Was America a Mistake?
What if the American Revolution wasn’t a noble birth of liberty, but a costly wrong turn? Before muskets were raised at Lexington and Concord, the British Empire was already inching toward something remarkable: the abolition of slavery. In 1772, just three years before the war began, the landmark Somerset decision in England ruled that slavery had no basis in common law. While it didn’t outlaw slavery across the empire, it signaled growing discomfort with the institution. British abolitionists like Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson were building momentum. By 1807, Britain banned the slave trade; by 1833, it abolished slavery entirely.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the American colonies, especially in the South, were deeply entrenched in slavery. Many of the Revolution’s leading voices were enslavers who feared that continued British rule might imperil their human property. In fact, during the war, the British offered freedom to enslaved people who escaped and joined their forces. The Americans, despite their soaring rhetoric about liberty, were far more reluctant to do the same. In this light, the Revolution was not just a fight for freedom: it was also, for some, a fight to preserve slavery.
Had the colonies remained within the empire, they likely would have been pulled along Britain’s abolitionist trajectory. Slavery might have ended decades earlier, without the catastrophic toll of a Civil War. Instead, the United States forged its identity through violent rupture, glorifying revolution and enshrining ideals it could not yet fulfill.
America’s foundational rebellion may have delayed justice rather than advanced it. Peace, reform, and patient negotiation–Canada’s path–might have built a fairer, stabler society. Liberty, contrary to our cherished American myths, isn’t always won on the battlefield. Sometimes, it’s secured by fighting for reform and changing from within.
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Show Notes:
Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/slave-nation/
We Could Have Been Canada: Was the American Revolution such a good idea?https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/we-could-have-been-canada
Bernie Sanders clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZWzADxM_kw
Leslie Nuss (singing) (00:01):
In these s trouble times with so many bulls in this China shop, what can we do? We're in a powerless to clean up the mess they made all and the psychopath nose while they slip our breath. But the masks are on golf while we same person on planet Earth wants to play these people. So let's get them all on one on power trip above, but they don't care. You'll time. They have to win. But the Blast Earth
Andrea Chalupa (01:13):
Our opening song was The New Single Ticket to Mars by Leslie Nuss, a brilliant singer songwriter and activist in Indiana. Some view may know Leslie from our Gaslit nation salons on Mondays where she sometimes sings original songs for us, serenading us with our beautiful voice, getting me one step closer to my long held dream of launching Gaslit Nation Karaoke night. We'll link to more of Leslie's amazing music in our show notes.
(01:47):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, the film that Kremlin doesn't want you to see. So be sure to watch it. Hope you all had a good independence day and celebrated in the spirit of one day winning our independence from the oligarchy and the patriarchy.
(02:12):
This 4th of July I have been reflecting on the hypocrisy in our history. We've talked about it all before, how America hasn't truly been a democracy only since about 60 years ago with the Voting Rights Act, which has since been gutted. In fact, Republicans know their policies of stealing from the poor to give tax breaks to the rich are unpopular, so they need to establish a dictatorship with their Christian nationalist tools in order to stay in power. You know what, this all reminds me of the founding of our country. What if and hear me out, what if the American Revolution was a mistake just three years before the war began? Britain's Somerset decision ruled that slavery had no basis in common law signaling a powerful shift. Abolitionists in Great Britain like Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson were gaining ground, and by 1833, the British Empire had outlawed slavery entirely. Meanwhile, in America, especially the South enslavement was deeply entrenched.
(03:38):
Many revolutionary leaders were enslavers worried that British rule might threaten their human property. Look at the show notes for more on that. During the war, it was the British, not the Americans who offered freedom to enslaved people who escaped and joined their cause. So what if the revolution didn't advance freedom but delayed it at a greater cost, including all the lives lost in the Civil War? Could a slower steadier path like Canada's have led to earlier abolition and a more just society, one that's not so batshit crazy because it's not built on hypocritical lies. We could have been Canada, so was America a mistake? I explore that question and much more with journalist Terrell Starr, who is now in key of Ukraine. We talk about the Revolutionary War, the legacy of slavery and what, despite it all, is giving us hope right now to frame the stakes.
(04:52):
Here's a clip from Bernie Sanders recorded over 20 years ago, warning that the real enemy that we all face that unites us all across the political spectrum are the oligarchs pulling the strings. Sanders calls out a system where the rich rob the poor to fund their super yachts, lavish weddings and endless plastic surgery. Sound familiar Jeff Bezos? With Trump's disastrous predatory tax bill threatening America's economy, the very survival of millions of Americans, Bernie Sanders words ring truer than ever. That is why tens of thousands of people are packing his fight the oligarchy tour across this country. We don't just need reform. We need a new American Revolution. One rooted in justice, not just mythology.
Bernie Sanders (05:54):
Now, I'm going to tell you something. The very few people in Congress would tell you if you are the Republican leadership, and this is what your goals are, your goals are to give huge tax breaks to the very richest people in this country. Your goals are ultimately to privatize social security so that Wall Street can make money from that privatize Medicare, so the insurance companies can make more money privatize education, do away with public schools. If those are your goals, and you said that to the American people, you think you get a lot of, there are many members of the Congress today, republicans who not only will not raise the minimum wage, which is $5.15 an hour. You know what? They will tell you? Honestly, they believe in abolishing the minimum wage. Did you know that? Check it out telling you the truth so that if Americans can work for three bucks an hour or two bucks an hour, not a problem.
(06:42):
Now, if you had an agenda like that and you went before the American people tax breaks for the rich destruction of Medicare, destruction of social security as we know it, lowering the minimum wage or abolishing it, how many votes do you think you'd get? Not a whole lot. Maybe the richest 1% would vote for you, but that's not a lot of votes. So what do I do? Got a problem? You package it. How do you package it? And here's, I want you to pay attention to me. This is bad stuff. What you do is divide people up, divide people up by racist, affirmative action becomes one issue. All them black people are getting the jobs that we white people used to have split people working class white against black instead of working together to create decent jobs for all those uppity women. Now they want the right to choose. We'll split people on the abortion issue. We'll split people up on the gun issue. We'll split people up on religious issues. You follow what I'm saying? So you split people up and then they end up, if you are a middle class person voting against your own interests and the rich go laughing all the way to the bank
Andrea Chalupa (07:57):
As we are recording this, Terrell is headed back to Ukraine at a time when the Trump administration is actively at war with sending Ukraine more defensive aid after signing a colonialist minerals deal. That doesn't include any security guarantees. This whole minerals deal is basically a contract version of Trump's extortion of Zelensky, which got him impeached the first go round in 2019. So Terrell, I wanted to capture this moment as a historical record for not just you personally, but Ukraine at this moment in time, our global war of democracy versus fascism at this time and America's larger struggle for independence from this global oligarchy, this jet stream of corruption that we are deeply mired in. So why are you headed back to Ukraine and what do you hope to accomplish there?
Terrell Starr (09:03):
Well, I'm going back to Ukraine because there are a few stories there of civilian life that I want to complete. One, I want to do video stories on the psychological trauma that people are enduring. I want to do stories on people who are maintaining businesses and just their own family lives. So I'm looking for those human interest stories that I can post on my YouTube channel, my rebranded YouTube channel, Terrell J Star official, which will be up in live by the end of the week and publishing content originally next week. So that is my main purpose. So I am going to also be there for several conferences, the Lab media Forum, which will be Thursday through Sunday of this week. Some of the best minds and media are coming together to address some of the same conversations that we're having on this show. And then at the end of the month, I'll be at another conference, the Arsenal book festival, which we'll be talking about democracy and authoritarianism. Everyone around the world is trying to figure out ways intellectually from an activist standpoint, how do we resist? And so that is going to be the centerpiece of the work of the human interest stories that I'm going to be doing while I'm in Ukraine.
Andrea Chalupa (10:24):
Yeah, but it's going to be a different Ukraine increasingly so because US military aid is running out, Putin knows this. Putin thinks that he can rely on the war of attrition that he created to wait out the clock and that the us trump his asset that the Russians carefully cultivated over several decades. If you look at the Trump family, you're basically seeing the Russian elite, that level of materialism, shallowness and greed at the expense of all. And so Putin thinks that this is all in his favor. So you're going back to a different Ukraine. I know we complained a lot, rightfully so about Biden and Jake Sullivan and how they were doing so much hand wringing falling for Putin's bullshit, nuclear war saber rattling those threats, nevermind that Putin and the rest of his quarter archs hide all their money in their west, including New York. They're not going to bomb their bank accounts and their mistresses apartments, but it's going to be different increasingly. Are you red deep for that? Has that kicked in for you? That Ukraine is going to be increasingly vulnerable, especially through the summer and fall, unless the US steps up in a meaningful way,
Terrell Starr (11:41):
Even with support. Ukraine has been vulnerable, even with the highest levels of support you have to deal with drones strikes and missiles strikes. I'm not a scared, fearful person. And so we've had those conversations personally and on the show. So I have the same attitude. You just have to maintain the same level of vigilance and it has to be mission, purpose. I'm there because it's a calling for me, so I don't have worries. But more specifically about the uncertainty about military aid, essentially on both sides, it's a standstill. Putin is not winning the war of attrition, and Ukraine is able to maintain its defensive posture on the most part. Russia may be able to gain a kilometer a day, which is not even sustainable for them at this point. They have more soldiers, but they're not as well trained. And in order for Putin to really push a really strong offensive that he needs to mobilize his general population because there's only so many ethnic minorities that you can send to kill because there's not that many bear.
(12:42):
And that's what Putin primarily does. I do explainers that I post on my YouTube channel shorts and they're also available on my Instagram. But yeah, I mean he just gets all these ethnic minorities that people and the general Russian population doesn't care about and just hope that will sustain him and prevent him from not doing mass mobilization of the populations, the middle class Russians that will go to the streets and protest. And so that's where we are, and I think it's realistic that there'll be some type of settlement. We don't know what that looks like, but it doesn't matter for the long term because another invasion or an attack will happen again. And so even if Trump gets his grand wish of a settlement this summer, two to three years from now, there'll be more fighting. There'll be another major push from someplace because Putin wants to colonize the entire country.
(13:38):
There's just too much uncertainty, particularly about how Europe will respond. Will they be able to make it up? There are live analysts that say yes, there are many who say no. The reality is that we don't know everyone. I don't get into this Olympics of being able to predict the future because there are so many variables that we haven't seen before that we don't know what the eventual outcome is going to be. Particularly how Ukraine will be able to defend itself once the US says, okay, we're just going to significantly withdraw our military support, which is not really at play yet because the US just approved Germany sending patriot missiles in other military hardware to Ukraine just a week ago. So they're continuing to get aid is not necessarily with the same enthusiasm and support as the Biden administration, but Ukraine is not in this despair situation as much as people think that they are. It's desperate. Well, I would say it's critical, but it's not desperate.
Andrea Chalupa (14:41):
Okay. So do you think there's going to be a point where we're going to do a gaslit nation meetup with listeners from around the world who want to join us in Ukraine in the coming years?
Terrell Starr (14:51):
Yes, absolutely. Because this phase of it will end at some point. It's kind like 2014, people really forget that the country was occupied in 2014 and life went on. The problem is that they didn't, Russians didn't take over as much of the country. And so yes...
Andrea Chalupa (15:10):
Well now Russia plays Russian roulette with the country. You go to bed at night and you don't know where the missiles are going to hit, where the Iranian drones are going to hit. And people at this point are so they need to sleep. They need to live their lives. And so they sleep through even their phones blurring the warning that missiles are coming.
Terrell Starr (15:30):
Yeah, that's such a common thing that people forget about it. So yes, drones, I hear drones all of a sudden, my window sometimes, depending on how many Iranian drones are fired at the Iranian drones, they're mopeds. They sound like mopeds and they have these very loud motors. You hear them often. But I think that in the next year, two years or so, sure there'll be some type of settlement and we don't know how the land will be partitioned in Russian's favor. But yes, within the next five years, I could totally see a gaslit nation meet up in Ukraine. But after that period, there will be another war because Putin or anyone that replaces him is going to want to swallow up the rest of the country. And that's because the Russian people want to swallow up the rest of the country until there's some military breakthrough in Ukraine's favor. And that could have happened under their Biden administration. They just refuse to do it because they're scared of Russia and they just allow Russia to bully them and threaten them with nuclear weapons use this war could have been over in Ukraine's favor. The West in total just didn't want to do it. That could change in the future. We don't know.
Andrea Chalupa (16:53):
Right? And Russia as a society is basically a failed state, and they have a culture from Pushkin and other great Russian thinkers normalizing genocide and conquest as part of the Russian identity. So for Russians to be pro peace, pro-democracy, to end its bloodlust of Ukraine, they would need an entire cultural reset. We're basically talking about the same sort ideology of hatred and ignorance and deep insecurity that justified the widespread genocide of Native Americans and slavery that established the United States of America.
Terrell Starr (17:32):
Yeah, they do. So that's another thing. And whatever the things that this war exposed is Russian, this, which is what Ukrainians question and take the task all the time. In whiteness, they're the same thing really. You have white people in America who are just angry and outraged that Jim Crow ended the Civil War ended and they just can't get over it. And you have Russians who are really are not reflective about their colonial past and their present because they're used to being centered. The intellectual framework of how we view Russia has always centered them in this favorable matter where provided deference, and they're not given that deference anymore. And so they don't know what to do with it. And so unless there's some cultural shift in Russia where they stop being colonial just as white people here need to stop being racist and really realize that whiteness is also harming them, just like Russian ness is harming the average Russian, you're going to always have this colonial outlook on the countries that it used to colonize.
(18:46):
And we have to continue to voice this fact. I feel like these conversations are so circular. Ukraine is never going to experience full independence until Russia militarily is defeated, but also they have a cultural revolution with themselves about who they are and who they are is beyond their borders. They will never respect their own individual borders. They will never reconcile their own history of internal colonialism because Siberia is not indigenous Russian land. So that's where all of this is coming from. It sounds academic, but it isn't. And so the best way to overcome these things, you have to defeat the oppression. It's in our own country. Racism has to be defeated. You can't negotiate with it. You can't negotiate with the Russian this in the same way.
Andrea Chalupa (19:40):
Thank you for saying that. And it's a reminder that in World War II, which was started by Moscow and Berlin, the Soviets and the Nazis joining forces and the Molotov Ribbon Trop Pact where they made a secret deal that they were going to carve up Europe together established their own spheres of influence. And according to historian Tim Snyder, the Nazis didn't murder on the mass scale as the Soviets until this pact. It's like Hitler felt like I got everything I need now the world in my pocket, let's go. And one of their many invasions during this time was Poland. The Germans went first followed by the, I call it the Russian Empire because the Soviet Union was just the Russian empire as everyone was speaking Russian in these occupied countries for a reason. And then the Soviets invaded two weeks after the Nazis kicking off World War II.
(20:32):
They had joint Nazi Soviet military parades together. And the only reason Stalin flip sides was because you can't make a deal with a madman, which is essentially what Trump a madman is trying to do with Putin in this settlement, right? The minerals deal, whatever you want to call it, extortion, compact. And basically Stalin was like, damn, this crazy guy is now invading me just like I always suspected he would. And then he becomes an ally, an Uncle Joe Stalin, and it's the big three, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin. So we used one monster to defeat another monster, but the other monster never went away. And I agree with you, the only way you're going to make Russia stop and not buy for time and relaunch its war two, three years from now, because Russia does need to buy some time, they're hurting and is, you have to really destroy them militarily.
(21:26):
You have to bring them to heal. Just like the allies united in bringing the Germans to heal in World War II, you need to have that level of conquest. I don't want that. No one wants that. That's why the Americans took so long to join the damn war. That's why the Americans needed to have a massive attack in Pearl Harbor in order to join the war. No one wants that. No one wants to say, let's all pony up and go to war with Russia. It's just we're pointing out a fact. You're not going to exercise that demon. You're not going to tame that beast until there is definitive conquest and the sanctions as mighty as they have been, as surprisingly strong as they have been, it's still not enough. And unfortunately, we're still going to live with the shadow of war with Russia for the next decade plus, unless every single Russian military site is destroyed.
Terrell Starr (22:15):
There's a much larger issue here too. If sanctions are stronger, then that requires American businesses to embrace a patriotic spirit around it because you have to convince businesses that are operating in Russia. You have to think about the banking systems that wash Russian money. I mean, there are billions of dollars are frozen, right? But ultimately, Russia spends tens of millions of dollars in Washington DC lobbying. You have to completely economically shut them out. And that means you can't buy real estate here. That means that anything that can accrue value in the west, the west has to say you cannot benefit from it. And that means that benefactors here wouldn't benefit from Russian blood money. And so that's really where this all comes from. And until we really pull the trigger on that, then it'll continue to happen because the west place puts see with Russia, regardless of whatever type of relationship is in, and right now it's more attention it's ever been over the past 30 plus years, but it's still bute.
(23:23):
There's not a complete economic isolation of Russia for all the billions of dollars that are frozen. There are billions more that aren't. So that option doesn't require anything militarily as economic, as business, and that requires the business community to buy in. But again, with Trump, he doesn't want that because he's greedy and he's nefarious. But even Biden didn't pull that trigger. Who is the opposite of Trump, obviously. And there is a benevolence. There is this particular type, I used the word before deference to Russia because people are wondering, what if Russia is defeated? They're afraid of the 1990s Russia where everything is the wild, wild west, and so they're afraid of destabilization. But what's your pick? Do you want Russia internally to be destabilized? Which by the way would be its own doing. That's the main thing. Or do you want Russia to destabilize you, which is slowly doing?
(24:23):
And so people want a good choice and a bad choice. The reality is that neither choice is going to be particularly good. What you want to do is make sure that the choice that we do make doesn't hurt us long term. And the best short term solution right now is to militarily disable Russia from encroaching on foreign territory. And that is number one solution that is totally in the west hands if they choose to do so, and again, economically and then militarily if necessary, and not all is about providing Ukraine with all it needs. If Ukraine had every single piece of artillery weaponry that they needed, they could do that on their own. However, that is not happening because we have this FTSE game with Russia where we are going to be tough, but we want one to win just in case things go well and it's not working.
Andrea Chalupa (25:20):
The west is trying to have its cake and eat it too. And that, my dear listeners, is what will ultimately lead us to a larger war with Russia. We could end it now. We could end it now with Terrell is describing meaningful sanctions to shut this down. But because the West doesn't want to do that, because too many of our own oligarchs have interests in this, keeping the door open with Russia and all that easy money from Russia that inevitably will drag out this conflict and more lives will be lost and things will escalate being given a green light. Russia's been giving mixed signals from the West for so long. Corruption is a virus anyway. So I wanted to ask you about this time of American independence. You have protests against Trump using a lot of American revolutionary imagery. No, kings is a big rallying cry.
(26:15):
And obviously America fought this war, this revolutionary war from independence from a mad king, and now we're stuck under a wannabe mad king. And it's not just liberation from the British Empire, the most powerful empire in the world at the time. Now we're struggling against liberation from the global oligarchy, the jet stream of unimaginable wealth, Russian oligarchy, middle Eastern, oligarchy and dictatorship. And the Trump family came to power with all this money, all this help, all this meaningful support. There wasn't just one Trump tower meeting with Don Jr. Kushner and the Russians making some handshake deals for the Russians to give help to bring Trump to power. 2016, there was also a Trump tower meeting with Arab nations, with Arab dictatorships promising the same thing. And then you had the Egyptians on the Egyptian dictatorship on the sideline of the UN in 2016 making another handshake deal. And next thing you know, Trump gets 10 million in cash from an Egyptian bank. So this same dictatorship, oligarchy, global oligarchy, I feel like that's the new British empire that America today is up against. It's like the British Empire seems easier compared to this. What are your thoughts?
Terrell Starr (27:36):
Let's just start with the fact that the way that we talk about America and democracy, just in the political science pedagogy is as if we're over it. And so we don't discuss American authoritarianism. It's not a common thing. We describe Trump as authoritarian, but we've never described events in our own history as authoritarian. Like for example, Jim Crow or the period after slavery or during slavery. We describe America as a democracy even during three fifths of a person. All of these things. And so much of this starts with the language, and we've only experienced full democracy, liberal democracy for roughly 50 years. Now. What Trump is very blatantly saying is that we want to reverse that black people, generally speaking, we've always known this. If you look at our voting patterns, we've always known that the democracy that we live in is pretty tenable. Even if we've never used a fancy language of saying that we're an authoritarianism or this is anti-democratic, we've always known that democracy is very vulnerable.
(28:51):
And another thing, the reason why we're experiencing this is that democracy is new for us as well. We never talked about that. This is a new experience for us. We live in a very experimental society where you have all of our different ethnic groups. You have 14 to 15% of black people, 16 to 17% of a Latino population. I don't know what percentage of Asian-Americans there are. Then you have our immigrant communities that have come in and Trump is reversing that, but new immigrant communities, and then you have a white population that's slowly losing the majority over the next few decades. And so this is a major experiment, and democracy is new. We really need to start saying that we have been flirting with democracy over the past a hundred years or so, but we really have not really lived a democracy in which every human being is experiencing full rights together.
(29:52):
Democracy has been framed as how white people experience it and people of color are the outlier. I think right now what we are seeing is without people directly saying it, is when you hear these phrases, kings, it's really a nod to the fact that we don't want to have these monarchs that are ruling our country, but in fact, we really need to go back and say, no more Jim Crow. And we could just name different governors across our own country who have restricted the right to vote, not only for people of color, but just women. I mean, we live in an extremely misogynistic society. And so the type of resistance that we're looking at right now, I wish it would be more like Ukraine and other countries where we just run to the streets and then people are forced to resign. When was the last time a US president resigned? Because so many millions of people went to the street. I can't really recall it.
Andrea Chalupa (30:52):
Well, LBJ didn't seek reelection. Nixon was like, I'm going to get my ass out of here before impeachment.
Terrell Starr (30:58):
But he didn't quit. He literally did not quit. He just did not finish. He was like, yeah, I'm not going to run. And then Gerald Ford took over. But I'm really looking forward to what this experimental time is going to produce for us, because really in the ideal situation, we would hit the streets and force this man out of office. Now that's what we want. And the reason why we can't do that is because we're not united as a country, because you have a vast majority of white people who are perfectly happy with what Trump is doing. And even if they're unhappy, they'll just pick another option that will produce similar results, but he just won't. But the difference is that person who is not Trump just won't beat you over the head with him, won't be so incompetent with it. And so you have a country of people who don't necessarily, who are maybe unsatisfied with Trump. They voted for him. They don't necessarily want Trump however they want what he's trying to do, but in a more systemic and smooth way to be executed. And so I have this country doesn't want democracy. That's another thing. And then we have another part of the country that does. And so because of that, we can't really come together and go to Washington DC and force this man out. That is our primary problem. Half this country does not want democracy. And so the people that we see going to the streets are the people who do
Andrea Chalupa (32:22):
Well. I mean a significant portion of the voters like the Christian nationalists that vote for Trump. They don't want democracy. The libertarians that claim that they don't want government in their lives. They are trying to literally overthrow the government. And then you have big tech that increasingly has this God complex where they're uniting with the Christian nationalists and putting all this money into innovation to live forever and to turn us all into the back, into the peasants. And they have their ruling city, state fiefdoms, basically. So that's the path they have us on us, this apocalyptic path of smash and grab. But I want to ask you, on the eve of the American Revolution, the American Revolution was obviously swept up in the ideas of the Enlightenment and John Locke and just this idea that the individual matters, that the pursuit of liberty, of freedom, control of your own destiny matters.
(33:13):
And that was very much the rights of men, rights of white men. But the founding fathers did debate, did give lip service to freeing the slaves, but they couldn't do it themselves. How convenient. And on the eve of the American Revolution, there's a big legal case in the UK directly challenging slavery. So maybe that also was a driver for these Americans, especially with the slaves, to be like, wait in a minute, we got to break apart here. Because what ultimately ends up happening is that the great mighty British empire abolishes slavery in 1833. No war required. They had internal debates, they had legal challenges, they had a growing abolition movement, and artists were on the front lines of advocating for this, and they just abolished slavery. Americans would have to go to war killing each other in order to get this same result. And so you kind of have to wonder, what is America ultimately a mistake?
(34:12):
We're the only industrialized nation with no social safety net, really hardly any to speak of. The Brits have one and their commonwealth nations like Canada and Australia have one. And then also no country that stuck with the British Empire or European Nation has our mass shooter problem. Kindergartners were gunned down, and still there's no meaningful gun reform. And now you have this Russian mafia asset, this corrupt criminal, a convicted felon, a serial rapist, president of the United States. He's a Frankenstein monster of America's long racist, misogynistic, authoritarian history all combined into one. So would you say that the American Revolution was a mistake? This very idea of America was a mistake?
Terrell Starr (35:09):
That's a good question. I can't say that it's a mistake because it matters about your perspective. And I think ultimately it's a philosophical question because it comes down to who is your creator, what you believe. I come from it from a faith perspective. And the biggest question is how can we as human beings figure out how to get along with one another? And I think since the revolutionary days, we are better than what we were. That's my scale. So how have we progressed as human beings over the past 100 years, 200 years, 300 years, particularly in this country? And I say that I spoke to a number of women in my life for Mother's Day, and most of them are old enough where they live through Jim Crow. And we were talking about how much the country has progressed since then, and this current time where we are regressing. And I'm really resistant to this idea that America is a mistake for the very simple reason that because I think ultimately as problematic as our country is, I think about all of the diversity of our country, the ethnic diversity of our country and who we are. I wouldn't imagine being in any other place in the world despite our problems. I just think that we should ask ourselves a hundred years. Well, we're not going to be alive a hundred years from now, but...
Andrea Chalupa (36:40):
Some of us, maybe if we marry into the big tech oligarchy and get some of those brain chip, they're developing live forever. But go on.
Terrell Starr (36:48):
But maybe a hundred years from now, I wonder how far will humanity in this country progress and optimists? I would have to believe that we would be better. And I don't know what that looks like. And so I think that we getting so much despair and frustration without realizing that Jim Crow was roughly a little more than 50 years ago. We've advanced far. And then before that it was slavery. And so the evolution of our humanity in this country has improved multiple fold despite all of our problems. But the key thing is that it's the activism is a small group of people who are doing most of the work that everyone benefits from.
Andrea Chalupa (37:32):
And that's across all liberation movements, gay liberation.
Terrell Starr (37:35):
But that's across all liberation movements. And you can see that with women. You can see that with different ethnic groups, religion, you have it. And so in New York City where we both live, there is a time when it was people who wanted to be mayor of this city. It was Anglo-Saxons, and then when the Irish came in, it was a victory for them. It was Italians at some point. And then roughly, I believe it was in the eighties and nineties, we had a black man to be president. And so 50 years from now, what will that look like? We have so many examples of progress. I don't think the problem is with it being a mistake. I think the main thing is convincing in this country, white people, mainly because they're the main issue, convincing white people, particularly white men, that whiteness is not the benefit that they think it is. And once the average white man from New York to California to the south across the south understands that, then there's nothing that these tech roles with whatever technology they have can do to reverse that. That's where I think we need to devote our attention.
Andrea Chalupa (38:48):
Prioritizing our common good, voting for our common good.
Terrell Starr (38:51):
That's the main thing. Because we are not benefiting from this white supremacist construct that we're existing in, and everybody is just operating on vibes. And that even goes across racial backgrounds. There are plenty of black people, Latino people, Asian people who vote for white supremacists, particularly men and women because they have been co-opted by patriarchy. And they think that somehow they work hard if they do the right things, that they will be a part of this white male ecosystem that is extractive, that harms people, however they think that it may harm other people, but it doesn't harm them. And so getting people to divest from that system is going to be key. And that's the vast majority of people who are the working poor. One of the things that I admire about Bernie Sanders, and you all, and anyone who listens to this show know I have very robust critiques about Bernie Sanders.
(39:50):
One of the things that I genuinely admire about him in general is that he does talk about these things. He is bold enough to talk about the oligarchy in ways that most people don't because they think it's too academic, even though most people around the world, regardless of their economic background, that understand oligarchy. But apparently some people believe that Americans are just too stupid to understand the word oligarch. But Bernie Sanders talks about this very thing, and he's really the only one that discusses it in a way that resonates across the board and across general lines, across racial lines. And we need that type of messaging across the Democratic party and general. When I see these huge rallies that Bernie Sanders organizes with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that gives me hope. That shows me that there are people in this country who are like, this is bullshit. But they need somebody to organize and come to them and tell them, this is bullshit. I will always admire Bernie Sanders for that. So no, I don't think that this is a mistake. I think the commonality of our humanity is a very key thing. Bernie Sanders needs to have a better race analysis. Bernie Sanders needs to have a more complex understanding that Western imperialism is the only imperialism that exists. IE Russia. I would be really concerned about the foreign policy people that he would have around them. That would be a thing.
Andrea Chalupa (41:22):
He's been really good about Russia in recent years.
Terrell Starr (41:25):
Recent years, he's been good. I would be concerned if he were president about some of the people that he would have around him because they tend to be too kind of DSA for me.
Andrea Chalupa (41:34):
Right? The isolationists, they exist on the far left just like they do on the right,
Terrell Starr (41:38):
Right? They would be to isolationists because that doesn't help either. We can't be critical of one form of colonialism and imperialism and kind of give a pass to another. But people like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, give me hope. Those are the people who really talk about economics in a way that goes across all racial barriers. And so I believe that because of these people, we have hope. And I think that the American Revolution that really liberated our country, we will figure out a way to have a multicultural revolution that will free all of us. Because I just think that is the trajectory of humanity as it pertains to our country. And even if we can't see it, I think that there are seeds that are being planted that will see that to fruition.
Leslie Nuss (singing) (42:29):
In these trouble times with so manys in this shop can do power to clean up the thumb their nose while they slip our grass. But the masks are on. They're up playing golf while we same person on planet Earth wants these people. So let's ship the one way ticket. Yeah, the on the power above the, but it's, they don't care unless you're wearing every time they have to win. But the die going to have a blast out there in ancient the, but they stole the shit and they robbed the We're feeling kind. We made up our minds yesterday with the master, you can have your, don't forget your and from the edge, goodbye forever. No Saint Planet in the universe wants to claim these people as our, so let's put them all one way ticket.
Andrea Chalupa (46:32):
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(47:40):
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