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Explore culture in all its rich complexity: connect across differences, understand how stories, media, and pop culture shape our sense of ourselves and how we see the world, and dive deep into what makes us human. Find your way to build a space where we all belong
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Culture Navigators Podcast episode 2. I'm your host, Susan x Jane. We are here to talk about Trump 2.0. That's right. We are descending down into the inferno of another Trump term.
Susan X Jane:What does this mean for you? What does this mean for us who are looking for liberation and justice? And what can you do to prepare for what's ahead. We are just 2 weeks out from one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and we are facing into those consequences. It's a second Trump term, everybody.
Susan X Jane:There have been lots of big feelings going on out there, and hopefully, you've taken some time to process, and you're ready to think about what comes next. So I've asked my favorite political scientist and dear, dear friend, Sandy McAvoy to join me. Professor McAvoy is the clinical associate professor of political science and women's gender and sexuality studies at Boston University. Her research focuses on gender and conflict, particularly related to how war creates vulnerabilities and opportunities that are both gendered and sexed. Her research draws on fieldwork in post conflict Northern Ireland, where she has worked for many years with women members of Protestant aligned loyalist paramilitary organizations.
Susan X Jane:So she has more creds to talk about politics than your drunk uncle or your random friend like me who just has a mic and a podcast. So let's get some facts around what comes next. Sandy, thank you so so much for joining me today.
Sandy McEvoy:Always my pleasure. Always my pleasure.
Susan X Jane:And I have to out that, I have been through this before with Sandy. We were together in 2016. We foolishly thought that Hillary Clinton was gonna win, win, and we planned a student trip to Washington DC. What do you remember about our previous experience with the Trump inauguration?
Sandy McEvoy:It's it was a tough weekend in many, many ways. As you said, we were sure that Hillary Clinton would win. We were sure that we would bring our students to Washington, D. C. To witness this historic moment and it was historic in ways we hadn't anticipated.
Sandy McEvoy:What really makes this moment feel like that moment is the surprise of it. Right? It is the how did this happenness that I think feels so familiar. You know, I remember in that trip us trying to explain to our students what happened. And, you know, this is getting pretty complicated.
Sandy McEvoy:We'll talk a little bit about that, I think. But the surprise of it, the shock of it, I think, is what most feels familiar.
Susan X Jane:I I have to say I'm not as shocked and was immediately thinking about how quickly things felt really chaotic. Like, the second that his motorcade passed by us, we were involved in, like, physical altercations. It was really a pretty, nutty time. But also was the women's march, so we know that the resistance, rose then and is already rising again. So excited to get into talking about that with you as well.
Susan X Jane:So I guess 2 weeks out, people are starting to surface from their Netflix coma and get ready to face into what's next. How are you feeling, especially as we've seen in the last 24 hours, some real pushes against abortion rights, an issue that I know is near and dear to your heart. How you doing, homie?
Sandy McEvoy:You know, I try and take some breaks from, from the news, which is, if you know me, very, very unusual. I'm feeling concerned. I'm feeling worried. I am also feeling like we did in 2016, where we said to ourselves, we've got some work to do. And so, I'm both angry and sad and feeling like it's time to start working.
Sandy McEvoy:It's time to start resisting. This last week, with this almost relentless revealing of appointees to incredibly important posts in the U. S. Government, these are not serious appointments. These are, I'm afraid, political favors being called in.
Sandy McEvoy:We have someone who has been nominated for a role in the Department of Defense, who is similar to the nomination of the Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, both of those men are being investigated for sexual assault in their past. So, these are the kinds of candidates that I get worried about. We'll go through this process for weeks weeks. I hope that there are some that just don't get through because I'm feeling generally pretty worried.
Susan X Jane:Worried is probably not the best thing to be floating into the next 4 years on, But I think a lot of people are really feeling very worried. But I wanna take a step back. What the hell happened? You know, now she had a very difficult road to hoe. She only had a 110 days.
Susan X Jane:It was gonna be a tough go for us anyways if Biden had been the candidate. Also, I think we would have faced a lot, but people were really surprised by the numbers. And, you know, as you said, again, shocked that this could happen. How did this happen?
Sandy McEvoy:I mean, I think that the Democratic Party is engaged in a very deep examination of itself in this post mortem period. You know, what happened is, to me, very uncomfortable to talk about because there are so many folks that we now know voted for Trump and did so in a way that I think practically is not going to serve their interests. Right? You have young, uneducated white men who I think voted for Trump because of his special brand of kind of militarized masculinity, right? The winners and the losers, right?
Sandy McEvoy:And they want to be in a position like Trump where they can see themselves being a leader like him. We know that this story that they tell themselves is really just that. You know, he is a millionaire, potentially a billionaire. And working class white, non educated, college educated folks are voting for Trump, I think, because they want to be like him. Other really uncomfortable truths, and this is the one that makes me the most frustrated, is that many women of color, many women, white women, voted against their own interests.
Sandy McEvoy:Those are folks that would typically vote for Democrats.
Susan X Jane:Right.
Sandy McEvoy:But what we're seeing here is that most people voted on costs of living issues and inflation. And Democrats were running on choice and democracy. And so, in between those two polls is where voters found themselves. And when left to figure out how they're going to make things work in their home, how they're going to buy groceries and get the kids school clothes and do all those things, Trump had a better message. And it was a simple message.
Sandy McEvoy:Vote for me, your life will be better. That was his that was his message. And so we lost some white voters without degrees, 14 point margin between Trump and Kamala.
Susan X Jane:So that message about about elites and elites coming to destroy your pocketbook, really resonated with people. Fourteen points. That's a big difference. And those usually are people that the Democrats can count on.
Sandy McEvoy:Yes. Yes. Democrats have also counted on Latino voters. Harris won Latino voters by 6 points, but Biden won them by 33 points.
Susan X Jane:Wow.
Sandy McEvoy:You can see that kind of peeling away. Trump, won Latino men by 12 points. By 12 points, Latino men. Now, why? Why would a group of Latino men vote for a candidate who has said that they do not deserve to be in this country, that they are vermin, that they are not the kind of people we want here, that they will deport them on day 1.
Sandy McEvoy:So, why did they vote for Trump? Same reasons. Money, cost of living. Things are getting harder. They're willing to put up with his, offensive language, his offensive way of treating people for the promise that they, that the Trump administration will create an economy where they can thrive.
Sandy McEvoy:Because many people at the moment do not think we have a functioning economy. We're the most functioning, the folks around the world wish they were us. We have the strongest economy in the world, but it did.
Susan X Jane:We have the strongest economic recovery post COVID of any country in the world. And so that even though Trump's message really resonated with people, we also are colliding with a information environment where people just really are misinformed about what's happening, how it got here, and what is likely to happen. And something else you pointed out that's interesting. We saw it among white women voters where we we thought bodily autonomy was really gonna be top of mind and it wasn't or along among those Latino men that the identity that was so much in the front and center in the last 4 years, as those groups are fracturing, we have to acknowledge that within identity groups, there is huge diversity of thought, diversity of perspective. And I think that, the idea that people were just gonna vote along identity lines, we need to get into a bit of the complexity a little bit more.
Sandy McEvoy:I think that's exactly right. I think that what won in this election was simplicity of message and that that message was about what politicians often refer to as kitchen table issues. And so, you know, I think what the Democrats have been accused of, and to be honest, I'm a very liberal Democrat. But the Democratic Party has, I think, rightly been, critiqued as overly elite. Right?
Sandy McEvoy:That it is made up of a bunch of people who like to pontificate about democracy versus what Trump did in this election, which is vote for me. You'll make you'll bring more home, more money. And that was that was the message.
Susan X Jane:You know, but I gotta say, looking at his cabinet picks, looking at his number 2, you got a lot of Yailies up in there. You got a lot of Ivy Leaguers. So it's really interesting that they leverage that argument about us being the elite when you have a cabal of people who are billionaires and who are themselves academics. So it seems like there is a little disingenuous in them saying that they they are not elites when, you know, they they are people who are much different than those that might be facing challenges at the kitchen table. I have a question about this has really just stuck in my craw for the last couple of weeks.
Susan X Jane:I've heard a lot of people commiserating that half of the country voted for Trump, and it seems to really highlight a deep division and a deep hopelessness. I I looked at the numbers, Sandy, and I don't feel like it is half of the country, 330,000,000 people in America, plus 40,000,000 people who are non citizen residents in this country. Of that, about 270,000 eligible to vote. A lot of people not active in this election. So we had a lot of people choose not to vote, but his support narrows down to 20% of the population, not 50.
Susan X Jane:Am I wrong on that math? Or is it hyperbole to say that half of everybody is with him?
Sandy McEvoy:I think that that we need to add more nuance to both of those those questions, both of those positions. There were many people that I understand voted but did not vote for president. So they just left that blank. What?
Susan X Jane:Voted but just didn't vote the top of the ticket?
Sandy McEvoy:Right. So voted on state electors, ballot measures, and in some states, there are so many of those. But I think that there were folks that just couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump and didn't know Kamala well enough, and as a result, didn't vote at all on on the presidential side. I mean, this argument that I think, folks in politics made a lot, the Democrats do it too. You know, we have a mandate.
Sandy McEvoy:1 the House, 1 the Senate, 1 the White House. Right? So, yes, that I mean, Democrats got their butts kicked. Absolutely. But the mandate question, I think, is is problematic.
Sandy McEvoy:Because in my view, and if you look at the number of of appointees there, by the way, they're all white men with one exception. What we see is that, yes, there's broad support for some of Trump's policies, but the mandate isn't a mandate to violate, residents' human rights. Right? So, yes, you got a lot of votes, but what you do with those votes is the thing I think that civil society is really going to have to figure out. I think the response from Democrats, has to be to organize.
Sandy McEvoy:Cynthia Enloe, who's a famous feminist political theorist, from the U. S, always reminds me in moments like this, that when we fought, and I think Harris did a really incredible job for a 110 days, but when we fight, and she did, and then when we don't win the office in this case, we are tired. Right? And their side is energized. And so when we most need to fight, when we most need to show up, is right after we lose.
Sandy McEvoy:And so right now, what I feel like we're doing a little bit is kind of licking our thoughts and we should, but there is another women's march and there is there are women's marches that are planned around the country after the inauguration. And that's really the key. We have to, as Michelle Obama said, do something. And we have to we we have really don't have a choice, I think.
Susan X Jane:I think that you're you're right that the it feels like it's moving really quickly already. And, Rachel Maddow shared in the night after the election that things would begin to happen very rapidly. And I think the for me, I was thinking that the choice of Matt Gaetz means right out of the start, they're not punching us in the face. They're punching their own party in the face to see, will you allow me to do things that you would not otherwise allow a candidate or a president-elect to do? And so, you know, that idea of kind of getting out of the gate now, there was a lot of fear.
Susan X Jane:I was nervous about this, that there was going to be a civil war. There was a lot of talk that we could have descended into an all out civil war post election. And then as soon as Trump took the victory, all of that talk seemed to magically dissipate. All of those threats of civil war seemed to go away. So where did those threats go?
Susan X Jane:And does that mean we can relax? Or is that threat of violence still hanging over our heads?
Sandy McEvoy:I think the threat of violence is still hanging over our heads. I don't think it'll be another January 6th. But I do think if Trump follows through on his threat to do a massive deportation effort on the first, second, third day of his presidency, I think that when we start seeing people in uniforms removing people from their homes, removing people from their workplaces, and that that is done in the majority of states where there are Republican governors, I think there is an element there where we reasonably could fear that there would be some violence. I don't think that neighbors are gonna stand around and watch neighbors get rounded up and put in the back of a truck and thrown on the other side of the border. That makes me nervous, for sure.
Susan X Jane:But we're seeing the New York Times report this morning that Trump has said that he will be employing the military on day 1 to do just that. And again, using that same dog whistle of saying these are criminals, these are bad people in order to justify it. And we know he's put a lot of immigration hardliners. So day 1, we start to see that put into place. What can we as individuals do to, to kind of face into the fear of that and then to protect our neighbors and the people that we care about?
Sandy McEvoy:Yeah. I mean, the first is to stay informed. Know what is happening. Find someone who follows the new who's and ask them, figure it out. But we can't resist if we don't know what the threat is.
Sandy McEvoy:And it's going to require people to be more curious and more interested and make a point of trying to understand what is happening in this country domestically. One of the real talents of Trump is to propose things that are perceived at the time as being crazy. And then he talks about it so much, we get kind of tired of it, and it happens. And then we say, well, we shouldn't be surprised. Right?
Sandy McEvoy:I'm not interested in should I be surprised. I'm interested in who the person, that is selected, like Matt Gaetz, there is in Matt Gaetz, and this is something that Trump pushes, a very, very deep seated distrust of this state. Anything related to to big government and big state, folks like Matt Gaetz wanna destroy. So I think that when we get to these nomination efforts, I think we could see some pushback here. And we have to reach out to our local officials and say to them, Matt Gaetz is not appropriate.
Sandy McEvoy:It's it's one of the most important and most basic ways in which we can resist, and that is call your senator and say, Matt Gaetz is not qualified for this role.
Susan X Jane:Now when we get to thinking about when we get to thinking about mass deportations, is that something where we can leverage our local politicians in order to create some pressure to to block these policies?
Sandy McEvoy:We can, but it will, to be honest, be very difficult. So, for example, the Trump administration has already said during the campaign that they would withdraw or hold funds, federal funds, going to states that are understood as being sanctuary cities. So that's gonna be the way that the the Trump administration pressures states not to deport folks. If if Gavin Newsom in California says I'm not deporting people, then Trump is gonna say you're not getting federal funds. Now, that's probably illegal, but they will dupe that out in court.
Sandy McEvoy:And in the meantime, when we're looking over here, Trump is gonna be over here in his minions doing something else. So we have to have full peripheral vision in this political environment that we're in because so much is happening, and it's happening by design very quickly. So they hope you don't notice.
Susan X Jane:I feel like that means we all just have to kind of pick a lane because when you say that we have to have full peripheral vi girl, I'm tired. I do not know if I have it in me to have full peripheral vision on everything for 4 minutes, never mind 4 years. But I can dig into the thing that I care most about and then recycle and send out the messages from people that are talking about issues that they care about. It seems like these are challenges that we're not just facing here. Alright?
Susan X Jane:So there are other countries around the world that have faced this process. And as an expert in both, resistance and political violence and also the kinds of environments that pops up, What do you know that we can learn from to help us in the days ahead?
Sandy McEvoy:I think there's so many places in the world where we can look for inspiration. It is true that the globe is leading hard right. The only place in the kind of, G20, for example, where we find that white nationalism was kind of tampered a bit was in the United Kingdom. Now that is not to say there aren't deeply, deeply problematic race, relations going on in the UK. It just means that they haven't succumb to the right leaning, you know, autocrat like much of Europe has.
Susan X Jane:Something you pointed out just then that was interesting is that this rise of the autocratic dictator is connected in all of these cases to white nationalism. Is that true that white nationalism, so racism at a global level, is driving this this move to the right?
Sandy McEvoy:Absolutely. And why is that? If you look around, especially in Europe, we see that there is an immigrant crisis. Countries and citizens around the world are feeling as though they are being invaded. In Northern Ireland, where I study quite a lot and talk with, working class people about their lives, they're very angry.
Sandy McEvoy:What they say to me is that the government has made a deal with the governments of where these, immigrants are coming from. And they get housing, they get brand new phones, they get food assistance. You know, it's a list of all of the things that these immigrants are getting that kind of native people are not. And so, governments are doing a very poor job in trying to communicate to their communities about how this migrate crisis has been created and what their government's going to do about it. But the truth is that none of these governments have the funds to deal with this matter.
Sandy McEvoy:They just don't. And there are huge violations of human rights surrounding these folks that are coming. And so when you've got an influx of migrants, for us, coming through the southern border in Europe, for example, coming across from the Mediterranean primarily, then people feel and feel as though everything that they knew and loved about the place that they live is being changed by, inverted commas, those people. And that then creates a problem about race, that then creates a problem about political affiliation. And what's the response?
Sandy McEvoy:Christian nationalism. White Christian nationalism. We see that in Hungary. We've seen that in Italy. We see it in the Netherlands.
Sandy McEvoy:We see it in the US. We've seen it everywhere. And it is primarily because the world is more connected now than it ever has been. And it's more complicated now than it ever has
Susan X Jane:been. And And also people don't wanna migrate for free. Like, when you list countries in Europe or particularly the Netherlands or the US, these were countries that, really benefited from migration when that migration was the forced migrations related to the transatlantic slave trade, or migration of people that allowed them to offer people depressed wages in order to work in their country. So it seems like this is also an issue of colonialism now?
Sandy McEvoy:Absolutely. I mean, if any of the leaders of these white right leaning organizations and parties, if they sat down and the microphone was on and they didn't know it was on, what the real truth is for every country that we've spoken about is that they cannot function without immigrant labor. That's just true. Right? So unless countries are willing to substantially change their living standards, then the exploitation of migrants will continue.
Sandy McEvoy:There is not enough labor in any of these countries to get the work done that's necessary to make the country successful. And so we just exploit labor and then turn around and tell the people who we need, we don't want them, which is what Trump is doing.
Susan X Jane:And we saw that on a really small scale with the Springfield, Ohio, situation, during the election. Here was a a town in Ohio. Manufacturing had collapsed. The town was dying. It really needed immigrants in order to bring life, to bring business, to bring the economy back, which they did.
Susan X Jane:And then they were vilified as being dog eaters during the campaign. And we saw the town attacked and facing threats of violence. So day 1, we're going to face mass deportations in this country, this country, which relies heavily on exploited labor from undocumented individuals, what's going to happen? What is what is likely to happen when we start to see that exploited labor force removed from this country? How will that affect working class people?
Sandy McEvoy:I mean, the deeply. It will it will affect working class people, obviously, so much more than it would affect people like you and I. Right? So but keep in mind also that these deportations don't occur in a vacuum. There will be other incredibly important global tensions that will distract us from the deportations.
Sandy McEvoy:Right?
Susan X Jane:Ukraine. Gaza.
Sandy McEvoy:Exactly. Right? So so the American public is sometimes just follows the shiny ball, and they don't really know what the ball's doing, but they're they know that they need to kinda keep track of it. And over here, way far away from the ball, there are abuses happening that just just are missed because we just didn't see them. Right?
Sandy McEvoy:Like, they're my worry also is that there will be a cacophony of new people, new policies, new ways of doing business, new ways of running a government, and that it will be so much that we get overwhelmed with it and don't respond to it at all, if you know what I mean.
Susan X Jane:Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm I'm overwhelmed, and I've only been talking to you for 35 minutes. So what what do we do with the overwhelm? What is the political response or strategies that we can begin to employ knowing that this is likely to be the environment we go into?
Sandy McEvoy:Yeah. You alluded to it earlier. We need to be influential in the spaces that we have influence. So for me, it would be with my students and my colleagues and with my friends. My life has significantly changed after reading this theorist, Veronica Galgo, who I've said to you many times, who's an Argentinian feminist and wrote the book, How to Change Everything.
Sandy McEvoy:And the book is really written as a kind of handbook, an instruction booklet on how to resist, right, tactics that have been used successfully all throughout, primarily, Latin America that have been successful for one fundamental reason, and that is groups. Like, say, you have your own group of influencers. I've got my own group of influencers. We may be trying to influence different things, but our goal is similar. And so we've got to make sure, very, very sure, that while we're all working in our own areas of influence, that we are not kind of siloing ourselves and working only with people who are in our immediate area.
Sandy McEvoy:We've got a coalition build really quickly. And I think that's the way in which we survive these next 4 years. If we don't coalition bill, if we don't work across groups, we will suffer more than I think is necessary.
Susan X Jane:Well, I I feel like we have a example of that. We saw in 2020, when George Floyd was murdered, we saw people across many, many different activist groups come together in a central moment. And that's what got us to those huge numbers of seeing lots of people turning out and then seeing lots of activism follow-up on that. So, certainly, we wanna think about how we can build those coalitions. But looking at what's happened in the last 4 years, it's not just that there is a strong push against what we would hope for in terms of liberation.
Susan X Jane:We've also seen a lot of fracturing and missteps within activist spaces. I feel like, we eat our own a little bit. And there's been a bit of that. There's a bit of siloing perfectionism. Can you talk about what happened to those movements that seem so strong in 2020?
Susan X Jane:Where did they go? And what can we do to revive them?
Sandy McEvoy:Oh, it's a good question. And I'm not sure that we fully understand that yet. But I do think that Trump and his minions are incredibly affected in the politics of fear. And when someone is fearful, I mean, I'm a queer woman, you're a woman of color, you know, we are the kind of people, that this new administration loves a lot. But we are kind of used to being fearful.
Sandy McEvoy:Right? We just kind of go with it. But there are other people, probably the mainstream of people who voted for Trump, certainly white voters, really, really did do believe Trump's rhetoric, which is this is a country in decline. Immigrants are taking over. You will lose your your life savings.
Sandy McEvoy:Right? He's creating an environment where unless you support him, you will fail. You will not be successful. You won't be the guy that gets the nice truck that rolls up, picks up his girlfriend, and goes off, and has a meal. That's what folks want, and that is a far cry from democracy.
Sandy McEvoy:You can't drive democracy to, you know, the Texas steakhouse and pick up pick up your girlfriend. It just doesn't work. And the politics of fear, I think, is what reelected this guy, I believe.
Susan X Jane:So people are afraid of you know, and I certainly DEI has been defunded in really powerful ways. And people definitely there is a fear that these people these outsiders are going to take over not realizing that that diversity is good for people, that diversity of thought makes our communities interesting and vibrant. When we look at the cabinet, as you said, the cabinet lacks diversity in many of the ways that we've seen recently. And so we just will have less of those voices at the table. And yet, I don't know if we made a solid argument for what inclusion can look like, because we weren't able to close that argument with a lot of voters in this last cycle.
Susan X Jane:What can we do to help people better understand and for ourselves as a movement to better understand what liberation can look like for everybody?
Sandy McEvoy:I I have to confess, the the day before the election, a couple of professor friends of mine and, were talking, and folks were scared. They were scared. You know, this is gonna could we do 4 more years? Could we really do this? And I said, you know what, for a moment, I'm not gonna let that fear get in here.
Sandy McEvoy:I'm going to imagine what it could be like where we talk kindly to one another again, or we can have conversations across the aisle that aren't, you know, you taking your life into your hands. I think the first thing we need to do is to decide that that's something that we want, is to actively decide that we want to be in better relation with each other. We have to be explicit about what it is that we want and then create that with our communities. If we don't if we don't find a way again to coalition build, to come together, I'm not talking, you know, a million woman march, although I would love that. I'm talking about maybe some people on the school board getting together to have a conversation.
Sandy McEvoy:Is there a way that we could talk across the political divide? And can we imagine that it's possible? That, I think, is step 1. But I have to admit to you, I think that feels really hard right now. And
Susan X Jane:and it does it
Sandy McEvoy:like, in my
Susan X Jane:way feel really hard. And I feel like a lot of people I mean, it brings to mind the James Baldwin quote that, you know, we can agree to disagree unless our disagreement is rooted in in my humanity, you know, to paraphrase. Yeah. And a lot of people feel like this white nationalism push is a existential threat. It is.
Susan X Jane:And you described a lot of voters that were not voting because they were trying to rip down democracy. They're voting on pocketbook issues. How do we lick our wounds enough to begin to coalition build with people that are adjacent to us, not the people that are opposed to liberation. Because I feel like my line is you believe people are fully human. If you are willing to dehumanize people, then, there's not gonna much that we can agree on.
Susan X Jane:But I think there are a lot of people who are not voting for dehumanization, but that that did vote for this this administration.
Sandy McEvoy:I mean, one of the issues I wish we could get past is this idea that politics has to be complicated and nuanced. Now I'm a professor of politics, so, of course, I think it's complicated in some ways, and and it's nuanced. But I think we overthought it here. I think we overthought it. I think what the Democrats missed was a more simple message that brings people together, And that one connection has to be enough to start.
Sandy McEvoy:There has to be one thing that you and I have in common if we are going to have a conversation. And for me, because I have, and I know that you have too, been targeted by conservative Christians of all types, I think we need to take it one relationship at a time and one issue at a time. You know, he won the popular vote. He just did. So the majority of the country is hoping that they made the right pick for their pocketbook.
Sandy McEvoy:And I think only later are they are we going to find or they find that this is gonna get kinda ugly.
Susan X Jane:Right. About to find that out on January 20, 2025 that it's about
Sandy McEvoy:to get right now, isn't it? I mean, like, these appointments, these are not serious appointments. These are not serious people. These are not
Susan X Jane:It's almost like they're not sending their best. It's almost like they're sending rapists, criminals.
Sandy McEvoy:They are they did send a rapist. We've got yeah. I mean, that's true.
Susan X Jane:And I would like to just gently point out that an immigrant in the form of Elon Musk did take a black woman's job sitting number 2 in the White House. I don't know if that is gonna age well. But
Sandy McEvoy:But I think another issue that we haven't talked about that played a really big role here is the administration and Harris's position on Gaza, Israel, and Palestine, I think this was not handled well. I think there should have been a much more well developed response to the concern that young voters were expressing repeatedly to the Harris campaign. And I think they were in a very difficult position. They couldn't say, for example, I don't like what we're doing in Gaza because I'm part of the administration. Right?
Sandy McEvoy:And we can't say, for example, that if I became president, that I would not support Israel because that's a long standing policy, which I actually
Susan X Jane:Right.
Sandy McEvoy:Break. But it's a long standing policy of American presidents to support Israel. So that piece, many of my students said, I love Kamala. I like everything she's doing, but I can't vote for her. She is endorsing the gen endorsing a genocide.
Sandy McEvoy:And that's true.
Susan X Jane:It does seem like a time for complexities to hold that that, yes, that is true. Are we gonna see, you know, our own form of dictatorship tried to take hold here? Like, how do people trade that? But, you know, for the people that, you know, may be much reviled for voting on their their kitchen table issues, we are all facing those complicated choices. You know, even those of us who might really want to stand on the most progressive or most liberal policies, we live in and benefit from being a part of a capitalist society.
Susan X Jane:So we all kind of have that, you know, I call it my, yes, I'm at a protest, but I'm drinking a Starbucks kind of moment where we both are a part of these systems. And and as a part of those systems, get the kind of knock on benefits of that, and then also have to make some pretty tough choices within those if we want to stand on any.
Sandy McEvoy:Yeah. I mean, I love your I love your Starbucks example because I love Starbucks. I love being a good strong cup of coffee from there. I think that, you know, Starbucks is the Democrats and Dunkin' Donuts is the Republicans. You know, if you go to a Dunkin' Donuts at, say, 6 in the morning, you're gonna find the people who cut your trees, you know, fix the road.
Sandy McEvoy:You're gonna find the construction workers. You're gonna find the cops. Right? These are all the people that I think the Dems didn't reach. Those white, non educated, working class, Christian men.
Sandy McEvoy:And I think those are the men also who voted for Trump because of, again, this I don't think we can talk about this enough because of the way in which the Republican party presents men in masculinity. Right? That that Trump is a big powerful leader and he's rich and he can do whatever he wants and he gets women whenever he wants and he can do whatever he want. Right? Like, that's what that guy in Dunkin' Donuts wants.
Susan X Jane:Yeah. But does that guy know that Melania is not moving into the White House?
Sandy McEvoy:That guy doesn't care. Okay. That guy just wants a golden toilet.
Susan X Jane:First of all, look, the needs of marginalized people have not been met in this last 4 years of of quote, unquote, wokeness. Like, we didn't we didn't get there. So it wasn't like, you know, all of the all of the queers and BIPOC people are having a party, you know, with money guns. So that's not there. But we do have to make an argument that there is a place for every American in a democratic country.
Susan X Jane:And there's a place for all of those people to be able to succeed in some sort of economic structure going forward. Not sure what that will look like. What is the thing that you are looking at as a space that you can hold with somebody that might have different opinions? So like you said, we have to kind of find that space that we can hold something that we can at least agree on to begin to hold some space together. How are you doing that?
Sandy McEvoy:Well, I mean, I try and remember that whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you do we all have, you know, fairly similar desires. Not all, but similar. We want our families to be safe. We want a leaf over our heads. We want to be able to, for me and for other people who are in vulnerable populations, to be able to live our lives without the fear of, a threat because of our color, because of our orientation.
Sandy McEvoy:That's what I'd like. But I think that the conversation mostly is that we can agree on what we would like. It is how we get there that is the problem. Right? So everybody in the United States, I'm gonna guess, would like to be financially stable.
Susan X Jane:Right.
Sandy McEvoy:How do we get there? We will exploit in this capitalist system, brown BIPOC people in order to be the workers to generate the wealth that you and I like. Right?
Susan X Jane:But that's also working class white people. Is that not a place for us to begin to hang together?
Sandy McEvoy:Totally. But what the Trump administration did did does and what dictators and autocrats do well is they find the 2 groups that are most oppressed and then create a fight between them. So we have poor white men, poor, immigrants, Hispanic, Latin folks. We have black men. Most of those groups operate in the lower ends of the socioeconomic scale.
Sandy McEvoy:Right? So these groups are being told that they're fighting for the same dollar.
Susan X Jane:Right.
Sandy McEvoy:Right? And that, you know, that's a dictator's dream to get all of the people that don't like him to fight with one another. So I feel like we want the same things. If we could have a conversation about what kinds of policies we would need to get us there, then I think that's how I I enter a conversation. So do you want a $50 head of lettuce?
Sandy McEvoy:No. I'm trying to have conversations about how we get there. What policies could get us there? But I have to admit to you, it is very hard. I get I can get pretty pretty upset when I hear some of the things that some very hard right white Christian nationalists have to say about my life and about my friends, and that doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Sandy McEvoy:That's hard.
Susan X Jane:Yeah. I think that in between the everybody deserves to be safe and have the ability to be to have a pathway to success and policy in between is I think is a layer of who deserves in on that dream. And that is what has really, I think, is the place where we're fighting. Because, yes, we can all agree that everybody wants to be happy, healthy, and free. But there is an argument that we don't always, have explicitly that many people feel like not everybody deserves that.
Sandy McEvoy:Yeah.
Susan X Jane:So who deserves in on the dream?
Sandy McEvoy:I think that's right. I think that is the that is the material for stereotypes. Right? That's the that's a place that we go when we want to devalue a group so that we can elevate my group. Right?
Sandy McEvoy:Like, that's old stuff. Who deserves to live well and who deserves to not live well as if there isn't enough for everyone.
Susan X Jane:Mhmm.
Sandy McEvoy:And if there is enough for everyone. Everyone can and should have what they need to be safe, secure, loved, and fed. Way in which I think the Trump administration, both in its first iteration and in this one, is to very much, as you say, discount people who they think don't deserve it. And and when you've got the majority of the American people supporting that, it's hard. It's hard to resist.
Susan X Jane:It is hard to resist. And we are definitely facing into a long 4 years of that. But I feel like that's a great place for us to kind of end up that there is enough for everyone. And how can we make that argument if we believe that we share everybody free, everybody has a road to opportunity. How can we help people step back out of the fear and see that there is enough for everyone?
Susan X Jane:And I I think we can do that by showing up in our local communities and making sure that that that story of scarcity gets knocked down by the actions that we take with the people right around us.
Sandy McEvoy:Yep. Yep. And I think you're right. Showing up. There's no substitute for your your body on a sidewalk talking to people about what what matters to you peacefully.
Sandy McEvoy:So I think we need to show up physically and we need to show up with our local representatives and tell them what we think. You know? Let's work this system as best we can.
Susan X Jane:Thank you for that, Sandy. I am gonna show up with you anytime I can. I've dusted off my hat. I'm ready to go. I know that you are as well.
Susan X Jane:You will see us out there. We hope to see all of you out there, wherever you are digging in super locally, doing what you can with the people around you. And really trying to make that argument that there is enough for all of us to have the life we deserve. Sandy, thank you so much. I will I will see you in the streets, and hopefully, we will be safe out there.
Susan X Jane:Thank you so much. Well, everybody, it sounds like we have our marching orders for the days ahead. Like we said, lot of big feelings still going on, and it's okay to have big feelings, but make sure that you are interspersing some actions with those feelings. Connect with the people around you. Think about the areas where you have influence and start planning ahead for the times when you are going to take action.
Susan X Jane:Speaking of taking action, it's almost turkey time. So while you are getting your turkeys defrosted and your stuffing recipes out, make sure you also think about how you are going to navigate those tricky cultural conversations during the holidays ahead. And if you need some help, be sure to check back here. We are gonna post a Cultural Navigators quick trip guide to dealing with your relatives during the holidays. Make sure you check us on culturenavigators.com if you are looking for support or training, and you can always find us on social media.
Susan X Jane:I'm your host and your fellow culture navigator, Susan x Jane. Thank you so much for spending some time here with us today and wishing you the very best on your journey to find the space where you belong.