Podcast Summary: The PoliticsGirl Podcast – "We Have To Do THIS for Another Year?"

Date: December 30, 2025
Host: Leigh McGowan (Meidas Media Network)

Episode Overview

In this end-of-year, emotionally-charged episode, Leigh McGowan reflects on the mounting crises facing American democracy, women’s autonomy, and the soul of America itself. McGowan describes her personal exhaustion and growing disillusionment as political and societal regression seems to intensify with each passing year. Yet, through passionate critique and personal anecdote, she rallies listeners: the fight for a better, more just America must continue—rooted in hope, moral clarity, and collective action.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of American Democracy & Increasing Authoritarianism

• Erosion of Democratic Norms: Leigh opens with outrage over state violence and the U.S. government’s increasing lack of accountability, highlighting recent human rights abuses by agencies like ICE, including a case where a pregnant American citizen lost her baby due to ICE brutality.
  “The party that cares more for unborn fetuses than any living child killed a baby in utero. For what? Optics.” (00:17)
• Authoritarian Consolidation: She warns of a future in which a handful of billionaires—Zuckerberg, Musk, Ellison, Thiel, Bezos, Trump—run the country with no regard for the people, pushing a vision of “techno-feudal empires.”
• International Re-alignment & Human Rights: Leigh is stunned by America aligning with authoritarian states (Russia, Hungary, North Korea) and abdicating its democratic alliances, as well as mainstream indifference to reports like Amnesty International’s exposure of egregious torture at “Alligator Alcatraz.”
  “The American government is torturing people… putting them in two foot by two foot cages in the blazing hot Florida sun. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then go look it up…” (02:55)

2. Personal Reflection on Womanhood, Motherhood, and Feminism

• Generational Regression: Leigh shares the shock of returning to a pre-Roe America, and the betrayal felt as women’s rights regress.
  “Fifty years later, we live in that world again. And the powers that be seek to strip even more of our autonomy from us.” (05:20)
• The Value of Choice: Discusses her career pivots—from acting derailed by MeToo experiences, to photography for flexibility, and finally finding fulfillment in activism and political content creation.
• Feminism as Choice: Stresses that the true point of feminism is allowing women to make personal decisions freely—career, motherhood, or both.
  “That’s the point of feminism, right? It’s the choice. Women should be able to choose what they want to do with their life, what fills their cup.” (11:22)
• ‘Tradwife’ Aesthetics vs. Authentic Progress: Critiques the resurgence of traditional gender roles, warning that social media’s glossy depiction of “trad wives” masks systemic efforts to restrict women's autonomy.

3. The Mainstreaming of Extreme Ideologies

• Open Attacks on Progress: Observes how repealing the 19th amendment (women's vote) is openly debated and right-wing movements have morphed into vehicles for religious fundamentalism and female subjugation.
  “…repealing the 19th amendment and a woman’s right to vote is something people feel unashamed to discuss openly in 2025.” (15:54)
• Upside-Down Morality: Recalls clear moral truths of her youth—good vs. evil, America vs. Nazis—and laments that today these lines have been blurred or inverted.
• State Violence & Demonization: Is appalled that the U.S. military is used against civilians, and the president publicly labels a third of the population “scum.”
  “I can’t get past the fact that it is atrocious that our President would refer to us like this, that my son might think this is how leaders behave.” (20:37)

4. Economic and Social Injustice

• Misappropriated Public Funds: Cites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—how oligarchs siphon off public benefits for secret police and surveillance, making the people “sicker and hungrier and poorer.”
  “Did we really elect this group of leaders to make us sicker and hungrier and poorer, only to use our own money to create an unaccountable secret police that are killing people in custody?” (24:49)
• Corrupted Institutions: Highlights figures like Stephen Miller’s escalating war on immigrants, dissenters, and LGBTQ+ people—labeling critics as domestic terrorists and enforcing Christian nationalist values.

5. The Moral Rot in American Leadership and Institutions

• The Epstein Files & Coverups: After the ad break, Leigh draws on John Pavlovitz’s Substack writings to outline the political and moral fallout of the (still unreleased) Epstein files.
  “What these files will ultimately expose… [are] a sprawling network of perverts and deviants who use their collective influence and wealth to violate humanity in ways unthinkable to decent human beings.” (38:34)
• Complicity & Broken Trust: Emphasizes the complicity of politicians, Christian leaders, and the mainstream media in covering for predators and protecting those in power at the cost of justice for survivors.
• Bipartisan Failure: Expresses deep disappointment in Democratic Party leadership’s inability to rise to the challenge, and the Republican Party’s transformation into an anti-democratic, “morally inverted” regime. “We need leaders who aren’t afraid to hold people accountable for the crimes they have committed against others, including against the entire American people.” (47:27)

6. The Fight Ahead: Hope, Imagination, and Resistance

• Possibility (and Necessity) of a New Future: Leigh urges listeners to not only oppose oppression, but to imagine and work tirelessly for what comes after collapse.
  “If you could have the world any way you wanted it, what would that look like? Because dreaming a new world into existence is actually just as important as living through the breakdown.” (55:07)
• The Power of Collective Action: Despite institutional collapse, cites the growing power of unions, protests, and community solidarity as signs of hope.
  “Our institutions might be failing, but the people are stepping up... We have been abandoned by our government, but we haven’t been abandoned by each other.” (58:14)
• A Call to Resistance: Makes a rousing appeal for resistance, not capitulation, and for remaking society to serve the many, not just the few.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We are a country with a thrice divorced, twice impeached, adjudicated rapist, 34-count felon… as president. And we are being told that we are domestic terrorists if we hold any hostile views to their version of traditional values. What planet are we on now?” — Leigh McGowan (26:44)
• “We need courage and imagination as we go into this next year and the years that are going to follow. Many of us can tell you what we don’t want, but we need to get really clear and loud about what we do want.” — Leigh McGowan (44:27)
• “There are only two choices… rebuild the government and society under the framework of a social democracy through a soft or hard revolution, or… decline further into a racist authoritarian state held hostage by the ruling triumvirate of techno-Christian oligarchs.” — Quoting Vicki Hobbs (52:48)
• “We are moving on. This is the nature of a cycle, a cycle that is completing itself. And I believe that what no longer fits will fall away. And I think more and more people are waking up to that.” — Leigh McGowan & Tara Isis Garris (Final 5 minutes)
• “Poverty is a policy choice. Concentrated wealth is a policy choice. None of this is natural or inevitable. We have the power to build a system that serves the many and not just the powerful few.” — Quoting Robert Reich (Final minutes; ~1:10:37)

Timestamps of Key Segments

| Time | Content | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Leigh details recent abuses by government agencies and her emotional exhaustion with current news | | 02:55 | Human rights alarm: Description of U.S. torture tactics & mainstream media silence | | 05:20 | Personal reflection on Roe v. Wade, shifting roles for women | | 11:22 | Reflection on feminism as the power of choice | | 15:54 | Resurgence of “trad wife,” open attacks on women's rights, and re-litigation of women’s suffrage | | 20:37 | Outrage about the president’s derisive rhetoric toward opposition | | 24:49 | Ocasio-Cortez quote and indictment of oligarchic control of public funds | | 26:44 | Leigh’s summary of the regime’s extremism and hypocrisy | | 38:34 | John Pavlovitz’s take on the Epstein files and societal complicity | | 44:27 | Shift towards hope: call for moral clarity, new leadership | | 47:27 | “We need leaders who aren’t afraid to hold people accountable…” | | 52:48 | Quoting Vicki Hobbs on the fork in America’s future | | 55:07 | Inspirational: Imagining a new future as form of resistance | | 58:14 | Reassurance in people’s mutual support, not institutions | | ~1:10:37 | Final reflections: cycles, letting go, choosing action, Robert Reich quote |

Final Thoughts & Takeaways

Leigh McGowan’s episode is a rallying cry to those discouraged by America’s current trajectory. She does not mince words in her condemnation of injustice, but refuses cynicism, instead invoking imagination, solidarity, and bold moral action as the only way forward. The summary message: American democracy is in existential crisis, but it’s not too late to fight for a different, better future—if we’re willing to let go of the past, stand up against tyranny, and believe in ourselves and each other.

“Go into this new year with grit and determination, because it is going to be hard. Go into this new year with curiosity and imagination because we have to create something new… I believe there is a world that is better than this. We just have to believe in it and each other in order to build it.” — Leigh McGowan (Final minutes)