holding guns in their direction. i end the about political violence with the question what happens when they decide to shoot and that relates to at a recent turning point usa turning point usa is kind of the maga youth you know the nazi youth reincarnate. somebody asked charlie kirk, leader of the organization, when do we start to use the when can we just start shooting these? and kirk said we shouldn't do that, but very revealingly he didn't say we shouldn't do that because to kill innocent people is wrong. you know, that would be woke to say that murder is wrong. instead, he said it would play into hands and it would allow them to depict us as fascists and violent. so by any stretch of by any

imagining the definition we're living in an era political terror because. the united states army defines terrorism as, the use or threat of violence to achieve a political objective. and all of these threats against libraries and school and election workers are of terrorism to try to make these people resign and sometimes they succeed. now much of that to the part of your question is fueled by an infamous national ecosystem that has become so narrow that can't penetrate an alternate analysis, can't enter. so i have a chapter in now about the death of local media since the since the year 2000. to thirds of news have shut down and in many these exurban towns

there no such thing as local media. so there's nothing there to provide an on the ground perspective that might clarify an issue that might introduce someone to a person who he or she believes is a threat. so if you're afraid of the latino immigrant or you're afraid of the transgender teenager to a local newspaper profiling a person, those characteristics might dispel you of some of those fears and some of that hostility. but when none of that exists, people living in isolation, they go to tucker carlson or steve bannon or fox news. and that feeds the rage, it feeds the paranoia and feeds the prejudice. and as robert putnam, author of the classic of social capital bowling alone argues, isolate asian is isolation is political,

extremism thrives and exurbia is a region of isolation, both in the in the or all in physical sense, the socioeconomic sense, but also in the sense in that they're not they're not getting the that could introduce some reality to their increasingly paranoid. well that leads me a question. you know, you mentioned bowling alone. there's i want to talk about nostalgia here and there seems to be kind of a paradox nostalgia in the book which is the one hand there's a sort of maga back before pre-civil rights free women's movement pre lgbtq. on the other hand, they seem very comfortable with a world that's nothing like it was, that's full of box stores and megachurches and no sidewalks and an you know that in which

the way things used to be is just no longer, even accessible. and then kind of the way you weave your own stories in the kind of you have this, it's not i'm not trying to both sides is a different kind of nostalgia but you do write about a vanished when there was more opportunity for neighborly association and local involvement and local and and but you also then kind of seem to say we can progress towards that. there's a wonderful phrase about something more communal and charming. i can't remember the third term communing and charming something you look at it more recently than i have sung, but i mean, it's sort of it's that's what sort of paradox that i the sort of same sense of the world that i grew up in being no longer accessible. what i began to think about, well, it was a world in which, you know, differences. i think it wasn't the world as it should be. you know, you start by talking about we haven't reached the progress hasn't reached where we want to. but it was there was much deeper

sense of things that be. mm hmm. and i don't know how much that is just my own nostalgia. you know, you think the way things feel when you're younger. well, you're kind of, you know, a lot of the stories that you tell, a lot of the that you mentioned about how people live, their lives and the great variety, diversity of perspectives and backgrounds and activities, art and culture and beer. i learned a lot about reading the book. i didn't know about the it's about law in 1912. the most important part of the book. it was yes and yes. i realize i have not had a budweiser since 1978, i guess it was. no, you're making a brilliant point. and it's one that no one's ever made before. so i'm trying to absorb myself. that's that's a really fascinating contradiction that you point out, is that so much of the current right wing movement is around nostalgia, but it's not nostalgic the good things. i mean i mean and forgive me if

i'm really simplifying your point but you know walkable and green spaces and and neighborhoods where there were communal networks of support like the united states of america has lost much that and and i could certainly understand and relate to nostalgia for those types of communities but the nostalgia that we see influencing much of our politics is the nostalgia that i quote elbert campbell in the book as saying as dangerous because it can lead people to committing act of evil in the name of an unknown realizable good. campbell warns that that's the danger. romanticizing the past is. you can't bring back the past, but in an effort to do so. you'll resort to violence or persecution or trying to bring back a past that never was. exactly. yes, exactly.

but terms of you're correct that there some things about which even i write nostalgically when i think about growing up in lansing illinois and, you know, as cliched as it sounds hillary clinton's book title, it a village, that's how my childhood that the entire village addition to my two wonderful parents my entire village was involved raising and rearing me and nurturing and discipline me. and so much of that is gone per perhaps there is if the right wing could get outside of this informational pollution that they exist. there's opportunity for common ground there to discuss what we've lost as a society. but we have to make the right diagnosis. so why we lost that as a society, it's not of immigrants and not because of secular

liberalism. it's because of the forces of an increasingly corporate and commercialized economy. it's because of the destruction of local networks, of democracy. and we also have to talk more clearly about how to get out of that trap as you mentioned, i try to end the book with notes of optimism. and at one point i write about the organizations towns, which does wonderful work, advocating for more livable spaces. and i also quote the great patti smith who talked about going to burnt out cities and dilapidated cities or going to small towns and an art scene to try to get something going. because she said so many neighborhoods in chicago, new york and san francisco and l.a., they've just priced people out of doing that, doing the kinds of things she did when she was young.

so look for another place to do it. hmm. yeah. yeah. one of the things i learned about you from the book didn't know you had a lutheran school background. so i might want to ask you about the godzilla jesus chapter, especially since in the last couple of weeks, sort of bizarre religiosity of trump's, you know, explicit appeal, you know, in selling bibles and the address to the national religious broadcasters and just the, you know, to explain what seems to us sort of just laughed. well, really, you know, biblical illiteracy and, you know, just vulgar ism. how how it is that, you know, the great mystery of why it is, although some people have said there's no mystery at all. when you study evangelicals. why do evangelicals in increasingly large majorities find trump not just.

a candidate that they can use to advance their own agenda, but somebody who they regard kind of chosen and. yeah. yeah well, kind of. they do. right right. yes. well, charles darwin, great hero of the religious, wrote that we bear the stamp of our origin. and that statement applies is to the religious right, because there's a common misperception out there that the christian conservative movement began as oppositional toward abortion and maybe gay rights, but in reality, christian evangelicals voted the first time in large numbers for jimmy carter. in 76, they turned against him in 1980 and supported his opponent ronald reagan because

carter been aggressive in punishing christian elementary and secondary schools in the south that, refused to admit black, latino and native american students. so the religious right was born and and by way the religious right leaders all discussed this openly. randall balmer, who's one of the best historians of american christianity, he's written about this in a number of his books. this isn't something they tried to hide. they began as a move meant for racial segregation. so in some sense, it's that they would continue as a movement sort of resistance against. the integration of lgbt people, integration, people of color into all of sectors of society. and christianity's at the same

time christianity has morphed into this this muscular version scholar of american calls it jesus and john, that many wing evangelicals have convinced themselves that they need someone operates outside the bounds of christian ethics to win a victory for christian ethics and something else that's interesting that relates to the geography of the book and the cultural geography of the book is that traditional churches such as the lutheran one, in which i raised and that i write about are dying. while megachurches to grow and continue to their numbers. well, so many megachurches have become citadels of christian nationalism, whereas the corner communal charitable church is

struggling for members. so that's made american christianity much more aggressive, much more exclusionary, and much hostile in its political posture and its social comportment. yeah, and i should say that most megachurches are in exurbia. that's that started for very practical reasons. the land was cheap and there open spaces. it hard. it would be hard to build mega church in the middle of. yeah in the middle of chicago or a densely populated suburb. but they could build in an exurbia. but then there's another symbiosis at work in that these megachurches then act as a magnet for people to move to those towns because some of the megachurch members are very devoted and they they're not only on sunday but for mid-week and bible classes. so they move to that town or they move close to it, helping

to shift town in an even increasingly right wing direction. well, thank you. maybe the last question before you open up the question, do y'all the question of optimism? we talked to you in the book with a glimpse, a potential, and it kind of gathers together a bunch of other glimpses throughout the book. but how can we begin to assemble those glimpses into something like a motivation or a program or real sense of direction? because, you know the other part of reading the book was, you know, frequently think the direction things are going is sort of too far gone to. it's that we can't recapture that we can't back, that we can't continue to build on the progress that had been made because we have to spend so time fighting off the right. yeah. and that is, that is the frustrating part i'm going to get to part about hope because it's very important that is the frustrating part is that we spend so much of our time playing defense that it

colonizes and cannibalizes our political discourse and we're not talking about things like how to subsidize child or how to create a health care system that's more access able, affordable and equitable or how to make sure that people can get a bachelor's degree without having to spend 20 to 25 years making student loan payments. so that's the frustration of these culture and the right wing movement against democracy that we all have to guard against is it takes up precious time. we're not talking about climate change. we're not talking about other issues. but i would say that i mentioned jesse jackson once earlier. i once asked him how you end every speech you give the words, keep hope alive. and i, i listed to him myriad problems and crises have as a society and you say keep hope

alive every speech and you seem to mean it. you seem and he talked about the he had in his childhood was arrested the first time trying to check a out of a public library. he witnessed the assassination of martin luther king that was in his childhood but he mentioned that experience as well and he said i'll never forget when he said this. he said when you're climbing your way out of a hole, sometimes times you become so focused on the distance you have yet to climb that you forget to look over your shoulder, see how far you've already come. we've come so far as a country on of race, on issues of gender on issues of lgbtq acceptance and opportunities that we could continue, that we should use that as motivation to harness of that energy and replicate some

of those tactics and. work on the issues that still elude us. those issues of economic justice, the issues of making our democracy, more robust and, accessible and representational. and what it requires that, first of all, we have to vote. i know that there are many people who are cynical about voting and there are many people who are disappointed that we have this version. form in an alley that nobody wants, you know, like it's like the rematch. nobody wants to see. but if we if we don't vote, then we're essentially guarantee being our loss because then we're going to have to play defense against the trump or a gubernatorial administration. so voting is very important, not just on the national level.

one of the things i write about and i hope people take away from this book is that there's a necessity of at the local level. we see this come alive in technicolor in recent years with all of the book bands the book bands are happening at the the local town council, the county, the school. the only way to fight that is to get involved at the local level, at the county level, with the school board. so many of the most important battles that take place, as i quote, the great novelist james lee burke in the first line of the book happen, in places few people care about. so if you live in one of these places that few people about well, you care about that. your friends and neighbors care about that place. so you need to get involved moved in that place because that's exactly what the right wing is doing. that's why we see these astroturf organizations like

moms for liberty, and that's why we see steve bannon using his podcast to instruct his audience to get involved with the local election or the school board or the library, if they're doing it and the democrats, liberals, lefties, socialist, whatever you want to call, are not doing it, well then you're guaranteeing the outcome. and again, this militant movement against democracy, reactionary, reactive. it's only so aggressive and vociferous right now or vehement right now, i should say, because they don't the progress that they've seen take place. so we need to unite in an effort to advance and continue progress rather than withdrawing from the very practices and procedures

that made possible. okay. thank you. all right. questions for david. if you could look into the future and at time when trump is gone or irrelevant and the republic party regains its sanity. where do you see the people exurbia well, that's an interesting so first of all, i would say that doug did such an outstanding job tonight thank you very much. originally my interlocutor is supposed to be a guy named david ferris who wrote a book, the kids are all left and that is about how younger generations of americans are more progressive than any previous generation. they're more politically involved than previous generations, and that's unlikely

to change for a whole host of reasons that he documents and describes in the book. so that's another reason for hope. and that's another reason why will they vote? will they vote. that's the that's the big question. that's the big question. know that you know, joe isn't an exciting candidate to name the big race, but they should vote. if you're watching this, you should vote. but exurbia gore vidal wrote, it's bit of a cliche, but he wrote that a clock ticks only in one direction and exurbia is going to become like the rest of america. in fact, in some sense, it's already happening in. parts of rural america, all of discussion of rural america is about voters underlining and underscore a certain bias that exists in the media. but voters of now make between

25 and 30% of rural america. that's going to happen in exurbia well. the eat the will become more diverse and the people who are opposed to that diversity and opposed to the progressive politics that invites they're not going to have anywhere to go. so i think that the future is bright. if we can emerge this short term danger that currently presents itself against us and of the things that makes the short term so severe, is that the political system works to the advantage the current exurbia night. so we have an electoral college that more weight to land than voters. we have a skewed senatorial representative system. there are 3 million people who

live here in. that's more than both dakotas combined. and yet the dakotas have four senators in washington, d.c. illinois has only two. so there some major structural but culture. the united states of america is becoming an increasingly diverse and progressive polity. so that will an interesting collision. just maybe a follow up and perhaps a little of pushback on that. is i feel like just because trump leaves the scene doesn't mean trump is on leaves the scene. so i think, you know, the party has probably shifted to the right for the foreseeable future. and secondly, there there's a lot data polling out that biden

is losing just we can't just rely on diversity just having a non white electoral population necessarily leaning left. african-americans tend to be more socially conservative, perhaps same thing with hispanic americans. can't just rely on that. so how do we also shift the narrative, kind of get that back in without necessarily just assuming they're going to come back? that's that's a great question. so in no effort to duck or the question, i do think that biden has his own unique problems. we sometimes to forget that these political figures are individual roles and therefore they have individual problems or strengths or weaknesses. if if biden dropped out of the race months to a year ago, i think whatever. whoever would have replaced him

on the democratic side would be polling much right now, including with all of the groups that you mentioned. but i understand questions much deeper and broader than that. so i would say that, first of all, there are some things about the society that we've that are unsustainable. on easter, my wife and i were talking to my wife's niece who has a two young children and. she was talking about how the cost of daycare for the two young children is, what, $3,000 a month or something like that approximate. and this isn't anomalous. it's not like she's experiencing some fluke freak situation. so that's not sustainable end to your earlier about economics. there are people who are going to react adversely against and demand something different just out of necessity not necessarily

even out of a political sophisticated or political aptitude. it's just the feeling that we can longer live like this. we can no longer live with a crippling student debt. we can no longer live with going to the emergency, as i did, i had high blood pressure and then getting a bill for $3,000. and i was there for all of half an hour. so some of those those crises that descend upon people on a daily basis will bear political fruit. but what we need are democratic leaders who are willing to speak to those crises aggressively, but also speak to those crises aggressively in a way that doesn't cancel out issues of identity. because my fear is, is so often people create a binary choice in

we can talk about economics or we could talk about culture. we can talk about class or, we can talk about social groups. those issues go together hand in hand. if you're raising a a gay or transgender teenager right now in the state of florida and you're also having trouble paying for your health insurance, you're not going to live in a way that separates those two concerns. so we need leadership that meets the the moment by speaking in such a way that these issues are not contradictory but complex entry and i don't have the magic bullet for it i mean if i did i wouldn't be here be sitting in the oval office or something like that. but but that's what the future

demands in that we have to speak to people's actual lives. and we also have to see that. class. and you class in economics and sociology are all a piece of the same situation situation. and there's something there's something to your point. i mean, you are correct that many black be because of high levels of religiosity have some social conservatives. same with latino voters but they're also we act as if the maga movement isn't dangerous. but there's something pathetic about it as well. i and and it's it's maybe a

little risky to speak this way because you don't want to downplay the threat that it presents but when trump hawking the lee greenwood god bless the usa bible. i it's very difficult to imagine anyone who has actually read the bible or read any other book putting down the money to make that that purchase. if you're around anyone under the age of 40 as we are routinely it's very difficult to imagine anyone in that cohort out buying the lee greenwood god the usa bible there's there's a quality of punching against the wind with this movement that i if if if the democratic and if leftist organizers can politically suffocate it will be

difficult for them to come at least in the short term. but i say that because the united states of america history always moves in cycles, and these reactionary, paranoid pop pop up excuse me, these reactionary, paranoid pop up, and then put down and then something and they pop up again. so an ongoing battle, but there's something quixotic about all these right wing movements in that they're the source of. their defeat is built into it from the start. it's just a matter of people voting, their numbers in and getting involved. the national and local level. well i will say congratulations on the book. thank you. just before the conversation i had to cram read it over the last 24 hours. so i'm looking forward to rereading and lingering over