What happens to a democracy when outrage, enforcement power, and information warfare collide at home and abroad?

In this wide-ranging exchange, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Rick Rosner about the intimate and the geopolitical in one breath: caring for Rosie, an elderly dog struggling to eat, while watching escalating turmoil in U.S. politics and global conflict. Rosner describes appetite treatment with Entyce and then pivots to controversies surrounding ICE tactics, public backlash, and the rhetorical hardening of political life. The discussion broadens to Iran’s crackdown, mass casualties, arrests, and communications shutdowns, alongside speculation about U.S. and Israeli responses. Together, they examine institutional resilience, civic “levers,” soft power erosion, and the long tail of ideological movements.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s new?

Rick Rosner: At home, we’ve got Rosie the dog. You met her. She’s fifteen and a quarter years old, and it’s been very hard to get her to eat, which is often a sign that a dog is nearing the end. We’re trying to keep her going as long as possible. She seems otherwise in pretty good shape, but something is clearly going on.

We’ve been dosing her with something called Entyce (capromorelin), which is designed to stimulate appetite by mimicking the body’s hunger-hormone signaling. We use a dosing syringe: we wait for her to fall asleep, then squirt it into her mouth. An hour or two later, she’ll eat. Can this continue indefinitely? Probably not. We’ll see how long we can keep it going. She’s a sweet dog, and she doesn’t seem to be suffering. We’re going to keep going as long as she allows.

Out in the world, Trump and the MAGA ecosystem are getting increasingly extreme. We used to be surprised by that. We should not be anymore, but it is still striking that he keeps finding new ways to escalate.

Minneapolis, in particular, has been flooded with federal immigration enforcement following the January 7, 2026 shooting of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, by an ICE agent during an enforcement surge. Videos and witness accounts have fueled major controversy over the federal account of events, and there have been widespread protests.

There are also videos showing aggressive encounters, including agents smashing a car window, cutting a seatbelt, and pulling a woman from her vehicle during the Minneapolis surge.

On the political side, Senator Markwayne Mullin publicly defended the agent’s actions in media appearances.

Inside the Justice Department, prosecutors resigned amid controversy over how the case is being handled, including reported pressure to scrutinize Renee Good’s widow rather than pursue a civil-rights investigation into the shooting. Different reports put the resignations at at least six.

The situation is even worse in Iran. Reporting indicates a large-scale crackdown and mass casualties, alongside severe communications restrictions. The death toll reported by rights monitors has exceeded 2,000, with Reuters reporting at least 2,571 as of January 14, 2026, citing a rights group. Iranian officials have also acknowledged roughly 2,000 deaths while disputing responsibility.

Iran’s security response involves multiple forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other security services. Estimates of IRGC size commonly place it at around 150,000 personnel, and Iran’s population is roughly in the low-90-millions.

Will this bring down the regime? Iran has faced repeated waves of unrest since 1979, and many analysts caution that even very large protest movements do not necessarily translate into regime collapse.

Trump is making noises about doing something to Iran. He might increase tariffs on countries still trading with Iran, but tariffs tend to take decades to have an effect, if they work at all. There are already extensive sanctions on Iran that have been in place for decades.

He could also try bombing Iran. That would not be very effective against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, because they are embedded in cities and mixed among the civilian population. You could try to locate barracks or target senior clerical leadership, but that would be difficult. They could bomb military targets, but I do not know whether that would be enough to destabilize the regime.

They could also give Israel a green light—Israel often seeks U.S. approval for actions against Iran, though not always—but I do not think any of that would necessarily bring down the regime. Thoughts?

Jacobsen: It’s deeply tragic. So many people are dying. It’s unclear whether this will have any effect on the regime itself. Estimates now put the death toll at over 2,500, including civilians, children, and some security personnel, with more than 18,000 arrests reported so far.

Rosner: And there have been a lot of executions. It’s not just people being shot in the streets. People are arrested, pushed through a rapid legal process, and in some cases executed within days. Things are profoundly broken there.

It’s strange to watch some of what is happening in the United States, because nothing like this has happened here before. The U.S. has been one of the luckiest countries in the world. We’re geographically isolated, so during the world wars we suffered relatively few casualties and almost no domestic destruction.

ICE is also using a slogan. Kristi Noem had it displayed on her speaker’s stand, printed clearly: “One of ours, all of yours.” People on social media have called it a Nazi slogan. Others have pushed back, saying the exact wording is not traceable to the SS or to Spanish fascists.

I looked into it. That precise phrasing may not have been used by the Nazis or by Franco’s forces in Spain, but the policy absolutely existed. The Nazi occupation doctrine included collective punishment—kill one of ours, and we will kill dozens or hundreds of people from your village. Spanish fascists also practiced collective reprisals. So even if the slogan itself is not a direct historical quotation, the idea behind it is very real.

MAGA apologists can say it is not technically an SS slogan, but it is still disturbing that a federal agency would adopt language that echoes that logic.

ICE is also not supposed to have jurisdiction over U.S. citizens unless those citizens are actively obstructing enforcement. Even then, my understanding is that ICE is generally supposed to defer to local law enforcement. I am not convinced they even have authority in many of the situations we are now seeing.

People are saying ICE is using tactics that resemble those of the SS, which is deeply disturbing. Public outrage does not seem to be diminishing. Joe Rogan has even referred to ICE as the Gestapo. We’ll see whether any of this constrains Trump from doing whatever he wants.

Trump went to a Ford plant to celebrate what he called good economic news. He claimed he has brought inflation under control, citing a 2.7 percent annualized rate. That same number was widely criticized as unacceptable when inflation fell to similar levels late in the Biden administration. Trump is now presenting it as proof of success.

He is also claiming job creation, but reported net job growth since April appears to be minimal. Nonetheless, he is touring factories and declaring victory. At the auto plant, a worker shouted at him and called him a “pedophile protector.” Trump shouted back, “fuck you,” and flipped him off. Within a few hours, the worker was reportedly suspended.

All of this feels unprecedented, though it is not entirely disconnected from earlier developments. The situation keeps growing more extreme. The question is how much worse it can get, and how long it can continue.

Republicans currently hold only a two-seat majority in the House, the narrowest margin in modern history. A large number of Republican senators and representatives—more than fifty—have announced they are not running for re-election, which is unusually high this far ahead of an election. If even two Republicans were to break away, the party could lose control of the House.

Even that might not change much. The House alone cannot pass legislation; it needs the Senate. The House can hold hearings and vote to impeach a president, but impeachment is a two-step process. A House vote only initiates a Senate trial. Removal from office requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which has never occurred and has never come close.

So that is where things stand. 

Jacobsen: Anything else?

Rosner: I’m confident in sports. The NFL playoff games so far have been exciting, unpredictable, and close. If you turn to sports for relief from everything else going on, that part has been good.

There hasn’t been much polling on Trump since before Christmas, partly because of a holiday lull. Right now his approval is around 42 percent. His lowest so far this term has been about 41 percent. I assume the most recent chaos will cost him a point and take him back down to around 41, possibly lower.

Will this cost him support in the House and Senate? Possibly. But does it matter? Does it represent a phase change in his support, the way Biden experienced one?

Under normal circumstances, a president’s popularity gradually declines over four years, sometimes rebounding a bit midway through a term. Biden’s support collapsed after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and never recovered. Is it possible for Trump’s approval to experience a similar break? I do not know. It hasn’t happened since he announced his candidacy in 2015. His approval has been remarkably steady through almost everything.

If he were to lose ten percent of his base and drop to the mid- or high-thirties, I’m not sure what would happen. He’s also likely to interfere with the midterm elections, which are less than ten months away.

People have already been turning out to protest across the country, including protests over the killing of Renee Good. So far, that hasn’t produced major political consequences. If public anger escalated to the point of a national strike, would that matter? Is a national strike even possible in a country as large and decentralized as the United States, compared with European countries where nationwide strikes are more common? I do not know. Your thoughts?

Jacobsen: Things can always get worse—and they can always get better. When you have a flexible system like the American one, that becomes even more true. There are many levers of civic engagement that determine where this goes.

In some countries, criticizing the leader can get you killed. People are being killed in the United States, but not simply for mocking the president. Many prominent figures openly criticize Trump, Hegseth, and others without consequence.

Rosner: I criticize them on Twitter every day.

Jacobsen: And people with even greater prominence do as well—shows like South Park and Saturday Night Live. Both have caricatured Pete Hegseth in very different ways. That’s a healthy sign in a society.

At the same time, the fact that so much technology is everywhere, with everything on camera, also matters. It allows extensive documentation. Outrage feeds attention, and attention incentivizes participation in rage culture—whether that’s end-times pastors framing Trump as an instrument of God’s will to restore a Christian nation, or civic, civil-rights, and human-rights advocates arguing that the country is regressing toward a less universalist moral framework.

People are mobilizing on both sides. In the contemporary U.S., what I’ve observed is that the left has often exercised influence through academia, while the right, when in power, has tended to exercise influence directly through the machinery of government.

Right now, the right wing has figured this out and is attacking the credibility of academia and other elites, trying to discredit them by arguing that they are illegitimate and cannot be trusted.

Rosner: There are two points here. First, you mentioned levers of power. There are more levers in the U.S., and it is harder to capture all of them at once, even though Trump has temporarily constrained several—judicial, legislative, executive, the press, and at least one more that escapes me at the moment. Still, that is not enough to seize the government in the way Hitler did in Germany, beginning rapidly after he took power in 1933. He rewrote the rules of government. Trump has not been able to do that, and I do not think he will be able to.

Jacobsen: The system is not as established for that kind of damage.

Rosner: What do you mean?

Jacobsen: It is not as consolidated or structurally vulnerable in the same way.

Rosner: Yes.

Jacobsen: Another thing being eroded, perhaps the most important one, is international soft power.

Rosner: Yes. We used to be seen as a friend to the world, and Trump does not like that.

Jacobsen: His approach to geopolitics and business is essentially zero-sum. If you are losing, I am winning. If you are winning, then I must be losing, which means you have to lose.

Rosner: Yes, but he is not very smart and he is a poor businessman. Many people believe otherwise, but that belief is misplaced. That actually leads to the other thing I wanted to mention.

The other issue is historical. In Germany, immediately after the war, the Allies left roughly a million troops there for years after hostilities ended in Europe in May 1945. They engaged in a sustained process of denazification. The Nazi Party was outlawed. Nazi symbols, statements, and imagery were made illegal. Nazi leaders were put on trial. Large amounts of foreign aid were eventually directed toward reconstruction and feeding a devastated population.

That process did not convert committed Nazis into non-believers. Some younger people may have concluded it was in their interest to abandon those beliefs, but many older true believers never did. Germany largely had to wait for that generation to age out and die.

When I look at social media today, it seems plausible that even after Trump is gone—and even if the MAGA movement is substantially removed from government—there will still be a significant share of Americans, perhaps around twenty percent of adults, who hold onto MAGA beliefs until the end of their lives. What do you think?

Jacobsen: Roughly 19 to 23 million baby boomers, out of about 70 million, had died as of a couple of years ago, so that process will continue. But it is not a rigid block.

I have long objected to generational labels—Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha. These are shorthand categories used by demographers to describe tendencies and population-level statistics. We then build social and political narratives around them, which is understandable. But the reality is fluid. People change, especially with technology.

We have to be careful not to imply that one generation is inherently bad and another inherently good.

Rosner: Baby boomers are not overwhelmingly MAGA. They might be something like 58–42 or 50–40, with the remainder disengaged or undecided. There is some fluidity. But if you look at hardcore anti-vaxxers, who overlap heavily with MAGA, many of them are unlikely to change their views. Most will probably remain anti-vaccine for the rest of their lives.

Unless medicine suddenly delivers such extraordinary results that people’s entire worldviews are forced to shift—say, routine lifespans of 105 years with good health into the late 90s—but that is not going to happen within the lifespan of today’s anti-vaxxers.

So my point is that a significant portion of the MAGA movement will likely persist until those individuals are simply no longer around. I’ve got three or four minutes left.

Jacobsen: Did you watch any good movies today?

Rosner: I’ve been watching Roofman with Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst.

Jacobsen: Interesting.

Rosner: It’s fine. Carole and I have also been watching Industry, an HBO series about people in finance—equity trading, asset management, IPOs, and high-net-worth clients. It’s a show where everyone is compromised. Everyone is at least somewhat unpleasant. Some characters are consistently awful, others are only occasionally so. This season includes companies like Siren.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Photo by omid armin on Unsplash

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