Im tony woods, it is my pleasure to moderatetonights book talk. With my friends jordan and chris. Its what happens when a liberal and conservative jump into a car and drive across the country and thats the question of this book union by the friends jordan blashek and christopher haugh. Jordan is my coworker, conservative and a former marine. Chris is a democratic speechwriter. The this unlikely pair met at lost and became friends but they couldnt stop arguing about politics and in 2016 those arguments got worse and worse though they decided to take a road trip to see america. They did it again and again. They but union is the story of their friendship and how that union changed the way they see themselves. Its also the story of the people they met and the lessons they learnedabout what it means to be an american. In the end union is a story about hope for a betterfuture and a better united states. Offer a warm virtual welcome to chris and jordan and give you a moment to say hello to the audience. Hi everyone. Thank you for the introduction. Its so fun to be here and thank you everyone for joining us, we are excited. Thanks everyone, this is exciting and thank youjordan for staying up late on this, you guys being on the east coast and all. Imhappy to do it. Lets go ahead and dive right in. You mentioned you had to talk about this eloquently in the forward but on thesurface , its possible somebody might say you have far more similarity than you do differences. And someone might say what can two straight white guys fromcalifornia possibly differ on . How do you see the world differently and what shape these experiences that cause you to see things differently and perhaps why you find yourselves regularly to disagree . Thank you for the question. The truth is superficially dressed and i are very similar, two straight white guys from california and i think at a deeper level were alsovery similar. Theres similarities that made us feel like when we first met we bonded over things like great literature and recording and chris wanted to be an award journalist. We also talked out with our mothers out it kind of shape our values. And all these early things bound us together but the similarities were very powerful. But i think it also quickly became obvious that those were probably because of our upbringings so i grew up in a republican family and after 9 11 my mother started a nonprofit that sent care packages to troops so i grew up sending packages to troops going overseas and chriss upbringing was different and i think theres different bellwethers to the differences but i think those Early Experiences were formative for us. Though i think in my household, we had dinner every night talking about republican policies and what we were hearing so its inevitable that changed our thought process but yes. I like to say we isolated a variable in many ways. We are very similar in so many facets. As jordan and tony eloquently put, where both from california, both straight white guys, theres a lot there we disagree and come from very different political backgrounds that was enough to both have the background to write together but also have something to disagree about to probe and i think if we had too much it was different, at least in terms of our worldview it would be harderto get a project like this done. In terms of my background and this is how i got two people to fact check me because ive known tony since i was 19 but im from berkeley california and i was raised by a mom who was an activist who shut down our College Campus in the 70s. I went to iraq war protest. I grew up reading black panther literature in high school we come from very different backgrounds in terms of our political influences and First Principles and in 2015 politics didnt seem all that prominent so we were actually able to build this friendship like jordan said on these other things. It wasnt until 2016 it started to feel like this friendship was transgressive or not something that was socially acceptable or something we should be doing and that was when the book and the project started to take flight. One quick follow up on that which is we talked earlier about our mothers influence on our lives and character and i think theres this clear imagery that growing up my mom was it your practice while chriss mom was protesting the iraq war and we had a chance to help ourmoms. That was exactly a year ago when the book finished their great friends, both of them have not been to a single book talk but there are a huge influence on our lives. What i love about them bonding over, you can almost say protesting the war for sending troops care packages is both out of a common sense of love or that individual and for the wellbeing which is a nice thing. So lets dive in a little further, it sounds like youve described some real differences. As a person who has suffered through many arguments with chris on the road i almost want to know, i know you spent hundreds of hours traveling the country trapped in a car together, maybe you can tell us about the road trip that animates the story and maybe what you hoped to find on these journeys. So chris and i we met in 2015 and after the second year of chriss first year at Yale Law School and it was actually 30 minutes and it ended up three hours and over the course of the next few months we built this great friendship but as 2016 got closer we were talking politics all the time and conversations with and with everyone of us red in the face and everyone else around us talked about politics and it was getting so vindictive and chris and i started pulling back from those conversations over time because we never felt like they got anywhere and i had to be in la for my sisters wedding at the end of the year and one night and we were sitting with all these people shouting around us i leaned over to chris and said do you want to go on a road trip and that first road trip together i think we were both nervous. We were still friends and knowing we would probably fight about politics was a little unnerving but on the road the country is so beautiful and theres something natural to the american highways and the National Parks and we at times have these great conversations and we also fought, we fought really hard but the beauty of the car is that youre stuck there so after you fight you have to reconcile and dig much deeper about what the fight was really about and we realized we were actually getting to the deeper values and having better conversations so as we heading into 2017 we decided there was something important about getting back on the road and that set off some serious road trips together and chris do you want to talk aboutsome of the other road trips . To your point tony i did cut my teeth on our arguments about everything from god to how many wins the 49ers will have next year so thank you for preparing me for these things. After that first road trip we were so impressed by how powerful it is to be on the road both in terms of the art your conversations can have going from anger to understanding to apology to greater understanding to more anger and continue that Virtuous Cycle in many ways but also the beauty of the country so we decided lets do this again, lets see if theres a chance we can get out there and learn something and bring back something that would be important to say so on that second road trip we ended up going to, we started at a trump rally, the heart of that road trip and we had no idea what was happening. I saw it on my phone the day before and i casually said jordan, do you want to go check out this trump rally and of course jordan said absolutely, what an opportunity to see the heart of our politics and i have course immediately regretted the idea that we decided to do it nonetheless and we were both blown away by how we saw the same thing. Whether we were inside the rally or outside we would turn to one another and whisper did you hear that western mark i heard that and we interpreted it the same way. We were both inspired by the activity outside and thrown aback by the violence inside. We were amazed by the president s ability to move his flock but we were both a little nervous by people at the edges of that rally and the simple fact that we were able to see the world through the same set of eyes at such a practice political moment made us go i think we have a voice here, i think theres dumping we can Stay Together but because of the street violence that we saw that night , because of the anger and the vitriol, the inability to actually get beyond the veneer of difference and talk inspired us to go out and try to find trees that were outside of politics that spoke to more universal values, that spoke to ideas that bond jordan and i together and maybe the country as well. So from there we turned to trying to identify values and stories that might get us there so we spent time with veterans who run a gun range in arizona. We spent time with Truck Drivers who took us from las vegas to louisiana and so we did all kinds of things that we found exciting from spending a couple days on our own trawler to rehearsing king lear with a group of inmates at a prison outside detroit. All with the intent of finding stories that a larger purpose and a different kind of valueset. You sort of polluted us, about your friendship and it excellently captured that but its also enriched by these unique characters that chris wanted to whether its a trump diehard trucker, a community activist, a prisoner. I imagine you met hundreds if not more incredible people who told stories having not written a book and like most of the audience having not written a book, im wondering if you could give us a little bit of aview into the writers process. What made you choose these characters over others . What were youhoping to eliminate by sharing their perspective. Each story was slightly different and all the stories we chose to tell spoke to both realizations on jordans part as well as the country but for example we spent a lot of time with petey the truck driver who we sort of went in intending to tell a story about bluecollar work at about what its like to be on the road as a trucker in America Today and of course we got to tell that story but what ended up emerging, its how american complicated americans can be under the surface so he showed up on day one wearing a make America Great shirt and i thought so much for getting away from politics but we found him to be accommodated thinker. The first thing he said about politics was i wish the president talked more about climate change. He talked about how god is love and therefore he has to support lgbtq in a way he didnt before. We started to see theres more to this country and the people on the road than meets the eye at first. And at the same time jordan and i were able to come together and talk about things like regulation. Corporate control of truck driving. The importance of dignity and telling dignified stories. So that was just one example and everyone else in the book had these animating values to the story as well as kind of to take away from what we learned. Spending time with these people. Do you have anything toadd on this front . One thing that was important to us is that we were writing about these people because we thought they were standing for something or some trend. We met people on the road. Theres no real intention behind finding these people, it was all just look. They had a big impact on our lives and they taught us so often in the writing were just trying to share that because they were so important to us that wewanted to share that with others. As we go through the book theres these amazing people and were so excited to share their stories but we said this is a trump supporter and theyre just great people who had big impacts. Thats great. In a moment, this is a statement to the audience. In a moment id like to start bringing in audience questions sophia please feel free to send questions through the chat function. Just ask a question and you can type in questions, either what were talking about now or questions through the book and we can leave those in throughout the conversation. Maybe turning now to my next question, in the book you use of firstperson narratives and described yourselves in many ways as representatives of your respective camps. But chris, the liberals or conservatives, i found it illuminating in the sense that it made me think about why these arguments often can feel very needed is your no longer just aperson representing yourself. Your representing an entire movement or community and thats difficult and it becomes animated very quickly in some ways you dont hope for. So i was wondering if you could take a moment and think about your various caps and some of the most prominent voices within those camps or the wings or factions as the media likes to use to highlight our polarization of the country. And im wondering maybe if you could tell us something about what you discovered on these journeys that these groups within your various caps were wrong about the otherside so chris ill start with you. You were talking to aoc or the squad. What would you say she doesnt understand about jordan that youd like to share about this from the other camp. Absolutely. I think what struck me and i hate doubt you hear jordan but on the road its always felt like jordan and the conservatives that he spent time with do actually care about progress. They might not be progressive but they want everyone to have healthcare. They want everyone to get a good education. They dont like the criminal Justice System as it exists today in jordans telling but they approach it very differently and the way jordan and i would talk about all these issues, we would often fight until we were blue in the face and sometimes we would end with digressive we agree and the other one would say i guess we do and if we want the same and then we can talk about the means to get there. And i think thats really important and thats one of our big takeaways is quite a few shared values around this country that we all agree upon. We believe in Second Chances for example or many of us agree on. So when jordan and i talk about criminal justice it was very clear that we just needed to figure out the way to that end. And i think thats something that gets lost in the mix sometimes and just for i think on the National Scale its much harder to talk about these things but knowing jordan quite well i can tell you that hes pursuing the same values and the same hopes and dreams that i am when im thinking about policy and i think thats a powerful starting point so jordan, i hope youre not too mad at me for saying that. Same question to you, what is the maga Community Get wrong . I think its well said, anytime i talked to mike or supporters i tell them that theres only half as much as you think he does. I think one of the discussions on the right, some of the more red meat hard right is that the left and especially the aggressive left that in some ways they have this deep disdain for it and theyre looking to tear it down and spending so much time on the road with chris i think what i learned about his perspective and most of theirs on the left is that in fact they do love america deeply and they love it for the values it espouses and the ideals and principles and trying in our documents and in our civil unions and what their generally asking us for is to live up to our values. They continue to feel left out today so as chris and i talked we found that they too often responded that we minimize the challenges that people have faced especially in marginalized communities today. To respond aggressively to give a deep action for these sort of communities in that they do have a right in the american tapestry and once i came to understand how deep that love was, now were talking about shared values, things that folks care deeply about who might have differentlanguages for it. Thats great. Maybe sticking with this theme im really interested in the converse of this. Maybe ill start with you jordan. Im wondering if you could be honest and maybe even a bit vulnerable. What are criticisms you hear from the left that is log towards your that you sort of agree with some that you ought to work on as a party or as a political ideology and i would ask of course the same question of chris. What are some of those things that i know in this day and age its hard to admit because in many ways you feel like its a struggle and if yousee any ground on anything its a sign of weakness. But im curious what are some of those things you say internally that we need to do a better job onthat and that we should aspire to be better on these issues. Thats a great question and i think their specific policy areas that people in the Republican Party, i wish they would take a different stance but as kind of a meadow place, i think the Republican Party and the conservative movement have a hard time articulating these angles. I have a hard time saying we want all americans to step up or we want every kid to have the best quality education possible or a society in which everybody has a minimum standard of living that is enough to have an essential living wage and i think the reason they cant articulate those things is because they think in doing so they admit the means must be Government Spending but they have an aversion to doing it, every conservative i know does care about those things it makes them come off, it makes republicans and conservatives come off as deeply unethical when you cant say things like of course every american should have Great Health Care and so i wish republicans would get much better about articulating the ends and why because thats where we do share a lot. Theres a ton of overlap there. I think it would be easier to just disagree over means say we might not agree on like your virtues or mine but we where in the middle can we meet and move the ball forward . Chris, same question. Things you would say that the liberal camp could be better on might want to do a little soulsearching on. One because george and i talked about at length about it is a more nuanced understanding of tradition. I think there are a lot of really powerful elements of the american tradition that we really need to embrace. Whether that is sort of the democratic foundingideals. The systems as it is designed. Of course there are deep flaws in that system and remain today and have been made worse over time and we do a lot of talking and writing in union about how we wrestle with history. But there are a lot of elements of our history that are quite important to hold onto even while we change monuments, we change names, we cant let go of where we come from and a lot of senses and i think its time to hear this message from jordan becau