Failure of Imagination

of anxiety and fear about the future. And you know, my advice, at least the advice that my therapist offered me today was you can only control what you can control, right and for me, that is right now making doctor's appointments and getting vaccinated and making sure that like my health is okay in the event that the ACA is repealed and I lose health care, that at least for the year ahead, that I am up to date on all of the important appointments that I need to have.

And I encourage everybody who you may pay for their own insurance like I do as an entrepreneur, to do that, you know, in thinking about what the future is going to look like, maybe dedicate more time to spending with your friends and family. The holiday season is coming up, and I know that for a lot of people, the holiday season is a mixed bag. I personally am grateful that I enjoy it, that I enjoy the time with my family, but I know for a lot of people

is going to be filled with strife. There are some people that aren't going to be spending time with their family because of what happened with the election. And I want to say to those people too, if you are one of them that is going to make the decision not to spend time with your family, do what it is that will make you feel safe, make you feel seen,

and make you feel cared for. And if being with a family that possibly voted against your rights and your life and your livelihood and your safety isn't that, then like that's okay. And also letting them know why is also okay, because I think that in a time when the truth of who America is has been revealed to all of us, it's time that we all start telling the truth to each other, not in a way to weaponize truth, but in a way to make people aware

of your why. So it isn't just oh, I'm not coming home for Thanksgiving because I'm busy or because I have a prior commitment. It's because you saw fit to vote against my rights, my life or that of those that I care about and those that I love, and I realize that now we no longer share the same values and the same morals, and so I will no longer be spending holidays with you. That's a fair thing to say, because we don't know what the road ahead

looks like. But I do know that I want to fill my time, whatever time that I have, with those that I love and care for deeply. You know, our time is precious, and so I don't want it to be spent wrapped up in fear and worry about a future that I cannot control. And I think that I say this to you all now as I am ingesting you know, my time with my own therapist, about like control what you can, let go of what you can't, and understand that we all have roles to play at

this moment. We may not know what those roles are at this moment, but that they will be revealed to us in due time if we are paying attention to our internal clock, to our internal messaging and not just what is filled up on social media. So coming up next is my conversation with our friend, our in house doctor,

doctor Jonathan Metzel. It's the first time Jonathan and I are speaking since the elections, so we share and reflect on what the last two weeks have been like and kind of what we are offering up to others as we're in this mode of reflection. But what I will end with today too is saying that if you are finding yourself exhausted, if you are finding yourself weighed down, listen to your body and give yourself a break. We're also moving into winter. You know, the trees have lost

their leaves. You know, the animals are going into hibernation. Our bodies flow on the same timeline and clocks as nature, right, And so if you are feeling heavy and tired, more so now than allow yourself the space and the time to rest, because that's also what the frenetic anxious energy does too. It burns us out. So I encourage us all, and I again am saying this out loud so that I hear it too, to rest when we need to move, when we need to in order to relieve our bodies

of this stress, of this darkness. But that you have to lean into what brings you light. You have to let go of what does not, so that you have the ability the nimbleness to be able to continue moving forward wherever that forward will lead you folks, you know that whenever we have the opportunity to sit down with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzil, I am always thrilled. And it has been, Jonathan, two weeks since the results

of the presidential election. I know that a lot of people are still very much reeling from the election and trying to make sense of where we are. And you and I haven't spoken in two weeks, So tell me how you are making sense of where things are right now.

that is going to be really seismic. And I don't know how to handle that because I feel it deeply, and I read your social media posts and I know you're up at five five o'clock in the morning thinking, you know what, because it's even it's kind of like remember we used to say, like wake up before the election, but now I know so many people here who are like, oh, it won't really impact me, or you know, somebody told me, oh, they're only going to deport like the murderers and the rapists,

like somebody I know and stuff like that. So there's kind of a level of I mean, I understand it's exhaustion, but it's also kind of disengagement or denial or something. And I think about that in a couple of ways. I mean, one is it's frustrating. I don't know whether I feel sometimes like I'm the guy who, like you probably feel it's like in a scary movie where you see the monster but nobody else does and it still feels that way, like the monster is like eating the townspeople.

And so the level of like I just want to be checked out is probably going to continue in a way. It's kind of the world kind of divides in that way. And also I feel like it's a divide between people who understand have histories of historical trauma and people who don't. It's kind of my feeling sometimes also, So that's part of it. Part of it for me is a feeling of kind of frustration in a way. You know, I understand, like it's not like this time, It's not like twenty sixteen.

People aren't going to be like out there protesting and things like that. Like people are down in a way, but it is that moment of like waking up at five am, and then I think, I told you this. I have a couple of colleagues who come from places where tutalitarian regimes took over democracies, and I said, like, what was it like? And they were like, it wasn't

just one like wake up moment. It was like people kind of gradually got used to it, and pretty soon they started policing each other, and so societies that are ready for it. I just feel like our society is much more primed for what's coming now than it was in twenty sixteen, where it really was a shock to the system. And I guess the last thing is just

honestly frustration. I mean, I feel like you and me and other people have been warning this for a long time, and even for me, like I tried to write my last book, I tried to call it How We Lost as a wake up call, and I said, like, we're going down the wrong path. We're not understanding what's happening

here like many people did. But there was this similar level of kind of denial that happened before and it's happening now just about how we got here in the first place, So all of those emotions are kind of joined.

right now is a failure of imagination of Democrats. Because you know, my sister said something to me the other day, Jonathan that has stuck with me, and she goes, you know, you can't really blame an untrained dog from bining somebody, and you can't blame a pig for being a pig.

So she's like, so, in all honesty, she's like, it's not as if I really blame Donald Trump and the Republicans for doing what it is that they said that they would do, for acting in the ways that we've known that they would act, and she's like, you know, so at the end of the day, it is honestly those that refuse to train the fucking dog and recognize that something was wrong with it to begin with.

Whiteness and they weren't getting healthcare. And so with the idea that like people are going to really wake up and regret this, I'm like, that is not how it works. There's always going to be something. But I also feel like I'm very critical of myself and our side for playing right into this in a way, like the Republicans were at the end of the day kind of unified, they broadened their coalition, they promised people things. Whether or not I agree with them, obviously, don't that they that

they wanted. And I feel like our side was divided and fractured. And I mean, I've just seen this even my experience. It kind of harkens for me back to trying to get my last book published and how I kept saying, like, look, man, We have a problem here, which is that liberals like me are making up all these gun laws that make sense to me because I believe in public health and I don't have a gun.

But the idea that we're going to get people to go along with gun control who are in red states and don't have guns because they don't believe in government, like our whole framework is wrong here, and as you know, I got shown the door for that, and me, I'm just saying that I just think our framework, we needed a framework. Honestly, I think.

well this is what we have. Myself be included in that that did not know even want to imagine having a new candidate because I was just like, it's just not going to work. I know, America. And the fact is is that they did incredible work and brought together so many different factions of the Democratic Party that had not been excited or interested or engaged in the last

four years. And so we also have to understand the timeline that we were working on and like what was at stake, and that Donald Trump and Republicans were able to have a consistent message over the last four years, with a consistent leader over the last four years that didn't detract from the escalator in twenty fifteen. And so that's not the same space that Democrats have been in.

And what pisses me off constantly is all of these fucking establishment people that want to do the finger pointing, that want to say, don't ever put up a person of color again, don't ever put up a woman, don't ever do this, and not get to the root of the root, which is that if white supremacy didn't have the value that it had for people, then they wouldn't

kill themselves to associate with it. And so you can't just have these large bullshit conversations with out actually getting to the education of the route.

kind of thing. So I think she was handed. She did an incredible job with a really rough hand, and the energy and the organization were pretty incredible given all that, and the election actually turned out to be a lot closer than the social media would lead you to believe.

So I think in all those cases that's true. But I think ultimately, as you and I talked about, the election came down to like a number of swing state voters in a number of swing states, And in that regard, I do stand by kind of what I was saying a couple of months ago when we talked, which is it wasn't just about the candidate. It wasn't even about the identity issues. I don't use the term white supremacy.

I don't even use it in Dying of Whiteness because I don't think it's a useful way to like get people to come over to our side. People get very defensive, I think for me in my research, so I don't use that, But I will say that my point always is that the frameworks we use, which are always like basically people hear it as more government and less entrepreneurialism.

And so remember when Kris first gave her convention speech, and you and I talked, and I said, I thought she should have been like more openly pro business and more like libertarian sounding or something like that. It's actually the frameworks through which we automatically say we're going to have more government, or like for guns, it's automatically gun

safety means more regulations. I think those frameworks are going to have it's just always going to be you're always going to lose to a guy like Trump who's saying more freedom and more entrepreneurialism can be rich like me. And so I don't know if you remember this, but

right after her convention speech, which was great. I said, I wish she would have nodded to entrepreneurialism, not to say government is going to give small grants and things like that to small businesses, but to say, this is a land where we all want to get rich and you know that kind of stuff. And so I just think the frameworks we use are just at a disadvantage. And we're seeing this in many other places too, where people on one hand are electing authoritarians who are going

to really ramp up the government. But the liberal framing of the role of government I think is going to put many candidates at a disadvantage. And the question for me is like, who could have overcome that? Who could have helped?

not who I want. There has been a tremendous amount of misinformation and disinformation and lies and the inability of the Democratic Party to break out and figure out like, how are we moving against the Musk machine, how are we moving against this spurt of disinformation, and recognizing that when the Latino population, for instance, watched the Madison Square Garden event and they're trashing Puerto Rico and blah blah, instead of people aligning themselves with those that were going

to be oppressed, they said, I'm not Puerto rican so he's not talking about me in the same way that folks are just like, oh, my family's not going to be deported because we're not criminals, so will be okay. It's this idea of really of separating from rather than building of community with like minded people and realizing that

actually we don't have the same values. That is fundamentally what has been really hard for me over the last two weeks is that we've always, through you know, Disney and Hollywood and all of these things, been primed and fed this idea that like good will win out, that like hope will always beat out evil. And so now when you're sitting back, and you're just like, oh, evil one.

Even if the margin is the smallest margin by which a president has won an election in modern times, which is the truth of where we are, it doesn't matter because it's still one and that in and of itself is suppressing people's ability to feel like they have the energy to fight another day. So my question for you is, we are a depressed people right now. Fifty percent of the population feels absolutely exhausted and beaten down and oppressed.

And and guess what, Donald Trump hasn't actually picked up the baton yet and started anything. What do you say to people who right now are just like I'm tapping out, I'm done, Like he's going to do his worst, and let him do his worst, and like everybody's going to be hurt and caught up in it. Some will get it worse than others, just like I keep a look at using the framework of COVID, that COVID hurt everybody, but it hurt more vulnerable communities more. So what do

you say to those people? Jonathan?

incredibly tribal, and I mean everybody became really tribal. And then it played out and then people were fed these lines that were related to history. Some people were incredibly biased, and other people just all of a sudden, we're in a competitive scenario where you know, it's kind of like the neuroscience exhibit with like ten rats and ten pieces of cheese, and the rats all get along and ten rats and two pieces of cheese and they all start

attacking each other. And so austerity politics, when you start to take away money and resources and infrastructure and give it to oligarchs, all of a sudden, people turn on each other in incredibly tribal ways. That's what's happened in Russia. All of a sudden people are afraid and not just money, resources, but opportunities jobs, government sanctions, your driver's license, all those kind of things, so those all become levers in a

certain kind of way. And so I saw it happen in Tennessee, where I've really honestly of kind of centrist red state. All of a sudden, everybody started worrying about, oh, other people are out for my stuff because there was less stuff. And I think that's in a way a lesson we should be studying really closely right now. Is because we are going to take away a lot of

money and give it to people like Elon Musk. Right now, all these cuts to government are going to be cutting away social programs to empower a bunch of other people. And so the question is, like we need to be looking to kind of alliance building in the era of I mean, like I find Hong Kong very terrifying right now, for example, because like a strong pro democracy protest movement

is now being basically incarcerated out of existence. And so I think we need to look to places where people have maintained alliance and the face of this kind of thing, because the flip side is people just start turning on their neighbors honestly, which is the you know, kind of what the system wants. And so I think that, you know, we need to look to resistance in other places like Iran for example, how people have maintained or other places like that.

have collective power. And the fact is is that sitting on you know, whether it's sitting in the sewer of X. And it's not to say that like, oh there is a good billionaire, there's a good site. But it's just like when you know that something is bad, why am I still sitting in it? It doesn't mean that the next place is not going to get bad. Like we're basically social locusts, just trying to move from place to place to place, and then when those resources dwindle, we

move on. And I think that people need each other now more than ever. Instead of turning away from we need to turn into And I also think too that the recognition of the rise of American oligarchs is something that people are aware of, and I think that what it's going to happen. And you know, you say, like, oh, well, they won't turn away from Donald Trump. Yeah, I think that a solid thirty and forty percent will never turn

away from Donald Trump. But I think that as austerity begins to come in and people realize that their lives are much harder and their existence has become much harder, that they're going to start asking a lot of questions.

our side. Given the framework of our side right now is one that we have to think really hard about. Because again, I've just seen in Tennessee that if one side is saying it's everybody else's fault. On the other side is saying, I mean we need to see our framework through which we engage people.