On the first episode of the year, Brad looks ahead to various scenarios in 2024 and what they might mean for our country. One thing is certain: This year will shape our country for the rest of our lives. It could mean a second Trump term. It could mean more political violence. It could mean an acceleration of the American cold civil war. But, there are reasons to hope. Reasons to keep fighting. To stay vigilant. Not to look away. Brad talks about those too.
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I don't know about you, but my New Year's Eve was pretty boring.
I have two young kids, and so the goal for me was get them in bed, see if I can find 20 minutes or half an hour to read or watch TV before I fall asleep, well before midnight.
But on New Year's Eve, Brent Tannehill, commentator on X, somebody who's a former Navy aviator and a popular author had a really good thread about the year ahead and how it's going to be very decisive for our country.
I want to highlight it here because I think it contains a lot of good insight.
Here's what she wrote on New Year's Eve, 2023, just a couple of days ago.
If Trump wins on December 31st, 2024, we will be living in a nation holding its breath for the chaos and horror that comes next, whether it's a theocratic fascist dictatorship or a nation that balkanizes in the attempt.
If Trump wins, we get one or the other.
So, right off the bat, when I read this, I thought, well, that's a, you know, really fascinating way to think about it.
You know, I don't know about you, but the end of the year always brings thoughts and memories, and where were we a year ago, and what happened in 2023 that was memorable for my wife and I. We have young kids, so it's one of those eras where we think about, like, hey, a year ago, this kid was barely walking, and now they're, like, jumping off the walls and that kind of stuff.
For me, 2023 was a year thinking about all the people I got to meet in Texas and in Washington, D.C.
and Pennsylvania and all the places I went to talk about my book and all the people who support this show.
And it was really cool for me.
It was really amazing.
So when I think back a year ago, I was just launching my book.
I hadn't done all those events and all those places and book signings and gotten to meet so many of you.
I mean, there's just a lot that's happened.
And I'm sure all of you can do that.
You can think back to things, good or bad, that happened in 2023.
Things that you celebrated, things that you were surprised by, things that were really hard and difficult.
If we think back, if we think ahead now to 2024 and what this year will hold, I think Brent Tannehill has a really good point.
I think we're in a place where Twelve months from today, this country will be in a very different place.
And I'm going to just say it, and I think Brent Tannehill says it in the Twitter thread, but I'll say it here too.
is a year that will probably define the United States for the rest of our lives.
And that may sound dramatic.
I think 2016 is a pretty good candidate for that.
And I think, you know, if you're a historian out there, you can decide which year will be more decisive.
But 2024 is a year where this country will come to some, some sort of decision.
And some sort of direction about what its near future is going to look like.
Once again, 2016 happened.
Feels like 2016 is still happening.
2020 happened, and that was an election year and a pandemic year.
Feels like it's still happening.
But 2024 is a year where we're going to decide.
We know.
We know who Trump is.
We know what MAGA is.
We know what Christian nationalism is.
We also know who Joe Biden is.
And so there are decisions and there are directions and there are ways that when we get to one year from now, this country will have set itself on a course.
And I really do think it's going to decide what the country will look like for years and years to come.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name's Pat Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
It's our first episode of 2024, and I want to share a couple thoughts about the year ahead, where we might be when we get to 2025, and what it all means.
Want to thank all of you for your support in 2023.
Our show was downloaded nearly 3 million times, and that just means the world to us and are so thankful for just all of you who helped make that happen.
Patrons and supporters and all of you.
Let's go back to Bryn Tannehill's Twitter thread.
So if Trump wins, we'll be living in a nation holding its breath for the chaos and horror that comes next.
And I think she's right about that.
I think if Trump wins in November, we are going to be bracing for what will be ahead.
If you remember when Trump won the first time, there was this horror, there was this shock, but there was also this Little sliver of hope that it may not be as bad as we anticipated.
He met with Barack Obama at the White House and Obama, in typical Obama fashion, took the high road, shook his hand, tried to instill some sense of decorum and gravitas to the whole situation.
That quickly evaporated as Trump was inaugurated in January and the Muslim ban was put in place a few weeks later and so on and so on.
If he wins this time, we will prepare for camps that will house a mass of migrants and asylum seekers.
Camps that may house other people, if I'm honest.
Those deemed necessary to confine.
We will prepare for an insurrection act being implemented and the military perhaps being called in to suppress protests.
People in the streets.
People worried about what this term means.
We will get ready for the expansion of the executive branch.
Project 2025.
It will be really, really, really difficult.
Those folks who are immigrants, those folks who are trans, those folks who are queer, those folks who are people of color.
Many, many, many, many, many Americans.
We'll be fearing what will be a second Trump term.
Tannehill continues, though, says, let's suppose he doesn't win.
In that case, he's on his way to prison.
The MAGA movement will be incensed, howling for blood and pissed that SCOTUS didn't save their guy.
There's no way Republicans accept the results of the election if it's close.
And if it isn't close, it's going to be because Trump got convicted somewhere and a bunch of states were forced to take him off the general election ballot because of laws prohibiting convicted felons from running or being on the ballot.
All right, so let's take those one after the other.
Let's say that he is convicted and is on his way to prison.
The MAGA movement will be incensed, howling for blood.
I don't know what happens if Trump goes to prison.
I really don't.
I do think That will be a moment when some of his corporate supporters, some of his more buttoned up supporters, those interested in power and money and influence, some of them will abandon him at that point.
Say it's just gotten to be too much and it's just gotten to be too much of a show and a side hustle and we got to just sort of look elsewhere.
There will be those Republicans that will finally use that at the time, as the time, to get off the Trump wagon.
However, Trump in prison, we don't know what that means.
We don't know what that means for the MAGA movement.
We don't know if that means that it dies and evaporates or if it accelerates into a movement that is bent on violence and revenge on resentment.
We don't know how that case works.
We know that there are, you know, many examples from history that show us that going to prison is not a death sentence.
For an authoritarian leader, for somebody who wants to be an autocrat, that there are people who've been indicted, whether that is Hitler or whether that is people like Netanyahu or Berlusconi, who, you know, have their own run-ins with the law, but nonetheless made comebacks.
So I don't think Trump going to prison means it's over.
I think it means we don't know what happens next.
It could mean A lot of violence in the streets.
It could mean a lot of unrest.
It could mean things that resemble January 6th.
But here's one thing that I think we should keep in mind is we are almost three years from January 6th.
There's a new poll out today from the Washington Post.
And the headline, if you read it, is going to say something like, majority of Americans think that January 6th was a big deal that should not be forgotten and we should learn from as a country so we don't repeat it.
If you dig into the numbers, it's like 43% of Americans think we're making too much of January 6th and we should just let it go.
Not a big deal.
Stop with this whole thing already.
If Trump goes to prison, I think it's a continuation of January 6th in the sense that January 6th only increased the myth of MAGA Nation.
It gave MAGA Nation its Alamo moment.
January 6th did not evaporate the momentum of MAGA.
It did not mean Trump is excised from our politics.
I have spent so many hours on this show, in my book, in public appearances talking about this.
That Trump in jail may mean the resentment machine, the revenge machine, the anti-democratic impulses of the American right may ratchet up to a point we have not seen before or have not seen at least in a long time.
Now, if Donald Trump loses, OK, let's say he makes it to the ballot.
Let's say he makes it to November and it's him and Biden.
Or him and someone else, and he loses.
What do you think is going to happen, y'all?
He's not going to accept that he lost.
There's no way he will accept that.
And we've learned from three years ago that he won't face any consequences because if he makes it that far and he's not in prison, what do you think is going to happen?
There is going to be so many tears and rips at our democratic process.
So many tears and rips at the election workers, the election officials, the people who process the votes.
So many counterfeit videos and pictures going around the internet showing this and that and how many ballots were dropped off at 3 a.m.
And I said this before and I'll say it again.
I wrote it in the New York Times two weeks after January 6th.
If the whole apparatus of the American right, the Republican senators, the megachurch pastors, the talking heads, had all been willing to say Trump lost the election, Trump incited January 6th, that's a fact, then that would have buttressed, it would have reinforced, it would have restitched all of those dynamics of democracy.
But now the playbook, the Carrie Lake playbook, the Doug Mastroianno playbook, the Tucker Carlson playbook is a pretty well-known playbook.
Just say you didn't lose.
Just say that there were suspicious things that happened.
Tell your supporters there's no way this was fair.
What happens again if Donald Trump loses?
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 Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
Tannehill writes this in the Twitter thread.
In this latter case, there's going to be anger and an even stronger drive coming from within southern states to cease recognizing the authority of the federal government.
Now, there's hinting at something here that's happened in the past.
We could talk about the Civil War, yes.
That's one time Southern states decided they didn't want to recognize the authority of the federal government.
But I also think we need to go back to what prompted the Civil Rights Movement.
We need to go back to the mid-20th century.
We need to go back to Brown v. Board of Education.
We need to go back to Jim Crow and realize that The reason we got the Voting Rights Act, the reason we've got the Civil Rights Act, the reason we got so many of the reforms that set the table for the latter half of the 20th century was because there were states that were like, we're not going to recognize the authority of the federal government when it comes to elections, when it comes to schools.
I think Tanya Hill's right that we may see some more of that in the future if Trump loses, that there will be sufficient anger and resentment, there will be sufficient Desire to flout the authority of the government, to call it illegitimate, to say that so-and-so is not my president, blah blah blah blah blah.
So that is also a possible future.
A future where, you know, some of you are old enough to remember, some of you know your history, some of you have seen the video footage, some of you have read it, about it.
Where the National Guard is called into places, where the National Guard has to help with schools or elections or with races, where you hear calls for secession, where you hear calls for outright ignoring of federal statutes, daring the government to come in and do something, daring the government, Joe Biden or whoever, to send in troops, give it a shot, daring the government to tear the nation apart, quote unquote, from within.
Brent Tannehill makes one more point and I want to touch on it and then touch on a couple of others.
If Trump loses, I also expect desperate shenanigans along the lines of the fake elector schemes, refusal to certify the election in the Senate or House if the GOP controls either.
I also expect violence.
So I've talked a lot about Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House.
I think Brent Tannehill has a really good point that we should all be aware of.
If Trump loses, Think about what happens in the House with someone like Mike Johnson as Speaker.
Mike Johnson, somebody who worked tirelessly to try to overturn the 2020 election.
Mike Johnson, somebody who has deep ties to those who stoked the insurrection on January 6th.
And if you don't believe me...
Read what I published with Matt Taylor at Rolling Stone on Mike Johnson.
You can read Matt Taylor's work on this.
You can also, if you don't want to read all that, just listen to this podcast.
I interviewed Matthew Taylor about Mike Johnson.
There are deep connections for Mike Johnson to overturning the election, both legally in the courts, he was unsuccessful, and illegally in terms of being tied to people who stoked insurrection.
Do you think Mike Johnson Isn't going to go along with whatever shenanigans might be available, might be thought up, might be imagined.
That will happen.
It could happen.
What about the Senate?
We don't know.
We don't know if the Dem majority will hold.
We don't know how that will look.
She says, I also expect violence.
There will be violence.
And I know some of you are thinking, you know, will there be though?
Like January 6th happened.
You know, is it a big deal?
Have we had that again?
And I'll just say, what I always say when I'm asked about this is, it's happening all around us, but sometimes we don't notice.
Today is January 2nd.
Last night, somebody broke into the Colorado Supreme Court, allegedly fired shots, and was arrested.
Now, why would they do that?
I don't know, because the Supreme Court just recently decided Trump should not be on the ballot.
The Supreme Court of Colorado made that decision.
Guess what happens?
Violence.
Somebody breaks in, starts shooting.
Now, people didn't die that we know of.
There were no injuries.
A Supreme Court Justice of Colorado was not killed or anything like that.
So you may or may not have heard about it.
It may not be something that came across the CNN ticker as you were watching it.
I don't know.
That's violence, though, isn't it?
Somebody breaking in and shooting up the Supreme Court.
Isn't that violence?
What happens if Trump loses?
What happens if Trump says, I didn't lose, they cheated you out of your country a second time?
What happens if Mike Johnson and the leader of the Senate, if he's Republican, could be Mitch McConnell or someone else, goes along with it?
There's all kinds of things we can't predict, and Tannehill points this out too, right?
2023 was full of these.
Things we could not have predicted, could not have known.
Could not have foreseen that whether over the last couple of years, this has been what's happened in Ukraine and Russia's invasion, whether what happened in October in Israel and the ensuing violence and just murder of tens of thousands of children in Gaza.
There are going to be things that happen next month and the months after that we don't know about.
We can't foresee.
But these are ways to think about what's ahead.
And I guess for me, the reason to talk about it today is this.
This is one of those years that defines a country.
It's one of those years that defines what it's going to look like.
Because again, some of you know your history.
You've read about 1965.
You've read about 1968.
Years that had these decisive influences, these decisive ways of deciding how the country would look and What kind of legacy would be there?
And, you know, when you're living through it, it's hard to understand it because you're just trying to get through it.
But 2024 is that year.
And I think 2024 is one of those times when we will.
We will kind of.
Live through a moment will be historic, and that sounds.
That's right.
Uh, it sounds cliche, especially in a time when we have the internet and everybody's always talking about something being iconic or the greatest of all time or a legacy or whatever.
That's, and it's hard to even figure out what's history anymore and what's just noise.
You know, what's, what's actually important and what's actually just today.
But 2024, I think, promises to be something like that.
So I want to close with a resolution, a 2024 resolution.
Andrew Weissman, who is a co-host on MSNBC and somebody who works at NYU Law and is just kind of on the television a lot, wrote Where Law Ends about his time at the DOJ, etc.
Andrew Weissman says, here's my resolution.
To do everything I can to uphold and strengthen the very best of America, not the worst.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the historian and very influential and important public intellectual says this, we will show the world that autocracy can be defeated.
I will be focusing all my efforts in 2024 to that end.
And I just want to say that's why we do this show too.
We're going to keep doing this show.
We're going to be telling you soon in the coming weeks about things we're going to be adding to this show in 2024, things that we're going to be renovating, because we see 2024 as one of those years where it's time to do everything we can to strengthen the very best of America and also to defeat autocracy.
I personally Feel as if this is a moment when, if we don't defeat this challenge ahead, if Trump becomes president once again, then we will be in a place where I'm not sure that something like democracy will be present in this country for a long time, if ever again.
And I just want to close, too, with a reason for hope.
I know Dan and I talk about reasons for hope.
Quite often.
But for me, this one is the thing that I keep in mind on an everyday basis.
And it's the reason that I hope, among others, when it comes to thinking about this country.
It's easy for me to be a harbinger of doom.
It's easy for me to be pessimistic.
It's easy for me to diagnose the situation and see all the threats.
That's kind of what I do.
My wife will tell you that, my friends will tell you that, and so on.
But I have little kids, and when you have little kids, hope is something you have to have, because otherwise, you really can't parent.
You really can't be somebody who invests in two little lives that mean the world to you.
I take my two-year-old to the playground as often as I can, and when we're there in my neighborhood, where I live, we hear a lot of different languages spoken.
We hear Spanish, and we hear Chinese, and we hear Hindi, we hear Russian.
We hear other languages.
No matter what playground we go to in my neighborhood, no matter where we go, we were at a Christmas celebration, we were at a holiday event, we're going to hear those different languages.
And you're going to hear people on Fox News, like Jesse Watters, or you're going to hear people like your Uncle Ron say, oh, America, I can't, this is, speak English.
What are we going to do, our way of life?
I have to tell you, for me, when I hear people speaking other languages around me, when their kids are playing with my kids at the playground, when we are trying to help our kids go down the slide and take turns and be good citizens of the playground, I'm reminded of why we hope in this country, because this country is supposed to be a grand experiment, supposed to be an experiment in democracy, a place where no matter who you are,
No matter your family background or how much money you have, you're supposed to be able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, to have equal protection under the law.
When I think of all my neighbors who speak those languages, who have their own stories, who have their own journeys, who have holidays and memories, who have histories and symbols, who have faiths, who have a family That in some ways is like mine and in some ways isn't.
My thought is not, I'm so scared about what America might become.
My thought is, I'm so hopeful that we might be people who take up that experiment.
That as long as we are people who believe in equality, in inclusion, people who think that sharing power Everyone having a voice.
Respecting.
Privacy.
The right to worship.
The right to free speech.
The right to gather.
Respecting.
The freedom of the press.
The idea that we would be neighbors who engage in an experiment where we say our stories are not the same, at least they're not identical, but our values, our American creed is.
That's what makes this country, or could make this country.
So when I hear all those languages, when I see all those faces, my thought is not I'm scared.
My thought is, this is our chance.
Just like I'm helping this kid get down the slide and telling that kid to wait their turn and working with their parent to do the same and blah blah.
That's what it is.
This country is not about Sameness.
It's not about being identical.
It's not about saying, unless we are all alike, then we can't live together.
It's a country that says audaciously, experimentally, daringly, we're going to live by a creed of values of participatory democracy.
One that will not run in the face of difference, but will say what holds us together Is a belief in those wonderful, if never achieved, ideals.
So that's why I hope in 2024.
It may be naive and it may be somewhat corny.
It may sound like the end of some sort of Andrew Sorkin or Aaron Sorkin TV show or something.
But the longer I do this work, the more I cover all the bad actors and the autocrats, the scandals of the megachurches, the people who do nothing but try to tear us down, the more I say, if we don't have that hope and we don't keep it front of mind that this is why we work, this is why we continue to try to have something like democracy, then what are we doing here?
What's the point?
So that's my hope for 2024 is to look at my neighbors, those who are speaking Hindi, those who at home are speaking Chinese or Spanish, the ones playing with my kids on the playground, the ones who go to their schools, the ones who with whom we share celebrations at preschool and say, I want to build the best of America.
I want to defeat autocracy.
So that we can live in the riches of pursuing these ideals together.
Whatever's left of them.
Whatever's possible for a future with them.
That's why I'm here.
That's why we're going to be here throughout 2024.
That's why we're going to be giving everything we have to this show and talking about everything we feel like is important to safeguarding democracy from these threats and helping everyone to understand what's going on in our midst as it comes to religion and politics.
Thanks for listening today.
We hope you had a great, safe holiday season.
Hope you had a good New Year.
Hope that you are ready for 2024 and we hope you'll take the ride with us.
