Ross Douthat

senator from Nebraska and you were giving them a couple of pieces of advice.

What would you say?

What was a concrete example of that, that the state party was pissed about?

But so is that well, is the is the problem then?

that there's sort of this widespread collapse of interest in or understanding of American civic values?

Or is it primarily a problem where most people are still on board with those values?

Hence, Ben Sasse can win liberal leaning Omaha while also winning deep Republican counties, but people who are sort of professionally tribally engaged in politics

are sort of tearing the country apart.

So this seems like though...

For politicians, for the next would-be Ben Sasse, the next high-minded, civic-minded senator, this seems like a pretty pessimistic description.

So is there some concrete response to this from politicians?

Always have been.

But people do...

Not just sort of the extreme.

I mean, there is a horrible way in which people like that.

Like, it's not just people.

Dopamine hits.

Right.

Well, it's dopamine hits.

But also, you know, there's a famous C.S.