George Packer on Liberal Values in Authoritarian Times

I have children and I still love my country and I still feel the the daily danger of giving up. Daily danger. What do we do? I mean, this is something people constantly ask, me and I'm sure you, what can we do about all of this? And I don't really have a good answer.

And now the good fight. with Yasha Monk. My guest today is George Packer. George, of course, is a very well-known writer and former podcast guest. He is a winner of a National Book Award and a staff writer at The Atlantic, but he's here to talk about a slightly unusual departure for him, or perhaps a return.

to form, because George actually started out his writing life as a novelist, and he has just published a lovely novel called The Emergency. We talk about literary allegories, how to understand this political moment, the polarization of American society, the way in which things seem to be falling apart through the lens of And then in the second half of conversation we talk about some of the more bread and butter political issues, how to make sense of Trump's assault on the American Republic and the struggles of Democrats to find a coherent response. Are we condemned to see society polarize further and further?

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