487: John Ganz: How the 1990s Broke America - Con Men, and Conspiracies, and a Failed Transition from the Reagan Years

The Realignment

Technology, News Commentary, National Security, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, News, Public Policy, Economics, Politics, Saager Enjeti, U.s. Politics, Policy

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Ganz, author of When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, joins The Realignment. Marshall and John discuss 2020s nostalgia for the 1990s, the misplaced belief that the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War represented the "end of history," the early 1990s rise of outsider, third-party presidential candidates, and the role that con men and conspiracy theories played in cracking up the country.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment.
0:03.2	Today's episode is all about the 1990s.
0:09.2	Today's episode is all about the 1990s.
0:11.8	Enjoyed by the author John Gans to discuss his new book
0:14.4	when the clock broke, conmen, conspiracies, and how America cracked up in the early 1990s. A lot of us,
0:21.3	especially those of you like me who were born in the early 1990s, are prone to looking
0:25.6	back on that decade with nostalgia, especially in comparison with how chaotic and disastrous
0:30.9	the 2000s, 2010s, and20s have felt.
0:34.8	Berlin Wall had just fallen, the Cold War was over, Desert Storm was a relative cake walk,
0:39.7	and the early promise of the internet had just started to show itself.
0:44.0	It's a total cliche at this point, but it really did feel like the end of history.
0:49.0	John's book takes the opposite view, though, and looks back on the decade and finds counterintuitive signs,
0:55.2	events and personalities that show that America had already started to crack up back in that period.
1:01.7	As we lead into and out of the 2024 election,
1:04.5	I'll be doing more of these decades focused episodes,
1:07.5	so I'm excited to keep diving into this theme.
1:11.6	Huge thank you to the Foundation for American Innovation is
1:14.7	the work of this podcast.
1:17.0	Hey guys, quick note before we get into today's episode, I wanted to take a
1:22.1	quick second to share some good and exciting news
1:24.8	about the Foundation for American Innovation's upcoming fall conference reboot 2024, the new reality.
1:31.7	As listeners will know, especially long time ones,
	...

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