Snake Oil Salesmen

feel depressed or frustrated, You're not alone. I don't think that I've ever seen or heard an anchor say that before on the news, which is the recognition that every single segment, every single story that they are covering as their job to enlighten the American people provide information on where we are and where we are headed. Is becoming so desperately troubling because you don't know where things are going, and you don't really know how to provide calm and

assurance to people, let alone yourself. The reality is is that every day that you've been waking up in this country for the past several years, we are beginning to understand what it is like to live in an oppressive state. What it is like to live in a country whose leaders you can't trust, who don't have your best interests

at heart. And I remember, you know, traveling around before COVID, when we were able to travel and feel good about traveling, you know, going into these countries where their governments were kind of in shambles, but the country was beautiful and the people seem nice, but they don't really have any opportunities and there wasn't a whole lot going on. I now understand, or am understanding, how it feels to wake up every day and wonder when the other shoe is

going to drop. Now, look, Donald Trump is no longer the president of the United States, God bless elections. But what do we know. We know that since then ten months ago, when the decision was made by the American people to boot out an authoritarian fascist wanna be who delighted with the journalists about having intel about COVID nineteen but not offering that to the American people. No, No, instead offering up snake oil and lies and bullshit right as a means to hold power. We're not in that

place anymore. But since then, over three hundred voter suppression bills have been rolled out. There's no federal legislation that has been agreed upon. The House voted and passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act along party lines. Not one fucking Republican, not that Adam Kinzinger, not the Liz Cheney, not one of them in the House of Representatives, who

we say, are you know, normal? Decided to vote on the side of their former colleague that died right, that died, that spent his entire life, John Lewis, spent his entire life fighting for people's right to vote. Your colleague that you worked alongside of some for decades upon decades, you decided to vote against a piece of legislation that bears his goddamn name. Again, I will say this, like I say every couple of days, when people show you who

they are, believe them. Stop trying to return and Republicans to this mystical pastime when they cared about the American people, when they wanted what was best for the country, when we put politics, you know, aside, and did what was right, when we were agreed to collaborate. Right, No, we're not there, and I don't think folks, that we will ever go

back there. Ever, Again, not when you have a party that is so hell bent on ensuring that a health pandemic that has killed over six hundred thousand Americans continues. You know, there are so many court cases right now that are proceeding around the country right school districts suing governors, governors suing school districts, companies, nonprofits suing the Biden administration so that they can discriminate a against whoever they want to discriminate against. I mean, we are in hell right.

Some folks say that it's purgatory. I don't know. I know that it ain't fucking good, is what I will say, right. I know that it's not good when people are looking for the ability to harm as many people as possible. Adam Sewar wrote a book called Cruelty is the point, right, and that is obvious right now. But my question is why aren't Democrats being so clear to the American people

about what Republicans are doing. Don't talk to me about the ways in which you're going to roll out this vaccination program and that vaccination program, and you're going to try and win over Americans. We're not there anymore. You're not changing hearts and minds in the ways that we thought that we could ten and fifteen years ago. We are in tribal cult territory right now, right where people are doubling down on their evil. They are doubling down

on the threats that they are making. You know, in my conversation that you'll hear later with our friend doctor Jonathan metzol And if Jonathan, what I even noticed in this conversation had a different tone than he's had in the past. We've tried to find ways to you know,

find levity right, you know, laugh so that you don't cry. Well, Jonathan right now is faced with an impossible situation where he is back on his college's campus that has no mask mandate rule, back in a state in the South that does not have any vaccination mandates or mask mandates or anything. Half the population, he says, is terrified and the other half is fine with being bullies and using right their desire to not wear a mask as a

threat and intimidation. Where have we seen that before, folks, Where you see these white aggressive folks wanting to double down right on their terrorism as a way to show their power. You see, what we now know is that it's not enough to just you know, hold up Donald Trump as you as your savior, right and your fucking God. It's not enough to just be maga. We're gonna make America great again by making everybody else miserable. It's not

enough to just own the Libs. No, now we are moving to a place where we want you dead and we want you to know who did it right that we are in a place I never in my wildest fucking nightmares would I have thought that America, that Republicans would have moved into a pro death stance, right, that their desire to win at any cost would literally be

costing thousands of Americans their lives every single month. Right now, Texas and Florida or the epicenter for COVID nineteen, we're talking about seeing numbers, folks, that we have not seen since twenty twenty. And we saw those numbers in twenty twenty with COVID nineteen and positive infection rates. Why because

we didn't have a fucking vaccine. We have one now, And so you would think that after living through so much loss, so much grief, and so much trauma, that Americans would be united around this vaccine as a way to get back to life as quote unquote normal. But you see the snake salesman, the snake oil salesman, the used car salesman, all of these people, they got them.

They got a hold on them. They got a hold on them in such a major way that they would rather take a horse d Wurmer right then they would take a vaccine, folks. Coming up next is my conversation with our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel, which is one that you want to listen to because what is happening and what Jonathan is experiencing on the ground in Tennessee is just an example of what is transpiring around the country. Folks.

You know that I'm always so grateful when our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, author of Dying of Whiteness, which apparently we are going to die of, joins woke f every single week. Jonathan, you are now joining us from Tennessee because you are back to school, like millions of other people will be following the Labor Day holiday. Tell us how things are going in Tennessee. What are you seeing, how are you feeling? Give us the rundown. It's pretty tense here. I have to say. I'm from

my office at Vanderbilt. I'm about to go after we speak into a lecture of one hundred and fifty students in a lecture hall. I'm doing this on a day where I've had multiple student emails this morning of students testing positive. I've got some colleagues who are testing positive. And we're in a micro environment where pretty much everybody is back and people are for the most playing by

the rules. But it's just honestly very hard to contain this thing, and especially given that the infrastructure has not been updated. So it's not like there's new air ventilation, there's new places to walk wide and sidewalks and all that kind of stuff, And so Vanderbilt is a it's the particular microcosm right now of the difficulties that we're seeing at other schools. Duke has had an outbreak. Other schools about outbreaks, and the question will be what you know,

what do you think? What do you do about it? Right? I mean, I'm a little, to be honest, I'm a little nervous about class today. I've got three and ninety five's sitting here in front of me. I have to decide which one or heck, maybe I'll wear them all and so it's it's a tense moment. And the tense moment isn't just because of Vanderbilt. It's all so because we're in this bigger context here of just out of

controlness around. And so I mean again, as you know, I've been in New York this entire time and now coming back to Tennessee, it's not just that you feel the COVID in the air. I mean, I'm sure that's in my mind, but it's more just to be in a place where, like, on the average, I mean, half the people are scared out of their minds and the other half of the people are like doing everything they

can to like and be intimidating. So I was on a flight the other day and one of the people next to me brought a huge bag of Doritos and they would eat a dorito every like five minutes so that they could keep their mask off. And every time that flight a tenant would come by and say put your mask on, the person was saying like, well, no, I'm eating and here's my bag of Doritos and stuff

like that. And so in a way, people are just doing everything they can, like being creative, putting thought energy into how they can best spread the spread the coronavirus. And so you know, again like and when it's your day to day life, it's it's a little bit different. I mean, half the people again are scared out of their minds and the other half the people are It's funny,

like this is kind of a tandem. But it reminds me of the gun issue that I've been studying for so long, which is like when people walk around with a gun, it's intimidating, it scares other people, and there there's a kind of power in that. You know, oh, I could do anything, you know, that kind of stuff, And the mask feels the same kind of thing. The power of it is is in the threat, it's in the intimidation, and so you know, you're kind of you're kind of surrounded by by all that stuff right now

here in the South. You know. I think that that's a really important point that you bring up that I haven't been thinking about, which is in the power and intimidation, and that essentially when you go back, you know in history, what was the point of the kkks, what was the point of lynching? What was a point of all of those things, which is to have the ability to terrorize

the black community, to terrorize a community of people. And in this instance, we're talking about these anti matter which I'm not even going to call them anti masks anymore. These this pro death cult that is really interested and has this deep desire to spread fear. Right, I have the power to kill you and to kill those around you,

or to make you severely ill. And you know when you say that half of the people that you see are scared out of their minds, are those people in your assumption they have been vaccinated, but they just feel that the threat in the environment that they are living in in Tennessee is just so great that they don't feel like that is effective. I think about this in terms of public health and the engagement with community public health. Certainly in New York. It's not like everybody's everybody's played

by the rules. But for the most part, it's kind of like driving, like you know people are going to stop at the red light, you know people are going to go on the green light. You know that they're going to stay in their lane for the most part, and that lets everybody drive safely down the road. And here it's like it's just the biggest car goes down the middle of the road and everybody else has to get out of the right like it. So in a way,

you just you don't feel like your structure. And I think about this a lot, right, because you know, on one end people probably say, oh, that's freedom and liberty stuff. It's more anxiety here. I mean, people turn on the news, they see what's happening with COVID. All the hospitals are full, all the icy user full, and so I'd rather be

part of a collaborative effort where people are banding together. Personally, I'd rather be taking medications that at least have been approved by the FDA or tested in some kind of modicum way. But I mean it's not like people are crazy.

I would just say, as somebody who studies this, there's a bigger ideology, right, which is that not playing by the rules reinforces existing power structures, right, And so the scary part here is there are so many people here who see their power or as contingent on not cooperating. And that's really when it's the most scary, which is not always. I mean, you know, when I'm at work, I'm okay and stuff like that, But in general, when people feel like they're not, you know, I'm going to

do what I want. Well, that's great if you're in a vacuum, but if you're you know, in a communal situation like a community infection and stuff like that with COVID, then really, you know, it's just it's it's just it's it's it's an intimidating moment. I would say that, and I think that's the point I was reading recently in the article in the New York Times this week by Jamal Bowie, who basically the article is do Republicans want COVID nineteen to end? Right? Is this something that they

want to end? And the premise of the article is no, right, And he takes us back to the beginning of Obama's presidency where Obama was signaling that he wanted to end the great political divide, to bring people together to be the great uniter, and he needed Republican support in order to do so. Republicans refused, right because and then we saw what happened during the midterm elections is that their refusal, their obstructionism, worked in their favor because he lost the Senate,

lost the House. Right, and this same setup is happening right now with Biden, except that it is not just about, Oh, I want to own Obama. I don't want Democrats to move forward their agenda. The agenda here is about keeping Americans safe. The agenda is making sure that Americans don't

die in mass and Republicans instead are doubling down. And you know when I look at the numbers right now, and you see that Florida is averaging twenty thousand new infections a day, two hundred and sixty two deaths a day, more than sixteen thousand people are hospitalized with COVID. In Texas, twenty three thousand new cases of COVID a day, fourteen thousand or hospitalized, two hundred and forty five deaths. And

my thing, Jonathan, is that we have no change. Democrats are making no change, a radical shift in their messaging, which is that instead of us just being pro vaccine, pro vaccine, we actually need to be stating very clearly to the American people what Republicans are doing right like, what they are doing like it is not enough. I don't think for Democrats to go around and say, we just need to get more Americans vaccinated and we need

to end this stalemate. We need to talk about their pro death agenda is to sacrifice as many Americans as possible so they win back power. How do you think that we shift this messaging because you understand the psychology and the ideology and the right wing extremism that we're working against right now. But I'm talking about I'm not ever in the camp of trying to win these people over. I think that if you're taking horse d warmer, you are not operating in the same planet that the rest

of us are on. So I'm not about those people, but I am about the people who are terrified, who are trying to keep themselves in their families safe, and riling those people up. It's a terrifying moment. It's a dangerous moment. I mean, let's just be honest. Biden is

considerably weakend right now because of Afghanistan. Because what he was banking his presidency on, which was vaccines, revving up the economy and everybody going back, didn't turn out to be because of the Delta variant, which is it's just a game changer. As we've said on the show a million, it's an entirely different pathogen. It's a different virus, in a particular way, and so and so it puts the

Democrats in a particularly vulnerable position. And I mean, I'm no strategist, but I would say two things, having worked on the last election. One is honestly a bit of frustration, a little bit honestly, because the Democrats learned how to win the election. The Democrats won the election, and they did so in a pretty strategic way, right. They created a big base, they were great about messaging. They had like it or not ally that learned how to like stick it to the other side. But it wasn't so

much the exact issue. It was about getting out in front of the issue and making the other side respond to the message that it's your message. And the minute the Democrats won the election, they stopped doing all that stuff. It's kind of like, oh, we won the election. Now people are going to come back to our senses. And so, whether or not you agree with the Lincoln Project, I

realize a lot of people didn't. The methods that groups like that were using was basically, here's how you crapp the narrative and make the other side respond to you. And the Democrats forgot how to do that. Right, all of a sudden, they're on their heels. Everything is a response. Everything is playing defense all the time, which is what's

gotten Democrats in trouble all the time. And so again message aside like rehire the Lincoln Project and people who do and do that and make it coherent and go on the offensive because every single thing that ever I was playing defense against everything. That is it for Today's Woke a f daily podcast. To hear more from today's show, including my full interview with doctor Jonathan Mexel. Support me

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