Too Many Lies

the fact that it's not over right. I know that, folks, everyone is exhausted, everyone is tired, and everyone wants to just move past. Right. This is what the Democratic governors are saying as they are rolling back mask mandates, as they are rolling back vaccine mandates. Just recently in DC, which only had vaccines in place for restaurants for folks to show their vaccinations in place for eight weeks. Guess what. They've decided that it's no longer politically advantageous for the mayor,

so they've decided to end that. Folks. You know I don't often say to you, well, both sides right, It's actually the phrase that I can't stand the fucking most both sides, Well, both sides are doing X, and both sides are doing why. But I will say this, Democrats had a leg to stand on as the party, right, the actual political party that was putting public health and public safety first. They were the political party that said,

we're following facts, we believe in science. Right, So for anybody who these elusive independence that everyone loved to talk about every fucking election cycle, except I've never met an independent, you know, you want to believe that, Oh, Democrats are doing the right thing, right, Like, it's very clear because Republicans are doing everything that they can to be the

worst people, right. Like everything, it's like after every announcement, every headline, it's like, oh, no, hold my beer, here's somebody that is worse. Here's an incident that is worse. Here's another book banning that is happening. Here's another rollback of COVID, here's another lie that's being told. Right, So, Democrats, I thought that they're saving grace going into midterms, was

going to be just that. Where the party that believes in public safety, where the party that believes in science, Where the party that believes in truth, and so that's how we're going to be moving forward. Right. But no, no, no,

that's not what they're doing. They have decided instead, dear friends, that it is going to be more politically expedient for them or better somehow in the midterm elections to decide to try on republicanism and just say, oh, you know, people are just fed up with COVID, so we're going to end restrictions and mask mandates. Now here's the thing.

I've been talking a lot of shit about the CDC and the way that doctor Willinsky has had such a communication nightmare over the past year plus, right, telling people, oh, get vaccinated, take off your mask. Oh by the way, put your masks back on. Oh by the way, and not everybody needs a booster. Oh by the way, you may need a fourth one. Right. But here's the thing,

here's what we know to be true. COVID over the last two years has followed the same pattern, right, which is this, we had alpha, right, so COVID comes out of the blue twenty twenty. We have the alpha variant. Right. Within a short period of time, roughly seven to eight months in to alpha, right, then we had what delta Delta took over Alpha. Then roughly in another seven six to eight month span, guess what came omicron. Right, So now we're at a point where the incredible surge that

we hit. And mind you, I said this on my other podcast, Democracy Ish, which if you're not listening to, comes out weekly with my friend wajahat Ali. You should check that out as well, really interesting in depth conversations with the both of us each week. But here's the thing. Sixty thousand Americans died last month, sixty thousand. We are still at a place in this pandemic where two thousand

Americans dying every day. Right, But we've decided as a society, as a culture, as a country that we don't really give a dam. We don't give a dam, We have no empathy. It doesn't matter to us that we are putting each other in harm's way, so long as everyone gets to pretend that normal still exists, whatever the fuck that is, they want to be able to go back to it. So we have collectively decided to engage in the COVID gaslight and tell ourselves and each other right

that it's no longer a threat. Well, here's what's going to happen. And I'm going to make this prediction. I'm going to read the tea leaves in the way that polsters tell us how elections are going to go. So here is this. In this lull that we will have, you will see things feel good and better as spring starts to happen, as we enter into summer. I guarantee you that before we enter into the fall season, midway through summer, there will be another fucking variant, right, because

that is what the patterns have shown us. So for these democratic I don't even care about the Republican governors, but to these Democratic governors who think that they are making this quote unquote politically smart decision, not the public health decision, but a politically smart decision to make these changes right before mid terms, I shit you not. That we will have a new variant before November, right, and if the pattern holds, it will happen by the end

of summer as we head into the fall. So then for those people, right, for these governors who are is telling people, oh, it's okay, take off your mass Oh we're not going to do vaccine checks anymore. It's just on everybody. We're going to decide that this is endemic now, even though, let me remind you, sixty thousand Americans died last month of COVID, two thousand or dying every single day, and before we get to summer, a million Americans will

have died from COVID. So no, you idiots, this is not like the flu, because a million people don't die over the course of two years from the fucking flu. And if you want to have some type of normal ish type of life, then you need to adapt. You need to be nimble in this moment and not decide to drop all of your COVID protocol in order for this rush to normal that doesn't exist. Like, here's the thing. I know that it is so difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that two thousand and

nineteen wasn't that long ago. But our lives are so drastically different then they were back then. The problems, the issues that even I was talking about on this show seem ridiculous now when we're facing global death rates at numbers that we haven't seen since the Spanish flu. Right that the numbers that we have seen in twenty twenty one, in twenty twenty two with a vaccine are worse than

what we saw in twenty twenty. So how is it that the party that is supposed to follow science, the party that is supposed to be about public safety, has decided that they're just too exhausted to keep going. So instead you give Republicans the talking points that they need, even though they don't do shit. They don't offer America platform, they don't offer you any help, they don't offer you

a direction forward. All they do is offer you the word no, right, no, on top of white supremacy, racism, misogyny, islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia. That's the only thing that they are offering to you. But now Democrats have given them a gift, right. You See.

The funny thing is is that I have believed for the longest time that Republicans who are going to make it easy for Democrats, because it was going to be so easy for people to see the writing on the wall with Republicans, they want to return to nineteen fifty three. They want segregation, They want to make segregation great again. They want to whitewash your child's public school curriculum. They

want to make it impossible to vote. The next thing up is going to be we're counting jellybeans again, just if you're black and brown, everybody else go to the front of the line. They are saying the quiet parts

out loud, over and over again. So you would think then it wouldn't be so hard to combat that narrative and to offer up to the American people, here's your alternative, people that want to exist in the twenty first century with you and recognize that we are living in a multiracial democracy, right that requires participation, because you see in all the documents that people love to bring up, it's said government foreign by the people, not a selected group

of minority that have made themselves into authoritarianism and enshrined with their over takeover of our judicial system, enshrined and codified into law, white supremacy. Again. You would think that Democrats would be able to figure this out, but no, Instead they have offered them a gift, which is that you see COVID wasn't that big of a deal anyway, because now the democratic governors are finally coming to their

senses where Republicans have been all along. So now the people don't know who to trust and they don't know who to believe in because you see all of the things that this administration said on the campaign trail that they were going to do, right, it's coming out in drips and drabs. If at all, we have no voting rights, right, we have no climate change legislation. I don't know about you, but I want to let you know something. When I left New York and headed down to Maryland, it was

sixty five fucking degrees outside. Now, hey, here's a thing. If we're all going to die anyway, I will absolutely enjoy some sunshine and some warm weather. But I want us all to realize it's February in the Northeast. It shouldn't be sixty five degrees. And last week, right after a lovely fifty some odd degree day, it's snowed two to three inches the next day. So, folks, what do you think is happening here? Right like? This is the

new normal? The new normal is just abnormal. It is all of the things that the scientists had been warning us about for twenty years. If you don't do something about climate change, it's going to get to a point where the damage that is done is irreversible. Well, the same thing is true about our fucking democracy right now. If you don't do anything to fix right our broken system, a system that Donald Trump has now told seventy five million people or however many white supremacis decided to vote

for him, that the election was rigged. And now you have a mirrie I mean, just a fucking bevy, right, a voter suppression laws now across the country. Like, what do you think is going to continue to happen when you don't protect what is sacred? So it's the environment, and today it's sixty five degrees in February and maybe it'll snow in fucking June. Right, what do you think that that is going to do to your grocery bill? For instance? Where do we think that we get this

food from? So if you have oh, I don't know, extreme frost, extreme heat, droughts, right, that is going to affect guess what food prices? Because you see the big farms, right, how are they going to know when to harvest? Which is going to make prices go up? All of this is connected, but instead we look at these problems as if they are silos. Right, Republicans don't want to talk about climate change, but they want to talk about opening

up the economy. Well, I don't know what kind of fucking economy you can have right when your basic needs like food is going to be disrupted because you're going to have to start outsourcing things that we used to grow in the United States but will no longer be able to grow and no longer be able to predict the seasons of And who is that going to fall

on the consumer? You know? But they want to Even the conversation that we have around climate change is one that is still sitting in trying to convince people of the obvious. And I'm just like, just start to look at your fucking grocery bills. That's not just because of inflation. Things are going to get worse. And the reality is that the one party that I continue to have faith in because I thought that, oh hey right, they believe

in truth, they believe in science. They are for the people, at least that that's what they set on the campaign trail. But they are for the people, and they are for science so long as it is convenient. But that's not how this ship works. So here we are. Pandemic is

not done. News to everybody, especially those folks at Coachella that are getting ready to put on their outdoor festival for tens of thousands of fucking people with no protocols in place, because guess what, right, money over everything else? You know. So I don't know, folks, I don't know how Democrats are going to showcase to the country right when they have no voting rights bill passed, they have no police reform passed, they have no climate change measured past.

Now the part of BBB, the human infrastructure that's stalled, that's not going to pass. So what is it that Democrats are going to be running on for mid terms? You tell me if you can think about something in the comment section that I am not thinking about, then tell me in the comments section of the show, if you're thinking about, Oh no, Danielle, they can run on this. Please let me know, because I have been begging, banging my head against the wall to figure out what is

the conversation going to be. I can tell you what the headlines are going to be. Democracy dies. That's going to be the headline. Right America is over. That's going to be the headline come following the mid term elections, because as soon as Republicans get in charge of the House and Kevin McCarthy or whatever piece of shit Republican could be. They could anoint Marjorie Taylor Green, for all we know, to be the new Speaker of the House.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Right, they will reinstate the people that were censured, not you know, the ones that believe that, you know, the election was free and fair, and not the two that they basically booted out of the party who sit on the one six Commission. Not Chainey and Kissinger, but the Marjorie Taylor Green. Oh well, that's the future of the party, she told us herself.

And by virtue of the fact that nobody ever has that racist, anti semite, ever transphobe, ever offer up an apology or say that that's not who we are, it is not outside of the realm of possibility that someone absolutely batshit crazy if Republicans win in midterms, will be the new Speaker of the House. So all of the investigations, what little is happening, will be done. They will gum up the works at the Department of Justice. They will

gut finally finish right with public education. I mean, folks, I just don't think that everyone gets what's at stake. And I spend each and every day trying to figure out how how do I tell this story better? You know, I try, and I scream at the top of my lungs, not because I'm doing it for show, but because I am really that fucking angry, you know. I just it's like Democrats feel to me like they are trying to lose, that they are trying to make sure that our country

is over right. And when I look at this administration that again I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt too. I wanted to give them time because they were inheriting, right, something that was terrible. They were inheriting a catastrophe. But at that same time, right in this same moment in Vain, it's been over a year, and again I say, what have they done? What have they

offered us? You can't continue to run on public health and safety when your own democratic governors are deciding that they are no longer going to listen to you, right. You can't run on the success of the vaccine when we still have more than a quarter of the population that isn't vaccinated. You can't run on the fact that, like people's lives got to go back to quote unquote normal, even though we knew those with brains that that was never really going to happen. But you can't run on

that either. And now you've turned your back on the virus. And you think that because we as a soci say COVID is done, the virus is like, oh okay, I'm finished too. I guess I'll move on now. It's not how it works. So I sit here deeply worried and troubled. I am deeply worried and troubled because I feel like we are at an a point where the end is inevitable.

I feel like we are at a point and even I just had a conversation with my friend as I walked in with my friends and they're like, you know, Danielle, sometimes I find it really hard to watch you. And I said, you know why, because everything that you say is true, and you just say it really fast and really straight. But there is nowhere that I can point to like it's just not easy to listen to. It's not easy to hear the truth. And I said, I get it, it's not easy for me to say it right.

But I feel like we're running out of time, so I don't have the time to you know, bullshit around and say, oh, well, maybe if we do X, why will happen? And I'm like, no, guys, you kind of know that that's not true. We can have faith, but it is not going to be in the fact that Democrats may hold on to power, because they have already shown the country that they don't know what to do with power once it's given to them. They are a disappointment.

I'm at a point with Democrats right now where I really do want to throw up my hands right where I'm sitting around and I'm wondering why Donald Trump isn't in jail. I'm wondering why white people who continue to break the law, who are criminal are able to get off scott free. I'm wondering why Democrats keep saying in Unison, no one is above the law. But then you have an ag that is apparently a mime who has offered nothing, no hope that we are restoring anybody's institutions or restoring

anybody's faith. You know, earlier in the week and I spoke about this, but I want to talk about it again. You know, I have really started to unpack what is happening in Ottawa, in Canada, and you know, we are Americans. Let's just be real, right, we're really fucking self centered. We don't really give a shit about what is happening in other countries by virtue of you know, how far away we are with the rest of the world. But

Canada is right, you know, to our north. And what is happening in Ottawa with this vaccine protests and the way that they have used these you know, semi trucks that apparently can't be moved to essentially block off the road to government and shut down the entire city, and they are being funded by right wingers in the United States, where people reporters are like, why are there so many

American flags? Like this is not how Canadians are. But they have these fucking transplants that are coming around and you know, the cops, right, they're not doing anything to stop people. And come to find out, guess who are some of the people that are in this quote unquote protest that is happening in Ottawa active police, active military. So we're like, why hasn't anybody been arrested? Right? Oh,

because they have a quote unquote right to protest. And this week Trudeau right has given himself outsized power in order to be able to gain control back over a situation that they kind of have given over to the protesters. Now why is this important? Because what is happening in Ottawa is gonna fucking happen in the United States. And also where do you think that they got the idea from. Do we all forget when white supremacst decided to take over the to take over the capitol in Michigan? We

did we forget that that happened? Do we forget that there was a plan to kidnap right and try in somebody's people's court. I'm sure in rape and murder the governor right and those people were arrested, Like, do we not get that the tactics that we are seeing being used in being used in other places where the right wing is not the majority of people, but they are the majority of who is being heard and who is

being shown. And the more spotlight that they get, the more reporting that is done, the more people that come. And because once again white people can do no wrong, they're able to set up an entire fucking Tailgate protest

over the course of three weeks. I don't know in whose world that that happens in, but all I know is that in this upcoming election, if folks are not paying attention to what has happened with the insurrection a year ago, to what is happening above us in the north, to how these right wingers continue to organize and mobilize right, because the Department of Justice is doing such a fucking poor shit job of actually taking down the people who

funded the insurrection, who were the architects of the insurrection. So all this time has passed, handful of people have been arrested, given some slaps on the wrist or being able to just go home, right, to give themselves up right, So all they're doing is sharpening their knives, polishing literally their arsenals, just waiting for the next green light from their leaders who are telling you out loud that they want another civil war. But once again we're going to

find ourselves caught off guard. Where did this come from? Oh my goodness, we need a documentary, an investigation into understanding how another insurrection could happen because you failed to stop the first one and then you didn't hold any of those people accountable. So basically giving a blueprint to the next round to make sure that it is successful, and just you know, to say this success looks different

to different people. Your ability to storm the Capitol building, to be able to shit in the halls of democracy and then go home and brag about it on Facebook and literally nothing happened to you. I don't know. I don't have kids, but I'm pretty sure that when they have poor behavior and you don't course correct it, and then they continue that behavior and then guess what, it escalates, right,

because they haven't been held accountable. So if we thought that one six look bad, right, what do you think that the next iteration is going to look like? I think it's going to look like bullets and tanks, and I don't mean tanks on our side, right, Because we're

again not paying attention. We have allowed our guard to fall completely by the wayside because the people who are causing the harm are white, and because we don't want to address that fact, we're going to be quote unquote card off guard by I guess a whole fucking parade full of you know, lone wolves folks. As I end this week too, I really once again cannot believe that it has been four years since the Parkland shooting. There

has been no good news to report on. If you are a person that works in the gun movement right, the guns safety movement right, that has been trying to pass legislation to make this country more safe. You know what New Zealand was able to do after their first mass shooting, something that America hasn't been able to do

in the twenty plus years since Columbine. There was good news this week on top of I guess recognizing the anniversary of the Parkland shooting is that now several years removed from Sandy Hook, which is when I knew that any gun policies in America were just dead in the water. When we were okay with a classroom of kindergarten and first graders and their teachers being gunned down and we

did nothing, I knew that we were done. Because you know, even with the lies that Republicans tell themselves about being the party of family values, when they don't give a shit about kids, being the party of kids and hope, and you know, we need to put our town. What about the children? Right Like any time that you wanted to talk about sex, said, what about the children? Any time that you want to protect them from a global health pandemic. No, the children, they can't they can't work

under with masks. You know, what about this? What about that? That's it is the what about ism of Republicans. But I thought, as many did, there's no way, right, there's no way that after elementary school kids are shot dead in their classroom that you wouldn't have bipartisan legislation done in the blink of an eye. But no, But the families of Sandy Hook did something that had never been

done before. They sued the gun manufacturer. They sued Remington because that was the company that produced the weapon that was used to kill their kids, their elementary school children. So Remington, for the first time announced, right, it was announced this week when news broke, are paying seventy three million dollars to the families of those that lost their children,

their babies. Seventy three million. I thought to myself as I saw that number, and again, you know, the headlines will say historic, historic, win, And I think to myself, there were, if I believe, if I remember correctly, twenty four people that were killed twenty four and again I say people, because it was teachers and children, twenty four seventy three million. I'm not really great at math, but I know that the price of a life is more

than what Remington settled for. And I certainly know that every birthday, every anniversary, that the money that these families are getting is not feeling any void of loss that they will continue to feel for the rest of their lives, and then be able to look around and realize that their government, their country doesn't really give a fuck about

them and their loss. That they've joined a club that nobody ever wants to join, those of families that have been broken apart by gun violence, whether it is a mass shooting, whether it is a regular every day shooting, that no one should have to live under those conditions. Nobody should have to live in a war zone. Nobody should have to be afraid to go to the supermarket, to go to church, to go to a synagogue, to go to a mosque, right to go to a movie

theater because of what will happen. You know, my mother told me the other day, she goes, you know, I haven't really been to a movie theater. And this is you know, before COVID obviously, but she's just like, not ever since that shooting, people are you're sitting ducks in there? And I said, you're sitting duck everywhere in America. There are more guns in this country than there are people. There were two and a half guns to every single person in this country. How fucking sick is that? What

does it say? But again, we accept it as the norm, right, We accept this, this fervent gun culture, as just being a part of who this country is. It is blood soaked. We expect too much of people, and we always always cave to the least among us. The fact that we can't agree that no one outside of military personnel, not even of the fucking police in this country, who you know, are fucked up. No one should have access to an AAR fifteen if you are not in somebody's military wearing

fati eaks, what are you doing with that? But we couldn't even agree on that. We couldn't even agree as two parties to get rid of high impact magazines. Oh, it's a slippery slope. Do you know what's a slippery slope? Fucking mass shootings and doing nothing about it. I keep thinking to myself, twenty years ago, when Columbine happened, what would school shootings have become a thing? Would active school

shooting drills have become a norm for American children? If our country had had the fucking courage to do something the first time had happened. I can't even count how many mass shootings there have been because friends, let me just be clear, we can riddle off the ones that make the headline news right where there are you know, ten twenty thirty people that are gunned down, But a

mass shooting, it's technically four or more people. Right in America, there's a mass shooting like every day, multiple times a day. And I said it during work Wednesday. America is a dangerous fucking country. It really is. When you are going to when you recognize when you kind of look at America on paper, right, it's like when you're going to set up a dating profile you look at America on paper and that it is just one giant red flag, Like it would be like, girl, you in danger. This

America they ain't the one for you, right. They got shooting debts all the time, They got the highest fucking COVID numbers in the world, They are placing low in their public education, socioeconomic measures are falling by the wayside. Girl, this person ain't for you. Look away, not even look away, run away. And so the joke, right that was made was that America is like is like a developing nation

and a fucking Gucci belt. That is the truth. We are nothing but facade, right, And the sad thing is the sad thing is is that many of us actually believed the lies that we have been told. I know, I did. I believe in democracy. I believe that America for a lot of people is a great place or was.

But once you start to peel back that onion, once you start to realize that everything is tied to white supremacy and racism, every policy, every institution, right, once you realize that it was right before my sister was born that women were allowed to get credit cards on their own, folks, that was in the nineteen seventies. How have we ever been able to say that we are better than quote unquote some of the parts of the evil of access right,

that's the axis remembered during the Bush years. It was all of these evil Middle East during countries. And one of the things that they loved to bring up was look at their treatment of women. I'm like, do you, motherfucker see what you do here to women in the United States where you are about to officially overturn rov Wade where women weren't allowed to like have financial independence

until the seventies and I mean mid seventies. You look at America on paper, right, and this is why there were such a fight right now to erase and whitewash the truth not just about the enslaved population of Africans, not just about America's origin an old fucking sin, right, but also what they have done to women, LGBTQ people, Native Americans, all of it being eliminated to preserve what

the big lie, the original big lie, American exceptionalism. Pause, let me say the you know, with the asterisk white American exceptionalism, because on paper, when you see the truth out in bullet form, this is not a country that most of us, if we were not born here, would say, would refer to as anybody's beacon on a hill, as anybody's model of any good goddamn thing. We are living in, friends, really unsettling times. And you know this, right, you know

this to be true. And I think that as my friend said to me, you know, Danny all, sometimes it just find it hard to listen to you. It's not because, as you know, what you're saying isn't right. It's just because it's just too much truth. Well, my response to that is we've been fed too many lies and we are running out of time for the truth to actually

fucking matter and make a difference. That I'm still busy out here trying to wake people up to their power and to the truth of what this nation is because you see, you see that you cannot work on things, you can't shape things that you refuse to actually examine, right like, you can't make things better when you have lied and said, oh but it's great. America is not great. It can be a lot fucking better. But you have one spineless political party and then the other one that

is a fascist regime, and the fascists are winning. So, folks, you know, I know that each and every day I offer hard truths that are difficult to swallow. But I got to tell you I don't have time for lies, and I don't think any of you do either. I just don't want to feel like it's too late. But

it's how I'm beginning to feel. All right, folks, Now for your woke moment of wellness after all of that, I am, as I said at the top of the show, visiting my one of my best friends for her birthday weekend, and I continue to say and to remind myself how important community and friendship is, that living in these uncertain and unstable times should be a consistent reminder to how fleeting life is right, and that we need to make time for our friends, for our family to check in right,

especially with the ones, the folks that you think are really strong. Oh, they seem to be able to handle

everything that can be a facade as well. Right, It is important for us to take the time to gather still in small groups, still thoughtfully because we're in a pandemic, but to gather to share in stories, to kind of lean on each other because some days are just too rough, and so for this moment of wellness, you know, use sometime this weekend, send some text messages to the friends or the family that you keep meaning to reach out to, but then you get so busy that it doesn't happen,

and you let more time and more water go underneath that bridge. Send a text, do and impromptu face time. Let people know the ones who you love and care about, whether they are your actual family, blood family, whether they are the family that you have put together yourself. Let people know in the moments that you are thinking about them, that you love them, that you care about them. Never get too busy to make space and time for those that you love, because you don't know how much time

any of us have. And if there is one thing that has been made clear over the last two years of living in this health pandemic, living in the threat of our democracy ending, living in all of this, it is how precious, how precious the time is, and so use it wisely, spend it with those that bring you joy as a consistent reminder that life is not about the grind, It is about the light, It is about the release, It is about love, and we should never be too busy for that. That is it for me today,

dear friends, recording live from Eastern Shore, Maryland. I wish you a happy, healthy, RESTful, joyful weekend and I will be back here on Monday. As always, dear friends, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.