The Democratic Party was facing an identity crisis when Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025. Just two months later, Democratic media Thinkboiz Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson published Abundance.

Their theory of the case: We could “solve our problems with supply,” and that to do so, we needed to pursue “a liberalism that builds,” an idea that meant aspiring to “more than redistribution […], more than parceling out the present.” The text of Abundance focuses almost exclusively on examples of government proceduralism and self-defeating obstruction, while at times quoting books like Fully Automated Luxury Communism and even Karl Marx.

There’s just one difference between the productive capacity imagined in Fully Automated Luxury Communism and Abundance: only one of these books sees this vision as compatible with capitalism.

Over the months that followed its publication, an “intra-left” fight emerged between the “populist left” (represented by figures like Bernie Sanders and the DSA) and the “abundance left.” For a while, it looked like Abundance would set the vision for the future of the party. What happened?

Diabolical Lies investigates.

All citations and references can be found at diabolicalliespod.com.

RESTOCK ALERT: Just in time for your summer vacation, the Banned Books tote is back in stock.

Alt. title: Katie finally bites off more than she can chew and attempts a nuanced exploration of the Lean In, Girlboss cultural era.

13 years ago, Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. The following year, Sophia Amoruso published #GIRLBOSS.

The broad understanding of this period was that—for a few solid years—we widely embraced the edicts of “corporate feminism” or “Lean In feminism” or “Girlboss feminism,” so named for a societal shift that saw a recognition and celebration of women’s career ambition as a decidedly positive thing worthy of support and encouragement or, at the very least, a collection of sassy poly-blend T-shirts.

We tried it, and it didn’t work.

…but did we?

Diabolical Lies investigates.

All citations and references can be found at https://www.diabolicalliespod.com.

NEW SWAG ALERT 🚨 The Small Government line is back & better than ever. Get yours here.

Katie’s back on her metaphoric “What’s Charlie Kirk up to these days?” editorial grind—checking in with one of the hottest new Gen Z Lady Voices taking the middle-aged men of the center-right by storm.

In this episode, we check in with a writer we haven’t discussed since one of our very first episodes:

Freya India, also known as three Jonathan Haidts in a very hot 26-year-old trenchcoat, just published her first book, Girls®—an excoriation of the modern world and its effects on The Youth (or, more specifically, the pathologies of liberal teen girls, as she often puts it).

To hear India tell it, young girls have been Filtered, Diagnosed, Documented, Disconnected, Detached, and ‘Empowered,’ all thanks to the increasingly rapacious incentive structure of a pyramid-shaped economic system that necessitates a constantly growing consumer base wait, sorry, no. That’s not it. Actually, we’re not really sure why. You know what? It’s not important. Let’s move on.

What Girls® lacks in explanatory mechanisms, it makes up for in solutions: Logging off, finding God, and starting a family.

The ideological project underway here should be obvious to anyone whose brain hasn’t been marinated in a dutch oven full of expired bath salts, so why has this book been endorsed by a gaggle of high-profile, putatively left-wing men?

Diabolical Lies investigates.

All citations and references can be found at www.diabolicalliespod.com.