# Money, Lies, and God: with Katherine Stewart

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 19 Feb 2025, 45 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/64304127/podcast788_moneyliesgod.mp3

Author and investigative reporter Katherine Stewart has been doing a deep dive into the power players behind Trump's takover. Fascinating stuff. https://katherinestewart.me VIDEO of this conversation Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 1: made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 2: There is video of this conversation. I spoke with Catherine
[1:00] Speaker 2: Stewart after the election and before the inauguration, so we
[1:05] Speaker 2: recorded this before Trump had actually taken office. Everything that
[1:08] Speaker 2: we speak about is still monumentally relevant. She goes beyond
[1:13] Speaker 2: the headlines and really down into the lower layers, the
[1:16] Speaker 2: money players, the influencers, the half century effort for the
[1:22] Speaker 2: zealots and authoritarians and opportunists to get us where we
[1:25] Speaker 2: are today. But again, if you want to watch the video,
[1:29] Speaker 2: that YouTube link is in the description box of the show.
[1:41] Speaker 2: It was in December of twenty twenty two when Donald
[1:46] Speaker 2: Trump in full grievance mode about the twenty twenty election
[1:50] Speaker 2: suggested the termination of parts of the United States Constitution.
[1:56] Speaker 2: The Supreme Court, six conservative judges essentially gave Trump immunity
[2:02] Speaker 2: from criminal prosecution via quote conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.
[2:10] Speaker 2: Donald Trump is constantly being compared to history's authoritarians, from
[2:16] Speaker 2: Hitler to King David. The nation is I think just
[2:21] Speaker 2: largely split, maybe almost down the middle of the vote count.
[2:24] Speaker 2: Is any indication one side is warning about the dictator
[2:28] Speaker 2: and the oligarchs and the ransacking of democracy, and the
[2:33] Speaker 2: other side is cheering the great Savior who has come
[2:36] Speaker 2: to rescue America. Now, my friend, author and journalist Catherine
[2:41] Speaker 2: Stewart has been swimming these turbulent waters, and she has
[2:45] Speaker 2: a new book. It's called Money, Lies and God Inside
[2:50] Speaker 2: the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. Catherine, good to see
[2:55] Speaker 2: you again.
[2:56] Speaker 3: Great to see you again as well.
[2:58] Speaker 2: Big words, that's strong, I mean destroy destroy American democracy,
[3:04] Speaker 2: defend the subtitle.
[3:06] Speaker 3: Well, this book really is about the anti democratic political
[3:10] Speaker 3: movement in the United States. And as I show, this
[3:14] Speaker 3: movement draws on a range of actors, many of whom
[3:17] Speaker 3: would say mutually incompatible goal. So I First of all,
[3:22] Speaker 3: I titled the book Money Lies in God because money
[3:24] Speaker 3: is a huge part of the story, meaning that huge
[3:27] Speaker 3: concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system. And I
[3:31] Speaker 3: sort of explain how that has worked in different chapters
[3:34] Speaker 3: of the book. So I talk about lies or conscious disinformation.
[3:39] Speaker 3: That's another huge feature of the movement to destroy American democracy.
[3:42] Speaker 3: If you can get a large sector of the American
[3:45] Speaker 3: electorate cocooned in a kind of fact free propaganda sphere,
[3:50] Speaker 3: you can make our country less governable and less democratic.
[3:54] Speaker 2: I produced and released a sort of rant commentary called
[3:58] Speaker 2: History Will Not Forget. I was post election. I was pissed,
[4:03] Speaker 2: I was frustrated, and I said, you know, those people
[4:06] Speaker 2: who have enabled what is about to go down, and
[4:09] Speaker 2: what is going down? You know, I feel like one
[4:12] Speaker 2: day history is going to, at least in the abstract,
[4:16] Speaker 2: call you to account for this assault on democracy and decency.
[4:20] Speaker 2: And I got this phone call out of the blue
[4:23] Speaker 2: from someone that I hadn't talked to in a long time.
[4:26] Speaker 2: Trump voter, conservative evangelical, and she couldn't understand, well, I
[4:31] Speaker 2: don't understand. This doesn't sound like you. Why are you
[4:34] Speaker 2: so upset? And so I sort of did what I
[4:38] Speaker 2: thought I should do, and I went point by point
[4:41] Speaker 2: through some of the major problems, and she was stunned.
[4:46] Speaker 2: This was not the world that she lived in. You know,
[4:48] Speaker 2: I'm talking about the dismantling of the United States from
[4:52] Speaker 2: the top down, and in her mind it was this
[4:55] Speaker 2: man has come to represent us, the common foe, can
[5:00] Speaker 2: renovate the system, and he's the hero we need. She lives.
[5:05] Speaker 2: I mean, we don't share the same reality, that's what
[5:08] Speaker 2: you're talking about, correct, Yes, I think.
[5:11] Speaker 3: Most commentators simply do not appreciate the extent to which
[5:16] Speaker 3: the largest part, I would say, of Trump's base inhabits
[5:19] Speaker 3: a disinformation cocoon, and until we find a way to
[5:23] Speaker 3: pierce this kind of sheltered space, they will continue to
[5:27] Speaker 3: believe whatever is in the interests of the right wing
[5:30] Speaker 3: authoritarian movement for them to believe. So in my book,
[5:34] Speaker 3: I provide detail on how that disinformation sphere works. Or
[5:38] Speaker 3: you know, I think most people in the mainstream think
[5:41] Speaker 3: of the media. Often talk about the media as though
[5:44] Speaker 3: it's one thing, but it's not. It's actually quite fractured.
[5:46] Speaker 3: You have mainstream news outlets which are certainly imperfect, but
[5:51] Speaker 3: have to adhere to some kind of fact checking standards,
[5:54] Speaker 3: and then you have, like, you know, most people know
[5:56] Speaker 3: about Fox News and it's version of right wing program
[6:00] Speaker 3: They might also heard by the way of Sinclair News,
[6:03] Speaker 3: which has bought up a large number of local television
[6:05] Speaker 3: stations and echoes right wing talking points. But most people
[6:09] Speaker 3: who are not familiar with the Christian nationalist movement, for instance,
[6:14] Speaker 3: have little awareness of how many other channels through which
[6:17] Speaker 3: disinformation is able to colonize the right wing base, and
[6:21] Speaker 3: that ends up bleeding into other sectors of the electorate.
[6:24] Speaker 3: Christian broadcasting networks like EWTN, which reaches a conservative Catholic audience,
[6:30] Speaker 3: or groups like CBN and their programming. There's conservative Christian
[6:35] Speaker 3: popular culture industry like films and podcasts. There's AM radio,
[6:40] Speaker 3: and then of course there are these church networks where
[6:44] Speaker 3: conservative or conservative leaning pastors deliver highly politicized messages by
[6:49] Speaker 3: word of mouth, and there are these sort of information
[6:51] Speaker 3: spheres that built up around that. And I think that
[6:55] Speaker 3: the people like your friend who are on the receiving
[6:58] Speaker 3: end of these disinformation streams hold a large number of
[7:02] Speaker 3: views that I mean, there's no other way to put it.
[7:04] Speaker 3: They're demonstrably at odds with reasonable representations of reality. You know,
[7:10] Speaker 3: one of the chapters in Money Lies in God. I
[7:12] Speaker 3: stop on the Reawakened America tour. As you know, it's
[7:15] Speaker 3: a sort of pro MAGA traveling road show organized by
[7:19] Speaker 3: Mike Flynn and some of Trump's most trusted allies. One
[7:23] Speaker 3: of his sons usually shows up to speak, and they'll
[7:26] Speaker 3: say things like the pandemic was organized by you know,
[7:30] Speaker 3: the globalist deep state in order to enslave Americans who
[7:35] Speaker 3: they want to microchip and change their gender by force.
[7:38] Speaker 3: I mean, this kind of nonsense, and you know, I
[7:42] Speaker 3: think over the past fifteen plus years of researching this movement,
[7:45] Speaker 3: I have to conclude that it is fundamentally destructive or nihilistic,
[7:50] Speaker 3: and can really, you know, we can't understand our politics
[7:53] Speaker 3: today without understanding this broader anti democratic movement and how
[7:57] Speaker 3: it works.
[7:58] Speaker 2: I remember it was not long ago Elon Musk on
[8:02] Speaker 2: X is calling himself or X, the new media because
[8:05] Speaker 2: the legacy media has betrayed us, you know, they've all
[8:09] Speaker 2: sold out, et cetera. And so now he has come
[8:12] Speaker 2: to and I'm like, I don't think X is media,
[8:16] Speaker 2: but I am interested in the deep states. They are
[8:20] Speaker 2: coming for us. I've noticed whenever like Ryan Walters, who
[8:24] Speaker 2: is the tragic superintendent of public instruction in Oklahoma, who
[8:29] Speaker 2: echoes politicians in that culture. They don't just talk about
[8:32] Speaker 2: the left. It's always radical left. It's not liberals, it's
[8:37] Speaker 2: the liberal elites. This is purposeful, right.
[8:41] Speaker 3: Yeah it is. And the irony here is they vash elites.
[8:45] Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, they want to
[8:47] Speaker 3: create a new elite. And that's exactly what they're doing.
[8:50] Speaker 3: Trump is often perceived, as you know, or portrayed so
[8:54] Speaker 3: he's for the people, But what they're really creating is
[8:58] Speaker 3: a government of the billionaire. Look at who's putting in
[9:01] Speaker 3: his cabinet of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for
[9:04] Speaker 3: the billionaires. And then you have these billionaires like Musk
[9:06] Speaker 3: saying that Americans, ordinary Americans need to get ready for
[9:10] Speaker 3: a new period of austerity. So when they talk about
[9:13] Speaker 3: Trump promoting a sort of populist agenda, we should think
[9:16] Speaker 3: about that in the same way as we think about
[9:18] Speaker 3: people who are trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge right.
[9:21] Speaker 3: Give me a break. Trump is creating a government that
[9:24] Speaker 3: is going to serve those who are members of his
[9:28] Speaker 3: small privileged class and their allies and anyone, you know,
[9:33] Speaker 3: ordinary folks who think they're going to get in on
[9:35] Speaker 3: the action, frankly, have been sold a false bill of goods. Already.
[9:40] Speaker 3: He's talking about eliminating certain rights for the workforce, deregulation,
[9:45] Speaker 3: stuff that's going to actually encourage the sort of accumulate
[9:49] Speaker 3: and justify massive accumulations of wealth. In my book, I
[9:53] Speaker 3: talk about how one of the ways that this works is,
[9:56] Speaker 3: you know, there's sort of vast concentrations of wealth that
[9:59] Speaker 3: we've seen over the past decades have created. Listen, there
[10:02] Speaker 3: are a lot of very rich people in America, and
[10:04] Speaker 3: they're not all on the right, but people on the
[10:07] Speaker 3: right have huge amounts of money to devote to what is,
[10:10] Speaker 3: at the end of the day, the destruction of our democracy.
[10:13] Speaker 3: And by the way, they're not all Christian, and some
[10:16] Speaker 3: of them are not. You know, some of them certainly
[10:18] Speaker 3: want to promote Christian nationalist ideas, but when you really
[10:21] Speaker 3: dig into what they want, they seem more interested in
[10:25] Speaker 3: policies that are going to eliminate taxes or reduce taxes
[10:29] Speaker 3: for the very rich justify massive accumulations of wealth. They
[10:33] Speaker 3: have these very i would say libertarian ideas about the economy,
[10:37] Speaker 3: and they want to eliminate rights for the workforce. So
[10:40] Speaker 3: if you look at somebody like Barryside, right, he's a
[10:43] Speaker 3: Jewish Chicago billionaire who donated one point six billion dollars
[10:48] Speaker 3: to create something called the Marble Freedom Trust. It's the
[10:51] Speaker 3: largest political donation in the history of our country. And
[10:55] Speaker 3: guess who we put in charge of it. Leonard Leo,
[10:58] Speaker 3: who is like the money and of the religious right,
[11:01] Speaker 3: has played an outsized role in shaping the courts in
[11:04] Speaker 3: the way that like the Supreme Court and also lower
[11:07] Speaker 3: courts in order to privilege conservative, largely Christian perspectives. And
[11:13] Speaker 3: you know, Leonard Leo has a very particular perspective in
[11:16] Speaker 3: our society. He recognized years ago that the policies that
[11:21] Speaker 3: he wants would be vastly unpopular among the rank and fallity. Thought, well,
[11:25] Speaker 3: if you can get control of the courts, you can
[11:27] Speaker 3: impose things on the country that frankly, most people don't want,
[11:30] Speaker 3: for instance, the total elimination of all abortions nationwide. Now, frankly,
[11:36] Speaker 3: most Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support abortion rights
[11:41] Speaker 3: at least in some form, and most Americans call themselves
[11:44] Speaker 3: pro choice. Leondard Leo think this is appalling. And by
[11:48] Speaker 3: the way, the way he describes abortion as any time
[11:51] Speaker 3: after an igana sperm unite and create, I think it's
[11:55] Speaker 3: called a diploid zygote. Most you know, birth control, some
[11:58] Speaker 3: birth control pills, some forms of IUD prevent implantation. But
[12:03] Speaker 3: he thinks once that, you know, once you get this
[12:05] Speaker 3: deployed zygote, that's it, you know. And so the agenda
[12:10] Speaker 3: that they have is radically anti democratic.
[12:13] Speaker 2: Okay, Well, you wrote in The Power Worshippers, which was
[12:15] Speaker 2: a book that released a few years ago, about the
[12:18] Speaker 2: weaponization of Christianity by people who may or may not
[12:21] Speaker 2: be Christians, but they understood the political power of the
[12:25] Speaker 2: evangelical rights. And that's what you're talking I mean, to
[12:27] Speaker 2: a degree, you're talking about people who they get it.
[12:30] Speaker 2: There's a massive demographic and if they speak to them,
[12:34] Speaker 2: even if they're not true believers, then that's it's a
[12:37] Speaker 2: weapon to wield power. Right.
[12:39] Speaker 3: Well, it's the most reliable slice of the Republican vote
[12:43] Speaker 3: and the sort of rank and file of the Christian
[12:46] Speaker 3: nationalist movement. It's not just Evandelicals, by the way, it's
[12:49] Speaker 3: a sector of conservative Catholics as well. They are sort
[12:53] Speaker 3: of fundamental to the movement. But yes, this is the
[12:56] Speaker 3: most reliable slice of the Republican vote. And religious right
[13:00] Speaker 3: leaders and their sort of political allies recognized that if
[13:03] Speaker 3: you can get this one sector of the American public
[13:07] Speaker 3: to vote in disproportionate numbers, you can punch above your
[13:11] Speaker 3: political weight. So they have, you know, played an enormous
[13:15] Speaker 3: role in mobilizing this sector of the electorate, and they
[13:20] Speaker 3: mobilize them in disproportionate numbers. Look in a country where
[13:23] Speaker 3: forty to fifty percent of people don't vote right, and
[13:26] Speaker 3: a certain number of people have their vote sort of
[13:30] Speaker 3: degraded or even sort of stolen from them through jerrymandering,
[13:33] Speaker 3: voter suppression, the closure of voting places in democratic leaning districts,
[13:40] Speaker 3: et cetera. You don't need a majority of the public
[13:43] Speaker 3: to win an election. You just need a disproportionately mobilized minority.
[13:48] Speaker 2: Catherine Stewart, I thought January sixth would turn the tide.
[13:53] Speaker 2: I mean, how naive again, am I just must be
[13:55] Speaker 2: a babe in the woods because I thought, oh my god,
[13:58] Speaker 2: you know, zelous blowing show fars as they walk around
[14:02] Speaker 2: the Capitol and Confederate flags and tear gas and smashing
[14:07] Speaker 2: of windows and the assault on police and people killed,
[14:12] Speaker 2: you know, Congress people including our own Mark Wayne Mullen,
[14:15] Speaker 2: who dismisses January sixth, and there's great video of him
[14:18] Speaker 2: and he looks terrified, you know. And I thought, after this,
[14:22] Speaker 2: after this tragically historic moment, people will wake from their
[14:26] Speaker 2: coma eh nothing. I mean, I just in my culture here,
[14:32] Speaker 2: it's eh, you know whatever. Donald Trump calls it a
[14:36] Speaker 2: day of love. He called the people involved beautiful. You
[14:40] Speaker 2: said you're beautiful. Did you think the insurrection would change
[14:43] Speaker 2: the game.
[14:45] Speaker 3: That's quite a question. I mean, I have, you know,
[14:48] Speaker 3: been writing about this movement for you know, over three books,
[14:53] Speaker 3: and I've been researching it for about fifteen or sixteen years,
[14:58] Speaker 3: and I think it was shocking.
[15:02] Speaker 2: Frank, you can say you were smarter than I am.
[15:06] Speaker 3: You can go I'm not going to say what smarter
[15:08] Speaker 3: you are. And I could never see, you know, I've
[15:11] Speaker 3: never been able to predict. I thought there was a moment,
[15:14] Speaker 3: and there was a moment when I thought some of
[15:17] Speaker 3: the leaders of the moment were really going to dial
[15:19] Speaker 3: back their support. But I would have to say the
[15:24] Speaker 3: pace with which the dominoes fell was absolutely shocking to me.
[15:28] Speaker 3: I would not have predicted that the entire Republican apparatus
[15:33] Speaker 3: would get in line with this sort of this program,
[15:37] Speaker 3: this transparently insurrectionist program. It's, you know, one of the
[15:42] Speaker 3: most serious crimes against a democracy and against the constitution
[15:47] Speaker 3: that you can imagine a former president or a president committing. Right.
[15:52] Speaker 3: But the wheels have clearly fallen off the Republican Party.
[15:56] Speaker 3: There were a few Republican voices that said, wait a second,
[15:59] Speaker 3: we need to look at what has happened and make
[16:01] Speaker 3: sure that that never happens again, and they were quickly sidelined,
[16:06] Speaker 3: and everybody got in line. And I think that speaks
[16:10] Speaker 3: to the fundamental power of this movement. It's been built
[16:13] Speaker 3: up over decades of investment in infrastructure. Now I think
[16:17] Speaker 3: many of its supporters don't recognize that American democracy, that
[16:21] Speaker 3: the movement leaders think that American democracy needs to be destroyed,
[16:26] Speaker 3: but others simply don't care. It's more important for them
[16:29] Speaker 3: to put a strong man in power who can advance
[16:32] Speaker 3: what they see as the correct policies, against which they're
[16:36] Speaker 3: always saying is a dangerous radical left anyone that is
[16:39] Speaker 3: not completely aligned with what they're saying, including properly conservative
[16:43] Speaker 3: Republicans is considered radical left Marxist or even sometimes cast
[16:49] Speaker 3: as demonic and satanic under the control of Satan.
[16:53] Speaker 2: I'm interested in authoritarianism though, and this may be out
[16:57] Speaker 2: of the lane that we're in today, but coming out
[17:00] Speaker 2: fundamental Christianity, we were trained to respond to an authoritarian
[17:05] Speaker 2: God and then God's proxies. You know, if God appoints
[17:09] Speaker 2: the Great Savior and he's come to rescue us all,
[17:14] Speaker 2: and he's part of divine destiny, then who cares if
[17:16] Speaker 2: the Constitution gets dismantled? Who cares if he has to
[17:19] Speaker 2: break a few eggs to make the omelet he has
[17:22] Speaker 2: come to, you know, as part of God's revolution. And
[17:25] Speaker 2: so then my concern for the law of man goes
[17:29] Speaker 2: away because I'm convinced the authoritarian is enacting the laws
[17:33] Speaker 2: of God. Can you speak to any of that or
[17:35] Speaker 2: is that sort of out of it?
[17:38] Speaker 3: I mean, you hear in those spaces, you know, the
[17:41] Speaker 3: sort of affinity for a king. Trump is often referred
[17:45] Speaker 3: to as a Cyrus or a David, you know, an
[17:48] Speaker 3: imperfect ruler that God chose to enact as well. I mean,
[17:51] Speaker 3: this is the thing about kings They're not kings of democracies.
[17:54] Speaker 3: They are the law unto themselves. And you hear a
[17:58] Speaker 3: lot of movement leaders in the christ Nationalists base at
[18:01] Speaker 3: least often talking about how I'm working for the Kingdom
[18:05] Speaker 3: of God first, and the constitution and our democracy clearly
[18:09] Speaker 3: comes second. You know, there's a sector of the movement,
[18:13] Speaker 3: and not all of it, by the way, is Christian nationalist.
[18:16] Speaker 3: That is, like, I'm speaking specifically about a sector of
[18:19] Speaker 3: the movement called the New Right, which is i would
[18:22] Speaker 3: say less explicitly Christian nationalist and less explicitly religious, at
[18:28] Speaker 3: least among many of the thinkers of the leaders of
[18:30] Speaker 3: that sector of the anti democratic movement, but more explicitly
[18:35] Speaker 3: anti democratic. They hate our liberal democracy and its principles.
[18:40] Speaker 3: They want us smash it. They have no respect for
[18:42] Speaker 3: the institutions of value that have served us over time,
[18:46] Speaker 3: and they want to do that precisely because they want
[18:50] Speaker 3: themselves to be a new elite that is going to
[18:54] Speaker 3: lead to the rise of a frankly new plutocracy and
[18:57] Speaker 3: new leaders.
[18:58] Speaker 2: In your book, you actually marry the new right in
[19:01] Speaker 2: Christian nationalism. You call it power couple.
[19:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I call the new Right and the
[19:06] Speaker 3: Christian nationalist movement, the power couple of American authoritarianism. They
[19:12] Speaker 3: don't have the same goals necessarily. I think the goals
[19:15] Speaker 3: of religious right leaders are more explicitly theocratic, and the
[19:19] Speaker 3: goals of some of the new right leaders are more
[19:21] Speaker 3: explicitly about creating a new elite. Some of them are
[19:25] Speaker 3: very libertarian in their economic policies that they want to
[19:28] Speaker 3: bring about, Others a more authoritarian. But these people are
[19:33] Speaker 3: sort of swimming in the same boat, as it were.
[19:35] Speaker 3: But there are fishures which I describe in my book,
[19:38] Speaker 3: and I think those could be exploited in order to
[19:41] Speaker 3: sort of eventually weaken the power of this movement.
[19:46] Speaker 2: More with Catherine Stewart about Money, Lies and God. Our
[19:51] Speaker 2: conversation continues next. My friend Catherine Stewart joins us this week.
[20:04] Speaker 2: Her work has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NPR,
[20:09] Speaker 2: and beyond. Her book, The Power Worshipers was actually the
[20:14] Speaker 2: inspiration for the Rob Reiner produced film God and Country,
[20:20] Speaker 2: and she's got a new book called Money, Lies and God.
[20:25] Speaker 2: One of the things I am hearing is We're not
[20:28] Speaker 2: a democracy, we are a republic. Donald Trump wants to
[20:32] Speaker 2: return us to the original vision of the founders to
[20:35] Speaker 2: be a republic. Often when I asked them to define republic,
[20:39] Speaker 2: they give me a blank look. But do you want
[20:43] Speaker 2: to speak to democracy versus a republic? The argument that's
[20:46] Speaker 2: being made.
[20:47] Speaker 3: We are democratic republic, But you know what they're really
[20:52] Speaker 3: trying to do is downgrade democracy itself.
[20:56] Speaker 2: I was reading about the definitions back when the country
[20:59] Speaker 2: was founded. Democracy was it kind of meant something. They
[21:03] Speaker 2: felt it meant more mob rule. At the time, it
[21:06] Speaker 2: was a little more I don't know, chaotic where republic
[21:10] Speaker 2: the Republicans, And yet those Republicans that were only less
[21:15] Speaker 2: than thirty thousand people, white men, voting for a populace
[21:20] Speaker 2: of three million people, and then just a few male
[21:23] Speaker 2: elite Republicans were enacting laws and kind of managing the
[21:27] Speaker 2: whole country. I mean, the early version of the Republic
[21:31] Speaker 2: was white and male and relatively privileged, and then those
[21:35] Speaker 2: terms sort of evolved as the cultures evolved. And I
[21:38] Speaker 2: don't know, I just find the whole republic democracy conversation
[21:42] Speaker 2: it's vague and it's kind of weird, and it's often
[21:45] Speaker 2: difficult to know how to approach it.
[21:46] Speaker 3: Catherine, People are meaning different things when they use those terms.
[21:49] Speaker 3: But here's the important thing. The founders were very much
[21:52] Speaker 3: product of their time. But the idea is that they
[21:55] Speaker 3: have the idea of a government of the people, by
[21:57] Speaker 3: the people, and for the people. It is a beautiful idea,
[22:00] Speaker 3: the idea that we should be a nation governed upon
[22:03] Speaker 3: laws that everyone has to obey, including the president, including
[22:07] Speaker 3: our governing officials, which are elected by the people in
[22:10] Speaker 3: free and fair elections. These are beautiful ideas, and their
[22:14] Speaker 3: ideas that say something about, you know, what has made
[22:17] Speaker 3: America special in the past and what has led us
[22:20] Speaker 3: to the sort of types of successes that we've enjoyed
[22:23] Speaker 3: and benefited from. Our country has never been perfect. Nothing
[22:28] Speaker 3: is perfect, but you know, these are ideals to continue
[22:31] Speaker 3: to work toward. But you know the way that the
[22:35] Speaker 3: movement leaders in Christian Nationalists movement sees it is not
[22:39] Speaker 3: government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
[22:42] Speaker 3: It's government of the righteous against the vermin right, which
[22:47] Speaker 3: is an internal enemy. This is something we're always hearing
[22:50] Speaker 3: at Trump rallies or among movement leaders. They describe people
[22:54] Speaker 3: who are not in line with their very particular vision
[22:57] Speaker 3: as being not just hostile to it or not just
[23:00] Speaker 3: people who are decent people and you know, loyal opposition
[23:03] Speaker 3: that have the best goals in mind for our country,
[23:06] Speaker 3: just different ideas about how to get there. We're hearing
[23:09] Speaker 3: increasing talk about how people who are not in line
[23:12] Speaker 3: with their vision. Any democrat or even a Rhino is
[23:15] Speaker 3: what they call a republican name only as under the
[23:19] Speaker 3: control of Satan or demonic or satanic. They're often described
[23:23] Speaker 3: into humanizing terms. You know, I've had the unfortunate opportunity
[23:27] Speaker 3: to see Trump speak any number of times, and every
[23:31] Speaker 3: single speech he says something along the lines of the
[23:34] Speaker 3: greatest enemy we face today is not our foreign enemies,
[23:38] Speaker 3: as dangerous as they may be. The greatest enemy we
[23:41] Speaker 3: face is the internal enemy, the enemy within. This is
[23:45] Speaker 3: what authoritarian leaders always do. They identify scapegoats, sometimes large
[23:51] Speaker 3: sectors of the public over which they're trying to establish
[23:55] Speaker 3: authoritarian rule. They're creating your other, an outsider, or you're inside,
[24:00] Speaker 3: or you're with us, or you're against us, you're pure
[24:02] Speaker 3: or impure, and that divides the country, makes it less governable,
[24:07] Speaker 3: and that creates the way for a strong man, an
[24:10] Speaker 3: opportunity for a strong man to come in and say,
[24:13] Speaker 3: you know, I loan can fix this chaos. And by
[24:16] Speaker 3: the way, I think one thing that we're facing that's
[24:20] Speaker 3: deeply disturbing about the current political moment is that, you know,
[24:24] Speaker 3: this is the movement that has created that we're on
[24:26] Speaker 3: the verge of a total apocalypse. They're always promoting these
[24:30] Speaker 3: lies that you know, all Democrats from Marxists, and they
[24:33] Speaker 3: want to change your kid's gender against your will and
[24:36] Speaker 3: the public goals and all this kind of nonsense. They're
[24:38] Speaker 3: killing babies after they're born, all of these lies. These
[24:41] Speaker 3: are total lies. They say, you know, January sixth was
[24:44] Speaker 3: a gathering of love. Stuff that's patently false, right, But
[24:49] Speaker 3: by doing so, they're creating this sense of permanent emergency.
[24:53] Speaker 3: We're on the verb of an apocalypse and if you're
[24:56] Speaker 3: not staying with us, you know, it's all going to
[24:58] Speaker 3: go to hell. And so that that's why we need
[25:00] Speaker 3: to suspend the rules and put our faith in a
[25:03] Speaker 3: leader who's going to suspend those rules and he's going
[25:06] Speaker 3: to break the laws and you know, violate the Constitution,
[25:09] Speaker 3: do everything that's necessary in order to save us. And
[25:13] Speaker 3: this is what I think we can expect in an
[25:16] Speaker 3: incoming Trump administration, is this total creation you know, perpetuation
[25:21] Speaker 3: of this sense of permanent emergency. Trump's policies, by the way,
[25:26] Speaker 3: are not going to solve the problems that a lot
[25:29] Speaker 3: of the people who voted for him were hoping to solve.
[25:32] Speaker 3: They are going to perpetuate a lot of the economic
[25:35] Speaker 3: grievance that you know, some of it is legitimate, but
[25:39] Speaker 3: it doesn't have to do with a lot of these
[25:42] Speaker 3: things weren't necessarily bide his fault. They have to do
[25:44] Speaker 3: with larger macroeconomic factors. Trump came in and said, I'm
[25:48] Speaker 3: going to lower the price of eggs. Well, I don't
[25:51] Speaker 3: think we should be able to count on that, but
[25:52] Speaker 3: you can predict that Trump will continue to blame those
[25:57] Speaker 3: who are against him politically and say they're the ones
[25:59] Speaker 3: who are possible for whatever problem he is causing, and
[26:03] Speaker 3: then using that narrative of a permanent emergency to continue
[26:07] Speaker 3: to sort of consolidate authoritarian rule.
[26:10] Speaker 2: Catherine, my friend, I'm trying to picture you in a
[26:13] Speaker 2: Trump rally. When he starts doing the weave, it just
[26:17] Speaker 2: drifts off into oblivion. It happened, did you find yourself?
[26:21] Speaker 3: Honest? It's like, oh my god, the guy can just
[26:23] Speaker 3: talk and talk and he starts rambling. It's so interesting,
[26:26] Speaker 3: except feel like the first like ten to fifteen minutes
[26:29] Speaker 3: it's sort of coherent, and then you've got an hour
[26:32] Speaker 3: of just this drivel, and then the last ten minutes
[26:36] Speaker 3: he'll pull it together again, and I'm like, did he
[26:38] Speaker 3: have the first you know, ten to fifteen minutes on
[26:41] Speaker 3: a teleprompter? Then he just goes off in a tangent,
[26:45] Speaker 3: and then you got teleprompter for the last ten minutes.
[26:47] Speaker 3: I don't really know how it.
[26:48] Speaker 2: Works, but I've had I've come to the point where
[26:50] Speaker 2: I have to read a transcript of whatever he said,
[26:54] Speaker 2: because just listening I get frustrated and I find myself
[26:58] Speaker 2: just going what is happening? At least in text form,
[27:01] Speaker 2: I can go through it at my own pace. You
[27:04] Speaker 2: mentioned disinformation. I'm reminded of the book came out fifteen
[27:08] Speaker 2: years ago, The Merchants of Doubt, which talked about how
[27:11] Speaker 2: big tobacco and major industries that were big polluters. One
[27:16] Speaker 2: of the strategies was not necessarily just to go out
[27:19] Speaker 2: and lie, but to muddy the waters. Well, you know,
[27:22] Speaker 2: we don't know cigarettes may be bad or not bad,
[27:25] Speaker 2: and hasn't really been proven. It's not definitive, but you know,
[27:28] Speaker 2: don't trust it. Disinformation is one thing, but selling doubt
[27:32] Speaker 2: that's a strategy as well.
[27:33] Speaker 3: Right absolutely. I mean it's frankly a subset I would say,
[27:37] Speaker 3: of the chaos strategy. It's, you know, whether by instinct
[27:41] Speaker 3: or design, I would say, Trump governs by chaos, and
[27:45] Speaker 3: no part of creating that chaos has to do with
[27:48] Speaker 3: interfering with knowledge or the truth. So he tosses out
[27:50] Speaker 3: these contradictory arguments and positions over and over, like by
[27:55] Speaker 3: the bucket, just like saying all this stuff, and he
[27:59] Speaker 3: watches people screw surry around sort of playing whack a mole,
[28:02] Speaker 3: trying to fact check the latest nonsense he said. And
[28:05] Speaker 3: by the time they fact checked it, he's like put
[28:08] Speaker 3: out another ten lies, and then he moves on to
[28:10] Speaker 3: do whatever he wants to do next. And that's part
[28:14] Speaker 3: of a strategy of creating that sense of chaos, a
[28:17] Speaker 3: sort of fire hose of disinformation that frankly disinformed so
[28:21] Speaker 3: much of the public and makes our country so much
[28:24] Speaker 3: less governable.
[28:25] Speaker 2: Speaking here with Catherine Stewart. She is a reporter and
[28:29] Speaker 2: an author of several books, including The New and Money
[28:32] Speaker 2: Lies and God Inside the movement to destroy American democracy,
[28:36] Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five. This is the product of a
[28:40] Speaker 2: long time with a lot of major players, lots of
[28:43] Speaker 2: big money behind the scenes, nine hundred pages. It's a
[28:47] Speaker 2: blueprint for Christianizing the country. I don't know would that
[28:50] Speaker 2: be how you'd frame Project twenty twenty.
[28:53] Speaker 3: Really it's you know, there are a lot of different
[28:55] Speaker 3: agendas baked into that Project twenty twenty five. Part of
[28:58] Speaker 3: it is again diminishing the strength of some of our
[29:02] Speaker 3: most democratic institutions, like public education. And you know, they
[29:06] Speaker 3: talk about replacing tens of thousands of loyal and often
[29:10] Speaker 3: you know, very well educated in their areas civil servants
[29:14] Speaker 3: and replacing them with magal loyaltists, like subjecting federal employees
[29:18] Speaker 3: to a magal loyalty test. There's nothing more authoritarian than that,
[29:22] Speaker 3: and that's going to diminish the effectiveness of our government
[29:25] Speaker 3: because magal loyalness. I don't know if you've noticed, but
[29:28] Speaker 3: they're not always the most competent people in the well.
[29:33] Speaker 2: Let me jump in here if I may, Because Trump
[29:35] Speaker 2: then goes forward, he's trying to get in front of
[29:37] Speaker 2: it pre election and he says, that's not my thing.
[29:40] Speaker 2: I mean they're doing twenty twenty five over here, But
[29:42] Speaker 2: I didn't write it. I'm not endorsing it. I'm not
[29:45] Speaker 2: beholden to it. And then you start to see, like
[29:48] Speaker 2: Russell Vote, he pulls in for Management and Budget, Tom Homan,
[29:53] Speaker 2: his borders are Stephen Miller, Deputy of Policy. They're all
[29:56] Speaker 2: wired in with Project twenty twenty five directly. But I guess,
[30:00] Speaker 2: is he trying plausible deniability? How much do you think
[30:03] Speaker 2: he's weaponized And this is subjective opinion, but how much
[30:06] Speaker 2: do you think he's weaponized it with plausible deniability to
[30:09] Speaker 2: help shield himself?
[30:11] Speaker 3: I mean, have we ever seen him lie before? Let's
[30:15] Speaker 3: not forget me. Let's not forget for a minute. Trump
[30:18] Speaker 3: was found guilty already of thirty four felonies. He's been
[30:21] Speaker 3: charged with some of the most serious crimes a president
[30:24] Speaker 3: can imagine committing. So the election, by the way, appears
[30:28] Speaker 3: to have secured it for him, an acquittal from our
[30:31] Speaker 3: legal system. But it doesn't equit him from the facts.
[30:34] Speaker 3: It doesn't equit him from the judgment of history. So
[30:38] Speaker 3: we now have to grapple with the fact that a
[30:40] Speaker 3: president has been set where a president apparently can get
[30:43] Speaker 3: away with not just lies, but crimes against the constitution,
[30:47] Speaker 3: crimes against the people, crimes against our laws. Provided he
[30:51] Speaker 3: wins an election. It's again a perfect recipe for authoritarianism
[30:56] Speaker 3: in the future, and the lies are the least of it.
[30:59] Speaker 2: All right, Well, as you're researching and writing the book,
[31:01] Speaker 2: give me some epiphanies or you know, some specific things
[31:04] Speaker 2: that some you know, aha moments that we as the
[31:07] Speaker 2: reader will benefit from. You know, how, will give me
[31:11] Speaker 2: something that wasn't in the Power Worshippers if you would.
[31:14] Speaker 3: Well, there's a lot in this book that wasn't in
[31:16] Speaker 3: Power Worshippers. I mean the Powershippers really focused on the
[31:20] Speaker 3: Christian nationalist movement much more narrowly. This book is centered
[31:24] Speaker 3: on the bigger question, which is where did this authoritarian
[31:27] Speaker 3: movement come from? And how does it work? And yes,
[31:30] Speaker 3: Christian nationalism is a big piece of that. But I
[31:33] Speaker 3: get into some of the newer features, concentrations of wealth,
[31:37] Speaker 3: the rise of new plutocracy. I show how very explicitly,
[31:40] Speaker 3: how you know, people talk about white evangelicals, that's really
[31:44] Speaker 3: only a part of the movement. The movement does extend
[31:46] Speaker 3: into conservative Catholics, Charismatics, and some people of color. I mean,
[31:51] Speaker 3: we look at the Latino vote in particular, who are like,
[31:53] Speaker 3: why did Latinos shift so much from twenty sixteen to
[31:56] Speaker 3: twenty twenty four. Will I explain in very great detail
[32:00] Speaker 3: how that happened. Part of it has to do with
[32:03] Speaker 3: conservative Latino pastors being drawn into explicitly Latino pastor networks
[32:09] Speaker 3: and given sets of talking points in order to turn
[32:12] Speaker 3: out their congregations to vote. Also, you know, in this
[32:15] Speaker 3: new book draw connections with intellectual movements that are also
[32:19] Speaker 3: not overtly committed. I would say to Christian nationalism and
[32:24] Speaker 3: the Christian religion, I'm thinking explicitly about the new right,
[32:27] Speaker 3: and I talk a little bit about those the ideologies,
[32:30] Speaker 3: and I also put I would say in this new
[32:32] Speaker 3: book some emphasis on the international aspect of the movement,
[32:36] Speaker 3: the way authoritarianism in the US feeds off of and
[32:40] Speaker 3: in turn contributes to authoritarian movements overseas well.
[32:44] Speaker 2: When you say new rights, like, I'm hearing a lot
[32:48] Speaker 2: of moderate Republicans lament the death of the Party of Lincoln.
[32:52] Speaker 2: This is not the Republican Party as it should be.
[32:55] Speaker 2: This is now the cult of Trump or the Party
[32:57] Speaker 2: of Trump. Is that what you mean by new right?
[33:00] Speaker 3: The New Right is a group of people that are
[33:04] Speaker 3: I call many of them the thinkers in the book.
[33:07] Speaker 3: They call us around think tanks such as the Claremont Institute.
[33:12] Speaker 3: Some of them draw very explicitly on thinkers in our past,
[33:16] Speaker 3: like for instance, Karl Schmidt, a Nazi political theorist. Others
[33:20] Speaker 3: draw from other progenitors that have to do with other
[33:24] Speaker 3: fascist political movements. And some of them are quite religious
[33:28] Speaker 3: in their aims, but some of them are not. Some
[33:30] Speaker 3: of them are frankly essentially libertarian, and in some ways
[33:34] Speaker 3: they're like the whispers of a sector of this movement.
[33:37] Speaker 3: Look at someone like JD. Vance Right, he is actually
[33:40] Speaker 3: a kind of perfect representative of the New Right. He
[33:43] Speaker 3: is very much tied to some of these essentially libertarian
[33:47] Speaker 3: funders like Peter Tiel, but he also is very connected
[33:51] Speaker 3: to Kevin Roberts, who is head of the Heritage Foundation,
[33:55] Speaker 3: which coordinated Project twenty twenty five. So he sort of
[33:58] Speaker 3: tied into those different groups of not only funders, but
[34:01] Speaker 3: also thinkers and strategists. And when you look at Project
[34:06] Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, you're not just getting a religious nationalist agenda.
[34:10] Speaker 3: You're also getting agenda, an agenda that really has a
[34:14] Speaker 3: kind of Yes. Of course, there's a very religious nationalist
[34:18] Speaker 3: to overlay to it. But you're also getting very different
[34:21] Speaker 3: ideas about how our government should be run, how it
[34:24] Speaker 3: should be populated, and which institutions should be strengthened and
[34:28] Speaker 3: which institutions should be totally destroyed.
[34:31] Speaker 2: I'm hearing some speculations that the Heritage Foundation types are,
[34:36] Speaker 2: you know, they're like secretly hoping Trump is not long
[34:39] Speaker 2: for this world because Vance is their guy, right, he'll
[34:43] Speaker 2: go in and do all the stump that Trump is
[34:45] Speaker 2: at least publicly denying.
[34:47] Speaker 3: I don't know, that's absolutely they don't need Trump. They
[34:51] Speaker 3: really don't as long as they've got like their guy
[34:54] Speaker 3: in the driver's seat, and then he will do whatever
[34:57] Speaker 3: whatever they want, and Vance would do whatever they want. Absolutely.
[35:00] Speaker 2: Well, let me let me throw this back to I mean.
[35:03] Speaker 3: Just just say one thing. I mean, the thing that
[35:05] Speaker 3: Trump has done for them is he has broken a
[35:07] Speaker 3: lot of norms, you know, a lot of norms because
[35:11] Speaker 3: he's just like a bull in a china shop. He's
[35:14] Speaker 3: been a bull in the china shop of our democracy
[35:16] Speaker 3: and the institutions that have served us over value. People
[35:20] Speaker 3: don't often talk about manners, but I actually think, you know,
[35:23] Speaker 3: sort of social norms can be really important. You know,
[35:27] Speaker 3: he's sort of blown through all the guard rails and
[35:30] Speaker 3: he's broken a lot. He's you know, really inflicted a
[35:32] Speaker 3: lot of damage on our democracy already.
[35:35] Speaker 2: Catherine, do you find that people who are making analogies
[35:39] Speaker 2: correlations to nineteen thirties Germany you feel like that they're
[35:43] Speaker 2: being unfair? Is that hyperbole?
[35:45] Speaker 3: I think there are nuances specific to different historical periods,
[35:50] Speaker 3: and we can't allide those. So we can look at
[35:53] Speaker 3: fascist movements, whether it's Stalinism or Mussolini, or whether it's
[35:58] Speaker 3: the you know, Nazis, or whether it's Salazar, or whether
[36:01] Speaker 3: it's Putin in Russia or to some degree, orbon and Hungary.
[36:05] Speaker 3: We can look at these kinds of I wouldn't you know,
[36:08] Speaker 3: orbon is sort of more of a soft authoritarianism, although
[36:12] Speaker 3: sort of setting aside what he has done and what
[36:15] Speaker 3: he hasn't done. We can look at these different places
[36:18] Speaker 3: where authoritarian rule has been consolidated and we can draw
[36:21] Speaker 3: some parallels, but there are a lot of differences. I mean,
[36:24] Speaker 3: what we're looking at is happening in a distinctly American
[36:27] Speaker 3: context and in the context of our.
[36:29] Speaker 2: Time one more short break. We continue with author and
[36:35] Speaker 2: journalist Catherine Stewart in just a moment. Thank you for
[36:46] Speaker 2: your support. Paitreon is a great way to keep this
[36:51] Speaker 2: host doing what he does. It just makes a big difference.
[36:55] Speaker 2: You can decide how much you want to support and
[36:58] Speaker 2: for how long, and the way side is paytreon dot
[37:02] Speaker 2: com slash Seth Andrew's talking here with my guest, author
[37:08] Speaker 2: and journalist Catherine Stewart. I'm also seeing a lot of
[37:12] Speaker 2: Handmaid's Tale memes and references. How much of this is
[37:17] Speaker 2: the patriarchy? How much of this is a woman belongs
[37:20] Speaker 2: in the home secondary to the man, and the men
[37:22] Speaker 2: make all the major decisions about the woman kind of
[37:25] Speaker 2: the Old Testament New Testament model for how women function
[37:29] Speaker 2: in societies. Handmaid's Tale. Is that too big a stretch
[37:34] Speaker 2: for you? What do you think?
[37:35] Speaker 1: You know?
[37:36] Speaker 3: It's interesting because I would say the Christian nationalist side
[37:39] Speaker 3: and the New Right side are both committed to patriarchy,
[37:43] Speaker 3: but for different reasons and in different ways. Patriarchy like
[37:47] Speaker 3: gender you know, anxiety about gender order is a kind
[37:51] Speaker 3: of rocket fuel of the movement. But we still can't
[37:54] Speaker 3: forget that Trump did win a majority of white women,
[37:58] Speaker 3: very slim, majority of white women tended to be white,
[38:01] Speaker 3: you know, disproportionally religious and disproportionately you know, not well,
[38:07] Speaker 3: you know, having received a whole lot of education. So
[38:10] Speaker 3: maybe I think it was fifty three percent of white
[38:12] Speaker 3: women voted for him. So it's not all patriarchy. It's
[38:15] Speaker 3: really hatred of an other. And for some folks that
[38:19] Speaker 3: was you know, for some of the people in the manisphere,
[38:22] Speaker 3: a lot of it as women. But for other sectors
[38:25] Speaker 3: that supported Trump, it's hatred of a different kind of
[38:28] Speaker 3: an other, whether it's focusing hatred on the elites, you know,
[38:33] Speaker 3: as they've been led to believe, or immigrants, or for
[38:36] Speaker 3: some it's you know, undeserving people of color or whatever.
[38:40] Speaker 3: But again, it's not all patriarchy, ordis is it all racism?
[38:46] Speaker 3: And races both play into the movement in different ways.
[38:50] Speaker 2: Evangelical women I have run into say, the man's the
[38:53] Speaker 2: head of the home. I'm a helpmate. He makes the
[38:57] Speaker 2: big decisions, so you don't have to be male or
[39:00] Speaker 2: the patriarchy.
[39:01] Speaker 3: That's absolutely true. And for people who are raised in
[39:04] Speaker 3: that movement, it's sort of all they know. For Also,
[39:07] Speaker 3: you know, there's always going to be some subset of
[39:08] Speaker 3: women who are willing to trade away their rights and
[39:11] Speaker 3: the rights of other women in order to get like
[39:14] Speaker 3: head pats from the men in charge, who they've always
[39:17] Speaker 3: been taught are the most important people in the room.
[39:20] Speaker 3: And that's just very sad, trading away their rights in
[39:23] Speaker 3: order to obtain approval or even a right at this,
[39:27] Speaker 3: you know, to have a seat at the table of power.
[39:30] Speaker 3: Think about someone like Phylish Laughley, who called the feminist
[39:33] Speaker 3: movement incredibly like the most destructive movement in our time,
[39:36] Speaker 3: and yet was an incredibly powerful leader herself and one
[39:40] Speaker 3: of the few women among that sector that earlier iteration
[39:43] Speaker 3: of the new Right that was so politically influential in
[39:47] Speaker 3: that time.
[39:48] Speaker 2: You know, Phylish Laughley to me was a contradiction. She's
[39:51] Speaker 2: wired in with the Reagan and she's talking about, you know,
[39:54] Speaker 2: this sort of deferential biblical wife. At the same time
[39:57] Speaker 2: she's wielding immense power and essentially teaching and influencing. So
[40:02] Speaker 2: she was one and the other.
[40:03] Speaker 3: You know. So interesting about Schlaffley is that her original
[40:07] Speaker 3: concern was anti communism, and she tried to get all
[40:12] Speaker 3: this sort of people who were largely male to pay
[40:15] Speaker 3: attention to her and to sort of enter into those
[40:17] Speaker 3: kinds of discussions where she was sort of influential in
[40:21] Speaker 3: that sector of the right wing at that time, and
[40:24] Speaker 3: they just shut their doors in her face because she
[40:27] Speaker 3: was a woman. As soon as she starts talking about
[40:29] Speaker 3: the ladies, Oh well, we can make use of a
[40:32] Speaker 3: lady who is going to, you know, bash the rights
[40:35] Speaker 3: of other women. And that's when she really got her power.
[40:38] Speaker 3: So again she was one of these women who is
[40:40] Speaker 3: willing to trade away the rights of other women for
[40:43] Speaker 3: sea at the table, at the boys table.
[40:45] Speaker 2: The vilification of the Department of Education, right, we saw
[40:49] Speaker 2: this with Betsy DeVos. We've seen it for a long time.
[40:53] Speaker 2: You know, this idea that it's all infected. There's a
[40:56] Speaker 2: cancer that is, this federal cancer. So if we just
[41:00] Speaker 2: set fire to the whole damn place and we bring
[41:03] Speaker 2: it back to the States, then that's going to somehow
[41:07] Speaker 2: fix it. That's the narrative you want to talk about education.
[41:11] Speaker 3: You know, the goal really is to create a national
[41:15] Speaker 3: network of publicly financed religious goals that explicitly favor conservative
[41:20] Speaker 3: forms of Christianity and promote sort of far right economic ideology.
[41:24] Speaker 3: So superficially it looks like they're trying to achieve these
[41:28] Speaker 3: aims by forcing their initiatives and programming in the public schools,
[41:32] Speaker 3: Like look at what they're doing in Texas, which there's
[41:34] Speaker 3: a new law in Texas offering to pay schools to
[41:37] Speaker 3: teach elementary age kids a sectarian Christian curricula. Or you know,
[41:42] Speaker 3: all the Bible and public school laws or all the
[41:44] Speaker 3: Ten Commandments laws and things like that. But the ultimate
[41:48] Speaker 3: goal is really to undermine public education through these initiatives
[41:52] Speaker 3: to establish i would say, to pave the way for privatization.
[41:57] Speaker 3: And when you have these Bible and schools law, it
[42:00] Speaker 3: creates a lot of chaos and conflict in the schools.
[42:02] Speaker 3: But that's not just an unintended consequence of those types
[42:06] Speaker 3: of laws. It's really the point. They want to create
[42:08] Speaker 3: a lot of distrust around public schools so they can,
[42:11] Speaker 3: at the end of the day week in public schools
[42:13] Speaker 3: get their people to pull their kids out of public schools,
[42:16] Speaker 3: and that softens the ground for vouchers, religious vouchers, or
[42:19] Speaker 3: even as they're trying to do in Oklahoma, create publicly funded,
[42:24] Speaker 3: fully publicly funded religious schools, as they're trying to do
[42:27] Speaker 3: with Saint Isidore's academy. That case has actually been sort
[42:31] Speaker 3: of smacked down by I believe it's the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
[42:34] Speaker 3: But movement leaders a plan to take that to Supreme Court.
[42:38] Speaker 3: And given how a lot of our current Supreme Court
[42:41] Speaker 3: justices are ruling in cases that they call religious freedom cases,
[42:45] Speaker 3: they probably will rule. I think we could. We should
[42:48] Speaker 3: not be surprised if they rule in favor of those
[42:51] Speaker 3: who are trying to establish this state funded religious school.
[42:55] Speaker 2: And vounchers are interesting to me. Right, you give us
[42:59] Speaker 2: seven thousand dollars dollar tax credit, but the cost of
[43:02] Speaker 2: annual tuition for a Catholic school is fifteen twenty grand.
[43:08] Speaker 2: So then people who couldn't afford it keep their kids
[43:11] Speaker 2: in public school anyway. And then the middle to upper
[43:14] Speaker 2: class people say, hey, thanks for the free money, and
[43:17] Speaker 2: they have their kids already in private school, so nothing
[43:20] Speaker 2: for them really changes.
[43:21] Speaker 3: Well, you it's government of the rich.
[43:23] Speaker 2: Bibel put a punctuation mark on it for me, Catherine,
[43:29] Speaker 2: Where can people find the book and what are they
[43:32] Speaker 2: in for?
[43:32] Speaker 3: The book is a wild ride through the disturbing and
[43:36] Speaker 3: also very beautiful landscape of America. You know, I do
[43:40] Speaker 3: a lot of on the ground reporting and money lies
[43:43] Speaker 3: in God and I also pull back and do some
[43:45] Speaker 3: political analysis and social analysis. You can find it everywhere
[43:49] Speaker 3: books are sold. Amazon is of course the easiest place.
[43:52] Speaker 3: Independent stores like Bookshop, which I think is not which
[43:55] Speaker 3: is online, are other places you can buy the book.
[43:58] Speaker 3: You can learn more about me at my website. Katherine
[44:01] Speaker 3: Stewart Dot me, and I'd love to hear what you think,
[44:05] Speaker 3: so drop me a line.
[44:07] Speaker 2: Your work is. It's so well sourced, it's so well defended.
[44:11] Speaker 2: Every chapter is really really rich, so I mean, I
[44:15] Speaker 2: didn't find any filler. I was like, oh my god,
[44:17] Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm reading, I'm reading, I'm reading. But
[44:19] Speaker 2: it's also useful because the more we understand the tactics,
[44:22] Speaker 2: I think, the more we can create responses to those tactics.
[44:25] Speaker 2: You are so good at what you do, Catherine Stewart,
[44:28] Speaker 2: Thanks for talking to me.
[44:29] Speaker 3: Thank you so much, really great to be in conversation
[44:32] Speaker 3: with you.
[44:32] Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[44:36] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
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[44:43] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[44:47] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com

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