November 13, 2024 • 59 mins
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Well, the results are in: Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Again. This election came with a ton of emotions on either side of the political divide. In a world where differing political views often lead to divisive conflicts, how can we bridge the gap and maintain our relationships? In this episode, we take a deep dive into the complex dynamics surrounding support for controversial figures, with a focus on Trump. We tackle the normalization of toxic masculinity and the cognitive dissonance present among his supporters, while also confronting uncomfortable truths about voting patterns among women. Through our discussion, we aim to unravel how cultural and social tensions shape political affiliations. Ultimately, we argue for using our perspective taking and compassion skills to arrive at mutual understanding between parties.
To get support in loving someone with mental illness (like voting for the opposite party as you, haha), join us at KulaMind.
Resources:
- If you have a loved one with mental or emotional problems, join KulaMind, our community and support platform. In KulaMind, work one on one with Dr. Kibby on learning how to set healthy boundaries, advocate for yourself, and support your loved one. *We only have a few spots left, so apply here if you're interested.
- Follow @kulamind on Instagram for science-backed insights on staying sane while loving someone emotionally explosive.
- For more info about this podcast, check out: www.alittlehelpforourfriends.com
- Follow us on Instagram: @ALittleHelpForOurFriends
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jacqueline (00:15):
Hello Little Helpers .
Today's episode is going to beprocessing our feelings about
the election.
It's kind of an obvious thingto talk about after what
happened.
I mean, I've talked to a lot ofpeople online, a lot of my own
friends.
I've been processing my ownfeelings and you know we often
talk about helping our friendson this show and I think that's
(00:40):
totally relevant to this episode.
But it's also how can we notfall into the trap of just
creating enemies, I guess?
Like how do we not just get ridof all of our friends when they
didn't vote the same way we didin what feels like, for both
sides, a very high stakeelection?
(01:02):
Kip, I'll turn it over to youfor now to talk a little bit
about how Kula Mind could help.
Kibby (01:09):
Yeah, we've been teasing this and we've gotten a lot of
people reaching out and askingfor more support around loving
someone with mental illness.
It's something that we're hugeabout and we really want to come
together and provide that kindof support in all different ways
.
So with Kula Mind, we arebuilding both a community and a
platform for getting individualsupport.
(01:30):
That's coming out really soon,but if you want to get on the
list, go to K-U-L-A-M-I-N-DcomKulaMindcom.
You see buttons that says likeget started.
Just click on that and you signup with me as a consultation
call just to understand what youneed and what can be helpful
and we'll figure it out fromthere.
Jacqueline (01:51):
Amazing, I mean.
I know that I felt reallynumbed out after the election.
I had this like lodged anger,slash, disgust and sadness and
finally got it out.
The other night I got I drankenough to get it out.
I wound up like sobbing for anhour about trump being a rapist
(02:14):
and um, it was actually kind offunny because jason and I were
having like a good night withour friend marvin and jason was
like we got in an uber and I wasjust sobbing the entire time
and it was like a 45 minute Uberride and the guy didn't even
put music on, it was just atotally silent Uber ride.
And then we like got home and Iwas like apparently, you know,
(02:38):
I was like getting changed.
I'm talking all about howTrump's a rapist, et cetera, et
cetera.
And I see Jason like look at myboobs and I'm like you can't
even talk to me without lookingat my tits, that's not funny
that.
I passed out and I was fine thenext day.
Cool, great.
Kibby (02:57):
So I finally, as a Democrat, but I also do want to
use this opportunity to do whatyou and I have always talked
about, which is let's notdemonize any particular side.
(03:20):
Like we're really big intotrying to take the perspective
of someone else and try tounderstand the compassion for
the other side that we're not,whether it's someone that we
love, mental illness, someonewith a personality disorder
traits or different sides ofthis political atmosphere,
because I think the, for me, my,my view is view is what scares
(03:45):
me is the polarization, right.
It scares me that we all hateeach other and refuse to see
each other's side.
Instead, I'm like, okay, fine,let me learn about the other
side.
So I mean even us doing thisright now.
This is like our platform, ourpodcast, and yet I'm afraid of
(04:05):
saying the wrong thing, whetherit's like in support of Trump
supporters or in support ofdemocratic ideals, right, like
I'm like I'm nervous and I thinkthat's the enemy.
I don't think that.
I think being learning how tobe open and tolerating different
perspectives is what we need.
So I think, like I'm trying totake a like a balanced
(04:26):
perspective and see how much wecan learn from both sides.
Jacqueline (04:29):
I agree, I mean, I'm on board with that, but at the
same time, I think that, like,if any Trump supporters are
listening, they have tounderstand that people who are
against him it's not justbecause of different policy
opinions, it's not, you know,just because, like Trump has
said a few clumsy things, it'sbecause there's actually real
fear and betrayal in having himas the president.
And I think you know, I'vespent the last week talking to a
(04:54):
lot of Trump supporters onInstagram, because first I
pissed them off, tried toexplain my perspective and and
also try to understand theirperspective and just talk about
like look, if you know, if wewant unity, then you have to
just not like write off theliberal response as whiny or
(05:16):
entitled, but to actuallyunderstand that there is that
there's a lot of fear and likehurt, like betrayal and hurt
from this election.
And you know and I, and so Italked to a lot of Trump
supporters and I think I can atleast try to steel man what they
(05:37):
told me as the argument.
Kibby (05:39):
And actually, before we jump into that conversation,
which I'm fascinated to hearabout, I actually, when you,
when you just said that you wereyou, I didn't realize like how,
um, emotionally this hit you inthat way, like the crying in
the cab, um, because for youactually, like you have a
(06:01):
history of being really like um,able to, um, dispassionately
and objectively, like see theother side and even when, even
when we come to like powerdynamics or narcissists or like
you, you tend to be like, okay,well, I see this side and you
know, like it, like your, youremotional response to this kind
(06:26):
of reminds me of some of what wetalked about in other podcast
episodes of like you realizinghow people have taken advantage
of you, or you know, like, yeah,there's, there's some, there's
some emotion revolution I'veseen in you and I wanted to ask
you about that, if this ishitting on something different.
Like this is just a differentresponse from you that I've
heard before, so it wasdifferent response that I've
(06:47):
than I've had before.
Jacqueline (06:48):
I didn't cry after the 2016 election.
I do think that I have had alowered patience for certain
things, a lower tolerance forcertain things, namely
entitlement, entitlement abuse,narcissism.
You know, I used to be sofascinated by NPD that I wanted
to treat it.
(07:08):
I really don't anymore.
Um, I think that I've had aseries of realizations that I've
allowed people to use me alittle bit too much and that's
come from a partially good placeof like.
I often don't feel helpful orcompetent and so, in ways that I
(07:29):
can be, then I like to givethat to people.
But I think I've also realizedwith some people in my life that
that's not really returned orappreciated, and it doesn't
always have to be, but I thinkat a fundamental level, I still
want to be seen as like a personwith feelings and to just be,
(07:49):
to be asked for things withappreciation instead of just
anyways.
I think a lot of this had to dowith my last relationship and
realizing that if I wanted tosave myself from future
relationships of that ilk, thatI might have to change a few
things, and I also think it hasto do with my current
relationship of being in areally great relationship where
(08:10):
Jason has turned on its head alot of the beliefs I had, or
maybe the expectations I've hadfor men, and now I have much
higher expectations for menbecause I've seen that they can
be met.
And so I think with Trump andalso in my last relationship I
would say, I experienced somelevel of like sexual abuse um at
(08:35):
the very least, just likeextreme sexual entitlement.
Yeah and um, I think for a verylong time in my life I was just
like you know what, if I can getover something, I'm going to
get over it, because what's thealternative?
Um, and I don't know, I wonderif a little bit of that has
gotten lodged in me.
(08:56):
Um, I think with Trump I wasactually able to accept that a
large number of people wouldvote for him, even given the
sexual assault allegations.
But it was the fact that he wonthe popular vote that actually
a majority of the country, or atleast of the voting population,
(09:17):
was willing to elect a rapistto the White House.
And I'll, I'll, I'll talk aboutthat from a trump supporter
perspective in a minute becauseI don't think that's how they
would put it right.
So I don't want to.
I don't want to just likecreate these accusations, but
from my from my perspectivesitting here, it's like 27 women
(09:41):
came out.
No, that was not 27 rapes.
Some of it was just assault,but there were multiple rapes
that were reported.
One was from a child, someonewho was 12 or 14.
And one that was substantiated,you know, and he, he lost a
(10:01):
civil suit, you know, and helost a civil suit.
And so for me, especially as atherapist, I can't just be like
27 different women relying,especially one that won a civil
suit against him.
Mm-hmm, and also I've.
I spent my 20s with a lot ofmen like him, including my
(10:25):
brother-in-law, my formerbrother-in-law, who's a trump
supporter.
You know, like I, my sistermarried that man when I was 16,
but they've been together when Iwas 13 and I really grew up
with this form of masculinitythat I admired and thought funny
of, like, very callous, crass,disrespectful.
Um, powerful, powerful, funny,wealthy.
(10:49):
I mean eric was.
There are so many erics in mypast life so you guys are
getting massively confused, butthis is yet another one.
That eric was larger than life,very, very funny.
Um, he paid attention to me inways that I think now I don't
think he had any kind of likesexual or romantic interest in
(11:11):
me, but it, but we're justdisrespectful to my sister, like
we would stay up until 3 amchatting and drinking when I was
like umand I, I liked that for me, that
kind of like barstool you know,that's actually a party named
like a barstool republican thatkind of barstool humor and um,
(11:35):
and I think I just accepted somepoor treatment from men because
I was like, oh yeah, like thisis what masculinity is.
And when I look at trump, I seesomebody who embodies all of
that, but so much worse.
And when, when people don'tbelieve that he assaulted those
women, I'm kind of like, okay,but but look at him at least
(12:00):
seem like someone who would dothat and also have all of the
power.
Uh, you know, that would sortof suggest that he would be able
to do that easily, even even ifthere wasn't like a pretty
believable testimony from EugeneCarroll.
Um, haven't we seen him use hismouth to say disrespectful and
(12:25):
dehumanizing things against manydifferent people?
What like, why do we acceptthis?
And for a long time again in my20s I just accepted shitty male
behavior, like I acceptedsomebody going on a date with me
, coming back and like basically, basically, like forcibly
(12:46):
hooking up with me, when I waslike fighting them off, yeah,
and then I asked him for asecond date because I was like
it's just boys being boys, justmen, you know, yeah.
And so, yeah, I think I'm overthat now.
I'm just like I'm.
Some anger is coming out aboutthat now.
Coming out about that now.
(13:08):
And it's fucking sad thatpeople, a lot of people, look at
him and are just like, yeah,you know he's joking.
Yeah, they're like they'relying, they're being dramatic.
You know like, let's elect thisguy anyway.
Kibby (13:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's the interesting
question, I mean, like eversince 2016,.
When he said you just got tograb him by the pussy, right
Like, just as soon as he saidthat, I was like, oh, he's not
going to win, right Like, wow,this is evidence that he, you
know, has a character, and wereally cared about character in
our, in a specific type ofcharacter in our president and
(13:43):
our leaders.
Right like, we railed againstbill clinton for you know other
you know that kind of behaviortoo.
So it's just like, ah, okay,america's american want like a
good christian, like family man,who doesn't do that.
So he's gone.
But then then we get more andmore and more and more and more.
And there's this reallyinteresting study that will link
(14:07):
to the site, but it's calledResponses to Belief-Conflicting
Information Justification ofSupport for Donald Trump.
And these researchers did aseries of studies where they ask
like, how can you support himgiven the allegations?
And blah, blah, blah, and itwas over three different studies
at different time periods, andit's interesting that there's
(14:29):
all different ways that peoplekind of justify it.
People justify it like, oh, Idon't actually believe he did
that, or other politicians dothe similar things, or or they
don't even care that he doesright there.
So there's a variety of likedevaluing the importance of or
the impact of, you know, theallegations.
(14:51):
But it's interesting over thecourse of the three studies,
like over time, people are areless likely to say to use the
excuse or the reasons um, otherpeople do the thing and also
over the course of the threestudies, they are more likely to
not believe in the allegations.
(15:13):
So as time went on, as moreresults of the court case and
stuff like that, they're morelikely to dig into the belief
that these aren't real.
Jacqueline (15:23):
And it's I found talking to people yeah it's
interesting.
Kibby (15:25):
It's like this dis you know we call it's based on this
theory of cognitive dissonance,where it's.
It's kind of like, if youreally believe in something, you
will start to um, you know,devalue um evidence against it.
You start to get moreentrenched in your beliefs,
right, and so, for example, ifthey believe, if they're a
(15:50):
believer in Trump, and the moreand more evidence comes out,
they're more likely to notbelieve and not believe it.
So they're, they get polarizedmore into their beliefs than
they were probably in them evenin the beginning, which is like
counterintuitive.
But it's just, that's justfascinating to me.
It's just, it's what have youheard in terms of like not
(16:11):
believing the allegations?
Jacqueline (16:14):
I'm going to try to steal the argument for Trump
because I think it's gotmultiple pieces that come
together.
So I basically put what I justsaid in this podcast on my
(16:34):
Instagram.
The other day.
You know about sexual assaultand you know so a follower of
mine had said, like you know, hewon the popular vote power over
half the country who are women.
You know they wouldn't want todo that, we wouldn't want to
subjugate women that way, andthat's not true.
That's what I figured out.
It's like that's the reality isjust not true.
So that's the Republicans thattalked to me then would respond,
(17:04):
mostly with I don't believe hedid it, however.
So the reasoning I think thisseems to all go back to some
really deep distrust towardswhat seems the establishment and
, for whatever reason, democratsalone seem to be responsible
for the quote unquoteestablishment.
Kibby (17:26):
Right right.
Jacqueline (17:29):
And a lot of this, I believe, is due to two factors
One is that Trump sowed distrustin the media, and the other is
that the media sowed distrust inthe media, distrust in the
media through like worsening andworsening bias that trump was
(17:50):
able to pick on and blame on thedemocratic-led media, which is
interesting because fox news, Ibelieve, is what the majority of
americans watch.
It's republican hell and thebias in fox news is just
astounding you know.
So I I don't entirely know howthis has become an only Democrat
problem, but whatever, maybethey wouldn't even say that.
Maybe they would say all bigmedia is biased, it's a problem
(18:12):
and you can't believe it.
Trump won is that he actuallydidn't use the establishment
media.
You know he wasn't big intodebates, which you know
(18:32):
Democrats have an explanation of, republicans have a different
explanation of.
He instead went on Joe Rogan.
He went on like multiple hugeYouTube podcasts where there is
a very large audience of men andwhere they are a long form.
Obviously we're a fan of thepodcast medium and you are able
(18:56):
to get to know them in a waythat is unscripted.
So basically, the idea is likethe establishment media is
inherently untrustworthy.
And then also there weredifferent kind of conspiracies
that people were able to pointto, like Hunter Biden's laptop,
(19:18):
or there were, like manyDemocratic officials joined
together to lie about this.
So why is it out of the realmof possibility that these 27
women would be hired bydemocratic establishment to lie
about Trump?
Now I will say one of theseaccusations came out before he
ever ran for president.
Okay, so I'm not sure how thatfits, but regardless, the point
(19:44):
is they see from what they'vetold me, they see all of these
accusations against Trump as theDemocrats being scared and
using corrupt means to get himout of power and to put him in
prison, and so every newallegation that comes up gets
put through that same machine of.
(20:04):
I inherently can't trust this,and all the Democrats are doing
is making me further distrustthem and any allegations they
make.
Yeah, yeah, so.
So that's, that's one piece wecan talk about, and then there's
other stuff I can try to yeah,no.
Kibby (20:23):
I, I think that what you're like, we know Trump in
the public's mind, but I, like Ialready have my view of him,
but this really made me turn toreally try to understand the
(20:45):
Trump support and be like, ok,I'm going to turn away from this
guy and turn to the people whoare, because there's something
about this country that is likebubbling that, that that he, he
gives a voice to, and I feellike he, he does something and
represent something for peoplethat is important, so important
that people are willing to justnot even cancel him, right,
(21:08):
because of this.
So there's something about like, what is that?
And I read this really goodarticle in Atlantic that that
was talking about what you weresaying, which is the Trump
support movement is reallyenergizing.
There's a ton of social medialike influencers now, like you
(21:31):
know, the Jordan Peterson, likethere's all these different like
grassroots, if you will like,for the people um, entertainers
and speakers, and it's just andit's like it's uniquely
activating, right, there's we'vetalked on this podcast so much
about the problem with peopleavoiding, right, Like kids don't
(21:51):
want to go to school, you know,like I bet a lot of kids didn't
vote, which is a big issue,right.
So like there's a lot about thedemocratic culture.
That's about censorship andabout being in restraint and
using ethics and curbing badbehavior.
Right, it's a lot of like eventheir platform of Kamala being
(22:12):
like can you believe this guyI'm running against?
What a jerk right.
Like there's a lot of likeelitist intellectual, like I'm
an establishment, and we arelike jerk right.
Like there's a lot of like likeelitist intellectual, like I'm
an establishment, and we arelike above right and like I'm
I'm at fault.
Like, as soon as I hearanything about Trump, my
automatic thought is they'redumb.
And then I'm like what, whereis that coming from?
(22:32):
Like that, what am I basingthat on?
You know, like that's, that's.
It's just like it's become aculture of condescension, which
is so unappealing, and so I even.
I find that off-putting right,but in the Trump's point it's
like let's change, let's dosomething Right, even if it's
(22:52):
like led by someone who's likenuts, right, like it's just like
it's more activating.
And I do hear more of the youthwho are like jazzed up to do
something, are like rightleaning.
So I think that we've kind offorgotten to.
I mean, that was something that, like Obama, did so well.
It was like Garner, likemovement and like a feeling of
(23:13):
if I elect this guy, things aregoing to change.
I don't know if I like him, Idon't know what he's like in his
personal life, but I wantsomething different and I want
to.
I'm angry.
I'm angry that, like COVID, andall this stuff happened.
Jacqueline (23:25):
You know, this is an exciting topic because I think
it, I think it connects well toother things we've talked about
on this podcast.
So I think the first thing iswhat's been going on with men
and boys, you know?
I mean we had Jared Glenn onand we talked about economic and
social and cultural shifts andI think that the Democrats have
uniquely failed in all of theseways.
(23:46):
So the first, the economicshift, is losing a ton of, you
know, manufacturing or bluecollar jobs overseas and that
vacuum basically being filledwith the opium crisis.
So in West Virginia, which is ahot seat of the opium opium
crisis and where I'm from, thecoal industry has largely
(24:08):
collapsed.
Those people don't have anyother skills.
What are they going to do?
There's nowhere to go, thereare no jobs.
Um, there's an extremely highliteracy rate in West Virginia,
extremely highiteracy rate inwest virginia, extremely high
like bad, poor, wow, extremelypoor health outcomes.
And so you have the democrats,who are uh well, a ignoring the
(24:31):
problem and then b disparagingmen at any chance they get, and
you have trump, who's an oldschool masculine figure who pays
attention and says we're goingto bring these jobs back.
So I understand why a largeswath of the population is
willing to vote just on thatalone.
I think culturally the Democratswere just straight up buckets
(24:55):
for like eight straight yearsand I hate them.
No-transcript supporter.
(25:30):
Before um, before I was aHillary Clinton supporter.
The only reason I really likedHillary Clinton was because I
hated Trump.
So I just want to say, likeit's not that I see the policies
between the two of them andthink that the Democrats are
clearly the winners, thatthey've clearly got their
(25:51):
fingers on the pulse.
Like I have a long history ofdisagreeing with Democrats.
I happen to be extremelypro-choice.
I have a long history ofdisagreeing with with Democrats.
I happen to be extremelypro-choice, and so when a social
issue like that becomesthreatened, then I'm likely to
switch over to the Democratbecause I'm used to hating both
sides basically and also alittle bit liking both sides.
So I understand from a policyperspective why somebody would
(26:14):
vote for Trump or just theRepublican party generally, like
that doesn't offend me at all.
And I also understand whypeople would vote for Trump or
just the Republican Partygenerally, like that doesn't
offend me at all.
And I also understand whypeople would deeply hate
Democrats because the becauseliberal individuals were just
dicks for so long.
I mean the condescension you'retalking about.
It was like it was viciouscondescension.
It was like I'm going to feelpowerful today by putting you
(26:38):
down.
Kibby (26:40):
I mean, you felt that strongly right, I despised them.
Jacqueline (26:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Despised them.
So like 0% of me is surprisedwhen people want to pummel them
and like beat them up Likethey're the whiny little goody
two-shoes on the schoolyard.
You know, like I totally getthat impulse because I wanted to
too.
My thing is that I don't seethe actual politicians as being
(27:05):
the arbiters of that.
I just see that as more likesocial, like buckheads on social
media being vicious, butwhatever, it's all in the same
soup.
That's the base.
Like I could understand wantingto punish the base.
I had a patient who I saw onwednesday and I was like you
know, how are you feelingpost-election, whatever, and
he's like.
He's like I feel great.
(27:26):
He's like I, you know I wasgonna feel great either way.
If trump lost, I was gonna getto see redneck tears and if
kamala lost I.
Now I get to see liberal tears.
That's great and it's like that.
You know what I kind of.
I mean I, you know I'm some ofthe liberal tears you're talking
about, but I also get itbecause they've been so annoying
and dehumanizing, particularlytowards masculinity and my costa
(27:53):
our friend showed he talked tome about I.
I think it was like KamalaHarris's campaign website and it
had a section that was like whoour campaign is for and it was
like it was like black people,asian people, lgbtq plus, women
um, every, every, everydemographic you can imagine,
except one, guess what one whitemales.
(28:16):
Not even white males, just men.
Men were not listed.
How could you leave out 50fucking percent of the entire
population when you say who yourcampaign is for?
Kibby (28:27):
Yeah, it's also like, if you picture from like the
Democrat I mean we're talkingabout actually right now
cultural, like the culturaldivide, when you imagine what a
Democrat, like the culturaldivide, when you imagine what a
Democrat, what a culture wouldsay is a man and shows
masculinity, is someone who islike like so, like so
(28:48):
self-monitoring for saying badthings, right, like someone who
is like so, almost likepre-ashamed, like
self-deprecating, careful,careful to say the right thing,
lots of trigger warnings, lotsof disclaimers, right, it's
someone who's like censoringhimself really well.
And on the other side, issomeone who's charged up and
(29:12):
ready to fight.
Right, which one's going to bemore appealing and which one you
know like-?
Jacqueline (29:17):
I think the other thing, the other misstep is you
know you can have a campaignthat disparages women because
women are used to it we haven'thad power ever but you can't
take a population that has beenin power since the beginning of
humanity and then all of asudden take it away and not
expect them to be like what.
Kibby (29:38):
Yeah, there was another interesting article that talked
about, like, what is thesentiment behind the Trump
support?
And one of them was feelingdisrespected.
Right, so it's like men, whitemen or, like you know, different
parts of the country feeldisrespected, feel like people
think that they're dumb or theyshouldn't have as much power,
(29:59):
like we should lift up theseother groups, you know, and take
away their power.
Right, and which isunderstandable.
Right, it's understandable thatyou'd want to fight against
that.
The interesting thing that thatarticle talked about was like,
if you look at it objectively,the stats, objectively, that
group like, let's say, the whitemales, young white males
(30:21):
they're not disrespected.
They still, of course, havemost money, have the most power,
have the most influence, likethey have the most mainstream
still, and yet they, yes, butthey feel more disrespected.
So it's kind of like feeding onit's feeding on the feeling that
everyone wants to be seen.
Now, right, Like, think aboutall of these different movements
(30:44):
.
Black Lives Matter Me Too.
Everyone's like look at me,look at the pain that I've been
struggling with silently.
But when you have this groupthat is still in power and
feeling that that's a recipe for, like them, fighting harder,
right, like if you have yourboss upset that he's not,
doesn't have enough power, he'sgonna get more power right, yeah
(31:06):
, yeah, well, I mean I, I thinkthere's, I mean there's many
kinds of men, but like I'm justgonna bucket them into two camps
.
Jacqueline (31:12):
One is the men who are told that they have all the
power but actually don't,because their industry has been
erased and they're fucking poorand they can't get a woman.
And, um, you know they're.
They're told over and overagain that they have got all
this privilege and actually theydon't.
So they're like how dare yousay this to me?
And then there's the men who dohave the power, but the thing
is is that they feel entitled toit because they've always been
(31:32):
entitled to it.
So suddenly you take it awayand it's like wait a minute, I'm
entitled to that versus othergroups are like yeah, I was
never entitled to that, clearlynot sure why, but I'm used to it
, I guess.
So this is no surprise.
I mean, when I was just sittingthere thinking like I guess, I
was like I can't believe howdisappointed I am in finding out
that we live in a reality wherea man can rape women and people
(31:57):
just fundamentally are like,like, yeah, that sucks, but you
know, the grocery prices arehigh.
It's like that was myquote-unquote.
I hate this fucking word, butprivileged realization.
As a white woman like you know,if you're any kind of minority,
you already know that's thecase and you've lived under that
forever yeah and so it's justyet one more piece of
confirmatory evidence.
(32:21):
But yeah, I mean, I think Ithink Donald Trump coming out
and basically being like I'm aman, I don't give a fuck what
you think about me, I'm notgoing to watch what I say, you
know, I'm going to say whateverI want.
It's going to be funny, it'sgoing to be insulting, but
whatever, like, at least I'm notcoming out and saying, want,
it's going to be funny, it'sgoing to be insulting, but
whatever, like, at least I'm notcoming out and saying like men,
(32:42):
you're toxic and you know youabuse people all the time and uh
, et cetera, et cetera, etcetera, like, like I love Dave
Chappelle.
You know, if Dave Chappellewere running for president, no,
I would not vote for him becausehe has no qualifications, but I
still enjoy that kind ofpersonality right, right, right,
the freedom of speech.
(33:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah um, yeah, soyeah, I think I think the
democratic party disowning menwas a is a huge issue.
Now I I think that liberal menwould have a different take.
Like they didn't disown men.
They had different expectationsof what men could live up to.
Kibby (33:21):
Yeah, yeah, but I think.
I think it's like theimportance of showing what that
looks like.
I think that we have so, um,the liberal movement is so much
about what you shouldn't do,right?
The?
things that the words that youshouldn't say, the ways to
conduct yourself, shouldn't?
There's?
There's very little should.
Yes, right, there's like I knowthat I should be scared of
(33:44):
saying certain words, but I andthere I mean given the better
words, but it's out of fear.
So it's like a very fear andlike avoiding shame and
rejection kind of like mode, andthat's really hard to, that's
really hard to stomach.
But something that does scareme a lot and I'll, I'll credit
my friend Anna.
(34:04):
She's a, she's a lawyer, she'sin Stockholm working at the
European banking authority.
She's she was, she's German andshe's like I'm really worried
about this.
This is like actuallyterrifying to watch what's
happening in the us, and I thinkshe didn't say this, but I'm
thinking, wow, things that I'velearned about, like dictators
rise is really paralleling this,where, after world war one,
(34:29):
germans were kind of butthurtthat they lost world war one and
they were not doing well, um,they're still like they were the
treaty of versailles also.
Jacqueline (34:38):
It, uh, it pillaged germany.
I mean, they had to pay a lot,right like they were, the
germans were really hurting um.
Kibby (34:45):
But then hitler was like hey guys, hey germans, you're
hurting, it's the jews fault andthey were like yeah, it is and
so kind of like garnering this.
I'm disrespected and I want toget my power back.
It's a really fiery and it's areally it's a big.
It's a big like seed fordictatorship, which is scary,
(35:07):
and my friend Anna was like thehope.
What we've learned in historyis like independent media and
having like open discourse andnot letting one voice dominate.
The public voice is reallyimportant.
So conversations like that, I'mlike, oh God, where are we
going?
It's so scary, and not becauseof Trump, not because of like,
(35:29):
it's just because of this, likethe hatred we have for each
other, which is scaring me, likethe hatred to the point where
we're.
So I just started watchingagain like the movie Civil War,
if you haven't seen it.
Jacqueline (35:44):
it's so good I've seen it yeah.
Kibby (35:45):
But it's dystopian world where America has broken out
into civil war, and I'm justlike this is not even looking
too much like fantasy.
This is like we're at arms witheach other, and that's the
scary part.
That's the part that's going tobe really beneficial to our
enemies globally, right, likethe fact that we're breaking
(36:07):
apart so deeply is the part thatscares me.
And that's why I wanted to likelook at the other side and like
be like, hey, let's learn fromthe Trump support Because, like,
I prefer that than like tearing, tearing us apart.
You know, I agree.
Jacqueline (36:22):
I agree.
I mean, I think look like Ithink some other just basic
reasons why people voted forTrump is that under Trump there
were no wars and apparentlythere's been a real fear that
we're going to be leading intoWorld War Three, given the war
with Ukraine, you know, betweenIsrael and Hamas, and you know
that is one example of when Ithink it's actually okay to vote
for a vile human being.
(36:43):
I think he's vile.
I know some of you don't.
You know, like, if you reallythink that we are headed into an
apocalyptic situation, then,yeah, you elect the person who's
going to keep you out.
And I don't know how much of theno wars for four years was due
to Trump.
I mean, I've I've certainly Ilistened to Jared Kushner and
Lex Friedman talk about how,basically, they like bankrupted
(37:04):
Iran and so Iran could not thenfund institutions like Hamas or
other terrorist groups.
And you know, if, if Trump didthat, then like, maybe that's on
, maybe that's a good thing, andso you know, I think that's a
valid reason to vote forsomebody.
And then the inflation was likelargely the result of the
pandemic, but also largely dueto Trump's tariffs that Biden
(37:26):
didn't take away and due to,like large transfers of money
into families' pockets who werefucked over by the pandemic.
So it's like but people don'tknow, like I don't know enough
about inflation to give a reallycogent explanation of how that
happened.
So how's anybody else supposedto?
What they experience is like Imean even jason, you know like
(37:49):
jason lost a lot of money underbiden.
That doesn't mean it wasbiden's fault, but car payments
rock like skyrocketed, housepayments skyrocketed.
Kibby (37:58):
Housing crisis now, yeah.
Jacqueline (38:00):
Yeah, yeah, all sorts of shit was bad, and
Jason's lucky enough to make ahigh enough income to where we
can keep our basic livelihoods,but if you live on the margin of
that, you can't, and so who areyou going to vote for?
So, I mean, I think there areperfectly valid reasons to vote
for Trump's policy.
What I do think Trumpsupporters need to understand
(38:20):
about liberals and this wholeHitler comparison, because to
them it's yet another like youaccuse us of, of dividing the
country, when you're going tocall our, like our candidate,
hitler.
Are you serious?
Kibby (38:32):
Right right, right right, but what?
Jacqueline (38:33):
liberals see, is something quite obvious, which
is like we are noticing similarpatterns to what happened in
post-World War I Germany.
Now, maybe these patterns havealso happened in many situations
where nothing bad happened, andwhat's really going on is that
it happened to happen inpost-World War I Germany in a
(38:54):
way that everybody learned about, and so everybody associates
with that bad outcome Germany ina way that everybody learned
about, and so everybodyassociates with that bad outcome
.
You know, like this very samecultural phenomenon could have
happened in France 50 years agoand we just don't know about it
because nobody knows anythingabout France 50 years ago,
because nothing terriblehappened in France 50 years ago.
So, but we are seeing a clearassociation.
But we're also seeing thingslike January 6th.
(39:15):
We're seeing that Trump wouldnot accept the results of
election, election that heconstantly called it into
question, that he sowed doubtand distrust in our electoral
system and the basics of ourdemocracy, that he incited a
riot on the Capitol, that hissupporters wanted to lynch the
vice president for not doingwhat Trump wanted him to do.
(39:35):
Those are all horrifying things.
Trump wanted him to do.
Those are all horrifying thingsand I don't think that we can
just laugh it off and just saythat liberals are, like, yet
again doing whatever they can toget their way, you know, and
like victimize this poor man whojust keeps being victimized
(39:55):
even though he was born into asmuch power as one could have.
Being victimized even though hewas born into as much power as
one could have, but like, no,like you know, I think it's very
important for us here tounderstand the trump supporter
side, but it's also veryimportant for the trump
supporters to understand ourside.
Like you, can't have unitywithout those two things
happening yeah and I think therehas to be some sort of an
acknowledgement of trump havingsome really fucking questionable
(40:17):
behavior yep, so what?
Kibby (40:22):
what's the solution here?
Like what on a I'm trying tothink on like a day-to-day level
, what do you think we should do?
Jacqueline (40:32):
I guess I think that we should understand A that we
are consuming different mediaand that a lot of the
divisiveness can be explained bythe fact that we are literally
consuming different information.
And if we are consumingdifferent information that's
presented as fact, then we'regoing to live in two different
realities.
And we're going to live in twodifferent realities and in order
(40:54):
to try to conjoin our realities, we have to have some basic
trust in human beings that thevast majority of us want the
same basic things and that weare inherently decent, like now
AI, or like really dedicatedaccounts or media.
Kibby (41:17):
that's just like we're going to distill the common
factor among like almost like arotten tomatoes of of media.
Just like what are we talkingabout in common, that we know
that both sides are saying, andjust like filter out all the
other bias.
Jacqueline (41:34):
I, that would be awesome yeah, I mean, I think, I
think people are going to bepopular because people want to
hear the bias.
But you know like but, I thinkpeople basically want health and
safety and respect.
Um, I think people basicallywant peace and they want to be
(41:56):
able to have the freedom to saywhat they think.
And this was another big pointagainst Kamala Harris I heard
about is that she was soestablishment, she was such a
Democrat that she never cameacross as authentic once.
And I think the reason she nevercame across as authentic once
is because everything she saidgot torn apart and she was
called dumb and stupid andunqualified all the time.
She had to be very careful, butTrump came across as
(42:17):
exceedingly authentic and he hadthree hour talks on joe rogan,
you know, yeah, yeah, so, so thename calling and the inherent
disrespect, I mean I hope it cango down, just so that people
can fucking speak again yeah Imean I.
I don't.
I don't know how you can saythat liberals are the only
(42:38):
condescending ones when you lookat a woman who is a federal
prosecutor, a US senator andvice president and say that
she's unqualified for thepresidency.
Kibby (42:48):
Yeah.
Jacqueline (42:49):
Or that she's stupid and has a low IQ.
Kibby (42:51):
Yeah.
Jacqueline (42:52):
When she she beat Trump in the debate, it was
pretty objective, um, so I meanwe got to cool it with that shit
.
Kibby (43:05):
Yeah, I would say that like finding respect for the
other side and finding respectfor just what the other side has
to say, or like sides have tosay um and stop.
Like I mean, but that's a thing, that's like that's another
part of the article like we just, we're just so angry that we're
(43:25):
latching on to angry rhetoricand I mean god, I mean talk
about how many times that we'vewatched reality tv just puts
like, just to put hate somewhere, right like my, I remember that
our at duke, our, our lovely umsupervisor, dr batson, was like
in the beginning of like Ithink it was the beginning of
(43:48):
covid, or beginning like aroundthe pandemic.
He was just like watch, there'sgoing to be a lot of um, just
like floating anxiety, likewe're we're coming into crisis
right now and there's going tobe a lot of just like floating
anxiety, like we're coming intocrisis right now and there's no
like person to blame, there's nolike clear enemy.
It's just like the world ischanging and we don't know why
(44:09):
or how or what this means andwe're scared and so, and then,
like now, we have all theseterrible wars.
It's like we want to have ahero right, and we want to also
have an enemy.
That's just human nature.
They want a God and a devil,right, and so we're finding that
(44:29):
in each other and that's justso toxic.
That part is toxic.
Instead of just being like, I'mscared because I don't know how
we can afford a rent, I don'tknow how we can build a family
in this right.
Jacqueline (44:42):
Yeah, I think I'm struggling and a lot of other
people are struggling with thisdilemma, though At some point,
everybody on earth has to draw aline with other people of what
kind of behavior and attitudethey're willing to tolerate.
And I think a lot of Democratsare in a position where they
look at a Trump supporter andthey say, okay, you must be at
(45:04):
some level.
Okay With tearing familiesapart, with making immigrants
the enemy, with dehumanizingother people, with accepting
rape, you know, with accepting,like, various forms of
dehumanization, and I am notokay with that.
And so how can you and I findcommon ground?
And what is the cost of that?
(45:25):
Right, you know, when I thinkabout, like I'm going, I would
like to watch Donald Trump onJoe Rogan.
I started it, I would like tofinish it.
A lot of Trump supporters aretelling me, like, have faith,
it's going to be okay.
And for me, the problem is Iactually feel a sense of danger
at the idea of watching Trumpand trying to trust him, because
(45:48):
for me, that is like looking atmy ex-boyfriend and saying
let's be friends again.
Kibby (45:53):
Yeah.
Jacqueline (45:54):
When I know the profile, yeah, yeah, how about
this?
Kibby (45:59):
It's kind of like how we would tell our patients when
they're like, why am I cuttingmyself?
Why am I doing drugs?
Like I can't, I keep gettingdrawn to it.
The way we think about it isokay.
We know that that thing thatyou're drawn, you're like can't
help yourself and keepdefaulting on that.
That thing that you're drawn,you're like can't help yourself
and keep defaulting on it has,like negative consequences.
(46:22):
Like there's something in yourmind, even if you're, like, in
the moment, willing to overlookthose, those bad things.
It's like these things have badconsequences, right, like drugs
are bad for you, but let's lookat why you're drawn to it.
Let's look at what it gives youand try to find healthier ways
where it doesn't involve the badstuff, right?
So, like, looking at what doesTrump give people, what does
(46:44):
that movement?
What is what is so appealingabout it that it feels like it's
filling a need?
And how can we do that withoutsomeone with all of this, like
you know, troubled past andquestionable behavior?
Like I'm not talking about justpolitics, right, I'm not
talking about just.
Like the person I'm talkingabout, like, can we get action
(47:07):
and change and activate it, finda place to channel our anger
that doesn't involve also likeabusing women?
Um yeah, I think.
Jacqueline (47:19):
I think embedded in what you're saying is it might
feel unsafe to, or against ourvalues to see the humanity and
the other side, but what are theconsequences of that?
Yeah, if the consequences ofdivision are actually that the
world gets worse, then do wemake a different choice.
(47:43):
Do we say me to Trumpsupporters hey, we fundamentally
disagree on some things, butI'm also going to choose to
believe.
Believe because I can't justbelieve that the majority of the
country are assholes, you know,just because they don't vote
(48:03):
like I do, I'm not going tochoose to see like I know.
I know that your party is madeup of decent people.
I know that your party, thatyour supporters or whatever, are
consuming different informationfrom me and that therefore, it
is completely legitimate thatyou would draw different
conclusions than me in somesimilar cultural realities as I
(48:29):
am, one of which is that we'veactually normalized and accepted
sexual assault to such a degreethat this is unsurprising and
that doesn't mean that willnever change.
And another is that you live indifferent cultural realities
(48:49):
for me, which is, while I cantake a hit on gas and food
prices, maybe you can't andmaybe I need to accept that.
You know and I can have afundamental trust in the human
race to know that certaincircumstances can push people to
(49:12):
nasty behavior.
But one of those, like allpeople are, are decent and want
nice things, like, want good,healthy, beautiful things, and
if we can come together insteadof pushing each other away, that
is more likely to come out anda trump supporter might look at
(49:32):
us and say instead of youelitist, condescending
motherfuckers who won't let ussay anything and who are
essentially hypocritical, youwere willing to elect Bill
Clinton even though he had validsexual assault accusations
against him.
(49:53):
You were allowing to elect TedKennedy, even though it was a
similar situation.
You allowed the Hunter Bidenlaptop fiasco to go down without
much of a whimper.
Maybe there's some legitimacyin what you think too.
Maybe you're scared, maybe youfeel betrayed, maybe you're hurt
, maybe you're seeing things ina different way that I'm seeing
(50:13):
things and I'm going to say thesame thing to you.
We have basic human decency.
As long as we aren't at oddswith each other, as long as we
aren't at war and thereforetrying to protect ourselves, I
guess that's the best I can do.
Yeah, yeah.
Kibby (50:29):
Yeah, I think just more like trying to understand the
other side.
I mean the thing is that wethink just more like trying to
understand the other side.
I mean the thing is that we um,having that stance is hard right
now, because right now emotionsare high, people don't have
capacity.
I mean, like taking someoneelse's perspective takes a lot
of work right and getting overthe way we feel and stuff like
(50:52):
that it's it's hard.
So I know like right now, youknow, the, the, the Trump side
is like super excited and theDemocrat side are just really
bummed.
So like right now, this is notthe moment to like all come
together, right, but I think wehave to eventually.
I think we have to just likehave a little bit more tolerance
to freedom of speech and havingdialogue, open dialogue, and
(51:14):
try to understand from differentperspectives and having more of
like a diversity of thoughtthan just like no, my side, no,
my side, no, the way I see isright.
The way I see is right, like weknow from couples, therapy
doesn't work right, like let'sfind the common vulnerable
emotion that connects us thefear, the vulnerability, the
(51:35):
fear of the future and then likework from there instead of just
trying to battle about whoseperspective is correct.
Jacqueline (51:42):
You know, it'd be awesome if, like, there was a
couples therapy, but fordifferent voters, and you could
just like, yeah, you could just,I don't.
I still don't know why we don'thave couples therapy for
friendships.
Kibby (51:53):
Hey we can yeah, we can, cool Mind can, like you, you
know promote that about liketrying to find, trying to use
like relationship skills and avariety of relationships, a
variety of like differentrelationships.
Yeah, because this is also Imean, this is very topical
because political divides aredividing families, like there's
a lot of estrangement becauseyour parents are of a different
(52:19):
political leaning than you are,and it's ripping families apart.
Jacqueline (52:22):
So I think a question to ask might be like
what do I gain by never speakingto my father again?
You know, what do I really gain?
Is it?
Is it actually more in linewith your values to to cut out a
person for believing somethingdifferent than you?
In some cases, it is.
That's why we don't befriendneo-Nazis usually you know, and
(52:46):
so I understand how that'sactually not that obvious of a
question to answer, but do wechange their minds by doing that
?
Do we help ourselves by doing,you know, if it's someone who
actually we really cared aboutand believed in for a long time?
So I don't know.
I think for those of youwanting to know just how to deal
(53:07):
with the election like, we'vegot other episodes where we talk
about self-soothing and, youknow, managing anxiety and
depression and all of that'sstill relevant, but I think
right now it's also a questionof how do we have some faith in
the future?
Kibby (53:23):
yeah I I mean, I'm just leaning more towards the, the,
the idea of self-compassion andcompassion yeah um theories,
where it's like the way tocultivate compassion is to
really focus on a commonhumanity and focus on what's
underneath, what's coming outright we're all trying to deal
with like fear and vulnerabilityin different ways, with anger,
(53:47):
with blame, with shaming right,and just like let's calm down
with that because that'salienating each other and
alienating feels good right,like separating yourself from
people you feel are dangerous.
Feels like you have, we havecontrol, but maybe sometimes
it's more the scary thing ofleaning into like we're losing
control here and scary and blameand maybe like looking down on
(54:10):
a trump supporter is not reallygoing to help this situation
yeah, what I will say to thetrump supporters that did
respond to me.
Jacqueline (54:19):
Most of them actually would end their
messages with something like hey, like thank you for thinking
deeply.
Or like, hey, you know, hope,all this aside, like hope you're
having a good weekend, orsomething.
You know, there was actually alittle bit of a turn back to it,
not, in some cases it wassurprisingly easy to just like.
I had one.
(54:39):
I had like a former friend ofmine who was saying a bunch of
shit and a lot of it was pissingme off, whatever, and then he
was like by the way, how's newyork, how's it been to be back?
and it was surprisingly easy tojust be like.
You know what new york's beenfine yes yep, yep, because
actually where I think you findthe most common humanity is by
putting politics aside and justremembering, like fundamentally
(55:00):
this this guy is curious abouthow I am yeah, yeah, I it's.
Kibby (55:06):
it's like like how I felt you and I watched the um, the
vice presidential debate, timwaltz and uh and jd vance, and
and by the end I was like, oh,this feels so good because it's
just toward the end they werecoming more and more together
and they were like I, you know,like they would go back and
forth, being like I agree withyou that we need to solve this
(55:27):
problem.
We just have different ways ofseeing the solution and I was
like, wow, that's what I want,like just, that's what we need.
It's like a coming together oflike we want to solve these
issues and respect that, to havea diversity of solutions,
because that's actually betterfor brainstorming and coming up
with good solutions.
Right, not to have like one wayof seeing how to fix things,
but like, hey, we all need to,we all want a problem solved.
(55:50):
Let's do a big think tankbrainstorming session,
respecting all these differentways of solving it and figure
out which way is best.
I'm like, oh, that's what Iwant.
So yeah, yeah.
Jacqueline (56:01):
Yeah, we'll see.
We'll see.
We're all made up of the samestuff.
Human beings are all made up ofblood and gore and bones and
shit, you know.
And like, the way that we startbeing at odds with each other
is not that some people are justborn evil and some people are
born good?
Like the Democrats missedsomething, we're missing
something big.
Why did I just call?
Kibby (56:21):
myself.
Jacqueline (56:21):
We're missing something big about this, about
about our social world andculture and what people need
right now.
And I think when I talked to alot of liberal people, it's just
like, yeah, we're just doomed,we're just, we're just a country
full of racists and I was like,well, maybe.
If we want to be a countrythat's not full of racists.
(56:42):
We gotta, we gotta do somethingdifferent, man.
Kibby (56:44):
Yeah, we will lean on what, what, what you and I have
at the core, which is, you know,like learning by doing like
let's not, let's, I don't.
We both don't like this, thistrend of like refusal and
avoidance and and hiding, likewe like going out, experiencing
(57:04):
the world, learning from otherperspectives, respecting others'
perspectives, identifying yourvalues and being open to many
other people's, like kind ofmore of a tolerance perspective.
So that's what we should leanon a little bit more.
At least that's what I, whatwe're trying to do.
So I think that's the, that'sthe tip for everyone is like be
compassionate, that's all.
Jacqueline (57:24):
I've got to say All right, everyone, I hope you are
doing okay.
For those of you who arehurting right now, I hope we can
all remember that progressisn't linear, that different
things need to happen in orderfor progress to be made and
actually, maybe this election,some good will come of it.
(57:46):
Some needed change will happenfor us to come together someday
and hopefully we can have faithin that and if not, we'll handle
what comes.
For now, we will see you in acouple weeks and I will say if
who you really want to bepresident is either me or Kibbe,
please give us a five-starrating on Apple Podcasts or
(58:07):
Spotify.
Bye everyone.
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(58:29):
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(58:50):
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(59:18):
such approval or endorsement.
Thank you.
Hello Little Helpers .
Today's episode is going to beprocessing our feelings about
the election.
It's kind of an obvious thingto talk about after what
happened.
I mean, I've talked to a lot ofpeople online, a lot of my own
friends.
I've been processing my ownfeelings and you know we often
talk about helping our friendson this show and I think that's
(00:40):
totally relevant to this episode.
But it's also how can we notfall into the trap of just
creating enemies, I guess?
Like how do we not just get ridof all of our friends when they
didn't vote the same way we didin what feels like, for both
sides, a very high stakeelection?
(01:02):
Kip, I'll turn it over to youfor now to talk a little bit
about how Kula Mind could help.
Kibby (01:09):
Yeah, we've been teasing this and we've gotten a lot of
people reaching out and askingfor more support around loving
someone with mental illness.
It's something that we're hugeabout and we really want to come
together and provide that kindof support in all different ways
.
So with Kula Mind, we arebuilding both a community and a
platform for getting individualsupport.
(01:30):
That's coming out really soon,but if you want to get on the
list, go to K-U-L-A-M-I-N-DcomKulaMindcom.
You see buttons that says likeget started.
Just click on that and you signup with me as a consultation
call just to understand what youneed and what can be helpful
and we'll figure it out fromthere.
Jacqueline (01:51):
Amazing, I mean.
I know that I felt reallynumbed out after the election.
I had this like lodged anger,slash, disgust and sadness and
finally got it out.
The other night I got I drankenough to get it out.
I wound up like sobbing for anhour about trump being a rapist
(02:14):
and um, it was actually kind offunny because jason and I were
having like a good night withour friend marvin and jason was
like we got in an uber and I wasjust sobbing the entire time
and it was like a 45 minute Uberride and the guy didn't even
put music on, it was just atotally silent Uber ride.
And then we like got home and Iwas like apparently, you know,
(02:38):
I was like getting changed.
I'm talking all about howTrump's a rapist, et cetera, et
cetera.
And I see Jason like look at myboobs and I'm like you can't
even talk to me without lookingat my tits, that's not funny
that.
I passed out and I was fine thenext day.
Cool, great.
Kibby (02:57):
So I finally, as a Democrat, but I also do want to
use this opportunity to do whatyou and I have always talked
about, which is let's notdemonize any particular side.
(03:20):
Like we're really big intotrying to take the perspective
of someone else and try tounderstand the compassion for
the other side that we're not,whether it's someone that we
love, mental illness, someonewith a personality disorder
traits or different sides ofthis political atmosphere,
because I think the, for me, my,my view is view is what scares
(03:45):
me is the polarization, right.
It scares me that we all hateeach other and refuse to see
each other's side.
Instead, I'm like, okay, fine,let me learn about the other
side.
So I mean even us doing thisright now.
This is like our platform, ourpodcast, and yet I'm afraid of
(04:05):
saying the wrong thing, whetherit's like in support of Trump
supporters or in support ofdemocratic ideals, right, like
I'm like I'm nervous and I thinkthat's the enemy.
I don't think that.
I think being learning how tobe open and tolerating different
perspectives is what we need.
So I think, like I'm trying totake a like a balanced
(04:26):
perspective and see how much wecan learn from both sides.
Jacqueline (04:29):
I agree, I mean, I'm on board with that, but at the
same time, I think that, like,if any Trump supporters are
listening, they have tounderstand that people who are
against him it's not justbecause of different policy
opinions, it's not, you know,just because, like Trump has
said a few clumsy things, it'sbecause there's actually real
fear and betrayal in having himas the president.
And I think you know, I'vespent the last week talking to a
(04:54):
lot of Trump supporters onInstagram, because first I
pissed them off, tried toexplain my perspective and and
also try to understand theirperspective and just talk about
like look, if you know, if wewant unity, then you have to
just not like write off theliberal response as whiny or
(05:16):
entitled, but to actuallyunderstand that there is that
there's a lot of fear and likehurt, like betrayal and hurt
from this election.
And you know and I, and so Italked to a lot of Trump
supporters and I think I can atleast try to steel man what they
(05:37):
told me as the argument.
Kibby (05:39):
And actually, before we jump into that conversation,
which I'm fascinated to hearabout, I actually, when you,
when you just said that you wereyou, I didn't realize like how,
um, emotionally this hit you inthat way, like the crying in
the cab, um, because for youactually, like you have a
(06:01):
history of being really like um,able to, um, dispassionately
and objectively, like see theother side and even when, even
when we come to like powerdynamics or narcissists or like
you, you tend to be like, okay,well, I see this side and you
know, like it, like your, youremotional response to this kind
(06:26):
of reminds me of some of what wetalked about in other podcast
episodes of like you realizinghow people have taken advantage
of you, or you know, like, yeah,there's, there's some, there's
some emotion revolution I'veseen in you and I wanted to ask
you about that, if this ishitting on something different.
Like this is just a differentresponse from you that I've
heard before, so it wasdifferent response that I've
(06:47):
than I've had before.
Jacqueline (06:48):
I didn't cry after the 2016 election.
I do think that I have had alowered patience for certain
things, a lower tolerance forcertain things, namely
entitlement, entitlement abuse,narcissism.
You know, I used to be sofascinated by NPD that I wanted
to treat it.
(07:08):
I really don't anymore.
Um, I think that I've had aseries of realizations that I've
allowed people to use me alittle bit too much and that's
come from a partially good placeof like.
I often don't feel helpful orcompetent and so, in ways that I
(07:29):
can be, then I like to givethat to people.
But I think I've also realizedwith some people in my life that
that's not really returned orappreciated, and it doesn't
always have to be, but I thinkat a fundamental level, I still
want to be seen as like a personwith feelings and to just be,
(07:49):
to be asked for things withappreciation instead of just
anyways.
I think a lot of this had to dowith my last relationship and
realizing that if I wanted tosave myself from future
relationships of that ilk, thatI might have to change a few
things, and I also think it hasto do with my current
relationship of being in areally great relationship where
(08:10):
Jason has turned on its head alot of the beliefs I had, or
maybe the expectations I've hadfor men, and now I have much
higher expectations for menbecause I've seen that they can
be met.
And so I think with Trump andalso in my last relationship I
would say, I experienced somelevel of like sexual abuse um at
(08:35):
the very least, just likeextreme sexual entitlement.
Yeah and um, I think for a verylong time in my life I was just
like you know what, if I can getover something, I'm going to
get over it, because what's thealternative?
Um, and I don't know, I wonderif a little bit of that has
gotten lodged in me.
(08:56):
Um, I think with Trump I wasactually able to accept that a
large number of people wouldvote for him, even given the
sexual assault allegations.
But it was the fact that he wonthe popular vote that actually
a majority of the country, or atleast of the voting population,
(09:17):
was willing to elect a rapistto the White House.
And I'll, I'll, I'll talk aboutthat from a trump supporter
perspective in a minute becauseI don't think that's how they
would put it right.
So I don't want to.
I don't want to just likecreate these accusations, but
from my from my perspectivesitting here, it's like 27 women
(09:41):
came out.
No, that was not 27 rapes.
Some of it was just assault,but there were multiple rapes
that were reported.
One was from a child, someonewho was 12 or 14.
And one that was substantiated,you know, and he, he lost a
(10:01):
civil suit, you know, and helost a civil suit.
And so for me, especially as atherapist, I can't just be like
27 different women relying,especially one that won a civil
suit against him.
Mm-hmm, and also I've.
I spent my 20s with a lot ofmen like him, including my
(10:25):
brother-in-law, my formerbrother-in-law, who's a trump
supporter.
You know, like I, my sistermarried that man when I was 16,
but they've been together when Iwas 13 and I really grew up
with this form of masculinitythat I admired and thought funny
of, like, very callous, crass,disrespectful.
Um, powerful, powerful, funny,wealthy.
(10:49):
I mean eric was.
There are so many erics in mypast life so you guys are
getting massively confused, butthis is yet another one.
That eric was larger than life,very, very funny.
Um, he paid attention to me inways that I think now I don't
think he had any kind of likesexual or romantic interest in
(11:11):
me, but it, but we're justdisrespectful to my sister, like
we would stay up until 3 amchatting and drinking when I was
like umand I, I liked that for me, that
kind of like barstool you know,that's actually a party named
like a barstool republican thatkind of barstool humor and um,
(11:35):
and I think I just accepted somepoor treatment from men because
I was like, oh yeah, like thisis what masculinity is.
And when I look at trump, I seesomebody who embodies all of
that, but so much worse.
And when, when people don'tbelieve that he assaulted those
women, I'm kind of like, okay,but but look at him at least
(12:00):
seem like someone who would dothat and also have all of the
power.
Uh, you know, that would sortof suggest that he would be able
to do that easily, even even ifthere wasn't like a pretty
believable testimony from EugeneCarroll.
Um, haven't we seen him use hismouth to say disrespectful and
(12:25):
dehumanizing things against manydifferent people?
What like, why do we acceptthis?
And for a long time again in my20s I just accepted shitty male
behavior, like I acceptedsomebody going on a date with me
, coming back and like basically, basically, like forcibly
(12:46):
hooking up with me, when I waslike fighting them off, yeah,
and then I asked him for asecond date because I was like
it's just boys being boys, justmen, you know, yeah.
And so, yeah, I think I'm overthat now.
I'm just like I'm.
Some anger is coming out aboutthat now.
Coming out about that now.
(13:08):
And it's fucking sad thatpeople, a lot of people, look at
him and are just like, yeah,you know he's joking.
Yeah, they're like they'relying, they're being dramatic.
You know like, let's elect thisguy anyway.
Kibby (13:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's the interesting
question, I mean, like eversince 2016,.
When he said you just got tograb him by the pussy, right
Like, just as soon as he saidthat, I was like, oh, he's not
going to win, right Like, wow,this is evidence that he, you
know, has a character, and wereally cared about character in
our, in a specific type ofcharacter in our president and
(13:43):
our leaders.
Right like, we railed againstbill clinton for you know other
you know that kind of behaviortoo.
So it's just like, ah, okay,america's american want like a
good christian, like family man,who doesn't do that.
So he's gone.
But then then we get more andmore and more and more and more.
And there's this reallyinteresting study that will link
(14:07):
to the site, but it's calledResponses to Belief-Conflicting
Information Justification ofSupport for Donald Trump.
And these researchers did aseries of studies where they ask
like, how can you support himgiven the allegations?
And blah, blah, blah, and itwas over three different studies
at different time periods, andit's interesting that there's
(14:29):
all different ways that peoplekind of justify it.
People justify it like, oh, Idon't actually believe he did
that, or other politicians dothe similar things, or or they
don't even care that he doesright there.
So there's a variety of likedevaluing the importance of or
the impact of, you know, theallegations.
(14:51):
But it's interesting over thecourse of the three studies,
like over time, people are areless likely to say to use the
excuse or the reasons um, otherpeople do the thing and also
over the course of the threestudies, they are more likely to
not believe in the allegations.
(15:13):
So as time went on, as moreresults of the court case and
stuff like that, they're morelikely to dig into the belief
that these aren't real.
Jacqueline (15:23):
And it's I found talking to people yeah it's
interesting.
Kibby (15:25):
It's like this dis you know we call it's based on this
theory of cognitive dissonance,where it's.
It's kind of like, if youreally believe in something, you
will start to um, you know,devalue um evidence against it.
You start to get moreentrenched in your beliefs,
right, and so, for example, ifthey believe, if they're a
(15:50):
believer in Trump, and the moreand more evidence comes out,
they're more likely to notbelieve and not believe it.
So they're, they get polarizedmore into their beliefs than
they were probably in them evenin the beginning, which is like
counterintuitive.
But it's just, that's justfascinating to me.
It's just, it's what have youheard in terms of like not
(16:11):
believing the allegations?
Jacqueline (16:14):
I'm going to try to steal the argument for Trump
because I think it's gotmultiple pieces that come
together.
So I basically put what I justsaid in this podcast on my
(16:34):
Instagram.
The other day.
You know about sexual assaultand you know so a follower of
mine had said, like you know, hewon the popular vote power over
half the country who are women.
You know they wouldn't want todo that, we wouldn't want to
subjugate women that way, andthat's not true.
That's what I figured out.
It's like that's the reality isjust not true.
So that's the Republicans thattalked to me then would respond,
(17:04):
mostly with I don't believe hedid it, however.
So the reasoning I think thisseems to all go back to some
really deep distrust towardswhat seems the establishment and
, for whatever reason, democratsalone seem to be responsible
for the quote unquoteestablishment.
Kibby (17:26):
Right right.
Jacqueline (17:29):
And a lot of this, I believe, is due to two factors
One is that Trump sowed distrustin the media, and the other is
that the media sowed distrust inthe media, distrust in the
media through like worsening andworsening bias that trump was
(17:50):
able to pick on and blame on thedemocratic-led media, which is
interesting because fox news, Ibelieve, is what the majority of
americans watch.
It's republican hell and thebias in fox news is just
astounding you know.
So I I don't entirely know howthis has become an only Democrat
problem, but whatever, maybethey wouldn't even say that.
Maybe they would say all bigmedia is biased, it's a problem
(18:12):
and you can't believe it.
Trump won is that he actuallydidn't use the establishment
media.
You know he wasn't big intodebates, which you know
(18:32):
Democrats have an explanation of, republicans have a different
explanation of.
He instead went on Joe Rogan.
He went on like multiple hugeYouTube podcasts where there is
a very large audience of men andwhere they are a long form.
Obviously we're a fan of thepodcast medium and you are able
(18:56):
to get to know them in a waythat is unscripted.
So basically, the idea is likethe establishment media is
inherently untrustworthy.
And then also there weredifferent kind of conspiracies
that people were able to pointto, like Hunter Biden's laptop,
(19:18):
or there were, like manyDemocratic officials joined
together to lie about this.
So why is it out of the realmof possibility that these 27
women would be hired bydemocratic establishment to lie
about Trump?
Now I will say one of theseaccusations came out before he
ever ran for president.
Okay, so I'm not sure how thatfits, but regardless, the point
(19:44):
is they see from what they'vetold me, they see all of these
accusations against Trump as theDemocrats being scared and
using corrupt means to get himout of power and to put him in
prison, and so every newallegation that comes up gets
put through that same machine of.
(20:04):
I inherently can't trust this,and all the Democrats are doing
is making me further distrustthem and any allegations they
make.
Yeah, yeah, so.
So that's, that's one piece wecan talk about, and then there's
other stuff I can try to yeah,no.
Kibby (20:23):
I, I think that what you're like, we know Trump in
the public's mind, but I, like Ialready have my view of him,
but this really made me turn toreally try to understand the
(20:45):
Trump support and be like, ok,I'm going to turn away from this
guy and turn to the people whoare, because there's something
about this country that is likebubbling that, that that he, he
gives a voice to, and I feellike he, he does something and
represent something for peoplethat is important, so important
that people are willing to justnot even cancel him, right,
(21:08):
because of this.
So there's something about like, what is that?
And I read this really goodarticle in Atlantic that that
was talking about what you weresaying, which is the Trump
support movement is reallyenergizing.
There's a ton of social medialike influencers now, like you
(21:31):
know, the Jordan Peterson, likethere's all these different like
grassroots, if you will like,for the people um, entertainers
and speakers, and it's just andit's like it's uniquely
activating, right, there's we'vetalked on this podcast so much
about the problem with peopleavoiding, right, Like kids don't
(21:51):
want to go to school, you know,like I bet a lot of kids didn't
vote, which is a big issue,right.
So like there's a lot about thedemocratic culture.
That's about censorship andabout being in restraint and
using ethics and curbing badbehavior.
Right, it's a lot of like eventheir platform of Kamala being
(22:12):
like can you believe this guyI'm running against?
What a jerk right.
Like there's a lot of likeelitist intellectual, like I'm
an establishment, and we arelike jerk right.
Like there's a lot of like likeelitist intellectual, like I'm
an establishment, and we arelike above right and like I'm
I'm at fault.
Like, as soon as I hearanything about Trump, my
automatic thought is they'redumb.
And then I'm like what, whereis that coming from?
(22:32):
Like that, what am I basingthat on?
You know, like that's, that's.
It's just like it's become aculture of condescension, which
is so unappealing, and so I even.
I find that off-putting right,but in the Trump's point it's
like let's change, let's dosomething Right, even if it's
(22:52):
like led by someone who's likenuts, right, like it's just like
it's more activating.
And I do hear more of the youthwho are like jazzed up to do
something, are like rightleaning.
So I think that we've kind offorgotten to.
I mean, that was something that, like Obama, did so well.
It was like Garner, likemovement and like a feeling of
(23:13):
if I elect this guy, things aregoing to change.
I don't know if I like him, Idon't know what he's like in his
personal life, but I wantsomething different and I want
to.
I'm angry.
I'm angry that, like COVID, andall this stuff happened.
Jacqueline (23:25):
You know, this is an exciting topic because I think
it, I think it connects well toother things we've talked about
on this podcast.
So I think the first thing iswhat's been going on with men
and boys, you know?
I mean we had Jared Glenn onand we talked about economic and
social and cultural shifts andI think that the Democrats have
uniquely failed in all of theseways.
(23:46):
So the first, the economicshift, is losing a ton of, you
know, manufacturing or bluecollar jobs overseas and that
vacuum basically being filledwith the opium crisis.
So in West Virginia, which is ahot seat of the opium opium
crisis and where I'm from, thecoal industry has largely
(24:08):
collapsed.
Those people don't have anyother skills.
What are they going to do?
There's nowhere to go, thereare no jobs.
Um, there's an extremely highliteracy rate in West Virginia,
extremely highiteracy rate inwest virginia, extremely high
like bad, poor, wow, extremelypoor health outcomes.
And so you have the democrats,who are uh well, a ignoring the
(24:31):
problem and then b disparagingmen at any chance they get, and
you have trump, who's an oldschool masculine figure who pays
attention and says we're goingto bring these jobs back.
So I understand why a largeswath of the population is
willing to vote just on thatalone.
I think culturally the Democratswere just straight up buckets
(24:55):
for like eight straight yearsand I hate them.
No-transcript supporter.
(25:30):
Before um, before I was aHillary Clinton supporter.
The only reason I really likedHillary Clinton was because I
hated Trump.
So I just want to say, likeit's not that I see the policies
between the two of them andthink that the Democrats are
clearly the winners, thatthey've clearly got their
(25:51):
fingers on the pulse.
Like I have a long history ofdisagreeing with Democrats.
I happen to be extremelypro-choice.
I have a long history ofdisagreeing with with Democrats.
I happen to be extremelypro-choice, and so when a social
issue like that becomesthreatened, then I'm likely to
switch over to the Democratbecause I'm used to hating both
sides basically and also alittle bit liking both sides.
So I understand from a policyperspective why somebody would
(26:14):
vote for Trump or just theRepublican party generally, like
that doesn't offend me at all.
And I also understand whypeople would vote for Trump or
just the Republican Partygenerally, like that doesn't
offend me at all.
And I also understand whypeople would deeply hate
Democrats because the becauseliberal individuals were just
dicks for so long.
I mean the condescension you'retalking about.
It was like it was viciouscondescension.
It was like I'm going to feelpowerful today by putting you
(26:38):
down.
Kibby (26:40):
I mean, you felt that strongly right, I despised them.
Jacqueline (26:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Despised them.
So like 0% of me is surprisedwhen people want to pummel them
and like beat them up Likethey're the whiny little goody
two-shoes on the schoolyard.
You know, like I totally getthat impulse because I wanted to
too.
My thing is that I don't seethe actual politicians as being
(27:05):
the arbiters of that.
I just see that as more likesocial, like buckheads on social
media being vicious, butwhatever, it's all in the same
soup.
That's the base.
Like I could understand wantingto punish the base.
I had a patient who I saw onwednesday and I was like you
know, how are you feelingpost-election, whatever, and
he's like.
He's like I feel great.
(27:26):
He's like I, you know I wasgonna feel great either way.
If trump lost, I was gonna getto see redneck tears and if
kamala lost I.
Now I get to see liberal tears.
That's great and it's like that.
You know what I kind of.
I mean I, you know I'm some ofthe liberal tears you're talking
about, but I also get itbecause they've been so annoying
and dehumanizing, particularlytowards masculinity and my costa
(27:53):
our friend showed he talked tome about I.
I think it was like KamalaHarris's campaign website and it
had a section that was like whoour campaign is for and it was
like it was like black people,asian people, lgbtq plus, women
um, every, every, everydemographic you can imagine,
except one, guess what one whitemales.
(28:16):
Not even white males, just men.
Men were not listed.
How could you leave out 50fucking percent of the entire
population when you say who yourcampaign is for?
Kibby (28:27):
Yeah, it's also like, if you picture from like the
Democrat I mean we're talkingabout actually right now
cultural, like the culturaldivide, when you imagine what a
Democrat, like the culturaldivide, when you imagine what a
Democrat, what a culture wouldsay is a man and shows
masculinity, is someone who islike like so, like so
(28:48):
self-monitoring for saying badthings, right, like someone who
is like so, almost likepre-ashamed, like
self-deprecating, careful,careful to say the right thing,
lots of trigger warnings, lotsof disclaimers, right, it's
someone who's like censoringhimself really well.
And on the other side, issomeone who's charged up and
(29:12):
ready to fight.
Right, which one's going to bemore appealing and which one you
know like-?
Jacqueline (29:17):
I think the other thing, the other misstep is you
know you can have a campaignthat disparages women because
women are used to it we haven'thad power ever but you can't
take a population that has beenin power since the beginning of
humanity and then all of asudden take it away and not
expect them to be like what.
Kibby (29:38):
Yeah, there was another interesting article that talked
about, like, what is thesentiment behind the Trump
support?
And one of them was feelingdisrespected.
Right, so it's like men, whitemen or, like you know, different
parts of the country feeldisrespected, feel like people
think that they're dumb or theyshouldn't have as much power,
(29:59):
like we should lift up theseother groups, you know, and take
away their power.
Right, and which isunderstandable.
Right, it's understandable thatyou'd want to fight against
that.
The interesting thing that thatarticle talked about was like,
if you look at it objectively,the stats, objectively, that
group like, let's say, the whitemales, young white males
(30:21):
they're not disrespected.
They still, of course, havemost money, have the most power,
have the most influence, likethey have the most mainstream
still, and yet they, yes, butthey feel more disrespected.
So it's kind of like feeding onit's feeding on the feeling that
everyone wants to be seen.
Now, right, Like, think aboutall of these different movements
(30:44):
.
Black Lives Matter Me Too.
Everyone's like look at me,look at the pain that I've been
struggling with silently.
But when you have this groupthat is still in power and
feeling that that's a recipe for, like them, fighting harder,
right, like if you have yourboss upset that he's not,
doesn't have enough power, he'sgonna get more power right, yeah
(31:06):
, yeah, well, I mean I, I thinkthere's, I mean there's many
kinds of men, but like I'm justgonna bucket them into two camps
.
Jacqueline (31:12):
One is the men who are told that they have all the
power but actually don't,because their industry has been
erased and they're fucking poorand they can't get a woman.
And, um, you know they're.
They're told over and overagain that they have got all
this privilege and actually theydon't.
So they're like how dare yousay this to me?
And then there's the men who dohave the power, but the thing
is is that they feel entitled toit because they've always been
(31:32):
entitled to it.
So suddenly you take it awayand it's like wait a minute, I'm
entitled to that versus othergroups are like yeah, I was
never entitled to that, clearlynot sure why, but I'm used to it
, I guess.
So this is no surprise.
I mean, when I was just sittingthere thinking like I guess, I
was like I can't believe howdisappointed I am in finding out
that we live in a reality wherea man can rape women and people
(31:57):
just fundamentally are like,like, yeah, that sucks, but you
know, the grocery prices arehigh.
It's like that was myquote-unquote.
I hate this fucking word, butprivileged realization.
As a white woman like you know,if you're any kind of minority,
you already know that's thecase and you've lived under that
forever yeah and so it's justyet one more piece of
confirmatory evidence.
(32:21):
But yeah, I mean, I think Ithink Donald Trump coming out
and basically being like I'm aman, I don't give a fuck what
you think about me, I'm notgoing to watch what I say, you
know, I'm going to say whateverI want.
It's going to be funny, it'sgoing to be insulting, but
whatever, like, at least I'm notcoming out and saying, want,
it's going to be funny, it'sgoing to be insulting, but
whatever, like, at least I'm notcoming out and saying like men,
(32:42):
you're toxic and you know youabuse people all the time and uh
, et cetera, et cetera, etcetera, like, like I love Dave
Chappelle.
You know, if Dave Chappellewere running for president, no,
I would not vote for him becausehe has no qualifications, but I
still enjoy that kind ofpersonality right, right, right,
the freedom of speech.
(33:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah um, yeah, soyeah, I think I think the
democratic party disowning menwas a is a huge issue.
Now I I think that liberal menwould have a different take.
Like they didn't disown men.
They had different expectationsof what men could live up to.
Kibby (33:21):
Yeah, yeah, but I think.
I think it's like theimportance of showing what that
looks like.
I think that we have so, um,the liberal movement is so much
about what you shouldn't do,right?
The?
things that the words that youshouldn't say, the ways to
conduct yourself, shouldn't?
There's?
There's very little should.
Yes, right, there's like I knowthat I should be scared of
(33:44):
saying certain words, but I andthere I mean given the better
words, but it's out of fear.
So it's like a very fear andlike avoiding shame and
rejection kind of like mode, andthat's really hard to, that's
really hard to stomach.
But something that does scareme a lot and I'll, I'll credit
my friend Anna.
(34:04):
She's a, she's a lawyer, she'sin Stockholm working at the
European banking authority.
She's she was, she's German andshe's like I'm really worried
about this.
This is like actuallyterrifying to watch what's
happening in the us, and I thinkshe didn't say this, but I'm
thinking, wow, things that I'velearned about, like dictators
rise is really paralleling this,where, after world war one,
(34:29):
germans were kind of butthurtthat they lost world war one and
they were not doing well, um,they're still like they were the
treaty of versailles also.
Jacqueline (34:38):
It, uh, it pillaged germany.
I mean, they had to pay a lot,right like they were, the
germans were really hurting um.
Kibby (34:45):
But then hitler was like hey guys, hey germans, you're
hurting, it's the jews fault andthey were like yeah, it is and
so kind of like garnering this.
I'm disrespected and I want toget my power back.
It's a really fiery and it's areally it's a big.
It's a big like seed fordictatorship, which is scary,
(35:07):
and my friend Anna was like thehope.
What we've learned in historyis like independent media and
having like open discourse andnot letting one voice dominate.
The public voice is reallyimportant.
So conversations like that, I'mlike, oh God, where are we
going?
It's so scary, and not becauseof Trump, not because of like,
(35:29):
it's just because of this, likethe hatred we have for each
other, which is scaring me, likethe hatred to the point where
we're.
So I just started watchingagain like the movie Civil War,
if you haven't seen it.
Jacqueline (35:44):
it's so good I've seen it yeah.
Kibby (35:45):
But it's dystopian world where America has broken out
into civil war, and I'm justlike this is not even looking
too much like fantasy.
This is like we're at arms witheach other, and that's the
scary part.
That's the part that's going tobe really beneficial to our
enemies globally, right, likethe fact that we're breaking
(36:07):
apart so deeply is the part thatscares me.
And that's why I wanted to likelook at the other side and like
be like, hey, let's learn fromthe Trump support Because, like,
I prefer that than like tearing, tearing us apart.
You know, I agree.
Jacqueline (36:22):
I agree.
I mean, I think look like Ithink some other just basic
reasons why people voted forTrump is that under Trump there
were no wars and apparentlythere's been a real fear that
we're going to be leading intoWorld War Three, given the war
with Ukraine, you know, betweenIsrael and Hamas, and you know
that is one example of when Ithink it's actually okay to vote
for a vile human being.
(36:43):
I think he's vile.
I know some of you don't.
You know, like, if you reallythink that we are headed into an
apocalyptic situation, then,yeah, you elect the person who's
going to keep you out.
And I don't know how much of theno wars for four years was due
to Trump.
I mean, I've I've certainly Ilistened to Jared Kushner and
Lex Friedman talk about how,basically, they like bankrupted
(37:04):
Iran and so Iran could not thenfund institutions like Hamas or
other terrorist groups.
And you know, if, if Trump didthat, then like, maybe that's on
, maybe that's a good thing, andso you know, I think that's a
valid reason to vote forsomebody.
And then the inflation was likelargely the result of the
pandemic, but also largely dueto Trump's tariffs that Biden
(37:26):
didn't take away and due to,like large transfers of money
into families' pockets who werefucked over by the pandemic.
So it's like but people don'tknow, like I don't know enough
about inflation to give a reallycogent explanation of how that
happened.
So how's anybody else supposedto?
What they experience is like Imean even jason, you know like
(37:49):
jason lost a lot of money underbiden.
That doesn't mean it wasbiden's fault, but car payments
rock like skyrocketed, housepayments skyrocketed.
Kibby (37:58):
Housing crisis now, yeah.
Jacqueline (38:00):
Yeah, yeah, all sorts of shit was bad, and
Jason's lucky enough to make ahigh enough income to where we
can keep our basic livelihoods,but if you live on the margin of
that, you can't, and so who areyou going to vote for?
So, I mean, I think there areperfectly valid reasons to vote
for Trump's policy.
What I do think Trumpsupporters need to understand
(38:20):
about liberals and this wholeHitler comparison, because to
them it's yet another like youaccuse us of, of dividing the
country, when you're going tocall our, like our candidate,
hitler.
Are you serious?
Kibby (38:32):
Right right, right right, but what?
Jacqueline (38:33):
liberals see, is something quite obvious, which
is like we are noticing similarpatterns to what happened in
post-World War I Germany.
Now, maybe these patterns havealso happened in many situations
where nothing bad happened, andwhat's really going on is that
it happened to happen inpost-World War I Germany in a
(38:54):
way that everybody learned about, and so everybody associates
with that bad outcome Germany ina way that everybody learned
about, and so everybodyassociates with that bad outcome
.
You know, like this very samecultural phenomenon could have
happened in France 50 years agoand we just don't know about it
because nobody knows anythingabout France 50 years ago,
because nothing terriblehappened in France 50 years ago.
So, but we are seeing a clearassociation.
But we're also seeing thingslike January 6th.
(39:15):
We're seeing that Trump wouldnot accept the results of
election, election that heconstantly called it into
question, that he sowed doubtand distrust in our electoral
system and the basics of ourdemocracy, that he incited a
riot on the Capitol, that hissupporters wanted to lynch the
vice president for not doingwhat Trump wanted him to do.
(39:35):
Those are all horrifying things.
Trump wanted him to do.
Those are all horrifying thingsand I don't think that we can
just laugh it off and just saythat liberals are, like, yet
again doing whatever they can toget their way, you know, and
like victimize this poor man whojust keeps being victimized
(39:55):
even though he was born into asmuch power as one could have.
Being victimized even though hewas born into as much power as
one could have, but like, no,like you know, I think it's very
important for us here tounderstand the trump supporter
side, but it's also veryimportant for the trump
supporters to understand ourside.
Like you, can't have unitywithout those two things
happening yeah and I think therehas to be some sort of an
acknowledgement of trump havingsome really fucking questionable
(40:17):
behavior yep, so what?
Kibby (40:22):
what's the solution here?
Like what on a I'm trying tothink on like a day-to-day level
, what do you think we should do?
Jacqueline (40:32):
I guess I think that we should understand A that we
are consuming different mediaand that a lot of the
divisiveness can be explained bythe fact that we are literally
consuming different information.
And if we are consumingdifferent information that's
presented as fact, then we'regoing to live in two different
realities.
And we're going to live in twodifferent realities and in order
(40:54):
to try to conjoin our realities, we have to have some basic
trust in human beings that thevast majority of us want the
same basic things and that weare inherently decent, like now
AI, or like really dedicatedaccounts or media.
Kibby (41:17):
that's just like we're going to distill the common
factor among like almost like arotten tomatoes of of media.
Just like what are we talkingabout in common, that we know
that both sides are saying, andjust like filter out all the
other bias.
Jacqueline (41:34):
I, that would be awesome yeah, I mean, I think, I
think people are going to bepopular because people want to
hear the bias.
But you know like but, I thinkpeople basically want health and
safety and respect.
Um, I think people basicallywant peace and they want to be
(41:56):
able to have the freedom to saywhat they think.
And this was another big pointagainst Kamala Harris I heard
about is that she was soestablishment, she was such a
Democrat that she never cameacross as authentic once.
And I think the reason she nevercame across as authentic once
is because everything she saidgot torn apart and she was
called dumb and stupid andunqualified all the time.
She had to be very careful, butTrump came across as
(42:17):
exceedingly authentic and he hadthree hour talks on joe rogan,
you know, yeah, yeah, so, so thename calling and the inherent
disrespect, I mean I hope it cango down, just so that people
can fucking speak again yeah Imean I.
I don't.
I don't know how you can saythat liberals are the only
(42:38):
condescending ones when you lookat a woman who is a federal
prosecutor, a US senator andvice president and say that
she's unqualified for thepresidency.
Kibby (42:48):
Yeah.
Jacqueline (42:49):
Or that she's stupid and has a low IQ.
Kibby (42:51):
Yeah.
Jacqueline (42:52):
When she she beat Trump in the debate, it was
pretty objective, um, so I meanwe got to cool it with that shit
.
Kibby (43:05):
Yeah, I would say that like finding respect for the
other side and finding respectfor just what the other side has
to say, or like sides have tosay um and stop.
Like I mean, but that's a thing, that's like that's another
part of the article like we just, we're just so angry that we're
(43:25):
latching on to angry rhetoricand I mean god, I mean talk
about how many times that we'vewatched reality tv just puts
like, just to put hate somewhere, right like my, I remember that
our at duke, our, our lovely umsupervisor, dr batson, was like
in the beginning of like Ithink it was the beginning of
(43:48):
covid, or beginning like aroundthe pandemic.
He was just like watch, there'sgoing to be a lot of um, just
like floating anxiety, likewe're we're coming into crisis
right now and there's going tobe a lot of just like floating
anxiety, like we're coming intocrisis right now and there's no
like person to blame, there's nolike clear enemy.
It's just like the world ischanging and we don't know why
(44:09):
or how or what this means andwe're scared and so, and then,
like now, we have all theseterrible wars.
It's like we want to have ahero right, and we want to also
have an enemy.
That's just human nature.
They want a God and a devil,right, and so we're finding that
(44:29):
in each other and that's justso toxic.
That part is toxic.
Instead of just being like, I'mscared because I don't know how
we can afford a rent, I don'tknow how we can build a family
in this right.
Jacqueline (44:42):
Yeah, I think I'm struggling and a lot of other
people are struggling with thisdilemma, though At some point,
everybody on earth has to draw aline with other people of what
kind of behavior and attitudethey're willing to tolerate.
And I think a lot of Democratsare in a position where they
look at a Trump supporter andthey say, okay, you must be at
(45:04):
some level.
Okay With tearing familiesapart, with making immigrants
the enemy, with dehumanizingother people, with accepting
rape, you know, with accepting,like, various forms of
dehumanization, and I am notokay with that.
And so how can you and I findcommon ground?
And what is the cost of that?
(45:25):
Right, you know, when I thinkabout, like I'm going, I would
like to watch Donald Trump onJoe Rogan.
I started it, I would like tofinish it.
A lot of Trump supporters aretelling me, like, have faith,
it's going to be okay.
And for me, the problem is Iactually feel a sense of danger
at the idea of watching Trumpand trying to trust him, because
(45:48):
for me, that is like looking atmy ex-boyfriend and saying
let's be friends again.
Kibby (45:53):
Yeah.
Jacqueline (45:54):
When I know the profile, yeah, yeah, how about
this?
Kibby (45:59):
It's kind of like how we would tell our patients when
they're like, why am I cuttingmyself?
Why am I doing drugs?
Like I can't, I keep gettingdrawn to it.
The way we think about it isokay.
We know that that thing thatyou're drawn, you're like can't
help yourself and keepdefaulting on that.
That thing that you're drawn,you're like can't help yourself
and keep defaulting on it has,like negative consequences.
(46:22):
Like there's something in yourmind, even if you're, like, in
the moment, willing to overlookthose, those bad things.
It's like these things have badconsequences, right, like drugs
are bad for you, but let's lookat why you're drawn to it.
Let's look at what it gives youand try to find healthier ways
where it doesn't involve the badstuff, right?
So, like, looking at what doesTrump give people, what does
(46:44):
that movement?
What is what is so appealingabout it that it feels like it's
filling a need?
And how can we do that withoutsomeone with all of this, like
you know, troubled past andquestionable behavior?
Like I'm not talking about justpolitics, right, I'm not
talking about just.
Like the person I'm talkingabout, like, can we get action
(47:07):
and change and activate it, finda place to channel our anger
that doesn't involve also likeabusing women?
Um yeah, I think.
Jacqueline (47:19):
I think embedded in what you're saying is it might
feel unsafe to, or against ourvalues to see the humanity and
the other side, but what are theconsequences of that?
Yeah, if the consequences ofdivision are actually that the
world gets worse, then do wemake a different choice.
(47:43):
Do we say me to Trumpsupporters hey, we fundamentally
disagree on some things, butI'm also going to choose to
believe.
Believe because I can't justbelieve that the majority of the
country are assholes, you know,just because they don't vote
(48:03):
like I do, I'm not going tochoose to see like I know.
I know that your party is madeup of decent people.
I know that your party, thatyour supporters or whatever, are
consuming different informationfrom me and that therefore, it
is completely legitimate thatyou would draw different
conclusions than me in somesimilar cultural realities as I
(48:29):
am, one of which is that we'veactually normalized and accepted
sexual assault to such a degreethat this is unsurprising and
that doesn't mean that willnever change.
And another is that you live indifferent cultural realities
(48:49):
for me, which is, while I cantake a hit on gas and food
prices, maybe you can't andmaybe I need to accept that.
You know and I can have afundamental trust in the human
race to know that certaincircumstances can push people to
(49:12):
nasty behavior.
But one of those, like allpeople are, are decent and want
nice things, like, want good,healthy, beautiful things, and
if we can come together insteadof pushing each other away, that
is more likely to come out anda trump supporter might look at
(49:32):
us and say instead of youelitist, condescending
motherfuckers who won't let ussay anything and who are
essentially hypocritical, youwere willing to elect Bill
Clinton even though he had validsexual assault accusations
against him.
(49:53):
You were allowing to elect TedKennedy, even though it was a
similar situation.
You allowed the Hunter Bidenlaptop fiasco to go down without
much of a whimper.
Maybe there's some legitimacyin what you think too.
Maybe you're scared, maybe youfeel betrayed, maybe you're hurt
, maybe you're seeing things ina different way that I'm seeing
(50:13):
things and I'm going to say thesame thing to you.
We have basic human decency.
As long as we aren't at oddswith each other, as long as we
aren't at war and thereforetrying to protect ourselves, I
guess that's the best I can do.
Yeah, yeah.
Kibby (50:29):
Yeah, I think just more like trying to understand the
other side.
I mean the thing is that wethink just more like trying to
understand the other side.
I mean the thing is that we um,having that stance is hard right
now, because right now emotionsare high, people don't have
capacity.
I mean, like taking someoneelse's perspective takes a lot
of work right and getting overthe way we feel and stuff like
(50:52):
that it's it's hard.
So I know like right now, youknow, the, the, the Trump side
is like super excited and theDemocrat side are just really
bummed.
So like right now, this is notthe moment to like all come
together, right, but I think wehave to eventually.
I think we have to just likehave a little bit more tolerance
to freedom of speech and havingdialogue, open dialogue, and
(51:14):
try to understand from differentperspectives and having more of
like a diversity of thoughtthan just like no, my side, no,
my side, no, the way I see isright.
The way I see is right, like weknow from couples, therapy
doesn't work right, like let'sfind the common vulnerable
emotion that connects us thefear, the vulnerability, the
(51:35):
fear of the future and then likework from there instead of just
trying to battle about whoseperspective is correct.
Jacqueline (51:42):
You know, it'd be awesome if, like, there was a
couples therapy, but fordifferent voters, and you could
just like, yeah, you could just,I don't.
I still don't know why we don'thave couples therapy for
friendships.
Kibby (51:53):
Hey we can yeah, we can, cool Mind can, like you, you
know promote that about liketrying to find, trying to use
like relationship skills and avariety of relationships, a
variety of like differentrelationships.
Yeah, because this is also Imean, this is very topical
because political divides aredividing families, like there's
a lot of estrangement becauseyour parents are of a different
(52:19):
political leaning than you are,and it's ripping families apart.
Jacqueline (52:22):
So I think a question to ask might be like
what do I gain by never speakingto my father again?
You know, what do I really gain?
Is it?
Is it actually more in linewith your values to to cut out a
person for believing somethingdifferent than you?
In some cases, it is.
That's why we don't befriendneo-Nazis usually you know, and
(52:46):
so I understand how that'sactually not that obvious of a
question to answer, but do wechange their minds by doing that
?
Do we help ourselves by doing,you know, if it's someone who
actually we really cared aboutand believed in for a long time?
So I don't know.
I think for those of youwanting to know just how to deal
(53:07):
with the election like, we'vegot other episodes where we talk
about self-soothing and, youknow, managing anxiety and
depression and all of that'sstill relevant, but I think
right now it's also a questionof how do we have some faith in
the future?
Kibby (53:23):
yeah I I mean, I'm just leaning more towards the, the,
the idea of self-compassion andcompassion yeah um theories,
where it's like the way tocultivate compassion is to
really focus on a commonhumanity and focus on what's
underneath, what's coming outright we're all trying to deal
with like fear and vulnerabilityin different ways, with anger,
(53:47):
with blame, with shaming right,and just like let's calm down
with that because that'salienating each other and
alienating feels good right,like separating yourself from
people you feel are dangerous.
Feels like you have, we havecontrol, but maybe sometimes
it's more the scary thing ofleaning into like we're losing
control here and scary and blameand maybe like looking down on
(54:10):
a trump supporter is not reallygoing to help this situation
yeah, what I will say to thetrump supporters that did
respond to me.
Jacqueline (54:19):
Most of them actually would end their
messages with something like hey, like thank you for thinking
deeply.
Or like, hey, you know, hope,all this aside, like hope you're
having a good weekend, orsomething.
You know, there was actually alittle bit of a turn back to it,
not, in some cases it wassurprisingly easy to just like.
I had one.
(54:39):
I had like a former friend ofmine who was saying a bunch of
shit and a lot of it was pissingme off, whatever, and then he
was like by the way, how's newyork, how's it been to be back?
and it was surprisingly easy tojust be like.
You know what new york's beenfine yes yep, yep, because
actually where I think you findthe most common humanity is by
putting politics aside and justremembering, like fundamentally
(55:00):
this this guy is curious abouthow I am yeah, yeah, I it's.
Kibby (55:06):
it's like like how I felt you and I watched the um, the
vice presidential debate, timwaltz and uh and jd vance, and
and by the end I was like, oh,this feels so good because it's
just toward the end they werecoming more and more together
and they were like I, you know,like they would go back and
forth, being like I agree withyou that we need to solve this
(55:27):
problem.
We just have different ways ofseeing the solution and I was
like, wow, that's what I want,like just, that's what we need.
It's like a coming together oflike we want to solve these
issues and respect that, to havea diversity of solutions,
because that's actually betterfor brainstorming and coming up
with good solutions.
Right, not to have like one wayof seeing how to fix things,
but like, hey, we all need to,we all want a problem solved.
(55:50):
Let's do a big think tankbrainstorming session,
respecting all these differentways of solving it and figure
out which way is best.
I'm like, oh, that's what Iwant.
So yeah, yeah.
Jacqueline (56:01):
Yeah, we'll see.
We'll see.
We're all made up of the samestuff.
Human beings are all made up ofblood and gore and bones and
shit, you know.
And like, the way that we startbeing at odds with each other
is not that some people are justborn evil and some people are
born good?
Like the Democrats missedsomething, we're missing
something big.
Why did I just call?
Kibby (56:21):
myself.
Jacqueline (56:21):
We're missing something big about this, about
about our social world andculture and what people need
right now.
And I think when I talked to alot of liberal people, it's just
like, yeah, we're just doomed,we're just, we're just a country
full of racists and I was like,well, maybe.
If we want to be a countrythat's not full of racists.
(56:42):
We gotta, we gotta do somethingdifferent, man.
Kibby (56:44):
Yeah, we will lean on what, what, what you and I have
at the core, which is, you know,like learning by doing like
let's not, let's, I don't.
We both don't like this, thistrend of like refusal and
avoidance and and hiding, likewe like going out, experiencing
(57:04):
the world, learning from otherperspectives, respecting others'
perspectives, identifying yourvalues and being open to many
other people's, like kind ofmore of a tolerance perspective.
So that's what we should leanon a little bit more.
At least that's what I, whatwe're trying to do.
So I think that's the, that'sthe tip for everyone is like be
compassionate, that's all.
Jacqueline (57:24):
I've got to say All right, everyone, I hope you are
doing okay.
For those of you who arehurting right now, I hope we can
all remember that progressisn't linear, that different
things need to happen in orderfor progress to be made and
actually, maybe this election,some good will come of it.
(57:46):
Some needed change will happenfor us to come together someday
and hopefully we can have faithin that and if not, we'll handle
what comes.
For now, we will see you in acouple weeks and I will say if
who you really want to bepresident is either me or Kibbe,
please give us a five-starrating on Apple Podcasts or
(58:07):
Spotify.
Bye everyone.
By accessing this podcast, Iacknowledge that the hosts of
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to the accuracy or sufficiencyof the information featured in
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The information, opinions andrecommendations presented in
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(58:29):
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(58:50):
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(59:18):
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!