Bitchy History - The Problem with the Puritans

00:00:00.040 Welcome to Bitchy History, the irreverent history podcast that would like to remind you that anyone who says that the pilgrims came to the new world for freedom of religion is either historically illiterate or lying to you for their own purposes.

00:00:12.720 all right guys so i've got a guest for you this month uh this is our guest episode for the month

00:00:33.440 and uh today we're talking to elena you want to introduce yourself sure uh my name is elena

00:00:39.140 Bowman. I am a researcher writer at Columbia University. I also have a couple of degrees

00:00:44.820 because I'm old and I find that one or two degrees is a little bit useless. One of those situations

00:00:51.640 where the more you learn about a given topic, the more you understand that you have so much

00:00:57.180 more to learn. And so we are here. I am the author of three different high school textbooks. And so

00:01:04.620 that's partly what we're here to discuss is um the history of the puritans and how we're still

00:01:10.220 seeing them uh as as really primary influences in american culture 400 years on still dealing

00:01:18.440 with these guys yeah and it's not necessarily in a good way yeah not not generally speaking

00:01:24.440 not in a good way i've got a few episodes already on the podcast about the puritans which everybody

00:01:28.740 uh you may have listened to them or not listened to them at this point but if you haven't they're

00:01:33.500 mostly back in season one of the podcast. Got an episode on the witch trials, which spends a little

00:01:39.280 bit of time on the Puritan witch trials, but also the European ones. And also, of course,

00:01:44.360 I've got episodes on the first Thanksgiving and some other information about the early Puritans

00:01:48.300 and how they influenced the beginnings of American culture. But they have, you know,

00:01:53.660 obviously, they had a huge impact. There were many of the original 13 colonies were Puritan

00:02:00.720 colonies that were based on that. We've got Massachusetts, Connecticut, all of these were

00:02:05.660 Puritan run, Puritan run communities and colonies. And that's going to have a major impact on the way

00:02:11.680 that we, you know, the way that America is formed, and it's going to have a major cultural element.

00:02:18.060 Yeah, and I think it's also worth noting, first of all, that when we first got together to sort

00:02:22.960 of start talking about this, we put together some notes in a document and just sort of,

00:02:27.340 you know, like farted around a little bit about concepts. And we talked for three and a half

00:02:32.360 hours the last time we had a meeting about this. That is to say that their scope is not limited.

00:02:40.760 Their scope is almost infinite in American culture and frankly, Western European culture,

00:02:45.580 although the Puritans were largely reactionary against the current, well, I should say their

00:02:52.740 contemporary Western culture. But their presence is still absolutely keenly felt. We see it

00:02:59.360 particularly in our brand of consumerism capitalism, and particularly these days in the

00:03:07.620 self-care community, which is certainly something that we want to address later on.

00:03:13.480 Yeah. So let me start off by talking a little bit about what the Puritans are and kind of how,

00:03:19.420 uh you know how we should look at them in the context of of history uh i always like to say

00:03:25.020 that there are separatists and then there are separatists uh because you've kind of got you've

00:03:30.220 kind of got a section of like three different separatist groups during this period of time

00:03:35.100 they all come from the same puritan line uh which i think i've mentioned this in an earlier episode

00:03:40.060 but they all come from the same group in england where you have these this you know these puritans

00:03:45.020 who are pulling away from the church of england they think the church of england is still too

00:03:49.420 uh you know still too much like the catholic church they're too they're they're too indulgent

00:03:55.020 they're too they they like fancy things too much there's too many rules and dogma between you and

00:04:01.600 god all of that and so you have this group and they kind of make everything miserable for everybody

00:04:06.420 for a while uh because they're not really happy letting other people believe what they want to

00:04:10.920 believe they want everybody to be a puritan oh it's almost like there are there are parallels

00:04:15.580 to contemporary America. Almost. It's very strange. So then you have a group of these,

00:04:21.740 these Puritans who are being too, that the king is admittedly, that the England is admittedly

00:04:28.540 kind of oppressing them. I'm not going to say they weren't. And so you have a lot of them who

00:04:32.220 decide they're going to leave. But contrary to popular opinion, they did not leave for America.

00:04:37.700 They left for Holland because the Netherlands is one of the only countries at that time that has

00:04:42.600 actively a law on the books allowing freedom of religion at the time which made them a very open

00:04:48.240 society they had they still had some problems with catholics but after the spanish inquisition

00:04:52.500 everybody had some problems with the catholics let's be fair here um but they allowed you know

00:04:57.340 jewish people protestants puritans everyone to practice their beliefs so you get this huge

00:05:03.140 section of them moving into leiden which is my old stomping grounds in grad school uh and then

00:05:07.960 you have that group who pretty much stays there except for a very tiny splinter group of them

00:05:12.900 who decide that holland is too too progressive for them right they're worried about the fact

00:05:19.540 that holland allows people to believe anything they want and so these that's who become the

00:05:23.800 pilgrims uh who then head off to america because the only way that they can handle society right

00:05:29.700 is to be we're going to protect our children from from outside influence and things like that by

00:05:35.940 by living basically American fundamentalism and the homeschooling community in the 1990s

00:05:41.780 so yes right it's the Duggars except in the 1600s that's essentially it and that's how I usually

00:05:48.100 explain it to my students uh because there's you know there's it's several break-off groups

00:05:52.620 splinter groups uh that get progressively more regressive I guess yeah so uh you know it's

00:06:01.060 it's crucial that we first identify these mysterious Puritans. And yes, you're correct

00:06:05.520 that there are separatists and then there are separatists. I mean, we've all heard the word

00:06:10.640 puritanical used as a pejorative, right? It usually indicates like someone who's really

00:06:16.060 uptight and aesthetic and, you know, wears colorless clothing and a scowl and a funny hat

00:06:21.080 with buckles. And while I do love Charles Schultz and Charlie Brown, I did go back and revisit the

00:06:27.560 thanksgiving special and found myself just like my heart sank a little bit because there's that

00:06:32.860 like white nostalgia of i really wish this is how things worked uh it is not um having said that

00:06:39.180 it is still a narrative that we're really dedicated to uh in this country we have collectively bought

00:06:44.660 into the fairy tale and that's partly because uh well for many reasons but partly because we're

00:06:49.560 anti-intellectual and we're anti-history um just in general in this country because being

00:06:54.700 historically accurate would require us to negotiate with national sin and we're not always willing to

00:07:00.560 do that right we're not comfortable the problem of our past right right so um you know the puritans

00:07:08.000 it indicates a time when you know women had no rights outside the home children were meant to

00:07:11.960 be seen and not heard but that's also an overly simplistic uh description the puritans played

00:07:17.620 games and sang songs and made special recipes that they passed down from uh you know mother to

00:07:22.580 daughter um they read together they did refuse to observe christmas which is funny given that

00:07:28.000 it's the 23rd of december today i find that that's an interesting um you know maybe uh

00:07:34.220 connective tissue there that we um they regarded christmas as too secular and too pagan and frankly

00:07:41.520 too jolly uh but they were also the instigators of the thanksgiving feast which of course did

00:07:46.100 not go down the way that you and I and Norman Rockwell were taught that. But there is a logical

00:07:52.860 balance between the stereotypes. So before we can really begin to approach the Puritans as an entity

00:07:59.520 unto themselves, we have to understand a little bit more about the Anglican Church,

00:08:03.860 which was essentially a pseudo-religious organization, but was far more interested in

00:08:11.460 politicking proper. Um, of course the Anglican church emerged out of, uh, King Henry, uh, the

00:08:19.080 eighth and his multiple wives and his desire to get a divorce, uh, and so on and so forth. And so

00:08:24.280 the Anglican church was seen as largely, um, the let's, let's call it maybe the expression of

00:08:33.360 indulgence, maybe religious and theocratic indulgence where, um, you know, we had a king

00:08:39.280 who was very wealthy and wanted his own way and so we created new rules around him to um to yeah

00:08:47.420 satisfy him right because this is during the period of the reformation anyway you've got

00:08:51.960 this reformation going on in europe and i've always viewed it as being like king henry's like

00:08:55.980 you know that's a cool idea i don't have to listen to catholic church anymore that seemed

00:09:00.860 that's so smart i'm gonna do i'm gonna do that myself but of course he's not doing it for the

00:09:05.140 reasons that Martin Luther is is doing the same thing he's doing it for his own gratification

00:09:09.640 and not just about theological differences right and anytime we see that we as as we did with the

00:09:16.360 reformation but anytime we see sort of like uh religious social and political upheaval what

00:09:21.200 we're going to see is like this this huge delineation between progressives and people who

00:09:26.800 are trying to conserve some sort of uh group identity uh and that becomes more and more as

00:09:34.280 you said regressive um and so with the puritans in particular um the anglican church became more

00:09:42.260 of a political um byproduct of the situation and it was no longer what they believed to be

00:09:48.480 theologically pure um whatever that means that should be the asterix of this uh maybe that's

00:09:53.600 the title of the episode like whatever the hell that means whatever that means but they thought

00:09:59.320 it right right so in the case of the puritans you know it became such that uh to be born

00:10:07.280 merely born in in britain was to be born into the anglican church so you were an anglican or

00:10:14.560 or a christian by default it required nothing of faith it required nothing of um certain virtues

00:10:22.960 It required nothing of your political identity. And so that's partly what the Puritans were rebelling against, was that they had adopted so profoundly the works of John Calvin, who wrote, I mean, he was also, you know, a persecuted reformer from the 16th century, French reformer and theologian and to some degree philosopher, who wrote two very dull volumes.

00:10:52.960 called the Institutes of the Christian Religion. He actually has some decent ideas, but one of his

00:10:58.620 chief presuppositions is the concept of predestination and to some degree limited

00:11:06.760 atonement. The concept of predestination is predicated on the idea that because God is

00:11:12.860 all-powerful, God knows and in fact more than just having foreknowledge actually does predestine the

00:11:20.620 events of the world throughout history. And therefore, we don't really have free will,

00:11:26.900 we don't really operate in a space of volition, but we are really reactionary to a pre-planned

00:11:33.960 path that God has set from the foundation of the earth. And so, you know, the Puritans take that

00:11:41.860 a little bit further. You know, John Calvin does talk about the predestination of the elect,

00:11:46.640 the idea that um you know the the people whom god has chosen for himself cannot be unchosen so if

00:11:54.160 you are destined for heaven there is nothing you can do to necessarily lose that salvation however

00:11:59.760 the counterpart of that is somewhat less gracious somewhat less generous that if god has destined

00:12:05.160 you for perdition there's also nothing you can do to uh change your state of grace or your state of

00:12:12.540 um ungrace that's not right now if you're destined for hell you're going to hell there's nothing you

00:12:19.180 do about it sorry which i mean brings a lot of problems into the into their religion which

00:12:24.500 we probably won't get into right at this point but it's it it's just such a you know hard line

00:12:33.520 religion where it's like you're either saved or you're not saved and there's nothing you can do

00:12:37.640 about it. And it kind of throws the idea of redemption out the window. This idea is completely

00:12:44.340 gone in Puritanism. And it affects everything. So these are also people who would have limited

00:12:52.200 their education, particularly female education, but also social education to the Bible and the

00:12:59.140 Book of Common Prayer. So these are not especially educated people. These are, as you said, hard

00:13:06.080 line. It's a hard line or very dogmatic religion, but it also informs the way that they look at

00:13:11.260 everything, the way that they move through the world. So they get to Holland and they say,

00:13:14.660 no, we are the elect. We are predestined for glory and for, well, manifest destiny ultimately

00:13:22.580 is where we're headed. And as a result, they're looking at all of these other people who are,

00:13:27.760 you know, enjoying and practicing freedom of religion. And the Puritans decide, no,

00:13:33.060 we can't have that. That is absolutely antithetical to our existence. And so they moved to what is

00:13:41.140 essentially, you know, eventually to Massachusetts colony. But that concept of predestination

00:13:47.460 informs everything. It informs the genocide of First Nations and Native peoples because

00:13:53.600 they are somehow not elect. And it also defines the way that they're going to treat the poor,

00:13:59.220 the way that they're going to treat um people who are enslaved groups um they're going to treat

00:14:04.880 every marginalized and oppressed group as though that is somehow a condition of um basically a

00:14:12.340 condition of deserving oppression which is enormously problematic right because why should

00:14:21.640 i be compassionate towards a person um whom god is so clearly punishing right like you you clearly

00:14:28.680 deserve whatever has happened to you if you're poor if you're sick if you're you know you're

00:14:34.100 enslaved this was god's plan for you the entire time which it's you know highly problematic uh

00:14:40.880 and though i guess they get points for not trying to trying to become missionaries and convert

00:14:48.280 everybody but they also just kill everybody so i'm not sure i'm not sure that that's necessarily

00:14:53.800 an improvement no uh an improvement upon say like the the spanish um settlements here um i think

00:15:02.880 that what we have here is a little bit more isolationist to their credit uh at the same

00:15:07.880 time this idea and we're seeing it playing out in real time this the 23rd of december of the year

00:15:14.920 of our lord such as it may be 2023 we are still encountering this same rhetoric right that god

00:15:23.300 destined me for this land therefore it is uh fine by any means met uh by any means necessary for me

00:15:30.300 to occupy such a space right it has a lot to do with things that are going on right now in the

00:15:34.920 middle east and things as well that we just see that influence over and over and over again where

00:15:39.880 it is this you know this constant we think we're special you know that that there's some special

00:15:46.200 space for us uh that that we're allowed to do these things and definitely plays into like

00:15:52.060 american foreign policy and things like that yeah american certainly that but also uh you know as i

00:15:57.100 said before western western expansion manifest destiny um the fact that i and you have experienced

00:16:03.760 uh in in our profession uh numerous people um typically on the more administrative side who

00:16:09.940 view education as a sort of consumer product and therefore want that product that education to be

00:16:15.940 packaged in such a way that does not question manifest destiny and some sort of divine

00:16:21.360 revelation around our country, our nationality, our social identity, which is obviously problematic.

00:16:29.500 Yeah. To be honest, if you and I were on the street and we met someone who said,

00:16:35.940 God gave me this land, you and I would question whether or not we had to call

00:16:41.220 emergency medical services, right? That is a mental illness. And yet it's something that we

00:16:46.780 also have to contend with almost daily as professional academics, professionals in

00:16:53.480 education. Yeah. It's special. Everything is right. Everything is for the greater good,

00:16:59.200 right? Which you never hear anybody saying that you're like, yeah, I feel like maybe you might

00:17:04.160 be on the wrong side of history. Whenever anybody says I'm doing this for the greater good.

00:17:07.140 yeah i mean anytime we talk about american exceptionalism which is constant right now

00:17:12.060 we even see in the u.n where we have objective national sins when we are we are making um

00:17:18.220 a travesty of our position in the world uh and yet we do it by claiming some sort of

00:17:25.200 like an extension of divine right um that's that's mental illness is what that is

00:17:31.140 it is i think it's an extension in many ways you know despite the fact that the puritans

00:17:36.620 definitely did not you know they didn't they didn't truck with monarchism right they didn't

00:17:40.380 really like the whole king thing they didn't like that but in a lot of ways i feel like puritan

00:17:45.440 ideology that's been passed down to us still holds a lot of that concept of divine right that kings

00:17:51.680 had because you're dealing with these people who say i am right i god has chosen me we have a divine

00:17:58.240 purpose and so everything we do is correct in the in the pursuit of that divine purpose and so it's

00:18:04.880 just divine right, but on a, but on a, I don't know, a democratic level instead of a, instead of

00:18:10.540 not even democratic, but you know, a populist level, let's say, uh, versus a, versus the king

00:18:16.580 having that divine right. It's, it's the same concept, I think. Yeah, I agree. It's a, it's

00:18:21.240 certainly, they're, they're certainly bedfellows. Um, what I, I think is probably, well, let me back

00:18:28.540 up. Okay. So, uh, William Bradford writes, um, of Plymouth Plantation, which is really our first

00:18:34.520 along with maybe the Mayflower Compact as our first witness to history around the Puritans.

00:18:41.880 It's also written in third person, which I think is ironic because he writes of himself as though

00:18:46.640 he was a character in his own story. And it's interesting because he's clearly setting out

00:18:50.660 to write a history. And yet there's so much, it's honestly drenched with theology. It's drenched

00:18:58.460 with magical thinking. And so I actually pulled out a portion here that I thought would be

00:19:03.680 interesting for you. Many became enlightened by the word of God. Again, he's writing this as a

00:19:08.520 history, but we're also invoking deity. Well, kind of strange, the Puritans didn't necessarily

00:19:15.000 believe in divine revelation, so it's not sure how they're making these assumptions that God

00:19:19.380 has told them such and such. But we have here, many became enlightened by the word of God. This

00:19:25.480 is they're on the ship and their ignorance and sins discovered onto them and began by his grace

00:19:30.100 to reform their lives and make conscience of their ways. The work of God was no sooner manifest

00:19:34.300 in them, but presently they were both scoffed and scorned by the profane multitude. And the

00:19:40.980 ministers urged with a yoke of subscription or else be silenced, meaning shut up or get with

00:19:45.240 the program. And everybody else, he talks about others outside of the Puritans. You want to talk

00:19:51.480 about the attitude of separatism is that everybody else is the profane multitude. Bizarrely,

00:19:58.460 american evangelicalism has carried this on we talk about be not of the world etc uh and and

00:20:06.140 then we have um some some uh chapters later we have a young man who was um a sailor uh on on

00:20:14.780 the mayflower who um actually curses a bit and um yes yeah terrible sin terrible grievance uh and

00:20:24.180 trespass against the sensibilities of the puritans and so um william bradford writes that god struck

00:20:30.860 him dead um yes this this poor unfortunate young man we don't actually have any um like historic

00:20:39.140 there's nothing in the record there's nothing in the archives about him what what illness he was

00:20:43.440 struck with nothing we just know that god struck him with an illness he died and they threw him

00:20:47.380 overboard and that was of course connected to his sin of swearing god was it was i'm sure it had

00:20:53.680 nothing to do with the rough sea crossing the scurvy the you know it couldn't have anything

00:20:59.640 to do with any of that stuff of course not has to do with offending uh god's sensibilities or

00:21:05.460 rather the sensibilities of the so-called people of god the people of god makes me wonder uh how

00:21:11.900 often um god has wanted to strike me dead um i like i like a good f word or two uh or many more

00:21:18.660 now that i live in new york um it's it's just the way people talk you can't not do it right

00:21:25.320 uh but then again studies have shown that people who curse more are more trustworthy

00:21:29.560 so and i think that has a little bit more to do with the with the self-righteousness of religious

00:21:35.080 people who don't curse than it does with the actual cursing but you know that's just my theory

00:21:41.200 i don't know if it's i don't know if it's because i've become more impulsive or if it's more that

00:21:46.820 uh having moved away or moving into more of a deconstruction space moved away from um as i

00:21:53.560 said the 1990s homeschooled child um as i was raised the the closer i move into academia the

00:22:00.080 more you realize that um cursing is is a perfectly linguistic um expression of whatever and it is so

00:22:08.220 uh elastic and so easily adaptable for our needs you can use you can use the word fuck for so many

00:22:16.700 things and yes we can curse on this show it's always rated it's always rated uh it's always

00:22:21.680 rated for not kids on when i put posted online so uh we can't it's such a wonderful word that

00:22:28.300 can be used in so many ways i love it so i think the next um probably the next line of thought

00:22:34.660 here is that the puritans did not arrive with any sense of religious freedom that's very very

00:22:41.540 important to touch on that the puritans did not believe in religious freedom they believed in a

00:22:46.400 theocracy um and and were not interested in having non-Puritans join their society um in fact in

00:22:54.680 order to vote you had to be obviously male you had to be a landowner and you had to be in good

00:23:00.480 standing with their church um which of course is going to lend itself into the sort of culture of

00:23:06.600 oppression and silence that that inevitably is going to lead to the witch trials and other

00:23:11.360 another truth i mean i mean it's so so many times i'm dealing with students and i uh one of the

00:23:17.500 things i start off with when i talk about the puritans is asking students to define what they

00:23:21.100 think freedom means uh because you know i want i want my students to kind of have that in their

00:23:26.140 mind as we're discussing this like what's the concept of of freedom freedom of religion freedom

00:23:30.460 of of speech those kind of things what do you think those things mean and then turn it around

00:23:35.420 and be like is this really why the pilgrims came here is is freedom as you have defined it does

00:23:41.980 that have anything to do with what the pilgrims came here for which is always a very elucidating

00:23:46.620 moment for them i think when they realize that they have been they have been lied to from the

00:23:50.220 very very beginning of saying that the pilgrims came here for religious freedom which is just not

00:23:54.300 it's patently untrue they came there also worth noting yeah the also worth noting that the

00:23:59.340 the Puritans were considered cults. It was considered a cult in Western Europe. There's

00:24:07.080 certain elements of that that certainly lends itself towards that kind of assessment.

00:24:13.320 Like the Puritan revolution would be another great example. We have, of course, the rise of

00:24:18.880 thinkers like Milton, who patently called for regicide, and then was able to, through whatever

00:24:27.720 uh you know rhetorical acrobatics was uh able to say like yes god destined for us to murder the

00:24:35.440 king uh because that is also uh yeah that's a that's a religious uh legitimate religious action

00:24:42.360 is to just kill people in charge yes uh never mind the 10 commandments never mind any of that

00:24:48.020 because never mind the render unto caesar what is caesar's never mind that doesn't matter that

00:24:53.380 doesn't matter if i uh if i the puritan head of household believe that the king should die then

00:24:59.000 that it is completely within my purview to make that happen which is of course utterly uh insane

00:25:05.620 but we do have this very strange again the predestination creeps in um where you know if uh

00:25:12.560 god intended um this king to die well then um why would i not partake in that action uh so quite

00:25:20.960 some definitely problematic um yeah just a continuation of of a continuation or even an

00:25:28.300 expansion of religion becoming part of politics it it's inherently it's not separated from

00:25:34.780 politics they want the religion to be in the politics which like i said you had to vote you

00:25:39.220 had to be in good standing with the church so they have intimately connected the ideas of theology

00:25:44.280 and and political party at that point in time and and that's you know and again that's unfortunately

00:25:50.380 we see that continuing throughout throughout american culture is that marriage of politics

00:25:55.100 and religion now i i do think that it is so central to the conversation um when i'm sorry

00:26:02.520 well no i i take it back i'm not going to apologize when absolute idiots like marjorie

00:26:07.780 taylor green and lauren bobert and their ilk get on line and say god uh the founding fathers

00:26:15.340 destined us to be a christian nation i want to push back against that so hard because it requires

00:26:20.240 a willful ignorance of history and culture um not to not that i mean these people cannot pass

00:26:27.480 like the ap civics exam so like we know these people are not qualified um but that is uh you

00:26:34.600 know part of you know both the the glory and the demise of democracy is that we invite people of

00:26:42.660 all types to partake. And if, if, and when, really, I should say if, because it's not a question of

00:26:51.100 when, when democracy fails, through, through gerrymandering or other means, right, various

00:27:00.180 nefarious parties, what we see is, particularly this narrative, especially as we see more and

00:27:08.400 more anti-intellectual um fervor we're gonna see more and more of this rise where it's you can make

00:27:15.360 blatant claims um with no training with no qualifications um with no research other than

00:27:22.700 what we have like i i what i think of as like uh covid era white soccer mom research like go and

00:27:29.740 do your research yeah it sure makes makes me think of if google was a person that script like does

00:27:37.160 do vaccines cause autism? Well, I have 500 results here that say they don't. And one result

00:27:42.460 says they do. I knew it. You know, that's it. That's the research for me of bias confirmation.

00:27:47.640 But what we're seeing is these people, uh, particularly those two women who just happened

00:27:52.760 to be under my skin a lot as an academic, uh, people who say, yes. Oh, who's the, who's the

00:27:59.020 gentleman from georgia now the guy who called um the lgbtq uh members of his community mutants

00:28:07.260 the same it's the same right where you can just make a blatant statement uh and expect that

00:28:13.100 because you are in a position of power that somehow legitimizes your sentiment um which

00:28:18.500 is absurd to to um the umpteenth degree honestly look at the things that mike johnson is saying

00:28:25.280 as Speaker of the House and things he has said in the past. And all of them are, they are steeped

00:28:30.100 in Puritan ideology in so many ways. This idea that America is being punished for people, you

00:28:36.560 know, being gay or people being, you know, it kind of goes all the way back to, you know, the hurricane

00:28:41.700 is the fault of gay marriage, you know, which is so funny. I just, I just bought a friend of mine

00:28:47.080 sent me a link and somebody had made a B-movie horror poster. It's that quote from Pat Robertson

00:28:52.920 about how feminism makes women, you know, turn into lesbian. And so now I just, I just ordered

00:28:58.700 that poster because I was like, I don't really want to Pat Robertson quote on my wall, but it's

00:29:02.140 so funny that I can't not buy the poster. I would say like, you know, turn that into a t-shirt. I

00:29:06.920 will wear that on campus. Like I'll think about it. I'll think about making that. We've laughed

00:29:12.680 about this before, but the number of times that I've, you and I have both been called witches

00:29:16.320 because there's, you know, that there's a scripture that says that rebellion is as witchcraft. And

00:29:21.700 therefore because i'm a woman who speaks in academic spaces which have been historically

00:29:25.820 preserved for white old men that they're you know i'm automatically um included in in the uh populace

00:29:35.080 of you know apparently local local witches i'm part of the the local coven by by merely being

00:29:40.660 um well read apparently apparently okay i'm okay with being a part of a coven i'm fine with that

00:29:46.180 i'm in good company we've split off topic a little bit but that's okay i'm gonna i like

00:29:53.420 sliding off topic i'm just gonna say i saw a post a few few days back where somebody was talking

00:29:57.680 about how like oh yeah i remember back when uh evangelical churches said that reading harry

00:30:02.540 potter would turn you away from god and turn you into a witch or whatever and i remember i it was

00:30:07.440 a friend of mine who posted on facebook and i commented on it and said i'm really not the best

00:30:11.420 person to try to refute that like i'm not saying that harry potter had anything to do with that

00:30:15.960 because harry potter is written by a garbage human being uh and it's not even good writing

00:30:19.900 in my personal opinion i said it i'll fight me if you don't like it uh i'm saying that more to

00:30:25.900 listeners if they want to fight me they can't uh but i don't think that's what caused me to turn

00:30:31.180 from the church and become a you know a witchy lesbian with too many tarot cards but i can't

00:30:36.880 really refute the point either which is which is very frustrating for me well i think any any

00:30:42.760 organization that is is predicated on exclusion right there is there are we enlightened um white

00:30:51.540 male etc everything else in parenthesis derogatory um and then there is them the others the people

00:30:58.960 outside of the circle the magic circle maybe uh but the people outside um where uh any kind of

00:31:06.400 And any kind of disagreement is not just annoying, even pejorative or libelous, but it's actually demonic, right? The number of times where I was told, full disclosure to members in the audience who don't know me as well as Meredith does, I did teach at a religious school for five years when I started teaching before I had.

00:31:29.760 Now, I was working for charter school, so I didn't really have to deal with sectarian or parochial content. But it was so hugely impressed on me that I was meant to uphold and preserve as sacrosanct this narrative that the United States is above reproach and that any sort of contention was in fact demonic, which is why I only lasted five years.

00:31:56.980 very surprised that it was amazing i'm amazed you made it that long quite frankly i don't think i

00:32:02.280 could handle that i used to substitute teach at a middle school uh which was not religious but

00:32:06.580 it was a religion it was a charter school here in in the phoenix area where i live and uh and i i

00:32:13.700 i don't know if i'd ever take another subbing job there again because it did have just this weird

00:32:19.220 american exceptionalist overtoned everything in there and i was like subbing in a latin in a latin

00:32:24.460 class and still like, I got kind of a nasty email from somebody after I did it, but I've made a

00:32:31.680 TikTok about it because I, I don't, I don't put my hand, I don't say the pledge. I don't put my

00:32:37.080 hand over my heart. That's not a thing I do. Uh, I think it's weird. And I think a lot of people

00:32:41.120 around the world would think it's pretty, I would argue that it's, uh, that it's, it's pretty

00:32:46.280 primeval anti-American. Exactly. And I actually had students in the, the, my, my homeroom class

00:32:52.800 that you know I was subbing for and they were like oh I can't believe you didn't put your say

00:32:56.500 the pledge and I don't make a big deal out of it it's not like I make a stance and tell the

00:33:00.740 students about it but they noticed because middle school students do and I was like well you don't

00:33:04.960 have to say the pledge most most countries don't have pledges to flags that's not a thing like if

00:33:11.120 you go anywhere else in the world they're not going to do that and they were like but isn't

00:33:14.160 it isn't it illegal and I was like no you're perfectly within your rights not to say the

00:33:17.780 pledge it's completely legal the supreme court said so and then after i stopped subbing there

00:33:23.760 apparently some of the students stopped saying the play because they didn't want to um and you

00:33:30.020 know whether they did it for logical reasons or not you know they really thought it through or

00:33:33.580 not they didn't want to do it and they might have done it because they're just yeah you know be edgy

00:33:38.420 edgy teenagers but the teacher in question was a little bit peeved that i had told the students

00:33:44.140 that they didn't have to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And I was like, they asked me a

00:33:47.580 question. I answered it honestly. I'm not going to lie to the students, you know, unless it's

00:33:51.860 inappropriate content, you know. And honestly, when we're, so, okay, so you open your question,

00:33:58.180 you open your class with what is freedom. I open many of my classes by having my students

00:34:03.900 close their eyes and describe the 4th of July. And this is another interesting concept. What do

00:34:10.320 you hear what do you smell um you know we've got fireworks and barbecue and whatever whatever

00:34:16.780 whatever and the question becomes then which of those are symbolic of america and which ought to

00:34:22.600 be right what have we established as more like a dogmatic pseudo-religious ritual and what is

00:34:31.560 actually symbolic of what we believe and hope for our nation and those are really important to

00:34:37.200 delineate? Because if you believe that it's okay to lead your, I mean, I think about like the

00:34:43.120 Pennsylvania state house four years ago, right? Like, do you believe that it's right to pray

00:34:48.740 and read the Bible in public as a public official versus in the safety of your own home,

00:34:56.560 in the privacy of your own home? And what is it like to actually force other human beings into

00:35:02.360 your religious experience um that that is ongoing the fact that we're seeing people like um tim scott

00:35:11.360 say you know the the government is not supposed to direct the church the church is supposed to

00:35:17.340 direct the government or maybe that was bobert i don't know they're honestly so

00:35:20.780 at this point um where it requires a really willful ignorance and frankly it's pandering

00:35:27.720 and we all know that it's performative pandering. But the fact that that's even allowed to be said

00:35:33.700 in public by a public official is so misleading. And again, I will protect your right to be an

00:35:41.460 idiot. You have every right to be an idiot. But when you're in a position of authority,

00:35:47.000 and then that becomes your messaging to your constituents and to the country at large,

00:35:52.880 because frankly the algorithm uh of of everything the algorithm of modern america is such that it

00:36:00.140 rewards bad behavior and reward sensationalizing right and so we have these people saying like

00:36:06.160 the founding fathers blah blah blah well okay let's take a look at those founding fathers

00:36:11.480 shall we like the puritans are not worth emulating they were dangerous people they were oppressive

00:36:17.700 of abusive and like like they were executing people for not following their religious beliefs

00:36:26.020 and that is something that I find that especially my students are very shocked to learn when I start

00:36:31.340 talking about their execution of Quakers and I you know I'll I predicate it with the fact that yeah

00:36:35.500 the Quakers were they were they were kind of a doomsday cult and they were a little bit annoying

00:36:39.620 and they probably showed up in town and caused a lot of disruption but being an asshole isn't

00:36:43.940 illegal like it shouldn't be something that you get killed for just because you believe something

00:36:48.780 that is kind of that just because you're a little annoying in the public square that's not a good

00:36:53.140 reason to be executed uh and that's just not that's not how this is supposed to work and not

00:36:58.620 if you believe in freedom right and they clearly did not yeah i think we also see we still we see

00:37:04.640 the echoes of those that ramification with people like the gop right now where they're invoking

00:37:12.020 i mean to some degree we certainly see it some in certain pockets in the liberal movement

00:37:18.040 um when we invoke god for any reason for any purpose um but we see it especially in the gop

00:37:25.040 the right wing um religious side of that where you know god chose me to we see mike johnson

00:37:32.140 talking about how his wife has bruises on her knees because she's been praying and i mean that

00:37:37.120 was just a meme that wrote itself it did i don't know what he was thinking but it was it did write

00:37:43.700 itself right uh and and this comes from again you cannot have the puritans without having

00:37:51.340 volitional intentional ignorance and at the repression of education right you can't have 0.99

00:37:57.720 this why by the way the same methodology that um uh moms for liberty are taking right we don't want 1.00

00:38:04.200 our kids to be this way therefore we are going to restrict their access to education restrict their 0.93

00:38:09.460 access to information by sensationalizing oh no we can't have you know the the one about the penguins

00:38:15.500 the gay penguins we can't have that because it's got pornographic material right we just sensationalize

00:38:21.300 ad nauseum in because if we if we take it to extremes oh no we're showing our kids someone's

00:38:26.760 showing my kid porn at school um it's the same methodology that the puritans are using to say

00:38:33.080 we we will not truck with the anglican church it's extreme they're demonic whatever and and

00:38:40.100 literally using mythological terms to describe your political or ideological opponent right they

00:38:46.160 are yeah it doesn't get more base than that to be like i don't like you therefore you're possessed

00:38:54.320 i don't agree with you and it's instead of having a conversation about why it is you don't agree

00:38:59.360 with that person and trying to come to you know some sort of middle ground or some sort of

00:39:02.960 discussion uh it's just you are an evil person and if you're the one writing writing the books

00:39:08.860 like Bradford going back to on Plymouth Plantation when you go back and look at that so much of it is

00:39:14.120 a it's it's so propaganda based it is by no means a honest historical look at the founding of the

00:39:20.900 Plymouth Colony because what you're looking at is this you know everything bad that happens he's he

00:39:26.580 writes about it like oh this is just God testing us and everything good that happens it's like oh

00:39:30.420 were being rewarded by God. And it has nothing to do with, you know, the hard work of the people

00:39:36.580 in the community or the hard work of the natives who actually saved their asses, right? Who they

00:39:42.320 would have died without these native tribes doing so many kind things and cooperating with them as

00:39:50.280 equals. But everything about that is just God, God coming in and helping them. And that's how

00:39:56.860 they justify then later massacring those same natives you know and i think there's also something

00:40:02.140 here to be said uh before we move on from like the original puritan colonies is the way in which

00:40:08.840 we have i would say preserved but honestly it's a false preservation it's a it's a an ode to to

00:40:15.400 white nostalgia um i as i've mentioned homeschooled in the 1990s i remember very distinctly um this

00:40:22.200 book that is now by the way being touted by moms for liberty so that you should tell you should

00:40:26.200 know from the get-go that this is a bad source of information. I remember my mother, we were

00:40:31.680 reading a book called The Story of Liberty, which is actually by an author whose name I can't

00:40:35.980 immediately recall, but he's from Irvine. And this book is, The Story of Liberty is essentially

00:40:44.100 an entirely fictionalized version of Plymouth Plantation and more. But it honestly says

00:40:53.700 things like um that the puritans were blessed because squanto had already been kidnapped

00:41:01.420 previously by english speakers and so it was a divine appointment that the previously enslaved

00:41:09.020 squanto was there and could translate for and that was a divine appointment never mind the fact that

00:41:14.280 this poor person had been uh had been at the the miserable hands of of enslavers who believed him

00:41:23.600 to be a savage because he didn't speak English and the fact that this book was trying to honestly

00:41:29.420 fictionalize a traumatic event and twist it's the same people who say like well we're going to talk

00:41:35.360 about Prager later but um the same people who are like well yeah but you know African-American

00:41:41.580 slaves didn't have it that bad don't take that out of context Meredith don't put that on TikTok

00:41:48.140 you know those people who were like at least they got to meet jesus i mean i'm sorry but

00:41:55.180 fuck that like that narrative cannot persist and yet it does that narrative that was coming out

00:42:02.840 in the florida those florida history standards where they're saying oh yeah but they learned

00:42:07.500 marketable skills while they were enslaved so it was okay they came out better in the end and it's

00:42:13.140 Like, that is so just mind-bogglingly awful.

00:42:17.440 Though I have to give credit to the book

00:42:19.060 that you're talking about

00:42:19.960 for at least being honest about Squanto being enslaved

00:42:23.260 because I don't recall ever being taught that in school.

00:42:27.620 Like, it was just kind of like,

00:42:28.480 oh, there's Squanto and he magically knows English

00:42:30.740 and he's friendly with these people.

00:42:32.480 I don't remember them ever mentioning that he was.

00:42:35.080 I will say, I will say,

00:42:36.700 half a point for effort on giving that information

00:42:39.600 at least, I guess.

00:42:41.120 I will say to her credit, you know,

00:42:42.700 I was homeschooled and I was in the homeschooling community. At the same time, I was somewhat

00:42:47.580 isolated in that both of my parents are highly educated. They were not coming at it from a

00:42:52.200 religious bent necessarily. Both of my parents went to USC for broadcast journalism. My mother

00:42:58.060 has her master's in philosophy and her doctorate. So I was also learning in a different space of

00:43:03.380 the homeschooling community. It was quite, I would say a bit of an outlier, but I will say

00:43:09.780 to her credit my mother actually took that book in front of me tore it up and threw it in the trash

00:43:14.500 so I'm quite happy I'm happy to say that that was very important like we don't we do not

00:43:21.540 propagate misinformation particularly with a religious bent that is so destructive um and

00:43:29.800 just going on I had a very similar experience I was only homeschooled a few years I mostly I went

00:43:36.540 to a Christian school in elementary school, a private school, which less said about that,

00:43:41.600 the better, like my parents, right? Fort Smith public schools were not that great. I grew up in

00:43:45.580 Arkansas. I'm not going to say that the evangelical Baptist church that ran the Christian church I

00:43:51.360 went or Christian school I went to was any better, but they were giving an effort. And they went out

00:43:56.740 of their way to send me to a private school. So good for them. But then I was partially homeschooled

00:44:00.980 throughout other years. But primarily that was for other reasons than my parents having an issue

00:44:06.520 with the education like my mom my mom's uh has an optometric doctorate she's an optometrist so

00:44:12.620 she's not a medical doctor but she's gone to graduate school for for medicine my dad was a

00:44:17.140 science teacher yeah uh so i was never raised with that like oh you know evolution's not real

00:44:22.540 or things like that which i was never raised on that and most of my homeschooling was done because

00:44:27.460 i had i was having emotional issues like i was i had depression and things like that and my mom

00:44:32.280 i was being bullied and so my mom pulled me out of school uh but they they same same thing they

00:44:37.940 were not homeschooling me from a religious mindset i think the closest we get to we ever

00:44:43.160 got to really religious content in our in my homeschooling was uh uh susan wise bowers books

00:44:48.580 uh because she used that you know she has this classical education model that my parents used

00:44:54.020 but really we have to talk about the classical model we'll get around that eventually maybe we'll

00:44:59.020 have another episode we could talk about the classical education model in another episode but

00:45:02.540 uh but as far as things go Susan Weisbauer is like religious light she's not like the crazy you know

00:45:08.060 the crazy side of this uh if Susan Weisbauer hears this I'll have you on the podcast to talk about it

00:45:12.440 I will uh Susan would love to discuss especially because she you're you're right in saying that she

00:45:19.200 was sort of religious light because I think of like beautiful feet and sunlight and all of these

00:45:22.960 other I mean a Becca um Bob Jones University which is not accredited number one and also

00:45:30.200 if anyone is listening to this who is considering moving to Pensacola do not move to Pensacola I

00:45:37.420 beg of you please spare yourself the therapy bills I mean it's Florida nobody should be considering

00:45:42.900 moving to Florida anyway but still yeah we should have another episode and talk about homeschooling

00:45:47.140 because I think we would have so much to talk about.

00:45:49.560 Absolutely. Let's do it.

00:45:52.020 Again, we see the Puritan influence there

00:45:54.540 where, you know, education is so belittled

00:45:56.860 because all you need is faith.

00:45:59.200 And honestly, yeah, fuck that narrative.

00:46:02.100 All right.

00:46:02.740 So I guess the next part of the question is

00:46:06.220 how do we see Puritan,

00:46:08.740 the Puritan outlook on life, perspective on life,

00:46:12.400 really perpetuated in 2023, right?

00:46:16.500 how do we see that still yeah part of it of course is what we've said about this these

00:46:23.480 fictitious historical narratives the fact that i love norman rockwell and did he get it wrong yeah

00:46:28.060 of course i love charlie brown and did they get it wrong yes of course um but uh you know i am

00:46:35.320 still negotiating with the difference between my white nostalgia about loving you know vince

00:46:44.120 and his jazz trio and um and also learning to navigate what do we do exactly when our traditions

00:46:52.840 are in their very nature uh negating the pain and misery and oppression that we have perpetuated

00:47:00.680 against other people exactly where we enjoy it it's it you know like i love norman rockwell

00:47:06.960 and you know i try to focus on the parts of norman rockwell that most people don't focus on

00:47:11.300 which I love the pieces that he, he actually did do pieces on institutional racism. He did things

00:47:17.060 on those areas and classes, it's always those pieces and not the, you know, the rampant

00:47:23.380 Americana that he produced for, for other magazines. He, he produced some very, some very

00:47:29.540 iconic images of, of racism in America actually throughout his work. So I always enjoy those.

00:47:35.780 I think as historians and well, you know, students of history, I wouldn't call myself

00:47:41.140 I think I know too little. But I think that part of what we must contend with, especially as educators, is the balance between sources that are problematic and whose authors are problematic and sources that also, in spite of those failures, also teach us something about culture and society and how we've come, how far we've come or not.

00:48:06.260 um and so um i mean you were even mentioning rowling earlier uh as what did you call her

00:48:12.580 a garbage human being or something like that and that's perfectly valid um but you know there's

00:48:18.220 also something to be negotiated there as someone who where for whom harry potter was transcendent

00:48:25.580 right is it is it brilliantly written no not really um but it was um you know what we're what

00:48:33.300 we're missing is the the social inclusion of feeling that you know this story was being told

00:48:38.920 for me what if I was exceptional which again I'm a white woman I don't need to be told that I'm

00:48:43.140 exceptional I live in the United States um but there is something you know about having waited

00:48:49.200 in line for a first edition or are going to the movies or the fact that I actually didn't encounter

00:48:54.620 Harry Potter until I was married and my husband read them to me while we were moving across the

00:48:59.520 country because he was in the military, right? Like there's a lot of nostalgia that comes with

00:49:04.120 that. And I don't want to undo that nostalgia, but I also want to be able to hold complicated

00:49:09.000 conversations in both hands. I want to be able to say, um, the, I want people to be safe with me.

00:49:16.780 And I want to communicate that people are safe with me, which may mean the exclusion of certain

00:49:21.480 childhood books. Um, and that should be okay because people matter more than my nostalgia.

00:49:26.880 and so there's there are complicated conversations and i wish that we were able to have those

00:49:30.800 conversations about the puritans see i wish so not at full circle it's exactly the case yes you

00:49:37.560 have to have that conversation we have to be able to say look it's okay to enjoy the charlie brown

00:49:42.700 thanksgiving special nobody's telling you you can't enjoy that as a as a moment as a moment

00:49:48.160 of nostalgia as a moment of childhood memory that's not the issue the issue is separating

00:49:52.900 the fact from the fiction and it's it's like I feel the same way about so many things uh where

00:49:58.440 it's just you can enjoy this story just know that it's not true and you have to unpack the things

00:50:04.500 about it that aren't true in some some concept in some context or you're just you know you're

00:50:10.220 believing a lie which is not helpful and I think there's there's something also so very precious

00:50:15.840 about being able to have nuanced conversation particularly with your children because it's

00:50:21.820 maybe it's a little strange that I'm 35 and revisiting Charlie Brown. But again, I'm a

00:50:26.180 classical pianist. So, you know, I've been trying to pick up a little bit of Guaraldi in my spare

00:50:31.060 time. But, you know, if I was a parent, I would be having a very different conversation

00:50:37.200 about this. I would probably make sure that my children understood the context before just

00:50:42.740 feeding it to them wholesale at five or six years old. Let's go watch, you know, the Peanuts

00:50:48.060 skating on the pond, right? Let's understand maybe the fullness of this. And that's not to say that

00:50:54.400 I believe in censorship. I don't. But I do think that we have to have these conversations in

00:50:59.720 responsible and somewhat didactic ways. And I think it's important because as we're talking

00:51:05.320 about like how the influence of Puritan culture has affected us, you know, Puritan ideas have

00:51:09.800 affected us culturally. There's so much of that in the problems that we have, you know, dealing

00:51:16.140 with mental illness things dealing with you know with with poverty in this country dealing with

00:51:21.820 self-care things like that where it is the puritan ideologies are so sneaky and so much a part of

00:51:28.940 our society that they damage us uh and the way we the way we exist in society the way we exist with

00:51:35.020 our own bodies and things like that it's it's inherently damaging to to our psyche in a lot of

00:51:40.700 of ways because it's snuck in there so much and that's it becomes an important discussion yeah

00:51:45.580 so if we if we fast forward some 300 odd years from from the instigation of the puritan presence

00:51:52.160 in in the north american content continent um we would see things like um this narrative around

00:52:00.700 um particularly um toxic narrative around welfare queens right that to be well to be on welfare is

00:52:08.560 somehow uh to be deserving of poverty um or that's uh what what is that horrible like uh pull

00:52:16.420 yourself up by your bootstraps and you're like okay what bootstraps john um what does that what

00:52:23.260 exactly does that mean and why do we still to this day um honestly participate in this kind of

00:52:29.900 idolatry of wealth um that the person who has billions of dollars um not that there is ethical

00:52:36.560 that not that there are ethical billionaires uh uh in in any society but that somehow that person

00:52:42.660 is intellectually superior morally superior and god has blessed them we may not say the last part

00:52:47.540 out loud but it is understood right that um bezos or or musk or you know insert your current marvel

00:52:56.420 villain um you know what we're having there is this is this understanding that they they built

00:53:02.080 themselves from you know this backyard garage whatever that that that rich so they must be

00:53:08.740 they must be good right there's there's something positive about them in some context because

00:53:13.300 if they weren't good they wouldn't be wealthy and that's such an obvious like obviously wrong

00:53:19.700 concept uh but america has that idea a lot yeah the corollary is equally prevalent right that

00:53:27.280 uh if you are poor it's because your wealth uh you're you're unlucky or at worst immoral

00:53:34.480 right um that you are a drag on the system that you are um you know somehow like this constant

00:53:43.980 uh uh honestly conflation of marginalized people groups with people who are deserving of poverty

00:53:51.220 is um is a uniquely puritan idea um that's that's one of the more um honestly insidious ways that

00:54:01.720 the puritan impact is still felt in in this country is that if you are poor it's because

00:54:07.000 you are deserving of it you are deserving of poverty you're deserving of fun and if you just

00:54:12.360 worked a little harder you just grab you know just had three jobs or maybe four if you already

00:54:17.380 have three jobs get a fourth one and if you just stop buying avocado toast and and starbucks you

00:54:23.560 know or you know stop getting your daily coffee you'll be able to afford a house or afford you

00:54:28.640 know afford any of these things we have this this that's a very much a part of our culture

00:54:33.060 uh where it's this this idea that somehow if you just work a little harder i just hustle a little

00:54:39.840 more you'll end up you know successful or wealthy or whatever and i you know i can't remember the

00:54:46.140 name cannot for some reason remember the name of the guy right now he was big in um in the

00:54:53.060 late 1800s early early 1900s on writing books about like rags to riches and I cannot remember

00:54:58.300 his name right right at this moment I'll put it in the notes later um but um shoot um the rise

00:55:06.820 of Silas Latham is what comes to mind I that might be it let me know it's not that guy um

00:55:15.860 this is, he was big in like, you know, the, the, you know, the idea that if you work hard,

00:55:22.080 anything will come to you, right? You know, you're just going to get these, and it's kind

00:55:26.360 of similar to The Rise of Silas Latham, but it's not that author. It's, it's, he wrote a whole

00:55:31.240 series of these, you know, stories about like young men who were, you know, like down on their

00:55:36.500 luck, orphans or whatever, and would become, you know, wealthy. And what I always find funny about

00:55:41.900 those books is that the man in question who wrote them um was uh was a pedophile uh and so he wrote

00:55:49.480 a book all these series of books that were popular about young men usually having a wealthy benefactor

00:55:54.420 who helps them because they're such a good person and they become wealthy as a result of it and i

00:55:58.720 kept raise a lot of red flags about that once you realize what his background was and the fact that

00:56:03.320 he was like expelled from the church he was a pastor of for inappropriate behavior with young

00:56:08.220 boys uh which whole thing to unpack there but it kind of goes into this idea that like oh yeah um

00:56:15.100 it's kind of a red flag when you think that everything in life is going to be handed to

00:56:19.260 you if you're just a really good person like that's just not that's not accurate yeah so i

00:56:26.000 mean i think uh you know my my parents um my mother is still a very religious person my my

00:56:31.920 father was until his, until his death. But I remember so very clearly as a young child,

00:56:38.280 my father was out of work when I was just born. And he told me it was part of family lore, in

00:56:44.720 fact, that he, he said something like, you know, you trust, you trust God, but then you knock down

00:56:49.080 every door until you get work. Which is to say, we don't really, God is not in charge of our fate.

00:56:56.880 We are. But there's still an element of the Puritan in that to say, not that we are predestined, but to say that if I work harder, I can still accomplish the American dream. And the American dream is different for everyone.

00:57:13.660 But this sort of the social buy-in is that if we work harder, we can achieve our goal without recognizing that there are obstacles that are absolutely intrinsic to existing as an American, particularly for people of color and for marginalized groups, that they're going to encounter different obstacles.

00:57:37.280 And the Puritans would have said, well, yes, but that is because, uh, that's like the result of

00:57:41.880 your sin or the result of some, some moral failure. Exactly. I was going to use a second

00:57:47.300 to talk about the phrase American dream. Uh, I've, I've been finally trying to work my way through

00:57:52.580 this book. I've quoted it before in a, in a couple of, uh, a couple of TikToks. Uh, I'm trying to

00:57:57.080 work my way through actually finishing it. It was this book by Sarah Churchwell, uh, in which she

00:58:00.680 kind of unpacks the history of the terms America first and the American dream. It's called Behold

00:58:05.280 America. And it's a really interesting look at the kind of history of those terms and how they've

00:58:11.060 impacted American society and culture. Because, you know, the American dream is a very politicized

00:58:17.440 term, but so is the term America first. And they kind of mean something, but we always hear the

00:58:24.780 terms and we don't know what they mean or where they came from. And I think it's a really interesting

00:58:27.740 book. And I figured out who it was, Horatio Alger, that's the guy I'm talking about, who wrote all

00:58:33.880 these books about you know young becoming um you know wealthy through their good works or whatever

00:58:40.360 yeah rags to riches narrative is his thing uh he wrote them um 1868 all the way through his death

00:58:47.660 in 1899 and he was a uh yeah child child sex sex abuse um he had been reported for this gross

00:58:57.180 familiarity with young boys. He didn't deny anything. He admitted what he did, and they just

00:59:03.760 kicked him out of the church and let him go. Nobody ever did anything about it, which is a

00:59:08.440 to the degree of difficulty that exists in holding wealthy people accountable.

00:59:18.060 Yeah, yeah, exactly. They kind of just get away with so much because, again, if you're wealthy,

00:59:23.660 if you're connected, you must be a good person. It just kind of goes into that. And, you know,

00:59:29.120 we're talking about welfare, it is this idea that you have done something to deserve it. And that

00:59:33.580 is intrinsically tied, I think, to the way that America views the welfare system versus other

00:59:39.860 countries. You know, like, when you're living in, like, I lived in Europe for a while, the idea of

00:59:45.780 being on welfare is not as, even in a very Calvinist country like the Netherlands, the idea of welfare

00:59:52.540 is not treated the same. It is not treated as if you have done something wrong or that there is

00:59:57.700 intrinsically, you know, lazy or broken about you as a person. It's just a matter of, you know,

01:00:05.740 you need some help, right? You've got a lean time. There's a problem here. And you're not

01:00:11.220 doing anything wrong to need that. And I think a lot of cultures, especially in Western Europe,

01:00:17.160 welfare is a lot less demonized. People aren't treated the same way. And, you know, that's a

01:00:24.380 much healthier way because people don't have to feel ashamed of needing that help. Whereas I know

01:00:28.920 people here in America who feel horribly ashamed of needing things like food stamps or things like

01:00:35.600 that. I remember reading a story recently, an article about an adjunct professor in New York

01:00:41.340 City who had written about the fact that she was on food stamps and how she happened to have been

01:00:47.920 in line at the grocery store and she realized that one of her students was the woman at the 1.00

01:00:53.940 checkout. And so she is sitting here going, I can't pay my student with my food stamp card

01:01:00.780 because then they're going to know that I'm on food stamps and they're not going to look at me

01:01:04.140 the same way. Even though the problem here is the fact that a woman who's teaching at multiple 0.69

01:01:10.380 colleges in new york city is on foods the problem is not her she is not doing anything wrong she is

01:01:16.960 is not at fault for this she is taking advantage of a service that she needs because someone else

01:01:22.160 is disrespecting her right so the story is that you as a moral entity have failed rather than

01:01:31.960 that you have been failed by an external system right and so you know what we're seeing with the

01:01:38.320 Puritans is this honestly what I find to be quite astounding is that this runs really contrary to

01:01:48.240 everything that we know for a particularly religious group they did a really shitty job

01:01:53.800 of following any of the actual mandates of their own religion which is of course to say

01:01:59.900 you know take all you have sell it and give it to the poor take care of the widow the orphan and

01:02:05.360 the stranger and of course those are things that we still even as a um post-religious country we

01:02:12.740 still can't get that right um that you know the same people who say that you know this is a

01:02:19.280 christian nation because our founders willed it um which again is is so ignorant that it would

01:02:25.260 take an entirely separate episode just to address that um the same people who are making those

01:02:30.500 claims are also saying that if you need a handout it's a moral failure rather than saying hey it is

01:02:37.720 my responsibility to make sure that the homeless in my community are being taken care of it is my

01:02:42.280 responsibility to create a social environment where people can thrive um instead we have this

01:02:48.200 uh patent worship of billionaires which i find to be right and then they say well we don't

01:02:54.400 station or welfare system because it should be the responsibility of the people the church to

01:02:59.080 to do these things and it's like okay but you're not doing it so the the solution here is not to

01:03:04.120 say the government can't do it but also we're not going to do it because it's immoral to help

01:03:08.760 somebody who's being punished by god right they're being punished they should just stay that way

01:03:12.440 and we do see that a lot and of course uh what you're saying here about like the puritans being

01:03:17.240 really bad at practicing what was actually in the bible we see that so often today too with

01:03:22.360 the evangelicals who are for some reason still buying into the the trump you know the trumpism

01:03:27.960 which is wild to me on so many levels. But you do see that. I remember seeing a few months back

01:03:34.340 that story from a pastor who was talking about the fact that his parishioners told him he was

01:03:38.120 being too woke because he was preaching about the Sermon on the Mount. And so Jesus is too woke for

01:03:45.980 them. And that is just, you know, it is the same thing, right? They want a very particular form of

01:03:52.800 Christianity. They want a very particular form of Jesus. And that bears a lot more similarity

01:03:56.960 to the puritan ideologies than it does to anything in the bible itself you know i i uh i've taught

01:04:03.980 dostoevsky for years and years and um one of my favorite episodes to teach is out of the brothers

01:04:09.820 k called the grand inquisitor and um it's this story um that i think uh a lot of literary nerds

01:04:18.420 and historical nerds are very into uh we engage with it quite prolifically it's this idea that

01:04:24.080 you know this society has been has been waiting because the the inquisitor is coming someone is

01:04:29.060 coming and of course is this is a metaphor for the arrival of jesus uh at whatever end times you

01:04:35.700 ascribe to and of course he ends up dying again they murder him again because he is critical of

01:04:43.920 the way they treat primarily the poor um and that is again the structure that we have borrowed in

01:04:51.100 large part from the Puritans, um, because obviously we don't get that in, in, um, church

01:04:55.640 history, uh, except when we begin to, um, sort of create connective tissue that does not exist

01:05:05.040 between religion and politics. There's a reason that they tell you not to bring those two topics

01:05:10.360 up at the Thanksgiving dinner table. And then I encourage everyone to do that every Thanksgiving,

01:05:16.140 because I like to call it. That's, you know, that's just me. At Thanksgiving, when I reposted

01:05:23.000 my Thanksgiving episode for it, I was like, everybody should have everybody listen to this

01:05:27.700 while you're making Thanksgiving dinner and tell me what the reactions were because I enjoy chaos.

01:05:33.020 That's my thing. But yeah, it is incredibly frustrating to watch people who don't know

01:05:41.060 anything i i was i went to a christian evangelical bible like a private school and i was raised in

01:05:48.280 the evangelical baptist church and i am one of those people who takes things very seriously so

01:05:52.980 if i'm going to be christian i'm going to be christian right you know i'm going to read the

01:05:55.940 bible i'm going to know what it says and i you know i won every bible quiz bowl you know i was

01:06:01.280 that i was that kid and it is very frustrating to me to watch people who know nothing about the bible

01:06:07.460 talk about how good a christian they are and it's your version of christianity does not

01:06:14.180 jive with what i learned which is one of the reasons i left the church because the version

01:06:19.560 of christianity they were preaching also didn't jive with what i was reading in the bible and it

01:06:23.560 just it didn't make any sense to me that you know that you can if this religion is true and you're

01:06:30.660 just gonna ignore it for your own own purposes then i don't see the point i don't i just don't

01:06:36.320 see the point in any of this. And it just frustrates me. To that exact end, two quick

01:06:43.340 stories, I guess. The first is obviously the image that is seared into my brain of Donald Trump

01:06:55.440 refusing to answer, which is his favorite scripture. He says it's too personal. That's

01:07:01.380 mostly because he doesn't know that there are words in the bible um upside down he can't read

01:07:06.680 it anyway i mean the the farce is insane uh and the levels to which we are willing to cater to

01:07:14.020 the billionaire uh man child uh cheeto monster uh is absurd um but because he is willing to align

01:07:23.560 himself for the first time in his life i might add with some sort of religious code um he it is

01:07:29.720 pandering at the most base level, but people are willing to buy it because he's claiming to be

01:07:34.800 religious. So there's the first thing. The second story is that when he was elected, I was asked to

01:07:41.700 be on a panel for World Magazine, which is an evangelical magazine. At the time, I was already

01:07:47.640 leaving the church. I had joined the Quakers because they are a little bit closer, at least

01:07:53.820 in practical speaking to where I align myself. I don't believe in the supernatural, but they do

01:08:00.460 allow you to ask good questions and they are answering war. What you're saying is the Puritans

01:08:05.260 would definitely have hated you. They definitely have taken you. Absolutely. And especially as

01:08:12.960 someone who has experienced military culture, the Quakers were definitely the way out of the

01:08:18.620 dogmatic evangelical church in my case. But I remember sitting there in this room. And first

01:08:24.040 of all, we were asked, it was like female leaders from the community or something like that. The

01:08:28.280 parameters were intentionally vague. And we were asked to watch the inauguration of Donald Trump

01:08:35.640 and then to comment on it. And I was one of only two women. First of all, I was one of only two

01:08:40.660 women in my twenties period. Everybody else was considerably older. And I was, the two of us were

01:08:46.140 the only two who had not voted for Trump and when the mic got around to me I said frankly the reason

01:08:52.140 that I didn't vote for him is because I will not vote for um someone who has in public admitted to

01:08:58.700 committed committing felonies and of course I was referring to um his sexual assault um which

01:09:05.060 we have on tape but the woman behind me who was in her I think 70s um interrupted and asked to

01:09:13.360 take the mic from me uh and because i am not a confrontational person gave her the mic and she

01:09:19.480 said uh i just want you to know that i have been fasting and praying and god told me that donald

01:09:26.100 trump never did that thing um really god god was talking to you that statement alone requires a lot

01:09:34.580 of unpacking um the amount the honestly the mental illness and the delusion that is so imperative

01:09:42.000 to that stance is really deeply troubling, and it's not isolated. That is everywhere. God has

01:09:50.260 told me such and such. If God is speaking to you, dear reader, please go get medication.

01:09:56.720 Yeah. Right? I wonder if maybe the fasting might have had something to do with the hallucinations,

01:10:02.400 just a concept, right? I remember, you know, fasting being a thing in the evangelical church

01:10:08.820 as well like we would participate in these fasting events and things like that and it is that moment

01:10:13.140 of they they push you to a level of exhaustion and physical need that you do begin to hallucinate

01:10:21.300 and it is you know then you're supposed to believe that that is a spiritual experience when it

01:10:27.140 actually is just your body crying out for help uh because you are tormenting it and that's not you

01:10:33.140 know that's not healthy um but they think it's a religious experience ooh we just had a religious

01:10:38.260 spiritual high but yeah one of the best statements I've heard was something like I thought as as a

01:10:43.920 child in the evangelical church I thought I was having a religious experience really I just liked

01:10:48.560 live music and I think there's like just go to Taylor Swift and you'll get the same experience

01:10:56.880 without all the baggage that you need to unpack so go to a concert um I think there's also the

01:11:02.860 fact um something um I remember being a child you said you were part of a bible bowl or something

01:11:08.200 like that? Bible quiz bowl. Okay. So, uh, I was involved very heavily in an organization called

01:11:14.560 Awana, which is a Bible memorization, uh, program. And, um, to some degree, like it gave,

01:11:20.480 it gave us a way to, you know, play games and, and compete. And it was sort of like Bible Boy

01:11:26.820 Scouts imagine. Um, but I remember being four years old, um, in the Sparkies, the Sparkies

01:11:34.960 division of this club and yes there was you know weekly bible memorization etc but we began every

01:11:42.540 uh every meeting on wednesday nights at six o'clock by praying number one number two saying

01:11:52.400 the pledge of allegiance and then saying the pledge to the christian flag yes yes dear reader

01:11:57.920 there is a christian flag and people pledge allegiance to it but i remember being a little

01:12:03.460 bit older and starting to ask the questions of like, why are we saying the Pledge of Allegiance

01:12:08.220 in a religious affiliation? Why? And it's so conflated so early on that to be American,

01:12:15.320 you have to be a Christian. That's what makes you a patriot. And that's so pernicious. It's so

01:12:23.640 toxic to say that there is only one way of being an American and there is only one way to be an

01:12:30.860 evangelical. And it requires this sort of unholy concoction and very heady at a young age. When

01:12:41.580 you're taught at four years old, you say the Pledge of Allegiance as a, I guess you could say

01:12:48.900 maybe as an expression of your religious ritual, which is very concerning. Yes, it is very

01:12:57.820 concerning. And you end up, I mean, we have, this is something I'm teaching this class on American

01:13:02.780 history from 1945 to present. So one of the, one of the readings and sections that we're talking

01:13:06.640 about next semester is talking about this, that shift in, in, in like religion, in the religion

01:13:12.500 part of America, which becomes a far more prominent part of politics during the Cold War.

01:13:17.880 It becomes, I mean, obviously the Puritans have had a long running impact on us, but the very

01:13:23.460 obvious politicization of religion starts on, it starts, you know, during the 1950s while we're

01:13:30.180 kind of in conflict with the, you know, with the atheistic communists, which a lot to unpack with

01:13:37.200 that. A lot of willful, a lot of willful ignorance there. Yeah, a lot. I mean, there is certainly

01:13:43.920 some atheism going on in there, but there's, there's, religion is way, we ignore the religious

01:13:49.420 aspects of the Soviet Union way too much, but that's an entirely different episode.

01:13:53.460 um but yeah so it was this you know it comes into play where we start to really really push this

01:13:59.520 evangelical side of Christianity into in the 1950s and then it only gets worse like from the 1950s on

01:14:05.780 up to the the 1980s it really just just grows into a monster and it and then you know gets

01:14:12.300 pulled into the Republican Party in this in this massive way during the 1980s uh I I don't hate

01:14:18.400 as much as most people hate reagan like i i have a very more much more nuanced view of reagan in

01:14:24.160 many cases uh but i that is one thing i'll never forgive him for which is you know sucking the

01:14:29.480 religious right right into the republican party um nah that one was a major misstep on his part

01:14:34.940 i don't think he really realized how bad that would turn out but uh but yeah it's a matter of

01:14:42.000 um a b-list celebrity with arguably limited talent wanting to make a name for himself on

01:14:50.080 the political stage and so again we have this sort of unholy matrimony of reagan and falwell

01:14:55.680 um which just becomes um cataclysmic and we're seeing that we're you know donald trump is

01:15:02.320 honestly just the inheritor of that as a political policy and at least reagan had a little more

01:15:08.840 political uh political experience than trump did yeah certainly there is some similarity there

01:15:14.960 but we also see with reagan um you know the complete abandonment of frankly what the what

01:15:22.100 the republicans the potential for what the republican party could have been um which is

01:15:26.920 to say small government etc um you know most people don't know that reagan actually put into

01:15:32.980 legislation the first pro-choice legislation in california and then changed his mind because

01:15:39.000 the original um behavior and attitude of the republican party towards the issue of abortion

01:15:44.860 was that it was none of the government's goddamn business yeah i mean if you look back at a long

01:15:50.180 history of that uh i always find it very interesting to look at like focus on the family

01:15:53.940 uh where dobson was very much pro-choice at a certain point in his career and then

01:16:00.180 flipped, everything flipped eventually when, when abortion became a hot button issue for the

01:16:05.320 evangelical church. Funny, another funny story then is because I was teaching, I taught both

01:16:11.320 the US, I taught APUSH and American literature, not concurrently, but, but different days of the

01:16:18.980 week. And so I had a lot of students who actually overlapped and did both at the same time. And so

01:16:24.140 I remember one young girl who asked me, Rebecca asked me, what was the Puritan attitude towards

01:16:33.140 abortion? And I thought that was such a fascinating question because, of course, at the same time we

01:16:36.460 were reading Hawthorne. And it was a great question. It had not occurred to me. And so I

01:16:42.220 went and actually did some research. And as it turns out, the Puritans were absolutely wholeheartedly

01:16:47.220 fans of abortion because you could not tell if it was very much Schrodinger's fetus. You know,

01:16:53.700 you couldn't tell the baby was alive until it was quickening, which is to say kicking. And until

01:17:00.340 then abortion was used prolifically as a way of, you know, especially for unwed mothers, it was a

01:17:07.620 way of providing them an alternate choice in life, an alternate path in life. Now, was it used really

01:17:15.960 to benefit women? Of course not. But it's not something that maybe the more religious

01:17:23.020 constituents of the GOP would probably not love to know that these Puritans

01:17:28.940 were absolutely pro-choice. And I have an episode, you may have listened to it,

01:17:35.800 towards the beginning of the first season on the history of abortion, which is, I mean,

01:17:39.340 abortion does not become a topic of legal debate in America really until after the Civil War. I

01:17:48.480 there's there's a few scatterings of different laws most of them uh saying it's it's illegal

01:17:53.280 left to quickening which is again a very person that that's a very vague thing and also you know

01:17:59.120 a woman could easily lie right it's not it's not exactly that difficult um saying there what's so

01:18:04.800 beautiful there is that it relies on the woman to tell you what is happening in her body which i

01:18:11.200 think is quite um yeah quite telling quite telling yeah and so yeah we don't see that politicization

01:18:17.760 and the legality of that come up until we get to uh until that post post civil war period and that

01:18:24.400 has a lot more to do with white supremacy than it does which is a different discussion but uh

01:18:28.320 though related to puritanism and in several ways i suppose but uh it certainly comes up into that

01:18:34.240 discussion so yeah this has been a really really great conversation i think we really made a lot of

01:18:39.520 connections here and you know the past to present i'm sure there's going to be some people who are

01:18:44.400 mad about it, but I mean, if they came onto this podcast, not expecting us to rip on Marjorie

01:18:48.940 Taylor Greene, they were on the wrong podcast. I'm pretty sure I've made fun of her before on

01:18:53.580 the show. So I don't think, I don't think that's going to be a surprise. That woman lives in my

01:18:58.200 brain rent-free for sure right now. The answer to the unspoken question is yes, the Puritans are

01:19:05.140 still felt today. They are absolutely still an influence. We see it even in the self-care

01:19:09.800 industry right now, um, where, you know, we're, we're being into particularly, I would say the

01:19:15.560 pernicious whiteness of self-care, um, where, you know, even self-care is only available because you

01:19:22.260 deserve it, right? Go ahead, treat yourself. You deserve it. And this concept that you cannot,

01:19:28.360 uh, even access, you ought not to expect to access good things unless you deserve it,

01:19:35.380 uh is deeply problematic we need to to be very conscious of the way that we are communicating

01:19:40.440 that uh of course it's a consumerist message self-care is just one one more way to you know

01:19:45.960 buy sephora but um you know this this contribution to consumers and we see it every day the the

01:19:51.620 impact of the puritan um philosophy and and um social theology yeah every day everywhere every

01:20:00.360 cornist i think it's it's like i said it's just it's very sneaky it snuck its way into every part

01:20:04.940 of like american culture uh the you know it's just the in our society everywhere and it's

01:20:12.540 kind of like the more brash like slut shaming that all comes from it's the same place it's

01:20:19.100 the same place all the same thing and uh i mean you know they might have gotten it right on

01:20:24.280 allowing abortion but they weren't doing it for the right reasons you know there's so many things

01:20:28.620 that the puritans where you go may they weren't terribly wrong about that little tiny thing or

01:20:34.340 they weren't terribly wrong about that but none of it's for the right reasons they're always they

01:20:38.420 always believe it for the wrong reasons i mean even the the foundational aspect of he who does

01:20:43.680 not work shall not eat um this idea that you have to be productive and you have to be somehow

01:20:51.960 contributing and that if you are somehow you know if you're other otherwise abled or if you are from

01:20:58.300 a marginalized group uh if you cannot produce then you don't deserve food uh it's backwards

01:21:05.260 it's it's frankly evil and it's absolutely present in our society absolutely though i guess with the

01:21:13.440 the you shall not eat work shall not eat at least i understand contextually that uh the problem

01:21:18.420 there being that they had a bunch of gentlemen who didn't believe that they should have to

01:21:21.460 which they were just literally not contributing they were like i'm here to find gold and that's

01:21:26.640 all I'm here to do. And it's like, that's not how a society works. You guys got to all kind of work

01:21:31.380 together or else, you know, and I have so many problems with John Smith. I've talked about him

01:21:35.660 on so many problems with him, but at least contextually, I understand what he was getting

01:21:40.660 at in that moment. But yeah, if you can't work, you can't eat. That is an unhealthy way to look

01:21:45.400 at, uh, at society. It really is. Yeah. That's also something that we see in the difference

01:21:50.680 between, you know, Plymouth Plantation versus Jamestown, where one obviously was far more

01:21:57.360 secular. And yes, we had the second born son who, you know, couldn't find his, you know,

01:22:02.160 couldn't come into his inheritance in England. And so therefore had no marketable skills,

01:22:07.600 no training of any kind. And yes, believed that he could come to Virginia and just pick up gold

01:22:13.460 by the wayside, which, you know, lovely delusion of the 17th century. But what we have with Plymouth

01:22:21.960 is something far less compassionate, right? That if you are young, for example, you shouldn't eat

01:22:29.400 as much because you can't contribute as much. If you are weak, if you are female, you should not

01:22:34.680 eat as much. You cannot participate in the spoils because you have not been productive enough. And

01:22:42.500 um i would say that that's absolutely something that we still we still right it may be um implicit

01:22:48.680 but it's certainly still present i think it's very much implicit and and just as a like final

01:22:54.020 final note that idea of like the women not contributing as much and things like that and 0.95

01:22:57.500 they don't deserve anything for it like we see that today a lot with with like stay-at-home 0.99

01:23:01.640 moms right this idea that uh their job isn't that hard they're not really contributing much

01:23:07.580 that special like they're not doing much and you know so they don't deserve a day off or they don't

01:23:14.040 deserve uh self-care or they or any of this this stuff it's it's it's frowned upon it's like oh 0.94

01:23:20.220 that she she left her husband with the kids so she could go to brunch like how irresponsible

01:23:24.680 you know and I think a lot of goes back to that so I want to push back just as a final note right

01:23:30.280 like I want to push back against this idea that you need to deserve anything deserving yeah

01:23:34.740 This implies that there's some sort of moral connection between having those needs fulfilled.

01:23:40.960 It should be something more like treat yourself not because you deserve it, but because you need something.

01:23:47.100 That's allowed.

01:23:48.160 You're a human being, and therefore, this ought to be available to you, whether or not you believe that you have some sort of moral obligation.

01:23:58.400 Yeah.

01:23:59.220 Yeah.

01:23:59.540 You can edit that out later.

01:24:02.020 No, no, no.

01:24:02.500 I think it's important.

01:24:03.160 I think it's important to remember that a lot of our bad relationship with work-life balance goes back to this kind of inherent idea of worthiness based on how much you have accomplished.

01:24:12.800 And, you know, that's not a healthy way to run society.

01:24:16.560 And it's very much an American problem.

01:24:20.220 Certainly the work-life balance is a problem in other places in the world, but you don't see it as much.

01:24:25.420 We were talking before the show started, before we started recording about like Scandinavian cultures, right?

01:24:30.380 And how that is, the work-life balance is a little different.

01:24:33.360 They have a different understanding of that.

01:24:36.040 And a lot of European countries, they have a different understanding of it.

01:24:38.240 And I think that that goes back a lot to the idea that like, yeah, you're allowed to have vacations.

01:24:44.000 You're allowed to take time off.

01:24:46.080 You're allowed to take your paid days off, right?

01:24:48.940 Whereas in America, if you do that, it's like, well, you can take your days off, but you shouldn't expect to get a raise or you shouldn't expect to get promoted later because you dare to take a week off.

01:25:00.220 to go on vacation so you don't burn out. And that becomes an issue of worthiness for Americans.

01:25:07.020 I was in a lecture a few weeks ago where one of the professors who had come in and said something

01:25:15.260 like, oh, I plan to read a trashy novel over Christmas. It's like my guilty pleasure. And

01:25:20.420 then she stopped and almost had a conniption. It was great to watch in real time where she's like,

01:25:25.800 wait, why did I call that a guilty pleasure? What, what do I have to be guilty about? Why is

01:25:31.000 this idea that pleasure must always come at the, uh, the exception, right? Like, uh, pleasure must

01:25:39.820 be somehow, um, inadmissible to me simply because pleasure is somehow pejorative, right? And so we

01:25:49.460 watched for a few minutes, this woman just sort of work things out. It was sort of like, I don't 0.69

01:25:53.880 know watching i've never actually met an experimental physicist but i imagine that

01:25:57.960 would be something like trying to you know quantify some uh obscure theorem while she was

01:26:04.740 trying to think through it for herself on the spot partly for our benefit but why why is it that i

01:26:10.580 believe that this pleasure is somehow guilty why have i um designated one particular joy of my life

01:26:18.200 uh as being somehow morally negligent and i thought that was quite beautiful

01:26:22.000 it's like it's like watching somebody in real time unpacking the puritan baggage of our society

01:26:28.340 it's it's great yeah and that was it was it was a marvel uh and she even said i wonder where that

01:26:35.340 came from what what puritan corner of my brain what did that crawl out of yes where did that

01:26:41.440 come from that i somehow felt um you know disconnected from myself because of my need

01:26:47.260 for pleasure or my or my maybe desire for pleasure that that is somehow a moral failure um that i

01:26:53.800 have that i must feel guilty about thanks a lot puritans thanks thanks lots to unpack in our

01:27:01.740 emotional baggage uh there yeah so this was a really great episode thank you so much for coming

01:27:06.660 on i'm sure we could talk for ages more but you can come back on for another episode we'll do we'll

01:27:11.120 do a homeschooling episode it'll be great oh prager don't forget prager and prager we got to

01:27:15.200 on the prager thing we have a we have a file folder titled destroy that's destroying prager

01:27:20.720 so we'll uh we'll revisit that later definitely um so yeah uh obviously i'll post a link for any

01:27:28.400 any areas that uh for any like social media that you're on where would you where can people find

01:27:32.640 you um let's see these days it's mostly tick tock and instagram i have some big projects coming out

01:27:38.960 that I will post that you guys can find

01:27:40.820 and Adderall was had

01:27:42.960 by all

01:27:43.720 legally all of us

01:27:46.460 it's all legal

01:27:47.520 have a great day guys

01:27:50.700 thank you so much for tuning in to hear us bitch about history today

01:28:01.580 we will definitely be having Elena back in the future

01:28:03.740 because I think between the two of us

01:28:05.400 we could easily fill like 10

01:28:07.280 20 more episodes together

01:28:08.840 given the length of our average zoom calls when we find the time to actually talk during our crazy

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01:28:18.820 attendance for this year and anything helps i just booked my hotel for the pop culture association's

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01:28:43.660 it wasn't that user-friendly for my fans either apparently i got several complaints about

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01:28:59.460 few new pieces of merch out now that were not available on the printify store so check that 0.90

01:29:04.300 out. I'll see you back here next week for another episode of Bitchy History. 1.00

Bitchy History - January 18, 2024

The Problem with the Puritans

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