(The Dish is on Easter break and will return in full next Friday.)
Derek Thompson is a long-time writer at The Atlantic. His books include Hit Makers, On Work, and Abundance, which he co-wrote with Ezra Klein. Derek also has an excellent substack and hosts a podcast called “Plain English.”
This episode was recorded on March 17. An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of our convo — on the impact of Abundance, and the difference between being alone and anti-social — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: growing up near DC; theater his first love; the two of us trading stories of stage acting; pursuing journalism after 9/11; how writing has evolved in the 21st century; conspiracy theories online; AI creating doubt; strategizing the Abundance book; Virtually Normal; books as totems; blue vs red city governance; housing deregulation; “procedural fetish” vs Trumpian chaos; government spurring innovation; Derek’s piece “The Anti-Social Century”; OnlyFans; looking at smartphones in a gay bar; Kierkegaard; Camus; tradition as a ballast; meaning through limits; fatherhood; Hegseth reveling in dominance; Nietzsche; the tribalism of early humans; wokeness and the Trump cult; liquid modernity; consumerism replacing meaning; the fertility crisis; the growing dominance of Orthodox Jews in Israel; and Oakeshott and infinite games of non-winning.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” HW Brands on the life of George Washington; Greg Lukianoff on free speech, and Tom Junod on his memoir and masculinity. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
A reader writes, “Just a few thoughts on a dreary Easter Sunday in Calgary”:
I read your latest column and have been chewing on the following line ever since: “One Trump term could be rationalized away by our friends and allies. Not two. This is America now.”
Europe has the luxury of turning away from America in the long term. Canada? Not so much. Despite our outward belligerence, we are simply too economically and militarily interdependent. We lack the internal resilience and unity required to make the sacrifices necessary to fully cut ties. I’m not happy about this. It’s just the reality as I see it; we don’t have the fortitude to engage in anything other than symbolic measures against an increasingly terrifying US. Those symbolic measures aren’t nothing, but they won’t be enough.
Which brings me to the timely question of renewal and rebirth. Christos Anesti!
How do we restore trust in this relationship after the fever has passed? What does “re-normalization” look like? My overwhelming sense is that Americans themselves don’t yet fully grasp how much damage has been done to these relationships — or they see Trump as so weird, ephemeral, and even funny that everything will settle into old norms once he’s passed. (And that doesn’t even address the fact that some of his critiques toward other countries, including Canada, are actually perfectly valid and correct.)
But, frankly, I think your assessment is correct. I don’t think you can just slide back into old patterns after two Trump administrations. There is something fundamentally dark at play in the American spirit, and until those demons are fully exorcised and addressed, there can be no real return to the old normal.
I get this sense even when I hear Democrats and liberals talk about Donald Trump — the “Good Guys” rightly outraged by his latest un-American obscenity. But what, specifically, do I hear them complain about? Gas prices. “No Kings.” Grocery bills. The complaints are all proximal and immediate to their everyday concerns. There is no sense of grander mission, nor of America’s — not just its exceptionalism, but also its special duty as leaders of the free world. I understand that isolationism comes and goes in historical waves in America but that, I think, is the problem.
Americans — not just their leaders, but the polity itself — need to decide whether or not they want to lead the free world. Until you all can answer that question for yourselves, there will be no end to these weird political paroxysms.
Just as there’s no exceptionalism without duty, the abrogation of duty will inevitably undermine the exception. America will remain dominant in culture and finance for my lifetime; but a world without American leadership in military, political, and (for lack of a better term) matters of deeper moral values, is a world that will be led by polities ready to take up that mantle. And I do not believe that is a better world for anyone — Americans least of all.
Me neither. A period of chastening may be necessary. But the Trump stain is ineradicable.
A listener writes, “Happy Easter — he is Risen!”
Thanks so much for the continued excellent podcast and weekly notes. It’s truly a highlight of my week.
I also want to endorse Tom Holland’s recommendation of Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion. Five years ago, when our second son was born, I felt a great stumbling block over the Bible verse, “He who knew no sin became sin that we might become his righteousness.” (2 Cor 5:21) How could this be? Isn’t Christ unchangeable? So as I held our newborn son on long naps in the rocking chair and on the couch, I read widely until I came to this magnificent book by Rutledge.
I am not quite sure Tom has it right that Rutledge views the crucifixion as simply a myth (though she is a bit more equivocal about the Devil perhaps being a force, or a being, or a negation), since she sure seems to emphasize that something did happen on the cross. The book wonderfully walks through all the deep motifs of how scripture talks about Christ’s horrendous death — a shameful death, and the closest modern analogue to lynching. From the scapegoat to Christus Victor to substitutionary atonement, the book is quite ecumenical in surveying the rich history of the Church. I cannot recommend it enough. Although my original question — how did Christ become sin? — was never quite answered, the book helped me understand what, if not how, all that was accomplished that day nearly two thousand years ago.
Let me close by also recommending the words of another tremendous writer, Frederick Buechner. From his book The Magnificent Defeat:
So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died? I can tell you this: that what I believe happened and what in faith and with great joy I proclaim, is that he somehow got up, with life in him again, and the glory upon him. And I speak very plainly here, very unfancifully. He got up. He said, “Don’t be afraid.” Rich man, poor man, child; sick man, dying man; man who cannot believe, scared sick man, lost one. Young man with your life ahead of you. “Don’t be afraid.” […]
Anxiety and fear are what we know best in this fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumors of wars. From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it.
But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God.
In the end, his will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.
Another writes:
I feel compelled to express my gratitude for all that you and Chris do to keep the Dish alive and kicking. I’m about to do some yard work and listen to you and Tom Holland. (And BTW, loved the pod with you and Jonah.) Even though it’s Saturday morning here in Central Texas, I want to say to you: Christ is Risen! Blessings to you and Chris, and thanks again.
Don’t forget Truman:
