Mushroom Cloud of Hate

You know, for the last couple of years, I swear to God that I have wanted a time machine so that I could go back and choose a different career, choose a different path, and just tell my younger self, you know, maybe public service, maybe educating the public, you know, being in politics, wanting to change policy and do all those things. Maybe don't do it. Maybe go make money, you know, because apparently greed is still fucking good right

in this country. But seriously, the other day, I was in conversation as I normally am with, you know, I was hanging out with friends who are you know, civil rights leaders and activists and you know, and just talking about this moment, you know, and how we are finding ourselves in a place of just utter distress and despair. And there are a lot of folks who are feeling utterly and completely burnt out and who are in the

process of thinking about what's next. And I say that not to say, like, you know, just give up and quit, but I also do want to honor the fact that this work has become really horrible, like for mental health, the inundation of just bad news, regressive policies, ignorance, it's like the algorithm of anger, right, this hate wave that has taken the country by a chokehold. There was a show on NBC. I think it was NBC. I don't fucking know because I don't really watch TV, but there

was a show that was called The Dome. I think you all will tell me in the comments section if I'm messing it up, But there was a show that was called like the Dome, and somehow there was like this sci fi show. There was this big dome that comes up over like the world or town. And that's how I feel about America right now, that there's like this hate dome, right, you know, when we're in those like horrible heat humidity indexes and they're just like, there's

this heat dome over you know, the East Coast. I feel like there is a hate dome that is over the United States right now, and the heat and the pressure is just growing and mushrooming right in a way that like a nuclear bomb mushrooms right and goes off. And I am just at a space where I want everybody to put on their oxygen masks, but at the

same time break out of this shit. And the only way that we break out right of this mushroom cloud of fucking hate is to activate ourselves in everyone around us, Like this shit is not going away, like the Canadian fire, fucking yellow sky that happened this time last year in New York City where by the way, I couldn't go outside without a mask on because the sky was fucking yellow and like polluted beyond belief, which is going to become our norm. Side note, because you know climate change

and we're not doing anything about that. But this hate wave, this hate dome, is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. It is making good people right rethink their careers and want to figure out what an exit strategy is. And I don't fault folks, because people who signed up to do policy work, to be in politics, to elect good people to office, to represent their districts or their states or their school board or what have you, didn't sign up to be harassed, didn't sign up for

death threats. Didn't sign up for, you know, unrelenting hate mail. Didn't sign up to put their safety in the safety of their family, you know, at risk in order to do a public good. It's crazy, but that's the place that we find ourselves. I mean, you saw this this week, right, one of the stories that I didn't really bother covering, and it's just gonna make like a making a quick

mention of it. But Marjorie Taylor Green right, and her utter and complete disfucking respect for doctor Fauci, I mean, she made a fool of herself, right, as she does

because she's in Neanderthal. But like the fact that we're at a point in our politics where we can't even feign respect for people, right, Like, doctor Fauci is a doctor, whether or not you like his policies that kept Americans safe, while the president that you've pledged your allegiance to is responsible for the deaths of over five hundred thousand Americans. By the way, where the fuck are those hearings? Right?

If there had been a mask mandate that was put in place, as was stated by doctors as necessary, do you think that five hundred thousand Americans would have died within a year. I don't think so. Right, do you think that if we hadn't had a president that was telling people to shoot up bleach and lights into their ass that like that, many Americans would have died because of utter fucking criminal negligence on the part of the

Trump administration. But again, no fucking hearings that are being called on this, right, no investigations that are being called. This was not an act of God. It was an act of stupidity, right. It was an act of blatant negligence.

And once, by the way, once that administration knew who was being most adversely affected put in harm's way black and brown people who were the essential workers, right I use air quotes, then it was liberate Michigan and open up Florida and open up these places because somehow white people were going to be immune from COVID nineteen, which was not the fucking case, particularly in rural areas. When

you look at how far we have fallen. I just did an interview on my other podcast, The New Abnormal with The Daily Beast, and I was interviewing my friend and the CEO of the Misfoundation for Women, Teresa Younger, and Teresa's whole point is about activating right, activating women and girls and our allies to recognize that we are at war right, that we are actually in the fight

for our lives. That while people think that civil wars or wars in general are fought on a batter field or with bombs and tanks, like what is happening in Israel and Gaza, there are other wars, right wars around policy, wars, around rights on equity and justice and liberation. And that is what this Republican Party has been waging over the last decade plus right, but certainly over the last ten years.

And so when you take a look at this and then the shrugging that, I feel like the collective shrugging because people are exhausted. And I'm not saying that you don't have a right to be exhausted. We have been living in a place of trauma. Right. Over a million fucking people died of COVID and we pretend like it didn't happen. We were forced into our homes right, whole country shut down, and the trauma from that we don't

readily talk about. It's still in us. The fact that anything can change at any fucking moment, and we have absolutely no control over it. That the air being in and the close proximity we are pack animals was dangerous. And instead of us coming together as a country and that being a point of pride, right helping and loving thy neighbor, we turned on one another because of the

leadership that was put in place in this country. And so when there is a time where we should be reflecting on who we actually want to be and how we actually want to show up, do you want that four years of Donald Trump back and worse? You know, I don't think that people get what is happening and

what is at stake. And so I understand again when folks are like, I'm done with this, but I'm so grateful for people like Teresa Junger and the Misfoundation for women because they're like, no, we continue to declare that women and girls are our future and we are going to invest in them whether or not. The US Circuit Court of Appeals in the Eleventh District says that that is discriminatory. They are using the language that we created during the civil rights era in order to equal a

very unequal and white supremacist playing field against us. And so I continue to say, use what they do and do it better. These venture firms, these philanthropic organizations, they say they fund everybody. We're about patriotism and liberty and justice. They mean for white people that is the asterisk. They mean for white men, that is the asterist. You can apply to those venture firms, you can apply to those

you ain't going to get them right. And so I need for people who have access to resource, write in philanthropy or individual philanthropists to start moving the way that white men have been moving in this country in a self serving, fucking manner, and making sure right that your descriptions are so broad, but that your fucking targets and your strategy are clear, because these motherfuckers are coming for every goddamn advancement that has been made in the twentieth century.

They want that mushroom cloud of hate to not only take over the entire country, but take over the entire world and link up with Russia, and link up with fucking Hungry, and link up right with other dictators around the world until we're all suffocating under their hate. And in order for little SIPs of air, we have to get rid of our values and our morals and conform to their hateful ideology just to survive. That's not the kind of fucking world I want to live in, but

it is the world that we are headed to. You know, every other week it feels like I'm seeing headlines where people in France are out in the streets and fucking protesting. What was the last protest that we had in the United States? The Senate Republicans this week blocked the right

to contraception. It is twenty twenty fucking four. They have all the data and all the information, and you know what it says to them, women were able to access power and economic mobility outside of the confines of men once they had bodily autonomy. While we celebrate that fact, right, they have weaponized it and said we're putting women back

in their place. And the way that we do that is to roll back abortion, roll back contraception, and roll their asses right back into the kitchen, under lock and key of men. Where's the outrage, folks, where's the bursting into protest. I don't know what it's going to take for people who continue to say that they can't stomach voting for Joe Biden. Can you stomach living in the

nineteenth fucking century. Other news, Clarence Thomas recently said that he would like to revisit Brown versus the Board of Education. For those of you tuning in from home, Brown versus the Board of Education was the case that outlawed segregation in schools, that integrated schools. You know the picture of Ruby Bridges, who by the way, is only sixty something years old right now, being ushered into school by the

National Guard. That was the decision that began to integrate schools that Clarence Thomas would like to revisit just the same way that they revisited Roe v. Wade, the same way that they revisited affirmative action. So when we are saying Joe Biden's too old, I don't like his policies in Gaza, let me tell you something. I know. Joe Biden is old, and I don't like his policies that he's doing in Gaza. I don't like where our tax dollars are going, and I don't like what it's going

to fun. But what I fucking do know for sure is that I am not trying to relive or recreate the fucking nineteenth century and see how well I'll do as a black queer woman in fucking America not trying to have it. Actually, So for all of you that are willing to gamble, do you think that it's gonna look like Bridgerton, Because I'm gonna tell you it's fucking not. It's not gonna be cute and romand and like look

at our outfits and this that. No, it's gonna be brutal and nasty and dark and dystopian, just like Donald Trump's inauguration speech back in twenty seventeen. American carnage. Blood in the streets January sixth was a warm up because what they are unable to do electorally, they're gonna do militarily, trust and fucking believe. And I'm like, how many times do these motherfuckers need to show you who they are before we all recognize that we are at war and

under attack. That they're not moving within the confines of precedent and shared values around law and order and policies around human rights and dignity. They have an agenda that they are operationalizing at warp fucking speed. The rest of us is still sitting around in shock. How could this be happening? It is happening. Why because of complacency and neglect. You see, we assumed that once rights were won, that then they were, I don't know, somehow etched into marble,

never to be removed. That's not the case. Mitch McConnell knew this when he began stacking the courts. He knew this when he denied Barack Obama to see the Supreme Court justice right. So, folks, I don't know how to ring an alarm any louder than the one that I've been trying to ring every day since Okay f Daily came on the air in twenty seventeen. The whole premise behind this show was like, how the fuck did this

country go from Barack Obama to Donald Trump? But not only that, how did we live through a Trump four year administration where we saw Donald Trump court and celebrate white supremacists, lock children in cages and go to court to deny them basic hygiene by providing soap and toothpaste and shelter and food. He denied people the right to

protest and unleashed the police on them. But not on January sixth, just when they're protesting the brutal murder of George Floyd that we all watch while sitting at home in quarantine, where Donald Trump told us not to wear a mask and to light ourselves up with bleach. How do you look at this and there are people that are willing to say those were good times and I want to go back. The country was better. Look, those thirty percent of Americans are in a fucking cult. They

are locked and loaded in. To deny Donald Trump now would to be to admit that they have been had, that they have been bamboozled, that they have been fucking fools. Their pride and ego is not going to allow them to do that, so they're going to continue to double and triple down. I still believe that we are the majority. I still believe that there are more of us than there are of them. They're just louder. So where is our voice? Where is our power? Where is our presence?

We cannot continue to just show up every two and four years and think that we're gonna hold on to this thing called democracy. Not when these motherfuckers are going full throttle warp speed on regression every fucking day. We got to show up and be better, be sharper, be louder, and be more strategic than they are, because this is

not going to stop. There is not going to be another election where we get to vote and then dust their hands off and go back to sticking our heads in the fucking sand and thinking that somehow somebody's daddy got it. We have got to understand that from this moment on, the security of our democracy is our responsibility, and that means either deciding to run for office your goddamn self at local, state and federal level, supporting those that have shared values with you at the local, state

and federal level. That means that putting in judges and fucking das that we now understand are critical to our progress and critical to accountability. We have got to make the time because let me tell you something, the fucking gop oh, they got time, and right now it's on

their side. That is it for me today, dear friends, on this fucking Friday, I pray that you all are finding rest, are finding joy, are gardening, walking, dancing, spending time building community, doing the most to take care of your mental health. Because we are in this for the long haul. We cannot have people be burning out and quitting, so do what is necessary to keep yourselves in this fight. Also, remember, folks, the damn shop is indeed open at Daniellemoody dot com.

Do go over and get yourself some summer swag. The future is woke t shirts, toads, stickers, and more. And when you make your purchase and get your delivery, take a picture, post it, tag me so that other people can see just how good you look. As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.