A Few White Men

as target practice in their classrooms. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson lost their positions in the Tennessee House because they're black men who have a voice in a platform. Gloria Johnson, the white woman who also participated with the other two. They were dubbed the Tennessee Three, kept her job. When asked on CNN why she believes that happened, she said, well, because I'm a sixty year old white woman and they're

two young black men, plain and simple. We don't need to contort ourselves into pretzels to look for any other reason than the one that is staring us in the fucking face. I will tell you that Keith Boykin recently also tweeted something that I said to myself ma'am, this is it. This is that thing where he said this, showing a video clip from January sixth, He tweeted this

last week. The Republican Party today made it clear as day that a peaceful black man with a megaphone is more threatening to them than a thousand violent white men with deadly weapons. That's it, folks, that's it. In a

fucking nutshell, right, that was it. From before right they assassinated Martin Luther King to now right, which is that peaceful black people demanding justice, right, demanding accountability, are more dangerous than the white vigilantes and militia that they are readily arming with their lack of gun regulation and reform. These white legislatures in Tennessee, North Carolina, Kansas, they know

exactly what the fuck they are doing. They are working overtime to not only silence black voices, queer voices, indigenous voices, but they are arming to the teeth. They're white militias. So let's make no mistake, right and pretend that we don't know what the fuck is going on, because the direction is underway. It never stopped. January six was the beginning,

not the end. Donald Trump was a symptom, not the sole cause we find ourselves in this moment because we refuse to own up and be accountable for America's history. We think that Donald Trump is new, That motherfucker is not, nor is he the sole problem. This has not pinned

the tail on the fucking elephant. It is an entire ideology that we have been fighting against since the formation of this country that a few white men want the ability to dictate the humanity, voice, movement, vote, and livelihood of everyone else. And they are doing so, come hell or high water. So the question, the question that is on everyone's mind is when are the American people going to activate in community and collaboration with one another and

saying enough is a fucking enough. It is not enough for us to think that we are safe in our blue bubbles. Because let me tell you something. The Tennessee legislature found a way to nullify the voices of those in Memphis, the voices of those in Nashville, the voices of those that are in the cities, and reappropriate power back to the rural, racist areas of the state. If they can do it there, they can do it in

fucking New York, they can do it in California. They can do it in all of these places that we call quote unquote blue states. But that's not how they are moving anymore. It is not. As our next guest, our friend Jonathan Metzel, will say, it is no longer moving north against south. It is moving rural against the cities the urban areas. In all of these places, it is rewriting the rules so that they can consolidate power

and exercise it however the fuck they see fit. So without, folks, without the collective action of all of us, we are in for a race car speeding drive over a cliff into white Christo nationalism in this country. I will talk about this and more with our friend, our in house doctor,

doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, as you know, it's always great when we get a chance to chat with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, and particularly this week, Jonathan, I will say that since the terrible shooting at the elementary school in Tennessee, Tennessee has been in the news, and I would argue for all the right reasons, because the people of Tennessee, is particularly the young people, seem to have had enough of their elected officials. And so first,

while I say that they've been in the news. Let's be honest, the mainstream media has been absolutely failing per normal with regard to the massive walkout that have happened at the schools, with regard to the takeover of the Capitol building. So, just because you're down there and Vanderbilt was so close to where everything took place last week, the tragedy that took place, I wanted to get your thoughts on the protests and activism that have been taking place.

It is an incredible couple of weeks here in Tennessee. I mean, it started with the horrible mass shooting in a school where nine year old kids and the principal and the one of the couple of people that worked there got killed, and and it felt like deja vu

and PTSD all over again. We've had so many mass shootings here, so many kids getting killed, but I don't know, there's something about like a school shooting that it's not just about the death with it, which is horrible, it's also kids and parents across the city start feeling really unsafe and they're demanding something happened. And so there's been a massive, massive movement here high school and college students just descended on the capitol Um demanding that something happened.

I've never seen our campus of Anderbal campus demanding some kind of change in this particular way, and and and it's just been it's just been pretty remarkable, honestly. But the pushback has been that we I'll call them the other side. I wish there weren't two sides of something like this. We should all be for protecting kids in schools, but the other side has doubled down in a way.

And so when when the students came to the capitol Um, there were a number of really incredible, remarkable Democratic Um congress people who state congress people who say, you know, we're going to amplify your voices. That the GOP has turned this into an excuse to literally kick those three congress people out out And so three politicians with constituencies of twenty to fifty thousand people are getting literally kicked out of their elected jobs. And and you think, like,

is that legal? How can they do that? And it's because the GOP has an incredible supermajority here because of jeremandering, and they've just been really terrorizing the state over the past six months since they since they've had this and this is just the latest example of them kind of flexing their power. And so it is a really volatile moment here, and it's going to come to a head.

We're I'll just say, we're taping this interview on Wednesday and the Thursday morning, so tomorrow morning for us, there's going to be there's going to be a real showdown here because students are descending on the Capitol and the GOP is deciding whether to kick out these politicians again, kick them out from their elected offices. And let's let's just be clear, because I want people to understand as well.

They're being kicked out because they decided to stand with young people who have literally been placed on the front lines of school shootings and mass shootings in this country. It is these Republican politicians whose negligence and cruelty and coldheartedness has children from elementary school to college level have to live in a state of fear. Right And so these three Democratic officials said we need gun reform. They didn't, oh, I don't know, traffic and underage girl across state lines.

They didn't, you know, use their political funds to do something nefarious and criminal and illegal. They're being expelled from their elected seats because they're standing with the people of Tennessee who don't want to live in fear. And two of the two of the politicians are black and represent black districts, and so there's a strong racial component to what's happening also, where communities of color now are not

going to have representation in Tennessee. So it's just it's messed up on every every angle, and it seems like such such a bad move. It seems like such a bad move for them also, like I don't know, they're just they're going to make It's just it's just inflaming things even more. And so it's guns race ideology. There's a profound age gap of what's happening here. This is like a bunch of old people trying to suppress the will of students UM. And so it's giving tim Square,

it's giving. It's giving China right now. I mean it's like it's it's giving. H We're going to crush you no matter what. I'll re send a tweet to you that I sent yesterday, which is like people actually literally fighting in the on the floor of the of the Um session. And so it really just feels like it feels like some other time, honestly, And and people should pay attention, first of all, because something bad is happening here,

and they should pay attention. They should also pay attention because this is the desantist model, right, get these supermajorities and then instill a level of authoritarianism that is linked to expanded gun rights. There's something scary about everybody being armed and what that means, um and then again it's

a way to quote unquote own the lives. And I mean part of the frustrating part also is for all the messed upness of for all the messed upness of Tennessee, which feels like it's read state forever, it actually hasn't always been that way. Like you have to remember that Tennessee is also the state that had al Gore. Tennessee is the state that in the nineteen nineties promoted ten Care, a national model championed in our state of public private

partnership for health insurance for all people. And so Tennessee actually has a historical tradition of people working together across ideological divides. And I just keep thinking this week, certainly what's happening is horrible. It's given voice to the most extreme and radical and unsettling aspects of our history. Here are three of being a slave owning state and all these other factors. But it's also like an end stage

of jerrymandering. I just keep thinking that what happens when you mean what happened in Tennessee, is that this Nashville, for example, used to have its own congress person. We were a congressional district in Davidson County, and then jerrymandering let the state basically split Nashville into three different congressional districts,

so we don't have our own congress person anymore. The whole map has been divided so that communities of color are split up in all these different districts, so they don't have any real voting power anymore. And it led to these supermajorities of the power being in all these conservative rural areas and cities like Memphis and Nashville in a way don't have any representation. They have nothing to fight back with. And I'm sure initially like people thought,

oh my god, this is great. If you're a conservative. We own the Libs. We've divided this app we have all the power. But what you see with this kind of geymandering is actually what happens is not that great. Right, there are no checks and balances in the system. You give power to the most radical, extreme versions of any party that is in a supermajority, and in a way, the people who kind of make the deals in the

middle are nowhere to be found. And so what happens with these supermajorities is you end up having to go farther and farther to the right to assuage the right wing of your own party, and it leads to the insanity that we're seeing now. I mean, it's not just about guns, it's about every single issue. And I don't know, it just it makes me think that like our system really needs checks and balances, it needs it needs two parties having a kind of conversation about how to fix problems,

you know. But I will say, and what you're laying out, Jonathan is is you know what the Republicans have been doing for the last thirty forty years across the country and in some places like Tennessee, who have been the model for jerrymandering. It has been really obscene. But I'm telling you that I'm moving to a place where I actually don't believe that we need a two party system.

I don't think that the Republican Party has ever offered anything to the advancement of our society, whether it be around public education, whether it be around healthcare, environmental concerns. I'm just confused about like what we think the balances that we need, because even when they weren't outwardly racist, homophobic, rabid and disgusting, we still had the drug war, we still had, you know, the terrorism in the communities of color.

And so I'm just curious when we talk, and I'm not just you, but in general, when we talk about needing balance, what exactly does that mean. Well, I'm not arguing for balance right now, certainly right now, but I mean there's a fantasy right now in our political system that to get anything done you have to kind of own the other side. And in the South, it's all I mean, something just happened in North Carolina or North Carolina.

The GOP now has a vetop majority. Tennessee, the supermajority is GOP and there just is no governance happening whatsoever. It's all about breeding these cycles of resentment, of domination and resentment. It's kind of what it feels like. And so it's just it's destroyed. It's destroyed whatever deal making capacity. I'm not in any way trying to idealize the Republicans. I'm certainly not. I'm certainly not, but I'm saying that just something feels so out of black down here that

isn't just about what they're doing. I mean what they're doing. I could, I could give you a list of what's happening here in Tennessee, and your viewers would be just shocked. I mean, they they cut out the Nashville City Council, They've taken control of all the income for the city. They've passed these gun laws that are just unbelievable and horrific, and so it's really not it's not democracy, it's not

governance what's happening here. But I don't know, it just doesn't seem very good for the Republicans either, Like, are they really enjoying this domination right now when everybody hates them and every kid in town is they don't. But yeah, they don't. I mean they don't care like I think that in Tennessee in particular, some of the stills that I saw coming out of that capital were absolutely brilliant.

I mean, these young people, young white kids in particular, that I saw screaming in the faces of these politicians. It's basically saying, you don't care about us, right like, you don't like we're being murdered and you don't care, right like like Brusher said, Oh, we're not going to fix this, brush it, We're not going to fix this, right so criminal, They're going to crime, and we just

kind of need to throw up our hands. And I just think, not only in Tennessee, but something Jonathan, to me feels like we are reaching a real serious inflection point in this country. And I want you to speak to that is Tennessee foreshadowing to where we are seeing this country hit before presidential you know, these really serious inflection points, you know. I mean this is the question is like what tools do you have when you what

tools do you have? Like you know, we say, ooh, the will of the people is being suppressed and things like that. But I mean, just looking at what's happened here in Tennessee, votes don't matter as much as they did ten years ago. Like they've developed this method of like splitting up the votes and fracturing the votes. And so even if every Democrat in Tennessee voted, their Democratic votes are now split. They're just fractured in a way. And so it does it does feel like, um just

the methods are just absolutely terrifying. The methods are absolutely terrifying, and so um yeah, I just I just think people really need to I said this on Twitter story. People need to pay attention to what's happening in Tennessee because it's not like, oh, there's a back and forth and you win an election and we win an election, and they're figuring out a way to like codify minority rule in a way that is kind of bullproof in a way.

It's pretty terrifying to watch. This is Jim Crow, this is apartheide, this is authoritarianism, this is you know, I mean, we could the list goes on and on. This is not the first time that this has been done in America. Yeah, right, Like, we've had a very short period if you really think about it, from the Civil rights the passage of the Civil Rights Act until now that we've had some form of equity in terms of representation in this country. It's

only been a little over fifty years. The majority of time in this country has been exactly what it is the Republican Party is rolling us back to. And so I don't want people to say, like, oh my god, this could never happen here. We've had a blip on a screen in terms of like the longevity of this American project, right that saw black people as human beings, so women as first class citizens. Like it's been a

little over fifty years. But let me just say one thing, Danielle, which is I think the difference now is that the methods that are being deployed aren't just going to work

in a place like Tennessee. I mean, the reason I bring up Tennessee's centrist history and tradition, even though it seems like another planet right now, is that what they did was they found a way to like mobilize rural areas against urban areas, Like this kind of resentment narrative is really powerful, and they found a way to structurally empower rural areas against urban They call it elites, which is hilarious if you've ever live in a city. But in a way, the method that what they're doing here

honestly would work in New York. It would work in any place where there are rural areas where people resent urban areas and want to take power back. And so people in Nashville, I've watched it happen, Like, while this was happening, they were saying, oh, no, we're the economic engine of the state. There's no way you can control us.

And then it happened anyway. And so what they found a way was to kind of move the seat of power from urban to rural areas in a way that made cities class and made cities unable to pay for social programs or transit or healthcare for people who live in urban areas. And so I just feel like, I mean,

my worry isn't just what's happening in Tennessee. It's that if people if this happened in New York, where right now Democrats are divided, for example, and there are a lot of people in upstate New York who would love to take control back of the city from the New Yorkers who are now going after Trump and stuff like that. So I just think people need to pay attention to the method of what's happening here, because it's not going to be like a red state, blue state thing anymore.

This is like a model that could work in a lot of different places. I mean, work, I think is an interesting word, because what they are setting up is implosion right like this, This kind of politics, this kind of Jerryman during this kind of bleeding out of the cities that are in fact your echo economic engines, this type of disruption and education like and health and all of these things, it's going to lead to implosion like that. I mean, there is there is no so you know,

it is it is. It is the model of dying, of whiteness. It is. It is the model of you know, um, if I can't have what I want, I'll I'll blow up and gut the entire country. There's no longevity to this um and it's and it's a dangerous model at that. And I think that all eyes for the next you know, week or so will continue to be should be I should say should be on tennessee what happens later on this week and moving forward and just you know, with with just a bit of good news, folks, you know

what happened in Wisconsin in the same week. UM has been fascinating to see the Supreme Court in Tennessee go back to being liberal after you know, after the election that could now reshape the policy, the policies that were put in place to ban abortion, um, so forth and

so on. And so the mayor's race in Chicago where you had an aunt, you know, a pro cop um you know official beat by am by a former principle, Like, I think that we have to hold the these moments because there is an infliction point that is coming, but there is a resistance that is rising. Uh, and I

want people to understand that as well. No, and again it's it's really whatever s happening in Tennessee is a reflection of the country, which is attempt to control and then massive pushback from people and students and a generational struggle, and then the old world kind of trying to hold onto it's how or quote unquote through ways that are incredibly destructive. And it really is true here that Nashville and Memphis are like the economic engines at the state.

And so if you destroy the cities, what do you you know, I don't I don't know what the financial model is except for farming, I don't. I don't know plantation model. I don't know what they're imagining. And so it is um, it is that and and certainly this is just I mean, where does this all lead? Right?

Where does this all lead? Is kind of scary, But I certainly think that remember you, like we used to know people like five years ago who'd be like, I don't pay attention to politics and stuff like you can't have that physician anymore because this is happening everywhere. I mean, this morning, a Democrat got convinced to switch to the GOP in North Carolina, given in North Carolina a veto proof majority in both houses there Wisconsin flip back to

the other side. And so I don't know, everybody, just man, don't quit your day job like this is this is this is really happening all over and it really is such an ideological fight that is not It's not just the kind of North South battle that we have grown up with thinking. It's it's really like the ideology of generation and race and equality that's happening all across the country. Well, let history be our guide. None of this leads anywhere. Good,

So people pay attention. As always, Jonathan, thank you so much for making the time to join Woke F We always appreciate you. Hang in there, everybody that is it for me today? Dear friends on Woke f as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.