ANNOUNCING THE FIRST SWAJ LIVE EVENT! https://www.bradonishi.com/nationalism/
Brad and Dan begin by going through the details of Trump's awful no good week of legal woes and lawsuits. Dan piles up the hits against him and shows how the arguments he makes on social media and rallies don't hold up in court. He also points out that the more Trump is pursued by the law, the more his base see him as a suffering martyr.
This sets up the next segment where Brad and Dan go through the creepy salutes people are doing at Trump rallies and other MAGA events around the country. It may seem like par for the course at this point, but it hearkens back to scary stages in the development of fascism from the past.
In the final segment they dig into the widening scandal surrounding DeSantis' Martha's Vineyard stunt. Brad points out that it recalls the "Reverse Freedom Rides" of the 1960s.
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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'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Nice to see you, Brad, as always.
We are recording very late in the day.
I'm sure some of you are listening to this wondering if there's going to be a weekly roundup, but lo and behold, don't worry.
We are here.
Schedules and families and jobs and all kinds of stuff leading us to a later record date.
I'm also going to warn everybody Just unavoidable construction noise coming at you.
It's going to happen today.
There are people in the very close to me doing instruction, and it's a really fun time for everyone, including my one year old daughter, who's, you know, trying to take a nap at various times.
Anyway, Dan.
All of that aside, the frustrations of daily life, the fatigue of living in this era, we have something to look forward to.
November 18, we're going to be in Denver.
Denver is near and dear to your heart, Dan, because you love the Denver Broncos.
I grew up partially in Colorado, and so we're going to be in Denver, November 18 from 7 to 10 p.m.
at the University of Denver for our first Swag Live event.
I know some of you are like, that sounds amazing, but I can't go because I don't live in Denver.
Well, you can attend virtually, you can ask questions virtually, you can chat with other people virtually, and you can be part of it all, even if you can't make it to Denver.
Hopefully you've seen our flyer.
If you have not seen our flyer, click the show notes.
But the speaker lineup is incredible.
Sam Perry, Phil Gorski, Robert Jones, Catherine Stewart, Kiyoti Joshi, yours truly, Dan Miller, who I'm looking at right now, Sarah Mosliner, And a few more.
It's going to be really, really good.
We're really excited about it.
And I'll just throw this out.
Rumor has it that we might be hanging out at some point, you know, after the event in some way.
Going to tease that.
Not going to sort of give all the details there yet.
But if you're in Denver and you can hang, Hopefully we'll get actually a chance to hang in person in some way after the big event.
So Dan, I'm pretty pumped.
Are you feeling pretty good about yourself that our first Swag Live event is in Denver and you can really sort of just bask in the, you know, the Broncos territory and feel really good about hosting your podcast's first big thing in Denver?
I do.
I will say the marketing people at the Broncos haven't gotten back to me yet about any player appearances at the event, but you know, we'll keep our fingers crossed.
But it is a, I don't know, fitting for me.
It's a part of the country that I like and that I still feel sort of as home.
So I'm actually really excited to go there and do this and same as you.
I've had some great just sort of preliminary conversations with some of the folks just, you know, emailing back and forth.
And looking forward to it and just, yeah, encourage everybody to take a look.
And like, like Brad says, if you can't join live, you know, maybe it's not in your budget to get on an airplane and like fly across country just to show up for a, you know, a three hour kind of thing.
Livestream it.
We're really excited.
And I think, I think people will get a lot out of it.
Especially if they listened to all the interviews that you do with these folks.
They, all their work informs everything we do so much.
So I'm really excited to get together and talk with them, especially right after the midterms and hear kind of their reflections on where we're at at that point.
Yeah, and come to Denver, you know, live, like, shake our hand.
Let's talk.
Let's, you know, let's tell some dad jokes.
Let's just do it.
All right, enough of that.
Here we go, Dan.
Today, I think we want to talk about the kind of very ongoing, like it's a very escalating saga of Trump's legal woes.
So we'll just do a rundown for people because it's a little bit dizzying.
I think some of you out there might keep up on it all, but a lot of you are like, I just don't know what's happening.
New York and Mar-a-Lago and everything in between.
So talk about that.
I also just want to then use that to kind of set up the fact that Trump's rallies and other MAGA world rallies are getting more and more extremist, if that's possible.
And I'll just say that this past week, there was what seemed to be something akin to a Heil Hitler kind of signal or gesture at his rally and some of the other at Trump's rally and some others.
Now, it's not We're never sure what these gestures are, but anyway, we'll get into why it's incredibly worrying.
I think we also just want to touch back on the migrant story from Martha's Vineyard and DeSantis and just talk about dehumanization and what that does and how ramping up dehumanization rhetoric is a classic proto kind of stage of fascism and why that's really worrying.
So Dan, take us through Trump's legal woes and just what happened this week that kind of Really make those worse.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWAGE episode.
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