Speaker 1: 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.
Truth Usian 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 2: So I saw something that was posted on the Cracked
Facebook page.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Cracked is an American humor magazine that was founded back
in nineteen fifty eight. I don't know if the magazine
itself is still around, but the online page, the Facebook page,
certainly is and Cracked posts a bunch of lists and
you know, funny stuff, and it's usually pretty lightweight, a
little bit mad magazine, all right, that's what Cracked is.
But I saw more and more serious stuff posted on
the Cracked page. And on the second of August there
was a reposting of a David Wong piece from twenty
sixteen the Donald Trump phenomenon explained in three movies. Well,
this intrigued me and it was a pretty long piece,
and I was so interested that I figured I just
read it for you here. So this is from nine
years ago. It says I'm going to explain the Donald
Trump phenomenon in three movies, and then some text in
the article. He actually references several movies and he's got
images that are pasted into the article. Talks about Brave Heart,
Hunger Games, Star Wars, Deliverance, Iron Man, maybe another one.
There's this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies used to
tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys
are simple folk from the countryside, while the bad guys
are decadent assholes who live in the city and wear
stupid clothes. And Star Wars Luke is a farm boy,
while the bad guys live in a shiny space station.
In Braveheart, the main character is a simple farmer, and
the dastardly prints Shithead lives in a luxurious castle and
wears fancy, foppish clothes. The theme expresses itself in several ways,
primitive versus advanced, tough versus delicate, masculine versus feminine, poor
versus rich, pure versus decadent, traditional versus weird. All of
it is code for rural versus urban. That tense divide
between the two doesn't exist because of these movies. Obviously,
these movies used it as shorthand because the divide already existed.
We country folk are programmed to hate the prissy elites
that brings us to Trump. It's not about red and
blue states. It's about the country versus the city. David
Wong says, I was born and raised in Trump Country.
My family are Trump people. If I hadn't moved away
and gotten this ridiculous job, I'd be voting for him.
I know. I would see political types talk about red
states and blue states, where red equals Republican conservative and
blue equals Democrat progressive. But forget about states. If you
want to understand the Trump phenomenon, dig up the much
more detailed county map. Here's how the nation voted, county
by county in the twenty twelve election. Again, red is Republican,
and the map itself looks like somebody just splashed the
whole country with red paint. I mean, it's almost all red.
And there's these tiny little blotches of bloom. Okay, and
I'll post a PDF version of this article in the
description box for you. So it's mostly red. It looks
like a red country. Back to the article Holy Cockslaps.
That makes it look like Obama's Blue Party is some
kind of fringe political faction that struggles to get twenty
percent of the vote. The blue parts, however, are more
densely populated. They are the cities in the upper left.
You see the blue Seattle Tacoma area, lower down to
San Francisco than La. The blue around the dickt shaped
Lake Michigan is made of cities like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago.
In the northeast, of course New York and Boston, leading
down into Philadelphia, which leads into a blue band which
connects a bunch of Southern cities like Charlotte in Atlanta.
Blue islands in an ocean of red. The cities are
less than four percent of the land mass, but sixty
two percent of the population and easily ninety nine percent
of the popular culture. Our movie shows, songs, and news
all radiate out of these blue islands. And if you
live in the red that fucking socks. See, I'm from
a blue state, Illinois, but the state isn't blue. Freaking
Chicago is blue. I'm from a tiny town in one
of the blood red areas. As a kid, visiting Chicago
was like well Catnis visiting the capital, or like Zoe
visiting the city of the future in this ridiculous book.
Their ways are strange and the whole goddamn world revolt
surround them. Every TV show was about La or New York,
maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they
did make a show about us, we were jokes, either
wide eyed, naive fluff balls, as in Parks and Recreation
and before that New Heart or filthy Murderous Mutants dru
Detective and before that Deliverance, you could feel the arrogance
from hundreds of miles away. Nothing that happens outside the
city matters, they say at their cocktailed parties, blissfully unaware
of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans. Kind of weird that a big
hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific
city and avoid everything else. To watch the news or
the multiple movies and TV shows about it. You'd barely
hear about the storm utterly steam rolling rural Missississippi, killing
two hundred and thirty eight people and doing an astounding
one hundred and twenty five billion dollars in damage. But
who cares about those people? Right? What's newsworthy about a
bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer. New
Orleans is culturally important. It matters to these ignored, suffering people.
Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of
the elites. Are you assholes listening now? But isn't this
really about race? Aren't Trump supporters just a bunch of
racist Don't they hate cities because that's where the brown
people live. Look, we're gonna get actual Nazis in the
comments section of this article, not calling them Nazis for
argument point Nazis, but actual swastikas in their avatars rooted
against Indiana Jones Nazis. Those people exist. But what I
can say from personal experience is that the racism of
my youth was always one step removed. I never saw
a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the
actual black people we had in town, We worked with them,
played video games with them, waved to them when they passed.
What I did hear was several million comments about how
if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in
the wrong neighborhood meant you'd get dragged from your car,
raped and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea
was that the local minorities were fine as long as
they acted exactly like us. If you'd asked me at
the time, I'd have said the fear and hatred wasn't
of people with brown skin, but of that specific tribe
they have in Chicago. You know, the guys with the
weird slang music and clothes, the dope friends who murder
everyone they see. It was all part of the bizarrow
nature of the city. Sas perceived from a are a
combination of hyper aggressive savages and frivolous white elites. Their
ways are strange, and it wasn't like pop culture was
trying to talk me out of it. It's not just
perception either. The stats back up the fact that these
are parallel universes. People living in the countryside or twice
as likely to own a gun and will probably get
married younger people in the urban blue areas, talk faster
and walk faster. They're more likely to be drug abusers,
but less likely to be alcoholics. The blues are less
likely to own land, and more importantly, they're less likely
to be evangelical Christians. In the small towns, this often
gets expressed as they don't share our values, and my
progressive friends love to scoff at that, what like illiteracy
and homophobia. Nope, everything trends always start in the cities,
and not all of them are good. The cities are
always living in the future. I remember when our little
town got our first Chinese restaurant and twenty years later
its first fancy coffee shop. All of this stuff had
turned up in movies set in LA, of course, decades earlier.
I remember watching eighties movies and mocking the valley girls stereotypes,
young girls from Lake California who would like say like
in between every third word. Twenty years later, you can
hear me doing the same in every Cracked podcast. The
cancer started in LA and spread to the rest of America. Well.
The perception back then was that those city folks were
all turning atheist, abandoning church for their bisexual sex parties.
That we were told was literally a sign of the apocalypse,
not just due to the ritual consequences, which were dire,
but the devastation that would come to the culture. I
couldn't imagine any rebuttal in that place. In that time,
the church was everything. Don't take my word for it.
Listen to the experts. Church was where you made friends,
met girls, networked for jobs, got social support. The poor
could get food and clothes there, couples could get advice
on their marriages, addices could try to get clean. But
now we're seeing a startling decline in Christianity among the
general population, the godless disease having spread alongside Valley girl talk.
So according to Fox News, what's the result of those
decadent atheist, amoral snobs in the cities having turned up
their noses that God chaos? The fabric is broken down,
they say, just as predicted. And what rural Americancy on
the news today is a sneak peek at their tomorrow.
The savages are coming, Blacks riot Muslims set bombs, Gays,
spread aids, Mexican cartels, behead children, Atheists tear down Christmas trees. Meanwhile,
those liberal Lena Dunhams and their five thousand dollars a
month apartments, sip wine and say, but those white Christians
are the real problem. Terror victims scream in the street
next to their own severed limbs, and the response from
the elites is to cry about how men should be
allowed to use women's restrooms, and how it's cruel to
keep chickens in cages madness. Their heads are so far
up their asses that they can't tell up from down.
Basic obvious truths that have gone unquestioned four thousands of
years now get laughed at and shouted down. The fact
that hard work is better than dependence on government, that
children do better with both parents in the picture, that
piece is better than rioting, that a strict moral code
is better than blithe hedonism, that humans tend to value
things they've earned more than what they get for free.
That not getting exploded by a bomb is better than
getting exploded by a bomb, or, as they say out
in the country, don't piss on my leg and tell
me it's raining. The foundation upon which America was undeniably built, family, faith,
and hard work had been deemed unfashionable and small minded.
Those snooty elites up in their ivory tower, laughed as
they kicked away that foundation, and then wrote ten thousand
word think pieces blaming the builders for the ensuing collapse.
Don't message me saying all those things I listed are wrong.
I know they're wrong, or rather I think they're wrong,
because I now live in a blue county and work
for a blue industry. I know the good old days
of the past were built on slavery and segregation. I
know that entire categories of humanity experienced religion only as
a boot on their neck. I know that those traditional
families involved millions of women trapped in kitchens and bad marriages.
I know gays lived in fear, and abortions were back
alley affairs. I know the changes were for the best.
Try telling that to anybody who lives in Trump country.
They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know
I was there. Step outside of the city and the
suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded
rural communities, but all the recovery went to the cities.
The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has
utterly collapsed. See Rural jobs used to be based around
one big local business, a factory, a coal mine, etc.
When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up,
it was an oil refinery closing that did us in.
I was raised in the hollowed out shell of what
the town had once been. The roof of our high
school leagued when it rained. Cities can make up for
the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs. Small towns cannot.
That model doesn't work below a certain population density. If
you don't live in one of these small towns, you
can't understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers
involved moving to the city and around every city is
now one hundred foot wall called cost of living. Let's
say you're a smart kid making eight dollars an hour
at Walgreens and aspire to greater things. Fine, get ready
to move yourself and your new baby into a seven
hundred square foot apartment for twelve hundred a month, and
then to pay double what you're paying now for utilities, grocery,
and babysitters, unless, of course, you're planning to move to
one of those neighborhoods hope you like being set on fire.
That is, if they don't replace the only room you
can afford with a thirty three hundred dollars per month
high rise. In the city, you can plausibly aspire to
start a brand, or become an actor, or get a
medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town.
There may be no venues for performing arts aside from
country music bars and churches. There may be only two
doctors in town. Aspiring to that job means waiting for
one of them to retire or die. You open the
classifieds and all the job listings will be for fast
food or convenience stores. The downtown is just a corpses
of mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater.
The suburbs are trailer parks. There are parts of these
towns that look post apocalyptic. I'm telling you, the hopelessness
eat you alive, and if you dare complain, some liberal
elites will pull out their iPad and type up a
rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied
to this with a comment saying you should try living
in a ghetto as a minority. Exactly to them, it
seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used
as a club to bat away white cries. For help. Meanwhile,
the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit.
At least politicians act like they care about the inner cities.
It really does feel like the worst of both worlds,
all the ravages of poverty, but none of the sympathy.
Blacks burn police cars and those liberal elites say it's
not their fault because they're poor. My son gets jailed
and fired over a baggie of meth, and those same
elites make jokes about his missing teeth. You're everyone's punching bag,
one of society's last remaining safe comedy targets. They take
it hard. These are people who come from a long
line of folks who took pride in looking after themselves.
Where I'm from, you weren't a real man unless you
could repair a car, patch a roof, hunt your own meat,
and defend your home from an intruder. That was a
source of shame to be dependent on anyone, especially the government.
You mowed your own lawn and fixed your own pipes
when they leaked. You hauled your own firewood in your
own pickup truck. Mine was a nineteen ninety four to
Ford Ranger. The current owner says it still runs, not
like those hipsters in their tiny apartments or those people
in their public housing projects, waiting for the landlord anytime
something breaks, knowing if things get too bad they can
just pick up and move. When you don't own anything,
it's all somebody else's problem. They probably don't pay taxes either,
just treating America itself as a subsidized apartment. They can trash.
The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards
say their way of life is dying, and you smirk
and say, what they really mean is that blacks and
gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it.
But I'm telling you they say their way of life
is dying because their way of life is dying. It's
not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it
as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines.
Well except for hunger games, and that was depicted as
an apocalypse. So yes, they vote for the guy promising
to put things back the way they were, the guy
who'd be a wake up call to the Blue Islands.
They voted for the brick through the window. It was
a vote of desperation. But Trump is objectively a piece
of shit. You say. He insults people, he objectifies women,
he cheats whenever possible, and he's not an everyman. He's
a smarmy, arrogant billionaire. Wait are you talking about Donald
Trump or this guy? And he posted there a picture
from Marvel Studios of Iron Man under the caption make
the Avengers Assemble Again. The article says, you never rooted
for somebody like that, someone powerful who gives your enemies
the insults they deserve, somebody with big, fun appetites who
screws up just enough to make him relatable, like Doctor
House or Walter White or any of the several million
renegade cop characters who can break all the rules because
they get shit done, who only get shit done because
they don't care about the rules. But those are fictional characters. Okay,
what about all those millionaire left leaning talk show hosts.
You think they keep their insults classy? Tune into any
bit about Chris Christy and start counting down the seconds
until the fat joke. Google David Letterman's sex scandals. But
it's okay because they're on our side and everybody wants
an asshole on their team. A spiked bat to smash
the enemies with. That's all Trump is. The howls of
elite outrage are like the sounds of bombs landing on
the enemy's fortress. The louder the better. Already some of
you have gotten angry, feeling this gut level revulsion at
any attempt to excuse or even understand these people. After all,
they're hardly people, right, aren't they just a mass of ignorant, rageful, crude, cursing,
spitting subhumans. Gee, I hope not. I have to hug
a bunch of them at Thanksgiving, and when I do,
it'll be with the knowledge that if I hadn't moved away,
I'd be on the other side of the fence. Leaving
nasty comments on this article, the alternate version of me wrote,
it feels good to dismiss people, to mock them, to
write them off as deplorables, but you might as well
take time to try to understand them, because I'm telling
you they'll still be around long after Trump is gone.
And that's the article again. I will link it in
the description box that you can read it, share it,
not share it, argue about it. So at least you
can reference the photographs that he had in the piece,
So that's in the show notes. I have thoughts, I'm
going to share them with you next. Hey, I'm going
down to Texas to do some speaking at the end
of August, and I would love a chance to see
you down my southern name. You know, a state just
as read or maybe even more so, maybe not than Oklahoma,
the state of Texas. You know, it's it's crazy down there,
and yet an atheist, humanist, secular activist will be an
infieldtrator and I will be speaking in Austin, Texas on
August twenty ninth, San Antonio August thirtieth, and Houston at
Houston Oasis the morning of August thirty. First, all the
details just go to my personal website Seth Andrews dot
com and then click the speaking tab and there'll be
links and everything you need to know. And Drew McCoy,
genetically Modified Skeptic, is going to be with me on
the Friday night event because he lives in Austin. And
that just made a whole bunch of cents. So that's
going to be a one to two punch on Friday, Okay,
Seth Andrews dot com and then click on the speaking
tab Okay, I have a few thoughts. I'm sure you
do as well about the opening article, and this better
understanding perhaps of how rural voters, you know, the heartland
voters in the United States are thinking about those West
and East Coast liberal elites, and it's messy. A lot
of people don't think it's messy, you know. They hear
about MAGA and they just scream out the word Nazi
and then they get on with the rest of their day.
And there are a ton of neo Nazis in MAGA, right,
there's a ton of them. But I don't think it's
that simple. Don't let anybody tell you that liberal progressives
cannot be guilty of reductive, binary thinking, of knee jerking,
of being so I don't know so creola about addressing
these very real and complex problems. Don't ever let anybody
tell you that we Libs are not meat covered skeletons
capable of emotional knee jerky biased stuff, because we are
all human beings. Okay, I'm not making an equivalence argument,
but you know there is true. I mean, I live
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are about a million people here.
Oklahoma City is a little bit larger, but we're not
considered big cities. So even our cities are kind of
rural compared to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. And
then we've got our own suburbs which become even more
and more and more country, with more land and you know,
more wooden fences. It becomes the whole, the whole cliche.
You know, people out there with barns and tractors and
horses and cows and all that. It's legit. And I'm
telling you those people are largely Trump voters. Many of
them are Trump worshippers. And there are so many reasons
I think for this that are related to in the article.
They do think that the cities are filled with the snops,
the people looking down their noses at heart land Americana.
And if you look at the map and see all
the reds, well America looks like us. Why do those
blues have so much control? Why have they suffocated all
of these institutions? Why are they in all the TV
and the movies and the music business. How come it's
all about the blues, the Libs, all of them progressive,
the secular humanists, instead of us great conservatives who love
America this is the thinking, and I think we have
to understand that. However, because it's messy, and this was
alluded to in the article, we can't escape the reality
that there's a shit ton of neo Nazis in Maga.
And I'm going to tell you a story. And this
relates to a member or an extended member of my
wife's family. And Natalie won't mind me telling this story
because we're both fed up and pissed and we don't
give a shit. Okay, we're just we're up to here.
We don't care. I'm gonna tell you the story. So
this was two months ago. A guy kind of a
patriarch of Natalie's side of the family. You know, he's
on the tree, but he's kind of out there. He's
an older guy, probably seventy five, silver haired, straight up
white country guy, and we figure just by looking at
him he voted Trump. He's just one of those dudes
where I don't think it's stereotyping, but when you look
at what he says and who he is, and where
he lives and the house he lives in and the
car he drives and all the stuff that interests him,
you just think Maga maga, that alarm goes off, and
beyond that, we never really thought much about it. And
I'll call this guy Richard. Well, Richard has a family member,
like a nephew or something. And Richard's nephew pays a
rare visit to Richard's house. He comes over and hangs out.
He's catching up with his uncle, and he's looking all
around and near the living room. I guess he sees
this display on the wall, and he sees a symbol
that looks suspiciously like a swastika. He says, hey, uncle Richard,
what's this framed thing on the wall here? Well, it's
it's about our history. It's a collector thing, kind of
a you know, it's a remembrance of the mid twentieth century.
It's one of those things that has some value and
and you know, it's one of those it's a collector's thing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: He's kind of fumbling in that way, according to the
story that was told to us. And of course you
and I are thinking, hey, well, donate it to a museum, right,
I mean, okay, it's part of our history, but make
it part of a display which talks about the larger
genocide of millions of people in bigotry and hatred and
murder and death and pain and all that stuff, But
why would you you hang this in your living room?
And that's what the nephew said, Hey, Uncle Richard, how
come you're displaying it right here in this way? And
I guess within two minutes shit went down and Uncle
Richard hit a point where he just unloaded all the
stuff that he was really thinking. He said the quiet
part out louder maybe for him it wasn't the quiet part,
and it became the most heinous, bigoted screed about how
this country would be better off if we just took
all the brown people and put him on a plane
and sent him out of here because America. And his
nephew was horrified. Holy shit, Uncle Richard is a swastika brandishing,
neo Nazi, white supremacist, brown person hating piece of jet.
It's just and he could not be leave it. And
that was the tone when he told the story to
the rest of the family. He's like, f y, I
you know, we got some Nazi as I'm going on
over here in this particular part of the family tree.
And that's I mean, that stuff's real. Now, it's true
that when I was growing up, I had some embedded biases.
We would talk about those inner city areas with black people,
and even though we didn't say it that way out loud,
you know, it was always like, well, I've got a
black friend. And we did. We had people in our
school who were people of color, whether they were black
or Hispanic or Asian, Native American, et cetera. And we
were friends and hung out, but there was always this
idea that those people over there were a little bit different,
even if we didn't really understand what was going on
in our own mind. It was bias. It was big,
it was othering, it was racism, and it was just there.
We just didn't really understand how it had been baked
into us, and you know, it wasn't done as much
with malice, just stupidity and ignorance and whatnot. And then
we crawl out of that and realize what it was,
how it worked, and why, you know, we have to
be aware of it. And so there is that kind
of bias. I'm not excusing it, but I'm saying, let's
understand it. And then there is Uncle Richard who is like,
white is right, and I just I'm giving a speech
in Let's See. I'm going to release it to YouTube
in September, which it shows my exasperation with MAGA. A
part of me is that guy who says brainwashing is real,
bigotry can be overcome, love must win, and those things
are true. And then there's another part of me that's like,
screw these people. They have dragged us down into the sewer.
They are destroying everything that we care about. They can't
be reasoned with, and what the hell are we gonna
do now except crush them utterly so that person exists.
And these two seths argue with each other all the time,
all the time, and I think they both may be right.
There are victims who are also perpetrators who are still victims,
and there are awful people who think Hitler was the
good guy in the human story. That's just. But understanding
is important. We must be creatures of understanding, and I'm
gonna hold onto that. I want to know why things
are happening, because long after Donald Trump is gone, the
people who supported him will not be gone. And you
and I have to deal with him if there is
still a United States. Laughed when that happens, Well, what
are your thoughts. I would be curious. James is dialing
in from eight one to seven.
Speaker 5: James either, good morning, Set, It's great to talk to
you again today.
Speaker 2: What's up.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to add something to this. I started
thinking about as I was growing up, and it's been
it's been a long time. When we were growing up,
things were so much different. The Christian conservative values pretty
much dominated the culture in our country. What I mean
by that is the majority of people just accepted it
as is. That's how things were. If you went outside
of that that norm then people would give you already looks.
I mean they could they could correct you just by
giving you that look. You know, that side eye, and
you knew you were messing up. You knew that you
were on the wrong path, and you better not stray
too far from those normative values that were just that
way back in the day. It didn't take anything to
enforce their world view. And now that the culture has
changed so far outside of that, I think they've just
gone crazy with the fact that they can't control the
culture anymore. I mean, they this five has been going
on forever. This isn't a new five. They've they've been
priming for this type of battle between us versus them.
For as long as I can remember, I mean for
at least the last thirty years, talk radio, conservative television
has been priming the pump. And then the Internet came
along and set it all on fire because a certain
amount of us realized that we weren't alone, that the
thoughts that we had weren't crazy, and that that what
we had the things can say, made sense and it
was It was bad. We had other people that agreed
with us that back in the day we would have
they weren't in our community. We had no way to
connect with those people. So when we did, we found
out we weren't alone, and all of a sudden, the
culture started shifting out from underneath the way things used
to be, and especially older people, they can't deal with that.
Speaker 2: I think us first as them has always been around,
don't you think, and on some level, but you're right
about the media and the connected world and has become
so much more amplifying.
Speaker 5: And it's all about money. I mean, we can't forget
that the powers to be this is all about money,
with inequality is worse than it's been in a very
long time, and they've successfully pitted us against each other,
and I don't know what the culture wars raging the
way they are. I don't know how we walk back
from that. They're destroying our country.
Speaker 2: Do you think we'll ever bounce back?
Speaker 5: I have a hard time maintain hope that that will
happen every day when you just see the direction of
things that are going. I mean, I guess it gives
me some hope when I see in the news that
they start to revolt against certain things, but when they
start feeling when it gets so bad, when it gets
so bad that they can no longer ignore it because
it affects them and not just us. If it affects them,
and they start feeling the effects of the actions that
they've brought about, and I guess it's possible that people
could become humble enough to start talking to one another
again in a way that maybe we could work towards
solutions and not just throwing moth top cocktails at one another.
I hope that's the case. I mean, I think that's
what we need.
Speaker 2: I've heard some people say they'll support Trump because Trump
pays who they hate. I think there are some people
like that. What's your perception?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I don't know how they don't. It seems like
they don't care as long as it's just a game.
It's like a football game, polities, like a football game.
I've got my team and I'm going to beat and
I'm going to win and at all costs, and all
the things that they said that they used to believe
in and hold as sacred, like the Constitution, or law
and order, or just things that were very basic to
the core identity to that particular group, They've just given
it up and said, hey, we're on the winning team,
and whatever you want to do to win is okay
by us. And I think Trump is terribly bombastic and
caustic towards our culture, towards the people. I hate to
see that that they've fallen so far away from what
they once said that they believed this country can never survive.
Speaker 2: James, I appreciate your calling perspective as part of this
much larger discussion, and I'm sure we'll talk again. Thanks
for dialing in, man Love you said, take care, appreciate you.
Some people I think are afraid of change. There are
certain personality types that are averse to change. They are
more prone to want routine and structure. Those people, I think,
travel less. They are less interested in what is different
or who is different. You know, they experiment less. And
I'm not just talking about sexually, but I mean everything
from diet to life experiences, et cetera. There have been
studies about people who tend to lean more into maga
type culture, and those traits seem to line up. They
yearn for yesteryear or this myth of yester yearing. Maybe
they you know, they want to go back before black
people could vote, and before interracial marriage was legal, and
back when women were paid less if they worked, and
they were encouraged to stay home and be barefoot and pregnant.
And maybe that's the reality they do want to return to.
But I think others have sort of embraced this lie that, well,
back then, it was all the Norman Rockwell painting kind
of thing. You know, it was all so pristy. We
never locked our doors at night, and no one was
sports to wear seat belts, and everybody was neighborly and happy.
And it's this totally fabricated nineteen fifties Americana that they
yearn for. And I think that is a reflection in
many cases of white privilege because if you weren't white
and probably male in the nineteen fifties, in the nineteen sixties,
things were not necessarily all that good for you. Those
were not the good old days. But I think those
who are promised structure, I think they respond to someone
who says I will bring structure. Plus, if someone says
I alone can fix it, I am the chosen one.
Trust me, follow me. They are primed to line up
behind a shepherd that allows them to check out. They
don't have to get into the messy noise, the white
noise of the world. They don't have to participate, they
don't have to get their hands dirty. They can just say, ah,
he's my guy. Let's send him off into the coliseum.
He shall do battle in our name, and then we're
gonna go off and watch the Kardashians or whatever else
they're gonna go to. I mean, I don't know if
does Maga watch Yeah, Yeah, I think they do. They do.
I'm thinking of one Maga right now. She is hooked
on The Bachelor, the Golden Bachelor, and a show called
Farmer Wants a Wife, which I'm guessing is the Bachelor
in Hooterville, and Hooterville is the name of the town
from a nineteen sixties sitcom. What was the name of
that sitcom? Wasn't Green Acres? What was the one? Green
Acres was the one with the Donna da nut Dunt
Bump bump. Remember that song Donna do Nat dun dun
dunt dunna dunna dun dunna dunna dun dunn dun. Green
Acres is the place to be. I can still remember
the song fum living is the life for me, petty
Coat Junction, petticoat Junction. Thank you very much for that.
There was another one too, It wasn't the Andy Griffiths show.
Hee Haw, Yeah, that was another one.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 2: We watched a lot of he Haw growing up. Hee
Haw was funny Hang on your second for me at five.
He Haw was funny because it was targeted to conservative
country folk because it was like people in straw hats
and they were sitting on hey Baale singing country songs
with Roy Rogers. But he Haw was loaded with women
who were wearing these little, I don't know, tablecloth looking
mini skirts in their boobs were busting out, you know.
So the wholesome family values types were totally watching. It
was like Benny Hill with corn. That's what kee Haw
was like, I'm sorry, five oh five high? Are you there?
Speaker 7: I am Seth. It's good to talk to you. My
name is Prince Brent.
Speaker 2: Welcome. Let's talk. What's your perspective on the things we
have been speaking about?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, Yeah, the rural urban divide is really interesting. I
was actually more interested in your take on it, given
that you were a pundit for a while and you
know what appeals to that particular demographic. So what do
you think is the primary separation that we're seeing?
Speaker 2: Well, for me and I wrote about this in Fox News, Christian,
I was in a disinformation bubble. So what happened was
is they told me the left wing quote mainstream media,
they're all infected. They're infected with permissive attitudes, godlessness, they
hate America. Part of that, I think had to do
with this idea that they didn't really consider our borders sacred.
So the one world government was part of that narrative,
and I was taught to believe that a one world
government meant the anti Christ and the devil is going everywhere.
I remember I would leave my job at KXOJ Radio
and Rush Limbaugh would be on starting at one o'clock,
so my shift ended at one. I did the morning show,
and then it was all production and other things, and
I would be in my car just in time for
the first hour of his monologue, and I would be
totally centered in calm, and by the time I got
home twenty minutes later, I would be livid because what's
this country coming to? And those permissive, progressive, immoral people.
I can't but they hate America. This place is going
to hell in a handbasket. And so I was in
that place where I was hyper targeted through right wing
media to believe that everybody was coming for everything I had.
They were all godless, immoral and un American. And you know,
when you have that attitude, it is really easy to
other someone else. And the fact that everybody in my
circle was like me. They were all Sunday go to
meet and church hypocrites. You know. They all listened to
the same music, they went to the same movies, they
talked the same way. I wasn't introduced to other people
in any meaningful way until I got into my thirties,
and man, it opened up my world. So that's my
long version of the short answer. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 7: No, I gotcha, No, yeah, absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: What I heard was number one, you kind of found
yourself in an information silo. You were sort of stuck
with the same opinions with the same people all the time.
There was this idea of a conspiracy that kept rolling around,
right the rise of the Antichrist, the one world government,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, tying into religion, and
then this rage machine that the right wing makes this
like just get mad about something because it sells, it sells.
And then the last thing you mentioned was this whole
idea of patriotism and othering people. So, with regard to
the rural population, what do you think would be the
most effective way to address those the information silo, conspiracy, religion,
rage machine or patriotism.
Speaker 2: I in my own circle, when I'm not in a
re with people who are just as outraged and horrified
and grieved, and we're saying all the things that were
you know, all the primal things that emit out from
our gut. When I'm actually engaging person like the Maga
who we were talking on the phone a couple of
months ago, and who I texted just a few days ago.
I'm leading with questions. I'm trying to engage with a
legitimate attitude of concern without insult, in the hopes of
planting a seed that might germinate and become something. Knowing
not everybody can be reachable. But I'll tell you I
haven't had a whole lot of success. I have seen
some people get out. There are people who are in
our family tree. I've got nephews and nieces. Natalie's got
some cousins. We didn't think they'd ever bust out of Conservatism.
They're pissed and they're going hard publicly at Trump to
the horror of their mega family. So some people are
getting out. Approach is imperfect. I'm just trying to speak,
and I ate an atmosphere of no.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I don't expect it. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't expect a panacea. The people you were talking about,
are they more of the urban population or more of
the rural population. The ones who are sort of turning
on Trump right now?
Speaker 2: Both there are a couple. In my mind, actually, one
of them just moved to Massachusetts. You may have seen
that statistic where Oklahoma just got ranked fifty in education
while Massachusetts is ranked number one, and they purposefully went
online and.
Speaker 7: Say Mexico is the last.
Speaker 5: Mexico is the last.
Speaker 2: Finally they left and moved out and said, FYI, I
am moving out of this backward ass state and I'm
going to Massachusetts. And she moved a few months ago
before this stat came out, but she's already out of here.
And then there was somebody else who lives in another suburb,
a suburb called so Pulpa, Oklahoma, and she's pissed. So
I've seen city and I've seen regional and rural. I've
seen them both.
Speaker 7: Man hm, Okay, Yeah, I'm just trying to think back
about the things that you had said about kind of
where you were at the time that information silo, this
conspiracy mindset tied into religion and the rage machine of
the right wing and patriotism and othering. I really kind
of feel like the best approach when it comes to
the rural population is attacking them on that level of
patriotism and othering because they have neighbors. You know, Rural
communities are by their very nature communal, and so they
will bond together to try to protect themselves from what
they appear to be outsiders, and within that inside group
there are LGBTQQIA people, there are trans people, There's all
sorts of neighbors that they have. So I really think
looking at it from the hey, you know what, these
are our neighbors, these are our friends, these are our
fellow Americans. I think that's really the approach on the
rural side.
Speaker 2: But that's my take, all right. Thanks for a perspective
that we can all sort of talk about and think
about and show on. Thanks so much for comp.
Speaker 7: Awome awesome, and I think you, yeah, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate what you
do and keep on getting on those calling shows because
you rock those colors than anybody else in.
Speaker 2: You're very kind. We'll see you later. Thanks. He's talking
about my guest shots on the Line Network, And if
you're not subscribed to the Line, just go on YouTube
and type it in. You'll see it pops up. And
there's a whole bunch of people who co host. Matt
Delahunty's on there and they bring it in R and Raw,
Paula Gea Eve was framed is there, Shannon q Erica
got sick given Forrest Valci and Forrest and I we
hosted just a few days ago. Again, they like this
pairing of me and Forrest. The dynamic of our personalities
apparently gels really well because you know, Forrest, he's a
Jack Russell Terrier. He's just like and me. I'm you know,
but I lately have been a little more animated me
maybe maybe too much so. And it is an interesting format.
It's very much a different animal than what we do here,
where you and I are having conversations really as a
as a family, as a community about the culture at large.
And we do have some people call in and challenge
and disagree, but it's it's a different vibe where the line,
at least when I'm co hosting the Sunday Show or
Skep Talk is theists, mostly theists who call in and
they are trying to explain or prove or defend God.
And I'll tell you that's some weak sauce, man, It's
weak sauce some of these serial callers. I mean, it'll
say on the switchboard twenty six previous calls to the line, Jesus,
I'm sorry you called twenty six times. Do you just
like hearing your voice on the air, because I suspect
you just like hearing your voice on the air. And
they talk about all kinds of crazy stuff. Okay, speaking
of crazy stuff. And this clip has been around since
the show aired in twenty sixteen. How have I not
seen it until this morning? But I hadn't and it
blew my mind. This is from the Comedy Central. Triumph,
the insult comic Dog said the puppet with a cigar,
and Triumph was a character. I don't know what Triumph
is doing now, but Triumph this little rubber puppet with
a cigar. And in the show Election Watch twenty sixteen,
they had a survey group, so they brought in voters
for Trump and they brought in voters for Clinton, and
they played fake audio of the two candidates saying horrible things.
And then they said, look, you know this is a
focus group. We need you to help us spin this
so that it doesn't totally torpedo them in the election.
You're a member of the vot voting public. What do
you think now? I'm going to be totally upfront and
say that they played a bunch of bogus stuff for
Hillary and the Hillary voters, And this is proof that
the left, progressive liberals, Democrats are not immune from in
group favoritism because they squirmed and stretched and did all that.
They did that. But that's not the clip I'm going
to play here. Because Hillary Clinton is not the president
of the United States. Hillary Clinton has not been engaging
in a war to dismantle pretty much everything. It is
streaming on Hulu, but it's on YouTube as well. Trump
and Clinton supporters react to shocking revelations. Okay, let me
just play the Trump section, because these people are doing
the same shit today. Check this out.
Speaker 8: Look any cameras in the dressing room, you know, cameras
on the wall, cameras on the floor, aims up at
their whatever. I want the best camp shut up by
the best Chinda mean, yeah, it's to make sure that
they're say day. I mean, look, I can't be there
all day. I'll just start grabbing him.
Speaker 2: Believe name for that. I mean, I'm a.
Speaker 8: Man the beautiful women. It's totally natural.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: Sometimes I'll walk in naked, so then we're all make
you know, they file a complaint against me, I can
file it right back at them. Jew lawyer told me
that one.
Speaker 4: We need to have a plan in place on how
to react and respond to the stuff if its in
the media.
Speaker 2: Well, this is obviously old before you decided he was
going to be a politician. I personally don't care. I
just I just don't care.
Speaker 4: I like him because he says. I like him because
he says all.
Speaker 2: I really love it when he says what everybody thinks
and won't say. And with that personality, it goes those
kind of comments most of the time.
Speaker 4: As a man, I know, I've been in a situation
where and lots of things and we've been this man talk.
I've done it, said it, They've done it, said it.
I've been around plenty man, professional, I mean, you name it.
Every man is something says something to the facts.
Speaker 8: You know that they'd like to put the camera in
a teenage great change.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to move on to the next one.
We'll be back with lots more of Donald Trump. Don't
go away, Okay?
Speaker 8: So am I doing all right, Larry, Because I'm a
little woozy. I just get back from giving blood for
this fraternity test.
Speaker 2: So what do they have to say?
Speaker 8: It's rivoka double checking that she's really my daughter. You know,
I don't want to go my whole life and find
out that she was fair game after all, you know, boom,
it's just that she's voluptuous, successful and you know, frankly,
I heard she's great in bed and we're back in
five okay? Or does oral cameras interest and we're.
Speaker 2: Back don will be the wall over the board tonight. Okay?
So how do you feel about this one? He's complimenting
his daughter like in his How jaw droppingly unbelievably creepy
is that? And how many of those people go to
church on Sunday and worship them some Jesus?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 2: He says it like it is. He says the things.
I mean, this is just how guys talk. Well, he
was complimenting his daughter, Are you shitting me? And then
I think there's no reasoning with that. It's not reasoning yet.
The one thing I do when I have heard a
few people say this, well, he says it like it is.
He's imperfect or whatnot. And this was an issue with
grabb him by the pussy and moved on her like
a bitch and the miss teen USA dressing rooms. And
my tactic there is to insert proper names or direct relatives.
So I'll say, well, what if it was your daughter
CHRISTI and Christy was in a beauty pageant and she
was naked or almost naked, and Trump came in, I mean,
and someone told you about that. He came in just
to check out your hot daughter. How'd you feel about that?
What if it was your wife whose pussy was grabbed?
What if it was your mother who was raped in
a dressing room in an apartment store back in the
nineteen nine What if he'd raped your mom? What if
your mom had come back and said, I accuse this
man of sexual assault. What if she was one of
the twenty eight or whoever who have come forward like that,
how would you feel about it? That seems to make
a little bit of headway. They won't admit it in
the moment, but you can totally see them for the
first time. They're having to do personalize, take personally this
idea of sexual assault. But the fact that that's what
it takes is terrifying to me and to you. I'm
sure he was complimenting his daughter. Oh my god. I
get to take a break and I'll be back and
we'll take more of your calls. I so appreciate your support.
On Patreon. It makes a difference. So if you want
to support the broadcast with I don't know, a pledge.
I hate the word pledge, but you know you can
support per show. Have very many shows a month that
you want. You choose the dollar figure you set the terms.
Go to patreon dot com slash Seth Andrews and thank
you so much. Peggy is dialing in from area code
for zero four. Peggy, thanks for your patients. Are you there?
Speaker 3: I am Jeth.
Speaker 2: I'm so good, you know, except for the fact that
the country's on fire and there's a fascist takeover and
I'm worried about the collective IQ of half of the country.
Speaker 3: And uh and that's why I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, all right, I'm sorry. I didn't need to
be a you and your show well hit me, Peggy
was on your line.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, this show is my life what you're talking
about here, because I was born in Chicago. We had
to move to Tennessee when I was sick, so all
of my education was in the South. And now I've
been living in Atlanta for almost thirty years and where
I'm in the only blue dot in a big red
state like you were, talking about. And all of my
family that I have left is still in Tennessee, very
mega fundamentalist Christians, including a friend that I used to
go to church with because I used to be also
and my sister, who is my closest family member. I
didn't even know she thought that she had any racist
or fundamentalist thoughts until twenty seventeen, which was, you know,
Trump's first year in office. And I do think that
a lot lot of what that he just gives people
permission to say their hate out loud. You know, It's
like they were validated in what they always believed somehow.
And I know that my oldest sister was the first
person my mom's side of the family to go to
college and always the second, and we have lots of
cousins there, and it was really considered disloyal to go
away to college. You shouldn't leave the family or the
country and go where there's all these other people with
all these other ways of thinking and all these races.
It was just like, why in the world would you
even want to do that? And so it is heartbreaking
to me that my sister and I, in order to
stay in communication, can no longer talk about religion or politics,
which are both like pretty much all I'm thinking about lately.
So we talk about family, we have to leave everything
else out. I certainly have friend's high school friends on
Facebook that I see them post things from time to time,
and I used to mean mag of people who are
maga now, So in high school, those things weren't even issues.
Speaker 7: We didn't need.
Speaker 3: I remember even talking about religion and politics and the fooste,
which is when I was in high school, and at
first I would think, I just need to post the
facts because they're believing this crazy stuff. Just post the
truth and that'll matter, and I realized it didn't at all,
and some of the things they would say back would
be so despicable. One woman said something so despicable. I
just gave up trying to even just counter with facts,
with not criticizing anybody, not putting anybody down. But it
just didn't seem to matter, because their choices and their
beliefs right now are based on emotion and also very
much based on their religions, and they trust their pastors.
So if they're told that the church, especially, you can't
challenge it. And I am just a hipster. It's just
because I eat kale and recycle makes me you know,
somebody who thinks she's better than everybody else.
Speaker 2: So you hippie, But I you liberal hippie. You wanting
to make the world a better place and eating kale.
I mean, what's this country coming to. We're all a
bunch of cow eaters here in the United States. I
know what you mean when it comes to trying to
make a dent with facts. Just a few days ago,
Donald Trump made the outrageous claim that he had reduced
the cost of pharmaceutical drugs by one thousand, five hundred percent.
And so I said to a maga Trump supporter in
my circle, I said, you realize that Trump just made
the claim that the pharmaceutical companies are now paying us
when we buy their drugs. Well, how do you explain that?
And there was no response. Totally got ghosted, like I
think they should down and went la la la la
la la in their mind and they didn't even want
to talk about it. And there's a lot of that
going on in there, Peggy, A lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's usually that's what would happen so much
in discussions with my sister, was just I would say
something logical back like, well, what about January sixth? I mean, like,
how do you reconcile him trying to overthrow the entire government?
And she actually said, well, I don't know about that.
Speaker 2: Well, what I hear is what about the riots in Portland?
Or didn't you see the other side of the Pentagon
where the police officers were allowing protesters to come in
and take a little you know, meandering walk through the
halls in a very peaceful way. Why aren't they being acknowledged?
Or I guess that's an inside job conspiracy theory, or
maybe Antifa as part of it. I don't know. There's
there's always an excuse, isn't there there is?
Speaker 3: I mean, she does have a ready answer until I
say something logical that really is based in back, and
then she really doesn't have anything to come back with,
and then she has to hang up, she has to go,
you know, and she just cuts it off, and she says,
I'm not cutting you off. I just got to fixed
in her, I'm not cutting you off. But I just
bet she obviously is. And so I've just quit because honestly,
I feel so much anger, and I love her. She
is my younger sister, and I want to stay close
to her. But the things that she believes now and
she's not a stupid person. She's not ignorant. And that's
another thing that confuses me. I know some people who
I hey consider very smart, who still voted for Trump
three times. I don't know what they all think now
because I haven't been communicated with them anymore. But they
aren't stupid people, and I just it's just so baffling
to me that they don't want to look at like
it's worth it to not have to see gay people
on commercials. So what if people are being snatched off
the street and being treated like dogs. You know, I
don't have to watch gay people on commercials where I
live anymore.
Speaker 2: Without being pedantic, I want to draw a quick distinction,
and I know you mean this distinction ignorance and stupidity.
I don't think of the same thing. I mean ignorance
being the lack of knowledge, even willful ignorance. I think
ignorance can be fixed. I do worry that stupid is forever.
You know, there is someone who you can give them
all of the you can educate them, you can give
them the info that they need, and they will still
reject it or twist it, distort it. You know, I
think ignorance and stupidity are two different things. Hell, I'm
ignorant about a ton of stuff, and yeah, i'd like
to think that I don't walk through my day stupidly.
And you and I share that frustration. And I think
a lot of people listening to the sound of your voice,
they've gone through the same things. If politics or religion
comes up during the holidays, it's gonna be thunder doome.
So it's better that we just shut up and everything
sort of under the surface. Let's get through the day.
But I'm frustrated, I'm heartbroken, I'm angry, and that's just
where we are. And so I think a lot of
people relate to that, Peggy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it makes me feel not genuine anymore when
I'm around them, And it's heartbreaking to me that our
relationship has to be superficial now, which is how it
feels to me. Was that to talk about everything?
Speaker 2: Was that a discussion that you had not to be labored?
You know the point? But did you say, Okay, from
now on, we need to talk about other things, no
more religion and politics.
Speaker 3: Yes, we both agreed on that because we both got
so angry.
Speaker 2: I don't bring it up around my family, but I'll
tell you I don't really see my family anymore. I
don't want to be around them. I'm pissed. Yeah, you know,
I'm mad. I'm just so outraged, and I'm having a
hard time being in the same room with him. So
I've just opted out. But I've come to the point
now where if I'm in the room and I find
an opportunity, I just don't think I'm going to hold
my tongue. I think I'm done, and I don't know
what that's going to mean. I don't know what the
response is going to be, but I'm kind of past caring.
I don't know, Peggy, I'm a mess. I'm a mess,
you know.
Speaker 3: I know I want to stick a fork in my
eye too, but I don't. The last time I was there,
which was just a couple of months ago, nobody brought
it up. You know, I feel like you do. I
think if somebody brought it up, I wouldn't be able
to hold my tongue. But we all have this silent
agreement now and then when I say, ah, it's really
my sister is about the only one I have left
to have some nieces and nephews, but the rest of
our family have all passed on. And that's another reason
I think why it's so important to both of us
to stay connected somehow, because there's not many of us left,
and I would if it came up, I wouldn't be
able to hold my tongue. But that's why being quiet
is hurt It's not just frustrating, it's hurtful. And I'm
so I'm just I don't I'm so angry that my
last years are spent in this environment. You know that
we've been sort divided, and I lived I was in
high school in the sixties. I remember nineteen sixty eight
and all the horrendous things that were going on all
through the sixties, and I don't know that this time
was worse yet, it's just different in the way that
it's worse. And we did kind of come out of that,
but maybe not really. All of this has been under
the surface and people got more politically correct, I guess,
and Trump gave them permission to stop being politically correct
and just let it all hang out. And now it's
a big old fight, and I'll stop talking.
Speaker 2: You're finding Peggy well, You've given us a lot to
think about, and I feel your pain. I relate to
completely to your situation. Peggy. It's so good to talk
to you and be safe out there.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you for taking my call. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see. Catherine is dialing in from nine to
three seven. Thanks for your patience. Are you there, Catherine, Yes,
I'm here.
Speaker 6: Can you hear me?
Speaker 2: I can? Indeed? What's on your mind?
Speaker 6: So I am a mental health counseling student and I'm
actually taking some classes about rural mental health. The program
I'm in has one of the only rural mental health
certificates in the country, so I was like, oh, I
might have some insight. I guess that maybe some other
folks might not have. But I just wanted to say
that I think the conversations you have been having are
really interesting. And one of the things I've been learning
is that rurality is really hard to define, Like for
research purposes, there's not really like an agreed upon definition
of what rural really means. So that complicates like how
we can study the mindset of people in rural because
nobody can really agree like what is rural? You know,
is it resources, is it how many people live in
an area, things like that. Nobody really agrees, but one
of the pattern I see is that rural people tend
to have lower mental health outcomes, There's higher rates of suicide,
less access to resource and material and economic conditions are
poorer in rural areas. Not saying that everybody's struggling right now, obviously,
but it's I think something to consider that these areas
are really struggling economically, you know, access to healthcare, things
like that. So do Yeah, that's my I guess.
Speaker 2: That's my No, no, no, I'm so glad for your perspective, Catherine.
When I read the article at the beginning, the author
was speaking to a kind of resentment to I don't
know them, city dwelling elites that are in different or
callous about the problems of heartland Americans. Do you feel
like there's merit to that? Was there resentment in the
rural areas thinking well, those those city dwellers don't they
don't know us, they don't get us, they don't care,
so screw them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I definitely think there is, Like you're talking about
this othering, and I think there probably is that for
urban folks. I know in my training that there are
challenges for being a mental health provider in rural areas
because like ethics are a little bit different, you know,
like if you're in a community, like your privacy has
to be like really really really really strong. Not that
it shouldn't be everywhere, but you know what I mean,
Like if you're like, oh, hey, Bob, I just had
a session with you, you know, like at a grocery store,
and like urban areas, you don't get that interaction, if
that makes sense. And I guess my point is that
I do think that while the res might not be
valid or understandable, I do think resources have been pulled
away from these areas for so long, Like some of
the things I've been learning, you know, state legislatures they
don't support rural areas at all. They don't support urban areas.
They don't support anybody. You know, there's funding, there's bills
that are they try to progress these areas economically, and
they get you know, they don't get past legislative bodies.
So I think it's really complicated, and I think the
material conditions of it all for all of us are
important to recognize. Like people are just like really struggling,
And I think that does breed resentments.
Speaker 2: When uh yeah, it comes to the subject of psychology.
Here in heartland, Red state, Oklahoma, I was trained to
distrust mental health professionals like, you know, psychologists, psychiatrists, et cetera.
You know, in the in the Blue States, the Blue areas.
Rather you know, they're all going to their therapist every
day and they're weeping about their problems. And we were
trained to think, will either suck it up, buttercup or
the psychologist and the mental health professionals are dealing with
things like depression because it's a spiritual issue, or they're
indoctrinating their patients. Any merit to that one.
Speaker 6: Thousand percent, Yes, And I think that that stigma still
very much exists, and that's another challenge of reaching folks,
I honestly think everywhere. I don't live in a rural
area myself, but I've worked in community and mental health
in an urban area, and that stigma is everywhere people. Really,
I think it's weird because, like, mental health is so
physical and vice versa. Physical health is very mental as well,
but we treat mental health like it's different because it
presents differently. But yes, you are absolutely right. And that's
another challenge of reaching rural people, overcoming that stigma and
recognizing like, hey, it's okay if these spiritual things help you.
Because I'm I'm I'm an atheist, but I as a
mental health professional, I'm trained to be not biased and
to support someone if someone is a religious person and
they find feeling in their faith, to not discount that.
And that has been really interesting for me to explore
my own biases as an atheist, because in the beginning
of my career, I'm like, oh, you know, that feels weird.
But I think of it more of like a psychological
or sociological tool for people. You know, I don't believe
in the evidentiary, you know, merits of religion, but if
that's what's helping that person, I'm not going to discount
it either. So I think a challenge for understanding rural
folks is recognizing the biases that are built into their
culture and their environments, and also recognizing that each rural
community is different. I think we paint like a broad
brush of like it's white and it's idyllic, but really
like rural areas are pretty diverse. That's what the research says,
which is interesting. I didn't know that it is.
Speaker 2: Very much a community thing with the church. Get I
take some heat. In fact, I'm releasing an interview in
a few days with a Christian who is an ally
and someone I admire tremendously, and you know, some people
don't get that. And I really think most people use
church for a sense of belonging and structure and family.
I'm not defending the theology, nor am I saying we
don't have those discussions, but you're right that we on
the other side can be very uncharitable. Religion is a
mental illness and bullshit like that. I also think it's interesting,
and since you're a mental health student as well, people
like to separate the body and the brain, like you know,
we have organs like the lungs and the heart and
the liver and the kidneys, but somehow we don't treat
the brain like part of the body. We say, well,
is it a mental illness or is it a physical illness?
But there really isn't a distinction. The brain is an organ.
Speaker 6: Right absolutely, one hundred percent, and our physical health affects
us mentally. You know, there's a connection between for example,
cancer and depression. A lot of people with cancer develop depression,
and there's complex reasons why that happens. But we can't
separate folks. We can't separate mental health from physical health
because there's this one and the same. But the stigma
of mental health in rural areas is really high. I
did a paper on suicide in rural areas, and there
are more suicides for rural folks. So I guess, just
like food for thought.
Speaker 2: Is the suicide because of a hopelessness they're locked into
a cycle of failure or I mean, what do you
think drives the higher statistics for suicide in these rural areas.
Speaker 6: I think it's really that's a super complicated question and
I don't know if anybody has the answer, but from
the research I've done, and there's not a lot of
research out there, so this is another thing. We need
to just research rural people more. There's just not enough.
But I think definitely hopelessness and I also think that
middle aged men are really at risk for suicide, and
in rural areas, they also have access to firearms, So
I think that that combination of factors is definitely at
play there. But I also think that the stigma and
lack of access to mental health care. If they don't
have the resources, they don't have the therapist they can call,
they don't have the mobile crisis team that can go
out to them. You know, Trump is defunding nine to
eight eight, which is horrible. You know, the suicide hotline,
it's all these Yeah, it is complicated, but I do
think there's just this perfect storm of things that are happening.
Speaker 2: I think an ingredient of that too. And this is
very much true in Oklahoma is men are still sort
of taught that old school model where if you were
to admit that you had depression or that you were
struggling mentally, that's weakness. You know, men are strong. Men
have to suck it up and buckle up and pull
themselves up by their bootstraps and put on the brave
face and go out and be John Wayne. And it
doesn't mean that all of those psychological issues and the
heartache and the baggage and all of the stuff they
drag around isn't there. But many don't have the tool set,
you know, they were never taught how to navigate that.
And then cultural pressure is bottle it up, don't say anything,
or else they're going to think you're a pansy, you know,
something like that.
Speaker 6: Yep, absolutely, one hundred percent. That is definitely a factor
as well. I've learned so much from the classes I've taken.
The professor that teaches the class is one of the
leading researchers in this area, in the whole world, which
is really cool. And so yeah, I don't know, just
considering that everybody's struggling everywhere, including in rural areas, and I,
you know, listening to Peggy and how do you talk
to your family members, I don't know. I I struggle
with the same things. I don't talk to my dad
because he's a Trump supporter, mega ultra Catholic nationalist person.
I don't know. But you know, if you have moments
where you can show kindness to someone even that you
disagree with, it might, I don't know, it might make
a difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so hard.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 2: It's massy Catherine, No, no, no, no, no, I'm on
your page. And this is a refreshing injection of compassion
and perspective into the final chapter of the show here.
And it's so good to talk to you, so all
my best in your studies and let's talk again down
the road.
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, for sure. And thank you for all that
you do. You've been in inspiration for me. You actually
have been an example of empathy for me.
Speaker 2: So really, because I'm struggling with empathy these days. I'm
telling you, I'm just well, I'm struggling, but but I'm trying,
and the fact that you picked up on that is
just a huge gift to me. Thanks for the kind words.
Be safe out there, okay, of course, we'll see you later.
I had my moments. I mean I posted something on
Facebook just recently and it was somebody holding up a
sign and it said, in this house we say please,
thank you and fuck Trump, and I stamp you know what,
And I actually wrote this. I'll read it to you
to finish the show today. I don't despise him for
the sake of hate. I hate the cruelty, stupidity, and grift,
the fact that he's only happy when aggrandizing himself, creeping
on women, or insulting others. His cartoonish lies, embraced by
fools don is everything parents teach their children not to
be egotistical, greedy, a bully, a deceiver, a predator who
ranks himself by pussy's grabbed golden trinkets sold and detractors punished.
He's a best friend of Ebstein, the guy trolling Miss
teen USA dressing rooms, a federally convicted rapist. Is it
Trump Derangement syndrome to strongly opposed the dismantling of decorum,
democracy and decency, or is it rather TDS to be
a red hatted enabler. I only say fuck Trump because
stronger language evades me. That's how I feel about the man.
But I'm trying with this cult. I'm trying, trying to
looking for a breakthrough. I don't know. Appreciate your perspective
on the broadcast today, and I appreciate so much your support, encouragement,
and community. I'll see you next time and we'll do
it again.
Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.