Schmidt is a syndicated columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Say you want to reduce polarization in the new year? Might I suggest going to see a movie this holiday season – but not just any movie. Check out “Spirited,” the musical starring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer.
Over Thanksgiving weekend my family went to see “Spirited” in a movie theater (it is also streaming on AppleTV+). “Spirited” is a musical version of the classic Charles Dickens story “A Christmas Carol.” I left the theater feeling energized for the good fight of repairing our democracy in 2023. And don’t worry, there will be no spoilers here.
For over two centuries, Jacob Marley has led the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-To-Come in selecting a miserable soul for redemption. They spend the year preparing for Christmas Eve and then haunt the selected “perp” with hopes of changing them to be a more positive force for humanity. While looking for their next soul, the Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) runs into a speaker at a hotel, Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds). Briggs is a morally bankrupt media consultant and social media manipulator. One of the spirits who works for Marley describes Briggs’ company this way: “specializes in creating controversy, conflict, and disinformation for the benefits of his clients worldwide.” The Ghost of Christmas Present watches Briggs break into a musical number about weaponizing the war on Christmas for profit while speaking to the National Association of Christmas Tree Growers.
Here are a few of the notable lines from the song "Bringin' Back Christmas”:
“Outrage is a drug.”
“Now it's some slight manipulation but it’s what we’ve gotta do. See, we need some confrontation, or your message won’t get through.”
“But the world is, what? Tribal. So, if you want your sales to soar, it’s not enough for folks to love you, they gotta hate your rivals more. As an expert my advice is feed that hate, ‘cause hate is strong. Folks will gladly pay your prices to prove those Christmas-killers wrong.
“It’s not enough to want it. You gotta get mad. You have to fight.”
While watching the musical number, the Ghost of Christmas Present announces that Briggs is “like the perfect combination of Mussolini and Seacrest.” No surprise that Marley’s team chooses Briggs since the Ghost of Christmas Present tells the others that the guy causes division for his job and is sure that his redemption could have a “ripple” effect and make him a force for positive change in humanity.
This movie does a remarkable job of providing some life lessons, which, beyond helping each one of us personally, can help our society in combating the cycle of polarization that we seem stuck in. It highlights that division sells and we need to think about who is profiting from the ensuing disconnection.
There is a famous saying that the first step in solving a problem is admitting there is one. I would add that you also must identify exactly what that problem is. This movie helped me do that.
In 2020, Scientific American magazine published a study in which they found that it is the influencers in our social media, not the networks themselves, that amplify differences between us. They highlight that partisan bias is exacerbated on social media because online networks are often organized around a few key influencers. This feature of social media is one of the main reasons why misinformation and fake news have become so pervasive. In centralized networks, which our current social media platforms are, biased influencers have a disproportionate impact on their community. These influencers simply amplify rumors and suppositions into widespread misconceptions and false beliefs.
In the movie, Briggs is one of those influencers. We learn that he has no problem monetizing his skills at division. And like this fictional character, we have real-life examples working in our midst.
The magazine goes on to suggest that one way to lessen influencers' effects is to be intentional about the social networks in those echo chambers. The more equity in people’s social networks, the less biased and more informed groups will become. Or you could do what I do and largely stay off social media.
Unlike the movie, there is no amount of singing and dancing or unearthly spirits that are going to help heal what divides our country. That is up to each individual, reaching out to one another, looking for the traps that nonfictional characters are placing in front of us, and working to rebuild our institutions.
You don’t need to celebrate Christmas to enjoy “Spirited,” but you should be open to producing ripples on your own. Or as a different song goes, “Playing our parts. Changing hearts. One by one.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address.
I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major figures in this administration, is a bona fide serious person. Indeed, that’s why President Trump keeps piling responsibilities on him. Rubio knows what he’s talking about and cares about policy. He is hardly a free agent; Trump is still president after all. But in an administration full of people willing to act like social media trolls, Rubio stands out for being serious. And I welcome that.
But just because Rubio made a serious argument, that doesn’t mean it was wholly persuasive. Part of his goal was to repair some of the damage done by his boss, who not long ago threatened to blow up the North Atlantic alliance by snatching Greenland away from Denmark. Rubio’s conciliatory language was welcome, but it hardly set things right.
Whether it was his intent or not, Rubio had more success in offering a contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who used the Munich conference last year as a platform to insult allies and provide fan service to his followers on X. Rubio’s speech was the one Vance should have given, if the goal was to offer a serious argument about Trump’s “vision” for the Western alliance. I put “vision” in scare quotes because it’s unclear to me that Trump actually has one, but the broader MAGA crowd is desperate to construct a coherent theory of their case.
So what’s that case? That Western Civilization is a real thing, America is not only part of it but also its leader, and it will do the hard things required to fix it.
In Rubio’s story, America and Europe embraced policies in the 1990s that amounted to the “managed decline” of the West. European governments were free riders on America’s military might and allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy as they funded bloated welfare states and inefficient regulatory regimes. Free trade, mass migration and an infatuation with “the rules-based global order” eroded national sovereignty, undermined the “cohesion of our societies” and fueled the “de-industrialization” of our economies. The remedy for these things? Reversing course on those policies and embracing the hard reality that strength and power drive events on the global stage.
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending,” Rubio said, “because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
I agree with some of this — to a point. And, honestly, given how refreshing it is to hear a grown-up argument from this administration, it feels churlish to quibble.
But, for starters, the simple fact is that Western Civilization is an abstraction, and so are nations and peoples. And that’s fine. Abstractions — like love, patriotism, moral principles, justice — are really important. Our “way of life” is largely defined and understood through abstractions: freedom, the American dream, democracy, etc. What is the “Great” in Make America Great Again, if not an abstraction?
This is important because the administration’s defenders ridicule or dismiss any principled objection critics raise as fastidious gitchy-goo eggheadery. Trump tramples the rule of law, pardons cronies, tries to steal an election and violates free market principles willy-nilly. And if you complain, it’s because you’re a goody-goody fool.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said not long ago, “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Rubio said it better, but it’s the same idea.
There are other problems with Rubio’s story. At the start of the 1990s, the EU’s economy was 9% bigger than ours. In 2025 we were nearly twice as rich as Europe. If Europe was “ripping us off,” they have a funny way of showing it. America hasn’t “deindustrialized.” The manufacturing sector has grown during all of this decline, though not as much as the service sector, where we are a behemoth. We have shed manufacturing jobs, but that has more to do with automation than immigration. Moreover, the trends Rubio describes are not unique to America. Manufacturing tends to shrink as countries get richer.
That’s an important point because Rubio, like his boss, blames all of our economic problems on bad politicians and pretends that good politicians can fix them through sheer force of will.
I think Rubio is wrong, but I salute him for making his case seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.