Defending Democracy

table to Russia in order to get back Britney Griner. Now, for those of you who obviously have been paying attention, Britney Griner has been in custody with Russian officials since February on some bullshit trumped up drug charges because of vile of cannabis oil that were found in her luggage, which she says that she has a prescription for from a doctor, but the country of Russia has a zero

tolerance on drugs. She has been on trial. We have seen glimpses of her looking at least physically well, being detained for this considerable amount of time. I am hopeful because over the last couple of months we have seen an uptick in attention and focus on her predicament. Right initially, when this first happened back in February, it got very

little press. And part of that, at least from what I heard, was because the State Department officials work through back channels, They work through avenues that are not dealt with in the public eye. And it was said not to bring, not to draw so much attention to her, because then the Russians would want to do some other maneuvering. Well, things have changed over the last several months. Her wife

has taken to calling the White House. She has been on Good Morning America and other outlets pleading for the safe return of Brittany Griner. So right now Britney has basically pled guilty because by virtue of the Russian courts, you are not seen to be innocent, and she has testified on her own behalf to plead guilty and to convince the judge that she should be released. Word is that any exchange with regard to an exchange of prisoners, which is what the State Department is working on, we

have no timeline for that. But folks are saying that she needs to be convicted and then sentenced and then we will see where we go from there. But folks, one of the things that has troubled me, I think the most about this case other than the fact that you know, the Russians do anything right. Everything is about political gain. Everything is about a political strategy. It is all bullshit maneuvering so that they can get out heinous, horrible people from prison, so that they can get sanctions.

You dropped like everything is a fucking political game. But what has really gotten me in particular about this case is that Britney Griner should have never had to be in Russia in the first place, and that is a failing of the United States. Why do I say that, Well, because the women who play basketball in the w NBA do not even make half of what NBA players make in this country, which requires them then to go ahead and play abroad right in the American off season so

that they can continue to make money. Brittany Griner was in Russia because she plays basketball for a living, and we don't really particularly give a shit about women in sports and how much they get paid. Look at what has happened the lawsuit that the women's soccer team had to bring against the Soccer Association for the inbound the

inequity in the pay between men and women in soccer. Right, these are the same cases that we have heard brought up with tennis players and the Tennis Association, namely with the Williams sisters and what they have had to go through in order to get again equal fucking pay. So this is, you know, so many layers of this Britney Griner trial. An issue is layered with how we treat

and value women in this country, plain and simple. If Britney Grinder was making as much money as you know, whatever other top NBA player who is in her same positioning, do you think that she would have been in Russia. No, she would be enjoying her off season as NBA players enjoy their off season right, being able to provide for their families amply right, and not have to travel around

the world in order to do that. And so, you know, I bring that up because I think that it is really important that we recognize, I mean, and we know this, right. We know this by virtue of the reversal of Roe v. Wade. We know this by virtue of the fact that in this country we have yet to be able to pass an equal Pay Act. Right, we know that white women

make probably seventy two cents. I think it was the last time that I saw to the dollar of a white man, and that the number is lessened as you add on race, as you you know, for people black women making less and being yet more qualified, right in terms of the number of professional degrees, in terms of

certifications and all of these things. And so again, if we were to actually take a strong look and give a shit in this country about equity, then we would have passed an Equal Pay Act a long long time ago, because the days are gone of you know, heteronormativity and the male going into the workforce in the job and the boss saying, oh, your wife is pregnant, so here's

a raise for the family. Type of bullshit. I mean, I know that that's what the Republicans want to drag us back to, where women are needing to be reliant on their spouses because they're trapped into pregnancy and parent that they don't want to be in right, and that forces this vicious cycle of women and people with uterus is being forced out of the workforce, clearing the way for white men clearly to be able to not only rule the workforce, but also rule their nest and women

not have any outlet whatsoever. That's the goal of the Republican Party. It's to turn women back into a servile positioning in our country, and you know how easy it is being done right. So I think that it is always important that when we look at these cases with that are gaining national attention, that we look at the why, that we ask ourselves the why about those things and don't just assume them to be by face value, just one thing about foreign affairs and the United States and

their geopolitical war that they like to play. Folks. We are now also six months into the war in Ukraine, which is just fucking crazy to even think about the devastation that Russian aggression and war crimes have caused in

the country of Ukraine. This week, if you pay attention to the likes of Vogue magazine, both Zelinsky and his and his wife First Lady are on the cover, the digital cover of Vogue magazine, and they are talking about the horrors of war, what what this has done to their own families, to their country, and you know, to themselves.

I said something the other day to a friend of mine with regard to President Zelinsky, and I said, man, if you look at photos from six months ago of Zelinsky, and you look at photos now, it is evident that the man has must have aged at least ten years

in six months. You know, I've been thinking a lot, as Republicans continue to wage war against democracy and against decency in this country, about whether or not those of us who do believe in democracy are actually willing to fight for it in the way that people are fighting

for it in Ukraine. Now, I'm not going to make any comparisons to being in a maternity ward and the hospital being blown up, or being in sitting in my apartment and the apartment building being blown up, or any of the things the heinous acts that we have seen at the hands of Russians. But the question that we should all really truly be asking ourselves is, if America continues on this anti democrat slope that we are on, what are each of us actually willing to do to

defend democracy? You know, I think about the people in Ukraine. I think about people all over the world who are forced into extraordinary situations because of power, greed, right violence that plagues their countries. We have largely as a nation been shielded from that right. Not since the Civil War the Revolutionary War have we seen, outside of the bombing

of Pearl Harbor, fighting on our own soil. And what has really gotten me in this realm of thinking, obviously is because we pay attention every single day to the news. But there was a recent article in the Washington Post that there were interviews that were done of Republicans and you know, looking at candidates at the local, state and national level that are running for office. And in this article, folks, these people are not holding back. They are saying that

they are prepared for a civil war. They are ready for a civil war, and that a majority of Americans outside of the Republican Party believe that this will come in the next couple of years. Namely, there have eyes on twenty twenty four. If Republicans take back the House and the Senate in the fall, they are going to do some really egregious, underhanded ship. We already know that

because they've told us. If a Republican, whether it be Donald Trump, Ron de Santis or Mike Pence, become President of the United States in twenty twenty four, you can kiss every single right. You can kiss the Constitution goodbye altogether. In these polls that have been done with Republicans, many of them have said that, you know, forty percent of the population hell, I'll give up on democracy so long as we have a strongman at the helm of this country.

Not only were we registered last year as a backsliding democracy for the first time in the history of the United States, people are talking about a civil war. People are talking about wanting a strongman instead of democracy. These are regular conversations that are happening, right and not just with the politically astute or those that pay attention. It's

happening with everybody around everybody's kitchen table. So I think about the images coming out of Ukraine, and I think about the trauma that has been inflicted on these people who have done nothing other than trying to live their lives right as best they could in a country that they were born in, in the country that they love, only to have everything that they've ever known upended, to lose loved ones, to lose their homes, to lose their

futures right, pick up with whatever it is that they have, and literally cross borders into other nations with nothing but what they have on their backs to start over. And I think that, you know, while I was really aggravated by the way that the Ukrainian people have been presented in the news, as if like we should all have empathy for these people. But we don't have empathy for people in Afghanistan. We don't have empathy for people in Syria. We don't have empathy for people in Iran, right, we

don't have empathy for people in the Congo. We don't have empathy for people who are not black, who are not white with blue eyes and blonde hair, And that is by virtue of white supremacy. And who runs the news, who runs everything right? White people in power. Hey, I'm David Plots of slates Political Gabfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all the noise

and the news. Each week, on the Gapfest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathlon and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter. We do not always agree, We definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time. So subscribe to Slate's Political Gapfest, new episodes every Thursday. Hey there, I want to tell you about another podcast

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Tune in every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. But there is something to think about when we are on the verge of so much right Like, when we are on the verge of so much that is happening on the brink of just it feels like remember playing on the seesaw as a kid on the playground. I don't even know if they have seesaws anymore, but playing on a seesaw and you know, the other person would get up and you would be slapped down to to the ground.

That's how I feel about this country right now, Like we're trying to both stay even and in the air with our emotional well being, with our understanding of democracy. We're just up and we're down. We're up and we're down, and I'm just waiting for the moment where the Republican Party completely gets off of the seesaw and they're just like,

fuck it, We're drawing our guns and we're done. Because I feel like this is imminent, right, when you have Republicans that are running for office and they're doing so holding their ar fifteens, when they are talking about the use of violence against political opponents, when they are and rising in the polls doing it, right, when they are

continuing to spread lies. When you could say that, oh, yes, I was at the insurrection and run for governor like Doug Mastriana was doing in Pennsylvania, and that be okay, you not be in jail, right because you would think, oh, no, this man is going to be charged with a federal crime and he would never be able to run for office. But not in these United States, right, not nowadays. But you think about the fact that these people are literally

getting everything that they have ever wanted. Their wish list right for America is literally being checked off one box at a time. And yet when you listen to Donald Trump, which by the way, I did not listen to the whole speech is bullshit speech. I was only listening to pieces of it because I can't stomach that bullshit. Donald Trump talking about America has got to be one of

the most scary things that I've ever heard. Donald Trump sees nothing good in this country even when Republicans are winning. It's not even about them touting the reversal of Roe v. Wade or touting all of the gun legislation that is across this country now, where you can just get a gun as easy as you can, you pick up a thing at ictas, where you can, you know, deny curriculum and burn books and don't say gay, and all of

these things that they have won. You would think that Donald Trump would then stand before his legions of sycophants and tick down all of those wins. But no, Donald Trump stands before the American public and says that the streets are filled with bodies and guns and you know, and oh not guns because he would love that with drugs, and that we should execute drug dealers, and that there's just mayhem and carnage and terror everywhere. And I'm like,

America is pretty much a shit show. It's a shit show because of all of the things that Republicans and the likes of Joe Mansion and Krsten Cinema have continued to allow to happen in this country right to make this country unsafe. But the idea that we're all walking out of our front doors into type to Donald Trump's healthscape is like is laughable. Right, And so I'm like, even when they are winning, they still run on fear,

which means to me that they're never going to be satisfied. Right, They're never going to be satisfied until every right is gone, until every person is living in fear, until the hope and the will of America is taken from everyone's eyes and souls, until it's just drained from all of us.

Because they don't even celebrate their victories. They just continue to cry foul and play victim, right, Like Donald Trump is talking about all of the carnage and the mayhem in the street and then saying, and they don't want me to lead you bitch, where did you lead us? You almost led us into multiple Twitter fucking like real

world wars with I ran and with North Korea. You know you're being The government is being sued by several families who were separated at the border under your bullshit policies, right, and they will most likely win because what the Trump administration did to undocumented people and their children was so fucking heinous and disgusting. But I'm like, how do you counter this horrible vision and dream of America that Donald

Trump and Republicans have. You have to give something to the people to have hope in And this is a thing that I understand, you know now more than ever about Democrats in the Democratic Party. While I say that a healthy dose of fhere is good, Do you want Trump's America or do you want the Biden version of America that we're all fighting for? Right? Like that, to

me is a very simple ad. You know, run down, play over Donald Trump just recently talking about the mayhem and the lack of law and order, and just run the visuals from the insurrection as Donald Trump is speaking today, five hundred and some odd days after he incited an entire crowd to attack his vice president and the capital of the United States, and say, do you want this version of America or do you want the one over here that we are all fighting for for better schools,

right that don't burn books but actually seek to educate and uplift our nation's children so that we can be globally competitive. Do you want Donald Trump's version of America

where you are not safe anywhere? Or do you want a version of America that we're fighting for where you can go to the grocery store, your synagogue, your mosque, and your church and a movie theater right with your family and to a parade and not be worried about being mowed down because we can do something about assault weapons weapons of mass destruction that are on our streets. The contrast, to me is so very clear to paint, even without any real major policy wins from this administration.

And yet here we sit but a handful of months before midterms, crossing our fingers and toes and hoping to God that the Republican White Supremacist Party doesn't take hold over this entire nation, even though, by the way, they

pretty much have a really fucking tight grip. So I sit here and I wonder most days as I look at the destruction that the rubble that most of Ukraine has turned into now, and I wonder how many of us would be willing to fight for this nation as opposed to dusting off our passports and saying, fuck it, I'm starting over someplace else, which, by the way, I have those fantasies on a regular goddamn basis. My sister just came back from living abroad for the last twelve years. Right.

I know that it can be done. I know that you can make a good living and you can travel the world. But what does it mean to no longer have a home base? Right? What does it mean to be a stranger in every land that you traverse because the one that you were born in is no longer recognizable. These are the things that kind of keep me up at night on a regular basis, wondering and worrying about

what the future is going to look like here. And I don't want the future of America to look like Ukraine with millions of us, you know, either heading south for Mexico or north for Canada, right and figuring out how to start over. But that's the America that Republicans want. They want to drive everybody that looks like me, praise

different looks, different loves, different out of this country. You know, just the other day, what was making the news, Doug Mastriano's like campaign lead talking about the fact that America is a Christian nation, a white Christian nation. Marjorie Taylor Green found herself saying that she's a nationalist and she's a Christian and she's a Christian nationalist and there's nothing

wrong with that. Rachel Maddow, because of her comments, did a major, a major deep dive into Christian nationalism and what that looked like in the United States. This push for it, it is Nazism, It is the KKK, it is burning crosses. This man was on national television talking about, Oh, we won't expel the Jews, but they'll need to, you know, they'll have the benefits of living in a Christian nation.

The fuck. I don't know what constitution they're all reading, but I'm pretty sure or that America was founded right air quotes on religious freedom right. They were fleeing persecution. So the very idea that then the descendants of those who came here would turn around and say that no one else has the ability to practice their own faith, because their belief is that America should have one faith that we all abide by and one rule of law, which is that white supremacy runs all things and is

all things. You have the Lauren Boberts and the Marjorie Tailor Greens that are sitting in Congress talking about there should be no separation between church and state, you have a Supreme Court that is just eroded further this separation between church and state. And so again, when I say to you, what are you willing to fight for if in fact it comes to pass, which again the polls are saying it is more likely than not to come to pass. What are you willing to stand up and

fight for? These are the questions that we need to be asking each other around our kitchen table, because it isn't just going to be enough to tweet about it. It isn't going to just be enough to vote. I think that this is going to come down to actual fucking hand to hand combat. I think that it is going to come down to a whole lot of things because I don't believe that this version of the white

nationalist of Republican Party is going away. Right, we had an opportunity to cut off the head of the snake Donald Trump twice with two impeachment trials, and Republicans said, nah, this is our guy. Right, you have Matt Gates, that fucking pedophile piece of shit, disparaging women, but making it clear that no Republican is going to vote for Mike Pence because Donald Trump is their guy. I'm sure he wants Donald Trump back in office so that he can

get pardoned for his sex trafficking charges. I just want Democrats right now to do a better job of laying out to the American people that the version of America that Republicans have isn't just one that is about white supremacy. It is also one that is about vigilante violence, right political violence, where it is going to be the norm that you're going to have people's lives threatened, the lives of their families threatened, because you decide to run for office.

But this is what they want, because then it will keep away good people, right, people who want to do good by this country, and it'll make way for the crazy, fucking zealots. Let me turn to climate change. The pictures that have come out of Saint Louis more rain in five hours than they've gotten in like a month. The brush fire that sparked an entire neighborhood to be burned down in Texas. The triple digit heat that we have been living in across a majority of this country and

around the world. Folks, Joe Mansion voted against any climate legislation. One man who is taking millions of dollars each and every year from the dirty coal industry is the one that is deciding whether or not you get to breathe clean air, whether or not you have the ability to fight back against raging fire seasons, whether or not you are going to be able to air condition your way out of climate change, which none of us are going

to be able to do. We have got to figure out how to fight these people who don't give a fuck. You know, I tweeted the other day, I said, you know, it is insane to me. That is people that are in their seventies and their eighties that are making decisions about inaction around climate change that they're not even going to be around in another twenty years to deal with the continued fallout from the decisions that they're making now

that are solely based in greed. And so if we're not calling these people out and letting the public know exactly why right, we are going to be living under so many different kinds of threats, the threats of voter suppression, the threats of having more rights taking away, the threats of climate change. We're just living under threat because of people like Joe Manchin and Kursten cinema. Right. The Republicans have already told us who they are. They've consistent they

been who they have been. But it is Democrats who pretend to say that we're not like the other guy. We can give you all of the things that you want, and then they fall short because they have people who

are really Republicans in sheep's clothing. So I'm hoping over the next couple of months that we are going to see the largest number of Generation Z vote in mid term elections who are in their early twenties right, who are over the age of eighteen, just entering into the workforce or entering into school, and saying, these people need to get the fuck up out of the way, because

that's who we need to be invigorating right now. And I hope that we are by virtue of the administration signaling the fact that they are telling student loan debtors to back up right that they are going to be extending or maybe finally canceling student loan debt, and this will engage a whole host of people, over forty million

of the population that is dealing with crippling debt. But I know that we need to do something to activate the American people, and it isn't just going to be fear right, but we have to provide some type of hope because if you don't have hope of a brighter day, then why would you wake up? That is it for me, dear friends on Woke f today, as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.