Walter Kirn On The Midwest, Walz, Trump

Walter is a novelist, literary critic, and journalist. He’s written eight books, most famously Up in the Air, which became a film starring George Clooney. He’s now the editor-at-large for County Highway and co-hosts a weekly podcast with Matt Taibbi, “America This Week.” Way back in the day, I edited his work for The New Republic, and he guest-blogged for the Dish.

You can listen to the episode in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on Tim Walz as a “white minstrel” of a Midwesterner, and Walter watching speeches by Obama and Trump on LSD — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Walter’s upbringing in rural Minnesota — “a Huckleberry Finn life”; the colorful characters of his small town; the humanist rear-admiral and feminist librarian who mentored him; learning horses from the Amish; his father the “short-haired hippie”; transferring to Princeton — “the coldest bath of my life”; the snobbery of his rich roommates; wanting to be a poet; his scholarship to Oxford; the anti-Americanism there; Shakespeare; drinking culture in London; working as a private eye; teaching immigrants to read in NYC; working at Vanity Fair with Tina Brown and the “Eurotrash elite”; The Great Gatsby; Gore Vidal on homosexuality; the overblown fear of militias in ‘90s America; the Matthew Shepard myths; the history of progressive populism in the Midwest; Gus Hall and Eugene McCarthy; towns decimated by NAFTA; Trump turning on Iraq War; the Pentagon Papers; Harris’ interview on 60 Minutes; her passing on Josh Shapiro; the phoniness of Walz; his fascination with China; disinformation and free speech; the Twitter Files; demonizing rural people during Covid; the “information engineering” in the pandemic; Jay Bhattacharya’s dissent; sex changes for minors; Helene and FEMA; immigration in small towns; Mickey Kaus; how the elite loathe Vance; Stop the Steal; and Walter living in Montana.

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: Tina Brown on her new substack, Musa al-Gharbi on wokeness, Sam Harris for our quadrennial chat before Election Day, and Damon Linker on the election results. Wait, there’s more: Peggy Noonan on America, Anderson Cooper on grief, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, Mary Matalin on anything but politics, and John Gray on, well, everything.

Please send any guest recommendations, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. From a fan of last week’s episode with Monica Murphy and Bill Wasik on animal welfare:

When I heard this topic would be discussed, I was a little underwhelmed, as I thought it would be a little preachy and boring. I was currently out fishing, and my hunting dogs nailed a possum — a pest here in New Zealand — and I listened to the episode while walking the river. I’m glad I did, because it was nothing like what I had imagined — not at all preachy, and wonderfully interesting. Please keep interviewing such interesting and engaging people who tell such great stories. 

Cheers. I do what I can to highlight environment or animal welfare writers who are not preachy, boring or devoid of perspective. Bill and Monica filled the bill — and then some. On a few recent pods:

During your episode with David Frum, I was very much taken aback by his assertion that the best years of his life are behind him, as if that is a truism for men his age. (Maybe he was speaking from a place of grief.) I’m a 58-year-old man and, while many of the joys of youth are gone and now memories, I feel quite often that experience and wisdom bring me a deeper and richer experience of life. I expect my life to get better and better. 

During your episode with Michelle Goldberg, which I thoroughly enjoyed, the topic of abortion came up. Maybe I missed an article or podcast, but I feel that you never really challenge anyone on that topic. The premise seems to be accepted that making abortion illegal is obviously a bad thing for society in general and women in particular.

I am against abortion. I eschew “pro-life” and ”pro-choice” because both of those are silly labels that are used to box in people politically in an unfair way — the way Kendi claims that people who agree with him are “anti-racist.” My opposition is abortion is coincidental to my religious faith, not a direct result of it — the way I am opposed to other obvious wrongs, such as slavery, physical abuse, theft, etc.

People often argue, like Michelle did, about how they accompanied someone to an abortion, or had scares themselves, as if that is somehow a justification for glossing over the act itself. Therefore they are deeply emotionally attached to their position and cannot even contemplate considering that abortion could be the brutal ending of a human life. To do so would mean acknowledging that they — or someone who is otherwise a wonderful, beautiful, incredible human being whom they love — did something horrible, so it cannot be allowed to enter their minds.

I find it exasperating that people frame the abortion debate as religion vs. freedom. It’s a false framing that the pro-abortion side brilliantly set up decades ago, and the media parrots it. I was appreciative of Bill Maher openly stating that it is the killing of a person, and that he supports it. That, to me, is the honest position.

Could you have a guest on who is opposed to abortion from a purely humanistic, scientific, liberty perspective and leave religion out of it? That is where I am coming from, and I think it deserves more of a hearing than it gets.

Any suggestions? Jill Filipovic discussed abortion on the Dishcast last year. Here’s a recommendation for a future guest:

I’ve encouraged you to address the events transpiring in Iran because you wrote so beautifully about the 2009 Green Movement there. More recently, the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement has directly challenged the Iranian government. And now Iran is being drawn into the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

I suggest as a guest Masih Alinejad. She articulates what is happening in Iran very clearly and directly, she has been targeted in the US by the Iranian government, and the topic is both timely and deserving of greater public awareness. I know folks are constantly pushing you to have certain guests, so this is my two cents.

The Dish has a deep connection to the struggle for freedom in Iran. We’ll check Masih out. Another rec:

I recommend you invite Jeff Maurer on your podcast! He’s witty and hilarious and definitely to the left of you, but with no patience for excessively woke nonsense. I think it would be a good conversation. 

A topic rec comes from a listener who “shares your agony of someone who loathes Trump but can’t rally behind Harris”:

I would greatly appreciate it if you dedicated a Dishcast or column to the various COVID policies implemented in the US (by Trump, Biden, different state governors, etc), and how they might be impacting moods toward the upcoming election. I am surprised some kind of reckoning has not happened in American politics over this — as it has in other places, including your home country — and I’m wondering if, like the Trump phenomenon at the outset, the COVID fallout lies just underneath the surface.

I say this as someone who initially went along with everything I was told: social distancing, lockdowns, masking, vaccines, etc. I may have even scolded others for not being more cautious (I live in New York, where the first wave was bleak). But as time went on, the non-aligned part of me — the part that voted for a third party candidate in 2016 and Biden in 2020 — couldn’t help but notice most of our pandemic policies were more ideological than they were practical. Everyone I knew was very cautious and got the virus anyway, some of them badly. That wasn’t what we were told would happen.

But instead of demonstrating humility and changing the recommendations based on the data, public officials turned the whole thing into a dangerous test of ideological purity. Many of my friends fell for the same trap, judging anyone who dared question things like the virus’s origin, school closures, or whether vaccines prevent transmission.

Meanwhile, the socioeconomic damage done by the policies were immense. For many, they turned out worse than the virus itself, provided they didn’t have a strong comorbidity. With the benefit of hindsight, we know the overreaction was a mistake. There is virtually no difference in terms of virus-related outcomes between states (or nations) that had the most draconian lockdowns/mandates and those that didn’t. But there was a major difference in every other kind of outcome, particularly for kids, the poor, and other underprivileged populations. 

My hunch is that outrage over this is one reason Trump remains close in this race, despite all of his terrible flaws and the relatively strong Biden economy. Trump also failed on Covid in many ways, but he was only in charge for a part of it, and gets a pass because it was the most uncertain part. Hidden anger also explains certain demographic changes, like the Blacks and Latinos — particularly men — who are now more Trump-leaning than many would have thought. It wasn’t that long ago when Biden tried to pass a new rule that would bar millions of unvaccinated people from working — many of them black men — only to be shot down by the Supreme Court.  

Anyway, I’m not looking for “I Told You Sos” here, but a proper reckoning — particularly for a leadership class that to this day refuses to acknowledge that it was wrong about anything, despite the terrible toll some of their mistakes took on the basic fabric of society. Regardless of what happens in November, our society will be reeling from this for a long time to come.

You describe my arc as well. I gave government a pass at first because no governments handle plagues well at the start. But, yes, the stark reality of an over-extended lockdown, and the high human cost, especially to children, slowly sunk in with me as well. It doesn’t feature that prominently in my thoughts this election season, but I can imagine that for man, it does.

A reader dissents:

I take issue with your disregard of the reality that FEMA is out of money partly because it’s being used for migrant housing and care. That is messed up; I’m upset that resources are not available for Americans in need. You ignored this reality because of the mouth it came out of. Just because Trump said it in his usual, coarse, inflammatory way doesn’t mean it’s not true.

I also don’t agree with your reference to Jack Smith’s one-sided court filing and its contents. This was so obviously released to influence the election (doesn’t that bother you?), and it’s filled with accusations that Trump has no opportunity to dispute. This is not justice; it’s sad partisanship in the Justice Department, which frightens me.

This is one of many reasons why I will swallow the bile in the back of my throat and vote for Trump. I’m with others who fear our future more with the left in charge, and this is based on recent history of both sides.

Yes, the timing of the Smith filing certainly helps Trump’s case that it’s about politics, not the law. (It’s not.) And yes, using FEMA as a way to settle paroled migrants muddles its mission. I sympathize with your discontent with the powers that currently be, and your fear of re-electing them. If it were any but Trump, I might be voting GOP as well.

Another reader continues a debate from last week:

I feel compelled to dissent over the dissenter who wrote, “But now, I feel silly having invested so emotionally in you. For all the conflict you had with Jon Stewart and others, you ultimately end up voting for the same person who absolutely supports all the things that you are afraid of with gender critical psychosis/religion.”

I’m a center-left Democrat who is no friend of the excesses of the far left, but I get very frustrated when pro-trans ideology gets pinned onto the people at the top of the Democratic Party.