The Future is Female
America will soon have a president who laughs easily and a humorous vice president, leading what will be the most progressive and joyful administration in American history. Kamala Harris made a strong choice by selecting beloved football coach, former teacher, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. This move unites the Democrats’ Big Tent coalition, which has historically won them the White House. Walz's heartfelt and straightforward approach won him a U.S. House seat in a rural Republican district and re-election as governor of Minnesota, where he used a slim Democratic majority to achieve bold progressive victories: strengthening LGBTQ+ protections to make Minnesota a refuge for trans people; committing to decarbonization by 2040; protecting reproductive healthcare; significantly reducing child poverty; implementing automatic voter registration; strengthening gun safety laws; signing into law free school meals and free public college; banning forever chemicals known as PFAS; calling for a ceasefire and hostage deal early; and much more.
Harris reportedly chose Walz to collaborate on advancing a progressive national agenda, and his humor is an added bonus. Walz won hearts across America by labeling MAGA as “weird,” because it is. His famous charm will destroy J.D. Vance, a fascist tool of dark lord Peter Thiel. Harris and Walz are roughly the same age, which means, if we hold on tight, we could have eight years of President Harris followed by eight years of President Walz, strengthening America's future as we build a sustainable economy for all, especially for the planet.
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You think modern women have it tough now? Not too long ago, in 2007, Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay for Vanity Fair titled, “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” In it, he argued, “Whereas women, bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is. Jokes about calamitous visits to the doctor or the shrink or the bathroom, or the venting of sexual frustration on furry domestic animals, are a male province.” In his view, women are precious baby-making machines, and that power forces them into being a solemn presence–a reserved audience for men, who have evolved with the purpose of making society laugh.
Today, a woman vice president of the United States is the second most powerful person in the world. And the most that her enemies can come up with is that she laughs too much and has never given birth. The slim pickings of criticism of Kamala Harris by MAGA are as thin as Hitchens' arguments, and they all boil down to misogyny that will be relegated to history books.
That era was defined by the reign of “the rape joke king” Tucker Max, bestselling author of the book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, in case you’ve blocked him out of your memory. Coming of age during that time, a group of childhood girlfriends decided to create their own satire of this misogynistic hellscape, Betches Media. Joining us this week on Gaslit Nation to make sense of the war on women, past and present, and what to do about it is Sami Sage, co-founder of Betches Media and co-author, along with Emily Amick of the popular civic-action Instagram account Emily in Your Phone, Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and Our Lives.
This conversation was recorded during one of the darkest weeks in American democracy: the Republican National Convention. As they say, it’s aways darkest before the dawn. Much has changed since then, but this conversation with Sami Sage remains as current as ever as we celebrate the opening words of the Gaslit Nation Action Guide: Democracy is a lifestyle. That’s the only way we ensure the first Black woman president, and secure our democracy in the critical years to come.
Book Launch Reception for In the Shadow of Stalin: The Story of Mr. Jones – Sept 16
Monday September 16th 7pm at the Ukrainian Institute of America join us for a wine reception and live taping of Gaslit Nation with Terrell Starr for the launch of the graphic novel adaptation of Andrea’s film Mr. Jones! Get in free by subscribing at the Truth-teller level or higher on Patreon! RSVP here: https://ukrainianinstitute.org/event/books-at-the-institute-chalupa/
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Show Notes:
Casablanca clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc
Why Women Aren’t Funny
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/hitchens200701
Betches Media
https://betches.com/
Nazi (Casablanca clip) (01:54):
You see what I mean? If Laszlo's presence in a cafe can inspire this unfortunate demonstration, what more will his presence in Casablanca bring on? I advise that this place be shut up at once,
Chief of Police (Casablanca clip) (02:03):
But everybody's having such a good
Nazi (Casablanca clip) (02:04):
Time. Yes, much a good time. The place to be closed,
Chief of Police (Casablanca clip) (02:07):
But I have no excuse to close
Nazi (Casablanca clip) (02:08):
It. Find one.
Chief of Police (Casablanca clip) (02:15):
Everybody's to leave here immediately. This cafe is closed until further notice. Clear the room at once. How can you close me up on what ground? I'm shocked. Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here. You winning? Oh, thank you very much. Everybody out at once.
Andrea Chalupa (02:32):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones. The film the Kremlin does not want you to see, so be sure to watch it. A film I studied religiously in making Mr. Jones was Casablanca, and the opening clip you heard was from one of the most famous scenes in this film, full of famous scenes. I obviously study this film because it is a classic. It is powerful. It withstands the test of time when we had script changes as we did all the time on set. And Mr. Jones when we were working in some crazy conditions, whether it is a very hot day in Poland or we were recreating a snowy day in Moscow in very sunny springtime Poland or in a snowstorm Ukraine. Anytime I had to make script changes, my grounding exercise, my grounding exercise was watching clips of Casablanca.
(03:37):
And it wasn't just because of the beauty, the timeless power of the film, it's a resistance film. It was also because of the backstory of Casablanca. I want everyone to know, and I know that longtime listeners of Gaslit Nation, all listeners of Gaslit Nation will appreciate this. The whole set of Casablanca, the making of this film, the set of Casablanca was a refugee camp. The crew, the actors you see on screen were amazing actors that were forced out of Europe because of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis march across Europe. If you listen to this clip again, there's a French actress I will link to in the show notes. You can watch it as well. There's a wonderful French actress by the name of Madeline Lebo who when they're singing is the French national anthem. She's crying real tears because France is under occupation.
(04:35):
And what was really wonderful is about how all of these artists found their way to Hollywood and they helped each other. They raised money for each other. They raised money that they sent back home. They raised money that they used to bring other artists over before they could be sent to concentration camps, but thrown in prison. Even the head Nazi in Casablanca, the wonderful actor, the German actor who plays the head Nazi Conrad Veidt who plays the, very, very Nazi character. He was married to a Jewish woman and he himself was not Jewish. But when they had to flee the country and they had to fill out paperwork, he wrote on his exit papers or whatever, his occupation as being Jewish. He's basically like, go fuck yourselves. And he was one of the staunchest supporters for raising funding for refugees, for helping get Jews out of Europe to freedom.
(05:30):
And so the whole story of the making of Casablanca, they knew what they were making. They knew that this was a resistance film. They knew that this was going to awaken an apathetic and an isolationist American public. And so in making this move in studying Casablanca, I was trying to do the same with Mr. Jones. I was trying to wake up an apathetic and isolationist American public. And that's why I poured my heart and soul into understanding this film. I needed all that energy and that historical mentoring and the very long journey of getting Mr. Jones off the ground. And that film came out right on time when the world needed it. And it was because of the energy we poured into it that it did what it needed to do at that exact moment, which was open people's eyes to Russia's genocidal imperial fascism against Ukraine and the world.
(06:21):
Now, if you're hearing this, I want you to know that I am getting back on the mechanical bull in the arena. I am starting a new film project with a lot of excitement. It's obviously a resistance film. That's all I know how to make and that's all I care about making. And it has a lot to say about the moment we find ourselves in art is survival. Art is survival. Art is key to the work that we are all doing, whether we know it or not. We are naturally creative. All children, were born artists. And art is that creativity is what we need to go back to. That is our oxygen mask. That is how we envision future. That's not the inevitability of MAGA and Putin and all these other dictators that want us to think that their regime is going to last forever and they try to rob us of our futures.
(07:11):
No, we can envision a new future. That's why we need all of our artists and everyone to awaken their inner artists. How we get through the times that we're in is by creating new possibilities. And it's so exciting and I love it. And so this new resistance screenplay, it's going to be a Soviet rock opera thriller. That's right. You heard it here first. It's something is going to speak to the artist inside all of us and awaken the power of art within all of us. And I'm so thrilled to share it with you. So I'm taking this week off from the show. You're going to still get episodes because I prerecorded some wonderful conversations. I have an incredible conversation with a longtime gaslit nation listener whom I'm incredibly proud of. She has a new bestselling book that she co-wrote with Emily Amick. And that book is called Democracy in Retrograde, how to Make Changes Big and Small in our country and in our Lives.
(08:08):
And the importance of this book as well as this conversation. And what Gaslit Nation is always trying to get across in every episode is that yes, it absolutely does matter who wins in this election because we're up against dictatorship, Christian, nationalist dictatorship, but let's say Kamala Harris wins and we have Madam President, which I do believe we will if we all work together and we're vigilant, we fight like hell. And that is what we're doing. We win on November 5th, 2024. What? Then we all go home. We all stop paying attention. We think racism is over. Misogyny has been solved, made that same mistake as a nation when Barack Obama became president 2008. We cannot make that same mistake again. Democracy is a lifestyle. Those are the opening words of the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, which we launched with this show. And so all of us need to live with that reality that the fascists aren't going anywhere.
(09:00):
The KKK is not going anywhere and neither are we. Democracy is a lifestyle. And to hold our hands in how to live and own that lifestyle and find where we fit in this brave new world that we're building together, this is an excellent book and I'm so proud of Sami for writing it and I recommend it to you all and I look forward to having her back on the show. Yes, the big news of Kamala Harris picking her vice president is coming out this week and I will do an episode on that. Don't you worry. We're going to deep dive into who this person is and my big takeaway on it, I can tell you in advance is that we are incredibly lucky to have so much talent in America right now for the future of our country. So the fact that Kamala Harris had a lot of great candidates to choose from, and those are just the white men by the time Kamala Harris serves two terms as president, imagine how many more incredible people we'll have to choose from and how much more ready and accepting and tolerant America will be, will no longer need these white male crutches.
(10:04):
We can just choose a candidate like MLK promised us and I have a dream speech. We can just choose a candidate because we simply like that person. We trust them and we know that they're going to keep us safe at night. We look forward to that day. So alright everyone, so you'll hear my hot take on the VP pick in due time. And in the meantime, enjoy this conversation. Here's Sami Sage, the co-author of the new book, democracy and Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives.
(10:40):
So tell me the story of Betches Media and how it came to be. I want to tell you what I love about your Instagram is it reminds me of how back in the day Christopher Hitchens wrote some misogynistic essay saying that women just simply cannot be funny. And Be's Media is just like a collection of women proving him wrong. And it's become such a force of informing and empowering women and capturing their inner lives. Not all women, because you know what I mean? Because some of it, sometimes you guys do something straight up girly posts and I cannot relate. I'm too much of a big sloppy dog to relate to that one. But by and large, it's did not exist when I was coming up in this world a time when Christopher Hitchens felt confident enough to write that totally misogynistic women. That's been proven wrong again and again. So I thank you guys for creating this. So what is Betches Media? How did it come about and what are you guys up to in this time of growing anti-women fascism?
Sami Sage (11:42):
So it's interesting that you bring up Christopher Hitchen or that you bring up the idea that women aren't funny because when I started this with two of my childhood friends when we were in college, we all were at Cornell University and we were seniors and we were living together. And this was not something we had planned since childhood. This kind of just happened this way and we really loved to write jokes and make funny projects and pranks and that kind of thing. And this was also, if you remember the time of Tucker Max and fratire and the idea that being an asshole to women is funny and that women should take it. And also even was
Andrea Chalupa (12:24):
Tucker Max, I think I may have deliberately forgotten him. He was like,
Sami Sage (12:27):
They serve beer in hell then the game. So we really created batches also as a satire when we were really starting, we were blogging satirically as an answer to that misogynistic guy. We were seniors in college, we were seeing that sort of world. And this was 2011 Charlie Sheen's winning was very popular at this time. So that was the Twitter Facebook environment that we went viral during the three of us built this into a business over 13 years where we are now. We were recently acquired last year by a UK brand. And basically we have built this entire media business amongst the backdrop. So much media going out of business, and we never took any venture funding or really we never took any funding. Our thesis was really that the news should be consumer friendly and that it can be funny and that we can make fun of it in a dark time and it can be inspiring and hopeful and that really everything is political, everything in our world, especially for women, but really for everybody is political whether you believe it or not, and whether you like it or not.
(13:39):
And especially with Betches News, it was really about using humor to demonstrate the ways in which the political system was unfair and affecting us and making it cool to be informed and to know what's up. So yeah, we are now eight years into Bitch's news and I've just come out with a book called Democracy and Retrograde, how to Make Changes big and Small in our country, in our Lives with my co-author who is also internet news politics creator named Emily Amick, of Emily in Your Phone. And it's been a wild ride and I'm hoping to be able to continue it another four to eight more years at least.
Andrea Chalupa (14:19):
Democracy in Retrograde really captures what we've been saying on this show forever, which is civic action activism. It's an act of self-care and that's what you aim to capture in this book. And so tell us about the book. What do you want people to know about the book in this moment of time? We just had one of the worst weeks for democracy ever. Kremlin disinformation agent JD Vance inevitably became Trump's VP pick with the help of a lot of other Kremlin disinformation agents, Trump Becker, Elon Musk, who else? David Sacks and Peter Teal. Yeah, Peter Thiel and Tucker Carlson. So as we're recording this, as we're recording this interview, it's July 16, the Kremlin Convention in Milwaukee is getting underway. And then of course Judge Eileen Cannon does what she was installed to do, dismissing some of the most damning charges. I had a Trump University prosecutor, Tristan Snell on the show, and he's like, that's the number one case. That's the big winner. I'm like, yeah, but look at the judge. This is not going to go anywhere. And sure enough, here it is. And then of course, the horrible assassination attempt, which during a time have already heightened political violence. So this was one of the worst weeks in American democracy. And here you are with your message of political activism being self-care, which I agree with. So what advice do you have for us with our nerves just jangled on how to really stay grounded in this fraught time?
Sami Sage (15:52):
Yeah, I mean between the debate and the Chevron decision and the immunity decision, the assassination situation, and Tucker Carl, and it's not Tucker Carls and
Andrea Chalupa (16:04):
Kind
Sami Sage (16:04):
Of similar in my mind. Yeah, well, let me just start by saying I have been a long time listener of the show since right when I was starting Betches News 2016, 20 17. And it has been very, very formative in my worldview, not just of geopolitical dynamics, but of the way that I think about politics. And I will give one particular example in a minute for how that manifested itself in the book. But I do just want to say if people who are listeners of the show, I think they will feel a real kinship with this book and they will feel really hopeful because what we ultimately wanted to create was an actual actionable guide that people can use to get involved in their communities and in civics with the goal of creating a more engaged, multicultural democracy. We've never seen turnout over 70%. What does it look like when our turnout is 95% and people are really engaged in their civic lives and understand the mechanisms that go into creating the conditions that they live in.
(17:13):
So one piece of it is this is kind of the direction we all know we need to go and we all need to engage at scale on mass in whatever way we can. And that's really the second point is finding the way that makes sense for you. And we recognize that everyone has different skills, resources, time, money, connections, wherever they are access. And what we really wanted to do was create a guidebook. And this book ultimately is a guidebook. There are exercises and worksheets you can do to find, to help you hone your, and then find how what you are good at and what you value and what you care about can manifest in terms of civic engagement. So we always tell people, go to page 91 when you've got your book and take the civic personality quiz because we've divided people into, or this isn't like a medical diagnosis, but we've given four different civic personalities that embody different ways that you can engage in civic action.
(18:17):
And the title democracy and retrograde is obviously a reference to mercury and retrograde. The right wing has religion around as their conviction. What is the left wing version of that? And it's of course the astrology girls. [Andrea: "It's witches!"] Yeah, exactly. So we divide it. There are different four different personalities that you can embrace and then take different actions within them. And they are leader, connector, giver and creator. And you can take your score and obviously you can give and take what you like from each personality, but within each one we give different examples of how you can actually get involved in a way that embraces that quality of yourself. And we give things that you can do if you only have a few hours a month to devote to this or if you want to make it a lifetime commitment. And like I said, I wanted to mention how this show had really inspired one aspect of the book and that is really with the creator aspect.
(19:15):
I know you will play people's songs, people who are listeners of the show who create art that is pro-democracy. And the idea that art can be a method of expressing your values and why that is so threatening to autocrats is an idea that I feel was really sort of stuck in my mind from listening to this show and just trying to look for other ways that are not so obvious being involved in a political campaign. Not everyone wants to run for office or text bank or write letters, and everyone kind of has their own thing. And what we really wanted to do with this book is since we'll need full engagement is help people find a way to find what that thing is. And something else we say is that civic engagement is a form of self-care. And this really comes from this idea that typical is thought of as how do I make myself more beautiful or how do I make myself better at my job or a better spouse or a better friend or parent.
(20:23):
And people think about all those relationships, but they don't really think about their relationship to the collective and what do we owe and what's owed to each other just by virtue of the fact that we co-exist and that our lives can't be separated from each other. And how do you think about yourself within that relationship if you don't even know that one exists. So the book is really about how do you step into that relationship and that part of your life and we ultimately posit that that is a form of self-care and a way to at scale really also solve the loneliness epidemic that we're experiencing in America.
Andrea Chalupa (21:01):
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I've always said on the show that civic action grassroots organizing activism, it's a trillion percent so empowering. I found my voice in this world, including as an artist, everything just came into sharp focus when I got involved doing everything I could for my couch in Brooklyn for Ukraine's EuroMaidan Revolution, launching a hashtag an SOS hashtag DigitalMaidan became a rallying cry hashtag for the revolution itself. You had all sorts of Ukrainians giving interviews about it. And when I went to Kyiv in 2014, I met my people and they're like, oh, the Twitter storms from Brooklyn. And it was like Mr. Jones got made off of that. Literally all the family I needed to make that film came together through my activism. I can't even tell you. So activism and art, finding your voice, finding your reason for being here is all about healing yourself and helping carry each other as we heal ourselves.
(21:58):
It's about healing the fucking planet right now that's literally on fire in some places as we're recording this and just bringing greater healing to yourself and others right now, your communities that desperately need it. And that's how we're going to prevail no matter what the outcome of this election is. And I think that's so important to keep in mind. One thing that concerns me and it's concerned me ever since January, 2021, when we saw so many people hyper engaged unlike ever before to unite, to stop Trump. And that's what we did. And then they sort of got very comfortable and checked out under Biden. Many people had to do that for their own and they had to take a break. They just felt burnt out from the horror of Trump. I mean, the guy's a psychopath. He is a narcissist. He really tries to consume you.
(22:49):
We never got mental space under him. You would go to bed reading his bullshit on Twitter and grab your phone first thing in the morning. She'd be like, what fresh hell has transpired? And no one was well rested, no one had time to breathe and really pursue their passions and their joys in meaningful ways because we're all living under a rain of terror. And under Biden, people forgot that people forgot what that was like to have such an intrusive bully in our lives every single second of the day. And that's historically what dictators have done. Mussolini was all about that because they're just narcissists that want to consume you whole and feed off of you, and it's really gross. So what I like about your book is that it's larger than this election and it's really about sustaining the engagement that we all need to rebuild our democracy that's in tatters right now.
Sami Sage (23:42):
And it's really to your point about checking out or needing to take a break, we definitely recognize that first of all, disengagement can be a form of protest itself. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people whose communities have been wronged by the system and for that reason, they do not, do not want to engage in that is valid. But what we really do aim to tackle is apathy and long-term apathy submission to this is just what it is and it's not going to affect me. Or if it does affect me, I'll just be powerless to it. We recognize that people have times where they can't devote everything to what they're doing, but really it's about cultivating a sort of posture towards the way that you see the world and see your community. So even if it's just a little bit at a time, maybe if you can't, what if you have a lot of money and you don't have a lot of time or you don't have other things that are stopping you from being more physically involved.
(24:44):
You can be really intentional about the way that you donate or the way that you spend your money or who you are, how you are allocating your money, even if it's your own business or something like that. It's really about seeing, finding ways within your existing life to cultivate this posture of community orientedness. Something else we talk about is third spaces and how don't really people really have this, like you said, for example, with digital EuroMaidan, that's enabled so much. But there's also this flip side that the algorithms really promote fear and that burns us out. We're not meant to know about every single thing all the time that is happening when it's this tragic and you're not really supposed to see Get Ready with me is between pictures of children in Gaza who are in hospitals. That's just not, the human brain is not built for that.
(25:37):
In fact, a lot of money was spent to make you feel this way. And the other thing we talk about is that it doesn't have to look hyper political. Sometimes it's like making a meal train for your friend who just gave birth or helping to arrange a carpool for people who work late or these smaller interactions that create exposure to people outside of our socioeconomic strata that limits us. Because when there's nowhere to go in the world that you can kind of just chill for free like libraries and public parks and places in your community, walkable cities, when you don't have that, the only place you're getting exposed to people who are different than you is online. And we already know that that's set up to create much more division. So it's this lack of exposure to each other of collective understanding that we used to be able to build. Just the environment right now is not constructive for that. It's really up to each of us to build
Andrea Chalupa (26:43):
That fabric
Sami Sage (26:44):
By stepping into our own individual role
Andrea Chalupa (26:47):
In it. Without question, the loneliness epidemic, it has grown during the rise of social media because social media is a fake substitute. Really. I loved it when I lived in Ukraine. I felt like share my stories to a wider audience and connect with my friends back in America. But largely society increasing its dependence on social media these past 20 years. And then you have this loneliness epidemic because social media, it's not intimacy. It's not intimacy. All the studies out there have talked about how the source of happiness in life comes from the quality of our relationships, having quality relationships, even in not close relationships, like the people you see as you go about your business, like the mail carrier, the person at the coffee shop and so on. Those all contribute to your overall wellbeing, that sense of social connection. So all of this is to say that the solution to the times we live in our community, finding your people, finding where you feel most comfortable, engaging and building from there, and just seeing how that changes you and helps you find your voice and your place in the world and really leading into that.
(27:55):
And your book can help people find that by doing self searching questionnaires and all of that, which I think is so cool. And the other thing I wanted to touch on is your point on Gaza. I mean, yeah, it's so horrific what is going on in the world? I think obviously war photography, genocide, images have really changed the conversation here at home. But what we're seeing in recent years certainly is, and I tweeted this in the early hours of Russia's full on genocide of Ukraine in February, 2022, is like it's unspeakable what we're being forced to acclimate to. And it's like you said, we're not built for that at the same time, we can't turn away. We absolutely cannot turn away. And we have to bear witness because that has a sense of power in it and documenting what's happening because they're going to try to pretend that none of this ever happened and memory hold it and excuse it and let all these war criminals escape accountability.
(28:51):
So it's such a messed up time. So I do understand your point. We have to pace ourselves in all this because then we check out and then we're not helping anybody. So I think that being a long time Ukraine person, I want to say to all the Gaza folks out there, especially those who are newer, because I think the latest events have really drawn largest global engagement around this conflict that we've ever probably had and largely of social media. And I just want to say to all those folks who had their heart broken over all these horrible war crimes that are being carried out and all these conflicts and the US' involvement in them is that we need you pace yourself. If you need to pace yourself, if you cannot bring yourself to see certain things, do not do it. You don't need to and just do what you can where you are with what you have.
(29:35):
That's always the winning solution. And that's how I've sustained myself in a conflict that is generational for me and my family. I'm seeing the same horrors repeated that my grandparents suffered through going on against my friends and family in Ukraine today. And it's devastating. It's always in my mind, it's not background noise for me. It's a heartache I live with and it's hard. And I know I don't want to see photos in what's going on there. I can't right now. When I can't, I'll look, but in the meantime, I'm going to put my energy and just trying to stop that genocide. But that's how you have to live. And I think your book is such a testament to helping people stay in the fight. We need you.
Sami Sage (30:13):
Well, something else that we believe is that one of the reasons why it feels like the world is on the shoulders of people who are most active is that there's not enough people to cover all of the issues that we have. And what we are trying to help people understand is that you are not responsible for solving every problem and you can't. So we need to lean on each other. If your issue that you are passionate about is repro rights and someone else's issue that they're passionate about is foreign policy and one person's issue is like libraries. Everyone can be doing something, but we need each other to be able to say, I got that so that it doesn't have to feel like so much on one person or a small group of people to fix every issue. And that I think is one of the hardest things is that it feels like, oh, I'm alone in caring about this.
(31:16):
Or it's like you hear this criticism online that it's like, oh, now the Gaza experts are going to be vaccine experts. It's like they're not trying to say that they're experts. They're just trying to express feelings about what's going on in this world. And it doesn't feel like the experts got us in any one realm, which is why more accountability is needed in every realm. It really has to take a sea of a giant swell of people who are looking at their lives differently and looking at their responsibility and their role and their privilege as being an American. I grew up, I grew up in America, and my mother would always take me to the voting booth and she would always say, this is your civic duty. You have to do it all the time. And I didn't really get it, did not really get it.
(32:02):
Grew up in New York, heard a lot of, oh, your vote doesn't count because the electoral college and our senators are going to definitely be and grew up in a very blue area. And that was the sentiment. And I thought, oh, we're only going to march towards more freedom and progressiveness. I was in college when Barack Obama was elected and it is not. It's actually a privilege. And I fear that many people will not wake up to what it was until it's gone, or that they won't ever understand that what happens to them has been the result of policy or regulation. People who are profiting off our pain.
Andrea Chalupa (32:43):
Yeah, absolutely. A trillion percent. It's like we talk so much about, oh no, fascism is coming if we don't stop Trump, it's already here. It's already been building for decades in these Republican hostage states, especially in the Midwest and Missouri and Ohio. Close Wisconsin. Wisconsin was fallen for a time and now we're clawing it back thanks to Ben Wickler who's a superstar there. And if every single state in this union had a Democratic Party chair like Ben Wickler, we would be so safe right now. And so I think what I want people to get from your book is yes, get in where you fit in. We're always saying that on the show a hundred percent. At the same time, take seriously that the only path out of the current crisis that we're in, which is Trump's ongoing coup, trump's ongoing Russian back coup against our democracy, is building our own political power.
(33:36):
And that means helping people run for office, encouraging people, run for office, be the wind beneath the wings of someone running for office and really building those close ties in communities where you live of people in positions of power because they need your help. They're overworked and underpaid. Public servants don't get very much and their staff don't get very much. It's not like a money. Well, it is a moneymaking job if you abuse it. If you abuse a public trust, you turn it into a corruption racket. Certainly like so many have like Bob Menendez and New Jersey Democrat, and also of course the Republican Party. By and large people have to also understand that the end game, the only way out is political power. And I hope your book is obviously a starting point for people that just need support right now and feel overwhelmed and demoralized and they're tired of the doom scrolling. But also consider yourself as somebody that could run for office, large or small, wherever you are. And if you don't know where to start, just read the book, understand the grounding exercise of that, and consider helping a race. Consider building political power wherever you live. The only way out
Sami Sage (34:47):
That's the
Andrea Chalupa (34:47):
Only way out is political power.
Sami Sage (34:48):
Absolutely. It is about building political power. And you'll see that some people are going to be drawn to that and some people are going to be supporting those people, and some people are going to be campaigning for those people and others will just be voting for them or caring for their voters. And it's a multi-step process that does not just end in November or January. It's something that we need to do forever. This needs to become part of the culture of the United States. And actually that is something that is my real goal with this. People ask, are you excited about this book? I'm like, yes. I'm very excited about the book, but not in the way I would be if I wrote a fiction book. I really feel excited about it in the sense of we want to create a cultural change in the way people think about themselves. I compare this more to the body keeps the score and the way that changed the way people think about their own trauma and their own experiences and how they might still be living with them, the way they see themselves and their own actions and their own potential.