In this episode of What Rough Beast, we talk to David Rees, host of Election Profit Makers and creator of the legendary post-9/11 comic strip “Get Your War On,” which skewered the Bush administration’s War on Terror through the voices of office workers having profane conversations about cluster bombs and nation-building. We discuss:

* Iraq vs. Iran rhetoric: How the arguments for bombing Iran compare to the “extremely stupid” discourse that justified the 2003 Iraq invasion, and why Trump’s impulsive approach differs from Bush’s ideological war machine

* The evolution of American freakiness: How the cultural currency of being anti-establishment has flipped from the counterculture left to Trump’s depraved right, making figures like Stephen Miller the new Rumsfeld

* Clip art as social commentary: Why Rees chose anonymous office workers to represent Americans during the War on Terror

* Protesting in the Trump era: Why young people aren’t motivated by “orange man bad” protests but are energized by direct action against ICE, and what this means for anti-establishment politics

* The Zohran Mamdani moment: How NYC’s presumptive next mayor represents a new generation of unapologetically progressive politicians who terrify billionaires—and why that’s exactly the point

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