They're Killing Us

of being in the zone. By yours at Walmart today. Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wikay f Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, Recording from the Bunker. So, folks, it is apparent right if you were watching the news, if you are just stepping outside of your front door,

that America Europe is in a climate crisis. What is making me so absolutely fucking livid is that the casual nature with which broadcasters anchors discuss the heat is if it's something that is, oh, just go grab a popsicle and like, oh, dip in a pool and everything will

be great. The fact that no one outside of climate scientists who have been ringing the alarm bell on how ten fifteen twenty thirty years ago, we could prevent what we are experiencing right now is so like just rage inducing you have right now, the temperatures that we are seeing in Europe are thirty degrees above their norm. Yesterday the UK had its hottest day ever, like since you know,

it's inception, since the sixteen hundreds. This is not something to just shrug off and say, oh, everything goes up and it comes down. It's not. And the reality is is at already hundreds of people have died across Europe because of the heat condition they're building infrastructure, the way that the UK and Europe are set up with the fact that I think they said in the UK five

percent of households have air conditioning. Why because on average this time of year for their entire existence, since they've been recording, temperatures has been in the seventies. So it's in the seventies and that's normal. And the way that you build buildings like then you're comfortable. Right you are talking now in some places hitting well above a hundred degrees,

young people, older people being at risk for heat stroke. Now, I want to take that over back to the United States where we are where yesterday a majority of the country, a majority of the country, we're seeing temperatures well above

ninety degrees and in certain areas well above one hundred degrees. Again, I want us to think about our produce, livestock, the workers that work on these farms and in these fields in order to bring to your local grocery store the things that you need to sayciate yourself and your family. We are already seeing because of inflation, the fact that when you go to the grocery store these days, your dollar does not go as far as it used to.

That package of chicken thighs or that you know, bundle of broccoli is now eighteen to twenty percent higher than it was last year. Right, So now I want us to add on top of that the inability to have enough water to feed the livestock, to water the produce, to be able to continue on with our same weight of production. As it comes to food. And now think about climate change and the fact that things are going to get much much more expensive, and it isn't going

to be because of inflation. It is going to be because of the climate change impact is having on our food production, and not just in this country, but around the world. Because when you're going to your grocery store and you're able to get avocados all fucking year around, or we're able to get tomatoes all year around, or you're able to get you know, this grocery store has cheaper meat than this one, that is no longer going

to be the case. And again, we have continued to talk about climate change or argue about the reality of climate change, and we've allowed Republicans and people like Joe fucking Cole Mansion to to co op the conversation so that they can continue being funded from big oil and big coal. And the reality is they're fucking killing us. The ignorance is actually killing us, because there are actions

that can be taken. And the Supreme Court just fucking decided right before this heat wave began that the EPA has no authority whatsoever to be able to set regulations for CO two emissions. So the Supreme Court has taken away the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to actually regulate the pollution that is going into our air, has cut off the federal government at the knees in so many different ways, all for what we're all going to breathe the same

fucking polluted air. We're all going to be scounging around in the grocery store for that last little bit of lettuce or that last little bit of whatever. I mean. The fact that folks, in my conversation with Jonathan that we have today is with regard to a new report that has come out that are saying that the life expectancy of people that are living in Trump Country in Red States is down five to seven years. We are

a developed fucking nation. By the way, I will ask Jonathan, and you will hear me say, when was there another time that life expectancy in the United States backslid? And he said World War One? When I tell you that we are in such compounded crises, this is what the fuck I am talking about. Not only are we dealing with COVID now, climate change is at an all time high. The other day I realized, as I'm, you know, in hanging out over the weekend, that it hasn't rained considerably

here in New York. We're in a drought. Grass is brown, you know, and you can water as much as you want, but eventually there's also going to be your water shortage. You're getting text alerts from your energy company telling you that Hey, there's a lot going on on our grid right now, and you may experience blackout and brownouts. Is

this Bangladesh? Like, what the fuck is going on? And why have we allowed ourselves to just accept right that in every area, by every metric, the United States is backsliding from our democracy to our life expectancy and so on and so forth. And yet you have these anchors and these newscasters and these politicians talking about ship as if it's just par for the course. This is a fucking crisis. This is a five alarm fire. Why the fuck is no one talking about it like it is?

Because the next thing to come is our water being dried up, or corporations deciding to take over more of the natural wells, more of the natural springs, and then guess what capitalism comes into play, and then it will be let the drink water and everybody else is left boiling and distilling, where the rest of the country looks like Flint, Michigan, which by the way, still doesn't have fucking clean water. We are living in really outrageous, dangerous

and terrifying times. And I wish that each week I could bring you some bit of solace, But I got to tell you that by the day, by the hour, I become increasingly worried about what is happening in this country and the fact that you have people like Jonathan and others that have been ringing the alarm about what's

going on, and it's falling on non listening ears. And I'm wondering now that people are experiencing this oppressive heat, that people are knowing that people are going to die, that it is difficult to be able to fill your gas tank, go to the grocery store, and put medicine in your medicine chest. All at the same time, this is becoming like the fucking hunger Games in the United States. And that's just around the climate change compacting our economy

and our ability to put food on the table. You add in all of the rights that are being stripped away and everybody having a fucking gun, Like, I don't understand where we think that investment into the United States or attractiveness is going to stay when people start realizing that this is a fucking dangerous place to live and travel to, and then that starts to tank, right, Like, what is the fucking endgame here that Republicans and quote

unquote moderate Democrats who are literally gambling with our lives, are hoping to get at the end because you can't. Unlike what fucking that idiot herschel Walker said, you know, you can't maintain a certain pocket of good air and clean water. That's not how fucking science works. Coming up next, my conversation with our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel about a really eye opening report that has come out to talk about life expectancy and what kind of messaging we need

around that. Indisputable with Doctor Rashid Ricci is one of the latest shows on the TYT Network and also the fastest growing news show in America. On his show, Doctor Ricci plays no games regarding policy, delivering a heavy dose of fact based truth and penetrating analysis on all the top news stories focusing on racism, criminal and social justice, politics,

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So you know that whenever we have the opportunity to chat with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel about all the ways in which this country is choosing, legitimately every single day to die of whiteness, it is a good time to get a perspective that we all clearly need because the choices that are being made by the MAGA class, by racist white America is now actually affecting every single one of us. But interestingly enough, Jonathan, according to a new study, you say that it is affecting

their life expectancy in Red states has lowered? Is that? What? So,

please tell us about this report and what is the latest. Well, there was a great article in Scientific American that's making the rounds on Twitter now, which even though they didn't cite me, which is cool, it basically was dying of whiteness brought up to date, right, And so what they found was that people in red states and in Trump supporting counties in particular, we're dying about four to seven years sooner than people in democratic states or liberal enclaves

or but mostly it was a kind of red state blue state kind of comparison. And what they found was the data was absolutely I mean, of course it made sense for COVID because there were a lot of areas where people weren't getting vaccinated and there was no mask and no public health and that kind of stuff. But COVID was just the tip of the iceberg that deaths from secondhand smoke, gun violence, gun suicide, lack of access to healthcare, all these things were leading to dramatic life

expectancy differences between red states and blue states. And you know, every time something like this happens and it's in scientific American and I urge people to read it. It's it's not one study, it's a culmination of, you know, a bunch of research of a bunch of different people. People will reach out to me and be like, you're right with dying of whiteness. And in a way, part of the point, right is that when you I mean, this

is not rocket science. When you invest in public health infrastructure, it prolongs people's lifespans. And the data in this scientific American art is just incredible. Right. It's like eight you live to seventy seven in Red states versus eighty five in Blue states. It's not inconsequential. It's a real data finding.

But of course, the tragic irony of all this for me is if we were on a different planet, like planet empathy or Planet reason or planet common sense, you would say, oh, man, some of these states are having better health outcomes. What can we do to bring that to everybody? You know? But instead we're seeing the opposite, which is let's take the shit outcomes and let's nationalize those.

And so all the things from easy access to guns leading to more guns, suicide leading to shorter life expectancy, to not investing in medicaid expansion leading to poor life expectancy. Those policies are now threatening to become nationalized. I mean, the whole idea that public health should create a health blanket over our country is following by the wayside because of the Supreme Court and because of the politics that

the dominator right now. So it's just another example. It's just interesting when you write a book called Dying of Witness that well, basically, to be honest, kind of predicted this point about you know, but I want to I do want to understand something because just to kind of put things into perspective, is if you're talking about a decrease in life expectancy of five to seventy years, when was the last time something like like that level of a shift has happened in this country? Like that is

that's not Yeah, that's not an instant. It's not an instact. Like I don't want people to think like, oh, that is kind of like the natural progressions progression of things like that's not a normal life expect that's not a normal chart to see in a developed country that has access to modern medicine, vaccines and all of these things. And what you're saying is that this isn't just largely about COVID and those the politics of those states in their reaction to COVID. This is going across the board

in terms of health outcomes. And so, you know, let me say one thing about that. Let me say one thing about that, which is just to reinforce that you're absolutely right that we haven't seen a particularly a life expectancy drop in in the demographic majority group since World War One, right, And the reason that was, first of all, of course people were going to war and dying, but also world War One people went off to Europe and then caught influenza and then brought it back here and

there was no treatment for it. And so it's really been since the nineteen late nineteen teens that we've seen something like this. And then of course we had the advent of modern medicine. Modern medicine helped us even during World War Two when people were still going off to war, so we didn't see a drop like this even when a lot of people were going off to World War two.

And so really we're talking about a return to a kind of I don't know, biological brutality that we really thought we'd kind of gotten past because of modern treatments. So the thing that what I want to follow up with Jonathan is then, I mean, what is the messaging around this, Right? You have these red state governors to your point, that's you know, the whole point of the Republican parties to nationalize brutality, oppression, and harm. Right to do as much harm as possible to as many people

as possible. And when I think about, right, the connectivity between your ability to live a long, prosperous, healthy life and what happens when people get sicker, the how the power structure plays into all of that. How you are downtrodden. You can't put food on your table, you can't pay your medical bills, you can't do all of these things. It is a recipe for authoritarianism, And like can you talk about that, like how the how America and these

states in particular are primed for what we know is coming. Well, I guess the question is really like how much do we want to And I'm going to be literal and graphic die on the hill of public health, right, because for us, public health is an aspirational state. Right, public health is what we want to live better and healthier lives. Modern lives. But I will tell you that I feel like in the hands of another ideology. I'm choosing my

words very carefully. Here. Public health is a bioweapon. The absence of right health right and so bad healthcare is already the case in a place like Florida or Mississippi or Alabama. Crappy gun laws are already the case there. But if you inflict that on New York, the whole system collapses, right, because so many people depend on writing the subway to work and going to Times Square and going to Central Park, and tons of guns in those

areas is just going to collapse the savic infrastructure. And so many people in New York get their health insurance from the expanded Medicaid that we have in New York City. And if the state itself, I mean a single state, cannot afford medicaid expansion. We know that from many other examples, including in Tennessee with the failure of ten Care, and so in a way, taking these policies that have created shorter life expectancy, and our goal always was like, oh,

let's prolong life expectancy in the South. Let's have everybody enjoy the fruits of better healthcare and stuff like that. But the reverse of that is if the South can inflict its shit policies on the North, then the North collapses in a way. This is a war of Southern aggression, is what we're kind of feeling right now. And it's being fought on the battle of health, on the terrain

of health policy. Why don't you think that this is being message in the way that it needs to because this is alarming, right, Like this should set off alarm bells, you know, across the country, regardless of whether or not you live in a red state or a blue state. And so is what is not happening with regard to the messaging about how devastating this type of so backsliding is happening. Not only are we not only are we for the first time as our democracy having been noted

as backslide, but now our life expectancy is backsliding. And these two things are not mutually exclusive, And so how should this be messaged? Well, if you think about life, expectancy is not always a goal in the context of theaters of power. And so I'm going to give you so our grapes in a minute here, But first I'll just say that you can think about murtyrs, for example,

or mercenaries or like people. There's a lot of different examples you can give if people willing to trade their health or their well being for power or money or authority foot and so in a way, bad health policy is a weapon, right that is going to destabilize the Libs, you know, in a way. And so I think that that's kind of what we're up against, and I think

people probably don't don't see it that way. And I'll tell you this our Grapes part is I mean that wasn't this our Grapes part Jonathan Grapes part as personal right? Because after dying a Whiteness came out the book I was going to write afterwards called the War of Southern Aggression, and it was about this exact point that actually bad health policy was being used as a weapon to destabilize

the North. And um, but I don't, like I need you to to to because I honestly like I need this to make more sense, and I know that it is something that is not going to make sense. We are one country. So to say that the goal that their goal, which I believe you is the destabilization of the North, that destabilization is a ripple effects tsunami that happens across the country. Who is that good for? Like,

I'm confused. It's not as if you're saying we're destabilizing in the North as a way to reinforce stability in the south. That's not the case. So who is it good for? Okay, So let me give you an example from the book I'm writing now, which is about guns and gun policy, because you know, your question is basically who benefits from this? And so part of the story, right is think about what the Supreme Court just did.

The Supreme Court just overturned New York's gun laws and said New York has no right to or any anybody who has a gun law that says we're going to regulate who can carry a gun in public, that states don't have the right to do that. Now we know from very detailed metrics what happens when you overturn permit laws, because we have examples of for example, Kansas City, Missouri, my hometown that used to be a very integrated, diverse

downtown area. Lots of people live downtown. I live downtown during med school, and the idea was basically, here's all this cool integration that's going to be happening. And the minute they overturned Missouri's permit laws and basically the state couldn't regulate who who carried a gun. Anybody could buy a gun and anybody had the right to carry it.

It led to dramatic increases in all kinds of I mean, in my book, I talked about gun suicide, but also led to increases in different kinds of violent crime, for example. And so what that led to was dramatic white flight from the downtown area. For example. Sly James, who was the mayor of Kansas City, pleaded to have some kind of gun regulations or things like that because so many people were dying or shooting or all these kind of things. And so it led to a dramatic kind of racial

divide in Kansas City. That honestly, I mean, Kansas City has always had a hard time with that issue, but it wasn't it wasn't the case the way it is now. It led to segregation in a way, It led to more economic inequality, and it led to an effect kind of gated communities in a way. Atlanta as another example, when Georgia overturned its gun laws. There was a people couldn't believe it when you could actually carry a gun to the to the Atlanta airport, which was huge news

about ten years ago. And what happened is the same thing. Concentrated low income areas that became less safe for a variety of reasons, police gunfire, and it led to massive disinvestment. And literally there are parts of Atlanta now where white wealthy communities have created gated communities with their own private police forces. They're not even using the Atlanta police anymore. And so in a way this leads to economic inequality

and segregation. But places like New York, for all its problems, or Los Angeles or Boston or DC, even though of course there's tremendous racial problems, police problems, of violence problems, but in a way, there also is a kind of ethos of you know, bike lanes connecting neighborhoods and subways and public transportation, all that kind of stuff. All that

kind of falls apart. And so if you just take what happened to Kansas City or Atlanta and apply that to New York, it's it's undoable, Like there's no New York if that happens. And so in a way. This is a targeted missile directed at population centers, liberal population centers. It's a racial but to do like to do so, then again I say who wins, right, because if everyone is it, because it's not just yeah, I guess the rich.

We can turn America into parable of the sower and the rich have the ability to have their walled off communities, but they still need to go outside of those walled off communities in order to access basic things like to go to the grocery store, like to go to a restaurant, like to go or do all of these things. So there if you're creating an environment where no one anywhere is safe with the target of trying to burst liberal bubbles.

But the reality is that this goes back to if you care about nothing else, becoming an economic issue that is one that is not fixable. Because if I'm working from home, I'm living in a gated community, I'm no longer going out. I fear to do all of these things.

I'm not spending money, right, Like I am actually put in a position to hoard because I feel so unsafe right and like so I'm trying to figure out if I am Alito and fucking Clarence Thomas and these people that are on the bench making these decisions that are disrupting everything. Like there, you're talking about places that we know hold a lot of American debt, like China, like Saudi Arabia, like whomever, that buy up real estate in these areas that will no longer be doing that because

this environment will be incredibly unsafe. So I'm like confused again about who is winning other than gun manufacturers for a very short period of time. Well, I mean, that's

that you nailed it right. On one hand. In Dying of Whiteness, I showed that when Tennessee didn't expand Medicaid, the life expectancy of the entire state fell, And that's because all the resources for healthcare went toward emergency room care, which is much more expensive because people didn't have health insurance, and they came in when they were much sicker, and the problems they came in with were much more expensive, and so ultimately everybody suffered except for the wealthiest people

and corporations. Similarly, when you let gunt, I mean, imagine the arms race that's going to happen in New York and Los Angeles and Boston. When the effects of this Supreme Court decision filter down, it's going to be a windfall, a windfall for gun manufacturers, for the n RA, for the organizations that are seen as supporting I mean, the NRA in twenty sixteen gave what like forty million dollars to Trump, and that's probably much more than we even

There's much more of that than we even realized. And so in a way, this is a particular power grab that is economic and political, and it's honestly death to the idea of the country in a way. So, I mean, it's a beautiful day out my window, you know, it's July.

But I will say that this Scientific American article like it just every so often this kind of thing pops up, right because there'll be an article then even though again I'm not in this article, but a million people right to me and be like, your thesis about dying of whiteness is right, and how come people aren't voting for their public health? And I'm like, don't think about it in terms of America. I think about it in terms

of Putin. Right, Putin doesn't care about public health. He's just putting his people in a meat grinder destroying his economy in the idea of beating the opposition and taking power and russifying the Ukraine. And that's kind of that's kind of what we're faced with now. It's just people for reasons that are understandable, like we don't have a history of that kind of conflict in our lifetimes, but

that is kind of what we're up against. And so I feel like these numbers, these public health numbers, are tragic, but they're also a warning sign for people to recognize the ideology that you're up against. Right It's not about life expectancy, it's about power. And so again, I know this is very doom and gloom, but it's just very much on my mind because the same thing keeps happening when these articles come out, and then people are like, what will it take to talk people into healthcare? And

I'm like, that's not the right question. The right question is like, what will it take for you to recognize the struggle you're in right now? Where life expectancy, your life expectancy is is what's at risk. So I'm sorry, sorry, Right this is this was as always incredibly eye opening and equally as depressing because I don't really see any

recourse to be taken. I don't see a democratic party that recognizes the strategy and that we are at war um against this party, against this you know, dying of whiteness mentality. Uh. And at the end of the day, no one is going to win, right, even though even those that are doing their greed power grab like it won't last, right, It never does. That's what That's what history tells us. And so I'm like, this set up

of failure right now is extraordinary. And then not to have conversations about it, not to be bringing the alarm about it, uh, not to be connecting the dots either leads me to believe that you are complicit or you were ignorant, and either way that is dangerous. As always, Jonathan, thank you so much for spending time with us on wok app daily. We appreciate you. Hanging everybody, the puppies

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Dear friends, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer

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