I Don't Like Biden.

That there are signs, whether they're coming through our judiciary with alien cannon deciding aph you know what, we're not going to actually do this court case with the documents. You know, we have so many pre trial things to do, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit that the Supreme Court is signaling that, you know, maybe a president should have immunity because you know, how else did the other forty four presidents before this criminal

last one forty five? How did they all manage? So I think that what we are seeing, and the reason why I get so just beside myself for lack of a better word, is because every sign points to the end of America as we know it. Every sign points to the end of our democracy as we know it. We have a genocide that is raging on seven months plus close to forty thousand people dead, including fifteen thousand and counting children, Biden has decided to side with a homicidal,

homicidal maniac. Like I say, homicidal over and over again, just to you know, run the point home. They have no desire in Israel, the government to have a two state solution to stop this war, to come to any negotiation, because you can't negotiate with terrorists, and what they want is to wipe out the Palestinian people. And Joe Biden

is right on their side. And so, like I have been saying all week long, which is that we are faced with is Sophie's choice, right, this idea that whatever the choice that we make, it's going to be painful. And I think that that's where I want to really focus this morning on, which is that I think that we have been set up to believe that we only get to make good choices, that we only get to do the things that make us feel good. And what I am realizing and what I am grappling with myself,

is that that's not the case. Right this time around. We don't get to feel good like we did in two thousand and eight, in twenty twelve, right the days of feeling good and excited about who we're electing, I

think are gone. I think that for the next several cycles, if we're able to make it out of this one and Donald Trump manages somehow not to become president, giving all of the cards that are stacked against Biden, all of the cards that he has fucking stacked against himself, if we're able to make it through this cycle, I think that the next several are going to be a lot like this last one, meaning that we're not going

to love the candidates. But what we need to make sure and I think that the most important thing to understand is whether or not they respect the Constitution of the United States, whether or not they are going to uphold democracy, and where they stand on issues of the social safety net and entitlements, where they stand on the environment, on education, on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, on LGBTQ equality, on racial justice, and really drill those things down. But

are we going to fall in love? No, we're not. And I think that where I am with the decision at hand in the next couple of months is that I don't like Biden. I don't I think that I have completely soured on him given his staunch support for Israel and the fact that they are going to erase Palestinian people their homeland from the map, and America is

going to be complicit in that. And five and ten years from now, when we look back at what was caused, I think that Biden's entire legacy, if in fact we have history at that time, will be tarnished beyond measure. I think that his decision to put Israel above everything else has made me really understand the binds and the power of white supremacy, and that, you know, you can do a little bit of good, but that doesn't erase

a whole lot of bad. So you can, you know, decide to reschedule marijuana, you can decide to you know, reduce student loan debt. You can decide to work on climate change and infrastructure issues. But if at the end of the day, your democracy and your understanding of quality and justice stops at the borders of the United States,

then I don't want to fuck with you. Like That's that's where I am right knowing that I am going to vote for Joe Biden because a vote for Donald Trump would be a vote to put myself in a camp, would be a vote for my own extermination and those that I love in the communities that I care about, am the part of and have been fighting for my entire professional career. But am I happy about that decision. Am I going to gleefily, wear a T shirt, put up a sign and put my fist in the air

for Joe Biden? Absolutely fucking not. I will do what needs to be done, and I hope that a lot of people out there will do the same, will hold their nose, will, you know, wash it down with some listerine afterwards, and we can deal with and fight and push, you know, following that election. But right now, I'm not going to be excited about it, and no one's gonna make me feel excited about it. But I'm gonna do what needs to be done. And I think that that's

where all of us need to get to. That sometimes we're not making choices that we feel great about, that we're jumping up and down about, that we're writing home about. Sometimes the choices that we make are just tough and they suck. And that is I guess what it means to adult in twenty twenty four or in a climate that doesn't produce a bevy of politicians offer you to choose from, and the choices are really slim. Coming up next, my conversation with our friend, our in house doctor, doctor

Jonathan Metzel. We're talking about an article that he has out now about what happens to Israel if they adopt the gun laws and policies that we have in this country. It's a difficult conversation because we're in a difficult space this week, folks, but you know we are going to continue to push through because that's what we do. We take breaks so that we don't have breakdowns. We turn off the news, we turn into ourselves and into those that we care about, and we just keep on keeping on.

Some weeks are better than others. This week just ain't it for me? Coming up next, our friend Jonathan Metzell. Folks, you know that whenever we have the chance to speak with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, we are always grateful. And today we are digging into an article that Jonathan did in Zokolo Public Square, an essay entitled

what could American style gun culture do to Israel? Jonathan give us the high level points of how Israel's gun control has been different very different from the United States, and why there is a shift that has happened.

a lot of people who were there. And so before before I say that, and I'm going to be answer that question, I just want to say, you know, I've always thought this, but I hope, I hope we've I hope, God damn it, we've hit the bottom right now, and that the next time we talk, by the next next week, this moment of what I feel like is strategic disaster, personally and moral disaster. It has turned into a change of direction. So let me just first say that and

then I'll talk about the article. But we're we're recording this on a really, really hard moment, and having been on the phone with a lot of people, I know that a lot of people to share that sentiment. And so now for me, I've been I've been collaborating with public health colleagues. As you know, for well over a decade now, I've worked with physicians for human rights Israel Palestine.

For I mean we were looking back there day like fifteen years now or something like that, and so done a lot of work on violence reduction, mostly in southern Israel and the West Bank. And it was before this current intent now who government, a kind of vibrant organization that combined Israeli and Israeli Palestinian doctors, social workers, nurses,

other healthcare providers to try to limit gun reform. And the irony for me was before this current government, Israel was a model of you know, Americans like me went to Israel. We would have conferences there to see like why is there so little gun death civilian gun death in a way, and so there's no Second Amendment in Israel. There there were really really tight laws, assault weapons bans, all these kinds of things. And so Israeli public health

was a model for gun reform before this government. And then this right wing government took over and immediately they started pulling out the NRA playbook. They started giving out guns, mostly to settlers in the West Bank, but also in urban areas to form these crazy police squads. So they adopted the NRA playbook, and the essay was basically, what happens to the moral soul of a country when you

start arming mostly right wing people? And what we see kind of what I argue in the piece is that it's actually harder to make peace when you haven't armed a bunch of right wing zealots on your side. And so part of what we're seeing globally as a reflection of the internal politics of Israel. So it was definitely

not an easy piece to write. I've spent the past six months interviewing tons and tons and tons of people on all sides of this, but I do think that there is an issue which doesn't seem urgent today, but it is a bigger issue that I think will need to be addressed about the internal politics of Israel and how the nintenda who is marginalized public health and the left in ways that I think are really disastrous.

shared responsibility. Can you speak to that a bit about the difference in the individualization that we have here of let's say, the castle doctrine and stand your ground and this individualized idea of protecting myself in my property versus what was a shared responsibility in Israel.

something like that. That was that's not part of the ethos, and so gun training for people was part of this exercise of like, we're defending our country. So it was a very plural narrative. But in terms of the internal politics of Israel, the idea was basically, we're all looking out for each other, and we don't need guns because we have institutions, the police and other things that protect us, and so there's no need for guns in a civilian context and there were no laws that let people have

guns in civilian contexts for the most part. Now, as I write in the piece, that's not totally true. There were gun markets in Israeli Palestinian towns, and there were a lot of guns that were stolen from the military and sold there and things like that, but for the most part, guns were seeing. The narrative was a plural narrative. It wasn't an individual narrative. There's no individual right to bear arms or anything like that. They didn't have that,

and it led to this sense. I mean, the two most powerful stories for me and why I wrote the piece. The first was, I think it was like twenty fifteen. I was speaking at a conference there and the NRA had sent a delegation of NRA people come over and try to spur because they thought Israel was a great gun market, and so they sent over all these NRAA people donors, and they toured around and they started touting

American style gun laws. You know, carry a gun, you don't know, castle doctor, and all this stuff, and they were almost effectively kind of laughed out of town. This conference I was at had a lot of the leading public health and doctors, and they were like, man, you Americans are crazy, like we don't need guns in civilian life at all. And so the NA came over totally not understanding the Israeli context and it was so foreign, like, of course, we're we don't need this, you guys are

They called it American michu gos, like American craziness. And another instance was there was the Parkland mass shooting here and Mike Huckabe just happened to be in Israel at the time, visiting, and he tweeted when he was there, I'm in Israel and there's no mass shootings here because everybody has a gun, and people there's a hyperlink in my piece one of the first two paragraphs. People pounced on him and they were like, dude, this isn't the

US at all. We don't have your crazy second Amendment. We don't have mass shootings here because we have responsible

gun laws. And so every time somebody would try to make this argument that we're the US, that is, you know, like the US the whole place would and I invite people to like click on that link because it's really interesting, the response is that was like, we don't have your insanity here, and then the Nitaniaho government got elected and then they started handing out guns and overturning all the

gun laws and stuff like that. And so part of the argument for me, which is tied to my work in my book, also is that got loose gun laws are a way to destabilize functioning democracies. The minute nitania Who started arming his supporters, there was a threat to liberals who then thought maybe we need guns also, And so you end up dividing a country and rupturing these these national narratives.

you know, I'm in the midst. I was telling Andrew, my producer, that I'm behind the times because I am in the midst of reading the Shock Doctrine right now by Naomi Klein and understanding that, you know, when you have moments of catastrophe, whether it be man made or natural catastrophe or exacerbated natural catastrophe, which is what is happening with climate change, you have very eager politicians that want to use those moments in order to push through

an agenda. And similarly, with nine to eleven in the United States, and how we ended up ushering in the Patriot Act, which gave away our freedom and allowed for the United States to overtly begin to surveil American people for our own safety. Net Nyahu has used October seventh, this devastating day in Israeli history, to push through gun laws.

Can you speak to that? And Ben Gavir and like this whole idea of kind of using this horrible moment, using the fear that then was brought up in this horrible moment, to then push through a very radicalized gun agenda.

I mean, they've got a year head start on everybody in terms of millions of people being out in the street. Before October they were protesting the judicial reform. The quote unquote reform, the takeover of the judiciary that the minute Nittanyahu basically was out of office, disgraced, facing possible and

jail time for crimes. And then he pulled together a coalition of people who themselves would never have gotten into the coalition, like totally radical people who by themselves were not going to be part of any other coalition, but they had a lot to gain by being He gave basically people power who were totally totally radical on the right, and part of the deal was that then when they got in power, they could do all this radical stuff to basically do the Israeli version of own the Libs.

And so they started taking over the judiciary, limiting the power of the Supreme Court, which had been a moderating force in Israel against a lot of the extremism, doing a lot of just every day stuff, like all these crazy religious laws that nobody really thought would ever happen. You know, you can't have your place open on Saturday, and girls can't stand with boys in public, like all

this stuff that were totally totally the radical fringe. But because he had mobilized this coalition that became the power structure, and part of The issue that I think is important to recognize is that it's not like there's a moral voice of like I'm not going to stand for this, because everybody in that coalition the minute the minute that coalition falls, they are not only not in power, they're probably criminally liable for some of the things that are

happening now and so in a way, so in a way, the government potentially is not going to fall by itself. It's very hard to fracture this coalition because it's like a confederation of I was calling it before it could federation of dunsas, but I would use a different word right now. And so the issue is this coalition is like all these people who are clinging to power, and the minute that topples, they are all in big trouble. So it's funny because like I used to admire a

coalition system, it's not our two party system. But you can see how in the age of fascism that system can be hijacked. Also, that's what I think what we're seeing in Israel, that in a way that system can be hijacked against the will of the people also, and so I know there's tons of just profound rage and rightfully,

so right now. But I just want to highlight that a lot of the people across Israel are also in the streets protesting because they've been trying to top all this government before October, and then October this moment of like I mean, that's kind of what I show in the piece, is that the power of emergency authority is really powerful and it gives the right to circumvent all of these civil liberties and so not ironically, it's not just about guns. People that these protests are being surveiled.

There's all this government surveillance. They're being targeted. I have a lot of links in the piece to a lot of sources that talk about that as well, and so in a way, I wrote this piece in part in part to give rise to the Israeli protest movement that has been there before, but also kind of as a warning because the reflection of what people in the Middle East have faced and what we could potentially be facing.

It's just it's a playbook that is one that is I find really terrifying, which is that a lot of the institutions and structures, like Israel's gun laws, as an example, that we've assumed our eternal can be hacked by this playbook.

by right wing fascists. And so as the people of Israel are out in the streets, as I saw before I came on, have been protesting, what voice do they have right now to combat this other than going into the street, But there is no change.

this final election that got this coalition into power. Liberals they don't have the same categories as we do, so liberals kind of meant something different. But the left voted roughly the same as they always had. But the right saw the fracture of the left as an opportunity to seize power and quote unquote on Libs, and so they

voted in record numbers. They behind the scenes had been mobilizing all of this voter drive and stuff like that, and so the left voted about sixty percent roughly, but the right voted like seventy three percent, which had never happened before, because they saw this as a chance to once and for all make Israel a much more right wing religious state. And the day after that election, it was like kind of like our version of Trump. Every

people were people were in shock. They were in total shock, and they're like, oh my god, this my life is over. I know a lot of friends of mine moved out of the country. The ones who stayed, I think were right about what was going to happen to their to their civil liberties. And so at the point then of being out of power, their best response. I mean, people like people's grandmothers have been in the street every single day,

people quit their jobs to protest. People are been stopping traffic and lighting fires and and I guess the question is, what could they have done different? In retrospect, they could have voted more than their opponents before. I think being out of power is terrifying, given the forces you can mobilize when they're in power now. And I say that thinking of us also so foreshadowing with these shitty ass

choices we have right now. But I'll just say that thinking of us also, it's kind of like when I interview people and I say what can you do different? And they tell me, I wish I could go back to the day before the election and have twenty people. I know, because it seemed like I had no choice. But actually, if you want no choice, that's what I actually have right now.

doing that next week. There are a couple of podcast interviews and things, and so I think Jonathan, we should probably like share them out on social for the one before we record, So if you're not following myself or Jonathan at this point, you should, and then we'll link in the show description, we'll link to the articles that we were discussing on that day, and you know.