The Psychology of Doomsday

world to me, so I really appreciate that, folks. So let's start off with a couple of things coming up in my conversation today. We're going to speak with our friend, the good doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. But before we get to that episode, I really want to reflect on where we stand right now with the midterm elections, and I want to lift up something because I think that too

off and you guys know me very well. Too often we use our victories as speed bumps and kind of zip over them onto the next thing, and I really want us to be very reflective in this moment, this historical moment that we just went through with the largest turnout for a midterm election we have ever had in this country, with generation z the eighteen to thirty year old swath of the electorate turning out in numbers that

no one predicted. I also want to talk about the fact that, much like I've been saying since the beginning of time, poles are bullshit. The only polls that matter are the ones that you walk inside of. And so case in point, the poles were telling us that we were going to expect a red wave, a red tsunami, Democrats were going to be decimated, and everything was going to go to shit and be horrible, and that voters didn't care about abortion, they only cared about the economy.

And so why did Democrats spend all this time talking about democracy an abortion when clearly they should have just been talking about the economy. Well, we hear on wok af know that motherfuckers can walk and chew gum at the same time, but evidently they don't think that in mainstream media. So here's the reality. The reality is is that Joe Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, the

President of the United States, has been fucking delivering. I will be the first, second, third, and fifth person to say so, because I have no problem calling out this administration when they fall short so I certainly am going to raise my hands into a series of applause. Bravo, bitch, you did it. Here's the thing. Joe Biden on the campaign trail told us that he was going to relieve student loan debt. He did it. He told us that he was going to have the biggest role out of vaccinations.

He did that. He told us that he was going to invest in infrastructure. He did that as well. He told us that he was going to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. He did that as well. He also told us that he was going to fight for the soul of this nation, and he's been doing it since he entered into office on the heels of an insurrection.

Joe Biden, regardless of his missteps and his misquotes, and the fact that people think that he should be running and skipping every time he steps in front of a podium, or the fact that they think that he should be thirty five years old and not eighty, Joe Biden has been doing the goddamn thing since he entered into the sewer that is the Washington DC, and since he took over from the corrupt, twice impeached criminal ass motherfucker Donald Trump, who probably by the time that you listen to this

recording will have announced his third run at the presidency because he uses the presidency as his get out of jail free card and not because he actually gives a fuck about this country or how to advance it, because he did none of those things when he was in office the first fucking time, which is why the American people, unlike the Republican Party, gave him the fucking boot. Nonetheless, I want us to recognize that the media has it out for Joe Biden, has it out for the Democratic Party.

Why do I say that because following the midterm elections, and following the results that we knew were coming in, you saw headlines like the New York Times saying that, oh my god, Republicans pick up critical states and critical seats and critical states. That was so at a step with the historic nature of the turnout right of this midterm election that they had to redo their the fucking headline because that's how many people call them out on

their bullshit. You have people right now, some seven hundred days until the presidential election, talking about the fact that Joe Biden is too old, or asking the question, is

Joe Biden too old? Because here's the thing. It's not enough that Joe Biden is delivering more than previous presidents, frankly have delivered, but that they can't find anything good to write, because that's not what gets them their subscriptions, that's not what gets them their clicks, and because they have been browbeat by the far right, they want to make sure that their neutrality looks like either not covering the president when he's giving groundbreaking speeches or making sure

that you remember how fucking old he is, because for some reason he's hiding it. He's not. Here's the thing, folks, Joe Biden is the leader of our party. He is the leader of this country, and frankly, he is doing a real fucking bang up job with the shit sandwich that he was delivered following Donald Trump's presidency or whatever

you want to call it. And I am so tired of mainstream media, and frankly, I hope at some point in time there is some multibillionaire on our side that wants to create a social media platform or take over a radio outlet that actually gives voice to real people with real thoughts and opinions, as opposed to what we have been forced forced to ingest over the course of multiple election cycles that if the mainstream media had it their way, this country would be up in smoke, just

so that they could sell more fucking papers. Like I'm just so sick to death of the bullshit right and if this past election, and the fact that I did not watch cable news at all, all I did was read what was happening, because to watch cable news would have been like me turning on ESPN, And why would I do that? Because I'm not a sports person, so

why would I do that. All they did was cover this very consequential midterm election like it was any other election or a fucking horse race, neither of which were true. And so had it been up to them, we would be in a different place, having a whole different kind of conversation, probably from a real bunker in an undisclosed

location in an undisclosed country. So I want us to take in this moment to pat ourselves on the back to big up young people who showed up in mass when folks said that, oh they don't care about voting, they absolutely fucking do. Because here's the thing that I want folks, to wrap their mind around when it comes to Generation Z. Generation Z has been doing active shooter drills since they were children, since they were placed into

the K through twelfth school system. That's their reality. They haven't been dealing with the quote unquote impending climate crisis. They've been dealing with the climate crisis as a regular part of their day to day life. They don't harken back to the days where you know, November used to be cold, and the fact that you know, on my birthday, for instance, November tenth, it was seventy degrees in New York, seventy. For the last several birthdays that I've had it has

been either in the high sixties or low seventies. That's not normal. Generation Z, however, doesn't know anything different than that because that's the world that they're inheriting. So if we think that they're just going to sit back and you know, allow what past generations have done, which is to ignore the needs of young people and think that their voices don't matter. Will this generation in this midterm election said go fuck yourselves, Republicans, and I, for one

say bravo, young people, bravo. So there is that The other thing folks, is I want to bring attention to a deep, deep, deep travesty that I will give more attention to in the coming weeks, which is the fact that the Iranian authoritarian regime, following the courageous and amazing protests of women against the killing right of a young woman who was killed because of improper head covering and which sparked a revolution led by young women in this country, well,

the Iranian regime has arrested over fifteen thousand young people, academics, professors, and what have you, and they're sentencing them all to death. And there is not a fucking blaz that I have heard from mainstream media in a call of outrage and humanitarian concern about the genocide that is getting ready to

be committed at the hands of Iran. There has got to be some things that are more important than fucking oil in this country, and it should be the lives of fifteen thousand young people, young women, who risk their lives to give voice to freedom. And we cannot as a world right and as a world power, sit by and think that this is just acceptable, that silence is

acceptable at this time. It is not. So. Whatever platform, dear friends, that you have whether it is Instagram or this gumster heap that is now Twitter, please use it to elevate what is happening in Iran, what is happening to these young people, so that the message can at least spread virally via social media. So maybe our mainstream media will open up their fucking eyes and use their platforms to exercise the power that they have in the way that they've done for the people of Ukraine. I

would love to see it all right. Coming up next my conversation with our friend, the good, good doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever we have the opportunity to sit down with our in house doctor, doctor

Jonathan Metzel, we are always thrilled. Jonathan. I'm excited to come back and chat with you as our doomsday predictions did not manifest And you know, I will say for myself that I had since stopped believing in the polls, and I told people who listened to WOKA have to stop believing in the polls and believe in what you see, so show up, show up in mass But I wanted to get your reflections first on New York. You know where you spend half your time time and where I am.

And then in general, as we're still at the time of this recording waiting for some House seats to come in, but know that Democrats control the Senate and we still have the runoff for Warnock and Walker. Well, I mean, certainly there is a pleasure of expecting the worse and then not having it be as bad as you thought it was going to be. And so in this sense, all the doomsday neurosis, I embrace it because imagine if we thought things would have been better and then they

turned out to be worse. And so the psychology of doomsdays is I will gladly say that things are not as dire as we thought they were going to be. Last week when we talked where it was kind of like what other country will accept our passport kind of thing, And so first I will just say that part of the issue is that people showed up. Eighteen to thirty old showed up. People were afraid of what was the implications were, and they were undaunted and voted very bravely,

I think. But I would say so I'm admitting that things are better than we thought they were going to be. But I would also say that all these talks of Trump's demise seemed awfully premature to me, honestly. So I'll talk about New York in a second. But I would also say, just having studied Trump and Trump supporters for so long, all these people that think because Rupert Murdoch is turning against Trump, but that means the end of Trump, I just think, you know, I would it'll be interesting

to see. I think today, when we're filming this, he's going to announce his candidacy or something like that. Like this guy is a master of mobilizing his followers and turning what seems like defeat everybody for everybody else into victory. And I also think control of the Congress is a pretty big deal because Congress controls the budget, it controls it controls everything else. And so so I just think, I just think there's enough to be you know, we're

in the middle of a struggle right now. But I would say that all these victory laps are great for him. Five minutes and let's get let's get back to work is part of the story. Now. Well, before you go, before you go into New York, I want to say one that I believe that Donald Trump is a fucking gremlin.

So I don't necessarily think that there is anything that is going to have Donald Trump go away unless Merritt Garland decides that he's actually going to prosecute Donald Trump for the myriad of crimes that he has committed both before he was president, while he was president, and since being twice impeached and removed from office via the vote in twenty twenty. So, to me, Donald Trump is going he is the whack a mole of Republican politics because he's going to keep returning if, in fact, he is

not rooted out. The only way that that happens, it's not going to be by the Republican Party turning on him. It's not going to be by Rupert Murdichton turning on him. It's going to be that he's facing a trial and prison. That's the only thing to me that is going to have Donald Trump go away. That's one two. In terms of like the victory, I think that this is actually a much bigger victory and needs to act, needs to be used as fuel for us going into the twenty

twenty four presidential election cycle. Once again, the posters were wrong. Once again, we were wrong in terms of what we

thought that Generation Z was going to do. This is a generation that has grown up with active shooter drills, that has grown up knowing that the climate crisis is literally breathing down their backs, has grown up with one trauma and tragedy after the next, and they are tired of it, right, and they and they voted and use their voice in a way that once again we as older people had said, Oh, they're not going to show up.

Oh they don't vote, Oh they don't do this, and they're saying to us, watch us, right, And so I want to applaud one Generation Z, but also applaud Americans who turned out in historic numbers. This was a midterm election. We don't get these types of numbers in the United

States from midterm elections. And so I don't want to just like speed bump over this as if it isn't something that is worthy of the historical moment that we're in because of what people have done to recognize that, Yeah, all of the things that the media outlets wanted to tell us that people didn't care about are actually the reasons why they went to the polls and went to the polls in mass So I don't want to just like say okay, great, good job, and now like everything

is still dire. Obviously we know that, right, But I want to applaud Americans for their consciousness. I want to applaud them for waking up and turning out in a way that we don't see outside of a presidential election. And that's how consequential they found this midterm election to democracy and to their daily lives. A million percent agree, I mean the level of the level of engagement. And also it's funny because I teach college. That's where I am right now, and I told my college students in

class yesterday two things. I said. First of all, thank you guys for saving democracy, because I think really college students and college age people and people in the kind of in that age demographic see the country being led the wrong way by grown ups, and they saved us. And they care about things that you know, octagenarians don't seem to care that much about, like climate change and

gun violence and things like that. But I also told them disinformation is a pretty powerful tool, and get ready for it to be directed at you, because because the way that this tool works, it's like they don't try to convince you to vote for somebody else they try to convince you that your vote doesn't matter, or that you're so different from the person sitting next to you, And they kind of flew under the radar in this election, but I told them that ain't going to happen next time,

because people are realizing the minute you realize your power, the disinformation machine realizes its power. And so you know, we're talking in class today after you and I talk about what can eighteen to thirty year olds do to keep the momentum but also not fall prey to the same divisive crap that got that ensnared the grown ups.

Basically no, and I think that that's fair. And you know, when I had the opportunity when you invited me to join your class, you know the questions that your students ask, and just there a thoughtfulness because you know, I will say that the beauty of when I was in college and when you and I were in college is the fact that, you know the world didn't seem to be going a shit, so we could really not pay attention and kind of you know, even though my major was

in political science, it wasn't as if I felt like the world was crumbling around me. So I needed to be activated in some type of way. I was interested and wanted to understand politics, but not because it was my major, but not in the way that I think that these young people um are now moved and compelled

because their lives depend on it. So Jonathan, just can you speak just a little bit more on you know, on what on what your students felt, you know, post what they have been feeling post the midterm elections, and you know what they are paying attention to as now

we turned the cycle into into the presidential election. Well, I mean, I think this week will be the interest week for us, honestly, because what I'm saying is, Okay, I'm going to tell them here's here's the disinformation and divisiveness that's been used on grown ups and hasn't really been targeted at you guys very much. What And we're going to have a conversation what will it mean to

be targeted in this way? What can people in your generation do to make sure that it doesn't work on you as well as it worked on the grown ups? And so I'm curious to hear what they're going to say. The other thing we're doing in my class is we're bringing in friends of mine who are on the other side.

You know, I interview a lot of Trump supporters, a lot of very serious gun owners, and I'm bringing them all into my class over the next two weeks just to say, Look, part of the issue is that part of what disinformation does is it makes you think that somebody who's different from you is so different that they're like an evil person, and so let they're a danger to you. Yeah, and so let's at least try to humanize people who we don't agree with, just so we can get a sense of what is going to get

up ended. And so I'm curious to see what they're going to say. And then in my big class, the class you spoke at, we have probably twenty five football players, and so the thing that happened in Virginia is going to be very friend of mine, also about guns. And so it's TBD because we're really having our first major class today and then and then we'll go from there. Um so so well, we'll have to see, but I'm I am curious to get their their take on it. You know, a lot of stuff we do in my

class is very forward, you know, activism. How can you change the future that kind of stuff, which is how college students think. Um, and so we'll we'll have to see. But it was overall it's a good problem to have, which is that they were engaged and paying attention. I do want to not drop the New York question before, Yeah, yeah, yeah, please yeah, So you know, I just don't. I hope

this is a wake up call to people in New York. Honestly, I mean that's my greatest hope, um, because you and I have been talking about this for years now, right that ye work has been given the shankbone, you know, in multiple, multiple ways that are just shipped away at the base of the assumption of what it means. Particularly New York City, a kind of pluralistic, diverse city where people can take public transportation to work and has reasonably good gun laws like that's kind of what made New

York in its current iteration New York. And there have been so many points along the way where you just want people to like, wake up. I mean, the twenty seventeen tax bill for me, was probably the biggest because that undermined the tax base of New York people, you know, corporations that were in New York because they could write off their drive through tax and other kinds of taxes

all of a sudden couldn't do that. It became much more lucrative for businesses to move to a place like here, Tennessee,

where there's no state income tax. So twenty seventeen, New York got hammered, hammered, hammered by the GOP tax bill that undercut funding for a bunch of important things in New York, including public education and universities and Quney and roads and parks, and so now you know, professors at Quney are on strike, for example, and grad students are going to go on strike, and certainly there's plenty of

money to go around. But I would also say that that there was this tax bill that undercut New York in twenty seventeen. Then there's all the stuff we've been talking about here with the gun laws and the Supreme Court overturning New York's gun laws. The pandemic was really hard, and so New York is on I just think far

less stable footing than people realize. And that's why all of these idiotic, you know, crime things that Zelden was trying to do were more effective, is because the city just isn't as on a firm footing as it was. And then the last thing I'll say about New York is that the sense because so many people moved away during the pandemic and people were afraid to full out

the census. So New York actually lost congressional representation because the census showed I think unfairly because Trump was gaming the census a demographic ship. So actually New York has less political clout in DC than it did. And all of which is to say that then losing political seats to Republicans in the Congress of New York these kind of states flip is going to have really big implications

for the city going forward. And so I really hope this is a time where New York Democrats really mobilize. But I mean, I'm sorry for like going on a rant about this, but I just feel like it's been brewing for so long, and this is kind of the obvious implication of what's been happening. I think that, you know, a lot of what we have seen, all of the things that you've named are true. I think that in terms of Hoocal's race, you know, I had interviewed another

another New Yorker last week or the week before. And you know, he also said something to the effect of maybe we also kind of let go of this idea that she needed to have a candidate that people actually liked or like new And the thing with Kathy Hokel is that like she does not move you right, Like, she is not a charismatic leader. She is not somebody that I can point to anything that she has said or done, whereas New York is very much used to these male, very ego driven showmen right in a lot

of ways of their politics. And I think that that is also what got lost in the shuffle, right, Like Kathy Hokel took the reins at a time of you know, the Cuomo instability, and then you know, it was just like, well, let me hold the line. It wasn't like, let me introduce myself to New York, to New Yorkers and show like why I'm the best candidate. I didn't start to see commercials until at least three weeks before the election,

which is which is normal. But also when you're seeing commercials of a Democrat and I live in Brooklyn, You're like wow. And when I talk to other people in New York and they're just like when Hopel started campaigning in the Bronx, we knew that we were in trouble because we have never seen they had never seen a gubernatorial candidate on anybody's campaign trail in any of the five boroughs in the way that then she was starting to get on the trail because Zeldon, or at least

according to those polls, were on her heels. She still beat him by over you by double digits. But I think that to your point, if you had somebody who was a Republican who was actually not crazy and more compelling, that race would have been a lot closer. And so if Republicans are paying attention and they're not going to run these zealots, but they're going to run somebody who can get in and then turn their zealot on, then

New York is going to be in trouble. It's not like we've never had a Republican governor before, right, or or a Republican mayor before like we have. But I think the important thing, and I was on k part last week and I was kicking myself for not making this point that I certainly think you know, when people thought about a guy like Zelden. Zelden was just a

bit two bonkers for anybody. But I would say that people thought, oh, Juliani came and cleaned things up, and Taki came in and he cleaned up some other stuff, I'm sure, and so people thought Republicans they come in and they cleaned things up, and then they hand it back to Democrats. But I have to say that's really

dangerous logic right now for a couple of reasons. One of course, is what I didn't add to the list I just gave you was the redistricting that many other states, including Tennessee where I am now, have been carved into these little pieces that mayly they're going to be red or blue for the next, you know, seventy five thousand years. But New York had very failed redistricting. It was rejected by a judge, and so the district alignment in New

York is very unfavorable to Democrats. And then of course the Supreme Court being against New York with the gun laws, the tax code being against New York. So there are factors that are against New York right now. And I really did feel like if Zelden won that election, he wasn't going to come in and save New York or clean up New York. He was part of an ideology that benefited by destroying New York. That shows, you know, woke liberal cities with black people out of control. That's

why we need more guns and stuff like that. And so his ideology wasn't one to clean up Times Square. It was to you know, pull away resources and undermine

New York. And so the danger I think was much greater than just people thinking, oh, it's another Giuliani, because as Giuliani for all of his before he went bonkers here and you know, was on his back counting ceiling tiles in the Borat movie before that, he was he sorry, couldn't help that, but you know, he was the police, you know, to a police in New York, and so he kind of knew New York. And Zelden is none

of those things. He was a kind of an Ara funded guy who didn't really care about New York that much and was just playing on these crime stereotypes. So I really think on one hand, we dodged a bullet.

But it's also important to note that Hockel's job is going to be a lot more difficult because of the Republican control of areas outside of New York City, and because we have congress people who are going to be advocating for their rural areas for resources in congressional budgets, and so New York is going to be underfunded compared to what it was before. There are a lot of factors still that I think because of the election, will

make Hockel's jobs more important. And of course also the gun stuff, which is now really I think important to keep on the front earner because UM, again the Supreme Court case really opened the door for a lot of

bad stuff. So switching gears UM. With a few minutes that we have left, I do want to talk about, you know, the major UM just traumatic event that happened at University of Virginia with the murder of UM, the mass shooting and the murder of three football players UM at the hands of apparently a former football player and

student on that campus. UM. And the reason why I want to talk about it one because I believe that any mass shooting deserves coverage because it is just way too common, particularly on UM, you know, on college campuses, on high school campuses, on elementary school campuses. It's just too common um for our children to experience. But the thing, Jonathan, that is standing out for me is that on its face, UVA has its own police, UVA has its own like

crisis task force. They have, you know, on its face, all of the right departments and procedures that are supposed to be in place to prevent something like this from happening. The suspect who is now in custody came up multiple times at least since twenty seventeen, I believe, on their radar with regard to the fact that they thought that he may own a gun that he had, you know,

gotten mixed up in the law. Previous to this, where was the breakdown and that you see and you know, and what needs to happen on these campuses in order to strengthen these procedures that they put in place to avoid,

you know, horrible incidents like this from happening. Well, I'm I'll just give you some numbers because I've been thinking about this for a long time and it's infuriating that before that, what's called the campus carry movement, this idea that college students eighteen and up have the same Second Amendment rights as did people in the Revolutionary war. Blah blah blah. The number of homicides on college campuses was ten per twenty million college students, ten gun homicides for

every twenty million gun every twenty million students. And the reason that was was because campuses were safe spaces. They were gun free zones, because people thought, number one, why do you need a gun on a college campus? And number two, people are at that in that age group, they're much more volatile, and they often go to fraternity parties and get drunk, and they're fighting over something that probably a year from now they won't even care about.

And it's just a very charge time and people are living in very close proximity. So throwing a bunch of guns into the college environment is not a great idea. But but what carried the day in a lot of places like here in Tennessee was this, you know, constitutional right of college age students to carry weapons on campus. And so there just are a lot more guns on

college campuses. And I think there will be even more guns on college campuses because of the Supreme Court case last summer that basically throws up even the laws restricting guns on college campuses to constitutional debate, and so college campuses are much less safe. Now. I'm on Vanderbilt campus right now. We're private school and we can limit guns

on our campus. But every other campus, and you know, University of Tennessee, blah blah blah uva, these state schools, because they're not private, they can't they can't limit they can't limit guns. And so the data is incredibly clear that there just are more of all kinds of shootings on college campuses that have more guns, because, believe it or not, more guns lead to more shootings. And so what to do to make it safe, Well, fewer guns

on campus would certainly be a good start. I mean, I think any individual case, it happens so quickly, and I'm sure in this case also, you know you want there to be checks and balances. We never hear of the story of the places where these laws that you were mentioning worked and they did take away a gun from somebody who was going to You never hear that story,

so you don't know how often they work. But when it doesn't work, it's kind of like, if you can't regulate the flow of guns, how do you know when you're just looking at people who shouldn't have a gun. And who should and then the shooting happens so quickly. So there is some story about this that I think will It just seems it seems so different from other shootings that we've heard about. There's there's going to be some story about this. We don't I don't know, we

don't know what it is yet. But I would also say that we had very good campus safety laws in place, and as we've overturned these or rules or just let colleges set their own regulations, there'll be more shootings on campus. Yeah, well, this is a story that we will continue to watch because it's one that is just utterly heartbreaking. And you know, yeah, there were two there was a shooting, and there were two campus shootings yesterday. So it's like it's it's so common,

it's so common, and it's let's talk much. I mean, you got me on my soapbox today because these are issues I care about, and I apologize for going on for a while about it, but it's just, um, it's just like, these are these are issues we need to keep talking about. All these things. Absolutely, doctor Jonathan Mapsil. As always, we appreciate your analysis and the time that you make for us on woke af We'll talk to

you again next week. Take everybody that is it for me today hear friends on Woke a F daily as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.