WEBVTT - Unpacking Dystopian Greed 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:14.800 Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKP Daily with Me 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:21.280 your Girl, Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. I 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:27.480 have been struggling because the dystopian times that we are 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:34.360 living in they're wild and it is taking everything in 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:40.360 me not to just follow the breaking news of the 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:46.839 moment and to really unpack what is underneath the dystopia. 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:51.920 And so that's what we're gonna do today, is try 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:57.040 and get underneath the mayhem instead of just remaining on 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.960 the surface. We need to be asking ourselves bigger questions 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.240 about this moment, why we're here and how we got here, 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:08.240 because I feel as if we don't if we don't 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:12.840 understand truly how we got into this moment where our 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.479 democracy is had hanging on by a thread, we're never 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:19.040 going to figure out how we fix it. And now, 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:21.400 when I say fix it, I don't mean as if 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:27.360 we're going to experience what comes post the fixing, because 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:31.880 that is going to be for other generations. But what 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:35.679 I mean by if we don't go back, we're going 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.680 to keep creating the same cycle over and over again. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.959 I have been trying to figure out how to make 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.560 sense of this current moment that we're in. And what 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.080 I've said before is that I want to get to 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.200 the underneath, right, I don't want to remain on the 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:58.840 surface following the bouncing ball of fascism and everything that 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.280 Donald Trump is saying and doing and who is he, 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:04.880 who he's appointing to what and where. The fact is 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.960 is that none of that actually matters. I mean it will, right. 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:09.840 We know the harm that it's going to cause, We 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:11.799 know the pain that people are going to be in 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:16.040 that we are all going to collectively experience. But at 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:20.000 the end of the day, this is cyclical, right, what 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:22.640 we are running through and what is happening. And I 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:27.120 think that right now again what is being experienced through 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:32.760 this killing, the murder of the United Healthcare CEO, is 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:37.280 really drawing out the underneath, opening up the wound of 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.480 America that has been ever present. But we just keep 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:48.480 patching up the wound of inequality, right of economic inequality, 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:54.520 of racial inequality, of gender inequality. Like what has come 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.320 up in twenty twenty four and what's been coming up 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:03.840 is the driving force behind the greed right, the hatred 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.799 that has gotten us here. And I continue to say 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:11.080 that I am so disgusted with the current democratic establishment 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:15.000 right now, because they seem to not learn anything. And 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.239 so what I realize, and what I keep saying over 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.440 and over again, is that democrats are not going to 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.520 save us. I'm kind of in this space of really 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:29.840 like unpacking the greed that we are seeing that we 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.400 are all being exposed to and wondering like, how did 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.280 we get to this point where these billionaires are just 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:41.200 so insatiable right, Like it's never enough, Like they don't 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:44.440 have enough money, they don't have enough power. And it's 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:49.440 because capitalism has had us worship them like they were 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:54.520 the new gods. Right. We have turned our eyes away 0:03:54.600 --> 0:04:00.520 from actual right religion and we have all been worshiping capitalism. 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:02.560 And so what does that mean? That means that those 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.320 that are at the top of the pyramid, the one percent, 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:11.000 we've looked at them and admired them and adored them, 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:16.159 followed their shows and follow their lives and say that 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:18.680 they're better than us because they have more than us. 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.520 But we've never actually asked ourselves why they have more 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:25.680 to begin with. But the lie that's been told, the 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:30.080 lie that's been sold, is that if you have more, 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:35.919 then you're inherently better. You're inherently smarter than the rest 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:38.960 of us. We don't look at the people at the 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:43.719 lower end of the economic pyramid and say, wow, how 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.280 were they able to make a dollar stretched so far 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:50.440 given that they have so little? That's real ingenuity. How 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:54.680 you actually turn how you make a dollar grow and 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.160 go when you have so little. But no, we look 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.520 and we glorify those that the top, and we never 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.000 stop and question how they got that fucking money to 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.919 begin with. I remember growing up actually on and I 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:12.800 will date myself Scrooge McDuck, Right, Scrooge McDuck had this 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:15.800 huge house in palace, and he had his nephews that 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.479 were living with him, and he had this vault, you know, 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.920 full of gold coins, and in that in that cartoon 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.919 really taught you about capitalism and how money actually works. 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.960 But the thing that we have not understood truly is that, like, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:37.159 there are those that started way ahead of the starting line, 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:39.680 And so we've been fed the lie that if you 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:42.200 just work hard enough, you'll be able to catch up 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.880 to those that are wealthy because they inherited that wealth. 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.080 So the lie of capitalism is that all you need 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:51.800 to do is just work harder and work smarter. And 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.880 those that are the wealthiest, they work the hardest and 0:05:56.000 --> 0:06:01.560 were the smartest. That's the fucking gag. They're not. They 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:05.680 just inherited their wealth, and then the rest of us 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.359 are forced into the cogs of the machine, believing that 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.960 if we just run faster, if we just do more, 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.240 if we just produce more, then we'll catch up to them. 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:20.520 So in this moment, we find ourselves reeling from this 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:26.839 murder because it exposes so very much about all the 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.719 things that are wrong. But we've been fed the lie 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.719 that we were wrong, that if we're not wealthy, that 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:38.760 if we don't have that security, then it must be 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:43.440 on us rather than on the system that's keeping us 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.800 stuck and keeping that kind of dollar floating in front 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:50.560 of our faces that we're chasing after. And so what 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:55.479 this murder has unearthed is questioning, wait a minute, who 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:59.920 actually is a murderer, because now there are multiple definitions, 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:05.800 and who should we really be chastising and questioning right now? 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:11.360 So I come in today with just my mind super 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:17.680 heavy and really trying to unpack the amount of lies 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.560 that we have all been fed in There's something about 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.920 getting older that has me really believe that like learning 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:30.040 never stops because we have to unlearn so much in 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.400 order to get to the truth, which they they the 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:38.040 big they don't want us to actually see. This is 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:41.000 why you ban books, This is why you threaten to 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:45.720 shut down information networks. This is why Elon Musk bought 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:49.800 Twitter and then destroyed it because the little peons that 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.720 they see us. The people were gathering, right, The people 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.000 were communicating, which means that then we were all of 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:59.640 a sudden going to realize that we were in each 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:03.800 other problem. We all had the same enemy. But if 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:10.000 you break down modes of communication and don't allow people 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:15.480 to assemble, then they'll readily eat the lies that you're 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.160 feeding them because they'll be nothing to rebuff it. So 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:25.480 Elon Musk saw Twitter. The billionaire class saw Twitter as 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.600 a problem to be solved because the people are getting 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:34.000 too ahead of themselves. The people are organizing too much. 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.480 It's really wild when you start to think about it. 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.400 I saw this post and it read you can be 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:46.040 driven into homelessness by someone like Brian Thompson. Brian Thompson 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:51.760 being the CEO who was murdered from United Healthcare. You 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:55.160 can be driven into homelessness by someone like Brian Thompson 0:08:55.559 --> 0:09:00.000 then legally murdered by someone like Daniel Penny, the man 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:05.160 who killed Jordan Neely, the black homeless man and street performer, 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:10.520 by putting him in a chokehold and suffocating him to death. 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:15.960 And he was just acquitted because he was supposedly helping 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.199 the people on the train. He goes on to say, 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:24.199 while the money that could have saved you is spent 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.800 on murdering children in Gaza. So let me read that again. 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:34.079 You can be driven into homelessness, bankrupted by a healthcare 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:39.320 system that profits off of your despair and profits off 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:44.000 of denying you access to life saving healthcare. Then you 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:48.920 can be legally murdered by a white vigilante on a train, 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.480 and all the while, the money that you're paying into 0:09:53.520 --> 0:10:00.359 the system is being sent elsewhere to murder women, children, 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:05.320 and men. Who is the depraved? Humanity is humanity, and 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:10.760 depravity is depravity. But this struck me. People say, oh, well, 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.280 Jordan Neely was threatening other people on the train. YO. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.280 If you live in New York City, there are lots 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.480 of shit that pop off in the subway station. There 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:23.360 are lots of things that pop off in the street 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:27.920 all the time. Tell me why this former military man 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:33.839 didn't release at some point the chokehold on Jordan Neely. 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:37.000 Why is it acceptable for us to commit murder in 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:40.560 broad daylight but only when we can say, oh, I 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:45.160 feared for my life. It's the same refrain, folks, that 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:49.920 police officers and vigilantes have used in order to kill 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:53.280 black people. That is my truth. I live in New York. 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:59.120 There are people that are on these streets because of 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.040 the mental health care system has failed them. So what 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:08.320 this piece is saying right here, it's this system failed 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:13.120 Jordan Neely, which had him on a train begging people 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.920 for help, begging for a dollar. He was sick, and 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:22.360 so then that day it's okay for murder to be 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.280 committed and then use it as a ruse and say, oh, 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:28.920 I was trying to help other passengers on the train. 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:32.559 George Zimmerman too, said that he feared for his life 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.760 when he killed sixteen year old Trayvon Martin. You can 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.400 have your opinions, but we we literally have got to 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.720 dig deeper and really understand the root of the root 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:49.080 of what is happening here, what we are allowing ourselves 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.880 to think of as normal. So the killing of a 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:58.240 wealthy CEO, that's wrong. But the killing of Jordan Neely, 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:04.360 that's okay. Our humanity is being tested right now. Our 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:08.440 humanity is being tested by what it is that we 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.600 allow to sit okay on our spirits. Those young people 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:16.080 on the college campuses last year were being told that 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.920 they were radical, they were Antifa, they were this and 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:21.839 the other thing. Why because they care about what they 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:25.680 are seeing come across their social media platforms. And what 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.720 politicians were telling them is that no, no, it's okay 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:32.880 to see bits and pieces of babies that have been 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:37.640 blown apart. It's okay to bomb hospitals and universities, and 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:43.680 that somehow calling out this massive destruction and murder somehow 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:49.400 makes them the villains. That's extraordinarily insane. But we make 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:53.680 we continue to make these little compromises. This system, this 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:58.040 killing machine, this system, it continues to have us make 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:03.319 these compromises. And in the meantime, folks, we are compromising ourselves, 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.320 our humanity, and our values, and it is destroying us. 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:12.920 It is destroying us. Elon Muss is now worth four 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:19.240 hundred billion dollars, four hundred billion dollars, and this is 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:26.160 being celebrated as opposed to being questioned, no person should 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:30.280 be worth as much as a fucking country. While there 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.280 are people that are going hungry, while there are people 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.680 that are on housed, while there are people that can't 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:40.960 afford medication. And yet this is our new deity Elon 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:46.680 Musk and this billionaire fucking oligarch class because they extract 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:50.440 from us and then we turn around and then worship 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:57.000 their wealth. Folks, Come on, come on, we have got 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.480 to see the writing that is on the wall here. 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.760 Reality TV. Let me go off on a tangent for 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:09.319 a minute. Reality TV started where it was like, oh, 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:11.920 look at these look at these poor SAPs, look at 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.920 these folks, look at these people eating eyeballs, or look 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.720 at these people living in trailer parks or what have you. 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:21.160 And reality TV made us feel good about ourselves because 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:23.600 we were not them. And then all of a sudden, 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.120 it flipped the script and we went back to, you know, 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.160 the lifestyle of the rich and famous, and all of 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:33.560 a sudden, now we're watching the Real Housewives of This 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:37.080 and the Kardashians and blah blah blah and Super Sweet sixteen. 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:41.960 That and everything right was about materialism. How much can 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.640 you amass? How much can you flaunch, so much so 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.600 that several of those real housewives would end up bankrupt 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:54.880 or in jail because everything was smoking, mirrors and a lie. 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:59.320 But they knew that if they could trick the public 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.400 into thinking that they were wealthy, because we worship wealth, 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:07.720 then they would be able to trade on their brands, 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:12.840 because we've been programmed into worshiping wealth because wealth is 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:18.080 somehow equated with intelligence, with brilliance, as opposed to just 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.920 being a really good fucking scammer or being able to 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:27.400 turn your millions into billions. You know, I harken back 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:31.840 to the film, the movie Wall Street, remember the original 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:36.480 Wall Street, Gordon Gecko and greed is good. We were 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:40.840 all fed that. That's how people said, whatever happened to 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.400 the hippies, they turned into yuppies. They like nice things, 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.320 and so you feed on that and you give more 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:53.760 and more and more, and then you realize people aren'tsatiable. 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.600 The more they have, the more they want. It wasn't 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.760 enough to just have a mansion. Now you need all 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:03.280 of these MC mansions. It wasn't enough to fly first class. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.440 Now you have a PJ, you have a private jet. 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:09.800 Everything is about more and more and more, and so 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:12.640 then you get here this piece that was in The 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:17.040 Hill back in September, the Hill dot com billionaires started 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:22.720 a class war. Americans must fight back. Let me say this, 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:27.840 This is what the author writes. Wealth is not a 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:32.520 moral failing, and Americans have long revered the entrepreneurial spirit 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.280 that animates small business owners to build a modest fortune 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:40.400 for themselves and their families. But a growing class of 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:46.600 malignant oligarchs has initiated a campaign to exert unchallenged control 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:51.960 over our democratic institutions and our economy. The war has 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:56.920 already started, and the billionaires have a significant head start. 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:01.600 He goes on to say, like a camp, sir, billionaire 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:07.639 control is metastasizing in every facet of America's socio political 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:13.520 and socioeconomic system. They control newspapers, television stations, and every 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:18.560 major social media platform. Last year, we learned the extent 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:23.240 of oligarchical control over our judiciary when it was revealed 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:28.600 that a handful of billionaires were showering Supreme Court justices 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:37.080 with lavish vacations and obscenely inappropriate gifts. And folks, what 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:42.720 happened after the big reveal of how Clarence Thomas has 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:47.760 a sugar daddy. How Justice Alido has a sugar dad. 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:53.320 What happened not a goddamn thing. So we know that, 0:17:53.760 --> 0:18:01.200 for instance, Peter Thiel, multi billionaire right wing fascists, bought JD. 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:05.520 Vance and installed him in the Senate. We know that 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:10.840 Chief Justice John Roberts allowed for with the decision and 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:16.280 Citizens United, an influx of overwhelming amount of money that 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:20.800 now in order to run for office it costs a 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:25.440 billion dollars plus. And now these people who have amassed 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.840 as well, it's not enough for them to have money, 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.359 money of like a small nation. No, now they want 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:38.560 our democracy, they want everything. They want the justice system, 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:43.640 they want Congress, they want the presidency, and with this 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:48.120 incoming regime they have it all. And so when we 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:53.040 sit back and we look at how we are continuing 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:59.240 to be lied to, bamboozled, hustled out of our little 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.399 bit of resource that we're trying to hold together like 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.840 a bunch of squirrels, as they are fucking shaking the trees. 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.720 And their goal is to continue to pit us against 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:15.720 one another so that we remain fighting over the scraps 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:20.399 and the artificial scarcity that they create. But now in 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.240 order to ensure that we don't protest, that we don't 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:29.240 rise up. They have the government too, folks. It is 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:36.000 if Elon paid ninety percent taxes, he'd still have forty 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.960 billion dollars. Is that not sick? I don't know if 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:42.480 those exact numbers are right, but the fact is is 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:46.600 that if he actually did fucking right and paid taxes, 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.840 he'd still be a multi billionaire. His eleven fucking kids 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:52.920 would still be taken care of, as well as their 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.720 grandkids and their grandkids and so on and so forth. 0:19:56.280 --> 0:20:02.800 But they're insatiable and there is never never enough. Meanwhile, 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.760 how did Donald Trump get into office this time lying 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.199 to people about the economy, telling them that he alone 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.560 can fix it? And then oh, well, last today is 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.280 he's ringing in the bell for the stock exchange. What 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:21.040 did he say, folks, Ooh, it's going to be very 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:26.040 hard to lower grocery prices, the very thing that he 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:30.120 told folks that he was going to do. But now 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:36.000 he says, ooh, not going to be able to do that, right, surprise, surprise, 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:40.160 And the post says, oh, maga got played. Everybody did 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.160 who thought that Donald Trump was actually going to make 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.560 good on any of his words? Donald Trump has said 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:51.280 to everyone while he was running for a president that 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:55.119 he was not interested in helping anyone, but it was 0:20:55.200 --> 0:21:01.840 okay because we all hate the same people. I tell 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:06.840 you that it's a dark place. It's a dark place 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:10.040 that we're in, But I often say that we've been 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:15.639 here before. These are conversations that have been had, and 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.040 so I want to bring up. This is an excerpt 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:24.920 from a piece that Frederick Douglas wrote for The Northern Star, 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.960 and he said this, let me give you a word 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:32.720 of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:37.119 progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:40.880 to her August claims have been born of earnest struggle. 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:45.000 If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:49.000 who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:54.560 men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:59.240 rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:03.159 the roar of its mighty waters. The struggle may be 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:06.160 a moral one, or it may be a physical one, 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:10.800 or it may both moral and physical, but it must 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:18.280 be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:22.119 has and it never will find out just what a 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:25.760 people will submit to, And you have found out the 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:29.680 exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:34.200 upon them. And these will continue till they are resisted 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:39.800 with either words or blows, or with both. The limits 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:44.760 of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:50.320 they oppress. In the light of these ideas, negroes will 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:54.000 be hunted in the north and held and flogged at 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:56.800 in the south, so long as they submit to those 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:01.960 devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:06.000 Men may not get all they pay for in this world, 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:09.440 but they must certainly pay for all they get. If 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:12.800 we ever get free from the oppression and wrongs heaped 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:16.800 upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:20.640 do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:24.920 need be, by our lives and the lives of others. 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:32.639 This is Frederick Douglas y'all completely different time, completely different century, 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:41.720 and yet offering the same truth. Greed right. But if 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:45.960 you can have people locked up in struggle, if you 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:49.400 can figure out the social engineering and just how to oppress, 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:51.440 and what they will take, and if you give them 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:54.040 a little bit of scraps, if you give white people 0:23:54.119 --> 0:23:57.560 a little bit more then black people, then oh, they'll 0:23:57.600 --> 0:24:00.720 continue to go along with the get along the oppression 0:24:00.720 --> 0:24:03.800 and the racism because they think that they are within 0:24:03.960 --> 0:24:08.800 reach of Elon Musk, They're in within reach of Zuckerberg, 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:13.159 just one lottery ticket away, one wish away, and so 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:16.240 they continue to give the people their oppressors the power 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:20.080 to step on their necks. This is why I say 0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:23.919 that this moment is not calling for us to follow 0:24:24.000 --> 0:24:29.240 the bouncing ball and all the distractions that this second 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:33.600 Trump regime are going to usher in. It is asking 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:38.600 us folks to dig deeper to get to the actual 0:24:38.760 --> 0:24:42.200 truth of the matter. I am not saying that wealth 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:45.560 is bad. I am saying that greed is I am 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:51.320 saying that being celebrated for your thievery is the problem 0:24:51.880 --> 0:24:58.200 that worshiping wealth. While most Americans can barely pull together 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:03.879 emergency funding, an emergency saving not because they don't work hard, 0:25:04.560 --> 0:25:07.840 but because the system has been rigged for them to 0:25:07.920 --> 0:25:12.000 remain on an absolute fucking hamster wheel. And so long 0:25:12.040 --> 0:25:14.800 as you keep running and just trying to keep your 0:25:14.840 --> 0:25:17.959 head above water, you don't have time to really question 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:21.000 and on earth and dig down into how you got 0:25:21.040 --> 0:25:23.720 into that situation in the first place, because all of 0:25:23.760 --> 0:25:27.040 the messages are telling you that you are the problem 0:25:27.200 --> 0:25:29.760 and not the system, because the system is too big 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:37.360 to fix. We are in a time of a great reveal. 0:25:38.240 --> 0:25:42.840 And there was at one time a young rapper and 0:25:43.040 --> 0:25:47.680 also a poet who offered up a lot of hard 0:25:47.800 --> 0:25:53.160 truths about America that folks didn't want to hear. And 0:25:53.680 --> 0:25:59.680 arguably there are courses taught about his critique and a 0:25:59.760 --> 0:26:05.879 now on America, and that is Tupac Shakur. And I 0:26:05.960 --> 0:26:11.080 want to offer one of the most famous lines, got 0:26:11.119 --> 0:26:14.880 money for war, but can't be the poor. Tupac Shakur, 0:26:16.240 --> 0:26:20.639 a child of a black panther, offered a deep critique 0:26:21.440 --> 0:26:26.600 on America using rap music. Rap music be nothing more 0:26:26.640 --> 0:26:32.600 than poetry put two intense beats about the human experience. 0:26:33.320 --> 0:26:37.600 Tupac talks about the fact that how can we live 0:26:37.640 --> 0:26:41.800 in a society where there are billionaires, where somebody can 0:26:41.840 --> 0:26:43.960 be worth And at the time of this right he 0:26:44.119 --> 0:26:48.800 was talking about like forty billion dollars. I just showed 0:26:48.840 --> 0:26:54.119 you four hundred billion dollars somebody being worth, and he's saying, 0:26:54.200 --> 0:26:56.480 how is it that we can live in a society 0:26:56.520 --> 0:26:59.720 where somebody can have forty billion dollars and people are 0:26:59.760 --> 0:27:03.159 on hous that you can walk past people that are 0:27:03.160 --> 0:27:06.840 begging on the street that have nothing, and you have 0:27:06.880 --> 0:27:09.239 three thousand dollars in your pocket and you throw them 0:27:09.280 --> 0:27:11.320 twenty five cents, And yet you want to judge how 0:27:11.320 --> 0:27:13.440 they're spending that money. He said, if you want to 0:27:13.520 --> 0:27:15.320 drink it, drink it. If you want to shoot it up, 0:27:15.320 --> 0:27:18.359 shoot it up. What you do is your business. But 0:27:18.480 --> 0:27:22.199 we would all have more if we thought in the collective, 0:27:22.920 --> 0:27:26.800 if we thought about actually what it is that it 0:27:26.920 --> 0:27:30.960 means to be part of a whole, and not find 0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:34.760 ourselves thinking that we are better right because we have 0:27:34.880 --> 0:27:37.639 a little bit more money than the person that is begging. Folks, 0:27:37.840 --> 0:27:42.280 it is just one emergency. We are just one emergency, 0:27:42.359 --> 0:27:47.119 one disaster, one tragedy away from having our handout and 0:27:47.200 --> 0:27:52.000 relying on the kindness of strangers. That's the situation that 0:27:52.200 --> 0:27:57.159 the insatiable greed of the one percent has put America in. 0:27:57.280 --> 0:28:00.239 And now they are getting ready to take control and 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:05.639 power over everything, and if we do not stand united 0:28:06.600 --> 0:28:11.199 in this moment, in this time, they will succeed. But 0:28:11.359 --> 0:28:16.320 as we continue to say that no one right can 0:28:16.400 --> 0:28:21.680 make you inferior without your fucking consent. So we cannot 0:28:21.960 --> 0:28:27.200 fall for folks the lie that tells us that somehow, 0:28:27.240 --> 0:28:29.639 because we have a little bit more than the person 0:28:29.760 --> 0:28:33.720 next to us, that somehow we are better. We're not. 0:28:34.800 --> 0:28:38.040 And things are going to get harder because they're purposefully 0:28:38.080 --> 0:28:42.200 being constructed in that way, because a desperate people and 0:28:42.280 --> 0:28:47.920 an ignorant people are a malleable people. A desperate people 0:28:48.240 --> 0:28:52.960 and an ignorant people are a malleable people because you 0:28:53.040 --> 0:28:57.200 do not have the energy to withstand their blows, so 0:28:57.360 --> 0:29:01.160 you cower in defense before they even raise their hands. 0:29:01.640 --> 0:29:06.120