The “I Don’t Knows”: Omicron, Status, and TikTok
Topics Discussed
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Episode Resources
Omicron Is Coming. The U.S. Must Act Now. (The New York Times)
DAVID FRENCH INTERVIEW
American Higher Education, Ideologically Separate and Unequal (The Dispatch)
Nadia Bolz-Weber Newsletter (The Corners)
Righting the Historical Wrong of the Claiborne Highway (The Daily, The New York Times)
American Gentry (The Atlantic)
BETH’S TIKTOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Transcript
David French [00:00:00] If you actually look and you drill down it to the people are most politically engaged right now in the country, on both sides, actually, they're disproportionately white, they're disproportionately wealthy and they're disproportionately educated. That's who's driving the quote unquote populist moment. There's a term that David Brooks coined. He called it class status envy. And what it is is it's sort of, I believe that I should have a certain kind of status in the eyes, not just to my community. You take that for granted. I've got it, but in everyone else's also.
Sarah [00:00:39] This is Sarah Stewart Holland
Beth [00:00:40] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:42] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
Sarah [00:00:58] Hello, everyone, and welcome to Pantsuit Politics, we are thrilled to be back here with you after Thanksgiving break and also feeling very grateful for the incredible feedback we got on our Wellness episodes. Thank you to all of you who listened and wrote in and shared your stories. It was cathartic for us to record those episodes and I think for all of you as well. So thanks for sharing your feedback on that series. And if you haven't checked it out yet, please head on back in our podcast feed and check out part one and part two of our Wellness series. We are here today to talk about Omicron along with the rest of the world. We're going to share our interview with David French, one of our favorite writers at The Dispatch and now newly at The Atlantic. And then we're going to wrap up the show with our thoughts on TikTok. Stay with us as we plot through a lot of, I don't know, Beth said that's should be the theme of today's show. I don't know about Omicron. I don't know about TikTok, but we're going to do our best to find some clarity, even in a sea of I don't know.
Sarah [00:02:03] In case you have not heard from the breathless media coverage, the World Health Organization has classified a new COVID 19 strain first identified in South Africa as a variant of concern and named it Omicron. I did think it was hilarious that the actual next letter in the Greek alphabet was new, but they were like, we cannot call it the new new strain. That's not going to work. So they went with Omicron. Beth, when did you first hear about Omicron?
Beth [00:02:29] I got an alert on my phone as I sat down to eat with my family, which is exactly what you're looking for. It made me feel kind of like Alice in Wonderland. We were like, Oh, she gets to have a tea party. Oh, wait, it's kind of weird and mean. Yeah. Oh, exciting. There's a croquet game. Oh wait, people are getting executed. You know, it's just I feel like there is that sense that we kind of know what's happening. It's getting better, it's getting better. And then yikes, what is coming. But I have really appreciated how many writers have gone out of their way, despite the headlines to say, We don't know. We don't know. Thank you South Africa for telling us about this. And also we don't know what it means, and so everybody's going to have to sit tight for a minute.
Sarah [00:03:09] Well, there is some things we do know. So let's walk through that. There is good news. There is good news. First and foremost, that South Africa did the right thing. They have a pretty prolific sequencing process, due in large part to the HIV aids epidemic that rocked the country in previous decades. And so they were already well suited to catch a story like this very early. They did, and they did the right thing by telling the rest of the world, now we're going to get into in a minute whether the rest of the world responded appropriately, but they did the right thing. And the other just good news out of the genetic lottery is that Omicron has a particular genetic signal that shows up in PCR testing. So that's great news. It's going to make it a lot easier to track with our regular testing infrastructure, so we don't have to start from scratch figuring out how to identify it. That's great news. So that's really, really good as well.
Beth [00:04:03] Not starting from scratch to me is the theme of what we do know.
Sarah [00:04:06] Word.
Beth [00:04:07] That Pfizer has already told us they can have vaccines targeting a new variant in like three months. That's incredible that even with breakthrough infections, the likelihood of severe infection is low because our immune systems are multilayered. We still have new antiviral drugs coming. So even if this is pretty bad, we do have a lot of tools. We had a lot of knowledge. We are not. We are not in March of 2020 again. That's what I keep telling myself.
Sarah [00:04:34] Yeah, I heard a reporter say that vaccines aren't a light switch. It's not like a variant shows up. And then Bam, we're susceptible and we're back at February 2020, right? That's not how it works. And because our immune system is multilayered, well, yeah, maybe it'll get through the the layer of antibodies in our plasma, but then you have T cells and you have all these other layers that have different memory structures and our immune system. Don't message me, I'm not. I'm not a doctor. I'm doing my best here to explain this as I understand it. But that's so even if it sort of chips away, it's not going to just turn it off. We're not going to wake up to a world where the vaccines are completely ineffective. And, you know, I think that the epidemiologists in particular are doing a good job of saying like, Hey, everybody, be cool. I feel like we're we're really we like some calibration because I feel like at other points in the pandemic, they've been like, everybody freak out. We're like, Nah. And now they're like, Be cool. And we're like, Nah. But so many of the epidemiologists I read really articulated this idea that this is what viruses do. They evolve to become more contagious, but not necessarily more severe? That's definitely what we saw with the 1918 pandemic, right? Is that it? It burned out, it became more mild and it burned out. And you know, we're going to get into the bad news, this particular variant as far as the ease of spread. But, you know, knowing what we know about viruses, there is not, like you said, a real scenario in which we go back to square one. We might be looking at something that's much more contagious, but not necessarily much more severe, which is was what that was our concern with Delta more contagious. But then we learned not necessarily more severe. And that's been the conclusion we've reached with several other variants as well.
Beth [00:06:19] And that's in our, I don't know, category. We don't know if it's more contagious. We don't know if it's more severe. We have a lot of questions that need to be answered, and it is going to take some time to answer those. But as Sarah said, being able to track this variant with our existing infrastructure will help us get the answers to those questions more quickly. On the bad news side. We do know that there are a large number of variants in the spike protein. The quantity of those variants doesn't matter as much as what those variants on the spike protein do, and that is the question everybody is watching out for right now.
Sarah [00:06:54] Yeah, I watched an epidemiologist who like color coded them like, this is a this is a red variant on this one, this particular protein. This is a blue like doesn't really matter. And there were like two or three red ones like that, it's just the looks like whatever got everybody's attention is that there are just so many. And this particular variant and because the spike protein is how COVID 19 sort of gets into our system, it's also with the vaccines are built around, it's going to get everybody's attention and it does seem to be spreading very quickly. And so that's definitely what they're paying attention to. But as far as you know, we know right now that that the reports of the cases that they're seeing in South Africa are pretty mild among the vaccinated. You know, the case in Hong Kong was asymptomatic. And so it's just going to take a few more weeks, though, until we can really have the numbers and the understanding to see how severe it is. But we know the cases are out there. We're probably going to get, you know, news alerts very soon that say it's here in the United States. It most likely is already here in the United States and many countries around the world. But we did see a reaction almost immediately, with lots of travel bans from the EU directed at South Africa and other African countries. And in America,
Beth [00:08:07] I give these travel bans zero stars do not recommend because, like in the United States, they started after the weekend blast, as Zeynep Tufekci wrote, Does the virus take the weekend off? I don't think it does.
Sarah [00:08:21] Well it reminds me of our favorite TikTok. When you sit, the virus has got to quit so down rules we have in restaurants.
Beth [00:08:28] And then the other thing is that the travel bans are basically, a punishment to South Africa for having identified this and shared sharing the information with the world and they examined again as as Zeynep Tufeci says that they examined passports not who actually carrying the virus. Exempting American citizens make sense politically. It does not make sense if you are actually trying to prevent the variant from getting here, which is interesting. It's here. I just to me, this is not a travel ban moment. It's probably here. It's just what are we going to learn about it? What are we going to do about it?
Sarah [00:09:05] It's just political signaling, and it's theater, and I don't like it. And once they put them in place, they don't pull them back when they should. That's the other thing they take too long to to lift these travel bans because again, it's a little it's once they're in place, it's politically fraught to lift them. It's not that travel bans can't work, but we don't do them in the way that could work when there's like, Oh, I don't know, actual quarantining like there is in so many countries when you enter them to see, you know, one quick, rapid tests and America is like, you're good to go, whereas in other countries are like, now we're going to need you to actually hang out in a hotel. Based on the time it takes for the virus to present itself and then you can go or mass testing, which we are still really, really lagging in.
Beth [00:09:46] This is the frustration for me. America has looked at the entire toolbox and said, I don't really want to commit to any of these tools, so I'm just going to, you know, take one out occasionally and look at it or try to hit someone else over the head with it, but then ignore it and not do it for real. And that's that's why we've done poorly. And I honestly think as a country, especially with and, you know, I do not envy the people who have to make these decisions. But with the overlapping problems that the country faces right now, I'm thinking especially of supply chain. I just think we ought to say as a country, we have not committed to travel bans in an effective way since the start of this pandemic, and that's not how we're going to approach it now. We're going to approach it through mass testing. We're going to approach it through continuing our vaccination push. We're going to approach it through working on getting these antiviral therapies to market as quickly as possible. But we're going to put travel bans back in the toolbox and just say, like that one we didn't commit to. It's not going to work for us.
Sarah [00:10:48] Well, and then I think we have a category which I called hard news. Not good, not bad, just hard to hear. I think it's easy to attach to the narrative that, look, this is where we failed people. We're not passing out vaccines like we should have. The reality in South Africa is not that it's a lack of vaccines. At one point, they were turning away vaccine doses. It's a lack of trust in the medical, particularly the pharmaceutical community, and that distrust is well placed based on the history of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa and HIV AIDS treatment, not to mention even COVID. I mean, Moderna tested the virus in South Africa, but then did not donate any vaccine doses to the country. So, you know, I think that that mistrust is well placed, and that is something that it's very hard to chip away at, even in the face of a contagious variant. Even in the face of all we know about vaccines, you know, it's we have vaccine hesitancy here. It's all over the world. I think it's easy to tell ourselves like, well, the doses get there and that will make a difference. But we know that's not true in our own country. So I don't know why we would think it would be different in other countries.
Beth [00:11:55] And so here we are with a whole lot of I don't know the things that we do know are a mixed bag of encouraging concerning, difficult to process. And this is sort of why I continue to orient myself to the fact that it's just going to be a long time before I don't get these alerts on my phone. You know, it's just going to be a long time before we're not thinking about COVID 19 anymore. That was the theme of the discussion at my family's Thanksgiving table. We just would like to stop thinking about it, but it's not going to be like that for a while. It hasn't been historically during pandemics. It's not going to be during this one. That doesn't mean that we have to ride the emotional roller coaster of every new variant. I remember when I heard about Lambda and then I didn't hear about Lambda anymore. It's going to continue to evolve. There are going to be new iterations and we just have to pay attention and learn what we can learn. But also, I like your word, calibrate our reactions to what the science tells us. My friend Shannon said The smartest thing I keep thinking about after listening to our wellness episode, she said, You know, I feel like we have so much more patience with the products created by science than the science itself. We got the iPod. We said this is the most efficient way to distribute music we've ever seen. And that kept changing. And we don't look back and say the iPod was so stupid. We say we kept developing new things and learning about this thing was a step in that process, and we were excited to keep developing new things. And it's much harder to take that posture with respect to something that causes sickness and death, drugs that we have to put in our body and hope is the right, you know, hope are the right things. But I have been thinking a lot about that and just trying to kind of let that sink into me a little bit more to that. I can be really grateful for how the science progresses and recognize that that means they're going to be setbacks. They're going to be huge revisions and they're going to be these spaces of we just have to wait and see.
Sarah [00:13:55] I agree. And I think as with most stressful situations in life, including a pandemic, we have to decide what we can control and release the rest. There are still behaviors available to us that will continue to protect ourselves and our loved ones. We should still wash our hands. We should still socially distance when available to us. We should still mask in public places when available to us, we should still get vaccinated, encourage those we love to get vaccinated, get boosted. Like, you know, I read Emily Oster and she was like, Look, guys, we're just going to control what we can control and wait for information on the rest of it. That's all we can do. And I think that's the right approach. I think that, you know, leaning all the way into the alarmism has its own cost, particularly to our mental health. And I don't think that's a great reaction in this situation. I don't really want to beat up on the media because as much as I think there's been a lot of coverage of this, I do feel like there's been a lot of good voices saying, Hey, we still don't know. Let's react to what we do know. Let's control what we can control and not lean into our anxiety and fears on the rest of it. And I think that's that's always good. Healthy guidance. Next up, we are going to share our interview with David French, political commentator at The Dispatch. New columnists at The Atlantic. We were thrilled to bring him on the show. We both regularly read David and really appreciate his perspectives on some of the most contentious cultural issues in America, and we can't wait for you to hear our conversation.
Sarah [00:15:42] We are so honored to have David French from The Dispatch here with us. We were joking before we started recording. We put this off too long and now there's too many pieces that you've written that we want to talk about. I would like to start with American higher education, ideologically separate and unequal. I think about this piece all the time, and not just because we recently went to the University of Alabama, which you talk about in this piece.
David French [00:16:06] Yes.
Sarah [00:16:07] For those who haven't read it, give people, I'll let you do it. I want some of your thoughts because I'll bet you're right. You'll do a much better job. So for people who haven't read that piece, can you give them just a quick rundown of your of your thought process?
David French [00:16:17] Yeah. So you know, I was there's been a lot of discussion about elites in elite institutions in the news recently and is realizing that we just have a lot of different elites in this country, especially where I come from. You know, when we talk about elite education, elite education and a lot of people focus on the Ivy Leagues. I grew up, I was born in Opa-Locka, Alabama. My parents were Auburn students. My dad taught briefly at LSU. I grew up outside of the University of Kentucky. I didn't think about elite education when it quote unquote elite education. When I was growing up, I went to a small Christian college for undergrad, and I began to realize that a lot of the education debate in this country is dominated by people may be in this sort of the Acela corridor in the northeast or out on the coasts where their vision of what they want for education for their kids is a lot different from the education that a lot of folks where I live. What I try to sum it up like this. If you see that your son or daughter has a super high SAT score, what's the first thing that comes to your mind is that they're going to go to Yale or they're going to go to Harvard or Stanford, or is it they're going to go to college for free? They're going to go to Alabama for free or they're going to go to Tennessee for free. And there are very different answers to that question. And depending on where you live in the country and the culture that you grew up and where I am, most family members are saying, Great, you're going to get a full scholarship, you're going to go to UT Honors College or. And then, you know, and then you're going to be set, you're going to do well, you're you're going to have every advantage that you need to have, whereas other families are thinking immediately. Yale, Stanford, Harvard. And that really is a difference. It really is a cultural difference. And a lot of the way parents where I live, they read about these families who are totally orienting their their kids from a very young age to get into these top, top schools and they kind of find that mystifying. And there are a lot of consequences that flow from these sort of two sets of worldviews about education.
Beth [00:18:30] Well, and it made me think about the degree of change that you're able to handle as a kid to as reflective of a lot of these political differences that manifest later. I thought I was going to an elite school when I chose Transylvania or a private liberal arts school here in Kentucky with a great reputation. And when I got there, I did feel like I had been dropped into a different world I had. I had a classmate who had two vehicles on campus, and that was a level of wealth I had never seen before. The clothes people wore, I mean, it was a real culture shock to go from Western Kentucky to Lexington, Kentucky, in this private school. I can't imagine what that would have felt like if I had gone to Harvard, Yale, Stanford and just the distance we experienced that way.
David French [00:19:16] I had sort of two. I had a stair step culture shock. So I grew up in Georgetown, Kentucky, at the time. Now you guys know Georgetown is a pretty big town. It's got a huge Toyota plant. It's super prosperous. When I was there, it's about eight thousand people, mainly a tobacco farming community, a little Baptist college there. Then I went to Nashville to college at a private liberal arts college, Christian College Lipscomb University. But I couldn't believe how much money people had. I could not believe it. And then I went to law school at Harvard, and that was a whole other experience, all by itself. I couldn't believe how many Rhodes scholars I was really in. And these culture shocks really well, one, they're they're both good for me in different ways. But the other thing is, they really did teach me, this is a big country. And while there are many commonalities about, quote unquote American culture, there are many subcultures in American culture and we can often lose sight of that when we sort of flatten all these discussions about education to what's happening at Yale or, you know, what's happening with the admissions policies of elite institutions. There's a whole other world out there.
Sarah [00:20:30] Well, I think what really appealed to me is that it named something and brought together some threads that I've been struggling with because I think what you do so well in this piece is like, there's still elite people at the university. Steve, Alabama, there is a lot of wealth at the University of Alabama. Absolutely. There's a lot of times, you know, in my town where Nichols will say, Why is everybody go to the University of Alabama? And you, like, named it and drew it out so well that like it is an elite institution to a certain type of elite in this country. And those elites are not mad because they don't have money resources, because they don't have a power. Exactly. It's because they don't have a certain sort of cultural power. And I think the other thing you write about so well is the way in which those elites that sort of landed gentry that move around in these places definitely move around. In my town, owned businesses pass those businesses down to their kids. That kind of thing is that they use the cultural power they do have to to protect their elite status. So they use it through the church. The church becomes political. They use it through powerful positions. They abuse that power. They protect protected and all kinds of ways. Not that elites in other parts of the country don't do that. But I think just naming like, No, this is a type of elite that's using the church and using politics and using money and philanthropy philanthropy to to maintain that status.
David French [00:21:50] Well, if I'm an Alabama grad and I own two car dealerships, you know, and I'm an elder at a huge Baptist church in town, I'm a very elite and powerful person by any measure, by any measure and in my community, in my world, I have more status and power than all of the sort of the folks who are floating around in Goldman Sachs and Manhattan. Right. You have the Yale degree or the Stanford or the Silicon Valley, folks. I have an enormous amount of power. I have an enormous amount of prestige. I have an enormous amount of wealth. You're elite by every meaning of the term. And yet part of what's happening in our culture right now is people who have all of this power and status and wealth and influence in their communities feel deeply resentful that somebody somewhere else might be looking down on them yet or not fully recognize who they are and what they've accomplished. And that that's one of the things is kind of odd about our populist moment is if you actually look in, you drill down to the people who are most politically engaged right now in the country, on both sides, actually, they're disproportionately white, they're disproportionately wealthy and they're disproportionately educated. Yep. And those that's who's driving the quote unquote populist moment. And this. And so a lot of this is that there's a term that that David Brooks coined years ago, which is sort of he called it class status envy.
Sarah [00:23:20] Mm hmm.
David French [00:23:21] And what it is is it's sort of I believe that I should have a certain kind of status in the eyes, not just in my community. You take that for granted. I've got it, but in everyone else's, also in everyone else's eyes. Also, when, by the way, a lot. If you're the guy who's got two car dealerships and is on the elder board of local church and has all of this local power, they're not exactly. They're kind of looking down on the folks in Palo Alto. You know, they have their own sense of cultural superiority.
Sarah [00:23:54] Well, here's though, I think where the imbalance lies. The landed gentry in my town spin their money and they go to big cities and they go to Broadway shows and they go to New York City and they interact with that culture enough, right?
David French [00:24:08] Mm hmm.
Sarah [00:24:08] They're not ignorant in the ways of the ways that status plays out.
David French [00:24:13] Right.
Sarah [00:24:14] However, I don't have a lot of friends in New York City flying down from University of Alabama games. You know what I'm saying? Like, they're not coming down and partaking in that culture and understanding the status in the way that culture works on the opposite end. You know what I'm saying?
David French [00:24:29] You know, this disparity of knowledge is really and that's a very important concept. That's a very important concept because there is actually some research that shows red Americans have more knowledge about what blue Americans believe than blue Americans have about what red Americans believe. You know, my kids went to a small school in rural Tennessee, and we did eighth grade trip to D.C. in the 10th grade trip to New York. And you can't escape it. But you know, a lot of folks who might land in Franklin, Tennessee, were not so much Franklin. It's just suburban Nashville, but where I used to live in Columbia, Tennessee. That's just not a culture that they're accustomed to at all. They don't really have much knowledge about it at all.
Beth [00:25:13] And I don't know how much knowledge helps, because I think part of the resentment that that that landed gentry in communities that aren't metropolitan centers of commerce feel is is accurate from those interactions that we have. I mean, my background is working at an associate in a very well-respected Cincinnati law firm that would often be local council paired with in New York or L.A. or London firm.
David French [00:25:42] Yeah.
Beth [00:25:42] And you understood very quickly how people in those centers of power felt about local council in Cincinnati, Ohio. Even though here in Cincinnati, this firm had this fantastic reputation, right? And so much skill, so much knowledge, so much wealth, but there was always a perceived lack of sophistication. And I don't think we just had a chip on our shoulder in Cincinnati about it. I think there was something pretty real to it.
David French [00:26:08] Yes, there's no question about that. So I practiced law in Manhattan and I practiced law in Lexington, Kentucky, and at a big firm in Lexington. Again, hyper skilled. Very, very good at what they did, and you could sometimes tell when we were in a local council relationship that there was sort of that I'm going to pat you on the head, sort of. But you know, one of the things one of the classic methods of the southern lawyer is to play the underestimated card. You know, I have been, I've been, you know, out after a lawyer, you know, a southern trial lawyer beat a big firm and a trial, and there's the lawyer knocking back a drink. And he says with that exaggerated drawl that all Southern trial lawyers have, he was like, that old boy thought I was dumb. And so that sense of I'm underestimated. My dad grew up in rural Mississippi, and he has is. He's brilliant. He got his math, Ph.D. and 10 months. I mean, that's.
Sarah [00:27:13] Wow.
David French [00:27:14] That's brilliant. And he used to do consulting internationally for IBM when he wasn't teaching math at the small college in Kentucky, and he got to the point because he had he, especially back then, more he had. He has a pretty awesome accent. And he got to a point where he would write some of his credentials on the chalkboard before he'd start talking.
Sarah [00:27:34] Wow.
David French [00:27:35] Because when he started talking, sometimes it was as if he had something to prove because of the way he where he talked. So, you know, it's funny. A lot of resentments that go overboard are often born in something that's real. And in fact, that kind of sums up a lot of our politics right now. A lot of a lot of the anger that has become extreme has been born in something that was legitimate. It has just taken on a life of its own.
Sarah [00:28:07] Well, and I think you see that in the Republican Party almost more. I see this conflict. I mean, maybe not more, but more profoundly between within the Republican Party than between Republicans and Democrats. Like this conflict between people who have status wanting to be respected within the Republican Party. And like this, this up swelling of popular anger of like you never took us seriously. You don't listen to us. Donald Trump will fight for us. Like, do you feel like there's some of that conflict in that as well?
David French [00:28:37] You know, one of the things that's happening in the populist Republican Party is. It has really become a shame honor party, it's become a shame honor culture, and a lot of that is because the disproportionate influence of the south and southern culture now in GOP politics. And so there's this really tremendous phrasing from this book called Desire, Violence and Divinity and Modern Southern Fiction. It's by a Kent State professor. And he writes, this 'Honor meant that Southerners beheld themselves as others beheld them, and that meant their self-worth lived in the look of the other'.
Sarah [00:29:15] Wow.
David French [00:29:15] And so which is a brilliant insight, I think, and it's actually was an insight into my own mind as well, because you have two things kind of coming together in a vicious cycle. One is there is actually sometimes a sort of sense of elitism and condescension towards, in particular, southern southern culture and southerners. And that's exactly the wrong community to have that sort of sense about. And there's this really famous or this this really interesting study of honor in the South where these researchers found and this is at the University of Michigan, that southern male students experienced higher levels of testosterone when they were bumped to into or sworn at in a hallway. In other words, there was a physiological like pride response that that swelled up. You know, when I first began to read about this years ago, I say, Oh, I recognize that in myself as well, that there's this almost involuntary response when you feel disrespected. And it's something that is not necessarily healthy. It's not necessarily healthy, so you have this vicious cycle, you have, on the one hand, people who, you know, as you were saying Beth, people who look down on others who are completely competent and capable and brilliant. And then that's exactly the wrong community to look down on because it has a triggers, a disproportionate reaction.
Beth [00:30:47] So when we think about this in terms of our current political landscape, one of the things that I admire so much in your writing is that I think you're willing to point out a problem, especially a problem, like, hey, we in the South are particularly sensitive or hey, in the Republican Party, we're doing this shame honor dynamic right without villainizing it. I think you're similarly very skilled when you talk about issues of race to say, Hey, you know, southern Christian, white person, Republican. This is real and we need to address it and it's wrong of us not to. And I wonder how you have tried to integrate all these discussions we've been talking about that you understand in you live every day in order to to walk that line where you're able to draw attention to these issues without creating new enemies.
David French [00:31:39] Well, I'm just...
Sarah [00:31:40] That's what's brutal about southern culture, right? Is like the honor thing is, we've gotten a lot of things wrong. How are you? How are they supposed to be able to tell us that if we won't recognize it ourselves?
David French [00:31:49] That's a that's a great point. If if critique is perceived as insult, because those are not the exact same things and especially as a Christian person critique, we should be extremely open to critique as a Christian person should recognize that we're all fallen, we all fall short of the glory of God. And so a lot of not every critique of ourselves is going to be legit, but some of them definitely are. And. And so, yeah, well, one thing I have to say is when I figure out how to thread the needle of doing these critiques without causing a whole lot of people to be really angry, I'll tell you. But but I will say this, I do think there are people because everything gets so tribal, so quickly that even something where you're trying very hard to offer a good faith and compassionate criticism of something, a movement or whatever, it will be taken as hatred and so there's in some ways there's almost nothing you can do about that. So you're not writing really for the people who are dug in. But there is a huge number of people, particularly on the race issue and some others who really are curious. They're curious, you know, maybe for reasons of where they grew up and the kind of education they received, they're learning a lot of things for the very first time. So, for example, I wrote something about the Tulsa Race Massacre that happened in 1921, and I asked this question How old were you when you first learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre? And a huge number of people said, Oh, my 40s or my 50s or my 60s? And I had some people who wrote me emails saying, I'm 80 years old and I just heard about this. And so what's happening for a lot of people is there's sort of a historical journey, not so much of an ideological journey, but a historical journey. And once you walk down that historical path, it has a lot of implications. It has a lot of implications. And this is one of the reasons, incidentally, why the battles over American history being taught in schools are so vitriolic and intense.
Beth [00:34:06] I think part of what I was trying to get to that I didn't articulate well is that I see in your writing what feels like a deliberate attempt to bring new language to the conversations that everyone is having. You wrote in the piece that we started with about how the students who seemed to be dinged when they're applying to college for expressing an ideology are not conservative or liberal. They are students of color that that when a black student expresses any sort of political opinion, that is a problem vs. white students expressing either ideology are welcome. And I thought that was such a good way to not use the word privilege and just show what privilege means. And I feel like you do that all the time.
David French [00:34:50] I try.
Beth [00:34:51] I love to know more about your process in trying to do.
David French [00:34:54] Yeah, I try. And the reason why is, I think when you're writing in in very entrenched time, if you use buzzwords that have accepted meanings on one side of the spectrum, they often have an entirely different meaning on the other side of the spectrum. And then you're fighting over the buzz word and you're fighting over definitions. If you then just describe the underlying phenomenon that you're talking about, rather than using the buzzword, you can often but not always push through. So and actually have a real conversation about the thing itself. Now I found that there is one area where that just doesn't work. That just doesn't work. I used to try to really avoid the term use of the term systemic racism or institutional racism, because immediately you would get sidetracked into that. That's not real. That doesn't exist. So I would back up and I would use this phrase. If you have three hundred and forty five years of institutional racist policies defended by violence, the effects of that that's from slavery through Jim Crow. The effects of that are not eliminated in fifty seven years of contentious change since the Civil Rights Act. Well, that's a definition of systemic racism. And so all of a sudden, all over sort of parts of the internet, people are saying he's saying systemic racism. Don't be fooled. He's saying systemic racism. So what I've tried to do in those kinds of discussions, though, is to make sure that if we're going to talk about that, what we're understanding is we're defining our terms in a way that people can deal with the definition without having to sort of deal with the buzzword. And that there's a distinction. There's a distinction because one of the things that when people hear the word systemic racism, for example, what they're hearing is you're calling me a racist and you're calling the company I worked for racist. And that's not, you know, now there are companies that are racist. You know, there are institutions that are explicitly and people who are explicitly and intentionally racist, but that's generally not what you're talking about. And so you have to be very careful about how you're defining your terms. And one of the things about systemic racism is that realities that racist people put into place for racist reasons are often sustained by non-racist people for non-racist reasons. And once you understand that for a lot of people, it's like, Oh, I get it now. And you can look at it and then have a real conversation about things about such as like how school zones or zoning regulations for housing and all of these things that right now, you in the real world in 2021, you're thinking about a zoning rule in the last thing on your mind. The last thing on your mind is racism and redlining and all of that. But what you're zoning rule might be doing is sustaining the very structure that was created by racism and redlining, etc. So that's how I try to do it. But there's always a lot of people in the background saying he's woke, he's getting woke.
Sarah [00:38:10] I think that's a perfect example of what I see so often, which is we are so entrenched and we are so hateful. I don't know another word for it. Hateful towards the other side that we're never talking to them. We're never like really talking to them because we're all so entrenched. We know we're not going to convince the other side. We're more attacking the people who are in theory on our side. I sent Beth Nadia Bolz-Weber's newsletter this week, and she wrote, For the last several years, it has felt like being a progressive on social media is like playing a poorly designed video game in which you never actually gauge the other team. You just earn ranking points by showing how the people on your own team are wrong. If you can call out the ideological impurity of another person's tweet, you get to level up and the game and call it activism. And I see that on the left and the right. I feel like you experienced that very personally.
David French [00:39:02] Oh goodness, yes. Yes, yes. I mean, yeah. So you have really sort of two things that are going on at once. One is you're you're sort of lobbying one of the ways that you level up now in this highly ideological terrain that we're in are highly polarized terrain. It's not as ideological anymore, but it's just driven more by animosity as you level up by directing devastating fire at the other side. And the other way you level up is by directing devastating fire at people on your own side who are not sufficiently angry at the other side. Yeah. And so it's it's a formula. It's, you know, call out the left or call out the right. And then if somebody on your own team isn't fully on board with you in calling out the left or calling out the right, well, then they're traitors or what, you know, whatever the language you want to use and you're calling out them too. And it is. I love that visual of leveling up. Because you do see this all the time on social media, you are leveling up in those two quite distinct methods. But at the same time, there's more of a silent group of people who lurk around on social media saying, I just want to learn about some stuff, you know, I'm just trying to figure out this world. It's really hard to figure out. And what's interesting is if you approach this stuff with an open mind, it kind of starts to feel devastating to everybody on every side of the spectrum. There was this great video put out by the New York Times about liberal hypocrisy on things like, Oh, you saw this?
Sarah [00:40:37] Yeah, zoning yes, so good.
David French [00:40:40] Yes. So good. And you know, so when you are in good faith looking at these things, then you're even in your own community. It can be sobering to sort of and in fact, I'm writing about that today, I'm writing about that video today. And then also The Daily had this tremendous podcast this morning about this highway running through New Orleans that just bisected and destroyed a African-American neighborhood. You know, one of the things that I'm talking about is the way in which central planning or in the way in which self-interest can devastate communities or sustain injustices in ways that we that we are only just now learning about.
Sarah [00:41:26] Well, I think you know, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesia and a lot, even some of the people at Vox have been doing good work on this. Just pointing out like, look, if if liberals are always right, then California should be a paradise. But I don't define paradise as an $800000 median home price, you know, like that's just not that's not on my list of things I'm striving for. Like, there's things to figure out. Nobody has a monopoly on perfection around here, and that doesn't mean that this is a false equivalency. I'm a Democrat. I think Democrats are closer than Republicans. I like a lot, you know, like that's still the idea that like, you're beyond critique because the because that's what it is on both sides. Well, I'm beyond catty because they are so terrible. They're so terrible.
David French [00:42:06] And if you critique, engage in any self-critique, people will turn on you with a vengeance because it's seen as weakening the team against the greater evil. I was talking not long ago with an expert in conflict in the developing world, and she and some of her team have come back to the US because they're seeing some of the same kinds of phenomenon that are happening in the developing world that cause civil strife. Here in the U.S. and one of the interesting things, because we are talking about some of the really vicious hard right attacks on me and my family and my wife and my youngest daughter over the last several years, and she said something very interesting. She said that revolutionary movements and extremist movements always, always focus on in-group dissenters. And you see this online. That's a Twitter dynamic where if you're not fully on board.
Sarah [00:43:00] That's terrifying.
David French [00:43:00] Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's why there's so little self-critique, because if you do look in the mirror as a movement, you're not focusing on the other side. And if you're not focusing on the other side, you're diluting your strength against the greater evil.
Beth [00:43:18] And it's hard because as important as critique is, it is not usually action oriented. I'm thinking about that posture of curiosity that you just described, which is something we talk about a lot. A really helpful shift for me. Going from associate in large law firm to political podcaster is I am less interested now in to whom I'm comparing myself to which was my whole world inside the law firm. And now I think about, OK, what am I responsible for? And when I think about what I'm responsible for, something like the Kyle Rittenhouse trial that you've written extensively and thoughtfully about. Feels tough. So if I'm being curious about that, I realize that I'm a citizen, not a juror. And that's really frustrating because as a citizen, I don't have a role here as to this trial and the jury system. The court system cannot deliver everything that is needed for healing around a situation like that. And I wonder just where you see opportunities for us to keep that posture of curiosity without getting down when there are a lot of places where I think I'm not responsible for this, but I don't think an institution can be either. I don't think government can be either. I don't think I don't think the landed gentry should be either right like that. I don't I don't know who holds this problem.
Sarah [00:44:47] Well, in theory, the church could sometimes if it was in a healthier place, that's my opinion.
David French [00:44:52] No, I agree with that. And I think there's a couple of things. One is we want to be informed citizens because we have a general responsibility as citizens and not just in how we vote, but how we participate. It shapes how we choose to participate or not participate locally. And so I think more information in sort of helping us understand the world around us is just part of being what an educated citizen in a republic is. But at the same time, we can't have our eyes cast all the always on the things that are distant from us that we have no control over. There's a kind of, I think, a truism of life that says We have we can have a lot of influence over a small number of people and very little influence over a large number of people. And that is true of even people with big public platforms. I mean, your your day to day influence over another human being, even with a big public platform, is pretty small. But our ability to impact the world in our media, you know, the six inches in front of our face is pretty large. And so one of the problems in this time is we've inverted that. Our attention, our attention is always on the things that we cannot really control, which just builds a lot of frustration and it distracts us from the things that are just right here in front of our face. And so one of the things that I talk to people about in when we're talking about all of these things, from race to school curriculum to you name it. What is it that's six inches in front of my face along these lines that I have a particular expertize or passion about and could just move the ball, you know, even if you're just moving it like six inches, at least you're moving at six inches because if you're all you're doing is Facebooking about it, you're not moving the ball at all. You're just making yourself and others angry, and so that, you know, when I talk about things on a national scale, I keep pulling, trying to pull back to things like we don't have to figure out everything about the narrative of American history. But we can do this. We can repeal a qualified immunity, which is this doctrine that allows agents of the state to violate our civil rights without just compensation. You know, I don't have to be in total agreement with somebody about all issues of race or class or gender or whatever to agree on that much. And if we can get that done, what's the next thing? And so that's where I, you know, I try to encourage people to sort of stay focused on that six inches in front of your face as opposed to I have to be completely in harmony with my movement on all of the things. And and until I can sort of get that all of the things in my mind correctly, I sort of feel paralyzed during it, full of anxiety or full of anger. Now we should turn our gaze a little bit closer.
Sarah [00:47:41] Well, and I just want to say that as a person with a large platform, I think what you do beautifully in what should be the call for all of us with platforms is help people see those six inches more clearly. That's hard to do. It's easy to fire people up about the stuff far away. It's harder to connect the dots and say, How can I help you with the spirit of curiosity? See the thing six inches in front of your face that you do have influence on a little more clearly, and you have definitely done that for me, and I want to thank you so much for your work.
David French [00:48:11] Well, I appreciate that so much. A really, you know, it really is the case that there are a lot of people in this country of goodwill who want a way out of this constant sniping and fury and rage. But it's hard because when you engage in politics, you're going to get shocked with the political cattle prod to the point. And we recoil from that. And it's not just public figures anymore, it's private citizens. I have a friend who on January 6th, he was very pro-Trump, and on January six, he posted a condemnation of the violence and didn't mention Trump at all. Didn't mention the Republican Party at all. Just condemn the violence. He had friendships strained, almost lost his relationship with his father. Like, that's that that's how toxic politics has become. But you just can't concede the ground to people who are that extreme. Otherwise, we're in much a world of much worse hurt than we're already in.
Beth [00:49:11] And it's hard to disconnect from those national narratives. Just I was thinking as we were talking about race for a bit here, it's it's a little bit risky for three white people to have a conversation about race, right? And at the same time, that is where I'm much less worried about being woke in a positive or negative way and more worried about taking responsibility and the white person. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to talk about race and to confront race and to think about the ways in which I perpetuate those systems for non-racist reasons. And I think staying oriented to that six inches is such a good way to to ask yourself, What am I trying to do here? Am I trying to level up in that system that's way out here? Or or am I trying to to go forward an inch in my circle of influence?
David French [00:49:59] Well, and I love the word you use responsibility because that word is very different. So here's here's the way the discourse often goes. Someone will hear. Well, you'll hear about things that happened in the past, and they'll say, don't make me feel guilty for what I didn't do. OK, fair enough. You know, fair enough. But do we have a shared responsibility for correcting the wrongs that still exist? That's different from saying you should feel guilty for something that happened, you know, a hundred years before you're born. But to say that we're inherited a system that has some inequities in just this is contained within it that we have a responsibility to correct is a different thing. And in a lot of other ways, this makes total sense. So if you have a car, a corporation and let's say it, there's a big chemical spill and it just ruins the environment in the town. You can fire the CEO, you can fire the the chief operating officer. But the corporation, what still has a responsibility to clean up the spill? There is a corporate responsibility if you have a governmental entity, say a city government that spent a century or more in very involved in explicit racial segregation and discrimination and that created consequences. Just voting out the people who created the consequences doesn't deal with the effects. And so I and that's where, you know, a lot of people will say, Well, you're trying to make me feel guilty. No, no. There's a difference between guilt and responsibility. Those are different concepts.
Sarah [00:51:40] Well, again, thank you so much for coming on the show and both in your written work and here with us today helping us sort through this difficult, polarized time. You can come back any, any time, and until then you can find David's work on The Dispatch and newly congratulations, by the way, on a newsletter for The Atlantic, so we hope you'll check it out.
David French [00:52:02] Thanks so much for having me, guys. I really appreciate it.
Sarah [00:52:15] Thank you to David for joining us. We hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as we did. Now we're going to continue into the land of, I don't know, because we're talking about TikTok. I've fallen hard for TikTok. Where are you with TikTok these days?
Beth [00:52:28] Oh, I continue to feel really on the struggle bus with TikTok because I think about what Klon Kitchen told us several episodes back that really having TikTok on my phone is not being a good digital citizen here in the United States. I do think that there are some very talented and funny people on TikTok. And so when I use it, which is maybe once a week, I have curated a list of those people who I find hilarious. One of them is a woman who and we'll put these links in. The show notes. One of them is a woman who stands outside her bathrobe and yells things at the universe. And I really like that one of them does great impressions. I'm really here for people who do great impressions, and then occasionally I get drawn into the organizational TikTok space because I do find it helpful. But I was interested in talking to you about this because you shared on the news brief about some of their safety information that circulating TikTok. And I think there is a good public service to share here.
Sarah [00:53:26] Listen, I love to talk. I'm all in. I learned so much from TikTok, including as covered in the viral news story that there is a an emergency alert wave. So if you can signal to people that your domestic situation is unsafe but you can't say it out loud, you hold your hand up, you tuck your thumb and then you put your fingers over your thumb and you kind of use it with your thumb tucked as a way to wave, right? And this girl was doing this on the highway for miles and miles until somebody saw her recognized it from TikTok and called the highway patrolman and they saved her from kidnaping TikTok out there, changing lives. Look, here's where I'm at with TikTok. I really appreciate Klon Kitchen's advice. I am rejecting it because I've just realized, like, I've seen this happen enough that platforms social media platforms in particular are just the funnest in the beginning. In the beginning where it is doors wide open, everybody's out there figuring out what works. Being creative, the corporations haven't taken over and occupied the platform yet with their advertising. It's just so fun and that's where TikTok is right now. There is a moment where Facebook was so fun. There was a moment when Twitter was so fun. There was a moment with Instagram was so fun. And this is TikTok's moment. And look, it is addictive as hell. I'm not trying to lie about that. I will. I have twice gotten the TikTok warning like, Hi friend, you've been on here a while. You need a drink, you take a break and take a breath and I'm like, Tick. Mind your business. Thank you. I love fashion. TikTok Carlo Rockmore the like especially like 40 plus 50 plus fashion. TikTok. Not to brag, but over Thanksgiving, my sister in law's nieces complimented my fashion. They told me I was in style and am today. You know why TikTok, TikTok is like, Hey, you need a plaid jacket, OK TikTok I will get one. Hey, you need some leather pants. OK, don't wear your jeans like this anymore. Okay, I got it TikTok out and I'm just out here surfing those trends with the young'uns feeling myself. I love it not to listen. This is my actually my gold star TikTok moment. It was. It wasn't even like it was actually a celebrity. It was Derek Hoke from Dancing With the Stars. And he was like, It's like one of those like, you were so many minutes old when you learned and you can adjust the height of your top dishwasher rack. Did you know this?
Beth [00:55:52] I did not know this.
Sarah [00:55:53] I did not, and I was not feeling my dishwasher that I had to get new because my other one died and there were no other dishwashers. And it was always bumping into my plates and I just took it up a notch, solved all my problems because it TikTok. I freaking love it.
Beth [00:56:08] I love about you. How on a societal level, you rail against consumerism. On a personal level, you're like, Tell me what to buy TikTok? I'll go get it.
Sarah [00:56:17] OK, I'll do it. I bought so much Christmas a decor because TikTok taught me to. Yeah, I take talks like you did about Am I OK? I have so many fave Amazon buys like the Amazon algorithm on my TikTok is poppin so many Amazon racks I have. I've sort of reined it in. I'm like, Don't do it. You fall for this every time and sometimes. But the problem is it's like, you know, it's like the social experience or the psychological experiment with the rats, and they get treats when they press randomly versus they get treats when they press the lever every time. Like, that's the problem with like Amazon buy TikTok is because randomly, you'll be like, this was life changing. Thank you, TikTok. And then the next time you're like, Well, I better do it again. Oh, I just love it. I love all of it. I love the like I do vintage hair, TikTok like watch people pin curl and stuff, or the like old school like 1800s clothes all day. I could watch that stuff. I love it so much.
Beth [00:57:09] I just I hate the feeling of just staring at my phone. The more I. Do it, the more I hate it, I do get pulled into to inadvertently through Pinterest sometimes. So I was looking at gift wrapping ideas on Pinterest and during a lull in one of our family gatherings, this is when I probably stare at my phone the most during a lull in a family gathering. And I was looking with Jane at them, at my in-laws house, and Jane starts pulling all these videos and I realize, Oh, it's like gift wrap TikTok that has been curated for us by Pinterest. It was helpful. There were some fun ideas. I did order something from Amazon on the couch as I was looking at them.
Sarah [00:57:49] See TikToks out there to make your life better. That's all I'm saying.
Beth [00:57:52] We're going to get so many emails about consumerism, the use of TikTok and the use of Amazon from this segment. Sorry, Alise.
Sarah [00:58:00] OK. And also, though, I am also a part of the conscientious consumerism TikTok, which is also very good, the woman who showed all the slashed coach bags that was bananas and coach changed its policy because of her TikTok. And I watched that there's a couple like conscientious consumers and actually the TikTok. I love the fashion. Like all these categories, fashion like sort of trends, all that. My favorite is thrift, ticktalk, thrift. It talk isn't what these people get from thrift stores and what they do with them and how they style them. I went to a state sale this weekend, bought all this stuff. I'm like, How can I tell tik talk about my vintage Chanel scarf I got for $85? Thank you. They would be so happy for me. I got to figure out. I mean, I have a TikTok channel. I'm just not very good at sharing the videos, but I felt like I like knew what I was doing at that estate sale because the thrift TikTok. Oh, I love it so much.
Beth [00:58:52] How is this affecting your reading time or is it?
Sarah [00:58:56] Fine. Me and Barry still hanging out ten pages at a time. I love him so much. It's really spent enjoying my time.
Beth [00:59:03] By Barry, you mean you're reading Barack Obama's memoir?
Sarah [00:59:06] We should, you know, his friends and family call him Barry, which I think is the best name for him. And I love to call him Barry. And then, yeah, I finished a novel over Thanksgiving that was really good called The Paper Palace, almost through Oh William! Elizabeth Strout's new book, my husband and I are going to read the Overstory together. Ah, yeah. I'm Jammin'. Doesn't affect my reading time at all.
Beth [00:59:24] Very good. Well, I'm glad that you're enjoying it. I would like you to continue to bring those safety measures to my attention.
Sarah [00:59:31] OK.
Beth [00:59:31] That is where I do feel like TikTok is making a contribution. I don't want to personally investigate that contribution, but I would like to hear about it through others.
Sarah [00:59:39] Listen it, take talk does anything good, I will tell you about it. Fear not. Fear not. Enthusiasm is and sharing is sort of my thing. All right. Thank you. Obviously, I want to hear all y'all's favorite TikTok channels. Share a way for all my TikTok fans out there. Thank you for joining us. As we, you know, consistently wade through the sea of, I don't know when it comes to COVID and TikTok, and God knows what else. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, Keep It Nuanced Ya'll.
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