Transcripts For CSPAN2 Christopher Haugh Jordan Blashek Uni

CSPAN2 Christopher Haugh Jordan Blashek Union July 12, 2024

There. Still be throughout the topic you want to support the two authors as was her books to read go head and click the green button down there to go in and purchase the book. With that being said, i will let them take the screen. High guys welcome. Lets see so again i am tony woods, it is my pleasure to moderate tonights book talk with my two friends jordan and chris. So union is a book that answers the question what happens when a liberal and a conservative decide to jump and drive across the country breed that is a question at the heart of this book. Union, democrat, republican a search for Common Ground by my friends jordan and chris. Jordan was a businessman my coworker, conservative informant marine from california. Chris is a democratic speech writer and journalist in berkeley, california. This paramedic law school quickly became friends. They couldnt stop argue about politics. In 2016 the arguments got worse and worse. So they decided to take a road trip to see american understand different perspectives. They did it again, and again, and again. The union is there friendship and how that friendship changed but also the story of the people they met and the lessons they learned about what it means to be an american. In the end, union restores hope, hope for Better Future future and for a better united states. So offer a warm virtual welcome to both chris and jordan, i will give you a moment to say hello to the audience. High everyone, thank you so much for the introduction. It is so fun to be here with you. Thank you awe for coming we are excited for this. Yeah, thanks everyone for this is exciting and thank you jordan and tony for staying up late for this. You guys being out on the east coast at awe. Happy to do it. Alright everyone lets go ahead and dive right in. So you mentioned you talked with us quite eloquently in the forward. But on the surface, it is possible that former similarities and huge differences. What good to straight white guys from california possibly do . Someone you guys could maybe push back on this notion a little bit and tells about yourself. Why both of you see the world differently, what shape some of those experiences in major see things differently . And perhaps way found yourself regularly disagreeing. That great thank you for the question. So think the truth is superficially chris and i are very similar. We are straight white guys in california. And i think that at a deeper level, we are also very similar. And there are some similarities and made us feel like theres a great friendship here. So we first met at yale law school. We bought it over things like our shared love for great literature and chris wanted to be a war journalist and i just come from a war zone. We also talked with the influence of our mothers and how they kind of shapes our sense of values and character. So awe these early things and bound us together in similarities were very powerful. I think it also became evident that very different worldviews. I grew up in a republican family. After 911 my mother started a nonprofit that sent care packages to troops. So i grew up packages to troops were going overseas and chriss upbringing was different. I think theres different i think those Early Experiences were formative for us. I think in my household, we had dinner conversations every night about republican policy. It was inevitable that shapes. But yeah. Yeah, i met with. Some assets there. We agree come from varied political backgrounds. That was enough to both step have the background to write together but also have something to disagree about. But too much thats different, some terms of our world is i think it be a lot harder to get a project like this done. In terms of my background, this is part of got two people to fact check the eye have known tony since i was 19. Im from berkeley, california has read by a mom who is an activist to shut down her College Campus in the 70s. I went to the iraq war protest. I grew up reading black panther literature in high school. We come from very different backgrounds in terms of our political influences and principles. And yes, in 2015 politics did not seem awe that prominence. Were actually able to build the friendship like jordan said on the other things. Not until 2016 that for like this friendship may be transgressive or something that was not socially acceptable or we should be doing. And that was when the book in the project release sort of took off. One quick followup on that. We talked earlier about our mothers and their difference in our lives. I think this was symmetry that growing up my mom was in the care packages where chriss mom was protesting the war. We actually had a chance have her moms meats. A year ago. They are now great friends. [laughter] [inaudible] that is really cool play what i love about them bonding over there experiences you could almost say protesting the war or sending troops care packages are both out of a common sense of love for that individual. And about being the people who served which is really nice thing. We go a little further it sounds like you describe some real differences as it person who had many arguments with chris on the road, what inspired the book that you spent hundreds of hours traveling the country trapped in a car together. Maybe could tell us a little bit about the road trip that animates the story. Maybe what you hope to find on these journeys . Yes so chris and i met in our sky was a seckinger chris was his first year at law school. We were introduced by someone meant for a drink and end up three hours. Over the course of months we built this great friendship. Thats 2016 got closer, i got closer. But, stations and they call chris and i both started pulling back from this bioassay happens. Because we felt like it got anywhere. I had to be in l. A. For my sisters wedding at the end of the year. One night we are sitting in people were shouting around us i leaned over to chriss it hey man tunic on a road trip with me . And that first road trip together, we are still friends together for seven days. Knowing wed probably fight about politics was a little unnerving. But on the road the country is so beautiful. Theres something beautiful about the american highways in the national parks. We had great conversation. We also fought. We fought really hard. But the beauty of a car as you are stuck there. So you had to reconcile. We realize are actually Getting Better values and better conversations. As we headed in to 2017 we decided theres something important about getting back on the road. That set off our road trips. And chris,. [inaudible] perspective first of awe, your point tony, i did cut my teeth on our arguments at everything from god to how many wins the 49ers will have next year. So thank you for preparing me for these things. So after first road trip, we were so impressed by how powerful it is to be on the road both in terms of the art through conversations can have going from anger to understanding to apology to greater understanding to more anger. And continue that cycle, purchase cycle in many ways. Also with the country. So we just theres a chance that we can get out there and learn something and maybe bring back something of importance to say. So on that second road trip we ended up going to both we started in the valley. [laughter] the heart of that is likely road trip. We had no idea what was happening, sought only from the day before. I casually said jordan you want to go check out this trump rally . And of course jordan said absolutely. What an opportunity to see the heart of our politics. the same way we are both inspired by the activity outside and pull back from the violence inside we were amazed by the president s ability to move his flock, move the people there but we were both a little nervous by people at the edges of that really. The simple fact that we were able to see the world do the same set of eyes at such a fractious political moment made us go, i think we have a voice here i think there is something we can say together. Because of the street violence we saw that night, because of the anger and vitriol, the inability to actually get beyond the veneer difference and actually talk inspired us to go out and try to find stories that were outside of politics. That spoke to more universal valleys that spoke to ideas that bonds jordan and i together and maybe the country as well if we were able to get our stories out from there we turned to trying to identify values and stories that might get us there so we spent time with a group of veterans who run a gun range and page arizona, we spent time with pete, a truck driver who took us from las vegas to louisiana. From there we did all kinds of things that we found exciting from spending a couple days on ato rehearsing king lear with a group of inmates at parnell prison outside detroit. All with the intent of finding stories that speak to a larger purpose as different kind of value sets. I love that. Obviously the book is very much about your friendship and it captures that but also really enriched the characters that chris started to speak to whether the trump die hard, the Community Activist ai imagine you met hundreds of not more incredible people who told incredible stories, having not written a book like most of the audience, probably not written a book just sort of wondering if you can give us a little bit about book into the writers process and what made you choose these characters over others . What jumped out in the stories . What were you hoping to eliminate by sharing their perspectives . Each story was slightly different. All the stories we chose to tell spoke to both realizations on jordan and eyes part as well as something about the country. We spent a lot of time with pete, the truck driver, who we sort of went in intending to tell the story about bluecollar work about what its like to be on the road as a trucker in America Today and we got to tell that story but ended up emerging in conversations with pete is really how comp located americans can be underneath the surface. Pete showed up on day one wearing a make America Great again shirt, my thought was, so much for getting away from politics. We found him to be a quite competent thinker. The first thing he said about politics was, i wish the president talked more about climate change. He talked about how god is love and therefore he has to support lgbtq marriage in a way that he didnt not that long before. We start to see there is more to this country and the people on the road than meets the eye at first. At the same time, jordan and i were able to come together and talk about things like regulation, corporate control of truck driving, importance of dignity and telling dignified stories. That was just one example and everyone else in the book as this animating value to the story as well as a take away from what we learned spending time with these people. Jordan, do you have anything to add on that . One thing i was really ab we were writing about these people because we thought they were a standin for some trend, we met people on the road, often serendipitously, often no real intention behind finding these people. It was all just lucky. What ended up happening is they had a big effect on our lives and taught us something to eat. Often when we are writing we are just trying to share that. They were so important to us we wanted to capture that and share with others. As we wrote the book, there is these amazing people and we are so excited to share the story but we didnt select them, like the trump supporter and the other abthey were just great people. Its great. In a moment, this is a statement of the audience, in a moment i would love to start bringing in audience questions. Please feel free to send questions using the chat function on your screen to ask a question, then you can type in questions you have either about what we are talking about now or general questions about the book, we would love to start reading those throughout the conversation. May be turning now to my next question, in the book you use the third person narrative and often describe yourself in many ways as representatives of your respective tribes from camps. So chris deliberated ab liberals, conservatives. Found it interesting why these conversations sound so heated, youre not personally representing yourself, youre representing a whole community. Its difficult, it becomes very animated very quickly, in some ways you dont hope for. And wondering if you can take a moment and think about your various camps and some of the more prominent voices within most camps are the wings or fractions that the media likes to use and highlight our polarization of country. And im wondering if you can tell us something you discovered on these journeys that these groups within your various camps get wrong about the other side chris, i will start with you. If you are talking to aoc or the squad, what would you say she doesnt understand about jordan . I think what really struck me, i hate to out you hear jordan but on the road it was always like jordan and the conservatives he spends time with do actually care about progress. They might not be progressives but they want everyone to have healthcare. They want everyone to get a good education. They dont like the criminal Justice System as it exists today, and jordans telling. But they approach it very differently. The way jordan and i will talk about these issues we would often fight until we were blue in the face and sometimes we would end with, i guess we agree . One of us would say, yes i guess we do. The idea as we want the same ends then we can talk about the means to get there. I think thats really important, thats one of our big takeaways, there are quite a few shared values around this country we all agree upon. We believe in second chances, many of us agree upon. When jordan and i talk about criminal justice it was very clear we just needed to figure out the way to that end. I think that is something that gets lost in the mix sometimes, i think on the National Scale much harder to talk about these things but knowing jordan quite well i can tell you hes pursuing the same values and same hopes and dreams i am when im thinking about policy. I think its a really powerful starting point. Jordan, i hope you are not too mad at me for saying that. Same question to you jordan, what is the maga Community Get wrong . Thank you chris, that was very well said. Anytime i talked to my friends who are big maga supporters, i told them chris only whines half as much as they think he does. [laughter] i think one of the perceptions on the right especially some of the more red meat throwing hard rights, the left, especially progressive left, that in some way they abthey have to see the same and look to the. [inaudible] spending so much time on the road with chris i think what i learned about his perspective and athat in fact they do love america deeply and love it for the values and the ideals and principles enshrined in our family documents and hours certain religions. What they are generally going for is for us to live off those values and they have a deep concern and empathy for those left out and continue to be left out today. As chris and i talked, he often responded to to minimize the challenges that people face especially marginalized communities and certain experience today to respond correctly to ensure they have a rightful place in the american abonce i really understand how deep that love was now we are talking about shared values, shared ground, things we care deeply about. Thats an easy thing for us to engage on. May be sticking with this theme, im really interested in the converse of this. Maybe i will start with you jordan. And wondering if you could be honest and maybe a bit vulnerable, whats the criticism you hear from the left that slobs toward your camp that you agree and we opt to work on as a party or political ideology i would ask the same question of chris, what are some of those things that i know especially in this day and age is really hard to admit because many ways you feel like life and death struggle and if i feed any ground on anything thats a sign of weakness and i can do that. I think there are specific policy areas i think Republican Party like i wish they would take a different stance but i think a metapoint i think the Republican Party and the conservative movement as a really hard time articulating desired angles, they have a really hard time staying in one awe want every kid to have the best education possible we want a society in which everybody has a minimum standard of living that includes enough to essentially build a bridge. The reason they cant articulate those things is because i think in doing so they admit the need must be on spending so they have abevery conservative i know doesnt care about those things yet and makes them come off and mix republicans and conservatives come off as deeply ayou cant say things like of course every american should have great healthcare. I wish republicans would get much better about an turkic dominic articulating why because thats where we do share a lot, there is ton of overlap. I think it would be easier to disagree in a productive way. Where in the middle can we get to so we can move the ball forward . Chris, same question, i think you sort of say that the liberal camp could be better on and might want to do a little cultural turnaround. One that comes to mind largely because jordan and i have talked at length about it is a more nuanced understanding of tradition. I think there are a lot of really powerful elements of the american tradition that we really need to embrace, whether that is the democratic founding ideals, the system as it was designed, of course there are deep flaws in that system that remain today and have been made worse over time. We do a lot of talking or writing in union about how we wrestle with history. There are a lot of elements about history that i really quite important to hold onto, even while we change monuments, we change names, we cant let go of where weve come from and a lot of senses, also i was primed to hear this message over the last few years because i consider myself an obama liberal. I was just listening, i was listening again to his eulogy for john lewis and he talks about these things he talks about redeeming the american idea. He talks about living up to the american creed and our original founding weather liberty, freedom, pursuit of happiness, these are important ideas would all lose track of. I think more and more we are losing our ability on the left, losing our ability to talk about the amazing parts of this country alongside the difficult parts. Great point. We have our first question from a member of the audience, to encourage folks to continue to send in Great Questions and share that. One of the questions we have from alexis is actually around the idea having shared a similar discussion for members of congress, maybe i will open that question a little more broadly but ask if there are lessons you wi

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