Weekly Roundup: An Assassination Attempt Gone to the Right
Brad and Dan begin by discussing the attack on Paul Pelosi. Brad discusses the conspiracy theories that have taken hold surrounding the attack and why the jokes, memes, and laughs coming from the American Right reveal how they think of the country - and themselves.
Dan then dives into Kanye West's anti-Semitic remarks and discusses his history of anti-Blackness.
The episode finishes with an examination of the open racial fear mongering on GOP midterm ads in the South.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show starts in a 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.
As always, glad to see you, Brad.
Yeah.
So we are in the teeth of the semester, about to have a time change.
And, uh, I was like thinking, Oh, we're going to fall back this weekend.
It's going to be great.
I'm going to sleep in an hour.
And then I realized I'm not going to do that because I have a one-year-old and a one-year-old doesn't seem to care about daylight savings time.
So I've tried to explain it to her and, uh, nonetheless, she refuses to listen.
So I don't think I'll actually be sleeping in.
It's funny how that works.
Yeah.
I had little ones that were, uh, you know, 5 a.m.
risers.
So the spring forward one was always the worst.
Cause you're just looking at the clock.
You're like, sweet, sweet.
When you learn how to, when you, when you learn how to communicate with the one-year-old and explain to them the benefits of adult sleep, definitely patent that and pass it on and you'll make all the money you want.
So, so good for you in advance.
I will.
Yeah, I will definitely abandon this podcast and just go straight into, like, Guy giving, you know, advertisements on late night television after Dr. Oz about my sleep method that I've learned with one year olds.
All right.
We've got like two weeks, a little more than two weeks, but something like that.
Actually, no, Dan, we have two weeks from today.
What am I saying?
It's two weeks from today.
We're going to be in Denver and a bunch of you signed up.
We've had like a ton of signups over the last week, which has been amazing.
But some of you are still like, oh, yeah, I haven't done that yet.
And I know you you know that.
So it's time to sign up.
We have an amazing lineup of guests.
You all know Robert Jones and Phil Gorski and Sam Perry and Catherine Stewart and Larisha Hawkins.
We're going to hang out and talk about things after the event and kind of get to know one another.
But the thing that really is on my mind, Dan, and I'll just be really honest, is we have midterms coming and they haven't happened yet, but they will happen here in the next few days.
And I think once that happens, we're going to feel, not that we don't now, but This renewed sense of trying to figure out what's going on.
So that's the point of our Denver event is to kind of analyze and dissect what's, what happened in the midterms with people who are experts in these fields and studying these things all the time.
So if you're thinking about midterms, if, if Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter or Carrie Lake's work in Arizona, or, you know, news out of rallies in Wisconsin or New Hampshire are, are worrying you then, um.
You know, one thing I would say is the whole point of Denver is to talk about this stuff.
So join us virtually.
Join us in person.
We just want to see you.
And honestly, can't wait, Dan, for that.
I'm pretty excited.
And I will be sleeping in a hotel room, which will mean there will there will be just for like a day or two.
No one year old who will be my alarm clock at whatever hour she decides to get up that day.
So that will actually be kind of nice, too.
All right, lots to talk about today.
We're going to talk about Paul Pelosi.
We're going to talk about Kanye West.
We're going to talk about the new Southern strategy of the GOP, which is perhaps even worse than the first one.
Or actually, it is worse than the first one.
So those are some of the things on our mind today.
Let's talk about Paul Pelosi, Dan, because we didn't talk about it last week.
In my mind, there's a lot here that kind of reveals the psychology of right-wing politics in this country and the ways that we talk about victims and others, is the way I'll put it for now.
But let me just say to you, I had some time to digest the news, thoughts on Pelosi about a week on.
I think part of my thought about Pelosi, and we'll get into this, is the way I'm reading things the last day or two about this new wave of GOP political ads where they're talking about they're trying to appeal to moderate voters.
Aren't you tired of divisive politics?
Aren't you tired of the attacks?
This gaslighting when the GOP for over half a decade now has done nothing but.
I mean really I'm just thinking about the Trump year.
Think all the way back to the election of Obama when they became the party of no.
Think back to the election of Obama when Mitch McConnell said our top priority is to make Obama a one-term president.
When oppositional politics attacking at all costs became the norm for the GOP, And now that they're facing pushback saying, we think that your rhetoric contributed to this, and we'll dive more deeply into that.
But that's one of the things that just sort of galls me that I've noticed, this kind of gaslighting.
I know I use the phrase Orwellian a lot.
It is.
If people want to go and do some 1986 reading of spending Years and years and years crafting a party that is about nothing but culture war attacks, walking up to and sometimes crossing the line in advocating violence.
And we can bring in J6 here, we can bring in everything else.
But that's one of the things that I noted is that now all of a sudden they've tried to flip the script and say, Well, gee, God, can you believe that those those Democrats are like they're always attacking people and so on.
So I think the rhetoric of violence and the way that it's being deployed is maybe part of what what really stands out to me about this and the way that it can be taken up in different directions.
And now a GOP effort to suddenly distance themselves from what they've been doing for four years.
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