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This is the podcast for the week of January 17th, 2025.

It's not safe for work.

Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where this will be our last podcast of the Biden administration.

And all around the internet, friends are asking each other what they plan to do on inauguration day.

Well, we plan to treat it like any other Irish wake. There'll be some storytelling, guarantee

there'll be some glasses raised. And in deference to my dad, some bagpipes.

It is awake because, as a Monday, something really important will have died.

But the confusing thing is we're not exactly sure what it is that we'll have died. It's certainly not our innocence because we lost that a long time ago,

didn't we? And it's not American exceptionalism because we sure as hell lost that a long time ago,

too. It might be American democracy, but we can't

know that right now. We're hoping that part of what has died is the residual naivete of some of our

liberal friends and allies, naivete about the media, naivete about millions of our fellow citizens.

Goethe once said, the hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes. And for a lot of our allies, seeing just how genuinely

awful and insane, millions of our fellow citizens have been all along will be the hardest thing.

Or how broken our media has been all along will be the hardest thing. Or how broken our media has been all along will be the hardest thing.

This is where they will be most prone to relapsing and letting wishful thinking,

get in the way of pragmatic planning and navigation.

Friend of the pod, Julie Hothard, directed this question to Drift Glass.

When Trump and the broligarchy F up, and they will, I'm curious how quickly the bootlickers will turn on them and pretend to be part of the resistance.

And I have made the statement multiple times on and off this podcast that I think Trump's going to wind up like Mussolini, not maybe physically, but the roaring crowds that cheered him will be the ones booing him.

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