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

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Trump's triumphant return to Washington after having dodged a a number of stories and issues in the news. We'll begin with Trump's

triumphant return to Washington after having dodged a slew of lawsuits and captured the Republican

Party into supine obedience, who are now rubber-stamping his dangerously unqualified cabinet picks.

We'll assess the incoming horror and the outgoing sadness of a president who accomplished much with a

razor-thin majority, but exits the scene a tragic figure whose party has flatlined.

Joining us is Sean Wilentz, the George Henry Davis, 1886 Professor of American History

at Princeton University, whose books include The Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson

to Lincoln, The Age of Reagan, a History, 1974 to 2008, Bob Dylan in America, and the

politicians and the egalitarians.

His latest book is No Property in Man, Slavery and Anti-Slavery in the Nation's founding,

and we'll discuss his article of Politico magazine,

a tragic element to Biden's presidency.

Then we'll look into two remarks from Biden's farewell address that stood out,

his warning that we are losing our democracy to a plutocracy,

and that a tech industrial complex is emerging that could do great damage to the country.

Joining us is Fred Turner, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University.

He is the author or co-author of five books, including Seeing Silicon Valley, Life Inside a Fraying America,

the Democratic Surround, Multim multimedia and American liberalism from World

War II to the psychedelic 60s, from counterculture to cyberculture, Stuart Brand, the whole

Earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism, and echoes of combat, the Vietnam War

...