Broadsheet

This is the first half of the third part (I, II) of our long-delayed series looking at Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox Interactive’s World War II grand strategy game, easily one of the most popular historical games on the market today and thus tremendously influential in both the popular history and gaming spaces.

Over the last two parts, we took a look at the military simulation that sits at the heart of Hearts of Iron, a division-level operational simulation of World War II, along with the doctrinal framework that contextualizes what is actually happening as divisions collide along the game’s front lines. While the doctrinal system struggles to really accurately represent the different ways that armies attempted to fight in the Second World War, the overall operational simulator is a remarkable achievement. Alas, the discussion is going to turn somewhat more critical from here as we move from the operational focus of the game – where the bulk of developer time and attention have gone – to the ‘everything else’ of the game, where simplifications and streamlining often go awry.

In this part, we’re going to move upwards to the strategic level, beginning with the question of politics, particularly domestic politics. Hearts of Iron IV has an understandably more simplified approach to politics than games like Victoria II or III or even Europa Universalis V which are substantially focused on questions of how changing conditions alter the political and economic balance of a polity. Simplified, however, does not mean absent: Hearts of Iron IV does have a ‘theory of history’ when it comes to the politics of the period.

Unfortunately – and I will not bury the lede here – Hearts of Iron IV‘s simplified politics serve to present an essentially authoritarian vision of politics in which the opinion of the people matters essentially not at all, where state power can easily and effortlessly shape outcomes and where authoritarian central direction is easy, frictionless and never produces unintended results and where democracy comes effectively only with drawbacks. It is a vision of politics that begs the question¹ in favor of empire and autocracy, where the only way to achieve social, cultural or political change is to first have control of the state. Governments in Hearts of Iron do not fall, they cannot be overthrown, they can only decide to abolish themselves, so absolute is authoritarian state power.

It is thus not inaccurate to say that Hearts of Iron IV‘s political model, as a result of careless simplification is fascist, in that it assumes that all politics flows down from the state, dictated by the leader and merely accepted by the people who do not exist as individuals, but merely units of state power. I do not think that the developers set out to build a fascist model of politics (indeed, I know they didn’t), but alas, despite themselves, in an effort to get the player ‘to the action’ with as little friction as possible, they have done so.

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Picking up in our United Kingdom game where we left off last time – with Japan entering the war – two major naval battles in October and November in the Strait of Malacca largely confirmed that my ‘fast squadron’ of carriers and battlecruisers could control the strait, handing the IJN a series of nasty batterings that cost them a few capital ships and substantial damage to a number of others.
The Dutch still managed to lose Java, but control of this area let me steadily work with a modest army to take Siam out of the war, then reclaim Dutch Indonesia and Borneo. Meanwhile, mounting IJN losses meant that the USA was actually able to support the Philippines, so by January of 1942, the war in the Pacific had already decisively shifted away from Japan.
I made the decision to remain focused on Europe, because the AI United States would have no problem defeating Japan at this point, so I kept my fleet operating in Indonesia to keep that area secure while the IJN was steadily dismantled by the USN.

Politics

On the surface, Hearts of Iron IV appears to have the components of an interesting political simulation: each country has a governing ideology along with a pie-chart of what ideologies are popular with the populace, along with stability (representing how stable the government is) and war support (reflecting how committed the populace is to the war). The problem is two-fold: none of these mechanics are very developed and none of these mechanics interact meaningfully with each other.

The system, such as it is, begins with ideology and here we run into immediate problems in representing the actual political conditions inside of most countries in the period. There are just four ideologies: democratic, communist, fascist and non-aligned. While the game does have ‘sub-ideologies’ (for instance, ‘liberalism,’ ‘conservatism,’ ‘socialism’ and ‘populism’ for democracy) these have functionally no influence on gameplay – their sum effect is to determine if your ‘same ideology’ diplomatic opinion bonus is +20 or merely +10, both numbers which in actual gameplay are either indistinguishable from zero or indistinguishable from 100, depending on what you are trying to do.² So in practice, there are just the four ideologies.

These ideologies do matter, because the governing ideology of a country determines what actions it can take, although in practice this is just an exciting set of disabilities applied to democracies. Democracies are heavily limited in the actions they can take, particularly not being able to declare war without meeting specific conditions, with requirements that ‘world tension’ (the amount of conflict in the game) reach certain levels before they can take actions. Democracies that guarantee the independent of other countries lower world tension, which in the game mechanically is bad for them, because democracies have a lot more things (like conscription and mobilization laws) gated behind world tension. Communist, non-aligned and fascist governments largely lack these limitations and thus have much greater freedom of action to mobilize earlier (which, as we’ll see in a later post, is simply better rather than being a truly strategic choice) and attack more freely.

The idea here is to model the challenge of bringing the United States and United Kingdom onto a war footing before the war began but in practice, mechanically, democracy is simply a weaker form of government in Hearts of Iron. It is striking that no effort is made to simulate the strengths that democratic governments displayed in this period, particularly in adaptability and economic mobilization. Historically, the United Kingdom, a fraction of the size of Hitler’s continental European empire after 1940, nevertheless outproduced it in key categories like aircraft.³

The game tracks the popularity of specific ideologies in a given country with a pie-chart, but the insufficiency of this model becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly. While each country often has a unique name for each ideology, representing actual political parties in the period, divisions within an ideology are not represented. So, for instance, the United States is represented as having 99% popular ‘Democratic’ ideology. The idea here is that in Hearts of Iron IV‘s really simplified politics, the Republican and Democratic parties of 1936 are indistinguishable – both ‘Democratic’ ideology parties – and so are combined (though this is still too high – Socialist third-party candidates generally got ~2-3% in the federal elections of this period). It also strikes me as wrong – the fact that Strom Thurmond leading a ‘State’s Rights’ party (a segregationist party that probably ought to be classified at least as non-aligned given its intent to restrict the franchise) would go on to win four states in 1948 (within the game’s timeframe!) suggests that there was a meaningful constituency for a less democratic United States even in the 1940s.

A smattering of the political screens of major powers at the 1936 start. As you can see, there is quite a bit of political compression going on here, particularly with the United States and the United Kingdom. But equally the perfect information and precise figures for the political leanings of authoritarian countries are odd – how would anyone **know** what percentage of Russians, Italians or Germans truly supported the ideology of the regime, given that not doing so was a reliable way to get killed?

Other countries suffer the same ‘party compression.’ The game has no way to distinguish in the UK between the Tories and Labour, so it doesn’t: they’re merged into a Tory (Democracy Ideology) mega-party with an unshakeable lock on politics. Pre-war Germany’s situation in 1936 are likewise simplified: the Nazi party starts with 50% popular support, while there is a chunk of Democratic ideological support (marked as Zentrum, despite the fact that the party had dissolved itself under Nazi pressure in July of 1933), communist support (the KPD) and some non-aligned. The SPD/Sopade isn’t represented at all.

Meanwhile, there is the absolute mess of the ‘non-aligned’ ideology, which encompasses non-fascist despotism, traditional absolute monarchy, quasi-democratic oligarchies, colonial dependencies and even the fractured, military-dominated political structure of the Japanese Empire. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the ‘non-aligned’ category functions as effectively a ‘grab bag’ for every country that doesn’t fit into the first three categories. In practice, the game thus largely treats ‘non-aligned’ as thus an absence of ideology: there is no way to start a global ‘non-aligned’ movement the way that democracies, fascists and communists can all create (or start with) factions aimed at promoting their ideology.

The result is a political system that simply lacks the granularity to represent politics as they existed in many countries in the period, which as we’ll see, mostly doesn’t matter for the game because this system barely matters for political change compared to the much greater influence of the focus system and political advisors. The game does have mechanics for elections, but in most of the major democracies, with all of the pro-democracy parties fused, that doesn’t mean much.

Popular ideology can change over the course of the game, but this too is extremely simplified. In practice, most countries have access to advisors they can hire (at the cost of 150 political power) who will cause popular opinion to trend towards one ideology at a rate of 0.10% per day. For some countries, getting this advisor requires completing a few national focuses (see below) to get on the right track for an ideology switch. But I want to stress how big that rate is: at +0.1 per day (the standard rate for the ‘Communist Revolutionary, Fascist Demagogue, Democratic Reformer and Staunch Monarchist advisors) a country could go from having no support at all for a given kind of government to having enough support (50%) to transition to that entirely new kind of government with little to no issues at all in less than a year and a half.

You just have to hire the right one guy. Also, this requires a government to decide to hire an advisor whose entire purpose is to undermine the government, overthrow it and in many cases presumably murder every other member of the government, but we’ll come back to that.

A similar lack of consequence assails stability and war-support as mechanics. Both stats offer bonuses when above 50% and penalties below 50% and in theory low war support can feed back into low stability which can in theory feed back into creating a political crisis. In practice, this almost never happens. War support acts as a more-or-less fixed value (it isn’t meaningfully responsive to casualties) which can be raised through war propaganda (costing political power, see below), while stability is likewise generally a fairly static value. Generally, the internal politics of states in Hearts of Iron IV are extremely stable such that the player needs to actively intervene to force political crises (sometimes a tool to intentionally change governing ideology early).

Our United Kingdom campaign comes with several examples of this sort of a-historical stability. The game requires, for instance, a bespoke event to transition from Neville Chamberlain’s government to that of Winston Churchill because the political system is both not granular enough to model the Norway Debate and subsequent vote of confidence happening as a debate within a political ideology as a result of serious policy setbacks.

Likewise, somewhat famously, support in the Wehrmacht for the invasion of France in 1940 was tepid and a number of high ranking officers were on the verge of attempting a coup if the invasion of France had failed. Of course, historically it succeeded, cementing Hitler’s power through to the end of the war. But Hearts of Iron IV has no way to model the failure of Fall Gelb (the invasion of the Low Countries) as a political event which might imperil the Nazi regime. Instead, unless the player is actively and aggressively attempting to intervene in internal German politics in ahistorical ways, Germany remains fully committed to Hitler’s vision down to the end of the war.

Instead, the political system serves as an essentially minimal scaffolding necessary to produce what Hearts of Iron IV actually cares about: the operational simulation. This is perhaps most obvious in the choice of political advisors and military staff, representing essentially key figures in something like a cabinet and a general staff respectively. But while these advisors are named after historical figures (with portraits), they are for the most part just a set of standard bonuses the player is choosing between in preparation for the operational simulator. Any sense that these choices might be dictated by domestic politics is removed by the fact that these slots always (I am unaware of any exceptions) begin empty, so that assembling a collection of advisors – really a collection of advisor-themed bonuses – is a key expenditure of political power in getting ready for the war during the 1930s.

But apart from advisors whose only specific purpose is to promote a specific ideology (which you only choose if you intend to ideology switch to that ideology, there isn’t any need to ‘defend’ the popularity of your current governing ideology because of how static the political model is here), these ‘advisors’ do not interact with your domestic political situation at all.

This is, however, in stark contrast to the thing that does matter quite a lot.

On Focus

Part of the reason the political mechanics remain largely skeletal is that for the most part core player political decision-making doesn’t take place there: it takes place in the focus tree.

Via the Wiki, this is a zoomed out view of the entire focus tree for the United Kingdom. It is, compared to other major powers, a relatively small focus tree – the major democracies (UK, USA, France) have gotten generally fairly little in the way of new content for quite some time (put a pin in that) and as a result tend to have relatively minimal – as such things go – focus trees.

Every country in Hearts of Iron IV has a focus tree and nearly all of them are unique. This is a significant change from HoI4‘s structure on release, where only a handful of countries (the major powers) had unique focus trees, while every other country has a ‘default’ focus tree. However, years of updates and DLCs have added bespoke focus trees to nearly every country on the map, with the result that only a handful of small countries use that ‘default’ focus tree. Some countries, however, still have far more developed focus trees than others, which gives a good sense of where the developers expect most players to spend their time (unsurprisingly, major players like the USSR, Germany, Japan all have very expensive trees; the trees for the USA and the UK are more developed than for most minors but also very obviously not at the same level as those for the other major powers – an implication we’ll come back to when we discussing modding).

Each node on the focus tree (a ‘national focus’) represents a specific political decision meant to represent a choice to focus the government on a specific aim for a short period (generally 70 days). These are arranged in a series of ‘trees’ where earlier foci unlock the ability to choose later ones and where branches are frequently mutually exclusive, forcing the player to choose a political direction which may then last over several foci. Most foci are fairly direct, offering some sort of bonus (easier research in a field, some new factories, a small permanent bonus called a ‘national spirit’) once completed, but most countries have a part of their focus tree designed to allow them to switch governing ideology through a series of foci that empower a specific different ideology, and many countries also have foci that unlock casus bellorum enabling them to go to war where they might not otherwise be able to do so.⁴

So in practice, each country begins the game by selecting a focus of the few available at the top of tree. This triggers a timer (typically 70 days, but many shorter 35-day foci exist, particularly in recently updated trees) after which the focus is completed, the country gets the bonus and a new focus is selected, with a few new choices opened up in the tree by the completion of the first focus and so on.

Enacting a focus is not entirely free. The game attempts to simulate the ‘political capital’ that a government has through a political power currency, which most countries generate at a rate of 2 per day.⁵ This currency is used to hire new advisors and to change a country’s laws (most notably conscription and economic mobilization laws) and is usually in short supply, particularly in the early game. Enacting a focus costs 1 political power per day (representing the governments efforts to get the job done), so most foci cost 70 political power, which is about half of what most advisors or law changes cost.

That said, national foci are powerful enough that it is fairly rare that any player would want to ignore them for the political power cost (except, rarely, right before a war is about to start, where a player wants to stockpile political power to be able to rapidly shift to stronger mobilization and conscription laws). Instead, the tendency is to have a focus running continuously well into the mid-game, making the key decisions here what focuses to take and in what order.

The range of what national focuses can do is unsurprisingly vast, but there is a common structure, generally. Most countries have a branch of the tree devoted to developing industry, which offers bonus civilian and military factories, extra building slots and research bonuses for that sort of thing, alongside a branch that instead focuses on military development, often unlocking research bonuses for specific kinds of units and national spirits that offer country-specific bonuses to production or combat. For countries that historically had active air or naval arms, this part of the tree is often split into non-mutually exclusive branches between the services, forcing the player to prioritize what part of their military to focus on first.

Then there is generally a series of ‘political paths,’ which often encompass together both domestic and foreign policy. Typically at the top of these trees is the crucial decision to either remain the ideology the country starts as or to attempt to shift ideology, with various ideology shifts having a series of foci which often empower that ideology. Indeed, and this seems worth noting, in a lot of cases, these foci exert a substantially stronger ideological push on a country’s population than most other options the player has, either by unlocking specific ticking modifiers or by unlocking specific decisions (often culminating in a civil war in which the player can, by winning, force the ideology switch). Generally tucked into the political path are also a set of foreign policy choices, usually to include focuses that result in allying with countries of similar ideologies or – for more expansionist ideologies (which is to say not the democratic ones) – foci that offer war goals against various countries to enable military expansion.

The political focus tree path for the United Kingdom, which makes up about half of their focus tree. As is typical, there are clearly delineated focus paths for taking Britain fascist, communist or non-aligned.

The result of all of this is that the key big picture decisions are not made in the political system itself, but rather in the focus system. If the player wants to, say, take Britain non-aligned they do so not by really engaging deeply with the political system, but by selecting the non-aligned focus path, which actually has a focus that starts popular opinion moving non-aligned. This creates something of an oddity because under normal circumstances, the player is clearly positioned as the government, but a player who intends to ideology shift is plotting against their government. In essence, Hearts of Iron IV imagines that the way a county shifts ideologies is that the existing government opts to spend precious political capital undermining itself in order to prepare the war for a civil war it intends to lose.

A partial image of Germany’s political paths.
You may notice that Germany’s focus tree is **so vast** that it requires a handy navigation aid in the lower left to allow the player to quickly jump to each branch, something not present for the much smaller focus trees for Britain, France, the USSR or the United States (Japan, China and oddly, the British Raj, also have extremely large focus trees with navigator panels). **This might suggest something** about where the Hearts of Iron team is spending its resources and what they understand about their playerbase.

We’ve seen this problem before, where Paradox titles struggle to decide if the player plays as a government or as the disembodied ‘spirit’ of a state, but of course the idea that nations have spirits at all is a loaded, contested one, bound up with nationalist notions of ‘national destiny.’ Notably, however, the player is very clearly not an expression of the actual public will: at no point is the player actually constrained to follow the popular ideology: it is only the ruling ideology that constrains them. The people and their ideology are, in Hearts of Iron IV for the most part just clay, eager and ready to be molded by the player’s simple decision to click this button and not that one.

And to be clear I think it isn’t too hard to understand why the game has been designed this way: if the core of the Hearts of Iron experience is the operational simulation, then everything else is simply a frame to get the player to that simulation. But of course for the most popular grand strategy game – which is the genre label Paradox prefers for its games – that is a troubling framework because it greatly simplifies the strategic and political layer.

Meme Politics

To explain how, I am going to borrow a term from Samantha Hancox-Li, who called Hearts of Iron IV‘s approach meme politics. Hancox-Li defines the idea of ‘meme politics’ as consisting of three conjoined political assumptions:

Every policy does exactly what it intends
Politics is straight forward and information is perfect
Policy does not face meaningful resistance

And I think that is a relatively fair description of the focus tree system’s approach to politics. Each focus declares, right on the tin, exactly what it will do and these choices never go awry – even the foci that can cause a civil war will have that clearly declared in their descriptions in advance. I find this particularly striking when it comes to industrial policy: just about every country has an industrial policy section of the focus tree, where in most cases they are merely selecting the “I would like more civilian and/or military factories 35 or 70 days from now” focus and letting it run.

But of course in practice in the real world, industrial policy is remarkably difficult and very frequently goes wrong: government interventions often lead to reduplicated efforts, sectors bloated beyond requirements, or they simply fail. Even a casual read of something like Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2006) reveals how much of a confused muddle Nazi industrial policy was. Allied armaments and economic efforts fared better, but were still often chaotic and impromptu at the time – initial US estimates of the military production possible in 1942, for instance, were wildly over-optimistic – akin to a situation where the ‘build military factory’ focus says it will add ten military factories but only adds five (or none!). But that simply cannot happen in Hearts of Iron IV.

Likewise, there is rarely much meaningful pushback for these focuses: they do what they say they do and only very few carry the possibility of blowback (which is – again, perfect information – clearly marked). An industrial plan never unexpectedly runs up against resistance from industrialists or workers or farmers or foreign financial interests. If you are playing as Communist China, you just trigger the ‘Agricultural Reform’ focus and ‘The Great Production Movement’ which just directly give you bonuses to construction speed and production because no industrial modernization movement led by Mao Zedong ever went wrong due to incomplete information, faulty implementation or any problem of unfounded ideological assumptions.

This lack of blowback is, of course, most obvious in the domestic political branches of the trees. While in many cases switching governing ideology does require a civil war or comes with penalties to stability, in practice making the decision for the government to abolish itself is as simple as clicking on the focus button, at which point the whole machinery of government – represented by the political power you are spending – gets to work on the job of becoming a different kind of government and unless that effort triggers an explicit civil war, no one tries to stop you.

Likewise, so long as you do not trigger one of those ideology-shifting trees, government control is extremely stable. In practice, throughout the war, leaders were abundantly aware that their power might be fragile – that battlefield setbacks or other problems might compromise their ability to lead. Not so in Hearts of Iron IV: governments are only fragile when they choose to be.

It is equally striking that in a game simulating an era of mass politics, the people matter very little to this system. As noted above, radically changing the population’s political beliefs in HoI4 is not hard – it is, in fact, very easy: it costs 150 political power to hire the single advisor who on their own will change a majority of the minds in the country in less than two years. 150 political power is, again, just about twice the cost of a single national focus or the same cost as moving a country’s conscription or mobilization law by a single step. This is a model of politics where once a political faction gets into government, mass-converting the entire populace and country to their ideology is presented as easy, a process of simply hitting the right button.

My run settled down into a fairly stable situation for most of early 1942. With no decision in the West, AI Germany did not declare war on the USSR and indeed the USSR is not going to join the war at all in this run. That left the entire German army on the western front, which required a longer build-up for me to have a viable breakthrough force.
That said, by May, 1942 I had assembled a mobile force of 10 armored divisions and 10 supporting motorized divisions to attempt to ‘punch outwards’ and launched that offensive in June. The initial goal was to push out eastward from Utrecht and then use the relatively flat ground to run to the Weser before turning north to trap any Germany forces left in the northern Netherlands.

Imperialism by Focus

When I was planning this series, I knew I’d want an example of just how absurd the outcomes that the focus tree can almost effortlessly give you are. Since we’re doing a United Kingdom run in the background, I thought I would use the Imperial Federation decision-chain as an example.

Now the concept of something like an Imperial Federation is not entirely a-historic – like many of these ‘alternate history’ paths, it is based on an idea that was talked about in the period – although as equally frequent the case, an idea that never got very far. From 1887 to 1937, the British Empire held somewhat regular ‘Imperial Conferences,’ where representatives of the constituent elements of the British Empire, including the Dominions, would meet. One of the ideas floated in the late 1880s and very early in the 1900s was the idea of creating a federal superstate encompassing the United Kingdom and the Dominions, an Imperial Federation; the idea never had tremendous support and was basically dead by 1926. But the United Kingdom focus tree lets you revive the concept and – solely as the United Kingdom, by pure force of political will (by which we mean pressing the button) force it through.

The entire sequence requires 12 national focuses, involving investments (fairly modest in scope and which come at no cost except the 70 day delay and political power cost of a focus) in the industry of India and the Dominions and then holding an Imperial Conference.

The focus tree path to get to the Imperial Conference. The India branch is optional if the player does not intend to include India in the resulting federation.

That then fires an event, the ‘Imperial Conference,’ at which the player can propose various common economic, military and political policies, at which point they can then propose an Imperial Federation. If all of the Dominions (potentially and the British Raj) accept, all of them get massive negative ticking autonomy, causing them to drift inexorably deeper under British control until the final Imperial Federation focus becomes available, annexing Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the British Raj into a single mega-state, the Commonwealth of Nations, which contrary to its name does not in any way function as a federal state, but rather as a single, unitary state of enormous size.⁶

Now it is possible for the Dominions to refuse – as they absolutely would have if this had been proposed in this period – but by raising their diplomatic opinion to +100, the player can guarantee a 100% acceptance rate. And – more meme politics – raising diplomatic opinion to 100 is simply a matter of clicking the ‘improve relations’ button, which will cost 10 political power to start (so almost nothing) and a ticking cost of 0.2 per day⁷ will raise relations to +100 in just a couple of months. Want to get the Canadians to like you so much they’d give up self-government for you? Just hit the button.

The result is that in practice it takes a player-run United Kingdom just about two years to achieve something that in practice in the 1930s and 1940s was probably impossible at any level of effort. The popular consciousness of entire countries is effortlessly molded, are a perfectly linear rate of x% per day, into whatever form is required.

Notably, the game also does not ask the player to think at all about the outcome of this decision, it just works. And here I think a brief thought experiment is useful: what would an Imperial Federation c. 1940 entail? Decisions would have to be made about how the Dominions would be represented in a ‘super-parliament’ in London: by population? By white population (think hard about South Africa’s situation before answering)? And what about the Raj? If India was represented by population, it would instantly hold 70% or more of the seats. Now it is hard to see how India and Pakistan – with the Indian independence movement already very well advanced (the Non-cooperation Movement started in 1919!) – would ever agree to any such federation but surely they would not agree to any federation where they had an artificially reduced percentage of the vote. But it is equally impossible to imagine the United Kingdom or the Dominions agreeing to a super-federation that would have been, in practice, the Empire of New Delhi given the balance of votes in a pure by-population-system.

In short, even if India isn’t included, there are just very obvious insurmountable political hurdles here both for actually forming the federation and also that such a federation would immediately face after the war. Including India merely compounds those problems.

Hearts of Iron IV asks the player to consider exactly none of these issues. You simply march linearly down the focus tree, spending political power when necessary, remember to use ‘improve relations’ two to three months before firing the Imperial Conference decision and there you go. The focus to accomplish a probably impossible feat does exactly what it says on the tin, with no pushback and perfect information about the results and the effort requires the whole way through. The problems all, presumably, work themselves out off-screen: a good example of Hearts of Iron IV‘s ‘meme politics’ structure, but hardly a unique one – basically all political questions in HoI4 are resolved this way.

And the wild part is, the Imperial Federation is one of the most complex of such sequences, since it requires a whole event chain and a substantial delay between getting everyone to agree and having the federation actually happen (though mechanically, once everyone agrees, no one can really stop the federation from happening – the downward ticking autonomy is more than anyone is likely to be able to counteract). You hit the right button, wait for the delay and the thing the button says it does happens and the opinions or resistance of the hundreds of millions of people who are involved doesn’t matter a damn.

And here we can see just a few days later, my offensive has broken into the open and made it to the Weser (and even over it, stealing a march by getting into Bremen before serious opposition could dig in) with the result that roughly 40 German and Italian divisions ended up trapped in a pocket between Leewarden and Wilhelmshaven. While they have ports, my naval presence in the German Bight is sufficient that no supplies are getting through and no one is leaving either.
On the southern end of the pocket, I make it to Dortmund but not deeper into the Rhineland as the terrain there is difficult and the attack runs out of steam before I can secure all of the urban centers. That’s fine – this rush is plenty for now.

The Effect

This is obviously an extremely simplistic model of politics. The contrast with the still-quite-simplified but far more complex political simulation involves in Victoria II or III or Europa Universalis V or Crusader Kings III is remarkable. As Hancox-Li notes, this is a vision of politics which seems to have crept out of gaming spaces into the real world (sometimes more or less explicitly invoked) – an assumption that major changes in society are not difficult or fraught or complex or sometimes backfire, but merely require finding the right button, the right national focus, which is neatly labeled “Do The Thing” on the tin, and pressing it forcefully enough.

And it isn’t hard to see, as a question of development time and focus, how we got here: this is a game about fighting World War II, fundamentally focused on its operational simulation. Everything else – diplomacy, politics, espionage, industrial policy⁸ – is merely a delivery mechanism, the unadorned, simple frame in which to present the operational painting. And so choices can be simplified down to the basics, made predictable and streamlined so they do not distract the player too much from the core of the game, which is smashing divisions into other divisions. Equally, most of the friction here is removed to facilitate players who want to change up the exact layout of the board where they are smashing their Army Men together.

And to be clear, I have nothing against a pure operational simulation or war games in general. But this is, notionally, supposed to be a grand strategy game. Grand strategy is, definitionally, the coordination of political, diplomatic, economic and military means to achieve strategic ends. If two (three, really, as we’ll see) of those means are radically simplified in this way, are we really doing grand strategy? And if we’re not – why include the strategic simulation at all? Why not structure the game as a series of operations?

But there is, I think a deeper problem here (one we’ll see recur over the next few posts), the unintended implications of these gameplay simplifications. And I’ll be blunt: Hearts of Iron IV presents an authoritarian model of politics. It presents a world in which the authoritarians (both fascists and the communists) are fundamentally right about the nature of politics – that individuals do not matter. All that matters is the state, embodied in the player.

The people in Hearts of Iron IV do not yearn for freedom, nor do they really even have their own ideologies at all. All it takes is hiring the right propagandist and selecting the right focus tree button – decisions whose cost and time investment are trivial compared to the military aspects of the game – and any leader can bend any population into believing anything. In HoI4, the authoritarian, central direction of all of society – culture and economy – is not merely possible, but it is desirable, it is better mechanically, as players will find that authoritarian government forms allow them to adopt better (for military activity, the only thing the game considers) laws earlier, to be more assertive strategically, all while suffering no penalties at all from the effort to centrally direct an entire society. Playing as a democracy in Hearts of Iron IV is essentially a ‘roleplay’ choice to accept limited mechanics for no real benefit.

This stands, of course, in rather direct and remarkable opposition to the actual war in which many of the advantages of democratic forms of government were on display, particularly in the organization and employment of economic resources. The Soviet economic mobilization during the war (conducted in the context of extreme military pressure and lost territory) was undeniably impressive, a feat of will and sacrifice, yet in 1942 and 1943, the United Kingdom – not the British Empire, just the United Kingdom – was outproducing the USSR in total GDP despite having a tiny fraction of the landmass and around a third of the population.⁹ Likewise, the strategic downsides of autocracy – particularly the tendency of autocratic leaders to order foolish, wasteful military actions out of arrogance, ignorance and pride – were abundantly on display in the Second World War for both the Axis and the USSR, but this too is unrepresented in the game.

Fundamentally, Hearts of Iron IV has a political model where all that is required to change the kind of society one has is to seize power and then order the Gleichschaltung¹⁰ from above. That is a fundamentally authoritarian view of power and also a fundamentally contested view: part of what the war was about was, on some level, if this view of politics was sustainable, if polities organized on this basis could compete with the liberal democracies and by and large the verdict of the battlefield¹¹ was no, they could not. Hearts of Iron IV grants the question, a priori, to the authoritarians, as an act of uncritical game design: authoritarian politics – fascist politics – work in HoI4 in exactly the way that the fascists of the 1930s and 1940s imagined they did.

In an effort to streamline away any political friction and get straight to the ‘fun stuff’ of war, Hearts of Iron IV adopts a fundamentally authoritarian vision of politics, uncritically and without caveats.

And the resulting vision is simply inaccurate. To take our Imperial Federation example above, in the real world the rising tide of decolonization could not simply be wished away – not even in the 1930s – by hiring the right advisor or pressing the right button. Popular opinion was not, in fact, easily and effortlessly molded by governments, but in fact would spend the 20th century for the most part bending governments rather than being bent by them. World War II was a war of mass politics in which the politics of the masses mattered a great deal and the decision by HoI4 to simplify that away into an exercise of pure state power leaves the player with quite a misleading assumption of how the politics of the 1930s came to be the way they were.

One understands the desire to simplify the mechanics that frame the core experience of a game, but it is necessary to be very careful in how those elements are simplified so that the simplification doesn’t end up doing violence to the underlying history.

Unfortunately, domestic politics is hardly the only historical concern of the 1930s and 1940s that Hearts of Iron IV airbrushes away – next week we’ll turn to the questions of occupation, bombing and war crimes. It isn’t going to get better.

Finally by August 1942 a zoomed out view of where the lines basically stabilize after the first offensive as I begin preparing for the next ‘push.’ While it might be tempting to push southward further into the Rhinelands, the terrain there is difficult for armored operations (rivers, cities and forests), whereas the terrain leading eastward into Germany by advancing to the Elbe is more favorable and lets me keep close to naval bases of supply (important because all those armored divisions eat up a lot of fuel).

Letitia Clark is my type of local politician.

First, the Democratic candidate for Tustin mayor ranks SWV as her all-time favorite musical act, and nobody (and I mean nobody) has utilized a Michael Jackson jam better than Sisters with Voices.

Second, while so many of our local leaders have rarely left the secure bubble of Orange County, Clark was working New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina—and refused to bolt, even when her family begged her to.

Third, she writes books.

And fourth—she’s just … normal. Not snazzy. Not trying to impress you. None of the glaze of far too many who enter the field. Hell, the other day the (arch-conservative) Orange County Register (wrongly) endorsed incumbent Austin Lumbard … and Letitia texted it to me. Not to bash Lumbard, not to whine and complain. Just because she knew I was writing about her, and she considered the information relevant. That, my friends, is integrity.

So—to hell with the Register, to hell with TLC and to hell with MAGA. The Truth OC is officially endorsing Letitia Clark (who served as Tustin mayor in the early 2020s) to return to her job, not just because her opponent is a bit of an amoeba, but because she has integrity and decency and a whole lot of passion for her hometown.

One can visit her website here, and donate to her run here.

Letitia Clark, no fear, have no fear—the Truth OC Q&A is right here …

JEFF PEARLMAN: Letitia Clark, first of all, thank you for doing this.

LETITIA CLARK: It is my pleasure.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Okay. This is a question, a recurring question I ask people, and you could definitely give me the cliche answer or you can give the raw answer. It’s totally up to you …

LETITIA CLARK: Okay.

JEFF PEARLMAN: But since I started this website, I’ve decided that anyone who runs for local office has some kind of mental imbalance because there’s no glory in it whatsoever. There’s minimal money in it, if any money in it, whatsoever.

LETITIA CLARK: Yes.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You just become a receptacle for everybody’s complaints and anger. And we live in more politically divided times than ever before. You served on the city council, you were mayor. Being sincere, why would any sane human being—and you do seem to be sane—want to do this?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, no, you’re 100% right. And I’ve decided to put people in three categories because sometimes I wonder why people are in it and I have decided it’s three buckets. It’s either one, you’re like a total egomaniac and it’s all about your ego and you need to be somebody or, two, you’re trying to make up for lost time like something happened in high school or something that just like ... that there’s some validation needed or, three, you really have a heart to serve.

And it’s usually those three that I find and they vary in a degree. But yeah, for me really, it all harkens back to how I even got into politics, which was in college. I grew up in Orange County, went to Tustin High School, went to Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. I wanted really badly to go away to school. My parents were really strict growing up and I was really itching to get away.

Well, I applied to a bunch of schools in DC and I thought I was going to go to Howard or Georgetown or something. My parents were like, “You’re not going there. We don’t have any family there.” So I was like, “Well, where can I go?” And they’re like, “Well, we have tons of family in Louisiana, so anywhere in Louisiana.” And so, I settled on Xavier, wound up being a Catholic school, HBCU that had a curfew of 10 o’clock on the weekdays and midnight on the weekend.

So I didn’t transfer over to much freedom there either, but was a pre-law major, thought I wanted to go to law school, started interning for some local campaigns to make extra money from the pre-law club opportunity. And I saw for the first time Black women running for office. I had never seen that growing up. I didn’t even know that was a possibility. Changed my major from pre-law to political science and then got an internship with the City of New Orleans my senior year of college.

And then I started working as a legislative aid for a council member right out of college. That was ‘05. So I’m about six months into my job as a legislative aid and Hurricane Katrina is approaching the city and I was kind of a guppy. I didn’t know much and got donuts and coffee and can take messages. So at the time my boss was saying, “Okay, you’re essential personnel, you have to stay.” And so I was like, “Oh, I’m important.” So I stayed and I saw everything unfold.

I saw the lack of planning, but then I also saw people 1,000% committed to helping the city come back and restore and heal. And I just got the bug and I learned what it meant to be in a position of influence when it mattered. I learned how important it was to be at the table and to be able to put a voice to people in need. And so I just kind of got the bug at 22 and it hasn’t left me. And so that desire to be at the dais and make decisions on behalf of other people.

Knowing that I have lived through times where lives were literally on the line based on the leadership in place. So that’s why I do it. It’s some kind of weird fixation that I’ve had since then.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You’re a kid from California, you’re in New Orleans during Katrina, everyone’s leaving, you’re staying. I’ll throw a big softball at you. What do you remember ... what actually haunts you in your memory all these years later?

LETITIA CLARK: My parents begging me to find a way to come home or just leave and get out. And yeah, I was just so naive that I was like, “This is my shot. It’ll be fine.” There’s never been a devastating hurricane, or at least it’s been over 40 years. Hurricane Betsy was 40 years prior, but it was another issue where the levee had broken. It wasn’t the actual storm. So I just had no idea how bad it could be, but I wind up losing my car. My entire apartment was flooded.

I was in a hotel and sheltered in place with everyone else. But when we did get back to a point where we could get back into the city, well, we had to evacuate the area just for a couple of weeks and then we went back in and the hotels were open for essential personnel and I had to walk to work. I didn’t have a car. I had to go to Goodwill for clothing, accept any donations that were coming in. Yeah, even to this day, I mean it’s over 20 years … I don’t enjoy eating off a plastic cutlery because that’s all we had for so long, because the water still wasn’t clean enough to wash dishes and things like that. And I can still smell some of those scents that existed in the city because of the rotting fridges, rotting bodies. So there’s things like that. There was a documentary that came out last year, 2025. I couldn’t watch it.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Yeah.

LETITIA CLARK: I tried and I was seeing people that I knew and I couldn’t even get through the first episode.

JEFF PEARLMAN: It’s interesting because I’m from New York and I lived through 9/11 and saw one of the planes. Can’t really digest it. And in the aftermath, in the immediate aftermath, Rudy Giuliani was like this hero, right? He’s doing a great job. He’s pointing. And in a way you kind of had the same thing in New Orleans with Ray Nagin, correct?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah. At first it was like, yes, he’s fighting for us. He’s getting mad with the federal administration. We need somebody to be angry like him. And then it kind of just all took a turn and all of the whatever incompetence, whatever corruption existed beneath the surface and we all lived in it. It all started creeping up and becoming illuminated. And then all of a sudden it was, we got to clear the swamp literally and figuratively.

And it was just a place where a lot of folks were just fed up and really felt like this only happened because folks, they weren’t good stewards of public dollars. They diverted federal funds to handle local projects when it should have been invested in reinforcing the levee. There were buses that people could have gotten on. And then thinking about the high poverty level, over 60% poverty level in New Orleans, and then obviously it was a heavily minority city.

So all those things played into the aftermath of why, how did this happen and how were so many people impacted? So yeah, I mean, again, it just stuck ... it was such a transformative time in my life and I didn’t have kids or a husband. Had it been a different situation, I definitely would have left.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Sure.

LETITIA CLARK: Because it would’ve been too much on the line, but it was just me. So it’s like, “Hey, let’s stay.” But it wound up being the best thing to ... everyone has that one thing that you can harken back to what changed the trajectory of your life and that was it.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So here’s a question for you. You’re in your 20s, this happens. I could see a lot of people being like, “Screw government. It just sucks. These people suck. They’re just greedy and callous and they don’t care and they’re ineffective. Why would I waste my time with this?” Yet somehow it seemed to have at least long-term and opposite effect on you. Why would you say that is?

LETITIA CLARK: Because I think I found out how simple it is just to care and do the right thing, that it really was just a difference in knowing that if I just care a little bit and also knowing that if good people who care and want to do the right thing do not step up and fill these seats, people who have their own agenda will, people who don’t care will, people who don’t have a commitment for a long-term stint, they will come in and make short-term decisions selfishly.

And I guess I just kind of saw the result of that. And so I felt like if I had the ability and the wherewithal that I would treat this almost like it was jury duty. It’s just an obligation that if you have the ability to do it, then you should.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So you had a bunch of interesting jobs actually. You worked for the Georgia State Assembly, you worked for the American Red Cross, you worked for the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors. You bounced around quite a bit before coming back to California. What actually brought you back to California?

LETITIA CLARK: Just personal. I was going through a divorce and honestly, when I think back to how I even met my ex, it was definitely kind of trauma bonding through Katrina because when I look back, it’s like, how did I even end up with this person? But we were bonded through the devastation that was going on in New Orleans. And so when all the dust settled, we just were not right for each other. And my twins were five years old at the time. They’re 19 now.

And so, when we were splitting, it was like I had spent enough time in New Orleans. It was 10 years at that point, and I wanted to be closer to family. My parents were still here, and so it was like, let me move back to what’s familiar. And then starting to really understand how great Orange County seemed comparatively. I don’t have to worry about good schools. I don’t have to worry about crime and just a lot of the things that kind of plague a big metropolitan city.

So yeah, that’s what brought me back. And then I was pretty determined not to just have to start from ground zero. So when I moved back, even though I lived with my parents for a year, I was just really ready to get back into it and started volunteering for the Tustin Community Foundation and then, found a job with the American Academy of Pediatrics. I just wanted to be in the mix and connected to community and public service again.

So I started volunteering right away, and then that eventually led to me trying to seek a commission seat in Tustin. And essentially that’s when the narrative that I learned to understand were telling me, “Hey, it’s not your turn and no one like you has ever served in this body. And so we applaud your efforts, but we’ve already got people in place that we would like to see in these seats.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: Was that from within the Democratic Party?

LETITIA CLARK: No, no, no, no. That was at the powers that be on the current Tustin City Council.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Got it.

LETITIA CLARK: Which were Republican men.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You speak longingly of returning to Orange County and the sort of comfort of Orange County. And we moved here 12 years ago, and I’m a Jewish guy from New York, right? And you can’t get a decent slice of pizza worth a damn here, and you can’t get a good bagel, and not that many Jews around here. And it is almost, surprising might be the wrong word. But you’re a Black woman who spent a lot of time in New Orleans who went to Xavier in New Orleans.

LETITIA CLARK: Right, right.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Speaking longingly about almost the bubble of Orange County.

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Okay. It’s an interesting sort of phenomenon right there.

LETITIA CLARK: Sure, sure.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So what is it, as a Black woman in Orange County ... and there are not a super, super-duper ton of Black women in Orange County comparatively.

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah.

JEFF PEARLMAN: What is the yin and yang for you of Orange County?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, I mean, I kind of had this really enchanted type of childhood because my dad grew up here and he was very connected and had this affinity for this place because he was born and raised here. So my grandparents came here from Little Rock, Arkansas, and they moved to Laguna Beach. They lived on a segregated street in Laguna Beach on Ocean Avenue.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Wow.

LETITIA CLARK: My dad was the first African American baby born at Hoag Hospital when it was Hoag Presbyterian Hospital.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Wow.

LETITIA CLARK: Yes. And so my grandfather ran a gas station on Coast Highway, and my dad talks about his childhood of just being a feral kid, just being able to go to the beach and run around Laguna Beach. And they definitely experienced their fair share of racism. I mean, my grandparents talked about trying to buy a house in Huntington Beach and essentially got turned away from the HOA saying that the quota had been met and they had to take the developer to Fair Housing Court to get their deposit back.

JEFF PEARLMAN: That sounds very Huntington Beach.

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah. Even then, right? And so we have those little stories, but it wasn’t like the headline of our family’s experience here in Orange County. And when I went to Tustin High School, the Marine base was still open. And I remember going to school with kids who were citizens of the world. I mean, a lot of these kids had lived all over the world, and so there was just a lot of tolerance. There was a lot of co-mingling of just kids from every background, and that stuck with me.

And so, when I was able to think about how I wanted to raise my kids, I did start to think about my experience here in Orange County and enjoying going to the beach and enjoying the diversity that existed. Because as you can imagine comparatively, although I ran to an HBCU because I wanted that experience, I kind of was a fish out of water. I had never been around that predominantly Black environment, and I had to learn how to have a voice in a space like that, which eventually I did.

But yeah, I kind of longed for the childhood that I had for my kids, a lot of diversity, a lot of beauty outside. And yeah, we’d have to search for culture here and there, but growing up, there was a better percentage of a Black community, particularly in Santa Ana, that we were very connected to. I grew up in a Black church. We still go there today, Friendship Baptist Church in Yorba Linda of all places. And we have great community there and there are African American families from all over Orange County.

But yeah, I think that’s what kind of drew me back was just that sense of childhood. And even at Tustin, although I was a minority young Black girl, I was the senior class president, I was the captain of the cheerleading squad, I was homecoming queen. So for me, being Black never felt like I couldn’t. And I just had that same mindset. And then, when I came back to Orange County, I was even more emboldened because now I understood Black excellence.

Now, I understood what it meant to be empowered and use my voice. And so, I kind of took that with my really optimistic view of how I grew up here in Orange County and then, just kind of hit the ground running versus letting that feel like that was supposed to be a barrier for me or that I couldn’t, and I wasn’t allowed into certain spaces, even though ... I’m sure it existed, but I just had a naivete that just allowed me to be bold and move forward regardless.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So you ran for the city council in 2016 …

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You’d worked in politics in New Orleans, in Louisiana. What did you learn from having your own election for the first time?

LETITIA CLARK: So you mentioned a little bit about my career. When I worked for the Georgia General Assembly after I left New Orleans for just a stint, because I was overwhelmed from all that was going on and then eventually moved back, I worked for one of the most conservative speakers of the house in Georgia history. His name was Glen Richardson. Glen Richardson. And it was part of this, almost like a fellows program that someone in New Orleans helped me get the position to just get a breather. And I learned a lot from being in his office.

I helped create some bridges and start some conversations with the Georgia Black Caucus in his office who were at odds when I got to the office. So I think I learned in the South to be what they would call a stateswoman. I learned how to cross the aisle, talk the language of being able to be a little more nonpartisan. And surprisingly enough, when I was telling folks I wanted to run, I was like, “You think it’s going to be an issue because I’m Black and I’m a woman, there’s never been one on the Tustin City Council?”

They’re like, “Yeah, we’re not worried about that.” I’m like, “Well, what about me being a single mom? Do you think that’ll be an issue?” No. They’re like, “But being a Democrat, that will never fly.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: Interesting.

LETITIA CLARK: They’re like, “You got to change that.” And I didn’t, but I was very discouraged. I was encouraged to try to move to decline the state or independent or something like that. They just thought that was going to be really hard. I knocked on doors, thousands of doors in 2016, and we knocked on Republican and Democratic doors. And when I went to Republican households, they were grilling me about certain things, often not knowing that I couldn’t handle a lot of federal issues like abortion and gun rights, et cetera.

But I’d often see some kind of paraphernalia in the house that had Tustin High on it. And so, I would make that connection right away like, “Hey, I know we’re probably different party affiliations, but I’m a Tustin Tiller.” And then all of a sudden the door opened a little wider and the conversation got a little softer. And I realized over time, okay, there are a lot of people that have some kind of connection to the oldest high school in Tustin, and I’m an alum there and I’m very connected there.

And so, I used that in the campaign to just remind people that we have a lot of similarities and we should talk about those things before we start talking about our differences. And I capitalized on that and used all those nostalgic references in my mailers. And there was a slate, two incumbents and one newcomer who was Austin Lumbard at the time who I’m running against right now. And I came in second out of the four, so their slate did not win and I beat another incumbent in terms of votes. So it was considered a very successful campaign.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Tustin confuses me a little because, okay, registration, Republicans 27%. Democrats, 41%.

LETITIA CLARK: Now, yeah. It didn’t used to be like that.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So when did that shift?

LETITIA CLARK: 2016, started to shift. Before that-

JEFF PEARLMAN: What caused that?

LETITIA CLARK: Trump. We didn’t even have a Democratic club in Tustin. There was no infrastructure to help me when I ran, no one to walk for me, no one to organize. As a Dem, I was literally on my own in Tustin. I had to rely a lot on the party and hope that maybe someone in Irvine or Garden Grove or Buena Park would come and help me out. But then after Trump was elected in 2016, then we had a Tustin Democratic Club form.

And then four years later, the Tustin Democratic Club merged with Orange, and now it’s the Central Dems, and they have over 500 members, which Democrats were in hiding when I first ran. They were like, “Yeah, I’m a Dem on paper, but I would never tell any of my neighbors.” That’s the kind of environment. So it literally changed within eight years.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So when you were mayor, you were mayor ... I mean, excuse me, you were on the council from ‘16 to ‘24. It was a rotating mayoral position at that time.

LETITIA CLARK: Right. Yeah, rotating.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So what did it mean to you? Wait, why did you do the air quotes when you said “rotating”? Were they not fair about it?

LETITIA CLARK: Because it wasn’t truly an equitable rotation. It’s not like everyone just got their turn. The council still had to vote, and they actually bypassed my colleague, Beckie Gomez, several times. She was on the council for 12 years and was never mayor. We could never get the votes to appoint her to be mayor.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So that’s happening in Mission Viejo now with a woman named Cynthia Vasquez, where she’s been on the council for a long time. She’s the lone Democrat.

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah.

JEFF PEARLMAN: They literally won’t let her be mayor.

LETITIA CLARK: Right.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Is this just ... to be blunt, is this just asshole behavior from people who are being assholes?

LETITIA CLARK: Because when you think about it’s like, well, what does it even mean to be a mayor on a five member city ... or seven member city council, if it’s not a strong mayor position, then it literally is just the title, it’s the ceremony. And then, if the person is doing what’s right with it, they’re setting the vision and the tone of the city. But yeah, that’s why we can’t say it truly rotates because it doesn’t.

JEFF PEARLMAN: So how did you get it?

LETITIA CLARK: Worked with my colleagues, used that Southern hospitality stateswoman stuff that I learned, really. And created alliances and friendships to find a way to get to the point, understanding that, what it would mean for me to be mayor and not compromising any of my values, but not making it so much that I needed to be a martyr that it’s like, “Oh, well, they’ll just never vote for me for mayor, so I might as well just not even try.”

No, I try to make connections, develop relationships, and educate where I can. Alan Bernstein rests his soul, he passed away a few years ago. During 2020, while the aftermath of George Floyd, he called me at 11 or 12:00 one night asking me, does systemic racism really exist? And I had to tell him, “I don’t have the bandwidth to have this conversation with you, but I will have this conversation with you.” And in a way, it kind of felt like, why do I have to have this conversation?

Why do I have to educate everyone? But that’s how I developed relationships because I was willing to do it. Even though I shouldn’t have had to do it, I was willing to do some of that education. And I think my colleagues respected me for it. And yeah, I had a unanimous vote for mayor in 2020 after I was reelected. And even though I came out number one out of nine candidates, there were just folks that woke up and decided they were going to run for city council in 2020.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Is it true being the mayor of Tustin is the greatest job in the world? That’s what I heard. Is that true?

LETITIA CLARK: That’s what you heard? I’d have to check your sources, your circle of influence there.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Did you enjoy your year as mayor?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, I did. It was great. I mean, I think I had a hundred meetings online, but I know, it was insane.

JEFF PEARLMAN: All I want now is to be mayor so I can have a hundred meetings.

LETITIA CLARK: I started counting them at some point. I don’t know. I kind of felt like I was meant to be mayor at that point because I hearkened so much of what I experienced during Hurricane Katrina. It was like, okay, it’s go mode. We’re getting into restoration. We’re going to figure out how to have drive-through vaccine clinics, and we’re going to do food distribution. So I was doing all those things. It just kind of felt like we were in emergency response mode, and that was my pocket.

So it felt oddly comfortable, and I just felt like I was the right person to be mayor at that time.

JEFF PEARLMAN: What would you say your greatest achievement or moment or whatever as mayor was?

LETITIA CLARK: I mean, I have a few, and I think I feel like they are great moments because I’ve seen replication of them in other cities, and it just makes me feel like, okay, the impact was bigger and greater than just Tustin. And that’s the Girls in Government program that I helped to start. That didn’t come easy. The funding for it didn’t come easily, but trying to expose more girls in our community to jobs in the city. I helped to start Lemonade Day, a citywide Lemonade Day for kids to learn about how to set up a stand.

How to have a marketing plan, all those things. So Lakewood has done Lemonade Day. They’re doing it bigger and better than Tustin ever did. Anaheim and Lakewood actually did a Girls and Youth in Government, just literally modeled after what we did. And then honestly, writing the book was ... I had no idea how big that would become. I mean, we sold over 10,000 copies across the world.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Wait, this was Mommy is the Mayor?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah. Yeah.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You sold 10,000 copies of your book?

LETITIA CLARK: Yes. I had no idea how successful it would be. I knew nothing about publishing. I knew nothing. And it obviously had an impact because I think it was a story that needed to be told and people hadn’t seen anything like that before. So I felt so great to be able to put something out there and it wasn’t theoretical. It was like, yes, I’m currently the mayor and I’m currently a mom, and so this is my story. And I didn’t have to say anything about me being a Black woman or the only woman.

It was all through pictures. We didn’t have to say any of that in writing. It was just illustrated and I just loved the representation in the book.

JEFF PEARLMAN: That’s cool. My knowledge of Tustin politics is not A plus. It’s probably a C minus. Why did you not run for mayor in 2022 when Austin Lumbard won the position?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, because we had term limits, so you could do eight years and it wasn’t clear that if I ran for a different position, whether it actually would restart the clock or if I would be limited and have to resign after two years because I had met the eight-year limit.

JEFF PEARLMAN: I see.

LETITIA CLARK: So something like that happened, I think in Costa Mesa and maybe Orange where the person tried to run for mayor in the middle of their council term and they were overruled that they wouldn’t be able to continue in the mayor position. So I didn’t want to waste money trying to run a mayor campaign and then have to step off and then just wanted to do it the right way. So essentially by law, it didn’t seem like I was able to run. So that’s why we really got behind Becky.

And then, we thought it was our opportunity to write history so that it’s like, “Okay, you never picked her to be the rotating appointed mayor. Let’s get her to run and get her elected” and it wasn’t successful.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You obviously served on the council with Austin Lumbard. You’re now running against him. He’s a Republican. You are not. I guess first, what was your working relationship like with him when you guys worked on the council?

LETITIA CLARK: Very cordial, very cordial. He has young kids, so we kind of always found connections in that. He’s a really quiet guy. I would say that we disagreed on a lot of policy things, but we always found a way to be extremely cordial, if not very respectful, but usually didn’t have a problem disagreeing behind the scenes. And sometimes in public would make it clear that we differed on policy issues. I guess the big comparison now is that I’ve talked in the community that the silence is deafening. It’s quiet to a fault.

There’s nothing being said about ICE presence in Tustin. There’s nothing being said about what we do to support our community to make sure that they feel seen and heard. And I mean when people are losing their SNAP benefits, when people don’t ... and I’m knocking on doors and folks are saying, “I can’t afford to live in Tustin anymore. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay my rent next month.” And so there’s just a silence from the council.

And namely in the mayor position, there’s an opportunity to speak on some of these issues that are impacting our community and there’s nothing. So that’s the real comparison there. But yeah, I mean, he’s a nice guy. We just-

JEFF PEARLMAN: It’s not a blood sport election.

LETITIA CLARK: I hope not. I hope not. And him and I had a conversation about being committed to not attacking each other. I kind of said, “Period, you won’t see any attack ads from me because it’s not my character.” And he said, “Well, you have the same commitment for me, but I can’t control what other people do.” Now, I didn’t give that caveat. I know that that can happen, but I also know that I can encourage all of my supporters to not ... to respect my wishes of the campaign. So I thought that was kind of interesting that it was kind of more of a comma, not a period.

It was a period from my perspective. But I mean, what? We’re 30 something days out, so I hope that we keep it focused on the issues and focused on our own campaigns. But yeah, he’s not one of these extremely loud MAGA Republicans that we see throughout the county or whatnot.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Wait, I’m kind of fascinated by something. In 2019, he posted on Instagram, this isn’t me dogging him actually, he had a picture of two people holding hands, and one is a Democrat and one is a Republican, he wrote ... I don’t think he came up with this. I think he just posted it, but … This is Bob. He voted Republican. This is Bob’s friend, Sally. Sally voted Democrat. Bob and Sally are still friends because Bob and Sally are both adults. Be like Bob and Sally.

And that was seven years ago. And I actually wonder, being serious about this, and I’m not even referring specifically to your election. Is that an unrealistic look at America in 2026 or do you think we can get back to something like that?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, I’m so optimistic in almost every other regard. I think we’re so far from the days of moderates on both sides of the aisle. And I think what we’re finding, at least in the Democratic Party, is you got to just find your section of the tent. It’s such a big tent, and yeah, all of us don’t agree with every single thing, but you got to find your area and you got to laser focus on your niche and try to accomplish what’s in your sphere because there’s just so much work to be done.

But I think, yeah, I’m always going to be the side of decency, the side of equity, social justice. That’s always going to be in my bailiwick. So if a Republican can get with some of those things, then sure, we can coalesce. But as long as the Republican Party is veering so far away from that, then I think it’s hard to say we can come together because what a Democrat is and what a Republican is today is just not what it was even seven years ago.

JEFF PEARLMAN: I wish more people ... like you said, you look at Austin Lumbard’s social media, he doesn’t seem like a bad guy. I will say he posted after January 6 happened, he wrote a very heartfelt thing about how awful this is. And I would say not a peep since, not a peep about ICE, not a peep about Trump, not a peep about deportations, not a peep about the Epstein files, nothing. And the problem is real leadership isn’t like muting yourself. Real leadership is actually sometimes going against and speaking out.

And I just think, again, I got no beef with this guy. I think it kind of sucks that you don’t have the wherewithal to at least say something.

LETITIA CLARK: Right. And at some point, are you now misusing your platform because you have an opportunity to speak to the broader community and it’s just nothing.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Are you an underdog?

LETITIA CLARK: No.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Do you feel like you’re going to win this?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, I do. I think I have the base. I think we’ve raised the money. We’re knocking on doors. We’re getting endorsements. We’re in a strong position now. I’m not taking anything for granted obviously, but I’ve had to remind some folks who I think are doubting in a biased way. They’re not even looking at the data. Not only is it a majority Democrat registered area now, it’s a plus eight Dem at large city now. So what’s incumbent upon us is now to turn out the voters and we’re doing everything.

I’ll have six plus mailers going out. We’re knocking on hundreds of doors every weekend. We have a broad coalition of support from veterans to unions to just about every Democrat elected official in the county and beyond. And we launched our campaign literally a year tomorrow. So we’ve been working. And again, I’m not a new no-name candidate that I was in 2016. And so, we’re capitalizing on my record and my roots in the community. And then, doing all the things that are needed for a winning campaign.

And yeah, not taking not one day for granted and working hard. And we say often that Republicans may be able to outraise us, but that doesn’t mean they can outwork us and they definitely can’t out ... Yeah, just work ethic. They can’t outwalk us and outwork us. So that’s the goal.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Is it true asking for money is super fun?

LETITIA CLARK: Now, the mayor being the best job in the world, that might be closer to truth than raising-

JEFF PEARLMAN: Wait, how much does it suck asking for money?

LETITIA CLARK: It sucks so much. It just is the worst thing. But I have learned to just remind people, look, this check is not going to me. This is not for me. This is not to lie in my pockets. This is not to make me rich. This is so we have a voice. This is so we have representation. This is so we have a fighting chance. I think I’m even more passionate about not leaning into the fundraising absolutely sucks and I don’t want to do it. I’m on the phone every week, every day making some type of call.

Because I did my dissertation on women of color running for office and their fundraising experience. And just data-wise, I mean literally the best candidates out there could not raise their counterparts if they were white and male. Okay, I’ll give you a great example. I had one union, they love me, they support me. They’re like, “We’re with you, Letitia. Come meet with us.” Sat with them for an hour. They wrote me a maxed out check. Okay, awesome. I’m thinking I’m good. Then I see Austin’s report, they gave him a maxed out check too.

So I called them and I said, “Hey guys, what’s going on? Are you endorsing both of us?” “Oh no, no, we’re not endorsing both of you. We’re supporting you.” “Well, why’d you guys give him a maxed out check?” And I said, well ... and then what did he say when he met with you? What commitments did he make?” “Oh, we didn’t meet with him. One of our members just thought it’d be a good idea to send him a check.” So he’s getting checks, not even having to ask for them.

And here I am, I had to spend time, meet with these folks, and these are supportive folks. So that’s kind of what I’m up against. So I don’t have time to get too down about how much it sucks to raise money because there will be folks that just write him a check without him even asking, without him even wanting it.

JEFF PEARLMAN: I just want to say, ever since I started this website, I’ve had a good number of people say to me, “You should run for something. You should run for something.”

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You just gave up ... in the future, I’m going to literally record that segment you just said to me and just play it for anyone who says, “Why aren’t you running?” I’m just going to be like, “Here’s Letitia Clark right here. She answered for me. She didn’t even know she was doing this. Public service. Thank you.” You summed it up. Wait, I’m being serious about this.

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah.

JEFF PEARLMAN: I get it. You like the job. I get it, public service is like, it just seems so unpleasant to run for office. Is there a bright side to ... forget the winning. Is there actually a bright side to the process of running for office?

LETITIA CLARK: The process is tough. It’s literally like the sausage being made, but once you put it on the grill and it’s cooking and yeah, it tastes good. But the process of making that sausage, I don’t know anyone who says they love campaigning. Now, I’ll tell you, I’ve learned to love knocking on doors because you get to talk to people and you’re having real genuine conversations, and I do truly enjoy that part, but I’m in communications. I know you have to hear something seven times before you remember it, so it won’t matter how ... I can’t knock on every door seven times.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Yeah.

LETITIA CLARK: So, we have to raise money to do the mail, to do the ads, so people see that name enough times to remember, “Oh yeah, that’s who I talked to at my door. That’s who called me and we had this conversation.” So if I don’t want all that work to be in vain, I know I have to raise the money to help remind voters what I’m all about and what I stand for, and that’s why you need the money. But no, it is not pleasant. It is not fun.

And you’re going to get people in those three buckets. Whoever says it’s fun has a whole nother motive. It is not to serve. It is to get contacts or to find out who has money in town. It is not because they just want to serve. They’re finding enjoyment for other reasons.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Right. I’m going to end this with a couple of rapid fires. You’re good with that?

LETITIA CLARK: Okay.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Give me your three favorite musical artists of all time.

LETITIA CLARK: Okay. SWV.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Really?

LETITIA CLARK: I’m a 90s-

JEFF PEARLMAN: Wait, Letitia. We’re about to be best friends. My son is a 19-year-old college junior, and he loves SWV, like loves …

LETITIA CLARK: I felt like I was born 10 years too late. I was like 11 when SWV was in their prime.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Come on. SWV is awesome.

LETITIA CLARK: I was 20 years old at the time.

JEFF PEARLMAN: All right. SWV. Who else?

LETITIA CLARK: SWV, I would say D’Angelo. Rest in peace.

JEFF PEARLMAN: My son’s favorite artist.

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, my gosh. Then he has great taste.

JEFF PEARLMAN: True.

LETITIA CLARK: And then probably Brandy.

JEFF PEARLMAN: If only you were a 19-year-old student at Northeastern, you’d be dating my son right now. I’m not kidding.

LETITIA CLARK: My gosh, my gosh.

JEFF PEARLMAN: You just hit three of his top five. That’s really funny.

LETITIA CLARK: Wow. I love it.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Give me your favorite movie of all time.

LETITIA CLARK: Probably Coming to America with Eddie Murphy.

JEFF PEARLMAN: The sequel, very disappointing though.

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, just terrible. Just a waste of vibe.

JEFF PEARLMAN: If I can eat one meal in Tustin, where should I go?

LETITIA CLARK: Go to American Grub, get a grilled cheese and tomato soup on any given day. It could be hot, rainy. It’s literally going to hit the spot.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Where’s your favorite vacation spot you’ve ever been to?

LETITIA CLARK: We just went to Maui with the family, and it’s the first time in my family’s whole experience of ever going on vacation. I didn’t plan any excursions. I didn’t overbook us, and we had the best time and just really relaxed. So that’s probably going to be my favorite spot because my kids got to see me and my husband totally relaxed. We’re like, “Hey, do whatever you guys want. We don’t care.” And they’re like “Oh, you all are different here.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: Last question. Give me your three political role models. How about that? We’re heroes.

LETITIA CLARK: Well, Shirley Chisholm is always going to be pretty high on the list.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Yep.

LETITIA CLARK: Well, I mean, I want to say Michelle Obama, but she’s not-

JEFF PEARLMAN: You can count her.

LETITIA CLARK: And then maybe Ayanna Pressley.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Okay. Good one.

LETITIA CLARK: I borrow from her. She likes to say, “Policy is my love language,” and I resonate with that. I’m like, “Yeah, I get that.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: I recently interviewed Katrina Foley for this website, and I always thought she was from afar little gruff. And I’ve got to say, she loves meetings and she loves being wonky. And I was like, “Wow, you’re just a policy nerd.”

LETITIA CLARK: She’s such a nerd in all the good ways, right?

JEFF PEARLMAN: Totally. Are you the same?

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah, and I don’t have a lot of ... my circle’s pretty small, so I don’t just surround myself around a lot of politically wonky people, but when I find folks that I can just nerd out with over politics who are actually genuine friends, it is literally the best.

JEFF PEARLMAN: I’ve got to say—dinner with Letitia Clark. Maybe not that fun.

LETITIA CLARK: Hahahaha. Well, if we keep the politics out of, it might be fun. We just can’t call it a meeting, Jeff.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Wait, let me ask you a final, final question. Actually being serious, I ask this of everyone. Do you think, whatever, 10, 15, 20 years from now, we look back at this period and we think that was really the ruination of America, that was the beginning of the end and everything with Trump just ruined this place. Do you think we look back and say, “That was a really dark period that somehow we got past?”

LETITIA CLARK: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it kind of starts with January 6th. There was so much chaos going on before that, but once ... it was such a violation, which oddly enough, I actually heard that Austin had commented on a Jesus statue being violated in Santa Ana, and our veteran statue, something happened ... someone was trying to steal the copper, and he had gone on record saying that it was such a violation. It’s like, “Yes, you’re right. It is a violation.” So how are any of us okay with what happened on January 6th.

Have you ever been in the halls, and if you’ve ever been in any place where it’s supposed to be solemn and respectful, and to see what happened, and it was allowed, and it was encouraged, and I think we crossed a line that we haven’t been able to get that back since then. And yeah, I do hope ... I don’t know about 10 years though, Jeff. I don’t know, but I think we will get to a time saying, “How do we get through that?” And we never want to go back to that. It’s like a pendulum.

And what we saw in 2020 was that pendulum swing far, far to the left. Everyone was DEI. Then we added the A, and everyone was all on board and okay to say Black Lives Matter, and then it shifted right back. We just need to get a little bit swinging left of center again. So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen to get a-

JEFF PEARLMAN: But what I’m hearing you say is Black Lives do not matter. Is that what I’m- [Laughs]

LETITIA CLARK: [Laughs] I’m definitely not saying that.

JEFF PEARLMAN: I didn’t think so.

#TOC

In this issue:

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Politics

On Focus

Meme Politics

Imperialism by Focus

The Effect

What City Observatory Did This Week

Must Read

# YOUTUBE & VIDEOS

# PROFIT/LOSS

# THE END

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Early Environmentalism

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The Environmental Industrial Complex

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JOBS AND HOMES

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The State of My Stack

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Who’s onboard?