Masha Gessen
speaker
304 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 10 Jan
Masha Gessen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
These lies can be annoying or amusing, but they're surmountable. They collapse in the face of facts. The Trumpian lie is different. It is the power lie or the bully lie. It is the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it while denying that he took it. There's no defense against this lie because the point of the lie is to assert power, to show I can say what I want when I want to.
the power of light conjures a different reality that demands that you choose between your experience and the bully's demands. Are you going to insist that you're wet from the rain or give in and say that the sun is shining?
Yeah, these are bully lies. And I'm seeing, you know, more and more of the sort of impossibility of standing up to it. Because there are now a lot of these people, right? It's not just Trump. The first administration was Trump and his lies and a bunch of psychophants. Now they're kind of all, particularly Trump and Musk, are just kind of running. One is constantly getting ahead of the other.
Federal employees have fortunes in the tens of millions with a salary of $180,000.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I wrote a piece about it at the time saying that it was totally Trumpian behavior. I did not win any friends with that piece, but that's what it felt like because we could see it. We could see the debate. And then there were all these people around Biden who were saying, don't believe your lying eyes. He is in control. He's running the country.
It had that feel of the bully lie.
Well, at this point, there's every indication, and by every indication, I mean all the things that he constantly says, that he actually thinks that that's how government should work. It should be one person making decisions.
Exactly.
Yeah. Or... Calling out the governor of Maine for, I guess in his opinion, not following his executive order on disallowing transgender athletes in sports. With the governor responding that the state of Maine has its own laws. And him basically saying, I can't remember the exact quote, but basically saying, I'm in charge here and we'll see who wins.
A better future that's basically the past is a common trait to all modern autocrats. I mean, in the 20th century, we also had some futuristic autocrats. The Soviet totalitarianism was probably the most vivid example. But all the autocrats have come to power in the world like in the last 15 or so years on this wave of of resurgent autocracies, they're all past-oriented.
They're saying, like, we had a glorious past and we've got to go back to it. Yeah, it's make whatever country great again. And it's always an imaginary past. When you felt comfortable, when you didn't have these anxieties, when your children were just like you, when men were men and women were women, and everyone spoke the same language as you do.
I think a few things are happening there, and I think they're pretty scary. I think the first time he mentioned Greenland, which was during his first term, it was probably at a moment's inspiration. He probably meant nothing by it.
Exactly, which is very much… What he does all the time. Yeah. One thing about Trump, though, is that he's very sensitive to being heard. Greenland was heard. And because Greenland was heard, it became a kind of a day fix. And so now in his second term, he's bringing up Greenland again. I think it's a whole other story. It's no longer an absurd trolling kind of meme thing.
It's beginning to approach policy. And I think that the way that he is also throwing around the Panama Canal and the Gulf of America, of course he's doing this because... totalitarian leaders have to promise expansion that's like why um it's it's like it's an axiom uh what are you saying no what do you like they have a rule book that they have to follow absolutely um I'm actually half serious.
Exactly.
Yeah, we're going to take over other lands. And what it is, I think, is it's a promise of greatness. It's a trade-off. Generally speaking, autocratic regimes don't, in the long run, prove economically beneficial.
To the population. Right. Right. They're usually economically beneficial to the actual autocrat and his cohort. And you will not necessarily be personally better off. So what is he going to actually give them? What he's going to give them is a sense of belonging to something greater.
Yeah. Yeah. The greatest country in the world that is expanding its borders.
Well, the problem is that we're always looking for that one thing or those three things. And now once we check them off, we're living in an autocracy. The problem is it's actually always a gradual process. And it's happening much faster here than it's happened in any country that I'm familiar with. Really? Yes.
I mean, it took Putin quite a long time to establish actual authoritarian rule and then another number of years to turn that regime into a totalitarian one. The way that Trump is taking a sledgehammer to government... is certainly unprecedented in my memory.
Showing 281–300 of 304 · page 15 of 16
← Previous
Next →