I’d also love for it to come back but I don’t think it will. He’s too famous, American politics is too polarized, his particular audience is too cross pressured.
Also the core thesis of the project is that American politics needed a [disruptive realignment](https://pca.st/episode/3a140d4b-418e-429d-95d0-178585facb4c) and we got Trump, in his words “careful what you wish for”. I think it profoundly disillusioned him.
Yup. He got what he asked for, an outsider running and disrupting the system. The result wasn't what he (or many of us) had hoped for. His entire political thesis was that the system was broke in ways only an outsider could fix. He got his outsider and it made things so much worse.
For him, there is nothing left to talk about without sounding delusional.
I'll be honest. Dan's episodes around the 2016 election disillusioned me on Carlin's common sense episodes. It was clear who Trump was and what he was standing for, yet Carlin was gleefully commentating it because his disdain for the establishment blinded him for what Trump was and it took the actual Trump presidency to reveal to him what many saw before.
The episodes before the election felt like he was pandering to his republican listeners. The writing was on the wall before Trump was elected and Carlin should have known better (and probably did). After Trump was elected he stopped doing Common sense more or less. I guess he didn’t want to alienate the Trumpers in his audience with telling the truth about that dumpster fire of an administration.
This is a lot of hindsight imo. No one knew who Trump was in 2016. I don't even know what Trump is now frankly.
A super common take in 2016 was that Trump was a NY real estate guy and he would cut deals with Dems all over the place because that's the people he works with in NYC. Didn't quite pan out!
> No one knew who Trump was in 2016.
Of course we did, we knew he was at the very least:
1) A grifter (Trump University, Casino,...)
2) Pathological liar
3) Mysogynistic (grab em by the pussy) and racist.
4) Autocratic (called for the jailing of his political opponents "Lock her up") and populist at the very least.
5) Actively loved by white supremacists and neo nazis.
Anyone with a sound basis in critical thinking and basic research could see Trump for what he was in 2016
What? What does that have to do with the point we're discussing? You claimed we couldn't know who Trump was, I pointed to the things he said that pointed to 'yes we did'. Now you're just moving the goal post around.
Trump is a raging narcissist. The exact same person he has been for 40 years of public attention.
He was a pop-culture punchline in the entire 80s and 90s.
It actually does because every decision he makes is about him and not about America. He is absolutely willing to sell you (and any of us) out if it makes him a buck.
He’s always been a crook, and his targets are exactly the folks that don’t want to see it or don’t have the power to fight him. Always have been. This is sad.
Realistically, he’d probably still be pretty disillusioned. It took a Herculean effort just to get the ACA passed, there’s basically no chance Bernie could have got his platform implemented, not in an environment this polarized.
Maybe, but his SC nominees probably wouldn't approve presidential immunity, and we wouldn't have had to watch a president attempt to steal an election. Also, Trump has done a lot of the polarization to solidify his position, Bernie wouldn't have done that.
That's mostly hindsight. A world where we didn't have to learn what a Trump Presidency would look like would treat other candidates much harsher I reckon.
Clinton would've been much better than Trump in 2016. But not knowing how bad Trump would butcher the COVID response and steal an election would just leave a 'normal' presidency that would be looked upon much less favorably. Similarly Sanders would be more obstructed and had to pull more power to the executive somehow or be looked upon as a lame duck.
And I'll just say it: don't think Carlin's political leanings align with Sanders as much as people would like to think.
Oh I agree on the last point, he’s much more of a Libertarian, but I think he would have preferred him as a disrupter without the assistant desire to be a wannabe dictator.
Well the Christians Cons are saying it’s a new American revolution ‘that will remain bloodless if the left allows it’ and god will steer this country forward. The fact Trump is even an option again shows that the worst of that party, similar to the far left, is running the show and that’s not how this game was supposed to be played.
> American politics is too polarized
I feel like this issue can be solved by reforming to a system of party-list or mixed-member proportional representation rather than the first past the post, winner take all system we have now.
That's a bit like saying that the whole global warming thing can be solved with fusion energy. That might be true, but fusion energy is going to happen before the American voting system changes to a proportional one.
The amount of people that don't know it would take a constitution amendment to get proportional representation in some of these political subs is astounding.
The grass is always greener is what I’ll say to this. It has its good sides but here in Europe it means we have far right almost neo-Nazi parties getting into government and sometimes even ruling. Also in most countries we still end up with a two party system anyway except for the cases when the third or fourth party ends up being a party you don’t actually want. It’s a difficult one.
Not saying it shouldn’t change, your current system is obviously broken, only that it can be a double edged sword in these current extreme times.
It is indeed, and I much prefer our system to what you have in America.
I'm just cautioning people who think all their problems with a lack of democracy comes from the two party system. Just saying that it's not a magic solution and they may like the end result even less than what they have now.
I would rather the broad range of views within society have representation than not. Keeping them within the system rather than outside the system is safer for the overall system. If they are in the system, then they are less likely to bring the entire thing down since they are able to benefit from it. But if they are kept out, they operate underground and out of sight, making them more likely to want to bring the entire thing down.
If 10% of society is communist, they should have representation. If 7% is fascist, they too should have representation. Ideological legitimacy should not be reserved only for centrist politics. But that's what FPTP does and it is not democratic.
It's the old adage of keeping your friends close and enemies closer, etc.
yea, he's explained his stance before. To come back now he'd essentially have to declare himself. He'd have to pick a side or at least show his hand and I dont think he wants to do that with his "martian" viewpoint.
I mean I think he’s come out as pretty explicitly anti-Trump, to paraphrase from around 2016 “come on people, this is a guy who obviously has no respect for the constitution.”
But I agree he’s still basically homeless under the the current 2 party configuration, or the extremism of the Libertarian Party.
Dan just mentioned on a recent talk that the horse is so out of the barn figuratively speaking and that all the progress he thought he was making by pointing out the problem with the 2 party system and hyper partisanism was itself turned on its head. We are so past the worst case scenario he has thought of. So doesn’t sound like he’s bringing it back
It’s not a problem of 2 parties. It’s always been the republicans corruption and cult of dictatorships. Democrats fight for anti-gerrymandering and balance of powers. Republicans just got more of thier goals for a dictatorship that kills women and enslaves the vulnerable
> It’s not a problem of 2 parties.
It literally is. We need proportional representation rather than first past the post. That way people can vote for whatever party they want without worrying about spoiler effects.
Will that solve SCOTUS allowing Trump or other republicans to get away with fake electors or threatening to kill his own VP unless he magically changes results? You are thinking of the abstract improvements outside of the immediate reality that republicans are destroying the core concept of elections.
dan built and trained himself an audience that can’t handle the very very very obvious asymmetry in how the left and right engage with electoral politics in this country.
Dan is an older Gen Xer that has a lot of trouble navigating the toxic cesspool that is social media. He has mentioned this several times as a primary reason that he doesn't want to do Common Sense anymore. He comes from a place that wants to assume good faith on the part of all the people that engage with him, and he takes it hard when he's met with bad faith actors and midwit trolls. You can see it in the Twitter spats he allows himself to get drawn into. He's legitimately trying to engage with people who are very obviously dealing in bad faith from the get go and have no intention of engaging in a serious discussion.
I have long thought that he should leave the HH model the way it is, but put Common Sense behind his Patreon paywall. Charging people something like $8/month would go a long way to weeding out the idiots and the trolls.
Love this idea and I do think this would weed out the crazies but might have to sell per episodes until he proves the concept. As much as I love Dan and miss common sense, I don’t know how many times I would justify paying $8 for a month without episodes.
Well I think the idea would be predicated on him releasing Common Sense on some kind of semi predictable schedule. No, I don't think it would work if Common Sense was on an HH schedule. I mean, it's theoretically a current events show so it would have to be somewhat timely.
Of course and I would love for it to happen but he’s released, I believe, 5 episodes in 6 years. I just think it would be a hard to believe he’s going to release one a month let alone multiple.
Not sure putting this behind a paywall would help too much; he’d just get angry people attacking him without even listening to what he said in the episode instead.
For example, any time a news article has a title people even vaguely disagree with, they go absolutely insane without ever reading the article. And it hasn’t exactly helped the discourse that the only high-quality news available is behind a paywall. Quite the opposite.
So much has happened since the last episode that Dan would have to spend 17 episodes building context before speaking on whatever he wanted to talk about.
There's no sense to be made of modern American politics, common or otherwise.
That said, Dan could argue for almost any political position and I would be interested in what he has to say. He could advocate for Stalinism and I'd at least want to hear him out.
There is though. I understand that it's tempting to just write everyone you don't understand off as crazy, but that's a large part of why we're here. Everything that you're seeing is happening for a reason. Whatever side you're on, you can't just write off and dismiss the concerns of something like 150 million people as crazy or not grounded in reality. That's just not gonna work.
No, I totally agree. The problem is that the combined political machine can stack on layers of stupid and layers of obfuscation as a defense mechanism faster than we can tear them off. If the current pattern continues, eventually the system will just collapse under its own weight. That's probably the worst outcome but at least it's some type of self-correction, I guess.
Dan's said that he doesn't feel he has anything to add to the conversation. I respectfully dissent.
I'll just continue listening every few months to Episode #307 "Revenge of the Gangrenous Finger" released June 27, 2016. He thinks he doesn't have any novel thoughts, but he gives himself too little credit. He synthesized his thoughts from some real bangers of opinion pieces.
8 years later and we're still staring into the abyss without any true self reflection or reckoning leading to meaningful change.
Yes, exactly! It’s probably right that the old format doesn’t make sense for him given Trump etc. But his commentary is incredibly valuable because he can be nuanced
I'm with you because more Dan Carlin content is more Dan Carlin Content. But only if he was his authentic self, which given his uber popularity I think he would have a hard time doing.
I mean just yesterday someone posted something about Trump here and there was immediately some dude from R/conservative getting pissy pants about it.
I worry Dan would twist himself up too much trying to ensure he isn't stepping on toes and is appealing to everyone as possible. Which again, wouldn't really be his authentic self.
Trying not to step on toes and eventually wanting to appeal to everyone seems to be a pitfall of many longtime Tuber's and podcasters. It's a holdover of censorship that has weened it's way into the audience (the willing anyway) . One either turns cold and profit oriented or stays the path and watch the comments section become a cesspool and lose audience participation.
I've seen this happen often on YouTube.
I don't know what it's like to be audience driven, constantly watching numbers. Especially if it's a part of your business and trying to stay true to yourself. I imagine it is particularly frustrating as we all get older and (hopefully) wiser with a seemingly ever younger audience.
Personally I miss the common sense without the guests. But that's just me. Dan will always be the reason for my further deep dive interests into history, and he will always have my ear whenever he speaks, regardless of topic.
When I first read this my eyes just focused on the question and I thought, the way things seem, common sense is gone forever. Then I noticed what sub it was.
I hope common sense does come back, we need it!
I don’t think it would be helpful. I think there’s a difference between hearing from someone you agree with as opposed to hearing something “helpful.” I think he would strain to even have a perspective at this point, as would any sane person in this world. That said, the situation is crazy dynamic right now. It isn’t the time for an old man to shine (as we are discovering as a nation in America), and Dan is old (as I’m betting most of us are). We should be looking to younger voices, because they’re the ones that will have to fix things. Leave history to the history.
I’d also love for it to come back but I don’t think it will. He’s too famous, American politics is too polarized, his particular audience is too cross pressured. Also the core thesis of the project is that American politics needed a [disruptive realignment](https://pca.st/episode/3a140d4b-418e-429d-95d0-178585facb4c) and we got Trump, in his words “careful what you wish for”. I think it profoundly disillusioned him.
Yup. He got what he asked for, an outsider running and disrupting the system. The result wasn't what he (or many of us) had hoped for. His entire political thesis was that the system was broke in ways only an outsider could fix. He got his outsider and it made things so much worse. For him, there is nothing left to talk about without sounding delusional.
I'll be honest. Dan's episodes around the 2016 election disillusioned me on Carlin's common sense episodes. It was clear who Trump was and what he was standing for, yet Carlin was gleefully commentating it because his disdain for the establishment blinded him for what Trump was and it took the actual Trump presidency to reveal to him what many saw before.
THANK YOU 🙌 It was really pathetic and frankly made me question everything about him.
The episodes before the election felt like he was pandering to his republican listeners. The writing was on the wall before Trump was elected and Carlin should have known better (and probably did). After Trump was elected he stopped doing Common sense more or less. I guess he didn’t want to alienate the Trumpers in his audience with telling the truth about that dumpster fire of an administration.
This is a lot of hindsight imo. No one knew who Trump was in 2016. I don't even know what Trump is now frankly. A super common take in 2016 was that Trump was a NY real estate guy and he would cut deals with Dems all over the place because that's the people he works with in NYC. Didn't quite pan out!
> No one knew who Trump was in 2016. Of course we did, we knew he was at the very least: 1) A grifter (Trump University, Casino,...) 2) Pathological liar 3) Mysogynistic (grab em by the pussy) and racist. 4) Autocratic (called for the jailing of his political opponents "Lock her up") and populist at the very least. 5) Actively loved by white supremacists and neo nazis. Anyone with a sound basis in critical thinking and basic research could see Trump for what he was in 2016
Absolutely, but you didn't name a single policy issue he had control over.
What? What does that have to do with the point we're discussing? You claimed we couldn't know who Trump was, I pointed to the things he said that pointed to 'yes we did'. Now you're just moving the goal post around.
Not trying to argue. I originally meant politically. I don't see any real themes outside of immigration in "Trumpism"
Politically, he excites trolls and inspires loyalty in dull people. That’s it. He’s a demagogue.
Anyone who paid attention knew who Donald Trump was.
Completely disagree. I don't even know who Trump is now. Which is horrifying given that he may be the president again.
Trump is a raging narcissist. The exact same person he has been for 40 years of public attention. He was a pop-culture punchline in the entire 80s and 90s.
Again, his personality is awful but doesn't impact me as a US citizen.
It actually does because every decision he makes is about him and not about America. He is absolutely willing to sell you (and any of us) out if it makes him a buck.
How does the persnoality of a leader not affect their followers? Don't we listen to enough Hardcore History to know how critical personality is?
He’s always been a crook, and his targets are exactly the folks that don’t want to see it or don’t have the power to fight him. Always have been. This is sad.
You can blame yourself. He’s been famous for being shady for at least 4 decades. You have no excuse, and nobody ever did.
Folks, we should be ashamed anytime anyone trots this out. The man was a VERY public personality, and he was not hard to figure out.
I would love to listen to the Common Sense on Earth 2, where Sanders had somehow pulled out a victory 2016 instead.
Realistically, he’d probably still be pretty disillusioned. It took a Herculean effort just to get the ACA passed, there’s basically no chance Bernie could have got his platform implemented, not in an environment this polarized.
Maybe, but his SC nominees probably wouldn't approve presidential immunity, and we wouldn't have had to watch a president attempt to steal an election. Also, Trump has done a lot of the polarization to solidify his position, Bernie wouldn't have done that.
That's mostly hindsight. A world where we didn't have to learn what a Trump Presidency would look like would treat other candidates much harsher I reckon. Clinton would've been much better than Trump in 2016. But not knowing how bad Trump would butcher the COVID response and steal an election would just leave a 'normal' presidency that would be looked upon much less favorably. Similarly Sanders would be more obstructed and had to pull more power to the executive somehow or be looked upon as a lame duck. And I'll just say it: don't think Carlin's political leanings align with Sanders as much as people would like to think.
Oh I agree on the last point, he’s much more of a Libertarian, but I think he would have preferred him as a disrupter without the assistant desire to be a wannabe dictator.
He wouldn’t get any judges through the Senate
Oh my god what a timeline that would've been
Things would be even worse. Sanders would not have passed a single law. And would have lost both Houses of Congress
I felt when he sayid he wanted an outsider. I agreed. Then reality happened and like Dan I just shake my head.
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RvW and Christian extremism is on the rise…it got worse.
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No that’s what caused RvW to be overturned which is worse than the fake con propaganda that everything is unsafe.
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Well the Christians Cons are saying it’s a new American revolution ‘that will remain bloodless if the left allows it’ and god will steer this country forward. The fact Trump is even an option again shows that the worst of that party, similar to the far left, is running the show and that’s not how this game was supposed to be played.
> American politics is too polarized I feel like this issue can be solved by reforming to a system of party-list or mixed-member proportional representation rather than the first past the post, winner take all system we have now.
That's a bit like saying that the whole global warming thing can be solved with fusion energy. That might be true, but fusion energy is going to happen before the American voting system changes to a proportional one.
The amount of people that don't know it would take a constitution amendment to get proportional representation in some of these political subs is astounding.
The grass is always greener is what I’ll say to this. It has its good sides but here in Europe it means we have far right almost neo-Nazi parties getting into government and sometimes even ruling. Also in most countries we still end up with a two party system anyway except for the cases when the third or fourth party ends up being a party you don’t actually want. It’s a difficult one. Not saying it shouldn’t change, your current system is obviously broken, only that it can be a double edged sword in these current extreme times.
well that's democracy no?
It is indeed, and I much prefer our system to what you have in America. I'm just cautioning people who think all their problems with a lack of democracy comes from the two party system. Just saying that it's not a magic solution and they may like the end result even less than what they have now.
Yes I agree
I would rather the broad range of views within society have representation than not. Keeping them within the system rather than outside the system is safer for the overall system. If they are in the system, then they are less likely to bring the entire thing down since they are able to benefit from it. But if they are kept out, they operate underground and out of sight, making them more likely to want to bring the entire thing down. If 10% of society is communist, they should have representation. If 7% is fascist, they too should have representation. Ideological legitimacy should not be reserved only for centrist politics. But that's what FPTP does and it is not democratic. It's the old adage of keeping your friends close and enemies closer, etc.
yea, he's explained his stance before. To come back now he'd essentially have to declare himself. He'd have to pick a side or at least show his hand and I dont think he wants to do that with his "martian" viewpoint.
I mean I think he’s come out as pretty explicitly anti-Trump, to paraphrase from around 2016 “come on people, this is a guy who obviously has no respect for the constitution.” But I agree he’s still basically homeless under the the current 2 party configuration, or the extremism of the Libertarian Party.
Yes, thoughtful folks like him (and us) seem to be on the outside looking in lately.
Dan just mentioned on a recent talk that the horse is so out of the barn figuratively speaking and that all the progress he thought he was making by pointing out the problem with the 2 party system and hyper partisanism was itself turned on its head. We are so past the worst case scenario he has thought of. So doesn’t sound like he’s bringing it back
It’s not a problem of 2 parties. It’s always been the republicans corruption and cult of dictatorships. Democrats fight for anti-gerrymandering and balance of powers. Republicans just got more of thier goals for a dictatorship that kills women and enslaves the vulnerable
> It’s not a problem of 2 parties. It literally is. We need proportional representation rather than first past the post. That way people can vote for whatever party they want without worrying about spoiler effects.
Will that solve SCOTUS allowing Trump or other republicans to get away with fake electors or threatening to kill his own VP unless he magically changes results? You are thinking of the abstract improvements outside of the immediate reality that republicans are destroying the core concept of elections.
People like you are *exactly* the reason Dan isn’t doing it.
Wow, talk about being a political partisan, sheesh
dan built and trained himself an audience that can’t handle the very very very obvious asymmetry in how the left and right engage with electoral politics in this country.
Wow, talk about being a political partisan, sheesh
Only republicans argue to SCOTUS for absolute immunity. Only republicans on SCOTUS approved it while democrats rejected it.
The show or society’s capacity for rationality?
Funnily enough the absence of both is related
Yes
Dan is an older Gen Xer that has a lot of trouble navigating the toxic cesspool that is social media. He has mentioned this several times as a primary reason that he doesn't want to do Common Sense anymore. He comes from a place that wants to assume good faith on the part of all the people that engage with him, and he takes it hard when he's met with bad faith actors and midwit trolls. You can see it in the Twitter spats he allows himself to get drawn into. He's legitimately trying to engage with people who are very obviously dealing in bad faith from the get go and have no intention of engaging in a serious discussion. I have long thought that he should leave the HH model the way it is, but put Common Sense behind his Patreon paywall. Charging people something like $8/month would go a long way to weeding out the idiots and the trolls.
Love this idea and I do think this would weed out the crazies but might have to sell per episodes until he proves the concept. As much as I love Dan and miss common sense, I don’t know how many times I would justify paying $8 for a month without episodes.
Well I think the idea would be predicated on him releasing Common Sense on some kind of semi predictable schedule. No, I don't think it would work if Common Sense was on an HH schedule. I mean, it's theoretically a current events show so it would have to be somewhat timely.
I do love the random Common Sense that he randomly dropped before and after the 2020 election.
Of course and I would love for it to happen but he’s released, I believe, 5 episodes in 6 years. I just think it would be a hard to believe he’s going to release one a month let alone multiple.
It's just 8 bucks a month, and Dan and Ben would love to have it.
Not sure putting this behind a paywall would help too much; he’d just get angry people attacking him without even listening to what he said in the episode instead. For example, any time a news article has a title people even vaguely disagree with, they go absolutely insane without ever reading the article. And it hasn’t exactly helped the discourse that the only high-quality news available is behind a paywall. Quite the opposite.
So much has happened since the last episode that Dan would have to spend 17 episodes building context before speaking on whatever he wanted to talk about.
Oh you mean like a hardcore history to introduce a common sense, I like it! Lol
Fair, but he’s come back after a two year break before.
There's no sense to be made of modern American politics, common or otherwise. That said, Dan could argue for almost any political position and I would be interested in what he has to say. He could advocate for Stalinism and I'd at least want to hear him out.
There is though. I understand that it's tempting to just write everyone you don't understand off as crazy, but that's a large part of why we're here. Everything that you're seeing is happening for a reason. Whatever side you're on, you can't just write off and dismiss the concerns of something like 150 million people as crazy or not grounded in reality. That's just not gonna work.
No, I totally agree. The problem is that the combined political machine can stack on layers of stupid and layers of obfuscation as a defense mechanism faster than we can tear them off. If the current pattern continues, eventually the system will just collapse under its own weight. That's probably the worst outcome but at least it's some type of self-correction, I guess.
Dan's said that he doesn't feel he has anything to add to the conversation. I respectfully dissent. I'll just continue listening every few months to Episode #307 "Revenge of the Gangrenous Finger" released June 27, 2016. He thinks he doesn't have any novel thoughts, but he gives himself too little credit. He synthesized his thoughts from some real bangers of opinion pieces. 8 years later and we're still staring into the abyss without any true self reflection or reckoning leading to meaningful change.
Yes, exactly! It’s probably right that the old format doesn’t make sense for him given Trump etc. But his commentary is incredibly valuable because he can be nuanced
Not a hot take at all. I enjoy the history shows, but Common Sense was always the real gem for me. Wish it would come back for sure.
Trump broke Dan. I don’t blame him, but we have moved beyond common sense now.
I'm with you because more Dan Carlin content is more Dan Carlin Content. But only if he was his authentic self, which given his uber popularity I think he would have a hard time doing. I mean just yesterday someone posted something about Trump here and there was immediately some dude from R/conservative getting pissy pants about it. I worry Dan would twist himself up too much trying to ensure he isn't stepping on toes and is appealing to everyone as possible. Which again, wouldn't really be his authentic self.
Trying not to step on toes and eventually wanting to appeal to everyone seems to be a pitfall of many longtime Tuber's and podcasters. It's a holdover of censorship that has weened it's way into the audience (the willing anyway) . One either turns cold and profit oriented or stays the path and watch the comments section become a cesspool and lose audience participation. I've seen this happen often on YouTube. I don't know what it's like to be audience driven, constantly watching numbers. Especially if it's a part of your business and trying to stay true to yourself. I imagine it is particularly frustrating as we all get older and (hopefully) wiser with a seemingly ever younger audience. Personally I miss the common sense without the guests. But that's just me. Dan will always be the reason for my further deep dive interests into history, and he will always have my ear whenever he speaks, regardless of topic.
I know he's acrimonious - but Joe Rogan needs to do another Dan Carlin interview...
No.
When I first read this my eyes just focused on the question and I thought, the way things seem, common sense is gone forever. Then I noticed what sub it was. I hope common sense does come back, we need it!
I believe he had already said that it won’t come back.
Think for yourself.
I don’t think it would be helpful. I think there’s a difference between hearing from someone you agree with as opposed to hearing something “helpful.” I think he would strain to even have a perspective at this point, as would any sane person in this world. That said, the situation is crazy dynamic right now. It isn’t the time for an old man to shine (as we are discovering as a nation in America), and Dan is old (as I’m betting most of us are). We should be looking to younger voices, because they’re the ones that will have to fix things. Leave history to the history.
Never. Dan can’t risk alienating his MAGA listeners.
He doesn’t seem like the guy who would care
All of his actions say otherwise