Brad and Dan begin by discussing the latest news from SCOTUS - Clarence Thomas's many vacations with right-wing billionaires - by framing the entire GOP's approach to politics as a will to power. Dan draws on a piece by a retired conservative judge in order to demonstrate that the American right has become the party of power and negativity.
Brad then goes through a litany of issues related to sex and gender: from reactions to the World Cup loss of the US women's team to Matt Walsh's comments on pansexuals to Praeger U being taught in Florida schools.
In the final segment the hosts analyze the mid-summer vote in Ohio and what it means for reproductive rights across the country.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Donate to help Maui: https://www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/maui-strong
To Donate: venmo - @straightwhitejc
Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AXIS Moondi AXIS Moondi You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
I'm here today in a mid-summer, mid-August, back-to-school Friday with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College in the swampy Northeast where we've had nothing but rain like all summer.
I know places you care about like Hawaii, it's very close to you, is being ravaged by forest fires.
We're being ravaged by floods all because of the global warming that's not real.
So nice to take a break from all of that and hang out with you for a while.
Yeah, it's been, uh, it's been a tough week for, for me and my family.
So my, some of you list, but some of you don't.
My, my family's history on Maui goes back, uh, about 125 years.
So we are not native Hawaiian and, and would, uh, yeah.
Uh, but we are Japanese American.
My great-grandfather went to Maui from Japan right around the end of the 19th century.
So my grandfather was born there.
My father was born there.
A lot, most of my aunts, uncles, cousins, Born there, lived there, etc.
So yeah, it's been a pretty hard week in terms of what's happened.
Lahaina is one of those places I've been to many times, and it's just also one of those places for Maui.
It doesn't matter how many times I've been there.
For Maui, it's kind of like, it's hard to explain.
You know, if you grew up in the Northeast, maybe at one point the Atlantic Boardwalk Atlantic City Boardwalk was kind of iconic.
These days, maybe not, but there's those places that are really, really meaningful and really historic, but also almost sacred to a lot of folks.
And to think of Lahaina as just not there anymore, Dan, is pretty tough.
So I'm going to put a link in the show notes.
If you want to donate, I would say you can check that out.
I would say giving to something that will help Maui is more important than posting your honeymoon pictures.
You have for Maui or your vacation.
So I'll just put that out there.
Maybe that's not a popular opinion, but nonetheless.
All right, Dan, today we're going to talk about I think three major buckets of discussion.
One is the will to power and the philosophy of governance coming from the GOP and how that plays out in things like the Clarence Thomas scandal, Samuel Alito's comments from a couple weeks ago, and even the approach to the presidential race.
So that's one.
Number two is, are things really related to gender and sexuality?
Want to get into some of the comments made about the U.S.
women's soccer team?
And also some comments from Matt Walsh about folks with various sexualities and also the fact that PragerU will now be in Florida schools as a resource for teachers and just want to like go over some of the things that maybe happen in PragerU videos related to gender and sexuality.
There's that.
Finally, I want to talk about Ohio and the big win there for voters and in some sense for reproductive rights in Ohio.
So, we'll get there.
Before we do, Dan, let's start here.
We're going to eventually land on Clarence Thomas.
So if you've been following the news this week, don't worry, we're going to get there.
But we're going to get there by way of a nice philosophical prologue.
So Dan, take us through it.
Yeah, so if we were a game show spinning the wheel, like it's rigged, it will eventually end on Clarence Thomas, as it feels like all things do now in the Supreme Court.
But yeah, I wanted to start with a piece that I came across in CNN this week that I think hammers home a lot of points that you and I have made for a really long time.
And I think not just us.
We're not unique in this.
But it was written by someone named J. Michael Luddig.
I think that's how you pronounce his last name.
I'm not positive.
But there was an interview with him, and basically, he's a conservative retired federal judge.
So he knows the law, he knows the judiciary, he's also a conservative, has longtime conservative bona fides.
He's also an advisor to Mike Pence at present, and has been for some time.
But the reason it caught my attention is he said these things that we've said for years, right?
And he said, for example, and I think these are worth repeating, but this is a quote from him.
He said, Without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties.
So today, in my view, there is no Republican Party to counter the Democratic Party in the country.
And he says, and for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.
So, no, this isn't a liberal saying this.
This is not a progressive saying this.
This isn't somebody who supports the Democratic Party or liberal policies.
This is a conservative.
And he goes on and he says this.
He says, quote, a political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America.
Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican Party for America.
What is he saying?
What we've said, Brad, for a while now is the Republican Party isn't about policies anymore.
It's not about what everybody thought until a few years ago were kind of central conservative principles like small government and fiscal responsibility and individual liberty and so on and so forth.
What the contemporary GOP is about, and I think the broader conservative movement, I'm going to highlight that because we're going to come to the Supreme Court.
We're going to come to Alito and Gorsuch and Thomas, and frankly, the liberal justices as well, in the sense that they are not part of the GOP, but I think that they're wrapped up in this.
And it's that it's solely about power.
We've said this for a long time.
We said it when Donald Trump was a candidate for president the first time.
But we've seen this over and over and over again.
There's no real policy position, right?
Those longtime talking points have just disappeared.
What we get, and I think this is the point that Ludwig is making, and this is what stood out to me, is that the GOP is about identifying enemies and punishing them.
It's about enacting what it sees as vengeance for For what?
A society that's—all the things we talked about—that's not white enough, that's not Christian enough, that's not straight enough, that's not patriarchal enough, and seeking to get that into place, it's all about its opposition.
It's about opposing the libs.
And here's the test.
This is what I was thinking about with this, right?
And I'll start with, I'm sure, a charming anecdote about a young Dan Miller going to college, to a small college in a small town, But the small town I graduated from high school from, Brad, was a town of 3,500 people.
And when I went to college, I was not a coffee drinker.
And folks, I will date myself, this is long before the days of, like, a Starbucks, every stone's throw on every corner, whatever.
So, like, my first week at college, one night, they're like, we're gonna go to a coffee house.
It was this cool thing.
It's this coffee house.
They've got music.
I've never been to a coffee house in my life.
There's nothing more 90s.
Well, so coffeehouse is one.
So let's just say it, you know, this is the era of friends, right?
So this is the era of like, hang out at the coffeehouse and whatever.
But some of you know this, some of you don't, but if you're at a Christian college in the 90s, the coffeehouse is the... because you can't drink.
A lot of people at Christian colleges, I mean, most people don't drink.
I was at a Southern Baptist College and did not drink, right?
You're not going to go to a bar.
You're not going to go to some place where there's alcohol, right?
So the cool thing is like, let's, I mean, the amount of times I did this, Dan, is like, let's go to a coffee house and like, hang, there's going to be a guy with a guitar and I'll get something called a latte.
I don't even know what that is, but it'll be fun.
Anyway, sorry.
Just some of you, yeah.
You're leading into my store, right?
So I do this.
So we go there, and not only do I not drink coffee, I don't know that there is coffee besides the straight black coffee that my dad drank when I was a kid.
So we go there, and they're like, what do you want to order?
And so this is the point, right?
I'm too insecure and 18, and I don't know these people well enough to be like, I have no idea.
Tell me about the drinks or something, right?
No idea.
So what do I do?
I order with a person at another table that I heard order.
So I order a straight double espresso.
Right?
So I'm not a coffee drinker and the first thing I order is a double espresso.
It comes in that little cup, which I didn't know.
No idea what to do.
It's like super, super, super strong.
Brad is like dying right now.
But that's like the equivalent.
So like espresso, a double espresso is the equivalent of ordering like an alcoholic, not alcoholic, but alcohol terms.
That's like the equivalent of ordering like a double whiskey.
So you had, it's like somebody who's never had any alcohol in their life and they're like, give me a double whiskey and they have no idea what's coming.
I mean, to me.
And they're drinking it neat.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
Straight in the glass, no ice, no nothing, just straight.
Yeah.
So that, that's me.
So I, I choked this stuff down.
I have no doubt today I'll drink double espresso with no problem.
We'll also take that double whiskey neat.
The point is, I had no idea what I was doing, and I was too insecure to say, I don't know what I'm doing.
I can go to the coffeehouse now, or, you know, someplace that sells coffee, and I can order any number of different things, depending on my mood.
Let me land this plane.
Why am I telling this story?
Because it's the same way with the GOP, except with opposition.
They don't have policies anymore.
And I invite people, try this out.
Next time you're, you know, at the cookout with Uncle Ron, Ask him, so what is your policy on, say, immigration?
Or what do you think about, I don't know, bad interest rates or whatever?
And once you cut through blah blah statements like we need to secure the border because that doesn't mean anything, what you'll find is they have to know what the liberals think first so they know what to oppose.
That's why the answer will be, well, Biden just did this, or Kamala Harris said this, or, you know, they can't say, I think this and this and this, and this is why I oppose people who don't.
They define themselves by what others are.
I went in the coffee shop and didn't know enough, didn't have my own views, had to define myself by other people.
They do the same thing, except theirs is, I will order whatever they're not ordering.
And that's the GOP right.
That's the exercise for power.
It's about punishing those that disagree with them.
But you see, they can't even tell you what they disagree about until those liberal or progressive positions come around.
If tomorrow the Democratic National Committee came out and supported abortion bans, I think a lot of Republicans would suddenly be like, we need to have unregulated abortion.
This is how much they've sold this out.
I overstate that, but we get the point.
It's about power.
It's about identifying enemies.
It's about trying to punish those.
It is a politics that is only about power and punishment.
And I think this is why, when people ask us, Why do they embrace Donald Trump?
Why do they embrace these things?
Because it's fundamentally anti-democratic.
The last point I'll make, I'll throw it over for some thoughts from you, is that democracy is about the dilution of power.
Democracy is about decentralizing power.
It's ensuring that power is never concentrated in one party or one person or one office.
You add in the modern mechanisms of constitutional democracies like checks and balances and independent judiciary and so forth, You have that.
This is why the GOP wants nothing to do with democracy.
This is why, jumping ahead to Ohio, they want to do away with ballot initiative.
This is why they want to rely on the judiciary.
This is why they want to limit voter turnout and all these other things.
Throw it to you before we go to the Supreme Court, but thoughts you have on any of that and or my coffee drinking proclivity?
So I think the analogy I want to make is this is I have a two-year-old and we're kind of in that stage where and I think we're all there adults included but it's really clear with a two-year-old that she's often upset and irritated or Somehow unhappy before she has the words to express why she's unhappy, right?
And you can see when she's unhappy and throwing a tantrum or crying in a way that I'm like, oh, now you're crying.
Okay, that was quick.
You're really upset.
Very quickly.
What happened?
And what happens in those cases, Dan, is both of us are like searching for the source.
What made you unhappy?
And a lot of times she doesn't even know.
She just knows that like she's irritated or her body hurts or something happened, right?
Here's my point is when you talk about the modern day GOP and the way you are, and I know you're going to use examples here in a minute with Supreme Court and so on.
It reminds me of Somebody who is upset, is hurt, is uncomfortable, is irritated.
You ever have a day like the summertime is really good for this when it's hot and you're just irritated and you're like why am I irritated?
And it's just because you're hot and you just you've been hot all day.
But you want to blame your partner, you want to blame your kids, you want to blame your colleague, you want to blame somebody.
Thanks a lot Obama.
You want someone to be to be blamed because you're uncomfortable and you're you're kind of just irritated.
And when you say that the modern day GOP doesn't Isn't able to define itself by what it wants and what it believes in what it's pursuing but more by I'm uncomfortable and I'm irritated.
So I'm going to assign blame for that.
I need to find people to punish.
I need to find people to put in place because I don't feel comfortable or I don't feel like I'm in charge anymore something.
And it just leads back to your book, which I want to plug, Queer Democracy, because you make this great, this example throughout the book, it's the basis of the whole book, of the American body.
And I just think, on this show we've talked about it, I have talked about it in my own book, but what you lay out there is, if you have a body, A lot of times your body is irritated or hurt or agitated before you know why.
And I think the modern day GOP is just stuck in a constant state of, we are irritated.
We are annoyed.
Instead of like figuring out why and asking ourselves, should we be annoyed by that?
Is there a way to adjust myself so I'm not annoyed by that and I can move forward in a way that's actually constructive?
It's just, I want to blame everyone and everything around me and I actually want them to hurt because I think that would make me feel better.
Last point on this Dan is, it doesn't make you feel better.
It never makes you feel better.
Like if I'm hot because it's 104 outside, And I'm irritated and I come in and yell at my kids or my partner or my colleague, I don't actually feel better.
It just, I'm still irritated.
I'm still uncomfortable.
And in fact, I'm hurting myself and hurting them, even though it probably has nothing to do with them.
So that's how I see the modern day GOP when you talk about it this way.
Yeah, I'm going to pick on that point for just a second before coming to the Supreme Court because this is, I guess we'll get not only philosophical but all therapeutic here, but like one of the things when I work with clients with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, one of the things I say to them is when we're dealing with like exactly that, right?
People are angry or they're upset or maybe they're upset all the time.
I've spent time in counseling dealing with like, yeah, you've got these emotions, like I don't know what is causing them or why I'm doing this.
There's like two steps.
The first is to be honest about what it is that you're feeling, right?
We don't get that from the GOP, right?
They won't just come out and say, we don't like the displacement of white people, right?
We don't like black people getting too much attention.
This is why we don't like DEI initiatives.
This is why we don't like critical race theory and so forth.
That's the first step is having to figure out what it is that's irritating you as you would describe it.
But the second one is, and this is the hard question that they're never, in my opinion, going to get to is, how do I then feel about what I feel?
Right?
When you start realizing that like, wow, this thing really bothers me, and I don't think that thing should bother me, right?
Like maybe it shouldn't bother me that two men are kissing in public, or that two women can get married, or that somebody who identifies as female can use the restroom for women, or whatever it is.
All of that is fed.
And so everything in the GOP, as you say, is about lashing out.
It's about protecting and even privileging that sense of discomfort, making sure that it remains normal and normative.
And so they use all the anti-democratic processes that they can to instantiate that.
Which brings me to the Supreme Court, because this week, right, we learn that ProPublica, again, who is doing great work to uncover some of these things, highlights—I'm not going to run down the laundry list, we can do that if we want—more exorbitant gifts and trips and so forth that Clarence Thomas has received over time.
Everybody remembers this kind of bombshell You know, weeks and months ago when it was revealed that he'd had these really expensive luxury trips and so forth.
Since then, we found out that Alito received, you know, a sort of luxury trip.
And he was so incensed that this story was going to come out.
He wrote this, like, preemptive op-ed to try to defend it.
Neil Gorsuch not disclosing profits that he made.
He disclosed the profits.
He didn't disclose the person or the entity that bought a piece of property and so forth and just on and on and on.
But tied in with To call it unrepentant would be an understatement, right?
You referenced Alito's statements a little while ago, basically saying that there's nothing anybody could do.
There's nothing in the Constitution that allows Supreme Court justices to be regulated by the Senate or the House or something like that.
Roberts has refused resolutely to impose any kind of code of ethics standard.
All the justices issued a statement in April saying that basically they're fine with the way things are.
There's no need for a code of ethics.
Just remind people that everybody, everybody else in the judiciary, every level of the judiciary has codes of ethics that they have to follow.
And there are not just ethicists, but legal analysts who think that some of these things that Supreme Court justices have been doing might have been a violation of law, not just ethics or morality, but law.
Where am I going with all this?
I see this as here's another institution that is, in important ways, fundamentally anti-democratic.
One of the things that the judiciary, in my view, is supposed to do is make sure that democracy doesn't just turn into the tyranny of the majority, as Alexis de Tocqueville called it, right?
That you can't Just take away people's rights because there are fewer of them than there are of you.
That's why we have the language of rights wrapped up with democracy.
Cool, great, good.
But what we have in the Supreme Court now are justices who clearly see themselves as above the law.
They are the adjudicators of law.
They are the ones who determine what it means.
They are the ones, I think, in their own mind, who determine what is right and wrong, appropriate, inappropriate, and it's inconsequential what anybody else thinks.
More pronounced, as far as we know, among conservative justices, and this is very much part of the playbook now of the same GOP, was to stack the court with this kind of justice.
And again, we've seen time and again now with Trump, we've heard it from others, this sense that the GOP would now do their bidding, or excuse me, that SCOTUS would do their bidding, that this is now part, one of their mechanisms of maintaining that power.
Of making sure that they can take all that grievance that they have, that anger, that vitriol, keep it in place to punish those who for them, as we've said for years, are just really not true Americans.
So that's where I see the stuff with Justice Thomas and others tying in with this broader Kind of amorphous toxic cloud of anger, vitriol, all aimed at attaining power and maintaining it at all costs.
So, I think it's worth just bringing up a couple of facts here.
I think the turn to the judiciary has been aggressive over the last two decades.
The GOP really identified that as the branch where they could, in essence, Foment a kind of revolution in American politics.
If you read Andrew Seidel's book and you follow along with some of the things he discusses there, you will know that there has been a billion and a half dollars given to Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society to basically remake the American judiciary and the Supreme Court And just to tie the threads together in my own words, Dan, I'll say, why focus on the judiciary?
Well, in the case of the Supreme Court, you're talking about nine people.
And if you can get five, better six, you're really in business.
You have control now.
And we've seen that.
We saw the overturning of Roe.
We've seen all these cases to do with religious liberty, quote unquote, the 303 Creative case from Colorado a couple of months ago, on down the line.
If you can get five or six people, you're in business.
If you're talking about Congress, you're talking about a couple of hundred people.
You got to get a majority in the Senate, you got to get a majority in the House, and you got to get enough majorities that you can actually do some things, right?
Get around a filibuster, whatever it may be.
The point is, If you want to concentrate power, if you want to do things that you said democracy doesn't do, which is to decentralize power, then focus on the judiciary, which five or six people gets you control rather than a couple of hundred in Congress.
The same goes for the presidency.
The presidency has grown.
I mean, we're not going to do this today, but if y'all are interested, you can track how the executive branch has grown in power since George W. Bush and all of the post 9-11 measures that he put in place, along with Obama.
Obama, you're not off the hook.
Yeah, he did this too.
But with Trump, what we now have talked about, Dan, and I think it was about five weeks ago we talked about this on this show, is Trump is forecasting and foreshadowing that if he wins, he's going to implement a unitary executive theory to his presidency.
Meaning, he believes that the executive branch is a unitary, exclusive locus of power.
And he's going to use the DOJ and the Department of State as his kind of personal arms.
And he is not going to see Congress as having oversight.
You know, we talked about this with impounding funds and holding back money that Congress has allotted to certain programs.
And so we can go back into those details.
The point is, though, Right.
Focus on the executive.
You got one guy in power.
You focus on the SCOTUS.
You got six people, five people in power.
Now you can concentrate power in a few hands and you can really sort of start to wield control over American democracy with a minority, which is what the GOP is.
Right.
And so anyway, final thoughts on this before we take a break.
Yeah, just that a word that we don't use a lot in the US, but we use it around places like Russia, is oligarchy, right?
The rule by a few.
That's functionally what it is.
That's what the GOP wants, as you say.
So again, I just hold that out.
I think it's worth noting that we don't hear, at least I feel like anecdotally, we don't hear the GOP talking about democracy as much as they used to.
I don't think we even hear them appealing to the Constitution as much as they used to.
They used to appeal to the Constitution to make anti-constitutional arguments all the time.
I feel like some of that's fading away a little bit in the rhetoric, and I think that that's a telling point.
All right.
Let's take a break, come back and talk about the women's soccer team.
We'll talk about PragerU, talk about Matt Walsh.
Be right back.
Hi, my name is Peter and I'm a prophet in the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
All right, Dan.
So when I was thinking about this segment, I was thinking about things that are related to issues of gender and sexuality.
They may seem like they're not related or they're disparate, but I kind of, I see them as all kind of one in, not one in the same, but at least in the same nexus of, Of issues.
So, let's start with the national soccer team, the U.S.
Women's National Soccer Team.
The U.S.
Women's National Soccer Team has had an incredible modicum of success over the last decade or so, winning two World Cups and really becoming just a major force in American sports history and on the sports landscape in the country.
People on the team have become household names, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe and many others.
It's very obvious if you follow soccer at all that the women's team has been much, much more successful than the men's team.
However, um, this world cup has not been one of great success for the soccer team, at least in the ways that they're used to.
And they did lose to Sweden, uh, about a week ago in the knockout stage.
Okay.
And this is hard.
It's hard to swallow when you, when you've had so much success, it's always disappointing if you're used to coming in first or second and to get knocked out is no fun.
All right.
But here's the, here's some of the responses from, um, from folks, the U S women's The national soccer team lost to Sweden yesterday at the 2023 Women's World Cup.
I used to poll for our women's soccer team, but recently they have shown disrespect for the U.S.
and have used their platform to promote the LGBTQ agenda.
When they lost, I wasn't sad.
That is from Mr.
Christian America, Franklin Graham.
That's one.
Let me pull up Alexi Lawless.
Now, Alexi Lawless is a sports commentator.
Dan, when we were teenagers, he was on the men's national team.
And I actually saw Alexi Lawless play in person a couple of times.
So here's what he says.
Don't kill the messenger.
This U.S.
women's national team is polarizing.
Politics, causes, stances, and behavior have made this team unlikable to a portion of America.
This team has built its brand and has derived its power from being the best slash winning.
If that goes away, they risk becoming irrelevant.
So I want to just approach two things here that are related, I think, to gender in very clear ways to me.
One is Alexi Lawless is talking here and saying that the team has built its brand and has power because it's the best and it's winning.
Okay.
So he's basically saying the only reason that you have power or you're relevant is because you win.
So he's basically saying to the women on the U.S.
national team, If you are good, if you are, uh, the best, then you are worth our attention.
If you are not, then as a country, even though you are a national team, you will become irrelevant.
Right.
And it's amazing to hear this because like Alexi Lawless and his like versions, his, his, the teams he played on for the U S uh, men's national team never made it.
To the championship game, the semifinals, the quarterfinals, right?
If the men's national team, Dan, gets out of the knockout stage, we are happy.
We are like, we did it.
This is awesome.
We get to go play England or like Argentina and probably lose, but yay, we did it.
It's fun.
Here's what I want to point out.
I'll just say it plainly.
We've done a lot of theory already today.
There is a history in this country where if you are a man, if you are a Christian, if you're a white man, you don't have to earn a lot to get to vote.
You don't have to earn the vote.
You don't have to earn the right to speak.
You don't have to earn the right to be somebody in the public square who has a voice.
But if you're not that, Then you have to earn it.
You have to show us that you're worth it.
And then we might admit you to the table and give you a seat.
Right?
So Lawless is basically saying, hey, if this team doesn't win, they're irrelevant and we won't watch anymore because they're women.
And, you know, I mean, come on, it's women.
I mean, are we really going to watch this if they're not the best?
Who cares?
Right?
That's what he's saying.
And he's saying politics, causes, stances and behavior have made this team unlikable to a portion of America.
So he's like, yeah, you know what these women did, Dan?
They demanded equal pay.
Can you believe that cause they stood up for?
Oh my God.
These women are annoying, huh, Alexi Lawless?
Oh, they kneeled.
Some of them, not all, like Megan Rapinoe, kneeled when it came to the national anthem.
Well, guess what that is?
That's like, American right to protest, okay?
Stances and behavior.
What's the behavior?
What behavior are you talking about?
Because you know what, Alexi Lawless, and this is like a whole three hours down, but do you know how many male athletes have been engaged in behavior that makes them unlikable?
How many male athletes that are in the mainstream, that make hundreds of millions, tens of millions, whatever dollars a year, have done things that quote make them I don't know not only unlikable but despicable how many people in the NFL have been engaged in domestic abuse how many people have been engaged in things that are truly not okay
I mean we could start when Alexi Law was played and go all the way till now and we could talk about it but because these are women we're going to talk about that and And one more comment.
I'll throw it to you.
One more comment about Franklin Graham.
So Franklin Graham says, I was not sad when they lost.
And I just want to point out, it's always with these folks.
Stand for the flag, kneel for the cross.
America, greatest country on earth.
I love this country.
I will root for this country.
These collars don't run.
Except for if it's a bunch of women who, like, talk too much and are too, like, demanding of equality and actually, I don't know, stand up for things they believe in.
Then they need to get in line and I'm not going to be sad.
Yeah, I hope they lose.
I actually hope they lose.
I'm not sad.
You lost while you deserved it because you're not the right kind of Americans.
When people are like, hey, why do conservatives appropriate the American flag?
Because they're basically saying we are America.
We stand for the entire country.
But if you, such as the Women's National Team, stand for the country and you don't do and act and say and believe like us, then That all goes out the window because you're not the right kind of American.
So I won't root for you.
I won't cheer for you.
And I'll actually won't be sad when you lost and I'm going to make comments when you do lose about how I'm actually kind of glad about it.
Okay.
So anyway, I have more thoughts.
I want to get to like PragerU and other stuff, but you have thoughts on this?
Yeah, I mean, and I think it'll lead right into where you're going.
It's about proper social order, right?
It's about being the right kind of American, but also the right kind of woman, right?
It's already suspect that they're exceptional athletes, right?
It's fine to have women's sports, as long as it's not as good as the male version of whatever the sport is.
And of course, the stark example where this doesn't hold in U.S.
sports is the women's national team, like you say.
But I think it is all of those issues.
It's the demanding equal pay.
It's demanding or the presence and visibility of queer identity.
It is just the outspokenness.
And again, all I mean is it's again, it's not like Trump invented anything.
He just was this person who brought all remember in everybody remembers in the debate with Hillary Clinton when he refers to that nasty woman.
He's just had enough.
of this woman is standing up and asking questions and making it's it's that that's we talked about the irritant we talked about being angry that's the deep visceral core that i think these women strike and women like them and the the bigger broader issue is they just don't know their place in a properly ordered american society and a properly ordered national body and a body politic They don't know their place, they're out of place, and they finally stumbled out of the gate, and now everybody can pile on, right?
It's... I am, everybody knows, sorry folks, an avid New England Patriots hater, and yes, if I waited long enough until Tom Brady just went away, they would finally be bad, and then I could be like, see?
I told you they weren't, you know, whatever.
It's the same thing, right?
Decry them long enough, and then when they stumble, we can say, see, it's the decline of America.
They're showing this.
I think Trump put something like that on Truth Social about the decline of America and how it was emblematic.
It's that notion of social order, of who the real Americans are and where they belong.
It's a great point, though, about Trump's comments, because it's what what's happening there is right.
Linking right.
Losing a soccer game right after a decade of dominance.
OK, it happens, right?
It happens.
There's this.
I don't know.
Sometimes we win.
Sometimes we lose.
That's how sports goes.
But there's what did Trump do?
He links it to the national identity and the national destiny of like, oh, yeah, look at this.
You have gay players.
You have players with like rainbow hair.
Oh, they wanted equal pay.
Guess what?
Decline of society.
I mean, that sounds like, focus on the family, Dan.
It sounds like, oh yeah, you got a family with two dads, guess what?
America's going down the drain, right?
That is, you're linking national identity to queer identity, to gender identity, to feminine identity, and the decline of the country because those forces are somehow demanding equal representation and rights.
All right.
Let's switch over to Florida.
A lot of you have probably heard the news that PragerU is now something that can be used in classrooms in Florida, Dan.
So, here's some news today.
If you hear nothing from today, if you are driving and distracted right now, if you have, like, things to do and you're listening to this as you mow the lawn or something, I hope you hear one thing today, and that's this.
In Florida, in some Florida classrooms, you cannot talk about, read, discuss, or watch video of Romeo and Juliet because there's too much sex.
However, you can use PragerU videos where an animated Frederick Douglass says that the most important thing for the founders was to unite the 13 colonies and they eventually got to that whole racism thing.
Right.
Or you can watch a PragerU University.
PragerU, it's not a real university.
If you don't know about PragerU, it's not a real university.
It's a propaganda machine.
It's a right-wing media platform designed to indoctrinate children.
Okay?
So just, that's that.
Prager U has a video, Dan, meant for sixth graders, okay?
People who are prepubescent, about to head into that really fun time called puberty.
And the video is about being feminine.
And it says that there are two genders, men and women, male and female.
That's how God created them.
And in fact, if you are a girl, you should really lean into being feminine.
And among other things, this video that could be shown in a classroom in public schools in the United States tells young women, young girls, I should say, that they should do things like master the art of makeup and learn how to be pretty, because that's part of how, like, they were designed.
Okay?
Now, This is incredible, Dan, because the whole spiel from DeSantis has been we're trying to get indoctrination out of our schools.
We don't want to indoctrinate kids.
And then they're allowing PragerU, right, to come in as like a curriculum resource.
And PragerU is not a real university.
OK, let me let me just read from WUSF Public Media.
So this is a Florida based outlet.
OK.
I think the unique thing to understand about PragerU is that there's no bid process for this.
They aren't a traditional vendor that even requires payment because it's free.
This is from Jessica Wright, a former teacher who's now the vice president of the non-profit Florida Freedom to Read Project.
She continues, it's not an accredited university.
It does not have creators with a vast education background.
And it says right on their website what their intention is, which is purely for indoctrination.
And it says specifically for conservative values.
Dan, we could spend two hours talking about the hypocrisy here.
I don't actually don't think it's that interesting.
We know it's hypocritical to the core.
Hey, we want to get rid of things that indoctrinate.
We don't want you to say gay.
We don't want you to say anything about queer characters.
But we're going to get PragerU in here to talk about how young girls should focus on being pretty and learning how to put on makeup because that's part of their education.
We could sit here and go through the hypocrisy.
It's clear.
It's not uninteresting to me because it's so blatant.
What is clear is that you cannot have, and people want to disagree with me on this.
I'm open to it.
I'm open to deconstructing Shakespeare, pointing out issues with Shakespeare in terms of racism, in terms of colonial, all kinds of things that are in Shakespeare.
Okay.
I'm totally happy to have those conversations about empire, whatever you want to do.
I just say, though, I think there's a pretty clear statement like this.
If you have schools, that allow you to teach PragerU videos and everything I just mentioned about gender, but will not allow you to teach Romeo and Juliet, there is no way to think about this being a civilization that is anything but undeveloping.
What do you think?
I think you're right.
I mean, I think I agree with everything you just said.
I think the other piece of this that's not just the hypocrisy of it is the impossibility of what's presented as this ideal, right?
Because defenders of don't say gay and stuff will say, no, it's not about that.
It's about age appropriate stuff.
And, you know, you get in Florida and other places, right?
We can't talk about gender and sexuality.
Guess what, folks?
You're talking about being attractive and wearing makeup and how God made you.
Guess what?
You're talking about gender and sexuality.
You're going to start talking about God creating two genders.
Number one, the God creating two genders part obviously has no place or should have no place in public schools, right?
If people want to believe that God created two genders, but not in like a public school context.
I think that's the other piece of it is not just the hypocrisy of it, but the way that that language All the time.
We're not going to let people teach about gender.
You are.
If you exist in the world, you are wrapped up in issues of gender and sexuality.
You are read certain ways.
The world responds to you in certain ways.
You're attracted to some people and not attracted to others, and you have to deal with the emotions about being attracted, and on and on and on and on.
It's an unavoidable part of what it is to be human.
And it highlights for me the way in which it's not just hypocrisy, but there's this kind of normalized conception, again, the proper social order, that being straight is normal.
Being masculine, if you're identified as male, that's normal.
Being feminine, I'm doing air quotes, right?
If you identify as female, that's normal.
And what that means to be masculine, how you have to present yourself, what it means to be feminine, all of that, that's read as a kind of norm that just passes as if it's not about Gender and sexuality.
As soon as you start talking about physical attractiveness, I think you're in the realm of sexuality, right?
You're in the realm of desire.
It's impossible.
And I don't know what scares me more, the people who know this and willingly obfuscate and hide that, Or the people who, honest to God, can't see that you're talking about gender and sexuality if you're talking to girls about how to be attractive enough for boys.
I don't know which of those is scarier, but it's fundamental.
And again, it's about proper social order, the right kinds of people.
And everything you say about Prager Is absolutely true.
I will say, I ran across a meme once that listed it as Praeger, P-R-G-G-E-R, as like pregnancy, because they won't teach anything on birth control, and that was just funny.
But yeah, it's a right-wing mechanism for trying to do exactly this, for trying to infiltrate the public schools.
Last point is just, we've seen this in Florida, trying to create this almost like parallel universe of education to try to match What I think the Christians would call, quote unquote, secular education.
We now call it woke education.
But yeah, just trying to create this parallel world where these things just don't have to figure it all.
So again, just let's just come back to order.
If we tie this together, theoretically, you know what people want, what people are saying is don't teach about gender and sexuality when it disrupts my sense of how things should be.
And what they're, if you dig deeper, they're like, I want the world to exist where there's just two categories.
The amount of times I've said on this show, Dan, over the last five years, the word binary, I don't know.
I'd love to get a montage someday of me saying binary on this show because The worldview is one that says, I just want there to be this or that, us and them, here or there, you and not you, me and the other, whatever it is.
I just want there to be two categories and then I'll know where I'm safe and where I'm not, who's my friend and who's my enemy.
That's what I want.
We can trace this to evangelical theology, we can trace whatever you want to do.
So if you teach about gender and sexuality as on a spectrum, as being complex, as being full of various iterations, full of various manifestations, people who are pansexual, people who are bisexual, people who are asexual, so on and so forth, people who identify as non-binary, and so on and so forth, people who use they-them pronouns, All of that binary's gone.
So it's like, don't teach these kids about that stuff, they're not ready for that.
What you're saying is, I'm not ready for that.
I'm not ready for a world that's complicated.
I'm not ready to adjust to a world that's like, one I'm not used to.
I'm not going to like, ask myself why this is so scary to me and maybe tell myself, it's actually not scary and I can just adjust to this, it's actually not a big deal.
But when you want kids to watch a PragerU University that tells girls, learn how to wear makeup, learn how to be pretty, and yeah, wear pink if you want to.
That's great.
Wearing pink is, like, great for girls.
I mean, that's what the video says, Dan.
You're saying, oh, yeah, you can talk about gender and sexuality in a way that's not irritating to me, that is not disruptive.
That's not gender and sexuality.
That's just normal.
That's just life.
That's just how God made us.
That's just the design for creation.
So that's what's happening there.
OK, so I'll give you one more example today of of a comment that fits all of this.
Matt Walsh, you know, Internet provocateur and.
Yeah, I'll just leave it there.
says that pansexuals are scary and I believe he's reacting here to Wayne Brady like who came out as pansexual Wayne Brady being somebody who's really funny but no longer kind of in the zeitgeist as a this is not the rock or Kevin Hart or Zendaya anyway but nonetheless Pansexuals are scary.
Why?
And this is Matt Walsh.
Other people have a right to know if they are potential objects of your sexual fantasies.
So like, here's the logic.
If you're pansexual and you are attracted to all folks, in essence.
Matt Walsh is like, that's scary because I don't know who it is you're attracted to.
So I don't know how to categorize you.
What he's saying is, I don't know how to categorize the world with you in it, because in my world there's men and women.
Men are attracted to women, women are attracted to men.
Men play these roles, women play those roles.
Men do this, women do that.
If you're pansexual, I don't know how to put you in.
You actually don't fit those categories.
You disrupt all of them.
And so, I'm scared.
And then, if we dig deeper, it gets worse.
Because he's basically saying, Dan, that if you're a man, then I know you're attracted to women.
And therefore, I'm surmising that you are fantasizing sexually about women in this way.
Or if you're a woman, you're fantasizing.
Like, it's a projection.
It's a sense of like, well, as long as I know who you want, I know what you're fantasizing about.
This is a little window, right?
Into like Matt Walsh basically saying, I really think of sexuality as like a set of desires and wants.
In some sense, it's about power.
And if I don't know how that works for you, or if you disrupt every binary that I have, what am I supposed to do?
I'm scared of you because for me, the world is just broken up into two categories and it's a sort of power balance, power struggle between them.
It goes back to everything we talked about with the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, the Unitary Executive, but it also is part of this understanding of gender and sexuality and the desire for control.
All right, more to say here, but what do you think?
I think it gets, for me, part of what it gets at is, and I've talked about this, you've talked about this, the projection of authority, the projection of confidence, the projection of power and so forth, all of it hides a core of fundamental fear and insecurity, right?
I've talked about this on It's in the Code, the language of not being governed by fear.
When that's all there is at the heart of this, you cut through the rage and the vitriol and the purple-faced yelling.
It's a fundamental fear.
And this is what Matt Walsh actually gives voice to, right?
Everything you're describing, a fear of that which can't be categorized, that doesn't fit into either or categories, right?
And I think that's what is more terrifying to many of these people Then the existence of queer people is not being able to know who they are.
I've had real conversations with people who will talk about, well, if I'm ever in the bathroom with somebody who, you know, and I'll be like, guess what?
You have been.
Guarantee it.
And you didn't know because it's somebody who passed or whatever.
And like, the look.
Of just kind of abject horror of like somebody that they can't quantify, that they can't position.
Why?
All the things we've been talking about.
Because if my worldview and my very experience in the world is based on having real Americans and proper social order, nothing disrupts the whole notion that there is a proper social order.
Like people that we just can't categorize.
People we don't know what drawer they fit into.
We don't, they're like, you know, we don't know if they're a knife or a fork or a serving thing.
So where do we put them in the drawer?
We don't know.
And it's terrifying.
And so we're going to do things like trying to put them out of existence or saying super creepy stuff about Fixating on other people's sexual fantasies and you know, whatever.
That would be a whole separate thing.
I think it all goes to this notion of social order and gender and sexuality is such a fundamental part of this.
But for me, it's that notion of the just deep visceral fear.
And insecurity that masquerades under heightened security and anger and all these other emotions and policies.
So as the dad of a two-year-old, I don't really watch much these days except for things that my two-year-old watches in the morning before we get ready for the day or whatever.
And the thing that she wants to watch all the time now, Dan, is a movie, animated film by Pixar called Luca.
And Luca takes place in Italy.
And Luke is all about these sea monsters, quote-unquote, that are able to, like, go above the water and change into humans and exist in human society.
Blah, blah, blah.
At the end of the movie, there's this great reveal that these kids who looked like kids are actually, quote-unquote, sea monsters, right?
And they're standing there, and they are transformed back into their sea identity, what they look like in the ocean.
They look like, quote-unquote, a sea monster.
And they say to this crowd of angry people about to attack them, we are not afraid of you.
And then there's this line from the antagonist in the film who says, no, but we are afraid of you, and that's why we're attacking.
Like, hey, you're a sea monster, and we're afraid of you?
And that's why we're attacking.
And that's exactly what this is.
We are afraid of you.
We are afraid.
So we're going to attack you and try to take you out of existence.
To erase you.
Even though you're just trying to exist.
You're not threatening.
You're not attacking.
You're just existing.
But we're scared of you.
So therefore we are going to attack you.
All right.
Let's take a break.
Come back and talk briefly about Ohio.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, let's talk about Ohio.
A big win.
It might be a little confusing if you're not sort of following it all.
Let me read a little bit from Noah Berlatzky at Substack.
For decades, the right argued that Roe v. Wade was an assault on democracy because it removed abortion rights from the democratic process and turned the U.S.
into a juristocracy.
Since Dobbs robbed women and pregnant people of bodily autonomy, though, the GOP has not been acting like a party which is confident it can win the support of voters for its draconian forced birth policies.
So, one of the reactions to this, Dan, has been an attempt To make it difficult for voters to voice their displeasure with abortion bans and restrictions on abortion such that state legislatures can keep those measures in place.
So this played out in Ohio.
What happened in Ohio this week was a mid-August vote That was really about ballot initiatives in the state.
So the GOP wanted to raise the threshold of a ballot initiatives initiative passing to 60%.
So in essence, if you get signatures and get something on the ballot for the state to vote on.
The Republicans were like, yeah, if it gets 52 percent, not going to work.
You're going to need to get 60 percent for a ballot initiative.
OK, now, why would they do that, Dan?
Because they're anticipating that in the fall there will be a ballot initiative that puts a measure on the docket that would protect abortion in Ohio and that it will easily get 50 percent of the vote.
So they were trying to basically make a situation where they're like, Yeah, majority doesn't count.
You need 60% for a ballot initiative.
They were trying to make it harder for the voice of the people to be heard in the state, and they were trying to restrict the power of voters to directly change the policies and laws in that state.
Well, Ohio didn't go for it, if you've been following the news, that Ohio said no.
And people of color, black Ohioans, women, and Gen Z turned out and said, look, you're not going to do this.
And yes, it might be.
The middle of August.
And guess what?
We're still going to come out and vote.
We're going to wait in line.
We're not going to let you trick us.
You're not going to pass this in some dead spot in the judicial calendar.
We are going to be here and we're going to let our voice be heard.
And it's pretty amazing, Dan, and we don't have a ton of time, but I'll just say, This continues to be an issue that the Republicans lose on every time and reproductive rights is a household kitchen table issue across the country.
It could be Michigan, it could be Ohio, it could be Kansas, but women, Gen Z, and others are like, we're not doing this.
You're not going to trick us.
We are ready to go.
And I don't know if I were a democratic strategist, I might be paying attention to this.
Thoughts on this before we have to get out of here.
Yeah, so just a couple quick things, and I'll get geeky for a minute here, but like people have all these debates about whether the U.S.
is a democracy or, you know, the relation of representative democracy versus what we call direct democracy.
I get it.
We're a country of over 300 million people.
You can't have everybody all the time legislating and so forth, so we have representatives.
That is different, in my view, from representatives saying, we are going to try to make sure that ordinary people can't have a voice.
I think that's a fundamental difference.
And that's what this is, right?
That's why ballot initiatives exist, is to create a mechanism where people can, if need be, bypass their elected officials and take questions straight to the people.
And there's mechanisms they have to go through, thresholds they have to hit, and so forth.
So I think it's really telling That this is the move.
And I think it highlights everything we've talked about, about concentrating power, choosing anti-democratic means, right?
Part of the GOP strategy now is let's win state houses.
And then once we do, let's use that concentrated power we have to further disenfranchise others and make sure that we can't be challenged democratically.
They've been doing it with gerrymandering for a really long time.
Now they're doing it in a targeted way with ballot initiatives.
The only other point that I'll make, it's the point that, to reiterate the point you made and kind of take it further, this is also turning into the Democratic ground game.
And this is something that they're exporting to different states now, right?
That the ballot initiative move and recognizing that it motivates voters.
And as of now, the GOP has no Answer to this, because they're simply on the wrong side of where most Americans are on the issue.
As you say, it's become an everyday issue for most Americans.
And if you had real moderate people in the GOP that would allow certain exceptions and things like that, they might gain traction, but we're not there.
And I think it's a huge leverage point for progressive voters and really significant because it'll bring people to the polls that, let's say in 2024, voting for Joe Biden might not.
Well, here's the Wall Street Journal editorial board making that same point that you just made.
Republicans spent half a century working to overturn Roe, yet they weren't prepared for the Democratic policy debate when that finally happened in Dobbs last year.
Now they're seeing abortion regimes as loose as Roe, or potentially looser, imposed by voters even in conservative states.
This political liability will persist until the GOP finds an abortion message that most voters can accept.
So it's exactly what you just said, Dan.
If you're going to continue with this abortion ban, six-week abortion ban, and so on, those kinds of approaches, it's unacceptable to the majority of Americans.
This is the last point that I'll make about this.
And we brought this up earlier about them just being the party of opposition.
This is part of that, right?
This is how they were with health care.
Remember that?
Like when Donald Trump won and they won both houses, I thought health care would be gone.
It turns out they had no idea what they were going to do if they actually got the majority And could do away with it and had no policies.
It's the same thing with this.
They have no answers at all for how they're actually going to govern in places where they have the power to govern now that they've gotten this.
They are just the party of opposition.
They have no answers.
They have no constructive policies.
It also points out that if you are counting on, you know, people who believe abortion is murder, if you're counting on white evangelicals, white Catholics, white Christian nationalists, and others who believe that, They might help you, but they're not the majority.
And we've said that on the show over and over, that they are not the majority in this country anymore.
If you ask people about abortion, about two-thirds of Americans are in favor of abortion in some form.
So if you're counting on those folks to get you elected and to fund your campaigns and to make sure that you have the money you need to run for governor or senate or anything else, that's fine.
It just happens that they're the minority, and if you actually have a scenario where the majority comes out to vote, you're going to lose every time, and that's what we're seeing.
All right, let's go to Reasons for Hope, Dan.
You go first.
What's your reasons for hope this week?
Mine is really, it's building off of the Ohio piece.
I said, this is one of the things I was delighted to be wrong about.
When this happened, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was skeptical that it would have The kind of impact that it's had.
I was afraid that it would sort of fade or that once it becomes sort of an accomplished fact that people would feel powerless.
So I continue to take hope that this is still alive.
It's still well.
It's been going on long enough that I think it's a real thing.
And the GOP has painted themselves into a corner where they can't be anything but what they are at this point.
And they had no response.
I mean, I took great hope in this and just the strategies of it and turning matters over to the people.
I'm a big fan of that.
So I found this really hopeful.
I was like a lot of other people.
I was really watching to see what would happen.
Took great hope in it.
My reason for hope is that images are showing that the banyan tree in Lahaina is still standing.
It's charred and it is definitely not the same, but it is there.
And, you know, in these cases, those little things are Reasons for hope.
They give you the glimmer that things can be rebuilt, that communities can come back and thrive.
Just want to say, thinking about the dozens of people, 60 people or so who've lost their life in these fires, and all of the people who will have nowhere to go, I mean there's There's a whole podcast series, Dan, that could be done just about the housing crisis in Hawaii, the way that it's unaffordable for those who live there and so on.
So, when I think of the line of fire, I think of the families that are doing their best to stay in paradise and live there because that is where they and their families have been for a long time.
Things like this make it even more difficult.
So the Banyan Tree is there, Lahaina will be rebuilt, and I hope that people will find the resources to continue to persist and live and hopefully thrive in Lahaina, on Maui, and so on.
All right.
As always, friends, I want to thank you for your support.
I want to thank you for hanging in with us.
We have no outside funding for this show, and so we do it three times a week the best we can.
If you're a patron, as always, thank you.
If you want to think about supporting us, PayPal, Venmo, Patreon is all in our link tree.
Check it out.
You should check out our merch.
You should check out our series and our website straight at whiteamericanjesus.com.
We'll be back next week with the weekly roundup, and it's in the code, and a great piece on Monday.
But for now, we'll just say thanks for being here.
