A Conversation: Mark Mansour and Heather Melton Fox

Join political expert Heather Melton Fox and me in a wide-ranging discussion of politics, Trump. civics education, right-wing media and other issues.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to America's Fractured Politics. Today I'm happy to have with me Heather Melton Fox. Heather has held roles as a senior communications and strategy advisor in the U.S. Congress in nonprofit and philanthropic organizations and is the founder of her own consulting firm. She writes Mindful Resistance on Substack, where she explores how we can cut through the chaos driving confusion and division in our politics so that we can make positive change to everything from our political conversations to the structures that are keeping us stuck. So, Heather, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I'm happy to have you here. Um let's start out with some a general question. Yeah. Um today I just found out from ABC News that Trump is planning on keeping his UFC structure on the White House lawn permanent.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Um What do you think it's going to take to undo the damage done by Trump? And what are the priorities once the Democrats take over, which I believe they will?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Yeah, it's it's a good question. I I think my answer is that there's not just one thing. There are a million different things we're going to have to do in concert. And I think hopefully our conversation unpacks some of that in the most immediate term. It seems as though what we need to do is protect the elections in the midterm. And I am encouraged a little bit by what's happening in the courts. That whereas, you know, while the Supreme Court has not made me categorically happy at all times, to say the least, I do think some of the lower courts are are doing interesting, important work to overturn some of the deportation stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

You know, with the even the slush fund and so on. So um I think it's going to take a lot of things. How about you? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I think one of the first things that has to be done is to deal with the deportation mess. To basically release these people and hire some immigration judges and have these asylum cases go through in order. Yeah, and close down these facilities, which are for-profit prisons as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

The next thing is to do something about the Supreme Court. I believe that we ought to expand it to 13 justices, one for every federal circuit, have retroactive term limits to knock out a lot of these justices, even if some Democrats have to go, and then appoint new justices. And I think we've got to play hardball that way because it's um, as far as I'm concerned, we get nowhere unless we deal with the Supreme Court.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah. I mean, what is the mechanism to do that?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

I is that it would take a president in both houses of Congress to enact it into a law.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

And what majorities in each house?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Uh just simple majorities.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

If the Democrats kill the filibuster.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

If they don't kill the filibuster, it won't happen. So that's that's the other thing I should have mentioned. They've got to kill the filibuster.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

So that they can get through all of these things.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, I mean, I think you're pointing to something that uh is what I try to explore more broadly, which is I think those are important things. They have to happen in concert with all kinds of other things, with will building in the country, with how we communicate with one another, with how we're breaking through our kind of algorithmically created realities. Um so playing hardball, kind of going to the one of the other things I know we're gonna talk about. Uh it's my favorite quote of Barney Franks that you're to your idealism to be as pragmatic as possible. What is the strategy that you build underneath that goal? And um, I think that takes all of us doing our part in different ways.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

I think it does. I think it's gonna be a collective effort, and I think it's gonna take a real national will. Yeah. Um, and I think people are discussing enough, or I think they will take action. Yeah. But we'll see what they do in November. Um, another question. Your Substack. Talk about the Substack itself, what issues you address, what informs your work, what inspires you. You wrote the following. When political power claims the authority to define both faith and belonging, it decides who counts and who doesn't. A religion that has been a beacon of mercy for countless souls should not be used as an authoritarian slogan that normalizes cruelty and entrenches privilege. A politics that requires that kind of exclusion is not one that can be trusted with power. Elaborate on that a bit.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yeah, so uh just to kind of uncouple two things there. More generally, what I'm trying to accomplish with mindful resistance. Um maybe I'll illustrate with just a couple of quick stories that I also write about in one of my earlier posts last year. Uh I talk about how I was on the beach in Mexico with my family a few years ago, and someone in the hotel down the next hotel over collapses, and everybody starts running and screaming and yelling, and it's just total pandemonium. And my younger brother is a firefighter. So while everybody else is kind of registering what's happening, he's making his way there at this very steady clip. And um he's not running, you know, he's just kind of deliberately moving toward the problem. And afterward, I asked him about that, and he explained that firefighters are trained to do what they call a gutter check. That, you know, if you are moving too fast without knowing it, you get blinders on. And you could also arrive at this chaos having already exhausted yourself. So I think about that in terms of how are we looking at this problem and how are we moving deliberately toward it? And also, you know, who are we as individuals in that scene? Are you the person waving your arms? Are you the person screaming? Are you the person over on the side gossiping about it and really not contributing anything? And so that requires some sort of reflection in that way. And then the other thing that I think about is another story that I talk about, which is um this wonderful, wonderful, beautiful um Buddhist teacher, Joan Halifax, who happens to be an American in Santa Fe, who's done just really wonderful um uh work all over the world. She talks about one time being at an outpost in Nepal, this medical outpost in the middle of nowhere, and this man shows up with his daughter, who'd been badly burnt, and he'd been walking with this little girl for days. And she shows up and they take off these dirty bandages. And apologies for how gross this is, but there's there's maggots in the wound, and she is looking at this, and she she mostly wants to stay more than anything, she wants to stay with the suffering of this child, but she finds herself getting overwhelmed. She thinks she's gonna pass out. So she decides she will focus on the bravery of that child and the people that are working to save her life. And I think there's so much in that that's instructive as well. You know, that where are we putting our focus? That this is such a precarious moment. Are we, you know, looking at what is productive and helpful and who is actually being harmed, you know, or not to be too cute about it? Are we the maggots in this story, you know? Right. So I think about those two things as kind of a framing mechanism. Mostly I write this because it's things that I'm trying to work out. I'm trying to figure out how to not get overwhelmed and pulled under by the chaos or despondent, you know, and and all of those things. And so to your second part of that question, um, you're referencing the latest thing that I wrote, which um is called MAGA Needs to Stop Making Jesus Sound Like a Jerk. And the point of that I loved it. I thought it was great. Um, thank you. But the point of that piece is something, it's a good example because it's something that I've been trying to work through. Is as we see this sort of overt, really unapologetic Christian nationalism in in the White House and throughout the kind of supplicants propping up the president. I listen to lots of different kinds of people talk about how they feel about that. And I think it is just so important that we are mindful about how we are framing a conversation and drawing a contrast. People like me have an inclination toward framing around the separation of church and state. Or um, this is when they claim it's a Christian country, we argue with that, sort of on this historical constitutional grounds, and that's fine. But I don't actually think that's the point. I think the point is that they are claiming for themselves something that they should not be claiming for themselves. In the same way Trump thinks that this is his country, Jesus does not belong to Pete Heggseth. And it makes, you know, it makes us have to think about the ways in which we are using our symbols, the ways in which, you know, we're talking about our constitution or our flag or what it means to be a patriot, and to not just seed that ground out of the gate. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

I know exactly what you mean. Um it's something I've spent some time thinking about too. We we tend to we tend to sometimes belittle religious people.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

And I think that that costs us votes because there are a lot of people of faith in the Democratic Party, um, especially among centrists. And you chase them away when you become all-encompassing in your criticism of religion. Right. Um, there's a need to respect their faith and incorporate it into your dialogue. Um, just as it's important to, you know, bridge the gap between rural and urban people. Um, you can't leave votes on the table. And the only way you can do that is by respecting people and listening to them.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah, in an authentic way and looking for where we have common ground and common purpose. It because I do believe, and it's one of the things that I try to unpack in that piece, is that we have a very strong tradition of Christian morality in this country. And I use the example of uh Abraham Lincoln talking about how he he tried to navigate the burden of leadership with a nation at war and a country deeply divided. And he has this beautiful quote that's uh something along the lines of, I've been driven many times upon my knees by the deep conviction that I had nowhere else to go. That's so gorgeous to me. And then you contrast that against this president who, when asked who he looks to for advice, he says himself, because quote, he has a very good brain, you know. Or you or you look at my personal hero, the hero possibly one of our greatest Americans, definitely one of our greatest, possibly our greatest, John Lewis, whose entire, you know, his his commitment to the Christian values of mercy and justice and the dignity of every human being, animated his work in the civil rights movement. You know, and so you contrast that against Pete Hegseth, who I know you read, is continues to deny certain people promotions that they're due because they are black or a woman. And and he just says, gay, trans, whatever it is, that it is a cause to be celebrated. He said this in a an event earlier this year where he said that um that he was happy to report that the godless diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are dead. And I think that using for all of us, Jesus has been this symbol of selflessness and care for one another. And using history's highest example of self-emptying love as a shield for this bottomless grift and shameless cruelty is not something we can just cede that territory, you know. And I think that to the other point that you made, I personally do find it condescending, the way that Democrats sometimes talk about people of faith. It does not make you stupid, it does not make you ignorant. We all have belief systems that organize our lives, whether it's, you know, a secular moral tradition or a religion or something else. And if we don't try to figure out what we have in common and you know, what is our common purpose, what are our common values, then we're we're not headed in a good direction.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

No, we're not. Speaking of John Lewis, I got to know him a long time ago and I've seen him a number of times. I saw him a number of times before he passed away. The thing about John Lewis that struck me most is his humility. He was one of the most humble people I know with the least reason.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

I was just I I was thinking about that just this morning. He was remarkable. Because I think about that iconic picture on the Edmund Tettis Bridge. And you, of course, know they wanted to rename that the John Lewis Bridge. And he said no. He said that it was a symbol of the civil rights movement, it shouldn't be named for him. Sat that against the current occupant of the White House who wants to slap his name on everything. And you know I think that's what I mean by framing an issue and drawing a contrast.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Well, that's a contrast. Um let's talk about the rot at the core of the DNC. Personally, I see them as a major obstacle to my success.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

If they only had small donor donations, they would still be a do disaster. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Right. They'd still be a disaster, I agree. It's just the way that's just the way it's set up. But I think the corporate, I think the corporate and the special interest donations are a big problem. Right. Because they tend to mute the the genuine feelings of members. I mean, I've had members tell me in private things that they don't say in public. And they won't say them because they're afraid of their donors.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

I'm guessing more than the other thing. Or what are the kinds of things that they want to say that they can't in a general sense.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

They they they don't want to criticize big business. They don't want to criticize the banks, the insurance companies, the oil companies. They mute their criticism in in really squishy words that don't really have any meaning. There's nobody that's willing to come out there like the progressives and say it as it is. And so the fact that they won't do that and they have control of the party means the party is going to be eternally divided between a section that wants to address social change head-on and another that wants to take it easy and slow, which means to the progressives, never again, never that'll ever happen. Um, and until they find a way to bridge that gap, yeah, it's gonna be very difficult to make the kind of progress that people like AOC and Bernie and others want to make. That isn't to say that they have all of the answers, but framed in the proper, proper perspective, people want universal health care in some form. People want um climate change uh uh activity, they want um they want better health care in general, um, they want a decent living wage. All of those things are things that the progressives want. But the way they're framed is important because centrists tend to not like the framing that we've used in the past.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Um instead of saying Medicare for all, um say good health care for everybody, or something like that. It's just the way you frame it. But it's very hard to even use that. I think we make a good some of the uh the centrists because they're afraid to alienate their donors.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

The money is one part of it. The other part of it that makes me bananas is that they are so bad at communications and bad at what they're doing for the reasons maybe that you're talking about related to that for sure. But there is this um old way of doing things that's grounded in big donors who pay high-paid consultants to run campaigns that are kind of based in traditional endorsements, traditional media buys. Even I'm sure you saw the autopsy debacle with Ken Martin and all of that. And it did if you yeah, did you? I mean, if you saw that interview that he did with um was it John Favreau?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Don't get me started.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

It's a disaster. It's a disaster. You're you're watching this person try to employ tactics like you're talking to Tim Russard 30 years ago, and he can just keep repeating the same three things, except it's not a two-minute segment, it's an hour-long conversation, and the part he doesn't have an hour to fill, and the gatekeepers are gone. You know, whatever he's gonna do. And he doesn't have an hour to fill whatever anyone thinks about that, that is reality. And they're playing this game, you know. I don't, I it it they cannot. You always hear this, it's a hard job. And I agree, it is a hard job. That's why you should be good at it, and they are not, right? You look at the people that are good at it, it is people like AOC, you know, it it is people that know how to communicate in this environment, people that know how to frame an issue and draw a contrast. And um I I was actually thinking about that in in the context of Barney Frank's passing, because you know, he wrote that, or not wrote, he was interviewed by the New York Times. Did you see that? Yeah, and it I thought I had this, and I had great admiration for him. And I still do. I read it. I read it. But he's talking about uh how he supported Janet Mills in Maine and encouraged her to run, how uh the Democratic Party lost its way when it started talking about these race and cultural issues and not economic populism, and that to what you just said, that we need to be incrementalists, we need to take these steps. And I thought not to take anything away from this person that I think has contributed a great deal to the country, but I suspect that if he were a younger man, or if he were if he lived for another 10 years, he would realize that the way that he wants to do business, this DNC way of doing business, is no longer pragmatic for reaching the goals that we say we want to reach, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

That interview shocked me because I've known Barney Frank for years, and that's not the Barney Frank I knew. He didn't sound anything like the Barney Frank I knew. Barney Frank was a fire brand. Barney Frank wanted to do things differently. Barney Frank Barney Frank wanted to talk about the issues that mattered. What do you think? The Barney Frank I saw in that interview was a completely different person.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

And I'm not sure what happened. I don't even have a guess. I don't know. I don't have a guess because it's such a switch that I don't know. I mean, I don't know why he promoted Janet Mills. She's nearly eighty years old. She's not in touch with the voters of Maine. Grand Platinum with all his faults. knows the knows what people are thinking and wanting, and he's got a finger on the pulse. So like him or not, I suspect the next round of polls is going to show he may have lost maybe a bit of support. But he's still nine points out of Susan Calm. Yeah, I don't know. No, she always finds a way to pull it out. But I don't think she will this time.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

What do you think is at the base of the anger?

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Because the anger is so deep. People are broke. Right. People are scared. People don't have futures. Young people can't buy houses. Young people can't find jobs. The elderly are afraid for their social security. They see that the country's divided and everybody hates everybody else. Right. And it just paints the picture of a country that's completely off its rocker. And that scares people. Yes. And I think they're getting angry because they feel like the politicians whom they've elected have failed.

unknown 22:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Some of them have, a lot of them have a lot of them have, some of them haven't. But everybody gets thrown into the pot together. And that's why you might see a white maybe. I mean that's where I think And I think the Democrats will benefit from it because they're not Trump. They need to articulate a vision.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

A way to be sure they should. But the fact that they're not Trump will take them away. There's never been anything this corrupt and I do think that his promises to do things to help with the economy to not get us into wars and so forth, I think people feel betrayed by that. But I don't think we can take for granted what different sort of algorithmic realities we're living in. And I I worry that sometimes we um can kind of breathlessly agree with each other and not make sure that we understand what they're saying on that side. So the way that you articulated the problem I think it's the way that everybody across the country feels regardless of a political um party. So how are how are we going to be the ones they do that that convince people to give us a chance to to lead us out of it. On that score on that score um a lot of people is not America he is the head of one of three coequal branches of government and he's been loaned that privilege for a finite amount of time the constitution of this country it created the separation of powers for the explicit purpose of guarding against the autocratic impulses of a wannabe king because they anticipated that something like that might happen and it is happening. So for me I have concern I have disappointment I have fear but I don't have time for shame. I don't find it to be a terribly useful emotion. For me it's very heavy it's if it makes you move at all it's to hang your head and hide. And I need to make sure that I'm doing whatever I need to do to stay engaged with the problem. I don't think shame helps that people do that. Well what do you think you I mean you do you think people feel yeah no it doesn't uh I I'm not ashamed of America.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

I'm not at all ashamed of America. I'm ashamed of what we'd become under Trump but I believe that the American people still have a will to elect leaders who will do the right thing. I just think they're so jaded right now that it's hard to get to that. But I think if you see some good government for a little while and the Democrats can deliver, I think you'll see a different populace in a different different mood and a different sense of of of being right now America looks embarrassing because of Donald Trump. Yeah and he tends because he's so large so much so larger than life to define the country I mean he's got the whole world thinking that we're hopeless. And the fact is 78 million people voted for him so if I'm the Europeans I look at that and say that's a lot of people what tells us that he won't come around again in some form some other form because there's a there's a a a large subset of people that like this sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

So how can we count that I worry about that too.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

That's what I worry about in terms of embarrassment. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah yes Trump's embarrassed and he's embarrassed us around the world should we be embarrassed for ourselves the opportunity to do quite a bit of traveling around the world and what I have found in conversations with people about Trump, they're baffled by it in the same way that I am to some extent working intentionally to be less baffled and understand it more. But other places have gone through the rise of autocrats. They've gone through um these kinds of things before they also understand in my conversations with people we are not as unique as we think we are in the world in dealing with immigration from the global south in dealing with right there's any number of issues economic populism any any number of things are happening all over the world look at France right yeah and and I think that um look at France where I land is what is different is that we have been the leader of the free world and people have looked to us to be a force for good. That doesn't mean that we haven't done things wrong things that we should regret and amend and any number of things. It doesn't mean that this is a perfect place but it has been a place that people could generally count on to keep their word in you know foreign relations to keep their word on trade agreements and to be on the right side of things generally you know and now it doesn't seem the notion even just a few years ago that we would be essentially on Russia's side against a sovereign nation that it invaded it's just the mind boggles at it. And here at home I mean we're always a work in progress. We're always trying to work toward a more perfect union. So I do try to pause and say when I hear people say that they're ashamed of the country I I there's a part of me that says why now you know this is we're almost 250 years into this thing. There have been many times when we have not met the expectations of our citizens and you know this isn't the first time. It's the first time in my lifetime it's been this bad but there's been times throughout this country's history where we've had to rise up and do better by each other. So you know that's where I just try to keep my focus a good focus.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Going back to the issue we talked about before I just want to probe a little bit more how do you um how do you think we individually contribute to both the chaos we say we hate and the disconnection people feel towards politics. For me it's something that I'm actually really trying to work through myself.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

But I'd like to dig a little bit deeper I think that I think about it I have a lot of energy for this kind of thing. I have lots of energy for politics and information and trying to figure things out and one of the things that I've been trying to do is when I'm consuming social media, I try to keep this in mind. I read this um statistic that 80% of people that are consuming social media are just scrolling. They don't like anything they don't share anything they definitely don't post anything. The other 20% that are posting are generally people who are articulating the most extreme version of an argument. So those 20% are making the 80% think that that's what everybody thinks. And so I when I try to engage because I find myself getting upset there's urgency everything's a mess one of the things I've started trying to do yeah on Substack where we're both right though you much more successfully than me but the uh I'm looking through something and I try to say what is this communication? Is this somebody venting? Is this somebody signaling you know that I'm going to defend you is this somebody trying to educate someone is it somebody trying to persuade is it somebody trying to test out a belief and that helps me a lot in how just just framing you know what am I looking at here? Because I think sometimes we treat everything like everything that somebody might just be venting that they're so frustrated that this guy's such a clown that is not a policy solution but it's not totally useless you know if somebody's trying to actually teach something or share information that's different than this and that you know so I try to for myself I try to think about what am I getting from this? If it's just furious that has a limited amount of value for me you know um and then I go back to what is the purpose of engaging with this? Because lots of times if I look at the news for five minutes in the morning or a half hour in the morning and a half an hour at night I know as much as if I look at it every moment 24 hours a day because it's just things on repeat trying to keep everything as yeah yeah and that is not good for us. And I think one of the most they just repeat it on a loop depressing things that we can do is we're experiencing this world so much through pixels on a screen and we're experiencing it again in these like algorithmically driven separate but kind of equally compelling realities that feel really disconnected from what it's like when I turn off my phone. You know it's so much information to process it's so much to try to figure out and I think we don't know how to bridge that gap. So it doesn't make sense to me you know if you are only to rely on what you're reading depending on what you consume you know you're being made to believe that 80 million people are as rotten as Donald Trump and I don't believe that. I just don't and I think there's nothing that is more beneficial to him and the MAGA movement than to make people believe it is that strong and that large I don't believe that it is. So I try to have conversations with people that don't see things the same way that I do I have a high tolerance for it like you I worked in Congress so I have some skill in dealing with people that I don't agree with telling me what they think in intense ways and being able to hold that and I find it really helpful. It's what makes me know that when you articulate the problem that you did that's what everybody thinks that's not just what Democrats think that's what everybody thinks is the problem that we need to solve you know yeah um what have been your encounters what what would have been it depends what's it been like to encounter Trump supporters what have we found the dialogue to be like it I'll send him this this uh podcast when it comes out but um one of my neighbors is this young guy and before the last election we called ourselves the crypto bro and the cat lady and we'd have these you know dialogues that uh about what was going on and to hear him talk he gets his information from what I guess he would call the the manosphere the Joe Rogan he's a smart guy he's not in any way an unsophisticated guy um he consumes different information than I do but he talks about I was saying what is it about this you know and to hear him say it he liked that RFK Jr was talking about cleaning up the food supply he liked that Trump was committed to not getting us into any more wars. He yeah exactly I mean it didn't work out and those people feel betrayed and I don't it's not how I engage it's not what I think about as uh it's not my mode of civic engagement but to hear him list the things those they you could transplant them on liberals you know I mean we've just thrown the deck of cards up in the air and we're still using these outdated kind of frames for what people care about. And I think that that's that's because again we're talking to each other. So I mean that would be one example and my friends that are you know on my ideological side can't believe that I am even friends with someone like that. It's not easy. It is not easy. I don't agree most of the time but we've got to find a way that we're gonna be able to live well together and care about one another. And I always say you know he didn't rub it in my face when he told me that Joe Biden was too old or that he thought that they were going to swap out Joe Biden for somebody else the summer before the election. You know I mean there are all of these ways that we're experiencing this world differently. And so that would be one kind of category of how a young man experiences consumes information experiences our political world um and then I also look at other people that I know that are uh one of my parents' good friends who's I'm incredibly fond of she's a beautiful beautiful woman that does incredibly good things with her life she watches Fox News and she grew up in a time when you believed the news and you believed the president. And so it makes me go to the way that we keep pushing the responsibility to the voters and not to the people who are in charge. So of course the smoker is responsible for smoker but the per for smoking but the person who's making the cigarettes is more responsible the person that believes the obvious lie is responsible the person telling the obvious lie is more responsible.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

And we just keep participating in this asymmetry that is um creating a division that I don't think needs to be there I agree let me tell you about my encounters with with Trump supporters because I I'm afraid they've been uniformly awful um I have tried to listen I've tried to engage and I've lost probably a dozen friendships over this all of them initiated by the other person because how it goes basically I cannot remain friends with somebody with somebody who believes that gays ought to have the same rights as people who are straight I can't tolerate the fact that you believe that Kamala Harris should be president of the United States I can't accept that how did this one put it this one is a beauty I can't accept that you believe that Donald Trump is not out for the benefit of the country Donald Trump is our savior Donald Trump is a person who's going to save this country and I said no he's not he said I'm sorry I can't right have anything to do with somebody who believes that they are so hardened in their beliefs so many of them that it becomes very hard to make it maintain a relationship in the I've tried but they just cut me off parameters either I don't know right right and I would too you know it'd be but that's the that's that's the straw I drew people like that how do I put this I I look at it as more of an excavation of what's underneath this where are we missing each other and if the reason why we're missing each other is because this person is a proud racist well then that conversation is over but if we're missing each other because we're mostly consuming different kinds of information then that's a different conversation.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

So for example during the ice raids earlier this year um I read more I read across the political spectrum I find consuming right wing media to be extremely illustrative and important and maybe one of the most valuable things that I do but I read across the spectrum and I ran into the neighbor I was just talking about who is a wonderful neighbor and a good person with whom I disagree um but not a horrible person in any way. And he sincerely says to me why do you think that the democratic governors or democratic um mayors in democratic states are not accepting help getting rid of violent criminals it was a very sincere question you know that um I was able to sincerely answer. And we couldn't do that if there wasn't a dialogue and a friendship you know and it goes both ways. I don't try to persuade him he doesn't try to persuade me we listen to each other's points of view and leave it at that because I don't think it's realistic to think that in the same way that he'll never get me to come around on certain views that he has because I'm a different human being I don't expect that that's going to happen with him but I do think that we have common ground and common purpose and that we're both frustrated with the system we certainly both agree that the DNC is a disaster you know it's and and you hear from him things like he's an independent he's not a Republican he he said you know Joe Rogan supported Bernie Sanders there's and that's true. I mean some of these people are not durable right wing voters at all they are yeah they want change they're sick of the system and until we get that on our side they want change and don't just you know move to this reflex that they're stupid or they're uneducated or they're whatever then we're gonna keep having people like Spencer Pratt make a legitimate run for mayor as this Republican clown in LA you know I mean that's gonna keep happening and that is not we have to own our side of the street on that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Yeah I agree.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Let's close with civic education we we both agree that it's important I think most people would what do you think we need to do to create more civic literacy in this country what you were saying that uh the purpose of public education initially was to create better citizens. It wasn't to create better cogs for the machine for lack of a better way to put it and that would be one of the ways that We lost our weight. I don't know if you remember that. Do you remember that program they used to have called We the People, where kids would compete? Yeah. Did we ever able to do that? Here in Colorado, uh, when I worked for Congress, I would get to be a judge for that. And for people that don't know, high school kids would compete on their knowledge of the Constitution and they would debate sides of different constitutional issues and leader. Yeah, I mean, but that was a value that we had. And we just kind of eroded that and kind of those were the days you don't see that anymore. So I think like the shift towards education is just for the purpose of creating workers was part of it. Um and I also think that as we look at it now, I and I you've you've given this a lot more robust thought than I have. But I think we need to not make civic education feel so much like a history lesson. It feels like we're still talking about it in terms of how a bill becomes the law. And it needs to be more relevant. It needs to be how did the government, what role did the government play in creating Tesla? How is it? What is the law that allows somebody who is able to take their stock profits and live off of those, get taxed at 15%, and somebody who's working gets taxed at twice that. You know, we have to have the ways that those things are relevant. And you hear people say all the time that uh they don't think people want to engage. And I was joking, if you don't think people want to engage, watch what happens when there's an HOA assessment. You'll see that community engaged immediately. You know, we just have to make those things more relevant. And um that's what I think. But I mean, you you've given this a ton of thought. So what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 46:09

What I think is that you need to teach the fundamentals too. We have people that don't understand anything about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, what the causes were, what the role of slavery was.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

The the the red states have purposely eliminated all of that education because frankly, they want to keep people dumb. Because dumb people make dumb voters and dumb voters choose Republicans. That's how they view it. And so far they've been putting it on the city.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Yeah, and a lot of rich people voted for him too.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

A lot of dumb people voted for Trump.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

I mean, that's just the reality. Oh, yeah, that'd be good. That's a separate category. That they they they voted their self-interest, and they deserve a special place in hell for that, as far as I'm concerned. But as far as civics education goes, we need to do what you described, but we need to teach the fundamentals too. But we need to find a way to teach them in a more exciting fashion. Because the way they were taught before was dry as dust. But I think STEM education has done a lot of damage because you're right, we're educating workers. We're not educating citizens.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

These people come out and they're ready to take jobs in science and math that aren't there, to be honest with you. Every every survey I've shown those jobs just aren't there. And um so we've taught people for to prepare for jobs that aren't there. Meanwhile, they're they're living in a civic starved environment where they don't understand the fundamentals of the country, how it how it's run, where it's failed, where it's succeeded, what's needed to be a good citizen. All of that stuff's important. And so I don't know how you divide it up, whether you teach some of it in histories, teach some of it in civics.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

Well, you also mentioned something in the CT recently, wrote social studies to find a way to do it. And is it and again, with that asymmetry that we have where we're pushing the responsibility on the citizens where it belongs, but it needs to be not outsized compared to the people in power, is that I think about how engaged I am, how much energy I have for politics. It's an area of expertise, a professional competency, and it's still hard to figure out what's going on, you know. And so we need to have a way for people to evaluate information for people to be able to think critically. And I think one of the most important things we can do in civic education is teach people how to have hard conversations about differences and how to hold differences. And it, if I had to say the one thing that I think has gotten us just careening off a cliff in this country, it is the shift from focusing on how we solve our problems to focusing on how we win elections. Of course, it's important that you win an election, but look at where the energy goes. It doesn't go toward how are we actually going to, you know, address the terrifying wealth disparities in this country. It goes to how are we going to elect Democrats to do that or Republicans to make sure that doesn't happen. And if we don't show that once people are in power, they actually can do those things, then I don't think people, you know, I don't think it's irrational for people to think it it doesn't matter. I don't think so. I think this has just been so wonderful. I mean, my one final thing. I am very grateful to actually meet you virtually here, and this has been been awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Pleasure's mine. This has been a lot of fun. I I think we covered a lot of ground, and I think a lot of it should be interesting. Um this has been America's Fractured Politics.