America Is Not It

off my chest about Juneteenth being a federal holiday. And I posted a video yesterday saying that, like, I'm not feeling Juneteenth as a federal holiday, and the reason being is because I don't think that white people and non black people, who there is no curriculum that was created, have no understanding whatsoever, just get another day off. It

means absolutely nothing. And I'm tired of living inside of a country that, instead of providing equity and justice for black people who have been exploited, abused, murdered, lynched, raped, beaten, subjugated, and oppressed for you know, damn near a millennial, that instead of providing us with the justice that would look like reparations in a number of ways, reparations doesn't look like money, it looks like a whole lot of things. Instead,

just throw a fucking holiday our way. And this is the same holiday that, oh yeah, the state of Florida gets to take off while they go ahead and ban quote unquote critical race theory and ban books and banned curriculum and fire teachers. So it's like, what are we really learning here? Right? Like what are we really learning? Nothing? And that's the point, right, The point is to pacify, right, Not to create critical thought, not to make amends for

past brutality. It is to pacify. And so I do have deep feelings about this holiday and the way that it was introduced after the murder of George Floyd in thinking that somehow the leaders of this country are doing something so that they can pat themselves on the fucking back about it, doing what exactly? Because I'll tell you that the last surviving witnesses to the Tulsa massacre that happened over one hundred years ago were just denied a

hearing in court at the Oklahoma Supreme Court. So they will die having had no reparations for state sensioned and federally senioned mob violence that killed over three hundred people and destroyed an entire fucking town. And those people got nothing, and one hundred years later, we still do nothing for them. So what is a holiday? It means nothing without any context, without any curriculum, without any thoughtfulness whatsoever. So for me, you know, I'm over it. I will not use this

day as a day to educate others. I will not use it as a day to provide infographics on this, that, and the fucking other thing. Like I want white people and non black people in this country to be curious, to be intellectually fucking curious, and be rigorous about learning and unlearning so that we can forge a better future because I don't see how we do it, because I sure as fuck am tired of pulling people along. Coming up next, my conversation with our friend, our in house doctor,

doctor Jonathan metzil Well. Jonathan and I talk about a range of things today, mostly in the fact that I'm just like you know, it's summer. I am in a place where I'm just like I need a break. I need a mental break, I need a physical break. I need all of the breaks, as I'm certain that all of you do as well. And so how to balance out the need and the desire to slow down when the news cycle and the world around us continues to spin out of control. That conversation is coming up next, folks.

You know that whenever we have the opportunity to sit down with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan mepsl I am always thrilled and Jonathan today what is on my mind? What is on my mind is that it's summer. It's nice outside, and like, I don't want to talk about the end of the world every single day all day. I want to, you know, just some days. I want to pretend is that healthy? Is that? Is that Okay?

they paid people to attend. He was recently at a black church where the attendees were not members of the congregation of that church, nor could the preacher that leads that church. When he went out to try and get people to come in, they laughed in his face. But nonetheless, I think it was in Michigan. They did a call to the GOP out there and so a bunch of white people showed up in blacks for Trump T shirts. Irony is not lost on them at all. So what

do I think about Donald Trump's push. I think it's like most things that Donald Trump pushes. I think it's fraudulent. I think it's a lie, just as I think it was Kelly and Conway that was on Fox News that said that there were eight thousand people there at the church, a church, by the way, that only holds several hundred. But you know whatever, like if it's going to be why not say there were eighty thousand people that were there, Because if you're gonna lie, just like make it even bigger.

So do I think that it's a concerted effort. No?

But I think that, you know, for me, it's more the fifty thousand foot issue that I think a lot of people are missing. I mean, absolutely, the thing was farcical, and you know, you expected like people to show up like dressed like black people, So that.

voters that they're going to love Trump. It was like an op to show this guy is so brave that he's actually taking it into the opposition's territory. And so I have a feeling I don't know this for sure, but I bet it did a lot of work beyond like our core audience, the goal wasn't to convince anybody. It was to show that Trump is like taking it onto other people's turf and suggesting he has brought a appeal. So that was concern number one for me about this.

But the bigger concern for me was actually the thing in Detroit, because I actually watched it and it was pretty sneaky evil what he was saying actually, because he was saying, the Biden policies are bringing in all these immigrants who are stealing your jobs basically, And so in a way, again, I don't think that massive numbers of black voters are going to vote for Trump, but in a place like Detroit, where you're already like Michigan, you

already have arib Americans like really questioning who they're going to vote for and things like that, you just to be able to peel off enough black voters. And so I thought that that message of like, immigrants are stealing your jobs, like I've heard that before, because that's what they told white voters in my research on dying of whiteness. And it turns out like that is a message that just really scares the Jesus out of people. And it can work like, oh, yeah, this guy's going to save

my job by stopping competition. That's a fifty year old playlist, but it's not in an effective one. And so I guess that was my bigger concern again, beyond the farce of it, was just the way they're crafting. This seems far from random to me and something that I find more concerning I think than other people do.

that you're going to provide. And the thing that I continue to ask people is like when you look at the four years of Donald Trump's administration, like, how did you feel? Right? Like, honestly, like, how did you feel? How did you feel emotionally? How did you feel physically?

their lives because of that administration. We were just aghast at Charlottesville, agast at George Floyd, agast at Donald Trump turning the police on peaceful protesters. Like so when I see instances like that, it isn't so much about how do we come bad and like, oh, doesn't Donald Trump

look tough? Like yeah, I guess if you're a fucking idiot, like I guess if you're looking at the imagery of Donald Trump on horseback looking like Sylvester Stallone out of nineteen eighties Rambow, and that is your like Christen yeah or Putin, and that's your personification of like what masculinity should look like. But you don't actually look at what Donald Trump looked like in the courthouse in New York City,

then like, yeah, my whole thing is right now. As we were speaking, the Biden administration, the Biden campaign excuse me, put out a really great attack ad and it is the first attack ad that has come out since the thirty four felony convictions that calls Donald Trump a felon, that actually says that here's what Donald Trump has done. He's been convicted of thirty four felons, he's liable for sexual assault, his university was fraudulent, his businesses are fraudulent,

and he's running a criminal enterprise. So your choice for president is a criminal, a convicted criminal, a convicted felon, or somebody that is fighting for democracy. Like, those are your choices. And that to me was like a really important smart ad and I need to see more of it, and I need to see it everywhere.

very mobilized on the other side. So it's kind of like the people who are just now paying attention who need like something simple, I think something like that that's like, oh yeah, it's this or that, it's this or that, And I think, you know, because always these elections, it's kind of like the people who are just now starting to pay attention or won't start paying attention, those are

the people who are going to decide it. But man, the margins are unbelieve It's unbelievable how closely divided all of this is right now. And so no, I think you're right. Any kind of simple messaging that makes this a polarizing choice between one thing or another and overturns all this other stuff that's coming out, you know. So yeah, so I think that's right. But again I did think again.

I watched that Detroit rally, the Detroit Church thing, and I thought, this guy's not just like flying off the handle like he did last time. Actually felt it felt much more strategic than I was expecting.

microphone in your face. He's like, if Donald Trump is reelected, he is going to have the ability to appoint two more Supreme Court justices. Right, the Supreme Court is taking away every single rite that was won in the twentieth cent entry. I didn't appoint those justices. Donald Trump did because we weren't paying attention to the courts the way that Leonard Leo and Mitch McConnell and the Republicans have been.

So do you want a Trump Court for not only the rest of your life, but the rest of your children's life and the potentially the rest of their children's lives, because that's what we're up against. Like, this is not fucking rocket science here. I don't need to part and parcel. Well, where is Donald Trump on immigration? How does he feel about putin in Ukraine? Where will we be you know in terms of workers' rights? It's like it's pretty clear.

This was like twenty fourteen. In fact, that's what the book I'm writing now is about, is that when in twenty fourteen, I was doing these focus groups, I didn't even understand what people were saying, because I said, hey, here's some free healthcare for you and you're sick, and people would answer me, I care more than we overturn abortion. And I'd be like, what does this have to do

with your healthcare? But they they kind of saw the They saw like people on the ground who like literally were trading away their health their health saw the picture. And I just say, like, I just always think like, oh,

that's what it took to get Trump elected. For example, in twenty sixteen, was people who rejected Obamacare, because if Obamacare would have gone into practice, it would have meant Centrists would have taken power and institutions and democracy and cooperation, all these things, but they rejected it and dismantled it in order to have their own power. And in a way, that's the kind of focus it took to get those Supreme Court justices, which is people like literally laid down

on the tracks themselves. And the question is, are democrats like that?

go to the office and renew my driver's license. And then I thought, Man, if Trump's president, I wonder if I can get a renewed driver's license. You know, every they're going to replace every office with some political appointee, and so really the reach of this would just be changing in a massive, massive way that people don't get. So the question is like, how can you simplify that in a way that's like it's a choice bet this and this, and that's I agree with you. That's what we've got to do.

it is overturned. You are a felon and in this country, you couldn't get a job at Walmart, but you can run the country.

which were actually political norms. I look at the hypocrisy, the downright hypocrisy that we purport globally as well as in this country, and I look around and I say, and I've been saying this on every show today, that over the next twenty thirty years, America is going to

experience an extraordinary brain drain. That people are going to fully this country in the way that you have seen other people fully countries or go to study in different places, or have that that is going to be You're going to see more Americans sprinkled around the globe in mass than you'd ever seen before. Because I don't know how we think that we are going to be importing talent in this country anymore when every single law and policy that used to make us somewhat the envy of the

world is now backwards. I was just talking about this. Ear just announce Thailand recognizing same sex marriage, the first country in the Asian Pacific to do so. Right, Mexico, past abortion Catholic country does So you're watching places where you would never see the type of progress. New Zealand assault rifle ban done, one mass shooting over with as other countries like recognize that America is not it, and they are making the decisions about like their citizens and

the future that they want to see. America is barreling in the opposite direction, and I think that people are going to leave this country, and who is going to be left, unfortunately, are going to be those that do not have the economic ability the education to be able to leave.

of it is, like I did this. I just did a literature search in all these linguistic databases for American print sources, and if you look, like in nineteen forty five, one of the most commonly used words in American print media was cooperate, and like I traced everywhere like it was our ethos even for like really untractable race problems, but also like how we came together to beat the Nazis and what we were going to do to our economy and the Marshall Plan and all this kind of

stuff was like, hey, we're all, you know, we're in a certain kind of alliance, you know, not that it was like obviously the same for a lot of people, and it led to all these other problems, but cooperate

was like this thing. And then it's funny, one of the graphs in my introduction, the word cooperate just falls down and down and down and down for the next like fifty years in a way, and that's the same time that the word dismantle starts to like rise in all these ways on the right and on the left.

And it's just so sad because what you're describing now is kind of like how we built this current iteration of America, right, which is we created alliances with allies, and we became a home for people like Albert Einstein, who we're fleeing oppression in other places, and we it was that kind of that model was like kind of what put us on the map. I mean, we were Hillbillies, you know, one hundred years ago. And so in a way, it's just sad that we're like we're like dismantling, like

what got us here in the first place. As you're saying, is other people are doing that, and it's it's just hard to It's like watching a slow motion train track.

thousand cars off of the street. They've created more pedestrian streets and made the city more even more pedestrian friendly than it was. Why. Because they see a threat. They've looked at that threat and they've said, let's create a solution for it. And I'm looking at that, and I'm just like, how groundbreaking you mean that you just don't like consistently talk about the threat at nauseum and then

don't do anything actually about it. You mean you can actually take action and then see real results in a small amount of time. No, can't possibly be?