Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Me your Girl, Danielle Moody recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: by the time that you listen to this episode, Hurricane
Speaker 1: Milton will have made landfall in Florida. We have no
Speaker 1: idea the type of devastation that the state of Florida
Speaker 1: will be in for. Once again, as I'm coming on air,
Speaker 1: my mother sends me a text and says, you know, Danielle,
Speaker 1: I rarely watched CNN, but today I turned it on
Speaker 1: and a reporter is asking a woman in Florida that's
Speaker 1: standing in her wreckage about, you know what she thinks
Speaker 1: about these two storms coming through within two weeks, and
Speaker 1: her response was their man made. I cannot express to
Speaker 1: you the absolute extraordinary damage that Donald Trump and the
Speaker 1: Republican Party have done to this country and have done
Speaker 1: to fucking common sense. It is a travesty what has happened,
Speaker 1: the amount of disinformation and how susceptible people are to it,
Speaker 1: to believe that in this day and age, that you
Speaker 1: cannot trust science, your eyes, or your ears, or anything
Speaker 1: any amount of education. I don't even care how far
Speaker 1: you went in school, but that you would denounce all
Speaker 1: of that and believe the fucking bullshit that is coming
Speaker 1: out of Donald Trump and Marjory Taylor Green and JD.
Speaker 1: Vance and Matt Gates in Rohn de Santis's mouth is
Speaker 1: absolutely fucking wild. And you wonder what was it like
Speaker 1: living inside of the Dark Ages. Well, you don't have
Speaker 1: to wonder. We are here. This is the modern day,
Speaker 1: as Brian Karem, you know, fellow Nerd Avenger said earlier
Speaker 1: this week on Nerd Avengers, this is the technological Dark Ages,
Speaker 1: where we're at a time when we're trying to convince
Speaker 1: people that the world is round and that like a
Speaker 1: man did actually land on the moon, in the age
Speaker 1: of deep fakes and deep, deep, deep fucking distorted disinformation.
Speaker 1: It is absolutely wild. And today I get into a
Speaker 1: conversation with our friend or in house doctor, doctor Jonathan
Speaker 1: Metzel about like how we've gotten here. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. It's absolutely disheartening and frustrating and
Speaker 1: just like mind numbing trying to convince people that they
Speaker 1: have become their own worst enemy. When you have welcomed
Speaker 1: the likes of Fox News and Donald Trump and the
Speaker 1: Republican Party into your home into your life, into your
Speaker 1: mind space. It is like a fucking earworm, right that,
Speaker 1: Just like burrows in they are power sites that are
Speaker 1: eating this country from the inside out. And I am
Speaker 1: just at the time of this recording, am absolutely fucking
Speaker 1: beside myself with where we find ourselves. And you know,
Speaker 1: Jonathan tries to, you know, to help me work through it,
Speaker 1: but Lord help us all because I really do believe
Speaker 1: that it is the end. I really do feel like
Speaker 1: this is the end. This is this is the pivotal moment. Friends.
Speaker 1: We either go over this cliff with a parachute or
Speaker 1: we go over it with a fucking anvil. But either way,
Speaker 1: we're going over the cliff right now. And it is
Speaker 1: just it is alarming. It is alarming. So coming up
Speaker 1: next my conversation with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks.
Speaker 1: As always, you know that whenever we have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to sit and chat with our in house doctor, doctor
Speaker 1: Jonathan Metzel, I am always thrilled because I feel like,
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, I need some type of diagnosis. Jonathan.
Speaker 1: We're living, as we always say, in extraordinary times, and
Speaker 1: when I think about it, right now, we're speaking as
Speaker 1: another hurricane is barreling towards Florida twice in two weeks.
Speaker 1: Historic storms are about to hit, and yet fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the population has been convinced by one of the
Speaker 1: two major political parties that climate change is in real
Speaker 1: that what they're experiencing and seeing with their own eyes
Speaker 1: and their own ears isn't happening. That we're being flooded
Speaker 1: and inundated with AI deep fakes of children floating on rafts,
Speaker 1: and being told some of the most egregious lies about
Speaker 1: hurricane relief not happening, about the money being spent on
Speaker 1: migrants as a way to so hate and disorder. And
Speaker 1: I want to get your thoughts, because this is something
Speaker 1: that you have studied, that you know about. I don't understand,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that we are talking still even
Speaker 1: nine years later, about how these pervasive lies, how people
Speaker 1: will discount their own thoughts and link on to Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and it will cost them everything, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter so long as it costs the people around them more.
Speaker 1: And I still, Jonathan, nine years later, I still can't
Speaker 1: come to terms with that. Help me, Well, good morning,
Speaker 1: good morning.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm definitely I mean, if there's a diagnosis.
Speaker 2: It's a diagnosis for all of us, which is staying
Speaker 2: afloat in this crazy time. I'm saying hi this morning
Speaker 2: from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, and I'm speaking to four hundred
Speaker 2: people tonight at the Convention Center as part of this
Speaker 2: series called Conversations about Race. And it's a very multi racial,
Speaker 2: multi everything group. And so I first want to say
Speaker 2: that it's hard to see from social media sometimes that conversation,
Speaker 2: real conversations are still happening, because I'm a part of
Speaker 2: one out here today. But it is these moments of crisis,
Speaker 2: these kind of polarizing moments of crisis. And so let's
Speaker 2: talk through a couple points about this. Do you want
Speaker 2: me to start with the most fair part, the most
Speaker 2: fear answer, or the most ever, the most conniving.
Speaker 1: Asser, whatever feels best to you to start with.
Speaker 2: Okay, So please I get starting. You know, there is
Speaker 2: an agenda of undermining It's not just like racism is
Speaker 2: the means and the ends and the agenda. It's that
Speaker 2: there is always another agenda here. I mean, we just
Speaker 2: learned this morning as we're filming this that while Trump
Speaker 2: was denying COVID, he was sent COVID tests to putin.
Speaker 2: It was breaking news about an hour ago from Bob
Speaker 2: Wooper's book that all these guys were saying this thing
Speaker 2: is fake and all this kind of thing, and behind
Speaker 2: the scenes they dan well knew that COVID was real
Speaker 2: and Trump was secretly shipping COVID stuff to putin, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure vaccines and other stuff.
Speaker 1: Also, I guess you just broke that news to me,
Speaker 1: and I am just I am speechless. Okay, really, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't know, got it.
Speaker 2: So there's stuff about this that is incredibly performative in
Speaker 2: a way that riles people up. But it's not like
Speaker 2: people don't know. And I do feel like there's I'm
Speaker 2: just speculating here just to be clear, but undermining FEMA
Speaker 2: is an agenda that plays to racism, plays to social division,
Speaker 2: place to all the things you're talking about. But then
Speaker 2: if Trump wins, they can get rid of FEMA and
Speaker 2: put Elon Musk in charge and privatize everything and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So there's a financial agenda here that is
Speaker 2: maybe a bigger agenda than just that. Now that being said,
Speaker 2: I just think that this idea of dismantling government, it's
Speaker 2: not like there's going to be no government. It's going
Speaker 2: to be privatized, for profit, unequal targeted, all the kind
Speaker 2: of things. And so in a way, I just think
Speaker 2: it's important to keep in mind that this is a psychology,
Speaker 2: it's a bias, it's a history, it's all those things.
Speaker 2: But it's also tied to a bigger financial agenda, which
Speaker 2: is to monetize certain things and promote certain kinds of
Speaker 2: commerce and screw people over who are already historically disadvantaged.
Speaker 2: And so I think that, to me is the number
Speaker 2: one point. I'm just seeing this again with this femous
Speaker 2: stuff the way I saw it before, with the Affordable
Speaker 2: Care Act and anti COVID and all those kind of things.
Speaker 2: And so I think that's probably for me point number one.
Speaker 2: Point number two. I saw AVI here in Minnesota, and
Speaker 2: I flew last night next to a guy who was
Speaker 2: flying this crazy circuitoust route. He was flying back to Minnesota.
Speaker 2: He was a construction developer and worked in construction, and
Speaker 2: he was going to get his truck and his supplies
Speaker 2: and his coworkers so they could drive down to Florida
Speaker 2: and help people out in the aftermath of the hurricane.
Speaker 2: And you know, good salta of the earth kind of guy,
Speaker 2: a really robust guy. We had a long conversation and
Speaker 2: he was telling me how he really wanted to help.
Speaker 2: This is a moment where people, in a matter of
Speaker 2: their ideology, chip in to help each other. He had
Speaker 2: gone to Ashville previously and helped at least rebuild some
Speaker 2: kind of things. But then as we started talking, it
Speaker 2: became clear that he was incredibly anti government and was
Speaker 2: a Trump supporter. So he said, the main thing for
Speaker 2: me is this is a moment where like, we chip
Speaker 2: in and help people, but we don't need government regulation.
Speaker 2: We don't need government telling me what to do. We
Speaker 2: don't need government. While he had this whole diatribe against
Speaker 2: what he called government, and so I said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: I can see your point, right, which is the government
Speaker 2: adds relation to staff. But don't you think you're maybe
Speaker 2: prone to help certain people that seem familiar to you
Speaker 2: and not help other people, Like if it's just random
Speaker 2: of people just chipping in, want to reinforce biases and
Speaker 2: things like that. So we had a long conversation. The
Speaker 2: guy wasn't crazy in fact, I mean, who would just
Speaker 2: drop everything and drive down to help people like it
Speaker 2: was laudable in some ways. But his animosity toward government
Speaker 2: was so deep that the stuff that Trump said really
Speaker 2: resonated with like and the JFK Junior stuff and all that,
Speaker 2: let's get rid of government, let's get rid of regulation.
Speaker 2: And so this mistrust of government is also such a
Speaker 2: deep thread. And I don't know, there's two ways to
Speaker 2: think about that, right, And I went in, yes, government
Speaker 2: does add a lot of regulation. The other hand, like,
Speaker 2: you can't just have a million random people driving down
Speaker 2: to Florida with lumber and stuff like that, because it'll
Speaker 2: reinforce inequity and be chaos and be disorganized and all
Speaker 2: these kind of things. And so these things are all
Speaker 2: playing out against each other. And I guess I don't
Speaker 2: deny that it's racism and stuff like that, but I
Speaker 2: would also say that there's all these other layers to
Speaker 2: it would have to do with finance and capital and
Speaker 2: governance and all these other things.
Speaker 1: I get the layering, but I would say that the
Speaker 1: foundation is racism, right, Like I don't think that we
Speaker 1: can deny. We always want to say that there are
Speaker 1: all of these other factors, and those other factors have
Speaker 1: to do with economics. And I will always say okay,
Speaker 1: and then run it back one more time, because it
Speaker 1: always starts and ends with racism, this distrust in government
Speaker 1: and what government is doing with your money. And I
Speaker 1: think about this in the story that you just told,
Speaker 1: in terms of the regulations, and right now down in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: right in the suburbs of Atlanta, you have an entire
Speaker 1: chlorine plume that is over ninety thousand plus residents that
Speaker 1: are down there because of deregulation that happened with these
Speaker 1: chemical plants that are allowed to be in residencedential areas
Speaker 1: and that have navigated loopholes where they don't have to
Speaker 1: follow any rules whatsoever in terms of creating safety measures
Speaker 1: that would mitigate the effects of say a fire breaking
Speaker 1: out inside and then causing extraordinary health damage that we
Speaker 1: won't know. There are certain people that right now are
Speaker 1: saying they have lingering headaches, eye irritation, skin irritation, and
Speaker 1: body aches. But you don't know what the long term
Speaker 1: ramifications are going to be of those illnesses that comes
Speaker 1: from deregulation. And so like, when I hear these things
Speaker 1: that are largely said by white Americans, what would be
Speaker 1: the reason that they don't trust government and that they
Speaker 1: want government to be deregulated because they don't like who
Speaker 1: government is supposedly helping. When it's a majority of people
Speaker 1: that are white and poor that are on government assistance,
Speaker 1: either white and poor or rich and poor that are
Speaker 1: receiving welfare, it's hard for me to navigate eight and
Speaker 1: have conversations when at the core of it, all we're
Speaker 1: doing is looking for euphemisms for racism.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, of course, I mean that's you just
Speaker 2: summarize the talk I'm giving today, and you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm a structuralist, right, so of course I completely agree
Speaker 2: with what you just said. But I guess the question
Speaker 2: is what are you going to do about it? Right?
Speaker 2: And I mean right now we have a real clear
Speaker 2: choice about what you do about it. But I would
Speaker 2: also say that is anti racism. The answer is changing
Speaker 2: the financial structure. The answer is more government. The answer
Speaker 2: is addressing people's concerns of government. The answer I just
Speaker 2: I think it's important for me at least to know
Speaker 2: people's agendas of how they come to that, just so
Speaker 2: I can know how to kind of push back on
Speaker 2: it a little bit more. Not denying that. But it's
Speaker 2: just funny because for me the issue is in the
Speaker 2: name of racism, divisions are monetized basically, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised that a lot of white people are
Speaker 2: resist that's I live in Tennessee. It's not very surprising.
Speaker 2: But for me, as you know, the answer to those
Speaker 2: divisions is to make structures equitable. And so that's the way.
Speaker 2: You don't try to change people's identity, to increase structures
Speaker 2: where equity is rewarded. But we're in the opposite potentially now,
Speaker 2: which is weaponizing historical divisions. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 2: anti Semitism and Islamophobia are also being weaponized right now
Speaker 2: for financial gain in a lot of different ways. And
Speaker 2: so we're just in a movement right now where these
Speaker 2: divisions are being monetized and there's no count, there's no
Speaker 2: what's the reward, right I mean? And so I guess
Speaker 2: part of the issue why this matters I'm talking around
Speaker 2: in circles I apologize, is if Trump wins, this is
Speaker 2: going to be the whole country. And that's another reason
Speaker 2: to just be worried about. Trump is giving us a
Speaker 2: little hint here of this FEMA thing is exactly what
Speaker 2: everything will be like, which is undercutting every government agency,
Speaker 2: privatizing everything, targeting people who are already at risk, Like
Speaker 2: that's going to be every agency. I mean, FEMA seems
Speaker 2: like an extreme example, but I don't know. You're going
Speaker 2: to see it in healthcare. You'll see it hell in
Speaker 2: the traffic lights and everything like that.
Speaker 1: Right, it will be everything, and it will be targeted
Speaker 1: again directly at people of color, directly at black and
Speaker 1: brown people and those communities, and then it will target
Speaker 1: everyone else. And so it's like again low hanging fruit,
Speaker 1: which is the fact that Donald Trump the Republican Party
Speaker 1: are racists. They are pushing a white supremaist, white Christian
Speaker 1: nationalist agenda, and it begins with sowing distrust in government,
Speaker 1: in agencies and saying that you can only trust me.
Speaker 1: And that's how you begin this game of distortion. I mean,
Speaker 1: I looked Jonathan at the AI photo that Steven Miller,
Speaker 1: Laura Lumer and all of these other right wing people
Speaker 1: with huge platforms retweeted a fake photo of this young
Speaker 1: girl holding a puppy on a raft and saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris sent all the FEMA money to Haitian migrants,
Speaker 1: And they retweeted this and they took it down after
Speaker 1: the fact, but guess what, it was already fucking out
Speaker 1: and liked by millions of people. So I'm like, they
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. And the question that you ask
Speaker 1: is a good one, like, well, how do you combat it?
Speaker 1: I have no idea because by the time a lie
Speaker 1: is around the corner, the truth hasn't gotten out of bed,
Speaker 1: so we can fill them with all of the facts
Speaker 1: and figures and say no, this is wrong, this is
Speaker 1: a lie, but it's already happened. So Jack is already
Speaker 1: out of the box. So at this point I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure what it looks like to put it back
Speaker 1: when you have fifty percent of the population that is
Speaker 1: now saying, well, Biden, you know, hasn't provided any relief
Speaker 1: or Fema is broke, and it's just like, wait, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? And you have Disantis just on
Speaker 1: television yesterday saying we've gotten everything that we've needed from
Speaker 1: the Biden administration and I'm sure they will provide us
Speaker 1: with more he said it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't. But the thing is, you know,
Speaker 2: the argument of dying of whiteness is such a vicious
Speaker 2: cycle that you think it's targeting other people and then
Speaker 2: it comes for you basically. And so the problem with
Speaker 2: FEMA now and Florida, for example, is that it's been
Speaker 2: so undercut and undermined that they actually have massive worker
Speaker 2: shortage for FEMA, so they're actually they have really hurt FEMA,
Speaker 2: I mean, and a time of climate emergency to not
Speaker 2: be doing more investing in climate is I'm praying that
Speaker 2: this thing takes a right turn or something before it
Speaker 2: hits Tampa. But these things have consequences that are not
Speaker 2: just for the targets of who people will say they no.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is the thing that people
Speaker 1: don't get is it goes back to the Martinia Mohler
Speaker 1: poem from World War Two. First they come for right,
Speaker 1: You think that they're going to come for everybody. Oh,
Speaker 1: I love Donald Trump because we hate the same people.
Speaker 1: And he's going to punish the people that have made
Speaker 1: my life hard in this imaginary type of way. And
Speaker 1: then when all of those people have been punished and
Speaker 1: criminalized in what have you, you're next up to bat
Speaker 1: And I don't understand how many times these things need
Speaker 1: to happen in the course of history for people to
Speaker 1: realize that you are not safe, that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: not the person who is going to keep you safe,
Speaker 1: who is lying to you on a regular basis and
Speaker 1: grifting off of you because you're that fucking stupid. I
Speaker 1: personally am at a loss right now as I watch
Speaker 1: this devastation hit these areas that are quote unquote red states.
Speaker 2: And you know, we'll maybe talk about this next week.
Speaker 2: I'm really curious about the whole Elon Musk effect here
Speaker 2: also because I mean, there obviously are extreme interesting for
Speaker 2: him of taking over all these things, and so I'm curious,
Speaker 2: Like I guess, I wonder sometimes if Elon Musk had
Speaker 2: done the same thing, but he was supporting causes that
Speaker 2: I believe in, if Elon Musk could come to our side,
Speaker 2: for example, what I think Elon Musk was greater, would
Speaker 2: I still think that he was what he seems to be.
Speaker 2: So I don't know the Elon Musk effect here.
Speaker 1: No one should have. I mean, here's the thing, and
Speaker 1: this is me saying this, which is that like, no
Speaker 1: one should have as much power as Elon Musk has,
Speaker 1: And I don't care if that is a person that
Speaker 1: is a Democrat or a Republican. One person should not
Speaker 1: have a mass as much wealth and have as much
Speaker 1: influence to do anything. Elon must in general shows me
Speaker 1: that our economic systems are absolutely and totally broken because
Speaker 1: this man is on the verge of becoming a trillionaire
Speaker 1: and we have so much economic disparity in this country
Speaker 1: and in the world. He is emblematic of everything that is.
Speaker 2: Wrong, and he's just so unlikable, oh.
Speaker 1: God, and so fucking hard to look at, like as
Speaker 1: a person.
Speaker 2: Just ye, dear God, I just I guess I'm just
Speaker 2: in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, like, is
Speaker 2: Elon Musk helping Trump right now? Or is he? Or
Speaker 2: is he like even on Twitter? I mean just looking
Speaker 2: what he's done with Twitter and then telling me this
Speaker 2: guy's going to run female like it's you know, so
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, I hope you enough
Speaker 2: people will come to their senses. But I guess the
Speaker 2: question of over the top eln mask stuff, I'm curious
Speaker 2: why the Democrats aren't using it more because it's so odious.
Speaker 2: But maybe it speaks for itself.
Speaker 1: I think that, honestly, I think that it speaks for itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first of all, we also know and we're out of
Speaker 1: time here, but we also know that the numbers that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk puts up on Twitter about people liking his
Speaker 1: posts and all of the it's all lies. It's all
Speaker 1: inflated lies. And no one is advertising on that broke
Speaker 1: down site because he's absolutely destroyed it and a majority
Speaker 1: of people except for journalists, have fled.
Speaker 2: So to me, the argument then, is is this the
Speaker 2: guy you want running disaster ely for the country. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's really bad at tweeting, and also he's so firstly
Speaker 2: bad at tweeting, So anyway, TB TBD. All right, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to talk about the boards of equity, So
Speaker 2: how would you be having a positive vibe day here?
Speaker 1: Good Jonathan. As always, we deeply appreciate your analysis and
Speaker 1: we will catch up with you again next week.
Speaker 2: Take care, everybody.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, Dear friends on Woke
Speaker 1: af as always, power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.