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What is āsettler colonialismā and how is it different from other forms of imperialism? In this episode I share excerpts from S.C. Gwynneās bracing, controversial book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, and reflect on the historical lines between the American project of removal and Israelās current genocidal campaign in Gaza. How is Zionism related to Manifest Destiny? And what can we learn from each of these tremendously disturbing eras?
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Check out Louis Therouxās documentary on the radical Israeli settlement movement, The Settlers.
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Hunter S. Thompsonās 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas remains a classic of American drug literature, a haunting reflection on the cultural and political hangover of the revolutionary 1960s. Iām not sure Iāve ever experienced a more resonant portrait of the American id than the carnival of vile, deranged American archetypes Thompson describes in these pages. Justin Rogers-Cooper has been similarly influenced by Fear and Loathing over the years, and joins me this week to talk about Thompsonās legacy, his dark take on the āmeaningā of the 1960s, and his view of America as a debased post-Nazi hellscape.
Check out our new SCREENSHOTZ news chat on the Trap Patreon page, where we share a curated stream of excerpts from global news sources ā a relentless, delicious feast of doom, with commentary!
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Fehlende Folgen?
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An explosive piece called "Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College" raises a few questions for me: What is the left's attitude toward tech? Is there anything positive about AI?Is digital technology compatible AT ALL with a progressive vision of the future? ARE WE DOOMED AS A SPECIES???
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FAA failures creating realistic fears of looming airline disasters, Trump's cryptocurrency scam, quantum computing and financial apocalypse, Kanye's celebrity vagina mega corporation, Israel's endgame for Gaza, the 4Channing of the world, the Baldoni/Lively mind control machine, and much more.
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April 30, 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, so Iām marking the occasion by reflecting on the warās meaning all these decades later. I share my own experiences as a historian of the war, along with some clips from books and documentaries that I think capture the impossible decisions the war forced upon millions of people.
Check out the podcast series created by Willa Seidenberg and Bill Short, A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War
Listen to NAM-TV, my documentary series on Vietnam
Buy my book, Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouse and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era
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The recent death of Val Kilmer got Justin and I thinking about Jim Morrison and the curious legacy of The Doors in American pop culture. In this conversation, we continue our exploration of the amorphous brand of white masculinity embodied by Morrison and other doomed rock gods of the late 20th century, as we share memories of how The Doors blew our alienated teenage minds before the massive buzzkill of adulthood forced us to reckon with the cringier elements of Morrisonās persona and cultural imprint. From psychedelic drugs and beat literature to sex, cars, and jazz ā The Doors broke us through a certain mode of American manhood. But what was waiting for us on the other side?
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I'm reading S.C. Gwynne's incredible book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, and it's making me think about Israel, Gaza, and the fatal arrogance of the leadership class throughout history. A scathing review of Bill Clinton's new book brings that arrogant tendency right up to 2025, as we witness the Democratic Party's inability to conjure a coherent battle plan to confront Trump and company's unbelievably evil intentions.
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As the Trump administration tests the "Hamilton glitch" in the U.S. Constitution by sending Abrego Garcia and others to a foreign concentration camp without legal due process, I thought it might be time to contemplate what ordinary people can do to express their outrage/disapproval/humanity in the face of injustice.
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Trump's tariff carnival is doing real damage to the global economy, and Justin shares his thoughts on how a collapsing financial architecture will impact big capital, our daily lives, and the Trump project itself. Plus, we address the "Hamilton glitch" of judicial weakness, baked into the Constitution, that's creating a rapidly escalating showdown over who's really in charge.
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Trump is dismantling the global neoliberal economic order that has served as the left's boogeyman for years, which SHOULD be an opportunity for the left to offer something beyond shrugging ambivalance and lib-dunking. Why isn't that happening?
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Guitar Center dudes and their insanely rigid opinions lead to a conversation with Justin about the political psychology of FOMO, the rise of the pedophile hunter influencer class, the masculine desperation of emoji-driven war-planning group chat jerkoff sessions, the abject horror of students kidnapped off the streets for their views on Israel and Palestine, and Trump's assault on free trade scrambling the political alignments of the past several decades.
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Adam Kotsko is a writer and cultural critic whose work focuses on American pop culture, from ācringeā comedies to our national obsession with sociopathic protagonists. His latest book, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era considers how the Star Trek series has evolved (or devolved) in the political economy of streaming TV and the Marvel-ization of feature filmmaking. In this conversation we talk about how his work on TV sociopaths holds up during the new Trump administration, and the challenges of participating in fan culture within a fracturing and cynical landscape of cultural production.
Check out our previous episode with Adam, āCringe Nationā
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Fascism comes to my local city council meeting, a proud Israel supporter haunts my gym, Elon Musk's transgender daughter drives him off a cliff, Trump wants to send people to foreign torture camps for Tesla vandalism, and the incompatible worldviews boil hotter than ever.
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Today I fall into paranoid android mode, thinking about what it means to "own the libs" from the left in the new Trump Reich. My message to an increasingly marginalized left flank: be careful what you wish for!
Check out John Ganz's terrific Substack, Unpopular Front
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Trump and Elon Musk are actively working to destroy the global economic order, but to what end? This week Justin and I consider the wacky cartoon reality that Americans inhabit, and speculate about the different forms "blowback" might take when the punishment gets real.
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Stephen Petrus is director of Public History Programs at LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and co-author of the book Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival (2015). He joins me to discuss the movie A Complete Unknown, which tracks a brief but critical moment in the life of Bob Dylan, when his rise to stardom intersected with the wider social and political project envisioned by American folk musicians, fans, and organizers.
Check out Dylanās Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.
For a deeper look at the folk scene from which Dylan emerged, donāt miss Martin Scorseseās documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)
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Our good friend Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to survey the first month of Trump's presidency, as we play out some of the nastier currents now circling in American and global political culture, from Trump's exoneration of his foot soldiers to the left salivating over Luigi Mangione, and much more. Who's really in control? And what can we anticipate as we head into truly uncharted territory?
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Check out the interview with ACLU executive director Anthony Romero that Justin cites in the episode.
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A recent law school event featuring former L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey honestly blew my mind, and made me think a lot about the intersection of crime, law enforcement, reform movements, and political violence. I try to put those ideas together alongside the current culture of J6 pardons and Luigi mania, as we fall further into a chaotic and vengeful national mindset.
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Check out the latest episode of Lawyers in the Attic, with education attorney Meghan Sherry.
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There are currently too many news stories to fit into the "ominous portents of a dark future" file, so I've chosen a few of the most flagrant examples of Trump/Musk savagery to share, along with some reflections on how to fight for our minds and for each other as the world heads down the toilet.
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I got my first job when I was 15 years old, working at a Pumpkin Patch on a local farm, and itās been all downhill from there. Iām partly joking, but the working world has never been a place of maximum success and happiness for me, and in this episode I try to come to terms with my own job history as a way of exploring the pressures that consume many of us: bosses, bills, weird co-workers, and the dark feeling that American life is often a big depressing rip-off. Iāve got stories to tell from a lifetime of shitty jobs, from manning the bakery case at Marie Callenderās as a teenager to dealing with obnoxious D-list celebrities as a production assistant in Hollywood. As a wise man once said, āwork sucks, I know.ā Hereās a few slices of how I found that out.
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