Announcer (00:00):

Today's episode of specifically for Seniors is brought to you by Memory Lane tv. A streaming service made just for people living with dementia. It's full of calming sensory friendly videos that help reduce stress and lift mood and science backs it up. Care centers using it report big improvements and even less need for medication. It's available for both home use and in professional care facilities. More information and links to Memory Lane TV are in the show notes. Below

Larry (00:39):

You are listening to specifically for Seniors, a podcast designed for a vibrant and diverse senior community. I'm your host, Dr. Larry Barsh. Join me in a lineup of experts as we discuss a wide variety of topics that will empower, inform, entertain, and inspire as we celebrate the richness and wisdom of this incredible stage of life.

Larry (01:12):

I recently read a magazine article that started, quote, we are sick of Donald Trump, totally and completely sick of hearing his voice, seeing his image, and watching his latest idiotic sin, the move. We are sick of his hold on the GOP, his incessant need for attention and his bullying bigoted swagger. Now, I can't begin to tell you how much I agree with that paragraph. Only if I had written it, I'd probably would've interspersed a list of obscenities. But after reading the rest of the article, I just had to have the author on the podcast to talk about it. Those are the opening lines of Sophia McClendon's Blisteringly honest article in salon titled, sick of Trump. Try Laughing at Him. We are so lucky today to have Sophia with us. Dr. Sophia McLennan is Professor of International Affairs, excuse me, and comparative literature at Penn State University.

Larry (02:29):

She is a scholar of satire, a cultural cl critic, and the author of the book, Trump was a joke, how satire made sense of a president who didn't in her recent salon article, sick of Trump, try laughing at him. Sophia argues that satire isn't just comic relief. It's one of the few ways, not just to expose absurdity, but also counteract it. Sophia has published more than 80 essays in books and journals. She writes regularly for Salon and is published in Slate, Huffington Post Daily Beast, truth Out Counter Punch, and Naite as well. She's been interviewed by Neil Degrass, Tyson, C-N-N-B-B-C tv, Al Jazeera tv, wall Street Journal tv, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquire of Political Variety, the Hill, NPR Miami, and CBC Canada. We're honored to have you on specifically for seniors today, Sophia.

Sophia McClennen (03:50):

Thanks for having me on.

Larry (03:53):

I do wanna talk about your article in Salon Magazine in your book, but I don't wanna miss asking about Trump's reaction to Stephen Colbert's message and the South Park sleeping with the Devil episode. How does Trump react to humor and satire that's aimed at him?

Sophia McClennen (04:15):

Well, Trump has a pretty predictable reaction when he's, feels like he's being mocked. And so what happens is that he tends to overreact. He tends to insult the source of the humor. Sometimes it's the comedian, sometimes it's the comedian and the show, and then the outlet that, you know, has the show on it. It's been that way with him since, well before he was a political candidate.

Larry (04:47):

Let, let's start off, since we're gonna be talking about satire. What exactly Sapphire satire is and is not?

Sophia McClennen (04:59):

Yeah, that's an excellent question. 'cause A lot of people do get confused, and I like to say that it's good that it's hard to explain 'cause it means that I have job security <laugh>. So satire is a very particular form of humor and mo lots of humor is sort of in the realm of some version of insult humor. Some version of, Hey, you know, these people over here, they do these things and then you laugh, but you're really laughing at this group that the comedians described. So that, that's one significant type of humor. Another type of humor is self-deprecating humor. So I make fun of myself, and that, that kind of humor is usually very non-confrontational because people like to see people make fun of themselves. Satire is unique because it can seem like mockery. So I'm making fun of Trump's hair, or I'm making fun of how he's not very articulate sort of elements of his physical persona.

Sophia McClennen (06:05):

But that's not actually satire, that's just mockery, that's just making fun of someone. Satire requires a certain level of art, and it typically has some element of irony. So, for example, most satire has an element of sarcasm. So the thing is that we might say for example you know, I come in, it's, it's cold and rainy out. We're work colleagues, and I say, Hey, great weather. Right? You knew that I didn't mean it. So that's just straight sarcasm. So I said one thing and I meant something else. And most satire has an element of that. So the reason why that's good is that satire allows you to do things like say, oh man, I'm so happy that Trump won, you know, now we can really look forward to this, this, this, this, and this. And you think to yourself, like, how could that be good?

Sophia McClennen (07:04):

Sarcasm just sort of seems to make people seem bitter and angry. But what's happening there is that your mind has to hear the words I'm saying and know, I mean something else. And that element of processing information and flipping it around to in, you know, understand the meaning is part of what makes satire really special. And and that's really one of the key elements of that type of humor that you don't see. For example, when I say, oh, man, you know, did you see this thing over here? And I'm just, again, making fun of human habits.

Larry (07:43):

You mentioned the word irony. How does, how does that differ from satire?

Sophia McClennen (07:49):

Well, irony is a core element in satire, but you can be ironic and not be satirical, right? So also, there's, there's different types of irony. So we, I like to remind people situational irony is when the world doesn't turn out the way you expect. So it might be the least articulate person, the least prepared person winning a race for president of the United States. That's situational irony. You could sort of imagine that maybe if you think of it that way. You could, you could kind of go, oh, that's kind of funny in a terrible way. So that situational irony, most satire is what's called rhetorical irony. I like to use the phrase creative 'cause it means I'm using words or I'm drawing cartoons in a way that sort of suggests something. If you read it in a literal way, but really means something else, you have to read it figuratively. You have to do that work to process it. And that's what makes you know, creative irony, very special

Larry (09:01):

Satire in politics is not a new thing. From Ben Franklin to Mort Saul, Lenny Bruce, John Stewart, and they seem to be able to challenge the power structures and shape public discourse. How, how's that accomplished?

Sophia McClennen (09:22):

Well, so the one thing that your audience will be interested in thinking about is the fact that satire has existed in every culture and across every historical period. It is a common part of the human condition as my now 20-year-old. But when he was about eight, my son used to say, satires, the body's response to stupid. And the fact is that when the world's being presented to you in a certain way, and you, for example, you have a president who says, I'm doing great things. This country is great. I am great. We are great. But you think it doesn't feel great to me, right? What happens is that people tend to respond with that sarcastic satire because the world, again, the world's in a situational irony, right? The things don't line up with the way they should. And so we tend to respond by making jokes, by cracking jokes about the situation, about the false narratives, about the misinformation, about the pompousness, about the arrogance, about the hypocrisy.

Sophia McClennen (10:38):

You start keying into all of that. And the best way to do it is often with satire. 'cause You, you know, we could say, Hey, you know, I'm really bummed out. We have a terrible president. Fine, okay, that's fine. You understand what I'm saying? But it doesn't, it doesn't engage you. It doesn't light you up. It doesn't make you sort of, again, have that, that clever laugh in your mind. But if I say, oh, man, boy, are we lucky? You know, we're in for a fantastic, you know, few years here, you, you have a different response to it. And so we see that the human beings have done this again and again. And the other thing that is critical in terms of understanding satire and politics is that satire tends to emerge in moments of crisis. So you get a huge upsurge of satire when things get difficult because there's censorship, because there's fear, because there's pressure because the people who are leading the nation are terrible megalomaniacs, you know that everything is worse, right? When things get really bad, satire thrives. If satire doesn't have any comment to make on the, the human condition, if it doesn't see that the world isn't the way it should be, then it tends to get quieter.

Larry (12:01):

So that sort of describes why satire and why Trump

Sophia McClennen (12:09):

Absolutely be, but there's another element to Trump that's very different, right? So for example, there's a lot of Putin satire right now. We do see satire emerge as a very natural response to autocrats dictators, strong leaders who are anti-democratic, right? That's very common. It's hap it happens everywhere. The degree to which it has to be subtle will vary, for example, but it's gonna exist. What's makes Trump particularly different is that he's already absurd. He's already a joke, and he already doesn't really make sense. I mean, we get a little bit of this with Putin where he wants to like ride a horse with no shirt on and those kinds of things. That's where he's making it in a strange way, right? He's not, he's not playing straight, right? He's being a performance, he's already sort of being exaggerated. And so satire has had a very difficult time with these leaders who are becoming, again, like absurd themselves because satire sort of likes to show absurdity.

Sophia McClennen (13:21):

And when the, the figure themselves is sort of playing on it, it makes it much harder. So in the book that I wrote on Trump and satire, I said, it tended to create a new sort of era for US satire, where the satirists were both on the one hand, more crude, more direct, more vulgar, more angry. So arguably not even really being satirical, just saying, oh my God, this is terrible. But on the other hand, being far more creative and far more again, ironic and really subtle and complex ways. So I sort of saw a pattern where things moved in the two opposing directions towards more creativity and more, more vulgarity.

Larry (14:08):

So it is Trump himself that makes it such an easy target.

Sophia McClennen (14:12):

Well, I mean, arguably not, that's the point, is it's not easy. So Andy Borowitz who had has an ongoing, or I don't know if he still is doing that, but he had a, a long-term bit that he did on the New Yorker. We reduced satirical pieces. And after Trump was elected the first time, Borowitz said, how does satire respond to something that's already so exaggerated and and ridiculous? Because again, one of the core things the Saters does is, is use exaggeration. So if you've got a political leader who's already always exaggerating to the max, that that sort of takes that away, you don't have that. You know, I like to think of it as the Satist has a classic toolkit, and in it is a hammer, and the hammer is your exaggeration. Well, Trump took it. Trump's got the hammer, so what are you going to use?

Sophia McClennen (15:08):

You know? I'm like, well, now you need Alan wrench. You know? 'cause That's where the higher creativity comes in, because he's, he sort of took out these classic pieces. So that's one thing. And, and, and it means that we've seen, and we have seen it, right, where the, the also this satist, particularly people on late night are becoming more and more of a thing that is sort of central for informing the public. The public is trusting the satirists more than they trust the politicians. And that's, that's something that we've seen in the United States building up since the events of September 11th, 2001. But it's really hit a fever pitch, I think, with Trump.

Larry (15:56):

So satire is essentially gonna keep us sane when Trump is making us crazy.

Sophia McClennen (16:03):

Well, satire keeps us sane in a range of ways. First of all, it actually informs the public. It gives you information you need that you're not getting, in part because a lot of the mainstream media is also sort of wrapped up in scandal and hype. So the sadists are giving you information, but the big thing, and the other thing they're doing is they're reframing Trump. They're, they're making it easier to laugh at something that's really both terrifying and depressing, right? So laughter is gonna help strengthen people. It's gonna help them not get depressed. It's gonna help them start to think about how to solve problems. These are all really critical things. But the, the one thing that I think makes satire, at the end of the day, the most powerful sort of weapon against abuses of power is the work it does to your mind.

Sophia McClennen (16:53):

Because if you're living in a world where you're being lied to, where you're being misinformed, where you are, governments administration is constantly BSing. You, you, you, what happens to the mind when they have to process lies, is you get sort of shut down eventually, sort of the, the sort of game is if I said to you, Hey, you know, the Atlantic Ocean is the biggest ocean in the world, you go no, it's not. And if I kept saying it to you, I'm like, you, you might say, well, but she's a professor. Maybe she knows something. I don't know. Right? And you, if I repeat it enough times, eventually you start to question like, is the Atlantic Ocean the biggest ocean in the world? So there's all this research on what happens to the mind when it's barrage with lies and misinformation and satire becomes one of the few ways that the mind can take again.

Sophia McClennen (17:48):

You know, when Stephen Colbert says, you know Trump great president or greatest president, he's using these words in ways. He doesn't mean literally, but you don't get cognitively exhausted. You get energized. You understood exactly what he meant. And so what it does is it's, it's sort of like taking your brain to the gym, right? And so if you're, you're living in a world that's like, would rather have your brain be a couch potato that sat around and ate Cheetos and drank, you know, Coca-Cola all day and satire's, like, you know, training you for a triathlon, right? Which one do you wanna be doing with your time?

Larry (18:29):

But it, it's something about Trump, the more outrageous his comments get, the more people listen to him.

Sophia McClennen (18:41):

Well, I don't know if that's true, <laugh>. It may feel like

Larry (18:45):

It's true. Well, maybe his group, maybe his followers, maybe his psych ofan. But he makes these outrageous claims and people listen and start to believe they're true. Even more than that Trump doing that. I think it says more about us as the public than it does as Trump.

Sophia McClennen (19:17):

Well, that's always true, right? I, you know, when you have a candidate that gets the level of support that Trump got, you are required to take it seriously. And we could have a, a much longer complex discussion of how it is that our democracy got into the situation it's in now that made it vulnerable to what happened with Trump. We're certainly currently seeing more efforts on the part of the GOP with things like redistricting. You know, we've got low voter turnout, we've got, you know, there's all of these elements, right, that made it possible to get us to where we are in terms of the infrastructure of our electoral system. But then there's the other problem, which again, is our information system. And that's the area that I work in more, which is where are people getting their information from? Are they drawing their decision making and citizen behavior from good information or from hype?

Sophia McClennen (20:24):

And, you know, that is related to the declining quality of the mainstream news media. It's related to sort of an ongoing sort of culture of suspicion where people just tend to not want to trust anyone. Again, we see it where you can't trust professors, you can't trust journalists, you can't trust, you know, that's not good. So we have all of these competing elements that have basically combined to create an electorate in the United States that's fundamentally stupid, right? This is one of the biggest problems we have, is that baseline understanding of how our system works, baseline understanding of the facts and any given situation is relatively low. You, we could poll people, for example, on were there weapons of mass destruction, you know, found in Iraq, and you'd be shocked at the answers you get. And so the basic education level in the US around critical political issues that one would think would be like just the basic minimum to be able to make a good informed decision as a voter. This country's terrible at that. Woefully behind a number of other countries, and not just in Europe.

Larry (21:44):

And Trump is capitalizing that, capitalizing on that in his education procedures, how he wants to diminish university level learning, and even public school learning.

Sophia McClennen (22:03):

Yeah. It's not just that he capitalized, as you put it, he is exacerbating it, right? We, we got Trump in part because of this, you know, highly you know, sort of an electorate that just is making decisions without good information. But then he is systematically doing everything he can to make sure that never gets better in this country. But of course, that's not only Trump, that's been true attacks on higher education. We can go back to McCarthy. Most people would really note that as a critical time. But people will also wanna remember the ways in which Nixon and Agnew went after, not just the press, but also again, the expertise of universities. So this ongoing association between the Republican party and this attack on, on, you know, sources of knowledge. This is not a new thing, it's just that Trump's sort of manifesting it in such an obvious way. There's no subtlety, and that's possibly one of the newest elements of this, right? So it's brazen. Whereas before it was maybe more kind of covert.

Larry (23:18):

I let, let's change the subject a little bit. I read through your book Trump was a joke, how satire made sense of a president, who didn't it read like a textbook which I guess it was it has tons of examples about comedians, cartoonists Saturday Night Live, all making jokes about Trump. Was there one one time, one example where it was most effective, where some jokes, some cartoon, some comments, some ski on Saturday Night Live was most effective judging by the effect it had on Trump.

Sophia McClennen (24:12):

So that's, that's something that the book doesn't do for you, in part, because that kind of, you know, giving actual sort of data on that is extremely difficult. We could say for example, that when Alec Baldwin was impersonating Trump for Saturday Night Live, it was extremely effective because we can note that Trump tended to tweet about it while the show was still on. And then we can look at the reactions to Trump's tweet. So one of the things that I found very interesting when I was working on the book was the fact that in the reactions to Trump's tweet, most people were making fun of him again. So sure, he had some supporters and they would say snarky comments, but there was also really, for the first time in US history, the average citizen is tweeting at the president's account and saying, dude, grow, you know, get thin, thicker skin, or what is wrong with you?

Sophia McClennen (25:15):

Whatever. So that was really interesting. And so if you wanted to look at that, you could see that. So what would happen is that when Trump would have a reaction, then it would draw more attention back to the skit that he was upset about. So, you know, those were relatively noteworthy moments. But then there were other times when I think SATs who are of course, speaking now to a more closed audience, speaking more to people who are, you know, like-minded, did extremely powerful work. John Oliver, for example, did a fantastic job of explaining the flaws in Trump's logic and how that was one of the most damaging parts of his role, you know, like his, his presence as a politician. And so, again, that would've been aimed at a smaller audience, but it would've had a lot more impact in framing how they thought about issues.

Sophia McClennen (26:15):

So that's another thing that we can notice. That's a sign of power. And of course, currently for the first time, right, we're seeing what seems to be Trump kind of winning, right? By bullying you know, media companies into potentially talking about canceling a show. We don't have proof that Trump was behind the cancellation of Colbert, but certainly the events line up in such a way that you think probably some conversation was at least had here, and at the very minimum, right? Paramount and CBS thought that this wasn't gonna hurt, right? I mean, we, you know, maybe one day we will find the smoking gun, but in the meantime, we're seeing for the first time ever, that sort of the temper tantrums that Trump throws when he's been mocked, maybe having a level of impact that we hadn't seen before during the first presidency.

Sophia McClennen (27:16):

It's true that there, you know, there was a, a well-known cartoonist at the Pittsburgh Gazette who lost his job. Rob Rogers, his work was fantastic. It just seemed to strike a nerve. And his parent company was very conservative, and so he got fired. There's some cases like that. But actually in the first Trump presidency, it seemed like the mainstream media enjoyed making money off of this dynamic. And now as they're thinking more in terms of these big mergers and other ways in which they, you know, they're sort of, it seems potentially caving to pressure. And that I think is, is certainly disturbing. It. It doesn't mean satire is going away, it just means that Trump is getting a little bit of traction. And as he's bullying media outlets,

Larry (28:10):

Will any of the satire like John Oliver, breakthrough to the supporters of Trump?

Sophia McClennen (28:20):

So I have an answer for you on that, but you probably won't like it, which is that the Trump supporter is not reachable. They're certainly not re they're not reachable with reason, they're not reachable with facts, and they're certainly not reachable with the type of satire that we're discussing, because they're going to feel defensive towards Trump when they see these things, their first reaction. If anything, we have researcher on this, right? The first reaction of anything is to be more protective, right? Oh, no, poor Trump, he's being picked on again. So the chance that any of this is breaking through with the traditional Trump supporter is zero. No way. Not gonna happen. What I like to tell people is, if you want the, if you want the United States to have a better chance, right? Of coming out of this incredibly dark period in our political history, you have to reach out to that quiet middle.

Sophia McClennen (29:26):

If you look at the history of how, you know, what we see now, we have an active cohort on the right, we have an active cohort on the left. We have a very quiet, very big middle. That's your audience. The Trump supporter is going to be a Trump supporter, and if you try to wiggle them off of that, they will hold onto it even more tightly. So you have to forget about them. The best thing you can do is just mute them and not listen to them and not engage with it. And focus again on these people who don't vote, who don't see why they should, or who just feel completely disenfranchised from the system, who feel like it doesn't matter. 'cause The, you know things just go the way they go. Those are the people, right? The apathetic middle is where the real change can happen.

Larry (30:23):

And what is the role of the small podcaster, the individual who starts to write a substack column sat trying to satirize Trump? Are they gonna have an effect?

Sophia McClennen (30:43):

<Laugh>, you can't imagine how many people send me things every day, <laugh>, you know, read this column, read this thing, what do you think of this? And I'm like, I, I am running outta time, right? So first of all, I think there's a real value to producing it, right? So we also, again, know our research shows that the people who produce satire, they're smarter, they're more creative, they're better at problem solving, and most importantly, they feel more politically effective. That's one of the coolest elements, right? And so that's not a bad thing. The question is, what happens with the audience? Is there an audience? What's going on with that? And that just is gonna vary so much depending on, again, what the particular slice of the market is. And, you know, I I I, I tend to think that, you know, if you influence five people in a way that's meaningful, that's a good day.

Sophia McClennen (31:47):

I mean, we live in this world where you have to have a million, like, you know, one of the things that we're trying to navigate all of us today is what to do about this constant onslaught, you know, of information, of options, of whether it's podcasts, whether it's substack. You, you could, you, you can't even possibly keep up. I can't keep up with the people that I'm trying to follow, let alone start to find a new person, right? So one of the things that we're trying to figure out is how do we do this with this sort of, it's, it's not even information exactly, right? It's just material. Not all of it is even what you might categorize truly as information, but you've just got so much coming at you. So it's very difficult to know how sort of a, you know what I call a citizen satirist you know, what kind of impact they might have.

Sophia McClennen (32:42):

But it, it, it is worth noting that it can be, and the blink of an eye, super powerful, right? So I talk about in the book, this woman, Sarah Cooper, who during the first presidency started this bit on Tip TikTok, where she would just lip sync to things that Trump had said. But because of it being from a woman of color and all of these things, it was so funny. And she was just an average amateur and ended up then with a Netflix show and all of these things. So you never know, right? It's certainly worth a try. It's just that we have a really saturated right, or overly saturated amount of you know, like choices in the media space, even if it's just for satire critical of Trump.

Larry (33:31):

So we shouldn't stop trying, though.

Sophia McClennen (33:33):

You should never stop trying, but you should have realistic expectations for your impact.

Larry (33:38):

<Laugh>. one thing about Trump, he does know how to control the media, and what, what are the other politicians, the Democrats missing in, in this, in this talent of his,

Sophia McClennen (34:05):

Again, <laugh>, that's a long conversation, but, but there's a number of things that's happening. And, and one of them is what I described, which is that Trump is both absurd and scary, right? He's, he's so over the top. He so, seems so obviously like a joke, but he's getting things done, right? So the mainstream media has had a very difficult time navigating that persona, and so have the politicians. So if Trump says something like, we're just gonna buy Greenland,

Sophia McClennen (34:39):

Like, how do you have a reasonable reaction to that? Like, you don't even know where to start, which is why the comedians can do a better job, because it is just so ridiculous. So that's one thing. But the problem is also that the Democrats, you know, really since Obama haven't really known what to do, right? They're reactive, and the party has become reactive. It's become over dominated by senior politicians. It's not opening space for younger voices. You know, again, and again, just a billion things that Democrats are doing wrong. We need the Democrats to be making the news because they're doing something cool, right? So when Bernie Sanders and a OC went on the road together, that was great, because they got huge audiences, they got lots of reactions, those kinds of things. I think the mayoral race in, in New York with mom, Donny, this is another really good opportunity because he's very good as a media presence.

Sophia McClennen (35:46):

The Democrats just haven't cultivated this. And part of it is that there's this other side, which is that the Democrats are <laugh>. You look at it, people are having an easier time being critical of Mom Donny than they are of Trump, right? So there's all this party infighting, all of this kind of, again, that this fragmentation and lack of vision, lack of, of understanding that you need to create the spectacle, but you can do it in a way that's ethical and that's in line with your core principles. Like it's just one thing after another that the Democrats are doing wrong. And right now they're not doing a single thing that gives me hope as a party, right? As we look to the future, we're, we're, we're setting ourselves up for another one of these cases where if the Democrats win, it's a vote against the Republicans. It's not for the Democrats. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Because they have completely abandoned a sense of what's our narrative? Who are we? I mean, think about phrases like build back better. Like, I can't even, like, it was such a terrible, right? It's not exciting, you know? And then I forget, Harris', do you remember what it was? But it was also really bad. It was something like, look forward or I don't know,

Larry (37:09):

You, you can't, you can't get it on a cap.

Sophia McClennen (37:12):

Yeah. But it's just so bad, right? It's like, oh my, you know, and they're paying, you know, supposedly you know, skilled PR people to help them come up with these campaign slogans and stuff, and they're terrible, terrible. So, you know, the Democrats need to get it together. And I think what, you know, we've seen before, which is that it's the grassroots, right? It's the progressive people, the younger people, they're, they're, they're out there. They're doing their stuff sometimes against, you know, with the party itself, making it very hard for them to advance their their campaign. So, you know, I do think we're seeing that, for example, with Mom, Donny. So the Democrats are, in my view, doing just about everything they could wrong

Larry (38:01):

And totally ignoring my generation.

Sophia McClennen (38:06):

Well, so, but this is the thing, okay? On the one hand, clearly we have generational differences. We have generational differences in terms of like how people conceptualize themselves as citizens, how they understand their relationship with our democracy, et cetera. But they're also failing to recognize that the future of the Democratic Party requires my students who are 18 years old to feel like they have a shared set of goals and principles and, you know, policy issues with you, right? And that we're not like against each other. And so the Democrats should be the party that gets that, right? And they're not.

Larry (38:49):

So how do we survive the next three, well, hopefully only three more years.

Sophia McClennen (38:56):

Yeah. You have reason to worry. It won't be that from what we're seeing, right? Yeah. So midterms are serious. The midterm elections are very serious. We have to reclaim Congress. We have to put an end to what's happening right now because the Supreme Court is done.

Larry (39:19):

That's another story.

Sophia McClennen (39:20):

I won't live long enough to see the Supreme Court get better, unless there's some significant, you know, again, like institutional change, which I doubt, I, I can't conceptualize how the things would line up for that. So Supreme Court is done that is fully in the bag for the Republicans for the foreseeable future. So you have to get back Congress a hundred percent, and you have to get back Congress with people who are strong, who are not doing things like capitulating saying, oh, okay, we'll, you know, we'll go ahead and sign on, or we won't, you know? No, no, no, no, no. You need Democrats who are tough, who are willing to fight and who are willing to attempt to block the Trump agenda. We just haven't seen it in the powerful way we should. And that's largely because some of these senior leaders, they're just capitulate. It's not good for us. And it's not energizing the public is the point every time they do that, right? Every time Chuck Schumer comes out and says, oh, hey, well, you know, this is what we're gonna do. Like, we lose voters every time that guy talks <laugh>.

Larry (40:33):

That's for sure. And I worry, well, I certainly won't live to see the Supreme Court change. I worry about my grandkids.

Sophia McClennen (40:46):

Yeah, and you should, I mean, so the point is, is that we have right now a series of things happening with the destruction of the Department of Education. I mean, like the, just so many elements of the functioning of the US government are coming under attack. It's almost impossible to keep track of it. The EPA, the FDA vaccines if you have, regardless of what your particular concerns would be, right? We have set ourselves up to be less healthy, less safe, less educated, have less responsiveness to natural disasters. Like e every single thing you think government's supposed to do, they're undoing.

Larry (41:34):

And we're, and we're losing the rest of the world as well.

Sophia McClennen (41:38):

Oh, I think we've lost the rest of the world, and we've done it in a way that's just emboldened, really. Arguably primarily China. But you know what? So because I, my background's international affairs, I travel a lot. I mean, you know, and I'm, I'm telling you, the US decision, for example, is shut down U-S-A-I-D and not to be involved in things like vaccine programs or even distributing condoms to communities that needed, you know family planning. It's opening these spaces for these other nations to step in the US is not gonna recover. That sort of, it had always been this complex place where yes, it was a strong superpower sometimes doing things that the public might disagree with, but they were involved in all of these on the ground programs that were helping people in their daily lives. And that built up a substantial amount of goodwill in addition to keeping everyone safer, right? Like, we want people in Africa to be vaccinated. That's just good for everybody. And so, you know, you can't even begin to discuss how bad this is. 

Larry (42:51):

And now we're burning condoms and burning food. Yeah, it makes no sense.

Sophia McClennen (42:57):

It's not just that it makes no sense. It goes back to your point. It makes the United States seem arrogant and stupid. So our, whatever we had as sort of a visible sign of what makes us great, and this is the irony we're losing,

Larry (43:19):

We can see that in China's development of ai, in China's development of electric cars, we're just losing the initiative we once had.

Sophia McClennen (43:34):

Well, if your government isn't gonna invest in, you know, engineering labs and you know, the kinds of grants that faculty have that train the students that then work in all these sort of university corporate partnerships, you ex Yeah, absolutely. You, you move. That was the model we had, right? China doesn't have that model because there everything is run by the government. So that was our model, right? And you broke it. So, you know, my, my daughter is a chemical engineer and she works on waste to energy. So taking plastics and turning it into oil, you know, in the field she's in is just like, boom, nothing, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. All of the labs being shut down. And you think, okay, so you are gonna not do this research, but guess who will be doing it? The Chinese will be doing it, the Russians will be doing it, and the US just won't even know how to solve problems anymore. I mean, that at the end of the day, is what research is all about.

Larry (44:43):

And the only weapon we have is the midterms.

Sophia McClennen (44:47):

Yes. I mean, okay, so it's two things. It's the midterms and it's reminding your audience that it's the school board, it's your local mayor, right? It's your council people. It's reminding everyone that these local elections, that people, you know, in my generation, nobody even necessarily paid attention to them. You know, it's reminding them that these things make a difference, because these are the people that institute certain rules that help make sure that our voting processes fair, free and fair, right? So don't forget to get involved on the ground grassroots in your communities at the same time that you mobilized to get people to turn out for the midterms.

Larry (45:40):

There's not much else to say

Sophia McClennen (45:43):

<Laugh>. No. And, you know, consume satire so you don't get depressed.

Larry (45:49):

<Laugh>. We're, we're, we're limited with our options.

Sophia McClennen (45:56):

We're limited with our options, in part because we're in a democracy, and the democracy has its, you know, its process. But again we want to remind people that when they see the, that our own, like the infrastructure of our democracy is being threatened. That these are reasons to come out, you know, to, to protest, to write to your, you know, to write, to do the things that are available to you. I always tell people I might study like political action, but I'm, I'm, I'm not someone who goes to protest. 'cause I get stressed out when I'm in crowds. But I can make ca calls and I can sign petitions and I can donate money and, you know, everybody has their ways they can get involved, right? And I think it's, I think it's remembering that these small things do add up. That's how Trump got where he is, is that we had just gotten lazy.

Larry (46:52):

Yeah. Sophia, thank you for helping us to understand. Thank you for helping us to feel less isolated. Thank you for coming on specifically for seniors.

Sophia McClennen (47:11):

Oh, I'm happy to have had the chance to do it. Thanks for having me.

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