Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm the N Masters, and today on this New Year's Day, we will broadcast the last of our retrospectives of

24 from a compilation of programs throughout the year we started back in January and ended this

month as we worked back through the major stories of the year as they evolved to the present.

We start off today as half the nation anticipates the worst ahead while the the other half hopes for the best, even though the writing is on the wall that they have been conned and will get shafted along with the rest of us.

We begin with a broadcast of background briefing from November the 18th, 2024, titled, Will the Democrats confront the economic conditions that gave rise

to right-wing populism? We assessed how the Democrats cannot move forward to meaningfully address

a deepening crisis of liberal democracy without first confronting the economic conditions

that gave rise to right-wing populism. We spoke then with Wendy Brown,

a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. She was formerly

a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a core

faculty member in the designated emphasis on critical theory. Her books include undoing the

demos, neoliberalism stealth revolution, wall states, waning sovereignty, and in the ruins of

neoliberalism, the rise of anti-democratic politics in the West. Her latest book is

nihilistic times, thinking Max Weber, and we discussed her article at Dissent,

A Party Out of Touch.

And before we begin in this new year of 2025, with half of the country hoping for the best,

as the other half expects the worst, I'm constantly asked, how do we survive four more ruinous

years of a corrupt sociopath deliberately

endangering our children and grandchildren and the future of the planet

by denying and delaying the urgent need to stop global warming?

As a democratic world is hollowed out from the inside with Trump threatening our allies

...