Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to bok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Recording from the Home Bunker,
Speaker 1: So friends. At the time of this recording, we are
Speaker 1: still on indictment watch for Donald Trump. But regardless of
Speaker 1: whether or not we see the indictments later this week,
Speaker 1: next week, or beyond, what is really amazing, and by amazing,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely breathtaking, is the fact that Republicans, particularly
Speaker 1: those in the House being led by Kevin McCarthy who
Speaker 1: led I used that in air quotes, are just hell
Speaker 1: bent on staking their career, staking the parties, staking their legacy,
Speaker 1: on defending Donald Trump. You have Kevin McCarthy sitting down
Speaker 1: for views and saying, you know, this is something that
Speaker 1: happened seven years ago. He used his own money. And
Speaker 1: I'm just like, dude, you are sitting down as a
Speaker 1: speaker of the House talking about your presidential candidate who
Speaker 1: is twice impeached, using his quote unquote own money to
Speaker 1: pay a porn star hush money. How do you justify this?
Speaker 1: But you see, the thing is, particularly with reporters, and
Speaker 1: this is why I get so consistently pissed off with
Speaker 1: the way that these people are allowed to just have airtime,
Speaker 1: no real questions, no real pushback, no real follow up.
Speaker 1: If I were a reporter and I'm sitting down with
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy and he offers up this, oh it was
Speaker 1: seven years ago, and the statue of limitation and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, and he used his own money. I'm saying
Speaker 1: to you, Speaker McCarthy, regardless of Donald Trump, like, let's
Speaker 1: say you're right, and we actually need to go through
Speaker 1: the legal process in order to recognize or find out
Speaker 1: if in fact your assertion is correct. One you claim
Speaker 1: to be the law and order party, but it seems
Speaker 1: that with every time that there is a member of
Speaker 1: your party that is caught up in legal woes, you
Speaker 1: actually don't want to see the legal process through and
Speaker 1: feel like there should be some way to sidestep. Someone's
Speaker 1: political affiliation has nothing to do with whether or not
Speaker 1: they have broken the law. Right, So I'm confused about
Speaker 1: your assertion on one hand. Around let's say your party's
Speaker 1: desperate desire to quote unquote lock her up as it
Speaker 1: pertained to Hillary Clinton, which had no factual evidence or
Speaker 1: basis thereof, because if it did, wouldn't have Donald Trump
Speaker 1: have tried a case or pushed his Department of Justice
Speaker 1: to investigate. I mean, he had both Jeff Sessions and
Speaker 1: Bill Barr and neither one of them opened up any
Speaker 1: type of investigation into Hillary Clinton. And he claimed that
Speaker 1: she needed to be locked up, and that was the
Speaker 1: first thing that he was going to do. So if
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton can sit for in a eleven hour browbeating
Speaker 1: committee hearing, surely Donald Trump can go through the legal
Speaker 1: process and then when he comes out, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: innocent and found to be innocent and victorious On the
Speaker 1: other end, wouldn't that be the process that you'd want
Speaker 1: to go through? Just sit there and wait. Also, following up,
Speaker 1: you claim to be the party that cares about family values.
Speaker 1: So let's put all the hush money and illegal payments
Speaker 1: and campaign finance stuff aside. Donald Trump is a married
Speaker 1: man who slept with a porn star. How does that
Speaker 1: align with the party's family values? And just wait, I'm
Speaker 1: so confused about why these easy moves and questions can't happen. Similarly,
Speaker 1: you had over the weekend, Mike Pence give an interview
Speaker 1: on ABC. Now. Mike Pence is the weakest of the
Speaker 1: week I mean, honestly, he makes Kevin McCarthy look like
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his prime during you know, total recall.
Speaker 1: I just aged myself. But nonetheless that was a good movie.
Speaker 1: But Mike Pence sits down with ABC and you know,
Speaker 1: talks about how this legal mess with Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: just you know, a political witch hunt, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, dude, you wouldn't get into your own fucking
Speaker 1: vice presidential motorcade on January sixth, So can you speak
Speaker 1: to why you decided not to get into your motorcaid
Speaker 1: because it has been reported that you were one afraid
Speaker 1: to get into your motor caden, two because you didn't
Speaker 1: know where you would be taken and who was driving
Speaker 1: the car. What did you mean by that? Right, if
Speaker 1: those assertions are true? And also, Mike Pence, you bring
Speaker 1: up the fact that the district attorney should be dealing
Speaker 1: with quote unquote, you know, a crime wave that is
Speaker 1: happening in New York City. But that's actually factually untrue
Speaker 1: because we have data here pulling out the receipts showcasing
Speaker 1: that New York's crime has actually been on the decline.
Speaker 1: But if you look at places like Florida, which is
Speaker 1: ruled you know, with a heavy hand by Ron De Santis.
Speaker 1: And you look at places like Ohio that just you know,
Speaker 1: gave up a Senate seat to a Republican JD Vance.
Speaker 1: You look at those areas and their crime wave is
Speaker 1: way higher than New York City. So what is the
Speaker 1: talking point about New York City's crime wave that actually
Speaker 1: doesn't exist? And just wait, I just don't understand why
Speaker 1: we allow Republicans to hijack a microphone whatever the fuck
Speaker 1: they want, not to be asked any type of follow
Speaker 1: up questions, and that these reporters don't show up with
Speaker 1: any of their fucking homework done. I don't get it.
Speaker 1: So when we think to ourselves that our democracy is
Speaker 1: hanging on by a threat, it isn't just because of
Speaker 1: the likes of Donald Trump. It isn't just because of
Speaker 1: the grifting criminal last Republican party right. It isn't just
Speaker 1: because they are a bunch of white supremacists, evangelical Christo freshist.
Speaker 1: It is because we have a media that wants more
Speaker 1: to do with access than they do accountability. They want
Speaker 1: to be able to get these people in the chair
Speaker 1: for their ratings, but not actually hold them responsible. For
Speaker 1: any of the hot shit that comes out of their mouth,
Speaker 1: and that is just unthinkable, particularly looking at the last
Speaker 1: seven years and think to yourself, did you fucking learn anything?
Speaker 1: And clearly by the last several interviews in the last
Speaker 1: several years, the answer is no. Coming up next, friends,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to welcome to woke f Daily Ellie
Speaker 1: Merrit whose new book How to Save Democracy. It has
Speaker 1: been released now, and he's also going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the twenty twenty three Summit for Democracy, which will
Speaker 1: be taking place on March twenty ninth, And you'll learn
Speaker 1: more about the twenty twenty three Summit for Democracy in
Speaker 1: our conversation that is coming up next, folks, I am
Speaker 1: very excited to welcome to woke f Daily for the
Speaker 1: very first time doctor Eli Merritt, who is a political
Speaker 1: historian at Vanderbilt University and writes a newsletter for substack
Speaker 1: called American Commonwealth, and is the author of a new
Speaker 1: book entitled How to Save Democracy. I am very excited
Speaker 1: to have you here because, as you know, Eli, I
Speaker 1: spend probably way too much time having conversations about our democracy,
Speaker 1: about whether or not we have the ta merit, you know,
Speaker 1: to save it because I think that we're spending a
Speaker 1: lot of conversation and a lot of time right now wondering,
Speaker 1: pontificating on do we think it's really at risk? Is
Speaker 1: this over you know, close to two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: year project. Can it really crumble under the weight of
Speaker 1: one incredibly bad presidency? And you know this force called Trumpism?
Speaker 1: And Magadam, I want to start off with asking you
Speaker 1: know what has alled you to believe that our democracy
Speaker 1: is currently at risk? At stake? It's good to be
Speaker 1: with you, to start with, thanks for the work you do.
Speaker 1: I think you've already made some important allusions to what
Speaker 1: was a wake up call for me. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm on my second career. I practice psychiatry for twenty years,
Speaker 1: and only in twenty and eighteen, after witnessing in a
Speaker 1: somewhat traumatic way like others, the presidency of Trump, did
Speaker 1: I begin to feel acutely that our democracy was at
Speaker 1: risk and that really set me about. I was already
Speaker 1: researching a history book at that time, but that set
Speaker 1: me about deep research into demagogues and that you can
Speaker 1: use a lot of terms for Trump, but the most
Speaker 1: significant from the perspective of researching and understanding what happens
Speaker 1: to democracy is the demagogue. Democracy in the Western tradition
Speaker 1: at least was born in Athens and the fifth century BC.
Speaker 1: And so at the same time was the word demagogue.
Speaker 1: That gives us an idea of what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: And so, as I researched in history but also watched Trump,
Speaker 1: I saw in real life this phenomenon that's well documented happening,
Speaker 1: and that is something happens in the political system, so
Speaker 1: that we allow a demagogue to become a head of state.
Speaker 1: And that's bad enough, as we all know, dude, simply
Speaker 1: to the divisiveness, fear mongering and hate mongering and racism
Speaker 1: and xenophobia, which is characteristic of demagogues. But then something
Speaker 1: bad happens. Once a demagogue gets the power of the presidency.
Speaker 1: They convert. It's well known in history. You just get worse.
Speaker 1: All principles are power corrupts. Absolute powercrupts. Absolutely. So all
Speaker 1: of this happening, and then the Republican Party already had
Speaker 1: its problems, shall we say, but it got much worse
Speaker 1: with Trump. So democracy is fragile. Human beings are fragile.
Speaker 1: So yes, we have to do what you stand up
Speaker 1: and do every day is fight hard for a democracy,
Speaker 1: and it starts with understanding actually how democracy works. I
Speaker 1: thought five years ago I understood, and I started to studying,
Speaker 1: and I'm still studying and learning new things about democracy
Speaker 1: every day. So we our democracy is categorically at risk. Now.
Speaker 1: We have de Santis Rising, who I will just people
Speaker 1: can use an invective or whatever they want, but he
Speaker 1: is practicing something down to political science to be constitutional ball.
Speaker 1: That is his stock and trade. He's good at it,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, even when it's constitutional hardball, it is a
Speaker 1: harbinger of worse forms of authoritarianism. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: to be done, and we just need to get more
Speaker 1: people involved in the fight and kicking one corner of
Speaker 1: democracy to work hard on. That's what I've done. What
Speaker 1: has really been troubling me is trying to put into
Speaker 1: context the perfect storm that we find ourselves in. Right.
Speaker 1: I often talk on Woke af about the late author
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler, who wrote the series Parable of the Sower,
Speaker 1: Parable of the Talents and Impowable of the Sower. You
Speaker 1: open up into this dystopian American present, it's actually the
Speaker 1: time that we're living in now. She wrote it in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, and it opens up in the twenty twenties,
Speaker 1: because it seemed the twenty twenty seemed thirty plus years
Speaker 1: into the future. And what she surmises in this science
Speaker 1: fiction novel is that this perfect storm of economic calamity,
Speaker 1: climate change, and arise in white Christian nationalism was going
Speaker 1: to overtake America. She was writing science fiction, and I
Speaker 1: see her as a soothsayer, somebody that was actually able
Speaker 1: to read the tea leaves and put it into a
Speaker 1: fictational context. And we're living in that future that she imagined.
Speaker 1: What do you see as the perfect storm that has
Speaker 1: allowed a figure like Trump to go from the margins
Speaker 1: of the Tea Party and birthsm right Birthism. What I
Speaker 1: like to remind people is what Booie Trump into the
Speaker 1: political stage. He was a reality TV star, hiring and
Speaker 1: firing people on NBC. Right Barrocco Obama, the first African
Speaker 1: American president, becomes president birthsm The Tea Party is born
Speaker 1: out of that, and at the time it stays on
Speaker 1: the margins. What is it do you see that allowed
Speaker 1: it to move from the margins to the mainstream and
Speaker 1: now become the absolute cancer on our democracy that it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a very good question, and you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of factors, but it is important to zero in
Speaker 1: on some of the most important of those factors, and
Speaker 1: to pick one. It is very clear to me that
Speaker 1: Donald and so many other people who have looked at
Speaker 1: it from this perspective, that Donald Trump is a direct
Speaker 1: descendant of Russia Limbaugh. And less importantly it's still importantly
Speaker 1: New Gingrich but Rush Limbaugh. Under the Reagan administration there
Speaker 1: was the abolishment of the fairness doctrine in media. Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh became this cancer, absolutely pernicious cancer that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and that's in the late nineteen eighties. So this has
Speaker 1: been growing, so to speak, in the Republican Party for
Speaker 1: some time. So I think the irresponsibility and lack of
Speaker 1: ethics that we have in our media is profoundly important
Speaker 1: in this whole process of Trump coming about. And I
Speaker 1: guess a couple of months ago written about that on
Speaker 1: my subject that you brought up American Commonwealth pointing to
Speaker 1: three causes of the rise of Trump, and one is
Speaker 1: the loss of ethical codes within the media, and another
Speaker 1: is the failure of our education system to I don't
Speaker 1: blame the people for voting for Trump. Actually, I blame
Speaker 1: all of us for having such a terrible educational system
Speaker 1: when it comes to education about democracy and civics. But
Speaker 1: the most important and the most addressable is actually in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, we reformed our presidential nominating system
Speaker 1: from a system which had checks and balances to prevent
Speaker 1: someone like Trump from being nominated in the national Convention,
Speaker 1: the Republican national Convention. We've gone from indirect primaries to
Speaker 1: direct primaries, and I hold that one thing to be
Speaker 1: the most responsible if we understood more deeply that democracy
Speaker 1: is first and foremost about the will of the people
Speaker 1: and voting. But that's not all it is. Direct democracies
Speaker 1: throughout history have been demonstrated to implode. So that's why
Speaker 1: representative democracy and republican forms of government are far more superior.
Speaker 1: The Greek democracy lasted about one hundred years really, or
Speaker 1: maybe one hundred and eighty, and the Roman republic, much
Speaker 1: more sophisticated form of government, lasted almost five hundred years.
Speaker 1: So we reformed our presidential nominating system, and so in
Speaker 1: both of the parties, the conventions cannot stop a demogogue
Speaker 1: or authoritarian because their hands are tied behind their backs.
Speaker 1: So I would keep democracy in our primary system, but
Speaker 1: I would probably have the people elect the delegates, and
Speaker 1: the delegates go to the convention and pick candidates after
Speaker 1: selecting the platform, so that the president has to follow
Speaker 1: the party platform, not the president come in as Trump
Speaker 1: did destroy the party platform and completely take the entire
Speaker 1: party by hostage. So those media and the presidential nominating
Speaker 1: system I hold accountable for Trump's entry into the White House.
Speaker 1: I love where you started as well, which is a
Speaker 1: broken education system. Right. I'm a former educator. I worked
Speaker 1: as a first and second grade early childhood educator, and
Speaker 1: that I moved into education policy when I went to
Speaker 1: work on the Hill. And the thing that I have
Speaker 1: consistently said is that if you want to disrupt democracy,
Speaker 1: you create an under educated citizentury. We're seeing this play
Speaker 1: out with the Santists that you mentioned you before. De
Speaker 1: Santis is gutting Florida's curriculum, which was pretty much trashed
Speaker 1: before four In rankings. If you look at the way
Speaker 1: that Florida ranks as a public school K through twelve
Speaker 1: education system, it is hovering in the thirties and in
Speaker 1: the forties, right, particularly if you go into math and
Speaker 1: science and writing and what have you. He's doing even
Speaker 1: worse to drive the good teachers out of the classroom,
Speaker 1: to make people fearful so much so that they're covering
Speaker 1: up books right in their classroom for fear of criminalization.
Speaker 1: When you see a Desantist who, in my opinion, is
Speaker 1: much more maniacal eli than Trump is at all. But
Speaker 1: yet the media is normalizing de Santists and the actions
Speaker 1: that he's taking. I'm seeing headlines in the New York
Speaker 1: Times and the Washington Post and other credible outlets that
Speaker 1: are talking about, let's get inside the mind of Ron
Speaker 1: de Santis, Right, what democrats can learn from Ron De Santis.
Speaker 1: Does that trouble you more so than Trump to think
Speaker 1: that maybe the media hasn't learned anything over the last
Speaker 1: seven years. Well, you're saying a number of things, and
Speaker 1: one there, you know, is that the media has for decades.
Speaker 1: It's not a recent phenomenon intended towards sensationalization. And that's
Speaker 1: happening with regard to the Santis a bit like you know,
Speaker 1: Trump became the darling of the press for very different reasons.
Speaker 1: To Santis has becomes darling of the press, and I
Speaker 1: think the press needs to exercise more critical thinking about
Speaker 1: de Santis, And I'm thinking of doing some writing, you know,
Speaker 1: about him that is not hyperbolic or there will be
Speaker 1: a little alarmism in it. But I think a big
Speaker 1: question a lot of people's mind is I mean, plenty
Speaker 1: of people, every one of the Democratic Party and some
Speaker 1: people in the Republican Party probably don't want to Santis
Speaker 1: or Trump. But the question on a lot of people's
Speaker 1: mind is, will wait a minute, if we had to
Speaker 1: choose one, who would you choose? Because the idea behind
Speaker 1: Trump is, yeah, he's dangerous, but he's a bit of
Speaker 1: a bumbling idiot, is the way people think about it.
Speaker 1: And DeSantis, however, is smart and firm and sharpens his
Speaker 1: arrows and moves forward. I feel very nervous about both
Speaker 1: of them, certainly, and but Trump is already a proven entity,
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous, extremely unpredictable. The Santis I feel very nervous
Speaker 1: about as well. But at least he has some history
Speaker 1: in his past of being a true constitutionalist, believing in
Speaker 1: the Constitution, and so one important thing to recognize is
Speaker 1: he is playing to the base right now That's another
Speaker 1: challenge or problem we have with our primary system is
Speaker 1: when someone liked de Santis comes out, he has to
Speaker 1: play to the base, and that's what he's doing. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I think DeSantis has the ability, and I don't know
Speaker 1: whether any internal ethical gyroscope to come board to the
Speaker 1: middle if he does in the Republican nomination. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that was your question or what you
Speaker 1: were looking at. But I don't want to pick either
Speaker 1: of them for the Republican nominee. But if I had
Speaker 1: to pick one, I would prefer to Sciantists, you know,
Speaker 1: And there is a risk in the future or something,
Speaker 1: you know, all that power I could go to his
Speaker 1: head and things could get more chaotic. You can have
Speaker 1: a terrible economic procession like you're describing. Society could explode
Speaker 1: into chaos, and he could become more authoritarian. I think
Speaker 1: it is a risk. But Trump, I just can't. I can't.
Speaker 1: He would be my last person on the planet, I think,
Speaker 1: to become the Republican nominee. I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: either of them either, you know, Neither of them to
Speaker 1: me are bode well for our democracy, bode well for
Speaker 1: people of color, for queer people in this country. For women,
Speaker 1: I think that they both present an existential threat. Where
Speaker 1: I want to pivot now is to the Summit for
Speaker 1: Democracy and to your book and Save Our Democracy. You
Speaker 1: have inspirational quotes and figures of ninety five leaders for
Speaker 1: us to look at and kind of glean inspiration from.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about you know, how you went about
Speaker 1: choosing these folks and why they should be models for
Speaker 1: how we look to save our democracy. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: it's called how to Save Democracy, Advice and Inspiration from
Speaker 1: ninety five world Leaders. And as you said, they're all
Speaker 1: derived from the First Summit for Democracy, and we're approaching
Speaker 1: at the end of marks the second Summit. And what
Speaker 1: happened for me and pulling together this book of quotations
Speaker 1: is as we you and I've been talking about a
Speaker 1: lot today. I'm constantly trying to learn more about democracy.
Speaker 1: So at the end, at the end of December of
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty one, I began to listen to some
Speaker 1: of the speeches. Many of them are only five minutes,
Speaker 1: many go up to ten minutes, and I just really
Speaker 1: found out I was really learning quite a bit about
Speaker 1: democracy that I didn't understand, and very from leaders from
Speaker 1: all across the country, and really the most inspiring remarkably
Speaker 1: to me quotations are those that come from the leaders
Speaker 1: of small island democracies in the Caribbean and some other island.
Speaker 1: Democracy was fascinating. You know, there's a hard side in
Speaker 1: the soft side of democracy, and it seemed to me
Speaker 1: that the only folks willing to talk about democracy from
Speaker 1: the perspective of the soft side were these again, these
Speaker 1: leaders of island democracies, and they would talk. They would
Speaker 1: say important things like, you know, have you better get
Speaker 1: up and defend our democracy because there is no other
Speaker 1: system of government which stands there for us, inviting us
Speaker 1: to come in in pursuit. And these are all small
Speaker 1: quotations from the book Pursue Self Realization, self actualization, the
Speaker 1: pursuit of human fulfillment and dignity. So I started off
Speaker 1: trying to learn more about democracy, and after I'd listened
Speaker 1: to If You, I did begin to hear some real
Speaker 1: poetry and some of the quotations. I would say, half
Speaker 1: of them are quite poetic and beautiful to read, and
Speaker 1: the other half that aren't as poetic, they still provide
Speaker 1: instruction or warning. There's a section about threats and menaces
Speaker 1: to democracy. And I've always been someone who has found
Speaker 1: reading personally to be quite therapeutic and helpful to me,
Speaker 1: finding my grounding and my strength and my courage to
Speaker 1: speak up against conformity. The quotations and speeches by Lincoln
Speaker 1: have been important to me. Very important also is the
Speaker 1: speeches and writings of Martin Luther King. What's the name
Speaker 1: of the wonderful book of his collections, a Testament of Hope.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone should have a Testament of Hope at
Speaker 1: their bedside along with this new book here called How
Speaker 1: to Say Democracy. But no, it's really beautiful. I mean
Speaker 1: we all need all the help we can get, both
Speaker 1: from the maybe three perspectives, figuring out how democracy works,
Speaker 1: figuring out what we can do, and then finding the
Speaker 1: inspiration to get involved. That's one of the most important
Speaker 1: messages of the summits end of the book is to
Speaker 1: get involved. But I do know when you say that
Speaker 1: to people, they think, well, I'm busy and I don't
Speaker 1: really know how if somebody wants to know, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you begin possibly to get involved with democracy work.
Speaker 1: I think the best way is to just start learning
Speaker 1: about democracy. Just don't really assume that you know and
Speaker 1: understand what democracy is, whether it's through some well selected
Speaker 1: YouTube videos or a book like this or another book,
Speaker 1: just start to dive in and understand democracy more deeply.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the only way I began to
Speaker 1: found my direct to find my direction was by being
Speaker 1: curious and wanting to understand how democracy works and what
Speaker 1: the heck is going wrong with ours now, what needs
Speaker 1: to be done to fix it, and then what tiny
Speaker 1: thing can I do to be helpful. I think that
Speaker 1: the scariest thing about the moment that we're in, both
Speaker 1: in this country and globally, because what we're seeing globally
Speaker 1: is a rise in fascism and a rise in authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: You can look to Hungry, you can look to Italy,
Speaker 1: you can look to Brazil. Thankfully, you know, elected a
Speaker 1: person that believes in democracy, but then we watched as
Speaker 1: they did a insurrection two point zero. And so what
Speaker 1: I think is really startling about this moment is that
Speaker 1: these leaders, what they have in common is their ability
Speaker 1: to zap hope, right, to drain hope from the people,
Speaker 1: and in its place instill this sense of fear, fear
Speaker 1: of self and fear of the other right to create
Speaker 1: this illusion that they alone can fix it, right, that
Speaker 1: you just want somebody to come in and make things
Speaker 1: better because they have created this illusion that everything around
Speaker 1: you is terrible. And so you know, as we wrap
Speaker 1: right now, I just want to give you another moment
Speaker 1: to talk about the power of hope, the power of
Speaker 1: hope and inspiration, particularly in a moment that is filled
Speaker 1: with a lot of despair. That's a great question, and
Speaker 1: I find a great amount of hope and the reading
Speaker 1: of history and building community with others. Then I have
Speaker 1: something to say that might not sound very helpful to people,
Speaker 1: but it is to me, and that is this is
Speaker 1: work that we should do with direction and hope, certainly,
Speaker 1: and the objective to restore democracy and to safeguard our
Speaker 1: democratic values. But we should also do the work because
Speaker 1: simply it's important. We want to keep what's described as
Speaker 1: the spirit of liberty alive even if times get worse
Speaker 1: in the future. You want to hand that down to
Speaker 1: the next generation, to children and to grandchildren, so that
Speaker 1: they don't forget what liberty and freedom is and even
Speaker 1: how to build a democracy. So if something more catastrophic
Speaker 1: happens to our democracy in the next fifty years. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that democracy is not going to undergo a resurgence.
Speaker 1: So we will need people who are carrying that flame onward.
Speaker 1: And so some of my writing, I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: to do to make sure people read some of it
Speaker 1: in fifty years. But these ideas are everlasting and far
Speaker 1: and away. As one hundred out of one hundred of
Speaker 1: the world leaders said at the last summit, and they'll
Speaker 1: say again at this summit, there is no better system
Speaker 1: of government than representative democracy. It is wonderful. Even if
Speaker 1: we lose it for a spell, it is wonderful. And
Speaker 1: so if you lose it, you just have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to go about finding it again or building
Speaker 1: it anew That's hopeful to me. That is hopeful to me.
Speaker 1: Doctor Eli and Merritt, thank you so much for making
Speaker 1: the time to join will Gate F folks again. His
Speaker 1: newsletter on sub stack is called American Commonwealth and his
Speaker 1: new book is How to Save Democracy Advice and Inspiration
Speaker 1: from ninety five world leaders. Thank you for making the
Speaker 1: time for woke F and I hope to have you
Speaker 1: back again on in the future. Thank you, Danielle. Great
Speaker 1: to talk to you. That is it for me today,
Speaker 1: dear folks on woke f as always, Power to the
Speaker 1: people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and
Speaker 1: stay woke as fuck.