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- [00:00]
Andrea Pitzer
Hello everyone. I hope you've enjoyed the month that I was away working on my next book, Snowblind. I spent a lot of time recreating a polar world from 100 years ago that has some ties to things happening around us today. The Arctic Circle, once a land far, far away, is now taking center stage in a military and geopolitical competition between global powers. Just to the east lurks Russia. I'll turn that into my editor later this month and we'll be excited to share it with you in 2027. Even though I was to stay off the grid for this month that I was focusing on the book, I did do a couple of events on the current national crisis. Typically, you put targeted groups in camps after you've shut down journalistic outlets after you. So here we're in a reversed setting. Certain groups are highly vulnerable. One of them was hosted by Duke University last week, a panel on the effects on families of ICE detention policy. But the majority of the US Population actually can act, and I would argue ought to be acting. I'll include a link to that panel in the episode description below if you want to check it out. I'm only a small part of it, but the others had some great things to say. The research literature is remarkably consistent on this that immigration detention, particularly prolonged detention, has severe, widespread, multilayered, and often very long lasting health impacts on children, families, as well as unaccompanied minors. In honor of that conversation, I want to spend this episode of the podcast torturing a medical metaphor for what's going on in the United States and many other countries today.
- [01:39]
Dr. Paul Offit
I'm the only president to take a cognitive test.
- [01:42]
Andrea Pitzer
We are living in a very sick society.
- [01:44]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
Trump continues to talk about these three cognitive tests that he aced, one that
- [01:51]
Andrea Pitzer
has had a chronic illness since forever, but which is afflicted in new and more serious ways at the present moment.
- [01:59]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
He keeps repeating, these are tough questions. These are tough questions. Just wait until you see what these questions are.
- [02:06]
Andrea Pitzer
Those who are thinking that our society might just be one election away from full recovery.
- [02:13]
Dr. Paul Offit
I just need you to name the
- [02:15]
Andrea Pitzer
animals in this picture. Just name have only to look at major court decisions in the last week and their ramifications to see that our condition is maybe graver than a simple voting cure.
- [02:28]
Dr. Paul Offit
What is that?
- [02:29]
Andrea Pitzer
That's a horse, though don't get me wrong. Voting, of course, is extraordinarily important.
- [02:33]
Dr. Paul Offit
I've had patients who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and they can still this
- [02:39]
Andrea Pitzer
test we've just seen the Supreme Court of The United States taking a sledgehammer to the Voting Rights Act.
- [02:45]
Dr. Paul Offit
Before the Voting Rights act, half of Selma, Alabama was black. 2% of black eligible voters in the country were registered. Poll taxes, literacy tests and organized terror had done the intended work of suppressing the black vote. The Voting Rights act signed by President Lyndon Johnson, changed that.
- [03:02]
Andrea Pitzer
And we saw the reaction to, with the immediate scramble to take advantage of that decision in Southern states, particularly that no longer feel themselves hemmed in by the court or law in terms of their ability to racially exclude people, particularly black folks, from any electoral representation. So if Republicans are going to redraw North Carolina, if they're going to redraw Texas, if they're going to redraw and gerrymander every one of their states, then unfortunately, we have to provide balance to that until we get to the day where we can all finally agree to put this behind us and pass nonpartisan gerrymandering federally. We also saw the ruling on mifepristone, seeking to make it illegal to prescribe via telemedicine. Let's go to Molly Megan, chief legal officer and general counsel at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and send in the mail.
- [03:57]
Erica Chenoweth
Mifepristone, the drug at issue in these
- [04:00]
Andrea Pitzer
cases, is one of the safest, most studied medications available. Among other things, mifepristone is used for medical abortions, which is why it was targeted.
- [04:09]
Erica Chenoweth
It's part of essential reproductive health care.
- [04:11]
Andrea Pitzer
And the confusion wrought by these decisions has really monumental impacts on care in the United States. We also saw the Supreme Court stay that initial ruling at least for this week. So this means access is restored, at least for now. It comes after the drug's manufacturer, as well as 21 states asked the court to block that order. Serious court watchers have suggested that this is a move by the conservative justices both to look reasonable and also to not rile up voters ahead of the upcoming elections. That we are even at this point with a medically sound and well vetted treatment is a ridiculous imposition of one specific religion on every American.
- [04:52]
Dr. Paul Offit
I guess if it's up to the
- [04:54]
Joseph Stiglitz
Pope, he thinks it's just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
- [04:58]
Andrea Pitzer
It too is a sign of the sickness.
- [05:01]
Dr. Paul Offit
But you had the wrong person up here. You'll be in, you'll be in World War Three.
- [05:05]
Andrea Pitzer
And to mention a third but just as important item, billionaire Ken Griffin bought the US Constitution, literally. He has purchased a second first printing of the US Constitution and now owns the only two copies of Our core founding document that lie in private hands. Billionaires are literally buying our history and our institutions.
- [05:29]
Dr. Paul Offit
Elon Musk could become the world's first trillionaire after Tesla shareholders approve a PayPal for Musk worth roughly $1 trillion.
- [05:38]
Andrea Pitzer
Our society is sick. It is diseased. Researchers at Boston University say Doge's cuts to USAID has already led to more than three quarters of a million deaths in the year since its outreach stopped. Things like voting restrictions and ICE concentration camps. We go to Washington D.C. where we're joined by Satara Gandhiari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network. Are symptoms of the rot and pathways to expand it. ICE fails to hold their contractors accountable. Congress has failed to hold ICE accountable. So it's really just a vicious cycle that continues. And the whole time we have these private corporations profiting off of the pain and suffering of adults and children alike. Today I'm going to try to address how we tackle a society wide affliction. First, I want to make one aside on metaphors and illness. There has been a lot of writing about how metaphor can be dangerous when talking about being sick. Using war metaphors to describe managing cancer, for instance, can be demeaning and judgy and inaccurate and is something that has been heavily criticized. So I'm going to use some other kinds of metaphors today, but I'm really hoping not to fall into that kind of framing. And another thing to realize about the illness that is debilitating the US right now is that the country will not get better without changes to it.
- [07:09]
Dr. Paul Offit
I want to bring in two time
- [07:11]
Joseph Stiglitz
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
- [07:13]
Andrea Pitzer
This is not like a cold that resolves on its own.
- [07:16]
Dr. Paul Offit
When Occupy Wall street first emerged, you were very hopeful. A year later, they don't seem to be very effective anywhere around the country.
- [07:26]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
What happened?
- [07:26]
Andrea Pitzer
The US has a grave condition that requires significant treatment. More than just bringing a new Congress in or electing a new president, I
- [07:34]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
think they succeeded in a way at getting a core message across. The core message was we are a divided society.
- [07:42]
Andrea Pitzer
We've seen expanding violence against civilians, erosion of free speech and civil liberties mushrooming, corruption at every level of government and devastation inflicted overseas that has already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, several illegal interventions and one hapless and extremely dangerous war.
- [08:04]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
One of their mottos is we are the 99%. And when you say that we are the 99%, it's a really strong message because it says most of us, almost all of us are in the same boat. There's just a little weak group up there. And it's not even 1%, maybe 1/10 of 1%, and it's not even those, because many of them are empathetic with the other 99%.
- [08:23]
Andrea Pitzer
On an aggregate level, we can't put all our hope in a new governor or a new president.
- [08:29]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
One of the reasons they, I think they have failed is they were instinctively opposed to organization. They wanted to be spontaneous.
- [08:42]
Andrea Pitzer
Imagining that a new leader is going to save everyone is like being in a disastrous relationship multiple times and then skipping therapy to find a better boyfriend.
- [08:53]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
Instead, they saw what had happened, what they thought of the corporate world which had brought us to all these problems. They didn't want that kind of strong
- [09:03]
Andrea Pitzer
organization or going to therapy, but then not doing any of the things that you planned on doing, because dating is more exciting.
- [09:10]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
But you can't have societal change without organization.
- [09:14]
Andrea Pitzer
Except in this case, it might not be an I can fix him moment, but more of a they can fix us. For political leaders, or the country as
- [09:24]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
a whole, inequality has been at the level that it is now in the United States at two previous periods. The Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties.
- [09:38]
Andrea Pitzer
But politicians aren't the actual leaders of change. They follow demands that are made on them. Demands by everyday voters, corporations, their peers, their party, and particularly by billionaires.
- [09:52]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
In both of those instances, Americans looked over the brink. They decided they didn't like the direction in which we were going. In both of those instances, we pulled back from the brink.
- [10:06]
Andrea Pitzer
Elected leaders can play a tremendous role by getting out in front and leading on various topics.
- [10:12]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
The Guild Age was followed by the Progressive era.
- [10:14]
Andrea Pitzer
I would 100% rather have the ability to elect leaders than to not have that ability.
- [10:21]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
The Roaring Twenties was followed by important social legislation in the thirties.
- [10:26]
Andrea Pitzer
But politicians are dependent on the political moment at hand and are rarely the core drivers stopping society's ills.
- [10:34]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
The question today is, as we understand the enormous cost that our society is paying by this high level of inequality, will we once again pull back from the brain?
- [10:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Another thing to remember is that part of the current disease afflicting the country is that under the right circumstances, almost all of us are susceptible to some kind of serious affliction.
- [11:03]
Dr. Paul Offit
Mr. Earl Warren was probably the most outspoken advocate of internment. 1942, of course, was an election year, and Earl Warren had declared himself for governor of California, and that became his platform.
- [11:19]
Andrea Pitzer
If you grew up like I did, then you know that if people are raised in a different community, exposed to different information, anyone might be part of the problem in the US Rather than part of the solution.
- [11:31]
Dr. Paul Offit
Warren was a member of an organization called the Native Sons of the Golden West. Now, this was a nativist organization which
- [11:39]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
was not only anti Japanese, it was anti immigrant.
- [11:43]
Andrea Pitzer
And honestly, depending on what we're doing, you or I might accidentally be part of the problem right now without realizing it.
- [11:51]
Dr. Paul Offit
You'll see him deriding current governor Colbert Olson for not being tough enough after the ball was rolling for internment.
- [11:58]
Andrea Pitzer
Or we might have a serious blind
- [12:00]
Dr. Paul Offit
spot, Culbert Olson said. Well, maybe we should modify that order so that Japanese Americans involved in agriculture can continue to work their fields, because that's important to California economy. Warren said, you're being soft on the enemy.
- [12:13]
Andrea Pitzer
Ours just doesn't matter for the future of democracy in this current place and time.
- [12:18]
Dr. Paul Offit
He said the fact that Japanese Americans have not committed any crime is confirming and disturbing confirmation evidence that they will
- [12:26]
Andrea Pitzer
commit a crime, which, I mean, wrap your head around that logic. That's not meant to freeze you up from taking action.
- [12:33]
Dr. Paul Offit
Earl Warren, of course, became a great Supreme Court justice.
- [12:37]
Andrea Pitzer
But I do try to stop once in a while and ask if what I'm doing is achieving the things that I'm hoping it will.
- [12:44]
Dr. Paul Offit
Warren reinvented himself as a champion of civil rights.
- [12:48]
Andrea Pitzer
If a treatment isn't working, it's okay to revisit the care plan or try another intervention.
- [12:53]
Dr. Paul Offit
He became a different man on the court, and people speculate one of the reasons he went out of his way to have the Brown vs Board education decision be unanimous was that he was feeling guilty even then about his conduct as an attorney general with aspirations to be governor.
- [13:11]
Andrea Pitzer
And if you find yourself getting angry at your fellow Americans on a regular basis, and seriously, that's probably all of us, I know it's at least me a lot of the time, it may be worth remembering that many of the people who are visibly part of the problem we have today are part and parcel of a secondary condition, not the underlying one. Of course, pneumonia is often a secondary condition, too, and it can kill. So I won't minimize the effects of those secondary conditions or the need to triage them in significant ways. But in the end, if there's an underlying illness, you're probably going to have to deal with that, too. Another way I often think of public health as offering really important analogies to our national crisis is that there are different stages of it.
- [13:57]
Erica Chenoweth
Welcome to today's discussion, the sixth session of the Breakdown, where Steve Blavitsky and I talk about the struggle for democracy in the United States, reflect on historical precedents in the US and abroad, and Offer evidence based reflections on the path forward. My name is Erica Chenoweth.
- [14:11]
Andrea Pitzer
Diagnosis tells you what is happening, what's wrong.
- [14:14]
Erica Chenoweth
Steve's research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties and weak and informal institutions, particularly in Latin America. He's co author with Daniel Zablatt of How Democracies Die.
- [14:27]
Andrea Pitzer
Prescription is what is the best treatment for you for your condition Is important
- [14:32]
Joseph Stiglitz
for oppositions to to not give up just because the the other side is
- [14:37]
Andrea Pitzer
abusing power and buy in is on an individual level, a community one or a global one. How do you get people to adopt that treatment?
- [14:47]
Joseph Stiglitz
People tend to. They vote for the illiberal because of the price of eggs and they vote against the illiberal maybe because the price eggs, maybe because of of corruption or other failures in power.
- [14:59]
Andrea Pitzer
There's a lot of good diagnosis happening right now though only a small percentage of the population is hearing it or ready to hear it or let's be honest, spends as much time thinking about this stuff online as I do and most of the listeners to this podcast do.
- [15:14]
Joseph Stiglitz
The extraordinary influence of legal influence of money and politics in the United States is such that so many American voters have been convinced that everybody's on the take, that everybody's corrupt. That gives Trump a free pass.
- [15:29]
Andrea Pitzer
There's even a decent amount of solid prescription happening out there.
- [15:34]
Erica Chenoweth
Street protests are very important in drawing participation and attention to the movement's claims and changing the public conversation, but don't necessarily impose material costs on the opponent or their enablers, whereas non cooperation does.
- [15:48]
Andrea Pitzer
I see a ton of people from different communities and disciplines talking about the need to take action and how to work on a local and national levels.
- [15:55]
Joseph Stiglitz
If we, if, if this country gets into a real emergency where the government is trying to declare a state of emergency and cancel elections, and there is a need for a really sort of a different level of response than we've had. You know, we're going to have to sort of develop the practices and, and the know how to do it.
- [16:19]
Andrea Pitzer
It can sometimes be hard to cut through the din of the blowhards who have some shtick or grift they're working in terms of telling people what to do.
- [16:28]
Joseph Stiglitz
The other challenge, in addition to just simply kind of cleaning up the state after an authoritarian episode, is the one you pointed to, which I think is even more difficult, which is actually coming up with an alternative programmatic agenda that appeals to a majority of citizens over time.
- [16:44]
Andrea Pitzer
But I see a lot of good suggestions for how to triage suffering nationwide in the short term and work for structural change in the long term, there's
- [16:53]
Joseph Stiglitz
not yet a program or an ideology that can excite people the way that the far right does in the 21st
- [16:59]
Andrea Pitzer
century west, where I see the biggest gap, if I'm going to run this medical metaphor into the ground, is often the most challenging part of public health. If you have a pretty good idea what's wrong and needs to be done, how do you get people to do that thing?
- [17:17]
Joseph Stiglitz
I mean, great, to give them a civics class and convince them that liberal politics is better than illiberal politics. But that's not usually how it works.
- [17:26]
Andrea Pitzer
How do you, on a community level and an individual level, convince people to take action, to take care of themselves, their neighbors, and their society?
- [17:36]
Erica Chenoweth
In terms of the question of what it would take to get to broader non cooperation, you know, I think like any method, it depends on the movement's own capacity to coordinate across many different sectors of society.
- [17:56]
Andrea Pitzer
It's a question that some corners of medicine sometimes skip over to and government as well. With so much uncertainty still ahead, can we ever envisage a time when we will be totally free of the virus? My spouse is a reporter who covered the COVID epidemic. And near the end of 2020, the two MRNA vaccines had been developed and were rolling out to doctors and nurses. It was an incredible scientific feat, but the Trump administration was botching the rollout. Turns out all those vaccine doses in reserve the Trump administration talked about, the ones they said they would now send out to the states. Turns out they're not actually real. They're not there. In January 2021, the Biden administration came in and actually significantly fixed the rollout in a matter of weeks.
- [18:43]
Joseph Stiglitz
President Biden speeding up the vaccine timeline and prioritizing educators for some of those vaccines. This week.
- [18:49]
Dr. Paul Offit
That comes as we hit day 40
- [18:51]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
in his 100 million vaccines in 100 days goal.
- [18:54]
Andrea Pitzer
And the nation's already more than halfway there, which was an incredible accomplishment. But another problem began to rear its head, vaccine hesitancy. Joining us now, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. In April of that year, my husband asked at a White House press conference about whether the new administration had a policy for rollout that dealt with vaccine hesitancy and whether and how hesitancy might or might not affect the way they would approach the rollout.
- [19:26]
Dr. Paul Offit
If those numbers don't budge, it's going to be very hard to get to herd immunity within, you know, just the adult population. That's why everyone's talking about pediatric trials.
- [19:35]
Andrea Pitzer
He meant it as a real question, not A gotcha, but suspects it was taken as a bad faith inquiry.
- [19:41]
Dr. Paul Offit
Who are these people who are more likely to be hesitant or refuse the vaccine altogether? At least among the rural population, 73% identify as Republicans, 41% identify as white evangelical Christians.
- [19:55]
Andrea Pitzer
The response was that they were not going to change anything based on vaccine hesitancy.
- [20:00]
Dr. Paul Offit
Dr. Paul Offit, after all, is a respected pediatrician, a vaccine researcher and an advocate.
- [20:07]
Andrea Pitzer
The idea had been that enough people would be vaccinated that it might break the back of the pandemic before the virus had a chance to mutate and emerge with variants that might be even more dangerous.
- [20:19]
Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, I get hate mail. I would say on a weekly basis. I've been physically threatened and physically harassed, and I've had three legitimate death threats, the kind that get investigated by the FBI.
- [20:32]
Andrea Pitzer
But that threshold was missed.
- [20:34]
Dr. Paul Offit
Offutt tells everyone that he's not motivated by money, but rather driven by memories. I mean, my parents were children of the 20s and 30s. They saw diphtheria as a killer of teenagers. They saw polio as a crippler. I was a child of the 50s and 60s. I had measles, I had mumps, I had German measles, I had chickenpox. I know what those diseases felt like.
- [20:53]
Andrea Pitzer
So despite an accurate diagnosis and a breathtaking medical achievement in developing a treatment that could be prescribed and made available to everyone, a significant number of additional people died due to not getting vaccinated, even in the new administration today. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reignited Covid controversy during an appearance here in Jacksonville this morning. Standing beside the state surgeon general, the governor doubled down on his anti vaccine and anti masking stance. Persuading people to do the thing that will help them is hard. That's why most of us spend way more time on diagnosis and prescription, long past the point after which we understand what's going on. Seeing what's wrong and saying what to do is just easier than actually doing something. In prior episodes, I've likened our current political catastrophe to someone dealing with addiction or a person staying with a partner. Despite long term domestic violence.
- [21:56]
Dr. Paul Offit
We are awaiting the vice president's arrival. He's just landed in the Hawkeye State a little while ago.
- [22:00]
Andrea Pitzer
People are responsible for their own actions.
- [22:03]
Dr. Paul Offit
When you talk to people in this state at the gas pump or out on their farms, yes, Iran is very much on their minds because the cost of things has gone up since late February when the war began.
- [22:12]
Andrea Pitzer
But they are also vulnerable. Vulnerable to bad actors and bad policies. Whether it's for biological reasons or financial ones or psychological ones.
- [22:22]
Dr. Paul Offit
Take for example Aaron Lehman, who's a farmer up in Polk City, about 20, 30 minutes outside of Des Moines.
- [22:27]
Andrea Pitzer
You have to be able to keep those two things in your head. That vulnerability and that agency. Both can be true.
- [22:36]
Dr. Paul Offit
When this White House says it's the best friend a farmer has ever had, you say that doesn't say much about my friends because people are out here hurting.
- [22:47]
Andrea Pitzer
So let me be clear. The path to empathy is not to suggest that people have no agency at all. The path to empathy is realizing that when a society is sick, it's a disease any of us could have caught.
- [23:01]
Dr. Paul Offit
Where is the anti vaxx message really coming from? It's a very, very well organized anti vaccination movement.
- [23:07]
Andrea Pitzer
If you're mad at the rural folks who are suffering for bringing this on us all, if you're mad at people in Michigan or some other state for not voting for Kamala Harris, I want to say that anger can be a pretty normal reaction.
- [23:23]
Dr. Paul Offit
Where is the anti vax message really coming from? It's a very, very well organized anti vaccination movement.
- [23:30]
Andrea Pitzer
But it's worth remembering that all those folks you're mad at are already being punished and will continue to be punished in more painful and greater ways.
- [23:40]
Joseph Stiglitz
One of the things that know is
- [23:42]
Andrea Pitzer
that minorities and the black population is much more likely to be hesitant to get the vaccine. So if you want the satisfaction of harm coming to them for their bad decisions, it's already here for most of them. One of the things that we have found surprising is that we're finding that there are some healthcare workers who really know the science about it. No science are hesitant to get it. You would be getting that wish. I think that a large part of that is the information or misinformation as al and to be clear, if there are people you need to shut out of your life, I'm not arguing against that. But in the larger sense, if you're out there working for bigger change, there should be some group of people who aren't already on board with what you're doing that you're hoping to bring along.
- [24:36]
Joseph Stiglitz
One, I think real concern about the overwhelmingly successful no Kings protest is there. You know, a lot of gray haired people like me, they young people have not been particularly well represented in these protests.
- [24:53]
Andrea Pitzer
And so I'm not advocating for false empathy either. You can legitimately be mad at people for a variety of reasons. For being suckers, for being naive, for being hateful. You don't have to pretend Trump voters for instance were all motivated by nothing more than economic anxiety. A correct diagnosis and prescription actually treats people with agency and respect. But to bring about change that public health buy in part of health care, you have to understand where these folks are at and invite them somewhere better.
- [25:24]
Dr. Paul Offit
More than 2 million people have watched this viral clip of a Marble head man challenging the town's planning board during this week's meeting. Because it seems like we're doing nothing. This is the Tedesco Country Club, and as of this week, it's been rezoned for multifamily housing. The only problem it's not going to
- [25:39]
Andrea Pitzer
become that you don't have to coddle racist voters by indulging their bigotry in order to figure out what might motivate them to make better choices.
- [25:48]
Dr. Paul Offit
So, but, like, when we're preserving, like, the character of Marblehead, it's like, it's a bad. We're selfish, we're doing a bad thing. Like, we're not doing any housing. Is that a question? Yeah, kind of. Like, are we kind of being tricks?
- [26:06]
Andrea Pitzer
And let me be clear, that empathy doesn't mean you have to spend all your time coddling people who are harming themselves or others. That's not a good public health intervention either.
- [26:15]
Dr. Paul Offit
Like, are we trying to do nothing? Because it seems like we're doing nothing.
- [26:18]
Andrea Pitzer
We can't make the future of the country dependent on hardcore Trump voters any more than you should center your life on someone who's addicted and stop living your own life.
- [26:26]
Dr. Paul Offit
I'm not an expert on this. I didn't even know it was a golf course.
- [26:29]
Andrea Pitzer
Build the life or the country that you want to have and make room for those who are willing to come along.
- [26:36]
Dr. Paul Offit
Like, what are we? We're trying to make sure we build. No, no Houses.
- [26:41]
Andrea Pitzer
Imagine a life in a community that people want to be a part of.
- [26:45]
Dr. Paul Offit
I don't get it. Like, people live in houses.
- [26:47]
Andrea Pitzer
One thing about our national ailment in 2026 is that it's treatable. Now, Morocco, with a closer look at a period in our history both maligned and misunderstood. There are people out there every day making measurable gains in their communities.
- [27:03]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
Call it the original great escape. On May 13, 1862, just over a year into the Civil War, an enslaved man named Robert Smalls, who labored on a Confederate steamer in South Carolina's Charleston harbor, set into motion a daring plan.
- [27:23]
Andrea Pitzer
They're stopping ICE warehouses from opening. They're getting people in ICE detention out. They're voting in record upsets to change representation.
- [27:32]
Dr. Paul Offit
He saw that the Confederate crew had left, and he knew that oftentimes they left for the evening, not to come back until the next day.
- [27:40]
Andrea Pitzer
In each situation, someone has set an actual goal in the world. Someone is calling on their neighbors or even strangers to join in.
- [27:47]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
For Smalls and six other slaves and their families, the stakes couldn't have been higher.
- [27:53]
Dr. Paul Offit
They knew that if they got caught that they would be not just killed, but probably tortured in a particularly egregious and public manner.
- [28:01]
Andrea Pitzer
Online is both real and not real. I've talked about this a lot.
- [28:04]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
Disguising himself in the top hat and long overcoat of a Confederate captain, Smalls piloted the ship past Fort Sumter towards the Union blockade and freedom.
- [28:17]
Andrea Pitzer
People, in many cases have replaced their actual lives with their online life. So in some ways, the real life becomes less real.
- [28:26]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
And how about this for a second act? After returning home to Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was elected to the US House of Representatives, one of more than a dozen African Americans to serve in Congress during the period known as Reconstruction, when the formerly rebel states were reabsorbed into the union and 4 million newly freed African Americans were made citizens.
- [28:54]
Andrea Pitzer
Online is the place they go to escape reality.
- [28:57]
Dr. Paul Offit
When you look at the radical, amazing changes that happened within a few years of the demise of slavery, there was a kind of irrational exuberance.
- [29:10]
Andrea Pitzer
But if sick public burns over media were sufficient to end careers, Drake wouldn't have had a number one album last year.
- [29:18]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
I mean, you go and you ask people on the street who the first black person was elected to the US Congress, they're gonna guess it's the 1960s, the 1970s, and they would never guess
- [29:28]
Dr. Paul Offit
it was hiring rebels from Mississippi.
- [29:31]
Andrea Pitzer
And so I'm not trying to take your hobby away if being online is your hobby, but if curing what ails America is your goal, it's going to take action in the real world.
- [29:42]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
Hiram Rhodes Revels was born free and served as a chaplain to black regiments during the Civil War. On February 25, 1870, he was sworn in as a senator from Mississippi, an office once held by Jefferson Davis, who left the Senate to become President of the Confederacy.
- [30:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Online worlds can be a way to build connections, a tool to spread ideas, and even to get initial buy in. But that actual change has to happen on the ground.
- [30:13]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
This lithograph featuring the African American members of Congress, all of them Southerners, all of them Republicans, in 1872.
- [30:22]
Andrea Pitzer
The final metaphor here is about the underlying cause of this disease.
- [30:26]
Dr. Paul Offit
When Frederick Douglass saw the portrait of Hiram Revels, he said, at last, the black man is represented as something other than a monkey.
- [30:33]
Andrea Pitzer
There is no doubt that hating minorities and women is a deep part of U.S. history. And a lot of evil has unfolded as a result of those hatreds.
- [30:43]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
The year he's seated in the Senate, 1875 is the apex of black representation during Reconstruction. Seven House members and one senator. So that's the high point.
- [30:54]
Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, no, it is. And so. But he doesn't get to enjoy that high point very long.
- [30:58]
Andrea Pitzer
But there are communities that have rejected those same hatreds.
- [31:02]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
When neither candidate in the 1876 presidential election secured enough votes in the Electoral College to be declared winner, a deal was struck.
- [31:11]
Andrea Pitzer
They are not fundamental aspects of humanity.
- [31:15]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
Southern Democrats agreed to back Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes. In exchange, the federal troops who had protected black voters were withdrawn from the South. Black voting rights were gradually stripped away and black representation in Congress faded.
- [31:34]
Andrea Pitzer
These are weaknesses to which a lot of humans are vulnerable. These flaws in society that have to be cultivated and nourished in order to thrive are like a cancer. Just as a cancer cell can reproduce, hate can too.
- [31:50]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
For most of the 20th century, reconstruction was portrayed as a failure.
- [31:55]
Andrea Pitzer
The dealer in this addiction metaphor is the extremely rich people who are corrupting society. They actively use their power to keep the country sick and to foment discord. Every vulnerability is exploited.
- [32:11]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
Columbia University historian Eric Foner estimates that about 2,000 African Americans held some kind of public office during Reconstruction.
- [32:21]
Andrea Pitzer
You can hold individuals to account for the harm they do while understanding that bigger forces are in play.
- [32:28]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
This is how the South Carolina state legislature was depicted in D.W. griffith's 1915 the Birth of a Nation.
- [32:37]
Andrea Pitzer
And from mifepristone to voter turnout and yes, even to owning the Constitution, they
- [32:44]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
were no different than other congressmen. They weren't all great geniuses and they weren't rabble like you saw in Birth of a Nation.
- [32:51]
Andrea Pitzer
It is income inequality that gives billionaires the ability to target our society's vulnerabilities and use them to their own ends.
- [33:00]
Social Movement Expert or Commentator
I think the black congressmen are worth studying, not only in their own right, but as symbols of a very big effort in our history to make this an interracial democracy.
- [33:10]
Andrea Pitzer
This is currently playing out in billionaire owned news media that is cosseting Trump, in fossil fuel companies that are reneging on climate change commitments, in universities, pressured by big donors and the administration to walk away from the freedom of speech and commitment to real education and in countless other ways. There are so many bad actors right now, but most of them are your obnoxious aunt at holiday dinners in comparison to the control that billionaires are exerting in the US Today. Without reducing and controlling the power of the super rich, we will never be able to cure the underlying disease afflicting the United States. Next week I'll return to my usual roundups at the end of each episode of Things you can do to Take Action. But for today, I'll say that to the degree that you are able, recognize that diagnosing what's wrong and prescribing an effective remedy by themselves are insufficient. A worthy coach doesn't remind players of how they screwed up the last time they got in the game in a playoff, and they don't say, you better not ruin it for everyone again. A supportive friend doesn't remind somebody who's leaving a domestic abuser that they already tried that four times and will probably just go back again, so why bother? The key is to bring people along by showing what's at stake, working toward it, and inviting others to join in. Trump is doing most of the work for us in the country right now by showing just how dangerous he is, and people are beginning to realize it. Let's take advantage of the moment and that's it. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with one person who's looking for ways to survive this mess.
- [35:00]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
To support this podcast, please become a
- [35:02]
Andrea Pitzer
paid subscriber@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what?
- [35:07]
Historian or Narrator (possibly a guest historian)
A five star review where you get your podcasts.