Hanging On By a Thread

them as Americans. Tommy Tuberville is sixty eight fucking years old, so I would really love it if mainstream media would stop giving these motherfuckers the benefit of the out as if Tommy Tuberville is in elementary school and is just learning these topics for the first fucking time. He is not.

And it is the same way that I had to listen during the entirety of Trump's disastrous administration from people like Susan Collins and others that say that Donald Trump will quote grow into the position, are we fucking dumb? Like it is this idea of perpetual adolescence that white men are given in this country. Oh you're sixty something, you're seventy something, you're eighty something. Oh they don't know, they'll learn. Give me a fucking break. It is intellectually

dishonest at best and gaslighting at fucking worse. By chasing people down like Tommy Tuberville and asking them to define statements that were very fucking clear, run with what it is that they said, instead of trying to get them to backtrack on what it is that you know that they believe, and then to boot Tommy Tuoperville's backtracking on his white nationalist or American statement was well, I was a football coach, so I dealt with more minorities than

a lot of people. You dealt with like slave masters dealt with enslaved Africans. Get the fuck out of here. It is just so wild to me the way that journalists just refuse to take these people at their word and print the fucking truth. Tommy Tuberville is a racist, and he's a fucking terrorist right now in the Senate as he holds up confirmations for the military because he doesn't want women in the military to be able to

have access to abortions. I am so tired of them talking about activism when this is the kind of terrorism that they are doing. What does it say folks about our government. When you can have one fucking senator hold up an entire fucking agency, it means it's broken. And those are the conversations that we should be having on

a regular basis. And instead of oh, Tommy Tuberville backtracks on his fucking white nationalist beliefs, it should be Tommy Tuberville believes that white nationalists are Americans that should have the ability to join the military. It is bullshit. The Republican Party is the white nationalist party. If you are

a Republican you support white nationalism, plain and simple. You attack LGBTQ people, you attack black people, you attack indigenous people, you attack women, you attack people of color, you attack Muslims. That is the protocol of the Republican Party. And to say or print anything to the contrary is a fucking lie. It is not neutrality. I'm just so tired of mainstream media. I'm so tired of this party. I'm so tired of

them making it so easy to run against them. And yes, Democrats are trying to figure out what their fucking messaging is. If you thought, folks that the twenty twenty election was the most consequential election of our time, I don't even know what to refer to twenty twenty four as, but it is literally the battle between good and evil, right and wrong, authoritarianism and democracy. This country is not just backsliding.

We are hanging on by a fucking thread. And for folks that say, oh, well, Biden's age, I don't give a fuck of Biden as one hundred and fifty. If that man still has breath in his body and that is who the fucking nominee is, then that is who we're voting for, plain and fucking simple. Because the alternative, whether it's Donald Trump or DeSantis or fucking Haley or Pence or any other of those Republican fucking clowns, the alternative is fascism and white nationalism. That is it.

I am so excited to welcome back after a very long break, our friend UH in house doctor doctor Jonathan Methel. Back to WOKF Jonathan, it has been a long time since we've chatted. I would love to say that things in America have gotten surprisingly better since you've been gone. They haven't. But I want to start off with the fact that you know, over the holiday, the fourth of July holiday, that a lot of people celebrated. You know, I just chose to drink by a pool because it's

a day off. But I'm not celebrating America. You know, there were countless shootings, right, some of which elevated to headline news, others did not. And I and I know that you've been traveling abroad a bit and and I wanted to get you know, just your read out on one, Why is it just that everyone is off, so everyone goes and grabs their guns over holidays? Like why the escalation in shooting happens during that time? Uh is number one?

And then two while you were traveling abroad, I know, speaking a lot about your your upcoming book and just your work around you know, gun violence, Like what is the perspective, what are you being what is being reflected back at you from the from people abroad in terms of how they are seeing America right now.

isn't working right now. People are still kind of reeling with the rise of fascism and a war of aggression like we haven't seen in really a very very long time, and climate instability everywhere, and so the whole, the whole world is reeling. You know. I go to the Middle

East a lot, and they're up ended. So but I will say that there's something so particular about guns in America that you even if the whole world's on fire, they're still going to like stop for a minute and say, and what the hell is wrong with what the hell's wrong with America, and and and and definitely I got that the most around around the shootings on the fourth July, I've actually been doing a fair bit of British media.

I did a piece in The Guardian and I have a piece coming out in The Independent about this because I just got contacted because everybody was like, hey, look, this is your national holiday. What the hell is going on here? And so it was, on one hand, pretty remarkable was happening around what was a long Fourth of July weekend. Remember we had everybody. Everybody kind of took off like six weeks before and after for Fourth of July.

But but I will say that it was it was it was hot, it was you know, muggy, and it was the opening line for my Independent piece is Americans celebrated the Fourth of July house holiday in the most American way possible by ducking for cover because.

just the high profile mass shooting. That's not all the other shootings that we probably had on that weekend too, about you know, suicide and partner violence and all the other stuff and stuff. So what I said is, in a way, the fourth of July shooting is a reflection of America right now, that this is our national autobiography, this is the world we live in. And there are I think are particular reasons. Right in the summer, people

are out, they're socializing together, they are getting conflict. It's muggy, they're irritable. People are also I mean, they just have more time to shoot each other around holiday weekends. And also I think particularly around fourth of July, there's symbolism about out. You know, there are fireworks and things exploding and grudges and remember lest year we had a shooting at a parade in Illinois, and so there are particular

things about Fourth of July. But I would also say that the numbers on fourth of July weren't that different from the numbers for the June or for you know, the month before that, And so in a way just it just becomes kind of what we've got. And part of the story is about a reflection of American trauma, and another story is about our complete inability, our complete inability to work together to address something that is a threat to all of us.

They wanted to take their kids down to you know, a little like kid parade that was happening in their town, and I was terrified, you know, I was terrified to go.

And I just I want to lift up what you just said, like with regard to the collective trauma, right like parades, outdoor concerts, movie, you know, outdoor movies like these are things that people look forward to and socialize around during the summer, and these are the places that are most terrorized during the summer, and so can you just speak to like this collective trauma and the fact that we continue to move through it, right, And also like how other people like you said that you're doing

a lot of writing, you know, with with you know, with regard to the British press, how they are looking at us, like does the rest of the world. Just like because I have not traveled abroad probably in a year, and one of the things I like to do is just you know, I like to talk to the drivers. I like to talk to the people that are you know, working and and get a sense of like what their views are on you know, on America as well as you know, on the country that I happen to be in,

because I think that it's very raw. But like, talk to us about this collective trauma and how we kind of just pick up and move through it.

I remember around Sandy Hook I was on Fox News all the time, and they were like, oh my god, what can we do to fix this? And people were marching down the street. Member there were all those huge marches in midtown here in New York. And so I think part of the story here is just a threat to our existence that is met with a complete lack of trust in our political system to fix it or

address it, or even meaningfully engage it. And I think that's really part of the story here is you know, partially in the piece if it ever gets published, you never know what kind of edits they're going to make. But I say the framework of Fourth of July is like a celebration of you know, life, liberty, the pursuit

of happiness, and what kind of liberty you have. I interview all these parents who who say that they're avoiding block parties and not letting their kids go to firecrackers because you don't know what is a firecracker and what is a gun? A gunshot, and so in a way, the impingement on our liberty of thinking you might or somebody you love might be the next statistic of a mass casualty event is really a real effect on our own liberty. Right. We're affecting our freedom, our ability to move.

And I don't think a lot of people with respect are really soothed by the idea of we'll just take a gun and you can fire back. It just doesn't work that way. That you know, it's very clearly a ridiculous response, and so in a way, it's just it impacts daily life and daily death and death in our country in a real way. But I guess the other part, having done this research my book in January talks about this more is I've interviewed a lot of gun owners

who want reform. Also, even in the piece, I interview some gun owners who say, look, I'm a gun owner, but what we have now is insane. And so it's not like it's like a Democrat versus Republican issue totally. I mean, it is because of who gets elected, but it's also there are these things that just seem really basic common sense across the rest of the world. Background checks, registering insurance liability, all the things you would do for a car, and you can't even do those really basic things.

And in fact, our Supreme Court right now is poised to make things considerably worse with a case they're going to hear next year. I can't even believe they're going to hear this about whether someone convicted of domestic Yes, And so in a way, it's just really, this is really what minority rule means. It's not just about like imposing the will of five percent of the people and everybody else. It's also not letting people work together to

solve problems. When left in a room together, they could find I think some reasonable compromise positions.

be able to get their right to vote back. But if you beat somebody, you can get your gun back.

there's no limitation whatsoever. And I think Kathy Hoschel had a pop ed in the New York Times about this or has one coming up, and other people are writing about it. But it's it's just a weird. It's a weird world we live in right now.

People are in shock. I have a lot of friends here who it's like America is going down the tubes, and so we're moving to Portugal. A lot of people are moving to Portugal.

of our lifetime. The twenty twenty four election really is the most important election of our lifetimes because America can reset the clock on this stuff, or we can go down that same path. And I just feel like if the American election goes to the far right, that is, that's just going to tip everything else over in a way, and also of course enable Putin and all these guys. So anyway, but your question was about the UK, and

I will say there. I mean, if you just walk down the street in the UK, and if you want an example of like what the hell's going on in America, you'll find it anywhere. Everybody's like what the hell's going on in America? But I will say that there were there was a lot of like I mean across Europe, how do we play pay for social programs? How do we pay for healthcare? How do we pay for retirement? How come conservatives are rising back up in our own governments?

And so I just think there's a model of liberalism that is, and I'd be curious your sense about this, there's a model of liberalism that just not responding to the to the rights of fascism. In other words, like I think the europe model that I've seen is like like, look at France, you know, trying to raise like France is going broke basically because of immigration and raising the raising the retirement age and all these kind of things.

And the model of kind of liberal socialism can't pay for I can't pay for what they're doing in a way. And so I just feel like liberalism is not an answer to fascism right now, or we need a better answer. I don't know. That's my sense of Europe. That's a very broad answer. I realized.

Bill Clinton was a centrist. Biden is a centrist. Right, So I'm not quite sure when we talk about liberalism, we've never seen that in action, not in this country.

by funding the military? It's like, it's not it's not clear, right, There are all these there are all these issues where I just think, I just think what it means to be a liberal is is it's much easier to be a fascism right now because it gives you like easy answers, even if they're fake, which is like trust and authoritarians. But it's I don't know, I'm not doing a very job of articulating this, but it does feel like what

does it mean to be a liberal right now? Is something that I just felt a lot of resonance between like things I've been thinking and what I was talking about with people in the UK.

It would be oh, looking at the fact that as a globe, we have had the hottest days on record since we have been measuring the fucking temperature on this planet in the last week, it would look like an emergency meeting being pulled together of all of the world leaders to actually not just put together a paper plan, but an actual fucking plan about how we're going to

combat climate change in a real way. That is affecting everyone right now, not just people in America, not just the wildfires in Canada, not just you know, flooding that

is happening in Europe. That it is affecting everyone, And this is like an emergency meeting, right What does it look like to pull together again the world leaders to say, we have a real issue in terms of the rise of fascism and authoritarianism in this country, on this planet, and if we are serious about advancing democracy and we're serious about advancing human rights, then as a collective, we need to come up with a plan that is about us as globe citizens that can also be be implemented

in each of our countries, right, like, like, to me, that's not a liberal idea. It's actually looking at the fucking problems that are in front of us, instead of pretending that they're not there, or wasting time in arguments with people trying to define what we know is already happening.

right now? Because, like, I agree with everything you just said, but I would also say that that requires a functioning government. And we have a government right now where like Tommy is like, is like holding up the whole government based on a social agenda about wokeism is underwining like promotions of people in the military, and and that's happening all across the government. People are are I mean, are we

have a government of petulance right now? And he's definitely the worst defender, but there are plenty of people who are doing that. And so in a way what you've suggested is right, but it also requires like functioning governance. So I just think we should also think like where is working, Like, let's is there something we can emulate about where is where is working?

way that we could have never imagined would happen. After World War Two, after what after what we have all collectively seen and known and have America potentially pee part of that access of evil. If this next election goes the way of the Republicans, that is exactly what will happen.