From Russia Without Love

are in the world right now. UM. Yesterday when the news broke that Russia had indeed invaded Ukraine, UM, and that everything that Putin has said that he would do, as he was amassing one hundred and fifty thousand plush troops around the Ukraine for the last couple of weeks, as he was, you know, shoring up blood supplies, as he was stationing tanks um ships, readying to attack. The images that came out, that continue to come out and will continue to grace all of the screens that we

look at day in and day out, are traumatizing. And I say that because I have a series of knots in my stomach and lump in my throat as I record this right now, because I do not believe that Americans understand the vast majority of Americans understand how serious this is right now. What is often true about America and Americans is that because we are so far away from the rest of the world that you know, we believe and eishly slow so that what happens in one

part of the world isn't going to affect us. That you know, I tweeted, I've been tweeting since the news broke, since I woke up like many of you did yesterday, and you're like, holy shit, war has broken out in Europe. We haven't seen war at this escalated level, folks, as many foreign affairs experts are saying since World War Two. We understand because we've been following Putin's moves since he seized power in Russia, that he, much like Republicans in

this country, plays the long game. The USSR was broken apart, fell apart many many years ago, right, and yet through the desires of one meglomaniac, he is and has been steadily moving towards his goal of a united Russia, right, a restored superpower. And you know when President Biden took to the Newswaves yesterday to essentially, you know, speak to the American people and speak to the world and say that the most severe sanctions are being placed against Russia

and that it will cripple Russia's economy. And you already see where their stock market has gone even though we know even in this country that the stock market is not indicative necessarily of the steadiness right of the country, because not everybody has money in the market, and the

damn shure don't in Russia. But I think that what's important to note here is that sanctions take months to have impact act, and we're talking about the Ukraine having ninety six hours until capitals start to fall to the

weight of Russian aggression. We're talking about images of people who yesterday had used the subways to get to work, to go shopping, to see friends, to see family, just to go about their days, that the subways have now turned into bomb shelters because there aren't enough bomb shelters in parts of the Ukraine. You're talking about people who, for the last thirty forty years have been an independent nation, many of whom or our ages, who have never experienced war.

It has only been something that has been a part of their history books. And so when they woke up to air raid sirens, when they woke up, no doubt to their phones pinging left and right about what has happened.

Imagine the fear of looking around your apartment, your home, and out the window and seeing plumes of smoke, seeing and hearing sirens going off, getting texts and phone calls that are saying are you safe, get out, but not knowing where the fuck you were going to go when you went to bed last night, You, like everybody else in the world, is thinking about, Oh, what's on my to do list tomorrow? Not do I have a go bag?

And am I going to be able to ever see my city, my town, my home, my friends, my family again as you are now using your normal metro subway stop as a bombshelter. You know, sometimes I think that in America, we look and we watch things that are happening in other countries, and we have this sense of superiority that like, oh, look at them. Oh I'm so

sad for them, But that could never happen here. And I'm thinking to myself, if I had the ability to drive around with a truck with a big fucking speaker on top of it, up and down every street in America railing with an alarm that's saying wake the fuck up, everything that you think could never happen is happening. I never thought that a billion animals would perish in a fire that is caused by climate change and the world be outraged for two seconds and then go off to

what they were doing. I never thought that we would be living in a global health pandemic where for a year and a half, our kids, our life, everything stopped, and our screens became the only way for us to stay in contact with the people that we love because there's a killer virus outside that we can't see, that we can't touch, but because of it, we can't see and touch each other. And that has happened. I never believe that America would elect a man who outwardly talked

about grabbing women by the pussy. I never thought that a political party, an American political party, would be touting the talking points of our biggest foe. If there's nothing else that you've ever learned in history, if there's nothing else that you even remember, the thing that I've always known is that Russia is an aggressor and has always been our enemy. Right, they wanted authoritarianism to reign supreme

around the world with that country at the helm. Right manifest destiny in the United States in the eighteen hundreds was about spreading democracy. But don't get it twisted. America has always had economic interest in the places that it

had quote unquote spread to to secure democracy. But never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the President of the United States, the former twice impeach president of the United States, would get on the phone and outwardly try and like muse his muscle to get what he needed from foreign nations. I never thought that the White House would turn into some type of Vegas fucking

slot machine. But here we are. So I don't want any of us to be looking at what is going on in the Ukraine and think to ourselves, well, at least I'm not there, because a year ago we saw our capital building enveloped in a plume of smoke. We saw the Michigan State capital under siege. Right now, as I speak, there are caravans not filled with Mexican immigrants, as Republicans had told us and fearmongered would happen if Hillary Clinton became president of the United States. No, those

caravans right are headed from South Carolina. Is headed from South California to Washington, DC to mirror what has been going on in Ottawa, Canada. The caravan is filled with American citizens that are ready to lay siege to an American city. Our own Republican politicians have told us, we have more guns and bullets on our side than you do. They have been chomping at the bit for another civil war,

another crack at the knot. They are so greedy for power and so entwined in white supremacy that they are emulating the actions of America's biggest enemy and upholding Vladimir Putin as their true president, as a leader that they want to see in America. When I tell you that we are living in the most unstable times this world, I think has ever seen this confluence of crisis and fucking disaster. This is what I'm talking about. You know, yesterday I spent most of the day in tears because

most people don't know. I'm an extreme EmPATH, right, meaning that I care deeply about what is going on, and I feel it in every cell in my body. Because I know that Ukraine is foreshadowing. I know that Ottawa, Canada is foreshadowing. I know that hungry is foreshadowing. And I know that Republicans have been saying the quiet part out loud on a speaker for the last five years,

and America isn't paying attention. This week. We have seen so much Yesterday, earlier in the week, excuse me, I railed, railed against what the new Manhattan District Attorney is doing. Then I had some he tell me, oh, good job focusing on midterms when fascism is spreading around the world,

And I'm like, are you fucking dumb? Do you not see the fucking connections between what Republicans are doing in the United States right now and how it is a part of the fascism that is spreading around the world, how they are apart and pawn in Putin's larger game. Do you not see the connection here? And if you don't, I am sorry, But my god, you're listening to Tucker Carlson on Fox News. I mean it is as if

Putin is actually speaking from his voice. He has his hand up Tucker Carlson's back like a fucking muppet, opening up his mouth and just coming out of it, singing the praises of Russia, saying to the millions of Americans that watch him and listen with bated breath to every fucking lie that comes out of that man's mouth, they are going against their own president. And what keeps me up, what woke me up actually last night, and I had to calm myself. The fuck down was Oh my god.

In World War Two, it took the deaths of six million Jewish people in order to get the world to pay attention to what Hitler was doing. Six million people, what do you think? And that was That was when folks, we were united as a nation against a common evil, when the world democracies were united against a common threat. We are an divided nation. Putin began his ploy to divide America years ago. The twenty sixteen election was just his first act of war. Do we not see that now?

We saw it then, Hillary Clinton warned us. Then there are clips going around right now of interviews that she gave to lay out the dangers that were ahead if you were to elect somebody who was so cozy and enamored with fucking dictators. The first step was to turn neighbor against neighbor and spread as much disinformation as possible.

Because a weakened and divided America right is easily pushed over a weekend, and divided America does not have the fortitude to lead the charge against a blood thirsty Russia because we're too busy putting out fires in our literal and figurative fires in our own backyard, fighting against each other, that we don't have the capacity, we don't have the fucking bandwidth to then be paying attention to what is happening at seas you had Vladimir Putin get on Russian

television and saying, bet so you all try and intervene with what I am doing in the Ukraine, and you will be sorry, because the fingerprints that that motherfucker had all over the twenty sixteen election, he has now dug his hands in and the Republican Party has welcomed him with open arms. There has never been a time, never been a time, I would ask any historian, at what point in time in America when we were faced with outside opposition, did you have internal power applauding the opposition.

Donald Trump stood before a ball room of his fans where he said that Putin just recently, folks, I mean this week, that he's strong, he's a leader. And all I want is for Democrats to take the sound and the visuals of that and have a split screen of the bombs being dropped overhead in Keith right, being dropped overhead in all of these Ukrainian cities, as you have Tucker Carlson saying, oh, we need to be concerned with

woke culture because Putin's doing just fine. If folks don't see what is happening here, that the war that Republicans are waging is much bigger than the start of book banning and putting a target on the back of trans youth, which is what Governor Abbott just did. That all of these things that don't say a bill, they are ticking off for you who in the society is expendable in the same way that the Nazis were ticking off to the Germans. Why you shouldn't give a fuck about your

Jewish neighbor down the street. And then when that person is gone, poof, at least my home is still around. At least I'm still here. Republicans are following the playbook of going after the most vulnerable among us, seeing how far they can go, how much they can push without receiving intense pushback from all sides. They just passed in the Florida House. Don't say gay bill soon, folks, phil

pass they don't be gay bill. If you can recall from history McCarthy right, Joseph McCarthy, the architect of McCarthyism, had a list a list of people whom he blacklisted, whom he said were gay or intellectuals, or Communist sympathizers or blah blah blah blah blah. So how soon do you think it will be before Republicans begin the other phase of their campaign? As soon as they get power back, which is in a handful of months, America will become

unrecord noticeable. And so as we watch what is taking place in in the Ukraine with shock and with horror, understand that it is possible, more than possible, that soon the rest of the world will be watching America with the same terror, watching as our streets fill with terrified citizens who have never had to have a plan of where to go and how to get out of harm's

way before, outside of preparing for national disasters. What do you think happens if Republicans part of their master plan is to get all of the truckers, all of the ex military, all of the x and active military and law enforcement in this country to gather and to start to take siege of cities that are controlled right by blue state governors. That they start little by little to occupy certain areas, that being the first step. And we say, oh,

but they have a freedom to protest. But we don't understand. We're not really paying attention to the bigger picture. You see, these people have been activated. Donald Trump activated them in twenty sixteen. The insurrection in twenty twenty one emboldened them. Almost a year and a half later, we're looking around for accountability and I see none, which emboldens them even further because now they know where to tighten up, in how to tighten up. These people are ready for war?

Are you? Because I know that I'm not. As I lay in bed last night and I think to myself, holy shit, what if I were to wake up tomorrow and there were air sirens going off? Do we even have air sirens in New York? Was followed by my second thought, where would I be going? My family lives on Long Island, in actual fucking island, right, That doesn't

help us navigate and move out of anywhere. Where would you go if in the middle of the night, at three to four in the morning sirens were going off and you knew, well, it's not a tornado and it's I see the stars and it's not a hurricane coming. What the fuck is that? You turn on the news, you look at your phone, and alert after alert after alert is coming in that there's been a takeover, that there's been a siege. What are you packing? Is your car if you have one, as it filled with gas?

Do you have cash stored away in your home? In the event that Russia has waged a cyber attack like the one we saw with the pipelines, which a couple of months ago, I said to myself, Holy shit, pipelines can be hacked. Everything can be hacked. So you think that we're here and we're secure and all of us. Now you're going out to the corner store to your local bank and there are a legions of people thinking

and trying to do the same goddamn thing. And now the bank has run out of money and they're turning people away. So you hop in your car and you go and you start going, but you don't know what direction to go in, Where is safe? What does safety look like? This is what is happening right now all over Ukraine. This is what has been happening in countries we don't even care about. There's been a war waging in Ethiopia for the last several months, tens of thousands

of people have died. We hear nothing. I sit here and I'm following the news, and I am thinking to myself, is this the beginning of the actual end? When it was World War Two? In the beginning, did people know? Were there folks that had a sinking feeling? Because those were the people that fled early, that began to see the writing on the wall and started to see the closing in. And then there were the others that couldn't possibly imagine picking up and going where to do? What?

We are about to have yet another refugee crisis in this world. Every several months we have another refugee crisis. We just just we're on the news where the ticker switch out fucking Ukraine and put in Afghanistan. Twenty years of quote unquote democracy in Afghanistan and it fell in twenty two fucking hours. Do we think that sanctions alone as severe as we think that they are. Do we think that that is going to stop a madman that has had a vision in his mind for the last

three decades. Do we think that Putin hasn't anticipated what cut off from the world's resources would do. This. Motherfucker is sitting on multiple oligarchs right with a combination of hundreds a collective of hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention whatever other backdoor deals this motherfucker has been making and planning. President Biden was asked yesterday in the press conference, do you think there are more countries that Putin has in mind? Do you think that he's going

after more than the Ukraine? Biden didn't stutter, He didn't even blink. He said, yes, he is coming for it all. And there are forces within each of the places that he is going to pick off where he has reinforcements, hundreds of billions at your disposal with probably talk to the oligarchs that you can return to greatness. I will restore your legacy and your power. He is their great white hope. Because this isn't just about a power grab, It is about what kind of power grab this is.

It is a white domination power grab. It is about a cleansing of who he deems to be a little in his way, not up to his ideals of just the right type of person. Now, it may not be akin to Hitler's Aryan Dreams and Vision but it's sure as fuck is white, and it's sure as fuck is about the right kind of white. He's spreading the lies about, oh, we need to go into the Ukraine because we need to scrub out the Nazis. What they're doing genocide. Point

to it. Where's it happening? Show us the evidence. You have these brave people in Russia yesterday, hundreds of them, thousands of them flooding into the streets to protest because they see the Ukrainians as their brother. Why why are we fighting our brother? We are family. Millions of Ukrainians live in Russia. Thousands were arrested. Do you know what they do to protesters in Russia? It ain't great, It ain't you know, the plastic on the risk like we

see here. It isn't even like mild tear gas. Not to say that tear gas is mild. But you know, we have laws, or at least some people have laws in this country. We know that definitely. Other people don't fucking abide by them. But they are laws to how, at least right now, how we treat people that protest. But you know that those red state governors like Desantists said welcome, drive over them. We'll make sure you're not prosecuted. Donald Trump said, beat the hell out of reporters. I'll

pay your legal fees. They are careening towards authoritarianism with right. They don't want any dissent because then they're going to start to label those that have dissent as what enemies of the state. And when they have the gavel back, all the gavels back, what do you think they're going to do with them. They're going to beat our democracy to death and ensure that anyone that pops up as a revolutionary, as an activist, as a leader is scrubbed out.

This is where this is heading. So we can't look and watch what is happening in the Ukraine as if it's a movie, right, something that couldn't possibly happen here. It's like World War Z. No, it's not. It's not a video game. It's not a movie. It's the real life consequences of what happens when we don't stop the enemies, when we have a chance, when we don't actually know who our enemies are, we are in danger. There is

no other way to relay that. We all, the collective, we, the global we who believe in democracy are in danger because I'm starting to feel like a global minority in terms of my feeling about government foreign by the people. If America falls, every other smaller democratic nation falls with it.

And when I hear reporters and analysts say that with next week's State of the Union that the president has to find a way to tell the American people why democracy is important, all I can think about is how our public school system has been a complete and total failure. If you don't understand why this is so important, we haven't told you why. We haven't taught you about why we've only beat into you rugged individualism. We haven't talked

about the collective we. You don't learn about the collective we. You get told tales and stories about America's exceptionalism and greatness, but you don't get taught about what would happen if America's story wasn't actually true, and if we were more susceptible to fascism then was led on that over the past several decades, that there has been an erosion of our civil liberties and rights, and that that erosion then has been manipulated and used by our enemies. You know,

the other news that broke that's not getting play. Eight Chinese aircrafts in Taiwanese airspace. Now, eight doesn't seem like a big number, but it was a big enough number for Taiwan to go on high alert and wonder if this was the beginning of a move that China was going to try and make to you know, grab power back. And I said to myself as I saw that tweet come across my timeline, I said, oh shit, what if this really is a coordinated effort? What if the thoughts

of some foreign affairs experts are what happens? If there is actually a coordinated effort between Russia and China. You help me over here, I help you over there. We can split the world in half. It's not a movie, folks. This is not clear in present danger. I mean, we are in clear and present danger. But I think that we have gotten so caught up with watching things play out across the world while we go about our daily lives that we don't see how interconnected we all are.

The only way that we ever get up in arms about how we are interconnected is when we actually feel the economic right downfall of what is happening in another country. Did you know that Russia is the biggest producer of oil next to the Middle East. If there is some type of death nail that happens to Russia's oil production, that beyond our barrels being at one hundred dollars a barrel for oil right now, that they could skyrocket out

of control. That they are all ready as reported by CNN, four states right now that are seeing oil prices at

four dollars a fucking gallon. This is one of the reasons why the Green New Deal was popular because you see, if you eliminate, if you eliminate our need for crude oil and dependency on these authoritarian regimes, and we find other sources of power like solar and wind, then then we eliminate their ability to be able to manipulate us and we don't fall into economics bare when they fall, and that they can't use right that power source as a way to push us off of their escalation and aggression.

Do we get that, No, because it's not spelled out in that way. It's like, oh, look at those lefties over there that want to hug trees and you know, drink fresh water and breathe clean air. It's not like, oh, look, you mean, if we're not attached to the tit of fucking Saudi Arabia and Russia and we're not all continuing to drive around these gas guzzlers, that then they can't

manipulate and control us in the same way. This is what I say, This is what I mean when I say that things are all connected and that we need to stop looking at these issues in silos, because Putin shure as fuck isn't Republicans certainly are not. The thing that they both have in cotton in common Putin and Republicans is their long game. And the question that I

have is what is the Democrats long game? What is their vision, what is their want and desire, and what are they willing to do to sacrifice in order to fucking get it? Right now, we're scrambling around about the next couple of months heading up to midterms, and the next couple of months after that heading up to the twenty twenty four presidential election. What about twenty thirty four right and beyond? Because we need somebody, a team of somebody's with the same type of fucking vision and focus

that Putin has. That's on our side, the side of democracy, the side of the people, the side of equity, the side of freedom, But right now I don't see any and that is what is scaring the shit out of me. Now, dear friends, for your woke moment of wellness. It has been a heavy, heavy, heavy week. At every turn. The headlines have been wild as fuck. War doesn't stop over the weekend, neither do our anxieties abate themselves. I need us to start focusing on how what is our plan?

Our plan to get through the dark times that we know are ahead of us, because there is no denying now the direction that things in this world, in this country are headed. I need us to start preparing for that emotionally, physically, spiritually. Right I laid out in the show things that have started to pop into my mind, like what are our plans if everything goes left? Do you have one? We should start to think about what

those are meaning. If you were to wake up in the middle of the morning with air raid sirens going off, where are you going? What are you doing? How are you protecting your family? This is not me being hyperbolic. This is me wanting to ensure that we start thinking outside of our very narrow boxes about how we operate. I have had a huge knot in the back of my shoulder. As the week has progressed, I am taking some time this weekend to go see a massuse because

I can. In the time being, what do you need? Those are the things that we need to start thinking about. What do you need? Who is on your wellness team to help keep you grounded, keep you sane but also practical. There will be people around you who will think that you're crazy because they want a need to live into nial. Denial is not safety, It is dangerous. So what do you need in order to strengthen your body to still

your mind. For some people, it is preparing in any way that they can to just get control and a hold of things. Maybe it's just making sure that you have a little bit more cash in your home than you normally would, just in case. Maybe that is the first baby step. Maybe it is checking in on your friends and your family and maybe setting up a WhatsApp chain. Right what happens if how are you able to communicate? If systems go down? Little things that help squell our anxiety.

We can't predict the future, but we sure as fuck can follow patterns. So, dear friends in this woke moment of wellness. I say, do what is going to be necessary for you to begin to think and action and put action behind your safety, your emotional safety, your physical safety. That is it for me today. Folks. If you have other ideas, tips, tricks and things that you are doing so that you can stay woke and well, please do drop them in the comment section. I will be right

back here on Monday morning. You all stay woke and be well. That is it for me today, Folks, on woke f daily as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.