Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to okate F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: On today's show, we get into a conversation with our friend,
Speaker 1: our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, and we talk
Speaker 1: to him about the kind of stages of grief that
Speaker 1: we continue to find ourselves in three weeks removed from
Speaker 1: this election, and what is it going to take for
Speaker 1: us to be able to navigate through and to find
Speaker 1: the strength again to imagine what resistance looks like in
Speaker 1: the new Trump regime. I think that it's important, and
Speaker 1: I say this in the interview with Jonathan, that we
Speaker 1: actually take this time to feel our feelings, that we
Speaker 1: take this time not to do a series of finger
Speaker 1: pointing or the ways in which you know, this policy
Speaker 1: measure wasn't talked about enough, or that policy measure wasn't
Speaker 1: talked about enough, but actually really feeling the grief and
Speaker 1: the disappointment and the anger that many feel towards half
Speaker 1: of this country right now, this kind of disorientation around
Speaker 1: who we are and who we will be over the
Speaker 1: next several years under the Trump regime. And you know,
Speaker 1: how do we find our way back in this moment
Speaker 1: of darkness, back to the light. What does it mean
Speaker 1: to do that? And so Jonathan and I, you know,
Speaker 1: go through this conversation because, as I've said to all
Speaker 1: of you, I am in the midst of feeling a
Speaker 1: whole host of things where I feel one that the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party is as responsible for getting us to this
Speaker 1: position as the Republican Party is, and that maybe it
Speaker 1: is time for a multi party system. But do we
Speaker 1: jump right into the fixing and the doing before we
Speaker 1: actually move through the feeling. So that conversation with Jonathan
Speaker 1: is coming up next, folks. You know that whenever we
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to sit down with our in house doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel, we are always thrilled for the opportunity
Speaker 1: to get your analysis. Jonathan. We are three weeks removed
Speaker 1: from the election, and I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I can't seem to move in a straight line on this.
Speaker 1: I am up and down. I'm not in a place
Speaker 1: of how could this happen? I'm just like, there is
Speaker 1: just this overwhelming sense of grief around America right now
Speaker 1: that I have, and also just the desire to really disconnect.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to ask you, like about kind of
Speaker 1: this process. Is it like going through and maneuvering through
Speaker 1: an unexpected death, Like is it like dealing with news
Speaker 1: that a family member is ailing and they're not going
Speaker 1: to make it? Like how do you make sense of
Speaker 1: these feelings?
Speaker 2: If you talk to people on the right, they're very
Speaker 2: energized right now, they're very optimistic, they're very upbeat. They
Speaker 2: won the game, right and our side loss, and so
Speaker 2: the question is like, how do you respond to that?
Speaker 2: I guess I'm seeing a number of different responses. One is,
Speaker 2: as we've seen a lot of finger pointing. Another is,
Speaker 2: and I've seen this so widely. This is just me
Speaker 2: talking as a person, not as a researcher, disengagement or disbelief,
Speaker 2: like so many people are like, Oh, it's not going
Speaker 2: to be that bad, it's not going to be that different,
Speaker 2: Like a kind of acceptance minimizing and then the resistance
Speaker 2: and that kind of stuff like we saw before, right,
Speaker 2: And so I find actually the minimize I mean, of
Speaker 2: course an emotional roll crushure too, because everybody's just tired.
Speaker 2: Like we had this huge election, and remember the feeling
Speaker 2: like when you won an election, you feel great, You're like, okay,
Speaker 2: let's get started. It's energy and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But now we have the opposite, which is we got
Speaker 2: our best kicked, and so there's a sense of helplessness.
Speaker 2: There's a sense of I worked so hard and I
Speaker 2: have nothing to show for it. There's just a resignation
Speaker 2: all those things. And I don't know, I mean, there's
Speaker 2: all seem like normal human responses honestly to the situation
Speaker 2: we're in right now. But I guess I think I've
Speaker 2: mentioned this before, but like, I have a colleague who's
Speaker 2: from a country that was a democracy and turned into
Speaker 2: a totalitarian regime actually, and a couple of friends from
Speaker 2: different places, one in Europe when in Asia specifically, I
Speaker 2: always ask them, like, what's it like when you're thriving
Speaker 2: democracy became single party rule telleritarian thing and people, you know,
Speaker 2: both people I've really stuck talked to a length about
Speaker 2: this said, the scariest thing is not like the resistance
Speaker 2: was crushed. We kind of saw that happening. It was
Speaker 2: more that kind of people just kind of accepted it.
Speaker 1: It kind of impacted their like was there an apathy
Speaker 1: would that be the word or not? Apathy?
Speaker 2: Like resignation. All of a sudden, people were like different.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like remember in twenty sixteen when Trump pointed
Speaker 2: people were like out there in the streets and in
Speaker 2: march and all these kind of things. But now like
Speaker 2: many of the things Trump says make kind of sense
Speaker 2: to people, or people minimize it or they're afraid and
Speaker 2: they just want the bad stuff not to happen to them.
Speaker 2: And we hear this a lot, right, We hear this
Speaker 2: a lot, and so the question is kind of what
Speaker 2: do you do in the face of that? But I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, one of my colleagues told me people just
Speaker 2: accepted it as their daily life. They started to do
Speaker 2: whatever they needed to survive, and people I never would
Speaker 2: have expected started telling on their neighbors. And that's kind
Speaker 2: of what happens. Is people are in this system and
Speaker 2: then the system changes, and then I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 2: not related, but I'm thinking, like, for example, about those
Speaker 2: democracy protesters in Hong Kong right now. For example, ten
Speaker 2: years ago, who could ever imagine Hong Kong was a
Speaker 2: thriving democracy and there's no way China would upend that
Speaker 2: because it was such a great financial boom and China
Speaker 2: would never commit like economic suicide. That would be totally irrational.
Speaker 2: And now all those protesters are in trial or in
Speaker 2: prison or things like that. China's not doing great economically,
Speaker 2: but that was the price that they paid to enrich
Speaker 2: certain people and create power for certain people. And Hong
Speaker 2: Kong is still there, but it's a shell of what
Speaker 2: it was economically before. And so you know, it's just
Speaker 2: the logic through which people say, oh, this is never
Speaker 2: going to happen turns out not to not to be
Speaker 2: the logic that actually works.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm wondering, is it's never going to happen or
Speaker 1: it's not going to be that bad? Is that self protection?
Speaker 1: Is it disassociation? Given that history is in fact, like
Speaker 1: a really good guide in this place. And again, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that things will dramatically, to your point, change
Speaker 1: in twelve months, but they will this slow, this creeping
Speaker 1: fascism that I think has been creeping for the last
Speaker 1: nine years. Is it self protection, the disassociation, the belief
Speaker 1: that it couldn't possibly or it won't be that bad.
Speaker 1: Is that a form that people are taking in order
Speaker 1: to kind of steal themselves.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there are two ways to think about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, of course people feel defeated, and they feel resigned,
Speaker 2: and they feel exhausted. The answer that I find frustration
Speaker 2: with is like people thinking that this is going to
Speaker 2: be the same as what happened in twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 2: it ain't.
Speaker 1: It is not.
Speaker 2: We're going We're in a different world right now. And
Speaker 2: so you know, I've had talked to numerous people who
Speaker 2: are like, oh, it's just the same as twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: and we got through it and stuff like that. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but the challenge is really different right now. This is
Speaker 2: a much different entity than Trump taking over while all
Speaker 2: of the guardrails were still in place in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: And that's not the case now. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: look just at what the Supreme Court by itself, Alito
Speaker 2: and on down are aiming to do with many core
Speaker 2: foundations of education, reproductive rates, guns, all those kind of things.
Speaker 2: Is this is not twenty sixteen. And so I've been
Speaker 2: trying to explain to people, hey, look, man, it's a
Speaker 2: lot different right now. But I think the other thing
Speaker 2: is we have to look at ourselves. I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just thinking of Jason Stanley's book about
Speaker 2: the rise of authoritarianism, and one of the most important
Speaker 2: things for that to rise is a fractured opposition. And
Speaker 2: so I think it's really a time also for us
Speaker 2: to really look at our if you're not in the
Speaker 2: governing party right now, look at ways. You know, we
Speaker 2: have to rebuild a coherent, almost monolithic opposition or we're
Speaker 2: just going to keep getting fragmented. And so I think
Speaker 2: that there's also a chance to reflect on ourselves, because
Speaker 2: I think strategy going forward is really important.
Speaker 1: You know what's really funny is that no one that
Speaker 1: I am talking to is in strategy mode. They're in shock,
Speaker 1: they're in protection mode, they're in cya mode. There is
Speaker 1: not a lot of forward thinking. And I think that
Speaker 1: there is just this place of emotional and physical haze
Speaker 1: that has come from the last hundred and some odd
Speaker 1: days of like utter exhaustion. And I do think that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Steve Bannon's strategy of flooding the zone
Speaker 1: has been like a tsunami. Even as we're going through
Speaker 1: each and every single appointment and each person that's coming up.
Speaker 1: I did a video yesterday and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be honest I actually don't care. I
Speaker 1: am in a place of like he could appoint Daffy
Speaker 1: Duck at this point, and I actually don't give a fuck.
Speaker 1: And for me, it is a genuine numbness, like I'm like,
Speaker 1: what is the point of following each and every single
Speaker 1: one of these appointments? What's the point in following every
Speaker 1: single bouncing ball that Donald Trump and this administration is
Speaker 1: going to be putting out? Where's the end? And so
Speaker 1: I think that obviously there are people that are doing
Speaker 1: a lot of protectionism, particularly those in the nonprofit arena,
Speaker 1: given that you know, their entire organizations could potentially be
Speaker 1: shut down and name this terrorist organizations and then just
Speaker 1: go from there and what happens to those people and
Speaker 1: those entities and then the people that they were trying
Speaker 1: to help and protect. But I don't know, there isn't
Speaker 1: a lot of forward thinking, And I think that that
Speaker 1: both worries me and I also completely understand it because
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people, particularly black women,
Speaker 1: are just like, well, you wanted this, so go ahead,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I'm not engaging at the level or
Speaker 1: with the intensity that I did in twenty sixteen or
Speaker 1: that I did in twenty twenty, Like, I don't have it.
Speaker 2: It's so delicate right now, you know, honestly, because the
Speaker 2: Democrats lost for a number of reasons. I mean, Trump
Speaker 2: didn't overperform, We underperformed. And so the question is how
Speaker 2: did our coalition fall apart? And was that the end
Speaker 2: of the coalition or not? And so I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of reckoning that will happen. I also think
Speaker 2: that as the impact of what's going to happen on
Speaker 2: people's daily lives becomes more real, people hopefully will become
Speaker 2: more energized. But maybe that's not the case. Maybe people
Speaker 2: are afraid and exhausted and resigned, and that's the case.
Speaker 2: But I just think something has to happen, and maybe
Speaker 2: now is not the time. And you know, it's the holidays.
Speaker 2: People are tired. We lost. I hope we rebuilt. I
Speaker 2: really knew. But I would love it if he appointed
Speaker 2: Daffy Duck to me. That would be a game changer.
Speaker 2: I would actually about that. So if Daffy Ducks are
Speaker 2: the cards to me, that would change everything.
Speaker 1: You know. I will say this though, you know, to
Speaker 1: your point, like Democrats were not shellacked in this election.
Speaker 1: It is the narrowest margin of a win in modern times.
Speaker 1: He's under fifty percent in the popular vote, like it
Speaker 1: was such a narrow win. So I will push back
Speaker 1: on the coalition collapsing, because that would have been like
Speaker 1: if this had been a title wave. It wasn't. There
Speaker 1: were a number of people, millions of people that did
Speaker 1: not engage at all in this election, and I think
Speaker 1: that that is for a number of reasons, as is
Speaker 1: the case with every presidential election, where everyone that has
Speaker 1: the ability to vote does not vote.
Speaker 2: Well, let me let me be clear, then I agree
Speaker 2: with you. I think that going forward, what's going to
Speaker 2: happen is that people are going to have different stakes
Speaker 2: in what's happening, and so people who are wealthy are
Speaker 2: gonna do better, people who are white are potentially going
Speaker 2: to do better. As these immigration crackdowns start happening, people
Speaker 2: are going to either think I'm out there, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: take a risk, or it's not happening to me. I'm
Speaker 2: going to stay home, and that kind of thing. And
Speaker 2: so I guess I would hold by the fact that
Speaker 2: there were fault lines that helped contribute to our underperformance
Speaker 2: in this election, even though we was again a close election.
Speaker 2: We didn't win the election, and we didn't win a
Speaker 2: bunch of congressional and Senate seats that we probably should have,
Speaker 2: and so I do think that there were fault lines
Speaker 2: that we just don't have the luxury of having anymore,
Speaker 2: like either we're on the same team or we're not.
Speaker 2: And so creating a narrative about that, I think is
Speaker 2: going to be important because I just again, I just
Speaker 2: don't think we have a luxury of hashtag dismantle anything
Speaker 2: at this point. And agree, I agree with you, it's close,
Speaker 2: But I'm saying that as the effects of NBC potentially
Speaker 2: going away and squashing the Department of Education and then
Speaker 2: doing all these things in a way, it's just going
Speaker 2: to be harder to build that coalition, and so the
Speaker 2: fracturing is going to you know, we just have to
Speaker 2: be careful that the fracturing is not just about self
Speaker 2: interest but is about mobilization, which I think is going
Speaker 2: to be the challenge.
Speaker 1: So here's my thing. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: have been kind of reframing myself around these systems don't work,
Speaker 1: and they've never worked for black people, for people of color,
Speaker 1: for women. We've taken incremental changes and growth and have
Speaker 1: made them bigger than they are. When we look at
Speaker 1: the institutions that are going to be destroyed, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of sitting here Jonathan these days, and I'm just like, well,
Speaker 1: if your life expectancy, your viability, economic viability can all
Speaker 1: be determined by your zip code, by what elementary school
Speaker 1: and high school you went to, by your geographical location,
Speaker 1: and that continues to be a serious determining factor, then
Speaker 1: like the systems that were put in place to lift
Speaker 1: people up haven't when I look at like the difference
Speaker 1: in terms of education just in blocks in Brooklyn alone, right,
Speaker 1: depending on what area, what neighborhood in Brooklyn you are,
Speaker 1: if your child was able to get into a Magnet school,
Speaker 1: if you're you know, or you're in a regular public school,
Speaker 1: whatever determines everything. So in a way, I'm at a
Speaker 1: place where I'm just like, well, he's going to destroy everything.
Speaker 1: And we've been painting a rotten house for generations and
Speaker 1: haven't seen the racial wealth gap, haven't seen the gender gap,
Speaker 1: haven't seen any of these things decrease with any significance.
Speaker 1: And so I think that for some of the people
Speaker 1: that did stay home, they're taking some not all. Some
Speaker 1: just didn't give a fuck at all, but some were
Speaker 1: looking at this and saying, tell me what the serious
Speaker 1: differences have been. And at some point, maybe things just
Speaker 1: do need to be destroyed. Unfortunately, maybe there does need
Speaker 1: to be a significant loss of life for there to
Speaker 1: be a jarring out of like this complacency, out of
Speaker 1: this malaise of incrementalization.
Speaker 2: You and I have talked about this before, Like, I
Speaker 2: think the frustration is something that you and I can
Speaker 2: both see, right. I mean, it wasn't just that people
Speaker 2: stayed home. Plenty of working less people and people of
Speaker 2: color voted for Trump, and so that frustration is something
Speaker 2: that he really tapped into well by and spent a
Speaker 2: long time telling everybody the economy was great and it
Speaker 2: wasn't great for them. And so I think part of
Speaker 2: that issue is you and I talked about like the
Speaker 2: politics of joy, but I don't know the Republicans one
Speaker 2: hundred percent attack ADS and so we were on the
Speaker 2: defense the entire time, and so what you're talking about
Speaker 2: is real, of course is real. But again, I just
Speaker 2: I'm so wary of the politics of burning everything down
Speaker 2: because that imagines that we're going to build back a
Speaker 2: better system.
Speaker 1: No, no, no. What I'm saying is that we are
Speaker 1: not going to build back a better system. Somebody will.
Speaker 1: And it isn't our politics of burning things down. It's
Speaker 1: the politics that has now been elected whose plans are
Speaker 1: and strategy is to burn everything down. So if you
Speaker 1: have no mechanism of power, not in the House, not
Speaker 1: in the Senate, the people themselves are tired and exhausted.
Speaker 1: It is not the mentality of like, oh, let us
Speaker 1: get into like this is what their plan is. And
Speaker 1: so my thing is like, no, we this generation that
Speaker 1: is here right now is not going to be a
Speaker 1: part of the rebuild because there's going to be decades
Speaker 1: a generation of destruction and darkness that is coming. But
Speaker 1: at some point, as waters recede, there is a billback phase.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is that the majority of us
Speaker 1: won't be here for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I need Daffie Duck, honestly, right, I need
Speaker 2: that again, Like this is our moment. It just feels
Speaker 2: like crap. And then honestly, man, we need a narrative,
Speaker 2: like we need a unifying narrative. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: we have to figure out study what other people have done.
Speaker 2: I don't know, we need a narrative that kind of
Speaker 2: brings it back together. If the Democrats are not the
Speaker 2: party of the mainstream or the working class or people
Speaker 2: who are. I mean, we just don't have a narrative
Speaker 2: right now. So we need a narrative. And often narratives
Speaker 2: are defined in opposition. And so if Trump overplays his hand,
Speaker 2: it's easier to have a resistance narrative than when we
Speaker 2: just don't have a narrative right now. And so we're
Speaker 2: scrambling and terrified. And as you say, the issues for
Speaker 2: which you and I and many other people have fought
Speaker 2: for lives are serious risk right now. We've got to
Speaker 2: figure something out. We've got to figure something out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that at some point something will
Speaker 1: be figured out. But I think that what I encourage
Speaker 1: people to do is kind of move through their feelings
Speaker 1: and emotions at this point, because that's really all there
Speaker 1: is to do. And I think that where our problem
Speaker 1: comes is consistently in this rush to you know, build
Speaker 1: the plane while flying it. And I think that I'm
Speaker 1: at a point at least today, this week and this
Speaker 1: month where I'm just like, yeah, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: doing both, and like I actually just feel like sitting
Speaker 1: in this and seeing how it unfolds before I spring
Speaker 1: into action. And I think that there needs to be
Speaker 1: a deeper analysis and reflection before there is a new
Speaker 1: strategy and a message.
Speaker 2: I'm with you there. It's Thanksgiving. Everybody, take a breath,
Speaker 2: and then we can figure it out.
Speaker 1: We will as always, my friend, Jonathan, thank you for
Speaker 1: making the time for wokf appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Hang in there, We'll get back on our feet. It's
Speaker 2: just going to take a minute kind of realizing what's
Speaker 2: happening right now. One hundred.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Here folks on wokef
Speaker 1: as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.