The Dispatch Podcast - Right Hand, Left Hand

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter at Vox, joins Sarah and Steve for a wide-ranging discussion on racism and police violence as protests around the world continue over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Show Notes: -Read Jane's work at Vox -Follow Jane on Twitter -The story of Right Hand, Left Hand Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday Dispatch podcast. I am your host, Sarah Isgird, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit the dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts. And make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. Today we're joined by Jane Koston. She's a senior politics reporter at Vox with a focus on conservatism and the American right. But perhaps more importantly than that, spending an hour getting to peek inside Jane's brain is a special treat. She's high energy, she's funny, and she synthesizes different strains of history and politics and news of the day, all at a super fast pace. I highly recommend following her on Twitter, finding her stuff on

Vox anytime you can. I'm a huge Jane fan, so today was definitely a special treat for me. Let's dive in with Jane. Jane, it's, you know, maybe I turn to data in times like these as a comfort. A lot of polls out recently. ABC just this morning said that nearly three force of Americans view the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer as a sign of an underlying racial injustice problem, a significant shift from just six years ago, a 30-point increase from December 2014

when the Black Lives Matter movement really became a national household name. There's CBS had pull out earlier that found 61% of Americans said the race was a major factor in Floyd's death. But we're starting to see, a partisan gap. 87% of Democrats in that question said that race was a major factor.

Only 39% of Republicans did. However, when it comes to the president's handling of the situation, 65% of Republicans approved how he was handling of the situation, which is far lower than the 84% who approved of how he's handling the coronavirus pandemic, for example. You write a lot about the conservative movement, the Republican Party for Vox, which is, you know, just some of the best explaining out there. How are you absorbing this as you look at conservative movement, Republican Party Trump supporters? So I think about it in a couple of different ways, and I want to break them down one by one.

first and foremost, I think it's interesting that our first focus, and I understand why this is, and I don't think it's bad, and I'll get to why I think that. I think the focus on thinking about this as being, you know, I'm going to say simply an issue of race, but obviously the issue of race is multifaceted and incredibly complex. When we are, what we are thinking about is what happened in the case of George Floyd is that an officer of the law took the life of another person on video, slowly smothering and asphyxating a person for nearly nine minutes. Whether that had happened to a white person or whether it had happened to a black person

or whether it happened to anyone for any reason. And let's not forget that what George Floyd was being arrested for was for passing a purportedly counterfeit $20 bill, which is a nonviolent offense. It is a felony because counterfeiting is a felony offense. But it is obviously a nonviolent crime. Right. This is very different than those sort of exigent circumstances in the moment.

We're not sure things are happening. Right. Right. You know, this is not a case, despite the efforts of Minneapolis's police union, who seems to be engaged in like, what would you have to do to make people hate police unions? That seems to be what the Minneapolis Police Union is, like, laser focused on doing. Well, we might need to talk about Buffalo Police Department. in a little bit because I think they're, yeah, they're giving them a run for their money there.

It's true. So I think that the focus for me has been on the wielding of power by officers purportedly of the law and doing so in general with few consequences. The fact that this has all happened so relatively quickly, it's extremely rare. And I think I can point to the case of Amud Arbery, which let's keep in mind that the murder and I will call it a murder because this is me talking and I'm allowed to do that. The murder of our burry took place in February and we're in the midst of proceedings taking place now that are just because the person who, you know, a video got out because a defense attorney believed that some way it would help the people who did it, which that's a whole separate question. But, you know, that was a case that happened months ago. And because people involved had experience with law enforcement, law enforcement in that area were apparently entirely willing to let it go.

And so I think that the question of race here, for me, is not top of mind. It is a part of this. It is a part of the context in which George Floyd died. It is a part of the context in which, you know, the police union could say that he was being, you know, he was a violent criminal when you watch that video and you're like, you've got like four people and you've got one person. And, you know, so much

of this seems to imply that police officers are they stalwart champions of the law, but they're also weak and tiny little corgis. And like, you can't have both. You can't have both arguments here. You got to pick one. And so, and, you know,

and I think that that goes to how some of this is polling in some ways, because I think that you know, if you think about this in terms of, you know, people we expect to uphold the law, people we give extraordinary powers, the power to kill on the basis of the state. If those people are failing and not just failing, they are committing crimes of their own, we view that, I think, across the country as being a problem. And I'll actually say that, you know, it was interesting because I kind of wanted to make that meme of like the two hands coming together because you saw a lot of people during the anti-shutdown protests who were like, these police officers were enforcing the shutdown or out of control. Like, how could they do this? They're just running rampant.

And I'm like, yes, police officers running rampant. They're enforcing the law, but they're, you know, they're violating the law that they're supposed to be enforcing. I don't know if I've ever heard of that before. And I think it's important to know that, like, the types of the way that George Floyd died, the way that African-American men and women have died in police custody is not just happening to black people. It's happening to people like Daniel Shaver, who was shot to death while sobbing hysterically on his knees. And the police officer who shot him was not only went unpunished, but he also received. a full pension. And, you know, I saw a couple of conservatives discuss that, yo, you've never

heard of this case because this person is white, as if like, ah, like, that's a get out of jail free card. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Like, it's not better when the person who is being murdered by police is white. It's not a, you know, that is, I think, an example again of what's taking place here. That said, I want to get to the point that race clearly played a role here. race clearly was a determinant of why the types of, you know, chokeholds or why these types of police strategies were used is because this particular, quote, unquote, offender was believed to be more violent or believed to be more of a threat than others. You know, I think that people, people bring this up all the time, and I'm aware that there are mitigating context to it. But I'll never forget the day that Dillon Roof was arrested. And Dillon Roof was arrested with no incident.

And the police officers who arrested him, the person who killed nine African-American people in a church, they arrested him and they got him lunch on the way. And I do not object to people feeding people because I'm a Christian and that's not how this works. But I do object to the fact that someone who had committed such a violent act because of this. their positionality and because of who they were and were not believed to be currently then violent. Whereas George Floyd was believed to be so much of a threat as an individual who had passed allegedly a counterfeit $20 bill

that he necessitated four people kneeling on him. And so I think that that is a key here. And I also think, though, that when people see this incident, they are not just seeing the murder of George Floyd. The reason why that all of this is happening is not just because of George Floyd. It is because of the precipitating cases that have happened.

It is because this has been happening for years. And now it's happening on video. And, you know, there have been a lot of people capturing videos even during the protests of police brutality. And we're seeing, you know, the case out of Buffalo. We're seeing a lot of this for the first time. I remember, you know. But what makes the Buffalo case, by the way, I think so important to your point

is not just that it's on video, and for listeners who haven't seen it, it is a video of an elderly man. As the police move forward, he is facing the police. He's maybe trying to say something to them. It's unclear. He doesn't appear to be a protester, though he might be. And they shove him, he falls backwards, hits his head, and starts bleeding from the head, and appears to be unconscious.

And they sort of move around him as they continue to move on the protesters. So it's a horrible video. But I think what makes it egregious is that the police department put out a statement that someone had tripped and fallen and it was a lie. And without the video, you don't, you would not know for sure that it was a lie. And so why the videos are important is because they directly contradict what we're being told. And it makes you go back to every time we were told something without a video and scare the hell out of you. Right.

Exactly. Because you start thinking, you know, I was going to say, that when I grew up in Cincinnati, and in April 2001, a police officer shot an unarmed black kid named Timothy Thomas, and, you know, the resulting protests and violence that, you know, Cincinnati was put under a curfew. I think correspondingly, and I've always thought about this, that April was unusually hot in Cincinnati. Like, I remember being like 85, 87 degrees and I was like an eighth grade and this was, it was very, it was a lot. But yeah, like, you know, we don't have a video of that. There wasn't body. came of that. We don't know what the officers in that case claimed was like, oh, he was moving towards his waistband. And we have no idea. And I think that that's been something that I think is influencing a lot of this for a lot of Americans is not only do we have this case on video, but we have so many other cases now where it seems as if the police acted, you know, there wasn't an exigent fear. There wasn't an exigent fear in the case of

Brianna Taylor, there was a no-knock raid signed by a judge based on postal, you know, postal evidence that the postal union said that they didn't give them, or the postal inspector, rather. You know, there is video in Ammoud Arbery's case, four minutes of, you know, a man being chased by people in a truck. And so I think what is reflective of a lot of this polling is, you know, people seeing all of this taking place and all of this happening in this overarching context. And people, you know, who in 2014 weren't sure. You know, you've seen, I've actually been thinking a lot about Colin Kaepernick. And if you search right now, I was wrong Colin Kaepernick. There are all these people on Twitter who are like, you know, in 2014, I told, I said that you've sucked.

In 2015, I, you know, I hated you, but I was wrong and I understand now what you were trying to do. And I think that there are a lot of people in 2014, 2015, who saw this in a very different context. Who saw this as, you know, the Obama administration is failing to keep an eye in the cities as, you know, this, you know, race fading, which I think is actually one of the most abhorrent terms that can be used. It's up there with outside agitator. That is a term where I'm like, we got to find another one because it just, to me, just makes you sound like it's 1965 and you're in Birmingham, Alabama. But I think people are now willing, especially with a crisis in institutions in general, you know, I've been wondering if for a lot of conservatives

who have been paying a lot of attention to the Michael Flynn case, where they've been told over and over again about how, you know, the federal law enforcement failed. Federal law enforcement did this to this man, you know, people who were supposed to know better, didn't. People put politics over their job. You know, if you want to see an example at the local level of law enforcement not doing their job, it's like, here you go. We've got dozens of examples. Welcome. You know, we're ready to have this conversation. Yeah, that's a fascinating combo there. And I don't, and I think that that's been, I think that's been particularly infuriating for a lot of people, I think, especially people who are libertarian leaning, is that the same questions people are

willing to ask of federal law enforcement. People, you know, who distrust the FBI for the many reasons you might distrust the FBI, who think of their local law enforcement very differently. And we see that in polling that, you know, you distrust law enforcement, but you like local police. Same to your congressman. Right, exactly. Because you might know officers on the beat or it just feels more familiar. I think people are starting to ask those questions. of local law enforcement as well, especially seeing, you know, all of these videos. And, you know, the only thing I'll say about Trump here, because I actually think that our tendency in media to make things about Trump, where I actually think that this is, this is an

issue that doesn't need him, and this is an issue in which he does not help. You know, I fear, you know, I've said this before, but sometimes I've theorized that Trump conceived of winning the presidency, like you win an Olympic gold medal. When you win an Olympic gold medal, you do not have to then, like, preside over the Olympics for four years. No one's going to ask you to, like, you know, you get a parade, you're done, that's it. Congratulations. It's good job. And I think that a lot of people who voted for him for their various reasons, you know, there is an understanding that he would either not be as bad as Hillary Clinton or not be as bad as Obama or that something would,

something else would happen and during a time of relative peace and prosperity, you know, he would do what you wanted him to do, which is yell about the media and stand up for whomever he's supposed to be standing up for. And he wouldn't really need to do anything, which that clearly hasn't exactly worked out. But I think that what we're seeing in a lot of the polling is a real recognition that this is a problem. And what I would ask people to say is that, you know, if you are seeing people or if you have that, you know, like, but what about the time police killed this white guy? I'm like, yes, exactly. Congratulations. Yes, here we are. Like, welcome. This is a, this is a bipartisan 50 state issue. You know, what the cases that we're seeing, you know,

like Buffalo, that's in the, you know, Democratic stronghold of New York State that, you know, we're seeing police violence in Los Angeles and, you know, Mayor Eric Garcetti, essentially letting the LAPD run rampant over protesters and then essentially saying like, oh, you know, we'll get them to take implicit bias training, which has its own long history and of which I'm very skeptical instead of, you know, actual things that he could actually do. You know, this is not an issue in which you can just say like, well, you know, this is a Democrat issue or a Republican issue. because so much of this is based on the power of police unions, and so much of this is based on the voters of all parties.

You know, the people with hate has no place here signs, still being willing to call the police every time something vaguely sketchy happens that they see on next door. You know, that's like the bipartisan practice. That is a bipartisan practice of the same, you know, I think that what I hope is happening. I don't know what will happen because no one does, but what I hope is happening is a recognition

that this is an overarching problem that is almost untethered to who is in the presidency right now. I will amend that to say that, you know, the Trump administration has done a lot to take away oversight of local police departments, oversight that was clearly very much necessary. But I would say that, you know, this is. a moment to really take stock and for Americans of all political ills to be asking a lot of questions of whom they vote for and why. Can I follow up on that? Yeah, yes, of course. I've got a, I mean, it's interesting because there's so many reasons as you watch what's happened throughout the country over the past couple weeks to be just incredibly discouraged. And

there's so many people I talk to, and that's the sort of overwhelming, um, sentiment, you know, whether it's discouraged because of what we're actually seeing on our, on our television screens, on our computers, whether it's being discouraged because we're still so far from the promise of the country that I think people thought we maybe had made more progress towards, whether it's discouraged just because of the precipitating event. I mean, the George Floyd video is just such a... It's such a picture of humanity that people prefer not to see. You prefer not to confront because it's so awful.

But I wondered listening to you talk whether there might also be reason for some optimism. As I listen to you, talking about the video, that's one of the things that I've been struck by throughout this whole thing is we're seeing all this stuff. obviously these are extraordinary circumstances and we're seeing far more police activity and it's so much more of it's being recorded and there's obviously scrutiny on police now because of the issues that we're all discussing. But I do think it's been eye-opening to some extent for people to see this, for people to see the video of the park police guy smashing the Australian cameraman in the face to see the video. of this poor fellow in Buffalo who was knocked backwards.

To see the video, I thought, for me, one of the most affecting things I've seen in this whole, this whole episode was the cops who pulled the young black couple out of the car in Atlanta, just extraordinary. Like, you watched, and the entire time you're watching, you're saying, what are you doing? Like, they're not doing it. Why are you doing this?

And to see this sort of look of pained horror, particularly on the, on the females' face for people who have seen that video, all of this to say, we're seeing this stuff. Right. Does that, can that affect change? Because we're seeing, it's no longer theoretical. It's no longer abstractly. We're watching this happen. We're seeing this. And I think that that can affect real change.

I mean, I think that you're already starting to see people. you know, talk about and being qualified immunity and talking about making real reforms to policing and, you know, limiting the power of policing, limiting the militarization of policing. But my concern is that I think that now I'll say this that one of the challenges, and I think that we've all seen, found this in our work, is that a lot of times if you want to hear from people, you go see what people are saying on social media. But the people who are saying things on social media are not the most important, but they are also the most loud. And so one thing that concerns me is, I talked about this before, but I think many people have a sense of personal libertarianism. Personal libertarianism in that, like, I should be able to do whatever I wants. You know, before we started recording, we were talking about someone's children being kind of like feral libertarians who want to do everything and they can't explain why they can't. And I think many of us in our own way see, you know, we are.

fine if we break the law, because we understand our full reasonings. And I think that, you know, and when I say break the law, I mean like jaywalking, which is technically a misdemeanor offense in many localities, including, for instance, the state of Florida. Jaywalking, speeding, slow rolling, a stop side, you know, a lot of these kind of small tick-tack penalties that either law enforcement doesn't enforce at all or they enforce it the barrel of a gun, as we've seen. And so my concern, though, is that you see some people who are like, well, you know, if that elderly guy in Buffalo had just gotten out of the way.

And it's funny because a lot of these people on the Internet are also people with like, don't tread on me headers and their bios. And I'm just like, it's like, no, no, no, don't tread on me, but those people tread all over them. And that's my concern is that sometimes we are taking in a, bunch of information. We have access, we're taking it a bunch of data and information and we are processing it in the best way we can. And my concern is that our inherent personal libertarianism, the kind of the rules apply to other people, but not to me, I think something that we all do.

You know, we all jaywalk, but if we found out that someone else got arrested for jaywalking, would be like, well, let's see it. You know, like, it's, it is a crime. But it's just, you know, It's when I do it, it's very different. So my concern, though, is that in a lot of these instances, we want to make sense out of it. And sometimes I think that that comes from people who are doing so in a way that mitigates the responsibility of law enforcement. Now, you know, but I don't think that that's going to happen on kind of a mass scale. I bet that is something that I'm concerned about. I think that more people are thinking about this than have before.

And I think because the role of government is bigger in our lives than it has been, I think, for many people ever before. And sometimes I think that occasionally people, conservatives forget that law enforcement counts as being part of the government. When people are like, oh, big government. And then they're like, oh, but our beautiful police unions, we should cover them in flowers. We love them. I'm like, no, no, no, that's all part of the same thing. And so I think that I am hopeful, but I'm also concerned that we will start making excuses in some of these cases

because we think of ourselves as being full actors in our own lives. But sometimes I don't think what you think about other people. As Nancy Pelosi said she was going to introduce a police reform bill, you mentioned the qualified immunity bill. that Justin Amash has introduced that has been joined by, I think, 16 Democrats in the House. The Senate has its version as well with a bunch of senators on it, Democratic senators and Democratic members of the House. Do you see a future legislative fix to any of this? I think that, well, I think that one of the challenges here is that there are going to be a lot

of people who are like, let's introduce a bill in Congress. And I'm like, yes. And then we need to introduce a bill in like every state legislature. And then also we need to go to our local governments and ask a lot of questions about the police unions here, because let's keep in mind that the, you know, what we've seen on the streets of many cities has been the police officers using military-grade equipment. That is literally from the military. That is because of a program that the Obama administration, I believe, ended and then the top administration started again.

So, you know, you are seeing small town, relatively small cities and small towns with weapons that I think for many, you know, many service members, they remember using, like, during the invasion of Basra. And so this will be a multi-tier effort. And we've seen in, you know, for instance, Camden, New Jersey, when we're talking about, like, defunding the police, Ken to New Jersey basically dismantled its police department and then brought in other people and then they established a police union under different settings, the police union that they had before. And that that's going to be the type of reform that might be necessary. And that reform might look different in different places. I think that, you know, when we're talking about, for instance, New York, where they have, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of

police officers, an extraordinarily powerful police union, you know, the reform. that will be necessarily there is going to be different than the reform that's necessary in, say, Zeno, Ohio. And so... But would you say then...

I mean, what... It sort of sounds like you're almost saying there could also be on the Republican side, maybe some movement there, but on the Democratic side, I keep hearing you mentioned

police unions. Could we see a falling off of support for unions in general? I think that for many people, police unions have... I think for me, and I'm still working through how I think about this

because I'm the member of a union. I like my union. But it's the Writers Guild of America. The Writers Guild of America, as far as I know, I get Oscar screeners. I do not have the power to kill on behalf of the state. And so I think that one of the big challenges now is that police unions,

you're starting to see Democratic candidates for office saying that they'll give back any donations, by police unions because part of why police unions have gained so much power is a terrific piece in reason today about this is essentially because of, you know, the ways in which police unions are both used and used political power or for political power. And so how many local, you know, if you live in D.C., you get the political ads for Maryland to Virginia, which is kind of hilarious because there are a lot of people telling me about how I can vote in things

that I cannot vote it. But how many ads have you seen and they're just like, you know, when this person did this, they took a tough stance on crime. You know, a real law and order approach that's really, you know, caring about our safe streets and safety.

You know, there are certain touchstones that we see in political advertising about law and safety and security. And all of that are, is, you know, a play towards the middle voter, the voter who may vote Democrat, may vote Republican, but they're in the center. They're kind of that, you know,

when we talk about, you know, the people who are most turned off by Trump after maybe voting for him in 2016, you're talking about like suburban white women who aren't, like, raging liberals, but they aren't, like, radical conservatives kind of in the middle. And that's to whom those ads that frequently mention

or talk about security and safety of law order, that's what they're meant to appeal to. And so there are politicians who for years have talked out of both sides of their mouths about the need for police reform, but also accepting a lot of money from police unions because they know they need that for, you know, political purposes. So this is going to be a long-running process because you're going to have to see candidates say, like, you know what, if the police union doesn't support me, that's okay, you know, the people who the police, police support me, the people who care about reform support me, the people who care, who know that law and order can only exist under the rule

of law and true order, that's who supports me. So I think that, you know, the issue of police means is going to be a long-running one, especially because, you know, public sector unions themselves, Keep in mind that, you know, for a lot of the largest public sector unions, police unions, teachers unions, all of them are all under one big umbrella. And so you're going to have, and you're already starting to see, you know, some people say, like, why can't we get police unions out of here? They do something very different. And you've seen in, you know, politically, for example, when Scott Walker in the state of Wisconsin attempted to kind of break the back of public sector unions, you'll notice he left out police unions and they left out firefighter unions. And then he got support from both of those groups in multiple rounds of elections. And so I think that it'll be interesting to see how police unions fit into this conversation

because conservatives have tended to support the police unions because of the word of police. And Democrats have tended to support police unions because of the word unions. And so both, you know, and police unions have benefited from both of those. And that has led to their overarching power and to the overwhelming, in sentiment, divide they have from, you know, the entire concept of the thin blue line. I don't know if people saw pictures of this, but in Cincinnati, you know, there was a Cincinnati Police Department, they took down their American flag, and then they put up the version of the American flag with the thin blue line, because apparently altering the flag is awesome when they do

it. And so, you know, this idea that you are, you know, they are this separate bulwark against, like, the forces of evil you know you send them to the wall you know to guard the north or something but they do this other thing over there and you know i think that we've gotten very far away from the police being people who you just know and um you know the police now being thought of as almost this separate culture is separate community and i think that that is something that is very concerning and that lends to why you know the heads of police unions in multiple cities always sound as if they are only talking to the police officers and they do not care anything

about anyone else, including the people they're policing. You do wonder, you wonder if, to pick up on Sarah's point, if this is sort of part of the ongoing scrambling of our politics that we've seen because the conservative critique of teachers' unions forever has been that basically unions are there to shield teachers from accountability. I think the same critique is made broadly by the left against police unions, right? I mean, that's the problem with police unions. This is the argument that we're hearing right now is unions get in the way of, you know, determining accountability or carrying out accountability for officers who are bad.

Therefore, we have too many officers who are bad. It is sort of the mirror image of the conservative critique of teachers' unions. And I wonder whether this is a moment that gets everybody to kind of rethink where they come from on that. Yeah, I think it's challenging because, again, you know, I am not a, one of, you know, I think that we can all agree that one of the challenges of doing this work is to have, you know, how to talk about something when you feel very intensely about it. And so even while you were talking, I was like, well, police, you know, police unions have, they've got guns. and many means by which to kill people. And teachers' unions have teachers, which is different. The future of our kids in their hands, you could argue.

Yes. Yes. See, again, that's true. And so I think that that's going to be a big challenge because I think that I have seen many people specifically on the right making that argument of like, you know, the same critiques that we have of police unions, Democrats have of teachers, the same critique that conservatives have of teachers unions. Democrats have of police unions, so just eliminate public sector unions and you solve this problem.

And I think that it's going to be more complicated than that because of the exact hesitancy that I'm having and the exact hesitancy that I think that many conservatives might be having about police unions. The same people who are like winning to abolish the Department of Education are probably thinking like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But police unions help protect police. Well, this is good. I mean, nobody will accuse me of being overly. optimistic about our politics, particularly in the last five years. But this is, this is, I think, another moment where I say, that's a good thing, right? I mean, what I think you're seeing is

you're taking these sort of reflexive positions that people have had on either side and maybe in the process of all of this chaos and all of this discouraging news that we're seeing, getting people to sort of stop and think about it. Or is it really just a small group of people who are stopping and thinking about it and everything will just revert back to the way it was. I don't think things will revert back because I think that, you know, for one thing, I don't know if things ever really do in general. I think that the conversations that we're having and the polling reflexes indicate that people are hungry for real change. You know, I've seen

just in D.C., I've seen people taking part in protests who genuinely had. had never done so in their lives. And I think we're hearing that from a lot of people. You know, you've got, you know, I'm 32 and I have friends whose parents who are just like, you know, I've never been in a protest in my life, but I'm doing, I'm taking part of this protest in Appleton, Wisconsin, or, you know, going to a protest in, you know, small towns in Indiana. And I think that that is reflective of an overall mood. And I think that the context matters here, the context of, you know, being in the midst of a pandemic that I think many people think was handled very poorly by all sides.

And I think that it takes place amidst of a real crisis of authority that I think has been fomented by certain people. And it's been kind of entertaining to see the same people who are like, you know, it's time to stand up to the deep state. And then there's like, well, you know, the park police said they didn't do this. So. Right. Okay, where I'm just like, but we just, you know, you got my anti-government dander up and you can't, no, no, no, like we're staying in this. So I, but I do think that this is the time in which the people who want to be in authority, they want to be in a position of authority, they need to prove to the American people why they deserve it. And they need to prove that, you know, why they should be the ones to wield power or even what kinds of power they should wield at all.

you know, I think that, um, I always joke that, uh, the, you know, do you remember in like 2012, 2012, 2013 that there are a lot of like, is this the libertarian moment articles? And it turns out it was not. It was not. Because whenever that's the libertarian moment, in general, the libertarian party has responded by like being like, do you want to talk about gold and no one ever wants to talk about gold. Um, but I do think that this may not be the libertarian moment, but I do think that this is the libertarian-lanning conversation touch point, which is a much longer sentence. Not a good bumper sticker, yeah, yeah.

It's not, it's not. But I think that this is the time in which if you are having, you know, I was thinking about how best to tweet about this and just decided not to, but, you know, I've been usually a good instinct, except for you. I like your tweets. Oh, thank you. I've been very intensely bothered by the number of times I say, for instance, Democrats who are Democrats who are like, you know,

this administration is doing bad things and it's full of bad people. And then because they want to be seen doing something, they'll do things like, and that's why I'm asking the Department of Homeland Security to do this. And I'm like, wait, what? No, no, you got to, the Department of Homeland Security arguably should no longer exist and maybe shouldn't have been established because, you know, if we remember that whole thing with the establishment of the security state as a result of September 11th, which is why we take off our shoes to get on airplanes because one person

tried to bomb a plane with a shoe. And yeah, it's a whole thing. But I think that there's a real, there's a, I'm hoping that you start to see a real understanding that challenging government power should not be a partisan cudgel, that the same Democrats who are currently voicing support for major police reforms could have done that beforehand. And that the same Republicans who during the Obama administration were talking, you know, standing of thwart, you know, progressivism yelling stuff, who are now like, actually, it would be pretty awesome if the military, like, was, you know, put out against

peaceful protesters. Like, there's got to be a moment at which you recognize. recognize that the problem may not necessarily be politics. The problem here is power and the wielding of power. I want to talk about gender for a second because I had a little disagreement with the guys last night. And, you know, I get to be the woman in that. So I speak for all women. So I need your help on this. Because I'm interested whether you agree or disagree with with this idea. Women through history have been allies. Look at the abolition movement.

There was a huge gender gap, if you will, to put a current term back in the 19th century on the abolition movement. And yet, you mentioned this earlier, that suburban moms post-9-11, we called them security moms. And they were sort of pro-law and order, pro-safety in their community,

you know, get things, back to not scary, let's call it. Right, exactly. But we also are seeing, I mean, in some of these polls up to a 30-point gender gap between, you know, Trump and Biden, who would you vote for today type stuff. Trump is going very much on the law and order message. And I think they believe that will appeal to these quote-unquote security moms. My theory is that in fact, they have missed what's going on here, and there is a gender gap and who is supporting these protests for maybe just some of these intuitive reasons that women have done this in the past, that, yes, safety and security in my neighborhood is important, but also there is something with women where injustice

stands out more, injustice to others. There's a protective aspect to femininity, maybe. No, disagree. Disagree. It depends on which women. Like, as we've, I think that you are absolutely right that what we saw after 9-11 was the security moms. And I think that so much of this conversation has been, you know, this is, I can't make people change their minds. I can't even make myself change my mind sometimes. But I do think that, you know, part of the conversation that we're not yet having, and I don't even know how we,

get there is who calls the police and why and the understanding of what police are supposed to do. This is the Karen problem. Right. This is the Karen problem, which is a universal bipartisan issue. You know, you call the police as your own personal security from things that vaguely annoy you. Even the entire, like, noise violations or like, you know, someone's grass is too long. Like, let's keep in mind that if you were calling the police for a noise violation, you calling people who could kill the people who are committing the noise violation. I think, though, that it is not that Trump's messaging on law and order is not appealing to suburban moms. I think it is the fact that the suburban moms perhaps do not believe

that Trump could actually provide the aforementioned law and order. Interesting. There's been a lot of comparison to 1968 recently, which I think is bad because in general, as someone who, you know, I was a history person. I wrote my thesis at Michigan on Nazi propaganda before and after the Battle of Stalingrad, which is one of those things. People were like, Jane, why are you talking about Nazis? When is that ever going to be useful?

And then here we are. I did not want it to ever be useful. I just wanted to talk to my dad about Stalingrad. But, well, but, you know, the historical illusion in 1968 is that Trump would make this big law and order campaign and in response to everything. people would vote for him because of all these reasons. But the issue is that he's the incumbent. He can no longer pretend to be an unknown quantity.

He can't be both, you know, it's, I'm aware that politics is very strange and context heavy. But it seems to me that asking Trump to be both the change agent who shakes things up and the guy who makes things normal again is asking him to do a lot of gymnastics that I don't know if he's entirely or this campaign is entirely prepared to do. apparently the campaign seems to have focused on remember everything we said in 2016 we say the opposite of that now I was very entertained to see for instance the Trump campaign Twitter feed tweeting out some piece about how Joe Biden along with I think a 409 other senators voted to give Robert E. Lee his citizenship back and they're using this as a hit on Joe Biden which I was like but do you remember like the whole Confederate memorial thing that we were just doing? I'm not three years old, so I do remember this. So it's interesting to just see them flip sides on this.

But I think that the challenge is not that like suburban moms or any mom. And let's be clear here that sometimes when we're talking about like the working class or suburban moms, we are talking about suburban white moms and the white working class because there are a lot of suburban moms of color, suburban black moms. Let's keep in mind the suburbs are far more diverse than I think how we talk about them is. And residential segregation is a real thing, but if we're still thinking about suburbs and the definition that we've been using for the last 40 years, that those areas have become far more diverse, it is not necessarily that those groups don't want security or, quote, unquote, law and order. It is that the guy who says that he can bring them to you has spent the last several weeks accusing an MSNBC host of committing murder and ranting. a lot on the internet and stuff keeps happening and the things that you don't want to happen keep happening. And the people who are supposed to stop those things may not be doing that

because they're over here yelling about Joe Scarborough. And so I don't think that it has to do with any innate aspect of femininity. I think it has to do with you said that you would do this thing and you didn't do this thing. You said that I, you said, you know, I alone can fix this American carnage and the carnage, you know,

it's, we're still carnaging, you know, it's gotten a carnager. And so I think that that is an important carnaging the carnage. Now, you know,

I don't think that you can, if I were the Biden campaign, I would not do an entire campaign about how Trump said he'd do these things and then didn't do them because you didn't want them to do them in the first place. But I do think that the, you know, the idea is not, again, that, you know, that people in suburban areas, you know, who see what's happening on television are not, you know, they have stopped wanting what they wanted before, is that they still want what they want before. They just don't think that this president can get it to them. And I think that that is, especially because so much of this rests on the idea that you see the things about like people getting, you know, Antifa coming to your small town.

Antifa's not coming to your small town anymore than the people who like, you know, I write about white nationalism and white nationalists and the same people like the fear, you know, the same people who are like that white nationalists are like within like. every small suburban block, you know, it's kind of the same idea of using these amorphous groups as a political casual rather than looking what they actually are. But, you know, let's keep in mind that this is happening under the administration of the person who said that this wouldn't happen anymore. Now, Trump said a lot of things, which is, I think, in some ways, part of how, you know, his election was possible. I mean, granted, his election was really possible because about 75 to 80,000 people in three states didn't vote and because Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate and because of a lot of other context about specific voting

numbers and the electoral college. But a lot of this was Trump saying a lot of things and projecting onto Trump a lot of other things, but him saying like, do you see the stuff that's happening that you don't like? I will make it stop. Which is actually the best political play of all is to be like, whatever it is you don't like, I also don't like. And whatever is you like, I also like. And it happens to be that all of these things, you know, if you vote for me, the things you don't like will stop and the things you do like will keep going. And that is a great political play if you are not the incumbent. And it is a great political play to people who are scared and don't like what's happening. But it is a challenge to do that when you are the person

who's supposed to have made them stop happening. You know, it's sort of like if you hear that there's a new pizza place in your block and the pizza in your area has been real bad and there's new places like you know all that pizza you hate not like that you know the pizza you like it'll be like that and then four years go by it and the pizza's kind of mad and the pizza place seems to be like it's closed at weird hours and sometimes the place is on fire and the person who runs it spends spend a lot of time like three doors down talking about some like other pizza place owner who he really hates and you're like but i just but i just want a pizza And then you have, you know, but then he's like, no, no, no, we're like, my pizza place that is

currently on fire and when it isn't on fire doesn't really work, that's the pizza that you're going to get. That's going to be so awesome. You won't believe how great this pizza is going to be. I think that's a hard play. Okay. I think everyone now understands why I think Jane is one of the most entertaining, fun people to read about, watch her Twitter feed and talk to. Normally, we end with a fun light question, Jane. But given the events of the two weeks, you know, past couple weeks, maybe the past couple months, maybe the past couple years, depending on where all you've been sitting, you posted something on Twitter that Steve and I both, you know, really stopped and absorbed, I guess. Steve, is that a fair way to describe it? Yeah, it was the kind of

thread that had you read it and think about it and then think about it two hours. later and think about it two hours after that and think about it two hours after that i was wondering you'd share that yeah so um i grew up in cincinnati ohio um i went to catholic schools all 13 years that you go to school um i went to a high school called ursaland academy which if you do not live in cincinnati will mean nothing to you and if you live in cincinnati will mean a great deal to you because cincinnati is like st louis it's a bunch like louis it's the kind of of Midwestern city where the first question is where did you go to high school? And then you form all judgments about the person after that. So I went to Ursula and I played the Cross

and it would have been March of 2002, which is just over 18 years ago, that I, we went on a travel trip to play Dublin-Syoto High School. Dublin, Ohio is a suburb of Columbus. It is, I looked it up yesterday because I had, I was not sure of the numbers, but it is 1.8% black. And so we're on this trip, and I'm very excited. You know, this is the first sport I'd ever played. I was not an athletic kid as a kid. It's funny because I'm far more athletic now than I ever was as a child,

which is, you know, that's a whole separate issue about how we think about things in high school. But anyway, so I'm playing, you know, I was so excited. I was playing goalie. if anyone's ever played lacrosse or knows anything about like lacrosse or field hockey goalie equipment you need a lot of stuff because people are shelling very hard plastic balls at your heads you've got a helmet you've got all this other stuff so my mom had bought me this really nice goalie bag as a reward for working hard at the sport and I was I was really excited and we're going on this trip and we you know we stop at a Wendy's beforehand you know on the way because to go from society to Columbus This is a couple of hours drive. And, you know, everyone in all these vans is like 14 years old. So half the people have the metabolisms of like gazelles, which means that they need to eat.

You know, like the teenager thing where everyone eats like. I had to have Tocino's pizza rolls in the freezer at all times. Yeah, I don't, yeah. It's very strange now to look back and just be like, who were we? That was very strange. Anyway, so we talked to this one day and I'm with a teammate. and the teammate's best friend and teammate's father. And it's weird because I was, you know, it's hard to discuss,

but when you are mixed race, sometimes, you know, my mom is white, my dad is black. My dad is a retired research librarian who cares a great deal about the hawk who lives in his yard. And they keep chickens and bees, and my dad loves Formula One racing and we'll talk about that or World War II to anyone who would answer.

He's like a dad, like most dad. But my high school, you know, it's all girls private school, majority white. You know, a lot of girls from Indian American households as well, but majority white. And, you know, I was pretty used to that. You know, when you are in Catholics War, you're in these environments and, you know,

you're just used to the fact everyone else is white and that's just how it is that's kind of the er setting of your life is that you know the only you know i remember that you know the only other biracial person i knew was my own sister um which has changed now which is awesome and great but you know so we're at this one days and i'm not going i didn't get anything because i was too nervous about the game and i said to my teammate uh you know like that just it was a it's kind of funny because it was literally like it's a full wendies and i am the only non-white person there not just like the only black person like the only non-white person at all

in a pretty packed place and uh my teammates father he chimes in and he says you know well they're like cockroaches why would they be out in the daytime and you know he had a on that like you know they scatter from the light and i'm looking at him and he's looking at me and my teammates looking at her father basically like we're all just kind of like stunned but it was funny because the emotion i felt most was embarrassment it was as if me being black was something that i'd like you know successfully hidden from everyone and that this one person, this one person had noticed. And he knew, and I obviously knew that he knew, and so did everybody else. And I felt so apart at a time where I really, I wanted to feel, you know, I was

14. You know, I had felt, you know, I felt very lonely at that time for a lot of different reasons, but I wanted to feel a part of something, which was how I had started playing the stupid sport in the first place. And in that moment, it was like, you know, I couldn't, I could join this team, I could go to this high school, I could get these grades, I could do these things, I could be the smartest and the shiniest and the most successful. And it would never mean anything because I was just some cockroach

who played lacrosse with this guy's daughter. And I've never forgotten that. because, you know, obviously it's not the most egregious example of racism that anyone's ever heard. But what got me was that he seemed to be saying this in a way that was like this, you know, he said it in the way that you'd be like, it's really hot today. Or, you know, the humidity levels are high. Or, you know, there's coffee on if you want some.

Or the water is over there as just sort of like pointing out just like a factual observation. And I felt so apart at that moment. And I think that that's something I've never really forgotten the apartness. And I think that that's perhaps what's bothered me the most in a lot of respects in this is the apartness that I feel. And I think a lot of people feel. You know, when you see people on Instagram who are like, you know, it's time to listen to black people. It's time to read these books. You know, I just got an email that's like, the three books by black authors you must own and I was like the implication is

that you didn't own them before and now you got to be like motherfucker get on Amazon it's time to get some books and the apartness the separation that you see and it's the result of housing policy and

residential segregation and a lot of other things but that's the result is the apartness that I feel and the the sense that when we're having conversations about politics, what we're having conversations about is the politics of white people. And the politics of black people are the separate thing. People call it quote-to-quote identity politics because the politics of white people

is just politics. And that apartness that I felt and that Wendy's, of just feeling as if I was very much alone and very much unlike these other people, you know, that's something that's never really gone away from me. And I think that that's an important part of this conversation is that this is a conversation that people have been having for years. You know, people have been talking about policing and the actions of police, you know, for decades, specifically African-Americans.

You know, I would draw attention to the work that's taken place since the 1970s and 1980s and the local level, you know, and police reform advocates in that, Atlanta and other cities who have often gone unheard unless they were saying the thing that happened to be agreed upon by the people in power. You know, sometimes when you talk about, you know, people are like, well, you know, the African American community asked us to be harder on police. And I'm like, one, what is the African American community? Because it kind of implies that like me and LeBron and Alan Keyes just all get together once a week to sit down. But also that, you know, when people were asking that police officers not shoot people at traffic stops, people didn't listen to them.

But then when it's like, we would like more good police in our streets because we're concerned about gangs, it's like, oh, absolutely. And we'll also give you texts. And so I think that that story for me, the apartness that I feel where you're talked about but not listen to or, you're believed to be part of something that you don't feel necessarily that you're a part of, but I guess you are anyway, you know, that sense of apartness, it's never really left me of what that feeling is like. And it's moments like this, you know, these times where I feel it the most. And it's something that is, you know, it goes deep within our history. You know, it's funny because if you go back and read a lot about Frederick Douglass,

so much of Frederick Douglass's efforts was to bridge that apartness by making arguments that were not aimed at black people because he kind of figured, like, I already know, you know, that's preacher to the choir, so to speak. But he is, you know, you see in his notes and in his writings a real effort to tailor even his own personal life story to white people.

His own personal life story, he needed to edit or change to make it the most appealing to white people. And, you know, if you read about the responses to his speeches, you know, during the abolition movement in the 1840s and 1850s, it is not so much about what he's saying, but he knows, he's well aware that it's how he's saying it. And you, you know, you hear, you read, you know,

newspaper reports from abolitionist newspapers that are like, this beautiful ebony man telling us these things in these dulcet tones. and he's well aware that that's what's happening. He's well aware that the only reason people are listening to him is because he has tailored himself and his story to this audience that will look at him and talk at him and talk about him but not listen to him. And he has to keep doing it for his entire life.

And it's not a partness that I feel so distinctly right now that I and people like me, I guess, are being discussed or, used as cudgels for one side or another and that that apartness that I felt in that Wendy's is the real challenge here where you know people when people are talking about you or talking about your politics without talking to you or thinking of you as being as part of a group that they do not think of themselves as being a part of a group you know it's it's funny because sometimes you see people are like, well, you know, when you talk about white Americans,

that seems strange. I'm like, yes, doesn't it seem strange the other way as well? And, you know, that moment in that stupid Wendy's is something that I've come back to occasionally during times like this, because I remember how unmoored I felt and how I would have given anything to not be in that moment, to not be that way, to not be who I was and who I am. And I think that that, that was that's that's that's been difficult jane jane thank you uh and thank you listeners for joining us today i don't think there's anything more to add to that really appreciate that thanks jane of course Thank you.