Andrew Seidel, Katherine Stewart, Rob Boston on Hope and Fear in 2024 - And Beyond
Brad shares the recording of a roundtable he hosted at Americans United's Summit for Religious Freedom. He asked Andrew Seidel, Katherine Stewart, and Rob Boston what they are worried about in the year ahead - and what gives them surprising amounts of hope as we careen toward 2024. They expound on SCOTUS, public schools, LGBTQ+ rights, and more.
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Today I have the privilege of sharing with you a roundtable that I hosted back in April with just a number of great people.
So I had a chance to talk to Andrew Seidel, constitutional lawyer, Who is the author of American Crusade and The Founding Myth, and somebody who works at Americans United, as well as Catherine Stewart, who is the author of The Power Worshippers, and Rob Bosson, who also works at Americans United and has been writing about the religious right since The 1990s.
And so our conversation really focused on two questions.
One of them was first, what is it that you're watching in the year ahead?
What are the things that you're keeping an eye on?
The things that you're worried about?
Second, what are the things that give you hope?
Where are the sources of light and of optimism in your mind?
And what followed was just an incredibly fascinating, insightful, and I think, in many ways, affirming conversation.
And I learned a lot talking to these folks, and I hope you will too.
So thank you for listening.
As always, find us at Straight White JC.
Find me at Bradley Onishi.
You can always use your help on PayPal or Patreon.
And also Venmo, that's in the show notes.
Catch everything we're doing at straightwhiteamericanjesus.com.
Otherwise, here's the interview.
You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
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So what we're going to do is give people hope in one second.
We're going to talk about the ways that we are fighting, that we are organizing.
But before we do that, I want to ask a question, and that's this.
We've done a lot of historical work at this conference.
We've talked a lot about what has taken place since the 50s or the 60s or the 90s or during the Trump presidency.
I want to focus on the future real quick, because I think it can sometimes be something that we don't lose sight of, but the urgency may slip from our minds at times.
When it comes to religious liberty, Bible in schools, mandatory religious practice in schools, reproductive rights, trans rights, free and fair elections.
What does a Trump or DeSantis or, or GOP presidency slash control of Congress look like from 2024 to 2032?
Just give me one issue.
We're going to do hope in a minute.
Okay.
But we got to do this first.
All right.
So Rob, what do you think?
Well, I mean, you mentioned a number of issues there.
One issue that's been interesting to me over the years is the proper role of religion in public education, because you can teach about religion as an academic subject, and students absolutely have the right to engage in voluntary religious activity and reading of religious texts on their free time, but to have organized coercive forms of prayer That's been unconstitutional since 1962.
Now, that decision and the subsequent 63 decision were not overturned by the Supreme Court in the Bremerton case, but wait more years of this, who knows, we could lose that 60-year-old precedent.
And then you're talking about public schools that essentially become the parochial school system for whatever religion happens to dominate in a given area, be a disaster.
So much to add to that, but we'll be brief.
I'll take on reproductive rights for now.
Don't be fooled by the Supreme Court's punting on the Pristone.
This is a movement that is determined to ban all abortions from the moment of conception, or as I often hear at these national pro-life summits and right-to-life marches, from the moment of fertilization, they want to ban all abortions.
But it's really linked to a broad, the assault on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy is linked to a broad range of rights.
They won't be satisfied with banning abortions.
They will go after various forms of birth control.
This will reach very deep, not only into maternal medicine, we already have a shocking and disgraceful level of maternal deaths in our country.
If you look at the graphs over the last couple of years, it's like a hockey stick.
It's going up as more and more restrictions come into play.
But it's going to affect, they're not just going to go after women having abortions, they're going to go after friends, family, mail carriers, internet service providers, anybody who participates in the obtaining of an abortion.
And I go to these Right-wing and anti-abortion gatherings, and you hear the leaders speaking, they are adamant that they want to ban abortion all over the country.
They don't see this as a quote-unquote states' rights issue.
They've never, it's always been this sort of incremental chipping away, chipping away, chipping away.
And Supreme Court is a very, I think, politically sensitive body.
They're like, oh gosh, well, we're afraid of the backlash.
Depending on what happens in 2024, I think we could see them sort of carry out that agenda completely, and that's very frightening.
I would agree with both of those for sure.
Public schools, I'm deeply worried about.
I mean, Christian nationalists are not just out to get vouchers and to get prayer into schools.
They're trying to destroy the public school system.
Read Catherine's books if you are not familiar with some of that.
That is one of the goals of vouchers.
Um, certainly I concur on reproductive rights, right, that the end of row is just the beginning.
They're coming for contraception, as she said, they're coming for everything.
And I mean, I'm also deeply worried for my LGBTQ friends and family.
They're coming for marriage equality, and they may even have the votes on the Supreme Court to do it.
People forget that the only time John Roberts read a dissent from the bench was in the Obergefell decision.
And you can go listen to it online right now.
I mean, he is an angry person reading that dissent.
And they don't even need him to overturn it.
So, I mean, that is clearly the front, I think, that they want to fight on.
They are looking at our trans brothers and sisters and siblings and saying, we can divide the other side by targeting them.
And that is one of the things they are trying to do.
And if we're not careful, they'll be successful at it.
I just want to talk briefly about state houses.
And there was an attempt in 2022 to elect folks who were election deniers to be secretaries of state and so on.
And that was fought tooth and nail and largely successful.
Jenna Griswold in Colorado and other folks really were leading that fight.
But I think ignoring how state legislatures are a part of the puzzle for a federal takeover is a big mistake.
And I think there's a long-term plan, too, to make sure that if you control enough state legislatures, you can send fake electors.
You can talk about independent state legislature theory.
You can talk about passing constitutional amendments and so on and so forth.
So, all right, we have a couple minutes before we're going to start questions, but I just want to ask now to turn to Hope and ask everybody, what is one either solution or way forward, or what is one thing you're seeing in terms of momentum or organizing that is giving you hope for the future?
Yeah, on the question of hope, despite how dire we have sounded tonight, there is hope.
There absolutely is hope.
Look at the backlash that is building.
The America that the Supreme Court is trying to foist onto us is an America that does not work for this nation right now.
And it certainly isn't going to work for it in the years to come.
You can see this backlash building.
When red states like Kentucky and Kansas vote by popular referendum to support abortion rights, when a red wave that we were supposed to see in the midterms elections fizzles out, When voters in Wisconsin go to the polls and put a progressive jurist on the Supreme Court and tip the balance.
When the election deniers, as Brad indicated, who many people thought would win, in fact, lose.
There is grounds for hope.
Now, understand me.
This is going to be a long-term project.
You need to be in this for the long haul.
We are not going to get this back overnight, but we will get it back if you think of Christian nationalism as a disease, the cure is separation of church and state.
So our task is to rebuild that wall, as I said in the panel this afternoon, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, brick by brick.
And I urge you, all of you, to be with us for the long haul in this project.
That was amazing, and I agree, we can't fight this situation unless people really know what they're up against.
And I'm seeing more and more folks really understand what we're up against.
I'm seeing Folks who are more willing to engage in the work of democracy building.
I think that we're actually engaging in the political process in meaningful ways.
When I started writing about these issues back in, well, 2010-2011, I A lot of folks just weren't aware.
They would say, what are you talking about?
Obama's the president.
Like, I don't know what you're talking about.
And now everybody really gets it.
I think post-January 6th, post-Dobbs, a lot of people finally woke up.
And I think that awareness is the first step.
But I'm also seeing more strategizing, more of an emphasis on doing the actual work of building a democracy and defending democracy.
It's so lovely to be on this panel because just awesome.
Anyway, go to au.org slash pledge.
You can sign our pledge that will bring you into an activist pipeline.
We're going to ladder you up to get you working to defend the separation of church and state.
This is a pledge.
One nation, all beliefs that we're going to We're going to take this country back for all of us.
We're going to take it back from the white Christian nationalists.
And to me, the thing that I really do have hope about is, I mean, both of you touched on this, is every time they win, because they are fighting for just this small group of people, they're fighting for minority rule.
That's what you're talking about when you're talking about them conquering the legislatures.
They are fighting for conservative, white, heterosexual men, Christian men to have the power.
And to be the only ones who are truly protected under our law.
So every time they win, they are alienating more people.
Every time the court decides in their favor in a case like Dobbs, it is waking more people up to the danger that we face, to the threat that exists, and driving more people into the arms of our movement if we are there ready to catch them.
So that is one thing that I think I'm very hopeful about and we're working desperately to make sure people have a home and the Summit for Religious Freedom is going to be that home for activism in the future.
I'll just say I get a chance to talk to young people quite a bit as a college professor.
And here at the Summit, I had a chance to interview several of the AU student fellows, and they give me a lot of hope.
And I'll tell you, both of the folks who I interviewed come from places that we would consider red states.
And if you listen to my show and you've heard me talk, I really don't like that, that way of categorizing things.
Reverend Barber says there's no red states, there's oppressed states.
And so the folks that we talked to this weekend are in places like Missouri, places like Tennessee, where from afar, you might think, well, things have gotten really, really, really deeply right wing there in a short amount of time.
And yet on the ground, there are people organizing.
On the ground, there are people finding ways to be in solidarity, to not give up.
And to say that if we are together, there's always hope, right?
And I think that's my encouragement, if you're watching online or if you're here this weekend, is fatigue sets in when you're alone and when you allow the bad news to just seep in.
Energizing and dynamism happens when you're together with others.
And it's not about a short-term victory, okay?
And I just agree with Rob and everyone else that if you think this is okay, Christian nationalism is a disease, And we're going to take some antibiotics, get that out of our system, and then we'll be back to playing golf and tennis and having a great time.
It's not like that, OK?
It's not a cold that the nation gets over.
It's a continual threat that the body politic here will face as long as any of us in the room Um, are living and beyond, I am sure.
So, uh, there's deep hope for me in the places that look like there is least hope because there are people there who are finding ways, creative ways to, to fight back.
All right.
We want to, um, now open up questions, uh, from the audience and folks who want to interject into the conversation.
So if you have a question, feel free to, to signal me and I'll, uh, I'll try to, um, to get to you as soon as we can.
So, um, okay, Jesse.
So, um, we have to sit here and tolerate while we wait.
We have to tolerate trans youth and trans people committing suicide while they wait for health care.
We have to tolerate women dying waiting for abortion procedures.
We have to tolerate this.
What is our actual breaking point before we start screaming?
I mean, it's just it makes me so angry because it's It's a toleration of this stuff because it is just, we have to wait.
It's a waiting procedure until something's done in the courts.
Because we do it legally.
We do it the right way.
We do everything the right way.
But we tolerate everything until then.
So if you're with us online, I just want to reiterate the question.
The question is, what is the breaking point?
Because there are moments of tolerating the pain and the oppression that feel as if they just lead to a place of being unbearable.
So what is the strategy for coping with that and how does one do that?
We didn't get here overnight.
We didn't get to this place.
The movement spent 50 years investing in infrastructure building, starting in the, I would say, late 1970s, early 1980s.
They started investing in infrastructure.
They started strategizing and they built their movement gradually and over time.
And there's no magic bullet that's going to solve this.
I mean, this type of political change takes It takes time, it takes movement building, it takes infrastructure building.
Sometimes I think about the words of the Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas, whose relatives were enslaved, whose ancestors were enslaved, and she says that, her words give me hope, she said, they fought for freedom, they fought for people they knew they were never even going to see.
But they fought nevertheless.
And I think that we are living in many ways in for many of us still have freedoms and we still have the ability to act.
And we have responsibility and a duty to act, not just for ourselves, but for future generations and for people that we that we will never see.
I often talk about that as planting trees.
When you're planting trees, you're never going to enjoy the shade of those trees.
It's for future generations.
I think that's part of it.
I really do think it's worth emphasizing that we are playing and fighting a long game, and we are very behind.
The other thing that I heard you mention, Jesse, in your question, Catherine touched on it in her answer a little bit, is So, you know, I'm a constitutional lawyer.
So at these conferences, I get five, 10 times people coming up with really great ideas for new legal arguments that are going to solve this problem.
And that's just, that is not what is going to win us the day here.
The courts are not going to save us.
And historically, I mean, if you look at our Supreme Court, historically, it's a very conservative and often retrogressive institution.
We think of the Warren Court and the Burger Court, the court that gave us Gideon versus Wainwright, you have a right to counsel when you're accused of a crime, that gave us Roe versus Wade.
That's the court that we think of.
We think of it as this bastion of civil rights, but that's the outlier.
For most of the court's history as an institution, it has not been that.
It has been retrogressive.
If anything, it's returning to the mean right now.
So we cannot wait for the courts or the lawyers to save us.
This has to be a much bigger movement than that.
And if you're expecting somebody to just think of this brilliant legal argument under the 14th Amendment, or I've heard it many this weekend, it's not going to happen.
Okay, this is going to be organizational.
It's going to be building power and changing hearts and minds and those people that are waking up to the danger of white Christian nationalism, welcoming them into this movement with open arms when they realize the threat that we face.
Let me just say real quick, real quick, 1945, my relatives get out of incarceration camps during World War II.
And if I would have stopped them in the United States, speaking of Earl Warren, right?
For Japanese Americans, Earl Warren is not our favorite guy, nor is FDR.
Uh, just got to say it.
Okay.
I know some of you didn't like that.
Okay.
1945, if I say to that, that uncle, Hey, in 20 years, we're going to have a voting rights act, a civil rights act.
We're going to have sweeping immigration reform that will bring Asian folks into the country in ways we've never seen before.
We're going to have in 1968, 1969, a racial.
A coalition, a pan-racial coalition in the Bay Area that will give us the birth of ethnic studies, right?
And that black and brown and Asian folks will stand together at San Francisco State.
That's all going to happen.
And it's going to sweep through the nation.
I think, I think my uncle would have looked at me and said, no, it's not.
So it's easy to say, Hey, it's 2023.
What's going to happen?
It's bleak.
Well, what's going to, what's it going to look like in 2043?
I think that's up to us.
Okay.
Yes, right here.
Mike.
Hi.
In addition to all the horrors you've described up to now, there's also the attack on modern science, particularly Darwinian evolution, which is the foundation of modern biology and the life sciences.
You can't understand how diseases propagate without understanding evolution.
You can't understand how they're treated without that.
People are questioning the age of the earth.
I used to teach science years ago.
What can we do to counter this massive attack on modern science, which is killing us in the modern world?
Let me take a shot at that because that's been an issue that Americans United has worked on for decades.
And of course, we stopped the teaching of intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania in 2005.
Some of you might remember that case.
So definitely an issue near and dear to us.
One of the things I think we need to do is help folks understand that if their children are not getting a good grounding in evolution in high school or junior high school or whatever grade level, When they go on to college, that's really going to put them at a disadvantage, and it may even choke off access to certain careers for these young people that haven't had this.
That there's really no dispute here in the scientific community that this is well-established, and that at any public university worth its salt, in the biology department, in the anthropology department, in the physical sciences department, this is going to be taught.
Do you really want your child to be at that much of a disadvantage?
So you bring it down to a level where folks can kind of understand the practical application, and I think that does help.
But Mike, yeah, it's definitely challenging.
I mean, the polls on this have been getting a little bit better as far as the number of Americans who believe in evolution and accept the reality of it, but we still lag behind a lot of other Western nations.
We have a lot of work to do.
One of the phrases that you said that struck me was, was it's killing us.
And I have a chapter in American Crusade, the COVID chapter about what happened with the COVID cases.
And it's that religious freedom is killing us is the title.
And it, I mean, this, you really saw the kind of anti-science strain in American society and especially in white Christian nationalism come out during the pandemic.
And it was held at bay for the most part in the courts until Amy Coney Barrett.
Was pushed onto the court.
Even John Roberts wasn't willing to go, not a moderate by any stretch of the imagination, just trying to protect the institutional integrity of the court so he can protect conservative change.
That's the only reason he doesn't do some of these things.
But he wasn't in favor of allowing religious freedom to trump the law when it came to COVID and pandemic.
You know, these health measures that we were taking to prevent people from dying.
And you get Amy Coney Barrett onto the court and all that changes.
The change in personnel changed the Constitution.
And it's a perfect example of what I was talking about with how easy these cases are to decide, right?
Your right to religious freedom is not a right to risk the entire health and safety of your community.
It's not this, the court decided that hundreds of years ago.
It was a hundred years ago.
It was not a hard case.
Um, and, and now all of a sudden we're re-litigating this battle.
And the giveaway is that when other first amendment cases were brought, challenging these health measures under free speech, under free assembly, things like that, no court came close to buying it.
It's the same rule in the constitution, but religious freedom was treated differently because it's been weaponized by white Christian nationalists.
Yes, in the back.
So, I know that AU and maybe FFRF have programs for legal interns so that they can, like, counter the Federalist Society.
And a couple other places where I'm wondering if you could do internships, the press coverage, for instance, Adam Liptap's coverage of the Bremerton case on the Daily Podcast was abominable.
It was full of falsehood.
It was terrible.
I wrote to them.
I never heard any rescinding nothing.
The other place I'm wondering is theological seminary.
So I wonder if, A, you would consider maybe having Rob have some writing interns who come in and help with church and state?
And how about faith?
I know you have a faith advisory group.
Could you have interns come into that so that we start spreading the word to people who are interested in journalism and theological careers?
We're already doing a lot of that.
We have interns every year at Americans United across departments.
I have a writing intern every year.
So a lot of that is ongoing.
And of course we have a legal academy where we're working with attorneys and so on.
We definitely do see at Americans United that the next generation is going to have to carry forth this battle.
I mentioned earlier when we were talking about hope, the long-term nature of this fight.
I don't know.
I may not live long enough to see it get back to where I want it to be, but I am damn sure going to make well, make certain that I lay groundwork so that I can pass the baton to a new generation that does bring about the change that I want to see.
I have a lot of thoughts on the daily episode that you mentioned.
I think it's best if I keep them to myself.
You can see me after.
I will say... I know, that's why, yeah.
Yeah, it lives forever there, I'm told.
I will say that I think those are wonderful ideas, and as Rob said, we are trying to execute them and make them a reality.
If you want to help make them a reality, we could definitely use more funding to help make it a reality.
Looking at you folks.
Everybody, yeah.
I mean, honestly, like getting the younger generation involved in this and building that power for the future is is the way that we are going to win in the long run.
And that that takes a lot.
I mean, and if you don't, again, you're planting trees.
So you do not see the fruits of that for a long time.
So it takes a special kind of person to give to those efforts.
had a thought is that the movement, the religious nationalists are incredibly youth focused.
If you go to the Road to Majority conference, or if you go to Pray Votes stand, they'll have a whole separate conference going on for young people.
And then they'll have connecting all these initiatives that connect young people with internships and offer them media training, You have organizations like the Leadership Institute, which offer young people training in various aspects of leadership and media, and they know very well that if you can get the kids, you can get the kingdom.
Matt Staver, I remember, referred to young people as strategic machinery.
And he was talking about very young people.
He was talking about initiatives in public schools.
They've succeeded in forcing some of their initiatives into public elementary schools, targeting very young kids.
And he said, if you want to change the direction of the cruise ship, you've got to go after those kids aged four to 14, which is the most strategic age group that we have.
Now, those of us who are not part of that movement see it as inappropriate to go after other people's children.
But certainly being youth focused in terms of offering training and internships to college students and people starting out their careers is very important.
Alicia is in the back there.
She oversees our Youth Organizing Fellowship at Americans United, and we're currently recruiting for the next cohort for that program.
So if you know a young person, what are the ages, Alicia?
18 to 25 who would like to be involved with that.
See her.
She can fill you in.
It's a great opportunity to get young people involved in this work.
And if you want to learn more about the 4 to 14, the Christian nationalists really going after children, read Catherine's first book, The Good News Club.
It's transformative.
Highly recommended.
There's also a little show called Straight White American Jesus, and we cover Christian nationalism and the religious right three times a week.
And we often compete with the New York Times and Vox and Slate, despite that show being run out of a religion professor's storage closet.
So anyway, I might be that religion professor.
Question over here.
Go ahead.
Let's, let's wait for the mic.
So I find that kind of conflicting that they're trying to focus so much on youth while the leaders in the Christian Nationalist movement are trying to raise the voting age from 18 to 21 and are trying to remove voting poll stations from colleges and cut off
Twirls of democracy because they see how infuriated they've made Gen Z. And so can you give a little bit of insights on that and what we do with like the fact that Mississippi is bringing back Jim Crow laws and like doing very anti-democratic things to make a theocratic state?
As somebody who was in this movement for a long time and worked with youth, I can tell you that there's a deep fear of losing the young people.
And there's in reality a deep understanding that it's really actually hard to hold onto the young people in these movements, right?
So there's a lot of effort put into, as Catherine talked about, converting hearts and minds at summer camps at age six and getting people involved in political streams at age 15 or 18.
However, there's also a stark reality, and I think this goes to what Andrew was talking about, that this is a minority group that has a very hard time holding on to folks who are 18 to 29.
It's been like that for a long time.
You can read the social science on churches and how that works.
So it seems conflicting, and I totally understand what you're saying.
But I think it reflects a reality that they know if young people as a whole organize and participate across the country, as we saw in a place like Kansas a couple of months ago, as we saw in an off season spring election for Supreme Court in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago, then you're going to get results that don't favor the white Christian nationalists.
And so of course they want to raise the voting age.
Of course they don't want, on the whole, young people to participate because they know that's not a demographic that's on their side.
This is a graying movement.
It doesn't mean it is a movement that is losing any sense of influence or power.
Yes.
I wrote this question down, so I'm going to read it.
So I was reading Dark Money by Jane Meyer, which Andrew recommends in American Crusade, and she gets into how a lot of right-wing beliefs are deliberately fed to people, like the billionaires that Kathryn had listed earlier, and they're made to seem like they came organically from the public, but they're definitely not.
How can you guys expand on that, or how it applies specifically to Christian nationalists, and what stake do Christian nationalists have in that?
Do you mind rephrasing the question?
So, the concept that some billionaires and really powerful people are feeding ideas into the public and making it seem like it came authentically from the public themselves and... So, I guess the question is, why do they do it?
Is that... Well, I mean, I'll tell you it... I'm sorry?
In observing the movement, I think that a lot of the folks who are the big funders, the deep-pocketed funders, they're as committed, if not more committed, to right-wing economic policy and a broad range of right-wing social policy as they are to positions, right-wing positions, in the so-called culture wars.
But they know that many of those policies will be deeply unpopular to the rank and file.
So if you want to get right-wing economic policies that are intensifying economic inequality and putting added stress on American families, How do you get those folks to vote for those policies?
Well, you get them to vote on abortion.
If you want to implement policies that, you know, that say there should be no environmental protections or low taxes for the rich or no taxes for the rich or no regulation of large businesses, how do you do it?
You get people in a moral panic over trans kids.
So I think that's one of the reasons why some of those deep-pocketed funders get involved in those movements.
But what they're doing is not funding those ideas themselves.
Often what they're doing is funding policy groups or legislative initiatives or they're funding pastoral initiatives.
I'll give you one example.
messaging about culture war stuff gets transmitted to the rank and file.
Look, movement leaders know very well if you can get people to vote on a single issue or two or three issues, you can control their vote.
I'll give you like one example.
I was writing about an initiative called Faith Wins, where leaders of the movement, like Chad Connolly of the Council for National Policy and David Barton, who's one of the movement's key myth makers and others, were going from church to church all across the country, They did hundreds of events, reaching thousands, many thousands of pastors, because each event had dozens or more pastors at them.
And up there, they're saying our culture is in decline.
Christians are under attack, et cetera, et cetera.
You've got to get your people out to vote.
Their church is not a cruise ship.
The church is a battleship.
It's your duty to get your people to vote their biblical values.
Well, who's funding this?
It's a family.
The initiative is partly funded by a family named the Lindsays.
And I started researching this family.
Like, who are they?
I'd never heard of them.
I found out they own multiple homes.
One of their homes at the time was for sale for $72 million.
A $72 million home that was for sale.
Their son collects airplanes or flies airplanes.
He drives race cars.
No, real airplanes.
This is a family with enormous wealth.
And I'm not saying that they don't care about the culture wars, because I think actually the woman in that family truly is, you know, buying 150% into that abortion, biblical marriage kind of stuff.
But this is also a family with an enormous fortune and is supporting basically a political movement, the religious right, which is Giving them tax policies that will increase their wealth.
And what's happened over time, and don't take my word for it, you can look at the sociological data, the economic data, we're living in an era of vast economic inequality where it's become harder and harder for most American families to succeed and to make it work.
So I hope that this is getting to your question somewhat.
If I could just channel Bernie Sanders here for a minute.
One of the biggest challenges we face in this country right now is to help persuade working class folks.
And I come from a working class background.
My father was a house painter.
We grew up with a lot of challenges and I'm a child of the great society.
Head Start, food stamps, and Pell Grants are what made me successful to the extent that I have been.
One of the things we need to help folks understand is that trans women and trans men didn't take away your health care.
Trans men and trans women did not close your factory.
Trans men and trans women did not plunder your pension.
Plutocrats who don't want to pay their taxes and don't want to live under any regulations did those things.
So ask yourself, who has really threatened your lifestyle?
Your ability to survive?
Not people from the LGBTQ community, but folks who don't want there to be a government and want to privatize everything because that's how they get wealthier on your back.
I wish I had an easy answer to how we convince folks of that, but that's part of it.
Absolutely.
I'll just say that one of the other dimensions of this is that the funding comes from those elite sources, those overwhelmingly plutocratic sources in ways that it even masks how the movement itself understands its inner dynamics.
So what am I talking about?
Every 10 years, there's a story in the Times or somewhere about the new right.
I mean, I don't know how many new rights we've had just in my lifetime, three or four.
And about a year ago, somebody wrote to me and said, hey, can you write about this?
Because there's somebody claiming it's the new right.
And what they were saying is the new right is no longer religious.
We just oppose trans people and want to ban books.
There's nothing religious about that.
And my response in my writing was, what's tragically genius here is that all of those things came from the playbook of the religious right.
I mean, we could look at 1955, 1965, 1970.
Historically, they're all there.
And yet the young up-and-comers who are supposedly, right, the face of the new right, this new audacious conservative social movement, don't even realize, right, in their own movement.
And so when people ask me about Christian nationalism, I'm like, there's something genius about that.
That you can foster an identity so divorced from the sort of religious roots that found a movement and spread to a 28-year-old in New York City who's touted as the new face of the GOP, somebody who says, I'm not religious at all, has no idea that their positions were cultivated from religious sources, and yet is out there fighting the same culture war in the third or fourth generation.
There's something tragically genius about that.
So.
On that very happy note, I think we're at time.
And so I just want to say thank you to Andrew, to Rob, to Catherine for all their brilliance and let's thank them.