Brad and Dan begin this 4th of July weekend episode with thoughts from James Baldwin, who discussed his love for America as a "lover's quarrel."
They then lay out the evidence for the fact that the Cold Civil War is escalating--from Trump's Revenge Tour, to new data on how White Evangelicals voted in 2020, to Governor Kristi Noem turning the South Dakota National Guard into soldiers-for-hire, to the Oath Keepers admitting the armed conspiracy to prevent Biden from becoming president on 1/6.
They finish by examining what the Supreme Court's decision on voting rights means moving forward, and how bipartisanship with a toxic party is not a virtue to pursue.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
I am here with my co-host today.
I am Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you, Brad.
I feel like we've, it's a little weird.
It's been like 95 degrees here and it's like 65 today.
How is it in sunny California where you are?
Yeah, we actually did not get the heat wave that has been terrorizing the, uh, the West Coast and Canada.
So, uh, we, we've been lucky.
We've been in the eighties or, uh, and, uh, others have been in the hundreds and the 120.
So it's, it's been tough.
Fire season is starting, so there are fires out here now, and so everybody's just bracing for a very difficult summer.
But it is, Dan, 4th of July weekend, and we need to talk about it.
Last year on 4th of July weekend, we talked about Frederick Douglass and what to the slave is 4th of July.
I wanted today to open with some words from James Baldwin, and they fit in with some events that have happened this week and some things we'll get to.
So here's what Baldwin says.
These are from various sources in Baldwin.
So Baldwin says in 1959, any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began.
He said a couple years later in 1962, societies never know it but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war and he does at his best what lovers do which is to reveal the beloved to himself and with that revelation make freedom real.
It is precisely because I love America more than any other country in the world and exactly for this reason I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
I wanted to bring this up, Dan.
We've had Gwen Berry this week.
I know I've been tweeting and writing about Gwen Berry.
You'll probably talk about what you saw in her protests and the reactions to it.
But last week we did some close readings of texts.
I wanted to do that just to start today.
Baldwin says, the war of an artist with the society is a lover's war.
And then he talks about the right to criticize America perpetually because he loves America more than any other country.
That's how I feel.
I feel like this is the country of my birth, this is my homeland, and my criticism of the United States is not a reflection of my hatred of the United States.
It's a reflection of my desire for the United States to live up to its potential, to be what it could be.
To live out the principles that it has set forth as its guiding lights.
And so there's always this reaction.
If I tweet about this, inevitably someone's going to tweet for me to leave the country, get the hell out of here, all that.
And I just love Baldwin's words here because he says, it's precisely because I love you so much that I want you to be the best you can be.
And I, you know, he likens this to a lover and how, you know, we all want those we love to be the best they can be, to reach their potential.
And sometimes that means we have to be the people in our family's lives and our loved ones lives who tell them the hard truths because no one else can and no one else will.
And I feel like that's part of what we do on this show, or at least we try to.
And I really do love Baldwin's words here on 4th of July weekend.
What do you think?
I agree with everything you just said.
I agree with everything Baldwin said.
No offense.
He says it even better than Bradley Onishi, which is why he's James Baldwin.
But it's a theme that we've picked up on before, right?
And I think it's built in.
One of the things I'm drawn to, you talk about close readings.
I'm not going to take us to the Declaration of Independence.
There are certain, like, almost sacred words, I think, for Americans.
Words like freedom.
Words like rights.
Words like liberty.
Words like, for many, equality.
And I think for good reason, right?
And I think the trick is that those words appear in places like the Declaration of Independence.
And they appear in places like, you know, the Constitution and famous orators and others.
And what protesters like, figures like Baldwin, if you want to call him a protester, or somebody like Gwen Berry in the last week, what they're picking up on is the promise in those words and the gap between what those words can mean and what they can signify and what they can symbolize and what they have actually been, right?
And one of the complications is that oftentimes, you know, the same framers that we revere, the same thinkers that we revere who use those words, They didn't harbor those things.
If people study some of these things, it can be disheartening to find out that John Locke, when he talked about liberty and equality and these kinds of things, he didn't have people who weren't white in mind when he talked about those things.
Immanuel Kant, who's somebody that you're familiar with and I'm familiar with, he's not a name that most regular people read, but he was another one of those thinkers who thought On humanism and what it is to be human and human dignity and human rights is really really central to that whole tradition that comes out of He was a pretty horrific racist when it came to his conception of like who the you know really counts as a human as a person You know, so you get these kind of things.
We've talked a lot about the founders and slavery and, you know, the history of the U.S.
and African Americans and Native Americans and women and others not being accorded that full status.
So you've always had this gap.
And so I'm with you that the critique is not because you hate the country.
It's because the country isn't what it could be, right?
And the reason that I don't go out and protest against, you know, directly, like, what's going on in, like, say, Belarus or someplace like that is, very frankly, it's not my country.
It's not the place that holds that promise to me.
And I know for lots of Belarusians, it is.
And so they protest, right?
It's that same kind of idea.
And, you know, you mentioned Gwen Berry, and the point I just wanted to make is that You know, after the backlash that she received to her protest, she said, you know, I never said I hated the country, right?
And she makes essentially the same point that so many people do, that she is protesting because it is not, for her people, as she said, for African Americans in particular, it is not what it has promised it would be or what those words Sound like they mean liberty and equality and freedom and rights and so I'm with you and I think that that's why for a lot of us.
I think the 4th of July is a really kind of conflicted sort of emotional space that we occupy because oftentimes I think the other thing that happens is you get and this is the way that the logic of the right works and people need to be aware of this.
Well, of course, we have all those words, freedom and liberty and equality, and they've been there since the 18th century.
So we must be a free, equal society.
That's how it was.
It's been 250 years.
Of course, we're a free and equal society, right?
And so every time we come into the Fourth of July and I go to a fireworks display and I'm there and I'm really torn by so many Kinds of emotions of like yeah the patriotism and pride but also discouragement and frankly shame at like what the his you know what what some of the history of our country is and and sometimes what those Frankly militaristic demonstrations might mean and all that kind of stuff so I think it's it's worth remembering that and and I feel like we everybody the big we there and
We just have to learn to live in that ambiguous space and to try to keep pressing forward and never be satisfied that we have fully plumbed the depths of words like liberty and equality and freedom.
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