Conspirituality

Prior to last month’s killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, many white American citizens felt obligated to use their privilege to actively disrupt unjust ICE activities in their cities. But the stakes just got higher for everyone.

In the wake of these tragic deaths, we look at how the MAGA propaganda machine dehumanizes opposition and demands loyalists not trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears. In segment two, Matthew will look into how renegade religious leaders, then in segment three Derek discusses brave community organizers in Portland currently resisting ICE and the authoritarianism it advances.

Show Notes

Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13 

As a resident of Minnesota—Bishop Barron

Bishop Barron's tendentious attack on Mayor Mamdani distorts doctrine | National Catholic Reporter 

Leo ally: defund ICE

BBC Audio US Military Archbishop, Faith and Gen Z, 'Understanding British Imams' project

Fact-Checking Trump Admin Claims of Paid Protestors

“Womanosphere” Influencers Urge Against the “Sin of Empathy”

‘Oregon was next’: Trump targeted state after Minnesota, report says

Feds at Portland ICE facility again deploy chemical agents against protesters

PDX ICE Watch

This nonviolent stuff'll get you killed : how guns made the civil rights movement possible : Cobb, Charles E., Jr., author : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Brief: Beyond Violence and Nonviolence (Part 1) — Conspirituality  

Omar Wasow on Non-Violent Protest Effectiveness

Charles Tilly on Public Perception of Protest Movements

William Gamson’s Strategy Of Social Protest
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When videos surfaced of Alex Pretti kicking an ICE vehicle's taillight 11 days before his murder, claims that the video was AI dominated social media. Some commenters even posted articles that stated the opposite of what they thought they said.

Derek explores the necessity of curiosity when coming across information that contradicts what you want to hear. First, he explores it through his love of books before applying the skill to situations like the Pretti video.
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The silence of MAHA influencers around the murder of Renee Good (and ICE generally) has been excessively loud. Yet that’s expected from the coalition that voted for Donald Trump in order to install RFK Jr at this point. Many believe “health isn’t political” while refusing to accept or acknowledge what their vote has empowered.

Dr Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist at NYU Langone’s Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center, returns to the podcast to talk about MAGA’s enablers in the MAHA movement with Derek and Julian.

Show Notes

MAHA Gave Us MAGA 2.0.  Remember the Enablers.

Everyone Else is Lying to You: How our medical establishment weaponized doubt to spread COVID, normalize quackery, and undermine public health
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As Trump surges his Gestapo and threatens to annex new territory, his brain is collapsing. He’s sundowning on Truth Social, nodding off in meetings, slurring words, slurping at the saliva pooling in his mouth. His insults and aggressions are as constant and predictable as his arms are, reaching out for handholds.

Up until this point, discourse on the mental health of this decrepit fascist leader has used the kid gloves of psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry, in which even the most informed analyses were constrained by the fact that experts were interpreting his inner states. For our part, we’ve compared his fate to that of charismatic cult leaders at the end of the line—and we’ll do more of that today.

Now a new posse of clinical commentators on IG and TikTok have made it all much more biological: we are witnessing, they say, the predictable signs of fast-progressing dementia.

Show Notes

Goldwater Rule vs Duty to Warn, American Academy of Psychiatry and Law

World Health Organization: Dementia

Signs and Symptoms of Dementia

Alzheimer's disease: a comprehensive review of epidemiology, risk factors, symptoms diagnosis, management, caregiving, advanced treatments and associated challenges

USC study finds new evidence linking dementia to problems with the brain’s waste clearance system

A new drug could stop Alzheimer’s before memory loss begins

A 2025 update on treatment strategies for the Alzheimer’s disease spectrum

Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission

Broadening dementia risk models: building on the 2024 Lancet Commission report for a more inclusive global framework

Study finds disparities in diagnosis and treatment of dementia

Decomposing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Risk and Protective Factors of Dementia in the U.S.

Mapping racial and ethnic healthcare disparities for persons living with dementia: A scoping review

Dementia Diagnosis Disparities by Race and Ethnicity

Racial disparities in dementia determined by social factors

Straight-forward Explainer: What’s Going on With NIH Cuts to Alzheimer’s Research?
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Listen to the full episode

Simone Weil was skeptical about the project of “rights.” They argued that obligations come before rights, and that rights only become real when obligations are recognized and lived. 

Weil believed the French Revolution made a foundational error by grounding society in rights rather than eternal obligations, creating a contradiction that still haunts liberal democracies today. Rights, Weil argues, carry a bargaining spirit and ultimately depend on force for enforcement, while obligations arise unconditionally from the mere fact of another person’s vulnerability. You owe something to others not because they’ve asserted a claim, but because they exist.

Drawing from Weil’s posthumous The Need for Roots, Matthew unpacks their critique of liberal rights discourse: that modern societies undermine their own moral claims by prioritizing abstractions over duties.
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