Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WIKA f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live from my Brooklyn Cilarium.
Speaker 1: Dear friends, you know, I want to say that yesterday
Speaker 1: I was pissed and I still remain pissed about the
Speaker 1: world's reactions to South African scientists discovering the omnicron omicron
Speaker 1: omicron amarion. The fucking O variant is what I'm going
Speaker 1: to start referring to it as um. You know, I
Speaker 1: will have a discussion in a little bit with our
Speaker 1: friend doctor Jonathan Metzel, and we have a posing views
Speaker 1: on the travel band that was instituted by the United
Speaker 1: States and many of their nations with regard to blocking
Speaker 1: South Africa and the surrounding countries from being able to
Speaker 1: enter into their country. And I say this that we
Speaker 1: cannot divorce ourselves from the reality of colonization, white supremacy,
Speaker 1: and manifest destiny, right. We cannot divorce ourselves and suspend
Speaker 1: reality in the way to make space for what is unrealistic, right,
Speaker 1: which is the fact that, oh, the travel bands were
Speaker 1: instituted because you know, we want to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: We want to prevent the spread we want to do
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. Well, yeah, that's all great and fine,
Speaker 1: except at the same time that the omnicron variant was
Speaker 1: discovered in South Africa, it had already been discovered in Belgium,
Speaker 1: it had already made its way to the Netherlands, it
Speaker 1: had already shown up in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: And yet yet those that discovered it and chose to
Speaker 1: be transparent about that information were then economically hindered and shunned.
Speaker 1: You know, you had Secretary blinkin say and refer to
Speaker 1: what the South African scientists have done as being extraordinarily transparent,
Speaker 1: And I said, so, is this how we reward transparency?
Speaker 1: And how is it that not one fucking reporter as
Speaker 1: of yet has still asked the question, why when the
Speaker 1: variant was discovered in other places, was it that only
Speaker 1: African nations were banned? Right? Like, that's the question. And
Speaker 1: I just don't understand why we make shit that is easy,
Speaker 1: super fucking complicated, right, And I'm saying, put people on
Speaker 1: the defense, make them have to give you the reason
Speaker 1: outside of racism, outside of xenophobia, as to why when
Speaker 1: it comes to things being discovered in black and brown
Speaker 1: nations that there's a rush for quote unquote isolation. But
Speaker 1: when it's discovered in your white countries, right, or wider
Speaker 1: countries demographically, that then it's oh, our neighbors, our colleagues,
Speaker 1: and these are the things that we're going to be doing.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, call a fucking spade a spade, And
Speaker 1: right now I'm calling bullshit on the Biden administration. I'm
Speaker 1: calling bullshit on the UK, I'm calling bullshit on Switzerland,
Speaker 1: I'm calling bullshit on Germany because those countries right outside
Speaker 1: of the United States that gave their tepid endorsement for
Speaker 1: ending trips, right, for ending right the inability for poorer,
Speaker 1: lower incominations to be able to create their own vaccines
Speaker 1: by lifting the fucking patents, by lifting the intellectual property
Speaker 1: guards on the vaccine, so that everyone in the world
Speaker 1: can get fucking vaccinated. Right, Like, folks, when you start
Speaker 1: to pull back the veil, the ship is not that deep. Right,
Speaker 1: It comes back to two things. It comes back to
Speaker 1: racism and capitalism, the things that have us all collectively
Speaker 1: going to fucking die of whiteness. Right. And I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted with trying to twist myself into different states
Speaker 1: of being to say the same things over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. You know, I also want to talk
Speaker 1: about the mainstream media's inability to fucking call out racists
Speaker 1: and just say the fucking word, just in the same
Speaker 1: way that abortion advocates are looking for this administration to
Speaker 1: stop you using things statements like safe and a safe
Speaker 1: and limited you know, in terms of in terms of abortion,
Speaker 1: are safe and rarely used in terms of abortion. It's
Speaker 1: like we want abortions to be safe and used whenever
Speaker 1: the fuck they are needed, right, not rare, right, not abundant,
Speaker 1: when they are needed, period, full stop. So, just like
Speaker 1: abortion activists are waiting for the Biden administration to get
Speaker 1: their shit together and pull their narrative away from the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties and into the twenty first century, I too,
Speaker 1: am waiting for mainstream media to actually refer to the
Speaker 1: Republican Party as the white supremacist terrorists party. I am
Speaker 1: waiting for them to fucking call out the Lauren Boubert's
Speaker 1: and the fucking Marjorie Taylor Greens, and the Josh Hally's right,
Speaker 1: and the Ted Cruises and the Lindsay Grahams right and
Speaker 1: call them out for their fucking racism. If you have
Speaker 1: an entire party filled with Lauren Baubert's and Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Greens and every single other day out of their fucking
Speaker 1: stupid mouths, right, is some hot racist, anti Muslim, xenophobic
Speaker 1: shit and you can't even muster muster a response, muster
Speaker 1: a condemnation, right, even pretend that this isn't who your
Speaker 1: fucking party is. Then they are showing you who the
Speaker 1: fuck they are. So why are you making it up
Speaker 1: that you don't know where their hearts and souls lie?
Speaker 1: Why are you making it up? Does somebody need to
Speaker 1: say the N word on television right, holding a fucking
Speaker 1: news in one hand and the fucking hood and the
Speaker 1: other for people to recognize that racism is a rampant
Speaker 1: and white supremacy is on the rise, and it has
Speaker 1: a leading force in an entire political party. That is
Speaker 1: our barometer, dear friends, And just wait a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure that that's where Lauren Brobert is going
Speaker 1: with her bullshit call to Congresswoman il Han Omar. Where
Speaker 1: she's on the other line Representative Omar, waiting for the
Speaker 1: fucking apology or at least the offer of a public
Speaker 1: apology for your hot fucking anti Muslim shit, and then
Speaker 1: you want to turn around and screech and call names
Speaker 1: and then have a whole press conference about how you're
Speaker 1: the victim. Karen, sit the fuck down, right, like I am,
Speaker 1: just exhausted by them as a whole. You don't know
Speaker 1: how government works. You're not interested in governing for the people,
Speaker 1: for the stupid motherfuckers that voted you into office in
Speaker 1: the goddamn place, right, Like I cannot believe every single
Speaker 1: day I tell you, because I tell the story about
Speaker 1: how how excited and proud I was to work on
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill in every fucking day that I got to
Speaker 1: talk about Lauren Bobert or Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever
Speaker 1: other dumb fuck shit from the Republican Party makes my
Speaker 1: blood boil. It makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
Speaker 1: That these people are wearing a congressional pin right, that
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green is working overtime to get Kyle Rittenhouse
Speaker 1: a congressional Gold Medal of freedom for being a fucking murderer.
Speaker 1: That this is the state of where we are. But
Speaker 1: remember that before his fucking death, which should have been
Speaker 1: a long time coming. Rush Limbaugh also received the highest
Speaker 1: medal in the land from Donald Trump. So we already
Speaker 1: know that these medals now are tarnished right for decades
Speaker 1: decades to come if this is what you're gonna fucking do.
Speaker 1: But let me say this on the Rittenhouse front. My god,
Speaker 1: do I want to applaud the young college folks at
Speaker 1: Arizona State University. So apparently it was said that, you know,
Speaker 1: Kyle Rittenhouse, after being acquitted for killing two people and
Speaker 1: wounding another one, was going to re enroll or enroll
Speaker 1: for the first time who the fuck knows at Arizona State. Well,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, these other college kids don't want
Speaker 1: to go to school with a fucking murderer, and so
Speaker 1: they staged protests, wrote demands, and now it is being
Speaker 1: reported that Kyle Rittenhouse is no longer enrolled at said
Speaker 1: school and that he is taking a pause, yeah, pause,
Speaker 1: and recognize that outside of the fucking magabubble, the world
Speaker 1: knows that you're a murderer, you piece of shit, right
Speaker 1: that outside of your little Marilago tour that you got
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump, that your name is going to be
Speaker 1: synonymous with murderer. So when you are looking to go
Speaker 1: to school to get a job, maybe just stay within
Speaker 1: that Maga path because that's the only ship that's going
Speaker 1: to work for you, right. And I want this to
Speaker 1: be a lesson to any other university that he is
Speaker 1: thinking about attending that is not Liberty University or maybe
Speaker 1: you know, Trump University will be back again, right, because
Speaker 1: what is old is always new again. That I want
Speaker 1: him to have nowhere to go to, have no job.
Speaker 1: I don't want Kyle Rittenhouse ever casually sitting down anywhere
Speaker 1: enjoying himself because you know what, the two families that
Speaker 1: he ruined, right, the people's lives that he took, will
Speaker 1: never see normalcy ever or fucking again, and neither should he.
Speaker 1: He should be made to feel uncomfortable, to feel fucking sick.
Speaker 1: I want to hear from years down the road that
Speaker 1: he is a fucking shut in. That's what I want.
Speaker 1: And people can say, oh, Danielle, that's too much blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, No, do you know what's too much? Rage
Speaker 1: filled white men with guns being able to turn our
Speaker 1: society into their fucking playground, into the wild wild West,
Speaker 1: where they can go out and they can call citizens,
Speaker 1: arrest or they can decide that somebody shouldn't belong and
Speaker 1: that a black person needs to show their papers, and
Speaker 1: that they're going to go and protect property and do
Speaker 1: what other people wouldn't do. Right, That's what is said
Speaker 1: about Kyle Rittenhouse. So I want the rest of us,
Speaker 1: the majority right of us, to make it so fucking
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for him to exist. That's what I want. That's
Speaker 1: what I want his future to look like, because he
Speaker 1: robbed two people, two families of their future with their
Speaker 1: loved one, and he will never face the consequences for it.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, to put white people on notice too,
Speaker 1: because the people that he murdered were not black and
Speaker 1: brown people, right, because that would have just been a
Speaker 1: given that he was going to go to jail, that
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to go to jail, right, because that's
Speaker 1: what we do here in America. But it puts other
Speaker 1: white folks on notice and saying, wait a minute. So
Speaker 1: by me going out and supporting, you know, a protest
Speaker 1: and airing my First Amendment rights, that I could be
Speaker 1: taken down. This is unjust, this is not right. Well,
Speaker 1: this is the norm for black and brown people in
Speaker 1: this country that I hope that white folks are waking
Speaker 1: up too, because what you are seeing as the tide
Speaker 1: continues to turn and the tempest continues to churn in
Speaker 1: this country is that you are not safe either, that
Speaker 1: you will no longer be afforded the protection of your whiteness.
Speaker 1: And so what does that mean? It is clear and
Speaker 1: evident that the battle lines in this country have been drawn. Right,
Speaker 1: you have people asking, well, how many elections do we
Speaker 1: got to keep doing before I get to use my guns?
Speaker 1: That was a real question that was recorded and asked
Speaker 1: at a right wing rally. They are geared up and ready, folks.
Speaker 1: The Written House decision, Lauren Bobert's actions right, they are
Speaker 1: all just adding consistent fuel to the fire that continues
Speaker 1: to rage and go on. Checked. And when we pretend right,
Speaker 1: when we pretend that a guilty verdict in the McMichael's
Speaker 1: case somehow nullified the not guilty verdict in the Written
Speaker 1: House case, we are being intellectually dishonest about where we
Speaker 1: are in America, where we are in the world. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to get down on both knees, hope and
Speaker 1: pray to whatever God you believe in or don't that
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system is going to function in the
Speaker 1: way that it was created to function, which was to
Speaker 1: be quote unquote non seeing right. But it sees everything.
Speaker 1: It sees color, it sees class, it sees creed right,
Speaker 1: and bases its judgments on all of those things. I'm
Speaker 1: just so tired of it all because what I realize
Speaker 1: there's just nowhere to look where you can say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's not about racism. Oh that's not about capitalism, right, Like,
Speaker 1: oh it's about something else it isn't. And the sooner
Speaker 1: that we recognize that and make people accountable to that truth,
Speaker 1: the better off we will all be. Coming up next, friends,
Speaker 1: is my conversation with our woke Wednesday good doctor, doctor
Speaker 1: Jonathan Metzel, talking about a recent piece in the Washington
Speaker 1: Post about Republicans, you know, willing to kill their constituency. Folks,
Speaker 1: you know that when it is a Wednesday, we are
Speaker 1: lucky to be joined by our in house doctor, doctor
Speaker 1: Jonathan Metzel, the author of Dying of a Whiteness, who
Speaker 1: runs us through how this country and possibly the entire globe,
Speaker 1: is in fact going to die of whiteness Jonathan. This
Speaker 1: week in The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin wrote a piece
Speaker 1: that I swear to God, if she had read your book,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have needed to write the piece. But it
Speaker 1: was entitled the GOP doesn't care about the suffering it causes,
Speaker 1: even among its own base, And in it, she goes
Speaker 1: on to report about how Florida, Iowa, Kansas, and Tennessee
Speaker 1: have just recently changed their unemployment insurance rules to allow
Speaker 1: workers who are fired to quit over vaccine mandates to
Speaker 1: get benefits. She pointed to the fact that former White
Speaker 1: House physician now Representative Ronnie Jackson, Republican from Texas, known
Speaker 1: for his, as she writes here, unintentionally comedic flattery of
Speaker 1: the former president and for describing the Biden administration's vaccine
Speaker 1: program as socialist communist Marxists, has piped up with an
Speaker 1: insane conspiracy theory that he says that he believes that
Speaker 1: they're going to Democrats are going to come up with
Speaker 1: MV the midterm election variant, because apparently Ronnie Jackson thinks
Speaker 1: that the entire world that is suffering from a global
Speaker 1: health pandemic is just doing so to fuck with Republicans,
Speaker 1: you know. In this piece, Jennifer runs through the ways
Speaker 1: in which particularly let me read you this part. Florida
Speaker 1: has now seen more than sixty one thousand coronavirus deaths,
Speaker 1: about two hundred and eighty four for every one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand residents. New York, by comparison, has seen fifty six thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred and forty five deaths two hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: per one hundred thousand residents. One year ago, before the vaccines,
Speaker 1: New York's per capita toll was nearly twice Florida's. What
Speaker 1: does this tell you where we are right now? Well,
Speaker 1: I like that piece by Jennifer. I think she did
Speaker 1: a good job. She has my book because I hand
Speaker 1: delivered it to her. I gave it to her at
Speaker 1: Politicon two years ago. But I don't I don't have
Speaker 1: any ownership of this issue. I mean, really, honestly, everybody's
Speaker 1: kind of alarmed with this. We just had a big
Speaker 1: piece in Tennessee and the Tennessee and is doing great
Speaker 1: reporting where they found over seventeen thousand rural Red state
Speaker 1: people died from COVID who were unvaccinated, but there was
Speaker 1: no data that they actually stopped calling the data, so
Speaker 1: nobody knew about it. I think it was like ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the people who were dying were unvaccinated. But
Speaker 1: just like the gun debate, I mean, that's the issue
Speaker 1: for me. I've been studying the gun debate for a
Speaker 1: decade before all this pandemic crap, and I've just seen,
Speaker 1: you know, it just it feels like deja voo. But
Speaker 1: if there's a deja vu that's also like fifty thousand
Speaker 1: times more amplified, That's kind of what it is right now,
Speaker 1: because what they learned from the gun debate is if
Speaker 1: you couch something as a front to your liberty or
Speaker 1: your freedom, it's a great way to get people to
Speaker 1: act against their own biological self interest, against their own
Speaker 1: public health self interest, by telling them we're going to
Speaker 1: take power, and you're going to be part of the
Speaker 1: winning team. You're going to be taking power over the
Speaker 1: minority groups or liberals or traitors, any evenything like that.
Speaker 1: And so in a way, the republic I just I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the issue for me, I'm kind of saying
Speaker 1: nine things at one time because I'm so charged by
Speaker 1: this right now, is that people shouldn't think of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party as a as a governing party that looks
Speaker 1: out for the interests of its people. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a theory of power. It's a theory of how to
Speaker 1: get an own power. And just like any army that
Speaker 1: takes power, there are people at the top and there
Speaker 1: are people at the bottom who are disposable, and so
Speaker 1: in a way, everybody is kind of signing up for
Speaker 1: this army. But I don't think we should think, oh
Speaker 1: my god, these guys, aren't you know, they're voting for
Speaker 1: their self interest. Self interest is power and white supremacy.
Speaker 1: It's not public health. It's not commune of public health.
Speaker 1: And so I just I don't think there's almost anything
Speaker 1: surprising about it anymore, even though we do need to
Speaker 1: keep pointing it out number one and the number two,
Speaker 1: try to think about ways we can unhook this system.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually easier to think about how to
Speaker 1: address the Republican Party if we don't think of it
Speaker 1: as a governing party. We think of it as just
Speaker 1: a power scheme kind of which is what it is.
Speaker 1: But I just think this shock of like, oh my god, people,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's no thing like I've studied gun
Speaker 1: violence for ten years. People in Red States were dying
Speaker 1: of guns, suicide, the effects of guns on their own
Speaker 1: kids schools was never more clear. But because this was
Speaker 1: being coded as like individual choice, freedom, liberty against all
Speaker 1: the encroaching, you know, evil liberals and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, people would just kept signing up for it.
Speaker 1: And the other part about the gun debate is that
Speaker 1: not only did they train people to hate public health,
Speaker 1: to resist public health, they also trained people not to
Speaker 1: have access to the data. I mean that there was
Speaker 1: ten years of squelching all the data and so there
Speaker 1: was no there there was no public health infrastructure. So
Speaker 1: in a way, this I just it's just crazy to
Speaker 1: me that we've seen all this before on a smaller scale.
Speaker 1: They're basically just nationalizing the exact same playbook they've done
Speaker 1: with guns for the past, you know, thirty years. This
Speaker 1: is one of the things that Rubens says in her
Speaker 1: piece as well. Their coronavirus death cult maybe the most
Speaker 1: egregious example of Republicans destructive oppositional behavior, but it is
Speaker 1: hardly the only one. MAGA hardliners still want to punish
Speaker 1: the thirteen House Republicans who had the temerity to vote
Speaker 1: for the infrastructure bill on the grounds that it would
Speaker 1: help their constituents they'll countenance for that, she says. Likewise,
Speaker 1: Republicans voted unanimously against the American Rescue Plan, but then
Speaker 1: touted its benefits, including the bill's programs to help struggling restaurants.
Speaker 1: And while Republicans have been ranting about inflation, they also
Speaker 1: voted unanimously in the House against the Build Back Better Plan,
Speaker 1: which would, among other things, have reduced the cost of childcare, housing,
Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act premiums, and prescription drugs for millions of people.
Speaker 1: She said, it's almost as though Republicans are rooting for
Speaker 1: inflation to devastate Americans. I mean, Jonathan, like we've reached
Speaker 1: I feel like a psychotic moment, right for the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: but also for this country where to your point, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been saying it forever, we don't have a two
Speaker 1: party system, right, because a two party functional democracy would
Speaker 1: have two parties that work on behalf of their ideologies
Speaker 1: to come to a place of compromise to do what
Speaker 1: is best for their citizens. Right, That's not where we are.
Speaker 1: We see time and time again, just recently this week,
Speaker 1: of simple legislation that could be passed so that we
Speaker 1: can get to the Build Back Better Act being passed
Speaker 1: in the Senate being thwarted by Republicans. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to matter, though, if our rebuttal is to tell the
Speaker 1: American public the truth about, for instance, what is inside
Speaker 1: of the Infrastructure Bill, or the truth about how Republicans
Speaker 1: are actively trying to kill them and are successfully doing so.
Speaker 1: Because to your point, the truth doesn't matter and hasn't
Speaker 1: mattered in such a long time. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: as you continue to go across the country, go around
Speaker 1: the country into these very red states to talk with
Speaker 1: white folks, rural folks there, you know, at this point,
Speaker 1: is there an end, is there a way to sway
Speaker 1: or are we just at a point where we need
Speaker 1: to recognize that twenty five percent of the population, the
Speaker 1: seventy plus million people or sixty five million depending on
Speaker 1: who you ask, that voted for Donald Trump and our
Speaker 1: you know, gung hope with the Republican Party are just
Speaker 1: going to be just that and we need to focus
Speaker 1: instead on the seventy five percent that is sane. Well, again,
Speaker 1: I do think we've talked about this a bunch or
Speaker 1: two things we've talked about a much. One is that
Speaker 1: I do think that we need to have better strategies
Speaker 1: for we need to have better strategies for addressing the
Speaker 1: seventy five percent. In other words, I do think that
Speaker 1: there is a time if we're going to build a
Speaker 1: party of seventy five we really need to think about
Speaker 1: what does that mean? How do you do that? But
Speaker 1: I also think it's super important just to recognize that
Speaker 1: just highlighting the I mean, let me just tell you
Speaker 1: how crazy it is. I'm in Tennessee right now, and
Speaker 1: they're paying people to not get the vaccine here basically,
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, the state pass to bill that if
Speaker 1: you are if you if there's a vaccine mandate at
Speaker 1: your work, and you lose your job because you refuse
Speaker 1: to get the vaccine, then the state will pay you
Speaker 1: your unemployment insurance. And these are the same people who
Speaker 1: are critiquing the stimulus, right, think of the same guys
Speaker 1: who were saying, oh, it's crazy, But now they're creating
Speaker 1: people who are monetized for losing their jobs for not
Speaker 1: getting the vaccine, and the state's paying for them. So
Speaker 1: consistency is not the strong suit here. But if if
Speaker 1: the goal is to take power to create an army
Speaker 1: of the unvaccinated, which I do think is what Republicans
Speaker 1: are trying to do right now to create a kind
Speaker 1: of orc army of people who are basically martyrs in
Speaker 1: a certain kind of way, that they're willing to throw
Speaker 1: their health out the window in pursuit of this larger goal.
Speaker 1: And the question is what's your response to that? And
Speaker 1: I don't see I don't see the Democrats having that
Speaker 1: in their arsenal right now? How to respond to that?
Speaker 1: I mean to be fair, Jonathan, because I critique Democrats
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, is there a response to
Speaker 1: people that literally change the rules of every game whenever
Speaker 1: they get the ball. So, for instance, it was largely panned, right,
Speaker 1: and we rescinded unemployment benefits because we were told by
Speaker 1: CEOs and shareholders and Republicans who are in their pocket
Speaker 1: that people are just being paid to stay home, and
Speaker 1: we got to save the economy, open up the economy, right,
Speaker 1: And so a way to do that was to then
Speaker 1: punish those people that had lost their jobs, couldn't afford
Speaker 1: to food on the table, are now back in lines
Speaker 1: at food pantries to do so, and we cut off
Speaker 1: their unemployment benefits. Now Republicans are saying no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to use our tax dollars in our states
Speaker 1: to now fund people to sit at home and spread
Speaker 1: a virus like they're literally paying COVID at this point.
Speaker 1: And so that is if that's what they're doing, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if we point out their hypocrisy, we
Speaker 1: point out them speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
Speaker 1: I just am confused about what the alternative is. Well,
Speaker 1: there's no answer right now, right we're paying defense all
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, I've been saying for two years
Speaker 1: and I don't have any more insight into this than
Speaker 1: anybody else. Well, maybe I have a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Is we need to put the Republicans on the defense
Speaker 1: of with their base. In other words, as an addition
Speaker 1: to building our base. We passed multiple chances where we
Speaker 1: could really target make make Republicans answer to their base,
Speaker 1: which means actually understanding what motivates their base and trying
Speaker 1: to circumvent that narrative. And so, in addition to paying
Speaker 1: attention to ourselves and pay attention to seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of people who on my flight just now, we're wearing
Speaker 1: masks and we're afraid of the twenty five percent of
Speaker 1: the people who refuse to wear masks. But you also
Speaker 1: have to figure out a way to put Republicans make
Speaker 1: them pay the price for their for their policies with
Speaker 1: their base, which means having ways to talk to their
Speaker 1: base in ways that are not the usual democratic ways.
Speaker 1: Now I realize it's just easy for me, some random
Speaker 1: guide to say that. And I know the Lincoln Project is,
Speaker 1: you know, on the outs and all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff right now. But at least they were the one
Speaker 1: time where it's like, oh, yeah, we're speaking their language
Speaker 1: in a way. And I think there are multiple times.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm watching the infrastructure right now. What messaging
Speaker 1: are we doing around this great infrastructure bill that we're
Speaker 1: that we already passed. It's going to shape the narrative right,
Speaker 1: And so in a way, it's just I mean, again,
Speaker 1: I think we've just given up on people and say, oh,
Speaker 1: they're too far gone. But I don't think that's the goal.
Speaker 1: The goal is make make Republicans have to answer to
Speaker 1: their base. You know, what's wrong with you that your
Speaker 1: leader didn't give you healthcare? Or Trump lost the election.
Speaker 1: Trump's a loser, asked Trump why he's a loser. Losers
Speaker 1: lose elections, you know, stuff like that, like we never
Speaker 1: we never make we never put them on the defensive
Speaker 1: with their own people. And so I think until we
Speaker 1: start doing that, and maybe it's too late now, but
Speaker 1: even with the Affordable Care Act and all these kind
Speaker 1: of things, and again it's not like they're all listening
Speaker 1: to MSNBC and stuff like that. But I just think
Speaker 1: we've we've we've let ourselves become too isolated in our
Speaker 1: own messaging and who we talk to and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And so my sense is just people aren't crazy, they're
Speaker 1: at They're not like pants on fire crazy. But I
Speaker 1: do think that there's a vacuum where there's no counter
Speaker 1: message to all this crazy stuff, and I think we've
Speaker 1: kind of given up on that. That's that's my critique
Speaker 1: of this stuff is at the earlier time, maybe it's
Speaker 1: too late now, but at the earlier time, when vaccines
Speaker 1: first came out, when we had a chance to expand
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act, during the beginning parts of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: when people were getting money from the government, when the
Speaker 1: infrastructure bills passed, there's a chance to shape that narrative.
Speaker 1: Not just for people who already agree with us, but
Speaker 1: to put Republicans on the defensive from you shape the
Speaker 1: narrative to people who don't agree with you, right and
Speaker 1: force them to answer that. And I don't know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: You and I have talked about this, I Jonathan kay Parton,
Speaker 1: I had a good conversation about this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's just that's not the kind of messaging we do.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, oh, you don't see the benefit
Speaker 1: of stimulus, what's wrong with you? Or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know, we're really good at the diagnosis,
Speaker 1: and this is a horrible diagnosis. Right. They are literally,
Speaker 1: I can just tell you. I'm living down to Tennessee.
Speaker 1: They are literally creating an army of people who will
Speaker 1: who are who? They're creating an army of the unvaccinated.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what it feels like. And so the
Speaker 1: question is how do you circumvent that. You build your enforces,
Speaker 1: but you also shape the narrative in ways that make
Speaker 1: them play defense, and we never make them play you know.
Speaker 1: I agree on the defense part, and I honestly think
Speaker 1: that it is And I blame the mainstream media a
Speaker 1: lot for this because they also benefit They benefit from
Speaker 1: the back and forth. They benefit from those ratings, and
Speaker 1: there is an opportunity that you know, during the entire
Speaker 1: Trump administration, I watched the questions or non questions that
Speaker 1: were asked, and I listen to them interview Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: and Mitch McConnell and don't ever ask them like, why
Speaker 1: is it that you don't care about your base dying
Speaker 1: of COVID? Why is it that you are couchelling to
Speaker 1: people that are egregiously bigots, right and racist? And I
Speaker 1: want to zoom out for a moment on our collective
Speaker 1: worry around COVID nineteen and how we're dealing with it
Speaker 1: or not dealing with it in the States in terms
Speaker 1: of the twenty five percent that just ain't going to
Speaker 1: get fucking vaccinated. And I want to turn attention for
Speaker 1: a moment to what happened over the holiday with regard
Speaker 1: to the announcement of a new variant that was identified
Speaker 1: in South Africa amikron. And you know, I have been
Speaker 1: really outraged and expressing those views on Twitter around the
Speaker 1: knee jerk reaction to ban uh severn African nations, when
Speaker 1: in fact, at the same time that it was announced
Speaker 1: through South African doctors and scientists that the new variant
Speaker 1: was discovered. It was also found to be in parts
Speaker 1: of Europe, and now it's all over Europe. Right as
Speaker 1: of this recording, there are over two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: roughly two hundred and twenty four. I think doctor Faucci
Speaker 1: had said known cases of amikron version of COVID. What
Speaker 1: is your reaction to what are your thoughts about how
Speaker 1: the United States, how the abiden and administration handled the
Speaker 1: transparency out of South Africa and then turned around and
Speaker 1: economically punished in and those are my words, economically punished
Speaker 1: this seven countries around South Africa, including South Africa. The
Speaker 1: question I've been asking myself is would they Would they
Speaker 1: have had the same response if it was coming from
Speaker 1: somewhere else, And I'm going to have you a counterintuitive
Speaker 1: example answer. I think they would have. And the reason
Speaker 1: is I know that there's a lot of racism, colonial history,
Speaker 1: all these factors at play here, but I think beneath
Speaker 1: all of this, and of course that shape part of it,
Speaker 1: but I think beneath all of this, the most important
Speaker 1: point about what's happened is that the virus has mutated
Speaker 1: in a way that in their wildest dreams scientists could
Speaker 1: not have anticipated. So I think when people saw these
Speaker 1: mutations on the spike protein, the scariest part about all this,
Speaker 1: it was just like a kicking the scrow to a
Speaker 1: moment for scientists around the country, around the world, because
Speaker 1: I don't think they thought that a virus could mutate
Speaker 1: as quickly as this. It just came totally out of
Speaker 1: the blue, and so there was a panic moment, I think,
Speaker 1: And I think the response of that panic moment in
Speaker 1: the first moment was just give us some more time
Speaker 1: to just catch our breath and figure out what happened here.
Speaker 1: And so I think that the panic was of the thing. Now,
Speaker 1: certainly they responded the wrong way there. They had a
Speaker 1: bad week, no doubt about that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: I do think that the impulse of let's just protect ourselves,
Speaker 1: will we figure out what we're facing, because what we're
Speaker 1: facing is so incredibly unexpected that I would iould, I
Speaker 1: would think, and I don't know that if you under
Speaker 1: a microscope saw this level of mutation, it's three years
Speaker 1: too soon for this virus to be mutating this way.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's it's unheard of and viruses
Speaker 1: don't act this way, and so all of a sudden
Speaker 1: people got terrified they had PTSD from you know, what
Speaker 1: happened before, and they acted irrationally. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: But I also, I mean, if they would have said,
Speaker 1: here's this horrible, this kind of variation and we're not
Speaker 1: going to do any kind of travel change or anything
Speaker 1: like that, I think that there would have been a
Speaker 1: different kind of backlash and stuff like that. Now I
Speaker 1: think this is going to get righted. But again, I
Speaker 1: think that the most important point to remember here is
Speaker 1: that the virus itself was completely unexpected. Completely We're just
Speaker 1: we're never prepared for that. But is it is it
Speaker 1: so unexpected when we the delta variant quickly took over
Speaker 1: the og COVID variant, right Like I mean, I'm saying
Speaker 1: the amount of mutations is unexpected, but it mutating is
Speaker 1: not unexpected because it happened damn near ten months after
Speaker 1: it was discovered. Well, no, there's no doubt that. I mean,
Speaker 1: this kind of mutation. I mean, somebody think was always
Speaker 1: going to compete with Delta. There's no doubt, and we
Speaker 1: knew that, and and we should have certainly been while
Speaker 1: I mean, we got a lot of problems here, um,
Speaker 1: but certainly getting I'm saying. I'm just saying, like the
Speaker 1: fact that I mean, I wish that we would have
Speaker 1: vaccinated the entire world. I wish that we would have
Speaker 1: vaccinated everywhere, But also I don't know, we got a
Speaker 1: lot of problems and so we're not the most functional
Speaker 1: group right now, and so it's just everything's pretty dysfunctional.
Speaker 1: So um. But the other thing is, even if you
Speaker 1: would have vaccinated half of Africa and there still would
Speaker 1: have been this vaccine, this variant, excuse me, I still
Speaker 1: think it would have been a holy shit moment for
Speaker 1: the world because the world looked under that microscope and
Speaker 1: saw these kind of variations and that it was just
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, mutation was expected. Yes, mutation from Africa
Speaker 1: was terrified and feared, and people were warning about it. Yes,
Speaker 1: the possibility of a mutation coming either from an animal
Speaker 1: source or an immunocompromised person was so all these things
Speaker 1: were things people were talking about. But then to have
Speaker 1: this level of mutation, and I guess the reason it's
Speaker 1: scary because no one knows what it means. Either it
Speaker 1: could mean, and no big deal thing, or it could
Speaker 1: mean an extinction event, like nobody really knows what this
Speaker 1: kind of various because we've never seen a virus mutate
Speaker 1: this way and so and so. Part of the issue
Speaker 1: is I'm sure very well trained scientists acted like racist
Speaker 1: third graders. That's probably what happened for at and because
Speaker 1: I just want to go back to that point, because again,
Speaker 1: when this was identified, it was simultaneously identified having already
Speaker 1: made it to Belgium, to the Netherlands, you know, two
Speaker 1: other places at the same time that it was discovered
Speaker 1: in South Africa. And I think that what I'm what
Speaker 1: worries me is that we are don't seem to be
Speaker 1: actively learning from our past transgressions, meaning that travel bands
Speaker 1: don't work. You cannot ban the virus. You can create
Speaker 1: quarantine mitigations for people that are coming from outside of
Speaker 1: the country, you can create vaccine mandates for airlines. You
Speaker 1: can do those things that make sense. But putting up
Speaker 1: a travel ban and then saying that, oh, but foreign
Speaker 1: nationals can't come into the United States, but if you're
Speaker 1: a United States citizen or permanent resident you can come in.
Speaker 1: It's like, what are you doing, right? It's just it
Speaker 1: once again, it feels to me like politics making the
Speaker 1: you know, making the coin tosses and not and not
Speaker 1: health and science. Am I wrong? Well? I think you're wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean I do. I mean, I'm sure personally, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're personally right. I'm sure you're personally right. I
Speaker 1: do think you're partially right in terms of if this
Speaker 1: would have come from Amsterdam, if this would have come
Speaker 1: from you know, the Playboy mansion in California, where wherever
Speaker 1: it is, where they have isolated. But I will say so,
Speaker 1: certainly the fact that it was coming from Africa led
Speaker 1: to a ban on all of Africa. Certainly that is
Speaker 1: something that it was not right. Absolutely, But I would
Speaker 1: say that the two things I would push back about
Speaker 1: our Number one, if you're a public health expert, how
Speaker 1: are you trained. You're trained to isolate the source of
Speaker 1: the outbreak? Right, That's how public health has been trained
Speaker 1: for centuries, Right, typhoid Mary, shut down that neighborhood or
Speaker 1: color outbreak, you know, shut down the neighbors. Let's isolate it,
Speaker 1: let's figure out how to treat it. But let's also
Speaker 1: not let people out of where the thing is. And
Speaker 1: that's every contagion movie you know that, remember that one
Speaker 1: with Outbreak. I literally put it on the other day.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, and then I shut it off
Speaker 1: within like ten minutes. I was like, I'm not watching. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is like they had it much better than
Speaker 1: we do. We gotta way worse than World War Z.
Speaker 1: We've I mean word rosibate that half the people would
Speaker 1: want to be zobvious. You know that that wasn't part
Speaker 1: of the spect I'm saying, when you're a public health expert,
Speaker 1: you're trained to isolate and then figure out a strategy,
Speaker 1: and so I think they went into unconscious public health
Speaker 1: mode with about a lot of implicit bias. I'm not
Speaker 1: denying that, but I would say that right now. It's
Speaker 1: also like the wrong impulse, right because virus is a
Speaker 1: global problem, which I think we're realizing, Um, did it
Speaker 1: slow the spread? Well, I don't think the US has
Speaker 1: a pot to piss in. But I would say, let's say,
Speaker 1: live in Israel where they totally shut down everybody coming in.
Speaker 1: They now, I mean, they're gonna everybody's going to get
Speaker 1: hit with this, but they have you know, if Israel
Speaker 1: would have kept their borders open, a smaller country where
Speaker 1: they can control the borders, that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm just saying I think public health
Speaker 1: experts acted like public health experts. And also there's this
Speaker 1: history we didn't learn from and hopefully this turns out
Speaker 1: to be a bunch of hype and if not, then
Speaker 1: were totally fucked. Those are my that's my son. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I the last thing that I will say
Speaker 1: on this is, you know, doctor Fauci announced, you know
Speaker 1: that there were fifty different mutations right that they are
Speaker 1: seeing that we will not know for probably two to
Speaker 1: four weeks what this actually means, And I think that
Speaker 1: that is terrifying, right, And I get the fact that
Speaker 1: you want to create policy or find a way to
Speaker 1: alleviate the fear that has spread that is spreading all
Speaker 1: over you know, all over Wall Street. That's the fear
Speaker 1: that's you know, spreading around the country right now. Where
Speaker 1: people were anticipating being able to go back to normal
Speaker 1: at the beginning of twenty twenty two, and now there's
Speaker 1: a whole new fucking variant that no one knows what
Speaker 1: it can do, what it will do, if it's worse,
Speaker 1: if it's faster and transmission, or what have you. But
Speaker 1: I feel like we can't ignore and just kind of
Speaker 1: shrug our shoulders at one of the guiding principles that
Speaker 1: led to, you know, all of these countries being colonized,
Speaker 1: which is white supremacy. And the fact is is that
Speaker 1: India and South Africa asked for a waiver to be
Speaker 1: able to create their own vaccines that they could manufacture
Speaker 1: in country. And because the Madernas and the Fisers and
Speaker 1: the Johnson and Johnson's and wherever the countries that they
Speaker 1: are headquartered in want to rake in billions, they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll take that up at a later time. And
Speaker 1: so I just can't be lost on us that these
Speaker 1: lower income countries are going to pay the brunt of
Speaker 1: the purposeful negligence that I see by higher income countries,
Speaker 1: and then the admonishment of them as if they're the problem,
Speaker 1: when it's really the high the high wealth nations, largely
Speaker 1: white nations, that are to blame. Well, again, all those
Speaker 1: things are true. I don't know if they're all roomated though.
Speaker 1: In other words, I mean, I don't know, we don't
Speaker 1: know yet. So we could have everybody in Africa could
Speaker 1: have been vaccinated, and we still could have had this variant.
Speaker 1: The vaccines may or may not be protective against this variant,
Speaker 1: in which case we're starting over. In which case, um,
Speaker 1: In which case you know, I don't even want I
Speaker 1: don't I don't even know. I don't want to say.
Speaker 1: I want to say nothing. In your which case, I
Speaker 1: like the part of my brain that like is fighter,
Speaker 1: like literally just shut off. In which case I just
Speaker 1: I mean certain, yeah, I mean, absolutely we need to
Speaker 1: vaccinate the world. Absolutely need a vaccine that works to
Speaker 1: vaccinate the world. Absolutely we screwed up before. But I
Speaker 1: don't know the connection between all those things. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and so so you know, it's we're
Speaker 1: going to be you know, I mean maybe this thing
Speaker 1: will be nothing. I mean, I'm I'm waiting, Like, where's
Speaker 1: the like pleasure variant? You know, there is not. There
Speaker 1: is not. It's called that's the fucking like it's called
Speaker 1: alcohol mut mutate in a way that like makes you giggling. No,
Speaker 1: you have like three orgasms or something like that. Like,
Speaker 1: I you know, I want a pleasure variant. Every variant
Speaker 1: is so bad, Like let's make friends with the this
Speaker 1: is uh, there is nothing about the last two years.
Speaker 1: That is leading me to believe that this one is
Speaker 1: going to be you know what, that's the good one.
Speaker 1: We are moving We are moving down, chomping at the
Speaker 1: Greek alphabet right now, and something tells me that when
Speaker 1: we get to the end, it's not going to be
Speaker 1: a pot of fucking gold. Uh. Maybe we'll end up
Speaker 1: with like sneezy or droopy or one of the I
Speaker 1: don't know, like Nope. As always, doctor Jack and Metzel,
Speaker 1: thank you for making time to join us on woke
Speaker 1: F and walk us through how we are all inevitably
Speaker 1: going to be dying of whiteness. Appreciate you well and
Speaker 1: the other The other thing I want to say is
Speaker 1: if this ship gets really bad, I still have a
Speaker 1: bunch of Formula forty nine and toilet paper from the
Speaker 1: last one. You should not announce that good people as
Speaker 1: sitting outside of your Brooklyn apartment waiting upon your return.
Speaker 1: I'd come on over take care. That is it for
Speaker 1: me today on woke F Daily, as always, Power to
Speaker 1: the people and to all the people. Power, get woke
Speaker 1: and stay woke as fuck.