Episode 122 - Bekah McNeel - This Is Going To Hurt - Still Unbelievable!

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(00:02):
Episode 122 Becca McNeil This isgoing to hurt.
This is Matthew and in this episode of Still Unbelievable
now welcome back Becca McNeil. Becca was a journalist and
author. Andrew and I interviewed Becca
for her first book, Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down
in episode 91. See the link in the show notes.

(00:26):
In this episode, I talk with Becca about her next book, This
is going to Hurt, Following Jesus in a divided America.
See the show notes for more on Becca and her books.
I enjoy having Becca as a guest.I find you insightful and
compassionate. I hope you enjoy this episode as

(00:46):
much as I enjoyed the conversation.
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of
Still Unbelievable. We have a returning guest this
time and author that Andrew Knight interviewed.
I think it was a year ago. I'll have to double check my
notes on when that was, but shownotes for a link to the previous
conversation that we had. Welcome back to Still
Unbelievable. Becca McNeil, it's a pleasure to

(01:09):
have you. You're a journalist and author.
You write well, so tell us aboutyourself and why you've written
your latest book. Well, thanks for having me back
and thank you. I I've often said writing is my
one marketable skill, so I I have to do it.
Well, it's the only one I've got.

(01:30):
Yeah. So I work as a journalist and I
cover a multitude of things. I spent a long time reporting on
education and immigration and recently started reporting more
on reproductive rights as that has become a much more fluid
topic in the United States. And I started just seeing a

(01:50):
through line in it. I started seeing, oh, wow, we do
a lot to try to distance ourselves from the suffering
that is inherent to our political positions.
So if you hold a political position that immigrants, for
instance, should not be let intothe country, we do a lot of work

(02:12):
to try to then justify or excuseor distance ourselves from the
suffering of the people who are not being LED in.
And we have these locked and loaded.
She's a very American term locked and loaded counter
narratives to the stories that we're hearing.
So you hear, I spend a lot of mycareer writing about, hey, this

(02:35):
policy is hurting people. And then seeing a very quick
counter narrative of actually that person's hurting themselves
or actually, it would be even worse without this policy.
Actually, the law is the law. And, you know, there's nothing
we can do about it. And so I had been seeing that

(02:56):
for years in education and immigration and certain kinds of
religion reporting. But when I saw it in the stories
of women who'd had abortions or who are being denied abortions,
that's when I started to go, oh,there we go.
I'm seeing it so clearly here. But when I think about it, I
have seen this story before. I've felt this feeling of

(03:18):
frustration, and it makes a journalist feel ineffective or
impotent because my job is to bring compelling stories to
people. And when they're so easily
dismissed, I was like, what is this potent counter narrative
that we keep embracing? And so I looked into it and I

(03:40):
wrote about it. Thank you.
And so the first book that you wrote that we had you on for
over on assembly for very I'll talk about that very briefly.
But listeners, if you haven't heard the conversation, check
the show notes. There will be a link to that
past episode. So that was about bringing up
children. So and bring up children when

(04:00):
church hurts you, I think is what the the title was something
like that. So what took you from that
narrative to the narrative of your current book?
This Is Going to Hurt, which is about what you've just been
talking about, about the effectsthat some extreme parts of
religion has on society in general.
Yeah, that's a good question. The Bringing Up Kids When Church

(04:26):
Lets You Down. My first book is very much a
both both books. What they have in common is that
they are me taking the part of ajournalistic conversation that
doesn't make it to print like the what what are we talking
about? Once I turn the recorder off,
what's the subtext? That kind of stuff.

(04:48):
You don't get to put that in a in a story, in a new story.
And so with bringing up kids, itwas really where my own lived
experience would intersect with my, the people I'd be talking
to. So we'd be talking about schools
or whatever, and then we'd be done with the interview and we'd
get to chatting about, oh, where's your kid in school?
And well, my, I wanted to do this because I grew up like

(05:12):
this, but we're not like that anymore.
And I started having this conversation over and over
because it was my story. People would go, oh, me too, and
tell me theirs. And so that's how that one came
about. And then this new one is again,
another piece of that journalistic process that can't
make it to print because you can't.
Most reporters are not given theopportunity to say, and here's

(05:35):
this meta thing going on. Here's this discourse that I
found myself part of. It's not a reflect.
We don't do a lot of reflecting in journalism publicly.
And so it's really more of a reflection on the, the stories
were not the, the quiet part that we're not saying and the

(05:58):
undercurrents that we're not, wecan't call out explicitly
because as a journalist, it's not facts.
It's discourse is very malleableand very much about both what's
sent and received. It's a, it's a process.
Whereas a lot of times, you know, if you're going to write
something as a journalist, you have to attribute it to some.

(06:19):
Like it has to either be something someone said or
something someone did. And that's not always.
And it lets a lot of discourse sneak through and get really
tangly because it's really hard to call out.
But in a book, I could jump in there and just say, like, yeah,
I am seeing this. This is for sure a thing.

(06:39):
And thank you and genuinely, I enjoyed reading both books.
You have a lovely calming tone in your writing in in a World,
especially on your in your second book, you're talking
about subjects that hurt and subjects that hurt deeply.
And in contrast to your title, Ididn't feel the promised hurt.

(07:04):
So the first question I wanted to ask you is, if I may do it
rather cheekily, who are you trying to hurt in that title?
I love that you asked it that way.
Yes, I'm hoping that This is going to Hurt is not a reference
to the pain you will feel reading the book.
I tried to make that and actually Erdman's when I came

(07:26):
and pitched the book, they said OK, but you have to make it
funny. Like you can write a book about
suffering, but it can't be it can't you can't be suffering as
you read it from the reading. So I did try to take a very non
threatening tone of a come sit with me and talk, not a hey, sit

(07:47):
down and listen to me. And I'm glad to hear that that
landed, but this is going to hurt.
What's going to hurt is invite what I'm inviting people to do.
I'm inviting people to say, oh, maybe myself.
Protection and avoiding my suffering shouldn't be at the
heart of all of my social and political and interpersonal

(08:12):
decision making. And it's just so natural to make
our decisions that way. I avoid suffering for me, even
if that means suffering for you.Well, if I reverse that and say
my goal is to minister to your suffering, to alleviate it, to
have compassion for it, it's going to mean inherently I'm a

(08:33):
little more open to things that might be uncomfortable or
painful because we have a commonhope and that you're willing to
endure a little more suffering, discomfort, you know, the
various levels of unpleasantnessin the name of mutual thriving

(08:55):
and connectedness and oneness. And we just don't have a system
that promotes that right now. We have a system that says
protect yourself because that's,and if everybody just protects
themselves, then the market willtake care of everything.
Well, it'll work itself out. And that's not the case.
Yes, If I may touch on a personal question, in your first
book, I felt like I got to know you, the author and I, I enjoyed

(09:21):
reading that. And you're, you were very open
about your journalistic skills and how that was driving the
book. And you switched very quickly
between personal stories and journalistic accounts.
And I got that in your first book.
In this second book, that transition is smoother.
And I think the reason why that transition is smoother is

(09:42):
because you're writing about others.
You're you're not bearing yourself to the reader, you're
bearing other people who don't have the privilege that you've
got to the reader. How hard was that for you?
That is, the heaviest responsibility in journalism is

(10:04):
telling other people's stories. There are different journalistic
techniques that can give our subjects, our sources more or
less autonomy in how they present their interview
techniques, their storytelling devices that create.

(10:28):
I can really buffer your experience of the people in the
book. Kendra Joseph, Jessica Menjivar,
the people in the book. I can stand between you guys as
like, here's what you need to know about them, or I can
essentially build a platform forthem to stand on and tell their
story. It's mediated through me.

(10:48):
I'm the one with the pen. And I think that when
journalists don't recognize the inherent power and privilege of
that, we really get ourselves ina mess and end up not doing
right by the people we tell stories about.
So this is a skill in this book.This book is much more about my
explicit journalism. There's a lot of my actual work

(11:10):
in here and it just adds in thatlayer of and here's what was
happening behind the scenes or and here's what happened next
and or in here's what I here's the curveball that I got thrown
while writing that story. And so you're seeing much more
how I do my work. I don't in my work typically

(11:31):
bring as much of myself as I brought to my first book.
It's the second book. It is truly about using your
skill to help someone tell theirstory or present them as in
their fullness of as close to who they are as you can.

(11:54):
And I take that extremely seriously.
I've always felt like sources don't owe me their time.
The amount that I can do for them is limited and I want to,
at the very least, I want them to look at the story and feel

(12:15):
that they were accurately represented like that.
Yes, that is me and that is how I want.
Now, this is not the case. If you're running for office, if
you're a person who's in a lot of a position of power and
you're damaging drinking water or infrastructure, like you
don't get a say in how we present this.
You're still a person. I'm not going to lie about you,

(12:35):
but I'm not going to like run itby you or something and say, do
you feel comfortable with how I'm portraying you?
Because the answer will be no. But if you that's, those aren't
the stories I do. I'm not an investigative
journalist. I'm, I tell people's stories.
I tell stories of people who, yeah, you don't know they exist
until you know. You don't know this individual

(12:55):
exists until you read about themin the news and that I need you
to know that they exist. I want you to know they exist
and I want you to have an accurate picture.
And so I believe that the only way we change this, my suffering
has to be avoided. Yours is very tolerable to me

(13:17):
because I don't really know who you are.
Is when we come together around the humanity of the people in
these stories and say, when I say Jessica is being affected by
this policy, I don't want to argue with you about the policy
and how it affects you and how it affects me.
I want us to both look at her and let's find our common.

(13:39):
Let's find our unity. If we want unity, if we want to
like not be divided, let's find our unity around how do we make
a better immigration system? That's not tearing Jessica
apart. And that's why it's because it's
not. There's no rhetorical argument I
could make that is going to actually heal the suffering that

(14:02):
our systems have brought about. It's going to have to be seeing
the oneness and seeing ourselvesin each other and really finding
the people who are being affected.
Did that answer your question? It.
Did and it leads really well actually into.
The next point I wanted to bringup is, so I asked you earlier

(14:24):
about who do you want to hurt from your title book.
The question really is who do you want to read the book?
And when I got to one of your penultimate, I think it's your
penultimate chapter about non violence and embracing non
violence. And you actually encouraged me
to have a moment of self reflection and still

(14:47):
unbelievable. The podcast, still unbelievable.
Especially when I do my solo shows.
The brand is built on being abrasive.
I self-described as spiky and you, you made me stop and think
and saying how spiky is too spiky because reading your book,

(15:09):
I felt safe reading a book. But then I agree with you.
You don't have to fight for my attention.
So that so reading a book I knewwas safe for me, but I also felt
that reading your book would be safe for your opponents because
you're not abrasive the same wayMatthew is on Still Unbelievable
when he runs a solo show critiquing somebody else.

(15:32):
You, you were safe in your language and you were making
that point that you just made. Let's put our own differences
aside and look at person X and see what is wrong in their life
and see what is negative effectively negatively affected
their life and they're currentlyin our jurisdiction of
responsibility. So what can we actually do to

(15:55):
effect positive change on their life?
We can have the argument about how that came about later.
But while they're here in our company, let them.
Let them and their well-being. And I, that really came out in
your book. And I think that your political
opponents will be safe reading your book, which is, I think in

(16:17):
today's environment is unfortunately too rare.
And so that was what brought me to a moment of self reflection
there. So whether that will change what
I do, we shall see. Stay tuned, readers.
Come and ask me next year if it's changed me.
Listen to subsequent episodes and I listen.

(16:38):
I appreciate spikiness. I get it and I have.
There was definitely a season ofmy career where I would say it
was like the profit blowing in from the wilderness with, with a
word you know, and I think thereis I, I do, I still think there

(17:01):
is a need to make a place for anger.
You know, I think that and I I talk a lot about like in 2020,
the profits blew in from the wilderness and said, I am not
interested in making this palatable for you.
I am too often the oh, let's be civil is oh, don't make me feel

(17:26):
bad. Like I want you to reassure me
with one hand while you're serving me the truth with the
other hand. And I think there is a rightful
place for in the United States, for black people, for trans
people, for women to a degree, for children to come in and say
like, no, I'm, I'm not doing that.

(17:47):
I don't want you to be able to sleep at night.
I want you to be truly uncomfortable because you're not
going to change if you're not. I think that there is.
It takes all of us because somebody has to be there once
they're uncomfortable to say, all right, let's talk through
how we, what do you do with thatencounter?

(18:08):
I think it's there was a time inmy life where I felt like it was
my job to wake. Like do the, the wake up shake?
And I feel like now it's my job.It's I'm at a point in my career
where I feel called to be the one who says, all right, you're

(18:31):
awake now. I've laid out your clothes.
Breakfast is cooking. Let's get this going.
You do that best as an invitation and as a like I'd
said on a different podcast, making the difference between
like seeing a clear difference between inhumane policies and
humane human people. It's not hate the sin, love the

(18:53):
Sinner. It's saying I can believe this
policy is reprehensible and abhorrent.
You as a person are still deserving of my compassion and
my connection. We are.
We are when and the part of it. And this was a call out to me
from indigenous writers, Native American writers, sorry,

(19:17):
international audience. The call out to me was you.
You can't just say I don't want any part of you.
You're not part of me. You have to take responsibility
for them. You can't just cut half the
country off. That's what when Americans love
to say this is not who we are. I'm like, no, this is who we

(19:38):
are. And that's why we have to be
gentle with each other is because we're we have to bring
all of us along because a country that basically says we
cut off people we don't like is a country that is constantly
cutting people off and doing violent things.
We have to be as kind to our ailing.

(20:01):
Abhorrently racist or whatever we have to offer that the same
redemptive path out that you would offer out your broken
hand. It's broken, it's smashed, it's
not in working order. It's not.
And it, you know, there's some really awful stuff going on, but
if you don't give it a path to healing, you just lose your
hand. And there's also I'm a

(20:22):
pragmatist at heart. That's the other funny thing, is
that as idealistic as I can be, it's not working.
The screaming match just isn't working.
People are still suffering. Like, why aren't we trying
something else? And I feel this when people are
like, well, I'm tired of the indignity of having to placate
the powerful. And I'm like, OK, but the I

(20:44):
don't want you to die, you know?And so I don't want to placate
them either. I want to change them.
And I want to be changed and I want us all to be changed.
And that's not happening in the current screaming match.
And that's quite disappointing. So to get onto your book then in

(21:04):
a bit more detail, you cover themajor subjects, the major
obvious subjects, abortion, race, immigration and guns.
I think that's right. And you, you've structured the
book, so you attack on each subject with a pair of chapters
with a very intentional thread that go goes through the book

(21:25):
without giving too many spoilers, because you just
describe that approach to the listeners so they know what to
expect when they come to pick upthe book.
Sure. So what I do is I call it each
issue, and there's six issues. There's abortion, immigration,
gun violence, climate change, COVID-19, and critical race

(21:48):
theory. I the fact that I can now list
them all without forgetting one is tells you where we are in the
process. It took the full year of writing
the book for me to be able to remember them all at once.
But each subject has a has a good twin and a bad twin.
I call it. So the first I say here's how
we're having this conversation. Here's the stories that we're

(22:11):
telling, like here's where the suffering comes from.
And here's the counter narrativethat we use to like push that
suffering out of sight or to justify it or whatever.
And each is a little nuanced because we some suffering we do
hide and that's our that's how we get by with it.
And some suffering we do excuse and some suffering we do say is

(22:36):
inevitable and some suffering wesimply deny is happening at all.
And so that for the 1st chapter on each subject is kind of a
here's where we are, here's where the discourse is.
And I break it down into components.
There's different components, distance, judgment, the

(22:58):
trade-offs that we often I'll will allow your suffering
because the trade off is in my advantage.
If I would, if I were to addressyour suffering, I would lose
something and or it might mean me suffering.
And so there's a trade off. There's the context.
Context is really important. The I try to avoid as much as I

(23:21):
can just making it all about politics.
It's very tempting to just be like, yeah, it's it's our hyper
partisan world, but I don't think that's true because you're
in the UK and y'all are probablyusing some of these same
narratives. I think it has much more to do
with bigger US versus them riftsthat we have in society.
So that's the first chapter. And then the 2nd chapter says,

(23:45):
all right, what would a healing story look like?
What would it look like to address this topic in a way that
did take suffering seriously foreveryone and did take our mutual
thriving seriously an offer a more hopeful way forward.
And because 60 something percentof the United States still

(24:06):
identifies as Christian. And that's the that's the world
I know the best. It's the world that I, I mean, I
will, I'll claim them until theystop claiming me.
And so I pulled from the Gospelsbecause I actually do think that
the character of Jesus offers a very radical approach to the

(24:26):
suffering of others and how we address suffering.
It's Jesus. And however you believe that the
Gospels came to be, the overarching message of Jesus's
ministry that made it through into several different accounts
was take up your cross and follow me.

(24:48):
It's prepared to suffer. If we're going to radically
change the world, there's a goodchance that it's not going to
we're not going to get to benefit from its systems.
If I'm out there trying to change the world, then the
people who you want you to change it the least are the ones
who it's working out really wellfor them.
So you it's really hard. And that's why he says like it's

(25:10):
hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.
It's because if this is working out for you, why would you?
You'd have to willingly lay downyour life.
We'd have to willingly suffer inorder to change it 'cause it
would mean a change in the systems that are delivering for
you and I. It's so much less personal and

(25:34):
spiritual than a lot of our religious traditions have made
it, and so much more practical. I'm going to have to vote
against myself. I'm a wealthy white heterosexual
woman, you know, with two kids and who owns property and all of
this stuff. I'm going to have to in some

(25:55):
instances, not do the thing thatwould be to my greatest
advantage, because by doing thatfor generations, we have the
inequities we have. I'm going to have to make some
sacrifices. And that's, that's the call.
That's and I so the good twin chapters, it's funny.

(26:19):
The good twin chapters are wherewe tell you that you're going to
have to suffer. The the bad twin chapter is
where we tell you who's already suffering.
And the good twin chapters, we say.
And here's where it needs to be you instead.
Yes, and that comes across and the other impression I got from
reading it, and I think it's a good one, is that, well, in my

(26:39):
mind with the way me as an atheist, former Christian views
America was, oh, it's so clearlyshe's talking about the
fundamentalist Christians. It's really obvious, but
actually you don't name and shame them.
You actually give the impressionin your writing that all of us
need to come together to to resolve this.

(27:01):
We're we're not going to resolveit by one side saying we're
right now and you're wrong. You have to do something about
it. You actually say we have to do
something about it. Absolutely.
I well and listen, you do not want to be in a foxhole with me
because I will I will quickly turn around and and be like and

(27:24):
you I my politics personally arepretty far to the left.
I'll come for my friends on the left.
They're not taking suffering seriously either.
Sometimes the too often again, right and left are political

(27:47):
alignments. And if you truly believe that
there is a political system that's going to end all
suffering, I you are misguided. That's all I can say.
It's political systems are an allocation of power and they are

(28:10):
inherently about governing, about saying you can do this,
you can't do this. And yes, obviously there are
some that are more coercive and more violent and more aligned to
the interests of power and self benefit out there.
I'm not saying they're all equal, I'm just saying none of
them. The governing of people and the
controlling of people and the the incentivizing of people and

(28:34):
what not is never going to be the source of healing.
That's not how we heal. We heal between each other.
It's the people. It's not the government.
We might need a government, sure, great.
I fine. It's just not what I'm talking
about. I'm talking about a way that we
identify with each other and relate to each other.

(28:56):
That's going to show up in the way that we vote.
It's going to show up in the waythat we protest and advocate and
want to spend our money, our taxes and stuff.
It's going to show up that way, but it's not in service of that.
When you have people who are like, and that's what I'm, I
argue against a lot in like the COVID chapters is that we have

(29:18):
said, well, this is my agenda, This is my political preference.
And so whatever it says is the way to end suffering.
That's what we do. And if there's something that
doesn't match with that, then itit must be a hoax or it must be,
you know, that's where conspiracy theory comes from.
I think you like, if it doesn't align to what I think should be

(29:40):
true, there has to be some otherexplanation.
And it can get really wild. And in COVID, you saw a lot of
conspiracy theory because the suffering didn't fit the
political narrative. You had people who didn't
believe that COVID didn't want to take COVID seriously because
they wanted to follow their Republican leaders and open up

(30:00):
shops and stuff so that when people were dying, they had to
explain it. And they chose a conspiracy
theory rather than saying, I think that my political
preference is leading to suffering.
But you know what? It was happening with Democrats,
too, because when they were closing schools and then there
were children who were falling into, like, horrific depression
and bad situations at home, the response was, you know, just,

(30:26):
frankly, denial half the time. And there was no flexibility.
There was nobody saying, maybe we should revisit some of these
policies or maybe we should figure out a way to, you know,
do something. We need to pivot.
This is going to take a long time.
We can't leave these kids isolated.
And so I saw on the left just anunwillingness to say, hey, the

(30:49):
policies that we prefer are leading to suffering.
And that's where. And I didn't see quite as many
conspiracies. The left, the political left in
the United States is not in conspiracy land right now, but
they can be. The prevalence of conspiracy
theories. I think a lot of it comes from I

(31:13):
have an understanding of the world that I need it to be
right, and I cannot live with the evidence that shows that my
values and my politics are in contradiction.

(31:35):
Yeah. So on the subject of conspiracy,
it says, I'm not expecting you to be able to answer this one in
any kind of detail, but it's just since we came onto it and
since COVID is covered in your book, it's something that has
bothered me. I'm just kind of wondering if
it's an observation that that you share.
COVID seemed to explode the number of people who are

(31:57):
prepared to go all in conspiracies.
Yes, conspiracy people existed prior to COVID 9/11 and all the
claims about Black Flag, false flag events proved that.
But it seems to be that COVID ramped up that kind of thing
exponentially. So we've got pre COVID

(32:17):
conspiracy theory comments were at a low enough level that they
were manageable and ignorable. COVID happened, bang, they
exploded. Then we have, which is a subject
I want to come on to because it's not in your book, but it's
recent, is Trump's ear. Suddenly the number of
conspiracy proponents about thatare at a level that looks like

(32:41):
10 times higher than it was pre COVID.
Is that number of conspiracy people now the new level?
And is it the fault of COVID? Because for me, that's what it
looks like. You're right in that I'm not
going to be able to definitivelyanswer it.

(33:01):
I will just say, I will say thatthe United States is just in a
very conspiracy friendly zone right now.
And I, I honestly do think that COVID did have a lot to do with
it exactly because of what I wassaying, because we, there was
this massive event that was causing disruptive economic and

(33:29):
work life like we were all, it was, it's stunk.
It was awful. And people's lives were so
disrupted in so many ways and there was so much suffering and
we couldn't fit it into our narratives of the moment.
We didn't. And then I, I talk about this in

(33:53):
my book, the fact that it had togo through like federal, state,
local. So you had all these different
governments who people were already like primed to be angry
about because it had been a really rough four years leading
up to it. And so everybody's already like
has AI am for or I am against this government.

(34:17):
And then that government is intruding in your life and
telling you you have to get a vaccine or you have to wear a
mask or you can't leave your house or whatever, or you're the
government is saying you can't close.
Like you have to open. You have to open the schools.
You see, you had the government,a government you didn't like,

(34:38):
several layers. So I'm in a Democratic city in a
Republican state at the time, ina Republican country.
It was, it was so chaotic to tryto critique a government's
decisions, figure out your own, you know it.

(35:03):
Oh God, it was so rough as far as people trying to decide the
the politics of suffering, how they wanted to allocate what
suffering they were going to tolerate.
Was it the stay at home suffering or was it the risk,

(35:24):
the risk, the virus suffering? And everyone had different
thresholds and everyone was primed to resist whichever
government they didn't like as they navigated their own
decisions. And so you just had so much
chaos. And out of chaos, conspiracy

(35:47):
theories seem to present order. It seems to present an like
finally a cohesive explanation. And it's especially great.
Conspiracy theories are especially helpful when you need
that order to be supportive of the agenda that you're still
trying to promote and the outcome you want.

(36:10):
Like, it's really hard to be like, yeah, my guy blew it.
And so there had to be. And it's, I think there's just a
desire for where we are in the United States.
It's the undermining of truth, the like, undermining of
journalism. We have, you know, Fox News out

(36:33):
there saying things that are nominally factual at best at
times. We have this, this proliferation
of opinion journalism masquerading as fact journalism.
We have, we already have this environment where you don't have
an ultimate authority for like, did this happen?

(36:54):
We're not even talking about theultimate authority of like God,
like moral authority. I'm talking about we don't even,
we can't even agree on who do welook to to say, you know, the
sun came up today. And so in that uncertain, low,
like messy understanding of the truth, really it just became so

(37:15):
much about what do I want to be true and how do I handle the
evidence that it's not? I think media and responsible
journalism being the the sad casualty of all of that
depresses me greatly. It seems that the label
mainstream media is now a pejorative and it it is you've

(37:39):
just rolled dry. Is it, it sickens me.
It's the appropriate reaction. And, you know, you try to give
somebody a sense to a reasonablenews source for something or you
give somebody a couple of news sources, which always used to
be, you know, trustworthy news sources for these kind of things
written by journalists who've got a lifetime of skill in

(38:03):
writing about this. And they say, no, no, no, no, no
mainstream media. Here's a YouTube video.
And I don't know how you recoverhow I said, I said to you, I
don't know how we because it's just a sickening in the UK as it
is probably for for you, you in the States, Yeah.
And Europe is Europe is going through it.

(38:25):
We are, we are, we are Europe. And it's not just UK.
Europe is definitely swinging right and swinging right, you
know, in a way that's ugly, if I'm really honest.
And this whole anti mainstream media trend seems to be a big
part of that. And people are trusting radicals
over I, I don't know what alternative verb to use there,

(38:49):
but over the people that we always trust on our TV screens.
And I I don't know what the answer to that is, but we're all
suffering as a result. Yeah, it's really it's
presuppositional. Apologetics run wild.
In my evangelical days, we talked a lot about precept.

(39:11):
Can you argue God to someone whopresupposes that it can't be?
And there was this big argument about like, is there like the CS
Lewis rational, like you, you argue God as a, you can reason
your way from atheism to theism or and back again.

(39:33):
And then you have the presuppositionalists who are
like, no, like you either believe or you don't believe.
And then you argue from there. And when I look at the way
people treat the media now, I'm like, Oh, it's just like, I'll
only believe people I agree with.
Well, how do you know if you like, if they're literally

(39:54):
saying like, I already know and I only accept information that
aligns with what I already know.And then, and then I have that
information. And how do you know?
Well, I heard it. Well, how did you believe it?
Well, like, because I already agree.
It's the most. Mind bending environment to be

(40:15):
to work in I and that's and again, it's part of why I wrote
the book 'cause I was writing stories where I'm like I am on
the Texas Mexico border. I'm looking at this child in the
face and then to read the conspiracy theory of like
there's actually no children at the border.
They're all plants and I'd be like, I'm right here and it's.

(40:43):
And we have this, yeah. And we have the same dilemma
here in the UK over people on board, although our border is a
little bit wider because there'swater.
But we have the same problem with people arriving half
drowned and people on the beaches don't want them there,
don't want to help them, want them to go back into the water

(41:06):
and do the journey backwards. And the, the, the, the lack of
compassion. I'm when I was a Christian, I
sat in multiple sermons where the pastor literally said, if it
doesn't hurt you to help someone, you're not helping them
enough or words to that effect. And that was the Christianity I

(41:29):
grew up in. You know, that help hurts.
You know, if you can give more, give more because they have even
less. And that was the Christianity I
loved through all my teenage years and through half of my
adult years. And now I look at Christianity
and yes, those Christians still exist.

(41:50):
I'm not denying they exist, but they are being completely
shouted down by the Christians that say it's their choice, that
they're there. Why should I help?
And I don't recognize that. I struggle to recognize that.
I, I truly believe a thing that happened with evangelicalism in

(42:14):
the United States and probably around the world is that there's
not really a strict definition of what it is.
You kind of just get to claim it.
And it's a, it's not, I was justtalking about this with someone
that like Catholicism is a pretty set system of what it
means to be a Catholic. And you, you can't just go

(42:35):
around be like, oh, yeah, I'm Catholic.
You have to be like inducted andconfirmed into the church.
That's the word I was looking for.
And evangelicalism is totally different.
And the mass, the, that Christianity that's shouting
right now, the, the ugly side, the white Christian nationalism,
stuff like that is very largely drawing from evangelical

(42:59):
traditions there. Not entirely.
And there are some, there's someCatholic stuff going on in there
and some some, I guess mainline,but it's largely evangelical.
And what's happened is that because no one can say, no,
that's not Christianity. What you're saying is

(43:23):
Christianity is not, look, this is the evangelicalism is this,
if that's what you say you are and this kind of loosey goosey,
like there's no nobody's drivingthe train.
It's just a dozen people trying to gate keep it in their own

(43:45):
way. There's no Pope, there's no
authority structure. And I'm not saying that that's a
better way, but it has generateda certain kind of chaos where
you can have people wanting to shut out immigrants in the name
of God, which is absolutely absurd.
And it but it is a result of a kind of make it up yourself

(44:10):
Christianity. And I'm the only and I'm you as
an atheist and me as someone whois like very ambivalent about
the term Christian these days. I'm kind of like, whether you
call it Christianity or you callit something else, they're doing

(44:31):
it in the name of what they believe.
And I get the soreness of other Christians saying that's not my
Christianity, but I'm just kind of like, well, at the end of the
day, whatever you call it, I don't want to fight for the
brand. You know, I don't care if
Christianity has a good reputation.

(44:52):
And that's where I like, I differ from probably the church
that life that I came from is I don't really care if
Christianity has a good reputation.
I care if it's a, if there are people in the world able to live
that life that Jesus set out andoffered, that's good stuff.
And I want people to be able to do that and have communities

(45:13):
that do that. But if you don't want to call it
Christianity because the brand, frankly, right now is getting
just drugged through the mud, don't call it that.
You know it. But people just want the brand.
And I, that part kind of bafflesme, 'cause I'm like, it's about
how you live. It's not about how big your
tribe is. It's not about whether you get

(45:35):
to say like, oh, there's this many Christians in the world
worth it. Like who gives a just go live
the way Jesus lived. And if a bunch of people are
doing that and can find each other, they can call it whatever
they want, and that's fine. You know, I sympathize.
I get it. I get where the people are like,

(45:57):
oh, I want Christianity to be identified with compassion and
welcoming immigrants and all this stuff.
And I'm like, I don't really care what you think of
Christianity. Just to have compassion and go
welcome immigrants, you know. So I'd, I'd like to veer a
little bit political for a bit because here in the UK, we all

(46:22):
look with amusement at the political scenario going on over
your side of that big puddle of water.
Although we have, we've had our own blonde bozo, you know,
messing up the, the country as well.
And we had our own single issue election over Brexit.
So I guess the first question I'd like to ask from your side

(46:43):
looking at us, did you guys lookat us voting for Brexit in a
single issue election and then watched how that savaged our
economy? Did you look at that and go,
wow, those Brits are weird? Or did you just not care enough?
Oh no, we looked very much and went, Oh no, you caught the

(47:08):
virus. It was a, a we've, we OK, your
average American, God only knows, you know, getting people
to know who their City Council person is, is a tall order these
days. So I can't speak for the average

(47:32):
American, but I do in the political discourse and the
people who are watching and whatnot.
And Brexit was very much part ofthe, you know, it was on our
part of our Twitter feeds, part of our conversations.
And the conversation was definitely a like, oh, shoot,
it's, it's not just us. This is, this is spreading.

(47:56):
And I think people are very worried about that because this
is no less threatening to us in the UK or Sweden or Germany than
it is here. This, this extreme nationalism
and with religious fervor and all of that is globally bad

(48:20):
news. It's not good.
It's how wars are born and nobody wants that.
And so I do think that the destabilizing energy of it is,
is a familiar troublesome, doesn't bode well.
And I think that there's definitely Americans who are
concerned about that. Obviously, on our other side,

(48:40):
there's Americans who are like cheering, cheering them on and
being like, yeah, finally, you know, maybe I will go to Europe
one day. The God, you know, the godless
continent. But I think, yeah, I'd say we're
wincing with you. Thank you.
Thank you for that. I think where we're different in
the UK is those divisions are less obviously religious,

(49:01):
They're much more classist than they are religious.
And I think that's because unbeknowingly, because I would
have, I wouldn't have said we were a class society, but I
think we are still living off the, I was going to say
benefits. That's completely the wrong
word. But we are living off the
repercussions of being a class Society of years ago and I think

(49:25):
that's obviously still effects our politics today.
And and so Brexit, I'm, I'm convinced, was a symptom of that
rather than a symptom of national religion.
And I will say this too, as someone who actually loves
religion, I love faith traditions and the idea of
connecting to God and humanity on a scale other than what is

(49:48):
seen. I love metaphysics.
I love spiritual, you know I love that part of life and I am
very pro religion and it's most peaceable forms it.
I will say that watching Europe struggle with the right, like
struggle with extreme political fascist, you know, tendencies

(50:13):
and anti and cruelty and seeing that happen without the Super
religious emphasis and like using the religious language is
to me a great proof point that like this is in the hearts of
men. And we are going to Co opt
religion just like we will Co opt science.

(50:35):
We will. And that's because the people
are like, oh, but science. And I'm like, dude, science has
been brought into this fight plenty of times.
These are, I'm starting to believe in like science,
religion, all of that as kind ofa moral, Like there's not an
inherent morality to it. It's how you bring it to bear on
our relationships with each other and with the earth.

(50:58):
It's what you do with it becausethe morality is about how we
treat each other. And you can do good and bad in
the name of God, and you can do good and bad in the name of
science and in the name of all sorts of things.
And so it's very for me seeing Europe go through it without the

(51:18):
religious trappings and gasolineon the fire.
I'm like, all right, I think there's actually hope for
religion. I think you know it's.
It's not the variable. Yeah, I I can see, yes, religion
can be saved in the way that to be something that's non

(51:40):
destructive. I I absolutely will grant that.
And I think what bothers me about Brexit now we'll get back
to how this links in how we viewthe United States.
What bothers me about Brexit andspecifically the right, the
right wing party that brought itabout is their next step is

(52:00):
taking the UK out of the European Convention of Human
Rights, which I think is an utter, utter travesty.
I didn't see that coming four years ago.
And then I started hearing murmurs, and I thought, no, no,
no, they can't be serious. And then now, well, actually
they are. So thank goodness that's not
going to happen for at least five years.

(52:22):
But I am pretty sure that that conversation is going to come
back. And that bothers me.
So as an observer, as a Europeanobserver of what's going on in
the United States, I've seen guns and gun rights, which is a
strange phrase to say, completely dominate your

(52:44):
politics. And there, there were a couple
of moments that I think you mentioned the Avaldi Travels
tragedy, excuse me, in your book.
And I think that was one of them.
But there was also, I think Sandy Hook was one of the other
ones. There seemed to be a pivotable
moment where there seemed to be a greater number of people

(53:04):
saying we really got to do it. And then for whatever reason,
momentum got dissipated and it just didn't make its way into
the political strings. And I keep wondering maybe
there'll be hope, maybe there'llbe hope.
But now I see abortion looming on the horizon.
And I'm wondering if now you've got 21 issue issues, you've now

(53:28):
got guns and abortion. And I'm wondering if abortion is
now going to lead to something else, maybe contraceptive
rights? Oh yeah.
We're bracing for the the whole.Shebang.
I'm wondering if, like we're on the slope from Brexit to human
rights to whatever comes next, you guys are on a slope through

(53:50):
a different level of subjects, but we're still on the same
slope. Gosh, that's so well thought
out. I really appreciate the way
you're thinking about this. Yeah, 100% like gun.
OK, start with guns. I say this in the book,
everyone. This has been said a million
times. Like if we if Sandy Hook didn't

(54:10):
change the conversation here, nothing will.
Nothing will. Those were little kids, you
know, and they were just it. I it was the first time we'd
seen the mass killing of little,little people.
And. Oh, if that didn't lead to major

(54:39):
radical change, I, I don't thinkwe're capable of it.
And I have had many times looking at certain things,
certain conversations in the United States and saying, oh,
this is a structural problem. Because if this was if, if
democracy was working the way they tell us it works, this
would have changed. But we have this structural

(55:01):
problem where the the gun lobby,the power of the NRA, the power
of the gun industry, and certainmythologies and political
alliances have operate independently of the will of the

(55:27):
people. They I look at Texas a lot.
Texas is so much more conservative in our policies and
our representatives than we are in our citizens and what the
citizens want. Guns have more power in Texas
than there are gun owners, you know, like it doesn't.

(55:47):
You imagine when you look at Texas as a gun state, you should
imagine that everybody's got a gun on their hip everywhere you
go. And that's not actually the
case. And a lot of people are for
common sense gun laws. And it's not, it's not the like
Wild West that you think it is, but there's a there are
mechanisms, gerrymandering is a great example.
But like there's a lot of the way primaries are set up, the

(56:10):
way our electoral system works. And then when we have decisions
at the Supreme Court like Citizens United that just make
it a money free for all, you know, we've got all these
structural things that circumvent what we thought
democracy was supposed to be, which was like, we all would
just vote and whatever ideas most people like is what

(56:32):
happens. And that's just not what that's
not how it works. So I get a little grim when I
think about it all because I'm like, yeah, we have set it up so
that it's not a simple majority that's going to get anything
done. It's going to take like really
massive majorities to overcome the structural safeguards that

(56:57):
people have set up to make sure the system keeps working this
way. And that's not to say that
Americans don't love their guns.They do.
But it's largely because we've got this mythology that it's up
to you to keep you or yourself safe.
That's just absolutely bonkers. And I didn't even realize how
bonkers it was because I grew upwith it.

(57:17):
You know, you grow up in this and you're like, well, of course
you need a gun. How else are you going to defend
your house? And it's just wild that that is
like the world that Americans live in.
And so the, so there's that. And so this, I don't know that
we're on a slippery slope as much as that's one that's just
locked in place. And I look at it and I, I think

(57:39):
like this is going to take more than like, yes, we could
probably muscle through some. It would not take a lot to
muscle through some very common sense gun laws.
And I think that politically that could be achieved.
But the larger problem, the bigger stuff in the United
States is going to take time on guns.
It's really deep in our mythology.

(58:00):
Our systems are not built for change.
It's tough. Now, abortion, we are absolutely
on a slippery slope. IVF has already come under fire.
It's going to get weird because I mean already with IVF as soon
as they come for it, there's people in lots of people have

(58:24):
used IVF and that's a lot of people have their children
because of IVF and so coming forit is going to get way more
uncomfortable. Starting to come for
contraception will be interesting, but I think certain
kinds of conscious abortive contraception, you know, IEDs

(58:47):
certain certain kinds of like the morning after pill, that
kind of stuff for sure is going to be on the table because right
now at this point it's truly just and I'll I honestly think
there are some true believers inthere, but the majority of the
people driving this legislation and driving this movement are
people who are who know that being the most pro-life

(59:09):
candidate is a is a big win to get votes.
And so you can just come up with, OK, what's the next most
pro-life thing until you're basically like just using the US
Conference of Bishops to draft your policy.
And so I don't think we're done on the slide with abortion.

(59:34):
I think with guns, it's more of a like, what what else?
I don't, I literally don't know what else could happen or how we
get out of this. It is such an entrenched thing.
OK, my flip side observation, and maybe this is where there is

(59:55):
some hope. My flip side observation is
because of what I do, the socialmedia activities I'm involved
in, I see a lot of people exiting Christianity,
specifically exiting fundamentalist Christianity.
Almost every single one of thosepeople is deeply hurt and deeply

(01:00:16):
affected by their experience, and that's driven their exit.
And every single one of those isI'm going to change my language.
Every single one of those is promoderation, is pro the attitudes
you put in your book. And so my hope is that as

(01:00:42):
Christian as that part of Christianity continues to
dwindle, continues to haemorrhage these kinds of
people, the voting base will change and that is where the
change will come from. And then you said a moment ago
that people get elected because they just say, oh, pro-life and
boom, they've got the votes. Those votes won't be there
forever. And in 20 years time, that will

(01:01:05):
not be a guaranteed ticket. And maybe that's the hope.
It's spoken like someone whose country has been there for
thousands of years instead of 200 years.
Yeah, no kidding. The I do think if we can keep
the planet going for, you know, a couple more generations, I

(01:01:31):
definitely think the next couplegenerations of Americans coming
up are way more moderate. They they have presented
themselves as quite radically left right now, but I think they
will, oh, maybe maybe there's times where I look at it and I'm
like, as someone who again considers yourself pretty far to

(01:01:54):
the left, I'm like, are you for real?
Are you for real? Are you going to hang in there?
But at least getting rid of thatof the political capital that
there is to be gained by absolutely irrational pandering
to right wing activities or likeultra religious niche views and

(01:02:19):
whatnot. I don't want to call being
pro-life niche. It's not.
But like, the belief that an IUDis an abortion is pretty niche
or that, you know, stem cell research is mass murder that's
out there. And it I think that that stuff
could easily be ushered out witha generational change.

(01:02:46):
I don't know. I don't know.
People are like, talk about demography is destiny.
And I'm like, yeah, some ideas have a sneaky way of finding a
new audience. So we'll see.
OK, I'd like to take this opportunity because you are the
first person with journalistic credentials I've had the

(01:03:07):
opportunity to chat to since 2:00.
Major headline incidents have happened in in recent weeks.
But talking of recent weeks, reminder to listeners, your book
that we're discussing This is Going to Hurt was published 2
weeks ago. Now.
Did it go out? July 16th.
July 16th, so two weeks ago, as we're talking.

(01:03:29):
Link in the show notes, listeners, That is the pretence
under which I've got Becca here.Do read the book.
I am fortunate enough to have read it without paying my own
money, but it is a book that is worth paying my own money to
read. So please, if you listen to
this, go and buy a copy. Enjoy the book.
Find Becca on social media, links in the show notes.

(01:03:51):
Tell her how much you enjoyed the book.
Tell her I I sent you and maybe I'll get to talk to her for the
next book. So recent event, let's start
with the gunshot. I wasn't expecting that.
And what's what's most bizarre about about that event is I
recorded an episode 5 weeks prior to that of still

(01:04:15):
unbelievable chatting with two people.
We talked about politics and I said very tongue in cheek, what
you guys need is an assassination.
Then I edited the episode. I queued it up to publish and
then three weeks later it published on the Sunday of that

(01:04:35):
weekend. And then I got an e-mail from
Melissa saying please wish him much fortune in his next life.
And just to be clear yet again, that's not how I want things to
go. I do not endorse that kind of.
Behaviour. But I think I have an idea as to
the kind of toxic political rhetoric which leads to that

(01:04:56):
event. But you're there, you're in it,
you're reporting on it. What's your take on what
happened? Oh, that's.
American. Yeah, that's just, it's American
gun violence at its at its finest.
It's the desperate belief that the only way, the only way we
can get out of this is to kill somebody.

(01:05:20):
That is just the most American response.
And so, yes, while we were all alittle surprised that it was an
that the assassination attempt was on Trump, I think everyone
was surprised a little bit by that.
Like, oh, we really thought it would be the the very, very pro
gun side going for the other side.

(01:05:43):
But at the same time, I look at that and I think, yeah, he's a
20 something. We have forgot how old he was.
He's a kid who has been told hiswhole life that, you know, he
hasn't probably been told by hisparents, but even we've been
told by the discourse, the media, that and I mean

(01:06:04):
Hollywood, our entertainment, the American zeitgeist, the, our
mythology, our everything. We've been told that vigilante
justice is sometimes the only justice, the only way we save
ourselves, as if we save ourselves by killing the bad
guy. It's a.
Great American movie. He saw himself as the good guy

(01:06:26):
with a gun, you know and not, and whatever mental health you
know, etcetera, etcetera. Mythology greets mental
unwellness in specific ways. Whatever was going on in his
mind, chemically, structurally, whatever was met with the

(01:06:50):
mythology of this is how this iswhat America needs.
This is what I need. This is what our country needs.
This is, you know, if I'm wrong,if he was just a guy who was out
to kill somebody, I, I don't think I am, but you know it.
They're easier people to take aim at.

(01:07:11):
If he was some kind of, he didn't.
None of the reporting on the shooter struck me as someone who
was looking for an attempt at getting a spotlight when he died
and he knew he had to know he was going to die.
That's the thing about mass shootings is that like they are
suicidal and some level, whetherit's through like recklessness,

(01:07:34):
like you're either being reckless with your life or
you're deliberately going out. And so whatever level of
delusion or whatever was going on, it intersected with the
mythology of the only way out ofthis is to is if that person

(01:07:54):
dies. And that's not an uncommon
thought. And in a country where there
it's really easy to put a gun inyour hand, you have the means.
And in a country that gathers, as you know, gathers together
for events and for rallies and stuff, you have the opportunity.

(01:08:15):
It's means motive. Opportunity motives are there's
abundant motive, whether you're trying to be the hero or you're
trying to say be the good guy with the gun and takes out the
bad guy with the bad policy or whatever.
Whatever your motivation, there's always going to be the
opportunity because everybody's getting we're going to keep

(01:08:36):
gathering. And so the only thing you can
really strike at is the the means, like you got to keep guns
out of people's hands. You know, there's always going
to be assassination attempts and, you know, you just hope
that they've got a knife and somebody can knock them over.
And The thing is that like, yeah, he didn't kill the

(01:08:56):
president, but he killed somebody else.
And it's it's the result of an American Society where it's just
too easy to put finger to trigger and you can't.

(01:09:19):
And the mythology is there to tohelp your motive of I want this
person out of the picture to be connected to here's how this is
how we do it here. And then it's from there.
It's just easy peasy. And that's so when I don't, I

(01:09:40):
don't know if it's the heightened rhetoric that led to
it because everybody's like, obviously Trump just basically
was became a victim of his own side's rhetoric.
Like, yeah, his side are the gunpeople.
But at the same time, I'm not ready to put it's on the
Republicans. This is American.
This is how we this is how he came to be putting guns in the
hands of settlers and saying go defend your homestead.

(01:10:00):
Go be the good guy with a gun. It's this is all of us.
This is not just Republicans. So what's the yes?
Thank you for that. So what was it then that drove?
Again, this is my perspective from from the UK.
What was it then, that drove Trump's spike in popularity

(01:10:24):
after that event? Oh, everybody loves the
survivor. I just think it was, I think it
was the fist in the air, the defiance, the like the yeah,
who, who? Does that you've just been shot
at. Well, been shot because it did
hit him. It did.
Who then fights through their security detail to fist punch?

(01:10:46):
Who is so unself aware that theywould do that?
Look. Sorry, I know the.
Answer to that question because yeah, no.
Well, here here's the thing. There's I I don't think it's
revealing too much of myself as a journalist to just say like, I

(01:11:06):
find nothing about Trump palatable or worthy of leading a
country. I I don't, I despise the man.
I will say his eye for a moment,his ability to read the room,
his room is not bad. That was a brilliant move.

(01:11:31):
It was brilliant. It was a there people are
getting that tattooed on themselves.
That will be on every Trump flag.
It is the moment he seized like Chris, terrifying frankly, as
that must have been he the adrenaline or cortisol or

(01:11:51):
whatever came through his I for the media moment.
It's it was. I was stunned.
I was like, Oh my gosh, like I don't see that as unself aware.
I see that as like a master media person who knows how to

(01:12:15):
capitalize on a moment. He just, it's and the the love
of like the cowboy, a masculine strongman ethos in that camp is,
is terrifying. I've spent time in the rallies

(01:12:38):
and it is it's there's a lot of testosterone going on.
It is very muscle man, you know,cowboy John Wayne.
Kudos to you, Becca, because I generally can't see myself
feeling safe in the vicinity of something like that.

(01:12:59):
I I went down Texas Monthly assigned me to follow the God's
God's army on a border convoy. The story is ran in February.
They went down and they were going to go protect this ranch
that kept that was being besieged by immigrants, they

(01:13:23):
said. And so all these truck like this
huge convoy of people, very Mogga, very lots of Confederate,
not not as many Confederate flags, lots of like 1776 like
these people, lots of Christian nationalism.
And I drove down to this remote ranch on the Texas border way

(01:13:47):
far, middle of nowhere and like and parked my little rental car
and walked past people selling body armor, people selling like
every kind of flag you can imagine, some of which were
extremely anti-Semitic, anti Muslim, like, you know, the

(01:14:12):
whole deal. I walked through the whole
gauntlet of it and then get in and had to identify myself as a
member of the media. It was.
It was absolutely I was. The whole time I was walking in,
I was like, why am I here by myself?
What am I doing? At the same time, the only thing

(01:14:37):
about me that was in danger was being a member of the media.
And I'm not the more I just alsohave this like I grew up here,
like I know you people. I and, and I went and talked to
the lead organizer of the entirething and he and I emailed

(01:15:00):
afterward and I just said, look,I, you know, my only goal is to
represent you accurately. And he was incredibly kind and
we had a great conversation. He was like, I really don't want
to talk to you because I don't trust you.
And I was like, that's fine. Like what, what can I do to help
you feel safe? And we had a great conversation.

(01:15:22):
I don't agree with anything thisman believes personally, but at
the same time I think that it you just have to have an
awareness that like the risk to me is it unpleasant getting
harassed at my car. The risk to me is somebody
spitting at me. The risk to the risk that these

(01:15:46):
people pose to the suffering at the border is massive.
And that's for me the moment of like, you know, it's
uncomfortable it I'm there's a lot more people looking at me
than I want to be looking at me.There's a lot of side eye going
on a lot. But at the end of the day, like

(01:16:11):
they're not going to touch me. And I knew that.
And I think that we have to really lean into like it was a
there was AUS, one of the great like liberal lions of the US
Congress at one point. They were, it was a really dark
time for immigrants. There's a lot of deportations.

(01:16:32):
And he just looked at me and youcan't, I don't know if you do
video, like your listeners can'tsee me, but I'm about as white
as they come. And he just goes, he's older and
we had a good relationship. He goes, kiddo, it's time for
those of us with blue eyes to stand out front so they won't
shoot. And he's speaking

(01:16:55):
metaphorically. But at the same, and I'm, I
don't know, I think, I think I have to step back from the drama
of it all and the discomfort andthe queasiness and just say, I

(01:17:19):
whatever this, whatever I'm feeling right now is just going
to have to step aside because there really is work to be done.
And I think that that's the callon everybody to like, no, you
might not want to go to Thanksgiving with your uncle
that you find abhorrent, but like, suck it up and go because
there's other people who can't go.
You know, there's the people whohis policies actually hurt, the

(01:17:40):
people who his votes actually hurt aren't at his Thanksgiving
table. And you are.
So, you know, be kind and have the conversation.
Thank you and sight note to to listeners as well as myself.
This is what real mainstream journalism does.

(01:18:01):
People go out to places that aredangerous and deeply
uncomfortable. This is not about research on
the Internet from the safety of your desk.
This is about actual boots on the ground talking to people.
And sometimes you don't know what will happen next, but
that's journalism. Yes, and it's a privilege.

(01:18:23):
Thank you for what you do. So I'm very conscious of time.
There is one more question I want to get in, and then we'll
see what we do in in the wind down from the points that I was
making earlier. Then how is Trump being
artistically depicted as Jesus something to be celebrated and
not offensive, but an Olympic opening ceremony is deeply,

(01:18:45):
deeply offensive? Among my friends, when the when
the bacchanal was mistaken for the Last Supper, I was like, we
already have a problem. We already have an education gap
here that we're really, we're really showing Heavens, I don't
know the ability of people to beoffended by thing like to see.

(01:19:10):
They see drag Queens who they donot like and are inherently
like, inherently dislike, not me.
They inherently dislike them. They think they're offensive.
They, you know where So pretty much anything the drag Queens do
is offensive and their presence there and they're welcome there
is offensive. So you already have that.
And then they were, it's almost like they're primed to look for

(01:19:32):
some kind of something to legitimize how offended they
feel by the fact that these people exist.
So there's that the Trump is Jesus thing.
I think there is a genuine belief, not that he's Jesus, but
this is this is like a person who was ordained by God and is

(01:19:52):
God doing God's work. And so like, because they like
what he's doing, he gets to be as he can take whatever icons
and imagery he wants. And if they don't like your
politics and don't like what you're doing, then you come

(01:20:13):
within 10 feet of a Christian symbol or Christian language or
whatever, and it's going to be highly offensive.
But the the killer, I was laughing with friends.
I was like, yeah, being uneducated and oversensitive is
a really fantastic combination. Like it's that just killed me.
Yeah, it's I'm still bemused by a tool.

(01:20:36):
I think for me the most amusing comment once by somebody who is
quite a well known Christian actually likened that moment in
the opening ceremony to counselling Christianity.
I think for me that was where I managed to just I my ability to

(01:20:58):
comprehend what was going on failed me immensely at that
moment. Well.
Here's the deal. Like if you go around looking
for a place where can I say this?
I'm looking because I know that that's going to rile up.
That's a great sound bite for that person.
And so they're going around and just looking for where can I
throw this in? And it was a misfire, honestly.

(01:21:22):
Like the facts didn't let somebody posted.
My favorite meme coming out of the whole thing was somebody
posted one of the men's gymnast on the rings and you know how
they will extend their arm and kind of cover between the rings.
And they call it the Crucon effects.
Yes, yes. And somebody was like, here they
are again, these stupid Olympicsmaking fun of Christian.

(01:21:44):
I was like, spot on. That's The thing is that just
like you go around looking for where can I inject my sense of
outrage? Because outrage drives clicks,
drives retweet, strives, whatever you're trying to drive.
Outrage is everybody's favorite thing.
And so you just go around looking for something to be
outraged about, and it's silly. Yeah, Sadly, sadly.

(01:22:07):
So it must pain the people like yourself, because there's lots
of you. Who feel that Christianity has
so much to offer us culturally and it's being decimated by
those who are most noisy. Yeah, I don't know, though.
I'm kind of of the mindset of like, if we need to call it

(01:22:29):
something else, let's just call it something else.
Like I'm not, I don't know that I want to fight.
I'm perfectly willing to go present something that I see as
like, actually, this is Christianity and I'll put it out
there, but I'm not going to go out there and say that what
they're doing isn't Christianitybecause like Christianity is an

(01:22:50):
evolving thing. That kind of is what you make
it. And if that's the direction it's
going and somebody wants to callwhat I'm doing something else,
go for it. Like I'm game.
I'm the future cannot be a defense of something that other
people are trying to Co-op. It has to be a willingness to
make something new. And I think that, more than

(01:23:10):
anything, is what I'm advocatingin the book.
And you, you do it so well. There were other things I wanted
to talk about, Becker. I wanted to touch on a bit of
Christian nationalism. I wanted to touch on CRT because
I know that is a big thing. And I know lots of very vocal
Christian voices are raging loudly and continuously against

(01:23:31):
CRT, and I wanted to touch on that.
A time is running away. I'm sorry, listeners, I know
you'd have wanted to hear Becca's wisdom on that.
Do you have another book on the horizon?
Will I have another opportunity to have a conversation with you?
Let's hope so the I don't we're pitching, I'm pitching new
books. I can't talk about them just

(01:23:52):
yet, but I think that I will sayI've been devoting a lot of
coverage to reproductive rights and I typically my books follow
my coverage. So that's that's always
possible. Been getting really interested
in the growth of the psychedelics movement in the
United. States Interesting.
Interesting, Yes. We could go that way.

(01:24:15):
There's some things on the horizon, but you can have me
back anytime. Just text check for on
Sojourners or Texas Monthly and pretty much any news story I
will come talk about for a little while.
You heard that, listeners, if you haven't heard enough of
Becca and you would really like me to have another conversation
with her usual e-mail address, reasonpress@gmail.com, tell me

(01:24:37):
what you want us to talk about and we'll see if we can line
something up. So just before I let you go
then, Becca, last time we had you one, I asked you a usual
question about a favorite Bible character and you brought up
Moses. I think you are still the only
person who's mentioned Moses. You said you there are elements
of Moses character that you appreciated, the way that he
achieved things. Is that still how you feel?

(01:25:00):
If I was to ask you the questionagain, would you give a
different answer? Would you like to nominate
somebody else at 0 notice? And I still stand by.
I'm still a big Moses fan, stilllove Moses.
I got to say, and I mean, this is about as cliche as it gets,
but writing this book, I spent alot of time with Jesus and I

(01:25:21):
think I came around to a new appreciation for Jesus as a
biblical character. Not necessarily, you know, son
of God that the Christ, but actually like the the dude,
Jesus the guy and enjoyed that. All right.
OK. So if I can give you a quick
dichotomy on that, then is this Jesus meeting the woman at the

(01:25:42):
well or Jesus overturning the tables in the temple?
This one is the the Jesus that Icame to appreciate was the more
of the the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
The the way I think it's John Dominic Crossan who taught is it

(01:26:05):
him? It's either him or Bart Ehrman
talks about Jesus as an antinomian Messiah, the guy who
shows up and breaks the law to show that the law is corrupt.
I'm I'm digging that pretty hardthese days.
I will try to find that and if Ifind it, it'll be in the show
notes, so have a look there listeners.

(01:26:25):
I'll sit. I'll send you.
I'll I'll find it and send it toyou.
Awesome. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Becca. I've genuinely appreciated the
last hour and a half. I hadn't realised the time had
gone quite that quickly. Thank you for writing that book.
This is going to hurt. It's the title.
There is a subtitle to that bookas well.
Check the show notes for both ofBecca's books.

(01:26:47):
Please do go and buy them. Do appreciate her prose.
I'm not a big reader but I did enjoy reading Becca.
Thank you once again Becca and listeners. reasonpress@gmail.com
is the usual place to find me. You've been listening to me
interviewing Becca and until next time, be recent.

(01:27:13):
You have been listening to a podcast from Reason Press.
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Please send all feedback to reasonpress@gmail.com.
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Episode 122 - Bekah McNeel - This Is Going To Hurt

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 122 - Bekah McNeel - This Is Going To Hurt