Liberals and the woke left see many of the same problems in society, from structural oppression to alienation. And yet the ideology of the woke left is incompatible with liberalism. For liberals, it starts with the very idea of wokeness, as an awakening from illusions, or false consciousness. The goal is supposed to be liberation. But it can look m…

As you know if you’ve been following my posts and podcast episodes lately, I’m writing and releasing the chapters of my new book The Liberal Backbone in real time. When Joan Esposito of WCPT Chicago heard about it, she had an idea: a "radio book club," with me coming on her show to talk about the book as it comes together, chapter by chapter, with …

The first draft of Chapter 5 of my next book, The Liberal Backbone. It's a brief summary of the roots of woke thinking, which should make the woke left more understandable, especially for liberals trying to sort out what they do and don't stand for. More at Dastardly Cleverness.com/liberal-backbone-chapter-5 and at Substack.com/@spencercritchley. —…

Are the woke just a bunch of Marxists? No, but that claim isn’t based on nothing. The Theory behind wokeness is complicated, but some of its key concepts are inherited from Marx, in modified form. And it becomes much easier to understand Theory if you understand something about Marx — which few people do, because Marx doesn't make it easy. In this …

The word "woke" has at least two meanings — and they’re so different, they contradict each other. By one of them, any liberal can be proud to be called woke, because to be woke in this sense is to recognize bigotry and oppose it. But by the other meaning, liberals can’t be woke, even if they want to. That’s because if you’re this kind of woke, you …

It’s hard to stand for something if you’re not even sure what that something is. And many liberals have become unsure what liberalism is. For a long time, few of us had to think much about it. Liberalism was just default political reality. It was like water is for the young fish in David Foster Wallace’s famous parable: They can’t see the water, be…

With American democracy facing its greatest crisis since the Civil War as a corrupt autocrat returns to the presidency, I want to do my part, however small, to help right now. So I’m going to try an experiment: writing a shorter, more tightly focused book, and releasing chapters as I write them. They’ll appear as posts and podcast episodes, like th…

Ernest Hemingway is famous for the terse economy of his writing. And in one of the most resonant examples of that quality, he captured the essence of catastrophic failure in just a few words, in his novel The Sun Also Rises. The alcoholic veteran Mike Campbell is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he says. “Gradually and then quickly.” As it i…

If we believe in democracy, I believe we have a responsibility not only to vote for it but to speak up for it, including to family and friends, despite how hard that might be. That doesn’t mean berating or insulting them. It can be done quietly and respectfully. In my own view it’s a mark of respect and even love to give people the whole truth abou…

According to my guest this time, the United States is entering a Latino century, and that might be what saves our democracy. Mike Madrid is a top expert on Latino voting, and in recent years he’s become a national leader in the bipartisan fight to save democracy. He’s been the political director for the California Republican Party, a senior adviser…

Many liberals are deeply confused about how to respond to the campus protests over Gaza. And I think it’s an example of the confusion liberals are feeling generally over a lot of issues. I believe much of the confusion can be traced to the assumption that all political opinions can fit on a single line, from left to right. For this one-dimensional,…

As we risk obliviously repeating catastrophic mistakes others have already made, Spencer Critchley has some thoughts about memory and freedom, from people who know the precious value of both. Excerpt: "Most of us in the U.S. have been spared the necessity of knowing history, and instead have been able to live as if the world was created at our birt…

If you wanted to, you could consume nothing but presidential campaign coverage all day every day. But how much of it would leave you feeling better informed about casting what may be the most important vote of your life? Not better informed about the campaign as a sporting event, with all the expert play-by-play, color commentary, and stats. But be…

By some measures, well over half of charities do little or no good. When similar charities are compared, the most effective ones can be up to 100 times more effective than the least. And there’s often a big mismatch between where donors direct their support and where the need and potential benefits are greatest. A movement called effective altruism…

There are lots of reasons to be cynical about the crisis in our politics. The trouble is, one of the biggest causes of that crisis is cynicism itself. We should always be skeptical about politics. People aren’t angels, as James Madison reminded us. But skepticism involves checking to find out what’s really going on, good or bad. Cynicism is just as…

A three-way conversation featuring host Spencer Critchley, Kevin Lewis, and Zach Friend on leadership lessons from the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, as compared with far better examples set by Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and others. It turns out, to the shock of cynics everywhere, that character matters! Kevin was the post-presidency spokesman for f…

If you want to know more about the risks and rewards of artificial intelligence, you could hardly do better than to consult with someone who’s been a senior communications advisor for Facebook, lately known as Meta, the US Department of Justice, and a President of the United States. And that’s what Spencer did for this episode. Kevin Lewis was the …

If you have children in your family, you’re probably worried about what technology might be doing to them. And maybe there’s some hope about what tech might do for them. In this episode, you can get guidance from one of the world's top experts on the subject. Dr. Katie Davis is a researcher and associate professor at the University of Washington, a…

The episode before last, Spencer was the guest for a change, interviewed by Joan Esposito, who hosts a liberal talk radio show originating at WCPT-AM in Chicago. This time, Spencer interviews Joan about how she manages to conduct smart, in-depth, live political conversations three hours a day, five days a week — sometimes devoting a full hour to a …

Sam Farr devoted 44 years of his life to elected office at the local, state, and federal level. That included 24 years as the Congressman for the Central Coast of California, where he grew up in the seaside village of Carmel. Among his inspirations were his father, longtime state legislator Fred Farr; President John F. Kennedy; and the Peace Corps,…

Spencer often talks with Joan Esposito, who interviews him about politics for her show on Chicago's WCPT-AM. This episode of Dastardly Cleverness replays one of those conversations that's especially relevant now. Joan and Spencer focus on why democracy, after all its successes, is now in so much danger from authoritarianism. They talk about: Why so…

Even with democracy in grave danger, Democrats are in a close race against the people who are trying to finish it off. How can that be, and what should they do about it? Questions like that have been dominating discussions among a group of some of the country's most senior Democratic Party veterans, including former House Democratic Leader Dick Gep…

In many ways, addiction has become a defining feature of life in America. More and more of us have become addicted to drugs like alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and opioids, and to other things increasingly recognized as addictive, like sugar, junk food, and social media. The problem has been growing for decades, but in recent years it has exploded. A re…

One way of thinking about democracy is as a game — a game in which freedom, equality, and even lives are at stake. And one way of thinking about the state of our democracy is that one of the two main competitors is no longer playing the game, but trying to destroy it. As with any game, the rules of democracy only matter if we agree they do. Ultimat…

It's not just Democrats who need the Democratic Party to remember how to win elections. Democracy does. Spencer's guest this time has some great ideas on where to start, based on his unique, decades-long experience studying politics from the inside and out. Walter Shapiro has reported on 11 presidential campaigns, going back to Ronald Reagan’s land…

Spencer's guest this time has fascinating, important insights about Vladimir Putin's "memory war:" a campaign to rewrite history with Russia at the center of the world stage. That campaign is being enacted with horrific violence in Ukraine, but is pursued in different ways around the world, including in the United States. Dr. Jade McGlynn is a seni…

Mike Madrid is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a longtime political consultant for candidates of both parties, and a leading expert on Latino voting. Mike says Latino voters are sounding an urgent alarm for the Democratic Party about how it may lose the presidency and more, by losing its working class base. And Mike believes that’s not just a …

The way we live is also the way we get sick and die: "Lifestyle diseases" are the leading causes of death for Americans, six out of ten of whom have a chronic condition. And yet we treat the symptoms, with expensive drugs and procedures, instead of addressing the causes. After training at top medical schools, our guest Dr. Rose Kumar walked away fr…

In Singapore, you can face a heavy fine or even jail for offenses like spitting on the sidewalk and importing chewing gum. Meanwhile in New Zealand, a man who hatched himself from a giant egg was appointed the country’s “official wizard.” These are examples of tight and loose cultures. Much of what’s going on in America and the world right now can …

Even if you see through the phony panic being spun up by Trumpists, some of what you hear from critical race theorists can sound extreme, especially if you don’t know much about the context. In this episode, host Spencer Critchley offers a guide for people who feel confused about Critical Race Theory but aren't sure why.…

Sometimes we can't "just move on." Sometimes we must first confront the truth about the past. According to our guest this time, we can do that through transitional justice. It addresses situations where doing wrong is not the exception, but has been made normal, as has happened in places like South Africa under apartheid, Northern Ireland during th…

We already know a lot about how to reform policing: not just to make it more fair, but to make it more effective. It turns out that when police work in partnership with the communities they protect, crime goes down, often way down. Spencer's guest this time is an expert on what works. Georgina Mendoza McDowell is an attorney and public safety exper…

It may be hard for many Americans to imagine, but there are striking parallels between post-Civil-War America and post-World-War-2 Germany. Our guest this time is an expert on those parallels, and wrote a deeply-researched, insightful, and important book about them. Philosopher Susan Neiman is the author of Learning From the Germans: Race and the M…

Compared to other high-income countries, our rate of gun deaths per capita is 25 times higher. But much of what Americans think they know about the costs and causes of gun violence is wrong. And few are aware of solutions that have already been shown to work. To help fix that, The Guardian has been running a series of in-depth stories called “Guns …

American democracy is more fragile than many of us ever imagined. But we’ve been neglecting and abusing it so much that maybe the bigger surprise is that it’s lasted as long as it has. A lot of that damage can still be fixed, though—as long as we don’t let the whole thing fall apart first. Spencer's guest Vinz Koller has great insights on what's go…

Even with Trump out of office, the Republican Party's leaders and media enablers appear determined to keep on living in a world of lies — a place where democracy can't live. As host Spencer Critchley says, it's like life under Soviet domination as described by writers such as Vaclav Havel and Czeslaw Milsoz: "Everything is a lie, everyone knows it'…

Spencer Critchley hosts a Zoom-based "Ask Anything" discussion covering the chaos in the Republican Party, how we can both believe in tolerance and make clear moral judgments about something like the Capitol riot, whether better education would be enough to save democracy, what we can learn from other countries that have had to deal with shameful p…

This time, host Spencer Critchley talks about the psychology of sedition, Trumpism as Freudian dream logic, and the apparent belief of Capitol rioters that they were in a movie. Excerpt: In dream logic, the Capitol riot was the start of a patriotic revolution led by Trump. And it was an anti-American plot led by Antifa and BLM. Dream logic not only…

Spencer Critchley talks about: Why we can’t “just move on” after the Capitol riot - or everything else that’s happened over the past four years. The circle of shared moral values that must encompass democracy and how each of us can and must defend it — starting by simply speaking up. Lessons from other countries, especially about the consequences o…

Just about the only thing many of us are thinking about these days is the endangered state of American democracy, especially since the attempted coup on Jan. 6. In this episode, Spencer Critchley offers some of his thoughts, and invites you to share yours. You can do that at these links: Twitter: @scritchley Facebook: spencer.critchley.page dastard…

Zach Friend is an author and a public policy and communications expert who has worked for Barack Obama and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Democratic National Committee. He’s been featured on and quoted by CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox News, and many ot…

The Lincoln Project is made up of top Republican political consultants who are aiming attack ads at a Republican president. We find out why and how from the Lincoln Project's Mike Madrid. Mike is an expert on Latino voting trends, based on work starting with his master’s thesis at Georgetown University. He’s the former press secretary for the Calif…

As a county supervisor in Santa Cruz County, California, Ryan Coonerty is having to cope with two historic challenges: the national coronavirus pandemic and the catastrophic western wildfires. Both disasters have hit his community hard. In this episode, host Spencer Critchley talks with him about leadership in a time of crisis — or crises.…

Social marketing uses the persuasion techniques normally used to sell potato chips, fashion, detergent, cars, and endless other consumer products, but for social good campaigns. Knowing how to do social marketing right is important to nonprofits, socially responsible corporations, and all other purpose-driven organizations — but all too often, it's…

The election of Donald Trump shocked America and the world — and that included Dastardly Cleverness host Spencer Critchley. But Spencer believes now that we should have seen him coming, like we should have seen the approach of this hyper-partisan crisis of democracy we're going through. He's written a book about it, called Patriots of Two Nations: …

Brent Colburn’s experience goes back to the Al Gore presidential campaign in 2000, through Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004, both Obama campaigns, FEMA, Homeland Security, HUD, and to the Pentagon, where he was in charge of communications for the Defense Department. After that, he led communications for Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s Chan Zucke…

By Dastardly Cleverness In The Service Of Good

Host Spencer Critchley talks with Tracy Palandjian, the co-founder and CEO of Social Finance, a nonprofit dedicated to using capital to drive social progress. So far, it has helped direct more than $100 million toward challenges in criminal justice, early childhood education, workforce development, health and homelessness. Social Finance uses the P…

For more than seven years, Jake Harriman was a US Marine, serving as a platoon commander in the Infantry and in a Special Operations unit. He was deployed in Southwest and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and served two combat tours in Iraq. During the second tour, he earned the Bronze Star. Jake believed whole-heartedly in the mission …

We hear so many stories about government spending big money without getting results — to the point that many Americans agree with Ronald Reagan's famous assertion that government isn't the solution, it's the problem. That claim was never accurate, as government successes like the Internet, highways, or vaccinations make clear. All the same, though,…