Reihan Salam On Identity And Individualism

Reihan is a writer and the president of the Manhattan Institute. Before that he was the executive editor of National Review and worked at publications as varied as the NYT, The Atlantic, National Affairs, Slate, CNN, NBC News, and Vice. He’s the author of Melting Pot or Civil War? and Grand New Party — a 2008 book he co-wrote with Ross Douthat that pushed a policy program for a GOP connected to the working class. He was also my very first assistant on the Daily Dish, editing the Letters page, over two decades ago.

For two clips of our convo — on finding “Americanness” out of immigrant diversity, and Trump vs the education system — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Reihan’s upbringing in Brooklyn; his immigrant parents (who both worked two jobs) and his older sisters from Bangladesh; how cities are enlivened by legal immigration; the formative role of TNR and the Dish for a young Reihan; the role of reader dissent in blogging; epistemic humility; Burke; Oakeshott; how outsiders often observe subcultures more accurately; the self-confidence of assimilation; Arthur Schlesinger’s The Disuniting of America; meritocracy; the PC movement of the early ‘90s; marriage equality; gay assimilation; victimhood culture and its self-harm; the love of one’s homeland; Orwell; Thatcher’s mature view of trade-offs and “vigorous virtues”; Bill Clinton; Obama’s view of red states and blue states; the importance of storytelling in politics; Trump’s iconic images in 2024; his trans ads; his multiracial coalition; the self-flagellation of woke whites; John Oliver and Jon Stewart; Seth Moulton and the woke backlash; how Harris might have won by acknowledging 2020 overreach; Eric Kaufmann and sacralization of victim groups; The 1619 Project; the failure of blue city governance; Reagan Democrats and Trump Democrats; the indoctrination in higher ed; the government’s role in curriculum; DEI bureaucracy; SCOTUS vs affirmative action; the American Rescue Plan and inflation; elite disconnect from higher prices and higher migration; October 7, Zionism; and the ordeal of consciousness.

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: David Greenberg on John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement, Adam Kirsch on his book On Settler Colonialism, Brianna Wu on trans lives and politics, Mary Matalin on anything but politics, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and John Gray in the new year on the state of liberal democracy. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a fan of last week’s pod:

Paid subscriber here. When I first saw that you were doing a two-hour episode with Anderson Cooper, on grief, I sort of groaned. But I tuned in — and it was SO compelling. Magnificent episode. By far your best ever.

Another listener calls it “an absolutely stunning episode”:

In a sense, this was the perfect episode to come out in this post-election haze. Your ability with all of your episodes to discuss, with clarity, the current events of the day while also setting aside time to dig deep into life’s big questions is what sets you apart from basically every other substack/podcast at the moment. Even when I disagree with you and a guest, I come away completely refreshed and intellectually stimulated. Thank you!

Towards the end of the conversation with Anderson, you spoke wonderfully about your mother’s love of Mary and the invocation of various saints. My grandmother was, to put it lightly, religiously and spiritually fluid, but she held a special place in her heart for Mary and the saints. This standup bit reminds me of her — and makes me laugh every time: 

So spot-on! Basically what I was taught as well. Another listener sends a poem:

I listen to most of your episodes, and I was not quite sure what to expect with Anderson Cooper, but I found your discussion very memorable and real. When you talked about your grandmother and her favorite hymn, I sat up. For several weeks now, I have been reciting to myself a few lines from “Lord, for tomorrow and its needs.” It has been a favorite for over 60 years — its beauty and truth never faltering. Before you named which hymn was her favorite, I just felt it had to be this one, and sure enough, it was. It felt telepathic. 

Lord, for tomorrow and its needs
I do not pray;
keep me my God from stain of sin
just for today.

[…]

So, for tomorrow and its needs
I do not pray;
but keep me, guide me, love me, Lord,
just for today.

Now, when so many are feeling unmoored, its words seem like a guiding light by which we might just manage to stumble along and hold onto what souls we have left.

I sing it to myself from time to time. It was important to sing it at my mother’s funeral. Another listener:

Thank you so much for the astonishing discussion with Anderson Cooper. I think you both, but Anderson in particular, have stored your grief high up on emotional shelves ... and it was heartbreaking to take down those dusty cans and take a look inside. I cried along with you.

Your talks felt like sermons to me: that all people — even you two fortunate and successful men — suffer and grieve losses. It is as inescapable as death and taxes, but we don’t want to hear about it. Like the tech bros who search for immortality, I plan on living forever and never suffering too much, and so far it’s worked out pretty well. But unlike them, I know I’m deluded … it’s all coming.

I hope you get out and savor this pretty Sunday and know that your mom and Bowie are together with God, and hopefully enjoying all of it. Prayers to you.

Honestly, I was not expecting Anderson to bring up the AIDS years, and I think it helped me open up. I hope recounting my mother’s suffering when it was visible (and audible) to just the nurses and my siblings did not violate the sacred space of privacy. But I think we need to be more open about sickness and death, stop euphemizing and avoiding, and start living in the awareness of our fragility. It’s liberating. And it’s something our culture once had, and has now lost.

Another listener recommends a book:

Your time with Anderson Cooper was raw ... and painful. It brought to mind this book: Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament, written by Mark Vroegop. How do we experience grief with God? As you kindly noted, when caring for a person devastated by grief, our presence with them is often so much more vital than our weak words.

But Vroegap anchors us through the ancient embrace of lament. Here we do speak — boldly and with anguish over our own suffering and that of others. Here, words are vital and join with deep suffering. We lament before the living God. We are encouraged to enter grief deeply, unedited, speaking boldly with God, seeking the presence, wisdom and consolation of the Ancient of Days.

This next listener has a question:

You’ve often mentioned your brief consideration that God might be evil or malevolent. Did the old Gnostic beliefs in a demiurge — an incredibly powerful, incredibly flawed god — ever appeal to you? That ancient idea that the god of the Old Testament and the god of the New Testament were different beings appealed to many people, particularly Marcion of Sinope and Valentinus. While their writings were quickly sought out and destroyed, their arguments did affect the early Church. 

No. I remain an orthodox Christian, although quite obviously the God of the New Testament is far more relevant to me than the God of the Old.

Another listener looks to the gay closet:

Your talk with Anderson reminded me so much of my own life (though I’m a little older than you are). I’m 70 years old and just self-published my own memoir called Squiggly Lines: A Life in Design. I grew up in Birmingham, MI — a suburb of Detroit — before moving to London with my parents where I began to “come out of the closet,” as they used to say. I spent the ‘80s working as an interior designer at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — the architectural firm in Chicago — during the height of the AIDS crisis. I lost many friends, including my own partner, to AIDS. As a friend/client wrote to me, the way I have experienced the visual world, or my life, is an invitation to the reader to share my story.

My own memoir of those years — which is really three connected essays — is Love Undetectable. It remains the book I’m proudest of as a writer. From a straight listener:

Well, that episode with Anderson was a dose, and I mean that in the positive sense. As a heterosexual, nice but boring, 83-year-old guy who has never had the kind of experiences raised in your talk with another gay journalist, you might wonder what I got out of it. I think every listener found something in it that touched their own life, even if their journey has been smooth sailing by comparison. What you are offering your listeners is, to my thinking, unique in today’s journalism. Godspeed!

One more listener this week:

Your column “The Energizing Clarity of Democracy” was a painful but excellent read. The writing was so beautiful, and I sent it to my entire family. (One day, I will ask my son to read everything you’ve written.) I also enjoyed your podcast with Bill Maher — it was hilarious!

But then I heard your podcast with Anderson Cooper, and that just terribly saddened and enlightened me all at once. I grew up in a small town in India in the ‘90s, in a pretty religious and conservative setting, and I only moved to the US in 2011. (I’m now in Canada.) So I was completely unaware of the incredible work you were doing in this time period, or the terrible tragedies you survived throughout this time and before. Thank you so, so much for doing this episode and sharing it with the world. What you say about your Catholic upbringing normalizing you to the suffering in the world was quite enlightening. Maybe it’s the right perspective to lead life with, to face life’s inevitable disappointments better.

Forgive me for asking this, but please do write about your mother and your childhood. For many reasons I won’t bore you with, I want to see how that story came to be and how it led to someone as terrific an individual as you. I was particularly fascinated with how you treat your relationship with your mother with such deep empathy despite how tough some of those experiences must have been for you growing up.

I’m committed to writing a book on Christianity, which is a subject I cannot begin to talk of personally without talking of my mother and grandmother. So she will be in the book — which is becoming a kind of spiritual autobiography in my head as well as a terribly amateur stab at some theology. The Dish is still consuming most of my time and bandwidth so it keeps getting delayed. But I hope to leave that book behind one day.

On to politics, here’s a reader in Portland who has given the Dish periodic updates on the vibe-shift there:

As someone from Portland, Oregon, I haven’t been surprised that the Democrats lost across the country. My friends and family who voted for Trump in Oregon simply point to Portland (and Seattle, San Francisco, and LA) to say that this is what Dem governance looks like, and they don’t want to live in that world. They don’t like Trump personally and don’t like how he talks, but he is their champion.   For states like Oregon where the Democrats have a supermajority and dismiss Republicans as stupid and racist, this is their only recourse.

I would caution any analysis on long-term trends based on 2024’s results. The Republicans seriously underperformed in 2022 and that could foreshadow what Trumpism without Trump looks like. I think many people are fed up with both parties, and if there is too much chaos and the economy stalls out under Trump, people could easily shift back to the Democrats.

This recent NYT article on the waning trends of progressive identity politics didn’t get much attention, and I think it’s accurate. It calls out many of the changes I’ve seen in Portland. For example, there is a new comedy YouTube series that is gaining popularity called “Hasaan Hates Portland” — about a black man’s experience living in the whitest, most progressive city in America:

I urge my progressive friends to watch this series when they are perplexed on the demographic trends of voters moving to Trump.  I’m not sure if progressive activists are self-aware enough to notice, but people who use terms like “BIPOC”, “LatinX”, and “heteronormative” have become a punchline.  

Voters in Portland are in a grumpy mood and are looking for results. The new mayor, Keith Wilson, has stated his plan to end unsheltered homelessness in 12 months, and the clock is ticking. I would also caution on analysis that it’s a conservative vs. progressive victory. People are looking to candidates to get things done. There were many new progressive candidates who won, but they ran campaigns about roll-up-your-sleeves action and showing results. 

Ezra Klein has rightly called out the politics of disorder. While I do think it’s true that major crime stats have decreased, that doesn’t cover disorder, and the general perception that everything is unsafe. When you have homeless people yell at you and your kids, see widespread graffiti and street camping, see everything locked up at CVS, that erodes any sense of safety. This isn’t a messaging issue. Democrats need to stop talking and start doing things to address disorder if they want to change this perception on safety.

I am optimistic that there was so much split-ticket voting in this past election. Montana and Missouri voters overwhelmingly supported the pro-choice measures. You saw candidates like Josh Stein and Ruben Gallego win in red states. I think voters are reasonable and not as polarized as they are made out to be. That gives me hope for the future. I love my city, and I’m optimistic on our recovery.

Also, I really enjoy the Dish’s weekly format. I’ve stopped using social media, and limit my time reading political news. I’ve asked friends and family to stop texting me the minute-by-minute drama of the Trump transition. I am concerned about the next four years, but I’m not going to take the bait of his daily trolling. It’s been better for my mental health already. I urge people to get off their screens, get out of their rooms, and go connect with other human beings in the real world.

One suggestion I have for a future Dishcast is a follow-up interview with Nicholas Christakis. One of the things that really stuck with me in your previous discussion was how he didn’t think we’d get back to “normal” after COVID until about 2024.   This felt so far away at the time, and yet I feel like this year really felt like we were getting back to pre-pandemic life again. I’m curious about his thoughts about how the past four years played out and any insights on the next four years as compared to history.

A reader returns to the ongoing trans debate:

Thank you so much for continuing to hammer the Democratic Party on the trans “rights” issue in last week’s column. I’m a very liberal lifelong Democrat appalled and enraged by my party’s wholesale embrace of this deeply anti-liberal, regressive, and, yes, totalitarian ideology. The latest example this week comes from a statement by Montana State Rep Zooey Zephyr, a trans-identified male: “Transgender women are every bit as ‘biologically female’ as cis women.” Orwell much? (Hey Zooey, if you’re a biological female, then why the hell are you a “trans” woman? Why do you need the “trans” at all?)

As you say, Zephyr and fellow extremists don’t ever answer the simple and obvious objections to their truly deranged demands — like a “right” of males to access female-only spaces and sports — because they can’t. Look at Whoopi Goldberg on The View this week: It’s only a vanishingly small number of trans girls/women in women’s sports!

First, that’s not true, but much more importantly: What difference does it make?