This post made me actually download the episode and give it a listen, and man I had forgotten how fucking boring it had gotten. To be fair, they’re not the ones actually spouting the unity line, they’re discussing the themes of Biden’s speech. But they’re just repeating his message and then wondering aloud if it’s going to work, they don’t actually have any meaningful analysis. It’s even more watered down now that they fired Claire Malone, who I’m pretty sure got the ax because she was the only one who would ever call out mainstream media narratives as bullshit.

There was a funny part halfway through the episode where they asked the political science professor they invited on if it was possible for a speech to actually have an effect on unity, and she went on some long spiel about how division comes from the top and it’s really the politicians that are sowing discord and regular people aren’t that divided on the ground. And then the one black commentator on the show said, “Are you sure about that? Because I’m thinking about June and July and there seemed to be a lot of division on the ground level too”, and the poli-sci professor was left stumbling.