Weekly Roundup September 4, 2020: Man. Woman. Losers. Suckers. Soldiers.
Dan confesses that 1st grade on Zoom is more intimidating than translating French philosophy or reading Hebrew. He and Brad then discuss the bombshell report on Trump calling soldiers losers, his defense of white nationalist vigilantism, and his encouraging people to vote twice. They then discuss the latest polls and Biden's chances in the electoral college. They then discuss how our political landscape has been reduced to an infuriating binary--as evidenced by Franklin Graham's approach to this election. They finish by covering terrifying stories from QAnon, Trump pushing through a vaccine unsafely, and the sidelining of Dr. Fauci.
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Axis Mundy Axis Mundy Axis Mundy Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Skidmore College, and here with my co-host, I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you, Brad.
You too, Dan.
We're in the semester.
We're both a little bit sort of I don't know what the right word is, balancing various responsibilities.
I was just going to say punchy at this point, just sort of generally.
Well, and you confessed to me that you went to your kids like first grade, 90 minute Zoom introduction, here's how you do virtual teaching.
And Dan Miller, who has a PhD, who I know reads many languages, Hebrew, Greek, French, has written complicated books.
And you feel like you were pretty overwhelmed by that first grade introduction, is that right?
Yeah, I think the first grade introduction might be the personally scariest part of the pandemic so far.
I felt completely overwhelmed looking at this schedule and they've got all these subgroups and whatever.
Yeah, give me 20th century French philosophy anytime, so that's a piece of cake.
Translate Derrida on violence and no problem.
Figure out how to do first grade on Zoom.
Complete breakdown, so okay.
All right, friends, a big announcement here just at the top.
Logistical thing.
We have switched our show over to Anchor, and that means that if you are accustomed to finding us on Podomatic, please update your bookmarks to anchor.fm slash straight white american jesu.
Dan, I worked really hard to find a better They only allow you so many characters, and we were one off, so we are now anchor.fm slash Straight White American J-Zoo.
I don't know what that means.
We could have done Swag, we could have done whatever.
Anyway, friends, look for us.
For many of you, this will mean no change because you download the show somewhere else and you have it on your podcast app or whatever, but if you do find us on Podomatic, please, please, please, we're gonna make sure that switch is over soon, so please do that.
All right, Dan.
I just want to throw out that the real reason, and maybe divine intervention, I don't know, is that the church that I was co-pastor, I was called the anchor.
So I think really, secretly, that's the real reason that happened.
Well, praise Jezu.
That's what I have to say to that, Dan.
- I said I was punchy, man.
It's, yeah. - All right, so friends, we are again recording Friday night.
So it used to be that Dan Miller and Brad Onishi went to evangelical rallies on Friday nights.
And then there was a time where on Friday nights, they went to fancy dinners at Oxford and drank way too much wine.
And stayed out late at night.
And then somehow they got old and now they record this podcast talking about religion and politics on Friday nights.
So you should play a drinking game.
Every time we say the Falwells, you should drink.
Every time we have a Christian or a conservative or an evangelical who calls someone else a Marxist or a socialist.
I think that should be a drink.
Dan, what else?
Every time we mention something about the polls or Trump or what do you got?
Well, Trump will jump in a swimming pool of alcohol.
That's true.
Everyone will have alcohol poisoning.
I think lately we've got Kenosha is a good one in there.
Yeah, this drinking game, it's starting to feel a little bit morbid.
I don't know how I feel about it.
Or a little too easy.
Yeah, well that's true.
Everyone's gonna be drunk after 20 minutes of the thing here.
Alright, Dan, we got a lot to cover.
We're gonna talk religion, we're gonna talk polls, we're gonna talk all kinds of things.
Real quick, would you want to summarize for us?
What happened with another person who was identifying as black and in fact was not black?
And it's touching on us from different angles because this person is part of the Academy.
So would you just give us a 30-second explainer on that if folks are kind of confused about Rachel Dolezal II?
Yeah, so people might have seen this online today.
That's where I came across it.
A professor named Jessica Krug, K-R-U-G, I think that's how you pronounce her last name, at George Washington University.
She's an associate professor, which for those who don't know how academies work, that means that she's been promoted.
Most academics will only ever achieve the rank of associate professor, so it means that she's well-established, that she has a strong research record in Washington.
Um, but her whole career has been built on African and Latin American studies.
And more importantly, she has presented herself as a member of those communities, as having both, I guess, depending on the context, South American or Puerto Rican Ancestry as well as African American and or Afro Caribbean, I think.
Identities apparently shifted a bit.
Really explicit as appeal to her ancestors and her parents and growing up in the Bronx and all this kind of stuff.
And she, in this kind of, I don't know, confession or something, I don't know what you want to call it, and that's a thing we can actually get into.
Said that she actually, that's not her background at all, that she's described herself as a white Jewish girl from the Kansas City suburbs.
Basically all of her background issues were made up.
Which is problematic given her areas of scholarship and the way that she has related her identity to those, never mind just the the kind of appropriation of identity and so on.
So it struck me, I think it struck you, my students brought it up today in class, particularly my students who are not members of communities of color or say LGBTQ communities and They see this and they want to be allies and they're passionate about things like Black Lives Matter or, you know,
Human rights campaign or, you know, whatever and they see this and they're sort of confused and they get nervous about, you know, are they doing something wrong if they support these things and they're not part of those communities.
So we're led to a lot of really complex discussions of identity and the way that it relates to these.
You and I have kind of talked about this before, you know, on the show.
I don't tick any minority boxes really of any kind.
You've talked about your own mixed ancestry and how the ambiguities of that.
Anyway, it's something that you and I are really cognizant of and aware of given our interests and emphases and not wanting to fall into the kind of trap that, I don't know the background of this, but I'll bet that once upon a time it was something small.
Somebody took her as black or she misspoke or something and She probably grabbed a hold of that and it kind of snowballed from there, would be my guess.
But anyway, it was an issue, I think, of relevance for us, both as academics generically, but I think also given some of the interests and concerns we have that people have heard us talk about, you know, certainly our students for years and anybody listening to the podcast.
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