated it because it worked better for their political ends really.
423
:Like you can like to paint Trump as the the the creed.
424
:I I hate Trump.
425
:He's a fucking like he's I just don't think he's a very smart guy.
426
:Number one.
427
:But whatever we can go on and on.
428
:But yeah I think that both sides I mean you look at the media companies too it's like both
sides made
429
:Remember when he first came out, they were showing his speeches on MSNBC the entire thing.
430
:Yeah, because their ratings were through the roof.
431
:Exactly, right?
432
:So they made a fortune off of this man, right?
433
:They all did right and so I think that ultimately maybe a different level it's like The
legalized bribery that's been going on for the last 50 years and gotten worse and worse
434
:and now you get Trump's inauguration And it's just right there in the open It's just like
the people who are getting who are bribing the government are right there in front of you
435
:And it's just like my big issue is like money getting money out of politics getting all
the bribery out of politics
436
:How do you even do that?
437
:You get a constitutional amendment?
438
:I don't know.
439
:um I don't know.
440
:But I agree with what you're saying, even though what I just said didn't really relate to
it.
441
:I'm trying to, I remember you asked me like that really big question about where we go
from here.
442
:Yeah, that's the million dollar question.
443
:I don't have the answer to that obviously, but I do have some sort of inkling of like
where I am now.
444
:I think I've come to the point where it'll take some sort of redistributionist agenda um
that will expand the social welfare state in this country.
445
:I think if we can't advocate for socialism, People say, yeah, okay, that's utopic.
446
:I kind of understand where they're coming from.
447
:I think if we have some sort of concrete demand or political project, it has to be around
restructuring, rebuilding the social contract between the state and the people in which
448
:people are not given these kind of...
449
:almost insulting programs like snap, which you have to be incredibly impoverished to even
qualify for or the ACA expansion or Medicaid.
450
:an actual robust social em safety net that empowers people to live m like a dignified
life.
451
:Sure.
452
:I guess my question, go ahead, sorry.
453
:Exactly, like how on earth are we gonna like, yeah, exactly.
454
:so am I thinking about this?
455
:think it's, I mean, this is all, obviously this is not super pragmatic, this is pretty
high level.
456
:I think it's gonna take, people asked me a lot when I started writing about the Democrats,
a lot of the stuff writing I do is about sort of the ideological bankruptcy, moral
457
:bankruptcy of the Democrats right now.
458
:uh People ask me, how are we gonna solve it?
459
:I say that I think it's gonna take some outside force to take over the party like...
460
:what happened with the Republican Party and Trump.
461
:think they need sort of a left version of something like that.
462
:And I'm not saying that any of this is like, or like,
463
:right, I just don't even see it, yeah.
464
:but I think that's where I've come to in terms of the practical.
465
:think the Democrats had their shot with Bernie Sanders and they just kind of, because I
ders would have beat Trump in:
466
:because he spoke to the same anger at the elites that Trump does, and I think a lot of
people voted for Trump because of the anti-elite sentiment that he preaches, right?
467
:Whereas, you know, had Kamal Harris, you know, dancing with Beyonce or whatever the hell.
468
:And I think Bernie Sanders would have won, and I think it's
469
:It's like, this is what you get.
470
:You had your chance, Democrats.
471
:You had your chance.
472
:You had your big shot and you decided to blow it.
473
:in that sense, I guess I don't see, I mean, if this kind of opportunity comes again with a
Bernie Sanders candidate, are they gonna jump on it or are they just gonna be like, no,
474
:no, no, no, no, want, what's his name in California, the slick Willy, whatever.
475
:yeah, Gavin Newsom.
476
:I have no doubt, yeah, that the Democrats will choose someone like that.
477
:uh I guess I back up a little bit and say two things.
478
:The first is um if...
479
:uh Sort of eras, like they do this a lot in other countries, like in France, they call it
like a new republic.
480
:So it's like the fourth, fifth republic.
481
:I think the era of sort of neoliberalism as the...
482
:bipartisan governing consensus, which you could say ran from like 1980 to probably 2008
it was kind of revived until:
483
:open.
484
:some people will argue that Trump is because his policies like the, um, the tax bill
largely do uphold sort of this corporate friendly environment.
485
:think so it is.
486
:also
487
:a break, and this is where the like democracy people, I think they're, they've quite
really maybe thought this through.
488
:think the pro-democracy movement is kind of surface level where it focuses on this narrow
definition of democracy as like, right.
489
:It's this institutional preservation.
490
:Um, it doesn't focus on sort of the more economic aspect.
491
:Right, quote unquote democracy is what they're trying to say.
492
:Right, the democracy we never actually really had in this country, but still we'll hold
onto that as an ideal and a goal, but yeah.
493
:Right.
494
:And you can think that Trump has really not a lot of regard for that.
495
:you know, for all of the like Trump's a fascist, Trump's a fascist, which was kind of, I
think, very overblown for a long time to the point where now that you mentioned earlier,
496
:we're seeing these pretty remarkable turns.
497
:think.
498
:And you think for me, like the ICE em
499
:what's going on with ICE and Trump trying to deploy the military to cities.
500
:That seems to me seems to kind of be like a secret place, know, sort of fascist.
501
:Yeah, a little bit.
502
:A little bit, yep.
503
:Yeah, and so I almost feel like we're a bit desensitized now to the idea that this could
be a turn towards authoritarianism that actually is kind of revolutionary.
504
:uh
505
:Right, right.
506
:think he's deploying military to these cities so that they get kind of used to it.
507
:So when the next election comes and he loses, he can just send the military in, you know.
508
:I think there's a lot of bad things that could come from that.
509
:I'm not exactly sure what the goal is there, but I think that's definitely part of it em
to help out with the next election.
510
:Right, like who knows?
511
:The problem is that the democratic establishment, people like Gavin Newsom,
512
:also don't really seem to care to take on sort of the neoliberal consensus and to me
513
:if that has died and you're trying to revive it, I'm just not sure that that's gonna work
ah in:
514
:I have been watching a lot of, I don't know if you watch any Tucker Carlson.
515
:ah Yes, yes.
516
:A lot of people are saying, wow, know, like he's making sense.
517
:uh Tucker Carlson to me is a really interesting brand of maybe sort of some sort of look
into what a future kind of
518
:Right populist movement could.
519
:That's interesting.
520
:Yeah
521
:Yeah.
522
:So Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan does this too.
523
:They both have this kind of shtick, which he, Carlson made that speech at the Turning
Point USA speech a couple of months ago that got a lot of attention where he said
524
:something to the effect of, I'm an American citizen and I, uh, you know, I should be able
to just ask questions.
525
:I should, you know, we should know these things, like what's going on.
526
:And he plays this kind of like,
527
:befuddled kind of everyday guy talking to these experts.
528
:And he's just done a new series on 9-11 on YouTube.
529
:it's got like five, each episode has like four or five million views.
530
:And it's this.
531
:It's this idea that actually used to be.
532
:much to the left, which is this like deep skepticism of this sort of bureaucratic state,
whether that's the intelligence.
533
:I think you see it in a lot of institutions.
534
:That's why I think Trump has put people in charge of most of his agencies who kind of have
the intention of like dismantling them.
535
:And yeah, so I think that's this
536
:all a very interesting, em and to me, somebody like Tucker Carlson is going to be much
more, I'm not saying I endorse it or I would vote for him.
537
:I'm just saying that that message is much more resonant um than the kind of Newsome, em
know, Trump's taking down our democracy.
538
:Although it might work if we go so far, you know, if Trump goes so far in this direction.
539
:don't know, but I just think the...
540
:policies that the Democratic establishment is going to try to put up for like towards to
people in the midterms and in:
541
:running Yeah, it's just it's incredible so I like there's a zeitgeist thing going on
that's that's moved Yeah, and it's moved past the Democrats, right?
542
:Like
543
:Nobody, their approval ratings are terrible.
544
:It's a their horse to this idea that Trump can get so bad that the pendulum will just kind
of naturally swing back to them.
545
:Right.
546
:I just don't think it's going to work.
547
:And so if I have any hope, I guess what I'm trying to say is that there will be more of an
opening this time for a left populist candidate to kind of infiltrate the Democratic Party
548
:and make a more serious
549
:I just think it's going to be the Democrats are going to do what they've always done and
they're going to use every tool at their disposal ah to preserve this kind of status quo.
550
:uh
551
:And the question I always have about a populist candidate is like, where are they going to
get their money?
552
:know, like 99%, 98 % of the time the candidate with the most money wins.
553
:like you run a populist candidate running on like an anti-corporate ideology, which kind
of you'd have to do, like where are they going to get money from?
554
:They're not, mean, the corporations are so involved with the billions of dollars to fund
these elections.
555
:Like the winner is the corporate winner, right?
556
:That's the one who's, you know, been paid off the most to
557
:to follow the corporate dogma.
558
:That's what scares me the most is that you can't even get your foot in the door, right?
559
:I mean.
560
:Yes and no, think, I mean I do think with...
561
:New York City election, we saw the power of a candidate who was em not in the pockets of
the oligarchs.
562
:That's true, where did he raise his money?
563
:Did he raise it all?
564
:Was it all grassroots?
565
:I think a lot of it was, I'm sure, I don't have it off the top of my head, but I can't
imagine that he took corporate money.
566
:oh They do have ways to get around that certain politicians do with like, ah but I mean,
that's the question I guess too with ma'am Donnie.
567
:And I made this point in a, I wrote a piece for the lever with David Sirota actually of
the night that he won where we made the comparison to Obama having.
568
:the populist message in a lot of grassroots.
569
:But he also took had the of the oligarchs in his tent.
570
:um Ma'am, Donnie seemed to do it without the oligarchs.
571
:But now people are raising the question of, he going to be able to govern like that?
572
:Is it going to turn out like AOC, who's pretty much kind of capitulated to the
establishment?
573
:Yeah.
574
:And so I think these are all questions that are interesting.
575
:Like, can a self-funded president, I mean,
576
:The reason that Trump also was so successful, right?
577
:And like Michael Bloomberg is there already billionaires.
578
:don't really, that's why Trump could go on stage at the RNC and say, you know, we're done
with these forever wars because he need their money.
579
:And so, yeah, it's certainly, it's a big problem in politics.
580
:Yeah, I mean, I guess what we need is like a, you know, extremely wealthy uh progressive,
but like that's
581
:We've been trying Jef.
582
:I've been to people about em doing like a media organization and it's funny we see that
every day there's like this new liberal em sub stack or something that has like a five
583
:billionaires bankrolling them and really if only there was like a socialist billionaire.
584
:They just don't exist.
585
:It's really like it's really money is very tight on the on the left.
586
:Right, right.
587
:Because, you know, do you think there's any hope for like the I have an idea where, you
know, there's two ways to get a constitutional amendment and you have to do it through
588
:Congress, which is never going to happen.
589
:But you can do it to two thirds of the states, right?
590
:You to have a vote.
591
:Two thirds of the states have to approve it.
592
:I feel like I feel like money in politics is an issue that both sides agree upon.
593
:Generally speaking, I think that like most people, if you ask them if we need to get the
money out of politics, they would be like, absolutely.
594
:We need to get corporate money and all that crap out of politics.
595
:Yes, we do.
596
:And I feel like if there was somebody who came out, and I don't know who that would be,
but like who was able to take this message and pull people together with this message and
597
:actually get this kind of election to happen where we can actually get an amendment to
get, I don't know what it would say of course, but to get corporate money and just all the
598
:money basically out of politics and have publicly funded elections, et cetera, et cetera,
which would be a huge change in America of course, but a necessary one.
599
:uh I think you would get that vote, but again.
600
:It's another dream the moneyed interests would tank it em
601
:Which again brings me back to that.
602
:I don't know how you're going to fix the system that has been so corrupted by money
because money is always going to corrupt any effort to fix it.
603
:Yeah.
604
:Yeah, there are a lot of people who've dedicated their kind of activism on the left to
this issue that I find very admirable.
605
:um Yeah, I mean, I agree with you, though.
606
:think the electorate, the voter is overwhelmingly in favor of uh policy, of getting rid of
money and politics.
607
:There's no question about that.
608
:And it's just gotten worse and worse and worse.
609
:ah To the point where, you know, now it's just basically out in the open.
610
:mean, wasn't it at one point Nixon got like bags full of money or something and that was a
big, big thing?
611
:Now it's like they could just write him a check right in public in front of him for to be
like, all right, there's Elon Musk giving him a little money.
612
:That's fine.
613
:Yeah, I mean, I think when a Musk, before they had their whole falling out and he was
closing up to Trump to get all these contracts and stuff, it was just out in the open.
614
:That's how the government and businesses have been running for decades.
615
:The corporations have benefited enormously from the state, whether that's through
subsidies or tax credits or the...
616
:availability of like lobbying.
617
:Yeah, that's, guess, going back to like, that's another thing that's hard to get across
sometimes with people who are more kind of married to this idea that Trump is the bad guy.
618
:You can say, no, this is a much greater problem with the system that both sides have been
complicit in.
619
:For sure.
620
:And Trump is just sort of the...
621
:actually think a lot of people's anger at Trump, a lot of the uh liberal elite and
conservative elite anger at Trump is just that he breaks the decorum of a president.
622
:It's like a lot of the policies and stuff are actually quite similar to things that have
happened in previous administrations.
623
:uh When he went into uh bomb Iran, the neocons were thrilled, right?
624
:Sure, sure, mean, yeah, there's a lot of policy continuo-
625
:continuation that m they actually like, but the fact that he puts such an ugly face and is
so brash and doesn't follow any of their kind of elite norms, I think is actually what
626
:upsets them the most.
627
:Yeah, I mean, although I would say like the the the the attack on the judiciary is is
really a problematic part of his administration that seems very organized and deliberate,
628
:uh a slow dismantling of what we understood the judicial system to be and the judiciary to
be and what they were supposed to do.
629
:Sure.
630
:Perhaps to, you know, to go after your enemies.
631
:We haven't seen that.
632
:mean, Nixon maybe did that, but I don't think nearly at the at the level that that Trump
seems to be doing it.
633
:uh
634
:And yeah, we've lost, I think, like a third of the judges in the country.
635
:I mean, it's incredible what's happened.
636
:And that concerns me.
637
:So Evelyn, what do you do when you're not thinking and writing about politics?
638
:Well, that's a good question.
639
:What brings you joy in this dark time that we live in?
640
:Yeah, that's it.
641
:That's nice, Jef.
642
:Um, I would say, well, I live in a beautiful place and I'm very grateful to live where I
live.
643
:live in a place that has a lot of forest and mountains and, ah I take my dogs.
644
:have two dogs.
645
:I take them every day for an hour long walk in the forest.
646
:And that is the best part of my day without.
647
:Is it the same path every time or is it a different route?
648
:We have this beautiful big pot.
649
:I think it's.
650
:a couple hundred acres.
651
:And I kind of just get there and decide which path I'm going to take that day, how we're
feeling, how the weather is.
652
:If it's hot, then we need to go to the path that goes down to the river so they can get
some water.
653
:Um, it's beautiful.
654
:And yeah, for me, like that's very centering.
655
:Um, I also find like exercise has been very grounding.
656
:Uh, I know we talked about this.
657
:What's your, what do you do to get away?
658
:I mean, honestly, this year I've been traveling a lot.
659
:I'm trying to figure out I'm in a pretty transition.
660
:I still don't have a job and I uh need to find a job of some sort.
661
:I'm hoping to get remote work so I can like do the digital nomad thing because I'm not
attached like in Columbus to anything really.
662
:You know, I have some friends here, but you know, I'm not really and like I'm not married.
663
:I don't have any kids, which most people at my age do.
664
:So it's like, why am I not, you know,
665
:Didn't you go to
666
:to Mexico City.
667
:I did, was gonna go, I was gonna like, so I've been working remotely with the organization
that shall not be named.
668
:You know, for four and a half years, and I never really took advantage of it.
669
:I did a little bit take advantage of the work remotely thing, but not as much as I wish I
had.
670
:So finally, like when, I think it was before the election or after the election, when we
were told you'll all have jobs going forward, I thought, well, this is great.
671
:I'm actually gonna do the em digital nomad thing finally.
672
:And so I booked this trip to Mexico, but then of course, you know, got laid off.
673
:So I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna go anyway.
674
:And, yeah, it's been like, it's great.
675
:I've never been to Mexico City, it's amazing.
676
:I've heard amazing things, it seems to be a very hot destination these days.
677
:It's very trendy, But I really loved it.
678
:I'm thinking I'm gonna go back either in a couple months or I don't know when.
679
:But yeah, I really loved it.
680
:And it's much less expensive.
681
:I mean, the things you would hear, I have asthma, like childhood asthma.
682
:And so I have the albuterol inhaler that I get here with my insurance.
683
:It always goes back to politics, Jef.
684
:Why do you always do this?
685
:but that's America.
686
:It really blew my mind though.
687
:I get this, I'll be able to, I get through insurance, have to have a prescription of
course.
688
:Get through insurance and I get, pay like 10 bucks for it, but I'm sure that it's being
billed at like $120 or whoever knows how much.
689
:This stuff is like basically free to make.
690
:In Mexico, I can buy them over the counter in the pharmacy for $10 a piece with no
insurance.
691
:Yeah.
692
:I'm told that the most expensive health insurance plan you can get in Mexico is $2,000 a
year.
693
:A year.
694
:This every other country, I have a friend who just moved to Costa Rica and they also have
a similar universal healthcare, much more affordable, much more accessible.
695
:I mean, you don't even really need healthcare in Mexico because it's cheap.
696
:You can just pay out of pocket.
697
:And like you start to wonder why are we still in America?
698
:Because like it's not serving us as a place, right?
699
:Like it's not serving me very well.
700
:I struggle to come up with a thing that like, mean, aside from friends and family and
stuff, why I'm staying here, you know?
701
:Not to say that there's not bad things going on in Mexico or wherever else, but I just
feel like
702
:I can't afford this country anymore.
703
:It does feel like the future in America is like for the first time in my life as a young
person, it feels very desolate in a way that I never, we never were told, you like you
704
:were never like indoctrinated to think that America would be a place of failing
opportunity, right?
705
:I mean, you were told to believe the opposite and you're right.
706
:mean, yeah, the, we've got an extremely oversaturated.
707
:job market for people who have four-year degrees.
708
:The housing is unbelievably expensive.
709
:We have this whole class that benefits off of us basically just being lifelong renters of
everything.
710
:I mean, they get six, in Europe they get six weeks of vacation.
711
:Everybody does, six weeks.
712
:Like, I mean, it's all at the same time too, which is even more amazing in a way, like, I
just start to wonder, and then I start to like, I've really gone down a rabbit hole since
713
:I got laid off, like with too much thinking, like, what are, like, you know, I wanna work,
do, I wanna contribute something, and like, but I don't.
714
:wanna have to just do something for a paycheck.
715
:And I know that's a privileged place to sit here and stay.
716
:And frankly, in three months, I'll probably be like, actually, no, I take that back.
717
:I need some money.
718
:But like, I just wanna be able to make money on my own terms, you know?
719
:ah And that also seems privileged, but I don't think it's uh unattainable.
720
:And I just need to figure out how to do it.
721
:And I think that part of that is like, that I won't make as much money.
722
:but I can live somewhere else and then not have to make as much money, you know?
723
:Exactly.
724
:think I've come up, I've come to the realization that I might never have a single employer
ever again.
725
:I think for me right now, like having multiple streams of income feels like the best way
to kind of make it in this economy because you, if you diversify, you can kind of lean on
726
:whatever's going well at that time.
727
:Um, like granted it's, it's still really hard to, to make it all work, but I think
728
:I see this too, like young people seem to like Gen Z.
729
:I'm like a prime millennial.
730
:Gen Z people seem to, I'm a prime millennial who went into the workforce thinking I could
work at one place.
731
:Which to be fair, like I probably could have had I stayed in Washington, but then you have
to make other sacrifices and you have to ask yourself at the end of the day, like what
732
:kind of life do I want to live?
733
:Right?
734
:Right, live the work or work to live, right?
735
:Yeah.
736
:Yeah.
737
:And so I think that like this front of freelance self-employed, it's a different
lifestyle.
738
:It's definitely like, I feel like I'm working and reading and writing and thinking and
talking to people like seven days a week, but it's that to be self-directed is like, it
739
:feels like such a privilege in a way too.
740
:It's like such a, I wake up every day and I think, my goodness, like I get to decide what
I'm going to focus on, right?
741
:Or what I'm going to work on.
742
:And I
743
:And it's something you're interested in and passionate about.
744
:And you want to do it.
745
:I never had that kind of autonomy when I was working for other people.
746
:And I think that's a real problem too with our work culture in general is most people's
jobs are not really that dignified work.
747
:They're sitting at a desk being told what to do all day.
748
:And if more people had the ability to have more kind of ownership and control over their
days and their time, we would have a lot more freedom as a society.
749
:When I worked at Hollistoke, we'd have these division-wide meetings and they would talk
about how many jeans we sold to teenagers.
750
:And people around me would go, woo!
751
:And I would think, what on earth has happened to you?
752
:I understand you, everybody wants to be part of a club, but what on earth?
753
:Do you ever?
754
:Yes.
755
:Anyway, and at that moment I think I realized I can't, corporate things don't, it doesn't
work for me.
756
:You can't get excited about it.
757
:I mean I can't get excited about selling how many jeans we sold how many distressed jeans
we sold right in the last quarter and but a lot of people didn't get very excited and I
758
:Yeah, and watching like a year or two.
759
:I'll have I'll be like I'll be like doing ads for Hollister on my podcast
760
:Well that's the dream though, in a dark way too isn't it?
761
:Which kind of is actually a weird sort of way.
762
:Not for Hollister necessarily, but I would like some advertisers because it would help
with, you
763
:Do like a new mattress or some athletic green?
764
:Right, believe me, I have mentioned many different products in this podcast just to see if
I can get on the radar, you know.
765
:um
766
:Do you think I've been free about podcasting?
767
:I feel like I've gravitated away from the really scripted one and into probably this is,
know, podcasts like yours, Jef, where it's a conversational and it's just, it doesn't
768
:feel forced.
769
:So much of the time that I worked in democratic politics, like your boss would go on a
show and
770
:have super rigid talking points.
771
:And it just felt so fake.
772
:to me, like, yeah, and it's funny when Democrats will say like, oh, we just need our own
Joe Rogan.
773
:they can't succeed on Joe Rogan is because they can't speak beyond talking points.
774
:Like the media landscape has just completely evolved towards these more like honest
conversations.
775
:it's so funny to me to watch the
776
:kind of consultants like scratch their head and say, why can't we have this?
777
:But it seems so obvious.
778
:But I mean, to be fair, don't think that the Republicans generally outside of Trump and
maybe a few others are able to talk very well outside of their talking points either.
779
:Yeah, I think that, I was thinking about this where you have to be really confident in
like what you're saying and you have to be interesting.
780
:I just listened to James Taylor Rico.
781
:you followed him?
782
:He's the new guy from Texas.
783
:No, no, I've kind of checked out to a degree.
784
:That's fair, so have I.
785
:I'm like not super excited about anyone, but he was on Joe Rogan and they had a beautiful
like two hour conversation about like spirituality and stuff.
786
:Yeah, Joe Rogan's an interesting one like I've kind of come and gone from his show but
like I Don't know what I used to really like about that show is it felt like a am radio
787
:I'm gonna date myself but like a am radio back in the day Used to tune in the middle of
the night and there was like this Art Bell guy and there was a few others but Art Bell was
788
:the big one and he was just this like to call in show that he would kind of just go
anywhere and talk about the craziest shit have UFO people on all these kind of things but
789
:just like agree with them and not mock them, you know
790
:And I think Joe Rogan at his best has, uh or at least used to, legitimately, like people
with legitimately uh crazy beliefs uh that they believed in fervently and he would just
791
:say, yes, tell me more, tell me more, and give them a place where they can just be heard,
right, over and over and over, and never make fun of it but say, yeah, I agree, you know.
792
:uh To a detriment, to a degree, but then he had RFK on and said the same thing and that's
not good.
793
:But yeah, it was fascinating because I love to hear somebody who believes, know, he was on
a UFO and got probed up the ass or whatever.
794
:I love to hear him just can talk for three hours because he's gonna go way deep, right?
795
:He's gonna go all the way in.
796
:uh But when he went to the inauguration, I started to have issues having Trump on, I
guess, I don't know.
797
:I like Joe Rogan, but I don't like Joe Rogan.
798
:An analyst known for years.
799
:Yes, I feel the same way and I like to listen knowing that I'm going to disagree with some
of the stuff.
800
:And I think.
801
:He's kind of an idiot.
802
:He's kind of an idiot is the thing though.
803
:He's not that I mean he's smart in this some ways, but he's not like smart in any
804
:But if he makes some sort of blanket statement that I think is, you know, like offensive
or wrong or whatever, it's just like shallow and whatever, I can hold that next to maybe
805
:something he says that I find to be correct or interesting or has some sort of point to
it.
806
:I think that like the problem is we're so siloed and I agree with you, there's a line, but
if we can listen to something and you actually have to think about it, you disagree.
807
:It's not like preordained at the start.
808
:I think that's good overall for people's.
809
:Yeah, my issue with Rogan, though, I think a vast majority of his listeners are getting
their information from his program.
810
:And that's where I have a problem with it.
811
:But that's also so then you say, OK, what do you do about that?
812
:And I don't think that there's anything to be done about it.
813
:How does Joe Rogan have to be more responsible in his show?
814
:I don't know that we can say that.
815
:But I also think that it is a problem when you have somebody like RFK on and he just
spouts nonsense and Joe Rogan says, yeah, that's yeah, totally.
816
:Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
817
:Like I had a lot of friends who liked RFK because like they believed the nonsense he was
spewing on things like Joe Rogan and that starts to ask the question of like, I don't
818
:know.
819
:No, that's how.
820
:Yeah, that's a great point.
821
:You're totally right about that.
822
:I think there's a really good book about this.
823
:If people are interested, it's called Revolt of the Public by Martin Gury.
824
:And he talks about how in sort of the information era of like, you know, basically when
the internet started until now with the digital era of information, the.
825
:um
826
:He calls them like center organizations, but kind of the like hierarchical authoritative,
um, like the government is a good example, or like, right.
827
:A central organization used to have a monopoly on information.
828
:And so the media and the could kind of work hand in hand, uh, to amplify whatever
narrative was, um, you know, convenient.
829
:uh And then you started to have ruptures in that, like with Vietnam, where when people
start seeing what's actually happening, uh that's information that's not being mediated by
830
:like uh a news organization or something, they can actually see it.
831
:Then they start to question the legitimacy of the information.
832
:And now we're at a point where institutions in general have lost so much legitimacy with
the public.
833
:that information has become so, what's the word?
834
:What's the truth anymore?
835
:I have no idea.
836
:Yeah.
837
:Right.
838
:Like it's available in so many different ways through so many different channels that
everybody's trying to make sense of what's legitimate and what's not, what's real and
839
:what's not.
840
:Uh, that there's, there's almost like the silver lining that yeah, you have more access to
information so you can question.
841
:But at the same time, you have less resources to understand and figure out what's true.
842
:And at a certain point, I think people just tune out.
843
:and they start listening to people that they trust regardless of whether or not it's true.
844
:And it becomes very hard to verify truth.
845
:I also think that that's part of the whole game though is to flood information into the
things to keep the real stories from being, you know, uh amplified, right?
846
:You can hide the real story.
847
:They've been weaponized.
848
:uh
849
:Yeah, no, it's really problematic.
850
:And I don't even know, I don't know about you, but like I read articles now and I'm like,
I see something like, I'm like, is that true?
851
:Is that actually true?
852
:And then I'll have to like check two or three places just to see if this article that back
in the day, I would have gotten a magazine like the New Yorker wherever and just been
853
:like, that must be true, true, true.
854
:But now anything I read now, I'm like, and then I'm and then at the end of the day, I
still don't know if it's true.
855
:And yeah, I don't know how a society continues to function when
856
:there is no agreed upon reality anymore.
857
:And maybe that's the thing that worries me the most is that, and that's the thing that
maybe that should worry us the most aside from all this, all the politics is just like
858
:when reality becomes impossible to agree upon, how do we even come together at all because
we're all siloed up so much in our own different pockets of, uh and they're all making
859
:money off of it too, so ah that's what.
860
:outrage has been monetized.
861
:You know that Twitter got more downloads in the week after Charlie Kirk's death?
862
:More new downloads than ever before.
863
:Yeah.
864
:Yeah, how much money, I wonder, did Elon Musk make off of his death?
865
:Yeah.
866
:And yeah, we've also got that new billionaire, US billionaire Zionists buying TikTok.
867
:Yeah, no that's not gonna cause any press not gonna cause any problems there at all Yeah,
that's right.
868
:I mean there was I mean I heard the inner of the Netanyahu thing where he was talking
about how great it was Like if he's saying it's great, you know, it's Yeah, if Netanyahu's
869
:saying it's great, you know, it's to be bad
870
:You know, he's basically our de facto president, but maybe that's uh a podcast for
another.
871
:that's a whole rabbit hole that you've opened there.
872
:Yeah, no, uh you're an anti-semite, Evelyn.
873
:I didn't know I was having an anti-semite on the show.
874
:Right, there you go.
875
:There's the close epistemic feedback loop of the liberal worldview that I'm trying to...
876
:Exactly.
877
:See, we circled the square.
878
:Yes.
879
:ah That was a Hollywood Squares reference.
880
:Good Lord, help me.
881
:Do know what that show was?
882
:Do ever seen Hollywood Squares?
883
:God, I can't believe I just did a Hollywood Squares reference.
884
:Oh dear.
885
:Well, this is what happens.
886
:Evelyn, tell people about your substack and the other things that you're writing for.
887
:Yeah.
888
:So if you're interested to do this stuff, I write uh usually once a week, sometimes twice
on Substack.
889
:It's just Quartz Evelyn at Substack.com or dot, you'll find it if you just search Evelyn
Quartz on Substack.
890
:And I have been doing some freelance writing.
891
:A lot of my interests are around these questions that we've been talking about.
892
:I'm really interested in political legitimacy at this moment.
893
:em I think it's
894
:more than anything we have a crisis of legitimacy um and faith in our ability to, em I
guess, figure out whatever this moment is.
895
:I'm really interested in sort of this whole realignment issue, um how the kind of next
populist, these movements build, things like this.
896
:So yeah, if you're interested in any of that, on Substack and I've written periodically
for The Lever.
897
:and Compact magazine.
898
:highly recommend both for people who are interested in this too.
899
:Two really good independent media publications that are very critical.
900
:The lever focuses a lot on what we've been talking about a little bit, Jef, the issue of
money and corruption in politics.
901
:no, they're great.
902
:They've done a ton of good.
903
:Yes.
904
:so forth.
905
:Yes.
906
:And I will say that compact is much more of kind of like a heterodox intellectual eh
outlet and it's also very good.
907
:So yeah, you can find me.
908
:Yeah, Evelyn's one of the few sane voices on Substack anymore.
909
:So if you're on Substack, check her out.
910
:Has that been lucrative for you?
911
:If you don't mind me asking.
912
:I mean, no, not a little bit, but not that's not the main point
913
:I know I'm just I'm just I'm just curious.
914
:Yeah, I mean everybody's got to make money if you can make money doing your writing on
substeck That'd be amazing
915
:I know, some people do.
916
:You do have to quite a bit of subscribers, paid subscri-
917
:you're building you're still building it's like six months now you've been doing that
918
:Yeah, and yeah, I've been very grateful of the support and I've been able to connect with
a lot of really great em people who are writing about similar things.
919
:I think Substack is overall like a really positive.
920
:I think it's better than better than most of the places.
921
:Yeah In terms of social media.
922
:Yeah, because it is social media like let's be
923
:They've kind of gone in that direction,
924
:Yeah, for sure.
925
:Yeah, it's got a feed and everything now.
926
:The only thing they don't have is like vertical videos that you can swipe up on repeatedly
with your.
927
:god, Jef you're giving them ideas.
928
:oh
929
:Even LinkedIn has that now too, think, don't they?
930
:think they have the swipe up.
931
:One of the nice things about doing this work is I have not got on LinkedIn in a long time.
932
:Oh, good for you.
933
:had to go on LinkedIn.
934
:I actually got my free trial to LinkedIn premium today so I can use their AI features to
amp up my resume.
935
:Oh, no, Kill me.
936
:Yeah, God help us all.
937
:God help us all.
938
:Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen, but I need to get a job because or more I need
to get a job or more.
939
:Patreon subscribers.
940
:if you're listening, go to my Patreon.
941
:After you go to Evelyn's sub stack and subscribe to hers, then go to my Patreon and
subscribe to mine.
942
:And then you'll make us both happy and you'll feel better too because everybody gets joy
from helping other people.
943
:See what I did there?
944
:I made it impossible.
945
:It's impossible not to accept that pitch.
946
:Now the ad companies are going to come running.
947
:Anyway, Evelyn, it was wonderful to talk to you again.
948
:I'm glad that you're, you know, doing what you want to do and writing about what you want
to write about and asking the questions that need to be asked in this dark time of our
949
:Lord 2025 because personally I'm confused so it's nice to have people uh writing about and
addressing this confusion in a way that seems sensible.
950
:Thanks, Jef.
951
:That means a lot.
952
:And thanks for having me.
953
:And this is awesome.
954
:Congrats on the podcast.
955
:Of course, thank you for coming on.
956
:And that was some political heterodoxy from Evelyn Quartz.
957
:can and should follow Evelyn on Substack at QuartzEvelyn.Substack.com I'll put that in the
show notes along with all the other stuff.
958
:You should read the show notes, by the way.
959
:They're fascinating and they're well written and they are succinct.
960
:If you do enjoy this show and you're still listening, please do like, rate, subscribe and
review.
961
:It helps so much.
962
:I'd say this every week.
963
:And I will say it every week.
964
:wish there was another way to say it.
965
:Maybe I should have a song.
966
:Like, rate, subscribe, and review.
967
:Like, rate, subscribe, and review.
968
:Like, rate, subscribe, and review.
969
:You gotta know that's what you gotta do.
970
:That's not bad.
971
:That's gonna be a hit.
972
:I'm quitting podcasting and going into music now.
973
:But please do.
974
:All of that.
975
:And send this to a friend of yours.
976
:Somebody who likes politics and who's interested in new ways of thinking about politics of
solutions to the problems of our time Send this to them send this podcast to them.
977
:They will love it and they will thank you for it And they'll be like, thank you so much
for that podcast.
978
:I love it so much It made me think about things in a new way and I really appreciate you
for it And they'll get you a better gift for Christmas probably You can follow the podcast
979
:and you should follow the podcast on Instagram at 1f Jef podd
980
:You can, what else can you do?
981
:You can email the podcast at 1fJefpod at gmail.com.
982
:Again, now that the episode's over, now you have a chance.
983
:You can turn the episode off now and you can go to patreon.com slash 1fJef and subscribe
to make this podcast go boom.
984
:I can't believe I've made 19 episodes.
985
:What was the statistic I heard?
986
:It was like only 5 to 10 % of podcasts ever get to like 10 or 15 episodes.
987
:And I think if you get to 20, you're at like the top 5 % of all podcasts.
988
:So go me.
989
:And thank you for continuing to listen because I mean honestly I would still do this if
nobody was listening at all but it'd be harder if I looked at my stats and it was like
990
:zero zero zero zero I'd be like what the fuck am I doing wrong?
991
:Because there's like a lot of people in the world so somebody's got to be listening to it
right?
992
:Somebody.
993
:Alright.
994
:Time for more Theraflu.
995
:Maybe just one more batch before I go to bed tonight.
996
:Thank you guys again for listening.
997
:I love you all.
998
:If you're struggling to get through these dark times, my advice is always to put your
fucking phone down, go outside, feel the sun on your face, hug a tree, lie down in the
999
:grass, close your eyes, and pretend it all isn't happening.
:
01:15:14,156 --> 01:15:15,578
Because it really isn't.
:
01:15:17,036 --> 01:15:18,805
Very good, Jefrey.
