Welcome to the HoosLeft podcast, a show about Indiana politics, history, and culture from the unapologetic perspective of the Hoosier left. My name is Scott Aaron Rogers and I’m recording from Bloomington.
My guest is Josh Lowry, candidate for Indiana House District 24. This, from his website…
“Josh was born and raised in Martinsville[…] He attended IU Bloomington where he met his future wife, Alexis. He then pursued his childhood dream of becoming a professional wrestler, before settling down and attending law school. Josh spent five years as a Deputy Attorney General practicing constitutional law, where he defended state agencies such as the Department of Child Services and Indiana State Police. Josh has argued in front of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and conducted jury trials.
Josh and Alexis moved to Westfield in 2009, where Alexis grew up. Alexis’s family has lived in Westfield for generations. Alexis and Josh knew they would want to raise a family in Westfield to be close to family and enjoy the great public schools that Alexis and her siblings had attended.
Unfortunately, Josh and Alexis were unable to have children. So they became foster parents. They have fostered [12] kids, [5] of which they adopted. When not driving one of his children to practice or work, Josh is a competitive natural bodybuilder and plays recreational soccer.”
We’ll talk about his work as an attorney, his motivation to run for office, driving turnout, standing for what one really believes in, and… a little pro wrestling. But first, I need your help.
HoosLeft is dedicated to calling out Indiana lawmakers, their financial backers, and the networks of people actively working to make our lives worse, those whose policies endanger children, those that sow grief in our homes and communities. I work to highlight these bad actors so we can replace them with more empathetic leadership, and also shine the spotlight on the Hoosier activists, organizations, and elected officials who are doing the hard work to build a more just, equitable, and compassionate Indiana.
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Here’s my interview with Josh Lowry.
Once again, that was Democratic candidate for Indiana House District 24, Josh Lowry. Some closing thoughts:
First of all, an attorney, foster and adoptive parent - by the way, that’s what pro-life looks like, bodybuilder, soccer player, who leads with caring and empathy AND looks like Daniel Craig? I am a straight dude, but like, swoon. Seriously, our guy’s out here setting the bar ridiculously high for the rest of us. But I kid.
The most important thing I take away from my conversation with Josh is that he understands the concept of generational trauma, and its effects on society at large. Very early in the conversation, we talked about violent criminals he took depositions from in his work with the Attorney General’s office, and to a tee, he said, they had been physically or sexually abused as a child. In the medical field, one would say they had suffered an adverse childhood experience, ACE.
According to a December 2020 piece in Thrive, an online magazine from IU Health, “an adverse childhood experience describes the abuse, trauma or neglect that creates toxic stress in a child’s brain, which has been linked with physical illness and mental health conditions as an adult.”
Think anger, irritability, mood swings, inability to connect with others, and difficulty with impulse control and how those ingredients could easily turn violent. The article continues,
‘Adverse childhood experiences often come from various sources of violence,’ said Mary Ciccarelli MD, an internist-pediatrician for Riley Children’s Health. ‘This could be witnessing or experiencing violence, neglect or abuse in your home or community, being close to someone who dies by suicide or being sexually assaulted in childhood.’
Typically, the parents of a child who experiences ACEs faced similar abuse or neglect when they were children, too. This effectively creates a vicious cycle that can last generations.”
The treatment is to find the root of the trauma, to become aware of the cycle and break it, addressing it through therapy. Almost inevitably, in hypercapitalist America, said treatment is completely inaccessible to those who need it most, the cycle continues, and the violence eventually becomes society’s problem. The thing is, conservatives fundamentally do not believe in societal solutions. To anything.
The wicked stepmother of neoliberalism, Margaret Thatcher, summed it up thusly, “there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” This continues to serve as conservative gospel.
Indiana Republicans embody this ethos, and their 20-year grip on power at the statehouse amounts to a full generation’s worth of psychological abuse perpetrated on Hoosiers. They dismantle public education to keep us ignorant, force us to breathe dirty air and drink dirty water, withhold quality medical care. They trap us in poverty, prevent us from organizing, and foster an environment of pervasive gun violence. They belittle racial, sexual, and gender minorities, say the oppressed deserve the suffering. They refuse to legislate based on the will of the people and use religious and spiritual abuse to sanctify our misery. And, through voter suppression and gerrymandering, make it nearly impossible to break the cycle.
And far too many Hoosiers seem to have Stockholm Syndrome - they’ve developed an emotional bond with our abusers and keep going back to them every two years at the polls. They’ve been convinced to cheer for the bad guy.
And this makes me think of the pro wrestling portion of our conversation. There’s a great book called Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, by Josie Riesman, came out last year. While the book is primarily a biography of the disgraced former WWE chairman, it also serves as a valuable window into modern political culture.
Riesman describes the concept of ‘kayfabe’, a term dating back to pro wrestling’s origins in the traveling circus. As the outcomes in professional wrestling matches are predetermined, kayfabe is this concept of maintaining the illusion that everything is real; that it wasn’t an act, but a real competition; that wrestlers must keep character in public and enemies in the ring could not be seen getting chummy outside it.
As pro wrestling became mainstream in the 1980’s, the illusion that the competition was legitimate faded away. The suspension of disbelief was gone. McMahon, who Reisman describes as “likely the closest thing to a friend Donald Trump has,” reinvented the sport, as it were, in the 1990’s with a philosophy she calls ‘neokayfabe’. She describes it in an interview with Michael Kruse of Politico, “You are operating not with the assumption that what you’re seeing is real; in fact, you are operating with the very firm belief that what you were seeing is fake. But in that fakeness, a promoter or a wrestler will toss in little bits of seemingly behind-the-scenes truth, what appears to be behind-the-scenes truth, in the context of this wider lie. And that I think should hopefully sound familiar to all of us who pay attention to politics these days.”
Right? You’ve heard it. “Democrats and Republicans are the same. They play for the same side. They fight in public then go to the same cocktail parties.” And here comes Trump, and MAGA Republicans in his image, saying the whole process is rigged and amid the torrent of lies is a kernel of truth. But truth is not what’s important.
The attention is important.
The button-pushing, paramount.
The emotional reaction is the entire point.
In pro wrestling, the good guy is called a ‘face’ or ‘babyface’. The bad guy is called a ‘heel’. In the modern iteration of pro wrestling that has dominated since the late 1990’s, and in modern politics for that matter, Riesman says, “being the face doesn’t pay because you’re always going to have another side that reflexively hates you. You’re not going to win over the other side. Whereas if you’re a heel, you have one side loving you, and the other side you’re profiting off their hatred. It’s the only way to actually make it now.”
The MAGA movement has fully embraced this over-the-top, performative style of politics, to great effect. So, “lemme tell ya somethin’ brother,” if those of us fighting them want to be the “cream of the crop” we’ve all got to understand the game has changed. Democrats far too often seem to be stuck in the 1980’s, Hulk Hogan “say your prayers, eat your vitamins” era. Like I was saying last week about folks wanting a fighter, not wanting a detailed policy plan in response to the bully stealing their lunch money, the people want someone that will stand up for their rights as vociferously as Republicans try to take them away. The template is less Hogan and more Stone Cold Steve Austin, who pounded brews, flipped birds, and told his rich, out-of-touch boss to “suck it.” I think Josh gets this. He talks about really standing for something. Going out there, speaking the truth as you see it, and owning it. In the battle royale of modern politics, there is no room for fear, squishiness, or equivocation. The crowd can tell. When they go low, we go high? No. When they go low, we slap ‘em in a figure-four leg lock! If the fight against Republican extremism is as important as we say it is - and remember, they’re abusing us, our parents, and our children - we cannot be aloof and above the fray. We’re gonna have to climb in the ring and knock some heads. And that’s the bottom line, if you smell what I’m cookin’.
Thanks for listening. Again, subscribe at scottaaronrogers.substack.com. Follow me at facebook.com/hoosleft and on most other social media sites at scottrog78. If you want to reach me, send me a DM on the socials or email me at scottrog78@gmail.com. Until next time, this has been the HoosLeft podcast. I’m Scott Aaron Rogers. Love each other, Indiana.
HoosLeft #23: Wrestling the Elephant
Guest: Democratic candidate for Indiana House District 24, Josh Lowry.
We’ll talk about his work as an attorney, his motivation to run for office, driving turnout, standing for what one really believes in, and… a little pro wrestling.
Subscribe at https://scottaaronrogers.substack.com
https://www.lowryforindiana.com/
https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/supreme-court-and-14th-amendment
https://www.pfw.edu/events/indiana-purple-state-voter-turnout-problem
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2023/12/04/former-colts-punter-hunter-smith-launches-statehouse-bid/
https://www.tiktok.com/@lowryforindiana
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176805559/montana-tiktok-ban
https://ovwrestling.com/
https://iuhealth.org/thrive/generational-trauma-breaking-the-cycle-of-adverse-childhood-experiences
https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-4/neoliberalism-more-recent-times/margaret-thatcher-theres-no-such-thing-as-society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ringmaster/Abraham-Josephine-Riesman/9781982169442
https://nypost.com/2024/01/30/sports/vince-mcmahon-exiting-wwe-in-disgrace-is-exactly-what-he-deserves/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/24/trump-wrestling-mcmahon-villain-election-00088590
