Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ok F Daily with
Speaker 1: me your girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I come to you on this Wednesday following Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: obliteration of the Republican field in Iowa. He won by
Speaker 1: fifty one percentage points, and then you had DeSantis and
Speaker 1: Haley coming in a very very very distant second and third.
Speaker 1: And where I find myself right now is in a
Speaker 1: deep place of frustration, disconnection, and despair about the prospects
Speaker 1: of America progressing in our work around democracy and the
Speaker 1: American project. I think that for the last couple of
Speaker 1: years following the twenty twenty election, many people believed that
Speaker 1: the Republican Party was going to implode, right, that there
Speaker 1: was going to be some type of moment where the
Speaker 1: Republican Party was going to get some smelling salts and
Speaker 1: recognize that they were a part of a cult, and
Speaker 1: you know that they needed to cut ties with Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and move on and rebuild. And in the now
Speaker 1: eight to nine years since Donald Trump entered into the
Speaker 1: political arena and now four years since he, you know,
Speaker 1: was in office, the only thing that has changed is
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has gotten stronger, that his followers have
Speaker 1: gotten more fervent and more resolute in their desire to
Speaker 1: anoint Donald Trump as the second coming of Christ and
Speaker 1: as their martyr and as their you know, wielder of retribution.
Speaker 1: The fact is that when I listen to interviews on
Speaker 1: the ground of people saying why they were caucusing for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and like why he is their guy, logic
Speaker 1: does not play a role here. And logic and facts
Speaker 1: and figures are where progressives and Democrats love to live.
Speaker 1: Their love and commitment to Donald Trump isn't logical. It
Speaker 1: is about emotion. It is about the emotion that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was able to tap into and exploit and expand
Speaker 1: over the last eight to nine years. Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: told white Americans that they will win the battle against
Speaker 1: these people of color, against the demographic shift, against political correctness,
Speaker 1: against the little minuscule equity that has happened in this
Speaker 1: country over the last sixty years, with the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: women's movement, abortion rights, affirmative action, all of these things
Speaker 1: that were put into place to make America more democratic
Speaker 1: and equitable for all of its inhabitants, not just white men.
Speaker 1: And so Donald Trump now comes in and says, don't worry.
Speaker 1: You don't have to learn new terms. You don't have
Speaker 1: to respect different people, you don't have to provide dignity,
Speaker 1: you don't have to learn new skills, you don't have
Speaker 1: to expand in any way. I'm going to bring back
Speaker 1: the good old days. I'm going to return us to
Speaker 1: the time when you didn't have to worry about what
Speaker 1: you said or how you said it, and you didn't
Speaker 1: have to consider anyone outside of your network or race,
Speaker 1: or religion or church or what have you. I'm going
Speaker 1: to bring back the good old days where white men
Speaker 1: reign supreme, so you don't have to feel small or
Speaker 1: like you're losing your country. Because we're powerful and together,
Speaker 1: we're going to take it back. We're going to take
Speaker 1: it all back and then some. And then we're gonna
Speaker 1: make those who even had this fanciful idea around equity
Speaker 1: and inclusion and progress right, We're going to punish them
Speaker 1: for even believing and having the audacity to move outside
Speaker 1: of the stations that we have put them in. That's
Speaker 1: what they are cheering for. That's what they were ripping
Speaker 1: apart the Capitol building for. That's why they wear their
Speaker 1: flag shirts. That's why they kiss the ground that this
Speaker 1: man walks on, because with the election of Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: with a passage of same sex marriage, with the introduction
Speaker 1: of gender identity and pronouns, and this world just changing
Speaker 1: so quickly. In front of them, Donald Trump said, don't worry,
Speaker 1: your pretty little blonde head, I'll fix it for you.
Speaker 1: And they said, thank God, because then I don't have
Speaker 1: to do anything. I don't have to learn anything. I
Speaker 1: can just maintain. Because you see, folks, that's what I
Speaker 1: realize is really behind this idea around the quote unquote
Speaker 1: American dream. It's just about maintaining. It isn't really about
Speaker 1: going above and beyond. It isn't really about expansion, right,
Speaker 1: It is just about being able to have enough. Right,
Speaker 1: I have a good enough job, I own my home,
Speaker 1: I can send my kids to school, I can retire.
Speaker 1: That's it. And facts are facts, which is that that's
Speaker 1: not how this country or the world works anymore. And
Speaker 1: why is that? Because of greed? Because capitalism only works
Speaker 1: for the top one percent and everyone else who thinks
Speaker 1: that they're a capitalist. I saw a really funny meme
Speaker 1: the other day that said, no, you're not a capitalist.
Speaker 1: You're just an exhausted, exploited worker. You're actually not benefiting
Speaker 1: from capitalism unless you are fucking Elon Musk or Bezos,
Speaker 1: you know, or Trump. Right, everyone else is just a worker,
Speaker 1: just a cog in the machine. And because we have
Speaker 1: given so much of this country away to corporations and
Speaker 1: corporate interests, right, just maintaining that bare minimum of the
Speaker 1: quote unquote American dream is now out of reach. And
Speaker 1: so when these people look around, they're not blaming the
Speaker 1: corporations of the CEOs, no, because they have been brainwashed
Speaker 1: into believing that those people have all these things, all
Speaker 1: of this wealth, all of this materialism, because they're smarter
Speaker 1: and they're better, and if they had the opportunity, they
Speaker 1: would do the same. So you steal from people, right,
Speaker 1: You steal their wages, you steal their labor, you enrich yourselves,
Speaker 1: and then you make them worship the material that you have.
Speaker 1: It's genius. And then when the people start to get
Speaker 1: antsy about this gap, this chasm growing between them, right
Speaker 1: and those with so much those halves up there, well,
Speaker 1: what do the habs do? Well, then they point to
Speaker 1: the people that are next to you and say, well,
Speaker 1: there's too many of them, and if they weren't there,
Speaker 1: you would still be comfortable, you would still be okay,
Speaker 1: because there isn't enough for everybody, and now that there's
Speaker 1: more of them, we need more policies to keep those
Speaker 1: people at bay, and then you'll have exactly what you
Speaker 1: had before. Just enough. It's all an illusion. It's a trick,
Speaker 1: and they've put us in the trick back. There is
Speaker 1: more than enough. They're just fucking greedy, and what they've
Speaker 1: done is that they have been able through every generation
Speaker 1: to create an enemy for grieved white people to coalesce around.
Speaker 1: You see, for a brief period in time, those eight
Speaker 1: years of the Obama era, we were operating as a
Speaker 1: people from an abundance mindset. We can do big things,
Speaker 1: we can do hard things. We can get healthcare like
Speaker 1: every other industrialized nation has right. We can create more
Speaker 1: access because me being able to marry a person of
Speaker 1: the same sex does not now devalue your marriage. It
Speaker 1: hasn't shifted anything. There. We are battling right now against
Speaker 1: this feeling, this sense of winner and loser, and there's
Speaker 1: no better person than Donald Trump to make people believe
Speaker 1: that in order for me to win, not only must
Speaker 1: that person over there lose, but they must suffer so
Speaker 1: that my win feels more valuable. It isn't enough for
Speaker 1: white Evangelical Christians to say that they don't want to
Speaker 1: have an abortion right. They must punish. They must not
Speaker 1: only take away abortion, but punish anyone who even ever
Speaker 1: thought that they had control over their own bodies. It's
Speaker 1: not enough to say, oh, well, I don't care, like
Speaker 1: I don't want my kid reading the set of books,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to not allow it. No, all kids
Speaker 1: now can't read a certain type of book, even the
Speaker 1: dictionary in Florida. And then I'm going to punish those
Speaker 1: that think that they actually have access to information that
Speaker 1: I'm not approving. We are up against so much, and
Speaker 1: to be honest, I personally am running out of steam
Speaker 1: and I'm not quite sure about how to create more.
Speaker 1: Because the day after the Iowa caucuses were decided in
Speaker 1: a way that we knew they were going to be decided,
Speaker 1: I woke up with this sense of deep hopelessness. Like
Speaker 1: these people, these white Evangelical Christians, these white aggrieved conservative Americans,
Speaker 1: they want to destroy America, like they are done with
Speaker 1: democracy because democracy doesn't allow them to be on top anymore.
Speaker 1: They are done with the rule of law, because if
Speaker 1: the rule of law recognizes all people's rights, then they
Speaker 1: have none. So because they feel this great sense of law,
Speaker 1: everything must be destroyed. And I'm at a place today
Speaker 1: where I'm like, I don't give a fuck, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I just hope I have the ability to leave in time,
Speaker 1: because I don't know who I'm trying to convince anymore.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: who I'm trying to convince and what we're actually trying
Speaker 1: to do. And I know you tune in and listen
Speaker 1: to me because you think that you know, most days
Speaker 1: I have something bright to say. Today I don't have
Speaker 1: something bright to say. I'm gonna be real with you.
Speaker 1: We keep trying to fight these people's opinions and feelings
Speaker 1: with facts, and you just can't fight feelings with facts.
Speaker 1: It's not how it works. These people love Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: They will give up their own life and their own
Speaker 1: freedom to advance his cause and his mission. They showed
Speaker 1: us that on January sixth, twenty twenty one, and they
Speaker 1: showed us that now as the Republican primary, which is
Speaker 1: not even really a primary because they don't want anybody
Speaker 1: but Donald Trump. And frankly, the people who said that
Speaker 1: they were quote unquote running for president don't want anybody
Speaker 1: other than Donald Trump. Otherwise they would make a very
Speaker 1: clear distinction between themselves and the person that is the
Speaker 1: perceived top of the ticket. All of this is a
Speaker 1: fargun conclusion. We know Donald Trump has the Republican nomination,
Speaker 1: and these people don't care if he is convicted of
Speaker 1: anything because it just makes their case even better. Look
Speaker 1: what he's overcome. It just plays into his message and
Speaker 1: into his hands. So at what point do we look
Speaker 1: around and say, I'm done reacting to him, I'm done
Speaker 1: reacting to them. What do we actually want? Because I
Speaker 1: will tell you that the seventy percent that didn't vote
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump are not acting as if they actually
Speaker 1: want democracy either. So I find myself at a loss
Speaker 1: right now what am I actually doing? Because if the
Speaker 1: seventy percent don't recognize the stakes at this fucking stage
Speaker 1: of the game, America is on life support and I'm
Speaker 1: like one of the physicians in the room that's just like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's coming back. So maybe we should
Speaker 1: send in whatever a holy person they believe in, give
Speaker 1: them their last rites and pull the fucking plug, you know.
Speaker 1: And maybe I'm just having a bad day and tomorrow,
Speaker 1: you know, will come out swinging. But I gotta be
Speaker 1: honest that the vacillation between the hopelessness and the hope
Speaker 1: is like giving me fucking whiplash, because to go through
Speaker 1: ten months of this shit with a current president that
Speaker 1: just does not have the support you see what folks
Speaker 1: failed to gather, or maybe they do, And maybe that's
Speaker 1: why there is this collective hopelessness, is that people did
Speaker 1: not vote for Joe Biden in twenty twenty. They voted
Speaker 1: against Donald Trump. We were in a pandemic without fucking vaccines,
Speaker 1: and like we're sitting glued to our televisions every day
Speaker 1: to see whether or not we could go outside, or
Speaker 1: whether or not there was a new strand. As a
Speaker 1: nation and as a globe, our backs were literally up
Speaker 1: against the wall facing certain death, and that motherfucker was
Speaker 1: telling us to inject bleach. So, like, the choice seemed
Speaker 1: pretty fucking clear. Either you're gonna go with the madman
Speaker 1: who's telling you to inject bleach, right, or you're gonna
Speaker 1: go with the elder statesman that like never really had
Speaker 1: a constituency. But at least he's not crazy. So what's
Speaker 1: the messaging now four years later, when people's money doesn't
Speaker 1: go as far as it used to, when we are
Speaker 1: in the middle in the middle of war in the
Speaker 1: Middle East and on the wrong fucking side. You know,
Speaker 1: I just I don't know, you know, if I'm looking
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing that every thing is being thrown at
Speaker 1: this election, meaning every type of misinformation, every type of
Speaker 1: fucking thing that can ensure a loss, war, despair, the
Speaker 1: rising migrant crisis, you know, the climate change, the severe
Speaker 1: weather that was just experience inst in Iowa and around
Speaker 1: the country in different formats, like you can barely keep
Speaker 1: your head above fucking water, literally and figuratively. So what
Speaker 1: are we going to do? This is where I find myself.
Speaker 1: These are the questions that I'm asking, what are we
Speaker 1: going to do? Because Donald Trump is not even inching.
Speaker 1: He is galloping towards the White House with a cadre
Speaker 1: of faithful followers with tiki torches and self made bombs
Speaker 1: and explosives behind him. They are coming, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if there's going to be anybody left at the
Speaker 1: gates to even put up a fight. What are we
Speaker 1: willing to do? That's the question that I leave you
Speaker 1: with today. What are we willing to do? And is
Speaker 1: there enough of us that is willing to do anything?
Speaker 1: At this point? That is it for me today, dear
Speaker 1: friends on woke af AS always power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people, God willing some power. Dear friends.
Speaker 1: I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried that not enough people
Speaker 1: are getting woke, and I'm worried about not enough people
Speaker 1: are staying woke because right now I just want to
Speaker 1: go right back to fucking sleep. I will be back tomorrow, though,
Speaker 1: I promise