Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to okay f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live from the Brooklyn Silarium.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to start off today with a
Speaker 1: couple of questions that I received over the weekend and
Speaker 1: at the end of last week, UM, with regard to
Speaker 1: the Kyle Rittenhouse CASEUM, many people had asked me on
Speaker 1: Twitter and on Instagram if I would jump on and
Speaker 1: do a live I got messaged UM, and I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you this, There's a reason I didn't go live.
Speaker 1: There is a reason why I am doing my best
Speaker 1: these days to protect my emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing.
Speaker 1: And it's because I've decided that white supremacy doesn't get
Speaker 1: to have the best of me. And it's the lesson
Speaker 1: that not only am I trying to embody in my
Speaker 1: own life, but I'm trying to share and impart with
Speaker 1: all of you as well. Rage is important, Trust me,
Speaker 1: I am a big philosopher of the importance of getting
Speaker 1: that toxic anger heat out of ourselves and as a
Speaker 1: way to then be able to cool ourselves down to
Speaker 1: have clearer heads. And I don't mean to expel that
Speaker 1: energy in violent ways. I mean that it's okay to
Speaker 1: commune with other people, with friends, with family, around rage,
Speaker 1: around frustration, around anger at the state of our current
Speaker 1: society and politics. It's to say that it's a disappointment
Speaker 1: where we are would be a euphemism. Beyond you famisms.
Speaker 1: It isn't just disappointing if you really sit down and
Speaker 1: unpack where we are as a country. It is unbelievable
Speaker 1: in so many ways. It is unbelievable. It would have
Speaker 1: been unbelievable to think, um five years ago that a
Speaker 1: member of Congress putting out a video depicting the murder
Speaker 1: of one of his colleagues would ever happen. It is
Speaker 1: unbelievable to think that a member of Congress that had
Speaker 1: that is under FBI investigation and has been accused of
Speaker 1: sexual sex with a minor sex trafficking or is connected
Speaker 1: to sex traffickers would still be in Congress. It is
Speaker 1: would be a you know, impossible to think five years
Speaker 1: ago that an insurrection would have occurred, That we would
Speaker 1: have seen a yilloteen in real life being built on
Speaker 1: the steps of our capitol building and watch our capital
Speaker 1: be ransacked by a violent white mob. All of these
Speaker 1: things have happened in the court in the shortest span
Speaker 1: of time. I bring it up constantly because I was
Speaker 1: brought back to a piece that was written by Larry
Speaker 1: Diamond in The Atlantic on October nineteenth. It was published
Speaker 1: October nineteenth, twenty sixteen, and the piece is entitled it
Speaker 1: could happen here. Democracy is facing setbacks around the world,
Speaker 1: but there hasn't been reason to doubt America's resilience until now.
Speaker 1: And I remember reading the piece in October, right, and
Speaker 1: this is again go with me in the time machine.
Speaker 1: This is but a couple of weeks before the election
Speaker 1: that would alter our country's future, our democracy. And I'm
Speaker 1: rereading it today and I'm thinking to myself, Dear God,
Speaker 1: how do you stop a train that you know is
Speaker 1: certainly colliding with a wall that is running off the
Speaker 1: rails and has no breaks, has no conductor, and you
Speaker 1: know that it's headed towards certain destruction, but you can't
Speaker 1: stop it. That's what it feels for me right now
Speaker 1: to be in media, coming off of the last four
Speaker 1: years of Donald Trump and moving into year two of
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. Now, I got to tell you that
Speaker 1: I want to highlight some parts of Larry Diamond's piece
Speaker 1: that I encourage everyone to reread if you or read
Speaker 1: for the first time if you did not read it
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen, because there are so many things
Speaker 1: that are so much more salient now given the things
Speaker 1: that I have just outlined. And in a minute, I
Speaker 1: will also go over my feelings about what we should
Speaker 1: be paying attention to with regard to the outcome in
Speaker 1: the Kyle Rittenhouse case. But here are some pieces of
Speaker 1: Larry Diamonds. It could happen here he wrote, among the
Speaker 1: most dangerous, among the most dangerous things of democrats in
Speaker 1: this time is arrogance and apathy. I want to unpack
Speaker 1: that for a moment, that arrogance and apathy are two
Speaker 1: of the things that democrats do really fucking well. Arrogance
Speaker 1: in the fact that we just believe that, you know,
Speaker 1: when people know better, that they'll do better. Right, that
Speaker 1: we believe fundamentally that if you provide people with information
Speaker 1: and facts, that they'll just do the right thing, right,
Speaker 1: that all people inherently want to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: And then there is the apathy in feeling like you
Speaker 1: don't actually need to do the work, that the work
Speaker 1: for a majority of us was in twenty twenty was
Speaker 1: in voting in the midst of a global health pandemic,
Speaker 1: and then just sitting back and assuming that because Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was gone, that meant that our democracy was going
Speaker 1: to be back on track, that we could then go
Speaker 1: back to believe being political ostriges, putting our heads back
Speaker 1: in the sand, and only being concerned about our day
Speaker 1: to day that the good guys, right, the good men
Speaker 1: and women and people would take it from there. That
Speaker 1: is the most dangerous thing. And when Larry Diamond wrote
Speaker 1: this piece back in twenty sixteen, he didn't know that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was going to win in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks using McCarthyism tactics that we had since said from
Speaker 1: fifty years prior were some of the darkest times in
Speaker 1: America's history. That we were creating committees in the in
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives, that we're going to investigate people's patriotism,
Speaker 1: That we were setting up ways in which to blacklist
Speaker 1: people in Hollywood because of their perceived connection to our
Speaker 1: relationship with communism. And it just so happened that the
Speaker 1: people that McCarthy, of course wanted to go after were
Speaker 1: the intellectuals, were the artist were those people whose society
Speaker 1: looked towards right as we were advancing. But if you
Speaker 1: silence those people, and you instill a certain level of
Speaker 1: fear in them, right, a fear of the other, right,
Speaker 1: a fear of their neighbor, then you can control them.
Speaker 1: And we knew that. That's why Joseph McCarthy's name is
Speaker 1: associated with the Red Scare, is associated with everything that
Speaker 1: is wrong with the body politic. So you would think that,
Speaker 1: because we made such a case over the last five
Speaker 1: decades about this part of our history, that the rising
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump would never happen, because we would see
Speaker 1: it miles and miles away. So when Larry Diamond is
Speaker 1: writing this piece in twenty sixteen, he's saying, how is
Speaker 1: it possible that this man is this close to the presidency?
Speaker 1: How is it possible that America right, it could never
Speaker 1: possibly happened. Here chorus is now applauding and celebrating this horrible, horrible, racist, misogynistic, islamophobic, transphobic, homophobic.
Speaker 1: I mean, you name what is wrong, Donald Trump embodies it. Man.
Speaker 1: Larry Diamond didn't know that in writing this that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was not only going to secure sixty five seventy
Speaker 1: million votes in twenty sixteen, but that he was going
Speaker 1: to extend his reach in twenty twenty, and that it
Speaker 1: was the assumption once again from Democrats that oh, you know,
Speaker 1: once the American people have more information than they will
Speaker 1: do what's right. Well, what the fuck? If there was
Speaker 1: anything that anyone should have known and realized over the
Speaker 1: last several years, even just before Donald Trump in the
Speaker 1: Tea Party, as our politics began to disintegrate into some
Speaker 1: version of reality TV, that it was the media right
Speaker 1: and their power to sway people one way or the
Speaker 1: other that was one of the most dangerous apparatus and
Speaker 1: threat to our democracy. That if you had a person
Speaker 1: that both embodied the outlandishness right but like what America
Speaker 1: craves around celebrity, and then you couple that with the
Speaker 1: foundation of America, which is racism and cruelty, that that
Speaker 1: would be a winning recipe for millions of so quote
Speaker 1: unquote aggrieved white people. So when he says that among
Speaker 1: the most dangerous things that Democrats can do is this
Speaker 1: coupling of arrogance and apathy, I am seeing it now
Speaker 1: even after having lived through the last five fucking years,
Speaker 1: because you see democrats right now doing what they do,
Speaker 1: which is partially let me be clear, we need them
Speaker 1: to pass policy. We need infrastructure bills, we need human infrastructure,
Speaker 1: we need immigration reform, but most importantly, we fucking needed
Speaker 1: voting rights. But that's a time for another day. Evidently
Speaker 1: we need these things to happen, but not outside of
Speaker 1: understanding the danger and the threat that we have yet
Speaker 1: to nullify. I would argue that we are in more
Speaker 1: trouble now then we were in twenty sixteen. You see,
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, we were just seeing what could happen.
Speaker 1: And even in twenty seventeen, after Donald Trump is inaugurated,
Speaker 1: you have the fucking march of the tiki torches in Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: again signals to the decline of our democracy. You had
Speaker 1: the President of the United States hail these people. This
Speaker 1: was all the slow roles set up for where we
Speaker 1: are now, for the insurrection. And so another point that
Speaker 1: is made in this piece is this, democracies fail diamond
Speaker 1: rights when people lose faith in them and elites abandon
Speaker 1: their norms for pure political advantage. Let me say that again,
Speaker 1: democracies fail when people lose faith in them and elites
Speaker 1: abandon their norms for pure political advantage. Again, this is
Speaker 1: written before Mitch McConnell force through over three hundred federal judges,
Speaker 1: many of whom the American Bar Association said, we're not qualified.
Speaker 1: This is before right we would have an attorney general
Speaker 1: turned the Department of Justice into an extension of the
Speaker 1: presidency and weaponize it against Donald Trump's political foes. This
Speaker 1: is before all of that. And so when we arrive
Speaker 1: in this moment, it's not as if alarms have not
Speaker 1: been going often, people haven't been warning, writing, speaking, screaming,
Speaker 1: marching to alert people to where we are. But I
Speaker 1: keep going back to our fundamental understanding of history and
Speaker 1: the way that it is taught. We always use the
Speaker 1: same setup. If you don't understand your history, you'll be
Speaker 1: deemed to repeat it. But all America does is repeat
Speaker 1: its history over and over and over again. I would
Speaker 1: make the joke about slavery coming back and how that's
Speaker 1: not out of the realm of possibility, except I don't
Speaker 1: think that it's funny, because I actually don't think that
Speaker 1: it's out of the realm of possibility. The only reason
Speaker 1: we don't have slavery in America right as a legal
Speaker 1: institution still is because of some laws that were passed.
Speaker 1: It's the same reason we currently are holding onto abortion
Speaker 1: in this country by our fingernails, because of laws that
Speaker 1: were passed. But what we are seeing, and what cannot
Speaker 1: be understated or overstated enough, frankly, is that those laws
Speaker 1: are only as enforceable and powerful as the people that
Speaker 1: are willing to enforce those said laws. Right. We only
Speaker 1: abolish slavery because of a mass insurgence of people, right
Speaker 1: and a full on fucking war that ended it. But
Speaker 1: those things that we think are just our part of
Speaker 1: our political norms came blood soaked. It wasn't without sacrifice.
Speaker 1: It wasn't without centuries of lost lives and brutality and
Speaker 1: torture and terrorism. That we arrive at this moment. When
Speaker 1: we are looking around it, we're like, fuck, even the
Speaker 1: free ish place that we have arrived in right now
Speaker 1: is up for fucking grabs. And if you don't, if
Speaker 1: you think that again, I'm being hyperbolic. I mean, just
Speaker 1: look around. Let's take the Kyle Rittenhouse case as an example. Now,
Speaker 1: everybody knows because you've been listening to the show, that
Speaker 1: I have not been following this case day in and
Speaker 1: day out. Why Because, like I stated at the top
Speaker 1: of the show, I give a shit about my emotional
Speaker 1: and spiritual well being and I hope folks that you
Speaker 1: care about yours as well. Because there was no need
Speaker 1: to follow this trial because from the outset with Judge
Speaker 1: Schroeder and his clear and present fucking bias against the prosecution,
Speaker 1: you knew where this was headed. Right when we are
Speaker 1: not referring to people that were gunned down because they
Speaker 1: were they were exercising their First Amendment right to be
Speaker 1: able to assemble right in protests against an unjust criminal system,
Speaker 1: and who were gunned down by the likes of a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old that cross state lines with a fucking
Speaker 1: R fifteen and then was patted on the back by police.
Speaker 1: Where the fuck did you think this was going? His
Speaker 1: bullshit performance on the stand of his crocodile tears, the
Speaker 1: embrace that he is receiving from Republicans who want to
Speaker 1: offer him positions of promotion like a congressional internship. Right,
Speaker 1: he has an entire fucking docuseries that's being hosted by
Speaker 1: Get This Tucker fucking Carlson. He will have a sit
Speaker 1: down interview this week in Prime Time with Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 1: who I'm certain will embrace him as a son and
Speaker 1: as a patriot. This is the same motherfucker who referred
Speaker 1: to an unarmed teenager walking home from the fucking store
Speaker 1: as a thug and a threat. When you take these
Speaker 1: stories of America and you put them up against how
Speaker 1: democracies have fallen before, every single sign is pointing to
Speaker 1: where this is headed and where we are headed as
Speaker 1: a country. And the fact is is that we have
Speaker 1: democrats that are too busy with their bullshit in fighting.
Speaker 1: You have democrats that are too busy saying we need
Speaker 1: political wins instead of recognizing the urgency of this moment
Speaker 1: to repair our democracy. So we have a future to discuss. Right,
Speaker 1: you realize that hope isn't on the horizon that we
Speaker 1: are going to be heading into. Not we are going
Speaker 1: to be We are headed in to some of the
Speaker 1: darkest time this country has seen since the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: since the Jim Crow era, since the consistent and unrelenting
Speaker 1: terrorism of the KKK. With a not guilty verdict in
Speaker 1: the Written House case, where do you think the rest
Speaker 1: of the written Houses are going? You know, I did
Speaker 1: an interview earlier this week with The Daily Beast with
Speaker 1: the New Abnormal and Molly jung Fast and Jesse Cannon,
Speaker 1: and they were talking about the fact that some of
Speaker 1: their friends are very concerned with attending another political protest
Speaker 1: that they may not do so, And mind you, I
Speaker 1: have gone to countless protests. I mean I lived in Washington,
Speaker 1: DC for damn near twenty years. I felt like I
Speaker 1: was at a protest every other week, right, But the
Speaker 1: thought of people being too scared to protest because of
Speaker 1: the likes of Kyle Rittenhouses, because that now we know
Speaker 1: that they have more rights to carry a gun and
Speaker 1: shoot and murder in called blood anyone that they want,
Speaker 1: and know that now they have precedent, recent precedent to
Speaker 1: get off would make me worry too. But the reality
Speaker 1: is is that America has always been fucking violent. It's
Speaker 1: a violent, fucking nation founded on cruelty, founded on bloodshed.
Speaker 1: So this is not a shock. My response to Jesse
Speaker 1: and his friend was to say, look, motherfuckers are getting
Speaker 1: murdered and trampled and shot at concerts, but they don't
Speaker 1: seem to stop. People don't to stop attending them. So
Speaker 1: when it comes to fighting for our rights, and voicing
Speaker 1: our descent against a biased and unjust government. Should we
Speaker 1: stop because of the potential of fatalities? And look, it's
Speaker 1: fucking serious. You know, we've been and seen these situations
Speaker 1: with these cops. I mean, we saw the elderly white
Speaker 1: man fucking knocked over, bloodpoiling pouring out of his goddamn head.
Speaker 1: They didn't give a shit. We saw police beat the
Speaker 1: shit out of protesters right causing serious harm. Stories of
Speaker 1: people that we interviewed running from Lafayette Square where famously,
Speaker 1: right or infamously, Donald Trump cleared Lafayette Square with the
Speaker 1: help of Bill Barr and the help of the fucking
Speaker 1: Pentagon so that he could take a photo op with
Speaker 1: a book he don't read in front of a church
Speaker 1: he don't attend. Each and every one of these examples
Speaker 1: that I'm laying out cannot be considered in isolation. They
Speaker 1: are what form the fundamental fall of our democracy, the
Speaker 1: erosion of civil liberties, the erosion of our faith in
Speaker 1: our institutions. I didn't watch the Written House trial because
Speaker 1: I knew where it was going. And I'm a person
Speaker 1: that still is trying so desperately to believe that we
Speaker 1: can reimagine America. But each and every day me, it's
Speaker 1: becoming harder and harder to assert that truth, to even
Speaker 1: believe in it myself. And it's my job. And that's
Speaker 1: why I tell people like, look, you can be a
Speaker 1: responsible citizen, pay attention and understand what is going on,
Speaker 1: but then recognize that if you don't take care of
Speaker 1: your emotional and spiritual well being, understand that nobody else will.
Speaker 1: That nobody's going to walk into your apartment or your
Speaker 1: house and tell you to turn off the news, Go
Speaker 1: walk in nature, take some deep breath, go do an exercise, class, meditate, pray,
Speaker 1: do an art project. Nobody's going to tell you to
Speaker 1: do those things. You're just going to have a breakdown
Speaker 1: and then shut it out completely. And that's why I'm
Speaker 1: saying take it, much like you know our indulgence in food,
Speaker 1: Take it in little bites, because the desire here is
Speaker 1: to wear you down. The desire is to accelebrate, accelerate
Speaker 1: our erosion of our trust in our faith in these
Speaker 1: institutions that we are watching fail us one major case
Speaker 1: at a time. I had to turn off the news
Speaker 1: earlier because I refuse to listen to the closing arguments
Speaker 1: in the McDaniels trial, right, because once again they were
Speaker 1: referring to it as the Ahmad Arbory trial. It's not
Speaker 1: Ahmad is dead, right, he was fucking gunned down in
Speaker 1: cold fucking blood after going for a fucking jog. It's
Speaker 1: not his trial because he's not alive to stand trial.
Speaker 1: But once again, the media does what the media does.
Speaker 1: But I can't watch every single instance of white vigilantes
Speaker 1: being able to walk go back home and pretend that
Speaker 1: nothing ever happened, but then be able to recant these
Speaker 1: stories to their friends, to their colleagues about their bravery
Speaker 1: and their fucking patriotism, because that's how it will be told.
Speaker 1: What did Cricketer Holden say? History is not written by
Speaker 1: the conquered, it's written by the conqueror. So what do
Speaker 1: you think the narrative is going to be for the
Speaker 1: written houses of the world. Oh, white people already talk
Speaker 1: about the fact he didn't do anything wrong. He's a hero,
Speaker 1: a hero, he's a fucking murderer. But why should they
Speaker 1: think otherwise when you're driving on highways, in attending schools
Speaker 1: named after fucking Confederates and what nation do you do
Speaker 1: that in? And we wonder how we arrive at this
Speaker 1: place because we are so disconnected from the fucking truth
Speaker 1: and so disconnected from facts and our real history that
Speaker 1: we are always going to be destined to repeat it.
Speaker 1: And I see no maneuvering into our future to make
Speaker 1: me believe that things are going to get better. How
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to convince you the sky is blue?
Speaker 1: How would I ever convince you that you're doing damage
Speaker 1: to the environment When I got to spend my fucking
Speaker 1: time and energy telling you the sky is blue and
Speaker 1: water is wet, I have to move you from that
Speaker 1: fucking obvious place to the effects of climate change. Give
Speaker 1: me a break. What is scary right now too, is
Speaker 1: that America for the first time by a organization IDEO no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, idea organization that has been tracking they've been
Speaker 1: tracking for the last decades democracies and the health of
Speaker 1: democracies in the world, and they've come out recently as
Speaker 1: if the news can't get any better that for the
Speaker 1: first time since they've been tracking democracies around the world,
Speaker 1: America is a backsliding democracy. One in four people, according
Speaker 1: to this organization, live in a backsliding democracy. But what
Speaker 1: is and should be alarming to every fucking person. Is
Speaker 1: that again the things that we thought could never happen
Speaker 1: here are not only happening, but happening at breakneck pace.
Speaker 1: You can shrug off that organization and say, oh, you
Speaker 1: know what, do they know? Well, they've been tracking this
Speaker 1: for the last fifty years and for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: and this coincides with it can happen here at the
Speaker 1: peace in the Atlantic from twenty sixteen is that for
Speaker 1: the first time in the world, we have less democracies
Speaker 1: And so what does that mean? That this isn't just
Speaker 1: about what is happening in America, although incredibly important, but
Speaker 1: it is about what is happening around the world, and
Speaker 1: people having looked at countries, having looked at America as
Speaker 1: an example for as fucked up and imperfect as our
Speaker 1: country is, looked at our country as a symbol of democracy,
Speaker 1: no one believing that what is transpired in the last
Speaker 1: five years, that you would have ever thought in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen that this could happen. And that was our
Speaker 1: as he said, our arrogance and our apathy. And that's
Speaker 1: not just democrats, it's everyone believing that, Oh, it's those
Speaker 1: countries over there that are unstable, that have been war torn. Right,
Speaker 1: it's those people over there that are violent, being able
Speaker 1: to look and make assumptions and judgments about other parts
Speaker 1: of the world without truly examining and unpacking what has
Speaker 1: been happening here. Again, I think it's our desire to
Speaker 1: shrug off. Right, Let's shrug off the Tea Party. Let's
Speaker 1: shrug off the calls for Obama's birth certificate. Let's shrug
Speaker 1: off Donald Trump calling Mexicans rapists and murders. Let's shrug
Speaker 1: off the fact that, you know, members of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party have been caught up in multiple scandals with sex traffickers,
Speaker 1: drug traffickers, murderers, all of these things. Let's just shrug
Speaker 1: that off. Let's just say that, you know, Derek Chauvin
Speaker 1: is just a bad apple, but not a part of
Speaker 1: the poisonous orchard that America has been seeding since the beginning.
Speaker 1: And it's because we refuse to interrogate our history in
Speaker 1: any real way that we are here in this moment.
Speaker 1: It's because of the fact that we would rather spend
Speaker 1: our energy and our resources upholding democracies around the world
Speaker 1: rather than safeguarding it here at home when we are
Speaker 1: watching it falter, you know, I said the other day
Speaker 1: when Biden was it overseas and he's speaking, you know,
Speaker 1: in front of the UN talking about democracy blah blah,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, if I were one of those nations
Speaker 1: sitting in the audience and he got applause, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I would have been sitting there like, who are you
Speaker 1: talking to fix your own house before you come out
Speaker 1: and step to me talking about how we need to
Speaker 1: clean up these international global streets. Your house is literally
Speaker 1: on fire, sir? The fuck you doing here? But that
Speaker 1: has always been America's bravado, right that we are somehow
Speaker 1: these these fucking cowboys that are out and I say
Speaker 1: cowboys and I mean that right, This idea of like
Speaker 1: you know, the horseback ride and wheeled in the whip,
Speaker 1: you know, like we saw with the fucking Haitians at
Speaker 1: the border, that is the symbol of America. It has
Speaker 1: always been us up high looking down on whoever else,
Speaker 1: not paying attention to what is going on around us.
Speaker 1: Larry Diamond writes, this democracy is facing setbacks around the world,
Speaker 1: but there hasn't been reason to doubt America's resilience until now.
Speaker 1: And I keep wondering, folks, Honestly, we've seen, we got
Speaker 1: a preview in the Trump administration to what happens around
Speaker 1: the world when America isn't stable. And that's not to
Speaker 1: say that I believe in America's paternalistic view of the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. No, not at all. But there
Speaker 1: is a vacuum that is created, and in that vacuum
Speaker 1: without intervention from the United States, you have those authoritarian
Speaker 1: regimes that sees their opportunity. And so at a time
Speaker 1: when we're being told that democracies are backsliding and are
Speaker 1: at their lowest point globally, and we're struggling with even
Speaker 1: attempting to pass voting rights legislation without doing anything to
Speaker 1: protect the integrity of our own elections, what faith do
Speaker 1: we have in the next couple of years. If all
Speaker 1: of this has transpired in the last five, what does
Speaker 1: the next three look like until the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 1: You know, I I am so rubbled, as I know
Speaker 1: so many of you are, and it takes everything in
Speaker 1: me right And this is why I will offer this
Speaker 1: that we need to find mechanisms not to distract or
Speaker 1: distort the information that is coming in, but we need
Speaker 1: to create mechanisms so that we can hear it right,
Speaker 1: but not embody it, that we can understand the urgency
Speaker 1: of this moment and not be caught off guard, right,
Speaker 1: but at the same time create the parameters and the
Speaker 1: boundaries in our own life that allow for our health
Speaker 1: and well being to matter more than anything else, because
Speaker 1: you see, we cannot fight exhausted and downtrodden, right, We can't.
Speaker 1: We can't fight if we are filled with anxiety and stress.
Speaker 1: Each of us have got to figure out the mechanisms,
Speaker 1: the support systems, the tribes that we need to surround
Speaker 1: ourselves with in order for us to be able to succeed.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about emotional, spiritual, and physical success and
Speaker 1: well being because we can no longer look outside of
Speaker 1: ourselves and think that there is somebody, right, whether it
Speaker 1: be the President of the United States, your governor state
Speaker 1: assembly person, your teacher, whomever, that is going to help
Speaker 1: balance us, because that couldn't be further from the fucking truth.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I used to think about elected leaders,
Speaker 1: I almost want to go back to my younger self
Speaker 1: and shake the shit out of her and be like
Speaker 1: These are human beings, right. They are no better and
Speaker 1: no worse than you are. Right, They're only as good
Speaker 1: as the accountability that we hold them to and the
Speaker 1: responsibilities that we hold them too. But given the ability
Speaker 1: to run am up and grab power for power's sake,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what the fuck they will do. But when
Speaker 1: I thought about elected officials, members of Congress, the administration's presidents, secretaries,
Speaker 1: and you know, I looked at them with such pride,
Speaker 1: me with such pride, believing that no one would enter
Speaker 1: into this work if they didn't believe in our founding principles,
Speaker 1: even as ridiculous as they are, created by a bunch
Speaker 1: of six gender, powerful, wealthy white men who own slaves.
Speaker 1: Right like talking about liberty and justice. But I'm saying
Speaker 1: that you cannot look to these people and think that
Speaker 1: they alone are going to help you, because what we
Speaker 1: are seeing is that they're only in it, a lot
Speaker 1: of them to help their to help themselves, and to
Speaker 1: sell you out as quick as they've possibly fucking can,
Speaker 1: in order to fill their pockets, in order to fill
Speaker 1: their egos, in order to own the Libs. Switching gears,
Speaker 1: But staying on our declining democracy in the news. I
Speaker 1: find this really, you know interesting. Anytime that there is
Speaker 1: news around Fox, the Fox Network, I'm always like, oh,
Speaker 1: who woke up today? Who came to the realization that
Speaker 1: they're working for a fucking media cult that is spreading
Speaker 1: misinformation and conspiracy and really really able to capitalize on
Speaker 1: white rage and anger no one other than Fox News, Right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, two contributors this week have put in their resignations,
Speaker 1: Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, and they quit, as they
Speaker 1: said in their resignation letter, because of Tucker Carlson and
Speaker 1: that piece of shit's new docu series. And I use
Speaker 1: that with real deep sarcasm and quotes because it is
Speaker 1: anything but anybody's docu anything, Right, called the Patriot Purge
Speaker 1: to three part three parter that was streaming on Fox's
Speaker 1: streaming site, but they were promoting it vigorously on the network.
Speaker 1: This is what those two contributors said, as they've come
Speaker 1: to their own personal reckoning. Over the past five years,
Speaker 1: some of Fox's top opinion hosts amplified the false claims
Speaker 1: and bizarre narrative Trump offered or their own under this
Speaker 1: guy's the release of the Patriot Purge wasn't an isolated incident.
Speaker 1: It was merely the most egregious example of a longstanding trend.
Speaker 1: So they have come to the realization that you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of us had came to about Fox News
Speaker 1: decades ago at this point, that they're in it. They're
Speaker 1: not changing. Course. Thought that following Donald Trump's loss, that
Speaker 1: everybody much in the same way that we all hoped
Speaker 1: that Republicans would come back to their senses, that the
Speaker 1: networks would, you know, stop running him, that you know,
Speaker 1: we could find this semblance of normal and get back
Speaker 1: to rigorous debate about policy, blah blah. But what folks
Speaker 1: failed to remember is that the deterioration of like the
Speaker 1: Republican Party and Fox News didn't start with the election
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. It started well before that, with Obama
Speaker 1: running for president, right, Like, that's when Fox News really
Speaker 1: ramped up their fucking anti blackness, their anti LGBT stances,
Speaker 1: their anti woman like, their anti democratic ways. They went
Speaker 1: full force, right and then any other network who wanted
Speaker 1: to appear neutral then was putting up some of their
Speaker 1: fucking people right in these bullshit oh both sides debates.
Speaker 1: But anyway, these two people have since quit because Foxes
Speaker 1: double downing, Right, they're doubling down on Tucker Carlson. Right,
Speaker 1: they are doubling down on their next meal ticket. Who
Speaker 1: is going to do a sit down with Kyle Rittenhouse
Speaker 1: who did his show over the summer for an entire
Speaker 1: week from the anti democratic country of Hungary, sat down
Speaker 1: with the prime minister talking about, Oh, this is how
Speaker 1: America should be, Like, this is who the fuck they are,
Speaker 1: and these two people, these two Fox News contributors, are
Speaker 1: waking up to the fact that they're never going back
Speaker 1: to normal, that this is who they have become, and
Speaker 1: that them, in their own consciousness, can't continue to work
Speaker 1: for a network that is going to support and promote
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson as if he's like a serious host and
Speaker 1: not an entertainer. That is actually dangerous because remember, Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson has been sued just like Fox News has been
Speaker 1: sued multiple times over and what did they say in court, Well,
Speaker 1: nobody would take him seriously. He's an entertainer. But you
Speaker 1: don't see the FCC making it so that Fox News
Speaker 1: has to air right the fact that they are for
Speaker 1: entertainment purposes only and not real news. You didn't see
Speaker 1: write any push in that direction to alert audiences to
Speaker 1: the fact that if you are looking for real news
Speaker 1: and not entertainment, this ain't it. There's no push here.
Speaker 1: So we're just watching the careening of our fucking body politic,
Speaker 1: and it's like no one, no one is driving the
Speaker 1: fucking train except for the Tucker Carlsons and the Murdocks.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I sit here, folks, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you can applaud these two people for quitting
Speaker 1: their jobs, I guess, But where the fuck were they
Speaker 1: over the whole five years from the time Donald Trump
Speaker 1: came down the escalator calling Mexicans rapists and murderers. Where
Speaker 1: were you the entire time that the network was celebrating
Speaker 1: this as well as celebrating violence. You know, I keep
Speaker 1: saying that I don't think that things will change until
Speaker 1: somebody is killed, right, and I mean, like a prominent
Speaker 1: member of Congress or whatever. And then I realized the
Speaker 1: other day that's not gonna fucking matter. And that's what's
Speaker 1: really sad and scary. And that's what I want to
Speaker 1: ring the alarm about with regard to the Rittenhouse case,
Speaker 1: is that this is just the beginning. So when I'm
Speaker 1: telling you to figure out the mechanisms for your wellness
Speaker 1: right and safeguarding yourself and creating boundaries, I am serious
Speaker 1: because this is just the beginning. Things are going to
Speaker 1: get worse, and they seem to be getting worse quicker
Speaker 1: and quicker and quicker. We will know by the end
Speaker 1: of this week the verdict in the McDaniels case. We
Speaker 1: will determine once again if white vigilanteism isn't just the
Speaker 1: way of the past and the way of the future, right,
Speaker 1: And what does that mean for the rest of us
Speaker 1: who are not white, who are not straight, who are
Speaker 1: not sis maile like? What does that mean for the
Speaker 1: rest of us? Are we to live under threat right,
Speaker 1: threat of domestic terrorism, threat of fear of leaving our
Speaker 1: homes because that's what they want, and I fucking refuse.
Speaker 1: I am choosing radical joy, I am choosing revolutionary self care.
Speaker 1: I am choosing to activate all other parts of my
Speaker 1: senses and emotions outside of rage, because they will not
Speaker 1: own me right, And the more that we invest in
Speaker 1: that singular emotion, the more they win. So again I
Speaker 1: say to you, be thoughtful daily about your self care,
Speaker 1: Be thoughtful daily about the way that you engage with
Speaker 1: the news, about the way that you engage in community,
Speaker 1: and how you choose to create community. Because all we
Speaker 1: have at this moment is us and that is the truth.
Speaker 1: That is it for me to day. Dear friends on
Speaker 1: woke f as always power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.