Race to the Bottom

campaign to be the worst fucking governor in America. So in a late in his latest right scheme, and let's just be clear that Abbott is facing not one, but two Republican challengers for the governorship, and so he feels the need to compete to be the worst person in this country. Not only has he banned abortions for women at six weeks, not only is he restricting schools from

being able to keep children safe. But now in his latest move, he has decided to ban all vaccine mandates, not just for state and government, not just for government workers, state, local, and federal, but also for private businesses. The question that I have is that I thought that Republicans were for private business. I thought that they were for the privatization of every fucking thing. So it's shocking to me that now Abbott is coming in hot and heavy telling private

businesses what they can and cannot fucking do. Interestingly enough, as he decides to sign this executive order that would essentially why doesn't he just go one step further and just ban vaccinations altogether? Right at the same time that Texas has now swooped in for the lead of COVID cases in the fucking country, this man himself has been vaccinated and then on top of the vaccination, also caught COVID. Right, so he understands, or should you think, understand the precarious

nature that we are in. But he doesn't. He doesn't give a damn because the only thing that Greg Abbott gives a fuck about is holding onto power, which is evident. Right and right now, you have the people in Texas. You have women in Texas and people in general in Texas basically living in a developed nation. When you think about the state of Texas right now, you think about their voter suppression laws, Apparently democracy does not exist as it's there. You think about their Roe v wade, their

attack on women's rights, apparently that doesn't exist there. So you think to yourself, what the fuck is going on in Texas? Because I'm waiting for the executive order when they just decide to succeed, and I not succeed, but succeed. And here's the thing. I wouldn't miss Texas. I really wouldn't. I don't give a fuck at this point. I would love it if Florida, Texas and whatever other fucking middle of hell type of place that is run by these inefficient,

ineffective executioners decide to do I'm like, fucking leave. I don't understand at this stage in the game. I'm gonna be honest with you, and I don't really give a damn because at this point I feel like I have moved past no fucks given what comes after zero fucks? I don't know, but I believe that I am there because I no longer want to waste time convincing these motherfuckers to get vaccinated. You want to die, go for it, take yourself out. I don't care. I don't want to

convince you. I don't want mobile vaccine units into your fucking neighborhoods. I don't want to help you. You don't want to help yourself. I don't want to fucking help you. You know. Here's the other thing too, When I think about what's going on, because everybody and you know, our friend doctor Jonathan Metzil will come on later and he will tell me, Oh, Danielle know it matters, and we should have empathy and we should care. But here's the thing I stopped caring. I think that I stopped caring

about six months ago. You know, when the vaccines were available to all people, right when they were at every single fucking pharmacy. That there is not a community that doesn't have a vaccination site within five miles. Like I'm kind of fucking over it. I don't care anymore. Like I am vaccinated, and the only thing that I'm waiting on right now is a fucking booster, right because I would like for my vaccine not to weigh out while we try and get more of these people who are

not going to get fucking vaccinated. Right, So I'm saying to them, dye in mass Let Darwinism take its fucking course at this point, right, Less of them means better for us, And I swear to God, I don't feel bad about saying that. Not at this stage in the game. We are, folks, nineteen months, nineteen god damn months into this global health pandemic, and what we know to be true is that pretty much COVID is going to be

here to stay. So all of these people that are dying to go back to normal, I just want them to I right, because the only reason why at this point that we are never ever getting back to a place of normal where mass are now just a part of our everyday life is because of Donald Trump. Is because of Republican governors like Greg Abbott and death Santis. Is because of all of these motherfuckers that care nothing about nothing, not their constituents, not public health, not civility,

not patriotism, not a fucking thing other than power. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of everybody sitting on the fucking fence at this point. Right. So the other day, I'm on Long Island, right because I want to go hang out with my parents for the long weekend. And you know, there's a big difference if you are not from New York. Let me lay it out for you.

There's a big difference between what happens in New York City and what the fuck is going on out on Long Island, right, So let me paint this picture for you. I'm in the suburbs and I decide I want to go to home, Goods, right, Like, I want to go, you know, shopping, because you know, those type of big box stores in the city don't have the beds selection. Why is that? Because we got a lot of fucking people and not a lot of inventory. So I love to go to big box stores when I'm out in

the suburbs. So I roll up right mask on, because you know, I care about public health, and I go into home Goods. Not ne'er a fucking person in this store was wearing a mask except for the workers that were there. Everyone else walking around the store maskless. I'm saying, huh, this is fascinating. I go to the bagel store again. I walk in, I'm getting looked at by the way because I'm wearing a mask, and I'm looking at these motherfuckers, and I'm like, Oh, is COVID done in Suffolk County?

Are we Is it finished? Did I not get the memo? Like? I get that the rates in Suffolk County, which is where my family is from. Long Island is made up in two counties, Nassa and Suffolk, and my family is from out East, and I understand that the COVID rate has dropped, hovering around two percent, right which is fairly good when we look at where things are nationally, and when we look at places like Texas and Florida and

what have you. But at the end of the day, I also live in an area where Trump flags still fly high in the sky, right where motherfuckers have up Trump posters on their garage doors and like our hailing to their fucking you know, fake ass, criminal ass twice impeach misogynistic rapists, Islamophobic, transphobic, homophobic, piece of trash right. And when I look and I see my family's neighbors right with their Trump flags, to me, what it looks like is just why don't you just put up the

Confederate flag here in New York? Why don't you just swing your hood from the KKK up in the air as well? Because I don't understand what you are trying to convey to your neighbors other than the fact that you agree with everything that Donald Trump says and does, that you agree with racism, that you agree with prejudice.

So you know, I say all this to say that at this stage in the game, when I hear that, you know, the next conservative has gotten COVID and is being hospitalized, and they are taking up resources from other people that have done the right thing, or other people that don't even have COVID but can't get into the hospital because they're being told to sit in the fucking lobby because you know the hospital is overloaded. I'm like,

turn these people away. You don't give a fuck about doctors and scientists until all of a sudden you're bedridden and getting ready to go on a ventilator, and now all of a sudden you're like, Oh, do what you can to save me. Fuck you, Like literally, that's what I want nurses and doctors to say. Fuck you, Like I swore an oath to do no harm, but you are the one doing harm. And I'm working twenty four hours a day, seven days a week to save you

motherfucker's from yourself. And at some point in time, you just got to throw up your hands and be like, go with God. Do you know what I'm saying? Like I have reached a point where I know I don't want to hear the Biden administration talk about the different techniques and things that they are doing to roll out

to help people get vaccinated. Fuck them. There are entire countries like Haiti, Jamaica, underdeveloped places in South America, on the continent of Africa that don't even have vaccines right now, and we are flush, right, and so I'm saying, take them away, give them to people that are in need.

Let's conquer the global problem, right, because the wealthy nations, much in the same way that the wealthy in the United States don't give a fuck about the poor, right, the wealthiest nations in the world don't give a fuck about the underdeveloped ones. Meanwhile, it's a global health pandemic.

It doesn't stay where the fuck it is. So for those countries that said, oh, I don't know, we would provide two hundred million vaccines or two hundred million doses here, there and everywhere, and come to find out they have done dick. Do you think that your borders are going to what turn COVID away at the entry like we do migrants and immigrants seeking asylum in this country. You think that you can say to COVID nineteen and the next iteration, the next fucking variation, oh no, thank you,

go back to where you came from. Yeah, it doesn't work like that, But I gotta tell you that I'm done. I'm done with the conversations about the unvaccinated. I don't give a fuck, right like, I'm done with trying to convince people go with God. I will wear my man ask, I will wash my hands, I will continue to do what I have to do to keep myself safe. And as soon as the boosters are available, I'm getting another shot in the arm, maybe two, just for good measure.

This week, the FDA is hearing from Maderna and Johnson and Johnson to talk about whether or not they are going to approve their booster shots, because right now, the only shot that is approved is Fiser, and it is only approved for those that are sixty five and older or those with pre existing conditions that are more susceptible to illness. But for those of us who did not get Fiser because I did not, I got Maderna because that was what was available. I don't want to mix

these two fucking things in my body. So I'm waiting on the FDA to be able to approve Maderna so that we can move forward. I don't know what the fuck they are waiting for, but let's hope that at the end of this week we have some good news on that front. Let me turn now to Columbus Day for a moment, which folks earlier this week, I gotta tell you, you know, I had half of my friends were off right for Columbus Day slash Indigenous Day. And here's the thing. How are we doing both things at

the same time. How are we deciding in this country to celebrate and provide days off for a rapist, murderer right who committed genocide and then also celebrating the people that he killed. How the fuck does that work? Right? Like, how does that even make sense? So I bring this up a couple of days later because I didn't recognize until I was watching the local news in New York that New York puts on one of the biggest fucking parades,

an actual Columbus Day parade. I had no idea, but tens of thousand sins of people came out, and I heard this white lady on the news who said, we're not giving up Columbus. That's our Italian hero. Wait what Columbus who did not discover America, who did not discover anything, because you can't discover shit that where people already exist. He actually discovered, you know, Haiti slashed the Dominican Republic.

And he didn't discover it. It he rolled up on their shores drunk, right, and this is your hero, this is your man. This is what I put up the other day on Twitter because you know, folks, I just I'm at a loss. I'm at a loss in these moments. But here's what I put up on Twitter and on Instagram. Only in America do we have holidays, highways, schools, and monuments named for rape murderers, racists, and traders, while also banning the perspectives of those raped and pillage by their

white American heroes. This place is so fucked up. I you know, some days I gotta tell you that I am becoming completely and totally just fucking outdone. I'm telling you, one of these days, I am going to walk out of my apartment, just go into the middle of the street and just scream, and do you know what, no one will probably even look at me twice. They'll probably say, yeah, that's about right. You know, here's another thing, guests, who's

on vacation this week? Fucking Congress. You know, I want to work like Congress does. I want to go into my job. I want to do the bare fucking minimum and then I want to go on vacation for a week. Somebody tweeted at me when I posted that comment because I am just outdone how Congress is so fucking ineffective right now and it doesn't matter that Democrats are in control. And yeah, I'm fucking saying it because I'm not holding my tongue anymore, giving Democrats more room to just, you know,

do nothing, to just create more and more disappointment. We have midterms coming up but a handful of months, and you tell me what it is that Democrats are offering to the American people that they have done. Tell me, right, because I don't feel any different. I don't feel any better, and I can't point to any fucking money that showed up in my bank account that I got a check from Uncle Sam to help me do a goddamn thing, right.

The only thing that we continue to find out, and of course no one is being held responsible and nobody is being held accountable. But the only thing that we continue to find out is guess what The people that actually needed the PPP loans didn't fucking get them. New report came out that black businesses got their PPP from online bankers as opposed to small banks right, brick and

mortar places, which are of course are racist. These are the same lenders that decided to be predatory and cause the fucking foreclosure crisis in America that was the largest decimation of black wealth since Oh, I don't know, the beginning of the nineteenth fucking century, folks, I gotta tell you, I you know, America is a shit whole country, right, Like America really is a shit whole country when you look around. I want to tell you about another report

that I saw over the long holiday weekend. Oh oh, I don't know that twenty five percent of America's infrastructure is basically going to be underwater given one more historic storm that the infrastructure Bill which is no longer an actual thing that would help us battle our climate crisis that we are currently in. Like it's not a future thing,

it's actually happening right the fuck now. That yeah, in I don't know, maybe next year, maybe a couple of months, maybe you know, one more historic, unprecedented hundred a year storm that the country will be twenty five percent of the country will be underwater. Six of those cities are in Louisiana right now, and largely in guess what black and brown communities, because you know, we don't give a

fuck about them at all. Ever, every single place that you look, there's just more devastation, more disaster, more fuckery. I want to tell you this too. So while I was home on Long Island, right I My mother is a small business owner, as you guys know, and has just celebrated which no small feat just celebrated her fifteenth

year of owning her yoga studio on Long Island. Now, I have said this before that where I grew up, I very rarely ever saw police, except if they were like just going to and from on the major throwaway or you know, posted up on the Long Island Expressway to ticket people at the beginning and at the end of the month when of course they need to make

their quotas. Right, that was the only time. What I did have, however, were tree lined streets, sidewalks, gated communities, country clubs, you know, schools with big, expansive playgrounds and wide windows. You know, all of the symbols of middle class America. Something has happened, though, it to my community.

Over the past oh, I don't know, fifteen years, I have watched as the community that I grew up in slowly goes on the decline where I see more and more for lease signs that are in front of stores. And this was pre pandemic. Right. We were one of the one of the hardest hit areas during the foreclosure crisis in the early auts, when you know, Wall Street bottomed down and millions of people across America lost their homes.

And during that time, I remember seeing just for sale for sale, foreclosed, foreclosed, as I was driving from my parents house to the train station. It became more and more prominent. This weekend there was a news story, local news story that kept recycling through. Five businesses in my small town were hit by burglar. Right, white man broken mask on stealing cash registers. Now, the other thing that has happened in my neighborhood that I grew up in

is the opioid crisis hit as well. And I only call it a crisis because I'm just mimicking what mainstream media says. I could give a fuck, and I'll be honest, right, And the reason why it is because whenever white people become addicted to substances, it is a crisis. Whenever black people are flooded their communities are flooded with drugs, right and they're being set up by police and set up by the federal government, then we need to have a war on drugs. This is why I say that I

don't care. It's not because I don't know people that have been hurt by it. It's not because I don't know people that have lost loved ones because of it. It is because I am tired of the double fucking stamp and dirt in this country as it pertains to people that are in neat I digress Burglaries have been happening all around my small town, like literally on the street right where my mother's yoga studio is in the

same development, there were two break ins. My mother says to me over the weekend, Danielle, I don't know what is happening, Like it's starting to get really scary. And I said, yeah, mom, it is starting to get really scary. And what I want to alert you to is that

things are actually going to get worse. You see, because when people are popped up on drugs, right when people are economically disadvantaged, they're working forty fifty sixty hours a week and realizing that they still can't put food on the table, that they can barely pay their mortgage, that they're having to play three card monte right with their healthcare, their home bills, their utilities, all of these things, because

they're just not making them enough to cover it. When Congress is inactive, right inact, not doing anything to support the actual economic disadvantaged people, right and just assuming that, oh, yeah, we're going to cut off unemployment because so many Americans are just sitting at home, because the assumption that our politicians have about us is that we are fucking lazy, right, that we are undeserving of our own tax dollars back

to support us when we are most in need. Then instead they want to give that money to CEOs and shareholders in the forms of tax breaks that you and I will never get because we don't have the teams of lawyers and CPAs that are going to help us navigate these huge loopholes that are available only to the rich. And as this gap continues to widen, right, as we see the rich continue to get richer and do their

little vacation jaunts to the edge of space. And then as we see on the other side, as people lose their businesses, lose their homes and they are just downward spiraling into economic peril. You are going to see more and more increased crime. That isn't because of what the media and fucking cops want to feed you, which is that, oh, we just need more cops because more cops keep us safe. No,

we need economic fucking opportunity. And I am watching it happen and ravage my hometown because people are at a loss. They can't continue at the same pace that they've been going and are bringing home less fucking money. So the break ins are going to become the norm. And right now they are happening at night when nobody is in these small businesses. But as people become more and more desperate, what the fuck do you think is going to happen?

We have an opportunity to pass major, major, robust legislation in the form of the New New Deal for the twenty first century, to deal with the economic devastation that we are in, and we have a Congress that is just phoning it the fuck inn I'm right now reading Fiona Hill's book and I told you guys about this last week. There's nothing for you. Here is the name of the book, and I got to tell you, I'm

just a few pages in and it is riveting. And it is riveting because she talks about her own country's economic crisis and how she ended up in the United States and how we formed these rust belts, how we've created a new knowledge based economy but didn't actually think about the communities that were built up solely on industry, that were built up solely on manufacturing, and that we created public school systems and curriculums that were only meant

to pipeline these people into those jobs that their parents had and their grandparents had that were not about preparing them for the future. We are doing the same shit now. We are preparing no one for anything other than a lifetime of indentured servitude and debt. And we have to ask ourselves why and who is benefiting from this, because those are the questions that are going to guide us into this next chapter. And I'm telling you, folks, this next chapter of America or America Ish is going to

be a very very dark one. Coming up next, folks, is my conversation with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, to unpack where we are with the latest COVID bands on vaccinations, and also the latest with gun laws that's coming to you next, folks. As always, I'm always so excited to be joined by our friend in house, doctor doctor Jonathan Metzel, who is joining us alive from New York as opposed to on Vanderbilt's campus. Jonathan, First, how are you? How are you doing? I'm great. It's a

it's a beautiful day in pre armageddon United States. Wonderful. Um. So we have so many different armageddons pending. Which one are you talking about today? Is it? Is it COVID? Is it guns? Is it climate change? Is it the civil war that's impending? You know what's on your mind? Well, first, just for our audience, I love puppies and I love fields of pretty flowers. I'm not all gloom and doom, um, you know, um, but I will say in what I study, in what you and I talk about, and the world

and the country right now, it's just unavoidable. And the problem is the minute you relax about one issue, like oh we put that fire out, there's some other really crap thing coming down the pike, and this crowd thing that's gonna be done the pike is a case that the Supreme Court is going to hear on November third about basically on the docket our New York's gun laws. There's been a gun law on the book since nineteen thirteen in New York, and basically New York basically says, look,

we're a crowded city. It's a New York state law, but we're a crowded city. We've got lots of people on the subway, in traffic, in bars and restaurants, So we just don't want everybody carrying a gun because we've

seen how that worked out. And so since nineteen thirteen, there's been a i think a very reasonable law in the books, which basically says, if you want to carry a gun in New York, you've got to demonstrate an urgent need, not that you just kind of feel like you need a gun because somebody might carjack you or something, but you need to demonstrate that you need it for your job, that you're unsafe, that you're being stalked by a partner, that you're you know, in law enforcement or

something like that. Then you can get a gun license. And so that's who since you know, for the last century, pretty much that's who's been able to carry New York, and the Supreme Court now is saying, well, maybe that's unconstitutional because anybody should be able to carry a gun who feels like they need it, because this is America, and the Second Amendment is that is as sacrosanc as

the First Amendment. And so really what's on the docket right now is overturning the right of cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, other places to limit to kind of regulate who gets to carry a gun, which is going to lead to many, many more guns in urban areas like this. And I've studied this for a long time. I've seen how this works out in other places. It

ain't good. But I feel like also places like New York have a particular stake in this, just because the whole vibe of New York is like much people, different people moshing together on a subway car. That's the great thing about New York. And when you start adding in guns more guns to this mix, it just seems to me catastrophic for the version of New York that we all know. So basically, we are living in a Republican wet dream and the rest of America's nightmare where we

have a virus that is still running rampant. We are rolling back women's ability to have autonomy over their own body. We have voters suppression laws that have been pushed out all over the country, and now we want everyone as well as who are economically unstable, to be able to carry a gun. What's the worst thing that can happen, Jonathan,

I mean, what a shootout on Fifth Avenue? I mean, you know, like, what is what is the logic behind the desire you think of this Supreme Court to just make it so that America isn't as unsafe as possible, while at the same time gas lighting the hell out of us and telling us that they are not partisan while sitting next to Mitch McConnell's speaking at Mitch McConnell's you know very conference, which is what Amy Covid Barrett did, like, I just we're not headed anywhere good. So what are

what are gun you know, gun um protection advocate? What are they saying right now about this impending case for November third and whatever happened to states rights and cities rights? I thought that that was one of the pillars of republicanism. Is that gone as well? Well? The pillar Republicanism is

whatever it takes, um. You know, it's not consistent. It's just whatever we can do to own the libs basically, and so states rights, except we won't interfere with private businesses except for when we want to overturn a COVID policy, you know, stuff like that. So nothing is consistent. It's not like, oh, I mean Trump is a perfect symbol of this. It's not the no, the man has no ideal. Um. It's all like whatever it takes to to get a particular form of power. And so that's that's that's exactly

what this is, right, Um. And the hard part is the data is just overwhelming that cities and states that within a country where you can control the flow of guns the way you can control the flow of coronavirus I you can't. Um. But even then, cities and states that are able to you know, have some common sense gun reform um, permit purchase, you know, purchase processes, background checks, la flagh laws. It works, right, Those places have less

gun injury and death. And so what you're doing is you're you're taking the policies from the ship places and you're bringing them to the places that have reasonable places so it's not just atturning states rights, it's taking bad policies and and posing them on the places that I have good policies. Now your question is really important because there are two parts of it. On one hand, what is a gun law in New York matter to somebody in the South who most people have never been to

New York? And I can say I've been doing interviews for the past six months with people about this. And on one hand, New York represents like this ideal, like the liberal idea of a place where I can't go and carry my guns. You know, it's like this blue state that is a restriction on my unfettered rights as a white man to be able to pack heat and something like that. So the idea of New York isn't affront you know, it's an affront to this idea that my gun rights should be, you know, as far as

the I can see, you know, something like that. So there's part of that. And then also there's a kind of racial logic I found when I talk to people that it was kind of like, well, there's all these gang bangers and carjackers there, and of course I'd want my gun, like they imagine these kind of racialized scenarios and then they imagine that they need guns in those scenarios, and so there's this kind of racial logic. Now again, the irony, of course, is none of these people have

been to New York. They you know, New York is actually by far more relaxed than walking around a place where there are a lot of guns, and so that's part of the issue. But New York is particularly symbolic. The fact that there's a there's a you know, a century old New York law on the books is particularly symbolic for this bigger war of kind of southern policies

and coming to the North. So basically, right now we have a Supreme Court that is going to overturn everything right, that is going to overturn gun protection, that is going to overturn women's rights, that is going to um they are hearing a case on whether or not businesses are able to mandate vaccines. Where, Jonathan, what's the end game here? Like? What what what do you foresee as the end game when you're doing these interviews with these you know, right wingers, Like,

what is what is their endgame? What is the goal that they that they have? Well, I don't. I don't think it's a it's not a mystery. The end game is already living in places like Texas and Tennessee. Um. Un you know, unquestioned white GOP power that's that's in place because of jerry mandering, um, which leads to incredible wealth, inequity of every kind of inequity, like when you have a lot of guns. It's not like everybody game shot.

A lot of people go to gated communities and everybody else has kind of left to fend for themselves and so um and so look at Texas, look at look at Tennessee. There's no way that minoritized communities are going to ever get to say, there's no way that Democrats are ever going to win an election because of the because of the election cheating system that's in place. And so I think what we're seeing is trying to instill

that over the entire country. M um. And you know, so again, like I think that to me, it seems kind of obvious. I'm not obvious, but clear and transparent. Like it's not like we're imagining some world. It's it's already existing. It just doesn't exist in blue states. And that's what's happening. What are your students say on your campus about about what is happening right now? Like, I just you know, I got to tell you that I

feel really deeply for young people. I feel really deeply about what we are doing to this country, what we are going to be handing over to them, which, in my humble opinion, is a big pile of shit. Um, We're giving them a climate crisis, We're giving them unfettered gun laws. Where I mean unfettered you know, gun use, uh,

racial unrest, economic instability. What are they saying in your classes as you're talking about you know, COVID in uh, you know, and the media as you're talking about you know, mental health and gun laws? What is the what is the persistent kind of conversation that you all are having. It's sad. I mean I asked my class thurday, how many people feel like we're living in the end of days? And like I've two twos in my class, Like half of them raised their hands. You know, I feel so sad.

But it's not just about that, you know, because they're of course very attuned to the climate. Like if you were if you were nineteen years old right now and you're trying to imagine what climate's going to be like fifty years from now. Like it's it's pretty scary, right, and so they're trying to figure that out. The economy is weird, like all these supply chain issues and things like that. What does that mean? What's the future of jobs of public safety? So, I don't know, it's weird.

There was this there was a study that came out like a year ago. They basically looked at what's called social capital. It said that society is that are going to whether this pandemic the best or the ones where more people feel like they're working to help other people, that there's the most social cohesion, that there's like structures in place where everybody can see, oh yeah, we're we're part of a national health service or we are part of a you know, social safety net something like that.

So those places, I think it'll be interesting to see their psychology. Now. Certainly have they have better health comes from COVID, but I bet they have better psychological outcomes too. Of kind of we're in a good place because we're all working together. I mean it's kind of an ideal, but it's you know, it's it's a lot different than what we're seeing in the US right now. So I think, you know, there's this all this literature social it's called social capital, and we don't have a lot of it

to spend right now. Is there a difference between how folks that you are interviewing in these conservative areas are speaking about the current state of our country versus the conversations that you were having on your campus right like, because we are so, we are so in our corners and in our tribes right now, are you seeing a through line in the anxiety and frustration and what does

that look like? Well, I'm doing a big project right now that does kind of focus groups with different groups of voters across the South that I'm interviewing liberals and Democrats and people from pretty much every demographic group in separate groups. And I can't say, on one hand, there's a ton of just suffering right now. People are suffering from COVID, from financial insecurity, really, from a kind of tribalism.

Tribalism is not that fun. You're living in a heightened state of anxiety all the time, and so in that regard, In that regard, I do think there's a tremendous amount of just anome, you know, to think of Durkheim, this sense of despair across our country right now. But I will say that, just imagine if you were in a group who your main things were you all you care about is making abortion completely illegal, expanding Second Amendment, having

your political party to take power. So it's a pretty heady time for people who are in the demographic that is being benefited by all of these policies, by the gerrymandering and stuff like that. So on their hand, especially if you don't really believe in COVID, you feel like you're on the on the winning team, and so it certainly is um you know, not everybody's experiencing this, this dystopia in the same way. You know, Jonathan, do you

feel like there is a path forward? And I asked that not because you're a politician, you know, or anything, but because you're a person that genuinely cares about understanding the other side, about figuring out you know, what may takes them tick, right like why you know, why they are willing to die of whiteness, why they're willing to take down the country with them, Like we can't have this lopsided democracy like it is It's just like, there's only one way that I see this going. But I'm

curious as to what you think. Yeah, I think that too, you know, Um, yeah, I think we're in trouble now, and I think that. You know, it's it's hard because the frustration is so it's just so everywhere right now, right, I mean, I'm frustrated. Maybe the deck was stacked against Biden from the first day, because it's hard to run a presidency when you're governing a very razor thin, already fractured coalition and the party before you is refusing to

even do anything. So it's certainly hard. I'm frustrated with the Democrats for for not coming together to figure out some way to get some stuff done. I feel like that's gonna really they have some very serious consequences, and then the issues themselves are very are very serious. And so yeah, I don't know. I just I miss how I felt in June, which is like the pandemic year exactly like this past Yune. It was like you know, eha, um, but but I I don't, um, I don't know. It's

it's it's um, it's a TVD right now. You know. The last question that I want to ask you, Um, is about the pandemic um and is about the pandemic becoming endemic? Right? And at what when do when? When does that become an actual thing? Right? Like people keep saying it like this pandemic is just going to be around, It is going to the COVID nineteen is going to be endemic. It's going to be you know, a part of our lives and our existence. At what threshold is

that the case threshold? Okay, yeah, we're there. I mean we thought before we could defeat There's some great there's some great stuff on the horizon here. I mean, there are treatments for more. I mean the one I'm most excited about. We can talk about it next week is as stuff happening in at Vanderbilt UM, which is a kind of treatment that will give you sustained levels of antibodies. And so I think there are good things on the

horizon that will continue to make this. I mean, we're obviously, in the pandemic sense, better off now than we were a year ago. UM, But I don't know, Um, you know, well, let's to see but but it is not going away. But but but I also think again and imagine how you felt before vaccines, before we had access to better masks, before we knew more about the transmission patterns and stuff. So this is just always it's always going to be changing.

But I do feel like their treatments on the horizon that are going to continue to make this less of an urgent threat than it is now. And if these any of these long term antibody treatments end up working that they really, to me at least, could be as big of game changers as the vaccine. All right, well, then we will leave it there on that hopeful the one hopeful note that we had this entire interview. As always, Jonathan, we appreciate your time, your analysis, and your insight so

very much. Take care everybody, and you know, just to quote Monty Python, always look on the bright side of life. I don't know what that is, but we will try. Okay, appreciate you. That's it for today's Woke AF Daily. To get the full video of today's show, a backlog of hundreds of shows, exclusive content, and more, support me on Patreon at Patreon dot com slash Woke AF. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck,