Jon Stewart

Because if I was looking for an analogous period to this, and I think you make a great point about that this is a multifaceted assault on reducing the power of people.

And the consent of the governed, what it's sort of doing is it's raising the bar of consent so that you almost can't reach it.

That consent is really now formulated at the corporate board level, that their speech is being far more valued than what the individuals are, right?

So they're designing that system and it feels more like,

gilded age scenario when those Titans like Morgan and those guys the government really did have to go to them and go hey man can you bail us out and we'll do whatever you want so how did they regain the power or does gaining that power necessarily have to have something catastrophic

like the depression, you know, will we only regain our agency in the most dire of circumstances?

Or is there a path to that that is less tragic and more productive?

when you see those moments heather and and i i love the way you paint that because what it does is it gives a framework to each of these periods that you know a a kind of governmental or world cataclysm or failure combined with a new way of storytelling combined with

a storyteller who is able to harness those and push us into what will be the next iteration.

And I think in our minds, the person that is always the hero in that story is the progressive.

Teddy Roosevelt jumps in in those moments of the robber barons, and he decides, speak softly, carry a big stick, and trust bust, and we're not going to have monopolies anymore, and we're going to do that.

And then

You talk about the 20s and the degradation of the power of people's voices.

And then FDR seizes that moment and he brings in social programs that ease the pain and the lives of all these different people.

And as you were telling it, what was coming up in my head was 2008 financial crisis and the Iraq war and social media.

And these are the three ingredients, but the progressive hero didn't seize that moment.

And I want to ask about this, and this is a hard one.

Trump is the one who ends up seizing that form of communication, mastering the attention economy.

But before that was Obama.

And are we in a situation where Obama, was it a slightly missed opportunity?