Speaker 1: Good morning, Peeves, and welcome to ok F Daily with
Speaker 1: me your girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: In today's conversation with our dear friend, doctor Jonathan Metzel,
Speaker 1: we talk about where we think the energy is right
Speaker 1: now with less than two weeks to go until the election,
Speaker 1: and Jonathan gives his own anecdotes on his experience thus
Speaker 1: far trying to vote in Tennessee, and we talk about
Speaker 1: a bit of good news that early voting in battleground states.
Speaker 1: Tennessee is not a battleground, but early voting in battleground
Speaker 1: states are breaking records, and usually that bodes as a
Speaker 1: really good sign for Democrats. After Jonathan and I record,
Speaker 1: I went back and was looking at headlines that would
Speaker 1: surface later in the day, and it said Republicans are
Speaker 1: voting in historic numbers and Republicans are early voting, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, breaking records and all of these things.
Speaker 1: And so I realize we don't know who to believe
Speaker 1: and what to believe anymore. And that's kind of the
Speaker 1: point of MAGA and the point of Donald Trump over
Speaker 1: the last nine years of terrorism in this country is
Speaker 1: that we can no longer rely on polls, we can
Speaker 1: no longer rely on the news, we can no longer
Speaker 1: rely on institution. We don't know which way is up
Speaker 1: and which way is down, and nothing that used to
Speaker 1: make sense makes sense anymore. And a part of me
Speaker 1: feels like we are living inside of black mirror, living
Speaker 1: inside of Orwell's nineteen eighty four, that it's already here,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, oh, to be honest, how we
Speaker 1: backpedal out of this. Obviously, I think that the election
Speaker 1: of Kamala Harris would be a really major step in
Speaker 1: the right direction, But I'm on the fence of if
Speaker 1: that happens or not. Folks like, no one knows. None
Speaker 1: of us know, and we won't know, probably for a
Speaker 1: couple of days following the election. And that's what's so disheartening,
Speaker 1: I think, is that how could you have all of
Speaker 1: this information about Donald Trump and still think to yourself
Speaker 1: that he should lead this country is obscene and absurd.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, like I just said, so
Speaker 1: many of us, millions of us, feel absolutely disoriented and
Speaker 1: detached from what we've known to be normal and true,
Speaker 1: and that has been done on purpose, so that you
Speaker 1: can believe that a figure like Donald Trump, maybe he
Speaker 1: isn't as bad as people think he is. Fucking Ezra
Speaker 1: Cline who wrote that bullshit and the New York Times,
Speaker 1: And so I understand where people are in this moment,
Speaker 1: and all I can encourage you to do is find
Speaker 1: whatever grounds you, whether that be you know, meditation, walking
Speaker 1: your pet, gardening, you know, doing whatever grounds you and
Speaker 1: just allows you to feel and see and taste and
Speaker 1: smell like reality. Double down on that, because I feel
Speaker 1: that over the next couple of months we are going
Speaker 1: to be kind of just embedded deeply inside of this
Speaker 1: tornado of misinformation of disinformation, and you're not alone in
Speaker 1: your disorientation of where things are. So ground yourself. Really
Speaker 1: engage in community, in your own community, and stay sane,
Speaker 1: my friends, because we are in this for the long haul.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, my conversation with our friend, our in
Speaker 1: house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever
Speaker 1: we have the opportunity to speak with our in house doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel, we are always always thrilled and grateful. Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you are back in Tennessee, and Tennessee, I sent you
Speaker 1: a video. I will tell folks that I sent Jonathan
Speaker 1: a video because I am vacillating, Jonathan as time gets
Speaker 1: closer to the final day to vote, between feeling good
Speaker 1: and feeling really anxious, feeling excited and feeling really depressed.
Speaker 1: And then I watched this video of this white woman
Speaker 1: in Davidson, I think Davidson County in Tennessee, where you are,
Speaker 1: and she had just finished early voting. She'd gotten into
Speaker 1: her car and she'd burst into tears because in her
Speaker 1: twenty years of living in Tennessee and voting, is never
Speaker 1: experienced the type of lines and packed parking lot and
Speaker 1: she was just beside herself. I wanted to get your
Speaker 1: reactions to the video and then your own reactions to
Speaker 1: having voted already in Tennessee and just give us like
Speaker 1: a bit of the experience that you have.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny, I actually haven't voted yet, because.
Speaker 1: Oh you haven't voted yet. Okay.
Speaker 2: I went and the line was like around the block
Speaker 2: nine times, So actually had to get back to my
Speaker 2: day job. Like that woman in the video. Early voting
Speaker 2: is usually like ten minutes, and I got there and
Speaker 2: I'm just like, oh my god, So I'm going to
Speaker 2: go back again today. So it's interesting, right, we're in
Speaker 2: a really we're in such an information vacuum right now,
Speaker 2: Like it's so unprecedented. All the modeling we have doesn't
Speaker 2: account for anything that's happening now, Like are people being
Speaker 2: honest with the polls or are they hiding from the polls?
Speaker 2: What will be the effect of Kamala Harris engaging Liz
Speaker 2: Cheney And how are people going to respond to that?
Speaker 2: Well this push Elon Musk is saying he will reproduce
Speaker 2: with your wife if you vote, or something like that,
Speaker 2: and so it's just like all these weird things and
Speaker 2: all of it is so it's all so unprecedented, and
Speaker 2: so I understand that everybody's then focusing on their own
Speaker 2: their own world. Right in Tennessee, I've never seen more
Speaker 2: people vote than or talk about it or engaged. I've
Speaker 2: been having a lot of the candidates come to my
Speaker 2: class and they're saying the same thing. So I guess
Speaker 2: the question is what I liked about that video? As
Speaker 2: the woman said, we've been jerrymandered out of existence. That's
Speaker 2: what I feel like. People really felt like their vote
Speaker 2: didn't matter, and now people feel like their vote matters,
Speaker 2: and so it's kind of like trying to fight back
Speaker 2: against jerrymandering.
Speaker 1: Well, wait, hold on, because I don't want you. I actually,
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm going to shrink you for a moment
Speaker 1: because I actually don't want you to dive into posing
Speaker 1: a question. I want to ask you, like, in all seriousness,
Speaker 1: how does it feel? How has it felt? And how
Speaker 1: have the candidates that have visited your classes and they're
Speaker 1: all remarking in the same way that they've never seen
Speaker 1: lines in this manner that they've never seen people or
Speaker 1: heard people in conversation about voting. How does that actually feel?
Speaker 1: Regardless of where we think that these people are voting
Speaker 1: or who they're voting for, what does the actual experience
Speaker 1: feel like?
Speaker 2: I'd sell you what it has felt like for the
Speaker 2: past decade here. Is that member in the cartoons when
Speaker 2: somebody would get run over by the steamroller and then
Speaker 2: they're just like a flattened pancake on the road. That's
Speaker 2: what it's felt like to be a Democrat here for
Speaker 2: the past ten years. It's just there's something about germandering,
Speaker 2: the kind of gearmandering that we see in Tennessee. It
Speaker 2: does two things. First, it makes it you feel like
Speaker 2: your vote doesn't matter, because everything is so incredibly predetermined
Speaker 2: that you know you're voting out of a civic duty,
Speaker 2: but your vote doesn't count in a way. And that's
Speaker 2: just not not just for presidential elections, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: for everything. But the other thing about jerymandering is that
Speaker 2: it pushes the party in power. There's no checks and
Speaker 2: balances on the party in power, so it pushes them
Speaker 2: into what we see now, which is just pornographically obscene
Speaker 2: right wing extremist and this is probably be true whoever
Speaker 2: is in power, but it's like when there's no natural competitor,
Speaker 2: the rush is to go more extreme. And so in
Speaker 2: Tennessee we've had these terrible mess shootings, and then the
Speaker 2: party in power lets eighteen year olds walk down main
Speaker 2: Street with AR fifteen's without any training or regulation or
Speaker 2: anything like that. So I guess in a way, what
Speaker 2: we're seeing is this a moment of the natural limits
Speaker 2: of germandering, which is that the extreme nature then pushes
Speaker 2: back toward the center, which is what's nice about it's
Speaker 2: happening here in Tennessee. But I also want to just
Speaker 2: be clear, we've had the renaissance of a whole new
Speaker 2: kind of political engagement here in Tennessee, which I never
Speaker 2: thought i'd see was Covenant Moms after the Covenant School
Speaker 2: shooting here, who were Centrists or Republicans who were just
Speaker 2: sick of the stance on guns. But that's kind of
Speaker 2: broadened out to voting rights. Obviously, abortion is a huge, huge,
Speaker 2: huge issue here, and so I'm curious to see. I mean,
Speaker 2: you hear me being a little hesitant, and it's just
Speaker 2: because I've gotten my hopes up before, but this, somehow,
Speaker 2: this feels different. There is something, there's something happening here
Speaker 2: that I would pay attention to. Trump's going to win
Speaker 2: the presidential race. But everything else is just you know,
Speaker 2: we have got Gloria Johnson here, We've got the just Times.
Speaker 2: We're doing a huge event here about guns in next week.
Speaker 2: There's real activity here that is part about people being
Speaker 2: sick of the extreme nature of some of this. Part
Speaker 2: of it is that we've had a lot of people
Speaker 2: move here from other parts of the country who are
Speaker 2: not as extreme. So I would keep your eye on
Speaker 2: Tennessee right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is one of the reasons why I'm
Speaker 1: asking one. I think that your kind of description of
Speaker 1: gerrymandering is exactly the point. It is to squeeze out
Speaker 1: any hopefulness and any belief that you have any power, right,
Speaker 1: And that's like what has happened in Tennessee, what's happened
Speaker 1: in Texas is a microcosm of what Republicans want to
Speaker 1: do nationally. Your vote doesn't count. You squeeze out the hopefulness,
Speaker 1: and then people feel just depressed. The voting becomes depressed,
Speaker 1: and they're able to literally get away with murder. And
Speaker 1: so I think that what is happening, what we're seeing
Speaker 1: in Tennessee, what we saw with the early voting as
Speaker 1: the day started in North Carolina, in Georgia last week,
Speaker 1: you're seeing these historic numbers that are superseding twenty twenty
Speaker 1: by doubling the numbers from twenty twenty. And look, people's
Speaker 1: hopes get up and they get down. That's just the
Speaker 1: nature of being human. But I think that denying ourselves
Speaker 1: in this moment an opportunity to feel hopeful and allow
Speaker 1: that hopeful energy to spurn us forward. Like I feel
Speaker 1: like that also is really necessary and important, right, Like
Speaker 1: I don't want people to be like, well, I've had
Speaker 1: my hopes let down before. Yeah, you're human, it's going
Speaker 1: to happen. But I think that it's really encouraging to
Speaker 1: look at and for you, you know, from your first
Speaker 1: hand experience, to be like, yeah, early voting here usually
Speaker 1: in and out because nobody's doing it, and now you're
Speaker 1: having to go back a second day to vote. I
Speaker 1: think that that means something. What do you think I mean, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that abortion is very big there, but we
Speaker 1: know because of the Covenant shooting and because of what
Speaker 1: the legislature did by trying to quiet these mothers, trying
Speaker 1: to quiet any type of action, trying to censure and
Speaker 1: kick out the two Justins from the state House who
Speaker 1: were duly elected and then forced to do a special
Speaker 1: election and then censured again. I think that the egregious
Speaker 1: action that has been taken against the Tennessee three, and
Speaker 1: particularly the two young black men, the Justins, how do
Speaker 1: you think that that is playing out in this early
Speaker 1: voting that you're seeing, Like, how do you think that
Speaker 1: the civic engagement? Do you think it is at all
Speaker 1: connected with what folks have experienced by watching what Republicans
Speaker 1: have tried to do with this group.
Speaker 2: It's not just the bad treatment they got, it's actually
Speaker 2: what they tapped into and mobilized. I mean, there was
Speaker 2: a grounds well, there's a strong progressive streak here. There
Speaker 2: are many many young people who have felt left out,
Speaker 2: and I think what they were tapping into before they
Speaker 2: were censured, before all that stuff, was they mobilized in
Speaker 2: a way that we thought was not possible. There was
Speaker 2: just such a feeling of helplessness here, honestly, that these
Speaker 2: shootings were going to keep happening, that this stuff was
Speaker 2: going to keep happening, and so they kind of modeled
Speaker 2: a kind of fighting back in a way that I
Speaker 2: think was very timely and very empowering. And part of
Speaker 2: the story with Tennessee in a lot of other places
Speaker 2: is there's also a profound old guard. I mean, I
Speaker 2: just drove to work here and I just rushed in
Speaker 2: to speak for our conversation because I was in traffic
Speaker 2: for an hour. But I could have ridden my bike.
Speaker 2: It would have taken me twenty minutes. We have a
Speaker 2: transit bill on the docket here, but there's tremendous resistance
Speaker 2: from kind of people who are like, I don't want
Speaker 2: my tax dollars doing that. There are a zillion Trump
Speaker 2: signs here and a zillion Harris signs here, and so
Speaker 2: it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. But
Speaker 2: it does feel like something has been tapped into here
Speaker 2: that is hopefully something that's going to spread and go national.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hope that it does as well. And
Speaker 1: you know, I get the tempered like emotions that folks
Speaker 1: are having right now with two weeks to go, I
Speaker 1: know that I am vacillating with a lot of emotion.
Speaker 1: Like I said at the top, I think that it's
Speaker 1: all like hitting me that like either this is the
Speaker 1: beginning of something of a new era of democracy or
Speaker 1: it's the end of democracy, like there is no in between.
Speaker 1: And I think that the stakes and now that the
Speaker 1: time has arrived where people are already voting, that it's
Speaker 1: starting to like hit me that in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks this country could be profoundly changed.
Speaker 2: No, And in a way that's why, I mean, we're
Speaker 2: all so I've been doing four different stops on my
Speaker 2: lecture tour a week in addition to my day job
Speaker 2: and working with campaigns and stuff like that, and so
Speaker 2: it does feel like these are, on one hand, the
Speaker 2: two most important weeks. You know, these are the two
Speaker 2: most important weeks. So you can't. You can't let down now,
Speaker 2: but it does feel like everything's at stake, and you know,
Speaker 2: just watching I'll be in Pennsylvania tomorrow. I'm going tonight
Speaker 2: to Pennsylvania, and so I'm really curious to see what
Speaker 2: the mood of all of this is. It's just I
Speaker 2: don't know. There's again so many variables and if you
Speaker 2: could ever design in a system to keep people engaged,
Speaker 2: like def gone one, this is kind of where we're at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that this is right, and I think
Speaker 1: that it's fair to say that these two weeks are
Speaker 1: the most important because it is when I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: be voting in New York on Friday, when early voting starts.
Speaker 1: It will be actually the first time that I'm early voting.
Speaker 1: I usually have been very old school about the process
Speaker 1: and have stayed, you know, to election day. But I
Speaker 1: am not going to be able to do that because
Speaker 1: I will be working and I don't want to let me.
Speaker 2: Ask you because in a way, what's also interesting about
Speaker 2: this election, there is some kind of like it's like
Speaker 2: the revenge of the forgotten Gerrymander voter or something like that.
Speaker 2: So you do kind of see a flip side in
Speaker 2: New York of what's happening in Tennessee. Obviously not exactly,
Speaker 2: but in New York, a lot of Republicans felt like
Speaker 2: their vote was didn't matter because it was such a
Speaker 2: blue state. But it feels like in New York, and
Speaker 2: this is a question, they've found their hook, which is
Speaker 2: immigration and crime to get people who felt like their
Speaker 2: vote didn't matter. We're kind of right wing people from
Speaker 2: Staten Island or Long Island or something like that, and
Speaker 2: so control of the Congress could go through New York,
Speaker 2: and so New York in a way, you're seeing the
Speaker 2: almost a mirror image of what's happening here in Tennessee,
Speaker 2: but the opposite where people there's an issue that has
Speaker 2: gotten people to kind of fight or take it back
Speaker 2: or something like that. In a way, we're seeing like
Speaker 2: the reverberations maybe of germandering or I don't even know
Speaker 2: how to put it, but it does seem interesting that
Speaker 2: there are these two processes playing out.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact is, and it doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: facts don't matter in this time and age, is that
Speaker 1: New York has had the lowest crime rate that it
Speaker 1: has had in decades. So for people it is the
Speaker 1: fear mongering, which is how we ended up with a
Speaker 1: crooked ass mayor in Mayor Adams, former cop who is
Speaker 1: a grifter and a cheat and a liar to come
Speaker 1: into power by saying that crime crime, crime in New
Speaker 1: York is skyrocketed, and none of that has been true,
Speaker 1: None of it is true. And by giving police more
Speaker 1: power here, which is what he's done, and increased their
Speaker 1: budgets which were already ballooned to disgusting places, there have
Speaker 1: been more shootings by police in New York City. So
Speaker 1: I feel like, while sure, where I am from out
Speaker 1: eastdal Long Island is definitely very red, but I remind
Speaker 1: people constantly that that was not the experience for more
Speaker 1: than half of my life. Is that where I grew
Speaker 1: up had always been a democratic stronghold for like middle class,
Speaker 1: lower middle class, working class people, the teachers, the firefighters,
Speaker 1: the police officers, the you know, the small business owners.
Speaker 1: Like that is the area that I grew up in,
Speaker 1: and it has become republican. So to me, it's like
Speaker 1: anything that was democratic that's become republican can make a
Speaker 1: return again with the right kind of candidate, the right voice,
Speaker 1: and the right infrastructure.
Speaker 2: But also like you know, we're seeing a moment now
Speaker 2: where the whole game of politics is finding people who
Speaker 2: will tribalize on your behalf and who will vote unflinchingly
Speaker 2: for filling the blank as a wedge issue, the issue
Speaker 2: itself almost as secondary because nobody's really I mean, actually,
Speaker 2: what I like about THEIRS campaign is like they're actually
Speaker 2: going to fix the problems if they win, or address them.
Speaker 2: But for the most part of the game of politics
Speaker 2: is getting people to vote for your thing as a
Speaker 2: wedge issue. I mean, I see it with guns, like
Speaker 2: nobody's taken anybody's gun, but this fear that people will
Speaker 2: vote because Libs are going to come take their guns.
Speaker 2: It just mobilizes base and it puts you in a tribe.
Speaker 2: And we've seen that I think in New York. I mean,
Speaker 2: I just I'll be really interesting to see what happens
Speaker 2: in New York with these myths and all these kind
Speaker 2: of things. But there's a lot of stake in your state.
Speaker 1: Also, there's going to be a lot at I think
Speaker 1: that if there's anything that we can learn from the
Speaker 1: last nine years of politics is that there isn't good
Speaker 1: We're never going to go back to a time when
Speaker 1: elections we can say that elections don't matter, that like
Speaker 1: we can just kind of rest on our laurels and
Speaker 1: the machine is going to run itself. I think that
Speaker 1: people are finally really conscious and waking up to the
Speaker 1: fact that, like, I need to have a voice and
Speaker 1: participate in my elections state, local, and federal, because if
Speaker 1: I don't, if I look away, then I have book
Speaker 1: bannings that are happening at the school level. I have
Speaker 1: cities that are allowing, like you said, eighteen year olds
Speaker 1: to walk around with ar fifteens. I have all of
Speaker 1: these things that I have judges that are being put
Speaker 1: in place that are magified, right, Like, I think that
Speaker 1: people are recognizing, oh, we can't just kind of vote
Speaker 1: every four years and hope for the best.
Speaker 2: And also, let me add, I mean, how many people
Speaker 2: do you know in New York that get their healthcare
Speaker 2: from the Affordable Care Act?
Speaker 1: It's a lot myself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so if Trump wins, they're going to destroy
Speaker 2: the Affordable Care Act. They have messaging people, but I mean,
Speaker 2: if I was in New York, I'd be out there
Speaker 2: in Staten Island telling people they are going to lose
Speaker 2: their healthcare. I mean, there are things that will happen
Speaker 2: that it's not like red state blue state separation, Like
Speaker 2: you know, most Blue states depend on the Affordable Care Act.
Speaker 2: If Trump sinks that, it will be a massive guided
Speaker 2: missile directed at the heart of blue states. And so
Speaker 2: this is what drives me crazy about even with respect
Speaker 2: all this, like people in Michigan are going to lose
Speaker 2: their healthcare. People are going to lose their healthcare. So
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's I don't know, Let's get through
Speaker 2: the next two weeks and then we'll go on a
Speaker 2: beach somewhere sip a cocktail or something.
Speaker 1: Probably not because I feel and I'll you know, i'll
Speaker 1: give you the last word. But my it's like, let's
Speaker 1: get through the next two weeks. But then depending on
Speaker 1: what happens in the next two and a half weeks,
Speaker 1: the time between then and inauguration, I'm very concerned about.
Speaker 2: You know, I think I told you before, like I
Speaker 2: think of the guy in the third year of the
Speaker 2: One Hundred Years War who said, I can't believe this
Speaker 2: thing is lasted three years already. You know, we're in
Speaker 2: the beginning of something. We don't know how long. It's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: All right, here's my last question for you. Okay, what
Speaker 2: are you going to be for Halloween?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I was going to be dressing up with my
Speaker 1: god daughter, but now I am summoned to DC for.
Speaker 2: Work, so oh okay.
Speaker 1: I will not be there. So yeah, what are you
Speaker 1: going to be?
Speaker 2: Anybody can steal this out in our listening audience. I'm
Speaker 2: going to be slutty Moodang now I'm just kidding. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I haven't thought about it yet.
Speaker 1: Oh God. All right, Well, when we come back next week,
Speaker 1: you can tell us what the decision is. Okay, thank you,
Speaker 1: my friends, and good luck on your continued lecture tour
Speaker 1: and series. Talk to those people in those red states.
Speaker 1: Let them know what they're gonna lose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we appreciate you hanging everybody.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, dear friends on Woke
Speaker 1: A app as always power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.