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Welcome to I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today, a conversational, culture-savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world that has gone sideways. We’re here to unpack the issues that boggle our minds, all rooted in a little history, a little culture, a little humor, a little group therapy, and a little humility.
Desiree Ep6 (00:00)
when you think about the mom, like her mind is always set to like, well, how can I reconfigure this? Or if you're thinking about like, why don't they care about like what's happening to black and brown folks? It's like, well, if you find all these different ways to dehumanize, it doesn't matter.
Chris Bevolo (00:23)
Hello, welcome everybody to episode six of I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today, our conversational, cultural savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world that has gone sideways. We're here to unpack the issues that boggle our tiny, incapable minds. That's gonna come out so many times today, Des, sorry. All rooted in a little history, a little culture, a little humor, a little group therapy, and a little humility, I am Chris Bevelo.
I'm your host of the show and owner of Bearing 287, an organization that's fighting the good fight to make the world a better place for all and the sponsor of the show. I'm joined as always by my cohost, Des, who's a social impact comm strategist by day and who spends her nights remixing history to make sense of the present. Hello, Des.
Desiree Ep6 (01:16)
Hi Chris. Hello Christopher. How we doing?
Chris Bevolo (01:21)
Are you? We're doing fine. We're doing fine. We're gonna we're gonna go deep into the idea of empathy today, or actually the lack of empathy is probably better put really kind of focused on the situation in Minneapolis. But obviously it's a much larger issue than that. So we're gonna cover a lot of ground. But first, Des, I understand that you have seen the movie.
Desiree Ep6 (01:25)
you
Chris Bevolo (01:50)
of the moment. What are the movies of the moment? Probably not the movie of the moment.
Desiree Ep6 (01:53)
One of the movies of the moment.
Well, it feels like it's a movie of a moment. Although Hamnet, it's come up as a movie of the moment as well. But okay, Marty Supreme. I actually went to go see it. I know when we talked about the Oscars a couple of episodes ago, I was like, Mostly because of just the conversation around it. But after actually listening to my favorite, Wesley Morris.
on his show, Cannon Ball, they were talking about it and I was like, okay, I do need to go see this. Because he raises the question of, because he's like, this is a good movie. Why are people so up in arms about this movie? And it's like, yeah, this guy's a jerk and he gets away with it. But he had this really interesting kind of question that I was like, ooh, now I wanna go see it to see. And it had mostly to do with the,
Marty Supreme, his character is Jewish and it's set in a lot of like Jewish communities within New York. Like it's, it's a thing. And he was asking this question around why so many people like walked out or had this feeling and does it have any kind of connection to like, how do you feel about Jewish people? And I was like, So anyways, I went to go see it for that reason, but I didn't see the connection to like how people would be like,
antisemitic or whatever and the response it wasn't. But I will say though, have to say it was actually an entertaining movie. So just putting that out there for other folks that found themselves on the fence, it actually was an entertaining movie. So.
Chris Bevolo (03:30)
Okay.
Well, good. That's good to know because we are planning on watching it. We are skeptical of its quality, but we will be watching it. And it's always better to be skeptical of the quality going in because then you're I don't know for me anyway. Lower expectations usually makes for a better movie. If I think it's going to be amazing, then I almost always let down. Not always, but sometimes. Speaking of which, we tried to watch F1.
And the first sign of trouble was when it was two hours and 41 minutes long. And my wife was like, I'm not sure. I'm like, well, let's just try it. Like I wasn't super going home to watch it. I'm actually very curious about F1, the sport. I liked it, but I don't know, we were like maybe a half hour in, maybe 40 minutes in. And she was like, I'm out. I can't do this anymore. So.
I have a flight coming up this week in which I will start it from scratch and hopefully cover the whole flight. So have you seen F1?
Desiree Ep6 (04:34)
I love it.
No, I did not bother. But was deeply surprised to see that it was nominated for best picture. And I was like, in what world? But OK. And also what you just said just pretty much like nails it for me where I'm like, again, why why was this nominated for best picture? But.
Chris Bevolo (04:52)
Well, it's a big blockbuster kind of thingy. And apparently the end is really cool. The racing end. so I don't know. One more thing on this. I think it was Saturday Night Live two weeks ago that had this amazing skit about, like product spin-offs of one battle after another. I don't know if you saw that and it was like action figures for kids. And it was so funny.
Desiree Ep6 (05:03)
girl.
Uh-uh.
Chris Bevolo (05:22)
Cause it was like the kids are playing in the gratuitous way that the movie happens with the action figures. But, but one of the things you could buy was like this vehicle that went on this endless desert road full of Hills. Cause there's that very famous scene at the end. It's just going over hills like this. It was really funny. We should, we should pull that out and you should find that it's good.
Desiree Ep6 (05:46)
I
do need to catch up on SNL. I've been seeing some gems on the socials lately. Okay, I need to go watch some episodes.
Chris Bevolo (05:54)
Yeah, yeah, it's not all great, but there's some really good stuff. In fact, we'll touch on one of them later in this episode. But let's get into this because we have a lot to cover. And I'm going to tell you I'm going to set this up by kind of sharing where this came from. I don't know, does if you have do you have playlists for certain situations, music playlists like workout playlists and cleaning playlists? I have like all kinds of playlists. Do you have those?
Desiree Ep6 (06:21)
I have the
deepest of niches for playlists, like hundreds, like it's ridiculous. Why are you asking?
Chris Bevolo (06:28)
Okay. Well, I was, had a long drive this weekend. and my favorite playlist right now is called the folk ability. And it's a bunch of folk and rebel songs from like the fifties and sixties and early seventies. But I got through that whole thing. It was a long ride. and so I started on my sadness and moods playlist, which is a full of great songs. And when I'm in the car, I was by myself, I get to sing and it's the only place where I should sing.
which is by myself. So I was going through the playlist, but sometimes, you know, like it's, don't listen to that very often. And so songs come up, they have heard in a while, I heard Black Eyed Peas, Where Is The Love? And I started listening to the lyrics. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is of this moment. I don't even know, I should have found out when the song was released. It has been a long time ago at this point, eight years, seven years, 10 years. Yeah, so.
Desiree Ep6 (07:21)
longer than that.
Chris Bevolo (07:26)
but it made me think about the moment we're living in and where is the love. So now I'm gonna shift to another story. So are you familiar with the Necessary Conversation podcast? Do you know what that is? No. Okay. I've never watched it. It's a video podcast, but I see clips of it on TikTok all the time. And I bet a lot of people are familiar with it without maybe even knowing the name of the show, but it's a...
Desiree Ep6 (07:37)
I'm not. No, what is that?
Chris Bevolo (07:53)
middle-aged brother and sister. I don't know, they must be in their 40s, mid to late 40s. And they are very liberal. And they are kind of the hosts of the show. And the show is them interviewing their parents who are diehard mega Fox News parents. And I think initially the show was intended to kind of...
Desiree Ep6 (08:11)
God.
Chris Bevolo (08:16)
Like we have to have a conversation. We can't get through Thanksgiving dinner. The things we talked about way back at episode one. Let's see if we can talk through this. And maybe there was some merit to that in the beginning, but now it's just, it's become very popular and it's almost, I don't know what I would call it, like conflict porn. Is there such a porn as conflict porn? mean, it's,
Desiree Ep6 (08:29)
You
That's what it sounds like, my God,
like, ugh, like trauma.
Chris Bevolo (08:44)
It's painful,
it's painful to watch. They're not doing any good. Like they're not doing any good with their relationships as far as you can see. And it almost looks like now at this point, they might be taking advantage of their parents because the father and the mother, the father is heinous. Like you can't even listen to him. He is so far gone and he's so ugly and he's so awful in his views.
that you just can't even dismiss him or you can't even take him serious. So it's kind of like, are you even talking to this guy? He hasn't budged a centimeter since the show started. The mom in some ways is worse though. I've seen a lot of commentators say she's clearly influenced by the dad. She always wears this glittery MAGA hat or Trump hat. She is the poster child for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
in that she clearly doesn't know shit, but she talks like she knows a lot. And she's very confident in her views. And it's so frustrating because you just want to shake this woman. And since the killing of Alex Preti in Minneapolis by ICE agents now, we learn it's multiple. I don't even watch this when it comes up on TikTok because it's so infuriating to me.
But it comes up and you sometimes I catch like the first few seconds. And so they have been talking about this and this woman is just I've seen three different videos where she is trying to defend what has happened. Right. She's trying to provide a rationale for why the ICE agents were valid in killing this guy. Right. Like, well, what if it's, you know, now we found out that he was at another
protest and they beat him up and what if he came to this gun, know, this new protest with a gun but they tend to kill them. So that's one. Another is like, you know, why was he there? You hear this all the time, like he shouldn't have even been there. And then the last one is the one that just broke my brain, which is kind of like, look, if you don't obey law enforcement, there are consequences, right? So all of these are given as excuses by her.
to why it was legitimate to shoot this guy 10 times and kill him in the street. And you just wanna say like, what the hell? I think this woman is, she looks grandmotherly. So you have this impression, if you could just shake her and say, where is your humanity on this, right? And we can keep going on this. I'm gonna go on a little rant here.
Just let me get through it, get it off my chest, right? So there's been a lot of conversation and a lot of the people I follow are wondering why it took two white people to be killed by ICE in Minneapolis before there was finally really a significant backlash. There was a lot of backlash about Renee Good, but after Alex Preddy, you saw changes in the Trump administration, you saw the national news media like we talked last week does, kind of pushed back.
more than they ever did before about the claims that DHS was making. According to the Guardian, eight people have been killed by ICE so far in 2026. Okay, so that's just like a month of ICE killing eight people. You've got Rene Good and Alex Preti, but the other six were people of color, right? Hispanic, Cambodian. And so...
you know, there's that side of it. Like it makes me curious. I'm going come off equal parts judgy, curious, furious, confounded in this podcast, right? It makes me curious why, like, you know, I remember you saying how your mom, when you went to the George Floyd protests, kind of broke down and said, she couldn't believe how many white people were there to support the cause. Why does it take this?
for white people to finally say, a second. Another thing I've experienced, I went to the Timberwolves game. This was about three weeks ago where they were honoring Martin Luther King Day. And then this amazing protest poet is what I will call her name was Tish Jones. And at halftime, she did spoken word.
And it was super, super powerful. And the name of her poem was The Children Are Watching. And I just remember getting chills in the arena as she was reading it and we'll provide a link to the, the Timber Bowls put out a video of it. It's incredibly inspiring, but it does make you ask like, the children are watching. Hey lady, old lady on.
you know, the necessary conversation. Your grandchildren are watching what you're saying. People are watching you. Kids are watching. And what is happening here, right? So you see in the shooting of Alex Preti, ICE officers applauding seconds after they kill him. You see what instigated the whole thing was this shorter ICE agent. I'm just going to say it. Shove a woman really hard to the ground, like for no reason. Like what?
What are you doing, right? You have this little old lady on this podcast tying herself in a pretzel, trying to rationalize the cold-blooded killing of these two people in Minneapolis. I see so many, and I'm assuming most of them are true. Some of them actually have news stories of people, business owners getting really in trouble for going online and saying they should have shot them all. All the protesters should be shots.
About damn time, ICE shoots those Democrat paid protestors assholes. We even have people from our own state, Tom Emmer, who if a little aside here is, he's a high ranking Republican in the House. He used to be a decent guy. There was a podcast that where he spoke out against people in his Uber white community in Northwest Twin Cities.
who didn't want to have people of color moving into their neighborhoods. He's like, you don't get to decide that. That's not this country, right? He really spoke up for people. Now he's just claiming everybody out on the streets is paid, right? They're either anarchists or they're paid or they're coming from out of our state. We even have our silly little Vikings announcer, Paul Allen, who the day before Alex Pretti was shot and we had the massive parade.
protest, say like, you know, do paid protesters get hazard pay for these kinds of conditions? He has not been back on the air since that happened. Just a few more things. So CNBC did a survey that asked businesses whether they were speaking out. Only one out of 34 business leaders interviewed, spoke out. One third of those who did not said it was not relevant to our business.
Okay, I'm gonna read this quote. I wanna get your reaction test. And then I'll be, I'm gonna finish my rant, but I want your input here. This is what one of them said. It would be a breach of management's fiduciary duty to use our business for such tangential political purposes. We do not view our silence as an endorsement of current administration policy action or personality. What's your reaction to that quote, Des? Do you have one?
Desiree Ep6 (16:45)
Just that, you know, my name is Bennett and I ain't in it, I guess. don't know. But yeah, it just...
Chris Bevolo (16:53)
I mean,
it's almost like this is gonna be like, where's Waldo with this podcast, right? We're gonna have to, every single episode, we're gonna come back to money, money, Money, money, money. It's our fiduciary duty, right? Like, gee thanks. Like that must've been written by an AI, you know, or 10 gentle political purposes. So.
the murder of two people's chit-tens gentle. I really wish I knew who this business was because while they may not view their silence as an endorsement, I sure as shit do. And I would love to know who they are so I can no longer spend my money with them. Okay, so wrapping up my rant, I appreciate your patience with this, Des. I'm gonna hand the mic over here to you in a second. I want to read a couple things. One is the statement from a federal judge
who released five-year-old, the five-year-old who was taken by ICE, if you remember that, that made national news. The viral video of that, guy with the little, you know, he had the little hoodie on, his little backpack. Judge Fred Beery really lit into the Trump administration. And this is, this sounds like something out of 1842, but I love this. Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us,
the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency and the rule of law be damned. Doesn't that sound like something like a judge in 1842 wrote? And then you have Hillary Clinton, again, like total irony that we decided on this. And then she posts a piece in the Atlantic that's called MAGA’s War and Empathy. We're gonna get more to that in a second, but this is one.
Desiree Ep6 (18:29)
.
Chris Bevolo (18:46)
comment from her, whatever you think about immigration policy, how can a person of conscious justify the lack of compassion and empathy for the victims of Minnesota and for families torn apart or hiding in fear for the children separated from their parent or afraid to go to work? So black eyed peas, where is the love, right? Like whatever happened to the values of humanity, whatever happened to the fairness and equality.
instead of spreading love or spreading animosity, lack of understanding leads away from unity. You gotta ask yourself, where is the love? Or as I keep thinking, what the fuck is wrong with people? And I'm sorry, but I don't get it. Okay, I'm done, Des. I'm done with, I had to get that off my chest. Yeah. How are you, how are you taking this from me?
Desiree Ep6 (19:34)
Yeah, I mean.
I mean, honestly, as a black woman, this is par for course. I mean, this has been our reality. And I guess for white people that haven't had to navigate this or deal with this or experiences like, my God, like what? And it's like, well, yeah. And what you had said about the children are watching, honey, the children have been watching. In fact, the children were taken to lynchings.
as entertainment, whole picnics around this event to watch people, black people be murdered and pose for photos with it as it's just a regular Sunday afternoon. So when I think about the idea of like, like we've lost our empathy, like, did we have it? Because stories like this have been happening. This is just the 20.
a 2020 version of this story, you know, if you ask me. And it's funny, the first thing that I it was interesting how the algorithm works as soon as that occurred last weekend, not this past weekend. I did notice that I was being fed different videos from folks talking about like, see, blog women been telling me all this, yada, yada, yada, that were things that were posted even like back in November, December. And I was like, wow. OK.
Chris Bevolo (20:58)
Yeah.
Desiree Ep6 (21:03)
The algorithm is algorithming. But essentially, like, yeah, just like we have been learning more about what atrocities have occurred that have been covered up. I'm thinking about, of course, know, the Indian boarding schools. I first learned about this when we were working on a documentary. And one of the stories that we uncover from following some indigenous nurses in Oklahoma, she was telling about how her mother essentially had been traumatized by that.
Chris Bevolo (21:17)
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Ep6 (21:33)
And that it was only until recently that she realized why her mother was the way she was because she was one of the kids that were at the boarding schools. This was the 18 seventies to the 1970s. I will say the lynching that started in 18 eighties, but that went all the way up into the 1960s. So a hundred years haven't even passed since we've been experiencing this or seen this. And then of course, know, gopher big plat people prosper. So now we got to burn it down. So we had the Tulsa race massacre.
Which again, thanks to television and series bringing this up, this was brought up by the, my God, I can't think of the series right now. Yes, yes, thank you, thank you. The Indian boarding schools, that came to be known more from the, there was an episode of Reservation Dogs on FX that was dedicated to that. Then of course we all know that Hitler and the Nazi, they got their playbook,
Chris Bevolo (22:09)
HBO Watchmen, the Watchmen show, yeah.
Desiree Ep6 (22:31)
from us, from our Jim Crow laws. They built all of that on US. So like we're killing it. And we talked about Oscar nominated movies. I watched train dreams over the weekend and I was, didn't expect to see this. It was really lovely. It's a great movie. Definitely see why it's nominated. But it's about the men out West who were going and essentially building the railroads systems
tree logging and all this kind of stuff. But what they really show is also how Asian men are treated and essentially killed in the cruelty that sent black. You are asking them to come over to this country to help build your roads, help build your railroads, but then you're offing them. Are you insane? Again, this is all connected to the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s that was in connection with World
too. Yeah, like, yeah, we've it's been this way. So in all honestly, I don't it's, which is sad to say I don't expect anything better. In fact, like I just not that I'm living my life like, God, like any moment now, I'm going to be completely murdered or, know, but you you pick up on these cues and you just kind of know that like, yeah, like, this ain't it. Like, I gotta stay awake.
stay vigilant, attention because like read the signs, which is why like we are like folks of color, especially we're some of the greatest like anthropologists because we have to decode so much of other people's behaviors to really understand what's going on. So that's essentially kind of my take on like what all is going on, but kind of to your point though about the mother and how she's just dogged about this, that
To me, that's the scary part, and we'll talk about this a little bit later, but it's, people will always find a way to justify the thing that they believe in. And that's just another example of this. it's like, yeah, there's so many different directions we can go, but that's essentially my initial response to all of this.
Chris Bevolo (24:47)
Yes, and thank you because I wanted to make sure that you were clear and I was clear. Like I'm not naive. know that Genghis Khan had no empathy. Like this is not a new thing.
There is a new component to it we're going to talk about in a second, but I think like, you know, it's hard for me to remember a time in my lifetime where I've been, you know, I've been part of something in this country. It's one thing, you know, like 9-11 was horrible. Like, you don't question empathy there because that's obviously a horrible attack. Right. But like for people that
are on your cul-de-sac that you go to church with or whatever. I don't know that I've experienced such a lack of empathy that's peaking now. I have, because I think the backlash, we'll talk about that, to George Floyd was the start of it. But, you know, a lot of that just gets rolled up into politics. And this just feels to me too clear cut about there is no reason those two people should have died. And people are just like,
they just can't see it. let's dig a little bit into this because I mentioned, you know, we have a little bit of a flow to this podcast. If it's hard to tell, maybe that's good. But we, we want to kind of talk about how we got here. And Des, you just kind of hit on some highlights. And I'm going to give you the floor to go a little deeper on some things. But one of the things that's been reported on recently, and honestly, like, it's hard to not get political with some of this. So I'm sorry.
You know, it just is what it is. But there has been a right wing push to denigrate the idea of empathy, an explicit one. And now maybe this is something that's been a thread throughout history too, at least on an implicit level or behind the scenes. But the outward attack on empathy is kind of startling, right? there's, we'll provide some sources, but just as an example,
Here are some things we've heard over the last five years, Elon Musk talking to Joe Rogan, a couple of big brains in the room there, who said the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit like what, what in the world, like we just stop and think about that you're like, that's the, that's the fundamental weakness of Western civilization. There was a book published by conservative commentator Ali Beth Stuckey, who I don't know.
don't know her at all. but it's called toxic, toxic empathy, which is such an oxymoron, right? Well, we'll call it out later for that. toxic empathy, how progressives exploit Christian compassion, how progressives exploit compassion. It's such a weird thing. Charlie Kirk, right? who is talking about the book.
said that it demolished the number one psychological trick of the left by employing our language, our Bible verses, our concepts, and then perverting them to morally extort us into adopting their position. There's just it when you hear those words, you're like, we morally extort you into caring about human beings. I don't I get my brain twisted there. Ben Shapiro, facts don't care about your feelings.
Our friend, as our close friend, Riley Gaines, the swimmer. I don't know who peed in here, her Cheerios, but man, she she's a horrible human being. Last week on Fox News in the wake of Alex Prady said, I believe words like compassion, empathy, inclusion and love have been weaponized against us. OK, go ahead.
Desiree Ep6 (28:49)
To me, it felt...
To me, this feels like a response to the last, you know, since George Floyd, where there was so much conversation around empathy and inclusion. Like all of this is like, essentially just like a switch of all of that to like go, but they're tired of having to have done any of that or trainings or what have you. So this is like essentially about backlash. I don't know, just from that.
Chris Bevolo (29:18)
Yeah, yeah. mean, if I had to read into a concerted effort to attack empathy, would be because it would be because of what we're talking about today and in many ways that empathy allows you to step outside your own little teeny world and care about others. But that's not good if you care about things like white supremacy. If you're a trad wife and you want to be like it was in the 50s or the 1880s or whatever.
empathy for people that aren't like you in different situations at different parts of the country or parts of the world. That is not helpful to that cause. So we better come at that thing and make sure people realize that it's being weaponized against us. One more. Well, two more examples, one from present day. So we mentioned this article from Hillary Clinton. She talks about the day after Trump was inaugurated. He attended a prayer service.
at a cathedral in DC and the Episcopal bishop there, her name is Marianne Edgar Boody, directed part of her sermon directly at Trump and said, in the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. Sounds pretty, you know, fair, also kind, also,
Who has a problem with that? Apparently a lot of people. Republican congressmen said that she should be added to the deportation list because of that. Ben Garrett, who I don't know who he is, but he's apparently a pastor, said this snake is God's enemy and yours too. She hates God and his people. You need to properly hate in response. Nice pastor. Like who's going to those sermons? And again, right wing podcaster, Ali Beth Stuckey, who we just heard about.
Said the sermon had toxic empathy. There's incomplete opposition to God's word and in support of the most satanic destructive ideas ever conjured up. So let me just get this straight. Asking to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared is what I say that is incomplete opposition to God's word. I mean, what in the world? And then
There's a survey quoted in there that said 40 % of Christian nationalists agree that empathy is a dangerous emotion that undermines our ability to set up a society that is guided by God's truth. again, we need some history, Des. One thing that's super interesting, you know they're listening, right? They're listening to everything, listening on all the tools and all the apps. Can't be a coincidence that as I was researching this, my TikTok feed served up a video.
of a documentary of Kent State, which is interesting for two reasons. One, Kent State is clearly a touch point for the turning of the public tide against Vietnam. Also, four white students who were killed, right? So again, it took four white kids to be killed for that to go as big as it did. But this was about interviews with men and women on the street after.
And one of them is just it just they're all mind blowing. But these two young women, they have to be in their 20s. And the interviewer says, do you think the guard, meaning National Guard, was justified? And she says, yes. And I'm just sorry they didn't shoot more. And he says, why? And she said they were told to move out of there and they didn't. So maybe that maybe that woman grew up to be the mom on necessary conversation.
because it's the same shiz. Now that's only going back to the 60s. We can go a lot further back than that, right, Des?
Desiree Ep6 (33:19)
Yeah,
yeah, I mean, it is. It's deeply concerning, but then it also it is. That's what this it has always been on every continent. There has been this sense of, I don't know, but I think a lot about the how we're set up as a country and the US in Australia. We're one of the only few countries where.
Actually, I need to look at the background on Canada, because I feel like Canada might be similar to you. But anyway, this continent, especially, as well as Australia, we're the only ones that don't have a connected ethnicity, a connected sense of place and land. know none of us are indigenous to this land, and we have done ruthless things to those that are indigenous to this land. So then what connects you?
You know, I think about my cocaine, you know, Germany obviously had their version of this trouble. but I look at the French, the Italians, again, they've had their own versions, but at least what connected them was there that they were Italian, that they were French, that they shared language, that they shared history in that way. And then in the U S you know, it's been this gigantic experiment where we've all been kind of thrown together a lot of times against our will and the, and the history.
But more presently, you know, it was a chosen spot to be. So then what connects you? And so with the US, we have this very individualist sense of self and our culture. Everything is about, you know, your own personal achievement, your own valor and like the things that you're doing. And that from before our beginning, that was the ideal.
And then in the 1600s and 1700s, you you started to see this category of white, or maybe even actually later than that, because when I first think about it, it usually comes up with like unions, but essentially, you know, race is a social construction and that it started to be used as this category to connect these other folks so that they wouldn't ally with enslaved black folks. You see this more with
especially in the Northeast, you know, lot of the factory workers, you know, lot of folks came through Ellis Island, you know, from Ireland, from Germany, from Italy, you know, so you have all these folks who, if you watch any Scorsese movie, you'd see that there is issues between Jewish folks, Italians, Irish folks. So they, you know, they have their thing amongst each other, right? but there was a centering fact where you don't even really see that anymore because everything is just white, right?
Chris Bevolo (36:03)
Yeah
Desiree Ep6 (36:14)
And that God forbid you connect with anyone else. And so then what this gave is poor whites got psychological wage of feeling superior to others instead of actual power. Because no matter what, like you said, and like I've said before, it all goes back to money and the only color that matter being green. And so even looking at some of the Gilded Age and like these people just let...
Chris Bevolo (36:15)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Ep6 (36:39)
all these guys that were building the railroads from the East and just let them, there was like a whole protest there and they just, we're going to let them be killed. And it was like, cause it's all in the name of business. And like, gotta pay this opera build out. anyways, so I think a lot about that. And then I think about like with communities of color, we're, we are more of a collective, you know, we do things for, in within community of each other. And in fact, you know, more present day times,
You know, oftentimes you look, when you walk into a room, you kind of look around to see like, you know, are, my people in here? Like just for the sake of safety or feeling like, okay, like someone else gets it. and that isn't just people of color. It's like anyone that has any kind of my minoritized or marginalized experience, know, like we're queer folks. That's something I'll also do. I'm like, look, who else is queer up in here that I can, you know, connect with it. Cause it's a sense of safety.
And so there's those two differences. And then when you bring that to today, and we talked about this on the last episode around the rise of the 24 hour news channels and the Fox news, and you're pumping out all of this stuff. And then I don't think we talk enough about what we learned or what we should have learned from Cambridge Analytica about the idea of, we talk about algorithms, but the reality is we haven't got it.
what they're being fed on a daily basis. We see what we're being fed. So we're like, yo, how did you even get to that? Because they have a completely different algorithm. I get that. But that's what I kind of think about. But then with watching the Ava DuVernay movie Origins, which is based off of the book Cast, The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. And essentially in her studies,
she goes back to uncover like, is this about this divide within people? Because a lot of times we think of it as just race. But if you look back into the Indian caste system, which is actually based off of Hindu traditions, that that's within your own people. That caste system has to do with every Indian. So whether you are a priest, king, what have you to business owner, landowner to a labor worker,
to all the way to the Dasits, who are the folks that essentially clean the toilets and like are covered in literal shit. And that still goes on today. We don't even know that life, but that still goes on today. it teaches you, like, this isn't always about race. Race definitely is a part of it, but it's power and really just putting others above or below yourself. And so,
Chris Bevolo (39:05)
.
Desiree Ep6 (39:28)
How do you think about empathy when folks
are below you? You don't, you find ways to dehumanize them so you don't have to see them as people and have empathy for them. So if you're always, so when you think about the mom, like her mind is always set to like, well, how can I reconfigure this? Or if you're thinking about like, why don't they care about like what's happening to black and brown folks? It's like, well, if you find all these different ways to dehumanize, it doesn't matter. So then I was like, okay, how the hell did we get here too?
when it comes to indigeneity and patriotism and like, what does that look like if there isn't indigeneity? And it's that shared belief system. And there's this conversation that came up, I watched the God and Country documentary, it came out in 2024, and it talks about the rise of Christian nationalists. And essentially it is looking at how the reinterpretation of
what our founding fathers wanted for this country. And they were like, this is, you they took the idea of wanting religious freedom from England, from the kingship, what have you, wanting to be able to practice whatever religion, allegedly they wanted to. That has been reinterpreted to be for today that we are a Christian nation. So then that's what connects us. That's our patriotism.
And then it just goes on to conflate the whole American identity is a Christian identity and that you will use fear in any kind of way to mobilize, to get that political power, to keep a set of folks down. So these folks that are out here touting this thing, they really have nothing to gain from this. They're doing the bidding of the most powerful. And we've seen this rise through the decades, honestly, but like it hits a fever pitch.
in more recent years that is mind-boggling. again, it's about essentially everything that has been spouted from the 24 hour news channel, then to political pundits who have then kind of gone on to do their own things, whether it's used to be talk radio, now it's podcasts, bloggers, what have you. And you're getting, when you're getting this constant feed of this, sure, there's no wonder you are.
coming on to that show and being like, yeah, righteous. And like, of course this is how it is. Cause look at what we're being fed and then look at what they're being fed. So anyways, that's, that's kind of how I, I, any, you, you always have to just keep asking like, what's the next layer in this? What's the next question? You can't just leave things at the surface. And so I just, I went down a whole damn rabbit hole and I was like, holy shit. but also back to that Cambridge Analytica they are savvy.
All of this is pieces of a larger strategy that they're using. Like they have only a finite amount of time right now, so they're knocking out things as fast as possible. But the folks that you can really, really harness are those that are really deeply rooted into this history of religion and that connection as an American and all that kind of stuff. But I don't know, what are your thoughts after all of that?
Chris Bevolo (42:46)
It's a great rabbit hole. There's a whole part of that. We'll probably talk about this next time or time after, but for some reason, I'm on a history kick and I'm listening to or watching or reading maybe 10 things about history. One of them is, well, a few of them are around the American Revolution. There's the People's History of the United States and it goes back and it also a podcast I listened to, which is incredible.
all of them talking about how this idea of race was a construct as one example, and how it was money, money, money, to your point, also fear, right? This, I think it was often stated as fear that this black slaves in the United States would rise up against their slave masters, right? But the real fear was monetary.
because the entire economy of the South was dependent on slavery. And so you lose that, you lose your money. Oof. So that kind of comes back to a couple of rabbit holes that I want to go down that are more tied to kind of like, I would say economic ways to think about why people don't have empathy, because I think what you're talking about underlies all of this. But I have like two classes of people that I think about.
These are people in my orbit. Right. So I'm not talking about like who doesn't have empathy, a sociopath or a narcissist. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about kind of classes of of people or categories of people. And I'm to name them. They're not great names, but I think they reflect who they are. OK, so the first is the sheltered. And really what I mean here is these are people that have a lack of empathy, but it's not intentional.
It may not be they may not be aware of it. They're not trying necessarily to be bad humans. It just reminds me of and I've spoken to this before. It's going to it comes off like mythology at this point. But after George Floyd was murdered and all of the events in the Twin Cities and then across the country, of course, we had a really bad in Minneapolis with riots and destruction of property and all that, which many of us.
understood why that was going on. But a neighbor, right in the community and the cul-de-sac I live in, which is high end cul-de-sac, high end people, I'm going to talk about somebody else from my cul-de-sac in a second, asking my wife, know, do you really think black people have it worse? So that to me is an example of somebody who's sheltered, right? They're, they're unable to see beyond their own little small world. They think like everything is groovy for me.
So if it's groovy for me, it must be groovy everywhere. If you're having a problem, that's your fault. That's not a problem of society. That's not a, that's an individual flaw almost. And I think that there's, you know, a few reasons for that that I don't know if I want to get into cause they're kind of deep. So I'm not going to get into all the psychological things are, but we I'm doing research on it actually for.
another project, and it kind of goes back to some sociological reasons why this stuff may be happening in that way, why people may think that way, right? So that's part of it, right? So they're sheltered that way. You can also think about them in terms of the American dream.
So the American dream, I wrote a piece on this for the 1985 report. If you work hard, you you put your nose to the grindstone, you will succeed in America. Right. So it's this myth of just work, work, work, work, work. And anybody, by the way, can do this. The unspoken corollary to that is if you don't succeed or you struggle in some way, that must not, that must be your problem. Like I said, right.
It's your fault. It's not the system. It's your fault. There's an article in Nature that talks about this in terms of what it calls economic system justification, which sounds pretty cool. But the name of the article is economic system justification predicts muted emotional responses to inequality. Right. So that's related to this idea of empathy. Economic system justification is the belief that the capitalist system provides equal opportunity.
and that outcomes are based on personal deservingness, enable system justifiers to interpret patterns of wealth and poverty is fair, legitimate and appropriate. I'm doing fine. If you're not, that's your problem, not mine. It also, I was talking to my wife about this and she said, no, I brought up the quote from the neighbor. And she said, you know, you got to remember that some people, you know, she grew up in a small town. There was no diversity where she was.
It depends on your upbringing, how your parents raise you. So if you don't have experience with other people, with other situations, with other experiences, it's harder for you to kind of reach out and understand that, to put yourself in those shoes. And again, this kind of speaks to the long lasting impact of segregation, which could be a whole nother show. But here's another study.
that show that 95 % of the more than 500 studies done show that increasing intergroup contact predicts decreased prejudice. In other words, the more people spend time together, the less prejudice they have, the less they understand the other person and what they may be going for. Of course, in this country, we have a long, long history of segregation. You I grew up in Iowa. You used to be able to count the number of black students
like on both hands, right? Like that was the thing. There was like eight in my class or something like that out of like 400. And this was in Ames, which is a fairly liberal part of Iowa. And so, you know, I was, I was fortunate enough to have parents who were somewhat liberal, but still like it took me decades to really break out of a mindset about racism, just myself. So that's one.
Okay, any comments on that before I move to the second category does.
Desiree Ep6 (49:30)
That's
just one category. The sheltered.
Chris Bevolo (49:33)
That's just, that is the sheltered, the people
that are there, they have a lack of empathy. It's not really explicitly oriented. It's just like, they're kind of inward focused. There's another one that's going to be outward focused, but before I move to them, anything?
Desiree Ep6 (49:51)
Yeah...
Yeah, I...
We all live in some form of a bubble and it's up to us to step outside of that bubble. And like just because a person is liberal, that doesn't mean that they actually are in community with folks of color either. They might have more of a textbook understanding, but they're not really in community to understand. But also like recognize that to be in community with...
folks of color, black folks, brown folks, queer folks doesn't mean that you're just gonna hear stories of plight. It's more about the kind of like a Harvey Milk, right? His whole stance on coming out was come out so that your neighbor, so that your family knows someone that they're spouting against. Because if you know someone that has this identity, then you are more likely to be empathetic.
And like what this list essentially is telling me is that these people are only in community with one another. And I get it. Like if you are in a small white, predominantly white town, it is kind of hard. You almost have to go out of your way, like trip over yourself to go like, my God, there's a black person. It just walked into the pub. Let me go make friends with them, which can feel weird. get that. But I have seen folks that have been very intentional about that. So I know it's possible.
Chris Bevolo (51:12)
Yeah. Okay.
Desiree Ep6 (51:20)
but that's, mean, to me, that's what this kind of seems like. And also that economic system justification that I also saw that directly in connection to, Christian nationalist theology where essentially, you know, about the idea being chosen, that you are deserved and that if you don't succeed, if you don't have this, then you obviously aren't chosen. So there's so much about that, which actually kind of reminds me of like the time that I spent in salt Lake last year.
Honey, prosperous. was so much money in that city. was ridiculous. And because like there's so much about within the Mormon faith around prospering in business and taking care of family, which again, a whole nother episode. but off top, that's what this really speaks to me is that, there is a lack of connectivity, to other folks outside of anyone that looks like them or have the same background.
Chris Bevolo (52:10)
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I am I am so fortunate to have three children that I just adore and I'm so proud of. And one of the things I'm so proud of
in all three of them is how much they care deeply about the world, about others around them, about the causes and issues that matter. And I would like to think, Des, that had a little bit of something to do with that. But it's also worth noting that they went to a public, all three of them, went to a public high school. It was extraordinarily diverse, really diverse. And thank God, because they made friends of
different nationalities, different races, different gender types, just all of it. And so living in a community like that at school, I think has probably more to do with their worldview than anything I could have of tried to shape them. So I'm thankful for that. Let's move to the other group. go ahead.
Desiree Ep6 (53:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, but I
think about busing, right? And this is in likely in every major city in the U S at the time, but this was more, I'm thinking more than nineties and eighties where families, because there was integration of schools, families, especially white families freaked out and moved their families into suburbs and other counties so that they could have the right makeup and the schools so that they, I wanted to make sure that my, kids are safe. There's just inanimate, there's just this,
weird just automatic fear of the other that is always kind of underlining in this, but yeah.
Chris Bevolo (53:54)
Yeah, for sure. And speaking of fear, that leads perfectly into the second group, which I will say has less of an internal focus on themselves, which is what causes lack of empathy. This is a group I call the angry and it's an outward focus for why they do not have empathy or better put, they have hatred. I've been reading the book misinformation by Dan O'Reilly from Predictably Irrational Fame.
And reading it just mainly for my other project around propaganda and misinformation. Here it is. got like, did call misinformation? It's called Misbelief. I got the book title wrong. Misbelief, which is deeper than misinformation. He's going into why do people believe the things that they do that seem so crazy? And there's a lot of it in here that's related in my view to empathy. One of the points he makes is that people are more susceptible
to fall for misinformation, propaganda, like this old lady, this mother on the necessary conversation, if they feel hard done by, okay? And what he says is hard done by is not only do they feel at a disadvantage in the world, they feel that they are in some sense being singled out for a harder lot in life, subjected to additional or unfair hardship or persecution. Now there's kind of two subgroups for this.
There are people that actually have experienced real hardship, right? Stress, economic inequality, all of that leads to being hard done by. That could come from your upbringing. That could come from just not being able to make it in this world, which is the majority of people in the United States, by the way. Liberalism and globalism, you could argue, has led to unprecedented income and wealth gaps. So people are facing real issues. Life is unfair.
But if life is unfair, they're slipping into it's unfair. It's been doing, this is happening to me. There are elites, quote unquote, sound familiar, who control the world in a way that helps them and hurts me. Minorities, immigrants, anybody who's getting favorable treatment, that's not fair. Well, know, nobody's helping me, quote unquote, which explains to me why there's so much fear mongering, conspiracy theories in back.
and propaganda, whether it's backlash against DEI, backlash against immigration, backlash against the poor, like with things like Medicaid and food stamps. People are getting help, but I don't get help. Also, if they get help and I don't, that hurts me somehow. I saw this great quote online. So this is this is group two, subgroup A, right? The people that actually are economically hard off. But this is a great quote.
When the American empire finally collapses, historians won't be stunned by the greed of the elite. They'll be stunned by the loyalty of the poor. The working class didn't just vote against their own interests. They worshiped the billionaires robbing them. They slashed their own benefits, gutted their own healthcare, and cheered while the rich rode off private jets as tax deductions. Here's the money quote. Not because it helped them, but because they were told it would hurt somebody else. There's the empathy. So.
That all makes sense for people in the middle class or the poor who are struggling and they've got to find a reason. Right. So why am I struggling? It's somebody else. It's somebody else's fault. So I do not have empathy. What about the other? What are the people in my cul-de-sac does? They're not struggling. Right. These are people that are entirely well off. In fact, I can think of a few of the families that had second homes in Florida, some of whom have moved to Florida, which is, you know,
explains a lot, right? They find ways to feel hard done by. I these people have three cars, three car garage, beautiful homes, they're well off, they're safe, you know, but boy, are they angry. Man, some of them are so angry. There was a family that was super, super right wing.
And a lot of their anger stemmed from the fact that their son couldn't get into an Ivy League school and they blamed DEI and affirmative action. Right. Also, one of them would just constantly talk about how much he hate political correctness. Right. That's a perfect straw man to throw your anger at political correctness. Immigration is another one. Right. Like, why do we need all these other people in here? Right. I'm doing great. I don't want anybody else in here. Any kind of government assistance taxes for.
the love of all that's holy, right? So you can find a lot to be angry about. It's harder for me to understand why, right? I understand if you can't keep up with rent, that's far easier for me to understand why you would buy into conspiracy theories, find a villain in somebody else. It makes you feel better to find a villain, all of those things. It's harder for me when people are well off.
But boy, they can do it.
Desiree Ep6 (59:12)
Yeah. Yeah, I, the second group, mean, I agree with the plight. There's actually a recent fabulous book called Paper Girl by Beth Macy that really dives into this. She's from a small town in Ohio and she kind of goes into, you know, the decline of her community. And it starts with essentially education and the pilgrim, the loss of the pilgrims.
Chris Bevolo (59:13)
Those are my two groups, Dez. Any thoughts on the second group?
Desiree Ep6 (59:40)
and then opioids and then it kind of slides from there. She didn't exactly touch on the middle class experience, but that there is always, I mean, I guess I could chalk this up to this inherent sense of, don't wanna be told what to do. I wanna be able to just be. And also maybe the talking point, because again, we don't know where their algorithm is, but I know a piece of this has to do with the conversation around from the census.
as we see, we're heading towards becoming a minority primary country. And that scares them perhaps. I don't know, I don't know your neighbors, but that sense of, well, what about me, my people? I'm like, well, first of all, this ain't your land anyway, so this is stolen land, but okay.
But if that's all you've known is that you have been the majority and kind of like you said on a past episode, it's like, are you afraid that you're going to get treated how you've treated others? but that's, you know, that's kind of where my mind goes with this. And I know that there's something else that is being shared, but I don't know that these folks just inherently would feel this if there wasn't this concerted effort, to put more of this stuff in front of them.
whether it is in what they're reading, what they're watching, what is being shared, what's being said and preached from the pulpit and siding with identity. I'd have to dig a little bit more into that because I don't know. But there's a sense of loss of power and that if they don't have the absolute power to get their kids into any school that they want to by any means necessary.
Chris Bevolo (1:01:21)
Hmm.
Desiree Ep6 (1:01:29)
then there's a feeling of loss. goes back to book that, the conversation around scarcity mindset and the sum of us, which was a fabulous book we based our documentary off of for everybody's work, and that essentially people will cut off their own in order to not let others have. So they rather drain the swimming pool than allow a black child to just swim in it for like just five minutes. It's like, we can't have that so no one gets a pool.
And that there is a better way, again, we can't get a whole, to me, I feel like there is no solution to any of this until we stop what's being fed and that people, and again, the reasons why race as a construct was created was to keep us divided because if we pulled our energy as poor people together, my God, their heads would be on stakes and we can't, they can't have that.
Chris Bevolo (1:02:25)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Desiree Ep6 (1:02:28)
So
yeah, that's kind of my take on this second category.
Chris Bevolo (1:02:31)
I have a mantra and I don't know if it's true, but I feel like you can boil down anything in this world to it's the haves versus the have nots. It's the haves keep it wanting to keep theirs and have nots wanting more for themselves. And so much of this is haves not having empathy for the have nots. That's just a big part of it. All right. So we always want to kind of end on a positive note. It's hard to do.
What do do about this? I'm going go through this pretty quickly because I know we're running long but because I think you're right, like some of this is just like a little bit like puff the magic dragon stuff like this is going on for millennia. I'm not sure we're going to solve it in a podcast. But what can you do? Well, first of all, pick up the book, Misbelief by Dan O'Reilly. It's a great book. And not only does he kind of deconstruct why people feel the way they do, he gives suggestions. So one of the suggestions from his book
is what he calls deep canvassing, which is, know, if you're the if you're the young the the son in this podcast, don't go after your mom and debate her, you're not going to get anywhere with that. Listen to her ask questions, you know, find areas you can support. Ask them questions to let them get to a place where they realize they might be thinking about things wrong. Don't accuse them don't attack them, right?
And so, like, if they're serious about really reconnecting with their parents, they would follow that kind of advice. Similarly, if somebody is actually showing some kind of empathy, and that's a reversal from where they've been, rethinking of their position. If you've got somebody that you know in your circle or your family's like, you know what, I was wrong about Trump. Really important to welcome that, to encourage it, to thank them for it. Do not rub it in their face. Do not.
you know, say I told you so there was actually an amazing skit on Saturday Night Live this weekend as it's being covered by a lot of news outlets or opinion outlets. And it was a joke about a mom who was trying to tell her four kids that she's changed her mind about Trump. And at first, like she's like, she's like trying to prepare them for this big news. And they're all nervous. And she says, I think I'm changing my mind about Trump. And then they just all explode.
And she's like, I'm not gonna do this if you act that way. And then she says one more thing and they're like, we told you that was the case. And she's like, I'm not gonna do it. And then she starts saying more and more and they're sitting there they're like, physically in pain trying not to say anything. But a lot of people are pointing out like, no, that's what you have to do, right? That is showing empathy for somebody else who to your point, Des, has been swallowed whole.
by an algorithm in many cases, they have no idea how it operates. They are victims of propaganda. They are really tools of the machine. And if you can pull them out of there, help them along the way. Don't make it harder on them. And show empathy yourself. He talks about this in the book too. Handlin's razor is what it's called. Never attribute malice. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by human.
I think the actual quote is, which is adequately explained by stupidity, but O'Reilly says that's a little harsh, right? So in other words, if somebody's doing something, don't assume they're doing it for intentionally to be negative or intentionally to cause harm, assume the best in people. And that's a way to show empathy. But at the end of the day, also don't get sucked into arguments. Don't be pulled into it. He mentioned something called Hitchens' razor.
which is amazing. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. So keep that in mind too. That was an overhaul. Yeah, go ahead.
Desiree Ep6 (1:06:32)
One thing. One thing. One thing I
would add is the I was listening to the podcast, You Are Not So Smart, because I love how
They go through a number of different topics and they went through, this episode was, they had the guy that hosts the Misguided podcast. He's also a scholar in this. And so I would check out the Misguided podcast. They also have a sub stack, their newsletter. But for those of you that are navigating parents that think this way, and they're being fed this misinformation because it's not like they're intentionally trying to be hurtful.
but like it's hard to get out of a mindset when something's being fed to you. But this podcast, I listened to this particular episode around facts, feelings, and the spread of misinformation was really great. And he gives actual tips and tools for how to kind of seed more better information.
for those that are stuck in the misinformation or misguided. I love the language around misguided rather than just, you're misinformed. That's a part of it, but it's essentially misguided because they're being guided by folks that have other intentions.
Chris Bevolo (1:07:42)
Yeah.
They are definitely being guided. so let's wrap. Hopefully that helps you cope with the world. Des, thanks as always.
Yeah, thank you all for joining us. Please like and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify. That helps ensure more people can hear us. upcoming episode does. We got to talk about boycotts like that's starting to game steam, like, you know, economic strikes and stuff. So when I say Apple podcasts and Spotify, it just came to mind. But definitely, you know, give us five stars there in the meantime.
Desiree Ep6 (1:08:20)
Wherever you listen.
Chris Bevolo (1:08:23)
wherever you listen, visit baring287.com or follow me on sub stack to access other helpful content from our network. And once again, I'm Chris Bevello and on behalf of I'm not even supposed to be here today and bearing 287. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you next time.