Is America Headed Towards a Civil War?

Gaslit Nation

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.7 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With political violence on the rise in America, along with disinformation, mainstream propaganda and the consolidation of media under conservative ownership, the scapegoating of LGBTQ+ people, women, and nonwhite people, and the weaponization of government in several Republican-led states, are we headed towards a civil war?

In this week's episode, Andrea interviews Jeff Sharlet, the author of the new book Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. Sharlet is also the author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, that launched the must-watch Netflix series of the same name, that takes viewers into the dark heart of corruption known as the National Prayer Breakfast, and how it's used as a tool for the extreme religious right to consolidate power. In Undertow, Sharlet takes readers on a cross-country roadtrip to show how we're in a slow-motion civil war, and provides ways to confront this dangerous crossroads, including lessons from Civil Rights leader and artist Harry Belafonte.

Sharlet is the New York Times best-selling author or editor of eight books. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper's; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He currently teaches the art of writing as a professor at Dartmouth College. In our bonus episode, out later this week for Patreon subscribers at the Truth-teller level or higher, Sharlet takes the Gaslit Nation Self-Care Q&A to share what art, music, books, and documentaries and other cultural resources that he recommends to help process the times we live in. We will share a free excerpt of that for all listeners wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be back with an all new Gaslit Nation episode next week, along with our regular Q&A bonus episode for Patreon subscribers. For supporters at the Democracy Defender level and higher, submit your questions to be answered in an upcoming bonus episode. Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation and keeps our show going! To join our community of listeners, sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit

Transcript

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0:00.0	This interview with Jeff Charlotte was recorded shortly before the death of the singer and civil rights leader Harry Belafonte and references the impact of his work.
0:12.0	The clip you're about to hear is Harry Belafonte reading the statement of the cultural contingent at the March of Washington in 1963, which he helped organize.
0:23.6	Statement to read on behalf of the cultural contingent.
0:28.6	And it says, and all the names that I've just read to you, endorse this statement.
0:34.6	We are here to bear witness to what we know. We know that this country,
0:40.3	America, to which we are committed and which we love, aspires to become that country in which
0:47.3	all men are free. We also know that freedom is not licensed. Everyone in a democracy ought to be free to vote, but no one has the license to oppress or demoralize another.
1:02.0	We also know, or we would not be here, that the American Negro has endured for many generations in this country which he helped to build
1:13.1	the most intolerable injustices. To be a Negro in this country means several unpleasant
1:19.6	things. In the deep south, it often means that he is prevented from exercising his right
1:26.1	to vote by all manner of intimidation
1:29.2	up to and including dead. This fact of intimidation is a great weight in the life of any Negro
1:37.7	and though it varies in degree, it never varies in intent, which is simply to limit, to demoralize, and to keep in subservient status more than 20 million Negro people.
1:51.0	We are here, therefore, to protest this evil and to make known our resolve, to make known our resolve to do everything we can possibly do
2:03.0	to bring it to an end. As artists and as human beings, we rejoice in the knowledge that
2:11.2	human experience has no color and that excellence in any endeavor is the fruit of individual labor and love.
2:20.3	And we believe that artists have a valuable function in any society since it is the artist,
2:28.3	artists who reveal the society to itself.
2:32.3	But we also know that any society which ceases to
2:36.1	respect the human aspirations of all its citizens courts political chaos and
2:42.1	artistic sterility we need the energies of these people to whom we have for so
2:48.0	long denied full humanity we need their their vigor, their joy, the authority which their pain has brought them.
	...

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