NEW PODCAST: Join us as we 'Trip the Beltway Fantastic'
A new podcast series from Kelley Vlahos out now
Welcome to my new podcast, Trip the Beltway Fantastic, the latest incarnation of a proud series of productions, following Empire has No Clothes (original w/ Matt Purple & Dan Larison) and Crashing the War Party (w/ Dan Larison).
For this one I will be running the show solo — and on camera — but expect old friends, and new, popping in each week for a whirl across the floor.
Our shows have had a lot of success over the years because people are frustrated, angry, and frankly annoyed with the company line coming out of Washington on major world conflicts and the foreign policy/national security political shenanigans at home. They know something is not right with the mainstream narratives, the “divide and conquer” partisanship, and the cancel culture. We have talked about it openly and invited guests who offer independent alternatives to help listeners decide what to believe.
As a reporter, editor, and columnist who has been working in the Imperial city since before DHS was an agency and Google & Amazon dominated the world, I know what lurks at the edges of the camera lens and just off the page. In the words of that infamous 80’s show, Tales of the Darkside, I can see DC’s “underworld, a place that is just as real as the one we see with our own two eyes, but not as brightly lit... a Darkside.”
On Trip the Beltway Fantastic we’ll talk about the root of this Darkside, the War Party, which is the bipartisan consensus behind the old order. The War Party has a very special bedtime story, that the United States is an indispensable nation that can and must use force to impose its values on other people and nations.Nevermind that it is hypocritical, deciding when and how to exhibit those values or play by the rules based on its own convenience.
Our guests for this episode are Katrina vanden Heuvel and James Carden, who are joining us to speak on progressives and the anti-war movement in the age of Russia gate and Trump. Vanden Heuvel and Carden experienced first-hand the brutal schism on the left over Russia, beginning with the 2014 overthrow of the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych all the way through the Trump impeachment and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Were these progressives ever restrainers or antiwar? How do they square their positioning on Kyiv with the calls for ceasefire in Gaza today?
Katrina is a longtime writer and author and is currently the editorial director and publisher of The Nation. James is also a writer and appears frequently in magazines on both sides of the aisle, including the American Conservative and Responsible Statecraft.
More from Katrina and James:
Where is Joe Biden’s ‘Devil’s Advocate’? (James)
10 Years Later: Maidan’s missing US history
The Moscow Terror Attack (Katrina)