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In this episode of Straight White American Jesus, Brad and Dan dive deep into the ramifications of the 2024 elections. They explore how religion and nationalism shape political behavior and examine the powerful draw of fascist ideologies in today’s climate.
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AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY We now know that Donald Trump is headed back to the White House.
There's a lot to prepare for.
There's a lot to process.
That's why we're gathering on November 21st in Los Angeles, California.
An illustrious group of thought leaders and scholars will be breaking down what happened.
And helping all of us to prepare for what's to come.
The event is sponsored by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Good Faith Media.
It'll include me and Dan, Rachel Lazar, Andrew Seidel, Kyate Joshi, and other scholars and thought leaders.
7 p.m.
at St.
John's Episcopal Cathedral in Los Angeles.
We hope you can join us in person.
Doors will open at 6 with book signings and a chance to hang out with me and Dan, talk with Andrew Seidel and Rachel Lazar and others.
And if you can't make it in person, we'd invite you to join us online.
Use code 50 for the next week for 50% off in-person tickets.
Sign up in the next week for half off.
You can find all the info in the show notes.
We hope to see you there.
This week Donald Trump was elected to a second term.
After four years of campaigning on revenge and retribution, he is now headed back to the White House.
This was undoubtedly one of the hardest weeks for many of you, as it was for us.
We spent today breaking down how he was able to capture more of the electorate than the previous two elections.
We talk about what happened and how everything from misogyny to racism and the economy drove people to vote for Trump.
We foreshadow what will come in a second Trump term, but we also spend time on how to cope in the interim.
Ways to approach the next couple of months so that you can prepare for what's ahead.
It's undoubtedly been an excruciating week.
It has been for us, too.
We're here to analyze, but we're also here to help prepare.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is the Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi, here with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, here to talk about a slow news week.
Brad, nothing going on this week at all that we need to dive into here.
You know, we've done 700 episodes of this podcast and we've been doing it since, planning it since around 2017 and really got going in 2018.
And I think this is the hardest day we've had in terms of getting on the mic, providing some analysis and some other thoughts.
But we weren't doing this when Trump was elected the first time.
There's been other times on the mic that I've been angry and emotional and hurt and everything else.
This is, I think, like all of you listening, one of the hardest weeks that anyone can remember.
So we're going to get into what we think happened.
We're going to talk about the religious and Christian nationalist dimensions of it.
We're going to talk about the ways people voted, including Catholics and other Christians.
We're going to talk about the allure, the religious and transcendent allure of fascism and how that plays into this.
And I think we're also going to get into practical things.
A lot of you reached out.
What do we do?
How do we cope?
And we want to provide some feedback on that in the best way we can and some perspective.
So we're going to do all those things today.
Dan, I spent yesterday, Wednesday, the day after the election, basically numb.
And in some ways I felt a sense of like...
Like it was over and I knew the result and my body moved on because it knew what we know.
I knew now what was going to be the reality.
But the numbness set in.
I didn't watch news.
I didn't do much on Twitter.
I didn't read a bunch of analysis from the Atlantic and everyone else and the New Yorker and, you know, the nation.
I called my brother.
I folded clothes.
I hung out with my kids, watched a little bit of a basketball game I didn't care about.
How about you?
Yeah, so again, similar to 2016.
I will say I was disappointed, but I think not surprised.
I'm too pessimistic to be surprised.
But the flashback of, you know, I'm watching stuff and I'm looking at, you know, data coming in and things are lagging and Harris is underperforming or Trump is overperforming, whatever, you know, those kinds of things.
I live on the East Coast, so I had to go to bed.
You know, before it ended, and I knew that this would happen.
I woke up at like 3.30, 4 in the morning, check.
It's pretty clear, like, you know, where it is.
And I, like you, I didn't look at any news yesterday beyond that, or just couldn't and chose not to.
Played some video games, did some other kinds of things, and really left, you know, processed some of the emotions that come with this.
I think things that stand out to me with that are...
That, you know, my reason for hope, and I guess this is why it's hope and not assurance, last time is I talked about all these hypotheticals and like none of them happened.
It's like, None of the hypotheticals that would have helped Harris materialize.
I think this was a clear victory.
This is the first time since 2004, first time in 20 years, that a Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote.
And that's disheartening to me, that that many Americans, that this is what they went for.
And I felt that the first time.
I feel that this time.
I've got to say there are some other pieces that are interesting.
I think we'll talk about this not just today, but in weeks and months to come, that the consequences of this election could be bigger than 2016.
But I will say it didn't hit me as hard because it wasn't the blind side that I think the 2016 election was.
There's also a sense that I think...
You know, I've talked about, you know, losing my mom recently.
I've experienced other losses.
That kind of experience sucks.
But when you lose a family member and you've done that before, there's this part of you that's like, I know I can survive this because I've done it before.
And I think that there's a bit of that reserve somewhere in me that's like, okay, like, this sucks, but this is real and this is what it is.
And we've survived this before.
And, you know, We're bigger than this guy.
And that's another thing we'll be talking about.
But yeah, a lot of complex emotions.
Having to talk to my kids.
I've got a kid who's in high school and who is old enough now to appreciate more of what this is.
Talking to students, aware of how young my students were eight years ago.
You and I are old enough now that eight years is not as big a chunk of our lives as it used to be.
But I've spent my day with 20-somethings who...
We're young in 2016, youngish.
And, you know, yeah.
So just a lot of things, a lot of discussions, a lot of different roles, a lot of different emotions.
I'm sure a lot of you out there are feeling that.
We're going to get into coping, self-care, preparing all of that here in the second part of our episode.
I think also, Dan, there are reasons for hope.
And I know that some of you are going to roll your eyes right now and you're like, you know, screw you, Brad.
And I get it.
But I do want to go down the line and talk about things that happen in state legislatures and governor's races and other things because those things are things to hold on to and are things to take away.
So let's get into it, Dan.
First thing, and jump in, so Dan, I got like eight things.
You jump in here wherever you want.
But the first thing is what you just said, and that is, this is not 2016 where it's like 10,000 votes in a swing state.
This is not 2020 where we're still counting votes and we don't know who won Georgia and who won Arizona until a week later.
This is the clearest Trump victory in the three elections, period.
And I will say, I've seen the folks Claiming that this was about Harris, ran a bad campaign and all that.
Harris, the candidate.
I've seen people saying, if we would have kept Joe Biden, this wouldn't have happened.
There are certainly Biden loyalists, like people who worked for Joe Biden on MSNBC, saying that as loud as they can.
Tom Bonnier, who's a pollster and somebody who's really in the data, had today on X that Basically, in non-battleground states, Trump gained six points from 2020.
We're not talking Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona.
We're talking anywhere other than those seven battlegrounds, he gained six points, and in battlegrounds, he gained three.
I don't think that's about Joe Biden.
I don't think that's about Kamala Harris.
I think that's about- I'm just going to- Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the economy and other things.
Here's the other thing about that.
Here's another part that will just drive me crazy.
I don't know if we're ever going to figure out why pollsters cannot figure out Trump.
Why it is- That after eight years, when they do midterm polling, it goes okay when Trump's not on the ballot, when they poll about some of these ballot measures and stuff.
But various things about this guy throw it off.
Biden was getting clocked by Trump.
And what that means is if Biden was down by three and four and five points from Trump in the summer, he was down by eight.
He was down by 10.
He was down by double digits.
That's how far off they were.
So I'm not going to say anybody was a perfect candidate and whatever, but I do think that we should have stayed with Biden line for me is probably the least convincing of all of the kind of post-mortem analyses of this.
So sorry to cut you off, but that line drives me crazy.
It's just a loyalist line, and that's all it is.
And none of that is to overlook that Kamala Harris is a woman and that there is misogyny baked into this.
So none of this is to say that we're ignoring that Joe Biden is a run of the mill white guy and Kamala Harris is a mixed race, black woman, Asian woman, married to a Jewish man, daughter of immigrants.
So is that baked into this?
Yes.
I think what we're trying to articulate is that Even if you leave Biden in, he's losing by more, despite the fact that he's not going to suffer some of that misogyny and other stuff.
It doesn't mean that misogyny and racism didn't play into this, and we're going to get to that.
And if you know us and you listen to the show, you know we're never going to look away from those things, and those are all things we know are real, are all present, and that misogyny and racism are a part of, like, not voting for Kamala Harris.
But the first point we're trying to make here is, like, Trump This is...
Trump's popularity is at an all-time high.
And I think that's something that is hard to understand and hard to comprehend for a lot of us.
But this was not about he eked out a victory.
You know, Dan, like, you ever have the athletes that are, like, 39 years old and they eke out one more championship?
And you can just tell they got, like, very little...
Like, it's like, well...
I hope they win it this year because I just don't think he or she's got it anymore.
And this is not that.
This is not one of those, oh, they were able to sort of get there despite the fact that he's old and something.
This is like a resounding Trump win.
Okay, so that's one.
There's number two is across the country, abortion rights, reproductive rights, one, there's popularity.
School vouchers, lost.
If you follow Josh Cowen, author of The Privateers, who I've interviewed on this show, he's been all over this.
So there's a lot of issues that are not Trump issues, not MAGA issues, that one, there's also a lot of down-ballot folks Who are not MAGA, who are not Republicans?
Who won?
If you look at North Carolina, basically everything went right if you're not MAGA in North Carolina, except for voting for Trump.
So that's there.
We can come back to that, Dan, if you like.
I want to jump into some numbers, first of all, for evangelicals and Catholics.
So this is from Dr.
Holly Berkeley Fletcher, who is the author of the forthcoming Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism.
She writes, The national exit polls show that white evangelicals are 22% of voters.
So just to stop for a minute, white evangelicals, Dan, are about 13% to 14% of the country, just to be clear.
I interviewed Robert Jones, Robert P. Jones about this recently, and that's the data we have.
If you want to know how many white evangelicals are in the country, they're like 13%, 14% of the country.
Damn, they vote like gangbusters.
So they might be 14% of the country.
They're 22% of the voters.
They're almost a quarter of the vote.
They voted just like they did in 2016.
81% for Trump, 17% for Harris.
Dr.
Berkeley Fletcher goes on.
Other people who make up 78% of the remaining electorate voted for Harris by a 19-point margin, 58 to 39.
Without white evangelicals, Harris would have won by nearly 20 points.
For example, in Wisconsin, 22% of voters were white evangelicals, and they went for Trump 77-23.
Everyone else in Wisconsin, who constituted 78% of voters, voted for Harris by a 14-point margin.
I could go on and give you how this works in PA and Minnesota, but there's, you know, once again, the white evangelical thing that we've been talking about, Dan, on this show for 700 episodes that a lot of others have written about and discussed.
That we lived and we know so intimately comes to the fore.
I have other thoughts on this, but you want to jump in on white evangelical Trumpism going on a decade now.
Just that it was under the radar this time.
People can remember 2016 and 2020 with Mike Pence, who was there to try to shore up that vote and so forth.
There wasn't a lot of talk about the white evangelicals this time.
And I think for some, that's because it just goes without saying.
They're going to support Trump.
And they did.
And I'm not surprised by that.
But I think I've also had people who asked me, because they didn't hear about that as much, like, are they still a thing?
Is that, like, kind of done?
And it's not.
It's not done.
It's there.
And I think it just shows how much that support is baked in and how much the Christian nationalism is supported.
the MAGA brand.
And as you say, they are highly motivated voters who are always enthusiastic for Trump and have been, and they show that again.
Dr.
Berkeley Fletcher points out that one of the breakdowns in this, and I'll get to this in a minute, in this election is education.
So non-college educated folks voting for Trump in high numbers, except for white evangelicals.
So what does that mean?
It means even college educated white evangelicals vote for Trump in extremely high numbers.
So I think that's something to keep an eye on.
And we'll talk way more about that over the coming weeks and what it means that evangelicalism is now this broad word that stretches to so many places that so many folks describe themselves as evangelical because they're MAGA, because they're a certain political bent, not because of their firm beliefs in the Trinity or the Holy Spirit, on and on and on.
56% of Catholics seem to have voted for Donald Trump.
In 2020, Catholics backed Joe Biden by five points.
So that's a swing.
I mean, that's just a big swing, Dan.
And we, again, will go on and on and on and on about this over the next months, but I have spent an inordinate amount of time on this podcast talking about J.D. Vance and Catholics who are anti-modernism, anti-modern Catholic Church, and really, in many ways, anti-Pope Francis.
And I think that brand of Catholicism, among other things here, and we'll get to them, and I don't want to reduce anything, but I think we see that.
The Harrison Butkers of the world, the Rad Trad Catholics of the world, who are now very much a prominent brand in American culture, that's a thing.
So we have that as well.
So feel free, jump in here if you want to talk about the Catholic vote.
We can talk about the ways this broke down according to race.
I can give a couple, but I want to focus on one.
Let's talk about women.
Black women, 89% voted for Kamala Harris.
Latino women, 60%.
So that's somewhat surprising.
You got 60% of Latino women.
There's probably something like an 8 to 10 point pick up there.
So that's a thing.
White women, 47%.
So a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump, just like they have.
And this is a running thing.
I just want to say, right?
Yeah, jump in.
53% of white women voted for a guy who is a rapist.
I mean, we want to talk about all the complexities of misogyny and patriarchy and religious identity and all these other factors that go into complex American identities.
I feel like that 53% of white women voting, because that is different.
That is something that has happened since the last time Trump ran, that civil finding that he was liable for sexual assault.
I think, again, we'll explore this going forward.
I think it says a lot.
I think Trump's rhetoric about women wanting to protect women and protecting them, there were a lot of white women out there who that clicked with.
I read an interview from somebody before the election.
It was somebody at a Trump rally who could not understand why people would be upset with this.
She was a white, middle-aged Trump supporter.
And she said that she wanted an alpha male protecting her.
She wanted an alpha male partner who would protect her.
She had a dad who was an alpha male.
And I get it when we can't empathize with that.
We can't get it.
We're like, how does that click for somebody?
But it does.
There are a huge portion of white women in this country, a majority of voting white women in this country for whom For a myriad reasons, all of that landed with them.
The IVF stuff, the abortion stuff, everything.
And I think that that's one of the most striking factors of this, of the findings and the exit polls for me.
I mean, between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, there's like 17 children.
I'm not exaggerating.
The father of fertility.
Trump calls himself the father of fertility.
RFK, who's now set to play a prominent role in the Trump administration, at one point had something like Four dozen mistresses in his phone.
So anyway, we can leave all that.
A couple more things that I think are worth talking about.
Dan McClellan, the prominent Bible scholar and absolute superstar on TikTok, says this.
MAGA was constructed on and continues to thrive on believing whatever claims validate their worldview and structuring of power irrespective of reality.
And he quotes a statistic here on misinformed views on immigration crime, the economy, correlated with ballot choice.
So I'll go slow, Dan, so we can make sure and get this.
Violent crime rates are at or near all-time highs in most American cities.
That is false.
And if you knew that that was false, you voted for Democrats plus 65.
If you did not, if you believe that was true, violent crime rates are at an all-time high.
In San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, you are a Republican plus 26.
Inflation in the US has declined over the last year and is near historic averages, which is true, and we've got to come back to this.
If you knew that, Democrat plus 53.
If you did not know that, if you believe something else, Republican plus 19.
The U.S. stock market is near our all-time highs.
Again, if you knew that, Democrat plus 20, Republican plus 9.
Over the last few months, unauthorized border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border are at or near the lowest level in the last few years.
If you know that, you're D, Democrat, plus 59.
If you don't, Republican plus 17.
So, things we went over in 2017 and 18, things everybody talked about.
Information silos, media echo chambers.
Where do you get your information?
Is it from Fox News?
Is it from Newsmax?
Is it from TikTok?
Is it from Joe Rogan?
Is it from Ben Shapiro?
Is it from whomever?
We see the effects of that here.
So I think that's something that's at least worth pointing out.
I want to just come to something that I think will be the last part of this first...
Well, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about this in a minute.
We'll be right back.
Okay, Dan, I do want to come to the economy, and I think that I am not being trite, and I'm not trying to be cliché here, and I'm not trying to be reductive.
A lot of what we've talked about today, with white evangelicalism and Catholics, with white women, with the misinformation, all of that is fueled by things we've talked about on this show.
For seven years and 700 episodes, which is racism, systemic racism, white evangelical racism, white supremacy, Raging misogyny.
Deep-seated patriarchy.
And there are people who would have never voted for Kamala Harris because she's a woman, because she's a black person, because she's a black woman, because she's an Asian woman, and so on.
That is all there.
So please do not misunderstand what I'm saying.
I am not denying the reality of those things.
I'm not downplaying them.
I'm not trying to look away from them.
That is all real.
And that reality is there.
For the second time in my life, I woke up and As is usual in my house, I stay up way too late, doom scrolling and reading things.
My wife goes to bed early.
And for the second election in our lives, we woke up and she was like, you know, basically gave me this look of like, today's supposed to be the day we have our first woman president.
Today's supposed to be the first day that I explained to our three-year-old that she won't understand it, but we have a woman president.
And once again, we don't.
So I am not looking away from any of that.
But Chris Hayes is somebody who I think talked about this well the other night on MSNBC. Chris Hayes is somebody who I think often has a good perspective on things.
He talked about the ways that this win for Trump is a rejection of the status quo.
That going into this, despite whatever the Democrats said about the economy, that it's working, that Inflation is not as bad here as in France and in Germany and everywhere else.
We're actually doing pretty well according to historic averages when it comes to inflation.
Jobs are great.
Everyone has a job.
It does not feel that way.
Chris Hayes talked about people who feel like they're squeezed by high prices, like they can't afford the things that they used to be able to, that food and housing and insurance and childcare and education is all being squeezed and the leaders around them don't They don't connect with.
And one of the things you pointed out, and I'll just throw it to you after this, and this is made also by Derek Thompson, who writes for The Atlantic, that for the first time since World War II, every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share.
So every governing party in a developed country lost a vote share, meaning across the developed world, there is a sense that the people in charge since the pandemic have failed their citizens, their communities, their constituents.
And I know some of you are driving, some of you are doing the dishes, and you're already going, yeah, but, yeah, but, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, I get it.
We've been saying for years that Trump's appeal is about feeling.
It is not about logic or policy or rationality.
It does not feel to a lot of people like this country works for them.
And so they are voting as women, as Latinos, as Catholics.
For a guy who, on the surface, you're like, why would you ever vote for that guy as a Catholic?
There is no love your neighbor there.
As a Latino, in terms of immigration and mass deportation, is that really, really?
As a woman, everything we talked about, IVF and so on.
I'm curious for your thoughts, Dan, on that.
I don't want anyone listening to think that we are looking away from race and gender here.
We're not.
But There are so many ways Donald Trump is abnormal, and I'm going to talk about that.
He is abnormal and there is a true sense of American apocalypse coming.
He is normal in the sense that he's a candidate across the developed world.
He is getting a higher share of the votes.
He got plus six in non-battlegrounds and plus three in battlegrounds, just like challengers across the world have since the pandemic.
This was, in some ways, a pandemic election.
Since the pandemic, life doesn't feel like it's working for a lot of people, and they're like, gas prices, I can't go on vacation, I can't buy a house, I can't do anything, who's going to fix it?
All right, off to you.
Yeah, so I want to pick up on a couple of these themes, I think, tied together and kind of add to what you said.
So the misinformation piece.
There was a good piece in The Atlantic by Adam Serwer.
And, you know, he outlines what he sees as sort of three spheres of MAGA support.
And it was really, he said, you know, the sort of the inner core, these are the Elon Musks of the world.
These are the hardcore, the people who really support Trump.
They want to dismantle everything he wants to dismantle.
They want to maintain these traditional hierarchies and so forth.
But then he says the next circle are what he calls the Trump fans.
And this is that misinformation circle.
These are the people who...
These are the ones who you talk about Project 2025, and they're like, Trump has nothing to do with that.
They don't necessarily like it, but they believe that he doesn't have anything to do with it because he said that he does.
They believe the conspiracy theory stuff.
Because they live in those silos and that misinformation and so forth.
And so they sort of become completely inured to any kind of factual disconfirmation.
And I think that that highlights that misinformation piece and how central that was.
I think you also get this other piece of, as he identifies as third, he says, the third are the kind of traditional conservatives who kind of choose to ignore or dismiss Stuff that Trump says.
They're the ones who are like, oh, he doesn't really mean that.
Or, oh, gee, I wish he wouldn't say those things.
But this was Nikki Haley for me.
I think it was last week when she talked about why she was going to vote for Trump.
She said, I don't like the way that he talks and blah, blah, blah.
But I like most of his policies.
I don't agree with any of Harris's policies.
It's the dismissal of everything that he says about all of these kinds of things.
So That's the kind of traditional, by this point, Trump coalition, let's call it, right?
Those three spheres.
What I think you're highlighting when we bring in the really mundane thing about inflation is that, number one, that's like the big variable in this election in many ways.
And as you say, we'll get to the race and the misogyny stuff because it's real, except it's not a variable.
It's a standard thing in American elections.
The inflation, as you say, was part of a broader pattern.
And Northwestern economist Robert Gordon was reading something and he said, as he noted, he said, inflation is highly predictive of election outcomes, not just in the US, but in these other places, as you say.
What happens is you mix all of these things together and you, as you say, it's about feelings.
So all the Trump people, those misinformation people, of course they didn't believe.
Remember the thing, what, two, three weeks ago when Trump was trying to say that the jobs numbers were inflated and they were made up and they'd been manipulated and so forth?
And, you know, earlier when he was bad-mouthing Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, who he now says he'll probably let finish his term, you know, of course they didn't believe it.
But for lots of other Americans, and I think a lot of these are what they call the low-information voters, and that's not intended to be a slight.
What they mean by low-information voters are people that they don't spend all of their time following politics.
They don't have a well-wrought political ideology.
They kind of, you know, these are in some ways the kind of vote, you know, they do the Democratic Olympics every four years.
They kind of tune in and so forth.
And for them, It didn't feel like inflation is better.
It doesn't feel like the economy is better.
And I think a lot of things feed that.
One is the myth, and it's a myth that has been around since Reagan, that the GOP is the party of the economy, that when the GOP is in office, the economy does better, that the GOP is better on the economy.
The GOP is better at funding money and creating wealth for wealthy people.
That's what the GOP does.
Lots of historians have written about this for decades, but that myth sticks.
That was there.
The feeling that things aren't better was there.
Jerome Powell, I think it was today, said it could be years before people feel like the inflation stuff is really sort of behind them.
There's such a lag So what happens?
You add that segment of the voting population.
And again, these are some of the people that the ones that said, yeah, I voted for Obama, and then I voted for Trump, and then I voted for Biden, and then I'm voting for Trump again.
These are the ones that say that they're voting for change every time they vote.
And for those of us who have, I think, deep-seated political convictions and things, it's really maddening.
I think that was a huge variable in this that I had hoped and others had hoped The facts about the economy could do this.
We'd seen polls that showed Kamala Harris was closing the gap with Trump on the economy.
I said to some people two days before the election, I was like, I wish this was happening in about a month.
I think she was going to catch up.
I think on some of these things, that sentiment might have worked.
And the last thing I'll say about this, about that element of feeling and this This variable that I think the economy was for the people who ultimately put Trump over the finish line is, I promise you, Brad, there are a lot of Americans who voted for Trump who, honest to God, feel like prices dropped since yesterday.
And you can talk to people.
That is how fast and how significant this notion of what we might call voter sentiment works.
And for those of us who trade in ideas for a living, that can be really, really frustrating.
But it's the reality of how Human beings work.
We're motivated by lots of things.
Lots of people are moved by feeling, by emotion.
And I promise there are people who woke up today feeling like overnight everything was better.
And nothing objectively has changed.
Nothing in the grocery store changed prices.
Gas prices didn't plummet.
None of that happened.
But I think it's probably impossible, in my view, to overstate the role of emotion and feeling and just kind of intuition.
When it comes to voter behavior, and it sunk the Democrats at the presidential level.
There's a deep irony here that I think a lot of you have already picked up on, which is if you have policies that in many ways come from the GOP and have since Reagan, but I'm not going to let the Democrats off the hook, especially the Democrats of the 90s, off the hook.
Clinton, years, yep.
Yep.
If you have the neoliberal policies that lead to wider and wider income inequality Such that not just the top 10% of people in the country, but the top 1%, like the difference between what it feels like to make in the top 10% and the top 1%.
I live in Silicon Valley.
I mean, I don't live in Silicon Valley, Dan.
I live half an hour from Silicon Valley, but I'm around it enough to know that it is really hard to comprehend.
Like when you think about a school teacher, When you think about a fireman trying to live in the region where I live, I mean, I can explain how and why I live here, but I'm not going to.
It feels impossible.
So I'll just give everybody one anecdote.
I have a friend who works at a firehouse.
He's a fireman in the heart of Silicon Valley.
He lives two hours from the firehouse because that's as close as he can get to afford a house.
So he drives two hours to work.
Now he's a fireman.
So he drives that like, you know, once every three days, you know, stays three days, drives home, whatever.
He's the guy that lives the closest to the firehouse.
Some of the guys live in Oregon.
Some of them live in Idaho and they like trade shifts so they can be like a week on a week off.
So it's like, Hey, I live in Oregon.
I'm going to leave for a week, go to my job in Silicon Valley as a fireman.
Then I'll come home for a week and to my small town in Oregon or my small town in Idaho where I can actually afford a house and actually like afford to live.
When we were at BYU, I had somebody tell me that they knew a fireman from California who lived in her neighborhood.
This may be a silly anecdote, but to me, every time you leave the house in this region, you feel the inequality and you feel how there are people with $10 billion next to you and also people who can barely make rent or who work 40 or 50 hours a week and they live in their RV. They live in their trailer.
All that to say, For a lot of the country, it doesn't feel like things are good.
Now, here's Ron Brownstein at The Atlantic.
To summarize, one-fourth of pro-choice women voted for Trump.
One-fourth of Latinos who opposed mass deportation voted for Trump.
One-third of voters who said government should do more to expand health coverage voted for Trump.
One out of six voters who said he'd steer the U.S. to authoritarianism voted for Trump.
All of that's in the future, Brownstein says.
Higher prices are now.
Okay, so that's there.
I think we've covered some of the nitty-gritty.
I want to get into the religious nature of fascism.
Any final thoughts on takeaways here?
I mean, we're going to spend the next month talking about evangelicals, talking about Catholics, talking about white women, white men.
I mean, I have not said it yet, but a majority of Latino men voted for Donald Trump, 60% or so.
Yeah, any final thoughts, Dan, before we take a break and then talk about fascism and reasons for hope and coping and the rest?
Yeah, just briefly, you know, to talk about the misogyny piece, there was a great piece that I'll just point people toward from Sachil Gonzalez, again at The Atlantic.
She had a great quote.
She said, misogyny helps disempowered men feel empowered.
And I think that that captured a lot.
She also talks about within Lots of communities of color.
They have their own histories of patriarchy and misogyny and complex issues related to that.
And just to note, when the Trump campaign will tout these numbers, and they will, just, yeah, we're very aware that that is a piece of that.
Whether it's a certain culture of machismo, whether it is a long...
This is why you had Barack Obama and a bunch of other people going on stage and meeting in barbershops and doing things and trying to tell Black men that they could vote for a black woman and that that was okay.
And that message, I think, didn't get through.
So just that line about misogyny helps disempowered men feel empowered.
Once again, feeling.
The feeling of empowerment.
Not the reality of it.
The feeling of it.
And this is something that the right has traded on for a very, very long time in this country.
And just to be fair, it's like a clear majority of white men, a clear majority of Latino men, and it's like, it's not a majority of black men.
Of black men, yeah.
So a clear minority still, yeah.
Yeah.
All right, let's take a break.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, I think one of the things that we can offer people as scholars of religion is some reflections on what makes Trump and, quite frankly, his fascist platform alluring to people.
And I think one of the things that we've tried to get across in this show, and I really feel like you are way more informed and articulate on this than I am, is that You have to change your mindset when it comes to a leader like Trump.
Some of you are at home and you're still stewing.
You're like, it doesn't make sense.
People are voting against their interests when it comes to reproductive rights, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to healthcare.
It doesn't make sense.
Why would you do that?
Why would you do that?
Make it coherent.
Make it coherent.
And I want to start here, not with The coherency, not with the propositions adding up.
We've already been over how much of the information is muddled and most people don't have a clear understanding of what's going on with crime, what's going on with immigration.
But I want to start here.
Fascism makes promises that democracy doesn't.
Fascism makes promises that democracy doesn't.
And it certainly makes promises that liberalism doesn't.
And by liberalism, I mean The liberal free order of free individual human beings making choices for their lives.
Fascism promises ultimate safety and fulfillment.
It is a solution.
By contrast, democracy promises to make things better incrementally, to improve your healthcare, to improve your infrastructure, to help you, perhaps, when it comes to a social safety net, to make things a little less dangerous, a little less fearful.
Fascism starts out with a promise and a ceiling that democracy never even claims to.
It's a solution to life.
And as I was thinking about this this weekend, it brought me back to somebody, I spent a great deal of time studying and I spent a lot of time, this is a really strange thing about to say, but I've spent a lot of time in Paris going through his archives and his written notes and other things for my dissertation.
And that's a guy named George Bataille.
If you know George Bataille, controversial figure, not necessarily family-friendly reading, it's a whole thing.
So if you know Bataille, I'm not going into it, okay?
Don't get the audiobook of Bataille on the way to the car line.
Yeah.
And please don't email me.
You can if you want.
Feel free to email me.
I'm happy for you to email me, but...
I know about Bataille's controversies and Bataille's whatever.
Bataille wrote a very controversial essay on fascism, and a lot of folks kind of worried that Bataille himself was a fascist, and I'm not going to get into that debate either.
I'm not here to say George Bataille was a great guy.
I'm not here to say George Bataille was good, bad, great, nothing.
I don't look up to George Bataille.
George Bataille is not my hero.
None of that, okay?
Everybody just take it easy.
I'm really talking to my dissertation advisor right now.
All right, sorry.
Just a little bit.
But there are lines in that essay that I think illuminate where we are right now.
So let me give you a little bit here, Dan.
This is from George Bataille in The Psychological Structure of Fascism.
But the religious value of the chief, meaning like the head of the state, is really the fundamental value of fascism.
So the religious value is the fundamental value of fascism.
So everybody needs a shorthand.
The religious nature of the fascist leader is what makes fascism.
Giving the activity of the militiamen its characteristic affective tonality distinct from that of the soldier in general.
Okay, that's a mouthful.
It's also a mouthful in French.
But what he's saying there is the soldier in the fascist regime is not just a soldier.
They're not just a guy, a gal, anybody who signed up for the military.
They take on this role of something else.
They're a warrior in the army of a leader who is divine.
The chief as such is in fact only the emanation of a principle which is none other than that of the glorious existence of a nation raised to the value of a divine force.
Something, Dan, I think you know a lot about.
But basically, the fascist leader is the emanation Is the incarnation, as you would put it, Dan, of a nation raised to the status of divine.
That when you say this country is the greatest country on earth, that God inspired the Constitution, the United States, blah, blah, all of that MAGA stuff, all of that, you're talking about a nation that's been raised to the status of divine, and thus the leader is not just any older president.
The leader is the emanation of that divine status.
That is what fascism done.
He even uses your word, Dan, incarnated in the person of the chief, right?
The nation thus plays the same role that Allah incarnated in the person of Muhammad plays for Islam.
Now, I don't agree with this, actually.
I think this is not a great analysis, and George Bataille and I have argued about this a lot, but we have not.
He's dead.
He's been dead a long time.
But What I think he's saying here is incarnation of the fascist leader is really important.
And incarnation, of course, is often a religious term, at least in the Christian tradition.
Dan, this is why Christian nationalism is such a potent vehicle for fascism, is because Christian nationalism adds the Christian to the nation.
It gives the nation the value of something divine.
It gives a religious language to what you're doing.
It's not just about white supremacy.
It's not just about white nationalism.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We're instituting the order that God wants.
We as this nation are a chosen nation.
We, in this nation, are a Christian nation.
And our leader is not just a president.
No, no, no, no, no.
Donald Trump has the status of the divine, and he emanates What this country symbolically is.
One more quote, and I'll throw it to you for your thoughts.
Further, these two figures derive their fundamental power not from their official function in the state.
So now he's talking about Hitler and Mussolini.
And he's like, look, Hitler and Mussolini, they don't get their power from their official function in the state.
Oh, he's the president.
We better show respect.
Hello, Madam Vice President.
Hello, Mr.
President.
Hello, Senator so-and-so.
Nope.
They get their power From the existence of a fascist party and from their personal position at the head of that party.
They are not like, oh, I'm walking in the...
Like, Dan, I used to live in D.C., okay?
And I used to see in these weird ways, like, you know, I've talked about it, like Justice Kennedy, like trying to pick out...
Watermelon at the grocery store and me getting frustrated and like, why is this old man taking so long to pick a watermelon?
It's like, Justice Kennedy.
And I look around and Secret Service is like, or whoever is protecting him.
There was moments where you'd see Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut, getting his kid out of the car seat.
There was a moment where Mitch McConnell walked by as my wife was walking our dogs and she had just picked up dog poop and she was like, Brad, I almost threw it at him or whatever.
Anyway, she didn't do that.
But the point is, You see these people in person and you still say, hello, Senator Murphy.
Hello, Senator McConnell.
Like, they have a title and you, just like you say to your doctor or whatever.
What Batai's trying to say here is like, Donald Trump He's not potent because he's the president-elect.
He's potent because people think of him as the emanation of the divine nature of this country.
That the Donald Trump on the Rambo body, the Donald Trump holding the AR-15s, the Donald Trump who's a statue or an icon, that is what fascism does.
And that's why it's alluring, Dan, that voter who's not fully into politics, that voter who's not really sure about who they're going to vote for this time and they don't really care about the ins and outs of the Republicans and the Democrats and all this stuff that you and I talk about all the time, There is something so alluring about somebody who promises to solve you,
to solve your community, to save you, to make it all okay, to make it all feel good, to make it all less scary, to make it all less fearful, to get all the bad guys away, and all the people that want to hurt you, no longer around, and all the ones who've done all the bad punished, somehow that just feels so inviting.
It's a lot different than somebody saying, I'm going to improve your life a little bit.
And that's the sad and tragic, to me, seductive nature of, and it always will be.
Thoughts on this before we do other things?
Yeah, so a couple points.
One, you know, to this point of incarnation, I'm actually going to quote from a fascist real quick.
His name is Mussolini, but this is what Mussolini says about the state.
Mussolini writing about fascism says, fascism conceives of the state as an absolute In comparison with which all individuals and groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the state.
That's how Mussolini describes fascism in the state.
You take this incarnational logic, and what does that mean?
What does it look like?
In terms, it looks exactly like what we've seen from Trump for years.
Everything has value only in relation to Trump.
And the entire MAGA movement is built around that.
And people ask why, and I think it's this logic that you're describing, using Bataille as a source, this logic of the state embodied in its leader as something that transcends ordinary people, and the value of anything else is measured only in relation to that leader.
That is the MAGA movement.
That is the true believers.
By way of contrast, democracy, another theorist I think I've mentioned from time to time, is a French theorist named Claude Lafort, who was a theorist of democracy.
And one of the things that he says is a defining feature of democracy is he says it's structured around an empty place of power.
It's the polar opposite of that fascist model.
By that, he means it's not that there's nobody in charge.
It's not that we don't, of course, I mean, we just elected a president and we put them, but that seat can be vacated.
It can be questioned.
There is no full permanent embodiment of power, and that's one of the defining features of democracy.
And that brings to the fact that democracy, people often say that democracy is about discerning the common good.
I think that that makes it too easy.
I think we work harder in democracy than that.
I think we have to construct the common good.
It is not just handed to us.
It isn't embodied.
It is not given from on high.
It does not transcend us.
It is something that we have to work to create and to bring into being.
And man, fascism is a lot easier.
And I think it is.
I think it is incredibly alluring because of that.
And again, I think if we, you know, in my book, I write a lot about political desire.
I think there is a strong political desire for the ease and the promise security of that that clearly resonates with millions and millions of contemporary Americans who just voted to put Donald Trump back into office.
Yeah.
And so, you know, This is all in response to the question, how did this happen?
And I think that's a question that a lot of you have.
Why would people vote?
People who generally are in favor of reproductive rights, people who are generally against mass deportation, people who are generally in need and want healthcare, Obamacare, and so on.
Why would they vote for someone like this?
And I think we're just trying to provide an understanding of how the religious dimensions play into the fascist dimensions.
And it starts to show you what hopes and what promises are being presented.
In addition to what people are feeling in the here and now.
If you're feeling in the here and now, as if you don't have much of a future or there's not a future that seems open to you, and then somebody shows up and starts claiming they can solve everything, there's a chance you're going to say, sign me up.
And I think we're seeing that with this country now.
But it goes without saying, if you know us and you've listened to us, we think this is terrible.
And if you're worried about it, You should be.
And we're going to spend the next months and years talking about it.
And we will be here at Straight White American Jesus to break it all down like we have been.
And starting next week, you're going to hear me talk about how all the things I think are going to happen when he takes office.
And it's going to be tough.
But, you know, at least for today, we're just trying to sort of get to a place where folks might come to some sense of why you would vote for this person if If you're not a hardcore MAGA person, because we really saw, Dan, an expansion.
This was not the kernels and the inner core, the inner sanctum of MAGA turned out, got Trump to the...
This was an expansion of his base, period.
And that's the really upsetting reality.
So...
All right.
Let's take an interlude.
Everyone take a breath because we're going to move into something more hopeful, more constructive, and a little bit more practical.
So everyone take a second to breathe and let's transition here from talking about Mussolini and George Bataille to talking about ways that we can self-care and think about hope as we go into what's going to be a very difficult period.
All right, Dan.
I think we're in a time of mourning and I'll just throw it to you.
I won't even analyze that yet.
Is that how you felt yesterday?
Was your video game playing and chores and stuff you did just one of those days of, yeah, I'm not going to do life today because today is a day of mourning.
I don't know.
Is that the right word or what other word would you use for yesterday?
I think mourning is a fair word, I think, especially if we're aware that, you know, you and I were talking before this, that mourning is more than just sadness.
Anybody who's ever mourned, I mean, really mourned, you've lost, you know, somebody you really care about, you know that it's just this kind of all-encompassing thing.
It's like it dims the world for a while.
I remember when, you know, people I've lost before and, like, you know, I would have conversations with people and later people would ask me about it.
I have no recollection of that conversation.
It, like, It disrupts our temporality.
It disrupts our ability to do things.
It disrupts, you know, sort of everything.
So I think, I don't know that I have a better term than morning.
But yeah, definitely, let's say a primary emotion and experience.
Yesterday and beyond, obviously, we'll be in this period, I think, a lot of us for a while.
I bring that up, that word mourning, because I used to teach a class on religious approaches to death and dying.
And one of the things that we talked a lot about when we mourn is that in the United States, we don't really have a robust practice of mourning.
So in the United States, we have to talk about getting closure, moving on.
And you have to do that very quickly because we live in a hyper-capitalist setting.
So it's like you get an afternoon off, you get a day off.
Trying to get back to work, literally.
Yep.
You know, and there's no sense of like, hey, Dan, you just lost your mom.
Why don't you take two months off, three months off and really, you know, et cetera.
And I often talk in that class, not often, every time I teach the class, hands down, the most preferred, favorite, excited thing we do, the things that students love every time is we talk about a group from Indonesia, South Sulawesi called the Tanaturajans.
And the Tonanturajans, when somebody passes away physically in their community, they often keep the corpse of that person in their residence for six months to a year.
And you heard that, so it's like, hey, grandma died.
And her mummy, her skeleton wrapped in clothes is in the living room.
And every day we bring her tea.
And then when it's time for sleep, she goes to sleep.
We put her in her bed.
And to Americans, it's like, whoa, that is not how we do it.
You were telling me you got a skeleton in your house for six months.
And the answer is yes.
And my students just, I mean, in terms of interest and fascination, this is One of those units of the class, I don't have to beg anybody to be interested.
When we study that, we talk about something in mourning that we never talk about in this country, which is that death and mourning signify a transition.
They are an adjustment.
And that the physical reality is often ahead of the social reality.
And what I mean by that is the physical reality that the person you've lost is now not here, that they are in the past tense.
That's the physical, biological reality.
They don't have a heartbeat.
They don't have a brainwave.
They're gone.
But socially, they're not.
It takes time for the two timelines to match up again.
They're like buffering.
There's like a lag.
And the Tana Tarajans know that.
And so they're like, yeah, it's going to take us six months for us to adjust to the fact that our relative is no longer here.
So we're going to keep them socially alive.
We're going to talk to them.
We're going to bring them tea.
Now, I'm not saying everybody should do that.
I'm not prescribing that you do that next time you lose somebody.
What I am saying is we are in a period on November 8th where until January 20th, I think we're going to be in a time of transition.
Now, does that mean we shouldn't get prepared and ready?
No.
I think right now, I think we should be focused on creating new expectations, readjusting to what is real, readjusting to what to expect, creating a new routine, and finding ways so that the physical reality that Donald Trump is the president-elect Will, at some point, match up with the social reality that we know that, that your body knows that, that your mind knows that, and you have the expectations for what's ahead.
It's not the expectations you had if Kamala Harris was elected.
Dan, I had a whole set of expectations if Kamala Harris was elected.
They're gone.
I spent yesterday trying to mourn that, thinking about it.
I'm still doing that.
Like, what does this mean for my kids?
What does this mean for their education?
What does it mean for vaccines?
What does it mean for, I mean, I can go on and on and on about all the things that mean.
What does it mean?
I have two, you know, kids who are sexed female.
What is this?
You know, we can talk for the next 10 hours about all the things this could mean.
So I've got to readjust my expectations for what's next.
I've got to create a new set of realities and find a way for those to set in.
And then I'm going to be able to find the community and the relationships and the causes to move forward into that reality.
Jump in here.
Does that sound right?
And what are the ways people might do that practically in terms of self-care and coping?
Yeah, I think everything you're saying is right.
I think tied in with all of that is just recognizing that this is a long haul kind of thing.
We've said this is four years.
It's not going to happen right away.
It's not going to happen quickly.
It's not going to be over.
So I think all those transitions, I think, again, we talk about mourning.
People who've ever lost a loved one know that feeling of, you know, When you're thinking about, oh, I got to remember to call so-and-so on their birthday.
And then you realize that you don't because they're not there anymore.
Or Father's Day or Mother's Day or the first set of holidays.
All of those kind of things, that lag that you're talking about, I think, between the fact and the experience of it.
And I think just as with mourning a person or something, in this case, we have to give ourselves the time and the space to feel that, to let that gap kind of close up.
Some things that I've been thinking about, about like, okay, so like how, like how do you move forward?
You had Bataille, I have Friedrich Nietzsche.
I think it says a lot about the two of us that this is where we go in times of mourning.
But you referenced a quote from Nietzsche that I have on the whiteboard of my office.
And part of the quote is, he says, and Nietzsche's a weird writer, weird stuff, whatever.
I think this is from Beyond Good and Evil.
He says, if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
That's the phrase.
Now, that's a weird thing and that can mean a lot of things, but here's part of what it means and a lesson I've had to incorporate as we've done the podcast, as we do all these episodes and talk about all this stuff all the time, is we can stare into the abyss.
There is stuff...
That is going to be unjust.
It's not going to be fair.
It's not going to make sense.
Today, the DOJ is winding down Trump's cases on voter suppression or voter interference, election interference, because he is now going to be the sitting president.
And I can't find any way to make that right.
I can't change it.
It is what it is.
And so I think part of mourning, part of all of this is Not staring into that too long, that is when it becomes abyssal.
That is when it becomes this kind of emptiness that will hollow us out if we don't look away.
And so I think that, what does that mean concretely?
It means there are times when, yeah, put away the phone.
Don't do the scrolling.
Don't watch the news.
I've had people who tell me they take breaks from this podcast because it just keeps stuff in front of them.
I'm like, that's cool.
Do that if you need to do that.
But I think moving forward, we have to learn and focus on there are real things that are important and real things that we need to know about and real things that maybe we can still affect the outcomes of and real people who will be victimized that we can try to help.
To focus on those and not the things that are literally hopeless, that are unfixable, that are a fait accompli.
And I think that that's one, is not to sort of let yourself be hollowed out.
I think that for a lot of MAGA folks, that's what's happened.
They became essentially nihilists.
They are these hollowed out husks who are just filled with anger and resentment and rage, and that's sort of all that they can feel.
And if we're not careful, that can become us.
I think related to this, another one that I would say is that we have to reach for joy.
And by that, I mean, you know, people, Brad, they'll be good about being like, you know what?
The doctor said I need to eat less, you know, refined sugar.
So I'm going to adjust my diet or I've been really good.
I've been getting that third workout in a week that I need to do and, you know, whatever, or I need to walk, you know, however many steps a day.
And I've been doing that.
I think we have to be just as intentional at seeking out things that bring us joy and And I mean little things.
I mean, you know, it's watching that show that you like and actually carving out time to let yourself feel joy.
Because if we don't, we will fall into a pit of despair.
And then we're not a help to anybody.
We're not a help to our families.
We're not a help to...
You won't be a help to your children.
I won't be a help to mine.
We won't be a help to people in states where they don't have abortion access and the ways that we can do that.
And I think that that's everything from...
Big things to medium things.
All my metal concerts, they bring me joy.
So I lean into that.
To just spending time with our kids and just turning things off and being like, you know what?
I'm present here and now doing this.
And maybe it's half an hour.
Maybe it's 10 minutes.
Maybe it's just having a cup of coffee and you're a morning person like I am.
And you're watching the sun come up and just sort of appreciating that.
I think we have to be conscious with that because there are going to be a lot of things, I think, over the next months and years that are going to rob us of joy.
And then the last one, I got this from somebody who's been on the show before, not for a long time, but she's been here, Sarah Buteau.
I've mentioned Sarah before, who I don't know how old Sarah is.
She's around my age, but she's somebody I consider really wise.
And we were texting back and forth yesterday.
And this is what she said.
She said, we have to just be willing to do the next right thing.
And I thought that that was a great phrase because people are like, what do we do?
We can't fix everything.
We can't fix all of it.
We can't undo things.
We can't go back.
You know, we'll do all the postmortem and the analyses, but we can't change what happened on Tuesday.
We don't get to, you know, Monday morning quarterback and go fix things.
But we can do the next right thing.
And so what is that?
And we've talked about things, and I think we'll be talking about that moving forward.
Maybe it's somebody who donates books that are banned to create book boxes somewhere.
Maybe it's somebody who gives to a campaign someplace.
Maybe it's somebody who spends their spring break and they go to some state and they help canvas and spread information about candidates or events or whatever.
Just doing the next right thing and not being overwhelmed by the task or the time of what's in front of us.
Because again, this is a long-term thing and I think we have to settle in for that.
So those are some of the things that I'm thinking about and trying to focus on as I come to terms with this and try to look forward.
Yeah, it's great stuff.
And I want to emphasize for folks just, if you don't mourn, you won't have yourself to mobilize, to defend, to care.
We've got to get to a place where we adjust our expectations.
And I'm really good at catastrophizing.
And my poor partner last night, I got on a roll and I told her all the things I think are going to happen under Trump's next term.
And we're going to start on that next Friday and you'll hear it.
But if you don't mourn the physical reality that Donald Trump is going to be president, And the social reality that you expected a Kamala Harris presidency, you expected certain things, are not going to match up.
And you're going to have a hard time getting to any place where you'll be a help to yourself, a help to your loved ones, or a help to anyone else.
I'll quote one more time Ross Gay, who I have quoted before, and he says, My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow, which does not necessarily mean we have the same sorrows, but that we, in common sorrow, might draw us together.
It might depolarize us and deatomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love.
So, sorrow, to me, is part of joy.
And joy is, above anything, a solidarity of togetherness.
And to me, that's a lot of what love is.
Let's go to reasons for hope, Dan, before we jump today.
We've got a long episode, but that's okay.
It's a tough week.
I'm going to run down a litany of these things just to give people a shot in the arm before we go.
Julie Johnson won the race to represent Texas' 32nd Congressional District, making her the first out LGBTQ person from the South elected to Congress.
Missouri passed Amendment 3 codifying abortion rights into law.
North Carolina and Delaware have elected Jewish governors.
Sarah McBride will represent Delaware in the United States Congress.
Sarah McBride is an openly and out trans person.
There's more of these, Dan.
We have two Black women for the first time elected to the Senate.
Andy Kim is the first Korean elected to the Senate.
Andy Kim is somebody I wrote about in my book, who was literally on his hands and knees cleaning up trash and debris from January 6th, the night that the rioters had left.
In New York, issue one wins, codifying gender identity and sexual orientation into their constitution, as well as reproductive healthcare and autonomy.
The Supreme Court in Michigan has flipped.
It is now five to two.
I could go on and on and on.
There are just more things that give us hope.
And yes, some of you are like, yeah, but Trump's president.
Yeah, but the Senate.
Yeah, but the House.
Yeah, and I know.
But if you don't see these things, then When the good happens and you don't see it, then you're only going to become that nihilist that Dan just talked about.
So those are some things that caught my eye this week, Dan.
What's your reason for hope?
So one, you talk about solidarity, and we talk about a decisive victory, and it was, but we live in a polarized America.
Decisive victory is what, 51% of the vote?
It's still a 50-50 country.
It can feel today like those of us who don't support Trump, we're beleaguered, we're some minority.
And you will hear the pundits who talk about Trump's campaign manager talking about a mandate from the American people.
References to the American people, the voters.
No.
Half of us did not vote for this.
Half of us are still standing in solidarity with others.
I know that that varies regionally and all of that, but I think that there's real power in that.
I think that that's something to hold on to as we move forward because we're going to need that solidarity.
We're going to need that joy and common sorrow and all of those kind of things.
I also, this is a long way out, and I'm not trying to minimize where we're going to be for the next several years, but I read an article last week, and it was talking about those in the MAGA movement who are worried, win or lose.
This was before the election.
They're like, whether we win or lose, Trump is it.
One of the things that is beginning to emerge is that there is no inheritor of the MAGA mantle.
It's not Trump's kids.
It's not Ron DeSantis.
It's not Vance.
And this is a long time, but he is it.
And I think that there are real...
Real variables and things that could happen.
The guy is 78 years old.
We've seen him decline.
I don't know.
I don't know how that impacts a Trump presidency, but I think that it's significant.
I think there are signs of hope with that as well.
Yeah, I could go on and on about the guess of this.
Trump has gotten what he wants.
Does Trump actually govern as president when he doesn't have to run for re-election or things like that?
Maybe.
And in some ways, but I just think there are real variables there that, again, give me pause, give me some hope.
I guess those manga people have never heard of Kevin Sorbo, or Scott Baio, for that matter.
Hulk Hogan.
Anyway.
All right, y'all.
We hope you're coping.
We hope you're finding ways to be with those you love, to find time to reflect and mourn.
If you can, join us in LA, join us in San Diego.
We'd love to see you there.
And all that is in the show notes and you'll hear about in a minute, but that's a great chance to get together.
It's a great chance to be with others in solidarity in just a setting where we can talk about these things and really kind of work through them together.
I want to give a shout out to Mike C. in Pittsburgh, who wrote me a really kind and moving email about the ways that not staring into the abyss, Dan, Has really helped him.
So, Mike, I appreciate you and your email.
If you cannot afford to come to our events because prices are too high or you don't have the money, just email me.
StraightWhiteAmericanJesus at gmail.com and we will make sure you get a ticket.
Okay?
Other than that, we will be here next week.
Thanks for listening.
Have the best day possible.
Thanks, Brad.
Don't forget, y'all, two live y'all, two live events coming in November from Straight White American Jesus.
Thank you.
One at the University of Southern California in LA with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and then the next night at the San Diego Convention Center.
Tickets are available now and you can find everything in the show notes.
You can also watch online if you can't be in LA or San Diego.
November 21 and November 22.
Two chances to be with us at Straight White American Jesus and a number of other great scholars and leaders.
