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Nick Hauselman is on vacation and lounging by the pool, so Jared Yates Sexton holds down the fort on this episode of the patreon-exclusive Weekender and discusses the possibilities of an ambitious Joe Biden presidency, the need for massive, radical change, and how the Left can use the GOP and the embarrassingly wealthy as foils to realize reform.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Booker A Podcast.
I'm your host, Jared Yates Saxton.
Nick Halseman, our tried and true co-host, one of our all-time favorites, he is taking a much-deserved vacation day, which means that I am flying solo, and this episode of The Weekender is going to be a lot more casual than usual.
So let's start the weekend.
Ah, that helps.
Anyway, hey everybody, thanks for tuning in.
I have a lot to go over today, a lot of interlocking parts that we got to talk about.
Before we do though, you know, we talk a lot on this podcast about things that have gone wrong, how our government has been co-opted by the wealthy and the powerful, how the wealthy and the powerful have more or less turned the American government into sort of a laundering business to
Make sure that they get everything that they want and has hurt in the process so many different human projects from health insurance, healthcare, infrastructure, education, you name it.
We are currently in just a really terrible situation of inequality and human suffering.
But I have to say, to start this thing off on the right note, I got my first vaccination yesterday, which I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten.
But I have to tell you that when I went to get it, it was a really inspiring circumstance.
I got it through my university and there was this sort of whole mobilized situation set up.
They had two lanes of cars going.
Of course, you have law enforcement out there making sure that everybody's going where they need to go.
Meanwhile, there's like an entire legion of volunteers who are getting people's paperwork.
They're making sure that they know what's going on.
They're getting all the facts about what they're getting ready to do, making sure that they go the right place, that they end up getting the shot, that they're going to be observed, that they're going to get taken care of.
It was really inspiring and it made me think quite a bit about what is possible in this country.
Now, of course, it wouldn't be the Muckrake Podcast without raking a little bit of muck.
I will say, it knocked me on my ass.
Like, for real.
The vaccine knocked me down a couple of pegs, especially yesterday.
I'm still sort of trying to get back to normal.
I am rallying right now so we can do this podcast and Nick can enjoy some of that well-deserved R&R.
But I have to tell you, it really, really knocked me down.
It was weird in that regard in order to like see the body starting to fight against this thing and I have to tell you it's the worst that I have felt since uh I I some of you obviously have been around for a while you heard my coverage from the Iowa caucuses way back in 2020 and I developed while in Iowa some type of flu That I felt like I was going to die from.
It was really awful.
This is the worst I've felt since then, but it was it was a relief to know that my body was fighting against this thing, that I was developing the natural defense toward it or getting ready for, you know, taking on this pandemic head on.
But, you know, besides it kind of kicking my ass, I have to tell you, I walked away with it.
Having glimpsed a project that is incredibly inspiring.
And if we can somehow or another manage to get our shit together.
If we can start approaching some of these other major crises.
And of course the coronavirus pandemic is chief among those at the moment.
And the reason is because it is conspicuous.
We have thousands of people dying every day.
Hundreds of thousands have died.
We've lost people.
We've suffered an ungodly amount of tragedy over the past year.
And we need to take care of this thing, obviously.
And in order to do that, we need to create vaccines.
In order to do that, we need to create logistics to get those vaccines to the people who need them.
But we also need this mobilization.
We need people who recognize that there is an opportunity for them to help other people.
For them to chip in and make sure that the vulnerable are taken care of and protected.
Seeing those people out at this mobilization site, seeing the money and the resources and the planning and the logistics come together It really kind of put me in awe of humanity for a moment.
And those of you who listen to this podcast, and obviously you're patrons, so I hope you're, you know, paying attention to what we're talking about.
You know that we can sometimes be pessimistic about people and the sort of things that they are capable of doing, particularly in the pursuit of power and wealth.
But watching what people are capable of doing in an effort of empathy and togetherness, it was really, really incredible.
And it's moments like that that I think are glimpses into not just what this country could be, but what this world could be.
If we started really dealing with our problems in a real, mature, human manner, I think we could change the world.
I truly honestly believe that and there are these moments where we reach a point of crisis where we see that we see the the quote-unquote best in people and and this was definitely that and it has it's renewed my fighting spirit and my hope But also it served to highlight for me what's missing right now, what the issue is at the heart of this problem.
And I want to take a minute.
We're going to talk in a second about Joe Biden's first press conference as President of the United States.
And this has been, I have to tell you, one of the most maddening faux controversies in a very long time.
Tastes like the weekend.
You know, we've had a media that for years now has completely relied on the tabloid spectacle of Donald Trump.
And, you know, it's not like Trump was really holding press conferences.
The few that he did hold were abusive traumas.
I mean, I don't think I will ever forget Watching the President of the United States of America stand up in front of the world and actively abuse and harass journalists and take joy in it.
I mean, he really, really enjoyed what he was doing to these people and trying to humiliate them and trying to mistreat them in a way that, you know, it was like, it was like trying to dominate them.
And I, you know, and actually it's funny to even start talking about this.
I was watching, in the past couple days, I've been watching HBO's QAnon documentary, which is really quite good, by the way.
I think it's actually better than the Vice TV QAnon series, which had some real problems with the way that it presented information, or rather misinformation.
But, you know, I tend to avoid Trump clips.
We talk a lot on this podcast about how Trump is a symptom, he's not the disease.
And as a result, there's a lot more to pay attention to, the things that have created Trump, the factors that managed to make him President of the United States.
But watching him now, a couple of months removed from his presidency, It's really bizarre.
Obviously he wasn't competent.
He wasn't serious.
He was a complete and utter ineffectual just buffoon.
And we all know that.
But watching the clips now they have even more of like a wretched patina to them.
I have to tell you.
I do not recommend it.
I do not recommend it.
But we've created this false controversy about Joe Biden having press conferences and whether or not he has enough availability.
And there are reasons to be frustrated with Joe Biden.
There are reasons to be frustrated with the administration.
That's not one of them.
The fact that he's not creating enough content for the networks to talk about or fawn over, it's absurd.
To treat this like it was some sort of legitimate controversy was just an absolute absurd spectacle.
And it made very, very apparent who these people are, what they care about, and the fact that they haven't learned any of their lessons.
But we know that.
So I want to talk a little bit about hope.
And I want to talk a little bit about the problems that we really need to address.
We spend a lot of time diagnosing them.
But I want to talk about causes and effects today.
And I'm going to go ahead and start.
There was an article that reared its head earlier today, and this was in Axios, where Mike Allen had a scoop.
They're calling it a scoop.
It's always funny when they call them scoops.
Scoop.
Inside Biden's private chat with historians.
And this was covering a closed door meeting that President Biden had with a room full of historians.
It was brokered by Jon Meacham, who some of you know as an author who has a he's a really smart guy, but I have to tell you.
His faith in American mythology is really, really misplaced in some troubling ways.
And along with him, Doris Kearns Goodwin kind of, kind of sort of straddles that same sort of line.
What you need to know about this meeting is that Biden was meeting with a lot of Very sort of stereotypical, capital A American, capital H historians.
These are the people who teach or write and espouse a more sort of traditional type of American history.
I would call it a spots and all approach, which is the idea that yes, America has problems and America has been imperfect.
It's an imperfect project.
But it's always making itself better.
and the angels of our better nature are going to lead us to something better.
It's a little naive sometimes.
And not only is it a little naive, sometimes it's a little damaging.
I'm not gonna lie here.
But what I thought was interesting here in the revelation of this meeting that Biden had with these historians, and I wanna talk about it, and then we're gonna get into the press conference and what we can take from it.
When Biden met with them, and this was on March 2nd, so at the beginning of the month, Biden sat with this room full of historians.
And one of the things that has been happening in a lot of these conversations, not just from the Biden administration, but particularly from the outside, the way that people are trying to sort of reckon with the Biden administration, understand what the Biden administration is and what it's capable of.
The lens has been through FDR and I some of you might remember we talked about this prior to the inauguration and Prior to the election even like what was the best case scenario for a Biden?
Presidency and what I had said was that I thought the best case scenario for a Biden presidency would be a Lyndon B Johnson type presidency Which would be a presidency that yeah, there were going to be some stumbles.
There were going to be some problems carrying on the continual sort of American project of hegemony and taking over the world and all that good stuff.
But that there might be some things like civil rights.
