Speaker 1: Today, we're going to be speaking with Joe Berkowitz, a writer whose work has
been featured in Vulture, The New Yorker Fast Company.
He's author of the books American Cheese and a Way with Words, and also of the recent article.
When did the Fear Feelings crowd get so triggered?
Joe, really great having you on.
I appreciate your time.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, maybe to start, you know, it's it's increasingly as the American
right wing and Republican Party has gotten away from serious policy discussions, there
has been more and more of a focus on this idea of owning the libs, triggering the snowflakes,
etc., almost as a stand in for policy where they they almost seem to see it as virtuous
for its own sake.
If if liberals are angry, then we must be doing something right.
At the same time they have this phrase Facts don't care about your feelings, which often
comes up in in right wing media, etc..
Did this all start because they started losing American public opinion on policy?
Or what are the origins of this shift that we've seen?
Speaker 4: I think there is a resentment about not having more standing in culture.
I think just seeing how kind of the liberal bias of entertainment, I think it's calmed
down a little bit at least.
But looking back at 2016, it was pretty rampant.
If you look at the the the Clinton campaign, you know, leaning on people like like Lena
Dunham and things like that, It was just I look back now and I can sort of see where
some of the resentment may have come from.
But I do feel there is resentment of from conservatives about feeling like they didn't
have a place in culture and.
That kind of led, in my opinion, to the trolling as politics and which, you know, saw its apotheosis
in and the ascent of Donald Trump in 2016.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting hypocrisies is that while on the one hand there is this
f your feelings sort of idea from the right, it's that they also engage in much of that
same well this just feels wrong sort of argumentation.
Just to pick one example and there's so many right the entire drag show stuff where children
are being recruited and forced in ba ba ba ba ba and groomed.
And it's, you know, for the most part, kids are showing up at any kind of drag event If
their parents have made the choice to bring them there.
Nobody's being recruited.
Nobody's being forced.
But they just feel as though it's very much wrong.
And we could talk about a lot of these different arguments.
Talk a little bit about that and the idea that it is also an instance, sort of of a
projection that they say, we don't care about your feelings, we care about facts.
And yet so many of the arguments they do make are based simply on their feelings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of what we're seeing now is all feelings based backlash.
And I think it's it's probably.
Best exemplified by the the backlash to the Bud Light campaign and the and Target and
things like that.
I saw a tweet after my article came out and it was Charlie Kirk from a Turning Point USA.
Yeah.
Surprisingly a lot of clout, I guess.
Yeah.
Shocking people, even though it's sort of youth centered, but it seems like only old
people seem to listen to it.
But anyway, Charlie Kirk tweeted that I opened my fridge the other day and I didn't know
whether my ketchup was woke or my mustard was.
Well, and it sounds like a parody.
Yeah, but he was being 100% serious.
And I think I'm not sure if I put this in the article or not, but like somebody was
saying, I heard that Chick-Fil-A got a D-I vice president or just a high up person, just
just strictly for DIY.
He's like, Does that mean I have to boycott Chick fil A?
I like Chick-Fil-A. And so it's this feeling like we have to push back against these things,
even though they're not.
I mean, there's no effect on your life.
If Bud Light sends a beer to a trans influencer, I, I really, I wracked my brain and I can't
see how that affects anyone in any ways.
But there is livid outrage.
There is Kid Rock taking an automatic weapon and shooting a bunch of Bud Light, which I
suppose is supposed to exemplify.
It's supposed to show strength.
I don't know how that shows strength, but anyway.
And yeah, so these are all feelings.
This isn't a policy that they have a logical rebuttal to.
This is just I know that in my heart that it is bad for LGBTQ representation to be to
appear in the corporate world doesn't need to have a corporate sanction that is against
what I stand for, and I am furious about it in my heart.
Speaker 1: One of the themes with a lot of these culture issues is using kids as a sort
of shield in a way, or not even a shield.
It's not a scapegoat.
It's sort of like saying the kids are the victims.
And if you go back ten years when I was covering the fight for for marriage equality, you would
hear about no gay gay men are grooming kids and they are pedophiles and so on and so forth.
Now you're seeing it with trans people.
Now you're seeing it with the drag shows.
When it came to masks and vaccines, it was the kids.
The kids can't breathe and the vaccines aren't safe for the kids and the kids aren't getting
a say.
And then it's well, for when it comes to don't say gay and the AP history class in Florida,
it's kids are being taught to hate America or whatever the case may be.
This is this is a theme, right?
I mean, at this point, the use of kids is the victims who we have to protect.
Seems like a clear cut strategy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
You know, with the don't say gay initiative, they promised it was just to protect children.
And then, of course, they did start doing it for middle school and I believe high school
students.
But they did start raising the age.
Yeah.
And it was pretty clear they just wanted to get it out of school.
And I do believe they want to protect children, but I think they're lying about who they want
to protect them from.
They say they want to protect them from predators, but what I think they want to protect them
from is the possibility that they think it's okay to be gay, that they that they will learn
that if they feel as though they were born in the wrong body, that there are possibilities
to explore that they don't they want to protect them from even a chance of that.
They would rather have them, you know, be suppressed, suppressed and go back to before
that was sanctioned culturally at all.
So they want to protect them from reality.
And then it's even more egregious with the black history stuff I used as an example in
the piece, the idea of protecting children from learning how Jackie Robinson was treated
when he what became the first black major baseball player.
Yeah, but that may be a slightly exaggerated example.
I don't even think so.
I mean, just the kinds of things that they want to protect protect children from feeling
weird or guilty about.
It's a it's ludicrous, especially after all the talk about six years ago when Trump was
first, you know, becoming president about safe spaces.
Yeah, you they're just ill preparing children from finding out hard truths later on if they
just want to paint a whitewashed portrait of history for them.
Now.
Speaker 1: What made you think or do you have an opinion when it comes to the strategy that
the left should adopt?
Because when it comes to a lot of these cultural issues, you can find arguments all over the
map.
You can find arguments that say the left should completely ignore every single one of these
issues.
You know, androgynous Eminem's that Tucker Carlson is no longer attracted to.
It's like just don't there's just don't even weigh and don't even acknowledge that they
are doing these things.
Another view is fight them on each of the issues on the merits.
Make the case about the Eminem's, make the case about AP history, like fight it on the
merits for each one third option.
Expose the hypocrisy as you were talking about.
They claim to be against safe spaces, but they're essentially creating them through
some of these policies.
They claim to be against feelings based policy proposals, but it's exactly what they're doing,
right?
So that would be like a third option.
Focus on the hypocrisy.
Do you have an opinion as to what the best approach would be for the left on this?
Speaker 4: I remember right when Biden right after the inauguration, he was just or at
least his administration anyway, was coming out with fulfilling campaign promises left
and right.
They were just kind of heads down, getting the work done.
And if you look back at the articles about time, that was when Eminem's are woke.
And what was it?
Oh, yeah, the Dr. Seuss books.
That was just those were the major issues.
And they were ignored in favor of passing legislation.
There was just no messaging on the left really about it, and that seemed to work.
But that's not an election.
That's just getting stuff done.
I think last year, the midterms, they were set up to be a referendum on a lot of these
culture war type issues.
True.
And I think in addition to having weak candidates, I think what we learned is that a lot of people
who aren't on Twitter for the entirety of the day are listening to whatever is to the
right of Fox News, Oann or Newsmax or whatever.
Those people don't care about that stuff.
And I think or at least a majority seem to have bigger concerns.
You know, like.
Inflation seem to be in abandoned for trans athletes in a lot of these campaigns.
So I do think that a good strategy.
I've seen a couple politicians do this is just kind of.
Point out how weird this stuff is.
Like I forget which state I should have prepared a little bit, but either Tennessee or just
some one state wanted to have genital inspections by our student athletes to make sure that
their their the gender they were assigned at birth.
And that's that's pretty creepy, especially when people are constantly pointing out like,
beware of creepy people.
So, yeah, I think trying to debate that might be a losing issue because you're not going
to dissuade someone from from their claims that that trans people shouldn't have rights
or black history shouldn't be taught in schools.
You can't dissuade someone about that.
You can't defeat them.
Doesn't matter if you have the facts people, you're not going to convince someone whose
livelihood depends on on being confidently wrong.
So just point out how weird it is and move on.
It seems to be a winning strategy for some politicians I've seen.
Speaker 1: I certainly agree with that, at least from what I've seen so far.
We've been speaking with Joe Berkowitz about his article.
When did the fear feelings crowd get so triggered?
We're going to be linking to the article.
Joe, I really appreciate your time and insights today.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks for having me on, David.
It was a pleasure