Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good

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Minneapolis: Saving Democracy From Moral Bankruptcy Jan 27, 2026

Show notes

Normally, we should be reluctant to talk about politics in terms of morality. We can't live with each other, in peace anyway, if we think disagreement is a matter of good and evil. But that doesn't mean that democracy is amoral. Democracy will survive if we all stand up for the shared moral values that make democracy possible. That's what the peaceful protesters in Minneapolis are doing, even at the risk of their own lives: showing us how to rescue our democracy from moral bankruptcy.

Video & transcript: https://spencercritchley.substack.com/p/minneapolis-saving-democracy-from

MAGA: An Escape From Freedom Jan 22, 2026

Show notes

One of the most confusing things about Trumpism is this paradox: People who believe so strongly in individual freedom are also eager to give away all their power, to one man. Why?

One reason: Human beings yearn for freedom, but when we actually get it, we may find it terrifying. So argued the influential German psychologist Erich Fromm in "Escape From Freedom," published in 1941, when another authoritarian was at the peak of his power.

The Shooting of Renee Good Jan 11, 2026

Show notes

In a democracy, law enforcement exists to protect people: their safety and their Constitutional rights.

Under authoritarianism, law enforcement protects power.

Under autocracy, it protects the power of one man.

Which way we're going to live is still up to us. The shooting of Renee Nicole Good shows us what's at stake.

— Spencer

The True Crisis: The Liberal Backbone Chapter 15 Dec 22, 2025

Show notes

About a year ago, I started publishing draft chapters of my book in progress, The Liberal Backbone. It hit me lately that the draft is done – I realized that with the latest chapters I'd started writing a second book. That one will be on alienation, which I think deserves a book of its own.

So I'm calling it. I'm going to switch to editing The Liberal Backbone — and, no doubt, editing some more, and then, more.

To make time for it, I'll be cutting back on the frequency of podcast episodes for a while.

For this one, I want to sum up why I think it's so crucially important for the lost liberal backbone to be restored. In a nutshell: the future of democracy depends on it.

— Spencer

The Art of Politics: The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 14 Oct 22, 2025

Show notes

Liberals think of rhetoric as something you cut through to get to the substance. But in politics, rhetoric is the substance.

Politics is the art of persuading people. If you can't persuade them, you can't get anything done.

That doesn't mean you have to lie to them.

Yes, Donald Trump uses rhetoric, like all con artists. But so did Barack Obama, like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and Cicero did. All saw rhetoric as a tool for moral work.

You can speak poetically and still speak truth — deeper truth, if you do it well.

If liberals want to stop losing, they need to re-learn how.

Here's where to start.

Full transcription and links at dastardlycleverness.com.

Escape From the Iron Cage: The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 13 Sep 17, 2025

Show notes

Escape from the iron cage of alienation appears to be impossible: You'll never think of a way out, because it's thinking that locks you in.

Unless you discover a different way to think.

This episode: a dive inside the mind of a musician.

How to Lose in One Word: The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 12 Jul 16, 2025

Show notes

Every politician, or anyone trying to persuade anyone else of anything, faces two make-or-break moments: the moment before they say a word, and the moment they do.

We turn to that second moment here.

And to "Don't Mess With Texas." You probably know the slogan, but you may not know that it represents one of the most successful persuasion projects in history. There are many reasons for that, but among the most important is the power of one word.

Full transcript and links at Substack and DastardlyCleverness.com.

It's the Alienation, Stupid: The Liberal Backbone Chapter 11 Jun 18, 2025

Show notes

The fiendish thing about the iron cage of alienation is that the harder you try to escape, the harder that gets. The more you try to think your way out, the more surely you lock yourself in.

A case in point: The Democratic Party recently paid $20 million to study how to talk to men.

If Democrats are alienated from men, it might just be because they see them as objects of study, as opposed to human beings they actually know.

And it's not just men who are becoming strangers to the Democratic Party. It's black, Latino, Asian, and female voters too. Many are members of the party's former, blue collar base.

But how can Democrats get unalienated? How do you escape your own mind?

Not by thinking the same old way, harder. You do it by learning to think in a different way.

Find the full transcript and links for this episode at DastardlyCleverness.com.

The Iron Cage: The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 10 May 21, 2025

Show notes

Between 1933 and 1981, there were 24 sessions of Congress. For 22 of those 24, Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. During the same time there were 12 presidential terms. Eight were served by Democrats.

Now Democrats can lose, twice, to a party led by Donald Trump, whose campaigns have been natural experiments in just how bad a candidate can be and still beat the Democrats.

What happened?

They got caught in what Max Weber called the Iron Cage: stuck in their rationalistic heads, Democrats have become alienated from much of America.

Find the full transcript at dastardlycleverness.com.

How We Became Aliens: The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 9 Apr 22, 2025

Show notes

Last time, I argued that if liberals still believe in an open society — free, equal, and pluralistic — we must defend reason. It's the shared "meeting space" that makes the open society possible.

But we must also understand that reason alone isn't enough.

If we filter all our experience through rationality, we become separated from it, as if we're not living life, but observing it with scientific instruments.

We become alienated.

It's a condition familiar to anyone who's had a modern, reason-based education, especially in the humanities. It has come to define life within the modern, post-Enlightenment worldview.

And as liberals have become ever more educated, it has come to define them. Thanks to the postwar education boom, more and more of them have gone to college.

Meanwhile they have become alien, and alienating, to more and more voters.

Find the full transcript at DastardlyCleverness.com.

— Spencer

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