570 | Dan Wang: China's Engineering State, America's Lawyerly Society, and the Competition for the 21st Century

Failure to Communicate Substack: https://failuretocommunicate.substack.com/Danielle Lee Tomson: https://failuretocommunicate.substack.com/p/beyond-messagingDanielle Lee Tomson: https://failuretocommunicate.substack.com/p/the-authenticity-gapRealignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail the Show: [email protected] Lee Tomson, author of the forthcoming Under the Influence: What's Real When America Feels Fake, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Danielle discuss the right's multi-decade project of participatory, oppositional media, and why the effort culminated in President Trump's 2024 election victory. They unfavorably contrast the center-left's post-2024 response, with its focus on top-down marketing, "ideas" disconnected from a broader story and understanding of the country, highlight the importance of storytelling when it comes to creating the "common sense" that oppositional movements require, and compare and contrast the worldviews and stories of the left, right, and center. 

Must-Read on Political Violence in America: Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary ViolenceJerusalem Demsas in The Argument on Abundance vs. National Conservatism: A Tale of Two Ballrooms Steve Teles on "The Varieties of Abundance: Varieties of Abundance - Niskanen CenterNew Cascadian Abundance Substack: What is Cascadian Abundance? - by Kelly JiangRealignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail the Show: [email protected] Teles, Niskanen Senior Fellow and Johns Hopkins University Professor, returns to The Realignment. After a brief note on Charlie Kirk's assassination yesterday in Utah, Marshall and Steve discuss their takeaways from last week's Abundance 2025 Conference in DC, tensions between the left-liberal wings of the Abundance project and the right-wing, "Dark Abundance" crew, the contrast between the dueling Abundance and National Conservatism conferences, and where the broader effort goes next after the previous week's events.

Varieties of Abundance: https://www.niskanencenter.org/abundance-varieties/PDF Version: https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Varieties-of-Abundance.pdfRealignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail the Show: [email protected] Teles, Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, returns to The Realignment. Ahead of next week's 2025 Abundance in DC, Marshall and Steve discuss his new Niskanen Center paper on "The Varieties of Abundance." In Steve's telling, despite broad agreement within the Abundance movement on the need to increase supply, challenge existing incumbents who benefit from scarcity, and the critical role of enhanced state capacity in addressing America's challenges, there are existing and potential varieties of Abundance across the ideological and geographic spectrums. Just as the late 19th- and early 20th-century Progressive Movement held a shared critique of the industrial-era American state, different actors took the project in different directions. Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Woodrow Wilson were all progressives, but operated in separate camps. In Steve's telling, abundance is already operating accordingly. In the paper, he identifies six varieties of Abundance: Red Plenty, Cascadian Abundance, Liberal Abundance, Moderate-Abundance Synthesis, Abundance Dynamism, and Dark Abundance. The aim of the paper is not to be overly inside-baseball, but to offer readers and listeners a framework for understanding the diversity of actors, institutions, and ideologies that have positively engaged with the Abundance framework. 

Realignment Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/Realignment Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail the Show: [email protected] Wang, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover History Lab and author of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Dan discuss China's quest to become a techno-industrial superpower, how China's "engineering state" contrasts with America's "lawyerly society," why China has successfully built megaprojects vs. America's stalled efforts at industrial policy, high speed rail, and electrification, whether both countries have entered into a cold war, and the downsides of the engineering states top-down control. 

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail Us: [email protected] Anderson, author of King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Scott discuss the historical legacy of the rise and fall of the Shah of Iran, how the rise of religious fundamentalism reshaped America's relationship with Iran and the broader Middle East, President Carter's misread of the Iranian Revolution in the context of the Cold War, and survey the aftermath of the joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran's nuclear program this past June.

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail Us: [email protected] Lee Anderson, New Yorker Staff Writer and author of To Lose a War: The Fall and the Rise of the Taliban, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Jon discuss the legacy of America's 20-year war in Afghanistan, how policymakers and the military struggle to define "victory" during wartime, why post-WWII conflicts and the end of the norm of "total war" has made it harder to "win," and why, despite achieving the goal of ending the country's status as a safe haven for terror, eliminating Osama bin Laden, and initially removing the Taliban from power, the U.S. still lost the war.

Noah Smith's Substack: www.noahpinion.blog Impulse Labs: www.impulselabs.comFast Company on Impulse Labs: Innovation by Design 2024: Impulse Labs' new induction cooktop is a step up from your gas stove - Fast CompanyREALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail Us: [email protected] D'Amico, Founder & CEO of Impulse Labs, and Noah Smith, author of the Noahpinion Substack, join The Realignment. Marshall, Noah, and Sam discuss how the "Electric Tech Stack," a combination of advances in batteries, motors, power electronics, and computing, will reshape everything from kitchen appliances to warfare. They argue that electricity will increasingly "eat" the world, that China has seized the lead in the race to electrification, and make the case for a serious industrial policy.

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail Us: [email protected] Nwanevu, author of The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Osita discuss a "re-founding" of America at the level of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments, why the current political system has left many Americans disillusioned with pro-democracy promises and rhetoric, the failure to leverage the 2008 Financial Crisis and 2020 COVID epidemic to force systemic change, and his case for radical reforms to the legislative branch, elections, the workplace, and Supreme Court.

NYT: New Democratic Group Says Answer to the Party’s Woes Lies With the StatesStates Forum Journal: Adam Pritzker & Daniel Squadron - First Principles in the 11th HourREALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail Us: [email protected] Squadron, former New York legislator and Co-Founder of the States Forum, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Daniel discuss why the center-left and the Democratic Party lack the kind of coherent worldview of the MAGA right, why real political power and the opportunity to build and test new ideas lies in the states, not just D.C., the importance of ideas vs. "messaging," and the case for centering the themes of representative democracy, fair markets, effective government, and personal freedom at the center of the left-liberal project. 

REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail Us: [email protected] Niskanen Center's Steve Teles returns to The Realignment for a wide-ranging discussion about the Democratic Party's evolution during the Trump-era and what lessons it can and can't take from the GOP's experience under Trump. Marshall and Steve unpack how Democratic Party factions - from abundance-focused reformers to the new "Common Sense Democrats" - mirror and diverge from the GOP's 2010s-era "Reform Conservative" movement. They explore the challenge of offering new ideas after rejection at the ballot box, the role of candidates like NYC's Zohran Mamdani, and why signaling change requires taking on your own side.