Good morning, peeps, and welcome to bige F Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody recording once again from the Brooklyn Bunker. Today is January sixth, twenty twenty two. Three hundred and sixty five days have passed since there was a coup attempt, an attempt to violently overthrow our government occurred.
We all sat before whether our computers, televisions, phones, tablets, whatever, and watched as thousands of Trump supporters, thousands of white Americans, ransacked our Capitol Building, tormenting our representatives as they were doing their duty to certify the twenty twenty election and the win, legitimate win of Joe Biden. There have been countless videos, stories, tweets, tiktoks that have been shared to convey the seriousness of that day. It exemplified just how
broken our democracy had become. Where a president could lie to his millions of followers, that he could be uplifted by cable news networks, that he could be celebrated and seen as a legitimate and normal president as he gathered his followers, his legions of fans as he calls them, in front of the Capitol Building on January six, twenty twenty one, hyping them up on toxic masculinity, on xenophobia, on hatred, on partisanship, on white supremacy, and then pointed
them in the direction of the Capitol Building and told them no, commanded them as I would write in My Peace America, It's time to take the red pill. Commanded them to go and take their country back. As I said earlier this week, there is a piece in the New York Times, and it is a startling, horrific piece of journalism that outlines just how devastating the one six events were for those officers that were on the front lines.
I would be remiss if I didn't tell you what stood out for me as I listened to January six, the Scars, right from the New York Times. It's called it's entitled the Capitol Police January six Scars, and what stood out for me are the accounts of Capitol Police officers talking about why they decided to join their police ranks and how proud they were right how proud they
have been to serve to uphold democracy. There are more members that talked about the fact that they decide to join the Capitol Police force after nine to eleven, that they felt so driven to protect democracy, to protect their country, But after the events of January sixth, they said, well, I didn't sign up for this. Have I thought to myself, what should I infer from that you signed up on
nine to eleven? Because what the terrorists that you thought that you would be battling had a different color melanine than you did, had a depth of pigmentation, spoke a different language, came from that part of the world that George Bush told you was an access of evil. That there were not people who were citizens and mothers and fathers and uncles and who also had a desire to live out healthy, normal lives. That you thought, what that after nine to eleven you would be like John Wayne
and what go get the bad guys? But when the bad guys, the terrorists, actually look like your neighbor or yourself, it's something that you didn't sign up for. Is that right? Did I read that and hear that correctly? The problem that this country is facing is grave, and you guys know that because you've been listening to me for years. At this point, I wrote one of my most honest pieces this week, my reflections on one six that I want to share with all of you. I normally don't
read an entire piece. I just go through and highlight, but what has hit me in this moment, this day that is going to be filled with images and video and analysts and hosts except for on Fox, talking about the events of these of this day, and members of Congress talking about their fears in that moment. And they'll be asked questions like do you feel safe now? And do you feel like you know justice is going to prevail?
And they'll give their platitudes and they will offer up a range of thoughts, right that will both try and present the sense of urgency that we still face in this country while also trying to assuage our fears. And I realize, folks, that's not my job. My job is not to make people feel safe. It's to make you feel hard. It's to make you feel seen, and it's certainly in this particular climate, meant to make you feel as if you're not being gas lit, as if you're
not going crazy. Right, because we all see what's happening, we all see what's coming, We see the direction that this country has taken. But those that are in power, whether they are in front of the camera behind the camera, whether they are wearing a little congressional pin or not, are trying to downplay. Some will say that they're trying to downplay the events because we have bigger fish to fry, or it's time to turn the page, or it was just a bunch of tourists anyway. But they're all serving
the same master. They're all serving the same beast, which is what James Baldwin referred to as moral apathy. See this always a rush to go back to normal, a rush to just put the bad times behind us and tell people that, oh, the good times are here to stay. Except for some Americans, those good times never arrived. They're
still waiting for the elusive American dream. There's a reason in this country while some people wave American flags and other people kneel at them, and it's one that we choose to ignore so that we can just get along for the get along. We have these moments and these flares where we see this country for what it is,
but then it all becomes just too much. The problem seems too big, And then we go about our days putting away our posters, resting our voices from our marches and protests and thinking that it's somebody else's problem to solve, except the destruction of our democracy isn't somebody else's problem. If you live here, citizen or not, it is your problem. I talked earlier this week about the Canadian professor who's
ringing the alarm about the crisis in the South. As he refers to it, what are we going to do if America falls? That's a real question. It's a question that the world is asking, But somehow our American leaders are not. You have the Senator mansions and the Senator cinemas of the world that are pretending that this is
the twentieth century and all is well. All wasn't fucking well in the twentieth century either, But at least we weren't battling climate change, a global health pandemic, and a rise of white supremacy all happening at the same fucking time. We could, at least at that time, take one problem right after the other. So I want to share with you my thoughts, my reflections on one six and what I wrote, and then I'll talk about it some more.
But I got to tell you, folks, dear friends, I am feeling so sad and deflated and it's just six days into twenty twenty two. I'll talk later in the show about Merritt Garland's press conference non conference because nothing was truly announced and where I think that we are going from here. But I'm not going to lie to you because I refuse to bullshit you. It ain't great.
So as per usual, as many of you know, I'm a columnist with Zora Magazine, which is the property of Medium, and I was asked right before the holiday break if I would write a reflection on one six and I was going to do you know, the normal, this is terrible, this is bad, and this is you know what I say, But I wanted to cut through the bullshit and just state why we are in this place and why I actually don't see a path forward. You know, I remember when I was on Serious and I started woke af
when Donald Trump got elected. And after the election, I read Psychology Today's the Eleven Signs of Gaslighting, and I would read it like I felt like I was reading it every month, right, just to remind people this is what it looks like, because you're not going crazy, but you're going to start to feel crazy. And years later, I feel like the entire every apparatus is participating in
the gaslight. Right, you had Joe Biden deciding that he wanted to move on infrastructure because he wanted to show the country that Democrats and Republicans can work together on rebuilding America. And I'm like, where the fuck have you been, dude. They're trying to destroy this country through voting rights, through voter suppression. How was that not the first thing that you're doing. You came into office at the height of the racial uprisings, when we all watched a black man
get suffocated to death in broad fucking daylight. Eight months later, oh, we can't get policing done, so you want to turn to something that you think will be easy. They don't want America to succeed, period. And until we actually grasp that and name it and tell the fucking truth, how were we going to do anything to change it. So here is my piece, America. It's time to take the
red pill. Our biggest problem moral apathy. On the anniversary of the one six insurrection, it's been three hundred and sixty five days since the twice impeached former President Donald Trump stood before his legions of fans in Washington d C and urged them, no, commanded them to stop the steel and go take their country back. It was a site that no one could have imagined, and yet the FBI, Capitol Police, and DC Metropolitan Police should have been prepared for,
but weren't. Since then, we have been nationally stunned by Republicans who completely and totally gaslight us every day, a day we all witness take place. We have allowed the reality of the breakdown of that day to fall by the wayside. The main question that should have been asked about the one six insurrection is not how did it happen? But instead why did all policing mechanisms fail? This is the real question, and the answer doesn't require a House
commission to uncover. Why did all police systems fail on one six? Simple because they were never intended to protect
white people from themselves. In the New York Times article The Capitol Police and the Scars of January six, the reader receives a horrific and graphic account of the day that a hundred and fifty police officers were injured, beaten, and tazed by rabid Trump supporters who were hyped up and then unleashed by their lion tamer Aside from the brutality that they faced, the article also highlights the many emails that went out referring to folks as bolos or
be on the lookout for. Many red flags were overlooked. The FBI also received tips and can see that white nationalist groups were organizing in plain sight. Ultimately, the agency decided that it was much to do about nothing. Why because historically, when some white people scream about liberty, they
are applauded for it, not seen as a threat. If any white man in the world says give me liberty or give me death, the entire white world applause, said James Baldwin once while in conversation with Decavit in nineteen sixty nine. Yet, he continued, when a black man says exactly the same word, same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one, and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad
nigger so that there won't be more like him. This is the reality we refuse to face as a nation. White America and often Brown America too, will literally map out every possible scenario, offer every excuse about regular joes, even dal being radicalized, but won't look at their historic patterns of violence that have been led to their own very real psychosis, the belief that whiteness is perfectly infallible
and anointed by their white Christian God. It is so embedded in the system, and this is in fact what Trump and his acolytes were able to stir up for four years. Why do you think that Republicans next campaign has been to take down critical race theory, which isn't even taught in K through twelve schools. The very idea of having their fictitious understanding of America questioned is one
that they cannot bear. And so instead of doing the work to interrogate whiteness and the privileges that it affords, it is much easier to be quote swept up by the benevolent desires of a used car salesman who tells you that not only will he get your country back from the grips of these liberal snowflakes, but he will punish them for believing they had the authority to lead. Why is it that three hundred and sixty five days after an attempt to overthrow the government, the ringleaders of
this attempt are still roaming free. The answer is simple, moral apathy and the unwillingness of whiteness to be accountable to the monster it created. I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don't think I'm human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say, and this means that they have become in themselves, moral monsters. Notes from James Baldwin.
Moral apathy will be the death of us unless we make the decision to unplug from centering whiteness and give up the white Christian American Disneyland version of ourselves and begin to take responsibility for our past so we can chart a better future. America. It's time to wake up and take the red pill. You know it is not lost on me the mental gymnastics that are performed on a daily to excuse, to pardon the violent behavior of
white people. It is always not all white people. It is always don't categorize them, But it's okay to categorize every other group. It's okay to look at every black person and say you are ANTIFA and a Black Lives Matter a protester, and you hate all white people. It's okay to look at the Muslim community and say that, oh, because she wears a hijab, then she must be a terrorist. Oh haha, let's make jokes about backpacks and elevators like
Laura Bobert did about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. It's okay to categorize all LGBTQ plus folks. It's okay to talk about every other group as a group, as a collective and path and the pathology around that, but never white people. It's a reason, there's there's a reason, folks, why the Capitol police were so fucking stunned, right, the DC Metropolitan Police, the FBI so stunned by what happened because they can't see themselves as criminal. There's always a justification. Oh, it's
racial anxiety. Oh, it's economic anxiety. Oh teachers, they shouldn't be able to tell our kids what they should do. Oh, it's parents choice. You know, parents had choices too in the nineteen fifties when segregation was passed, when we desegregated schools after the Brown versus the Board of Education in
nineteen fifty four, parents had a choice. Then they were told that they had a choice, So they pulled their kids out of the public school system, They put them into Catholic schools, they put them into private schools, they put them anywhere, so long as they weren't going to be sitting side by side with black children. And so then what did the federal government do? Then they started
to pull resources out of public education. The only reason why we had public education in the first fucking place was because of black people, because of the push that government had a responsibility to educate its citizenjury. You know, I always think about the adage all the time, Oh, if you don't understand history, you'll be doomed to repeat it. Well, that's the point of this whole, fake, fictitious battle around critical race theory, is so that your children will never
learn anything. They'll never learn anything except about white heroes and white inventors and innovators. Right, those are the people that make this country great, because, according to Rick Santorum and others, there was nothing here before their ancestors rolled up on the Mayflower. There were just a bunch of savages running around with no industry, no currency. We are sick, and you can't cure a disease that you refuse to identify.
You can't just look at all of these systems that have been designed to oppress everyone who is not white, everyone who is not mail, everyone who is not cists. You cannot look at these systems as silos and then pretend played dumb that you don't understand where this is all coming And why was there a breakdown. There was no breakdown in Oregon with the police. There was no breakdown in Lafayette Square when Donald Trump had it cleared
with the Italian right. There was no breakdown in upstate New York where officers that were in the latest g I Joe gear trampled a white man with blood coming out of his head and knocked him down and walked right over him. But there's always a breakdown when it comes to dealing with angry white mobs. They turn they turned their terrorists into heroes. If that is not something that should wake people the fuck up, then I don't
know what is Kyle Rittenhouse is a terrorist. He grabbed an R fifteen, He traveled across state lines looking for people to kill, and this justice system said that he was well in his right. That these judges who we think are beyond reproach and are so neutral said that we can't use the term victim because we don't know what those people were up to. Well, we know exactly what the fuck Kyle Writtenhouse was up to. But do
you see the applause that that motherfucker got. We cannot continue to lie to ourselves and say that we are in a political fight when we are not. There used to be a time when we had a shared sense of what was acceptable, We had a social contract, what was moral, what was immoral, what was right, what was wrong? Those lines have been completely blurred. It is now facts and alternative facts. It is now right and right ish.
I feel like America is in a free fall. And when I talked to you about the European Organization for the first time, for the first time in America's history, for the first time in the fifty years of this organization's reporting, that they referred to America as a backsliding democracy. They talked about signs and alarms going off in twenty nineteen. Well, those alarms were sounded in fifteen, but everybody thought it
was a joke. Now you have an entire cable network that is forced feeding lies to the public, from COVID to a stolen election to the point that seventy percent of Republicans believe that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Cancer unchecked spreads. White supremacy is a cancer on this country. We want to believe that everything isn't about race, except white people make everything about race. Why is Kyle Rittenhouse their hero a murderer but a victim of white supremacy.
Trey von Martin was thug. Why do they lift up the woman who was shot at the Capitol Building as a martyr, but Heather Meyer, who was mowed down by white supremacists in Charlottesville was an agitator. Why do we have members of Congress who don't believe that the Newtown massacre happened, who believe that there are Jewish people with space lasers shooting down onto earth that woman is sitting in Congress. You know, many people believe that the movie
Don't Look Up was too much on the nose. And I'm like, this current political climate pretty much has put the Onion out of business because they can't come up with anything more absurd, more ridiculous, more devastating than what we are living in right now. Over eight hundred and thirty thousand Americans are dead, and you have governors going on television, surgeon state surgeon generals telling us that the vaccine doesn't work when them themselves are vaccinated and boasted.
They've weaponized a virus, and yet we still are referring to them like a legitimized, normal political party. Make it make sense, Make it make sense. In Merrick Garland's press conference yesterday ahead of today's anniversary, I'd made a joke on Twitter and I said, so are we doing a drinking game along with this? Every time that he offers some type of justice will prevail platitude that we just take a shot. I'm a big fan of day drinking. And then I watched it and watching him use strong
language but really offered nothing, telling us that it takes time. Right, justice takes time seems like a move swiftly when the defendants have a different shade. Right. On today's episode of Democracy Ish, which is prerecorded, I offered my thoughts about this slow pace of this entire justice department, and I
bring this up all the time. I said, do you know how many black men, women and children have lost their lives under the suspicion that they've done something wrong, never to actually have concrete evidence, but the suspicion, right, you're up to something. Trayvon Martin walking home in the rain with a hood up. He seems suspicious, so I'm going to murder him and then I'm going to get off to me. Or Rice playing on the playground with a toy gun, as most twelve year olds do. Police
officers rolling by that seems suspicious. You know, a child on a playground, but they're black, so I must kill them. We're always convicted and or murdered under suspicion. We have concrete fucking evidence. We got text message changed, we got PowerPoint presentations, we got people in their own fucking voice. Peter Navarro was on Ari Melber's show this week on MSNBC, saying every part out loud. There were a hundred Republicans, he said, lined up as a part of this strategic
plan to overthrow the government. Those motherfuckers still sitting in Congress dictating policy that affects our day to day lives. And they are criminals. Oh but Merritt Garland wants to tell us, we will follow the facts where they fucking lead us. Bitch, you have enough to indict and I don't need to have gone to law school in order to know that, because black and brown people in this country have been convicted, have been murdered for fucking less,
much less falsified police reports. Right, Everything lies made up in order to lock people up. Throw away the key. But you have these white people in their own fucking voice telling you what they planned. But we got to follow the facts, We got to look for more evidence. Don't insult us, and we shouldn't just be taking it. We shouldn't just be sitting back and say, oh, yeah, they'll figure it out. Three hundred and sixty five days,
Donald Trump and the Republican Party are terrorists, operators. They are not a secret cell. They are not a sleeper cell. They are awaken out in the open, telling you exactly what it is that they are doing, and what they are planning, and who they are modeling. This new regime after Victor orbon in Hungary. You know what, they refer to Hungry as a hybrid regime because it's no longer a democracy. Victor Roban has been in power since twenty ten, and during that time he has a race history books.
He has scared the ship out of journalists so now the journalism that you get is just propaganda. He has actually said that, you know, the mixing of the races, these dark people coming in with their Muslim religion, it's not good for Hungary. He said that he's purged the judiciary. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar. Do you know who recorded from there in twenty twenty, Tucker Carlson?
Do you know where Cepak is headed Hungry Budapest? Do you know that Steve benn has been on an international tour of fascists, organizations and regimes so that he can scribble down his notes and bring it back to the Republican Party, He says, takeover village by village. Democrats still fucking around with Congress and the presidency. And I'm telling you, if this is what the fuck winning looks like, I'm proud to be a loser. Then we own the seat of power right now. Does it feel like that to you?
There's a reason why they're going to the local levels, and they're going to the state levels and Democrats are still fucking around. Right If I hear one more time Nancy Pelosi, tell me about the hundreds of pieces of legislation that they've gotten through the House and it's historic. I don't give a fuck because all it does go to the Senate to die. But because of the likes of Mansion and Cinema, We're not going to change the
rules in order to get democracy going. We're not going to change the rules in order to keep America running. You know, I shed tears on January sixth because I was so overcome with rage and grief. I worked on Capitol Hill, I got my degree in political science. I believed in the tenants of our Constitution. I left New York as a wide eyed teenager wanting to put my stamp on the world, wanting to work on behalf of
the people of this country. The pride that I had the day that I got my pass to be able to walk these historic halls, to be able to sit in committee meetings, taking notes and offering my ideas to members of Congress about how to make this country better, more fair, more just to see the moke, the broken glass, the angry white faces, the use of our flag as a weapon literally broke my heart. America is filled with flaws, but what made its special was the desire to be
better and the possibility that you could be better. But like I said in my piece, it's like we'd all been fed the blue pill, the one that has us memorized, the songs and the pledge the heroes that they've wanted us to uplift, while the real heroes, the ones that put their bodies and their lives on the line for justice, are whitewashed or betty are yet painted as some type
of terrorists. I remember being in eleventh grade, and this is back when you used to do you know, book reports, and you know, pick topics or groups or themes, and you know, deliver twenty pages on it. And I decided that I was going to write about the Black Panther Party because always, as growing up on Eastern Long Island in a ninety five percent white community ninety six ninety eight, I google it every once in a while where I grew up because I want to see if anything has
changed in terms of the demographics. It really hasn't. But I remember deciding to write about the Black Panther Party because in my school, the only way that you got to learn about anything that wasn't centered around whiteness is if you took matters into your own hands. And as a child that grew up as the only black kid in every fucking class from K through twelve. I had to do my own research, right, I had to do my own studies that were very separate from what I
was given. My eleventh grade teacher was a very big, tall, military veteran white man, and do you know what he used to call us if you didn't stand for the pledge of allegiance in his class, Kamie Pinko's right. And when I went to him and I said that I want to do my paper on the Black Panthers, he goes, why would you want to write about that terrorist organization? And they said, because I don't think that they're terrorists,
But you tell me after you read it. I remember calling on the school board, the school board chair, when I was a senior in high school, saying that I think that they needed to expand our history curriculum to include at the time, African American history. And I was told that the current curriculum was adequate. And I said, well, as one of the very few black students at your school, I don't think so. And you know what the response
to me was, Oh, you're black. Because I was over the phone the assumption, because you know so articulate, I couldn't possibly be anything other than white at every point in my life. I tell you this story because I've challenged the systems that I have been raised in and a part of, because I believe that I had the power to make them better, that that was in my calling.
So many fucking years later, and I feel like I have wasted my time because when I continue to look at and replay the events of January six, everything that transpired during the Trump administration, and know that none of these people are ever going to see the inside of a jail. But low level drug dealers, low level thieves that are trying to put food on the table or are dealing drugs because basically their schools are shit, their communities are ship, and they've never been invested in and
so it's kill or be killed where they are. But the real menaces to fucking society, the ones that sit in the C suite, the ones that are walking on Wall Street, the ones that are walking around the halls of power, the ones that actually pose the greatest threat to our way of life. They get off scot free. They want to call ourselves tough on crime. It only looks tough on crime when the criminals that you are protecting society from look like me. I'm sick to death
of America right now. I really am, And every single day I ask myself if this country is worth fighting for. But then I have friends who have babies and bringing new life in and I say, I can't possibly give up because I can't give up on their kids. I can't give up on your kids. I want better for them, and it breaks my heart that what we are giving them, what our legacy is going to be, is a steaming
pile of shit. We have choices to make in the upcoming months, because all we have left are a handful of months. It's either we fight for this country or we lay down and we let them take it. But that's the choice that we have. That is it for me today. Friends on woke f as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.