A World of Trouble

that enough. I cannot urge you enough to use the remaining months that we have to organize, to strategize to get people to vote for Joe Biden. But understand that that is about a four year lifeline. It is not indefinite at all, and the Supreme Court has saw to that. If Donald Trump is elected, I will tell you that the first one hundred days are going to be the bloodiest and the worst that this country has ever seen.

And that's saying a lot. I need people to take this with the gravity and the seriousness that people took their lives in Germany in Austria in the nineteen thirties. You are not overreacting. Do not let anyone tell you that you are overreacting. But I will urge you not to allow your fear to paralyze you into a place of apathy and complacency. I will urge you to utilize that fear to propel you to make really hard decisions in the coming months about your future, the future of

your families, of your community. We are at that moment, and the more folks that can share these messages, that can share these podcast interviews, that can post them on your Facebook, on your Instagram, on whatever social platform that you use to get this message out, please do. It is not about the numbers, I don't give a fuck. It is about getting as many people to a place of safety as they can possibly find for themselves in

this moment. The demise following a Trumpet win will be swift like nothing you've ever seen, and there will be no protests at that point that can stop it. So folks need to prepare. And that's the conversation that Jonathan and I get into on today's show. Well, I like, I I don't even know what to say. It's gonna say my usual, which is like, you know, it's doctor here.

This guy right so excited to have our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan metzel Uh here because if there was any time that you felt like you need a doctor, it is probably at this moment, Jonathan. We are talking, uh recording this a day after uh the Supreme courtious ended democracy in this country, and I'm still reeling from the news. Uh, not doing that well? So how are you doing?

You know, if there's a restaurant you always wanted to go to, go to that restaurant. If you wanted to stay at home and make couscous or get a dog, or practice dry humping or whatever you want to do, this is the time to do it. Because this is this is our summer of I wouldn't say it's our summer of freedom. I would say, it's our summer of relative freedom relative to freedom we might not have later on down that road. So if you wanted to do it,

like do it now. So that's that's part of it, is like, you know, I just think that there's you know, I'll be honest, there's a waking up moment for a lot of people who are like, oh my god, And it is a kind of Cassandra moment because like a lot of people are saying, like, oh my god, here's all these freedoms we took for grant aid. And I don't know, like it's just they obviously didn't listen to our conversations or our show or something like that. And

so the question is, I don't know. I'm to be honest, it's the last hardest twenty fours for me, not that it was any surprise. Honestly, you and I are the least surprised people in the world.

no this is beyond the pale. And for I think for Joe Biden to address the nation for the first time a president addresses the nation following a Supreme Court decision, and for him to end that five minute speech with God bless the troops and may God protect our democracy, I was like, oh it was. It was just so clear. I think that a lot of people held on to a bit of hope that the Supreme Court is crazy and the nice and their right wing, but they're not

going to usher in the fourth right. And that's exactly what they did yesterday.

in plain view. It was in plain v this whole time. But there's so much there's just so much disbelief, and so I think there are two questions I think we should be asking right now, to be honest. One is what's the nature of that disbelief? Like when people like you and WAJ and me and other people have been frustratingly shouting this for so long, and maybe there's just no avenue, Like we can shout all we want, but it's kind of like the elevator button to close the

door that's not connected anything. Maybe shouting wasn't enough or

something like that. But part of the question is like why weren't I mean, you know, my personal frustration right like even my last book, I was trying to name it how we lost, And the argument of the book was that we weren't paying enough attention, that guns were a false issue compared to the bigger story, which was taking over the Supreme Court, which they were using guns to take over the Supreme Court for largely anti democratic

issues that weren't about public health. Public health was a misnomer, and my publisher rejected the argument, made me change the title of the book, said that's never going to happen. And everybody who has been in a Cassandra position probably has twenty stories like this. So part of the story is what's the nature of that disbelief that all of a sudden people are waking up now with four months ago, until you know it matters, and then what can we

do between now and then, Like what's the strategy? We need a strategy right now, like we shock. We're in shock, like we were in shock after Dobbs, we were in shock after Pearl Harbor, we were in shock at these other moments that are akin to this in American history, which is like a real threat to what we thought America was or safety or security. And then what's our strategy.

the United States, it's an endgame. And she's like, so, what is the plan? And I will say this. I said, Look, basically, I want everyone and I'm gonna just be as honest as I have been. Everyone needs to be operating on a six month plan to be absolutely completely frank things that I was researching today, Jonathan, like in the wee hours of the morning, I was like, how long did

it take Hitler to moments? It took two months. He was elected in January of nineteen thirty three, and by March of nineteen thirty three, the first camp in Dushua, Germany was built, and the first people that were sent there political prisoners and perceived enemies of the state.

so easily manipulated. And as we've said, citing our good friend Jason Stanley so many times here, the conditions that allow this, among other things, are a fractured opposition, right, and so the ways that we've been fractured to let this happen are a huge part of the story, in addition to the thing itself. But it's just you know that part. Okay, six month lane, what else you got?

the ballot. And at the same time, if you are part of an unprotected class of people, if you are from a religious minority, if you are from a racial minority, if you are from the LGBTQ community, if you are a person that is disabled, if you are you know, liberal liberal, if you have been, if you were a journalist, if you are an academic that has been very vocal

about where we are. I suggest that you developed up and exit strategy for yourself and your family and understand that unfortunately, everyone will not go because people will tell you that we survived it the first time, we'll make it through the next time. And tell me, oh, I'm not disclosing that at all.

the hell out of here. This is getting bad. And so my grandfather tried to convince my whole family, our grandparents, our aunts, our uncles, our cousins, and they were like, you know, we've been through this before, we'll get through it again.

So I still have that down comforter in a bag because it was so valuable to them, just as to me a kind of reminder it smells like goose, to be honest. But for them that was kind of the one of the things that they thought, oh my god, this is the thing we need. And then they were displaced persons for ten years, and then they finally got into the US, which was a beacond of the opposite ideology, right. I mean the question now as I say where do

you go? I wasn't saying like where you specifically going? But besides, Dave Investor is like, what ideology is going to be home for people who do flee? Is it? And I got an open question which don't answer, but I'll just say, is it Blue States? Is it other countries? Is it sanctuary areas? Like all these things are all there's no easy answer the way like a mayor which was not an easy answer, right because it wasn't letting people in.

everybody makes their best case, We hear everybody out. It's like a national primetime thing, a debate for different strategies for Democrats, we all decide to get around somebody knew that Biden gives his blessing, and whether it's Kamala Harris or it's one of the people people are talking about

now or something like that. There actually is what Democrats used to do, which is a contested convention that then generates excitement and then, like in the UK system, a seven week barnstorming kind of deal, which is what the US used to do. You think there's no chance that would work?

absolute way of life. And you know, the best thing that I think they can do, and by day I mean Demo, big d Democrats is talk about the scare the shit out of everyone is breakdown Project twenty twenty five, like a fucking fraction. Like give it to people in little bitty bites. Tell them about you know now that this power is absolute and the president is a king. Remind them of some of the things that Donald Trump has said. Put it up on billboards, put it up

on commercials. None of this is hyperbolic. There are no guardrails whatsoever at all. And so when he says I'm going to deport eleven million people, who's going to stop him a six to three Trump Supreme Court. When he says that he's going to have retribution against his political enemies, what's to stop him? No one, right, because he's immune. And then for anybody else who's going to do his bidding, he will just provide them with a pardon. And what

does a pardon really matter? Again, when you have a six to three Supreme Court that doesn't give a fuck. So I think that any move or distraction away from just supporting Biden and understanding that he has a very competent, very young vice president of the United States and if she was not a she or a person of color, we wouldn't be having this fucking conversation. And so we have to also understand them misogyn war that is at play here with this conversation of Biden should walk away

or can't we have the contested whatever. I'm like, this was a conversation for two years ago, right, This was Yeah, this was a conversation that serious people needed to be having. Who are at those levers two years ago? Right? And so this is not a conversation that now everything has come to fruition that we thought couldn't is now here. And now people want to say, like, oh, well, the

New York Times wants to do a coordinated attack. When Donald Trump was convicted of thirty four felonies, where were the calls for him to drop out of the race, Where were the calls for him to step down from the Republican Party? There were none. So we have to understand that there is a coordination and a strategy that is happening at all levers of power, including the media.

Right that is implicit they are accomplices. And so no, I don't think that we have time even for the speculation at this point.

There is legalized bribery, there is agencies no longer have any powered those they have centralized power to the executive branch and to the court. There is no like Oh, but we could do X, Y and Z. It's like the only thing that we can do is vote for Biden, hope that he would that he gets re elected, and then in those first two years of his reelection, that he expands the court that we have also won the Senate and the House, and that we take drastic measures

to protect the Constitution and our democracy. But barring that, I don't I don't know how how they haven't won.

the last choice that Americans will have. And you know, when I saw I don't know if you saw this, but the BET Music Awards were a couple of nights ago and Taraji p Henson, actress phenomenal actress, takes a moment to tell people to google Project twenty twenty five and the analytics went through the roof. Yeah, you know, and that is a captive audience of young people of

color who are like, what is that? You know? And again we've been talking about it, but when you have now some people's icons and folks really saying, hm, things look bad.

the power judges have. Like that was two years ago that we have been having this conversation, and so I don't know, We're up against an adversary that was very directed, understood how power worked, and we get distracted and right now we can't get distracted. That's just kind of power.