Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org, I'm Ian Masters,

and today we examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin as this year ends with selected programs from our archives, starting today

with events early in the year, then tomorrow stories from the middle of the year, then on Thursday's

program from later in the year before special programming on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Let's start with a broadcast of background briefing from January the 17th of 2023,

a history of paranoid fantasies and today's rise of fascism led by a reality TV star

when we spoke with Jared Yates Sexton, the author of American rule, How a Nation

Conquered the World but Failed Its People, and The People are Going to Rise like the Waters

upon Your Shore, as well as three collections of fiction. The host of the Muck Rake podcast,

His latest book is The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia and the Coming Crisis,

and we discussed how the current crisis of fascism led by a reality TV star is a part of a long

history the book covers in which reality is rejected for paranoid fantasies, ending up with

today's apocalyptic mindset that has become Republican orthodoxy.

Then we'll go to a broadcast of background briefing from February 8, 2023, rising tensions

with China and a U.S. China policy of self-harm, which covered tensions rising between the

U.S. and China and the absence of a diplomatic dialogue

following Secretary of State Blinken's cancellation of talks

with Chinese leaders over the balloon incident.

We spoke with Ambassador Chas Freeman,

a visiting scholar at Brown University's Watson Institute

for International and Public Affairs.

...