What Rough Beast

This week we talk to “What Rough Beast” regular Cy Canterel about fractured realities, fascism’s fatal flaw, and why keeping a diary might be the most radical act you can do right now. She joined us for a live this past week.
We discuss:
* How the Renee Good murder revealed that motivated reasoning—not actual ambiguity—is fracturing American reality
* Why the paradox of tolerance matters now: what does a pluralist society owe people who … can’t handle plurality?
* The underground genealogy of the current moment (spoiler: it’s been brewing in evangelical Christianity since the 1960s)
* Iris Origo’s war diaries and why putting pen to paper might save your sanity when propaganda becomes a deafening cacophony
* The difference between teaching and indoctrination—and what happens when a Mormon girl looks at a map and asks “wait, what are the chances?”
* Why fascism is constitutionally terrible at survival (it’s suicidal by design) but also: the body count still matters
* Mutual aid, record-keeping, and how to not go insane while toggling between doomscrolling and actually living your life
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This week, on the occasion of the five-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, I want to share a couple of conversations I had on the first anniversary of the insurrection with Reps. Jamie Raskin and Hakeem Jeffries, and Jamelle Bouie.
What you’ll hear are vivid accounts of that day, and you’ll hear about what this seemed to mean for who we are as a country, and where we were (and are) headed.
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This week we talk to Fred Kaplan, the national security columnist for Slate and author of seven books, including The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War (his most recent non-fiction), The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (which was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist), and his most recent, A Capital Calamity, a thriller-satire novel.
We discuss:
* The Venezuela “double tap” incident — why shooting survivors of a speedboat attack is literally the Pentagon’s textbook example of a “clearly unlawful order”
* The end of Pax Americana — Trump may have cultivated the appearance of power at a catastrophic cost to actual American power, and what happens when Europe no longer needs us
* Why no one is speaking out — the terrifying silence from military leaders and Republicans who know what’s happening is wrong, and what Trump’s threats against Mark Kelly reveal about the new rules
* Trump’s mob politics — how his favorite movie (The Godfather) explains his foreign policy better than any traditional framework, and why strongmen from Putin to the Saudis appeal to him
* What comes after — when other countries can finally “go their own way,” the resentment built up from decades of subjugation could leave America isolated and weakened
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Alex Karp and the Masturbating Girl. Is squirming in your seat erotic, pathological, subversive, insane? Alex Karp and Palantir believe it's genius. https://virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/alex-karp-and-the-masturbating-girl


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This week we talk to Cy Canterel (again!), about her recent video essay “Epstein, Elite Power Networks, and The Utility of Disgrace.” Cy is a New Orleans-based “feral scholar,” a media theorist/technologist decoding systems of power and meaning. We discussed:
* World Systems Theory as a map for understanding elite power: How Immanuel Wallerstein’s framework reveals the parallel reality inhabited by the ultra-wealthy—a class that exists “state-free” by choice, moving agnostically between systems to extract resources
* What the Epstein emails actually reveal: Beyond individual scandals, the documents show systematic patterns of how power consolidates—from the differential treatment of “core,” “semi-peripheral,” and “peripheral” actors to the strategic uses of disgrace itself
* The death of meritocracy: How discovering the emotional immaturity, illiteracy, and sheer cognitive dysfunction behind some of our most powerful institutions forces us to confront what we were really being acculturated into
* From neoliberalism to what comes next: Why it’s crucial not to reject everything that came before, and what figures like Zohran Mamdani might signal about a new paradigm that prioritizes collective flourishing over individual charisma
* Self-regulation as revolutionary act: How showing up with a “still center” in the face of chaos—without capitulating or getting mealy-mouthed about principles—offers a model we desperately need
Cy’s recommendations:
* Rob Horning - Writer who has a Substack called “Internal Exile” and wrote the essay “Mass Authentic”
* David Chapman - Wacky but so smart about how he thinks about meaning
* Sarah Perry - Philosopher who wrote a “Every Cradle Is a Grave,” about the ethics of birth and suicide
* Richard Siken - Poet who won the Yale Series of Younger Poets for his book “Crush”; also wrote “War of the Foxes” and is a painter
Virginia’s recommendation:
* “Loved and Missed” by Susie Boyt - An incredibly moving novel about a woman who takes over the care of her granddaughter as her daughter contends with addiction.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com/subscribe