Glenn and Pat are joined by Russ McCameymanor owner Russ McKamey to talk about the horrors of being a member of the Westboro Baptist Church and the crazy things he has done in his life.
00:02:12.400They keep seeing a nut, something shiny in the wind, and they've got to move.
00:02:16.120The constant assault on our Constitution, the rule of law, and liberty is something that is subsidized by many large corporations in the United States.
00:02:25.860And your cell phone company may be among them.
00:07:52.860They're just major adrenaline junkies.
00:07:56.080These are people who have lived and they've done all the bungee jumping and skydiving and then all the exciting things out there and nothing really affects them anymore.
00:08:05.720So they come to me like, oh, I really want to feel this again.
00:08:08.340I want to feel what it's like when I wrote my first roller coaster or saw my first scary movie.
00:09:29.560And it's customized for that one individual or two folks that go through per week.
00:09:34.760It's funny, you know, we talk to their parents or talk to their family and friends or the coworkers, and they're more than willing to throw them under the bus.
00:09:44.020They're more than willing to give us all the dirt about what really scares them.
00:18:29.680Again, here's here's where people have to put on their logic caps.
00:18:32.620And I know it's hard to do sometimes or certain folks always want to sign that silly petition.
00:18:37.260But if I was really, really doing things that were illegal and giving medication to people and torturing people and doing this and that, that would be illegal.
00:19:05.180Without giving too much away, just kind of add two and two together and realize that if that all this stuff is going on that's in the petition, I wouldn't be here right now.
00:19:14.700I'd be locked away in the Birk Cage Theater someplace.
00:19:40.180It just goes to show you they can write whatever they want.
00:19:42.380And what they're doing is they're just taking their own thoughts based upon movies that are five, six, seven years old that I made back in San Diego.
00:19:51.520They're not basing anything upon the reality of what it really is.
00:19:56.200And, in fact, every show, before every show, I call the police.
00:20:01.920I volunteer for them to come down and watch the show anytime they want to.
00:20:06.780Law enforcement, the district attorney, anybody can come here unannounced, anytime they want to, with cameras in hand, film everything they want.
00:48:35.660Good to have you on the program again.
00:48:36.940Uh, first of all, can I ask you, um, the, you kept the name Phelps, your Megan Phelps Roper and Phelps is one of those words, you know, like we say, your name is mud around here.
00:48:51.700That because that's, that's because the guy who was helping John Wilkes Booth, his name was mud.
00:49:17.700And, you know, I, my husband, my husband recently, we've been talking about, you know, we want to start a nonprofit at some point.
00:49:23.960And he had the idea of calling it the Westboro foundation, because I want people when they hear Westboro to not think of people who celebrate.
00:49:32.520Tragedies and death, but people who are there when tragedies happen to help people who are suffering.
00:49:38.180I mean, in some ways, it's what Chip and Joanna did for Waco, Texas.
00:49:41.860But it was, I mean, that wasn't, that wasn't personally them.
00:50:29.360I was the one who took our message to social media initially and, you know, helped with all of the logistical work, you know, orchestrating the protest.
00:50:38.500So I was not, I was not, you know, as I put it, I said I was all in.
00:50:43.620And then before you, before you change, before you talk about how you changed, was there ever any discussion like, hey, guys, I don't think this is working.
00:50:57.700Was there ever any discussion like that?
00:51:00.560No, because for Westboro, you know, they do not use conversion numbers as a metric of their success.
00:51:06.640They don't believe that, you know, changing hearts and minds is in their power because they believe in predestination.
00:51:12.140So only God can change someone's heart.
00:51:14.600And so we, we basically saw our, you know, we measured our success as the amount of publicity that we were getting.
00:51:21.300Because all we were trying to do was publish this message that we thought was the word of God.
00:51:26.640So, and so from that perspective, we were very successful.
00:51:29.960We were all, I mean, you know, pop culture phenomenons, you know, True Blood, that, you know, really popular series on HBO.
00:51:35.860So the opening credits included, you know, God hates fangs, you know, which is part of our, you know, just a play on our God hates gays message.
00:51:45.620But so it's, you know, for them, they just, that's, they weren't trying to change people's minds.
00:51:51.240And that's why they, to change, the idea of changing tactics didn't even occur to them.
00:51:57.560And when people would insist that they should, that it was biblical for them to change tactics, for us to change tactics, we basically just dismissed them out of hand.
00:52:05.860So, Megan, when, when you are away from this now, and your eyes have been opened, and you, you know what you were part of, and your family is a part of, and you know, you know, what's, what's true and what's not.
00:52:26.640How difficult is it for you to look at our society today, and to see what people are doing online, on air, everything, and, and not just cry out, you fools, what are you doing?
00:52:44.040Well, I can't say you fools, because I, I was exactly where so many people are now.
00:52:50.560I know, I know how seductive that, that way of seeing things is, you know, the, the appeal of absolute certainty.
00:52:58.300You know, the, it, my grandfather used to say that it was, there's something wonderfully liberating in the idea that, in the notion, the knowledge, that you are 100% right.
00:53:09.900He believed that we were 100% right, with no possibility of error, because we, again, we had the word of God.
00:53:16.560And, and so when I see this, you know, this, this spirit, kind of the same spirit taking over, you know, the Westboroization of, of politics and American culture generally, I know, I know why people are drawn to it.
00:53:30.900And, and I understand the group dynamics that lead people to it, but I also know, you know, how incredibly destructive it is to see the world that way, and how, how ineffective it is to try to, to change hearts and minds to, to, to come to, you know, collective, to compromise, how difficult that is to do when you have completely demonized anyone who doesn't agree with you on everything, anyone who steps outside of the party line on any, on any notion.
00:53:58.700It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not good.
00:54:01.740It's, it's interesting, because I, I wrote in one of my books, I think it was my last one, where I said, the only thing I am now certain of is that I'm not certain of anything.
00:54:10.740It is our certainty that is, is dividing us.
00:54:14.280Um, and it, it, it's, it feels, it feels different than what you went through, because you see, and you claim what's happening over here is evil.
00:54:30.840And, and I know the difference between good and evil, and this is just, this movement is evil, but that's what you guys thought.
00:54:40.840Mm-hmm, yeah, and that's the thing, it's, if you are only looking at things from your perspective, you know, you're, you're, you are looking at, at, at current events in light of your, your own experiences.
00:54:52.820And if you cut yourself off from trying to understand why other people have come to different conclusions, if you just attribute it to, you know, this person is evil, they are ill-intentioned, you, you are immediately cutting yourself off from really understanding that person and what has led them to those conclusions.
00:55:10.020Right, and it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that you, um, are going to change your point of view or, uh, or, uh, that you're not necessarily on the right track.
00:55:22.580But you don't understand that you are limiting, um, yourself by not listening to how other people got there or viewed it, because they are going to teach you something.
00:55:36.080Uh, and if you close yourself off to that, you end up alone, right?
00:55:42.320And there, you know, there is this instinct that I think is very human.
00:55:45.500You know, when, when we encounter people that we believe are doing and believing destructive things, the instinct that we have is to isolate ourselves from them.
00:55:53.440You know, we don't want to endorse them.
00:55:55.320We don't want to have any part with what they're involved in.
00:55:57.960And again, I think that's very, a very human response.
00:56:01.400Um, you know, you're trying to shame them into changing.
00:56:04.060The problem is that when the divide is as great as it is now in, in so many different spheres, you know, I was talking to an anthropologist last year, uh, and she, she explained the feeling of shame.
00:56:15.500As, you know, the feeling that we get when we know that we have violated the norms of our community.
00:56:20.800And so, you know, for me, Westboro was my community and I didn't have any community outside of that.
00:56:26.480I felt completely alienated from the rest of the world.
00:57:03.740This toxic sense of certainty in your own righteousness.
00:57:06.220It's not, it's not that you don't have opinions or that you don't have strong values and strong beliefs.
00:57:11.120It's that you hold them a bit more loosely because you understand that there is information and experiences outside of your own, which are necessarily limited, uh, that can and should change the way you see things.
00:57:25.040We have to be willing to listen because, not because we are, are trying to, you know, say that, okay, white supremacy is okay or, or whatever the, whatever the specific issue is.
00:57:34.520Um, it's that, what is that, what, what, what is in this that I can learn from and how can we build a bridge from where they are to where, where I am?
00:57:44.220So show us how, uh, we need to change our behavior.
00:57:48.780You know, your book is called, uh, unfollow, uh, and you're not necessarily saying disengage from social media.
00:57:57.900Um, you, because at least I don't think, uh, because that's, that's what, that's what changed you was somebody using social media in the right way.
00:58:07.880So what's the right way to approach this or another way?
00:58:12.700Yeah. So I, I, on, I gave a TED talk a couple of years ago about this. This was, I think the last time I was on, um, that it was basically detailing these strategies that, um, that people used with me.
00:58:24.680So the first was to don't assume bad intent, because again, you need to understand what is actually motivating this person.
00:58:31.340And I think very few people are actually deliberately trying to do things that they know are evil or wrong.
00:58:37.440They have somehow become convinced that this is the right way.
00:58:40.960And so you need to understand where they're coming from if you're going to actually reach them.
00:58:45.620Um, the second is to ask questions, partly again, to help you understand where that, where they are, where they're coming from, but also partly as a signal to them that they're being heard.
00:58:55.360And so, and, you know, there's, there's this reciprocal thing that happens where, you know, somebody, you ask them questions and they, they go through their whole position.
00:59:03.360They explain it all to you and then they get to the end and there's this natural, you know, sense of reciprocation often where they want to know what you think, where are you coming from?
00:59:11.500And it's not asking questions, it's asking honest questions.
00:59:15.520It's asking questions of, I want to know, not questions that will get them to change their mind, because I'm going to have a, I know the answer to this one.
00:59:25.320And then the third is to stay calm, which is, you know, as you see in conversations on social media, on television, all over the place, it's really difficult, right, it seems like right now to be able to stay calm in these discussions, because we, these are conversations about deeply held values and disagreements that we, we cannot fathom how somebody has come to a different place.
00:59:47.100And so if we can be very intentional and deliberate about keeping, you know, keeping the, the hostility level as low as possible, trying to acknowledge, you know, that the other person is, is coming from a place of genuine disagreement and to be, be able to tolerate that.
01:00:03.060Like this is, you know, embodying the value of tolerance.
01:00:33.260And then, you know, I think I mentioned this last time too, the fifth point that I would, that I would say that was not in my TED talk because I ran out of time, but it would be to be patient.
01:00:43.340Because people don't change these kinds of deeply held values overnight, like in a moment, like even, even though I can look back in my own experience to how my mind changed over time.
01:00:53.940I can point to several moments where I absolutely became aware that there was a contradiction in what I believed.
01:01:00.020And what it caused me to do was kind of to shut down momentarily, right?
01:01:05.420And that's what happens to human beings as we, you know, this cognitive dissonance, like to finally come to the place where we understand, wow, maybe there is something wrong with my position.