Thank you to everyone who tuned into this video live!
In this bonus episode, recorded yesterday as a Substack Live, Princeton sociologist Paul Starr and I discuss his new article in The American Prospect, “Stephen Miller’s Impossible America:The ethnonationalist strategy for white replenishment won’t work” (May 26, 2026). Starr shows how multiple policy threads—pronatalism, deportation, and so-called “remigration” of ethnic Americans born and raised in the United States—support a fantasy that the United States can be the “white” nation that it never was.
Listen and:
You know how I am always asking you to support me? Well, do me a mitzvah and check out The American Prospect. A progressive journal of ideas, politics and power founded by Starr, Robert Kuttner, and Robert Reich, it is available online for free: this spring they eliminated intrusive programmatic ads. So, if you liked this conversation:
What I’m reading:
* Ling Ma, Severance (New York: Picador, 2019.) As far as I can tell this novel has nothing to do with the television show of the same name, and because it was written before Covid-19 pandemic, the deadly fungus that travels the globe to devastate American society is a figment of Ma’s imagination. The novel imagines an apocalypse created be unrestrained global capitalism, and which leaves virtually nothing but trash behind. It’s also a great read—which I can vouch for because I almost never read science fiction or futuristic fiction, I can’t put it down, and it won a basket of prizes. Also it’s pink!
Short takes:
* Democrats have plenty of good ideas—but unlike Republicans no coherent view of what the future should look like. “It is not that these policies are bad,” Jamelle Bouie writes at The New York Times. “Most of them, from what has been revealed, are good: worthwhile plans to break up utility monopolies, support child-rearing, regulate social media and artificial intelligence, and curtail corporate abuse. But none of this reflects or represents a far-reaching or comprehensive idea of what the nation might be.” (June 3, 2026)
* Can the left rediscover the hope inherent in patriotism? Many on the left say no—despite the fact that social change has often appealed to the founding ideals. “That most Americans continue to be patriotic only demonstrates to these progressives their blindness to, if not complicity in, evils wrought by the men and women who rule the imperial state,” Michael Kazin writes at The Atlantic. “Leftists already have such harsh critics on their side. If they wish to govern, though, they will need to win over the majority of Americans who love their country but also believe that it needs to change. As the late Todd Gitlin, an erstwhile leader of the New Left, wrote a year after the attacks of 9/11: ‘It is time for the patriotism of mutual aid, not just symbolic displays, not catechisms or self-congratulation. It is time to diminish the gap between the nation we love and the justice we also love. It is time for the real America to stand up.’” (June 3, 2026)
* Where in the world is Gregory Bovino? You remember Bovino—the Border Patrol guy who marched around Minneapolis in Nazi-adjacent gear? He’s in Portugal, according to Marion Soletty at Politico, mingling with “European far-right activists who advocate the mass deportation of immigrants and their descendants,” otherwise known as remigration. “In an interview with a far-right website ahead of the summit,” Solely continues, “Bovino — who didn’t wear his controversial coat — referenced Nazi Germany’s lead general Erwin Rommel as an inspirational figure and offered his help to end what he described as a ‘creeping horror,’ echoing racist terms used by far-right extremists to describe migrants.” (May 31, 2026)
Political Junkie is a reader-supported publication. You can always subscribe for free—but what about supporting us for as little as $5.00/month?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe
