Ross Douthat

Lewis quote, right, about the man who, you know, reads the newspaper and learns that his enemies overseas have committed atrocities.

And then he reads another story that says, actually, maybe there were fewer atrocities committed.

Right.

And there's part of him that's disappointed.

It's disappointed.

Yeah.

Right.

And there is some way in which people respond to the idea that their enemies are even worse than they imagined before.

Right.

I mean, I've I've watched this happen just with the Jeffrey Epstein stuff where.

As a conservative, I lived for a long time with people on the right who were obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein.

And I have my own sort of moderate conspiracy theories about it.

But then as soon as it became about Donald Trump, there was this flip that happened.

And suddenly, I had all of these liberal friends for whom it was like, this story was amazing.

They'd never thought about it before.

But now, it was occupying all this brain space because it became...

a way to think that the other side was bad.

And I feel like there's an element of that where it's just such a part of human nature that it's challenging to deal with.

Why didn't you stick around?

If you thought this model was workable, that you could have been reelected