Wait, I’m Not the Crazy One! Sarah Longwell, Conservative Watchdog of Republican Sanity

Written By Guest User

January 11, 2022

“I'm watching everybody slowly turn into a pro-Trump zombie that I've ever worked with or been around; everyone's doing their rationalizations.” So recalls special guest this episode, Sarah Longwell, conservative strategist turned watchdog of Republican populism as Executive Director of the Republican Accountability Project and Publisher of The Bulwark.

“The fact that there were a bunch of people that I respected who I had been intellectually interested in for many years,” Longwell explains. “When those people saw the world the same way I did, it kept me from feeling insane.”

That “bunch” of people included highly respected conservative journalist Charles Sykes, Contributing Editor of The Weekly Standard before founding The Bulwark, and William Kristol, veteran of several Republican White House positions, now Chairman of the Republican Accountability Project (RAP).

Longwell goes on to describe perhaps the most visible outcome of her partnership with Kristol, the “Republican Voters Against Trump” campaign, which ran throughout the 2020 election. And she recounts another subsequent surprise in her Washington career, the inflection point that failed to happen after the 2020 Biden victory.

“I had thought, you know, I'd kind of move on to other things. And then Trump just didn't concede the election. And then he was lying about the results of the election. And then there was the insurrection. And, you know, sometime in January, I'm saying to myself, this is what I'm doing from here on.”

Not sparing in her criticisms of the left, Longwell also calls out the political hazards of progressive pronoun obsession and legislative overreach by the White House. “We don't love the Biden Administration with all these big swings being prioritized over sort of small wins,” she explains, exhibiting her conservative roots. “Especially if you think that the Republican Party is as dangerous as we do, you really are rooting for the Democrats to build a broad coalition. And that's not what's happening at the moment.”

So much happening yet not happening in our politics these days, with legislative gridlock but primary elections coming up soon. Join us for a fast-paced, no-holds-barred discussion with one of Washington’s keenest minds and sharpest wits, Sarah Longwell of the Republican Accountability Project and The Bulwark.

Original Music by Ryan Adair Rooney

SHOW NOTES

Our Guest

Sarah Longwell: Twitter, Defending Democracy Together, The Bulwark


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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah Longwell

I did three years at a conservative thinktank out of college. Then I did 15 years at a conservative or right-leaning sort of policy and PR firm.

Robert Pease (co-host)

Those are just some of the conservative credentials of our special guest today, Sarah Longwell, executive director of the Republican Accountability Project.

Sarah Longwell

I was in kind of hot pursuit of a new vision of the Republican party, that I thought was going to be a boon for, you know, why America was a great place for people to come and live…

Robert Pease (co-host)

Sarah’s also publisher of The Bulwark, maybe the most thoughtful, widely read US publication pushing back from the more traditional right on the excesses of the populist right…

Sarah Longwell

And it just didn't pan out: my vision for what the future of the Republican party was going to be.

Robert Pease (co-host)

Join us today as Sarah Longwell reflects on the Trumpification of the Republican Party and how some Democrats may unwittingly abet that process. I’m Robert Pease and this is the Purple Principle, a podcast about the perils of polarization. 

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

And I’m Jillian Youngblood, co-host here and executive director of Civic Genius, a civic engagement non-profit. Sarah Longwell is someone whose path I’ve crossed several times over the past few years. She’s not only an uber-effective organizer but a sharp-as-they come analyst of our zero-sum politics. 

Robert Pease (co-host)

Let’s get right into it then, with Sarah Longwell, close colleague of Bulwark founder Charles Sykes and Republican Accountability Project Chairman William Kristol, a veteran of several Republican White Houses. We asked her about her initial discussions with Kristol at the low-profile Meetings of the Concerned back in 2017. 

[Into Interview]

Sarah Longwell

Hey, you know, those were important meetings, they were formative for me. I used to call it “the sad Republican meeting where we tried to figure out what the heck was going on with the Republican party,” back in 2017. I ended up kind of cornering Bill Kristol after one of them and saying, “We've gotta do something about this. We should build an organization. We should plant a flag for conservatives like us who believe that this is off the rails and something's gone wrong, and we need to understand what's going on with the Republican party because clearly we miss something.” We had a pretty high profile campaign last year during the election called “Republican Voters Against Trump.” If you saw all those testimonials of people saying, “Hey, you know, I've been a Republican my whole life, but I'm going to vote for Joe Biden because Donald Trump is not what it means to me to be a Republican or a conservative.” And then I started The Bulwark with Bill, Charlie, and Jonathan Last, after The Weekly Standard went under. 

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

Yeah. Yeah. I remember a lot of those social media spots that I saw of voters saying “I've been a Republican my entire life, but I can't do this.” And it was really powerful in building, I think, trusted messengers for the community of people of who feel the same way. So I thought it was really interesting work. Did you feel — so you did kind of chart this new path here? Did you feel like you had role models that you could sorta tap into?

Sarah Longwell

Oh, that's a good question. Well, I guess it would be people like Bill Kristol, Mona Charen, and Linda Chavez…Charlie. You know, I grew up watching them on TV and suddenly I was in the room with all of them and they, you know — there's this thing that happens when you're looking at reality and  everything changes. So everything you think you know to be true suddenly is off and you start to think, “Am I crazy? Am I the crazy one?” So I'm watching Donald Trump happen. I'm watching everybody slowly turn into a pro-Trump zombie that I've ever worked with or been around; everyone's doing their rationalizations. And so the fact that there were a bunch of people that I respected who I had been intellectually interested in for many years — when those people saw the world the same way I did, it kept me from feeling insane. 

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

Right. Could you talk a little bit more about what you're doing with the Republican Accountability Project now? What's your urgent mission?

Sarah Longwell

Yeah. You know, after Republican Voters Against Trump, after the election was over, I was kind of like, “Yeah, well, shut that down. We're not going to need that again.” And I had thought, you know, I'd kind of move on to other things. And then Trump just didn't concede the election. And then he was lying about the results of the election. And then there was the insurrection. And, you know, sometime in January, I'm saying to myself, “This is what I'm doing from here on.” And what's been wild to watch: Trump is stronger than he’s ever been. And he's stronger because if you can incite an insurrection in clear broad daylight, have everybody denouncing you, get impeached for a second time, and then weeks later, you know, [House Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy's blazing a trail down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss your ring again. And Mitch McConnell's endorsing your wildly outside the mainstream, handpicked candidates like Herschel Walker. That's power; that's you owning the party. So I was determined to keep reminding people and to try to seek accountability any way possible, whether it was through electoral defeat, or whether it was, you know, ensuring that companies didn't support people who wanted to not certify the election because that was wild. All those people — I mean, hundreds of Republicans saying they weren't going to certify an election — and at the end of the day, Republicans downticket overperformed the top of the ticket because enough college educated, suburban Republicans voted downticket Republican, but they voted for Joe Biden. And that was our target in 2020, that's who we focus on because those people are gettable for sanity. Sanity can get those people.

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

Right. Can you talk a little bit more about those college educated suburbanites? I think when people hear that they kind of assume people get like one picture in their mind of who a college educated person is. And I've heard you paint sort of a broader picture of what that demographic is.

Sarah Longwell

Oh yeah. What a good question because this is something I was constantly sort of pounding on in 2020 because people, they think like Bucks County, Pennsylvania, right? Like a rich suburb of Philadelphia that's who these college educated suburban voters are and — they are, that's true — but they're also in the suburbs of Harrisburg and the college that they went to wasn't, you know, Harvard or Bates or some small liberal arts college, you know, they went to college in their state, maybe a small Christian college or they live in like Carlisle, Pennsylvania or Camp Hill. I'm from Pennsylvania, so like these places seem normal to me, but trust me, they're real places in Pennsylvania that have lots of white working class voters and lots of college educated voters that went to small local colleges. And they are part of this shifting demographic.  

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

My dad’s from Quakertown. So those were all familiar names to me. 

Sarah Longwell

There you go.

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

You mentioned corporations. When you're talking to corporations about this stuff and I mean, it's a good observation that right after January 6th, there was all this corporate disavowal of what had happened. And there was a lot of boycott going on and we're not going to support this person and that candidate. And then, I don't know, everybody just seems to have quietly like dropped it… 

Sarah Longwell

Yeah. This is a complicated one. Because some companies are doing one thing and lots of others are doing different things and I think that they have to figure it out cause they can play a really important role. I thought a good line was “We are not going to support people who refuse to certify an election.” That seems like a good, broad rule of thumb. I think getting into individual pieces of legislation can be much trickier because frankly there are really bad, uh, bills out there right now around voting. 

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

Yeah. I can see why it would be terrifying as a CEO to have to make some decisions there. I would love to hear kind of the evolution — if there has been any kind of evolution — at The Bulwark in terms of what you guys are trying to achieve there. 

Sarah Longwell

Yeah. I think that what's interesting about The Bulwark is that it was kind of an accident. The Weekly Standard got the plug pulled on it for being insufficiently pro-Trump, and Bill and I were working together and basically it happened, you know, a week before Christmas. And so it was, you know, kind of a mean time to have it all go under. And so we were like, well, what could we do? And so we basically had the websites, we just said, “Let's start writing…” And so, you know, half this sort of Weekly Standard editorial and writing team just came over and started. And the whole thing just took off. But, obviously in the beginning it was, you know, to even call yourself a “bulwark” is to define yourself as like negative, like we're trying to — we're taking a stand opposing something, or we're trying to defend against something. And I think now the challenge is the world has changed quite a bit. There's been unbelievable political realignment, which is ongoing. The parties are standing for different things. And so I think rather than defending against something, but like what's an affirmative vision for the direction the country should go? Like, you know, we're all interested in unity. We're all  interested in building a big, broad, pro-democracy coalition. But also I think for us as for, you know, conservatives or people with conservative-ish leanings, you know, we don't love the Biden Administration with all these big swings being prioritized over sort of small wins. And, you know, he doesn't have a massive mandate coming out of that election. And I would say things aren't going as well as one might hope. Especially if you think that the Republican Party is as dangerous as we do, then you really are rooting for the Democrats to, you know, build a broad coalition and that's not what's happening at the moment. And so I think that we have to have like a clear voice about what we imagine for the country and, and some of what that means on policy and on posture. And so, yeah, I think that's a lot of the evolution. 

[Exit Interview]

Robert Pease (co-host)

That’s Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, launched in 2018 and, in their words, “dedicated to providing political analysis and reporting free from partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices.”

Jillian Youngblood (co-host)

Amen to that. And Sarah referred to the rightward and populist turn of the Republican Party over the  two-plus decades she’s been in DC. But those forces have been in motion for half a century. In an early Purple Principle episode, historian Geoffrey Kabaservice suggests that these transformation seeds were planted as far back as the 1960s.  

[Archival clip]

Geoffrey Kabaservice

Well, moderate Republicanism took a nasty hit in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, the very conservative Arizona Senator, became the GOP presidential nominee. And that was significant not just because a conservative for the first seized the nomination but also because Barry Goldwater was one of the few Republican legislators in Congress to vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And that had long standing and permanent repercussions… The conservative faction gained strength with every passing year in the Republican Party after 1970 or thereabouts. Richard Nixon really took the party in a much more populist direction after 1970.

Robert Pease (co-host)

And in our 2021 episode, “Portrait of the Arsonist as Young Congressman,” author Julian Zelizer described the pivotal role former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had on that GOP turn toward populism: 

[Archival clip]
Julian Zelizer

There was a loyalty before the 1980s in both parties to making sure that the institutions of government, including Congress, work. Once Gingrich helped to flip that switch, lots of things became possible. You're willing to say whatever you want about an opponent, which was not the case before the 1970s. You're willing to take basic processes of government, whether it's the filibuster or the budget, and use them as partisan bludgeons. And I think that's how to think about the change that happens. It's not that the earlier system was perfect. It really wasn't. But this change in terms of what partisanship means and how it's practiced is very dramatic.

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

So that’s a historical backdrop to the rightwing populism that’s reached critical mass in recent years.   And with that in mind, Rob turns to the thorny topic of today’s GOP politics in the next part of the interview…

Robert Pease (co-host)

I’m trying to push just back a bit on Sarah’s view that Donald Trump exerts complete control over the entire Republican Party.

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

Though, spoiler alert, without much success on that point…

 

[Into Interview]

Robert Pease (co-host)

So, Sarah,  you've mentioned that Trump still has, in your estimation, complete control over the Republican party, but we did kind of have what we thought was surprising vote by 19 Republican  Senators for the infrastructure package that Trump was actively against. That's pretty remarkable. And if Trump fully controlled the party, that many aisle crossing votes would have seemed difficult.

Sarah Longwell

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, infrastructure's different. I always argued that there was going to be a bipartisan vote on something. I thought infrastructure was the thing that it would happen on because everybody wants to take credit for infrastructure. It's like there was as a part of, I mean, we can get into part of why. I think I'm frustrated with some of the ways that the Democrats have handled this.  Mitch McConnell voted for that. You got 19 senators, there was I think a real opportunity for them to take some bipartisan goodwill, show that they could legislate for Democrats to put that win in their pocket and go run on it.

Robert Pease (co-host)

Well, what if we float the hypothesis that some politicians are a little bit two-faced.  I hope that that's not too controversial. Let's say Mitch McConnell, for example. He has Trump actively saying he doesn't want McConnell to be the Majority Leader. Don't you think behind the scenes, in some way, McConnell is undermining Trump either with funding or with his connections to enablers and other people who will be involved in the next election?

Sarah Longwell

Maybe. But look: I mean, I've been listening to this behind the scenes stuff for like a billion years and I bought it in the early days. I listened to people tell me how much they didn't like him and how they were, you know — but honestly these guys have no affirmative plan for how to deal with Trump. Okay. They wanted to get rid of him; they could have all swallowed hard, voted for the second impeachment, made sure that there was no way he was coming back.

Robert Pease (co-host)

What about the — I suppose relatively small number, but still very moderate, very different seemingly — anti-Trump Republican governors, you know, like Baker and to some extent, you know, certainly Hogan?…  


Sarah Longwell

You know, I mean, these are my people. I love Larry Hogan. I love Charlie Baker. I would love to see one of them hold national office. If Larry Hogan runs for president, I would be in the just absolute front of the classroom, raising my hand to say, “I wan to help. I'll work day and night.” The problem is that these are people, these are Republicans who can get elected in blue states. And I always saw that as the future national model, that you would have these kind of moderate, sensible, compromise Republicans who weren't super socially conservative, but were good fiscal stewards who are responsible, that they'd be a great future for the Republican party. The voters don't want them. I mean is there a lane for Larry Hogan in 2024? There might be one lane for an anti-Trump Republican; it's a small lane and in it are Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, you know, there's like all of the very small cadre of people who are now vocally anti-Trump and have some national profile for being so, and are going to present this alternate version of the party while only one of them can run. And then you gotta hope there's kind of the inverse of 2016 where there's 15 other hardcore Trumpers in the field trying to out-Trump each other so that you can be alone and get, you know, cobbled together your 15 to 20% of the sort of normal-ish Republicans that are left. But the fact is that that's all if Trump doesn't run himself…


Robert Pease (co-host)

Well, it seemed at one point there was a lot of speculation or expectation that other members of the Trump family were going to run for office in various states: Florida, North Carolina… And that did not happen. And so we wondered if perhaps they tested the funding waters and they weren't too friendly at that time. If that’s the case perhaps the business community having lived through the last couple years, the Trump administration, maybe they won't be financially supportive of Trump or Trump family members.


Sarah Longwell

I mean, I just think that's wishful thinking. First of all, Trump is sitting on a warchest that he raised from the Stop the Steal shenanigans: that's basically a leadership PAC. I mean, if he wanted to fund their candidacy, he could. My guess is that Trump doesn't want any of his progeny running until he's decided whether or not he still wants to be the main event. And look, Ron DeSantis is pulling in a lot of money because there's a lot of people that think that — and people do want to move on. It's not that these donors want it to be Trump. They don't; they want it to be Ron DeSantis or somebody else more palatable to them who can win. But if Trump wants it, they know that the people will give it to him. The voters will give it to him (Republican primary voters). And so they will do exactly what they did back then, which is to play nice and to support him. And, I just — you can try to really squint and see some world in which we get past Trump, but it's up to him. Because if his strength is that he took the reality of something like January 6th, the reality of losing an election, and has created an alternative universe where now half the country, or 30% of it, think that he did win the election. It’s just a whole different ball game.

[Exit Interview]


Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

A real privilege to have Sarah Longwell of the Republican Accountability Project breaking things down for us. And, by the way, Rob, you need to stop squinting. 


Robert Pease (co-host)

I guess I do Jillian. Because when I squint hard enough I still see some vaguely purple glow from those  infrastructure votes in the Senate and House. That was 19 Senate Republicans including Mitch McConnell. But also 13 House Republicans helped pass that bill when 6 progressive Democrats bailed out.

Jillian Youngblood (co-host)

Could be a mirage though. Or something in your contacts, since Democrats haven’t garnered even a wisp of a Republican vote on Biden’s Build Back Better bill. 

Robert Pease (co-host)

That’s a fair point. And now we’re coming up on primary elections which never do much for aisle-crossing, in fact, it tends to make the aisles between parties a whole lot wider and more treacherous.


Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

Like a moat filled with partisan alligators. 


Robert Pease (co-host)

Or loyalist crocodiles. I binge watch Animal Planet and still can’t keep them straight


Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

A snout thing I’m pretty sure. But let’s get back to elephants and donkeys, shall we? Pretty clear differences there. Sarah’s been conducting focus groups with both species as well as independents in the lead up to the 2022 primaries.


Robert Pease (co-host)

So we asked her the question many indie-minded Purple Principle listeners will be pondering, especially in those states where indies choose which party’s primary to vote in. States like Texas and Georgia and Virginia. And that question is: What’s more important this primary season, Republican or Democratic primaries? 

[Into Interview]


Sarah Longwell

Ooh, that's a good question because I don't know. They're both super important because there's a certain condition that that has to be created and I think it's a mirror of what happened in 2020. We saw how close the last election was. Is anybody going to dispute that if that election had been between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren or Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders that Donald Trump would've won it? I believe Trump would've beaten just about every other Democrat in the field. You needed to have both Donald Trump who, while he attracts a lot of people, repels a certain and kind of swing voter. And you needed to have a sufficiently moderate candidate, or perceived to be moderate candidate, to pick up the people who are repelled by Donald Trump and who could kind of hold the line and not lose any more ground on the white working class voters. And so I think in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, you know, you need both things to happen. Pennsylvania's going to be super interesting. I'm watching the Democratic primary there because John Fetterman — who kind of like looks like a viking — he's running against Connor Lamb who’s basically your archetypal, you know, sort of centrist, moderate, former military guy, serious — the kind of person a swing voter could really go for. And then there's some interesting governor's races. So Carrie Lake in Arizona, who's looking to be the successor to Doug Ducey? But Doug Ducey, you know, before Trump made his life miserable and he had to kind of play along with the Trump game and like say, “Yeah, sure. Let's do a fourth audit with the cyber ninjas. That seems like a great idea.” before he was doing that. He was a really normal Republican who had sort of national political aspirations. And really the contours of all the races are the same to me, which is, can Democrats put up broadly appealing candidates that can pick up swing voters who don't like these super Trumpy candidates who are well outside the mainstream and who are likely to say really crazy things during the course of the election?


Robert Pease (co-host)

That’s a great explanation of things. Sarah and you have your hands full reforming the Republican party, but we did want to ask you a question about the Democratic Party. We had Thomas Edsall of the New York Times on recently. And he said that, for the sake of preserving our democracy, the burden is on Democrats as the more rational of the two parties to turn down the sense of threat that identity politics poses to many Republicans.


Sarah Longwell

There's no doubt about it. And I think that, you know, in some ways this was the promise of Joe Biden, right? And why, I think you have a lot of independents who are frustrated with him right now. And it's reflected in the polling. Because the promise of Joe Biden was “I'm going to turn the temperature down. I'm not going to engage in these culture war battles.” And, you know, “I can figure out how to bring people together and govern from the center.” And I think that's what people wanted. And after feeling like maybe we were all going to get out of this whole Covid thing, we’re back in it even after the rollout of the vaccines, and a bunch of people aren’t vaccinated, then you go into the school year and everyone’s fighting about masks again. And then there's critical race theory. And look, these culture issues, culture worships, they've always been in our politics before this, it was school prayer, or I don't even know what did everybody fight about when it was the nineties?...


Robert Pease (co-host)

Textbooks


Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

Evolution. 


Sarah Longwell

Yeah, yeah. Right. What was the — there was like the evolution and like, there was somewhat conservative alternative to that, that everyone talked about that I forget about from the early aughts and like these, just these debates are always with us. Yeah. I do think what is different right now is that there is, you know, a real — as crazy as the Republicans are being January 6th, everything else, it can feel a little far away from people like they're not experiencing an insurrection at their house. But their kids are in school and they are worried about what they're being taught and it can feel close. And a lot of these things are things that these, you know, people didn't grow up with. And like, they don't necessarily understand the trans issue that well. But let's say they're good hearted people. And they're like, “Well, I want to just, you know, to be nice to people. And I think people should be able to do whatever they want.” But they don't understand the pronoun situation and they don't want to get in trouble. And also when people say it's like, they're like talking about “birthing persons.” They're like, “What alien-speak is this? What do you mean? Like, is ‘mother’ not an okay word anymore? What is this crazy place we're living in?” And that feels very immediate to people. That feels like they're living in a world they don't understand. And I think that that stuff is just, is a killer for your political coalition. “Defund the police” is another great example. I mean, you just heard all of the centrist Dems who were trying to run in that environment. And, you know, they say, “Well, we didn't mean ‘defund the police.’” Whatever, the second you're explaining, you're losing.


Robert Pease (co-host)

One last question we ask all our guests is to show a bit of purple, which is to highlight a current or modern Democratic and Republican leader that you particularly respect.


Sarah Longwell

Well, on the Dem side, I mean, some of my favorites I've listed them. I'm really hoping for big careers for Abigail Spanberger and Elissa Slotkin, Mikie Sherrill. There's this group of women, many of them  are CIA analysts or they have military backgrounds, really sort of tough pragmatists, who I've come to admire as I've watched them govern. They're all in sort of their second term. And so I wish them long political careers and hopefully for them to be rising stars within their party. On the Republican side…   Look, I have been so desperate for somebody to stand up and say, “The emperor has no clothes” and watching Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but I mean, Liz Cheney in particular with that steely resolve just absolutely going for it. They can take her out of her leadership position, but they're not going to stop her from leading. And, you know, I don't know what she's going to do about her state. It's going to be really, really tough. But if she runs for president or whatever, she's another one I'm just all in for, and really admire that she's just decided she doesn't care what it does to her career. She's going to tell the truth about what's happening right now.

[Exit Interview]

Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

That’s Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and executive director of the Republican Accountability Project. Prior to Liz Cheney, she’s talking there about three centrist female Democratic House Members: Spanberger, Slotkin and Sherrill, who might help bridge the political divide in this country.  


Robert Pease (co-host)

But, of course, all three of these districts are being redrawn without clear implications. And exactly because they’re centrists, these House members could face tough primary battles from the Democratic left, then, if they survive primaries, well-funded Republican opponents from the right in the general elections.


Jillian Youngblood (co-host) 

The center cannot hold when centrists cannot hold office. And, yes, I’m both quoting and embellishing at the same time. 


Robert Pease (co-host)

In a good cause, though, Jillian. The extremes get so much attention. And that stretches the fabric of society in really dangerous ways. Special thanks to a very special guest today, Sarah Longwell, for shedding light on a lot of tough political issues today. Our guest next episode, Tom Nichols, places the blame for our weakening civil society not so conveniently on media companies and politicians but on “we the people.”  In his latest book, Our Own Worst Enemy, Dr. Nichols calls out American voters and citizens who no longer embrace the civic values democracy depends on: 


Tom Nichols

…the center is always a hard place to be because it's not dramatic enough. It doesn't provide enough psychic income for people, you know, on the edges, on the far left on the far right. And that's when you can say to yourself, you know, “I'm not just working at a department store, I am uncovering pedophile conspiracies.” Or, “I am not just the assistant manager of a retail outlet, I am solving social justice and creating a new world of equality.” And I think the one word we haven't used yet that is central to the book is “narcissism.”

Robert Pease (co-host)

Narcissism meets democracy and quickly gains the upper hand. We hope you’ll join us for that discussion, tell a friend or two about the Purple Principle, and support us on Patreon as we look ahead to Season 3 against the backdrop of primary elections. Meantime, all the best in this challenging time from the whole Purple Principle team: Alison Byrne, Production & Audience Engagement; Kevin A. Kline, Senior Audio Engineer; Dom Scarlett and Grant Sharratt, Research Associates; Emma Trujillo, Audio Associate. Music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production.

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