Keen On

It’s hard to know if F.H. Buckley is keen on Donald Trump. On the one hand, Buckley and his wife wrote a number of speeches for Trump in his 2016 campaign; on the other, Buckley publicly wrote Donald Trump off in 2022, arguing in the Wall Street Journal that Trump “can’t win another presidential election”. What Buckley was explicitly calling for was Trumpism without Trump. So what, exactly, is “Trumpism”. In his new book, The Roots of Liberalism, Buckley lays out a kind of aristocratic version of liberalism based upon chivalry and kindness. It’s Lord of the Rings meets Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen, with a bit of patrimonial welfare state thrown in to satisfy the Republican social conscience. Kind of interesting, I guess, for grown-ups with childishly atavistic notions of gentlemanly honor. But certainly no validation of Donald Trump himself, who is about as chivalrous or gentlemanly as Uriah Heep.F.H. BUCKLEY is a Foundation Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law. He is a frequent

So how can The Dude and The Boss save America? According to the cultural critic, David Masciotra, Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski and Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen, represent the antithesis of Donald Trumps’s illiberal authoritarianism. Masciotra’s thesis of Lebowski and Springsteen as twin paragons of American liberalism is compelling. Both men have a childish faith in the goodness of others. Both offer liberal solace in an America which, I fear, is about to become as darkly surreal as The Big Lebowski. Transcript:“[Springsteen] represents, as cultural icon, a certain expression of liberalism, a big-hearted, humanistic liberalism that exercises creativity to represent diverse constituencies in our society, that believes in art as a tool of democratic engagement, and that seeks to lead with an abounding, an abiding sense of compassion and empathy. That is the kind of liberalism, both with the small and capital L, that I believe in, and that I have spent my career documenting and attempting to advance.” -David Masc

So was November 5 a moral catastrophe signaling the death knell of American liberalism or just another election in the turbulent history of American democracy. According to the Brookings scholar Jonathan Rauch, the Trump-Harris election was both. On the one hand, Rauch argues, wearing his unashamedly liberal cap, November 5 was a moral catastrophe for the future of American democracy. But, on the other, slapping on his Brookings analyst’s cap, Rauch celebrates November 5 as an ordinary election. I suspect the double capped Rauch is onto a singular thing here. There is a feeling of catastrophic ordinariness about America right now. It’s that moment before a crash when everything slows down and you know something dramatic is about to happen. Enjoy the (horror) show, Rauch seems to be saying. America is about to become very unordinary. Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is the recipient of a National Mag

“There is one winner regarding the most significant story this week,” Keith Teare writes in his That Was The Week technology newsletter. But, as he explains, there are, in fact, two winners: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneurs trusted by Trump to reform and shrink the federal government. So how seriously might we take Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)? Should we welcome this attempt to reform (ie: cut) the Federal government. And is Musk’s SpaceX really a positive model for streamlining the state bureaucracy. Keith, as always, is hopeful; Andrew, as always, is skeptical. But, like it or not, DOGE is going to be one of the more intriguing and impactful experiments of the incoming administration.Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy

In association with our friends at Digital-Life-Design (DLD), Europe’s iconic annual tech conference which next January celebrates its twentieth anniversary, we are starting a series of conversations with DLD speakers looking back over the last twenty years. First up is Silicon Valley entrepreneur, speaker and author John Hagel, who talked, quite openly, about his lifelong fear of fear and how he’s cured himself of this affliction over the last two decades.John Hagel III has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. After recently retiring as a partner from Deloitte, McGraw Hill published in May 2021 his latest book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that addresses the psychology of change and he is developing a series of programs to help people navigate through change at many levels. John has founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact. While at Deloitte, Jo

The endless culture wars rage on. In his new book, The War Against the Past, the sociologist Frank Furedi believes that unless what he calls “the West” fights for its history, the “grievance entrepreneurs” will take over and undermine all our hard won intellectual freedoms. It’s the convention conservative argument, of course, but what’s interesting about Furedi is that he used to be a revolutionary communist. So I wonder if Furedi’s rightward shift is the standard intellectual fate of old leftists. Alternatively, perhaps, the woke crowd has become so corrosive that even former communists like Furedi are now manning the barricades in defense of western civilization.Frank Furedi is a sociologist and social commentator. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Since the late 1990s, Frank has been widely cited about his views on why Western societies find it so difficult to engage with risk and uncertainty. He has published widely about controversies relating to issues such

As the author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, the Cambridge University historian Gary Gerstle was one of first people to recognize the collapse of neoliberalism. But today, the real question is not about the death of neoliberalism, but what comes after it. And, of course, when I sat down with Gerstle, I began by asking him what the Trump victory tells us about what comes after neoliberalism.Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. Gerstle received his BA from Brown University and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author, editor, and coeditor of more than ten books.  He is currently the Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, where he is working on a new book, Politics in Our Time: Authoritarian Peril and Democratic Hope in the Twenty-First Century.  He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Named as one of the "100 most pivoted men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's most

Gary Shapiro is my Pivot Guy. As the longtime president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, the organization that puts on Las Vegas’ annual Consumer Electronics Show, Gary knows a thing or two about pivoting. And now he’s put his pivoting wisdom into a pivotal new book, Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes, a guide about how to pivot successfully. As Gary explained to me, he breaks pivoting down into four kinds of pivots: the startup pivot, the forced pivot, the failure pivot and the success pivot. A pivotal conversation about a pivotally important subject.Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® which represents over 1300 consumer technology companies and owns and produces CES® — the Global Stage for Innovation. As head of CTA for more than three decades, he has ushered the consumer technology industry through major periods of technological upheaval and transformation. Shapiro is also the New York Times bestselling author of Ninja Future:

It’s the race that will change the world. In Supremacy, one of the FT’s six short-listed best business book of the year, Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson tells the story of what she sees as the key battle of our digital age between Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Demis Hassabis’ DeepMind. Altman and Hassabis, Olson argues, are fighting to dominate our new AI world and this war, she suggests, is as much one of personal style as of corporate power. It’s a refreshingly original take on an AI story which tends to be reported with either annoyingly utopian glee or equally childish dystopian fear. And Olson’s narrative on our brave new AI world is a particularly interesting take on the future of Alphabet, DeepMind’s parent corporation, which, she suggests, might, in the not too distant future, have Demis Hassabis as its CEO. “There's a very human story behind the development of AI.” -Parmy OlsonTRANSCRIPT:AK: Hello, everybody. A few weeks ago, about three weeks ago, the Nobel Prizes were awarded. And it was the year for AI

Might November 5 mark a new dawn for both Silicon Valley and America? Palo Alto based serial entrepreneur Keith Teare is ambivalent. In his That Was The Week tech newsletter for this week, Keith confesses that while he voted for Harris, he recognizes that the Trump victory probably benefits him economically. It’s almost as if Keith is embarrassed to admit this - which may be true more broadly about the rest of us in Silicon Valley. As Keith and I discuss this week, November 5 brings much of what has been simmering over the last decade to a boil - particularly the role of AI in reshaping both the Valley and American society. It’s certainly going to an interesting four years. This episode also comes with some afterthoughts from Rob Hodgkinson, Keith’s co-founder at SignalRank, who wrote a provocatively celebratory piece this week about American exceptionalism. Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based gl

The election is over and, is spite of Trump’s clear victory, America remains as divided as ever. So how to put the country together again? Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley, has been giving this existential question much thought. What all Americans need, Tafur tells me, is the compassion, empathy and humility to understand the other side. But, as I asked her, isn’t that just shorthand for a progressive bridge building project in which the left defines the language of a reunited America?Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley Her work focuses on strengthening social connections across lines of race, religion, culture, politics, and more, to foster a culture of understanding and belonging in the United States and beyond. Through partnerships, multimedia content, speaking engagements, and workshops, Juliana is committed to ensuring that bridge-building skills and resources reach people and inspire meaningful change. With experien

If there’s a disease that captures the toxic spirit of our times, it’s what the therapist, Vanessa Resier, in her new book, calls Narcissistic Abuse. Even the language of this disease - Gaslighting. Love bombing. Hoovering. Triangulating - has become part of the dictionary of life in the 2020’s. Narcissism and narcissists seem to be everywhere these days. In fact, as Resier told me (see full transcript below), all domestic abuse - from outright violence to subtle manipulation - is a form of narcissistic abuse. But if that’s true, I asked her, then what, exactly, isn’t narcissism?Vanessa M. Reiser is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), licensed in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida. She is a psychotherapist and the founder of Tell a Therapist, LLC as well as the founder of the nonprofit, Tell a Therapist, INC. Vanessa holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY Empire State college and a Master of Social Work (MSM) from the University of Southern California. Vanessa specializes

War is never pretty, but its privatized high tech future dominated by companies like Palintir and SpaceX is particularly chilling. In Unit X, their FT shortlisted best business book of the year, Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff’s explain how the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are transforming the future of war with the creation of a new kind of military-digital complex. As Shah and Kirchhoff explain, Unit X is the elite unit within the Pentagon known as the Defense Innovation Unit which is now the military bridge between Silicon Valley and the Federal government. And with Elon Musk’s deregulatory zeal driving the upcoming Trump administration, expect to see closer and closer cooperation between the Pentagon and cutting edge AI and biotech tech companies. Raj M. Shah is a serial technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit. He is currently the managing partner of Shield Capital, an investment firm focused on technologies at the nexus of commercial

I did this interview with John Driscoll, co-author of Pay the People! Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America, earlier this week, assuming that Harris would lose the election. And let’s be clear: she did lose an election that should have been eminently winnable. Driscoll spelt it out clearly in a powerful The Hill article last week about how raising the minimum wage is the key to the White House for Harris. The problem with Harris, and most of the Democratic party, is their failure to offer a coherent and politically sellable economic alternative to Trumpism. John Driscoll and his group of successful business leaders at Patriotic Millionaires offer that alternative. It’s not socialism, but it is an undisguised and unapologetic attempt to recognize the economic predicament of the American working class and to resurrect the American Dream by leveling the playing field. That’s the way to defeat Trumpism. Not by smiling inanely and saying nothing.John Driscoll chairs the Waystar Corporation and is

Lauren Oyler’s “Revenge Plot”, a literary diary of her trip to this year’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, is the cover story of this month’s Harper’s. So when I talked today with the Berlin based writer, we discussed both the revengefulness of the Republican party and what she calls the “risk aversion” of the Democrats. While Oyler cares a lot about the outcome of today’s election, she is wary of what she calls the “constant catastrophizing” both on the left and right of American politics. While this probably won’t be the final election in the history of American democracy, she suggests, it might be the first 21st century Presidential contest not dramatically shaped by the internet. LAUREN OYLER’s essays on books and culture appear regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, London Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, Bookforum, and other publications. Born and raised in West Virginia, she now divides her time between New York and Berlin.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ mag

The good news is that the interminable 2024 election is almost done. The bad news is that the 2028 Presidential campaign - sure to be described as the most important election in American history - will begin later this week. The best-selling writer Paul Greenberg is already imagining this election. “It is 2028 and a certain president wants a third term,” is the premise of Greenberg’s new satire, A Third Term: A Novella. And to counter this Republican President, (un)popularly known as “the Tyrant”, an operative snatches a certain George Washington from his deathbed in 1799 and makes him the 2028 Democratic candidate. The really interesting question in this imaginary Trump-Washington match-up are their running mates. If Washington selects FDR, then I’m guessing Trump will go with Robert E. Lee. It’s going to be quite a spectacle. I can’t wait. Paul Greenberg writes at the intersection of the environment and technology, seeking to help his readers escape screens and find emotional and ecological balance with the

This was the week of Techcrunch Disrupt, one of San Francisco’s biggest technology events of the year. That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare attended Disrupt this year and, as he explained in our weekly round up of tech news, the event - which was attended by over 10,000 people - only confirmed to him that we are living in profoundly disruptive technology times. And yet, as Keith and I discuss, the more things change in technology, the more things seem to stay the same in politics. So while AI is radically disrupting the world, next week’s election is, essentially, a rerun of the Biden-Trump race from four years ago. So will new Silicon Valley technology ever successfully disrupt politics? Or will American tech and American politics continue to exist in surreally parallel universes?Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with the British pro-market Conservative, Jon Moynihan, who is unambiguously in favor of economic growth. But Daniel Susskind, author of Growth: A History and a Reckoning, is less of an ideological warrior on behalf of unrestrained economic growth. In Growth, which is deservedly included on the Financial Times’ short list of best business books for 2024, Susskind seeks to navigate between the exuberantly Hayekian Moynihan and “degrowthers” like previous KEEN ON guests Tim Jackson and Jason Hickel. The truth about growth, for Susskind, as I’m guessing for most of us, is tricky, especially in the context of its longer term environmental costs. Thus the importance of Susskind’s nuanced and sensitive treatment of both the benefits and drawbacks of economic growth.Dr Daniel Susskind explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is a Research Professor in Economics at King’s College London, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethi

Not everyone believes in the promise of economic growth. We’ve done KEEN ON shows in the past with “degrowth” advocates like Tim Jackson and Jason Hickle who argue that we need to get beyond the false promise of ever expanding wealth. Our guest today, however, is anything but a sceptic of capitalist economics. Jon Moynihan is a Conservative member of the House of Lords, a vocal supporter of BREXIT, and an unashamed follower of the free market economic principles of Friedrich Hayek & Margaret Thatcher. In his new book, Return to Growth: How to Fix the Economy, the entertaining and combative Lord Moynihan argues that critics of economic growth tend to be what he calls “pampered Oxford Dons” who have no real understanding of the needs or ambitions of ordinary people. By the way, tomorrow’s guest on the show will be the Oxford trained economist Daniel Susskind who, as it happens, has a new book out entitled Growth: A History and a Reckoning. So more views about the value of the idea of economic growth over th

Maybe Halloween is a bit early this year. As Jason Pack, the host of the excellent Disorder podcast notes, a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a horror show. And while he’s much more optimistic than me about a Harris victory, Pack nonetheless views Trump as Exhibit A in his arguments about the global disorder now threatening peace and stability around the world. My own view is that America - always vulnerable to paranoia and conspiracy theories - has descended into total hysteria over the upcoming election. Whoever wins isn’t going to have the political or financial capital to change much; whoever wins, the country is going to remain as bitterly divided as ever. But then, as I’m often reminded, what the f$*k do I know?Jason Pack is the Founder of Libya-Analysis LLC, and the co-host of Disorder, a geopolitics podcast co-produced with Goalhanger Podcasts. He is a Senior Analyst for Emerging Challenges at the NATO Defence College Foundation in Rome. In partnership with NDCF, Jason leads a project entitled NATO a