Justin Brierley On The Rebirth Of Belief In God

Talking about faith and the “meaning crisis” of modern life.

Justin is a writer and broadcaster who gets Christians and non-Christians to talk to each other. He co-hosts the “Re-Enchanting” podcast for Seen & Unseen, and is a guest presenter for the “Maybe God” podcast. He also contributes to Premier Christianity magazine, where he used to be editor. His new book is The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, and he has a documentary podcast series of the same name.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on what killed the New Atheist movement, and the infinitesimal odds that life ever emerged in the universe — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: his parents the “hippies who found Jesus” at Oxford; his early childhood in a Christian commune; the left and right brains of faith; conversion moments; Pascal; Augustine; the evolutionary need for religion; Hitchens and me debating the meaning of life; our disdain for proselytizing; Dawkins and the “mind virus”; atheism and why people “need more than a negative to live on”; my falling away from the Church after the sex-abuse crisis; the quasi-religious movement of BLM and wokeness; its need for purity without grace; the Trump cult; evangelicals drifting from the church-state divide; Christianism; my atheist ex-boyfriend; Ayaan’s conversion; Tom Holland; Game of Thrones as medieval Europe without Christianity; how Jesus changed human consciousness forever; Bart Ehrman; debating the details of the Resurrection; the #MeToo movement and the dignity of women; monogamy as a way to protect women from polygamist men; Louise Perry’s Case Against Sexual Revolution; how ISIS brought back crucifixion; the chasm between Christianity and its leaders; the many messiahs of the ancient world; psychedelics; sensing my friend Patrick after his death; scientific materialism; Alex Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide to Reality; the problem of consciousness; panpsychism; Harari on human rights; Paul Davies and the “directionality of life”; logos as logic speaking into chaos; and why “Christianity has to stay weird.”

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Isikoff and Klaidman on Trump’s trials; Christian Wiman on resisting despair as a Christian, Nate Silver on the 2024 race, Jeffrey Rosen on the pursuit of happiness, George Will on Trump and conservatism, and Abigail Shrier on why the cult of therapy harms children. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Here’s a listener on last week’s convo with Jonathan Freedland on anti-Semitism and the left:

Thank you for that super interesting and very engaging conversation!

I’m a bit of an Anglophile and do follow British politics, and Jonathan is one of the few Guardian columnists I really respect. I haven’t heard you utter a single word I disagree with on the topic of Israel and Hamas, and I found Jonathan’s opinions to be so enlightening and moving, really. I listened to it on a long walk, avoiding lake-sized puddles of slush on this mucky, too-warm January day in Montreal.

That’s the perfect way to listen to the Dishcast! From another listener who enjoyed the pod:

We don’t get such detailed discussions of British politics very often here in the States. So great. But the thing that always troubles me, in that episode and many other places, is how people go on and on about how it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize the Israeli government or its policies. And I agree that it’s not inherently anti-Semitic to criticize a government and its policies, but this particular government is criticized constantly, for everything. Israel was criticized in October, before they even started the invasion of Gaza. Nasty stuff, like the crowd in Sydney chanting “Gas the Jews,” or those lovely young people at Harvard who claimed that the attack was Israel’s fault, 100%. And on and on and on. To these people, Israel can do no right, in any situation, ever.

So while it may not automatically be anti-Semitic to criticize the Israeli government, it sure as hell feels anti-Semitic to this Jew. Especially as Israel is so much better than its neighbors in terms of democracy, doesn’t torture and/or kill citizens the government doesn’t like, and has freedoms in general. Even for its Arab minority!

And stories about how the Global South disapproves of Israel would make me laugh if I weren’t so outraged. How many of these countries are beacons of democracy, freedom and tolerance? So for them to continually bash Israel is laughable, and hypocrisy of the highest order. And South Africa? Their government is hardly without some very grievous sins, including continuing to align with Russia, even in the face of their invasion of Ukraine, for which there is NO excuse.

On the other hand, the near-total obliteration of Gaza as a place where anyone could live is more like Putin’s use of the military rather than the West’s. Another on Israel:

I was fascinated by your discussion with Jonathan Freedland about anti-Semitism, which I firmly believe has been spurred to a significant degree by the actions of Netanyahu and the radical West Bank settlers. He has used Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority and even agreed to allow billions of dollars to be sent to Hamas by Qatar. I think Hamas and Netanyahu need each other in order to survive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to prolong Israeli military action in Gaza because he knows if the fighting ends, he will likely be ousted from power when an election is held and could very well wind up in jail for corruption.

I don’t think the Palestinian Authority is up to the task of governing Gaza, judging by their record in the West Bank. They appear to be corrupt and incompetent, which begs the question of who can govern the Palestinians if a two-state solution ever came to fruition. Talk about being on the horns of a dilemma.

Another writes, “I immensely enjoyed your interview with Freedland and laughed out loud at your recollections of Keir Starmer during your grammar school days together”:

Another has a question:

I very much enjoy your writing, but I don’t like wasting time listening to podcasts.  I can read text much faster than listening to speech. I would be happy to subscribe to a written transcript of your podcasts. Is that possible?

A reminder that Substack recently launched an auto-transcription feature, which you can access by clicking the gray box labeled “Transcript” below the byline of every podcast post:

This next reader wants to hear more about Nikki Haley:

I welcomed your latest commentary on Trump — I despise him as much as the next guy — but I think our fear of the fool should be kept within rational bounds. Where I get off your trolley is your characterization of Nikki Haley as “ghastly.” I scratched my head wondering where you were coming from until I listened to the Maher clip and got the picture that you see her as the second coming of Dick Cheney:

While the topic may soon be irrelevant, I am puzzled by what wars you think she is interested in launching. I listened to (suffered through?) the GOP debates, and Haley sounded to me a lot more like Reagan than Cheney. She supports money and arms for Ukraine, no US troops. (So did Christie — is he a warmonger?) Ditto for Israel. If she differs from Biden on these matters, and Taiwan, it is only a matter of degree. A perfect candidate she is not, but ghastly?

Her support for Israel is close to pathological. I suspect she’d take us to the edge of war with both China and Russia. Everything she says reminds me of unreconstructed neocons circa 2003. Someone who has learned nothing from history is not someone I’d want as president.

Another reader turns to the debate over race and IQ:

The issue is vexing me terribly. I agree that the left has done a pathetic job engaging with this explosive topic, and I commend you for taking a different approach. I recommend a popular piece published by a fellow ‘Stacker, Nathan Cofnas. I’ve also been keeping track of Hanania’s recent works on this topic, and can’t shake the nagging feeling that there’s no small amount of handwaving going on when it comes both to cultural impact on IQ as well as the societal damage a simple “hereditarian” take on this topic would reap. This is not a subject one can talk about freely at dinner parties (ha!).

I think it would be helpful for all of us to acknowledge that there is no empirical doubt that IQ is distributed differently across racial groupings. It’s just a fact. Why this is the case is highly contested — with the usual nature-nurture debate at play. I think it’s only safe to say that it isn’t 100 percent genetics, as some racists believe; and it isn’t 100 percent environment, as the current orthodoxy would have it. It’s probably some complicated mixture of the two, with interaction between both. If we can isolate what’s going on, we may be able to ameliorate it. If we deny what’s going on, we go round and round in circles. That’s why I favor more research and less stigma.

From a dissenter:

I’ve followed you since your Atlantic essay on why we should vote for Barack Obama when he ran in 2008, and I’m a paid subscriber (I had to pay because I kept wanting more when your podcasts would end early). I also follow Will Stancil on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), and I generally enjoy his commentary. I saw some of that back-and-forth on race you covered, but I didn’t dive into it carefully. Reading your own commentary, though, you bring up a dimension of this debate on race and IQ that I find really frustrating.

I think it’s really problematic and especially crude to think of white and black as useful markers for race. The reason why we do it is because they originally did it hundreds of years ago to justify slavery. We continue to talk in this way because we have enormous hangover effects from slavery, Jim Crow and other laws that were clearly racist.

But blackness is not really a useful way to categorize people by race, especially if you’re trying to understand genetic differences. There’s just far too much genetic diversity within these categories to be useful. First of all, we’re lumping together an entire continent (Africa) and then lumping in all the people globally with some genetic ties to Africa, which includes a significant amount of intermixing with people descended from other places. (The same problem is exists with saying whiteness is a race. Or Asian.)

A good example of this is to figure out why all the best marathoners come from Kenya or Ethiopia. That CNN piece describes strong cultural and environmental reasons, and perhaps there are genetic reasons, but that has yet to be shown. Where it’s interesting to narrow the lens on Kenya, it’s crude and wrong to widen the lens to include all black people. (You can do a similar analysis about sprinters from Jamaica.)

This is why race as blackness is not the same as gender. Black, white or brown are just shades of skin and hair. It’s a genetic marker that people from many races might have in common, but it’s crude to use these as the category dividing line. And these differences are superficial in ways biological sex is not. While there are overlaps between gender debate and racial debates, the differences are big enough that I think you can readily land in different places on these issues. I don’t agree with Kendi on everything, but I think many of his core positions on race are sound for the reasons I describe here.

I just read that CNN piece. It’s written as if Darwin never existed and we had no concept of natural selection. That a single sport is dominated globally by people from one high-altitude valley and one tribe screams of at least some genetic advantage. Yet CNN won’t go there, except as a post-script that attempts to debunk it. That’s how deep the media hostility is to the science of genetics.

The argument that race is entirely superficial — that it affects the hair, and skin, but nothing else — is passingly strange. Would we say that of any other mammal? Does evolution occur only in the skin and somehow stops miraculously at the neck, so that the brain is unaffected? Does it have no effect on the size and the shape of the body? Just look around you! I understand the need to deny reality. Race differences have such a dark and foul history. But that doesn’t mean they don’t or cannot exist. It doesn’t mean they are entirely socially created.

Speaking of athleticism:

As a retired psychologist who has done a lot of IQ testing, I’d like to add something to your discussion on IQ and race. IQ tests measure a set of mental abilities that are deemed relevant to success in modern societies. At the risk of being called all kinds of names, I notice that Blacks, on average, seem to outperform whites in activities requiring particular psychomotor abilities that are not measured by standard IQ tests. These include musical/vocal/rhythmic abilities and motor speed and coordination as displayed in athletics.

These abilities may have provided an evolutionary edge in an African evolutionary environment. If they were measured and included in IQ test scores, the racial IQ gap would likely diminish or disappear. The problem is whether they are relevant enough to success in a modern society to warrant their inclusion.

Precisely, IQ tests are really tests for how well you will do in a Western advanced economy. That’s all they are. They do not confer moral worth. They do not make someone superior or inferior.

Another dissent:

I see you discuss the race/IQ issue a lot, and there is something I think you’re missing. “IQ score” is a normed number, that is readjusted every few years, yet most people falsely think of it as an objective number — such as “height” or “weight — that is constant regardless of the year. For example: An American who was 6’0″ in 1920 is the same height as an American who is 6’0″ today. However, an American whose raw score on an IQ test would earn them 100 IQ in 1920 would, with an identical raw score, measure 70-80 IQ today. This is due to the well-known Flynn Effect of score creep over the years.

IQ is important, but clearly there are things that can massively shift scores. Being low vs high caste is one of them, and if a group remains low caste for 100 years, that will depress its score for 100 years. But nonetheless, even a low-caste group today scores higher than a high-caste group from 1920, and that’s kind of interesting, no?

IQ is more useful for evaluating an individual than it is for making set-in-stone statements about groups. If Barack Obama is a genius, that’s useful to know. But we can’t say if he’d have still been a genius in all other environments (e.g. if born into slavery in 1600s he would’ve done worse, as would any of us).

To me, you sound way too cavalier when you talk about race and IQ. Everyone deserves to be looked at as an individual. Emphasizing group differences gives people a lazy shorthand to over-value some and under-value others based on stereotypes.

I couldn’t agree more. Group differences have no effect on any random individual from the group. Countless Asians are dumber, for example, than countless African-Americans. It’s just the that mean is different, which will affect broad social outcomes.

Another reader is “curious to know how you assess the prevalence of threats of political violence on the left and right”:

My query is prompted by Joe Klein’s statement in your episode with him that he received death threats for questioning some point (I can’t remember which one) of left-wing orthodoxy. When I say “political violence,” I’m thinking of ideologically motivated threats — from people on the far left who threaten those perceived as ideologically non-conformist, and from people on the MAGA right who threaten those perceived as ideologically non-conformist.

Knowing what I know of the mainstream media’s ideological bias, and having heard scattered stories about people receiving death threats from the far left, my guess is that the prevalence of such threats is under-reported. Whom those threats tend to target — ordinary people and public figures who find themselves at the center of some culture-war firestorm, judges, right-wing politicians, and/or non-woke Democrats — isn’t clear to me, nor is their degree of effectiveness in frightening people to behave in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.

By contrast, it does seem clear to me that Trump’s supporters routinely make threats of physical violence against ordinary people and public figures, anti-MAGA Republicans, Democrats, and judges, and that they have done so to considerable effect against anti-MAGA Republicans in particular. (I’m thinking here of Mitt Romney’s and others’ claims that various Republicans wanted to vote to impeach Trump after January 6 but refrained from doing so out of fear for themselves and their families.) And, of course, the right has the guns and the gun fetishization in a way the left does not.

It seems clear to me there’s an asymmetry in the relationship between those making the threats and their side’s political leadership. While Trump is careful to avoid crossing legal lines, relying on winks and nudges rather than explicit incitement, he is without question morally responsible for creating a permission structure for threats of violence by his supporters. By contrast, while I think Democrats (to their shame) created the same permission structure for the far left and opportunists during the 2020 riots, I don’t see that violence as political in the same way as death threats, and I don’t see the Dem leadership giving wink-wink nudge-nudge permission for the far left to make threats in the way I see Trump giving it to the far right.

Do you think these are real asymmetries between the left and right, or are they apparent asymmetries reflecting under-reported threats of violence from the left?

I don’t know. When I see Antifa and the Proud Boys, I don’t see a huge amount of difference. But the far right does seem to be ascendant. From a 2023 piece in the Military Times:

Fifty years ago, far-left movements posed the biggest domestic terrorism threat to the United States, with some environmental, communist and animal rights groups taking credit for bombings, arson and vandalism at businesses and federal buildings across the country. But terrorism carried out by right-wing actors eclipsed that of leftist movements in the 1990s, and then, the country’s focus shifted to foreign terrorist organizations for more than a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Now, government agencies and scholars across the political spectrum agree that far-right movements have caused most of the political violence in the U.S. over the past few years — and present the most dangerous threat today. Data shows that the involvement of veterans and service members in some of these groups is helping to further the violence. […]

Thomas Spoehr, a scholar with the conservative Heritage Foundation who’s argued against “wokeness” in the military, agreed that right-wing extremism is more prevalent than other ideologies, though he believes the issue of extremism overall is taking up too many government resources. The numbers are hard to argue with. Right-wing ideologies were behind a majority of the nearly 600 domestic terror attacks that occurred from 2010 through 2021 […] During that period, right-wing extremists were charged with 353 plots or attacks that caused 147 deaths, the data show. In the same time frame, far-left extremists carried out 126 plots or attacks, killing 23 people.

A reader addresses my latest Trump piece:

I’m a lifelong liberal Democrat, but I’ll grant some validity to your assertion here:

It’s going to be extremely hard for me to vote for Biden again this fall, given his appalling record on immigration, his aggressive race and sex discrimination, and his support for transing children. But Trump is not just a despicable human being. He is a completely unpredictable violator of constitutional and democratic norms.

Earlier today I heard a brief segment from a Trump speech on the radio. A lot of it was his usual babble, but then he asserted, in what struck me as a surprisingly cogent manner, that he opposes DEI and that as president he will remove the DEI bureaucracy from the federal government. (After a brief search, I cannot (yet) find that quote in print, but this article seems to reference Trump’s position on the issue.) And for the first time that I can recall, I found myself agreeing with one of Trump’s proposals. I even found myself thinking that at least this one good thing will probably happen if he wins re-election. And I surely can’t be the only liberal type harboring such heretical notions. In fact, I’m quite certain there are a lot of us.

I personally believe that DEI is the administrative apparatus for instituting a Kendi style of anti-racism. In other words, DEI is a reductive policy that obsesses over race to the exclusion of other valid and pertinent considerations. And, although it claims to promote equal racial outcomes, it may in reality be a mechanism for a reverse racism that seeks more to penalize the (white or Asian) privileged than to uplift the (POC) disadvantaged.

Worst of all, DEI is now notorious for adopting illiberal means to mandate its questionable ends. The DEI regulations in the California Community College system, forcing faculty to promote antiracism or risk their tenure status, is a shocking and utterly horrifying example.

So, imagine the unprecedented political disorientation I feel when my own Democratic Party is the one promoting illiberal and arguably racist DEI policies while none other than DONALD TRUMP speaks out against them! This must be what it feels like to live in Bizarro World.

I’m going to vote for Biden, but I wish I could do so as enthusiastically as I did in 2020. As usual, I do not think your column does a fair enough job enumerating Biden’s many accomplishments. He strikes me as a decent man doing a good job. But he’s stuck in a party seemingly in thrall to its fringe lunatics on the far left. While I’m still willing to vote for him, I’m beginning to wonder if he might be the last Democratic president I ever vote for.

I will not vote for Trump, who’s mentally ill. But Biden is not in charge of his party, and is a captive of its extremes. Here’s another anguished reader on the 2024 race:

If you had asked me in the summer of 2021 if I would ever consider voting for Trump in 2024, I would have answered “Hell no!” I voted for Biden in 2020, even though I thought Trump’s policies were (for the most part) better, because of Trump’s personal unfitness. But also because I genuinely believed Biden, or wanted to believe him, when he vowed that he was a moderate who would try to unite the country.

Today, my concerns about Trump haven’t gone away. Indeed, they’ve deepened for a variety of well-known reasons. But this time around there’s no way Biden is going to convince me he is a moderate or a uniter. And his significant mental and physical decline since he took office — obvious to anyone with eyes and ears —means that, if Biden were to win in 2024, it’s very likely Kamala Harris would at some point become president — a thought that sends chills down my spine.

You cite some of the reasons why I could never vote for Biden again — “his appalling record on immigration, his aggressive race and sex discrimination, and his support for transing children” — but let me add a few more: his failure to appreciate the impact of inflation on ordinary Americans (fueled by his signature “achievements”); his reliance on woke Millennials and TikTok influencers to make policy; undermining one of the core values in our Constitution (free speech); his eagerness to violate the Constitution through executive order if he thinks nobody will have legal “standing” to challenge him; and his clear participation in the influence-peddling scams of his ne’er-do-well son. I could include more, but my fingers are tired.

Barely a day goes by when someone doesn’t insist that I “must” vote for Biden because “democracy is at stake.” Trump, I’m told, will be a dictator — and that alone should require me to vote Biden. But what these people fail to consider is that Biden has actually governed like a dictator, albeit with less blustery rhetoric. (He’s barely capable of rhetoric at this point, unless you count mumbling.) His outrageous eviction moratorium — which SCOTUS overturned — prevented landlords like me from getting rid of tenants who did not pay their rent. His similar “student loan forgiveness” mandates have been transparent attempts to buy votes and end-run Congress — and he’s still at it. His coordination with social media giants to silence or marginalize voices that disagree with his policies are more consistent with the actions of Kim Jong Un than Thomas Jefferson.

Meanwhile, once-great cities run by Democrats — cities I have loved since I was a child — have descended into madness. Migrants swarm our borders, most making patently false claims of asylum or just walking across to avoid detection. The president exercises a power he does not have to “parole” most of the former into the country to await hearings that will happen many years from now, if at all. And migrants know that, unless they commit rape or murder, they will be able to stay here forever.

The insanity isn’t confined to our cities. Girls are forced to compete against (and change in front of) biological boys, and little gay boys are told they are really girls and that it would just be swell if they took life-altering hormones and started thinking about chopping off their balls and surgically reconstituting their penises to resemble a vagina. And anyone who suggests that maybe there is something troubling about this is condemned as a bigot.

Four more years of Biden-Harris means four more years of me having to show up for work every day at my mundane, non-policy job in the federal government and be lectured about DEI and reminded that I must prove my devotion to DEI to get promoted. I survived four years under Donald-effing-Trump and never once had to demonstrate what I did to make America great again to get promoted; I was just expected to do my job and do it well. I didn’t have to worry about consultants lecturing me about how I — a gay man married to a mixed-raced legal immigrant — was by birth a racist and that, if I didn’t acknowledge that as “fact,” well that just proves it.

So, no, I am not looking forward to four more years of Donald Trump. He will rant and rave and say and do all sorts of crazy shit. But he will control the border. He will put an immediate end to DEI (at least in the federal government). He won’t use social media to censor his opponents (social media would never collaborate with him if he tried). His economic policies surely will be better for me and my retirement plans, which have grown in importance to me as I close in on retirement age. And, when Trump is done at the end of 2028, he’ll leave office because he must, and I trust our institutions to hold.

But four more years of Biden-Harris means four more years of an administration that governs by unchallengeable executive order; that fails in its basic responsibility to protect our borders; that is hellbent on dividing us on race and gender ideology; that is incapable of understanding that a decrease in the rate of inflation is not a decrease in prices; and that uses the weight of the federal government to silence critics. As much as I despise Trump, there might still be a country worth living in when he’s gone. I increasingly don’t believe the same can be said of Joe Biden.

In a perfect world — hell, in merely a sane world — a great country like ours wouldn’t have to choose between the likes of Biden or Trump. But, alas, that seems to be what we are left with. My mind isn’t 100 percent made up whether I will vote for Trump (I might choose a third-party candidate or sit it out), but there is nothing Biden can do or say to make me vote for him again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I’m pretty much on the same page. Another reader is worried about foreign affairs:

If we are headed into a global conflict, as looks likely in short time, I’d rather have a figurehead who is feared for his unpredictability than a seemingly incoherent, puppet granddad type whose better days are in the rear view mirror. If Biden and Trump are the options, and a global conflict ensues, Biden, Harris, Austin, and Blinken aren’t exactly your war superhero team. Maslow’s pyramid still applies and safety is a top priority. Social issues go away when we are focused on defense of our borders, cities, and way of life. All of which are likely in more danger because of Biden’s refusal to follow immigration law.

A reminder of Trump leaving the capital three years ago:

I also deeply dread a second Trump presidency, and I agree that he is just a deeply disturbed coward. So many liberals are declaring, with increasing alarm and seriousness, that if he wins he would make himself a dictator for life. I often remind people that on Inauguration Day 2021, he slithered out of the White House and quickly absconded to Florida, making him the first president in more than 150 years to refuse to attend the inauguration:

(Evan Vucci – Pool/Getty Images)

He was too cowardly to show his face at Biden’s swearing in. He was too scared to stand his ground in the Oval Office. He just disappeared. In fact, moving trucks started moving Trump’s personal belongings to Florida two months in advance, and the Trumps were gone six hours before the Bidens would move in, to allow sufficient time for a White House Covid-19 cleaning crew. The Capitol Police or D.C. National Guard didn’t have to drag Trump, kicking and screaming, out of the White House. No doors were barricaded; no shots were fired; no law-enforcement officers were injured. Trump just scurried away like a frightened bunny rabbit, and hasn’t been seen in the area since.

Another reader also isn’t worried about Trump becoming a “dictator for life”:

None of the pieces I’ve read about the dangers of a second Trump term mention two obvious points:

1. Trump will be a lame duck president. With each passing month, his power will wane. Anyone who thinks he will stay in office for a third term does not understand this country. John Roberts would swear in the new president. The new president would politely request Trump to leave the White House. If he didn’t, the new president would order the Secret Service to eject him, by force if necessary. If the Secret Service did not obey, our military would do the job.
2. Thus, Trump will be in office for four years at most. The statute of limitations on most federal criminal offenses is six years. Any Trump minion who goes too far will be subject to possible criminal prosecution after Trump leaves office. Lawyers in particular will be quite conscious of this. It will inhibit them from too radical action.

This next reader isn’t worried about the vote in November:

I do think you are wrong about Biden losing the election to Trump. I believe the election will be decided by two issues: abortion and the future of democracy. I can’t see educated suburban women voting for the misogynist Trump, who has done nothing in the past four years to attract the votes of independents who abandoned him in 2020 — and more women vote than men. The pundits all proclaimed there would be a red wave in the 2022 midterms, which did not come to pass, with the Trumpist candidates losing.

Trump may have 50 percent of the GOP, but the Republicans only comprise about 30 percent of the electorate, so his support is made up of half of 30 percent. His supporters may be the most vociferous, but Richard Nixon was correct in saying there is a Great Silent Majority out there.

We’ll see, won’t we? One more email for the week:

If this doesn’t convince you that MAGA world suffers from pathological paranoia, nothing will: now they’re going after Taylor Swift because (gasp!) she supports Joe Biden and has been getting fans registered to vote at her shows. She and her BF are supposedly tools of the deep state who are going to be in a GOTV campaign for Biden and promote vaccines and abortion rights. MAGA Has TDS — Taylor Derangement Syndrome.

This is some truly loony stuff and it makes no sense politically. Taylor Swift is one of the most popular people in the US today, and her millions of fans are not going to enjoy a smear campaign against her. Trumpers are going to alienate themselves from even more people. I would say Swift is right up there with Oprah and Madonna with her influence on women and gays.

Yes, entirely loopy, weird and unhinged. I’m with Larry David on this. I truly don’t give a shit about Taylor Swift. I just lust for her boyfriend’s brother.

Thanks for all the great emails, and you can send yours to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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