Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because.
Speaker 2: I put my hand on a book and made a.
Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Speaker 3: Truth, Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3: You can almost always tell about my headspace, my frame
of MI based on the tone of the speeches that
I give from the stage. I mean, just scroll back
through a fifteen year archive of I don't know how
many presentations. And sometimes I'm hopeful and sometimes I'm cynical.
Sometimes I'm optimistic, and sometimes I'm pessimistic and sometimes both.
And I think that probably best describes what you're about
to hear. But it's appropriate to the Christmas holiday. There's
kind of a Christmas theme embedded. There is a video
version of this that has about one hundred and ten
slides or more. You can go back and watch it
the YouTube link in the description box, but it plays
just fine as audio, so you can listen and watch
and do whatever. And I hope you walk away from
this somewhat encouraged and maybe even inspired. Recorded October twenty
fifth in Albuquerque for the Humanist Society of New Mexico,
my presentation A War Story about Love. I'm so glad
you're here today, and I thank you. It's an honor
to be in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Pretty country in the
month of October, gorgeous. We went up the tram yesterday,
you know, totally tourist thing to do, and I asked
the worker there, I said, does anyone ever freak out,
hit the deck or lose their minds?
Speaker 2: And they said all the time.
Speaker 3: Apparently someone went all the way to the top and
was so traumatized that they walked the trail all the
way down the mountain. But I was talking to Paul,
and he said, you know, like a couple of decades ago,
some people got stranded on the tram. This is a
common story for you guys. I'm not telling you anything,
but he had.
Speaker 2: Just told me that story.
Speaker 3: We were getting ready to board the tram.
Speaker 2: And as a joke.
Speaker 3: I looked at the strangers around me and I said,
I just want you all to know that if we
get stranded up there, you're welcome to use me as
an alternate food source. And they looked at me so
awkwardly until they laughed. I'm going to tell you a
story today. Many of you have heard it. I don't
know if you've heard it in this way. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, World War One was raging
across Europe's Western and Eastern fronts, Allied forces facing off
against enemy forces and a meat grinder of conflict that
would ultimately end the lives of tens of millions of people. Now,
in the context of the battlefield, we understand why fighting
forces need a authorady figures. They need commanders, admirals, generals, sergeants.
If there weren't firm directives given by directors, you know,
there weren't chains of command, it would be chaos. But
on one cold December night in nineteen fourteen, miserable soldiers
in opposing trenches stopped listening to authority. Instead, they listened
to each other and to themselves, and this became an
encounter that historians talk about more than one hundred years later.
Is there such a thing as a war story about love?
I think maybe the better word here is empathy. But
I like the way love sounds. I like the way
it rolls off the tongue. So roll with me here,
love empathy. I'm going to interchange those. I was surprised
when I heard this story. Before today is over, you.
Speaker 2: Might be surprised as as well.
Speaker 3: It might make you think and wonder and perhaps even hope.
And don't we need hope in this day and age.
I recently released a speech about the human tendency to
gravitate to and defer to authority figures, specifically authoritarians, And
I'm interested in how a majority, often representing tens of
millions of human beings, don't realize that they have power,
specifically the power to say no. And man, when we
surrender that power, don't horrible things go down?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: The late British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote these words back
in nineteen oh three. He said, if power is bad
as it seems to be, let us reject it from
our hearts. In this lies man's true freedom and determination
to worship only the God created.
Speaker 2: By our own love of the good.
Speaker 3: Now, before I get to my war story about love,
let me cover some familiar territory. In my last presentation,
I was talking about the authoritarian Benito Mussolini. He engaged
in his own power grab back in nineteen twenty two.
He was imposing, he was charismatic, and he established a
new political entity, the fasci italianid Combetimento, the Italian fighting bands.
Of course, Fasci is drawn from the word fascio. That's
where we get the term fascism, the ancient symbol of
authority with an axe that is supported by Styx and
guests who got to be the axe? Mussolini he rose
to power on the platform that he would remove the
undesirables and restore national greatness.
Speaker 2: Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 3: All he needed was a police state, right, give me
the power to do it, Give me unchecked power, and
I will accomplish this for you. And it would take many,
many years and millions of deaths before the people finally
rose up and shut him down. His authoritarian rule ended
in disgrace, defeat, and eventually his own execution.
Speaker 2: But I want to come back to the symbol.
Speaker 3: This fascio symbol from ancient times the fortified acts, representing
the authority to rule, reward, and even punish. And this
symbol has been used in various ways throughout the centuries,
with various meanings and interpretations domination, liberation. You might be
surprised to see this symbol on display in our own
House of Representatives. It's funny. I saw the congressional halls
my whole life. I never noticed those, but they're there.
The interpretation is said to represent the power of the
authority of the United States House of Representatives. But there
are important discussions about whether or not this should be
a symbol hanging in our halls of power. How many
deadly actions in our history have been propped up by
the everyday common people for lack of the better way
of saying. For decades, Joseph Stalin reigned terror on his
own people, the Russian people, and he preached about dangerous
and traitorous dissenters, those who hated their country, and he
had them tried and often executed. He was an absolute authority,
and yet over one hundred and eighty million citizens lived
in Russia at that time.
Speaker 2: He was just one man.
Speaker 3: It's so strange. Kim Il sung, founder of North Korea.
He remains an authority, terry in power even in death.
His dynasty was and is treated as divine. He's a divinity,
He's a god. Watch the citizen's bow. Under these giant
effigies you can see Kim Il sung and Kim Jong Ill.
Notice how towering they are imposing, looming over the tiny
commoners beneath them. This is not an accident. This is messaging.
There is no escaping. They're all seeing eyes. Even on
the walls of private homes. Throughout North Korea, every building
required to display portraits of the Deer Leaders. You must
pay homage to the gods. In fact, there are inspections.
Sometimes people will come into your house and they'll white
glove to make sure that they aren't dusty or askew,
to make sure they're properly displayed to honor the dear leaders.
I think about twenty six million North Koreans who are
right now living in fear for their lives, and I
imagine in my brain what could happen, What might happen
if they all woke from their slumber, or they all
felt that liberation and they could rise up and join
humanity beyond the guard towers and the barbed wire and
the concentration camps. Now, I understand that many of these
people are not given the luxury of being able to
do that because the country has been militarized and it's
a life and death thing. They don't have the billion
dollar weaponry. They don't have the tanks and the soldiers
and the guns and the bullets, and so for them
it's simply not practical. Maybe they're waiting for their moment.
They're an underground of people yearning to be free. I
do understand that. But still I think about people and
their true power in terms of numbers, and what might
happen if all of those millions rose up together at
so I think about these rank and file Russian soldiers
in Ukraine. They don't give a rats ass if Putin
gets more real estate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't care. They don't have a dog in
that fight.
Speaker 3: I mean, there may be some people who are true believers,
but how many of these people are literally under Putin's gun?
And what if even half of those seven hundred thousand
soldiers in Ukraine bucked the system that threatened to kill
them and the supposed enemy.
Speaker 2: What might happen. What if.
Speaker 3: Even the over sixty percent of Russian citizens who say
they support Putin's assault on Ukraine admit they don't really
understand what his goals are. Ah, we don't know what
he's trying to accomplish. They're following authority. And imagine if
they put down their national flags and they stopped following
the king and met the men and women and children
being targeted by Russian bullets and bombs by the millions.
I wonder if they could not demand an end.
Speaker 2: To the madness. It's a dream.
Speaker 3: We know that at least ten thousand Russians in uniform
have tried to desert. The courts in Russia are packed
with a wall cases. Morale on the ground is terrible.
These people feel trapped under one man's rule, one man
supported by the many. Do they understand their true power?
Especially when our favorite stories are stories are rebellion? I mean,
what's the easy one star Wars? Who are the heroes
in Star Wars?
Speaker 2: The rebellion?
Speaker 3: Who does the emperor want to crush the rebellion?
Speaker 2: The rebellion must be crushed.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I just gave him that accent,
but I did, because that's what bad guys sound like.
The American perception of evil apparently is slavic or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is. Sorry, my fault.
Speaker 3: The plucky hero underdogs are rising up against the evil
power of the Emperor. You got to wonder what the
Death Star staffers were saying at the water cooler when
the boss was ranting he's out there torturing and murdering.
You know, the stormtroopers and the people running the Death Star,
They're like, oh God, what are we going to do?
This guy's out of control. I just want to take
my paycheck.
Speaker 2: And go, oh my god. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is not going to come out. Well,
what happens if the rebels fly a ship and blow
up our I don't know what's going to happen. Literally,
I think many may have bowed in fear. They were
just trying to survive. Some shrugged and looked the other way.
Some would rather be a pet than cattle, so they
accepted the leash.
Speaker 2: Maybe some were impressed.
Speaker 3: You know what, if he's that awesome, if he's that powerful,
good for him. Be strong enough to conquer. That's my
team right there. I'm a winner. At all costs, and
I want to be on the team of the winner.
Maybe they loved it. Social Darwinism, if you will, you know,
if you can be the victor, you deserve the spoils.
We've heard a lot of that kind of messaging today.
The strong must crush the weak. Social Darwinism is a
bad riff on natural selection and survival of the fittest.
The thinking is the week are being filtered out of
the societal gene pool.
Speaker 2: The week are a.
Speaker 3: Drain, they're a distraction, they're pathetic, and they're pretty much
just in the way. This country has long romanticized figures
like General George Patten.
Speaker 2: He kicked ass and he took names. He walked the.
Speaker 3: Lines with those ivory handled pistols at each side, you know,
in March of nineteen forty five at the Rhine River
in Germany, he terminated in the water. He was marking territory. Right,
the winners will piss on the losers. Now, given the
Nazi threat and what we had all been through, I'm
not saying this was right or wrong, but Patten proved
problematic as he sort of bravadoed that alpha male persona
compassion consideration empathy. He saw those things as not strength
but weakness. As portrayed in the famous George C. Scott movie,
Patten slapped two shell shocked officers. He did not recognize
or accept that there was such a thing as PTSD
trauma breakdown. What he saw was weakness, losers. Those slaps
cost him a rebuke from President Eisenhower and damaged his career.
But I can think of a whole bunch of people
who admire this kind of thing, right. Suck it up, snowflake.
Be strong, Crush the weak. That's what strength is. That's
what victors do. Many of us had real concerns about
social Darwinism when Trump himself declared only the weak will fail.
Even though I'm not myself a Christian, I have to
wonder how that claim jibs with the best teachings of
Jesus Christ. And I think this is a fair question.
Be devoted to one another in love, Honor one another
above yourselves and everything give thanks God is love. Let
all that you do be done in love. Blessed are
the meek. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted forgiving one another,
Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger,
and other Bible examples a soft answer turns of way wrath.
Don't take revenge, don't love money, be humble and gentle, don't.
Speaker 2: Lie, and on and on and on.
Speaker 3: Don't bully, don't lust, don't cheat on your spouse, don't steal.
If we don't lead with love, what might we become?
I think we might become what we have seen much
of our country become a culture of celebrated cruelty, demonstrating
a callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering.
Psychologist and journalist Brian Resnik sums it up like this.
He said, dehumanization is a mental loophole that lets us
harm other people. How often have we seen humans dehumanized
to justify their mistreatment? How many authoritarians have sent false
narratives about them and demanded their mistreatment in the eyes
of the dismissive, cold, bigoted, and cruel. Immigrants documented or
otherwise are not human beings, often escaping tremendous suffering, in danger,
just trying to survive. Now they're vilified as parasites, pushers, predators.
Many churches are thankfully an open tent for people of
all orientations, but in fundamentalist circles. Gay people are sodomites,
deemed wicked by both God and men. Trans people have
been a convenient villain of our times. Not good people
who are trying to navigate a complex gender journey with authenticity,
just trying to live their lives in safety. They're called
bathroom stalkers who are hunting our children culture of indifference, fear,
and cruelty. Murdered school children are ignored, while ar fifteens
enjoy protection. The poor are too weak and pathetic to
not be poor. Christian's own Bibles, which say to show
hospitality to the stranger, to give justice to the foreigner,
to act with love, because you never know when you
just might be entertaining angels. Many people hold to those convictions,
but an alarming many do not. Now, you and I
will often usually instinctively favor our in group, our tribe first,
and it's understandable and reasonable. It's a reflection of our
own evolution as the human primate. You favor your in
group while being often distrustful of, or in some ways
law out the out group. Sometimes we destroy the outgroup
right because this evolutionarily meant that we were more likely
to survive and pass on our genes. Primitive at the time,
but effective in groups made us more efficient. We could
procure more, we could grow more, we could accomplish more
potential enemies who might attack us. Not necessarily we didn't
know for sure, but they might be dangerous. They might
attack us well, they might think again before attacking all
of us as a consolidated group. And of course, the
bigger and stronger we were, the more we.
Speaker 2: Could use that power for our own benefit.
Speaker 3: Tribalism can be a good thing. We're surrounded by it.
One of the more fun examples of sports teams now.
In my home state, a big rivalry used to be
the Oklahoma Universe versus Oklahoma State University. Right, the Red
versus the Orange. These two aren't in the same conference anymore.
So the game, which was called Bedlam. It was so
anticipated we called it the Bedlam Game every year, and
that that showdown was so hotly anticipated, everybody would just
ramp up. The news reports would be all about it.
We'd make jokes about the opponents, we'd gripe about hometown referees,
defend the colors.
Speaker 2: We cheer and jeer every play.
Speaker 3: Fans were divided into tribe one or tribe two unless
an Oklahoma team played Texas. Oh oh, wait a minute,
Wait a minute. Now it's the Oklahoma tribe versus the
Texas tribe. Oh yeah, two rivals banned together against a
common enemy.
Speaker 2: Now I don't.
Speaker 3: Follow football watch the Super Bowl for fun, but I mean,
I get it right. We all have our favorite pastimes.
We often cheer our favorite players. Sports I think can
be a nice distraction as much as anything else, you know,
collecting stams, video games, whatever you know. But still it's tribalism.
Sometimes things get so intense. I stumbled upon this two
thousand and seven documentary about this longtime rival between Michigan
and Ohio State.
Speaker 2: Those people hate each other. There's a Michigan guy over here.
Speaker 3: We're going to need some sort of intervention before it
gets serious. And because of our tribal tendencies, a fan
from either team could watch the same game but walk
away with a totally different perspective, a different experience. They
saw a different game. Interesting psychology. I think how many
times have we heard a music fan say this, you're
being such man. My brand of music's better. Metal is
the best. Nah, No, eighties music's the best. In the
classical country music. We even see subtribes. You know, are
you this decade? Are you soft rock?
Speaker 2: Hard rock? You know? Punk rock? Whatever?
Speaker 3: Clubs, tribes, cultures, I get it. What do Taylor Swift
fans call themselves Swifties?
Speaker 2: Right, they're part of a group.
Speaker 3: I actually really admire Taylor Swift and what she's accomplished.
I don't really follow her music, but I get it
in group solidarity that's based on a single rallying point,
a person, genre, whatever. Here's a fun debate. Are you
a DC person or are you a Marvel person?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And of course some of us are like, well why
not both?
Speaker 2: Why is this a contest? I just go where you want,
love what you love. Who cares?
Speaker 3: But there are some people, I mean, go on the internet. Really,
it's thunderdome out there. Political parties are all about tribalism,
and I think this is necessary because our political families
should reflect our value, shouldn't they. But we're still grouping
ourselves based on those values. What are nations if not tribes?
Where the home country then there are the other or
away the foreign countries. Sometimes national interest and even national
pride can be great for organization. Safety, community, a feeling
a family to get things done.
Speaker 2: But also it can spill.
Speaker 3: Into something that is isolating and dehumanizing. Are we thinking
our fellow human beings who happen to live in other places?
Or are we thinking about the inferior other? How often
are national flags more than just benign identify and they
become these sort of sacred totems for tribal loyalty and
claimed territory. They're dividers that keep us far away from
each other. Religions of the world. What are they if
not tribes. Each has their own communities, leaders' ideologies, beliefs,
codes of conduct, whatever. And you can see tribal fragmentation
with each individual religion, and then you can see splinter
tribes within each denominational tribe. The Southern Baptists reject the
American Baptists who separate from the cooperative Baptists to teach
a better doctrine than the independent, free will and Reformed Baptists, etc.
Speaker 2: Etc.
Speaker 3: Until this one denomination, the Baptist Church becomes a comedy
of splinter cells fighting about doctrinal purity. And don't kid
yourself that atheists are immune from all this stuff. We
as human beings are not above superiority complexes, tribal tendencies,
reductive thinking, and just being awful to people.
Speaker 2: We're not immune, We're not above it.
Speaker 3: The atheist meme verse is loaded with all kinds of
tragic othering when it comes to Christians, Muslims, people of
the other political party, etc. I'm not making an equivalence argument.
Don't jump out of your chairs at me, but let
me give you a couple of examples. All right, I
saw this one floating around. Sundays are peaceful because the
most evil.
Speaker 2: People are at church? Are you kidding me? Really?
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? It's so tragically wrong. It's destructive,
it's unhelpful, it's cruel.
Speaker 2: Here's another one. This has been around forever.
Speaker 3: Atheist a thoughtful, honest, ethical, intelligent, skeptical thinker.
Speaker 2: Oh I wish this was true.
Speaker 3: Oh I wish it was true. Atheism the non belief
in gods. I don't buy it. I'm not saying there
is no god, there could never be a god. I'm
not making a declarative statement. It has almost nothing to
do with my value system as a secular humanist. It's
just atheist. I'm atheist. I don't believe in a God.
I have met in my travels flat Earth atheists Chicago, Illinois.
I met a flat I swear my head almost exploded
off of my neck.
Speaker 2: I was what.
Speaker 3: Anti vaccine atheists, homeopathy using atheists, alien conspiracy atheists. I've
met inhumane, nasty, toxic, tribal atheists who have been saying
horribly incorrect things about anyone and everyone religious. I've heard
some people make this connection. Even casual Christians enable Christian nationalists,
which is often a culture infected with racist crashing the
capital chambers to fortify white power. As such, then Christians,
even the most casual, are Nazis. And this ignores so
many devout Christians who are humanists. We disagree on some theology,
we can have those discussions, but at the end of
the day, it's all about our value system.
Speaker 2: What do we care about.
Speaker 3: Christians who have joined the fight, standing with us for
democracy and decency. This is my friend Amanda Tyler. She
is the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee. She
founded Christians Against Christian Nationalism. She fights daily to restore
and protect equality and safety for LGBT people, immigrants, Americans
across the color and culture spectrum. I think she's working
a bit outside the Bible to practice a kind of
evolved personalized faith. Yes, has she had to cherry pick
a few things, Okay, as she jumped over some of
the more inconvenient verses. We can have that conversation and
we have. But more important to me, despite the fact
that she's religious, is that she wants peace, equality, safety, humanity.
Speaker 2: I'm in she's my people.
Speaker 3: The organization itself, Christians against Christian Nationalism, is remarkable. It's
a remarkably diverse assembly of reverenced pastors, bishops, religious leaders.
These are good people working alongside us to be on
the right side of history when it comes to secular
government and freedom, battling the cancer of cruelty in this
world world Fine, God believers, Okay, your clergy, fine.
Speaker 2: But in the overall, in.
Speaker 3: This instance, these people and I have much more in
common than we have in disagreement, and I think that's important.
Speaker 2: Are they stupid? Are they evil? Are they Nazis?
Speaker 3: Are we instead connected by something more important, which is
a shared humanity. This guy's name is Pastor John Pavlovitz.
He's a Christian. Yes, he and I have had disagreements
about his interpretation of the Bible.
Speaker 2: We've had our disagreements.
Speaker 3: You know, in his world, Jesus would never have condemned homosexuals.
And I'm like, have you read the book of whatever
Old and New Testament? We start actually in Leviticus and
we crawl through the But fine, fine, his Jesus would
not be anything but a god of love.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll take that. I'll take that. He's a humanist. First.
Speaker 3: This is doctor Christen Dumain. She's a theology professor, a
devout Christian. She dismantles Christian nationalism. She published a book
called Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals corrupted a
faith and fractured a nation. She condemns the white evangelical
steamroller that is crushing the United States.
Speaker 2: I've interviewed her on the show. She's amazing.
Speaker 3: I know some atheists who would immediately see her theology
degree and they would outgroup her without a blink. What
a tragic waste that would be. How often have we
marked the hard lines between us and them when we
might have more in common, more of a shared humanity
than we ever had in a disagreement.
Speaker 2: Bibilism it can activate.
Speaker 3: The best and sometimes the worst angels of our nature.
You know, that evolutionary leftover which so easily splinters us
and causes us to declare others inhuman, draws us into
a rallying point around maybe a savior figure, a tribal elder.
We draw and redraw our lines of territory. We claim ownership,
sometimes even divine right. Crush the subhumans. They don't deserve
what we're going to get or what we already have.
The humanization, the mental loophole that lets us harm other people.
We see militaries do this with the enemy. It's understandable
why they do. It's shooting, knifing, or bombing an inhuman
thing is a hell of a lot easier than doing
it to a flesh and blood person. I interviewed this guy.
He is a Vietnam veteran, John Musgrave. He was featured
in the Ken Burns documentary, a ten part series about
the Vietnam War, which is fascinating. It is probably the
best layout of that conflict that I have ever seen.
John Musgrave was featured.
Speaker 2: He told his.
Speaker 3: Story and I reached out to him afterward and I said,
you don't know me from Adam, but would you come
on my show and talk about what happened.
Speaker 2: He was horribly wounded. They thought he was going to die.
Speaker 3: He did survive, and he became a protester against the
Vietnam War. He was one of those guys at the
beginning he was like, my country right or wrong. And
he became someone who was out there marching saying.
Speaker 2: This is unjust.
Speaker 3: And he spoke about an instance, an example of something
that happened when he was out in the field before
he was injured. He killed an NVA soldier. He killed
an enemy soldier, and he was right there, so close
to it, and it shook him to his core. It
was so traumatizing. He really couldn't process it. He was
having a hard time dealing with it. It just there's
not language to describe how horribly it affected him. But
after seeing one of his own men step on a
land mine, he made a deal with the devil. His words,
I said, I will never kill another human being as
long as I'm in Vietnam. However, I will waste as
many gooks as I can find. I'll wax as many
dinks as i can find. I'll smoke as many zips
as I can find, but I ain't going to kill anybody.
Turn a subject into an object. It's racism one oh one.
Turn a subject into an object, and it makes them
easier to destroy. Human beings have done.
Speaker 2: This to each other since forever.
Speaker 3: And why have so many humans on both sides, on
all sides allowed themselves to be pawns in a power
game that's run by a privileged and often corrupt few.
I recently revisited this film two thousand and five movie
called V four. Vendetta was based on a graphic novel
by Alan Moore and David Loy, and the protagonist V
is wearing the guy Fawke's mask. He was horribly abused
and tortured by a fascist regime, and then he rose
up to wage his own personal revolution. And we can
debate the politics of the film, but I'm more interested
in the fascist state that is portrayed in both the
graphic novel and the movie. I remember I watched it
first when I'm still a Christian. I hadn't come out
of the faith yet, and I was somewhat appalled by
the line that was in it. It said people's shouldn't
be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of
their people. And I remember being very uncomfortable with that.
Sounded somehow like a betrayal, very unpatriotic, But on my
revisit of the film, it sounded much more true when
I couldn't stop thinking about this guy. This looks suspiciously
like the official presidential portrait that came down last year.
Speaker 2: Did you guys see that?
Speaker 3: The imposing stare High Chancellor Adam Suttler an amalgam of
dictators throughout history, preaching his Holy War narrative. He demanded
absolute allegiance and obedience, and he meeted out Gestapo violence
on all dissenders.
Speaker 2: He was the oligarch.
Speaker 3: He controlled all the media, he surveilled his population, and
he promised national greatness and the crushing of the evil enemy.
Using terms and faith linked to a cross symbol. Jingoistic
messages reinforced the righteous slogan England prevails and the shadow
of authoritarianism. V was the wrench in the works, the
fly in the ointment. He was the ultimate spoiler. The
plan was radical, blow up the symbol of the fascist regime,
bomb the Parliament building. Now I'm not endorsing anything like that.
I'm not endorsing any violence or anything like that. Right,
But I'm interested in that plot line and the actual line.
Governments should be afraid of their people, the power of
the people. In the film, there is this conveniently happy
ending where the entire population of London joins v in
this fearless and defiant stand against the man, the literal
man puppeteering the whole system. You know, he would have
or could have easily been sort of flicked out of
the Chancellor's chair by even a small focused resistance. Why
did he remain in power for so long? The people
had been lulled into a sleep, a deep slumber, or
maybe resignation. Maybe they were followers. They just wanted to
be told who to love, who to hate, what to think,
what to do, especially if someone claims divine right, God
gave me the power right. How often have authoritarians weaponized
God speak, terrifying people into submission and then promising that
I will make you safe and I will make you great.
King Henry the Eighth ushered in the divine right of kings,
invoking religion to establish himself as the head of the
Church of England.
Speaker 2: My will is God's will.
Speaker 3: Disobey me, you might as well be disobeying the almighty?
Is that que the power consolidation, the persecution of declared enemies,
rewritten laws, torture, execution, including the beheading of one of
his own wives.
Speaker 2: But he was just one man.
Speaker 3: King Leopold, the second second King of the Belgians in
the late nineteenth century, responsible for all kinds of heinous stuff, slavery, torture, kidnapping,
the murder of millions. And I imagine a scenario where
those who were suffering under his reign would unify at
once and rise up. They raised their own humanity against
his inhumanity.
Speaker 2: I know it's a fantasy.
Speaker 3: It maybe even be simple minded to think in this way,
but that's how my brain operates, right. The machines of
oppression have so many gears.
Speaker 2: What if all those gears decided to stop moving the machine.
Speaker 3: There were several plots from within Germany to take out Hitler,
another tyrant who stoked terror, propagandized the country, and promised
national greatness.
Speaker 2: Eighty million Germans, eighty million, one man.
Speaker 3: My brain wrestles with the psychology of tyrants and those
under them.
Speaker 2: It's hard to process it.
Speaker 3: Anybody see the nineteen eighty eight John Carpenter film called
They Live. It's a kind of an on the nose
commentary on free market capitalism. Lase a fair, unchecked, unfettered capitalism, oligarchy,
manipulation of people who've become thus sheeple. They're just living
their lives, distracted, lulled, and cold. The system is threatened
if the people start to think for themselves and resist
the system. So behind all of the billboards and in
every page of every book, hidden underneath what we think
is actual content, are these words sleep obey, those types
of things lulling people into a subservience. Yet how much
progress has come through resistance? Brave resistance, often messy, unpopular, dangerous,
pain in the ass resistance where the rising many defy
the few. During the civil rights movement of the fifties
and sixties, those in power were preaching God wants us
segregated America first, or white America first. But good people
resisted against the shouts and threats and danger. Defiant in
the best sense of the word, not allowing anyone else
to strip anyone else of their humanity, their quality, their
own individual authority. With a landmark Supreme Court decision, of
nineteen fifty four, Brown Versus Board of Education, segregation was
to declared unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: Now it was the High.
Speaker 3: Court that ruled, but it was everyday people who stood
defiantly and created that pressure to help smash the barrier
between minority children and their promising future.
Speaker 2: Wasn't all that long.
Speaker 3: Ago in American history that men happily assumed the authority
over a woman. You know what, little lady, I'll do
the thinking around here, I'll do the working and the achieving,
and I'll vote. I'll vote. I represent this family with
my vote. Even the founding fathers didn't allow women into
the halls of power. Their thinking was patriarchy is patriotism.
It's also God's will. According to the Bible. We all
know that scripture out of First Timothy. I do not
allow a woman to teach or to have authority over
a man. Instead, she is to remain quiet. But American
women rose up in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 2: They resisted.
Speaker 3: The brave activists of the suffrage movement organized and activated
to fight injustice, to demand fairness and equalize the man's world,
resulting in the nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
in August of nineteen twenty the right of citizens of
the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any state on
account of sex. Misogyny has not gone away, has it?
But twentieth century women knocked down sexist barriers to the
ballot box, barriers that were installed by authority that's returning
from Vietnam.
Speaker 2: To protests, they were threatened.
Speaker 3: They were called on American, you hate America, your traders,
your heretics, your judas. Many were even physically assaulted as
they rose up to stand against the folly of that war.
The highest offices of government and their minions called these
people the betrayers of their country, and yet they marched forward.
Speaker 2: Invoking God.
Speaker 3: Famous religious bigot Jerry Folwell, along with others like him,
Anita Bryant, etc. Said gay people were dangerous reprobates seeking
a modern sodom and gomorrah.
Speaker 2: We heard a lot of this in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 3: Sadly, we hear a lot of it today. Homosexuals blamed
for everything from pedophilia to the AIDS virus to.
Speaker 2: The attacks of nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Those in power said that society had no obligation to
serve non heterosexuals. You want healthcare, you want a job,
you want to get married.
Speaker 2: Would you like us to bake you a cake? Sorry,
you don't have those rights. Yet, millions formed a resistance.
Speaker 3: They stood up, and they continue to stand up for
LGBT equality, gender equality, racial equality, human equality, and that
resistance continues bravely against the bigots. Today, women across the
Middle East are putting their lives on the line against
Islamic oppressors. The Iran Revolution is a great example. They're saying, fine,
you can arrest us, you can torture us, you can
even kill us, but you do not own us. Remarkable
courage for a cause that deserves a lot more attention
in the Western world. The recent No Kings protesters sent
a strong message by the millions, messages plural. Really, we
are not a dictatorship. Cruelty is a cancer. Love over hate.
For the crime of descent, they we have been labeled
a hate America movement. We're also somehow paid actors being
compensated by George Soros. I haven't received my check. I'm
very disappointed. Does anyone here received that cash?
Speaker 2: App Venmo Soros?
Speaker 3: Hello, have you guys seen the protesters in the frog
costumes out in Portland. I love that sort of refutation
of the hate with good humor and goodwill. I called
them Amphibitifa.
Speaker 2: It just makes me laugh. I released the speech.
Speaker 3: Last year called dissent is Our Duty, and I don't
just mean descent against oligarchy and oppression. I mean descent
from authority with a capital A on almost every level,
starting from within our own walls.
Speaker 2: How many controlling.
Speaker 3: Families and families are tribes with tribal leaders. How many
controlling families claimed authority over you and said we raised you,
we'll define you. I was talking earlier today about how
parents will often say, you know what, you can grow
up to be anything you want to be in this world,
and then they commit a ton of their resources to
limiting your options, don't They often for the most noble
of reasons. They want to protect you and they want
to see you survive and thrive. But it's like, Oh,
don't date that person, don't marry that person, don't go
to that church, don't change denominations, don't leave the church,
don't go to this college, don't have this career, don't
vote for that candidate. Don't don't right, and you chose
to listen to yourself. You said, no, I've got my
own position, I've got a value system, I'm going to
be true to I'm going to be me. Pastors and
priests so often give commands from the pulpits and their
high platforms, and they invoke God's authority and then their
own authority over everybody else. And yet you say, no, no, no,
I'm smart enough, and I have enough value, and I'm
centered enough to be able to realize that you're not
going to tell me how to think or who to be.
Nationalists say, line up or get out, the authority of
the state, love of the motherland or the fatherland, line up, salute,
pledge your allegiance. Protest is treason, so affirm us, support us,
agree with this, or get out.
Speaker 2: But you stay and you fight for what's right. It's remarkable.
Speaker 3: There is such power in recognizing our own valid voices.
Speaker 2: You know, to say you.
Speaker 3: Cannot, you will not govern me. You're not going to
manipulate me. You're not going to make me hate or
hurt somebody else. You can shout all you want, you
can throw Bible verses at me all the want, you
can cry trador. All you want, you can claim your kingship,
divine right, demand my obedience. My tribe is the human tribe.
My convictions are my own and they are precious. My
allegiance is to my values. I will bet everybody in
this room has a story about breaking out of some
kind of high control situation. Some authority figure, someone who
claimed authority tried to put you in a cookie cutter,
and often with great trauma, you bust it out. You said,
screw it, Damn the consequences. It's my life. Despite the challenge,
you were true to your authentic self and you are free.
And we imagine what if everybody could be that free,
Which brings me back to where I begin. That story
in our history books, that human moment in an inhumane situation,
the war story about empathy, the war story about love. Now,
I'm not making a commentary about whether or not the
First World War was necessary, right, the stand against tyranny
often requires bloody conflict. That's just a necessary truth. But
I want to show you what happened on that one
night in nineteen fourteen when everyday soldiers briefly stepped out
of the shadow of authority and they found a few
precious seconds of humanity.
Speaker 2: World War One.
Speaker 3: It began in July of nineteen fourteen France, Russia, Britain
and the US, and then eventually it joining forces against Germany, Austria, Hungary,
Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. That conflict would last four
years and kill millions of people. The Western Front was
a line of trench warfare that stretched from the English
Channel in the north to the Swiss Alps in the south.
It was four hundred and seventy five miles long, running
through much of Belgium and northern France. Trench warfare brought
its own special brand of suffering trench warfare. Opposing armies
digging in like ticks. They're shielded by sandbags and barbed wire.
They attacked, they counterattacked, They try to find ways to advance.
The space between them known as no man's land. Those
trenches were a cold hell of deep mud, wet cigarettes,
sleeping standing up off and against the sidewall. Because you
couldn't lie down in two or three feet of water.
There was the risk of trench foot and that could
cost you a limb. Combat beyond the trenches was a
meat grinder.
Speaker 2: Oh it is so easy to see.
Speaker 3: Why many of these standoffs resulted in stalemates. They were exhausting, physically,
exhausting emotionally. Christmas Eve, nineteen fourteen, the war was only
five months old. There was another cold night behind those
mud walls along a thirty mile stretch of trench controlled
by the British Expeditionary Force. Many thought the war was
going to be over already. They thought, oh, the war
will be over by Christmas.
Speaker 2: Piece of Kate.
Speaker 3: Well, with hundreds of thousands dead, stalemates everywhere, no victory
in sight on both the Allied and the Central power sides.
Morale was literally below ground. Bruce Bearn's father was an
Allied captain and a machine gunner, and he would go
on to become author and a cartoonist, and he was
like his fellow soldiers. He was down in there, shivering
in the muck that Christmas Eve, and he would go
on to chronicle what happened next. Around ten o'clock at night,
the Allied soldiers heard a noise coming from the enemy trenches,
and at first they couldn't quite make it out, but
then they recognized the sound. It was the sound of
the singing of Christmas carols. Who knows what song they
were singing deck the hall, Silent knights hark, the herald
angels sing. But in a magical moment, the British troops
in their own trenches joined in, opposing armies with hundreds
of feet between them, suddenly united in song. Captain Baron's
father would go on to report that a German soldier
suddenly shouted out in English, come over, join us. A
British soldier responded, I'm not going over there. You come
halfway and we'll meet halfway. And what happened next became
a Christmas miracle. The armies of both sides got out
of their trenches, walked into no man's land and shook
hands in peace, not his enemies, but as men, human
beings who had suddenly been united in song. No shouts
in anger, no bullets, no bombs, only warm smiles and goodwill.
Baron's father would write these words about that day, and
I quote there was not an atom of hate on
either side. Another British soldier, a guy named John Ferguson,
would chronicle that moment by saying, here we were laughing
and chatting to men whom only a few hours before
we were trying to kill. The men did their best
to talk to each other through the language barrier. They
exchanged cigarettes and bottles of liquor. They showed photos of
their families back home. They ask about sports teams, speaking
of sports. In some places, the two camps improvised soccer matches,
with maybe one hundred troops or more joining in. Each
side allowed the other side to collect their dead in
an atmosphere of reverence and respect, honoring those who had
fallen by giving them a chance of some kind of
proper burial or remembrance. These men, for those precious moments,
were not acting under authority, unless you account the authority
that they gave to themselves the permission to be a
human being. First, I think of that John Lennon.
Speaker 2: Song, right.
Speaker 3: Imagine, if there's no countries, it isn't hard to do.
This phenomenon was happening in other places, all the way
up and down the Western and in parts of the
Eastern Front that divided suddenly united on a Christmas.
Speaker 2: Eve in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 3: Until commanders on both sides heard about this truce, they
were furious. They demanded that the men immediately separate and
return to fighting. They said, if this happens again, there
will be consequences. Germans would be executed, British soldiers court martialed.
But even then, after that moment, many soldiers couldn't bring
themselves to pull the trigger. They couldn't fire on the
people that they had just met. They would eventually get
replaced and far more obeyed authority, and they returned to
their lines. They again began waging war against those they
had befriended only moments before. I can't even imagine what
that must have been like. There are memorials to that day,
including this one in Staffordshire, England. It's an effigy of
the handshakes from the battlefield. Here's one in Belgium, two
soldiers shaking hands over a soccer ball on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 2: Peace on Earth.
Speaker 3: Goodwill toward men, goodwill toward everybody. I'll finish today by
quoting one of the great writers and thinkers of the
late nineteenth century, Robert green Ingersoll, who wrote these words
back in eighteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: He said, love is the only beau on life. Stark clout.
It is the morning in the evening star.
Speaker 3: It shines upon the babe and sheds its radiance on
the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer
of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and
light of every heart, builder of every home, kindler of
every fire on every hearth. It was the first to
dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for
music is the voice of love. Love is the magician,
the enchanter that changes worthless things to joy and makes
royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the
perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart. And without that
sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts.
But with it Earth is heaven, and we are gods.
You and I care because it matters. We grieve over
injustice because it matters, trying to spread love over hate
because it matters. We resist because it matters, and because
we must our Yesterday and today have shown us that
we have the power. At the very least, we have
the potential to have the power. When you and I
see each other as fragile, beautiful, precious travelers in this world,
and we refuse to let anybody anywhere tear us away
from our hearts, our values, our convictions, and each other.
Then we recognize the best parts of what it means
to be a human being. Thank you for having me today.
It's been a tremendous honor to.
Speaker 2: Speak with you.
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