Brad and Dan kickoff this New Year's Day roundup with a look at the false binary anti-vaxxers use to criticize the COVID vaccine and put forth a bad argument as to why they shouldn't get it. Dan discusses the case of NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, while Brad uses the binary reference point to show why anti-vaxxers are natural allies to those who adhere to fundamentalist religions.
They then discuss the very cringe worthy poster for the Alpha Conference--a gathering for male entrepreneurs who want to be "Alphas" in business and life. Brad dispels the myth of the Alpha male, while pointing out how it damages both men and women.
The episode finishes with the wild details of how Madison Cawthorn met his wife. It involves a cruise. Russia, and a man named Captain Todd.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Recording in 2022, Brad.
It's good to see you as we start another new year that I hope is better than last year.
I said this a year ago, so if we keep saying this long enough, maybe it'll be true.
Yeah, no, Happy New Year.
It's definitely strange.
We didn't record like we usually do on a Friday, New Year's Eve, but here we are.
And part of that is I shared this and I've said some of it publicly, so I might as well just say part of that, friends, is we had a weird COVID, not weird, but we just had a COVID sort of thing in our house and we had some people test positive and we have a new baby.
Everyone is fine.
And we got some negative tests back.
Baby does not have COVID and all that stuff.
So things are kind of settling down in our house.
But the last week's been a pretty wild ride and full of anxiety and kind of worry about all of that.
And so anyway, we are a day late.
It's also New Year's Day, Dan.
So I want to say, Um, for Japanese folks, Japanese American folks, New Year's Day is like a really big deal.
So, uh, it always brings back these memories of like when I was a kid and we'd go to my grandma's and there'd be like 50 people there and we ate, you know, you're supposed to, in order to have good luck for the coming year, you're supposed to eat certain foods in a certain order.
And, um, yeah, those were like really good times.
And, but I bring that up because I didn't realize until I was like 15 that like other people don't, Think of New Year's Day as a big deal.
It's like the day you sleep off the hangover or just like sleep in.
I just thought New Year's Day was, for us, it was always as big a deal as like Christmas or anything else.
So I'm still, as like an old man, I'm still like getting used to the fact that New Year's Day for most people is like, let's wake up late and eat pancakes and watch a movie, not like gather with 47 cousins and eat fertility stew in order to make sure next year is awesome and there's more kids.
I don't know.
Anyway.
Do you have any New Year's Day traditions, or is it just, you know, sleep and recover?
Yeah, I'm in that very, I guess, non-Japanese American white guy background.
Yeah, like, yeah, New Year's Day to me was always like, just sort of a, like a, not much of a day.
More that I would go somewhere and then get annoyed because I'd forget that stores were closed and stuff.
Like, yeah, so.
I actually envy that, though, because I'm one of those, depending how people like to think of it, I'm either romantic or nostalgic or a dork or whatever, because I like the holiday season and even some of the kitschiness of it and like whatever.
And so adding like another like serious holiday, like turning New Year's into a serious holiday sounds good to me.
So someday post-COVID, maybe I'll travel to wherever you are and have fertility stew.
Well, I'm pretty sure I've never had that.
Yeah, no, I mean, the food on New Year's Day, I mean, it's it's tough.
I mean, people are like, get to the point here, pal.
We came here for politics.
But I'll just say.
It's one of those days when I was a kid, I was really picky eater, but as an adult, you realize like it wasn't just fertility stew.
I mean, the food, anytime I brought a friend or like anyone to this gathering, they were like they looked at me like wide eyed because the food is just out of this world.
We had all the homemade stuff, right?
You know, sushi and tempura and And squid and everything, I don't know, sorry, I'm getting nostalgic now.
But see, here's the thing, it's not anti-politics or non-politics, because I think what you really need to do is take on the war on New Year's that's clearly been waged by all non-Japanese Americans.
I think this is your real wedge issue to build the movement that you've been trying to get people to get on board with.
So here it is, the war on New Year's.
Petition coming, people.
Get ready to sign.
All right, here we go, Dan.
We want to talk today.
It's New Year's, and we are looking back on a 2020 and a 2021 that were filled with, among other things, COVID, and a 2022 that is now being, in many ways, launched with the Omicron variant running rampant.
As I just said, we had our own brush with that this week.
I know many people are dealing with it.
It feels to me, Dan, a little bit like we're back to the beginning of the pandemic where there was no vaccines because Omicron feels so contagious that if you have people in your life who are immunocompromised or like in my case a child who's not old enough to be vaccinated, etc.
It just feels like even going into a store is pretty risky because you don't know if just sort of walking next to someone even with a mask you might get it or whatever.
This brings us, though, to maybe the first kind of, you know, big COVID story of the year, and that is the ongoing saga with Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.
I know for some people, this is not a big story.
They're like, haven't even heard of this.
But I think for you, it really does sort of epitomize The growing and now very entrenched anti-vax sediments that we have.
I mean, we're a year and a year and change into having vaccines, Dan, and we still have people who are spewing all kinds of stuff about why they don't need to be vaccinated.
And there's two classes of people and everything else.
So I'll send this over to you.
What's going on with Rogers and how does this sort of epitomize the whole anti-vax movement that continues to plague our country?
Yeah, so I know not everybody's into the NFL.
Not everybody's going to watch Aaron Rodgers or pay any attention to what he says.
But there are millions of people who do.
For those who follow or just want to know about the NFL football season, it's now kind of getting ready for playoffs.
So this is the time when the best teams kind of emerge, and the Green Bay Packers are one of those teams.
Aaron Rodgers is a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame when he retires at some point.
He's one of the best quarterbacks, not just in the league now, but historically.
So he's a big-name figure.
He was also the guest host of Jeopardy!
for a period of time and got kind of a lot of plaudits and notoriety for that and just did really well at it.
So he kind of got a broader audience and a broader hearing.
And so why am I talking about him?
Because he is, for me, this kind of microcosm window into what has been going on in the U.S.
about vaccines all of 2021, right?
As we look back over what the last year was like.
And as you say, I've made this point before and the numbers keep changing, but in a positive way where I just want to throw out there, you mentioned The vaccines, the U.S.
has administered over 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
That's half a billion doses.
That's more than enough for every man, woman and child in the U.S.
Numerically, of course, like not every man, woman and child in the U.S.
can have vaccine.
But the point is that the arguments that there's something weird about it or things we don't know about it or side effects that are going to emerge or whatever, it's just it's just not plausible.
Half a million dose or excuse me, half a billion doses in.
So here's what happened, and the reason I think Aaron Rodgers is interesting is because he's come out just full-on anti-vaxxer now, but no doubt still does not see himself as an anti-vaxxer, and I think he captures, and I talked about this with the comments he made previously that we'll mention briefly, he captures the way that people fall into these ideologies, right?
You and I will talk about White nationalism or Christian nationalism or anti-vaxxing or any number of belief systems and ideologies that people have.
And I think that a lot of people really truly believe that that is not them, right?
They can't step outside and see what they're saying or see what they're Uh, or what they're into.
So, so here's, here's what happened.
Um, this is a background on Rogers.
Um, back in August, he, uh, he was asked if he'd been vaccinated.
He said he had been immunized.
It turns out that he was not vaccinated.
He sought some kind of homeopathic remedies and things like this.
And so he was not vaccinated.
The NFL knew this, and there's a different set of protocols for unvaccinated players.
Uh, he was following all of those and so forth, but then he tested positive, uh, for COVID a little less than, uh, two months ago.
Right.
And he said that he was allergic to some unspecified ingredient.
He said he had done lots of research.
He did what was best for his body and so forth.
Was pretty defiant, but was really clear.
He said that he was not an anti-vaxxer, that it wasn't about opposing the vaccines and so forth.
And this is the point that I made back then, and people can go back and listen to it, that this is how people fall into these ideologies.
Well, this week he goes back on a sports show, the Pat McAfee Show, which is where he made these statements before, and really like doubles and triples down on this, and demonstrates all the key elements for me of anti-vaxxer ideology, and how it works, and how it plays out.
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