Latest / the ACT OUT podcast / Deconstructing Religion: How Faith and Politics Shape Your Identity (Part 2)

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Deconstructing Religion: How Faith and Politics Shape Your Identity (Part 2) · the ACT OUT podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Act Out Podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Adam Tomlin.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Today's guest is Kate Powell.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, she was last week.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she's this week too.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Her episode was so good we had to break it up into two parts.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, let's roll the tape.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I'm like pro-diversity.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I like winning.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess all that to say, I hate the patriarchy.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, because it does turn it all into a a limited pie, right?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone only gets a small section of it.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you have to beat everyone else up to get more of it if you want more of it.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: There isn't, rather than like you said, if it's non-zero sum, if it's simply a, you know, there's infinite creativity, there's infinite possibility.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Abundant.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: Just right.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, abundance.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, I despise abundance.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: I saw that post a lot.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I digress.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um But if we believe that there is abundance and that we can that we can all um succeed with others succeeding, as opposed to your success is my failure, and vice versa.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um we we're just a much, much happier uh set of beings.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I think when it comes to my politics, that's definitely politics, spirituality, whatever.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: That has always been sort of my freaking mind reader.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was about to get segue into politics.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, yeah.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, but that that's been my assumption is that the um the the conservative view, whether you're talking about conservatively religious or conservatively political, is that there's scarcity and we must fight to the death for it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: And the more whatever you want to call it, liberal, leftist, whatever views are there is plenty.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, not infinite in the case of some reason.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: What's interesting about the conservative view is that there's also like infinite resources.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: We should just drill, baby, drill, who cares, you know, whatever.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um goes back to that like this be life being dirty rags.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Right, yes, exact right, exactly.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like just use the earth for whatever it is and peace out when we're when we're dead.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: And um, but yeah, no, I mean, like when you again thinking back to like my earliest conceptions of like what a good spiritual practice is, it lines up very well with the liberal mindset because the liberal mindset is like, yeah, there are limits, there are some limits as far as like the amount of oxygen in the air and like stuff like that.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: But there is no limit to creativity, there is no limit to thoughts and ideas.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: We can just, you know, embrace those and and continue to pursue ever more of that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's literally no reason why we should sit here and think that because a woman it, you know, has a podcast or has a platform or whatever that that somehow demeans the men around her.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's weird.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: Weird.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um it just sounds like a bunch of insecure dudes.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, that's definitely, definitely a thing.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: But when we're talking about religion, though there's a lot of that, unfortunately.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um definitely not in podcasting, though.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: So no, yeah, there's no insecure people, no insecure men in podcasting at all.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: Wouldn't know anything about that.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that God was a Republican?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously, like everyone's I think everyone's pretty clear that God was a Republican.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Straight up though, like I'm not kidding, like growing up, unironically, right?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like God was definitely a Republican.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that was like there was no distinction between religion and politics for me growing up.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I thought that like God's law should be, you know, uh be America's law.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um did you like you you kind of were were were you kind of on the outskirts of Christian nationalism?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I wouldn't say that I was in Christian nationalism.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like when I'm listening to stories from like Monty Mater or April LaJoy or whatnot.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um I love them.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: I love them too.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: A lot.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Eve was framed as really good too.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and uh I I I love I love you both.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: I hope one day we can be friends.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: But they um they they what they describe was not my experience, but definitely adjacent to like a gateway drug to could have easily gone that way.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: So very grateful to not have gone that way.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um what do you think stopped it?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have a theory.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's that's an interesting question.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think part of with me personally, okay.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think part of it is personality.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um I have always been hyper independent with like a healthy dose of skepticism and and kind of a very like that's wrong.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, wrong as in like if you're gonna like murder a puppy in front of me, it didn't I didn't need to know that that was wrong.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: I would like beat you up.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like that um without getting into all my childhood traumas.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um I was like that from like birth.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Who beat up a puppy in front of you?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody beat up a puppy in front of me.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um someone did, yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: I I I did, though, like at like a very young age experience some domestic violence and whatnot, and I responded with like defending the person as like a two-year-old.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: So like I think there's just a per I think for me specifically, there's just a personality issue of like I, you know, you can sit there and tell me that all the day long, but there's like this thing right here that's gonna make me go like, no.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um I was I was definitely, again, a conservative leaning independent um in a Republican household.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So your family was Republican as well.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um and yeah, definitely conservative leaning.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: But was Illinois uh like the area of Illinois you were in, was it conservative leaning?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, the Central Park, yes.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, Central Park, yes, okay.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Chicago, not no, not at all.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, in Central Illinois, Arkansas, um and then even like you know, here in Hampton Roads, we've got a real split here.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: So you can find your people on either side of the political spectrum.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: That was really surprising to me.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we did whenever we were doing uh research.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go off on a tangent.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but when we were doing like research of where to where to move, uh, I was looking for a progressive area further north.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It couldn't be so far up north to where my accent stuck out too much.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So Norfolk is like right there on the line, you know.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: Truly.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like for like Norfolk, I'll look at the presidential election stuff.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, yeah, I can definitely can definitely live there.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're very proud of our voting margins here in Norfolk.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're real good.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You and I, I think uh actually had a thing on threads like, well, my my uh precinct went like 76%.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: The the most like nerdy flex of all time.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: Meanwhile, the mayor from a different precinct was like, shut up, Kate.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: It was very funny.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I didn't have that part.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not important enough to get this Philothia.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um But uh yeah, so like I was so I I was so excited, and then there was like, you know, like went to Pungo for the first time.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And like uh a lot of like Chesapeake and Virginia beach, but oh never mind, okay, I am right back at home.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's so surprising.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, not at all.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, no, it's um I don't even know where I we were talking about like growing up like in the like in a conservat in the conservative environment.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so you were like Republican family.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember like the first uh like first political thing that you like you were involved in?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I as like a kid, I wasn't really involved in politics at all.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, like we weren't a political family.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um my parents voted Republican.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: That was like the extent, and we were in a conservative Christian household.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: So like there we go.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: The whole um like getting involved politically, I I again was fairly open-minded.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was skeptical of Obama because my parents were skeptical of Obama.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I went to James Madison and he actually did a rally there in 2008 in his first um presidential uh campaign.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I made sure to go, even though I was skeptical of him, because I was like, I it's it's a presidential candidate coming to my campus.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: I should go no matter how I feel about his politics.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I also, again, because I wasn't that political, was like, I don't really know what I'm doing, like what I'm talking about anyway.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I did vote for Mitt Romney.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: I know that I voted for McCain.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: So like, um, you know, I definitely um, you know, voted against Obama both times.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, though I will say that I think that there's a huge difference between John McCain and Mitt Romney and what we're dealing with.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but that's just where I was.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I I was very skeptical of the hope and change thing.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I oh yeah.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: Interestingly, again, I think this is a personality thing and just being like super hyper-independent and being like, that sounds like crap.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so kind of being like feeling there wasn't a lot of substance there.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And like a bandwagon effect too.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that the more people that came on.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right, the more I was like, I don't know, guys, it seems really culty to me.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then so there was there was some of that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: And then um, but then there was also like when the ACA passed, and my personal experience with it was my health insurance skyrocketing.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: Skyrocketing, losing all like, cause I was in that, like, you know, I wasn't my husband and I are very much middle class people, but we had health insurance and like job with group health plan and you came here in a Lamborghini Kate.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't don't try that.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: My Maserati's parked outside.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I remember I I had a my first big girl health insurance plan the year before the ACA went into effect.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I had and I had no previous health conditions, you know, I was like normal, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: I was in that normy thing.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I had a really easy premium, I had really great coverage, yada yada.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: The minute that law went into effect, if you were in that bucket of people, premiums skyrocketed.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, more people got insured, but that's when the health insurance companies were like, well, if we have to cover all this, we gouge it because there were no price controls and there was no public option.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: Skyrocketing things.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I saw the night and day difference, and I rem I held a grudge against that man forever about that until recently.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm over it now.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: But like I I truly was like, I can't believe you did this to me.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: It was it was a very personal, very visceral reaction.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was not data driven.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so I have I have a strange empathy for people in this, in the in the um last election, the 2024 presidential election.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: I have a very strange empathy for people who were so desperate to get out from under inflation and everything else that they saw as Biden's fault, though it wasn't really Biden's fault.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I understand the reaction to it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't understand the reaction towards a a known quantity like Trump, right?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: There's a difference between reacting with someone who has never been president before and we haven't seen how awful and terrible and cruel he was before, versus having a reaction towards a very known, yeah, like dangerous person.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: That was the part, that's the part that I really like.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of draw the line of like sensibleness.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: Most people are not politically engaged to the point where they really understand that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's hard for me to conceptualize.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: It is hard.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard, it's hard to be like, how do you not see it?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: But think about it.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: If you're working two jobs to make ends meet, inflation's killing you, yada yada.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: When do you have time to do that?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like me being able to speak to the level that I do in my content about political matters or whatever is like a second full-time job.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I have a different full-time job, by the way.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: That's not my like this whole thing that I do is for fun.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it doesn't pay anything, really.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, uh yes, I have some monetization on TikTok, but like, you know, it's it's really, and every once in a while I do a partnership or something, but it's it's just not it's not a speaking of, if you need any kind of news service, please go to ground news and use the code Kate.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that it?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if it's still going on.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if it is, yeah, if it is, you can go to groundnews.com slash Kate.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: If you I don't know if that's still open or not.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, thanks.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm constantly having to remind myself that there, like, first of all, I was like, I remember being that person who didn't know anything other than what I was experiencing from the political decisions that were being made.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: And really, looking back, most political experts will tell you that the ACA's lack of a public option, the lack of price controls on health insurance companies was a mistake.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because it did lead to this backlash that led to Trump 2016.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: I did not vote for Trump in 2016, to be clear.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: But like It was a mistake that like had to happen, though.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I don't think the ACA could have passed without Oh no, it wasn't, it wasn't gonna pass otherwise.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, again, when when I was able to come out of like what my personal experience was and see the bigger picture and like, you know, Kristen Cinema, like, you know, like the things that that were in play at that um time, it's like, well, it it was it was the best we could do.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And even that I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but I just remembered this.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, even with that like watered down ACA that she's talking about, freaking uh Massachusetts elected Scott Brown specifically because of this.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, like this, yeah, like it the the political reality there was such where Obama and Obama was obsessed with bipartisanship.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, man, I bless his heart.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I remember uh uh whenever he was inaugurated, um Johnny Ro uh Johnny Reb messed up the uh oath of office and uh Obama had to do it again.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I call him Johnny Reb and the funky bunch.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's really funny.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, like they they did it again in private.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Robert Gates came out.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Robert Gates?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who whoever his first press secretary was.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I may be mistaken his name now.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh, no, he was on uh dancing with the stars at one point, too, I think.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe mixing up Trump's.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: But he was like, um, Obama did this in a very bipartisan way.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And like, dude, you he did the oath of office, man.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not by bipartisan.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like you could just tell that that was what he was hammering.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think like Obama's mindset of like, we gotta get a couple of Republicans really like screwed up.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and also Well, and also he in the Senate at the time, like again, when you look at the electoral reality, he just didn't have the votes to get through like universal health care or a public option or whatever.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um it passed.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I here's here's what I will say though.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think that there was as far as like to the normal average ever average everyday American, there was simply not the communication post-ACA.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because it was very much like this is the greatest thing we've ever done.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: They just doubled down on how great it was.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: There was zero acknowledgement of the collateral damage that I just described.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: My story is not unique.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's it happened to millions of people.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: Again, the reaction to it was felt politically, like you said, the level state level first, and then you know, Obama did run win re-election, not by the same margins that he was.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say by a lower margin.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: We were the first times in the right.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: He had we had already shifted right, and then of course we ended up with Trump right after him.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Because again, the re the the refusal to me, the refusal to acknowledge what was challenging about those policies, about the ACA, about Obama's immigration policy, which by the way, there's a lot more similarity between Obama and Trump's immigration policy than there is between Biden and Trump's.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: So let's just be clear.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like, he is not like the great patron saint of humanity or something like that.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: He had some problems.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so he was pissing off people on both sides.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: You know, uh the ACA pissed off the right, his immigration policy pissed off the left, Trump 2016.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: It really, I mean, it's really not like as far again, as far as like speaking to the normal voter and that kind of the Democratic Party's lack of ability to just admit, hey, we got some things wrong here, and here's what we want to do differently if you give us power to do XYZ.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: I really, it's really frustrating when it's like they refuse to court power and instead are just like, well, you don't want Trump, right?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: You don't want the crazy guy.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, no, I don't, which is why I didn't vote for him.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I also would like a solution to the mess you made, right?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like you, you made, you made this mess of mess of health insurance.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: What the heck are you gonna do to fix it?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I know Hillary gets a lot of crap, and I'm not really here to, you know, give her a hard time.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: She would have been so much better.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she she would have been so much better.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: But also, like where did she campaign?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: And and what did her people s tell her to say?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like I I it's really frustrating sometimes.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to shake the big D Democrats because I'm just like, if you don't say it with your mouth, if you don't say with your mouth, hey, the ACA did this and it also did this, and we would like to fix that with X, Y, and the other, it would require you to do it in the teeth of the health insurance lobby.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's really what the problem is.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: We all know it.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it's not, it's not a mystery why we don't have a public option.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yes, I know, like, again, I know the the set at realities when we passed the ACA initially, but as far as like why we haven't moved forward at all since then, that that would be part of it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: Biden's expansion of it was great and stuff, but like anyway, sorry.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like on a tear.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I think we were talking about where like yeah, yeah, we're we're talking about like your political beliefs, yeah.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was the ACA and how you felt that on a very visceral level.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: The ADHD actually helped me out not going to remember this time.
• 18:43
  unknown: Right.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: But like what eventually happened was um obviously Trump won.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, well, no, yeah.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: If being conservative means this, we're done.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're breaking up forever, never ever getting back together.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then like ever?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Not ever.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I like voted for Biden, was like, let's go.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I was very frustrated with like not getting uh student loan forgiveness.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, that was the Supreme Court.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: Johnny.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Though I yeah, I know, seriously, John Roberts.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: If your ideological soulmate is Roger Taney, we got a problem.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: He's he's got a lot, there's a lot of problems by court.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, don't get me started about the Supreme Court.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I also am like I'm like Biden, you should have just done the the Jackson like let him enforce it.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because I go do exactly what I said I was gonna do and the people elected me to do.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, um, but the the re-election of Trump is what really pushed me into like I gotta be full throated liberal left, whatever now, because we have gone so far that way.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: I I like this is and it's also just like it just the more I'm like the more I actually studied it, looked at the data and the economics of it and whatever, I was like, this is the this is the way.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: The the evidence is that way.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: The same way that I had to, you know, I didn't we didn't really talk about how I deconstructed from Christian, you know, Christianity and whatnot.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: But like the same way I just deconstructed from Christianity is how I deconstructed from really any hint of conservativism.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's just like that, it just doesn't make sense anymore.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's leading to this cruel, like policy, cruel policies all around.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: It is not what I believe as far as like the spiritual aspects, and also it actually just dollars incense-wise makes zero sense.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did these happen at a similar time?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Your religious uh kind of deconstruction uh political?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: They were um dovetailed.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: They were dovetailed.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, that word could I almost said tail feathered, and I was like, that is not the word.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um no, they they definitely dovetailed.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: So uh the Christianity went first, spirituality went first.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Same.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then and then the political belief fellow behind.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: For the spiritual destruction?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh boy.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: So um save the juicy stuff for um the end.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: If you if you've got this far, you've gotten to the the the nuggets.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we're gonna put at the very beginning.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have a little teaser.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, so I mentioned that I was a uh youth director, youth youth ministry director, youth pastor, whatever, whatever you want to call it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I was under the leadership of a senior pastor who I had known since high school.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: So um it was a church here in Virginia, and I um had gone to this church in high school.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: I went to college, moved to Nova, you know, like was gone for several years, and then came back as an adult.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: And uh the whole time, same, same senior pastor who had founded the church too.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I um when I got back, I was kind of on.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: On a we would call it a revival in in the church terms, but I was very much like in a I'm like renewed, refreshed, I really want to get back into like service.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: The spirit of the Lord was burning bright in you.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right, it really was.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_03: I had a fire that I could not contain type thing.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: At the same time, there was like a schism going on in this church uh between my old youth pastor and the senior pastors, like very messy and everything.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: And my old youth pastor left, and there was a void in that ministry.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I told the senior pastor, like, I will step into that void because this means a lot to me.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: I was in this youth ministry.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: I believe in it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: I was a youth leader in that ministry.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like I and I want to ensure that there's a a place, uh a safe, edifying place for the students.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I did.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um there were, speaking of patriarchy, speaking of difficulties with that, there were it was like a couple years of me doing the job, but not having a title.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't get paid, which I people will tell you I'm really bad at charging for like literally anything that I do.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um well then why did you charge for this appearance?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm really bad at it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um he's joking.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, sorry.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: I really, I literally almost charge for nothing ever.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so anyway, so I'm doing I'm doing this job.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm I as I say, moonlighting because I I worked a full-time day job.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: And uh this is gonna sound like the story that's the tale's oldest time.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: So feel free to tune out at any point.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: But um, my relationship with the senior pastor to me had always been very fatherly, very mentor, mentee type thing.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um looking back, I can see that there were years of grooming, progressively abusive behavior.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't, it wasn't just like, or honestly, at the beginning, it wasn't like um a sexual thing.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was, it was more about like power and control and like emotional, like, you know, like let me make sure I kind of have you in a place where you're, you know, seeking reassurance from me a lot and all that kind of thing.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: But it did move into like a physical, sexual situation.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like small things, you know, it's always, it's always small.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's always stuff that you're like, I'm imagining this, right?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, um, I remember one time him walking behind me and like we were walking through the sanctuary.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: We just had a meeting or something, he was right behind me, and then all of a sudden I felt like this like twisting through my hair, like he was playing with my hair.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: But like it happened for a second, and then it was, and then it was done, you know, and you're and you're just kind of thinking, like, did I imagine that?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: Was it a fly in my, you know what I mean?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: But like I knew it was it, I had to just be like, yeah.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, anyway, there's like I'm like I said, this was a years-long situation, two and a half years, probably, is what I can count, um, of like just progressively moving me through the stages of um of grooming and abuse.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um it basically it culminated in an encounter where um the the proposition was clearly sexual, like it was um was it a quid pro quo kind of in nature?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: So not it was interesting about it is like not I I don't think completely outright.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: So like there was a there was definitely some in the process of this whole thing.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um there was there was definitely a little bit of like that would every once in a while be brought up.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: And certainly the proximity that I had to him in the position and the fact that I was a volunteer, I was a woman, he's in charge of me, yada yada, like um fed into this dynamic on the other side.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um there wasn't a whole there was never like um a in or if you want this, you'll do this.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: What there was for me though, was you know, I was friends with his wife.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: I I said earlier the church was my entire social like world, my entire social support.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so the consequences of not being on good terms with this man, and certainly the consequences of outing what was happening were high, not just for me, but for like literally everyone.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, my husband, his wife, all of the other people in this church, and it wasn't a huge church, it was like hundred people, but like still, it's like you know, this was my world, and I love these people.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: Not to mention the students, you know, like it's like you know, like they see it anyway.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but there was there was an encounter where it was like there was a clear proposition.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: I said no.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: It was not received well.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Fortunately, it was not received violently either.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'd like just to be clear, that's not what happened, but it was it was it was not received well.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I realized that I was I was kind of at that I was at that point where it was either going to be like I fall off a cliff or I put a stop to it now.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like I need I like I'm I'm kind of at that critical point.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: And um, if we go back to like a personality, I was very much like I cannot allow this to happen.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: However, I also very as as part of the whole like grooming thing and also just the way like I I really do try to believe the best in people, really to a fault.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've gotten better about that since this this whole experience, but I I still have that tendency.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I really thought that if I outed it and brought it into the light that there was like a way to do it where we could all just figure it out and it would be okay.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: I remember begging him several times over the course of like a year and a half of these, like he would do something, he would say I'm so sorry, and I would be like, if we just tell your wife and my husband and get this all straightened out, like it will be fine, like we can fix this.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: And of course he was like, No, like I won't do it again.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: And of course he would do it again a couple months later, you know, like, or something like that.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but this this final encounter, I was like, I I have, like, I have to do something.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: I have to get this, I have to get this out.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I told my husband, and um, that went about as well as you'd expect.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it all blew up so, so badly.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I can imagine if I'm your husband, I am super pissed that he is coming on to you.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: He's super well, he's super pissed, but also I'm like, I'm still framing this as I'm having an emotional affair with my pastor.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I was very much coming to him.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how you like truly believed at the time.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: And also, like when we're talking about like purity culture and how men and women relate to each other in the church, that's what it's called.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's what you would say.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I have caused him to sin.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I would say all the time, Am I doing something?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, am I like putting out some sort of sick, no, it's not you, it's not you.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but of course, once I said something to my husband, and then once it started coming out and whatever, it was suddenly like she's really damaged from previous childhood experiences.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: I was trying to help her.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because that was the other thing, is that I do, I do have some traumatic childhood experiences.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: I had sought counseling from him for these things.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then he weaponized it against you.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so it was like, so she's crazy and sick and ill and all this kind of thing.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: And she's lying.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: This is what happened.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: She came on to me.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: And like, there in this whole like, it was like one week in particular the the week between me telling my husband and like being basically excommunicated.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there was this whole he actually called me and gave me this story of what I was gonna say.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I actually tried to tell the story to my husband.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: I tried to be like, actually, just kidding.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: It was this and this.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: And God bless my husband.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: He was like, I don't believe you.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, I don't believe any of that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and so that did.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so after like, because what I had initially told him was like just enough to like raise the alarm bells, but not the full story.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't the full thing.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so then I tried to give him the story that this man was feeding to me, and then he was like, that sounds like nonsense.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: So then I went back to my husband and was like, let me try to tell you everything.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I ended up writing everything down.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: I made a timeline, like I literally went back to my type A training, um, made like a dated timeline, everything I could remember from the last couple of years.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: I let him read it.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: We brought it to the elders of the church.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: And and basically, long story short, I was told to leave post-haste.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: My students were told without me that I had had an emotional affair with the senior pastor.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: That was that was basically what was explained to them.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, without me there, I wasn't allowed to talk to them, I wasn't allowed to contact them.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then he was able to go up on frustrated.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like I can feel like a lot of work to be able to tell this story without like crying and stuff.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Just know it's my jaw clenching, like my chest is getting like I'm I'm sorry, but please go ahead.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm just um and then he was he was actually allowed to go up on stage um and explain that he'd had uh like uh had uh something like I wasn't there, but and they had turned off the recording to, you know, we usually record services and whatever they'd record, turn all that off.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: So there's no evidence, it's just whatever people told me.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: But what I understood is that he got up on stage and was like, you know, I shared this moment with a congregant, and it was, you know, it was uh we both lied about it, and um, I'm gonna take some time to reflect.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so he was like on leave to go to therapy or whatever.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Probably paid leave.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think so.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Or it, yeah, it was who knows.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: I I forget exactly what they what they said, but he he was put on leave and was gonna go to therapy and fix it and whatever.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: And um, the way that part of the story kind of ended was they were kind of trying to let him come back.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: So after a couple weeks, I there was there was really only one person, one or two people left at the church who would talk to me.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: And but they were like, Kate, he's been coming to services, but staying in like what what we called the family room.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of churches have this where it's like, you go with your crying child or whatever.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: So he would come in after the service had started, be in there to like watch the service, and then would leave before it was over so that people wouldn't see him or whatever, but he was there.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it was clear that there was like sort of this, like very much like how people do it is like testing the waters and like, you know, can we just bring this back in?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I was I I just I heard that this had gone on for about three weeks or so.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: And again, this is like a month or so after everything had come out, and I'd been told to like leave and never come back, and like all this kind of thing.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and and by the way, they told me to leave and never come back without talking to me.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: The the elder board who's supposed to be in charge of all this, they had talked to him, but they never asked to sit down and listen to me.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: But I'd shared my my timeline with one of the other people at that church, and he went to the board and was like, You have made a mistake.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: You there's something wrong here, and you need to talk to her.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I shared it with them.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: They were very sad, very heartbroken, didn't know what to do or whatever.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: So that was that's where that was.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then this whole like he was coming to the services in secret sort of thing started happening a couple of weeks later.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: So when I heard about that, there was just one week where I was like, you know what?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: F this.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I texted again, the one person who was talking to me and was like, is he there?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like it was a Sunday.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, is he there?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: And she was like, Yes.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I got my car and I drove there, and I walked in, or I'm sorry, no, he wasn't there.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: I I texted her and was like, Are you like, are you there?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: And was he there last week?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I got my car, drove there, walked in, sat in the exact same room.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: He never showed up.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: I am sure someone told because they they saw me, like the head usher saw me.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: He actually tried to get me to leave, and I would he was like, I think you need to go.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Well, has he been here um for the last couple weeks?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: And he tried to argue with me, and I was like, No, no, no, I asked you a very simple question.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: Has he been here the last three weeks?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, Great, then I'm gonna go sit exactly where he's been sitting.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: He never appeared, I'm sure he was told like she's here, you know, stay away or whatever.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I sat there and then I left.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: And after that, not after he'd been going for weeks, but after I showed up to do the exact same thing, that's when I got a letter in the mail saying I needed to stay away from the campus unless I wanted to agree to a r restoration plan to the to the church, to which I was like, I have zero interest in a restoration plan with people who think that they can operate like this.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: So, um, so that anyway, that's like the the quickest version of the story.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, by the way, you can tell like from what you're saying that you were not his only victim.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's what a lot of people say.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: I I unfortunately don't know, but it yeah, it's it seems practiced.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: And most people that I tell the story to are like, yeah, that that seems like a repeated pattern.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, you don't they're like, that's not a first-time thing.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's like someone who's been the the girl, like the the very innocuous, like, wait, d did he actually touch my hair?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the the escalation, the oh, I'm so sorry, that that'll never happen again.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like I everything you were saying is just Well, it's it's also like every time I thought I was very unique in this story, and then I started listening to like on podcasts and like learning more stories of spiritual and you know, pastoral abuse.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, it's literally the same.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I need to know where the book is that they wrote because there's clearly a book somewhere that they all read.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, right.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, it's it's like the abuser's guide or whatever.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, like, and it's not just pastoral, but like every abuser, it just seems to have the exact same mechanism.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's about the exploitation of power and control.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like it's a power thing.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but anyway, so that's that's like the the gross story, but that was I remember at one point, um, to bring it kind of back around to like the actual deconstruction thing, um, because that was the catalyst.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: But like I remember at one point during that like I call it the week of hell when everything was coming out and it was a mess and you know, whatever.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I prayed and I said, like, get me out of this.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: Get me out of this.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't even know what this was.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: I just like whatever this is, like, just get me out.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember the first my one of my first sessions with my psychologist, he used the term PTSD, and I was like, I don't have that.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and he was like, okay.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh turns out off the charts, PTSD by like literally every measure.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um you put a lower case C in there, that's this guy.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: No, well, same.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: But you know what I mean?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: Because like it was like between like childhood and then the the length of time for this, it was like there's also like a little C right there, but we're just gonna leave that alone.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um anyway, so but in one of my therapy assignments, I actually wrote, like, I prayed that God would get me out of that somehow.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: And even though I never would have chosen the way that I was, you know what I mean?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like that is it.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: This this ended up being on the other side of it, of course, not in the middle of it.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't wish this on anybody, and I I I wish nobody ever had to go through such a thing ever, ever again.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I will say that it ended up being like this.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: I call it sometimes a gift.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: I sometimes call it a weapon, like my weapon, like something like that, where it's like I have this thing now and I had to pay for it with a lot of pain.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it is so useful to me all of the time.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was useful in how I deconstructed and am now reconstructing my spiritual beliefs.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: It was so useful in being able to identify Trump for exactly what he was.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: This was all happening in the middle of Trump one.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that was just so triggering.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: It was the middle of Trump one, it was me too.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: It was literally all at the exact same time.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um and uh it was when the SBC was going through their abuse allegations, like literally the exact same time as when this whole traumatic experience was occurring for me.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: But like when Trump got re-elected, this thing right here that I now have as a result of all of that um and the years of healing that had to happen, which was a long process that we don't have time to get into.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: But like I have this thing now.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we did.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to come back.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh gift that I have from this.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: When Trump got re-elected in 2024, I was like, I am I am ready.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: I know exactly what to do here.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: I know exactly who you are and what you are and what this game is.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I know ex like I know who I will be and how I will position myself, and I don't care how much it costs, and I don't care if it hurts me.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you can't hurt me.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: And like he can, technically he's the president, and just people, you know what I mean?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I can absolutely be hurt, I can absolutely lose things.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: But like the whole like, I've already been through that.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: The the hellishness we talked about earlier, like, I'm like, I already did that.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I know what it is.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: I survived it once, I can absolutely survive it again.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and this time I will not bend, I will not compromise, I will not try to work with you, I will not try to do whatever.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: I will actually just be like, this is correct, and I will stand here and be on the side of the people who need me the most.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: And you can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: You being the Trump and everything around him.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: But um It saddens me on one level that like so many women were able to uh pick Trump from the very beginning, spot him out, and be like, no, no, no, no.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not a thing.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um it just it sucks.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like it just that's that is something that's very heavy.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the like more that I have these conversations and the the more women that I talk to.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: How common?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I and I don't feel like I'm not trying to trivial uh trivialize in the least, but don't feel that at all.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's way too common.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's so heartbreaking.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I do want to touch on kind of that that hopeful part that that you put in.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's something that has taken me a very long time, but like have like finally have started to be able to get there too.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: But saying, like, you know what?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: There was such a like a shitty part, but what I learned in that, like the skills that I've gotten have made me fucking bulletproof.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um now I it's I I had so much resentment, certainly, and then disdain for religion and for for my experience for a very long time.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I um I I felt like I was lied to by like every community member, by every family member, by every like church leader, you know, I was like, ah, there they're a whole bunch of liars, I'll never step foot um in there in there again because of like all the the hurt.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: But um, and this is like something that like I because of the CPTSC, I don't really remember like a whole lot of my childhood.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do remember uh being in uh being in church and uh like the pastor talking about like you know, like you know, like are you going to heaven or home?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And being like so scared that I'd like basically dissociate.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I would watch how the pastor was talking.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I wouldn't pay attention to what he said, but how he said it.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because like I realized that he was controlling our emotion, how he was speaking.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that fascinated me.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was like, how is he how is he doing that?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go home, stand in front of a mirror, and I would like just in hindsight practice like public speaking, just for hours.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like how I like my facial expression, my tone, and I like doing all of this stuff.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: You got real Southern Baptist, right?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: But now, whenever I like go up to give a speech, it is literally muscle memory.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Which is good because I get nervous every time.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's terrifying.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it is like it is second nature.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And like whenever you hear me give a speech, you're gonna be like, oh, that's Pastor Adam.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like that is, I sound like a pastor combined with Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Those are like those are like my three uh like Reagan was a good orator.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: We do have to give that to him.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's allowed.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: We can hate everything else.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: His quips.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh I I had just watched um the the clip where uh the guy from the Baltimore Sun asked him in the uh second presidential debate, like, you know, you're already the oldest candidate, and people said that you were really tired during the last talk.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are you worried about uh age?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he said, No, Mr.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Truett, not at all.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: And also I want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: I will not exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Talking about Walter Walter Mondell.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Which is just like, yeah.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was terrible.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: But but yeah, like you got handed to him.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: He knew exactly how he he knew how to cross swords verbally.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um the the hopeful sorry.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was the first Teflon man, though, come to think of it.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like where he could not nearly as well as Donald Trump, but like he could say things and then completely get away with it.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: But say all that.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um the hopeful note, I you know, I I do think that for women in particular, um and especially women of color, black women, um, you know, specifically, I I I'm seeing a lot of hopefulness in in this moment of like it's such a reckoning.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's so blatant.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: I talked earlier about how the lack of engagement with like kind of the everyday normal person who doesn't make politics their thing, we're unfortunately going through a very traumatic abusive experience similar to what I just described.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: That happened to me personally, but like as a nation.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like, which again, I think was part of why I was like, I know exactly what to do here in 2024, is because I was like, you are Pim.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: You're the same, the same person.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: And same, same tactic, same, same everything.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: And in my psychotherapy, I hit upon uh using Marvel references a lot, specifically Iron Man.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: And uh my tattoo is actually an homage to Iron Man.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: Those who know will know.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you'll see the arc reactor here.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_03: And uh because at the beginning, when I was very much like, I don't know what to do, I'm totally freaked out.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how do I how do I fix this?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because the whole process of healing from trauma is itself very traumatic.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you because you have to do it all over again.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a bone grief.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_03: You broke a bone, it didn't heal right.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: In order to fix it, you actually have to re-break it and do it all over again.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: It sucks.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so um my therapist and I ended up using the whole uh Marvel Cinematic Universe Tony Stark thing.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Tony's in the cave, he has to cobble together to survive Mark One, right?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: The arc, the arc reactor, Mark One, and just get out of there, right?
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that's like the the initial traumatic event.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: You did what you could to survive, it wasn't perfect, it didn't look good, it wasn't fancy, but it was what it was, or you were dead.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, now you have this thing inside of you and and whatever.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then in the second movie, we see that the arc reactor's poisoning him.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: We see that the shrapnel is still in there, you know.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: But if he doesn't, if he doesn't let it poison him, the shrapnel will kill him, right?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: So we have this like paradox.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and then so he has to create a new element in order to deal with the toxic, you know, to lower the toxicity.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: And then by the third movie, we have the okay, you've done that, but it's now like the trauma has be has still like subsumed your personality.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: And in order for you to move on and be a person, we need to get the shrapnel out of you, right?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_03: You need to let go of the whole like this is how I survive thing.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: It needs to be I'm Iron Man because I it is like it is me as a whole person, not me as a survival, not me as a trauma response.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so then he gets the shrapnel removed out of him.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then by the end game, which is this is supposed to be a play on Tony Stark's funeral wreath.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, uh, by the end game, you know, Tony has become a whole person.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_03: He's got a kid, he's got a life.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: Iron Man is an option if he needs it, but otherwise, it's like he just wants to live and be a person.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's when he invents time travel and saves the world and ultimately makes the sacrificial, you know, decision and snap to save said world.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like he it all falls on him.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: But that's like, to me, is like hopefully Marvel doesn't like copyright this or whatever, you know, bang you for copyright.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: But like um, to me, that that became like the ultimate It's such a compliment that you think Marvel watches.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: They're coming for you.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: The Roosso brothers, I'm like, no, you may not do that.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they're gonna come for me for my tattoo.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, like out of my um PTSD protocol is when I had this done.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like one of those, like, my sister helped me design it.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_03: It came the idea came to me like this flash of like insight of like, oh my gosh, I need to do this and that.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and uh there's like Hebrew on here of um uh quoting Proverbs above all else, guard your heart.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um the play on proof that Tony Stark has a heart.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: That again, this is supposed to be like the funeral read, go watch the movies if you don't know what I'm talking about.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: But the whole, like, to me, it's like this it's this hopeful arc of like, we went through the really crappy scene in the cave, right?
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you're you're gonna die unless you just come up with something to get out, and then we progressively learn how to be human again.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_03: And by the end, it's not Iron Man who's saving the world, it's Tony.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: Tony saved the world, right?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's just him being him.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: And to me, it was like this was about like I want to be Kate being Kate, not Kate, not Kate the sheltered person going through trauma for the first time, not Kate as a trauma response to what happened, not Kate as just a PTSD poster child, right?
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like, but Kate isn't like a whole person.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that my whole, my spiritual projects, my political projects, my like work, every like my family, like all of that is like this attempt to become like Kate, you know, and and that's really like at the like I'm I'm at the stage now where I'm actually starting to try to craft like a new like spiritual schema for myself that is like this is this is what it means to be human type thing.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love the there can be something that's so dark, yeah.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh just insiduous.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't I I every word feels trite.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: But to be able to create something not just like super meaningful, yeah, but just it it radiates kind of it radiates like almost like a like a like a joy, like like a joy fly energy.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's beautiful.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, just like it's a to be able to like like that whole messy thing to come together and it creates a whole that is just like well changing the world.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, hopefully, hopefully that is that is the idea.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: I think it that can be everyone's superpower.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_03: I hope that people are looking at like the mess because there's still mess in my life, don't be confused.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but can look at the things that are really hard, that those are the things that are like shrapnel in our bodies, right?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_03: The or the poison in our blood or or whatever it is, and can figure out how to metabolize that, turn it, alchemize it into like exactly what you're talking about, joy and peace and and strength.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like we need we need strength right now in a big way, right?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: We're not gonna be able to push through what's going on in our country, what's going on in the church, big C church everywhere type thing.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_03: We're not gonna be able to push back against any of that unless we are like super, super strong.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: And strength, the only way to get stronger is is to go through this thing.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like it that's it.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like you have to be vulnerable.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right, you have to be vulnerable and you have to be willing to be broken, like strength trainers will explain to you.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like the muscle getting stronger is literally ripping itself apart and putting itself back together.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's the only way it otherwise it doesn't it doesn't build anything.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, I could go on.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: I could have a million metaphors for you.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Kate, like I literally could talk to you for hours.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I And we have.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we are on the two hour mark.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to be respectful of your time.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh nice.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can you pretty pretty please come back on though?
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like this was so much fun.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: I had a freaking this was really fun.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: I've um I walked in, full disclosure, really without a whole lot of expectations or outline.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so this ended up being like a really cool conversation.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Kate, thank you for acting out with me.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: Of course.