The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures) by Eddie Glaude Jr.

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures) by Eddie Glaude Jr. https://amzn.to/3JQZWyM We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires. Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude’s unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency constrained our politics as we turned to yet another prophet-like figure. He examines his personal history and the traditions that both shape and overwhelm his own voice. Glaude weaves anecdotes about his evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, encouraging us to reflect on the lessons of these great thinkers and address imaginatively the challenges of our day in voices uniquely our own. Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must step out from under the shadows of past giants to build a better society―one that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Oaks Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. As always, we certainly appreciate you guys coming by for 16 years and nearly 2,000 episodes.

We've been bringing you the Chris Voss Show, and we've always been bringing the smartest people on the show. Of course, none of them are me. I'm just the idiot with the mic. We're bringing the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the astronauts, the rock stars, the people who win Pulitzer Prizes, write these amazing books that will just blow your mind, and you'll learn something from them. And we have one of my favorite authors, and I always love his commentary. He has a way of putting things in the most inspiring, poetic sort of thing

that just make you want to get up and, I don't know, go do something. So there you go. Eddie Glaude Jr. joins us on the show today. He's a returning guest, and his newest book is out April 16, 2024. The title of the book is We Are the Leaders We've Been Looking For. And this part of it is W.E.B. Du Bois' lecture. Did I get Du Bois right? Yes, indeed.

You did. Absolutely. I'm learning every day. This is why we do the show. So Eddie will be on the show with us to talk about his amazing book. And he is the author of several books, including Democracy in black and the New York Times bestseller begin again James Baldwin's America and it's urgent lessons for our own winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize he frequently appears in the media as an

MSNBC contributor on programs like morning Joe and deadline White House he's a native of Moss Point, Mississippi, and he is the James S. McDonald Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University. Welcome to the show, Eddie. It's so much a pleasure. It's such a pleasure to be back with you, Chris. Thank you. So I'm looking forward to the conversation, Doc. Wonderful to have you as well, sir. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs?

Oh, just follow me on X at ESGlaud and Instagram at ESGlaud. Those are my two primary social media platforms. So yeah, absolutely. There you go. So tell us about your new book, What's Inside. Give us a kind of 30,000 overview, if you would, please. Sure. I think at the heart of our current malaise, the current sickness and troubles that have

the country in some ways by the throat, is that we've outsourced our responsibility for democracy for too long. We expect politicians or so-called leaders to really do the hard work or the heavy lifting. And in order for democracies to flourish, I think everyday ordinary people have to be the leaders that we've been looking for. And the through line, Chris, in the book is that if we're going to be the leaders that we've been looking for. And the through line, Chris, in the book is that if we're going to be the leaders that we've been looking for, we have to become better people. And in order for us to become better people, we have to build a better world. It's circular in some ways, right? And so I try to think through this in light of my own biography, in light of the tradition of African-American politics, where prophets and heroes have been so critical and so important, not only to my own life, but to the way in which we conceive of politics. And I want to bring the prophetic down to the

ground. I want to bring the heroic down to the ground, not these special people that are anointed by God or these heroic people who have characteristics that we could not fathom in our own selves, but rather to see them as exemplars of what we're capable of doing. So that's what the book is all about. Pete There you go. And you talk about Emerson, self-reliance. You talk about a lot of people in the book that espouse that sort of nature of building a better people's stoicism. A lot of the original founders were into meditations, Marcus Aurelius, stoicism, and things of that nature. you know into meditations marcus aurelius stoicism

and things of that nature why do you feel that this is so crucial at this time you kind of gave me a little bit of that but are we in a juxtaposition or a dangerous area right now where you know i i would argue democracy stands at a point of of we can go one way the other way what what do you feel is the most emergency in our moment right now? You know, there are so many that are swirling around our heads right now. But I think at the end of the day, we could lose this democracy as we know it. Yeah, yeah. You know, there have always been forces, Chris, in our country's history that have been anti-liberal,

that have been in so many ways committed to an idea that did not affirm the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence, that all men and women were created equal. And these folk have been trying since day one, since the moment the country came into being, to yoke it to a tradition in which a certain few have all the power while the rest of us should simply shut up and follow them. And those people who stand in that tradition today are in full force and they're threatening the very foundations of democracy. We just saw in a recent report, in an interview in Time Magazine, Donald Trump showing what he would do as he would weaponize the federal government. We know what the Heritage 2025 is trying to do. We know what the Dominionists are trying to do, the Christian Nationalists and what they're

trying to do. So we actually face a full frontal threat from undemocratic forces in the country. And we have to marshal all of our energies, I think, to beat it back. But we can't do it just simply by way of elections and by politicians. We're going to have to change who we actually are and how we go about our business. There you go. So we'll circle back to the book. Our audience loves to know a little bit about you and your background, et cetera, if they're not familiar with you. So tell us a little bit about how you grew up, what shaped you, and then when did you discover that you were a writer, you're an intellect, and you wanted to do the things that you're doing now? You know, I'm a country boy from Moss Point, Mississippi.

You know, I grew up near the water. I could literally walk to the Gulf of Mexico, and the name of my little town is, the nickname is the River City because we have bayous that flow throughout. It's actually, flow throughout the town. It's actually quite beautiful. And it's named from the moss that dangles from magnolia trees or the cedar trees that are in or the cypress trees that are in the water. It's really beautiful with the best seafood on the planet. I mean, it's just amazing. My father was a postman.

He a veteran of Vietnam. He's a veteran of the Navy. Came home, took the government test, became a postman, and that changed our lives. I mean, back in those days, to be a letter carrier gave you a middle-class existence in some ways. And my mother, she's a powerful woman. She had her first baby in the ninth grade. They got married when they were 21 and 20, and they had four kids, and they basically grew up with us. And I had a very complicated relationship with my father. I write about it in the book, but he made me who I am.

I didn't realize that I was going to be an intellectual, though, until probably, I would say, my senior year in college. I realized, and I don't think I would describe it then as an intellectual, I just realized I was a fish out of water if I couldn't read books. And I was most comfortable in the exchange of ideas. And it wasn't until late in my career that I actually embraced the idea that I was a writer. You know, because you're trained as an academic in a certain kind of practice, Chris. You know, citation, you engage in this kind of specialized language. You don't really try to find your voice on the page.

You're constantly demonstrating your competence, your knowledge of literatures, and all of this other stuff. But, you know, I guess it was the book with Jimmy Baldwin, on Jimmy Baldwin, that solidified my view of myself. And I'm in my 50s as an artist, as a writer, yeah. There you go. They say the 50s, 60s, and 70s are actually man's best, most productive years. You're not as afraid. I know that for sure you're like i don't give a shit what anybody thinks exactly we're we're on the down slope

so it's okay it's all right what are you gonna do kill me i'm already have i'm already almost dead all the other parts are failing now as it is i know that so back to your book the the title we are the leaders we have been looking for i I love this because for me, when I talk about leadership, which is a favorite topic, is everyone can be a leader. One of the things I always used to hear with all my companies and the employees in them is you'd be giving someone some tasks or something. I'm not a leader, Chris. I'm not a manager. I'm not like you, the CEO. I don't have the title, so I'm not a leader.

And what I've always tried to espouse to people is anybody's a leader. A parent's a leader. The person riding the bus is the leader. The person who steps up in an emergency for someone who's a complete stranger becomes a leader. We're always leading. We're always influencing each other. We're always teaching each other. And so this is important in recognizing that we all have that ability to lead.

But I like how you take it and say, you know, we need to do better with politics and shaping the future. Because, you know, a lot of people are dismissive of politics nowadays or discouraged with politics. But you get the government you deserve. You get the government you vote. So, you know, when people complain to me about politics, I'm like, who'd you vote for? Maybe here's a mirror. Have fun with that. Yeah.

You know, I keep saying, as I travel around the country, we become better people, then we'll send better people to Washington, DC. And I think you're, you're absolutely right. And see, most people, some people get it, get it confused that we're trying to engage in this leveling, that all of us are leaders of the same quality, that we all have the same capacities and talents. That's not true. We all can't be Martin Luther King Jr. We all can't be DR. But you know what, though? We all have the capacity and the qualities that history could call forth that we could actually actualize, that we could

actually demonstrate in our living. And that's the beauty of it. Emerson has this wonderful formulation that great people come to us so that even greater people can follow. I love that quote. And see, oftentimes, Chris, what happens is that when we give ourselves over to so-called great people, when we give ourselves over to the prophet or give ourselves over to the so-called hero, we start following them and stop working on ourselves. We start following them and not paying attention to our own talents. And so I think what's most important for me, at least, and the title of the book comes from one of the great activists of the 20th century, Miss Ella Baker, is that at the end of the day,

responsibility for the world, responsibility for our form of life rest in each of our hands. And what does it mean to take responsibility for that? So recognize what's inside you, to try to make it actual in our doing, and just simply work on the world to become the people that the world desperately needs there you go i tell people we're the stewards of the democracy exactly that and and that's why it's so important that we vote that we care what goes on that we monitor that we hold politicians accountable you know you you bring up a great point people just like to vote and throw away the key and and they're and they don't check in they're like imagine whoever i voted for president or congress will do whatever and you know it's even more gross

that we expect that they lie to us and they're going to cheat and steal and we just kind of roll over for that yeah democracies can't work if that's what we do is that if that's what we believe you know they just they just fail they're going to wither on the vine if that's if that's how we approach it yeah if we give up on it, it will fail. And that's kind of why you're seeing these flashes of authoritarianism and fascism coming at us. You're seeing the rise in violent sort of nature. I think you were on before January 6th. But January 6th showed the violence of fascist authoritarian sort of uprising.

You know, one thing that was interesting to me, we had Peter, I forget peter i forget his name but he was one of the people got lambasted by trump the fbi agent peter stroud yeah peter stroud on the show yeah and amazing gentleman got to speak to him about about what his experience was but somebody had left a message on his show a week before january 6th on youtube saying we're gonna fix all this on january 6th and both him and i just went holy crap that's it was weird to look back on but to see the confederate flag still in in in the in the capitol building that stunned me like i just went holy shit we haven't settled the civil war that's That realization is so important. We're still fighting that battle. And that battle is really rooted in this idea that some people hold that our country must remain

a white nation in the vein of old Europe. And so when we listen to the two principal forces among the group that you're talking about, that you're describing, are white Christian nationalists and white nationalists. I mean, these are two, some who hold religious views, who believe that ours must be a Christian nation, and it's tethered to some idea of white identity, and those who are just simply white supremacists. And then you combine that, Chris, with hatred, I mean, with selfishness and greed, it's a toxic cocktail that threatens the very foundation of our society, it seems to me. It definitely does. So how do you advise people in the book to rise to your vision of being leaders?

How do we get there? Do we have to turn off the Kardashians and stop watching The Bachelor all the time and start paying attention? In part, we need to start paying attention for sure. We need to acquire the information we need in order to make reasoned decisions to govern our own lives. At the heart of democracy is this fundamental faith that everyday ordinary people can engage in self-governance. But you can't engage in self-governance if you're not discerning about the information that you're using. But the way in which I talk about it in the book, though, Chris, is that I say that I'm arguing for self-cultivation in the pursuit of a more just world.

And what I mean by that is that when we work on becoming our better selves, we have to work on the world that gets in the way of us becoming our better selves. Let me put it differently. There's a sense in which Baldwin, James Baldwin has this wonderful point. He says that the messiness of the world is in part a reflection of the messiness of our interior lives, that you and I are wounded, and that we carry around those wounds, our fears, and all of that stuff that's bubbling on the inside, that's moving us about, that's leading us to make certain kinds of choices, right, impact the very way in which the world is organized. Baldwin tells this story

in No Name in the Street, which was published in 1972, of this powerful figure in the South. With a phone call, he could keep somebody from being lynched or he gets somebody lynched. And Baldwin says that he reaches over in the midst of a drunken revelry and grabs his private parts. And Baldwin looks into his eyes and he says, they're wet eyes. And wet eyes for Jimmy is a metaphor for sentimentality. And he looks into his wet eyes and he says, there's something empty here. Something empty that leads to a loveless touch. And so what's going on on the inside is really important to the kind of world we build. So self-cultivation, trying to reach for higher forms of excellences, require that you and I be honest about who we are so that we can leave an old self behind and reach for a higher self.

And in order to do that, I think we have to commit ourselves to building a more just world. There you go. I mean, the rising tide lifts all boats. I think one of the challenges that we have is, I'm still waiting for my Reagan check from the down economics. Oh my God, aren't we all? Yeah. The illiberalism of Reagan and the Reagan era and the destruction it did to the middle class has been unwinding for 40, 50 years. I've lost count now of time. And it just seems like the middle class has just been slowly just cut to pieces, you know, one slice after another, one slice after another.

His Reagan illiteracy was very bad to the black community and minority communities as well. You know, I remember we had an author on the show who talked about she's become a great attorney for getting people out of prison they're falsely accused and she talked about how her mother had alcoholism in the south and she was able to go before reagan to programs to to help her maintain that and once you know reagan pulled all the mental health support out from under everyone you know know, and the, of course, increased police presence. Oh, absolutely, Doc. So it just kind of offset everything.

Her mother just went right into the tube. Yeah. I mean, since 1980, we have been living in an economic and political system that has transformed citizens into self-interested person in competition and rivalry with others. And what has happened because we've been transformed into these people who are in competition with others in pursuit of our own selfish aims is that we've eviscerated any robust notion of the public good. So there's a reason why in the 80s, they were talking about Americans bowling alone. There's a reason why in this current moment, people are talking about an epidemic of loneliness. The very social fabric of the country has been frayed as what has happened

as we've witnessed over the last 50 years, a serious transfer of wealth from working people to the very rich. We've seen the financialization of our economy. We've seen all of this happen while wages have flatlined, while working people could barely keep their noses above water, while people were being scapegoated and folks' fears and hatreds are being exacerbated all in the name of what so the rich can get richer the middle class can bear the burden of it because they're we're the only ones paying the bills and so and as a result our class structure moves from the shape of an hourglass to the look of a damn you know driver club. And that's where we are. And I think people are so marginalized by making poor decisions in politics,

who they voted and put in, not being educated, not being self-actualized, what you talk about in your book. It's put us to that point where we're just so desperate clawing for the bare necessities that we can get by. Number one, we don't pay attention because we're so busy. A person who works minimum wage works at McDonald's.

I've done that when I was a kid. Or a single mother or someone who's just trying to make ends meet, they don't have time to sit around and go, oh, did my congressman do their job today? What did he vote on? Things of that nature. You know, it kind of reminds me, and this is kind of funny because this movie came out in 1976, anytime i i think about the topic we're talking about right now it takes me back to the network movie where anchorman

howard beal he delivers that monologue where he says please just leave us alone our living rooms let me have my toaster my tv and my steel belted radios i won't say anything just leave us alone that was in 1976 people were feeling that way and i think it's more so now you know people people just they more want escapism i joked about the kardashians then you know they're they're interesting people but you know people want escapism they don't want to face reality and part of being a leader being self-actualized being self-reliant is about taking responsibility for your stuff and living in the real world and and being and being active in it oh absolutely you know and and exercising the imagination to understand that the world as it currently is is not the world the way the world will always be

you know so when we if we believe that all is settled that nothing we do, no choice we make can impact the world as it is, then you either resign yourself to your fate or you just simply say, hell, I can just be selfish and just go get mine. You feel no obligation to each other because your choices really don't matter. And our districts are gerrymandered. Our politicians don't seem to care about us. The really rich can buy the Supreme Court. I mean, we see it over and over again. And the fact that Donald Trump is just now being held to account is an example of the way of a two-tiered, three-tiered justice system in so many ways. But if we fundamentally believe that how we, the choices we make, how we act in the world matters, then we can understand

that we are really powerful. Everyday ordinary folk are really powerful, and we're so powerful that those who have power now don't want us to understand it, don't want us to see it, because they know how powerful we actually are. Yeah. So everyone, basically you want network, you want everybody to go to their windows, start shouting, I'm Mattis Allen, I'm not going to take it anymore. Is that what you want? I want everyone to try to, you know what I want, Chris? I want everyone to reach for their best selves. I want a coalition of the decent, people who affirm the dignity and

standing of everyone else, who want a society that's fair so that no matter your color, no matter your gender, no matter who you love or your ability, you can reach for higher forms of excellence. And I think if we can constitute a coalition of the decent we can be back we can beat back these illiberal forces yeah i think but we're going to have to be honest with ourselves tell the truth about who we are definitely i mean the one thing man can learn from his history and the one thing man can learn from his history i always say is that man never learns from his history and thereby we go around and around but you're right i mean we we have to make a decision and stand up and go you know our voices matter we can all change the world one of

my favorite heroes is bobby kennedy and i love his ripples of hope south africa speech where he talks about how each of us can send forth tiny ripples of hope that can that can tear down the greatest walls of oppression yeah and it was just one of my favorite things of all time that i like to keep in mind one but yeah we all need to take that thing when you when you live in a scare we used to america for the most part you know kind of had an abundance mindset i mean i think there were still people that were marginalizing but i think you know that's that struggle but we kind of seem to have had an abundance mindset. Now we have the scarcity mindset. And it seemed to be like a rising tide lifts all boats.

But now we're just like fighting each other for the rudders and fighting each other. We're in lifeboats fighting each other. And you're like, there's only one lifeboat here. And if we don't quit fighting, we're going to sink this thing. Yeah, we're on the lifeboat while the riches of the rich are sitting on their yachts and trying to tear down old bridges so they can bring their big mega yachts through the canal. I mean, I think we've been sold a bill of goods that there's only so much pie to go around. When in fact, we could just simply bake a bigger damn pie. There you go. I i can see it's funny this is this is my first copy i ever bought of emerson's oh wow that's great this is 1987 i can

see behind you all my vintage book series you have yeah authors yeah so and this this sits beside me we had an author on that came on the show who said, Emerson is a Stoic. He's just like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and everyone else. And I was like, oh, wow. I never thought of it. But yeah, it's self-reliance and all that good stuff. Well, you know, I think Emerson read the Stoics very carefully. I wouldn't want to suggest that he is a Stoic.

I think he understands the importance of, or the insights of Marcus Aurelius and others. But, you know, I read Emerson in the pragmatist tradition. So, there's a way in which the sage of Concord is setting the stage for you and me to act in the world intelligently, right? And to engage in the perfectionist impulse, and that is to reach for a higher self by leaving an older self behind. That there's this moral argument to be made that the kinds of human beings we take ourselves to be matter. And so we do that hard work of working on ourselves, as it were. And so Stoicism is obviously a resource of his, but I don't think he's only a Stoic, I think.

There you go. I think that's really important to say. And I know a lot of our original founders, that was one of the influences they had, was Marcus Aurelius, meditations, and some of the other philosophers. And when you read the Federalist Papers, and you kind of start understanding what they were hoping to do. You know, I mean, the transcript of the Constitution that says we're working to be a better union or a better people, it doesn't say we are. It says we're working, you know. I think it was Obama who said, you know, we're a nation that yins and yangs back and forth, but we're on a journey to be the best.

And that journey may never end. I don't know if you said that ending part, but. Yeah, you know, I think that's really important on a journey to be the best, and that journey may never end. I don't know if you said that ending part. Yeah, you know, I think that's really important on a certain level. But, you know, it has also been an abiding excuse of ours. We're always already on the road to be a more perfect union. And when we say it that way, Chris, what we're doing is we are often absolving ourselves of our sins. Oh, no, we're not perfect yet, but we will be. And by virtue of that formulation, we wash our hands of the evils that we're currently engaged in.

And so part of the idea here is not just simply to say that we're guaranteed to be a more perfect union. No, no, no, no, no. I say this all the time when I'm traveling the country. I said, you know, you can't, you and your spouse could decide that y'all are going to have a better marriage. But if you don't deal with the lie that's at the heart of the fight, no matter what you do, no matter what you do, you're going to be handicapped by the fact that you refuse to confront what's at the heart of the problem. And so America cannot become that more perfect union time we were together, we talked about this with Baldwin. And I'm extending that argument in this book, We Are the Leaders We've Been Looking For. Yeah. And, I mean, since then, we've, you know, we've seen Florida and other states try and hide or bury our history.

You know, history and character are destiny. I think that's part of what you're saying in your book. And we need to be active in that. We can't just, like you say, just go, they said in the Declaration we're on a better path, so I'm sure we'll get there if we just stay on this road. I'm going to go watch the Kardashians now. You've got to be active in politics.

You've got to care. Absolutely, Doc. Absolutely. There you go. One of the other things you talked about in your book is Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Ella Baker. Any plugs you went to Morehouse and there's a Dr. King statue pointing at the campus, right? I mean, we're baptized in all of Dr. King's teachings as it were. And so part of what I want to do with Dr. King is to bring him down to the ground, closer to the ground, as I put it. Because oftentimes Dr. King is invoked, Chris, as a way of disciplining the nature of black politics.

Oh, if you're not doing politics like Dr. King, then your form of politics isn't legitimate. So Dr. King is invoked to narrow the range of what constitutes legitimate forms of black political dissent. Or he's used or invoked to justify whoever wants to lead the march. I'm a follower of Dr. King. I was with Dr. King, like, come on, man. And let's read Dr. King, not as this larger than life figure, but as an example of what one can do when history calls you. Because he was a nobody and he was a young 20-plus-year-old minister in Montgomery. And the only reason E.D. Nixon and others chose him was because he was untouched by the powers that be. Oh, wow. And he answered the call and became the man that we glorify. So bring him down to the ground.

Malcolm is so important to me, though, because my father scared the shit out of me when I was little. He loved us hard, man. As I said earlier, he was, they grew up with us, but all that I am is because of him. But he could just look at me and scare me in my of constructing my manhood over and against the father that made me feel so afraid. Wow. So I have my go-to goatee to this day as a result of that conversion experience. I read the autobiography of Malcolm X. I said, oh, my God, this is the language of my father's rage. This helps me deal with that. But what does it mean to read Malcolm X as a shining black prince as opposed to a wounded witness?

Yeah. I wanted to bring him down to the ground so that his wounds and my wounds could speak to each other. Wow. You know, and I could become, I could understand what my voice is and what I'm capable of because I lost myself in the imitation of one of my heroes. Yeah. And then the last figure really is Ella Baker. Most people don't really know about her. But without her, Chris, the 20th century black freedom struggle would not have happened.

She was in the 1940s. She was the field secretary for the NAACP. So that means she's going into the South in the most one of the most dangerous periods of the NAACP's history. She's making connections, connections that will then show up in the mid 20th century, in the 1960s. She's the first executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, Dr. King's organization. So he tapped her to help him build the foundation of that organization. And then when the students engaged in their sit-ins in 1960, they eventually had a conference in April of 1960 at Shaw University. They were at Shaw because that was Ms. Baker's alma mater. And she has this view of democracy, man, that is

fundamentally tied to the title of the text. We are the leaders. She said she used to tell the SNCC organizers, shut up and listen to the sharecroppers text. We are the leaders. She said she used to tell the SNCC organizers, shut up and listen to the sharecroppers. You might learn something. And she had this fundamental, she had this wonderful formulation. She said a strong people doesn't need a strong leader. Ah.

You know, this is the thing I love about what you talked about is we, what's the word? We shovel off the leadership to whoever our demigods are prophets we seem to have some demigods lately and and or whoever we think is leading and and we just we just abandon any sort of we just follow them and and in today's world people follow drooling down the side of their mouth they really they just, they rabidly follow them and they don't test anything. They don't check that they're following through on what they promise. They don't hold them accountable in any way, shape, or form. If anything, they seem to give them a lot of leash on being unaccountable or being, making our politics worse and more dissented as opposed to building unity you

know you see a real difference between joe biden building unity trying to reach across the aisle and old style politics where we saw something different four years before and we're seeing the threatening of something very different here now well the you talked about in your book the father issue. Yeah. It's interesting to me because I'm 56, and it constantly comes back to me how striking and influential my father was. And a lot of it, I don't think I really understood for a long time. And I had a contentious thing with my father, too. I think he didn't tell me he was proud of me until I was 35. I didn't tell him.

Big company. But when we were young, we didn't tell me he's proud of me until i was 35 big company but when we were young he we didn't have the greatest relationship and he was he was a very angry man with a belt let's put it that way and he was complicated i never wanted to be like him but what was interesting in many ways i became like him and fortunately i was able to recognize it and go we need to go back and fix some of these things. But how did that, did you have an experience like that where you're going through? Yeah. And it sounds like flushing some of that out and kind of reflecting the manhood and fatherhood. Yeah, you know, I have a wonderful relationship with my dad today, but it was a journey.

You know, I opened the second chapter of the book with a terrible story. I'm playing hopscotch with this young woman, young girl down the street. I'm in the fifth grade. And she's showing me how to do the hopscotch thing. And my intention was to fail at this miserably over and over again, because I wanted her to show me and pay attention to me. So this was, this gives you a sense of my scheming mind, right? So I'm going to fail at hopscotch. And then suddenly I hear my father screaming, come down here. And I'm in his, I'm in the foyer of the house and my uncle is sitting on the couch and my dad asks me this question, what are you, a fag or something? So I'm in the fifth grade and I'm in the middle of this, I'm in this hallway in my father's house and he's questioning my sexuality. And I'm looking him dead in his eye.

And my brother used to tell me, don't look at him because whenever I would look at him, I would cry. Wow. That's a powerful look. He would fixate on me, right? And so part of what I'm trying to do in that moment is to talk about my own wounds. Remember Baldwin says the messiness of the world is often a reflection of the messiness of our interior lives. So why do I reach for my heroes? Why do I want to escape the world? Because my dad loved us. I don't ever doubt that. At least I don't now. I did when I was little, but he loved hard and it left his bruises and marks. And I've been having to battle, at least I had, with his ghost, with his shadow

for much of my adult life. And part of what, you know, right now, you know, we have a great relationship. He'll call me to tell me what to say on television. It's actually quite cute. It's wonderful, actually. But what does it mean to be honest about those things, Chris? I mean, in some ways it releases us into the possibility of being otherwise. Yeah.

Because if I don't, if I'm not honest about it, Cornel West has this wonderful formulation that he told me when I was a graduate student. He said, he said, Brother Eddie, we're all wounded. The question that we have to ask ourselves is whether we're going to be a wounded healer or a wounded herder. And then as I've grown older, I realized that if you're really mature, you realize that you're going to be at some point both. But this aspiration to be whole can get us in trouble. I'm trying to find instead the beauty in the brokenness and to put the goal in the cracks because the cracks are there and they're not going anywhere. They're kind of our makeup, what makes us. Yeah, they're the grooves in our lives.

Exactly. They give you and me texture. I have a lot of texture. Sounds like you do. It's in my Tinder profile. He's a big guy who's eaten too many burgers and has lots of texture on him, especially in my cheeks. So there you go. Eddie, it's been wonderful to have you on.

Give us your final thoughts as we go out, pitch people on picking up your book, et cetera, et cetera. You know, the book is asking the reader to stretch. I'm going to introduce you to a whole bunch of philosophy, philosophical figures and others that you might not know of. But the fundamental, the fundamental claim is that if democracy is going to be saved, if American democracy is going to be salvaged, if we're going to imagine America anew, we have to become better people. And when we become better people, we become the leaders we've been looking for. And that's at the heart of this text. They're each of us is stewards of this democracy.

There you go, Doug. There you go. Stewards of the thing. Be a leader. You know, everyone can lead. I think you're right. People feel that they don't have the title or they feel that they're inept or they feel that they're wounded or they feel that, you know, I'm not big enough to make a difference, you know. And those are the people who need to stand up.

Those are the people who make a difference in history. Every single day. Yeah, yeah. So there you go. Give us your dot coms, Eddie, as we go out. Again, esglot, that's on X, and esglot on Instagram. Appreciate you. There you go.

Thank you very much, Eddie, for coming on the show. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Fost and all those crazy places we're on the internet. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold april 16 2024 is out we are the leaders we have been looking for id god jr has been with us on the show thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time