Ben Sasse

And I think normie politicians have an opportunity, at least in small enough electorates, where people can get to know who you are as a person.

Again, I don't know that this works if you got all the media markets of California, but I think it's possible.

Big picture.

15 years 25 years from now does the Republic survive or not?

I think it's an open question But I think we do but if we survive one thing that I'm nearly certain of is we will figure out how to have discussions in spite of all

all of the noise of social media chaos, of a lot of lying and a lot of screaming and just a whole lot of conspiracy stupid all across the continuum.

There's gonna be a lot more normies who show up and roll their eyes and say, Yeah,

Grandma, I know you got a text that, you know, some terrible thing's going to happen if you don't click this link by tomorrow.

We've figured out how to deal with a lot of that kind of fraud on your digital devices.

A lot of the so-called content is also fraudulent nonsense.

And people are going to figure out how to tune out more of the fan service crazy that says only bad people are at the other end of the continuum.

Now, there's some crazy people everywhere.

It's a little weird to say when you've just gotten an actual terminal diagnosis, but I will confess that I've always felt mortality heavy on my shoulders.

I've always thought time was short.

And the Senate is a very, very, very important institution, has been in the past, and it will be again in the future, I'm relatively confident.

But it doesn't do anything right now.

And so when you have kids and you've watched two of the three of them graduate out and go two thirds empty nester while you were commuting every week and you still have another kid left with you and you just think it's super unlikely that the Senate's going to tackle any real stuff.

this year or next year or the year after that or the year after that.

Like, why am I still doing this?

And so I had been recruited for a few college presidencies and none of them seemed like the right fit.