Politics for the Exhausted American Voter with Jane Coaston

27:51And there's a big conversation among Democrats and liberals about the groups. People get very mad at the groups because the groups can determine whether or not a bill, like what the bill language is in a particular piece of legislation. Or if the groups are mad at something, then you have to be mad at something and you have to determine whether or not you need to make the groups happy or something like that. Well, I think that conservatism has that too, where you have a whole host of people who used to have the power to say, no, we're not going to do that. No, we're opposed to this. And then you had a whole host of voters who were like, actually, we don't care about any of that.

28:30Coleman Hughes:And so you kept seeing that over and over again in 2015, 2016, where it was like, well, you know, you know, Donald Trump used to be a Democrat. You know, Donald Trump is never, you know, is too, as I believe he said, like, oh, the most pro LGBT president or will be ever. Or, oh, you know, he's not, he doesn't know how to talk about the Bible or he doesn't know how to do these. He doesn't talk in this specific way that was very appealing. He doesn't know how to talk in a specific way. And that was anathema to the determinists. Like there's a very famous against Trump issue of National Review, you know, where you have a whole host of people who just kept saying he's not a conservative.

29:12He's not a conservative. He's not a conservative. He's not a conservative. the voters didn't care and i think that that's because conservatism much like in some ways liberalism is now less about a specific list of you know do you think this do you think that but it's more about a i wish there were a better way to say this than i could think of it's more about kind of a vibe. And you see this now where you have people who are like, oh, I long for the 1990s. We're just like kind of just a constant idea of like something used to be better and it's worse now and I want to go back. But it's funny because now we're getting to the point where what people have decided is like the zenith of human civilization is like 2002.

30:00And I'm like, I can tell you I was there. It was not the zenith of human civilization. I was 15. I wasn't having like a real great time. So I think that that's the challenge that media has, is that if you want to talk to somebody about conservatism, you obviously go to a conservative organization, and you send them an email. And you're like, can you have this person come to talk to me about conservatism? And they'll be like, yes, I absolutely can. But are they as reflective of what conservatism actually is as the people who actually go and vote?

30:31Coleman Hughes:Right. So if we try to kind of like isolate the actual differences there. What would come to mind for me is that Trump ran far to the right, you would say, of his party on immigration. He was way tougher on immigration than pretty much than anyone else in the Republican Party in 2015. And this was part of his appeal. And on the other end, he ran much softer and much more to the center on issues of public entitlements. You know, like he's like, I'm not going to touch social security. Right. He wasn't Paul Ryan. He wasn't... Yeah, Paul Ryan, who famously said that he'd been like dreaming of cutting, I believe it was, the tax bill that was in 2017.

31:21He was like, oh, you know, we were dreaming about this while we were doing keg stands in college, which I was like, you went to a different college than I did. But yeah, like it was in opposition to a type of conservative orthodoxy that I don't know if everybody really was behind at any point.

31:40Coleman Hughes:But then there's the other piece I want to talk about is the Christianity piece. Because if we're considering Trump's win as a litmus test of how off the Republican Party was from its base, would that then imply that the base did not care about being a believable Christian as much? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. I think that there is a type of, how best to put this, there's a type of kind of secular evangelicalism. And what I mean by that is that there are people who embrace the aesthetics of Christianity, but don't do it or live it. But they know that it is important to embrace it because of the symbology it offers.

32:32And so, of course, I mean, I think I always think back to in I believe it was 2015 or early 2016 when Trump does that interview with Chris Matthews, where he is at, you know, he says that women who have abortions should be punished. And I got a bunch of anti-abortion groups were like, no, we don't think that we don't think that I know that they're kind of like the weirdos in Texas who absolutely think women who have abortions should be punished, but it's not a big thing. But 100 % is the kind of thing that you would think, pro-life people think, if you were a Manhattan liberal. And so there were so many moments, and you see this whenever Trump has to talk about the Bible in depth, where you're just kind of like, oh.

33:19Coleman Hughes:He actually doesn't know a single Bible verse. He has not memorized a single Bible verse. Nope, which is actually kind of impressive because it's easy to do. You know, you could just do, you know, for God so loved the world, he gave his only son. Like, there's a line in the Bible that's two words. He would have like prepped one, prepped one or two just to be ready. Exactly. But it's interesting because he didn't have to do any of that. Because you can see in polling that there are a host of people for whom they describe themselves as Christians or even evangelical Christians, which is a specific thing.

33:53I hate, talking about things that media gets wrong, talking about Christianity or religion in general, absolute shit show, bananas pants over there. But you can, there are a host of people who are even talk of Christians who, when they're polled, are like, oh, I do not think that Jesus is the son of God. Which I was like, I think that's a pretty big piece of it. And so I think that he was much more, and I wrote a piece about this for the Times, about the debate between an episode of Firing Line between William F. Buckley and Hugh Hefner about, you know, essentially like sex and media and pornography.

34:37And I argue that it's a debate that Hugh Hefner obviously won because one of the things that you have when you have a kind of the secular evangelicalism is that you have a Christianity of vibes. you have a Christianity of people who are like, we love the 10 commandments, but we don't want to really abide by them. And for whom, you know, it's a Christianity in which you go to church on Sunday, but it's also a version of which you think that, you know, wasn't it so much better when movies were hornier and you could put up a pinup calendar in your office and nobody would get mad at you. And so I think that many people, And I would say like this is, you know, I do not want to be one of those people who is just like, oh, you say you're a Christian?

35:28Names of all the apostles or something like that. But I do think that there's a type of secular evangelicalism that is very much about like Christianity as a vibe. Christianity in opposition to something else. Not Christianity as truth. you know I happen to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who did indeed was indeed murdered on the cross and did indeed rise again three days later in fulfillment of the scriptures son of a virgin whole thing totally believe it and I think that one of the things that I've seen over and over is that there are people for whom they think of Christianity in the same way that, you know, Constantine did, where it's like, if I say that I am this, that means I'm actually part of this movement that is defending the West, or I am standing athwart liberalism or something like that.

36:26Coleman Hughes:It's like instrumental Christianity. Yeah, it's exactly. It's instrumentalized Christianity, which as someone who actually believes in this, I find kind of objectionable because it strikes me as like, you know, what would you be using if Christianity didn't work. It just really speaks to me of like, if Zoroastrianism had more pull, you'd be like, ah, Ahura Mazda, that's my guy. Yeah. So there's one element of that I want to push back on, which is the foreign policy piece. I think it's definitely true that the US security establishment was far more gung-ho on the Iraq War than the American people were.

37:12Coleman Hughes:The Afghanistan War, I think not so much. I think the American people were very much behind that war, certainly in the beginning, because they saw the direct link between 9-11 and Afghanistan, and there was no direct link between Saddam and 9-11. But I mean, you would think, I think there's a bit of a false memory around that only because, you know, by 2007 and 2008, it's super mainstream to oppose the Iraq war at that point. And, you know, Obama runs on a platform of having opposed it. And now it's a bit like in 2003, it's not like people like everyone was opposed to the Iraq war. And it's not like people didn't punish Bush at the polls in 2004 for it.

37:58Nope. Nope. Nope. He went in there and he thought, I think about that 2004 election a lot because it really is another example of, and this happens every time, like you win an election and you're like, wow, everyone's into everything I'm into. I'm going to privatize social security. And it's just like, okay. But yeah, it really was. It's interesting because there was a large anti-war movement. But I think that one of the challenges, again, if you go back and read about anti-war protests in 2003, there really is a sense of like, you know, these people are standing against our troops. They don't care about America.

38:39Don't they remember what just happened? And it is interesting because I think that, and I'm a prime example of that kind of weird, hazy memory. Because, you know, 9-11 is my freshman year. We go into Afghanistan. And I just remember there was a lot of talk about, like, the Taliban being terrible for women. Totally true. And then it is, you know, we go to Iraq. and even like even going back and trying to remember like how we got there it's very hazy for me at the time and I was in high school so I think it might I think that many people would be kind of experiencing that same haze especially when there was a sense that this was something we needed to do but we needed to do it for reasons that even now I'm kind of like what what what was the point here?

39:34What were we doing here? And I think that that's something that's so weird for me is now seeing people who are all saying like, oh, we all opposed this. We were all against this is so bad. I'm like, I was there the first time. I remember that you didn't, but it is a kind of a really hazy moment.

39:52Coleman Hughes:Right. So what it says about the future, I'm curious what this says about the future of the Republican party after Trump is gone, presuming that he leaves, which I think he will.

40:06Coleman Hughes:what lessons do you think the party is going to, the party elites are going to internalize? Because one lesson you might internalize is just like copy Trump. Trump was so successful. He wrote a different playbook and that is the new playbook. But there's a danger in that, which is that part of Trump's success might not just be his policies. It might be his personal individual charisma. Because Trump has this quality where I think he can sort of take voters to places that they didn't know they wanted to go. He can, I mean, I'm curious if you agree with this. Is it just that he's sensing where his base actually is?

40:46Coleman Hughes:Or is it that his base is so loyal to him that whatever decision he makes, they will trust him, even if it's a bad decision? I think the latter. I think that the base, and I always think it's important to remember that there's the base and then there are the people who voted for Trump and those aren't the same thing. I always do the comparison like, do you like this band? Or did you like line up for tickets and try to get signatures? And are you like, you know, talking about them all the time? That's a different thing than, you know. And so I think that what Trump is able to do is that he does have this very solid base that will follow him on basically whatever he wants.

41:29And that base makes everybody else anxious to oppose him or anxious about opposing him. And so, but to your point, to your question of like, you know, what comes after Trump, I think the challenge is going to be that there are going to be a lot of people who try to imitate Trump, but none of them have worked. None of them. Like even when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ran and his whole effort was to be like, you know, Trump, but better, Trump, but smart, Trump, but on top of it. And it absolutely did not work. I would argue in part that that was also because he had an incredibly online campaign.

42:04Like, you remember, he launched on Twitter spaces and it didn't work. And then, you know, you have weird Sonnenrad ads about like, you know, they're just so online. And you see this actually, I actually think that that's a concern for this Trump White House, too, of just being incredibly online. But I think that even going back to 2017, I always love this example because it was so, you know, I was in D.C. at the time, and it was just so funny to watch it happen. When Corey Stewart ran in Virginia and his whole thing was being like, you know, taking down Confederate monuments is evil and yelling about carpetbaggers.

42:40He's from Minnesota. He went to St. Olaf College. Like there just really was a moment of people just being like, oh, all you have to do is sound like Trump. And I think that is my concern and actually an overarching concern, because there are a lot of people, a lot of conservatives, who I think think that, you know, they have done a rethink of foreign policy, of domestic policy, of taxation, of what it means to have a government. And they, I think, would see Trump as being like, oh, you know, this is a reason to kind of shift our perspectives on a couple of issues. But then there are going to be a lot of Republicans, and you see them trying to run for office and failing right now, who are like, oh, all you you have to do is just be an asshole.

43:23That's it. You don't have to change anything about your actual politics. You don't have to change anything about your views. If you post videos of yourself setting fire to a Quran or calling everybody fags, well, that'll do it. And I think that that to me, one, kind of weirdly insulting to Donald Trump. Like, it's kind of weird that you're just like, I'm not going to change any of my policy views. I'm just going to be the most annoying person on earth. And that'll do it because people clearly love that. Like, that's kind of insulting but i also think like when people are given the change the choice between you could change your demeanor or you could change your policies people will change their demeanor so fast every time and so i think really you think so oh a hundred percent because it seems

44:09Coleman Hughes:to me like it you know given how famously politicians flip-flop on policies i think that people you know easier to do that than to actually change your personality or change the way you show up on a mic. Oh, I think it's, I disagree. I think people will change their personality and how they talk about an issue in such a way that it might even sound like they've changed their minds. There's a great example. My colleague, John Lovett, had a really interesting, kind of infuriating conversation about a housing bill in California with some Democrats. And one of them was trying to argue that she voted against more affordable housing because of like something, something making apartment buildings shorter or something like that.

44:51And you could tell that she thought like she was winning this argument because she had she was talking about it in a specific way. But she hadn't like she hadn't actually done anything for affordable housing in California or Los Angeles, for that matter. And so I do think that there is a demeanor shift. But then, you know, and you can see this with how some Republicans talk about, you know, talk about war, for example, where you have someone who, you know, Donald Trump, I don't think Donald Trump is anti-war. I think Donald Trump is anti-losing wars. I think if you, if he will go to war with anyone, if you could guarantee that he is always going to win or be viewed as winning.

45:31But I think that he did tap into a lot of people who expressed a lot of exhaustion from Iraq and Afghanistan. But now you see that, you know, the same Republicans who are talking about how, you know, Trump is this anti-war president and this idea of like, oh, we're going to be turning down foreign entanglements. And they're like, let's bomb some drug boats. And so I do think that, you know, it's really easy to change how you talk about something. It's really easy to start using different language or swearing a lot or, you know, it's easy to do all of that. But I think that policies, you know, politics is the road by which we get to policy.

46:10I think that policies often people are less willing to give up on.

46:16Coleman Hughes:Okay, so let's shift gears, talk about the Democratic Party a little bit, because after, there's a certain shock to having allowed Trump to win a second time, given how unpopular he became by 2020, 2021, given all the indictments, although the indictments perhaps might have helped him actually, might have helped rally the base around him, given that he was just never a popular president, particularly popular president, even the first time, right? You would think Democrats would love the idea against running against Trump again in 2024, but they blew it very, very badly for many reasons that are too widely known for us to need to rehearse here.

47:01Coleman Hughes:But if we're talking about the future of the Democratic Party, do you have any strong views about what a smart Democratic strategist should lay out as a plan for them for winning next time and for broadly saving their legacy as a party? um well a couple of things one i have now you mentioned george w bush winning in 2004 uh earlier and i was alive then i remember this all very well um growing up in ohio and there was a sense of inevitability about george w bush that i think people who are maybe younger or weren't around for don't know, that there was a sense of like, you know, 2004, the Republican Party is ascendant.

47:49They will, you know, never lose again. I think that that's a thing that happens in politics is that you win one election and you're like, we did it. We did it forever. And so I think that, you know, like in 2004, we don't know what the future will hold. We don't know what is going to happen that might make it seem like it might make this entire conversation seem kind of ridiculous when, I don't know, Governor Pritzker wins a landslide in 2008, or 2028, wins a landslide in 2028, like, which I do not think will happen, but I'm just saying, we don't know. I would say also that one of the challenges of any sort of autopsy is that everybody seems to think that everyone would win everything if they just did whatever actually they said.

48:39So, for example, you have this ongoing battle, especially on Blue Sky, where I've yelled about this a lot, of people being absolutely convinced that the reason why Kamala Harris lost is because she did not take a hard enough line on Israel. People 100 % convinced of this. And then you look at, there was actually really interesting data in The Nation, surprisingly, that showed that the people who like the swingest voters and the people who declined to vote at all also had like no opinion really on Israel-Palestine and they didn't they were tended to be more conservative than the people of Democrats who did vote so but you know at a certain point if there if that's the most important issue to you of course you think that it's the most important issue to everybody else.

49:27I appear, you know, I've always joked that I personally am aware that most people don't hold my politics. I know that. And I would never assume otherwise. And I think it's very strange when people are just like, America agrees with me. I'm like, no, they don't. So I think that that's also a challenge of people doing, you know, just pretty much kind of arguing that whatever it is they happen to want would also help Democrats win. But, you know, setting aside all of that, I would say that a smart Democratic strategist should embrace what I've jokingly called the cool dad theory of liberalism, which is a liberalism of what would my dad want?

50:12And by my dad, I mean, literally my dad, But like a liberalism that understands that most people don't want to do politics all the time. Most people don't want to do this. I think that politics as a hobby is terrible for everybody and it's making everything worse. Like people who really get really mad at you if you talk about something other than politics, like on a social media site, which is somebody who for whom, you know, I love football. I do not love politics. I love football. I love working out. I love metal. I do not love politics. I'm interested in politics and I think it's interesting and I want good policies to happen and bad policies not to happen.

50:51But like I have things I actually enjoy and that are not this. But I think that and I think many people feel that way. You know, that was kind of, I think, Biden's entire campaign in 2020. It was like, aren't you tired of all of this? And then, of course, Biden was like, actually, you're not tired of all this. We're doing all this new stuff and it's more politics all the time. But I think that a cool dad theory of liberalism is that America is great, can always get better. It's actually nice to be able to have non-political moments and talk about things with your friends without calling them either degenerate or problematic.

51:30I wrote about this, you know, a couple of years ago, but like most people in general, there's actually a recent, I think it's in The Economist, like most people hold pretty like kind of center weaving complex views. It's just that social media, it makes it seem like it's all tankies and all Nazis all the time. But most people kind of want a politics that works for them, a politics that's about like, why does that road never get repaired? Or I want more affordable housing, or I want it to be better to live where I am, or I want it to be easier to move or change jobs or have kids or do something like that.

52:09Like, I want politics, a liberal politics that is about helping people do the stuff that they want to do and not yelling at them about whether or not they should do the thing they want to do. And so, you know, yes, this is a politics that all eventually leads to everybody getting to watch football with no one yelling at them about it in any direction, which is, you know, very important to me personally. But I do think that there is something to be said for a politics that embraces patriotism in kind of the, you know, OG Barack Obama kind of way of like, you know, we are not a red country or a blue country.

52:43We're America and, you know, very 2004 DNC speech, but also one that emphasizes action towards doing things, not action towards being something or seeming like something or saying something. And I think that that's where I would go. But again, I'm not a Democratic strategist, mercifully. So that's kind of where I'm thinking.

53:06Coleman Hughes:Gotcha. Okay, so this is a topic I think we've both, you've written about at least once, I assume you've talked about probably many times. The trend in the past 10 years or so of black Americans going towards the Republican Party. Now, it's not a huge trend. It's not as big as the trend in the Hispanic community, but it nevertheless is true that I'll speak for myself and everyone I know in my life. It was on neither my bingo card nor anyone I know, if you ask this, in 2015. Someone came from the future and said Trump is going to run three times. Each time he's going to get a higher share of the black vote than the last time.

53:49Coleman Hughes:and by the third time, he's going to get a higher share of the black vote than any Republican you can remember in your lifetime. This would be on nobody's bingo card, in particular because of how deep the conviction was among many Democrats that Trump was a racist of a kind worse than we even thought previous Republicans were racists, right? And so clearly the electorate was going to react to this. And he was, if anything, going to do worse than a typical Republican with Black voters. The opposite happened. The question is, what do we know about this trend by now? I think people have stopped denying the trend is a thing at this point.

54:31Coleman Hughes:What do we know about this trend? I mean, I know that we know it's more male than female. And my understanding is it's like, it's more under 35 than over 35. It might be more, I'm not sure whether it's more college educated or working class. So give me what you think the trend is. And if you have strong ideas about why it's happening, tell me about that too. Yeah, it's funny because I'm looking at exit polling right now for 2024. And it's the trend, 92 % of black women voted for Kamala Harris. that's compared to 77 % of black men, which is like, you know, we're still talking like very large numbers of people voting for Democrats.

55:19And I think that that gender breakdown is really important and kind of under discussed. But I think that one of the challenges is that the politics of people who are within the fulcrum of oppression are always going to be different than people who are not. And what I mean by the fulcrum of oppression is that you have roughly, you know, African Americans being able to vote en masse happens roughly in the 60s, let's say, roughly. And then you have basically people with the lived and institutional memory of life before then and how people are talking about race. And I think that there really is a sense of like, there's only one game in town and it's the Democratic Party.

56:13And I think that as the experiences of African-Americans, like pretty much every other racial group in the United States, are more influenced by class, by gender, by where you live and what you do and what you have access to than by institutionalized racism. I think that you see people whose politics are shifting based on that, because as you and I both know, African-Americans in general tend to be more socially conservative. They just do. So it actually makes a lot of sense why, you know, a socially conservative African-American man would vote for Donald Trump. Like, yeah, that That checks out.

56:57I mean, it makes sense if you're a socialist conservative, you know, Cuban emigre. It makes sense if you're a, you know, kind of right-leaning El Salvadorian second generation person.

57:09Coleman Hughes:Then that would push the question back to why didn't that socially conservative black dude vote Republican 10, 15 years ago? I mean, I think that the, I mean, you have to say also the Trump team did a lot of outreach. But I also think that the availability of social media means that you feel as if there are more options for you or you've heard of more people talking about these specific issues or you see a lot more African-American men who talk about being supporters of Donald Trump. And so you feel as if it's less anathema for you to do so, because it's not like you were between Trump and Harris.

57:50It's because it's between Trump and not voting at all. And so I think as the parties have shifted, as especially the role of gender here, as that has shifted in terms of how people are thinking about for whom they vote, I think that that becomes a moment where people are more tied to class, gender, than they are to voting as a member of a group. And in general, I think that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that people feel as if they can vote for whom they want to. They are not necessarily voting, quote unquote, against their own interests. Because everybody kind of votes against their own interests in a lot of cases.

58:39Because voting often becomes an identity marker. It is a symbol of what you value or want. Not necessarily what you think is actually going to happen sometimes. And so I think that for me, I think that that is something where it's one of those things where if the numbers for black women were significantly different, I'd be like, okay, that's very curious. But this actually, to me, makes sense. Yeah.

59:06Coleman Hughes:So this might be another way of saying the same thing you're saying or it might be different. What do you make of the theory that really what's happened over the past 10 years is that the Democratic Party has become more hostile towards men and masculinity in general? Even though it's hard to cite a specific policy that has caused this, but there is, as we were talking about earlier, a general vibe. I remember there was some Democratic advisor or strategist in this past election cycle who said, I'll butcher the exact quote, but it was like something like the Democratic Party really like, let's be honest, we care more about women, right?

59:48Coleman Hughes:And the Republican Party has, at the same time, embraced a kind of masculinity. I mean, toxic masculinity is an overused meme, but it describes Donald Trump absolutely perfectly. Right. And so doesn't it just make sense that men of all races have drifted towards the Republican Party, which is true. And why would black men be exempt from that trend? So on this theory, it's really just a gender effect. And the truth is the racial solidarity, like cultural element of the black community where we really kind of police perceived race traitors and basically effectively try to vote as a block just wasn't strong enough to overcome the gender effect.

1:00:36Right. Right. Which, I mean, again, I don't, you know, I have never gotten to be on the black community Zoom, you know, where we all talk. Where it's just like you, me, LeBron, you know, Barack Obama when he can join. I think that that is, that's always been something. I feel like that's one of those things where you can just kind of see it if you knew it. But it actually, I mean, it's kind of like how I am not very surprised that left-wing woo culture moved to the right. It makes sense if you're just in these spaces and can think about what this all means and what the language people are using looks like or sounds like more accurately.

1:01:18So yeah, I do think that it's that gender piece about how people view the Democratic Party. And it's interesting also, though, because I do think that there's a sense for which how, one, it's interesting to me that we talk about a party or an entity becoming feminized, and that's to imply that something's bad about it. That, you know, you want to have this more masculine party because that's good.

1:01:47Coleman Hughes:I don't think it implies that. I mean, at least when I say it, I'm just describing it. No, no, I don't think you think that. I'm just thinking about like the people yelling about the long house on the internet think that. And so I think that that piece, the gender piece is really important. And I also think like it's fascinating to me that while the GOP has been so good at outreach to African-Americans, for example, like the ways in which um kind of right-wing influencers basically try to or i don't think they're trying very hard like perform towards women is so funny to me it's like the exact up you know it very much is the kind of like hashtag male tears just reversed just you know it's just two people like entities attempting to pretend as if genders are constantly at war and that that's good.

1:02:41And I do think that's the piece that I think will be really, like really, I mean, not interesting necessarily because I don't think it's good, but that's going to be the piece to follow in the future.

1:02:51Coleman Hughes:Who was it that said the gender wars will never be won because there's too much fraternizing with the enemy? Yes, yes. I love that quote. Yeah, but I think like that's something and especially because I think it's really important to not to understate how

1:03:14much social media is playing into this and how people are performing their politics and even performing their gender politics. And so I think that that plays an important piece here. But to your original thought about African American men voting for Republicans, yeah, that totally checks out based on everything else we know.

1:03:33Coleman Hughes:Yeah. Okay, so another question about something that surprised me over the past five years. So if you had asked, if you had a time machine, right, or you had asked me in, say, 2020, or even 2018, you told me that in a few years, the Supreme Court's going to abolish affirmative action. there is going to be a slew of executive orders and a decisive cultural turn against DEI, I would have said, well, okay, well, surely people would be in the streets protesting that akin to the Women's March on a scale that was profound and huge, and the country would be torn and divided over it. And yet, surprisingly, a lot less than I thought.

1:04:27Coleman Hughes:Like the reaction to it was a lot more, obviously, many people were upset. But it did not, the upset didn't reach even a third of the scale that I thought it would, compared to if you look, you know, how campuses are melting down over Gaza, and how people, you know, how many people show up to the Women's March and all these other issues. Do you share that surprise with me or is that unsurprising to you? And what do you make of it? I think that I am not surprised because I think that there is a real sense that the Women's March didn't work or that like what mass movement politics looks like now is very different from what it looked like before.

1:05:20Like people obviously still protest, but I think that there's a sense of how protest is interpreted and what it means. You can tie this to how Twitter has changed. You know, you remember that like a lot of kind of protest movements of the 2010s, a lot of them were people talking about it on Twitter in a way that is less easy to do now. and also how people view protests in general is different now. But I also think that the challenge is that there's been, you know, how Americans feel about affirmative action, which is why I think it's been lightly amusing to me that you see a bunch of people online who kind of want affirmative action, but like a version of affirmative action for white people, where it's kind of like, you know, you see this in conversations, which I was entertained that it happened seemingly so quickly, which, you know, you can hear the conversations of how people talk about Indian Americans.

1:06:26This idea of like, well, you know, they're too successful, so we can't, you know, we got it, we can't have that. And there really is kind of this like Goldilocks, like, you know, you have groups that are too successful and groups that aren't successful enough. And in the middle, somehow just the perfect group who should get everything. But I also think that people are in general aware, in general, they are aware that most people were opposed to affirmative action, particularly what they viewed affirmative action to be. And they also are opposed to what they imagine DEI to be. Now, the challenge I've always found is that DEI became very quickly, there's a black lady here and we can't have that.

1:07:07and you could see that, you know, where it's just like, here's a picture of a judge. She's black. What's the, like the implication is like black lady.

1:07:16Coleman Hughes:The one I remember being very absurd was calling Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, a DEI mayor. Yes. Yeah. Which I was like, how do you think people become mayor? Right. Well, like there's no such thing as a DEI mayor by definition because mayors are elected, right? There is no, there is no, like, you know, it's just a result of an election, right? Right. Exactly. How could it not be meritocratic in some broader sense? Even if you think he's a bad mayor, it's a separate point. Yeah, yeah. And so I think that like, you know, what DEI and what affirmative action actually were or actually are, and then how they have been construed culturally, I think that in general, a lot of people were opposed to that, including a lot of African Americans and a lot of people who were just kind of like, this just seems unfair.

1:08:06You know, it seems unfair to say that, like, there should be fewer Asians at a college because they're not as likable or something like, you know, you go back through some of the filings in the Harvard case and you're just kind of like, yeah,

1:08:22Coleman Hughes:that's a weird way to talk about people. But I think that so it actually does not surprise me that people, you know, that people were not out in the streets protesting. I also think that there's just kind of a general exhaustion of the last like 10 years. And it, you know, and you can see that. And I think that that's what actually really pisses me off about sometimes like online rhetoric about how, you know, people are so exhausted by politics. And yet you have people now who are like, well, now it's time for a race war. And I'm like, we're not doing a race war. We're not. One, no. Two, no. But like there is I think that people have been so let down by a politics and in a political environment that promises everything but delivers markedly little.

1:09:14It's like the promises keep going up and the delivery keeps going down. If you go back and look, you know, and this is not a new problem. Politics has always been just kind of an element of prompt. You know, everybody's running for sixth grade class president all the time for ice cream and pizza for everybody. And then when that doesn't happen, everybody's always disappointed. And that happens all the time. And so I do think like I think that they're just kind of a general exhaustion, which is funny because you would you you go online and people are just like mad and screaming. You would think people would be in the streets all the time every day.

1:09:48But actually, people don't want to do that.

1:09:51Coleman Hughes:okay so final two questions for you just um curious to get your take and i don't know it but you've tweeted some stuff which would lead me to think you have a take uh jeffrey epstein did he kill himself do you have an opinion i mean this this this obsession has swept the culture over the past summer what do you make of it um based on the long long long long, long history of the MCC where he was being held being kind of a shoddy establishment. I do think he died by suicide, especially like if you think about it for long enough, you know, this is a person who is about who had spent his entire life being, you know, feted by everyone around him and given unimaginable amounts of money to do something.

1:10:46That's the other thing about this is that like it's, you know, there's a lot of like the financial stuff about his crimes that I'm, you know, there's been some great reporting in the New York Times on this subject, but that's still very curious. But like many people die by suicide in jail because they do not want to deal with the future and what that means. They do not want to go to trial. They do not want to have all of this discussed all the time. There's a reason why traditionally you put people on suicide watch, but also traditionally this prison isn't very good. So I think he did die by suicide.

1:11:21I would also say that like, I think that the story of Jeffrey Epstein as someone who, you know, I've written a lot and talked a lot about the sexual abuse of young people. And I think that the story of Epstein is indicative of how we treat the sexual abuse of young people, which is that we ignore it or we, in some cases, support it, especially if it's being done by somebody that we think is smart or interesting and we just don't believe that they would ever do such a thing. You can go back to the Larry Nassar case with USA Gymnastics. I always think about how when he was arrested in September, I believe, of 2016, the MSU gymnastics coach, women's gymnastics coach, had her team sign a card for him of support for a man who sexually abused hundreds of young people.

1:12:16Coleman Hughes:Was that because they were personal friends? She just thought it would be a nice gesture. She didn't know the guy. It's unclear. But I think all the time about how, and you see this over and over again. There was a recent case of sex trafficking in Alabama, like a circle of people, and people being like, we had no idea. This is all such a surprise. And I'm like, no, people did know. And I'm guessing that someone tried to tell someone and no one listened to them. And we see this over and over and over and over and over again. And it also is like, you read that 50th birthday book that was made for him.

1:12:51And everybody knew. All of these people writing and just kind of joking about the fact that this guy is a sexual predator. And so I think that the reason to me why this story is important is not because of its political implications, but because of its societal implications. There's a great piece I was reading recently that was talking about Me Too's One Win, which is that in general now, we think it's bad if adult men are sexually attracted to 13, 14-year-old girls. and you go back in our culture 15, 20 years ago and how adult men are talking about girls who are 13, 14, 15 is very different and it was widely accepted.

1:13:33And I can say, I was never catcalled as much as I was when I was 11, never. It's never the most ever that ever happened like from walking down the street, from passing cars from people, never more so than when I was 11 years old. And so I think that that is why the story is important to me. It's been very weird to watch the people for whom it was very important until it stopped being important. But that's why I think it's of interest. Anyway, that was a long answer.

1:14:02Coleman Hughes:Yeah, so I agree with you that he probably killed himself. I mean, it's amazing, though, that you and I agree about that. And I actually changed my mind on that. I was early years ago, I wasn't sure he was murdered, but I mean, there were just so many weird facts that it seemed like there had to be more to the story. But the more I've actually looked into it, the more it does seem a story of very weird guy plus incompetence, you know, classic prison guard incompetence. Right. I mean, he tried to kill himself two weeks before that, right? Yeah. And then he changes his will the day before he kills himself.

1:14:45Coleman Hughes:It's like at some level, you've got to focus on like the basic elements here are just very much pointing towards suicide. And if you get too deep into your corkboard and connecting little facts, you can sort of miss the bigger picture. but I do find it I find it kind of astounding how deeply the conspiracy has swept the culture to the point where I see recent polls like 50 % of people in both parties think he was murdered and the people who agree with you and I it's like 15 % of the country it's like a very much minority view and it's actually looped into another question I wanted to ask you which is why does it seem that at least on the right the conspiracy theories are always related to either pedophilia, incest, or some other kind of sexual deviance, right?

1:15:42Coleman Hughes:Like I'm thinking obviously QAnon. I'm thinking of Brigitte Macron is a man. The deeper you go into that, you actually realize incest is key to the whole. Yeah. And sexual deviance is wrapped up in all of it. Yeah. Epstein. I mean, I can go on. But why is it always like about sexual deviance? I think that sexual deviance is something that we all recognize as being wrong. And so I think that it is also the easiest cudgel to use, which is repulsive to me in so many ways. Thinking about the work that my mom did with abused and neglected kids, many of whom had been sexually abused. the number one sexual abusers of children are parents the number ones producers of child sexual abuse material typically referred to as child pornography i don't like that term because it makes it sound like the genre of pornography it's not it's a crime um the number one producers of those parents are you talking about biological parents or like step parents and things biological parents um and that's depressing it's extremely depressing let's see let me double check because I wouldn't have trouble believing like, you know, step parents or adults in the house that aren't related to the kid.

1:17:03But let's see. Parental production of. Yep. Yep. Yep. Let's see. Parental. Yeah. So.

1:17:15Typically, biological father, stepfather or mother's partner. Right.

1:17:21Coleman Hughes:Who this is depressing. Anyway. Sorry. Yeah, it's a it's a big thing. But so I think that there's this idea also that you can define deviancy or define that kind of sexual deviancy as on the other. I think a lot about how that like kind of the whole groomers thing where it was using a term that is referencing preparing a child to be sexually abused, but using that to refer to gay people being teachers. and I think that there's always a sense of like sexual deviancy is indicative of it is something that's not your deviancy, that's not you it's them, them being deviant, them being bad them, the other.

1:18:06You see this in a lot of kind of anti-Semitic writings, the idea that Jewish people are behind pornography, that they invented it or something like that.

1:18:14Coleman Hughes:Or that Israel is a haven for pedophiles. Pedophiles, right, exactly. And so you see that in an effort to indicate that these people are not just bad, but they're evil in a way that is easily understandable to an audience that knows that pedophilia and incest are evil. And so I think it's an available cudgel. And I also think that, you know, if I was queen of everything, I could change anything. That would be something in which I would strike, I want that idea of taking the sexual abuse of children and young people and using that as a political cudgel against your enemies. If there was one thing I could strike from our political culture, that would be it.

1:19:01100%. Especially because it does not do anything to benefit children and victims of sexual assault at all. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't make anything better. it makes everything worse, especially because it becomes clear that there are sexual deviants that you will be okay with because it's not, you know, it's your political side. You know, the idea, like I keep thinking about the people who are like, oh, you know, the Democrats, they got to protect Bill Clinton. So that's why they don't want to talk about Epstein. And I'm like, how close do you think I am to Bill Clinton?

1:19:42Like, how much do you think I am like, oh my God, the guy who left the White House when I was 12? Oh yeah, I gotta go full hard for that guy. And so when you wield child abuse as a political cudgel, and you're not talking about child abuse as a societal scourge, as something that is deeply evil and wrong, I think that you do nothing but make our political culture worse and put more kids at risk.

1:20:16Coleman Hughes:All right, we'll end on that. Jane Koston, thank you so much for coming on my podcast. And before you leave, can you plug where people can find you if they want to follow you more? Sure. I'm on Twitter and Blue Sky, Jane Koston. And you can listen to my podcast every day. It's called What A Day. 20 minutes to explain whatever is happening on these weird days we keep having. All right, Jane. Thanks so much.