Bob Logan, the director and writer of the classic 1990 spoof “Repossessed”, is a very funny man. In that sharp and silly parody of “The Exorcist,” Father Jedediah Mayii (Leslie “the Olivier of spoofs” Nielsen) must save Nancy Aglet (Linda Blair, who also played the possessed victim in “The Exorcist”) after a demon that possessed her as a child returns after she watches Christian right-wing grifters (Ned Beatty and Lana Schwab) on TV.

In addition to “Repossessed,” Logan helmed the 1989 social comedy “Up Your Alley,” which stars Blair as a journalist studying homelessness who falls in love with one of her interview subjects (The Unknown Comic), and the 1992 screwball comedy “Meatballs 4”, starring Corey Feldman as a cool counselor who has to save a struggling summer camp. Chatting with Logan, I learned interesting tidbits about all of these projects; how Logan tried being homeless for a week to write “Up Your Alley,” for example, or how Feldman asked to be allowed to dance in “Meatballs 4” and Logan kept it in the film because it was unintentionally funny. I particularly enjoyed learning about Nielsen’s legendary “fart” machine, which is just that — a hand-held device the iconic spoofmeister would randomly press to simulate the sound of flatulence. Without question, I wish I had a time machine so I visit Nielsen on the set of his spoofs like “Repossessed” and experience his fart device in person.

Yet I want to highlight the very last question I asked Logan, about why liberals like him are so funny… and the most conspicuous conservative comedians on the landscape are so painfully unfunny.

Without further ado, my conversation with Logan. It’s been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

Rozsa:

You are both a liberal and a comedian, and in my opinion, liberals tend to just be funnier than conservatives. In my opinion, the top conservative comedians are people like Joe Rogan and Greg Gutfeld, and they’re just lame. They’re just really lame. Is there a reason why conservative comedians, the Stephen Crowder types, tend to be just so horrifically, badly unfunny, painfully, excruciatingly unfunny?

Logan:

Yeah, I think so. There are several reasons, but I think the key reason is the fact that they’re limited by fencing. What I mean by that is they can’t tackle everything. A liberal can tackle every subject, but a conservative can’t. If a conservative starts knocking themselves, they’ll be eaten by their own young—you know, you can’t do that. You can’t be a comedian and not go after the liberals and the conservatives and everything in between. It’s got to be a giant field that’s open for you to attack, because everybody’s got different ideas.

I mean, you and I are liberals, but there are a couple of things where our ideas will fall a little more into the conservative area or toward the center. We all have that. Nobody’s an absolute. I’m not an absolute liberal. What am I predominantly? Oh yeah. But nobody’s an absolute. So again, the comedian who’s a liberal can go off and tackle any subject, and he’s an equal-opportunity person, okay? But a comedian who’s conservative—they’re limited. Try to be in front of a conservative audience and make a Trump joke.

Rozsa:

If Joe Rogan—if Joe Rogan ever made a joke, or Greg Gutfeld or Stephen Crowder ever made a joke about the MAGA movement, their base would get so triggered. They would wet themselves, crap themselves and then complain that someone else did it to them.

Logan:

Absolutely. And Gutfeld—first off, Gutfeld, I don’t find—he’s not a comedian. No, no. He’s a personality. He’s not a comic. He’s a personality who’s an actor playing the role of a comedian. He’s not a comedian.

Now, Joe Rogan is a comedian, but I remember Joe in the early days at the Comedy Store where his stuff was so liberal it was crazy. Always. He wasn’t—he was going with a tide. He was going with the hot thing. He had to be a liberal, hot, funny person. Hot, funny people were liberals. And that’s what he was. But then he started finding his little niche away from it that separated him from the chaff. And that’s what happened with Joe…

Rush Limbaugh used to be a rock-and-roll disc jockey, okay? He used to be one of these, “It’s 27 degrees out there, it’s crazy—go out and party, guys,” and blah blah blah. That was Rush Limbaugh. Then he found his hook. He wasn’t doing well with that, so he changed his hook and became something different.

Rozsa:

There are younger personalities like Matt Walsh, like Steven Crowder, like Ben Shapiro, who wanted to be entertainers, wanted to be comedians, and failed because they lack talent. And I think the reason a lot of these conservatives are unfunny is exactly what you said: they cannot make jokes about real power structures. They cannot comment in thoughtful ways about everything. They can only comment in a very narrow way that appeals to their very narrow base. If they ever span beyond that

And that’s why Joe Rogan isn’t as funny—I mean, isn’t funny right now on his podcast. Every comment, every joke that Joe Rogan makes is so predictable because he only has a very small template that he can use. And that’s true, I think, for a lot of these conservatives.

The one conservative-leaning comedian that sometimes can still make me laugh is Dave Chappelle. He is the only one who can still make me laugh, even though I find a lot of his stuff disgusting.

Logan:

Because he’s a totally honest person. He knows there are certain areas he shouldn’t go into in the minds of others—but he does it anyway. He says, “So what? That’s what we’re all thinking.” So whatever.

The one guy you and I could spend an hour talking about, though, is Bill Maher, because in the last year, year and a half, I have totally lost all respect for Bill Maher.

Rozsa:

Oh yeah. I’m disgusted by his sucking up to Trump. I’m disgusted by his sucking up to Netanyahu. He’s another person who I think used to be funny. I mean, certainly Bill Maher in the nineties was very witty and very clever. I don’t know what happened to him.

Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 11

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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“Meatballs 4” is not, as its title suggests, a sequel to a preexisting story. Like the other “Meatballs” sequels (save to a small extent “Meatballs 3: Summer Job”), “Meatballs 4” is a self-contained story. Perhaps this is for the best; I doubt the average audience member for a raunchy comedy

More importantly, it means there is no barrier of entry for potential views of “Meatballs 4.” This is for the best, because the performance of star Corey Feldman as cool camp counselor Ricky Wade must be seen to be believed.

Simply put, Feldman is hilarious in “Meatballs 4,” both intentionally and unintentionally. Because he grew up as a top child star in the 1980s, by the early 1990s Feldman was instinctively familiar with the rhythms and cadences of the era’s popular teen comedies. He knows how to set the right tone, and as a result he effortlessly leads the cast as they engage on their various misadventures.

Yet he is also inadvertently funny. In real life as in “Meatballs 4,” Feldman can’t shake the notion that his true calling is to be a song-and-dance man. The results are hardly flattering to Feldman… but his bruised vanity aside, they are also quite entertaining.

Feldman’s Michael Jacksonian hoofing are enough to recommend “Meatballs,” but I also recommend it as a throwback to the shamelessly perverted, corny, un-PC and self-indulgent teenage comedies that dominated the box office from “Animal House” and “Porky’s” to “American Pie” and “Old School.” Note that the first two films listed there were released in the late 1970s/early 1980s (1978 and 1981) and the last two in the late 1990s/early 2000s (1999 and 2003). Released in 1992, “Meatballs 4” falls in the middle of that cinematic cycle, and this shows.

For anyone fond of that subgenre, “Meatballs 4” is also rewarding.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

Logan:

In 19—gosh, when was it—’92, we shot the film “Meatballs 4,” which, by the way, was never gonna be called “Meatballs 4.” It was gonna be called—uh, uh—it was gonna be called “Happy Campers.” And during the middle of the making of the film, the producers came to me and said, ‘Hey, we bought the name ‘Meatballs.’ We’re gonna call it ‘Meatballs 4.’’ I had no idea that I was gonna be involved in a ‘Meatballs’ or any movie called ‘4.’ So just get that outta the way first.

Anyway, we were shooting the film, and then we had a sequence at night where the young kids at the camp are getting together, and they’re dancing, and they’re having a good time, and we got a DJ playing music.

And then Corey came up to me and said, ‘Hey, can I go up on stage and dance during one of the—one of the musical songs?’ And I went, ‘Well, sure,’ you know, because I thought, what the hell? We had a little bit of time to shoot. And also, I could always—if it wasn’t good, I could cut it out or whatever.

And so we went ahead and shot it. And we wound up sticking it into the film, ’cause we thought — he’s not gonna like hearing this—’cause we thought it was funny as opposed to what he wanted to get, which was, like, entertaining. That was kind of funny.

Anyway, that’s got him into really wanting to perform in the whatever. And then he—he went off, and we’ve seen him now on “The Today Show” and lots of other places. And he’s got his new career doing this rock stuff. I like Cory. I do like Cory.

Rozsa:

I have to ask: whose idea was it for his character to be introduced parasailing with a boombox strapped to his chest? He parasails into a lake with a boombox strapped to his chest. Whose idea was that?

Logan:

It was me. I mean, I had—the thing is, I got—I got approached to make this movie. And again, like I said, it wasn’t gonna be called ‘Meatballs”; it was gonna be called “Happy Campers.” And it was a—it was a pure deal that we had to get the production going. They called me and said, “Would you like to make this movie?” I said, “Well, send me the script.” They said, “There is no script.”

I said, “Well, tell me what the story’s about.” “There is no story.” “When will there be a script?’ “Well, we want you to write it and direct. We want you to be the guy on this.” “And I went, ‘Well, how long have I got to write the film?” “They go, ‘Eight days.’” So they offered me—kind of, to be honest—they offered me a little ridiculous kind of amount of money. And I went, “Okay. <laugh> Let’s do it.”

And I locked myself in a hotel, and I wrote it in eight days.

So anyway, so everything you saw in that film—all the characters, the story, the—the—the whole thing, the—the entire screenplay—I wrote in eight days. And so I wrote everything in it.

Rozsa:

You made the right decision. I mean, if they offered you a ridiculous amount of money to make a silly summer camp comedy, you should take that money, and you should make the silly summer camp comedy. I see no reason not to.

Logan:

Bought me—bought me another house. Mm-hmm.

Rozsa:

I mean, the movie in my mind is best known today for being the “Meatballs” movie with Corey Feldman. I’d say that’s its big claim to fame. And that dance scene was something else, to put it mildly.

I think he’s trying to channel Michael Jackson. He’s trying to channel Michael Jackson, yeah—but he doesn’t have the rhythm, and he needs to be honest with himself.

Logan:

Michael and he were very close friends, by the way, just as a matter of fact. Michael released—now, which album was that? I think it was “HIStory”, the one that has “Black or White” on it. [Author’s Note: The album was “Dangerous.”] Michael had released it while we were on location shooting the film. He had a copy sent by an assistant up to the location at Bass Lake in Northern California, where we shot the film.

So Corey had a party—no, it was a wrap party, an end-of-the-week party—in his cabin. All the cast and crew came, and he played us the album. That was it. He and Michael were very close. Corey used to spend many, many nights at Neverland Ranch with him.

Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 11

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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I wish to briefly discuss a short film, just 13 minutes long, that was released in 2018. It illustrates the universality of the horror we should feel toward President Trump’s persecution of immigrants — a horror that will transcend time.

“One Cambodian Family Please For My Pleasure,” directed and written A. M. Lukas, focuses on an idea that has currently fallen out of political fashion in the most deadly of ways: the belief that immigrants should be welcomed into America not out of obligation or utility, but because they are human beings and thus inherently deserving of care and solidarity.

Set in 1981, the movie stars Emily Mortimer as a Czech immigrant living in Fargo, a small North Dakota city, and works through her Lutheran church to help resettle a family of Cambodian refugees in the United States. In real life Lukas’ mother actually was a Czech immigrant who throughout the ‘80s helped dozens of refugees from all backgrounds relocate in America — including, of course, the adjacent state of Minnesota, where President Trump has been particularly ferocious in his war against immigrants.

Unlike the reality of Trump’s America, “One Cambodian Family Please For My Pleasure” is an uplifting story, one I highly recommend you check out on YouTube, along with my accompanying video (see below) interviewing Lukas in depth about the true story. When I hear this tale, I think of the picture of one of the families saved by Lukas’ mother (see above)…. and wonder how they are doing today.

I’m not alone in asking this question. The following transcript has been mildly revised for clarity.

Lukas:

I was talking with my mom and I don’t know if you saw recently one of those like arresting, startling images, like the image of Liam, the five-year-old boy who was detained, or any of the images coming out of Minnesota right now. There was one of a Hmong, a 56-year-old Hmong man, who they ripped out of his house wearing just pajamas, right? He was very disheveled. You could tell that he was probably asleep and it was heartbreaking. And my mom was like, “I’m pretty sure he was one of the young boys that I helped resettle at the time in the ‘80s. He would’ve been one of those kids depicted in the film.”

Rozsa:

And now he’s being bothered by ICE, thanks to Trump.

Lukas:

Ripped out of his house in the middle of the night and sent somewhere.

Rozsa:

Do we even know where? Was it a camp? Was it back to China?

Lukas:

Oh, no. I mean, I think they’re sending everyone — there’s one facility in Minnesota, and then they’re shipping a lot of people down to Texas. I heard from my friend who’s in Minnesota right now — she’s a nurse hospital administrator with kids — and her kid’s best friend and his entire family were sent down to Texas. She said that, thankfully, she thinks they’re coming back, but the trauma that’s being inflicted on people — even the ones who aren’t being murdered — is staggering. And the sheer amount of money, our tax dollars, being spent to send a family to basically a concentration camp and then ship them back is mind-blowing.

And I agree with you about the money thing — that’s the law. One of the many losses of innocence that keeps happening is the realization that it’s only money that runs the world. It’s only money that the people in power are ever thinking about, it seems. It’s like the only language they speak is money; nothing else seems to matter. And the fact that now Trump — like today, yesterday and today— has pulled back a little on this, with the New York Times journalists talking about it like, “Hmm, could this actually make a difference? Is it going to be better now?”

It’s like, the reason he’s pulling back is to manage the situation so that it doesn’t erupt into a full-on civil war.

Rozsa:

Until he is ready to win it. Until he is ready to win it.

To be clear, Lukas and her mother aren’t 100% sure that the Hmong man on the screen was one of the refugees her mother helped. As her mother herself put it, “They said he was 56,” and the child she had in mind “was 7 when they arrived to Fargo. There were five children, the boys were the oldest ones. One of them would have had to been 10 back then to be now 56.”

Could it be the same family? Maybe, maybe not, “but THAT does not matter! It’s just heart-breaking.”

When I think about the Cambodian family featured in “One Cambodian Family Please For My Pleasure,” I’m reminded of my own immigrant roots. Among the most compelling, as I recalled to Lukas, is my great-grandfather Martin Huppert, who immigrated to the United States in 1900 as an 18-year-old from Budapest.

“During Prohibition—all through Prohibition—he made a very good living as a bootlegger, which means that by the logic of the Trump administration, Martin Huppert should have been deported right back to Hungary, even though he made this living breaking a law that no longer exists, committing a crime that the vast majority of people do not think should be a crime,” I told Lukas. “He only did it to provide for his family, including my grandmother. I, by the way, found a newspaper clipping which found that he was busted for running a speakeasy days before my grandma was born in 1923. I am very curious what was happening in that Jersey City house when he returned home from the clink.”

I concluded that “there were shades of gray there, and there are shades of gray throughout America today. Most of these immigrants are not all good or all evil. I am sure that the refugees your mother helped were not all good or all evil, but they are still human beings, and they should not be treated like vermin.”

We are united by our shared humanity, as Lukas’ film makes clear, and we only need to look at our own family histories to see that the immigrants persecuted by Trump are just like ourselves.

I don’t have much else to add beyond this. At the time that Lukas and I spoke about “One Cambodian Family For My Pleasure,” President Trump has used ICE to kill innocent people protesting his immigration policies…. and, of course, continues hauling hundreds of thousands of innocent people away because of their immigration status.

This will either get much worse or much better, but it will not stay the same. Trump will keep fighting these cruel battles as long as he thinks he can win them.

Will we let him?

Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 10

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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On Wednesday, President Trump reduced American tariffs on India while claiming the world’s second-most populous country had agreed to stop buying Russian oil in return. Russia replied that India made no such promise.

Just as importantly, America’s longtime economic allies like Japan, South Korea and the European Union are striking new deals with each other rather than deal with the instability and humiliation of Trump’s constant bullying.

It reminds me of what I wrote for the Progressive Policy Institute last year:

The silver lining in this dark cloud is the perfect opportunity Democrats now have to reclaim their historic leadership and optimistic messages by condemning Trump’s protectionism. As Roosevelt demonstrated in the 1930s, Democrats can build a durable political coalition based on the prosperity and international stability facilitated through trade liberalization. As Kennedy showed in the 1960s, economic integration with neighbors and allies can remain a vital and successful policy even when the world isn’t bogged down in a literal war and depression. As Clinton proved in the 1990s, a Democrat can win his party’s nomination despite the opposition of protectionists within their own ranks and indeed by leaning into the party’s low-tariff, pro-exporter, pro-consumer heritage.

What is unfolding now is not simply a messy trade dispute or another episode of Trumpian bluster. It is a slow-motion erosion of American credibility, one tariff threat at a time. When U.S. policy becomes indistinguishable from extortion and improvisation, allies do what rational actors always do: they hedge, they diversify and they cut deals that bypass Washington altogether. The result is not “America First,” but America isolated, watching from the sidelines as others construct the very trade architecture we once dominated.

Trump’s defenders insist that chaos is a feature rather than a bug, that unpredictability keeps rivals off balance. Yet the evidence points in the opposite direction. China, Russia and even longtime U.S. partners have learned how to wait out, deflect or ignore Trump’s demands. The costs of his approach, meanwhile, are borne by American consumers, exporters and workers who face higher prices, retaliatory tariffs and shrinking access to foreign markets. Bullying does not create leverage when the bully depends on the cooperation of those he mistreats.

This is why the moment is so ripe for Democrats to stop triangulating and start leading. Trade liberalization is not a concession to corporations or a relic of a bygone era; it is a tool for shared prosperity and geopolitical stability when paired with strong labor protections, environmental standards and domestic investment. The party that once understood this does not need to invent a new ideology, only to recover the confidence to defend an old one.

Trump has made the argument easier by exposing the emptiness of economic nationalism as governing philosophy. In its place, Democrats can articulate a vision of trade that lowers costs for families, expands exports for American producers and reinforces alliances rather than sabotaging them. At a time when authoritarian powers are eager to fill any vacuum the United States leaves behind, choosing cooperation over coercion is not naïveté. It is realism. And it is a choice Democrats should be eager to make.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Because I criticize Israel, I’ve been accused of anti-Semitism — or at least insensitivity toward Jews — by many fellow Jews in my life. A fellow journalist, a Libertarian Party leader, an ex-girlfriend, two Israelis… the list goes on and on.

Nevermind that I’ve written repeatedly about being Jewish (including surviving a hate crime) and denouncing anti-Semitism. Because I despise Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, and openly describe it as such, I’m denounced as anti-Semitic.

Yet at the same time, I agree that many critics of Israel are motivated by anti-Semitism, not sincere abhorrence of human rights violations. Partially this is because so many of Israel’s critics (especially those on the right like Andrew Tate, Kanye West, Marjorie Taylor Greene and David Duke) seem to support human rights violations except when Jews perpetrate them. More personally, though, it’s because I’m repeatedly accused of being pro-Israel, based not on what I’ve said but for no other reason than I’m Jewish.

This is why I think of the 2025 “South Park” episode “Conflict of Interest,” in which Jewish characters Kyle and Sheila Broflovski (Matt Stone and Mona Marshall) are repeatedly blamed for Israeli atrocities because of their background.

“I think it’s terrible, a lot of people are dying,” Broflovski says at one point, prompting her friends to say, “And … do you feel you should do something about it?”

Broflovski’s response is exactly what every anti-Semite needs to hear when they use valid criticisms of Israel as their shield.

“Are you implying that Jews in the U.S. have a duty to do something about this?” she yells. “You want to slander my faith, don’t you? It’s not the Jews against Palestine; it’s Israel against Palestine! And maybe if you read books instead of listening to what Hollywood actors say, you’ll see the difference.”

Later she elaborates on this point: “Why is everyone suddenly confronting us about politics? Have people been asking what you think about Gaza? It’s just pure anti-Semitism. I’m so sick of being grilled about my views on Palestine and my thoughts on Hamas and being judged for things that are centuries old and that non-Jews know nothing about. Well, if they all think we should do something, then you better believe I’ll do something.”

Of course, because “South Park” is a cartoon instead of real life, Broflovski is one ordinary American Jew who has the ability to actually do something. Thus at the end she confronts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, using words that I’d apply to every Jew who supports his Zionist atrocities.

“Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism!” she indignantly declares. “You’re making life for Jews miserable and life for American Jews impossible!”

When he rolls his eyes, she scolds him further.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, mister!” she says. “You know what you’re doing, and you’re doing it on purpose!”

Indeed he is. Netanyahu, better than any human being alive, knows that you can shut down debate about Israel by fanning the flames of Jew-hatred throughout the world. Once you have enough Jews scared for their lives, they’ll back Israel even when it kills thousands and flattens neighborhoods.

Like Sheila Broflovski, I’m disgusted by both sides here. I cannot stand Netanyahu, Israel’s own President Donald Trump, avoid accountability for his myriad crimes (both war-related and financial) and continue decades of miserable, immoral apartheid policies in Israel. I am similarly contemptuous toward Jews who attempt to intimidate Israel’s critics into silence by labeling any harsh words about Israel as anti-Semitic.

At the same time, I’m fed up with being told that every Jew is somehow a Zionist unless proven otherwise. I have no use for people who obviously sit around all days hating Jews, see Israel as a galvanizer for their cause and then make Jews miserable while claiming an actually-nonexistent moral high ground.

Most people, I believe, are smart and decent enough to realize that you can both oppose anti-Semitism and Israeli genocide. The ones who insist that you must support Israel or else be an anti-Semite, and those who insist all Jews must denounce Israel with every breath lest they be accountable, are equally foolish and vile.

Back Seat Socialism

Column by Matthew Rozsa who is a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Carl Sagan is arguably the greatest science communicator of all time — and his widow, Ann Druyan, has important things to say about science and abortion rights.

Sagan is best known today for narrating the 1980 docuseries “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” which after having been seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries remains the most widely-watched series in public television history. The astronomer and planetary scientist also wrote popular science books including “The Dragons of Eden” in 1977 (about the evolution of human intelligence), “Broca’s Brain” in 1979 (about debunking bad science), “Cosmos” in 1980 (to accompany the TV series), “Pale Blue Dot” in 1994 (a sequel to “Cosmos”) and “The Demon-Haunted World” in 1996 (more debunking bad science). On a personal level, I adore Sagan for writing the 1985 novel that introduced me to him, “Contact,” as well as the underrated 1997 film adaptation I was lucky enough to see in theaters.

Throughout his 40-year career, Sagan consistently advocated widespread science education and scientific literacy. This brings us to Druyan, Sagan’s wife for 15 years (from 1981 until his untimely death from cancer in 1996). In the late 1970s, Druyan was the creative director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Project, which created the golden discs affixed to the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. Druyan has continued to “Cosmos” franchise after Sagan’s passing, and won a litany of prestigious awards including the 2004 Richard Dawkins Award, the 2014 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming, the 2015 Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television, the 2015 Writers Guild Award for Documentary Script (Other than Current Events), the 2017 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award, and the 2020 National Geographic Further Award.

While I could have spoken to Druyan for hours about each individual topic from the previous two paragraphs, I instead focused on a 1990 editorial Sagan and Druyan co-authored for Parade Magazine about abortion. The two scientists, contemplating at the time the Christian Right’s crusade against women’s reproductive rights, presented a scientific case for abortion.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

Rozsa:

When describing how President Trump has rolled back abortion rights during the first year of his second term, the Center for Reproductive Rights focused on his use of pseudoscience, such as calling birth control an abortifacient, or having the FDA investigate the abortion pill. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Chief Justice Alito explicitly used Christian teachings to justify his position. To what extent can we thus say that the war on women’s reproductive rights is one and the same as the war on science?

Druyan:

It’s a facet of that war, but I feel like this administration is a war on all of us and on women, on every living thing, actually. And so, yes, it’s part of the war. It’s anti-scientific. All of the positions that he takes are not only not grounded in science, they’re not even grounded in reality. And so, you know, if you hear someone speak who is so mendacious, who lies virtually every single time you hear him speak, it’s no wonder that the administration and Trump personally are completely disinterested in any scientific argument about abortion. He is, of course, always appealing to the most base in all of us, the most fearful, the most ignorant. And so that’s his M.O. And why should abortion be any different from any of the other subjects?

Rozsa:

It’s an important difference because, in my opinion, it is one with so much Christian Right hate behind it. And I say this as someone who spent years of his career as a Salon Magazine journalist focusing on climate change. And I know that the Christian Right is glomming onto that. They’re glomming onto anti-science arguments about vaccines. They’re glomming onto anti-science arguments about all kinds of issues. But abortion is special because it’s rooted in their hate for women. Also think of their war on immigrants. Think of their war on the poor that is also rooted in hatred and fear, and in pseudoscience. They use eugenics to justify their hate of immigrants. They use laissez-faire economics to justify their hate of the poor. I would argue that those are pseudoscientific arguments.

Druyan:

You’re making my argument. It’s all of a piece. Yes, abortion, all of it is—it’s kind of an assault on reality. And think of what they tried to do to public education, to higher education. There’s no area — CDC, health on any level. There is no exception to their attitude, which is the flight from reality and the flight towards prejudice, bigotry, fear, ignorance. That’s all of it. And it’s all of a piece.

But you know what’s interesting to me, in studying the question of abortion, as you kindly alluded to the piece that Carl Sagan and I wrote together in 1990, we did extensive research because we were taking a bit of a stand. And we wanted to be sure that that—if you look, Hitler and Stalin, both were two of the most determined right-to-lifers in history — this is one of the first things that Stalin did.

So I don’t see the hatred of women and the rejection of their rights as being necessarily something that is only found in a particular kind of economic system. I think it starts with agriculture and it begins very early in human history. And it’s part of a kind of a warfare that dominance hierarchies have waged on women.

Rozsa:

That is an excellent way of putting it. And I’m glad you mentioned the editorial you wrote in 1990. I’m going to quote it right now. You observed that a future in which abortion rights are overturned “conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up, forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with, saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home and bring up babies, and worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants.”

Do you believe that world is real now? And if so, is that by accident or design?

Druyan:

I think there are people who are working in a very concerted way to bring about this great leap backwards into the past. And so, yes, I mean, it’s not an accident. It is a piece, as I said earlier. And one of the things that Carl and I discovered in our research was that there was, of the Catholic Church, for instance, until 1869, not a word. Nothing. And in fact, if you read some of the early church writers, St. Augustine, various others, they are not against abortion.

And so this is a recent artifact of something that has roots in a much more ancient kind of power structure in which women do not have any freedom or any choice. And that’s one of the reasons, by the way, that even in this period of terrible darkness, the worst darkness of my lifetime, even in this period in the United States of kind of horror, I have so much hope because I was born in 1949. I’m 76.

And so I remember when the hatred of women and the fear of women was so intense and so chronic that the ridicule of women was our primary form of public entertainment. Every sitcom was how stupid women are. Women are so dumb. And I remember being a child in that world and resenting it fiercely. And luckily I had parents who really believed in me and who gave me a completely different sense of who I was and what my future was. But, as bad as things are, I can’t believe they’re not as bad as they were in the early ‘50s when I was coming of age and living in a completely racist, sexist, homophobic world.

Rozsa:

My fear is that we are heading there, not just through the overturning of reproductive rights, but through other Trump administration initiatives. Look at how they’re downgrading or firing women and people of color in the military because they assume that they are incompetent by virtue of their immutable characteristics. Look at the constant barrage of anti-feminist, anti-woke rhetoric from the Right. This is all part of a concerted effort to break down the idea that the world you grew up in in the 1950s shouldn’t be the world we return to in the 2020s.

Druyan:

Yes. But this is where I find the hopeful aspect, and that is, we’re talking about the most unpopular president in modern American history. We’re talking about someone who really has no real constituency anymore, besides the people who are completely crazy. That’s the feeling I’m getting. Maybe I live in a bubble, but I try to find people who really like Trump still and really like what he’s doing every day, and really want to go to war with Greenland and want to run Venezuela and want to be permanently impoverished. And I can’t find them.

Rozsa:

My concern is that his approval rating, though stuck in the high 30s and low 40s, is not low enough for him to feel as if he can’t do whatever he wants, because that base in the Republican Party, the MAGA movement, hasn’t budged.

Druyan:

Great point, great point, Matthew.

Rozsa:

Because if him sending an angry mob to murder them on January 6th, 2021 wasn’t going to sway them, nothing will.

Druyan:

Great point, great point, Matthew. And I know a lot of people whom I respect who feel the way you do, so my mind is open. But I have to say that what’s terrifying is when the mob—when the country becomes the mob—when the country, such as what happened in Germany, is really like, yeah, let’s do this, you know?

And I don’t think—I really feel like the American people are coming to the opinion that he is deluded. Now, of course, it could be that the algorithm is feeding me stuff that I want to hear. I’m sure that’s true to an extent. But you can feel—I feel, and others like Robert Reich—various people have been writing in the last month saying, we feel that sea change. We feel that turning away from this kind of madness.

Rozsa:

And I hope you’re right. But I disagree only because I think, from the perspective of Trump and his supporters, they only need each other, even if it’s two-fifths of the country waging war against the other three-fifths. If that two-fifths can control the military and the courts, if they can control the media—which Trump is trying to do through Larry and David Ellison — and other aspects through which we obtain information, like online search engines — then the three-fifths be damned. The two-fifths will just cudgel us into submission. That might be the way they look at it.

Druyan:

I don’t know. I’m sure you’ve been to the demonstrations recently, and in places—really unlikely places. I’m not talking about New York and Boston, I’m talking about throughout the country. And I feel like, as long as people feel that the economy is not serving them—and they’re feeling it more and more keenly all the time—the likelihood that they will be blessing this man and his monstrous government becomes smaller and smaller.

And if you believe that there are underlying economic forces that determine history, then I think there’s reason to hope. The inequities in American society were always great, but there was a huge middle class 50 or 40 years ago that had rising expectations of what the lives of their children and grandchildren would be. That’s not true anymore. Not only that, but the inequities between people who work for a living and the people who have incomprehensible amounts of money—who live in a completely different existence—that contrast has become much starker.

Rozsa:

But Trump and the media are clever at redirecting that anger toward immigrants or trans people or people of color or Jews or women or the liberal media. They are very skilled at taking legitimate economic grievances and transferring them toward illegitimate explanations that usually are rooted in hate and always serve their economic bottom line.

Druyan:

And absolutely true. You’re totally right. They have been very skilled, and we have not been as skilled in conveying our messages. Absolutely right. But I think we’re learning—our learning curve is—

Rozsa:

I don’t think we should blame ourselves for not being skilled. I think the problem is that we don’t have money. Dr. Richard Wolff, the founder of this nonprofit and one of my personal heroes, has said many times that the problem the left has is that our argument ultimately is not as profitable for the people in power as the arguments of the right. It is a serious structural flaw. And it’s not something that’s a moral problem or even a strategic problem. It’s just that we are arguing that the rich should have less, and the right is arguing that the rich should have more. Which one do you think is going to get more money from the rich? That’s the basic problem.

Druyan:

Well, as long as we’re depending on the rich, it’s not going to go well for us. Yes. We can’t depend on them, and that’s something that we have to be responsible for. We have to—I think we do have to sharpen our message, and I think we have to be absolutely vigilant and willing to schlep anywhere and do whatever we are called upon to do to say, no, not in our name. No, we will not. This is not acceptable. We have to do that. And my—

Rozsa:

And my concern is that—and this is the basic structural problem with capitalism—is that even when you had people initially opposing Trump from the rich who run the world, even when you had the Jeff Bezoses and the Mark Zuckerbergs talking a big game about their support for diversity and their opposition to fascism, once they started to sense that Trump might actually prevail, they quickly turned coat. And now Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are sucking up to him like puppies on a wolf’s teets.

Druyan:

And—and may I say, I never put my faith in those people. And we can’t do that.

Rozsa:

I don’t put my faith in them, but they control our lives whether we want them to or not.

Druyan:

We can’t be surprised that whatever pretense of equity they held, they dropped as soon as Trump became president. I mean, that is who they are.

And—but that is fundamentally why the left loses. It’s not about money—it’s that there’s not enough money, and there never will be enough money for that. There’s no limit. There’s never enough. And on the tiny pale blue dot that we live on, with finite resources, there’s no way that our current system can ever—

And by the way, I’m not saying that I know of another system that’s doing this—but what is called for, what we need, is a kind of thinking on timescales that no capitalist or communist or socialist society has ever been able to develop.

Rozsa:

See, that’s brilliant. Because that is brilliant.

Druyan:

And that’s the problem. You see, if we were thinking on the timescales of science—science is talking to us about 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution; the history of our planet and the history of life, four-and-a-half billion years, five billion years. And all of us—you, me, everyone—are alive because of an unbroken chain of life that goes back to the first couple of hundred million years of the existence of this planet.

And this is what we have to begin to keep sacred and to believe is our sacred duty as links in that chain for this moment: to protect this magnificent birthright that we’re all a part of. And there has not been a human society since perhaps the days of the hunter-gatherers that has internalized that preciousness.

And the fact is that the mentality of the super-rich—and I’m not talking about how they think or what they say, I don’t know them—I’m talking about how they live and how they treat the resources that really belong to all of us. And that’s the heartbreak: that people as foolish and selfish as they are could despoil, could ruin this legacy of which we are a part.

Rozsa:

I think you just put that so beautifully that any follow-up I might say will not live up to what you just uttered. That was amazing. Thank you.

It reminds me of why I fell in love with the TV show Cosmos. And by the way—oh, great—I’m not sure if you noticed this on my bookshelf. And also my mom, who is friends with your friend Stu Bossert and made this interview happen—hi, Mom— she saw this when it was in theaters with me and got verklempt when the words “For Carl” appeared at the end. And at that moment, I could see—I could hear—the voice of Cosmos in what you just said.

Druyan:

Well, I am perpetually verklempt because of the great goodness and beauty of Carl Sagan, and because of my unbelievable good fortune to have had 20 years with him and two kids. And yeah—this was a man who was up close so much more remarkable than he even seemed from afar.

There’s so much to talk about. You know, this was a mensch through and through. And I think the reason people still love him nearly 30 years after his death is because that goodness emanated from him. You could sense it. And watching Cosmos or reading Contact or any of the books that he wrote or that we wrote together—he was magnificent. And I can never wrap my head around how lucky I was to know him.

Rozsa:

He changed millions, or perhaps even billions and billions, of lives. And he also, in my opinion, was—in a secular sense—a prophet. And I’m not using the word prophet lightly.

Let me quote “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge even to ourselves that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Now, I agree with everything you’ve said about the importance of science and humanism and the—your belief in the majority being decent. But my concern is that that large minority, which by your own husband’s words has been bamboozled, will never admit that they’re wrong for exactly the reasons that he wrote.

Druyan:

Some of them will not. Some of them are lost causes for us because they cannot be touched. And the reasons for that are probably complex and multi-leveled, but most people, I think, do know what’s right and what’s wrong. And I believe in small-d democracy truly. And you can’t hold that belief if you don’t have a deep respect for humanity.

Rozsa:

I agree with that as well. I’m also going to quote another passage that your husband wrote, which speaks to the future. He said in that same book, “The Demon-Haunted World,” “the dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media. The 30-second soundbites, now down to 10 seconds or less [and imagine what he would’ve thought of TikTok and YouTube], owest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Druyan:

Celebration of ignorance. Exactly.

Rozsa:

That is, and I’m going to bring this full circle to the issue of women’s reproductive rights. The MAGA movement’s approach to it—celebrating ignorance of women’s biology, celebrating ignorance about the procedures and about the medications that are used, celebrating ignorance about the fact that women are just as capable as men in STEM fields, are just as capable as men in the military, are in fact the equal of men. It’s—they have to deny all of the science. And in my mind, women are being very much hurt by this. And I’m curious, when you and Carl wrote that essay for Parade Magazine in 1990, was this the world that you feared would happen if Roe v. Wade was overturned?

Druyan:

Yes, we did. But I have to say, we did not have an inkling of how bad it would be. You know, I am a complete materialist rationalist. I don’t have a mystical bone in my body except for maybe fortune cookies. I love fortunes. We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what would happen now. And I’ve often thought if I ever saw Carl again, and I have no expectation that I will, but how would I tell him what has happened in the last 30 years? It would be heartbreaking. I think he would cry. And it makes me cry when I think of how far we came from our dream, our shining moment, and how far this administration has pushed us backwards.

And my comfort here is that history does not move in a straight line. It just doesn’t. It’s not like an upward trajectory. It’s a pendulum. And the pendulum was swinging our way for many years. Not all the way, not as far as I would like to go. But compared to the ‘50s, as I said earlier, there was a sense of a growing enlightenment. And what Trump has done from the moment he walked on the national stage, he has pushed us as far back as he possibly could. And it’s really nauseating. It’s horrifying. And I just have this sense that from now on, we are going to see his diminished capacity, the fact that he is feeble, the fact that he is inarticulate, the fact that he tells such crazy lies every time he speaks, where “I’m gonna get you a thousand percent reduction in prices,” just like an infant, like a child. And I feel like after a while this gets old and people become immune to it because they’ve heard it so many times.

Rozsa:

I am—you and I agree philosophically, but I am far more cynical about human nature than you. I think that might be where we are disagreeing. And the reason I am so cynical is because I am oversaturated every day with the—the garbage pumped out by the pro-Trump media. And then I hear people regurgitate that garbage onto me and try to pass it off as filet mignon. Everywhere I turn. I live in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. It’s inescapable. Where do you live?

Druyan:

I live in upstate New York and in a fairly isolated rural area, although we have a couple of universities nearby, but still—

Rozsa:

Is Trump beloved there?

Druyan:

No, hated everywhere I go. Everywhere. Everywhere. In fact, the last No Kings demonstration, there were so many people in the demonstration, you could not get downtown. You could not, because every street was so choked with people demonstrating.

Rozsa:

And I—I have met not one, not two, but three people—one of them a friend, and the other two people I’ve just interacted with in the course of casual conversations—who have specifically said that they love Trump because of what he did to reverse abortion rights. Everything else aside. They don’t care because he overturned abortion rights. They are for him.

Druyan:

Okay, so they have—they’ve focused on one particular issue, which is interesting, I have to say, because there are so many other pressing issues that are important, and if you say to them, well, how do you feel about—about us going to war with Denmark over Greenland? Do they say, ‘Yeah, let’s go’?

Rozsa:

They’ll say that there’s nothing worse than murdering babies. And when I argue that they’re not babies, and I will cite your 1990 Parade Magazine editorial, which makes a very persuasive argument that consciousness in every meaningful sense doesn’t exist until at the earliest the beginning of the third trimester, they’ll say, “Nope, life begins at conception. You’ll never convince me otherwise.” And that’s where the conversation ends.

Druyan:

Well, they should be—as we said in our article—they should be militant anti-masturbation. They should really take a stand because why wait to—

Rozsa:

But for most of these men, if they couldn’t masturbate, they’d never have any sexual experience at all.

Druyan:

Okay, well, fair enough. Well, we don’t want them then. They would really be grumpy [laugh]. If you think they’re bad now, they would be so grumpy. So let’s not—let’s not do that to them. But still, I mean, what can you say? These are people who are against SNAP, who are against early childhood development specialists. They’re against nutrition for the children of the underserved. How do they rationalize this? They never understand. It’s almost as if as soon as you’re born, you’re on your own [laugh].

Rozsa:

I think the way they rationalize it—to bring it full circle—is it’s about controlling and hating women. They—

Druyan:

Okay, but they don’t rationalize it that way. We do, we understand it to be that, but they don’t rationalize it that way.

Rozsa:

See, and maybe I’m a little more cynical. Maybe I’m the person who believes that secretly they are very conscious about what they’re doing, and everything they say publicly is deliberate nonsense. Again, that’s a cynical way of looking at it. But I think that they’re liars. And you know why I think that? Because Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett all appeared before Congress and swore that they had no intention of overturning Roe v. Wade. So I believe they are deliberate malicious liars.

Druyan:

They—no question. I’m with you on that, Matthew. A hundred percent. They—what their conduct is indefensible. And I don’t understand why the Senate holds the hearings and has people swear that they’re going to tell the truth. And when they demonstrably lie just to get their what they want, I don’t understand why they’re never held accountable.

But this is the problem. And I—I felt that this began, there’ve always been these contending forces of enlightenment in my view and reaction. And a kind of backwardness, those forces have always existed. But it feels to me as if, when it was clear that there would never be any consequences for any of the high crimes—of someone like George Bush going to war on a lie affecting countless lives, killing people, hundreds of thousands of people died, and there was never any consequence for him when we all knew—I was in New York with 700,000 other people demonstrating, and everyone was holding signs before we went to war — there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And when it proved to be the case, there was not any consequence for this man.

And I believe that if it’s so clear to us that Trump can conduct himself the way he did on January 6th, and instead of being punished for it, he can be given the highest reward in the land. It says to me that that’s our—the danger we’re up against is there is no consequence for a certain class of people in this society. And that’s wicked. And not only that, even if you don’t think it’s wicked, it’s counterproductive and it’s a danger to our future.

Rozsa:

I agree. And on that note, I’m going to close with my final question. Is there anything important you would like to say about this subject? We’ve discussed women’s reproductive rights and the war on science that I haven’t given you a chance to say with the questions I’ve raised so far.

Druyan:

I’ll leave this, and this is my very subjective opinion, which I cannot in any way back up with any kind of rock solid data. But just based on the women I know—we are going to get those rights back. And we are not going to stop until we do because we know what’s right. And we’ve looked at this deep and very profound question of whether or not it’s possible to be both pro-choice and pro-life. And it is possible, but to be one without the other is wrong. And we’re living in a situation where rights—this is very rarely happened in American history, it did during Reconstruction, another hideous period in American history, and it is now that we have rolled back hard fought rights that we won, legally.

We’re going to get them back. And I know the women I know are not going to stop until we do. And that’s true of many of the men I know too.

Rozsa:

I’m one of the people who is part of the Resistance and will fight to get those rights back. I hope that my cynicism about the cruelty of the two-fifths who still support Trump is misplaced.

Druyan:

Well, whoever is right or wrong about this situation, I want you to know what a stimulating experience it was for me to be talking with you. I’m so happy we did this, and, it’s an honor and I hope you get another chance someday to have more opportunities.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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In 1997, director Robert Zemeckis adapted scientist Carl Sagan’s classic 1985 novel “Contact” into a major motion picture. Starring Jodie Foster as an atheist science and Matthew McConaughey as her Christian philosopher lover, “Contact” hooks audiences with a tantalizing premise: Scientists searching for extraterrestrial life are contacted by an advanced civilization from the stars. They send schematics to a mysterious machine; humanity must construct it and, without knowing what comes next, activate it.

When I first saw the trailer for “Contact” in theaters in 1997, I immediately lost interest in the movie I was there to see (“The Lost World: Jurassic Park” was my 12th birthday gift). What does that machine do? I kept wondering. What would it be like to contact an alien civilization?

Upon seeing “Contact,” I was instead struck by its profound meditation on the need to balance science with religion. Sagan himself was profoundly skeptical about whether God and an afterlife exist; speaking with his widow Ann Druyan, who co-authored the story of “Contact” with Sagan, I heard her reaffirm Sagan’s lifelong belief that when you die, your conscious mind no longer exists.

These are depressing thoughts, demoralizing even, and I suspect Sagan and Druyan (like me) accepted them with the sad resignation of those who do not wish to allow hope to counter their education. Yet even though Sagan, Druyan and myself identify far more with Foster’s Dr. Ellie Arroway than McConaughey’s Palmer Joss, they are intellectually honest about their subject. Arroway and Joss have fantastically profound conversations about balancing science and religion, with both sides given a fair chance to air their views.

Ellie Arroway: I read your book.

Palmer Joss: Here we go.

Ellie Arroway: You want me to quote you? “Ironically, the thing people are most hungry for - meaning - is the one thing science hasn’t been able to give them.”

Palmer Joss: Yeah.

Ellie Arroway: [humorously] Come on! It’s like you’re saying that science killed God. What if science simply revealed that He never existed in the first place?

Palmer Joss: I think we’re gonna need to get some air.

Ellie Arroway: Oh?

Palmer Joss: [takes two champagne glasses] And a few more of these...

Later, Arroway delivers what seems to be a knockout punch to Joss’ point-of-view.

Ellie Arroway: So what’s more likely? That an all-powerful, mysterious God created the Universe, and decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or, that He simply doesn’t exist at all, and that we created Him, so that we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone?

The beauty of “Contact” is that, when the machine is finally activated and the subsequent adventure embarked upon, the Arroway-Joss discourses become unexpectedly relevant. I won’t spoil why, but suffice to say that I was shocked and delighted with the outcome as a nerdy 12-year-old sci-fi nerd studying for his Bar Mitzvah.

By the time the plot of “Contact” is resolved, the Arroway-Joss exchanges and the main plot have intersected beautifully. “Contact” rewards subsequent viewings precisely because it allows viewers to contemplate nuances in both story and philosophy that may have previously eluded them.

What other movie can deliver like this? They are few and far between, and rarely spout pedigrees as distinguished as this one.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Can we socialize sleep? Must hundreds of millions suffer?

Roughly 936 million adults worldwide are living with obstructive sleep apnea, according to a comprehensive medical review published by the National Library of Medicine. That is not a typo; with a global population of roughly 8 billion, it counts as roughly one out of nine people alive.

This is not a marginal statistic. Nearly one billion people experience repeated breathing interruptions during sleep that significantly raise their risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression and early death. When I ask the question “Can we socialize sleep?”, I am asking it on behalf of those 936 million people — myself among them — because a condition this widespread cannot reasonably be treated as an individual consumer problem.

It was with that scale in mind that I spoke in 2023 to Dr. Colin Sullivan, the inventor of the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine. “I hope for a future where my invention is no longer needed,” Sullivan told me during our conversation. His hope is not that people stop treating sleep apnea, but that humanity eventually prevents it altogether. I admire that sentiment deeply. But until such a future arrives, Sullivan and I agree on something far more immediate: anyone who needs a CPAP should be able to afford one, along with the sleep studies and long-term medical care required to determine the best treatment. That belief brings me back to the same unavoidable question: Can we socialize sleep?

The number alone, 936 million adults worldwide, makes clear that sleep apnea is not a niche disorder. In the United States, an estimated 22 million people have sleep apnea (out of roughly 340 million, or approximately 1 out of 15), and roughly 80 percent of moderate to severe cases remain undiagnosed. Untreated sleep apnea is associated with sharply increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, stroke and workplace accidents. When diagnosis and treatment are delayed, patients often suffer years of cumulative damage that could have been prevented with early intervention. These harms are measurable, common and deadly.

One reason sleep apnea is so widespread globally is that it is not primarily behavioral. As I reported when examining why the human neck is effectively an evolutionary mistake, modern humans evolved airways optimized for speech rather than uninterrupted breathing during sleep. This anatomical compromise makes airway collapse more likely with aging, weight gain or inflammation. Sleep apnea is therefore not a failure of discipline or willpower. It is a predictable outcome of human biology, one we are reluctant to accept for religious reasons.

I think of engineer and creationist Walter Myers III who, critiquing an article of mine maligning the human neck as proof that if God designed the body he is a poor draftsman, compared me to the discoverer of evolution, Sir Charles Darwin himself.

“Darwin made this mistake numerous times in the Origin of Species, purporting to know what God may or may not do with respect to design,” Myers wrote, “and thus arguing as to how a blind, purposeless process acts fully as a designer substitute with no evidence aside from the quite uncontroversial natural selection clearly demonstrated in the book (notably, Darwin does not even address origins).”

Because organized religions often refuse to accept the inherent imperfections of the human body, they naturally rebel against the idea of providing free health care. Yet once you acknowledge that the body is in fact the result of natural selection and not intelligent design, there is only one moral conclusion: With nearly a billion people worldwide affected by a condition rooted in their anatomy, the question “Can we socialize sleep?” becomes a matter of biological survival rather than mere political ideology.

What continues to strike me, after years of reporting on sleep and health, is how unnecessary so much suffering is. Dr. Sullivan did not invent the CPAP to create dependence on a machine. He invented it because he saw patients whose lives were being shortened night after night. I even recall how he vividly described the first apnea patient who he effectively treated with a rudimentary CPAP.

It was a hot summer night in 1980, and the 45-year-old Australian builder was so exhausted he was nearly falling off scaffolding. He had sleep apnea — a condition that causes people to struggle to breathe while sleeping — and his body was barely holding itself together due to a severe lack of quality sleep. Finally his doctors told him that he had a choice: Either punch a hole in his throat so he could breathe while sleeping, a procedure known as a tracheotomy, or become a test subject for a new machine called a CPAP, short for continuous positive airway pressure.

The builder chose the CPAP, and from July 8 to 9, 1980, he took a literally historic snooze. When the builder woke up the following morning, he remarked at how refreshed he felt. For the first time he could remember, he felt genuinely awake and well-rested. His brain fog had dissipated; his blood pressure had improved; and, perhaps most strikingly, he realized he had been rendered partially color blind from exhaustion.

When Sullivan told me he hopes his invention will one day be obsolete, he was expressing faith in a future defined by prevention, early diagnosis and structural change. I share that hope. But hope does not help the 936 million adults worldwide who are struggling to breathe in their sleep right now.

So I keep asking it, deliberately and without apology: Can we socialize sleep? Doing so would mean universal access to affordable sleep studies, guaranteed coverage for CPAP machines and supplies, long-term follow-up care and medically appropriate alternatives like dental devices, surgical implants and other forms of surgery when CPAP is not tolerated. It would mean treating sleep apnea as essential healthcare rather than a lifestyle upgrade.

“I hope for a future where my invention is no longer needed,” Sullivan told me. I admire him for imagining that world. Until we reach it, however, the humane position is clear:

We need to socialize sleep!

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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If Donald Trump’s ghostwriter Anthony Schwartz is to be believed, America’s 45th/47th president may have a form of ADHD. Thus when Dr. Robert Shapiro — an esteemed economist who worked for America’s 42nd president, Bill Clinton — also suggested that Trump could have ADHD, I deliberately mentioned Schwartz’s observation.

Less deliberate? My subsequent ADHD-riddled interview with Shapiro.

What can I say? Unlike Trump, I don’t view neurodiversity as shameful, and am therefore unabashed in declaring my ADHD diagnosis. More to the point, I was a child with ADHD during the Golden Nineties, when Clinton led America through a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity from 1993 to 2001. Even though Shapiro has advised countless prominent Democrats, as well as President Barack Obama, I couldn’t stop dwelling on Clinton: Arkansas governor, two-term president, Rhodes scholar, suave saxophone player, shrewd political analyst, legendary eidetiker

Shapiro obviously shares my fascination with the man who, love him or hate him, objectively led an America in the ‘90s and early ‘00s far superior economically, geopolitically and in terms of social justice than the one languishing under Trump in the ‘10s and ‘20s. Perhaps this is why I was so shocked when he described Trump, and not Clinton, as “the most consequential president of our time.”

This is a direct excerpt from our interview. All interview excerpts are italicized.

Shapiro:

Donald Trump is the most consequential president of our time. He dominates American politics.

Rozsa:

Are you saying he’s even more dominant than Clinton or Obama or any of the others you’ve mentioned?

Shapiro:

Yes. Yes, he is more dominant. All of politics today is pro-Trump or anti-Trump. Discussion of substance is much less than it was before Trump. He has the ability to dominate the channels of communication more effectively than any other president I’ve ever seen, and that’s just a fact.

And look, he happens to be, in my view, unbalanced, ignorant, and very destructive. That destructiveness isn’t accidental—it’s built into his personality. But consequential presidents can be consequential for different reasons. They can change the country for the better, or they can change the country—and the world—for the worse. In that sense, the term “consequential” is neutral as to substance. The real question is how much someone reshapes American politics and institutions.

And in that sense, Donald Trump is the dominant figure of this era—all the worse for us and for the world. But it’s a fact.

Rozsa:

I hope you’re incorrect, and that Trump might someday be viewed as the political equivalent of a terrible virus—something that knocks you flat, but then gets purged from your system, leaving you healthier because your immune system has built up defenses against it. And I didn’t even intend that as a COVID reference, given how it defined his first term. The analogy just came to mind on its own. But could that be the case?

Shapiro:

Look, Adolf Hitler was the most consequential figure of the 1930s and 1940s. The fact that Germany was able to put him behind it, virtually entirely, after World War II doesn’t change the enormous impact he had.

I see your point. I concede that point—you’re absolutely right. It just breaks my heart.

Later in that same conversation, I rambled about why Clinton’s supporters never intimidated his detractors like Trump’s supporters. This conversation, inevitably, was linked to Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile financier who was connected to many powerful and rich people… and who is accused of suspected by many of preying on underage women with Trump.

Rozsa:

What I certainly agree with is that the evidence involving Trump and Epstein is extremely damning, while the evidence involving other people—like Clinton—is much less so. And I share a concern that I suspect you do as well: that in the zeal to take down Trump, everyone is going to be lumped into the same category.

The zeal to take down Trump is valid. The zeal to hold him accountable for the seemingly horrible things he did is valid. But you don’t want to ruin someone’s life just because they were peripherally connected to him. My sense is that’s what you’re saying, and I agree with that.

I’d also add something about your observation that people don’t fear Clinton. In American politics, the personality of the leader trickles down to the followers. My parents were Clinton supporters in the 1990s, and I knew many others as well. Clinton was all about being, as you put it, the man with the plan—the guy who was smart, who read the policies. The idea of Clinton pulling a January 6th would be laughable if the implications weren’t so somber.

That’s why people aren’t scared of Clinton. He never whipped up a cult of personality that he could use like a thug to intimidate people.

That’s precisely what Trump has done. And one bit of proof of that is this: I was very good friends with Senator Joe Lieberman. We disagreed on many issues—and I’m about to broach some of those with you—but one thing Lieberman told me always stuck with me. When he criticized Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he expected Clinton to ream him out. Instead, he got a call from the president saying, essentially, *I screwed up*. Not in those exact words, but that was the substance.

Can you imagine Trump being denounced by a senator from his own party for sexual infidelity and then calling that senator to say, “Yeah, you’re right”? That speaks to the difference. Would you agree with all of that?

Shapiro:

I absolutely agree with all of that, including what you said about Joe Lieberman, whom I also knew quite well—and with whom I also disagreed often.

Rozsa:

Yes. And we’re about to get to that, because you were talking about—now, I consider myself a democratic socialist in the Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani sense, which is very controversial among certain Democrats. But in my mind, that comes from the lived experiences of my generation.

We’ve seen the unfettered free market cause a massive economic collapse. That collapse produced generational income inequality, gave our bosses far more power to make our lives miserable, and left us with fewer resources to advocate for ourselves. Even now, the one truly great thing that’s happened in our lifetime was President Obama securing affordable health care through the Affordable Care Act. And Republicans have worked relentlessly to reverse it—the one good thing the government has given the American people in the 21st century.

So from that point of view, can you understand our profound cynicism? The idea that the free market can behave like a cancer, and that free-market ideology can destroy a healthy body if it’s allowed to run amok?

Shapiro:

Yes—but that wasn’t Bill Clinton’s philosophy.

Rozsa:

Right. I’m not talking about—what I’m saying is that Clinton is viewed by democratic socialists as someone who wants to negotiate with the cancer.

Shapiro:

I understand, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I think that’s a way of making an argument, but I don’t think it reflects the reality. I was with him when he made many decisions. He did not believe in unfettered markets. He believed in regulating markets in ways that allowed them to produce wealth while also benefiting the broader public.

He ran as a new kind of Democrat—well, as a Democrat, because he believed the role of government was to improve people’s lives. And look, this is a man who was raised dirt poor, who had a very difficult childhood. His father died before he was born—while his mother was pregnant. She left him with his grandmother so she could train as a nurse to support him, meaning he lost his mother for a time when he was very young. Later, she remarried an abusive man.

Rozsa:

Bill Clinton had to stand up for his mother and physically confront his stepfather. I know those stories. And I want to be clear about one thing: I do not accuse Bill Clinton of not caring about poor people. I do not accuse him of that.

Shapiro:

What I’m saying is that he carried with him the pain of people who start with nothing and have to live with nothing. His political mission had two parts. One was giving people the means to lift themselves up. The other was civil rights. He believed in racial equality—more sincerely, I think, than any white president since Lyndon Johnson, though not more sincerely than Barack Obama.

So this notion of Bill Clinton as someone who supported unfettered markets is simply not true.

Clearly Shapiro and I are not going to agree about whether Clinton was too pro-market or not. But I certainly share Shapiro’s underlying respect for Clinton’s presidency, at least insofar as the man’s intentions are concerned. I also share Shapiro’s conviction that democratic socialists like me, who think Clinton was too pro-market, and moderates like Clinton (Bill, Hillary and the millions who share their center-left beliefs), MUST work together.

All of us want an end to the madness and radicalism of Trumpism. All of us want an America that is more diverse, more just, more prosperous, more peaceful, more kind.

I’m grateful for my hour-long interview with Shapiro, which you can view below. More important, I hope that this kind of civil disagreement is still possible in America.

Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 9

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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President Dwight D. Eisenhower — colloquially known by his nickname “Ike” — demonstrated in 1956 that you can stand up to Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism or losing elections.

I know this from my own life story.

Growing up hearing about Ike:

My maternal grandmother Rita, a staunch liberal, once told me that in the 1956 election, my paternal grandfather — the aforementioned Republican who nevertheless admired the intellectual Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson — defected from the GOP that year in part because he was “disappointed” with President Dwight Eisenhower’s position on Israel during the Suez Crisis. (Of course, he had also voted for Stevenson in 1952, when Israel wasn’t an issue, because of Stevenson’s intellectual “egghead” image.)

Because I first heard this as a teenager, when I subsequently read Eisenhower’s two-volume presidential memoirs and processed his account of the Suez Crisis, I vehemently disagreed with him. Mere weeks before Eisenhower faced off against Stevenson on Election Day 1956, Israel began making militaristic overtures toward her Arab neighbors. Fearing that Israel might invade Jordan because its leaders “overestimate my desire to avoid offending the many voters who might have either sentimental or blood relations with Israel,” Eisenhower sent Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion a memorandum through Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Growing up to believe that any criticism of Israel was at best suspicious, and at worst anti-Semitic, I bristled when I first read Ike’s Memorandum for the Record in the late 1990s, even though he had written it more than four decades earlier. Returning to it over the years, as I became more left-wing and more well-informed about the Arab-Israeli conflict, I regard it as a remarkable act of presidential courage and statesmanship.

“I have told the Secretary of State that he should make very clear to the Israelis that they must stop these attacks against the borders of Jordan,” Eisenhower said. “If they continue them, and particularly if they carry them on to the point of trying to take over and hold the territory west of the Jordan River, they will certainly be condemned by the United Nations, and not only Arab opinion but all world opinion will be brought to bear against this little country.”

If Israel expected Eisenhower to allow this to happen simply so he wouldn’t risk his reelection, they needed to clear up that misapprehension.

“Ben-Gurion should not make any grave mistakes based upon his belief that winning a domestic election is as important to us as preserving and protecting the interests of the United Nations and other nations of the free world in that region,” Eisenhower said.

Although Israel soon thereafter ceased its hostilities toward Jordan, it wasn’t because they had been persuaded by Eisenhower’s letter. Instead it was because they decided to join forces with the United Kingdom and France to launch an unprovoked attack for land against Egypt. The three nations claimed that they had to do so for national security reasons because Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s president from 1954 to 1970, nationalized the Suez Canal. Instead of allowing one of Egypt’s most valuable economic resources to be controlled by the collapsing British and French empires, Nasser — to the applause of democratic socialists all over the world — declared that the Suez Canal should be owned by Egyptians and profit Egyptians.

The United Kingdom and France saw a threat to the profit margins of their nations’ most powerful oligarchs. Israel saw an opportunity to grab the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, both then under Egyptian control. And Eisenhower saw this with crystal clarity right away, despite the three nations’ claims that Egypt was Soviet-controlled (it wasn’t) or that Egyptians weren’t qualified to operate the canal (they were). Even though he was a capitalist himself and therefore felt deeply dismayed by Nasser’s decision to nationalize the canal (he later made it US policy to keep Soviet influence out of the Middle East), Eisenhower also believed America had no right to interfere in Egypt’s domestic policies.

What I learned from Ike:

Therefore, even as Zionist lobbies in America pressured the government to supply Israel with more weapons to conquer the Suez Canal, Eisenhower refused. As my grandmother recalled, Stevenson then blasted Eisenhower for his policy, accusing the president of not fulfilling America’s obligation to protect Israel from potential annihilation. Eisenhower’s response, given both through his statements on foreign policy and his subsequent actions, was that America would protect all of its allies from unprovoked aggression — including Israel as well as its Arab neighbors. Because Israel was the aggressor on this occasion, Eisenhower would not lend it any support; indeed, if Israel became too aggressive, Eisenhower would even consider an economic blockade to rein in the wayward Jewish State.

The president’s actions worked on every level: Israel and its two European allies backed off, Egypt was able to keep its canal and Eisenhower was handily reelected despite Zionist opposition. As political scientist Kevin Phillips wrote in 1969’s “The Emerging Republican Majority,” “Always ready to suspect the GOP of hostility to Jewish interests, some Jews read exactly this attitude into the Administration’s diplomatic moves to halt the (successful) Franco-British-Israeli invasion of the Suez Canal area… the President’s Jewish losses were minor, but they ran counter to the considerable gains he scored elsewhere in the urban Northeast.” Eisenhower opposed Israeli aggression without losing either his presidency or being branded by history as an anti-Semite, and even his losses among Jewish voters were minimal. Indeed, Jews ultimately backed Ike in both of his elections more than any other Republican presidential candidate in recorded history.

Viewed with the hindsight of 70 years — during which America has sent a practically uninterrupted flow of arms to Israel which it uses to impose apartheid on the Palestinians — it is clear that Eisenhower was taking a stand for the international rule of law, for human rights and for anti-imperialism. Even though Ike hated socialism and would have deplored having his ideas used to advance an anticapitalist message, one doesn’t have to oppose capitalism to see how capitalists created that crisis. Israel sought land and the money that could come from owning it; the world’s most powerful empires wanted to control a key global waterway; and American arms manufacturers wanted to profit from selling to Israel.

Remember: Ike played a key role in chronicling the Holocaust!

Seven decades later, Eisenhower isn’t derided as an anti-Semite for his criticism of Israel. Quite to the contrary, Eisenhower played a critical role in making sure the 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust would be remembered. After liberating the Ohrdruf concentration camp in 1945, Eisenhower demanded that the Allies meticulously document the Holocaust.

“The things I saw beggar description,” Eisenhower wrote at the time to Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. “I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

Perhaps because he saw firsthand what happens when a military-industrial complex seizes all the levers of power, sixteen years later Eisenhower offered a different legendary quote, one that is still used by people of all political persuasions when critiquing American imperialism.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” Eisenhower said. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

This incident also reminds one that Zionism, the ideology which holds that the Jewish people must have their own state, is fundamentally illiberal. Historian Carl E. Schorske demonstrated this in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1979 book “Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture.” Writing about “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio,” Schorske compared Zionist founder Theodor Herzl with pan-German nationalist Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Vienna Mayor Karl Lueger, the latter two notorious anti-Semites. Despite their different perspectives on subjects involving Jewish rights, Schorske noted that they all derived their philosophies from reactions against liberal ideology.

“For Schönerer, the German national liberals were the most treasonous of Germans and the most dangerous of liberals,” Schorske wrote. “For Lueger, the pusillanimous but well-entrenched liberal Catholics offered the strongest obstacle to Catholic-social renewal. So too for Herzl: the ‘enlightened’ liberal Jews were on the one hand part of his own intellectual and social class and on the other blindly refused to recognize the nature of their own problems as Jews. Liberalism: voila l’ennemi! [Here is the enemy!]”

I am proud of my Jewish heritage, but I’m under no illusions that Zionism is incompatible with any consistent left-wing philosophy. Because Israel exists, and more than 7 million Israeli Jews live there, the state’s reality is an established fact and the inhabitants lives must be protected. Yet anyone who opposes right-wing politics cannot ignore that Israel is, to its core, a right-wing state. This is reflected in the apartheid conditions under which Palestinians continue to live. It is not anti-Semitic to criticize individual Jews when they do bad things, and when Israel grabs Palestinian land under the guise of religion, they act strictly as capitalists and theocrats. They do not represent Jews as a whole.

More importantly, neurodivergent people have the same responsibility to oppose injustices against Palestinian as they do injustices against other marginalized groups. We are all in this together.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Last week I covered President Trump’s threatened invasion of Greenland, the Arctic island province owned by Denmark, through the paradigm of climate change. Specifically I discussed the ideas of Dr. Twila Moon, the deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who along with more than 350 similarly-qualified scientists, signed a recent public letter opposing President Trump’s ongoing bellicosity toward the large island.

To be clear: Greenland is inhabited by 58,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom either wish to stay with Denmark or become an independent nation. If Trump invades Greenland, the primary wrong will be that done to the Greenlandic people. Yet we also must not forget the ecological consequences, which will impact not only Greenland but all of Earth.

What do we know for sure about how climate change is impacting Greenland, and how that in turn can alter weather systems and otherwise impact humans everywhere?

Human-caused climate change is having a wide range of impacts in Greenland. Heating of the air and ocean is melting the Greenland Ice Sheet as well as other glaciers around the edges of the territory. Warmer air temperatures are also thawing permafrost, frozen ground that underlies roads, buildings, and airports. Thawing can cause problems with infrastructure and spur dangerous landslides. These changes are also influencing the ocean, causes species to shift where they live and move, influencing fishing industries and food availability. There’s also less sea ice through the winter, commonly making travel by dog sled or snowmobile more dangerous or impossible. And Greenlanders are noticing the weird weather, making it harder to plan based on past experience and knowledge.

These changes in Greenland don’t stay in Greenland. In fact, ice melt that adds to sea level has the biggest impact far from Greenland - so the US experiences more sea level rise from Greenland ice loss than Greenlanders do. And changes in the ocean salt and heat make the ocean currents move in different ways, changing weather patterns all around the Atlantic region.

In general, what are the environmental consequences of the foreign policy Trump is pursuing, as articulated by a MAGA supporter here?

[The pro-Trump author, John Mac Ghlionn, argues “seen through a realist lens — the kind John Mearsheimer describes — power is never polite. Nations do not glide through history on good will. They compete, maneuver, and block rivals wherever they can.

America didn’t invent this contest, but it has played it for a century, shaping trade routes, locking down strategic chokepoints, and denying rivals room to expand. Exiting now would not end the game — it would simply forfeit the advantage.”]

After reading the article you sent, I simply want to make sure you are aware of the excellent coverage and information available that makes it clear that existing agreements between the US, Denmark, and Greenland allow for substantial military and security leeway for the US to use Greenland territory. Denmark and Greenland have made clear that they are eager to receive these requests from the US. And regarding business and other collaborations, Greenlanders have for a very long time repeated that “Greenland is open for business”.

Finally, I want to make you aware of this open letter released a few days ago and signed by US researchers engaged with Greenland and Greenlanders.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film “Barbie” proved that the Mattel line of female dolls can be not only profitable, but progressive. Despite being based on a toy, “Barbie” is a thoughtful, funny and often touching reflection on gender roles, all wrapped in the sweet candy shell of a modern fairy tale.

Perhaps in this spirit, Mattel recently announced that it is releasing its first ever-autistic Barbie doll.

The doll incorporates deliberate design features meant to emulate autistic experiences, such as movable elbows and hands that accommodate stimming—repetitive movements, which many autistic people use to regulate sensory input. The doll’s accessories similarly mirror items commonly used by autistic individuals, including noise-reducing headphones, comfortable loose-fitting clothes, and a tablet equipped with augmentative and alternative communication software.

Collaborating over the course of more than 18 months with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAF), Mattel takes justifiable pride in their doll.

Yet I wonder…

Barbie remains, despite its new progressive trappings, a fundamentally retrograde product. Extensive research has been performed showing how the doll’s unrealistic body proportions can create or reinforce self-esteem issues in young girls. More broadly, Barbies are notoriously overpriced, so I suspect many of the underprivileged autistic girls who might otherwise enjoy such playtime will be literally unable to afford the experience.

At the same time, I don’t wish to put a stink on this good news. Indeed, I’m delighted by ASAF’s explanation of how they worked with Mattel.

“During our meetings with Mattel, we talked about how there are many ways that autistic people express ourselves — autism doesn’t have just one look,” ASAF writes. “While one doll won’t be able to represent every way an autistic person can be, we wanted to share some of them! We think it’s especially important for kids to see some of themselves in these dolls.”

They add, “Some of the things we thought about were articulated wrists for flapping hands, robust augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), noise cancelling headphones, and Barbie not making eye contact. Autistic women and autistics of color are under diagnosed, so we made this doll a part of both of those communities too!”

All of this is wonderful. All of these steps are strides in the right direction. Like the 2023 film “Barbie,” all of this should be celebrated, and our children should play with these toys and see these movies.

I just hope that Barbie doesn’t forget that progress is not the same thing as success. As long as Barbie dolls cultivate body image issues and are priced beyond the means of low-income children, I cannot view the franchise as a full-fledged win for progressivism.

Neurodivergent advocates can not afford, for moral and strategic reasons, to sacrifice their support for other social justice movements. Our rights as “disabled” people, who are both marginalized and exploited, intersects inevitably and irrevocably with those of every other marginalized group. There are neurodivergent women, neurodivergent Black people, neurodivergent immigrants, neurodivergent LGBTQ people. They all need our help and support not just as they struggle with neurodiversity, but as they struggle with the other ways in which they are oppressed because of their identities.

Intersectionality matters, even if it is dangerously un-chic in President Trump’s America. Thus I simultaneously applaud Barbie for creating an autistic doll, and yet hope that they will one day create dolls for every body type out there for women.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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On the last occasion I interviewed Dr. Federico Finchelstein, the New School history department University in Exile Research Professor and Professor in History, discussed then-former President Donald Trump’s fascistic tendencies. Given that Finchelstein’s “A Brief History of Fascist Lies” deconstructs far right dishonesty, and I was reviewing a movie (“The Apprentice”) about how Trump was radicalized by far rightists like lawyer Roy Cohn and (indirectly) Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.), our conversation naturally contextualized Trump within that 1950s-1980s historical milieu.

“Even though myself I’m not so sure that McCarthy and Cohn were fascistic, it’s clear that what Trump learned from them eventually led to what I think is his ‘wannabe fascism,’” Dr. Federico Finchelstein, chair of the history department at the New School for Social Research and author of “A Brief History of Fascist Lies,” told me at the time. “The idea that Trump is a fascist relates to his own kind of very basic, intuitive understanding of politics… At the end of the day, it went back to a very kind of intuitive and really violent and narcissistic understanding of their own leadership.”

Flash forward 15 months. I now write for Democracy at Work instead of Salon Magazine. Trump is no longer a former-president but an incumbent again. Finchelstein, who hails from Argentina, clearly feels strongly about Trump’s recent unprovoked invasion of Venezuela, not out of any affinity whatsoever for the brutal Nicolás Maduro regime but because an unhinged America threatens every other nation in the world.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and context.

Question:

How does Trump’s invasion of Venezuela—and his threats of potential invasions of countries like Colombia, Panama, Denmark, Iran, and others—fit into the larger history of American foreign policy? Is this consistent with past U.S. imperialism, or is it something fundamentally new?

Answer:

It is, of course, a combination of continuity and rupture. There is a long history of American interventionism and imperialism, and that context matters. However, when we look at the current situation, these actions appear to stem less from any coherent imperial strategy than from Trump’s inability to reconcile his desires—and his fascistic tendencies—with political and geopolitical realities.

In past episodes of American imperialism, there was at least a plan. That plan was often deeply problematic from a democratic or egalitarian standpoint, but it existed. There was an articulated vision of objectives, even if those objectives failed catastrophically—as in the invasion of Iraq.

Here, however, there is not even a discernible plan. What we see instead is a series of contradictions and fabrications. Trump speaks as though he has absolute control over the government and the world, jumping erratically from Greenland to Colombia to Venezuela, without any strategic coherence. This reflects his belief—common in fascist ideology—that the militarization of politics and the exaltation of violence inevitably produce success. History suggests otherwise.

Question:

That raises an interesting point. In earlier American conflicts—such as Cuba, Pearl Harbor, or even post–September 11—we could at least identify a triggering event or provocation, however distorted or manipulated. Even Vietnam relied on the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication. This moment seems entirely invented. Would you agree that this resembles those past fabrications rather than genuine casus belli?

Answer:

Yes, although I would add an important distinction. Even in Iraq, disastrous as it was, there was an ideological framework—however delusional—that imagined regime change would lead to easy state-building with U.S. participation. That fantasy collapsed, but it existed.

Here, we are dealing with something even more troubling: pure fantasy without a plan. Even the Gulf of Tonkin incident, while fabricated, was initially believed by U.S. officials to be real. There was at least a perceived connection between reality and action.

What concerns me now is that this appears untethered from reality altogether. It is driven by a combination of fantasy, authoritarian impulses, and ideological radicalization. For example, while Nicolás Maduro is undeniably a dictator—a point I have written about for years—the narrative of “narco-terrorism” collapses when paired with Trump’s willingness to grant amnesty to allied leaders in Central America who are credibly implicated in such crimes.

These contradictions make the argument incoherent. Trump seems to imagine that Maduro—or remnants of his regime—will simply comply with his demands like puppets. This is deeply unrealistic. There is no rational framework here, only impulsive decision-making driven by unchecked power and personal grievance.

Question:

In 2019, I interviewed former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about Trump’s overtures toward Venezuela. She argued that international pressure—especially with the Lima Group and Canada—was appropriate, but warned that introducing military force would give Maduro an excuse to claim foreign intervention. In retrospect, how accurate were her criticisms of Maduro, and how accurate was her warning about Trump?

Answer:

Albright herself wrote extensively about the dangers of fascism, and she understood that in democratic politics, ends do not justify any means. Even when confronting a dictator, you cannot abandon international norms without severe consequences.

I have criticized Maduro for years, but I also warned—along with my colleague Pablo Pito—about the dangers of reviving a crude, neo-Monroe Doctrine approach to Latin America. Venezuela is a massive, complex country. You cannot assume that intervention will unfold according to irrational impulses or personal ambition.

Many governments across Latin America share this view. Even leaders who have strongly criticized Maduro—such as Chile’s outgoing president Gabriel Boric—have rejected military intervention. Spain and others have done the same. There is a broad consensus that you cannot simply “enter” a sovereign nation and remove its leader without disastrous consequences.

Trump’s reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is even more irrational than its original formulation. It ignores history, law, and political reality—and it will only generate further crises. This approach serves neither international law nor long-term American interests in the region.

Question:

What can ordinary Americans do to stop this? What can Republicans and Democrats alike do to restrain a president behaving in increasingly dictatorial ways?

Answer:

First and foremost, Americans must demand that Congress fulfill its constitutional role. Decisions of war and peace cannot be made unilaterally, without consultation, oversight, or transparency.

What makes this especially alarming is the blatant conflict of interest involved. The suggestion that Trump may consult oil companies while bypassing Congress is not just undemocratic—it borders on corruption. This is a president operating without restraint, combining extremist ideology with what appears to be profound irrationality.

Question:

Trump often reminds me of George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address, where Washington warned against foreign entanglements and against partisan loyalty empowering “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” who would subvert democracy itself. Is Trump proving Washington prophetic?

Answer:

Absolutely. Washington’s warning reflects a long American tradition of fearing exactly this scenario: a leader who consolidates power in anti-democratic ways while claiming to embody national values.

Trump behaves less like a democratically elected president and more like a monarch. Despite dubious legitimacy and declining approval, he acts as though he can invent new geopolitical doctrines by sheer will. We should not forget that this is a leader who attempted to overturn the constitutional order. In most democratic countries, such a figure would be facing prosecution—not exercising unchecked authority over the nation’s future.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Dr. Twila Moon, the deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, is an expert on Earth’s cryosphere — that is, the regions of our planet so cold that they are perpetually covered in frozen water like ice, snow, slush and more. For this reason, if any scientist can claim to be an expert on Greenland, it is Moon.

That is why Moon, along with more than 350 similarly-qualified scientists, signed a recent public letter opposing President Trump’s ongoing bellicosity toward the large island, which is controlled by Denmark and inhabited by 58,000 people who either wish to stay that way or become independent.

None desire American rule.

“We are U.S.-based scientists who have conducted research in Kalaallit Nunaat / Greenland, and we write to express our solidarity and gratitude to Greenland’s people for years of friendship and partnership,” the statement proclaims. After summarizing their past public letters and Trump’s efforts to either “buy” or “take” Greenland, the scientists state that “Greenland belongs to its people,” quoting Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen who says “We have been America’s close and loyal friend for generations. Enough is enough. Greenland is our home and our territory.”

The letter adds, “Greenland deserves the world’s attention: It occupies a key position geopolitically and geophysically. As climate warms, rapid loss of Greenland’s ice affects coastal cities and communities worldwide. Greenland’s natural resources are abundant – and they belong to Greenland. But most importantly, Greenland is home to almost 57,000 people, the vast majority of whom have roots there that reach through countless generations.”

I’d like to focus for a moment on the sentence, “As climate warms, rapid loss of Greenland’s ice affects coastal cities and communities worldwide.” When we contemplate the massive industrial exploitation that Trump plans for the island, this detail must not be overlooked, as they are bound to exacerbate the greenhouse effect.

One major consequence of this process is a dangerous rise in global sea levels. Right now, melting from the Greenland Ice Sheet is adding roughly 0.7 millimeters per year to average sea levels worldwide. Scientists warn that if current projections hold, that number could climb to somewhere between 2 and 7 millimeters annually. Even small increases like these can have enormous consequences. As oceans rise, coastal communities face growing risks from flooding, storm surges, and extreme weather. In the United States, nearly 40 percent of the population lives in coastal or near-coastal regions that are especially vulnerable, including cities such as New York, Baltimore, Boston and Miami. On a global scale, eight of the world’s ten largest cities are located close to coastlines. Hundreds of millions of people are in harm’s way.

Accelerated melting in Greenland also threatens to disrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. This system of ocean currents transports warm water from tropical regions near the equator northward into the Atlantic, helping to regulate temperatures across much of western Europe. It is one component of a much larger, interconnected system of ocean currents that circulate heat and salt around the globe, commonly referred to as the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt and more formally known as thermohaline circulation.

Under normal conditions, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation carries warm, salty water north through the Atlantic. As this water reaches cooler regions near the United Kingdom, it loses heat, becomes denser, and sinks into deep waters in the Labrador and Nordic Seas before flowing southward along the ocean floor toward the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. This continuous movement functions much like a planetary conveyor belt. However, if large amounts of fresh meltwater from Greenland slow or disrupt this process, the results could be highly unpredictable. There could be severe consequences for human societies and ecosystems across the planet.

Of course, our need to halt climate change — though of paramount consideration — is not the main takeaway from America’s imperialist overtures toward Greenland.

“Greenland’s people have been strong allies and friends to Americans for decades, despite painful colonial legacies like the forced relocation of Inughuit people from their ancestral homes to build Thule Air Base (now Pituffik Space Base) in 1953,” the scientists wrote in their public letter. “Americans owe Greenland our respect and deep gratitude. We acknowledge that scientific research also has a colonial history in Greenland, and pledge to be good partners, with guidance from Greenland’s researchers and by honoring Greenland’s National Research Strategy.”

That is the main point. But climate change is a not-inconsequential detail here too.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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In “The Neighbor,” a 2016 independent film directed and written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, an enigmatic Mississippi redneck named Troy (Bill Engvall of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour) kidnaps a drug trafficker’s wife Rosie (Alex Essoe from “Doctor Sleep”), compelling her husband John (Josh Stewart from “Third Watch”) to attempt to rescue her. In the process, John learns that Troy is running a kidnapping-and-ransom operation, one that he uses partially to support his family and partially to sexually exploit his victims.

In short, John learns that Troy is the redneck equivalent of Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous financier and child sex trafficker whose buddy Donald Trump was elected to his first presidential term in the same year “The Neighbor” was released. Given that Trump is president again and continues to seemingly suppress evidence about Epstein’s predations — while his base, a large bulk of whom are like the Southern rednecks depicted in “The Neighbor,” either deny or rationalize Trump’s alleged misdeeds with Epstein — “The Neighbor” is as relevant now as it was in 2016.

Yet even if “The Neighbor” didn’t speak to the modern zeitgeist, it is still a quality movie. The acting is top-notch, from Stewart and Essoe as tough-but-vulnerable outlaws down the line to memorable side characters like the vicious crime lord “Uncle” Neill (Skipp Sudduth, also from “Third Watch”) and sadistic Officer Burns (Jaqueline Fleming from “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”). Dunstan and Melton direct and write their story with a strong sense of who these people are, allowing them to emerge as flesh-and-blood human beings rather than thin archetypes serving a narrative.

When it comes to the performances, Engvall in particular stands out; if one didn’t know he is most famous as a comedian, you’d never guess it from his acting here. As the mysterious Troy, Engvall glowers intimidatingly and uses a superficial layer of charm as a cloak for more menacing intentions. Like most murderers, thieves and rapists, Troy rationalizes his way through his evil actions, justifying them as necessary to provide for his family after he and his two sons lost their mother to cancer. Because he can thereby frame the hurt he causes others as somehow noble, Troy is the most dangerous type of predator — one who sincerely clings to the illusion that he, and not those who condemn him, are the actual villains.

It’s a shame that “The Neighbor” isn’t better known, and that is why I’m opening “Back Seat Socialism” in 2026 with this tribute to that film, roughly 10 years after its initial release. Below I include a snippet of my interview with Dunstan and Melton (you can watch the full 47-minute interview below), where they admitted that — despite being seasoned horror writers behind scary flicks like “Piranha 3DD,” “The Collection” (which also starred Stewart), “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” and “Pilgrim” —they hadn’t even conceived of evil on the level of Epstein when they wrote “The Neighbor.”

DUNSTAN: I want to say — and this this would bring in Patrick — when we were imagining it, and more specifically when Patrick was imagining this, I don’t think either one of us thought a person like Jeffrey Epstein was possible. Like that just is World Series awful bad!

ROZSA: I just want to clarify. The men who write horror movies for a living found Jeffrey Epstein incomprehensible?!

DUNSTAN: I would say, and that’s to our own Midwest naivete of what happened. Then once you start to peel a few layers, you realize, how? Because that’s the next question. Well something like that exists: how, right? Oh, God, and your idea of the world starts to..,,,

ROZSA: I want to hear what Patrick has to say.

MELTON: Well, if you also think that he [Epstein] is the head of the snake, you’re naive. Obviously, he is a cog in the machine, as is the villain we have in this movie. So you should have that feeling that, yes, John deals with this problem by the end of it, but he hasn’t solved it any way, shape or form. It still exists, it’s still out there, and we’re constantly going to still be distracted by other things.

That, ultimately, is why “The Neighbor” packs such a strong punch. While there are thousands of thrillers out there about larger-than-life heroes fighting equally impressive (if unlikeable) bad guys, “The Neighbor” is more gritty and grounded. In “The Neighbor,” we learn that evil isn’t always obvious, and good is often tainted. Indeed, evil is more hazardous precisely when it isn’t conspicuous, and good more difficult to recognize because its form can be ugly.

Like John and Rosie in “The Neighbor,” all humans must constantly be mindful that evil people exist and pose a danger to us all. No matter how much we achieve toward the goal of defeating bad people, there will always be more of them out there. Even when we are flawed, like John and Rosie in “The Neighbor,” we should still strive to do good to counter this evil.

To close with what Melton said about John’s plight at the end of “The Neighbor”:

“He hasn’t solved it any way, shape or form. It still exists, it’s still out there, and we’re constantly going to still be distracted by other things.”

Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 8

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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If you haven’t seen the 1997 political comedy “Wag the Dog,” (1) stop everything you’re doing and watch it, then (2) read this review. Otherwise you’ll encounter spoilers.

Directed by Barry Levinson off a screenplay by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet, “Wag the Dog” tells the story of a pedophile president whose spin doctor Conrad Brean (Robert DeNiro) hires Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to pretend America is at war with Albania. Brean and Motss correctly gamble that America’s media will be so easily manipulated by their propaganda, the president’s pedophilic predations will be swept under the rug until Election Day is good and over.

In “Wag the Dog,” Brean and Motss have the basic human decency to not actually start a war, but merely fake one. This premise was semi-plausible in 1997 but logistically impossible in 2026. No, for Trump to distract people from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, he has to wage actual wars…. wars that he was planning on waging anyway (former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright predicted to me Trump had designs on Venezuela back in 2019), but which he is now starting willy nilly and in a manic, frenzied state.

Trump’s appetite is not going to be glutted by Venezuela. He has already talked about conquering Greenland, an island of 58,000 semi-independent people who currently choose to be protected by Denmark (many want to be free; some want to stay Danes; practically none want to join the US). The president “jokes” about clearing Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population and turning it into a pricey Israeli resort. He threatens Colombia and Mexico for its narco-terrorism, while ignoring the same which comes from his far right allies in El Salvador and Argentina.

If the heat hadn’t become so intense in the kitchen of the Trump-Epstein scandal, our president probably would have executed his imperialist plans with more aplomb. Instead he is starting to crack, and the whole world is paying for it.

So where do we go from here? The worst case scenario is that Trump divides the world up like slices of a pie between himself, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. The best case scenario is that this clown car cavalcade crashes because of the egoes and incompetence of those behind the wheel.

Take the fate of Motss, Hoffman’s colorful and brilliant producer who refuses to allow anyone else to take credit for his mastery of the president’s reelection campaign.

“Fuck my life! Fuck my life!” he proclaims. “I want the credit! The credit!”

When I first watched “Wag the Dog,” I shook my head in disbelief that Motss could be so naive as to believe that he could get credit for such an obviously-secret operation. Yet upon further contemplation, the so-called “masters of the universe” — even the brilliant ones — usually cannot avoid tripping over their own pride. If Trump and his crew had wits as well as raw power behind them, I’d consider them unbeatable.

Instead I merely consider this intimidating — not inevitable. No, for Trump and his goons to win, the world will need to forget about movies like “Wag the Dog.” We’ll need to believe that these individuals truly are all-knowing and all-powerful, deserving of every cent they possess, and that we’ve earned little better than to be spoon-fed nonsense by their “betters.” “Wag the Dog,” by contrast, shows that the powerful are bumbling fools who succeed in manipulating us only to the extent that we turn off our critical thinking skills.

Once you start to exhibit healthy skepticism toward the government’s actions and motives, they start to seem less like an Orwellian superstate and more like a collection of cocky crooks just one step ahead of the good guys — and one mistake away from being exposed.

Despite its cynical veneer, “Wag the Dog” contains a flicker of hope in its warts-and-all characterizations of Brean, Motss and the various other power players and pawns depicted in the film. That’s why I hope more Americans turn to it during these dire times.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is an immensely entertaining follow up to “Avatar” and “Avatar: The Way of Water”. The movie is, without question, the one hard-core fans were hoping for.

It is also the perfect cinematic antidote to Trumpism, given how prominently it features feminist, pro-environmental and anti-racist politics.

First, the story.

Unlike the first two installments, to be understood this entry requires deep familiarity with the previous films. (I suspect this is partially why so many of my fellow Rotten Tomatoes critics have greeted it with a lukewarm reception.) There are even two scenes which directly reference lore from the Dark Horse Comics that accompany the “Avatar” series. At its core, though, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is a straightforward story about how the Omatikaya, Metkayina and other Na’vi tribes on the alien moon of Pandora fight invading humans and their traitorous Na’vi allies, the Mangkwan. The winner gets to claim Pandora for itself; the loser, it is implied, will be wiped out.

The Na’vi are still led by Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a human who became Na’vi, along with his Na’vi queen Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), their Na’vi son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), their adopted Na’vi daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), their adopted human son Spider (Jack Champion) and the Metkayina royal family including Na’vis Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), Ronal (Kate Winslet), Tsireya (Bailey Bass), Ao’nung (Filip Geljo) and Rotxo (Duane Evans Jr.). On the other side are the dastardly humans led by the human/Na’vi recombinant Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), queen of the evil Na’vi Mangkwan tribe Varang (Oona Chaplin), intergalactic human whaler Captain Nick Scoresby (Brendan Cowell), human General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco) and human corporate executive Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi).

Each of these characters have moments to shine, with director/writer James Cameron building on what audiences know from previous installments to add psychological and narrative layers to their respective arcs. It isn’t easy to juggle so many character arcs (again, see the common critics’ complaint), but Cameron sufficiently fleshes out these personalities across his trilogy to earn the new complexity. If anything, the deeper characterizations and storylines endows “Avatar: Fire and Ash” with a narrative verisimilitude that equals the awe-inspiring realism of the special effects. While the first “Avatar” revolutionized special effects in the service of a formulaic (albeit well-executed) plot, the latest entry is as creative with its screenplay as with its CGI. As a result, the new movie is superior to the second one, even if it still falls short of the classic original.

Next, the politics.

Like the first two movies, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” also contains explicit political messages. Given that it is the first “Avatar” movie to be released during either of President Donald Trump’s administrations, it is inevitable to contrast its feminist, pro-environment and anti-racist sentiments with the misogyny, science denial and white supremacy that defines the MAGA movement.

Suffice to say, if you are a Trump fan and enjoy “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” it’s only because you ignored the glorious “wokeness” of its story.

Take the female characters. Even as Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth target women in the military, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” showcases a range of literal woman warriors, all of whom are treated unquestioningly as equal to their male counterparts. Sexism may still determine outcomes on Earth in 2025, but Pandora in 2170 includes badass women among both the humans and Na’vi. From Falco’s coldly sinister Ardmore and Varang’s bloodthirsty jaded zealot to the impressive action sequences centering around Neytiri, Ronal and Kiri, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” continues Cameron’s tradition of centering his sci-fi epics around strong female characters. Neytiri in particular, as before, more than deserves to join the Cameron pantheon which includes Ridley from “Aliens” (also played by Weaver) and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Conner from “The Terminator,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and (the criminally-underrated and tragically unprofitable) “Terminator: Dark Fate.”

That seems pretty woke to me. Of course, the central premise of the “Avatar” movies is that human businesses tend to destroy worlds by killing innocent people, unnecessarily slaughtering wildlife and exploiting natural resources past any world’s points of sustainability. In real life we are indeed overheating the climate, clogging our land and Earth with plastic and causing the most mass extinctions in 66 million years. By the time of the “Avatar” movies, Earth is dying as a world for these reasons, compelling humans to first exploit and then attempt to colonize Pandora. If they were interested in sharing that world and respecting its ecosystem, this would of course be a wonderful thing. Yet Sully shares the Na’vi skepticism that humans are capable of changing for the better, at least on a collective level. For this reason, when the plot opens up the prospect of enabling humans to naturally breath Pandoran air, Sully and his allies agree that this would disastrously make it possible for more humans to move to Pandora.

This isn’t to say that the Na’vi are angels, despite appearing favorable when contrasted with humans. Neytiri is as racist to people as Ardmore is as toward Na’vi; when Neytiri derides humans as “pink skins,” her tone echoes that of Ardmore when she dismisses the Na’vi as “savages.” Both of their positions, however, are revealed by the plot to be morally and/or strategically unfeasible, demonstrating that those who hate based on race ultimately deprive their causes of vital allies — regardless of what cause itself happens to be.

With nearly 200 minutes of running time to put meat on the bone of these themes, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” winds up elevating itself above the normal rung of Hollywood blockbusters. If you want simply to be entertained, it will accomplish that in spades. That said, if you also want to think, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” offers more than enough to satisfy that craving as well.

Finally, the epilogue.

Credit for the photograph goes to Easton, PA Regal Cinemas employee Izzy Carbonetto. Regal has been my hometown theater since I saw another James Cameron movie, “Titanic,” there as a 12-year-old in late 1997. I’m delighted that, as an adult film critic, I am able to work remotely and thus easily patron this Easton institution. From its friendly staff and warm atmosphere to the screenings of classics (it’s currently playing the Barbara Stanwyck romcom “Christmas in Connecticut”) I can’t recommend Regal enough.

The picture also includes a shout out to my friend Dr. Paul Frommer, the linguist who created the Na’vi conlang, and whose interviews can be found both in these embedded links and in the video below. If you find the shout out, please mention it in the comments!

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Statistically speaking, Dick Van Dyke should no longer be alive. Thank God the odds are wrong in his case. It gives all decent human beings hope for the future.

Van Dyke, who is best known for his roles in 1960s pop culture milestones like “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (1961-1966) and “Mary Poppins” (1964), was a heavy smoker through most of his adult life. He also drank so much that he eventually decided he had alcoholism and needed to quit. Given those two vices, it is nothing short of miraculous that Van Dyke recently celebrated his 100th birthday. Yet when you read the actor/comedian/dancer/singer’s recent interview with The Times, the source of his longevity suddenly becomes apparent.

“I’ve made it to 99 in no small part because I have stubbornly refused to give into the bad stuff in life: failures and defeats, personal losses, loneliness and bitterness, the physical and emotional pains of ageing,” Van Dyke said. “That stuff is real but I have not let it define me. Instead, for the vast majority of my years, I have been in what I can only describe as a full-on bear hug with the experience of living. Being alive has been doing life — not like a job but rather like a giant playground.”

Van Dyke’s observation here tracks medically — few doctors would disagree that less stress equals more years, longevity-wise — but it strikes a deeper chord coming from Van Dyke because he has every reason to dread the future. He spoke with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for civil rights in 1964, at a time when his pro-civil rights stance was hotly controversial (to use modern nomenclature, “woke”). Now he has lived to see America elect a white supremacist president who rose to political power by challenging the legitimacy of America’s first black Commander in Chief.

The man who endorsed for president Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an open democratic socialist, he did so based on Sanders’ support for left-wing social justice causes and because Van Dyke feared another term for President Donald Trump would destroy democracy. Instead Van Dyke lived to see Sanders get ripped off twice by President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party establishment — first for his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then for his Vice President Joe Biden — and Trump elected to the second term he feared.

Like the rest of us Sanders-supporting left-wingers out there, Van Dyke felt depressed about these events. When Trump was reelected in 2024, the famously upbeat artist gloomily pined for death itself:“Fortunately, I won’t be around to experience the four years.”

My reaction, like that of so many other attuned Van Dyke fans, was sad agreement. Even deeper, I lamented a state of affairs so sorry that one of America’s greatest living entertainers openly wished to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Then I read what Van Dyke recently (as in, a few months rather than shortly post-election) had to say about the prospect of additional years.

“100 years is not enough. You want to live more,” the legendary actor told one media outlet. As he added to another, “I still try to dance.”

Clearly Van Dyke is able to get past his initial misery about her state of affairs. The newly-minted centenarian, even though he understands all too well that humanity’s prospects are currently bleak, somehow is still hopeful.

I can’t say that I’m doing my best to follow his example. But I’m trying.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Criticizing Israel isn’t anti-Semitic, but arguing for collective accountability is anti-Semitic.

If you oppose President Donald Trump, you’re probably hearing praise from others in the Resistance for one of his former allies, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. As a Jew and a science journalist, the rising pro-Greene sentiment is nothing short of alarming.

It is especially so as anti-Semitic violence occurs all over the world, from the shooting at a Hanukkah party in Australia (it’s claimed 15 lives at the time of writing) to violence against innocent Israelis and Jews in Russia, Germany, France, Tunisia — and, over and over again, in the United States. I even hear anti-Semitic comments in my home region, the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, a swing region in a swing state. Although it should go without saying that it is anti-Semitic to argue Jews are collectively responsible for the Israeli government’s actions, I fear it must be explicitly stated nonetheless. I am second to none in criticizing the Israeli government’s actions, and millions of other Jews feel similarly. Millions of other Jews are indifferent to Israel and just go about their lives, or support Israel because they’re proud Jews but still deplore its human rights violations. They are no more directly accountable for Israel’s evil actions and other misdeeds than any non-Jew is responsible for the evil actions and other misdeeds of the non-Jewish ethnic groups of which they are members.

To argue otherwise, to say that Jews are somehow “different,” is anti-Semitic, full stop.

Anti-Semitism is linked to climate change denial. That’s not a coincidence.

One cannot separate the illogic of anti-Semitism from other forms of illogic — especially because anti-Semitism doesn’t always revolve around the issue of Israel. It can also involve denying man-made climate change.

Which brings us back to Greene. Greene criticized Israel, and her criticisms are aligned with those of one of my favorite living politicians, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (the first Jew to perform well in a presidential primary). This has nothing to do with why I say Greene is anti-Semitic. I respect Greene for standing up to Israel’s genocide; similarly, I respect Greene as one of the few national Republicans to meaningfully stand up to Trump (shortly before stepping down from Congress, of course). She deserves credit for opposing Trump’s corruption insofar as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is concerned. (Greene remains silent about him trying to overturn the 2020 election — an effort she helped in — for example.)

Many who oppose Trump are now embracing Greene because of her necessary (and sadly rare) stance opposing child sex abuse. Yet despite applauding her on this occasion, there are three big reasons I will never trust Greene:

• First, I’m a Jew, and she has defamed my people (see below).

• Second, Greene refuses to accept the scientific consensus that the fossil fuel industry is overheating the planet by releasing greenhouse gases. If our planet continues to unnaturally warm, humanity will suffer from rising sea levels, more frequently extreme storms, intensified wildfires and heat waves so intense large sections of the planet will be uninhabitable.

• Finally, instead of protecting her constituents from this man-made threat, such as by sharing scientific facts and proposing regulations on Big Oil, Greene has tied her disbelief in climate science with deeper cultural hostility to Jewish people. In a since-deleted 2018 Facebook post, Greene implied California’s wildfires are being started by powerful Jews like the Rothschild banking family and former California Senator Dianne Feinstein. The Rotschilds and Feinstein are historic targets of anti-Semitic conservatives because they can be linked to liberal causes; the same is true for famous Jews like philanthropist George Soros and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Because Greene bizarrely added these Jews control the weather from outer space, both Jews and non-bigots in general joined together to mock the Georgia politician for her belief in what were derisively dubbed “Jewish space lasers.”

It’s great to laugh at Greene, but one must not forget there is an ominous side to the absurdity. When all we do is laugh at her harmful views, we distract from the real harm they cause.

To this day, Greene continues to insist our abnormal weather is caused by sinister elites supposedly manipulating it. She refuses to accept the threat to Earth is from the fossil fuel industry’s irresponsible, avaricious greenhouse gas pollution. Even worse, as anti-Semitism continues to rise both in America and around the world, Greene contemptibly refuses to admit her error in playing on Jewish stereotypes to make her point.

In short, Greene is making both the problem of anti-Semitism and the problem of climate change much, much worse.

If Greene ever renounces her blood libel against my people, I will trust her conscience. If she stops standing in the way of reforms necessary to protect our planet, I will gain some faith in her judgment. Frankly I’m skeptical either of those things will happen. To quote my meteorologist friend, NBC Philadelphia’s former weatherman Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz, “The more extreme you are in your feelings about different subjects, the less likely you are to change your mind, or let alone admit that you were mistaken.”

Jew-hatred and science-denial, as understood by “Family Guy” and a top climate scientist, Dr. Michael E. Mann.

Or I can quote the song “Republican Town,” which was released in the 2010 “Family Guy” episode “Excellence in Broadcasting.” The following snippet is an exchange between acclaimed Jewish comedian Alex Borstein (as Lois Griffin), “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane (as Brian Griffin) and right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh (as himself).

Lois: But how ‘bout global warming?

Brian: It’s a snow job by Obama and his crew!

Lois: But aren’t all his findings backed by science?

Rush Limbaugh: Careful, Lois, now you’re sounding like a Jew!

Brian: Oy!

I know that Greene is part of the same far right ecosystem that produced Limbaugh, which makes that clip especially resonant. Unless she admits to her mistakes about climate science and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, I will regard her with the same contempt that I share for anyone who is (a) an anti-Semite, (b) a science denier and/or (c) both.

These are groups that frequently overlap, as University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann told me in a recent interview about his book “Science Under Siege” (co-authored with a pediatrician, Baylor University’s Dr. Peter Hotez). To understand why and how, I refer you to a transcript of that portion from our chat. The entire video is embedded below.

Rozsa: At one point in “Science Under Siege,” you allude to the intersection between anti-Semitism, anti-science radicalism and the broader right-wing hostility to intellectuals. I think about this because we both live in Pennsylvania, a state founded as a colony that promoted religious liberty and Enlightenment principles. Yet even though you live in a blue area of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) whereas I live in a red area of Pennsylvania (Northampton County), we both have experienced similar interactions with Pennsylvanians in terms of the issue of climate change. So my question is, why do you think this tie exists between hostility to science, particularly climate science, and anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism?

Mann: Yeah, well, thanks for the question, Matt. And by the way, the book is out actually, it’s been out since September. So let me sort of comment on our take in the book when it comes to this issue, anti-Semitism and anti-science, how they’re related. There is sort of a historical context. Many of the conspiracy theories that exist today (QAnon: Democrats are literally drinking the blood of children in a pizza in the basement of a pizza parlor), these conspiracy theories that often invoke Jewish people, Jewish scientists, have sort of this historical basis that goes back to the Middle Ages.

To the blood libel: This idea that was popular in Europe and earlier centuries that Jews were literally drinking the blood of children. It has sort of morphed over the centuries, but it still exists. It exists in this form that Jewish people, Jewish scientists are out there trying to take something from you. And if it’s not literally your children to drink their blood, it’s that they’re taking away your freedom. They are getting rich off of carbon credits; supposedly they’re profiting from simply doing the science of climate change and communicating the science of climate change.

I don’t have any investments in carbon credits. I don’t know any of my scientists who do, but there is this conspiracy that somehow the scientists are getting rich, and it sort of taps into various anti-Semitic tropes about Jews being supposedly preoccupied with money and wealth. So it’s always very thinly beneath the surface when you hear these sorts of narratives, in the sort of conspiratorial world of climate change denial. They love to talk about scientists who are Jewish, and they love to talk about how that supposedly means that we need to question the motives of these scientists. It applies to myself.

Rozsa: It applies to me. I have to say, I have experienced much of this when I’ve interviewed you for articles for Salon Magazine, for articles for Democracy at Work. Apparently a pair of nerdy Jews from Pennsylvania are the real enemy rather than billionaire oligarchs like Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

For another conversation about climate change between two nerdy Pennsylvania Jews, check out my Back Seat Socialism interview with retired NBC Philadelphia meteorologist Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz! Climate-conscious Pennsylvania Jews like Rozsa, Mann and Schwartz do not control the world, regardless of what MAGA would like you to believe.

We’re smart people who care about Earth’s future — and the world would be a lot better off if it listened to us.

Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 7

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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Could Illinois Governor JB Pritzker be America’s first Jewish president?

We live in a timeline where, despite their proportionally smaller Jewish populations, Mexico and Ukraine have beaten the United States in electing Jews as their chief executives. And as a Jew, I couldn’t be prouder of these role models: Volodomyr Zelenskyy, fighting for his nation’s sovereignty against a brutal empire, and Claudia Sheinbaum, a democratic socialist and climate scientist who is also Mexico’s first woman head of state.

During the 2020 presidential election, four candidates of Jewish descent ran for America’s highest office. At that time, it was the largest number of Jews to ever seek the presidency in a single year. Assuming there are free and fair elections in 2028 (a massive “if” in the MAGA era), it’s possible there will be at least as many Jews once again seeking the Democratic presidential nod. These mostly include moderates like Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, Hawaii Governor Josh Green and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (who was a finalist in 2024 to be vice presidential running mate for the last Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris).

Personally, one Jew stands out above all the others on this list. As the billionaire heir of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker can self-finance his campaign if necessary — practically a plus, though morally a minus. Setting aside my democratic socialist distaste for the fact that billionaires even exist, however, Pritzker looks almost ridiculously good on paper if you’re a left-winger who wants to actually elect a president.

First, Pritzker is opposing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in meaningful ways. He recently signed into law a new bill restricting immigration-related arrests at state courthouses, thereby protecting immigrants from having their human rights violated. It also empowers Illinois residents to sue federal officials if they feel their rights have been breached, further defanging the venomous ICE and its abetters. (I called for similar programs along with my friend, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, earlier this year.)

Second, Pritzker is consistently progressive on other key issues. He unambiguously supports LGBT rights, is addressing climate change in his state, eliminated cash bail and turned Illinois into a model of responsible public health policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that unlike Slotkin, Green, Shapiro and even my dear friend, the late Senator Joe Lieberman (the first Jew to run for for vice president on a major ticket), Pritzker is on the same wavelength as the Democratic Party’s left, not its center-left.

Finally, I believe America’s first Jewish president needs to be able to use their Jewish background to pressure Israel into making necessary concessions on the human rights of Palestinians. Pritzker has called for blocking US arms to Israel as long as it continues its genocide against the Palestinians, and he has notably received support from America’s own Palestinian community. Even as Pritzker fights anti-Semitism in the form of providing Holocaust education, he also teaches that right-wing Jews who wrong others should be opposed just as those who wrong Jews should be opposed.

As I celebrate Hanukkah and usher in the new year, one of my biggest hopes is that in 2026 Pritzker becomes the first Illinois governor to be elected to a third term since Jim Thompson in 1982. Once he accomplishes that, I hope Pritzker uses his billions intelligently and promotes his brand of progressivism throughout the Democratic Party. Even if he doesn’t become president, the party will be better off to be shaped by Pritzker’s political philosophy. Yet frankly I’d love it if the early 21st century listed as its great Jewish world leaders the likes of Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Sheinbaum of Mexico… and Pritzker of America.

Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.

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