Weekly Roundup: JD Vance, the End Times, and the Antichrist

0:00Cafe Axis Moondy J.D. Vance says he might bring in the end times and the Antichrist might be living among us. We got to talk about that. Don't we, Dan? This is the Swajwikler Roundup. I'm Brad O'Neeshy, author of American Caesar, how tech lords and theacrats are turning American to a monarchy out in just over a week.

1:01Also the founder of AccessMediaMedia, co-host of Straight White American, Jesus with my friend and colleague. I am Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought of Lamar College. Brad O'Neeshy's co-host for a long time. Glad to be with you, Brad. I'm also just going to throw this out there as somebody who grew up in the evangelical subculture. The Antichrist is getting really old because he's been living among us for a long time. So the octogenarian Antichrist needs to take action. I'm going to start. I'm going to start with that. A YouTube channel where I go to every Convalescent Home in America and try to figure out who is he? Who's the Antichrist? Brad O'Neeshy coming to you from Bulgaria. Brad O'Neeshy, now who's beckons Dan? All the things that we're going to be the sign of the Antichrist, like the barcode that you'd have or something like. I need to see any barcode tattoos, any six, six, sixes, any weird birthmarks. They won't think you're weird at all if you show up in the care homes. You're like, can I look for birthmarks? Can I check people? I just need to talk to everyone.

2:02All right, folks, we'll talk about JD Vance. We're going to talk about the death of Gloria Steinem. Then we'll also talk about the attack on male and voting and the chaos that Trump is sowing and really what could be a decisive issue when it comes to a free and fair election in November as it comes to the midterms. That's what we're doing today. Welcome to Straight Wide American Jesus. So glad you're here. People are coming into the live stream. As people kind of make their way here, I want to say, American Caesar is out, September 15. If you'd like a signed copy, go to any Blooms bookstore, which is in Portland. You can go to their website and order one from there. They will send you a copy signed by me. I went and signed those copies this weekend, Dan, and took my three-year-old who pooped in her pants right before. So nothing will keep you more humble than going into a bookstore and then being like, oh, you're here to sign your books? You're an author, neat. What a cool thing. Yeah, come over here. Here's the pile of books. Oh, what a cute daughter.

3:02Having to be like, yeah, I'm just, do you have a bathroom because I need to spend the next 37 minutes cleaning this up. So there's no way to get a big ego when you're doing that. I'll beat any Blooms. September 16th. Come and hang out and sign books. Freeways are closed. So you need to make sure to leave early because there's a big freeway apocalypse in Portland right now. September 22nd. Dan Miller, me. Amherst College. It's going to be amazing. So be there 4.30 pm at Amherst College. If you are an Amherst person or nearby, we'll send you the room. But just plan it being at Amherst College at 4.30 September 22nd. Of course, September, everybody who knows those amers is not a big place. So it's not going to be hard to find wherever it is. So yeah, excited about that. September 23rd, Northeastern University. If you're a Boston person, come hang out. October 1, NYU Religion and Media Center, Washington Square Park with Emigoldberg from the New York Times. I'll stop there.

4:02But just really excited. If you have an order at American Caesar yet, please do. And just appreciate everyone's support. All right, Dan, it's time. Here we go. JD Vance went on Bryce Crawford's podcast. Bryce Crawford is a Gen Z podcaster with 1.1 million followers on YouTube. What a world. We live in here, Dan. And they talked about everything from the end times to the anti-Christ. Let's just get right into what everything's talking about, everyone's talking about. And then we can get into the kind of larger takeaways from this interview. So here's JD Vance on the end times. Talking to a chatbot, but they're building a life talking to their friends and their family. So I tend to think like the, while I wouldn't be shocked if we are living in the end times, what I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the end times, okay. And if that leads to us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very

5:08long time after I'm gone, that's great too. I just think you've got to kind of try to have an attitude of the end times may be coming. In fact, they are coming. It's just a question of whether they're coming thousands of years down the road or a few months down the road. I got a lot of thoughts, Dan. You and I have been studying theology for 25 years now. We used to be evangelicals who were obsessed with the end times. We've lived this. We've studied it. You did an entire PhD exam on the book of Revelation. You know more about the book of Revelation than maybe anyone else I know, I can think of one or two people who are really into Revelation. So all that to say, you go first. What do you want to say in response to that? Maybe some context for those who maybe aren't familiar right. When they talk about end times, a certain strand, a really dominant strand of American evangelicalism believes that the end times are where Jesus will physically come back and

6:11there'll be a divine judgment in this cosmic war and kind of basically like a get even campaign to defend all the Christians. And then the Jesus is going to found a thousand year reign on earth. And after that, you'll have the final judgment. So it's this whole cosmic conflict end of time kind of thing. And in a lot of evangelicalism, this is like a not just a standard article of faith, but like a central sort of core teaching. And so JD Vance here, sounding, and we'll talk more about this, sounding like the evangelical that he kind of was once upon a time and not like the Catholic that he is now is sort of channeling that. And so you have this notion that we could be in the end times that it might have started. There's this shadowy figure who's actually not from the book of Revelation. It's from the Apostle Paul, but people like Merge the two called the Antichrist is going to rise up and be this opponent of God and his people and so forth. And so JD Vance is playing this pretty typical evangelical game of saying we could be in

7:12the end times now. And we don't know. And the Antichrist could be alive now and among us. And so that's what he's talking about is what strikes me. Well, again, we'll talk more about it. People ask us a lot, right? Contemporary Christian nationalism, people who grew up in evangelicalism. They're like, I used to hear about end times all the time and things are supposed to get kind of worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And they're all signs of like the coming end times and the return of Christ and so forth. How does that fit with like the Seven Mountains Band-Aid and this Christian nationalist vision of taking over society and making it? The answer is they're incompatible theologies, right? There's another kind of theology that rejects that kind of end time stuff and says there's going to be a thousand year reign, but that's the reign of the church in the world. And we are going to be God's presence and then there'll be a final judgment. They're incompatible. And people ask us all the time, how come Christian nationalists don't talk about the end times all the time the way that I used to hear in church? And we've said it's because you have this weird merging of theologies and they don't all fit. And we see this in advance. So he's busy saying, I'm going to work to do God's work in the world and make America,

8:16but the world, the best place it can be. And if we're in the end times great, I'm like, yeah, that's not how it works. JD, you've got this really convoluted thing. So there's a lot of weird stuff going on in this interview. So Bryce Crawford is an evangelical. He went to Liberty University. He talks like an evangelical. He talks about, you know, when you listen to him talk, he talks like a young guy who's steeped in evangelicalism. I think I just want to reiterate what you said. If you are Catholic, if you're post-Catholic, ex-Catholic, there's just not this emphasis on the quote unquote end times or the apocalypse in the Catholic church, in Catholic theology period. It's just not something that Catholics emphasize in the ways that their evangelical counterparts do. So when JD speaks like this, and I think we'll come back to this in a minute, he really does sound like somebody trying to appease an evangelical audience. He knows this host and a lot of his followers are thinking about the end times and the anti-Christ and this kind of stuff.

9:17He just, it's classic JD Vance where he's trying to read the room and figure out what people want from him and then play that part. He's doing his kind of chameleon thing. So I think that's there. I do think there is a lack here of understanding of Catholic theology and what I told you before started recording is I was disappointed because he doesn't even know the bad theology. Like he doesn't even know the toxic forms of Catholic theology. He's just giving it like before this clip, a couple minutes before the clip I played, he talks about how his first Bible was a John Hague study Bible. John Hague is of course the Christian Zionist pastor from the South. And Hague, Hague was one who like every sermon that Hague did was end times. Like every single sermon, this is how he made his career. He was televised in a world before the internet and you know, whatever. So like in that world of evangelicals, like there was kind of no bigger name than Hague for popularizing this. Yeah, he's really situating himself within the evangelical world with that reference.

10:21So I think that if I, you know, I know there's been a lot of reaction to this on social media. If you go on YouTube, if you go on any social media platform, you're going to see a lot of reactions to end times JD Vance. If you watch the entirety of it, I am not giving JD Vance a pass. I don't think this was as Peter teal Bazaar as people might make it out to be. Like I've spent a lot of time reading the Peter teal antichrist stuff over the last year and going back Peter teals going back Peter teal 20 years ago, right? And that stuff is Bazaar. This to me was JD Vance saying, I'm a world leader and I'm going to work hard every day to make the world into the kingdom of God that I think it should be. Now, I think his version of the kingdom of God is extremely hurtful inhumane and just plain bad. But nonetheless, if that leads to the end times, then that's great.

11:21If not, whatever. I actually think Dan, and this, we may not agree here, and I'm just, I'm curious what you think of this take. I actually think he is parroting a kind of Christian nationalist post-millennial eschatology here. And what that means is I think he's saying it's our job to create the kingdom of God on earth. And that is why Christian nationalists like the Seventh Mountain Mandate, people, the Doug Wilson's of the world, the Hegseth's of the world, others. They're not expecting Jesus to return it any moment as a thief in the night. They're expecting to dominate the world for a thousand years. And when it's finally, completely colonized for Jesus, King Jesus, then King Jesus will come down. He will pat everybody on the head and say, great work. I can now take my seat on the throne on earth. And you have vanquished all of my enemies. You have destroyed all the other kingdoms. You have trampled the false idols. Like there's a conquering imperial crusading element to this kind of theology.

12:26And if I read JD between the lines, I think that's what he's gesturing towards. So is that any better? Not at all. I don't think this is JD Van saying, I think my policies or my actions as my president or future president are going to bring about the rapture. I don't know. I mean, how did you read it? What I mean, I don't know. I read it as kind of a mixed bag because I don't think JD Van knows what he's talking about. So here's what I mean by that. So I think you're right. So that the contemporary Christian nationalist model of society with all the different strands as exactly as you describe. Right. God, the kingdom of God is something that humans. God's humans on earth need to put in place. And this is why they draw on things like a certain strand of Augustinian theology and others. We need to make the world into the city of God and all of that stuff. And yes, like, and so they use that language of the millennium, the thousand year rain, whether that's literal or symbolic or whatever.

13:27But the idea being we're going to create a godly world that you're right. It's sort of fit for Jesus to come back to. And that that's absolutely, I think the wagon to which JD Van has hitched himself for a long time. Yeah, I think I missed that metaphor up. It's the horse to which he's hitched his wagon, Brad. I know about horses and wagons, right? Okay. You could hitch himself to a wagon. He would be the horse, I think, in this renderer. Okay. Yeah. So what JD Van says into. That's not what John Hagee was into. That's not what traditional pre-millennial Evangelicalism said. It was actually a kind of political fatalism, right? The world is going to get worse and worse and worse. And the only thing that can redeem it is the return of Jesus. And that's why in a bygone generation, you opposed, say, environmentalism. Because the world is going to burn up anyway. It's going to get worse and worse and worse. Why are you trying to save it? It's why efforts at global peace were always back. There was this vision of there'll be one world government that's going to oppose God and so forth. So I think there's a sense in which Van says like mixing his metaphors.

14:31The Christian he is and the Christians he surrounds himself with. The kind of Catholic that he just talked about being in his book and all of that is that we're going to dominate the world and make it into what it should be for God person. But he's also trying to talk to this other audience, right? He's trying to ingratiate himself with the evangelicals. He's trying to talk to this other wing, this other strand of Maga world that speaks a different language, that has a different metaphor. And so he's trying, I think what he's doing is taking that post-millennial vision and trying to use the classical language that the evangelicals have. I don't think he knows that they don't fit. I don't think he knows that it's two completely different concepts because he doesn't understand theology unless Peter Teal's telling him what to think. So I think it's convoluted. So I think you're right. I think that he does have this vision that the Christian task is to create the world in their image and call it God's image so they can dominate. That's what it is. But he's drawing on this other rhetoric and this other theological model.

15:32It has a very different vision. But I don't think he knows that. I think he thinks that they just dub Teal together. I think it's also to your point about it not being this maybe shocking as it is, right? So on that evangelical understanding, it's supposed to be like all these signs, signs and wonders and so forth that will tell you it's coming. And he's actually trying to humble brag. I think we're saying, well, you know, I don't know. I'm just going to do my best and two gods work in the world and hey, if God uses me to bring about the end times, if I'm that important as a world leader, I think that's great. And you know, I always look at me like JD, you're not, you're not a world leader. I don't know what God's mechanism will be for bringing about the end times. It's not you, dude. But I think it's that. I mean, it's not like a bold claim. It's more of a this weird Christian humble brag thing of like, I'm not going to say that I'm important, Brad. I'm not going to say that I am the tool God will use to redeem the world, but it might be. And I'm open to it. I'm just open to whatever God puts in my path, right? It's that kind of thing that he's doing.

16:32I think he's trying to talk to a lot of different people. He's trying to speak a lot of different languages. He's trying to play to different audiences. And you know, what they hear is what they hear. I don't think he cares or knows that it doesn't work, theologically. Yeah, you know, it just harkens back to JD, advances appearances with the TPSA crowd, whether that's taking Charlie Kirk seat a year ago, and after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, whether that's appearing with Erica Kirk and the various TPSA events he's done. There's a sense to me that JD is a Catholic who is most often speaking to young evangelicals and hoping they'll like him. I think some of you out there are probably like, look, guys, there's no way JD is this uninformed about theology. I mean, it can't be like Dan Miller is telling me that he doesn't know the difference between the sort of Catholic, a millennial or post-millennial eschatology and the evangelical pre-millennial that can't be. But if you've made certain decisions in your life that make it such that for your work,

17:37you have to watch JD Vance's entire interview with Bryce Crawford, which is what I've done. Decisions Brad wouldn't necessarily recommend to others. I'm just going to throw that out there. There's this moment in the interview where Bryce Crawford asks him about signs and wonders and spiritual dark energy and this kind of stuff. And he starts in and he's like, you know, we went last year to the Pope's inaugural mass. And you're really waiting for this like punchline of like, you know, we were at the first mass of the new Pope and I was sitting next to somebody like someone really like important, like whether it's a bishop or a cardinal or somebody you would write, you know, Lady Gaga, I don't know, some other famous Catholic, whatever. And he's like, yeah, and you know, on the way there, the Dominican priest who baptized me. Now he doesn't say the man's name. He just says the Dominican priest. There's a weird tick which JD Vance where he, he doesn't, I'm just going to notice this. Like, why would you not say his name?

18:38He says, oh, the Dominican priest who baptized me like he's in no one. He's like, you know, as we were going to the mass, he was talking to me about Psalm 53 and Bryce Crawford's like, yeah, man, okay, yeah, tell me. And again, you're waiting for this punchline, right? Of like this when he's like, you know, what that priest did know is that Psalm is, as that's one I've really, it's mental ought to me. So I just think those kinds of things are really interesting. And like Bryce Crawford is just like, what is this? What? This is the, what? Like kind of story. Did you just tell me man like JD Vance is like a charisma suck. He's like a charisma black hole. Like he's the op, whatever the opposite of a charismatic engaging speaker is, it's him. It's like if you have a, like a, a store of energy in the room, and he brings JD, he's just like sucks up all the energies. Like a black hole. It's just gone. And you see it in things like that. You just like, okay. Yeah. And you want to tell us what the Psalm is? No, that's just like meaningful one I like. No, JD, like nothing. Yeah. My, my like 75 year old mom who I love and you know,

19:41is, is my mom. She comes over. No, no, I mean like she's, she's my mom. I love her. She lives near me. I help her do a lot of stuff. I see her a lot. And she'll do these things where she's like, hey, you never guess what happened. And I'm like, what? She's like, well, when I, when I got home today, garage door open or wouldn't work. I'm like, oh, and I'm like waiting for there to be like, there was a tiger in her garage. Or you know, like, like, like, like, I don't know. I'm waiting for it to be like Mitt Romney showed up. I'm like, oh my god, that would be correct. Okay. And she's like, yeah, you know, turns out the batteries will. I'm like, yeah, okay. I'm like, okay, that's the story. Okay, yeah. Well, you know, glad you figured that out, mom. That's great. I know that this, this was a story that was not structured very well. I think that's what JD does. All right. There's another clip here of him talking about the anti-Christ. And we need to talk about that. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and talk about JD's anti-Christ understanding and theology. Be right back.

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22:49One is, so one, do I think that we're in the end times I don't know. And I think that it's probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it, because there are things you got to do. I got to be good to my wife. I got to be good to my kids. I have to be, you know, as good of a leader as I can for the United States of America. I think that focusing, while I'm fascinated by it, I think focusing on it is too much can be very bad. I think that there are like things about the world that make me feel like not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us. But again, I try not to focus too much on it. So he goes on to say he has been with certain world leaders who he feels like have really dark energy. And when they say something, every spiritual sense in him goes up. He also talks about how he left Silicon Valley kind of before the AI revolution.

23:55And now when he examines some of the intricacies of the AI models and what they do, he gets the sense of Antichrist. So once again, Dan Miller, I throw it up, Allie Up, slam it home. What do you think? The Antichrist has been like maybe, I don't know, the most overplayed empty figure in Christian history. So they're getting trace it all the way back to as early as Christians are talking about it. They always, the shadowy figure that the Bible doesn't say very much about the Antichrist. And so because it's shadowy, you can build up this whole theology around it. And there's a long history of Christians of all different stripes basically taking whatever enemy they have and naming them the Antichrist or the enemy of God. All the Protestant reformers, it was always the Pope. I don't know if JD knows that, but that's how that always worked. Popes have had different Antichrist. There was a period of time in the Catholic Church where there were multiple claims to the papacy and the Popes were all busy naming each other the Antichrist. And so if you kind of watch this from the outside, it's like this old Christian came of like,

24:57you know, pin the tail on the Antichrist. And that's that's kind of what he's doing. You got the Peter Teal echoes there with the weird AI Antichrist, you know, kind of thing. You have the standard move of at least hinting that certain world leaders, Brad could be the Antichrist. And if somebody knows this discourse, if you grew up in this discourse, if you watch this, if you again just read historical accounts of how many times, for 2000 years, Christians have been calling people they don't like the Antichrist, it's not as shocking and weird as it sounds because it's a very, very kind of almost wrote right of passage for somebody trying to talk to an evangelical audience to say, you know, the Antichrist could be among us. The shadowy figure could exist not going to name names, but you know, I might have met him, might have had dinner with him at that G6 summit. I'm not going to say, but I might have, it's just it's part of the game. It's part of the game that he's playing. It's again, trying to communicate to that audience and also hedges bets and say, I don't know if we are.

25:57I want to be a good dad and a good leader, you know. Yeah, I think again, I think there's a blending here. I think the Catholic side is like, that's not what you do. You focus on, you know, today you focus on building society, building the city of God and so on. I think there's a little Easter egg here for the Evangelical extremists who are still wanting to be invested in the Antichrist. I think that if you're that person, you can start like doing the things that internet conspiracy theorists loose do and that is wait a minute. So he's saying he's sat with world leaders who've said things that are so dark. He thinks that maybe they're at least demonic and maybe that person at the Antichrist. Well, who has JD Vance been negotiating with recently? Well, he's been the one who's been sent a lot of the times to talk to the Iranian delegation. Huh? The Muslim, you know, quote unquote jihadist regime that's at war with the US, right? And then you can see that like 14-year-old us,

27:0314-year-old versions of you and me are like, wait a minute. I think I know who he's talking about here. Of course, it's a Muslim country. Of course, it's Iran. Of course, and you can just sort of cascade into into conspiracy. So I think that's part of it. I want to play one more clip before we leave JD and that is them talking about heaven. So Breish Crawford, if you are not a kind of sort of Breish Crawford's YouTube channel, likes to ask people, how sure are you that you're going to go to heaven? It's a fun question. This is what I actually ask people at the preschool parties I go to. The other parent, when the kids are like on the in the ball pit, I'm like, hey, Jeff, I'm sure you that you're going to heaven. It's a good way to scale. One to 10, 10 being absolutely certain, one being not certain at all, how confident are you that you'd go to heaven? Oh, man. That is a tough question. It's high, but it's not 10, right? I mean, it's it's it's a seven or it's an eight. Like I'm always one of these people who is is always going

28:06to have little doubts. And like if you asked me that question a year ago, probably was like a five or six. Wow. Wait, why the why the change like five or six now seven or eight? Because I'd say the differences and again, I all respect to God. But you know, I stand Dan Dan Miller, my brother in Christ, Dan Miller, if you all respect God, what is that? There is there's not an even jellicle in the world who talks like that. There's also not like if this is like a like an evangelical one-on-one belonging test, you just failed it. You're supposed to be able to say, I know I'll go to heaven because I believe in Jesus is my personal Lord and savior, which is exactly what Bryce Crawford says. Bryce Crawford says they had exact thing in response to him. He's like, for me, it's a 10 out of 10 because I know Jesus is my savior. Yeah. Like he says all respect to God, like it's like, hey, who's your top five NBA players of all time? And it's like, oh, it's hard to

29:06choose. Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, you know, all respect to Shaqille O'Neal. I got to put in your cream. I'm gonna build your bar. Like this is not a sports podcast, JD. God, man. All right. Here we go. I still occasionally have doubts like, is this actually real? Yeah. Right? And you know, maybe that's sort of where I come. So it's not like if it's real, I feel confident that I've done the things necessary or more importantly that I have followed what God has told me to do, believe in Jesus Christ. I believe He's my savior. I try to do the things that are, you know, sort of necessary to walk the path of faith. And I think what, but what is JD? What is that? Like if you, if you are an evangelical or a Catholic, you have language to use here. Like you have Catholic social teaching. You have like specific touchstones that you can use here to say what it is

30:10you think you're doing in the world. Like James Talleriko, if you ask him this question, he's gonna tell you like so many specific things from the sermon on the mount about why his faith informs who he wants to be as a politician. Now they're very different Christians. But like Talleriko's answer here is going to be the richness of the New Testament and the red letters of Jesus. JD's like, yeah, try to do the things God says to do. I mean, that's what I try. This sounds like the man at my old church who like went to church once a month because he was a real estate agent and like he needed to go to church so that people in town thought he was a good Christian man and they would buy houses from him. This is not sound like a guy who's invested in like a lot here. You said she's such a bad Christian like his like if his answers to the questions are any measure. I just like, I'm, yeah, I'm just like this. If you're talking to an evangelical audience, these are all the wrong answers, right? It's not, well, I have faith in Jesus and it's like, nope, your answer is supposed to be that. Like that's it. That's all. That's all it takes. You don't have to do anything else. That's what matters. I have, like, I Brad, you and I come from evangelical

31:15backgrounds, but they're also different in whatever. I don't know if you had to go to a lot of the like, I'm sure you did. You were a youth pastor. You probably took the kids to like the big youth revival things or whatever. And you have the speaker up there and they'd be like, oh yeah. Do you know that you know that you know that if you died tonight, you would go to heaven when you and you're supposed to be able to say yes, full stop. No, I'm not perfect. God loves me anyway because I accepted his son or whatever. It's just like, it's like dude. So this is the thing about JD Vance, even as a chameleon. He's not good at it. Yeah. Like to real, I think real died in the wool Catholics. He doesn't feel like a Catholic when he's like, I don't know what the Pope knows about just worth here. But there's this thing called just worth here that my advisors told me about half an hour ago. Or here, he's like, I don't know him. Maybe somebody gave him a talking sheet. Maybe they didn't. I don't know. But whoever did, he just can't even like pretend to be the things that he is very well. Whether that's like the guy who grew up in the Appalachians when

32:15he didn't, or it's the conservative, you know, Catholic or the evangelical or whatever. He just can't play any of the games very well. So let's just put this on the screen and just to remind everybody that JD said this a couple months ago. So come on up. There you are. Go ahead. There you go. In the same way that it's important for the vice president of the United States to be careful, when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology. And maybe he would reverse those. Maybe the VP needs to be careful when he's talking matters of theology, right? You got it backwards. You're talking to like a 23 year old podcaster and, you know, just Willie Nilly here about about faith. And if you're going to heaven and all of that, I want to just give one more thought about JD Vance here before we leave. And I know some of you, you know, are, are it's hard to take JD Vance seriously. I know some of you are like, this guy's why. Who cares? He's a nothing burger.

33:17A, if the general election 2028 were today, it would be Vance versus Rubio. And we'd have to see who is going to win that kind of Maga Civil War with Hegseth a distant third. If Donald Trump dies in office, JD Vance will be the president. So you can tell me, you can email me and be like, who cares about JD Vance? If Donald Trump's 80 years old, he's incredibly unhealthy. If he died today, this man is the president. The man that we've been talking about for, you know, 30 minutes now. So that's, that's that. If you watch the entire thing, Dan, it's hard to overstate what an underwhelming presence JD Vance is. His answers, his aura, his ability to kind of command the conversation. There's no richness there. There's no vibrance. There's no like, this is not a person when he speaks. You're like, damn, I don't know if I agree with everything you said, but I just, I just want to be around this guy. I want to listen to this guy. I want to ask this guy questions. I want to see what this guy's ideas are about this, that and the other.

34:19And what I've said before we recorded, Dan is like, he, if you put somehow the young Ronald Reagan, the 40 year old Ronald Reagan in that seat, that guy would have been dripping with charisma. I mean, he would have made Bryce Crawford and every camera person and every whoever was there, that day fell in love with him because that's what Ronald Reagan did. And don't get me wrong, I agree with like, you know, I disagree with like 99.8% of what Ronald Reagan did. The same with even George W. Bush as whatever vapid, mindless, whatever George W. Bush was, he had this sort of thing. He walks in. He does the finger guns. Hey, how are we doing? Guys, good to see you. What's going on today? All right, then, you know, and all of a sudden, you're like, having a beer and George W. Bush is your new pal. The young Barack Obama would have just like destroyed this an hour and 20 minutes of of JD Vance. And I think Bryce Crawford is like, woo time to get out of here because this is God. Give me away from this guy. Like, get me a Chick-fil-A and send me home because I need a break from this dude. You know what I'm saying?

35:21Extra large diet coke, please. Extra pickles. Yeah, yeah, extra pickles. I'll pay for the the extra fry, extra Chick-fil-A sauce. I don't know. Does that mean anything to you, Dan? Does it matter that he's this way or maybe I, I'm just saying as somebody who watched more than the eight seconds that are being put on social media, as somebody who watched almost the entire interview, it's hard to ignore JD Vance as a somebody who doesn't have it. Yeah. I think it matters for a few reasons. The reasons you said, right? He's the proverbial, you know, heartbeat away from the presidency, all that stuff. I think it matters because that's why he's doing this. He is doing this to position himself for 2028. He's doing this to try to stay ahead of Rubio and stay on people's radar and trying to, I think, I promise you, you know this, everybody probably knows this. He's got internal pulsars and strategists who will tell him the same thing. We just said that like, you just don't resonate with people, dude. So like, keep going on Gen Z podcast and keep doing this and try to

36:23fix the persona and whatever. That's what he's doing. And so I think it does matter because, number one, he is a person in a position of authority. He is a person in power. He's a person who stands to air more and he's positioning himself to be the president. Yeah. Whether that happens or not, that's real and that's significant. And we have to pay attention, I think, to who he is. And I think also, you know, all politicians to some extent, I understand they modify what they do, depending on audience and so forth. But JD Vance is more of a wallpaper guy than most of just taking on the shade of whatever room he's in, of just trying to do that. And he would say this about a lot of people, I don't, I don't know that he actually believes or values anything, yeah, other than power. And I think that's another reason why this matters because this is what we see on display when he does these things. He can't answer significant questions, right? He can't talk about them

37:23in a real way. He has to talk about, oh, I try to do good things. He doesn't know what they are. He doesn't know what he's trying to do. He's just trying to say that he does good things because that's a thing a good person would maybe say. And I think that that vacuessness and that emptiness is part of what makes him terrifying. He's like, he's like, he's just a nihilistic person who will do whatever it takes to try to get power and to try to win people over. And I think that that is why he matters is precisely because he is so empty in that way. All right. Let's take one more break. I just got to say this. So let me say one more thing. Don't take a break. I have met several people who've been in contact with Gavin Newsom. Like Gavin Newsom comes to an event at their work or they've been in a place where they've had a chance to talk to Gavin Newsom for 30 minutes. And I want to go on the record and say Gavin Newsom is not my guy. I don't like Gavin Newsom for president. I don't think Gavin Newsom is somebody I believe in who's the future of

38:26anything good. I just don't. So you can email me if you want. I can tell you that Gavin Newsom is the guy that when he walks in the room, he's six three. His hair makes him six seven. He's he's incredibly charismatic. And he reads the room and he's like, whoever's here. By the time I leave, they will be so enamored with me that I will have stories about famous people or things I've done or things I've seen or you guys want to hear a story about this or you. And by the time he leaves, you're just like holy moly like that guy. Wow. That guy's life is different than mine. That's what I mean, right? When I talk about the young, wronged Reagan or the young whoever. JD's not that dude. All right. Let's take a break. We're right back. All right, Dan. Let's talk about Gloria Steinem who died this week. And I think, you know, we want to talk about this and then we want to get into the USPS voting stuff. So two more, two more things to talk about today. Gloria Steinem was a feminist pioneer, somebody who fought

39:26tooth and nail for women's rights. And I think one of the things you noticed this week was the conservative reactions to Gloria Steinem's death. And so take us through some of those reactions and what you think they mean. It's what I want to think about. The reactions really about two things, I think primarily one is the reaction to her support for abortion rights. She was outspoken advocate for abortion rights. She talked about the Roe v. Wade decision and the abortion debate at that time as being the beginning of activism for her. And she said this quotation. I got from the AP that she said a number of years ago, either our control over our own bodies is equal regardless of sex or race or we're not living in a democracy. Great statement, right? So that legacy. But also she was an outspoken critic of the quote unquote traditional family. And that's what that's what the right one of the things that they've really picked on this this week since she passed is she

40:27attacked the traditional family. She didn't like the traditional family. She and that becomes I think for those who maybe know this or follow this, that's the cipher for feminism broadly speaking. Second wave feminism. The entire kind of criticism of second wave feminism as a movement is they attacked traditional women's roles. They attacked the traditional family. They told women that they couldn't be women if they were home makers. They told women that they were oppressed for having children. And so there's this kind of caricature of second wave feminism. And I think glorious time as a second wave feminist pioneer and this figure head within that this week has sort of become the symbolic attacking sort of the the pinata that they can beat around as we don't like second wave feminism. And we're trying to reassert a certain conception of family and society and so forth. So you've got these really nasty kind of attacks on her. And what I want to talk about for a minute and I want I want us to sort of pause on and we talk about this a lot, but I think it's important is this language of the traditional family because it still comes up comes up all the

41:29time. It's part of a Maga world and the camp where defending the traditional family. And so I think the first thing to know about this because there's a slide of hand that happens here is that when conservatives talk about the traditional family, they're talking about the patriarchal family. They're not just talking about a structure of you know a straight man and a straight woman who have biological children and are married, right? Like that's that's a piece of it. But they're also talking about a structure where the man is the one in charge within that Christian model male headship and so forth. The man is supposed to be the breadwinner. That's his job is to be out in the world earning money and doing things and the woman is to be a homemaker and so forth. So when they talk about the traditional family, they often position it as if oh you're looking down on me because I made a decision to get married and have kids. No, it's not that it's the patriarchal authority within that structure and the other piece of it is the normativity of it. The claim that this is the only model of the family. Any other this way you're not a woman. Yeah, you're not a woman and you're not a fit person. Any other kind of family is substandard and so that model of the nuclear

42:34family, straight man, straight woman, monogamously married with biological kids. The nuclear family is understood as being a historical norm, something that transcends time and culture and ultimately the reason it transcends it is because it was God's model for the family like that. And this is where you get the language, right? So whenever they say that other kinds of families are a threat to the traditional family, that's what they're talking about, right? I don't I don't my personal view, I think, and some may disagree and yes, we could find out liars, but in general, I say this as a super boring cis hetero guy married to a cis hetero woman who has biological kids. I don't feel threatened at all if people have other family structures. In the best possible sense, I don't care. Awesome. Love who you love, how you love them, all different kinds of families and structures and sexualities and kids and like, or no kids or whatever. Awesome. And I don't think that anybody cares what my family structure is. If I'll just they can live their

43:35life the way that they want to live it and I'll live it the way I'm living it will all like cool. Awesome. It's because I don't think that that's the only way to be, right? So Steinem is getting an attack because I saw I found a quote that I want to read from her. This was at the 1996 address to the feminist family values for them. And so this is what she had to say and it's worth just sort of pausing on parts of this. She said, I think the first thing we need to reconsider about family values is saying family in the singular. Check, yep, absolutely agree. She is not critiquing straight people or married people or people who have kids biological children. She's saying, cool, that's a kind of family. And if you can acknowledge that and make room for other kinds of families, awesome. She goes on and says, that is a right wing trip altogether. The minute you say family in the singular, it defines one kind of family as normal and renders all other forms peripheral or wrong. That's what she's critiquing. And that's why she's a threat to a Christian nationalist vision of society that does exactly that. She goes on and says, the patriarchal nuclear

44:38family that we're supposed to think is the normal the only one. That kind of family is really only about 150 years old and is almost entirely the function of industrialization and capitalism. Our great friends Sarah Moslinner, who's done so much on the show, if you want to like hear all about that, go read her stuff. But this model of the family that's taken is divinely sanctioned and divinely ordered and cross cultures is a relatively new cultural invention. There's no reason to think that it's the norm. One of the reasons I'm right here with Steinem when people say, a patriarchal authority, part of the reason why men are expected to be the red winner is that so that women are financially dependent upon them. Part of the reason why they structure the family that way is that so women have to stay with the family. They have to stay with a husband to support them. They have to be there to support and raise kids because they don't have an option to do anything else. That is part of what Steinem I think is saying there. She says it was a form and invented to make one portable so they could be shipped about at the will of their employers, something that could not be done with big extended communal families. The idea that there is only one

45:42family form is really pure bullshit. I read that quote from Steinem and I'm like, yeah, preach it sister. I'm with you. So I think she was a powerful voice. I think that they are right. She was critical of the traditional family. But for me, and I'm interested in your thoughts on this, that's not because she thought there was something wrong with people having biological children or being straight or whatever. It's the normativity of that. It's the claim that only those kind of people deserve to be families. Only those kind of people love their kids or can raise kids or can express love. She was a powerful voice and we're getting a pretty strong backlash against her this week from different right wing outlets. Let's talk about why the American right including the evangelicals we grew up with many Catholics including Kevin Roberts and J.D. Vance think this way. Why is it that if you can have families that diverge from the nuclear family

46:42of a straight man, a straight woman, a cis man, a cis woman and biological children. Why is it a threat to have a lesbian couple who are married and have children, a gay couple who are married and have children, a polycule that are raising their kids together. Maybe they adopt kids. Yeah. A single mom. A single dad. Like whatever. Why is that a threat? And I think what you're saying is look that doesn't diminish my life. It doesn't hurt me as a somebody who is straight and married and has biological children. So why would it hurt them? If I try to explain it from their view, what they're going to say is it hurts me because the nuclear family is the basic unit of society. It is not free individuals who make choices. It is the nuclear family. If you broke down society to its atoms, it's basic parts. You do not get

47:44individuals who have life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. You do not get people who get to choose how to live their lives and make free and unhindered choices about who they want to be. Nope. That's not what society is. Society is the nuclear family. And so if you're not part of a nuclear family, you are hurting society. So just that's the very basic argument. If you're not part of nuclear society, you're hurting society because you are taking the foundation of society out from underneath everything. And we cannot build upon the foundation if the foundation is not in place. So if you are a single woman who decides not to have children to get married, you're hurting us. That's how they that's what they mean when they say you're hurting us. I want to give three book recommendations and people, if you're listening, you can write these down and listen carefully. One is Sophie Bjork James, Bjork BJORK, Bjork James, the divine institution. And what she shows there

48:46is that the nuclear family became the divine institution for evangelicals and Catholics starting with the religious right and going forward. That for them, the divinity of humans came in the nuclear family. So if you diverse from that, if you're a woman who says, I'm not going to get married, if you're not straight, if you are somebody who is in favor of abortion some way, you are destroying the nuclear family. You're trespassing the divine institution. Therefore you are hurting all of us. After purity by Sarah Mosslinner will take you through how purity culture goes hand in hand with everything Dan Miller saying here about the nuclear family feminism women and so on. The last one is Chelsea Eben, EBIN, the radical mind. That book is so important because what Chelsea shows us there is that this is really the most important revolutionary aspect of the religious right, Jerry Falwell, Paul Wyrick, and it's the one that continues today. They are the ones that convinced

49:48Americans that the basis of society is the nuclear family. And so if you depart from that, you're a groomer, you're a pervert, you're a threat, and you're destroying America because a lot of you out there, I know I know I get these emails, I see what conference is, I see what events you're like, I don't get it, dude. Like who cares if two gay people get married, how does that hurt somebody? It's because they think that you're destroying the foundation of society. And what they want to argue is that this form of family has been the form of family forever. It's the basis for human civilization. It's the only way to have a flourishing, a flourishing public square. And this is a place where you can get conservative Catholics and evangelicals to agree. And so someone like Lourious Thinum is a common enemy of those traditional Catholics and those right wing evangelicals by and large disagree about a lot of things, theologically and socially. So some thoughts there, final thoughts here, and then we'll go to USPS. I think just a couple final thoughts is number one,

50:50the depth of insecurity that it brings, right? The depth of fear, I think is another piece of it. I think if somebody is not secure enough in their own family, unit or relationships or whatever that they can let other people be different, it's a signal, right? If you feel threatened by difference, we could talk about this in so many areas. You could talk about it in terms of race, you could talk about it in terms of class or economics, you could talk about it in terms of this. I think that that's something that we need to pay attention to, why the insecurity. And I think it's also a sense where I think it's a problem for the traditional family people that society hasn't simply collapsed as families have diversified and so forth, right? The apocalyptic things that they would say would happen if queer people could get married didn't happen. And all of these kinds of things. And so I think you sometimes get, they're just going to keep screaming louder and shriller and more intensely to create the sense of crisis, precisely because the crisis they've been predicting for decades hasn't happened. Kids have not all become terrible. The world hasn't

51:54fallen apart. Divorce rates among evangelicals and conservative Christians, like kind of match what they match everywhere else, all of those kinds of things so that they don't have any data or things to point you so they just become sort of louder and angrier and more sort of virulent in what they said. But they have to make it up. They have to tell you that go to downtown London, go to New York City, it's a hell, and it's like people from, you know, and then you go to New York City or like that was pretty cool at a good time. That was, yeah, yeah, go to Portland and it's like, well, actually food is really good and people were nice and everyone's riding a bike and okay. Yep. All right, let's go to the USPS. We've covered this, but I want to stay on it. I think Dan wants to stay on it because this is a really undercover thing that people need to know about. Those who are not political junkies need to know about. So as we talked about, this is from Boltzmag and they just have a great explainer on this. So I'm going to go through it quickly, Dan.

52:55Trump issued a sweeping executive order this spring to give the US Postal Service new authority to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that don't comply with the president's directives. What's really key here is understanding that what's Trump is trying to do is say, Dan Miller, you don't get your, we're not going to deliver your ballot to you as the US Postal Service because Massachusetts has not given the president and the administration a list of eligible voters and voter rolls and so on. So it's not about what happens when you send it in, Dan Miller. It's about you not getting it at all because Massachusetts has not done what Trump wants Massachusetts to do, right? Separately voting rights advocates worry that the new USPS rules on postmarking risk causing a surge in mail ballot rejections this fall. Now this one's really important. What happens now is that if you take something to the mail, it may not get postmarked to that day.

53:56So if a ballot needs to be postmarked by November 6th and you turn it in November 6th, like here's my ballot and they don't postmark it until November 7th, it will not count. Your vote will not be counted and it's gone. That's a problem. Let me continue. USPS no longer automatically postmarks mail on the day it's received. So this is what I just said. This matters greatly in states that require mail ballots or voter registration forms to be postmarked by a certain day to be valid. There's evidence from primaries held this year that the changes having an impact election offices are reporting a marked increase in ballots that are rejected because their postmark is late in Yakima County, Washington for instance, 5% of mail ballots cast for the August 4th primary or rejected this summer. So people, what do you need to do? You need to tell everyone you know and they need to you need to tell 10 friends and they need to tell 10 friends you have to get your ballots postmarked on time. Either that means sending in them in like

55:03three days early or demanding when you go to the post office in person that they postmarked at that day. Okay. And going to a post office versus like a drop box, right? Or a, you know, a blue mailbox or something like that that adds additional delays. So Joseph from Maryland asked about the Bolts magazine, it sounds like Trump wants the Postal Service to refuse to deliver some people's mail. How can a president do this? Is there any precedent? Many election professionals share your assessment and are loaned by the administration's claim that the Postal Service can refuse to deliver some ballots to individuals who are not on their list. Now for now, the federal judges agree, but there are problems here. One of the problems is that, sorry, let me pull something up. One of the problems is that there is a whistleblower complaint that has surfaced this week showing that the USPS is actually doing this despite the fact that they don't have the systems to do it and

56:05that the federal judges, a federal judge has prohibit them from doing it. So there is actually the USPS going along with Trump, even though judges are saying they should not. There was a hearing on this this week in light of the whistleblower complaint and so on and Judge Talwanne from your state, Massachusetts had a striking exchange with the legal representatives from Trump's government. What does the certification of the portal say, Talwanne asks? When Vellcheck, the representative from Trump's government, said he did not have the information in front of him and referred Judge Talwanne to the final rule, the judge pushed back that the world did not answer her question. What she's asking is like, do you have a portal available that will make sure that if states give you these lists, they will be able then to like ensure they know who's able to vote and the USPS will deliver the ballots to everybody who's on the list? Is it ready to go or not? Judge

57:09Talwanne asked. Vellcheck again pointed her to the government's brief. At that, Talwanne leaned back in her chair and said, okay, spurring laughter from the courtroom. We've been here for a week and you can't tell me the government is ready to go. The exchange came during a pivotal hearing over whether Talwanne should issue a preliminary injection blocking USPS's new male voting rule. Earlier in the hearing, she pressed Trump's lawyers on basic questions about the government's lawyers, I should say, about how states would upload voter names, addresses and barcodes. We're 60 days before the election and I have nothing from USPS on how this will happen. Talwanne gave D.U. J until 3 PM Thursday to get all this figured out. The government could not provide those details. She said she would assume the system was not finalized yet. The questions about the portal come days after a USPS whistleblower, who I just talked about, warned that the agency's implementation effort has been rushed slap dash and haphazard with new systems being built on

58:13an unusually compressed timeline. The takeaways, Dan, because we're going to run out of time are the government is, let me back up. The postal service seems to be doing what Trump wants, even though they're not prepared to and legally they should not. Two, they're not ready to do it. They don't have the things in place. The portals, the systems, the processes to make sure it all goes how it's supposed to go. Three, that's the point. Trump wants chaos. He wants a people, because that is better. If you don't want people to vote, if you don't want votes to count, if you want institutions who are supposed to help with the facilitation of votes being counted by way of mail or by way of other means, and those institutions are in chaos, you win as a wannabe autocrat. Chaos helps you. Disruption helps you. That's all you need. You don't need to have the

59:14portal ready. You don't need to be a fully prepared operating team who's ready to implement a really complex operating system. Nope. You need to be people who make it such that there is distrust in our elections, not sure if my vote counted, not sure if I turned it in on time, I didn't get it in the first place. That's all you want. This in addition to Tarrant County in Texas, closing 90 polling locations, there's one party who doesn't want people to vote in this country, and it's the Republicans, and they show you that over and over again. Thoughts on this before we go to reasons for hope. So just to pick up on one point, the goal was never for the portal to work to your point. It was never really to facilitate mailing ballots. Yes, the Trump administration wants to leverage states into turning over voter data, and they refuse to do that. They're trying to do this, but they don't want like mail in voting to happen. Despite the fact that Trump keeps voting by mail, that's just a separate thing. No surprise there. So it's not about making a system that will actually work. So if it doesn't work, that's great for them. As you say, there's no sign that

1:00:20even if they put this in place, the system is there. For my money, if I'm looking ahead at what will happen, I think the bigger risk, the more pragmatic issues coming into the midterms are the issue of fewer polling areas and drop areas, right? Four mail in ballots or drop ballots. They mail you your ballot where I live. I can get a mail in ballot, and I can go to my little courthouse downtown, and there's a voter ballot drop. I can put it in there. Fewer of those. Yep. Moving those all the way, as you've said, and the postmark issue. I think there's a good chance that the court injunctions hold, right? That this can't go into place in practice. Also in stores out lots and lots of states have just said like, even if we wanted to do this, there's not enough time. You didn't give us enough time. And so they're kind of just ignoring it. I think that piece may not be the big issue. I think the postmark issue for my money is the one that poses probably the greatest risk, or all the people that are going to vote, like they always

1:01:22have. Put it in the mailbox, like they always have. Drive downtown where they've always dropped it before on the way to school, or the way to work, or wherever they are, and the drop thing is gone. I don't even know where it is, and well, shit. And then it's sitting in their car the next day, because they couldn't even forget where to drop it off, or they thought that they mailed it in time, as you're saying, as the stories are saying, and it goes to a regional sorting center, and it's not postmarked until the next day. And they dropped it on election day, because it feels good to drop it on election day, right? I voted on election day, but it's not postmarked. I think that's the issue that I think is actually the biggest, most realistic threat in 2026, because it's the one that's kind of already there, already up and running. Courts aren't sort of weighing in in the same way that, no, you have to postmark it on the day that it's picked up. I think that's the issue. And we know, four to five percent of votes in a lot of places is an election. Oh, that's a lot. Right. We live in a place that we talk about red states and blue states and whatever, but a lot of those states are decided by two and three

1:02:23and four points, five percent of ballots being sent back. That's an election. Right. And so I think for me, that's the one that feels, this other thing is scary and it's bad, but I think it's not going to actually get sorted out to lack of the election. But for me, the postmark thing is the one that I think poses a really direct currently existing threat to 2026. All right. What's your reason for hope? My reason for hope is that with the Trump administration sowing doubts about vaccines and RFK, Jr., and everything that he does, and they have not issued new vaccine guidelines, this week a number of medical groups issued their own. They just kind of banded together and the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetrics and gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the infectious diseases society of America, and there may be others, they just band together and put out their own vaccine recommendations to kind of fill this gap

1:03:24that the government is leaving under RFK and Trump. And I thought that that was really cool to see that they're like, you know what? We're just going to tell people what they need to do to be healthy and protected, and we're not just going to worry about what the Trump administration is doing. So I found that to be very hopeful. This is going to sound weird. It may not, I don't know. Some of you may email me and be like, you know, Brad, that was a pretty bad reason for hope. But we've discussed this. I'm a basketball person and I really like basketball. There was a thing with the LA Clippers where they did some shady things with the salary cap and Kauai Leonard and those of you don't know about basketball, you don't care. What happened though this week is that there was a severe penalty placed on the billionaire owner of the Clippers Steve Balmer, who was like a number three or four employee at Microsoft and his worth tens of billions of dollars. Why is this a reason for hope? Well, he was suspended for the entire year. I mean, this is embarrassing humiliating stuff for a sports owner. He's not allowed to go to the arena,

1:04:28talk to the team, be part of anything. Every sports game of every time they always have that thing where they pan across the owner's box and show that and whatever and like, yeah, he can't even go there this year. Here's the old white guy who owns the team. As I follow this just as a basketball person, it struck me how strange it is to see a billionaire actually get punished. Like actually for an organization to come out and be like, you did something really wrong and you need to pay for that. When's the last time we saw that with a billionaire? I'm being serious. It feels like no matter what Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or anyone else does, they can just do whatever they want. I don't know if there's a reason for hope, but this feeling I have of like, yeah, Steve Balmer did something wrong and they punished him. I'd like to have that feeling more. I just will just say that. All right, y'all. Thanks for being here. Thanks for your support. Thanks for hanging with us. Come hang out on the American Caesar Book tour starts in in Portland September 16th and then I get to go see Dan Miller September 22nd at Amherst College.

1:05:31So be there. Boston is September 23rd, New York in on October 1st and so on. American Caesar comes out September 15th. If you haven't pre ordered yet, now is the time and just appreciate everybody's support and encouragement for this show and for everything we do here at Axis Moondy. We back with the Sunday interview. I got Robert Jones this Sunday about his new book Backslide. We'll be back next Tuesday and Wednesday with our normal programming and Friday with the right up. Thanks for being here, y'all. We'll catch you next time. Thanks Brad. All right, y'all. Just a reminder to go to groundnews.com slash swedge. That is groundnews.com slash swedge SWAJ to get 40% off their unlimited access vantage subscription. Make sure you use the

1:06:35link so they know I sent you.