A Chorus of 10,000 Voices

TOPICS DISCUSSED

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EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Beth [00:00:00] Listening to all of those voices individually on every single note leads you to this place where everything is filled with contradictions. Everything is filled with contradictions. And it has just helped me to know I need to listen to this as a chorus. I can be really sensitive to the things that I'm learning from it, and at the same time recognize I got to hear it with one sound and I've got to hear the trends. I have to hear the song, not the notes, because that's the only way that I can make sense of the world. 

Sarah [00:00:43] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. 

Beth [00:00:45] And this is Beth Silvers. 

Sarah [00:00:47] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. We are thrilled to be here with you today and to be back together after two weeks of spring break. Welcome back, Beth. 

Beth [00:01:13] I'm so happy to be here. Two weeks is a long time. 

Sarah [00:01:16] I know. It is a long time to not be in our regular routine of coming together and processing the news and talking through what it is to be an American today. And actually after two weeks, we have a lot to say about that. That's what we're going to tackle today. We're going to do some real political therapy on the show, and talk about why it feels so hard to be an American at this particular moment in history, particularly, when it comes to social media. Before we do that, we're going to check in on the episodes we missed with each other. We're going to check in on a couple headlines, follow up on a story we covered in a previous episode, and then we're going to tackle what Beth calls the chorus of 10,000 voices in the main segment of the show. And then at the end of the show, we'll talk about what's on our minds outside of politics and discuss our spring break trips. 

Beth [00:02:04] We're getting real close to our book being out into the world, which means we're going to continue to tell you about it for a little bit. And thank you so much for your enthusiasm. Our launch team it's just out there every day telling people that this book is even better than they expected it to be. They started reading it. It's so fun to see their comments. It's so fun to discuss the book with them. I can't wait to get back in the launch team group coming off of vacation to say hello to everyone and thank you. So if you have not yet preordered, we would just humbly invite you to do so today because we do hope that this book will be helpful to you, and you're  hearing from people that they're finding it helpful. You can visit our website, fill out the form once you've preordered to join us on May 3rd for our virtual book launch party over on Crowdcast. We're going to be answering questions. You can send questions to us to Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I think that our book has a lot to say about the chorus of 10,000 that we're going to discuss today. 

Sarah [00:02:59] That's exactly what I was just going to say. 

Beth [00:03:01] I'm excited to keep this conversation going. 

Sarah [00:03:03] There's just so much pain out there right now in interpersonal relationships and in community and institutions. And hearing from our launch team, I'm just reminded like, yeah, this speaks to a lot of what people are experiencing. And you don't have to be a big listener of the show. If you have people in your lives that are struggling with these broken relationships or struggling with community institutions or congregations or just struggling, send this book to them. We really honestly believe it could help because it just gives voice. It just says, yes, a lot of people are experiencing this. We're experiencing it. These are our stories. These are our listeners stories. I think it can really help put some words and some framework around what people are experiencing. So we hope that you will preorder it yourself, maybe send it to people in your lives who you think might need it. And, again, the link for the preorder bonuses in the show notes. 

[00:03:59] Before we get started, we did want to check in on our weeks of episodes without each other. Beth, I thought your conversation with Emily and Chad was so incredible. Emily is such a rock star. I've been following her for so long and still I heard some new things in that conversation you had with her. And I've had lots of listeners and lots of people in my life say, "Wow, she's incredible. That was such a cool conversation you had." 

Beth [00:04:25] Emily has such clarity about what she wants to say. It was so easy to talk with her about a really tender subject, and I really appreciated the way that our listeners received that episode. I think it always surprises people to hear me call myself fat. Like, it's funny to me how how much it bugged my kids to hear that in the car. So we had a lot of discussions about that in our house. And they said, "But you always say we don't talk about other people's bodies." And I said, "That's right, we don't talk about other people's bodies. But we can talk about our own bodies." And I said, "I'm not saying that as a negative thing. I'm seeing it as like an objective description." And all it means to me is that there are some challenging aspects to being a person in a world that is built for one category of people when bodies exist in lots of other ways. And I really appreciated -- I think that what Emily did in this conversation was make this very welcoming for people to come in. Without any weirdness, to say it's kind of hard to be really short too, or it's kind of hard to be really tall. Like, we do have a very limited understanding of what a body looks like. And we're going to talk about more, I think, as the show goes on. It's tough to feel like it's okay to bring your own experience to a conversation about someone else's experience. And I think that Emily just brilliantly says, no, everybody matters here. 

Sarah [00:05:52] We ask because we then opened up our husbands and my friend Leslie and Erin Moon to the chorus of 10,000 voices. They took it beautifully. You guys were so supportive and it was really funny. What we heard from our end was Nicholas got a lot of text messages that were like, wait, you're more progressive than Sarah? I didn't know that. Because I describe him like that it's just the truth. But I think there's some gendered component to that, if I'm being honest. Like, I think people just assume that the woman is the more liberal in the relationship a lot of the time.

Beth [00:06:24] I think it has the component of what you say all the time about personality. Because Nicholas is temperamentally more moderate than you are. If you're just having dinner with Nicholas, his perspective is not going to come across as passionately as yours is. But when you look at actual policy, he's quite a bit more progressive than you are and I think more Partisan than you are. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but just that he is more interested in democratic victory. You are very invested in that, but not to the way he is. 

Sarah [00:06:55]  Yes.  And it's so funny. Well, and it was really funny because I had a good friend of both of ours reach out and say about Chad. I don't think Chad likes politics that much. I just don't think he cares that much. I think that's the right takeaway. 

Beth [00:07:08] I think that's right. And that's part of why I love discussing things with him because he's really smart. 

Sarah [00:07:14] Because that's not a voice you hear in the chorus of 10,000 as the person that's not like a political hobbyist 24/7. 

Beth [00:07:20] That's right. He's smart, he's well-informed, but he does not eat, sleep and breathe that. He much more eats, sleeps and breathes what's going on with financial markets, what's going on with technology. Like, all of the components that contribute in equal and sometimes larger ways than politics to how the world goes around and how people's lives are being shaped. And so he makes my thinking better because he is not tracking political Twitter all day. 

Sarah [00:07:46] Well, I think it's so incredibly important to elevate voices like that to remind people that some of this is your interests. You know, it's not necessarily an objective like ethical stance to be highly invested in politics. I always say that. I say, the business page impacts my life an enormous amount too, but I don't read that with tremendous dedication. I understand that some of this is just what you're interested in, and I just think it's really important to remind people of that. And  we're so grateful to everyone who stepped in the last week. Leslie and Representative Jose Ramon and the team at Vote Mama, Erin, Emily, our beloved husbands, we really, really, appreciate everyone who brought their voices and their perspectives and their stories to Pantsuit Politics. 

[00:08:45] On my episode with Nicholas on Friday, Beth, I did say that we would be speaking about the death of Patrick Lyoya in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It happened on April 4th. There was a lot of protesting and community demand for release of the footage, which then came out on Friday. It's really, really, horrific. For those of you don't know, Patrick was a 26-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who was fatally shot in the back of the head by an officer for the Grand Rapids Police Department during a scuffle following a traffic stop. He was unarmed. The Michigan State Police are investigating the circumstances. The Grand Rapids police chief has said that they will not release the officer's name until either the officer has been charged with the crime or the investigation comes to an end. 

[00:09:33] But there were protests in Grand Rapids over the weekend, with community members demanding that the officer be held responsible. I was really struck by many of the protests were also really celebrations and attempts to help people understand who Patrick Lyoya was. You know, he loved music and so there was a lot of music and they were talking about his two daughters. And I thought Illuminating and elevating his humanity in the midst of all this is really, really, important and it's very impactful. 

Beth [00:10:12] It's just a difficult thing to sit with the reality that a refugee who received asylum in the United States escaping a violent country and then was shot dead by a police officer because of improper vehicle registration. This was a traffic stop, not because of something criminal happening, it was an administrative traffic stop. It's hard to know what to say about police shootings that hasn't been said a hundred times over. I think about this particular one very much in the category of our conversations about no knock warrants. It seems to me that we have a predictably dangerous situation happening when people get pulled over in their cars. And you can imagine why, your car is an extension of your house on wheels, right? You have an expectation of privacy in your car and you're being immediately pulled over with no time to prepare for it. Often feeling a sense of danger about being pulled over on the road, that is a situation just like a no knock warrant that is too dangerous for a police officer, and it's too dangerous for the person or people with whom the police are interacting. And I just think as a society, we got to talk about cost-benefit analysis here. 

Sarah [00:11:40] Yeah. For what? And for what, what did we do all that for?

Beth [00:11:44] The answer is often, well, I guess we can use technology to police those kinds of things. And there are issues about privacy with that. But I would rather work through the hard issues of technology and privacy and discretion in terms of meeting out penalties than continue to place both police officers and the people they're interacting with and the rest of the highway in the kind of danger that these traffic stops result in. 

Sarah [00:12:12] Well, and I think also his status as a refugee to me just triggered the complexity that every human being brings to these stops. And we give police officers this process as if you can just walk through these easy steps to figure out what's going on. Not that they're not always prepared for an emergency situation or at least trained for emergency situations, but how do you train someone to say, well, this is what a refugee from Congo's experience with law enforcement is in their original country? Like, how would one go about training somebody for that? How would you say, well, for two decades plus of his existence in another country, this is what traffic stop look like. Or there aren't traffic stops. Or this is what it looks like when a police officer stops you. Or these aren't common. 

[00:13:00] Like, I mean, there's a million different facets of this, and to what end are we doing this? How could we possibly reduce the danger when you're bringing that level of human complexity to a highly charged situation to achieve what to achieve what? To just cast a wide net with these traffic stops in the hopes that you bring back some criminality? That's not a demand to end policing. That's a totally different thing, but the way in which we police, particularly when it comes to these traffic stops we have got to examine. 

Beth [00:13:41] We undoubtedly have public safety problems right now. I saw an 18 wheeler pulled over on the side of the road and someone leaning over, probably dealing with a tire on it. But the way this person was leaning and my peripheral vision, I had a moment where I thought, is that a gun? It wasn't. It was fine. And I don't think of myself as particularly paranoid. I don't think about crime a lot, probably because I had just read a ton of articles about how many guns were purchased during the pandemic, about police shootings. 

Sarah [00:14:16] It was a very violent weekend. 

Beth [00:14:19] It was  a very violent weekend. So we have a public safety issue right now. To me, that means especially if you care about policing as a component of dealing with public safety issues, we got to be really sensitive to what different communities are experiencing right now. We got to really care about officer safety. Is it worth the risk to a police officer to do a traffic stop like this? I don't think it is. I don't think it is. And it's certainly not worth this young man's life or anyone else's. And so I agree with you. I think that the the whole back the blue or defund the police conversation has advanced our understanding of some issues and has outlived its usefulness in terms of our dialog about what is needed today. And so, to me, what is needed today is, like, let's look at some precise things that we know to be consistently dangerous and make some decisions about this. 

Sarah [00:15:13] It's also the wider policy conversation is separate from this individual incident. There will need to be an investigation. There will need to be responsibility taken. That's the hard part whenever these shootings happen and they will happen again, unfortunately. We have to have two conversations simultaneously as community members and as citizens. 

Beth [00:15:38] Localized and nationalized and lots of layers in between. 

Sarah [00:15:43] It's so hard. It's so hard. We also wanted to follow up on an episode we did several months ago on devious leaks. Beth, do you remember devious leaks? 

Beth [00:15:54] I do. 

Sarah [00:15:56] So we did an episode on this Tik Tok trend in which the young people, of which we are no longer members, they were doing pranks. There was like they were pulling soap dispensers off the wall. It was a challenge on Tik Tok you're supposed to do. Soap dispensers and sort of destroying stuff. And it was happening.

Beth [00:16:15] The was a slap a teacher moment. 

Sarah [00:16:16] Slap a teacher. These things were happening. Actual bathrooms were being defaced and taken apart. That was a thing that was happening. Okay. But then there was this larger conversation around how did it get started, where did all this media coverage come from? There was a really great episode of reply. Where did these this specific list of challenges come from? It doesn't look like it was a screenshot from a Tik Tok video. It looks like like a notes app. But then they did all this investigation into a Facebook app with teachers and administrators, and they think that's what came up. So then I'm sitting. I'm doing my little News Brief reading. It was a couple of weeks ago about the end of March, and there was exclusive reporting from Tyler Lorens and Drew Harwell [sp] at The Washington Post about Facebook had actually hired a firm called Targeted Victory. 

[00:17:05] And it was pushing media coverage, and I'm assuming maybe even boosting  posts within Facebook calling TikTok a threat to America. This is a quote. "The dream would be to get stories with headlines like from dances to danger," one campaign director said. It was like opposition research, opposition tactics from Facebook trying to take down TikTok. And they specifically cited devious lyrics as a part of this campaign, and I literally went, oh. Because at first I felt a little bamboozled. Like, did Pantsuit Politics get swept up in this?y? 

Beth [00:17:42] Everyday I am grateful that we read Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing.Because that book I think so clearly helped me understand what the attention economy means and what it's going to require to sustain itself. And so, to me, this story is a manifestation of what Jenny Odell is trying to tell you, in part. The book is about lots of things, but in part I think she's saying, "Hello, when people make money off your attention, they are invested in getting your attention and that has all kinds of ramifications." I don't feel bamboozled in that it was a real thing that was happening, and I hope the conversation we had was larger and more relevant than what platform started it. At the same time, I'm really grateful for this reporting because it is a reminder of what the attention economy requires to sustain itself and how much of this is probably happening that we don't know about and how much more of it's going to be happening in the future. 

Sarah [00:18:47] Well, we're about to really get into the attention economy. This is a good transition. Up next, we're going to talk about talking. Actually, I think we're going to talk about talking and why it's so hard to talk as Americans right now in this moment in history. Beth, recently you were telling me about your parenting coaching. And you said I've named something I've been experiencing, which just feeling like everything I do and everything I say I can hear the chorus of 10,000 voices in my head. And when you said that it felt like a little door in my brain opened up and I thought, that's it. So tell us about the chorus. Tell us about how you came to this conclusion and naming this particular feeling. 

Beth [00:19:50] Well, the first thing I want to say about this is that it is a loving metaphor. I love a chorus. I was in one for a long time. I feel like one of the only things really missing in my life right now is that I don't sing regularly with other people. So it's a loving metaphor. At the same time, I have felt a narrowing in my own thinking because of the awareness that I have of how many people listen to what I say and not even people listen to what I say, but engage with what we create. And I realized, as I was very carefully speaking, three of my children's fights with each other to a person I had hired to listen to me talk about that, that I have so constrained my own vocabulary in a lot of ways. And if you are listening right now and thinking, Oh God, I cancel culture conversation or another diatribe about wokeness, I really think I mean something different. 

[00:20:49] I think what it has occurred to me is that I'm more and more understand that I need to think of the internet. And I don't just mean social media, but the whole of the internet, like an asteroid, would have affected the dinosaurs. That there is something new in human history that has been working on us for about 10 years, probably longer than that, but I really felt it as an adult for about 10 years and will continue to work on us. The constant exposure to other people offers an education that I am grateful for.  And it also offers this chorus of voices where if you listen to them all individually, every single note, you will lose your mind. Because listening to all of those voices individually on every single note leads you to this place where everything is filled with contradictions. Everything is filled with contradictions. 

[00:21:54] And it has just helped me to know I need to listen to this as a chorus. I can be really sensitive to the things that I'm learning from it, and at the same time recognize I got to hear it with one sound and I've got to hear the trends. I have to hear the song, not the notes, because that's the only way that I can make sense of the world. Like, it's just too much. My brain has not met this asteroid yet. I am not involved enough. Maybe people in the future will be able to process all this information differently than I am. But it's given me like a sense of physicality about what it's like to take in this much information that has really been helpful to me. 

Sarah [00:22:35] When you name that, I had been struggling with sort of separate threads of the same issue. And even when I said to Maggie I think this might be a good topic of conversation, I even did what you just did. Oh, I know people are going to say nobody wants to hear content creators complain. The constant disclaimers is wearing me out. It makes me tired to be in my own head. And I thought,  first of all, it's our podcast. If we want to complain, we should be able to unapologetically. That's the first thing. We built it. We did it for free for several years. So if we want to complain about how hard it is, sometimes that should be allowed. Somebody who's an influencer on Twitter should be able to complain about how hard it is. Sometimes people should be able to complain. So maybe that's my first hurdle I'd like to stake a little bit of claim on. Complaining is fine in context. 

Beth [00:23:32] A lot can be going right in your life and you'd still have to complain. That's a good principle. Right? 

Sarah [00:23:37] And you'd still complain, right? So that was the first thing is, well, look, I'm doing it even around this conversation. And the second thing is, the reason that we do keep sniffing around, talking about, tweeting about cancel culture is because we are clearly all worried about it and thinking about it. Mad about it, mad other people are mad about it. Now, I think we use those words to contain too much. But even two weeks ago when we had a conversation about Will Smith and the Oscars, we had a listener reach out and say, "Hey, I don't think white people are supposed to be talking about this." And we responded and said, "Hey, we were affected, we're going to talk about it." She's like, "Well, I just was so worried. I didn't want you guys to get canceled because I love you." And I thought, what is happening? What is happening right now that the people who listen to us are also not just carrying their own concerns and anxiety about their words, but also carrying the anxiety about our words and how people might respond to them. 

[00:24:34] And so when you name that, and especially when you take a break from it when you get away for a week and you go on vacation with your family, and you just engage like we used to back in nineteen-dickety-four and just talk to the people in your surroundings, and then you come back to it, you're like, you feel that oppressiveness. And I don't think it's just people who talk for a living, right? I think a lot of us are feeling that. A lot of you have sent us the Jonathan Haidt Atlantic piece, Why The Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. He names specifically social media. He uses the analogy of darts. Like, everybody's throwing darts. The loudest voices get to throw darts. There's no contextualization which Jenny Odell talks about. There's no mediation. There was also a piece in the New York Times where they interviewed eight conservative men. What they named was very interesting and a fascinating companion to the Jonathan Haidt piece. 

[00:25:24] I think the drudgery of  interacting in public that we're all naming, the increased violence, the increased road rage, the increased traffic accidents, the distrust among one another, the stress we feel interacting in public and interacting with customer service and all that. There is this unnamed anxiety, or maybe it's the opposite problem. The anxiety is over named, I don't know. But this constant paranoia of I'm going to say the wrong thing, people are going to say things about me, they're going to hate me or I'm supposed to hate them. I think polarization as something we talk about constantly, it got to a point where it sort of felt cliche. Now I feel like we circled all the way back around to know this is hurting all of us. This sense of  we don't trust each other, we're not in it together, we're enemies, we're strangers, we're too different, we're too different from one another, is exhausting. It's exhausting. 

Beth [00:26:41] You know, you said, "I think it's affecting people other than content creators," and I just want to add to that. I think it affects other people a lot more than it affects me or anybody who's writing Atlantic pieces about it. Honestly, I think that when I read the New York Times piece talking to eight people who were not monolithic at all, they were not racially monolithic, from what I can tell, they were not monolithic in terms of socioeconomic status or education level or profession. 

Sarah [00:27:09] And I was embarrassed that I assumed that. I read that article and thought I was going to be eight white guys. I just did. I just assumed. Then I read it and I thought I was embarrassed I assumed that. 

Beth [00:27:17] Very diverse group of ages. And absolutely none of it surprised me. I laughed out loud about one guy saying that people are rude on the highway because they got to get to Chick-Fil-A. And I laughed because of the familiarity of that word to me. Because they sounded like a lot of people that I know, pretty much everybody that I know when they're talking in a place where they feel like they can just talk. I think it's really hitting people, and I do not think it is cancelation. I agree with you that word is lifting too much. I think it is more on the level of social shunning in teeny, tiny ways. And it's hard to talk about all of this without bringing race into the conversation and socioeconomic status and education. At the same time, I just want to name out loud that I'm trying to do that today. 

[00:28:17] I am deliberately trying not to bring those factors into the conversation today because I want to ask the smallest question I can here. That's a scale I've been working on. The only way I can figure my way out of this, the only way I can figure out how to navigate the chorus of 10,000 voices is to try to make my questions smaller and more focused. Because the other thing that I have somehow trained myself to do, and this is embarrassing to admit, I have become so reductive in the way that I think about other groups. In my quest to treat other groups of people better, I have become extremely reductive. And this really came to light for me with the Will Smith thing. I can't believe we're talking about the slap. 

Sarah [00:29:04] I'm telling you. Something broke open at that moment. I am telling you. 

Beth [00:29:08] What I realize is that I have fallen into a pattern of thinking, what do all black women think about this? Every life experience that I have off the internet tells me that all black women don't think the same thing about anything that is absurd, that is reductive, that is borderline racist. All black women don't think a thing about anything.  And that's what I kind of mean about the chorus of 10,000, because it leads me to want to just find the answer to any question. Like, I'm doing geometry on everything. I just want to work through the proof. Okay, this is what the New York Times opinion page would say about it. This is what the Wall Street Journal opinion page would say about it. This is what Twitter tells me black women think about it. This is what the AAPI community would think, and it's just reductive. And I don't want to do that. I want to be actually inclusive and actually in relationship with a diverse group of people who inform my perspective. 

[00:30:19] And so, today, and talking about this, I want to try to just talk about the universal experience as much as we can, recognizing that the universal experience is one percent of the conversation. But I would like to be able to get to that teeny tiny slice of it just to understand something a little differently instead of rehashing the same stuff. And, honestly, if I can just put in parentheses here, I know that I got a lot of messages about how hard it is for certain communities to hear Chad and I talk about the Republican Party and to specifically hear any kind of approving comments about any era of Republican politics. And I understand that and I care about it. I also don't feel defensive in any way because I know who I'm married to, and I don't feel angry that people received it that way. 

[00:31:17] And I don't feel apologetic for the conversation because I think the conversation is important. And the tiny question I wanted to answer in that episode is, what do current Republicans say it means to be a Republican? Not is that good or bad. Not should we be. What do current Republicans say it means to be a Republican? And I think what I want to work on in response to the chorus of 10,000 and myself is better articulating. Here is the narrow question that I'm trying to consider right now. Because as I keep telling people in my house who are having arguments with each other, we cannot allow every argument to carry the weight of everything that has come before and will come after. That is what stalls us out and flattens and reduces. 

Sarah [00:32:02] It is that loss of the universal that is breaking my heart right now, I think. It is that feeling that we have conversations, and the takeaway is there are parts of me that are unknowable to you. There are parts of my experience that are unknowable to you and the attempt to even try to understand is proof of your wrongness. And I think that is uniquely harmful to human beings as social creatures. So much of my values, my ethics, is the belief in the power and the devine found in the connection between human beings. And so when it becomes this sense of we are separate from each other, we are separate because of my sexuality, we are separate because of my gender, we are separate because of my race, we are separate because of my nationality, we are separate because of my socioeconomic status, there is just something fundamentally painful. And that I think the separation is what is hurtful that we can't find a path together. We can't find a connection. It's too much. 

[00:33:51] And I think we've decided, and what I feel like the chorus in my head is always saying is to point out this seperation, to do those constant parentheses. Oh, but I know this isn't your experience. Oh, but I know but I don't understand this. Oh, but I know but I'm privileged. Oh, but I know... And I'm doing it out of a deep desire not to hurt people, not to skip over somebody's experience, not to reduce down a perspective. But life is full of paradoxes, and the paradox of the desire to empathize is I feel more secluded. I feel less connected because in a desire to name literally everything, which is impossible, and I know that logically, but in a desire to name everything to not get anything wrong, especially because this is particularly relevant to the conversation around race, we did a racial reconciliation service at my church. It was all white people. It was written by a white person. I still think it was beneficial, but every piece of the program, it was just you have to name it. You have to be aware. You have to name the racism. 

[00:35:10]  And I thought, so often for people that are deeply concerned, who want nothing more than to -- especially as white people, to not be a part of the problem and to be a part of the solution, it feels like the only thing given to you is to name it. Make sure you name it. Make sure you name it. And so, in proportion to how awful the impression is, it feels like we in proportion name the oppression, right? It's like the only way for me to show how much I care and how bad I think this is, is to name it constantly. And, again, it's like at a moment in time that was needed, but now it just feels like it's just pushing us further and further and further away from each other because we can't get past anything else. And I don't think this is just true for race, but I do think this is where I feel it. I feel it with gender. I feel it with sexuality. That it's like the naming of it. And I think this is where the role of social media comes in because what is available to you on a social media platform, right? Speaking, naming, calling out. And so it's like, well, if I'm a good person and this is important to me, then this is what is available to me. To get on social media and to name it and to call it out. And it just becomes empty. 

[00:36:41] You know, it's so weird, I wrote this blog post like probably 10 years ago, saying you have to call things racist. Was when the Holiday Inn controversy, because at the time it felt like the only way to get people's attention about something that was so important was to use that word because it was a very powerful word. And it remains a powerful word, except for now using the word racist or using the word sexist, or using any sort of like accusation of prejudice, it just ends all connection. It ends all self-reflection. It ends any attempt to curiosity. And it's just breaking my heart because it feels like it's disconnecting us, pushing us further away from each other, and I don't think this is all individual choices. I think, like you said, there's no benefit of the doubt with one another anymore. It's all accusation. It's all worst case scenario. It's all attack. 

[00:37:43] And I think that is manifested for a lot of reason and accelerated on social media and accelerated on the internet, where we have access to one another. And I think it's taxing our relationships. I think it's taxing our institutions. I think it's taxing our democracy. Truly, what are we doing here together? What's the goal? And there are moments in a conversation or there are moments when I read headlines or I listen to people talk about politics, and I think I don't  know if we know anymore. I don't know if we know anymore what the goal is. 

Beth [00:38:22] And I think there's a physicality to that. I think you're right. I don't think it's individual choices. I think that's where a lot of the like wokeness cancel culture conversations become really pointless. Because it's like a discussion about how other people have lost their sense of -- because it's always a conversation about how other people have lost all common sense. And I don't think that's it. I think there is a physicality to this whole thing. When we were on spring break and I know we're going to talk more specifically about those trips in a minute, but I was on the internet almost not at all. Just three days of pretty disconnected, especially compared to my normal life. And I could feel physically the impact of that. And that's not I don't think about phone blue light or 5G or whatever. I think it was a sense that when you disconnect from the internet, the world suddenly becomes both larger and smaller in a way that physically feels more manageable. 

[00:39:38] And I imagine that there are people studying this and who have studied it, and that will continue to learn more and more about it. But when I match up that physical sensation of expansiveness and contraction with an article like Taylor Lawrence's work from The Washington Post telling us, Oh, yeah, the strings are getting pulled all the time for reasons. For many, many, reasons, the strings are getting pulled all the time. I'm way less angry at everybody for seeming to lose their common sense because I know I've lost mine too, and I can't ground. I don't have a true north on that anymore because I'm taking in an amount of information that I just don't think I'm evolutionarily capable of managing. 

Sarah [00:40:22] One hundred percent. I don't even feel angry. I really don't. Now, do I not roll my eyes at things I see on the internet? Of course I do. But one of the sort of foundational moments in my life, and you all going to laugh, but it's okay, I'm secure in who I am. It's an Oprah's 10th anniversary Dvd special. 

Beth [00:40:43] I was going to guess. 

Sarah [00:40:45] It was. 

Beth [00:40:48] I love this about you, by the way. 

Sarah [00:40:49] Thank you. She sits down with these mothers who killed their children. I mean, there's no easy way to put it. She goes to prison and she talks to them, and one of them says, "I just thought you were going to come here and judge us and basically make a mockery of us." And Oprah says, "You dealt with your pain your way, and I dealt with my pain my way." and that's just what I see when I look around. It's just like everybody's in so much pain. And we're taking it out on each other when we need each other the most at this moment. And I hear myself say that, and I want to make a joke about Kumbaya, and I want to make a million side comments about how, of course, the internet is connecting and it's built the community we have here. And for every time  I roll my eyes at a Twitter thread, I go into my DMs and we have listeners who are sharing with us that they're listening to our show as they have brain surgery. Like, I just can't. And it's so much to hold. And I think you said, I'm not sure we're evolutionarily built for this. It's a lot of empathy and sadness and heartbreak in happiness --

Beth [00:42:07] And beauty. Yeah. 

Sarah [00:42:08] And beauty and anger and I don't want to give it up. I don't want to give up the internet. I don't want to give up even social media. And I'm just desperate for a way to name what we're doing to each other so we can stop, and so we should keep the good parts and get rid of the parts that are wearing us all down to raw nerves. 

Beth [00:42:37] Well, here's the truth. I don't think we can stop. I don't. I just don't think that we can do a whole lot better than we're doing right now, because I think it's evolutionary. But what is helpful to me, and the reason that the chorus of 10,000 has been such a valuable shorthand for me, is because it just takes the pressure off. Because what I think we can do better on is not resenting each other through it because resentment is the poison. 

Sarah [00:43:04] I got so much of it right now, Beth. 

Beth [00:43:06] Yeah. I mean, everybody does and you can almost see it. Like, we're almost wearing it. 

Sarah [00:43:12] Yes. 

Beth [00:43:13] And so, to me, being like, oh, that's the chorus of 10,000 and knowing that I don't have all the tools to deal with it, and neither do the people singing and that I'm just one of the singers too at the end of the day, it has released a lot of pressure from me. I think that's my current formulation of Grace. To just know that we are all in the chorus and there are people singing louder than others and I'm over here singing too. And we don't have a conductor. We're just figuring it out. It just has taken a lot off my shoulders to know that's what it is. 

Sarah [00:43:50] I will say this. You know, I'm an enneagram one.  I think our enneagrams are coming out here. You're finding a lot of care, for sure. I think I have to find a little bit of black and white with this. I got to pull back because I do think some of the issue, particularly around speech, but illiberal speech that we are concerned about right now as Americans is the instinct to shun and silence. Talked about this book I read, Conflict Is Not Abused by Sarah Schulman in our premium community, and she talks about that that is unethical. To shun, to silence is unethical. And she is convinced me. I think there was a moment. In my life where I could have been convinced that some speech should be illegal, that some speech is damaging. And I think there's a lot of people out there in the generation younger than ours that are working through that, and I think I've come down on no more is better. Firmly, more speech is better. And I'm still very firmly in the words are not violence. 

[00:45:08] I know that we had listeners push back on me the last time I said this. But I felt like the universe sort of gave me a shove even further in this direction when I have a disabled child that's made fun of and then I had a child that was physically attacked and they felt like very different experiences to me. And I think that because the internet has given strength to words, it makes sense in a way that we've pushed in this direction that words are more powerful and they are. Of course, I think words are powerful. I'm a podcaster. But just because they're powerful doesn't mean that they're the same as physical violence and physical harm. And I have got to find some lines. And I have got to find some places where I stand and I think now this is firm ground. This is objective and true. 

[00:46:01] And so I'm trying to find some spaces to pull back and to give my soft human brain some things that are black and white because I think the gray is important and that there is nuance and beauty and complexity. I think all that is true and I think there is some space here and some real need at this particular moment in human history to say, "Yeah, but some things are black and white. Some things are different." Because I think all the time about how you say we overcorrect, we push all the way in one direction. And I think that is a natural human instinct. We're reaching the peak arc of the pendulum swing. We are going to swing back a little bit more so that we can calibrate, that we can find within this experiment a multicultural democracy space for complexity, and space for truth, and space for universals, and space for diversity because we have to hold both if we're going to continue down this path together. 

Beth [00:47:13] I cannot believe I'm about to bring this up. But you know what, I just feel like I'm doing like a vulnerable buffet of my own brain and body. 

Sarah [00:47:19] Yeah, we are doing it here. Today is the day. 

Beth [00:47:20]  I had a conversation with Chad about Louis C.K. because I was not mad when Louis C.K. got "canceled" right? I thought he did very bad things. Yes, we do. Yes, there are 

Sarah [00:47:38] Yes. We do not do those things in front of other people and without their permission. 

Beth [00:47:40] To your black and white delineation, that's not acceptable.  And I think we are, as I have said on this show a gazillion times, at a moment in human history where we're starting to look at people who have not been looked at before with our mom eyes and saying, "That's a no. And they're going to be some consequences." I am also not mad that he just won a Grammy. And Chad was like, "You aren't?" And I said, "No, because I don't know the appropriate public shaming sentence for him or anyone else." And, again, I don't really believe punishment ever works. I think there is a version of life that involves accountability, but not punishment. I base a lot of my spirituality on that formulation. That we love through everything. That some things are not okay to get to your soft human brain, we need some black and white. I think that's a lot of what the chorus is yearning for. And it's helpful to remember that. 

[00:48:50] And I'm not going to go to the mat with anybody who feels differently about Louis C.K. I recognize that some people do have a sense of what the public sentence ought to be. I don't. And I at the same time believe this is a person who did wrong and who deserves some accountability for that wrong. And also, my heart is open to forgiveness and redemption and moving on. Forgiveness isn't mine to give to Louis C.K. Redemption isn't mine to give to Louis C.K.. But I can at least stand up and say the chorus of 10,000 has a lot to say about this, and I don't need to figure it out. I don't need to feel anything about this in particular. It is that release and that softening around things that I am craving. You know, if you're looking for the black and white, I am looking for the spaces where I can say, I see the importance of this and I care about what it means to people. I can't make meaning of everything myself. I cannot do it. 

Sarah [00:49:50] You know what it might be for me? The black and white is the one we've stood on forever, which is we don't dehumanize. And my soft human heart says that withholding redemption is dehumanizing. To say you are beyond redemption means that you are no longer human, that there's nothing human there anymore. And I don't believe that's ever true of anyone. And I think that's  what I'm pushing up against is because if there is no redemption, if there's never any benefit of the doubt, if there's never any, I will listen to you. Sometimes redemption just looks like listening. Nothing more, nothing less. Just saying, I will hear you. I will listen. Because that gives us back our humanity. That says there is something here in you that I recognize in myself. 

[00:50:49] And I think the damage done by the internet is to to put up this wall and to say, there is nothing in you that I recognize in myself, there is no humanity in you that I recognize in myself, and I can't do that. I can't do that for anyone. Trump voters, the deep reaches of [Inaudible] God knows what. I mean, I just can't do that. I cannot. Because in refusing to recognize their humanity, I shut off some of my own and that is a black and white for me. 

Beth [00:51:25] Well, you see the extreme effects of what happens, the conclusion of that playing out in Ukraine. As I've listened to your reporting about Putin's popularity rising among some Russians, not all but among some Russians, and I hear people say that they believed, for example, that Ukraine staged the violence in Butcher. What must you think of someone to believe that they could do that to their own people? But that's not hard to imagine given the way that we talk about and interact with each other right now. 

Sarah [00:52:03] And what must you think of yourself? 

Beth [00:52:04] Right. Right. I took a number of lessons from Covid, and I am aware that we did not take the same lessons from Covid, and we are not all taking the same lessons from Covid because it is certainly ongoing. And I think especially this weird, confusing time we're in with the pandemic right now has just left me extremely humble. I hope. Because what I've learned is that everybody in the course of 10,000 has a point. Does that mean everybody's right about everything? That doesn't mean everybody needs to be heard at equal volume. It doesn't mean that nothing is true, but more than before the pandemic, certainly, I am realizing that there is something that you need to pay attention to in all of the strains. That's another reason I wanted to do that episode on what Republicans say it means to be Republican right now. 

[00:53:00] There is something to pay attention to right now, and I want to pay attention to it. And I don't want to be afraid of asking the questions or so sure that I'm right about everything that I'm unwilling to because we don't give any airtime to people who don't see it our way. That's not what I learned from Covid. What I learned from Covid is that the world is complicated and people are complicated, and everybody gets affected differently by almost everything that's happening. And a lot of it matters tremendously. And the more we pretend it doesn't matter to someone, the worse that problem gets. 

Sarah [00:53:35] Well, and that's the thing. I can't carry everything. I can just carry the part of your experience that I understand. I can't carry the complexity of your individual experience, but I can carry the understanding of feeling lonely or sad, or grief stricken, or confused, or silenced. I can carry that. I can understand that. Because if  we can't find the common threads, again, what are we doing? What's the point if we can't pick up those threads of our shared experience and weave them together into something? And I think we thought the internet was going to help us do that, and in some ways it has. In some ways it has. In some ways we confined those shared spaces in those shared experiences, and have people put words to things that we thought we were the only ones experiencing or the only ones thinking. But because we're such social creatures, we can't just take that one piece of the experience because the other side of the experience is that the voices on the internet that say you're wrong. You are stupid. You're privileged. You're racist. You can't possibly understand this and all is lost. 

[00:55:01] I think it's the all is lost that feels so hard right now. That there's nothing we can do about it. And I don't believe that. I actually think the suggestions at the end of Jonathan Haidt's piece are pretty good about how to strengthen our democratic institutions, how to make sure that the internet and social media doesn't work on our kids the way it has on us. Because, again, I don't want to walk away. I don't think it's even possible. But I also don't want us to just keep acting out on each other in pain and rage and anger. There is  just a lot of hurt on the internet and in real life right now. And I know if it's breaking my heart, I know it's breaking a lot of other people's hearts. 

[00:55:46] And that's the power of this community, is it feels good to say that and to know that other people are listening and that we will hear from all of you, both the parts of this that we got wrong and the parts of this that we got right and the parts that that connect with you. It's again, I wouldn't trade any of that. I wouldn't trade any of that. And I'm so grateful that every one of you joins us and listens to the sound of our voices and lets us have these conversations, and joins in and is a part of that chorus that makes such a beautiful song so much of the time. Okay, Beth, we're back. We're back from spring break. How was your trip? 

Beth [00:56:39] It was lovely. It was total sloth, and that's exactly what I did. 

Sarah [00:56:42] I like that. 

Beth [00:56:43] We went with our friends, Jen and Brian. If you are a More To Say listener, you heard Brian with me the week Sarah was on vacation. We got a cabin. It was cold and rainy, which was almost a gift because it let us just hang out play cards, we went bowling, we went to an Amish market. We had a lot of discussion with our kids about what it means to be Amish. And we just talked and relaxed, and it was a really nice downshift for me. I forget that I'm an introvert occasionally. We had such a busy week before you went on spring break. We recorded our audio book. We went to New York. We were on Good Morning America GMA3. And all of that was fantastic and wonderful, and that just takes a lot out of me. And it was really good to hole up, and that's what I needed. Honestly, like, I posted very little about it. People ask me questions. For the first time, I feel like I ignored a lot of questions because I just didn't want to be making content about my trip or sharing a lot. I really kind of needed a moment of privacy. And it was that moment of privacy for me. It was really, really, good. Now, you went in the opposite direction, which is no surprise based on our personality.. 

Sarah [00:58:02] Yes. As is our way. We're very complimentary experiences here. 

Beth [00:58:04] I loved, loved, loved, following along with your gorgeous trip. 

Sarah [00:58:09] It was beautiful. And, look, it was a mental health break of a different type because we spent hours outside in the sunshine hiking several days of the trip. And it's just like somebody just pours serotonin right into your brain when you do that. Like, when you're outside hiking like that and beautiful vistas and seeing these amazing landscapes, it really was -- to the point where I almost had like a post vacation letdown when I came home because my body was like, wait, what? Why are we -- where's the sunshine? Where's the physical activity for several hours a day? We were really digging it. But it really felt amazing. It was an incredible trip. Utah was lovely. I cannot recommend it enough. I put our itinerary on my Instagram if you all want to check it out. 

[00:58:52] It was power of the internet built by the, in part, definitely the listeners of Pantsuit Politics who I called out on Instagram. They were like, okay, you will eat here. You will order this thing, then you will go here and you will eat this thing. And then you will take this hike, this is the good one for kids. This is not the good one for kids. Like, it's so good. Even from our conversation on Nicholas and I conversation last week, I've already got like a listener sent me this incredible breakdown of the trip we're thinking about doing in New Mexico and Texas. Like, just such an incredible resource. We had a fabulous time. We were national park's people for a reason because they are a gift.  They are the best of America. Truly, it's so much fun. And so we had a great time. We really, really, really, had a great time. 

Beth [00:59:36] I'm so glad. And I'm so glad to be back. I do feel like a weird level of tension that mounts when we don't get to, like, work through things together regularly. It's taught me a lot about friendship, honestly, because I think it's true that you and I have connected because we talk about hard things and we talk openly about everything. Nothing's off the table. But I also think the regularity of it is enormous and something that you get very little opportunity to have in your life without really concentrating on it. 

Sarah [01:00:05] So true. So true. I totally agree, really. I've been in a kind of a funk this last week and Nicholas was like, you just need to get back into your schedule with Beth, you'll feel better immediately. And I do already feel better, especially since I cried most of this episode. It's fine. It's fine. 

Beth [01:00:19] It's normal. That's part of getting back into your routine with me. It's good. That's how it's supposed to be. 

Sarah [01:00:25] That's right. Well, thank you for joining us for this episode of Pantsuit Politics. Again, our book is coming out and we're having a massive launch party in Waco, Texas, on April 30th, just a few short weeks away. If you don't have your tickets, you should come because it's going to be a blast with Clint Harp and Kelly Harp. The link is in the show notes. We will be back with you again here on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced ya'll. 

Beth [01:00:57] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director. 

Sarah [01:01:03] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

Beth [01:01:08] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers (Read their own names) [01:01:13] Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Emily Holladay, Katie Johnson, Katrina Zugenalis Kasling, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs. 

[01:01:31] The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, Emily Neesley, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sara Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Katy Stigers, Karin True, Onica Ulveling, Nick and Alysa Vilelli, Katherine Vollmer, Amy Whited. 

Beth [01:01:49] Jeff Davis, Melinda Johnston, Ashley Thompson, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

[01:01:59] I had another thing I was going to say and I've lost it. 

Sarah [01:02:01] Well done to me. 

Beth [01:02:02] Let me think about what you were just saying. Oh! 

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