Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 689: How Christian Is Christian Nationalism?

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Show Notes  

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. This is our our long form analysis episode for the month of May. May. May.

May. Even though we're recording it in April. May, April. That's okay. Guys, we don't know which end is up or which end is down, but we are recording at fucking a breakneck pace. We're trying to get ahead

because I'm going to go on a long vacation in like the middle of the summer. And we're trying to get ahead now because we know we're just going to be inundated with work if we don't do it now. And we're trying to get ahead now. Cause we know we're just going to be inundated with work. It's just going to be a bomb. If we don't do it 60 days, I'm going on vacation and it's like, okay, well we got to get it. We got to get it done. So we are, we're recording extra episodes at this point. And so we're recording a little bit ahead. This article, um, great article, great article Great article. Tom read it for patrons.

This is also in the New Yorker. We'll post a link to it. How Christian is Christian nationalism? This is by Kelfa Sana. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly. I don't know either. You know, I didn't know who this person was. So I looked them up.

I was like, well, who are they? What have they written? They're a music critic. Really? So they're a music critic. Really? So they write mostly music criticism and they also write about boxing for the New Yorker. I love this. This is the first, after scrolling through the stuff,

this feels like the first sort of serious article I've ever, I mean, now don't get me wrong. The other stuff is serious, right? Like, I mean, music criticism and understanding music and things like that. But I know what you mean, like political, topical. Yeah, but this is the first sort of, I guess, deep topic, you know, deep, deep topic, you know, how Christian is Christian nationalism. Really interesting article that comes at it from a ton of different ways. So I got to rewind real quick because I want to ask you this question. Do you look up who writes articles a lot? I've never done that in my life. I do it on occasion

just to sort of see like, especially if I'll read a line and I'll think, what do you mean by this line here? Do you have any kind of background that I can then say, what do I glean from this line? Because it's not telling me everything. It's open-ended. So I wonder, what's your stance? What is your stance? How do you, because it feels like the way this article ends, the way this article ends, and so the article itself is talking about Christian nationalism and how Christian nationalism might be what regular Christians think is Christianity, right? There's a big push in this where they talk about that. Then there's also this other piece where they talk about very specifically people who were surveyed as Christians. And they talk about the survey results from that. And then he brings up a lot of different points and different points of view,

reviewing many different books that he's read and their takes on how Christian is, you know, how Christian nationalist is Christianity. And then he gets to the end of the article. And the line that got me was something like he's saying, talking about the cyclical nature of Christianity becoming in vogue and out of vogue and whether or not there's going to be another resurgence of Christianity. And the way that line is written, I can read it because I did quote it. Let me read it really quick. So he says at the end of the article, but the underlying idea is that recent trends will continue, that churches will continue emptying out, and that Christianity will become an ever more tribal identity. The secular country that emerges might be increasingly free, anxious, and unpredictable, less prayer in

schools, more shamans in the capital. Why should we assume, though, that these trends are irreversible and that most of today's Americans are beyond the reach of a message that has reached many for so long? Earlier periods of secularization in America have given way to periods of Christian renewal. Is the next Christian revival just around the corner? It seems hard to believe, but surely not impossible. And the line that got me was that line about, why should we assume though that these trends are irreversible and that most of today's Americans are beyond the reach of a message that has reached many for so long?

And I was like, well, what do you mean by that? Like what's, you know, just because something has been, you know, popular in the past doesn't necessarily make it more right. It doesn't make it more valuable. Why do you say that? And I couldn't glean it from his history.

I couldn't decide whether or not he was writing this as a Christian or not. I don't know either. One of the things that I thought like the central piece that like struck me as like really interesting was the idea of Christian nationalism as being divorced from Christianity itself

and being more of a cultural identity. Yeah. And I feel like intuitively that that feels deeply true to me in the same way that like, and they make a comparison in this article, in the same way that like, there is an idea of Judaism,

which is secular, that there is this idea of Christian nationalism, which is increasingly cultural and almost secular rather than really rooted in any kind of theocratic underpinning at all. And I think that that feels right. That feels right because what Christian nationalism has really morphed into has very little to do with most mainstream Christian thinking, most mainstream Christian teaching. Like the obsession, like the, for a great example,

I think, as I was thinking about this today, a great example is the interconnectedness of Christian nationalism and gun culture. There is literally nothing at all religiously to connect guns with Christianity. There is nothing there. There's nothing there. But there's culturally something there. Christian nationalism and our gun culture are inextricably linked. They feel part and parcel. They feel like people have this sense that their guns are a part of their religious identity.

And I think that there's this idea now that like our, our, our sense of ourselves, um, not our, like broad speaking, but their sense of themselves as white ethnocentric Christian Americans is built up around this sort of idea that increasingly has nothing to do with anything in the Bible at all. It's instead become this mishmash of political teachings, football, racism, guns, country music. I'm kind of spitballing, but like, I'm also not. Like there's all these like pieces of Americana that are sort of like tied to this. And they're specifically white Americana. Yeah, very, very much. This is not a multicultural Americana.

They're white, male, you know, they're very specific. And none of that stuff has necessarily got anything to do with Jesus or the Bible or theology. Not very much. to do with Jesus or the Bible or theology. Not very much. I wonder, because they do seem to use the same language and the same, I don't know how to put this into words, but they demonize their enemies, right? Yeah.

So there is a good and an evil. Yeah, right. And so that plays really well into Christianity. For sure. It plays really well into Christian mindset to create a struggle between good and evil and then to put yourself on the side of good and to put your enemies or the people who you disagree with

on the side of evil and then to create all these little tiny wars with all these demons or bad people or whatever, the Satanists. I mean, they're not Satanists. They're just like, they're evil. They're the forces of darkness. They're the forces of evil. And that's a tactic that's constantly used. There's also, I think, there's plenty of prophecy in that too, where they get the word and then they tell you what to believe because they heard the word.

You know what I mean? So when you think about Christian nationalism, there's a divinely inspired word to make it. So it still does have that connection. It's not completely divorced like that connection it's not completely divorced like a secular jew would be completely divorced right from any kind of uh but it's almost a spiritualism yeah it's almost like an american spiritualism right that is like that's that's becoming its own theology that's different from, I do think that like American Christianity

would be in many ways, like impossible to understand from a European Christianity standpoint, but it shouldn't be. If theologically they were- No, you're right, you're right. They were using the same tools and tools, but like American Christianity is this like

whole spiritual suitcase full of shit i tend to think that even just like a liberal christianity would have a hard time understanding some of these very conservative christianities in any way the quakers couldn't understand i i i know plenty of people that are religious and i also know plenty of people who are like you know they're deeply some of these people that are religious. And I also know plenty of people who are like, you know, they're deeply, some of these people that are religious are deeply involved in social movements that are very liberal, right? Sustainable development in countries that, you know, need aid, immigration, women's issues, LGBT issues, deeply ingrained in these things. And I feel like they wouldn't be able to, in fact, a lady that I work with, the, I don't know what kind, what flavor of Christian he is,

but she had mentioned that the same church or it's not the same church, but it's the same umbrella church, Presbyterian maybe, that Jeff Sessions is in. So she's, her denomination is the same denomination as Jeff Sessions, just like a different, like a left and a right or something. You know what I mean? And so there's, I think there's big, huge divides

in religious people in this country, huge divides where they can't even see each other. But the more I see this right-wing, racist Christianity rear its head, the more I wonder why there's people who are adamantly against that sort of thing don't reject the underlying Christianity. It makes me wonder, like, why would...

Because, you know, when I think about somebody who does bad things, right? Like, think about somebody who does something bad that's in, say, the atheist community, right? If somebody did something bad, we just wouldn't associate with them. I wouldn't associate with them anymore. I can't get rid of my atheism. I can't be like,

I'm not an atheist. Yeah, I can't wake up. But I also cannot identify as one, right? Sure. I think when we first started out, we very much identified with the atheist movement. But once we saw there's a bunch of chuckle fucks in there, we're just like, nah, man, we're just going to be skeptical.

We'll be caring people. Right. We're humanists now. I'm not an atheist guy. I'm not a guy who's like, here's an atheist thing. On occasion, I'll have those atheist activists on the show, but I'm not that guy. It's not my torch.

Right. I'm not going to do that. Right. And so like, like I, I, I feel like I will easily just leave that in the past and walk away from that. If I find that that's something that like, it's full of a bunch of chuckle fucks. Right. Yeah. And I wonder why people don't,

and I know the answer is, it's so ingrained and it's so part of your life that it's impossible to walk away from. It's not impossible because plenty of people do it. Right. But it's very tough. It's tough.

It's very, very tough. And I wonder too about like people of color who see any rise of racist Christian nationalism, I wonder how they feel about still remaining Christian. Yeah. And I wonder if they even can, because as you were talking, like I was thinking that for a lot of Christian nationalists, the Christianity itself is very likely to be inconvenient because what they're really worshiping is nationalism. Sure. White nationalism.

Yeah. They're worshiping a white ethno-nationalist state. That's the worship that they're performing. The Christianity, I think, gives them a sort of structuralism that they can use in order to frame their worship. But like what they're really like going to the altar for isn't Jesus. It's America as they see it and want it to be.

An America that doesn't exist, but an America that they fantasize for themselves. And I think for those folks, which I think is really like the QAnon shaman's a great example. Yeah, he's mentioned in this article a couple of times. That's a fascinating character

because that character is like he, like as a light bringer and all this, like, and there's this mishmash now of different sort of like theological ideas that are still, that are at once absolutely incompatible with one another, right? Like shamanism is absolutely incompatible

with Christianity. You might as well be a Christian witch. Right, you can't reconcile them, but you can absolutely reconcile them with Christian nationalism because what the worship process revolves around is that flag and the buntings and the Americana and all of these like pieces of America as worshiped

and imagined rather than as experienced and as real. But like the Christianity piece, is like at once convenient, but also intellectually inconvenient. I think the same is true of those like, um, profit preachers. What are they called?

The, it's not profit preachers. Those, those prosperity gospel guys, profit preachers. It's true though. Right. They profit off of everybody else.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. The profit profits. Like, yeah, the profit profits. So the profits profits for the profit preaching for the prosperity gospel.

Just, I don't know why it rolls right off the tongue. But those guys, like, same thing. Like, the Christianity is like the tool they use, but it seems like an inconvenient and unwieldy tool. But I think that they know they can use it because people aren't worshiping any of the sort of ideas that are in that book or any of the ideas that even for thousands of years have been part and parcel of Christianity.

Instead, it's like, yeah, you know, they're worshiping at a different altar. And so we can paint the altar green and they'll worship at this one too. Yeah. They use that. They do use that. You know, while there is a lot of differences, I do feel like they use very often the prophecy to try to get people in line.

Yeah, man. And, you know, we saw that with Trump. We saw that in an immense way when we were watching the Christian right before Trump was elected. We saw in a huge way, there was a moment where they all immediately said, you know, one of them said it out loud and then all the rest of them followed because they're not really talking to God.

Right. They're listening to what the other ones say and then they're all agreeing. They're yes-anding each other. And they yes-anded. It's religious improv. They yes-anded he's the chosen one. Yeah. They yes-anded it. Now, they all had different ideas of why he was the chosen one.

I don't know if you remember, but like one of them was calling him Cyrus. Yeah. They yes-anded it. Now, they all had different ideas of why he was the chosen one. I don't know if you remember, but one of them was calling him Cyrus. Yeah. Oh, I do remember this. Trump's not, he's not a good person, but he's the one who's going to bring the end to the bad state. And so he's not a bad person and he's not a good person and he's not really a Christian, but he is God's tool in this moment. Yeah. Oh God, I do remember this. I'd forgotten about that. Yeah. So Trump Cyrus, there was a coin. I don't know if you remember the Trump Cyrus coin. Oh my God, I do. And, and I want to read a part of this because we're talking about Trump. I want to read it because it starts and ends with Trump. And I want to read both the quotes. And so it says, this is Trump saying,

I'm a true believer, he said, and he conducted an impromptu poll. He was at a religious place and he says, and the quote is, is everybody a true believer in this room? He was scarcely the first presidential candidate to make a religious appeal, but he might've been the first one to address Christian voters so explicitly as a special interest. You have the strongest lobby ever, he said, but I never hear about the Christian lobby. He made his audience promise. He made his audience a promise. If I'm there, you're going to have plenty of power, he said. You are going to have somebody representing you very well. And then at the end of the article, they come back to Trump. So they talk a lot about how Trump sort of treated evangelical Christians as a political party. And he was right. He was

100% right to do that. And it didn't matter, I think, where those evangelical Christians fit on that spectrum. They all voted for him because overwhelmingly those people voted for him. And then he didn't get elected a second time. Right. And then they started wandering away because they recognize

that he's a piece of shit. And so at the end of the article, it says, during a recent interview, Trump said, they won. I think they also wandered away

because he was a fucking loser. He was a fucking loser. He was a fucking loser. During a recent interview, Trump said, they won. Roe v. Wade, they won.

In his formulation, they meant the Christian lobby and Trump expressed disappointment that they hadn't done more to support his preferred candidates during the midterms in 2022. And you could hear the language that Trump uses, right?

He's like, I'm a true believer in the first part. And in the second part, he's saying the people, those people, those guys, I helped them. Those guys, I forgot who fed them. Those guys forgot who greased their palms. Those, he's not part of that group. He's never been part of that group. All he did was manipulate them to get voted. And then they manipulated him to create the most conservative court in the history of our country.

And the whole thing that like the part of that, to me, that's like really fascinating is he knows he was manipulated and they know he's not part of them. Yeah. Like they say it out loud, like in the beginning of that quote, when he says, you have the strongest lobby ever. When you're saying you have a lobby, you're saying, I'm not a part of your in-group, but you exert influence on me that bends me to your will. That's what lobbying is. That's what lobbying is. It's being bent to a special interest will. Yeah. So when he says that, he's like, but he's also saying like, he's also recognizing, I think, in a really explicit way that others haven't, the power of a religious group as something to be catered to in a way that's just purely, purely political. Because usually the way that politicians cater to religious groups is they try to be a part of that group.

Usually the way that politicians cater to religious groups is they try to be a part of that group. So the way that most politicians try to cater to the religious is they say, I am also religious. Yeah. I am. But he doesn't try to cater to them in that way. Instead, he says, hey, here's the things you want. I'll give them to you. Yeah.

He treats them like the gun lobby. And the thing is, is like, like they took him up on it. They did. He did what he wanted them to do. Because what he did was, people think about it as the extent of it was the Supreme Court, but that's not true. Because McConnell pushed through so many damn federal judges. Oh, yeah. That now you have federal judges all over the country who are making horrifying decisions.

Terrible decisions. Horrifying decisions. Scary decisions. Decisions that hate women, that hate people of color, that exploit those groups, and that have no— it proves that it's not a safe country for them when they make those decisions, you have to make the Supreme Court this far right so that when this shit rolls uphill, they go, you know, that's fine. Right. No, that's perfectly fine. So he had to do that. Yep.

And he did it. But he had to have those lower pieces in place, too. And those are lifetime appointments, man. Yeah. This is, like you said, there isn't just one lifetime appointment. It's not like, it's not like just like the Supreme Court is the only,

there's a lot of lifetime appointments that he was handing out and they handed out a ton of them. Yeah, I mean, didn't Trump fill more judicial vacancies

than any other president in modern history? Yeah, it's intense how many he had. And then the, and that's because McConnell cock-blocked Obama forever. Yeah, refused to, yeah, refused to fill vacancies. Refused to do any of them. And then's because McConnell cock-blocked Obama forever.

Refused to fill vacancies. And then when Trump came in, they just flooded a ton of them. And then, now that we have the power, I don't know if you saw, but Feinstein, we need every vote

in order to pass any single judge. Anything, yeah. And there's like a part where I thought Feinstein was like getting a ton of shit because she's holding up these appointments. Yeah, right.

Because of her health concerns. Because of her health. She's in terrible health. She's like 90 or something. And she's like, I mean, at a certain point, I think we really do need an upper limit of age. I do too. We have a minimum age for some work. You should have a maximum age.

You have a minimum age for the presidency. There should be a maximum age. There should be a maximum age. There should be a maximum age. I don't know why that's like... Look, the thing is, I'm not saying set the maximum age at like 65, right? But I am saying like,

let's set it at 70. You know? Like, that's a long span. You've got a 35-year span to get in that door, right? If you can't get in that door in 35 years, you're not going to make it.

I think there's a lot of reasons for it to be dangerous, to have, it would be a dangerous and unsteady thing from a leadership perspective to have a president have dementia in office, to die in office, to become incapacitated in office. Like, that's not,

that's just an inherently dangerous position, even though we have the backup guy. I know people, who's the vice president for? I know. But that's not, that's just an inherently dangerous position. Even though we have the backup guy. I know people, who's the vice president for? I know. But there's a fucking inherent danger to that

that we just don't want to press that button if we don't have to. Right. So maybe we should recognize that human lives have a fucking end date to them.

And as we approach it, maybe it's time to not have that job. I don't think it's, I don't think it's a bad thing, man. I think, you know, especially if you're holding

up things like that. Yeah. Because you're think it's, I don't think it's a bad thing, man. I think, you know, especially if you're holding up things like that because you're in poor health, man, just in Chuck Grassley in his nineties, dude, what the fuck? He's in his nineties. And you're like,

come on, man. And here's the thing. Why do you still want to work in your nineties? Cecil, I want to retire right now. I do too. Right now.

If somebody was like, you can be, I'd be like, I'm so retired. It's ridiculous. If they let me retire tomorrow, I would was like, you could be, I'd be like, I'm so retired, it's ridiculous. If they let me retire tomorrow, I would light my work on fire. I want to read a part of this

and I want to know what your take is on it. So, here's a comment from this article. To a secular liberal, it might seem distasteful for a Christian

to consider Muslim or atheistic values morally inferior or want to have or want the government to promote Christian values. But to claim any set of values as your own is to find them superior in some meaningful sense to the alternatives and probably to hope that they would guide the decisions

that your government makes on your behalf. So do you think that's a true statement? Because I don't know that I agree. I think it's a half true statement. I think yes. I think it's true to the point of being absurd and almost meaningless to say that if you believe in any set of values, that you necessarily think that those values are better than other values. Otherwise, I would have, yes, I have to think that or I would have decided on other values. So if there's an issue at hand and I say. Otherwise, I would have, yes, I have to think that, or I would have decided on other values. So if there's an issue at hand and I say, well, I think this, yeah, I do think that that's the right decision.

If I didn't, I would think a different thing. Yeah, I don't know, though. No, I'm not sure I agree. Here's where I don't agree. Like, when I think about values, I think that there's a lot of things that go into values that's more than thinking. There's action. Sure. It has to have and it has to exist, right?

So my values are tempered by my own laziness, right? I don't every weekend go spend my whole weekend at a homeless shelter or at a, you know, whatever, like a food pantry. But I know people who do. Right. And I think their values are superior to mine. food pantry. But I know people who do. Right. And I think their values are superior to mine. I genuinely do. I think like those are good people. Those are people who are better than me.

Yeah. They've chosen a different life path to give them the opportunity to go do things, right? That they think, now don't get me wrong, I've done good work for charity in my life. Sure. I've done good work for charity, but I haven't done like a whole Peace Corps life or a whole giving my life to help, you know, people, you know, like feeding

hundreds of people a day with no thought of myself, right. A more selfless life. There's plenty of more selfless lives out there than the life I've lived and the thoughts and the morals that brought me to where I am. So I do think there's people out there with superior values to me, but I also recognize like the way I do things or the way I might do things is in a way tempered by my experience and my place in life and what my opportunity costs and all those things. You know what I mean? Does that make any sense? Yeah. I guess I would have separated your values from the action you take on your values. I see.

So like, and so there's a difference, I think, between holding a value and living a value. And I think like you would hold a value that would be absolutely in line with the same person who's working at the soup kitchen, right? You hold the same value. It's just that it's a weaker value for you and a stronger value for them.

But at the end of the day, the principle that underlies it is the same. And that's kind of where I was thinking of it from. I see, yeah. It's like just, because when I think about politics, which is like what this drives to for me, when I was thinking about politics and thinking about making decisions,

like to me, those are, what are the principles involved? Because those principles have to be right to guide the actions that the government can or can't take. So like, but when I hear that statement that you read, it's like, well, everybody thinks their values are the best values. And so it sort of has this like relativistic kind of throwaway quality to it. And I chafe at that because it's like, well, yeah, the problem is that Christianity or Islam or, you know, religious Judaism, they are what I would consider like bucket values. Meaning there is a set of values which can't be sort of pulled apart from one another and still be Christian or still be Muslim or still be religiously.

But the difference with secular values is every topic can be considered independently without necessitating removal of yourself from the bucket. Do you know what I mean? It's coercive. Yeah. They're coercive ethics in some ways. So it's like, yeah, if I want to be a Christian,

I have to believe these things. Otherwise, I lose my status and my identity as a Christian. And you go to hell. And you go to hell. Like, there's also the ability to, like, in your own brain, to be punished

for not thinking these things. So I guess it's like, yeah, like, atheistic values are inherently better values because they're more flexible. Yeah, because I can, and I can also change my mind, which is something very different from's like, yeah, like atheistic values are inherently better values because they're more flexible. Yeah, and I can also change my mind, which is something very different from like,

if I was from Islam and somebody said like, for instance, look at the upheaval that goes on in say Iran because of headscarves, right? There are some that are pushing back, but if you have such a large group of people there that are still trying to enforce a policy and then they continue to enforce those policies and then hurt people because of it and kill people because of it and throw them in jail because of it. You know, like, like there's a group there that, that you can't push against. You can't be outside of because you will be punished for.

Right. Other people in the world can look and say, well, I don't agree with that. I think that doesn't. And that's, and it's a secular, I think I do think in that way, because secular values in my mind model how scientific thinking works, where I'm like, I will test that out and think and understand, does that fit with my worldview? Does that fit with my testing of this thing throughout the years? And then make that decision on whether or not it fits, not just I read it somewhere and that's how it is. Right.

And like, if you are, let's say like the headscarf thing, if you are a Muslim and you are a devout Muslim, your ability to really consider the headscarf issue is hampered. Yes. How well can you really consider that? Because it's in the Muslim bucket. You can't pull it out of that bucket or you won't be a good Muslim.

You're not even really allowed in that sense to consider it. So like, yeah, that relativistic nonsense, like kind of, I feel annoyed by it whenever I read it. I'm just like, get out of here with that. Just get out of here. Go away down with that.

It's lazy. It's fucking, you know what I mean? Like I can pull it apart. Who the fuck am I? Yeah. It's lazy. I read it and I was like, I out of here with that. Just get out of here. Go away down with that. It's lazy. It's fucking, you know what I mean? Like I can pull it apart. Who the fuck am I? It's lazy. I read it and I was like, I'm not sure I agree. And I thought it was interesting because it brought me down that thought path of like,

like, cause I genuinely don't feel like I have the moral character of many people that have done great work. Absolutely the same. Yeah. I will say that like, I feel comfortable generally with my values and uncomfortable with my ability to act

or desire to act on them. Yeah, I think that's fair, right? Yeah, I think I'm lazier than my values. I think I am too. And I think that's a great way to think about it, right? Like I am lazier than my, my values would say, go do this thing,

go donate, go do this. And then there's the laziness of my life and also the selfishness of my life, right? Don't be, I mean, who am I kidding? Like I'm selfish. Like I want to do these, I want to hang out with my buddy

instead of going to, you know, work at the soup kitchen on Thursday nights. And that's just a true thing about who I am. Like, do I value that? And so, but like politically, I want to vote for that. I want to throw our money behind that stuff. I want to,

like, we should, we should, because that's the other thing is like, if it all relies on me personally and everybody's individual personal decisions,

we have to collectivize this shit where nothing gets done. Because like, I'm just going to wake up on a Tuesday and be like, I'm not going to the soup kitchen. Well, and it's also like, if it's not in your planner, Tom,

you're going to forget about it. I'm going to forget about it. You're going to fucking 100%. There's a thousand percent chance if it's not in my calendar, it never happened. You'll never fucking remember to do it. Nope.

Nope. No, man. I'm like, I'm just, I'm a fucking goldfish without my calendar. Yeah. Like, I can't get any, like, Haley would be like, when did you schedule?

Like, I have a great story for this. I told Haley the other day in the car. I was like, oh, I scheduled Aislinn's orthodontist appointment. When did you schedule it for? Oh, I have no idea. It's in the calendar. It's in the calendar. And she's, so she's then it's like, well, was it like this month or next month or in the summer or at the end of the summer?

I was like, oh, no, I have literally no idea. I don't know. What happens is, Cecil, and this story gets funnier because what happens, hun, is like they tell me the first available date. I open my calendar to see if there's a conflict. If there's no conflict, I put it on that date. I don't know what that date is because that information, I don't need to hold that anywhere. The calendar holds that information. So she's like, you have no idea if it's before our school starts.

I was like, I don't know if it's 2024. I don't know. The lady gave me a calendar. She gave me the first available. So that's, I couldn't have picked an earlier one. So that's the best one. I got the best one. So here's the best part.

So then she's like, I was like, so just check the calendar, search the calendar. You'll find the, search for orthodontist. She that's the best one. Did you? I got the best one. So here's the best part. So then she's like, I was like, so just check the calendar, search the calendar, you'll find the, search for orthodontist. She searches in the calendar. She's like,

I can't find it. But I'm religious about my calendar. I was like, oh, maybe I misspelled orthodontist. I'll find it. You know,

like maybe I just typoed it, you know? Ornithopter? What is happening? Yeah, what? Well, here's the funniest part. Then I searched for it

when I get home because I was driving and we were having this conversation. I can't find it anywhere. It's not in the calendar. So I was like, well, that's the weirdest thing. Then I searched for it when I get home because I was driving. We were having this conversation. I can't find it anywhere. It's not in the calendar. So I was like, well, that's the weirdest thing. I don't make these mistakes.

I said, I'll call the orthodontist in the morning and I'll figure it out. I guess maybe I made the appointment and didn't put it in the calendar. But in my brain, I'm like, that literally never happens because I don't have a backup system. This is the only system.

That's the system. So I don't fuck that up. Yeah. So I call the orthodontist Cecil and I say, Hey, you know, I'm Tom. I made an appointment. This is the first time I've ever spoken to you. Yes. Are you kidding? I dreamed the whole thing. I must've dreamed the whole thing. No way. Are you serious? I told the lady on the phone. I was like, all right, so here's what happened. You right now are talking to a crazy person. And if you still make, except new patients who have crazy parents,

I guess I need to make an appointment for my stepdaughter. I am a crazy person. I swore and have memories of making an appointment with you, but I have no evidence that it happened. And Cecil, because the calendar is not evident, I was like, it didn't happen.

I dreamed it. And now I know I just dreamed it. Because that's it. Do you think you dreamed it? It's not in the calendar. not evident. I was like, it didn't happen. I dreamed it. And now I know I just dreamed it. Because that's it. Do you think you dreamed it? It's not in the calendar. It doesn't matter. I'm asking you a different question. I can't know.

I can't know. It's like, you have no idea like how shitty this brain I have is. Here, I'll give you another great example. Yes, you know. You know. I have no idea. You know. Haley will ask me like all the time.

Hey, where's this thing we have? And I'll say, I don't know, but I'll find it. And so she'll be worried. And she'll be like, is it lost? I'm like, no, I'll just, I don't know where, and I have to explain to her, I don't know where anything is. All I know is where I put things like that.

So I don't remember where anything's at. I just know that I put things like that. In this drawer. In this drawer or that drawer. So it's not lost. I don't remember where anything's at. I just know that I put things like that. In this drawer. In this drawer or that drawer. So it's not lost. I don't ever lose anything. But I have no idea where it's at. I literally don't know.

So it's literally lost. It's lost. It's lost. But I will find it because I only ever put things. It's lost in an area. Right. I don't know where anything is. I can ask Haley at any time, hey, I'll put the groceries away.

So she'll order groceries from Instac hey, I'll put the groceries away. So she'll order groceries from Instacart. I'll put the groceries away. And then I'll go and she'll say, okay, she's like, how many boxes of this did we get and that did we get? You got to check off your groceries. And the first couple of times you did, I was like, I have no idea.

I don't remember even putting that away. I'm just like, I get a box and I know where that box goes. I love that you just wandered through life like a fucking, like a robot. I know why you're upset with AI. I know why. I know why. I don't know what's happening at all.

I know why you don't want AI now. I'm busy in my own thoughts, Cecil. I'm like, I'm in my head and it's just like, how many boxes of Rice Krispies do we get? I'm like, I didn't see any, but I put them away and they're in the right place. Oh, Tom. I'm just shitty, dude. All right, let's get back to the article. All right, sorry. I just thought it was funny. No, I love it. It's a great story. It's a great story. So here's

the other quote I want to read. Now, there's a guy in this article who gets caught like with a, he's a Christian who's on a podcast and he writes a book and he's kind of a famous Christian or whatever, but then he gets caught like with a, he's a Christian who's on a podcast and he writes a book and he's kind of a famous Christian or whatever.

But then he gets caught with like a secret Twitter account telling black people to go away. Like it's a horrible, like a horrible, you're just like, oh, what a shit bag. So he gets caught.

And so that, this is where this leads off. The scandal was a big deal in the small world of intellectual Christian nationalism. That feels like an oxymoron. One difference between Wolf, that's the person who was caught, and then they say, and someone like Jerry Falwell,

who believes many of the same things, is that Falwell could plausibly claim to be leading what he called a moral majority. Whereas many of today's Christian nationalists are keenly aware of their minority status and perhaps as a consequence, less likely to worry about transgressing dominant social norms. And I wonder how true that is

because when we think about Trump, we think about how many evangelicals in this country voted and how many people identify with evangelicals. I mean, we're talking about, you know, the last election that Trump was in, 75 million people voted for him or something. Which is astonishing. I mean, an insane amount of people. There's a lot of people. This is not a minority. And Christianity is not a minority. And Christianity is not a minority.

Christian nationalism, I feel like there's a part of me that wonders if they're taking it as seriously as they should in this article. Because I feel like they play up the minority because they want to be an underdog, because they know that gets people on their side. But I'm not so sure that this guy doesn't hold views of a third of the population of the United States. Yeah, I'm not sure that he doesn't either. The sense that I get is that Christian nationalism is rising even as Christianity is falling. Yeah. And that should be a contradiction, but to me is very much not. And I think the article kind of drives clumsily in that general direction,

but doesn't go nearly far enough in stating it as explicitly. I think that Christian nationalism is very much on the rise in terms of its political and financial and social power, even as Christianity drops. Because there's a point, like we were talking about before, where I think that Christianity can be fairly comfortably divorced from Christian nationalism. That those ideas are sort of like

almost becoming two separate concepts, like in the same way that Judaism and secular Judaism are functionally very different ideas. Like you can be a non-practicing secular Jew, but still culturally identify as a Jew. And that's not unusual or even contradictory. unusual or even contradictory. And I really think that like Christian nationalism is becoming very, very much like that, where people will identify with the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and the Lauren Boebert's and all the rest of these horrible, horrible fucking people. And whether or not they're like Christianity is important to them or not is like tangential to the issue. Right. Right. You know, they all, They all kind of root for the same team. Right.

They feel very much like sports fans. It feels like politics, and at this point, religion has become a lot more like which team you're rooting for and much less about what that team represents and what that team believes in. You know what I mean?

I do. It feels like it wouldn't be out of place in any place in this country to have a whole entire stadium full of people with shirts that have Jesus riding a bald eagle into the sunset. Yeah, man. That 100% wouldn't be an issue.

I wouldn't even blink an eye at that. And that, to me, to come back, that, to me, feels like a new religion. Right. That, to me, feels like a new religion. I see what you're saying. So it feels like it's morphing, that it's evolving,

and keeping God, the shittiest parts of its evolution, and adding new God, the shittiest parts of its evolution. Yeah. And adding new shitty parts on it. Yeah. It's almost like this is the Third Testament. It's like fucking the smog monster from Godzilla or whatever.

Yeah. Gross. I feel like that's not untrue. Intuitively, I have that sense. Intuitively, I have that sense. I don't have anything like super, I have that sense. Intuitively, I have that sense. I don't have anything super empirical to back that up. Well, you see,

there are some signs when you look at the rise of Trumpism and the crazy... While he's in office, he's giving these stadium talks. They feel like sermons. They do. They feel like evangelical sermons.

They feel very much like that. There's a worshiping that is going on. There's a, and like you said, like if Jesus is riding on the bald eagle and like, you know, you got fucking Jesus with an AK-47 or AR-15 or whatever, that is a new religiosity. That's a new testament of American Christianity,

which is really a different thing than Christianity itself. Sure. And they sort of borrow and pull parts from each other and mish them all up together. And you have this gray sludge now that is like, because before we had this binary where there was Christianity and there was not Christianity. And Christianity for a long time.

And, and I think structurally has in its nature binaries as a definitional feature, right? Heaven and hell, good and evil. Like these binaries are part of a part of how Christianity works, but now everything seems to be in flux. And now like this like hyper patriotic nationalistic jingoistic version of america seems to have become religionized yeah into this sort of weird

weird backwater political urbanized, uh, Protestantism. Yeah. And I don't know what that all looks like when you smush together, but I, it's like pornography. Like I, I know when I see it.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And I know none of that means a lot, but I feel like that just feels intuitively true to me to be like where we're at now. I just, I just very much wish that there were more Christians against these bad Christians. Man, I do too.

It doesn't feel like they're on our side. Yeah. It doesn't feel like they're with us pointing out the badness of Christianity, right? I feel like it should be my job to, if I'm going to be part of it, unless I'm going to reject it. Either I reject it, or if I'm going to defend it and stay with it, then I've got to clean the house.

Right, yeah. I've got to get rid of the things that are bad. Yeah. And to not clean the house, at least publicly, right? Like, here's the thing. It could be happening all across the country. In small parishes, It could be happening all across the country in small

parishes. There could be these fights between these two warring parties of a Christian congregation, right? It could be a left and right fight. It could be happening. A racist versus non-racist portion of your congregation. But I don't see it. I don't hear about it. And wouldn't you make a giant stink about it if that was you? Like, I feel like you should, right? You should be making it a big deal. I mean, fucking Martin Luther sure did. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, I get the sense that for the last maybe 50, 60 years, the religious have sacrificed their principles in favor of results and expediency. And that constant sacrificing of this principle and that principle and this principle and that principle in order to get the political result that they wanted. Or in order to wield a certain amount of political power in the hopes of getting Roe overturned

or the hopes of getting the Johnson Amendment overturned, in the hopes of all of these political... I think it has made the marriage of politics and religion now a permanent blending. Yeah, yeah. And I think their principles have just like completely fallen by the wayside. Now, it's sort of like a religion of expediency and results.

Yeah, results, results. Yeah, results-based religion, which is the first time in history that's ever happened. The worst results. I know, it's the worst results too, yeah. All right, that's going to wrap it up. We'll catch you guys on Monday with a new show, but we're going to leave you like we always do

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