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Chapter 1: What is the main topic of Ta-Nehisi Coates' new column?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show a journalist and author and contributing editor at Vanity Fair, which just published his newest column, The Homeland is a War on America, the Blood and Soil Nationalism that killed Rene Good and Alex Preddy. It's time to ask you, Coates. How you doing, man?
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. How about you, Tim?
Well, you know, we're here. All right.
Chapter 2: How does the concept of 'homeland' shape political discourse?
We're living. So that's the best we can do. It was a great piece, man. I'm so appreciative of you coming back on. And the word homeland's been bugging me a lot. So you scratched an itch that I've had. And I guess let's just start.
Wait, I'm so sorry. Can I ask you why it's been bugging you? Sure.
Chapter 3: What historical context influences current identity politics?
Well, here's why. It was funny. I was reading the article. And you quoted Peggy Noonan. I did. Who I kind of hate now, but who I loved in 2002. And this was an article of hers from 2002 where she said, Homeland isn't really an American word. It's not something we used to say or say now. It has a vaguely Teutonic ring. V must help the Fuhrer protect the homeland.
Chapter 4: How does white supremacy manifest within government structures?
And that's like how I felt about it. That's how I felt about it. And I didn't feel that way. about the Department of Homeland Security during the 20 aughts. I should have in retrospect, but I didn't. But like the way they use it has drawn out that kind of German Teutonic sense for me in a way that's made me feel very uncomfortable. It's the blood and soil element of it. So that'd be my answer.
What about you?
No, I only asked you because I can't say I was either.
Chapter 5: What overlooked elements of the Civil Rights Movement are discussed?
I mean, I was in my 20s when they, you know, founded the Department of Homeland Security. But I certainly was not saying, wow, this sounds really, this sounds a little off, you know. And I probably did not have enough political awareness to understand that some of the problems that, you know, we're seeing today actually had their roots back then.
But what was interesting to me is that some people did. And some of them were people that you would suspect and some of them were people that, you know, you would not necessarily suspect either.
Yeah, I thought that was the interesting thing about the Peggy column that you referenced it is to me, it speaks to something that I think basically everyone would have agreed about in 2002 that the Trump supporters would disagree with now because they have to out of convenience, which is that like words matter, framing their carry with them some type of. you know, whether you want to or not.
They carry with them implications, you know, whether you want them to or not necessarily. And it feels like the fact that they gave it that name, the Department of Homeland Security, had these implications. You could kind of see some of it in the Bush and Obama years.
Chapter 6: How does Jared Kushner's vision for Gaza reflect broader issues?
I don't want to say you couldn't. The sort of rhetorical implications of it really fully bloomed in this past few years.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. And there are people like Russ Feingold, who I interviewed for the article, and Spencer Ackerman, who wrote this great, great history of the war on terror called Reign of Terror, which very much influenced this article, by the way, who would say that even then, the pivot to merging border security
with anti-terrorism, actually that there's a lot of, you know, roots of what's happening now in that, that it's not a mistake that you ended up in a Black, Muslim, immigrant, sometimes not immigrant, community, that that became the flashpoint.
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that Russ, that you referenced in the story that I think was super prescient, you look at now was that a lot of those who were responding to his concerns were saying, well, like we have, we're better than that. Like, you know, you're worried that this might happen, but the norms will protect us.
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Chapter 7: What critiques are made about the state of journalism today?
And he was saying at the time, well, we can't just rely on like norms protecting us. And like here we are today and literally DHS is signing warrants for themselves to beat down the door of people's houses. And the vice president is out there saying, well, we got a warrant because they're just checking their own boxes. And it's like, man, we really probably should have listened to Russ Feingold.
That interview was so good. And there were aspects of it that I actually, just because of the boundaries of the column, I couldn't get in there. And in this sense, I mean, I think he was of, you know, two minds. He was sincere, but he was of two minds in the sense that on the one hand, you know, he was suspicious of this notion that the norms will protect us.
But at the same time, one thing he said that I didn't get in the article was that against somebody, who is just determined, you know, to become a tyrant or determined to just violate, you know what I mean?
Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from past activism and its impact?
And who's elected. You can't really design a system that, you know, is foolproof. You know, because he was saying, you know, he had come from this space of thinking of the Constitution as this, you know, great genius document, you know, emanating out of the American people and all of this. But what he had taken over his years was that really is actually quite hard to design a system.
that is invulnerable to the kind of things that Trump is doing. Now, the Department of Homeland Security made it easier, I would say, but to make it completely, it's extremely hard to do. Some of this is not about rules, man.
What else was Russ saying? What's he up to right now? I just Googled it. He's 72. He is. At our current status, he could be the Democratic nominee next time. He'd be the youngest of the last three presidents if he won in 2028.
I don't know why more people don't talk to him. I mean, he was just so wise, and you know what I mean? He was so free. I mean, if we start at one place, because I didn't expect to talk about this whole thing about constitutionality and how he himself had changed, which was very, very interesting because he didn't go into the interview and say, ha, ha, ha, I was right.
You know, all these other people were wrong. I mean, you know, he told the truth about what happened. But then he said, listen, I'm just going to tell you, even I did not foresee it going this far. Like, you don't, like, paint it like I knew, like, Trump was going to happen. I did not. I did not.
And, you know, one of the stories that we did get in that article was that he talked about how – and I just – This is so sad to me, but it's true. He said, you know, as part of his duties as a senator every year, he would go to every county in Wisconsin and he would hold these town meetings. And he said, you know, sometimes people come out, they would disagree.
And, you know, sometimes those people would get booed by his supporters and he would tell his supporters, no, let him talk. And, you know, but it never really got nasty. And he said as soon as Obama won, before he was even sworn in, it immediately, immediately degraded. And I think It was very, very depressing about that.
And this is, I think, hard for a lot of us to say, but those eight years really broke something in some portion of this country. And I think we're still under it.
We got to track him down. He might be on the podcast.
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