J. Burden on Political Realism

Podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, for an interesting discussion, a lively discussion, and my second ever discussion with someone who goes by an anonymous name. We have Jay Burden.

With us. Hey, Jay, how are you doing? I'm doing quite well, John. Thank you for having me on.

And if people want to find out more about your podcast and your writing, they can go to jayburden .substack .com, jayburden .substack .com. But I reached out to you, what, two weeks ago, and I've known about you for a few years.

I think I was on your show maybe a year and a half ago.

Yeah, we spoke a few months ago. It's funny, we were talking about this before you went live. And if you have as many interviews as either of us do, everything blurs together. It's sort of this run of incredibly intense conversations.

But yeah, it was quite a good show. I enjoyed it a lot and I welcome the chance to speak with you again. Yeah, so I just reached out and said,.

I'd love to have you on. And I had my first anonymous person on the other day. And so you're the second ever on the Conversations That Matter podcast, which I don't know, it's exciting in a way. Like we were talking before we started recording that I think some people are attracted to those conversations, not just because you tend to be intelligent and Kryptos was intelligent on this podcast.

But there is sort of like this element of like, almost like forbidden conversation. Like they have to keep their names out of the discussion because it's like truth that could get them in trouble potentially.

And so I don't know what we're going to say exactly. But I think that that's a sort of an attractive element. And I guess real quick, before we get into the big discussion, since this is new for the podcast, maybe you just want to tell everyone publicly, hey, why don't you use your own name?

Why do you use this sort of anonymous account?

Why Use a Pseudonym in a Hostile Culture

Well, sure. And I will make a distinction I think is important at the beginning between the difference between anonymous and pseudonymous, right? So when we think of anonymous accounts, if you've been on social media, there are these sort of faceless personas that basically just say whatever they want.

And it could be the same person with three different accounts. It could be three different people, but I have a pseudonym, right? I write under Jay Burden. I speak under Jay Burden. I use that same avatar and that same name everywhere.

So even if you don't know me personally, that is associated with the same kind of body of ideas. And the reason I do that is the same reason that many in the Western tradition have selected pseudonyms, right?

The Federalist Papers were written under assumed names. And it's because it grants you a certain amount of freedom, right? You can say things that would be kind of socially or economically disadvantageous, right?

So you're a full-time podcaster, or not a full-time podcaster. You're a full-timer, right? This is what you do. I'm not. I have a day job. And because of that, if the things that I said, which I'm not ashamed of, I'm not hiding from those things, but they are things that if I told to my HR department, they would ask me to leave, right?

Things that are even would have been common sense 20, 30, 50 years ago are now sort of outside the Overton window, outside of what is acceptable to talk about. And so that enables me to still have interesting ideas, to speak with people without putting my family in risk of economic trouble.

And so I think, especially if we look at the world as it is now, where more and more things are becoming kind of irredeemable social sins, it's a useful tool for that. Do people abuse it? Most certainly, right?

I'm not issuing this sort of blanket endorsement of every pseudonymous person on the internet, right? But I think that it's important, especially in a time where we see this kind of like rampant social contagion, if you want to call it wokeness or progressivism, kind of ruling society, that it becomes very difficult if you aren't at the level where it can fully support you to talk about important ideas, talk about things that ought to be discussed.

So that's my reason for adopting a fake name and a profile picture.

It's also, I think, a symptom of what we're going to be talking about today. The reason that people feel the need to be pseudonymous is because of the arrangement that we have, I guess, the way that the elites have decided to use their power and the gap that exists between us and them as far as the way they view the world and their mission and vision for the world and the one that we have.

So that's what we're going to get into today is just how do we grapple with that? One of the ways is pseudonymous accounts, but how do we look at it and then what do we do? So Jay, I saw this tweet and I can't pull it up again.

I think it was deleted, but it was not long ago. It was like maybe two weeks ago. And it was Aaron Wren, who I've had on the podcast and enjoys talking to. And he was just pointing out that the new, the young right, the upcoming, Zoomer right, if you want to call it that, dissident Zoomer right, they kind of, when they look at things, they look at it in a more Machiavellian way.

They're looking at it, meaning there's just a very pragmatic kind of approach to politics that they have that their parents did not have. And some people are very concerned. I think even Aaron was kind of concerned about this, that like, is this casting principles aside?

Is this something that is showing a compromise in the fabric of our moral view? And so one of the things you're going to talk about is since we live in a different frame, we live in this frame where the Overton window has shifted so much and the left, if you want to call them that, but the cultural elites really on both sides now have deemed certain things unacceptable and they're willing to use their power to crush disagreements.

Even if you just believe what normal people in the nineties believe, now you're crushed. Do we need this Machiavellian approach? Should we throw it out? How should we view this particular culture ward that we're in?

So I'll let you take it away.

Machiavelli and Dealing With the World as It Is

For sure. Let's examine that term Machiavelli, right? It is sort of entered the, you know, entered the dictionary, right, as the synonym for kind of like ruthless, heartless, results-oriented action.

But if we look at the man Machiavelli, he was a political thinker from Italy. Interesting personal life, won't get into it, but it's worth your time to check him out. But he wrote this book essentially as a manual for the Christian prince, right?

This is Italy where there's no unified state. There are kind of these like micro polities. And so politics was a very dangerous game, right? Machiavelli himself was on the losing end of a political struggle and ended up being, you know, exiled and tortured for that.

And so what he essentially tried to do was write a manual for how to play this game, right? How to get what you want done. And there's this phrase at the kernel of that, that I think is quite useful for this discussion, which is basically dealing with the world as it is not how we wish it to be, right?

So a lot of previous political thought was concerning these kind of broad abstractions, right? These noble principles. And his whole point was like, okay, that's great. But when you're actually playing the game, you have to work in a, in a very kind of ruthless way.

So for instance, right, if you look back at Roman history, there's this in this kind of anecdote where Ursula, who was a general comes up to the gates of the city, the guy in charge of the city says, well, it's illegal for you to conquer the city.

And he says, you know, enough about laws. We have swords, you know, basically being like, well, it doesn't matter what you say. We're, we're going to beat you up and take your stuff. And I think it's important to contextualize where we are currently, right?

Because there's this idea and I like it. I referenced it quite a bit of first and second order disagreements. So a first order disagreement is sort of an intra group conflict, right? So John, you and I get into an argument, but you and I assent to the same set of ultimate principles, right?

We believe in God, we believe in these kinds of like higher principles. And so we can have a common argument, right? We're arguing within the same framework, you know, and if it ultimately comes out that, you know, our higher authority, whether it's our pastor or mayor or something says, all right, you know, Jay burden, you were wrong.

John was in the right. Well, you know, I assent to that system of values. And so fair enough that the dispute is resolved. But when we talk about outer groups of second order disagreements who do not have the same system of authority, do not have the same priors.

Well, if you're acting like, okay, we ultimately agree we're under the same arbiter here. You're sort of playing the game wrong. You know, you're looking at the problem incorrectly. And, you know, my assertion is that society now is a series of these second order disagreements, our enemies, the people who wish bad things for us.

And, you know, we can get into exactly what that means. They do not have the same values. And so they may tactically, you know, pick up those values, you know, oh, you as a Christian should do X, or you as a Christian do Y.

But it's very clear that they don't hold those. And so it becomes a conflict more similar to what Machiavelli was talking about, where it is this sort of winner take all type of situation. And so when I look at, you know, American Christians, right, when I look at evangelicals, I see a group that is a minority, we are not in an ascendant position.

And our views are not shared by the system of power. And so to go around acting as if that is still the case, like it may have been in a previous generation, is a is an error. And so I don't look at that and say, that's great.

I'm not happy that that is the case. But it goes back to that principle of looking at the world how it is. And quite simply, we are not in a position where we can afford to afford to act as if we are in the cultural ascendance.

Yeah, so to put some meat on the bones here, so people understand exactly what you're talking about, maybe some examples of first order versus second order first. So like with the Reformation, would that be an example of a second order where they could not go to the Catholic Church to arbitrate it because there was a fundamental disagreement about the authority.

Of the church? Well, definitely. And if we look at the consequences of that, we have something like the 30 Years War, right, where millions of people are killed, because it is not a, you know, not a conflict you can resolve by going to a common shared authority.

So for instance, you know, I used a hypothetical when you and I were speaking about, you know, first order claims, but you can imagine like a schoolyard dispute, right, you know, okay, you know, like you stole someone's lunch money, you both go to the principal, he sorts it out, it's solved, versus, like you said, the Reformation, where there's a fundamental disagreement about the ordering of society where authority derives from.

And so currently, we're seeing about, you know, any number of social issues, right, if you believe that, you know, marriage is defined as a man between, you know, as a, you know, one, you know, one man, one woman, right, the not only is that not shared by the vast majority of society, but when other people are talking about marriage, they're talking about a completely different institution, it was a completely different claim being made.

And so there is no common shared authority between the two. And so I think that that's an important distinction to bring up when we talk about the culture war. Because I think some people view this as if we are still operating in a relatively unified society, right?

This is a disagreement with shared ultimate premises. Is that do you.

Think that maybe the fundamental thinking behind the whole, we say in common parlance, the boomer cons who think that we're, you know, we're still under the Constitution, that's their arbiter, we can go to that, read it, and then it'll force the left to stop doing what they're doing.

Whereas like the left really doesn't care about the Constitution, that's not their authority.

The Constitution, the Left, and the Failure of Shared Arbiter Politics

Exactly. And that's actually perhaps the perfect example. You know, I like the Constitution, when I read that document, it resonates with me on a certain level. But it goes back to that idea of, you know, quoting law to the man with a sword, he doesn't care, you know, it has no hold on him.

And so despite the nobility of that document, it only works when everyone assents to it, right, it is the rules of the game. And likewise, you know, if you're playing basketball at the park, you know, and one side's tackling you and stealing the ball, you know, pulling up the official rules, you know, on your phone and saying, well, this is illegal.

I mean, that only carries you so far, you could be technically there, you can be technically completely correct. But technically correct, you know, only gets you so far. And obviously, you see this as well in conflict for watching in American denominations.

Right. So recently, the United Methodist split about a year ago. And I actually got to see this firsthand in a congregation local to write, my friend went there, that was where he'd attended since he was a small kid.

And what he saw there is that, you know, this church ended up splitting. And the very small, you know, vocal minority group basically said, you know, we want to affirm gay marriage, we want to become, you know, one of those churches that has the in this church, we believe type of signs in the front yard.

Well, they were willing to go above and beyond, you know, all kinds of underhanded tricks, you know, getting people who are still on the books as records, but as members rather, but hadn't, you know, hadn't shown up to church in 15 years, got them to come in for the vote, you know, spread false information about when the vote was being held to their opposition, all of those things, you know, it's kind of underhanded tricks to get what they want.

And so there's a certain level at which it's like, well, okay, like, if your enemy is playing dirty, if your enemy is, you know, viewing this as that second order, pure power struggle, essentially, in order to survive, you have to adopt those tactics.

And that doesn't mean that it is a great thing for all societies to be run like that, like in our own tradition, you know, we see a time in which everyone did have a shared system of values, a shared morality.

But again, that is not where we currently are. And I think it's important to remember that the stakes of this are very high. You know, if your church obviously, you know, starts preaching heresy, you have to find another church.

You know, we see this in other places like Canada, where it is not merely on a kind of a doctrinal level. But you know, the state is very comfortable saying, you know, you cannot go to church, you know, what you are preaching is hateful, you will be thrown in jail.

And so when we look at other countries that are sort of, you know, down the line further, you know, degraded than we are, again, we have to understand that there are real consequences to this, to this political game.

You know, this isn't merely kind of a disagreement that you can have over Sunday dinner and then say, all right, well, you know, go back to normal life. Even if you don't care about politics, well, politics cares about you, to be kind of brutally honest.

So when you, when it comes to the first order disagreements, then there's sort of a, there's a sharing, there's a sense of like, the society in which you operate is shared by the other party. And so you can actually create a life together, in which there's a potential for peace there, because there's arbitration.

And the second order disagreements, that's not true. Like one side has to win, their paradigm is going to be imposed on the other side. Is that correct?

That is exactly correct. And in fact, I probably should have said that more explicitly, right, that this is, you know, because it is not an arbitrated conflict, you know, there's really no way for these two parties to coexist.

You know, it can't be simultaneously true that marriage is between a man and a woman and marriage is between any two consenting categories who have any, you know, set of hardware, right? One of those must be true.

And, you know, it's interesting, you mentioned Aaron Wren, because he has quite an insightful model on this, basically how the culture has changed in result or in relation to Christianity. You know, if we look at, if we look at America in particular, America was a Protestant country, right?

That doesn't mean it was any particular denomination really. And obviously, you know, there've always been Catholics and Jews and an extreme minority of Orthodox people there, but it was assumed that that was sort of the baseline morality of society.

And we go into this, you know, and you can kind of pick the time at which you think this happens, whether it's the sixties or the nineties, where Christianity is now a neutral thing. He refers to this as neutral world where, you know, it doesn't do you any good to be a good standing member of a church, but it's probably not going to hurt.

And what he says is what we are currently in is a negative world where society at large views your classical Christian, you know, small O Orthodox belief is a, is a negative, it's a social ill. And so I think that it's also important to talk about this idea of neutrality, right?

Because you were fed this idea and it's kind of downstream of the doctrine of separation of church and state, right? Which let's be honest, is not a part of law. It is not something in the constitution.

It's a, it's a phrase someone got from a letter, I believe either Jefferson or Madison wrote. I can't remember off the top of my head. And, and, and, and views that as, well, that's how society was in society was just completely neutral.

That's not the case. Very obviously, every society has a civic religion at its core. Even if it is not explicit, it has a baseline set of values that citizens are supposed to adhere to. And the situation we're in now is we don't have in any way a Christian ethic at the core of society, but we still do have an ethic.

You know, it's a bad religion. It's a bad civic religion, but nonetheless it exists. And we've got to understand that we are not aligned with that civic religion. We cannot because of our commitments to Christ.

And so if we look at how societies previously have dealt with people who did not adhere to the civic religion, I mean, actually, if we go back into early, early Christian history, right? Why were Christians persecuted?

Well, very explicitly because they would not make concessions to the emperor cult of Rome, to the civic religion that was seen as a traitorous act. And so I guess the reason I want to bring this up is just to say, like, look at the land as it currently lies, like look at the situation we're in and acting like, oh, it's just like how it was when, you know, church was a neutral or a positive part of, you know, my life I think is, is inaccurate.

And I'll throw it back to you. But one of the things you hear often in our circles is this idea that, oh, like persecution will be good for the church. You know, particularly more conservative Christians have been saying this for a long time, you know, calling back to, you know, what happened behind the iron curtain, like Dreher did, you know, talking about Christians in Muslim countries and kind of, you know, making out those martyrs to be, you know, noble.

And that's definitely true, right? Those, those men died for what they believed and that's honorable. But when those same people say, like, oh, that would be me, you know, I'd go to the pyre for my beliefs, but they get a little bit squirrelly, they get a little bit uncomfortable when it becomes, you know, socially shameful to be Christian, you know, when it becomes racist or homophobic, I kind of don't believe, you know, I don't really believe you, that you're willing to go to the pyre if, you know, you sort of clam up when someone calls you a mean name.

And so maybe that's a discussion for another time,.

But nonetheless, something I wanted to bring up. Yeah, no, that's a lot to think about. And like, really good point, because I think that the Christian nationalism discussion fits within really this discussion in that I think Stephen Wolfe, and maybe even like, you know, Andrew Torba and Andrew Isker wrote this book as well on the subject, and I'm trying to think who else has used it positively in a book form, but they seem to want to hold on to something that still exists in red areas in certain respect in the South, perhaps in the Midwest.

And it's, you know, from, it's like the Hunger Games, right? Like, there's this sort of central authority in DC that's imposing itself more and more and more, even on these local areas, but there's still areas where the church bells chime, the people are respectful to one another.

And most of the people are, they claim to be Christian, and perhaps even the majority goes to church, right? Those places do still exist. And, but they're being imposed upon and by this new paradigm. And I think that's how the Christian nationalism thing fits in.

That's why at this moment, it's such a big deal, and why the media wants to attack it is because in the siege we're in, they've stormed the gates, they're past that, they're now rushing in to kind of like the inner area.

And this is one of the last strongholds is like, can we agree, can we at least agree that Christianity is a good thing, right? Like, that's like, like, one of the last things to go. And, and, and, you know, even in, I live in New York, so I'm not in one of those areas.

But even where I live, there's a lot of kind of latent Roman Catholics who have like this cultural memory of like, grandma went to church and took me when I was a kid, and they have a respect for religion.

Like if, if let's say the government came in, whether it would probably be the state, maybe even local government where I am, and they decided, we're going to round up the pastors who preach against, you use the example of homosexuality, so I'll use that.

But whatever, I mean, there's so many things they could do this with, there would be an outcry, even among the people who don't go to church, they'd be like, something's wrong with this, because there's sort of this, this memory of a time, or this, like, I don't know, the sentimental authority, I don't even know what word or term to use.

But they look at the Bible, they look at the church, as like, they disagree with it, they don't want to live their lives by it, but like, don't touch it, like, don't tamp, let it be there. And I think that's even fading, but it's still kind of like, it there's still sort of this, this sense of that.

And maybe and I think that's what like, Christian nationalists are trying to capitalize on and why that whole controversy exists in a way is like, don't let the new paradigm rule don't like we're in a struggle, like it's still an ongoing battle.

We haven't been completely defeated, even though cultural power is certainly in the hands of the wrong people. Like, let's, let's rally, let's try in these red areas, especially to kind of like secure things and reinforce them.

And so that ends up being a strategy. And that's what's called at least one of the many different strategies on the dissident right today, a Machiavellian strategy. So I guess first, you know, I'll let you respond to that.

But like, do you think of that as like, Machiavellian to say, you know, let's, let's somewhat try to disregard what's coming from the central authority, and what's being imposed on us by Hollywood and the media and the education system and, you know, all the places that, that produce power and that kind of thing.

And then let's produce our own institutions, let's.

Building Alternative Institutions and a Dissident Track

Try to hedge against those things. I think that you're, you're 100 right. Like when we're if we've accepted this premise, that Christianity is no longer a dominant cultural force, we're kind of presented with a fork, right?

And either we can do what, you know, a lot of progressive denominations have done, you see this very clearly, and, you know, institutions like the Church of England is basically to form a new syncretic religion, right, to kind of, you know, mix, you know, 50 Christianity 50 kind of, you know, current cultural attitudes, and let's be honest, it never, it never ends up being 5050.

But that's the idea, and sort of become wins, right, you know, adopt certain attitudes from, you know, predominant cultural forces, and we'll use that to sort of win people over. And I feel like we've, we've run this experiment enough times to know that it doesn't work, right?

The Church of England is not at all a church, right? You have you have churches where they're leading Muslim prayer, you know, from from the front of the cathedral, you know, you have, you know, female ministers, you have no open homosexuals kind of in positions power.

And so to me, I think it's very clear that that that option is no longer open to us, right, that does not work. We've seen that experiment run any number of times, you cannot make a compromise, because effectively, you know, again, this is a second order kind of winner takes all situation, they either want all of you, or they want to destroy you.

And what we've seen is, when you give them a little bit, they get all of you, right, you can name any number of mainline Protestant institutions that have basically just become, you know, social clubs for aging NPR supporters, right, and nothing else, there's really no gospel there.

And so the other one, right is to sort of adopt a dissident track, like you said, to sort of build your own thing. And one of the things that I think is important to mention in this is that once you've accepted that role of a dissident, someone outside the system, you've got to understand that that is a socially disadvantageous role, right, you cannot expect the sort of accolades of power, if you're opposing them, right, you become an enemy.

And so, you know, look at the reaction to the Christian nationalists, you know, I don't consider myself a Christian nationalist, I'm friends with a lot of those guys, it's not my circle, but they're being hysterically attacked from every corner, you know, with the most insane, insane things possible.

You know, there's this movie coming out Civil War, right. And what it effectively is, is, you know, sort of this liberal wish fulfillment fantasy of, you know, people like you and I basically joining up with these kind of right wing militias to shoot journalists and take over the world, right.

And that is how they view dissidents, that is how they view traders, quote unquote, to their state religion. You know, it's interesting, this is something that's actually been going on for quite a while.

There's a great, I believe it's a Rothbard essay from the late 70s, I can't pull it up. So Rothbard, a father of libertarianism with an atheist Jew, right, had absolutely nothing, you know, spiritually connecting him to Christianity.

But he wrote this article talking about Jerry Falwell and the moral majority. And what he basically said is like, all of the things you read about these people are completely hysterical, it's stupid. This is not a real threat to the halls of power, right.

Jerry Falwell is not going to institute a theocracy, right. But the people in power find it very useful for you to think that, right, to find people who are dissidents, who do not, you know, bear their priors, and to cast them as ultimate villains.

So what we've got to expect, right, is if we adopt that second path, right, that path that says, I am rejecting this, you will take flack for that. And you will take flack for things that you, that are not true, right, you're racist, you're homophobic, whatever that term means.

You know, you're a Christian nationalist, a domestic terrorist. That's sort of par for the course, again, because we are in a real conflict. You know, this culture war, like, there are certainly stupid things about it.

There are things that I find a little bit distasteful. But it is much more than just people getting angry on the internet. It is a real argument about those kind of, you know, important priors. And I think that for a lot of people who grew up in a world in which going to church was a positive thing, or even a neutral thing, they don't understand.

They're saying, well, I'm not doing anything wrong. You know, I'm doing something pro-social. That is 100 right. Again, you are technically 100 correct. But the people who are arguing against you, they don't care.

They view you as an enemy. They view you as prey, effectively. And so I think that if we're adopting this lens of looking at things how they are, we must accept the fact that we will, you know, because we have set ourselves in opposition to the system, we will get flack, we will be called names.

And again, like I said, looking at the example of Canada, looking at the example of the UK, there will very likely be persecution that derives from that.

You know, so you brought up Jerry Falwell. And that, you know, that was what now 40 years ago, I guess, like, the height of his influence, if you want to call it that. And he probably didn't think he was working outside the system.

Like the way we're framing it right now, in his mind, he probably thought he's doing something as American as apple pie. And people are going to, you know, realize that the imposters are the ones who are taking us away from what we used to be.

And the way that the media, well, not even the media, just I've read a number of books from leftists on Christianity, and, you know, now they call it Christian nationalism, but, you know, all that whole thing, the moral majority, Christians being mobilized for political ends.

And the way that they look at it is, this was an anomaly that America was doing just fine. And it would have been at peace, like people would have been living the way that they always lived until they frame it that the real imposters, the real agitators were people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who showed up and started mobilizing Christians outside of the system.

And then to make matters worse, the Republicans ended up seeing this as advantageous for their own power. And so they got behind supporting, or at least really not supporting, but receiving support from the moral majority.

And now we're to the point where figures like Russell Moore and David French and Phil Vischer and Karen Swallow Pryor and Kirsten Dumez. And, you know, the list goes on and on about like the cultural elites who, on the Christian side now, they denounced Jerry Falwell, right, as being exactly what the leftists say he is.

Tim Keller even said this before his death, that like Falwell came in and, you know, he didn't have Jesus's spirit because he was too concentrated on power. And this is what they all say, that that was all wrong because it was focused on power instead of the way Jesus was.

And Jesus wasn't focused on power. He was focused on the needs of people and these kinds of things. And that's how you be a good Christian and live with. So really what's happening though, is they're telling you this is how we can try to keep our faith, quote unquote, and we can also live within this paradigm.

We don't have to have this battle over second tier disagreements. Whereas the Christian nationalist types today are saying, actually, you know, that's not possible. They're not going to let us keep our faith.

We have to compromise our faith in order to do this. So we have to be dissidents. We have to be outside the system and there's really no option. Like that's all there is to.

It. So, I mean, do you see it lined up that way? I do. And it's interesting to take this back to the split between what we now call evangelicals and mainline Protestants, right? Because this is this did not start in 1970.

This did not start in 2020. So this split is referred to depending on who you ask. It's either the great betrayal or the modernist crisis. And basically what you see is, you know, like I said, you know, America was an explicitly Protestant country and many of these kind of institutions of kind of arch leftism now like Yale and Harvard, well, they were set up as Christian seminaries, as Christian institutions, right?

Like interesting enough, I think it was Princeton was set up as a conservative reaction to how leftward Harvard had gone, you know, in the 18th century, right? Which is sort of comical to think of now.

But when we get to the early 20th century, we see that the elites are basically taking on modernist positions, right? Things like, oh, you know, Christ is not literally divine. He didn't literally rise from the dead.

The virgin birth could not have happened. And so there's a conservative backlash from congregations, right? And so what we see is, you know, your pastor may have gone to Harvard, but the congregation, you know, they don't count.

And it's the idea that, you know, Christ wasn't really divine. So a lot of these churches split and a lot of these splits basically form the mainline and then the evangelical branches of any one tradition.

And, you know, many of these, you know, evangelical congregations realize, oh, we need a place to train our pastors. This is the genesis of Bible colleges and things like that. And very, very quickly, you see that these people start to just get the absolute brunt of the press.

You know, these people are morons, they're idiots, they're backwards hicks. You know, the scopes monkey trial is very much connected to this. And, you know, regardless of your opinions on the people involved in that, it is very clear that that has been used as a cudgel, right?

To beat people who are not on the same page as the ruling elite. So this has been going on for quite a while. I think the big difference is that not only has the gap between those two groups massively extended, because look, like, let's be honest.

I think that someone who believes in 1920 that, you know, Christianity is still a good thing, but Christ wasn't literally God's son is that's heretical, but that is a world away from there is nothing good about Christianity.

And also if I put on a dress, I am literally a woman, right? That is an order of magnitude different, but that, that crack started quite a while ago. And again, we see through that, that, you know, the people who are most devout are, are viewed as, you know, kind of like socially backwards, right?

That is a negative thing from the halls of power. But as that, that divide increases, so does the temperature of the rhetoric. And so, you know, I really understand the desire to return to a depoliticized society, right?

Where people did share at least most of the same priors. And so any number of these things that were considered, you know, private religious matters could genuinely be private religious matters. But again, we don't really have that luxury anymore.