# Climate Crisis, Meet Democracy Crisis

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 7 Jan 2022, 32 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/5dd539b0-063c-474a-8edc-b3ec00f219e4/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

What happens when the climate crisis collides with the unraveling of American democracy? Max Berger, a longtime progressive organizer who helped incubate the Sunrise Movement and worked with both Cori Bush and Elizabeth Warren, discusses movement building and the climate crisis. (Check out Scene on Radio's climate season here: http://www.sceneonradio.org/the-repair/) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:10] Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt, and today to
[0:15] Speaker 1: kick off the new year, we're talking to longtime progressive
[0:19] Speaker 1: organizer Max Berger about two really big questions for climate
[0:27] Speaker 1: how do you build an effective movement? And what do
[0:30] Speaker 1: we do about the unraveling of democracy in America. I
[0:35] Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Berger in particular about these questions
[0:38] Speaker 1: because he's been involved with some of the most effective
[0:41] Speaker 1: social movements in recent history, the Sunrise Movement and Occupy
[0:46] Speaker 1: Wall Street. And he's also worked in politics for a
[0:50] Speaker 1: wide range of folks, including Howard Dean, Corey Bush, and
[0:54] Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren. Today, Berger works with More Perfect Union, an
[0:58] Speaker 1: advocacy group that helps working people be seen and heard
[1:02] Speaker 1: in media coverage. We spoke back in November twenty twenty
[1:06] Speaker 1: one for a wrap up episode of Seen on Radio's
[1:09] Speaker 1: Climate season, focused on what needs to be done now
[1:13] Speaker 1: to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.
[1:18] Speaker 1: I'll link to that episode in the show notes. It's
[1:20] Speaker 1: well worth a listen. But I also wanted to bring
[1:24] Speaker 1: folks this longer conversation because I think it's just so
[1:29] Speaker 1: relevant to the task at hand as we start a
[1:32] Speaker 1: new year. Hope you enjoy the conversation. It's coming up
[1:35] Speaker 1: right after this quick break.
[2:02] Speaker 2: So I was hoping maybe you could start with just
[2:05] Speaker 2: a little bit of your own personal background. I knowe
[2:07] Speaker 2: you've been an organizer in progressive spaces for a really
[2:11] Speaker 2: long time.
[2:12] Speaker 3: Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure to
[2:14] Speaker 3: be on. Yeah. So I have been doing progressive and
[2:19] Speaker 3: left politics for what now, it turns out to be
[2:22] Speaker 3: quite a long time. I first started when I was
[2:25] Speaker 3: in high school actually doing organizing against the war in Iraq,
[2:28] Speaker 3: and I started a little group called Freedom Not Empire,
[2:31] Speaker 3: which I'm still very proud of the branding. And it
[2:35] Speaker 3: was actually a pretty formative experience for me because I
[2:38] Speaker 3: grew up in a small town in central Massachusetts that
[2:41] Speaker 3: was pretty evenly split politically and about as normal as
[2:45] Speaker 3: could be. And it really helped me, I think, understand
[2:48] Speaker 3: how to try to take what could be considered radical
[2:51] Speaker 3: ideas and try to make them very approachable in mainstream,
[2:54] Speaker 3: which I think I've tried to do and everything that
[2:57] Speaker 3: I've subsequently done. After that, I was actually at an
[3:01] Speaker 3: anti war protest and somebody gave me a fly this
[3:05] Speaker 3: flyer for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and I thought to myself, Okay,
[3:10] Speaker 3: that's a plausible that's a plausible theory of change, that
[3:13] Speaker 3: if that guy won, we could actually end the war.
[3:16] Speaker 3: And so I went and I worked for his campaign
[3:18] Speaker 3: as an intern in Burlington, And so that kind of
[3:22] Speaker 3: set up the two main threads of my career, I
[3:26] Speaker 3: guess is sort of social movement stuff more in the streets,
[3:31] Speaker 3: and kind of left of the democratic part and trying
[3:33] Speaker 3: to bring some of those same values and ideas into
[3:37] Speaker 3: mainstream politics. I sometimes joke I've I've worked for every
[3:41] Speaker 3: tea Party of the left organization that has ever existed,
[3:45] Speaker 3: even like putting like all these deep cuts that like
[3:48] Speaker 3: no one's ever really heard of before. But you know,
[3:50] Speaker 3: so I worked for Rebuild the Dream, which was a
[3:52] Speaker 3: move On spinoff that was supposed to kind of be
[3:55] Speaker 3: the counterweight to the Tea Party that was started by
[3:57] Speaker 3: Van Jones. I worked for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee,
[4:00] Speaker 3: which is one of the first organizations I claimed to
[4:03] Speaker 3: be doing what a lot of the groups on the
[4:05] Speaker 3: right do around elections. And then eventually most I tried
[4:09] Speaker 3: to start with myself in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen with
[4:11] Speaker 3: a bunch of people who have since gone on to
[4:13] Speaker 3: do a lot of really cool and interesting things. And
[4:16] Speaker 3: then that group, which was called All of Us, we
[4:18] Speaker 3: ended up merging with Justice Democrats. So I was around
[4:21] Speaker 3: when Justice Democrats was first kind of getting started, and
[4:24] Speaker 3: I had a chance to meet some of the folks
[4:26] Speaker 3: there and work with Corey Bush in twenty eighteen, and so, yeah,
[4:30] Speaker 3: it was early to that organization. And then on the
[4:35] Speaker 3: social movement side, I could tell this chronologically, but I
[4:38] Speaker 3: sort of story is kind of bouncing back and forth
[4:41] Speaker 3: between these two kind of bodies of work.
[4:43] Speaker 4: Yeah. No, that's great.
[4:45] Speaker 3: On the social movement side, so while I was at
[4:48] Speaker 3: Rebuild the Dream, they were like, can you go help
[4:51] Speaker 3: start a social movement against austerity? This was in like
[4:55] Speaker 3: twenty ten, after the Tea Party took over. They're like,
[4:58] Speaker 3: can you start a youth move movement against austerity? And
[5:01] Speaker 3: I was I remember thinking myself, I know, I don't
[5:04] Speaker 3: know how to do that. That is really hard, but
[5:06] Speaker 3: I agree that that's needed. And that was my job.
[5:10] Speaker 3: When Occupy Wall Street broke out, and I was living
[5:13] Speaker 3: in New York at the time, and I went down
[5:15] Speaker 3: the first week and I remember thinking myself, Okay, like
[5:18] Speaker 3: here these guys did it. I'm just gonna jump on
[5:20] Speaker 3: this thing. So I threw down pretty hard with Occupy,
[5:24] Speaker 3: and I think I was one of the first kind
[5:26] Speaker 3: of NGO connected folks who had been working in politics.
[5:31] Speaker 3: So I ended up helping, I think, bring some of
[5:34] Speaker 3: those types into the movement and planning some of the
[5:37] Speaker 3: big mobilizations that we did, the big days of mobilization,
[5:40] Speaker 3: and after Occupy, you know, my mind was kind of
[5:44] Speaker 3: blown because I very clearly saw both how this random
[5:49] Speaker 3: ragtag group of folks had started this global movement that
[5:54] Speaker 3: was so bigger and more powerful than anything that the
[5:57] Speaker 3: NGOs that I had worked for had ever been able
[6:00] Speaker 3: to come up. But also, as anybody who was part
[6:03] Speaker 3: of Occupy Wall Street could tell you, it was an
[6:05] Speaker 3: absolute shit show, disaster shambles in its own right. And
[6:08] Speaker 3: so I spent some time thinking about what it would
[6:12] Speaker 3: take to create a social movement that had more structure
[6:17] Speaker 3: and strategy and had a chance to actually win the
[6:21] Speaker 3: things that I was fighting for. And through some of
[6:24] Speaker 3: the things I was exploring at the time, I ended
[6:27] Speaker 3: up getting connected with Carlos Savadra and Paul and who
[6:30] Speaker 3: were students of Yvonne Maravich, who was one of the
[6:33] Speaker 3: lead organizers of the Serbian Revolution that overthrew Slovanan Loosovich
[6:40] Speaker 3: and Paul and carlos are you know, Americans who had
[6:44] Speaker 3: a lot of movement experience and were studying Yvon's ideas
[6:48] Speaker 3: about movement building, and I sort of agitated them, and
[6:50] Speaker 3: together the three of us ended up starting with a
[6:53] Speaker 3: lot of other folks an organization called the Momentum Training
[6:55] Speaker 3: Organization that has a theory of organizing or or teach
[7:00] Speaker 3: us some practices around organizing that help folks think through
[7:04] Speaker 3: how to have more structure and strategy so that you
[7:07] Speaker 3: can have highly autonomous movement where people can operate without
[7:11] Speaker 3: central command or organization, while at the same time having
[7:15] Speaker 3: clarity around what the goals are and how to achieve
[7:17] Speaker 3: those things. Together and the Momentum Organization ended up training
[7:20] Speaker 3: a lot of people. After we started Momentum, the Warren
[7:23] Speaker 3: Gaza broke out, so I kind of took the ideas
[7:26] Speaker 3: that we had been starting to cook in Momentum and
[7:29] Speaker 3: applied that to the sort of nascent Jewish left, where
[7:34] Speaker 3: I helped start If Not Now, which is a Jewish
[7:37] Speaker 3: American movement against the occupation in Palestine and learned a
[7:41] Speaker 3: lot about how different it is to apply a theory
[7:44] Speaker 3: than it is to come up with one, But very
[7:47] Speaker 3: proud of the young people who created that, who really
[7:50] Speaker 3: led that movement. And then I think when we were
[7:53] Speaker 3: doing all of us, I wish I referred to previously.
[7:56] Speaker 3: It's a very small group of people at that time
[7:59] Speaker 3: who were taking this momentum stuff seriously. A lot of
[8:02] Speaker 3: the people who I was personally most invested in were
[8:05] Speaker 3: these kids who ran the Divestment Student Network, which you know,
[8:09] Speaker 3: I thought was the coolest climate organizing happening at the time.
[8:14] Speaker 3: And I remember Varsh came to me in twenty sixteen,
[8:19] Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. I was like, hey, we want to do
[8:22] Speaker 3: we want to front load, we want to plan a
[8:23] Speaker 3: movement coming out of DSN. And we were hoping that
[8:28] Speaker 3: like the folks from if Not Now could train us
[8:30] Speaker 3: and how to do that really absolutely, like let us
[8:33] Speaker 3: know what we can do, do anything to help you guys.
[8:34] Speaker 3: And that movement became Sunrise. And so I feel I
[8:39] Speaker 3: sometimes joke, like with the Sunrise kids that I'm like
[8:42] Speaker 3: the uncle that's like prouder of the movement than like
[8:47] Speaker 3: even the parents or like the kids themselves like, no,
[8:50] Speaker 3: I will not hear you talk badly about yourself. Okay,
[8:53] Speaker 3: I don't want to hear. I worked on the Warren
[8:55] Speaker 3: campaign in twenty twenty doing progressive outreach, and after that
[9:00] Speaker 3: I helped start with Fazshakir, who is the campaign manager
[9:04] Speaker 3: for Bernie's campaign. I helped start an organization called More
[9:08] Speaker 3: Perfect Union, which is a media advocacy organization that builds
[9:13] Speaker 3: power for working people. And that's why I work now
[9:15] Speaker 3: as the editorial director.
[9:18] Speaker 2: Can I help you define front loading also for people
[9:21] Speaker 2: that don't know that term.
[9:22] Speaker 3: Yeah, frontloading, it's this term of art that we came
[9:25] Speaker 3: up with in momentum. It essentially just means planning, but
[9:29] Speaker 3: it specifically means planning for a movement that you hope
[9:35] Speaker 3: will decentralize. So if you look at movements like Occupy
[9:40] Speaker 3: in Black Lives Matter that broke out spontaneously or somewhat spontaneously,
[9:44] Speaker 3: you know, they may have a group that really helped
[9:47] Speaker 3: kick them off and get them started, but it basically
[9:49] Speaker 3: went viral without a plan to operate at scale. And
[9:53] Speaker 3: so what ends up happening, in my experience is those
[9:57] Speaker 3: kinds of decohere very rapidly because there's not really especially
[10:02] Speaker 3: when you're talking about the actual institution of the movement,
[10:05] Speaker 3: there's very little holding it together because it wasn't really
[10:08] Speaker 3: planning to get as big as it got. And so
[10:10] Speaker 3: basically front loading is just a process by which you
[10:14] Speaker 3: spend time thinking about what do we do if this
[10:16] Speaker 3: gets huge? Right, And so as people are entering into
[10:20] Speaker 3: the movement, you can arm them with the knowledge and
[10:23] Speaker 3: the frameworks that they need to operate as part of it,
[10:27] Speaker 3: even if it gets really big. And I think that's
[10:29] Speaker 3: something that has served Sunrise really well in that they
[10:33] Speaker 3: had a pretty not that you don't have to answer
[10:35] Speaker 3: a million different questions, and it's not like this just
[10:38] Speaker 3: kind of like unfolding protein that just then, you know,
[10:41] Speaker 3: collapses into the shape that it needs to be. But
[10:44] Speaker 3: it certainly allows you to It guides your decision making
[10:48] Speaker 3: once the movement is unfolding in a way that I
[10:51] Speaker 3: think it can be really helpful both for leaders and
[10:53] Speaker 3: for even new people coming in the front door to understand, Okay,
[10:57] Speaker 3: if I sign up for the movement, this is what
[10:58] Speaker 3: I'm signing up for. This is why they believe what
[11:01] Speaker 3: they believe, this is what we're fighting for, This is
[11:04] Speaker 3: how we're going to fight for it. And so it
[11:05] Speaker 3: allows you to then take leadership in your local community
[11:08] Speaker 3: and be make decisions that make sense for your local
[11:11] Speaker 3: context while still being part of something much much larger
[11:15] Speaker 3: and more coherent.
[11:18] Speaker 2: The thing that has always struck me about Sunrise too
[11:22] Speaker 2: is that that it does have this this way of
[11:27] Speaker 2: I don't know, just of flattening hierarchy in a way
[11:31] Speaker 2: like there are leaders, and there are people who take
[11:33] Speaker 2: on that mantle, like like Varshnie and whatnot. But but
[11:37] Speaker 2: then that have this ability to kind of step back
[11:41] Speaker 2: and just be part of the movement again. And I
[11:43] Speaker 2: wonder if that's a planned thing, like if that's something
[11:46] Speaker 2: that you I don't know, that that gets sort of
[11:48] Speaker 2: set up up top.
[11:50] Speaker 3: That's sort of the that's always the goal. I think
[11:54] Speaker 3: it's not. I mean, we could spend the whole hour
[11:56] Speaker 3: just on the kind of organizational theory stuff. So I'm
[12:00] Speaker 3: this is less my strong suit when it comes to
[12:04] Speaker 3: different areas of the movement. But you know, the folks
[12:06] Speaker 3: who help come up with these ideas spend a lot
[12:09] Speaker 3: of time studying different organizational structures, reading about Honestly, one
[12:13] Speaker 3: of the biggest inspirations is the Evangelical Church and the
[12:16] Speaker 3: way that they can create these kind of small groups
[12:18] Speaker 3: that really foster leadership and create tiers of engagement for
[12:22] Speaker 3: people to move up that give people a ton of
[12:24] Speaker 3: agency and autonomy, but within a structure so that as
[12:28] Speaker 3: you're going about your journey that you are you're part
[12:33] Speaker 3: of something bigger and it's kind of laid out. So
[12:36] Speaker 3: the goal is not necessarily to completely do away with hierarchies.
[12:40] Speaker 3: It's not a kind of anarchist like flattening of all difference,
[12:44] Speaker 3: but to allow for the hierarchies to emerge in ways
[12:47] Speaker 3: that serve the movement and that allow people still to
[12:52] Speaker 3: have a lot of choice and freedom in kind of
[12:55] Speaker 3: like how they want to participate in what that means.
[12:58] Speaker 3: And I think especially that helps create a culture in
[13:01] Speaker 3: which there's a lot of accountability and the people at
[13:05] Speaker 3: the top are understanding their role as kind of servant
[13:10] Speaker 3: leaders in fostering fostering a movement that people actually want
[13:14] Speaker 3: to be a part of and that feels good to
[13:16] Speaker 3: be a part of. And I think that's one of
[13:19] Speaker 3: Sunrise as many great successes, is in taking the culture
[13:24] Speaker 3: aspect of that really seriously and wanting to invite people
[13:28] Speaker 3: in and to make it feel friendly, and the Left,
[13:31] Speaker 3: I think doesn't always do that, and I think, more importantly,
[13:33] Speaker 3: doesn't even really try a lot of the time. And
[13:36] Speaker 3: I think Sunrise has. The folks who helped start it
[13:39] Speaker 3: have been a part of the left enough to know
[13:41] Speaker 3: that that doesn't work, right, Like, if you don't create
[13:45] Speaker 3: a welcoming space for people that folks actually want to
[13:47] Speaker 3: be a part of, then they'll go home, because there's
[13:49] Speaker 3: a million other things that they could do, and this
[13:51] Speaker 3: stuff is really hard. I think that they took that
[13:53] Speaker 3: seriously in a way that a very few other groups
[13:56] Speaker 3: do and have, and I think it's a significant part
[13:59] Speaker 3: of their success.
[14:01] Speaker 4: I have been hearing a lot of people recently talking
[14:05] Speaker 4: about systems change, but talking about it in this way
[14:08] Speaker 4: of like making tweaks to the existing system.
[14:12] Speaker 2: Rather than sort of a more like an actual change
[14:17] Speaker 2: of the system or a replacement of the current system.
[14:20] Speaker 4: And I've seen you at least tweeting a.
[14:21] Speaker 2: Few things recently like the it might not be possible
[14:25] Speaker 2: to just improve the system that we have, that there
[14:29] Speaker 2: might actually be a need for what some would call revolution,
[14:33] Speaker 2: And I'd love to just I don't know hear you
[14:36] Speaker 2: expand on that, Yeah.
[14:37] Speaker 3: It's a great question. I'll be honest that my answer
[14:40] Speaker 3: here is going to be very preliminary. I think I'm
[14:43] Speaker 3: in the process of trying to figure out what it
[14:46] Speaker 3: would look like to engage with these questions more serious
[14:48] Speaker 3: as is for the broader momentum community. And I would
[14:51] Speaker 3: not claim I'd say in the same way that like
[14:54] Speaker 3: eighteen months out, Sunrise was kind of like, Yeah, we
[14:57] Speaker 3: like want to start a new movement that's not just
[15:01] Speaker 3: about ending the fossil fuel industry, but that has a
[15:03] Speaker 3: sort of positive vision of what we're trying to fight for,
[15:07] Speaker 3: and we want to frontload it, and we want it
[15:09] Speaker 3: to be big, and we want it to be political
[15:10] Speaker 3: and not just a social movement, but we don't really
[15:13] Speaker 3: know what it is yet. That I'm sort of in
[15:15] Speaker 3: that kind of a place with this conversation. So with
[15:18] Speaker 3: that caveat that I'm still early in trying to figure
[15:21] Speaker 3: out how to talk about and think about this stuff,
[15:23] Speaker 3: I would say I think, well, first, let's like define
[15:26] Speaker 3: the problem, right, because I think my intuition, hypothesis sense
[15:32] Speaker 3: of where this is going is that essentially it's not
[15:36] Speaker 3: really so much a question of should we keep the
[15:42] Speaker 3: current system that we have, or should we throw it
[15:46] Speaker 3: aside and get a totally new system. Unfortunately, I think
[15:49] Speaker 3: this decision has some already been made for us, and
[15:52] Speaker 3: that I don't think that this current system will can
[15:57] Speaker 3: sustain itself through the course of the decade. Because what's
[16:00] Speaker 3: fundamentally happening here is the United States is a country
[16:04] Speaker 3: we like to think of ourselves and historically have you know,
[16:08] Speaker 3: really been very different from a lot of other countries
[16:10] Speaker 3: and sort of the pre eminent whatever American exceptionalism. But
[16:14] Speaker 3: if you just were to step back and look at
[16:16] Speaker 3: the US as a country, it would be very clear
[16:19] Speaker 3: the current constitutional arrangement is not long for this world.
[16:23] Speaker 3: You have a significant subset of the population, particularly the
[16:27] Speaker 3: white population, although not only that, is really terrified about
[16:33] Speaker 3: the transition away from a white majority population to a
[16:40] Speaker 3: multi racial majority. And that's happening in the context of
[16:46] Speaker 3: world historic inequality. Right, So, you really do have the
[16:50] Speaker 3: conditions for ethno nationalist authoritarian politics right like call it
[16:57] Speaker 3: fascists call it ethno nationalist authoritarian white supremacist politics, in
[17:02] Speaker 3: which there is a significant number of people that are
[17:04] Speaker 3: willing to use violence and do not really subscribe to
[17:10] Speaker 3: the beliefs that are required of participating in a democracy
[17:14] Speaker 3: because they're afraid of losing power within that democracy to
[17:18] Speaker 3: other ethnic groups. That's the kind of beginning of my
[17:22] Speaker 3: analysis here. And if you take that as a kind
[17:26] Speaker 3: of skeleton key for what's going on, you're a lot
[17:31] Speaker 3: becomes more clear in that that group of people, that
[17:34] Speaker 3: kind of white supremacist plurality, is not big enough to
[17:37] Speaker 3: govern the country, but it is big enough to take
[17:39] Speaker 3: over the Republican part as Trump showed, and through their
[17:43] Speaker 3: control of the Republican Party, are able to take control
[17:47] Speaker 3: of state and federal governments because we have a very
[17:51] Speaker 3: anti democratic political system, because our political system is the
[17:55] Speaker 3: result of a compromise with slaveholders and so vastly over
[18:00] Speaker 3: represents small rural states that white people have more power,
[18:04] Speaker 3: and so that white supremacist plurality can take over the
[18:10] Speaker 3: federal government, state governments with a minority of votes, and
[18:16] Speaker 3: because of other aspects of our anti democratic political system,
[18:20] Speaker 3: the Senate, as we're seeing now, the electoral college, as
[18:23] Speaker 3: we are kind of threatened with every four years that
[18:26] Speaker 3: there's going to be another instance in which the winner
[18:29] Speaker 3: of the popular vote does not become president that has
[18:31] Speaker 3: happened recently in a number of times, and the two
[18:34] Speaker 3: party system which allows for that, let's say, twenty five
[18:38] Speaker 3: to forty percent of the population to govern, we are
[18:41] Speaker 3: not We're not going to see the multi racial majority
[18:47] Speaker 3: have an opportunity to turn its will into law in
[18:52] Speaker 3: the next ten to fifteen years. And I think the
[18:55] Speaker 3: amount of tension that that will generate will break the
[19:00] Speaker 3: political system. I don't think that. I don't think that
[19:04] Speaker 3: the amount of friction that will be created in the
[19:11] Speaker 3: in the in the popular will of being steymied in
[19:13] Speaker 3: that way, particularly when the people in power are taking
[19:18] Speaker 3: active steps to move us away from competitive elections and
[19:23] Speaker 3: limit people's rights, I cannot imagine a situation in which
[19:27] Speaker 3: the multiracial majority takes that lying down. And I also
[19:32] Speaker 3: don't think that the white nationalist plurality is going to
[19:37] Speaker 3: become less vociferous in their opposition to multiracial democracy. So,
[19:44] Speaker 3: and if you were to talk about this with a
[19:46] Speaker 3: comparative political scientist, they would tell you, if you have
[19:49] Speaker 3: this kind of demographic transition happening, the worst case scenario,
[19:56] Speaker 3: our political system is basically designed as poorly as possible
[20:00] Speaker 3: to manage that kind of a demographic transition because the
[20:04] Speaker 3: two party system collapses all divisions in society into a
[20:09] Speaker 3: zero sum, all or nothing competitive existential conflict, and when
[20:14] Speaker 3: that gets racialized or ethnicized, it can become dangerous very quickly.
[20:20] Speaker 3: We're as polarized as any time since before the Civil War,
[20:23] Speaker 3: and in addition, with the separately elected presidency and a
[20:28] Speaker 3: bi cameral system, we have what a political scientists referred
[20:32] Speaker 3: to as a profusion of veto points right. So it's very,
[20:35] Speaker 3: very difficult for bills to become law, as we see
[20:39] Speaker 3: with anything. But the example I always use is gun control,
[20:43] Speaker 3: and after name a massacre, people always ask, if this
[20:47] Speaker 3: stuff is eighty five percent approval rating, why can't it pass?
[20:50] Speaker 3: And the truth of the matter is that very little
[20:52] Speaker 3: can pass, very little, very few laws make it through
[20:56] Speaker 3: the our system. And there's a stat that I think
[21:00] Speaker 3: is not bode well. I tweeted this the other day
[21:01] Speaker 3: and people thought I was saying not in jest, but
[21:04] Speaker 3: you know, there's there's a stat that the United States
[21:07] Speaker 3: is the only system that has a separately elected executive
[21:10] Speaker 3: branch that is not at some point collapsed into dictators
[21:14] Speaker 3: because in presidential systems, systems with a separate, separately elected executive.
[21:18] Speaker 3: What happens is there's a conflict between the president and
[21:22] Speaker 3: the Congress and there's some external crisis that requires action,
[21:28] Speaker 3: and the Congress is incapable of or unwilling to respond,
[21:32] Speaker 3: and then the executive takes the authority to do so
[21:36] Speaker 3: without the approval of the legislature. And once that is broken,
[21:41] Speaker 3: it's very hard to take back. And I think some
[21:45] Speaker 3: version of that is more or less inevitable in the
[21:49] Speaker 3: next five years.
[21:51] Speaker 4: So I.
[21:54] Speaker 3: The way I say it is like, look, we're going
[21:56] Speaker 3: to get a new political system. The question is does
[21:58] Speaker 3: it happen before authorityitarian authoritarianism, and civil war or after?
[22:03] Speaker 3: And I would love for it to be before. As
[22:07] Speaker 3: an American, I would love to not have to experience
[22:10] Speaker 3: those things, but I don't. I don't think we're going to.
[22:13] Speaker 3: So I think we're looking more at a post dictatorship,
[22:17] Speaker 3: post conflict situation and less at like how do we
[22:20] Speaker 3: organize a political revolution before? But it's not so neat
[22:25] Speaker 3: and tidy as that, right, Like I it's there's probably
[22:28] Speaker 3: a little bit more overlap in those scenarios than I'm
[22:30] Speaker 3: given credit for.
[22:34] Speaker 4: Well, it's interesting that you say that because I feel
[22:37] Speaker 4: like people.
[22:37] Speaker 2: Are seemed to be actually increasingly calling for Biden to
[22:43] Speaker 2: do that, you know.
[22:46] Speaker 4: To just just use executive power to do X y Z.
[22:49] Speaker 2: And I think out of this frustration with the fact
[22:52] Speaker 2: that votes are being suppressed and then even when you know,
[22:55] Speaker 2: you do kind of elect someone that you think is
[22:59] Speaker 2: going to pass different palsy. Not that I mean I'm
[23:02] Speaker 2: under no, I was not, like I was not excited
[23:06] Speaker 2: to vote for, but like that, it's it's difficult to
[23:09] Speaker 2: get any kind of significant change past, right, and then
[23:14] Speaker 2: that there's this sense of, oh, well, who knows if
[23:18] Speaker 2: this will stick, because in three years time someone else
[23:21] Speaker 2: will come in and change it back. I think people
[23:23] Speaker 2: are yeah, I just.
[23:25] Speaker 4: I just yeah.
[23:25] Speaker 2: I don't really see how that continues without some kind
[23:33] Speaker 2: of boiling point and then restructuring of some kind.
[23:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not, it's not. We don't live in a democracy.
[23:42] Speaker 3: Like the thing. The thing about the kind of common
[23:46] Speaker 3: liberal story around this that I get incredibly frustrated with
[23:50] Speaker 3: is that and this gets to sort of where I'd
[23:53] Speaker 3: like the conversation to go, and where I'm you know,
[23:55] Speaker 3: only beginning to try to figure out how to bring
[23:57] Speaker 3: it there. But you know where I think it needs
[23:58] Speaker 3: to go is we cannot simply make this about defending
[24:03] Speaker 3: the existing constitutional order, because it's precisely the existing constitutional
[24:07] Speaker 3: order that was failing that led us to this point.
[24:10] Speaker 3: Trump is not aberrant in that respect. He is. Actually
[24:13] Speaker 3: there's a way in which you could argue he is.
[24:15] Speaker 3: He is a defender of the underlying structures of the
[24:19] Speaker 3: constitution right they serve him. So despite his willingness to
[24:25] Speaker 3: get rid of the parts of the constitution that don't
[24:27] Speaker 3: benefit him, he doesn't want to change the underlying political
[24:31] Speaker 3: arrangements because they're good for Republicans. So I and like
[24:38] Speaker 3: you said, I mean, like in most other countries, the
[24:40] Speaker 3: way that democracy works, the way it's supposed to work,
[24:42] Speaker 3: is you vote for a new government. The government passes
[24:47] Speaker 3: the laws based on what they said they were going
[24:49] Speaker 3: to do in the election. Then voters get to decide
[24:54] Speaker 3: did that work for us? And depending on whether it
[24:57] Speaker 3: did or it didn't, they get rid of the people
[24:59] Speaker 3: in power, or they give them more opportunities to do
[25:03] Speaker 3: other things that they promise that they're going to do.
[25:05] Speaker 3: In our system, none of it works like that. People,
[25:10] Speaker 3: when you elect a new government, no matter what they
[25:12] Speaker 3: ran on. They probably can't actually do the thing that
[25:16] Speaker 3: they said that they were going to do. And it's
[25:18] Speaker 3: not because they weren't super committed to it or that
[25:20] Speaker 3: they don't really believe in it or whatever. It's because
[25:23] Speaker 3: literally our institutions make it impossible for them to do that.
[25:27] Speaker 3: And then people get mad because stuff isn't happening, because
[25:30] Speaker 3: things are going bad, and our system makes it damn
[25:33] Speaker 3: near impossible to figure out whose fault that is right,
[25:37] Speaker 3: whose fault is it that build back better got watered down?
[25:41] Speaker 3: I mean, I follow this stuff super closely, about as
[25:44] Speaker 3: closely as anybody could, and I get confused sometimes. I
[25:48] Speaker 3: can't imagine how working class people who don't follow politics
[25:52] Speaker 3: that closely and just want to understand what our politics
[25:57] Speaker 3: to do more to help people like them, why they don't.
[26:01] Speaker 3: They can't tell who's that fault for these things, who
[26:04] Speaker 3: they should be angry at, who they should reelect. It
[26:06] Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense. So the accountability mechanism is completely broken.
[26:11] Speaker 3: And to your point about wanting Biden to take more,
[26:15] Speaker 3: to just do more, this is the trajectory of the
[26:19] Speaker 3: past forty years. Is the Congress is less and less
[26:24] Speaker 3: able to pass laws, and so what that means of
[26:28] Speaker 3: the presidency is it has to just do more, do
[26:31] Speaker 3: more through executive action, do more through what existing authorities
[26:35] Speaker 3: it already has. And some people talk about that in
[26:38] Speaker 3: terms of the imperial presidency, and it is. It is,
[26:40] Speaker 3: It is dangerous, and it is part of it is
[26:43] Speaker 3: one of the many threads leading us towards authoritarianism. But
[26:47] Speaker 3: it needs to be seen as a result of the
[26:50] Speaker 3: failure of Congress to govern. And Congress's failure is again
[26:55] Speaker 3: not simply the result of kind of people with bad
[27:00] Speaker 3: ideas or insufficient will, but the result of a political
[27:03] Speaker 3: system that is this Rube Goldberg device that simply can't
[27:08] Speaker 3: sustain itself. And I think it's really important here also
[27:13] Speaker 3: to give some credence to the founders while also recognizing
[27:16] Speaker 3: just what the hell we're talking about here. Like these
[27:18] Speaker 3: guys were, it was the first modern republican democracy in
[27:24] Speaker 3: the world. They had no examples to draw from, and
[27:28] Speaker 3: they had a lot of beliefs that now we would
[27:31] Speaker 3: think of as aberrant, and they didn't have anything to
[27:36] Speaker 3: compare themselves to. And so I think there's a way
[27:39] Speaker 3: that we can come down on the Constitution and the
[27:42] Speaker 3: kind of original political institutions of the country in a
[27:45] Speaker 3: way that both recognizes that there were real innovations and
[27:50] Speaker 3: real leaps forward for human liberation, while not ignoring the
[27:55] Speaker 3: reality that many of these people were slave holders, and that,
[27:59] Speaker 3: in a very practical sense, that the institutions that they
[28:02] Speaker 3: created were the result of compromises with the power of slaveholders,
[28:07] Speaker 3: and that those compromises still live with us today. That
[28:11] Speaker 3: we can kind of not throw out the baby with
[28:15] Speaker 3: the bathwater, like constitutional democracy is still worth fighting for,
[28:19] Speaker 3: and many of the ideals that we consider to be,
[28:22] Speaker 3: you know, American ideals are worth fighting for. But I
[28:25] Speaker 3: would argue that the spirit of the founders would augur
[28:29] Speaker 3: in favor of us creating a new constitution today in
[28:33] Speaker 3: the same way that they did and not paying fealty
[28:36] Speaker 3: to the work of long dead men who don't understand
[28:43] Speaker 3: the world that we live in today. So I think
[28:46] Speaker 3: we can talk more about this some other time. But
[28:48] Speaker 3: I think that trying to imagine what it would look
[28:50] Speaker 3: like to create a new constitution is not as impossible
[28:54] Speaker 3: as people think. Again, because the United States is a country,
[28:58] Speaker 3: and other countries have constitutions that are significantly better than
[29:02] Speaker 3: the United States.
[29:03] Speaker 4: And that are significantly more flexible. Like other countries change
[29:06] Speaker 4: and update their constitutions all the time, and it like
[29:09] Speaker 4: never happens here.
[29:10] Speaker 3: Yeah, no, right, not only not only I think that's
[29:13] Speaker 3: so key. We not only do we have a kind
[29:15] Speaker 3: of uniquely badly designed political system, but we also have
[29:20] Speaker 3: one of, if not the hardest constitution to change. So
[29:24] Speaker 3: it's this. It's like, imagine if you had the oldest,
[29:29] Speaker 3: like the literally the first indoor plumbing system that was
[29:32] Speaker 3: ever created in the world, and you could never change it.
[29:36] Speaker 3: You'd be like, well, this house is pretty nice, but
[29:38] Speaker 3: holy shit, it's always flooding and leaking and maybe it's
[29:42] Speaker 3: just time for a new plumbing system.
[30:00] Speaker 1: That's it for this time. Thanks as always for joining us.
[30:03] Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with another bonus episode and
[30:06] Speaker 1: back with part two of our season on the gas
[30:09] Speaker 1: industry just as soon as we can wrap it up,
[30:13] Speaker 1: hopefully by the end of this month, but it might
[30:15] Speaker 1: be a little bit later, just depending on you know,
[30:19] Speaker 1: this never ending pandemic. Do you want to give a
[30:23] Speaker 1: shout out to our latest Patreon supporters, Tanna Morgan, Katie
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[31:02] Speaker 1: check out patreon dot com. Slash Drilled. Drilled is an
[31:07] Speaker 1: original production of the Critical Frequency podcast network. Music This
[31:11] Speaker 1: Week is by Martin Wissenberg. The show is written, reported,
[31:15] Speaker 1: and produced by me Amy westerveldt Our producer is Jules Bradley,
[31:20] Speaker 1: Audio engineering by Peter Duff. Our First Amendment Attorney is
[31:24] Speaker 1: James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. Thanks again for
[31:28] Speaker 1: listening and we'll see you next week.

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