August 15, 2025 • 49 mins
On this episode of The Middle, we ask if you're afraid to speak your mind in the current social and political climate. Jeremy is joined by political activist and philosopher Cornel West and Kmele Foster, editor-at-large at Tangle News. DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus calls from around the country. #freespeech #left #right #publicsquare #politicalbeliefs #1stammendment #Republican #Democrat #Trump
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Support for the Middle comes from the stations that air
the show and from you. Thanks for making a donation
at listen tooth Middle dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I'm Jeremy Hobson along with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver.
You would not know it from listening to this show,
but discourse in this country is actually not so hot
right now.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I think we need to change that. Like, let's make
the show just like the Internet, just like wild comments. Stop.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
No, that is definitely the wrong, definitely the wrong we have.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It turns out people can be kind of mean to
each other, even though one recent survey finds we actually
agree on most things, even sensitive topics, but we're afraid
to talk about it publicly. And it's not a surprise
because as we've seen, people can get ostracized or canceled,
not to mention, arrested and threatened with deportation for speaking
out on certain issues. So this hour we're asking if
(00:50):
you are afraid to speak your mind right now, We've
got an amazing panel with us as we take your
calls at eight four four four Middle. That's eight four
four four six four three three five three. We'll get
to that in just a minute. But first last week
on the show, we asked if the re industrialized America
that President Trump wants is still possible. Here are some
of the comments that came in on our voicemail after
(01:12):
the show.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Hi, my name is Jude, calling from Florida. I believe
that is a very critical national security interest to have
an economy that is capable of manufacturing, not just from
the companies like Apple or TMC or from their perspective,
but what about education systems and infrastructure and how do
we build those kinds of supports around a manufacturing economy
(01:34):
if that is in fact what we want to create.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
This is Lisa Heck calling from Boise, Idaho. With the
defunding of a lot of universities, how will we be
able to develop the technologies that will give us manufacturing
the edge.
Speaker 6 (01:52):
My name is Jeff, I'm from Nashville. Endess the people
that want to work factory jobs. I have assist who
works a factory job.
Speaker 7 (02:01):
And she hates us.
Speaker 6 (02:02):
And I'm sure there's a million and one people here
who would rather get an education and go work like
a trade or go work something more intellectual based.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Just become a DJ.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
His sister just hates that job.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, well, you can subscribe to the Middle wherever you
get your podcast to hear that entire episode. But now
to our question this hour, are you afraid to speak
your mind?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Right now? Tolliver?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
How can people who want to speak their mind reach us?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
You can call us at eight four four four Middle,
that's eight four four four six four three three five three,
or you can write to us at Listen to the
Middle dot com. You can also comment on our live
stream on YouTube if you dare, okay, I'll get you
on air. Leave a comment.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Joining us this hour, political activist and philosopher doctor Cornell West.
Cornell West, Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 8 (02:49):
It's a blessed to be here, or brother, I salute you,
and I salute my dear brother, DJ Tollivan and music
rich to music is real and it's one of the
things that the country needs one and ever. We need
something that's for real, that cuts deeper than all of
the labels on the surface.
Speaker 9 (03:05):
It gets to deep and rich humanity.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh, thank you, my brother. I'm putting on my man.
Speaker 9 (03:11):
Appreciate that, Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Our other guest this hour is Camille Foster, Editor at
large at Tangled News, Camille.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Great to have you back on the.
Speaker 10 (03:18):
Show, Jeremy, thanks so much for having me, doctor West.
It's a pleasure to be with you here, and it's
always pleasure to be back here, Jeremy, so thanks for
having me again, and thanks to your entire team.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Thank you, brother.
Speaker 8 (03:29):
There's a blessing to be in a lot with you,
very much, so, very much so.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
All right, all right, so before we get to the funds,
let me talk to each of you. Corno West, you
have spent a career in academia. I was talking to
a political science professor recently who said he used to
start his classes off by asking his students to talk
about issues in the news, and he doesn't do that
anymore because the students are too afraid to say anything controversial.
Are you seeing that or how would you describe the
(03:55):
state of free speech in our country right now?
Speaker 11 (03:58):
No?
Speaker 9 (03:59):
I think we're indeed.
Speaker 8 (04:00):
When it comes to people who want to dig deep
in the corners of their own dark soul and speak
to deep truths that they feel, it's more and more
difficult to do that. It's hard to enter public space
without feeling marginalized. We don't have the bonds of trust
that's required for people to speak their minds, so can
disagree with each other and still engage a respectful dialogue.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And why is that?
Speaker 8 (04:26):
Well, I just think there's just spiritual decay. Those the
more with decrepitude. It's a when you have one organized
greed and weabinized hatred and institutionalize indifference run while in
a society, then your rest assured that you no longer
created contexts in which people feel that they can be
fully themselves to raise their voices. So a lot of
(04:48):
posing and posturing echoes rather than voices. I come from
a Black folk whose anthemis lift every voices and not
lift every echo.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Let you see.
Speaker 9 (04:57):
And I'm a jazz man.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
Jazz man he can't make If all you got is
an echo, you better get another job.
Speaker 9 (05:03):
You better find your voice.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
But it takes courage to find out against the grain,
and we don't have enough courage right now in the culture.
And it cuts across colored class, region, religion, non religion,
it cuts across you know, it comes across all those
lines because the empire itself is experiencing this deep spiritual decay.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Kamille Foster, what do you think about the state of
free speech?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
In our country right now.
Speaker 10 (05:29):
Well, I'm certainly deeply concerned about that. I think there's
an agreement on the panel with that. With respect to that,
I've been involved in a lot of these conversations for
many years now on the board of FIRE, the Foundation
for Individual Rights and an Expression, which used to be
individual rights and education and most of the issues FIRE
used to contend with we're on campus, but we saw
(05:51):
this growing problem with respect to the need of the friend,
free expression, and a bunch of other contexts, and broadened
our mandate mandate accordingly. It's interesting that back in twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, when we were having
these conversations, much of it focused on cancel culture. A
lot of it was about concern with respect to conduct
on the political left. Obviously, the left kind of controlled
(06:14):
the culture in many respects. They had the White House,
if not Congress, and things have changed pretty substantially in
recent years. Conservatives used to be very concerned about cancel culture.
A lot of that concern seems to have abated somewhat,
and President Trump has been engaged in a great deal
of explicit censorship, in other cases actual active harassment of
(06:38):
various media organizations through the courts, et cetera. So we've
gone from simply and not simply because it was consequential
and important then as well, but a kind of culture
that had this disposition towards cancelation, cancelations that were often
happening in these social contexts that had pretty real consequences
for people in their jobs and in their personal lives,
and that polling seemed to suggest was contributing to them
(07:01):
not sharing their perspectives as often, and it was a
majority of people, irrespective of their kind of background, in
most contexts, and that trend has continued. Unfortunately, not only
has it continued, we see the government become a more
active participant in a lot of these in a lot
of these cancelations. So we both have a real political
(07:21):
problem that we have to navigate and contend with, but
we also still have a lot of really unhealthy social
dynamics that are at play. And I would actually agree
with doctor West in an important respect. I think technology
has contributed to a real kind of decaying of the
sort of culture around free expression and pluralism.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, it will definitely get into the issue of social
media and all of the harm that it does to
you know, people just being able to throw bombs anonymously
basically in the public square. But doctor West, what are
the downsides if people are afraid to speak out?
Speaker 8 (07:59):
Well, you just with a nihilism that people feel as
if what they say does not matter. And of course
that's a short move to whether they themselves ever't matter,
if your voice doesn't matter, and you wonder whether you
matter at all? Right, the Black National anthem has to
do with the people who were viewed by so many
in society as not counting, not mattering. So when you
(08:21):
say lift every voice, oh lord, I really matter, Yes
it is. And your voice, when rais, can actually shape
your destiny, beginning with the memory of your grandmama, beginning
with how you treat your child, beginning with shaping the
future of the country, so that it's a spiritual decay.
And I keep coming back to spiritual because see, once
you live in a.
Speaker 9 (08:41):
Society and with money and power are the.
Speaker 8 (08:44):
Fundamental determinants of your humanity, then lifting voices and free
speech are tertiary, their secondary. It's the money folk, it's
the powerful folk, it's the wealthy ones. And we've got
to fight back. I mean I'm not one into bleakness
and gloom and bloom. I believe in fighting back. I
(09:06):
go down swinging, lifting my voice a long voices of others,
and I want to hear all the other voices, even
the voices I just agree with.
Speaker 9 (09:14):
I want to hear it.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, let's actually the lines are full, so let me
just get to one call quick before we go to
a break. Here, Angie in South Dakota is joining us. Angie,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Go ahead. Are you afraid to speak your mind?
Speaker 12 (09:28):
Hi?
Speaker 13 (09:29):
Thanks for having me on. Yes, I'm an educator. I'm
in the school system, and it's a public school system,
and I work in the arts and so I've got
teenagers on the stage with me every evening, and I
have very close and personal relationships with all their parents
because they're involved, and it's gotten worse and worse over
(09:49):
the years. But I come back around to trying to
teach them lessons of you know, expression through kindness. We
have issues between parents and transit that that's come to
a head over the over the years, and I come
back to the fact that every one of these students
are fighting a battle every single day with mental illness.
Every one of us in the stage, and that they're
(10:12):
all hurting in their teen years, they're struggling, and that
don't we all want these kids to feel loved and
I'm finding that that's something that we can find commonality on.
But if I were to go any further, I mean,
that would be my job.
Speaker 14 (10:27):
That would be my job.
Speaker 13 (10:28):
So in the case, I would absolutely if I were
to say anything more about, hey, I know you don't
want to use their pronouns, but they have rights, right,
that would be the end for me. So instead, I'd say, Okay,
you can't call them by their the pronoun We don't
even go I don't even say the pronouns. I just say,
can we call them by their name? And that works
(10:51):
out for everybody. So we are kind of mediating these
through a safer, more shallow way of handling all these
issues that are really political for their families.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, well, Angie, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So great to hear from an educator in a public
school system in South Dakota. As we kicked this off, reminder,
our numbers eight four to four for middle that's eight
four four four six four three three five three, and Tolliver,
we said that speaking your mind has become difficult on
college campuses. A number of foreign students were detained after
protesting or even writing criticism about Israel's war in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, one was a Tufts University student who wrote an
op ed in the student newspaper criticizing her school's response
to the war, and who's arrest by ice went viral.
Here's the Democratic Congressoman Pramila Diapaul grilling Secretary of State
Marco Rubio about that.
Speaker 15 (11:42):
Where in the Constitution does it say that the Secretary
of State can override the First Amendment protections of free speech?
Is there a note that I missed constitutional right to
a student visa? But is there a constitutional right? Does
it say somewhere that Marco Rubio gets to deter whether
which speech is appropriate and revoke student visas based on
(12:05):
what you think constitutions for scarce a statue.
Speaker 16 (12:07):
There's a statue says a secretary of State gets to
determine whether someone is a threat.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Is a threat?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
He says, we should note that that student Romesa os
Turk was ultimately freed from immigration detention, but there are
other students who are facing very similar things. That will
keep an eye on that and we'll be right back
with more of the middle. This is the Middle. I'm
Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, in the Middle is
a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices
from the middle, geographically, politically, philosophically, or maybe you just
(12:35):
want to meet in the middle. This hour, we're asking
if you're afraid to speak your mind right now, Tolliver,
how can people reach us?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
You can call us to eight four four four Middle.
That's eight four four four six four three three five three.
You can also write to us at Listen to the
Middle dot com or on every single piece of social media.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
I'm joined by political activists and philosopher Cornell West and
Camille Foster, editor at large at Tangle News. And before
we get to more phone calls, Uh, you mentioned money
and power, Cornell West. If we think about traditional media
companies in this country, CBS, ABC, Washington Post, et cetera,
they've all been targeted by the Trump administration, maybe with
(13:14):
costly lawsuits. Or do you think that they are self
censoring right now to avoid the ire of President Trump?
Speaker 7 (13:22):
Oh?
Speaker 9 (13:22):
I think so, my brother, very much so.
Speaker 8 (13:24):
Not only that many of them are capitulating and allowing
their trajectory to be determined by what his own values
and what his own ends and aims ought to be.
Speaker 9 (13:39):
And that's and of course we see this with the universities.
Speaker 8 (13:42):
Look at Columbia University capitulates, because so many others capitulate.
Harvard's about to capitulate half a billion dollars. You have
to have courage, You have to be within the street
and your back up, speak your mind, and and and
and go against the grain, as it were.
Speaker 9 (13:58):
I think that's so important.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
QBO Foster, what about that and social media, which you
brought up. It's so easy on social media to pile
on accuse people of things anonymously and make people not
want to say what they think.
Speaker 10 (14:13):
Sure, I mean those are new social dynamics that have
emerged and not so new anymore, but now well established
where we can very quickly assemble online both to collaborate
and work towards some outcome that could be a positive outcome.
It could also be bullying, a kind of online censorship
(14:34):
mobs that are looking to get people fired from their jobs.
But I do think there's an important parallel to draw
between what we're seeing now happening, and what was happening
during say COVID, when we did see a kind of
soft censorship where various political officials were perhaps coordinating with
various independent private actors, social media companies, tech companies in
(14:55):
order to ensure that certain kinds of messages weren't getting out.
And it's certainly arguable that they had some legitimate interest
in attempting to do that because of public health concerns.
But I do think that there is a non trivial
kind of relationship between what we saw there and what
we've seen in the present day, where we're seeing more
(15:15):
and more instances of this, and we're seeing the current
White House kind of take its own use its own
efforts to try and achieve some of the same ends.
In certain instances, it's filing these rather frivolous lawsuits and
scoring these settlements. In other cases, it's a different kind
of quiet coordination with universities where they've gone in and
tried to obtain these concessions that allow them to essentially
(15:37):
dictate the terms on campus. And I worry a lot
about the pendulum swinging from left to right as opposed
to us trying to pursue a more sustainable pluralism, first
centrist kind of perspective on these issues. And unfortunately, I
think a lot of the prior bad acts helped contribute
to the current circumstance, which is deeply unhealthy, and I'm
(16:00):
not certain that we're actually taking the right lessons on
board in order to build more viable future for ourselves.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
We have another Camille who's on the phone from Sun Valley, Idaho. Camille,
Welcome to the middle. Go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 17 (16:17):
Hi, thanks for having me. I was born in the
late sixties and raised to always voice my opinion, and
I cannot remember a time until recently since Trump take
office that I have felt in public situations, not so
much private, but definitely public situations where I was actually
(16:42):
hesitant about calling specifically a man out for doing something
I thought was disrespectful or stating something disrespectful. And it's
a very scary feeling. It's a very odd, odd feeling.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Was a very.
Speaker 18 (17:06):
I mean, I actually felt, which I've never felt in
my life before. I actually felt in certain public situations
in the in the last two or three years physically,
you know, a little bit of afraid to call this
person out, whether it was you know, a sexist remark
or you know, just almost aggressive behavior which I've never
(17:30):
really experienced in a public setting before. And again, Idaho's
it's a very red state, but I live in a
very blue county, and so certainly I'm aware of different perspectives,
and I really I appreciate everyone's perspective, but when someone
cross that line, I feel lately that I'm actually a
(17:53):
little bit physically afraid just to call someone out. And
that scares me because I have a twenty daughter.
Speaker 17 (18:00):
I've really raised to express her opinions. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Well, yeah, Camille, thank you very much for that corner West,
What do you What do you make of that? Just
the fear to say what you want to say, even
for fear that you're going to be physically harmed potentially.
Speaker 8 (18:19):
No, I think that what she says is a confirmation
of what I'm trying to put forward, what the Camille
was trying to put forward. I think that the crucial
thing at this point is to try to highlight what
needs to be in place for us to not just
fight back, but to change and transform, to decay and
(18:40):
the decadence that are presented to us. You see that
one of The crucial things is is that any democracy
that will flower and flourish needs to be rich in
the things that money cannot buy. Love, trust, integrity, honesty, decency, kindness, sweetness.
(19:08):
Oh this red and tells me to try a little tenderness.
You see, those are the things that every human being need.
You get it into music. Used to get it in
the churches, in monscin synagogues, but they've been commodified. They've
been so deeply ideologically polarized that it's hard for them
to get at their prophetic sources that talk about the
(19:30):
things that money cannot buy. And I was blessed to
grow up in a family with the West family, shallow
Baptist Church, Black Panther Party. Taught me to be in
solidarity with the poor even if you get shot by
the police or the FBI or anybody else, because that
is a wealth that the world can't take away. Even
if you broke the Ten commandments. Financially, you're still rich,
(19:55):
very rich. And that's true for the jazz women and
the blues men. They got something the money can't, but
that most of them broke as can be.
Speaker 9 (20:02):
But all they got some riches that the world is
angry for then and now.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, let's get to Ben in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Ben, go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 14 (20:17):
Hi. So we were talking a little bit earlier on
in the show about sort of the college environment and
a lot of stuff that's going on there with.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
Free speech.
Speaker 14 (20:29):
And I think for me, one of the things I'm
in college right now and one of the things that
makes me a little bit afraid to speak out sort
of as someone who's trying to make friends make connections
at this time in my life, I don't want to
sort of share my views before I've gotten to know
(20:50):
someone well, because I feel like if I state my claim,
especially my views trend towards the left, and sometimes you
know that can be farther than other people views go.
I feel like if I share those views, I'm going
to lose that person and maybe I'm going to lose
(21:10):
the people around them if that sort of, uh the
word gets out things like that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
So do you worry about do you worry about losing
like career prospects if you say what you think about something, you.
Speaker 14 (21:27):
Know, honestly, I had not thought about that, but now
that you mentioned that, I think that is that is
a good point. I think you know, part of this,
part of this time in life is not only yeah,
building social connections, but building job connections as well. And
I think, you know, something that I might think is
(21:48):
an offhand comment about a headline in the news or
something like that, I worry that that could paint the
image of me for for someone who has opposing views,
and they would be inclined to cut me off or
try to otherwise prevent me from succeeding.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, let me just ask you one more thing, Ben,
Do you think this is something temporary or do you
think that things will change and eventually you'll be able
to say what you really think?
Speaker 14 (22:17):
You know, I honestly don't know. I think that for me,
as I've sort of gone through the school system in elementary,
middle school, high school, now college, I think it's gotten
more difficult to speak my mind as sort of I've
gained opinions and learned more about the world. But I
(22:39):
don't know if that is simply how it is as
you know, get older, or if that's something more recently.
You know, when I was in elementary school, that was
that was the first term of President Trump in twenty sixteen,
So that sort of is a bit of a turn
in my mind for me in terms of how speech
is treated, how I treat speech.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, well, thank you so much for calling in. Ben
really appreciate it. I always love hearing from a college student.
Camille Foster, Wow, what do you think about about that?
Hearing from Ben who's in college and I mean in
elementary school when President Trump was when it was in office,
and feels that way.
Speaker 10 (23:19):
It's very interesting. Again, it's just just the trend line
with respect to opinions on this, the nature of the
debate and how it's evolved over time, and what I'm
hearing here with the callers, and this is me kind
of projecting something onto them. I don't have data to
support it, but I do wonder if a number of
people on the left, who had traditionally felt a bit
more empowered to speak their mind in prior epochs, have
(23:43):
since the election perhaps begun to feel some of the
concern in trepidation that some people on the right have
been talking about people who were perhaps out of step
with some of the kind of social justice issues. I
think the first caller we had mentioned some of the
gender and pronoun debates, and around that time, one of
the dynamics that I observed was the fact that there
(24:04):
was this kind of equivalence drawn between speech and violence,
and even she kind of talked about this concern about
safety with respect to actually being able to speak to
various issues, and I find it really interesting, and it
also makes me think, well, shouldn't we be talking a
bit more about solutions? How do we actually work through
(24:25):
a circumstance like this? For so many people on so
many sides of our various political circumstances find themselves in
this situation where they feel that they can't express themselves openly.
And honestly, there've always been things you can't say without
some sort of sensor sanction, but it's also the case
that the universe of things that you can't say, it seems,
(24:48):
has expanded in a pretty considerable way, and that is
a cause for concern.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Well, here in the middle, we are very proud that
we also always hear from people who are Trump supporters,
who are people are into and so if you're out
there and you're on the conservative side of things, I'd
love to hear from you at eight four four four
six four through three five three about whether you feel
like you can speak your mind right now, Tolliver, what
is coming in online?
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's like over there's so many comments. Appreciate them, keep
them coming. Briefly, Randy and Rochester broke the record for
swears okay in a message. I want to acknowledge Randy
for that. Shout out to Rochester.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Gratus.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yes, but Mikey and Gainesville says from North central Florida,
as the name of the show, the citizens who register
to vote are now afraid to say which party they
are part of, afraid of personal retaliation, and now they
can't vote in primaries because they register as non party affiliated.
Kareem says, guns, you don't know who has one, so
you don't speak up. Duncan, North Carolina says it's interesting
(25:43):
that we all watch China crush free speech in Hong
Kong recently. Now Trump regime is imitating the CPC, so
a lot of interesting comments coming in. I was trying
to formulate a question with this, but I know that
my self image of America growing up was that we
are the free ones and that other countries that this
kind of thing happens. Do you think that, I guess,
brother West, do you think that our that like our
(26:04):
our image of ourselves has fundamentally changed going forward because
of the era we are now.
Speaker 9 (26:09):
Well, I think they are. I think they. I think
it's very important to keep in mind.
Speaker 11 (26:13):
That in the history of the human species, truth seekers
and truth tellers and truth and actors have usually either
been crucified, forced to drink himlock, marginalize, forced to.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
Go in exile. Think of Socrates. Now, I'm a Christian,
so I got to buyas towards Jesus. But oh Lord,
haven't merged thirty three years old.
Speaker 9 (26:36):
On the cross. Mmmmm. And we haven't even got you know,
the Martin King.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
And we haven't got the Rabbi Hesha, we haven't got
the Dorothy Day.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
These are folk.
Speaker 8 (26:45):
Who thoroughly marginalize, vilify, attacked because they were just trying
to talk about love and justice and kindness and sweetness.
So we have to keep in mind that there's never
been a golden age. That doesn't mean I've been a
bad age. Things have been better than they are now,
there's no doubt about that. But there's never been a
golden age. So that I hope none of us in
(27:08):
any way are paralyzed by despair.
Speaker 9 (27:11):
That's the crucial thing.
Speaker 8 (27:12):
We had to be fortified, to bear witness to a love, integrity, honesty, decency,
a certain kind of commitment to something bigger than greed
and bigger than hatred.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Let's get another call in. Robert is calling from Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, Robert,
what do you think? Are you afraid to speak your mind?
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Hello?
Speaker 15 (27:34):
I want to.
Speaker 12 (27:36):
For me personally, no, I am not. Well, it just
depends on the environment. I tend to being gay. I
just have naturally like found myself sometimes forgetting that straight
people exist, and then I'm reminded and then I have
to like, oh, just like code switch. But I want
to talk about the online phenomenon of so when I
(28:01):
was growing up I'm twenty eight, there's a big thing
of like you have to watch what you on the internet.
You can't be posting like things about from your party.
You have to make sure that like if in a
future employer look you up, you will be square and
like presentable. And now there's an interesting I don't want
to say it's an inverse or a parallel, but it's
like there's phenomenons of like the QAnon conspiracy and then
(28:24):
like echo chambers and like forums on Reddit and four
Chan and like weird, like I think the Internet has
helped make people feel less alone. But at the same time,
you can curate and then the algorithm curates for you
a chamber in which you do not interrogate yourself. You
are affirmed in everything that you hold and think of,
(28:45):
and sometimes that can lead to people like increasingly spiraling
out of reality. And I think then they bring that
to the real world.
Speaker 14 (28:52):
And.
Speaker 12 (28:54):
It's just it's another variable, another aspect that is I
think to talk about in this whole converse.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, Rob Robert, thank you very much for that.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Camille Foster, is there a difference do you think with
the social just briefly, is there a difference with social
media's effect on people on the right and the left?
Speaker 10 (29:11):
Do you think I'm not so sure about that. I
think that in both instances, it can contribute to these
kind of mobbings. It can contribute to this process of
to humanization. We're speaking to one another through these avatars.
We don't even imagine that this is kind of another
person on the other side. It's just they're irredeemable and
terrible and bad. And I actually think something doctor Wes
(29:34):
said a moment ago, there is an important connection between
people being able to speak freely and have this process
of truth discovery take place. And we really do need
to be able to speak freely in order to arrive
at what is truth in the world.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Right converse and get to the truth, Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
There have been moments in the past when people you
heard that, there's not been a golden age. There have
been moments in the past when people got in trouble
for saying what they thought.
Speaker 9 (30:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Back in two thousand and one, comedian Bill Maher made
some controversial remarks about the nine to eleven hijackers on
his show Politically Incorrect, which aired on ABC. He said
the terrorists weren't cowards. Here's what former White House Press
Secretary Ari Fleischer had to say in response.
Speaker 16 (30:15):
It's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate. And
that's why there was an earlier question about as the
President said anything to people of his own party. They're
remind us to all Americans that they need to watch
what they say, watch what they do. And this is
not a time for remarks like that.
Speaker 9 (30:31):
There never is.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
By the way, Bill Maher's show was canceled by ABC,
but he was back on the air on HBO shortly
after that in two thousand and three with Real Time,
which has been on the air ever since.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And he hasn't said anything controversial since two thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, I think there was just one or two things,
right exactly. We'll be right back with more of the Middle.
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. In this hour,
we're asking if you're afraid to speak your mind right now,
you can call us at eight four four four Middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five three,
or you can reach out and listen to the Middle
dot com. I am joined by Camille Foster, editor at
(31:06):
large Tangle News and political activists and philosopher Cornell West.
And before we go back to the phone, since this
show is live, I get to ask about something that's
happening right now, which is, how does the deployment of
the National Guard in Washington, d c.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Affect what we're talking about here?
Speaker 1 (31:21):
DC is home to some of the biggest protests. Will people,
doctor West be scared away from speaking their minds with
all the National guardsmen? And they happened in La before
now now Washington, Oh?
Speaker 8 (31:33):
Absolutely, I mean Trump's project in many ways.
Speaker 9 (31:38):
Is cruelty, cruelty, cruelty based on fear, fear, fear.
Speaker 8 (31:43):
There's no love, no tendonness, no sweetness there. This is
domination and manipulation. So it's the brothers and sisters of
all colors there in Washington who will fear the brunt tears, consequences, psychically, spiritually,
will see what happens on the ground. But then all
of the various protests that we often go to Washington.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
D C.
Speaker 8 (32:06):
How many will want to do that with this kind
of militarization that we see at work. So that but
we shouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 11 (32:14):
I say.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
The thing about Trump is he's a very honest gangster.
He hasn't tried to hide and conceal any of his
cruelty at all. He's been very explicit about it. When
he came out nineteen eighties, he said, I want people
to hate. That's what he said about the brothers in
Central Park. He said, people talking about.
Speaker 9 (32:35):
Love, No, I want them to hate. You said, well, no, Trump,
we don't agree with that. Brother. Now, if that doesn't
mean we have to just hate you back, that's.
Speaker 8 (32:43):
Too petty a game. We love the very people you hate.
We don't want you crushing the people we love. So
we organize and we try to speak the truth. But
this is a very very ominous move, but it's not
a surprising one coming out of the Trump White House.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Kibille, what do you think about the sort of effect
of this law enforcement presence, national guard presence on speech.
Speaker 10 (33:07):
I mean, interestingly, the stepped up efforts with ICE in
various Blue cities had actually contributed to an outpouring of
support for protesters and demonstrators, and I suspect that this
provocation is actually going to yield precisely that same sort
of blowback. It might actually inspire a lot of people
to speak out, because it does feel like such a
(33:28):
kind of naked affront of certain things and values that
people had espoused. And there is I think a perception
on the left with respect to this truth deployment that
this is unacceptable, that this is beyond the pale, and
that the narrative that the Trump administration has tried to
spin about DC being in this kind of utter state
(33:48):
of complete disarray is one that just doesn't really seem
to fit the facts from their standpoint. So I think
they really are kind of two separate issues in terms
of the conversation we've been having about kind of this
year of expressing yourself in different contexts, and the particular
overreach in another, yet another area by the Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Here, let's go to Matthew, who's in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hi, Matthew,
go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 19 (34:16):
Thank you. First, allow me to say that, let me
say the bias and say that along with the cameleon
Cornell And excuse me for the familiarity, but I'm African
American and academic pretty well trained. I say that not
for any purpose other than to acknowledge that I have
to agree with with doctor West, especially when it comes
(34:37):
to our senses of what's going on politically. This isn't
a left parideation. What's going on here actually has to
do with capitalism and the need for those plutocrats who
are quickly becoming our techno bros. And other people hiding
from the fact that the American dollar is about to
sink to the bottom of the well. I think what's
happening here is where that's all the the Trump I'll
(34:59):
be behavior is all disguised to keep the American people
from understanding really what's going on, which is a greater
loss of their full democracy. What we don't understand and
what's going on here its very depths, is that the
American people are actually being sullied into believing that we're
talking left and right and democratic and republican, but we're
(35:21):
really talking about capital and its ability to maintain its
position once the society sinks to where it has to
be given where China, the bricks, and the lcon nations
are going.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Interesting, Matthew, thank you very much for that. Corn Now
West your thoughts.
Speaker 9 (35:38):
No, I mean, I agree with what he's saying.
Speaker 8 (35:41):
I just want to put a spiritual and moral dimension
to it. Because capitalism is a system based on predatory
greed looking for short term gain. But it can be corrected,
it can be reformed, it can be transformed so that
some of the innovation that goes with capitalism can actually
(36:05):
be used to produce a whole hosts of innovations where
poor and working people have assets. We're at a moment
now in the history of capitalism in the United States
where the greed has become so overwhelming and the levels
of poverty and homelessness and rootlessness is increasing, so you
(36:28):
get to grow test wealth, inequality, and so you end
up with that dynamic being hidden because Trump is using
so many distractions, and he's got different distractions every week,
He's got four or five of them every week, so
that people don't see what's really going on in terms
of the shaping of the impact of the economy on
(36:49):
their lives.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Alex Is calling from Houston, Texas. Alex Are you afraid
to speak your mind right now?
Speaker 7 (37:00):
Actually, I would have to disagree with Professor West. I'm
not afraid to stick in my mind. And I think
what happens that the left, mostly the left and sometimes
there right, have been very selective of what you should
say publicly where you should not say. For instance, social
media is governed by mostly people who would identify as
(37:22):
Louis and they're the ones that are ones that are
sinstory conservatives. And through my history, people who have been
right in my issues, I mean, have been silenced. But
nowadays I don't feel like Trump's intensive. I don't feel
like Trump is I don't know what you want to
call him. I don't think he's a guy that's out
there to to get people or to get the left.
(37:43):
I just think that people like me who are informed,
who are aware what's going on. I've heard Profensing your
West on many minion outlets. Speaker point his mind, and
I respect his opinion. But you know, I think that's
the beauty of America. I can disagree with his opinion
and not be afraid to speak my mind. If I
(38:04):
am against gay marriage, I should, at the concernatives be
able to speak that on the public form without being
attacked or targeted by the left. And you know, coming
from my point of view as a conservative, I'm Hispanic
and I agree with a lot of what could Trump
is doing. And I'm glad that finally someone's actually taken
(38:25):
action against a lot of stuff that the left has
throughout the year to the last twenty years since I've
been to high school, all the propaganda, the things put
and pushed on the young people. Nowadays, I think people
are waking up. I think people are awake. We are
not working. We are awake or ready, and we are
the two people who are informed. You know, there was
(38:47):
an interesting article back in two thousand and nine, I
believe we're two tide put and he said the people
who voted for Obama and the people who who support
Obama were the unemploy I'm not an uninformed border I'm
very informed. I'm very aware. I'm aware of the environment
and the and the area, and I'm not afraid of
(39:10):
my mind. If if people find out fensive, then you
know what you are against free speech Because even if
there's a white racist or black racist or attack races,
they speak their mind, they have that right as long
as they're not violent, as long as they're.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
More Okay, Alex, Alex, We've got it, We've got it.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
I appreciate your call, and thank you for listening and
for calling in, and let me go to let me
go to Camille Foster.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You got your conservative right there.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
But he's still talking about the censorship that with Trump
was talking about in the campaign with social media. How
does that look now? I mean, what do you think
about what you just heard there?
Speaker 10 (39:45):
I mean, look, I do think that some of those
prior incidences and circumstances that the kind of evolving culture
with respect to who has power and control and who's
doing the kind of active formal censoring and even the
informal sense in certain instances. But one of the things
that I think is really important, and what the caller
(40:05):
actually highlights, is the importance of not getting into the
habit of focusing too narrowly on imagined motives for people
who are doing things that we find unacceptable. And I
think a lot of the kind of call out culture
as it was referred to before again cancel culture, call
out culture, was there's this emphasis on these categorical denunciations. Well,
(40:26):
what you said is sexist and the project of actually
having a substantive argument about some particular issue, for example,
the pronouns conversation, it is entirely possible for someone to
feel uncomfortable with the expectation that I will use someone's
preferred pronouns without themselves being transphobic. That is entirely possible.
(40:47):
And I know that that is actually hard for some
people to square. But there are kind of competing issues
that do in fact have to be disentangled and agree
or disagree with that caller. I think that caller does
illustrate the fact that some one can arrive at very
different perspectives about the same issues, and the important thing
for us to be able to do is have a
conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, it's interesting, he pointed, Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Sorry, Sorry, I do I feel like I draw distinction
because people talk about oh, when the left was you know,
in power, you know, the woke situation. But I think
like if you miss gender somebody, you don't get detained.
You know what I'm saying. I think comparing these like
that era to the current era is is unfortunate, incorrect, right, So.
Speaker 10 (41:31):
Well, I think well, and I also say I also think, yeah,
well succinctly so we have a little bit of deliverous.
It's not about entertained.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah, yes, although for some people, I guess it is
right now, but uh, doctor West, Uh, you know. One
of the things that our caller just did there was
he pointed out that he's Hispanic and that he believes
this even though he's Hispanic. And it gets to what
Camille was just saying that people make all these assumptions
about you that may make you afraid to say what
you think. You know, Can you be an African American
(42:04):
in this country and say I disagree with this part
of you know, the.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Culture that I'm supposed to.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
I mean, remember when Biden said if you don't vote
for me, you ain't black.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I just what do you think about that sort of.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Assigning all these motives and all these things to people
when they have one view or another.
Speaker 9 (42:20):
Yeah, from the bad you raised the question.
Speaker 8 (42:21):
I mean I was glad that the conservative brother Alix
is not afraid to speak his mind.
Speaker 9 (42:27):
It's a beautiful thing. Lift your voice. I take that
very seriously. I will fight for his right to be wrong.
Speaker 8 (42:33):
I just want to make sure that we have a
respectful disagreement. Now there's a text How Truth Matters by Robert.
Speaker 9 (42:41):
George and her brother n Cornell.
Speaker 8 (42:43):
We asked dealing with what fruitful disagreement in an age
of division?
Speaker 11 (42:47):
Right?
Speaker 9 (42:48):
And we've been running around the country doing that.
Speaker 8 (42:49):
He's Conservative of vanilla Catholic brother, and I'm Chocolate and
you know, kind of hang loose Baptist and trying to
be a forceful good before the worms get my body.
Speaker 9 (43:01):
And I go on to the next stage.
Speaker 8 (43:03):
But the crucial thing is this, though, that there's no
such thing as any determinism. You see, the quality of
an argument and the depth of your insight is not
determined by whether you let tino a black African, an
indigenous person, a Muslim or.
Speaker 9 (43:18):
Christian or what have you. Truth is something bigger than
all of that. Justice is something bigger than all of that.
Speaker 8 (43:23):
And as brother Tolliver reminds us with his music, beauty
is something bigger than all of that, and if we
lose that motivation and aspiration, then it's all over.
Speaker 9 (43:37):
I mean, we were talking about the beauty.
Speaker 8 (43:39):
Of brother Camille's name, that it gets from his magnificent, precious,
loving mother, not just because he's a black brother. No,
the love is love and the beauty is putty of me.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
You can't deny that.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, yeah, what a great point. Devon is calling in
from Chicago, Illinois. Devin, welcome to the go ahead.
Speaker 20 (44:01):
Yes, I've just been listening to you guys talk a
lot about the division in our country, specifically with regard
to the way people are choosing to speak or feel
afraid to speak. And I think a big part of
that is that most of us forget that we're in
the gray, I think because of the media and a
lot of these hot busting issues on both sides. You know,
(44:24):
whether it be everybody from the left is Antifa if
you're on the right, and everybody on the left thinks
everybody from the right's a proud boy. And you know,
I kind of disagree with that that affessment of kind
of each side of the political sphere just because I
run into people that fall right or fall left, and
(44:46):
I look for commonalities, and you know, doctor Cornell was
just mentioning, you know, loves and music and even something
as simple as sports that we can find common interest in.
And I think, unfortunately we're being pitted against each other
by the politicians and the media. Maybe not consciously by
the media, but it reminds me of John Stewart in
(45:08):
a sense where I love The Daily Show, but I
made the connection where I felt like it was a
spoonful of sugar that was helping the medicine go down.
And unfortunately, I feel like the Liberals are taking a
lot of these very serious issues that are going on
and only choosing to look at it as something to
laugh at, something to joke about, something to make fun of.
Trump at the South Park episode was very big. The
(45:28):
White House is responding to that, and we're getting caught
up in all this these small things that really don't
represent the larger whole of our communities, and I think
that it's making people more divisive than feeling connected. And
I'm trying to figure out a way that we can
get back to that connection with each other.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
You know, Devin.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
When people say to me, oh, there is no middle anymore,
I'm just going to play them your call. I think
that's all we have to do there. So thank you,
thank you very much for calling in. I really appreciate it. Camille,
what do we We've just got a couple of minutes
left here, But let me ask each of you, what
do we do now to try to get to a
point where free speech and open conversation doesn't carry so
(46:10):
much potential risk in this country?
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Camille Foster, I'll start with you.
Speaker 10 (46:15):
I think doctor West has kind of been saying it
all along here. We have to cultivate a greater sense
of empathy. We have to cultivate a deeper commitment to
actually understanding one another's point of view, to not engaging
in these kind of blanket condemnations of the other and
imagining that there's nothing we have in common with people
who disagree with us. Politically and with respect to things political,
(46:39):
it would be great if we began to take some
steps and perhaps not make every single aspect of our
lives heavily politicized. It's fine for things not to be
decided in government. It is fine for us to try
to have public schools that prioritize teaching you to think
critically and engage in the Socratic method, as opposed to
have arguments about whether or not we're going to enforce
(47:02):
a kind of CRT oriented curriculum or ban CRT completely.
It seems to me that that's the wrong conversation to have.
Can you build sound children with soundbinds through our educational system,
who can engage with one another in a productive way
in society? That's the ultimate question. And I don't think
that our political valances necessarily have any formal impact on
(47:27):
how we go about trying to achieve that.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Cornell West's last word to you, your thoughts, how do
we go forward?
Speaker 8 (47:34):
No, the brother he said that with eloquence. Cicero and
Quintilly has said eloquence is wisdom speaking now politically ideologically,
it can go in a lot of different directions, but
you have to have some kind of spiritual and moral
starting point where you feel that you want to treat
(47:55):
other people as human beings, not as simply means to
manipulate and ends the subjugate. And once you lose that,
then no matter what your politics are, you just into domination, manipulation,
and transaction, and Trump is we know he's in a
domination manipulation transaction, but he is a signing symptom of
(48:15):
a culture that is obsessed with transaction manipulation and it's
very much market driven.
Speaker 9 (48:23):
And I go right back to the point again.
Speaker 8 (48:25):
We've got to reach a point where non market values
like love and trust and fidelity make a role.
Speaker 9 (48:32):
So if I want to say, for example, genocide.
Speaker 8 (48:35):
Has taken place in Gaza, but people who are critical
of me have a right to be critical, absolutely, let's
have a conversation.
Speaker 9 (48:42):
Absolutely, but that's not a brand, that's a cause.
Speaker 8 (48:47):
That's different. Were moving away from the market. We talking
about something deep, humanity.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
And that's the word. We'll end on humanity. Let me
thank my guests Cornell West and Caville Foster. Is so
great to have you both on. Thank you so much.
Speaker 9 (49:01):
Thank you, brother Jeremy. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Maye you Angelo, thank you and and Toliver And don't
forget to subscribe to our podcast. We've got extra episodes
every week, only available on the Middle podcast feed.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
As always, you can call in at eight four four
four Middle that's eight four four four six four three
three five three, or you can reach out at Listen
to the Middle dot com. You can also sign up
for our free weekly newsletter and support us with a
text deductible contribution.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
The Middle is brought to you by Longnook Media, distributed
by Illinois Public Media and Urbana Illinois, and produced by
Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmas, Dawes, John Barthonic Kadeshler,
and Brandon Condritz. Our technical director is Steve Mork. Thanks
to our satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the
hundreds of public radio stations that are making it possible
for people across the country to Listen to the Middle,
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and I'll talk to you next week.
Support for the Middle comes from the stations that air
the show and from you. Thanks for making a donation
at listen tooth Middle dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I'm Jeremy Hobson along with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver.
You would not know it from listening to this show,
but discourse in this country is actually not so hot
right now.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I think we need to change that. Like, let's make
the show just like the Internet, just like wild comments. Stop.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
No, that is definitely the wrong, definitely the wrong we have.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It turns out people can be kind of mean to
each other, even though one recent survey finds we actually
agree on most things, even sensitive topics, but we're afraid
to talk about it publicly. And it's not a surprise
because as we've seen, people can get ostracized or canceled,
not to mention, arrested and threatened with deportation for speaking
out on certain issues. So this hour we're asking if
(00:50):
you are afraid to speak your mind right now, We've
got an amazing panel with us as we take your
calls at eight four four four Middle. That's eight four
four four six four three three five three. We'll get
to that in just a minute. But first last week
on the show, we asked if the re industrialized America
that President Trump wants is still possible. Here are some
of the comments that came in on our voicemail after
(01:12):
the show.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Hi, my name is Jude, calling from Florida. I believe
that is a very critical national security interest to have
an economy that is capable of manufacturing, not just from
the companies like Apple or TMC or from their perspective,
but what about education systems and infrastructure and how do
we build those kinds of supports around a manufacturing economy
(01:34):
if that is in fact what we want to create.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
This is Lisa Heck calling from Boise, Idaho. With the
defunding of a lot of universities, how will we be
able to develop the technologies that will give us manufacturing
the edge.
Speaker 6 (01:52):
My name is Jeff, I'm from Nashville. Endess the people
that want to work factory jobs. I have assist who
works a factory job.
Speaker 7 (02:01):
And she hates us.
Speaker 6 (02:02):
And I'm sure there's a million and one people here
who would rather get an education and go work like
a trade or go work something more intellectual based.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Just become a DJ.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
His sister just hates that job.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, well, you can subscribe to the Middle wherever you
get your podcast to hear that entire episode. But now
to our question this hour, are you afraid to speak
your mind?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Right now? Tolliver?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
How can people who want to speak their mind reach us?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
You can call us at eight four four four Middle,
that's eight four four four six four three three five three,
or you can write to us at Listen to the
Middle dot com. You can also comment on our live
stream on YouTube if you dare, okay, I'll get you
on air. Leave a comment.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Joining us this hour, political activist and philosopher doctor Cornell West.
Cornell West, Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 8 (02:49):
It's a blessed to be here, or brother, I salute you,
and I salute my dear brother, DJ Tollivan and music
rich to music is real and it's one of the
things that the country needs one and ever. We need
something that's for real, that cuts deeper than all of
the labels on the surface.
Speaker 9 (03:05):
It gets to deep and rich humanity.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh, thank you, my brother. I'm putting on my man.
Speaker 9 (03:11):
Appreciate that, Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Our other guest this hour is Camille Foster, Editor at
large at Tangled News, Camille.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Great to have you back on the.
Speaker 10 (03:18):
Show, Jeremy, thanks so much for having me, doctor West.
It's a pleasure to be with you here, and it's
always pleasure to be back here, Jeremy, so thanks for
having me again, and thanks to your entire team.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Thank you, brother.
Speaker 8 (03:29):
There's a blessing to be in a lot with you,
very much, so, very much so.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
All right, all right, so before we get to the funds,
let me talk to each of you. Corno West, you
have spent a career in academia. I was talking to
a political science professor recently who said he used to
start his classes off by asking his students to talk
about issues in the news, and he doesn't do that
anymore because the students are too afraid to say anything controversial.
Are you seeing that or how would you describe the
(03:55):
state of free speech in our country right now?
Speaker 11 (03:58):
No?
Speaker 9 (03:59):
I think we're indeed.
Speaker 8 (04:00):
When it comes to people who want to dig deep
in the corners of their own dark soul and speak
to deep truths that they feel, it's more and more
difficult to do that. It's hard to enter public space
without feeling marginalized. We don't have the bonds of trust
that's required for people to speak their minds, so can
disagree with each other and still engage a respectful dialogue.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And why is that?
Speaker 8 (04:26):
Well, I just think there's just spiritual decay. Those the
more with decrepitude. It's a when you have one organized
greed and weabinized hatred and institutionalize indifference run while in
a society, then your rest assured that you no longer
created contexts in which people feel that they can be
fully themselves to raise their voices. So a lot of
(04:48):
posing and posturing echoes rather than voices. I come from
a Black folk whose anthemis lift every voices and not
lift every echo.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Let you see.
Speaker 9 (04:57):
And I'm a jazz man.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
Jazz man he can't make If all you got is
an echo, you better get another job.
Speaker 9 (05:03):
You better find your voice.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
But it takes courage to find out against the grain,
and we don't have enough courage right now in the culture.
And it cuts across colored class, region, religion, non religion,
it cuts across you know, it comes across all those
lines because the empire itself is experiencing this deep spiritual decay.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Kamille Foster, what do you think about the state of
free speech?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
In our country right now.
Speaker 10 (05:29):
Well, I'm certainly deeply concerned about that. I think there's
an agreement on the panel with that. With respect to that,
I've been involved in a lot of these conversations for
many years now on the board of FIRE, the Foundation
for Individual Rights and an Expression, which used to be
individual rights and education and most of the issues FIRE
used to contend with we're on campus, but we saw
(05:51):
this growing problem with respect to the need of the friend,
free expression, and a bunch of other contexts, and broadened
our mandate mandate accordingly. It's interesting that back in twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, when we were having
these conversations, much of it focused on cancel culture. A
lot of it was about concern with respect to conduct
on the political left. Obviously, the left kind of controlled
(06:14):
the culture in many respects. They had the White House,
if not Congress, and things have changed pretty substantially in
recent years. Conservatives used to be very concerned about cancel culture.
A lot of that concern seems to have abated somewhat,
and President Trump has been engaged in a great deal
of explicit censorship, in other cases actual active harassment of
(06:38):
various media organizations through the courts, et cetera. So we've
gone from simply and not simply because it was consequential
and important then as well, but a kind of culture
that had this disposition towards cancelation, cancelations that were often
happening in these social contexts that had pretty real consequences
for people in their jobs and in their personal lives,
and that polling seemed to suggest was contributing to them
(07:01):
not sharing their perspectives as often, and it was a
majority of people, irrespective of their kind of background, in
most contexts, and that trend has continued. Unfortunately, not only
has it continued, we see the government become a more
active participant in a lot of these in a lot
of these cancelations. So we both have a real political
(07:21):
problem that we have to navigate and contend with, but
we also still have a lot of really unhealthy social
dynamics that are at play. And I would actually agree
with doctor West in an important respect. I think technology
has contributed to a real kind of decaying of the
sort of culture around free expression and pluralism.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, it will definitely get into the issue of social
media and all of the harm that it does to
you know, people just being able to throw bombs anonymously
basically in the public square. But doctor West, what are
the downsides if people are afraid to speak out?
Speaker 8 (07:59):
Well, you just with a nihilism that people feel as
if what they say does not matter. And of course
that's a short move to whether they themselves ever't matter,
if your voice doesn't matter, and you wonder whether you
matter at all? Right, the Black National anthem has to
do with the people who were viewed by so many
in society as not counting, not mattering. So when you
(08:21):
say lift every voice, oh lord, I really matter, Yes
it is. And your voice, when rais, can actually shape
your destiny, beginning with the memory of your grandmama, beginning
with how you treat your child, beginning with shaping the
future of the country, so that it's a spiritual decay.
And I keep coming back to spiritual because see, once
you live in a.
Speaker 9 (08:41):
Society and with money and power are the.
Speaker 8 (08:44):
Fundamental determinants of your humanity, then lifting voices and free
speech are tertiary, their secondary. It's the money folk, it's
the powerful folk, it's the wealthy ones. And we've got
to fight back. I mean I'm not one into bleakness
and gloom and bloom. I believe in fighting back. I
(09:06):
go down swinging, lifting my voice a long voices of others,
and I want to hear all the other voices, even
the voices I just agree with.
Speaker 9 (09:14):
I want to hear it.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, let's actually the lines are full, so let me
just get to one call quick before we go to
a break. Here, Angie in South Dakota is joining us. Angie,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Go ahead. Are you afraid to speak your mind?
Speaker 12 (09:28):
Hi?
Speaker 13 (09:29):
Thanks for having me on. Yes, I'm an educator. I'm
in the school system, and it's a public school system,
and I work in the arts and so I've got
teenagers on the stage with me every evening, and I
have very close and personal relationships with all their parents
because they're involved, and it's gotten worse and worse over
(09:49):
the years. But I come back around to trying to
teach them lessons of you know, expression through kindness. We
have issues between parents and transit that that's come to
a head over the over the years, and I come
back to the fact that every one of these students
are fighting a battle every single day with mental illness.
Every one of us in the stage, and that they're
(10:12):
all hurting in their teen years, they're struggling, and that
don't we all want these kids to feel loved and
I'm finding that that's something that we can find commonality on.
But if I were to go any further, I mean,
that would be my job.
Speaker 14 (10:27):
That would be my job.
Speaker 13 (10:28):
So in the case, I would absolutely if I were
to say anything more about, hey, I know you don't
want to use their pronouns, but they have rights, right,
that would be the end for me. So instead, I'd say, Okay,
you can't call them by their the pronoun We don't
even go I don't even say the pronouns. I just say,
can we call them by their name? And that works
(10:51):
out for everybody. So we are kind of mediating these
through a safer, more shallow way of handling all these
issues that are really political for their families.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, well, Angie, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So great to hear from an educator in a public
school system in South Dakota. As we kicked this off, reminder,
our numbers eight four to four for middle that's eight
four four four six four three three five three, and Tolliver,
we said that speaking your mind has become difficult on
college campuses. A number of foreign students were detained after
protesting or even writing criticism about Israel's war in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, one was a Tufts University student who wrote an
op ed in the student newspaper criticizing her school's response
to the war, and who's arrest by ice went viral.
Here's the Democratic Congressoman Pramila Diapaul grilling Secretary of State
Marco Rubio about that.
Speaker 15 (11:42):
Where in the Constitution does it say that the Secretary
of State can override the First Amendment protections of free speech?
Is there a note that I missed constitutional right to
a student visa? But is there a constitutional right? Does
it say somewhere that Marco Rubio gets to deter whether
which speech is appropriate and revoke student visas based on
(12:05):
what you think constitutions for scarce a statue.
Speaker 16 (12:07):
There's a statue says a secretary of State gets to
determine whether someone is a threat.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Is a threat?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
He says, we should note that that student Romesa os
Turk was ultimately freed from immigration detention, but there are
other students who are facing very similar things. That will
keep an eye on that and we'll be right back
with more of the middle. This is the Middle. I'm
Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, in the Middle is
a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices
from the middle, geographically, politically, philosophically, or maybe you just
(12:35):
want to meet in the middle. This hour, we're asking
if you're afraid to speak your mind right now, Tolliver,
how can people reach us?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
You can call us to eight four four four Middle.
That's eight four four four six four three three five three.
You can also write to us at Listen to the
Middle dot com or on every single piece of social media.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
I'm joined by political activists and philosopher Cornell West and
Camille Foster, editor at large at Tangle News. And before
we get to more phone calls, Uh, you mentioned money
and power, Cornell West. If we think about traditional media
companies in this country, CBS, ABC, Washington Post, et cetera,
they've all been targeted by the Trump administration, maybe with
(13:14):
costly lawsuits. Or do you think that they are self
censoring right now to avoid the ire of President Trump?
Speaker 7 (13:22):
Oh?
Speaker 9 (13:22):
I think so, my brother, very much so.
Speaker 8 (13:24):
Not only that many of them are capitulating and allowing
their trajectory to be determined by what his own values
and what his own ends and aims ought to be.
Speaker 9 (13:39):
And that's and of course we see this with the universities.
Speaker 8 (13:42):
Look at Columbia University capitulates, because so many others capitulate.
Harvard's about to capitulate half a billion dollars. You have
to have courage, You have to be within the street
and your back up, speak your mind, and and and
and go against the grain, as it were.
Speaker 9 (13:58):
I think that's so important.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
QBO Foster, what about that and social media, which you
brought up. It's so easy on social media to pile
on accuse people of things anonymously and make people not
want to say what they think.
Speaker 10 (14:13):
Sure, I mean those are new social dynamics that have
emerged and not so new anymore, but now well established
where we can very quickly assemble online both to collaborate
and work towards some outcome that could be a positive outcome.
It could also be bullying, a kind of online censorship
(14:34):
mobs that are looking to get people fired from their jobs.
But I do think there's an important parallel to draw
between what we're seeing now happening, and what was happening
during say COVID, when we did see a kind of
soft censorship where various political officials were perhaps coordinating with
various independent private actors, social media companies, tech companies in
(14:55):
order to ensure that certain kinds of messages weren't getting out.
And it's certainly arguable that they had some legitimate interest
in attempting to do that because of public health concerns.
But I do think that there is a non trivial
kind of relationship between what we saw there and what
we've seen in the present day, where we're seeing more
(15:15):
and more instances of this, and we're seeing the current
White House kind of take its own use its own
efforts to try and achieve some of the same ends.
In certain instances, it's filing these rather frivolous lawsuits and
scoring these settlements. In other cases, it's a different kind
of quiet coordination with universities where they've gone in and
tried to obtain these concessions that allow them to essentially
(15:37):
dictate the terms on campus. And I worry a lot
about the pendulum swinging from left to right as opposed
to us trying to pursue a more sustainable pluralism, first
centrist kind of perspective on these issues. And unfortunately, I
think a lot of the prior bad acts helped contribute
to the current circumstance, which is deeply unhealthy, and I'm
(16:00):
not certain that we're actually taking the right lessons on
board in order to build more viable future for ourselves.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
We have another Camille who's on the phone from Sun Valley, Idaho. Camille,
Welcome to the middle. Go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 17 (16:17):
Hi, thanks for having me. I was born in the
late sixties and raised to always voice my opinion, and
I cannot remember a time until recently since Trump take
office that I have felt in public situations, not so
much private, but definitely public situations where I was actually
(16:42):
hesitant about calling specifically a man out for doing something
I thought was disrespectful or stating something disrespectful. And it's
a very scary feeling. It's a very odd, odd feeling.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Was a very.
Speaker 18 (17:06):
I mean, I actually felt, which I've never felt in
my life before. I actually felt in certain public situations
in the in the last two or three years physically,
you know, a little bit of afraid to call this
person out, whether it was you know, a sexist remark
or you know, just almost aggressive behavior which I've never
(17:30):
really experienced in a public setting before. And again, Idaho's
it's a very red state, but I live in a
very blue county, and so certainly I'm aware of different perspectives,
and I really I appreciate everyone's perspective, but when someone
cross that line, I feel lately that I'm actually a
(17:53):
little bit physically afraid just to call someone out. And
that scares me because I have a twenty daughter.
Speaker 17 (18:00):
I've really raised to express her opinions. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Well, yeah, Camille, thank you very much for that corner West,
What do you What do you make of that? Just
the fear to say what you want to say, even
for fear that you're going to be physically harmed potentially.
Speaker 8 (18:19):
No, I think that what she says is a confirmation
of what I'm trying to put forward, what the Camille
was trying to put forward. I think that the crucial
thing at this point is to try to highlight what
needs to be in place for us to not just
fight back, but to change and transform, to decay and
(18:40):
the decadence that are presented to us. You see that
one of The crucial things is is that any democracy
that will flower and flourish needs to be rich in
the things that money cannot buy. Love, trust, integrity, honesty, decency, kindness, sweetness.
(19:08):
Oh this red and tells me to try a little tenderness.
You see, those are the things that every human being need.
You get it into music. Used to get it in
the churches, in monscin synagogues, but they've been commodified. They've
been so deeply ideologically polarized that it's hard for them
to get at their prophetic sources that talk about the
(19:30):
things that money cannot buy. And I was blessed to
grow up in a family with the West family, shallow
Baptist Church, Black Panther Party. Taught me to be in
solidarity with the poor even if you get shot by
the police or the FBI or anybody else, because that
is a wealth that the world can't take away. Even
if you broke the Ten commandments. Financially, you're still rich,
(19:55):
very rich. And that's true for the jazz women and
the blues men. They got something the money can't, but
that most of them broke as can be.
Speaker 9 (20:02):
But all they got some riches that the world is
angry for then and now.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, let's get to Ben in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Ben, go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 14 (20:17):
Hi. So we were talking a little bit earlier on
in the show about sort of the college environment and
a lot of stuff that's going on there with.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
Free speech.
Speaker 14 (20:29):
And I think for me, one of the things I'm
in college right now and one of the things that
makes me a little bit afraid to speak out sort
of as someone who's trying to make friends make connections
at this time in my life, I don't want to
sort of share my views before I've gotten to know
(20:50):
someone well, because I feel like if I state my claim,
especially my views trend towards the left, and sometimes you
know that can be farther than other people views go.
I feel like if I share those views, I'm going
to lose that person and maybe I'm going to lose
(21:10):
the people around them if that sort of, uh the
word gets out things like that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
So do you worry about do you worry about losing
like career prospects if you say what you think about something, you.
Speaker 14 (21:27):
Know, honestly, I had not thought about that, but now
that you mentioned that, I think that is that is
a good point. I think you know, part of this,
part of this time in life is not only yeah,
building social connections, but building job connections as well. And
I think, you know, something that I might think is
(21:48):
an offhand comment about a headline in the news or
something like that, I worry that that could paint the
image of me for for someone who has opposing views,
and they would be inclined to cut me off or
try to otherwise prevent me from succeeding.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, let me just ask you one more thing, Ben,
Do you think this is something temporary or do you
think that things will change and eventually you'll be able
to say what you really think?
Speaker 14 (22:17):
You know, I honestly don't know. I think that for me,
as I've sort of gone through the school system in elementary,
middle school, high school, now college, I think it's gotten
more difficult to speak my mind as sort of I've
gained opinions and learned more about the world. But I
(22:39):
don't know if that is simply how it is as
you know, get older, or if that's something more recently.
You know, when I was in elementary school, that was
that was the first term of President Trump in twenty sixteen,
So that sort of is a bit of a turn
in my mind for me in terms of how speech
is treated, how I treat speech.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, well, thank you so much for calling in. Ben
really appreciate it. I always love hearing from a college student.
Camille Foster, Wow, what do you think about about that?
Hearing from Ben who's in college and I mean in
elementary school when President Trump was when it was in office,
and feels that way.
Speaker 10 (23:19):
It's very interesting. Again, it's just just the trend line
with respect to opinions on this, the nature of the
debate and how it's evolved over time, and what I'm
hearing here with the callers, and this is me kind
of projecting something onto them. I don't have data to
support it, but I do wonder if a number of
people on the left, who had traditionally felt a bit
more empowered to speak their mind in prior epochs, have
(23:43):
since the election perhaps begun to feel some of the
concern in trepidation that some people on the right have
been talking about people who were perhaps out of step
with some of the kind of social justice issues. I
think the first caller we had mentioned some of the
gender and pronoun debates, and around that time, one of
the dynamics that I observed was the fact that there
(24:04):
was this kind of equivalence drawn between speech and violence,
and even she kind of talked about this concern about
safety with respect to actually being able to speak to
various issues, and I find it really interesting, and it
also makes me think, well, shouldn't we be talking a
bit more about solutions? How do we actually work through
(24:25):
a circumstance like this? For so many people on so
many sides of our various political circumstances find themselves in
this situation where they feel that they can't express themselves openly.
And honestly, there've always been things you can't say without
some sort of sensor sanction, but it's also the case
that the universe of things that you can't say, it seems,
(24:48):
has expanded in a pretty considerable way, and that is
a cause for concern.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Well, here in the middle, we are very proud that
we also always hear from people who are Trump supporters,
who are people are into and so if you're out
there and you're on the conservative side of things, I'd
love to hear from you at eight four four four
six four through three five three about whether you feel
like you can speak your mind right now, Tolliver, what
is coming in online?
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's like over there's so many comments. Appreciate them, keep
them coming. Briefly, Randy and Rochester broke the record for
swears okay in a message. I want to acknowledge Randy
for that. Shout out to Rochester.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Gratus.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yes, but Mikey and Gainesville says from North central Florida,
as the name of the show, the citizens who register
to vote are now afraid to say which party they
are part of, afraid of personal retaliation, and now they
can't vote in primaries because they register as non party affiliated.
Kareem says, guns, you don't know who has one, so
you don't speak up. Duncan, North Carolina says it's interesting
(25:43):
that we all watch China crush free speech in Hong
Kong recently. Now Trump regime is imitating the CPC, so
a lot of interesting comments coming in. I was trying
to formulate a question with this, but I know that
my self image of America growing up was that we
are the free ones and that other countries that this
kind of thing happens. Do you think that, I guess,
brother West, do you think that our that like our
(26:04):
our image of ourselves has fundamentally changed going forward because
of the era we are now.
Speaker 9 (26:09):
Well, I think they are. I think they. I think
it's very important to keep in mind.
Speaker 11 (26:13):
That in the history of the human species, truth seekers
and truth tellers and truth and actors have usually either
been crucified, forced to drink himlock, marginalize, forced to.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
Go in exile. Think of Socrates. Now, I'm a Christian,
so I got to buyas towards Jesus. But oh Lord,
haven't merged thirty three years old.
Speaker 9 (26:36):
On the cross. Mmmmm. And we haven't even got you know,
the Martin King.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
And we haven't got the Rabbi Hesha, we haven't got
the Dorothy Day.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
These are folk.
Speaker 8 (26:45):
Who thoroughly marginalize, vilify, attacked because they were just trying
to talk about love and justice and kindness and sweetness.
So we have to keep in mind that there's never
been a golden age. That doesn't mean I've been a
bad age. Things have been better than they are now,
there's no doubt about that. But there's never been a
golden age. So that I hope none of us in
(27:08):
any way are paralyzed by despair.
Speaker 9 (27:11):
That's the crucial thing.
Speaker 8 (27:12):
We had to be fortified, to bear witness to a love, integrity, honesty, decency,
a certain kind of commitment to something bigger than greed
and bigger than hatred.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Let's get another call in. Robert is calling from Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, Robert,
what do you think? Are you afraid to speak your mind?
Speaker 7 (27:32):
Hello?
Speaker 15 (27:34):
I want to.
Speaker 12 (27:36):
For me personally, no, I am not. Well, it just
depends on the environment. I tend to being gay. I
just have naturally like found myself sometimes forgetting that straight
people exist, and then I'm reminded and then I have
to like, oh, just like code switch. But I want
to talk about the online phenomenon of so when I
(28:01):
was growing up I'm twenty eight, there's a big thing
of like you have to watch what you on the internet.
You can't be posting like things about from your party.
You have to make sure that like if in a
future employer look you up, you will be square and
like presentable. And now there's an interesting I don't want
to say it's an inverse or a parallel, but it's
like there's phenomenons of like the QAnon conspiracy and then
(28:24):
like echo chambers and like forums on Reddit and four
Chan and like weird, like I think the Internet has
helped make people feel less alone. But at the same time,
you can curate and then the algorithm curates for you
a chamber in which you do not interrogate yourself. You
are affirmed in everything that you hold and think of,
(28:45):
and sometimes that can lead to people like increasingly spiraling
out of reality. And I think then they bring that
to the real world.
Speaker 14 (28:52):
And.
Speaker 12 (28:54):
It's just it's another variable, another aspect that is I
think to talk about in this whole converse.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, Rob Robert, thank you very much for that.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Camille Foster, is there a difference do you think with
the social just briefly, is there a difference with social
media's effect on people on the right and the left?
Speaker 10 (29:11):
Do you think I'm not so sure about that. I
think that in both instances, it can contribute to these
kind of mobbings. It can contribute to this process of
to humanization. We're speaking to one another through these avatars.
We don't even imagine that this is kind of another
person on the other side. It's just they're irredeemable and
terrible and bad. And I actually think something doctor Wes
(29:34):
said a moment ago, there is an important connection between
people being able to speak freely and have this process
of truth discovery take place. And we really do need
to be able to speak freely in order to arrive
at what is truth in the world.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Right converse and get to the truth, Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
There have been moments in the past when people you
heard that, there's not been a golden age. There have
been moments in the past when people got in trouble
for saying what they thought.
Speaker 9 (30:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Back in two thousand and one, comedian Bill Maher made
some controversial remarks about the nine to eleven hijackers on
his show Politically Incorrect, which aired on ABC. He said
the terrorists weren't cowards. Here's what former White House Press
Secretary Ari Fleischer had to say in response.
Speaker 16 (30:15):
It's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate. And
that's why there was an earlier question about as the
President said anything to people of his own party. They're
remind us to all Americans that they need to watch
what they say, watch what they do. And this is
not a time for remarks like that.
Speaker 9 (30:31):
There never is.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
By the way, Bill Maher's show was canceled by ABC,
but he was back on the air on HBO shortly
after that in two thousand and three with Real Time,
which has been on the air ever since.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And he hasn't said anything controversial since two thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, I think there was just one or two things,
right exactly. We'll be right back with more of the Middle.
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. In this hour,
we're asking if you're afraid to speak your mind right now,
you can call us at eight four four four Middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five three,
or you can reach out and listen to the Middle
dot com. I am joined by Camille Foster, editor at
(31:06):
large Tangle News and political activists and philosopher Cornell West.
And before we go back to the phone, since this
show is live, I get to ask about something that's
happening right now, which is, how does the deployment of
the National Guard in Washington, d c.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Affect what we're talking about here?
Speaker 1 (31:21):
DC is home to some of the biggest protests. Will people,
doctor West be scared away from speaking their minds with
all the National guardsmen? And they happened in La before
now now Washington, Oh?
Speaker 8 (31:33):
Absolutely, I mean Trump's project in many ways.
Speaker 9 (31:38):
Is cruelty, cruelty, cruelty based on fear, fear, fear.
Speaker 8 (31:43):
There's no love, no tendonness, no sweetness there. This is
domination and manipulation. So it's the brothers and sisters of
all colors there in Washington who will fear the brunt tears, consequences, psychically, spiritually,
will see what happens on the ground. But then all
of the various protests that we often go to Washington.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
D C.
Speaker 8 (32:06):
How many will want to do that with this kind
of militarization that we see at work. So that but
we shouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 11 (32:14):
I say.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
The thing about Trump is he's a very honest gangster.
He hasn't tried to hide and conceal any of his
cruelty at all. He's been very explicit about it. When
he came out nineteen eighties, he said, I want people
to hate. That's what he said about the brothers in
Central Park. He said, people talking about.
Speaker 9 (32:35):
Love, No, I want them to hate. You said, well, no, Trump,
we don't agree with that. Brother. Now, if that doesn't
mean we have to just hate you back, that's.
Speaker 8 (32:43):
Too petty a game. We love the very people you hate.
We don't want you crushing the people we love. So
we organize and we try to speak the truth. But
this is a very very ominous move, but it's not
a surprising one coming out of the Trump White House.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Kibille, what do you think about the sort of effect
of this law enforcement presence, national guard presence on speech.
Speaker 10 (33:07):
I mean, interestingly, the stepped up efforts with ICE in
various Blue cities had actually contributed to an outpouring of
support for protesters and demonstrators, and I suspect that this
provocation is actually going to yield precisely that same sort
of blowback. It might actually inspire a lot of people
to speak out, because it does feel like such a
(33:28):
kind of naked affront of certain things and values that
people had espoused. And there is I think a perception
on the left with respect to this truth deployment that
this is unacceptable, that this is beyond the pale, and
that the narrative that the Trump administration has tried to
spin about DC being in this kind of utter state
(33:48):
of complete disarray is one that just doesn't really seem
to fit the facts from their standpoint. So I think
they really are kind of two separate issues in terms
of the conversation we've been having about kind of this
year of expressing yourself in different contexts, and the particular
overreach in another, yet another area by the Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Here, let's go to Matthew, who's in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hi, Matthew,
go ahead with your thoughts.
Speaker 19 (34:16):
Thank you. First, allow me to say that, let me
say the bias and say that along with the cameleon
Cornell And excuse me for the familiarity, but I'm African
American and academic pretty well trained. I say that not
for any purpose other than to acknowledge that I have
to agree with with doctor West, especially when it comes
(34:37):
to our senses of what's going on politically. This isn't
a left parideation. What's going on here actually has to
do with capitalism and the need for those plutocrats who
are quickly becoming our techno bros. And other people hiding
from the fact that the American dollar is about to
sink to the bottom of the well. I think what's
happening here is where that's all the the Trump I'll
(34:59):
be behavior is all disguised to keep the American people
from understanding really what's going on, which is a greater
loss of their full democracy. What we don't understand and
what's going on here its very depths, is that the
American people are actually being sullied into believing that we're
talking left and right and democratic and republican, but we're
(35:21):
really talking about capital and its ability to maintain its
position once the society sinks to where it has to
be given where China, the bricks, and the lcon nations
are going.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Interesting, Matthew, thank you very much for that. Corn Now
West your thoughts.
Speaker 9 (35:38):
No, I mean, I agree with what he's saying.
Speaker 8 (35:41):
I just want to put a spiritual and moral dimension
to it. Because capitalism is a system based on predatory
greed looking for short term gain. But it can be corrected,
it can be reformed, it can be transformed so that
some of the innovation that goes with capitalism can actually
(36:05):
be used to produce a whole hosts of innovations where
poor and working people have assets. We're at a moment
now in the history of capitalism in the United States
where the greed has become so overwhelming and the levels
of poverty and homelessness and rootlessness is increasing, so you
(36:28):
get to grow test wealth, inequality, and so you end
up with that dynamic being hidden because Trump is using
so many distractions, and he's got different distractions every week,
He's got four or five of them every week, so
that people don't see what's really going on in terms
of the shaping of the impact of the economy on
(36:49):
their lives.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Alex Is calling from Houston, Texas. Alex Are you afraid
to speak your mind right now?
Speaker 7 (37:00):
Actually, I would have to disagree with Professor West. I'm
not afraid to stick in my mind. And I think
what happens that the left, mostly the left and sometimes
there right, have been very selective of what you should
say publicly where you should not say. For instance, social
media is governed by mostly people who would identify as
(37:22):
Louis and they're the ones that are ones that are
sinstory conservatives. And through my history, people who have been
right in my issues, I mean, have been silenced. But
nowadays I don't feel like Trump's intensive. I don't feel
like Trump is I don't know what you want to
call him. I don't think he's a guy that's out
there to to get people or to get the left.
(37:43):
I just think that people like me who are informed,
who are aware what's going on. I've heard Profensing your
West on many minion outlets. Speaker point his mind, and
I respect his opinion. But you know, I think that's
the beauty of America. I can disagree with his opinion
and not be afraid to speak my mind. If I
(38:04):
am against gay marriage, I should, at the concernatives be
able to speak that on the public form without being
attacked or targeted by the left. And you know, coming
from my point of view as a conservative, I'm Hispanic
and I agree with a lot of what could Trump
is doing. And I'm glad that finally someone's actually taken
(38:25):
action against a lot of stuff that the left has
throughout the year to the last twenty years since I've
been to high school, all the propaganda, the things put
and pushed on the young people. Nowadays, I think people
are waking up. I think people are awake. We are
not working. We are awake or ready, and we are
the two people who are informed. You know, there was
(38:47):
an interesting article back in two thousand and nine, I
believe we're two tide put and he said the people
who voted for Obama and the people who who support
Obama were the unemploy I'm not an uninformed border I'm
very informed. I'm very aware. I'm aware of the environment
and the and the area, and I'm not afraid of
(39:10):
my mind. If if people find out fensive, then you
know what you are against free speech Because even if
there's a white racist or black racist or attack races,
they speak their mind, they have that right as long
as they're not violent, as long as they're.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
More Okay, Alex, Alex, We've got it, We've got it.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
I appreciate your call, and thank you for listening and
for calling in, and let me go to let me
go to Camille Foster.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You got your conservative right there.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
But he's still talking about the censorship that with Trump
was talking about in the campaign with social media. How
does that look now? I mean, what do you think
about what you just heard there?
Speaker 10 (39:45):
I mean, look, I do think that some of those
prior incidences and circumstances that the kind of evolving culture
with respect to who has power and control and who's
doing the kind of active formal censoring and even the
informal sense in certain instances. But one of the things
that I think is really important, and what the caller
(40:05):
actually highlights, is the importance of not getting into the
habit of focusing too narrowly on imagined motives for people
who are doing things that we find unacceptable. And I
think a lot of the kind of call out culture
as it was referred to before again cancel culture, call
out culture, was there's this emphasis on these categorical denunciations. Well,
(40:26):
what you said is sexist and the project of actually
having a substantive argument about some particular issue, for example,
the pronouns conversation, it is entirely possible for someone to
feel uncomfortable with the expectation that I will use someone's
preferred pronouns without themselves being transphobic. That is entirely possible.
(40:47):
And I know that that is actually hard for some
people to square. But there are kind of competing issues
that do in fact have to be disentangled and agree
or disagree with that caller. I think that caller does
illustrate the fact that some one can arrive at very
different perspectives about the same issues, and the important thing
for us to be able to do is have a
conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, it's interesting, he pointed, Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Sorry, Sorry, I do I feel like I draw distinction
because people talk about oh, when the left was you know,
in power, you know, the woke situation. But I think
like if you miss gender somebody, you don't get detained.
You know what I'm saying. I think comparing these like
that era to the current era is is unfortunate, incorrect, right, So.
Speaker 10 (41:31):
Well, I think well, and I also say I also think, yeah,
well succinctly so we have a little bit of deliverous.
It's not about entertained.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah, yes, although for some people, I guess it is
right now, but uh, doctor West, Uh, you know. One
of the things that our caller just did there was
he pointed out that he's Hispanic and that he believes
this even though he's Hispanic. And it gets to what
Camille was just saying that people make all these assumptions
about you that may make you afraid to say what
you think. You know, Can you be an African American
(42:04):
in this country and say I disagree with this part
of you know, the.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Culture that I'm supposed to.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
I mean, remember when Biden said if you don't vote
for me, you ain't black.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I just what do you think about that sort of.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Assigning all these motives and all these things to people
when they have one view or another.
Speaker 9 (42:20):
Yeah, from the bad you raised the question.
Speaker 8 (42:21):
I mean I was glad that the conservative brother Alix
is not afraid to speak his mind.
Speaker 9 (42:27):
It's a beautiful thing. Lift your voice. I take that
very seriously. I will fight for his right to be wrong.
Speaker 8 (42:33):
I just want to make sure that we have a
respectful disagreement. Now there's a text How Truth Matters by Robert.
Speaker 9 (42:41):
George and her brother n Cornell.
Speaker 8 (42:43):
We asked dealing with what fruitful disagreement in an age
of division?
Speaker 11 (42:47):
Right?
Speaker 9 (42:48):
And we've been running around the country doing that.
Speaker 8 (42:49):
He's Conservative of vanilla Catholic brother, and I'm Chocolate and
you know, kind of hang loose Baptist and trying to
be a forceful good before the worms get my body.
Speaker 9 (43:01):
And I go on to the next stage.
Speaker 8 (43:03):
But the crucial thing is this, though, that there's no
such thing as any determinism. You see, the quality of
an argument and the depth of your insight is not
determined by whether you let tino a black African, an
indigenous person, a Muslim or.
Speaker 9 (43:18):
Christian or what have you. Truth is something bigger than
all of that. Justice is something bigger than all of that.
Speaker 8 (43:23):
And as brother Tolliver reminds us with his music, beauty
is something bigger than all of that, and if we
lose that motivation and aspiration, then it's all over.
Speaker 9 (43:37):
I mean, we were talking about the beauty.
Speaker 8 (43:39):
Of brother Camille's name, that it gets from his magnificent, precious,
loving mother, not just because he's a black brother. No,
the love is love and the beauty is putty of me.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
You can't deny that.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, yeah, what a great point. Devon is calling in
from Chicago, Illinois. Devin, welcome to the go ahead.
Speaker 20 (44:01):
Yes, I've just been listening to you guys talk a
lot about the division in our country, specifically with regard
to the way people are choosing to speak or feel
afraid to speak. And I think a big part of
that is that most of us forget that we're in
the gray, I think because of the media and a
lot of these hot busting issues on both sides. You know,
(44:24):
whether it be everybody from the left is Antifa if
you're on the right, and everybody on the left thinks
everybody from the right's a proud boy. And you know,
I kind of disagree with that that affessment of kind
of each side of the political sphere just because I
run into people that fall right or fall left, and
(44:46):
I look for commonalities, and you know, doctor Cornell was
just mentioning, you know, loves and music and even something
as simple as sports that we can find common interest in.
And I think, unfortunately we're being pitted against each other
by the politicians and the media. Maybe not consciously by
the media, but it reminds me of John Stewart in
(45:08):
a sense where I love The Daily Show, but I
made the connection where I felt like it was a
spoonful of sugar that was helping the medicine go down.
And unfortunately, I feel like the Liberals are taking a
lot of these very serious issues that are going on
and only choosing to look at it as something to
laugh at, something to joke about, something to make fun of.
Trump at the South Park episode was very big. The
(45:28):
White House is responding to that, and we're getting caught
up in all this these small things that really don't
represent the larger whole of our communities, and I think
that it's making people more divisive than feeling connected. And
I'm trying to figure out a way that we can
get back to that connection with each other.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
You know, Devin.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
When people say to me, oh, there is no middle anymore,
I'm just going to play them your call. I think
that's all we have to do there. So thank you,
thank you very much for calling in. I really appreciate it. Camille,
what do we We've just got a couple of minutes
left here, But let me ask each of you, what
do we do now to try to get to a
point where free speech and open conversation doesn't carry so
(46:10):
much potential risk in this country?
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Camille Foster, I'll start with you.
Speaker 10 (46:15):
I think doctor West has kind of been saying it
all along here. We have to cultivate a greater sense
of empathy. We have to cultivate a deeper commitment to
actually understanding one another's point of view, to not engaging
in these kind of blanket condemnations of the other and
imagining that there's nothing we have in common with people
who disagree with us. Politically and with respect to things political,
(46:39):
it would be great if we began to take some
steps and perhaps not make every single aspect of our
lives heavily politicized. It's fine for things not to be
decided in government. It is fine for us to try
to have public schools that prioritize teaching you to think
critically and engage in the Socratic method, as opposed to
have arguments about whether or not we're going to enforce
(47:02):
a kind of CRT oriented curriculum or ban CRT completely.
It seems to me that that's the wrong conversation to have.
Can you build sound children with soundbinds through our educational system,
who can engage with one another in a productive way
in society? That's the ultimate question. And I don't think
that our political valances necessarily have any formal impact on
(47:27):
how we go about trying to achieve that.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Cornell West's last word to you, your thoughts, how do
we go forward?
Speaker 8 (47:34):
No, the brother he said that with eloquence. Cicero and
Quintilly has said eloquence is wisdom speaking now politically ideologically,
it can go in a lot of different directions, but
you have to have some kind of spiritual and moral
starting point where you feel that you want to treat
(47:55):
other people as human beings, not as simply means to
manipulate and ends the subjugate. And once you lose that,
then no matter what your politics are, you just into domination, manipulation,
and transaction, and Trump is we know he's in a
domination manipulation transaction, but he is a signing symptom of
(48:15):
a culture that is obsessed with transaction manipulation and it's
very much market driven.
Speaker 9 (48:23):
And I go right back to the point again.
Speaker 8 (48:25):
We've got to reach a point where non market values
like love and trust and fidelity make a role.
Speaker 9 (48:32):
So if I want to say, for example, genocide.
Speaker 8 (48:35):
Has taken place in Gaza, but people who are critical
of me have a right to be critical, absolutely, let's
have a conversation.
Speaker 9 (48:42):
Absolutely, but that's not a brand, that's a cause.
Speaker 8 (48:47):
That's different. Were moving away from the market. We talking
about something deep, humanity.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
And that's the word. We'll end on humanity. Let me
thank my guests Cornell West and Caville Foster. Is so
great to have you both on. Thank you so much.
Speaker 9 (49:01):
Thank you, brother Jeremy. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Maye you Angelo, thank you and and Toliver And don't
forget to subscribe to our podcast. We've got extra episodes
every week, only available on the Middle podcast feed.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
As always, you can call in at eight four four
four Middle that's eight four four four six four three
three five three, or you can reach out at Listen
to the Middle dot com. You can also sign up
for our free weekly newsletter and support us with a
text deductible contribution.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
The Middle is brought to you by Longnook Media, distributed
by Illinois Public Media and Urbana Illinois, and produced by
Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmas, Dawes, John Barthonic Kadeshler,
and Brandon Condritz. Our technical director is Steve Mork. Thanks
to our satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the
hundreds of public radio stations that are making it possible
for people across the country to Listen to the Middle,
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and I'll talk to you next week.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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