Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'mory host, Rams' Ja he is.
Rams's Jah, I am q Ward And you are tuned in to Civic Scipher.
Yes you are, and we're talking about the election. If you are a longtime listener of the show, you know that that was not what we expected, nor was it happy in any way. You know, there are some some bright moments that came out of the election, but there are so few of them, and they're so sparse that we're taking a moment to just kind of come to terms with what has happened and really decide as much as we can where we go from here. And so we're going to spend the next part of the show
trying to sort that out with you. But before we get there, it's time to become a better ally Baba and Today's Baba sponsored by Friends of the Movement, you can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot com, and today I want to remind you about Stop Aapihete dot org. This is an initiative that really looks out for the rights and the wellbeing of
our Asian American and Pacific Islander brothers and sisters. There are unique challenges and needs of all communities, and this is the foremost community that I've found that is really seeking to protect our AAPI brothers and sisters against you know, hate and again challenges that are specific to their community. I'll share a bit. It is a US based coalition dedicated to ending racism and discrimination against Asian Americans and
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To learn more about your donation, visit their website at Stop AAPI Hate dot org, slash donate and another note here there are several ways you can contribute. Your donation is one hundred tax deductible. The fiscal sponsor of stop AAPI hate is Chinese for Affirmative Action. That's CAAA, and that is a five oh one C three nonprofit organization. And their tax id number and all their W nine infos available at stopaapi height dot org. Okay, so how
did we get here? Well? I thought that once upon a time that black men would be the deciding factor. At another point in time, I thought, you know, third party candidates would be a deciding factor. You know, I read from the economists that it's Latino males that were decisive in the most recent election and that Democrats could no longer rely on that group faithfully to support Democratic candidates and policies and initiatives. And you know, there's a
conversation to be had about any number of things. But the truth is, I think the biggest, most visible element that we've had to come to terms with is the voter turnout. The reason this was top of mind is that, you know, I went to the watch party, the campaign watch party for Kamala Harris, and there was an individual next to me wearing a shirt that says You're fired,
and then it was signed eighty one million voters. So of course I saw this shirt before all of the votes had been counted, and that number stood out to me. Eighty one million. Wow, that's a lot of people. And then I saw the number of voters that turned out for Kamala Harris, and if I'm not mistaken, it was
you know, sixty six almost sixty seven million voters. So considerably less voters turned out for Kamala Harris, and the end to be fair, less voters turned out for Donald Trump too, but I think he lost some in the neighborhood of like three million votes from the twenty twenty election to this one, and Kamala Harris lost something like, you know, thirteen million. Somehow, it ended up being a very low
voter turnout for Democrats. And of course we see by looking at twenty twenty numbers that Democrats do exist and they do vote. Eighty one million of them voted to get Trump out of there, and a lot of those folks just didn't show up at the polls this time. So if we want to look at Latino voters or black men, or jerry mandering or third party candidates or everything you know, all put together, it might not amount
to that many votes. There is something to be said about what the Democrats have stood on, what the Democrats have done under this current administration that has failed to motivate people to come out to vote. The thing that we've debated on this show, the thing that we've wrestled with on this show again, longtime listeners will know, is Palestine. There were a lot of people, probably more than I would have expected, that simply, we're not going to vote
for an administration that is actively supporting a genocide. That's the only thing that makes sense to me in terms of while those people stayed home this time, and of course I wish that, you know, all the people that stayed home would have given Kamala Harris a chance. I wish that all the people that you know could not conceive of a woman being president would have given Kamala Harris a chance. We already gave Donald Trump a chance.
You know what I mean, Let's just see, just because it has worked, it doesn't mean it can't work better, you know, it doesn't mean that it's going to be worse. Just because we've all only had men in the past, doesn't mean that a woman might not do as good
or a better job. Just because Kamala Harris was actively in an administration that was helping fund the gendocide on the ground in Gaza doesn't mean that had she been able to ascend, that she could not have played a more decisive role in ending that genocide or helping Palestinians rebuild or you know, find a path to self determination. Hard to imagine Donald Trump prioritizing you know, Palestinian people or really anybody that kind of not in his immediate
circle and is not putting money in his pocket. So, you know, I don't mean to point fingers because that's just kind of the wrong approach right now. But it is important to learn from this moment that you know, there is a line, you know, as try as you might to get everybody on the same page and get out and vote, you know, there's eighty one million of them.
You know, maybe I hope it's just the the Palestine thing, you know what I mean, because if it's you know, people not willing to vote for a woman too, then you know that that's half of the population, you know what I mean. If it's just the Palestine thing, then that's an easy lesson for an easier lesson for Democrats to learn that they cannot ignore the split in the vote. But if it's I'm really you know, it's hard to come up with the words right now, I'm really disappointed.
And and the people that failed to show up, you know, the Republicans did what they did. You know that we saw were disappointed in the people that did show up and.
Voted for him.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
I'm not even going to try to pretend to two things are the same.
Well, so let me just make this last statement, and I want to hear what you're thinking. But again, the first go round, Donald Trump had seventy four million, seventy six million votes, and then he's pretty much all those same people showed back up less about three million. So he already had a built in base that we knew that. You know, those people, as you mentioned earlier, they weren't going to learn. He said that when he was campaigning in twenty sixteen, he could walk out in Times Square
and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose a single vote. So we kind of knew that he had a solid base going into it. We just didn't. I just didn't realize that Democrats had turned off so many people with what, again, I'm hoping is just Palestine. They didn't turn they I didn't realize they would turn off so many people with that.
I'm pretty certain that it's not just Palestine. Yeah, well, I figured as much Stein as a convenient thing to say. It puts you in this kind of ambiguously morally, as far as your moral intellectual stance, it's ambiguous, almost intentionally. If you use platonized Palestine as a shield, people won't question the fact that you didn't participate, they won't question your apathy. You won't be looked at as a bad person. Actually,
quite the contrary. You stood on some deep held principle that you had, But you'd have to be intentionally misinformed, intentionally dishonest, intentionally apathetic, and intentionally privileged to adopt that as your single issue for not participating in this election. Because every piece of information available to you, and I mean the simplest way of searching information, shows that the guy that won this thing is worse, is far worse. It's not people keep doing this neck and neck thing.
All politicians are the same, and both parties are bad, and they keep doing this very very intentionally false equivalent. The percentage of Latino men that voted for him increased in the face of him spewing anti Latino, anti immigrant rhetoric every time he spoke to a microphone. And the interesting thing that happens for men in the patriarchy, for immigrants in this country, for white women in the patriarchy, at once they see themselves accepted by it, they will protected.
The Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican and Latino men in general who see themselves as a part of this American dream that came from wherever they came from, and they were accepted now for incentivized, if not obligated, to protect that same American dream, the same American dream that craps on their countrymen, but speaks of them as they are criminal bigenetics, lesser biogenetics, murderers and rapist biogenetics, thieves and lazy genetically. That means he's talking about you too. But oh no,
you did it the right way. You got the proper paperwork, you went through the proper steps, and you're here the right way. Everyone else is wrong, and everyone else hents also beneath you. Not just beneath him. I'll ask you guys, forgiveness. I do not have a redeeming thing to say today. I don't have a positive thing to say today. I don't have a hopeful thing to say today because I don't believe or feel any of that. I don't feel hopeful.
I don't feel like there's redemption. I don't feel like there's some lesson that's going to be learned and people are going to get it the next time, if there's a next time. I saw people saying they would vote for him because he promised not to ban abortions. That's a really uninformed reason to vote for Donald Trump, because he's made very, very plainly his thoughts on abortion. I've seen people vote for him because of the economy. This
is what I mean. You were just intentionally misinformed. Do the smallest amount of research, and you be blown away by the improvements of our economy under the current administration. From record lows and unemployment, record lows and black unemployment, decreasing of inflation, decreasings of prices across the board. Donald Trump had us in record debt by the trillions with a T Do you vote for him because of his economy. All of this keeps us from saying the very very
obvious truth out loud. Wasn't Palestine, it wasn't the economy, it wasn't reproductive freedoms. Clearly, a black woman was running for president. We like to make things more complicated because we'd like to think that we're much more advanced and progressed society. We're not. There was another black person running,
and she was a woman. And there's a massive segment of this society that will tell you to your face they voted to protect whiteness if you would get them to have a conversation with you where they wouldn't be shamed by anyone, which also doesn't seem to be something that matters anymore. Donald Trump's gonna stop all those immigrants from coming in here. He's going to deport all the immigrants that are here. He's going to make America great again.
Making America white again is what they mean. White people to have all the power throughout all of history, all of it. Forever. We will stomp on, step on, and stagnate the progress of everyone else forever, to protect that every story, or the overarching themes of every story throughout the entirety of humankind has always from the Bible to Game of Thrones, has always had in its reserve some sort of redemption or redeeming except for the African seeds
that were planted on American soil. Black people in this country have no redeeming. There is no redemption story, There is no happy ending. And every time we get a little bit of excitement, a little bit of joy, how dare you be happy? How dare you be hopeful? How dare you think it's going to work out for you? Along comes a petulant, narcissist, white supremacist child of a man who spits in our faces, tells us it's raining,
and then we buy Trump umbrellas for it. He has woken up the most disgusting among us, and those who I consider far less disgusting got in line with.
Them, and everybody that was supposed to save us stayed home because it was a black woman.
Are you really going to stop being friends with people over politics? I would never, But am I going to stop being friends with who because they support and worship Donald Trump? Absolutely one, without equivocation? Yes, because I don't need people to think I'm smart, so I don't have to pretend to be a contrarian and think of some other thing about how flat the world is, and tell you all the reasons why I think so. To what end?
How does that benefit me or anyone? All the scientists and the history of the of the planet have all worked against us to what end? To make us think what? There's no facts no more, there's no experts anymore. And somehow Donald Trump.
Is teaching us about windmills, is.
Teaching us about anything. He's the leader of the free world now again, hope and belief in what bro like? Yeah, right, Well, like I.
Said, you know, we are on a long road, and the road just got longer. It got a lot longer. And I'm not gonna pretend like that's not true, but that's the road. You know. I've said it before. I was not born a slave, So that means at some point some folks had to get on the same page black people and white people and make some progress. And you know, I wasn't born in you know, and subjected
to the black codes or Jim Crow, you know. And there was an evolution of what it meant to be black in this country by the time I was born.
Reproject twenty twenty five and tell me how all that hope you're expressing right now can still exist.
What I mean is that it's a long road and there's momentum, sometimes forward, sometimes backward, and this feels like a huge, gigantic, enormous step backwards. But that doesn't mean that you know, the road is not still ahead of us. So I'm going to walk and not be weary, am I run, and not think it's the only setting I have. As always, I'm inviting everyone to join me. This is what we do. Man. You know, sometimes we we are
a little sad and sometimes we're big sad. And my hope is that eventually somebody gets to be happy somewhere, so we'll manifest that. We'll manifest that together. All right. With that in mind, i'd like to thank you for listening to this very heavy installment, probably the heaviest yet of Civic Cipher. I've been your host, ramses Jah, I am q Ward and do us a favor. Follow us on all social media. We are at Civic Cipher on all platforms. We got our work cut out for us,
and we need your support now more than ever. We're going to keep doing what we have to do. And uh again, your well wishes, your support, your whatever it is you have, follows, likes, donations, comments, That goes a long way. If you have any questions, anything to add, like I said, you can hit us on Civic cipher dot com and of course you can download this in any previous episode. Yeah, we got our we got our marching orders, so let's march together all right? Until next time, y'all.
Peace,