Episode 906: Arnie Arnesen Attitude January 29 2026

Part 1:We talk with Sophia A. McClennen, Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at Penn State University.We discuss how we all should respond to the lies and propaganda that colors what he hear and see in the news and through social media posts that pretend to be news. Debunking is not enough, telling the truth should be swift and emphatic. Should be depend on the 'normal' institutions to protect us? What if those institutions (Congress, SCOTUS, law enforcement agencies) are useless? Are we complicit if we just give up?Part 2:Jonathan Feingold, Professor at Boston University School of Law, and Arnie chat about Ta-Nehisi Coate’s recent essay and observation that “Trump has clarified an inconvenient fact—the culture war is an actual war.” The actual war manifests physically in ICE, the now $85 billion entity Trump is deploying to racially profile, terrorize and now execute people across the United States. The actual war is also the anti-Black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry that animates the right side of America’s so-called “culture ways.” This hateful rhetoric and fear mongering, which Steven Miller, Charlie Kirk, JD Vance and others have sought to mainstream, serves a purpose in ICE’s war on our communities: to dehumanize and legitimize violence against those deemed unfit for the Homeland. WNHNFM.ORG  productionMusic: "That's how every empire falls"  John Prine, 2015