The Aesthetic That Explains American Identity Now

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Aesthetic That Explains American Identity Now"

Podcast: The Opinions (New York Times Opinion)
Release Date: December 2, 2025
Host: Meher Ahmad
Guests:

• Tressie McMillan Cottom (Columnist, Sociologist)
• Emily Keegan (Photo Editor, Creative Consultant)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Meher Ahmad is joined by cultural commentator Tressie McMillan Cottom and creative consultant Emily Keegan to unpack the resurgence of "country" and rural aesthetics in American culture—and what this says about identity, politics, and authenticity. The conversation explores how rural signifiers have seeped into mainstream fashion, pop music, entertainment, and politics, and analyzes the political implications and tensions underlying this cultural shift. The episode tackles the cycles of American nostalgia, the power and contradictions of authenticity, and the potential future of American political and cultural storytelling.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Where the Country Aesthetic Is Showing Up

(01:03–05:30)

• The rural/country aesthetic is newly dominant in:
  • Reality TV (e.g. “Yellowstone,” dating shows about farmers, “Swamp People”)
  • Home design (“farmhouse” and “cottagecore”), fashion (Western, denim, camo like Realtree)
  • Social media influencers (e.g., “trad wives” like Ballerina Farm)
  • Pop music (Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter,” Sabrina Carpenter, others crossing into country)
  • Comedy (surge of country-inflected comedians, e.g., Leanne Morgan)
• Quote [Tressie, 03:08]: “Farmhouse and mid century modern are over. It's all about cottage, modern, cottage, you know, cottage chic, granny cottage... I see it in comedians... very popular on social media.”

2. Is Rural Aesthetic a Political Signifier?

(05:30–09:34)

• Trends cycle, but what makes this moment unique is the intersection of culture and politics, particularly nostalgia.
• The rural aesthetic today represents not just a physical place, but an “imagined” America. It's often about a nostalgia for a (possibly mythical) pre-modern, ‘traditional’ past—a vision that aligns with current right-wing political narratives (“Make America Great Again”).
• Quote [Tressie, 06:39]: “When you say something like make America great, that's a backward looking vision… about nostalgia for an imagined American past where, you know, all families were, quote, unquote, traditional and all women were real women...”

3. How Power and Cultural Stories Shape Aesthetic Trends

(07:26–09:34)

• Emily connects shifts in popular aesthetics to narratives of power: Who is culturally considered “in charge” (e.g., the rise of conservative culture in the Clinton years).
• TV, entertainment, and news all mix to reinforce or challenge dominant cultural myths.

4. The Trump Contradiction: Rural aesthetic and an Urban Figure

(09:34–15:22)

• Trump is overtly urban—his aesthetic is New York glitz, not rural modesty—yet he’s become the symbol of rural American identity.
  • Tressie: The key is that “rural” is a cultural myth, not a strict geography; you cannot evoke rural without also invoking urban.
  • Trump appeals to American nostalgia and “Southernness” to embody an imagined past, leveraging cultural signifiers (e.g., genteel womanhood, race, and the Confederacy) lodged in the American South, blurring urban-rural divides.
• Quote [Tressie, 10:08]: “When we talk about being romantic for rural life, we're really talking about an imaginary place... These are signifiers that are maybe less about a physical place, a geography.”
• Discussion of how “showing the seams”—being visibly handmade or imperfect—can ironically help a political figure appear "authentic" and thus “rural.”
• Quote [Emily, 13:16]: “When we boil down what a rural aesthetic is... it's about the human hand and showing what humans create, versus the urban aesthetic, which is based in machine and in technology.”

5. Country Music and Political Tensions

(15:49–19:24)

• The “renaissance” in country music (e.g., Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter”) echoes broader anxieties—especially around authenticity, race, and who “belongs” in country spaces.
• Country music has always been shaped by anxiety about race and authenticity; when black, queer, or Hispanic artists attempt to claim country music, it causes anxieties in the industry and is politicized in ways previous crossovers (e.g., Dolly Parton) were not.
• Quote [Tressie, 16:03]: “Country music is invented as a consequence of anxiety about race… [industry] panicked a lot of people in the music industry who make a lot of money off of how easy it is to bracket what is and is not country music.”
• Anecdote: Beyoncé’s country debut sparked jokes about its impact in an election year, and a superstition that “country hits topping the charts signals a Republican win.”

6. The Cowboy as American Myth & Barometer

(19:24–23:48)

• Cowboy imagery rises at moments of national anxiety or transformation (notably, around major elections or after cultural shifts, e.g., around 1980, 2000, Trump years).
• Cowboys represent safety in a dangerous world and signal a new horizon or the taming of chaos—often tied to anxieties about the "other."
• Quote [Tressie, 21:07]: “People, power goes back and taps into the cowboy when it is saying there is some new horizon that we need to now capture, tame and own. And it is dangerous...The cowboy comes into a lawless land always full of a dangerous other, whether it is indigenous people, whether it is immigrants…”

7. Pop Culture Universes as Mirrors of Political Eras

(23:48–25:05)

• Taylor Sheridan (creator of “Yellowstone”) is described as crafting “a soap opera for Trump's America,” weaving rural anxiety, anti-elite sentiment, and nostalgia into popular storytelling.
• Contrast to Obama-era pop culture (e.g., Shonda Rhimes) which presented a “colorblind” and aspirational America.

8. The Search for Authenticity and the Path for Democrats

(25:05–31:33)

• Could Democrats harness the rural aesthetic? Or would mimicking it seem inauthentic?
• Authenticity, even if artfully constructed, is still crucial. Voters are drawn to candidates who seem “handmade,” raw, or to “show the seams.”
• The association of rural/southern traits with American authenticity recurs—from Johnson and Carter to Obama (who, despite being from Chicago, signaled connection to rural America).
• Both panelists suggest that Democrats need a new “character” for the current political story; the anti-hero trope has run its course, and a “Superman” figure—a positive hero—is due.

9. The Enduring Value of Handcrafted "Authenticity"

(30:59–31:33)

• The handmade, “Etsy candidate”—crafted but appearing real—may be the future of political storytelling, with “authenticity” often equated with the (mythical) openness of rural America.
• Quote [Meher, 31:19]: “We want the Etsy candidate.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cyclical nostalgia and political meaning:
  • [06:39] Tressie McMillan Cottom: “...when that nostalgia is present, but the politics are also enabling a set of ideas that are mobilized, that culture, then I think we can say, all right, so the culture, yes, is reflecting something. And more importantly, the politics is trying to reflect the culture.”
• On Trump channeling rural through Southern myth:
  • [10:08] Tressie McMillan Cottom: “When we talk about urban versus rural... the South holds this idea of the quintessential past… It is still steeped in a romanticism... You can, you know, you can pull out the Confederate flag, and... suddenly people's imagination is in the South. Well, once you are in the south, in the imagination, you are just, if you'll forgive me, you are just hayride away from rural America.”
• On handmade vs. mechanical authenticity:
  • [13:16] Emily Keegan: “When we boil it down... it's about the human hand and showing what humans create versus the urban aesthetic, which is based in machine.”
• On country music as political lightning rod:
  • [16:03] Tressie McMillan Cottom: “Country music is invented as a consequence of anxiety about race... but before even Beyoncé does Cowboy Carter, there'd been years of Black artists… trying to make a claim that country music was authentic for them as well… panic in the industry… and a political moment came along where... opportunists… turn it into a cultural war.”
• On the cowboy symbol:
  • [21:07] Tressie McMillan Cottom: “People, power goes back and taps into the cowboy when… saying there’s some new horizon that we need to now capture, tame and own. And it is dangerous. The reason why we like the cowboy is it is safety in a dangerous world… That gives you some sense of safety and security.”
• On the limitations for today's politicians:
  • [27:32] Tressie McMillan Cottom: “…the era of the antihero and the political storytelling is over… I don’t even care if it’s good. Just give me a flying dog. I’m over it. I do think that the era of the antihero... is over. And that means looking to cast someone new. And I’m not sure I have seen it yet.”

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Segment Timestamps

• 01:03–05:30: Country aesthetic examples—TV, design, comedy, social media, fashion.
• 05:30–09:34: Is rural a political signifier? The power of nostalgia in the current political climate.
• 09:34–15:22: Urban/rural myths, Trump’s paradoxical authenticity, and aesthetics of power.
• 15:49–19:24: Country music’s cycles, authenticity, and politicization (Beyoncé, race, and identity).
• 19:24–23:48: Cowboy as a barometer for political anxiety and American mythology.
• 23:48–25:05: TV universes (“Yellowstone” and “Scandal”) as mirrors of their times.
• 25:05–31:33: Can Democrats (or anyone) “win” with rural aesthetics? The future of political authenticity and the yearning for a new hero.

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Conclusion

The episode makes clear that rural and country signifiers are less about literal geography and more about American mythmaking, nostalgia, power, and the struggle over authenticity. Although pop culture and politics are more fragmented than ever, the rural aesthetic's emotional and symbolic power persists—especially at moments of collective uncertainty. As Americans continue to search for authenticity and reassurance, both political parties and media creators are likely to keep invoking, reinventing, and contesting the meaning of the “country” and the “cowboy” in American life.

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Transcript

[Narrator]

Hear that? That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest. Work done by thousands of working forest professionals like Adam, a district forest manager who works to protect our forests from fires.

[Adam (District Forest Manager)]

Keeping the forest fire resistant, synonymous with keeping the forest healthy. And we do that through planting more than we harvest and mitigate those risks through active management. It's a long term commitment.

[Narrator]

Visit workingforestsinitiative.com to learn more.

[Podcast Host Intro]

This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

[Meher Ahmad]

I'm Meher Ahmad and I'm an editor for New York Times Opinion. I'm here with columnist and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottam, who often writes about culture, and photo editor and creative consultant Emily Keegan. Welcome.

[Emily Keegan]

H. Hi. It's great to be here.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Hello. It's a pleasure to be here.

[Meher Ahmad]

Both trustee and Emily are keen observers of the cultural zeitgeist. And in their own spheres, they've been noticing an ongoing mainstreaming of all things country and rural. Think shows like Yellowstone, this is America.

[Narrator/Commentator]

We don't share land here.

[Meher Ahmad]

And hunting wives.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

What brings you to East Texas? I guess I live here now.

[Meher Ahmad]

Oh, well, welcome pop stars like Beyonce and Sabrina Carpenter, producing country songs as part of their repertoire. And trad wife influencers like Hannah Neeleman, popularly known as Ballerina Farm, who has now more than 10 million followers.

[Farm Tour Guide]

So we have the dairy barn where the cows are going to be over where Daniel and Martha are standing is going to be the hay barn. So in the hay barn structure will be obviously hay, alfalfa, grain.

[Meher Ahmad]

So what does the mainstream embrace of this aesthetic say about our society and about our politics? Emily, Tressy, just so we're all on the same page, I'd love for each of you to give some examples of where you're seeing the country aesthetic showing up. What makes you define these trends as rural and what are the specific signifiers you're seeing?

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Okay, I'm gonna try not to take all of them, although I know I won't. Okay, so reality TV show jumps out there. You have, there's a show where a farmer takes a wife who is ready.

[Meher Ahmad]

To fall for a farmer.

[Adam (District Forest Manager)]

Have you ever dated a farmer?

[Emily Keegan]

No, I've never dated a farmer before. Love that show.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

So many people contacted me when the show premiered which says that I have a brand and I was very proud of that. But you can even get into, I think, shows that aren't as character driven, where the morality is Actually a character. So then you've got shows where there are alligator hunters in Louisiana and a show called Swamp People.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Last year, the Landrys came out on top in a friendly competition to score the biggest average gator size.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

I see it in sort of everyday, accessible, middle market design aesthetics. I'm one of those people in the middle of also decorating my home because, you know, how much more basic can I get? And you know, the hottest trend right now is farmhouse and mid century modern are over. It's all about cottage, modern, cottage, you know, cottage chic, granny cottage, all of that. Just sort of appealing to that idea. I see it in comedians. There's this crop of country, country inflected comedians, someone like Leanne Morgan.

[Personal Storyteller]

I drove to the Walmart in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and I took my two babies with me and I went into the Walmart and bought an EPT pregnancy test. I took it in the stall and I tinkled on it and my 3 year old boy looked at me, said, what is it? Positive.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

So you see it in comedy. I think it is very popular on social media. And then of course, all the pop stars that you mention.

[Meher Ahmad]

Emily, what about you? Was there one or two aesthetic trends that kind of made you sit up and notice, whoa, this is everywhere now?

[Emily Keegan]

Yeah, I mean, I think we've had a very long romance with rural aesthetics in this country. And after the second Trump win, what I noticed was there was a big cowboy trend that took off. Denim is big, Western culture is big. SNL this season had a musical act on a hayloft, in a hayloft, real tree coming in and dominating the sweatshirt world.

[Meher Ahmad]

Just for people who might not know. What is Realtree?

[Emily Keegan]

Oh, it's the hunting camouflage.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

So it's like something all of our listeners will be very clued into. Hunting camouflage.

[Emily Keegan]

Well, okay, where would you have seen it? You would have seen it on the merch of chapel roan. She had a hat that said Midwestern princess. And again, Midwestern princess, I think is part of this trend as well. And that was picked up by the Harris Walls campaign. If you recall, they did also have a hat.

[Meher Ahmad]

Yeah, I mean, so part of this is also, you know, these are cultural signifiers. But are there political undertones to these trends? Like does it signify left, right, divide or geographical dividend?

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

You know, trends are trends and they're always cycling through. What matters is whether or not a trend hits a political moment. And that's what I would argue we have happening now. You know, cowboy boots will circle right back around in seven, 10, 15 years, whatever. But we may not have the politics to imbue that trend at that moment as a political signifier. I have argued that this is one of those moments, however, where, yes, the cultural turn is mirroring the political turn. And as much as it is about, like, a real place. So when we're talking about being romantic for rural life, we're really talking about an imaginary place, right? This isn't really the rural life that actual people who live in rural America tend to be familiar with. This is a. These are signifiers that are maybe less about a physical place, a geography. And I would say the divide is between nostalgia and today's politics. It manifests in many different ways. But when you say something like make America great, that's a backward looking vision, right? That is not about the future, although it's trying to own the idea of what the future should look like. But it is really calling to a nostalgia for an imagined American past where, you know, all families were, quote, unquote, traditional and all women were real women, and, you know, home life looked this way. So what happens is when that nostalgia is present, but the politics are also enabling a set of ideas that are mobilized, that culture, then I think we can say, all right, so the culture, yes, is reflecting something. And more importantly, the politics is trying to reflect the culture. And I think that's one of those things that we have happening right now.

[Emily Keegan]

I think our culture generally moves by whoever we think is powerful at any given point in time. So we're very curious people, and we're also really interested in power and the stories of the people who we think are holding power. And that tends to shift with the narrative that we give our political moment. So when we have large elections and a narrative is built around the reason for whoever wins, we follow those guidelines, those guides within our culture. So, I mean, we look at kind of like how culture changed through the Clinton years and what was on TV and when. When the rural revolt happened in 94, we had a narrative around that that was about a shift in a rising conservative culture in this country, which was absolutely true. It's, you know, narratives are based in truth, right? And our television shows followed that. We get shows like that Brett Butler.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Show, Grace Under Fire.

[Emily Keegan]

Grace Under Fire, yeah. What happens in 96 is that Clinton wins again. And that upsets this narrative that we are in a moment of a dominant rural culture, and instead we have what is kind of a rural and urban culture mix. I'm glossing over a lot here, but if we think about our culture as kind of three different groups of storytelling. We have storytelling from Washington and what's coming out of our political narratives. We have storytelling coming out of our entertainment culture, and then we have storytelling coming out of our news and journalism. And how those mix, I think, is where our culture ends up landing.

[Meher Ahmad]

I mean, inherent to what I'm hearing from both of you is that a large part of this trend has to do with our political moment, which is the era of Trump. But Trump himself is kind of a New York City cultural icon. Emily, you wrote a piece for the Opinion section about how he's dipped the White House in gold. And nothing about his personal aesthetic seems very rural at all to me. He's very much a city figure and always has been. But there's no denying the relationship. Relationship between MAGA and the country aesthetic. Do you see that as a contradiction?

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

No. Yeah. No, I don't see it as a contradiction. This is, again, about keeping in mind that when we talk about Donald Trump being a sort of a quintessential New York urban figure, that may be true in his biography, but we're not talking about real places. When we talk about urban versus rural, and when you appeal to rural, you are always, always calling up the idea of urban. Right. These things exist at the same time. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I would say that what Donald Trump does, the way he enters into the rural imagination, is he does it through Southern ness. Now, you can talk about the South. The south has plenty of urban places. Atlanta is a major international city. But when we talk about the south the way we would rural or urban, as an idea, an imaginary imagined place, a set of beliefs, what we mean is the south holds this idea of the quintessential past that we can be very romantic about, even when it's a dark romance, Right? We're talking about slavery and violence and a civil war and all of that, it is still steeped in a romanticism. And I think that what Donald Trump does is he becomes associated with rural life because of how often he has appealed to Southernness. When he, of course, raises the specter of racism or raises the specter of, you know, genteel womanhood, all of those things that the south is kind of known for, they came in the figure of Donald Trump, in his rhetoric. Anyway, you know, we keep this big treasure chest, a repertoire of ideas in the South. And when somebody wants to call them up, they can go and open the toy chest, and there it is. You can, you know, you can pull out the Confederate flag, and you can pull out, you know, songs of the south or whatever it is, and suddenly people's imagination is in the South. Well, once you are in the south, in the imagination, you are just, if you'll forgive me, you are just hayride away from rural America. And so those two things, I think, are happening simultaneously with Donald Trump. Appealing to nostalgia will always have political power, especially when people are very anxious and afraid, which is what I would argue people are for many, many reasons. And that's why I think Donald Trump reads as rural to some people. Although I'd pay money to see. I'd pay money to see Donald Trump in actual rural America, for what it's worth.

[Emily Keegan]

Well, have you seen him put on a. On a cowboy hat?

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

No, I have not.

[Emily Keegan]

He's done it once. It doesn't work. It really doesn't work.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

I mean, he's got his seat.

[Emily Keegan]

It looks. It doesn't fit on that hair.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Yeah, yeah. I'm not surprised.

[Emily Keegan]

It's a look for sure. You know, Donald Trump, he shows the seams. You see where the makeup ends on his face. It's very clear that his hair is done by himself. Right. And you see the grease in it. There's a photo of him where you see that he holds his tie together with tape.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Oh, I just felt physical. That was so embodied, you know?

[Emily Keegan]

And I think when we boil down what a rural aesthetic is, regardless of who is engaging with, is about the human hand and showing what humans create versus the urban aesthetic, which is based in machine and in technology. And we think about our urban centers. That is where we produce a lot of our culture, but it's also the center of our governments, and it's also our financial centers. And all of the aesthetics that we associate with urban life come from those occupations which are about the mind over the body. This is not where you are toiling and making things with the human hand and with your physical self. And that is the schism, I think. So when I look at Trump, I think, yeah, there are a lot of things about him that are very rural because he's not slick. You know, like, we look at Gavin Newsom, for example, and Gavin Newsom, to.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Me, despite being quintessential urban guy, right.

[Emily Keegan]

And I think it's just because he uses hair gel.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

I strongly agree.

[Emily Keegan]

You know, like, and in the 90s, when we were really having this battle between what we thought was virtuous and what we wanted to support as a nation, we made a choice that people with hair gel were the bad Guys.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Yeah.

[Emily Keegan]

If you ever watch Mighty Ducks 2, you know that when you don't have hair gel, you are the hero. Right? You're connected to nature. I mean, this is kind of going back to the debate about that's kind of the center of the American Revolution and the story of America. Like, what does the king represent? It represents a power that is not related to the rural struggle and the physical relationship to nature.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

I love this idea of Donald Trump, however, being manual as opposed to mechanical.

[Emily Keegan]

Oh, yeah.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

The idea on him being manual is just absolutely fantastic. Yeah, he's very. He's very embodied in a time when everything from technology to this sort of end of rational science is very much enamored with being disembodied. The idea that, yeah, he shows up in his body is just so physically present, does lend itself to thinking about people who work with hands and work with bodies, which is. Yeah, it's fascinating.

[Meher Ahmad]

I wanted to talk a little bit about country music. Tressy, you've written extensively about country music. Do you think the renaissance of country music fits into this role aesthetic and, like, what does it indicate about the politics of the moment, especially when it comes to race?

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Okay, but I gotta first of all acknowledge I. I saw. I saw what you did there. The renaissance and country music. Okay, so you're gonna make me do it. Thank you, man. Okay, so you're gonna do the thing. Listen, we cannot, from the fact that we are cycling through again, the trend in country music of moving between pop and country, and these intracultural wars about authenticity are endemic to country music. So that part is not new. It has been true since its invention. Country music is invented as a consequence of anxiety about race. Right. You have to call it countries to separate it from what was at the time early R and B, or quote, unquote, race music. But before even Beyonce does Cowboy Carter, there had been several years of black artists, queer artists, Hispanic and Latino artists especially, who were trying to make a claim that country music was authentic for them as well. That, I think, produced a lot of anxiety in the industry. A lot of it, yes. About racism. Whether or not you could sell country music to the typical country music listener, whether or not you could sell to that audience a sort of multicultural, rural imagination, panicked a lot of people in the music industry who make a lot of money off of how easy it is to bracket what is and is not country music. At the same time that a political moment came along where there are a ton of political opportunists who are willing to take that anxiety and turn it into a cultural war. If anybody attended the Cowboy Carter concert, I did one of the nights in Atlanta. There's a whole part of Beyonce's set where she's just playing people who are talking about how she is ruining the country through country music. Right. They had leveled up the rhetoric of, you know, what was really just a pop album, but had leveled it up to the level of political discourse. And I really found that juxtaposition very interesting, because when a Dolly Parton, you know, goes pop in the 70s and 80s, yes, it was considered a violation maybe of the genre's boundaries, but it wasn't considered a political political challenge. The idea of someone like Beyonce doing it was seen as political. And a lot of that, I mean, I don't assume that that's in good faith. I think a lot of that is opportunism. But the fact is that we had that moment and you had so many political opportunists. That is about our political climate.

[Emily Keegan]

I mean, my memory of that moment was going out to brunch with a friend of mine talking about the album, and we were both listening to it non stop end she's saying to me, but she knows it's an election year, right? Like, she's come out with a cowboy hat on. You know what that means, right?

[Meher Ahmad]

Oh, wow.

[Emily Keegan]

Because when you look at when country hits the top of our Billboard charts for the last handful of decades, it means that Republicans are gonna win. Right. And there was this, like, sense that something was afoot in this nation that wasn't being spoken to in our current politics somehow, if we were having country back on the table. So that's my memory of that moment. It was a pretty high anxiety moment, I think.

[Meher Ahmad]

And just keeping in line with that idea of when we see country, when we see cowboys. Are there other moments in history when cowboys in culture have been a flag of what's to come or a reflection of our political moments? How does the cowboy of it all fit in?

[Emily Keegan]

Well, I want to start by saying that a trend is not causation necessarily. Right. Shark attacks and ice cream sales are popular at the same time. It doesn't mean that they cause each other. Right. But if you look at, for example, 1980, huge cowboy moment. There's a big cowboy moment, obviously, in the year 2000, before the bush election, who himself wore cowboys.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Yeah, he tried to embody a cowboy.

[Emily Keegan]

He tried real hard. Yep.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Yes, he did.

[Emily Keegan]

The whole time. And then after Bush, it kind of went out of style. Right. We kind of didn't have a lot of cowboy aesthetics during the Obama administration. During the second half, I'd say of the Obama administration, we don't see a lot of cowboys. I think we do see a lot of interest in Washington and in finance and tech and in tech. And none of those stories. I mean, we look at like, what's happening. The stories that we start to tell about Washington, like House of Cards and scandal. And the stories we're telling are quite dark, right? It's about a place that is not virtuous. It's broken in some way.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

The cowboy figure is part of the rural imagination, but it's kind of distinct in a way because it is a thread of continuity between, you know, American manifest destiny. And however, in any political moment, we want to borrow that framework to shape the future, however powerful interests want to shape it. So people, you know, power goes back and taps into the cowboy when it is saying there is some new horizon that we need to now capture, tame and own. And it is dangerous. The reason why we like the cowboy is it is safety in a dangerous world, right? The cowboy comes into a lawless land always full of a dangerous other, Whether it is indigenous people, whether it is immigrants, right? And they are there to stand in the gap where law may not be the best solution. That sometimes you got to do some extrajudicial murder, you know what I mean? And like. But it's somebody who you can trust because you trust his individual moral code. And that gives you some sense of safety and security. And I would argue that one of the reasons we're kind of tapping back into the cowboy figure, you know, shout out to Taylor Sheridan here, you know.

[Narrator/Commentator]

How much the Yellowstone is worth.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Who timed the market to an immaculate degree. Is that what we're. What we're looking at is, you know, I think so much of this is generated by a climate crisis anxiety of this sort of unknown horizon where we do not have law or norms yet to tell us how to manage. Like we don't have any clear answers.

[Meher Ahmad]

About how I'm supposed to.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

To manage all of this anxiety about this big scary thing that is coming and that is clearly gonna threaten to change any way our way of life, not end it, but to change our way of life. The cowboy is the figure that says no matter what happens, America will still come out on top.

[Meher Ahmad]

Yeah, I was, I'm glad you mentioned Taylor Sheridan. That's where I was gonna go next. Cause I think those TV shows very much have that anxiety of what the future has built into it. So the out of towners are moneyed tech people that are take our land and change our way of life and change our cities. And in the same sense, it's also that kind of idea of rugged individualism triumphing over these big corporations of people who are all working together to kind of take down the traditional idea of America.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Every millionaire I know wants to be a cowboy. Authenticity is the one thing that money can't buy.

[Meher Ahmad]

So the good and evil characters in those shows are so clear cut in that way that it's really a strong distillation of exactly what you were describing. Tressy.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Oh, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor. You know, when I think of, like, a popular artist who shaped, captured, and shaped our understanding of the political moment in popular culture, Obama, it is Shonda Rhimes. I feel like Shonda Rhimes created this fictional universe that had all of Obama's personal and political qualities and the hopes we were projecting onto that into this fictional world. Right. Colorblind casting, you know, full of gender diversity, every kind of family imaginable. Right. The professionals and the elites weren't in charge. Highly expert people, but they were still a little messed up like we were, so they were still relatable. You know, power is both distant and close, and we liked that idea. What Taylor Sheridan was right on time with is he produced a soap opera for Trump's America with all of its anxieties. And yes, this is this idea of now the dangerous others are both coming from outside the country, but also within. So internal migration now becomes a threat, which you now see how that gets leveled up to Trump's national homeland security policies. Right. Picking up on those nuances and turning it into a soap opera is its own special kind of maybe dark gift, but, like, Taylor really captured it in his cinematic universe.

[Meher Ahmad]

Well, so where do we go from here? Culturally? I know that this isn't one to one, but if Democrats are interested in trying to take back power at a presidential level, do they harness these cultural trends or do they buck against them?

[Emily Keegan]

Well, I think that there's nothing in a trend that is inherently liberal or conservative in and of itself. What we're talking about, all of these trends have a lot of contradictions woven into them. Any aesthetic can be contextualized in a lot of different ways to communicate one's politics. How do the Democrats win using realtree and cowboy hats? Is that the question?

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Yeah, I think it is.

[Emily Keegan]

I think the question is, can Gavin Newsom win without changing his hair? I think that people all over this country want our representatives to fight for them and fight for their interests. And when they look at the national culture and that's the propaganda and stories that are coming out of Washington and the stories that are coming out of Hollywood and they don't see themselves in some way, they revolt and choose whoever is the opposite of what they're seeing. So I think that the stories that are coming out of this government right now, I don't know who sees themselves there. I truly don't. Because it isn't clear who it is they are actually fighting for.

[Meher Ahmad]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting to consider the markers of these shifts as well. I mean, in a certain sense, does the recent blue wave indicate another aesthetic that we're about to experience? You know, I think about someone as magnetic, whether you like him or not, as Mamdani, and whether that is gonna change to some degree how people are perceiving these trends, or if it's making a difference in this kind of era of nostalgia for a bygone America that maybe never existed. Maybe. I'm asking you to trend forecast a little bit. Do you see something coming down the pipeline that's a little bit different than what we've been talking about?

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

I'm with Emily. I think that I will know when the new character emerges and enters the national scene anyway. I think there are lots of really interesting figures regionally, at state level, that kind of thing politically. But I think when we're talking about a meta story or the single story that. Because that's what a politician has to do. Right. Especially in our fragmented media mediatized world, it becomes harder and harder to do. That's one of the reasons why you can have someone, I think, as magnetic as Imam Donnie and it won't quite become sort of a national stock figure. It is very hard, the amount of charm and power you have to wed to compel a single audience out of our, you know, millions of tiny little media worlds. It gets harder every political cycle. And I think that's one of the things at the level of storytelling that's the Democrats problem. And I feel like we'll know when that character falls from the sky. But I think the era of looking for the anti hero is over or needs to end quickly. I think if we didn't learn anything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it should have been. We can only metabolize so much darkness right before people go reissue Superman. Right. I don't even care if it's good. Just give me a flying dog. I'm over it. I do think that the era of the antihero and the political storytelling is over. And that means looking to cast someone new. And I'm not sure I have seen it yet.

[Meher Ahmad]

Yeah. Emily, what about you? Do you have some trend forecasts, both political and in the cultural sense?

[Emily Keegan]

Well, I think, honestly, the only thing that matters when you're voting is whether or not the person in front of you feels authentic to you. And that is such a loaded word. We know that is an incredibly loaded word. But I think that for us in this country, authenticity often has to do with whether or not they feel like the person in front of them is handmade and shows the seams and in that way has a rural aesthetic, even if they aren't coming from Arkansas. We've got lbj, Carter, Biden, Obama, and Clinton. And a high number of those men.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

Were rural, associated with the South. Yeah.

[Emily Keegan]

The only one who might say wasn't really rural was Obama. I mean, here was the south lawyer from Chicago. Right. That shouldn't resonate. But not only is he incredible talent, but he, in his first campaign, made sure to telegraph a interest and connection to rural America and also was incredibly authentically himself in so many ways. So when we think about whether or not the. The Democrats can win, I think they have to be.

[Meher Ahmad]

Yeah.

[Emily Keegan]

Connected to our American sense of self, which includes ruralness.

[Meher Ahmad]

So what I'm hearing is realtree is the answer, actually, to taking back power.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

That was my takeaway.

[Emily Keegan]

Yeah. I mean, that's basically it. Head to toe.

[Meher Ahmad]

We still need the real tree.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

I love this idea of looking for the handmade, which, I mean, we know how much artifice goes into shaping a political candidate. But I think Emily's right. Something needs to resonate with voters that there is something real there, even if it is constructed. We want the Etsy candidate. Yeah.

[Meher Ahmad]

Well, also, that this idea of authenticity, in a way, can sometimes be synonymous with country is also what I'm hearing from both of you, that if authenticity is a value, that we look at country in America and think it's authentic.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

That's it. That's right.

[Emily Keegan]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of. We're still recovering from the Enlightenment, really. Right. The debate over the value and virtue that is found in nature.

[Meher Ahmad]

Well, thank you both for joining me. This is a lovely and very insightful conversation.

[Emily Keegan]

Thank you so much. It's been great.

[Tressie McMillan Cottom]

I had a great time. Thanks for having me.

[Podcast Host Intro]

If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur Vishaka Darba, Christina Samulewski and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering, mixing and original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.