Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: last week was a week and it ended I kind
Speaker 1: of tell you it ended with me waking up on
Speaker 1: Friday morning to seeing Marjorie Taylor Green get her ass
Speaker 1: handed to her by Representative Jasmine Crockett from Texas. And
Speaker 1: here's what I will say, because folks have had a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about the exchange that took place. That
Speaker 1: began because Marjorie Taylor Green lauded a personal attack on
Speaker 1: Representative Crockett about her eyelashes, and at the committee, Alexandria
Speaker 1: Cassio Cortez said, directed to the chairman of the committee,
Speaker 1: a Republican, that she needs to apologize because according to
Speaker 1: our rules, we're not allowed to attack each other personally.
Speaker 1: And he said, nah, that's fine, right. So then Representative
Speaker 1: Jasmine Crockett, who is one of the fiercest members of
Speaker 1: Congress when it comes to dressing motherfuckers all the way down, said, okay,
Speaker 1: so we're allowed to make personal So when we're talking
Speaker 1: about personal attacks, if somebody, if I were to refer
Speaker 1: to somebody in this body as a bleach blonde. I
Speaker 1: don't know what she said, like bullshitter body, you know,
Speaker 1: just I mean read her for filth and it was
Speaker 1: and the alliteration was fire, Then what would happen? And
Speaker 1: you know, of course, then Marjory Taylor Green turns herself
Speaker 1: into the victim. Oh you're being hostile, you're being loud,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. So let me just pause right there
Speaker 1: and say that anytime a white woman who attacks a
Speaker 1: black woman then wants to turn around and play victim
Speaker 1: when that black woman then unleashes a bit of fire
Speaker 1: that you can't fucking take, don't come for us and
Speaker 1: tell us that, oh my god, the tone you're acting
Speaker 1: out and doing all of these things, because that, my friend,
Speaker 1: is nothing but racism. Because what we know is that
Speaker 1: these motherfucking Karens who say hot shit cannot fucking take
Speaker 1: it when it is delivered back to them. And so,
Speaker 1: while I would prefer that our members of Congress do
Speaker 1: not engage in name calling and rhetoric that is beneath
Speaker 1: the office, I have said it before and I will
Speaker 1: say it again. If Republicans want to go low, then
Speaker 1: let Democrats go to hell. Do you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because this is what they can't take. They want to
Speaker 1: say hot shit. They want to call Democrats everything but
Speaker 1: a child of God. They want to say the Democrats
Speaker 1: are pedophiles, that Democrats are groomers. They want to say
Speaker 1: all of these things. But when you turn around, right,
Speaker 1: when you turn the table around and then hold up
Speaker 1: a glaring mirror and a spotlight on them, then they
Speaker 1: don't know how to fucking take it. And so Representative
Speaker 1: Jasmine Crockett brought the fucking heat to Marjory Taylor Green,
Speaker 1: and she looked amazing doing so. So I got to
Speaker 1: tell you, the devolving that we have seen that the
Speaker 1: Republicans have done to our governing bodies is just astounding
Speaker 1: to me. But to me, what Representative Crockett did is
Speaker 1: what it does look like to be an adult in
Speaker 1: the room. Because Republicans want to play bully, but they
Speaker 1: don't know how to deal with a boss. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what she showed them. Marjorie Taylor Green then want
Speaker 1: to find herself saying that she wants to debate AOC bitch.
Speaker 1: You can't debate a first grader. Sit down coming up
Speaker 1: on today's show, I'm very excited to welcome back my
Speaker 1: friend and friend of the show, Jared Yate Sexton, who
Speaker 1: is the author of The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power,
Speaker 1: Paranoia and the Coming Crisis. Jared and I, man, we
Speaker 1: never know where our conversations will go when we start
Speaker 1: off with asking each other how we're doing as we
Speaker 1: watch the fall of democracy the rise of fascism. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that we do tackle in this
Speaker 1: episode is this idea of radicalization, right and what it
Speaker 1: means to become radicalized. And I think that the conversation
Speaker 1: gets incredibly rich. I could honestly speak to you, Jared,
Speaker 1: all day, every day and I would feel better. So
Speaker 1: I hope that you guys enjoy our exchange coming up next, folks,
Speaker 1: I am so excited to welcome back to wok af Daily.
Speaker 1: It's been a while. Author of The Midnight Kingdom, A
Speaker 1: History of Power, Paranoia and the Coming Crisis, and the
Speaker 1: host of the Muckbreaker podcast, Jared Yates Sexton, Friend, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start off with how I always start
Speaker 1: off with how are you doing?
Speaker 2: Man? These times are kicking ass, aren't they. I mean,
Speaker 2: it is just it's you keep expecting maybe a day
Speaker 2: or two to go by without things getting worse and weirder,
Speaker 2: Like it's there are moments of hope, They're like little
Speaker 2: glimmers of inspiration. These are the times that try the salt.
Speaker 2: That's the only other way to put it. I and again,
Speaker 2: you know I said before we started recording, like it's
Speaker 2: so good to see you, and yet we continue to
Speaker 2: have to document this. So yeah, it's good to be here.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel these days, Like I jutt, but
Speaker 1: right before I came on, I saw a meme that
Speaker 1: said that we're more burnt out than we actually realize, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that when we do the math and
Speaker 1: realize that we've kind of been existing in this nightmare
Speaker 1: since twenty fifteen, right like I dated twenty fifteen, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump comes down that escalator. We are in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four and have not had a break since then, nine years,
Speaker 1: almost a decade long. And when we think about Jared,
Speaker 1: the political norms that have just been eroded, the idea
Speaker 1: of law and order, common decency. When you look back
Speaker 1: at twenty fifteen team to where we are now, could
Speaker 1: your past self have even comprehended this moment, not even.
Speaker 2: A little bit. I've spent a lot of time I'm
Speaker 2: sure you have as well, not just dealing with what
Speaker 2: happens on a day to day basis, because we have
Speaker 2: to analyze it, we have to try and comment on
Speaker 2: it and put it into a framework for people. But
Speaker 2: if you are not I don't know how I'll say this.
Speaker 2: If you are not a grifter, and if you are
Speaker 2: not an opportunist, and you're not a fascist, at this point,
Speaker 2: you are constantly involved in not just trying to put
Speaker 2: the framework of the world in order, but your own.
Speaker 2: Because what happens every single day now, and I want
Speaker 2: to be very clear about it, what we're dealing with
Speaker 2: right now is not just a white supremacist, Christian nationalist,
Speaker 2: anti democratic movement that we're fighting. We are dealing with
Speaker 2: an abusive environment that is intentionally trying to grind us down.
Speaker 2: You know, what we have to do constantly is we
Speaker 2: have to search ourselves to understand where we're coming from,
Speaker 2: what it is that we hold to be true, what
Speaker 2: it is that we value, why we do the things
Speaker 2: that we do. Quite frankly, because meanwhile, in the midst
Speaker 2: of all of this, it's all commodified, all of it
Speaker 2: is commodified right, like jobs, careers, products, you name it.
Speaker 2: So what we have to do in order to not
Speaker 2: just fight it is we also have to look within ourselves.
Speaker 2: We're doing like eight or nine or ten different major
Speaker 2: emotionally and energy draining jobs at once. And the unfortunate
Speaker 2: truth is that that's where authoritarianism comes from, is what
Speaker 2: it feeds on and what it systematically does. So no, I,
Speaker 2: I myself as a person, I've had to change completely
Speaker 2: because the only other option is to just lean into
Speaker 2: it and join it, you know. And it's not putting
Speaker 2: an armband on. It's playing the role that this sick
Speaker 2: society and sick movement wants you to play. And opposing
Speaker 2: it means that you have to constantly, you have to change,
Speaker 2: and you have to fight on all of these different landscapes.
Speaker 2: So no I who I was nine years ago much
Speaker 2: less I mean who I was a year ago. It
Speaker 2: has to change. And that's one of the things that
Speaker 2: I think is the most complicated about this.
Speaker 1: I feel like over the last nine years, but particularly
Speaker 1: I focus on probably the last five twenty nineteen kind
Speaker 1: of being the last sense of normalcy globally before we
Speaker 1: headed into a global health pandemic where I think that
Speaker 1: what was revealed to many who did not spend their
Speaker 1: careers kind of researching and understanding and analyzing the response
Speaker 1: stability of our government, right and see all of these
Speaker 1: kind of holes in the systems of capitalism, right in
Speaker 1: the idea of who is forced right into these essential
Speaker 1: roles and who gets to stay home? Like I don't
Speaker 1: think we ever saw so clearly the discrepancies that we
Speaker 1: have in our capitalistic, patriarchal, greedy system. How many women
Speaker 1: had to drop out of the workforce in that time
Speaker 1: frame in order to be the sole caretakers for their children.
Speaker 1: And so I think about the ways in which I
Speaker 1: have changed, right, the ways in which I have had
Speaker 1: to adopt different routines of well being in order to
Speaker 1: keep myself in a place of sanity right that I
Speaker 1: never had before. So when you say that you have
Speaker 1: had to change that this time, this era that we
Speaker 1: have lived in, has forced you to change, can you
Speaker 1: just unpack a little bit of what that means for us?
Speaker 1: What have you done?
Speaker 2: I'll go ahead and try and give the spark now
Speaker 2: version of this. You know, back in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: I was documenting the rising threat of trump Ism. I
Speaker 2: saw this, I knew that something was wrong, but like
Speaker 2: a lot of people at the time, I didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: have a larger framework. I thought he was going to
Speaker 2: be rejected, you know. I thought, like, here is a
Speaker 2: disgusting individual. He's cruel, awful and lacking, and he will
Speaker 2: be rejected and then we'll move on. And I thought
Speaker 2: for a while he was an aberration. I thought this
Speaker 2: was a guy who came along. He just happened to
Speaker 2: say the right things, you know, he just happened to
Speaker 2: hit the right chords. And what I had to do
Speaker 2: over time, and I'll be completely frank, I've become radicalized.
Speaker 2: I just can't because you have to be because, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: to be an adult and to be an actual participant
Speaker 2: in resisting authoritarianism and fascism, you have to take a
Speaker 2: long view. You have to understand that this is a
Speaker 2: train that has been coming for a long time, like
Speaker 2: this goes back unfortunately, not just the founding of the
Speaker 2: United States of America but centuries, and so all of
Speaker 2: these things are constantly going through crisis. It's a lot
Speaker 2: easier to believe that Trump is a problem, that he
Speaker 2: is the issue that he's the disease as opposed to
Speaker 2: a symptom, right. And what I've had to do is
Speaker 2: I've had to basically re educate myself on exactly what
Speaker 2: came before him, what happened when he got here, and
Speaker 2: what's been happening ever since. And I came to realize
Speaker 2: that the reality that I thought I lived in was
Speaker 2: a meticulously and painstakingly created fairy tale that went ahead
Speaker 2: and preyed upon what I wanted to be true, what
Speaker 2: other people wanted to be true. Also, by the way,
Speaker 2: I need to make it clear as a white cisgender
Speaker 2: man that you know, I was told to comfort me,
Speaker 2: you know, and what was told to comfort other people
Speaker 2: like me like I have had to basically reorganize all that.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you the truth, Danielle. And this is
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I like talking to you, because
Speaker 2: I don't think you shy away from this larger picture.
Speaker 2: The truth is, it's really overwhelming to understand that this
Speaker 2: is more more than elections. It's more than the twenty
Speaker 2: four hour news cycle. This is a larger existential crisis
Speaker 2: that existed before I got here. And quite frankly, even
Speaker 2: if we win this battle, it will exist beyond me. Yep.
Speaker 2: This is an existential question about who human beings are,
Speaker 2: what we should be, what we could be. And I've
Speaker 2: had to really deconstruct and reconstruct and sort of change
Speaker 2: everything about myself, and it has made me more strident
Speaker 2: about what I think we should be doing and where
Speaker 2: we should be going. It has been a complete transformation.
Speaker 1: And I think that the word radicalization, right, we need
Speaker 1: to reclaim that as not being something that is rooted
Speaker 1: in terrorism, right, which which is the way, Oh, people
Speaker 1: have become radicalized and so they join these different militant
Speaker 1: structures that are about you know, subjugation, oppression, and violence.
Speaker 1: That what it means, I think when you're saying, because
Speaker 1: I feel the same way. And I actually had this
Speaker 1: conversation with Wajahat Ali on my other show Democracy Ish,
Speaker 1: where we were both saying, there's no way right and
Speaker 1: I will look at the suffering that we are seeing
Speaker 1: right now in Gaza. I will look at what the
Speaker 1: United States is not only complicit in, but is funding
Speaker 1: is regularly providing a green light and a blank check
Speaker 1: for a genocide, and say that there is absolutely no
Speaker 1: way that you look at those videos and pictures and
Speaker 1: think to yourself that America is okay, right, that you
Speaker 1: look at how we have formulated our pr version of
Speaker 1: who we are on the global right as the arbiters
Speaker 1: of democracy, right, as the standard bears of truth and
Speaker 1: morality in the world. And then see what is happening
Speaker 1: and these young people on these college campuses marching and
Speaker 1: building encampments and saying, wait a minute, we've been fed alive,
Speaker 1: like we're not the crazy ones. You guys have been
Speaker 1: gas lighting us. Yes, right, we've been pledging allegiance blindly right,
Speaker 1: being indoctrinated from primary school about who the United States is.
Speaker 1: And then when we ask you to actually reflect back
Speaker 1: to us who you tell us that you are, you
Speaker 1: tell us that we're crazy, that we know not what
Speaker 1: we do or what we see. And so I think
Speaker 1: that if you aren't bucking the gas lighting and screaming
Speaker 1: at the top of your lungs and being radical because
Speaker 1: the idea apparently a freedom and liberal is a radical notion,
Speaker 1: then you're not awake, you know. And I wonder in
Speaker 1: this environment that we are seeing that we recognize that
Speaker 1: whether or not Biden or Trump wins, I feel like
Speaker 1: Jared that the next administration is really going to have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to pull America back together again.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what that looks like. Do you
Speaker 1: have an idea of like what that looks like.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to say some things. And again this
Speaker 2: was one of the reasons I was looking forward to
Speaker 2: talking with you. I want to say some hard traits,
Speaker 2: some uncomfortable things. Quite frankly, what is happening in Gaza
Speaker 2: is not just indescribable horror, but it is merely the
Speaker 2: most visible component of it. Right now, It's happening all
Speaker 2: around the world that people are being exploited, people are
Speaker 2: being used for slave labor, they are being oppressed, and
Speaker 2: by the way, a lot of it has been done.
Speaker 2: And this is a hard truth. And this doesn't make
Speaker 2: me comfortable. It doesn't make anybody comfortable. This is one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why it's easier to just say, you know,
Speaker 2: the next election is everything, don't worry about anything besides it. Right, Listen,
Speaker 2: what has happened with the United States of America, not
Speaker 2: just in the beginning in which capitalism was completely based
Speaker 2: on the subjugation of generations of people from the continent
Speaker 2: of Africa in order to build capitalistic wealth and build
Speaker 2: up the society that we live in. Now. People don't
Speaker 2: want to talk about that. They want to hide it.
Speaker 2: They want to like obfuscated behind like fairy tales of
Speaker 2: national mythologies. Right, it has been since at least the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties into the nineties. For decades now, we have
Speaker 2: been given a deal. The United States will live in
Speaker 2: relative consumer comfort. We will be able to buy a
Speaker 2: ton of probert that are going to cost a lot
Speaker 2: less than they should because we're going to find other people,
Speaker 2: particularly people in the Southern hemisphere, particularly people in other countries,
Speaker 2: people in places like China, you name it. They are
Speaker 2: going to be worked to the point of death, or
Speaker 2: they're going to be worked to death, and they're going
Speaker 2: to be paid if they get paid at all, since
Speaker 2: on the dollar. By the way, it's not even like
Speaker 2: men and women over the age of eighteen. We're talking
Speaker 2: about children. Those people, they're going to have their resources stolen.
Speaker 2: And by the way, we're going to go ahead and
Speaker 2: destroy the environment while we're at it. That deal gave
Speaker 2: us things like the iPhone, which allow us to scroll
Speaker 2: and not really pay attention to what's going on. That's
Speaker 2: the deal. The problem is this, and this is another
Speaker 2: hard truth. The reason we're talking about this is because
Speaker 2: it turned out the deal didn't last that long. We
Speaker 2: are now in a place where the United States of
Speaker 2: America is starting to feel some of the pressures that
Speaker 2: other places in the world have felt. The authoritarianism that
Speaker 2: made all of that possible has come home. And that's
Speaker 2: inevitably what happens because capitalism doesn't stop. It always has
Speaker 2: to have more profits, it always has to grow. So
Speaker 2: as a result, people are starting to look around. They're saying,
Speaker 2: this shit is not reasonable, it's wrong, and we need
Speaker 2: to change it. We need to have something that looks
Speaker 2: different than this, and unfortunately we are facing a time
Speaker 2: of choosing what is that different thing going to look like?
Speaker 2: And there are two options, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2: One is that the authoritarianism grows and that the people
Speaker 2: like us who would talk about this the student and
Speaker 2: by the way, the students are getting a first hand
Speaker 2: education in this. They are out there practicing their rights,
Speaker 2: they're saying what's right and wrong, and what are they
Speaker 2: getting in return. They're getting brutalized, they're getting bloodied, they're
Speaker 2: getting attacked, and they're being slandered. Let's tell the truth
Speaker 2: about that. By the way, for a country that supposedly
Speaker 2: thinks that children are a future and all this bullshit, no,
Speaker 2: we want children to be exploited and shut up about
Speaker 2: it and get in life line and go along with everything.
Speaker 2: And by the way, they are our conscience. They have
Speaker 2: not had the idealism beaten out of them. We're watching
Speaker 2: it right now an attempt to beat it out of them.
Speaker 2: And what happens is they get radicalized. They realize, oh
Speaker 2: my god, like everything that I thought was going on
Speaker 2: is now happening. So I have to stand against this.
Speaker 2: So it either gets worse and we either move into
Speaker 2: a police state where, by the way, we are going
Speaker 2: to be treated the same way that we have treated
Speaker 2: so called second and third world citizens. Yep, that's what's
Speaker 2: happening right now. And by the way, for everybody who
Speaker 2: I want Americans who are listening to this, think about
Speaker 2: for something for a second, think about every apocalyptic entertainment
Speaker 2: that you've ever enjoyed, whether it's a movie, television show,
Speaker 2: or book. The conditions that Americans are subjected to are
Speaker 2: what happens to second and third world people today. The
Speaker 2: fear is that it's going to be visited on you,
Speaker 2: and it is being visited on you. The only way
Speaker 2: we get out of this is we make common cause
Speaker 2: with the oppressed people around the world, whether it's gossens,
Speaker 2: whether it's be who are being exploited in slave labor,
Speaker 2: or whether it's the people who are having their resources
Speaker 2: and rights taken from them. We either make common cause
Speaker 2: with them and we make this change that you're talking about,
Speaker 2: or we dive deeper into it. That's it. And by
Speaker 2: the way, I need to say this because the thing
Speaker 2: that isn't being said and all this needs said. This
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that you go out and you vote for
Speaker 2: Donald Trump because somehow or another, like you're tired of
Speaker 2: Biden or whatever. You need to realize and be an
Speaker 2: adult about how politics works in this country. You need
Speaker 2: to understand that we currently have a system that is
Speaker 2: speeding to the right into straight white supremacists, neo fascism.
Speaker 2: You have one party that says, let's go faster. You
Speaker 2: have another party that's saying, well, we don't want that,
Speaker 2: but we also can't make many changes and all of that.
Speaker 2: There are alternatives between those two. We can have a
Speaker 2: different world. We can have a world where those things change,
Speaker 2: but it is not going to change by simply accepting
Speaker 2: this and by just saying like, well, this isn't realistic
Speaker 2: this conversation you're having and why because that's a softer
Speaker 2: abuse than the iron hand, than the rubber bullets, than
Speaker 2: the baton to the skull. It's a softer abuse. It's
Speaker 2: an enabling abuse.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: It's saying, well, I understand things are pretty screwed up
Speaker 2: and maybe things need to be changed, but we need
Speaker 2: to slow down and not be radical. No, we need
Speaker 2: to let our ethics and our morality and our conscience
Speaker 2: is free. We need to understand that this was never right.
Speaker 2: This was wrong way before us, it's wrong now, and
Speaker 2: it's going to be wrong in the future as long
Speaker 2: as we find it, and we need to start having
Speaker 2: serious conversations about that.
Speaker 1: You know. And I think too with regard to young
Speaker 1: people and basically telling them that you're not our future
Speaker 1: to shut up, sit down, get in line, and do
Speaker 1: what prior generations have done. The difference with Generation Z
Speaker 1: and prior generations too, is that there isn't going to
Speaker 1: be this softening of their principles as they get older,
Speaker 1: because they have the creature comforts around them that then
Speaker 1: stifle them, make them stagnant. Right, they aren't going to
Speaker 1: have the house and the picket fence and the car
Speaker 1: and the safe job. Right, They're not going to get
Speaker 1: those creature comforts that then turned people right from being
Speaker 1: the radical protesters during the Vietnam era into the Reagan yuppie,
Speaker 1: greedy capitalists that they turned into as they became forty
Speaker 1: and fifty and sixty years old. That's not going to
Speaker 1: happen because they are no longer have access to what
Speaker 1: used to be called the American dream. They have been
Speaker 1: economically terrorized from the time that they entered into secondary
Speaker 1: education with leaving six deep six figures in debt.
Speaker 2: I would also go ahead and ad something else that
Speaker 2: they have been literally terrorized. This country has made a decision,
Speaker 2: which is that profit matters over making sure that anybody
Speaker 2: lives not just a life, but does anybody actually live
Speaker 2: in safety. We have taken this generation, and I don't
Speaker 2: think I don't think it's a surprise that this is
Speaker 2: the generation that understands every time, every day that they
Speaker 2: go to school, that they might very well be slaughtered.
Speaker 2: And by the way, they have a bunch of adults
Speaker 2: who haven't taken care of them. They already they know
Speaker 2: full and well. And this isn't just like the left
Speaker 2: leaning ones. They all know that the climate is absolutely screwed.
Speaker 2: They know that nobody's doing anything to take care of
Speaker 2: any of these things. And what happens when that occurs.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I want to go ahead and say,
Speaker 2: this isn't just a political or economic crisis. This is
Speaker 2: a mental health crisis in a home where abuse is
Speaker 2: taking place. And I know this is someone who grew
Speaker 2: up in an abusive home. I know this from doing
Speaker 2: the studies. This is very very clear. When the adults
Speaker 2: are abusing the children, at some point or another stand
Speaker 2: up and say, I don't know what's going on, but
Speaker 2: this is wrong. And what do they get in return?
Speaker 2: They get abuse to shut them up and to keep
Speaker 2: them from speaking their truth, and they become socialized to
Speaker 2: what has happened to them. They are rejecting that right now.
Speaker 2: These are children who have had to go through active
Speaker 2: shooter drills, who have been told no one's coming to
Speaker 2: save you. And eventually, when your back is against the wall,
Speaker 2: you're told you don't have an economic future, you don't
Speaker 2: have an environment in future, things are only going to
Speaker 2: get worse. And every single day you need to think
Speaker 2: about the fact that life is fleeting. Was that breed desperation,
Speaker 2: It breeds the idea I need to do something about this.
Speaker 2: And when the cops go out and shoot them with
Speaker 2: rubber bullets, they've been prepared for this their entire lives.
Speaker 2: They've been told every day of their lives to expect
Speaker 2: bullets to be shot against them, in violence to be
Speaker 2: visited upon them. And one of the things that we
Speaker 2: have to realize, and it really really hurts to say this,
Speaker 2: I'm forty two. I realized back in two thousand and
Speaker 2: three when I was protesting against the Iraq war, I
Speaker 2: still have so much idealism. I thought that if we
Speaker 2: protested the right way, that the powerful people would hear
Speaker 2: it and come to their senses. Yeah, and do you
Speaker 2: know what I learned. I learned that doesn't happen. I
Speaker 2: looked up and by the way, this is another hard
Speaker 2: truth and inconvenience. You know what happened in two thousand
Speaker 2: and three. It was a bi partisan support for an
Speaker 2: illegal war to go after another country illegally and not
Speaker 2: just take out a dictator who, by the way, was
Speaker 2: an evil son of a bitch. It was to go
Speaker 2: ahead and destroy the entirety of their civilization, ruin all
Speaker 2: of their progress. Also, corporations could come in and absolutely
Speaker 2: raid them and make profits off of rebuilding the society
Speaker 2: that was unjustly destroyed. I thought that if I said
Speaker 2: the right thing. I was a poet back then, Oh,
Speaker 2: if I write the right poem, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it will make a difference. Right, if the right movie
Speaker 2: has made, the right book is written, people will come
Speaker 2: to their senses. And suddenly, when that doesn't happen, you
Speaker 2: look at the entire picture and you say, something is
Speaker 2: stridently wrong here and it's not going. And by the way,
Speaker 2: that spirit is what leads to social revolutions. That's what
Speaker 2: leads to the civil rights movement. It's a group of
Speaker 2: people who heard the stories of their parents and grandparents
Speaker 2: that things were not changed, that people with power did
Speaker 2: not come in and help them, and they realized, we
Speaker 2: have to be the ones to change this. What we're
Speaker 2: looking at right now is a generational war that is growing.
Speaker 2: And it's always what happens. These young people are always
Speaker 2: the canaries in the coal mines. It's why the students
Speaker 2: were the ones who said it, the lunch counters in
Speaker 2: the South, it's why the students were the ones who
Speaker 2: spoke out against the Vietnam War. That all of the
Speaker 2: adults were like, you don't understand this, this is beyond you.
Speaker 2: And now we look back and we're like, wow, all
Speaker 2: those people were correct, and this is another situation like that,
Speaker 2: And unfortunately the adults are reacting in the way that
Speaker 2: adults always do, which is to say, either wait for
Speaker 2: something to change. I promise you eventually will, or they
Speaker 2: react with violence. And that's what we're looking at right now.
Speaker 1: I always appreciate you like beyond because you break down
Speaker 1: in such a beautiful, articulate and passionate way every lie
Speaker 1: that we have been told right, that has gotten us here,
Speaker 1: because I think that too often, because we're not a
Speaker 1: nation that believes in history, right, the truth of history
Speaker 1: and the lessons of history. People think that this just happened, right,
Speaker 1: and we don't understand that this has been building. The
Speaker 1: collapse has been building for generations, and the writing has
Speaker 1: been on the wall and it has just been ignored
Speaker 1: so that a few people could get even more wealthy
Speaker 1: right off of the lies and subjugation and oppression that
Speaker 1: we've just all wilfully shrugged at.
Speaker 2: Well. And I, first of all, at the risk of
Speaker 2: being overly sentimental, I want to say, I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2: This is a time and I hope that your listeners
Speaker 2: look around and I want them to see that a
Speaker 2: lot of the people they thought were their allies, a
Speaker 2: lot of the people that they thought were on their side,
Speaker 2: that they are chanting for young people to be brutalized.
Speaker 2: They are saying, hey, you know, I don't like what's
Speaker 2: going on in Gaza either, but like we really just
Speaker 2: can't talk about it right now. On top of that,
Speaker 2: like what is being exchanged is that a lot of
Speaker 2: people who have let's call it what it is, middle
Speaker 2: class white collar jobs. Not a lot of power, right,
Speaker 2: but like a little bit of comfort. Like people are
Speaker 2: exchanging their morality and conscience for just shreds of what
Speaker 2: they deserve. They're doing again, it's a phone, it's having
Speaker 2: a law, and it's being like one of the few
Speaker 2: people in America who can afford a house, or you know,
Speaker 2: it's to not have healthcare, it's to not have childcare,
Speaker 2: it's to look around and see the people that you
Speaker 2: care about, or supposedly care about, being absolutely shredded by
Speaker 2: an oppressive system. We have to stop ransoming our morality
Speaker 2: and our conscience in this situation. We have to stand up.
Speaker 2: It's ugly, it's not comfortable. It is it is really
Speaker 2: really brutal, hard work. It's lonely, and that, by the way,
Speaker 2: is one of the reasons I appreciate you. And I
Speaker 2: find myself looking at other people of conscience, whether it's
Speaker 2: in the commentary space, or whether it's in the organizing space,
Speaker 2: or what it is. This is not an easy time
Speaker 2: to do what's right. I mean it is when you
Speaker 2: lay your head down on the pillow, but when you're
Speaker 2: out in the space, when you're watching day to day,
Speaker 2: when you're when you're when you're absorbing all of this,
Speaker 2: it's incredibly lonely. And I think if I can impress
Speaker 2: one thing on your listeners before we go, it's this,
Speaker 2: that loneliness is real. But you're not alone. We are
Speaker 2: surrounded by a lot of people who are more than
Speaker 2: willing to jettison this stuff and more been willing to
Speaker 2: countenance God knows how many children being destroyed right now
Speaker 2: around the world and like it is lonely, but you
Speaker 2: are not alone. And I remain optimistic. But it's only
Speaker 2: in living in that and sitting with it and being
Speaker 2: curious about it and acting on it. That's where we
Speaker 2: find each other. And I think that now more than ever,
Speaker 2: we have to find each other and we have to
Speaker 2: push for something better.
Speaker 1: H Jared, I can't thank you enough. I appreciate your
Speaker 1: words so so very much. Thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for making the time for woke AF and we're
Speaker 1: going to have you back on again soon.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Daniel.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, Dear friends on woke
Speaker 1: A app as always Power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.