Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, I want to bring your attention to an op ed that was written last week by Charles Blow in The New York Times entitle America's thirst for authoritarianism, and I want to bring it to your attention because as I continue to be concerned, which is an understatement about the state of our democracy and the willingness of some people to just let the whole thing go, this piece really stood out to me with stark reasoning as to where
people are and what the risk is right now. And I don't think that people are truly seeing what the risk is in the behavior, in the antics, or in the language of I'm going to vote my values. I'm not voting for Biden. You know, I'm going to sit this one out. And what that means across the board.
First of all, we're not just talking about the presidential When people decide not to vote, that means that they don't show up at the polls at all, which means that there is no vote for governors and state legislatures. Those things that we are recognizing more and more are incredibly important into having a check in balance on a right wing authoritarian wanna be that is in the governor's mansion. Look no further than Virginia, because the state legislature was
put back in Democratic hands. Guess who doesn't have the ability to institute his fifteen week abortion plan. Youngkin, Right, Glenn Youngin was not only getting ready to probably launch a presidential bid, but he was getting ready to put into place a fifteen week abortion ban in Virginia. And because the state legislature turned blue, they had the veto power to be able to deny him the ability to
deny women and people with uterus access to bodily autonomy. Right, So when people say, well, I'm not going to vote for Biden, well are you going to the voting booth at all? Because then we're looking at your school board who is deciding what books to put on the shelf or to just put them all right under lock and key if it's left up to Republicans. Right, voting down ballot matters just as much, if not more, these days
than voting up ballot. So for those people who continued to think that like this is a privilege that can't be taken away. I say, look no further than fucking abortion right. If people had maybe taken it seriously back in twenty sixteen, when Hillary Clinton was set unding the fucking alarm bells about the ability to appoint Supreme Court justices and what kind of damage Donald Trump was gonna
do right two hour democracy. If people had heeded her warning, we wouldn't be in the fucking position that we're in because those Third Party wanted to be like Jill Stein. Goers maybe would have thought fucking twice. So I would love for us as Americans not to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. So Charles Blow writes this in his op ed in The New York
Times entitled America's thirst for Authoritarianism. Trump surely appeals to those who want a president who will simply bulldoze through that bureaucracy, or at least express contempt for it and is willing to threaten it. Furthermore, Trump's chances will probably be helped by the portion of the electorate misjudging the
very utility of voting. There are still too many citizens who think of a vote, particularly for president, as something to throw to a person they like rather than being cast for the candidate and a party more likely to advance the policies they need. And there are too many who think that a vote should be withheld from a more preferable candidate as punishment for not delivering every single thing on their wish lists, that choosing not to vote at all is a sensible act of political protests rather
than a relinquishing of control to others. Abstinence doesn't empower it neoters if you want a democracy to thrive. The idea that voting is a choice is itself an illusion. Voting is about survival, and survival isn't a choice. It is an imperative. It's an instinct. It's a tool one uses for self advancement and self preservation. It's an instrument, and you use to decrease chances of harm and increase chances of betterment. It is naive to use it solely
to co sign an individual's character. Not to say that character doesn't count, it does, but rather that its primacy is a fallacy. Voting isn't just an expression of your worldview, but also a manifestation of your insistence on safety and security.
That is it, folks, That's it. In a nutshell. So, like I have been saying, I encourage folks, as you're getting ready to potentially gather with friends and with family for the holiday season, that you engage in thoughtful conversation and dialogue, that you put down your phones, that you put down the aggression, and that you get to the heart of the matter. Because what is at stake, dear friends, isn't just oh, this thing we call democracy, It is
our very safety right as citizens of this country. There will be no one who is safe other than those that pledge their full allegiance and loyalty above all else to Donald Trump. Everyone else will be at risk and
risk of what. Well, I'll allow your imaginations to run wild, or rather just take some time going through the history books, or rather just look around at the instability that we are seeing right now, the wars that have outbroken, the devastation that is being wielded against those that are seen as villains from birth, whether it is deprivation of electricity, food, water, gas, the inability to hold jobs, to go to school, all of those things, all of those things will be able
to happen under a second Trump administration. And if you think that you will have the opportunity to then cast another vote four years later. You will be the full coming up next my conversation with our friend, our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks. As always when we have the opportunity each week to chat with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzl, we are always thrilled. On
this occasion, Jonathan. As we are recording this, the Supreme Court has decided to take up the abortion pill case that the Department of Justice apparently has asked them to take up to decide whether or not the use of MiFi pristone, which has FDA approved over the last i don't know, two plus decades to handle without any type of like surgical medical UH intervention UH issues related to the needs around abortion. This is used I believe in what a majority of cases.
Half over half, yeah.
Over half of abortions use MiFi pristone. This is something that if the Supreme Court, which I believe that they will decide to overturn the FDA's approval the you know, over two plus decades use of MiFi pristone, it will not just affect those in red states, which is what we have been saying since the overturning of Dobbs that this was not a state's issue, that this was a
push for national abortion. Van talk to us about the implication and what you were thinking with regard to the Supreme Court taking this up.
Well, first of all, apologies to everybody. I'm clearly suffering from non COVID illness, and so I will try to articulate as best I can today. We are learning about this right now, and so I'm sure by the time people hear this, it will be it will be uh, you know, it'll be much more known about it. So we're just like forming our opinions right now. But I feel pretty confident that this will be the biggest case since overturning Row versus Wade for exactly the reasons you've said.
It has profound implications. First of all, because mifipristone is so widely used. It's used in over half of abortions. Second, because it's used not just in red states but in blue states, and so this would be a national issue, right It's targeting something that is really you know, made sure for people in red and blue states, in places where you don't have access to health abortion provider or
women's health provider. So really profound national implications. And I think the other part that we'll play out about this again this is just first thoughts, is that the FDA approved this drug in two thousand. I actually know one of the people who was one of the researchers from my residency, and it is safer than pretty much anything you can think of. I mean, it's way safer than many other medications.
I mean, we don't eat Jonathan, we don't even have to talk about with safety measure of it because we know that that's not even the point.
Nobody here's the important point. The important point is, I mean, it's way safer than biograph for example. It's way safer than other drugs that have implications for sex and things like that. But the question, the issue is this case, as I remember, was taken on grounds of safety. So that safety is important because they're saying, does the FDA. Did the FDA do due diligence for this drug that's been out like twenty four years now? Did the FDA
do due diligence in safety? And if they rule against that, it's not just a huge blow to women's reproductive health, it's also a blow to the autonomy of the FDA to make I mean, FDA is our kind of gold standard, world renowned safety organization that everybody in the world bases their information on. And so if they're going to undermind the FDA about this, that is another massive, massive, massive issue because it has regulatory implications where ideology can just come in and overturn science.
I mean, and that is that's the point that I want to get to and I want to discuss because I find that what we are doing, as Democrats, as progressives, as people would sense, is that we continue to argue what we already know to be true, which is that mifipristone has been on the market for twenty four years and is safer than advil, is safer than many of your over the counter drugs, the things such as viagra, to your point, which are obviously used for the sexual
pleasure of men, is something that has readily been approved. My point is that I find that we are consistently on the defensive when it comes to arguing these issues that we know are not about the safety of people. We actually know that the people that are bringing these cases, the folks that sit on the Supreme Court, the Attorney General of Texas, they don't care about the safety and
health of women and people with uteruses. And I find that assuming good faith in their arguments has us continually in a false place. Am I wrong about that? Like we're continuing to say, oh, look, look, look, let me tell you all the ways that this is safe, as opposed to you're placing your ideology, your religiosity on top of science. Is this the twelfth century or is it the twenty first century?
You know, you really have to wonder. I mean, because if safety was the issue, MYFI prison five deaths per million US for per million users. That's that's less than that's less than that Viagras fifty deaths per per million users and things like that. So it's just it's it's minuscule to help, the safety risk is minuscule. But we're seeing into let me look at what's happening in Texas right now. They're trying to force a woman to have
an unviable pregnancy delivered to term. Like it's just you know, so this this feels like bodily control really, And I think the irony, of course, is that the scary part is it's they're using all of our language, like oh, health and safety and concern to do the opposite.
So it's it's scary time.
But that's my point is that like, if you're going to it's like it's people are lying about the premise and their concern, then why are we meeting them on the issue of concern and safety as opposed to saying that this actually has nothing to do with concern and safety. Your push against abortion had everything to do with bodily
it's not. I think it's about bodily control. A woman is now being forced to flee the state and then return to her home state and be prosecuted as a criminal because it was either choose infertility potential death right, or use the means that she has that a lot of other people don't to go to the nearest state where she could get the medical attention that she needs.
Right we're talking about women sitting in the parking lots that testified before the Senate, sitting in a parking lot waiting to meet death's door before they're able to be operated on in these right states. And I just feel like the way in which it's similarly with gun control right and gun safety, the way in which we are arguing is arguing on their terms and their terms are false.
Right.
No, I mean that's the argument of my new book, Right, is that we took the bait thinking that guns were a health issue, but really it's about power. And so if the issue is about power, your counter strategy has to be about power also. And so, as you know, you and I will be talking about in person, I
think that we take the bait. I mean, health is an important argument, but if the other side is hell bent on power, you actually have to look at the mechan of power and figure out how you can counter that.
Right.
So one example is we have not paid anywhere near enough attention to the relationships between winning elections and seating judges over the past thirty years. But all this crap is happening now because the other side was like hell bent on taking over the judiciary while we were protesting health issues. Again, these are massive, massive, massive health issues.
But why are we in this position. It's because we don't have control of the Supreme Court, and we don't have control of the lower courts that did this and things like that. And so I guess the question for me is just very obviously there needs to be a concrete strategy for defeating this case, like, I don't know how this is going to be argued. I don't know how narrow it's going to be, but I think you've really mobilize this case, which sounds like it's going to
go pretty quickly. But then the other issue is everything you've been talking about, which is that this all ties to like if you think this is bad, wait till you see what happens if Trump wins another election, Like this is just the warm up, and so you know how much how much are we willing to do everything we can to win the next election?
Really, you know? And I think that that like that to me is there there are two There are two frontiers right now for this right, two places to fight. One which is whatever it is that the lawyers are going to do inside of the courtroom with the Supreme Court.
The other is the fight with the American people to say, you know, you think that you are protected in these quote unquote blue bubbles, but you are not right, and that this was never going to stop at abortion and stop with the states that have trigger laws, that this was going to go to mifipristone, then it's going to go to contraception as a whole right it's going to go to birth control, right, it's going to go to condoms, it's going to go to to all of these other places,
because the point is control. And so if we continue to argue right on the merits that this is about safety and let us, you know, bring out our stats and figures in the press. I'm not talking about in the courtroom because even there we already know what. I already know what the decision is going to be. If the Supreme Court surprises me, okay, but like this is the same Supreme Court overturned that overturned fifty years worth
of precedent. Right, So now all of a sudden, I think that they're going to say, oh, well, you know, maybe maybe we've gone too far. The decisions are already made before they hear the arguments, right, So I mean, so the point here is that what decision hasn't been made. It's a decision about who we are going to elect to run this country in November of twenty twenty four. And right now, I'll tell you one thing. What you've
seen in my comments sections. Every time that I post a video that has to do about Biden or an article, my comment session section turns to trash with people telling me that they're not voting, that they're staying home, so forth and so on.
No, I mean, remember like the Jill Stein stuff about how or Cornell West. Also, you know Clinton and Trump were the same that kind of stuff in twenty sixteen, but they actually weren't the same, Like, no matter how you feel about them as people, they actually would have we would not be if Clinton would have won that election. You've got to be joking, Like the whole country would be different right now, and.
The world I think would be different right now, right.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And so you know, I wish we had different options, but I also I'm going to vote on the options we have, honestly. But to me, that's that's you know, the side that's saying, well, I'll I'll just vote for the option we have is often at a disadvantage against the side that is energized and mobilize to like take over the country. Like the other side we're against is like smelling power right now, big time.
And so.
You know, I just I don't know, how do you respond to those things when people respond that way?
I mean, I think that the point I think that the point here is that we've seen the voters respond in local elections, in state elections like Ohio, like Kentucky and other places to push back against this overt power
grab that Republicans are on. And so if this administration, which has a whole host of other fucking problems, does not use this as an opportunity to say, if the American people are not with us on everything else, which they are not, particularly as it pertains to the actions that they continue to take in God and in Israel, if the American people are losing faith by the day, which they are, then this needs to be the galvanizing issue, right, This needs to be the thing, the thing, the word
that you had to lobby to get Biden to say, the word abortion has become the lightning rod for women and people with uteruses in this country. And you're saying that now you're no like because what this needs to say is that you are not protected no matter where you are, no matter what state that you were in,
you are not protected. Right, you were under the control and thumb of the Republican white supremaist, misogynist, patriarchal party, and they need to beat that drum because that may be the only thing that saves them.
Yeah, I hope that's the case. I mean, we have a year to make that argument. That argument is true, right, I mean, the people's lives would change in really unimaginable ways. And so if people are upset about this, like this is just the beginning. I mean, before you know, you and I talked about this. You know, facts aside, Right,
there are many facts that are horrible. But remember the very first conversation we had about Gaza, and I said, this is a polarizing crisis, right that in a way, this is the kind of crisis that divides coalitions in ways that enables enables fascism, right and so and so I think right now, I mean, there definitely are the facts on the ground, there are huge human rights issues, but also the amplification of the polarization of like, oh, you never you have nothing in common with your former ally,
you have nothing in common with a Jewish liberal or a black liberal or something like that. You can you're not you shouldn't even be in the same political party. Stuff like that, Like that is that disinformation is so is so amplified right now, it's not being regulated by any social media platform, and so this idea of like your vote doesn't matter, or don't vote, or you have nothing in common with your allies. Is the strategy that's honestly being used against us right now, and it's scary
to see how effective that is. We have a year to we have a year to get back to feeling like we're in a coalition.
You know, I want to go back to a point that you made earlier about energy and the lack of energy on the basis side. And I continue to have these conversations with folks, you know, in all different spaces and places where they say, you know, the media does the same trick bag every single year where we have an election, and they tell us that black people aren't going to vote, and young people aren't going to vote, and it's what drives their ratings and all of these things.
But it's not actually factual or the truth. However, I do think that there is some truth to the fact that what I am hearing, and you tell me what you are hearing, is that people no longer want to vote from a place of fear right. They don't want to vote because the democracy depends on it, because their life depends on it, because bodily autonomy depends on it. They want to vote because they believe in the person that they are voting for, and I think that that
is where we are going to struggle. I mean again, Donald Trump was a motivating factor to get people in the middle of a pandemic without a vaccine out in aggressive numbers to vote against fascism. We are a year out, but do you think that the lack of energy, Jonathan, is something that we should be paying attention to now? The worst is that is it a media trick bad that we're in.
Well?
As as you know, because I only tell you these things. I've been worried about this for a long time. And so the first time that I told you I didn't think Biden was the right candidate, I invoked the memory of Bob Dole and John Kerry campaigns. Were the people who like were owed it because of the past performance or dedication to the party or something like that. You know, Bob Dole went onto viagraphame, but he was not a competitive He was not a competitive candidate in a way.
And so John Carrey, you know same. I mean, Carrie had a lot of problems also, But when you put up like a candidate who appears markedly less vibrant than the other candidate who is also old and whatever.
But then you really are at a massive, massive, massive.
Disadvantage independent of the issues, and so I think it's a real thing.
I guess that is what I'm saying.
And I think I hope remember like when the Obama strategists like they knew about like a different kind of marketing that the other side didn't know about. I hope our side has some genius people who are going to like blast out the movie Cocoon like two weeks before the election or some crap like that. Like, I hope we have some strategy, but I do feel like we're
at just a really massive disadvantage. And what worries me is not just the disadvantage itself, it's also that they try to talk people out of it, you know, like, oh, no, that's an issue, like look at the economy or something, and I'm like, yeah, but this guy's not inspiring anybody. But that being said, we're going to need to come up with a strategy. I mean, maybe this is where AI is helpful or in injecting some kind of new No.
I don't know, but I'm just saying, like we have to figure out something about this, because that this is right now is the choice we have.
Yeah, and I just you know, and I think that it is the choice that we have. People who think that there is going to be some type of bait and switch are dreaming and are kidding themselves. And I think that you know, the comparisons that you made with Dole and Carrie accurate to a certain extent. But the stakes of the country and the world were not anywhere
near where they are right now. And so while we could say, okay, whatever, we lost that election, that sucks, but we'll get them next time, is not the place that we find ourselves in as a country, or or as a planet for that matter. Jonathan, as always, we appreciate you. We wish you good health and go and take care of yourself. But thank you for making the time.
Thank you, Thank everybody. And again, next week we'll know more about this and my voice I'll be back hopefully so we can talk more about all.
Listen, that is it for me today, dear friends on woke a f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.