Breaking Out of the Blue Cocoon

to get the best of us. And I say this to myself out loud as well as saying it to you, which is, we can only control what we can control, right. The rest is going to be up to you know, God in the universe about how things pan out in

America in the upcoming year. What each of us can do right if you have the ability donate money right to down ballot candidates, Democrats, school board, city council, state legislatures, like, what we can do each of us get involved, right if that means signing up people to registered to vote, checking on at least ten people in your network to make sure that they are registered to vote and plan

on voting. Talk to them about their voting plan and if they're like, I'm not voting for Biden, be like, so are you? Not going to vote for your state legislature,

your school board. Are you just going to sit this one out completely because remind them right, You don't need to lecture, but you can say, you know, Virginia wanted to end institute a fifteen week abortion ban at the hands of Governor Youngkin, and you know who blocked that, Democrats because they were able to turn the state legislature blue Ohio. They tried to institute a constitutional ban on

abortion in that state. They didn't get it done. Why because they turned the legislature blue and the people came out and voted to knock down the republican's' draconian measures. What we do still matters, still matters, And so having conversations with your friends, with your families, with your colleagues, donating money, volunteering, phone banking, going door to door, doing anything and everything that is within your power to do is what we can do. And the rest we gotta

let go. I don't want us to overwork ourselves. I don't want us to exhaust ourselves, but I want us to think strategically about how we are using our network, our skills, our talents in order to fight for our democracy. That is what I'm asking of all of you, that is the gift that we need to give ourselves this season, is the ability, strength and clarity to continue fighting. As my friend Rashad Robinson said, every election is in just about trying to make progress and voting for somebody that

you want to have a damn beer with. Sometimes it is about just holding on. Coming up my conversation with my friend Jared Yate Sexton about what he is feeling as we close out this year and we go into a new one, and why he plans to spend some time in the woods just getting grounded and preparing. And that's what I think all of us need to be doing, is figuring out the best ways that we are going to prepare ourselves right, prepare ourselves to deal with the

onslaught that is going to be coming our way. You know, we weren't prepared in twenty sixteen. We got better prepared in twenty twenty, but we were also dealing with a pandemic. So here we go again. You know, the battle rages on, and I think that frankly, it always will because we open the door to somebody like Donald Trump, to trump Ism, to Maga dum right, had we not, we wouldn't be here.

But we did. So this conversation Jared and I really go through what is needed, what we are doing, what our hopes are and you know, frankly understanding that we got to leave everything on the field in twenty twenty four if we are to survive. That conversation is coming up next, folks. You know that whenever I have the opportunity to bring on this next guest. Jared y H. Sexton to WOKF Daily, I'm always thrilled author political analyst.

If you have not read his book The Midnight Kingdom, The History of Power, Paranoia and the Coming Crisis, it basically lays out you know where we are, where we're going right now as a country. You are missing out. Jared, It's been a hell of a year in politics.

lived seven to eighteen years in one year. The beginning of this administration is an absolute and total blur. And I think that if it's a If it's a blur for us whose job it is to pay attention, then for the average American, they're lucky if they remember last week, let alone twenty twenty. And so as you are looking back on twenty twenty three, what are some of the things that have transpired that stick out to you that like either we didn't cover enough or we covered ad nauseum.

that for real, because what has happened. You know, I was saying there, I was putting together this new book proposal and really looking at the last seven years, and I realized, you know, twenty sixteen was a hell of a year for a lot of different reasons. Yeah, Trump years were hallacious years for a lot of different reasons.

But if you actually start thinking about how those years started a downward slope and you started picking up momentum, it makes sense that these years feel longer, these years

feel wilder because things are picking up momentum. And one of the things I think you and I and a lot of other people have warned people about is that things are changing, and they're changing in a hurry, like the idea that there's I just it boggles my mind that there are still people who believe that we are sedentary and something isn't changing, and that culture isn't moving and things aren't happening, and that we're not watching a major transformation, because if you look at it, we are

in a weaponized society at this point. Our senses are constantly being overwhelmed with violence, but also with weaponized abuse. We are being told consistently and if anyone listening this has ever been in an abusive situation, I think they're going to recognize what I'm about to say, because abusers don't just be use. They abuse your idea of reality. They tell you that you are silly, They tell you that you are overly sensitive, They tell you that what

your perception of what is going on isn't real. What is actually occurring right now is an escalation of what we've been dealing with over the past few years, and it starts with everything from you know, I actually think, weirdly enough, I think Elon Musk was undercovered this year.

I actually think one of the richest men in the world overtaking one of the major communication devices and turning it into not just a white nationalist playland, but also like one of the main ways to promote propaganda and to basically we don't talk about it enough, Danielle. He has access at Twitter to everybody's dms. On top of that, he has access to people's Internet histories because of cookies

and algorithms and all of that. Like, we have actually watched him turn himself into not just a person who is interlocked with us to FI but also in every other sphere in the world, the robber barons couldn't even have dreamed of having this type of power. Meanwhile, look around at at what has happened politically. We have a president at this point that no one expects to really do anything that's really going to push back on any

of this. Like when it came out the other day that he was telling, you know, Republicans that he was going to flirt around with like even harsher deportation immigration policies. What we actually realized was everybody looked around at each other and they're like, are you surprised? Is there really anything happening right now? Like we've been told, you know, Oh, they're going to help us after Roe v. Wade. Oh they're going to help us with voting in the South.

Ask women who are dying because they can't get reproductive care how they feel about it. Ask Black people in the South how they feel about their voting rights. Right now, it has moved into territory where it is accelerating to the point where you're either exhausted or you're completely demoralized and you're giving up and those are really the only two ways to you are only like, oh my god, I feel like giving up or I have given up,

and you go back to the regular Americans. They are so exhausted, they are so overworked that many of them weren't even in the fight to begin with, and they have no ability whatsoever to understand what the fight is. It is. These are trying days, is what it is. And I think that is what I think. That's what the story of twenty twenty three is that this is like, you know, the best of days, the worst of days.

These are some of the worst of days, and unless we do something about it, it's going to get what even the worst.

a Clinton administration. Regardless of what you think about her, it's sure as hell was not going to be what we experienced under the Trump administration. And so we thought that we were, you know, headed up to you know, to the Precipice so that we could look out, look at look at how far we've come. And instead we've been kicked down. And as we in this descent, you know, not only do we want to keep our eyes closed, but we can't, right because everything is speeding by us.

Our rights are just going every which way that we look, and and we don't know how to slow ourselves down. And I think that the rate of exhaustion that we

have doesn't seem to be slow. And you know, I could remember going on vacation, you know, and traveling around and into other countries that had relatively unstable governments, and you would look at the people and while they seem, you know, to to be happy, right because that was their part of tourism, you could sense this level of grief right if you were if you stayed around long enough, you saw it in their eyes. Didn't matter if you were in a Caribbean island, if you were in South America,

you know, wherever you were, you get this sense. That's how I feel about America, right, now that if you look through the eyes of people, either you are a worker that is just you're exhausted because you're working so hard. Your grocery card is filling up with less. But the

bill is this long. And when we're trying, as you and I do, through our shows, through your writing, through our speaking, to try and engage people in the political process, to say like, this is the fight of our lives, and they're like, I've been fighting all my life just

to keep my head above water. I find right now, Jared, that it is incredible hard to not it's not even about exciting people, it's just about engaging them, right, because they feel they're already stretched so far, and we're already stretched so far because our job is to keep tabs on everything that is bad and everything that's going wrong and looking at all of the potential you know, in

the problem. I just how are we supposed to figure out how to engage people in what we continue to say is the most quote consequential election of our times When we're looking at twenty twenty three and going oh god, damn, yep.

I promise you there's a plan and you literally you just have to believe it and you have to have faith in it, you know, whether you call it blue and on or whatever you want to call it. Right, there was a lot of that, and so a lot of people, I think, we're sold on this idea that yeah, this is hard, but guess what, it's easier than other people are telling you it is.

And like you, you start to do it, and all of a sudden something comes over into your mind and it's like I might not be able to do this, you know, I might, And like this is literally like people die in the woods, people get law and never get found again in the woods, and all of a sudden, like the magnitude of that starts to come over you. We're deep in the woods right now. We have not even actually turned around in order to walk back out. And there's a problem in this because so many voices

are telling people. Don't listen to them. They're fearmongers. Everything's fine. Nancy Pelosi's on it, you know, like whoever it is now, it's Jack Smith, right, Jack Smith is the new character. He's gonna take care of it. Everything's fine. Donald Trump isn't actually that bad. The Republicans aren't actually that bad. Meanwhile, what is happening with our politics and culture and our economics is that it's like we're out having these walls come in, and as the walls come in and as

things get worse, like it breaks your spirit. And eventually what happens in authoritarian society such as what you were talking about. I used to think that in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy was trained on everybody. Do you know what I mean? Like, at any given moment they said or did the wrong thing, they were done it was at the threat of death. But that's not true. All the authoritarian societies need to do is kill some people, lock others up, and then hope that everybody else is

so exhausted that they will not answer the call. It is so much easier to just shut your door and say, listen, I don't care what you do outside this door. That's fine. I'll watch TV, I'll listen to my music, I'll have culture, I'll go to restaurants. It's totally fine.

not women. These are people who can quite frankly are are either white or privileged and probably live in cities where this isn't touching them yet. And it is a big it's it's a clusterfuck, is what it is. There's no other way to put it. But at the meantime, you you either kind of have a choice. You either lay down in the forest and you say, okay, I can't, I can't make it, or you keep trudging forward and you hope that eventually you reach the point where you

can find safety. And that's that. I mean that that right now, that that that's the story of the time.

abortion pill. That is you, I think it's like eighty percent of abortions in this country that them deciding to take up this case to say that to basically here, one or two things are going to happen. They're going to disallow mifipristone, which is to undermine the FDA, which doesn't just hurt the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration in this country, but it's a system that is heavily used globally, which will continue to chip away at faith

in agencies. Right, So they either do this with the medication that has been on the market for roughly twenty five years, which means that nothing is safe, and by doing so, this doesn't just hurt the people that live in southern states or the Midwestern areas where trigger laws were already in place in the event that Roe v.

Wade was overturned. This is going to affect everyone. So that blue bubble, that cocoon that it hasn't touched me yet will touch you this year, or excuse me, in twenty twenty four when the case is heard and we learned the fate of this medication and basically the fate of the Food and Drug Administration. And I wonder if you think that it is literally going to take the erosion of the illusion that we can remain comfortable in certain pockets, and that's going to be enough.

something that needs to be highlighted here. There are a lot of problems in our system because of inequality that need to be addressed. One of them is demographic collapse, which is the idea that people just aren't having that many kids anymore because it's so expensive to have kids. Now most of the major Western countries, as neoliberalism is rolled in and made everything prohibitively expensive, suddenly you look

up in the boomers are either retiring or dying. Nobody's behind them because nobody can afford to buy houses or have families. You could address this by I don't know, making healthcare more readily available. You could go ahead and take care of the fact that corporations have a stranglehold over all prices, or you could just go ahead and take away a woman's right to choose, which is what is happening right now, and by the way, is going

to continue to happen. And as that's also happening, the entire progress of the twentieth century is being done away by the exact same peace people that that progress had to be wrenched out of their hands. We have another generation of robber barons guests who funded the fascists who tried to oppose the New Deal and all of the civil rights, the feminist movement, gay rights. The same people who oppose that are now the ones who are wiping the slate clean. What you just say is exactly right.

We need to tell people first of all, and I want to go ahead and put a little asterisk by this. People should care about it because other people are being affected, right that straight up like people should have empathy and solidarity. They should care that people in Red States and elsewhere are being treated like this. But meanwhile, if people need self interest, here's what's happening. Eventually, they're going to get

rid of this stuff. They're going to get rid of any medications or any devices that a woman could possibly use Yeah, there are still going to be those medications and devices for people who can afford them. And guess what happens whenever they get wiped out and they get made quote unquote illegal. The price goes up and up

and up and up. And if you are a middle class person who is barely making it in Brooklyn or barely making it in Los Angeles, you might not be able to afford that in the future on the black market. When you look at how all of this is happening, all I can tell you is this, Eventually the knock comes on your door or not. And listen, the people who listen to my podcast, the people who listen to

your podcast, no knock against them. But you are not part of the one percent of the people who are safe from this and who are pulling the strings on this thing. You are part of the ninety nine percent. And eventually someone is going to knock on your door. And you need to understand that, like, giving into these people is only going to make it worse, and it's only going to accelerate it.

forth with these people. I just continued trucking along and doing what I'm doing and posting what I need to post. But at the same time, I can't ignore these mini focus groups that happen in my comments section, which is that I don't fucking understand how people live through the Trump administration. Are living through this weaponized I mean criminal ass Supreme Court are looking all around them and saying, you know what, things can't get worse, Because I have

news for folks. They can always get worse. Right. We have watched things get steadily worse over the years because we thought that, oh, if Donald Trump is in an office, then everything will go back to normal. Has everything gone back to normal? No, it has not, because trump Ism

and Maga supremacy is a virus. So I just wonder to you, like what does it look like when people are saying, eleven months out from an election, not only are they not excited about the Democratic candidate, but apparently they've lost faith in their ability to secure democracy at all.

make me feel comfortable. I don't want to repel down the side of a waterfall. I'm good. Right when you're repelling down the side of a waterfall, gravity is bringing you down right like you are relying on gravity. You have a choice of how fast you go down, Like you can inch down, you know, or you can just take big leaps and the next thing you know, you're you're down there and let gravity take over. Donald Trump as president is letting gravity take over. It is acceleration

and quite frankly not we can't. We don't have time to get into all of it. There are things happening in this country that as of the current situation, of our representative government. It doesn't matter what party is in power, that shit's going to keep happening because you know, corporate and elite interests have taken over our government, they've taken over our economy, and they have basic control over a lot of this stuff is a lot of you know, theater, right.

That is true. And by the way, I think Joe Biden much like Barack Obama, and people need to listen to Barack Obama post presidency. He has told everybody who will listen. I got in there, there were things I could do. There were other things that president just does not have the power to do anymore. So while I look at this and I say, Joe Biden is the break as you're going down the mountain, it's slowing it down. Do I think that the Democratic Party is completely acting

in good faith? No? I do not. Do I think the Democratic Party is going to save democracy out of the kindness of their hearts and their principles, No, I do not. Here's what I tell people, Joe Biden, I have a real problem with this presidency in a lot of different arenas, Like we don't have time to go down the list because they are long. But I will say that the destruction that is coming or could possibly come, will come slower than if you let Donald Trump in there.

That is a complete and utter free fall. I'm dedicating myself. I'm going to choose the lesser of too bad options in my heart, and then I'm gonna work my ass off to try and either turn the Democratic Party into a tool to fix this thing, or I'm gonna find other places to put my energy. But going ahead and voting for Donald Trump or not voting against him, I think is madness right now.

been so broken. Right, But you don't get to fix what's broken if who you elect in by virtue of not voting comes in with a fucking sledgehammer like that is just you know, then you can't and I don't want us sitting around in a cell together saying, you know, well, maybe I should have voted.

it for two days? And after that it can go to shit like there does and the whole idea just very quickly, just to wrap this up, the problem is that Biden and the people who supported him in twenty twenty told everybody we'll all go back to normal and be fine. That's why we're in the situation we're in right now, is because we were sold a false bill of goods and people wanted to believe it and they didn't want to do the hard work that was behind it, which was you can't just go into a voting booth

every four years and expect that to be enough. You just can't.