Courageous Conversations: Jeff Sharlet on American Failures and American Possibility

Meet Dr. Jeff Sharlet, Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College and author of the recently released The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. In it, he journeys into the corners of our national psyche in an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.

In this conversation, George and Jeff discuss the religious dimensions of American politics, and the role of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism. Sharlet offers insight into both the human condition and into our country today, bringing to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.

Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books. His latest is The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War (2023), a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Nonfiction, one of The New York Times 100 Books of the Year, and a New Republic book of the year.

Watch the video, here.

George (00:37):

Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public Life. I'm your host, George Mason, and I'm delighted to welcome to this series of conversations called Courageous Conversations. Jeff Sharlet. Jeff is a professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. He's written eight books and is an award-winning author. His most recent book is called The Undertow, which has a provocative subtitle, Jeff, Scenes from a Slow Civil War. And a lot of what you do is talk to people, ordinary people, not politicians, not talking heads, but ordinary people. Uh, and these are some of your observations about where we are right now. So could you tell us a little more about the concept of the undertow and, uh, this notion of a slow civil war as you see it?

Jeff (01:36):

Well, the undertow, the, the title of the undertow, um, I think I came up with that title in 2018, and I've been reporting on, I report on, I write about a lot of things. But one of those things has been, uh, a variety of right wing movements. And I, and I emphasize variety. 'cause there's a lot of different ones, and they don't always converge. And I, um, but in 2018, I have been thinking about sort of that last decade, the decade of division 2010 to now, and the ways in which, in fact, a lot of these currents sometimes ran parallel, sometimes, uh, at odds with one another. They had converged in Trumpism or Trumpism had consumed some that you would've thought would've been resistance. And I, and I, and I thought of it as, um, the undertow to me sort of spoke to a little bit some of these things, like people weren't paying attention.

Jeff (02:26):

There's a chapter in the book about something called the Men's Rights Movement about these are men who believe that men are the most oppressed class in society. And, um, that rape, if it exists at all, is a crime mainly experienced by men, um, by, by women. And so they have a very kind of topsy-turvy, and they, they were easy to dismiss as fringe as kind of almost a cartoonish version of sexist now. And in fact, so much of what they were saying when I was speaking to them in 20 13, 20 14, is, I mean, these are talking points of the mainstream Republican party now. Right? So I thought, well, there's that, that undertone was there, you know, so much of, I wasn't surprised when Trumpism came because of sort of saying like, oh, these were currents. I didn't know if we would get there. We did. But the other meaning of the undertone, I think this is important for all of us, is to think about just the way that we all, I think almost everybody that I know, and including some of the scary people I write about in this book, there's very few people who are sitting around cackling and saying, how can I be evil today?

Jeff (03:32):

Right? They're, they're all invested in this idea of what is it to be decent and good, and what is it to, to live the right life. And so many people, you know, it's hard work to do that. And the undertow, to me, spoke to that experience that I would encounter so many of these people who had really tried to be decent people for a long time. And, and then at a certain point, and I think these recent years, Trumpism gave him license, you know what? I'm gonna stop swimming against the current. I'm just gonna lean back and let this hate and this fury and this rage, and even the ecstasy of this, this movement carry me. I'm gonna let this, and it carries you out to see it doesn't take any place. Good. So that's what the undertow is sort of trying to speak to those, um, not the main political events, but these sort of currents in our lives that I think have converged to bring us here.

George (04:24):

You, you talk about how they sort of let the hate, let the anger, let the grief and all of that just take over and carry them out. But the, the irony when I read your book is that they don't actually, uh, think of it as if that's what they're giving into. They, they, they actually have reinterpreted all of this in terms of love and joy and sacrifice and freedom and, and nobility and these sorts of things. I'm, I was struck by the guy. Uh, there's so much about guns in, in the book, but, uh, the guy who, who says love is being ready, you know? Yeah. Essentially love is being, is defined as being ready for war against someone else. And, and, and it reminded me, Jeff, of, of someone that I knew here in Dallas who had relationships with people in our church.

George (05:20):

And, uh, after, uh, the, uh, insurrection, uh, uh, at the Capitol, uh, I, I found myself preaching about it, of course. And I get an a, a Facebook message from her and say, you've got it completely wrong. I was there, and it was the most joyful experience that people were happy. They were there to, you know, be real Americans. And, and, and I, uh, it struck me that, you know, what, what so many of us saw as an expression of anger and violence and o others experienced as a sense of community and belonging, a sense of place. And mm-hmm, <affirmative>, how do we, how do we think about the fact that we are using terminology, uh, that sounds alike, but means such different things to us?

Jeff (06:16):

I mean, to the, to me this comes, I said, I write about a lot about rightwing movements, and I also write about religion. Originally I was sort of writing about varieties of religious movement, and I didn't want to go near politics. I just, my first book is a book called Killing the Buddha, which is an old Buddhist idea. It's not an anti Buddhist thing. And the writer, Peter Manso, and I traveled the country for about a year, just wandering. And I remember when we started, we thought, wouldn't it be great if United States was like, you know, ancient Greece or the ancient world, and every town you come into it and you say, well, who, what, what God is your temple to? And what does it stand for? And we discovered that that was in fact the case, except that they're all named Jesus <laugh>. It's a different God, you know?

Jeff (06:57):

So, you know, down in Texas, we went in Mount Vernon, Texas. We went to a cowboy church. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, where there is a big picture of a, a, a, what do you call a Texas longhorn, <laugh>, what do you call it? Sorry. A steer. And they, they read from scripture that has been rewritten into what they think of as a cowboy vernacular. And there's nothing kitschy or ironic about it. It's an earnest expression of something they value. You go to, we are in Miami where you see the mixture of Sania, um, and, um, where, you know, this West African God ochin, it coexists with Christian gods coexists with this depth of antagonism toward Castro so deep, yes. Everything is filtered through that. And that Jesus is very different, right? Again and again and again. And, and that got me into thinking just as you say, what is, what is so, what does the word Jesus mean?

Jeff (07:52):

What does the word love mean? And I've encountered in my years of, I've very rarely encountered a hard right movement or anything that doesn't speak in terms of love. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right. Um, we all speak in terms of love, that that man who said, uh, you know, love is being prepared. Scott Snedden of Layton, Utah. And, um, I had, I had contacted Scott, um, and he had sort of told me that, uh, he wanted to show me Utah militia life because Utah, excuse me, Utah, some may know, is sort of a very communal space. I mean, uh, the heritage of Mormonism. But it, it overflows to almost sort of, everyone's there. It's a different, slightly different idea of community. He says, and we do militias differently too. And he was, well, he says, you know, come down to Layton and I'll, and I, we'll spend some time together.

Jeff (08:44):

And I got down there and, um, we didn't end up getting to meet because he said, well, you know, today is actually my, my, my father passed recently. Today is his memorial. And I just, I didn't want to be rude, so I was gonna try and squeeze you in, but, you know, I've got relatives from, so what, you know, uh, I'm a Jew, so to, I'm by Yiddish term, what a men, this guy almost too men is like, I, I wanna say Scott, attend to your business. You don't need to make time for me. And you certainly don't need to apologize a kind man. On the other hand, I wanted to speak to Scott because he was part of something called the 3% movement, the three, the three percenters. This is based on the idea that only 3% the American Revolution was fault by only 3% of the people.

Jeff (09:28):

It's false. It was more like about 26, 20 7%. But the idea of the 3% is you only need a small, small avantgarde to overthrow a government. And that's also very appealing to terrorist organizations, which is what the three percenters are formerly recognized as in Canada. And because of our politics, despite their connection with any number of bombings, not in the United States. So maybe not so nice now. And so now the love, the question of love gets confusing. And I think from a lot of these people though, it comes from the set. You know, the, the figure I wrote my most about in the book was Ashley Babbitt. Right? The woman was killed on, on January 6th, and her public right wing life began with a tweet on October, 2016. And she was really one of these people who tried to live a good life. Yeah. And there's a moment where she's just like, gives up.

Jeff (10:20):

And Donald Trump was there to catch her and to tell her anger and her fury, you know what that is? He said, that's love, just the way he said January 6th, so much love in the air. Yeah. She writes, 2016 hashtag love hashtag Donald Trump. And that was sort of the day when she says like, you know what? I'm gonna stop trying to have compassion for people. I'm not doing that anymore. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> love My anger is a kind of love. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Uh, and, uh, I think that that's really called upon those of us who might be liberal or might be just never Trumpers and so on, to reject the language that sees some of this reactionary and say, well, it's just hypocrisy. It's not just hypocrisy. Um, the language is capacious and they're experiencing it differently, and that doesn't make it okay. Absolutely not. Um, but if we just sit there and say, haha, they're, they're lying, then we are not hearing what is happening.

George (11:18):

Right? So words should have some sort of anchor in terms of reference points, right? Like, if you're gonna use love, um, you would think it has to do with, um, the wellbeing of your neighbor, uh, with, uh, with, with securing, uh, their, uh, prosperity or their, um, protection or some such thing. Uh, and certainly in our religious traditions, there seems to be a, a fairly common, uh, biblical understanding of love that is rooted in that kind of behavior. And, and yet, it, it, it, it now seems to be more about protecting your own more, a kind of tribal, uh, sort of protection than it is, uh, welcoming the stranger, loving your enemy, um, doing good to those who despise you. All of these, uh, are, are, are, are religious concepts that are rooted in a narrative that that once seemed to hold true and now has gotten unmoored, it seems like in some way.

George (12:37):

And, and I'll, I'll, I'll go one step further. In the book, you, you talk about, you know, the church and, and the pastor who, who says that, you know, the, the cross has been replaced by the sword, and really he means guns, right? And, uh, and, and that the cross is weak. And the focus of that is no longer on the self-sacrifice of Jesus, but now is on his coming in vengeance, right. And, uh, in, in wreaking havoc upon the world. And we have to be prepared to join him. So I, I guess my question is, how, how do we have courageous conversations when we're using the same language? But there's the, well, the, we've lost the plot. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Other of your articles, right? We've lost the plot.

Jeff (13:31):

I mean, I do think that the plot <laugh>, there are more plots, and here's where I might be different, but I would also depend on those with that kind of, uh, that, that greater biblical knowledge than mine. Um, I do think welcoming the stranger, there's a concept that has fallen out of it. On the other hand, um, you're, you're speaking of a church. I went to the Church of Glad Tidings and Yuba City, California, Northern California. Um, they experience themselves as, uh, one of their loving ministries is they take care of children who are, um, uh, the children of incarcerated women. And they experienced that as love, uh, at a distance. It looks like they're stealing the children. And the department of, you know, child Protective Services can't do anything because the sheriff in that county is a constitutional sheriff, and he won't participate with the state.

Jeff (14:23):

I sat there at a sermon in which they said, if, uh, child Protective Services comes to your family, first thing you do is you put a bullet in their head, and that's loving your children. Right? So suddenly, oh, oh, I see what you mean by the wellbeing. But look what falls out of that, right. Is welcoming the stranger. So, on the one hand, I mean, like, one thing I'd sort of push back a little bit, right? I, I always say to secular audiences that they're like, isn't Jesus always about being nice? And I'm like, mm hmm. You know, and, and I think of a much misinterpreted scripture, but no less than Billy Graham, speaking of the National Prayer breakfast at the height of the Vietnam War, says, I come not to bring peace, but the so sword urging the United States on to greater violence against Vietnam.

Jeff (15:08):

And of course, Billy Graham saw nuclear war against Vietnam. I come not to peace bring That's there too. Now, I think the good work that one does is to wrestle with that and to think about that, and to think about that in the context of the message. Mm-Hmm. But what's falling out altogether is welcoming the stranger. And I think of another militia church, um, uh, church of, uh, ward of house in Omaha, Nebraska. And there it was, boy, they were sure, loving for everybody in the church, big community. I tried to speak to them there. It, there was nothing doing. Um, I was a journalist, and therefore it wasn't necessary to welcome me, because as the church explained to me, you are demonic, right? By virtue of being a journalist, you are demonic. You are not whom we welcome. And I think when we come to that stage, um, uh, you see it, I think I, I remember years ago, uh, um, a church called New Life in, uh, uh, Colorado Springs, uh, a pastor named Ted Haggard, who was then, right?

Jeff (16:10):

Sure. Uh, head of the National Association of the Evangelicals. And I remember people in his church telling me, you can always tell who's gay. And I really, I was like, really? Tell me how. I said, if you watch very closely for their eyes every now and then, I mean, this was like folk religion. Their eyes will turn into cats or goat's eyes. And of course, this did not help them with their own pastor Ted Haggard, who turned out to be gay. Um, but you see what they've done there. They have relieved themselves of the burden of welcoming the stranger. They say, I'm loving, I'm loving to all who deserve the, and, and I think that kind of sifting, that centrif fusion of American life is, is what's happening. I would, I would like to see more of the welcoming of the stranger. I've been thinking, uh, about, um, Abraham negotiating with God over Solomon Goor. You know, if I can find this many righteous people, I can find this many righteous people. And the historical interpretation of that being about the, the, you know, the sexual sin of those cities, but then the possibility that the failure of those cities was their failure to welcome and care for the stranger. Um, uh, that seems like a good lesson to us right now.

George (17:17):

I think it, it really is. So what do you make of the fact that we have a growing number of people who once identified as Ashley Babbitt did, uh, with the left, so to speak, uh, who, uh, were pro-democracy. They were, uh, all about, um, defending minorities and, uh, standing up for what we would call social justice. And somewhere along the line, they ended up, um, feeling somewhat rejected by the left and, uh, welcomed by the right. And this movement seems to be, uh, fairly consistently from left to right. It doesn't seem much to be going the other way. What's happening in the left, Jeff, that is creating a culture, maybe it's a purity culture of its own kind. Uh, this sort of cancel culture that doesn't allow for, uh, much sort of diversity of opinion on the left. But we see this happening over and over again among journalists for one, uh, and, uh, certainly politicians, uh, but, uh, ordinary people I think as well. Yeah. Uh, I, I, I mean, it's easy to say that there is a pull from the right, but is there a push from the left as well happening?

Jeff (18:46):

Well, I, I think that's a, a a a I think it's an important discussion we have, um, to have. And I, and I think yes, obviously, and I think some of us experience it. And I would, I would go so far as to say, you know, if you're talking about purity culture, then you're not talking about the left. I don't believe in the word pure. I don't think there is anything pure. Yeah. If you, if I hear the word pure, I run, um, uh, um, and that's because it's against the mess of human. Yeah. The mess of human life. Right. And, and in as much as you encounter those purity movements, they are adopting some of those elements. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that are, it, it's worth sort of thinking about. You know, one, one metaphor is, is the undertone. Another metaphor is sort of the gravity of fascism.

Jeff (19:29):

And I do use the F word advisedly, and not just for things I don't like, but I use a historically for, you know, a movement that's cult of personality, national myth, um, uh, uh, a not just, uh, violence, but a kind of ecstatic violence that somehow violence is gonna, you're gonna find identity in violence, um, if that gravity is there, and unquestionably is, and not just the United States, it's around the globe. You know, for instance, we're not, we we're not paying much attention to Indonesia, one of the largest countries in the United States, which just elected, democratically elected a president who was instrumental in the genocide in East Timor, and is an openly fascist leader of one of the largest countries. Right? Um, not to mention Putin, uh, not to mention Xi in China, not to mention Bolsonaro, who thank God is out in Brazil for now.

Jeff (20:18):

But we'll see what happens, right? Not to mention Germany, where the, the far right, uh, uh, and, and, and openly Nazi sympathetic party is now in some states the largest party. So this is a global movement. This is big gravity, right? And I think the, the temptation can be when we encounter those frustrations on the left, and I definitely do, right? Um, is to say, well, um, there's a, there's a little bit of a left move of always sort of saying, what did we do wrong? Right? As, and I think about this, there's a, a chapter in the book about Occupy Wall Street, if you ancient history now 2011. But this moment, which to me was most important, is a moment of political imagination. And which it was a little ridiculous, and was also like, w what if we didn't think in terms of like, how can I move this electoral thing?

Jeff (21:08):

What if we just imagined what, right? We're gonna have a, we're gonna have a kitchen where we're gonna feed everybody. We're gonna have a free library. And, um, occupy ended. And since then, so many in the left spent time, well, what did we do wrong? What did we do wrong? Well, I was there, you know what you did wrong? About a thousand NYPD came in and they forced us journalists out, and then they came in and they smashed your head against, uh, the pavement. Very literally. They took the library and they dumped it on the wet pavement. When you're being punched, you're not doing anything wrong. You're being punched. And that gravity of authoritarianism right now that I think does draw in some people, it gets tired, it gets fatiguing. You say, look at the success of that. Maybe that's the way to do it.

Jeff (21:52):

Maybe intolerance, maybe that's how we build a movement. And there's enough left traditions, you know, uh, there's enough stalinism, if we call it left, um, uh, maybe we can sort of speak of authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism. Hmm. Um, and, and that's a better, a better way than using, you know, left and right comes from the, uh, design of the, you know, the French parliament and whatever it is. Uh, 19th century. It's, it's, it is an old, old thing. Maybe it's time for new metaphors, but I don't, I think, so-called cancel culture. It's there, uh, I think it's quite overstated. Um, I teach on a college campus. I keep waiting for these horror stories that I read about in the paper. And every now and then I meet a student who's like that, and everyone else is like, huh, that person's a little tightly wound. But you actually, not the majority,

George (22:47):

You actually do mention Dartmouth. And, uh, unlike some of the other Ivy League schools that have really been in the news and struggled on with, with campus tensions, uh, with free speech and questions of, uh, antisemitism and, and the like, Dartmouth seems to have, uh, avoided it or dealt with it in a more constructive way. Is that a fair statement?

Jeff (23:12):

I mean, I know some activists would say we haven't, but, um, uh, and there's some stuff that's troubling there. Uh, part of what happened is, and I think this is a model, um, we had in the Jewish Studies program and the New Eastern Studies program, uh, a group of scholars who years ago led by Susanna Heschel, or one of, one of the leaders was Susanna Haschel, who people may know Abraham and Joshua has Heschel her, her great prophetic father, um, who, who said, you know, let's not wait for a crisis to build this relationship. So they started meeting years ago. So when this comes along, and look, people are tense. They are, and they're reasonably tense, you know, I mean, there are Jewish students at Dartmouth who have lost friends and relatives. There are Palestinian students at Dartmouth who have lost friends and relatives. Like, when you've lost a loved one, or if you have a friend who's lost a loved one, that's not a time we're like, well, I'm gonna be reasonable.

Jeff (24:07):

You're, you're, you're, you're filled with grief. We had the structures in place. But that said, I I, I, one of the failures of the media right now is, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, people may have read there was a, a terrible incident. Berkeley, uh, some kind of Israeli speaker. And, uh, I, I don't, I don't actually know who he was. And, and, and, um, I have no problem with protesting, but apparently there was some violence at the protest. Berkeley's a big, big, big school. Harvard is a big school. These, and, and, uh, and we're, we're seeing stories about a very small number of students who are, and let us remember grief stricken some of them, because they've actually lost loved ones. Some of them, and I, I mean, Israelis as well as Palestinians, but some of them, because they are, I see this so, so many times with my students.

Jeff (25:04):

Some of them are becoming aware. They're 18, 19, they're becoming aware of, wait a minute, the United States is, might be complicit in things that I deeply trouble me, or I'm seeing images I've never seen before. Right. And they overwhelm me. And I, I, I think part of our wi to go to get through this thing, and I think we're gonna get through it, but it's going to, with, with losses, um, uh, we have to be careful about resisting that, you know, resisting yelling at the kids to get off our lawn <laugh>, you know, it's sort of like, yeah. And, and, and, and young people are gonna say some extreme things, right? I did when I was 18. Um, and, uh, you're encountering things for the first time, and let's understand how, how troubling that is. If you've been just playing soccer and da da, da, da, and now suddenly you're seeing children pulled out of rubble.

George (25:59):

Yeah.

Jeff (26:00):

Yeah. That's a big lift for an 18-year-old.

George (26:03):

You know, I, I wanna go back to something you said earlier about grief being at the heart of a lot of this, um, when you were here in Dallas, you, you, you talked some about that as well. And, uh, I, I think, you know, I remember CS Lewis said something about how nobody ever told him how much grief felt like fear. Mm-Hmm.

Jeff (26:33):

It's funny, I, I've got a new appreciation or a renewed appreciation of CS Lewis as a, you know, person who loved Narnia as a kid. And there's a terrific book by a writer named Laura Miller about those people who loved Narnia as a kid. And then those of us who aren't Christian backgrounds, and they're like, wait a minute, a Jesus, hey, I was getting tricked. And then they get bitter, and then she goes back to it, and she loves it. And for me, it was an even longer journey. 'cause I was, I was spending time with what is ultimately a very authoritarian leaning Christian group. And they were deeply into CS Lewis. They called them. They had a branch called the CS Lewis Institute. And that was the first time reading the screw tape letters. And, and, you know, men without chest, which he always was back.

Jeff (27:13):

And then with my child, I came back to Narnia. And, and with adult eyes one, I realized CS Lewis is such a good and strange writer. He tried to make an evangelical tale, and he was too good to do it. His imagination. It's sort of like, yeah, Aslan can be Jesus, but it's also a lion. It's really a lion. And but the role of grief in those stories. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, the, the young child who, uh, who, who, who, who teams up with the white witch, even there's grief in there too. He feels excluded, he feels left out. There's the pain of not being, of feeling wrong and so on. Yeah. Grief, I think, I mean, the theme of the book, the Undertow is grief that has not been mourned. Right. Uh, we've allowed it to curle fear and anger. And in as much as they're there now, where we, you know, I, I'm wary of that phrase, that both sides phrase. Yeah. But that is an affliction of our times. Of Yeah. Unprocessed grief, uh, and mold. So

George (28:26):

It, it does bring up the question then, how do you do public mourning in a way that has a healing effect, uh, that addresses some of these things? Uh, a kind of, um, you know, uh, right of lament. Uh, I, I, I think about this. I, I know I'm gonna wade into really dangerous territory here, but I, I sort of wonder after October 7th,

George (28:51):

What difference it might have made if Israel, as the Israeli government had said, you know, we're gonna draw upon our Jewish tradition, and we're gonna spend 30 days in public lament. Hmm. We're gonna, we're gonna bury our dead. We're gonna, yes, we're gonna put troops at, at the border. We don't want them coming over and all of that, but pray for us. Join us in our grief. Uh, let us bury our dead and, and give us some time, uh, to figure out what this means and, and, and what we might do next. I just have an imagination that the, the, the conscience of the world would be different, differently focused if, if such a thing had taken place. And I, I, I wonder in our country, you know, uh, rather than immediately reacting, uh, immediately blaming immediately, you know, how do we, how do we do this in, in, in, in a society that doesn't have a single religious narrative, but should have learned something, even as a secular society from religious traditions about the psychological and sociological importance of such a thing?

Jeff (30:04):

I mean, it's reductive, but in some ways, I think of religion overall, writ large is one way to mourn, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, and if that seems too sorrowful, mourning is part of joy. Right? Um, and when you, what you say about Israel, I mean, it makes my eyes water to imagine. And, and, and I come out of, um, I'm a secular Jew, spent some years working with this Eastern European language, Yiddish, which was the language, and it's a dead language. He's, I mean, it was killed. It was murdered. And, um, and it's a mournful language. It's a deeply, it, it's so mournful that in the early days of Israel, in fact, um, they were as keen to get rid of Yiddish as they could. There would, there was, even Yiddish movie theaters would be attacked. People just couldn't handle that depth of grief. This was not a language of victory.

Jeff (31:00):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, uh, this was not j this was not the Jericho language. Right. This was the language, a diaspora language. And I think, you know, it, it's, yes. And, and you wanna be sensitive too, also. And anyone suffering to someone who is grieving to say to them, of course, like, well, why don't you rise above it? You know, like, well, let let you let me know when, when this happens to you, how you're gonna do it. 'cause may, but some do. And, but we certainly in the United States, are in no position. You know, we talk about the wars that we launched and in grief, but I think of, you know, a million and more dead of covid. And now let's leave aside all our debates on Covid and how to, uh, how to approach it. We can leave a a million dead. Yeah. Remember that?

Jeff (31:47):

Well, Dallas, maybe not, but New York Times, it was that New York Times front page when it reached a hundred thousand, and all they did was print, uh, the names of the dead. 'cause a hundred thousand seemed unfathomable. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, and, you know, suddenly we become, uh, we become, we all become Stalinist in the sense that Stalin says, you know, uh, uh, still, what was, I'm paraphrasing. A single death is a, is a tragedy. A million is a, a statistic where, where, where are memorials for the million dead. Right. Because we feel their absence, but we don't name it. We feel their absence in the way that certain jobs are hard to fill. We feel their absence. We go to supermarkets, they're not run as well anymore because there's just a dearth of people. What about the many more millions we're going from public life? 'cause we're on Covid, we have all agreed, and I say, all I'm, I'm complicit.

Jeff (32:40):

We're all complicit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I, I think we have artistic traditions that help us. We have religious traditions that help us, um, right. We need political traditions that help us more in tune. And that's what's absent because our political traditions cross the spectrum. Yes. No one wants to do politics of mourning. That's not how you get elected. It's mourning in America with no, with no, you in that word. Right. Right. And, and, and it's gonna be bigger and better as opposed to <laugh> courageous conversations. I, I don't wanna get into politics of it, but Jimmy, you know, the famous malaise speech, like a president who says, we are sad. Yeah.

George (33:22):

Right.

Jeff (33:23):

Credit to Obama, when Obama let tears roll. Right. I believe it was for Sandy Hooks his Right. We are sad that that's, that's real.

George (33:31):

Right. And, and you know, I I, again, not to get overly political, but I, the state of the Union speech, which seemed almost universally to be praising, uh, Biden for showing virility and, uh, you know, strength and all of that, I, I took as a kind of sad reality in our politics. I, I mean, to me, yes.

Jeff (33:54):

I, I did this man who, who we had valued because he seemed to understand law, compassion, and, and, but he instead, we can't do that. Alright. So he's just gonna be a tough guy like Trump.

George (34:05):

Yeah. E exactly. And, and so I, I, I do lament that that state of our politics and, and, and maybe as we kind of wind this time down, uh, I, I, I go back to something you said to some faith leaders, uh, when you were here in Dallas, we were talking about whether the religious community might play a role in bringing back civil society. And, uh, you had a really interesting, uh, take on that. Uh, and I, I'd love to explore that a little more with you. Talk, what's what's your idea about civil society?

Jeff (34:43):

I'm against it. Um, which sounds bad. Um, uh, maybe a more, you know, uh, what, what was Gandhi's famous view on democracy? Uh, do, uh, uh, what do we think about American democracy? I think it would be a good idea. You should try it <laugh> <laugh>. Um, uh, uh, when we speak of, I think there is a great temptation, but I, that temptation of going back to civil society, that's an anti mourning move. Right? Right. Because mourning is saying, Hey, we lost something. And it's really lost. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and whatever comes is gonna be different. Mm-Hmm. It's not, we can't go back to that time. You know, you lose a loved one, they're not coming back. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, it's why in the beginning of the book, I, I, I write against this language of crisis, crisis of democracy, crisis, climate, crisis, glaciers aren't coming back. We have to learn to live with this gloss. And I think some of it, some of, you know, part of, we lost some civil society, but also what was revealed to us was what some of us had to live with all the time, which was, it was not, it was never as civil as it seemed. Right. Well,

George (35:49):

It was an imposed civility, uh, in a sense. There, there, there, it's, it, it's, uh, it is sort of a way of, you know, maintaining the status quo because everyone was not included. Everyone did not have a sense of full participation, uh, of, uh, of, of welcome at the table, so to speak. And so the idea of civility now, uh, has for some people who are still marginalized, the, uh, the, the sense of please just be quiet and be nice. Yeah. We, we know you're, we know.

Jeff (36:24):

And that is so much the, the, the, the, the conversation I think that we see around, um, and, and one's very close to me about, um, and, and I think one that's tough for even good, good spirited folks, um, uh, about trans rights. Yes. Um, and, uh, and, and, you know, you know what, it's, we don't have a problem with it, but you just don't make us, you do you really have to use that bathroom? Like, what do you mean? Do I just really have to go through my day like a human being? Like the way you do all the time when you go to the bathroom, do you think about politics or you just go to the bathroom? Right. And I think that kind of imposed silence, or I'm thinking, you know, uh, before we started recording, I mentioned that my time visiting y'all in, in Dallas, and I have to say West Dallas and South Dallas, I, and I'm not picking on Dallas.

Jeff (37:15):

'cause we could go to Boston and see the same depth of segregation. We could go to almost a, any American city and see the same depth of segregation. Um, and Dallas, west Dallas in particular, I thought, wow, it's very visible because wherever you are in West Dallas, this very, very poor black community, you can see the towers of downtown Dallas. And there's sort of a berm separating them. And they are being slowly displaced by these million dollar homes, by people who wanna, you know, have an Airbnb for the game. That's civility. Right. We're gonna quietly say, well, hey, hey, look, you know that, I don't want to go back to that civility. So when I say I don't believe in civil society, I don't wanna go back to civil society. I'm asking especially, you know, I'm asking you religious people who are engaged in the work of the imagination. You know, there's writers, we're, we're engaged in the work of the imagination. And then there's religious folks who, uh, every Sunday, maybe maybe more often than Sunday, but every Sunday, go there and say, I'm gonna engage in the work of the imagination of what a beloved community might be. Right. That's

George (38:23):

Beautiful. That's

Jeff (38:25):

Beautiful. That's it. So that's, I don't want civil society. I want the beloved community.

George (38:28):

Let's, let's re-envision the world as we think God has dreamt of it. Uh, and that we have this sense in our religious traditions of what it's supposed to be. Yeah. And let's articulate that rather than just calling for calm.

Jeff (38:43):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Supposed to be or could be. I mean, and there's also the openness. It's okay to not know, right. I think that's important. Like, let's, let's, let's figure it out together.

George (38:53):

Well, the book is The Undertow by Jeff Sharlet. And Jeff, we thank you for all the ways that, uh, you have contributed to, uh, helping us understand where we are, uh, helping give us insight, uh, into the human condition and especially in, in, in our country today. And we thank you for your diligent work and your good spirit.

Jeff (39:17):

Thank you.