New Night Owls
The Election of 2025
John Ellis and I have a lot to chew over in the latest Night Owls podcast—temporal stuff like the election of 2025 and longer term concerns like the raggedy state of our power grid, the mystery of why Trump is stalling on all sorts of energy development (Is he really against windmills because they pockmark his golf courses?). Also, The New Macchiavelli: Is it Giuliano daEmpoli, whose novel The Wizard of the Kremlin takes a deep dive into the minds of autocrats—and whose forthcoming non-fiction book about autocracy will be crucial reading.
John and Joe--
I got about half way through your discussion before I had to stop and write a pushback. John, you especially, express almost complete puzzlement about Democratic messaging and why they aren't saying something about this or something about that. Further, you seem to think that the voting public who supported DJT (whether they're devoutly MAGA or not) would then hear these new messages, believe them and consider them important. The outlets for the democrat's policy messaging are not deemed trustworthy by the great majority of these voters. If they did find them trustworthy and listened and understood the messages, we wouldn't have Trump 2.0. The timeline for disintegration of American's trust in each other, its institutions and the democrats to act in good faith began with the success of Rush Limbaugh, his many imitators, then Fox and finally the force multiplier of social media. It's taken thirty years but the divide is etched into our foundational rock by an alternative news and information universe that makes its enormous profits by dividing Americans with malinformation. As always, I'll end my argument by quoting James Madison, "A democratic republic requires a well-informed electorate." We simply do not have that in America today.
Terrific show. Giuliano da Empoli's nonfiction work, The Hour of the Predator, has been released in English. I'm reading it on my Kindle now and it's something. The Prince for the Twenty-First Century. I'm going to read Wizard of the Kremlin next, also available at Amazon. Don't forget, Trump's loony tariffs are before SCOTUS in early November. I'm rooting for the Justices to save him -- and us -- from his insanity. Best regards and thanks again.