Sarah and Beth discuss controversial figure Javier Milei, Argentina’s president whose unorthodox style and politics have captured the attention of Elon Musk and America’s MAGA movement. They examine how he came to power in Argentina, what he’s done there, and how his ideology has influenced conservative thinking in the United States.
Outside of politics, we want to hear about your whimsical habits!
Topics Discussed
Argentina Under the Leadership of Javier Milei
Milei’s Influence and Ideology in the United States
Finding Solutions After the Damage
Outside of Politics: Whimsical Habits
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Episode Resources
Pantsuit Politics Resources
Javier Milei Resources
Milei came to Washington wanting freer trade. What would that mean for the US and Argentina? (Atlantic Council)
Davos 2025: Speech by Javier Milei, President of Argentina (World Economic Forum)
Argentine economy shrinks by 1.8% in Milei’s first year as president (Buenos Aires Herald)
At CPAC, Argentina’s Milei explains his chainsaw methods and likens them to Musk’s DOGE (AP News)
Whimsical Habits Resources
Women are sharing quirky things they do to make life more whimsical and it's pure delight (Upworthy)
Show Credits
Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.
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Episode Transcript
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] This is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] You are listening to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. On today's show, we're going to be discussing Javier Milei. Who's that? Well, let me tell you. He's the guy standing behind Elon Musk as he wielded that chainsaw at CPAC. He is also the president of Argentina and a big inspiration in the MAGA movement. So we're going to talk about him and what he's been doing in Argentina over the past year, because we think it has a lot of relevance here in the United States. Outside of politics, we want to talk about whimsical habits after that roundup made its way around the internet this week. And I'm really excited about it.
Beth [00:00:41] Pure delight. Now, if you are like, hey, Javier Milei sounds interesting, but what about the budget deal or the Ukrainian minerals deal, or that Gaza video that Trump released? Well, we've got you covered on our bonus episode, which you can find on our Substack. We hope you will join us there. All the information to do that will be in the notes.
Sarah [00:01:06] We also kicked off our year-long slow read of Habits of the Heart this week on Substack. Spoiler, we are loving it. Despite being written almost 40 years ago, it is providing a lot of perspective on our current political moment, so we hope you'll check that out as well. Next up, let's talk about Javier Milei. Beth, I thought we should talk about Argentina probably a little bit first. Now, you are our geography and demographic population expert. So give us a little level set on Argentina.
Beth [00:01:41] Argentina is about a third the size of the United States in terms of land. It has about 46 million people. And we do a lot of trade with Argentina. It's the 10th largest country for us in terms of trade surpluses. We export more to Argentina than we import from Argentina. And that's been a real win-win. And people think there's opportunity for more of that, which is why Javier Milei has been in Washington, D.C., talking with Donald Trump. But we send a lot of heavy machinery and equipment that facilitates the energy industry in Argentina. They got a lot of oil. They got lithium. They have all kinds of minerals. The types of materials that you're hearing about everywhere, Argentina has those and they need a lot of US equipment to make the most of them.
Sarah [00:02:28] So Argentina has been dominated for most of the post-World War Two era by the Peronist party. And that is that Peron, like the Evita Peron we all learned about in the musical. That's the one. That party used an enormous amount of power as the state to intervene in Argentina's economy. Lots of social welfare programs, lots of industry subsidies. The state owned and still owned several industries. They ran massive, massive budget deficits and as a result, their central bank did a lot of capital controls. They controlled how much capital you could move in and out of the country.
[00:03:12] They did multiple exchange rates. They did price controls. And so as a result, they were basically printing money. The pesos, their currency rose tremendously. You don't have to understand what I'm talking about when I say capital controls to know that if the state is spending more than it takes in and decides to print money to make up the difference, you're going to have really high inflation rates. And I mean really high, as in, it reached 211% when Javier Milei was sworn in in 2023. So Javier Milei comes in and he is quite the character. Right, Beth?
Beth [00:03:54] He is quite the character. He like many of the quite the character politicians that have inspired the MAGA movement, thinks of himself not at all as a politician. He has a real look reminiscent of late stage Elvis.
Sarah [00:04:10] Yeah, I see it. I see it.
Beth [00:04:12] You see it. He is somewhat crude in his language, and he intends to make everyone in every room he enters extremely uncomfortable. I watched his speech at Davos from this year yesterday.
Sarah [00:04:27] Oh, Lord. Who invited him to Davos? That's a bad idea.
Beth [00:04:30] And he walks up to the podium intending to make everyone very, very uncomfortable.
Sarah [00:04:37] And so he has this background in economics. And he starts going viral with these takes, these attacks on the state and their intervention in the economy. He calls himself an anarcho-capitalist. The economist has this cover with him and he's like layering up. And the quote is, my contempt for this state is infinite. And that was his vibe. He was not hiding it when he ran for office. He was aggressively saying I'm going to come in there and undo all of this. Because he basically sees any state intervention as socialism. And I don't just mean in the economy, I basically mean anywhere.
Beth [00:05:22] This is a real test case for your what happens when people who hate the government control the government. Because he truly, truly hates the government. What he did that's a little bit different from what we see in similar figures in the United States, though, is he told everybody this is going to hurt. The economy is going to shrink because I am going to shrink the government control of the economy. So at least in the short term, fasten your seat belts. It's going to kind of suck. And it has.
Sarah [00:05:50] Yes. Now he has taken inflation down from about 13% month over month to 3% month over month. But poverty has jumped under his austerity measures. Unemployment is up. Argentina has entered a recession. Now he has tried to take that chainsaw to the government. The chainsaw at CPAC started with his campaign. He was always wielding this chainsaw. So that's why you saw Elon picking it up as inspiration.
Beth [00:06:18] It was a gift.
Sarah [00:06:19] Beautiful.
Beth [00:06:20] It was a gift from Milei. And he gave the chainsaw to Elon with his signature slogan, "Long live liberty, damn it" on the chainsaw. So it's a shared emblem now.
Sarah [00:06:33] Well, that's perfect that it was a gift and it had this slogan on it. And like you said, he has owned this. And I think there seems to be so far-- we're going to get into his most recent scandal. But this first year he was in office; he was sworn in in 2023. So over the course of 2024 he was doing a lot of slashing, but he was really trying to stay away from cash transfers to the poor. So he lowered government spending by 30%. He took the ministries from 18 to 8, halted all public works projects, stopped sending money to provincial governments. So he tried to get at it through spending that wasn't going to hurt the population directly. And he was coasting for a while on the goodwill of his honesty. And I think the sense you see here with Trump, which is at least he's doing something, he's taking action. He's trying to get at this. Much like the United States, the opposition party was sort of decimated and couldn't get its wits about it, wasn't putting up much opposition to what he was doing.
[00:07:34] So you're seeing a lot of this, but he hasn't quite gotten at the hardcore interventions through the central bank in Argentina. So he's still majorly in the red as far as foreign reserves like $11 billion or something. But he's going to need money from the IMF, and he's going to need money from foreign investors. And as far as everybody else is concerned, looking at this, the peso is still overvalued. They still have some of those capital controls in place. They still have some of the, I think, exchange rates in place. So he hasn't done all the really painful stuff yet because if he does that, the peso is going to drop even more. The recession will continue. People are going to hurt if the pesos continues to be devalued. But he needs that. He needs his population to suffer, to get the investment, to build it up in the long run. And I think he's just running out of track so far. But I still think that what he's managed to accomplish, being honest with people, is interesting.
Beth [00:08:36] Yeah. He announced at Davos that Argentina represents a new way of doing politics, which is about telling people the truth to their faces and trusting they will understand.
Sarah [00:08:45] I don't have any beef with that. I have a lot of beef with what he decides to do with that. But I do think particularly post-Covid, there is a lot of room for people to just feel like they're being told the truth. We're going to at least tell you the truth. And he has done that for the most part. He said, I'm going to do this. It's going to hurt.
Beth [00:09:08] Yeah. The truth has some pain. The truth means that inflation is way down, but prices are still going up. They're still going up 3% month over month, right? It's not deflation. I think we continue to need someone in the United States to say to the public, the prices will not go back down. You will not pay what you once paid for milk and eggs and bread. There'll be some volatility, but deflation is not the goal and it's probably not achievable for the rest of the economy to be what you expect and desire it to be.
Sarah [00:09:38] And I think it's interesting to watch him too, because he sort of defies classification. I know that seems crazy when I say he was at CPAC, but he's not like Donald Trump. He is not also promising everything will be great. We're going to grow the economy. We're going to balance the budget, but also we're going to cut taxes. And also we're going to stop taxing tips. He doesn't talk out both sides of his mouth.
Beth [00:10:07] Where he is very much aligned with Donald Trump is in the belief that woke ideology is the central problem to be solved by all leaders. I think I better understand that coming from Milei than anybody else I've heard talk about it, though. I understand where it fits in his worldview better than with anyone else. Because he really lays out his view that when you are talking about woke ideology, what you are saying is that there are all of these problems that cannot be solved by the market. And his belief is that the market, by definition, is correct. That there are no market failures. That the idea of a market failure is an oxymoron. And that talking about systemic injustice is an excuse to build government power and limit the power of the market. And that I understand. I don't agree with it, but I get it. And I had not been able to get before why someone like Milei would align with someone like Orban or Trump around this anti-woke ideology.
Sarah [00:11:18] Yeah, because I think two things. One, the confusing part is he is maniacally free market. He is not going to be supporting tariffs. He is full in the model of like Margaret Thatcher. Like we are just going to shrink the government and let the markets decide. Whatever pain that causes for people, who cares? Like you said, the markets are infallible. Again, don't agree with it, but that's his position. That's not Donald Trump's position. Donald Trump has abandoned so much of the free market ideology that defined the Republican Party for my entire lifetime. So it is confusing when you take that in combination with the woke ideology because it's easy, I think, just to tell yourself (and that's definitely what I told myself for a while) it's just red meat politics. All they care about is firing people up so they can get done what they want to get done. But he seems a little more ideological about it than some Republicans who I do think really don't care about woke ideology. But even when it comes to the conservatives in our own country, I'm realizing like, no, I think I was just telling myself about the-- I think there are more true believers than I realize when it comes to this. And so Javier Milei is like an interesting test case for that.
Beth [00:12:45] When I was watching his speech at Davos, he spent a lot of time talking about men and feminism. And what he said that I wrote down because I thought, okay, I'm learning something about this worldview that I didn't know before, is that he said radical feminism is redundant because we already have equality before the law in the West. And equality before the law is all we need. That is the gold standard. Everything else is a quest for privileges. And he said that those privileges are always going to be conveyed by the government. And that is how you get to out of control all powerful government that constrains our freedom, our liberty, our markets.
Sarah [00:13:28] Let's take a break and talk about that. This debate around equality under the law or systemic inequity. That's a really interesting perspective. And like I said, I think I'm coming around to realizing that there are more true believers when it comes to this than I wanted to admit to myself. I think some of this within the CPAC community is a radicalization that happened under the first Trump term. A radicalization and a feeling that they were using the power of the government and opposition to our ideas and nothing else.
Beth [00:14:13] They meaning Democrats?
Sarah [00:14:15] Yeah. I think so.
Beth [00:14:16] Or 'they' meaning the establishment, or 'they' meaning what? Because I think that's important.
Sarah [00:14:20] I think it's not just Democrats. I think they see the administrative state as an enemy all on its own, because if it was just about political party, then they would probably maintain the status quo within the federal government as other administrations have, because you'd be harming members of both parties, which is what we're seeing, right?
Beth [00:14:43] Yes.
Sarah [00:14:43] As this rolls out across the country, it's not just about partisanship you're seeing. Now, listen, I think they knew that. I think they accepted we're going to punish the state. It'll hurt Republicans and Democrats. But there was no Milei like honesty with the voters in America that like this is going to hurt everybody, but we're going to take it out just the same. I was reading an article today; the reporter was like this is one of my most trusted Trump interpreters. And they're like, what's the goal with DOGE? And they're like just to break it. Just to break it. And that, I think, is the crossover with Milei. I think a lot of what he does is just to break it. And if you're fueled not just by a belief in the free market and the value of the free market, but also like the villainy of the state, well, then you've got a really supercharged situation.
Beth [00:15:38] In that respect, I sense from his public remarks that I have read that Milei feels a greater kinship with Elon Musk than with Donald Trump. And I can imagine that some of where an Elon Musk vision of society appeals to Milei, I can imagine Milei being fine with private armies, with private space travel, with colonization of space by private companies, with construction of cities by wealthy individuals. I find myself wondering yesterday, as I was doing research about him, what Milei would say about any role the state has to provide a measure of security to citizens. Before I was reading about him, I talked to a listener who is a federal wildfire fighter, and this man loves what he does and is super passionate about serving the country. Doesn't have an ounce of complaint in him. You can tell that he's just not built to complain.
[00:16:43] But as he described his work, he was talking about fighting these fires and how it necessitates being out there 21 days before a break, 16 hour days. Just the sheer intensity of the work to keep people safe from wildfire is extreme. It takes extreme measures by individuals and by the government. And he is a little concerned about the cutting back of people available for that kind of work. And so I'm thinking about him and I'm reading about Milei and I just wonder, like, is there any role for the government in this kind of worldview? Is there a federal wildfire fighting service in Milei's conception of what government should be? And I don't hear it coming through in these remarks. Which makes them, for me, less straight talking revolutionary to more like naive and maybe deceptive.
Sarah [00:17:43] To his alliance with Elon Musk, I read the other day that someone described him as the college freshman who's learning about politics for the first time, and I thought, oh my God, that's it. That's it. Except for because of the indisputable liberal bent of many colleges. I went to college, I learned about all this for the first time and there were college professors there, mostly liberal, to be like, yeah, this is the issue. This is how government or activism can fix it. And because they hate the government, they think everything they learn about is like we'll just cut the government, break it, break it, break it. That'll fix it. But listen, market failures do exist. I'm going to go out on a limb here and think Javier Milei has probably not spent a lot of time looking into the American daycare system. Market failures do exist. And it is not because I think that government is perfect that I am inclined to use the levers of government to address not just systemic inequities, but other problems within our culture, society, nation, it's because I don't know who else is going to do it. I don't know who else will, who else can.
[00:18:58] And the irony of someone aligned with Elon Musk saying there's no market failure, well, Elon Musk and his market success and Tesla wouldn't exist without government research and subsidies. So how do you explain that? The things that are not profitable still have to happen. There are things that have to happen that don't make anybody money. So what do we do about those things? And, to me, I don't know who else is going to do them. I know there are people who think like basically nonprofits and churches should just carry us across the line. This is a debate in my own community right now about homelessness. You have commissioners being like, well, I just don't know what the government is going to do about it. Homelessness, really? Emergency housing? And if you think that the non-profits are the best vehicles for that, fine. Give them some money. But there are of course market failures and I don't know who else is going to address them but the government.
Beth [00:20:00] Nonprofits and churches almost universally are subsidized by government in one form or another specifically through the tax code. So we do have to be very honest and open about that. I think that the test cases that you just unspooled would really push to the limit where this honesty goes. I could see a Javier Milei responding to you about daycare by saying, well, women should raise their children. Because he definitely has a very rigid view of gender roles. We haven't even talked about the way that he discusses transgender people and just believes that that doesn't exist and we are accepting unacceptable things, and history is going to look back very unkindly on where we are. But beyond that, he really espouses a pretty traditional, rigid version of what the genders are supposed to do and how we're supposed to contribute.
Sarah [00:21:00] That's fine, friend. Cool. Grow your economy with half the labor class at home.
Beth [00:21:04] Yeah.
Sarah [00:21:05] Go for it. If you want to find a way to do that, I'm all ears.
Beth [00:21:09] But the thing with him is I don't think that's his goal. I don't think growing the economy is his goal, or he wouldn't be doing the things that he's doing. I think his belief is that there is a right way for society to be come what may. And I wonder if that's what he'd say about disasters. Well, some disasters are going to happen and some people are going to die because life is cruel and hard and bad things happen and that is the way it's supposed to go. I think that's what he might say about climate. He talks about climate extremism, that we don't just care now about clean air and clean water and making places habitable for humans. We act like humans are a scourge on the planet, and that leads us to radical places. And I think what he might say is like, look, the earth's going to change them.
Sarah [00:21:51] Suck it up.
Beth [00:21:52] What happens will happen.
Sarah [00:21:53] And, look, here's the thing. I'm really working on acknowledging the kernel of truth that is often present in worldviews and policy suggestions that I find abhorrent. This is Donald Trump superpower, right? He's the honest liar. He says enough that people go, "He's right about that." That if you don't acknowledge it you seem a little crazy. If you don't go, "Yeah, he is right about that. But this is not the solution." And I'm really trying hard to get out of that bimodal place in American politics where I can't give you anything because we're talking about morality, which I do not believe belongs in politics. I think that leads us bad places.
[00:22:40] Or it means like you'll win and I'll never win again if I acknowledge that you might be right about something, I just think that that has not served us, and so I'm really trying to work on that in myself. And so I do want to say that I think there is kernels of this that are accurate. I think that definitely the just looking people in the eye and tell them the truth. Even if it's the truth about your wacky ideology, fine. Tell them the truth and they can decide. We have tried the whole in lots of places, including higher ed and Europe and other places that it's so abhorrent it deserves not to be spoken out loud. And I don't think that's worked. I think the silencing of it lets it grow. I think you expose it to the light and everybody can go, urgh! Which for what it's worth, I think it's happening with Elon Musk right now.
[00:22:37] I think the American public's getting a good long look at Elon Musk and going, urgh! So I think there's something there. And I think there is something to the idea that people with power-- and for better or for worse, there is power in access to the bureaucracy either as an employee or a lawyer or a lobbyist or whatever. There is a certain amount of power with the access to a very powerful system like the federal government. And acknowledging that like that power is often used to keep people out is important. The status quo is not utopia. If we are keeping to norms and maintaining the status quo, some people are getting left behind, and some people are doing that even though they know people are getting left behind. Be it from individual opportunity hoarding, all the way up to manipulating the administrative regulations to make sure your corporation gets the subsidy, in all levels this happens. And I think that it is important to acknowledge that.
Beth [00:24:53] So may I read to you a little bit of him talking about this idea of systemic injustice and rights and government control to get your thoughts, because I think it relates to everything you just said. Okay, this is him talking at Davos. He says that social justice at its core has a fundamental premise that equality before the law is not enough, as hidden systemic injustices exist which must be rectified, an idea that serves as a goldmine for bureaucrats who aspire to omnipotence. Negative rights to life, liberty, and property were transformed into an artificially and artificial and endless list of positive rights. First, it was education, then housing, and from then on, absurdities like access to the internet, televised football, theater, cosmetic treatments, and an endless number of other desires that were turned into fundamental human rights. Rights that, of course, someone has to pay for and which can only be guaranteed through the infinite expansion of the abhorrent state. In other words, we move from the concept of freedom as the fundamental protection of the individual against the intervention of the tyrant, to the concept of liberation through state intervention.
Sarah [00:26:12] So there is something there. It goes about 40% further than I would... Because here's what I think. Here's the difference. in the spirit of our whiteboard conversations, here's what I've been thinking about. When he gets to the bureaucrats who aspire to omnipotence, I'm like, what are you doing? What are you talking about? That's cuckoo. That's cuckoo but for Cocoa Puffs. Or the, like, televised football. Okay. Everybody chill, starting with you, Mr. Milei. But this is a debate I have with my 15-year-old all the time about housing. It's just crazy that people don't have houses. Of course, I agree. I don't think in the richest nation in the world people should live in encampments. I don't want that level of suffering. But I think my hesitancy about this and something that Milei names and exploits is the idea that he's articulating that there's this positive right to it. And definitely I think the American populace did have a but who's going to pay for it reaction. Because here's where I think I'm coming down to it. One, I don't think that while it would decrease a lot of suffering in some very exploited populations, I don't think Americans want the government to just give them a house when they turn 18.
Beth [00:27:51] Right. I agree.
Sarah [00:27:51] Our government built housing. Here it is. Nobody wants that because there needs to be like what we talked about all the time, we talked about in Habits of the Heart, humans need friction. Humans need purpose. Humans need pursuit.
Beth [00:28:05] Yeah. Quest.
Sarah [00:28:06] Quest. We needed the pursuit. We talked about the pursuit of happiness, and really we think it might have been better said as the pursuit of purpose. They need something. They need to be striving. They need to have a reason that they're waking up every day and doing what they're doing. And I think what he's naming is something I've been thinking a lot about, which is it's not necessarily the administrative state, but it is this sense that we will just use the levers of the law. We will use lawyers and lawsuits and the legal system to fix everything. We won't be in a communicative, responsive conversation with our legislators so they can actually start solving problems and we can go, "Not that one. This one." We'll just foist on the legal system.
[00:28:59] We'll say, give us a right to this. Name the right. And then we did it. And I think what we've seen is that doesn't do it. Even if you hate this version and you want the positive list of rights, if we get to the Supreme Court and we overturn a Supreme Court case I hate that says you don't have a fundamental right to education, that's not going to fix our public education system. Not overnight. There is this detachment. So I don't think it's nefarious. I just think we've removed ourselves from saying it's our job in a democracy. We are the committee. If we don't want homelessness, it's our job through the levers of government, responsive government, to fight for that and not just go, we'll sue. We'll get a right, and then we'll be done."
Beth [00:29:52] Fundamentally, we're always in an argument about how much better we're trying to make society and who is responsible for that bettering. And the tension that I always feel inside this sort of giant Democratic coalition now is that I mostly think the federal government is better at freedom from than freedom, too. I mostly think the law is at its best when it's saying we are going to protect you from unreasonable search and seizure by the law. When the law is putting limits on itself and saying, yes, we are responsible for your security and order, but we also cannot step too far into the scope of life that is purely yours to go have that quest and to explore and to build and to solve problems. And so I just see this playing out everywhere when I think about a measles death in Texas.
[00:30:53] That is an argument about how much better we're trying to make things and who is responsible for better, and what better we all agree we actually want. And that's what runs through Milei's comments for me. His sense perhaps that, yes, he wants a great world, too. Maybe if we sat down and made a list of things we care about, we would have more overlap than it sounds like in these speeches. But his belief is that that better can never come from government. And I think you're right, I don't think that's where Americans are. But I think we are not aligned on what better we think can come from government, because I think some of what Trump speaks to is the fact that our belief that government is handling everything has made us just sit back and wait always for someone else to do it, and then just be pissed off and disappointed that it doesn't get anywhere.
Sarah [00:31:52] Well, and I think where Milei and he's like Musk, Trump all of them are not honest, is if you want to address the expansive power of the federal government, you do not do that through the executive branch because the only way to do that is expand your power to change.
Beth [00:32:12] That's right.
Sarah [00:32:12] And you're expanding your power along the way. And guess what? There will be a day when Donald Trump will not be in charge. And guess who's going to claim that power? People that might very much disagree with you. So there's just no way. You might shrink the federal government. Clearly, Milei has. But you have expanded the power of government along the way. And that's what they never want to be honest about.
Beth [00:32:36] Yeah.
Sarah [00:32:36] And let's talk about one more last area of hypocrisy with Mr. Milei. And I would say market failures. So on Valentine's Day, Mr. Milei took to X to promote a previously unknown crypto token called Libra, claiming that it would really help Argentina's economy; it's going to fund small businesses. Signature slogan long live freedom. Well, lots of people believed him and went and got themselves some Libra. It skyrocketed from near zero to almost $5 before crashing within hours. So the first question for Mr. Milei is was that a market failure? That is my first question. So it was a big deal. People are very, very angry. People lost millions of dollars.
[00:33:32] Here's a fun fact for you, Beth. Ben Chow, the co-founder of the decentralized exchange Meteora, which also facilitated the launch of the Melania token, the Trump token, and this Libra token was of course involved. Now he resigned, but this exploitation he's saying he didn't know. Of course, Milei is lying. I didn't know. But there's already calls for impeachment. He's losing a lot of political capital day by day over the scandal. And again, I just want to be like, well, what do we think? Was this a market failure? Is there a role in government here when it comes to these crypto tokens that are basically just bank accounts for people who want to pay off world leaders to do their bidding? I wonder.
Beth [00:34:23] Is there a reason that we've had ethical standards for leaders to not do things like this, to not profit from the office? And he can say he didn't know all he wants to, people immediately told him. As soon as he sent the tweet, people were saying, hey, you need to be careful here. This sounds like a scam. It sounds like you're being taken for a ride. And he absolutely was. This is how a lot of cryptocurrency works. They get somebody famous to tweet about it, or they hack into somebody famous and they tweet about it, and then all kinds of people buy it and then the people who were propping up its value, jet.
Sarah [00:34:57] Yeah, take their money and run.
Beth [00:34:59] This is a playbook that's gone over and over again. So if you are a world leader who wants to be part of the crypto industry, then you need to go to school before you say anything public about any of these coins because fundamentally all of this is so ephemeral anyway. I could go on for days about how irresponsible this was and how I think he deserves every bit of scrutiny that comes his way from it.
Sarah [00:35:23] Well, I just think crypto is-- and I think we're going to see this in the United States. This is really where this worldview runs out of road. It just runs out of road. Who are you going to blame for this? Is this the administrative state? What bureaucrat is responsible for this? Because there's very little regulation. Very little regulation. So whose fault is this? Just wondering if the whole worldview is built on villains, particularly in the administrative state, what happens when shit starts to break? You wanted it broken. So who are we going to blame, then? I've been thinking a lot about this with Trump. He has had this enormous capacity to critique the government while being the government for so long. But I do wonder if that's running out of road.
[00:36:12] I wonder if the way he has come in so dramatically and taken such aggressive action, it's this hard moment in time, right? Is anybody going to buy it when he goes and tries to blame Joe Biden? Is anybody going to buy it when he's going to try to blame the Democratic Party, which everybody sees as weak? I don't know. It doesn't seem like it to me. It seems like his ability to constantly play the victim is not going to work with Elon and his chainsaw and OMB telling everybody to slash this, break it. You're going to break it. You're not going to be able to blame it on anybody else. That feels to me like a previous approach that is not going to work in this new reality.
Beth [00:37:02] I think that's a great point and an important point for political opponents to keep in mind. Because what can be used down the road-- and we don't wish for things to be broken, obviously, but some of them just will-- and around the next election, I think you show that chainsaw and say that should be a chainsaw to the excuses. He said that he was going to remake this government as he wanted it, and he did. And look at the numbers. Look at the unemployment that he created. Look at the downsides to our economy that he created. And it's all him. There's nobody left. And if they are, it's because he decided to let them stay there.
Sarah [00:37:42] They are loyal.
Beth [00:37:42] It's all him now.
Sarah [00:37:43] Their only loyalist left. So who is going to take responsibility for things when they go badly? When there's another chemical explosion and there's no one at the EPA to come to the town and address the pollution. Who's going to be blamed when there's a natural disaster and FEMA has been gutted and there's no one there to help you rebuild? And I think then we can have a real conversation, like we said, with Milei. What is the government supposed to do? Because they've broken it. What do we want to rebuild in its place? We can't go back. Look, it's done. So much of what they've done already cannot be undone. It just can't. And we're going to have to start to put forward a new vision, a new argument for what government can do. I think for me a convincing, articulable vision is to rein in the imbalance of power but not between the federal government and the regular citizen, but between the billionaire class and probably soon a trillionaire class. I don't think Elon's that far away. So then we can have a conversation about is this what we want? Do we want trillionaires while some people can't pay their bills? To me, that's a good direction to take this conversation.
Beth [00:39:11] And my interest is in seeing who does the problem solving if the government isn't there to do it. And where do we want that problem solving to happen? The one thing that Milei says that I agree with, with no qualification, is that the script of the last 40 years has run out. And when a system runs out, history opens up. I believe that.
Sarah [00:39:33] I agree.
Beth [00:39:34] And that's part of why I have tried to take a really reserved approach to critiquing what Trump and Musk are doing right now, because I think they are breaking things, and I do believe around some of those things something will emerge outside of government that's great, or through state governments that's great, or in forms that I can't even imagine sitting here today that's great. Some of it will be really bad, but I feel like I need to kind of wait and see how things evolve. Because what comes with breakage is exposure and brainstorming and resilience and resolve and adaptation. And I'm interested in all of that.
Sarah [00:40:18] Yeah, I want a calibration to the problem solving and who's solving it? I read this great article in The New York Times about the juvenile justice system, and they were talking about the crack epidemic. And they were like, look, we spent a lot of time talking about the crack epidemic and the systemic racism and the war on drugs. We don't spend a lot of time talking about the communities responded, and some of those solutions worked and they are still in place. People built gang intervention organizations and afterschool programs, and they took the reins themselves.
[00:40:59] And it makes me tear up. We don't talk enough about that. We don't say they saw the problem and they went after it. And so, like I said, I keep talking about a responsive government. People got mad at me on Tuesday because I kind of critiqued the idea that we would have DEI inside pest control. Look, I'm not saying that's not a problem, but is it a problem big enough to take the power of the federal government to it? If there's a recruitment problem, then there's a recruitment problem and there's a way closer to the ground to address that. The reason I think articulating the billionaire, soon trillionaire class, is because that is a problem so big. Who else is going to get at it but the federal government? That's something that a local community can't get at, right? A local community can't get at the fact that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and the other robber barons have been allowed to amass that level of wealth. That's a problem so big you have to have a problem solver of equal power to get at it.
Beth [00:42:15] Or you have violent revolution.
Sarah [00:42:17] Right. I think one of my biggest issues with the Democratic Party and the progressive narrative-- and I say this all the time, my husband is the one who coined this first. Which is everything can't be about everything. Everything can't be about everything. Everything can't be about systemic injustice. And everything can't be about the death of capitalism. We have to calibrate where is this problem? Who can best solve it? And I think that there is strength, even in a national party, in saying this is best left to local communities. But when the problem gets so big that only a big problem solver can address it, that's where we need to talk.
Beth [00:43:07] And that tension for me leaves me curious right now when I think about education. I don't like the idea of them going in and just bleeding the Department of Education dry. And I worry for people who are very well served by programs administered through the Department of Education right now. At the same time, I do not believe that the Department of Education is solving challenges that we have in our public schools across the country from gun violence, to reading loss, to absenteeism. A million things. I don't think the Department of Education is getting a lot of those problems. And sometimes I just look at my local schools and I wonder, if you had less from government, would you be free to do more?
[00:44:00] Would you be free to focus on things that you think would really make a difference for the students you see every day, instead of spreading your energy across all of these competing priorities that just keep getting layered on and layered on and layered on by state and federal government? I'm curious about where less federal government actually turns on the capacity to solve problems because people have felt constrained. I don't think it's everywhere. And I don't think it's obvious, but I sense that some of that capacity exists and we might be able to get at it over the next four years, even as we are dealing with a lot of wreckage.
Sarah [00:44:43] Well, because also it's not a false binary. If there are layers of government that are removed and certain education systems find solutions that they are then free to pursue, guess what? Other people will notice. Maybe they stumble upon something or strategically put a system in place that is a solution for people across the nation, but they can't find it if the status quo is maintained through the levers of funding. So they can't get to that, they can't get to that next level if they're so hamstrung by the-- I don't know another word but bureaucracy. I don't know another way to describe it. Again, I don't think it's nefarious. That's where they leave me behind. I don't think it's nefarious.
[00:45:44] I keep thinking about that book, Subtract, we're just creatures of addiction. And we're definitely creatures of addiction when you put a lot of lawyers at the table. I'm married to a lawyer. We both went to law school. That is not a moral critique. It's just a psychological observation. You're paying somebody by the hour. That's not problem solving. Maybe that's back to my observation and trying to wrap my head around the legal system. That approach of lawsuits and positive rights, it's not problem solving. It's not the same thing. How many times in your future problem solving do you sit down and go, I know the best solution is to file a lawsuit?
Beth [00:46:29] Never. And I tell people all the time that I was not a good fit in practicing law because I wanted to go to law school to solve problems, and I came out of law school very adept at naming them. And that was my career. See the problem, figure out how to make the problem bigger if it advantaged my client. Try to figure out how to make the problem smaller, but never really like, oh, here's a creative solution. The law doesn't want creativity. The law wants predictability and stability and status quo. The law is a driver for status quo, and we need that. The guardrail is so important, but it's not innovative. And I think all of us feel this urgent need for innovation. And innovation often just requires the people who show up to say, well, here's what we're going to try.
[00:47:19] And paradoxically, everything is about everything. Of course, it is. Because when you just show up and try, you hit on all kinds of things and the ripple effects are enormous. But you can never try if you begin thinking about those ripple effects. This is what we teach in future problem solving. You have to choose something to work on that is significant, but that is manageable in scope so you can assess how it's working and continue to make it work better. And I think that having the federal government be a problem solver at so many different levels, we've lost the scope. And we've prevented the people who show up from saying, well, here's what we're going to try now because there are too many strings and attachments and landmines.
Sarah [00:48:08] Well, and that's exactly what I was going to say. That's why the naming of even the federal bureaucracy, those layers of government, as the villain, they could be heroes if you'd let them try. These people know what they're doing better than anybody else. So instead of firing them, why don't you empower them to innovate? Say whatever comes up, whatever Dateline special or John Stossel gets his hands on, like, we'll back you up and we'll say we were trying. We were trying to figure out a better, more innovative way. I'm reading this book called The Lean Startup, and he talks about the learning and how you can trick yourself into thinking there's these mirages of successful metrics. And I just think for the federal government, so much of it was like don't take any risk. That's the only metric we care about.
[00:49:02] It's not serving us. It's definitely not serving the employees who are now being treated like hot garbage in the pursuit of efficiency-- even though they're not even pursuing efficiency, there are pursuing destruction. That's what they're trying to do. And in the face of that, they are pushing out people who could innovate, who could find solutions, who would probably be more than happy to strip away some regulations they see that they're not working. You think people want to sit around filing reports they don't think anybody reads? Nobody wants to do that. But they're not doing that because it's not their goal. Again, when you create this world where everybody who's not you is a villain, then you are also not problem solving.
Beth [00:49:42] And I think that's why Milei is instructive because as much as we've been talking about, okay, let's take the morality out of it, this kind of extreme view of government is also based in morality. I really think when you listen carefully to Milei, what he is saying is I don't care what harm comes of it. Government should not interfere with people's lives. And he believes that as a value proposition. That markets are good and government is bad. As a value proposition. And that also is not problem solving. And I think that is what's unfolding with Elon Musk and why it's important to study the company he keeps on the world stage and understand that they intend to break it. And sometimes it's because they just believe that it shouldn't exist, not because they envision it in a new form.
Sarah [00:50:37] So we hope that in learning a little bit more about Javier Milei, you have a deeper, perhaps not less frustrating, but at least more knowledgeable understanding of the philosophy fueling so much of the changes within our own government right now. Up next, we're going to talk about what's on our mind Outside of Politics. Beth, there's this great roundup where somebody said, what are your whimsical habits? Now, I know it was a roundup, so we get at the best of the best here. But I was just reading through these things, and I do not have enough whimsical habits. They are so good. Well, I think my favorite one was somebody said every time they pass themselves in a mirror, they go, "My Lady." It's so good.
Beth [00:51:23] That was also my favorite. I felt that I should adopt it immediately. I thought the same thing. It really inspired me. It reminded me of when I started working with Mary Van Geffen as a parenting coach. She made me a much sillier parent in a way that has really benefited our lives. So when I was thinking about what are my whimsical habits, almost all of them are in relating to my kids because I focus on being sillier with them. And it's really helped. And now I feel like, okay, this is an invitation for me to be sillier with myself. Just these little things for me. Like "My lady" in the mirror. Yes, please.
Sarah [00:52:01] I really thought about. I think Nicholas would tell you my one whimsical habit is every time I get cold chills, I announce it. I just say cold chills. I just feel like everybody should know. I don't know if it's because I feel like maybe they're coming to you next you better watch out. Because there is like a lot of fairy tale mysticism in some of these. Somebody was like, "When I get a drink in the middle of the night, I drink out of a little wooden bowl and pretend I'm being nursed back to health by fairies," which was hilarious. I definitely have silliness, so we do a lot of dance parties. I had a dance party button that ultimately got broken, but it was awesome. 32nd Dance Party button. So we do a lot of silly dance parties. There's just a lot of silliness because I live with four boys, so there's lots of farting and puns. Nicholas is a prolific bad dad joke/pun maker. So there's a lot of silliness, but I feel like whimsy is just a little bit different. And I'm trying to think of ways to be more whimsical. It feels like it's almost like fairy tales, like you're leaning in to the there's other things happening out there that aren't just black and white. You know what I mean?
Beth [00:53:20] I do. So when I have to wake Ellen up-- Ellen is nine years old and doesn't wake up well. It's just the truth. If she sets her alarm and she gets up on her own, all is peaceful. If I have to go in, it's tough. So I always wake her up with a story. I'll sit down in her bed and I'll say, "Once upon a time," and I will make her some kind of princess or some kind of fairy or some kind of spirit and the story will be about her having to wake up and what kind of day she has after she wakes up. And that has helped tremendously. If I start with a story, we're fine. If I go in and say, "Hey, it's time to go," it's not going to work. We're going to have a tough morning. So I do things like that with my kids. I do talk to myself like a small child when I work out.
Sarah [00:54:04] Okay.
Beth [00:54:05] So the whole time I'm working out, I'll be like, "Beth, you're doing amazing. You made such a good choice today. I'm so proud of you for showing up today like this." And I will do it in the smallest like most cloying voice possible because it sort of makes me laugh. Because I'm sort of doing the trainer talk, but making fun of it at the same time and there's some kind of combination of sarcasm and encouragement there that really works for me.
Sarah [00:54:28] Well, somebody said that if they say something mean to themself, they have to say it in a Cockney accent.
Beth [00:54:32] I like that, too.
Sarah [00:54:33] That was one of the whimsical habits.
Beth [00:54:35] That's a good one. I write little notes to myself sometimes, just this was really well done. Good job on this or whatever. So I do a lot of self encouragement.
Sarah [00:54:42] Listen, the being nice to yourself and treating yourself and just living a life like you're your own best friend, I got that down. Guys, that's not a problem for me. I do not have mean self-talk. I am more than happy to lean into the treat. I guess. I don't know if this is whimsical, but I really do like a holiday. I told you when we sat down today is National Toast Day and I thought we should have a piece of toast in celebration. So I'm very celebratory. Like I'm all about the-- and I really try to work them in. If it's like chocolate covered nut day, you better believe I'm going to have some chocolate covered nuts for my kids when they get home from school. But again, I don't know if that's whimsical.
Beth [00:55:25] Well, I don't think we need to be too difficult about the definition of whimsical, right? That seems to defy whimsy in and of itself.
Sarah [00:55:31] I will say I do like all those fairy doors. Remember the fairy doors in the trees? We had those for a while. I think I had a fairy door in my house. I think that when my kids got older though I left the once upon a time nature of some of this behind, and I would like to bring it back. It's the once upon a timeness that I think I really like.
Beth [00:55:52] Do you have Superstitions or like attachments to objects? I firmly believe that if things are going bad, I need to change my purse.
Sarah [00:55:59] Okay, no, I don't have that.
Beth [00:56:01] So there are things like that that I just think, well, okay, now we must light a candle and that will help the situation.
Sarah [00:56:06] Okay. I'm superstitious about some things. I'm just basically, like, energetically superstitious. I think we talked about this on the podcast before. I don't say I'm dead. I don't send coffin emojis. I don't do that. I really don't like that. I just said it just then. I don't like putting it out there. So I definitely have energetic superstitions. But to me that feels like heavy. That's the opposite of whimsy.
Beth [00:56:32] Well, changing your purse never feels heavy to me. It just feels like, okay, we're shaking the energy.
Sarah [00:56:37] Well, that's not true, Beth, because I've held your purse and it is very, very heavy.
Beth [00:56:40] It is heavy. I carry around a lot because I'm ready for whatever anyone needs. That's part of my charm, okay? I'm ready for whatever anyone needs.
Sarah [00:56:47] I like it. I want to hear everybody's ideas. I want some more whimsy. Specifically whimsy. Now, this might be anti-whimsical the way I'm really honing in on this. And I get the irony just the same. I want to hear people's whimsical habits, so I'm excited.
Beth [00:57:05] Agreed.
Sarah [00:57:07] Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We hope this episode was helpful and enlightening. Make sure you head over to our Substack to check out our first discussion of Habits of the Heart. We'll be back in your ears on Tuesday with a new episode, and until then, have the best weekend available to you.
Something I thing we have to accept and hold deeply about Musk, Milei, and probably Trump; is that they are not interested in human survival or thriving. They know they are fine, and that's enough for them. I'm not saying this as a moral thing - it's just a fact that we have to put in all of our analysis.
Musk signals this when he claims a diagnosis of Asperger's. The Autism community no longer uses that term because of its connection to Nazis. Musk uses it to exempt himself from accountability because of Autistic tropes about lack of emotional connection. But he also uses it to say, "I can use a disability label to excuse/provide a reason for my behavior, but I'm good enough to survive genocide." In other words, "My publicly perceived flaws are a disability, but I'll survive."
I say hello to the moon when I can see it during the day and I pretend I'm the only one who can see it and it's our little secret.