Transcript

Finally Some Wisdom to Move Forward! Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom

From We Can Do Hard Things · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 31 min · 16,039 words · 277 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Finally Some Wisdom to Move Forward! Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom", an episode of We Can Do Hard Things published November 11, 2025 (1 h 31 min, about 16,039 words). It mentions 11 people, works and ideas, including Trese McMillan Cotton, MAGA, Black Panther Party, Peter Thiel, Smithsonian.

What this episode is about

Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, a distinguished professor and acclaimed author, provides insightful analysis on the societal challenges we face and offers pathways for action and hope. Through her storytelling and critical perspective, she explores the narratives that have shaped our current situation and highlights what we can do to move forward collaboratively.

Key takeaways

  • In a world of chaos, clarity is the real Christmas gift—let's unwrap understanding together!
  • The danger of a single story? It's like having one flavor of ice cream—who wants just vanilla?
  • Urgency in storytelling is key; it's the difference between stagnation and sparking societal action.
  • Truth-tellers exist—some just wear capes of charisma, making even bitter pills easier to swallow.
  • If history’s a tapestry, let’s embrace the threads linking us, or risk unraveling the whole fabric.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Trese McMillan Cotton, MAGA, Black Panther Party, Power to the People
  2. – 20:00: Constitutional Amendments, Chicago
  3. – 30:00: Peter Thiel, Trese McMillan Cotton
  4. – 40:00: Chicago
  5. – 1:00:00: Black Panther Party
  6. – 1:20:00: Smithsonian
  7. – 1:30:00: Peter Thiel, Smithsonian

Notable quotes from "Finally Some Wisdom to Move Forward! Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom"

  • Okay, we'll see how you feel at the end of this pod squad. Enjoy. Dr. Trese McMillan Cotton is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, a MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant Awardee.
    about Trese McMillan Cotton · at
  • Threat because depending on who you ask, they'll tell you a different threat, but the threat is what everybody agreed on, right? There's a threat, whether it's a threat to our…
    about MAGA · at
  • Wonderful powerful peaceful resistance that has been happening in Chicago for example and I think that there's a clear moral ethical voice starting to break out there with…
    about Chicago · at
  • Zone is here. It is now time for us to tune in and decide. Does that mean we are expanding the Supreme Court? Does that mean constitutional amendments?
    about Constitutional Amendments · at
  • That is the position of someone like a Peter Teal, right? who is on a tour a lecture tour right now telling people his postapocalyptic version of the world right if you cannot say to people look.
    about Peter Thiel · at
  • Inherited down the line. So, we're seeing right now with the Smithsonian, the Department of Interior just took down the scorched back photo, which was this iconic photo of this enslaved man, Gordon, who.
    about Smithsonian · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Trese McMillan Cotton — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at
    Primary interview subject analyzing political narratives (MAGA), democracy, money in politics, the U.S. South as a political 'character,' and the power of community organizing; also referenced for her scholarship and creative work (book and documentary).
  • Peter Thiel — Person · Referenced political/tech billionaire (antagonist example) · 3 mentions · first at
    Cited as an example of a wealthy actor promoting anti-democratic/post-liberal ideas and funding political candidates; used to illustrate how billionaire money shapes politics and narrative power.

Companies & orgs

  • Smithsonian — Company · Case study · 2 mentions · first at
    Discussed in the context of controlling historical narratives and memory.
  • University of North Carolina Chapel Hill — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at
    Trese McMillan Cottom's academic affiliation, highlighting her professional background.
    Okay, we'll see how you feel at the end of this pod squad. Enjoy. Dr. Trese McMillan Cotton is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, a MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant Awardee.
  • New York Times — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at
    Trese McMillan Cottom's professional affiliation as a columnist.
    McMillan Cotton is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, a MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant Awardee.

Products & tech

  • Power to the People — Product · Secondary owned · 1 mention · first at
    Trese McMillan Cottom's upcoming documentary about the Black Panther Party.
    Was named one of the 30 best non-fiction books of the last 30 years by the LA Times. And I am personally very impatiently awaiting her upcoming documentary, Power to the People, y'all, about the Black Panther Party of the South.

Concepts & topics

  • MAGA — Concept · Core topic · 2 mentions · first at
    Central to the discussion about the current political climate and the stories that shape it.
  • Black Panther Party — Concept · Core topic · 2 mentions · first at
    Discussed in the context of Trese McMillan Cottom's upcoming documentary and its historical significance.
    Impatiently awaiting her upcoming documentary, Power to the People, y'all, about the Black Panther Party of the South.
  • Constitutional Amendments — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a potential solution to current political challenges.
  • MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant — Concept · Achievement · 1 mention · first at
    Highlighting Trese McMillan Cottom's recognition and expertise.
    McMillan Cotton is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, a MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant Awardee.

Places & events

  • Chicago — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as a location where resistance and moral leadership are emerging.

Full transcript with timestamps

This feels like Christmas to me. I'm very, very honored and thrilled that you are here. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much for having me. But that does suggest that we need to step up your Christmases just a little bit.

There's so much we need to step up. You have no idea. I'm just saying we could do this.

Okay. I know we're stressed. I know we're not sure exactly what's going on or what to do about it. And by exactly, we mean not at all what's going on or what to do about it. Right. Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy that shall be for all the people. And that is we have Trese McMillan Cotm. If you don't know Trese, you probably do. Trese is the one on the computer or in newspapers explaining this to us. Okay, that is what she does. She is incredible mind. She is an incredible storyteller. She is precise. She is brilliant and she's funny.

Really funny and she's hopeful and she's hopeful. Okay. She in this episode she explains to us clearly with amazing clarity what stories got us to this place and what will get us out and how to get through it. What to do every day? Like I felt

I felt like I wanted to just like run out of my house and start doing something at the end of this.

Wow. I did not feel that. Okay. I did. I felt like I WAS LIKE LET'S GO. I felt like I was going to stay home and do lots of stuff.

Okay, also important. Okay, we'll see how you feel at the end of this pod squad. Enjoy. Dr. Trese McMillan Cotton is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, a MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant Awardee. Her work has earned national and international recognition for its urgency, depth, and insightfulness in her critical perspective and analysis of some of the greatest social challenges we face today. Her book thick was named one of the 30 best non-fiction books of the last 30 years by the LA Times. And I am personally very impatiently awaiting her upcoming documentary, Power to the People, y'all, about the Black Panther Party of the South.

So exciting. It's so exciting. Um Tracy, you introduced me to the term um Grios. Oh yeah.

And I would love to introduce our audience to to that um term. Uh the go um those in West African culture who are gifted with the gift of storytelling. They have a deep spiritual, social, and political discernment to preserve their people's genealogies, historical narratives, values, and their storytelling makes them the advisers, diplomats, and delighters of their people. They are the truth tellers. But there are truth tellers, and then there are the miraculous few who, as Trese has noted, are able to tell the truth and make you want to hear it.

And you trustee are a go of our times. You're able to discern and tell the truth and make us want to hear it. And I can't think of a gift more valuable in the crucible of this time and place than that. And so we are deeply grateful for your work and for you being here with us today. Thank you. Well, thank you very much not only for that lovely uh introduction but for uh tying it to one of you know my favorite cultural traditions. Uh the idea of the people who hold the spiritual, political and historical knowledge of a community is just one of my favorite concepts ever.

And I never would have called myself that but I can't stop you if you do. I thank you. I thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

I love it. And and since you are the storyteller of our times, we were hoping to frame this conversation around story and the power of story

and really the stories that delivered us to this place and the stories that God willing could deliver us from this place

where we are. And I wondered if you could start with landing us like what is the story

that delivered us to this place? Like what is the MAGA story and and why did it win? Because

it was truly that story that that carried us here. Um just tell us what your take is on that story that prevailed.

Oh yeah, that's a great question. And I don't know if it's one story, you know, I'm here I'm thinking very deeply here about, you know, the the danger or the tyranny of a single story and that idea. Um because sometimes our desire for a single story is sometimes the problem, right? Um, so I don't know if it is one story, but if I had to choose a story that I think broke through, which is often how I think of it, because there are always tons of stories, especially we are a multi-racial uh, you know, uh, crossclass culture and society and so there are always many stories. It's about the story that tends to break through, right? So the story that I think broke through over the last, you know, my math here is terrible. I think the '9s were like 20 years ago. So I always say 10 years ago, but I don't know if that means 1990 or 2000, but whatever. So we're probably somewhere around year eight or nine or 10 where

this story starts to break through, I think, both nationally and in the minds of regular people that there is a threat, right? And it's a almost, you know, it's a it's a a an amorphous threat because depending on who you ask, they'll tell you a different threat, but the threat is what everybody agreed on, right? There's a threat, whether it's a threat to our culture. Uh there is a threat to our uh existence, climate change, you know, which I'd argue that's what a lot of our fear is about. We just are misdirecting it in other places. Um but there was a threat, a threat to our way of life, right? a threat to our economic survival and mobility. What we were fundamentally saying is there was a threat to the American dream,

right? Because that had been the prevailing story. You work hard, you roughly follow the rules, and you will do better than your parents.

That was the promise. Now, I can try to tell people that's a new story, y'all. That story didn't exist, I'll say to them, 60 years ago. But it was so prevailing. It was so big that we stopped being able to imagine the world outside of it really. So when someone says there's a threat to that, which is the MAGA story, there is a threat. And even better, I'm going to name a threat for you. You won't even have to think about it, right? Uh so you know, the threat are immigrants, the threat are migrants, the threat are trans people, the threat are gay people, the threat the threat is uh you know, uh professors, you know, like myself. The threat is work the workers. It is librarians. I mean the the the threat assessment here of the people that suddenly became so dangerous. It was like a hodgepodge group of like a a insignificant minor sexual minorities, a librarian, a book seller and like five

migrant children. And this became in the minds of millions of people the threat. But I think it was the threat that made people feel alive and feel seen in MAGA because they are afraid cannot or do the work of figuring out what their actual fear is. And here is someone telling them that this is what you're afraid of and I can fix it. I alone can fix it. So that story I think it's a old story, right? Powerful dangerous people have told that story for millennia.

The question for me isn't like why is the story there? The story is always bubbling beneath the surface. The question is why is in this moment would that story break through.

Why right now you know does that story get so much currency? But that is the story and the story that I will tell you I continue to be sort of amazed by its resilience right now in the face of so much evidence that this is not a strong man that this is not uh the you know dangerous war torn country that he would tell you this is that you are actually you know mostly fine and safe that we do have hard problems to tackle we can do hard things but we don't have impossible ones right in the face of all the evidence to The contrary, however, this story, the MAGA story is deeply sticky.

And the question that's, you know, driving me these days is why. Why is it so sticky right now? But yeah, I think that's the story we're living with.

Do you have any takes on why it's so sticky right now? Well, I So, I just finished saying that there are always competing stories, and that is true, but we don't have a good competing story right now.

We do not. No, we do not. I mean, I look out at the people I would turn to uh that, you know, trust, but I think the people who are responsible for telling us a better story, a different story. And I, you know, we've had enough time now, I think, to come up with one. And so, I will tell you this, this might not be very reassuring, but I'm almost as befuddled as everybody else about why there is not a better competing story. Um I'm starting to see some things that I think are breaking through the wonderful powerful uh peaceful resistance that has been happening in Chicago for example and I think that there's a a clear moral ethical voice starting to break out there with their religious community and religious leaders uh on the ground in Chicago. And so I am seeing some glimmers, but as of yet there has not been anybody who I think speaks less to our fear and more to our strength in a way that feels

honest and authentic. Because here's the thing. Here's the truth. The truth is actually we do have some really big problems and we are running out of some runway to make hard choices. Right. And I think part of the problem is nobody wants to tell people that.

Yeah. Right. Right. I can sit in the room with Democrats, for example, professional Democrats or Democratic pollsters or political adviserss. They know how deep the problems are.

But nobody wants to be the person who goes to people and says you your life really is going to have to change. Now, it doesn't have to end and it doesn't have to be worse, but it is going to have to change. We really do have to make hard decisions again about the environment and about climate. We just got to do it. Mhm.

But nobody wants to give that hard truth. And in the absence of a story that is honest about the truth but makes you feel better about it, people are willing to listen to the story that might be dishonest about it but tells you a way to feel better about it. Right. It's a real hard story. Yeah.

This was going to be our last question, but I feel like it it is rearing now. It

Yeah. Do you believe because as you've noted there is no compelling counter story to the easy

to swallow I don't have to change my life I just have to hate those people narrative

um from the democratic side and there also it seems to me it seems to be the story is we're not evil like them like that's the story we're not them

but then yeah that became really complicated I think for for me personally and for a lot of people

when we had no red line on a genocide. It became very hard to say, well, how evil do I have to be?

The moral high ground. Where is it? No one is. And so I my my like huge question is as the structure exists right now, is there anyone capable of carrying that any story that could deliver us with our modern two-party system? Or are we looking at if we are to be delivered from this

a whole different paradigm that needs to come up like what you're saying with the communities and the faith communities and and all of us like

does this system even work to carry a better story if we could make one? I am with you. First of all, let me say this. I do think that a lot of people who believe themselves to be well-meaning, reasonable people lost the moral high ground when they could look at starving children and not say the obvious thing which is, oh, we are killing

these children, right? We we share culpability here. Yeah, this is a genocide and people are dying, right? And you can argue then about the historical significance and the contemporary politics of it. But what was irrefutable was that people were dying and you can see that um and I actually attribute some of people's inability to do that with the fear of not knowing a story that was going to redeem them. Right? If somebody had been willing to say you can say the hard thing and you won't experience a social death, right? You're not going to be cut off. uh from your friends or your community, right? There will be a path for you here. Um

now the reason, however, we could not build that way forward and that path leads into your bigger point. It is more politically powerful to have a two-party system where people can be cut out of that system than it is for somebody to do the hard work of building away a rec a path of reconciliation. That is to say, it is unfortunately good politics to be bad people,

right? Doing the good thing and being a good person with actually was going to make you a bad politician.

That's right. Right. You've gone on the record about something where there was no clear right or wrong. And you can't do that as a politician. People will hold you to the things you said and it can be misconstrued and it might come up in a campaign ad later and it might you right. Good politics then has become hostile to being a good person.

A moral ethical maybe complicated person we all are but a one with a pretty clear moral compass. So then the question becomes the one I think that you have posed was which is what do we want the good politics or do we want to be the good people with a functioning society and when those two things that are at odds what I think a lot of reasonable people who see themselves as reasonable are going to have to accept is that right now in this moment the reasonable position is the political system we have is not conducive to the world we want.

The problem is eight years ago, 10 years ago, that made you sound crazy. It happened so fast for so many people

that really though now the centrist position, if you want to be honest. When the extremes, however, go so far to the extreme on the right, the centrist position can seem really radical,

right, to people if you weren't paying attention. But y'all, a lot has happened and you can be forgiven for missing some of it. To be fair, there was a lot of TV the last 10, 15 years. There was a lot of Prestige TV to watch. You can be forgiven. But in the event that you missed it, let me be the one to update you here. A lot has happened. You now go out into regular society and you say something like, "Well, I think we should reform uh the the electoral system." You actually sound a little whackadoodle,

right? People have been paying attention will tell you the centrist position, honey. It's too late now for some of that. Now I we can get into the weeds here a little bit and I won't but to say that there are a lot of smart people who have proposals and I will tell you this some of the smartest people I know who have studied this as a career both in the United States and across the globe says that we are almost past the point of making a decision about how we are going to reform our electoral system.

So that means regular people now have to clock in. Yeah, you're up. Right. the the experts have said, "Oh, we're here. The danger zone is here. It is now time for us to tune in and decide. Does that mean we are expanding the Supreme Court? Does that mean constitutional amendments?" And these are all big, historically hard things, but totally not impossible. I am here because of constitutional amendments.

Women are here working because well, they should they weren't fully constitutional amendments. We're still working on that part, but certainly because of reforms, right, to our system that at one time sounded absolutely radical, but had to become the normal position because the other side had just go gone so far a field. And I think the experts are saying to us, this is now that time. Regular people need to decide which side they are on and we need to pretty quickly get to the point of deciding what's our rallying cry. And now this is where the one story would be very useful. I asked someone uh pretty high up in uh the democratic machine not too long ago, what is it you want people to ask for? Right? There is some unmet need, I think, among the people I talk to who are like, "No, I'm suitably angry. I'm suitably radicalized.

Tell me what I should be demanding." When I make my five calls to my Congress person,

what is it I want them to do? And the fact that we haven't given people Yeah. that well now that just that stuns me.

But that's where we are. We need a really good ask and the people who are ready to make the ask need to know that somebody's working on it. Do you think that the story could be something about like I don't know why our story isn't um eradicating billionaires. I don't know why our story isn't

I like that story. Yeah. He likes people to point to. We know who the We know who the if if everybody needs they're anxious and they need somebody to blame.

Yeah. We have a great option that's actually true. And it's not like these are very likable people. If you cannot just a matter of just like basic politics, if you cannot character these this class of billionaires, then you probably should not be in the political communication game. I will agree with you. Uh these are weird, dangerous, spiteful, petty, mean people. Uh you know these are people who have said uh things cannot continue as they are. So let's destroy it with as much joy and excitement as we can. Let's watch it explode. Let's accelerate the explosion. Use it for my fireworks while I sail off into the sunset. That, by the way, is quite literally the position of a lot of wealthy, powerful people

who say, "Oh, no. We just can't have democracy anymore. It hasn't worked. We actually can't have women working." That hasn't worked, right? We need straight up biological determinism and a small group of men to make the decisions for everybody. And I want that to happen as quickly as possible. So, I am investing in that chaos and destruction.

That is the position of someone like a Peter Teal, right? who is on a tour a lecture tour right now telling people his postapocalyptic version of the world right if you cannot say to people look at that we are not that we are against that I agree with you I think we've got a problem now here's the real the real crux of the issue if you want to be a politician you need people to give you money

right and it's very difficult then to court the people the donor class we would call that and then go tell the people who have to live with the politics of that that they should be against th those donors, right? It is very difficult to serve uh two masters and in fact when you try to serve two you just end up serving both of them really poorly.

Yeah. Which circles back to the same reason why the system the people in the system who are supposed to have the moral high ground would not call a genocide a genocide. Yeah. is because of Apac and whatever. So it's like it's all the money which is

listen at the end of the day I think one of the decisions that seemed at the time like a pretty wonky political you know decision and I think that's why we didn't really get a narrative around it didn't really explain it to everyday Americans at the point that corporations become citizens and the citizens united decision this starts an arms race for money to pour into politics it's not to say money had never mattered, but there were there were some meaningful checks on how much money could matter uh in politics. Once you threw open that door, the incentives then for the people who could afford it, for really wealthy people to buy politicians really just lock, stock, and barrel were all in place. And now we're about 15 years behind explaining to people what that decision meant and putting it in like everyday terms. I'm of the belief that regular people shouldn't have to be experts in politics to live in the

world, right? That this was a sort of a division of labor we did. We said, "Listen, we will put our faith in you. We will give you the power of people, people power. We'll put our faith in you in exchange for, right, a certain level of accountability and expertise. Um, all of the money that is pour poured into politics has broken that compact between people and the people who represent them." This is what I like to liken it to. When people when politicians are not afraid of their voters, when they can go out and not do listening tours in their local uh communities or go to those uh local communities, even worse, do the listening tour and then insult the voters,

right? Which I've seen over and over again, right? Because they are not afraid of the voters. That means the system you have is not your system.

And now then the question is what are you going to do about it? Now I am of the belief that they need to be afraid of voters again. And there are only a few ways you can do that. Right? We need to claw back the checks and balances system. I do think that we're going to have to reform if not completely expand uh and deemphi deemphasize this court, the Supreme Court. Um, but you got to you also you've just got to get a rallying cry about getting money this amount of money out of politics. Uh, if politicians are not afraid of you, you just do not have a republic or a democracy.

So, is that the call? Is that because I You like it? What do you think? I just don't know what the hell it is if not that first.

Yeah. Like if they're not We don't have a democracy. Like we it's it's a fable. It's that we that these politicians represent us. They don't. They represent the the the groups that are lobbying. Like we we're never going to get out of our gun nightmare

because they answer to the NRA. They answer to Apac. They answer to and and the seeing the boldness and brazeness of what they're saying now

should be chilling to all of us because they are not afraid of us because they don't answer to us and behind the scenes they are changing things a little by little so by the time we get to the next elections it will not matter

how they don't they know they're not accountable to us anymore. Yeah. over and over again. I've talked with people about this, about watching some of what's happening, you know, some of the the the just, you know, almost absurdest, I would say. If, you know, if I could laugh, I would. Uh, but the, you know, just the sort of the the coarse, blatant obvious undemocratic uh uh political decisions and political speech coming not just out of this administration, I would argue, but it is now become the culture of American politics. Everybody is coarser.

Everybody is cruer. Everybody is uh less competent and is, you know, relishing being incompetent even, right? Uh the the scam is visible. You know, scammers are usually supposed to try to do some slight of hand. They don't even care to pretend anymore, right? You can just see the scam

uh in the life and that is the power move to say I can rip you off and you can't do anything about it.

Right? That is right. That is how a straw man, that's how an authoritarian shows that they have that power. Um, but I've looked and I said, I don't understand how you look at that and think that these are people who intend to be governed by voters. These are not people who intend to have an election matter to them. That is not to say then men tend to come out and say that, you know, we're being uh alarmist. You know, we say that and get upset. I'm not saying we won't have elections, but elections alone don't mean that you have a democracy.

Yeah. Right? You have a democracy when they are afraid of people. Period. So you ask yourself, are your representatives afraid of you? I don't know when you call, do you get them or do you get their legislative aid or do you get a voicemail

or like some of the people I'm in the state of North Carolina, we have some elected officials you call and they have turned off even the voicemail. It just rings and then hangs up on you, right? If you can call, if you can email, if you can show up at your local political events and your elected representatives are not afraid of you, I promise you, you do not live in a competitive democracy.

You just don't. Well, just look at reproductive I mean, look at reproductive justice. like when when 70% of Americans

support action um access to abortion and they full slate go and take it away like they aren't afraid of

that's right the entire country they are doing what they're doing because they've been not only bought after the fact as as politicians they have been manufactured from the beginning

JD Vance exists because Peter Teal decided he That's exactly right. They found somebody with a narrative who was willing to be remade in the image of what a Peter Thiel wanted and that I could not agree more. Someone who was willing to play that role in exchange and let's just be very honest in exchange for personal gain. This is not about some ideological project. We keep thinking that these people have deeply held convictions about when life begins or uh the second amendment. No, these are people who have been promised we can protect you and we can make you very rich. Your children's children will still be rich,

right? They are buying themselves that ticket and we just need to be very very clear. But that's right. You manufacture the story you want in the candidate you then create. And again, I would ask people, do people have that power? Can we go and manufacture that and then have that person have the resources and the attention they need to actually be a politician? And no, we can't. And that happened admittedly very fast, but that is where we are now. These aren't even to my mind, these aren't even real politicians. You I was speaking with someone last night about there was a moment when Mitt Romney resigned. Yeah.

Uh from Congress, and I remember doing and listen, and I was at odds policy-wise with Mitt Romney on many, many, many things, but I remember the speech he gave about why he was leaving.

Yeah. Right. He said, "It is not just that this isn't a Republican party I don't recognize anymore." He said, "This is a government and a job I don't recognize anymore." When you have a candidate who is ideologically committed to the ideas, you know, the Republican ideas or we should say maybe conservative ideas and they are terrified of what they are seeing. To me, that meant that even the pretense of us being a normal functioning uh system had been called off and it was over. That to me felt like an important moment and I think we have seen that, right? the they've even gotten rid of their committed believers in the party. That is

Cheney only point here. That's right. Cheney uh you know uh when you would make fun of people who helped build your party this they didn't just you know they didn't just run them out the the mockery of them right all of that that signal to me where we were and where we are is that yeah you can buy politicians and many of them have already been bought.

Yeah. Okay. And now it's time to thank the companies who allow you to listen to We Can Do Hard Things for free. So, our kids are coming home for Thanksgiving. I know it is the absolute best thing in the world and also utter chaos.

Yes, there's cooking from Abby, baking from Abby, football on the TV from Abby. What do I do? You watch and sit.

We're going to get to what exactly you do, Glennon. Okay, great. Anyway, regardless of who's doing what, by the end of the night, the kitchen looks like it survived a natural disaster. But this year, I feel calm about it because of our new kitchen friend, Mill.

We call her Millie. Millie. Yeah. Mill has been a total game changer, y'all, in in our house and hopefully in yours, too. It's this quiet, odorless food recycler that takes all of the scraps, the turkey bones, pie crusts, veggie peels, and turns them into nutrient-rich grounds overnight. No smells, no mess, no trash overflow when everyone's home and eating all day long like our kids. It makes a huge difference. And the kitchen actually stays fresh, which used to feel impossible during the holidays, right, G?

Yes. Usually after Thanksgiving dinner, I'd be running around cleaning up, emptying the trash.

That's what you do. Feeling guilty about how much food went to waste. Oh, that is what you do.

I am with my depression era heart always stressed about all of the waste. And now there isn't any.

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You are a very proud, deeply rooted southern black woman. I am. And I'm wondering if in speaking of story if you could walk us through the story just real quick the the story of the South in terms of you know the real South versus the South that has been

weaponized, turned into idolatry, turned into kind of a political pawn. on in the the creation of these stories.

Oh yeah. Um and what it means to you as kind as like the epicenter of so much of this racial gender

uh crisis, how it's how it's being misused and the promise of it in its realness. Listen, I happen to believe that there is nothing that needs to be solved in this country that can be meaningfully solved in this country if it is not solved first and best in the American South

because the South holds everything that the rest of the country wants to sort of shunt off, right? So, you want to have a progressive uh California, let's say, right? you want to be you want to have a progressive state. Um, okay. Well, then let's be, you know, let's really police uh who can afford to live here, creating a a certain amount of class and racial homogeneity, right? Um, well, then you have basically bought yourself the comfort of being progressive.

You know, be progressive in Alabama and then I'll be impressed. You know, right? Be okay. Yeah, I get it. You're progressive in a world where you control who can live there, who can afford to work there, who can travel there, what kind of public transportations avail. Oh, that's really nice. But again, do it someplace where you have to live side by side with people that you have meaningful differences with. And that is the one thing the South has always had. We have an intimacy with our enemies in the South. That means if you can't solve it here, if you can't do climate change off of the coast of South Carolina, listen, I I think we absolutely need to get on this. But I'm telling you that if these solutions don't work in a place where you have a lot of poor Native American people and a lot of poor black people and a lot of poor white people, chances are excellent that you don't really have a solution,

right? You've just got something that makes comfortable people a little bit more comfortable in the rest of the country. So when I say that the south matters, I don't just mean it in the historical sense, which is how we love to talk about the south. We love the south historically. We love the south. Oh, come down and visit, you know, uh the the grand uh Antabellum mansions, right? You can take a tour of the romantic historical south. I'm like the south is still here today, right? We are present because we have the internet. We have TV just like everybody else, right?

We are living in the modern political moment. That means every problem that we are facing in this country exists here. Uh and I say that because the promise of this country is that it would not just be a democracy but it would be a multi-racial one. So creating democracy by getting rid of all of the racial minorities is not to my mind living up to to the American ideal. So solve it in the place where you have to actually reckon with our hard deep uh interpersonal factions. I also believe that we use the south as a character.

Yes. To say no matter how bad the problems are in Chicago, in Detroit, uh, in, you know, Palo Alto, at least we aren't the South.

At least. And I go, well, no, you exist because the South exists. The South holds your cheap labor. The south is a place where we tax poor people almost to death and provide absolutely no social contract in exchange. Right? That creates an immense amount of wealth that the rest of the country gets to benefit from. Right? When you want to use all of your money from selling your house in California or Montana and you want a big home, where do you move? Right? You move to Florida, you move to Georgia, you're moving to North Carolina. That means you are taking advantage of the fact that people there have not been able to build their own economic survival. You're taking advantage of cheap housing which is cheap because we have made it so that people can't afford to live right.

You're taking advantage of that. So the south exists and that means the rest of the country gets to exist. And I also really reject this idea that there's something uniquely racist about the south,

right? This idea that like, oh, we don't do that. We would never say that here. I always like to tell people I think the uh the last time that somebody had uh uh I'll just be honest with you. Last time somebody had the balls to call me a racial slur to my face, it was in Northern California.

Wow. It was not in Birmingham, a place I've been quite recently. Right. So, the idea that we are uniquely racist is one of those fictions, one of those stories, y'all, that people love because it makes them feel good about themselves. Yeah.

Right. Um and so I defend us only to the extent that I say that we are worth defending because if not you get these things like you know self-proclaimed liberals and progressives who are like well we should just write off if they are going to vote against their interests right we should just write off

Florida Georgia well you look at a map about race and class in this country and who you're saying you should write off who the people you're saying who should be cut off from the union are disproportionately black, Hispanic, poor, and I will also point out women,

right? That's the South. So, you're saying that you can only have your country if you get rid of the rest of us. And I would say there's a word for that, and it's fascism.

It's polite fascism. It has a little sign in its yard that says, "In this house, we believe." But it is the exact same principle. If you can only have your freedoms by me not having mine, then we aren't doing the same project. Uh so I think about the South as being this place that holds these ideas that people aren't comfortable with. But you know who is comfortable with it? Somebody who comes along and wants to exploit it for political gain.

Somebody who wants to point out your hypocrisies to you and make them into memes to discredit you. You know who ended up being really good at that? Donald Trump

who said, "Okay, I will puncture all of your liberal hypocrisy by taking all these ideas from the South." Here is a New Yorker who can say with no irony and without much push back can draw on all these southern images, the Lost Cause, the Confederacy. You know, he's a New Yorker. What is he even doing here playing in our repertoire of ideas? Well, he can get away with it because he knows the hypocrisy around it when centrists and liberals and progressive people aren't willing to be honest that they hold some of the same ideas about southerners, some of the same ideas about what we deserve and what we don't deserve. And he knows that and he's able to exploit it. And so the the South becomes just another political pawn. But I would argue that both sides make us a political pawn. is just right now one side is doing a better job at it than the other.

You're talking about New York. I was in upstate New York a couple weeks ago and we're driving through this town and my kids are have their jaws on the ground because we are in upstate New York and every other house

has a Confederate flag on it. Yeah, I've seen it. Mhm. And they were they were just like, "What? This doesn't even make sense.

I know this is this they weren't even part of the Confederacy. There is no claim to the actual quote unquote heritage. If if that flag is supposed to we believe,

right, represent some part of southern heritage. Y'all are the farthest from that southern heritage that we can get outside of Maine. So, so what is that iconography? And then they're all over the January 6th

insurrection which was not predominantly southerners up there. No, you had Midwesterners and Westerners very urban orbane upper middle class wealthy people who were flying Yes. the Confederate flag who were dressed up in uh uh in a Confederate uh uniforms wearing the Confederate hat uh using, you know, don't tread on me. all of this language, all of this iconography, the images, the stories, the slogans from the Civil War and from the South's version of the Civil War. Uh I was at a uh an event recently where someone presented her she was presenting her research showing the connections between uh uh Nazis in Germany and their connections to the American South. And she said the thing is the American South has always been global. the racism that we say is unique to the South, she said, has always had a global audience. She talks about Amanda being in Germany and seeing a Confederate flag fly. You

trying to make sense of New York, try to make sense of that. Well, yeah, it makes sense if you realize that the ideas have nothing to do with land or property rights or citizenship or sovereignty and have everything to do with white supremacy.

It's the only thing that makes all of that logical. and coherent. So then I would ask us, well then why is the south caretaking those ideas? Yes. So this is what happens every 6 7 8 12 years between bouts of social progress somebody can tap in to the you know the rage the isolation that some group of people feel and the most efficient way to tap into it is to come back to the south

to resurrect that flag to remind them that you don't need to feel guilty you don't need to compromise or sacrifice for the ideas of inclusion, equality, or social progress, right? And that is the idea of the lost cause, that even in losing, you can be a winner. And that will always have currency when you wrap it up in white nationalism. And that's why you can see a Confederate flag in upstate New York. And people do that with absolutely uh no irony whatsoever because they know it's not about they know it's not about land or property or rights. Just like the South knew that uh it was never about states rights. it was always about slavery.

They know what the real story of those images are and that's what they want to communicate.

Okay. So, if our sign in our yard and I'm in in uh Southern California in my yard, which I may or may not have had in the past.

No, no, you don't need to go on the record here with me at all has I in this house we etc., etc. Yeah, we are inclusive because we have made sure not to include anyone. So, it's really

super easy to be inclusive when anyone is not a smidge it's a smidge easier. I'm going be honest with you.

I take the point. Um Okay. If the Confederate flags that are in northern New York, is that what you read? New York.

Yeah. Are they are are are those houses what is the story that they think they're telling

do they actually believe I I understand that we we that is evoking white supremacy that is evoking

um no more guilt but like what are they telling themselves that that means and are we at the point where just like the politicians the mask is off and they actually are just saying in this house we do white supremacy.

Yes, I think that's far more of it than people are willing to accept or believe that these aren't people who have just been led astray, who are just confused, who have fallen down the misinformation rabbit hole, right, and are living in a conspiracy theory. No, these are a lot of in many cases well-educated uh productive people and citizens who know exactly what that sign means and that is exactly what they want to communicate. And I think we need to be honest with ourselves and accept that that that that may even be true of your friend, of your family member, of someone that you can play golf with who seems like a nice and a nice enough person. But to me, there's no difference between having the Confederate flag in your yard as a message and having a uh a lawn jockey

on the front yard as a message. They are the exact same thing. And people are deeply aware and they know exactly what they're doing. And we should not give them a pass that they haven't asked for.

Okay. They haven't asked they haven't That's right. They're not coming out saying, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know. Please forgive." You know, no, they're not asking for a pass. So why are we volunteering to give them one?

No. You know, unless we're just uncomfortable with the discomfort, which I think is a lot of it.

Then I think there's a smaller set of people for whom there is a story they have that is a story of nostalgia. The past was always better. By which they usually mean I could have been defensively innocent about the price of my progress, the price of my good life, my quality life. Right? There was a time when I didn't have to know that we were killing bombing babies in Palestine. There was a time when I didn't have to know that we were enslaving tens of millions of people in a prison system. Right? There was a time when I didn't have to know.

Right? That's the nostal that's what the nostalgia is for. Now, it just so happens that they are nostalgic for a time where they had that innocence because of white supremacy. But I think the story they're telling themselves about a kinder, gentler time is about a time of innocence when they did not have to deal with all of the moral conflict, the ethical conflict, the discomfort people feel when they realize the American dream was always costing somebody else their nightmare. Yeah.

And so we need to question like what tradeoffs are we willing to accept. Now you got to be a brave person. I think you actually also have to be a curious person. I think curiosity is an undervalued human trait. I think people who are curious about the world no matter how much or how little education or exposure they have to other people, there's just a curiosity there where they ask questions. But if you don't have that curiosity or you don't have to have that curiosity and you feel uncomfortable about now having to deal with the moral the moral uh uh consequences of your choices, it's real easy to say, you know what, forget it.

It was better in 1929, and that's what I want. Yeah. I still see the no king stuff. There's still signs everywhere that say if Kamla had won we'd be at brunch right now

and that is not actually and us being at brunch was the problem these two I'm like no no no let's not go back to the brunch delusions. Yes

the brunch delusion like that that strikes me in a deep way because I think that had Kamla one I would be at brunch.

I feel you. Yeah. I'm afraid I too would have been maybe not a brunch, but I've been like at a round table.

Yeah. You know what I mean? I get I get invited to lots of those. You know, A SCHOLARLY BRUNCH.

YEAH. A THERE YOU GO. A scholarly brunch. And I am deeply like and that fear motivates me though. So I use it as like okay Tessy let's not be the person at the round table while Rome is burning behind us. Right. But I feel you. That's a I actually would say that being afraid of knowing of thinking you might be that person is a really good inoculation from becoming that person.

But I'm like you. I see all of this. I could have been back. I could have been at brunch. You know, we could have been and I'm like what you're saying is you could have

again had an innocence that I don't think you deserved. That none of us deserved.

Yes. None of us deserved. Why? There are many people in the new generation who are done with pretending that the Democratic Party,

yeah, is just a bunch of good guys. That a lot of these kids see them as the exact same one with a mask and one without one.

And they think that what we wanted was just for somebody to keep on the mask so we could pretend

that we all still believe in liberty and justice for all while we went to brunch. And what we're really annoyed about is that the mask is off and now we're not allowed to keep pretending.

Yes. I mean, I a couple months ago I was so frustrated and I came downstairs to Abby and I was like, I just I can't I can't write. I had I can't make anything every day. It just feels like how does anybody be creative anymore? It's just reaction constantly.

Yes, I feel that too. Yeah. And we just sat and was like, "Oh, that's for people who have been engaged constantly." That's how life. That's life.

That's life. Yeah. First of all, power to your kids. That's But that's Yeah. This is why everybody, for the record, this is why people uh get so upset when their kids come home from college. They think we radicalizing them. I'm like, "No, they just told you. That's not on us. That's not our fault." But yeah, because that's tough. Yeah. They come home and they tell you these things. They're like, "Oh, yeah." You know, I work with college students all the time and I think you have nailed it in that what they're saying is first of all that we didn't give them a world where they could really choose that innocence. So like how dare we be grieving the loss of that when we didn't give them that which totally fair by the way

but also the clarity they have about in some ways I think they are not just more brave than us because some of that can come with uh youth certainly but I do think that they are more courageous about whatever comes after the knowing could be worse but it could be better. Yes,

it could be better. They're the ones who remind me of that when I'm like, "Oh, everything is collapsing." Well, guess what? It kind of had to to rebuild it. It's like getting the the tower card in tarot, you know, or the death card. It has to die for the rebirth. And what I think they are better at because they did not they weren't as immersed in our brunch past when we could just you know vote every two or four years and then go back to our lives and our self-actualization and our becoming and all of that right u because they don't have as much of that. I think they can also be excited about what's possible

in facing the truth that we've got two sides here, one with a mask and one without, and we have to unmask before we can even get to anything better.

That's right. Yeah. And I do think that they are right. I will say that for those of us though who it is a I have to almost weekly convict myself on that,

right? that the end of a way of life doesn't mean the end of the world. Just the end of the way we were living, y'all. It's not the end of the world.

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I'm interested as you're talking as we're thinking about like what is the third way? What are the alternatives? Like what is what is the thing that will make these people afraid enough to hold

to account? And I it makes me think about your work on uh the Black Panther project that you're doing and

the way that that community threatened threatened the powers by taking care of each other that that serving each other and not looking to the state or to the government to meet its needs. That in itself was deemed so threatening

so as to be deemed violent. Yes. To the state. So there is something there in that of the community and and your partner um your partner's phrase where they say uh freedom is responsibility.

Freedom is responsibility. I know. Isn't he such a good egg? Yeah. Says babe. He's like babe I wasn't free until I was responsible to other people. which gosh really got me, you know, in our moment of our, you know, focus on self, you know, listen, I'm like every other woman. Yes, we need the boundaries, we need the care, we need all of that. But there was something almost intimately radical about him looking at me going, "No, the more responsible I am to other people, the more freedom I have." And, you know, he meant several things, but one of the things that I think about a lot that is so evident in uh working with this chapter of the Black Panther Party in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

So again, the south and in a place not, you know, imagine people don't think if they think of Winston Salem at all and it's perfectly fine if you haven't. It's fine. It's a small regional.

I've been there in North it is. It's darling. Thank you for telling people. It's darling.

I love I love North Carolina. Huge fan. Chapel Hill especially was there last weekend. Love it.

Where are you? Next time you let me know you're here. I'm in downtown I will see you next time. Seriously, it's one of my favorite places. There's a reason I choose to live here. I really do think it's amazing. Uh and Win Salem is amazing in that way. You know, sort of a bedroom sort of uh community. Uh but you don't think of this as a place as a hotbed of radical activism, right? Um but I knew that it was my mom had been in the the party. That's she was in the party when she got pregnant with me. And so in many ways figuring out my own origin story involved understanding this chapter, but also the fact that we've kind of erased it,

right? The fact that there was no southern presence for this. Um, and not only was that chapter active, in their minds, they are still active. So, I go back to them 55 years, the 55th anniversary of their chapter was this past year, and we had a gathering there to do some filming for this documentary. And one of the things that I want people to see is something that I needed to see at this point in my life. Y'all, some people survive the movement. Some people grow, you can grow old as a revolutionary thinker. You can you can grow old. You can have a life. The movements do move on, right? They are put down. The government puts down a radical movement. Sure, those things happen, but their work didn't

end. They are still feeding people. They are still housing people. They're still educating people. The work goes on even when the cameras stop showing it and the politicians have moved beyond it and we think it's in the past and in fact it is the people who continue to do the work in between those times. Well, they're caretaking those ideas for us.

So when I was sitting there I was like you I'm sitting in my house going how am I supposed to be this person I worked so hard to be able to be. All I all I've wanted all my life is to read books

and sometimes write a little something down in a notebook. It was all I wanted, you know, and I sacrificed so much and I got here and then this happened and I've been a little pissed.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. That's a real thing that people are going right now which is like I had individual dreams. I had a I had a joy to cultivate in me. I have a little and for for you

and I'm middleaged. I can't just keep rebuilding this thing. I also was feeling like the time I was like, "Oh my god, by the time we get rid of him and we do all this and blah blah blah blah, right? I'm not going to be able to drive my car anymore." Right? It was I was just so like I've got a short ramp and I was really feeling that.

Amen. Then you go home as I did and when these are people, you know, I call aunties and uncles and extended family. They're in their 70s now. Some of them in their 80s and now maybe they show up to the meeting uh in a hoveround. Sure. Sometimes they're in their assisted devices and sometimes we have to roll out their oxygen tanks for them and sometimes, you know, we make all of these allowances for the the physical passage of time. But these are people who are still actively intellectually and spiritually alive and engaged. And I looked at and had gone on with lives.

They became teachers, professors, lawyers, uh, you know, preachers, uh, corporate, you know, marketing, corporate branding. They got jobs. They had jobs like the rest of us.

And yet, and yet they were still fmenting these ideas. They were still showing up. the small acts when I asked them how the party remained alive for them even after it's long since dissolved. It's been villainized by the government. You know, you become an enemy of the state, which is a deep grief. By the way, we don't have a language for this. When you're when the country turns against you, it is a deep level of loss,

right? It's like you're stateless in your own country and it hurts. They go through a deep trauma here. uh people, anybody's ever been in a union or any kind of collective movement and when it ends the trauma of that is so deep and they lived with that but they lived despite it and they took their ideas that you should never take from the poor basic idea and they took it into the professions with them they took it into their work with them

and so no that doesn't maybe look radical when we write it down later but I think surviving and thriving even during times of great unrest is a type of radical way of living. And I needed to see that. I needed to see them they can still pick up the phone and call each other and they can turn out 300 people in an hour. What power to be able to do.

And they can do that because they've been serving people in their own way for so long. And so what they reminded me is that yes, keep up with the news. know what's happening but don't think that's the work and that in fact if I was serving people if I was doing something in service if I was responsible

to other people and to the things I believe in they are right remarkably at the end of the day when I have done that I feel far more free than I do on the days when I have kept up with all of the Supreme Court decisions and the judicial testimony and the minutia of whatever it As Donald Trump has tweeted, "Miraculously, I do feel more free when I have served people than when I have kept up with the news."

They're right about that. There's this that's the story. That's the better story. It's like, how do you

It is. How do you put that into words? I feel the better story in my body when I'm organizing. when I'm at a table full of people that are like I feel that I'm like, "Oh, oh, this is better than the other thing."

Yeah. I mean, there's a reason that the I think the American dream whole story started from mortgage companies,

if that's true. I think or certainly the the language of it. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a reason that the symbol is a fence. Like when you think of American dream, you think white picket fence. That's what

Yep. Whatever our story, the better story isn't it's it's not a fence. That's good.

Offense. Yep. No, I think that's exactly right. A lot of the ideas that we now think of as taken for granted, edicts from a higher power really started either as satires or marketing campaigns. So, we have the same thing with meritocracy. Meritocracy was a satire. It was a book written to saterize the idea that you would work hard and get ahead. They thought it was funny and he came up with this term. It was a joke and he wrote it. He went and wrote it into our social fabric like it was some, you know, like Ben Franklin sat at the feet of Jesus and handed us this idea. You know what I mean? And it's not. It just comes from like a marketing spiel most of the time. The real the real stuff I think that we are looking for unfortunately is never as easily branded as that,

right? The American dream, work hard, get ahead, uh, bootstraps and all of that. It is harder to market. Uh, but it is much better to live it than to live in the commercial, right? To live in the marketing campaign. I'm with you. Nothing makes me feel both smaller but more significant than organizing with people around any meaningful idea. Nothing does it right and we talk so much about what we are losing right now and what we have lost and I have worried a lot that even I have contributed to that right because my job part of my job in this world I think is to chronicle what I think is happening and to make sense of the moment but that means I think sometimes we haven't told people that actually though yes it can be better you also get something you've lost something and we are we're asking you to give up comfort we are asking you to give up privilege But you get so much and we should talk I

think as much about what you get as what you will sacrifice. Yes, you really are. I promise you everything I have seen says that you are a healthier, happier, more connected person when you sometimes have to argue with people about in a meeting about a movement. It doesn't sound right, but it sounds counterintuitive, but the more you argue with people about something meaningful to do something meaningful, I promise you, the happier you will be

and you are going to gain so much more than anything you gave up in comfort. But it's not a good it's not I know it's not an easy story to sell, but I do think it's the truth. It's like the cure circles back to the diagnosis. It's like a so much of that anxiety that underlying anxiety to which MAGA etc. have answers

have got to be connected to our profound disconnection. Yes. And lack of communities.

Yes. And I mean I don't know if white people know how to be in community. I don't know if we do.

Listen, you can't do it as white people. You want me tell you what I mean about this? The thing is white is a choice. It's not like because it doesn't being white is not a a country, right? It's not a religion. It's not right. It really did start as an idea and then we backfilled the people, right? We needed white people and then we decided this is who this will be. And by we, I'm being generous here because I wasn't part of that committee, but you know what I mean, right? We made this up and then we backfilled it. So here's the thing. You do have to give up that. But here's the here's the thing that you can give up because that is it is a construction,

right? So no, I do believe because though it's just an idea about who should be in power. It's just an idea about who deserves the right to rule,

right? You actually don't need that to be a person. You actually don't need that to have ancestry. You don't need that to have culture. And in fact, it is usually being white is usually standing in the way of you having culture, ancestry, community identity place and belonging, right? It's usually the thing that's standing in your way.

So people, yes, I think can have it, but not while they're holding on tightly to being white.

You do have to give that up, I think. Have you guys seen the um One Battle After Another movie?

No, but I've read so much about it. You've seen it. I loved it. Okay. But there's this one scene where is going down. Okay. Like the

police, they're all over the place. They're looking for the revolutionaries, everything. And Leo is like this mess of a but he was a revolutionary and he's

and then Benio Del Toro is this character who is also in a movement and is protecting people and getting them out. And he hands something to Leo and he looks him in the eye. He goes, "Don't get selfish now."

And keeps going. And it was like it felt like don't you're white. Yeah. Don't evoke it.

Don't You're You're with us. You could right now. Yep. It's just like a constant not

It is embodying evil fake power that's not real. Mhm. I think it's really Yeah. I think what people think they can do is they can layer a good identity on top of that poisoned one.

Yeah. Right. And I say to them, "No, you're just going to keep poisoning the well."

You can't layer feminism on top of that. You can't, you know, layer, you know, I don't know, uh, you know, bike path guy, I don't know, or co-op person. You can't layer any of these progressive or radical identities on top of the one that's poisoning the well. You got to root out that white power identity first and inconsistently constantly. Yeah, that's the thing. I do think it is a it is a practice over time. And power power is so seductive, which is why that's such a good Yeah. He gave him something and now you got power and now it matters what you choose.

Yeah, that's right. Don't Yeah, it matters. That's good. I mean, don't get selfish makes me think so much of, you know, all the different reactions people are having, which I understand completely and it's everyone has to do, but the whole like get out of the country, do the thing, do like do the protective thing

is maybe a a smidge of that of like the moment of don't get selfish right now. We are all in this together.

I'm sorry. I would say to people, did those other countries ask for us? I always feel like like how what what a mentality to have that like I'm just like like did they did they ask for us?

Sure as hell not. That's what I'm thinking. I'm like you know most people look at us and for good reason. I'm like no we're good. And I'm like you're going to flee. I would what you know were you invited? But that's Yeah. It's like were you invited?

Not aren't we just like reproducing the same problem? Like I'm not going to go over here and do what we did here without an invitation. Isn't that how this all this whole thing started? Yeah.

Then we're going to BE LIKE, WE DISCOVERED ANOTHER COUNTRY. Just what we built thousands of Christopher Columbuses

all over the world. I'm like, I think we should really think this thing through, y'all.

If you if you BROKE IT, YOU BUY IT. THERE YOU GO. That's exactly it. You broke it, you bought it. That's exactly it.

That's fair. That's our story. Yeah, that's right. But you guys, it's like tied back to that, right? It's like our story is Christopher Columbus.

It's the poisoning of the well all the way through and it's all that. All of it is a refusal to accept the real story. We're all just making up stories

because we don't want to look like a family. You don't want to like look at your dad and your mom.

Yeah. So, you just keep repeating. That is what we're doing. We're repeating the whole western expansionism

over and over again, over and over again. Now we're going to do it to the moon. Then we're going to do it to Mars. And then we're going to do it beneath the ocean. Then we're going to do in the internet. But it is the same mindset of colonizing the new place so that we can keep our bad ideas but recreate them in a place that doesn't know their bad ideas yet. That's it. Because you don't want

the opposite of look around at your community, stay still. you are where you are and take care of the people around you.

That's it. That's really scary and hard. Yep. People don't want to do that. Amanda, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Well, I'm interested in this idea of, you know, perpetuating the story, which is what we're doing, but we're also in a moment, and specifically you, Trese, as a a chronicler of our times and as a keeper of stories. It's it's really scary to me in this moment what we're seeing around, you know, the effort to control story necessarily includes eradicating the parts of the story that you don't want inherited down the line. So, we're seeing right now with the Smithsonian, you know, the Department of Interior just uh took down um you know, the scorched the scorched back photo, which was this iconic photo of this enslaved man, Gordon, who escaped, ran 80 miles to uh flee enslavement. And that became the iconic picture that was reprinted all over the North to show

the the horrors of slavery. um was just taken down. It's it's against ideology according to the president's directive. Um the the women's uh contributions to the military that was taken down. Japanese Americans contributions to the military that was taken down.

Um the Harriet Tubman exhibits in the National Park have been taken down. This is all about trying to forget.

Yeah. What to you? What does that signify to you? What do we do with that? What do we make of that in terms of the trying to remaking? Because it's very similar to forget a genocide of Native Americans.

Right. This story has always been good. That's why we're continuing this power structure.

That's exactly right. The story has always been good. So there's no need to change who is writing the story. You know the the great irony of a nation that has always been so future oriented because we were a new young country, right? You you can't appeal to a long ancient history. So we decided to sort of colonize the future instead, right? So we're always very future oriented. Uh the irony though is that to control the future, you have to control the past. You got to control people's memories of the past.

So ironically, our obsession with the future has made us obsessed with history, owning it, controlling it, erasing it. And I think what we are seeing in this administration is just the full embodiment of that. There's always been some element of that in the American project of exceptionalism ex our exceptionalism.

Are we going to go with that? Yeah, right. Let's go with that. It's fine. Um, it's made up anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Let me just tell you, if people want clear thinking from me these days, they better come up with uh new hormonal drugs. Let me just tell you,

okay, talk about that another time. Thank you. I was going to say you're getting from me what you're going to get, people. Right. So, you gota you got to control what people are allowed to remember. Um, that does a couple of things, I think, especially when you can see it so clearly as we see it in Trumpism because one of the things that Trump does is he he removes the plausible deniability.

Oh, they're just building a museum. No, he just says, "No, no, no. We're just going to take all of the the bad people and the women down. We're just going to take all of that away." Uh, because I don't like it. America's always been good. Get over it. Right? And because this is what winners do, right? He's so um overt about it that now we don't have plausible deniability.

But there's always been a battle for whose stories will be remembered, whose will be enshrined in institutions, in the formal history of this country. Um and here's the thing. If you want to exist in the future, you have to defend people's right to remember in the present. If not, you're going to get to a future where somebody has also decided to erase you. I promise you, your fates are linked.

Yeah. To other people's. This is why when people thought, you know, when you remove black people and indigenous people from the walls, the women were always going to come next

and then it was always going to be queer people and then it's going to be poor people and then it's going to just be our enemies.

Just just writ large, our enemies. Anybody that we don't like. Um, if you then want to exist, if you want to project yourself into the future, you have to defend today every group's right to remember, right? The beauty of living in a complicated world with a document that I really do think gives us the possibility for to live in a complicated reality. I think there's more room in our sort of constitutional structure than there is in some other existing uh forms of governance is that you have we it is not about making everybody seen and comfortable. It is about everybody being a little uncomfortable.

It's about sharing the discomfort. Right? Everybody should be doing a little selfcensorship at a dinner party. Everybody should be doing a little bit of checking their language in the public in a public square. Everybody should be a little uncomfortable. That means the parts of my story that make me feel good about myself need to peacefully coexist with the parts of your story that says we weren't always good and great and moral. I got to make room for both stories. If I don't, someone is going to come along. some fascist regime, some horrible human impulse is going to come along and decide to erase both of our stories.

Yep. And that is what we're doing. And I think Trump in particular, however, is a particular type of authoritarian and that he is doing it mostly out of self-interest. He wants to control which stories are remembered because he intends to write his story as the American story. He is about trying to protect the Trump legacy.

Oh yeah. in the near future. He wants to enshrine it in these cultural institutions before he is, you know, run out, arrested, or whatever ends up happening to him. Uh, and he's just trying to get out ahead of that because he understands and appreciates probably culture and education and memory more than a lot of people who enjoy those institutions and think of themselves as progressive and open-minded. He knows how powerful they are. He's willing to make enemies to protect them and to own them. And we aren't. M

nobody thinks a library is more powerful than the person who wants to ban the books in them.

They think those books are so powerful that they can change the world. So where are we the people who love reading and love books? We should be just as protective and vigilant and vicious about defending them as the people who would uh destroy them. But yeah, he believes in he actually believes in culture frankly I think far more than a lot of us who like to think that he is um you know unsophisticated and uncultured.

Yeah, that's so such a good point. If he didn't care about if he didn't know the power, he wouldn't be working so hard to erase all of it.

He wants to get up there in the Smithsonian's board. He wants to be in church because he knows something like, you know, uh, or the Kennedy Center, I should say, the Kennedy Honors is a way that the country still, you know, cuz they show them on on broadcast television. It is a way that the country still convenes about, oh, these are the people who matter.

This is the art that mattered. These are the artists that mattered, right? These are the cultural workers who matter. He thinks that is so powerful that he wants to co-opt it.

Yeah. Fascists are always doing that because it's like art is the same as sex in like there are certain realms

that power can't really directly get to and that drives them insane. It does like they want to be in bed with us. They're like that

the sexuality, the desire in their bodies is something we can't scare them out of. So, we have to try

because inner power like the that desire and joy and love of community are so effing powerful.

Those are the things that actually could take them down. And of course, that's what you're seeing try to be scared out of us.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I and I really like putting together I do think the creative energies I mean arguably both sex and art are the same spectrum you know on the same spectrum of that there is something that I have found that people you know and it not just people who like inclined towards authoritarianism but even people who are just self-interested or deeply unafraid or uncurious and therefore make what I think are some horrific individual choices. Something that is common among all of them is how much they resent artists and how much they resent people that make them feel desire.

They resent it. Uh and I think there's something to wanting to put forward a, you know, this administration and this cultural regime wanting to put forward a future for us where we won't have any real human interactions. They'll all be with an automated AI. um uh version of uh intimacy while they starve us of the means of having actual intimacy with each other. I think they are so afraid of it and so resentful of it because they can't own it, can't completely capture it, can't control it. Uh desire and creativity really resists power.

It's very resistant to power. It's not impervious, totally impervious, but it is resistant. And I think they just find that really threatening.

Yeah. that if at the end of the day if what it essentially means to be a human and to have a life and to and what you would do to defend that if you really got to the bones of it, your own desire, your own passion, your own connection, your like that's stuff people die for. That's stuff people live for. And so if you were to put that against any kind of hierarchy of power, any kind of threat or fear,

you know, your basis of humanity is going to win every time. And they know that. So they have to kill the hunger for that because if you kill your hunger to remain a human, you'll fall for anything.

That's right. That's right. You will replace everything that makes you feel alive with things that are just tracking you, surveilling you, and selling you things if they can. Yes. get rid of what really are our basic human desires. We you know we only have a handful and it is uh you know to be intimate with each other physically and intellectually. It is to tell stories seems to be a basic one to tell stories and to imagine the future.

Yeah, we just got those basic desires and if you can't you know beat that out of people u make people too afraid to experience them they are much easier to control. Uh, and yeah, that's a reason why art and desire and intimacy are always considered an enemy of the people who want to use the state to control us, which is what we're living with now.

Yeah. I find they're like they really hate books. Yeah. They hate books, you know, and I find that so fascinating

almost. I mean, not just like I don't read, but it's like a disdain for the idea of writing a book or painting a picture. how like they just so I've been in rooms with like these really sometimes powerful people but they have that same sort of like you know Silicon Valley libertarian ideology and they hate it. They hate art. They hate literature so much.

It's too human. I mean doesn't Theel actually use the term posthuman? He just he uses that term to describe what he believes in his vision.

Posthuman. Mhm. Tracy, is there anything else that you want to leave us with? You are I'm just so grateful for you.

Oh, well, thank you very much for that. Uh, you know, I have been taken to task on occasion by readers who say, well, you know, you did a good job diagnosing the problem, but you know, now I just feel hopeless on top of everything, you know, overwhelmed on top of everything else. And you know that is usually followed by you know a plaintiff you know a plea to please tell them what to do

and the the thing is it isn't that I there isn't a you know an agenda for what to do that there isn't a blueprint is that there are so many

right there's so many and increasingly what I'm telling people is actually it's very simple that doesn't mean it's easy but it is very simple Every day you get up, try to do something, try to do something with other people, and then the next day do it again.

Do something, do something with other people, and do it again. I think that can be everything from whatever your issue is going to be. Truly, you've got a pick. You've got you've got your choice, a range of 50, any of which could topple an authoritarian government at any time or moment. One of the things that people who study like social movements uh uh believe is that you can have all of the elements for revolutionary change and yet it won't happen. It won't coalesce into a moment. You know, it won't coalesce into like a Vietnam war protest or uh you know the civil rights movement or march march on Washington or Tianaan Square like and they're like what is it about those moments that make it spark?

This is the thing. You can't predict them. Mh. What happened in those moments is people had been showing up at that square at that bridge.

That's right. For like 30 years. You just may not have known it, but people had just And then one day, one day something will just, you know, lightning strikes. Our work is to be there when the lightning strikes. It may end up being that it was the community who hit on some solution for garbage uh dispos. It may be it may end up coming out of a food justice movement. It may be urban farmers markets, honey. It may be reproductive justice. It may all of those things matter. They all have your values, but we don't know. But the people who show up to keep it alive until lightning strikes, those are the people doing uh the work that matters. And you just got to trust that the lightning does eventually strike. And it really does.

Yeah. The question is, am I am I creating the right environment for it? So, just get up, do something, do something with other people. We are only human when we are human together. And if it threatens people and power this much, that means you need to do more of it.

Yeah. So, just keep doing it. And then you just you got to keep doing it. You just got to keep doing it.

Thank you, Trusty. All right. Go. Thank you. It was a real pleasure to be here with y'all. And I'm I mean this you ever in Chapel Hill again, you let me know you're here. I'd love to see you.

I will do that. Yeah. All right. All right. She will. Thank you so much for everything you do for the world.

Grateful. All right. Go out. Keep working. So when the lightning strikes, you get to be one of the ones who celebrate. And if you don't, you don't get to be.

That's right. You don't you don't the lightning will strike you. There you go. You don't get to then later say, "We were the witches who survived." If you didn't burn it down,

you don't get to do that, people. Plus, it would be so much more fun. Exactly. That's the thing. If you get into it with other people, this is not this is either a damn it, we have to or it's a we get to. We get to be the ones who defended this place from this tyranny. That's what we get to do, right?

And we get to do it together. That's it. It's our turn. That's all this is. It's history doing what history does. It's just our turn. That's right. Let's go. We get to do it. It's our turn.

All right. Let's go. Yep. You heard it here, Pod Squad. After a nap. I'm definitely in it. I am definitely in it, though.

Maybe a little brunch and some hormones. And definitely get your patches on, We're going

patches. Patches. Magnesium. Hand me a magnesium and whatever else they're selling right now. And then I'm totally in. I'm ready to go. We will burn it down.

I'm ready. God bless you and keep you, Trusty. girls. See you next time. We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at we can do hard things on Instagram and we can do hard things show on Tik Tok.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Finally Some Wisdom to Move Forward! Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom"?

Glennon Doyle (Host), Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom (Guest).

What is "Finally Some Wisdom to Move Forward! Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom" about?

Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, a distinguished professor and acclaimed author, provides insightful analysis on the societal challenges we face and offers pathways for action and hope. Through her storytelling and critical perspective, she explores the narratives that have shaped our current situation and highlights what we can do to move forward collaboratively.

What is mentioned in this We Can Do Hard Things episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Trese McMillan Cotton, MAGA, Black Panther Party, Peter Thiel, Smithsonian, Power to the People. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Finally Some Wisdom to Move Forward! Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom"?

The episode runs 1 h 31 min; the transcript is about 16,039 words in 277 timestamped sections.

More from We Can Do Hard Things

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 15, 2026.