4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2024
⏱️ 55 minutes
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Clay interviews former NPR CEO Ken Stern, author of a provocative 2018 book, Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right. Weary of living in a liberal cosmos that found the other side “deplorable,” Ken traveled America to experience rituals that many associate with the political Right. He hunted a pig in Texas, visited evangelical churches, went to a NASCAR race, and spent time with the philosopher of Trumpism, Steve Bannon. Clay asks why Ken did it, what he learned, and how his views of America changed.
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0:00.0 | So I talked to Ken Stern, who is the author of Republican Like Me, how I left the liberal bubble |
0:06.8 | and learned to love the right. |
0:08.6 | Turns out, may I say, and I really admire him. |
0:11.7 | He's an extraordinary man in a great sense of humor. |
0:14.3 | We had a wonderful talk. You'll hear the humor that he is capable of including being |
0:20.2 | teasable, which I think is a sign of true confidence and enlightenment. |
0:24.3 | The title is a little misleading because he didn't really become a right-wing Republican, |
0:29.6 | but what he did was go enter the rituals, the ceremonies, the habits, the traditions of right-wing life in America. |
0:37.5 | He shot a pig or shot at a pig in a Texas hunt. |
0:41.0 | He went to NASCAR, went to evangelical churches, he hung out a little bit with |
0:46.3 | Steve Bannon and so on. |
0:49.2 | And so he didn't become a Maga American or even a conservative Republican, but what he did was write a title that really got everyone's attention, but he also said, you know, if we stay in our bubble, if you stay in your bubble, if you're a liberal or conservative no good can come of that. |
1:06.0 | They truly are echo chambers. |
1:08.0 | You know we truly do lock ourselves into a confirmation system which only increases our sense of isolation and that the other side |
1:16.2 | is is is peopled with people who are not really good Americans and and so that sense |
1:21.8 | that the other capital oh, whether it's the squad on the left or the |
1:26.4 | Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert, Matt Gates world on the right is alien and un-American is you know we have reason to doubt the |
1:35.9 | authenticity and the validity of some of these people on the left and particularly on the |
1:40.3 | right but we can't get stuck there we can't get stuck there. |
1:42.6 | We can't get stuck there. |
1:43.8 | And when I think of the election that's coming, I'm trying to, and I urge you to think about |
1:48.2 | this and see if you agree, I'm trying to wean myself of personality and really just think about policy so I love the public lands. |
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