#32 Tolerance and Faith in American Politics w/ Jimmy Williams
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2016
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
American politics has changed a lot in the last few decades. Jimmy Williams, has observed this from inside the beltway, and has made a few changes himself. When he first arrived in DC in 1992, he was a Republican working for the George H.W. Bush's reelection campaign. A few years later he was a Democrat working on the staff of Democratic Senator Dick Durban. Since then he has been a lobbyist, a contributor at MSNBC, the founder of his own online media outlet and, most recently, the host of the political podcast Decode DC.
In our interview, Jimmy tells Bob and Ben of the road that led him through all of these career changes, and the path that led him from a Republican to a self-professed "progressive Democrat who owns guns." Jimmy discusses his experience of coming out as gay in the 1990s and the ways his faith have informed his political views. We also discuss HB2 in North Carolina and the greater history of discrimination and inclusion in American politics.
Jimmy Williams is a political commentator and the host of the Decode DC podcast, which explains how politics in Washington, DC affects Americans' daily lives.
More on this episode and The Road to Now can be found at our website: www.TheRoadToNow.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on the road to now. |
| 0:03.0 | When you are discriminated against, that you understand what discrimination is. |
| 0:08.0 | I think everybody in this country is a racism. |
| 0:11.0 | It's just a matter of whether or not your racism is minuscule or huge. |
| 0:17.0 | You were not born hating gay people or black people or white people for that matter. You |
| 0:22.6 | learn that from somewhere. So you have to, A, teach people not to do those kinds of things, |
| 0:27.7 | or be, unlearn that kind of behavior. And that's sort of where America's at a weird point |
| 0:34.7 | right now. We're in a fulcrum. And I think we have to figure out how to become not a post-racial society, but a racially inclusive society. |
| 0:42.3 | They expected Barack Obama to come in and single-handedly and with the magic wand make racial relations in this country eminently better instantaneously. |
| 0:53.3 | And the answer to that is no |
| 0:57.0 | human being can do that because the country has just had such a long and tortured |
| 1:02.0 | history when it comes to race and to how we treat races Americans don't like government |
| 1:08.0 | working when they can see it they like it when they can't see it. |
| 1:12.4 | The sausage making sucks, but everybody loves sausage. |
| 1:15.8 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 1:17.0 | And I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 1:18.1 | This is the road to now. |
| 1:19.9 | Ben, how was your Thanksgiving? |
| 1:21.7 | Oh, my Thanksgiving was awesome, Bob. |
| 1:23.5 | Thank you for asking. |
| 1:24.5 | I went out to California to see my wife's family. I had Thanksgiving in Orange County on the beach. It was amazing. My sister-in-law, Jamie, just got married on Friday as well. And so we had Thanksgiving dinner with her, her fiancé then, now husband, Jason's family. And it was amazing. The wedding is great. I got to say, |
| 1:48.2 | you know, if you marry, marry up. And so it was a great one, too, to spend time with my wife's |
... |
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