Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WIKA f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: The conversation that I have coming up next with our
Speaker 1: friend doctor Jonathan Metzel is one that I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: it gets really exhausting having what feels like the same
Speaker 1: conversation over and over again about gun violence in the
Speaker 1: United States, about the pervasiveness of mass shootings. You know,
Speaker 1: over the holiday, the Thanksgiving Holiday, as you know, folks
Speaker 1: are gathered with friends and family and chosen family. You know,
Speaker 1: I use it as a day to really just have gratitude. Right.
Speaker 1: It is not about the founding of this nation, is
Speaker 1: not about the fucking Pilgrims. It is not about the
Speaker 1: mass genocide that was visited upon the indigenous population of
Speaker 1: this country. For me and for my loved ones, it
Speaker 1: is about an opportunity for us to gather together, for
Speaker 1: us to share some food, make some food, eat too much,
Speaker 1: laugh really hard, drink too much, and just enjoy each
Speaker 1: other's time. This Thanksgiving holiday, like so many that have
Speaker 1: come before it, have been marred by headlines that are
Speaker 1: visited upon us with regard to mass shootings. And the
Speaker 1: fact that around many people's tables, they're loved ones won't
Speaker 1: be sitting, their loved ones, won't be laughing, their loved
Speaker 1: ones won't be arguing about who needs to wash the
Speaker 1: dishes and who needs to set the kids table. No,
Speaker 1: they're dead. They're dead because they decided to, you know,
Speaker 1: go to the grocery store, or go to the movies,
Speaker 1: or you know, go to a queer club to feel
Speaker 1: in community with other queer people, or did you just
Speaker 1: have a good time. They're dead because they decided to
Speaker 1: go to school that day. The arbitrary nature of mass
Speaker 1: shootings in this country, meaning that they can happen anywhere
Speaker 1: and at any time, has us all just living on edge, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no better way to say it, you know. Jonathan
Speaker 1: and our conversation, he will talk about the habitualness of
Speaker 1: our practice in terms of moving through these stages of
Speaker 1: grief and rage that we vacillate between on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis, and how it has just become a norm,
Speaker 1: a part of how we exist in this country because
Speaker 1: there's no end to it. You know. Jonathan often talks
Speaker 1: about the fact that liberals and progressives need to reframe
Speaker 1: their message and reframe their messaging. And my thought is
Speaker 1: that it isn't necessary like in this particular instance. You
Speaker 1: know that I talk about messaging a lot when I
Speaker 1: talk about electoral politics. This issue isn't about the messaging.
Speaker 1: It's about who's in power, right, It is about who
Speaker 1: wields the power. Because every sensible person with a brain
Speaker 1: in their head knows that AR fifteens shouldn't be readily
Speaker 1: available to civilians for fucking what, what are you hunting
Speaker 1: that you need an AAR fifteen four? Not a goddamn thing.
Speaker 1: It was a gun that was made for war, right,
Speaker 1: So why does that need to be a part of
Speaker 1: your fucking stockpile? And if it is, you should definitely
Speaker 1: be on somebody's fucking list, right, somebody that's you know,
Speaker 1: is being surveiled as being watched for their potential for
Speaker 1: fucking violence. But we don't do that, right because that
Speaker 1: would be encroaching on people's freedoms freedom to kill as
Speaker 1: many people as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Speaker 1: Every sensible person knows that you should have a waiting period,
Speaker 1: you should have rigorous background checks. There should be an
Speaker 1: age requirement in every fucking state, that is nationalized, that
Speaker 1: you need to go through a series of background checks,
Speaker 1: you need to go through safety training, You need to
Speaker 1: then get re certified every year in order to keep
Speaker 1: right your weapons. If you have any types of infraction,
Speaker 1: whether they be domestic violence, whether it be any type
Speaker 1: of violent incident, that then your guns are taken away.
Speaker 1: You should be in mass databases right that if you
Speaker 1: have a weapon in your home, you should have to
Speaker 1: put up a sticker that says, so you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I did see over the Thanksgiving holiday,
Speaker 1: And again, I don't know if this is just something
Speaker 1: that is happening in New York, and I probably believe
Speaker 1: that it is because of a Supreme Court decision that
Speaker 1: overturned New York's ability to ban assault rifles right, which
Speaker 1: had been a hundred year old ban. But you know,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, they don't give a fuck about precedent,
Speaker 1: and they don't give a fuck about American constituents, citizens
Speaker 1: and our safety or anything. They care about power, right,
Speaker 1: they care about owning the libs. But there was a
Speaker 1: commercial that was airing and it was parents, white parents
Speaker 1: dropping their kid off for a play date, and they're
Speaker 1: asking sore heterosexual couple is at the door and another
Speaker 1: white heterosexual couple answers the door, and they say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, just quick question, is the tiger going to
Speaker 1: be on a leash for the entire time that you
Speaker 1: know Johnny is going to be overplaying? You know, just
Speaker 1: want to make sure that everybody's going to be safe,
Speaker 1: because they are equating in this commercial a you know, lion,
Speaker 1: a non domesticated animal being loose in the home as
Speaker 1: the same thing as having an unlocked gun in the home.
Speaker 1: And it is a commercial about people asking right and
Speaker 1: needing to ask the question do you have a gun
Speaker 1: in your home? And if you do, is the gun
Speaker 1: locked up? Right? Because I don't want my fucking kid
Speaker 1: being dropped off at a place someone's home where they
Speaker 1: have a bunch of guns and guess what, none of
Speaker 1: them are locked up, And so there is access that
Speaker 1: is granted to young kids, which, by the way, according
Speaker 1: to this PSA commercial, gun violence is the number one
Speaker 1: killer of kids now, right, So asking these questions and
Speaker 1: feeling like you have the ability to ask these questions
Speaker 1: as parents are really fucking important. But going back to
Speaker 1: my earlier statements is that everyone knows everyone believes if
Speaker 1: you want to own a gun, own a fucking gun,
Speaker 1: but it should be a normal gun, not a weapon
Speaker 1: of mass destruction. And it should be registered, and you
Speaker 1: should have had to go through safety training, and it
Speaker 1: should be locked up, and it should be registered, and
Speaker 1: you should be of a certain age and having to
Speaker 1: have gone through a series of background checks to make
Speaker 1: sure that you are not a violent person, Like you
Speaker 1: should have to prove those fucking things in order to
Speaker 1: be able to get a gun that can kill someone, right, Like,
Speaker 1: this is not rocket science, but the powers that be,
Speaker 1: the people that are in power, want to make it
Speaker 1: seem as if we're crazy for asking for these things,
Speaker 1: and that it is normal to wake up every morning
Speaker 1: and to see a headline of five people gunned down,
Speaker 1: six people gunned down, nineteen people gunned down, fifty people
Speaker 1: gunned down. That that's just how we should live. That's
Speaker 1: the cost of freedom. It doesn't feel very free. So
Speaker 1: coming up next my conversation with our in house doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel, where he will talk about his upcoming
Speaker 1: book book that he used writing about gun violence and
Speaker 1: why it was denied from thirty five publishers. Given this
Speaker 1: great success of his previous book, Dying of Whiteness, and
Speaker 1: what it is that we all need to be doing
Speaker 1: and paying attention to right now. Folks. You know that
Speaker 1: whenever we have the opportunity to speak with our in
Speaker 1: house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzil, we are always pleased, sometimes
Speaker 1: depressed when we finished, But you know, it's important to
Speaker 1: have these conversations. Jonathan. You know I thought about you
Speaker 1: a lot over the Thanksgiving holiday because it seemed like
Speaker 1: there were multiple mass shootings that happened leading up to
Speaker 1: the holiday that happened over the holiday, and it is
Speaker 1: as if I am struggling with the ability to stay
Speaker 1: enraged with headlines that just keep coming. Now what feels
Speaker 1: like just on a regular basis, I think that the
Speaker 1: last stat that I heard, and you correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, which is that we are at what November,
Speaker 1: the end of November, barreling towards the end of the year,
Speaker 1: and we've had in this country over six hundred mass shootings.
Speaker 1: More mass shootings have taken place than have days in
Speaker 1: the calendar year thus far. So I just want to
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on the number of shootings that have
Speaker 1: happened over the last week or so and let what
Speaker 1: do you think is happening? Are we covering it more?
Speaker 1: Are there more shootings? Is it just like par for
Speaker 1: the course? What is happening? Well, you're first year exactly
Speaker 1: right that there has been more than one. If you define,
Speaker 1: as many scholars do, a mass shooting is for or
Speaker 1: victims shot usually strangers. There have been over six hundred
Speaker 1: in the US this year, so quite a bit more
Speaker 1: than one per calendar day. The number I mean, if
Speaker 1: it's just you turn open the news any day and
Speaker 1: they were going to be a couple of mass shootings.
Speaker 1: We didn't used to count mass shootings, used to be
Speaker 1: just the high profile kind of things that we've been seeing.
Speaker 1: Over the past couple of weeks, we started counting all
Speaker 1: the multiple victim shootings, which we should have been doing
Speaker 1: from the beginning, and it turned out that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of multiple victim shootings that don't make it
Speaker 1: to the news because they're like in urban areas and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And so when you start adding it up,
Speaker 1: the toll is not just the carnage that we see
Speaker 1: in suburbia, which is horrible and in places where it's arresting,
Speaker 1: but there's also a toll in I mean, really, the
Speaker 1: true toll of mass shootings are the ones that don't
Speaker 1: make it to the news, right, The true toll of
Speaker 1: mass shootings and gun violence happened in like inner cities
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. And I think for me,
Speaker 1: you know, when you start adding up just the overall
Speaker 1: toll on an aggregate, it's it's breathtaking. It's really breathtaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you know, I'm kind of in the middle of this,
Speaker 1: and so, like many gun scholars, I spent a good
Speaker 1: part of my Thanksgiving going on the news and trying
Speaker 1: to explain. For the US news, it was kind of
Speaker 1: trying to give perspective. And the minute the minute we started,
Speaker 1: the minute we started getting some perspective about about the
Speaker 1: Colorado shooting, then there was the Walmart shooting, on and on,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of like, where are we going?
Speaker 1: What's the plan here? And it just feels like there's
Speaker 1: so much anger and anguish and as you're right, you're
Speaker 1: right that the next day there's going to be another headline.
Speaker 1: And even the Colorado shooting, which even five years ago
Speaker 1: would have been a national headline for months, was replaced
Speaker 1: by another mass shooting the very next day. And so
Speaker 1: the level of helplessness about this issue is just so frustrating.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're gonna shatter the record that this year,
Speaker 1: I think for gun deaths in a year, which was
Speaker 1: about forty two thousand. Looks like we're on pace for
Speaker 1: more than that. And it just becomes habituated in a way.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know. For me, I care about
Speaker 1: the mass shootings, which is what everybody hears about, but
Speaker 1: I also care just about the role of guns in
Speaker 1: everyday life. And there was an article in the Washington
Speaker 1: Post about guns showing up at protests and what does
Speaker 1: that say for just the potential for violence, not just
Speaker 1: the shootings we see, but whatever civic discourse we have left.
Speaker 1: And so it's a it's a problem that's only getting worse.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, I'll just say, and excuse
Speaker 1: me for going on long about this. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: book I'm writing now is about mass shootings in America
Speaker 1: and looking at race and mass shootings. And not to
Speaker 1: do any sour grapes, but my last book won a
Speaker 1: bunch of awards. It's sold quite more than one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand copies. It did very well, and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: a publisher for my book about mass shootings, because every
Speaker 1: single publisher I went to. Now I have a home, thankfully,
Speaker 1: but every publisher I went to told me there's no
Speaker 1: market for gun books because nobody wants to think about this.
Speaker 1: And I'm about to prove them wrong the book I'm
Speaker 1: writing now. But I you know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: wrote Dying of Whiteness. It won all these awards, and
Speaker 1: then I had like thirty five rejections in a row
Speaker 1: when I wanted to write a book about guns. And
Speaker 1: so it's just like people feel like, oh, everybody's tuned
Speaker 1: out about it, and that's you know, to me, I
Speaker 1: don't believe that, But that's kind of the world written.
Speaker 1: What is next? I mean, that's kind of that's really
Speaker 1: shocking to me, the response from publishers that nobody's interested
Speaker 1: in it when it is something that has permeated did
Speaker 1: our everyday existence. There's not a day that goes by
Speaker 1: that we aren't inundated with gun violence. And so was
Speaker 1: that like just the blanket response or that they don't
Speaker 1: want to touch it for whatever other political reasons. They've
Speaker 1: tried selling gun books in the past and they just
Speaker 1: don't sell because half the country won't buy them because
Speaker 1: they think that it's like liberal take your gun book,
Speaker 1: and so Republicans automatically won't buy it by the framing
Speaker 1: of other gun books, and then they think liberals already
Speaker 1: feel like they know everything they know about it and
Speaker 1: they don't need to learn anymore. And so you're kind
Speaker 1: of killing the audience before you get in there. You
Speaker 1: know me, I'm a complicated person, and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: about to overturn that. But even now, it's like a
Speaker 1: daily fight just to explain why I think it's important.
Speaker 1: I keep saying, like this is a story on the
Speaker 1: front page of the newspaper every single day or every day.
Speaker 1: You just have to tap into the complexity of it,
Speaker 1: not tell people what they think they already know. And
Speaker 1: so I'm hoping I'm writing one that's a bit more challenging,
Speaker 1: but we'll have to see. I mean, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: you and I will be talking about you know, I'll
Speaker 1: be happy to talk about it, yea. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I do want to touch upon
Speaker 1: in this conversation again, and I you know, obviously at
Speaker 1: the core the issue is access to guns, right, Like
Speaker 1: we know that that that's the problem. There are too
Speaker 1: many guns in America. Access to guns, it's just way
Speaker 1: too easy to get one, so on and so forth. However,
Speaker 1: with the past several shootings that we have talked about,
Speaker 1: that you and I have talked about on Woke Gay
Speaker 1: app from Buffalo. It was a white supremacist with a
Speaker 1: map with a manifesto in in Colorado. It is anti
Speaker 1: gay rhetoric. And you know, unfortunately we heard from or
Speaker 1: as people made this man viral, the father of the shooter,
Speaker 1: who was more concerned with his son not being gay
Speaker 1: than it was that he committed an act of absolute
Speaker 1: depraved violence, killing several people at that club. Then you have,
Speaker 1: you know, threats of anti Semitic violence, and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. It seems to me, Jonathan, that the
Speaker 1: last several high profile shootings, the ones again that we
Speaker 1: see on the headlines that are gracing the cable news segments,
Speaker 1: are ones that are spawning from hate. They're not just
Speaker 1: your quote unquote average every day domestic dispute, your average
Speaker 1: every day you know, gang territory or things of that nature.
Speaker 1: These are actually spawning from hate of particular groups. At
Speaker 1: a time when political violence and anti gay anti Black,
Speaker 1: anti Jewish, all of these things are at an all
Speaker 1: time high. Can you talk about that and the root
Speaker 1: the causation right outside of the access to guns being
Speaker 1: prevalent in this country unlike anywhere else in the world,
Speaker 1: talk about the root that the patterns that we are
Speaker 1: seeing in terms of the who are the victims and
Speaker 1: who are the perpetrators of this gun violence? Well, I
Speaker 1: would say one important point to note is that is
Speaker 1: that just the very first part of your question, there
Speaker 1: are many more everyday shootings. Right. So the finding we've
Speaker 1: had in public health for the past forty years is
Speaker 1: the more guns, the more shootings. It's probably one of
Speaker 1: the most contested findings in the history of America because
Speaker 1: that everybody then said, oh, there are anti guy and
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. But so we just have
Speaker 1: a lot of guns in households, and so the first
Speaker 1: part of your question is there are a lot of
Speaker 1: shootings we don't hear about, right. Those are the ones
Speaker 1: that are the partner shootings and guns suicides and accidental shootings.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more of all of that. We're just
Speaker 1: not hearing about it right now. And so it's important
Speaker 1: to note that what we're seeing is a very particular
Speaker 1: sample bias in a particular way of much bigger category
Speaker 1: of gun violence. Now that being said, it does seem
Speaker 1: to me like when you add guns to any situation,
Speaker 1: you're providing an outlet for the kind of hate that's
Speaker 1: being validated right now. And so there is, of course,
Speaker 1: as we talked about last week, a real validation for
Speaker 1: anti gay hate, anti trans hate, anti semitism, and guns
Speaker 1: become almost a character in those narratives of I have
Speaker 1: this intense emotion, it's being validated by society, and here's
Speaker 1: a tool that's going to let me happen address that.
Speaker 1: And then people who used to be what we would
Speaker 1: call like the most on the fringe, but now I
Speaker 1: don't know. We've got Mike Lindel running for them, Speaker
Speaker 1: of the House, m and outhkeepers stockpiling weapons for you know,
Speaker 1: for January six and all the kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: what is the fringe? The fringe is kind of moving
Speaker 1: like algae toward the middle right now, yea and so
Speaker 1: and so. But but again, when you add guns to
Speaker 1: this mix, you're providing an outlet for this kind of extremism.
Speaker 1: You know, I what I struggle with and it's really
Speaker 1: you know what I am struggling with and I and
Speaker 1: I said this at the top, is the ability to
Speaker 1: sustain outrage? Is the ability to sustain grief? Right, um,
Speaker 1: Because at this point it's just so rampant that you'll
Speaker 1: if you think about these things on a regular basis
Speaker 1: in the way that we do, you won't want to
Speaker 1: leave your house. And So when you're writing this book
Speaker 1: right now, Jonathan, what is the emotion that you are
Speaker 1: looking to conjure in the reader. Is it one that
Speaker 1: is just informative, this is what you need to understand
Speaker 1: in a historical context and how we got to where
Speaker 1: we are, or is it like this feeling of rage,
Speaker 1: of anger, or of grief and sadness about where we
Speaker 1: are in terms of our gun predicament. So my title
Speaker 1: for the book, which is now being rejected by the publisher,
Speaker 1: this is sour Grape, say I apologize? Is how We Lost?
Speaker 1: That was the working title of the book, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of a story of how a miracle lost the
Speaker 1: gun debate. They think that nobody's going to buy a
Speaker 1: book with lost in the title because it's too much
Speaker 1: of a downer. And I'm like, the whole topic is
Speaker 1: a downer. So I'm trying to tell people, like how
Speaker 1: we got to this point, which is in part a
Speaker 1: story about conservative America, but it's also a story about
Speaker 1: a liberal America. And they want to change the title
Speaker 1: to like, you know, a doctor at the front lines
Speaker 1: of Yak a yak, yak yak, And I'm like, man, nobody,
Speaker 1: let's tap into the emotion that people are having right now.
Speaker 1: And so I'm just trying to explain how we got here, honestly,
Speaker 1: and I think people will be surprised to know it's
Speaker 1: not just an in our a story, it's also missteps
Speaker 1: by liberal America. Liberal America is has for the past
Speaker 1: forty years. What I argue in the book, it's put
Speaker 1: its faith in public health, which is what we do now,
Speaker 1: which is that we only have a narrative after the shooting.
Speaker 1: We don't go further upstream to talk about the judges
Speaker 1: and the political system and the rigged elections. We have
Speaker 1: no strategy for that when it came to guns for decades,
Speaker 1: and we're paying the price for it now. And so
Speaker 1: I'm trying to kind of tell a story that is
Speaker 1: also about liberal America understanding how we got here and
Speaker 1: it'll probably by the time it comes out, be titled
Speaker 1: like Sunny Paris and Springtime or something like that. For
Speaker 1: anybody out there, Man, don't write a book. It ruins
Speaker 1: your life. But I would say that I would say
Speaker 1: that that's the story I'm trying to tell, is liberal
Speaker 1: America understand Like how the hell we got here? Which
Speaker 1: is the kind of the story that I try to tell,
Speaker 1: that the answer was in front of us all along.
Speaker 1: We just we got into this pattern of mass shooting,
Speaker 1: then calling for public health based gun reform, then nothing happens,
Speaker 1: Rince repeat. That's kind of the story of the book.
Speaker 1: And and and so it really is a book about
Speaker 1: liberal America needing to change its tactics and when it
Speaker 1: comes to guns, to understand the upstream politics of judges
Speaker 1: and capital and all these other factors. And so I
Speaker 1: think how we lost to me as a catchy title,
Speaker 1: but it'll probably be like Puppies in your Bed? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and can we can we win? Yeah? You know, because
Speaker 1: I think that one of the things that I have
Speaker 1: realized that I've noticed, I should say not realized, that
Speaker 1: I've noticed over the last um last several shootings is
Speaker 1: that doctors are going on to talk about gun violence
Speaker 1: in the United States as a public health crisis in
Speaker 1: the way that we frame the pandemic, in the way
Speaker 1: that we have framed other issues. And I wonder, is
Speaker 1: that Jonathan just too little, too late, or it does
Speaker 1: does that conversation in and of itself how we understand
Speaker 1: public health which again now with COVID and republic and
Speaker 1: because of Republicans and their apprehension of you know, wanting
Speaker 1: to have their constituent live um, public health has become
Speaker 1: something that is highly politicized. So does it even help
Speaker 1: or does it continue to hurt this issue get the
Speaker 1: kind attraction that it needs by couching it in this way.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's great as a fifth tier strategy, it's
Speaker 1: ridiculous as a political strategy. I mean, I know there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people like me who spent our careers
Speaker 1: focusing on it. But I think we have to admit
Speaker 1: that what we're doing is not working. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's a horrible political strategy. Um, you know, we
Speaker 1: need to we need to reboot the whole thing. So
Speaker 1: that's my sense. But is it but is it a
Speaker 1: horrible strategy? Because like, here's the thing, because this is
Speaker 1: the reality, Jonathan. It's not working because the people that
Speaker 1: are in power don't want it to work. Exactly right,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not because how the how it's and
Speaker 1: this is this is I think where where I end
Speaker 1: up wanting to throw my hands up. And I'm grateful
Speaker 1: for the fact of people like yourself that don't throw
Speaker 1: their hands up, that keep trying to find different ways,
Speaker 1: different avenues, different footholds to kind of get in. But
Speaker 1: it's it isn't about so much the framing around gun
Speaker 1: violence as is that everyone knows that you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to access in AAR fifteen. Everyone knows that, like
Speaker 1: you should have longer waiting periods and background checks and
Speaker 1: all of these laws that are in place to make
Speaker 1: accessing guns safe. Like we know all of this, but
Speaker 1: the people that are in power don't care. And so
Speaker 1: is it that you just need to frame the villains
Speaker 1: for who the villains are instead of trying to convince
Speaker 1: people of what they already know, which is that these
Speaker 1: are weapons of mass destruction. They cause so much harm.
Speaker 1: They have us living on edge and fear for our lives,
Speaker 1: going to the grocery store, going to school, basically disrupting
Speaker 1: our ability to have and live normal lives. And so
Speaker 1: is it just that we need to frame the conversation
Speaker 1: around the villains, because no, the logic that we're offering
Speaker 1: isn't going to permeate people that are choosing to be
Speaker 1: willfully ignorant. Well, my argument, and we'll see if it
Speaker 1: works in my argument in my forthcoming book, Puppies in
Speaker 1: the Springtime, is that is that public health provides a framework,
Speaker 1: a moral framework. It provides a framework of common sense,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't provide a framework of power. Right, And
Speaker 1: so you said it exactly in your question, which is
Speaker 1: which is that all of the common sense in the
Speaker 1: world will not impact the law if you don't also
Speaker 1: have a strategy for power, which means figuring out how
Speaker 1: to win elections and seek judges. And public health doesn't
Speaker 1: bring any of that. And so part of kind of
Speaker 1: what I'm going to argue is you also need a
Speaker 1: theory of power, because the other side has a very
Speaker 1: developed theory of power. And so we're arguing in a
Speaker 1: way you're you're doing framing a resistance movement. Um but
Speaker 1: um but and you know, we'll see, we'll see where
Speaker 1: this goes. I mean, I've got four hundred pages to
Speaker 1: make this claim, but I would just say that without
Speaker 1: attention to like how you win elections or how you
Speaker 1: see judges, or how you raise funds or how you
Speaker 1: bring in donors beyond Mike Bloomberg, you're always going to
Speaker 1: be protesting because the other side has a very developed
Speaker 1: theory of power, which is very good at suppressing the
Speaker 1: will of the people. And so we're always in this
Speaker 1: position of like protesting against mass shootings when really we're
Speaker 1: not going farther upstream. That's my personal feeling. And we'll
Speaker 1: see how how it goes, and so um in my
Speaker 1: forthcoming book I Love Balloons, I will just be saying
Speaker 1: that that, you know, we'll see how it goes. But
Speaker 1: I just think it's time to start thinking hard about
Speaker 1: like how we how we reboot this. Maybe you should
Speaker 1: just change the title of the book to power and
Speaker 1: then have your subtitle, because if that's what, if that's
Speaker 1: what it's about, that's a different conversation. It isn't about
Speaker 1: talking specifically about gun control and legislation, and it's about
Speaker 1: it's a conversation around power, who has it and who doesn't,
Speaker 1: which times into race and everything and all and all
Speaker 1: of and all of those things. UM, last question for you,
Speaker 1: Jonathan on this uh for for today? UH is you know,
Speaker 1: for people who are feeling increasingly powerless, UM, who are
Speaker 1: waking up every day and are exhausted by the headlines,
Speaker 1: are just they're exhausted by their grief. They're exhausted by
Speaker 1: this sadness. Like what do you offer to those people?
Speaker 1: What do you offer to your students that come in
Speaker 1: and they're just like so again, like we're doing this again.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a shooting on a Monday, there's a
Speaker 1: shooting on a Friday. I don't even know which hashtag
Speaker 1: I'm using because you know, to to air my grievances
Speaker 1: because I can't keep pace with the violence that's happening. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there is, there are. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: so hard rate because we're doing what people in war
Speaker 1: zones do, which is we habituate trauma in order to
Speaker 1: move on with our lives. So we're doing what we
Speaker 1: do what people with war zone people do, and that's
Speaker 1: really a human defense mechanism that people who are faced
Speaker 1: with this kind of situation that we're faced with now.
Speaker 1: But but it's important it also that it's not the
Speaker 1: same for everybody that I'm on Vanderbilt's campus here in
Speaker 1: New York. If you're living in South Chicago right now,
Speaker 1: your risk is just considerably higher than any location that
Speaker 1: we're in. And so I just personally feel like I
Speaker 1: just personally feel like nobody's safe until everybody is safe.
Speaker 1: And I think we really need to mobilize to build
Speaker 1: a really broad based coalition that brings together everybody who's
Speaker 1: at risk of gunfire and not have it be just
Speaker 1: after mass shootings in places that we can and recognize,
Speaker 1: which are horrible and horrible, horrible, horrible, But until we
Speaker 1: build this broad movement that treats every gun violence victim
Speaker 1: the same, I just think there's power in the numbers
Speaker 1: we have, we just don't use them. Yeah, well, we'll
Speaker 1: leave it there for today. Doctor Jonathan Metzel, thank you
Speaker 1: as always for bringing perspective and your time and analysis
Speaker 1: to woke F And one of these days we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a cheerful topic. I don't know what
Speaker 1: day that's going to because we've been doing this for
Speaker 1: three unclear, but you know, here's open. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: Hi guys, thank you. That is it. For me today,
Speaker 1: Dear friends on Woke f as always, power to the
Speaker 1: people and to all the people. Power, get woke and
Speaker 1: stay woke as fuck.