Breaking Echo Chambers & Sacrificing Sacred Cows With Nathan Dohse

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Additional Takeaways

• Cognitive dissonance can lead to positive change.
• Echo chambers limit our understanding of diverse perspectives.
• We have a responsibility to encourage others to think critically.
• Creating safe spaces allows for open and honest conversations.
• Privilege can be used to foster safety or to isolate others.
• Loneliness is a growing epidemic in modern society.
• Challenging societal norms can create meaningful dialogue.
• It's important to introduce new information in discussions.
• Men often struggle with forming deep connections due to echo chambers.
• No fixing or platitudes allow for genuine sharing in groups. Silence can be uncomfortable but valuable in conversations.
• Vulnerability allows for deeper connections and understanding.
• Cognitive dissonance can create conflict in personal beliefs.
• Emotional communication is essential for resolving misunderstandings.
• Curiosity can bridge gaps in political conversations.
• People often seek confirmation bias to avoid cognitive dissonance.
• Empathy is crucial in understanding differing perspectives.
• Political identities can be complex and contradictory.
• It's important to create safe spaces for open dialogue.
• Navigating conversations requires patience and understanding.
• I want a strong and vibrant Republican party.
• Most Americans have at least one issue they don't align with the party on.
• We need to talk about solutions, not just problems.
• Curiosity in conversations can lead to understanding.
• Empathy is crucial in political discussions.
• We need to provide safety before challenging beliefs.
• Echo chambers can distort our perceptions of others.
• Bridging divides requires recognizing shared humanity.
• Presence in discourse can create meaningful change.

Podcast Episode Unedited Transcript

Jason Scott Montoya (00:00)
Welcome to an episode of the Share Life Podcast. I'm Jason Scott Montoya. And today I'm here with Nathan Dose. Nathan, say hello.

Nathan Dohse (00:08)
Hello!

Jason Scott Montoya (00:08)
Nathan is an educator. He's an advocate. He's a speaker in the music industry. He's in the Nashville area. Today we're talking about breaking our echo chambers and sacrificing our sacred cows. So I invited Nathan to join me on the podcast because he interacted with me on one of the political posts that I had done on Facebook. And I wanted to read his comment because I think that's gonna set the stage.

for this conversation. So I'm gonna read the comment and then I'm gonna throw it to you, Nathan, to explain what is it you mean by this and what's been your sort of your perspective of this situation. in response to, I believe it was when I came out about being a Republican for Harris, the Republicans for Harris as a coalition came together and I posted about it.

Nathan Dohse (00:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I love it.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (01:02)
And so you said, this breaks the echo chamber if nothing else. It creates cognitive dissonance within a community, which does more good than anything else you could possibly do. We do not have a responsibility or the right to change anyone else's mind, but we do have the responsibility to use our minds we have and to encourage others to do the same. You are doing a great job of that. So talk to me, what is it? Why'd you post that? What do you mean by this? What's going on?

Nathan Dohse (01:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, I think that I've been thinking a lot about thought leadership versus like following along and taking in information. And I've been studying it a little bit. When I say studying, mean, really skimming the top of a lot of different articles because I can't get all the way through any single article too deeply. But

I've just been thinking a lot about this and it's really funny to me because in the both sides, right? We talk about both sides call each other sheep all the time, right? Just, sheep and everybody's a sheep, meaning everybody's going along. And so in that, think cognitive dissonance creating something that is

going against the direction of the flow and just dropping it in of like, Hey, this exists. This is real. This is happening. Republicans for Harris is a coalition of people that have come together and it's happening. And the people that are a part of that coalition are a bunch of people that, you know, have followers who previously were

for Trump. so now the fact that this just happened and it's out in the world, everybody has to at least ponder and grapple with and decide where they're going to fall. Because, this person might be somebody that I used to take what they said as gold or really follow what they said. And now I can't. And so what

What am I going to do with that? So it's the only way we can't change people's minds. We can't argue with people. And you know, when we argue our points and we go a hundred comments deep on a Facebook post, you're never going to end up changing that person's mind, but introducing new information, and then having to place it themselves.

they might come to a new conclusion. So within the echo chambers, whenever I'm in what some would call a Facebook debate, I'm not actually debating the person trying to change their mind. I know that in this digital space and in the comment section, there are many people who are just reading along, right? They're reading and they might be reading along because somebody that they usually listen to

Is the one commenting maybe that's the person that I'm arguing with maybe they have disagreed with that person in the past but not said anything about it and now I'm giving the counter argument to the thing that they've heard that person say over and over and over again is that they just but they've never actually heard the counter argument At least not in a cordial or well articulated way. Maybe they've heard it screamed at somebody or something

but to sit there and so I'll have that conversation and sometimes people will chime in and say, that's pointless. like, well, it's not pointless to the person who's reading and following along. And so I know that one comment will sit in there and just kind of worm away in somebody's brain and be like, I haven't thought about it that way. And that cognitive dissonance of like, Hey, this is true. This is happening and now you have to hold it and you have to deal with it. Like, what does it mean?

that Liz Cheney is you know, is campaigning for Harris is, okay, you have to sit with that Dick Cheney. You have to sit with that, you know, like, what does this mean? You know, so I think that's what I meant by that comment.

Jason Scott Montoya (05:21)
All right, so the first thing you said is you said this breaks the echo chamber. So talk to me about one, like how do you think about echo chambers and why is it a problem? Is it a problem?

Nathan Dohse (05:27)
Mm-hmm.

That's interesting. Is it a problem? Not always. I think that we have so much information coming into us all the time that we probably couldn't handle.

If we were actually giving everything the time of day, I don't know that we would actually be able to handle it. And so the Echo Chamber, it's, mean, we live in a world of algorithms, right? So you're getting a lot of your information. Everything, all the information that you're getting now is pretty much funneled through an algorithm one way or another, except for if you're still on cable television, but then that's...

then that's subjective media based off of the people that control each station. So you're getting everything from an algorithm. So I think what I mean by your post is that from knowing you and your community, the folks who are getting information from your algorithm are usually getting something different from you or something more in line with their thought and their thinking. And then you go,

Here's this. And it's not what they expected. So, so the only people who can break an echo chamber are in the echo chamber. They have to be in it to begin with, to break it, which is, which is hard to do these days. You know, it's hard to, it's hard to be in shared spaces.

Jason Scott Montoya (06:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, and I guess so then in terms of our societal situation kind of parlay that to like, is it, why does it matter in terms of our politics and to our voting for and the giant election that's looming over our country?

Nathan Dohse (07:23)
Yeah, man, we're under 30 days. Yeah, I mean, I think that how it plays out in real life is, especially in certain environments, regionally, you come to some assumptions of how people are gonna think.

And so for example, my wife is a hairstylist and she's grown up in the south. She's grown up here in the Nashville area. you know, growing up, she'd be cutting hair and people would come in and start saying stuff that she just really disagreed with and would find offensive. But they just assumed.

Jason Scott Montoya (08:02)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (08:06)
about her that because of the environment that she thought a certain way or they just had the entitlement to just talk about whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. So what she did was she started putting pins on a jacket that just were, you know, there's a Black Lives Matter pin. There's a pride flag.

things like that. And what it does when you do that is it just sends, just makes somebody go, I'm, I'm not going to talk about my opinions about that thing. While this person's cutting my hair with a set of scissors right next to my ear or something, you know, just makes you a little bit more aware. And so I think people oftentimes call that

Jason Scott Montoya (08:34)
Interesting, yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (09:00)
virtue signaling, but I think it also is just it's it's not that it is saying hey, and then it has a It's allegiance signaling, but it also does something else right like it so it minimizes the amount of it gives that person information because I think a lot of folks they don't want to

Jason Scott Montoya (09:06)
Maybe allegiance, allegiance signaling.

Nathan Dohse (09:17)
And, but they do want to be seen and heard and they want to have conversations. So I think a lot of these, you know, these would be clients that she's, she's worked with for years and years. Right. And I don't want to tell too much of her story. That's her story. But the, but the point I've always liked it is that I think it gives them, I think it gives people information of like, we disagree on that topic. And so we don't need to talk about it because they don't want to offend, but then it does a second thing too. And that is.

people who do agree see that, that pin and they go, this is a safe place for me to talk about this. Right. And, so I think that's maybe equally or more important is to let people know like, Hey, this, this conversation we can talk about here. And, and in that same sense, I think that goes, I think that goes both ways, to where, you know,

Yeah, whatever your allegiances are. but if you're doing it to try and like scare somebody, like that's, that's where it gets a little uncomfortable. Right. And so how can you break the echo chamber? It's just by the echo chambers do exist regionally. And I think it's just like being able to say, Hey, I'm a part of this space. I'm a part of this community. And I just don't think the same way that you do. that's okay.

Jason Scott Montoya (10:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, so you, yeah, well, I think, so part of what you're describing too is the second piece, which is the sacred cow, right? And in this case, they're talking about one thing, what this person is bothered by it, of which they don't know any different. And you could have the flip side dynamic too, where if you do have those signals and then someone comes in and then they don't speak about it.

Nathan Dohse (10:58)
Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (11:05)
in that same way. And one of the things that reminds me of is I had this, I've been a movie extra on several movies. So there's this one movie I was on, a founder with Michael Keaton, which is an interesting parallel because it's the story of McDonald's and it's really about this horrible person that essentially steals a McDonald's from the founders. They kind of let the wolf in. There's a scene where it's like, we let the wolf in, know, what are we doing? And so.

Nathan Dohse (11:17)
Yeah.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (11:32)
I was on set in this particular scene, everyone except for me and one other person where it's called to the set. we were essentially waiting and we're at the table and he's talking and he's doing like what you're describing, which is he's talking how he probably talks to other men, but he's talking to me that way about his girlfriend. And he, I think the situation was something like he wanted to bring his laptop so he could do something and his...

Nathan Dohse (11:49)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (12:00)
girlfriend was supposed to put it in his bag or remind him or something and he and she didn't. So he said she was an effing B. Like just I can't believe you know and I said don't talk to your talk about your girlfriend that way and he was like shocked. Because he didn't expect that and he immediately changed and he started actually talking differently. We actually had a really meaningful conversation and he was a lot more respectful.

Nathan Dohse (12:09)
Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (12:28)
And I got in that moment, like he was talking to me because he thought I was expecting him to talk a certain way and I wasn't that person.

Nathan Dohse (12:34)
Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. I had the same situation happen yesterday in the sauna at the YMCA. It was me and two really old dudes, similar situation. Not exactly the same, but similar. And, you know, and one young woman. And the second she gets up to leave, these two very old men.

Jason Scott Montoya (12:58)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (12:59)
start talking locker room talk like you would expect. And they look at me and they're like, you know, like, I do not know. Like, like, and I, I didn't go into the place of like confronting it for a couple of reasons. But one, I think also just back to the point of like, the cognitive dissonance is I'm a, I'm a younger man in the sense and, and, and so for them to be like, you know, and for me to be like,

Jason Scott Montoya (13:06)
Yeah

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (13:29)
No. Cognitive dissonance. Whoa, wait, why? Why did he respond that way? Like, maybe he was gay or something. Wherever they go, they have to process, right? They have to process. Why didn't he respond the way we expected him to respond? And I think sometimes that's even more beneficial than the-

Jason Scott Montoya (13:39)
Yeah.

They put you in a bucket, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (13:55)
confrontation because the confrontation puts somebody in defense, not saying that how you could, would have confronted that aggressively too. was an aggressive stance. Sometimes that aggressive stance is necessary, but I like to not respond how it's expected and leave them with it. Cause now they have to think of it, man, that guy can respond how I expected him to. And so then it's, it's

they have to sit with it and they have to try to place it. And I think, you know, I think that's usually where they end up going. Maybe my behavior wasn't.

Jason Scott Montoya (14:26)
Yeah, I call it, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it creates a mirror, I think. I had a situation, I think of that idea as being a, like, living anomalous, anomaly-alias? Being an anomaly to what they expect. And I had a situation where I had a friend who was an author and he was being published and he was doing some interviews in New York and I went along with him on his trip to New York. And the gal who was interviewing, he was a Christian author and he wrote a Christian book. And,

Nathan Dohse (14:36)
Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (15:03)
this girl's experience, a woman, she was probably like 20 something, her experience of Christians was like very negative. Like she thought they were so bad that she wrote a screenplay about serial killing Christians. Like that was her experience. And so here she is talking to my friend and me and we're like really kind to her and respectful and listening, trying to understand her story.

Nathan Dohse (15:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's above. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (15:30)
It was interesting because she did the interview for him for this. It was an interfaith channel of some sort. And it was like she went from like a job of interviewing him to like she was actually personally curious about this story. And we ended up like invited her to Bible study and she came that night. It was quite a wild experience. But we were a type of Christian that was so dramatically different than the type she had experienced. And it created exactly what you're trying to create. created that tension that go, hmm.

Nathan Dohse (15:43)
Yeah.

Cool. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (15:59)
That's interesting.

Nathan Dohse (16:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (16:01)
So the other thing I was gonna add is, you know, back to my movie extra, there's another layer I think here that we can talk about. So we end up moving to a different table and I ended up talking with this other woman, younger, probably 20s too. And we had a great conversation, we built some rapport and the guy that I was talking with was, and he was nice and respectful, like he wasn't a jerk face.

Nathan Dohse (16:05)
Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (16:28)
But another guy shows up at the second table and this is the guy that the guy was probably trying to get his approval because this guy was very cynical, he was very crude. And so it was this weird situation where he felt threatening to this woman and I'm kind of sitting between them like, okay, I'm trying to like moderate but I...

Nathan Dohse (16:39)
Hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (16:54)
Unlike the other guy who was responsive to it, this guy was not. He was just gonna do what he's gonna do. And so I just sat with her until he left so that she wouldn't have to feel that.

Nathan Dohse (16:56)
Yeah, it is not. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, to feel that. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (17:08)
So I think that's another dynamic just to think about is kind of like what you said about the safety piece. Our presence, I think both helps people not feel alone, but also not feel unsafe. And I think for vulnerable people, that as someone who doesn't feel vulnerable, like we may not appreciate that as a man.

Nathan Dohse (17:15)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank

Jason Scott Montoya (17:33)
But as a woman, they may feel that vulnerability in a way that we don't. And so to provide that positive tension, I think, is another dynamic. I don't know, what are your thoughts on that?

Nathan Dohse (17:44)
Yeah, I mean, it brings it back to the word that sends people, you know, raging and that's a privilege. It's a privilege of being a man, a male privilege to be in spaces and feel safe majority of the time. In most situations, we feel relatively safe as men, you know, whether that's getting pulled over by the cops.

or being in dark alleyways, like we know that the threat to us is more often than not relatively minor as opposed to other people. so it is a privilege that we have. so then,

We can either use that privilege to create safety or we can use it to advance our own desires and exploit it. Or we can use it, and this is maybe the one that applies the most to isolate ourselves, right? When we do that,

Jason Scott Montoya (18:50)
and exploit it, yeah.

you

Nathan Dohse (19:06)
we start to isolate from, now we're not safe anymore. And now this whole spate, because we didn't confront somebody who was behaving inappropriately, now the whole environment's not safe, right? And so now...

that's how an echo chamber gets created is because there's no safety for other voices. So those voices leave, right? Those voices like dip out and then it's just the same thing over and over and over again. And I think that that happens to men a lot. Every, you know, we, we, we don't create safe spaces for other voices or other types of people.

And that's just the same thing. And what I think isn't really being talked about is that that's boring.

Jason Scott Montoya (20:04)
Yeah, nobody wants to have those conversations Yeah

Nathan Dohse (20:05)
And we're, and we're bored. Like, and so that's why, like, when you look at men in their 30s, they start to decline and having deep and meaningful relationships. And of course they are when they show up to hang out with the boys. It's the same thing over and over and over again, because it's carbon copy of all the same people.

So it's just the same conversation. The only thing different is who's winning the football game that week, right? And so that's why the conversations just devolve into really shallow things. And it's because it's all the same voice. And so echo chambers are creating isolation for us as well, especially for men.

And it's creating loneliness. that's, and just recently it was, I was reading about how for all intents and purposes they've called loneliness an epidemic, know, like, right, right, right. Yeah. You couldn't remember if it was a surgeon general, but I think, I think that's right. And so a lot of that has to do with echo chambers. so.

Jason Scott Montoya (21:10)
Yeah, I think the Surgeon General actually came out and said something about it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Well, think, let me add a couple of layers there because, well, I gave some examples of where I was like, I did the right thing and I was great, but I have so many stories where I've utterly failed, where I didn't speak up and I was a coward and all of that. so there's the flip side of that. And I think part of that has to do with talking about loneliness and isolation and survival. When I'm struggling or if there's an addiction that I have,

Nathan Dohse (21:36)
Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (21:52)
you know, having a place of other men to talk about those things that most men are not talking about, but we need to because they're like critical. We can just decay inside if we don't. And so having that place, I think the echo chamber is...

Nathan Dohse (21:55)
Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (22:08)
there's an interesting contrast between that and even the sacred cow in the sense of, hey, this is a group where we can talk about anything. And we're gonna be able to sort of, hey, I'm struggling with this thing. And there isn't sort of any, well, we don't talk about that thing. We can talk about, if you're struggling with this, if you're facing this challenge, this is a place to be vulnerable and to work that out so that we can move from.

being unhealthy to being healthy, right?

Nathan Dohse (22:38)
Yeah, yeah, I have a space like that. I have a recovery group that I go to. We call it Men's Heart Group. It's associated with my church, but my church is progressive Christian, so it kind of kind of alone in the Nashville area already. so this men's group is really great, I would say.

Jason Scott Montoya (22:47)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (23:07)
A decent, decent portion are our gay men, which is amazing to have in the community because right there it's different voices. And we have a lot of values that we hold that I think, I mean, we grew up in the same area and had a lot of intersection in our, in our youth groups and things like that. But one of the first things I learned when we started this group was no, no religious platitudes and no fixing.

No crosstalk right in a there's no crosstalk. This isn't an AA group, but it but it uses some of the same structure and And so no fixing no fixing was like and no platitudes and what that looks like is when somebody shares their experience You know, you're not saying like well God has a plan like well

Jason Scott Montoya (23:37)
you

Okay.

similar, yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah

Nathan Dohse (24:02)
That's not helping me right now in this moment, right? And one of the things that we say in the group is when we don't know what to say, we give ourselves permission to sit quietly with each other. As somebody who's ADHD and a loud voice and a speaker and all that, whew, sitting quietly together.

I hate it. So it really was something to sit and learn and be like, do I actually have something valuable to say? Or am I uncomfortable in the silence? I think about that too, in when, when people are, when we're in spaces where people are inappropriate or things like that.

Jason Scott Montoya (24:31)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Nathan Dohse (24:52)
Back to that story in the sauna is that being uncomfortable in the silence, it has a lot of value too. I really measure, used to get into confrontations a lot more than I actually do now. Like, well, you shouldn't say that or whatever. And I really measure and I go, is what I'm going to say going to create a difference or

is sitting here quietly going to have the larger impact. But yeah, but in that space, nothing's off the table. We talk about whatever's going on and there's no fixing. And it's amazing to see how men, what I love about this group too, it's the only group that I've ever been in that's like this, but we have somebody who I think is 75, I think.

And then our youngest member is 24. I don't think I've ever been a part of a group that has that wide of a age gap. it's amazing. I think every other one that I've ever been a part of, older men felt like they had to...

Jason Scott Montoya (25:44)
Yeah.

Okay.

Wow. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (26:04)
be wise or something, you know, they were in some sort of leadership or something with it. And it's amazing to have the men who are quite a bit older than me be vulnerable and show that they don't, you know, they don't have it all going on and, and they don't know how to handle things and they struggle with stuff and all that stuff. So it's cool. It's important. We need more spaces like that. think.

Jason Scott Montoya (26:08)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. So let's talk about the cognitive dissonance within a community. How do you, I mean, I think of the Seinfeld episode where George is dating the gal that looks like Jerry. It's like, don't they look alike? And like the whole episode, it's like irritating him. And then at the end, he's like, I can't do this anymore. He finally accepts the reality and he decides to break up with her because the cognitive.

Nathan Dohse (26:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (27:00)
dissonance that was too much. But talk to us about that.

Nathan Dohse (27:01)
I can't. Yeah.

I'll give an example back to my church and my faith journey. I'm a Christian that's affirming of LGBTQ and I hold, believe they're Christians and part of our community and I affirm their right to have a relationship and be exactly who they are.

And when I talk about that, and especially on the internet, people are like, you're not a Christian, right? And I go, no, I am. And they list all the reasons as to why I'm not a Christian. There's other reasons why you're not a Christian. Now I I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian because I'm, I know what I believe it means to be a Christian.

Jason Scott Montoya (27:30)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Nathan Dohse (27:51)
And then I know what they believe that it means to be a Christian. so then I reiterate our shared beliefs. Right here. No, no, no. Hold on. Isn't this what we believe makes us a Christian? Isn't that what we've been taught? I believe those things. Well, here's this one thing that you don't believe. And because of that, I'm going to hang on to it and say, you're not a Christian.

Right? So that's this, this voice. I go, no. And that is the space where, where, if, if we can, if we can hold power and our own identity and only speak for ourselves and hold our own power, and not even try to fight to change somebody's mind. Like, you know, I'm going to keep calling myself a Christian. Clearly you won't.

But that's a you can do that, but you don't you don't get to tell me that that I'm not. And so in that. People just have to sit with it and just they, you know, they can double down. But eventually, once they've heard that story more than once.

And okay, now there's more folks that believe the way Nathan does and now they've heard it before. The next time they hear it, it's not the first time they've heard it and they've had to sit with it a little bit longer. And these things just bounce around in our heads and some people kick them out and they just completely tune it out and they get the way that they view the world and hide it. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (29:27)
Drive it, drive, hide it, put it, put it, hide it, dismiss it.

Nathan Dohse (29:33)
dismiss it and find some confirmation bias, I think is the number one thing that happens in that, right? Like if you're dealing with cognitive dissonance, you go, I know this to be true. You go look for something that confirms what you want to believe, right? So confirmation bias in conjunction with cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias is the only way to get out of cognitive dissonance.

Jason Scott Montoya (29:53)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (29:59)
right, is to go find something that affirms what you want to believe to be true about the world. and I think a big piece of that is emotional vulnerability. And I think this comes back to where men have a long way to go, is that if I can communicate, hey, what you said made me sad.

and I'm vulnerable and I've shared my information. What you said made me sad.

Jason Scott Montoya (30:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (30:31)
Well, what I said wasn't wrong. I didn't say what you said was wrong. I said it made me feel sad. Well, you shouldn't feel that way. I can't really do anything about the way that I feel what what you said made me sad. What are you saying? I should have said something different. No, I'm not. And so then the person has to sit with. OK, this this person's sad and you see.

the just friction that's like, don't like, they don't want that to be true, you know?

Jason Scott Montoya (31:05)
Yeah. Yeah, I think of that scene in Lord of the Rings when the Balrog is trying to cross and Gandalf standing there like you shall not pass. And it's just two powerful forces, just all this friction, but nothing's happening. It's just stuck. Who's going to budge?

Nathan Dohse (31:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm hmm. And so, yeah, often oftentimes we, you know, we don't have the vulnerable. We want to fight. And that doesn't that creates we both dig our heels in and we want to argue. But if we get vulnerable and we just say like, man.

that, you know, that like, I'm angry right now, you know, like, instead of being like, you're wrong, and you're stupid. And you know, you you snowflake or whatever, just like, hey, what what you when people speak this way, it makes it makes me really angry. Right. And you're not showing anger. You're not raging. You're not fighting. You're giving information that says, I'm really angry.

Jason Scott Montoya (31:54)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (32:03)
And people don't know what to do with that because they're used to your behavior matching it. And then they have to defend themselves and they know how to defend themselves, but they don't. People don't like to have people mad at them, right? No one does. You don't like to have people mad at you. So when you go, that made me really angry with you.

Jason Scott Montoya (32:10)
I see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and I've noticed, I had this interesting experience in high school where this kind of bully kid was messing around in class and he kind of took it too far and he hit me and like it really hurt. And he felt guilty about it. And he said, hit me back. Like he needed me to hit him back to help feel better about it. I said, I'm not gonna do that. And he really, really, really bothered him. But that's, I think what you're describing is that dynamic.

Nathan Dohse (32:43)
Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (32:54)
And I think Christ in his passion experience is just such a beautiful example of that where all of these wretched, horrible lies and terrible things are done to him, one after the next, after the next. And he could have responded in wrath in a number of ways and he didn't. And in fact, several of the cases he says, forgive them for they know not what they do. I mean, he did the opposite in several situations. So that's kind of what comes to my mind.

Nathan Dohse (32:58)
You hear?

Mm-hmm.

yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Well, actually, take that even, you know, even to what we know about that story, there was an army of people that expected him to do that. Right? Like his followers, his, so that is the, that is the echo chamber. That is what we need to be doing is, is there's this expectation of how we will respond.

Jason Scott Montoya (33:32)
Yeah, yeah, Peter and Judas being two of them. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (33:48)
from the people who are with us, right? it was his followers were like, okay, now it's time for the sword. You know, now we're okay. We're gonna like, now is when he's gonna bring it and it's time for us to go to war. And he's gonna be the.

Jason Scott Montoya (33:51)
Yeah.

And that was also similar with Martin Luther King Jr. He was such a conviction about his peaceful participation. But there were people in his group that were like doing that. And he said, no, this is what we're doing. And so, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (34:07)
Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. I believe it might be a TV history for me. But I mean, I think that was the big conflict and disagreement between Malcolm X. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (34:30)
But it created when, yeah, yeah, yeah, from what I understand. But it created, as people watched on TV, these peaceful, the black community being peaceful and then being, and then violence being put on them, it created a picture that if they had been fighting each other, America may not have responded the same way. But it's, and so from just a empirical approach to protesting, it actually made a, it created that cognitive dissonance, you know?

Nathan Dohse (34:43)
Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (34:58)
and people had to wrestle with that as it bounced around in their head.

Nathan Dohse (35:02)
Yeah, and it's funny when taking it back to Christ, how much you can say something to people, how many times you can tell somebody who you are and what you're about, and they just, they won't believe it. mean, how many times did he say, you know, greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend, right? And then they're like,

but you're not gonna do that. You're not gonna actually let them kill you. Yeah, yeah. And then he's like, I've been telling you guys, like I've been saying, this is what's gonna happen. they're like, but surely, no, it won't. And I think that's where, you know, we're.

Jason Scott Montoya (35:27)
Yeah, it's like none of it made sense until it was all over, you

Yeah.

We kind of put our own hopes and dreams, we overlay the reality.

Nathan Dohse (35:45)
Yeah, yeah. And so when we're having these conversations and we exit, you I can walk into a locker room. I can walk into any locker room. And when I say locker room, I mean the real one and the metaphorical one, right? And be around men and.

You know, I can laugh at like, I'll laugh at a couple of the jokes that are like, yeah, that's not appropriate, but it's funny. And I, and so I'll laugh and I don't have to make every single situation uncomfortable. And I also don't feel guilty for laughing at something that's funny, but crude and not appropriate. And so I think there's this place where, you know, it's, it's like, there's a,

Jason Scott Montoya (36:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (36:32)
it's like reading the room, knowing the opportunities. And I'm in there like trying to, I'm not trying to change the locker room. I'm looking for the other person. I'm looking for the person in the locker room that seems a little bit uncomfortable, right? That's going, man, like I don't belong here. I'm uncomfortable with this.

Jason Scott Montoya (36:51)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (36:59)
And I'm trying to just be a bridge to that person before they assimilate and compress whatever it is, right? Before they compartmentalize whatever it is about them that makes them uncomfortable and tuck it away. And because that's when they start to suffer trauma is when they compartmentalize whatever makes them different to assimilate to the group. And so I'm just trying to be a bridge that goes like, Hey, you know,

Jason Scott Montoya (37:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (37:28)
I mean, I can be in this group, but I'm not like this group. And I think on my own and I think differently. Yeah. And, and I think the best way to do that is just like ask questions and get to know people and, and just stay curious about people. And I find that's interesting too. So when you take it back to like politics,

Jason Scott Montoya (37:34)
Yeah, an escape hatch.

Nathan Dohse (37:53)
in the echo chamber of politics. live in a rural area right outside of Nashville called Pegram and it's conservative relatively, you know. And so again, my wife with her and I'm all about this too, but she's like, I am going to make sure people know who we are and what we stand for. So when we moved in, Black Lives Matter sign out front, pride flag hanging off of the balcony. was...

We live here now, you know, and one of the neighbors had a big old Trump flag out front of their house and he knew us. He was a distant cousin of somebody that

was a distant cousin to somebody, because that's just how Nashville is. And so he came up, he was like, hey, I heard you guys moved in. And we're like, where do you live? He's like, the one with the big Trump flag on the front of the house. And he looked at the Black Lives Matter sign as he said that. And it was like fear. He had fear saying his own thing that it was going to create

Jason Scott Montoya (38:37)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (39:02)
conflict.

by just saying it. And I said, cool. What are you loving about Trump right now? He's like, what? He's like, what do you love about Trump? And then he proceeded to tell me, and it was what I love about that conversation is that the answers are real thin these days. it's, he says it how it is. Does he though? So.

Jason Scott Montoya (39:17)
you

You

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's an interesting dynamic, because I'm saying it how it is, and they don't like it. So there's nothing more to it than that. That's just the way it comes out.

Nathan Dohse (39:31)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, but, but that type of curiosity, you come in and you go like, I don't need to, I've already, you already know where I stand. We got the sign out front. You got all that. I can be curious about you and, and he can say whatever he wants to say. It could, it could have been the most, you know,

it could have been the ugliest thing, right? And it could have been like, okay. But most people don't want to say they know what's ugly. You know, again, back to some of that cognitive dissonance, they know that the ugly stuff is ugly. And in that first interaction, when you're being curious, and you're like, what do you like about him?

Jason Scott Montoya (40:12)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (40:23)
they're not going to lead with the stuff that's the ugliest, right? But when they're in a battle on Facebook, they're going to take that. They're going to go ugly when you are doubling down and you're fighting back and forth. They're going to go for the ugly thing because they are trying to piss you off to win a battle. Right. And so I think that has its place too. If it's like, let's say the ugliest, let's say the ugly stuff out loud.

Jason Scott Montoya (40:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Got it.

Nathan Dohse (40:52)
you're thinking it. at least now, you know, and the version of that for me is, you know, America first is this like that's, that's kind of the

That's kind of the nice way of saying some of the stuff that's like, you know, got the ugliest things like tied into it, you know? And it took what he's been campaigning since 2015. It kind of took, I feel like, seven to eight years for it to get compiled down into that one phrase of where like,

Jason Scott Montoya (41:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (41:29)
Well, just America first. And there's so much tied in to what that means, you know? And so we just go, OK, let's be curious and have civil conversations. And. It's fun to be the one to spark and ask the questions and.

Jason Scott Montoya (41:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think one of the things I think would be worth pulling, teasing out here because, well, a couple layers, but one just specifically to that is, I think one of the things that Republicans have failed utterly, particularly in the last decade, is that they're fighting, they're sort of fighting this culture war, say, but the way they're fighting it is actually causing them to lose it.

Nathan Dohse (42:10)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (42:15)
They're actually, like they're loosing, they're asserting dominance and control, which is losing influence, right? And I think what you're describing, you know, is something that they're missing. Maybe, I mean, maybe we're all missing it, but maybe in larger quantities.

Nathan Dohse (42:15)
I would agree.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think.

Jason Scott Montoya (42:36)
So what would you say to that? Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (42:40)
Listen, here's the thing. There's a lot of people who agree with Republicans on where they stand in the culture war. Right? We'll take abortion as an example. Many, many people do not want people to be getting abortions. Right?

like don't agree with abortion, would never get an abortion. But they don't think that the government has the right to dictate what a person can or can't do with their body. And so then you have the anti-vax crowd that says the government can't tell me what to do with my body.

And it's the same statement. It's literally the same language. so. Yeah, yeah. And so so then you have this this and then cognitive dissonance. You let you you can't say. Both things you can't say, the government has a right to tell. A woman what she can do with her body, but not me.

Jason Scott Montoya (43:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, and you could add masks, masks into that too. Yeah, whatever the thing is.

Nathan Dohse (43:58)
a man or whatever, you can't say that and use the same language. Not. Yeah, at some point you have to confront like, I just I want to be able to tell people what they can do, what you said of dominance. I want to be able to tell people what they can do with their body as far as it's concerned. With abortion. Because I have a very passionate belief about what

Jason Scott Montoya (44:03)
it would corrode into a, yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (44:26)
abortion is. And, but I don't want them to be able to tell me what I can do with my body as it as it pertains to vaccines because I have a very passionate opinion about what I believe about vaccines.

Jason Scott Montoya (44:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's like I'm a type of person where I want to be, I want to have sort of the vision and be consistent in that value. Like I don't want, if I'm, if I am like inconsistent in the way you're describing, like then that bothers me. But I think for a lot of people, maybe that cognitive dissonance doesn't bother them.

Nathan Dohse (44:57)
Yeah, now I wager that it does bother them. Right, I think it does bother them. And that's why we see such aggression.

Jason Scott Montoya (45:02)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you're saying the contradiction, they have a hard time with the contradiction and that comes out in different weird ways.

Nathan Dohse (45:12)
I don't think you can hold that level of hypocrisy and contradiction in and it not have a negative consequence. And I think what that negative consequence is, is rage. Right?

Jason Scott Montoya (45:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, so this would actually be a good example, I think, also what I'm talking about in terms of winning the hearts and minds of people is that domination approach to abortion is scaring people away from Republicans. Like, whoa, they're trying to control me. And they should be scared. So, but they're thinking, well, if we can just control them, then we can force this on them and then we don't have any abortions.

Nathan Dohse (45:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (45:54)
which isn't actually how it works. And so the way I see it is they're actually driving up the number of abortions through their approach. And...

Nathan Dohse (45:56)
Yeah.

We know that. mean, we have the data on that, you know.

Jason Scott Montoya (46:07)
Yeah, and so what they don't see is they're actually making the issue worse. And this is one of things for me, like, when it comes to life, valuing the life versus wanting to enact laws. And not that we shouldn't regulate or shouldn't have laws, but there's a limit to the law, and that's where you have to win the hearts and the minds, where the law hits the limit, then you work on the hearts and the minds. And...

Nathan Dohse (46:21)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (46:33)
And so it's this weird thing of the thing they're chasing. And this kind of where I guess it comes out for me in terms of like being a Republican for Harris is, wait a second, you said this, this, and this was important. Like take for example, Republicans, as far as I grew up, it was about taking responsibility. It was about fidelity to the constitution. But Trump is the opposite of both of those things.

Nathan Dohse (46:44)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (47:01)
And now the Republican Party is the opposite of those things. They're about blame and they're about doesn't you maybe we don't need the Constitution like We've flipped. Yeah, and so it's I kind of think of this year as a year of unmasking like what's really underneath it and for some people those Values may still be there but for a lot of people there's something overriding it and I think there are many reasons for that and it's different for different people but

Nathan Dohse (47:01)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

It's wild.

Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (47:27)
you know, to kind of just connect to some of the things you're saying, like being a Republican for Harris is a very different thing than me just have becoming a Democrat in terms of the tension and dynamic it creates. And I kind of thought about it for a while, like, what should I do? And I decided, like, I don't want to be pushed out here. So, and one of the things Trump actually taught me is,

Nathan Dohse (47:31)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (47:56)
He showed me that in eight years he could transform the party in his image. And there's no reason that couldn't be done again in a different image. And from my own experience just working, consulting with people, coaching people, people are usually ejected from the system and they don't stay in it and then change it from the inside out, which is very difficult. In most cases, it's almost impossible. There are a few exceptions that I've discovered, but the...

Nathan Dohse (48:04)
That's correct. That's correct.

Mm-hmm.

It's very hard. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (48:25)
That's been an interesting dynamic because I'm part of a group and with the Republicans, they're very, if you aren't loyal to Trump, you're not a Republican. And it kind of goes back to what you're saying. You're not a Christian. I get that all the time. Jason, you're not a Republican. And they say, well, here's my story. Here's all the people I voted for. And here's all the things. I used to go to the young Republicans. Responsibility, that these values? But they're...

Nathan Dohse (48:37)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yep.

Jason Scott Montoya (48:51)
pushing me out because they don't want me to stay. They want me to leave so that they have their echo chamber, it seems, or they have their sacred cows. We don't talk about January 6th. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (48:54)
Great. Great.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Right. Well, what's funny is that it's the same thing as the term that sheep, right? Like what you're saying is that the Republican Party is no longer the Republican Party. So you could say that it's Republican in name only, right? So it's a rhino. Then they're calling you a rhino because you're not aligning with what the current Republican Party

Jason Scott Montoya (49:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (49:28)
is saying, it's the same thing of like, we're just, we're, we're all calling each other snowflake. I we're all calling each other the same thing. At what point do you stop and just go, okay, maybe we are the same thing. Maybe we are all snowflakes. Maybe we are all just getting our feelings hurt over and over and over again. And maybe everybody is offended all the time. Okay.

Jason Scott Montoya (49:29)
It has become, yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (49:58)
Why? Why is that? And, and I, and, I think it's a, I think it's a lack of empathy. think it's a lack of curiosity. Empathy has been big on, my mind of late because in, your situation of the Republican party and stuff, like I, what I, what I hear from you when you're posting, I hear a lot of empathy in.

Jason Scott Montoya (50:01)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (50:24)
Your concerns, your, your passion about the Republican party. love, I love what you said of like, I don't want to just like eject myself. It's I'm not becoming a Democrat, right? I'm staying a Republican. And then your advocacy obviously is for the nation as a whole, but I also hear a lot of empathy from you for Republicans who are still underneath the influence of Trump.

Jason Scott Montoya (50:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (50:50)
I think you really are and I really appreciate it. You really are trying to create a bridge where you can of just like, Hey, I don't want you to change your mind, I just like, don't want to force you to change your mind. just want to point these things out. Like, you hang? Can you hang with this?

Jason Scott Montoya (51:00)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (51:16)
With this cognitive distance, right? Can you, can you stay in it? Like the, this is what the Republican party used to stand for. And, and now, and now it doesn't. And, and for the record, mean, I came up Republican until, I didn't, I voted for McCain against Obama. And then I actually, I didn't vote on, on the second,

Jason Scott Montoya (51:18)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (51:39)
Romney. I didn't vote for Obama or Romney. just, I was on tour, and, didn't, didn't do the, do it right. and then, and, and then yeah, voted for, Hillary, you know, in that, and I voted for, I voted for Bush. Bush was the first, time. So, so I've, I've voted for, wait.

Jason Scott Montoya (51:40)
Okay, yeah. Okay.

Mm. Didn't, yeah.

Okay, 2008, 2004, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (52:05)
So I guess I've voted for more Republicans than Democrats. So, which is funny. So, I mean, I think I'm probably a Democrat a lot, but I have criticisms of the Democratic party for sure in the sense that it's also got the echo chamber and there are extreme, there's always going to be extremists, right? There's always going to be people that are extreme and fundamental. And so then when people criticize,

Jason Scott Montoya (52:09)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (52:34)
the, when they, it's, it's funny. Cause also that here's another thing that happens. everybody says that, like Kamala Harris is far left, right? Far left. And then the far left is like, she's basically a Republican. And you're like, what, what are we? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so you're just like, okay, well,

Jason Scott Montoya (52:52)
Yeah. Which which I get that too, like I'm either a communist or I'm, you know, whatever. But I think, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (53:02)
Both of those things can't be true. don't think, one thing that I'm excited about and I, and I hope, and I think you and I share this even amongst, I've heard more Democrats say this than maybe anytime before. Pete Buttigieg, Pete Buttigieg being the one who says it the most is that we want a strong and vibrant Republican party. I want.

Jason Scott Montoya (53:28)
Yes, we want two healthy parties, both of them, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (53:30)
I want two healthy parties, right? Like I want a strong, you know, well voiced Republican party that isn't an authoritarian party, you know, a place where there's there's good debate happening from a conservative perspective. I want that. And I find myself very moderate in a lot of ways. Like on on the abortion topic.

And when people are like, it should be an issue of the States. There's a lot of places where I agree that there are things that are, you know, should be governed by the States. And so when that was the piece that like kicked it back to the States, I was like, this isn't all bad. This isn't all bad. Now we need some federal guidelines.

Jason Scott Montoya (54:18)
Yeah, to the states, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (54:28)
that say this is my belief, some federal guidelines that govern access so that these nightmare situations that happen and autonomy can be preserved and the government isn't telling people what to do with their healthcare, but then the states do have regulatory authority in situations too. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (54:50)
Yeah, I don't know that anyone is saying it shouldn't be regulated. Or very few are, yeah, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (54:54)
Exactly. Actually, like the people say like, this politician or that politician has no regulations. And that's actually no even Roe, even Roe had regulations within it. And and so most of the Democratic politicians are saying, you know, we want Roe back with the regulations that it had all that all that to say, what I mean is that I think most Americans

Jason Scott Montoya (55:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (55:23)
have at least one issue that they don't align with the party on.

Jason Scott Montoya (55:30)
Yeah, yeah. Is it more of a matter of like, is there enough of them that just sort of tips the scale? Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (55:32)
great.

Yeah. And, and, but what happens is we don't get to talk about those issues at all. And the thing is, is that when those issues come up, it's like, Hey, I think this is a, know, for me, I have so many issues that I go, I think these things are problems. And people go, that's not a problem. That's not a problem. And the, what about ism? This is what's actually a problem. And I go,

Jason Scott Montoya (56:03)
Got it. Redirecting, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (56:04)
No, that's also, that's also a problem. but can we talk about this problem? And then if we actually have the conversation, Hey, what do you think we should do about it? That's where people find we actually align is like, if we can agree that it's a problem, now let's talk about solutions. and, and then people find out that my path to fixing a lot of problems isn't what they expected it to be. So sometimes the

Jason Scott Montoya (56:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (56:32)
be like, think the state should handle it I don't think it should be federal. And then they're like, are you sure you're a Democrat? You know, I'm like, no, I'm not. You called me that. I didn't call me that. And so that's where it's like, if we can get back to discourse, if we can get back to conversation and being able to talk with each other, you know.

Jason Scott Montoya (56:38)
Yeah, yeah.

Well, and that's one of the things that I think led to the Trump era. In this, maybe it's both, but I'm Republican, so I'm speaking from the Republican side. Dems are bad, Dems are bad, Dems are bad. This was the habit. Dems are bad, Dems are bad. And so, know, talk radio said that, everyone said that. When Liz Cheney did the January 6th committee, she was asked to be on it by Nancy Pelosi.

Nathan Dohse (57:01)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (57:19)
So she's working with Nancy Pelosi. And I guess they had a meeting where she shows up and Nancy Pelosi's aide comes to her and says, these are all the 10 things, that terrible things that Liz Cheney said about you. And Nancy Pelosi was like, wise enough to say that doesn't matter, get rid of it. Like it didn't matter. And I think one of the things that I've seen with Liz Cheney that's in also just her campaigning with Harris.

is that bridge of like, isn't actually my enemy. I mean, we have different, I think of a rival is a better word. This is my rival, but we're on the same team in the larger picture. But I think that kind of the two parties demonizing each other, but as far as I can tell with the Republican Party, it's the Dems are bad habit, it kind of distorted us in how we saw things.

Nathan Dohse (57:57)
Ooh, Rivals killed. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (58:15)
and the way that I look at it is we actually need each other. Like we need two healthy parties and two healthy parties need each other. And what we need is people and leaders that are doing what Cheney and Harris are doing, which is they're working together. I Harris said she was gonna have a Republican on her cabinet. mean, I get emotional thinking about like the idea of a bipartisan White House. And that could just be the starting point. Like it could...

Nathan Dohse (58:15)
Yeah.

Yeah. It happened in the West Wing. It happened in the show.

Jason Scott Montoya (58:44)
Like imagine if it grew, okay, I never saw it, but that sounds like, I mean, I kind of had this vision, like what about like one party is the president, the other is the vice president? That unity ticket is just really powerful. And I think I just get emotional thinking, like these are our...

Nathan Dohse (58:58)
Yeah, it could happen one day.

Jason Scott Montoya (59:09)
These were our present, know, I loved a lot of the things Obama said at the DNC. Like I was very moved by some of the things he said, but I've also been discouraged by George W. Bush, who's just been gone the last 10 years in a lot of ways. I know he's doing things like in local ways and he's, but from like, he's our grandfather. I feel like he's the grandfather that disappeared after he retired, you know? And so, but I have this sort of.

Nathan Dohse (59:29)
Yeah, he's painting a lot.

Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (59:39)
vision and hope, let's, these people that led us, like, there's an obligation and a duty, I think, that's beyond just their role in the White House, you know, and so that leadership vacuum, think, just generally speaking, is just something that I want to see and that I want us to have as a country.

Nathan Dohse (59:58)
Well, I think what you're talking about, you said Dems are bad, Dems are bad, Dems are bad. And and I'll, and take that even a step down, like as that's even better than what I hear the most. And it's, are bad. They are bad. And I'm like, who's they, who is they? Do you, do you mean your neighbor? Do you like.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:00:14)
Yeah,

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:00:24)
They are bad. When we say they are bad, it means that we can eliminate our neighbor if we don't want to include them, if they're in the room, right? Like, I don't, well, I don't mean you. Well, so who is they? And as you get more specific, it does start to include people that maybe you wouldn't want to include. But when you aren't specific,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:00:37)
I see. Yeah.

amorphous.

Nathan Dohse (1:00:52)
the person listening can put whoever they want into that space. Right. So, so what we have to actually do is we actually have to start naming who we think are the problems. Right. So if, so if, if you want to, know, let's take it to this side of the fence, you know, like, they are bad. Okay. Who's they Democrats are bad. You mean

Jason Scott Montoya (1:00:56)
That's a good point,

Nathan Dohse (1:01:21)
All people registered as Democrats are bad. Well, no, not people registered as Democrats are bad. The Democratic politicians are bad. Okay, cool. The Democratic politicians are bad. All of them, which ones, right? this one. When you actually do that, when you actually go in and you start ticking away and you start naming them, what's gonna happen is somebody's gonna go, this Democrat is bad.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:01:29)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:01:49)
Nancy Pelosi will just take Nancy Pelosi is bad. if you, if you take that line and you run that line down, you're going to have a lot of Democrats that are going to go, yeah, not a big fan of Nancy Pelosi. Right. But then, then you don't get to have your echo chamber anymore.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:01:53)
Well, and I was gonna say, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, let me give a couple examples too that come to mind is one is I'll use Kamala Harris as an example. But this was kind of earlier this year when it seemed like Biden, the pressure was on Biden. And I had a negative impression of Harris and I asked myself, why do I have that negative impression of her? And I thought about it I said, well, the impression I have is based on all these people that hate her that I heard talk about her. And that's all it's based on.

Nathan Dohse (1:02:30)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You actually listen to her speak.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:02:41)
And yeah, I never listened to her speech and I've actually been very impressed with her speeches. She's a very focused person. She's a very disciplined person. Just how she conducts herself in her campaign has just been incredible to watch for me. very things about her, just, didn't know were there. Maybe she's changed and grown, but it was very compelling for me. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:02:50)
Mm-hmm.

She has, and she just recently posted something that said, did I see the quote from you where she said, anyways, maybe it was, somebody said, here were your policies that you campaigned on when you were campaigning before Biden, and then here's what you're saying.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:03:11)
I'm not sure.

yeah, I did see something, yeah. Which I was so grateful, just be honest about it, I change. Everyone loves that, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:03:30)
Yeah, she said I changed because I spent four years as the vice president of the United States, which gave me it, which is a lot different than being a senator of a single singular state. And when you go and have conversations with people all across the country, if your position doesn't change after doing that, there's something wrong with you. You know,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:03:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and another example is, so I've watched a bunch of her speeches and every time she talks, whenever she does a speech, for like the first five minutes, she's just thanking people. So much gratitude. I'm so grateful for this person that did this. Thank you so and so. Thank you though. I've never seen someone with such gratitude in that type of a leadership position. And it was so stark that Trump actually mocked her for like, does she always apologize? Why does she always?

Nathan Dohse (1:03:57)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:04:13)
telling people thank you, that's so, he kind of diminished it. But it was very striking for me. another example is, you mentioned Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi's bad, Nancy Pelosi, that's what I always heard. I have never actually heard an, I never heard an interview with Nancy Pelosi until this year. Like an actual interview where she's talking and I'm listening. That was the first time I've ever done that. And so this echo chamber idea, like,

Nathan Dohse (1:04:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:04:43)
I think part of it is we want to be in that echo chamber, so we have to want to get out of it. And have to want to, and this could go both ways. And so there's stereotypes and exceptions, and those skew how we see things. But I think it's something we have to want. And I guess that's what I hope for America, and I hope in our leadership who will model it is that, you know what, we, you know.

Nathan Dohse (1:04:48)
We do. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:05:12)
Like Harris being an example, like I'm gonna have Republican in my cabinet. That's a choice to have an environment that doesn't have this echo chamber, right? And that's a huge deal. Like I know it's, you know, it's just striking. Yeah. And I think that's so powerful because for me, I'm, you know, as I've grown and changed, want strength for me is this is...

Nathan Dohse (1:05:20)
That's correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Inviting in voices that you're going to disagree with.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:05:39)
is not, is steel manning. It's the best argument and counter argument coming together to discover the best integration of both. And I don't want a flimsy one-sided argument that wins a debate. I want like, what's the strongest thing? I want what's true, you know, and what's good.

Nathan Dohse (1:05:50)
Yeah, the best solution.

Yeah, or a gotcha moment. You know, I think the funniest criticism of Harris is when people go, she doesn't answer any questions. And she's like, no, she doesn't answer the loaded questions. Right? Like it was a loaded question. She's a lawyer. She knew how to not get caught in the gotcha moment. And so let's get back to some journalism and stop asking loaded questions, right? To get the sound bite for the meat.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:06:01)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and back to your point about the whole they thing, mean, part of me wants to go, well, what have you actually watched? Like, have you watched one clip of one interview? Like, have you watched the whole interview? Have you watched your speeches? You know, I see people say stuff and it feels like chat GPT giving this shallow answer that doesn't know what he's talking about. And I feel like a lot of people are just regurgitating things and they actually haven't done their work.

Nathan Dohse (1:06:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. Or are you getting the sound bite?

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. To your point.

Yeah, to your point of like you have to get out of the echo chamber. I think that we can be more proactive though, too. We can't expect people to come out of the echo chamber because the echo chamber is their safety. So I think that we can be more proactive to get ourselves invited into spaces where our voices are able to be heard. And one of the ways that I do that is I say, hey,

If you believe that the 2020 election was stolen, I'm not going to try and tell you it wasn't. You've got your information, you've got your data. I don't believe that it was, but whatever you've looked at or whoever you're listening to, you're convinced that it was stolen. Okay. Then you absolutely should be voting for Trump. That's it. If you believe it was stolen, you absolutely should be voting for Trump.

Right? If, if you believe XYZ about it, like if you've heard this information and you believe it.

then I understand why you're making the decisions that you're making. And that's empathy and affirmation.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:08:00)
Yeah, cognitive empathy.

Nathan Dohse (1:08:04)
And that's the part where part of an echo chamber is also the echo of what you expect opposing voices to say. You expect them to say, how could you believe that? Hey, listen, like if you believe it, you believe it. Somebody you trust told you. So who's they? The person who believes it's not my enemy. The person who lied to somebody about it is my enemy. The person who betrayed

Jason Scott Montoya (1:08:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, trying to be different than their expectation. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:08:33)
my friends trust and now they believe that the government is controlling hurricanes. That is my, it's not the person that believes that, right? Like the person who believes that the government is controlling hurricanes is absolutely not my enemy. It's whoever, whoever they trusted that told them that. So why am I coming in being like, are you an idiot? Like,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:08:41)
You

That lied to them, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:09:02)
I'm coming in going, where did you get this information? Like, I got it from here. Why do you why like, I'm going, okay, why do you trust that person? And staying curious? Why do you trust that person? because here's all the things that they said and what it always boils down to. And this comes back to one of the you know,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:09:06)
Yeah, who told you that?

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:09:22)
We might start being an echo chamber here, but one of the things is it comes back to fear. I think most of the time is that somebody's scared of something. They've got this cognitive dissonance that they go, I'm scared. This person's making me feel safe. And that's what we were talking about. Something is giving them the feeling of safety in a time that they're feeling fear.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:09:24)
Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:09:44)
And so then when you come in and you try to eliminate that thing, you're eliminating their safety. And I don't think we operate with enough awareness around that. And so we have to come in and we have to provide safety before we take away something that is giving safety. so that's what curiosity looks like. when you ask somebody, why do you believe that? Where'd you get that information? I got it from this trusted source who

has made me feel safe in all these other places where I've felt fear. Okay. I understand why you trust that person. If, if I were scared of those things, if that, if that was my biggest fear, I'd probably trust them too. If I, if I believed the rhetoric that Trump grabs and hangs on to, if I believed it,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:10:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:10:41)
I would be pretty excited about Trump as president.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:10:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Nathan Dohse (1:10:47)
You know, and so it's fear mongering at its finest. And so you can't fight fear mongering with aggression.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:10:56)
Yeah, one of the things I wrote about and published was when I first moved to Atlanta, I was in over my head and I felt that anxiety and fear. And when those toxic people came around, helped me kind of push, they helped me feel safe. And I was exploited because of it, but there was a symbiotic dynamic there because I was also feeling safe.

Nathan Dohse (1:11:16)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

That's

Jason Scott Montoya (1:11:26)
So it's hard to overcome that without actually healing and growing through our own trauma that we have and wounds and pain. But yeah, that echo, voluntarily inviting, think, so you say, like going into those places and then I think you can create context where you invite that. I've been working on this book called From the Garden to the Cross and I did a

Nathan Dohse (1:11:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yep.

Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:11:54)
I got four people and we did an episode podcast for each chapter. And for one of the chapters, I invited a Jewish friend of mine and another I invited an atheist. And so they're part of those conversations, you know? And it was a really interesting, you know, it adds a different, like you said, boring, it adds another interesting layer. And I'm not threatened, you know?

Nathan Dohse (1:11:57)
Cool.

Yeah.

Correct. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:12:18)
I know some people might be and you know is a little bit scary if you're not used to that kind thing but I was excited about it and I loved it so...

Nathan Dohse (1:12:25)
it's one. mean, that's that's what we that's what we have to be doing. and and I think that's that's the pieces coming into spaces. And when we come in with curiosity, if you come in and you ask questions of somebody, they're going to they like answering them. Right. So if you come in and you ask questions and you're curious. It'll be an hour.

long conversation before and they might not ever ask you anything about yourself. And so then when they go, yeah, well, what about you? You go, here's everything about me. they go, shoot. I really liked this guy for the last hour when he was curious about me, but now he believes all these things that are different than me. And then when you show that, maybe he was judging me for my answers. No, wasn't judging you for your answers. You know, there's a quote.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:12:52)
Yeah.

haha

haha

Yeah. OK, yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:13:15)
There's a quote that I heard from Pete Holmes, but it's not his quote. I heard it on his podcast. It's not his quote, but I don't remember who it was. But he says, if I were them, I'd be them. And it's my favorite of just, if I lived the experiences that they experience, that would be exactly how they are and who they are. So, you know.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:13:21)
Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Dohse (1:13:40)
That's the way that it ends.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:13:41)
Yeah, I think that's a really helpful thing, yeah. And it's for like, when you think about, I think when we feel like we're superior to somebody else, that's a great thing to remember is, know what? We're not, we're the same. We might think we're a little bit better, but we're not.

Nathan Dohse (1:13:53)
Nope. That person is the way they are because of all the things that have happened. And if all the things that had happened to them happened to you exactly the same, you'd be exactly.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:14:05)
Yeah, yeah. And I actually, that's one of the things I thought about just in terms of January 6th, like I could have been Ashley Babbitt, who's the lady that was shot. That could have been me, right? I went through a stint of being radicalized in 2006. It was pre the pre Trump era. It was a lot milder than it is now. But if it was now, know, if it was then with 220, it could have been me. I could have been climbing over that window.

Nathan Dohse (1:14:21)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:14:33)
And I think that's just a really important thing. And I think kind of back to your point about like, want, I don't want, and this is even my fear for like this year, like when January 6th, 2.0 happens, I don't want my friends and family involved in that. I want them to stay home. I don't want the consequences that would come with that participation. And so part of why I'm speaking out is because I don't want them to be a part of that.

Nathan Dohse (1:14:48)
Right. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I love it, man. I think my child's about to walk in. You know, which is.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:15:01)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, any last word for you? And we'll wrap it up here.

Nathan Dohse (1:15:09)
I just, hope, I hope to have more conversations like this, you know, and, and I, and I hope that people will listen and disagree vibrantly and then talk about it, you know?

Jason Scott Montoya (1:15:20)
Yeah, yeah, that was good. I'll just leave us with one little quick story that I always wanted to do jury duty and every time I've done it, I've gotten a little bit farther in the process, but I've never been in the courtroom. But I had this one experience where I was called and we were all like picked, we were about to go in the courtroom and it was resolved before we went in. And the court personnel came over and said,

Nathan Dohse (1:15:31)
Ha ha!

Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:15:44)
I know it feels like you just wasted your whole day, but you all just sitting here made a difference. It created a tension between the prosecutor and the defense to actually negotiate a deal. And that was pretty powerful just to realize that, kind of like we've talked about, just standing in the gap, and it could even be silently just being there with that pin. It could be that pin on your backpack or a post you do on social or a thing you say. That could make the difference.

Nathan Dohse (1:15:58)
Yeah

Mm-hmm. Just being there.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:16:12)
And so yeah, that's my final story.

Nathan Dohse (1:16:12)
Yeah.

I dig it. Man, it's good to chat.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:16:19)
Yeah, you too. Talk to you later.

Nathan Dohse (1:16:21)
See ya.

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