Brad and Dan begin this episode with a prolonged discussion of the newly released audio of Kevin McCarthy calling for Trump's resignation and the revelations in the 2000+ texts of Mark Meadows revealed this week. Brad argues that in the McCarthy tapes you can see an alternative pathway for the country--one where the GOP and its media entourage called out the traitorousness of Trump and his team before, during, and after J6. But instead, the Meadows texts show, we got conspiracy theories, the Big Lie, and are now on the precipice of an authoritarian takeover in the next cycle of elections.
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The second segment is a mythbuster--Dan uses the various events in Florida (from book banning to the war on Disney to the war on trans people to the war on CRT) to uncover the real nature of contemporary American conservativism. It uses government as a weapon for identity politics, culture wars, and censorship.
This leads to a brief analysis of the debate about forgiving student loans.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I don't even remember my name anymore, but I'm glad to be with this guy doing a podcast.
No, my name is Dan Miller.
I'm Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and I am glad to see you, Brad.
I think so everybody can know that if you go to graduate school in the humanities and like say religion, you don't do lots of seminars on like, you know, technical issues and how to get your computer to recognize mics and things.
So I think we just both feel glad to be here at this point in time.
Yeah, I'm definitely having technical issues today, and so there's no way around it.
So I may not sound as crisp and clear as usual, you know, but anyway, friends, I hope you can cope with us today.
However, there's some good news, bad news here.
A lot of good news.
Don't get me wrong.
The bad news is actually good news, too.
So the bad news is our seminar with Sarah Mosner on Periodic Culture is absolutely full, and so we're not able to take any more registrations.
Some of you reached out, and we're just super excited about that.
There's a ton of good news, though.
You ready for the good news, everybody?
One, we're hoping to run Sarah's seminar again in August or September, and so we're working out the details.
Once we have those, we'll share them, and you can get ready and sign up for the next version and the next iteration of Sarah's seminar.
The other good news, it just keeps coming, is that we have another seminar to offer you, and that is in June of 2022, and that will be with none other than the illustrious Dan Miller, and the seminar is Christian nationalism and identity politics.
So Dan, you mind just telling us a little bit about the seminar and what you have planned?
Yes, it's two of the things that people listen to the podcast we hear about a lot.
If you listened to my series on identity politics, you know, some of that will be familiar, but Really bringing together issues that we continue to hear about, we continue to talk about.
We're going to be talking about it today of why does the contemporary GOP in particular care so much about certain cultural issues and make the decisions they do.
We've talked about Christian nationalism, and I'm looking at this as a kind of identity politics and helping people understand, number one, what do we mean By Christian nationalism, who are these people?
What is that identity that works that way?
How do group identities like Christian nationalists or any other identities work?
And how does that help us to understand Christian nationalism?
How does that help us to understand, say, stuff going on in Florida right now that we're going to be talking about?
Or ongoing issues with January 6 and so forth and so really comes from a lot of feedback I've gotten from folks and questions that keep coming allows a little bit deeper dive in some things.
You don't have to be an academic or a specialist to take it.
People who are just curious about this stuff can take it.
You're one of those people with an Uncle Ron that we reference all the time, and you just want to have a little bit better sense of who the hell Uncle Ron is and why he thinks the things that he does, feel free to join us.
But if you are a scholar or a journalist or an academic or somebody, and you just want to take a little bit deeper dive in this, And connect these two ideas, Christian nationalism and how identity feeds that a little bit more, then that's where we'll be going.
And related to that, I'll throw out too, and just plug again while I've got the mic here, that I have also kicked off a new series.
It's called It's in the Code, basically decoding the way that American Christians talk about stuff.
What does it mean if you see the word Bible in a church name?
It tells you all kinds of stuff.
What does it mean if a church says it's open and affirming?
What does it mean if a church says that they are spirit-driven or something like that or any other number of things?
I let out this week and invited folks to reach out and give me topics.
I'd love this to be a kind of ground up, from the ground up sort of thing.
And several people have reached out, but my email is DanielMillerSwaj, DanielMillerSWAJ@gmail.com.
Would love to hear from you.
Obviously can't promise I'll get to like every topic or phrase that people give me, but I'd like that to be sort of driven from that.
So yeah, we've got the seminar coming up.
Folks can look at that on Straight White American Jesus on the website.
It'll be Tuesday evenings in June and the new series that has started, and I'll be releasing new episodes weekly.
So, yeah, really excited about a lot of that kind of stuff and turning the corner from some of the things I've been working on to some new stuff.
The good news is just abundant.
It's abundant this Friday.
We can all see, at least Dan and I can, the end of the school year, which I think is putting us in a good mood.
One more piece of good news.
I'm giving a talk next week at the CAP Center, our partner for this show, down at UCSB.
And so, if you live somewhere near Santa Barbara, come on by.
If not, the talk's Wednesday night, 5.30 Pacific Time, and I'll share the Zoom link.
You can jump in on Zoom, and I would appreciate it a lot if, in the comments, In the Zoom meeting, you could make disparaging comments about my haircut and my outfit and things like, you know, say things like, oh, I've been listening to the show and I thought he would be taller.
Or, you know, I've been listening to the show and he really needs to do something about those eyebrows.
You know, comments like this, I think, would be really helpful and very much appreciated.
So, all right.
Dan, we got some things to talk about this week.
And we're going to start, we're going to go back to something we I have shown great discipline, Dan, over the last couple of months because we've not talked about it.
We have not talked about January 6th since really like February.
But we're going to talk about it today because there's just new things here to talk about.
And I just think we need, at times, a reminder of where we are as a republic because where we are is a dangerous place.
So there's new audio that was released as part of a book that's coming out.
Called This Shall Not Pass by a couple of New York Times reporters.
And it's Kevin McCarthy, who's the minority Speaker of the House and somebody who desperately, desperately, desperately wants to be Speaker of the House someday.
And here is some of the audio coming from McCarthy right in the wake of January 6th.
And this will lead us to some further comment just about where the country's gone since then.
In our next segment, in a minute here, just a preview, we'll talk a lot about what's happening down in Florida.
Once again, As a kind of indication of where conservative politics are in this country.
But for now, let's listen to Kevin McCarthy.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
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