Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Let's talk a little bit about your future politically. You're going to get back in the arena, thinking about it, on the fence? Where are you? I could tell you you're not going to be a liar seriously considering what role we might play in the future including as a candidate for public office again.

Well you're right. So he says you're right. There's only one office I'd be thinking about.

It's the cost of living, plus election. Now that's what I call it.

We will win the election if we convince voters we care about their economic well-being.

If your goal is to win an economic argument, go on Morning Joe. If the goal is to win an election, look at the fucking data.

The cost of living is the heart of it. Now, look, like I, you know, I work in various places in the in the world, not just the U.S. and so the pandemic drove up prices, but when you have to cut off of Russian energy, you had this spike of energy, got unbelievable energy cost and the elections became who is going to help people with the cost of it.

When you have two-thirds wrong track and two-thirds saying the economy sucks and their lives are going... the edge of a cliff, they don't want to hear what a great job you've done. They want to hear what you... what you're doing for them and how you're helping them.

In America, we have this genre of self-help books for entrepreneurs... but nothing really comparable exists for statesmen.

Leadership requires painting a beautiful portrait of the world that you'd like to inhabit and installing confidence that you are the best person to make it a reality.

Great leaders throughout history have been builders of beautiful things.

I go back to Justinian the Great. He built the Hagia Sophia... he coupled that beauty because he knew that most people, they're not persuaded by logic. They want that big compelling story.

It's Gateway to Statesmanship, selections from Xenophon to Churchill.

Liberals, especially liberal women, are significantly less likely to be happy with their lives and satisfied with their mental health compared to their conservative peers aged 18 to 55.

The survey goes on to find that liberals are about 18 percentage points less likely to be completely satisfied with their mental health than conservatives, but the problem appears to be especially acute for liberal women who register the lowest level of satisfaction with their lives and mental health.

His theory in The Unheard article is that liberals are clearly less likely to be married and less likely to have children and that is eating away at their ability to come to that answer that yes, I'm completely satisfied with my life.

We Are on a Path to Nuclear War

No rational or even sane leader plans to start a nuclear war... Once an escalatory cycle begins, a series of individually rational steps can add up to a world-ending absurdity.

In the Russian case particularly, a loss in Ukraine would seem to threaten regime survival and even the territorial integrity of the country.

What we know so far from this conflict is ever increasing escalation.

we've been seeing this uh previously invisible crisis of the collapse of work for men mainly driven by an exit from the workforce of prime age men of 25 to 54 year olds let's say it's been almost a straight line up from 65 to the present

for every guy who's unemployed there over four who were neither working nor looking for work today

we have a depression scale problem of work for men on our hands right now

the unnerving eerie thing is the line i calculated for the exit from the workforce which is almost straight has just continued right on from 2016 to the present

there's absolutely nothing good that comes out of this uh it leads to this huge gap in our workforce means uh slower economic growth it also means bigger income and wealth gaps in our society it probably means more dependence upon social programs and social welfare over the long term more pressure on fragile families less social mobility less involvement in society and you know trust in institutions there's just you do the 360 there is nothing good that comes out of this

Coal Miner's Daughter is one of the great class conscious anthems of the American song book.

Loretta Lynn somehow managed to enjoy the popular culture of modernity while simultaneously thinking Trump was 'the only one who's going to turn this country around'.

those in charge of public schools and politicians are hypocrites when it comes to the rhetoric surrounding a teacher shortage school districts around the country are describing hundreds of classrooms they can't seem to fill with qualified teachers this has been a manipulated ploy to get rid of veteran teachers and employ alternative revolving door unqualified teachers who will settle for smaller salaries

But they don't write in a way that touches the soul the way that someone like Du Bois or James Baldwin can.

And what Du Bois says is that what Brown reveals is that historical processes really shift by the way that people who are able to activate the part of our consciences that are not explicable parts of the political process.

There's a great book people should read by Christina Lamb called Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, which is about the history of rape as a weapon of war.

I suggested Rashid Khalidi, author of 100 Years War, a great Palestinian American scholar as the next president of Harvard.

He wrote a book in the 90s where he's like, Russia and policy should have three goals. Number one, split Britain away from the rest of the EU.

Number two, Russia should invade Georgia. And number three, Russia should retake Ukraine.

So all three of those things actually did happen.

Now as I mentioned before the monologue, the people who are the Russiagate basically level people in Britain like to point to that first one as evidence that it's Russia's fault.

The EU. Yeah, exactly. They're like, Brexit was a Russian plot. They have their own Russiagate version over there.

It's kind of you can tell me if you think this description is right. It's like part memoir, part, you know, description of the journey of yourself and as an activist, but also tracking these major movements from Occupy to Bernie 2016 to Bernie 2020.

It's available wherever books are sold now.

I started writing it before it came to an end, which, you know, obviously required some retooling.

I knew that I wanted to start writing I knew that I wanted to start sort of with where I came from and how I ended up, you know, on the left, quote unquote, whatever that means.

It's excellent. Congratulations and thank you so much for sharing some of your insights today.

I recommend Ben Shreckinger's book called The Bidens that specifically goes into all of the transactions over the decades of President Joe Biden's career that he and Hunter have taken advantage of the Biden last name to the tune of tens of millions.

The presidents did not give good answers, but they were right to not answer categorically. There is no genocide exception to the First Amendment.

HBO Films has optioned the rights to a new book, Mark Chusano maybe I'm gonna go with? The Fabulous, the book is called The Fabulous, The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing and Very American Legend of George Santos which was published on November 28th, 2023.

And I'm the author of the book, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism.