Weekly Roundup: Bernie Sanders and American Civil (Non) Religion
Brad and Dan discuss why in this sort of crisis everyone's a socialist (2:55), the fallout from the Burr/Loeffler revelations (7:35), and then spend the bulk of the episode discussing why Bernie Sanders would be a revolutionary candidate in religious terms--the first None President in our country's history. They trace histories of anti-Jewish and anti-secular bias in the USA and discuss the dimensions of a non-theist as president(14:15), and reasons for hope--neighbors, neighborhoods, and the rediscovery of in-person interactions! (55:00)
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My name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Skidmore College, and I'm joined today by my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller.
I'm Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
How you doing, Brad?
I'm doing good, as good as anyone, and we were just talking, and I think the social isolation thing has brought out a lot of things, but one of them for me has just been, you know, I don't have kids, but I know you do, and I just, I really do think that those folks with young children at home are facing a much different experience than those without, so are you, are you hanging in there?
Are you okay?
Surviving so far.
Um, the kids are alive and I'm alive and you know, it's all good there.
Yeah.
I mean, we're fortunate that I, you know, I'm on sabbatical this term and can be at home and my wife works from home a fair amount because she's a real estate agent and we don't have childcare.
They're old enough that they're out of that.
So we're, uh, a lot better off than a lot of people who can't stay home with their kids without losing their job or, you know, um, have kids who require kind of constant care.
So yeah, hats off to sort of everybody out there who's dealing with those things.
Yeah, we're thinking of all of you who are not only trying to do homeschooling, we're thinking of how important teachers are, we're thinking of those of you who are going in on the front lines, you know, helping to make things run, you know, those who are working at grocery stores, food workers, People who are cleaning buildings and other facilities and so on and so forth.
So, all right, Dan.
Well today, you know, we are going to do our normal weekly roundup and We're going to start with, did you see that?
And you had some nice thoughts on just what happens in a crisis like this one.
It seems like everyone's politics kind of turns a certain way.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things you and I have talked about a lot in this podcast at different times, and just to set the stage, is that basically, roughly from 1980, from Reagan forward, You've had this kind of political paradigm.
The fancy term for it is neoliberalism and, you know, whatever.
But it's been the dominant kind of political paradigm in the U.S.
and increasingly Western Europe for a long time.
And all the mantras that everybody's familiar with come from that, right?
Big government's bad.
It's not the role of government to take care of citizens.
Government should be small.
Taxes should be cut.
There shouldn't be regulation.
A kind of valorization of a myth of the rugged individual who sort of goes out in his own thing.
And you know whenever there's a crisis I think we've talked about it in the context of school shootings and things like that people will always say oh no no we shouldn't we shouldn't politicize it right as if politics and and existing policies didn't bring it about but we're seeing that again now not with people saying not to politicize it but number one the effects of these policies right we've we've talked about this the fact that people can't be guaranteed that if they take off for two weeks or three weeks or four weeks even if the government orders them to They can't be guaranteed they're going to have a job to go back to.
They can't be guaranteed that they're going to be able to pay their rent.
They can't be guaranteed that they're going to have child care.
There was an article in Time about somebody whose treatment for coronavirus is upwards of like $34,000 out of pocket, right?
Because people don't have coverage.
You got the testing issues, all of that.
But what's interesting is we've had this, we've talked about this, and we're going to talk about Bernie Sanders here in a few minutes.
But we've had this, you know, before all this hit, that sort of Fear and concern about this word socialism.
And it turns out that during a pandemic, even the Republicans are suddenly socialists, right?
They're now on board with sending checks to people.
And I'm all in favor of that, as long as it gets to like real people and not just people who don't really need the check.
They're talking about, Trump is talking about buying, you know, stakes in different companies to help stabilize them.
That's like straight up socialism 101 there, right?
With the government having an active role in those.
Talking about low interest, you know, government guaranteed loans for small business owners or extending unemployment benefits or all of those things.
I think it's really telling that in a time of crisis, it turns out that the politics of the left are what people actually need to try to help each other.
It also just reminds us that government is like, why do we have a government?
I mean, you know, Dan, you know so much more about this than I do in terms of your work and political theory.
It really takes us back to like basic questions of like why do we have a government, you know?
And I think we have a government because we recognize that if we form a government, a government Who's purpose is to help provide services, safety, security, health, and to help all of us enjoy that in ways we could not just as individuals or clans or, you know, whatever it is.
You start to realize in this kind of situation, oh yeah, that's what a government should do.
It should help people with things like health, liberty, food, And so on and so forth.
And so, yeah, I agree with you.
We are seeing, you know, a lot of the talking points of, like, you know, right-wing politics kind of vanish before us, at least in my mind.
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