Weekly Roundup: The Sin of Empathy and the Theology of Terror From Minnesota to Davos

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, author of American Caesar, forthcoming in September, about technocrats and theocrats turning America into a monarchy. Founder of Axis Mundi Media, here today with my co-host,

Dan Miller: Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College. Good to be with you, Brad.

Brad: You too, and we just did our bonus episode. So if you're a subscriber, look for the bonus episode on Sunday. A bunch of you were there with us live, and so you already know what we talked about, but we did talk at length about Minnesota and the City's Church protests. But there is more to say, and there's actually a lot to say that the media has seemingly missed. So we'll get there and flesh out the connections between City's Church and Doug Wilson, not to mention Pete Hegseth, which you may not expect. Talked about the ongoing ICE occupation of Minnesota, Minneapolis, the general strike and the religious criticisms coming at Trump and ICE from the Catholic Church, Catholic leaders, I guess I should say, and many other clergy who are participating in a general strike in the Twin Cities today, or at least Minneapolis today. We'll also talk about Davos, Trump's comment that sometimes they need a dictator, his overall fitness for office and much more. Lots to do. Let's go.

All right, Dan, as I do, I was hanging out on Twitter today, as one does, and last night, and I want to shout out somebody who listens to the show and who I've met, and that's Molly Tindall, who's been on this since the beginning, and no one else has seemed to notice. And I think we need to just be the ones who notice today and talk about it. So in our bonus episode, we went for about 40 minutes on City's Church and the protests that happened there. The FBI has arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who is the person who led that protest. They tried to get a judge to sign off on arresting Don Lemon. That didn't happen. Al Mohler and evangelical leaders have been crying about how this is a trespass and a sacred terror and all of that kind of stuff. We're not going to rehash that. If you were there with us at the live recording, you know what we said. If not, we'll publish that on Sunday, and you can listen in then. But there is something that I do want to talk about, and that's this, Dan. Guess who? Just guess who was one of the church planters of City's Church in Minneapolis, who was one of the people that said, let's start this church, let's put it here, and served on that staff for a long time. None other than Joe Rigney. Joe Rigney is, of course, the author of The Sin of Empathy, and he left City's Church to go where, Dan? Where did he go? Where did Joe go after this? Was it to, you know, a new career, new horizons? Nope. He is now the right-hand man of Doug Wilson. If you pay attention to Doug Wilson at all, if you, like me, have made poor life decisions and you watch the podcast that Wilson does, you read the blogs, you pay attention to the conferences, Joe Rigney is like his second in command. He is a general in the Doug Wilson army, along with Jared Longshore and a few others. So that's there. I'll give you that, Dan. I'll just tee that up to see what you think about that. In addition, Joe Rigney is part of the team that goes to Washington, DC, to preach occasionally at the church plant that Christ Church, Christ Kirk Moscow, has planted in DC. And so what I'm trying to tell you there is Joe Rigney is somebody who has probably preached while Pete Hegseth was in the pews, because that is where Pete Hegseth attends church. So yeah, there's a lot there. I have thoughts. I'll leave it to you to start. What do you think about all those connections of the church that was protested because their pastor is an ICE field officer last weekend?

Dan: Well, so one of the points we made in, we were talking with people in the live episode was that this was not an anti-Christian protest. These are protesters who went into a church and they criticized them essentially for being bad Christians, or saying that, in their view, you're corrupting the gospel. How can you essentially be a Storm Trooper and a pastor, a Christian pastor? Basically, those are my words, not their words, but that's basically what they're saying. And then we find out, as you say, just connecting the dots, that this is a church, if the belief and ideology of one of its founding pastors is any indication, this is the church that if you were like, ask them and say, you know what's the biggest problem, what's the biggest sin, the biggest way that Americans are going astray, that American Christians have lost their way. They'll probably say pornography, because they say pornography about everything. I'm anticipating. It's in the Code that's coming up this next week. But leave that out, and the answer on the right-wing Christians right now is empathy. It's not caring for the poor, the marginalized, the widow. It's not. It's empathy. We care too much. That's the failing of American Christians. They just care too damn much about people that they shouldn't care about. And hence you have the book The Sin of Empathy. That empathy is this sin. So, yeah, it's like, oh, gee, what a shock that a guy that runs an ICE field office there in Minneapolis, who was listed on the church website as a pastor of this Southern Baptist Church. Shocker, that that's the ideology. It's not, you couldn't write it. You couldn't make it up and be like, what if the guy that wrote the book The Sin of Empathy actually founded the church? And it turns out he did. But I feel like that says a lot. I understand. I mean, I teach and talk all the time, there's a lot more than theology to like Christian belief and so forth. But I think theology, or if you want to call it, the ideology, is part of what shapes Christian expression. And this is an ideology that, in my view, has been reverse engineered. Nobody read the Bible and said, you know what, the main teaching of the Bible is, don't care too much. I don't think anybody got that from the Bible. They reverse engineered it. Because what they're trying to do is they're trying to critique anybody on the left or progressive Christians, or anybody else who says, well, what about like Jesus talking all the time about the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the whole prophetic tradition and loving your neighbor as yourself, except that the neighbor is this despised other, and you know all of this. What about that? And they didn't have an answer for it, so they invented a theology that said, well, empathy is bad. That's not what Jesus meant. And you know, move on. Yeah, that's the ideology driving this. This is why you can have a Christian pastor who, I imagine, in his own experience, experiences no dissonance at all between going out on the weekdays and like knocking some heads and pumping tear gas into crowds of unarmed protesters and breaking down doors without warrants. That's another issue that we might get into when we talk about this and hauling people away, whether they're American citizens or not, demanding papers. You are not required in the United States to carry proof of citizenship, but people are routinely stopped and detained by ICE for not having proof of citizenship. Experiences no disconnect or dissonance between that and then going into a church on Sunday and presumably preaching about, you know, loving your neighbor and being a good father and a good friend and whatever, because that's all misplaced empathy. Brad, if you care about those people without papers, if you care about the wrong kinds of Americans, you just got misplaced empathy. So it fits, it fits, and it's like a big puzzle piece that suddenly slides into place. It's like, oh, okay, that confirms it. Yeah.

Brad: I want to stay on this point, and then I want to make a further point about Pete Hegseth and American empire. So here's what Joe Rigney put online after the protests happened last week. "11 years ago today, I helped plant City's Church. I served as a pastor there for eight years. This is a normal Baptist church now."

Dan: That's the problem.

Brad: Yeah.

Dan: As if. I just want, like, as if that makes it okay. You're like, that's a condemnation of the Southern Baptist Church, of the Southern Baptist Convention, and that kind of church. That's the problem. Joe Rigney, this is a regular Baptist Church. Yes, that's the issue. This is like—

Brad: I'm on a first date, and I'm like, yeah, no, I'm normal guy. Normal guy. I wear Dockers, polo shirts. I live in a one bedroom apartment. I do have 17 ferrets, yes, but I'm just a normal guy. I'm normal. I've nothing weird. I'm normal. You know, I shop at the Gap. I like crypto drinking, IPAs, Coke Zero. It's like, yeah, I'm normal. Normal, yes, 17 ferrets, yes, but that's not a big deal, okay? Um, this is a normal Baptist Church. They worship Jesus. They love each other. Now he does not say they love everybody. They just love each other, which is interesting. They seek the good of their neighbors. Now they seek the good. He does not say they love the... This is like, y'all, sorry, Dan, I got to control myself. But as somebody who spent way too much time in this literature, they seek the good of their neighbors does not mean they love their neighbors. It means they seek the good of their neighbors, which probably means, Dan, ICE going into homes and schools and taking away people that, as you just outlined, don't show their papers, et cetera, okay?

Dan: Or you can get even more twisted, as people like Allie Beth Stuckey and others do, who always try to make it so it's like, somehow, to the benefit of the people being deported, that they're being deported, right? It's for their own good. There's their countries. Brad, their countries are experiencing such a brain drain because so many of them are coming to the US. So it's gonna be great for their country to have them back. It's literally the arguments they make.

Brad: It's amazing how immigrants, documented or undocumented, are always like so many... They're like St. Paul, all things to all men. It's like if, in their, these people's minds, if you're an immigrant, you are so rich that you're taking away the housing stock from everybody and buying up all the houses on the block. You're also taking all the good jobs.

Dan: You're also getting all the welfare. Yeah, you got all the welfare.

Brad: You're super lazy, but somehow you have four houses that you know, that you vote in seven different states, like, you know, like you're really politically active, and yet you're dumb and all that. So anyway, it's amazing. All right, "The Democrats are the party of lawlessness, of cultural decay, social disorder and death. It's time for Christian boldness, for courage and clarity about Jesus and sin. It's time for our governing officials to fulfill their mandate and become a terror to evil conduct." So here's the irony about City's Church and Joe Rigney, and then we can go to the bigger dimensions here of, here's a man who's saying in the first part of his little thing here, it's a normal church. They love Jesus, they love each other. Leave them alone. It's not, why are you? Why them? Come on. Oh, one of the pastors serves his country in law enforcement. Oh, you're the party of lawlessness. Like it's a sort of just, I can't believe you would come to this meek, family friendly, good old fashioned, Jesus loving, American flag waving church and like protest. But since you did, it's time for the government to become a terror and destroy those who did this. Because that's what should happen, right? I mean, it goes from, and this is like the encapsulation of Christian nationalists and the American right in general. It goes from victim, I can't believe you would do this to us, to like, well, all right, we'll have to destroy you, genocide. It is ethnic cleansing. You asked for it, I guess. So that's what I read here. One other dimension I want to throw to you is this. I don't want to be one of those people who does the like, oh, you know Joe Rigney was the pastor, and he, Doug Wilson, and he shook hands one time with this person. And that means this. But I will say, Dan, that if, again, I said this on the bonus episode. If you look back in 50 years, if we still have books and humans and other stuff in 50 years, and people still read and stuff, there's going to be something to this protest that says, look, they protested a local field officer from ICE. They were also protesting a man, or at least a church that was planted in part by a man that has a legacy of this man's ministry, who now preaches to the Department of Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth in DC. And Pete Hegseth represents all of the terror on boats in Venezuela, all of the talk of rooting out trans people and women and others from the military, all of the talk of lethality and war and violence and destruction, the man who is the symbol of hegemonic American terror at the moment. Pete Hegseth has a direct connection to the man that planted the church where they protested. I can, if I were a historian, I could fit that in like three sentences. So I think it's a valid connection to draw, and it opens up not only the local protest aspect of this, it opens up the national and global protest aspect of this. There is multiple levels to this protest, and I think the media has really missed that. Nobody's really talking about that. How does that hit you?

Dan: No, I think it makes sense. I think the point that you're making is that it's possible to have these spurious connections. Oh, you were in the room once with this person, okay, but there's a real like, especially when you're tracing ideas. I think you and I both work in tracing ideas. How do ideas develop? Ideologies develop? A felt sense of society. How does that build among people? And there are real connections to draw here, because what you get is a certain nexus of relationships and those common themes and common expressions. And I think we could layer this onto other stuff. And people have complained for decades now about the militarization of the regular police force, let alone ICE. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So let's look at the influence of somebody like Hegseth and his vision of what the Department of War, not the Department of Defense, the Department of War is supposed to be, the warrior language, the warrior ethos, the lethality focus, all of that sort of stuff. And what do you have? You've got this theological string connecting them that says it's time to be a terror on evildoers. We need to eradicate empathy. And so the same preacher who founds this church where this guy is now a pastor is preaching to the, you know, the defense secretary. And I challenge anybody watching ICE and their tactics to make a strong distinction between them and a military occupying force. I mean, that's the point, correct? It's ironic to me every time I see them with the police blazing, you know, when they have it on their chest, I'm like, you don't look like a cop. Maybe when they're in riot gear and they're full militarized action, but you look like the military. So, I mean, yeah, I think the connections are there. And when you see the parallels, and you start thinking, like, is there a connection? Are there real strands of shared thought, shared ideology between these? They're there. So I think what you're saying, it's not just that these people rub elbows every now and then. It's a substantive connection to be developed.

Brad: Well, one or two more thoughts on this, and we'll move on. Rigney and Wilson are people who think that the 19th Amendment should be repealed. So not only does Rigney talk about enacting terror on those who are quote, unquote, evil, but this is a person who believes, theologically, that women should not have the right to vote. Doug Wilson, the man who he serves, or, you know, who he's sort of his right-hand man to, has in the past said that the time of slavery was the time of the greatest racial harmony in the United States. At Doug Wilson's church, he has protected child abusers to the point that he officiated the wedding of a convicted child abuser and protected him and vouched for him. That protected child, that child abuser then went on to have a child with his then wife and then abuse that child that came from that marriage. Okay, if you read Sarah Stankorb's Vice piece on this from a couple years ago, the details are sickening of what has happened at Christ Church when it comes to sex and gender and cover-ups. That is who Rigney is. That is the guy that he's doing ministry with, Doug Wilson, and he's the guy that planted this church. And as you say, it just makes sense. Oh yeah, of course, the ICE field officer is a pastor at the church now that Rigney helped plant. So any final thoughts here? Or should we go to some other stuff around Minnesota?

Dan: Yeah, maybe we as well move on. It ties to all the other stuff that's going on and sort of unfolding in real time.

Brad: Let's take a break. Come back. We'll come back and talk about what's happening in Minnesota in terms of a strike, in terms of ongoing terror, and the community's incredible reaction to it. Be right back.

It is Friday, January 23. As we speak, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people at the airport in the Twin Cities who are protesting, shutting down the airport. There are hundreds of clergy there. I've seen the reports. They are being arrested. There is a general strike in the city today. It is minus 20, and there is a coordinated effort to basically shut down commerce and everything. As Dan, you say, there has been an occupation of Minnesota. There are so many reports of the ways that the community, and I'm talking about a cross section of the community in the Twin Cities has responded. There's a veteran organizer who wrote this on Bluesky yesterday. "I got in late last night. First thing this morning, I saw cars following an ICE vehicle down the street, honking at it. Later, we didn't drive more than three blocks before we found people defending a childcare facility. Half the street corners around here have people from every walk of life, including Republicans standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network. I've been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I've never seen anything approaching this scale." I think we're going to keep an eye on what happens in terms of the just overwhelming, I would call it, well, I'm gonna hold my tongue, but the overwhelming response of the community in the Twin Cities. But that leads me to, I think, some of the most disturbing incidents that we've seen over the past week. I'll start with one, Dan, I'll throw it to you, and then I have one I want to elaborate on. The first one is basically the pictures that are going viral that people are going to see this weekend, if they haven't seen them already, of ICE detaining a five-year-old boy and using him, reportedly, as bait to try to lure his parents into the open so that ICE could detain them. The boy went from the Twin Cities, according to reports, all the way to Texas. His family was not notified. They did not know where he was. There was no communication. There was no sense of making sure that there were people, guardians, teachers, anyone who knew where he was. I just want to stop for a minute and compare these. See what you think. We just had all of this uproar among Christians and evangelicals and Al Mohler and Joe Rigney and everyone else saying the protest at the church is a boundary too far. And I don't hear any of them talking about a five-year-old boy wearing a backpack and a beanie standing out in the Minnesota freezing weather being put into an ICE car. Dan, I have a four and a half year old. Like I can't, the idea that somebody would show up at my kid's like preschool, take them, not tell anyone where they were, and send them from where we live, 1500 miles away, into a detainment center. A five-year-old kid. Is that a criminal? Is that a threat to the public square? Is that a sex offender? Is that somebody that's... That's a five-year-old. But all you will hear, if you go on Twitter today from the right wing, is, well, we had to do it. Oh, we got to get used to this. This is what's necessary. This is what we have to do if we want to get our country back. Rachel Maddow cried on air reporting this the other night. I'm trying not to get emotional as we speak right now. Thoughts on this as it compares to what we just talked about with Joe Rigney. And then we can get into what happened with another incident.

Dan: A few. I mean, we just talked about the lack of empathy, the sin of empathy. This is what you do. There's a phrase people who are familiar with the Bible will know, what the hardening of your heart, that language of your heart being hardened. And this was, at least in principle, in the Christianity I grew up in, this was one of the things you always had to watch for, is that your heart becomes hardened. That's what this kind of religion is about. It's like having a nice, tough heart that can do these things. And the trick is, you're right. Everybody on the right got, JD Vance defending this, because JD Vance has never found like a shitty, reprehensible thing that the right does, that he doesn't feel the need to defend. It's not resonating with most people, because most people are capable of doing this kind of moral reflexive exercise. And here it is. You ready for it? When you have to start a sentence with, "Hey, this is what we have to do if," and you evaluate that, okay, what is it that we have to do? And if it comes to, like, kidnapping children. That's when you're like, you know what? Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing. If that's the price of this thing that I say I value. Yeah, maybe that's too much, and maybe I need to rethink that. And a lot of people are there. That's why we're seeing the response in Minnesota that we are. That's why the administration, whose only reflex is always to come back harder and harder and harder. But that's why they have to keep pushing back so hard, is because there's a massive momentum against ICE that is and has been building, and not just in Minnesota. But to circle back around to the other piece of the Christian thing. This is the other thing that the Christian nationalists do, and before Trump, they've always done, is they are always expanding the sphere of the church. Yeah, right. So we can go back and we can think about something like the Hobby Lobby decision or something like that. We're like, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now businesses don't have to provide certain kinds of health care because they're owned by Christians. But, like, they're not ecclesiastical organizations. They're not religious organizations. They're not doing religious teaching. They're not promulgating. Like, we get it like, okay, your church doesn't have to provide, I don't know, access to abortion to people who are on their staff. But like, Hobby Lobby, really. So you get this sense of like, wherever a Christian is is this kind of Christian sphere that can't be violated. Unless it's clergy protesting an airport. But no, then that's, they're out of place. So you go into a building and occupy it or protest it, and we're going to come after you. The right forever has expanded the privilege of being Christian by basically saying, if I'm a Christian in the world, there's like this bubble around me so that wherever I am is essentially sanctified space. You can't criticize me for anything that I do or say anywhere, because I have brought the kingdom of God with me. But not if you're the wrong kind of Christian protesting an airport, then you're just a criminal. You're a terrorist or whatever. And so, you know, people ask us all the time with the Christian nationalism, well, what about this kind of Christian? Or what about this kind of Christian? Or what about people who are Christian this way? Like, nope, it's built in. It's gonna be the right kind of Christian. You're not in their camp. Just because you're a Christian, you have to be the right kind. And it shows this as well, the kind that cares about five-year-olds and that cares about the, you know, the orphans and the widows and people seeking refuge and all of those things that the right is opposed to.

Brad: I agree, and that's where we are. Thank you. Thank you for outlining that so clearly. Let me give you another example here that caught my eye up in Minneapolis this week. This is from Andrew Eggers at The Bulwark. "When ICE agents detained US citizen." Let me just repeat that sentence, Dan. "When ICE agents detained US citizen ChongLy Thao in Minneapolis this weekend, breaking down his door and escorting him half-naked into the snow, administration officials claimed they'd been looking for a pair of sex criminal migrants at the address. DHS plastered images of the two men they were hunting across social media with dire warnings that they remained at large, imploring the public to call in tips." So Dan, they are looking for somebody. They're looking for people they say are actually two people who they say are sex criminals and they're migrants, and that is the justification for going into an American citizen's home without a warrant and breaking down the door and dragging him out, I mean, into the snow with no clothes on. This is a man who is your parents' age. This man is in, this is a baby boomer aged man, okay, but as Andrew Eggers says, Dan, it's not only that they did this. It's not only that they went into a home. This is in the Constitution. Do you remember the British soldiers are not allowed just to take your home kind of stuff? That's kind of where we're at here. But there was one place that they apparently hadn't bothered to look: the Minnesota prison system. That's where Lou Mua, one of DHS's purported targets, has been since a 2024 conviction on charges including felony kidnapping. Like Dan, they were looking for a man and going all over Minneapolis saying, we got to find this sex criminal. Here's a picture of him. Didn't even know he was already in jail. So that is the justification for dragging an American citizen out into the cold. Now, without belaboring the point, I'll skip down here, and this is from PBS. "ChongLy Thao's family are particularly upset at his treatment by the US government, because his mother had to flee to the US from Laos when Communists took over in the 1970s since she had supported American covert operations in the country and her life was in danger. Thao's adopted mother, Choua Thao, was a nurse who treated CIA-backed Hmong soldiers in the US government secret war from 1961 to 1975 against the communists. She treated countless civilians and American soldiers, working closely with US personnel." So here's a man who's a naturalized US citizen. His adopted mother helped countless civilians and American soldiers and his, from what I can tell, his birth mother had to flee the US from Laos when Communists took over in the 1970s because she was supporting American covert operations. Okay, all of that to say this story has like three or four dimensions of both lawlessness and stupidity. You're not allowed to go into anybody's house without a warrant. You're not allowed to just arrest a US citizen claiming they're a migrant. You probably shouldn't be looking for that person if the person you're looking for is already in jail, but you didn't know that because you're so incompetent, DHS, that you hadn't bothered to look in the Minnesota jail system. But finally, here's the point I really want to make, and I'll shut up. Some of you out there know this, and we're going to release in about two months, a series by Dr. Melissa Borja called One Million Neighbors. It's called One Million Neighbors because, Dan, in the '70s, one million Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in the United States, people coming from Laos, people coming from Cambodia, Hmong people. Many of them had helped the US in its covert operation and secret wars in those countries. They were fleeing here and refugees here, largely because of our government's actions in their countries. So this man that was dragged out, this isn't "all Asians look the same." I'm saying that as an Asian person, this is an "all Asians look the same" situation. Absolutely. All Asians look the same. So the guy who's like 30 years older than the man you're looking for who's already in jail, drag him out.

Dan: One person of Asian descent can fill in for another. It's the biggest racist white person kind of blind spot, the "they all look the same and they are all the same" ideology is absolutely at play here.

Brad: This is a man whose family is in this country because of a legacy of helping Americans in covert operations where they were no longer safe in their own country. The last thing I'll say about this, Dan. Who were the integral, most important cogs in the machine to resettle one million refugees? Who were they? There were so many Christians and churches, people from Minnesota, people from Michigan, people from Iowa, people throughout the Midwest, people on the coasts. Christians who did this. Why? Because Jesus said to love your neighbor and to welcome the stranger. It was not to make them Christian. It was not to convert them to Jesus. It was because that's what Jesus told them to do. So they did. They bought them winter coats, they showed up at the airport, they found places for them to live, they got them jobs, they gave them food, they worked together. It was not always easy, it was not always seamless, but both the refugees and the churches and the American citizens worked hand in hand. And now, years later, this man's being dragged out of the house by the colonizing, occupying force of ICE for just being Asian. Thoughts here before I really lose my mind.

Dan: So a few. I mean one, if somebody goes back and looks at the history of this resettlement, as you're talking about and the Christian component of it, number one is that it was a lot of different kinds of Christians, the same theologically conservative Christians now who want to talk about how none of these people belong here, those churches were also involved in that, because they wholeheartedly supported the anti-communist mission and everything else. So that's a piece of it. But the other piece of this is, I like you talk about this, these people that they're targeting in this specific example, we could look at other kind of more recent examples of the same thing, people from Afghanistan or Iraq who had to flee to the United States because they helped coalition forces and whatever. They sacrificed more for the cause that the US was backing than Pete Hegseth ever has, or than Kristi Noem ever has, or than Donald Trump ever has, or than the, I just want to knock some people in the heads, I would do this for free, unvetted ICE agents who are handed guns and tear gas canisters. They have done more to aid the cause of this country, and we can debate the causes, we can debate anti-communism, all that, but serving what were the interests of this country as they were articulated, they have done more than any of the people who are now hunting them down and trying to remove them in the name of American interests are serving their country. And it's just, it's beyond maddening. It's beyond sickening. I look at somebody like Pete Hegseth, who did his time, and you know, a little time in the military, and has reduced it all to like, pull-ups and push-ups and getting people of color out. I mean, that's his idea of serving his nation.

Brad: Not surprisingly, the critiques of the immigration policies of the Trump administration are ramping up. They are underwater on this. When it comes to polls, the approval has gone down. There are seemingly normies in Minneapolis, people that might lean right Republican, people who are not political actors, people who are not that interested in politics, who do not listen to Straight White American Jesus or any other kind of political podcast, are drawn into what's happening there. But one of those sources is Catholic Bishops. Tell us what's going on with them.

Dan: So this is interesting because we've talked in the past, the Catholic bishops in the US tend to be conservative, especially on social issues, and so they've tended to be pretty right leaning when it comes to things like anti-LGBTQ kinds of issues, anti-abortion issues and so forth. But the US Archbishops issued a joint statement this week critiquing Trump's specifically his foreign policy, which dovetails with ongoing critiques of their immigration policy, and it's something that's worth watching. So they talked about Venezuela, they talked about the threats against Greenland, and then tying this in with immigration, which, of course, is also, you know, the immigration reform is where foreign policy and domestic policy meet in many ways. So they've come out being critical of all of these different kinds of things, and it's becoming a really, really contentious relationship. And I think that's interesting for a number of reasons, again, because on a lot of culture war issues, American Catholic leadership tends to be very conservative, but the Trump administration has kind of lost that edge. I think it's also significant because you have, as you have talked about so much and developed so much that radical traditionalist Catholic bent that is now so much a part of the MAGA movement, and people like JD Vance in particular, that is at odds with, you know, mainstream Catholic thought, Catholic Social Teaching and so forth. It's even gone all the way up to the Vatican. The US ambassador to the Vatican got pushed back for downplaying the Pope's concerns about the US action in Venezuela, was sort of like downplaying the degree to which the pope disapproved of this. And we know that Francis, the current pope, had made lots of comments about the US immigration policy and things like this. So as you're highlighting, it's a disparate group of people, a disparate population, that is now confronting this administration on issues like immigration and, in my view, again, the related issues of foreign policy. It's not just people on the hard political left. It's lots of independents. All the polls show that independents overwhelmingly oppose a lot of the things that the Trump administration is doing. It's, as you say, a lot of disaffiliated people on the right, people on the right who are not, let's call them sort of, they lean right. But as you say, they don't engage politics regularly. This is not something they follow all the time. They probably listen to the stuff about lower taxes, and they're like, you know what? That sounds good. Let's do that, you know. And they're seeing what's happening to their neighbors. They're seeing what's happening out in public. They're getting caught up in clouds of tear gas because they happen to be on the wrong street at the wrong time. It's bringing them in. The American Catholic bishops, who could be a source of strength for a Trump administration that wants to win over more Catholics who traditionally vote democratic and so forth. They're alienating them. These issues are beginning to spiral into each other, foreign policy, domestic policy and so forth. And I think it's really significant that the theological critiques here, the religious critiques are coming from lots of different directions as well. And it's not all just, you know, super progressive liberal Protestant Christians.

Brad: I have a thought about this Dan that I haven't developed, and it's always dangerous to kind of do this. You know when something's sort of in the beginning stages, but nonetheless, here I am. I have just been reading so many reports of what you just said in Minneapolis, of working class Catholics, wine moms, liberal Protestant clergy, longtime activists, but also soccer coaches and just people you would never expect, as I just read a couple of minutes ago, to be on the corners, following the ICE cars, blowing the whistles, reporting to the decentralized, you know, activist system that is responding to ICE. This, to me, is something that feels like, and I want to be really careful, but I'm just, hear me out everybody, it feels like if you wanted to reinvigorate democracy on a visceral, public, enacted ritual level, this is what it would look like, because like King George, they are going door to door and threatening to invade your home. They're enacting violence with no rules. Whoever you are, they can detain. I have a picture up on my computer of them stopping a 16-year-old boy walking home eating a snack. They ask him, show us your papers. He's like, I don't have papers. What are you talking about? They're like, okay, you're arrested because you're Brown. Like, if you wanted to create a situation where, organically, the lived story of democracy was reinvigorated in a major American city where people were like, you're not allowed just to come into our homes. You're not allowed to arrest my neighbor. You're not allowed to just simply at the whim of one man terrorize us, pepper spray us, detain us. Isn't this what you would expect? Like I'm trying not to, and this is not a kumbaya moment. This is not me saying, oh, this is great. It's just me saying everything from the criticism of the Catholic Church that you just outlined all the way across this gambit, this cross section, if you wanted to reveal to people why democracy is actually better than monarchy, better than a dictator, better than an oligarchy, isn't what's happening in Minnesota like the way that people will get that in their body, going out on a corner in minus 20 degrees to protect their own neighbors. I don't know. Does that, again, this is a new thought for me, but I'm just wondering if that has any resonance for you.

Dan: It does. Democracy is wonky and nerdy and whatever, but it's literally the power or rule of the people. And I argue when I talk about democracy, that's the whole issue, is who or what are the people? And I've talked about this here. I've written about it, the difference between the people as populism imagines it, and the people as, in my view, a substantive democracy does is that the people is an expansive, inclusive, open body that's constantly evolving and constantly incorporating more. And when you get more and more segments of society who begin to identify, at least on this issue, as the people, as "we the people," this, "we the people don't support this," it says, I think it is, I think it's a grassroots expression of democracy, not democracy understood in terms of defined political parties, not democracy reduced to political Olympics that we do every four years when you cast a vote, right? But a kind of, because, I mean, we think about this. What is politics? Politics is about the allocation of social resources. It's fundamentally what politics is. Who gets those resources, to whom do they go? Who gets to make those determinations? Who is worthy of them, who is not? And this is a demand, a political act, to demand a reallocation of those resources, including resources like the ability to walk down the street, resources like legal protections that ought to be yours, resources like not being dragged out into the cold for simply being a person of Asian descent or whatever it is. So I absolutely agree. I think it's an expression of what political theorists might call substantive or grassroots democracy. Absolutely.

Brad: I mean, this is not about consultants. This is not about ads. This is not about, you know, trying to, this is about people fighting for their lives against an invading force. Doesn't that sound like, in some way, what the American Revolution was supposed to be, fighting against the force that says we'll just come into your home and we want, fighting for a force that will tax you but not represent you. I mean, we don't even have a Congress that does anything anymore. I don't know. I could go on and on. Let's take a break and we'll talk about Davos. We'll be right back.

All right, the elites, the oligarchs, the 1%, they were all at Davos this week. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, gave a speech for the ages. Donald Trump gave a speech for the aged and those who should no longer be in power, or should have never been in power in his case. There's a lot to get at here, Dan, in terms of Trump's fitness. Let me play you a short clip of him saying what he said. Here's 10 seconds of what Trump said. Here it is.

Trump: "We had a good speech. We got great reviews. I can't believe it. We got good reviews in that speech. Usually they say he's a horrible dictator-type person. I'm a dictator, but sometimes you need a dictator. But they didn't say that in this case. And no, it's common sense. It's all based on common sense. You know, it's not conservative or liberal or anything else. It's mostly, let's say, 95% common sense. And that's what we..."

Brad: So he says there, "sometimes you need a dictator," just says it out loud, and apparently that's not a big deal anymore. Dan, we could play the game. What if Bill Clinton? What if Barack Obama? What if Ronald Reagan said that? None of that matters anymore because that world is gone. But he did say that. He also seemed to confuse Greenland and Iceland. Now, Greenland has been his little obsession here for a while. He's talked about invading it, and then in his speech, he talked about Iceland. Let me play that clip.

Trump: "I know that they'd be there for us. They're not there for us on Iceland. That I can tell you. May our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland's already cost us a lot of money, but that dip is peanuts compared to what it's gone up and we..."

Brad: Now Carolyn Leavitt says, oh no, he was saying "the land of ice." Like, literally, her defense of this was like—

Dan: The most high attempt to try to make it so he didn't say what he said multiple times. It's ridiculous.

Brad: Like every morning and every evening when I'm negotiating with my four-year-old of like, trying to get her to eat, you know? And like, did you eat this many things? She's like, yeah, I did. And I'm like, did you? She was like, no, what I said, I did. I took this many bites already before, for you, before you looked and after the last night, I took eight bites. Doesn't that carry out? And they're like, no. Carolyn Leavitt in her defense is like, oh, he meant the land of ice, you liberal, woke jerks, you know. So anyway, this leads to all kinds of discussions we can have. Where do you want to start with this, in terms of Trump's fitness and all that?

Dan: Well, so Ty Cobb. Bring this to Ty Cobb. For people who, not the baseball player, obviously, but he's the, people will recognize him, the mustache. Like, if you Google Ty Cobb and you see him, like, oh, that guy. He was a former White House attorney in the first Trump administration. So he's one of these former Trump people turned Trump critic. But he was not responding to the Davos speech. He was responding to a press conference that Trump gave. It was kind of the same. It just went on and on and on and meandered. And his Davos speech was the same way. It talked about people kind of crowding in initially to hear what he would say, and like, after a while, people are leaving, and they're just like, you know, it was a frosty reception anyway. But so Cobb talks about this, but I think there of just, he highlights, as many people do, what he says is a clear cognitive decline in Trump. And I am going to play the game. Imagine what would have happened if Biden had stood up and confused Iceland and Greenland multiple times, when it has been the center point of Trump's foreign policy for weeks. The only thing he wants to talk about, and he mixes up the damn names. The narcissism, diagnosable or subclinical or whatever, of circulating, like Trump choosing to circulate a letter to European leaders saying, well, you know, if I'd gotten the Nobel Prize, maybe I wouldn't care about, maybe I wouldn't care about Greenland so much. It's not even something he said. It's not even something put on Truth Social. Like, he wrote a letter and then circulated it to European leaders and all of these kind of things. And so this was also on display, in my view, in this speech, and not just in confusing Iceland and Greenland, the just the lack of focus, the inability to string together coherent sentences, the meandering for, you know, hours on end and not really saying anything, the personal grievances, the petty, the petty narcissism, all of it that was there. And then you layer onto it all the typical parts from the Trump playlist. At this point, it was all the not even veiled racist notions that Europe is losing its identity, its cultural identity, because of immigration and the laws it passes, and NATO's bad. And, you know, strong men are good, and maybe we need a dictator and all of those things. It was, it's like, if you wanted to take a speech from Trump and watch it and say, like, okay, here is, here's all the stuff we talk about all in one place. The Davos speech is a pretty good place to start.

Brad: Yeah, it was thoroughly humiliating. But beyond humiliating, it's one of those moments where you're like, we don't have a Congress anymore, because if you were going to invoke the 25th amendment at any point, him writing the letter that he did, him giving the speech, him saying, sometimes you need a dictator...

Dan: When he keeps boasting as well about acing cognitive tests. Yeah, right. And you're like, dude, do you keep having to take cognitive tests? Like it just, he doesn't even know to not brag about the fact that he's had to be tested multiple times to see if he has the cognitive fitness to function.

Brad: Lion, elephant, bear, car, plane, tree, unstoppable. I'm unstoppable. Now, the thing about that is, like, a lot of nights I do a puzzle with my four-year-old, and there's these moments I have where I'm like, doing the puzzle really fast, and I'm like, still got it, doing it, and then I have to be like, you're a loser, dude. This is a puzzle for four-year-olds. Like, why don't, yeah, okay, great job. So that seems to be at play here. I want to go to the speech by Carney and what he said, and I'm going to play you a clip here. It's worth listening to the speech in full. It's about 15 minutes. There's a great Václav Havel reference and sort of exegesis, but let me play you this part about a global rupture.

Mark Carney: "We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied, the WTO, the UN, the COP, the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving, are under threat. As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable. A country that can't feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. But let's be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And there is another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They will buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty."

Brad: So he talks about how we're in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. And he talks about the crises that have led to that rupture. Financial, 2008-2009, crypto, all of that, health, energy, geopolitics, and what he says is interesting. He says, look, what happens is these great powers in the world, and he's referencing the United States, but also Russia, I think, but mainly the United States, they have begun to use tariffs and coercion and supply chains to exploit others. This could be the US, it's China, it's Russia and so on. As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy. So he's like, look, we have to help ourselves, because the world order that prevailed after World War Two is gone. But this leads to a world of fortresses. It leads to a place where things are less stable, where there's more opportunity for smaller countries and less, you know, less powerful nations, to be attacked, to be picked off from the group. And so what he calls for is for a sense that allies will need to diversify, to hedge against uncertainty and to rebuild sovereignty. And he's basically looking the United States in the face and saying, you are now the threat, and we as Canada, you as Europeans, you as others around the world, we will have to work with each other to protect ourselves from this. To listeners of the show and to us, Dan, it's like, yeah, of course, we've been saying this for a year, but for a world leader to say this on the Davos stage, to many, felt like a watershed moment. It felt like somebody telling the truth about where we are and facing up to the fact that the script that has been written no longer applies, and the path that you might have thought your life was on is not the path your life is on as an individual, nor is it the one that your country is on or the world. It's just not. There's mourning in that. We have to mourn the fact that your life is just not going to be what it was, that this world, this country, your community. Do you think anyone in Minneapolis thought they were going to be facing 3,000 agents masked, charging into homes, dragging people out in the winter, taking five-year-olds away. I don't think that anyone thought that 10 years ago, but that is where we are now. I know I'm going to need the emails, and I know stuff like that's been happening forever, and I'm fully cognizant of that, but nonetheless, the script is off, and Carney admits that here. Did you have a strong reaction to this, or do you just think, oh, yeah, I've known that for a long time. Thanks for finally saying it.

Dan: I think the reaction, because, yeah, you see it for a long time. I think what feels different in the Carney speech, and we're seeing it in other places, is it's like the, your major European powers and Canada, basically the NATO allies of different kinds. It's like they are finally to that point where they kind of recognized what this is. We left the days even from a year ago of like, oh, we're treading lightly around Trump. We're not sure. I think it feels like this kind of realization has finally settled in on these nations, and Carney kind of gives voice to this, of like, this is where we are. And, you know, Trump responds by disinviting Carney from his little peace group, his board of peace. You know, that's his response. He backed off of the Greenland thing. That's a whole other piece of this, saying that he worked out the outlines of an agreement and whatever. And the people who talk about, you know, Trump that's back, and it didn't actually change anything. It was all like military access the US already had, and so forth. But analysts are like, yeah, but the Europeans know now, like, this doesn't protect NATO, and they're not, like they're... So that, I would say disillusioned, except that I think that they're actually seeing the way things are. I think that's the piece that may mark a significant turn. And to me, that's what the Carney speech felt like. I recognize this is Canada and not Europe, but a major speaker, you know, in the NATO coalition, and what had been a country with, you know, I don't know how much of a closer diplomatic relationship you can have with the US than Canada traditionally has, coming out and saying, this is, like, I think, a fundamental recognition that the old system is broken, and that regardless of where it goes from here, there's no simply going back. And that's beyond Trump. If a Democrat wins the White House and tries to, you know, make reconciliations and so forth, the Europeans are not just going to say, oh, well, good. That was a one-time thing. I guess we'll go back to the way things were. I think it's that recognition. Another piece of this is Zelensky this week coming out and telling the Europeans and basically being like, refer to it as Groundhog Day. He's like, yeah. Now this, this is what we're talking about. Welcome to the club and talk about annexation. You talk about threats like, this is what it is. The US is your Russia. Like, and I think that, I think the Carney speech recognizes a realization that this is where we are. We're not, we, sorry. I feel like I'm spinning in different directions. Here, another way to say this is you didn't get the speech that we've had in the past where Prime Minister X, Y or Z stands up and offers effusive praise to Trump for the things that he's done, or for helping NATO allies to realize their financial obligations or whatever. I think that's the sign of the awareness that it's broken, is when they just say what it is, and they're not trying to appease him anymore.

Brad: You know, I think what you're gesturing at here is something that, to me, is coming into focus, which is that this last month, I think, is a moment when many across the United States, but of course, particularly those in Chicago, those in Minneapolis, those in LA, already have woken up to the fact that this is a regime in the United States that is an invading force trying to take away everything you have, your liberty, your capital, your freedom, your safety, your certainty. And Minneapolis is seeing that on the grandest scale yet in this country, the images, the videos, the detainments, the putting protesters, you know, in violent situations, just for observing. To me, what's happening in Minnesota is my reason for hope, because the people of Minneapolis are showing the United States and Americans that it's possible to fight back and what it takes for everyone to be on board with that. But I think, Dan, and this is going back to your point, I promise, which is, I think Europe this month realized when Trump was just right up to the line of willing to invade Greenland, I think Europe, I think everyday Europeans, I think European leaders, I think they were like, okay, this is where we are. Like, I think Carney's speech reflects the realization that many finally had, whether that is a European leader, whether that's somebody on the ground in Europe. I just think there was a sense of like, oh, we're dealing with a madman, and no one will stop him. Congress will not stop him. The Republican Party, SCOTUS, nobody, nobody's gonna do anything. They're gonna just let him do the most irrational, stupid thing you could think of, which is invade Greenland, blow up NATO, attack a European ally, so on and so forth. And I think they got there too. So to me, that's what this speech reflected. It was not only Carney's words, it was a larger consciousness of European coalitions coming to understand it this way.

Dan: I think it was the mouthpiece. He was the mouthpiece of, as you say, a kind of growing, call it a North Atlantic anti-Trump coalition, or a group of North Atlantic countries that recognize Trump is a threat to them. Yeah, yeah. All right. What's your reason for hope?

Brad: My reason for hope is there was a court hearing this week that was kind of under the radar with all the other stuff going on, but the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit against Trump about the giant ballroom. As a reminder, he tore down the East Wing building. This ballroom is not even the right word for this. I think it's something like 83,000 square feet or something. It's like almost double the size of the actual like White House, the residence part of the White House. Trump, being Trump, didn't follow any of the regular protocols and whatever. And so it was brought before a court about whether or not he actually had the legal authority to do this. The judge, listening to us, seemed very clearly incredulous that Trump had the legal authority to have done what he did and to move forward with this. And I think I took hope in that, and I think it's significant for a number of reasons. We've talked about what the White House means as kind of a national symbol, what it means as the people's house, not just Trump's chance to, you know, at self-aggrandizement and so forth. And so I found that to be a hopeful sign, and we'll see what happens. No formal ruling was issued, but as judges often do, they pretty well telegraph what they're going to be saying. And it was another pretty devastating day in court. The judge sort of laughed at his attorneys and some of their arguments, which, if nothing else, the petty part of me, Brad, found that very satisfying.

Dan: It was another petty, satisfying moment when the J6 officers were at a hearing with Jack Smith. Anyway, y'all can watch the clips. But there was some folks who claimed that responsibility for violence on January 6 was with the leadership of the Capitol Police, not with Donald Trump, and Michael Fanone, the J6 Capitol police officer, had some choice words for the person who said that. So all right, y'all check out our new website, straightwhiteamericanjesus.com. But also check out axismundi.us. It's brand new, it's pretty, it's amazing. We spent so much time and effort on it. Please go take a look. Sign up for the newsletter. Get connected. If you're not a subscriber, think about supporting us. We are going to be doing office hours, Dan and I, and checking in with people on lunch hours to hang out, talk. We just did our bonus episode for this week, which was really fun. I do bonus content most Mondays. You get access to our Discord and ad-free listening. It is, it's a party and you should join. It's $5.99 a month. And if you can't do that, let us know. You can send in a one-time donation, whatever you want to do. We'd love to have you. Other than that, we're back next week with great stuff. On Monday, It's in the Code on Wednesday, the weekly roundup on Friday, and then starting soon, our interviews will be switching to Sundays, and you'll be hearing not just me, but you'll be hearing Annika Brock Schmidt and Leah Payne will be switching off and alternating. So that is something to look forward to. Can't wait for that to start. Thanks for being here, y'all. Stay safe, stay warm. We'll catch you next time.

Dan: Thanks, Brad.