The Progress Report: Looming Changes

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Zachary Karabell: What Could Go Right? I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined by my co host Emma Varvaloucas, the executive director of The Progress Network. And this is our weekly adjunct to our longer What Could Go Right podcast, our progress report, where we look at news of the week or of the month or of the time that is likely to have been missed, missed by us, by you, unless you had made Herculean efforts to notice that there are some things going on in the world that augur a better future.

We are recording this before the U. S. presidential election. Indeed, there is a U. S. presidential election coming up, for those of you who may not have noticed. And we will, I am sure, duly attend to that. But if you’re listening to this after that, this may feel, I don’t know, tone deaf or irrelevant, or maybe it will feel remarkably refreshing and relevant.

Who knows? But we will deal with that in due course. So Emma, what have you for us this week?

Emma Varvaloucas: All right, so let’s start by talking about the election a little bit, which at the time we’re recording this is just a few days away, and quite a few people, in fact, if you want to take a number for it, it’s 76 percent according to one poll, the APNORC poll, which is the poll run by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago, 76 percent of registered voters are at least somewhat or very concerned about political violence.

After the election what side do you think that’s going to come from? I guess it depends on what side you’re on, but certainly there’s a widespread view that Donald Trump will contest the results if he loses. And we might see a repeat of something like the January 6th Capitol riot. So, with all of that worrying concern out there, I did want to highlight one report from a group called the ACLED, that’s Armed Conflict Location.

and EventData, and they have been gathering information about extremist groups, both on the right and on the left. Since 2020, and they have a report out that is basically about how extremist groups in the U. S. since 2020 have declined substantially in their activity, and that while of course there is risk of political violence after the election, it might be from lone actors it might indeed be from protests or extremist groups that the landscape has shifted Significantly, so they point out that on the right, groups like Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers.

Many of these groups, their leaders are, have been arrested in our jail after January 6th. The proud boys in particular, their activity has cratered Q Anon, which was so often discussed so recently, and has kind of fallen off the radar. They are still quite active online, but references to them in in person demonstrations have totally fallen, fallen off.

Anti fascist groups, too, are immobilizing at about half of the rate that they were back in 2020. And they know in particular, as well, that some white nationalist groups and neo Nazi groups are actually more active than they have been in previous years, but not in support of Trump. They have actually seemed to have turned their backs on Trump.

So, with all this, they, they also mentioned that pro Trump demonstrations, generally speaking, have also been on decline since 2020, even with some really shocking events, you know, Trump being arrested in 2023, him being convicted of 34 felony counts in 2024, him being shot also in 2024, Rarely inspired in person demonstrations, and there’s been a small, much smaller contingent of extremist groups involved in those demonstrations.

So, re caveating everything I said in the beginning, this doesn’t mean that nothing will happen. It’s not a prediction that something terrible might not happen. It’s just that there is evidence out there to think that political violence on this scale that we saw back in 2020 is not going to be repeated.

Zachary Karabell: Right, and again, while it is certainly true that the concern is that Trump will not concede the results of the election any time after November 5th in a way that makes things smooth, there was a huge amount of political violence, obviously, in the summer of 2020, and the right, I think, rightly points out that most of that political violence In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder came from extreme left groups, or I don’t even know if extreme left is, is quite the right word, you know, anarchists or, Antifa, or just kind of angry people, and not from armed white nationalist groups.

I mean, yes, there was also some of that violence. There was the, the kid who showed up in wherever he showed up, you know, he, he traveled to the protest and shot the person, but.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah.

Zachary Karabell: You know, again, the, the political violence concern does, as you mentioned in the beginning, go both ways in terms of the fear of it, and You know, part of the challenge is if there are isolated incidents, you know, one protest where a bunch of people are beaten up, that will almost certainly be magnified by media stories that use it as an example or an exemplar of widespread political violence, even if there isn’t actually widespread political violence.

So you know, there’s also going to be the challenge of optics and that there’s been a lot of political violence in the United States historically, and I’m not talking about the Civil War, because obviously that’s an easy one, but you know, 1890s. 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, union demonstrations, you know, police breaking it up with lethal force, or militias breaking it up with lethal force obviously the 1960s, late 60s into the 70s.

It’s not like the United States hasn’t had this. Labeling that as the end of the Republic is gonna be tempting, in fact, easy, but even then, I think we need to be careful. Really, keep those instincts of Armageddon days rhetoric in check, even if there is some political violence. Because again, the United States has not been a country that has been marked by Marquess of Queensbury rules, where everything’s just been, you know, calmly done, and everyone’s agreed to disagree with mutual respect, you know, fought on the hustings and then had a beer together and gone, haha.

So it’s not, like, I think there’s this, this weird image of the United States as a land of, of, of ease and peace and law and order. And it’s as if we kind of continue to confront the reality of who we are juxtaposed to the image of who we think we are.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, that’s very well said. And per your first point,

This report says the same thing as well. You know, the really large Black Lives Matter protests and the anti pandemic measure protests that were very active back in 2020 are just not around anymore. So, if you want to take that stance from the right that, you know, the left is not creating this kind of circumstance is true and also extremist groups on the right are not counter organizing in response to that.

So the undertone you know, we have like a very, it’s a, it’s an election that on the face of it is very, you know, Turbulent. And there, there are many things that are properly turbulent about it. You know, two assassination attempts, just to mention one. There’s a lot of beefing up of security happening around the Capitol, around various election offices, but the undertone of the country is different than it was back in 2020 for all the reasons that we just described.

And yeah, I’m hoping that next week, this episode is not going to have aged Terribly, terribly, terribly, but we’re running that risk. We are hoping

Zachary Karabell: people are not currently. You know, changing their channel, their serious channel in the car and going, Oh my God, these poor benighted people, which is possible.

I mean, we will, we will accept the fact that hindsight is 2020 and we do not have a crystal ball as to what’s going to unfold, but I would be. deeply surprised if this is not just a calm before a storm, but if the storm is kind of end of days, republic, oh well, Rome is burning kind of scenario, and that as bad as it might get, it’s unlikely to be as bad as we describe it as being, and that’s kind of what I was talking about even in 2020.

So, I guess we’ll see, take a deep breath, expect, prepare for the worst, hope for the best, that’s the kind of ongoing mantra of these things. There’s clearly apocalyptic rhetoric online about what’s going to unfold or what the stakes are. And it is definitely true that the level of apocalyptic rhetoric on both sides has reached a fever pitch that is, I can’t recall in my own Lifetime, I think even exceeds anything in 2020 and 2016, just in terms of the sheer online mutual vitriol slash demonization slash the other side is kind of some version of an anti democratic antichrist.

That, to me, seems extreme, even relative to other contested periods. A lot of that stuff would have been done sotto voce, it just, you know, wouldn’t have been done as, as explicitly. Maybe that’s laying the groundwork for actual violence. That’s the fear people have, you know, that words precede actions, and it creates a climate in which actions become.

either permissible or justifiable. And I, you know, I agree there’s, there is truth to that. I guess that that rhetoric may be necessary, but not sufficient as a precondition for societal unraveling. Or just maybe the ease of saying things online hysterically with no accountability and no real consequence, right?

You and I can go online and we can say the most. extreme, vile things. Well, not the most extreme. There’s actually certain things you still can’t get away with saying. But you can call someone a, you know, a devil and a fascist and evil and unhuman and like all sorts of things without any particular, we don’t have liable laws that would prevent that.

So there you are. And here we are trying to say there’s another way and there’s other alternatives and things might go. And there was lots of fear in 2022. We did an episode after the 2022 midterm elections. where a lot of the response was on our episode, which I think we did with Steve Clemens, was look at how well that went commensurate with the fears of how badly it was going to go.

You know, none of the violence, none of the outrage, none of the protests, none of the challenges. A lot of close races, everybody seemed to just deal, and that was contrary to any expectations in October of 2022 about what was going to happen post 22. And that was refreshing, right? We were, we were all noting how smoothly that went.

I’m not predicting that will then be the result in November of 2024, but we do have a recent experience of similar ratcheting up fears that were then not met by the election.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, I guess we should say too that none of this precludes the possibility that the candidate that you dislike or even loathe might win, but we can’t really do anything for you on that front.

Go out and vote. Correct. So, and we are going to leave that there. I think we’re, people have had enough of election talk these days. So moving out of the United States and then I’m going to move back in. Let’s talk about Malaysia briefly. Malaysia is one of 24 remaining countries where a mother cannot confer citizenship on their child.

It must be the father. So if there’s a situation in which a Malaysian woman has a child with somebody who is not Malaysian, the child is born abroad. That child is, does not count as a Malaysian citizen, and of course, there are instances, depending on who the father is, there might be instances where the child is stateless.

So there are only 24 countries in the world where that is still the case, and Malaysia has recently decided, within the last couple of weeks, actually the parliament voted to change their constitution. So now women will be allowed to confer citizenship on their child, which means there are 23!

remaining countries in the world in which the woman cannot confer citizenship upon her child.

Zachary Karabell: Well, there you go. We will not list the 23. I’m sure people can google it.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, most, I mean, people don’t even have to google it. Most of the countries where this is not allowed are in the Middle East and Northern Africa, so.

Let’s talk a little bit about planes. This is a fun one. So the Federal Aviation Administration just recently released new regulatory guidelines or final regulations. I should say it’s a simpler way of saying that. I know everyone just hotly anticipates the release of new FAA regulations, but this one is cool because I know, I know.

This is the first new category of aircraft that the FAA has released regulations for since the helicopter was introduced in 1940. Hopefully at this point you’re asking what kind of aircraft is this? What kind of aircraft

Zachary Karabell: is this?

Emma Varvaloucas: Thank you, Zachary. These are called powered lift aircraft, and that encompasses a wider umbrella of things, but one thing under, one thing under that umbrella are planes, well, aircraft, not really planes.

They lift up and come down like helicopters, but they fly like planes when they’re in flight. So, they look like they have these weird kind of wings with, like, helicopter rotors attached to the end of them. None are in commercial use. Yeah, go ahead.

Zachary Karabell: Right. They do, they do have them in the military.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah.

Zachary Karabell: Probably.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah. Yeah. So, if you’ve been around the military, you’ve seen them. If you’ve not been around the military, you probably haven’t because none are in commercial use at the moment, but there are many companies now that the regulations have come out that are on the way to getting those certificates needed to get those planes into commercial use.

So they might be air taxis, they might be used for cargo, they might be used for rescue and retrieval, but yeah, they might be part of our lives. In the next, in the next few years, you might. hop on an air taxi in one of these power lift aircrafts now that the FAA has decided on their regulations. So pretty cool.

Zachary Karabell: If anyone wants to look what these look like the closest example probably is what’s called the Osprey. Look that up if you want to see what these look like, or what a version of these sort of tilt rotor vertical lift aircraft, non helicopter vertical lift aircraft look like. And if Trump wins and Elon becomes the master of all things we will, there will be a roto taxi, robo lifting air taxi coming to a landing pad near you soon.

Emma Varvaloucas: Or we’ll be in tunnels. We’ll all be in tunnels. Or we’ll be in tunnels. Tunnels everywhere.

Zachary Karabell: That’s right. The boring company.

Emma Varvaloucas: Alright, so that’s it for today. That’s it for today? That was that was a lot, yeah. Yeah.

Zachary Karabell: Political violence to robo taxis to Malaysian citizenship. So there you go. Yeah. Thank you on, but I feel

Emma Varvaloucas: like we’ve given people enough, so.

Zachary Karabell: We’ve given people enough. And if you’ve made it this far maybe our election segment has proven to be at least modestly accurate. Or if you’ve made it this far, you’re just laughing hysterically at how completely wrong we were about the aftermath of the election. One of the two. We will see, and you may already know.

Thank you for listening. Please check out our newsletter, What Could Go Right?, which you can get for free on theprogressnetwork. org in your mailbox weekly, and our longer form podcast. Thank you, Emma. Thank you to the Podglomerate, and send us your ideas, and send us your news stories, which we are always interested to look at and perhaps highlight.

We’ll be back with you next week.

Emma Varvaloucas: Thanks, Zachary, and thanks everyone for listening, as always.