Gun control works, as Australia powerfully demonstrates.

Between 1978 and 1996, there were 13 massacres in Australia; 104 people were killed. In 1996, at Tasmania’s Port Arthur, 35 people were murdered (and 23 injured) by a man armed with semiautomatic weapons.  

Tim Fischer, Australia’s deputy prime minister at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, decided major change had to happen. Along with his coalition Prime Minister John Howard, Fischer pushed through legislation banning all automatic and semiautomatic firearms. They implemented a gun buyback program that purchased and destroyed 660,959 firearms — some 20 percent of privately owned guns across the country. Every state and territory was required to register guns, and all gun owners were required to store their registered guns and ammunition in separate locked areas.

Fischer, a farmer and Vietnam War veteran, led a center-right conservative party that represented Australia’s rural electorates. He took a lot of heat from gun-owning constituents for his legislation, facing arguments similar to those employed by American anti-gun-control activists. In Gympie, a Queensland town, opponents of the law constructed and burned an effigy of Fischer. Fischer faced intense criticism from the far-right One Nation party.

But Fischer and Howard weathered the backlash. Years later, studies show that their decision saved lives. Seven years after the bill went into effect, annual firearm-related homicide rates had declined by 42 percent. Firearm-related suicides dropped by 57 percent. During the 21 years since Port Arthur, there hasn’t been a single gun massacre in Australia (Australia defines a massacre as more than four people shot dead).

Fischer retired from national politics in 1999, and today he enjoys respect across the political spectrum. His work since includes serving as chair of Tourism Australia and as ambassador to the Vatican.

Over the phone from New South Wales, Fischer spoke with me about the legislation’s impact, Las Vegas, and his thoughts about the National Rifle Association.

Alexander Bisley

Columbine, Sandy Hook, Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas — what will it take?  

Tim Fischer

There has to be some leadership. The debate has to be taken into the public square, as John Howard and I did 21 years ago. We managed to get the right legislation through, and the results speak for themselves.

If there’s another massacre of this Las Vegas size, I believe there’ll be a reverse lock on the NRA in Congress — as in, if you have the backing of the NRA you’ll lose your seat in Congress, rather than [the current] vice versa.  

To see some media figures finally stand up on TV and make pretty powerful statements — it’s registering. We haven’t heard too much from the NRA since Vegas.

Alexander Bisley

In 2014, two people died at the Sydney Lindt Siege, when Man Haron Monis took a Lindt cafe hostage. He used a sawn-off pump-action shotgun. I think it’s likely a lot more people would have died during tragedies involving angry men with guns if you hadn’t banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms.  

Tim Fischer

I agree. It was very hard work persuading people to surrender their guns. But it was the correct call. I took the argument to the public square, and the Australian people chose to step back from laissez-faire dysfunctionality, which now exists in the USA.

Orlando last year, Vegas this year, but so many more mass gun shootings in between — now is the time to act. For the White House spokesperson to say otherwise, they are wrong. Even President Trump referred to the need to discuss gun control legislation, [albeit] later down the track.

Alexander Bisley

What’s your message to the NRA?

Tim Fischer

In short: Continue to make your crazy, total rationality-defying stand and you’ll end up losing the whole lot in due course. The NRA have blocked people on the USA’s no-fly list [from] getting gun background checks. The NRA are pushing pro-silencer legislation, not just in hunting areas but right across the USA. Enough is enough. There is a great Italian word, basta, which means enough. My message to the NRA is: Basta!

Alexander Bisley

The iconic Southern novelist Richard Ford, a lifelong gun owner, told me, “The National Rifle Association is a domestic terrorist organization that tacitly supports the killing of children more than it supports reasoned gun legislation.”

Tim Fischer

Well, that’s a strong statement, and I don’t demur from it.    

Alexander Bisley

Do you think American gun control reformers have the numbers, and the will, to make significant change?  

Tim Fischer

The American polls I’ve seen, and a fantastic article in the Atlantic, point to a lot of sensible people doing a lot of work. I regret that the NRA has its dominant lock on Congress. I can see that that will corrode, and decent people will step into the public square, the sooner the better. Michael Bloomberg’s work with mayors across America has been terrific. He should pull together a train trip from Penn Station to Union Station in California, arguing the cause in the public square. I’d be happy to join him.

Alexander Bisley

You are 15 times more likely to be shot dead in the USA than in Australia per capita, you pointed out in 2015, arguing that America was becoming a notable travel risk. What is your current advice to Australian tourists considering going to the USA?

Tim Fischer

Consider the updates to the DFAT Smartravellers website, which advises Australian travelers on safety. Consider in particular where you might go in the USA. There is now quite a sharp difference between some of the Midwestern states and New York, where some progress has been made with guns.

Alexander Bisley

The US gun lobby might dismiss us as a couple of liberals. It’s worth noting that you are a farmer and Vietnam War veteran and gun owner who led the Nationals, a center-right conservative party that represents Australia’s rural, gun-owning electorates.

Tim Fischer

I made the correct call and gained majority support, even in country electorates. I defended farmers, hunters, and Olympic shooters having the right kind of weapon as they go about their work, recreation, and sport. I’m not anti-gun. I’m anti automatics and semiautomatics dominating the suburbs.

Alexander Bisley

Your legislation was mostly devised, drafted, debated, and implemented during the 12 weeks following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, wasn’t it?

Tim Fischer

It wasn’t much longer than that. It went through fairly quickly. Remember it also had the support signed on of the six state ministers for police. [Author’s note: Australia has a federal government and state governments. Police ministers oversee policing in their respective states.] It was a nationwide effort, spearheaded by John Howard.

Alexander Bisley

There have been no gun massacres in Australia, and also a massive decline in suicides, since the legislation passed.

Tim Fischer

That says it all.

Alexander Bisley’s recent interviews include NRA critics Richard Ford and David Simon. Peter Garrett is another former Australian politician hopeful about progress.  

Dan Savage has a message for liberals in the age of Donald Trump and Mike Pence: “There is a strain of the left that is really invested in show trials and purity testing and virtue signaling,” he said. “And would rather lose surrounded by perfect allies than win with an army that includes imperfect allies.”

For Savage — the LGBTQ rights activist and sex-advice leader most famous for his column and podcast Savage Love — the threats of the Trump-Pence presidency means the left needs to focus its fight, not be distracted by relatively minor things.

When it comes to sex and identity, the administration appears to be heading toward the 1950s social conservatism preferred by Vice President Pence, known for his staunchly anti-LGBTQ values and policies as a Congress member and later as the governor of Indiana.

Last Thursday, Trump tweeted his intention to ban trans military members, signaling the rollback of trans individuals’ rights. Then in mid-July, the Trump administration slashed more than $200 million worth of federal funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs around America. The administration’s proposed budget in May included funneling $277 million toward abstinence education programs. Abstinence-only education advocates such as Valerie Huber have been appointed to influential positions at organizations like the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The Trump-Pence administration’s recent actions represent a deeply antagonistic view toward sex and identity, Savage says. “They want sex to be dangerous and consequential so as to scare people out of having it.”  

Our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, covers Trump-Penceism’s dangers, empathy, Savage’s beef with leftist fools, and hope.

Alexander Bisley

“Sex is probably the most interesting subject in the world,” Paul Auster says. “Everybody is obsessed with sex,” data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz adds. Yet some people seem to have issues with discussing it.

Dan Savage

I think that a certain sex negativity is hard-wired into the human experience. When you’re told about sex before puberty you’re just appalled: Why would anyone do such a thing? And along comes puberty and the thing that you swore when you were 7 years old you would never do, ’cause that’s so gross, and before long, you’re drafted into this army that you never wanted to serve in. And I think that there’s always a bit of discomfort and alienation from your own body that goes on because in a way you experience it as a betrayal.

One of the things I like to say is that we’re told this lie when we’re children that one day we’re gonna grow up and have sex, when in reality one day we grow up and sex has us.

It can make it hard to talk about, because we’re all implicated and we’re all powerless in the face of our sexual desires and interests. Not in acting on them, we all have the ability to make our own choices and be sure that we’re acting consensually. But powerlessness in the face of desires existing within us. Our sexual interests, whether we’re talking about genders that people are attracted to, or even our kinks and what turns us on, in a way those are all assigned to us whether we like it or not. And that experience is always going to be a little alienating. It makes sex a little difficult for everyone to talk about.

Alexander Bisley

The Trump administration is moving toward abstinence-only sex education for teens.

Dan Savage

Mmhm. That’s going to be counter-productive. They don’t seem to learn much from research or data.

Alexander Bisley

Teen pregnancy rates go down when there’s access to contraception and sex education.

Dan Savage

And comprehensive sex education. But it’s no surprise that they’re going to revive or pump more money into abstinence education, which continued to receive funds all throughout the Obama administration. It was only toward the end of the Obama administration that they began to target abstinence-only funding for zeroing out.

It’s galling — it’s counter-productive and people are going to get knocked up. And people are gonna sexually transmit infections ’cause all the research shows that people who have abstinence-only education may delay the onset of sexual activity by about six months to nine months, but they’re still sexually active before marriage. Just less likely to use birth control or any form of protection, so more likely to get pregnant or get an STI. 

That said, what we talk about in this country as comprehensive sex ed, really isn’t. The sex ed that is out there that’s not abstinence-only tends to be what sex researchers and educators call “sex dread education,” because it just is all about sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies. Even if they’re offering information about birth control and other things, they’re still trying to scare kids out of being sexually active, which does not work. It all still sucks.

Alexander Bisley

The St Louis Choice project replicated Obamacare’s birth control provision with a free birth control initiative for poor women, which led to a big drop in abortions in St Louis. Yet the anti-choice folks even brought their same-old scorched earth opposition to that.

Dan Savage

There was also a statewide effort in Colorado that was hugely successful, that brought the unplanned pregnancy and abortion rates down to historic lows. And Republicans and conservatives opposed refunding it, opposed the continuance of each program, even though it dropped the abortion rate down. Because Republicans and conservatives aren’t actually anti-abortion. They want sex to be dangerous and consequential so as to scare people out of having it. 

It’s the reason they oppose the introduction of the HPV vaccine, because they had long used cancers related to HPV, which is sexually transmitted, to argue for abstinence.

Alexander Bisley

You’ve revived your charity, ITMFA, or Impeach the Motherfucker Already. All the funds you raise are going to organizations like the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Dan Savage

And Planned Parenthood continues to exist in the face of Republican efforts to murder the organization. We’ve raised a lot of money for those three organizations. We’ve also, hopefully, given people a moment where they can bond over their dislike of Trump and their desire to see Congress step up and do the right thing and impeach the motherfucker. I wear my [ITMFA] T-shirt all the time.

Alexander Bisley

“Sex is powerful and you must approach it thoughtfully because it can destroy you,” you told Playboy.

Dan Savage

Some people in the sex positive movement discuss sex in a way that makes it sound harmless, like it’s a stuffed animal sitting on a bed that could never hurt anyone.

Maybe it was growing up and coming out as gay in the early 1980s, before the HIV/AIDS epidemic started. Then seeing that, witnessing that, watching my friends die — it was hard to go through that experience and then conclude that sex is always wonderful and could never hurt you or harm you. Whether you’re talking about sexually transmitted infections, unplanned pregnancies, intimate partner violence, sex is potentially dangerous.

But so is dinner. Dinner is dangerous, you know what I mean? If you don’t cook the chicken thoroughly, or if you start cutting up raw vegetables on the same cutting board that you cut up the chicken breast, you can get salmonella and die. You want to eat the chicken, it’s delicious, but you also want to mitigate your risks. You’re still going to eat the fucking chicken. Same applies for sex.

Alexander Bisley

Trainspotting’s Irvine Welsh warns of the dangers of excessive pornography consumption, talking about friends “masturbatin’ themselves into oblivion.”

Dan Savage

It’s possible to abuse anything. Too many goddamn potato chips. You can waste too much time watching too much sport. You can fall down a porn-Tumblr rabbit hole and not come out for hours if you’re not careful. It’s usually the person that has the problem, not the porn that is the problem. If you are watching porn compulsively you need to do something about that [laughs]. Because the world isn’t going to come and take your computer away from you.

Alexander Bisley

Did you read that New York magazine missive, “Pornhub Is the Kinsey Report of Our Time”? Maureen O’Connor argues that internet pornography usage data documents contemporary sexual desires.

Dan Savage

It’s good that we have this data now and it’s not all self-reported. It’s what people are doing when they’re alone and they don’t feel scrutinized. They’re being authentically themselves and looking for exactly what their conscious wants.

It further demonstrates, and it comes to something I’ve believed for a very long time, so it’s nice for the data to catch up with me, which is that when it comes to human sexuality variances are the norm. We talk about normal sex and we picture an opposite sex couple, married to each other, having missionary position, vaginal intercourse in the dark, in their house, in the bedroom, with the door closed. And that sex that we think of is normal is freakishly abnormal. The overwhelming majority of sex happening on any given night is not that.

Alexander Bisley

I appreciate the empathy you bring to your work, Dan, like your recent column advising a disabled virgin. Meanwhile, the Republicans are obsessed with repealing Obamacare despite repeat CBO reports showing this will cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance. Is empathy a quality some Republicans lack these days?

Dan Savage

Yeah, there’s a Republican empathy gap, and Republicans seems to lack moral imagination. They can’t project themselves into the experience of someone who’s different, which is why you always see Republicans supporting things like drug treatment when they themselves get addicted to drugs, as is the case with Rush Limbaugh. Only supporting gay marriage when their son comes out. As is the case with Sen. Rob Portman.

We need Republicans who can imagine what it might be like to be trans and have to go to the bathroom.

Alexander Bisley

On policy grounds the likes of Ted Cruz and Mike Pence and Paul Ryan aren’t any better than Trump.

Dan Savage

No, they’re not. They’re worse.  

Alexander Bisley

What’s your general political advice for liberals?

Dan Savage

There is a strain of the left that is really invested in show trials and purity testing and virtue signaling. And would rather lose surrounded by perfect allies than win with an army that includes imperfect allies. And it is self-defeating and it is exhausting and it is a real problem for the left.

Show the fuck up and vote. Voting is not a platform on which you perform or call attention to your purity. You’re giving away your vote; you’re not giving away your fucking hymen.

Don’t drive people out by attacking them for not being as pure and woke as you are. The less evil you have at the top, the better direction the country is going to go in. The lie the Greens peddle every four years, “If we can just election Ralph Nader or Jill Stein everything will be glorious and wonderful tomorrow.” That’s just not how things play out politically.

Alexander Bisley

George Saunders, the author of Lincoln in the Bardo, sees Trump-Penceism as this last gasp of the bad old days.

Dan Savage

Yeah, maybe. Who knows? What we’re seeing though is an effort to purge voter rolls, and put more voter ID laws in place, make it harder for poor people, people of color, urbanized college students, to vote.

Maybe Trump is the last. Maybe this will bring people to their senses. But the Republicans have control of the system right now. The Republicans are reshaping the system to make it even more favorable to them. So we can’t be complacent about the odds that next time we’re gonna beat the motherfuckers: because right now those motherfuckers are writing the rules of the game we’re all playing. And we’re going to have to beat them with new rules that they wrote and it’s going to be harder.

Alexander Bisley

Having grown up through and survived the ’80s, Dan, having survived more overt and aggressive forms of homophobia and discrimination, isn’t there hope in terms of the progress that has been made?

Dan Savage

Yeah, there’s hope. But hope is in action. Hope isn’t a mood. If you want the progress that’s been made not to be entirely held back, you’d like some forward momentum again in the future, you have to get off your ass and get out there and work, fight, and make it happen. It’s not just gonna happen. Progress ain’t the weather, it’s not just gonna rain one day.

Alexander Bisley last interviewed Rashida Jones. In April, Howard Dean was optimistic about a progressive American future.

There are more pornography users than users of Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined.

Actress Rashida Jones has produced an excellent Netflix documentary and follow-up series to examine the ramifications of such widespread pornography use. Hot Girls Wanted and Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On explore important, under-asked questions about porn, sexual socialization, feminism, labor rights, relationships, loneliness, and technology. 

The point of view in both the film and the series is multitudinous and nuanced; there’s no catharsis via facile conclusions.

Jones worked with Kinsey Institute-affiliated researchers Debby Herbenick and Bryant Paul, who conducted a study on sexual socialization from kids to teens to adults. Nearly half of teen girls who have seen porn said they felt at least “a little scared” when seeing it. And more than one in three teen girls who have seen porn say they were bothered by the way women are treated in pornography.

“There’s things [in porn] that we would never accept from our mainstream media,” Jones told me. “Really, really bad racial slurs, racial stereotypes, terrible treatment of women — things that are protected because it turns somebody on.”

Our conversation (which has been edited and condensed) includes porn labor rights, e-dating, and what Jones likes about modern porn.

Alexander Bisley

Whatever people may think, porn is obviously here to stay, its good qualities and its less good qualities. One of the points you make is that there’s not enough of a conversation about all this.

Rashida Jones

We have this hypocritical tension, especially in the States. There’s this real puritanical, religious restriction in terms of sex being something that really only should happen between a married couple and should really only be for the sake of procreation. But we know that’s probably not the case for most people in the country and the world. We’re inherently sexual beings. Plus, we use sexuality for mass media and perversity in marketing, and we have for a very long time. We fetishize sexuality, and we fetishize women’s sexuality and young girls’ sexuality. We have the tension between those two things.

Then, personally and individually, people have a lot of shame around sex and their sexual habits, the things that turn them on. And it’s not something that people feel necessarily comfortable to talk about publicly, amongst each other, or with their children, which to me is the most important piece that we’re missing here. So I think the vacuum of that is only intensifying the tension between the puritanism and the objectification obsession.

Alexander Bisley

You worked with Kinsey Institute-affiliated researchers like Dr. Debby Herbenick. One of the notable statistics that came out of that was that nearly half of teen girls who have seen porn said they felt at least “a little scared” when seeing it. And more than one in three teen girls who have seen porn say they were bothered by the way women are treated in pornography.

Rashida Jones

It was the first study of its kind post-internet: We collected data from teenagers and then got their media usage, their porn usage, their sexual habits. Then we collected data from their parents. And as you can imagine, the findings were that the parents didn’t really know what the kids were up to.

But, as you said, the other part of that was to gauge how teenagers were taking in what they were seeing online. It gives me hope that young women who are sexually active look at porn and a third of them don’t like the way women are treated. That gives me hope because there is this weird struggle that porn is protected by this bubble of fantasy and there’s a lot of really problematic representation in porn, racially, gender-wise, politically. There’s things that we would never accept from our mainstream media: really, really bad racial slurs, racial stereotypes, terrible treatment of women, and things that are protected because it turns somebody on.

Unfortunately, we have so little sex education in this country and most kids happen upon porn accidentally for the first time — 80 percent of them — that we have to assume they’re learning a lot about sex from a place that’s not really interested in teaching any lessons to children. It’s considered adult entertainment. There’s not a ton of ways to protect kids from porn. Yes, individual parents can do their best, but most kids come to it accidentally, so that really is the problem — exposure to young minds who might not have seen the experience of sex and may have never even had their first kiss.

Alexander Bisley

The average age kids are first watching hardcore porn is 11. Even James Deen — whatever he is, he’s not a prude — said recently that he was concerned about porn’s impact on underage kids, and how kids are learning about sex. 

Rashida Jones

Oh, interesting, I didn’t know that. Yeah. I think it’s such a giant industry, and there’s so many levels of power that people have within it. And I’ve talked to sex workers, former sex workers, who are concerned about that, and also want to pursue their own careers. And I think both things are possible. The porn industry is here to stay. There doesn’t have to be an inherent problem with that. But the idea that porn is used as sex education, which is just the truth, is something we should consider and be concerned about.

Alexander Bisley

You’ve had some criticism over Hot Girls Wanted. What do you say to your haters?

Rashida Jones

If you take any kind of position, especially against a very powerful industry, you’re going to have critics. I don’t have criticism of what any adult wishes and desires sexually. What worries me is the disconnect between the materials that are made and who’s watching the materials that are made.

I know people within the industry are concerned that if you start to limit who’s seeing it, then you further stigmatize the industry, which I completely understand. It’s already such a marginalized industry, and that was not our intent. Our intent is to have a conversation about how to let adults feel free about their own sexuality. And also, [for] people under 18, the chance to discover sexuality in a way that’s not made by people just trying to make money. And that’s nobody’s fault, but it’s something that we have to talk about. I hope that, if anything, the series creates conversation. If I’m criticized and it increases conversation, I’m fine with that.

Alexander Bisley

Could you elaborate more on your critique: the distinction you make between sexuality and sexualization, and America’s pornified imagination in general?

Rashida Jones

We live in a time now where the performance of identity is king. If we look at social media, everyone is self-branding. But I think it’s particularly intensified when it comes to sex and when it comes to how important it becomes to perform sexuality publicly.

These are just questions I’m asking: Does one perform their sexuality in a way that actually is true to what their real sexuality is? Does one perform sexuality as a way to have somebody else define what makes them attractive, and sexy, and what turns them on? There’s this issue of objectification. If you’re self-objectifying and that turns you on, great. If you’re self-objectifying for a reaction, then maybe it’s not actually turning you on? Is there a tension between that and what really turns you on?

They’re all psychological questions, but they seem to be relevant because there’s so many platforms now to express your “sexuality.” And I think sometimes what I see is an expression of sexualization, because it all feels somewhat uniform to me. I don’t know if that’s just because I’m in a media bubble. But what it looks like to be sexy feels kind of all on the same track, and it makes me wonder if it can feel that good, that particular brand of sexuality through everybody who’s performing it. I think sexuality is such an individual thing and the idea that everybody would like the same things and the same things would turn them on, it just doesn’t, for me, necessarily ring true.

Alexander Bisley

Modern dating is one of Turned On’s engaging episodes, focusing on James, a 40-year-old, all over the dating apps, disappointing multiple 20-something women simultaneously. What do you think of modern dating, apps, etc.?

Rashida Jones

Everybody goes into those apps with completely different intentions. When you have somebody who’s just gaming the system and then you have somebody that’s looking for true love, and we live in a time where self-branding is not necessarily about being your authentic self, it’s about being the version you think somebody else wants you to be because you think that’s going to attract the right person to you; that’s the problem.

We’re having this moment where we’re disconnected on who we want to be seen as and who we actually are. And then we end up feeling disappointed like a lot of the girls on that episode. But every app, whether it’s dating or shopping or food or whatever, they’re all designed to keep you hooked. So that means you’re either browsing on a shopping site forever, you’re looking through Instagram, you’re looking through all the possibilities of people that you could go out with that night, and it takes the humanity out of all of it. And it’s fine if it’s just clothes, or it’s shopping on Amazon, but it’s not as fine when there’s actual people on the other side of that photo. The weight of choices and options and accessibility and efficiency [make] you forget that there’s actually a whole complicated person behind that image.

Alexander Bisley

Your work, both in Hot Girls Wanted and [in] the Black Mirror episode you co-wrote, explores the dark side of social media and technology.

Rashida Jones

We won’t know [the full impact] for a very long time. But I think the enthusiasm and the money that could be made in technology has prohibited us from really taking a hard look at what it’s changing about humanity. And we haven’t really studied what it’s done to our brains, to our emotions, to our relationships, which is part of the reason I wanted to do the series. We haven’t taken a lot of time to stop and ponder because everybody’s so excited about the innovation.

Alexander Bisley

I wish I could quit Twitter, as you did.

Rashida Jones

Oh, you can! You can do it too! Why not?

Alexander Bisley

Are there further aspects of pornography or modern romance you’d like to explore?

Rashida Jones

There’s so many more stories to tell. Now I’m more interested in sex and technology, and intimacy and technology. Regardless if it’s sex or not, there’s something about connecting online that’s inherently a bit lonely and isolating. And there’s a world in which you can stay in your house, and you can order Amazon, and you can order your food online, and you can watch your programs in your house, and get your sex online, and you don’t really have to leave. And then the question becomes: Are you living a fulfilled life? I don’t know the answer, but I want to continue to explore those topics because it will be the thing that defines this era, probably.

How [do] we reckon with this new tool, as it came with absolutely no rules, whatsoever? What do we do now? Do we create rules individually based on how we feel? Do we self-regulate? Do we just say “screw it” and just go for it? Is it making us numb? Is it making us more connected? Is it making us more isolated? I don’t know. But it is something I will continue to be fascinated by. 

Alexander Bisley

What’s something nice you have to say about porn?

Rashida Jones

Oh, there’s a lot of stories to tell with that too. We had one subject in Turned On — unfortunately he dropped out — a young guy, teenager, who discovered his own sexuality through porn. He came out as gay about two years ago. And it was really only through the discovery of gay porn that he was able to come to terms with his own sexuality. And that to me is great. How lucky it is to be able to have that tool when you don’t feel like you can ask somebody or talk to somebody, you can go online in private and find out who you are. That’s wonderful.

I know a lot of people who use it in a relationship. In the episode I directed for the series, women claiming their own sexuality and making their own porn; I love that movement. It’s been happening for a while, but it really feels like more women are taking to it, that there’s not shame around female sexuality. There’s such a stigma around women wanting, and there shouldn’t be. And I think the more they stand up and ask to see what they want and to be actual consumers, there will be a supply and demand chain that will continue to thrive and to grow. I hope it does. 

Alexander Bisley

In Turned On, you profiled Suze Randall, a female feminist pornographer, and her director daughter, Holly. They detail how the industry’s new economic conditions are much more challenging.

Rashida Jones

They’re both so wonderful. And I think because Holly came up in this really artistic, free bubble of her mom’s work, she had a very specific eye and specific aesthetic. … I know it’s frustrating for Holly, and I hope that as much as this industry’s growing that it leaves room for people who really appreciate and respect the art form of making porn. Because they still have an audience.

Alexander Bisley

Holly says there’s less freedom for making more artistic content, more pressure for “harder” content, and generally not the money and fame some younger girls think.

Rashida Jones

It’s such a decentralized industry that because anybody can do it, and they can do it from anywhere they want, there’s just a lot less money to be made by any one individual, except for the three guys who own all the tube sites. They make a shit-ton of money, and then everybody else sort of does the best they can.

Which is, by the way, another reason, understandably, that people who work within the industry feel so stigmatized: There’s so many people making porn now that it’s really hard to make a living doing so. They feel very protective and defensive of the business that they work within because they want to continue to work. And it makes perfect sense. But to me, the way to do that is to talk about it, not just keep it secret.

The fact that Holly was brave enough just to talk about her experience in the industry and how it’s changed, and how she is for hire, and she does great work, and the people who hire her know she does great work, but they give her these tiny, tiny budgets. They’d rather make more product than less product of quality. It’s great that she said that, because now we all know that, and maybe people who do demand a higher-quality product, or the kinds of aesthetic that Holly wants to offer, will find her and let her make the films she wants to make.

Alexander Bisley

Is there any further impact that you hope people Hot Girls Wanted and Turned On has?

Rashida Jones

We’ve had a lot of parents ask us: “What are we supposed to do?” In my episode, I asked Holly if she learned about sex and porn from her mom, and Suze said, “Oh, my God, absolutely not. I would not have talked to her about that stuff. I just taught her how to have good manners.” If Suze isn’t talking to her daughter about porn and sex, and that was in the ’80s and the ’90s, what are parents who don’t work in erotica not talking to their kids about?

So, as awkward as it is, I do feel there’s a responsibility here to continue conversation, and you have to assume that if your kid is 11, they’ve probably happened upon porn. And it’s worth having a conversation to find out so that they can have a healthy relationship with their sex life that isn’t driven by porn [but] driven by their own desires.

Correction: Jones worked with both Debby Herbenick and Bryant Paul.

Alexander Bisley is a regular Vox contributor. 

Even the editor of the New York Times Book Review hasn’t read everything.

“We joke at the Book Review because we all are constantly saying, ‘Oh, have you read such and such?’ And the answer 80 percent of the time is ‘no,’ because there’s no way,” Pamela Paul told me in a recent interview.

Since 2013, Paul has revitalized the New York Times’s dynamic books coverage, especially the New York Times Book Review, and The Book Review Podcast. Formerly the Times’s children’s books editor, Paul is the author of four nonfiction books, most famously Pornified.

Her new memoir, My Life With Bob, is about the emotional engagement and enthusiasm that readers have for books. (The title refers to Paul’s book of books, a reading diary she has kept since she was a teenager.) Our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, covers reading habits, how books reflect the zeitgeist, what makes the Times’s coverage special, pornography’s negative effects, and summer.   

Alexander Bisley

What’s a current book that is capturing the zeitgeist for you?

Pamela Paul

My personal way of engaging with the zeitgeist, in a way, is to disengage with the zeitgeist [laughs]. With engagement, they can offer you a deeper perspective and a longer view of anything going on in the current moment, whether political, or economic, or environmental. On the other hand, you can just choose to be in a book, and that’s pretty much the only way you can leave, barring expensive travel to an island spa. So personally I’m doing the pure escapism in books, at the moment.

I’m reading a memoir called The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald that came out in 1945. She became famous for her children’s books Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. It’s about her moving to and setting up a chicken ranch outside of Seattle, Washington, and all of the surprises that are in store for her there. It’s incredibly well-written and very funny. After a full day of being onscreen, looking at this swirl of headlines on social media, and frankly a ceaseless news cycle, it’s really nice to retreat to this chicken farm and contemplate the difficulties of getting eggs out from under hens. That actually feels quite peaceful. It’s a very nice remove from my own daily systems.

Alexander Bisley

Conversely at work, leading the Times books coverage, you have responsibility for probing the political zeitgeist.  

Pamela Paul

One recent novel that has spoken about something that is of global concern is Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, which is about refugees. That is obviously a concern in every country right now, and I thought his words were really beautiful in that book. People are returning to earlier books about totalitarianism, and fascism, and political oppression in droves — in the US, at least. 1984, Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, these kinds of books have seen renewed attention.

Alexander Bisley

Is there a book you think every politician should read?

Pamela Paul

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell is a really brilliant essay about communication in general and political rhetoric in particular.

Alexander Bisley

Does your reading change with the seasons?

Pamela Paul

Ah! I love the idea of summer reading, but it doesn’t actually play out for me differently now that I’m working very full time and have three children. When I am on a beach is very rare, like once a year. I often choose those moments, curiously, to pick up a big, dense novel. I write in My Life With Bob about reading Moby Dick while vacationing on Ko Phi Phi in southern Thailand. Ko Phi Phi is an island where most people are not reading Moby Dick but are drinking themselves silly, and scuba diving.

Alexander Bisley

You don’t have a favorite book you return to during the summers?

Pamela Paul

I’m not a returner to books. I feel endlessly curious to read the books I haven’t read. But one of the two books I have gone back to is Buddenbrooks. Thomas Mann wrote that when he was 25, and I read it when I was about that age. What was so shocking to me was that he, at that young age, was able to capture so many life experiences and emotions of people much older than him and who had those experiences where he had not. His incredible emotional acuity in understanding what disappointment was like, and parenthood, and grandparenthood, and failure. Rereading it in my late 30s, it did completely hold up, and it was all the more impressive. 

Alexander Bisley

Is there an especially embarrassing gap in your reading?

Pamela Paul

Oh, my God, there’s so many gaps.  My neglect of reading of poetry is terrible; I’m a terrible poetry reader. I read it so rarely. Also, I never got an MFA, so there are a lot of writers’ writers who I haven’t read. I tend to read very few short stories and concentrate primarily on the novel when I do read fiction. So that’s another big gap. And I would also say that the big midcentury greats that are popular especially among baby boomers — [John] Updike, and [Saul] Bellow, and [Philip] Roth — I’ve read very little in there. So that’s another gaping hole. We all have them.

Part of what I write about in My Life With Bob is the fact that the more you read, the more you realize you haven’t read. And even when you’re among dedicated book readers, we joke at the Book Review here at the Times because we all are constantly saying, “Oh, have you read such and such?” And the answer 80 percent of the time is “no,” because there’s no way. There’s so many books out there and there’s no way that we can all be caught up. For a long time, I didn’t read contemporary fiction because I was still catching up on the 19th century.

Alexander Bisley

What makes the New York Times Book Review special?

Pamela Paul

We’re the only newspaper that has three full-time staff critics. And we’re the only newspaper that has a full-time, dedicated children’s book editor. What the New York Times physically does, we think, is offer authoritative, relevant coverage that helps readers know what to make of the big, new, important books that are out there, but also enables them to discover new voices and find unexpected gems. That requires a full-time, dedicated staff. We’re not just covering the books that the publishers are coming in and telling us, “These are the big books.” We’re finding small books from independent presses. Very few publications are doing this anymore, doing this with the authority that the Times does.

The internet means that we can reach everyone. So many local newspapers have cut their books coverage. Local papers that used to have a full-time staff critic, or a book review section, no longer do. Having just come from Australia, where I was for the Sydney Writers Festival, it was instructive for me that so many people were following our coverage. That’s because, as you know, most Australian publications have pulled back on their books coverage. There’s still a very lively literary criticism scene in Australia: It’s a country of enormous numbers of readers, and a lot of them are reading the New York Times, so that was really exciting.

Alexander Bisley

What’s at stake with a good book review? 

Pamela Paul

You should feel like the reviewer engaged with the work. That they took it seriously, that they wrote it with respect, that they were fair, that they’re accurate. That they really wrote about the book and represented the book as it was written. That they reviewed the book in question and not the book they wish the author had written instead.

That if there is a greater argument to be made that it really does come out of the book. That the book isn’t just an excuse to climb on something else, known as a platform review, where the reviewer stands on top of the book and the book is just there to provide that podium. A good book review gives a sense of the writing. It’s amazing how many book reviews can come out and not quote from the book. You want to know what the book actually sounds like. 

Alexander Bisley

Your most famous book, 2005’s Pornified, was prescient about pornography’s negative aspects. “Pornography is wildly popular with teenage boys in a way that makes yesteryear’s sneaked glimpses at Penthouse seem monastic. For teenagers, pornography is just another online activity; there is little barrier to entry and almost no sense of taboo,” was one memorable line. Twelve years on, would you add anything to your critique? 

Pamela Paul

Only that it feels more relevant than ever. That book started off as a story for Time magazine that came out in 2003. When I proposed the idea that the internet was affecting the ways in which people consumed pornography and then the implications that that kind of consumption had for people’s sex lives, for their relationships, for the way that children learned about sexuality, that idea was kind of radical at the time. People thought: “Well, really? Is this a thing?” I had to persuade that this was a story and that there were in fact repercussions.

Now the evidence is inarguable, and there have been a number of other books that have come out, whether specifically on that topic or more generally about the ways in which the internet has transformed personal and social relations overall.

There’s been an enormous amount of vindication and amplification of what I said in Pornified. Some people said, “Oh, well, she only talked to the extremists and addicts.”

I still hear from readers on that book; the responses that I get most often are, “This is my life,” “You’re talking about me.” Or, “You’re talking about my husband,” or, “This is my son,” or “my brother.” Pornified has a long shelf life, but not for the happiest reasons.

Alexander Bisley

I’ve been appreciating the Times’s coverage of feminist literature, writing by and about female writers. Any comment you’d make on feminist writing in America in 2017?

Pamela Paul

That there’s still a need for awareness. That the change still isn’t there, that we’re still arguing and putting forth the same complaints, the same suggestions, the same call to action, that’s been bubbling since the 1970s, is a bit dispiriting. On the flip side, what’s encouraging is that there’s clearly an appetite for people to read about those things; they’re resonating, and readers respond to them.

Alexander Bisley

In My Life With Bob, you write about you and your freelance writer friends struggling [in your] emerging years in New York’s “Invisible Institute,” as you dubbed the experience. “Writing doesn’t pay” is one sharp line. Is there any advice you have for younger writers?

Pamela Paul

It’s terrible how little writing pays. For freelance journalists in the early ’70s, the going rate was $1 to $2 a word, and for certain publications it was $5 per word. Many print publications that used to, as a rule, pay $2 a word have gone down to $1. Internet writing pays less than print writing, and sometimes it’s as low as 50 cents a word or $300 per story. There’ve been scandalous stories that bubble up on the internet, of places that will ask seasoned, experienced writers to write for free for “exposure.” Writing is a profession, like any other, and it deserves to be paid accordingly. Unfortunately, right now, the business model has not really evolved to accommodate that. 

My advice would be to work really very hard and to hopefully have another source of income.

Alexander Bisley

What’s the most exciting aspect of your Times job?

Pamela Paul

Oh, as a book lover it’s the dream job. You couldn’t ask for more because it’s access to books, it’s access to authors and editors and people who work in the process of bringing books to readers, and it’s access to colleagues who are fellow book evangelists, and enthusiasts, and voracious readers. Working in an institution like the New York Times that is really dedicated, that sees books as part of its journalistic mission and supports that, it couldn’t be a more fulfilling experience.

I feel like a kid in the candy store because there’s books everywhere and I’m supposed to read them. I didn’t grow up surrounded by books of my own, which I write about in My Life With Bob. I felt like I went from books being a rare and magical thing to books being an omnipresent and yet still magical thing.

Correction: This article was updated with the correct title of the George Orwell essay Politics and the English Language.

Alexander Bisley’s tips for summer reading include Gary Shteyngart, Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux’s travel writing, and W. Kamau Bell’s new autobiography.

“If there were an emperor of progressive Democrats, Howard Dean would be the man — except of course his fellow Vermonter, Sanders, is now that man,” Ben Sarle wrote for the Atlantic last year. Certainly it’s hard to imagine the unexpected success of Bernie Sanders’s and Barack Obama’s campaigns without Dean’s insurgent 2003-’04 presidential run. Dean inspired thousands of new youth organizers, pioneered the use of digital technologies for political campaigns, and amassed sizable funds through many modest donations.

In March 2003, Dean righteously slammed the Democrats’ establishment leadership, opening a California speech: “What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the president’s unilateral intervention in Iraq?” The doctor turned popular Vermont governor’s catchphrase was that he was from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” and he was blunt about the failings of both his own side and the Bush administration.    

The Democrats’ frontrunner collapsed in the Iowa vote, after coordinated attacks from the party hierarchy, and he quit the race after finishing second to John Kerry in New Hampshire. Dean morphed his campaign into Democracy for America. The million-member organization’s goal? To “empower the progressive grassroots to take our democracy back from corporations and the wealthy few and aggressively combat growing income inequality.” While Dean was chair of the Democratic National Committee, between 2005 and 2009, the party took back the House, the Senate, and the White House.  

I spoke with Dean, now 68, over the phone from his Burlington home. We discussed health care and Iraq, politics as war, Dean’s beef with business, and Donald Trump’s “mental problems.” 

This conversation has been condensed and edited.

Alexander Bisley

What messages were you advancing back in 2004 that you most wish people listened to you on?

Howard Dean 

I think I’ve been proven right about a number of things: the war in Iraq, Bush’s tax cuts, which ran up huge debts, and his lack of regulation, which allowed the entire infrastructure of the Western financial world to collapse. I don’t think Republicans know anything about fiscal policy; I don’t think they care. I think they’re so ideologically driven that they don’t care about balanced budgets. You wait and see Trump’s tax cuts; I guarantee the budget will be less balanced afterward. Republicans are ideologues; they don’t care what the facts are.

Alexander Bisley

You were prescient about the opioid epidemic. In a 2001 interview with the LA Times, you warned about OxyContin’s catastrophic impact; as governor, you restricted its prescription in Vermont.

Howard Dean

Right — because I was a physician, I could see that one coming. There was no real need for OxyContin. It was highly addictive, and there were lots of reasons it became so addictive. That was what really created the heroin addiction, which is the scourge of our country, everywhere. Once the government forced OxyContin to reformulate so you couldn’t abuse it as easily, people switched to heroin because it was more available and cheaper.

Alexander Bisley

Do you think the opioid epidemic played a role in getting Donald Trump elected president?

Howard Dean 

I think it did have an effect. There’s a sort of constellation of hopelessness in a lot of rural America for many reasons, and I think the opioid endemic is pretty high on their list of worries. It’s on my list as the three things we have to do to try to reconstruct rural America.

First is real tax reform — not the kind that Trump is about to pass that helps billionaires, but the kind that actually encourages investment in places that need it. Second is a better education system, not the kind that [Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos wants, which is to privatize all the schools with lower quality.

The third is dealing with the opioid epidemic, which is one of the reasons Obamacare is so important. It may not be perfect, but it certainly does help people who have really serious drug problems. We’re going to have to use a medical model to deal with this problem because throwing everybody in jail clearly doesn’t work. We need to be smart about what happens to people who are in trouble. If they’re violent and dangerous, obviously they have to be in prison. But if they have a drug problem, they probably need to be in treatment [instead].

Alexander Bisley

Obamacare has given 20 million more Americans health care. However, even Obama acknowledged it needs improvements. What would you suggest?

Howard Dean 

A bunch of things. First of all, I’d allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare on a voluntary basis. There would never be the problem of not having an adequate number of insurance companies in the market. If insurance companies chose to leave a market, for whatever reason, you’d have Medicare as a backup.

Number two, I actually would get rid of the individual mandate. If you’re a purist about the insurance market, you need it. But we managed to insure every child under 18 in Vermont minus 1 percent, and we didn’t have a mandate. For the 1 percent that are going to do the wrong thing, it’s not worth antagonizing the 99 percent that don’t want to be told what to do by the government. There’s plenty of people across the entire political spectrum that feel that way; that’s not just a conservative position. So I would probably get rid of the individual mandate. I’d allow people to buy into Medicare, the so-called public option, and I’d use Medicaid the way President Obama did. I think that was the most successful part of the bill.

Alexander Bisley 

Trump is the Republicans’ “chickens coming home to roost,” Bill Maher told me recently. “The problem is that they’ve been riding this tiger for a long time. Republicans have been feeding their base all kinds of crazy for years,” Obama put it at the end of the 2016 campaign.

Howard Dean 

I think that’s very accurate. When you feed your base anger and lies, eventually it’ll catch up with the feeder. And that’s what happened.

Alexander Bisley

People like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence: These guys are similarly responsible?

Howard Dean

Sure, they all did it, or almost all of them did. There’s almost a total absence of moderate Republicans now. The stuff that Paul Ryan was saying about the health care bill was just mumbo-jumbo and nonsense. He and McConnell were making things up; that was the party line.

I was shocked by what Ryan said about insurance. He didn’t appear to understand how it works.

Alexander Bisley

How does your party get through to swing voters who voted for Trump?

Howard Dean

First of all, I really do believe it’s time for my generation to step back and assume a coaching role. I think we need to get the young people of what I call the “first global generation” into politics. Trump may do it for them. This is a generation who doesn’t like establishment politics, they don’t like institutions because they find them clunky and slow, which they are, and they’ve remade the world in many ways without the help of institutions on an ad hoc basis. 

I think the shock of the Trump win for them was, “Oh, gosh, you really do need institutions as clunky and slow as they are.” Trump was an affront to the values of the younger generation, who value diversity, inclusion, respect for others, facts, and metrics. They’re not particularly left, and they don’t necessarily consider themselves Democrats, but they always vote for the Democrats because the Republicans are busy throwing red meat to their base, which includes excluding all the … first global generation’s friends.

I see this as a generation with less ideological bandwidth from left to right than ours, somebody who’s put the culture wars behind them, which our generation is still fighting. Young people who want to get stuff done and not just screaming, yelling, carrying on on television. That’s not going to benefit the country, and it’s because the Republicans have pushed so hard against the values of their own children. I think we’re going to see a huge change in politics as soon as that generation begins to take over the levers of power.

Alexander Bisley

What are some of your coaching tips?

Howard Dean

I think young people don’t quite understand that politics is a substitute for war and it’s a rough game. You don’t find nice people because the stakes are enormous, and people will do a lot of bad things to each other. Four hundred years ago, if we had a question on the succession of power, lots of people would’ve lost their lives. Instead, we essentially had a revolution in this country, and people didn’t lose their lives because we use elections instead. Politics is a substitute for war, and therefore you have to be tough, unyielding, and uncompromising in battle. That’s why the Republicans generally, with the exception of the two Obama campaigns, have run campaigns better.

They’ve survived a long time as a minority party. It’s a funny thing to say they’re a minority party, given their huge gains in the last eight years, but the truth is their views do not represent the views of most Americans on most issues, such as Social Security, Medicare, the right to have women make up their own reproductive decisions, and same-sex rights, including marriage. Those are all positions that the Republicans have been left behind on. But they’re very clever, they’re incredibly disciplined, they understand that politics is like war, they’ve been methodical about getting what they want.

The younger generation isn’t like that at all. They aspire to a higher vision of what human beings are, and we’ll get there, but we’re not going to get there without breaking some glass.

Alexander Bisley 

Trump “believes truly insane, deranged and delusional things”, Chris Hayes told me. “It’s very much an Infowars presidency in many ways. The president is a conspiracy theorist.” What do you think?

Howard Dean 

Well, I think the American people are smarter than most writers and intellectuals give them credit for. Richard Nixon had a 24 percent favorability rating the day he left office a disgrace. So there’s going to be 24 percent of the people who are going to believe whatever they believe, and they don’t care what the facts are.

But I think there are a lot of people who thought Trump really might be somebody who would turn the country around, so they were willing to forgive his craziness. Now I think they’re not, because it looks like he probably can’t do the job as a result of his mental problems.

Alexander Bisley

To be human is to have regrets. Do you have any particular political regrets?

Howard Dean

Well, yes, I didn’t win in 2004. It would’ve been great to be president; we might’ve saved ourselves a lot of trouble. We would’ve been out of Iraq earlier, we would’ve had a more equitable economic system, we would’ve had universal health care a long time ago. That’s assuming I could’ve had a Congress that I wanted. But remember, these campaigns are like war, and they’re very tough. I actually think if you can’t get through the campaign then you probably shouldn’t be president. And I didn’t get through the campaign. 

Alexander Bisley 

What about the most recent presidential campaign? You told MSNBC the Democratic National Committee “should never have taken sides” — do you have any regrets from that one? 

Howard Dean

Well, I regret Hillary didn’t win. I always like to teach my classes that there’s one instrument that’s incredibly popular among both physicians and politicians because they use it twice as much as anybody else: the retrospectoscope. The retrospectoscope is always correct. I try not to do too much looking in the rearview mirror. You want to do enough of it to learn, but you don’t want to do enough of it to fundamentally undermine what your values are. 

Alexander Bisley 

Okay, but is there a particular learning from the last campaign you’d emphasize?

Howard Dean 

I think the thing we learned about the most was that America was not quite ready to elect a woman president; we’ve got a ways to go there. But we did make a crack in the ceiling, and I think it’s very important.

Alexander Bisley 

What has changed the most in American politics since 2004?

Howard Dean 

I think what’s changed the most is the ability to run technical campaigns with metrics. What we did was very crude compared to where people are today. While it was invented by the left, mostly by the kids on my 2004 campaign, the right has now taken up technology and actually surpassed us in their ability to use it.

Alexander Bisley 

What did you think would change but hasn’t?

Howard Dean 

I’m not sure. I think someday we’ll get away from the reliance on the right-wing crazy stuff, otherwise known as fake news, and the Breitbarts, and all that. But I don’t think that’s at hand now; the Russians are using that as an international weapon. I’m a little surprised it hasn’t gone away sooner. I think until this next generation gets into politics, I don’t see major cleaning up of the place. I think the partisanship is going to continue for a while, and fake news and all this other destructive stuff is going to stay as long as my generation is in politics. There’s technology that my generation knows how to use but doesn’t know what it really means.

Alexander Bisley 

“Washington is the last place in America that has any idea about what the hell is going on,” you told Katie Couric recently.

Howard Dean

That’s true. I always call it middle school on steroids. They’re all wrapped up in their own little bubble, and they don’t really understand what’s going on elsewhere. The Republicans know what the anger is, and then they exploit it. The Democrats, I don’t think they understand what people really want. The Republicans understand what people want; they just don’t want to give it to them because it requires some rearranging and tough choices. People want to live in a fair society where if they work hard, they have a shot. Since about 2000, that hasn’t been the case.  

I think the moral leadership in the business community has fallen apart for the most part. When I was young, businesses integrated their boardrooms before they had to, and they actually were fairly pro-environmental. Now I think there’s an appalling lack of concern sometimes in the boardroom of multinational corporations. After all, their allegiance is to multinational shareholders, not necessarily [to] the United States. There are some exceptions — for example, Starbucks and all those companies that made Mike Pence back off his anti-gay bill.  

They really came through in North Carolina. Who ever thought the NCAA would come through on anything like that? Arizona refused to recognize Martin Luther King Day, so the National Football League forced them to do that. We need large corporations to use their influence. There are more that don’t do the right thing than there used to be. I think the business community needs to think seriously about where we’re going and not simply about what the next tax break is.

Alexander Bisley

Matthew Yglesias wrote in Vox about how Deaniacs became Democrats and believes Sandersistas can do the same. Do you agree?

Howard Dean 

I do think it’s true, but it’s interesting what’s going on with the Sanders people because it went on with me in 2004 too. We divided into three groups. I told them when I was dropping out, I said, “You go to join your local Democratic Party. If they welcome you with open arms, then you’re part of the fabric of the party. If they try to keep you out, then you try to beat them in an election, which has happened.” The Sandersistas have done that too; they have several state chairmanships.

I think what Sanders did was fantastic; it was great for the country and great for the body politic. However, there is a faction of Sanders people that I call “the sourpuss party” who don’t really want to win; they just want to be self-righteous. That always exists in humankind. They’d rather be on the sidelines and be right than get dirty and have to make some compromises. Bernie himself is not like that; he was quite a good mayor. He had to make compromises, he told his supporters so, and they had to like it. Whether it’s the right or the left, in every group there’s always people who believe that purity of ideology is more important than results. That’s not where I am on the political spectrum.

Alexander Bisley 

What’s your relationship with Bernie like?

Howard Dean 

I think we like and respect each other. We’re not close, but I think what he did was good and he knows that I think he did was good. I went out of my way not to say anything that I thought was really destructive about him during the campaign even though I was supporting Hillary. I think he’s been a big addition to the country.

Alexander Bisley 

What do you think of the recent wave of nostalgia and goodwill for George W. Bush?

Howard Dean 

Look, I’ve always thought George W. Bush was an honorable person, although that doesn’t fit exactly with what happened in Iraq. My theory is that [Dick] Cheney manipulated him and controlled the amount of intelligence he was getting. But I know George Bush, I like him, he’s a great parent. I had some major problems with the war and some of his domestic policies, but as a human being I think it’s hard to dislike George W. Bush.

Alexander Bisley

In my opinion — and your opinion in 2003 and 2004 — he certainly misled America into Iraq, which was and is horrendous, and had a lot of bad domestic policies too.

Howard Dean 

I agree with that. I didn’t support him for president; I don’t think he should’ve been president. I actually don’t think he was elected president. I think [Al] Gore should’ve gone and taken the next constitutional step, which was to ask Congress to make the decision, although the outcome might not have been different. I do not think [Bush] was a good president, but I do think he’s a good person.

Alexander Bisley 

Today some liberals even feel wistful toward the W years: Have the Republicans gotten more extreme since he was president?

Howard Dean

The Republicans have gotten much more extreme. In the times of legislation, they’re just vindictive. It’s almost know-nothingism; their position on climate change, the purism on abortion, the hostility to people of color — which they may deny but then play to and dog-whistle it. Trump didn’t even bother to dog-whistle it; he just laid it out there. My parents were both Republicans; that’s not the Republican Party I grew up with in my house.

Alexander Bisley 

What can a tiny state like Vermont do to challenge Trumpism?

Howard Dean 

We can do a lot. We were the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex unions. We’ve had universal health care for people under 18 since 1992. There’s a lot of things we can do. I think one of the impressive things that Bernie did as mayor of Burlington was start the Burlington Community Land Trust, which was a way of allowing modest-income people to stay in their own homes and to buy homes, and that’s been copied all over the country. A lot of our environmental stuff has been copied all over the country. Even small states can lead the way if they’re internally consistent and they have principles they believe in. 

Here in Vermont, you get rewarded for telling the truth. I think what people loved about Bernie is that he wasn’t afraid to say things that everybody else is afraid to say that were pretty obvious. Bernie will win elections as long as he wants to here because his coalition is essentially the Trump voters and the lefties and the progressives.

I had my car jump-started in my driveway this past summer. I got yakking about politics with the tow truck driver. As we’re putting the jumper cables on, he says, “You know what I’d like to see in politics? I’d like to see a Trump-Sanders ticket. That’d give the big middle finger to all those people in Washington.” Well, Bernie gets all those people up here. I think people here are pretty practical about the politics in Washington; they want somebody to go down there and shake the place up.

Alexander Bisley

Bernie seems to me like the John McCain of the left in that he’ll never retire.

Howard Dean 

He’s a little more consistent than John McCain, but you’re right. Bernie’s independent; he’s not afraid of calling out his own side, which is important.

Alexander Bisley 

“Since his career in politics ended, Dean has found a home in the K Street establishment he once held in such disdain,” the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, a Deaniac, wrote in 2013. What’s your response?

Howard Dean

Jonathan Cohn wrote that?

Alexander Bisley

Yes.

Howard Dean 

He must have read the Intercept. That was a mistake [laughs]. I’m not a lobbyist. I do work at Denton’s, which is the largest law firm in the country, and I have a great time doing it. But I don’t lobby, I don’t work for clients I don’t particularly like, I don’t do billable hours; I do it my way. I have no intention of going to K Street. I must’ve missed that article, but I still think Jonathan Cohn is the best health care writer in the United States, bar none.

Alexander Bisley 

What do you hope your legacy is?

Howard Dean 

There’s the Vermont legacy: what I did in Vermont in terms of balancing the budget, same-sex marriage, health care, and that we blocked up hundreds of thousands of acres that’ll never be developed here because I wanted to preserve the character of Vermont long after nobody remembered who I was.

But the national legacy, the most important part of my legacy, is I think I was the first candidate to get the first global generation involved in politics.

Alexander Bisley

Despite Trumpism, you’re hopeful about their capacity to improve America and improve the world?

Howard Dean

I have very little patience for people who whine and moan about millennials or the first globals, as I call them. I think this generation is absolutely extraordinary. Of course they have faults, but I think a lot of the criticism [from] older people about this generation [is] older people who are insecure about some of the things these guys are pointing out. This is a generation of human beings who have more power as individuals than any generation in human history. It’s unbelievable what they’ve done.

I know kids who are 28 years old who started foundations when they were 18. They’re changing more lives than USAID does, and there’s thousands of them. I think inner-city education has been transformed by Teach for America and by the charter school movement. Nobody did anything about inner-city education for 40 years — not white, not black, not Republicans, not Democrats, nobody.  

Now we’ve got to get [more of] them into politics. They hate it, they don’t have any use for it — it’s too slow, it’s cumbersome, it’s full of self-interested people that are unattractive — but it’s going to have to happen. And they’re going to change it. The problem is they’ve never wanted to get [into politics]. Now I think they understand why they have to do it, and that’s my great hope for the salvation of the world. 

Alexander Bisley 

You came up during the ’60s and ’70s, so you would’ve known young leftists who were more annoying than the odd fool on campus today.

Howard Dean 

You know that’s true. Here’s the great thing about this generation from my point of view: They have our values, but they’re much more sober-minded, much more willing to work with each other, much more pragmatic, much less ideological, which is one of the more unattractive features of my generation in the ’60s. 

Bernie’s left, but there’s not really much of a left in this country. I remember when there was a left — they were blowing up buildings, they were self-righteous as hell — and now there isn’t one. Now the right’s really unpleasant and doing crazy things. This generation has our values without having our rough edges and intolerance of others. I think that’s very important. 

Now, there’s still a hell of a lot of work to be done. The race issue in this country still exists. I think before Ferguson, [Missouri,] my generation thought we were post-racial, and that’s not true: There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done. There’s not many nice things about getting old, but one of them is that I can look backward as well as forward. When Freddie Gray was killed, what you media were writing about was riots in the streets of Baltimore. When Martin Luther King was killed, 99 cities were burned down in the United States. What happened in Baltimore was barely a riot by our standards. Second of all, there were white kids out there protesting along with the black community; that never would’ve happened in the ’60s and the ’70s.

In 1968, King was killed, Bobby Kennedy was killed, the Chicago Convention blew up, and 99 cities were burned down. If you told us 40 years later we’re going to have a black president, we’d have told you you’re out of your mind, you’re smoking too much pot. Forty years later, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The amount of change in this country is unbelievable, but it’s not going to really accelerate until the first global generation takes their rightful place, which has been usurped by my generation. We’ve just stayed on a little too long, I think.

Alexander Bisley also writes for Maclean’s, the Guardian, BBC, and more.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

George Saunders, a Buddhist raised on the South Side of Chicago, is one of America’s great writers. He’s long been hailed for his short stories; his debut novel is Lincoln in the Bardo. Zadie Smith describes it as a “masterpiece.”

The Civil War is in its first year — it’s February 1862 — and Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie dies. Saunders imagines a polyphonic graveyard chorus during a night the grieving Lincoln returned alone to Willie’s Georgetown cemetery crypt.

I spoke to Saunders on a recent afternoon in Dallas, over the phone. We discussed Lincoln, empathy, having friends and family who voted for Trump, and the problem with the media.

Alexander Bisley

During the period Lincoln in the Bardo is set, the Civil War is a fiasco. What do you think Lincoln would make of what’s going on today?

George Saunders

Lincoln’s got this beautiful quote, in which he’s talking about if you truncate the American equality vision, if you truncate it to exclude black people, the next thing some despot will do is start excluding immigrants. Lincoln knew this, and in his day the opposition party was called the Know Nothings, and they were very much a white power party. I think Lincoln would recognize and be very strongly against the Trump movement, because it’s simply anti-American to be so damn scared all the time. 

Alexander Bisley

Lincoln spoke stirringly about “the mystic cords of memory” and the “chorus of the union.” African-American writers like Walter Mosley and Colson Whitehead have emphasized to me that Barack Obama tried to find post-partisan commonality between Republicans and Democrats, and only got scorched-earth opposition as thanks. 

George Saunders

I think that’s true, but God bless Obama for making the effort. He’s a tremendous role model, and I think he had a very, very deep understanding of this American project as it’s supposed to be. America was a terrific, beautiful concept as stated in the Constitution, and we’ve never actually done it: to really believe that all beings are created equal. I felt just before this election, going to some Bernie Sanders rallies and talking to my students, that we’re closer than we’ve ever been to realizing the constitutional vision, which is what most of us believe and want.

As sometimes happens when one thing is about to dominate, the opposition has a bit of a death throe. I think that’s what we’re seeing here, a last stand of this white- normative exclusionary, xenophobic vision of America. America as, like, a little island or something. It never was. You can go back to 1780, and we were a multicultural society then. I’m just trying to be optimistic and say that the young people get it.

The vision in the Constitution was always colorblind; it was, “that person is an American because he lives in America, and because he believes in certain ideas.” I think in terms of demographics, and the way that young people understand this country intuitively, I think we’re going to get there. The question is how long is this Trump step backward going to last, and how much damage is it going to do in the process.

Alexander Bisley

There was a memorable piece you did for the New Yorker, following Trump supporters on the Trump campaign trail: “Sometimes it seemed that they were, like me, just slightly spoiled Americans, imbued with unreasonable boomer expectations for autonomy, glory, and ascension, and that their grievances were more theoretical than actual, more media-induced than experience-related.”

George Saunders

My feeling is mostly confused. On the one hand, I’m so angry about these mean-spirited people running our country, and at the same time I also have some sympathy for some of the people who felt left out enough to go to Trump.

In real time, in real chaos, it’s hard to know what to think. It’s always easy with a hundred years of history between you and the object, but in real time the ways that things get fucked up is, there’s such a contradiction in the data that it paralyses us a bit. What I keep thinking is that maybe, for the first time in my life, these eternal verities that I’ve always talked about are actually being asked to stand up and walk.

Defense of democracy, defense of diversity, kindness, empathy: All these things now are really being challenged. And you have to be fierce while being empathetic, which is pretty tricky. You have to think about these groups that are suffering under Trump, and even sort of include these Trump supporters as one of those groups. It’s really morally challenging, and kind of invigorating if it’s the right day.

In the Buddhist sense, when they talk about compassion, that means you don’t want anybody to suffer. In philosophy, that will actually make you a stronger opponent to injustice. If you can remain empathetic, curious, open, you’re actually going to be a better advocate for justice in the long run. As opposed to descending into hyperbole or snark and then standing there ejecting bile at everybody. That’s not a very effective stance.

Alexander Bisley

In your 2007 essay and book The Braindead Megaphone — about the pernicious effects of entertainment and right-wing media — you wrote: “Our venture in Iraq was a literary failure, by which I mean a failure of imagination.”

George Saunders

I think that the Trump movement is a failure of imagination. All these people who are being humiliated and terrified by these stupid proposals. For the Trump people, I have to believe they are just projections. If you think about an actual immigrant, an actual Muslim, no reasonable person could be so energetic in pursuing these harsh policies if they actually knew those people.

I read a Gallup poll about Trump supporters that supports this idea that most Trump supporters don’t know many immigrants. They don’t live near the border or near pockets of immigrants, they don’t know many Muslims, a lot of people of color. It means that these fearful programs that they’re putting in place are mostly based on projection; it’s not based on actual human experience.

One of the purposes of art can be to put flesh on the thing. You think about the big political essays that were written about the Okies in the ’30s that were projective, and then think of The Grapes of Wrath. I have to believe that people who read that book would be moved by the plight of that particular family.

So I think that’s one possibly productive thing that progressives can think about is that the people making a lot of these Trump initiatives don’t seem able to imagine the actual victims of their programs. So those of us who are in the arts or in journalism can do some work to put real people on the other end of this thing.

Alexander Bisley

Do you discuss politics with your friends and family who are Trump voters?

George Saunders

Not so much. Zadie Smith told me a wonderful thing about the way that you can look at a person and see that there are multiplicities. So they may be a Trump supporter, but they may also be a wonderful granddad, or a baseball fan. I’m personally not very comfortable with fighting or with strife. The times when I have raised politics with them, I haven’t made any converts, and it’s probably made it worse. I’m pretty comfortable with just getting along in whatever way I can, and I think they feel the same way about me. I feel like each of us has to figure out a way to protect our own equanimity and our own better self.

I don’t like hating people, I don’t like fighting, I don’t like name-calling, so I’m not going to do it. I have faith that the things I really believe in — which are empathy, and good faith, and a sense of humor — will serve me better than those other things. I don’t know if persuasion is happening, but as long as I can feel that there’s a softening of the border — maybe suddenly we’re not talking about Trump, we’re talking about music.

Even though that feels small considering the stakes, it’s a start: To be able to remind ourselves that we are a country here, and if we can cultivate a little mutual curiosity and affection it might come in handy if the crisis gets worse. I’m trying to stay in a state of confusion every day, so I don’t settle into some kind of false, foul position.

Alexander Bisley

Of course, art is about much more than just politics.

George Saunders

In all honesty, when you’re writing a book, you’re in love with it as an aesthetic exercise. First, you respect the innate energy of the piece; trying to make it truthful and trying to make it fast and funny. Any time you start hitting an idea too hard, you can fuck yourself up as an artist because the real process of writing a book is a lot weirder and a lot more mysterious and maybe unintentioned.

If you start saying what art should do, pretty soon you’re saying what art must do, and then some reactionary comes along and says, “Hey, your art isn’t doing what you said it must do, go to the Gulag.” I think art has to reserve the right to be truly useless. It can do these other wonderful things. But from the point of the practitioner, you have to be a bit understated in terms of intentionality. 

Alexander Bisley

Do you have any criticism of liberals?

George Saunders

I think there’s a lot of mutual projection from both sides. If you talk to Trump supporters, they have an idea of progressives that isn’t accurate, and very condescending. But I would say that a lot of progressives that I know have the same idea of Trump supporters; it isn’t quite right.

Progressives are more curious about what Trump supporters are like, and they’re more willing to go out and do the work and are able to self-flagellate for their failure to imagine the Trump supporters. I don’t see much of that coming the other direction. I want to avoid false equivalency.

Alexander Bisley

You believe hard right-wing media is a malign influence on our polity?

George Saunders

Yes. As I wrote in that Braindead Megaphone essay; there are two different mythological universes that are working. It started with Fox, which has become a great mainstream media source for many people. But Fox is pretty far to the wacky right, so that’s disturbing the whole thought system in this country. Fox came along, and Rush Limbaugh and so on, they made a model, which was maybe tapping into something legitimate, but it now exacerbates it by a factor of tens.

I think it’s teaching Americans how to be peevish and how to stereotype one another. The number of times people at these Trump rallies would tell me, “We held this rally in the morning because liberals sleep in.” And I’m like, “What are you talking about?”

It’s very profitable, and I think it creates a pundit class that’d be very unhappy if things were discussed more reasonably, because it doesn’t fit into the programming. I think it’s really dangerous. I think you can trace it back to when I was a kid, when news was considered a public service that they didn’t really want to do but were required to do for a certain number of hours a day. It was not a profit-center, it was a loss-center, and each of the networks absorbed it because they were required to. And instead, then, when it became a profit-center, agitation is great entertainment, as David Foster Wallace wrote about in his book of essays.

Alexander Bisley

What do you think of your late friend Wallace’s media critique?

George Saunders

He had an amazing mind. He had a piece in which he interviewed a right-wing radio host in Los Angeles, and his conclusion, as usual, was so original. He said that while the station was ostensibly right-wing, the actual currency they were using was agitation energy. So they would introduce “grade-school teacher steps on the flag,” or something, and then they would just bring it up every day.

They found that when a person was agitated and outraged, that’s one of the most addictive emotions you can have. It’s much more powerful than political loyalty. This is what Fox does: They throw down these distorted, incendiary versions of the liberal world and they keep bringing it up every day. They have a group of people who are vocationally agitated, and who turn to that show every day to get their fix.

The problem with that is that it isn’t accurate to reality. The actual country is relatively benevolent, actual liberals are pretty sweet and pretty nice people, not so different from conservative people. But the right media has this investment in painting this picture of a diabolical elite, this negative-minded left. You can follow the money: It’s a very profitable enterprise.

Alexander Bisley

Lincoln in the Bardo evokes a moving sense of mortality. What do you hope Wallace’s legacy is?

George Saunders

I hope people will turn again and again to his work, because I don’t know a wiser or more original or more honest thinker. That was always my experience with him. I’d be around him and suddenly I’d acutely feel all the different kinds of falseness in me. He was someone who was not comfortable with lying. I think his influence is maybe stronger now than it was when he passed away. Young writers love him.

I wish I could talk to him about this Trump thing, because he always was 20 percent ahead of the curve, and he had that sort of relentless logic that would lead him to a truth that the rest of us would stumble upon a couple of years later. I so wish that he was still with us. He was also a very dear person, very loving, and was becoming more lovable and loving and funny and wonderful every day. I miss him.

Alexander Bisley

Trumpism, like Lincoln in the Bardo, reminds me of an enduring William Faulkner line: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

George Saunders

That Faulkner quote is very true. I had this sense when I was writing of how fragile the country is, and how it’s never quite at peace. Before I started the Lincoln book, like most people in my generation, I thought, “Yeah, a democracy, we did it, great, now we’re just cranking out the product.” Now, after doing this Lincoln book, I’m like, “Wait a minute, we’re not done.” Black Lives Matters comes directly out of the botched Reconstruction, which comes directly out of historical white racism.

When I finished the book, everything seemed so alive politically, and then along came Trump and I went out on the campaign trail. I have to say that the world has never felt more beautifully politicized than it does right now. That line between the political and the moral, or the political and the artistic, is almost nonexistent now in my mind.

Politics, art, and morality all end up thinking about human suffering. These Trump proposals are really causing a lot of suffering for very nice people, and they’re not really alleviating anybody’s suffering. I don’t think he’s less fearful, or his supporters are less fearful, but you’ve got a bunch of people getting morally beaten up at the border and a lot of good people afraid for no reason.

Alexander Bisley

What happens next?

George Saunders

That’s the sad thing, to get to this stage of one’s life and see how much beauty there is in the world and how much kindness and how, at times, the world seems like a paradise because human beings are so wonderful.

You think about all the people in Syria who could come here to America and find homes and loving communities. The Trump machine has said, “We’re not going to do that”; who profits? Are his supporters less afraid? I don’t think so. Now this great country that I love is basically cranking out misery. And it looks like it’s going to crank out misery for as long as he’s in office. And that’s very sad. 

Alexander Bisley writes for Playboy, the Guardian, GQ, BBC, and other outlets. Anthony Bourdain told him America’s opioid crisis was a notable factor in Trump’s election.