I recently had the exhilarating privilege of hosting two community events as part of CJ Hopkins’s and Hugo Fernandez’s America Road Trip Project.
I will save the details for a separate post, but while I’m awaiting photos and attendee contributions, I thought you might enjoy listening to our conversation with Jefferson Exchange Host Mike Green on NPR affiliate station Jefferson Public Radio. Both he and Senior Producer Natalie Golay are consummate professionals, and it was a pleasure speaking with them. I enjoyed several in-depth phone calls with Natalie prior to the interview, and I appreciated her thoroughness, intellectual curiosity, and creative ideas. Normally, the guest slots are only fifteen minutes, but I suggested we add Hugo and do a full thirty minutes, and she generously agreed. Mike did a stellar job preparing for the interview and asked pertinent questions. Both he and Natalie recognize the value of fostering dialogue during this especially contentious moment in history. We are grateful to them for the opportunity to encourage depolarizing conversations and smuggle some contraband ideas out to NPR listeners.
Jefferson Exchange Interview
September 30, 2025
MG:
Most everyone has an opinion about the polarizing political dynamics in America today, and my guests are eager to hear them all. CJ Hopkins and Hugo Fernandez are working on a collaborative book that will document the opinions of Americans across the country about the state of our nation today. To capture the opinions of people all across the nation, they launched the America Road Trip Project, which has a scheduled engagement in Ashland at The Noble Fox restaurant tonight from 6 to 10 pm. CJ Hopkins is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and political satirist. Welcome to the Exchange, CJ.
CJ:
It’s a pleasure to be here, Mike. Thanks.
MG:
Hugo Fernandez has been a professor of photography and art appreciation at LaGuardia Community College for over thirty years. Welcome, Hugo.
HF:
Welcome. I mean, to me? (😂) Thank you. Hi, Mike.
MG:
And helping to organize the events is Margaret Anna Alice. She writes about politics; health; psychology; human rights and civil liberties; culture; and more at her Substack Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass. Welcome, Margaret.
MAA:
Thank you so much, Mike.
MG:
I want to know more about each of you, but let’s start with the project itself. CJ, tell me about it.
CJ:
Well, it’s kind of a crazy project. It just happened on the fly, really. I floated an idea on my Substack to my readers. I’ve been living in Europe for twenty years. I’m an American, but I’ve been gone for twenty years, and I floated the idea to my readers. I said, “What if I came back to the United States and rented a ridiculous automobile and put my old buddy who is a photographer in the car and we drove all around the country talking to people and really just trying to take the pulse of the States and paint a portrait of the country at this historical—and I would argue historic—moment?” And I floated it out there, and readers just poured in responses and saying, “Yes, we’ll organize events for you and set up gatherings.”
And then I went to my publisher, I said, “Can we turn this into a book?” And they said, “Sure.” So it’s going to be a book. It’ll be out next year. And Hugo and I are just trying to paint a portrait of the country at this moment.
MG:
Okay. Well, Hugo, tell me about your role in the project.
HF:
My role—I used to take a lot of pictures of CJ in his youth on small cameras, black-and-white. And so he came to me to try to replicate that approach on the road. Basically, I’m trying to capture as much of the land and the people as possible to illustrate the book and maybe get a few shots for myself along the way. This is every photographer’s—art photographer’s—dream, probably maybe every photographer’s dream, to travel across the country. It’s been done many times before photographically and in words. And so it’s just a great opportunity.
MG:
Do we know what this book will be called?
CJ:
Sure. It’s going to be titled Strangers in a Strange Homeland, kind of nodding to Robert Heinlein, of course. And the concept behind that is, again, I’m an American, but I’ve been gone for twenty years. So I’ve been telling people, look, I don’t really understand the country anymore, and I need you all who have been living here to explain it to me. So I’m a stranger in a strange homeland. And in a sense, I think all Americans, we’re all strangers in a strange homeland. I mean, except for the Native Americans, of course. So yeah, that’s what it’ll be called.
MG:
It reminds me of Martin Luther King Jr. when he told his story of Rip Van Winkle waking up after being asleep and finding the country had changed.
CJ:
Yes, sir. Exactly.
HF:
That’s a perfect metaphor.
MG:
So Margaret, what’s your role in all of this?
MAA:
I’m organizing the events, and I feel very honored to do so. I’ve known about CJ’s work for maybe—since around 2017. He is my favorite satirist, and he’s also a brilliant playwright and novelist. I did a Dissident Dialogue with him three years ago for my Substack, and I subtitled it My Dinner with CJ. I never imagined that I would actually have an opportunity to have dinner with him in person. And so when he floated the idea, this crazy idea at his Substack, I jumped at the opportunity and invited him to come to the Rogue Valley.
MG:
Okay, so you’re the reason CJ’s here?
MAA:
Yes.
MG:
Now, I understand that there was an event yesterday.
MAA:
Yes.
MG:
Tell me about it.
MAA:
That was at Barnes and Noble, and we had a really lovely group of people show up.
MG:
That’s in Medford?
MAA:
Yes, that was in Medford. We had readers who drove—some from Portland, but one came all the way from Washington just to see us, which was really touching. And just a really vibrant conversation. I feel like people are thirsting for this opportunity to have community dialogue about important, substantive topics that’s not contentious, that’s just out of a spirit of love and open-minded listening.
MG:
Okay, well, speaking of that, Donald Trump recently said that he hates Democrats, and he’s sending troops under his authority into cities run by Democrats, the latest of which is Portland, of course. And some people believe he’s adding fuel to an already out-of-control, hostile environment across this nation. So how do you all manage a conversation with strangers about polarizing issues in Trump’s political dynamics that have dominated the last decade of American history?
CJ:
It’s something I put out right at the beginning of the project. I told people, “Look, we want to talk to people from all walks of life, people from all across the political spectrum.” And I’m a political satirist and a commentator, so I put my views out all the time. They’re published. This project is not about me putting my views out. It’s about me listening to people telling us what they think is going on in the country, regardless of what it is. And it’s about me listening to that without judgment. Mike, the idea is that I want to present all of those views, regardless of what I think of them personally. I want to present them all so that the readers can look at that and say, “Wow, this is America at this time.” That’s basically the way that I’m handling listening to folks and whatever they’ve got to say.
Of course, I’m going to be doing some satire in the book—not of the people, but of what’s happening. We were just joking as we drove in. I put it in scare quotes. I said, “We’re driving into ‘war-ravaged Portland.’” I was quoting Trump. And, of course, we rolled into Portland, and I went into a restaurant, and there were a couple of people standing there. I said, “Well, where’s the war-ravaging?” And they said, “There’s nothing going on. Everything is quiet, and if the troops come in, we’re just going to ignore them and laugh at them.”
But the polarization, Mike, that intense polarization is really one of my main motivations for doing the project. It scares me. It’s not just in this country, of course, but it is here. And absolutely Trump and Musk, and that whole gang, from what I can tell, is just feeding it. They’re just pouring gasoline on the flames and really stoking some ugly, ugly sentiments, racial hatred, ethnonationalist hysteria. And yeah, it’s scary.
MG:
And you’re out there listening to it all?
CJ:
Yes, I am.
MG:
My guests are CJ Hopkins, Hugo Fernandez, and Margaret Anna Alice. They’re organizers of the America Road Trip, which travels the country, inviting Americans to share their views about the state of the country today. They’ll be at The Noble Fox restaurant in Ashland tonight from 6 to 10 pm.
Now, this project has launched already, right?
MAA & CJ:
Yes.
MG:
So what have you been hearing? Hugo?
HF:
There certainly are themes that we’ve come across. One of them is people don’t really trust what they’re getting from the various media sources, all the different kinds of social media–type things. That’s one thing. Another thing that we’re getting is after our experience of talking to them or Chris’s—I’m sorry—CJ’s experiences of speaking with them is they want to keep doing it. Because one of the things that happened with COVID is that it destroyed a lot of their social structures, and they’ve been dealing with people through Zoom and other approaches, and it’s not the same as getting into a room and talking to people face-to-face. You can’t be as mean. You have to have to kind of let the other person have a chance. And it’s really been interesting because we’ve been listening to all types of points of view, but behind all of that is just folks, United States citizens, who mean well, but it’s from their approach. And I think by talking to each other, maybe we can find a way. I said it last night after maybe one drink too many, that when Americans are at their best, they work together. When we are at our worst is when we’re divided.
MG:
Margaret, when you invite people into this space, there are some people who will want to be in the space. They have something to say. But there are a lot of people who are in agreement with a lot of the sort of rancor that’s happening at the upper level of society, and they don’t want to talk. How do you get them to engage?
MAA:
Well, I’ve actually found that happens more online, but everybody that I’ve been talking to and inviting to this, just walking downtown Ashland or Medford, telling them about the event, their eyes light up, and they get so excited about this opportunity to be in this—really, I feel a very unique space—where they’re able to discuss these typically very controversial issues but in a spirit of civil discourse, which really has been lacking and sort of has been dying. And I feel like this is giving us an opportunity to resurrect that. And everyone seems to really appreciate that opportunity.
We experience each other through screens so often. I think people just need to have that human face-to-face interaction to rehumanize each other because we need to combat that dehumanization that is occurring.
MG:
Are you seeing that your audience is more diverse, or is it more of an echo chamber?
MAA:
I think, at least here, I felt like it was a pretty diverse spectrum across the political—we had people from the left, people from the right, people in the middle. Most of the people, I’d say are more in the middle—or even outside of it altogether. That’s how I feel.
MG:
What do you think, CJ?
CJ:
We’ve been getting some echo chamber stuff. One of our gatherings was exclusively Republican MAGA people in a small town in Kansas. Another one of our gatherings was exclusively Democrats, progressives, except for one guy who was the state senator who happened to be a Republican. But the other people in the room, thirty-five people, were all Democrats. Most of them have been mixed, and it’s been interesting.
If I can return to the question that you asked before. What I’ve noticed is that people, a lot of times people are very hesitant to speak out. They’re afraid to speak out. That’s one of the themes that has been emerging.
MG:
What are they afraid of?
CJ:
They’re afraid of getting canceled, they’re afraid of getting fired from their jobs in some instances. There’s just been so much censorship and suppression of dissent first from one quote-unquote side, and now from the other quote-unquote side. And people are really scared to speak out. What I’ve noticed is that as the gathering goes on, as the event goes on, it takes people a while, and they begin to trust and understand, “Okay, there’s no judgment here, this is just a place where people can speak their mind and say what they need to say.” And I don’t manage the events too much. If people want to argue, they can argue. But mostly it’s just been people speaking their minds and not getting judged for it. And towards the end of the events, the people who’ve been holding back, often they feel like, “Okay, I am comfortable enough here, I’m going to go ahead and say what I have to say.”
MG:
So it’s about tell me more—rather than tell me less.
CJ:
Correct, correct. I am really stressing to people, “Look, we are trying to paint a portrait. I’m not going to judge or mock or satirize the people who are being kind enough to talk to us.” I’m going to save that for the news.
MG:
So I heard that in some places, like here in Rogue Valley, there’s more diverse audiences, but you’ve been on the road and heard a lot of echo-chamber kind of things. Tell me more.
CJ:
Well, it was one gathering that we had in a small town in Kansas was almost exclusively Republicans, MAGA supporters, Donald Trump supporters. I don’t want to put these folks down because I’ve been asking them to come and speak to us, but I was a bit alarmed by it. These folks were talking like they were preparing for civil war.
MG:
Really?
CJ:
Yeah, it was—
MG:
Was this authentic?
CJ:
This was authentic. This was just local people from the community. And again, I’m grateful to them for coming out and speaking to us and letting us know their thoughts and their views.
MG:
What are they afraid of? What did they say they’re afraid of?
CJ:
They kind of feel that the left—and I put everything in scare quotes—but the left or the other side of the political spectrum is trying to go to war with them and literally start a civil war, a second civil war in this country.
MG:
They believe they’re under attack?
CJ:
They do. They see themselves as being victimized and feeling under attack, and, in some cases, really preparing for civil war.
One of the folks was expressing his view that their side of the political spectrum was the good side, and the other side was evil. And I asked him, I said, “If you really believe that, if you believe that the people on the other side of the political spectrum are evil, how do you get past that? How do you work with that?” Because I think once you feel that someone is evil, there’s no discussion to have any more, then it is a war. So that was kind of scary. And to be fair, talking to some of the progressives and the liberals on the other side, seeing the right as the same way—as people that they can’t speak to, people who are just evil, for lack of a better word, or the embodiment of some kind of new fascism.
MG:
So both sides feel like the other side is evil, and they both fear each other, and that could become a very dangerous environment.
MAA:
Yes.
CJ:
I don’t want to overstate it because in many cases—many, many cases, and I’d say the majority of people—are expressing their frustration with that polarization and their frustration with being demonized on one side or the other. So there’s a lot of sentiment out there, Mike, of people who are just sick of the intense polarization. But that intense polarization is definitely out there.
MG:
When we look at polling data and voting data, there’s one clear and consistent energy that cuts across many generations of politics, and that is that older Americans have a lot of views, and they also have higher turnouts at the polls than younger folks. But Charlie Kirk was having an influence on younger people, primarily white college students. What are you all hearing from younger voters and teens? What are you hearing out there?
HF:
What’s interesting is that we’re going to be at LSU and hopefully Old Miss, and so we’re going to get a chance to hear the younger voices. But last night, actually, there were some young folks in the crowd, and a young woman who said she had originally been on the left, but she was actually kind of moving towards Republicans because she felt the Democrats didn’t have a plan, and at least the Republicans have a plan. So I found that fascinating.
MG:
Well, they do have a plan. They named it Project 2025. Right, but that’s a good point. There are younger people who feel like there is no vision, no strategy, no plan. “Where is this ship going?” And there are other folks who say, “Well, we’re steering the ship. This is where we’re going.” So you’re listening to it all. What do you expect to hear here in Ashland?
CJ:
I don’t know. I try not to have too many expectations about it. I know that a lot of the folks that are coming to the event tonight are folks that have been reading Margaret Anna Alice, so I think I have an idea of where they’re coming from. But Mike, we’ve been getting people coming in who from, again, all over the political spectrum, who are just interested in expressing their views or hearing what people have to say. I don’t know what to expect. I try to keep my mind open.
MG:
Okay. Well, I have a provocative question about our schools. Do you think young people are learning enough about America in their history, civics, social studies, and economic courses in K–12 schools to even form knowledgeable opinions about the state of our country?
MAA:
I’d say definitely not. And that’s a huge problem. One of the reasons we are sliding toward tyranny so rapidly is so many people are ignorant of history, and not just young people, but surprisingly across the whole age spectrum. And the more knowledgeable you are about history, the better you are able to recognize the signs of encroaching tyranny.
HF:
Actually, last night, we were speaking to, we were talking about Selma, and there was a woman next to me who didn’t understand the significance of it. And a gentleman and I went back and forth, tried to explain the importance of what happened there and a lot of the other ideas about the civil rights movement. And it was clear to me that that was missing from her experience. And it’s tough. There’s a lot to learn in school. As a schoolteacher, I can tell you that. And so the best thing we can do for students is teach them how to be autodidacts—once they leave us, how to continue learning for the rest of their lives.
CJ:
If I can just add one thing, we just had a really beautiful gathering in Philadelphia. It wasn’t a public event; it was a private event. We were staying with a reader and a colleague in an African-American part of Philadelphia. Really mixed crowd came to the gathering, and one of the people attending it was a schoolteacher who had been working in the schools in Philadelphia forever. I mean, she probably could have retired twenty years ago. And she shared about just her experience of trying to help the kids and trying to educate the kids in her neighborhood with very limited resources and struggling to give these kids a good education. I think there are good teachers out there who are really trying their best, and the system isn’t helping them a whole lot.
MG:
And as we start to dissolve the Department of Education, that system might help even less.
If you’re just joining me, my guests are CJ Hopkins, Hugo Fernandez, and Margaret Anna Alice. They’re organizers of the America Road Trip Project, which is traveling the country and inviting people to share their views about the state of the nation today. They’ll be at The Noble Fox Restaurant in Ashland tonight from 6 to 10 pm.
So Margaret, tell me a little bit about your background, and how did you gain an interest in politics and the social dynamics of our society?
MAA:
Well, I’m an avid reader and I have been fascinated with totalitarianism, genocide, all these different health topics that converged in 2020. And I wound up starting a Substack in 2021. I’ve always been interested in propaganda, and I was just seeing such clear, glaring signs of propaganda. They were just getting so emboldened, and they were trying fear manipulation tactics and playing on people’s cognitive biases. And this ties into our conversation today—I’d say our ingroup and outgroup biases are what they’re manipulating to create what we are observing, which I think is really very artificial. They call themselves the elites. I call them the cruelites, basically the 1 percent are intentionally fomenting this tribal hatred and emotionally manipulating us to fear each other because they don’t want us to come together in these face-to-face conversations and see we really do have a lot of common desires and goals. And if we are able to be in this space together and respectfully discuss these things, we might actually be able to come to some solutions.
MG:
So through this process, you’re building common ground.
MAA:
Yes.
MG:
So CJ, tell me about your background and what led you to this point.
CJ:
Gosh, that’s going to be a long answer. The short—
MG:
We’ve got four minutes.
CJ:
Short version is I’m a playwright. I’m an author. I worked in the theater for most of my life and started writing political satire and commentary around 2016 because the right populist uprising that started at that time in Europe and then Brexit, and then the first Trump campaign got my attention. I was kind of a Bernie supporter when Bernie was in there originally.
MG:
Bernie Sanders.
CJ:
Yeah, Bernie Sanders. And anyway, I was writing my satire and was covering that sort of development. Where I started, Mike, I think the fundamental conflict of our times is basically neoliberalism versus neonationalism. And if folks come tonight, I’ll explain that at greater length, but that’s sort of what I was covering. And then 2020 came along, and the COVID measures were rolled out. I opposed those authoritarian measures. I was fine—if you want to wear masks, wear masks, if you want to get a vaccine, get a vaccine. I don’t care. I’ve never been concerned about vaccines, but I opposed the authoritarian measures. And long story short, I ended up getting prosecuted in Germany for two tweets that I put out, and they took me to trial. And I was originally acquitted. The judge didn’t like me at all, thought I was a crazy COVID-denying conspiracy theorist, but she acquitted me because she followed the law, and the prosecutor didn’t like that very much. And, in Germany, they can put you on trial again, which they did. Took me—the prosecutor appealed, took me to appellate court, reversed my acquittal. And so now technically, I’m a convicted hate criminal because I opposed the COVID measures in Germany. We’ve submitted our case to the German Supreme Court. My readers know all of this, so I tried to do the short version for you. That’s kind of what led me here.
MG:
That is amazing. Is that on your record?
CJ:
On my record in Germany so far. As I said, the case is still pending at the German Supreme Court, but yes.
MG:
If you have a record, you could still run for president here.
CJ:
That’s not a problem, right.
MG:
That’s not a problem. We’ve got about a minute left. Hugo, how do you capture the passion and emotions that people are putting on display when they’re engaged in these conversations?
HF:
Actually, I don’t photograph during the conversations because if we were to use the images, we would have to have folks’ releases. But what I do is after the event, if they are willing to have [me] take a headshot and sign a release, and I say to people, “Represent yourself the way you want to.” Most people smile, but there’s some folks that do things interesting. And we’re trying to put those pictures together in some sort of mosaic, either for the cover of the book or for the website or something so that people can say, “Who did CJ speak to?” And again, we are the people of this country.
MG:
We have about ten seconds. Any last words?
MAA:
I wrote an article on Friday about the importance of resurrecting civil discourse, and there’s a video in there by Chase Hughes with a pledge that I think could save a lot of this chaos. And you can go to bluesbrowns.com to watch the video and read the pledge.
MG:
Okay, well, that’s all the time we have. Thank you all.
CJ:
Thank you, Mike.
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