July 22, 2025 • 56 mins
This episode of Cults and the Culting of America features guest Kelvin, a political scientist and community organizer, in a deep dive on whether capitalism functions as a cult and how overlapping systems like patriarchy, white supremacy, and religion have historically reinforced each other. The hosts, Scot and Daniella, explore the evolution of these frameworks—from European colonialism and the doctrine of discovery to modern American politics—and discuss how these systemic beliefs sustain cult-like behaviors in society. The conversation covers the historical hijacking of Christianity, education as a control mechanism, the cult of Americanism, and the psychological and political strategies that uphold oppressive systems. The episode closes with an optimistic note about generational shifts, the decline of white supremacist capitalism, and practical advice on grassroots activism.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:25):
Welcome to another edition of CULT's and the CULTing of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend, Daniella.
Knitting CULT lady, Daniella, it's good to see you again as always.
So good to see you too, Scott.
Getting close to book debut date.
Absolutely, just a few weeks away.
Thank you so much for saying that.
(00:45):
August the 26th, my book debuts from choir publishing entitled, The God I Was Given,Looking for Faith After Losing My Religion.
uh speaking of religion, it is a framework that we receive in society, right?
And a lot of times, as you have rightly pointed out, ideologies get connected to that andthey
(01:08):
Become a useful tool for cults, although they may not be cults in and of themselves Butthey do become a useful framework and speaking of frameworks.
We have a great guest with us tonight.
I love your little uh Heading there a general nerd I can relate because I'm one as wellKelvin welcome.
(01:30):
Why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, so I'm Kelvin.
General Nerd is a pretty apt description.
I'm a political scientist by training.
Shout out to uh Southern University, A College in Baton Rouge, my alma mater, and the onlyHBCU system in the world.
Also work in justice work full time.
(01:52):
Well, I've been in justice work in energy policy, environmental and racial justice policy,and grassroots organizing for my entire.
professional career and you know with community organizing comes the gamut of knowledgeand skills you need and so I've done everything from camp counseling in Texas to teaching
(02:12):
fifth grade uh ELA in New Orleans, worked with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund on thestudent loan debt crisis.
So yeah, bounced around and worked in a lot of spaces on a lot of issues and am generallya nerd.
uh So yeah, happy to be here.
some time in Louisiana.
(02:33):
I taught at Louisiana College.
It's now Louisiana Christian University, I think, in central Louisiana.
So I was there for four years coaching debate and uh teaching communication.
Louisiana is a great state, right?
There is so much personality, so much culture.
The food is fabulous.
Yeah.
(02:54):
time in Louisiana, but it was only in the swamp where the military goes to do training.
I'm looking forward to going back for Mardi Gras sometime.
It's a blast, promise you.
it's a place, uh range of experiences, but no, it's home.
(03:14):
uh Louisiana is an amazing place with amazing people.
And just like everywhere else, we have our problems, uh bad writ rash, some would say.
But yeah, I love it.
That's why I haven't left.
Probably won't.
So social systems, you and I got into a conversation about social systems and really thisquestion of is capitalism a cult?
(03:40):
As soon as I start talking about cults, I basically get asked three questions.
What about capitalism?
What about white supremacy?
And what about patriarchy?
And I kind of think like when we say the cult of,
cult of patriarchy, the cult of capitalism, the cult of white supremacy, we're kind ofalluding to this bigger system.
I've recently started to think maybe education and medicine are, you know, some of thesesystems as well.
(04:07):
But do you think, do you think capitalism is a cult?
Let's just start there.
Yeah, no, don't.
don't think capitalism itself is a code.
think capitalism, most people when they hear of capitalism, even myself before, you know,going to, you know, becoming a political scientist and learning these things in a more
(04:28):
formal setting, the first people think, first thing people think of is markets and theeconomy.
And, you know, this is how we get innovation and, you know, supply and demand.
And I too thought that was the case, you know, capitalism's just this.
economic system.
uh Until though, I was introduced by Dr.
Albert Samuels, the chair of the political science department, who really gave me this inour politics, funny enough, politics and religion course, really took us out of this, this
(05:02):
micro view of like the things in terms you're familiar with.
And let's look at these things for what they are, and how these things play out in theworld.
uh And
That's when I realized capitalism and through this teaching, capitalism isn't an economicsystem.
It's a social framework.
It is a way of being in the world.
And the easiest way that this illustrated is for us to, you can pick, and it's for us tolook into our society.
(05:29):
You know, we live in a capitalist society and think about the things we experience andwhere those things come from and why they are the way it are.
The reason the school system is the way it is.
You move on a bell system.
You're in alphabetical order in a single file line and you can't talk because it's theefficiency of the factory Well again labor has to be as efficient and as cheap as possible
(05:51):
in a capitalist system So again the school system and the education system is the way itis because we need workers not thinkers We need hands and feet and bodies to generate uh
Values that can be extracted for the capitalists
And so again, we can look at where the interstate system is.
(06:15):
The interstate system is where it is because that's where the property value was cheapest.
Well, that also happened to be majority black and brown neighborhoods who deliberately hadtheir property values lowered via redlining and discriminatory loan policies.
Well, we need the cheapest land.
We need a lot of it.
We can get it from this group of people who've been left out.
(06:38):
I'm a capitalist, it's cheap, that's what I need.
And that's why the interstate system is the way it is.
uh The reason why they're, you know, the temperatures in the summertime are different inthe suburbs and in the inner city communities.
Lack of tree coverage.
Why are there no trees?
know, why are there, why is there, are there fewer trees?
Well, that lowers, you know, you have nice trees, that raises your property value.
(07:02):
Your home value is higher, especially
You know when these are like native to the area and have been there a while, you know Weeveryone loves a nice shade tree in the front yard But we don't want those people coming
to buy the houses with the nice shade trees in the front yard so we just cut them all downand Over and over again, you can literally pick just about anything we experience
(07:24):
especially in you know, American society as the patriarchal
Christo-fascist society that it is and is becoming, and capitalist society that has alwaysbeen.
You can pick any part of our experiences, and it goes back to not a group of capitalistsin particular, but to this idea that this is the way the world should be.
(07:46):
Now, if you have extremely bad leadership in the form of a group of billionaires whobelieve that they have this mandate to shape the world into this image,
Because they are the capitalists and they have the divine right and that's why they'rerich and white and they start to socialize or organize themselves and exhibit certain
(08:08):
behaviors as it relates to expanding capitalism or propagating capitalism.
That's a cult.
But capitalism in and of itself is not.
Yeah, and that's an intriguing idea because, right, it's hard to imagine when you get tothese ideas or these cultural frameworks like patriarchy, like white supremacy, like
(08:35):
capitalism, at least for me as a white male, right, I understand that I have a whole listof privileges.
And even though I grew up poor in rural Arkansas,
the Mississippi River Delta, lived there most of my life.
uh My Black peers growing up in the same community have far different experiences than Idid.
(09:01):
I was never looked at as a suspect.
uh I was never uh denied help when I asked for it.
Nobody assumed that I had nefarious ideas.
And, you know, probably most importantly,
I never feared for my life when I was pulled over for a routine traffic stop.
(09:22):
But yet, these cultural frameworks became tools of oppression against people that looklike you, Kelvin, against women uh like Daniela, and against a whole host of people.
So are you suggesting then that though they may not be cults in and of themselves, thatthey have been tools
(09:46):
of cultic leaders and behaviors and became tools of oppression.
Is that what you're saying?
Absolutely, if you think about oh, this is great if you think about the cult ofAmericanism And Americanism is very much so a cult but if you think about the cult of
Americanism what it did was it took these three took the three ideas of Patriarchy racismand capitalism and blended them together and used those ideas
(10:23):
Exactly and use those ideas then to distribute power and that's what political science is.
Political science is at its core the study of power.
Who has it?
How they got it?
What are they doing with it?
How does that affecting other people's experiences?
You know and what's the current balance of power?
That's the base of what political science is.
uh And so you then have these political scientists because that's who they wereconstructing the American society based on the cult of Americanism.
(10:52):
Well, it's patriarchal.
And that's why there were no women when they were anyone was writing any governmentdocuments.
It's racist.
It's literally built on the idea that these people are not human.
so we get to use them to generate labor, you know, force them onto breeding plantations.
The idea of chattel slavery is referred to the peculiar institution because it wasinvented in America as a result of this blend of
(11:20):
racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.
And so as the groups who would become, who would make up America, they came here orevolved here or however they began, but as the groups that make up America found
themselves here and began to exist here, then based on these social frameworks, groupsbegan to orient and socialize themselves into cults.
(11:47):
into you know and that's where you get the cult of whites of pyramid saying you know
this is what I say where it's like, it's a cult system.
You know, and I love the way you explain stuff.
I love this idea that like these three things blended together to be like over America.
I had an interesting experience because I grew up in Brazil mostly inside a sort of likeinternational white led cult.
(12:12):
So I grew up in Brazil and I moved to America when I'm a teenager.
Like the racism was shocking to me, but I didn't really have any context to explain it.
And then over the decades, I will hear Brazilians say like, we don't have racism like inAmerica.
And it's like, well, like they do, it's different, right?
(12:36):
There's this peculiar mix that made up America.
the American racism and the chattel slavery and the separation and the one drop rule.
um And there's a different mix in a different place.
But then all of these groups under the system have to like form in that soup.
(12:59):
If that makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
And even if you look at, the American brand of racism gets, it's from the same Europeanbrand of racism that, you know, that advented in the 1500s or 1400s when Europe was like,
we got to find a way to justify all this genocide we're about to do.
(13:20):
So we have to, we have to invent something like that.
We literally need a reason.
ah And so
Once the scientific, know, once pseudo science and eugenics come out and say actually, youknow, they're not they're not as human as us because The back of their head looks like
this.
I don't know, you know, their their skin is dark.
(13:40):
So they must be inferior even though Like the Sun literally will kill you in two hours Butyou know, but you know
how?
I'm one of those people that is allergic to the sun, and I'm like, how did that become thebetter skin?
(14:01):
there's no logic.
But again, the pseudoscience comes out in the 1400s, 1500s.
then that version, this European white supremacy was born in Europe.
uh This idea of white supremacy is carried by different colonialists or colonizers whoexpress it differently.
(14:22):
So the Portuguese who colonized Brazil, theirs looks a little different.
uh Because, know, more for one, you know, uh there's
They have different, the colonizers themselves are different.
The version of colonialism that got to Jamaica, white supremacy in Jamaica, looks a littlebit different because those were Irish enslavers and they had a different worldview, a
(14:46):
different cultural background.
so Jamaican Patois comes from Irish or that brand of English.
The Portuguese go to Brazil, the English, the Scots.
And then not to mention the raping and pillaging of Africa and why racism looks different,a little bit different in all of those places.
And that's why.
(15:06):
Because again, once the idea is born, then the groups form themselves in sort of theprimordial soup and evolve accordingly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of particular interest to me, you mentioned, you know, how, you know, all of this sort ofgot its start in 1400s and 1500s Europe with this idea of colonizing the doctrine of
(15:30):
discovery.
This, this, this idea that, you know, because of religion, right, that, white supremacysort of used this as a vehicle to go and justify all of the atrocities that you've
mentioned.
Um, it's amazing to me how, you know, they were able to take, um, what started, uh,ostensibly as a religion of peace, right?
(15:59):
You have Jesus saying things like love your neighbor as yourself, uh, do unto others asyou would have them do unto you to, it sort of evolves, right?
Under the, the premise of white supremacy into this doctrine of discovery that says you'regoing to convert.
to Christianity at the edge of our sword.
(16:20):
And if you don't, then your death is your responsibility.
The raping of your women is your responsibility if you don't obey, submit, and becomeenslaved to our purposes in the pursuit of wealth, in the pursuit of really robbing you
and taking what you have because they saw themselves as having this divine right.
(16:43):
And then you fast forward to what happened
of course, in the United States with the war against uh indigenous people, uh native landsthat were taken.
um And this was all couched in the idea of divine right or this idea that somehow we areempowered by God to commit all of these atrocities.
(17:09):
And I think that goes to your original premise, right, Kelvin, that uh religion
like capitalism became a tool of these cult wannabes, for lack of a better term.
Absolutely.
uh Also, I've been ordained in ministry since October of 2022.
I've been licensed since 2014.
(17:31):
So can speak to that.
And also, uh it's interesting being a political science Xanad minister because I seeexactly this, some of the things people miss in the evolution of Christianity.
And you're absolutely right.
Christianity, if you look at the establishment of the early church.
and the way they were instructed to go about handling their day-to-day business andrelating to one another.
(17:53):
If you look at specifically in the book of Acts, the second chapter, verse 44 on to theend of it, it says literally that the believers had everything in common.
Sounds like another word.
And they would sell their extra possessions and bring the money or bring the extra,whatever extra they had, they would bring it and the church would take it and give it to
everyone who has need without.
(18:16):
a work requirement or checking their citizenship or because that's just what that's that'sthe way Christians are supposed to relate to one another.
uh And against the backdrop of a capitalist racist empire, Rome, this is what makes themstand out.
This is what makes them different.
And this is why Jesus says, they will know you are my followers by the love you have foranother, because these people are they are.
(18:42):
They are living in very socialist, very communist ways.
They're dividing up extra wealth and bringing it.
They didn't go to temples or these mega churches.
They went from home to home in the community.
ah And everybody was empowered to speak up and everybody was empowered to lead.
Even when certain offices were established in the Bible, you look at the office of deacon.
(19:07):
Deacons were established because, and this is in Acts chapter six, Deacons wereestablished because Greek speaking widows were not receiving the same portion of food or
money or whatever, medicine or what have you, as the Aramaic speaking widows, because theywere seen as the more Jewish people.
These are the more ethnically pure Jews.
And the early Turks was like, no, we're not gonna do that.
(19:30):
In fact, we're gonna establish an entire...
office of people whose job it is to make sure that everyone gets treated the same, thatthe people who need get what they need, and there's no discrimination because, oh, you're
not a Jew or you're from North Africa or, and that looks very different than KennethCopeland or, you know, or any of the people who were in that picture in the White House
(20:00):
laying hands on Donald Trump.
And what happened is a group of people, mainly the Roman Empire, saw this fast spreadingreligion and said, oh, we can't beat them.
Let's take it.
Let's mix up a bunch of other stuff in it for, know, so the pagans will be cool.
Let's, you know, move it to Sunday.
And now you have a temple and now you have fancy clothes because those people were incults.
(20:25):
They were literally like the cult of the goddess Isis, the cult of Asherah, the cult ofApollo.
And so when Rome says, again, people with power and okay, this religion, whatever thisweird religion is, we got, this is spreading too fast.
So let's take it, mix up a bunch of mix up a bunch of cults into it.
(20:48):
And now this is the official religion of everywhere Rome is or everywhere under the RomanEmpire's jurisdiction.
And...
I feel like that is what Donald Trump has done, by the way.
And I was just thinking about this today because I was like, actually, like, Children ofGod founder did this.
He went into like Teens for Christ and he went into these cults that were kind of like,didn't know where they were going.
(21:14):
And he took their populations of like already culty people and built them into his cult ofpersonality.
And I think that
you know, there's been this cult of an idea building since Reagan, right?
Or maybe it's a bunch of little cults, you know?
Like the fact that the Mormons and the evangelicals and the Catholics are all workingtogether right now is kind of bonkers.
(21:38):
um And I think that like the Heritage Foundation or whoever it was, they thought they werebringing in Trump as kind of like a puppet and they thought they were gonna get his,
absorb his cult.
but he actually came in and took everyone into his cult.
And now it's like this hardcore cult of personality where there's no logic, you know?
(22:01):
um I kind of think it's a good thing in a way because one, it's exposing all of this shit,but two, like when he goes, you know, I think a lot of things are gonna scatter, right?
Because it has become this like cult of personality behind one guy.
(22:21):
But kind of, think it's very similar to what Augustine did with Christianity in a way.
And a lot of people don't know that that's that history is some guy literally said likethis monotheist, this thing is gonna give me more power.
So let me join it and then corrupt it or twist it.
(22:44):
Yeah, and that's exactly what the European nations, there was no United White Europe.
These people literally had spent centuries taking turns, raping and pillaging and killingeach other.
Now, they were all Christian, there's, and they're all this feudalist capitalism-informedversion of Christianity where, well, the rich person must be God's favorite.
(23:07):
So we follow the rich person because they have the power.
And again, these are already culty ideas.
And once in the name of capitalism, know, once Europe says, we can like get spices andmake these people do labor and agriculture and generate wealth and generate, therefore,
power for ourselves, then all these little individuals, culty groups all over Europeunified themselves behind the idea of whiteness.
(23:35):
And so in the way that Donald Trump does this into, you know, takes this scattered, thesebunch of scattered cults of
idea in terms into a cult of personality whiteness and white supremacy allowed yeah thisidea of whiteness allowed Europe to coalesce into this idea of whiteness and so therefore
white supremacists get they get their idea that you know the white person is the thenatural ruler of the earth you know and if you're you know especially in the white western
(24:07):
european construct you know the lord gave the minion to the white man over
world and we're supposed to steward it and these other people are you know ourresponsibility and we're supposed to guide them into Christianity and also you know yeah
yeah
one of the defenses that was used, right, for chattel slavery, that, you know, whiteplantation owners saw this as their Christian responsibility and to educate and to, quote
(24:41):
unquote, save uh black people from their African uh spiritualism and religious practices.
And they saw this and they utilized it
as a weapon of oppression and actually forced black people to accept this religion um as ameans of controlling them.
(25:07):
And you know what, let me tell you, I had a teacher in high school.
So I dropped out of this cult into a mega school in Texas.
And I had this teacher who, know, like anyone I knew in Texas would have called like blackliberal teacher, right?
And she made sure that we knew like all the history.
(25:29):
We also knew the women's version and the African-American version.
And so one day I blurt out in class, I'm 17 years old, I don't even know if I know what Igrew up in yet was a cult.
And I just blurted out about how my parents were missionaries.
And she just looks at me and she goes, know, missionaries are agents of...
uh
Colonialism.
(25:50):
Yeah.
like uh agents of colonialism.
I, in my next book where I'm talking about this, I call it, We the Baddies, that chapter.
So it's just like, I remember in that moment being like infuriated, but also knowing itwas true.
Like it was kind of one of those crack in the brainwashing moments for me.
And I remember walking away and going like, so even in our lie, we weren't the good guys.
(26:17):
Even in our.
lie about being missionaries when we kind of knew we weren't.
Like this whole broader concept that she opened up for me, I think was that like, just ingeneral, we weren't the good guys, the white missionaries around the world.
(26:37):
And like that concept just changed my life forever, I think.
it really plays into all this.
right?
Think about the arrogance and the neurosis of that as far as in Christianity, especiallyin its white uh expressions that, you know, somehow we, because of the lack of melanin in
(27:02):
our skin, are uniquely qualified to go out to all of these other countries, to all ofthese other groups, and to share with
them not a truth, but the truth.
I saw a meme uh earlier today where, you know, this uh white Christian missionary islanding in an African country like Ethiopia and saying, I'm here to tell you about Jesus.
(27:29):
And, you know, the Ethiopians respond, well, we know much more than you do about that,right?
So there's this assumption throughout history because of white supremacy.
um that hijacked uh Christianity and other religions um that got this idea that somehow uhwe are more qualified.
(27:53):
And the way that that manifested itself growing up in a small, rural Pentecostal churchfor me in Northeast Arkansas, in a predominantly African-American community, was we did
things like bus ministry, right?
Where we felt like
we knew better than the black communities in our town as to oh how they should raise theirchildren, how they should conduct their lives, and certainly how they should live a
(28:23):
Christian life.
So it ended up, right, in this uh Messiah complex, this paternalism, where we would go outto black communities and we would solicit
uh children from those communities to come to our predominantly white church.
And in retrospect, you know, what we saw as doing our Christian duty was nothing butblatant racism on display.
(28:51):
Absolutely, and I think that's why if you look at uh the way this is evolved, this idea ofthis white supremacist idea of the missionary, of saviorism, if you look at the way it has
evolved, what it really is, is closing, or trying to preventatively close the cracks.
And that's why, uh you know, that's why even in feudal Europe, education is closed off tothe rich, to the, you know, the ruling class.
(29:19):
Because we don't need anyone who's had a different experience to get into a space where weteach them to think critically about experiences.
Because if they do, then they're not going to connect the same dots as a person who growsup in the nobility.
And so again, in the 15th and 16th, 1700s, uh colonial education, education is still onlyfor the ruling class.
(29:47):
because their experiences, again, we don't need them learning how to think critically ordisseminate information or public speaking or writing.
We don't need them to learn any of that because the material they're going to put out intothe world, the way they're going to catalog their experiences are going to expose that
this idea that we are beholden to is in fact a lie.
(30:08):
And then the 2010s and 2020s, you have to ban books in America and you can't teachcritical race theory and you...
can't teach black history or women's history or AP anything uh that goes against the whitesupremacist, Christo, fascist uh idea of Americanism.
You can't teach anything different because then there are gonna be cracks and then thereare gonna be places where people can go.
(30:35):
that's why at the same time that billionaires continue to send their children to thefinest institutions, they're also themselves.
and using their money and influence to put out, though colleges are a hoax and a scam andeducation is horrible and books are bad and that's why they want to read to your children
(30:56):
so they can, you know, so they won't know the truth and so they will be distracted fromthe way things are supposed to be.
Again, it's the same idea from feudal schools in Europe all the way to the Moms forLiberty banning books in Florida because education is a tool that could be used.
to get people out of the cult.
(31:16):
if, know...
you made me realize something about my military experience because I was an officer and Ireally didn't belong as an officer because I didn't come, I don't know, like come in
through the elite of America, right?
And they have this kind of lie that we want you questioning, right?
(31:39):
Like we want you here questioning things and testing the process.
But then there was always this like surprise, like,
why don't you think the way we tell you?
And what you said there, just like, and now I think back and I'm like, yep, and it was allthe officers that came from different backgrounds than what they're used to having in that
(31:59):
pipeline that were the ones that were constantly kind of getting in trouble for asking thequestions.
like, it's that different experience coming in in a system where you're not, like it's notintended for you to have that.
And yeah, yeah, and again, that's why, you know, and that's why these these other systemsbecome tools of our religion becomes a tool to, know, because again, the faith you have,
(32:25):
you can't believe that a homeless brown Palestinian Jew was executed by a capitalistempire for rabble rousing, because love your neighbor, you know, love your neighbor isn't
what got Jesus killed.
It's my kingdom is not of this world.
This is what got Jesus killed because now you're telling people, wait, we can experience asociety and reality based on your teachings that's different than this and better for us.
(32:56):
Like heaven's not some closed off thing that we have to go through the rich, taken,powerful to get.
It's, you you don't have to.
And this is something I point out often in African-American circles, black religiouscircles as well is any religion that's telling you
that you have to die to have a better quality of life is trying to keep you from realizingsomething true about your life on this side.
(33:21):
And so again, when this homeless brown socialist Palestinian Jew against the backdrop ofthe Roman Empire is like, y'all know y'all don't have to live like that.
We can just, we can just all share because that's what, that's what dad, you know, thedear old dad said, you know, we can just all chill out.
(33:42):
and just share and be kind to each other.
And the fact that he proposed a different social reality to people, too big a crack, toobig a crack in Rome's capitalism and the colony of Judea.
And so that's what gets him killed.
And over and over, see anyone who exposes or, hey, this whole idea is not true.
(34:06):
One typically is from outside of the experience and that doesn't necessarily mean eitheron the positive end, like you benefited from white supremacy or patriarchy, colonialism.
But if you had the experience that, for example, oh myself as a black person who grew upin poor in the inner city in Baton Rouge, I had the experience that capitalism wants me to
(34:31):
have.
And that's not even as bad as it's supposed to be because I'm still supposed to be a slavein this country, you know, and be property to extract value from.
But that's what racialized capitalism, like that's the experience I'm supposed to have.
And so when you don't have that experience, you know, when I'm able to, you know, go toschool, go to college, you know, uh, you know, pursue graduate education.
(34:53):
When I get outside of what I'm supposed to do in the confines of the system and say, okay.
Now I can see that this is the matrix, you know, it's the person it's like the differencebetween you know Homo sapiens a who knows and then homo sapiens a man who knows that he
knows And so once you have that systemic level of awareness, you're a problem for thesystem Because you're gonna start pointing out inconsistencies and you're gonna start
(35:20):
Leading people into different ways and different frameworks that don't match the one thatthe people with power like and that's why Martin and Malcolm and
Metger and and you know and the list goes on and on and on you know so that yeah
I mean, not as big of a deal as those people, but this also was like, in my experience inthe military, it's like, this is why they don't want women in these high ranking positions
(35:46):
and these special operations.
And kind of what's happening now is women went and had that experience and played thatgame and got those badges.
And now we're talking about it from a different perspective and they don't like that atall, right?
Like it's very upsetting.
to people that women who got the badges and did the stuff are now getting out and they'relike, yeah, but we wanna talk about the sexism and we wanna talk about the whole game, the
(36:18):
whole matrix of it that you have set up here.
it's like, but that's not, people used to ask me, are you a proud veteran or are you gonnacriticize?
what, what?
And I was like, I'm gonna talk about all of it, all of it.
And that was like not, that's not what you're supposed to do.
Kelvin, I want to return for just a moment to this idea of uh capitalism and currency,because in much the same way that religion was hijacked and used as a tool of oppression,
(36:50):
we see the same thing in the history of this nation with the exploitation of free laborfrom black slave people uh to the idea for white poor people.
that somehow that if they play by the rules, that if they work hard enough, that they canachieve, right, the quote unquote American dream.
(37:16):
And that's the lie that was sold to my generation.
That's the lie that keeps getting repeated.
And we hear a lot of that today, right?
And that's why you have people uh voting against their own interest because they buy intothis lie.
I mean, if you go back to the Civil War,
It wasn't plantation owners that were out there fighting and bleeding and dying for thecause of slavery, for the cause of the Confederacy.
(37:44):
uh It was by and large poor uh white young men who were convinced that the keeping slaveryand the expansion of slavery was their ticket to wealth uh and to prosperity.
um And so, you know, this leveraging of capitalism today, uh convincing people that ifthey vote for a particular uh political party or if uh they buy into a particular tax
(38:19):
structure, um that, you know, all of this is going to benefit them.
I often use the example of my father, my dad, he worked at the same factory.
He was a member of the United Auto Workers.
And for 37 years, he worked at a factory making chrome parts for an automobile.
(38:40):
also, we had a small portion of land where he would plant crops and we would eatvegetables and food.
Hardest working man I've ever known.
uh But we barely made it, right?
We barely got by, but he kept contributing to this system.
(39:01):
because he was convinced like everyone else that that work was an end in and of itself.
And it was serving a larger system that he never saw the benefit of.
And I think there's a lot of white poor folks that continue to buy into this lie ofcapitalism that if you work hard, play by the rules.
(39:24):
And if we look at increasing support of uh African-Americans of Donald Trump,
I think that there are uh a segment of African Americans that are buying into that lie aswell.
Your thoughts?
Yeah, well one, uh yeah, the other half of that big lie is like, know, because you'rewhite, if you work hard, you can climb up the social ladder.
(39:52):
And I think that's exactly what we're seeing though, is that, you know, again, uh thiscurrent regime is trying to reintroduce that rigidity into society.
And so that's why we can't have a Department of Education whose primary purpose it is toenforce civil rights and ensure that
you know, services get where they need to and funding gets where it's supposed to in theamounts.
You know, that's why we can't have, you know, you know, an immigration system that allowspeople to seek asylum and come and start, you know, start over, you know, have a better
(40:21):
life because there's this rigid way it's supposed to be.
And we need to get everyone back into where they're supposed to be.
ah And the issue is that, you know, for the
60 years that America's been an actual democracy since the Civil and Voting Rights Actwere passed, you know People have been moving in between and we've lost a lot of that
(40:42):
social rigidity And so now trying to reintroduce that is what's causing a lot of frictionand cognitive dissonance especially for those poor white people who are now seems like
well No, they cut my Medicaid.
They weren't supposed to do that.
It was like well, no, they just needed you
The cult just needed you, even if you were not in the cult, they needed you to be cultadjacent and exhibit a certain behavior, i.e.
(41:05):
voting, i.e.
fear-mongering online about, they're eating the cats and dogs in Springfield, Illinois,or, oh those people are moving into these neighborhoods.
Hey, if you see something, say something.
Report suspicious activity.
Here's a reward, a bounty if you report.
brown Spanish-speaking people in your area, in your city, et cetera, et cetera.
(41:29):
All of these are tools to get people who may not be bought into the cult to exhibitbehaviors that the cult needs from them in order to reestablish its power.
And that's exactly it.
In the case of poor white people, the poor whites who hadn't fought for the Confederacywere bought into, and I wouldn't go so far as to argue that they were in the cult and
(41:49):
didn't know it.
Because they had they did what they were supposed they bought into the idea of well, no,this is my obligation to to defend the institution of slavery because slavery is how you
know, the economy works here and if I can work hard enough and I can get my foot into thatdoor the door of some of that wealth driven by this institution So I'm gonna go defend my
(42:14):
state's right to you know own people to codify slavery into its constitution
And same thing we see now, you know, with anybody who's actively signing up andvolunteering to go work for ICE.
Or, you know, the people who are like, well, you know, the people who are in the streets,you know, in their nice little uniforms and masks, and they're like, yeah, we're sending
(42:38):
the message.
And, know, it's deportation now.
Because they've now taken their place in the cult.
They've, again, they keep...
believing the big lie, is, you know, again, one of racialized capitalism is hate.
We know we have all the money and resources and all the healthcare.
We know we have it all, but you could get some because you and I are both white.
(43:02):
But that black person or brown person or whoever else is different is the reason why youdon't have it.
Not because I'm hoarding it, not because I'm concentrating it for myself and thegenerations of my family, but because there are other people you're competing against.
And it's to get us to believe that they have the control.
Right?
(43:23):
And I feel like I have spent a lot of my time since the election just explaining to peoplethat 360 million people can't be controlled by force, right?
Like if we get together, you know, even a fraction of us, right?
Like we can tell our leaders what to do, but they, in the cult, they don't want you torealize that.
(43:46):
And this is why, at some point I feel like teenagers will understand like, you can't makeme do this anymore.
Like you and what army?
And that's when the cult loses power and they don't want us to realize that, right?
Because they want us to keep feeding this labor machine.
(44:07):
My question is, do you think we're waking up from it right now?
Do you think this is a shift or do you think we're kind of like,
waking up from the cult of capitalism.
I fundamentally believe that white supremacy and capitalism and therefore like the whitesupremacist capitalist idea that is currently America is in its death throes actively.
(44:30):
uh because, well uh here's the thing, you have to look at these desperate graphs.
Well, one, the first part of it is math.
In the next 25 years, America's gonna be majority minority.
And so, you know, and
terrified.
for, let's say for a certain group of people, that's horrible news because they have theseimplicit and explicit assumptions about who minorities are and how they are treated in a
(45:01):
society and how they are supposed to be treated in a society.
And so we can't become a minority because then we're gonna get treated like we treatedthese people because they bought into this idea of supremacy.
And that's why we see
You know, and I've told people, know, yeah, we're definitely at the end of it.
(45:22):
And that's why you see so much such a grasp.
That's why all these these traditionally these groups that are traditionally at odds,these all these groups that have white supremacy in their core are working together now
because they see it's falling apart.
And capitalism is inherently unsustainable because you can't have infinite growth in afinite system.
(45:45):
No, you know that that's literally what cancer is and it kills things so Capitalism isgoing to burn it.
It always does.
Yeah.
Yeah
people that look like me are seeing in this nation, And all of this fear mongering that'sgoing on is exactly what you pointed out.
(46:05):
They uh fear losing status and privilege and power because that's how they interpretequality, right?
They interpret equality as punishment.
And so, you know, most middle-aged white guys that are full on board the Trump train, whatthey see in Donald Trump is a champion, right?
(46:35):
They see uh all of the things that probably aren't true about the man, but what heprojects they aspire to be.
Here is a white successful businessman, got plenty of money.
He's surrounded by beautiful women.
He has the power and the status.
And even though they aren't that, they aspire to be that and they see in him a champion.
(47:04):
And that's why I believe that you have this cult of personality because it's a seamlesstransition between what white men have always desired
and what they see Donald Trump saying and doing and championing because they see theirstatus and power and privilege slipping away by the day.
(47:31):
Yeah.
Absolutely, and I was gonna say even the well the heritage the the people who intended forDonald Trump to be their puppet You know what they're looking at though is you know the
political systems that For now work for them and sustain their power are going to be verydifferent if they continue to operate in free and open elections Because every generation
(47:51):
is more progressive or further left to use the left-right spectrum There are more blackand brown people there are going to continue to be more black and brown
More of those Black and Brown people are becoming educated.
More of them are entering the workforce.
More of them are entering the uh you know, what they consider skilled professions or, youknow, they law and social sciences and medicine.
(48:13):
And they are going to start dismantling these institutions that we've built to serve us.
And so they saw this in the 60s and 70s.
And so that's when they start putting their dominoes in place.
Southern Baptist Convention was pro-life.
until they needed another issue to mobilize people and scare their base with and get themout.
(48:34):
And so now abortion is horrible.
It's the worst thing ever.
And these people are trying to replace us, know, replacement theory.
uh
Kelvin, think you're right, but I want to ask you this question, and I alluded to it uh amoment ago.
um If the statistics are correct, uh by and large, African-American populations stillsupport Democratic causes and candidates.
(49:02):
uh But we have seen an increase, especially among Black young men, in support
of the GOP in support of the Republican Party in support of Donald Trump.
Should we be concerned about that?
um And why do you think that is happening?
Yeah, well, the reason that's happening um is, well, one, because immediately afterAmerica is racist, it is patriarchal.
(49:30):
ah And so, again, ah this access to power, ah what the white patriarchal ruling classwants to happen is for black men to say, well, I'm a man, though.
And so the patriarchy serves me.
And so I should then...
perpetuate even if I hate everything Donald Trump says about you know black people orbrown people or the racism he espouses uh because uh of this this you know, I'd redefine
(50:03):
the idea of Masculinity and what it is to be a man.
Well, Donald Trump is going to support and this you know, he espouses the same beliefs andhe's going to support institutions and laws that Reinforce with real masculinity is
And now to speak though to the question, to second part of that question, I don't think weshould be concerned because one that like the increase in support for Donald Trump in this
(50:33):
past election that we saw, it's still what, 87 % of black men voted democratically orwhat, 92, 93 % of white women.
That's still 91, 92 % on average, about 90 % on average.
of black people.
And again, some of that was driven by and some of that increase was driven by also ah thefact that African-American men still tend to be largely Christian ah and the
(51:05):
bastardization of messaging around Christianity as relates to abortion or this idea thatsomehow as America being a Christian nation, you're beholden to Americans first before
these other people like
And so some of that increases due to that, but I don't think we should be concerned longterm just because again, looking at uh trends projecting, especially leading up to
(51:27):
midterms, but looking at trends projecting this next group of people who are going toturn, the next couple of groups of people who are going to turn 18 in uh time to vote in
midterm elections.
Again, they're even further left on the left, right spectrum than
this last group of young people who voted.
And the group that's going to turn 18, or the couple of groups who are going to turn 18between 2026 and 2028, are still even further left in those two groups.
(51:55):
uh And it's uh not like a gradually getting more progressive.
These people are a lot more progressive than the people before them, because they've hadthese different experiences that don't line up with the messaging of the cult masters.
uh
Yeah.
yeah, I don't think we should be concerned.
(52:16):
I don't think we should be concerned about that long term, about that trend long term.
And I also think that part of the reason why...
oh
Go ahead, sorry.
I was gonna say, and I also think that part of the reason why that messaging was pushed somuch was so that the black community would think that we're experiencing some sort of
(52:38):
dissension internally and throw ourselves into this frantic chaos emergency like, oh no,everything's on fire.
We gotta figure out why all these black men are voting for Trump and where are they?
And while we're scrambling and doing that, we're not focusing on building internal systemsof power.
and resources to replace the ones we're about to lose and are actively losing ororganizing ourselves or for the people who need to rest and feel that rest is their
(53:05):
calling, doing that.
But I think part of the reason that messaging was put out and proliferated in such a wayabout this concerning increase was to generate that sort of chaos and confusion internally
um within the African-American community.
So I don't think we should be worried.
uh But yeah.
One of the things I've been saying as an intelligence officer is nobody is this scaredwhen they're winning, which is one of the ways I know that they're losing.
(53:35):
And then from the cult perspective, when you can't keep the young people, it doesn'tmatter.
doesn't matter how much power you have or how much money you have.
Ultimately, if you can't keep the young people, your cult is gonna fall apart.
So that is where my hope is, Kelvin.
I love the way you explain things.
Like, I wish I could be a student in your class every day.
(53:58):
ah I'm just so appreciative that you came on here and had this conversation with us today.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Kelvin.
thanks for the invitation.
Yeah.
Happy to come back.
back at some point in the future.
Thank you so much, Kelvin.
We appreciate it.
And if folks want to get in touch with you, uh make sure you pass along that informationto Haley, our wonderful producer, and we'll get all of that included in the show notes.
(54:27):
Thanks again for being here.
Delightful uh and uh inspiring conversation.
So thank you so much.
Of course, yeah, thanks for having me.
Looking forward to it.
sure.
I ask you, Calvin, as just as a lifelong community organizer, do you have like, is there asingle piece of advice you give people for like how to get involved or is that too broad
(54:51):
of a question?
No, think.
Yeah, the single piece of advice I'd give people is find something you care about and showup where it's happening.
ah There's, you know, people who people who I've been in coalition with folks in theenergy justice world, for example.
Some people are concerned about, you know, grid resilience, and that's why they want toimprove, you know, electric.
(55:13):
Some people are concerned about energy burden and, you know, disproportionate economiceffect in that impact.
And some people are concerned about
environmental justice and how the energy is being generated and where the facilities areand how that's impacting those communities.
And three different groups of people, three different groups of areas of concern, threevery different demographics because some of those people are scientists, some of those
(55:36):
people are engineers, and some of those people are your grandma.
But find something you care about and show up because chances are there's other people whocare about it too.
Amazing.
Thank you so much, Calvin, for your time and words today.
And thank all of you for tuning in to this edition of Cults and the Culting of Americapodcast.
Until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Mesteneck Young, Knitting Cult Lady.
(56:01):
We'll see you on the next episode.
Welcome to another edition of CULT's and the CULTing of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend, Daniella.
Knitting CULT lady, Daniella, it's good to see you again as always.
So good to see you too, Scott.
Getting close to book debut date.
Absolutely, just a few weeks away.
Thank you so much for saying that.
(00:45):
August the 26th, my book debuts from choir publishing entitled, The God I Was Given,Looking for Faith After Losing My Religion.
uh speaking of religion, it is a framework that we receive in society, right?
And a lot of times, as you have rightly pointed out, ideologies get connected to that andthey
(01:08):
Become a useful tool for cults, although they may not be cults in and of themselves Butthey do become a useful framework and speaking of frameworks.
We have a great guest with us tonight.
I love your little uh Heading there a general nerd I can relate because I'm one as wellKelvin welcome.
(01:30):
Why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, so I'm Kelvin.
General Nerd is a pretty apt description.
I'm a political scientist by training.
Shout out to uh Southern University, A College in Baton Rouge, my alma mater, and the onlyHBCU system in the world.
Also work in justice work full time.
(01:52):
Well, I've been in justice work in energy policy, environmental and racial justice policy,and grassroots organizing for my entire.
professional career and you know with community organizing comes the gamut of knowledgeand skills you need and so I've done everything from camp counseling in Texas to teaching
(02:12):
fifth grade uh ELA in New Orleans, worked with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund on thestudent loan debt crisis.
So yeah, bounced around and worked in a lot of spaces on a lot of issues and am generallya nerd.
uh So yeah, happy to be here.
some time in Louisiana.
(02:33):
I taught at Louisiana College.
It's now Louisiana Christian University, I think, in central Louisiana.
So I was there for four years coaching debate and uh teaching communication.
Louisiana is a great state, right?
There is so much personality, so much culture.
The food is fabulous.
Yeah.
(02:54):
time in Louisiana, but it was only in the swamp where the military goes to do training.
I'm looking forward to going back for Mardi Gras sometime.
It's a blast, promise you.
it's a place, uh range of experiences, but no, it's home.
(03:14):
uh Louisiana is an amazing place with amazing people.
And just like everywhere else, we have our problems, uh bad writ rash, some would say.
But yeah, I love it.
That's why I haven't left.
Probably won't.
So social systems, you and I got into a conversation about social systems and really thisquestion of is capitalism a cult?
(03:40):
As soon as I start talking about cults, I basically get asked three questions.
What about capitalism?
What about white supremacy?
And what about patriarchy?
And I kind of think like when we say the cult of,
cult of patriarchy, the cult of capitalism, the cult of white supremacy, we're kind ofalluding to this bigger system.
I've recently started to think maybe education and medicine are, you know, some of thesesystems as well.
(04:07):
But do you think, do you think capitalism is a cult?
Let's just start there.
Yeah, no, don't.
don't think capitalism itself is a code.
think capitalism, most people when they hear of capitalism, even myself before, you know,going to, you know, becoming a political scientist and learning these things in a more
(04:28):
formal setting, the first people think, first thing people think of is markets and theeconomy.
And, you know, this is how we get innovation and, you know, supply and demand.
And I too thought that was the case, you know, capitalism's just this.
economic system.
uh Until though, I was introduced by Dr.
Albert Samuels, the chair of the political science department, who really gave me this inour politics, funny enough, politics and religion course, really took us out of this, this
(05:02):
micro view of like the things in terms you're familiar with.
And let's look at these things for what they are, and how these things play out in theworld.
uh And
That's when I realized capitalism and through this teaching, capitalism isn't an economicsystem.
It's a social framework.
It is a way of being in the world.
And the easiest way that this illustrated is for us to, you can pick, and it's for us tolook into our society.
(05:29):
You know, we live in a capitalist society and think about the things we experience andwhere those things come from and why they are the way it are.
The reason the school system is the way it is.
You move on a bell system.
You're in alphabetical order in a single file line and you can't talk because it's theefficiency of the factory Well again labor has to be as efficient and as cheap as possible
(05:51):
in a capitalist system So again the school system and the education system is the way itis because we need workers not thinkers We need hands and feet and bodies to generate uh
Values that can be extracted for the capitalists
And so again, we can look at where the interstate system is.
(06:15):
The interstate system is where it is because that's where the property value was cheapest.
Well, that also happened to be majority black and brown neighborhoods who deliberately hadtheir property values lowered via redlining and discriminatory loan policies.
Well, we need the cheapest land.
We need a lot of it.
We can get it from this group of people who've been left out.
(06:38):
I'm a capitalist, it's cheap, that's what I need.
And that's why the interstate system is the way it is.
uh The reason why they're, you know, the temperatures in the summertime are different inthe suburbs and in the inner city communities.
Lack of tree coverage.
Why are there no trees?
know, why are there, why is there, are there fewer trees?
Well, that lowers, you know, you have nice trees, that raises your property value.
(07:02):
Your home value is higher, especially
You know when these are like native to the area and have been there a while, you know Weeveryone loves a nice shade tree in the front yard But we don't want those people coming
to buy the houses with the nice shade trees in the front yard so we just cut them all downand Over and over again, you can literally pick just about anything we experience
(07:24):
especially in you know, American society as the patriarchal
Christo-fascist society that it is and is becoming, and capitalist society that has alwaysbeen.
You can pick any part of our experiences, and it goes back to not a group of capitalistsin particular, but to this idea that this is the way the world should be.
(07:46):
Now, if you have extremely bad leadership in the form of a group of billionaires whobelieve that they have this mandate to shape the world into this image,
Because they are the capitalists and they have the divine right and that's why they'rerich and white and they start to socialize or organize themselves and exhibit certain
(08:08):
behaviors as it relates to expanding capitalism or propagating capitalism.
That's a cult.
But capitalism in and of itself is not.
Yeah, and that's an intriguing idea because, right, it's hard to imagine when you get tothese ideas or these cultural frameworks like patriarchy, like white supremacy, like
(08:35):
capitalism, at least for me as a white male, right, I understand that I have a whole listof privileges.
And even though I grew up poor in rural Arkansas,
the Mississippi River Delta, lived there most of my life.
uh My Black peers growing up in the same community have far different experiences than Idid.
(09:01):
I was never looked at as a suspect.
uh I was never uh denied help when I asked for it.
Nobody assumed that I had nefarious ideas.
And, you know, probably most importantly,
I never feared for my life when I was pulled over for a routine traffic stop.
(09:22):
But yet, these cultural frameworks became tools of oppression against people that looklike you, Kelvin, against women uh like Daniela, and against a whole host of people.
So are you suggesting then that though they may not be cults in and of themselves, thatthey have been tools
(09:46):
of cultic leaders and behaviors and became tools of oppression.
Is that what you're saying?
Absolutely, if you think about oh, this is great if you think about the cult ofAmericanism And Americanism is very much so a cult but if you think about the cult of
Americanism what it did was it took these three took the three ideas of Patriarchy racismand capitalism and blended them together and used those ideas
(10:23):
Exactly and use those ideas then to distribute power and that's what political science is.
Political science is at its core the study of power.
Who has it?
How they got it?
What are they doing with it?
How does that affecting other people's experiences?
You know and what's the current balance of power?
That's the base of what political science is.
uh And so you then have these political scientists because that's who they wereconstructing the American society based on the cult of Americanism.
(10:52):
Well, it's patriarchal.
And that's why there were no women when they were anyone was writing any governmentdocuments.
It's racist.
It's literally built on the idea that these people are not human.
so we get to use them to generate labor, you know, force them onto breeding plantations.
The idea of chattel slavery is referred to the peculiar institution because it wasinvented in America as a result of this blend of
(11:20):
racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.
And so as the groups who would become, who would make up America, they came here orevolved here or however they began, but as the groups that make up America found
themselves here and began to exist here, then based on these social frameworks, groupsbegan to orient and socialize themselves into cults.
(11:47):
into you know and that's where you get the cult of whites of pyramid saying you know
this is what I say where it's like, it's a cult system.
You know, and I love the way you explain stuff.
I love this idea that like these three things blended together to be like over America.
I had an interesting experience because I grew up in Brazil mostly inside a sort of likeinternational white led cult.
(12:12):
So I grew up in Brazil and I moved to America when I'm a teenager.
Like the racism was shocking to me, but I didn't really have any context to explain it.
And then over the decades, I will hear Brazilians say like, we don't have racism like inAmerica.
And it's like, well, like they do, it's different, right?
(12:36):
There's this peculiar mix that made up America.
the American racism and the chattel slavery and the separation and the one drop rule.
um And there's a different mix in a different place.
But then all of these groups under the system have to like form in that soup.
(12:59):
If that makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
And even if you look at, the American brand of racism gets, it's from the same Europeanbrand of racism that, you know, that advented in the 1500s or 1400s when Europe was like,
we got to find a way to justify all this genocide we're about to do.
(13:20):
So we have to, we have to invent something like that.
We literally need a reason.
ah And so
Once the scientific, know, once pseudo science and eugenics come out and say actually, youknow, they're not they're not as human as us because The back of their head looks like
this.
I don't know, you know, their their skin is dark.
(13:40):
So they must be inferior even though Like the Sun literally will kill you in two hours Butyou know, but you know
how?
I'm one of those people that is allergic to the sun, and I'm like, how did that become thebetter skin?
(14:01):
there's no logic.
But again, the pseudoscience comes out in the 1400s, 1500s.
then that version, this European white supremacy was born in Europe.
uh This idea of white supremacy is carried by different colonialists or colonizers whoexpress it differently.
(14:22):
So the Portuguese who colonized Brazil, theirs looks a little different.
uh Because, know, more for one, you know, uh there's
They have different, the colonizers themselves are different.
The version of colonialism that got to Jamaica, white supremacy in Jamaica, looks a littlebit different because those were Irish enslavers and they had a different worldview, a
(14:46):
different cultural background.
so Jamaican Patois comes from Irish or that brand of English.
The Portuguese go to Brazil, the English, the Scots.
And then not to mention the raping and pillaging of Africa and why racism looks different,a little bit different in all of those places.
And that's why.
(15:06):
Because again, once the idea is born, then the groups form themselves in sort of theprimordial soup and evolve accordingly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of particular interest to me, you mentioned, you know, how, you know, all of this sort ofgot its start in 1400s and 1500s Europe with this idea of colonizing the doctrine of
(15:30):
discovery.
This, this, this idea that, you know, because of religion, right, that, white supremacysort of used this as a vehicle to go and justify all of the atrocities that you've
mentioned.
Um, it's amazing to me how, you know, they were able to take, um, what started, uh,ostensibly as a religion of peace, right?
(15:59):
You have Jesus saying things like love your neighbor as yourself, uh, do unto others asyou would have them do unto you to, it sort of evolves, right?
Under the, the premise of white supremacy into this doctrine of discovery that says you'regoing to convert.
to Christianity at the edge of our sword.
(16:20):
And if you don't, then your death is your responsibility.
The raping of your women is your responsibility if you don't obey, submit, and becomeenslaved to our purposes in the pursuit of wealth, in the pursuit of really robbing you
and taking what you have because they saw themselves as having this divine right.
(16:43):
And then you fast forward to what happened
of course, in the United States with the war against uh indigenous people, uh native landsthat were taken.
um And this was all couched in the idea of divine right or this idea that somehow we areempowered by God to commit all of these atrocities.
(17:09):
And I think that goes to your original premise, right, Kelvin, that uh religion
like capitalism became a tool of these cult wannabes, for lack of a better term.
Absolutely.
uh Also, I've been ordained in ministry since October of 2022.
I've been licensed since 2014.
(17:31):
So can speak to that.
And also, uh it's interesting being a political science Xanad minister because I seeexactly this, some of the things people miss in the evolution of Christianity.
And you're absolutely right.
Christianity, if you look at the establishment of the early church.
and the way they were instructed to go about handling their day-to-day business andrelating to one another.
(17:53):
If you look at specifically in the book of Acts, the second chapter, verse 44 on to theend of it, it says literally that the believers had everything in common.
Sounds like another word.
And they would sell their extra possessions and bring the money or bring the extra,whatever extra they had, they would bring it and the church would take it and give it to
everyone who has need without.
(18:16):
a work requirement or checking their citizenship or because that's just what that's that'sthe way Christians are supposed to relate to one another.
uh And against the backdrop of a capitalist racist empire, Rome, this is what makes themstand out.
This is what makes them different.
And this is why Jesus says, they will know you are my followers by the love you have foranother, because these people are they are.
(18:42):
They are living in very socialist, very communist ways.
They're dividing up extra wealth and bringing it.
They didn't go to temples or these mega churches.
They went from home to home in the community.
ah And everybody was empowered to speak up and everybody was empowered to lead.
Even when certain offices were established in the Bible, you look at the office of deacon.
(19:07):
Deacons were established because, and this is in Acts chapter six, Deacons wereestablished because Greek speaking widows were not receiving the same portion of food or
money or whatever, medicine or what have you, as the Aramaic speaking widows, because theywere seen as the more Jewish people.
These are the more ethnically pure Jews.
And the early Turks was like, no, we're not gonna do that.
(19:30):
In fact, we're gonna establish an entire...
office of people whose job it is to make sure that everyone gets treated the same, thatthe people who need get what they need, and there's no discrimination because, oh, you're
not a Jew or you're from North Africa or, and that looks very different than KennethCopeland or, you know, or any of the people who were in that picture in the White House
(20:00):
laying hands on Donald Trump.
And what happened is a group of people, mainly the Roman Empire, saw this fast spreadingreligion and said, oh, we can't beat them.
Let's take it.
Let's mix up a bunch of other stuff in it for, know, so the pagans will be cool.
Let's, you know, move it to Sunday.
And now you have a temple and now you have fancy clothes because those people were incults.
(20:25):
They were literally like the cult of the goddess Isis, the cult of Asherah, the cult ofApollo.
And so when Rome says, again, people with power and okay, this religion, whatever thisweird religion is, we got, this is spreading too fast.
So let's take it, mix up a bunch of mix up a bunch of cults into it.
(20:48):
And now this is the official religion of everywhere Rome is or everywhere under the RomanEmpire's jurisdiction.
And...
I feel like that is what Donald Trump has done, by the way.
And I was just thinking about this today because I was like, actually, like, Children ofGod founder did this.
He went into like Teens for Christ and he went into these cults that were kind of like,didn't know where they were going.
(21:14):
And he took their populations of like already culty people and built them into his cult ofpersonality.
And I think that
you know, there's been this cult of an idea building since Reagan, right?
Or maybe it's a bunch of little cults, you know?
Like the fact that the Mormons and the evangelicals and the Catholics are all workingtogether right now is kind of bonkers.
(21:38):
um And I think that like the Heritage Foundation or whoever it was, they thought they werebringing in Trump as kind of like a puppet and they thought they were gonna get his,
absorb his cult.
but he actually came in and took everyone into his cult.
And now it's like this hardcore cult of personality where there's no logic, you know?
(22:01):
um I kind of think it's a good thing in a way because one, it's exposing all of this shit,but two, like when he goes, you know, I think a lot of things are gonna scatter, right?
Because it has become this like cult of personality behind one guy.
(22:21):
But kind of, think it's very similar to what Augustine did with Christianity in a way.
And a lot of people don't know that that's that history is some guy literally said likethis monotheist, this thing is gonna give me more power.
So let me join it and then corrupt it or twist it.
(22:44):
Yeah, and that's exactly what the European nations, there was no United White Europe.
These people literally had spent centuries taking turns, raping and pillaging and killingeach other.
Now, they were all Christian, there's, and they're all this feudalist capitalism-informedversion of Christianity where, well, the rich person must be God's favorite.
(23:07):
So we follow the rich person because they have the power.
And again, these are already culty ideas.
And once in the name of capitalism, know, once Europe says, we can like get spices andmake these people do labor and agriculture and generate wealth and generate, therefore,
power for ourselves, then all these little individuals, culty groups all over Europeunified themselves behind the idea of whiteness.
(23:35):
And so in the way that Donald Trump does this into, you know, takes this scattered, thesebunch of scattered cults of
idea in terms into a cult of personality whiteness and white supremacy allowed yeah thisidea of whiteness allowed Europe to coalesce into this idea of whiteness and so therefore
white supremacists get they get their idea that you know the white person is the thenatural ruler of the earth you know and if you're you know especially in the white western
(24:07):
european construct you know the lord gave the minion to the white man over
world and we're supposed to steward it and these other people are you know ourresponsibility and we're supposed to guide them into Christianity and also you know yeah
yeah
one of the defenses that was used, right, for chattel slavery, that, you know, whiteplantation owners saw this as their Christian responsibility and to educate and to, quote
(24:41):
unquote, save uh black people from their African uh spiritualism and religious practices.
And they saw this and they utilized it
as a weapon of oppression and actually forced black people to accept this religion um as ameans of controlling them.
(25:07):
And you know what, let me tell you, I had a teacher in high school.
So I dropped out of this cult into a mega school in Texas.
And I had this teacher who, know, like anyone I knew in Texas would have called like blackliberal teacher, right?
And she made sure that we knew like all the history.
(25:29):
We also knew the women's version and the African-American version.
And so one day I blurt out in class, I'm 17 years old, I don't even know if I know what Igrew up in yet was a cult.
And I just blurted out about how my parents were missionaries.
And she just looks at me and she goes, know, missionaries are agents of...
uh
Colonialism.
(25:50):
Yeah.
like uh agents of colonialism.
I, in my next book where I'm talking about this, I call it, We the Baddies, that chapter.
So it's just like, I remember in that moment being like infuriated, but also knowing itwas true.
Like it was kind of one of those crack in the brainwashing moments for me.
And I remember walking away and going like, so even in our lie, we weren't the good guys.
(26:17):
Even in our.
lie about being missionaries when we kind of knew we weren't.
Like this whole broader concept that she opened up for me, I think was that like, just ingeneral, we weren't the good guys, the white missionaries around the world.
(26:37):
And like that concept just changed my life forever, I think.
it really plays into all this.
right?
Think about the arrogance and the neurosis of that as far as in Christianity, especiallyin its white uh expressions that, you know, somehow we, because of the lack of melanin in
(27:02):
our skin, are uniquely qualified to go out to all of these other countries, to all ofthese other groups, and to share with
them not a truth, but the truth.
I saw a meme uh earlier today where, you know, this uh white Christian missionary islanding in an African country like Ethiopia and saying, I'm here to tell you about Jesus.
(27:29):
And, you know, the Ethiopians respond, well, we know much more than you do about that,right?
So there's this assumption throughout history because of white supremacy.
um that hijacked uh Christianity and other religions um that got this idea that somehow uhwe are more qualified.
(27:53):
And the way that that manifested itself growing up in a small, rural Pentecostal churchfor me in Northeast Arkansas, in a predominantly African-American community, was we did
things like bus ministry, right?
Where we felt like
we knew better than the black communities in our town as to oh how they should raise theirchildren, how they should conduct their lives, and certainly how they should live a
(28:23):
Christian life.
So it ended up, right, in this uh Messiah complex, this paternalism, where we would go outto black communities and we would solicit
uh children from those communities to come to our predominantly white church.
And in retrospect, you know, what we saw as doing our Christian duty was nothing butblatant racism on display.
(28:51):
Absolutely, and I think that's why if you look at uh the way this is evolved, this idea ofthis white supremacist idea of the missionary, of saviorism, if you look at the way it has
evolved, what it really is, is closing, or trying to preventatively close the cracks.
And that's why, uh you know, that's why even in feudal Europe, education is closed off tothe rich, to the, you know, the ruling class.
(29:19):
Because we don't need anyone who's had a different experience to get into a space where weteach them to think critically about experiences.
Because if they do, then they're not going to connect the same dots as a person who growsup in the nobility.
And so again, in the 15th and 16th, 1700s, uh colonial education, education is still onlyfor the ruling class.
(29:47):
because their experiences, again, we don't need them learning how to think critically ordisseminate information or public speaking or writing.
We don't need them to learn any of that because the material they're going to put out intothe world, the way they're going to catalog their experiences are going to expose that
this idea that we are beholden to is in fact a lie.
(30:08):
And then the 2010s and 2020s, you have to ban books in America and you can't teachcritical race theory and you...
can't teach black history or women's history or AP anything uh that goes against the whitesupremacist, Christo, fascist uh idea of Americanism.
You can't teach anything different because then there are gonna be cracks and then thereare gonna be places where people can go.
(30:35):
that's why at the same time that billionaires continue to send their children to thefinest institutions, they're also themselves.
and using their money and influence to put out, though colleges are a hoax and a scam andeducation is horrible and books are bad and that's why they want to read to your children
(30:56):
so they can, you know, so they won't know the truth and so they will be distracted fromthe way things are supposed to be.
Again, it's the same idea from feudal schools in Europe all the way to the Moms forLiberty banning books in Florida because education is a tool that could be used.
to get people out of the cult.
(31:16):
if, know...
you made me realize something about my military experience because I was an officer and Ireally didn't belong as an officer because I didn't come, I don't know, like come in
through the elite of America, right?
And they have this kind of lie that we want you questioning, right?
(31:39):
Like we want you here questioning things and testing the process.
But then there was always this like surprise, like,
why don't you think the way we tell you?
And what you said there, just like, and now I think back and I'm like, yep, and it was allthe officers that came from different backgrounds than what they're used to having in that
(31:59):
pipeline that were the ones that were constantly kind of getting in trouble for asking thequestions.
like, it's that different experience coming in in a system where you're not, like it's notintended for you to have that.
And yeah, yeah, and again, that's why, you know, and that's why these these other systemsbecome tools of our religion becomes a tool to, know, because again, the faith you have,
(32:25):
you can't believe that a homeless brown Palestinian Jew was executed by a capitalistempire for rabble rousing, because love your neighbor, you know, love your neighbor isn't
what got Jesus killed.
It's my kingdom is not of this world.
This is what got Jesus killed because now you're telling people, wait, we can experience asociety and reality based on your teachings that's different than this and better for us.
(32:56):
Like heaven's not some closed off thing that we have to go through the rich, taken,powerful to get.
It's, you you don't have to.
And this is something I point out often in African-American circles, black religiouscircles as well is any religion that's telling you
that you have to die to have a better quality of life is trying to keep you from realizingsomething true about your life on this side.
(33:21):
And so again, when this homeless brown socialist Palestinian Jew against the backdrop ofthe Roman Empire is like, y'all know y'all don't have to live like that.
We can just, we can just all share because that's what, that's what dad, you know, thedear old dad said, you know, we can just all chill out.
(33:42):
and just share and be kind to each other.
And the fact that he proposed a different social reality to people, too big a crack, toobig a crack in Rome's capitalism and the colony of Judea.
And so that's what gets him killed.
And over and over, see anyone who exposes or, hey, this whole idea is not true.
(34:06):
One typically is from outside of the experience and that doesn't necessarily mean eitheron the positive end, like you benefited from white supremacy or patriarchy, colonialism.
But if you had the experience that, for example, oh myself as a black person who grew upin poor in the inner city in Baton Rouge, I had the experience that capitalism wants me to
(34:31):
have.
And that's not even as bad as it's supposed to be because I'm still supposed to be a slavein this country, you know, and be property to extract value from.
But that's what racialized capitalism, like that's the experience I'm supposed to have.
And so when you don't have that experience, you know, when I'm able to, you know, go toschool, go to college, you know, uh, you know, pursue graduate education.
(34:53):
When I get outside of what I'm supposed to do in the confines of the system and say, okay.
Now I can see that this is the matrix, you know, it's the person it's like the differencebetween you know Homo sapiens a who knows and then homo sapiens a man who knows that he
knows And so once you have that systemic level of awareness, you're a problem for thesystem Because you're gonna start pointing out inconsistencies and you're gonna start
(35:20):
Leading people into different ways and different frameworks that don't match the one thatthe people with power like and that's why Martin and Malcolm and
Metger and and you know and the list goes on and on and on you know so that yeah
I mean, not as big of a deal as those people, but this also was like, in my experience inthe military, it's like, this is why they don't want women in these high ranking positions
(35:46):
and these special operations.
And kind of what's happening now is women went and had that experience and played thatgame and got those badges.
And now we're talking about it from a different perspective and they don't like that atall, right?
Like it's very upsetting.
to people that women who got the badges and did the stuff are now getting out and they'relike, yeah, but we wanna talk about the sexism and we wanna talk about the whole game, the
(36:18):
whole matrix of it that you have set up here.
it's like, but that's not, people used to ask me, are you a proud veteran or are you gonnacriticize?
what, what?
And I was like, I'm gonna talk about all of it, all of it.
And that was like not, that's not what you're supposed to do.
Kelvin, I want to return for just a moment to this idea of uh capitalism and currency,because in much the same way that religion was hijacked and used as a tool of oppression,
(36:50):
we see the same thing in the history of this nation with the exploitation of free laborfrom black slave people uh to the idea for white poor people.
that somehow that if they play by the rules, that if they work hard enough, that they canachieve, right, the quote unquote American dream.
(37:16):
And that's the lie that was sold to my generation.
That's the lie that keeps getting repeated.
And we hear a lot of that today, right?
And that's why you have people uh voting against their own interest because they buy intothis lie.
I mean, if you go back to the Civil War,
It wasn't plantation owners that were out there fighting and bleeding and dying for thecause of slavery, for the cause of the Confederacy.
(37:44):
uh It was by and large poor uh white young men who were convinced that the keeping slaveryand the expansion of slavery was their ticket to wealth uh and to prosperity.
um And so, you know, this leveraging of capitalism today, uh convincing people that ifthey vote for a particular uh political party or if uh they buy into a particular tax
(38:19):
structure, um that, you know, all of this is going to benefit them.
I often use the example of my father, my dad, he worked at the same factory.
He was a member of the United Auto Workers.
And for 37 years, he worked at a factory making chrome parts for an automobile.
(38:40):
also, we had a small portion of land where he would plant crops and we would eatvegetables and food.
Hardest working man I've ever known.
uh But we barely made it, right?
We barely got by, but he kept contributing to this system.
(39:01):
because he was convinced like everyone else that that work was an end in and of itself.
And it was serving a larger system that he never saw the benefit of.
And I think there's a lot of white poor folks that continue to buy into this lie ofcapitalism that if you work hard, play by the rules.
(39:24):
And if we look at increasing support of uh African-Americans of Donald Trump,
I think that there are uh a segment of African Americans that are buying into that lie aswell.
Your thoughts?
Yeah, well one, uh yeah, the other half of that big lie is like, know, because you'rewhite, if you work hard, you can climb up the social ladder.
(39:52):
And I think that's exactly what we're seeing though, is that, you know, again, uh thiscurrent regime is trying to reintroduce that rigidity into society.
And so that's why we can't have a Department of Education whose primary purpose it is toenforce civil rights and ensure that
you know, services get where they need to and funding gets where it's supposed to in theamounts.
You know, that's why we can't have, you know, you know, an immigration system that allowspeople to seek asylum and come and start, you know, start over, you know, have a better
(40:21):
life because there's this rigid way it's supposed to be.
And we need to get everyone back into where they're supposed to be.
ah And the issue is that, you know, for the
60 years that America's been an actual democracy since the Civil and Voting Rights Actwere passed, you know People have been moving in between and we've lost a lot of that
(40:42):
social rigidity And so now trying to reintroduce that is what's causing a lot of frictionand cognitive dissonance especially for those poor white people who are now seems like
well No, they cut my Medicaid.
They weren't supposed to do that.
It was like well, no, they just needed you
The cult just needed you, even if you were not in the cult, they needed you to be cultadjacent and exhibit a certain behavior, i.e.
(41:05):
voting, i.e.
fear-mongering online about, they're eating the cats and dogs in Springfield, Illinois,or, oh those people are moving into these neighborhoods.
Hey, if you see something, say something.
Report suspicious activity.
Here's a reward, a bounty if you report.
brown Spanish-speaking people in your area, in your city, et cetera, et cetera.
(41:29):
All of these are tools to get people who may not be bought into the cult to exhibitbehaviors that the cult needs from them in order to reestablish its power.
And that's exactly it.
In the case of poor white people, the poor whites who hadn't fought for the Confederacywere bought into, and I wouldn't go so far as to argue that they were in the cult and
(41:49):
didn't know it.
Because they had they did what they were supposed they bought into the idea of well, no,this is my obligation to to defend the institution of slavery because slavery is how you
know, the economy works here and if I can work hard enough and I can get my foot into thatdoor the door of some of that wealth driven by this institution So I'm gonna go defend my
(42:14):
state's right to you know own people to codify slavery into its constitution
And same thing we see now, you know, with anybody who's actively signing up andvolunteering to go work for ICE.
Or, you know, the people who are like, well, you know, the people who are in the streets,you know, in their nice little uniforms and masks, and they're like, yeah, we're sending
(42:38):
the message.
And, know, it's deportation now.
Because they've now taken their place in the cult.
They've, again, they keep...
believing the big lie, is, you know, again, one of racialized capitalism is hate.
We know we have all the money and resources and all the healthcare.
We know we have it all, but you could get some because you and I are both white.
(43:02):
But that black person or brown person or whoever else is different is the reason why youdon't have it.
Not because I'm hoarding it, not because I'm concentrating it for myself and thegenerations of my family, but because there are other people you're competing against.
And it's to get us to believe that they have the control.
Right?
(43:23):
And I feel like I have spent a lot of my time since the election just explaining to peoplethat 360 million people can't be controlled by force, right?
Like if we get together, you know, even a fraction of us, right?
Like we can tell our leaders what to do, but they, in the cult, they don't want you torealize that.
(43:46):
And this is why, at some point I feel like teenagers will understand like, you can't makeme do this anymore.
Like you and what army?
And that's when the cult loses power and they don't want us to realize that, right?
Because they want us to keep feeding this labor machine.
(44:07):
My question is, do you think we're waking up from it right now?
Do you think this is a shift or do you think we're kind of like,
waking up from the cult of capitalism.
I fundamentally believe that white supremacy and capitalism and therefore like the whitesupremacist capitalist idea that is currently America is in its death throes actively.
(44:30):
uh because, well uh here's the thing, you have to look at these desperate graphs.
Well, one, the first part of it is math.
In the next 25 years, America's gonna be majority minority.
And so, you know, and
terrified.
for, let's say for a certain group of people, that's horrible news because they have theseimplicit and explicit assumptions about who minorities are and how they are treated in a
(45:01):
society and how they are supposed to be treated in a society.
And so we can't become a minority because then we're gonna get treated like we treatedthese people because they bought into this idea of supremacy.
And that's why we see
You know, and I've told people, know, yeah, we're definitely at the end of it.
(45:22):
And that's why you see so much such a grasp.
That's why all these these traditionally these groups that are traditionally at odds,these all these groups that have white supremacy in their core are working together now
because they see it's falling apart.
And capitalism is inherently unsustainable because you can't have infinite growth in afinite system.
(45:45):
No, you know that that's literally what cancer is and it kills things so Capitalism isgoing to burn it.
It always does.
Yeah.
Yeah
people that look like me are seeing in this nation, And all of this fear mongering that'sgoing on is exactly what you pointed out.
(46:05):
They uh fear losing status and privilege and power because that's how they interpretequality, right?
They interpret equality as punishment.
And so, you know, most middle-aged white guys that are full on board the Trump train, whatthey see in Donald Trump is a champion, right?
(46:35):
They see uh all of the things that probably aren't true about the man, but what heprojects they aspire to be.
Here is a white successful businessman, got plenty of money.
He's surrounded by beautiful women.
He has the power and the status.
And even though they aren't that, they aspire to be that and they see in him a champion.
(47:04):
And that's why I believe that you have this cult of personality because it's a seamlesstransition between what white men have always desired
and what they see Donald Trump saying and doing and championing because they see theirstatus and power and privilege slipping away by the day.
(47:31):
Yeah.
Absolutely, and I was gonna say even the well the heritage the the people who intended forDonald Trump to be their puppet You know what they're looking at though is you know the
political systems that For now work for them and sustain their power are going to be verydifferent if they continue to operate in free and open elections Because every generation
(47:51):
is more progressive or further left to use the left-right spectrum There are more blackand brown people there are going to continue to be more black and brown
More of those Black and Brown people are becoming educated.
More of them are entering the workforce.
More of them are entering the uh you know, what they consider skilled professions or, youknow, they law and social sciences and medicine.
(48:13):
And they are going to start dismantling these institutions that we've built to serve us.
And so they saw this in the 60s and 70s.
And so that's when they start putting their dominoes in place.
Southern Baptist Convention was pro-life.
until they needed another issue to mobilize people and scare their base with and get themout.
(48:34):
And so now abortion is horrible.
It's the worst thing ever.
And these people are trying to replace us, know, replacement theory.
uh
Kelvin, think you're right, but I want to ask you this question, and I alluded to it uh amoment ago.
um If the statistics are correct, uh by and large, African-American populations stillsupport Democratic causes and candidates.
(49:02):
uh But we have seen an increase, especially among Black young men, in support
of the GOP in support of the Republican Party in support of Donald Trump.
Should we be concerned about that?
um And why do you think that is happening?
Yeah, well, the reason that's happening um is, well, one, because immediately afterAmerica is racist, it is patriarchal.
(49:30):
ah And so, again, ah this access to power, ah what the white patriarchal ruling classwants to happen is for black men to say, well, I'm a man, though.
And so the patriarchy serves me.
And so I should then...
perpetuate even if I hate everything Donald Trump says about you know black people orbrown people or the racism he espouses uh because uh of this this you know, I'd redefine
(50:03):
the idea of Masculinity and what it is to be a man.
Well, Donald Trump is going to support and this you know, he espouses the same beliefs andhe's going to support institutions and laws that Reinforce with real masculinity is
And now to speak though to the question, to second part of that question, I don't think weshould be concerned because one that like the increase in support for Donald Trump in this
(50:33):
past election that we saw, it's still what, 87 % of black men voted democratically orwhat, 92, 93 % of white women.
That's still 91, 92 % on average, about 90 % on average.
of black people.
And again, some of that was driven by and some of that increase was driven by also ah thefact that African-American men still tend to be largely Christian ah and the
(51:05):
bastardization of messaging around Christianity as relates to abortion or this idea thatsomehow as America being a Christian nation, you're beholden to Americans first before
these other people like
And so some of that increases due to that, but I don't think we should be concerned longterm just because again, looking at uh trends projecting, especially leading up to
(51:27):
midterms, but looking at trends projecting this next group of people who are going toturn, the next couple of groups of people who are going to turn 18 in uh time to vote in
midterm elections.
Again, they're even further left on the left, right spectrum than
this last group of young people who voted.
And the group that's going to turn 18, or the couple of groups who are going to turn 18between 2026 and 2028, are still even further left in those two groups.
(51:55):
uh And it's uh not like a gradually getting more progressive.
These people are a lot more progressive than the people before them, because they've hadthese different experiences that don't line up with the messaging of the cult masters.
uh
Yeah.
yeah, I don't think we should be concerned.
(52:16):
I don't think we should be concerned about that long term, about that trend long term.
And I also think that part of the reason why...
oh
Go ahead, sorry.
I was gonna say, and I also think that part of the reason why that messaging was pushed somuch was so that the black community would think that we're experiencing some sort of
(52:38):
dissension internally and throw ourselves into this frantic chaos emergency like, oh no,everything's on fire.
We gotta figure out why all these black men are voting for Trump and where are they?
And while we're scrambling and doing that, we're not focusing on building internal systemsof power.
and resources to replace the ones we're about to lose and are actively losing ororganizing ourselves or for the people who need to rest and feel that rest is their
(53:05):
calling, doing that.
But I think part of the reason that messaging was put out and proliferated in such a wayabout this concerning increase was to generate that sort of chaos and confusion internally
um within the African-American community.
So I don't think we should be worried.
uh But yeah.
One of the things I've been saying as an intelligence officer is nobody is this scaredwhen they're winning, which is one of the ways I know that they're losing.
(53:35):
And then from the cult perspective, when you can't keep the young people, it doesn'tmatter.
doesn't matter how much power you have or how much money you have.
Ultimately, if you can't keep the young people, your cult is gonna fall apart.
So that is where my hope is, Kelvin.
I love the way you explain things.
Like, I wish I could be a student in your class every day.
(53:58):
ah I'm just so appreciative that you came on here and had this conversation with us today.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Kelvin.
thanks for the invitation.
Yeah.
Happy to come back.
back at some point in the future.
Thank you so much, Kelvin.
We appreciate it.
And if folks want to get in touch with you, uh make sure you pass along that informationto Haley, our wonderful producer, and we'll get all of that included in the show notes.
(54:27):
Thanks again for being here.
Delightful uh and uh inspiring conversation.
So thank you so much.
Of course, yeah, thanks for having me.
Looking forward to it.
sure.
I ask you, Calvin, as just as a lifelong community organizer, do you have like, is there asingle piece of advice you give people for like how to get involved or is that too broad
(54:51):
of a question?
No, think.
Yeah, the single piece of advice I'd give people is find something you care about and showup where it's happening.
ah There's, you know, people who people who I've been in coalition with folks in theenergy justice world, for example.
Some people are concerned about, you know, grid resilience, and that's why they want toimprove, you know, electric.
(55:13):
Some people are concerned about energy burden and, you know, disproportionate economiceffect in that impact.
And some people are concerned about
environmental justice and how the energy is being generated and where the facilities areand how that's impacting those communities.
And three different groups of people, three different groups of areas of concern, threevery different demographics because some of those people are scientists, some of those
(55:36):
people are engineers, and some of those people are your grandma.
But find something you care about and show up because chances are there's other people whocare about it too.
Amazing.
Thank you so much, Calvin, for your time and words today.
And thank all of you for tuning in to this edition of Cults and the Culting of Americapodcast.
Until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Mesteneck Young, Knitting Cult Lady.
(56:01):
We'll see you on the next episode.
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