The new “lost cause” is built on denial and rewritten history.
Power without accountability corrodes every institution.
Democracy endures only when citizens refuse to surrender hope.
Joyce Vance and Stuart Stevens trace how democratic decay thrives on resignation and revisionism—the impulse to surrender truth for comfort. Vance’s Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy makes the case that cynicism is a luxury no citizen can afford, warning that autocrats depend on exhaustion to win.
Stuart, always reflecting on his decades inside Republican politics, describes how compliance became a creed, breeding a party that mistook loyalty for strength and nostalgia for principle. It’s a reckoning with moral muscle memory, the need to rebuild courage where convenience has taken root. The message isn’t sentimental; it’s insurgent: democracy survives only when people choose to fight for it, again and again, even when they’re tired of trying.
Tune in for the full conversation and check out Joyce’s new book.
