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I know it's a dark time, so shine your light on your people, and if you have the energy, shine your light on every person you can be, as they say, the change you want to see in the world. Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl Podcast. I'm your host, Leigh McGowan. Let's get into it. I am in New York, where my family has spent the past three years for the holiday. I do some work, my boys meet me here. We spend some time together as a family, and then we go out to our friend's house on Long island to be with the family that we chose for ourselves. It's a wonderful tradition and I love doing it, even if I never quite stop working. It's a little bit different this year because my son is spending the first half of the holiday with his girlfriend instead of with us because they do long distance and any chance they have to be together, it has to be done. But since he is a senior in high school this year, it is the beginning of a new era where the child just isn't with us. In fact, he'll be with us less and less, moving forward. And I'm starting to realize that, and I'm having some feelings about that. Lachlan is our only child, and if you can only have one, which is what happened to me because I got sick after he was born, he's the one to have. I know all people think their child is special, but our boy impresses us every day. He adds to the world he inhabits. He is a new breed of man, one who sees women as his equal and calls himself a feminist without irony. He is a gentleman like his dad and driven like his mom. And I'm going to miss him so much when he goes away to college. Being a parent is fascinating. For 18 years, this child is everything. You build your life, you build your schedule, you build your days around them, what they need, what they're doing, who their friends are, what they're interested in. And then it's just over and they go off and you stay behind. And it's what's supposed to happen. If you raise them right and you get lucky, it's what should happen. But I've only ever been on the leaving side of the parent child thing, the moving away and the starting my real life side. Now I'm on the left behind side and we'll miss you side. The call us when you can side. And as we finish up with his college apps and we realize all the cramming life skills that we need to jam into the next eight months. It's all coming up really fast. There was a framed picture in my room growing up. My mom put it there and it said, there are two lasting gifts we can give our children. One is roots and the other is wings. And I know that we gave our child both. But watching him get ready to fly away is leaving me with some emotions I wasn't quite prepared for. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely thrilled for him. I don't want him to be homesick or lonely. Well, my child will not be lonely, But I don't want him to forget us either. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, and I am deeply lucky to have both. A job I love that keeps me busy and a husband I love who I also actually like. But I realize now how hard it must be for parents who don't really like each other, and then their kids go away. And without that common goal, what's left to talk about? That must feel so awful. But that's life, right? The only thing that stays the same is change. It's just with kids, it seems like those days. Those days are never going to end. Someone once told me that the days are long, but the years are short. And at the time, I thought, yeah, the days are long. Because there were times where I thought, if I have to fill in one more hour of time, if I have to do Thomas the Train's voice for one more second, if I have to get out of bed in the middle of the night again, I might die. And now it all seems nostalgic, lovely, fleeting. And as we come up on this season of gratitude, I feel deeply grateful to have spent that time with my child, with our family, to have had those days together. But, man, I am a bit melancholy. And as we come up on Thanksgiving, that melancholy is only amplified by what's going on in the world. Thanksgiving is a time that we reflect on the things we're grateful for. A holiday where we are offered time with our friends and family. Family, if we choose to take it. But this year, far beyond my weepy mom ness, I find myself struggling with what I'm grateful for, beyond my friends and family. To be clear, we celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada, where I grew up. But it's in early October and it's more about the harvest and the end of summer. We always closed our cottage on Thanksgiving weekend. We would have a big dinner with cottage friends where every family member would have to come with a poem that we had written about the summer. And then we put canvas up on the screens and Winterize what we could and then say goodbye to the cottage until the May 24th weekend when we would open it up and start all over again. Thanksgiving in America is a completely different holiday. It is deeply rooted in American history, or at least the idealized history that school used to teach my generation and people who were older than me, which we now basically know as colonizer propaganda. Pilgrims and Native Americans sitting down to eat together before the indigenous helped the pilgrims through their first winter. We now know that story is essentially lies. But the Thanksgiving holiday is still the most popular of all American holidays. It's a secular one, so everyone is included. It's the holiday most people travel for. It's a time to be grateful and be with friends and with family. As I said, our family has done Thanksgiving with the same group of friends for almost a decade. At first in Los Angeles and now in New York. The first year, we joined them very last minute with our whole car packed to drive to San Diego to do Thanksgiving with Shawn's brother and his family. But my sister in law called me and said, do not come because everyone is sick. So there we were, a family with a bunch of sides and nowhere to go. So our dear friends, the Milks, took pity on us and invited us to join their family's Thanksgiving dinner. And when it was all over, we thanked them for having us. Ingrid is an insanely good cook. They have this large extended family, so the whole thing felt very festive. They did football in the street. I mean, it was terrific. And they were like, no, thank you for coming. Our family was on their best behavior because we had outsiders here come every year. So we did. And we have done Thanksgiving with them ever since. We love it. They have become part of our family. So while I am so looking forward to spending time with them this season, and I hope that you are looking forward to spending time with you and yours, I am still struggling because I find myself deeply confused about what Americans are supposed to be grateful for this holiday. I mean, I suppose if I was a rich, white, straight Christian supremacist who hated women and migrants and got off on bullies punching down, if I didn't care if the poor had food or the sick had health care or human beings were treated with respect, I might think the country was in a great place. Maybe if I watched World War II movies and thought those soldiers asking people for their papers were just doing their job, then maybe I'd think the country was on the right path. If I believed that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia having a Washington Post journalist chopped up into pieces while still alive and then smuggled out of Turkey in suitcases was like a baller move. Maybe I wouldn't be sickened by the American president defending that same man from the Oval Office and then making trillion dollar deals with him, but I don't think like that. So it makes me struggle. Like, I genuinely don't care what your politics are. If you were part of an international sex trafficking ring that raped and abused young women and girls for decades, to me, how you vote or what party you donate to is irrelevant. If you played an active role in the abuse of women and children, you should be held accountable. And I'm confused that that's a hard thing for people to say. I'm confused that it's even up for debate. Yes, I know that Jeffrey Epstein was most likely part of an American intelligence operation, maybe multiple intelligence operations. I know that his web spun out to different countries, involved different governments. I know the CIA is likely involved. Mossad is likely involved. We know there's at least one royal, definitely a bunch of billionaires, high level financial guys, rock stars, Hollywood people, all involved. I know that the fallout will probably include multiple presidencies. But the idea that there are so many people in power trying to cover these crimes up is just distressing. I don't think I'm alone in not caring if this scandal takes down hundreds of thousands of influential people, if it rewrites how we feel about former leaders or celebrities. I don't care if our country's influence comes from the abuse of the powerless at the hands of the powerful. Maybe we didn't deserve that influence. And it's just so incredibly disappointing that there are so many people tying themselves into knots trying to cover this up. It's sickening. And it sickens me that it doesn't sicken everyone. What has happened to us, America? We have military in our streets. We have ice, an unchecked law enforcement agency murdering people in custody. We have and continue to build concentration camps on our shores and ship people to foreign prisons without charging them with any crime. We just out that the child separation policy from the first Trump administration deliberately miscategorized the children and parents so that when they were separated, the parent was deported as a single undocumented immigrant, and the child was put into American custody as an unaccompanied minor. So with a couple of keystrokes, the American government severed the family bonds of tens of thousands of people, including toddlers and babies that were breastfeeding, so their parents could never find their children. Again and those children will never know where came from. We stole those children. We brutalized those families for what? As a deterrent to tell people, don't go to America. Those people are monsters who will steal your children. That's who we are. Where is our collective outrage in that? Where is our collective outrage on the President demolishing a third of the White House without permission or permits? He didn't even remove all the furniture or art before he took a wrecking ball to the People's House. He destroyed our history like a terrorist might have. He literally Independence Day, the East Wing, and the next day we were just onto something else. It's just a really hard time to be an empathetic, aware, patriotic American. And if you feel the same way I do, then I want you to know I get it. And you're not alone now, because the only way the podcast can continue is with the generous support of our sponsors. I'm going to take a little break to highlight them and then I'm going to be right back. Stick around. So we're coming into the holiday season and this is the time when we get dressed up. Now, you might not feel like it right now because everything is so depressing, but I think people are really going to need celebrations this year. And part of that is what we wear. Which is why I want to talk to you about Honey Love. Whether you are driving in a car to visit your family and you need a comfortable bra for a long day, or you're having a fancy New Year's Eve party where you're going to ring in the new year and you want to look snatched, either way, honeylove can help you out at the end of the day. Quality holiday outfits start with the right foundation. Honey Love bras and shapewear give you the comfort and confidence you need so you can sparkle around your holiday party or stay cozy and comfortable all day long. Like if you don't want to spend time tugging on some bra or having underwires digging to you, then you're going to need Honey Love's Cloud Embrace bra, which is a modern wireless T shirt bra with lightly padded cups that feel like a cloud against your skin. There's a reason they keep selling them out. So if you want one or you want to put one in someone's stocking, now might be the time to pick one up. Honeylove is an independent female founded brand whose products are intelligently designed by women who actually wear them, including their founder Betsy, who's very involved in the development of each and everything they sell. So treat yourself or someone you love to Honey love this holiday season. Right now you can save 20% off@honeylove.com politicsgirl just use the exclusive link honeylove.com politicsgirl to grab that discount. And after you order, if they ask you where you heard about honeylove, please support the show and tell them that we sent you. Celebrate the season feeling confident and comfortable with honeylove. Today's episode is brought to you by Oneskin. Oneskin is known for their cult favorites like OS1 body, OS1, OS1 face and OS1 eye because they all use the OS1 peptide, the first ingredient proven to target sentient cells, the root cause of wrinkles, crepiness and loss of elasticity. 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Founded by an all woman team of longevity scientists with backgrounds in stem cell biology, skin regeneration, tissue engineering, it's no wonder customers rave about their skin is smoother and firmer and healthier looking and the products have over 10,000 five star reviews. OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company targeting cellular aging to keep your skin and scalp looking and acting younger for longer. For a limited time you can try one skin with 15% off by using the code politicsgirl@oneskin co. That's 15% off at oneskin co with the code politicsgirl. And after you purchase, if they ask you where you heard about them, please support the show and tell them that we sent you. Try One Skin today future you will. Thank you. Okay, so I have been using our next sponsor a lot lately. For months I wavered between leaving the country because I was getting death threats to hunkering down and fighting for the country I love and I have chosen to stay. But doing that I have also chosen to redo my house because if I'm going to be here I better like where I live. But let's be honest, redoing your house, that's expensive. So I've been spending a lot of time on dupe.com if you have looked up furniture lately, it is extraordinarily overpriced. Dupe is this awesome tool that helps you find high quality, budget friendly versions of the expensive pieces that you're coveting. It's easy to use. You just type a forward slash in front of any product URL and it shows you the lookalike that won't drain your savings. I often just copy and paste the URL into dupe.com and I get all the options that way. And are these these aren't pathetic knockoffs. Most of these are made at the exact same factory. They're just sold under a different name at a way better price. It's totally free to use, dangerously addictive, and is blowing up on TikTok for good reason. So if you have expensive taste but maybe less expensive budget, dupe.com is your new best friend. Go ahead and make your dream home happen without maxing out your credit card. Give it a try for yourself. @dupe.com it's really, really easy to use. Just type dup.com forward/before any product URL in your browser and it will instantly find less expensive alternatives. They even have an app and browser extension that you can download without any account or sign up required. It's completely free to use, so stop wasting money on brand names and start saving with Duke.com today. So I've said it before and I'll say it again. I have to wear a lot of makeup when I'm on camera. Otherwise I often end up just looking like a pair of eyes with some nostrils under all the lights. But when I am out in the world, I have found that wearing too much makeup actually makes me look older. Which is why I was really excited to try Jones Road Beauty. A lot of my friends have been raving about Jones Road Beauty because it's a minimalist makeup brand founded by makeup artist Bobbi Brown who created this easy to use products to simplify your routine. It's clean makeup that actually works. Jones Road isn't about covering things up, but rather enhancing what you have. You don't need brushes or a complicated routine. If you want, you can get spruced up in under 60 seconds. Just use your fingers and go. If you like that effortless natural no makeup look, just clean beauty, then this is something you want to try. Their best selling product is their Miracle Balm, which is a makeup skincare hybrid that gives you this natural glow. It can be used as a tint, as a blush, as a bronzer. You can use it as a highlighter. You can use it on your lips, on your eyes. I think it's actually great to give to someone older as a gift. It's easy to use, it'll make them feel better about themselves, but they don't have to have a whole fussy makeup routine. I use it, but I would give it to my mom. She would have loved it. The whole thing just gives you a your skin but better look and honestly I think that's what we all want. Jones Road also has a full line of effortless skin for staples like their Just Enough Tinted moisturizer, which is like a lightweight formula that goes on smooth just to even out your skin tone. It hides redness, it looks natural and it feels like nothing on your skin. Jones wrote, is all about skin friendly ingredients that help your skin stay moisturized without clogging any pores. Jones wrote is a modern day makeup that's clean, strategic, multifunctional for effortless routines. For limited time, our listeners are getting a free cool gloss with their purchase when they use the Code Politics Girl at checkout. Just head to Jonesroadbeauty.com and use the Code Politics Girl at checkout and after you purchase they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support the show and let them know we sent you jonesroadbeauty.com code politics girl okay, so the Politics Girl podcast has a new sponsor, True Classic and I have to tell you it is totally worth checking out. True Classic started with a very simple mission to bring premium comfortable clothing to the masses because they felt that looking and feeling great shouldn't have to come with some designer price tag. We're talking about classic crew neck T shirts, comfortable jeans, Henley's, all without the ridiculous prices that we're seeing now. Recently my husband has been wearing a gray True Classic T shirt that I got for him and he loves it. And this is a guy that likes James Pierce T shirts. There is a reason True Classic has sold over 25 million shirts to more than 5 million people and earned more than 200,000 five star reviews. It's not just about great fabric and fit. It's about helping you show up every day looking comfortable and feeling comfortable and pulled together without being dead broke. The clothes fit. They fit where they should, they feel good, they don't break the bank and you get that polished look without sacrificing comfort or in this case blowing your entire holiday budget. So maybe this holiday season, skip the stress and the overpriced designer stuff and try giving True Classic. You can find them on Amazon and Target, Target and Costco and Sam's Club. Or you can just go to truclassic.com politicsgirl and find something for everyone on your list. Both Sean and I have a black True Classic crewneck sweatshirt. It's the flippin best. So update your wardrobe and save@truclassic.com politicsgirl that's trueclassic.com politicsgirl and now back to the show. And we're back. Look, the holidays often fill us with nostalgia. We watch the same movies, we eat the same food, we have the same traditions. But the nostalgia I'm feeling right now is for a time when I believed the world was good. Of course, there were wars and there were terrible things that happened, but I thought we were on a path forward, that we were, as a people and a nation, evolving to be a better, kinder, more fair country. And it's not that I want to go back, because I understand now that the America I remember was only great for me because I grew up white and privileged. What I'm mourning is the America I thought existed, the country I thought we were. I want to go back to feeling safe in my country. I want to go back to a time where I believed we were the good guys, the scrappy patriots on the side of truth and justice. A country that defeated a tyrant king and the Nazis. And yet now we're a country whose coast guard downgraded the swastika from a hate symbol to something potentially divisive. And they're only changing it back because people noticed and they didn't like the blowback. I grew up believing in a country that named a day after a brilliant black civil rights leader and made Juneteenth a federal holiday. The country that elected Barack Hussein Obama, not one that removes black history from schools and fires black workers from companies and took the photograph of the black slave with the whip marks on his back, the photograph that Frederick Douglass showed to Lincoln during the Civil War. War. The photograph that ultimately led to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation out of our museums. I have no patriotism for a country that only wants to celebrate the experience of people who look like me or respect for a nation that marginalizes everyone else. But even looking like me these days isn't good enough, because I'm a woman. And this country is now working overtime to reverse every piece of progress we ever made to jam us back into the role of housewife and maid and mother to undermine the jobs we do and. And the roles we play. As if our wage gap wasn't bad enough, the New York Times recently published a piece titled, did Women Ruin the Workplace? What's even happening here? With the reversal of Roe v. Wade, we now have women dying of treatable pregnancy complications. Child marriages are up, the age of consent is going down. And we have a president who says to a female journalist, quiet, quiet, Piggy. Which shouldn't really surprise us since he already bragged about grabbing women by the pussy. So it never stopped him before and it didn't stop him from getting elected. But if you are a woman listening to my show, I want you to know it's not okay. And it is hard to function living in a country that seems to hate you. I'm sure minorities feel that way. Black people have felt that way forever. I was on CNN last week and one of the MAGA commentators was challenging the other female guest across the panel and he was asking her why she wanted her president to fail. He called her un American because she should want Donald Trump's success because he's her president too. And she said in a far calmer way than he deserved, do you really think that Donald Trump thinks he's my president? And the man said yes at the same time, I piped up and said no. And then the two of us went on a tirade because he doesn't think of us. He doesn't care about women, he doesn't care about minorities, which the other woman was. He called Democrats, Democrats, radical left wing lunatics. He said he hates us. He called for the death of sitting members of Congress because they had the audacity to put out a video reminding our military that they didn't have to follow illegal orders. Of course he's not our president. He wouldn't care if we died. He would sic the military on us himself if he could. In fact, based on his policies on healthcare, on food assistance, on education, he doesn't care what happens to most of us. And this holiday season, it is hard to find gratitude in that. Believe me, I would love to just be cooking Yankee noodle dandies and watching White Christmas or Miracle on 34th street, the original or the 90s version because both are great. I would love to be listening to Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole's Christmas albums. But even going on to 103.5, your home for holiday favorites in Los Angeles this year, I was one song in before I was listening to an ad with Kristi Noem's voice telling my fellow Americans to join ICE to protect the homeland. I had to turn the whole station off and I won't be listening to it again. It's impossible to enjoy holiday classics when you're interrupted by Join the American Gestapo revenge porn. Look, I understand it is my job to be immersed in the news. My job is to break down what's going on in our country and make it digestible for people. But to do that, I have to understand it. And understanding what's going on right now is demoralizing. But I started this project to educate and inspire to make the country a better place. And in the 10 years I've been doing the job, it's only gotten worse. I wanted to make the world better for my son and now that he's 18, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to afford the college he gets into if the administration gets rid of student loans, or he's going to be drafted into the Department of War to fight Venezuela for mineral rights that none of us will benefit from. I am having a really hard time these days and as I said, I feel like anyone with an open heart or empathy or morality is probably feeling the same way. We are drowning in hate and bigotry and cruelty and the loudest, most self serving voices seem to have all the power. But I want to remind you that even with the majority of power, they are not the majority of people. I believe the majority of us don't want to live in a country where masked government thugs disappear people off the streets. We don't want to live in a country where we're scared to protest or even speak our minds privately in our home because we're constantly being surveilled by our devices. We don't support leadership that ignores court orders or the rules, rule of law or the Constitution to just do whatever they want whenever they want. Last week the President of the United States was calling for sitting Congress members to be put to death. And that is a lot to take in and it's alarming that no one seems capable of stopping it. You cannot be a person with critical thinking skills right now and not feel like you're living in the upside down. People are not meant to function with this state of constant anxiety. Our nervous systems aren't set to never leave, fight or flight. Our society isn't prepared for a complete breakdown of societal rules. So it's understandable that some people's instinct right now is to check out. It's self preservation. And I get it. But if we ever want to make it out of this moment, we cannot disengage. We have to stay connected. A bunch of my friends from Chorus, a group that I'm very proud to be part of, truly good people who want to make a difference in the world, they were recently in D.C. and they made a video. And in the video they were doing some dancing and there was a voiceover that said, the people on your timeline right now who are being the loudest, the ones who are going to the protests, the ones who are posting political content, the ones who are fighting back against this administration, they're not radicalized, they're not extreme, they don't hate America. But they are empathetic human beings who want basic rights for everyone. They want people to be safe, to be loved, to have a roof over their head, to have food in their bellies, to be able to go to a doctor without going bankrupt, to be able to be comfortable in their own skin. And if you don't want those things, then maybe it's time for you to look inward and ask yourself why. I get that people are exhausted. I get that we are burnt out and broken and hurt by our country, and we're hurt by each other. I knew it would be bad last Thanksgiving when we had just had the election. But I am still shocked daily at the damage that they have been able to do in 11 months. Not just what Donald Trump and the Project 2025 crew have been able to accomplish, but what Republican leadership have allowed them to get away with. Rule by executive order is not how our nation was created to work. Our Supreme Court is supposed to be above politics, not above the law. I am truly worried about the institutions that are being demolished right now because you can't just rebuild this CDC or the EPA or the Department of Education once it's gone. But I'm also worried about the demolition of our collective American spirit. When Charlie Kirk was killed, half the country was painted without any evidence. In fact, with evidence pointing to the contrary as the reason, it didn't matter that it had nothing to do with us. I was personally told to get security. Why? What did I do? And what kind of nation would hurt me for the actions of another? Are people as truly happy as they seem to be online talking about hanging people and murdering their fellow Americans? Are we really proud of a president who takes planes as gifts and buddies around with the people who funded 9 11? Are we really cool taking Russia's side in the war with Ukraine, favoring the murderous despot over an allied nation who did nothing but be attacked. I love my country, but right now we're not really a nation worthy of respect. I am not proud of who we are. I believe our leadership is a detriment to our place in the world and our safety in it. I believe the people in charge are dividing us up so they can sell us for parts. And having leaders that don't care if their people make it is a trip. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently made quite a clueless and tone deaf request for people to stop wearing their pajamas on airplanes. He said we needed to bring back civility to air travel by dressing with more respect and being courteous to others and helping our fellow passengers. And he suggested dressing up and being in a good mood and showing kindness to improve everyone's experience. And while I would tell Sean that most of us dress comfortably because capitalism has made airline travel so flippin uncomfortable that we have no choice and if he wants us to dress up again, we would also like 36 inches of legroom again. I would however agree that the world would be far better if we were kinder and more courteous to each other. But I believe that respect starts at the macro level. And until we stop electing leaders who make excuses for murderers and rapists and call women names and allow babies to be maced in the face and our kids to be slaughtered in their school, it is very hard for that same administration to preach kindness and courtesy and respect because the fish rots from the head. We can, however, bring those qualities back to our people, to our families, to our friends who are our responsibility. We might not be able to fix the whole world, but we can strengthen our individual world so there's more of us who feel whole and loved and those feelings can radiate out to others. So this holiday season, bring it in. Make it small, make it personal. Look at your people or your person or your animal, whatever it is in your life that you love, and be in the moment with them. Give them a little bit more of your time, give them your energy, put your screen down, remove the distractions and give the love of your life yourself. Celebrate what's real. AI is going to steal it from us. This administration is already trying to steal it from us. Take the time to look at each other and remind yourself who it's all for. Maybe that will give us the strength to continue the fight to unite with those who love against those who hate. I know it's a dark time, so shine your light on your people. And if you have the energy, shine your light on every person you can be, as they say, the change you want to see in the world. I often say that I don't like the MLK quote. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice because I think it infers that the right thing will just happen and the right thing never just happens. You have to work for it to happen. But I have always loved his quote that hate can't drive out hate, only love can do that. Which is often coupled with the quote, darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. The idea being that responding to hate and darkness with more hate and darkness only creates a cycle of violence and bitterness that we cannot escape from. That it's only love and compassion that are powerful enough to break the cycle and lead to real change. And this season I think we have to start with that love and compassion at home. So Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. I am so grateful for those who listen to my podcast and support my work. I am deeply grateful for those who financially support what I'm doing by being a member of Politics Girl Premium. But I am the most grateful for those who still care enough to make this country and the world a better place. So from our family to yours, be good to each other. The world needs you. Until next week, PG Out The Politics Girl podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan, and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.