Nick Hauselman is out and about, leaving Jared Yates Sexton to talk with Danielle Moodie, host of Woke AF and co-host of Democracy-ish and The New Abnormal. They discuss how our court and political systems continue to aid wealthy, white men like Donald Trump and the many things holding America back.
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I drove through the desert and through a blizzard.
And listen, Nick, Nick Halseman, he had enough at the Podjam.
He took off for warmer weather out in Florida, which left me with a real need.
To have somebody on the podcast.
I needed a friend.
I needed someone insightful.
I needed somebody who was going to bring it today.
And guess what, everybody?
I found that person.
That's right.
Danielle Moody is returning to the podcast, the hardest working woman in show business, the host of Woke AF, the host of A Democracy-ish, The New Abnormal.
Danielle, I am so glad to see you.
And before we get going, I want to say, I enjoy you so much, and I hate that most of our conversations are about this shit.
I know.
One day, Jared, we'll talk about something good.
We got on here and we were starting to sort of unpack how we were feeling, and I realized there was no way for us to do that without actually getting into this.
For people listening to this right now, we're recording this on Monday, March 25th.
Donald Trump just got an extension on paying his debt, and also he's not going to have to pay as much, which is fantastic because of a whole array of things.
Danielle, I'm pissed off.
I'm so tired of seeing our legal system serve the whims of wealthy white men as it has done since it was first constructed.
Yeah, I'm pissed off.
How are you doing?
You know, I'm so, I'm so exhausted with being angry, right?
I think that that is this, and that is a kind of dangerous place to be, where you're exhausted by being angry.
Because the opposite of that is going to grow into apathy, where you just don't care, right?
Like you're just unmoved.
You're unmoved by the headlines.
You're unmoved by the decisions that are being made.
Because I think that, you know, as folks know who listen to any of my shows and listen to me here, is that rage is a really useful tool, right?
When it has, and it's directed towards a target with strategy, it is a useful tool.
But it is a finite tool, right?
Kind of like our oil reserves on Earth.
Like it is a finite, it's finite.
Right.
And so when you keep pushing that rage button over and over again, and then what comes out the other side of that is nothing.
I think that eventually people which which I am seeing in social media, and I'm sure that you are too, people just start to throw up their hands.
I don't give a damn.
Forget it.
Like, who cares?
You stop following, right, what Donald Trump is doing.
You stop following these court cases because it's like, I mean, is he was he a feline in another Another dimension, how many lives, how many extensions does one person get over the course of 50 years of scheming?
This has been a 50-year crime spree, Jared.
And here we are, it was on the eve of potentially just one time there being accountability.
And then here we go.
Another white man says to another wealthy white man, hey, buddy, don't you worry about it.
We all have money troubles sometimes.
We all have money troubles.
This is not a big deal.
And you know what?
Let me knock it down, you know, three quarters of the way.
And also, let me give you 10 extra days to come up with the money, because I'd already given you the time to come up with $434 million, which you were never going to be able to do because every lender laughed in your face.
But now I'm going to give you an extra 10 days to come up with less money and I'm certain you'll be okay with that so that you can continue threatening me, my law clerks, the Attorney General, and anyone else who gets in your way.
And what's incredible is they did it and then he immediately went to a microphone and threatened all of the people who had helped him.
Which is part of what happens with the privilege of being a wealthy white man in this country, is even though the system is designed to do this, it continually does this, it exhausts itself, you still have to remind everybody that you're above it, right?
That it's all bullshit and that it's all there to serve you.
It's almost like somebody who didn't bring out your dinner fast enough, right?
Yep!
Because that's what this whole thing is.
Is that this system, you take someone like a Donald Trump, unfortunately, like one of the biggest grifters America's ever produced, and actually one of the biggest financial losers America's ever produced.
And what does it keep doing?
It keeps reinforcing him one way after another.
We've reached this point with this judgment where his assets should have been seized very, very shortly.
That process should be going right now.
Instead now, what did they tell him?
Go out and find yourself a foreign entity to launder some money.
Right.
Basically, sir, you can have a little bit of extra time to go talk to the Saudis.
Oh, I assume there are some Russians who are very interested in buying some condos of yours or possibly giving you, you know, this money in exchange for whatever.
And I'm with you.
I have given up on the court process.
I'll be honest with you.
Years ago, and I know you remember this, when social media, it was every single day, it was this is what's happening in court.
This is what's happening with this investigation.
This person was here at this point.
And it became very clear to me, even before the Robert Mueller disaster and fiasco, that this system was not going to take care of him because it doesn't want to.
It has no desire whatsoever.
People like him are load-bearing walls of this system.
You don't go after wealthy white people.
The only time, and I was saying this to Nick actually when we were in Las Vegas, The only time you go after wealthy white people is when they take the money of other wealthy white people.
That's it.
It's not when they hurt the state.
It's not when they hurt poor people.
It's not when they hurt anybody else.
It's only whenever at that upper echelon you hurt each other.
When it comes to this, nobody wants anything to do with that.
That's why they're delaying these things.
That's why they're giving him extra time.
That's why we're seeing one passion play after another.
This is as far away from anything that they want anything to do with as they possibly can.
And, I don't know how you feel about it, I think most of them just kind of want him to become president again so this will go away.
So all of a sudden he'll have something close to immunity.
So, you know, what's funny is this is what I've come to realize as well.
For a little while, Jared, I believed in the potential of our justice system, even as a black queer woman in America that has seen the justice system weaponized against innocent black people, right, against low level Drugs, right?
The differentiation, let me just remind folks, between crack cocaine and powder cocaine.
The differentiation between what happens if a Kyle Rittenhouse is carrying a gun but, you know, a young black kid is carrying a suspected backpack that he may have stolen, right?
If a Kyle Rittenhouse literally shoots two people in cold blood and somebody thinks they saw a gun on a child, Right.
Yes.
Right.
So even given what we know about our justice system, I said no.
Donald Trump leaves office.
There are no more excuses.
He is going to be made an example of because we cannot set up a scenario in these United States where we tell people explicitly and overtly that if you are white, wealthy and connected, you are above the law.
No, we're going to have to have some semblance, some veil of equity, right?
Of justice.
And then here we are.
And I just want to say, the reason why we're here with these four indictments and 91 charges at this moment, several months ahead of November, is because of Merrick Garland.
We would not be in this place If on January 21st, 2021, when Biden was sworn in and he chose his U.S., you know, his U.S.
Attorney General, that if they had taken the Mueller report, which already had laid out 10 crimes that were committed, we didn't even ask for a new investigation.
So let's just say Merrick Garland is lazy.
It was already laid out for you where to start.
But you waited until 2023 to then assign a special counsel to then start an investigation that you knew was going to edge up against the election, but you want to bullshit the American people and tell them that you're about integrity of institutions?
How do you even say that with a straight face?
You know why I think that you can with a straight face?
Is because I actually think when you say that you care about the integrity of institutions, I think they're being honest.
They care about the integrity of racist and classist institutions.
And I think that's part of what's going on right now, which is becoming more and more obvious, which is whether it's Merrick Garland, whether it's the FBI, CIA, or even our politicians, not just Joe Manchin and Akirsten Sinema, who were the ones who propped up like a filibuster, plenty of Democrats who would have done the exact same thing if it were politically advantageous.
The whole issue here I think we're running up to the awareness and it can't be hidden anymore.
In the past, you could hide it behind a veneer of bullshit like justice is colorblind, right?
Everybody is equal in front of the law.
Now, all of a sudden, people are like, well, everybody is equal above the law, but you can't really go prosecuting former presidents.
That's a dangerous precedent, right?
Or, you know, we have to really respect the integrity of the Senate and of the Congress.
And what you start to realize is that, I think what you said, the integrity of the institutions has always been code-switching for I want this thing to work the way that I want it to work for a certain group of people.
Another group of people get treated another way about it.
And by the way, we'll say the right things about it, right?
We'll say, we'll go to fundraisers.
Let me tell you something.
We'll appoint some people to positions to keep up appearances.
Oh my God, we'll say all the perfect things in speeches.
But what really matters at the end of the day is that we have a class of people Who are way more interested about maintaining their power and their privilege than they are about making sure that any of this actually carries out the promises that they've given.
You know, there is a piece right now, it's in the New Yorker, and I have to tell you because here's the thing that I also think that we don't pay attention to enough.
And it is the fact that we have such attention and concentration on Donald Trump that we don't actually look at the institutions and the agencies and the people and the industries that are enabling him to be who he is.
That belch him out like so much bad food.
And so the piece is in the New Yorker and it's entitled The Forgotten History of Hitler's Establishment Enablers by Adam Gottenik.
And I got to tell you that I started reading the piece and I'm just like horrified because it reads As if he is writing about Donald Trump and this moment in 2024.
And he is because he's making these very distinct parallels about how Hitler could have never been Hitler.
If not for the institutions, the politicians, and the agencies that said that he's our guy.
We can control him.
He'll be our person on the inside, right?
The corporations wanted him for capitalism.
The politicians wanted him to be a strong man.
But lo and behold, like we've seen with MAGA, You actually can't control the monster once it's created.
You can't control the monster once you've taken off all of the guardrails.
When you have 44 people that were a part of your cabinet now come out, including your vice president, and say, I will not vote for him.
What does that tell you?
It tells you that everyone else, from judges, to the agencies, to the politicians, to the corporations that have been giving him just the length, the runway, all have a vested interest in his survival because it's attached to their own greed and for power and for wealth.
Yeah, and I don't think people understand the rise of Hitler thing.
And of course, like, everybody rolls their eyes about it, but we're in real times now, so we actually need to talk about how dictators come to power.
And it might not even be Donald Trump, by the way.
Like, I lose sleep at the idea of J.D.
Vance being right underneath this man.
Like, if you actually take a look at how this all happened, people want to believe that Hitler gave incredible speeches that brainwashed people.
No, the white middle class made a decision, we'll take this guy over communists.
Like, the industrialists who didn't want to lose their money and they wanted to maintain control and actually get rid of any semblance of democracy, they went with him.
That's why I want to bring up something very quickly.
I want to bring up Elon Musk and this recent interview with Don Lemon in which, and by the way, for the record, Don Lemon bodied Elon Musk.
And I want to bring this up for a very specific reason that goes along with everything that we're saying.
Elon Musk gets in this interview with Don Lemon, and Don Lemon pushes him on his statements about DEI, right?
About how they're going to lower standards, it's going to lead to doctors, and all these things that are going to be lower standards.
What Musk didn't say in all of this is that the reason why he says DEI lowers standards is because he believes, deep down, without wanting to say it, that people of color are inferior to white people.
Yes.
Pure, blatant, white supremacy.
That's what everybody wants to say.
They want to hide behind standards.
I want to point something out in all of this.
What's actually happening right now in this country that is driving people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump and all of the fascists that we're talking about insane is that these institutions, these standards, these systems, they were all created explicitly generations ago in order to take white people and continue to drive them up to the top to portions of power and wealth and affluence.
Donald Trump, for the record, one of the biggest financial losers in American history.
And that's not an exaggeration.
That's like an actual figure.
This system made him into a billionaire.
They will not let someone like him fail.
So what has happened is this entire thing has been programmed to take mediocrity and to continue to reward it.
And it's one of the reasons why this country is in the trouble that it is.
It's why our innovation's falling apart.
It's why we can't come up with better ideas.
Because it's the same losers who keep making the same mistakes.
We're living in their mistakes, and they're telling us they're going to figure it out.
They don't have it.
They're not actually that talented.
The entire idea here, though, is deep, deep down, they understand that they're mediocre.
Speaking of Elon Musk, who, by the way, would not have billions of dollars if the United States government didn't just flood him With their own money constantly.
They are completely terrified that something is happening right now where their mediocrity is being exposed.
Their criminality is being exposed.
The system is being exposed as being not just prejudiced, but extreme prejudice, completely and utterly wired in favor of white male supremacy.
And I have to tell you, going back to what you were bringing up, whether it's the 20s or 30s or 40s, there is a group of people Who know that things are changing and they're terrified of things changing.
And instead of maybe seeing if it could be better, they would much rather take a rabid dog and use that person or hope to use that person as their attack dog.
And that's what is happening with this.
And we've seen this happen time and time again throughout history.
And I tell you, the best example of the brilliance that you just laid out is the election twice of Barack Obama.
The Republicans' worst nightmare.
White supremacy's worst nightmare.
An intelligent, successful, beloved black man.
Who, through all obstacles and barriers and mother's death being, you know, biracial, this, that, and the other thing, showcased the actual promise of America.
That they do not want everyone, namely black people and people of color, to have access to.
So what do we need to do?
We need to get rid of DEI.
Right?
We need to stop the critical thinking that is happening inside of classrooms that is making Generation Z question capitalism, not want to show up in the workplace in the way that they did.
Let's ban a social media platform also so they're not talking to each other.
So they're not talking to each other and that they don't understand and are being hip to the patterns, right, of toxic behavior that you just laid out.
Because for so long in this country, but globally, we have equated, right, genius with wealth.
The wealthier somebody is, the bigger the genius that they are.
And what we have seen is just like, no, you just have more money and access.
But when everyone else Right?
Is now, given the same access that you've had since the beginning of this country, over the last 50 years, you can see how rapidly you become extinct.
Right?
That, oh my god, all of the things that we put in place to bar these people, to bar women, right?
Now, we need to ban abortion again.
Too many women in the workplace.
With too many opinions.
Right?
Too much autonomy.
Can I just add something on that?
This is something we haven't touched on on this show, and I'm so glad that you just brought it up.
One of the driving reasons for taking away women's rights is because you have a class of men who are terrified that women are either not going to choose them, In order to be their partners or they'll leave them if they have options.
And that's like one of the major psychological drivers and they want to get rid of that.
They want to go ahead and institute, you know, move away from like divorce while pregnant and no-fault divorce.
Like they want to reinstall all these things because they want the system to protect themselves when what they're afraid of is being mediocre.
I was going to say, and it just goes back to mediocrity, because here's the thing.
If I'm a woman, and I'm straight, and I'm no longer reliant on a man for my financial freedom and access, now I get to become choosier, right?
Which means that I'm no longer needed to meet your standards, right?
Of beauty, of this, of that, of whatever.
You know, men put on women these stereotypes and these restraints and these oppressive regimes, right?
No!
Now, I'm a woman with my own bank account, my high-paying job, right?
I can defer pregnancy or not have a child at all.
And now, you know what?
I don't have to settle for the guy that only shows up half the time.
Because now, what is their other attack?
On soft men, the feminization of men, you mean men showing up and being asked to show up and told to show up as real partners in child rearing and in marriage?
Right?
So if you take all of those things away, you take away bodily autonomy, then you take away financial security and access, you take away affirmative action, which helped more white women than it did people of color, you take away all of these things, then you get to roll back to 1953.
So let's go ahead and broaden that out because that principle, and I don't know that everybody always puts this together because we have a real problem in this country.
We're bad at understanding politics, history, and all the interconnected socioeconomic stuff.
Let's go ahead and broaden that out from just, you know, male-female relationships.
Let's look at people of color and white people.
They would much rather have them in a system in which it's almost like a, you know, a Parenthood over them, the way that it was during Jim Crow, the way that it was during slavery, this entire idea of, well, we'll take care of them because they're inferior.
What are they doing?
They're taking away their opportunities.
And for anybody who doesn't know this from history, the moment that black people in this country were emancipated, they kicked white people's asses in democracy.
They were immediately really good at it.
And what did they do?
They had to go and ride on horses wearing masks and terrorize people, literally domestic terrorists, in order to take it back.
You move to children, what we were just talking about, whether it's TikTok, but let's talk about also education.
They want to make sure that kids don't have facts, so they won't come home and say, hey, I have a question about the things that you say to me.
I have a question about what's going on.
And you know what we see throughout history?
Social revolutions, democratic revolutions, these movements that actually change things.
They begin with young people who say, hey, I'm tired of my parents' shit.
I'm tired of the people I know's shit.
I'm tired of being abused.
I'm tired of being controlled.
And we brought up Germany a second ago when it came to Hitler.
Do you know what happened after the Nazis fell?
The people who were Nazis took the government back over and the young people said, we're not doing this anymore.
And they started a social revolution.
It happened in France.
That's also what happened with the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, the feminist movement, the civil rights movement.
All of that takes place.
What it is, and this comes back to it, this entire movement, this entire moment in history, it's not just MAGA.
It's not just Elon Musk.
It's a lot of very, very powerful, wealthy white people, including politicians that some of the listeners of this show look up to, are so afraid of letting any question foment, because it will lead to something akin to a social revolution or progress, that they would rather be on the side of a complete and utter disgusting pig like Donald Trump.
I mean, you know, Jared, it's just so, and then when you, when you do piece it together, It is so gut-wrenching and heartbreaking to recognize the systems that we've been living in, right, that use our public education system to launder propaganda about this country.
And then when we get to a place of critical thought, right, then say, no, no, no, we have to stop this immediately.
Right?
When we get to a place where children are not being shamed because of their gender and can express themselves and be who they are, right?
We say, no, no, no, no, no.
Right?
And so it is, I think that where we are is in both a very scary place, but also a very critical place.
Because I do believe, and look, I'm going to say something that I say on social media all the time.
I do believe that we are going to see the fall of the American empire.
This is what this looks like.
Yes.
When you're backsliding, when you're being rated as a backsliding democracy, when you're falling out of the top 20 happiest places to live.
Infant mortality, education.
Infant mortality, education, healthcare.
When everything is backsliding and you look around and you're just like, Where am I?
What is this?
I don't think that Generation Z, and the generation to come after it, is just going to take this lying down.
You know, I think that, again, we think that, you know, and when I say we, I mean people our age, And older, look at the banning of TikTok and say, we have bigger fish to fry.
I saw that all over the place.
We have bigger fish to fry.
There are bigger things to be concerned with.
And I said, bigger than free speech?
Bigger than access to information?
Like, it isn't just dance challenges that are happening on TikTok.
It's where this whole generation learned about Gaza and Israel and the fight and plight of the Palestinian people.
That's where it was happening.
And I want to jump off that very, very quickly, because I think TikTok is a really good example of what we're talking about, right?
So the United States government, in a bipartisan way, is going after TikTok.
They're using fear of China, brainwashing kids, when every other tech giant has already brainwashed everybody that they possibly can, tracking their data, you name it.
You have Democrats and Republicans alike who are calling for this thing to be banned, right?
Republicans want to do it because they want, like you said, they want to make sure that people aren't getting critical information.
A lot of Democrats want to ban it because they believe that's why so many people are against the war in Gaza and the war crimes in Gaza.
What are they going to do if they do it?
If they go ahead and cause a divestment of TikTok?
Who's waiting?
It's Steve Mnuchin, but who's behind him?
The Saudis!
And let me tell you something, that goes back to what we were saying.
They would rather one of the most influential social media networks Fall in the hands of the conservatives, the new right, and the Saudis.
They would rather do that than chance people talking about what's actually going on and honestly become not just educated, but radicalized.
That's a very, very large metaphor for what's going on in all of our politics right now.
It's just it's so it's just so wild.
Like it's so wild of a place to be.
And I think that what makes this moment so salient is that everyone sees it to some degree.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Like you don't need to be a student of history.
You don't need to understand politics every day and follow it day in and day out, although I would love for you to.
You don't have to.
But you can understand when you're being played, right?
When you start to see that these people are playing in your face.
When you saw Jeff Bezos a couple of years ago when they're doing the first launches of their space programs in the world.
And he says, Oh, well, I got to thank the Amazon, you know, workers and the consumers in such a disgusting, almost comic book villain type of way.
Right?
Like the the greed has become exponential.
The the power hungriness has become exponential, and everybody sees it.
Right?
So instead of us having a handful of billionaires and multi-multi-millionaires, like, do what's right and be compelled to do so, everyone else is told that they need to stop reading, they need to stop, you know, stop connecting, they need to stop watching, like, and also we're taking away all of your social safety nets.
Like, so on top of all of these things, we're gonna make sure that we Engrain a permanent working class in this country by taking away every bit of access that allowed marginalized groups to ascend to places beyond where patriarchy and white supremacy wanted them to be.
We're going to rescind all of those things.
Take away your books.
Take away your public education.
Take away your access so that we maintain a work.
How is that working for Russia?
I mean, it depends on who you are.
It depends on who you are in Russia.
If I'm an oligarch, right, you're right.
For them, but I'm talking about Russians in mass.
The worst.
Literal hell.
Literal, literal hell.
And you could not be more right.
It is a literal rolling back of the progress of the 20th century.
And for anybody who doesn't know this, the beginning of the 20th century looked a lot like what Russia looks like now and what you're describing.
Which was when industrialism had created a permanent underclass.
You had a bunch of oligarchs who, by the way, funded the Nazis and the fascists, but that's, you know, only history telling us what happens.
And they're looking to get rid of all of the democratic and populist, like, progress that was actually hard-earned.
And you brought up Bezos.
I gotta tell you, like, it's really chilling to me that every tech person that there is, every billionaire and oligarch that there is, they're all using all of their platforms.
I mean, I don't just mean like, you know, Bezos's Washington Post, which is a different story altogether.
But I'm talking about, you know, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or threads, whatever it is, they're all deemphasizing news.
They're all deemphasizing information.
And why?
Because when all these people get together, they're like, Things just need to calm down.
People are a little out there.
They keep calling it the left, even though there is no left in this country functionally in power right now.
And I'm sure you've probably heard this, probably not as much as I have, because I'm a white dude, and when I'm in spaces, people think that they can say what they want, you know?
And what do they say?
They're like, oh, you know, I hate Donald Trump and I hate all this stuff, but I just think the left's out of control.
You know, I voted for Barack Obama twice, but I think the left's just out of control.
And that's what they say because they truly, deep, deep down, going back to the beginning of this conversation, they are truly conservative and they would be more than happy to give up everybody
Uh, you know, every vulnerable community, every outlier, every minority in this country, basically, to move them back, to roll back those protections and those hard-earned rights, in order to go ahead and just have a little bit of calm, have people stop reading, stop paying attention, and just have things go back to quote-unquote normal.
Yeah, and it's, you know, and I think that that's what we have to understand, is that when it comes to the wealthy 1%, that there is no Left and right, to your point.
That there is just wealth and more wealth and greed, right?
That they are actually all on the same page, all on the same page, paying each other, you know, back and forth and elevating each other and blah blah.
But at the end of the day, I agree.
What they don't want is what happened during COVID.
And this is what I think also accelerated this desire to de-emphasize news, to like get people disconnected, right, because all of a sudden, now the actual workers had power.
Had some semblance of power with saying, you know what?
I don't want your five-day work week.
I don't want your every day in the office that is literally sucking me of my life.
That even though we were in a global health pandemic, that people had more life, more access and control over their lives than they had ever had before.
Right?
And so, as long as, Jared, you can keep people exhausted, You can keep them in need, right?
And desperate, you can control them.
And so now when people are like, yeah, I'm going to leave this job and I'm going to look for one that's only three days, and that's a hybrid, or I'm going to leave this job and I'm going to go ahead and find a remote one.
They're trying to put that genie back inside the bottle, right?
Now you have corporate real estate run amok because no one's in the office.
Oh my God, cities are going to fall.
It's all, it comes back to the money, not the care.
And once people saw that, oh, the CDC is just changing, changing tactics and laws every time that Bob Iger or Bezos or somebody comes out and says something, oh, we need the workforce back.
You saw how everything worked in cahoots together.
And you're just like, wait a minute, who are the good guys?
And then you realize there are none.
I remember, so I was in academia when the pandemic hit, and I remember a colleague of mine, because I lived in the state of Georgia, and basically, I mean, they got back to work pretty fast.
And, you know, they were just like shoveling people into the mall of the pandemic.
It's like business has to go on.
It doesn't matter if you die, right?
And I remember a colleague being like, what happened to these people?
I just feel like something happened.
I said, no, the mask has fallen off.
These people, when things are quote-unquote good, which means that they have leverage, they're like, hey everybody, let's have a pizza party.
What do you say?
We're all family here, right?
We're all family doing what we can for each other.
That's what they say when things are in their control.
Also, for anybody who wants to look further in that metaphor, that's what our politicians do.
They want to talk happily about things.
They want to have these norms that we always, like, you know, raise up to a level of Santa Claus.
Like, they don't want authoritarianism to be bald-faced.
They don't want it to be clear that they're attacking you, that they're exploiting you, and that they would sacrifice you in a moment.
What has happened with neoliberalism the last 40 years, austerity, the destroying of the social safety net, capitalism just coming back around and closing shit down, and on top of that, the pandemic, What has become clear is that the entire time there was a mask on.
Yes.
And quite frankly, I try and point this out for people all the time because I don't think it's understood.
The definition of horror is thinking that you were safe in a moment in which you were in danger.
Right?
You're sitting there watching TV, eating your popcorn, and the killer's creeping up behind you.
You were comfortable.
Your guard was down.
We have been convinced our entire lives that, you know, maybe things aren't great and there's a lot of problems.
But it's okay, and sure hands have the wheel.
We now know that we have been in danger this entire time.
And even the people who are in the most denial now understand that there is danger.
And now, you either, like you said, you put it back in the bottle in some way, shape, or form, or you try to.
Or you push the issue, you know what I mean?
Or something's going to change.
And the actual energy in people is towards change.
And that's the problem.
And the people who benefit from it the most are scared as hell.
And if you look around at what they're willing to do, whether it's genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, the building of a larger police surveillance state.
I mean, this TikTok thing?
They learned about this from China.
They've looked at the authoritarian control state of China and how they've tried to control their younger people.
And they're like, oh, OK, we hate China, but those are good notes.
We'll take those.
Like this is what happens when they get desperate and when they start feeling a little bit of control shifting.
You know, and I think that here is where I mean, there's so much to be concerned about, but you're so on the money with the definition of horror.
And I think that.
We have been in a place of lulled complacency for the last 40-some-odd years, I will say.
Why?
Because we were spoon-fed this idea that every generation, it gets better than the next one, right?
That we're just all building on, that there's no such thing of backsliding progress, Jared.
Everything is always about forward momentum.
And then again, we got to the forward momentum of a President Barack Obama of a look what we can do.
And they were like, oh, hell no, absolutely not.
No, you cannot.
And then a woman wants to run?
No, that can't happen at all.
So we have to stop every bit of progress in its tracks.
And then we have to pretend, which is what the Republicans do, that we're doing it for your own good.
Sure.
Right?
It's because we care about the embryos, you know, the embryonic individuals in Alabama.
It's because we love the babies, right, but only the ones that are in utero.
It's because we want to protect your children from those transgender people.
Ah, so scary!
Right?
So you need us to protect you because otherwise, Lord only knows what will happen.
People might think.
And I gotta tell you, on that note, one of the things that I've been... I've had to study this because over the last eight years, you know, I think for a while, I was like some people where I was like, man, it seems like these Republicans are contradicting themselves.
And maybe if someone points out the contradiction, it'll get figured out.
Then those of us who actually paid attention, we started to realize that's their superpower.
They can hold 15 different contradictory thoughts all at once without discomfort.
told 15 different contradictory thoughts all at once without discomfort, right?
I mean, Donald Trump, it's incredible.
It's like a cheesecake you get from the store in the freezer aisle.
You know, it's like all these like complete contradictions, you know.
He's strong, but he's also, you know, not.
And he's so physically fit and he's a warrior, even though he cries all the time and whines all the time.
But when it comes down to it, I think going back to the Barack Obama era, I think a lot of people looked at Barack Obama And they thought that maybe Republicans would say, hey, we're going to give this guy a chance.
And maybe we'll even maybe we'll even go along with him, which is what kind of used to happen with presidents.
Like a president would get elected and they would determine where the country was going and what was going to happen.
You know, there would be fights and some of the agenda would get passed and others wouldn't.
I don't, I think a lot of people were caught unaware of exactly the depths that the Republicans could go to.
Whether it's the fact that he wasn't born in America, he was a New World Order anti-Christ puppet, you know, whatever.
Now it's Michael Obama, you know, like it's all of this stuff that I think Some people truly, going back to the system that we were talking about in the beginning of this, oh, I assume Donald Trump's so obviously guilty the system will hold him accountable.
People looked at the Republican Party and they were like, listen, I don't agree with what they've done, I don't like George W. Bush, any of this stuff, but they will have to play ball honorably.
They'll at least have to, you know, be a part of this thing.
And the fact that they have been able to go to these depths, I think, have caught a lot of people off guard.
And that they are more than willing to destroy this country rather than lose it.
I mean, you know, my other friend Jonathan Metzl wrote the book Dying of Whiteness, right?
Like, they are happy to destroy it.
Do you know what I'm saying?
They will set the bonfire and then sit there and watch it burn.
Right?
Just so that, again, they can remind us of their power.
The power to, we made this so we can destroy it.
Right?
Even if that means destroying ourselves.
It is, it's just like, and so when you get to that place and you realize, how do you argue with that?
Like, when people are so out of their depths of reality and don't care about their own survival, when you saw people, just to go back to COVID for a minute, Jared, that would be at these different school board meetings and hospitals and saying, my son, you know, died, but I'm still here, like, and I'm not going to wear a mask, like, does that make you a hero?
Your son sacrificed himself because of your ignorance, right?
Like, they were protesting in front of a hospital.
They're sending bomb threats inside of hospitals.
And then have the audacity to look on the other side of the globe and call people terrorists and monsters and not human?
And I gotta tell you, I come from those people who are dying from whiteness.
I know, I cannot tell you the number of people, whether it's family members or people in my community growing up, who, you know, they wouldn't go to the doctor, they would have health problems, they wouldn't take care of themselves, or they would have a heart attack and the doctor would tell them, you have to change your life or you're going to die.
And it's a rational thing to go ahead and live and they just kept doing what was killing them.
And I think what we see when it comes to fascism, authoritarianism, it's a it's a suicidal drive is what it is.
Things are actually like and I said this the other night.
I think a lot of what's happening right now is an unconscious reaction to what's coming in the future.
Global climate change is, like, I think, behind a lot of this stuff.
Like, it's coming.
We all know it's coming.
It's as easy as going outside and understanding things have changed, right?
And instead, there's, like, this impulse to just drive into it.
Just to not change anything, to not do anything.
And I think Trump and the Republicans, the same way the Nazis, the fascists, authoritarians of all different stripes and ages, there is a death drive to go ahead and just, if it's going to end, let's end.
Let's just do it.
Let's just go ahead and see how bad we can make it as quickly as possible.
And so we're not dealing with rationalism.
No.
We're not dealing with politics, which is supposed to be where you and I come together in a public square, maybe we have disagreements and we figure out where we can meet and where we can go forward.
What we're actually dealing with now is a cultural, social takeover.
And it's going to damn all of us and doom all of us.
And quite frankly, I wanted to talk to you about this very quickly.
We are dealing with a media class and a political class that have no desire whatsoever to deal with this, to discuss it, and are in complete denial of it, expecting this conversation that we're having, the institutions, all these things to go ahead and sweep in and save people.
And I've been pissed about it for years.
I've moved past being pissed.
I'm at a new level of something that I don't even know if there are words for.
It is a white, cold, hot feeling that consumes me on a daily basis.
How are you feeling about how this is being communicated or not being communicated as of recently?
I have two words for you.
Yeah.
Ronna McDaniel.
Ronna McDaniel.
I mean, how?
How, Jared?
How do you run the RNC, hold Trump's water, lie about the election being stolen, vote to have the money that the RNC has raised for all other Republican candidates used for his own financial gain for his crimes?
Try to overthrow the government.
Try to overthrow the government.
Cut out your own family, your own name.
Get rid of Romney, because he don't like that.
Right?
And this woman does this on a national stage.
We all see it.
And NBC News says, come on in.
For a cool sum, $300,000.
And by the way, just real fast, I want to point out, because it's relevant to what we've talked about, she did all of those things.
She also did it badly.
She committed God knows how many unforgivable crimes and misgivings, and she did it all poorly.
And they're like, here is $300,000.
And for the record, she's terrible on television.
Yeah.
We're going to bring her on.
She had no actual power within the RNC.
She was a puppet who got deposed.
She had no ability whatsoever.
She's now going to make more than, you know, what?
More than 80% of all Americans make.
Yep.
And she's going to become, like, an election-denying conspiracy theorist authoritarian apologist on one of the major networks on television.
And I gotta say, like, people, again, They're playing in our faces, as the young kids say.
You see this, and what are you supposed to think?
Right?
Like, my mother, who watches MSNBC faithfully, and I was on over the weekend, and she was just like, please tell me you will never go on a show with that woman.
She didn't even have to say her name.
I knew who she was talking about.
And I said, she goes, how, Danielle?
How did they make this decision?
And I said, this is what they do.
And I said, because they're all at the same country clubs.
They're all at the same restaurants.
Just to go back to Oh, the left or the right.
When you're talking about wealth and power, again, there is no left and right, and there is no better example than the revolving door that you saw from the Trump administration into mainstream media.
So whether it's Sean Spicer standing before the American people and lying about a fucking crowd size, And then dancing with the stars for his rehabilitation.
You have another one sitting on The View, right?
Oh, well, I, you know, I condemned Donald Trump.
When?
On January 6th?
Yep.
But you didn't condemn any of the things that were happening before that day?
Right?
So, I mean, you look at all of these major networks, and they all have Trump-affiliated people on there that they are paying.
And I said, being in that administration, working on that campaign, should have been a death knell to anyone's career.
News outlets were serious if mainstream media was serious about the danger that this man caused.
Sure, okay, we got in it for a minute because of the ratings.
But you know what?
When it comes to hiring these people, we're not gonna do it.
Let them go to Fox.
Let them go to OAN.
Let them go to whatever right-wing, you know, show or TV.
No.
They've all been mainstreamed to CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and the like.
And I want to let people know, so a few things here.
One, the reason why Ronna McDaniel was hired by NBC was to gain access to Donald Trump and to gain access to the Republican Party.
That's why.
But that's why you pay somebody like this.
It's not because they're dynamite on TV.
I mean, you know, that's not what it is.
You pay these people in order to be accesses.
The next thing about it, and by the way, like you, I'm a regular guest on MSNBC, but I'm going to go ahead and say what's going on here.
I watched Chuck Todd go on Meet the Press, and for people who don't know this, obviously our listeners know this, Chuck Todd has been one of the biggest parts of what we're discussing right now.
He has normalized this to Time and time again, he is the biggest, most, like, I think, destructive pundits that we've had for his inability to ask questions and to normalize it and also to be like, this is a game, there's not actually real things happening because it's beltway insider bullshit, right?
It's what gets talked about at a cocktail when you're not worried about your rights and your safety, right?
So, with this, Chuck Todd wasn't pissed that Ronald McDaniel got brought on as a person.
He was pissed that it hurt NBC News' reputation.
He wasn't pissed off that Ronald McDaniel hurt America or tried to overthrow the government.
That never really came up in anything Chuck Todd ever said.
He was pissed that it hurt the news organization that he is a leader of.
It goes back to what we've been discussing, which is we have a lot of very wealthy and powerful people who have an interest, and I think it's unconscious.
I don't think they wake up in the morning and brush their teeth and think about this.
I think it has to do with identity and how they see themselves, what it's like to hand somebody their business card, where they get their money, how they afford their second and third houses.
You have to normalize MAGA and Trump and white authoritarianism because it is powerful in this country.
It's now normal because Donald Trump got elected.
When Donald Trump became president of the United States of America, it has to be normalized.
Otherwise, normal isn't okay.
So what happens?
Normal becomes more extreme, and Ronna McDaniel, every other election denier, I'm talking some of the most dangerous people who have ever been involved in American politics, now have to be treated as if their normal and all this extremism and radical talk, all of that is just an overreaction.
And so what happens with the Overton window in this country?
It moves further and further and further right because these people cannot handle the cognitive dissonance that they're part of a system that is failing and dangerous.
I mean, it's just it's so disgusting.
And I and I will say that this is why independent media podcasts like influential like and Influencers that work outside of a system matter, right?
Because without it, which is what they are hoping, people are just fed More and more bullshit.
And they don't have the time and the energy to sort through multiple news channels, multiple papers, multiple things in order to get to some point of truth.
I'll go back to what I said at the beginning.
At some point, the apathy, right, will take over.
The rage corrodes and it turns into apathy.
I just now just don't care.
Right?
What happens?
So long as I can put some food on my table, I can get some medicine from the pharmacy, and I can send my kid to some kind of school to get an education, I hope that they can get a job.
But if they live with me forever, I guess that that's going to be what it is.
Right?
The deal keeps getting shittier.
That's the whole point.
And people keep taking that deal until they realize that sometimes The table that is set is not the one that you need to eat at, and you should flip the fucking table over.
And that's one of the reasons I'm optimistic, but it's also one of the reasons that I think that this whole thing is hard to understand, which is the problem is that Americans have been convinced that they don't deserve better.
That they're very, very lucky that they have the lights on, that they can have food, that they're not cutting their pills in half.
If they're not, right, that their kids might be able to go to school, that they might actually have a job, that there's something wrong with them that, you know, hopefully they can just float underneath and they don't get caught and they don't get fired and they don't get embarrassed and ostracized.
And what happens?
And I think we've all been in this situation, whether it's been a relationship or it's been a job or it's been how somebody treats us, where we live, how we live.
We make deals with ourselves to accept less because we don't expect better.
And this entire thing is a lack of imagination, and it's an abusive cycle.
We have been convinced over the course of our lifetimes that, yeah, maybe things could get better, but that would be dangerous.
You should just be happy for what you have.
Vote for these rights to be protected, and if you lose a couple of them, you lose a couple of them, but at least you're not out on the streets.
And that mindset actually is what leads you to accept authoritarianism and to basically say, just leave it outside my door.
If I can eat, if I can just have my shows, if I can just get six hours of sleep at night, just please leave me alone.
And unfortunately, that's the cycle that we're in.
I think we'll get out of it.
That's what happens.
When people realize they deserve better, they get better.
And, you know, that's when you organize.
That's when you push back.
That's when you protest.
That's whenever you tell your terrible manager at Starbucks, guess what?
We're starting a union in your ass's grass.
And what do you do?
You beat them.
You beat the largest corporations.
You beat the largest parties.
You actually change things.
But you first have to go ahead and take the chance that, like, you might lose what little you have already.
And, you know, I don't know if you became a preacher in the time since I've seen you, but you need to take that sermon on the road.
Because that was straight and total facts.
We are in an abusive, toxic relationship with America.
Yes, that's right.
And for anyone that has traveled to any other country, And you see their infrastructure, their train systems, their airports, their, you know, cleanliness, their education system, right?
Like, you look around and you're just like, wait a minute.
Right?
Wait a minute.
I thought that we were number one.
Number one at what?
And so when you are told that this is the best that it can be, and a majority of people never leave this country, right?
Then that perspective becomes their reality.
But the reality is, is that America stopped producing the best.
When it started divesting from education, right?
And investing in the prison industrial complex, and investing in things that take away people's lives.
Like, you have food that is created in Europe with different ingredients, same company.
But here, it's filled with cancerous chemicals.
There, not so much.
Deadly slop.
Right.
But again, like we're told this is the best America can do.
Right.
So you're right.
It is an abusive, toxic relationship.
And the only time that you leave that partner is when you start believing that you are better off alone.
Right.
That you can do bad by yourself.
So it's like, let's break up.
It's not working for me.
And it's you.
It is not me.
It's you.
Right?
And recognize that, like, we all deserve better.
We deserve better representation.
Yes.
We deserve better access.
We deserve better rights.
We deserve better judges.
We deserve a better Supreme Court.
We deserve better than what they have been lying and giving to us.
You know, and just, you know, the last thing I'll say, it's like, you know, the other day, again, new report comes out, driven by 1,500 European countries.
Guess what works better and creates a better bottom line?
A four-day workweek.
Absolutely, it does.
People are happier.
The bottom line is richer, right?
Do you think that we will see that here?
No.
And so it's the control, it's the greed, and until people start to really wake up and see what is happening and what's been happening, I don't think anything will change.
And I would love to believe that this election, the courts have already failed us, right?
Like, Donald Trump isn't going to be held accountable.
He's not going to see the inside of any prison.
He's not going to have to forfeit anything.
The only way that this truly goes away is with us.
That's it.
Is when we vote in November.
And vote for ourselves and not a political party.
That's right.
And then the work that comes after that.
Daniel Moody, my dear, dear friend.
I am so happy that you came by.
The host of Woke AF, the co-host of Democracy-ish and the New Abnormal.
I just absolutely adore you.
I'm so glad you came by.
Thank you for having me.
One day we'll talk about something, you know, light.
We'll see.
All right, everybody, that's going to do it for this episode of the Muckrake Podcast.
As always, go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast in order to keep us ad-free, editorially independent, and growing.
You're the absolute best audience in the world.
Thank you so, so much, and we will be back with The Weekender on Friday.
