Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKF Daily with Meet
Speaker 1: your Girl Danielle Moody. Recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I want to start off today's show with talking about
Speaker 1: Dominion and the lawsuit that Dominion had with Fox that
Speaker 1: they have now settled for seven hundred and eighty seven
Speaker 1: million dollars. First, the mainstream media's conversation around this settlement
Speaker 1: is bullshit. And let me tell you why. They keep saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is a windfall largest settlement, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. Fox is a multi billion dollar
Speaker 1: fucking company, Okay, like as well as it's CEO is
Speaker 1: a multi billionaire. They are insulated from this shit. Insurance
Speaker 1: we'll probably cover it. Now, folks, I'm not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: right or have do I have an MBA? And some
Speaker 1: have said to me, well, insurance may not cover it
Speaker 1: because their Dominion was able to show intent right with
Speaker 1: all of their findings through their own investigation and through
Speaker 1: testimony and the text messages and the floods of emails
Speaker 1: and the voicemails and all of these things. But seven
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty seven million dollars to a multi billion
Speaker 1: dollar company into a multi billionaire is not a big deal, right.
Speaker 1: You can brush that off like us as commoners, right,
Speaker 1: we think to ourselves, oh my god, yes, that's a
Speaker 1: ton of money. I could live and have generations a
Speaker 1: family live with that kind of wealth. The issue here
Speaker 1: is that we all thought that this case was truly
Speaker 1: about democracy and the fourth estate, meaning journalism as a whole.
Speaker 1: Fox has been able to lie to their viewers, not
Speaker 1: just about dominion having a key role in, you know,
Speaker 1: throwing the election to Biden, and the lies that every
Speaker 1: single one of their hosts told knowing that they were lying.
Speaker 2: They've lied about all whole host of things.
Speaker 1: They spread the lie around COVID and saying that it
Speaker 1: was a democratic hoax. They've upheld the lie around Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden's laptop, They've upheld the lie around Hillary Clinton, around
Speaker 1: Barack Obama not being from this country, like, They've upheld
Speaker 1: a lot of lies. And so we all thought that
Speaker 1: this lawsuit was going to be an opportunity to really
Speaker 1: secure journalistic integrity and to uphold our democratic institutions. But
Speaker 1: silly us, because in a capitalistic, greedy society, as Wu
Speaker 1: Tang clan wrapped so many decades ago, cash rules everything
Speaker 1: around me. Cream get the money, dalla dolla bill y'all.
Speaker 1: That is exactly what Dominion did, and they had the
Speaker 1: audacity to send their lawyers out in a press conference saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: money is accountability for who? Because the tens of millions
Speaker 1: of people that tune into Fox News every day don't
Speaker 1: even know that this case existed. And guess what else
Speaker 1: happens with their settlement. There's going to be no right,
Speaker 1: no sharing with their audience, no forced overture by Fox
Speaker 1: to say we lied to you about the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty election was not stolen. The twenty twenty
Speaker 1: election was free and fair election. Dominion machines had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with uh with overturning the election or giving
Speaker 1: it to Joe Biden, And we apologize for the lies
Speaker 1: that we have spread. That also, by the way, had
Speaker 1: thousands of people take up arms to go quote unquote
Speaker 1: take their country back. None of that is going to
Speaker 1: happen because there was no contingency on top of the
Speaker 1: money for there to be an admission to their audiences
Speaker 1: about their lives. So Fox gets to give a little
Speaker 1: bit of their lunch money over to dominion and their
Speaker 1: viewers are none the wiser, and our democracy hangs over
Speaker 1: a cliff. So it's extraordinarily disappointing. And I don't even
Speaker 1: think disappointing is the right fucking word. I just every
Speaker 1: time that I think that we are getting to a
Speaker 1: place where people are becoming conscious of what is happening,
Speaker 1: where the uber rich and the evil puppet masters behind
Speaker 1: the attempts at authoritarianism and fascism in this country, when
Speaker 1: I think that they're going to be held to account,
Speaker 1: the rug is pulled out from under us, and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, don't you worry. The wealthy, the white, and
Speaker 1: the powerful. All they ever do in life is ever
Speaker 1: have to pay a fine. Right, Fox is responsible for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, the monster Fox is responsible, bears part of
Speaker 1: the responsibility for the insurrection. Why did the insurrection happen?
Speaker 1: It wasn't just that day down at the stop the
Speaker 1: Steel Rally where Donald Trump pointed to the Capitol building
Speaker 1: and told non armed insurrection is to go take their
Speaker 1: country back. No, it was a series of lies that
Speaker 1: were spread over the course of months, aid inebedded by
Speaker 1: Fox News, knowingly.
Speaker 2: Knowing the truth.
Speaker 1: But they won't be held to account. So no, I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear this bullshit narrative from the mainstream
Speaker 1: media saying, oh, seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars. No,
Speaker 1: if it was five billion, maybe I'd give a fuck.
Speaker 1: If it was gonna bankrupt Fox, if it was going
Speaker 1: to bankrupt the Murdocks, then maybe that would matter. If
Speaker 1: it was gonna shudder the entire network and then send
Speaker 1: a warning shot to other outlets like Newsmax and oh
Speaker 1: An and all of these other right wing vessels of
Speaker 1: hate and lies and disinformation, if it was going to
Speaker 1: do that, I would say, bravo, Dominion, you've done it,
Speaker 1: and you've earned the money that you're gonna walk away with.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, it seems as
Speaker 1: if the only people that give a fuck about our
Speaker 1: democracy are the ones that are gonna bear the brunt
Speaker 1: of this authoritarian regime because everybody else either got a
Speaker 1: rocket to go to the fucking moon, to Mars and
Speaker 1: leave the rest of us behind. You know, somebody tweeted
Speaker 1: at me and it said, other countries, other nations have democracies,
Speaker 1: and they don't seem to have to fight for them
Speaker 1: as fucking hard as Americans. Are fighting for our democracy.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's right. I think that you know,
Speaker 1: much has been told about the story of you know,
Speaker 1: those that are patriots that fight for their freedom and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. But in a true demands
Speaker 1: and not a Banana republic, do you have to continually
Speaker 1: be in the streets, continually be vigilant or is that
Speaker 1: just the story that we tell ourselves. I tell you that,
Speaker 1: you know, what America has done right, is that America
Speaker 1: has the best pr best public relations of any country
Speaker 1: in the world. It begins with the indoctrination that we
Speaker 1: get as we enter into the doors of kindergarten until
Speaker 1: we graduate right about America being great, about this wonderful land,
Speaker 1: this beacon on a hill, about all of these wonderful people.
Speaker 1: George Washington in the cherry tree and is wooden teeth.
Speaker 1: You're not told the truth about George Washington, the slave owner,
Speaker 1: the brutal slave master that ripped the teeth out of
Speaker 1: his slave and put them into his own mouth. You're
Speaker 1: not told the real story about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. No,
Speaker 1: for white America, it's a love story. A love story
Speaker 1: between a man who is twice the age of his
Speaker 1: enslaved piece of property, a human being that he was
Speaker 1: able to discard and use like a ball or a plate,
Speaker 1: who had no choice, no bodily autonomy. But instead of
Speaker 1: telling the truth about rape and enslavement and brutality, America
Speaker 1: weave the tale of a love story. Everything in this
Speaker 1: country is based on disinformation and lies. So of course
Speaker 1: Fox is gonna get away with what it is that
Speaker 1: they do because there's no accountability, there's no responsibility. There's
Speaker 1: a reason why there is a force a movement around
Speaker 1: wokeness and consciousness because we're tired of being lied to,
Speaker 1: tired of being taken advantage of. And just when you think,
Speaker 1: when you think, oh maybe we are going to reach
Speaker 1: the mountaintop, maybe the arc is actually bending, you realize
Speaker 1: that it was a mirage. Just like our democracy. There
Speaker 1: are days when I say to you that I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what it is some days that I'm fighting for
Speaker 1: that we're all fighting for. Is it the promise of America? Right,
Speaker 1: the promise that it will live up to its creed.
Speaker 1: But promises are only as good as the people who
Speaker 1: are making them. So you know, the dominion case, much
Speaker 1: like how we are learning about Clarence Thomas, how we
Speaker 1: are learning more about Donald Trump, how we are learning
Speaker 1: about all of these rich, powerful people who are able
Speaker 1: to manipulate and take advantage of systems because that is
Speaker 1: who the systems were built to protect. They have the
Speaker 1: rest of us scraping around and fighting for the crumbs
Speaker 1: that they leave behind, filling our heads with this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, we all must fight while the rest
Speaker 1: of them live lives of leisure. I'm just so outdone
Speaker 1: these days, so outdone. But coming up next my conversation
Speaker 1: with my friend who I love, love, love love when
Speaker 1: Jared Yate Sexton joins the show. He is the author
Speaker 1: of The Midnight Kingdom, The History of Power, Power, Nooria,
Speaker 1: and the Coming Crisis. Whenever Jared and I get a
Speaker 1: chance to chat, we delve into the big picture, you know,
Speaker 1: to the big picture how all of these things are
Speaker 1: tied together. And that is more of what is coming
Speaker 1: up next, folks. I am always so happy when I
Speaker 1: get to chat with my friend jaredy Ate Sexton. You
Speaker 1: know him as the author of The Midnight Kingdom, A
Speaker 1: History of Power, Paranoia and the Coming Crisis, and also
Speaker 1: co host of the podcast The Muckrakers, Jared Like, it
Speaker 1: has been a wild first quarter movement to second quarter
Speaker 1: of this new year in America. I mean, first off,
Speaker 1: we've had more mass shootings than we have had days
Speaker 1: in the year. We are watching Republicans not only in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: but in Nebraska, in Missouri, in Florida, across this country
Speaker 1: take their hoods off, and there's no quiet part anymore.
Speaker 2: They're on the.
Speaker 1: Floor of state houses just saying everything that we've always known,
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about, we've been tweeting about, but
Speaker 1: that they've tried to be underhanded. Oh we're not racist,
Speaker 1: Oh we don't hate women. And yet now it is
Speaker 1: just so apparent the like the direction that they want
Speaker 1: this country to go in. So I just want you
Speaker 1: to just you know, off the top. Just the last
Speaker 1: several weeks have just felt like drinking from a fire
Speaker 1: hose in terms of like white supremacy and patriarchy, like
Speaker 1: it it is just inundating us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, to go ahead and go off
Speaker 3: on a couple of things here. First of all, and
Speaker 3: I know that you've followed this too. I have gotten
Speaker 3: such a great enjoyment over the past week or so
Speaker 3: watching respectable Republicans come out of the groundwork to defend
Speaker 3: a billionaire who has bought off the Supreme Court, but
Speaker 3: to defend him for displaying throughout his entire home Nazi memorabilia.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: And I always like to explain to people because everybody
Speaker 3: thinks that the Republican Party is just sort of a
Speaker 3: monolithic structure, right because and people always compared to the Democrats,
Speaker 3: and the Democrats it's like herding cats. They're all over
Speaker 3: the place. The Republicans have a lot of different groups
Speaker 3: within their very very small white tint. And part of
Speaker 3: that group is what I would call professional Republicans for
Speaker 3: country club Republicans. These are very very wealthy white people who,
Speaker 3: by the way, many of them were educated at the
Speaker 3: Ivy League schools that.
Speaker 2: You know they condemn and say the right, you know.
Speaker 3: Ted Kruzell, you know, an aid will hand him a
Speaker 3: car hard jacket that still has the hangar on it,
Speaker 3: and he'll put it on and he'll say, I'm a
Speaker 3: regular guy and go to Yale. Right, And meanwhile, they're
Speaker 3: all just absolute frauds. Those people, for the most part,
Speaker 3: have been pretty good at promoting respectability right. They know
Speaker 3: exactly what all of these polls say. They know what
Speaker 3: they're crypto Nazi people tell them that they're supposed to
Speaker 3: say in order to hide exactly who they are and
Speaker 3: what they believe. These people that you were talking about,
Speaker 3: and we were talking about before we start recording state
Speaker 3: legislatures like are full of some of the most idiotic
Speaker 3: politicians in the country. These are people who the they
Speaker 3: won because they're in gerrymander districts, because they're cousins of
Speaker 3: I don't know, the County Goo director. Maybe they were
Speaker 3: the first person that they found who didn't have a
Speaker 3: felony record, and maybe they even had some felony records
Speaker 3: and it, you know, didn't reach a certain point. These
Speaker 3: people are getting the exact same playbook that those high
Speaker 3: folutant billionaire Republicans, including Harlan Crowe, they paid for all
Speaker 3: of this to be done in all of these legislatures
Speaker 3: that you know, they have their fingers in all of
Speaker 3: these pies. None of these legislators are coming up with
Speaker 3: this stuff. None of them have cooked it up in
Speaker 3: their own mind. They're not writing the bills. This is
Speaker 3: basically being handed out by all these institutes, all at
Speaker 3: once and being coordinated. They can't be intelligent about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they have no idea how to play the game right.
Speaker 3: All of the you know, Bill Crystal and all of
Speaker 3: these other like old respectable Republicans who claim things you know,
Speaker 3: went to ellwhen Donald Trump came around. Those people know
Speaker 3: how to do the game.
Speaker 2: But what we're.
Speaker 3: Actually seeing from those idiots that we're talking about is
Speaker 3: what's actually happening and what's always been happening, which is racist,
Speaker 3: classes and obic, you name it, misogynistic, All of that
Speaker 3: stuff is at the heart of it. It's just those
Speaker 3: people don't have the intelligence or the media training or
Speaker 3: the cultural sort of code switching abilities that has always
Speaker 3: hidden what's been at the core of this stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, I love the fact that you broke down
Speaker 1: like the layers and the and the essentially the casts
Speaker 1: right that sit inside of the Republican Party, because you know,
Speaker 1: I want to go back to what you said about
Speaker 1: Harlan Crowe, who is just like a almost a comic
Speaker 1: book villain character in his Garden of Evil that he
Speaker 1: has in his sign copy of mind coomp in his
Speaker 1: Nazi cocktail, napkins that are just strown around, strown about
Speaker 1: and he is a multi billionaire backer and has been
Speaker 1: the one folks, if you if you recall it there
Speaker 1: following this story that has you know, hosted Thomas, Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 1: and Ginny Thomas on lavish trips funded Ginny Thomas's quote
Speaker 1: unquote nonprofit organizations that she pays herself out of, has
Speaker 1: been the mastermind behind creating policies that have found their
Speaker 1: way to move up to the Supreme Court, which he
Speaker 1: has purchased like a like a little signatore on monopoly
Speaker 1: and has been able from Citizens United to Shelby County
Speaker 1: to the Dobs case and many in between to create
Speaker 1: this kind of Christian fascist reality that we are living
Speaker 1: in right now.
Speaker 2: This has been behind.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're looking at Harlan Crowe, You're looking at
Speaker 1: Leo Leonard from the Federalist Society, You're looking at Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 1: who is there like pawn in the middle, and it
Speaker 1: is it is seeming so wild to me, Jared, that
Speaker 1: we find ourselves at this place and these people have
Speaker 1: been making these iterative moves over the course of three decades.
Speaker 3: That's right. And by the way, I want to point
Speaker 3: this out, and you know, this as well as I do.
Speaker 3: And this might be something. And I always like to
Speaker 3: talk about this because it actually pulls the curtain back
Speaker 3: on a lot of this people like all the time
Speaker 3: they look around, they're like, man, Ben Shapiro, all these guys,
Speaker 3: they've got millions of subscribers and views, and oh my god,
Speaker 3: I guess this is like a real ideology that people
Speaker 3: believe in. It's not at all like the Republican conservative
Speaker 3: ideology is so small like it is. And again, like
Speaker 3: you go back to what I was talking about with
Speaker 3: the country club sort of Harlan Crowe set, there's a
Speaker 3: very small group of people. And whenever you peel back
Speaker 3: the layers to see what's behind a Republican conservative media
Speaker 3: operation and personality, it's it's it's Crow, it's the Bradley's,
Speaker 3: the devices, it's the Kokes. It's the same people who
Speaker 3: are keeping all these boats aflow, and not just that,
Speaker 3: but creating fake follower accounts. They're creating fake views, they're
Speaker 3: creating fake impressions. And what they're doing it for has
Speaker 3: always been to make it seem like this very small
Speaker 3: group of people is much larger. This is not a
Speaker 3: viable national party. They don't have the numbers, and it's
Speaker 3: like this thing that happens in our media. It has
Speaker 3: the inability to really look at it. It was like
Speaker 3: this poll that came out a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 3: that said, oh my god, quote unquote, wokeness is popular
Speaker 3: with eighty percent of the American public.
Speaker 2: What you say today, right?
Speaker 3: And by the way, you know as well as I do,
Speaker 3: that our media loves to pretend that every issue forty
Speaker 3: five percent Democrat, forty five percent Republican, with ten percent
Speaker 3: in the middle, and they're fighting over that ten percent.
Speaker 3: That's not how America is set up. I know. So
Speaker 3: this is a shock to some people, So I hope
Speaker 3: they'll pull over or sit down before I say this.
Speaker 3: This country was formulated to benefit a minority of white,
Speaker 3: wealthy people, and so all of our structures benefit that.
Speaker 3: The Republican Party is not a national party anymore. They
Speaker 3: only benefit based on that minoritarian idea that we're talking
Speaker 3: about here. As a result, these billionaires have outsized influence
Speaker 3: and they're able to move all this stuff around. Look
Speaker 3: at what happened with the Supreme Court. It's a backstop.
Speaker 3: It's a minoritarian institution which we all know has been
Speaker 3: used to limit human rights, to promote white supremacy, to
Speaker 3: create conservative sort of dams. In terms of progress, it's
Speaker 3: a regressive institution, always has. They've taken that over. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: why are they acting so aggressively in these red states?
Speaker 3: Because they've been jerrymandered so hard that they own them.
Speaker 3: And on top of that, it's all they have left.
Speaker 3: And right now is the moment where the Republican Party
Speaker 3: has had to make a choice. And this, by the way,
Speaker 3: since twenty twelve when Mitt Romney got washed out by
Speaker 3: Barack Obama, we've both read that the autops here report
Speaker 3: they knew they eyed their head to move away from
Speaker 3: exclusively white male supremacy or they were going to continue
Speaker 3: losing elections. Twenty sixteen rolls around. Donald Trump just completely
Speaker 3: through that in the trash can. This is a losing brand.
Speaker 3: They are crazy, unpopular freaks, even people who lean conservative.
Speaker 3: They don't want people in their face talking about genital
Speaker 3: examinations of children before swim meets. They don't want people
Speaker 3: screaming about transhumanism and satanic cabals behind the scenes. They
Speaker 3: are losing their popularity and what they have to do
Speaker 3: is they have to seize control of those minoritarian institutions
Speaker 3: and Harlan Crow and that people just like him are
Speaker 3: paying all the money to make that happen before they
Speaker 3: get washed out completely as a party and lose all viability,
Speaker 3: and they need to go ahead and make all their
Speaker 3: dreams come true right now, which right now, this is
Speaker 3: like a was It's like the crash and dash burgl
Speaker 3: They need to get in the store, they need to
Speaker 3: get whatever they need to get out, and they need
Speaker 3: to leave and they need to destroy democracy or else
Speaker 3: they're finished.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because when you're given the option right
Speaker 1: of creating policies people like for destroying democracy altogether, right
Speaker 1: and understanding that, just as we have seen with these
Speaker 1: last few mass shootings, that they're not absolved from that pain. Right.
Speaker 1: It was in the Tennessee shooting at the school you
Speaker 1: had the first I believe the first Lady of Tennessee
Speaker 1: lost one of her best friends in that shooting. You
Speaker 1: have over you know what has happened in Kentucky, and
Speaker 1: there are people on the force and the governor himself,
Speaker 1: who is a Democrat, however, lost friends in that shooting.
Speaker 1: They're creating, Jared, these these policies, right. You have Tennessee
Speaker 1: was just about to pass their permitless conceal and carry.
Speaker 1: You have Florida passing, you know, these permit lists conceal
Speaker 1: and carry laws. They're doing these things that are coming
Speaker 1: down from on high, the billionaire is on high. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't create a measure, a mechanism of
Speaker 1: security or arm's lengthness from harm. So, like, talk to
Speaker 1: me about this. We got to double down and get
Speaker 1: everything this smashing grab of rights and freedoms. We got
Speaker 1: to scoop it all up, right, then we got to
Speaker 1: push out our white supremacist militias to defend all of
Speaker 1: the things that we all of the rights that we
Speaker 1: have scooped up because we're you know, proliferating the streets
Speaker 1: with guns, which is the point, right, because they know
Speaker 1: that they're creating the climate and conditions for revolution, right,
Speaker 1: because there's only so far that people will be pushed.
Speaker 1: So well, when I put all of that together, I mean,
Speaker 1: is there a logic thread through this? Like I'll like,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, because you are creating the
Speaker 1: conditions for your own demise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and by the way. That's actually one of the
Speaker 3: weirder things that I've been studying within the Republican sphere
Speaker 3: is so much of this is self destructive, right, because
Speaker 3: literally nothing that we're talking about here, I just saw
Speaker 3: this the other day, because you know, it's it's almost
Speaker 3: like one of those things where the alerts come out
Speaker 3: of these state legislatures and you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: you passed that. Like like I just saw a state
Speaker 3: the other day, a red state just completely defunded all
Speaker 3: libraries Missouri, Missouri, and it's like, you do you do
Speaker 3: you think people want that? You know, like does that
Speaker 3: win somehow? And your culture war? You know, Malia. So
Speaker 3: part of what's happening is that they understand that there
Speaker 3: are levers that they can use. They have to use outrage,
Speaker 3: they have to use fear right. And this is something
Speaker 3: I didn't totally understand until I wrote my last book,
Speaker 3: Them in That Kingdom, which is this has always been
Speaker 3: how it is the only way that conservatives and reactionaries
Speaker 3: win is if they're using these fear based appears right.
Speaker 3: So for instance, not only is there a political incentive,
Speaker 3: there's an economic incentive, right. So one of the things
Speaker 3: I'm writing about today, is this bud Light backlash? Right?
Speaker 1: Oh my two, Yes, I've been following your tweets about it.
Speaker 2: So tell tell the.
Speaker 3: People bud Light decided that they needed to broaden their
Speaker 3: their marketing and that they decided to go out and
Speaker 3: try and get LGBTQ people to buy bud Light, so
Speaker 3: they handed it to an influencer as transgendered. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 3: right reacted completely normally. You know, they just lost their minds,
Speaker 3: firing guns on this stuff, blowing up bud Light cans. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: there's a dangerous game that's happening here, right, because one
Speaker 3: of the things that you're doing is on the right,
Speaker 3: you are few within this angry white populace that has
Speaker 3: been told for years that they're being replaced, that there's
Speaker 3: a conspiracy against them, that the minorities are coming from them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, betrayed.
Speaker 3: They have played a dangerous game telling them, guess what,
Speaker 3: you're at war, and you're a warrior, and you are
Speaker 3: going to take on the deep state. You need to
Speaker 3: buy all the guns, you need to get giant trucks,
Speaker 3: you need to clad yourself in Second Amendment clothes, all
Speaker 3: in that stuff.
Speaker 2: Second Amendment clothes.
Speaker 3: They know, they know that what they're doing is creating
Speaker 3: the fantasy of violence.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, at some point or another, a.
Speaker 3: Fantasy of violence becomes violence. That is the way it works.
Speaker 3: If you tell enough people you are a Second Amendment warrior,
Speaker 3: eventually some of them are gonna pop off. We've already
Speaker 3: seen that.
Speaker 1: Yep, Kyle Rittenhouse and the person that Governor Abbott is
Speaker 1: trying to pardon the Texas And by the.
Speaker 3: Way, those are the quote unquote loan wolves. That's know
Speaker 3: what they are. They're the vanguard of what's coming, which
Speaker 3: is more of this. And by the way, the problem
Speaker 3: with the through line is this because the right is
Speaker 3: not this completely homogenous structure. Right, There are different ideas.
Speaker 3: There are some people who think, well, I will get
Speaker 3: this as close to mass violence as I possibly can. Right,
Speaker 3: I'll go ahead and I'll figure out how to make
Speaker 3: the most money, gain the most electoral power. But I
Speaker 3: don't want it to spill out. There are others and
Speaker 3: we've seen them, we've heard them, and people like you
Speaker 3: and me pay attention to these things. There are those
Speaker 3: who are like, that's what I want. I want there
Speaker 3: to be violence. I want the total overthrow of democracy,
Speaker 3: and there's a tug of war within the Republican tent
Speaker 3: over who wins that, and right now, the direction in
Speaker 3: the trajectory is towards that. You know, It's like that
Speaker 3: old idea of like how do you avoid running off
Speaker 3: a cliff? Will you run as quick as you can
Speaker 3: at the cliff and then stop right like we're going
Speaker 3: over the cliff, and we want to go over the cliff.
Speaker 3: And that's what's winning within the Republican Party right now,
Speaker 3: which just draws us closer and closer to more of
Speaker 3: that violence.
Speaker 1: What scares me is one that I don't see. And
Speaker 1: you tell me if I'm I'm wrong, Jared, But I
Speaker 1: don't see a path to pull us back from the cliff.
Speaker 1: Right I feel like America is in that Looney Tunes cartoon,
Speaker 1: careening right in slow motion over the cliff, and I
Speaker 1: don't believe that there is anything to deter that from happening.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I look at the microcosm that we've been paying attention
Speaker 1: to that unfolded in Tennessee with the Tennessee Three with
Speaker 1: Gloria Johnson, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, and you know
Speaker 1: that Republican regime in Tennessee believe that they were going
Speaker 1: to expel these people and no one was going to
Speaker 1: be the wiser or give a damn right.
Speaker 2: I genuinely believe that me too.
Speaker 1: They created in in the Justins International Superstars right because
Speaker 1: it was so blatant, blatant in its racism, dripping in
Speaker 1: its white supremacy, that people couldn't turn their eyes away.
Speaker 1: So when we see moves like that, but then we
Speaker 1: see the reaction of the people, that gives me, gives
Speaker 1: that mustard seed of hope that I have inside of me,
Speaker 1: makes it become, you know, a little field. For a moment,
Speaker 1: I start to say, well, maybe that's the thing that
Speaker 1: pulls us back from kreening. But we know about attention spans.
Speaker 1: We know that in a couple of weeks, there'll be
Speaker 1: another mass shooting, There'll be another egregious thing. In the
Speaker 1: moments that we're watching the people of Tennessee awaken to
Speaker 1: their power, we're also watching public libraries be defunded. We're
Speaker 1: also watching folks get on the floor in the Nebraska
Speaker 1: State Senate and talk about the fact that we need
Speaker 1: a six week ban on abortions because we're losing white
Speaker 1: babies we see, you know, like we foreigners are having
Speaker 1: more babies than us, like literally saying these things. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, am I wrong? Am I being hyperbolic to
Speaker 1: believe that we've already crossed the point of no return?
Speaker 1: But where we're headed is going to be violent, is
Speaker 1: going to be dangerous.
Speaker 2: We just don't know the how.
Speaker 3: Well. And by the way, I want to go ahead.
Speaker 3: And we have this phenomenon when we think about politics
Speaker 3: and history, we end up in these like shallow pools.
Speaker 3: We only think about it like within like a five
Speaker 3: to ten year span. We don't think about the larger
Speaker 3: sort of movements. I'm going to time travel back to
Speaker 3: age long ago, the nineteen nineties, and you know, let's
Speaker 3: go back to this period. There was another moment like this.
Speaker 3: We're up on the thirtieth anniversary of the Waco Siege
Speaker 3: with the branch Davidian. In the wake of that siege
Speaker 3: and in the wake of Ruby Ridge, people of memory
Speaker 3: hold that the Republican Party in the NRA also used
Speaker 3: the same incentives we're talking about today in order to
Speaker 3: increase their power, using paranoia of what the United States
Speaker 3: government was doing and what was happening to white Americans.
Speaker 3: They sold so many guns, they gained so many advantages.
Speaker 3: You can go back to the conservative quote unquote revolution
Speaker 3: all of that, and that was by playing footsie with
Speaker 3: white supremacists and white militias around the country and going
Speaker 3: ahead and doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on white supremacy.
Speaker 3: Guess what happened. We ended up with Oklahoma City, one
Speaker 3: of the worst domestic terrorist incidents in the history of
Speaker 3: the country, in which this sought off person who all
Speaker 3: these conspiracy theories decided to attack the federal government. What
Speaker 3: happens after that? And umembersual as I do, there was
Speaker 3: a little bit of cooling down, right, just a little
Speaker 3: bit of cooling down of rhetoric that took place between
Speaker 3: that bombing and then moving into September eleventh in the
Speaker 3: War one. Well, guess what if you open up the
Speaker 3: lens there, it tells a different story. It's not that
Speaker 3: it went away, it's that it changed and it moved
Speaker 3: and we're in another period like that. January sixth should
Speaker 3: have changed everything. In a sane country. First of all,
Speaker 3: you don't have January six But then you have a
Speaker 3: country that actually looks at it and says, oh my god,
Speaker 3: we need to stop this. The breaks are beaten off
Speaker 3: this thing. The question is what kind of violence it's
Speaker 3: going to be. I completely agree at this point it's
Speaker 3: whether or not we're going to see widespread violence. If
Speaker 3: we're going to see a continuing balkanization. Are we going
Speaker 3: to see another person, you know, attack a federal building.
Speaker 3: Are we going to see assassinations? Are we going to
Speaker 3: see any of that stuff? It's starting to look more
Speaker 3: like the period between the main world Wars and the
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties nineteen seventies, which was an incredible amount of violence.
Speaker 3: But what happened there. What happened was we saw younger people.
Speaker 3: We saw grassroots movements, civil rights protesters, you name it,
Speaker 3: people who came in and said enough of this right.
Speaker 3: And I think we're getting to the point where we're
Speaker 3: seeing those things grow. I think, you know, not just
Speaker 3: test scene, not just BLM, but also with the organizers
Speaker 3: and labor unions that are growing, I think we're starting
Speaker 3: to see a push back against it. The question is
Speaker 3: can we gain enough speed in order to curb this
Speaker 3: before it turns into just an unthinkable amount of violence.
Speaker 1: Last question for you, Jared, is is I want to
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning of our conversation where we're
Speaker 1: talking about Harlan Crow and the echo chamber that has
Speaker 1: been able to be created for to create this false
Speaker 1: idea that these people are the majority, that their ideology
Speaker 1: is the majority. Have Democrats in your mind, then democratic
Speaker 1: leadership fallen for that ropodope to believe right in this
Speaker 1: kind of belief that they need to placate to this
Speaker 1: imaginary middle right in order to win national office, in
Speaker 1: order to you know, sustain their tent. Because if in
Speaker 1: fact the echo chamber is nothing but a house of mirrors, right,
Speaker 1: a house of speakers, and it's it's only but a
Speaker 1: small group of people talking, then have they fallen for it?
Speaker 1: And is there any recourse if you think that that
Speaker 1: is the case.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean again, there's a multi praying to answer
Speaker 3: with this. And first things first, you know, ideology is
Speaker 3: a funny thing, right. We think that people are won
Speaker 3: over by arguments sometimes and like they change their entire opinions. Actually,
Speaker 3: when you look at the numbers, it's more people find
Speaker 3: things that echo what it is that they all rn believe.
Speaker 3: And so if you actually look at sort of the
Speaker 3: right word turn of the Democratic Party in the nineteen
Speaker 3: nineties with Bill Clinton and even Joe Biden, they said,
Speaker 3: you had to go after this mythical independent voter. They
Speaker 3: believe that not because they necessarily understood the electorate, but
Speaker 3: because it reflected their own personal beliefs about how government
Speaker 3: should work. They were illiberals. They were actually centrist and
Speaker 3: right center right. They actually wanted to go ahead and
Speaker 3: frame it that way in order to go ahead and
Speaker 3: get their way and push what they wanted. I think
Speaker 3: there are some Democrats who believe it, but it's also
Speaker 3: just a reflection of the fact they don't want to
Speaker 3: change anything.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of Democratic leaders who are very
Speaker 3: happy with the Democratic Party now being the guardians of
Speaker 3: the status quo. We're not going to talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: distribution of wealth. We're not going to talk about race.
Speaker 3: We're not going to talk about white supremacy. We're not
Speaker 3: even going to make sure the gay and trans people
Speaker 3: are safe, or that black people in the South can vote.
Speaker 2: That's not going to do.
Speaker 3: Well with the independent voter. Guess what it does. It
Speaker 3: already has been shown to do that. It's a self
Speaker 3: serving fantasy, and it's not for some of them they've
Speaker 3: been won over by that fantasy, and others it's exactly
Speaker 3: what they want and it's exactly how they want to
Speaker 3: operate as politicians. But I do think that what we're
Speaker 3: seeing again from younger people, they reject this garbage, and
Speaker 3: they why we have so many young independents who say,
Speaker 3: you know, what neither party does for us. The Republicans
Speaker 3: are fascists. The Democrats are doing what they need to do.
Speaker 3: We don't care if they're kneeling during the BLM protest,
Speaker 3: like where are the results? I think what we're going
Speaker 3: to see is a generational shift, and I think small
Speaker 3: little stories, you know, like the Diane Feinstein thing, the
Speaker 3: ringing of the hands over Joe Biden running for another term.
Speaker 3: I think we're going to see a generational turnover that's
Speaker 3: going to change how these parties work eventually at some point,
Speaker 3: if we can get there, if free and fair elections continue,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Here's hoping.
Speaker 1: Jarry. As always, thank you for making the time to
Speaker 1: have just such in depth and ground us in historical
Speaker 1: conversation that I think is really important to make sense.
Speaker 2: Of where we are right now. So as always, I
Speaker 2: appreciate you well Danielle.
Speaker 3: Thank you. You're one of my favorite people. I hate
Speaker 3: that we have to get together and talk about all
Speaker 3: this stuff.
Speaker 2: One day we'll talk about something good.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that day will be, but it'll
Speaker 1: be good. That is it for me today, Dear friends
Speaker 1: on wokef as always, power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.