The election of Donald Trump means that the Christian right expects to have even more political influence than they did before. That might be bad news for those of us who don’t believe worldly events are merely the byproducts of a transcendent spiritual battle of good vs. evil.
To better understand the philosophy and goals of American theocrats, Travis and Jake spoke to Talia Lavin, author of Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America. We explore her research into how rightwing evangelical Christians have worked to become a powerful constituency over past five decades, the modern-day prophets and apostles who drive the movement, the Christian Patriarchy movement which justifies the subjugation of women and the abuse of children, and why extremist Christians so easily became online conspiracy theorists.
It’s challenging subject matter which is made more palatable by Talia’s deep knowledge and Jake making an overextended metaphor about eating moldy bagels.
Talia Lavin on Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/swordsjew.bsky.social
Wild Faith: How The Christian Right Is Taking Over America by Talia Lavin
https://bookshop.org/p/books/wild-faith-how-the-christian-right-is-taking-over-america-talia-lavin/21057649
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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe, Nick Sena, Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, Episode 303, Wild Faith, featuring Talia Lavin.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky and Travis View.
Listener, I know you have a lot on your plate right now.
You're trying to keep your home in order and do a good job at work.
And it's the holiday season, so your to-do list is even longer than usual.
And if you're anything like me, you've been preoccupied with thinking about how the forces of history are going to affect you and the people you care about.
So I don't mean to pile on, but you should know that you were involved in a spiritual war.
You are a figure in a cosmic battle that can be seen in interpersonal relationships and society, but has its source in a transcendent struggle of good versus evil.
You may not believe this to be true, but the Christian evangelical right, a major faction of the ascendant political regime, does believe it's true.
And if you're listening to this podcast, then they probably would consider you a soldier in the devil's army.
That may become a bigger issue in the coming years because the people guided by these apocalyptic visions intend to win the spiritual war by exercising real political power.
To get a better understanding of the Christian right and their vision for America, we are joined by three-time QAA guest, Talia Lavin.
She is the author of the book, Culture Warlords, My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, Today we're going to talk about her newest book, Wild Faith, How the Christian Right is Taking Over America.
Talia, thank you so much for coming on again.
Oh my god, I'm so delighted.
And also, that was an amazing cold open.
Like, I thought you were going to be doing an ad for, like, SimpliSafe?
You know, or something?
We haven't quite transitioned to advertising precious metals and stones and coins yet, but given the recent events, I think we're headed there shortly.
I mean, I just was like, oh, cool.
Okay, they're doing an ad for, like, Squarespace.
But Noah was like, ah, you're in the devil's army.
And it was so perfect and disarming.
I loved it.
I mean, that's more or less like how I start the book, too.
It's like, you don't know it.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
I'll be clear.
I ripped off your concept.
It was very, very good.
No, I loved it.
I thought it was like, oh, that's so good.
I'm going to do it in podcast form.
Oh no, it was beautiful.
I have to be honest, I have not finished the book yet, but I have been listening to it on Audible, and you do such a good job narrating the book.
Travis and I were talking about this actually before you hopped on.
is you are delving into these very, very dark topics, but the writing and especially, you know, the way that you narrate the book is very gentle.
You kind of like gently let people know how disturbing some of this stuff is.
And it's a very fine balance.
So congratulations on figuring that out somehow.
Well, it's my inner theater kid, just, like, jumping up and, like, being so excited.
I can do little voices.
Some unfortunate.
I got called out on Goodreads for having a terrible Trump impression, but, like, who doesn't?
Yeah, who doesn't?
I've got a horrible one.
I'm lying.
I think I'm probably top 50. Yeah, I mean, I'm not like James Adomian or whatever, or that guy on SNL. But you know, yeah, like one has to do what one has to do.
No, and my goal, I think form and function are really tied together.
I think a lot of books about the right wing are very dry.
And I try to infuse the prose with a little bit of that.
Excitement.
And then the narration, like, I'm in this with you.
I'm angry with you.
I'm frightened with you.
I'm figuring this out with you.
And like, let's delve into this madness together and do it in a way that's like bright and horrifying, but compelling.
And that starts very much by being like, hey, you, you're in the army.
The army of hell.
Yeah.
So you have, you make these little You know, you have this creative use of language and the way that you sort of unfold the information, even when you're talking about, like, really wretched things, like, you know, physical abuse, you're able to present it in a way that is, you know, very comfortable and very sort of, like, easy to digest without, like, downplaying the darkness.
So that's quite a feat.
So I enjoy it.
Well, I mean, you guys know how to do that better than anyone.
That's what you do.
Like, you have to look at the horror straight in the face, but like, you know, you gotta make the occasional joke or just write a beautiful sentence, do something to redeem it, because otherwise you're just driving yourself insane.
Yeah.
Well, that's what happens when we hit, like, stop record, is that we leave the show, and then, at least for me personally, I go and I'm insane in my real life.
I mean, I'm sure you can relate to that as, you know, somebody who, you know, was raised Orthodox Jew, you know, diving into extreme Christianity and its pervasiveness, you know, throughout the history of this country.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, one thing I think that that did give me is like, so I was raised, you know, modern Orthodox, so I was allowed to go to college.
But I went to a modern Orthodox school and I lived in a very heavily Jewish town.
And so I grew up like with modesty rules enforced on my clothing and like kashrut dictating everything I ate in this very homogenous closed religious community until college, which was a huge culture shock.
Mm hmm.
And so when I interviewed about 150 former evangelicals for this book, mostly about gender roles and abusive childhoods.
And so I think I was able to approach it without being like, you freak.
God, you know, determined your childhood.
What are you talking about?
But also without like a pocket Jesus that I was holding up against the version of their, that their churches held forward where I was like, your Jesus is wrong.
I was like, I don't have one.
So tell me what yours is like.
So I think in that way, even though people are a little iffy about a Jew writing a whole book about the Christian right, I'm like, actually, I think it equipped me in certain ways where I can just approach this and be like, so what's going on?
What do you believe?
And as I think you guys are uniquely equipped to like so much of like my work on extremism and now the Christian right, people approach it with the skepticism of just like, how can these people really believe that?
You know, surely they can't really believe that stuff.
And you have to be like, no, they really do.
Like their belief is you could bounce pennies off it.
It is so strong.
And just as they think you think, believing that like politics is a theater of war between demons and angels and like everything you do is either in service of Lucifer or in the service of the host of heaven seems bananas.
Like, to them, the fact that we're so stuck in the material plane that we're completely ignoring this celestial war unfolding all around us is, like, just as bananas.
You know, these are very durable, very real systems of belief that are not, I mean, sure, there's cynical power grabs involved too, but like, they've also built up a very elaborate structure to justify wanting temporal power for celestial reasons.
Yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, they have an interesting experience because they're operating on multiple planes, right?
It's not just like, you know, people who, you know, operate from a, I guess, materialist perspective, you know, that's just our dirty physical reality.
But there's this, in their world, there's this interaction between, you know, our physical reality and this higher transcendent reality where like the real important stuff is going on.
And this stuff that we can see is just a manifestation of what's going on in there.
In incredibly literal ways.
I mean, encountered this mindset in different ways.
Like just how many exorcists there are in the U.S.
Both like the Catholic exorcists, but also deliverance ministers is like the Protestant term for it.
And like there is one in your town.
Like if you Google deliverance minister in my town, there's one in your town.
And you can also do it by Zoom.
Get exorcised by Zoom.
And it's like, are you tired?
Are you clumsy?
Are you sad?
You may be the victim of a demon.
And then you watch these testimonial videos and it's people throwing up in a bucket as a congregation lays hands on them and getting the demons out in Jesus' name.
And frankly...
If I thought that would cure my anxiety, like, I'm in that basement.
Absolutely.
But, you know, the other piece is, like, so I did a lot of reading of, like, another commonality is, like, both you and me and you guys have consumed a lot of terrible right-wing art or, like, propagandistic right-wing art and media.
And one of the most striking ones in, like, Every former evangelical kid of a certain age has read it.
This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti.
It was this whole series of novels.
And This Present Darkness is about the battle for the soul of an American town.
And it's so literal.
There's this whole scene where the pastor's wife is in a parking lot and some scary, demonically possessed biker is approaching her car.
And an angel and a demon have a battle over her parking brake.
And, like, the angel slays the demon, but dies in the process, and she's able to free her parking brake and get home.
Oh my god.
This is like Constantine with Keanu Reeves, but, like, for children?
Yeah, or, like, whatever.
It's, like, written, like, Tom Clancy style.
It's sort of a supermarket thriller kind of prose.
And every single person, like, if you mention it on social media, like, every former evangelical is like, oh, Yeah, I read that.
Totally.
Like, I read that in church.
I read that in camp.
You know, everyone was reading it because it is like a fun, fun read.
But it's like, and of course, theologians are like, hey, this isn't really how that works.
And everyone else is like, you're boring.
Shut up.
So this pop culture influenced vision of like a very literal war playing out all around us becomes the dominant like worldview on the evangelical right and it's really so manifest in every day and like why you'll see like the term demon crat is like actually quite literal for a lot of people.
Yeah.
Not just a clever wordplay.
Yeah.
Well, gosh, if, like, every action and inaction can be explained or examined through the lens of two sides of morality fighting against it.
Like, gosh, if every time I was trying to, like, unscrew a screw that had been stripped and I couldn't get it and I'm trying and I'm...
I'm feeling like a failure and I'm no good at carpentry or handy stuff.
If I could be like, well, the demons won that one.
That kind of takes me out of the equation.
It's a very attractive way.
Even though you're filled with fear all the time, I would imagine, at least it's not you.
It's these other entities that are controlling you or fighting for your love.
And if you just pray hard enough, you can sort of prevail.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I saw a Christian podcast.
It was like, you know, if you like have an appointment or like a date or something you want to go do, and then at the last minute you feel like, I don't really want to go.
I just want to stay home.
That's the devil working on you.
Because like, you're meant to go do that thing in service of God.
And that's the devil working on you.
And I'm like, for me, it usually means I just want to nap and I'm tired.
But like, yeah, the devil is making you want to nap.
Like, it's very literal.
Or for me, it's like, I'm like having social anxiety and I'm worried that I'm going to like, oh, if I go out into public, my friends, like I could have a panic attack and embarrass myself.
And if I just stay home, you know, I don't put myself out there.
So yes, of course, it would be very easy to be like, ah, well, the devil is trying to like it does.
It takes like mental health out of the equation in a way that I think is probably attractive for a lot of people.
Or just like Satan is giving you panic attacks.
Yeah.
Which I do feel like sometimes.
Yeah, sometimes, yeah.
Whatever.
Panic attacks are the worst.
Like, I would love to blame them on, like, Baphomet instead of just, like, faulty genetics or whatever.
But, um...
No, and then the spiritual war is interesting also because there is...
As a Christian, you're urged to don the whole armor of God.
And it's like a mech suit, a spiritual mech suit of like, you know, the shield of truth and the sandals of righteousness and the sword of the Lord and all this stuff.
And so, you know, you see this applied in so many cases.
A lot of times it's like, if you are unhappy in your marriage, I'm like, you want to leave.
You should don the whole armor of God and stay with your shitty husband forever.
And it's like, oh man, okay.
Woof.
But yeah, I mean, spiritual warfare is a fascinating doctrine and I think it explains a great deal of how pitched and how Manichaean American political dialogue is.
But there's a lot that goes into the creation of that and a lot about the Christian right and many, many ways that it intersects with QAnon, for sure.
Yeah, you do have like some really interesting sections in QAnon in the book.
In fact, you quote Julian.
And I especially love like there's this one paragraph that explains why evangelicals just immediately took to QAnon.
It was just natural for them to start engaging with that.
Because, you know, it feels like that requires some explaining.
It's like, why did they, it seems like more than any other demographic, like hear about these internet posts that can reveal secrets about a history-changing battle of good versus evil, but only if those posts are decoded properly and say, that makes perfect sense to me, I'm in.
But in your book, you have this paragraph that explains why QAnon falls perfectly in line with how a lot of evangelicals interact with text and reality.
This kind of salvo connecting public events, demons, and prophetic power is something millions of American evangelicals find comfortingly familiar.
It mirrors their childhood information diets in which ministers cooked up apocalyptic predictions from Bible verses and Spiritual warfare doctrine placed a demon on every shoulder.
As the journalist and ex-evangelical Sam Thielman put it in 2020, many evangelicals grew up with a mindset that, quote, takes metaphorical passages in the Bible and tries to decode them into both individual prophecies that refer directly to current events as well as a larger meta-prophecy ending in the rapture of believers to heaven, the coming of the Antichrist, and the battle of Armageddon, end quote.
No wonder they've taken so well to digital-era conspiracy theories.
They were raised seeing signs and wonders, coded miracles and tribulations.
They just took it to social media and found a plethora of new souls to convert.
Couldn't say it better myself.
I mean, it really is.
It's that simple.
I love this because I suppose the stereotype is the idea of if you're deeper religious, you have this old-time religion, maybe you don't take too advanced or new communication technology that easily.
But it shows like, no, no, actually, the way that you sort of people interact and communicate and like understand information online is just perfect for like how evangelicals sort of like, you know, were raised with this idea of science and wonders and like Bible code stuff.
Yeah, and prophecy.
Like all these books of prophecy and now like a charismatic movement towards prophecy and all these prophets.
I'm sure you guys have heard of like Julie Green and like Lance Wallnau and these people, you know, saying like the Biden is an agent of Satan and a whale will be in the news for an unusual reason, which is my favorite prophecy ever from Julie Green, like in the middle of like a really long diatribe.
I think that was like in 2020 or whatever.
I mean, religion and technology have always evolved together, and often new technology can be, like, the site of religious anxieties.
So we see that in, like, these recurrent Mark of the Beast panics that I talk about in the book.
Like, barcodes were the Mark of the Beast, and then it was, you know, RFID trips, and then it was the COVID vaccine.
You have these recurrent...
Like, new technology becomes the outlet for religious anxiety, or anxiety about technology is, finds an outlet in religion.
And then at the same time, I mean, like, from the printing press onward, like, which the printing press was a huge part of, like, the reformation wars about Christianity, you know, and social media has become a religious outlet for a lot of people.
But like, yeah, it doesn't have to be, like, the most ultra-sophisticated.
I mean, we're talking about, like, memes on Facebook about how, like, Trump is King David reincarnate and, you know, think of the, like, all the stuff about clocks and kids.
But, you know, if you grow up with this idea that, like, the world is just this veil for the spirit behind it and that we're counting down to the apocalypse and, like, here's all the ways that the apocalypse is nigh...
Yeah, understanding the world as a series of coded messages is really not that foreign an idea.
So I would say QAnon is both deliberately Christian.
Like Q has like cited Bible passages lots of times.
And it's also consonant with Christianity, evangelical Christianity in the US.
And I would call it a Christian movement.
So that like yoga moms who like were anti-vax or worried about the vax in 2020, suddenly we're talking about Satan, like within two months of starting to ask questions.
You know, all of this stuff really like taps into demons really fast.
I mean, how much have you guys heard about sacrifices to Lucifer and children's blood and all the stuff.
I mean, that's the interesting stuff.
Because, you know, QAnon at the very, very beginning, and I know that Travis and Julian have corrected me in the past that whoever was posting did dive into religious symbolism and ideology pretty early on.
But it was, you know, it was like Spygate stuff.
It was about Trump was unfairly sur-surveillance by the FBI and he had caught them in this trap and everybody was going down.
And that stuff Didn't stick.
As QAnon got more and more popular, it wasn't because there was more stuff coming out about Spygate.
It was because there was more content being written about this battle between light and dark.
A great awakening.
All of this stuff is incredibly spiritual.
Yeah, so I totally agree with you that that is the exciting part, I think, for people who believe in QAnon still.
I think that belief has been a primary human drive since the Paleolithic era.
We've been carving gods out of rocks since we could conceptualize in the abstract.
And so it is this primal human drive.
And even secular folks, we have this drive to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to have ideals that we believe in, to make a mark and leave a legacy.
So I think it really is this primal human drive that manifests in many ways.
And one of those ways is QAnon and the Christian right that sort of gave birth to it or gave it its most compelling images.
And so, you know, I think we do ourselves a disservice when we discount the strength that belief has.
That being said, not all beliefs are created equal, and just because someone believes something sincerely doesn't mean you have to respect it.
But you do have to understand it.
In order to combat it, you do have to understand it as a sincerely held belief.
That's the best way to understand it and therefore to combat it.
Yeah, yeah.
Sometimes you have to get around the idea.
It's like, no one actually believes that, right?
This is something that they say or something that's just part of maybe their internal signaling to each other that they're serious.
But they don't really, in their core, believe some of these wild claims.
But they absolutely do.
They make their decisions and their interpersonal relationships and their politics based upon this belief.
Yeah, and this has been a particular, I think, failing of the media coverage where you have their coverage of evangelicalism is this fascinating mix of like undue deference where it's like you guys are the real Americans and we're, you know, just a bunch of panty waist elites who are true blue Americans under the flag and the cross.
But also condescension, where you guys are a bunch of rubes who don't really, possibly, you can't possibly really believe all these things you say you do, because everyone secretly in their head is a rationalist skeptic, just like I am.
I mean, it's this total failure of empathy, or at least trying to project yourself into a fundamentally different mindset than a Beltway journo.
It's just, like, these are fundamentally different ways of approaching reality, and you can't measure someone else's wheat with your bushel.
Like, you cannot project your own mindset into everyone, because these are folks who've been inculcated since, like, birth.
into a very totalizing system of ideas that are fundamentally incompatible with secular, multiracial, multicredile democracy.
And that can be really hard, particularly for the sort of pundit class to wrap their head around.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah.
Speaking of, I suppose, the attitudes of Christian nationalists about democracy, I think it's fair to say that they're pretty enthused about the re-election of Donald Trump, and they see this as an opportunity to remake the country.
The Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau, who you mentioned, made this explicit in a recent comment about Trump's win.
And so we got one administration, one four-year period to do it.
The church is going through a reconfiguration right now.
We want our revival.
But like I was preaching last night to a group of leaders, I said revival is for us.
Reformation is for the institutions.
We have to have revived believers.
Strong and connected as an ecclesia to go where the gates of hell are located in the DOJ, in the government, in the IRS. I know it's a daunting task.
It sounds crazy, but that's exactly what the believers said to do.
They had to go up against giants.
We have to see these strongholds come down.
God's giving us a chance to see it happen.
If you take the elevator in the DOJ department building, Down to the 66th basement floor, you will find a doorway sealed by ancient magic.
Like, what are you talking- This intersection of spirituality and- Sounds like your skepticism was given to you by Satan, Jake.
I mean, I don't know.
Yeah, the gates of hell and the DOJ. As I was preaching last night is a great opener, and I should use it more.
But yeah, I mean, listen, this guy has millions of followers.
And there are many, many, many people like him.
This may not be a literal portal to hell, or it may be in his conception.
But it's certainly a metaphorical portal to hell.
And it is fascinating to me that he brought up the IRS. Yeah.
Right.
I mean, yeah.
If there's anyone who's treated with kid gloves by the IRS in the United States, it's religious organizations.
Well, yeah.
And what's interesting is that you can trace, actually, the rise of the Christian right as a political movement to a backlash against the IRS, actually.
So in the sort of post-pre and post-World War II years, like, you had this very large population of Southern Protestants, but they were more or less detached from politics, like, kind of approved of McCarthyism, they were generally right-wing, but they weren't, like...
political activists per se, they sort of viewed politics as worldly and beneath them.
And then you had Brown versus Board of Education desegregating the schools.
And all across the South, this absolute cluster of parochial schools that were segregated with church or Christian in the name, like NAACP reports at the time were like, if you want to find a segregation academy, which was the term of art for like schools that popped up to take white students which was the term of art for like schools that popped up to take white students out of integrated public schools, like if you want to find a segregation academy, look for
And this was so widespread that throughout the, you know, late 50s, 60s, there were entire counties in the South, you know, whose public school systems were drained of white students, drained of funds.
And this was so widespread that throughout the, you know, late 50s, 60s, there were entire counties in the South, you know, whose public school systems were drained of white students, drained of funds.
And a lot of black students like fundamentally did not get an education.
And a lot of black students like fundamentally did not get an education.
And so by the 70s, there was this landmark Supreme Court decision in 71 called Green versus Connolly that basically a couple of black parents like sued a segregation academy and were like, why are you a charitable tax-exempt institution when you are illegally segregated?
And the Supreme Court found in the favor of those parents.
And suddenly these segregation academies were no longer tax-exempt.
And the IRS started more aggressively like auditing these schools, including Jerry Falwell's Lynchburg Christian Academy, which believe it or not, was segregated.
I know that's a shock to hear.
And this was what woke the sleeping giant.
And then a bunch of Catholics who, like, had already been really politically active, like Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich and these savvy operators were like, hey, glad you're finally doing the politics thing.
That's really cool.
Like, the people who were, like, throwing tomatoes at Ruby Bridges and, you know, the screaming white mobs from the massive resistance movement, right?
This is their moment of political awakening.
The Catholics are like, well, this is great.
I'm so glad.
We're excited to expand the ranks of the religious right.
But segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, like, has a limit in terms of its appeal.
And like, you guys are kind of coming off as the bad guys.
Here's an idea.
As late as 1973, the Southern Baptist Convention, even after the passage of Roe v.
Wade, was like, yeah, abortion is fine.
They voted in favor of abortion.
It was very much seen as this niche Catholic issue.
It was not a Protestant priority whatsoever.
And then the Catholics kind of pitched it.
Schlafly, in particular, had this goal of turning the Republican Party into the pro-life party.
And she and others pitched it as a new civil rights movement.
Like, okay, guys, you were on the wrong side of the other one, and it's made you look small and cruel and, like, people don't like you.
You're the, like, guys with the hoses spraying civil rights protesters.
But now you can get in on the ground on the civil rights of the unborn.
And so very early on, like, in the 70s, you have these comparisons of abortion to slavery and the Holocaust and very much, like, Up to and including in 2022, when the Dobbs decision was happening, like the president of Susan B. Anthony, pro-life America, saying like, we're like the abolitionists, you know, we are like the people who are, you know, who fought against slavery.
So it's been this internally ennobling image.
And they've also been phenomenally successful at propagandizing Americans into sort of believing they're the guardians of moral purity.
That they have this profound care for the unborn child.
And it's one of the greatest snow jobs in the history of ever.
That this movement, whose roots were entirely in segregationism, has been able to rebrand as the moral majority, the focus on the family, the guardians of moral purity, and given so much credence and so much leeway in that regard.
Well, I mean, that's the shocking, shockingly successful PR effort.
I mean, like, so it's one for the ages in terms of, yeah, right, it's for an image.
You're right, that could have been sort of just more disastrous as the public became more, you know, tolerant and accepting.
You know, I'm sure they could have been, they'd be, you know, as marginalized as they imagine they are in their head.
But no, but they did successfully pivoted.
Well, they chose to, like, delve into our country's other bottomless well, which is misogyny, and found a lot more success there.
People were very anxious about feminism.
It was like civil rights had sort of been viewed as this triumphant moral struggle.
Of course, they're still against civil rights, and the Christian right is like, they have like a military.
There's a million different synonyms for it, as many as Chris Rufo comes up with on, you know, whatever, anti-DEI, let's not teach the history of slavery, let's ban books by Black authors all over.
So it's not that the fight against civil rights has gone away, but they found this real salience and this real resonance as defining themselves as protectors of the unborn.
And the other thing, the other piece, and this was brought up by Ry Taron, who's like a really thoughtful ex-evangelical.
She's like, the other reason why evangelicals love unborn babies is because they hate actual born babies.
Like, and I'm not, like, there's this very Calvinist, very punitive view of, like, humanity as, like, fundamentally sinful and evil.
So a baby is crying and sleeping and shitting because it's selfish and evil.
And like, you know, a baby is evil if it like is too greedy for milk.
Like, it's really weird, these views.
And they're very, very widely held.
And that's why when you look at these parenting manuals, I mean, some of the worst ones are like If your baby bites your breast, like, tug its hair.
Or, you know, if your baby is, like, crawling up the stairs, like, hit it.
Because there's no earliest stage at which, like, mankind becomes evil, except those in the womb.
They're perfect.
And they'll never fight back.
And also this idea that you have to spend your whole life devoted to God and the teachings of Jesus so that you can be absolved of this sin.
But in the same breath, from what I understand, that you could live an entire life filled with sin and on your deathbed accept Christ into your heart and be saved.
So there's so much ideas that are in conflict With one another.
And, you know, earlier you guys were talking and you were saying image, you know, this image.
And I think that that's really true.
I was thinking about QAnon and, you know, how QAnon is this sort of Christian movement.
And like the guy who is most likely most responsible for the majority of QAnon, Ron Watkins.
Like when you see videos of him in Cullen Hobeck's documentary or docuseries Into the Storm, he's like watching pornography in the car on the way to a restaurant.
Like he can't I think?
Yeah, and people very much had the same critique with Trump.
And then you had the like, oh, he's the reincarnation of the Emperor Cyrus.
He's a heathen, but he's a tool of God.
And he'll get us the, you know, repeal of Roe.
And he did.
Yeah, you think that, you know, these people who act based upon their religious convictions would be purists, but in fact, they're actually very utilitarian.
You know, they act with, they operate with, you know, real politics.
They're very pragmatic and vicious in that sense.
Well, yeah, and you see that also in, like, who makes up the coalition, right?
Like, so you have the Protestants, and then the Catholics, and, you know, there was a religious war over that whole thing.
And then the Mormons are part of it too, especially in Arizona, and Utah, and California.
And all of these factions think the other ones are going to hell because they're papists or, you know, dirty followers of Luther or weird space fake Christians.
But they all have consonant political goals, which is this like stranglehold over women and children and women's bodies and bringing Christ into the public arena.
And so they're like, we'll get along.
You know, we'll march forward together for life.
And I mean, I hate to say this, but like, I would love to see even like a tiny fraction of like that kind of problem.
It's not that I want to walk hand in hand with the resist grifters necessarily, but a lot of people are really shaken right now and struggling and grieving.
You cannot build community in a meaningful and durable way without hanging out with people who are kind of annoying and doing stuff together with people that kind of irritate you.
That's what it is.
That's one thing about the extreme right.
They'll, like Travis said, they're very utilitarian.
They'll put aside their differences to get something done, for sure.
I mean, back when I was researching Cultural Warlords, one of the funniest, like, neo-Nazi chats I was part of was a group that composed of, like, neo-Nazi pagans and neo-Nazi trad cats.
And they were like, well, here's how we will hash out our differences.
We'll have a fight club in the woods to raise money for, like, Augustus Invictus, who's this white supremacist asshole, to, like, get bailed out of jail.
Like, you know, they're like, cool, well, you know, you may be a filthy odinist and I may worship Jesus.
And, you know, the other crew is like, don't you know Jesus is a Jew and they're too anti-Semitic to be Christian, which is awesome.
But they're like, well, we'll hash it out together with a manly grapple in the woods.
And meanwhile, like the leftist soap is eating each other's faces like for, you know.
I would love to like pull up in a DeLorean and like take these guys back to when Jesus was alive.
Because what they would see is like a Middle Eastern looking guy who probably looks like homeless.
You know, not this, like, pristine, like, you know, pale, fair-skinned white guy, you know, with the beard, and it's just, it's just like, all of this stuff is based on an idea that is creating reality, even though it's not based on anything else.
Like you were saying, Jesus was Jewish.
I've actually read a little bit more about Jesus than I probably would like to, and what I've read and what I find interesting about him is that what he was trying to do was a more kind of radical form of Judaism.
He basically thought that Judaism, as it was practiced, wasn't right, that we could go further.
Yeah, I mean, you see the fact of Christianity as a breakaway sect from Judaism, ironically, in, like, just how persistent Christian anti-Semitism has been over the centuries.
Like, you always have to, like, hey, kill your mom, right?
Like, you always have to rebel against your parent.
And, like, it does come out, like, even in the terms, like, devout Christians use to, like, insult one another.
They're like, you're so legalistic.
You're a Pharisee.
And, like, all of those just mean Jew.
Like, all of those terms.
Just me and Jew.
You know, but whatever.
That's like hardly, hardly the worst of the issues faced here.
I think, you know, but it is interesting.
And like, you know, the other piece I think that's really consonant with QAnon and the evangelical, right, is this idea that like everything important is happening behind a curtain.
Everything important is secret and hidden and is like this sort of cosmic celestial conflict.
And like concurrently, most of what you see publicly reported is not important because it's public.
So it can't be true.
And that's how you get such a polluted misinformation, like an information environment that fucking RFK Jr. is going to be in charge of health.
I mean, the man looks like a slab of uncooked pork.
He has worms.
And he's going to be in charge of our meat.
I'm not okay with it.
I'm so not okay with it.
It's like sinking in slowly.
And I'm like, this guy is a friend to measles everywhere.
And it's just, I do think that like COVID broke a lot of brains, but also just like I did a lot of like looking into sort of the right wing grifter ecology and like the mindset of...
Behind prophecy and the apocalypse and like all this stuff that's just inherent and constantly present in evangelical life.
And it's all about fear.
You're so afraid of the world all the time.
You're buying survival kits and like Trump Bibles and you are like buying stuff out of fear.
You're constantly in this like mixed state of agony and terror over the rapture.
So many former evangelical kids were like I came home and my parents were gone.
I got out of the shower and my parents were gone and I assumed they'd been raptured.
And this moment of transcendent terror because the end of the world is always around the corner.
And now we have Mike Huckabee, a man who is best friends with Timothy LaHaye, who wrote the Left Behind series, which is all about the fucking apocalypse.
He's the ambassador to Israel.
And that scares the living shit out of me.
Because these people are horny for the end of the world, and it starts with a catastrophic war in the Middle East.
Yep.
Like, they're excited about it.
And I'm like, I don't want the world to end.
I don't think Jesus is going to come back anyway, but I'm like, just not, they're like, if you look at like, you know, John Hagee and like his books, it's all like, and then like Israel will be knee deep in blood and the stench of bodies will be so thick, like, No one will be able to breathe.
And he's like so horny about it.
And when like the most recent war, genocide in Israel broke out, all these churches were like, God's timepiece is ticking.
Like Jesus is coming.
And they were so excited, like excited, thrilled, and people were dying.
5,000 people died on day one.
And then, like, everyone has been...
Like, there has been so much death.
And it has been this moment of, like, the prophecies are coming true.
Jesus is closer than ever.
And it really brought home to me how, like, inhumane this worldview is where everything is an instrument towards the fulfillment of prophecy and where bodies are so much less important than souls.
Like, when you govern theocratically, you are far more interested in the business of souls than you are of bodies.
So if a woman dies of sepsis because she can't get an abortion, that's not a tragedy.
That's a martyrdom.
That's a fitting martyrdom.
And she was saved from sin.
Sorry, that's really depressing, but it's like true.
No, it's real.
It's real.
Like I learned, I was, you know, as somebody who's like fairly non-religious in my adulthood, you know, it was really crazy to learn that evangelicals or, you know, Christians or Republicans, you know, were so pro-Israel because they think that the bodies of the Jews are going to be a landing were so pro-Israel because they think that the bodies of the Jews are going to be a That like, you know, we got to protect Israel at all costs, not because we care about Jewish people, but because that's where the reusable Jesus thruster will come back down.
You know, the jaws, the jaws will grab it and the fire coming out of his feet will, will torch that entire area.
And it's really, it's really upsetting, especially now you have this additional entity, this additional prophet, right?
Quote unquote in QAnon, which I'm assuming is going to come back.
That is light, you know, light to dark or dark to light, the great awakening, all of this language that feeds into these, these rapture beliefs.
It's of course they, they think that it's close.
And if you believe in an eternal life, you know, or an eternal afterlife, at least, and that this, this time on earth is just this, this blip or just essentially, you know, auditions to use a, a theater kid talk, like auditions to get into heaven, then like whatever carnage you create here, it doesn't matter then like whatever carnage you create here, it doesn't matter because your, your sole focus is on whatever awaits you in Yeah, it's really scary.
As someone who's very firmly anchored in the material world, I'm like, no.
Bodies.
Bodies are important.
Don't feed kids poison milk.
And, you know, stop them from getting measles.
And, like, the children don't yearn for the mines.
And stop beating your kids.
But, I mean, the other piece of it is that my term for, like, Christian Zionism, which, by the way, like, if you don't know about Christian Zionism, there are, like, more members of Christians United for Israel, which is just one Christian Zionist organization, than there are Jews in the United States.
Like, America's Israel policy must seem totally insane if you're not aware of this phenomenon.
Like, you might think it's like a sinister Jewish control thing, because like, why else would we, you know, never even move an inch?
And there are like documented instances where like, George W. Bush, like, Slow-walked any movement on peace with the Palestinians because he was like, oh, the evangelicals won't like it.
You know, really, that religious belief has dominated our policy for a long time, certainly on the Republican side.
And Trump's move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was absolutely a suck to evangelicals.
And the people giving the speeches were like, Some of the most anti-Semitic preachers you could possibly find.
Because the way a Christian, particularly an evangelical, loves a Jew is the way a hungry man loves a chicken wing.
It's all about consumption and destruction and domination.
And their final fantasy, right, is Jesus coming back and the Jews are forced to convert or die.
And there's a righteous remnant that become Christian and are saved.
And everyone else is cast into the fiery pit.
So their final conception of Jews and attitude towards Israel and Middle East policy, which are inextricable, because the way evangelicals relate to Middle East policy is through the lens of the apocalypse, which is terrifying.
But their vision is like the total annihilation of Jewry.
And I'm like, you know, I definitely have Jewish friends who are like, okay, we'll worry about it when Jesus comes back.
But I'm like, if these are your friends, like, you know, what do you need enemies for?
Like, they're terrible influences, and they're horny for war!
Of course they'll never stop sending arms.
They want a catastrophic end-of-world conflict.
I don't know.
It's very unnerving, and I think people are very not aware of how intense Christian Zionism is.
Totally.
I've got a family member.
I won't mention what kind of Who is, like, a big Israel guy and big Shoal guy.
Like, he's, you know, very much into his Shoal, and that's kind of, like, what his life revolves around.
And he's, like, a diehard Trump guy.
Because he's, like, Trump, like, cares about Israel, and, like, Republicans want to protect Israel.
It's, like, oh, man, like, oh, dude.
I don't know.
It just seems very, you know, sort of against a conflict of interest, if you will.
But yes, some people just like, I don't know.
I don't know.
It's hard to understand why anybody thinks what they think anymore.
Everybody's just the thing that their little beliefsies, you know, that keep it going, that make the hardships of this very real, you know, existence that is happening right now that...
You know, not the afterlife, not the before life, but the thing that we're in now that can be very difficult at times, and it makes it seem, I don't know, less harsh or easier to endure or whatever it is.
Yeah, I mean, people cling to beliefs and structures that make them either feel ennobled or make them feel like they can survive, even beyond death in some cases.
Yeah, I remember I gave a talk to a congregation, and it was talking about how shitty the evangelicals are, and then how shitty the Nazis are, and this guy stood up and was like, Talia, you don't like the Philo-Semites?
You don't like the anti-Semites?
Who do you like?
And I was like, I don't trust anybody.
And it's a tough sell, but I'm like, hmm.
I don't know.
Like, you want to consume me in the rage of your lord?
No thanks.
I will say it did get me a couple more interviews with, like, evangelical figures who are more down to talk to me because they're like, I could convert a Jew.
And, like, I still get emails from some of these folks, even though I'm like, I roasted you in public.
But that would be a mitzvah for them to convert.
Whatever their terminology for a mitzvah is.
It's like catching, like, a really rare Pokemon.
Like, it's really exciting.
Yeah.
Yeah, like, I mean, I just wanted to reference that, you know, that you were talking about how genuinely concerning that someone as, like, evangelical as Mike Huckabee was named U.S. ambassador to Israel because, you know, there's, like, there was a recent appearance he had on Charlie Kirk.
In which Huckabee talked about his new role and why he believed Israel to be important.
But it didn't seem like his philosophy, like as an ambassador, is driven by secular concerns like diplomacy or humanitarianism.
Instead, he referenced words spoken by God in the book of Genesis.
I believe it is a special place because God made it special.
And so without any apology in saying this, you know, I'm a simple guy.
I believe the scripture.
Genesis 12, those who bless Israel will be blessed.
Those who curse Israel will be cursed.
I want to be on the blessing side, not the curse side.
I'm not 100% comfortable with, like, you know, just diplomats just openly saying that their policy is driven by a religious text.
Yeah, but, like, this is what I mean when people are like, but what about the separation of church and state?
I'm like, what about it?
It doesn't fucking exist.
Like, tell that to, like, a woman who lives in Idaho or Arkansas.
Like, you know, and now we have, like, a Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexeth, who has, like, a deus walt tattoo.
It's like a crusader tattoo.
And it's like...
His political positions have been described as Christian nationalists.
He literally wrote a book called American Crusade, you know, where he talks about a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.
And, you know, we are at a very strange tipping point where these people who have so long defined themselves as persecuted and in opposition and all this stuff are really acquiring the temporal power they've been building and building and building for 50 years.
This is in many ways the apotheosis of this And it started with judiciary capture, and by dint of that judiciary capture, they were able to regain executive power.
And it's just, I mean, I just would say I find it really one of the best things you can do in this moment, or at least it's been helpful for me in terms of conceptualizing and understanding this moment, is two things.
First of all, abandon some of your myths about how America's special, and it can't happen here and all that.
The separation of church and state has been gone for a very long time, as you would probably know better if you weren't born into a church.
Sorry.
But the other piece of it is that, you know, I find that a lot of people on the left are like, well, we've been in oligarchy for a long time.
Biden was also giving blank checks to Israel.
You know, essentially we have this fascist history.
And all of that is true.
And like, you can reckon with the sins of America.
Absolutely.
But like, the axiom that I've been using is like, more is new and more is worse.
Like, just because things are bad and have been bad and historically have been bad, Doesn't mean they can't get worse.
Like, use your imagination.
Like, people who want to turn the U.S. into a domain of Christ, where women are submissive and children are, like, objects to be beaten, are now gaining more, like, power over some of the biggest and strongest and most lethal institutions in the world.
It's scary, but it's also, like, you have to understand the parameters of the threat in order to even begin to marshal your counterzeal.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, it's like, if I've got a bagel, right, and it's been sitting on the counter, it's the last bagel in the sleeve, the plastic sleeve, and I pull it out, and there's like a tiny spot of mold on it, and I eat the bagel, and I'm like, ah, whatever, you know?
I didn't realize there, or maybe it was the second to last bagel, and I didn't notice any mold on it, but like, I see the last bagel that's got a little spot on it, I go, oh shit, okay, well, I don't know.
There's a difference between that and reaching into the bag and having a bagel that's covered in mold that I eat and I go, well, it doesn't matter because I already ate the mold.
I already ate a tiny piece of it.
It's like, no, bad can become worse and the You know, one thing that I've learned over the course of doing this show and talking to a lot of people is that the degree in which things are now and can be worse is a big difference.
There's a big difference between what Trump is going to do for Israel and what Biden did for Israel.
And that degree of, that degree, it doesn't seem like it matters.
And, you know, we're lucky that, you know, we're lucky that we aren't living in the hellscape that people over there are.
But it's going to feel, it's going to be worse.
I mean, listen, it's like you can condemn a genocidal policy and also be like, it's also extra bad if like these messianic like apocalypse humpers are in charge of policy in this very volatile part of the world.
Like these are two very consonant and okay views to hold at the same time.
I don't know.
It's like staring down the barrel of a second Trump term, having spent the last several years of my life, like really digging out sort of I mean, and once again, for the third election in a row, you have like Saddam Hussein numbers for Trump among white evangelicals.
It's 82% this time.
82 to 17. Crazy.
Yeah, like Ba'athist numbers.
And, you know, it's utilitarian and it's also like, yeah, we're winning.
Fuck you.
And like, one thing that I've been thinking about in terms of like a counter zeal is a term that I like to think about.
It's hard to say like, you know, when you're like on team like autocracy and theocracy, you know what you're fighting for.
You know, you have this set of ideas and principles that are deeply constraining.
And we're talking about like the repeal of sodomy laws, drumming trans people out of public life, like drumming women out of public life, forcing them back into the domestic sphere, like Stripping autonomy from our bodies, all this stuff.
You know, the parental rights movement mandating, like, child abuse, right?
This is a very coherent set of principles, whereas, like, on the other side, you're like, no, we want cacophony.
We want freedom.
We want, like, a whole mix of people doing their thing in different ways.
Like, we don't have a unitary vision.
So how do you create, like, a counterzeal for cacophony, right?
How do you, like, create a joyous riot for freedom?
It's tough.
It's a tough ask.
And one thing I think that's important that I've been thinking about is just like, as I mentioned earlier, like faith is such a deep human drive.
The desire to believe in something bigger than yourself and something that will last after you die.
And we can't cede the idea of faith to this cruel, limited, and also deeply unpopular view of faith, of Christianity, of religion.
Like, there are so many people whose faith guides them towards wanting a better, kinder, juster, and non-burning world.
And I think that it's time for, like, those voices to show up and show out and for all of us to say, like, no, your kingdom, I don't want to be part of your kingdom.
Your God is not my God.
Your God is a God of cruelty and narrowness and terrorizing people.
And you don't have a monopoly over faith and who is faithful and who is true and good.
And that's what I think about when I think about how we even begin to fight back against a movement that sees us all as like minions of the devil.
It's like, fuck you, no I'm not.
I know what the devil looks like and he's in your eyes.
Yeah, I do.
I'm good.
I'm a good person, actually.
I do try to, like, treat other people well and, you know, try to see everybody as equal.
It's so funny.
It's like, yeah, there's such a hypocrisy, and I think that that's infuriating for a lot of people who aren't in it.
And we like to point that out, right?
Anytime, you know, a pastor or somebody involved in the church is doing some horrible crime against children or whatever, that always bubbles to the top.
But then once that person is punished, this entire institution, you know, this institution of faith or this system of beliefs, you know, that cultivates or sort of protects these people is like, oh, well, back to, you know, back to just like kind of being, you know, the sort of undertow of America, right?
Yeah.
I mean, hypocrisy never matters to the will to power.
And also, in order to accuse someone of hypocrisy in a way that's durable and matters, you have to be seen as a credible interlocutor by them.
And that's just not the case when it comes to the Christian right.
They view us as sinners and heathens and lost to the will of God and going to hell, right?
So us saying, you're hypocrites and you're not living your values.
They're like, who are you?
Like, you're a Luciferian piece of shit, right?
So your standing matters.
But also, like, in general, when you're like, I'm gonna obtain absolute power to build a kingdom of Christ, like, someone being like, you're a hypocrite, like, doesn't really have a lot of weight.
I think the stronger, like, it's been interesting to me, I've had to accept it.
Like, when people use religious imagery to counter the Christian right, I find it kind of powerful.
People are like, Trump is not Cyrus.
He's not King David.
He's the golden calf.
You know, he's this idol that you've created.
You know, or saying he fits a lot of criteria for the Antichrist or whatever.
Like, that's not my approach to it.
But it is an approach to it where people bring their faith with them.
I think we should discount that as part of...
It has to be a broad, strange arsenal for the army of letting life be broad and messy and strange.
And people, you know, instead of the puritanical anti-sex gang winning, absolutely.
We have to...
Love as hard as we can and be strange and be cacophonous and be ungovernable and not fit into these iron molds they've made for us.
And in order to do that, we have to bring every motivation that we have.
That's my...
I'm so sorry.
I have sincerity disease where I've just been reading this shit for so long and I find it so upsetting when I'm like, no, I'm going to give the speech that saves America.
Never apologize for being sincere.
And also, it's just like, it's so amazing because I believe you're on East Coast time and the sun is just setting in the background and the room is starting to become like darker and darker.
Like you can feel the devil, you know, basically ascending on like, you know, where you are.
I'm like, be gay, do crimes.
Little horns are like popping out of my head.
I want to mention, so your book is really enlightening because I think it helps contextualize some of the bizarre statements and actions of right-wing figures.
And I experienced this personally while I was reading your chapters on Christian corporal punishment.
And as you explain your book, there's a large body of literature directed towards Christians that explains the theory and practice of using physical pain to mold the behavior of a child.
I mean, I thought it was the most impactful chapter of your book.
You talk to some people who suffered some very serious abuse as children as a consequence of this philosophy.
And this philosophy also just, it doesn't just have an impact on an individual level, but it also has a society-wide impact.
And while reading your book, I felt like I suddenly understood some bizarre comments that were made by Tucker Carlson in October at a Turning Point action conference.
So he likened the American public to an out-of-control child and Donald Trump to a father who was obligated to correct bad behavior with physical punishment.
If you allow your hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter to, like, slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you're going to get more of it.
And those kids are going to wind up in rehab.
It's not good for you and it's not good for them.
No.
There has to be a point at which dad comes home.
And when dad gets home, you know what he says?
You've been a bad girl.
You've been a bad little girl and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now.
And no, it's not going to hurt me more than it hurts you.
No, it's not.
I'm not going to lie.
It's going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.
And it has to be this way.
It has to be this way because it's true.
And you're only going to get better when you take responsibility for what you did.
That's not said in the spirit of hate.
It's not said in the spirit of vengeance or bigotry.
Far from it.
It's said in the spirit of justice, which is the purest and best thing there is.
And without it, things fall apart.
Wow.
Psycho.
I know.
It was psycho.
When that happened, I mean, I saw some commentary from, like, liberals, but like, oh, man, Tucker's just, like, playing out a weird fantasy, or maybe he's just, like, you know, he's kind of, like, saying odd shit to trigger their libs.
But this idea of Trump as this sort of loving punisher who has to administer pain in order to avoid things from getting out of control, that sounds really rooted in this right-wing Christian parenting philosophy.
Oh yeah, like control the youth, control the future, right?
And specifically control the youth through like physical abuse in the service of obedience, right?
Like the thing that this hypothetical daughter who's a bad girl is doing is slamming the door on you.
She's saying that she's moving away from you.
She's changing.
That's not acceptable.
And it's interesting.
Tucker is a very savvy character in his way.
And like, he's been moving more towards the evangelical, right?
Now that he no longer has a Fox show.
Like, some of his biggest statements lately that have like broken out of whatever weird silo he's in on X have been like experiences with demons and demonology.
Like, oh, I was scratched by a demon in bed.
Oh, and like, and he's getting up and talking about spanking.
Like, he's speaking to a specific audience here.
He's like signaling to the evangelicals, like...
You're my people.
It's so depressing also that that was a winning electoral message.
I think that's just sinking in now, that like that won.
I mean, the other piece of it is that like when you have, as our country does, right?
The Christian rate has been on this beat your kid into submission train since like the 70s.
When James Dobson, who redacted, redacted, redacted, redacted, redacted stuff about how much I loathe that guy, wrote Dare to Discipline about how permissive parents in the 50s had been.
And we have to go back to the Bible and the Rod and spawned a whole legion of imitators.
And so for 50 years, these parenting tracts have come out and all of them are like, beat your kid into obedience, but in like different ways.
I read God the Rod and Your Child's Bod so you didn't have to.
Thank me.
I mean, yeah, I do thank you, because it's fair to say I would never pick that up.
No, and I have it on my shelf, and I feel like a monster every time I see it, like, glimpse it.
But it's in my, like, horrible, like, my little, like, horrible quarantined corner of, like, Christian child rearing and parenting manuals.
But, like, so you have, in aggregate...
You know, right now there are about 14 million white evangelical Christians, right?
And a lot of them have a lot of kids.
And there are also, like, generations since the 70s that have been raised this way.
And when you raise a kid in a context like this, where obedience is the absolute sine qua non, it's the highest ideal, total obedience, where brutality and violence are derogore, they're the norm, what to expect.
When authority, like violent authority and love come from the same place, you're building a nation of authoritarians.
You're building a nation of people who are conditioned to see daddy's home and he's going to punish you as like the ideal method of governance because that's how they were raised and that's how they're raising their kids.
So it's like if you're wondering why the Christian right has so openly embraced, you know, an autocrat, Despite all their cries of, like, religious liberty, religious freedom.
Again, hypocrisy is irrelevant, but, like, I would argue that one very overlooked, like, very, very overlooked cause of Americans' willing embrace of authoritarianism in this populace is just, like, they were raised in deeply authoritarian homes, with the father as protector and the mother as submissive co-enforcer, and the children as, like, subject to ritualized violence.
And so I'm going to blame this on James Dobson.
And there's also a podcast called I Hate James Dobson.
So I'm not the only one.
He's a monster and like all his imitators are monsters and like, whoo!
Yeah, it sucks.
It sucks to think about violence being done to children in the name of some sort of righteousness.
Yeah, and those kids grow up, right?
And some of them break away, and so many of my interlocutors talked about the damage they'd suffered, or a lot of them moved away from this faith when they had kids, and they were like, I don't want to hit my kid.
This is actually immoral.
It hurts me to hit my kid.
I'm not going to do this.
But a lot of people don't.
A lot of people stay in it.
It's much harder to leave than to stay.
You lose a very tight-knit community.
You lose your family.
You lose so much when you leave a totalizing religion like this.
Especially as lonely and atomized as American life is without this kind of community.
And so a lot of people stay in it.
And if we're wondering why American political life is so full of violent fantasy and punishment and the idea of punishment and vengeance and retribution and strong autocratic leaders, I think a lot of it comes down to this family model.
And these people are some of the most active people in politics.
They showed up.
82% voted for Trump and they all showed up.
The biggest winner in the 2024 election wasn't Trump or Harris.
It was staying the fuck home.
And these people are motivated.
They're out here to win the war against Satan.
And that desire has been beaten into them before they could walk.
And so, you know, we're at this inflection point where it's like, we gotta show up now.
But it's scary because these folks are very militant and conditioned to be so, for sure.
Should we end on a more positive note?
A sobering way to end the show.
Terrible.
God, I'm like, ugh.
No, but it's like, we can do all the hyena laughing that we want as we stare down, like you said, the barrel of another four years of Trump and how melted it is going to be and what's this going to do for the conspiracy community on both sides.
This is the real, this is the depressing shit.
This is the shit that sinks in after a week or so, which is like where we are.
So it's appropriate.
Here's how we're going to land this one.
So Talia, I would recommend your account on X, but that was nuked in the sort of tumultuous process of transfer ship to Elon Musk.
What happened there?
Yeah, so I'm on Blue Sky now.
Oh, okay.
The skies are blue.
And like, the Resist Libs just showed up and like all the like angry trans Marxist Leninists are like, and it's an interesting dynamic right now.
There have been like a million, literally a million new Blue Sky users this week as people are just like, Fuck Twitter.
It's a Nazi machine.
So there was like this brief period after Elon took over where people who had like legacy blue checks, which I got when I was a fact checker at The New Yorker, like still had them, but they were going to be stripped away in favor of like paid blue checks, which is just like some random asshole.
And now it's like some random asshole using chat GPT. That's how it's evolved over the last year or so.
But, like, it was, like, the twilight of the blue checks, and I used mine to impersonate a...
Like, I had this account at Swords Jew that, like, had 100,000 followers, and I was like, fuck it, like, you know, this place is going to the dogs, I'm gonna go out, you know, you know, like, they used to say to warriors, like, come back with your shield or on it.
I'm like, I'm going out on my shield.
Like, whatever.
So I impersonated J.K. Rowling.
My handle was at SwordsJu, so if you looked for more than three seconds, you would see.
But I was like, sorry to be such a dementor all along.
Trans people are great.
And by the way, read another book.
You know, trans women are women.
And then I just got fucking nuked.
And for a brief time, I used my former podcast account, and now I'm just like, I don't know, my last post on X was, fuck all of you.
Then I lost my password.
Now I'm just on Blue Sky all the time.
I think that's a great place to leave your account indefinitely, is fuck all of you, and then just never post again.
I think about doing this on almost like a half-hourly basis, so I think you're ahead of the curve, yeah.
I think you should at least try Blue Sky News.
It's really nice because yeah like it's online so everyone's weird and like you'll have people that just like are misunderstanding or like possibly schizophrenic or whatever but like the default isn't like defensive crouch because like a bunch of Nazis and or race scientists and or like weird like AI bot farming accounts are like all the replies.
Yeah.
People will engage with what you have to say.
It's great.
And, you know, you can't go to heaven without passing through the blue sky, I guess.
Facts.
Yeah, no.
Go to the blue sky if you're tired of Twitter, which is a reasonable stance.
And then also pick up her book, Wild Faith, How the Christian Right is Taking Over America.
Like I said, it's dark subject matter, but it's beautifully written.
There's some funny jokes, and it's just put together well, and it's enlightening.
So, yeah, enjoy.
And if you enjoyed the melodic and sonorous tones of my voice, I read the audiobook.
I was gonna say, I was gonna say, if you're like me and you have trouble with attention to sit down and read a book cover to cover, I've been listening to the audiobook and it's very nice.
Like we said at the beginning, you very gently sort of drop us into the hellscape of this ideology and this movement that has, you know, been, yeah, So much a part of our history, so much a part of this country will be so much a part of our future, but at least you sound very nice doing it, which is, you know...
Yeah, I'm just like, let me take your hand and lead you gently into...
Yeah, lead me gently to hell.
Into the gates of hell in the DOJ basement.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and I don't know, guys.
My third book is going to be about sandwiches, and I probably won't get invited on QAA to talk about it.
No, no, you will.
I like talking about sandwiches.
That's a good way to end it on a positive note.
What current sandwich are you plugging?
Like, what's your latest obsession?
So, I generally, I am like a big stan of the grilled cheese sandwich.
I think...
Okay.
If I was going to start a cult or like a religious movement, it would just be giving grilled cheeses to people who are sad or lonely or hungry.
Like, I think a grilled cheese is so great because it's like a perfect thing in and of itself.
And every grilled cheese, like, I'm very ecumenical about it.
Like, I don't care if you do, like, Jarlsberg on, like, the fanciest bread or Wonder Bread on American cheese.
Like, you've created something warm and nourishing and, like, perfect.
And it will sustain you and it will make you happy.
And if you listen to this whole podcast, like, you deserve a grilled cheese and maybe a bowl of tomato soup.
Yes, absolutely.
And a little bit of comfort and warmth in a dark world.
It's like a sun in your hands.
Yes, folks, get out, get that Wonder Bread, get those craft singles, get yourself a nice tomato bisque, do a little bit of dipping, reset, look forward, and we're going to be something.
I'm not going to say okay, but we're going to be something.
And yeah, Talia, thank you for spending your time with us, and thanks for writing the book.
It was really lovely.
It was an honor, and thank you so much.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA Podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAA and subscribe for $5 a month to get a whole second episode every single week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
We've got a website, qaapodcast.com.
Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
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This is...
So it is manifest and plain that God is currently judging America, one of the most fruitful nations ever to exist, and He is judging us by turning us over to the fruitless deeds of darkness.
He is letting us run headlong into the void where no fruit grows, where no harvest has ever been gathered.
Fruitless.
Pay attention to that italicized adjective, fruitless.
What is anal intercourse?
Among other things, fruitless.
What do puberty blockers bring about?
Fruitlessness.
What is abortion?
Violent and bloody fruitlessness.
What is the dink, double income, no kids lifestyle?
Fruitless.
America has enslaved herself to the terrible bondage of orgasms without consequences.
