Damon Linker On Trump's Historic Win

Damon is a political writer with a must-read substack, Notes from the Middleground. He’s been the editor of First Things and a senior correspondent at The Week, and he’s the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test. Back when we were both at Newsweek / Daily Beast, he edited my essays, so we’ve been friends for a while. We also both belong to the camp of conflicted moderates — and look like doppelgängers. The poor guy gets mistaken for me sometimes.

Damon was on the Dishcast right after the 2022 midterms, so he’s back to discuss the results of this election. For two clips of our convo — if we should be more afraid of Trump this time around, and the effect of woke culture on men — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Trump going from an “absolute joke” to a world historical figure; his uncanny instincts; how he activated an ignored demographic in 2016; telling Jeb Bush that his brother didn’t keep us safe; W’s wars; neocons like John Podhoretz; Trump’s gains with Hispanic and black voters; the backlash against elites; South Park Conservatives; the end of Reagan Republicans; how Trump’s first win felt like a fluke; his smart team this time; Covid lockdowns and BLM; MeToo excesses and DEI; the immigration surge under Biden as a gift to Trump; liberals who see borders as immoral; the hideous talk about Springfield and migrant crime; the left’s “racism” slur; the Hispanic backlash over “Latinx”; legal immigrants opposed to illegals; the 1924 and 1965 laws; how asylum law takes sovereignty from citizens; the threat of Stephen Miller; deportation camps, violent protests, and martial law; how Dems could flatter Trump to tame him; Obama’s progressivism restrained by realism; Niebuhr; how skepticism over Ukraine is deemed “pro Putin”; how Ukraine didn’t move the electorate; the “fascism” debate; Harris and Trump both running ads on both sides of Israel/Gaza; the gaslighting over Biden’s decline; inflation and fuzzy memories of Trump’s economy; Harris courting Haley voters with Liz Cheney; her not-terrible but tepid run; “opportunity economy” and other blather; how her abortion strategy didn’t work; her cowardice with the press and new media; Trump’s success with podcasts; how he became a funny grandpa figure; barstool conservatives; his trans ads in the final stretch; and Vance as the future heir.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Anderson Cooper on grief, Reihan Salam on the evolution of the GOP, John Gray on the state of liberal democracy, David Greenberg on his new bio of John Lewis, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and Mary Matalin on anything but politics. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Here’s a fan of last week’s pod with Musa al-Gharbi:

Great dive into wokeness and the causes thereof. One of your best episodes this year.

But the excellent discussion is lacking in the second half, namely a more thorough dissection of how we got to “elite overproduction.” Peter Turchin, who coined that phrase, explains it all in his book End Times. It’s a paradigm-altering book, and I’d love to hear Turchin’s opinion of the 2024 election and what lies ahead.

Another fan:

This was a brilliant episode and I’m very much looking forward to reading Mr. al-Gharbi’s book. I got into a Ph.D. program rather late in my life, and it was an education in economy, that’s for sure. I guess I walked in innocently thinking I was joining “my tribe” in the pursuit of Knowledge and Teaching, but this proved to be so far from the case that I’m still a bit in shock about it ten years later. So I was very grateful to see Mr. al-Gharbi put into words what I instantly recognized but had yet to articulate. 

I remember one of my colleagues was a woman from India who had gotten her first grad degree in England. In our first group-orientation meeting — which was about orienting our perceptions along the social justice lines — she began to speak about how “white” it was here in Nebraska and how “I’m feeling very brown right now!” She was Brahmin caste, and nothing about her family or her life in India spoke of anything other than the highest levels of privilege. She was a lovely person, but it was so strange in hindsight to recognize how exactly she fit in the standing order and how happy she was to do it.

Here’s another clip from the Musa pod:

Another listener points to a post-election piece by Rebecca Solnit titled, “Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do”:

It’s amusing that the Solnits of the world find America so confusing. They still don’t get it, and they lash out at the ones who were left behind. A lot of my peers in the Bay area are also perplexed.

Thanks to one of your recent guests, Tina Brown, I watched The Insurrectionists Next Door, and it sunk in a bit more clearly for me — that, plus my fellow Indian tech engineers who were pro-Trump because of the illegal immigration, deficit spending, and culture-war nonsense. I’ve always said that if the Bay-area folks care more about Guatemalan illegals than the poor, all-color “trash” in Alabama, this country will fall apart. For us immigrants, it’s clear that the only supporters of illegal immigration are liberal elites or transactional business types.

Also, I loved the Musa episode — finally someone with the balls to say what we all think in academia. The only ones who benefit from the DEI positions of leadership created are elites with the correct skin color or ethnic origin and not actual poor minorities trying to rise up from the ghetto/hood coming from disadvantaged families. Somehow the society is so racist that it needs examples of rich elite Black Americans (often not even American citizens or even permanent residents) in positions of power.

Here’s a guest recommendation:

I would absolutely love to hear you talk to Dr. Anthony Daniels, also known by the pen name “Theodore Dalrymple.” He is primarily a cultural critic but spent his earlier years working as a prison psychiatrist. He’s a contributing editor to City Journal, a Manhattan Institute fellow, and a recurring contributor to The New Criterion, among many other publications. Just look at the titles of some of his books: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass, Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses, and Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality.

Anyway, he’s my port in the current storm, and might make a great guest after we have this election in the rear-view mirror. (Please, get in the rear-view mirror.)

Always grateful for recs. Another:

That photo of Truman is irresistible! You wrote, “Dogs FTW.” How about dogs For The Dishcast? Brian Hare is Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology, and Psychology and Neuroscience, at Duke University:

He’s also a dog expert, and has a new book out, together with Vanessa Woods — the director of the Duke Puppy Kindergarten. It’s called Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog. I’d love to hear them join you for a discussion about evolutionary anthropology and, of course, dogs. 

Yeah I watched that documentary on Netflix. Lovely, but a little cringe at times for my taste. Here’s a listener with a perennial question:

I’m writing to ask you to consider providing written transcripts for your podcast. I’m not deaf, but I have another illness that makes it impossible for me to listen to podcasts for any longer than a few minutes. But it’s also worth considering that not providing transcripts (or putting the entire conversion on YouTube, where CC is provided) keeps deaf people away from your content. I am a former sign-language interpreter, and I can tell you that I realize what an invisible (bad pun I suppose) issue this is for most podcasters. Though inelegant and often funny, AI transcripts are becoming popular with some podcasters; perhaps you could consider that. 

Problem solved! Substack auto-transcribes each episode using AI, and you can find the transcript on each pod page here:

A reader writes:

Despite being deeply engaged in this issue, somehow I had never seen this Trump campaign video (h/t Rod Dreher) on Trump’s very detailed plans to stop the ongoing homophobic crime against humanity of mutilating gay kids on the basis of pure medical quackery:

So glad to see it now. The big battle is over. Now activists like me just have to make sure that the famously inattentive Trump does not get distracted from carrying out these plans. But I don’t think he will. His team was smart enough to run tons of ads on it (I saw some even here in deep blue California during the World Series), and I think they will know that they must follow through. 

Here’s a dissent for our trans coverage:

I’ve spent years reading your weekly concerns about transing kids. This topic is difficult for me because it’s so personal.