American Hypocrisy

of what war actually looks like. And before I get into the details of what we've learned thus far with putin Russian soldiers, the lies that are being told by the Kremlin, that are also being embraced by Fox News, particularly people like Tucker Carlson, who remain a threat to our national security and nothing is being done about it, I want to talk about war, just war in general.

And the reason why I say that is because as we are watching these images and we are seeing this the NonStop coverage in Ukraine, and if you are following also on social media, a part of it can feel like a video game. It can feel like you're watching a movie or a story. We're so desensitized in the way that we take in and absorb content these days. We're always like this, you know, swiping on our phones,

looking at the next thing, and just overstimulated. And yet also desensitized and when it comes to the actions of war. You know, we have seen in this country violence glorify through video games, through movies, through narratives and stories and all of these things. And when I saw the images as I'm sure many of you did, out of Bucha, which is outside of Kiev in Ukraine, and you see human beings, human beings laying dead in the street as if they are strown about, as if they are trash.

The images of dead bodies, people with their arms clasped behind them, killed murdered execution style. There is a mass grave in Bucha that has over one hundred and fifty bodies in it, wrapped in plastic with appendages hanging out. There were images that I saw before I came to record of parents writing the names and phone numbers of

relatives on their children's bodies. In the event that they die and their young children are found are discovered that on their body would be the numbers to call in order to get them to safety. And I hearkened back as I saw the images of those children and people saying, this is the most heartbreaking thing that I have seen. I want to remind you that that is those images

of children with numbers written on them. Hearkens back to what the Trump administration did at the border with undocumented immigrants, ripping children away from their families, and families desperately sprawling any type of information that they could on the bodies of their children. This is not new, and while it is horrific and disgusting and shows the dregs of society

and where we are. I don't want us to solely look at this situation, this war that is playing out in Ukraine and somehow garner more empathy and thought and outrage for this situation than we have previously. I say that because I was on the phone recently catching up with my sister and you know, one of her friends, who I think was volunteering in a way, you know, to how support help support refugees, and that's that's what they do. And one of their other friends had said, well,

tell me, you know what I can do. I want to give money. I want to do something to help the people in Ukraine. And the friend says, well, that's wonderful, but can you tell me why this time rather than all of the other times that we have seen atrocities and war breakout that I have been working on Are

you interested now? And it wasn't to say that you shouldn't be This is not this is this is not me saying that you shouldn't be outraged, that tears shouldn't come to your eyes, that you shouldn't see these bodies littering the streets of Buscha. Who were you know? But days before, full complete souls right, People with loved ones, family members, friends, stories that are now cut completely short.

People whose bodies are dumped into mass graves, that their families, their friends will never know what happened to them, They'll never have proper burials because by the time that somebody is able to get in right and begin to sort out the collection of these bodies, the decay right, and who's coming in because you've had three and a half million people flee so who's coming in to identify them?

How will they do this? And when I'm just saying this out loud and my voice is quivering because I just think about the pain, the suffering, the tragedy and the trauma that we are seeing. And then I think about also the mass graves that were just discovered in these United States, that were filled with the remains of Native American children who this country stole from their families, put them in residential schools that were essentially legalized torture.

And for the kids that did not assimilate into Eurocentric ways, were beaten, were killed and thrown away like trash. That's in our recent history. There are mass graves that were discovered in legacy black communities after lynching, mobs, ransacked, burned down, and killed hundreds. Tulsa was not the only place. So we look, folks, we look at what is happening in Ukraine, and I say, none of these things to take away

from what we are currently witnessing. But I don't want us to continue to look at these images and look at them as if they are isolated, or look at these people as if they are the only ones that have ever suffered, when we have had and continue to have a legacy of suffering and trauma that is waged against marginalized communities in this country as well. I want us to be able to walk and chew gum at

the same time. And I want us to be able to look through a wider lens, a wider lens at what we see as a humanitarian crisis around the world and also in this country. You know, I was in the midst and I'm still trying to I'm working on an idea to pitch to an editor, a new editor

that I started working with. And you know, it was announced late last week, not announced, but there was a speech that was given by Hassan L Thawadi, who is the Secretary General of Qatar, which is going to be hosting for the first time ever in the Arab world the World Cup, and the Secretary General gave a speech about the importance of this moment and how the people of the Arab world for the first time will be able to set their own narrative and be able to

push back against the stereotypes that have plagued them in the conflict lens through which we view the Middle East and have the Middle East since two thousand and two when George W. Bush in the State of the Union referred to that region of the world the Middle East, and he tacked on North Korea as the axis of evil.

And I've been thinking about it, and I was listening to the speech that the Secretary General gave of Qatar and thinking about narratives and how they are set and how they spread, and thinking about, you know, in all honesty, how we are watching this kind of new light, new emergence of the Middle East, and these very cosmopolitan and very wealthy countries and cities, you know, are being put on the map, whether they're age or fashion events that

are happening in Doah, whether there are you know, in major events that are happening in Dubai. We're watching right this shifting lens with regard to how certain countries within

the Middle East are viewed. And I started to think to myself about how we've allowed the United States to lead the narrative, to craft the narrative around this quote unquote access of evil, and how the United States has always been able to admonish other countries for their wrongdoing because we have the biggest mic and the best pr And we want to talk now about Putin's war crimes and genocide and the things that he are doing, all

of which are absolutely true. But do we ever talk about the ways that the United States has gone into countries like Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan, which most recently we can see that we go into these places, we destroy communities, we kill children and women and men, and we decide that these people are all terrorists, right and undeserving of safety and sympathy, and we paint ourselves as the heroes right as we address and bring to the

world their human rights violations. Well, folks, I started to think about that state of the Union from two thousand and two. I started to think about who we've allowed the American government to identify as evil, and then I started to think about how what is happening in this country at the hands of the radical right is no different than the things that we have used to admonish China as well as the Middle East and other countries that the United States has found itself looking its nose

down at. Right now, in the United States, we are in two months three months about to lose Roby Wade. Women and people with uteruses in this country will no longer be able to access abortion. You will have certain blue states while there is a Democratic president that is in office that will become abortion sanctuary states and sanctuary cities. But overtly around the country, the United States will no longer have abortion access for women and people with uteruses.

We have rolled out right over four hundred voter suppression laws in damn near every state of the country. We have just watched Florida past there don't say gay legislation and death santists gleefully signed that into law. We are watching Governor Abbott wage an assault against voting access as well as abortion in the state of Texas. Over this past weekend, there were not one, but two mass shootings that took place, One in Sacramento that killed six people

and I believe injured twelve. Another at a Dallas concert that killed one person and injured a dozen. When you look at America on paper or in real life, who the fuck are we to be talking about anybody's access of evil when we are in the midst of America's great regression. Not only is our gun violence at an all time fucking high. The only time that we saw are rescinding in the numbers of people and the numbers of mass shooting was when we had quarantine in twenty

twenty and schools were shut down. Not it didn't have anything to do with of course, no policy that was put into place right had had everything to do with another killer, a virus that would shutter businesses and doors and schools, And that would be the only reason. While on a monthly basis, there wasn't a series of mass shooting headlines. When the news even broke over the weekend, it was pretty much like a blip on social media until yesterday when a man hunt was underweighed. So that's

exciting for the media. There's a man hunt, so now we're going to cover it. But when I'm taking all of these different pieces, the anti gay, anti trans, anti women, anti black, anti voting, anti democracy, all of the things that have happened in this country over just the last couple of years, since the reign of Trump began in twenty sixteen, and Trump is m became a thing. The regression that we have seen in our democracy is at

lightning pace. So how is it that we have ever been able to look at any other country and have the audacity to talk about human rights violations and women's rights and girls should have rights to learn and this, that and the other thing when we can still dictate in America, one of the wealthiest fucking countries in the world, the life expectancy of a child based on their zip code.

How is it that this administration just yesterday released a plan to retrofit schools and have clean energy and all of these things, and our schools haven't seen any type of upgrade. You want to talk about infrastructure, unless you are living in a wealthy school district. Most schools haven't seen any type of retrofitting. I think since the world would,

since the word's been invented. So when you take these things, when you take these issues that are plaguing America and have been plaguing America and are being so instituted at the hands of the radical right, how is it that we have allowed them to talk about other places in the world as being uncivilized where I don't see anything civilized about what is happening in America and what has happened in America or at the hands of the American

government around the world. Right, at least those other countries, they're upfront and honest about their shit. What I realize about America is that America is the biggest front. They front like they give a fuck about women's rights. But yet every March we acknowledge equal pay day and show the disparity. But yet for decades and decades and decades have had no equal pay passed, no equal pay bill passed. We have consistent conversations right that want to make us

feel good, and I hear tough talk. Right, Congress needs to do something out of every president's mouth, whether Democrat or Republican, and yet get dick done. We want to again talk about the devastation of gun violence, and then in the same breath to say, but now is not the time to politicize it. So let's do the politicizing of it when it's not in the news, which at this point, when is gun violence not in the news. We have literally a mass shooting that happens a day.

Because a mass shooting is four or more people being shot at one time. The only time that it seems to really catch the headlines is if we're talking multiple bodies. So, while we're looking at the images coming out of Bouscha, and rightfully so with horror, with this Dane, if we were to take those same photos, minus the blown out buildings, you would see bodies littered all over the streets of

America every fucking day. So how is it that we can conjure the outrage and the empathy directed at the people of Ukraine, but we're not recognizing how many people we are allowing to perish because of gun violence every single day in this country because both sides are bought and sold by the gun lobby, and that even when Democrats are in charge, are in power, they still don't pass fucking legislation that were to reduce mass shootings and

make this country safer. Why because we also have within our own ranks people that are fronted like they are fucking democrats, knowing, good God damn well, cinema and mansion and others that you're not. I'm just tired of America going around the globe selling this lie of exceptionalism, selling this lie and wagging our finger and turning down our nose at other nations and not taking a hard fucking look in the mirror and looking at what hypocrites we

look like now. I mean, it's it's incredible. Every day during the Trump administration, I would get on here and just think to myself, like, Wow, beliefs that I had that I thought were laws, that I thought were common values that we shared as a nation of democracy, of voting,

of fairness, of legitimacy, of accountability. We don't. And I say that as a black queer woman, knowing, good God damn well that black people all that things that I've listed have never experienced in this country, not in any full throated type of way. It's why my other show is called democracy Ish, because we don't experience democracy. It is something that we have continually had to fight for to have our ability to cast a vote. Right. You

just saw that down in Florida. Federal judge said, nah, so now you all are not allowed to change your laws anymore, because there is no way to look at the changes that you have made to your voting restrictions and not see it as racist because it only impacts the black people in this state. They are saying the quiet parts out loud, and yet we are still looking at other countries and saying, oh, poor them, and not looking in our own front and backyard and being like, Yo,

what is happening here? What's happening in this country? You know, I went on a radio show, went on a radio show that I do once a month out of Philly WRUD. It's one of the very few black radio stations still left in the country. And one of the conversations that we had yesterday morning was with regard to reparations. And you know, California apparently has passed legislation or they're thinking about it with regard to reparations and how to provide

reparations to black people. So, but they want to do it in a neutral way. Do you know what is becoming one of the most hated words, one of my most hated words. Neutral. There is no fucking such thing. Neutrality is bullshit, right. Neutrality is something that cis gendered, straight white men made up to make themselves elves the default and make everything else othered, including their own fucking wives.

So when we used to say, oh, the news should be neutral, the news was always coming through sis hetero male perspective. But because they had made themselves the default, we believe that neutrality actually existed. But it wasn't. It's the world seen through one set of eyes, one community's

set of eyes. So how would California go about turning something such as chattel slavery and then the hundred years that would follow it of Jim Crow, which was based on anything but neutral beliefs about what it is and isn't that black people in this country deserve right, namely

dignity and respect. How is it that you would take the atrocities that our ancestors lived through, died through, and then turn around and tell me that you want to place a neutral lens over it to think about how you distribute resources, whether it be cash, money or changes to policy that would make up for the genocide that happened at the hands of white America against Black America

since sixteen nineteen. How does that work exactly? And what I said on the show is that if we're not going to come from a place of honesty in talking about the atrocities that were faced, right, that people had to live through. Like, I don't think that sometimes we all wrap our minds, but at least, you know, every once in a while, I kind of sit back and I think to myself, how many generations of black suffering had people had to fight and live through in order

for me to exist? Right? Like, I want folks, particularly black folks, to think about that for a minute. How much suffering and trauma and torture and discrimination and hate and rape and violence that our ancestors had to live through and order for us to exist today. And the thing about it why I get really frustrated with the conversation around reparations is because we're always told, well, how will we figure out I'm like, if you are black

and live in this country, live in this world. You are a descendant of an enslaved African person, right, Like people want to say, like, oh yeah, there were those that didn't get caught, or there were this, that and the other thing, you are a descendant of that, and if not, you were certainly a fucking descendant of Jim Crow.

So for us to try and put a neutralized lens over America's original sin as a way to repay the debt that was that to repay the debt that America owes of the extracted labor right and genocide that it committed, is just absolute bullshit, right, Like just absolute fuckery. And so I want and the other lie that I push back against as well, is oh, well, we just don't

have the money. If I hear that fucking lie one more time, like, on one hand, you want to tell me that America is the wealthiest nation in the world, and then on the other hand, you want to tell me that you don't have any money. Right. It's like when Donald Trump was just like, I am the smartest

person ever and I alone can fix this. But oh I didn't realize that I broke Emoliaman's clauses oh, I, you know, I didn't mean those tweets that I sent that almost you know, put us into nuclear war, Like you're you're either a genius or you're too fucking dumb. Which one is it? Right? Which one is it? Because

both can't be true. You can't both be the wealthiest nation in the world but then not have the funds to be able to resource right the basic traumas and genocides that you have caused, right, and how that has that into the racial wealth gap that continues to widen in this country because all of the policies that we have are based on racism put through that quote unquote neutral lens that just so happened to exclude everyone who

was in white or male. From the g I Bill right to the creation of Levitt Town, and on any single policy that was created with the idea of how to support uplift the middle class, create the middle class, did so purposefully without women being included and without black people being included. So for me, don't tell me that you don't have the money, Just tell me you don't

want to. You don't want to give it to the people whose ancestors you stole from, Because what I would say, is that before we start talking about dollars and cents, how about you institute federal policies that are directed at

righting the wrongs. How about you, oh, I don't know, Joe Biden, with the flick of your pen, a race student loan debt, which affects more black and brown people than it does any other group because they are have always been the ones that were told that they needed to be more and do more in order to compete

in this racist ass country. And then they get saddled with this debt because their parents, their families aren't the ones that have the resources, again from extracted fucking labor and from loans from the federal government to start said businesses and send kids to school and buy homes that all would accumulate value over time and be able to pass down from generation to generation. So you owe that

at the very fucking least. But those aren't the conversations that we have, because then we want to get into this all people deserve shit, just like how we want to talk about black lives matter, and then people say, well, all lives matter. Well, if all lives did matter, right, I wouldn't have to specifically single out black people would I because we wouldn't have had to wait sixty years for an anti lynching bill after a fourteen year old

boy was brutally murdered, if all lives actually fucking mattered. Oh, we don't have the money, but we can send right trillion dollars budgets with billions, hundreds of billions of dollars for our fucking military. But you're telling me we can't erase student loan debt to alleviate the noose, the financial noose that this country has put around the necks of black and brown people. The fuck out of here. You want to tell me that we can't make college free

for black and brown people in this country? Like, if you don't want to talk to me about specific dollar amount reparations, then how about we go back to the housing crisis in the early two thousands that saw black homeowners lose their homes at double plus the rate because they were the ones that the predatory lenders went to. You don't see the United States giving those people back

what they lost, right, you don't see them. You didn't see them making sure that Wall Street fucking hustlers would be held accountable and have to pay back what they stall now, and that again under a fucking Democrat. So I'm just I'm tired of having conversations that are intellectually dishonest when we are talking about reparations and what is deserving and who deserves what, and how do we decide?

How about we acknowledge the generational harm and trauma and violence that has been perpetuated against the black community, and then we look at policy solves and then you talk to me about dollars and cents later, but don't talk to me about how well we need to make this free for everybody or we need to do us No white people have gotten enough, and I will say that again and piss a whole lot of people off. White

America has gotten enough. It is time that if we actually are serious about closing the racial wealth got if we are serious about addressing systemic racism, then we do targeted responses to the communities that have experienced the most fucking harm. But the reality is we're not serious. We don't care. Not Republicans for Fox, sure, but not Democrats either. Because the conversation that I had last week with my colleague was Jahat Ali on democracy ish And if you're

not listening to democracy issue. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts on democracy ish, we said, we had a whole conversation around what Martin Luther King had coined back in nineteen sixty three and letter to a Birmingham jail when he said, no, it will not be the klu Klux Klansmen, right, the klu Klux Klansmen actually isn't our greatest obstacle to justice in America. It is

the white moderate. It is the both sidesism, which I will add, it is the white moderate that will say, oh, it's a matter of law, not a matter of justice. We need law and order, we need these things. You've allowed the white moderates quote unquote moderates to disrupt Biden's entire agenda. You have King Cole fucking Joe Mansion is head chair of the Energy Committee in the Senate, Like,

we're not honest about the change. Like, so you can listen to really good speeches about climate change, but who's chairing your energy committee. The man that torpedoed multiple clean energy acts and didn't like the climate language within the infrastructure bills. It was taken out because it would offend his bottom line. Because of his legal connections to Big Cole. So how do you tell me that you're serious but

not serious? That's how you tell me? How do you tell me that you care about black people but you really don't care about them? You pass an anti lynching bill sixty years after the most the most egregious lynching that the world had ever seen. Right, you passed that sixty years later, and then tell me that's what that's

what progress and change looks like. So I guess, like I said last week, we'll wait another sixty years until the George Floyd Policing Act has passed as well, and then we'll look back and whoever is president of whatever fascious nation America has turned into will be like, oh, look at us. I'm tired of patting this country on the back for doing the bare fucking minimum. An anti

lynching bill should have been light work. But the fact that you had three Republicans that voted against it today, in this day and age, shows you who and where we are now, folks. I want to make the transition quickly into talking picking up where the conversation with Glenn Kirshner left off yesterday and talking about the insurrection and

where things stand with this Department of Justice. Again, over the weekend, you had a great piece written in The New York Times by Katie Benner, Katie Rogers, and Michael S.

Schmidt entitled Garland faces growing precious as January six investigation widens. Now, we did get good news right that Glenn walked us through, that there were signals and signs that the investigation has expanded, that when Merritt Garland said in January of twenty two that we were going to look everywhere at both the foot soldiers of the insurrections as well as those donors

that supported them. And I'll tell you that what gets me about this article, and what gets me about Garland in general, is that everybody is pissed off at this man, like he is moving at a sloth's pace, and that every time that I turn on the TV and I'm listening to strategists and Democrats say with deep frustration, like there is more than enough fucking evidence to indict Donald Trump,

to indict Mark Meadows. Right, We're begging the Justice Department to do its fucking job, and I'm just confused as to why. So they say in this article that the Attorney General's deliberative approach has come to frustrate democratic allies of the White House and at times, the President himself.

As recently as late last year, mister Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments, And while the President has never communicated his frustrations directly to Merritt Garland, he has said privately he wanted Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who was willing to take decisive action over the events of

January sixth, And this article will go on to say that, you know, everyone is always so concerned about their fucking legacy, and I find it laughable in a country that doesn't actually teach history, right, that doesn't actually teach the fucking truth about history. So I'm never confused. I'm always confused about why people are so concerned about their legacy. And Bill Barr said it right, like, I don't give a fuck about my legacy, right, remember, and CBS he was

just like, they're like, what about your legacy? And He's just like, yeah, I'm all like, I'm good. You know, I'm gonna get mine while I'm still breathing, right. And so when I hear this, oh, people are worried about the legacy, I'm just like, and who is writing that story? Because I'm certain that by the time that it matters, it will be banned anyway. But this is what Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat out of Virginia, said about Garland. The

Department of Justice must move swiftly. Attorney General Garland, do your job so that we can do ours. In a statement, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the President believed that mister Garland had decisively restored the independence of the Justice Department. But what is being said in here is that they don't communicate at all. Right, There's no communication between the White House and the Department of Justice, and so there is an overcorrection that has happened from the

Trump days. Now we know that Trump was hot on Twitter cursing out Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, calling them to the White House via tweet, But how do you have no communication with your attorney general when both of your legacies, Again, that word hang in the balance with regard to making it definitively so than any attempt to overthrow the government will be met with the full force

of the Department of Justice. So I remain confused about where this is going, how quickly we are going to see anything, and whether or not this Department of Justice is actually set up to do its job and do so in an expedient way that restores not the integrity or perception of integrity, but the actual faith in institutions that Americans have lost over the last few years. That friends, is left up for debate. That is it for me today here on woke f as always Power to the

people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.