{"id":14001,"date":"2020-11-03T06:41:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-03T11:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=14001"},"modified":"2020-11-16T16:24:08","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T21:24:08","slug":"episode-406-david-shields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-406-david-shields","title":{"rendered":"Episode 406 – David Shields"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 406:
\nDavid Shields<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_406_-_David_Shields.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

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“So much of American history has been a fairy-tale children’s history, and so much of Trump’s dealing with COVID was a Norman Vincent Peale ‘think positively and it’ll all go away.’ So much of the connection is an absence of reality hunger, not to name-check my own work.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>In 2018, essayist David Shields<\/a> wrote Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention<\/a> (Thought Catalog). For Election Day 2020, we decided to revisit that book, how he would write it differently now, and why Trump is the Bizarro World’s Personal Essayist #1. I prompt David with the adventitious sight of a car that bore the message, “Compassion Is Another Word For Control,” and we go off to the conversational races, talking politics, the superior messaging tactics of the right-wing, concerns about far-left cultural policies, faith in radical skeptical intelligence, the absence of reality hunger vis-a-vis the history of America, why rage isn’t a primary emotion but rather a cover for fear and pain, the lessons of Howard Stern, and why “An Intervention” is not for Trump but for the American people. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read David’s books<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“I’m really interested in strength, weakness, confessionality, brokenness, and woundedness, and obviously Trump and I approach those in very different ways.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n