Politics For Happy People
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Politics For Happy People
Trust But Verify: Can accountability fix voting and budget problems?
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Ashley and Joseph break down the latest debate surrounding the SAVE Act, asking whether requiring proof of citizenship and voter ID is simply common sense or an unnecessary burden. They also dive into North Carolina's razor-thin election margins and discuss why they believe election integrity matters, even when fraud is difficult to prove. Then they unpack State Auditor Dave Boliek's investigation into controversial spending in the Town of Cary, including luxury hotel stays, taxpayer-funded books, and six-figure video projects, raising bigger questions about stewardship, accountability, and the proper role of public servants.
Welcome to Politics for Happy People, where we have fun conversations about very serious issues, sometimes, sometimes less serious. But that's what we do around here. We're glad to have you with us. I'm Joseph Backholm, joined as always by Ashley Vaughan. Ashley, good to see you again. Hey, Joseph. Let's do this thing, Ashley, because we are always trying to balance outrage with reasonable concern. How do we keep our joy and still like be aware and alert and part of the solution?
SPEAKER_00Putting it all into perspective.
SPEAKER_02How upset should you be today? The subject is the Save Act. Do you know the SAVE Act? I know that you do. I do. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, and it is a federal piece of legislation that requires documentary proof of citizenship, typically in the form of a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote in federal elections. And the broader Save America Act version adds a photo ID requirement to vote. So this is kind of the whole discussion: should people have to prove their identity to vote? This is the general idea, you like it or you don't.
SPEAKER_00I do like it.
SPEAKER_02You don't. Okay.
SPEAKER_00It's critically important.
SPEAKER_02Well, a lot of people agree with you. Some of them are in Congress. The House has passed this more than once, an initial version in April of 2025, again in February of 26 by a narrow 218 to 213 vote margin. So it's basically a partisan issue. The problem for its supporters has been the Senate. It's stalled there. Part of the reason it stalls, well, not part of the reason, all of the reason, is because in the Senate you need 60 votes to get past a filibuster. Now, there's some procedural challenges here. The filibuster in the Senate requires 60 votes, which is, of course, more than a majority. There's a workaround procedurally, which is a reconciliation vote. And as long as there's a budget impact, the budget only requires 50 votes in the Senate. So they've kind of restructured the SAVE Act in a way to try to fit it into this budget process. And what they would say is they would incentivize states to have photo ID rules rather than require them. No state would be required to do it, but states that do do it could get part of the $10 billion set aside for incentivizing states to do this. And that would allow it to pass by 50 votes. Now, as we record this today, things are happening this week. We don't know what the status of this will be when people are listening to this. But to our how how upset should you be question, Ashley, on a scale of one to ten. If the Save Act does not become law, so photo so photo ID is not required when people go to the ballots this November or any November in the future. How upset will you be?
SPEAKER_00Um you want one to ten. One to ten. Okay. I'm gonna go with seven.
SPEAKER_02That's pretty upset.
SPEAKER_00Decently upset, but not as upset as I would be if some kind of like pro-life provision got thrown out.
SPEAKER_02It's not quite there for you, but yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm probably I'm probably about there with you. I think I think voto I think proving your identity before you vote is is important. Not because I'm convinced that every single election has been changed, but I think the lack of it can the lack of this requirement and the integrity that it provides to the system provides increasing vulnerability to future elections as well. Um and it just is so common sense to me that if you're gonna vote, all the things we require identification for, you I mean, to buy alcohol, you have to provide your your driver's license in most places. And the idea that it is an un that it is an unreasonable burden to require that for voting doesn't make sense to me. So yeah, it's an integrity thing.
SPEAKER_00A lot of the opponents of the Save Act say that non-citizen voting is vanishingly rare. Like this doesn't happen, guys. We don't need to pass this because we don't have non-citizens voting and changing election results. And it's funny, the the amount of time that I have been in this space, Joseph, whenever you're against something but you don't really have a good argument, you just say, Well, this isn't happening. You know? Correct. Or this is so rare. But I have a rebuttal to that.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Give it to us.
SPEAKER_00Think about how close elections can be. Think about how close, how few votes often decide who is in office. And I will take you through a tiny little walk through recent North Carolina history with some examples to make this point. In 2020, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Paul Newby, won over Sherry Beasley by 401 votes. So that's a statewide race. It was over 4 million, 5 million votes, and it was decided by only 401, and that's a pretty important office. In 2022, North Carolina House District 115 in the Republican primary, pratique Fakta, I think that's how you pronounce his name, won over someone named Sherry Higgins by one vote. So this is a smaller number of votes, and it's a primary, but that's just one vote. Okay. In 2024, Justice Allison Riggs won over Judge Jefferson Griffin for a North Carolina Supreme Court by 734 votes. Okay. Again, statewide race, millions and millions and millions of votes. And most recently, 2026, Senate President Phil Berger in Senate District 26, he conceded to Sam Page, the Rockingham County Sheriff, after being behind by only 23 votes. And because uh Senator Berger was the Senate president, this has a massive effect on the political landscape in North Carolina. So considering how close these elections can be, and I understand that the examples that I just gave aren't federal races, but the point still stands. We need to do everything possible to make sure that every lawful vote counts and no ineligible votes are included in the count because it can overturn results.
SPEAKER_02That's exactly right. And the principle of it is, I think, worth defending all by itself. Let's just make sure that that the people who are actually legal voters actually invested in the in the system are the ones making the decision. So I think that principle is worth defending all by itself. And the way we have decided to do that in all sorts of ways is prove your identity. And it is not a good idea.
SPEAKER_00The principle is worth defending, but it can also make a functional difference. Correct. That is my point.
SPEAKER_02And I'll say you, there was a state delegate race in Virginia, our neighbors to the north, decided by a coin flip. Because it was tied, literally tied. They the winner was determined by a coin flip in if memory serves, and forgive me if I'm wrong on this. Um, I think that actually decided the balance of the power in one of their chambers, was an actual tied vote, right?
SPEAKER_01So that seems pretty old-fashioned.
SPEAKER_02One vote would have made the difference, but that's that was the process, right? Right, right. That's the rules. They had no other way, they had no other way of resolving this. That's how they did it. And and and another thing I'll say is to the argument that um that you haven't proven that these have made a difference in a ton of elections. One of the challenges with that is the places that do not require voter ID are also the places where there is not the information is not available to actually verify whether the vote is valid or not. So you cannot prove a negative because when you don't ask for voter ID and you're not comparing signatures, you have no idea who did it. You it's just it's possible. Can I prove that it was fraud? No. Is it possible that it was? Sure. The problem is nobody knows, and there's no way of verifying that this is the person who it's claimed to be. And the person who it's claimed to be actually is the person who filled out the ballot. Can you know that? And and we should have a system that allows us to prove that that's happened. So we're not leaning on, well, you can't prove it was fraud. Well, of course we can't prove it was fraud, because you don't have any of the information that would allow us to verify it's not. So we just don't know. And so, yes, we the integrity of the system uh requires it. Uh, if you want to think about it in biblical terms, let's just be above reproach, right? It's accountability, make sure there's light on it. Um, we should not just say it doesn't matter and let's just trust everybody because the reason why, you know, the deodorant is locked up at Walgreens is because you can't trust everybody.
SPEAKER_00Well, there and there's there is evidence that there are issues with non-citizens being res registered to vote. The Department of Homeland Security has been reviewing voter registration files from almost two dozen states, and they flagged thousands of voter files as being uh potentially non-citizens who have registered.
SPEAKER_02So again, well, and you have st cities like New York openly talking about the possibility of allowing non-citizens to vote because they want them to vote, right? So it's New York right now. It's not like the left it doesn't want non-citizens to vote. Many of them say it out loud. And so this idea that it could, that it even theoretically could happen. Um, you know, on in one hand, they're saying, yeah, we want this to happen. And then on the other hand, they're saying it can never happen. Um, you know, you can't have it both ways. So, how outraged should we be about this? You and I are both fairly outraged about this. Um, you can decide for yourselves. But the big story of today, auditor Dave Bullock uncovers crazy spending around the state. And today we're gonna focus on the great city of Kerry.
SPEAKER_00Have you been to Kerry?
SPEAKER_02Of course. I live close to Carrie. Familiar with Carrie? My kids play sports in Kerry fairly fairly recently. Yes. It's a nice place. It's uh, you know, as a somebody who moved into the state, it it's the um What is it?
SPEAKER_00What's your impression of Kerry?
SPEAKER_02Well, I uh the the acronym of Cary, right? It's the Relocated Yankees. What one is that? There are a couple different ones.
SPEAKER_00The the Can't Afford Raleigh yet.
SPEAKER_02Can't afford Raleigh yet is Carrie, but it's also the um collection area of relocated Yankees. That's it, yeah. I think that's what it is.
SPEAKER_00And and that's entirely incorrect.
SPEAKER_02No, that that's exactly right, because there's a lot of people from pleasant, though.
SPEAKER_00You know, it's a lovely town between town.
SPEAKER_02And they have an amphitheater, and I've gone to concerts there. And no, yeah, nothing wrong with Carrie. But uh new auditor, well, not that new anymore. As of 2024, Dave Bullock has been doing some audits of all sorts of things. One of which is how cities are spending money, and he did this in the city of Kerry. And found some interesting things. The investigation was launched in late 2025 after former town manager Sean Stiegel's spending drew scrutiny. Public records surfaced in a series of major expenses that much of the town that the town council said they didn't know about. Stiegel was placed on administrative leave in November of 2025. He resigned about a month later amid allegations of over-the-top spending, inadequate financial reporting, an unhealthy work environment, and a lack of transparency with the council, staff, and the public. Now, this is regarding the town manager. Let's put the town manager. Who is the who in the world is the town manager? Because some people have maybe never heard of a town manager. We know that most cities have mayors, most cities have city councils, and the town manager, in most places, is somebody that is chosen, hired by the mayor or the city council to kind of do the CEO work.
SPEAKER_00So not an elected person, but an employee of the city council.
SPEAKER_02I I cannot say to definitively in no part of no town in America is the is the town manager elected, but my understanding of that position is generally in Kerry.
SPEAKER_00I know that I looked at that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And not elected in Kerry in this case. So uh Sean Stiegel, the gentleman in this conversation, was not elected. Now, he had, there were some interesting expenditures from the city of Kerry. More than one million dollars for land near Kerry Elementary School, purchased against the assistant town manager's recommendations and without the full counsel's knowledge. So apparently the guy bought a million dollar piece of real estate.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02I don't know what the purpose of that is. Um, that was not described exactly. This one is interesting. $121,000 on video production for the town's 2024 retreat in Wilmington, which included a surprise staff dance performance, which they put on video. Apparently.
SPEAKER_00Do we have clips of this?
SPEAKER_02We should have uncovered that. We're gonna have to do a follow-up report on this story and include the uh staff dance report uh performance from the City.
SPEAKER_00The craziest part is what comes next, though.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00$35,000 more for a documentary about how the video was made.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um who's watching this?
SPEAKER_02$35,000 on a documentary about a video about the 2024 retreat of the town council. I I have no idea. I have no other explanation, but the reason this is on the list is because uh the auditor's office seemed to be all the videographers around the state are can I get the number for the town?
SPEAKER_00How do we get this deal?
SPEAKER_02That's right. I'd like to go work for the city of Kerry. Um $65,000 paid to a ghostwriter for a book about Stagel. This is this is awesome because again, Stiegel is the is the town manager, and the town paid someone $65,000 to write a book about the ghostwriter, though.
SPEAKER_00So the book was authored by him.
SPEAKER_02Was he okay? That might be right. I don't know. I don't know that. If if this was like autobiographical and he was the named author, or if they were like it was a memoir by the city of Count uh of Cary about their author. It's about their town.
SPEAKER_00The book is called Top of the Ark. Oh. It is I I did not read the entire book. I didn't. But it's about local governments and the people they serve, building the future together in more innovative, adaptive, and efficient ways. So is it actually not about him or is it is kind of lauding him as a change agent and the work that he was doing and his his model. Uh okay.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well for managing. So the allegation is certainly that it was self-serving and to pay $65,000 to write a book about him, which presumably he used to promote himself. So okay, sketchy. $37,000 in graduate tuition, graduate school tuition paid on behalf of council member Lori Bush. Full disclosure, she later reimbursed the town. But how does one get to a situation where the city that you are a council member of is paying for your graduate school tuition? I don't know how that develops. I mean, who even makes the answer?
SPEAKER_00What's the degree? I mean, is there any degree that uh you would say is is necessary to be a council member? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00I mean, yeah, is it like I mean if you're not equipped, may maybe we should Is it like learning?
SPEAKER_02Uh what's the what's the term I'm looking for? Professional development?
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Professional development.
SPEAKER_00Of taxpayer dollars. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a lot. Okay. Okay. Next item 108,000 to male flyers informing citizens of council district and election date changes. I mean, I'm not opposed to like notifications about election changes. I I don't this this one shocks my sensibilities a little bit less, but $108,000 for mail. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. Yeah. That's a lot of money. Um so I'd need I need more information.
SPEAKER_00But the the next one is more bothersome. Uh $34 wait, $3,419 penthouse hotel stay for Stiegel, plus other luxury hotel stays and hotel cancellation and no show fees. Okay. Let's put this in context. I have a question for you, Joseph, to guess.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00How much do you think was Sean Steagall's salary, his yearly scout salary as Carrie Town Manager? Now, I'll put it in context. Okay. He oversaw 1,300 town employees in a total budget of 500 million. So what was his salary?
SPEAKER_02$300,000.
SPEAKER_00$381,000 a year.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02That's not bad.
SPEAKER_00That's a that's a huge salary.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's a lot.
SPEAKER_02It is. That's about the president.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And then the town is paying $3,400 for a penthouse stay?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm sure he just booked it and just and and I think that's he he clearly thought it was justified because he's important in his mind. I mean, all of this, there, right, there's clearly an error air of self-importance. I don't think the town like booked it. I think he booked it and then just put it on the travel expensive.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, though. Exactly. How is that, I mean, how is that justifiable?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I it isn't, unless you just really like yourself and think you deserve for the public and and think the public should like you as much as you do. I mean, that that's my interpretation.
SPEAKER_00Well, and you just hit on an important point, though, because evidently the town council is saying that they didn't know a lot about what he his discretionary spending.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and all of this comes from a lack of accountability. And that's kind of the one of the theses of this. And Dave Bullock is kind of that that's why he's doing what he's doing to try to just raise awareness of these things. Because if you are in an environment where nobody's asking questions, oh I got away with that, what else could I get away with, right? He probably didn't start off. I don't, do we even know how long he was the town manager? Because I don't know that information, and maybe we can look it up. But my thesis would be that you know, if he had been the town manager for many years, um, and enough where he thought he had done enough to write books about himself and or at least have them written, that early on this probably wasn't happening. But 2016. So well, that wasn't that long until 2025. Okay, maybe he always did it this way. But yes, um, the idea that the the taxpayers should pay $3,500 for me to stay in a penthouse is a bit self-important. And I, you know, it it just goes to the question of is this, you know, we used to refer to these folks as public servants, as those who work for the and now the reality is that government jobs are the good jobs for so many people.
SPEAKER_00He should be paid a fair market value for uh the work that he's doing. But I do think uh fluff things like a penthouse and just uh wasteful spending rightfully upsetting.
SPEAKER_02It's not stewardship.
SPEAKER_00It's not stewardship. It rightfully is upsetting, especially when you consider that uh Carrie voted to raise property taxes in this amount of time. And so, you know, and it's to to fund good things like police and fire and all of that, but and penthouses. Wasn't that in the actual like to use some of this money in wiser ways? And it just it goes back to the I mean, this is sort of I mean, it is kind of a biblical concept. Like if you are the person that if the consequence consequences shape behavior. If the if it's your money, you're and and you're the one that stands to lose when uh when it's it's spent wrongfully, then you're going to be more responsible with it. If you're spending someone else's money wastefully and you don't feel the pain from that, um things go wild, you know?
SPEAKER_02To me, it's all it's all about attitude and and what this reveals. I'm gonna spend money to write a book about myself. I'm comfortable expensing $3,400 in a penthouse, hotel stay, is the idea that I deserve this. Not that I'm here to serve the public and provide a good to my community, but that somehow I'm entitled to this and this is appropriate for them to spend in this way on me personally. That to me is an attitude. And it's one that's not I mean, we'll get to into this maybe in a moment, but I I just think this is kind of pervasive. in what in the in the world we used to refer to as public service, where it really is self-importance, platform building.
SPEAKER_00It's well, it is platform building. When you're using town money to have a ghostwriter write a book about you that you are then the author of. And it's the book is basically lauding his work. He's portrayed as this change agent and look what what all we've done for Carrie and these are our results and follow our model. And then the books on sale um on the town of Cary's online store.
SPEAKER_02Evidently I read that um I can't imagine they sold that many copies. I mean who really what is the market local government?
SPEAKER_00This is management you know resume building and platform making you know it's and again to me it's it's the attitude if you want to do that you need to spend your own money doing it. If you want to buy if you want a ghostwriter to write a book for you where you can tell about all the great things you've done, fine. But pay for it yourself.
SPEAKER_02There might be a less cynical framing of this where really it's just about the city. And maybe Carrie did some things that are in in and maybe this is not giving him the benefit of the doubt and the book was actually just about city government and city management and maybe they have some things to teach people and and I don't know because I'm not in city government and maybe there are some other city government leaders around the country who would say actually Carrie is a model for this. We asked them to write it is it is a nice place.
SPEAKER_00I mean Carrie's a yeah it it it's a nice but it was nice before 2016. Yeah so I don't like he overhauled Carrie and it was horrible before then but he revitalized it like he inherited a place that was running just fine.
SPEAKER_02Well and and and that well that that could be true and you know the next one we'll go to is $1600 for 10 pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses. I mean you know I don't and an annual car allowance of $9600 per council member eight hundred two dollars a month per council member for a car allowance I don't know that's a pretty nice car yeah what can you get for $800 I've never dreamt I would eat I bet you can lease something really nice for that amount yeah for eight oh yeah you can oh yeah you can and so is that do we expect do we think as taxpayers that we are paying for the personal paying car allowances for our city council members? Now they have to get around and do things I don't know um is that less expensive than the mileage reimbursements? And there's an argument for that because I've been in situations where I drive so much that it's actually cheaper for the employer to pay for the vehicle itself rather than pay the 60 cents a mile or whatever you drive. So I mean I'm willing to listen to the argument if they really are beating the street that much but carry's not that big of a place so how many miles can you put on the ground just driving around carry in your official capacity. So that's true. Maybe not so all of this to say you know the there's some questionable expenses. Certainly that's what the the auditor found but I I I it's also important to note that this has become potentially a criminal matter that uh there has been the State Bureau of investigation has opened its own probe at the recommendation of Wake County District Attorney Lauren Freeman. So it's um sketchy as to stewardship responsibilities the State Bureau the Wake County District Attorney Lauren Freeman thinks it might even be more than that. And if they can prove that then all of my attempts to perhaps give the benefit of the doubt with respect to some of these things may be for not do you think this kind of spending should be a crime Ashley unethical.
SPEAKER_00Do I think it should be a crime? That's a different question.
SPEAKER_02It could be just theft if you're if you're taking public money for person personal use that's you know you do that from your other neighbor in a different way it's a crime. Yeah I can certainly see the argument now this kind of thing to me seems common but what I'm not sure I understand is whether it seems common because Somali daycares, you know questionable spending in carry when when these things happen they get a lot of attention but is that overstating the nature of the problem do you think are in most cities people are being responsible they're being ethical they're not using their public positions for their own personal gain.
SPEAKER_00Is this the exception of the rule you think I don't know how common it is but I do think it should get as much or more attention than it already has been because um it is a stewardship issue. This money is being confiscated by the government and it should be going to purposes that benefit the public good. And I completely I said it before and I'll say it again I think uh whoever is the town manager should be paid for their skills and it does it's a it is a big job. 1300 town employees and a total budget of over 500 million they should be paid well for the real professional job for sure. But the market the market value for that job should be determined and that should set their salary and then there should be guidelines and restrictions to make sure that there isn't um wasteful fluff spending that is footed by the taxpayers.
SPEAKER_02That's right now this is the one that's getting the most attention and I know that it is not the only city that has been audited by the auditor's office. And that to me suggests that in some of these other audits he's discovering that people are above board and they have a uh a process that makes sure that expenditures are justifiable and pre-approved and not opulent or totally personal. And I I want to believe that's happening in most cases. And I do get concerned when you know when we get appropriately outraged by examples of this of like abuse that we just assume everybody who's working for their local government is trying to exploit something and someone and I don't think that that's true. I don't want to believe that's true.
SPEAKER_00And I I have to think there's a lot of just knowing that someone is checking though is a really good thing in our state just knowing that Auditor Bollock is looking into these things, I think is going to make everyone think twice. Hopefully if you're if you're wise and you realize you know it's kind of like when mom's away the kids will play like and it's human nature like if I don't give my children consequences I promise you they are far less likely to follow the rules or to be conscious of what they should be doing. So hopefully at least him looking into these things, you know, holding a press conference exposing some of these uh expenses that I think many taxpayers I've given my opinion a little bit I do think this is it's unethical it's fluffy spending it's wasting other people's money I do think a lot of people hearing about exactly what these charges are going to are going to feel the same way.
SPEAKER_02Sunlight is good for us, right? And it's kind of the old Ronald Reagan trust but verify thing. And I think if there's a theme to our show today, it's that, right? When we talk about voter ID, you know, you're probably registered to vote. Trust but verify. City managers, city spending, trust but verify. It's our state budget. It's all of those things, right?
SPEAKER_00It's because it is the responsible thing to do.
SPEAKER_02It is the responsible thing to do. And none of us should be afraid of that unless you want to do something that you shouldn't be doing. And that's that you when you're running from accountability generally it's because you want to be able to do something that you don't want people to know about. So I I'm just I I think that's the theme here the human nature is one where sin exists everywhere we're all tempted to it and uh many of us will choose to do the thing we can get away with.
SPEAKER_00And accountability is loving.
SPEAKER_02It is it keeps it keeps us out of the ditch.
SPEAKER_00Yeah right and it you know and and we need each other and we need guardrails.
SPEAKER_02Right in in town city manager Stiegel I mean I don't want the guy on a personal I got no personal acts to grind I don't want him to go to prison. But if this turns out to be like a criminal thing then he needed that accountability to like for his own good as well as the good of the city right and that and that's the nature of of community and laws and order and accountability and all of those things. Sometimes accountability doesn't feel good but if the reason we're parents is we want to keep our kids from killing each other and ending up in jail. That's why we provide accountability right so all of those things are good. It's good to have an auditor who audits uh everything I've seen from Dave Bullock so far has been you know consistent and ethical and I I love that it's happening and it's also intentional and aggressive and I like and I like that. So here's to more of it but here's to also hopefully finding out that in most of our cities around uh the state that uh everybody is doing things the way they should be done. So last question before we end our program today Ashley bet you didn't know bet you didn't know um this is this is kind of personal but I think there's gonna be a broader application I was recently going through my grandfather's high school yearbook. Okay I'm shocked I didn't know this and I'll explain why in a moment but I'm gonna give you a guess I'm gonna give you maybe even a few what was my grandfather's high school mascot and I will um give you a clue in that no school today would dream of making this their high school mascot what was their high school mascot controversial okay uh well they did away with the redskins so was it an Indian it was not okay um what else is controversial that they may have used in the past I think you will never guess this so I will probably tell you okay tell me the swastikas the actual mascot was a swastika in 1936 the mascot of Hokwam High School and I went to the rival high school Aberdeen high school this is on the coast of Washington was the swastikas did did okay wait did it like was it a personified swastika like did it have a face? No it was just the swastika as you know the swastika to be okay now wait what what year was this this is nine well he he graduated from high school in 1936 and of course the high school had been around for long before that right so we're talking decades in which it is the Hoquim swastikas okay that was their high school mascot now I think there's some things to learn about history here because we all, what do we associate the swastikas with, of course, Nazi Germany is the Nazis. And and the fact that that is true is why when I attended the rival Aberdeen high school the fact that I did not know their original mascot was the swastikas we missed so many names nobody wanted you to know every high school kid from Aberdeen should be harassing every Oakwam high school kid with Nazi chants just because that's that's the true history. And that might be I have notified my hometown of this fact upon recently discovering stirring it up. So but before the Nazis kind of co-opted the the the swastika we need to understand that's what happened because there's a lesson to be learned here about symbols, right? Because previous to this in the late 19th and 20th centuries Western archaeologists discovered the symbol of the swastika in the ruins of ancient Troy because they found it on artifacts from diverse regions they theorized a shared Indo-European history. Consequently the swastika became a popular symbol of good luck and prosperity in Western culture appearing on Coca-Cola products, Boy Scout badges and early American military patches. So the Boy Scouts prior to Nazi Germany were putting swastikas on their patches because it was a popular symbol of luck and prosperity it originates from the Sanskrit word swastika which translates to it is well, well-being or good fortune. So it used to mean good luck and prosperity and now it means evil genocide yeah genocide essentially right and yeah and it is it is whenever somebody is looking for the kind of personification or representation of evil the default reference is the Nazis and Hitler there are other people who have killed more people Mao has killed many more people killed did kill many more people than Hitler so we recognize him as an evil guy as well lots of other Stalin did as well but Hitler for whatever reason because they were genuinely evil they're the they're the personification of this but it's worth understanding that that wasn't always the meaning and the significance of the swastika well a symbol is meant to communicate something words communicate obviously but symbols also communicate and what is communicated depends on the shared meaning that everyone holds for that symbol right so if I share if I put up a swastika today no one would think that I was meaning good luck and prosperity.
SPEAKER_00The shared meaning of the swastika now is Nazi Germany genocide correct pure evil right and so if that's what I'm communicating because that's what everyone thinks right no one's gonna no one is gonna assume that I mean good luck and prosperity. Back in ancient Rome to them that was a symbol of torture death execution humiliation. And now to us of Jesus' death on the cross uh he he defeated death when he was resurrected for us as Christians it's a symbol of hope and and we wear it proudly so the meaning was inverted so it the meaning of a symbol has very much to do with context and also um kind of uh the shared interpretation in in that community around that symbol how strange would it be if we wore necklaces with electric chairs or nooses on them right and that and that that's kind of the the equivalent and so I think there's a couple things to just be aware of is how careful we need to be of judging history through modern eyes.
SPEAKER_02Because I I in in this discovery of mine I saw these pictures of the high school basketball teams and the only thing on their like unitards that they would wear as basketball uniforms is the swastika in the middle of their chest. And if you took that picture and you showed it to anybody in the 21st century they would just condemn and judge and rail against these group of high school basketball players from Hoakwim, Washington, who actually in fact would later go to Europe to defeat the Nazis because that was my grandfather's generation. He graduated from high school in 1936. He served in World War II to defeat the Nazis when he came from the Hoakwim swastikas high school right that that would that is the reality of it. So we have to be very careful about how we judge history because we very often don't understand context.
SPEAKER_00And intentions matter no one who wore that swastika intended to communicate anything about support of genocide or anything like that. That was not their intent.
SPEAKER_02And so ask questions before you make strong judgments historically under make sure that you know um what was going on rather than you know in in reaction call in in the reaction world that we live in. But also the point that you made about symbols and in something happening in the opposite direction right now with the sexual revolution and the rainbow right what what another example the symbol of the rainbow what God created that to be and what he tells us that that is in scripture and then what it has become and risks being co-opted by a movement that is the opposite of of what God intended that to be. So you know they hide that history which is why I think I didn't know about it. I think we understand why they do but there's but there's I mean there's reason to know that history and understand it. And of course we aren't mad at my grandfather and his classmates because their mascot was the swastikus because uh obviously everything was different but just live with the humility to know that things are different and um maybe that's what it means and maybe not take the time to gather information before you you know fire up the outrage machine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which is what we're so inclined to do. So friends thank you for joining us today on Politics for Happy People. It's been a pleasure glad you're all on the ride with us. Reminder new episodes every Tuesday and every Friday like and subscribe where you have found us so you don't miss the next one. We'll see you then