spiritual undergirds the whole of life. and so, something like this is always a sign of some kind of a spiritual rupture, a loss of contact with the deepest source of meaning. you said it earlier, the loss of faith, the decreased religious practice around the country. when i was a kid, about 3% of our country would have claimed no religion. now it s up to 25%. i don t think that that goes without some consequence. there is a coarsening when you lose contact with god, who is the source of moral value, the source of meaning, and finally the source of human dignity. i don t think it simply a trivial matter when people are in a very consistent way, staying away from god and the things of god. so i would point to that is certainly an important cause in some of the social trial that we see. martha: yet. i think when people look at these, they try to find some reason, right.
the graphic. i think that we should know this is a publicly available information, it s not an example of doxxing. but let s make the point that he didn t release secret information. that said, i m concerned about the coarsening of our political debate. in the way that words matter, we say that about president trump and that matters for congressman crack castro as well. this could create a dangerous situation for people that were indulging and doing their political right of making a contribution to a candidate that they supported and he also this graphic also supported the places they worked so that s an effort to have some kind of boycott. bret: if this is the new bar, think about the groups on the right or the packs on the right who would say, who s contributing to elizabeth warren, who s contributing to bernie sanders, let s put them out in a tweet.
in fact to even question that i find curious because it s just such an evident pattern you know let me just ask before we run out of time but peter you know you re a man who makes his money with words when you look at the language that the u.s. president throws alp into the public discourse is it s you know starkly different from any we ve seen from any u.s. presidents at least in the last 100 years what is the impact of the president s language on the way people communicate and talk with each other in the united states. well it is there s no question it s it s it s certainly supported a coarsening of the culture it would be wrong probably to blame that entirely on this president. i m not sure that we haven t seen this in many other countries around the world but i i do believe it s very unproductive to have political
from any we ve seen from any u.s. presidents at least in the last 100 years what is the impact of the president s language on the way people communicate and talk with each other in the united states. well it is there s no question it s it s it s certainly supported a coarsening of the culture it would be wrong probably to blame that entirely on this president. i m not sure that we haven t seen this in many other countries around the world but i i do believe it s very unproductive to have political conversation quite so arch quite so passionate and quite so hatefilled as what we have seen in recent years and it was a wake up in the in the american 7th congressional district in an area about 750000 people and to have your play your homes described as the worst place to live in the united states is it s just not acceptable behavior by the person who you is alike
he said, from a republican view about, so i guess republicans no longer have anything to complain about in the national debt or a trillion-dollar deficit or tariffs, and the list goes on. well, that s the buck gore such argument that he may be coarsening, he may lie all the time he may discredit the united states all the time but gorsuch. there are very few republicans that seem to have really drunk the kool-aid, that is to mean what they say. i d say mike pence and lindsey graham are the two. the others i think without any affection or respect for the president, which makes what they do in a way worse because what they re doing is saying it s all because we re invertebrate and completely terrified that we re doing this. george, your point about how this presidency could be more damaging than the nixon presidency was, please expand on that.