Jonathan Metzl
speaker
134 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 12 Apr
Jonathan Metzl’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think that there's a very powerful narrative that says I'm the only
person that's going to protect you or I'm the only other party that's going to protect you.
So our politics vary broadly.
I mean, when I wrote Dying of Whiteness, it was before the first Trump presidency.
It was happening across the South.
And I was seeing people act in ways that I found
irrational or against what I thought were their own interests at the time.
But the narrative of I'm on your side against those other people is a very powerful message, and particularly when resources start to get taken away.
I think for me, part of the power of that narrative was people were in an austerity climate.
I mean, there wasn't enough money for the healthcare system and people were being told even before the first Trump presidency here in Tennessee, it's because of these immigrants who are pouring across the borders and you need to look down and block the immigrants.
But really the reason there wasn't resource in the system was because of the massive tax cuts that were going.
So all the money, all the resource that would have paid for roads and the healthcare system and schools that would have benefited most people was not, I just wanted to shout when I was doing the focus groups, you're being taught to look down, but really look up because the issue is,
the money in the system is going toward a very select few.
And so in that regard, it did foreshadow, I think, a lot of the tensions that were happening.
But I think the other important part of my research in Dying of Whiteness, but also in the gun book that I just finished,
is also that people are being told that these kind of tribal identities are a source of power that if we just stick together and we reject the the government that the democrats aren't going to take control and then they won't be able to do all these things for you and so it's not just
straight up racism.
Maybe I thought that at one time, but it's more that our politics really have created a system in which there's a price to pay for breaking with your tribe.
And so I'll just I'll never forget, like 2013, 2014, I'd ask people, Why are you rejecting your own health care?
And they said, Well, if I do it,
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