THE NORTHERN PODCAST (NAS STUDIO)

We Read Josh Hawley's Book So You Don't Have To

Josh Hawley's book/polemic on the trials and tribulations of American men also gives us a window into the dark worldview that informs his politics-- so unfortunately, we needed to see what all he's saying. We decided to do an informal book club to discuss the horrors within, and we invited the only person whose opining on masculinity we actually want: Jonathan Van Ness.

Duration:: 1h 10m
Broadcast on:: 15 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Have you met all modern? All modern brings you the best of modern furniture, and they deliver it for free in days. You heard that right, days. That way, you get your sofa ASAP, and can sit comfortably while figuring out your other modern must-haves. At All Modern, you'll find only the best of modern, from Scandi to mid-century, minimalist to maximalist. Every piece is hand-vetted for quality by our team of experts, and designed for real life. That's Modern Made Simple, shop now at AllModern.com. Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast Wise is happening a crossover with the Strix scrutiny podcast. My wife, Kate Shaw, her co-host Melissa Murray and Leah Littman, joined to discuss the Supreme Court's big decisions this term. The point of the Constitution and the separation of powers is that you don't want any one of these branches to consolidate power in a way that allows them to dwarf any of the others. You have to look at how different this court has been since it became a six to three conservative superindorities. The court has just, it seems to me, given a permission structure for Trump to do everything in his wildest imagination he might want to do, but might have been somewhat constrained by the prospect of legal accountability from doing. All of that is now gone. That's this week on Wise is Happening. Search for Wise is Happening. We're ever listening right now, and follow. Mr. Chief Justice, let's please afford it's an old joke, but when I argue, men argue against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word. She spoke not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, "I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks." [MUSIC] Hello, and welcome back to Strix Grutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We are your hosts. I'm Kate Shaw. I'm Leah Litman. And I'm Melissa Murray, and listeners, prepare yourselves, because this is a very, very special episode. We have such a treat in store for you. I almost cannot contain myself. I have no words. So Leah, go tell them what the treat is. So we had such a wonderful time with Amicus of the Pod, Jonathan Van Ness. We knew we needed to have them back on. And we think we found the perfect occasion to do so. A plus occasion, A plus, A plus. Well, if we're greeting the occasion, I might give it an F, but I'm hoping it will generate an A plus experience for our listeners. So regular listeners of the show know that we stay up on the goings-on of the sprinter who moonlights as a Senator, Josh Hawley, who in between some long runs and light jogs, manages to find time to conduct rather unhinged questioning of various judicial nominees on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and some light insurrection encouragement to boot. So listeners, if you are not familiar with Josh Hawley, we might run a few clips. So you get an idea of who this person is. So here's a clip of Josh Hawley at the Katanji Brown Jackson confirmation. You had an 18-year-old who possessed and distributed hundreds of images of 8-year-olds and 9-year-olds and 10-year-olds, and you gave him, frankly, a slap on the reasons of three months. Senator, I don't remember whether it was distribution or possession in the law. It was both. Do you regret it? In the law, there are different crimes that people committed in this area. You gave him three months. My question is, do you regret it or not? Senator, what I regret is that in a hearing about my qualifications to be a Justice on the Supreme Court, we've spent a lot of time focusing on this small subset of my sentences, and I've tried to explain. You regret that we're focusing on your cases? I don't understand it. No, no, no. I'm talking about the fact that you're talking about seven very serious cases. I'm glad we agree on that, don't you? Some of which involve conduct that I sentenced people to 25, 30 years before-- Three months in this case, Judge. Do you regret it? You haven't answered my question yet. Do you regret the sentence? Senator, I would have to look at the circumstances. Senator, I've answered this question many times from many senators who've asked me, so I'll stand on what I've already said. So you have nothing to add about why these crimes, why these images, in your view, do not signal an especially heinous or egregious child pornography offense. That's Hawkins. You say in Cooper, I understand the government's argument, but I don't find them persuasive the fact that there were pre-probescent children from the standpoint of characterizing this as an especially egregious child pornography offense. That's page 58. Senator, I've answered this question. I've explained how the guidelines work, and I'll stand on my answer. But the guidelines are not mandatory. I wish they were, but they're not. The Supreme Court made that determination. I'm trying to understand why you think it's rational not to sentence criminals based on the number of images they have. You say that this is a policy disagreement that you have with the guidelines. This gets to the core of your judicial philosophy. Yes, that's Josh Hawley introducing pornography into a Senate confirmation, all very, very normal. Equally normal has been Josh Hawley's Islamophobic-esque line of questioning at the hearing for Third Circuit nominee, Adil Manji. Adil Manji has still not been confirmed by the Senate and has actually lost the support of Democratic senators because of this line of questioning that has tried to link Adil Manji to terrorism. That's not the greatest hit, though, on the Josh Hawley parade of horribles. At number one with a bullet is Josh Hawley, who has maintained that Naomi Rao of the DC Circuit is simply not socially conservative enough to be on Trump's SCOTUS short list. Query, who would fit the bill for one Josh Hawley, if not Naomi Rao? It truly boggles the mind. So, all to say, we occasionally, habitually, mock Josh Hawley and call out his actually disgustingly gross behavior, and we don't do this because it sparks joy for us. We do it because Josh Hawley is actually among the authoritarianism forward, gilead, curious entrepreneurs in the federal government. So, knowing what he is up to and what he is working toward is vitally important. And because it is so important, we, the three of us, as an act of service and of love for our listeners, not for Josh Hawley, held our collective noses and read his book, Slash Polymic, which is titled, I'm going to try to say it with a straight face, manhood, colon, the masculine virtues America needs. So, we read the book and we reviewed it for the Michigan Law Review's upcoming book review issue, so it'll be available for your reading or hate reading pleasure shortly. And more broadly, we've talked on the show about how various political officials with the cooperation of the courts are engaged in an effort to restore traditional sex roles and clawback advances that women and LGBTQ people have made. And this book really lays all of that, the entire agenda out, right? It says the quiet part out loud. And so, we thought it was important to give both readers and listeners a glimpse of the worldview that animates Hawley's book that he is openly trumpeting because he thinks it is a path to political power. And we wanted to suggest that this worldview is very similar to the worldview driving the conservative majority on SCOTUS. Or we should say Brodus, or SCOTUS, as the case may be. And as we noted at the top, we are joined by Jonathan Van Ness, JVN, who will help break down Josh Hawley's conceptions of manhood and masculinity, read them for filth, and as importantly, help us have a good time doing so. So welcome to the show, Jonathan. You guys, I'm so happy to be back. I miss you all the time. You are my Roman Empire podcast, except for I listen to you and think of you all the time. I think you're doing such important work. And wow, that book is, I mean, I just started twitching involuntarily. Interestingly, on my right side, which according to Eastern medicine is my Sun side, which is your masculine side. So my right side, my Sun side, is literally rebelling at this very thought of this book. But I'm really proud of you guys for reading it. And let's get into the horrors. And also, Melissa, your ability to assign pop culture references to such dark, conservative activism is equally as amazing and like inspiring as it also is scary, because it almost makes it sound like I'm like, I'm curious, y'all, but then I'm like, wait, no, focus, this is serious. No, you don't want to be gilly curious. You don't want to be gilly. No, no, no. But again, the gist of the book is a little gilly curious. So I'll just give you a brief description listeners, because we read this. So you don't have to. Basically, the gist of the book is that American men are really taking it on the chin, which is to say that men are the victims of a society with its woke laws and policies that are trying to rectify the historic discrimination that women and girls have suffered in this society. And to be very clear, Josh Hawley isn't wrong about some of this. There's considerable social science and empirical evidence that backs up his claim, at least when we're talking about boys and men who are not in the highest income brackets and socioeconomic status. So there is just a lot of research about men falling behind in terms of higher education, especially among the middle and working class, not so much among the upper classes who tend to be the leaders of society. But in any event, scholars and policymakers have all talked about the range of factors that contribute to the gender gap in higher education, the gender gap in employment. Then they have real actual factual empirical support for what is driving this. Josh Hawley wants to talk about this, but again, he doesn't really want to talk about it with any rigor. So by contrast, Josh Hawley's description of this problem is that it is animated almost entirely by what Hawley calls Epicureanism, which is a code word for liberalism or progressivism. And he says, quote, men have been told this nonsense for decades now by the press and the politicians. The nonsense is apparently equality and equal rights for women. In these circumstances, under the influence of this creed, the creed is the equal protection clause. Is it any wonder that so many men now feel adrift, bereft, and yes, ashamed to be men? Question mark. That's on page nine. And under that label of Epicureanism or liberalism, Josh Hawley lumps a lot of different things. So there is the left's denigration of men, the left's insistence on self care, also screen time, including video games, porn consumption, which, as I said earlier, Josh Hawley is very preoccupied with declining marriage rates are another symptom of Epicureanism, delaying or abstaining from parenthood, ladies, another sign of Epicureanism. And of course, the zero tolerance policy found in many schools alongside the childhood diagnoses of ADD and ADHD. All of this is the work of the liberal left, and all of it is a concerted campaign to stick it to men. And as Melissa was just alluding to, there are scholars and policymakers who have basically said there is a kernel of truth to what Hawley is saying, which is that American men are falling behind in all kinds of ways. But Hawley, of course, wants to lay the blame at the feet of women and progressives. And what folks who've actually studied this phenomenon have come up with this, you know, there are lots of different potential causes and interventions that might be appropriate to actually address the plight of American boys and men. But what Hawley thinks is that what we need to do is read the Bible and read it in a highly selective way, which I suppose is not surprising given the proclivities of the current conservative Supreme Court justices for highly selective reading of all kinds of texts. Here, let me just read a couple of quotes from Hawley's invocation of the Bible. So Abraham was tempted to abandon the promise of his marriage and seek for solace elsewhere. He gave in for a time to his doubt and despair, and yet Abraham did not give up. Not ultimately. He found his nerve. He pressed on. He honored Sarah, returned to his covenant. He waited for her child as his heir, and in time, God rewarded him and Sarah with a son. Narrator voice. Melissa, what's omitted from that version of the narrative that Hawley offers? Before Abraham begat a post-menopausal baby on Sarah, he first had a whole ass kid with a servant girl named Hagar. And we might question Hagar's ability as a said servant girl to consent. But again, totally selective, the Clarence Thomas School of Bible reading. Well, that passage has been read out of the Bible, much like they have read out the establishment clause from the Constitution and other provisions as well. What's the one thing most history books all over the world have in common? That they're seriously lacking in the melanin department. Wondery's podcast, Black History for Real, introduces you to the most overlooked Black History makers you should already know about. In recent episodes, they've told the story of the women of the Black Panther Party, like Asada Shakur, who's still a fugitive in exile, and Elaine Brown, the first female chairperson of the party. And there's so much more, like why a young Samuel L. Jackson got expelled from Morehouse College, and why country keeps trying to keep Beyonce out. Follow Black History for Real, wherever you get your podcasts. Discover more to the story with Wondery's other top history podcasts, including American history, tellers, legacy, and even the royals. Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Skims. Okay, so not to be a broken record, but I broke my elbow. And it stinks, one of the things I really needed are comfortable clothes that I can also get myself into. And for that, I've been loving the Skims soft lounge line. Sleeping in an elbow brace is not fun, but I at least have my super comfortable and breathable Skims soft lounge jammies to help make me comfortable, including after a grueling session of PT. One of the biggest reasons to love Skims is because of how comfortable their fabrics are, and the soft lounge collection really takes comfort to that next level. 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My favorite soft lounge pieces so far are the soft lounge sleep set. The fabric is amazing, it's dense and therefore feels luxurious, but it's also super soft and isn't too heavy. It's both cozy and cool. And that's what stuck out to me first. And I've liked it so much. These have become night to day PJs for me. I kind of never get out of them. Shop the Skims soft lounge collection at skims.com. Now available in sizes extra extra small to 4x. If you haven't yet, be sure to let them know we sent you. After you place your order, select podcast in the survey and select strict scrutiny in the drop down menu that follows. Holly invokes the Bible in part because he thinks that the solution to all of our problems is that American men need to live their lives according to five biblical archetypes, which we're going to talk about now. So I'm actually going to lump two of the archetypes together because Holly kind of does so as well. And that is the archetype of the father and the archetype of the husband. Well first, can we ask JVN, what do you think about this? Like all the things that are befalling American society and American men. Is it because of self-care? Is it because of self-care? It's because someone put a mask on and like took care of themselves, took a nap. I thought what was so interesting when I was reading all of my like highlighted portions from the book is how so many conservative policies are at the heart of what he thinks the problems are like the crisis of fatherlessness. Like if you look at family separation, which is like really mass incarceration and the way that we have like, when you think about mass incarceration, it does affect people who have less income, majority BIPOC people. I mean, but there's just a lot of overlap that he refuses to see the nuance on. And I just keep thinking like the real enemy of conservatism is nuance. Like even when he's talking about like, you know, they can't even say what a woman is or they can't even say what a man is, which are so much transphobia, like all throughout this, like the refusal to see the difference between like biology and then like the expression of gender, like biological sex and gender. There's a refusal to see that or refusal to understand that. And just like this, when you look at what he's talking about and where it comes, do you guys know about Sabrina Strings? Dr. Sabrina Strings, she's major. She's like one of my faves. No, and lightness. She just wrote this book on like the death of romance. I had her on getting curious and it kind of is talking about this from like the females POV, but on romance, but because anything is everything, so much of what, you know, women are dealing with is all of the stuff that Josh Hawley, these policies are making things so much harder for women. And it's making a harder for romance and connection and families of any type. But it's just so interesting the ways that everyone are going about trying to approach us in such different ways and such scary ways. Yeah. We're also scared of each other, but we should be scared of him because Jesus. We should be scared of him, but it's such a great point that many of the contributing factors that he identifies for the decline of men are in fact attributable to conservative Republican supported policies. So he noted delaying or abstaining from parenthood. Well, who the fuck opposes parental leave and family leave, news flash, right? It's not the Democrats or the zero tolerance policies found in many schools. Who is all about right, like calling the police and having these, you know, disciplinary policies that are overwhelmingly affecting children of color. Again, like, it's not primarily Democrats and progressives. And not just leave, right? But funding for, you know, postpartum care and, you know, special Medicaid expansion and other state programs that provide people who have just given birth and babies and kids access to basic fucking subsistence, like all of the most conservative states in terms of their governance are the worst in terms of those policies. Like people plan their families and abstain or defer parenthood so they can afford it. Yeah. And also like thinking about Sonya Passi, who's like the founder of Free From, which is this organization that is like experts on intimate partner violence, because so much of this really goes to intimate partner violence, and we don't even call it intimate partner violence, but the policies that Republicans refuse to like enforce when it comes to like the ability to prosecute intimate partner violence, like protect people who are in abusive relationships. And then the way that like pregnancy can play into that, it's so messed up. And then we're like scapegoating trans people and all of these other people when really these policies are making it so much more dangerous for women, genderqueer people, anyone who doesn't make a lot of money, it's just making it worse for everyone. We loathe. So to this kind of vision for America that Holly entreats men to follow is to live according to these biblical archetypes. As I was noting, one is the father and one is the husband. And Holly just proclaims, and this is a quote, the mission of manhood is bound up with fathering. And at the same time, right, he says, you know, marriage is where quote a man learns to open his life to another and bind his fate to hers, right, end quote. So defining marriage as between a man and a woman. And the idea, again, that all of these problems would be fixed if men just have children is wild, because it seems to depict and just expect that women are going to be these vessels for men's redemption, like they just need to bear children. So men can be good. It's almost like women should not wear sexy clothing. So men won't rape them or sexually assault them. Same, same energy. Yeah. Very similar. You guys, it's so hard. Like when I read the quotes, like my, I noticed my like toes curling and my like fingers curling, and it's like, oh, you're, I'm like, ah, it's like, it's almost like, like, so hard like to read this book, because I read this book and I was just like, Jesus, I mean, just like, like the selective reading of the Bible, the fact of these archetypes, the, I mean, this is a man with a family. And we hear very little about his wife, who is a Supreme Court advocate trying to keep medication abortion access off the table for people around the country. And he has a daughter. We never even hear about the daughter. Like women are completely erased from this book. I mean, it is about manhood. I guess that's part for the course. Well, like I noticed in some of my advocacy work in Texas that like a lot of people who worked in like in the Democratic Party would like observe from their colleagues on the right that like they would say off the record that they didn't even believe any of this, but they knew that if they could like speak about like link, like their religious, like religiousness to policy as much as possible that that would help them. But behind closed doors, like they don't believe any of this. But his book is so convincing that he drinks the Kool-Aid that I'm like, maybe he really does actually believe. I can't tell with him because he's really committed to the and he's not really curious. He's like full hardcore that he puts the G in Gilead or whatever. It's hard to tell whether this is complete opportunism. Like he's doing this instrumentally because he thinks it'll be politically palatable to a certain group of people that he imagines will continue bolstering him and pushing him forward and advancing him in the political spectrum. But I will say to the extent he is drinking the Kool-Aid, other people are drinking the Kool-Aid too because as Leah suggests, there is a lot of this sort of archetype, lace logic and language in many of the cases the Supreme Court is spitting out under this new conservative 6 to 3 super majorities. So the emphasis on husbands and fathers and a man's mission to be a father works right in line with dogs and women must be mothers and 303 creative. The case that basically said that gay civil rights have to yield to free speech, masterpiece cake shop, Fulton versus City of Philadelphia, all of these cases where we're sort of talking about heterosexual marriage and the opportunity for those who are religious believers to abstain from a vision of marriage that might be more expansive than heterosexual marriage. So I mean, all of that is very much in keeping with the court's jurisprudence. And I wanted to call attention to two other archetypes that Holly spends a lot of time on. One of them is the archetype of the quote unquote priest and Holly is very clearly nodding to evangelical Christianity. He's explaining in the book that men are not quote simply charged with building the world into a temple. They must also serve as priests quote bringing God to the world end quote. And it's a lot easier I think to be a priest bringing God to the world if you get a government subsidy to do that. And perhaps that helps explain the court's jurisprudence in cases like Kennedy versus Premerton school district where the court authorizes the praying coach, coach Kennedy, to conduct his prayers in front of enormous audience on a publicly owned high school football field, or maybe it's more in keeping with Carson versus Macon, where the court allows a no aid policy to be invalidated so that religious schools can get public funding. And I mean, to Jayvian's point about has he really sort of like bought this all? Has he drank the Kool-Aid or sort of what exactly is motivating him here? It is, I think that, you know, however terrible it is, and it's truly a atrocious book, I do think in some weird way, it does, it is an authentic expression of his real convictions and not pure political posturing. And I say this, that could be wrong. Maybe it's both. But if you wanted to suggest that, you know, kind of liberals, feminists, LGBTQ people, secularists, like these are the villains, and actually return to kind of traditional sexual mores and religiosity is the prescription. He could have cast religiosity and sort of like faithfulness in kind of broader, more ecumenical terms. It's so narrowly focused on a single Christian and evangelical Christian vision of what it means to be godly and to live in a family and a marriage. And it doesn't even pretend to be any more expansive and sort of who it is interested in reaching than that. And I think that maybe that is just the only valid recognizable model of American patriotic manhood that Holly is willing to concede. And even I think for a lot of conservatives, that is an unbelievably narrow conception of sort of like what it means to be a person, American and a man. But that's what what Holly thinks is valid and legitimate. He also seems to think that like, Hollywood and just like the entertainment industry is like so much further left than it really is. I mean, I do think that obviously things like do lean a little left, but like the amount of like misogyny transphobia and just like kind of pro man POV bias that is in Hollywood that people have to swim against every day. It's not like a little it's huge. And you are very rewarded for I mean, Joe Rogan has one of the most highly visible and profitable podcasts around. Chappelle is one of the most highly paid comedians on Netflix. People who have conservative values and who are, you know, say things that are widely considered to be transphobic and who clearly make trans people's lives harder day in and day out are very financially rewarded. So this idea that like things are just so left in Hollywood is also just not at all true. Like there is actually a very, you know, wide range of political views in Hollywood. And so just, I think anytime people try to separate it so much into like us versus them, like in the way that he does it here, when you just lack critical thinking and nuance, like because porn's been around, that's is also what Sabrina, Dr. Sabrina Strings talks about in her book. But like, she really kind of lays it at the feet of like, you know, like at the start of it, it was like Playboy because like the idea of like romance, the way that he's talking about this is like that you're really supposed to have your partner's like best interests at heart and stuff and like not be a misogynist, like piece of shit. Where is like, and it's like, and that was the time when people were like, Oh, well, you only treat women like this is she's like, chased enough and like honorable enough. And if she shows too much of this or that, then like, she's not, she's not it and she's like kind of not worth it. But that didn't become like widely culturally acceptable until like after World War II was like in the 50s with like the rise of Playboy. And that's when she kind of thinks like culturally, there was this like bigger shift. But this didn't just now stop working, like, and there was this really funny thing I saw on, or someone sent to me like they had been a thing on X, it was a picture of um, what's that actor's name from sex in the city? He was like, Trey, you know, like, he had the erectile dysfunction. And yeah. Yes. And it was like, the death of woke is like men aren't men anymore. But then it was like this picture of him from like 1982 with his like shirt off with this like skimpy little like kind of like early 80s outfit when he was like playing something in like the early 80s, just to say that like men have been expressing like a lot of different like fashion and like ideas about breaking like gender norms that we would consider like conservatively like not the thing for a really long time. Like this didn't just start and like when Target started like having a pride section, you know. Yeah, I don't know exactly when Holly would say like we sort of took a long term probably when Barack Obama was elected if I had to sort of pinpoint a baby also when women gained the right to vote. So it could be a very like either 2008 or 1920 unclear. But there's you know a flattening and a simplification. I think part of the simplification too is that which men are really behind here. I mean like he's not down and out and beleaguered. The guys he's paddling around with aren't down and out and beleaguered. They wield enormous power. They've gone to college. I mean this is the guy who's like talking about the educational outcomes of men and he's got three degrees from three elite institutions. I mean it boggles the mind. I mean like you said JVN like the antithesis of what they're doing is nuance and and that's exactly right. This isn't nuance at all. Like part of what he's saying is true for a certain subset that he and his ilk will not minister to because they have such antipathy for redistribution whether it's economic or educational. So this book is not about the true down and out and beleaguered men who are falling behind. It's about him and his cronies and they're not falling behind. They're actually on top. That's what she said. Leah that's what Leah was saying. It's like the policies right? Because like like Republicans are the ones who have like shipped all the jobs like to like country like you know off of the you like they're the ones who have like like weakened like the middle class or at least like the way that I understand it. Like they don't pay people a living wage. They don't give family leave. They don't make it so that anyone can really achieve upward economic mobility easier. So like they're really they're policies and also like look at health care. Look at like gun control like people who are like working class and like don't have as much money. Like they're the ones who pay the price for these policies that Republicans keep enforcing that is just so true. So maybe to pivot back to the sort of structure of the book a little bit. So as we were talking about the book is divided into these kind of archetypes that Holly kind of explores. Leah already mentioned the father and the husband archetypes and Melissa was talking about the priest archetype. So then there are two more. One is the builder and one save the best for last is the king. So let's start with builder. You know he suggests that you know there's this affliction of dependence that he is part of his diagnosis of the problem with contemporary American manhood and he says the antidote to dependence is building. And just as we think there are important connections between some of the claims Holly is making about the husband and the father and the priest and Supreme Court cases. I think that's also true about the builder and Supreme Court cases. So you have the Supreme Court in recent cases really trying it seems to sort of value and valorize the kind of rugged individual who wants to build and make something as against this Leviathan of the federal government trying to take something from him because it's of course a him. So there's a case from two terms ago called sack it about an individual a couple that basically like wants to dump a lot of gravel on their land and it's going to pollute some wetlands. And you know what wetlands are important to keeping water clean for all of us and the Supreme Court basically says it's fine like we can't really it would be intolerable to prevent them from doing that. And actually a case just this term called devilier versus Texas which is you know just a case about whether a claim can proceed but is also about this sort of Texas rancher who's being disadvantaged by the state of Texas. And so it is just the court loves nothing more than kind of holding up this image of the rugged manly individual against the federal government and obviously siding with the you know manly individual. Okay but I think we should talk about king as well because the last section of the book is about exhorting men to lead. I mean he is saying this like with a straight face like he says quote it is good for a man to exercise authority good for him and good for those around him. So I don't know if like toes and fingers started curling but like that he is like patriarchy. That's so chilly. It's really it is it is a scary that is a scary line of many many scary lines in the scary book. And then but despite the importance of men leading the left today warned shrilly that male leadership can only ever amount to domination. That's like the whole like we're just saying like beating up your partners and like trying to force everyone to have the exact same religious ideals as you is not great. That's not saying that masculinity is bad and your inability to make a decision between those two things that scare me. Even though you have a big Adam's apple which is you know we like a big Adam's apple but we don't love you know anything else really about you. So yeah. Maybe it's like linking what you were saying about the king archetype to one of the earlier archetypes we were talking about which is father and husband. You know again the conceit of this book is that American men are downtrodden. But when you're thinking about say some of the courts recent cases like the emptala case which did effectively create one class of people who are required to lose bodily organs in service of Idaho's preferred vision about how society should be structured namely that women and pregnant people should be forced to bear children again even when they are at risk of serious health consequences and loss and that is going to be so because of the Republican justices on the Supreme Court because that is their vision for you know the country and how they think it should be ordered. And it is just really striking again you know we were previously talking about whether this is like an authentic vision of Holly or some posturing. But I don't think you know like the Republican justices on the court are posturing. I think this is an authentic vision for them about how society and laws should work that again like women and pregnant people can be pressed into service and made to do these things at immense personal familial sacrifice you know because that's just their worldview. I mean the next part when he says that um American men need to wake up because God made them kings not subjects like and you need to be a king of your domain the way that you're like fathers and grandfathers were what like mr howl um this is it's not great you guys. I think actually American people need to wake up because we are literally marching into it. Yeah that's one of the places where I think that kind of Holly's aspirations for this book I think are pretty clear which is that he wants to be the new and rotate right with the criminal misogyny shared off but the basic vision of the proper role of men as you know the top of a profoundly and straight cisgendered men at the top of profoundly hierarchical system in which they are owning this mantle of king and everyone below them is a subordinate subject like that's really explicit we sort of think his vision is that he wants to be I don't know like the a kind or gentler version of andrutate and appeal to millions of American men a less muscled version too less good you know I think I'm sure Holly works out I we I feel like we've observed this before not like that no no no but he also clearly neglects leg day he does not work out his like his he's got like very skinny legs and enormous shoulders and I think you need a better balance in your workout what do you think JVN if you were his trainer what would you advise me to do to balance his physique better you guys I'm not the person to ask about this if you've ever come to my comedy show I have a lot of deep rooted shame about this I am like I don't know if I can say it to you guys after the morning that we've already had it's been a rough morning it's like hard for me to see on topic with this book because he's a nightmare to read but now I'm reading like all my highlighted passages and I'm like this is also like TBH my first like book review podcast and my ADHD is like was really refusing to play ball until now but now I'm like really dialed and I'm back to the book I am and maybe we need to edit this out same a shame to say it I'm physically attracted to him I'll just fucking name it okay I'm physically attracted to him but I hate his policies okay I hate his fucking policies I hate his fucking policies okay I do but I we talked about it last time I'm also physically attracted to my Romney there's this principle vibe there's this shoulder pad thing when you have like a big Adam's apple and shoulder pads it just makes I don't know I don't like it obviously I think that the world has recently seen that I'm a complex person and I'm very layered okay I'm he's got no there but how he's got that fucking Adam's apple honey he's got no I know he's an into fucking Rectionist and he's a white nationalist and he's a Christian nationalist it's a problem I'm working on in therapy okay no I'm talking about Josh Howley okay I have this I'm you guys I'm recovering from sexual compulsivity I've talked about it in my book okay I have this uncanny ability to divorce someone's personality from their physical body I do and even though I'm non-binary you know they're always talking about biology which I also talk about in my show like biologically I'm hardwired attracted to men with big Adam's apples biologically okay and my body can separate their hideous policy from their being and I'm ashamed of it okay but shame thrives in secrets and so we just have to name it that's what the truth is but I fucking disagree with him and I want him to lose his fucking place in office but can I just say something really quick about there was this quote in here that I just it really struck me about um oh well the thing about like the center of God's creation that's all really scary out let's get from it's like man for others is the title of chapter five and he's talking about how um the biggest threat our society faces is that the male longing for adventure and her and heroism is dangerous the demands desire for accomplishment is oppressive that masculinity is toxic inherently so whatever identity men construct and life they they make had better take all that into account and it better screen out the objectionable elements of of masculinity which are by liberals reckoning most of them this mixed message puts young men especially in a vine they are supposed to fashion an identity entirely of their own choosing in order to be authentic but leave out the features that have defined for millennia good luck with that no wonder young men feel but went bewildered the classic identity of masculinity was never what it is now it only became that recently like it was a whole like like invention in the last like 40 to 60 years like and if you look if you know anything about queer history you would know that every culture has had all these different expressions of genders even in the west he keeps talking about how like the bible his like guided guided us through like the roman empire and antiquity all the way through now honey the roman empire in antiquity in antiquity was not what it is now like it was a hot freaking mess where men had like all sorts of wives and they were doing all sorts of things with all sorts of people and it was like not cool for kids and certainly not like this idea of like a good space for everyone so the way that he just has like a selective idea of it like it's clear that he's not a historian nor is any of the justices well clearly not roberts anyway who like didn't know that like abortion is actually deeply rooted in this country's history and like Benjamin franklin had an abortion recipe and is like little diary but other thing was like this country in the constitution was like for land-owning white men so that is a problem because everyone else has had to fight for the recognition here and so when that's really what we're saying is bad not masculinity just that like the constitution was founded on the idea that only like white property-owning men could vote and we're saying that like that ideal that it was built on and the wealth that was amassed under that and chattel slavery and the removal of like native Americans from their lands and the funds that were made off of that that refused to be redistributed that's the problem and then like men beating up people and like gun violence these are the problems not like traditional masculinity we love tonsillic we love a big Adam's apple we love white shoulders honey but we just don't love these fucking policies you know like so i just don't understand what the goddamn problem is i mean understanding what josh holly's problem is might be on the scope of this podcast and way above my pay grade but what i think you were saying gets at something really profound and relates to something i think Melissa had alluded to as the clear subtext of the book which is it is about the narrow group of elite white conservative men who have been accustomed to having all of the power and calling all of the shots and the book is uncomfortable with the idea of sharing political power and authority right allowing anyone else to be in a position of authority to actually be decision-maker to be supreme court justice to be congressional representative and that is again like the group of people that holly seems to actually be concerned with given that he's not engaging with any of the anti-re distributive policies that would actually benefit you know people in lower income brackets and instead depicts that as some kind of evil dependence that his view for america would just remove and so the vision that he's clinging to like the reason why pointing out the fact that america has an exclusionary past is threatening to him is because like he wants the exclusionary past to be the exclusionary future and that is i think part of what he is resisting he also quotes andrew or he talks about back on the mit romney thing oh but wait he's talking about andrew tape didn't donald trump have dinner i'm sorry i'm sorry it was let me google that did donald did didn't he he had dinner with like that that white supremacist guy what's his name i don't hate that came true i don't know it's nick one test or whatever yeah i don't see anything i don't think he's like roman put under some criminal and yeah i don't think but i just like you're right but like in the day but i wonder but like how is it the left's fault like i wonder how holly makes an andrew tape the enemy and the left the enemy because really like andrew tape is like he like that is like something from the right like the left didn't do that like how does i don't understand how like it's like everyone is the problem except for him should we explain who andrew tape is and then maybe something between him maybe not everyone is deep and then's right oh yeah i just got scared to read the passage because it's a dark someone else wanted to take a stab at describing who is slash what is andrew tape andrew tape is someone who i was never physically attracted to i'll do it so i can say i've never been physically attracted to i'm relieved yeah i can use his words so josh holly says uh the case of andrew tape a social media provocateur and self-styled quote success coach for men comes to mind tates idea of success apparently involves sleeping with as many women as possible berating them abusing them and celebrating it all as manly and as quote freedom as reported by the new york post a very refutable news publication take quote advice his followers to this is the part i didn't want to read it's like you know just abuse people um women and then he canceled that if a man in a relationship has sex with someone else it's not cheating it's exercise meanwhile if accused of cheating himself it's it's like day but then he's talking about just like literally pulling a machete out to someone's freaking like to a woman's neck like he this is like what he was just like talking about and tate and and also holly talks about this i mean it should have like a trigger warning if i posted something just talking about something like he just talks about it like it's tuesday you know rape and this and do you and that with andrew tate like there's no like respect for like the violence that he's talking about so casually like all throughout this it's so gross yeah yeah and tate we should say attraction to him by the second you guys glad we could help good but yeah but but tate in addition to not tate yes no there was never a tate attraction no we got that and that that is excellent and i'm sure that's not changing over the course of this conversation oh yeah but then he got arrested because he had like romanian dominoes pizza boxes in this video that he made and then he got arrested by interpool because of these like romanian domino boxes or something and the internet turned his ass in but he'd been like i think he was like he was like trafficking people and like literally like been accused of like all sorts of really like rapey yeah he's under indictment sexual assault human trafficking all sorts of bad all of that um no that's right and um and and and holly does kind of nominally distance himself from certain again of the most violent and violently misogynistic aspects of tates worldview and public persona and we should say even before he was a social media personality right like i think he was a kickboxer um and um but it's very clear that the distance that holly imagines or at least posits separates him from andritate is nowhere near as fast as holly seems to want to convince his readers it is yeah and maybe just to take two examples of that so you know we mentioned that holly is entreating men to be fathers and husbands you know andritate just like tweets out or puts out on x you know sexist for making children um and so like their worldview it is quite similar there's more to it than that okay so the other part of andritate's tweet is also anti-LGBTQ which we also identify anti-women and anti-women um also in some ways it's um anti-men um it's anti everyone okay so anti okay so the second part of andritate's tweet that says sexist for making children says any man who has sex with women because it quote feels good is gay so again anti-women anti-pleasure anti-men anti-LGBTQ he just packs it all in in one sentence and that doesn't even that that doesn't make sense i don't understand like a man who has sex with women because it feels good is gay isn't that like opposite fellas is it gay to like sex is it gay to have sex with women because it says about anything like that is a real cell phone it is a real cell phone right yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know mitt romney would never you can laugh at that cake um that oh my god he really mitt romney really wouldn't i do feel like he's a little bit more you know at least mitt voted to remove trump from office that's what i always tell myself when my timbers get shivered when i see him stride onto my tv screen you're not the only one there are a lot of people so i know someone who is at like a big muckety muck in the reapro community and she says she would climb mitt romney like a tree like you were not the first person to say that to me that's why i was taking a backbikes i thought it was a very singular appetite apparently that resonates no yeah that resonates i thought that we talked about this last time see i've talked about this so many times i can't remember who i've i've said this too um but yeah for me it all started in salt lake city yeah i don't think we've had this particular conversation no john we did talk about john robert's but not i don't think you called Neil Gorsuch a silver fox but um you did call Neil Gorsuch a silver fox yeah i did make us throw up in our mouths a little i actually i do take that back i think i did that for a reaction you guys i do i can legitimately say mitt romney yes no gorsage no no not Neil right yeah not Neil i mean that yeah that face is like not it for me at all i don't know what i was thinking you guys i was i think i was you would not take a run at Neil Gorsuch no i was going through it that day i think i i believe i take it off the record but mitt i stand by that and i refuse to budge on that one strict scrutiny is brought to you by shopify what's something that works so well that it's basically magic air conditioning noise canceling headphones meeting free fridays what about selling with shopify shopify is a global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business and trust me i would know that's how i launched our merchandising back when we were an independent podcast from the launch your online shop stage to the first real-life store stage all the way to the did we just hit a million order stage shopify is there to help you grow whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits or let's say designing your own t-shirts based on whatever hijinks are happening at the court shopify helps you sell everywhere from their all-in-one e-commerce platform to their in-person POS system wherever and whatever you're selling shopify's got you covered shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout and sell more with less effort thanks to shopify magic your ai powered all-star plus shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way because businesses that grow grow with shopify and shopify is so easy even a law professor can do it this really was a platform that we use when i was running our merchandising line i use shopify to help me do that it's super easy and user-friendly i could get designs up immediately and shopify was so easy for me to see how our store was doing honestly i even had fun doing it sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at shopify dot com slash scrutiny all lowercase go to shopify dot com slash scrutiny now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in shopify dot com slash scrutiny this show is sponsored by better help so listeners know i had a bike accident and it basically messed up my entire summer and it's really hard not to compare the summer i am having to the summer everyone else is having getting to go to live shows tailor swift concerts etc etc seeing all of the fun pictures on social media it's no fun comparison is the thief of joy and it's easy to envy other people's lives have you ever thought about how awesome it is to be in an elbow brace anyways it might look like they have it all together on their instagram but in reality they probably don't therapy can help you focus on what you want instead of what others have so you can start living your best life even if your best life is in an elbow brace for the time being if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule so hypothetically if you can't go anywhere you can still access therapy at better help just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge stop comparing and start focusing with better help visit betterhelp.com/strict today to get 10 percent off your first month that's better help h-e-l-p.com/strict can i connect something we were saying about androotage to Neil Gorsuch though even though you have you know just about your previous statements about him so as we were saying you know josh holly kind of attempts to put some distance between androotage more violent expressions of misogyny and josh holly's other expressions of misogyny even though their worldviews are in some respects quite similar and i think this kind of relates to our effort to draw connections between this book and what the supreme court is doing because when you think about again i know i reference the impala case before it's just top of mind when you think about what the court is doing again essentially requiring women to bear these life altering consequences health altering consequences that is a kind of violence it is just done under the language of the law and with these kind of questions that the justices are bandying about about how about a conditional spending program or how about preemption but when the rubber hits the road the you know again operative arrangement that they have endorsed is that states can prohibit care that is necessary to save someone's major bodily functions and major bodily organs and it's again we want to talk about violence like that to me is like a an example of it she's right though a hundred percent i mean the the way that he keeps talking about no adam's apple but i can make some points no hundred a hundred percent and really good ones by the way um he the way that he talks so much about like epicureans that he talks about it more and more and how that like it it's interesting because my my friend alok um who i'm just obsessed with they have this theory where like part of why the um conservatives get so angry when they see like non-binary queer people expressing themselves in public is because like when you let yourself express yourself and you don't repress there's this like anger and jealousy at the sight of this and he's literally talking about that you need to like deny yourself what makes you happy deny yourself who you are to conform to this idea and the reason that our society is failing is because people aren't doing that they're just expressing themselves too much and that's a lot of where i think his anger comes from in this niche of like evangelical where they're like we're suppressing ourselves we're doing what we were told to do by you know god and by this book or our interpretation of it so other people should too i think that's really interesting because he really is saying that with like not even saying it without saying it he's like literally saying that so one thing i wanted to get your take on jvn is um recently josh holly allowed his wife to argue before the supreme court and i'm only being half i don't know what the dynamics are like i mean we got very little mention of her and very little mention of his daughter in the book it's almost as though women don't exist but we know she exists because she appeared before the lectern at the supreme court on behalf of the alliance defending freedom to argue against the availability of mephapristone one of the drugs in the two drug medication abortion protocol um is it inconsistent with manhood to have your wife out in the world working and talking to five male members of the supreme court is is that manhood is he enlightened like what is this i don't know is this feminism i don't know what do you think jvn i mean it's just giving if it weren't so scary you'd laugh you know it's just it's just so yeah he clearly hasn't fully rejected nihilism darling or something that's like you know chapter eight rejecting nihilism well i mean but it is interesting he's like i say this in jd vans too this is sort of a thing with people like jd vans too like jd vans is always sort of espousing these kind of like manhood adjacent themes about traditional families and you know like how important the traditional family is and he's definitely against paid family leave and all of that yet he has a wife who he met at eo law school who's incredibly accomplished who clerked for the supreme court and is a working lawyer so i mean is some of this sort of feels a little bit like traditional family traditional values breadwinner husband dependent wife for you but not for me i get to have like sort of you know a different kind of life actually no it's actually really interesting because it's very gilliard and like that main care it's like it's okay because she's working to further the values of like christian nationalism so it's like your wife can work as long as she's working to enforce these structures and these ideas and i think that men in power have often seen the way that like their partners can help to further their influence and spread their influence which i mean you even saw that with like we love uh um oh my god my gay brain we love uh um who are the ladies who learned or who like fought for the right to vote in the 20s the suffragette suffragette suffragette suffragette i kept going to be like segregationists and i was like that's not it but in some ways they were because they did not fucking include black women and went but they also did not include some women of color you're right and so but that's another way that you saw like yeah the way that power works and the way that like it has to work and it's kind of own time and i think that both you know the left and the right has this show itself the gendered aspect of white patriarchy yeah i don't know that J.D. Vance's wife is involved in conservative causes she sort of stays out of the frame but i think it's a real a good point um that often the gender politics the racial politics yeah it's yeah it is all wrapped up and and there is a way in which women can facilitate patriarchy even as it ostensibly works against them or definitely works against them because it's the whole idea that Stacey Abrams talks about like fighting over crumbs you know instead of like why don't you have the whole cake it's like if it's in that is like the Jenny Thomas thing too because we saw so much how she was like deeply ingrained in trying to like be all up in there and like you know her relationship to power also too just like the book review of it all the titles of or the chapter titles are really like intense like and that isn't the last one like who's going to run the country like that's really what he's scared of like other people have too much power and too much voice like that's really what he's scared of and this is like a call to action because he's like no that's that's a great point he's such a rude ass i can't believe ever said he had a good Adam's apple yeah it is yeah i think that's right yeah it is this kind of profound threat that sort of the advance is made by women and people of color and lgbtq folks represent to holly and his ill because Melissa was saying earlier like that's the kind of fundamental anxiety at the heart of the book that that motivates it and i also think that you know holly and we were talking about his wife erin um you know i think he is holding himself out as the he wants to be the standard bearer of the republican party in the next generation right like we right now have this gerontocracy and there is going to be a gap at some point in which there will need to be a new leadership class i'm sure he wants to run for president um and he either way like wants to be an important defining figure in the political life of the country and his views are terrifying and so that's why we thought it was worth like you know that maybe masochistic undertaking of reading this book and reading it carefully and trying to sort of pull the threads on the actual claims and world view at the heart of it because this is someone who is not only in dialogue with the law as it's developing on the supreme court today but i think is poised to be a major national political figure and this is the world that he envisions and would like to bring about and it's really important to be clear-eyed in our view of that one more little tiny thing i feel i hope i didn't talk too much in this episode i'm so glad that you guys have me back and i love you guys so much um but i lived in kansas city when josh holly got elected in 2018 because i was shooting clear-eye at the time and my dad and stepmom currently live in missouri and i talk and fight with my dad a lot about politics but the point of what i was going to say is that the brand of um the culture that josh holly is selling is deeply palatable for a huge swath of our country and you know i've been really curious on my pot about spirituality and the way that like spirituality and more importantly religion interfaces with our politics and like and like motivates people to do things and this is a really important time so what you guys have done here is really important and um it's really important that we understand no matter how uh masochistic and scary it is what is going on on the other side because they are not only deeply in conversation with like the future of the country but they are really influencing what's happening and people are really buying what they're selling so thanks for continuing to do all your guys's great work well likewise um thanks so much for joining us today um i i don't know if i'm ever gonna look at mit romney the same way again um whoo i don't think i can um but jvn thank you for reading this book we know it was uh it was a big lift it was a big ask um we read it too we we read it too and that's all i'm gonna say and we really appreciate all of your insights um again the book is out you don't have to buy it we read it for you just listen to this or read our forthcoming review of the book in the michigan law review the review is called of mite and men by me kcha and lea litman with our research assistant jonathan man does we should give you a little credit you guys it's so good we're gonna drop you in the dagger now well until next time jonathan um i'm sure we are going to come calling on you again to join us once more um since uh these clowns give us a never ending diet stream for material um to to be working with it's always so great to have you thank you so much for joining us jonathan you good thanks for having me you guys i just realized after you said that malissa this this is his idea of profiles and courage like this is his like love letter to america i'm oh my god oh profiles encouraged the jf k book that he wrote before becoming president that his dad got published well that's a terrifying thought scary you guys we need yeah you're right yeah wow that is a deep cut jvn i had to save it for the end you know i pulled up an s of williams save the best for last you know good yep well you know and also we need to talk about really quick pss just really quick and i'm gonna like literally be late for filming uh before we started this i don't know if i hit the recording i'm in vega shooting queer i now and i'm in a little closet in our airbnb that's covered in blankets so that's what's giving uh this you know view um and i was like oh my gosh i look really shiny i need to like just powder the face really quick and then kay was it can we say it kay can we tell your hotel the full or our full healing story yeah for the people because it's also the antidote to this fucking book it is yeah your has was filming where you were filming yesterday and he left his powder and so you're like oh my god i need my powder and i just think that is so great because i've literally done twice on like spoiler alert these men love a little concealer and a little powder they want to feel good too so i'm teaching a lot of guys like how to do that this season because i'm like they don't even know how to color match they don't know like the right order to do anything so i'm just like teaching them really quick so they can have like you know more confident under circles yeah so they you need to actually have to teach them how to do it and we all need to spread the word that it is completely fine to powder your nose and conceal those dark circles under your eyes exactly like and we should all embrace that um you know yes you guys should feel the pressure to do too positive note and also you just feel so much cuter normalized and even skin too normalized and you just uh thanks for having me you guys thank you so much for joining us so the supreme court seems to think having trump as a monarch sounds great and to that we say no fucking away or as justice so tomorrow put it with fear for our democracy i dissent so show that you're mad as hell about the highest courts recent decisions taking away power from government agencies and giving the president permission to authorize a coup yes really with a quote taken from Justice Sotomayor's dissent to the court's terrifying presidential immunity decision this t-shirt shows where you stand loud and clear it's really a great conversation shirt that provides a way to talk to everyone about what is going on with the supreme court get your own dissent t at crooked.com/store now strict scrutiny is a crooked media production hosted and executive produced by me lea litman molesomeri and k-chop produced and edited by melody raul michael goldsmith is our associate producer our interns this summer are Hannah seroff and Tess o'Donahue audio support from kyle segland and charlotte landis music by eddie cooper production support from maddling herringer and re shorts matt to groat is our head of production and thanks to our digital team phoebe bradford and joe mottoskey subscribe to strict scrutiny on youtube to catchful episodes find us at youtube.com/at strict scrutiny podcast if you haven't already be sure to subscribe to strict scrutiny in your favorite podcast apps you never miss an episode and if you want to help other people find the show please rate and review us it really helps why are two old unpopular men running for the world's most demanding job again since 1992 every american president bar one has been a white man born in the 1940s that run looks likely to span 36 years this cohort was born with eases in their pockets their parents defeated naziism and won the cold war they hit the jobs market at an unmatched period of wealth creation they have benefited from giant leaps in technology and in racial and gender equality and yet their last act in politics sees the two main parties accusing each other of wrecking american democracy as the boomers near the end of their political journey john perdow sets out to make sense of their inheritance and their legacy search boom exclamation mark from the economist wherever you listen to your podcast and unlock all episodes by subscribing to economist podcast plus there are some cases so infamous that we have all heard about them but some of the coldest cases are the ones that you've never heard of before i'm ashley flowers and every wednesday on my show the deck i died into the coldest of cold cases i'm sharing what our reporting team has found on these stories in hopes that someone listening may have the information needed to bring answers to light and that listener could be you listen to the deck now wherever you get your podcasts you can host the best backyard barbecue when you find a professional on angie to make your backyard the best around connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well inside to outside repairs to renovations get started on the angie app or visit 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