The American dream is pretty simple; With a bit of hard work and luck just about anyone can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and rise ever-upwards. The poor can become middle-class. The middle-class can become rich. And the rich? . . .well they’ll be just fine. The dream supposes that America’s experiment with democracy and radical individualism will bend the arc of history towards justice.
I like the American dream. I want it to be true.
It’s too bad that dreams rarely match up with reality. A single glance at the front page of any newspaper or economic trend over the last 50 years shows how far we really are from achieving it. An entire subset of the culture has an almost religious devotion to the idea that a simple change in mindset can alter their personal economic trajectory and even the course of the national political discourse itself. We fail to recognize that the country is more hopelessly muddled now than at any time since the Civil War.
Other than a few comments here and there on social media, I try not to cover politics directly on my channels. It moves to fast, and the problems always seem to intractable. I just don’t feel up to the task.
Which is why this week I decided to call up . She’s the author of 7 books and an amazing substack newsletter “American Freakshow.”
I’ve known Burleigh since we both began reporting separate stories about a fringe buddhist group in the Arizona desert where a young man meditated to death in a cave above a silent retreat center. Her piece ran in Rolling Stone and mine in Playboy (my piece eventually turned into my book The Enlightenment Trap.) We were both completely fascinated with how the sect combined notions of spiritual progress with the pursuit of ostentatious wealth.
We’ve kept in touch over the years, and I’ve always admitted her tenacity and ability to distill large complex ideas into elegant prose.
Burleigh’s works include an expose on the women in Donald Tump’s orbit, on archaeological fraud with biblical texts and the political hijacking of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Like every journalist I know who is worth their salt, Burleigh has been the subject of high-profile—and baseless—assaults on her credibility. A recent libel threat from Melania Trump took issue with the timelines in one of her books and the Telegraph caved to the pressure.
In this week’s conversation Nina and I delve into the breadth of her career, the sorry state of journalism and the declining credibility of the supreme court. We examine the strange community of billionaires who fund archaeological research for personal gain, and the death of the mainstream media.
I think you’re gonna like it.
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