Speaker 1: If you want to get the show early and ad free,
head on over to the Peak Kinyonas show dot com.
There you can choose from where you wish to support me.
Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me
about this, even though I think on the last ad
I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,
you're going to have to subscribe yourself Substack or through Patreon.
You can also subscribe on my website which is right there,
gum Road and what's the other one, subscribe Star And
if you do that, you will get access to the
audio file. So head on over to the pekan yonasshow
dot com. You'll see all the ways that you can
support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.
It's because of you that I can put out the
amount of material that I do. I can do what
I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together
and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are
doing together on kindinal philosophy, it's all because of you.
And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank
you enough.
Speaker 2: So thank you.
Speaker 1: The Pekanyonashow dot com. Everything's there. I want to welcome
everyone back to the Peking Yona's show. I am here
with Claire. How are you doing today, Claire?
Speaker 3: I'm doing great. How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing good, doing good. So tell everybody a little
bit about yourself as an introduction to this, and I
think people will understand right away that you're going to
hold stuff back, but we'll still have an interesting conversation here.
So go right out of Claire.
Speaker 3: Sure. I've been working in the entertainment industry now for
almost twenty years, and I work based out of New York,
but I work all over the country, and in addition
to that, for some time now, I've also been teaching
in the entertainment sector, and so I have an interesting
relationship to not only the industry as it exists now,
but also where it's going and who's coming into it.
Speaker 1: I think that's the interesting thing about what you do
is I mean, if you were just working in the
entertainment industry and we were going to have the conversation
we're going to have, that'd be one thing. But you're
in academia as well, and really those are two pillars
of what you would call regime control at least for
like a hundred years. You know, you get entertainment, and
you could put your narrative out there, and you get
academia and you can teach kids what the narrative is
going to be that they're going to have to carry
through life if they want to succeed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's very true. And I think that
there's also a bit of gatekeeping around who gets to
make the narrative based on what credentials you have, and
that factors into this as well.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you told me, even though you work in
New York, you work in academia, you grew up in
a southern state, and you know, have you always been
on the right and how right have you always been?
I mean people, And from what I know of people
is is it's very rare as someone goes from like
the right to liberalism. Maybe when they get a little
bit older that you can see that happen. But normally,
as people get older and if they start out right wing,
you know, quote unquote right wing, they have a tendency,
especially in today's world and in what we've seen in
like the last ten to twenty years, to crawl further
to the right as time goes on. If they're really
paying attention and if they are in tune to the culture.
But also, I mean, where you work it has to
be and who the kind of people you work with
has to be. Kind of I would assume it would
be radicalizing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've always been conservative, and I think you could
correctly characterize me as right wing. I grew up in
that kind of environment. I went to school in that
kind of environment. But I went to an extremely liberal,
left leaning college, and I think I went to that
experience sort of a little bit as in battle, I
guess you could say. And my college experience, I think
I had a lot of good interactions with people who
disagreed with me. I learned a lot about the other arguments.
But I came through that experience firmly still conservative, firmly
still I would say, right wing. And that continued throughout
my graduate school experience and then moving to New York
and joining the entertainment industry. I think that I am
excited by the fact that I have so many friends
who disagree with me. I think it's important to have
conversations with people that don't agree with you. I think
talking is a really big part of what makes us human.
But I wouldn't say that I ever had a point
where I sort of became more left leaning and then
came back and found the right again. I think I've
always sort of been where I am now, and as
I get older, I become quite convinced that this is
where I intend to stay. Certainly the events around me
have made me feel that way, but also I think
it's when you're young. I think there's a lot of
prerogative to try things on. And I see this with
the people that I teach, and you know, go for
an idea and run towards an idea until you find
that it doesn't work. And I think that when I
talk to people who feel differently from me, that's what
I'm doing. I'm listening to their idea and I'm turning
it over and I'm thinking, well, I don't think that
this works when I take this to the conclusion that
I need to. And so yeah, I've always I've always
kind of been where I am.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll come back to dialogue dialogue with left us.
But our mutual friend who introduced us, he said that
you mentioned that you're you know, your father tried to
prepare you for operating in a world where people were
going to have radically different beliefs than you. Is that true?
Speaker 3: Yes? I think my father had similar experiences that I
was going to have, and I think from a young
age prepared me to have real conversations, to be able
to debate arguments on their merit, to be able to
listen to what people were saying and parse through what
it really means, and to know what I believed, and
to hold study to those values, and to not go
into interactions assuming that I was there to sort of
better myself or make progress on myself, but really just
sort of say no, I know who I am. I'm
here to learn things, but I know who I am,
and I'm not going to walk in here and be
changed just for the sake of being changed. And I
think both my parents prepared me for that. But I
think in particular, because my father had experiences being a
conservative person in a very left wing environment, he knew
what it was going to feel like. And it's interesting
because he didn't really say that to me directly. You know,
there wasn't a time when we sat down and he said, Okay,
here's the thing. I was just raised in an environment
where I was encouraged to form opinions and debate them.
And know what I believed and know where I stood.
And I think that rigorous education in the home enabled
me to get to school and look around and say,
I can hold my own here. I don't have to
abandon what I think just because people around me have
fancier credentials than me. I can still have this conversation
and I can decide on the merits of the argument
what I think.
Speaker 1: Well, do the people that you work with and do
your students, do they know that you're you know, you're
not part of their team?
Speaker 3: Very few, very few of them do. There are a
few who are close to me that have come to
understand this part about who I am and what I believe,
but for the most part, they don't. And I think
there are I think many who suspect, but it's easier
to not have that suspicion confirmed for them, quite frankly.
And I've had some cases in the past when I
was young and a little less circumspect, where I was
spoken to about it, sort of privately berated about it.
And you know, I've tried not to let those things
bother me because I feel like I show up to
do work and I do really good work, and I
don't really think my politics should have anything to do
with whether or not I'm good at doing the job
I've been hired to do. But unfortunately they do. And
so I found it best to not have that conversation
because it doesn't yield anything be fruitful in my experience,
unless I'm very close to that person and we have
a bond of respect that goes beyond just where we're colleagues.
Speaker 1: So when you say that you're open to having conversations
with people, you're not talking about sitting there and debating them.
You're open to just to coexist in what essentially is
their world. I mean, even if you are a teacher
with your beliefs, you're really not You're not a part
of that world. You're a little bit. You're more of
like an outsider who's infiltrated.
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah.
Speaker 3: That is definitely how it feels at times. I think
that what I've experienced is that most people are not
actually interested in having a dialogue about these things, right
that when it comes to political matters or what has
become politicized, things like abortion, things like religious freedom, immigration
rights for minority groups, all of that stuff, Right, it's
become a world where those are no longer allowed to
be opinions. Those are held to be measures of worth,
and so those are not conversations that people have. They're
supposed to be givens. When you walk into a room
and there's there's sort of an overt understanding, very overt
understanding that everyone in this room believes the same thing,
because those aren't things we're allowed to not believe the
same thing about. And so the only conversations that are
possible is if you are close to someone and they
genuinely want to talk with you on a person to
person level and they genuinely want to understand how you feel,
because those topics are not topics you are allowed to question.
If that makes.
Speaker 1: Sense, well yeah, but it also has to make you
worry about whether, you know, if you're talking to someone
and you know they're oh, no, it's okay to open
up and everything, that they could just be trying to
deceive you.
Speaker 3: I mean, these are yeah, I don't really trust that, right.
I think I'm very careful with who I talk to
in the industry, and I I do take a risk
when I explain it to people. But I would say
there's just so few right that fully understand, because I
don't believe people when they say, oh, this is an
open space, this is a safe space, you can say
what you feel here, because they don't mean that, you know.
I think in a world where we've equated words with
harm and violence, we have a problem with discourse, right,
because if you believe that words are harmful inherently, and
that words constitute violence, then how can you have a
conversation with someone who disagrees with you? You know? And when
I'm talking to someone who believes that, it's difficult to
know how to have a real conversation because basically we
just have to agree, right, because I don't know where
the line is with that person.
Speaker 1: So it seems like last year you were doing a
gig in la and you had told our mutual friend
that the theater kids were still wearing COVID masks in
twenty twenty four. Why do you think, Why do you think.
Speaker 2: They're doing that?
Speaker 3: Well? I think there's a couple of reasons for that, right.
I think that one is that people are fearful when
they're told to be fearful. And I think if you
are raised as a young person in a society that
tells you the world is scary, the world is out
to get you, the world is falling apart. You know,
there's all this doomsday conversation. Everything is hyperbolic. And I
think that we have a lot of young people who
genuinely have grown up in a culture of fear, and
they don't know how to not be afraid, and they
spend a lot of time trying to protect themselves from
things that they have been told are out to get them.
You know, this could be a COVID mass, this could
be speech that someone has told them is violent or harmful.
This could be viewpoints that someone has told them are
violent or harmful, sex of people that someone has told
them to be violent or harmful, Religion, organized churches, you
know all of that stuff, right, And so if you
raise a young person to constantly fear and to constantly
be told you're a victim, you're in danger, that's what
they're going to do. Right. We're talking about very impressionable
young people. And I think for a lot of these
young people, they've been entrenched in this since they were
in middle school, elementary school, and they've been told that
the world hates them and that they need to be
brave against the world, but they need to protect themselves first,
and it comes out in this sort of I can't
be in that room because I might get hurt scenario.
I think we've also you know, this is a little
bit of a sidebar, but you add it to the
idea that we have a lot of helicopter parenting right now.
And I see it with young people who come across
my desk, where they've also never really been allowed to fail,
They've never really been allowed to be alone, they've never
really been allowed to experience real steaks and have the
repercussions of those steaks, and that just exacerbates this, right,
I'm afraid I'm going to get hurt, so I'm going
to protect myself against the boogeyman that I've been told
I should be afraid of. And I think that's really
where it comes psychologically for these people. The distribution method
of like the COVID mask, etc. Is just a symptom,
right of the larger problem. And I see I see
young people all the time, and what I want to
tell them and what I try to tell them in
my own way, if possible, is what are you afraid of?
You know? So what if you disagree with me or
him or her or whatever it is, right, what are
you afraid of? But they're very afraid. And even the
ones who are not swept up in sort of the
radicalization of the left, they're afraid to tell their friends
that they have questions. You know, they're afraid to take
the mask off because they don't want to be perceived
right as harming someone. They've been told that people that
don't wear a mask are harmful people. So if they
take the mask off, what if someone thinks that I
don't care about other people? Right? This is all this
is all ingrained in their psyche. Because remember the young
people who are in college right now, they were in
high school when this all happened. They were ninth graders,
they were eighth graders, they were thirteen. They learned this behavior.
Speaker 1: So I guess that probably points towards something you were
talking about with how I mean, this is such a
term that's been used to death. But like Trump derangement
syndrome and how they see Trump as an authoritarian. Of
course they never they would never see who they think
agrees with them or as being an authoritarian. They believe
he's a fascist. They don't know the difference between Trump
and actual fascists.
Speaker 2: They're caught.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you said was it
almost seems like they're physically exhausted by getting worked up
over those they.
Speaker 3: Are, And I don't know how they live. I mean,
I remember being a young person, right. You could not
pay me to be seventeen again. But I think these
young people are exhausted. We hear all the time from
young people. I'm just so tired. I'm just so tired,
and it goes beyond. You know, I stayed up late
because I didn't finish my homework. Or this is the
first job I've had in the industry and I didn't
realize how hard it was. Or I'm having to hustle
because I can't make enough money in this one job
and I need to take a side job, et cetera.
You know, our industry is a really hard one and
it is really underpaid. But I don't think that's what
they're talking about. I think that they are emotionally and
psychologically exhausted by having to constantly perform their beliefs for people,
you know. I mean, the call out culture that exists
for these young people is astronomical. Everything that they do
is online. Literally, everything they have ever said, everything they
have ever posted, every picture, it's online. Their parents started
doing it for them when they were little, and they've
continued doing it since. You know, you hear that joke
picks or it didn't happen, but it's real. For these
young people, they don't believe that it's real unless they
broadcast it, because that's where they get their worth, right.
They get their dopamine hits from how many likes they
get on the social media platform. And they've been doing
it since they were thirteen years old, since they got
their phone, and so they are constantly living in fear
that they will be revealed as somehow less radical, less progressive,
less on the quote unquote right side, because if they
slip up, it will never go away. This is something
that I cannot fathom and I cannot stress enough to
people that are not operating with young people today. Nothing
goes away. For these young people. The tweet they made
when they were fourteen years old. Their college friends are
shoving that in their face daily. They're not allowed to
grow and they're not allowed to change their beliefs because
that's not allowed in a culture that records meticulously every
micro move you make, it's really scary. It's really really scary.
I have to say that I have significantly decreased my
own social media presence because when I watch these young
people go through this, it's astonishing to me how they
are surviving it, and I think that they aren't. You
look at the rates of depression and young people today.
You look at the rates of suicide and young people
today astronomically high. And they come back to this stuff.
You know, if you take a young person, you put
everything they've ever thought online, and then you hold them
accountable for every small detail they made when they were
young and foolish. How do you live.
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I think a lot of being terminally online is also
you're a lot of the people who are on Twitter,
I would say very much, Twitter probably read it too.
These aren't people that have friends in real life. I
think a lot of them are. Their friend group is
the little the group chats or the pages that they're on,
and they're constantly having to I wouldn't say virtue signal
because it's just a used up term, but they're constantly
having to reiterate what that they're part of the group and.
Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah, good no, I mean, that's exactly what you're saying.
I mean, as sorry, exactly what I'm saying, because that
that is what it is. You know, you you can
never be enough, you know. And I think this is
a good sort of This is a good sort of
realtion to something that I think is also really happening,
which is that, in a culture that prioritizes victimhood, if
you solve the problem, you lose the power. Right. So,
in order to maintain your status as someone who's allowed
to speak right, because a lot of this is about
who's allowed to talk right now, you have to constantly
be reaffirming that you are one of those people who
has been disenfranchised in some way, right, And in order
to do that, you have to constantly be signaling where
you have been harmed. And this leads to a very
dangerous spiral where you lose sight of reality because you're
constantly having to prove to other people that you get
to talk right now. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: It makes sense.
Speaker 1: But what I see as the biggest problem with that
is that you actually start to believe it.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, of course, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it becomes your reality, even if it isn't your reality.
There was a back in the eighties in the early nineties,
there was a lot of talk and I actually experienced
it with somebody that was very close to me of
group therapy, and people would walk out of would hear
other people's stories and walk out of there and adoptimist
their own.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think this happens, right, And I
think that you have to believe it on some level, right.
I mean, if you repeat something daily, at some point
you start believing it or you go insane. Right. We
aren't made to live with that level of cognitive dissonance, right,
And I think that people do believe it, and I
think they internalize it because that's how they see the world.
They don't have another option, and if they want to
continue with those friends in that circle with that level
of ability to speak, they have to adopt that as
their identity. I think that this is also really hard
for young people because they don't know who they are yet.
A lot of these young people, right, this is the
first time they've been away from home. This is the
first time they haven't been the child of so and so,
this is the first time where they haven't been defined
by their siblings or their friend group. And they come
to these institutions to figure out who they want to be,
and they get told that you have to be this way,
and if you don't conform, then you don't get to
be here. You don't belong, you're not one of us,
and even worse, we hate you, we don't want you here. Right,
So of course they're going to go along with it
because they want to have friends, you know, they they
want college to be fun. They're in an impossible situation.
Speaker 1: Why don't you talk a little bit about well when
you had brought up before, you know, like it's like,
I can you know, I can have conversations with these people.
I knew you weren't talking about having conversations about, you know,
what you believe, what they believe in comparing or debating.
But I think it's pretty it should be pretty obvious
to people, and I don't There are still people out
there that think that they can debate and like if
they have the better idea, they're going to win. I
call those people naive and dangerous. But why don't you
talk a little bit about just what you would overhear
not only on the camp, you know, in a college classroom,
but also in your industry about Charlie Kirk getting killed.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, that was uh, that was really that was
really hard. I I to say that I was surprised
would be not totally accurate. But I heard a lot
of people who were really happy about that, for lack
of a better word, that they felt that this was
a good thing that had happened, and they weren't shy
about saying it. They were excitedly sharing the news, and
there were a lot of, you know, funny things like
I didn't find them funny, but funny things that people
said back and forth. You know, it's difficult for me
to understand why celebrating our murder is okay. But again,
I think it's the logical conclusion of if you if
you decide that a whole group of people and what
they believe doesn't matter, right, and you've dehumanized them to
where they aren't people to you, and there they don't
they don't get to count as people. Their opinion and
shouldn't be are not allowed, and you declare things like
I'm not friends with any of those people, then of
course that's how you're going to feel when one of
those people is no longer here. It was disheartening, to
say the least. I didn't really want to come to
work that day because I knew I was going to
have to see and hear about it all the time.
And I sort of managed to isolate myself to where
I didn't have to see and hear about it. But
I know it was happening because I I could, I
could feel it, and I could hear other people outside
the door talking about it, you know, quite frankly. And
there are a couple people that are conservative here that
shared with me what had been shared with them, you know,
these funny little, not funny little memes about him getting shot,
and it was it was really sad. I think that
I saw in my social media feed a lot of
people that I am friends with, that I work with,
that I consider to be friends, you know, on a
professional level, post things on social media that made it
clear to me that they thought this was not only okay,
but a good thing and something to be celebrated. And
it just made me think to myself, if they hate
him enough that they think it's okay to murder him,
then do they think they should murder me?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Like? I mean, that may sound extreme, but I don't
think it is because I think and feel those things too.
And that's what made me so sad, because I realized
that even the people that I thought were friends of mine,
if they knew what I believed, they would feel that
way about me. Right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it makes sense because when you're dealing with
people who are operating purely on emotion and well, let
me ask you this. I had this thought a little earlier,
but I didn't bring it up. How many of these people,
especially young people, and doesn't only have to be young people,
the people you work with, whether it be an academia
colleagues or people you work with in the industry, in
the entertainment industry, how many of these people are on
prescription medication?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I definitely think that in general, young people today are
very medicated. Certainly, I'm always astound. I mean, you know,
at the college level, we don't. It is a pretty
the further laws are pretty clear, like we don't. We
try not to to sort of get into that information
with the students, and I definitely try not to just
because I don't. I'm not a therapy you know what
I mean, I'm not licensed to deal with that kind
of thing. And so I try very hard to sort
of direct questions around that to the appropriate resources, as
I think most people who are in teaching do. But
I think it's no secret that in America we put
people on prescription drugs at a very early age, very
powerful ones to treat all kinds of things, and a
lot of times that may not be the solution that
makes sense. Certainly, I think it's common for people to
be on a lot of antidepressants, but I don't know.
I couldn't really speak to the individuals I work necessarily,
because again I try not to engage in those conversations
because I think my own feelings around that kind of
thing are not always the most welcome. I did have
a large conversation with a very good friend of mine
who has opposite political beliefs, who is aware of my
political and religious beliefs about this topic a couple nights ago.
It's not someone who works in the industry, but it's
someone who's an adjacent industry with me, and I just
sort of expressed my opinions that I don't think the
one size all fits policy around therapy and prescription drugs
is very helpful. I think that there's sort of this
idea that well, we just need to get everybody in therapy,
and we just need to get everybody on antidepressants, right,
and that'll fix everything, that every will be better. And
I was expressing that my own experience with those things
has been very different and it has not been the
solution for me. And it was interesting because my friend
was sort of not satisfied with that answer, even though
I made it clear that I think, if that's what
my friend wants to do, then I have no problem
with that. But I don't think that that's a panacea
that you can just apply in all situations. And I think,
you know, they've done a lot of research with young people,
and it turns out that the best medicine for a
young person who feels insecure, non confident, self aware, unhappy
with their physical appearance, especially on people going through puberty,
you know, the best medicine is actually to put them outside,
away from electronic devices and get them in, you know,
an outdoor physical environment like a summer camp or a
sport or something like that. Right, the research shows very
clearly that that actually is the number one thing that
helps young people overcome the natural things that happen when
you're in puberty, that you don't feel confident, that you
don't like who you are, that you don't think your
body is beautiful. You know, all of these things that
we see young people being pushed into. Other explanations for
the answer is to put them outside and give them
something to do. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean and when your whole existence is online,
being outside, you know, you may you may lose your
phone signal.
Speaker 2: Or something like that.
Speaker 3: Right, But you know, it's funny that this is what works,
and you see it start to be prescribed more. But
that's what works. I think what frustrates people about this
is it a lot of the places that do that,
like say a summer camp or whatnot, are run by
people who are religious. And I think that that that
creates problems, right if you don't want your children exposed
to religion. But that's how you help people get better, right,
just at a general level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, being outside.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it was probably I think it
was a leftist that came up with the term touching grass.
Go touch grass, Yes.
Speaker 3: I go touch grass. I hear that a lot, yeah, which.
Speaker 1: Which is hilarious because as it usually comes from somebody
who has in such grass in a very long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I do think there's something interesting happening
with young people, because you know, we're sort of talking
about young people right now, a lot is that they
are interested in more analogue things. I think that I
think that young people today, while they're not willing to
give up the phone, right, they're not willing to give
up social media. It's sort of an appendage and it's
like part of their psychology that they get those that
dopamine hit right during their daily lives. But they they
are interested in being in the moment, and I think
that they have started to realize I've seen this happened,
that they recognize that this chronic being online, this addiction
to the cell phone and the Instagram and the Twitter
feed and all that, that it prevents them from actually
engaging in the world around them. And I do think
we are seeing a resurgence of young people who are
interested in unplugging, but they don't really know how to
do it, and they're not really doing it right in
the way that maybe people did in the eighties and seventies.
But they are curious around it, and I think that
curiosity gives me a little bit of hope that if
we could just get them unplugged from the machine, right,
the machine that's doing all this programming, they would maybe
think for themselves and they might come up with a
different result. Unfortunately, the industry that I work in doesn't
really touch grass. We work inside dark rooms right where
we don't touch grass at all and purpose, so it's
hard to sort of it's hard to sort of promote
that when my industry requires you to be inside using
electronics most of the day, you know, But I think
this being in the moment thing is a place to
sort of slip in and say, Okay, well everyone has
told you a lot of things online, but right now,
what are you experiencing right now? You know, make your
own opinion about that. Actually have some backbone. Don't just
repeat what someone has said to you. Think about it
for yourself, and decide what you feel and what you think.
And I want to be very clear, I don't want
to confuse feelings with fact, because I think that a
lot of people today, young and old, have confused feelings
with fact. Right that like the idea that if I
feel something, it must be true, and this is obviously false. Right,
We feel a lot of things that are not true,
especially when what we feel is based on information that
is not true. And so I think that being able
to help people learn the difference between I feel a
certain way, but it doesn't mean that I have to
act on that feeling or revise my worldview based on
that feeling. But I can actually look at what the
fact is I feel this person has said something that
I do not like. Is the fact that they have
harmed me? Or is it the fact that we disagree?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I think people are unable to distinguish between those two things.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that you had mentioned was
the fact that highly educated people.
Speaker 2: It's quote unquote that.
Speaker 1: Most of the people you interact with are highly educated.
But in your own words, you say that they're ignorant
and deranged. And that's I mean ignorant, sure, deranged. I
mean that's a whole that's a whole thing because you're
you know, you have to ask yourself, Okay, why you
know what is it? Is it academia doing it to them?
Is it the fact that they they thought they were
going to get answers in academia and they didn't get them.
Is it stunting of growth? Is it, you know, column A,
column being column C. I mean, what is it about
people who can you know what they say about like
like you know, right wingers, you know, like far right
people who are far to the right is you know, oh,
you people are uneducated and you know it's like, well,
that's not true. I probably read more books in a
year than most leftists have read in the last ten years,
you know. And you know, I read poetry and I
read you know, I listened to classical music. There's I'm
very refined, but I'm also you know, somebody who is
not somebody whose heroes are considered to be you know,
maybe possibly some of the worst people who ever lived
by most people in academia.
Speaker 2: So what is it? What?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, well I think it's the sort of
complete takeover. And I mean I think this this is
the this is the culmination of you know, a long
game program, right that what started sort of you know,
i'd say like in the fifties really that you sort
of you infiltrate academia with sort of these other ideas
right about how society could be. And then those people
are educated that way, and then they go on and
they become the high school teachers, and they become the
elementary school teachers, right, and then they have children, and
then they raise those children that way. And I think
that what we're seeing is sort of the completion of
that cycle. That if you've got a bunch of people
who've been educated from birth that these leftis ideologies are true,
then there isn't a way for them to see something else.
And so I don't know that it's just I don't
know that they're showing up to college and they're getting indoctrinated.
I think that they're indoctrinated in elementary school. Think. I
think it's a full I think it's a full court press, right.
And I think that that has happened recently, that maybe
in the last like fifteen twenty years, that the elementary
schools and the public schools have been sort of filled
with this ideology. I mean, you remember when that anti
racist baby book came out, right, I don't know if
you remember that, but I mean, what's happening, right, I mean,
you're basically saying that we're going to start promoting this
kind of speak from infancy, right, and we're going to
set up the idea that we've got these systemic problems
from infancy, and we're going to set up this US
versus them mentality from infancy. And so I think you
don't get that without acknowledging that there's a whole generation
of parents who were brought up in an educational system
that was already very far to the left, and now
it's just completed the circle. I mean, Harvard published an
interesting article recently where they were documenting that their student
is actually more conservative than it's been in a very
long time. And if you look at the numbers, the
faculty is like very very left, it's like ninety eight
percent or something like that, you know, but the student
body itself is actually shifting more moderate and indeed right,
And they don't really know what to do about it, right,
because there aren't people that are teaching that that think
and feel the way that some of these students are feeling.
They there's a big disconnect. But I mean, I think
the schools are making it worse, right because you young
people come to school to be told how to get
an education, and we sort of equated that education with
bettering oneself. Right, that like, you get a college education
and that makes you somehow superior to people who don't
have a college education. There's this idea around that, and
I think that that idea is perpetuated by academic institutions
because it gives them credibility, right that why should you
pay us money because we make you superior versus schools
that are trade schools or you know, ged requirements and
things like that. We have an idea in our culture
that if you have a college degree, you are somehow
better than people who don't. And I think that there's
this idea that you go to college and you you know,
you've come from a very provincial place right wherever you
grew up, and you were very sheltered with your parents,
and then you come to college and you get exposed
to the real world and real ideas, and that you know,
you're supposed to shed off that provincial thought and take
on a more worldly view because now you have education
and so you know better. I think that's a total lie.
You know, it's certainly the lie that I experienced. But
I think that's possible because in the high schools and
in the elementary schools, they're also hearing the same message.
You know, the people that you've been raised by, they
maybe don't, you know, their old fashioned they haven't changed,
their beliefs are out of date, et cetera. You know,
when you get to college, you'll be able to decide
for yourself and make different choices. And I think that
this is being said in the classrooms to young people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean at this point, we've everything
we've been talking about is negative.
Speaker 3: And I know, I know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, I mean we have to we have
to go through it. I mean, we have to know
what the problem is before we can even talk about
whether anything positive is u is happening. So I guess
one of the first things the whole de I thing,
what do you what do you see happening with with
with the whole de I regime?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, federally it's it's not allowed anymore.
And certainly I have watched educational institutions and places that
I work remove that language. Right, they are very quick
to assure everyone in the institution that they are still
doing that work. They're just calling it something else, right,
So from their perspective, they are sort of undercover now
and working very hard to keep doing the work. As
they would say it right from the out of perspective.
I think that it's you can't really say it in
the same way, right, so that messaging in that language
isn't hitting young people and frankly people who are my
age to the same degree that it was. I mean,
I got to say that during twenty twenty and twenty one,
so much of my life was consumed by showing up
to go to work and then finding that the first
hour of my work day was going to be this, right,
that we would be engaging in some sort of workshop
or engaging in some sort of exercise as a group
before we could begin the actual work of the day,
which was to you know, do whatever the task was
ahead of us. That sort of thing doesn't really happen
anymore because it really can't. And so you know, I
don't have to sort of go through that experience unfortunately,
or I mean, I don't know, unfortunately. It's a weird word.
The language, though, is still there, right. Young people have
learned this language in their high schools and in their
middle schools, and so that's how they talk, right. They
see the world through that lens. And I don't know
that I don't know how to undo that. I think
maybe with time it will sort of gradually unravel because
it won't be indoctrinated into young people like it was
for four years. But the language is still very much present.
It's just not able to be funded or presented as
sort of a requirement. You know, a lot of schools
right had requirements for their students that they had to
participate in DEI programs as part of their curriculum, and
now that that doesn't exist, right, So I guess that's
kind of the change that I've seen more than anything else.
But I think the people that are still in the schools,
they're very much thinking of the world that way, even
if they're not using those terms. Because I answer your question,
I hope that maybe, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's about that's about what you what you would expect
that it would still be sticking around, But if it
can't be funded, then it'll it'll eventually evaporate and it'll
just be uh remnant, They'll be remnants of it.
Speaker 3: But Jim just to be cool about the funding as well. Right.
The funding is interesting because it can be funded at
a federal level, Like you know, we've seen this play
out right in the grants, right if you if you,
if you follow the entertainment industry. Then you are probably
aware that the National Dowmage for the Arts changed their
requirements for what constitutes as grant worthy work, right, and
they removed they removed language around work that you know,
was specific to a certain community identity. Right. So this
this caused a lot of uproar in my community, right
because a lot of the work that is made in
the entertainment industry does not support itself. I mean, certainly
you've got stuff in Vegas where ticket sales support itself
and commercial projects, but a lot of the nonprofit work
that happens specifically in New York City but across America
non profit institutions, it's not able to be supported without
substantial funding from outside sources. And a lot of it
is substantially funded by the NEA. And so when the
NEA changed the guidelines under Trump to say that we're
we're not going to allow you to we're not going
to fund things that are specifically related to sort of
this dei language, right, that a lot of stuff just
didn't get made, or a lot of stuff is in
danger of not getting made, you know. And so there's
been a lot of grassroots support in organizing in the
entertainment industry to supplement the funding that is no longer
coming in from the NEA for these projects that don't
meet the guidlines anymore. Right, because there are projects that
specifically are exclusive right of any identity, but the one
that the project wants to uphold. Does that make sense?
So this is where really I've seen the biggest change
because all of these organizations that have been counting on
large amounts of federal money to make up the deficits
that they inevitably run don't have that anymore, and they're
having to make choices about what work they put on
because they can't make it up with ticket sales. I mean,
it's no secret that most of the entertainment industry doesn't
make money, right, it's in the red. And so if
people don't want to come see it and they're not
going to buy tickets to it, then unless it's funded
in another way, it doesn't happen. So that that's really
been the place where I've seen that. You know, academic
institutions are funded differently, so they're going to put on
whatever plays they want regardless of what the ticket sales are,
because they don't need the ticket sales to continue doing
the play right. They've got a budget from the university
to do the work, and they're going to use that
however they want. But it's in the the you know,
in the real world, where suddenly you can't make the
balance sheet balance. That's where it's really I've seen the
biggest impact.
Speaker 1: What about the the trend stuff, the pronown stuff, the
gender stuff. Yeah, how strong? How strong was that stuff
in your industry? And strong?
Speaker 3: It's just way. I don't know that that's going away.
I think I think that is very much present. What's
interesting is that it used to UH, as someone who
sort of chose to opt out of that in a
big way, it used to feel hard to do that.
Now I find that it's easier to just not engage
in that because there's not as much focus on checking
to see who's carrying the flag, so to speak. And
I think part of that is that, you know, when
no one was allowed to work because our government shut
down the country, people had a lot of time to
do nothing but focus on what their neighbor was doing. UH.
And so now that that we're actually doing real things
again in the industry, people have less time and patience
for that sort of thing. But certainly in academia and
in the non for profit sector, it's still very much
alive because it's a signaling tactic, right, It's that you know,
the rest of the world may have abandoned this, but
we still do this because we see you. You know.
That's I think that's what's behind it. Personally, I think
that I have been able to sort of not engage
in that, and I've been able to sort of like
be on the outside of that issue, which has been
good because I'm not really interested in having those conversations
with people. They're not going to be fruitful and they're
going to end up with me being called a bunch
of names, and I just don't need to engage with
that in my workplace, you know. But it's very much there.
I think that again, I think that you've got a
lot of young people who are entering the industry and
entering our world, who are about to become the people
in charge of our world, right, who are not about mean,
you know, in maybe ten fifteen years, who have been
doing that since they were fourteen years old. So they
just believe that that's how humans should treat each other, right,
that's what they think, and so it's not going away,
because that's they just do it like second nature.
Speaker 1: You've said that you for years, there probably isn't a
day that goes by where you don't think about quitting
and walking away and doing something else, And you actually
said that if Trump hadn't one, that was probably what
you were going to do.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Is definitely definitely from teaching, I think definitely from teaching.
I think that professionally where I am, I've been around
a long time, so where I am professionally, I think
that I would have probably spent more time in the
non non for profit sector, where it doesn't matter really
as much and there's less hand ringing over such things.
But definitely in teaching. I mean, I found the environment
that I was teaching in to be pretty untenable during
twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, and I think it
would have continued to be untenable. I think that there
were there have been multiple times when it has been
assumed that I would sign a document or put my
name to a document or affirm things that I think
I had been able to sort of not do, and
I think that that would not have been an option
for me going forward. And yeah, I mean I were,
you know, I think it's different if you're at a
private or a public institution.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 3: I, yeah, I certainly feel like the outcome of the
election and gave me breathing room in a way that
I didn't feel that I had. And yeah, I think
about all the time. I think about the fact that
I basically, as as you said, I sort of live
undercover in this world. I love the work that I do.
I love making things. It's really sad to me that
everyone around me says things about me without knowing it's me, right,
and they say a lot of things that are really nasty,
and I just sort of have to ignore it. And
you know, am I personally harmed by those things? No,
it's just something someone said. But when that's your environment
day in, day out, it's not fun. You know, it's
not fun. And a lot of the work that is
being made is work that is really negative and really
misinformed about people that I care about. And it's frustrating that,
you know, I don't want to be part of that work.
But at some point it's like, well, if I'm not
going to be part of that work, then what's left?
You know, there's only so many opportunities, and I think
I've found a lot of solace in working more in
the corporate side and things where like this isn't really
as much of a factor, but certainly in New York,
it's becoming increasingly difficult to find work that isn't highly political.
And I have to say I've had conversations with people
who are left leaning about this problem too. I think
that people in the industry are frustrated with the fact
that everybody has to make everything about the politics all
the time. Like it's sort of considered bad form, right
to just make something that's fun just to be fun.
It has to say something, you know. You hear a
lot of people say the phrase art is resistance. That's
one of the favorite phrases that people in my industry say.
Art is resistance. Art is resistance. But sometimes artists just
art like because we thought it would be cool, because
it looks cool, because it's a fun story, because we
love the music, because it's an interesting story, right, And
I think that there is fatigue even among people who
accept the leftist principles. There's fatigue that they can't just
make something. Because they want to make something, it has
to somehow have a deeper meaning. And when they say, well, no,
I just wanted to make this thing because it was interesting,
everybody shoots back and says, but don't you think as
an artist you have a duty. You have a duty
to use your power to say what needs to be
said to protect who needs to you know what I mean? Like,
this is the kind of language that gets thrown around
and it's really tiresome. It's really really tiresome. And so
you know, I think that if Trump hadn't won, it
would be a lot more codified, right, I think that
Trump winning and stuff like the nea like changing. It's
just it's it's given a little bit of breathing room.
Because if you want to sell tickets, you got to
put on a show, right, And so maybe you're going
to do a show in your season that's not doom
and gloom. Maybe you're going to do something just because
it's fun, so that that's been interesting to watch. And
I think everyone experiences a lot of fatigue. But again, right,
if if you're an artist that's coded in the left
and you dare to say I'm tired of the fight,
then you get canceled. Right, you weren't a true believer
you got tired, and that's there. Nobody wants to be canceled, right.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the question is, is you say that
many of these people are basically deranged?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean yeah, I mean the word yeah, the
word isn't right because.
Speaker 1: I think it's well, I mean, if you think that
you're putting out this art, which I mean, who accept
like your immediate friend group thinks it's any good, I mean,
it's it's garbage. Well, and it is deep down you
have to know it's garbage.
Speaker 3: Well, I think this is the thing I think that
you know, the way I would say that the problem
I have with a lot of art this being produced
right now is that it's not you know, it's not
saying anything that you can engage in, right, And I
think that that's what you're referring to. It's like it's
people standing up and saying this is what I feel
in this moment, affirm me.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: That's not actually interesting in any way. It doesn't engage
in a dialogue, it doesn't ask questions, it doesn't it
doesn't allow for people to engage with it who don't
already agree with the premise, you know, and I and
that's where I think people are sort of deranged because.
Speaker 1: Also if they agree with you, then you you expect.
I think that they're they're expecting that this is really
good art and that this is real art, and you
know art. Yeah, I been in museums and looked at
classical art, neo classical art, Romanticism, medieval art. It draws emotion,
you know, it can bring tears to your eyes. I mean,
this is these aren't people who are They're not expecting
people to you know. It's like these comedians who they
don't want you to laugh. They want you to applaud
because they're saying something. You know, they're part of the resistance.
So I know, if I go to a comedy club,
I want to laugh. I don't want to applaud if
I go to if I go to an art gallery,
I want to feel something. I don't want to have
to sit there and wonder what.
Speaker 3: You know, Well, I think this is what I'm getting at,
is that, like I think that a lot of this
theater making is actually a lecture. Right. It's you go
into the theater and you are berated by the piece
of how bad you are. Right, you're either affirmed that
you're one of the good ones, and you're being celebrated, right,
and then you look around and look at all the
other poor pitibles in the theater who aren't being affirmed,
and you know that you're superior or you're being told
that you're terrible, and here are all the steps you
should take to become better, and if you don't follow
these steps, then you're the problem, right like I and
I just I think my way of saying that would
be that that's not that's not the point, right, Like,
that doesn't that doesn't actually allow people to engage or
feel right, because they're either they're either just feeling the
things they've already felt or they're feeling horrible right and there,
and when when you put people in a position, you know,
if you I mean, I mean really, when I think
about it, it's just not an effective way of communication,
like barring what the message is, barring any of that. Like,
if you want people to be engaged by what you're doing,
sitting them down for two and a half hours and
explain to them how they're terrible people is not the
way to go about doing that, right, Like, that's not
going to get you anywhere because those people are going
to walk out angry and resentful, and the people that
already agree with you you don't need to change their mind.
And so it just doesn't It doesn't make a lot
of sense. And so I think what it means is
that there's a lot of people out there who don't
go to see art because they don't get anything from
it and they don't think it's for them. You know,
they go to museums and they see exhibitions where they're
being told why the museum is bad, So why are
they going? You know, it doesn't help them, and so
they just don't engage with it.
Speaker 2: But it's just everything well yeah.
Speaker 3: But and then what's interesting is what happens is that
people on the left say, look, how uncultured those people are.
They don't go see art, right, So it creates this
feedback loop for everybody, which is that you know, everyone
on the right is uncultured because they don't appreciate art
because they didn't come to see my piece where I
tell them how bad they are for not believing what
I believe, right, Like, it just creates a problem, and
so I think everyone becomes affirmed in that because they say, well, look,
no one came to see my piece doesn't already agree
with me, and the people didn't see the piece, say well,
why would I want to sit through that? And so
it just it just it's difficult and and I don't know,
I guess I'm old fashioned, but I feel like if
you're going to make someone sit down for two and
a half hours in the theater, be quiet and pay
attention to what you have to say, you need to
have something worthwhile to say. You know, it's ultimately a
very hubristic thing that we're doing here, that whatever I
have is super important. You need to turn off your
cell phone. You need to fully engage because what I
had to say deserves your full attention. So when people,
when people enter into that contract with you and you
don't give them anything in return, that's a failure in
my book, Let's uh.
Speaker 2: Let's finish up on this.
Speaker 1: Race is quickly becoming a huge issue, and it has been,
but I think that now it's even starting to cross
over into you know, like normies are noticing it, your
grandparents are noticing. Wow, it really seems like they hate
white people. All these people hate white people. Even white
people on TV hate white people. You talked about during
the covid ear. There was something going around called white
People in Theater, a document that was being used to
taunt and go after people. Can you talk a little
bit about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a document that came out that people
were sort of asked to sign that had a lot
of statements about how white people in theater were engaging
in bad behavior, what they call harmful behavior. Right, that's
the language that the document, that's language people use. And
there was a ton of pressure in the industry to
sign this document. It came from companies, it came from individuals,
it came from academic institutions. At one point, there was
a list published by the people who wrote the document
of all the people who had not signed, who were
members of prominent institutions. It was sort of a reup
of like, hey, we published this list, you know, a
month or so ago, and look at all these people
who were in charge of the art making spaces that
we engage in who haven't signed the document. Why haven't
you signed the document? And there was no ability to
talk about it. It was sort of hook line and sinker, right.
It was this is the thing. We have made, this thing,
these are our demands, and you are either fully in
support or you are against us. And there were a
lot of things in that document weren't necessarily actually about race.
There are practices in the theater and the entertainment industry
that are predatory, and there were a lot of things
in that document that actually were trying to address predatory practices,
but through a lens that was all about race. And
it was impossible to have a conversation about that document
because if you didn't agree with it, you were bad, right,
you were bad. That's the only way to put it.
And you know, theatrical institutions, entertainment institutions across America would
sign this with great flourish and post it. You know,
our entire staff has signed this. We believe you know,
but really, like that's not how it goes down, right,
I mean, there was pressure in academia to sign it
as an institution right, that the institution needed to sign this,
and therefore all of the people who work at the
institution would de facto sort of be part of that right.
And there was a lot of discussion around it because
I think that many people were concerned about the idea
that people should just sign something. Right. It was a
long dog I mean had a lot in it. You know,
it was not a short thing. Yeah, I mean, that's
one of those things that I was kind of referring
to that I feel like that sort of thing would
have happened more had Trump not won, or I'm fearful
that that sort of thing would have happened more. And
I you know, I've always sort of been an easy
with sort of endorsements right from any kind of group
because it doesn't really represent the panopoly of thought within
the group. And I don't think that because I work
for a company or I work on a project, that
I a should be required to adopt the political ideologies
of that company or the project. I think I'm an
American and I have free speech and I have the
right to my own opinion. But that's not how this works,
right because once everybody signs, then everybody's now bound by this.
So that was very difficult. You know, not much honestly
has come of that document after we sort of the
country came through the worst of the COVID issues. It's
sort of fallen out, and I really haven't heard anybody
refer to it in a while, but I think that
it's still there, right it's still lurking, and I think
that people have still signed it and that exists. Yeah,
that was that was really stressful. There was a period
of time where I was convinced that I would be
required to sign this thing as a member of the
institution that I was teaching at. That did not happen ultimately,
but I was really nervous about that because I I
didn't I don't think it was Yeah, I didn't want
to sign it, right, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Well in in academia or in UH, in in entertainment,
is is there open hostility? Is there still that kind
of speech of open hostility of to white people? Because yeah,
the whole colonizer colonial, slave owner fascist, I mean basically
if you can get anybody to understand, you know, and
I'm not some I'm not one of these people who
was like I need to wake up the normies or
anything like that. I'm if they wake up, that's fine.
And but you know, I'm just looking for a very
I look for a very small group to uh to
work with and to organize with. But you know, all
of those things, slave owner, colonizer, fascist, it's just basically
an excuse to be like, Okay, at some point, we
can kill you, just like we killed Charlie because Charlie,
you know, Charlie was was a fascist and it's and
I'm like, no, I'm way more. I'm way closer to
a fascist than Charlie was. I considered Charlie to be
on the left. I mean it's I mean, that's my thinking.
Is anybody who's like a classical liberal, Oh, we can
talk with our enemies and you know, if we just
make a better argument. I'm like, that's that. That's not
thinking that I at one time I held to that,
but you know, my eyes are wide open to the
fact that you know, people, people want to kill you
for your opinions, and if they can't kill you, they'll
be happy to destroy you or destroy somebody close to you,
and they'll laugh about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I I think that's what is so
hard about being in the industry, because I think that
that is the emotional truth of it, right, Like I
mean I said that earlier, But it's hard to sort
of go to work every day and realize that the
people around you, if they knew you, if they knew
if they were willing to have a conversation with you,
they would they would hate you immediately, and and and
it's hard for me because I do feel that the
people that I've been able to have real conversations with,
I actually think that there has been movement with some
of those conversations over time. Sometimes it's taken many, many,
many years, but at least there's the ability to have
a decent discussion. Of course, it doesn't go anywhere because
the conversation stays within those two people, but the open
hostility is real. I think you're you're right. I think
it is very much there. I mean, it's in casual ways, right,
it's in it's in going into a room and having
everyone say, like, you know, F Trump, and everyone go yeah,
F Trump, right like, and then that's just sort of
a thing that happens, and it just happens in the room,
and everybody's sort of expected to go along with it,
and nobody even looks around to see if it's if
it's a problem for anybody, because there's an assumption that
nobody who matters would feel that way, and they would
definitely not be in this room.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I had a situation once where I was told in
a private conversation that I should I should reveal myself
because the community deserved to know what monsters were among us.
This was said to me, and of course I disengage
from that conversation very quickly. But this is I think
how people feel. Right, you don't agree with me, it's
okay for me to be hostile, and because I know
that I could never see you as a person who's
worthy of my time and respect, I'm just going to
be openly hostile and I'm not even gonna think about
the fact that you might be in the room because
I just know you aren't. So that that sort of
thing happens on a daily basis, and it's, uh, yeah,
it's tough. And I think that hostility towards one race
or another it's all kind of wrapped in together, right,
I mean, it's I don't know that I've experienced people
being like openly hostile to me because of my racial
identity necessarily, but it's wrapped up in the identity of
everything else they talk about, So it doesn't you know,
they don't have to say that out loud, right, it's
already there because if you're a leftist, you feel a
certain way and everyone feels that way. I mean, this
is The thing that I find so crazy, right, is
that like for political ideology that's supposed to be about
individualism and expression and all of that, it's not. You know,
it's like it's totally groupthink, right. You can't question something.
If you question something, then you're automatically not an ally.
And I don't know. I feel like in conservative circles,
I think there's a lot more breadth to the thinking.
There's a lot more allowance for being on different places
on the spectrum, and there's a lot more tolerance for
different points of view around things that's not present in
the left. So the hostility has to be there because
they have to have a way to weed out who
you are from the get go right. If you don't
participate in the sort of f chorus of f Trump,
then they look at you sideways, they start watching you right,
and when you haven't done it four times in a row,
they start to wonder whose side you're on.
Speaker 1: Well, it's unfortunately that's they seem to be a little
more inclusive when it comes to fighting the right. So
one of the reasons why they were able to basically
take over so many of the institutions is because they
are better at organizing.
Speaker 2: Than the right.
Speaker 1: Ever, is the right is actually the more individualistic?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, completely, Yeah, I mean they're they're I mean
I think you know, look, we can we can get
into like the sole communist discussion. But I think the
mentality is basically the group is more important than the
individual right, and that leads to better organization because you
don't have to deal with the fact that people, you know,
everybody sort of goes I'm going to sublimate whatever I
feel towards the group because the cause is more important
than me, right at every at every turn. So it's
going to be easier to get a bunch of people
to march in the street because they're all sort of
buying into that ideology that I'm gonna I'm going to
get there. You know, all the boats rise together, except
they don't, right, Except they don't because it's never enough,
right Because as soon as you've got somebody in the
collective who says, well, actually this is harmful to me,
then everybody's got to reorganize around that, right, and it
sort of starts to fracture and splinter. And so the
only way you can keep control of it is by
declaring what people have to think and kind of forcing
them to think. And of course, as the ideology starts
to splinter and get more ridiculous, you have to declare
people to think even more ridiculous things. So then all
of a sudden you've got people who are like moderate
right who suddenly found themselves marching in a crowd of
people who say things that they never would have said.
They never would have said right on their own, but
because it's a never Trumper, all of a sudden they're saying, yeah,
let's let's have you know, let's have late term abortion,
right when like they actually never would have said that,
but it's part of the march, so they're going to
do it. Yeah. I don't know. The group think is
really exhausting. It's really really exhausting.
Speaker 1: Well really, the only the problem is is that the
only way to defeat them is to basically organize like
they do.
Speaker 3: And they do. Yeah, and I think to you know,
I think to be I mean, I struggle with this myself.
Just be braver about it, because the reality is, you know,
they can sit here and say Trump isn't my president,
but millions of people voted for him, right, So they're
either going to discount millions of people, or they're going
to have to reckon with the fact that those are
facts and they've chosen to sort of discount millions of people, right,
that's kind of what they do.
Speaker 2: This is their history.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why I started studying, and
I tell people to study the Spanish Civil War from
nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty nine, because that is
a war that the It's one of the only wars
in history where the losers got to write the history books.
Everybody thinks there was this There was this republican form
of government, and these fascist right wingers like you know,
rose up to overthrow them because they were upset that
they know, these people were communists and they were literally
working with the Soviet Union in the Common tern and
the International and they were anarchists, and their plan was
to kill half the country because they said if they
killed half the half the country, people would probably stop
being Catholics, you know, because they they killed sixs within
the first six months of the war. They killed six
thousand priests, nuns, seminarians, lay people, and burned down thousands
of churches.
Speaker 2: And yeah, they have no.
Speaker 1: Problem with alienating millions of people, because when it comes
down to it, those of us who've studied this well
know that if it comes to they'll just kill those people.
The time is going to come when they will just
put bullets in their heads like they did and you
know in the Katyn forests, and you know, like the
Russians did in the Katchin Forest to Poles and Lithuanians
and Germans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think you've actually sort of like
you've alluded to something that I think is a big
part of this as well, which is that humans. I mean,
this is where the faith part comes in. Right. Humans
have a need to believe in something right, and that
has been filled historically by a faith. When you have
a program that removes that, you have to replace it
with something. And you know, these people are you know,
fanatics because this is their religion, right, and they're willing
to die for their religion. They're willing to organize for
the religion. They're willing to kill for their religion because
that's their belief system. It's these ideologists have replaced a
belief in a higher power, They've replaced a belief in
you know, what have you? Because that hole in a
person has to be filled somewhere. And you know, I'm
getting very religious here, but I really believe that it's important.
And so I see a lot of people who are
desperate to believe in something, and this ideology comes along
and says, we'll give you something to believe, and we'll
give you something to fight for. We'll pay for you
to do it. You'll have a lot of friends, you'll
be really popular, you'll be on the right side of history,
et cetera. And people buy it, hook line and sinker.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It supplies the need inside of them to believe in
something greater than themselves, and that's been stripped away from them,
right because they haven't been raised in a society where
they're given access to faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of going to war with the Yeah,
you have another religion, so you have to go to
war with the existing religion is uh, you know, a
tale as old as time. You know, it used to
be Protestants and Catholics, or Catholics in Catholics, or or
you know, just choose, you know, or you know, obviously
you know, when it comes to like historic Spain, the
Caliphate takeover and yeah, I mean this is I don't
you know, my friend Charles Haywood makes a really good point.
He's like, I don't know, when you say it's a religion,
you don't know how many how many of these people
are willing to die for it. And that's usually you know,
martyrdom is probably the best, the best predictor of whether
somebody is in a religion or not they're willing to
die for it. But I think in the last couple
of years we've seen that the the radicals are and
they're they're willing to kill into a you know, into
Christian schools and Catholic schools, kill and have their own
lives taken from them or taking their own lives. So yeah,
I mean the religion itself is you know, once you
understand that it is a religion to them, then you
understand why they have They have this what they believe
is a mandate to destroy all the other religions that
would possibly compete with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that this is what young you know,
I think it's appealing to young people because they're looking
for something to believe in and they see this thing
and it seems to check all the boxes that they've
been indoctrinated in to believe, you know, and they they
they're so I find that young people today are just
they're incredibly ignorant about faith. They're incredibly ignorant about church.
And I don't really mean to specifics of dominomination. I
think they're just incredibly ignorant about the Christian faith. They
don't know anything about it that, you know. I think
that they're growing up somewhere where everybody was sort of
nominally Christian. Right. There were a lot of people that
I knew who knew a lot about religion but sort
of chose not to engage with it. You know. They
were sort of like self styling agnostic or atheist. But
it wasn't because they didn't understand or had never heard
of it. They just didn't want to engage in it
because it was inconvenient for them in some way.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But I think there are a lot of people now
who literally do not know anything about it because I
think our culture has succeeded in erasing it from a
lot of places where these young people would have accessed
it earlier. The home, the school, all those places, right,
civic events. They just it's you know that when I
have discussed things with younger people or even people in
the industry. It's astonishing to me that they just have
a complete ignorance of the facts in the historical significance
of religion. And it's funny because you you do plays
that have a lot of references from the Bible in them,
and they don't they don't even know their references.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's they don't realize that the basically they live
in a Christian culture.
Speaker 3: Correct, And they're curious there. They're they're weirdly curious about it,
Like it's almost like learning about a new culture to them,
which can be exciting, I guess in those moments when
they demonstrate some real curiosity, but it's alarming. It's alarming
to realize how much they don't know about their culture.
And you know, if you don't know what your culture is,
you can't you can't engage in it. I think that
like there's all this questions around what is American culture
right now? And I think we have a lot of
other cultures that are living here in America, and people
are confused because they they have been told that they're
not allowed to want their culture right, They're suppose to
have other cultures. They're supposed to be open to other things.
Speaker 1: Well, you're not allowed to have your own culture if
you're white. Basically, that's the main.
Speaker 3: Thing is Yeah, So I mean I think I think
this is confusing to people because they they don't they
can see their other things are not their culture. I mean,
I just watch it be confusing to people. I find
it confusing because why is it okay to celebrate other
people's cultures in a culture? You know, like, why why
is it not okay to go to those places and
bring my culture, but it's okay to bring their culture
to mine?
Speaker 1: White, white, white culture, especially white Northern European culture, has
always been very open and very because they're basic, that's
the way they are. But when you start introducing other cultures,
because the because they are what European culture, and European
culture is open and other cultures are not, they're very insular.
It's very easy for insular outside in culture is to
dominate a culture of openness, especially when you know it
really it's seen as a as a faux power.
Speaker 2: It's seen as.
Speaker 1: Rude to you know, go after somebody else's culture. And
I know a lot of people blame this on Christianity,
And I mean, I don't think I don't think this
has a lot to do with the Enlightenment too, which
was a complete rebellion against Christianity.
Speaker 2: But the on that.
Speaker 3: I think you would I absolutely agree that. I I I. Yeah,
I think a lot of this can be traced back
to the Enlightenment. I think you're right about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was just basically you're trying to
you're trying to have Christianity without Christ and you know,
you can have your own your own beliefs, your own religion,
you're your own God, and yeah, that just doesn't that
doesn't historically work. I mean you're trying to force something
upon people who you know, for thousands and thousands of
years have lived have been either monotheists or polytheist and
the concept of no, now you have to worship yourself.
While that goes, that ends, it turns out that that
you end up in a bad place often when when
you're your own God and you have the culture of
little gods running around.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think often, I think often of C. S.
Lewis's argument for why one should believe in a religion
right when when sort of asked why one should believe
in a god if you can't prove it, right, That's
a common thing people say, well, you can't prove it
to me.
Speaker 1: And C. S.
Speaker 3: Lewis says, but wouldn't it be better right to live
in hope than to live in a world where like
the best it gets is me? And I think that
what he's getting to in that is this human condition,
right that like, if we're worshiping ourselves, how horrible, how
absolutely horrible. I mean, I fail all the time. I'm
a disaster. I think, just like from a psychological point
of view, that's such a bad idea, and it does
lead to a really dark place. Never mind the truth
of the matter, never mind the truth of the universe
or God or all that stuff. It just leads to
a really terrible place. And I think this is what
happens with people on social media, is what happens with
young people today, right, because they hold up these people
as look, here's the true believer, here's the guy who's
going to lead us out of the darkness, and then
that person fails, and then the only option they have
is to cancel that person and find another perfect person
who then lives in fear of becoming imperfect, because if
you were up yourself. When you become imperfect, you are
no longer worthy of worship, right, and it just creates
this horrible cycle. So I completely agree with that assessment
of the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: I have to say, well, if we're if, if we're
agreed on the Enlightenment, I don't know where else there
is to go because getting getting people to agree on
the Enlightenment in this day and age is uh, it's
hard enough when you when you bring it up. It's
like bringing up bringing up the Constitution. Sure, the Constitution
was a you know, a pretty decent document for its day,
but you know, if you if you're not, if there's
no one there to enforce it, you know, you just
basically have paper, a paper that you're waving around or
you know. It's like famously people say, you know, Liberia
has our Constitution and it's one of the worst places
in the world to live.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I think this gets into ideas around statehood, right, that like,
in order for a state to exist, it has to
be able to perpetuate itself. And I think so much
about what is happening in leftist ideology seeks to dismantle
the idea that one is allowed to perpetuate one's existence,
and this is counter to the ability to exist, right, Like,
if I can't assert myself as separate from you and
assert my right to be myself, then what's the point?
And what I see is a lot of left is
ideology sort of saying you don't get to be you,
you don't get to assert your your selfness here. Right,
I'm going to decide who gets to be perpetuated and
who doesn't. And you know, I have a lot of
arguments with my friends about this and say, like, you know,
if if we don't have the ability to be an entity,
then we will cease to exist as an entity in
all of those things that you love about this entity,
all of those rights and freedoms that you want so
badly will go away because there will be no entity
to enforce them. And this is the great problem I
think inherent in the ideology. You know, Yeah, you know
you're allowed to protest because you have an entity that
protects your right to protest. If you really were in
the kind of society that you say you want to be,
and you would not be allowed to say what you say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's also the whole idea that you're you're
always going to be in charge, you know, when you
you know, that's why you know a lot of people
are like, well if Trump doesn't and I don't think
he's going to destroy the left, they're going to get
you know, if not in twenty twenty eight, one day,
they are going to get back in power. And when
they get back in power, they're going to be looking
to punish people. And when I say punish people, I mean,
you know, beyond throwing them in jail for like January six. Now,
it's going to be it's going to be a little
more historic than that.
Speaker 2: I'll just so I'll say that much.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know, we're I think we already
see this in the UK, right, I mean we've seen
this idea that people are getting arrested in the United
Kingdom for what they say, right, and that's a country
that doesn't have the same free speech guarantees that our
country has, but they're not that far away. And when
you've got people who are being fined and put in
jail for what they say online, that's you know, that's
that's not good. Like, that's not a good situation. I mean,
it's happening in England, right, like, I think that you're
not wrong that the next round will be more significant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we can see our future by looking over there.
Although I'm hoping that they rise up and they start
to say no. And yeah, eighteen forty eight saw all
of these it's basically international rebellion, rebellions in all these
countries and leftist coded and I think that the spirit
of eighteen forty eight, if it happens, it'll eventually happen.
But once it happens, like in one country, it's going
to spread because that's just how how it works. And
most of Europe is screwed. I mean, I haven't been
to Europe in a couple of decades, but you know,
when I went there, it was it wasn't that you
didn't have this and to see it like this is uh,
you know, it is pretty horrible. I mean, I I
there are places I want to go in Europe, and
I probably will despite the way it is there, but
you know, it's it's I very often find myself much
more upset with the situation in England than I do
in my own country because it is so horrific and
just dystopian already that when I hear the stories. I
you know, I'm like, Okay, well we need to invade
England and overthrow their government and set the people free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean obvious, obviously, even
this conversation like that, you know, we we have we
have things that we agree on and things that I
think we may have slightly different points of view on,
but but the ability to sort of be able to
talk about that and it is precious, I think. I mean,
I I think I would fall into the category that like,
I definitely still want to talk to people. I hear,
I hear your I hear where you are on that,
and I think that it can There are days when
I feel like, what is the point it is? You know,
I should just quit? And then I think about the
few people that I've met in my industry who we've
found each other, and it's been really affirming. And I
don't really like using that word, but that's the word
I use. I guess it's been really affirming to be like, oh,
I'm not alone, you know. And so I think to myself, Gosh,
like I should stay right, I should keep fighting this way.
I should keep trying my best. I should keep holding
close and revealing when I can to people because if
I do it for one person, then someone else will
do it for another person, and before you know it,
there'll be a lot more of us. And I think
that what I want people to know on the other
side is that there are a lot of us. We're
not some weird person stuck in a basement who's never
seen the sun like we are real people who have
beliefs that are not crazy. And there's a lot of
people who think this way. It's not some sort of
marginalized thing that you can put in a corner and say, oh,
those right wingers are all are all nutty, terrible people.
And I think that a lot of a lot of
moderates in the middle are stuck. Right moderates who traditionally
have voted Democratic are stuck because they they're not comfortable
with the rhetoric they see, but they don't know how
to be on the right. They don't know how to
be conservative because everything in their being, everything in their
in their upbringing, tells them that they're not allowed to
be conservative. And those people are sort of getting lost.
And those people are the people that I'm sort of
interested in talking with if they're willing to listen. I
think those are the people that Charlie Kirk was interested
in talking to too.
Speaker 1: You know, well, I mean, I just don't believe in democracy.
So my big thing is is I don't really, like
I think I said earlier, waking up waking up people
on moss if I can help that, help them with
that so that they can understand how the world works
and better navigate it.
Speaker 2: Sure, But as far as like.
Speaker 1: We're going to sing for the future, and when I
say organizing, I mean like, you know, having a trusted
a trusted group that you know that is seeking to
you know, make plans for the future and make plans
to uh to protect, to protect each other in the
in the event that things get you know, get worse,
which they probably are. Then I'm not really interested in, like,
I'm more interested in having conversations with people who think
like I do or almost think like I do, than
people who are in the middle.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of.
Speaker 1: The things that I know from from reading a very
famous book in a book that that you're really not
you shouldn't if you told people you read it, they'd
want to know why is that you know this person
would go to work and convince his co workers of
his arguments, and he leave that day and feel like
he accomplished something, and then he come back the next
day and they forgot everything he said. So, you know,
I'm very I've become very selective with the people that
I'm going to give my time to put it that way,
that I'm going to spend any any time with that uh,
you know that, you know, to try to make allies with.
I'm way more interested in making allies with people who
are who I believe, who we pretty much believe the
same thing, or are pretty close than anyone who is
in the middle and you know, would still consider to
vote for like a Democrat or even think that voting
is going to change anything at all at this point. So,
I mean, that's just that's just where I am. I mean,
I'm I've been doing this for a very long time,
and I've talked to a lot of people, and I've
made the mistake of talking to people that I didn't
agree with before, and it usually does not turn out well.
And I try to be as as gracious a host
as possible. But you know, for the most part, I
find that at this point the danger is so great
that aligning Allying with people who you know pretty much
are on your side at least ninety percent and even
higher is probably the smartest thing to do because there's
a lot of people out there that will just turn.
Speaker 2: On you like a dime.
Speaker 1: And we live in a dangerous world where you know,
people go to debate on campuses and get shot.
Speaker 3: Well, that is certainly true. I think that it's difficult
to know where you can have the conversations. And I
think because it's such a extreme reaction to things that
are disparate viewpoints, like there isn't room to sort of say,
oh wow, like I don't I don't like that thing,
so I'm gonna I'm not gonna engage with it, but
it can be over there, like you're You're right about
that that people don't allow the thing to exist. So
if you have a viewpoint that they don't love, then
they're gonna they're gonna come after you. They're gonna come
after you really hard because they need it to go away.
It threatens them so much that they it can't exist
in their world. And you're right about that that they
will do anything they can. They will come after your family,
they will come after you personally, they will post you online,
they will do whatever it takes to rid themselves of you.
And it's yeah, yeah, it's I mean that that's what's
that's what's so hard, because that's true about about all
these relationships that I'm aware that it is very tenuous,
and I'd like to think that if people know me
as a person, they would be able to get past that.
But I just don't know that that's true. I mean,
it doesn't seem true, and that makes me really sad.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I was where I was where you are.
I was where you are years ago, so it got up.
I've gotten past the the sadness part now and I'm
just at the you know, I went through all the
stages of denial and I'm on the other I'm on
the other side going okay, I really just I want
to concentrate on people that that I know, and people
who who I can trust, people that I know I
can trust, and you know, trying to convince people. You know,
people think because I have a podcast, I'm trying to
convince people, trying to help people. You know, I realize
it probably you know, less than one percent of the
people that that here that listen to this will probably
probably ever meet in person and everything, but you know,
I want to help them understand what the world looks
like and help them understand exactly how the world operates
so that they can they can thrive as best they can,
because I think if they're listening to me, we have
we have a lot in common. But when it comes
right down to it, those people should be finding people
in their area to ally with, you know, like I'm like,
we do here and then you you go from there.
So you know, I I would never tell anybody.
Speaker 2: Don't don't listen.
Speaker 1: I mean, it goes against my you know, why I
do this and everything because I think I put valuable
information out there and have good conversations with people like
you who you know, I haven't had a conversation like
this in a very in a very long time with
somebody who is actually in in the you know, behind
enemy lines really and talking about behind the enemy lines.
But you know, I want them, I want anyone who's
listening to to be able to thrive. And even those
people that hate listen, you know, I have a you know,
I hope they I can convince them of something something
one day.
Speaker 3: Who knows, Yeah, it's certainly interesting. I feel like I
feel I don't know. I wake up some days and
I feel like I there's something, there's hope, And then
I wake up some days and I think, what, what's
it's it's all sort of hopeless. But I don't know.
I think I have to figure I think I have
to find a reason to keep going. I guess, yeah,
it's a lot to think about. It's a lot to
think about. I think, I don't know. I'm not making
much sense about that now.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, we've been going a while, so we
should we should probably uh probably end this and go
on with go on with what we're doing and everything
like that. But it was very nice talking to you.
I really hope that people get a lot out of
this and at least get a peek behind the curtain,
because I know a lot of the people who you
know myself, I have gotten to the point where I
can put myself in a bubble and not have to
engage with this at all, engage with people like you
have to engage with on it on a daily basis.
But you know, to hear it from to hear it
from somebody who's who's doing it and who is you know,
thriving in it, you know, just you know, what I
would say is, uh, just keep a play, your cards
close to your vest and do not as best you
can as things get worse, because they will. Just you know,
be as careful as you can.
Speaker 3: I think that sums it up pretty well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Claire, thank you so much for the
talk and.
Speaker 2: My best to you. Maybe we'll talk again sometimes.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much