Ask A Genius 1580: Trump, FIFA, COVID Flights, and Social Backsliding
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/12/11
How do Trump’s love of awards, post-COVID air travel, and economic anxiety reveal deeper cracks in American politics and social life?
In this conversation, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner dissect the surreal overlap of American politics, global sport, and everyday life. Rosner riffs on FIFA’s World Cup “peace prize” diplomacy with Trump, linking symbolic awards to geopolitical tensions and a jittery U.S. economy. He contrasts the relative ease of childhood flying with today’scramped, hyper-secured, COVID-risky air travel, weaving in deregulation and presidential responsibility. Extending the theme, Rosner argues that hollowed-out jobs and constant pressure erode the moral energy needed to sustain marriage, family, and broader social institutions, suggesting the arc of history is currently bending backward.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the newest thing in American politics?
Rick Rosner: The newest thing? I have been watching the late-night monologues until you came on, and I have watched Jon Stewart and Kimmel, and I am watching Colbert. It turns out the way to get Trump to play ball with you — literally, a soccer ball with you — is to give him an award. FIFA, the international soccer organization that runs the World Cup.
The 2026 World Cup will be held across North America — specifically the United States, Mexico, and Canada. All the games are in those three countries. FIFA does not want Trump to disrupt them. We are going to have visitors from all over the world, and the U.S. is currently hostile to much of the world. So what FIFA did, I assume in the hopes that Trump will not interfere with the World Cup, is give him a Peace Prize. He really wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He cannot get one — this year it went to a Venezuelan opposition leader instead — and at the same time, he is edging toward an actual conflict with Venezuela.
So FIFA stepped in and gave him the first annual FIFA Peace Prize, a big trophy of a bunch of hands reaching up to hold the world, along with a peace medal that he immediately puts on and wears around his neck. That is a new thing: getting Trump to behave nicely toward you by giving him a prize. Also, Trump handed out awards at the Kennedy Center Honours.
He is the first president to host the Kennedy Center Honours ceremony, where they present medals to honorees — five great Americans or groups. KISS got a medal — the three surviving members, with Ace Frehley honoured posthumously. They usually hire an experienced comedic host, such as Stephen Colbert, but Trump named himself the head of the Kennedy Center’s board and the host. He likes awards, giving and receiving.
Another development is that the economy is showing disquieting signs. About 1.1 million Americans have lost their jobs so far this year — more than 1.1 million layoffs announced through November — which is the worst since COVID in 2020, when companies cut more than 2 million jobs. The numbers are likely so bad and so messy that the government did not release a complete jobs report for October. They blamed the 43-day shutdown. They cancelled the October unemployment rate report because they could not collect household survey data during the shutdown.
This will not fully hit the fan until a couple of months into 2026, because people are distracted during December by the holidays and eggnog. Unemployment has ticked up to 4.4 percent — not terrible, but the highest in about four years — and inflation has ticked up. We will not really see the numbers and the distress land emotionally until maybe February.“Rotten Tomatoes.” Also, there is a chance the economy won’t tank.
The stock market is still hitting near highs. The Dow is strong; the NASDAQ is wobbly because of AI and tech. The stock market loves it when the government is hobbled because then companies can get away with more.
Jacobsen: How has flying changed since you started flying, say, 40 years ago?
Rosner: Forty years ago. My parents got divorced when I was zero, so I was on planes for visitation, probably starting when I was two. For some of those years, people would not hesitate to put a seven-year-old on a plane and have him get picked up on the other end by the other parent. A stewardess — back then, they were still called flight attendants — gives you a pair of plastic wings for being a good flyer, and it is really exciting. Denver to Albuquerque, or Albuquerque to Denver, is only about an hour, so there wasn’t much to freak out about.
1986 really freaked me out. It was one of the worst years for airline accidents in modern aviation, and that was the beginning of my decades as a nervous flyer. I am still a nervous flyer, maybe a little less anxious, but planes used to allow smoking so that the air would turn blue with cigarette smoke. That is a huge difference.
There was more space. My brother accidentally spilled 7-Up on me on a flight. I joined the Mile High Club by myself in an empty row except for me, into a Pop-Tarts wrapper under a blanket. I have only done that once on a plane, and I have not done that in 25 or 30 years, so that is another difference.
When we fly now, it is often these 12-hour intercontinental flights, and you have to find a way to make yourself comfortable. You cannot just sit in that seat for 12 hours. We fly midweek, so we are more likely to have empty seats around us, which allows us to stretch out. The entertainment is much more plentiful. On a 12-hour flight, you can get through four movies or parts of five films and still fall asleep for a while.
I bring exercise bands on the plane. I can do chest presses and curls. I cannot do that if I am sitting next to a stranger, but if I am sitting next to Carol, she will put up with it.
Security is obviously different. When I was a kid flying, right up until the early 21st century, you kept your shoes on, and you didn’t go through a full-body scanner. Flying has gotten cheaper. When my parents were in decline, and I would fly to Denver and Albuquerque from L.A., you might find a flight for $ 50 one-way. That followed deregulation under Carter in 1978, though Reagan continued the deregulatory environment. I do not know if 1986 — the terrible year for flying — was awful because of deregulation, but it was undoubtedly a chaotic year for aviation.
The food — I still like the food. The last time Carol flew, she got food poisoning, but I did not, and I like it. What I do not like is trying to eat off a tiny tray in a confined space while you are freaking out a bit, because on my last flight, I got COVID. The kid next to me was coughing the whole way from Chicago to L.A., and I should have asked to switch seats. I did not want to be rude. He was a 12-year-old Black kid, and I did not want to be the guy who could not sit next to the Black kid, but really, I was sitting next to a person with COVID. I should have been more assertive.
It is awkward to eat in a bit of space on a little tray when they give you too much food that takes two trays to open and spread out, next to a kid who is actively making me sick.
I thought about how many presidents and other people teamed up for that kid to give me COVID, and Lance would blame LBJ, because LBJ helped create the modern welfare state — though really it was FDR.
So Lance would blame LBJ, because Lance likes to say that the welfare system expanded under LBJ created a perverse incentive in inner cities, where you could get more money and assistance if you were single, which Lance would argue contributed to a culture of single parents. And this kid who got me sick was travelling from one parent in Chicago to another parent in L.A.
So there is one president you could blame. You could blame Trump for letting COVID get out of hand. You could blame Biden because there were more deaths from COVID under Biden than under Trump, since Trump was only in charge for the first 11–12 months of the pandemic, while Biden had multiple years of COVID to manage.
You could blame Reagan for deregulating the airlines and making tickets cheaper. If plane tickets were still expensive, the family could not have afforded to send the kid on the flight to cough on me. You could make all sorts of arguments for all kinds of presidents giving me COVID.
And also the Star Trek lady — Seven of Nine, Jeri Ryan. If she had not been married to a creep, and if the deposition from her divorce proceedings had not been leaked, then her husband — who was a political candidate — would not have dropped out, which made way for Obama. Obama is from Chicago, like the kid who was coughing on me. So, somehow, the Star Trek lady, a lovely lady and a Twitter friend, and Obama are responsible. It takes a village to give me COVID.
Jacobsen: Where do you think traditional social institutions are going? I do not mean infrastructure. I mean marriage, partnership, family.
Rosner: A very popular quote over the past few years is Martin Luther King’s: “The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” The idea is that, slowly and surely, we will arrive at a more enlightened world where everyone can be who they are and who they want to be without political or social oppression.
We are in a period of backsliding. There is so much happening that people are defending their turf, distracted, and worried. Progress tends to happen when conditions are improving overall, and people can focus on not being assholes, and then succeed at not being assholes.
When my mother-in-law was suffering from early dementia, whenever she got caught in a situation where she did not know something she should have known, she would say, “There is just a lot going on.” And I say that several times a week. A lot is going on. And it lets a lot of hate and ethical, moral, and societal backsliding slip through the cracks.
The U.S. has a hollowed-out economy. We have plenty of jobs, but many are shitty jobs that provide no cushion, and people often need to hold two or three of them. People are under pressure. And people under pressure have less moral oomph to take on issues that require them.
Jacobsen: Moral motivation is much easier when you have a full tummy.
Rosner: Yes. Or when your tummy is full of things you want to eat instead of the shitty stuff you can afford.
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