Democratic Russian Roulette

at the insurrection on social media. I just you know, coming up in my interview with our friend was Jahat Alive. The Daily Beast columnist Wash says this, you know what we just want. We want that the Justice Department and the criminal justice system would treat Trump and all his accolades as badly as they treat black and brown innocent people right like, for low level infractions. They throw the

book at these people. You just saw just recently that Gavin Newsom, governor of California, decided that he was going to do away with mandatory minimum sentencing because of how it outside, how it harms right black and brown people the most. So again, why is it that we will throw the book at low level black and brown people, low level drug offenders, but we won't do the same for white collar quote unquote white collar crimes that threaten our fucking democracy and the future stake that we have

on the global stage. I'm just I'm so outdone by this. I'm tired of the reports, I'm tired of the talking heads in the commentary around this, and I want to know where the fucking action is. You know, every week we have Glenn Kirshner join us I MSNBC legal analysts and host of Justice Matters talk about the fact that, yes, you know, the Justice Department does not work as fast as we would like them to, and oftentimes we don't know exactly what it is that they are working on.

But I would tell you that to ensure that people do not lose faith in our democracy and do not lose faith and hope in our agencies, namely the Department of Justice, they may want to issue some fucking statements that allow us to see that they are working on behalf of securing our democracy and not just holding up

institutional ideals. I you know, I think that at some point in time, at some point in time, you know, in the not too distant future, in the shambles right of our democracy, somebody will be listening to this podcast, and they'll say to themselves, you know, it was all so clear of the steps that needed to be taken and the action in order to secure our democracy and make sure that a fascist, authoritarian, white supremaist, misogynist, islamophobic, transphobic,

homophobic piece of shit wouldn't become president of the United States again. But you know, they just decided not to not to end the filibuster, not to actually work on behalf of the American people, and just roll the dice. You know, we talk often on this show about the fact that essentially we're all just playing Russian roulette, right The anti vaxers and the anti maskers and all of these people are just friends paying just Russian roulette with

their lives. But you see, our Congress right now, which is controlled by the Democrats, is playing Russian Roulette with our democracy by not securing vote rights, by not going after those that actually break the law in broad fucking daylight. Because what you don't want to set what you believe to be a partisan president of investigating a former president even though he was twice fucking impeached. This man, dear friends, he is running for office again in twenty twenty four.

If he is not placed in goddamn fucking handcuffs in the next two years, this man is going to run and most likely win again. Not win because I believe that that many Americans are going to vote for him, but win because our vote will no longer fucking matter. And that's exactly what state Republican officials are hoping and banking on. We are getting ready to aform an American apartheid system where the minority is going to have rule over the majority, not just in Congress, but in the

courts as well. And then they'll get the executive branch, and you know what, Republicans will hold power for the next twenty thirty, forty fifty years. Because the only way, the only direction that I see this going in, if we continue to see in action from our Department of Justice, is revolution. That's the only way that this is going to end. We are headed directly towards a civil war. And I don't say that as hyperbole. I say that as reality. You have Facebook and other social media entities

that are doing nothing about misinformation. They are doing nothing about their platforms being used as organizing tools for hate

groups right and militias. So you have that on one hand, then you have a Democratic controlled Congress that can't get their ship together to pass any type of legislation that is going to affect the daily lives of the American people and make sure that they secure our democracy on the other hand, and then you have a president that sits in the middle that believe that we're still operating the twentieth century, where he's going to solve these problems

with a sit down summit over some fucking Scotch Wake the fuck up. I can think of nothing more urgent than securing our right to vote, because if we don't have that, then we're not going to have climate change legislation, We're not going to have infrastructure bills, we're not going to have a change right to ensure that all people that are able to birth can have an abortion if they need one. Everything that has come up over the past nine months has pointed to one thing only that

our democracy is on life support. And frankly, the question that I'll ask Wag later is whether or not America is already dead and we're living in some type of dystopian fucking sixth cents where we're all walking around talking to each other and not realizing that we're just a bunch of apparitions, just a bunch of ghosts of democracy's past.

Fiona Hill outlined very clearly, very starkly, very stoically in our testimony in Donald Trump's first impeachment that you need look no further than modern day Russia to see the direction that the United States is headed in. You need look no further into the fact that the upcoming CEPAC Conservative Conference is going to be held in Hungary because they believe that hungry, right, a country that doesn't have real elections, right, they perform democracy, but it's a theater trick.

It is not something that actually has power driven for and by the people. But that's where they're having their next convention. So they are telling you all that they are doing. They are telling you the dictators that they believe in and want to hold up as a model

for the future of America. And we're all just sitting around pretending that Biden can do all things when he can barely get his agenda fucking past because he put too much faith in the fact that everyone else was going to want to do the quote unquote right thing. No one does because at the end of the day. What rules us is greed. What rules us is the desire or the proximity to power. And like I said in twenty sixteen, right on election night, that this was

going to be white supremacy's last stand. But white supremacy is not going down without a motherfucking fight. They have the courts, which is where all of us have received any of the rights that we have. Now, it didn't happen through policy. It happened through laws. It happened through the court system. It happened through hard battles. And now they own the courts because Democrats decided not to talk

about that. They don't even want to have conversations about the expansion of the Supreme Court because they think somehow it's set in stone, the number nine. It's not. When you think see that things are radically shifting in this country at a pace that is neck break, then you have to make radical choices. You have to be willing to risk losing position, to being risk losing popularity in

order to get the right things done. But we are living in a system where people are more concerned with adding money to their pockets, more concerned with their little fiefdoms than they are about collective and that's what began right with the Tea Party that we all again wanted

to laugh off. That's what begat the tribalism right was this idea that we are going to coalesce around a lie, a lie that Barack Obama wasn't an American, a lie that he didn't have claim to the presidency because he was black, and because we refuse to face the truth of white supremacy in this country and how it is a part of every fucking agency and institution. We are

at this place. You know, Wash will say later that he believes at this moment was inevitable right that we were going to get to a point where our democracy was not just going to bend, that it would in fact break. He believes that there's still time, and I'm saying to you, I don't know that there is. We have a handful of months until we begin campaigning for the twenty twenty two midterm cycle. We have at fifty margin in the Senate, we have a razor thin edge

up in the House. But you see, Republicans don't have to run on anything. That's what they showed us back in the twenty twenty election. They didn't even bother running on a platform. They said, Oh, we'll just you know, rerun the same ship from twenty sixteen. Friends, We have a deep problem here. We have a crisis. A constitutional crisis was not averted because a couple of people in the Justice Department did the right thing in the moment. We're in the midst of a constitutional crisis. We're in

the midst of a moral crisis. We're in the midst of a crisis of conscience in this country. And I don't know who sees the urgency of now, because I don't think that the current makeup of folks in Congress do. I don't think that the current administration does, because nobody is screaming from the rafters saying, look, folks, the comment is coming. We are in armageddon. This is deep impact. And it isn't aliens or comments that are going to

take us out. It is in action and apathy. Coming up next, dear friends, is my conversation with wasajahat Ali, the columnist at the Daily Beast. He is a friend and he has so many thoughts. He makes me feel less crazy. So I hope that you enjoy that conversation. Friends. I am so happy to welcome back to woke. A f daily friend and colleague and Daily Beast columnists was Jahat Ali to discuss Guess what, folks, the nine month anniversary of the attempted coup to overthrow the government by

Donald Trump and his fellow fascist was. You know, we just learned this week as well, which I'm sure is not an accident of timing, that the Senate Judiciary Committee had a three hundred and ninety four page report outlining all the ways in which Bill Barr, Mark Meadows, Donald Trump and others worked to try and get the Department of Justice to say that there was fraud in the election in order to subvert our democracy and keep Donald

Trump in power. It's been nine months since the insurrection right this week, and not one of those people have been indicted. And also we have heard that the people that have been called upon by the one six Commission to be subpoenad and be under oath, Steve Bannon, Cashpital and and others have decided, you know what, they think that the subpoenas by Congress are a suggestion that they

would rather not RSVP four. What is going on? Yeah, So, what we're witnessing is the rough draft of an insurrection, a failed first copy that will be rinsedon, repeated, and perfected in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four. And people say, oh, you're you're just being hysterical. I was just having a conversation with someone. They said, oh, you

were just being hysterical and reactionary. But all the stuff that you and your colleagues, oftentimes people of color were seeing for the past four or five years turn out to be true, even the effort fa fascism that you use. I was so happy to hear it. I wrote a couple of articles and tweets about it, and people like, oh, you've gone too far. I had to make the pitch to use the word fascism even a year ago. This is why you have to really make the case for it.

I'm like, what's the case. This is what's going to happen. This is when Trump was in office, right, and this is the future we're going to see is minority rule to establish white Christian suprem see. And it's gonna be an authoritarian government with the veneer of democracy putin, for example, wins elections. No one's gonna say it's a democracy but he wins elections. You know, Pustinia Bobari, the dictator of Egypt one elections, Victor orbon Is Quoe unquote president of Hungary,

a hungry of the country which they love. Right now the model for Trucker Carlson where they're gonna have sepack the Annual Consertive Action political conference is going to be in Hungary right like there's there's like a Defcon three, Defcon two probably happening right now. But Steve Bennett did something I'm gonna give him credit. Flood the zone with shit.

That was his strategy. If you flood the zone with shit, you leave people confused, you leave people overwhelmed, you're able to move the Overton window of what's acceptable and not acceptable. You're supposed to you're you're supposed to numb the people. There's just too many crisis what to believe, what not to believe in our media establishment. Let's be honest in this incestuous ecosystem where everyone's buddy buddy, and everyone has to call balls and strikes, and everyone has the view

from nowhere. Oftentimes many white gate keepers, because it doesn't affect them, they say no, no, no, we have to do both sides. There's no both sides here. We have one side that is aggressively trying to subvert democracy through a coup another word that you use that I'm so glad that you used, and the other side, which is, yes, flawed, but at least it's trying to be adults and raise

the dead ceiling to keep the government function. And so what do you do when the entire conservative ecosystem, not just the elected officials, but Fox News, which is celebrating his twenty fifth anniversary this week, and also the podcast, and also the strategists and also the lawyers are hell bent on minority rule. You're going to have a constitutional crisis and you're going to have most likely a civil war in this country. And the Justice Department, which should

be aggressive af right now, has not arrested anybody. So to answer your question, I echo your frustration because that was my first tweet when this report came out, and I tweeted, I'm like, how come nobody's in jail? And that tweet kind of went viral and everyone was like, that's a very good question. I guess we should just be black and brown, unarmed protesters protesting officers Chauvin, you know, choking George Floyd to death. And then maybe then these

people will take it seriously. I mean, I could find it absolutely shocking and disgusting that, first of all, the longest sentence that we have seen come out of the insurrectionists was it's four months. That's the longest goddamn sentence that we have seen, right for two thousand people breaking into the Capitol building, building a guilty and on the steps of the Capitol saying and chanting that they wanted to hang Mike Pence, defecating in the halls of our democracy.

We have it on every goddamn video, every goddamn angle we have seen that. We heard testimony from four police officers right from the Capitol Police and DC Metropolitan Police talking about the trauma of that day. We've had police officers commit suicide following right the insurrection, and yet to your point, to your tweet, why isn't anybody in jail? And I'm not just talking about the people that were

on the steps that day. I'm talking about the people that were on the dias at the stop, the Steel rally, the Juliani's right, the Josh Hollies that wanted to give a fist the Donald Trumps that talked about one six being wild. How is it that Congress has the time to put together three hundred and ninety some odd page report, and yet I'm wondering whether or not they're going to even support even enforce the subpoenas. Right, I'm just I'm

so outraged. I feel like, so I've said this before, the Democrats bring a pencil to a knife fight, and Mitch McConnell brings a bazooka, and who's gonna win ten out of ten times? At the same time, you want to, you know, go high, like Michelle said, but you need some brawlers. The problem is is when you have structural deficiencies where we have a fifty fifty Senate and the fifty Democrats represent nearly forty million more Americans, and yet

it's still fifty fifty. You have the electoral College, you have massive voter suppression bier Republicans, you have jerrymandering, and you literally have one entire gop ecosystem that has held bent on obstructionism. Casement point. As we're recording this, we just got a small reprief to December for the dead ceiling but they're literally hijacking the nation because they have

admitted Centator till Us admitted it. We will run great ads on this in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four that look at the Democrats, Look how much they spend so much money. Yeah, because you're not raising the dead ceiling for this country to pay off the debts incurred under Donald Trump's administration. So you're dealing with nihilists, this pro death nihilist movement that is attacking masks, attacking vaccines,

attacking science, all for their culture work. On the Democratic side, you have this unweeling group that is trying to get together a diverse coalition, but we are fed because we have these coone core moderates. I hate to call them moderates, their obstruction. I was gonna say they are And you know what, there is a doctor abdul l say ed um, he refers to them. He said, no, they're not, They're not even there were. They're regressionist, right yea, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I'm fine with the regressionist. I'll take it. So so you have so this if we just like, let's give Biden to put myself in Biden's shoes and democratsrihoes for a second. This is what you're dealing with, a pandemic that has killed more than seven hundred thousand people because Donald Trump failed and lied to the American people. Let's be honest, trying to reopen America. But you have this right wing fringe nut now literally invoking violence upon school

teachers and physicians. You have a recession, you have this debt ceiling. You have obstructionist Republicans. You got Republicans who refuse to even take part in a bipartisan commission in which this mob tried to kill them and the Vice President Mike Pence, and you have massive voter suppression, and you have corruption and by the way, you have a propaganda network that refuses to be honest and is disinforming people.

And oh, by the way, you have one year to pull it off, Danielle, because you have a razor thin margin in the House, and according to all the data and the stats and historical trends and voter suppression and jerrymandering, Republicans isn't going to take the House and most likely the Senate. And so just to like, you know, when you get so frustrated and people get so frustrated, and

I get frustrated. You have the Democratic Party which is barely hanging onto its majority because you have people like Cinema and Mansion and other que quote regressionists in the House, not unified. Meanwhile, McConnell and the right wing, they whip him into shape when it comes to the culture or even Mitt Romney refuses to raise the dead selling you know, he's allegedly the colone quote moderate. And so it's so frustrating that the majority is hijacked by a minority. We're

running out of time, we don't have the resources. Multiple fires, multiple crises, and this is where Steve benn and won flood the zone with shit. Now deal with the shit, Mit Daniel, what shit do you want to deal with? First? Climate change, income inequality, build back better, the January sixth insurrection, voter suppression. You tell me what's the number one on

your list? You know, see, And that is such a good that is such a good question, because one you just gave us, you know, a partridge in a pear tree of all the things that are fucking wrong and are right. If I am Biden, right, if I if I am the President of the United States, and you're saying to me after that litany of things that are wrong, things that are broken. First of all, I don't even know why the man ran for the job in the first place, because I would run from it, not run

for it. Voting. Voting, to me, has got to be number one because if to your point, if we don't have the huge margins necessary in order to get things done, because we have two regressionists, right that are marauding as if they are Democrats, but we know, good god damn well that they are not. They're bought and paid like by the pharmaceutical companies, by goal by just name it right, And I continue to say this on social media as well, to follow the money right, like why isn't Christen Cinema

talking to anybody? Why is Joe Manchin the only one that is always in front of a microphone? Look at their bank accounts, look and see where they're getting their money from. But again, if I am dealing with all of these problems, I'm going after voting because if I don't have the large enough margins, if people are not able to show up and express their frustrations at the polls, and none of these members are going to be held accountable for their in action and their obstructionism, then I

can't get anything else done. I'm not passing infrastructure, I'm not passing a climate change bill. I'm not doing any of the things that the American people say that they desperately need. But for you, if you is what is number one? For you? Yeah? So I wrote an article about this with the Daily ABUSA couple months ago, and I said, you have to nuke the filibuster, right, I said, nuke could get rid of it. It's over, It's done

because of philibuster. Is this archaic relic of the Jim Crow era that has been used predominantly by McConnell Republicans to turn this sent into a graveyard. Just obstructionism. Nothing's gonna get done. If you get rid of the filibuster, you got the fifty fifty, you can get Kamala to come in as a tiebreaker, and you can pass a

John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Right, you can pass all these bills that will strengthen voting, that will be a buffer against these voter suppression bills across the nation, which you buy it the way or even unpopular with Republican voters. See that's where you have to gop flexes its muscle. They're like, we don't even care if our voters don't like this. Hell, we'll even kill our voters for the

culture war. And you're dealing with this nihilistic movement. But unfortunately you said, we have mansion in Cinema were bought and paid. I personally think Chris Cinema will tank it all for christ and Cinema. People say, oh, eventually, if she'll come around. I'm like, I don't buy it. People say, oh, she has to run for reelection, maybe she doesn't, maybe she's a one term a dollar she goes. I'm out, yeah,

but what what what? People say? No? No, And I think this is the analysis which with why people see rose colored glasses of an America that doesn't exist, and white people of color have called it out consistently, especially for the past five years, is because we have experienced both the American dream and the American nightmare. We have seen the unfairness of it all, the hypocracy of it all. You know, my people experienced the war and terror black people,

I've been experiencing the war in terror since forever. Latinos get it, and so we say Yeah, this country can turn on you on a dime. The people who are supposed to be the gatekeepers can be perverse and corrupted. The guardrails won't be in place if they get bent by the people who don't care about the guardrails, whill remove it, right, And so we're saying, oh, you know Donald Trump will be regulated by the Republican Party. We said, no,

he won't. Oh, the right wing movement will be moderated. Nope, it's gonna get fascistic. That's what I said. And lo and behold that's where we are, and we still haven't. Really the fundamental problem is those folks in power, and I really mean this, they still feel that they'll be protected. They have sex with these people, they drink with these people, they party with these people. Oh, they invite me to the country club. Behind the scenes, they're moderate, they go

to my same church. You know, let's be honest. It's a very incestuous ecosystem with big money media, and they think we'll be fine. They won't come after me. Oh, you don't know them the way I know them. Right. It's this type of human, if you will, subjectivity that blinds them to the reality that they're witnessing in front of us. Meanwhile, the rest of us don't have that privilege. We don't get invite to those cocktail parties. We're like, no,

these policies affect our communities. We know white supremacy, we know what's coming down the pipeline. You're gonna take this seriously. And I don't think they're gonna take it seriously. I think imagine in cinema they're gonna get rich. They don't do they won't do what's necessary. They won't do what's needed. It's staring you right in the face. I agree with you. If it was me, I would whip them up, you know, Pelosi, Biden, Schumer. But they can't. They don't have the power kill the

fullibuster pass Voting Rights Act. We have one year left of the twenty twenty two mid terms, and if you can do that what you want, then what I would do is say, Merrick Garland, you were appointed for a reason. The Justice Apartment is here. You need to flex, and you need to flex now. I want subpoenas, and if they reject the subpoenas, I want you to flex, right. I want you to punish them. I want you to find them, jail them, do what you would do to poor black and brown people. Come on, that is it

for Today's Woke, a f daily podcast. To hear more from today's show, including my full interview with wajahat Ali. Support me on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Woke AF. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.