Ep. 01 – Interdependence, Trump Flags, and Taylor Swift

The first episode of our new call-in show is here, and we have two callers who seemed to be totally unrelated: a new rancher in Texas, and a Swiftie with Cerebral Palsy in New York.

But (get your red string and your tinfoil hat) everything is connected! Especially us. 

That’s easy to forget when we’re constantly pushed to see each other as the enemy, and something we need to remember now more than ever. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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Um, how are you? Most of us say fine or good, but obviously it’s not always fine.

And sometimes it’s not even that good. This is a podcast that gives people the space to be honest about how they really feel. It’s a place to talk about life, the good, the bad, the awkward, the complicated.

I’m Nora McInerny. And this is Thanks For Asking. What do Taylor Swift lyrics, Trump flags, and cerebral palsy have in common?

Well, thanks for asking. We’re going to talk about it. It’s the year 2025 and things are not great.

The wealth gap is widening to widths we never thought possible. We have sorted each other into us and them, picked teams and retreated into our respective corners. Us vs.

them is Democrat vs. Republican, right vs. left, right vs.

wrong, urban vs. rural. There are and always have been countless ways to slice and dice us up, to divide us, and we are happy to do it.

And as a result, the social fabric feels like it is in tatters. And, though the horrors persist, somehow, so do we. We aren’t thriving, but we are surviving, and that’s something.

It is very American to believe that you are exceptional and also the exception. It is very American to believe that you are independent, you don’t need anybody at all. And it is very American to be very wrong about both of those things.

Because like it or not, we do need each other. Our fates are all entwined. Even with the people that we dislike, the people that we despise, the people we want nothing to do with.

To quote one of the greatest action movies of all time, Bad Boys, we ride together, we die together. Quite literally.

Today on Thanks For Asking, we have two very different callers calling in about two things that sound and seemed very, very different until I had the conversations and realized, Oh my gosh, we’re talking about the same thing.

These are topics that are unexpectedly, surprisingly, and insert a third word here, very connected. First, we’re taking a call from Texas.

I wanted you to call specifically because I kind of want you to just rant, you know, I want to be like, I want to be the outlet for you because you also you have a very, I don’t want to say unique, but you do have like a very specific space in

Yeah.

And that’s the thing. I so OK, so I grew up in rural Texas till I was 15. And then at 15, I moved to the city, but still in Texas.

And it’s Amarillo. So like only people in Texas think of Amarillo as a city. Everyone else is like, it’s Amarillo.

Like it’s a George Strait song. But it is a city, as in it has diverse communities and cultures. And it was a culture shock for me.

That’s when I learned that I was Mexican. All the people that I met were like, you’re not white. And I was like, what?

What are you talking about? You know, I didn’t think I was white, but I thought I was just small town Texan. I thought like that’s just like a saying, like that’s its own race or whatever.

But it gave me great experience. And understanding how city people think of rural people. And the funny thing about rural Texans is that if you live in town, you still don’t consider yourself living the country life.

Whereas if you live in the city, anyone who lives in a small town is a country bumpkin, you know? So it’s weird that rural people don’t see themselves that way either.

So I did have that thinking after living in the city for most of all my adult life that rural America was white, male, racist, and uneducated, which is a very nice way of saying stupid. And then I moved out here.

And it’s so weird because when I moved out here, I was in this space online where I would not have ever had a conversation with anyone who waved a Trump flag.

I would have seen the Trump sticker on their F250, and I would have just assumed a bunch of stuff about them and a bunch of shit, that they were racist and that they would be rude to me or unkind or hate me.

And then I actually got offline, wild move, honestly, stepped outside and started talking to these people. People who like online, they never would have talked to you. And a lot of them know nothing about internet life.

They have no idea about internet lingo.

They might know some slang from their kids or grandkids, but for the most part, one of my dear friends, he’s become one of my dear friends, just barely switched his flip phone to a smartphone like two weeks ago.

Bless him, bless him.

Yeah, so they have no idea about the internet. Right, exactly. I mean, I was so disappointed when he, you know, pulled this iPhone out of his pocket.

I was like, Jeff, what the fuck is that?

You know, not you too. Not you, Jeff, you’re my last hope.

But and now, so of course, he’s addicted to YouTube, but you know how it is, like if you get off Instagram for a month and you come back, you don’t know what’s happening. It’s a whole other world. A month in online world is 27,000 years.

You don’t know what’s happening. You don’t know what people are ranting about. You don’t know what the latest fad word is, like oligarchy now, right today.

Everyone’s, goodness. But so I started talking to people who in the online world, I would have dismissed as non-human. Honestly, that’s what it was.

I could have come up with the 40 million reasons on why I had this assumption. I could have come up with a million examples of how online, this person, how this group of people were the worst, right?

Which is a very polite way of dismissing someone’s humanity. Because you just put them in this group, you assume all this stuff and you’re like, they’re not worth my time.

When you live in a small town of 1,100 people, you kind of have to see them as human beings because they’re the only people to talk to, unless you just want to spend your whole life talking to a cow.

That sounds really nice to me, actually.

It does, until you realize, the cow doesn’t care at all about you. You think she does, but she does not at all care.

She doesn’t care.

No, she doesn’t care if you over die. She just doesn’t, except for how she’s going to get her hay.

But anyway, Thanks For Asking is a podcast about life, about all kinds of things. We take listener calls, we read books, we do all kinds of stuff because life is complicated and so are people.

You can get full episodes of Thanks For Asking on my Substack, which is linked in the description.

I started going to town, I started talking to these people, and the more I talked to people who lived in my community, the more I realized that even in the Trump flag wearing group of people, there is diversity.

There are different opinions about telling your pastures, not telling your pastures. Everyone agrees on the cattle, like cattle ranchers are getting sold, and it’s all because the greedy rich man wants to get greedy and rich.

And I’m like, that’s called socialism. Like you’re actually saying the same things. And so the more I started talking to people and being like, well, yeah, because they would call me the commie.

And you know, because also the other side, you know, like I would say, I think AOC is actually kind of smart 90% of the time. Even when she’s wrong, even when I disagree with her, I think she comes there from an intelligent point of view.

Like it’s not a hatred of a certain group of people. And then they would just like be like, oh, AOC, the devil. And like I would just say these things that they had never heard her say.

And I was like, don’t you agree with that? And they’d be like, well, yeah, I actually do.

And I’m like, and then the thing is, is a lot of people watch Bernie Sanders on Joe Rogan and saw how they agreed with him about a lot of things, the cost of medicine, the price of land, the price of beef and and all this and that.

So basically, I just started getting to know all these people who I literally thought I was going to hate like moving here. And then I found our new mayor’s daughter and her wife are ranching out here. So there’s queer ranchers and farmers.

There’s and I talked to her about, you know, a bunch of stuff. And she said when they first moved out here, they were worried about their safety. And then they got here and it’s been nothing but kindness.

So I just started thinking like there’s so many. I mean, there’s just so people are complex. And when we hate each other, it’s for the benefit of only one group of people.

And that’s the people who are exploiting our labor and our life and our cultures and our, you know, because and our fear to like make them to like further the stratification.

It’s like, yeah, I see this too. And even if you don’t live in a rural place, you have to remember like how interconnected we are. Like our fates are tied together like it or not.

You know, you don’t want to fund public school. Well, guess what? That is our future leaders.

That is our future, you know, electorate. Like that’s going to affect all of us like it or not.

You know, like all of these systems are put in place like for one thing, and that is to make the rich richer. And so that includes like, you know, the police system. And the justice system.

And the school system. And all of these systems that are meant to, you know, prepare people for, to prepare people for a certain way of life. Of going into work at eight in the morning and getting off, blah, blah, blah.

And then working overtime, which is homework. And, you know, it’s all this grooming for a certain, you know, life that you’re going to be able to be exploited for your labor. And it’s all normal.

It’s normalized from a young age. It’s like, how do you change all of those things without knowing people who you disagree with?

Yeah, I think you had said something before online. And I always love when you get back on because you say something really that truly like it always challenges my way of thinking. I’m like, oh yeah, I do need that too.

But you had said something too about I think after the election, people were shocked that the Republican Party captured so many Latino votes. And you said like, do you not know? Do you not know what happens at the border?

Like already? Like under Joe Biden?

Like under Obama?

It’s not changed. It has not changed under any of those people. What has changed is how people care about it.

And I said this before, I said this in 20, whatever the last dumb election was, and people were like, no, you can’t vote for Trump because the border. And I’m like, y’all don’t care about the border unless Trump is the president.

So maybe if he won, we could actually fix it instead of thinking, oh, I voted for a Democrat. Therefore, that’s all I need to do.

Because and not just that, but not just fixing the detention centers, which we, you know, most people, if they actually saw what was happening in those detention centers would say, this is inhumane. This is not, this is unacceptable.

I think that people who vote, no matter how they vote, I think when you see it as a human being, you realize it’s unacceptable.

The problem is too though, on the flip side, people who vote Democrat thinking that the dangers of living in a border town are blown up. I don’t know, I don’t live in a border town.

So, you know, the right thing to do would be to let people in a border town tell you. You live in a border town, you voted Democrat, every other thing, but you voted for Trump, let’s talk about it. You know?

Yeah.

Wild concept.

I saw this white woman on TikTok just rant about how the Latinos who voted for Trump in Texas should realize that their families all have a house being made for them in detention centers. And she was like, I’m your friendly progressive.

I was like, that’s not very progressive thinking lady. Let’s unpack this, right? And I just thought to myself, and then she said, I have to speak for the voiceless.

And I’m like, we’re not voiceless. We still live here.

We’re here.

You know, indigenous people exist. We exist. Like we’re here.

You don’t have to speak for us. Like ask us, because we also disagree in the Latino community. We disagree on calling ourselves Latinx or Latino or what are we calling ourselves, you know?

But I think it’s important to know what’s happening in border towns because it isn’t all just people are coming across the border and it’s sunshine and lollipops and roses and everyone’s just handing them clothes and food and they’re all getting along. Like there’s serious bad stuff happening.

Along with the inhumane treatment of immigrants by our government. So it’s like it’s the whole thing, right? And no one talks about the whole thing.

You get this piece or that piece depending on who’s running for what, you know?

Yeah, we do a lot of we do so many inhumane things as standard practice in America. And it’s hard because you really are raised in America to see us as the good guys.

You know, like we’re going to swoop into a world war and we’re going to win it for you. You know, like, oh, well, we only joined World War II because they brought it to us in a place that was not a state.

We were colonizing and then forced them to be a state. So there’s a lot, you know, and like seeing, you know, just there’s there’s like the war industrial complex. There is like the prison industrial complex.

There is the medical industrial complex. And like those things don’t change dramatically from one presidency to another. I think this week, though, like the concern is like, will we even have a democracy?

Because now there are people in charge who truly want to codify the destruction of our government.

But my thing is that that has always been true. And people of color have always known that that’s true of this country.

Like the democracy has been fake since the beginning, since the words, all men are created equal, were written by men who owned other human beings.

Yeah, with an asterisk that said, I mean, some. When we say all, we do mean some. And-

And ones who didn’t knew that they did and accepted it as part of the way things are.

You know what I’m saying?

So it’s like, so that whole, like, let’s look the other way at the atrocities while we keep pushing this line that everything is going to be good and America is great and America, this American and sexualism has always been pushed while ignoring the

inhumanity of Americans. You know what I’m saying? And this is my thing. People, I just I just thought people were so aghast at Latinos for voting for Trump as if voting for Kamala Harris wasn’t also voting for someone who supported a genocide.

Do you know what I mean? Like the same with you. Me too.

The same way we ignored that and voted for her. People ignored Trump’s racism, for lack of a better word, because they thought, well, in a good economy, my family can survive. And like, that’s really all we voted for.

Everyone voted for which one of these horrible choices. And am I going to have the best chance of surviving in? Yeah, because we no longer think of a community or collectively.

We think of ourselves. And that’s the thing that people don’t understand about rural communities and maybe I’m, and maybe I’m just really lucky and I came to a really good one.

But there is no, when I asked for help with my cows, everyone knows I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. And they don’t go like, you’re fucking idiot. You city girl, blah, blah, blah.

They come out and help and they explain things to me and they teach me and I learn from them and they don’t ask me how I voted. Well, most of them already know because obviously I can’t shut up.

But, you know, I’ve learned how to state my opinions though, respectfully. And I’ll tell you another thing that’s really freaking wild to me. I am more accepted and tolerated.

I don’t want to say tolerated. I’m more accepted and listen to and have freer space to state my opinion among a bunch of Trump flag wearing white men Republicans than I do online and liberal or leftist circles.

I believe it.

I absolutely love when it’s like a white woman explaining to me about racism and why my opinion is wrong, because obviously I’m privileged and I’m just like, you don’t actually believe what you’re saying when you, you know, or it’s easy to believe

And I have been that person, a chronically online person, who believes that like popping off on the internet is like changing the world when it isn’t, if anything, like being reprimanded, shamed, like further entrenches people into what they believe.

It’s like a defensive thing. And, you know, if you treat everything like a fight, like you’re going to get a fight. Yeah.

And then the people are going to retreat into circles on the internet where everyone does agree with them.

And then what does that leave us? Everyone just believes that they’re right because I don’t know, two thousand other followers believe that they’re right or tell them yay or high five or whatever.

And, you know, I’ll tell you another thing like the chief of police here in Florence, he just left. But he was the coolest, nicest, caring person ever. One day we were out somewhere eating dinner and he was there grabbing some to go.

And I told him, I was like, you know, I don’t really like cops. And he’s like, why not? And so I was telling him, like, you know, after George Floyd and blah, blah, blah, of course, I went on that whole thing.

And he was like, I wouldn’t like them either. If that’s all I saw. Like, I totally get that.

But if you have any problems with any of my officers, you call me and give me a cell phone number.

Like, just the nicest can and to me it’s like, you know how much change we could make if we supported police officers who were that type of person, who were the type of person that sees why people don’t trust the police and goes out of their way to

try to restore a little bit of that trust, you know? And I think, I think we would get so much further than tearing down is all I’m saying, you know?

I think when I sit at the bar and I talk to someone who has been a cattle rancher his entire life since he was five years old, and has never even mentioned the words, you know, I think maybe you’re right.

I agree with some leftist things like that is how we change.

We don’t, or again, with my friends and her fiancee, that, you know, these people who say the most awful things about gay people online, and then they walk into their coffee shop and tell them hi, and give them a hug and see them as something.

And I can totally get that. The reason why I don’t, the reason why I’m not no longer thinking of myself is like, accepting these homophobic people is because I started realizing that I was dehumanizing Trump supporters. So they dehumanize gay people.

But then when you see them face to face, you realize, oh, this is a whole, you know, well, a whole person, not just this one thing about them. And so that doesn’t make me any better than them. Because I do it too, to all kinds of people.

Like, that’s another reason why I’ve tried to stop saying, like, white people this and white people that. Because, well, first of all, my husband’s white. So it makes it a little, it makes it a little strange around here.

He’s like, what?

You’re like, what?

Um, it’s hard.

It’s so hard for me. But I have made a conscious effort to stop saying stuff like that and being like, and or even saying like, oh, this, like this person just dismissing this human being because they have 35 bad opinions about things.

You know what I mean? I start saying I don’t like this opinion from this person, not I don’t like this whole person because I don’t know this whole person.

Do you think also that there’s like a correlation between how empathetic you can be with someone else and how empathetic you can be with yourself?

Because even what you just said is something that my therapist has been working on with me, where it’s like instead of using blanket statements with myself, like, oh, I’m the worst. I’m always says it’s like, oh, a part of me feels this way.

A part of me is like this. A part of me sometimes does this because no one is all one thing. And that means no one is all one thing.

Even the people that we disagree with on things that we hold so dear and so sacred to us. Yes. And I think the least tolerant I’ve ever been has been when I was very, very intolerant with my own shortcomings, too.

It’s like another sort of form of perfectionism that is just like, again, it’s just like not helpful. It’s just not helpful.

And so it’s like I almost want to issue like a blanket apology to like anybody who like caught a stray from me at some point, you know, about whatever. Because, you know, I know for a fact I’ve done that. I definitely have.

That was a little, that’s a little excerpt from Thanks For Asking.