right. and you mentioned the concept of respectable form, which is really, i think, key to both, betty barney. right. they were presenting themselves in the fifties and sixties as respectable. right. and for barney, that's important. yeah. this is a concept that was very important to activists like martin luther king and rosa parks. right. that they be perceived as mobile, as respectable. they would be taken seriously. barney initially is very worried about calling the government to report this ufo because he's worried it won't be taken seriously. he is worried about the government. he is worried what if this story gets out, what its impact would be on his political work and betty persuaded him to do? but i think later in her life in particular are barney's fears are manifested. right. but she loses that sense of

respectability comes to be seen as someone is fringy someone who is a kook and then does moves away from the center of political life where they had been before. very interestingly and surprisingly to me, you recall that when she learned about the work of america abstract artist, a notable artist, budd hopkins, his work providing support groups and amateur hypnosis be for people who claim to have abduction experiences. she rejects all of that and wants nothing to do with it and asserted that her experience was unique. this is very interesting to me. would you expand on that? yeah, you can see there, i think also the idea of respectability contingent, right, betty hill was a unitarian and very much believed in science. it's very, i think, significant,

betty, that the extraterrestrials encountered. she believed built a spacecraft on another planet in star systems, ada, which actually flew to earth. it was science that might be far, but it was simply science. when then she encountered the abduction boom of the 1980s and 1990 was which leads to tv shows like the x-files and and all the roswell surrounding, you know, 1997 and all of this these abductions seemed to her unscientific. they are full of stories of people levitating and being transported through walls and extra terrestrials kind of magically appearing in bedrooms and so on and so forth. all of this seems strange to her. and so she begins practicing in a sense her own respectability politics, saying no, no, no. what? ufos are like what i experienced these. things are strange. they are almost magical. they are flawed. before conclude, i think it would be very important for you

to please describe the dramatizations of the betty and barney hill stories have been left sort of as the residue of their memory and the mass culture. so please tell us about those. yes, there are two in particular. in 1975, a film is made called the ufo incident. it is produced by james earl jones, who bought the rights to their story for two reasons. one, he wanted to barney hill in the film. and secondly, he wanted he saw this story being very much about civil rights and indeed very as the story about the anxiety that barney feels. it's about barney feeling kind of trapped in this very white new hampshire town and being increasingly isolated and for very swaths of the film. james earl jones and the actress plays his betty recite the

abduction. i'm sorry. you know, it's just transcripts that were preserved by the psychiatry office. and it's a magnificent performance. but the story is quite internal. it's very much about race. seven years later, in his miniseries cosmos, carl sagan spends 15 minutes actually dramatizing body and barney hill's story dramatizing the reduction experience. actually, incorrectly. and then he talks about it a little bit. and for carl sagan, betty and hill were. he says this story is entirely implausible. this is the wrong way to think about space. he speculates that they were suffering some sort of psychological problems that led to this abduction. and you see that i think these different people kind of reading this of betty and barney in different ways for different purposes and making of it something useful for and it is, i think sagan's, memory of their story that has largely been

preserved. yes. and it's unfortunate because, as you say, it was inaccurate and i don't want to overgeneralize, but i would say that every time i have tried to have a conversation about, these matters with an astronomer, either an amateur astronomer or a professional astronomer. i have found similar attitudes. let's just say, well, i see is the ten minute mark. and at this point masculine. i have agreed that we'd love to take questions from you all. so this is. yes, we have a question right away. we do tap into them and we want to get on the microphone. oh, yes, sorry. protocol. so that we can bring a microphone to the front for this person right here. there we go. thank you. matthew, do you believe that in story, do you believe what happened to them was it was was true? that is the first question i always get. yeah. and it's an obvious one,

certainly. i think they saw something strange in this guy. i don't know what it was. i am not persuaded by the abduction, given the controversies around, recovered memory and, the through hypnosis. so, yeah. mm hmm. jonathan, we need a microphone here in the middle. this gentleman to wearing the maroon sweater. there you go. mm hmm. it's on. haven't a book yet, but will. it? i'm, you know, i'm really. i really like the way you put in the cultural context. and, of course, that culture that line has moved. now to a point where there's the new paradigm, there's the defense department, there's lot of stuff. and i'm not quite sure how many abductions have taken place. there's a sizable community of that. and the fact that roswell and

all of this stuff is is now coming out. and so i think it's as a a really a turning point. what you've put in context, what i'm and listening to what you're saying here. it seems like actually now it has moved beyond race. because we're now in an area where we're about a different sense of species. we're all part of the human race on this earth planet. but terms of the non-human intelligence, which appears to be connecting with humanity or this other than human intelligence, there's something other in a sense. and of course, they get into the whole hybridization programs and all of that which which is documented now as ed mentioned at rice university in the archives of the impossible. there's just so much evidence and i'm. any comment on that in terms of contextualizing this but but i look forward. yeah. yeah. so two things to that. first, is that the question of

race and ufo, is it interesting, right, that some scholars have argued that the ufo phenomenon and people i'm describing encounters with as you're saying on human intelligence pushes us, as you say, right towards this sense of a limiting or lessening how we imagine. there are other scholars, however, i think this is true for betty and barney, who argue that the perception of race that we have really marks how humans perceive alien and perceive the other. so betty argue is as you do her experience in her memories emphasizes the kind of commonality of humanity. she says this makes me feel all the more how important it is to pursue civil rights and to pursue equality. barney, on the other hand, perceives it quite differently. ani consistently described in his memories his underwear.

said no. he says he describes these creatures in metaphors. it a racial hostility. he says they look like nazis. he doesn't specify what he means by that. but he says they remind me of notches. he was a world war two veteran. so that was, you know, particularly significant to him. he refers to another saying he looks like an irishman. and i say that because in my experience, irish people are hostile to black people. right. so he perceives a real of racial divide here, which is fascinating. i think it goes to how many scholars will speak this, which is to say there's maybe a strange phenomenon happening, how we interpret it, how we understand it, is very much marked by our own histories and our own perceptions and we see, in a sense, what we expect to see on how are we doing time?

we have 5 minutes. thank you. so any other questions? yes, there's a person right there, please. thank you. go. yes. and i apologize if you touched on this earlier. do you have any personal experience with aliens or a story that kind of pointed you in this direction to to be curious about, betty and barney. you know, in some days i will say i wish i did. but other days i say i'm glad don't, which is as i know. i know experience like this drove me to i think what made me interested in them was how representative they seem to be. and i think, frankly, how marginal ized many of these sorts of experiences have generally been in the academy. mm hmm. what thank you. any other questions. okay well, since we have a

little bit more time, i'd like to ask you a question about what. do you think is the long term cultural impact of this story of betty and barney hill? mm hmm. and let me just add as a parenthesis to that, but as jonathan was saying, we are now in a period of time where it appears that there has been a sea change in american attitudes about all this. there seems be a lot of people who say they've had experience with ufos or beings. we even have an incredible congressional inquiry into recovered crashed alien craft whistleblowers coming forth, etc. so please give us your concluding thoughts about what the long term impacts this story. mm hmm. yeah, in some ways. as i said before, the betty and barney hill abduction story set the template for how american

southeast told and retold and retold this story. betty and barney hill were the first people to describe these creatures as being small, large heads slanted eyes, gray skin. right. and that has become the sort of fundamental motif for this. but i think even more the trajectory that the hill's experienced that is from this position of having general faith in politics, faith in government faith in the state through suspicion and fear, to embracing other apparently marginalized cultures in the state. right. that is the experience, not simply, i think, of ufo believers from the mid-20th century through the late 20th century, but of many americans. i mean, that period as well as we we came out of the betty and marty hill era with a mass kind

of national suspicion and fear, conspiratorial belief and so on and so forth. and that's their in miniature, too. well, thank you for that excellent summary and. all i can say is, as a writer, you've set yourself up to do an interesting sequel. this further investigation into this cultural complex. let's all give a warm round of applause to matthewhi, everyone.

welcome. thank you for joining us tonight in celebration of exurbia. now the battleground for american democracy. my name nyein and i'm a manager

at the seminary co-op. as you might know, our was founded in 1961 and in 2019 became the country's first and currently only not for profit bookstore whose mission is? bookselling. this mission recognizes as a cultural endeavor. booksellers as professionals and bookstores as. a civic institution that supports an informed populace. we invite you to browse, and we also invite you to learn more about the co-op. our sister store, 57th street books and how to support these unique cultural institutions by visiting our website. and of course, speaking to a bookseller after this event, one of the main ways you can support our stores is by buying a book. maybe like the one tonight and we're the author will be happy to be signing books after the event. you can also become a member, the co-op and earn credit back on your purchases if you aren't already become a member when you make purchase this evening. your support us to deliver a very rich and robust of free events. and we hope you'll join for another event soon. there will be time for audience

questions at the end of the conversation. should you have any questions? please raise your hand during that time. and with that, i'm thrilled to introduce guest for this evening. david masciotra masi ultra. got it. is the author of six books a journalist political, analyst and arts critic. he has written for the new republic salon progressive monthly, no depression, the bulwark, crime reads and many other about politics, literature and, music. he and his wife live in indiana where he teaches at indiana university. northwell east. doug swartz, who he's been in conversation with, is the director of the writers program at indiana university northwest. please me and give a warm welcome to david and, doug. they do. good evening, david. good to see you. good evening, doug. yeah, i will have to say that david has actually been my entree. a lot of the a lot of the sites that that show up in the book that that we met at zip's

coffeehouse and, sanjay stereo. so david has been my guide to a lot of a lot of the the region that he is that he is writing about. i might begin by asking you to define terms maybe by doing a sort of, you may be an urbanite sort of routine or something like that and just, you know, you might be an exurbia might not even know it. that's right. yeah. so i would assume that most people are familiar with suburbia and the suburb. it's a town to an urban area such as one in which where we sit chicago. what differentiates an excerpt from a suburb is density and distance. so taking those in reverse and exurb has greater distance from the urban area than a suburb, but fewer people. so less population density and exurbia began to take off, expand and grow and enlarge. within the past couple of

decades as a later stage of white flight, which is perhaps something we'll in just a bit, but also exurbia is largely. so a real developers enter into these area as and they see that it's there's cheap land available they purchase it and they build housing complexes and strip malls and other accouterments necessary to establish something reasonable living a community and people. the diversity or the progressive politics of the city or the densely populated suburb they find themselves in exurbia. and there is a symbol closest that develops between the isolation of the town and the exclusionary and exclusive political beliefs of the inhabitants. well, let me ask you, when i took in to be kind of the the big picture and the big question

of the book and the big picture, you seem to be saying, you know, the focus is on escape buddhism and the what you call the coupling of christian nationalists and white flight and it sort of that the main direction of the book is to discuss the ways in which that escapism no longer has anywhere to escape and. that the estranging it is turning into belligerence, you said. and so i'm kind of what i was wondering and think about that. the subtitle of the book, you know, the battleground and. how, how, how much parallel we in, i guess, you know, in words i couldn't help from going to you know, taking the battleground state has been a metaphor for quite some time in kind of liberalizing it somehow or thinking you know you said that they had they've gone from flight to fight. yes. and what forms that fighting is going to take? you know, you think of trump on

january six saying we've got to fight like hell. we're not going to have a country. so that the moment in which we find ourselves in the converging crises which we must navigate are very because we're in such short term peril and danger due to digital and the maga maniacs. what we find is that trump's elected returns his popular ity is off the charts and exurbia and the most psychotic members of congress lovable characters like. marjorie taylor greene, matt gaetz, jim jordan, some of your favorites. doug lauren boebert they all represent that are predominantly exurban. so the book begins, i'm going to get to your questions take the long way around the scenic route through exurbia. the book begins as a work of political geography that rather

than examining trump because we've all read a number of of trump they're all quite gruesome and unpleasant. rather than inspecting let's inspect the places where they're most popular and perhaps through inspecting those places we can learn about the people who vote for them and the movement that they represent. and what we discover is the movement is reactionary, but it's also reactive in the sense that it's an adverse reaction it's a backlash to the progress, the immense progress that is taking shape across the united states in my lifetime, your lifetime, just over the past few decades, the progress on issues of race, progress on issues of gender the progress on, issues of acceptance and opportunities for lgbt q people. and it's not to say that we live in an in an endemic paradise or a. there's still so much work to do

and so many injustices to. correct. but it's due to the quiet revolution of the civil rights movement that is still in motion. and it's due to the increasing of people of color and lgbtq people in positions of power and prominence that the people who have fled to exurban counties and exurban towns have run of the means of escape. as you were asking. so it's a fight or flight politics and there's nowhere left to take flight. so they've adopted a fight mode against the very mechanisms, against the very that made the progress that they so vehemently oppose. and that is constitutional liberal democracy. so in trump they found an authoritarian figure to speak

for the hinder lands, to speak for the exurbs, speak for the small metro suburbs in of an aggressive against the mechanisms, the systems and the culture. all forces that have made this country more more just diverse and more progressive. so exurbia becomes the staging and breeding ground of a radical right wing insurgency that is opposed to what's in cities such as this one and what's happening in the suburbs that immediately surround. hmm. would the people you're talking about. yeah. and this is. this is an impossible question, i'm sure. are they able to conceptualize their own position? articulate their own position? one of the things i sort of vaguely was thinking i would find in the book, but i didn't, you know, was any encounter with

you and serbian and exurban escapist themselves? you did write about attending a tea party rally and saying, well, what is the evidence example of that? and they had this sort of very trumpian locution, well, you just need to pay attention to what's happened, you know, which trump continues to use and then proceeds to avoid any kind of example. so i used to question how you know if we're thinking what is a battleground democracy? is it possible to conduct the battle on, their turf on terms other than theirs. that's an interesting question. so. one of the early reviews of the book that offered a criticism is is something that you're echoing right now. so so thanks for that doug. i appreciate it. and that's that that there are profiles of the maga. exurbia writes in the book i did that for the deliberate reason

that and perhaps this this is a flaw i'm perfectly willing to acknowledge. but i grew rather tired those profiles the the reporters going into the diner and talking to the guys in the ball caps and saying, why do you support trump and and and why you support marjorie taylor? greene and. and do you really think that bill gates is implanting a micro trip inside of your skull? i grew rather tired of that because i found that it was reinforcing the prejudicial bias that those are the real americans. so i made an effort to instead fill my book with correct who represent something different even in the suburbs, even in the exurbs. so lgbtq youth or people who start a local environmental group in. the town where my wife and i live. or robert cotton, who was part of the cotton family, the first

black family to move to a sundown town of valparaiso. and cotton, now on the city council of valparaiso. so stories of hope and stories of and stories the diverse possibilities that exist in the united states of america. but it's an interesting question you ask about how much are the exurbia nights reacting in the fight mode against the progress that has occurred in this country consciously aware of their opposition to democracy. of they would say that they're not opposed democracy. they would probably argue that they're defending democracy. but what i find is that often times you can't take these people their word. so i draw on a story in, the book about when white flight in

my hometown, no one said, we're leaving the town of lansing, illinois, south of chicago, because more people and a few latino people moved into our neighborhoods. they cited, like property values and fears, crime and real estate trends. so there is always a way in which they will smuggle through custom of fear or and anger against multicultural and the culture that it creates. and of the things i attempted to do in the book is write about the on the ground that exists in the in which people actually live their lives in these towns gives some sense of what life is like in these towns because so much of our political dialog and discourse has become radically

divorced from reality, you know because of of the dominance of the right wing culture wars and the need for a reaction to it. we can't just ignore these things. we spend half our time about the bisexual eminem's or or aaron rodgers or there's illegal immigrant on every corner preparing to kill an elderly christian. you know, these fever of the right wing and we're not talking about what's actually happening in small towns like lansing, illinois, or highland, indiana or, or three oaks, michigan. you know, fill in the blank. so we're not talking about health care. we're not talking about living wage. we're not talking environmental sustainability. and the people who have create this culture war, who fund it, who feed it, and who support it. they will that they're

interested in a higher standard of living in, a more robust democracy. but all of their actions from voting to consumption to habits of assembly indicate otherwise. well, one of the i think one of the another misperception or misconception that you seem to want to address in the book is the idea that that there's an economic behind support for trump. and then you want to reestablish priority of the social and the cultural. and i want to get to this in a minute the sort of the religious or the cosmic, even sort of motivates us. so could you talk maybe about that? yeah. so in some ways the book was born of frustration because i as noted earlier, i live in region that i write about and i've