Know Your Enemy19 Des 2023

Bomb Power (w/ Erik Baker)

For our final main episode of 2023, we're dipping back into the Wills well to discuss Garry's under-appreciated 2010 book, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. Joining us is our great friend Erik Baker, lecturer in the History of Science Department at Harvard University and an editor at The Drift magazine.

In Bomb Power, Garry Wills elegantly demonstrates how the imperatives of secretly conceiving, building, and deploying the nuclear bomb fundamentally changed American democracy — massively empowering the presidency, disempowering Congress, and setting the nation on a permanent war footing. At the same time, secrecy and deception metastasized through the American system, enabling the rise of extra-judicial assassinations, coup plotting, domestic surveillance, torture, and clandestine war. "Secrecy emanated from the Manhattan Project like a giant radiation emission..." writes Wills, "Because the government was the keeper of the great secret, it began specializing in secret keeping.”

Also discussed: Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023), Henry Kissinger (RIP), Bush and Obama, Snowden, Ellsberg, and the ways in which Bomb Power is a profoundly Catholic book. Enjoy!

Sources:

Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (2010)

Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear Planner (2017)

Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State (2021)

Archbishop John Wester, "Living in the Light of Christ's Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament," Jan 11, 2022

Erik Baker, "Daniel in the Lion's Den: On the Moral Courage of Daniel Ellsberg," The Baffler, June 17, 2023

John Schwenkler and Mark Souva, "False Choices: The Unjustifiable Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Commonweal, Oct 14, 2020

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(267)

Trump Country (w/ Sarah Jones)

Sarah Jones joins Matt and Sam to discuss the myth of "Trump Country" and the pitfalls of reporting on rural America, and to address the most important question of all: is Donald Trump the Antichrist?...

29 Okt 20191h 40min

KYE EXTRA: "Morning Hate" (w/ Hannah Gais)

UNPAYWALLED:Sam interviews journalist Hannah Gais about (1) the far right's ongoing efforts to infiltrate conservative media and (2) the self-victimizing grift of Quillette anti-anti-fascist Andy Ngo....

23 Okt 201944min

Working-Class Conservatism (w/ Max Alvarez)

Matt and Sam talk to Max Alvarez—writer, editor, and host of Working People, an excellent podcast—about growing up working-class and conservative in a mixed race household.Matt and Max compare experie...

7 Okt 20191h 24min

Koch'd Out

With the help of Jane Mayer's essential 2016 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, your hosts explore the world of right-wing philanthropy and ...

9 Sep 20191h 32min

Gunpower (w/ Patrick Blanchfield)

Matt and Sam's first ever guest, Patrick Blanchfield, is an Associate Faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and author of the forthcoming book Gunpower from Verso books, which y...

15 Aug 20191h 29min

The Definitely-Not-Racist National Conservatives

The first National Conservatism conference was convened at the Ritz Carlton in Washington D.C. two weeks ago. It was a coming out party for the rising nationalist wing of the conservative movement, wi...

30 Jul 20191h 37min

The Rise of the Illiberal Right

Interested in the background reading we did for this episode? There's a lot of it. But we want to show our work and give you the chance to dig deeper. Below are the articles we referenced, read, or dr...

12 Jul 20191h 18min

The Death of Conservatism? (Part 2)

Special thanks to Will Epstein and The Downtown Boys for providing music for these two episodes. Check them out. Ronald Reagan's televised "A Time for Choosing" speech in support of Barry Goldwater in...

26 Jun 20191h 1min