David Cross knows what America’s problem is in an exclusive clip from his new special

When David Cross released his first stand-up special, Shut Up You Fucking Baby!, back in 2002, liberals had a lot to be pessimistic about. George W. Bush had snatched the election right out of Al Gore’s boring-but-competent hands, bringing the neo-conservatives to Washington along with him. 9/11 led to wars in Afghanistan, then Iraq, and the growing influence of the religious right meant that you couldn’t even say the word “sex” in many public school classrooms. Things couldn’t get much worse, right?

Wrong. They could get much worse. Or at least the possibility is there, now that Americans have a choice between another uninspiring career politician and a bloviating nutbag who makes ol’ G-Dubs look like a great statesman in comparison. Luckily for us, Cross is still here to help us laugh about how absurd all of this is.

in this exclusive clip from his new Netflix special, Making America Great Again!, a bearded Cross reflects on why, exactly, America isn’t so great anymore, and decides that the problem must be that we care way too much about our fellow humans. “Let’s be honest, that’s what makes America weak, is empathy. When we care about those less fortunate than ourselves, that what brings us down,” he says. “Ask Ayn Rand—I believe you can still find her haunting the public housing she died in while on Social Security and Medicare.”

Filmed at the Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin this past April—which is why Cross doesn’t yet know that he and his fellow comedians had been given the wonderful, terrible gift of a Trump candidacy—Making America Great Again! premieres on Netflix tomorrow, August 5.