Kelly Tshibaka: 0:03
Hello America, Hello Alaska, Welcome to Stand where we are making courage contagious. I’m your host, Kelly Tshibaka, a former candidate for US Senate in Alaska, and I’m joined by my amazing husband and co-host, Niki Tshibaka, a former civil rights attorney at the Department of Justice. We’re broadcasting today from Alaska’s Last Frontier. Subscribe now to Stand with Kelly Niki Tshibakaa and become one of our standouts. You can find all of our information on our website, standshow. org. All of our episodes are there, so let’s strap in tight for an intellectual bull ride with our powerhouse guest today, Naomi Wolf. She is a fearless thinker, an author, a journalist and civil rights activist. She’s consistently pushed the boundaries for intellectual discourse. For those who aren’t familiar with Naomi Wolf, she is a prominent Democrat, an influencer in politics, academia, feminist thought, big tech and the health industry, Just to name a few areas. Niki and I discussed and debated all of her ideas during our academic careers and we’ve watched with great interest her journey in transformation and thinking over the past several years, which is what we’re going to dive into today, and she’s brilliantly detailed that journey in her latest book called Facing the Beast. So, Naomi, thank you so much for being with us on Stand today. We’re so excited to talk with you.

Naomi Wolf: 1:22
Thank you so much for a lovely introduction, how distinguished both of you are, and I just wanted to say before we dive into your audience doesn’t hate me right off the bat that I’m actually no longer a Democrat, I’m an independent. But I should update my pilot.

Kelly Tshibaka: 1:35
It’s such a fascinating journey. We’ve been watching this and we’re actually really interested in talking with you about it. I think that you talk about it in some, in some detail in the book, but to the extent we can get into it. So this book, which I got to read thanks for the advanced copy, is shocking and heart wrenching. So open my eyes, change the way. I think it brought tears to my eyes because of your. Your personal stories that were in there were actually really gripping. They’re such a rich book. We could probably do two or three episodes on this book, but we don’t have that time. So if you could just summarize like what’s the main takeaway, if you want our readers to say, look, this is the, this is the main point that I’d like you to leave with from Facing the Beast, what would that be?

Naomi Wolf: 2:18
Wow. I guess the main point is that I think we’re at an historic crossroads in which we’re all being tested, and it’s a moral battle, and that the kind of apocalypse we’re seeing around us, that has launched since 2020 and brought us to an absolute precipice as a human species is, is manifesting a kind of a metaphysical battle between good and evil. That’s the, that’s the core of it, the more kind of pedestrian what is it about is the story of my life for the last two and a half years, since I was ousted from my very comfy perch as a legacy media spokesperson for the liberal elites, you know, and I was ousted for telling the truth about harms to women, especially to their reproductive health, through these mRNA injections. And that was a blessing in disguise, because while it was traumatic and I lost friends and livelihood and my whole kind of life, in some ways I gained much more because it thrust me into what I call the rest of America and conversations with conservatives and libertarians and people of faith, and I realized how many lies I’ve been told and and found that what’s out outside that bubble is so much richer. So that’s kind of a summary of the bodies of others.

Kelly Tshibaka: 3:48
Yeah, one of the things I really liked. I think we dig into this a little bit. But you talk about what is the beast? And it is a really self reflective moment right of. We have to do some self reflection and facing oh gosh, what lies have I been believing and who am I aligning myself with and whom I shutting myself out from? So, on that note, I thought was really interesting and humbling the chapter you wrote called conservatives, I apologize. So everybody listening, I recommend buying this book just for that chapter, because I think Naomi does a really good job of of walking this interesting road of exposing the lies she has believed and then how that affected how she sees so many, so many of us in America. But I wanted to ask you what inspired you to write this chapter and and how has that mind shift changed your perspective on so many Americans?

Naomi Wolf: 4:40
Yeah, great question. Well, I guess before I, you know, got to the place where I was ready to face the fact that I had believed a long laundry list of lies and kind of done moral injustice to my fellow Americans on the conservative side of the aisle, I had witnessed unbelievably appalling behavior by people in my own tribe on the left whom I had thought would never have done the things they did in 2020 to 2023, specifically 2021, 2022 when they were asked to participate in overnight built discrimination society which you know legally had ended in this country in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act. And they people around me in New York and in Washington DC, who would never discriminate against a same sex couple or against a person of color or against, you know, someone from a Native American community, wholeheartedly, unquestioningly, jumped on board a to do in which, literally, I could not walk into, I could not sit at, literally, a lunch counter in my hotel because my unvaccinated status, as if that has no resonance. You know, in our countries, if we have no history of knowing, that’s not a good idea. You know, been here before and these people just had no problem with it. They had no problem with the vaccine passport, they had no problem with, you know children being dropped, left out of school. You know disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable communities. They had no problem. Feminists had no problem with women being having to leave the workforce to oversee children stuck at home. You know, chained to keyboards, all the things, the economic theft, the transfer of property and assets and revenue from small bodegas and mom and pop stores and those, you know, families who scraped and saved to get that one rental property. You know first generation families and it all got crushed and transferred to. You know a handful of elites. The mom and pop stores had to close, walmart and strip clubs and liquor stores stayed open. Amazon stayed open, etsy stayed open, right, you know, the people around me had no problem with that. So it’s a bit of a digression, but kind of not really, because before I wrote that essay I had to face the fact that people I thought were critical thinkers, egalitarian people who believed in a just society, who didn’t discriminate right, were, were behaving abominably. You know, just happy to sacrifice all of their ideals without any reflection that they were sacrificing their ideals. And then, and you know, as an unvaccinated person, I I experienced the receiving end of exclusion and rejection and nastiness in a very personal way. So there was no glossy it over, because it was happening to me. I was witnessing this ugly behavior. So when you said, what is the beast, there are like three or four answers in the book to what is the beast, but one of them is that, right, half of us behaved up politely and showed the ugly face of the same face of people who colluded with what was the run up to Nazi Germany or colluded with Jim Crow laws. That was the face we saw in 2021, 2022. Many friends and neighbors and loved ones. And then that experience had kind of broken me down into like wow, maybe I have misperceived the world for a long time. This was always there, right. And then I remember watching the Tucker Carlson show and of course, I’d been attacked for even talking to Tucker Carlson, which is a whole other redonkula subject. When did the left decide you’re bad for having conversations with people with whom you don’t agree?

Kelly Tshibaka: 8:56
Right, conversations with the other as it’s turned.

Naomi Wolf: 9:00
Yeah, the other guy there, yes, but I watched the Tucker Carlson January 6th footage that we hadn’t been shown previously and I used to be a consultant for President Clinton’s reelection campaign and for Vice President Gore’s presidential run, and I was a White House spouse during the Clinton years. So I know what I’m looking at, right, and I look at that security footage and I’d also done a little bit of historical research and it confirmed what I had remembered, which is capital is the people’s house, like the left had done a really good job trying to message, post-genery 6th, that peacefully entering the capital was this horrific insurrection. Right, like violence is never okay, but peacefully entering the capital is what people do every day at the capital. It’s a public building. So when I saw that footage a lot of it very peaceful, a lot of it very weird to me as a White House spouse, right, because those buildings have very set security plans. You don’t get police wandering around aimlessly when there’s a breach Just don’t Like no, there’s backup, there is National Guard, there is like. That simply wouldn’t happen. If it was possible, we wouldn’t have sent our husbands and wives to work in the old executive office building or the Capitol or the White House every day, right? So, basically, that led me to think, wow, all of that iterative messaging on CNN and the New York Times that we believed that there’d been a violent insurrection. It looked a certain way and it was used to paint literally half the country as violent insurrectionists. Right, that was not to say it was false, but it was a simplified version of events that left out other complexities. And then I thought, well, if I can be lied to about that, you know, january 6th didn’t look like that. There’s other footage that was concealed that hasn’t been revealed to us. And again, that footage belongs to us. Those are just like the building belongs to us. Right, it’s our building. Well, it’s also our footage by law I’m not being rhetorical, literally. And your husband, who I assume is a lawyer, right, he knows nodding because he knows it’s like it’s our stuff, the footage. Who withheld it? You know how could they withhold it? It’s our history, it’s our archive. There’s a national archive because all that material is ours.

Kelly Tshibaka: 11:50
So, Naomi let’s pick up with this. We’re coming on a break. Let’s pick up with this on the other side of the break, because this is fantastic. We appreciate all this insight. We’re on stand with Niki, and Tshibaka talking to Naomi Wolf. We’ll be back right after this break. Make sure to hit subscribe and check out her book Facing the Beast. We’ll be right back. Weka is a private security services company operating in Alaska and across the US with nearly a decade of experience providing personal protection, medical support, surveillance and facility, event, armed and transport security. Weka provides state of the art security forces by utilizing current and former law enforcement officers, former military and medical personnel to provide for clients’ needs in all situations. For more information on Weka and its security services, contact 260-337-8263.

Niki Tshibaka: 12:42
We are back on stand with civil rights activist and prominent scholar, naomi Wolf discussing her book Facing the Beast. I know there are several different ways that you approach it. In the book, naomi, as you talk about who the beast is, I can tell you just from looking at the title. My immediate response or thought was Thomas Hobbes, the Leviathan. And really we’re seeing as you talk about the beast within us in the book. We’re kind of seeing the beast writ large in some of the responses that we saw from the government in the last few years as we were dealing with various crises. In your book you talk about influential people who privately applauded your courage and were supportive of what you were doing, but refused or were too scared to speak out publicly themselves. And you make a really powerful statement in your book that I’d love for you to comment on. You say, quote I’m exasperated by those who stain the shadows, agreeing with the risk taking of others who admire their courage. This is a form of othering that dehumanizes and exploits those speaking out. Could you comment on that a little further?

Naomi Wolf: 14:02
Sure Gosh. Well, I guess I’m very informed by my family’s history, right? Because my grandmother, I’m Jewish and my grandmother lost nine brothers and sisters to the Holocaust. Wow, I’ve read and I wrote a book in 2008 about other countries’ descent into fascism and I looked at other times and places in which democracies were subverted by totalitarians, on the left or on the right, and they always do the same 10 things. They take the same 10 steps, and so I recognize very early on that we were at step 10, which is emergency law, and it’s very difficult to get democracy back after you’ve gone to step 10. So I knew from reading history the importance of speaking up early, and if more people in 1931 and 32 and 33 had spoken up, it would have been much more difficult for them to acquire power. And I also knew that speaking up early is much less dangerous than being silent, like people think. You know it’s that fantastic. I think Audre Lorde quote my silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you. People think that if they just keep their heads down, they’ll be safe, and history shows that’s the opposite of true. Things just get more and more dangerous and then they take you to a quarantine camp anyway. No, seriously, that’s like literally what happens. So if people comply and the other quote I love is RFK Junior no one ever complied their way out of totalitarianism. So I was getting these DMs from again. People in my milieu, the most privileged right, the best educations, all the things that should empower people to step into the breach when they’re is at stake right. That’s, why are you giving all this privilege and education if not to help your fellow human beings and show some leadership when there’s a real emergency? And instead of stepping forward, they were DMing me saying I love what you’re saying, naomi, but of course I’m not going to speak because and then they would give me nonsensical reasons, like because my boss will be mad at me, not like because I’ll be executed, right, but because people will be upset with me. And I just felt like that. And then I was watching people that have since become my good friends Dr Peter McCullough, dr Paula Alexander, all the brave doctors and scientists, martin Koldorf and Jay Bhattacharya suffer erasures of position and reputation, and I was suffering erasures of position, reputation, money, all of it by telling the truth, doing just what we weren’t being especially heroic in the large scheme of things, there being actual doctors and scientists. I’m being an actual journalist. It’s de minimis, you know, it’s like just what you’re supposed to do. But also on a human level, when your fellow men and women’s lives are at stake or their freedom is at stake, you are supposed to speak out, right? We know this and literally, as Americans, you’re supposed to do that. So I didn’t respect these people who are saying, well, I really agree with you, but I’m not gonna say anything. Because why should I speak for their kids if they’re not gonna speak for my kids? And they were benefiting from the heroism of Dr McCullough and Dr Alexander. Me, whatever my courage was at that point and not trying to paint myself as a hero, but it was hard every day and they were benefiting and they were staying in the shadows and weakening us, not empowering us. So I think it was also othering, because it’s like it’s like people who send other people’s children to the front and like, oh, your kids can enlist. They were kind of almost exploiting us to protect their liberties without risking anything themselves. I hope that answers your question. Not how it’s supposed to work.

Niki Tshibaka: 18:32
No, that’s a fantastic answer, and it makes me think of, in my father’s home country, democratic Republic of Congo. It was the people there were subject to a totalitarian state for a long time after colonization, with Mobutu, cecececo, laurent Kabila. We see this in countries around the world and yet somehow we think that it just won’t happen to us and even if we see ourselves going down that dark road, somehow, some way we’ll get back on track. It’ll be okay. There’ll be somebody like Naomi Wolf and Dr Peter. McCullough, who will come in and save the day and we won’t have to sacrifice. And what I hear you saying is no, if we all want to preserve our freedoms, we all need to sacrifice and we all need to link arms, and we shouldn’t be pushing other people in front of the firing squad and then saying thank you, thank you for doing that. I do that, but you know right.

Kelly Tshibaka: 19:33
I’ll get shot Right.

Niki Tshibaka: 19:36
And so no, I really appreciate that answer.

Kelly Tshibaka: 19:38
Well, I think you made this comment like this in the book. It stood out to me something about totalitarianism will always bulldoze over the few, but it can’t take the crowds. And I remember you talking at length in the book about what we would say is the cancel culture you face. But it was far more extreme than that. I mean the de-platforming and the silencing of you. That’s happened. You detailed how you posted what now is a universally recognized truth, an accurate statement, back in, I think, mid-2021. And immediately you’re taking off of all of the major social media platforms, mocked and ridiculed internationally in news journals and on commentators who I think previously were your friends. And then it extends past there. So for people who don’t know, major major news commentators or bestselling authors and national celebrities who’ve interviewed Naomi Wolf, even their channels get de-platformed, and by de-platformed I mean they completely are erased, never to be returned and reinstated, simply because they show an interview with Naomi Wolf. And so it’s taking cancel culture to an extreme, like Naomi Wolf no longer exists in our culture because what you’re saying is so offensive to the group of friends that you’ve come from. I wanted to ask you about that. Why are they so hostile to you. What is so dangerous that requires de-platforming you at such an extreme level? Right?

Naomi Wolf: 21:06
Well, I don’t think it’s personal ultimately, because two lawsuits by two states attorney general Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration found that the initiator of the de-platforming and smearing was the White House, the administration that I’ve been for, believe it or not, there’s internal emails Also. America First Legal discovered these as well in their lawsuit. But our taxpayer dollars, this administration, for whom I had voted, was spending time emailing one another at the highest levels CDC, carol Crawford, white House staff, us Bureau of the Census for some creepy reason that is not that clear to me, but creepy in terms of my personal security, because they wish I have my personal address and so on. And they were literally talking about this tweet that you referenced. That is accurate. That said, women are experiencing menstrual problems subsequent to mRNA injection, they’re having bleeding around people who are vaccinated, and this is unconfirmed, needs more investigation. That was the tweet and not like I want to overthrow the government and it’ll happen at this time and this date with this militia. It’s literally about women’s reproductive health, which, by the way, I was writing about as a beloved icon of the culture since I wrote my first book at 26. It is my beat right. I wrote about breast implants. I wrote about the industrialization of childbirth. I wrote about female sexual desire Like this. I wrote about anorexia and bulimia. If I’m not gonna notice that women are having menstrual problems in 2021, which means they’ll have fertility problems in 2023, which is exactly what we’re seeing now, and the book goes into detail about this 13 to 20% drop in live birth, entirely predictable if women are having menstrual problems, you know who’s supposed to do it, right? I mean, it’s like so I guess what I’m trying to say is this push was the White House bullying Twitter and Facebook and Twitter complying, and then a whole mechanism, which is that you know, onion peels are being unveiled more and more every day now with, like, the release of documentation. This was a whole program, you know, inside the White House and to a target misinformation right. And so I think that the Guardian and Wikipedia and the BBC and like just what was so creepy in 2021 was this change in my reputation, with conspiracy theorists added as the first sentence. You know, head of Rhodes Scholar, yale, oxford, you know, apa sellers, it’s like wacky conspiracy theorists, like overnight all at once, and at that time I didn’t know that AI was being deployed in journalism, so I didn’t even understand how it was possible that all these hip pieces were coming out all at once around the world. But I guess what I’m trying to say is I, you know there’s a chapter that kind of goes I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you all the awful people, the awful things he did. But I kind of have to I’m not gonna forget and there’s accounting to be done but I kind of forgive the journalists and news outlets that to this day, are going after me because there was a gigantic apparatus with the most powerful and going after them, and a vast amount of money flowed as well to target misinformation, first from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and then the CARES Act, two news outlets. So it doesn’t excuse anybody, but I’m just putting it in context and trying to kind of rise above my personal you know irritation at seeing my whole reputation torched all at once by my friends but in platforms that used to publish me. But I guess the bigger picture is, I think too, it’s helpful to have a warning shot or a case like I think I was kind of held up as if you do what Naomi Wolf did, this will happen, sure that’s good.

Kelly Tshibaka: 25:35
Thank you, naomi. This has been a fantastic interview Been on with Naomi Wolf on stand, get her book Facing the Beast. We’ll be right back after this break. Stand by.

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Kelly Tshibaka: 26:15
You’re back on stand with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka, just following up on a fantastic interview with Naomi Wolf about her new book Facing the Beast. So exciting to get to talk with her in person after so many years of just seeing her ideas in academia. But I think the part of the conversation and the part of the book that’s so interesting to me is her journey through courage. So she actually details in her book about how she didn’t start out so courageously and she sort of references that in the interview. She was just doing what she was supposed to do she’s just being a journalist but that she got a lot of courage from watching other people be courageous and so she took cues, if you will, or gathered courage to do some really brave things from watching people around her who were doing really courageous things, and she mentioned some of them. You know people who didn’t share her political views but were doing the right thing, and I think she also referenced it, you know, with respect to the history of her family, which she’s written about a lot, and having that courage, I think coming from Somewhere deep within, you know believing something higher than yourself, that you’re part of a story larger than yourself, and the goal isn’t to maximize comfort, the goal is to stick to those core values. And what do you really Believe in? What will you stand for? So there’s this fascinating part in the book when she talks about you know, she’s in New York and she lives in New York and New York had some of the most strict mandates, and how she defied those mandates and Because she’s such a public figure, it was really public and there were a couple times that she eminently faced arrest and how terrified she was. But then she never was arrested. And so she kind of calls it out and she says it’s interesting, when you actually stand up and do what’s right and you don’t comply with Unjust laws, laws that violate civil liberties and constitutional rights, there’s no teeth in the bite. It’s just fascinating. And she kind of goes through historical examples of this as well and and talks about how, if People were to do that in mass, it would sort of expose that this is actually just a power play, a control play, and Not an effort to actually try and achieve the stated objectives, such as, for example, public health, because if it was, then you would act quickly. Instead it’s just an effort to control and she sort of compares that to times in history like 1933, when they did similar things to just try and mind control the population. I thought that was fascinating journey that she took, pointing to these other people who had courage the few, the proud, the courageous. And then what happens when you actually step up to that line of courage? That, yeah, they’ll de-platform you but they won’t actually do much else as far as like from the government perspective.

Niki Tshibaka: 29:08
Well, I mean, she, she really minimized. She’s very humble and she really minimized the, the, the courage that she, she showed. She showed a lot of courage and she and others sacrificed a lot, have sacrificed a lot. That’s true. There are a lot of journalists out there who didn’t speak up and who haven’t spoken out and who have continued to advance this false narrative that you know that whole, that that whole crisis was well thought out in terms of how we responded to it and that no civil liberties were unjustly impinged on, sure. And so it takes a lot of courage to stand up against the current and say no, this isn’t right. And I think you know, as I think back to when I started reading her writings back in back in college, she’s always been Consistent in in in her principles, and that’s one of the things that I admire about her. And it’s because of that consistency that she was able to look at this whole crisis and and say, wait a second, even though I have always associated myself with this group of people from an ideological standpoint, they’re not following the principles that I thought we shared. And how quickly they’ve Flipped not just on those principles but on me. And to have the intellectual integrity and the courage to To follow those principles, even when they isolate you from the people who you would thought were your community, is tremendously, I think, courageous. It’s one of the things that she touched on. She didn’t go go deeply into it, but I I think you know, when she talked about how quickly things flipped, I was just thinking to myself how powerful a force fear can be and how this is an important lesson to all of us as Americans, that we were so quick to Be willing to get into the world, be willing to give up our freedoms For perceived security. When we found out later, and after the fact that you know what, we could have maintained our freedoms and had that security good point. And so I hope we learn a lesson from all of that. There’s another point that she made in the book that I’d love to hear some more from you on to is she talks about the spiritual Aspect to all of this, which I found very interesting. But she, you know, she kind of referenced it in the interview, I think at the beginning, to sort of the metaphysical aspect of what’s happening when you asked her that first question. So it’s interesting to hear Voices like hers and Tucker Carlson and others Recognizing that there’s something more that was going on here, that’s cool and that is going on here, than just what we’re seeing with the naked eye. They’re perceiving something metaphysical, something Behind all of this that isn’t just your regular, ordinary, everyday political stuff right.

Kelly Tshibaka: 32:36
This wasn’t just a political move. There was something spiritual behind this, which, of course, is something you and I acknowledge and believe. We don’t just operate in the natural. Just like we have physical bodies, we have minds. We have bodies, we also have spirits and that there’s something spiritual behind what’s happening in our culture and country today. And she doesn’t just time bound her book back in 2020 and 2021. It goes all the way up to 2023, which is fascinating. But, yes, there’s this interesting chapter where she writes about the spiritual battle that is happening in our country today and she acknowledges that she doesn’t and hasn’t talked about God much at all in her writings, which you and I know, but that it’s time to start talking about the element of the spiritual side of things and what’s happening in our country and happening across the world right now, and it’s fascinating chapter. So, again, absolutely recommend the book. It’s a fantastic book and I don’t I don’t say that about many things. I will be adding it to my collection.

Niki Tshibaka: 33:37
Yeah, and you know, I think it’s the war for the nation’s soul, yeah, right, for For each of our souls. When you, when you think about, am I willing to see the liberties of my fellow human beings crush, their personal bodily autonomy, this, you know, the rights to their personal body and autonomy discarded, their voices silenced? If we are willing to sit back and say that’s okay, they deserved it because we disagree with them, or you know what, that’s not okay, but I Don’t want to say anything about it because I don’t want that to happen to me. Look, I mean, we all have that, that fear, right, we got to acknowledge it. There’s nobody who doesn’t have at least some level of trepidation about what? the consequences could be of standing for what you believe, but if we don’t, Mm-hmm. What happens to us like from a soul perspective and what happens to the soul of a nation if we collectively Turn our backs on the very values and the things that that we hold dear and that so many of Americans had given their lives of fortunes and their sacred honor To protect? Right so I I’m encouraged to see her continue to speak out. Others continue to speak out, because I think the tide is turning. I think it’s turning. I think Americans are realizing whoa. Things went too far. Now the question is going to be how? How strongly, how steadfastly do we stand? Will we stand together and link arms and say no more? This is not going to happen again. We need to get back to the regular order of what true freedom and liberty is about and what America is about. Enough with this deep platforming, enough with this canceling, enough with I’m deciding from my own subjective Perspective. What is a false narrative? You know what it is. You know what is what I call propaganda. You know we are a country that believes in the freedom of conscience, the freedom of speech, the freedom of thought, and you don’t have a right to silence somebody of somebody else’s beliefs or their voice.

Kelly Tshibaka: 36:10
Yeah, I think it’s a really great point that we have an option on where we go from here and I appreciate that Naomi Wolf is standing for truth and for freedom and, to your question about the spiritual battle, that we have an opportunity for spiritual redemption and she’s, you know, trailblazing that path along with others. There’s others like her when there’s an opportunity for unity. I believe it was her interview with Tucker Carlson that I was watching with our oldest and and she turned to me and said I think that she needs to recognize that she’s become a Republican. And I turned to her and I said or we’ve become Democrats, and the point being that In this intellectually honest journey, the lines are becoming blurred. When you can find places of unity, like you said, when Naomi Wolf can recognize, not only have I been lied to, but I’ve helped perpetuate those lies and created some deep divides in America that didn’t actually need to be there. But she’s not the only one who needs to look in the mirror, that all of us need to look in the mirror and say wait, where have I believed some of these things that have been divided? And that’s actually unity, is actually a spiritual thing and there’s an opportunity here as we have our eyes open, because she didn’t just mention you know one public health crisis. She mentioned a couple areas where this has happened, where we can actually say you know, she started her interview before your audience hates me. There’s no reason to hate. That’s why we’ve had her on the show. There’s opportunity to look within and say, okay, wait, where have I had misconceptions? And we can build bridges and have unity because we actually agree on a lot of things around the principles of freedom, truth and government led by we, the people, which is what we’re standing for.

Niki Tshibaka: 37:56
And she. The book is really a mirror for us in that regard. Like you said, we’ve all been part of that divide, but now, like her, we can all be part of that bringing together.

Kelly Tshibaka: 38:07
Time of unity.

Niki Tshibaka: 38:08
Yeah, so get the book folks. It’s amazing and you can get it anywhere. Good books are sold. Check it out, buy it for a family or member or friend.

Kelly Tshibaka: 38:18
Yeah, the book by Naomi Wolf. You’re on stand with Kelly. Tshibaka will will be right back after the break. Make sure to hit subscribe. We’ll see you in a minute. Welcome back to stand with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka. We’ve been talking about facing the beast, a new book by Naomi Wolf which, by the way, Niki Tshibaka, would be a fantastic Christmas gift. If you’re thinking about what to get me because I know it must be hard to think about what to get me for Christmas the wife who has everything.

Niki Tshibaka: 38:54
Your subtlety, always, always surprises me.

Kelly Tshibaka: 38:58
I don’t think I’ve ever been called subtle, so we’ll have to put that one down in the book. But Christmas is right around the corner, holiday season, and this is a time for Christmas traditions and Christmas holidays, and I remember when we got married, we had an opportunity to create our own traditions because we came from family backgrounds with very different Christmas traditions, and so we’re looking forward to another. Oh gosh, are we coming up on like 23 years of Christmases together? Yeah, that’s amazing, one of my favorite married couple.

Niki Tshibaka: 39:30
We had a couple of Christmases before that a couple a couple awkward dating Christmases some long distance.

Kelly Tshibaka: 39:36
So one of my favorite Christmas traditions that we do is root beer floats on Christmas morning. The kids know that before we have breakfast, before we dig into all the presents under the tree, they can always count on root beer floats on Christmas morning. And so it’s my job to get up before the kids and to get out the ice cream so it’s not rock hard, and the different flavors of root beer. Because people are, they have their, their preferences, the root beer preferences, and set up essentially like a, an ice cream bar, and have the cups out and the markers out so people don’t mix up their cups, because there’s a lot of cups running around our house on Christmas day and everybody gets their root beer floats before we start Christmas morning, and so that’s a little Tshibaka tradition that is really fun We’ll have to make sure to carry out. This year. Christmas in our house goes on for at least one full day, sometimes multiple. So what do you love about Christmas at our house?

Niki Tshibaka: 40:34
I love the root beer float tradition. I think it’s kind of funny that for the most part I’ve never gotten to enjoy it.

Kelly Tshibaka: 40:41
It’s a time you get up the root beer is gone.

Niki Tshibaka: 40:42
I know it’s like the kids are up at 5 36 in the morning ready to go and I’m like, yeah, I’ll saunter down around 9, 30 or 10 and already have the root beer. Floats have been consumed, the ice cream’s been eaten or melted levels are through the roof and people are bouncing off the walls ready to tear open the Christmas presents. You know I think I’m thinking back to my my own family traditions before we got married. Growing up, I really loved how my folks would always try to find ways to host people during the Christmas holidays. We would often have a some sort of event or a dinner or something during the holiday season just to remember together what we were celebrating. Mom would often she’s a concert pianist by training and so she would play Christmas carols and get everybody together to do that, and so there’s something heartwarming for me from that tradition. Another tradition my folks started, which as a young kid I didn’t fully appreciate I’ll have to say that but it really made a difference in my outlook on the world and and how I came to really appreciate Christmas for its deeper meaning, which was there were times where my parents just said we’re not going to have as many presents as Christmas, and the money that we would have put towards getting presents for you guys some of that money or all of that money or most of that money, depending on the Christmas we’re going to instead choose to give to those who are less fortunate, and we’ll make those decisions together as a family, and so that wasn’t always easy as a young teenager or preteen, be like, really what I’m not going to get my Nintendo game. I just dated myself or some of our younger audience, but it made a difference and reminded me that what we celebrate as we’re moving into this season is that God sent his son to as a gift to us, and it was in the midst of a crisis, right, a political crisis, spiritual crisis, civilizational tensions, which we’re kind of in the midst of today, right and he came to bring peace and he came to bring hope and he came to bring love and he came to bring unity. And so, as we go into this Christmas season that’s one of the things that I’m thinking about is, just in the midst of all the turmoil and all the difficulties and all the challenges and all the trials and all the conflict and some of the things that we were talking about with Naomi, there is hope and there can be peace in the midst of the storm and there can be bridge building, there can be forgiveness, and she talked about that too. You know about her choosing to forgive the people who had wronged her. That is part of rebuilding. You know the unity that the last couple of years have really compromised.

Kelly Tshibaka: 43:46
Sure Chew to wait up. Yeah, I really like that. That’s part of your Christmas story and you’ve carried that into our family too. So every holiday season we as a family make a point to do some kind of giving or serving opportunity around the holiday, so that the kids know it’s not just about us and doing things that are fun for our family, but for them too. So for Thanksgiving we do some kind of a serving project. The Thanksgiving it was helping to feed homeless. For Christmas we’ll do something as well, whether it’s giving or serving, but I love that. That’s a family tradition that you’ve carried forward for us. One of our family traditions is my mom collected Christmas ornaments and my godmother would always make a Christmas ornament for me every year. So I have Christmas ornaments throughout all my childhood and so then I know that you love this. I carried that forward and we make Christmas ornaments every year, and then the kids really get into it and have made multiple Christmas ornaments, and so then we have a way too many Christmas ornaments for one tree and we love collecting Christmas ornaments and making Christmas ornaments. But what I look forward to is, as the kids grow up and leave, they will take their set of Christmas ornaments with them, and they’ll have a whole set that they’ve made from the time they were like infants all the way through their high school years, of Christmas ornaments through the seasons and Christmas ornaments that I’ve made them to. So the homemade Christmas ornament tradition is a memorable one as well that we love to do at Christmas time.

Niki Tshibaka: 45:19
So yeah, and it’s a beautiful thing too, because every one of them is a memory. That’s right. I don’t have your memory, so I don’t always remember what a particular ornament is supposed to remind me of it unless it’s very clear, like Disney World 2008. Oh, I know what that one’s about, but I love how you can look at our Christmas tree and you can tell a story for each ornament that’s on there, and so, in a lot of ways, the Christmas trees are the stories of our lives as a family. That’s true, we get to celebrate each Christmas and they represent the gift that God has given us in each other and in the memories that we’ve shared as a family through difficult times, through times of tragedy, through times of triumph. They’re all right there in front of us and, as we sip our eggnog or whatnot, we can celebrate that wow, look what God has brought us through. And, as always, this Christmas is a reminder that there’s hope for us, for the world and for the future.

Kelly Tshibaka: 46:35
Yeah, that’s good. We collect Christmas ornaments, and by we I mean I We’ve got to just be honest, but you fortunately indulge me in that habit. You’re really thoughtful.

Niki Tshibaka: 46:43
I’ll buy one for you every once in a while.

Kelly Tshibaka: 46:44
You do, and sometimes more than once in a while, which I really appreciate, but we get them on trips or, like you said, at different memories. So I just did a college trip with one of our kids this year and I picked up an ornament at the school that he preferred least so that it would always be an inside joke, but to your point, when we put those Christmas ornaments up, they’re not only stories but they’re objects of gratitude. So to thank God for friends who know this about us and they get us ornaments, for there’s pictures of the kids through different stages in their life or through different things that happen like broken bones, and so just gratitude to God for what he’s done and the story that he’s weaving together where we’ve been, where he’s brought us to all these memories that we’ve had and the tree becomes a bit of like a family scrapbook, but remembering the reason for the season that we’re not just here for great meal and family time and a point of presence. We’re here to remember that the greatest gift of all is that God loved the world so much he gave us his only son that we wouldn’t be living alone and under his wrath, but that we’d be reconciled to him, so that anyone who believes would become a child of God. And that’s what we’re celebrating like. The greatest sacrifice of all is a God who loved us so much that he gave up his position on his throne to come down here and born in the most humble circumstance on this birthday that we celebrate in December, in order to become one of us, that we could become co-heirs with Christ, that we could become a child of God, and that’s a really big privilege and a point to be really grateful for and to remember in solemn humility at Christmastime. And so part of that is that there is a gift that’s given all the time, like the gift of Jesus. It would be enough, but part of what the ornaments do is remind us of all the gifts and all the blessings that God gives us and to not forget because it says that in the Bible to set up stones of remembrance. Well, we don’t live this nomadic life of wandering through the Middle East, but I do have a nomadic Christmas tree, if you will, that takes us through the journey of our life together.

Niki Tshibaka: 49:00
Well, more than one, let’s be honest. Okay, so we’re up to a few Christmas trees. We have so many ornaments we need even more Christmas trees. Well, as we wrap up today, we just wanna wish our audience, all of you, our listeners and viewers, the merriest of Christmases. May you experience God’s hope. May you experience joy, peace, love, a family and friends. May you be encouraged, remembering that there’s hope for tomorrow, and that’s what Christmas reminds us of that God sent us a sure and certain hope in his Son, and so Merry Christmas to all.

Kelly Tshibaka: 49:45
This is Stand with Kelly Niki Chevaca. Be sure to subscribe. We will see you next week. Have a wonderful week, stand firm and stand strong. Secondly, be proud of us, god.