What Rough Beast

This week we talk to friend of What Rough Beast Cy Canterel—whose Substack Abstract Machines is essential reading right now—about why Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney just gave a eulogy for neoliberal capitalism at Davos, and what comes after the fiction falls apart.
We discuss:
* Why Carney’s Davos speech was the diplomatic equivalent of taking down the communist party slogan from the greengrocer’s wall (Václav Havel would be proud)
* The surprisingly dark connection between Horatio Alger, Jeffrey Epstein, and the extractive core of the American Dream
* What H-Mart Gate revealed about proximity to power, model minorities, and who gets to be Cassandra
* Why we need to stop asking powerful people to change themselves (because they won’t)
* Mass transitions, rubber bands, and the moment before the grid snaps
* How level three maintenance techs have more power than your congressman (and what that means for resistance)
* Direct action vs. endless petitioning: where the real pressure points are in a failing system
* Cy’s wild career arc from coding on Andy Warhol’s software to working inside GE as it collapsed to becoming a perfumer because smell can’t be digitized
Plus: why hope means accepting that the future is dark (impenetrable, not doomed), the wealth defense industry as target, and what it means to finally stop living by lies.
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This week on What Rough Beast, we talk to Trevor Mitchell, a reporter on the ground in Minneapolis for the nonprofit publication MinnPost. We wanted to discuss with him what everyday life looks like under ICE occupation—and how the Twin Cities are fighting back. We discuss:
* Why the most important stories are the hardest to tell—and why print journalism can reach people cameras can’t
* Mutual aid networks sprouting everywhere from churches to sex shops as neighbors step up to protect each other
* The Women with Walkers—senior activists protesting from chapel pews who’ve been doing this since 1967
* How half of the city’s Spanish-speaking students don’t show up to school and parents are too terrified to send their kids outside
* Whether this feels like war reporting, pandemic reporting, or something entirely new
* Why Minnesota—and what it means when 3,000 federal agents occupy American streets
What Rough Beast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk to “What Rough Beast” regular Cy Canterel about fractured realities, fascism’s fatal flaw, and why keeping a diary might be the most radical act you can do right now. She joined us for a live this past week.
We discuss:
* How the Renee Good murder revealed that motivated reasoning—not actual ambiguity—is fracturing American reality
* Why the paradox of tolerance matters now: what does a pluralist society owe people who … can’t handle plurality?
* The underground genealogy of the current moment (spoiler: it’s been brewing in evangelical Christianity since the 1960s)
* Iris Origo’s war diaries and why putting pen to paper might save your sanity when propaganda becomes a deafening cacophony
* The difference between teaching and indoctrination—and what happens when a Mormon girl looks at a map and asks “wait, what are the chances?”
* Why fascism is constitutionally terrible at survival (it’s suicidal by design) but also: the body count still matters
* Mutual aid, record-keeping, and how to not go insane while toggling between doomscrolling and actually living your life
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This week, on the occasion of the five-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, I want to share a couple of conversations I had on the first anniversary of the insurrection with Reps. Jamie Raskin and Hakeem Jeffries, and Jamelle Bouie.
What you’ll hear are vivid accounts of that day, and you’ll hear about what this seemed to mean for who we are as a country, and where we were (and are) headed.
What Rough Beast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk to Fred Kaplan, the national security columnist for Slate and author of seven books, including The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War (his most recent non-fiction), The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (which was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist), and his most recent, A Capital Calamity, a thriller-satire novel.
We discuss:
* The Venezuela “double tap” incident — why shooting survivors of a speedboat attack is literally the Pentagon’s textbook example of a “clearly unlawful order”
* The end of Pax Americana — Trump may have cultivated the appearance of power at a catastrophic cost to actual American power, and what happens when Europe no longer needs us
* Why no one is speaking out — the terrifying silence from military leaders and Republicans who know what’s happening is wrong, and what Trump’s threats against Mark Kelly reveal about the new rules
* Trump’s mob politics — how his favorite movie (The Godfather) explains his foreign policy better than any traditional framework, and why strongmen from Putin to the Saudis appeal to him
* What comes after — when other countries can finally “go their own way,” the resentment built up from decades of subjugation could leave America isolated and weakened
What Rough Beast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com/subscribe