Nikki Haley and Shifting Demographics

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Michigan State University Shooting

  • Nikki Haley’s Candidacy for President

  • Shifting Demographics

  • Outside of Politics: Birthdays and Celebrating Life

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EPISODE RESOURCES

East Tennessee State University Festival of Ideas: Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Sarah and Beth live at the Abbey in Orlando for The Politics of the Most Magical Place on Earth: Wednesday, April 5, 2023 at 7 pm

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:25] Welcome to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're going to be talking about Nikki Haley's presidential campaign, demographics here in the United States and around the globe, and birthday parties with a side of grief. If you can imagine it, it's going to be a characteristically wide-ranging conversation as always.  

Beth [00:00:42] And if you think today's episode is a journey, we do this even more in person. So, if you would like to come see how this journey evolves when we are together in the flesh, we would love for you to join us at our live show in Orlando on Wednesday, April 5th. We're going to be talking about Florida politics and presidential primaries. We're going to play some games with our kids and our husband. It's going to be a great night.  

Sarah [00:01:06] So fun.  

Beth [00:01:06] And very different from anything that we've done before. So even if you've seen us in person elsewhere, this is going to be new and we would love for you to be there. The link to purchase tickets is in our show notes. So please come join us in Florida.  

Sarah [00:01:18] Next up, we're going to talk about Nikki Haley's presidential campaign. We wanted to begin by acknowledging a community that's really hurting right now. On Monday, there was a shooting at Michigan State University where three students lost their lives and the shooter then died by suicide. It has been particularly heartbreaking because so many of the students at Michigan State University have now experience multiple school shootings. And that reality is incredibly difficult to face as parents, and people in power feeling like they failed these students, and the students themselves who feel scared and disempowered and wondering what kind of world they're growing up in, what kind of world they're going to face. And there's just no easy way to tie that up. There's just no easy way to say this is the solution. This is the reality. This is how we move forward. But just because there's no easy way to talk about this doesn't mean that we shouldn't acknowledge it.  

Beth [00:02:34] Two things stood out to me this time-- and I hate that it's like this time.  

Sarah [00:02:38] This time.  

Beth [00:02:39] But one of them was just in my own reaction. I was very numb when I heard the news and I sat down to read about it and I could almost picture like the drawer of a filing cabinet in my brain sliding another folder in, until I read that the shooter was 43 and I gasped. It was like being awakened. It just jolted me into the reality of what had happened. And I feel really ashamed about that, that I wasn't already in that reality. But I think I felt like I knew everything that was coming. I felt like I knew this story because we've seen this story before and it was just such a reminder that it's a singular event every single time, even if you are observing it from a distance. The other thing that really struck me this time is how in correspondence with our listeners, I just keep hearing now I feel like it's only a matter of time before it's me or my kids. It's only a matter of time before this hits me even closer than it's already hit me. And I think it's hard not to feel that way. We posted on Instagram some statistics and the conversation became so predictable. And it just leaves me and the question that we return to every time we talk about this is just, like, what do we want? What do we want? Do we want to just keep opening that drawer and adding more folders to it? It seems like it when the response is so predictable.  

Sarah [00:04:11] In Kentucky our Supreme Court has just affirmed the legislator's ability to ban all abortions despite a right to privacy inside the Kentucky Constitution. And I feel when I hear that news the same way I feel when I hear another school shooting, which is a certain numbness, a lot of anger, and overwhelming frustration because I cannot articulate a path forward because it feels like the tools of change have been foreclosed because of the Supreme Court and because of our Constitution and the Second Amendment. And I have to remind myself that there are other tools we have not ever availed ourselves of them, particularly in recent American history. But I think when what we want-- because the truth is we do know what we want. We can poll Americans very easily. Americans want less gun violence and more access to abortion, but we have a mismatch between the articulated policy goal and the political will. And it's not a moral failing. It will require enormous political will because of those paths forward that have been shut off. And the path forward is going to take a lot of work and a lot of unearthing and an enormous amount of organizing. And that's difficult to face and hard to think about, especially coming out of a pandemic. So, what we are left with right now in this present moment is facing the heartbreak and the experiences of those at Michigan State. Becky reached out, she's a child at Michigan State, and shared some of her thoughts and feelings. We wanted to share that with you right now.  

Becky [00:06:11] I do not want to be driving to MSU right now to hug my daughter. I don't want to be fielding all of the loving texts from family and friends and coworkers expressing their concern for us. I don't want to try to help my daughter decide whether she should come home and rest or stay on campus in order to comfort her friends. But this is what we've chosen as a nation to tolerate. We all, at some point, will be impacted directly by a public shooting whether as victims or our loved ones are victims. It is only a matter of time before you too will be sitting in my place while other priorities take a front seat to your child's life and your peace. We love the drama of it all, don't we? It's the sparty logo with the chear, the prayers and the fears. It gives us an urgent purpose in our comfortable lives. We are unwilling to give up that comfort or our unearned freedoms in order to give up the drama. It may be tragic, but, hey, at least it's interesting. This is what we've chosen.  

Sarah [00:07:11] Before we move on to our demographic conversation, we did want to say, as we speak of more traditional paths to political power, we officially have somebody running for the Republican nomination for president in addition to Donald Trump. Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and U.N. ambassador, has announced her candidacy.  

Beth [00:07:33] I'm excited to talk about this because I think while it is very unlikely that Nikki Haley becomes the Republican nominee, it is a good thing. Net-net, Nikki Haley is in this race, in my view, that we have in the Republican Party a woman seeking the nomination, a woman who has the experience to do the job of president, who's been a governor, who's been the U.N. ambassador. That's a good resume for someone seeking the presidency. I think that it was a wonderful thing when Nikki Haley had the Confederate flag taken down in South Carolina after the shooting in Charleston. While her record is not perfect or a profile in courage in any respect during the Trump years, there are a lot of things that make me feel that Nikki Haley running for the Republican nomination is a baby step in a better direction. And I just want to celebrate the baby step. It doesn't have to be perfect for me to celebrate it.  

Sarah [00:08:30] I was really struck by someone asking Mitt Romney about the primary and him just like defaulting to like, oh, I don't think anybody can beat Trump. I was like, Mitt, that surprises me coming from you. I also think there's a part of me that goes, oh, no, if Mitt Romney feels like that maybe it's really true. And then there's a part of me, the loud voice in my head that always goes, stop trying to predict what's going to happen. We've made this mistake before. And so, I'm not willing to say like it's foreclosed. It's a long way away. We have no idea what's going to happen with Trump or with any other candidacy. I was struck by her announcement video. I was particularly struck in the way she talked about race. Often conflicting she would say it's not racist, but then she would point out the very racist history of the place where she grew up. But what I was really struck by was where she said I wasn't black and I wasn't white. Because that is a critique of the conversation I have of the race conversation in America, is that often it defaults to a conversation that acts as if the only people President America are black people or white people-- not mixed race, not Asian, not Indian, not Latino. So, I thought the way that she articulated that was really interesting. I'm not Nikki Haley's biggest fan, but I agree with you. Would we prefer everybody just bow out and go, well, he wants to do it again so we'll let him? Of course not. I do think that Sarah Longwell's thoughts on our previous episode were true. She got a lot of press coverage by being the first one. And I stand by my statement that part of the unpredictability of this is the decoupling of the process. What will it look like in Iowa and New Hampshire if there aren't Democrats occupying the ads animating this US versus them part of the Republican primary? Like, will that change things when they just have to stand on their own policy proposals? It's not that people won't be running and they can maybe run against Joe Biden. She did when she was like his record is abysmal. I was like what are you talking about? I just think there's still a lot up in the air. And I think her acknowledgment that there is at least some space, a lane, however small, to step out and say, "I'm running. I have critiques of him," is a step in the right direction.  

Beth [00:10:47] And on the race discussion within that ad, and I think what she'll try to do throughout her campaign, there are a lot of Americans who will say we have a racist history but we are not a racist nation. There's a constituency for that.  

Sarah [00:11:02] Yeah. A hundred percent.  

Beth [00:11:02] And I would rather her have that conversation than have the Republican Party dominated by people who say, no, our history isn't even racist. This is a step in the right direction. The other thing about your point that we don't know, this is a low probability hypothetical I acknowledge, but low probability things happen. I've heard no analysis of the Republican primary that doesn't include Ron DeSantis. What if he just didn't run?  

Sarah [00:11:28] Seriously. 

Beth [00:11:30] What if he just decided, you know what, I don't really want to be called Meatball Ron. And I am flying high right now with the people that I care about, and I know that I will stop flying so high the second I get in this race. And maybe I don't want that. Maybe I just want to be the governor here and keep being everybody's favorite. Maybe I want to be the kingmaker in this primary instead of in it. What happens if Ron DeSantis doesn't get in? Nobody has a clue. And the default answer would be what Mitt Romney says. But, guys, I don't think Donald Trump has the juice anymore. I just don't. I understand that there are people who will forever love him, but I think a lot of those people still want to win. And I think they know that he does not have the juice to win. I don't say that to diminish the threat of his candidacy. I still believe it is a very bad thing for America that he's in the race at all. But I don't think, to your point, sitting here more than a year away from when anybody cast a vote, that the conclusion is predetermined in a way that would make Nikki Haley's shot nonexistent dead on arrival. Why would that be? We treat the contest for the primaries so much more like American Idol than an election at this point that it just depends on who gets hot win. And why wouldn't she have a moment where she gets hot? I don't know.  

Sarah [00:12:50] Well, predetermined conclusions I think is an excellent transition to our next conversation. We're going to talk about changing demographics in the United States and around the world. Demographics have been on our minds here at Pantsuit Politics because there have been so many stories about declines in mortality rates and births, which means if you're bad at statistics, we have more old people than babies. And that freaks people out. That freaks people out. See, The Handmaid's Tale freaks people out. According to all the stories, this is not what you want. Now, here at Pantsuit Politics we don't like to just follow this crisis narrative, we want to examine it a little more carefully. So that's what we're going to do here today. Now, it is indisputable that many countries around the world are facing dramatic demographic changes, including here in the U.S. Now, our population did grow last year, Beth. It increased by point four percent.  

Beth [00:13:52] Covid babies, right?  

Sarah [00:13:53] With Covid babies, yes. But our population is definitely greying, the share of the U.S. population at 65 or older grew by 38% from 2010. And then what's really fueling this latest round of stories is China. And China deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time in six decades. We have a lot of countries such as Singapore and South Asia and that part of the world with really low fertility. Japan in particular is in dire straits. This is crazy. In 2020, researchers predicted that Japan's population would decline from 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million in 2100. And, of course, Europe is also dealing with this. There's a big piece in The New York Times about Italy. So, we definitely have a lot of places around the world where there are more old people than babies.  

Beth [00:14:40] And as I understand it, that is because when a nation is developing you have a real and perceived threat to child mortality and people have lots of babies when they think child mortality is uncertain. And once your systems are set up where child mortality improves, people stop having as many babies. And this is just what happens. It's an observable pattern over time that as a nation develops their fertility rate lowers. It lowers because there's more education and more opportunities for women in the workforce. Yes, but the primary driver seems to be that the health care system enables birth to be successful often enough that people just don't have as many kids.  

Sarah [00:15:25] Yeah. Remember when the Gates Foundation did this whole thing where they were, like, we were trying to like basically hand out birth control and prevent these high birthrates that were really strains on the families and the communities and the countries overall. And then we realized, no, they were doing that because the babies died. And so, we went out and we addressed malaria and all these other issues and then the birth rates would drop. And they call this a second demographic transition, which is like sustained sub-replacement fertility. So, we're not replacing ourselves, our populations are slowly going down. A multitude of living arrangements other than marriage, the disconnection between marriage and procreation and no stationary population. It's just interesting to me that it's always framed as this crisis when it sounds like it's the goal. It sounds like this is a sign of success. You did it, good job. But that is certainly not how it's framed in the media narrative.  

Beth [00:16:16] And so we have governments that are worried about this trying to offer some interventions. In Australia they offered baby bonuses of about $3,000, and it did seem to move the needle.  

Sarah [00:16:26] That pumped up a little. Yeah, a little bit.  

Beth [00:16:28] In Hungary, Viktor Orban announced that any woman with four or more children will no longer pay income tax.  

Sarah [00:16:34] Believe right now I would have another baby at 41 years old if it means I never have to pay a dime of income tax again. I have three kids. The thought of another baby is abhorrent to me, and also, I would definitely have one.  

Beth [00:16:45] I need a minute with that because I would not. There's no amount of money... 

Sarah [00:16:47] You would not?  

Beth [00:16:48] No.  

Sarah [00:16:48] I would do it. I would be, like, "Heck, yeah, I don't want to pay income tax anymore. Give me that baby."  

Beth [00:16:53] No, I would not. But for the most part, these government interventions are swimming upstream. The decisions are too intimate and too life altering for a bonus here and there to make a big difference across the entire population.  

Sarah [00:17:10] Well, Jessica Gross at The New York Times had a really interesting examination, which is we have this narrative that women are working and so the fertility rates drop. She was rightfully pointing out that some of this is coincidental. It's people who want to have kids and can't find a partner with which they are willing to have kids. She called it coincidental childlessness. And I've been on this hobby-horse because I've been reading Richard Reeves' of Boys and Men about this crisis with men and that women don't feel like the men are providers or good enough partners. And that is a problem because you want people who want to have children to feel like they are supported and able to have children. But I don't think that's an easy fix. The crisis of modern men is is quite a pickle.  

Beth [00:17:58] Mortality rates are stagnant or rising among every age group under 25 with poverty, race, ethnicity and parental education identified as important risk factors. Young adults have been disproportionately affected by the economic fallout from COVID 19, and I think that's part of this too.  

Sarah [00:18:14] A huge part of it.  

Beth [00:18:15] It's a huge part especially here in the United States. You hear people talk about childcare is a barrier to me having kids. My economic prospects, will I ever be able to own a home? Not just will I be able to afford it, but will there actually be a house? Will there be housing inventory available in the place I want to live? There are so many factors contributing to an overall sense that I need to be older when I have kids, if I have them. And the longer you wait the less likely it becomes.  

Sarah [00:18:43] Right. So, there are also policy proposals about the other side of the equation. The more old people side of the equation. The greying population. Because this is a demographic change across the globe-- we're going to talk about more global trends, less U.S. trends in a minute. For example, in France right now they're discussing raising the retirement age. And it is going over like that [Inaudible] that went across our country. They don't like it. They don't want to do it. I mean, they don't even mention it here in the United States even though I think we should talk about it. There, I said it. I said it, Beth. I said it. I touched the third rail.  

Beth [00:19:14] Well, let me come to the third rail with you. I've been thinking a lot about this. As we've been doing this research, I keep finding myself thinking, "Is 65 the right place for any of this analysis anymore?" We are living so much longer, which is kind of what's driving the concern about this imbalance. But we are also living healthier for so much more of that. Where is the line where the economic calculus really should start to kick in? And I don't say that for the purpose of talking about how people should be working until they're 75 now, but just as we're measuring these things 65 feels really young to me to be having this conversation.  

Sarah [00:19:51] Well, it's not even forcing people to work to 75. It's acknowledging that a lot of people are working by choice. I have members of my own family working late into their seventies by choice because they want to continue to work. So, what are we talking about exactly? Do we need to talk about this number? Let's not even talk about what's the right thing to do. Can you just statistically show me when we set this number at 65 how many people work till 75, and now how many people work till 75? And can we ground the conversation in the reality of the choices people are making? Maybe that would be a helpful step forward.  

Beth [00:20:24] And not just work choices because we're so much more than that, but about when do we start to worry in an average sense about people's ability to live independently? About when do we see health care costs start to go up? About when do we worry about mental acuity? All of this seems to me to be way past 65, and so that's a discussion we need to have. The other thing that bugs me about the conversation in France and here in the United States about the sustainability of Social Security or pension programs, what have you, is most people don't want to just work and then not work. It is a ramp that is needed. I don't think you should be full tilt in a career or a physically demanding job until you are in your sixties or seventies. It is very different to be a lawyer at 70 than to be a construction worker. And so, we need to figure out some differences in the support people expect on the other side based on what's happened to their bodies and their jobs in the first place. But I wonder what it would look like to have benefits that toggle depending on how much you're choosing to work. Let's say you've retired from a really intense profession and then you want to drive a school bus and it's a part time position driving a school bus, does it make sense to incentivize that? Maybe your benefit goes up a little bit if you're still contributing in that way. Does it make sense to incentivize volunteerism among our aging population? I think, for what it's worth, that would do a lot for loneliness and other health outcomes. So, I just would like to see more creativity than well let's raise it by a year or 1.8 years, 20 years into the future. That's not accepting the reality that we have changed what it means to be 65 plus.  

Sarah [00:22:15] Well, I'm putting those pieces together between young people feeling like they don't have a place in the economy, particularly young men, and the sense that our older populations are participating in the economy for longer or don't want any conversation around like the age at which that's appropriate or not appropriate. I listened to Scott Galloway talk about this crisis with young men on Dax Shepard's podcast. He mentioned Richard Reeves' book and he was just talking about we have a wealth transfer from older people to younger people. When you're talking about the mortgage interest tax deduction, that's like a wealth transfer, right? Like, who owns houses right now? Older people. And when you're getting taxed on income but you're not getting taxed on investment earnings, who is that benefiting? Older generations. If you want to empower younger generations-- even just through the lens of this demographic situation-- to have babies and have families and contribute to the economy, we need to talk about some of these policies and where the wealth is flowing and in what direction. And I think that we do have to have some of these more difficult conversations because if you ignore them and you silence them, well, then you get in this situation with this like Yale professor, Yusuke Narita, who got a ton of attention this week. He'd said it previously and somebody kind of went through his past statements and suggesting mass suicide for old people in Japan. I mean, he's less of an academic; he's more of a rabble-rouser, but he's got a lot of young followers in Japan who are interested in what he has to say in a culture where there's enormous respect for the elderly. But if people feel like they're being treated unfairly, that's just like fuel waiting for somebody to strike a match to me.  

Beth [00:23:57] And that to me is the importance of talking about these shifts in really just descriptive terms instead of value laden terms.  

Sarah [00:24:04] Yeah.  

Beth [00:24:06] Because every demographic in America right now feels like they're getting a raw deal somewhere. I think our aging population does feel culturally thrown away. I think our young people feel economically abandoned. I think people our age feel so squeezed by caregiving responsibilities between those two groups that we think everything's busted. So, describing this in terms of whose life is worse or more unfair because of policy prescriptions misses it to me.  

Sarah [00:24:34] Yeah.  

Beth [00:24:34] Let's look at the data. It's not good or bad that our population is aging, it just is.  

Sarah [00:24:40] Yeah.  

Beth [00:24:42] What do we want to do now?  

Sarah [00:24:44] Yeah. I think looking at the data can sometimes illuminate things that you might not understand. I always think about this conversation as like, well, that's why immigration is important. Immigration is a fix. But doing all this research, I found a report from Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development that countries with the largest numbers of international migrants still have fertility rates below the 2.1 children per woman. That would be replacement levels, right? So, it's not an easy fix all the time. I still think it's important if you just need more population to do the work. But I think it's really easy inside demographic conversations to make a lot of assumptions including looking at it always through the lens of nations, because globally that's not what's going on even across nations. I mean, there are parts of the globe that are not having this problem. There are several countries in Africa which are entering what demographers call the window of opportunity because their fertility is declining a little bit. And so, they have that sort of that limited window where you can really grow and take advantage of high population but not burdensome population in fertility rates to grow your economy.  

Beth [00:25:56] And I think that's what's problematic about trying to manage this from only an economic perspective. Because if I said, "Well, Sarah, as I look at the rapid development of AI, I don't think this is a problem. We don't need that many more workers. We're going to figure out how to get the work done without that many people. And so maybe we shouldn't be encouraging people to have more children." Well, that's gross. That's not good. It's not healthy to me when we say, well, the climate is so threatened by humans that we probably should reduce the human population. That's terrible. That's not a way to be. And so, I don't want to be doing it for economic reasons either. I want to just face what the consequences of this are and say what are the new needs, instead of trying to decide how we can control how many babies people are having.  

Sarah [00:26:41] Well, because we can't. That's the too long do not ruin of this episode. You can't. You can't control it. And, again, if you look at the global population-- and I think that's where you can really get into some sort of like privilege d arguably racist perspectives on this conversation-- it's not that we're concerned with decreased global population because it's not decreased, it's slowing. It is definitely slowing globally. Predictions are that the global population will peak at about 10.4 billion in the 2080s and then stay there through the end of the century. It's that this represents shifting places of power. Like so much of that China demographic conversation was wrapped up in the fact that India is going to outpace them as the most populous country. We're talking about population, but what we're really talking about is power. I just think that's a really important thing to keep in mind as well.  

Beth [00:27:35] And half of that population growth through the 2018 is expected to come from only nine countries.  

Sarah [00:27:41] Wow.  

Beth [00:27:41] The U.S. is on that list, but it's not on that list with any of the other countries that we compare ourselves to. It's India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Egypt. And, yeah, that will change the world. It will change the world, but the world is intended to keep changing with those types of fluctuations.  

Sarah [00:28:02] As we're talking about these global shifts, the other statistic as I was doing research that sort of caught me off guard, is that nearly 29 out of every 30 people stay in the country of their birth. I would not have guessed it was that high. We talk about migration, we talk about immigration, and really the people who do that are pioneers. They're dang explorers. The number of people who actually do that is so small when you really think about it globally. It's really, really impressive.  

Beth [00:28:35] I think it is too. I read that statistic and thought, I want more information like this. I want to know how many people stay in their hometowns or their states or their county. Regionally, what does that look like in the world? When they move how far do they go? I would love to know more about that.  

Sarah [00:28:49] Here I am right back where I started, so I'm not helping that statistic any.  

Beth [00:28:54] And I think statistics like that also help us have some perspective. I was really struck by this from an IMF article. It took more than 50,000 years for the world population to reach 1 billion people.  

Sarah [00:29:05] Wow.  

Beth [00:29:06] And then since 1960, we've added billions every one or two decades. So, we have accelerated this. We're talking about replacement fertility as though it is a forever and always principle of natural law. But it took us 50,000 years to get to a billion people. The rate at which we've accelerated the population is new in human history. And so, for it to slow a little bit, I don't think needs to be a massive freak out as much as just interesting data as we learn more about ourselves and what we're doing here.  

Sarah [00:29:36] Well, I think we want this information to make us feel better and we better understand what's happening. And often it's the opposite and that's why we get so upset.  

Beth [00:29:45] Yeah. That's a good point.  

Sarah [00:29:47] Well, that's why we like having these conversations and we will continue to examine this data with curiosity and with a sense that there's always something we could learn that could disrupt what we thought we understood. Beth, my child turns eight today. My baby. My baby turns eight.  

Beth [00:30:12] Happy birthday, Felix. Is he excited about taking a trip around his birthday?  

Sarah [00:30:17] No. We're going to Congaree National Park, and he said, "I have to go look at grass on my birthday." I'll take a look at grass on my birthday. It's good. 

Beth [00:30:29] I feel that, Felix.  

Sarah [00:30:30] We're coming back and he's going to have a big fifties themed birthday party.  

Beth [00:30:37] Ooh, that's fun. Like sock hop kind of situation?  

Sarah [00:30:38] Sock hop. Milkshakes.  

Beth [00:30:41] I love that.  

Sarah [00:30:41] The whole situation. Which brought to mind-- and I don't know if you've seen this in your community-- that there seems to be a little bit of pent-up birthday party energy. That people are blowing it out because they didn't get to really throw the birthday parties they wanted to for like two years. So, they're like now's the time; we got some money saved up, we're ready to throw a big old birthday party.  

Beth [00:31:02] I don't know that I've observed it around birthday parties as much, but I definitely sense a vibe of like we got to make our kids whole for all they've missed.  

Sarah [00:31:12] Yeah.  

Beth [00:31:14] And whatever we need to do, we've got to make them whole.  

Sarah [00:31:20] It's so true. And, guys, we can't.  

Beth [00:31:24] I know. I'm sorry.  

Sarah [00:31:26] Have you been telling people or you've been keeping that a secret?  

Beth [00:31:29] I've been holding on to it. It seems mean.  

Sarah [00:31:31] It does.  

Beth [00:31:32] We're all doing our best.  

Sarah [00:31:33] I do have some people in my community who are still sad, still bring up the things that got missed like the graduations or the plays or whatever. They're still upset about it, and I get it. I think disappointment-- I said it before on this podcast-- is arguably the most difficult human emotion to deal with.  

Beth [00:31:51] Well, and so is grief.  

Sarah [00:31:53] Hmm.  

Beth [00:31:54] And that's a lot of what folks are experiencing, so that's why I don't want to pop anybody's balloon. Have the birthday blowout. That's great. Do it. I recognize I'm just not having the year that I thought I was going to because of the way that I have experienced Chad's dad's death. Really since his dad started to decline rapidly, it's just worked on me. And it's worked on me in weird ways because I wasn't particularly close to him, and at the same time he's a huge part of my person.  

Sarah [00:32:26] Yeah.  

Beth [00:32:27] I have at least once a day where I look at Chad and I want to not just cry, but make like labor noises. And I just think I so hope we get to get old together. I just so badly want that and then maybe die in our sleep at exactly the same moment. And I have those moments with friends when I'm playing cards with my friends, I think I love these people so much. I hope we get to play cards until we're like 90. And when you and I had dinner before our last speaking event, there was a moment we were sitting there I just thought, I hope we get to do this for so long. And I feel kind of greedy about that. Especially in light of all the news that you and I are sitting in all the time, I think like why should I get that? Everybody doesn't get that. That's not promised. I sort of feel the opposite of that pent up birthday party energy. I feel like anything extravagant is just asking too much. Like, it's this strange mix of grief and gratitude and guilt. And so that's a long arguably should have been worked out in therapy instead of here way of saying, I just feel wherever people are right now is fine with me. We're all just doing our best.  

Sarah [00:33:42] Yeah, I had the same conversation with Nicholas when we saw the very sad news that Dave Hollis had died. An influencer. If you know of Rachel Hollis, this is her ex-husband. And he died really young, he was 47-years-old. And we were talking about it and I said, "You can die approximately 5 to 15 minutes after I do in our bed asleep in our nineties." And I said, "No, just kidding. I want to be 100." So, in our hundreds. That is my pre-approved way that I want it to be. I know the exact emotion you're describing. I remember vividly in college-- and I think it was The Hours. Remember that book they turned it into a movie with Nicole Kidman? There's this great line in it about how the character was sitting in this really happy spot and sort of anticipating all the happiness that was going to come with these people around her and just realized like, no, that's it. That's the happiness. That sense of I love it here. I love it here. And I remember reading that and walking through-- I can tell you where I was walking on our campus-- and feeling this sense of I love it here and realizing, oh, that's what he was talking about in that book. That's what I'm feeling right now. Since that time, I've really trained myself. I think Bernie Brown has a great word for it. She calls it anticipatory grief, where you see your kid and you're like, "Oh, no, someday they might not be right here with me all the time and I just want to cry." But I think it's just that sense of I love it here. I love it here with you. I love it here with these children. I love it here with my friends. Brené Brown talks about gratitude is the antidote to anticipatory grief. But you cannot have that sense of I love it here without also understanding how fragile it is. That's what makes it so beautiful. If it was in perpetuity, it wouldn't be so special. They have to live side by side. I hate it. I wish there was another way, but unfortunately there isn't. The fragility in the I love it here have to live side by side.  

Beth [00:36:05] I like the phrase I love it here. I'm just going to start using that as a shortcut for myself. I felt that yesterday so intensely. It was a beautiful day here. It was like fake spring and--  

Sarah [00:36:15] We love that in Kentucky! It's the best season.  

Beth [00:36:18] We have so much fake spring. It comes around about five times and in between like second, third, fourth, fifth winter. So, Ellen gets off the bus and she immediately runs to play with her friends in the cul-de-sac in somebody's backyard. And Jane and I sat on the porch. Jane was on Pinterest. It was like not particularly magical set of circumstances. But Jane was scrolling Pinterest and I took my Kindle and we just sat on the porch and I just thought, "I don't need a thing in the world. I have everything. I have everything right now." I think that my brain is doing that unhelpful thing of being like, well, then don't go anywhere. Don't let anything happen that could mess this up. Don't take any risks. Like, just hold all of this so tightly because you are the luckiest. And I'm not doing that. It's not affecting my actions. I'm still putting one foot in front of the other and going places and getting on airplanes and whatever. But inside me, even like an extravagant birthday party, I'm like, "That's just too much. Nobody deserves this much happiness. It's too much. So, rein it in a little bit and just sit in your gratitude."  

Sarah [00:37:25] Well, while we're at therapy, it's so funny I experience that profoundly while I'm traveling. Like, while I'm out there's something about being out of the space that I'm sort of in that every day drive, the momentum of my every day. Even though I feel that every time we sit down to dinner and I look around the table and I think, these people they just sit down at the dinner table with me every day. I love it here. But I do feel it so much when I travel. And, listen, I've had that. I felt that so profoundly when I was pregnant for the third time. I thought, "I'm tempting fate. I have these two beautiful boys. I'm asking too much. Something's going to be wrong." And something was and the baby died. And I think about that all the time. I think, well, sometimes that's true, right? Sometimes you worry that something's going to come along and disrupt it. Because that's true, something will. Again, you're not tempting it. You're not preventing it. Your soul is trying to remind you that fragility is always present. Always present. Nicholas and I were saying this week it's been so hard. And I go, "Of course it has. 41,000 souls left this earth last week during that earthquake." Do we think that won't affect everyone? Because it's fragile. He's said things feel fragile. I'm like it's not that things feel fragile, it's that we are fragile. We are fragile. Does it matter? Bubonic plague. World War Two. Right now. Always true. Always true. We want to think we're going to get to a place where that's not true. If we had the right policies or the right laws or the right politics or the right leaders, we would arrive at this place where we're not fragile, but that's not true. And when you can see that, I think you have access to a lot more. Man, I just love it here. I just love it here.  

Beth [00:39:15] Yeah. I'm ready to level out a little bit on all that because the intensity of feeling that I've been experiencing has been too much. Just like I think we'll create a little bit of too much with our kids and their expectations because of how hard we're trying to make up for the past couple of years with them and we want to correct that, but that process of weaving in and out is just what we do. And I'm trying to tell myself that about my own strange chemistry of grief right now. This is just what it is and there's no rushing it. There's no shortcut for it.  

Sarah [00:39:50] Maybe instead of thinking about it through a lens of overcorrection, maybe we're just surfing. And sometimes you have to tilt pretty far when you're surfing and then you go back in the other direction. Doesn't mean you did anything wrong. That's how you ride the wave.  

Beth [00:40:01] Yeah. I wasn't even thinking overcorrection there. It's funny because I can see where that would be exactly what I'm saying, but I really do feel with emotions that it's more that title flow. I hear grief describe that way all the time, that it's just waves and waves and some of them are tiny and some of the pull you down. And maybe you get to equilibrium for a minute, but don't hang in that minute too long because it will change.  

Sarah [00:40:29] Well, thank you for joining us for this therapy session here today at Pantsuit Politics. This is how it goes. We're America's political therapist for a reason. Sometimes we have to be each other's therapist.  

Beth [00:40:38] That's right.  

Sarah [00:40:39] And we invite you guys along for the ride. Just a reminder that because of the federal holiday on Monday, our Tuesday episode next week will actually be a Wednesday episode. We're looking forward to being back with you then. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

Beth [00:41:06] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:41:11] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:41:17] Our show is listener-supported special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh.   

Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.   

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