In this episode, Grace and Katelyn discuss the psychological underpinnings of political beliefs. They delve into whether innate tendencies or experiences shape our political views, with personal anecdotes illustrating how economic circumstances and family dynamics can influence one's political evolution. The conversation also touches on the generational differences in political engagement and the potential for understanding and dialogue across ideological divides.

00:00 Kicking Off with Vacation Plans and Unplugging from Politics

00:22 Reflecting on Historical Political Shifts and Personal Insights

01:27 Exploring the Psychology Behind Political Beliefs and Aging

02:39 Personal Anecdotes on Political Shifts Within Families

03:43 The Influence of Historical Figures and Events on Modern Politics

08:09 Understanding the Impact of Education and Community on Political Views

09:15 Navigating Political Conversations in a Divided Society

14:42 Generational Perspectives on Politics and the Future

22:59 The Role of Personal Experiences in Shaping Political Ideologies

27:40 Closing Thoughts and a Dive into Pop Culture

Copyright 2024 Grace Cowan

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Hi Katelyn. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you this week? I'm going on vacation next week and I'm not taking anything at all having to do with politics. I'm going to totally unplug.

Grace, I want a full report when you get back as to whether or not you were able to stick to that.

Yeah, no Twitter, no TikTok. But I think that sort of leads us into our reflection today of the piece that I did on Wednesday because I think it, it speaks to what we're instinctively attracted to in media, like what sparks us, what from our core self creates our political values.

Your episode on Wednesday was really informative. I know I've learned that stuff before, particularly starting at the Civil War. I think I knew maybe less about the, FDR switch, but it was so fascinating to me.

And I'm writing a piece on Phyllis Schlafly right now. Oh my goodness. She is something. And then we also have Marjorie Spruill who wrote the book Divided We Stand basically about the 1977 weekend in Texas that upended the ERA and Phyllis Schlafly had the counter event.

And the ERA, that to me is something that I also don't understand why I didn't learn about that in high school. Did you? Do you remember anyone talking about that? I can't wait to share that with everyone, but why I like to read the history a little bit about it is because I love to understand the psychology of how we vote.

Whether or not you as a human, the way that you're born tend toward being more conservative or you tend toward being more progressive and not using those terms in political sense, but your perception of the world around you, the thing that really stood out was that conservative minds tend more. To react differently to fear.

And that was like a huge aha moment for me. And it makes sense that as you get older, you become more fearful because you're not socially as active facing the end of life a little bit more. There are all these things that are closing in around you. And that gives you a somewhat more fearful outlook on life.

And that's when people tend to become very conservative.

Theoretically, you've worked your way up in your career, you're making more money, you have a house, you've got more financial responsibilities. So there's a fear of losing your status and thus the life that you've built for yourself. Listening to your episode, I Unlocked a core memory of a conversation I had with my father when I was a teenager, because he and my mom and quite frankly, myself grew up, I would say lower middle class.

And there were weeks where we were robbing Peter to pay Paul. And I know my parents grew up that way as well. And so it comes as no surprise. I think that they were Democrats, both of them. And as my dad got older and started to earn more money and has seen more Title started to become quote unquote, more important within the structure.

And he had a Republican boss. He started to lean more Republican. And I remember one night at the dinner table, we were conversing and things that I was saying that normally he would have doubled down and agreed upon. He started pushing back on me and I looked at him and I was like, Oh, so you're rich.

Now you're a Republican. And of course that was super disrespectful, but. It shocked me that I was watching him transition from what he had taught me to be to a Republican. And I couldn't believe that we were having that conversation.

And I think it's fascinating too, on the history from a business perspective, that those Northern industrialists needed the government money to get railroads and all of these big corporations happening.

And then because of the war, they made tons of money providing. War necessities and they were not hardcore abolitionists, but the abolitionists fell under that party because that was the party that was fighting against the South who were the farmers, the agricultural businessmen. Who didn't want the government messing with what they had already established in large amounts of money provided by free labor.

The flip flop when the Northern Industrials had set their companies up, there's an Elon Musk component in here too. Elon Musk used to be like a really progressive guy when he needed tons of government money to start his businesses. He's back off. Leave me alone. Free speech. Conservative. Yeah.

Elon Musk is an interesting character given the fact that he and his family made most of their money under the apartheid era in South Africa.

Oh, I forgot about that too. Yeah.

South Africans don't necessarily have the most positive outlook on Mr. Elon Musk. It's funny that the world outside of South Africa looks at him as more progressive earlier Ultimately, if you just look at him at face value, he was,

I envisioned him getting really paranoid late in life and living in a one room movie theater and just tweeting stuff out all the time.

Our generations, Howard Hughes,

Howard Hughes, the one that DiCaprio played the pilot guy.

Yes, that's exactly right. And he was like one of the wealthiest men in the country. And he was borderline genius, borderline. Insane person lived literally in a one room, didn't want anyone near him. He was afraid of disease and germs.

And I digress back to the conservative and progressive. I also have been really hyper focused on lately terminology. And like last week we talked about, you can say the word taxpayer and that's an honorable word. But if you say you pay taxes, that has an ick to it. And this goes back to the story you just told about your dad, which I imagine that was probably Reagan era and the eighties really was the undoing of all of those FDR policies.

As soon as FDR started implementing those policies, conservatives freaked out and were like, this is socialism. And then in the eighties, there was this huge backlash against all of those. And really it was how Reagan used terminology to simplify. Really complicated things. And my parents were not political at all.

I had no idea what their policy beliefs were in any way. Like it never came up, but I do remember the one thing my dad said to me is when rich people are richer, everyone does better. And that is the fundamental of trickle down economics. That was my take on politics until I was like 28.

What about 28? Were you like during a political election at 28 or something?

No. And actually the funny thing is when I was in high school, I think my junior year, Ms. Watkins class, we had to volunteer for a political campaign. You didn't have to go one party or the other. It could be anyone. And there were no real pieces around what you had to do for that campaign.

You just had to volunteer. So my family knew this guy that was running for judge and he was a Republican. I grew up in Cincinnati and Ohio. They elect their judges through public voting. And so I volunteered for his campaign. I have no idea what he stood for. I got no information. I knew nothing about him.

Not one bit. But I knew that I wanted him to win because I was volunteering for his campaign. I don't think that's

outside of the realm of reality for most people when they are volunteering or voting for somebody. I think you go to the polls to this day and you're like looking at the school board candidates or the whatever purveyor of water and sanitation.

And you're voting for them and you're like, I don't know, I'll just, this name looks interesting. I'll vote for that person.

Yeah. The thing that I always go back to when it comes to schools and listening to parents, schools are indoctrinating kids. I went to the equivalent in Cincinnati of a magnet school.

They called it a college prep school. They really made you think. You had to take three years of Latin. They had all these requirements outside of Traditional public school, and it was the most diverse school in the city, which was also really fantastic because it got me out of my shell of this little town that I'd grown up in, and it was an eye opener.

And I think it literally changed my perspective on the world because of the people that I was surrounded by. I don't remember anyone pushing any agenda on me at all. I had really great teachers. I feel like I had a really good public school education.

It sounds like you were allowed to be curious because you surrounded yourself with people who had very different experiences than you.

And that's not maybe intentional because you were young and it was the school your parents had you go to. But I think when we talk about. the progressive conservative mindset over the last 40 years, how do you get to a place where we can have conversations with people who disagree with us and disagree with us vehemently?

Because I think a lot of people, for instance, on the progressive side, look at that James Baldwin quote, and I'm not going to quote it perfectly, but it says something to the effect of we can be friends and disagree until our disagreement represents my oppression. And so a lot of progressives sit in what they consider that moral fortitude.

And there are a lot of people listening to this podcast that probably think, yeah, of course, I don't want to be friends with somebody who doesn't see me as an equal. And on the conservative side, they're like, it's not that I don't see you as an equal, it's we're just not the same. And I don't believe. in what you do.

My religion tells me that what you're doing is inappropriate and you're not going to go to heaven. And so I don't want to live in a country where people don't have the same standard and morals as me. And when that happens in a family, how you get to a place where you can have a dinner and not blow up.

In prepping for this today, I read an article by this woman named Monica Guzman and she wrote a book called I Never Thought of It That Way. And it really is a book that discusses with so much division in our world. It can be really hard to talk to others with opposing views, but the reality is we have to in order for us to solve this true chaos we're living in.

And she outlines her own family and her father actually asked, are we going to get to a place someday where you don't bring my grandchildren around because we don't agree? And I think that's incredibly important to think about.

yeah, my family does a trip every summer where we all rent one house and all 30 of us stay in the same house together for a week at a lake.

And I can't begin to tell you the rainbow of differences that everyone believes in politically. And to this day, knock on wood, we've never had a political fight breakout, even though we all know each other have very different views. And I think it's because one, we all have a shared sense of who we are as a family.

And I think a lot of families lose that over time. But my grandmother was really intent on making sure That all of her children and her grandchildren really understood who we were as a family. And it's built around sports. All of her boys were college athletes. One was professional. Almost every one of my cousins has played sports.

Many have gone on to play in college. There's this other piece where we just all make fun of each other and tell the same really dumb, funny stories of the past. That's everyone's connection. And it really never veers, or at least we don't let it veer into the political. I think I can understand my dad's beliefs on politics a little bit better in some ways.

But it's because I know that we come from the same shared foundation. I know that he cares about people the way that I do. He just might get to caring for those people in a different way politically.

Do you think you would ever have a conversation with your family about politics?

There are certain members of my family, like my one cousin, she lives in a very conservative part of Northern Kentucky, surrounded by very conservative people.

And I think She had a little bit of a transition of how vocabulary and politics affects outcomes because one of her good friends ran for school board. Her friend had been working with the schools and my cousin had watched her do all of these things and knew that she understood the schools from the bottom up.

And this woman that was a Moms for Liberty candidate came in and went after her that she was going to indoctrinate the kids and used all of those words. That was 100 percent not her agenda. And the moms for liberty candidate one. And I think that there are experiences like that, that people have in real time where they're like, wait a minute, this is so wrong.

What's happening in what they're claiming is happening, isn't actually happening. And I have kids in that school and I'm seeing that it's not happening. Yet this sense of fear people are able to tap into has taken over what reality is.

Agreed. And if you look at Ellen, I think her last name is Petrie. I don't know how to pronounce it.

She's a neuroscientist and she also has a book called The Happiness Hack. What she says is that your brain likes to stay efficient, right? And take shortcuts. If you become entrenched in certain beliefs, your brain just keeps moving. And so if your cousin lives in an area that's mostly conservative, or if you're from New York and it's mostly liberal, you just hear things and you're like, yeah, of course you have reactive thinking and you don't really question anymore.

Where did that belief come from? Why do I think that? When the Moms for Liberty candidate shows up. Initially, you probably were like, I believe that. And then after a while, when things start to push that envelope, it's not normal for most people to really question why do I believe that? And so that's how we see that psychology of people just accepting things that seem a little outlandish because they're not questioning because our brains don't work like that.

That's right. Is following generationally how people vote, like we said earlier, as you get older, people tend to become more conservative. I'm Gen X. We are still for the most part party affiliated. All of the people Gen X and older data wise, pretty attached. To one party or the other, but the people coming after us, the millennials, Gen Z and the Igen, they have no party affiliation because they've grown up in this total chaos of politics.

They have also gotten so much more information politically than any of my generation ever did. The only place I ever saw politics, if there was any, was on the news. I was not inundated with it over and over because of the iPads and the phones and all the things. They experience it on such a different level.

They're not aligned with any of the parties. They're aligned with issues. I am a believer that a lot of the gun issues will be resolved in the coming years because The people that are starting to get into Congress that make those laws are now the kids that grew up only knowing shooter drills at school, right?

They are the people that had to experience the fear of those things over and over again as children, and that is buried deep, deep inside of them. That will then become their primary focus. I think that it's been very visible in the Israeli Gazan conflict, the younger generations. I have a very different perspective than the older generations, and it's not party affiliated. It's age affiliated.

Do you think that there's a different sense of curiosity in age as well?

Yes, I absolutely would say that because I think when you're younger, you are definitely way more open to trying new things. New things because you haven't experienced certain outcomes yet. So like you may go on a cruise when you're 20 and you throw up the whole time and it's the worst experience of your life.

And so for the rest of your life, you're like, I'm never going on a cruise again. One experience changes the outcome or your decision making as you get older. I also think technology and exposure is a huge impact on experience when our grandparents and our parents and us were younger, you only had this one way for the rest of the world to infiltrate your life.

And that was TV and your radio through the filter of other people. But now you have access. to people everywhere in the world all the time at your fingertips. And so I think that they're just, it's just such a different life concept that we can't even imagine having had access to the enormity of the internet that our kids have had.

The access is still a viewer's perspective. I don't think the younger generation has any more experience. Experience with different people than we did necessarily. I think you can see different clips or memes or thoughts, but even the algorithm builds towards what you're interested in.

And this goes back to what you were saying earlier is the conservatives need to limit the unknown. They like things a little bit more buttoned up and they like to know the outcome or they like to have more of a structured plan. And one of the ways that happens is through a power structure. It's one leader, then followers underneath. Whereas. A progressive mindset is more, let's think about this as a community rather than top down.

That is very evident right now in the conservative party mindset. They're hyper focused on family, dad's in charge, then mom, and even this, the Christian nationalism stuff is like God, father, mother, children. There's always a very strict structure versus the progressive mindset. Mom, dad, and kids are all equal and parents ultimately have the final say when kids are little, but we're going to talk through all of those things.

It's literally a foundational difference in how you view a family structure.

And now can those two families get together and have dinner together? Are we at a place where that's possible?

But that's the thing they always have, like we always have from the very beginning. I mean, yeah. Conservative and progressive are not political parties.

Neither one of those words is positive or negative. And there's a quote that I love that says progress is our most important product, learning, and then taking those insights and continuing to move forward. And the only way you can do that is to have equal balance of conservatives and progressives.

I fundamentally agree with you because I'm a Zennial.

I was born just in between that Gen X and Millennial. I do not think younger generations agree. I think that because they have been fed information that makes them feel good all the time because they agree with it, the algorithm, I don't think that there is as much openness to talking to people who don't don't agree based on how they experienced the world because it is their experience and no one can tell them that their experience is wrong.

They're still experiencing the world through a kid's view. Your brain isn't fully developed until you're 25. And that's why I said earlier, I didn't get politically motivated until I was 28 because that's the year that I started a business and I started seeing things from like action versus reaction and.

Preparation versus non prep, you know, there were all of these ways that I was like, Oh, this is what I actually believe. But prior to that, I didn't have to think about those things. I just was going through life, trying to experience everything that I could. And then once I had to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

That's when I started looking at how my vote matters and like politically what affected my business, I was a concert promoter, so I had to speak to town councils all the time and get permits and all these things utilizing government services. And I started to see how government actually worked and affected your daily life.

It took my brain that long to really make that action reaction connection realistic. And so to your point, like the kids that are growing up now. They're like, everybody thinks like I do because they don't see from their social media feed that there are people that don't think like they do to your point.

That's where it's going to be really fascinating to see that generation come into adulthood and realize that when they get to the office, they're Not everybody's going to agree with you that you should have pancake Thursday breakfast. That they're like, no, I want to actually work at 8am. I don't want to sit in a conference room and eat pancakes.

You hear people in business right now that are my age and above say these kids, they don't know how to work. And they, I actually think there's going to be a great movement that they will bring about that is balancing work home life. That is meeting needs in ways that our generation was like, you just grind through it and you deal and you move on and you don't talk about it. I think our country will get a little bit more humane.

Oh, agree. Start to take over. Listen, having managed multiple people in the Gen Z generation over the last. 10 years. I can say with total clarity, they are some of the most highly emotional people at work, which for us older generations can be really hard.

I had someone ask me if they wanted to schedule some time to cry together, but I will say this. I find that they are also incredibly hard working and when they believe in what they're doing, they will match if not exceed anything I ever did at their age. So I can understand the difficulties around finding the balance between this is my job.

This is not a therapy session. But also they believe so much in what they're doing. And I love that about this generation.

And they are not afraid to ask questions

from a psychology perspective. I don't think people are born conservative or progressive. I totally think it's a nurture thing. And with that wonder how.

Childhood experiences, i. e. abuse pushes people to be either more conservative or more progressive or socioeconomic status. Or if you went to bed hungry, are you more likely to be conservative or progressive? If you experienced physical violence as a child, are you more likely to be conservative or progressive?

And I think that it would be really interesting to see how that influences. Your political ideology over time.

I don't want to give the wrong impression of how I'm saying this conservative and progressive as it applies to politics. I do not think you're born with, I a hundred percent think that grows over time, but I think that people with certain traits, like there are children when you are at the playground that you see are a little bit more timid.

I think that's Then the rest of the kids, and those are kids that are born with a little bit more of a fear. The things that conservative politics represents attract more people that are naturally born with a little bit more fear than others. And that's not to say. That they can't see past that and they align with progressive political views.

But I think that we're all innately born either like a front and center person who always wants to be at the front of the line or someone that's a little bit more hesitant. And those traits align more with one way or the other.

Because I think about like financial stability, for instance, right? We both talked about the fact that we grew up in lower income households.

And for me, I think that there was nothing that drove me more to be at the forefront of every line to win every interview for a job application than the fear of not being financially stable. How does your experience lean into how you act in this world?

But I would also say who you were as a toddler. Like if you go back and ask your mom, when she dropped you off at the playground, were you the kid that like ran up to the other kids and said, Hey, let's play. Or were you the kid that was like, I'm going to stand back and watch everybody else play until somebody comes up to me and says, Can you come and play in the sandbox just you and me?

I think my mom started going to therapy as soon as I started walking because I never held her hand again and she still talks about it and I'm almost 40. She was devastated that the cuddles ended as soon as I started walking.

And then as you grow up, your parents influence your moral systems, right? This is who we are as a family. This is our moral system. Your family, your extended family, your neighbors, your community, you. your church, that is all tied to your individual identity. So you've got like all of these things compiling into one. Those things lead you either to a more conservative outlook on life or a progressive outlook on life. I've really gone deep here, Katelyn.

I know. I love it. I could talk about this stuff all day.

Same. But there actually is one thing, and this doesn't really have to do with anything super deep or big or whatever, but this is my whole nother thing this week. This quote, saying that you admire Trump for his policies, recalls the way men used to say that they read Playboy for the articles.

I don't know who said that, but they're a genius.

I don't know where I read that. And so whoever said it, I'm sorry, I haven't credited you, but it's genius. I am from the generation where I remember adult men saying that they read Playboy for the articles. Oh, of course. Articles. And I was so curious as a kid what Playboy was.

And I think it was at my neighbor's house that her dad had Playboy. Playboys. And I remember her saying, he just reads it for the articles, but you have to see what these pictures are in it. And I go back and I'm like, how brainwashed were we as kids? That still resonates with me to this day. And I'm 50 years old.

That is just. Bonkers. That is like a really easy equivalent of how we're being gaslighted. Because literally when you ask any Trump follower, they say strong border, build the wall. Like they're very much like top line talking points. I haven't met a Trump supporter yet that has a really in depth view on one of his policies.

And I think that's partly because his policies change depending on what he feels like saying at the moment. What you got, Katelyn?

Speaking of leaders who are maybe quite controversial, I have started watching The Regime. Have you heard about this with Kate Winslet?

I see ads for it, but I'm stuck on the other one that's the World War II story that has Coco Chanel.

Let me tell you, this leader that Kate Winslet plays is bat shit crazy. She is just off the wall. The first episode starts out with her having a crisis around the fact that there's mold in the walls of the palace that she's in. I think it is such a farcical, insane show about, Modern democracy and politics.

It's fascinating. So I'm not paid to say this, but if I were you, I would stop whatever you're doing and watch the regime because it is so crazy, laugh out loud, bizarre. And I just, I'm fascinated by it.

Okay. That's maybe what I'll do next week when I'm on vacation. I'll watch the regime.

They are going old school and releasing it episodically. It's not like Netflix binge for eight hours. I know. I know. But there's three episodes out already. And my wife and I cannot get enough of it.

Okay. Done. I'm definitely going to watch it. All right. That's all the Stew for this week. Talk to you next week.

The second helping podcast is written and hosted by Grace Cowan and Katelyn Brewer editing and it support provided by Eric Johnson produced and directed by TJ Phillips with the podcast solutions network, give me more.