FiresideND, Part 10: What Happened, Reflecting on the 2024 Election and How We Got Here

Listen in to conversations between scholars, activists, faith leaders, and political strategists at this perilous moment in the history of American democracy as they reflect on the 2024 election from how we got here to what to watch for in the days ahead.

What Happened Speakers:

• David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy and the Director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative, University of Notre Dame
• Robert P. Jones, President and Founder of the Public Religion Research Institute
• Karrie Koesel, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
• Chris Parker, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara
• Katherine Stewart, Journalist, author of The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and God

Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.

• Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu.
• Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Transcript

Paul Blaschko: 0:06

Welcome to Fireside ND, the podcast from Think ND that brings the experience and expertise of Notre Dame to you whenever, wherever. From STEM to art, from religion to health. Listen and learn with Notre Dame on the go.

1: 0:20

Let me just take a moment to thank my colleagues from the Democracy Initiative and the Ansari Institute who have helped promote and spread the word, about this event. So excited to get started here with our second of three panels for the day. So I'm going to introduce your panelists briefly, and then, just as in the earlier panel this morning, each speaker will have up to 10 minutes, to speak. I will be Holding us to that, and then we'll have a period of Q& A that is, four folks sitting in the reserved section are invited, guests and other speakers from the day, and then we'll open it up to more general Q& A. Okay, so beside me, Matthew Taylor is a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where he specializes in American Christianity, American Islam, Christian extremism, and religious politics. He's also an associate fellow at the Center for Peace Diplomacy in New Orleans, where he works on preventing religion related violence surrounding U. S. elections. His most recent book is titled The Violent Take It By Force, The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy. Kristen Kobus Dumais is a, is a professor of history at Calvin College, visiting us here at Notre Dame for the year as a fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Religion. Kristen is a New York Times best selling author, having written Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Christianity Today. Elizabeth Newman is, formerly a high ranking Department of Homeland Security official, and author of the book Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. She is the Chief Strategy Officer for Moonshot, a tech enabled company that supports government and community partners in preventing violence, and serves as a national security contributor to ABC News. Liliana Mason is the SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Uncivil Agreement, How Politics Became Our Identity, as well as, with her co author, Nathan Kelmo. Radical American Partisanship, mapping violent hostility, its causes, and the consequences for democracy. Lastly, Rachel Brown is an expert on counteracting hate and dangerous speech and preventing violence. She's the founder and executive director of Over Zero, an organization that works to understand and counteract the weaponized communication that is involved in identity based violence. Forging connections among researchers studying this communication and community and religious leaders. to effectively prevent violence and build resilience. Join me in welcoming our panel.

3: 3:06

Good morning. so I specialize in studying the, the Christian leaders who are around Trump. So I'm going to do two things, this morning in, in the ten minutes that I have. I'm going to try to, to outline what I think are four priorities that Christian nationalists have, for the coming Trump, term. And then I want to kind of dial out to the big picture and think about the moment that we're in and the, the, the range of possibilities for what the next four years could entail. So, the four priorities that I want to highlight, obviously the first one is, is actually implied by the name Christian nationalism. they, there's a goal of making the U S. It's a de facto, semi recognized Christian nation. To make it an officially Christian nation, they'd have to overturn the First Amendment, which would be very difficult for them. but this will be especially manifested in education, how American history is taught, how Christianity gets integrated into public schools. There's also an entirely alternative path of trying to fund Christian education through state funding, through vouchers and such. And then there's a sub goal to this. that is more around ending quote unquote Christian persecution. We're a majority Christian nation, there is no widespread Christian persecution. But, the idea is to use government power to further kind of entrench Christian privilege and exclusively kind of prosecute Christian persecution. Second, another one that has already come up today is abortion. and the, the, I think we're going to see the ongoing state and local bans. I think a national ban would be a, a very far stretch just legislatively to get that through Congress. But there's been a lot of discussion about other avenues to blocking abortion, blocking mefaprestone, which is, the drug used in many abortions through the FDA. There's already been discussion of that and also using this Comstock Act, a 19th century indecency legislative piece to block mailing. abortion drugs would be another avenue they're pursuing. They definitely want to limit LGBTQ rights and protections. This often gets framed under this rubric of religious freedom, but in these circles that often means the right of religious institutions to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals. This is also a lot about recognition. Especially of trans people and trans children, and there are, there's real discussion in these circles about trying to overturn Obergefell. That would probably be a stretch because it's a fairly recent Supreme Court precedent, but they talk about it. and then the last one is unequivocal support for Israel. And this is actually coming more from the Protestant side of the Christian Nationalist Ledger than the Catholic side. and the key word here is unequivocal. Biden has clearly supported Israel throughout his entire career, especially for the last couple years. But they want to see U. S. policy align much more closely with the Netanyahu administration and its agenda. And this is driven by, especially on the Protestant side, this idea of Christian Zionism, Christian support for the state of Israel based on theology. but I think that we're also going to see a lot of effort at leveraging definitions of anti semitism to try to silence critics of Israel, both Jewish and really anyone else. Now, thinking about the bigger picture, I want to try to dial it out for the rest of the time and think about where are we in this present moment? What, what, what is the situation we're in and get our categories straight? So my first point is that Donald Trump is a populist authoritarian Backed by a religious nationalist movement. That is what we are dealing with in the U. S. right now. That's a situation we're in, and as Christian nationalists, we heard a little bit about this in the first panel, as Christian nationalists have aligned themselves with Trump, their policy priorities have moved his direction, not vice versa. Especially on, questions of immigration and foreign policy. There was an interesting moment in the first Trump administration, or really in the campaign and the administration, where a number of his Latino and Latina evangelical advisors started pushing back on his abortion, or his rhetoric around immigration, saying, you're dehumanizing people, you're being too harsh. That's gone. And even some of those same leaders are still very close to him, but they are not voicing any sort of criticism of that. So the one place where you might see a little bit of daylight or veiled criticisms is if Trump does not Align himself as closely with Netanyahu as they want that that would be the place where they might be willing to voice a little bit of criticism, I think. and I would just as a final point on this I think there's no good analogy from American history for the moment that we are in right now. We tend to be believe in American exceptionalism and be very self referential in our politics, but we have never been. In this situation before as a country, and I know some of you might think, well, we were in this situation eight years ago in late 2016, early 2017. No, we were not in, in, in the first Trump administration, especially early on, he had to govern in coalition. with establishment Republicans, and it was in fact many of his own appointees and the people coming out of that establishment Republican circle that was stymieing Trump's agenda and curbing his most authoritarian impulses, those people are all gone. It is, it is MAGA all the way down now. He has eradicated those people from the party or beaten them into submission. And so now he has pretty much free hand to do what he wants to do. So I want to, this is the last little section here, I just want to think about What have we seen recently in the world when we have these populist authoritarian movements taking over countries backed by religious nationalist movements? What is the range of possibilities? And I'm using the analogy of a bell curve distribution here just to think about kind of most probable versus least probable. I don't have hard numbers on this obviously. But the center of the curve obviously is the most probable and then as you kind of go to the tail ends that you have the least probable. I think the, the least probable, one of the least probable but most hopeful scenarios would be that we would get a Trump first administration redux. Right? Malevolence tempered by incompetence, eroding norms on policy and the rule of law, policy chaos, kleptocracy, trying to take money from the state. This is a best case scenario because I think in the first Trump administration we actually got very, very lucky. In that he was blocked and stymied by his own people, with a notable exception of COVID. his own advisors and appointees really kind of held him back from, or bureaucratically delayed his most authoritarian impulses. I don't think this is very likely though, because as I said, he's gotten rid of those people. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, the other worst case scenario would be Putin's Russia. and there we have, an authoritarian government expanding its territory aggressively, entrenching an elite oligarchy, severely repressing any form of dissent or protest, and total disinformation eclipse, where, rigged elections are just part of the rule of the day. They still pretend to be a democracy in Russia. They still have elections, just don't run against Vladimir Putin without his permission or you might end up dead. Right? So, again, I don't think this is very likely. The U. S. is in a very different situation, in all kinds of different ways from Russia, but it is a real possibility, I think, especially if we were to live through 10 to 20 years of a kind of MAGA type rule. So, the next best scenario, at least in my view, would be Poland. and Poland is a very interesting case study, actually a fairly hopeful case study. starting in 2015, this, this, this authoritarian party, Law and Justice Party took over, Polish politics. They began to dismantle the rule of law, attempted to start rigging the elections, they start turning media into propaganda, kind of following this playbook. But then the Poles managed to do something incredible. In 2023, they created a supermajority coalition, and even though there was an attempt to rig that election, they reversed this process of democratic backsliding and pushed Law and Justice Party out of their politics. So, there was this eight year interregnum where there was this real democratic backsliding, but then we see this reversal, and I think that's a hopeful story for us. At the other end of the spectrum, you have India under Narendra Modi. and, you have, again, centralizing of executive power, empowering of the, this, this religious majority, the Hindu majority, to the status of privileged citizenship, weaponizing of laws, and especially today you see a turning a blind eye on, violent attacks on racial minorities, religious minorities, especially Muslims. and this powerful Hindutva Hindu movement, the Hindu nationalist movement, just runs roughshod. over norms constantly without paying any sort of price. so, that, that, again, not the most likely scenario, but that, that is, I think we need to be paying attention, especially as we talk about the violent rhetoric that we hear, from the Christian Nationalist Movement and from Trump. Now, the middle, the most likely scenarios, I think, would be the, the kind of middle distribution of the bell curve would, would probably be either similar to what we see in Turkey. under Recep Tayyip Erdogan or in Hungary under Viktor Orban. In Turkey, Erdogan has consolidated his executive power, shut down some of the media, entrenched the national religious identity against secularism, and there was, there was a coup, an attempted coup, in, I think it was 2015 in Turkey, that really cemented a lot of these things. So I think we also have to pay attention to what happens in the, in the resistance. But, Erdogan is remaking. the Turkish constitution, rebalancing power within the government, cracking down on his enemies and, and remaking Turkish identity around a kind of neo Ottoman, neo imperialist vision for Turkey, again, using this kind of populist authoritarian style in their politics. And then Hungary is, is, I'll just end here, is, is the most widely cited example by far right Christian nationalists in terms of the model. of what they want to follow, and, and Viktor Orban himself will even call Turkey an illiberal Christian democracy. He'll, he'll, he's embraced that term. There's a lot of interesting parallels here as well, in that Orban was previously in power. He, he served a first term from 98 to 2002, where he mostly abided by democratic norms. He was then out of power for eight years, and was the leader of the opposition, and when he comes back, he, he really makes this authoritarian turn. Undercutting the rule of law, co opting the media, suppressing dissent, attempting a one party state. And, and this, as I said, this is an extremely popular vision on the far right, and the hope is I'm

1: 12:40

afraid we are at ten.

3: 12:41

Yeah, the hope is that, that Trump will be an even greater war bond.

4: 12:45

All right. So as has already been mentioned, what you didn't hear a lot about in the immediate aftermath of the election was white evangelicals. And to some of us, that was refreshing. so apologies in advance. Because white evangelicals didn't, seem to move. they have been this reliable, voting bloc, but again, there is a story in continuity and not just change. What did strike me, however, in the days and now weeks since the election, was that the, the, the, the, Explanations that were swirling around the role of podcasts and the new media ecosystems of disinformation of negative polarization All of these things reminded me an awful lot of what I have seen in white evangelical history. So today I'm going to be reflecting on What we have seen in the past in terms of white evangelicals How we might see them as the tip of the spear and what we might expect So, I'm going to talk a little bit about what to expect in the coming months and years. first of all, in terms of polarizing rhetoric, this us versus them, and Catherine referenced this earlier today, the idea that, you know, true Americans are, are Christians and, other Americans then can be seen as enemies. and this has really driven the Christian right fundraising. and political mobilization for more than half a century. It resonates deeply with the persecution complex that was referenced, just briefly here. and it drives radicalization. We are talking literal demonization, which then justifies, any, any means to achieve the end, seizing power before they get you, and driving people into the arms of a strong man. So on this front, what should we expect to see? This is a little interesting because in recent decades, up until Trump, we tended to see the power of the religious right actually diminish when a Republican was in the White House because it's harder to play this game. And so you see organizations losing their funds, going under. Trump changed this pattern. He broke the mold. the constant. constant demonization that rhetoric was effective and helped him to continue to mobilize and Radicalize so I would imagine further demonization of enemies and it chills me to think of what that might look like and of course now we have the threat of going beyond mere rhetoric into retribution also, in, in terms of the, the analysis swirling around the election, the role of the new media landscape, the podcasts and disinformation. Here too, evangelicals have pioneered these efforts. Christian radio, television, Christian publishing, massive media networks, and don't forget direct mail, data collection, targeted messaging, and this fuels this us versus them suspicion of outspoken. Siders distrust of secular experts, and it drives money into these organizations. a while back, somebody signed me up for Babylon, be a mailing list, thank you to whoever who did that, it came suspiciously just after, Babylon be had targeted me and tried to get me fired, or at least their, their minions did. and I was just about to hit unsubscribe and I'm so glad I didn't. is a fabulous example of how this. Disinformation works and it is wrapped up with devotionals with charity, fundraising with ads for Ivermectin and it's all and I get several a day into my email inbox. related to this media ecosystem is disinformation. Here too, evangelicals have long been promoting anti science or alternative science, pseudo histories, think David Barton, look at stats of election denial, six in ten white evangelicals on board there, and they are the most likely demographic to embrace conspiracy theories, right? They just lead the way in all of these. And I'm reminded of Hannah Arendt's. claim in the origins of totalitarianism that lies unite, and especially the obvious lie, and that repetition, right, makes people unable to, assess lie versus truth. And why does this matter? economics were referenced some in the first. panel and just as, as one example, where we know that economic status doesn't generally drive political choice, but perceptions of economic status do. And this is the media ecosystem that is showing people how to perceive their status. then Christian nationalism, Matthew already, talked about this and, and we know that white evangelicals very much tip of the spear in terms of Christian nationalism. 17 appointees thus far are connected to Project 2025 and America First Policy Institute. And I know this probably comes as a huge shock to many of you because you had on good word, Trump's word, that he knew nothing about Project 2025. So much more could be said about that, but I'll just name a couple of, self identified Christian nationalists, who are, appointees, Russ Vogt, the Office of Management and Budget. He was the author of the chapter on executive power in Project 2025. He is the one who plans to drain the swamp. He is the one who plans to ensure that there are only Trump loyalists employed in the federal government. These are things that are different. from the first Trump administration. They learned from their mistakes, and he's a key point person. Pete Hegseth, of course, another self identified Christian nationalist who attends a church, in the Doug Wilson network, if that means anything to some of you here. It's important to remember, and Matthew gave a great kind of precursor for a Christian Nationalist agenda, very important to note that the Christian Nationalist agenda is not just putting up Ten Commandments in, public schools. it is dismantling the Department of Education and, or, I think now it's going to be much more tempting to keep it up and running, but imposing the new curricular requirements. Using the power that they now have to reshape the country's educational system or indoctrination system. Christian nationalism also entails the anti woke agenda and all of that means. It will involve rewriting American history. they have some models already out there. Hillsdale 1776 curriculum, David Barton, Dennis Prager, and so on. Christian nationalists also oppose immigration. They also, as, as Catherine reminded us, Our free market capitalists, apostles, anti regulationism, and this is not just political, this is religious, it's baked into their theologies, God blesses with success. Pro social hierarchy, and their methods, lean anti democratic, nasty politics, authoritarian markers, concentrating political powers in the hands of a strong leader. so what should we expect to see? You could read Project 2025 in all of its glory. and also on the point of tactics, I saw very quickly, on Twitter, people saying, Christian nationalists telling other Christian nationalists, you don't even have to wait for inauguration, start acting now in red states, because this administration will have your back. wrapping up, in terms of what else to expect, I mentioned retribution. earlier, there have been many public threats. of, by Trump and his inner circle of, retribution, threats of imprisonment to political enemies, anybody who targeted Trump or the Trump family or his, circles, disloyal, his own appointees who were, were not sufficiently loyal, targeted lawsuits. even if fri frivolous, which will have a chilling effect far beyond their reach and then broader harassment. another thing caught my eye, a few months ago, and that was Trump started campaigning in Christian spaces, on establishing a task force on anti Christian bias. and as was already alluded to in the first panel, if the past is a, a guide at all, this Task Force on Anti Christian Bias is actually going to be a task force on, anti Christian privilege, and, some of the likeliest targets of that are going to be fellow Christians themselves, as we have seen in, in, in the Russia model. and then, so, retribution, also I would expect to see capitulation, wide scale capitulation, in white evangelical spaces, we have seen how this has worked, not only, open arms, certainly among much of that 80, 81, percent, but we've seen power dynamics. And I often look to, Levitsky and Zivlat's How Democracies Die model, for the failure of party gatekeepers, to allow authoritarianism in, thinking that they can use that to their advantage. I think a similar model can be seen in the white evangelical churches. And now we are seeing, the moderates. The respectable evangelicals being ruthlessly attacked by the right wing. we've seen so much, compliance, and that was even before the threat of hard power. one of the most telling phrases I heard from an insider in a conservative media, Christian media organization was the memo was, you don't have to agree with this MAGA agenda, you just can't speak out against it. what moderating forces do we have? Incompetence. Bureaucratic resilience in fighting. We're seeing some of that in the Christian nationalist spaces. the extent to which it aligns with Musk or Putin, and other power brokers and maybe our courts. And that's, really what we have, to look at. And this is indeed unprecedented times.

5: 21:51

Gosh, I'm feeling better already, right? and I'm the person that gets to talk about the violence. So it's gonna get dark here. So I, I'm a policymaker. I'm not an academic. but as a policymaker, you always start with your intel. And so I wanted to borrow from, my day job, Moonshot. I'm not here, as Moonshot. I'm here in my personal capacity, but I have access to some data from them, so I wanted to share that. I think most of you are familiar with some of the conspiracy theories and the related threats we had leading up to the election. and, U. S. postal workers were threatened. Poll workers were threatened. Voter registration volunteers, were threatened. Judges, election officials, it, it was, unprecedented, the level of threat, vitriol, actual doxing, swatting, things that were happening. and we also had in the lead up to the election, a number of polls demonstrating, That there was a not insignificant number of people who are willing to commit an act of violence in order to see their candidate installed in office. Now, historically from a counterterrorism perspective, that threat of violence usually comes from the right. There are a number of psychological reasons for that. It's just kind of, they're more predisposed to it. But what was telling was that it was actually a pretty even split. the number of people around 8 to 10 percent willing to, commit an act of violence to support Harris, 8 to 10 percent willing to commit an act of violence to support Trump. So, that's a, a new dynamic, and that dynamic, I think, is going to continue with us, and I'll come circle back to that in a second. but I just want to clarify that the idea that you're cognitively open to violence does not mean you're likely to go out and commit an act of violence. there's a whole host of factors that go into play when somebody is actually mobilizing to violence. but what we do know is that any time you have an increase in the general population's openness to violence, those, those individuals that are vulnerable. to, actually mobilizing to violence are more likely to do so. So the, the issue for us is not that 20 percent of the public is going to go today and go commit an act of violence. It's that 20 percent is way too high for us to be in this space. and there are other polls that show, outside of the election context that it's about 32 percent of Americans who believe that violence is sometimes justified to achieve a political end. That, by the way, is very close to the definition of terrorism. Now, if you ask the question, would you be Willing to commit an act of terrorism, to support your political aims, the answer is probably no, because we all think 9 11. That's horrible. We don't want that. but when you frame the question slightly differently, violence, hostility, people are much more open to that, and I, I would suggest that's a massive problem that we have on our hands. post election, One of the things we are watching very closely is the reaction of the far left extremist movements. Historically, these are the least likely to commit acts of violence against people. we usually see them target infrastructure, think animal rights movements, or, more recently we've had a lot of Pro Palestinian, activism targeting, infrastructure that's supporting Israel. So shipments to Israel, or things that, are perceived as part of the war effort, those have been targeted. We are, however, and this is coming from ethnographic researchers, so people that are, working alongside, living with, people on the far left, as well as what we're seeing in online spaces, they are arming, this has been going on for a couple of years now, not necessarily to, proactively attack, but they very much believe they are going to be attacked. They very much believe they are going to be arrested and, and rounded up, part of the retribution agenda, and, and so they're preparing for that. so that's rather concerning, they're also. calling for, organizing, which I will tell you some of, some of these groups that we watch, their conversations, and all of this is publicly available online. We're not, embedding ourselves using, any sort of law enforcement tools. We're just looking at conversations that are occurring online. the idea that anarchists want to organize is kind of ironic. part of the reason they tend to not be more violent is because They don't believe in a hierarchy in an organization. so the fact that they're even having those conversations tells you a bit how scared they are. Meanwhile, we're also seeing, harassment towards Trump's cabinet appointees. Trump was, had two assassination attempts this year. and the, we have AV, sorry, I shouldn't use my acronyms, anarchist, violent extremists. Actors of DOCS, the Heritage Foundation, authors and scholars due to their involvement with Project 2025. and we are seeing more interconnection between those far left movements, anarchist movements, and Hamas, a popular front for liberation of Palestine, which is a designated foreign terrorist organization. so that, the reason I draw that out is Things have shifted, and when things shift, people like me don't have historical references to be able to go, I don't know what this means, I don't know if we're going to see more violence from them, and it's just something that the community is concerned about. okay, on the right, I can tell you more about them because we have lots more historical precedent, continue to be election fraud claims, we've all kind of moved on from the election, but there are ongoing, claims of fraud and conspiracy theories, and that leads to threats against those election officials. This is particular to Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. We have a lot of threats against immigrant communities. In fact, we are seeing, threats towards immigrants 26. 6 percent higher, compared to the, the, last, last November. 234 percent increase in calls to deport illegals in the last month. 132 percent increase in calls to round them up, in the last month. And, generally speaking, threats towards Latin American communities online have increased 41 percent in the last month. threats towards government agencies are also up. And then I would expect, I asked, the analysts what they would anticipate in the coming months, and, and the general sentiment is We always see, threats, high levels of threats against the Jewish community and black community, and that's likely to continue. we do think that the vigilantism around immigrant communities is likely to, continue and possibly escalate, when, the inauguration happens and some of the deportation efforts start to occur. So what does this all mean? now I'm moving away from Moonshot data, and this is my personal assessment. I, I believe, based on both, what we saw in the first term, as well as what we've watched, increase over the last four years, that we are likely to see a consistent high rate of hate crimes and targeted violence. and why is that? Let me explain a little bit about the lens I use, what extremism means to me, not in a, political context of being outside the mainstream, but violent extremism is when an in group perceives a threat to their success or survival by an out group and draws the conclusion that the only solution is hostile action. Hostile action is on a spectrum. There is a non criminal space that the government can't do anything about. It's when you're bullying, harassing, intimidating, threatening, sometimes you can use civil tools, to go after those activities, but for the most part it's really hard in court to address that non criminal space. the concern, is not just that people stay in that space, it's that a small percentage progress. They ask themselves, am I doing enough for the cause? Or somebody else challenges them that they're not doing enough for the cause. And they progress up that spectrum to the criminal space of hate crimes, terrorism. The upper end of that spectrum is genocide. Most of the people that are operating on that lower end of the hostile action space, and I would argue that's quite a huge percentage of the American public that are willing, at least in the online spaces, to be hostile and intimidate and threaten, most of them are not going to go commit a crime. however, as I said earlier, the more people you have acting in that milieu, the more likely you are to increase the number of people that actually go out and commit a hate crime or an Act of violence. we just had this, I want to say it was yesterday, some immigrant, teenagers were stabbed. One was killed. and we don't know the, the, the disposition of the attackers yet. this was in New York City, lower Manhattan. but the implication from what the, the stories were telling was it, it was because they were immigrants. so we are likely to see more of this because the milieu is continuing, because the retribution agenda continues to stir up the grievances. the, the thing that I argue in my book about, why, why are we here? And some of the panelists, the last panelists addressed this. Is that we are, we are increasingly a society, or a large swath of the Christian culture, a culture from which I came. is experiencing a group humiliation. In extremism, the reason why people, move or are open and vulnerable to extremist ideology, it's because they're experiencing some sort of crisis of belonging or significance. It is often activated by a crisis moment, but that crisis moment can be group related. So I think we have a group of people who have experienced group humiliation. Maybe not Actually, maybe they've just been indoctrinated to believe that they have been, but some of those humiliations or experiences are in fact legitimate. And one of the challenges we have as we move forward is being able to better understand the legitimate grievances and finding alternatives to answer what they perceive to be as a humiliation. I'll stop there.

31:01

Hello. So, I'm going to talk about, violence and racism and sexism. So, Chris, I got you. So, I'm just going to do a little bit of stage setting. The, in my second book, Radical American Partisanship, we, we looked at a bunch of attitudes that we thought, might predict future violence. And so in other places, in other countries, we know that when mass violence occurs, people tend to have, the people who are engaging in the violence are morally disengaged from other people, meaning that they can hurt another person and not feel like they're morally bad themselves. And so the types of questions that we ask in other countries are things like, would you say people on the other party are a serious threat to the United States and its people? They're not just worse for politics, they're downright evil, it's a ghost like the demonization thing, and many can lack the traits to be considered fully human because they behave like animals. So we started wondering about these, the prevalence of these traits in 2017 and we've been measuring them multiple times a year since then. There we go. And the, first, the first thing that we noticed was that in, even in 2017, these numbers were quite high, higher than they should be, right? 60 percent of people thinking the other party is a threat, 40 percent of people willing to claim the other party is evil, and 20 percent willing to dehumanize people in the other party. And these numbers have sort of gone up and down, over the last many years, generally with Republicans being higher than Democrats, but not very much, and so we sort of have this like cauldron of feelings that, that can always be dangerous. and one of the things that's driving this is, is our beliefs about social equality. So I think Robbie said earlier that, that it, gender, identity itself doesn't determine which party you're in. It's what you think about gender equality that determines what party you're in. And one thing that I've been noticing is that since the 1980s and 90s. We have seen a huge divergence between the parties, specifically in their attitudes about social equality. So, in terms of racial resentment, so this is a scale that measures things like, Basically, it's, it's assessing whether black people are, are poor because, economically disadvantaged because of systemic racism or because of like some sort of deficiencies, right? And in 1986, this is just white Democrats and Republicans, they agreed basically with each other. and they were above the middle point of this scale, right? So, so both white Republicans and Democrats were relatively, racially resentful. over time, over the following couple of decades, what we saw was that Republicans basically stayed where they, white Republicans stayed where they were, but white Democrats became much more progressive. and this process occurred partly, clearly because of the, of Obama's election, but also Obama's election required this process to have been occurring, and even more after Trump was elected the first time. this is data from 538, just showing it a different way, just so you can know that this is right. starting in 1994, the gap between Democrats and Republicans on whether they said racial discrimination is the main reason black people can't get ahead was 13 percentage points. by 2020, that was 55 percentage points difference. This is one of the largest breaks between the parties that we've seen over the last few decades. And then the next one is, is. My personal, it breaks my heart a little bit. women's role in society. So the American National Election Studies from 1972 to 2008 asked this question. some people think that women should have an equal role with men in running business, etc. Others think a woman's place is in the home. And, from 1972 to 2008, what they found was that both Democrats and Republicans were becoming more progressive on this question. And it, they became so progressive that actually the, the American National Election Studies stopped measuring it in 2008 because there wasn't any variance left. It wasn't an interesting question to ask anymore in 2022. And also just last month, my co-author and I asked the question again of a national sample. Slightly different question wording, so that might explain some of the difference, but what we, what we found is that among Democrats they had gone back, to basically the 1990s in terms of their level of, of sexism and, Republicans had gone back to basically the 1970s in their levels of sexism. Four year, or two years later the final data point, it, it accelerated even more. So, one thing that's depressing is that Democrats are becoming more sexist. But the other thing that's depressing is that the parties are still deeply polarized on this question, right? They're very far apart from each other on this question. and so why does this matter? Why is this important? Obviously, we normatively think these things are bad, but like, what does it mean for our democracy? And here I borrow some of Robbie's data, actually. which, from 2023, the PRI American Values Survey, which shows that, violent attitudes are significantly correlated with these types of attitudes about, equality in America. And so, you know, 23 percent of Americans in this study were willing to say American patriots may have to resort to violence. but among those who thought the 2020 election was stolen, they're much more likely to agree that we need to resort to violence. Those who like Donald Trump are more likely. Immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural background. That's more likely. That's more correlated with these violent attitudes. God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians. oh, it's not showing it, is it? That's, oh, wait, hold on. You know what happened? There. Sorry. I put it that way. There we go. Okay. Sorry about that. right. So Christian nationalism, societies become too soft and feminine, and, the recent killings of black Americans by police are isolated incidents. So all of these attitudes about sort of social equality are correlated with attitudes about whether or not we have to, American patriots have to resort to violence. And, and so the fact that we're, the parties are polarizing along these lines indicates that we might have, we're, we increasingly have one political party that is going to be more embracing of violence, particularly because they endorse a lot of these, these same attitudes. Now, one thing, that I was really interested in here was, is this something that's happening to the Republican Party as a whole, or, or is it that, you know, sort of some Republicans are really going gung ho for this stuff, and others are kind of like still the traditional kind of not really into this. and so, we've been collecting data for our, we did a four wave panel. I'm going to show you our waves from September and November. This is just, like, the November data we just got, asking about these particular questions, but dividing Republicans by those who believe that Biden won in 2020 and those who believe that Trump won in 2020, which is a sort of rough dividing line between, like, really Trump Republicans and not so Trump Republicans. so in the, this is a racial resentment item. Irish, Italian, and Jewish ethnicities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Black Americans should do the same without any special favors. If we look at the very top, that's from September. Oops, sorry. If we look at the top, thank you, just keep doing that. from September, what we see is that the Republicans, who are really Trumpy Republicans in the center, look very different from every other American, right? They're different from the other Republicans, they're different from Democrats, they're different from Independents. They're much more conservative on this, on this issue of racial resentment. The exact same people we re interviewed in November after the election, and we found, actually the one that's most disturbing to me is that the, the non Trump Republicans after the election started feeling like they could be a little bit more racially resentful. Right? They got a little bit of permission. They were ready to resist Trump when it looked like Trump might not win next time, but, but after he did, they're coming, they're coming around, which is very depressing. The Trump Republicans stay relatively similar, although they're getting a little bit more conservative also, and Democrats stay basically where they were. this is the women question. Women are better suited for taking care of the home. In this, this is one thing that I've noticed, is that the sort of Republicans who don't like Trump and the Republicans who do like Trump look very similar on the sexism question. So there's not a big difference between them on whether or not they believe women's place is in the home. And they become somewhat more conservative after, after the election, but not that much more. whereas Democrats are kind of like digging in their heels after the election and believing even more, more strongly rejecting this idea. this is the evil question. The other party's not just wrong for politics, they're downright evil. again, if you look at the Republicans who like, who think Trump won in September, They look unlike any other group of Americans. Half of them, strongly agree with that statement. And, and only, you know, a similar number is basically the Democrats who strongly or somewhat agree is half of Democrats. but 75 percent of these Republicans are willing to say that Democrats are evil. they look very different from the other Republicans in this, in this way. And, and of course, well, sorry, I'm running out of time, so I'm just gonna show you the last one. do you think political violence will occur after the 2024 election? the Republicans who like Trump are more willing to think that violence will occur than the other Republicans. although that number goes down, after the election, they stopped thinking violence will occur. And, and then how close do you think the U. S. is to another civil war? Again, the Republicans who love Trump here are very different from the rest of America. They truly believe that a civil war is coming. They strongly agree that that's a possibility, or they think it's very likely to happen.

1: 39:55

Sorry, we are at 10.

39:56

Yes, we are. Sorry. I'll leave it there.

8: 39:58

I made it. I made it. Someone can ask Lily a follow up question. so, I am, I'm a Republican. I'm going to focus today on talking about something I've spent the last about 15 years focused on, which is the relationship between communication and violence and specifically the targeting of particular groups with violence based on their identity. This is not something new, only to look at after this. election. It's been happening and is part of what brought us here. but, but I do think it also is important to ground ourselves in some of the patterns, that we might look for, moving forward and how those might play out. why focus on communication? I want to just take a second to say, I think it's been a little bit of an undercurrent throughout this conversation, but humans don't tend to behave and make decisions based on some objective reality, we do so based on our perception of that reality, which is very much based, on the type of information that we have and that we believe in, right? and so communication as every way that humans exchange information, not just speeches from politicians, but things like songs, conversations at the kitchen table. social media, all the ways we're saturated with information shape our perception of reality, of how we interpret events, of what groups do I belong to, who do I trust and not trust, etc. And so, from that perspective, collective action by humans, whether it's political mobilization or mobilization to violence, is not possible without communication, being used in some way. And specifically, Large scale violence that happens by groups or targeting groups is not possible without communication being weaponized. And I draw on a ton of research from different people. I'll, I'll pitch, I'll plug Jonathan Leder Maynard, who is a leader in thinking about the ideas and ideologies that lead toward violence, to talk about some of those patterns of communications that repeat throughout history and across contexts globally again and again. That includes specific narratives. You've heard a lot about the construction. We all have many identities, right, that are part of who we are. But where violence occurs, it tends to try to make rigid and very singular some part, or sort of lump together some pieces of identity, whether that's racial, ethnic, religious, national, etc. into these very singular, rigid ideas of some sort of us that needs protection and different forms of them, of an other. And Different others are constructed and portrayed in a few specific ways. They're portrayed as existentially threatening. That can be threatening to our physical existence. They're going to be violent. They're coming to get us. A threat to our purity, right? This activates often, emotions such as disgust. They are a threat to quote unquote our women. They're coming to rape quote unquote our women, dirty the bloodline. They are bringing disease, right? They're going to corrupt our moral values. So a threat to our purity. to our way of life. They have different ways of doing things to our assets, to our jobs, to our status, right? These can be material or immaterial. the, the group that's being constructed as other is portrayed as inherently and already guilty, right? Not just for an action, but that an entire group. is inherently guilty for an action of one or few people. Often maybe some really egregious crime, perpetrated by one person with a particular identity is blown up to say that whole group is guilty, for some sort of sexual crime or otherwise. But also often history is used. You can look at I mean, again, I come out of studying genocide and atrocity prevention. You can look at Milosevic reaching far into history to claim that Muslims, have, have done us wrong. And this is our time to, take retribution and make things right. These narratives of threat and guilt portray violence as an act of self defense, therefore not just justifiable but necessary, and also as a way to make past wrongs right. to avenge ourselves, right? and then finally we see dehumanization, the portrayal of an entire group of people as inherently unlike us, with different moral values. And this can be in very overt, explicit ways, often comparing groups to pests, vermin, etc. But also you can see this in language choices. You see this in narratives now about immigrant communities. language such as there are swarms of people crossing the border. We do not use the word swarms. about humans, right? We use that to talk about bugs. equally important to the construction of an other is the construction of a virtuous us that deserves protection. And that is often a very rigid boundary, right? We are victims. We have been wronged. it is all about making things right for us. And it is a narrative of care and empathy. and often of, very, a particular type of masculinity. If you're a real man and a real member of our group, our group, you will protect our women and our Children. You will stand up and do what's necessary to protect us from the others. really critical is that this creates mounting social pressure. If you want to be a real member of our group, if you are a real member of our group, you go along with these narratives and doing what it takes for our protection and for us to continue on words. and this goes along with significant targeting, not just of an other outside, but of what we might call in group moderates, moderating forces against violence or upstanders who share some part of the group identity. They are at best, naive and stupid, but at worst, traitors to us, right, and, and, and one of them. And so this is what it means to be a good group member. There is also a rewriting of morality, what Jonathan Leder Maynard calls a destruction of alternatives. These threats are so great. The other is so. We are under such threat that our only choice is violence. Our only choice is to not just break rules, laws, and norms, dismantle institutions, whatever it takes. So there's a rewriting of morality and this idea that we might have to do unpleasant things, but they're absolutely essential for the future that we want. Right? So there is this idea of what are we for, as well as this threatening other. And, and this is always across context, across history. You can look at what it looks like in. our era with social media, et cetera. This is always built on lies, on rumors, and on propaganda that portray entire groups of people as sharing a particular essence. it's, it involves making up stories, blowing up stories, and often a belief in these narratives is worn as a badge of identity, right? Whether people believe in it or not, the social pressure exerted to go along with the group, and the consequences that people witness. for the people who do not go along, mean that people start to wear these ideas as a badge of identity, or at the very least, go silent. this often also rewrites history. If you look at Orban in Hungary, one of the things that he has done, and look at history textbooks, and look at the, the way that Holocaust history is told. So that Hungarians were not complicit, but were the victims as well of an invading. And I think you can look, Kristen talked about rewriting history textbooks. I think we will see massive efforts to rewrite January 6th and what happened in the 2020 election. It's not just about whether an election was stolen. It's about the story that's being told and the story that's being told of the people that have been quote unquote persecuted for participation. and so that rewriting and relitigation of history of what it means to be a good and moral person, is going to be really critical. This communication, it's not. It's not dangerous only when it happens in some corner on some talk show that's happening at 3 a. m. because that's the only place it can get space. It's dangerous when it saturates and creates that perception of reality. And so we have to look at not just a one time message that people are getting, but the infrastructure and ecosystem of communication that they live in, from the TV channels that they watch, to their social media consumption, to the groups and social groups that they're part of, where they're getting social information but also social cues about what other people are saying. This, this type of narrative and speech is, is very dangerous when it comes from speakers who have credibility, official credibility, political leaders, et cetera, but also people who have moral authority, epistemic authority, are seen as experts in different spaces. And this communication is dangerous because it not only It activates people to engage in really harmful, dangerous ways, but it also silences. And when people start to fall silent, the perception is there's no one else standing up against it. And it becomes a lot scarier, right, to say something or do something. So we have to be aware of silence as well as the ways that people are activated. And always, I talked about some broad patterns, but it always happens in context. You always have to look at the historical context. Who's been historically targeted, marginalized, and what's the current context of whether institutions are able to rein in this type of behavior or not. Our institutions have taken a lot of hits. and we are not looking great, I would say, on that sense. I would say that we are looking at, in terms of how these narratives might lead to violence. Looking at the potential for state violence, we're looking at the potential for a lot of vigilantism, especially if we see January 6th pardons. And vigilantism because there is this perception that there will be impunity, right? And we're also seeing that, that there is, a sense of moral cover. You're part of something bigger if you're committing violence. And there is an ease of targeting, right, where you can have really official players using social media to name people or create targets and then, people who are organized and armed in different ways taking action. we're unique in how large of a country we are, and we have different states and this will play out differently depending, in, in different states and I think that's something to pay attention for. We're also quite violent compared to many other analogous case studies we might look at and quite armed. I have 15 seconds and I can get into this more in the Q& A, but I want to say that Things that are really important are to root ourselves in what we know are our values and our norms because those things and the information we're getting can change quite quickly. That leaders matter in standing up and maintaining a sense of moral compass and to watch out for, for isolation and distrust. I think it's an important moment to gather and lean into relationships within and across communities where people feel safe and comfortable having honest conversations.

1: 49:48

So now I'll invite questions from our invited speakers sitting here in the middle and the reserve section. and we'll give first question to Mark, fourth row, fifth row.

9: 49:57

thank you all so much for this. This question is initially prompted by the last slide that Matthew had. the more despotic we got, often the longer a period of time, strong man has been in leadership. We have the 22nd Amendment. In theory, Trump should have maximum eight years. do you think there's a, a realistic risk that Trump will try to subvert the safeguards so much that he tries to run for a third time? If that happens, how does the Republican Party and MAGA respond? And I guess. On the other hand, if you're not worried about that, what do you think happens in the vacuum after so much Trump?

3: 50:36

Answer to your first question is yes. There's absolutely the possibility that they will try to subvert the 22nd Amendment. I mean, the 14th Amendment, Section 3, says that an insurrectionist can't hold public office. And the Supreme Court said states can't enforce that against Trump. So who can? I mean, if there's letters and words in the Constitution, somebody has to enforce that. And we have typically given our Supreme Court the space to arbitrate. So, I mean, even some of the stuff that was just said, if Trump claims that he won the 2020 election, he can say, well, I had an election that was stolen from me, so I'm entitled to another one. I mean, it's not hard to construct how the propaganda would work, how the Republican Party would react. I mean, they're in his sway. I mean, I don't, I don't expect a lot of opposition. The other model though, if you look at some of these other parties, and especially in like Poland or Russia, sometimes the authoritarian leader takes a step back into the shadows and puts another kind of puppet forward or an heir apparent forward to, to rule in their stead. Even as they maintain a lot of power, there's a lot of nepotism that goes on in authoritarianism. I would, I would expect that Trump is already kind of figuring out who his successors could be.

1: 51:45

next question here in the front.

10: 51:46

I'm Brian Morris. Rachel, you went so fast in those last, no, in the last things that were almost potential antidotes to violence or potential things that we could do. And we're up against such a massive network as many of, many, Katherine and everyone else has talked about. Could you expand on that a little bit more on potential antidotes, and maybe a few others, just like one thing that might be really valuable for us to do other than sit around and console ourselves.

8: 52:21

Thank you for that question. I guess I'll say a couple of things. There are things that I think will really matter in the immediate term, and I also think it's a long game. and I think that some of the The risks that are posed by what we're about to walk into is again, that sort of disengagement. People are exhausted already. It's overwhelming because a lot is about to come down the pipeline at us. How do you make sense of the bigger strategies that are at play when the news is so overwhelming and alarming all the time? It's part of why I think these bigger, understanding some of the bigger playbooks, really, really matter. I think being aware of who is likely to be targeted early on, right? From political enemies to, and we see this in the narratives right now, immigrant communities, trans communities specifically, but that it often starts by targeting a particular group and expands from there, and you've seen that target. Go back and forth. I know, in Czech Republic colleagues, who I used to work with called it liquid anger, that you take that emotion and then you, you move it to different targets depending on what opportunity arises. So I think really staying attuned to that type of targeting of any group matters. But I do, that shifting of perceived norms and the silencing is one of the most important things that opens the most room for the most bad to happen, right? Because it's much harder to go from people are, are silent and afraid to speak up or do anything to getting people to take that initial action. Then when people are in relationship, collaborating and sometimes it's harder to act alone than to act together, especially when there's a sense of fear going along with that. So thinking about, and I I would say at an individual level. Think about how much feels normal today that wouldn't be. that you would have, like, laughed me out of the room if I told you it as a story ten years ago. Take the time to write down what you think are the important elements of, of sort of normal or things we take for granted and the key values, but leaders do matter and we've heard a lot about how faith has been weaponized. when you look at, The most extreme cases, genocide, mass atrocity, et cetera. It often is small faith communities that, because they're organized, because they're rooted in some sort of value and morality, have leadership, are able to resist. We look a lot at the case study of the Muslim community in Rwanda, which had people from different ethnic communities, but during the genocide, framed the genocide as a time of temptation of your faith, where you would be, there would be attempts to pit you against other people based on ethnicity. but that Good Muslims would not go along and that community ultimately resisted, and worked together. Right? You have always people individuals. That resists this type of mass violence. But there you had a community working together. So I think people gathering in relationship in communities. leaders, setting norms, continuing to anchor people in values. not to allow that sense of loss of agency that comes with the idea of we have no other choice. I do think gathering, I think that isolation and distrust are really potent, and things we will see happen in the coming years. And so gathering people, building those relationships with people that are wanting to keep open honest conversation, but also making sure those relationships cross different lines of difference, making sure that if you, have relationships or some role of leadership in one community, that you're making sure you're connected to different communities. it's really important, especially that communities that are targeted, likely to be targeted with violence already being targeted with rhetoric, that there are relationships to other communities, that, that, whose communities might be mobilized. And I think we have to think deeply about what can compete with fear and isolation. and this is going to sound soft, but it's not, right? If you look at the on ramps to different forms of extremism, it's not through, hey, let's destroy democracy. It's, hey, are you feeling depressed? Can we pull you out of that space? It's, hey, are you interested in this thing? So we need to look at how to create spaces of belonging, purpose, values that bring people into community that can be engaged around key moments when there's a need to mobilize against violence, et cetera.

56:00

Can I just add also, there's an opportunity here, which is the, you know, I created these different groups of Republicans, and the ones that are not very into Trump are, really, they don't like him. And they don't like his decision making, and they don't like his principles and values. But even though they look like a separate group because I divided them statistically, in the, in the actual country, every one of those people usually feels alone. They don't realize that they're a third, they're a third of the party. And they don't know that. And they, and a lot of them live in places where everyone around them loves Trump and they think they're the only one who doesn't. Even though there's probably people that agree with them, they just, no one ever says it. And so to the extent that in Republican spaces there can be these opportunities to create a sense of a group identity among those particular people, I mean, if, if a third of the party turns against a leader, then it, that's a real problem.

5: 56:48

I'm going to add, sorry, I know there's lots of good questions, but, can I, can I add the perspective of, from the extremist side of things and I, and I realized that not everybody that voted, certainly not everybody that voted for Trump is at all an extremist. It's a very, very, very small percentage, but what I'm saying is learning from those who are legitimate extremist when they leave, what. Help them leave. I think that those learnings are helpful to a community, some of whom are a bit radicalized, some of whom embrace violence, which leads you to that extremist definition. So, here's what we know. When, somebody leaves a neo Nazi movement or ISIS or Al Qaeda, it is often, they will tell you, it's because they had an unexpected experience with empathy and love. Now, if you talk to the counselor who works with that person, they will also tell you it's because they experience some form of accountability. So there's like a, a truth and love piece of this, right? We need both the truth and we need the love. So if we want to change something at a cultural level, here's, here's the bad news. You can mass radicalize, you can't mass de radicalize. You cannot experience love in that massive setting. You know, OAN is really great at making you angry. It's not going to make you truly feel belonging. It's a false sense of belonging. it's not going to truly love you. So we have to work at the grassroots, individual, small group level to reconnect. We are the most lonely society. We are desperately, isolated. We have a huge problem with our youth. Huge. If you haven't read Jonathan Haidt's book about the anxious generation, please go read it. The number of, that just this week, Five Eyes, which is like the five English speaking, major countries, Canada, UK, US, New Zealand, and Australia. Counterterrorism Group put out, one of the first publications they've ever done post World War II, oh, sounding the alarm about the growing trend of youth radicalization. it, it is skewing extremely young. It used to be we were concerned mostly about 16 to 22 year olds. We are now concerned about 12 year olds who are putting together IEDs and plotting attacks. All because of the online environment, all because they're isolated, all because they are starting to believe in this nihilistic, there is no hope, no future for me. So some of this is beyond the politics. Like, we, we are broken as a culture and as a society, and if we want to fix the politics, we have to fix the broken culture, which is a culture that is hopeless and in despair. So, how do we do that? It's, it's gotta start local. We've got to go grassroots. We've got to be providing that true, authentic belonging, and true, authentic love to solve this problem.

1: 59:32

Okay, the green sweater in the front, and then, you next in the queue.

11: 59:36

I love the overarching, the overarching joy of this, of this room. so as a, as a little word of introduction. So I'm, I'm, I'm a pastor. I'm a scholar of lynching particularly. but also I'm basically the equivalent of Baylor's chief, chief diversity officer. So there's a lot going on, a lot going on there. But one of the things that, that, that I've been deeply impressed with. At least in each of those elements of, of who I am and what I do is how is, how important, money is. And, and so, and so, Lilian, I think, I think about the, the questions that, that you, that you brought up in, in framing racial resentment and gender hierarchy. Specifically the question about Irish, Irish and Italian folks that black people should just. Bootstraps. and, and the understanding of women's place being in the home, like these are fundamentally economic, like, like these are, these are economic questions. and when we think about even the mobilization of power, it often, it often happens through the mobilization of money. And so as we think about, well, and, and as a, as one more point, I mean, we're, we're, it's, it is not inconsequential that like Trump. has a lot of money. Less than a lot of people think, but has a lot of money. and like, really talks about it a fair amount too. and, and we're just, and we're propping up billionaires everywhere. So there's the corporate, there's the corporate plutocracy thing kind of starting to go on. where do you see as, as we see those trends And, and to, and to add, I'll, I'll, I'll drop a little drop of encouragement in there. I think the most important form of solidarity that we can form with one another is economic solidarity. And it's one of the, and it's one of the forms of solidarity that I think we, we often flee from. But, where do we see, where do we see money coalescing? Where do we see it going? Particularly in the next few, in the next few years. given a, Given, I think, a broader political economy that, I think, creates a lot of these social issues of isolation and things like that, and we're told that our economic success largely depends on the things that we do rather than the ways in which we may be facing exploitation, there, there, there, there seems to be a new set, seems to be kind of a, not only a new set of narratives, but possibly kind of new movements of money. where do you see, where do you see it going? particularly in these next few years. It's kind of for everybody.

4: 1:01:55

So this is not my primary expertise, Malcolm, as you know, but I want to start by just reiterating a couple of points that you made and, and going back to, Catherine's, mention as well of the extractive industries. And is Darren Dochuk here this morning? I mean, Darren Dochuk, professor of history here, right, wrote the book on this subject, Anointed with oil, in, in terms of mid century, and I think what we're seeing now is more of that, right? The oil money has not gone away, as you know, at Baylor, and, but now we also have the, the tech money. Right, and that's been a really astonishing, not surprising, but, astonishingly important development. And so we know that, you know, Musk spent, more than a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Trump, directly. And, so, it, it, the question is, I'm a historian, I hate trying to predict the future, you know, where, where is the money going to go, Oh, let me also add that I reference this briefly that, there is a theology underneath this and there is, deliberate. organization, Spiritual Mobilization got a shout out as well, but if somebody asked where was the social gospel, and we didn't really, address that, there was a long term deliberate strategy to kill off the social gospel in, the history of American Christianity, to divide and destroy the mainline. because they were a site of resistance, and, that has been extremely successful. we also have promises in the Republican platform in Project 2025 to get rid of regulations, particularly around environmental, right, to, to benefit the extractive companies, and, to regulate the tech industry, but, you know, not, in a, in a particular way to benefit some. I've seen statistics. I'm really excited. Remember the, the dollar number, of, you know, what Musk, how he, is, stands to benefit from just a couple of, of, key, legislative, decisions, right, that are likely to come down the chute. So all of that, where is that money going? I think that's, really important to, to follow the money and to realize that this is not, this didn't happen overnight. This has been part of a deliberate strategy, and on the theology point, right, that, it's not just prosperity gospel, but throughout evangelicalism, this idea of, those who are successful, those who have the money, they have been blessed by God. Prosperity and power. is a sign of God's blessing, a sign of God's anointing. And it's worth mentioning to those who are Christians in this room, right, how, how much that undercuts the, arguably, traditional Christian theology and the teachings of, the Christian scriptures.

1:04:29

I'll just also add as a potential hope, the I work at a democracy focused institute, and so One thing that we do is, is, you know, try to get money from philanthropy and foundations. And, and I, and I believe this number is correct, which is that over the last year, philanthropy gave six billion dollars to democracy oriented causes. and so the problem is with that money, like a, you know, like an Elon Musk could just give it all to one, Place and these people are giving it in these all these different directions. Yes. but it's there. And they're, and I, and I know right now they're all sort of like, what are we gonna do now? Like they're, they don't know what to do, but, but they, but they have the funds and they're interested in preserving democracy and so they're potentially could be some kind of movement to organize better and get them to like figure out where to actually put that money.

1: 1:05:16

Fourth row. Thanks.

12: 1:05:18

at the risk of being the skunk at the garden party, I. I kind of want to ask how the left might be unknowingly contributing to this problem. I had a conversation in October with a friend, little context, 60 year old, very wealthy, white man, who has contributed significant amounts of money to Democratic candidates over the years, voted for Hillary Clinton, voted for Joe Biden, confided in me in October that he was very seriously considering voting for Donald Trump, and I think he may have. And his rationale was citing rhetoric he was hearing from the left. That was very alarming to him. We heard about the status threat in the previous panel. We've heard Elizabeth, you brought up the perceived or real humiliation that some groups feel, how that humiliation is then magnified using money, God and lies to justify then violence. And we saw the stats about. The legitimizing of violence, so all of that's happening on the right, but what, two questions. One is, how did the rhetoric of the left in recent years, including in this election, unknowingly contribute to those feelings on the right? And two, looking forward, what advice would you give to those of us who might be more on the left about the rhetoric we use or the way we communicate ideas to avoid contributing to this getting worse?

3: 1:06:38

So, one of my, conclusions after this election is that we are a country that is roughly divided into thirds. A third of the country coming into this election believe the 2020 election was stolen. And as we've heard, that was closer to 60 percent among white evangelicals. Those people are living in unreality. And they live in a media ecosystem that is completely walled off. And if you have interacted with these folks, to believe that, you have to believe conspiracy theories. You have to deny reality. There's another third. There's another media bubble, and that is the mainstream media bubble. And that is also speaking to only about a third of the country. And those are people like those of us in this room, right, who consume mainstream media, who live in the blue dots, who are cosmopolitan, urban and suburban, college educated elites. And it's not that, those folks are living in reality, but they are also living in a prescribed reality that, and a logic that pertains to their third. And then there's the middle third of the country that has a very chaotic pattern of media consumption that has, is very sensitive to some of these economic arguments. And I think what we realized in the course of this election is that that middle third is more susceptible to the right wing propaganda than to the mainstream media. And so I think if we are going to, build a big enough coalition to defeat Trump, and it is only going to get harder. And I think that's something that we need to remember in future elections. Because part of the authoritarian playbook is that you start rigging elections. And there's all kinds of ways to rig those elections, in terms of disempowering your opponents, prosecuting your opponents, creating different financial incentives, all these sorts of things. If we're going to build that super majority, we need to reach into the logic in that middle third, and speak to those people. And I think the challenge for a lot of us is we don't know people. Or we know people, but we don't have close relationships with people in that middle third. I think it's going to require us getting to know them. and understanding what their needs and desires are, and recognizing that the things that speak to the liberal progressive third are not going to speak to that middle third necessarily. And part of Trump's brilliance as a political leader is he speaks to his third, and he makes the liberal third crazy. He makes the, he keeps driving the wedge in and making them go mad, making us go mad, and the middle just is befuddled. And I think we need to find our way out of that befuddlement and try to find a way to, to build a, the, the super majority that can actually reverse this process.

8: 1:08:55

I can add something and I just want to say, so for me, I don't come at it around who won an election, right? Like the, the, the framework that I use is looking at risk of identity based violence and obviously that intersects with politics, but it doesn't start there and it doesn't end there and, and, and, and so I do think you can look. I think so much of it comes to the status threat piece, that we heard about on the, the first panel. If I look back at, at rhetoric that might make people feel a sense of being disenfranchised and like they're losing their status and their position in society, the idea of democ this came up in the Q& A earlier, the idea of demographics as destiny and we're going to be a majority minority country. That, that type of shift, and that type of shift in demographics and in power doesn't tend to go very well, historically and internationally, and telling a group, hey, you're about to lose power, you know, is an interesting, an interesting rhetorical choice. Telling people you're voting against your interests tells somebody, I think you're stupid, right? and then you get, you know, somebody that comes in that says, they hate you. Right? They hate you. That's been a huge piece of the rhetoric that mobilizes that sense of threat. They hate you. I love you. This is where you can belong. People want a sense of a future where they can belong. And if they're used to being pretty high status, they want a sense of a future where they can maintain that status. And internationally, you do see violence where groups tend to be aware that they are losing their status and have time and capacity, while they still have that status to mobilize with it. so, so there's some interesting pieces there, but I, I do think, some of, some of it. I'm not a political analyst, so I'm just giving you my personal opinion. There's, there's different self interest pieces, but I do think that some of it comes, into being able to portray a narrative and an image of a future that people feel like they have a place in. but I also wouldn't underestimate the fact that we live in a media environment. that people live in really, really different realities. And that does not just have to do with the messaging or the narrative. That also has to do with reach. And I thought it was really important what Catherine talked about, about how investments are made, and I think it's really important that this did not happen overnight or in the last eight years. Right? This is about where people get information and the structures of culture that are set up to give it to them and where that infrastructure has been built to mobilize through places and cities. and I think that that question of reach and being able to listen to an audience, being able to understand what resonates with an audience, being able to shape their perception of reality. So I don't think it's just a question now, especially in the environment that we're walking into of sort of like getting just the right message. I think it's a question of reach and engagement with different groups and audiences, understanding where they're at, what matters to them, and building that sort of. relational capacity, to engage, which I also think is an error, not just of. of the specific narrative, but of overall strategy.

1:11:43

And it's important to distinguish between what Democrats are saying and what Republicans are saying Democrats are saying. Like, there was only one party that talked about trans issues constantly in this election, and it was the Republican Party, right? Democrats didn't talk about it at all, and yet, we came away with this sense that Democrats can't stop talking about trans issues, even though they didn't do it, right? And so, there's also, this is the, this is the challenge, is that These messages come out of the right about what the left is saying and a lot of them aren't actually what the left is really saying.

5: 1:12:10

But there are, there are examples that they use, and I think that's maybe what Sky's picking up on. They take, and they're really good at this, they'll take, you know, an anecdote right after Oberfeld decision where somebody loses their job because they didn't go to a, company mandated, Pride month activity. And they'll take that story and it'll go on repeat. So if you are, a Fox News watcher, you think that happened. You know, over and over again. It's one case, it goes to court, the guy, is found, to, to be in the right, the company was in the wrong, because, we still have the First Amendment and religious freedom, and, but that part of the story never gets told. So, there's an aspect of, don't play into their hand. So, if, if your question, Skye, is, is kind of, you know, what do we do about this? My, my encouragement to the third. that find themselves in the, the liberal progressive side. Know what you're up against, don't play into their hand, don't give them the example. Just this past month, one of the most recent things, this is right after the election, a kindergarten, sent out, news about, to their, to their community, hey, we're gonna start teaching about gender identity in kindergarten. I will tell you, coming from the conservative community, that is exactly what, why people voted for Trump, even if they don't like him, because they don't want schools teaching their kids about sex and gender identity at age five. So some of this is just like, I, this isn't a policy debate. We could have a totally different panel about what the right answer is for our five year olds, but the reality is most Americans are not. There. So if you wanna be pragmatic and win an election, you need to be where most Americans are. And it is not where perhaps some of the progressive conversations have gone. so I, I'm not a Democrat, I'm now an independent, but, if, if I were advising that party on like how do you, capture that middle third? You, you have to recognize that you, you are. you have parts of your party that are causing the backlash, causing the reaction, or creating this opening, and you've got to be a strategist about this. Like, you win elections by building coalitions, and you've actually effectively inhibited the ability of building a coalition with the moderate middle because, because of how you're talking about a couple of key issues. And you're absolutely right, it, it's not like they ran on that, but know the system you're up against. They, they find the little anecdote and they amplify it. That's what you're up against. So know it and figure out how to counter it.

3: 1:14:43

Can I, can I tell an anecdote on that? So I was talking recently to, one of these, anti Trump Republicans. Not necessarily anti in the sense of like reject Trump utterly, but very much opposed to him. Christian leader, very educated man. And, we're, we're having this call, and he, he says, I just cannot support the Democrats, because they want every kindergartner to know how to put a condom on a banana in public school. And I, my response was, I live in a blue county in Maryland, I have a son in kindergarten, I have a daughter in third grade, that is not happening. I, if that happened, parents would be up in arms, right? It is not happening. And he's like, well, it might not be happening where you are, but it's happening where I am. And I was like, you live in Birmingham, Alabama.

2: 1:15:21

And he's like, I live in Birmingham, Alabama.

3: 1:15:24

But he is in the, the media he consumes tells him that is true. Even though it's, it's opposed to his own political orientation, he believes it, right? And so, yeah, that, that we so have to find ways to reach that kind of a person.

1: 1:15:38

All right. Let's broaden out. Take some questions from other audience members in the back here, blue shirt.

7: 1:15:44

I am in fairly liberal, progressive spaces and definitely hear the, Republicans are evil rhetoric thrown around. And the hard thing is that that's combined with legitimate concerns, legitimate grievances about things that are being said, being done by MAGA. so how do we separate, how do we, deescalate the Republicans are evil? So, while legitimizing, somebody said earlier, legitimizing grievance, making people feel hurt. How do we separate that from these people are all evil? I mean,

8: 1:16:19

I think one thing that's important is to differentiate between behaviors and humans, and individuals and groups. One thing at the root of the type of rhetoric and narrative that entrenches us, first them dynamics and leads to violence is this, this idea of essentialism, right? It's at the heart of any attempt to dehumanize, which says that by virtue of being part of X, Y, or Z group. all the people in that group share some sort of fundamental essence that's different than the essence that we share, right? And I think that that's a really important, sort of thing to look at and to ground yourself in. Like a, a conversation that essentializes a group of people is never going to be accurate, right? People share in essence, it's for being human. It's not for being part of one group or another. And so I think, I think really looking out for the types of narratives that essentialize an entire group of people, and that paint them all as homogenous. That is always dangerous. It's also always wrong. but that does not mean shying away from specific behaviors that are harmful or damaging. So I think being able to speak about the specific behaviors. Or actions that are threatening that are problematic and why? and the idea that an entire group of people, is monolithic in the way that they think about support, understand those issues. and I, I think that it's important. That doesn't mean that people and individuals can't be held accountable for specifically doing things, right, that are harmful or dangerous, but getting specific about the behaviors and about the need for accountability for people that are engaging in behaviors, right, that might go against particular, moral, ethical, Considerations, laws, et cetera, like that accountability is important, but I really think the thing to guard against is that essentializing, and I also think that This kind of ties back to the last question. I think one of the challenges is that we're a country that is big, diverse, super complicated. And as you saw in some of the earlier presentation, when we move and shift, there tends to be backlash. That's not unique to this country, that's general. But, it is messy, and it's more than gets solved in just here's an election, and it went 51 49, and like, the idea that you're then done if you have sort of like a political win, and you pass through some sort of legislation, the social and cultural piece is important, and, we also lose the capacity to try and understand and broaden reach when we treat people along. like a monolith and stop trying to understand what are the different sort of drivers and motivation. Even in, if you look in wars and conflicts, et cetera, and you look at the things that motivate even the people that take the most egregious actions, those are diverse. So, I would just guard against that, essentializing.

1:18:58

And in our book, we actually found that the, one of the best predictors of those types of attitudes, of sort of saying people are evil, is differences of opinion on, on racial equality. And so, the, the Democrats who think Republicans are evil are the ones who are lowest in racial resentment. And the Republicans who think Democrats are evil are the ones who are highest in racial resentment. And so, one, one thing that's happening is that this evil moniker that we're hearing is really about this dividing line about what do we want this country to look like and who counts as a real American and who deserves the full rights and dignity of American citizenship. And when you have a conversation like that, it starts to get Really deep, really fast, right? When we're talking about the humanity of our fellow Americans, and who deserves and who belongs, then we get into this, this existential type language. and so, I don't think that the answer is necessarily to just like remove the moniker. It's to dig in. Like, to why are we feeling this way towards each other? What are we actually fighting about? It's not just about being evil or not being evil, right? It's about like, What do you think America should be in the future? And we don't agree on that. And that's, I think, where a lot of this is coming from.

4: 1:20:04

Yeah, if I could, jump in on, on this and, it relates to Skye's previous question as well. and this is something I've wrestled with, for several years as the author of a book subtitled How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. and, and then, you know, I hear Elizabeth talk about group humiliation and, how that spawns, you know, reactionary politics and, violence. and this is not a new thought that I've had, and it is a dilemma that many of us in this space, feel, and, I've raised this a number of times, that my, my worry is that the diagnosis works at counter purposes to the cure. But if we don't have the diagnosis, we're also not going to get to the cure. But I do think we have to be much smarter. Smarter than about, about that cure, And about, you know so when I talk with progressive activist groups or political groups, you know, I will talk about the importance of positivity. And that so next book I'm working on is all about that actually. Live, Laugh, Love. But, right there is a real appeal there. And there is nothing attractive to, you know, Joining a community that is chastising you. Shaming you. and, and So, we, and, and I, I see that the Harris campaign right tried to lean into joy. we can assess its, you know, merits and effectiveness. but, but I think that we need to bring social psychologists around the table. And, we need to think, and the Democratic Party needs To right now. You know, there's divisions within there and they're often talking at each other and fighting for control of the party internally. and they need to be much more strategic and, in, in an, in all kinds of ways, looking outward. And then finally, I would say, you know, going local is so key. Going local means you actually meet people in your community who hold different views than you, and it's much harder to demonize when you are working together. on a common goal. And so to be invested in terms of, ordinary citizens, what can you do? Get deeply invested in your community in any way possible. And I think that will, be at least a partial antidote to what may be coming.

1: 1:22:05

All right. let's take you here in the third row.

13: 1:22:08

Hi, my name is Rebecca, and we're here at Notre Dame, which some people call like Catholic Disneyland, and we're also here at the, the birthplace of the people of praise, which is also, this is where Amy Coney Barrett is from, well, she's from Louisiana but her husband's from here, and, and so I just wanted to make a comment and then I have a question, my comment is. I don't think it's that great that the Catholic vote is unpredictable. Like if it, if it's based on your identity and not your faith, then how much, how good is that? Right. How much is our faith forming our identity? I think this is problematic. And maybe the Catholics should be thinking about this in a deep way. because, That should mean something, our faith, in some way, right? and where is the Catholic leadership in saying, Holy smokes guys, we just in an authoritarian dictator, who's also kind of an asshole. so, but I also, I, as somebody who grew up in the people of praise and grew up as a Catholic, I'm just really not clear on exactly where the humiliation is coming from, like you, a couple of people have referenced it. And I just don't know, like, what are folks humiliated about? You know, they, they seem to be well positioned. They have a lot of power. They generally are white. They have a lot of, like, privilege. You know, these are not people who are, like, struggling. I'm not sure I'm seeing what they have to be humiliated about. So I just wished somebody could give me more clarity on that.

5: 1:23:42

I, I think I was the one that brought that up, so I'm happy to answer it. so I, I grew up in North, North Texas, Bible Belt, height of white privilege. And, and it's my community that feels that. Humiliation. My, the county I grew up in, and the adjacent counties disproportionately sent more people to, the Capitol on January 6th, that have been indicted than, you know, I think there are two, two or three other, parts of the country that sent more disproportionately, but we're right up there. So it's, there's two pieces to this. One is, there are anecdotally, like we were talking about, legitimate, violations of maybe civil liberties, or examples where, certain influencers or political leaders have said things, that you can point to and say that, that was disrespectful and you're, you're trying to shame my community. but, The, probably the, the outsized piece of this is that there's an entire, entire infotainment eco chamber that my community has lived in since the 1990s where we were told that we live in flyover country, and that the coastal elites don't care about you. And that, we're, we're laughed at. And they, and they'll show little clips, right? They'll show, maybe it's, President Obama, or Hillary Clinton talking about the basket. of deplorables, or, maybe it's the, the clip from Saturday Night Live, or the late night comics making fun of, people that are seen as, the, the heartland. but that, if you live in that eco chamber, and it's been, I mean, Rush Limbaugh, like, Made it his shtick, right? Like, he, this is, this was his entire approach and then everybody kind of has been trying to mimic it ever since. you are looked down upon, but I'm gonna be your champion. I'm gonna give, I'm gonna equip you. to be able to push back against all these people that think that they know better than you. I, I haven't actually made it all the way through, but, David Brooks wrote a really interesting piece about, the great divide being the education gap in America. and, and so I, I think we need to have a better appreciation. And, Catherine and I, or maybe it was Anne. Anne and I had dinner last night. We're talking about the, there you are, Anne. talking about the, the, The divide in this country at, you know, operating at a, you know, half the country is operating at a sixth grade reading level. so if we're communicating, at a level that is harder for them to understand, they feel like you're being talked down to. so some of this is we just kind of need to recognize we're a very massive country with lots of different people and lots of different beliefs and the way that we set up our constitution, is such that we, We, have to find compromise, and in the last 20 years, 30 years, compromise has become a dirty word. the idea that if you, have a, you know, drink with a Democrat as a Republican, it used to be, when I came to Washington, that was the norm. I left and moved around the country, came back in 2017, and found out, like, no, no, that if that word gets around that you're friends with Democrats, like, you're impure. Like, you're like, well, that's not healthy. I mean, how are we supposed to make the laws? How are we supposed to represent the people? and, and you have just this, utter shift where we are, I mean, this is the polarization problem and where we see the other as evil. But if we're never spending time with the other side, then how would we ever know that they're, in fact, not evil? so that proximity and that connection to people with different beliefs and restoring the idea that, it's, it's okay for us to disagree. That doesn't, that's not a problem. That's actually the entire reason we came up with this constitutional structure was the assumption that we would disagree about things and we need to find a way to move forward. but that, that's kind of the, the, the history behind the, the group humiliation. And I, and I totally, I want to be clear here. I, I am absolutely firmly. where you are in terms of You guys have a lot of privilege. We, I have a lot of privilege. We, we aren't being humiliated. there's a great More in Common statistic, from a publication they put out in September, asking different religious groups, if you felt like you were under threat. And, you know, some of the groups that, said yes, Jewish community, the Muslim community as a, terrorism expert, I would say, yes, you are under threat. I, I actually have the data to back that up. but the community that felt the most under threat was the Christian community. Yes. It was like 63 percent said that they felt like they were under threat. And it, like, there's no data to back that up. None whatsoever. so, so, like, there is a huge perception problem here and that, that we have to solve, but you're not going to. Unless you can take down some of these influencers and, and, infotainment sector, which I'm not aware of with the First Amendment, how we're going to be able to do that, we have to go grassroots. This is a heart problem. And you have to solve it through small groups, go local, that's, that's the way forward.

4: 1:28:31

If I could just jump in on your, your other mention of people of praise, and, we could talk people of praise, Matthew could talk, New Apostolic Reformation, we could, and Catherine's work is, is so important, and, and, and Nelson's work, as well, and, and understanding that there are networks, there are organized networks. It's highly disciplined, highly funded networks behind the scenes here that are shaping people with religious commitments, directing their political mobilization, and that these go back many decades and that they have mechanisms of control, well developed, well crafted. And some of them are out in the open and some of them are not. And it's very important to know what we're up against on that front as well.

3: 1:29:15

Just really quick. This is actually, this is not a Christian issue. I know we tend to want to return to like, well, theologically, how can they do that, right? But this is something that populist authoritarians do, right? They get majorities angry against minorities, right? And so, yes, we have 63, 64 percent of the country is Christian. In India, right now, 72 percent of India is Hindu, and yet you hear all this talk in India about Hinduphobia. And then that is used to say the Muslim minority is persecuting Hindus and they can pull out a tiny little case study or a little incident, blow it up, and then they can do violence against the Muslim minority. And you have actual pogroms going on that are unpoliced in India today. And again, so it's a way of kind of leveraging that majority resentment against minorities. And that's a very common

1: 1:30:05

tactic. Probably just one more question. Four minutes here. I'll give it to you. Second row in the black shirt.

1 (2): 1:30:11

Thank you. I hope my question is worthy. we actually live in a very conservative community, here in Indiana. And, I really do believe that, by the way, To the last question, my, my brother is aggrieved his life has been stolen by other people and he has not gotten the opportunities that he deserves. You know, it's ridiculous. I mean, meanwhile, my husband is an immigrant who's the epitome of the American dream. But there's resentment. It's just silly. Anyway, I really do believe there are a lot of people in our community who held their nose. while voting for Trump, but 90 percent of our county voted for Trump. How, as someone who is moderate slash progressive, but living in that environment, I feel like it's guerrilla warfare. How do we draw out that third that held their nose? How do we say to them, Hey guys, where's the line? Where, where's the line where you're going to say, Gosh, I don't think this should be happening in my country. Like, how do we, how, practically, do we, do we go about, pulling those people to, to sanity?

2: 1:31:25

That's a good question. We can go to the next panel.

3: 1:31:28

Yeah, we want to push that one to the next panel.

5: 1:31:30

I mean, this is the work that I'm doing right now. And I'm just gonna repeat what we already said. You have to You're asking specifically about your community. You have to do it locally, you have to do it one on one, or very small groups. As a Christian, I think one of the most ripe opportunities we have is theologically conservative and moderate Christian women. If you look at the history of peacebuilding and conflict overseas, the, the, place where people put their money and invest in, it's the women. It's the women that bring change. Likewise, what we see in violent extremist movements is that it's the women that can be the influencers that support the, the violence. So if you, you want to change culture, you, you, we need to be reaching women. Now, one of the problems that we face in trying to reach Women is that conservative and moderate theologically, theologically conservative and moderate people the leadership there is usually men. So there's been a lot of investment, particularly over the last eight years in trying to help, the, the in group moderates, if you will, which I would consider myself one. there's been a ton of investment, but it's been at the grass tops level, which disproportionately reach, reaches men. And I think that's really great. And I'm glad we're doing that. but you're not actually. tapping into the people that are most likely to drive that change. And those women are in a structure, as was talked about in the last panel, where they have been programmed or told, hey, you know, you can speak, but you can speak only to women. hey, you, it's okay for you to have your opinion, but you really just should share it with your husband. and, and then if your husband disagrees with you, like, okay, you're going to submit. Right? So, so that, that's kind of the, the culture that we came up through. I mean, it was actually Kristen's book that helped me put all, piece all this together. Because it was the world that I grew up in. And all of a sudden you see this new, new picture of like, Oh my gosh! This was intentional. anyway. It's a different topic for a different panel, but Kristen changed my life. It was great. But, I, I will say that I, I think that for me personally, that's where I'm investing my time. Is we have to provide spaces for women to come to the discovery, like, oh, wait a second, like this, this whole structure that I've grown up in, you know, some of it's good. I'm not saying it's all bad. but, but a lot of it was intentionally to keep me quiet, and, and I think those women know in their heart that something's wrong with our community. We are not living out our biblical values. And what they need is affirmation that you're right, your, your conscience has been pricked, and let's study that. Let's understand why you're, you're, you're feeling like this is wrong and not consistent with your biblical values. And then the encouragement to actually speak out. I mean, that takes, it's a huge, huge to break from your tribe. It is so hard, but We've got to create permission structures and space for people to take time. It is not going to be like this. They need time and space to wrestle and they need safe places to wrestle. It's much like the movement about 10 years ago when we were trying to, as a conservative Christian community, better understand how, the true impact of racism and unfortunately a lot of that. Very healthy movement, got pushed back against, basically by labeling it woke. but similarly, you have to create space for people to wrestle and not demonize them in the process. Like, how could you not know, about this history? How could you not know that this is what was happening? So, if, if you were in this room and you're on that progressive liberal third, Don't contribute to it by demonizing people, create, and if you can, support those in group moderates who are needing to do this work, and just recognize it's gonna take time, and a lot of time, to change those hearts and minds, but we gotta create space for people.

1: 1:35:23

I'm afraid we are at time,

5: 1:35:25

so let's thank

1: 1:35:26

our panelists.

Paul Blaschko: 1:35:27

I want to thank our listeners for joining us this month on FiresideND. I hope you enjoy the episode and will visit think.nd.edu to learn more Until next time, inspire your mind and spark conversations.