We Get Nothing

They are supporting an organization that supports women and girls of color in particular at this moment in time, and do wonderful grants to organizations that are working on behalf of women and girls of color in a range of different ways. Folks, let me start out by saying that, you know, the other day, I was on the plane traveling out here to California from New York, and I

found myself completely and utterly off the grid, right. I decided not to pay for the Wi Fi on the plane, and I'm looking around and everybody's complying with the MASK mandates, and you know, all is moving well. Land in California. Decide to turn on Twitter after not being online for about five hours, and come to find out that the

build back better. The three point five trillion dollar Infrastructure Bill, which was supposed to incorporate both buildings and roads and bridges and broadband and traditional ideas of what we believe as infrastructure, as well as what it takes to have human infrastructure, meaning you know that Americans are essentially cogs in the capitalistic machine, and what does it take to have workers right and to have people have the ability to enter into the workforce because they have things like

paid family leave, paid medical leave, They have things like support in cost of childcare so that women don't have to leave the workforce in high numbers because guess what their employers would be supporting childcare. Because we know that even in heteronormative circumstances, right, that it is women right. Even if we want to believe that the world has changed, it has not, and the pandemic showed us this that

it is. Oftentimes, when the sole responsibility of childcare ends up being on the family, it is women who end up having to leave the workforce to care for those children. And then we create a society in an environment that does not welcome them back in. And as a matter of fact, looks at any gaps that you may have on your resume, and if you were to dare to say that, oh, I had left my last job but then decided to have two beautiful children and then want

to come back five years later. They look at that as if you are lazy, you are a problem, right, And what does that mean for your productivity down the road? Are you going to have to leave for parent teacher conferences? What if the kid gets sick, I might as well get somebody younger, cheaper, without kids, not married, who I can work to death. Right. So these are the types of issues that were a part of what the Biden

administration was referring to as their human Infrastructure Bill. And come to find out that when I got off of my flight from New York to LA that Senator Mansion decided that, among other things, he was going to take out the medical leave, take out the paid family leave, take out the childcare costs, because you know what, he doesn't like the size of the infrastructure bill. It's just

too big. And then also, guess what, even though the Democrats have created an opportunity for us to have a billionaire tax, you know, for these people who do not get taxed through income but get taxed through other means, to be able to pay their fair share and so that the burden doesn't fall on the rest of us middle class and lower income people and the poor that oh, he doesn't like that either, even though according to many reports and on Twitter, there are no fucking billionaires in

West Virginia, but there are, of course billionaires the heads of corporations that are giving Joe Mansion his money and his leash apparently. So the reality is that we are getting nothing. We are getting nothing. And a couple of people had tweeted and said this at this point, what is happening is just cruel and disgusting, and I said, yeah, I mean, I know that I say these things on a relative on a regular basis on woke AF, I

talk about how disgusting, how despicable. And I realized that at the end of the day, that's really just me blowing off steam because it's not as if these people Joe Mansion, Kursten Cinema, who, by the way, was on the floor of the Senate and a denim vest, like first of all, A, it's not the nineties and b professionalism much and see, no, I'm not talking about respectability

politics and as it pertains to dress. But what I'm saying is is that if she were not a white woman rocking a denim vest on the floor of the Senate. Then the amount of commentary that would have proceeded, how unprofessional, how uncouth, how not ready for prime time this person is. And you know, I got to tell you that it reeked of white privilege. It reeked, reeked of it, and it was disgusting. It was a disgusting display. But I digress.

The fact is that many people are saying, well, you know, because they're already preparing themselves for the loss that we're getting ready to have, right because we're not getting the three point five trillion dollar deal. We're not getting the robust, transformative new deal that everybody kept talking about. No, we're not. And the reality is is that Joe Mansion is a piece of shit. And here's what one of our friends, a friend of the show and a member of WIKA

Nation is Zach Bacantis had said. He said, even a compromise, build back better deal would be as historic and impactful as any initiative from the New Deal or Great Society, the most significant investment to fight climate change in human history,

the greatest American investment in childcare since our founding. And my response, even though I appreciate Zach and understand the perspective right that you know, we oftentimes as Democrats, tell ourselves, don't let the perfect get in the way of the good. You know, something is better than nothing, right, But we set ourselves up in a way to continually have incremental change and mediocre progress with those sentiments. And I say that not because Zach was wrong, because he's not right.

This will be one of the biggest things to have happened, but it won't have as many teeth, or if any at all, or a spine because all of the things that people were looking forward to in this bill that had yet to be written was the fact that it was going to address the needs that were made laid bare at the height of quarantine, right when people two million women were left the workforce because having to balance teaching their kids on zoom right, who are probably who

were in elementary school or younger, as well as keep up with their day to day tasks at work became too much to bear. And so what were they going to sacrifice their children's learning, which we already know how much children lost right in learning during this time, or what were they going to do what they were given in a false choice? Right, That's the reality, and So my feeling, my feeling here is this, It's what kind of choices are we actually giving American workers right now?

You have, and we've talked about this on the show, you have over eleven million people that have left the workforce. They keep talking about on mainstream media about how we have some type of workers shortage. No, we don't. We don't have a worker shortage in America. There are plenty of people to work. But do you know what they're recognizing that they don't want to work for peanuts, that they don't want to work forty hours a week and not be able to pay for prescription drugs, put food

on the table, pay off their student loan debt. Coming up next, friends, is my conversation with Ruth Cooker, the author of the book The Public Insult Playbook, How abusers in power undermine civil rights for warm, When they go low, we go high. Is a great turn of a phrase and an admirable way to go through life, but did nothing to defeat the radical right or Trump in twenty sixteen. Stay tuned for that conversation and as always, let me

know about what you think, folks. I am so excited to welcome to Okay f for the first time author Ruth Cooker, who has written the book The Public Insult Playbook, How abusers empower undermined Civil rights reform and how this book Ruth offers insights into how attacks have come to effect our contemporary public discourse right and the fact that you know, we all have moved from the space where Michelle Obama has said when they go low, we go high.

And let me tell you something. When she made that point in that speech, I was excited, but I also said, Hmmm, I don't know if that works all the time. I don't know if choosing the high road works when people are invested in taking us to the sewer. So can you talk to us about why you wrote this book and why it's important in the moment that we are

currently living in. Well. I started writing this book actually because I was inspired by my good friend Amy Robertson, who does disability rights activism, and she wrote this blog post which is always such a great way for people

to just get out ideas. Right. You wrote this great blog post about how the political right in lawsuits being brought by disabled people were criticizing these people, insulting them when all they were trying to do was get access to like a restaurant, a hotel or whatever, and they would call them things like drive by litigators, which is such a shocking term because drive by we think of like school shootings or something right like guns and violence.

And they were accusing these people who are trying to get into places that were inaccessible as drive by litigators, you know, they called them bounty hunters and all these insults, and shockingly, some judges accepted this characterization of these people who are just trying to access their basic civil rights. And so I started doing research in the disability area to see how this insult was having such effect and limiting people's abilities to utilize one of my favorite statutes

to Americans, Disabilities Act. And then after I started doing the work in the disability context, a publisher approached me and said, you know, I think this is a good theme. Do you want to pursue it outside of disability context? To go, yeah, you're right, and I as you know, I wrote chapters on many other different topics that we can discuss, but it was the disability issue that really got me started because I was just so appalled by these insults are being flung at people just for trying

to access their rights that they were entitled to. Do you think that, you know, just staying in the disability vein for a moment, do you think that that community is still very much marginalized in terms of the language

that we use it like they are. They are readily a target by both the right and they by both sides, I say, and I say that not because I liked to both sides things to death, because I definitely do not, But I say it because the language that we use these days are important, right, And there used to be things that we would say that would reference a disability, but we were making the point of something not working right,

And I still hear people use that language. So do you think that the reason why judges were signing with the opponents is because this is a community that is seen of as as a throwaway that we don't need to pay attention to. That is such a good point, Danielle.

And one of the things I tried to do this year at the New Year's resolution I've completely failed is to stop using the word crazy every time something didn't make sense to me that I disliked it, that I thought it was wrong, Because of course I didn't mean crazy, right, I was just using that as a shorthand. And so in modern popular discourse, we all do it. And I'm like you, I never do the both sides stuff that really bothers me, but in this case, but everybody does it.

Everybody uses shorthands when they are disability terms, when that's not actually what they're talking about. They're not talking about someone's mental health or whatever. And so many of them are, unfortunately, you know, terms that have to do with mental health disabilities, which we are talking about more and that's great, But at the same time, we haven't stopped using these really disparaging labels just all the time in common discourse, you know.

And so I want to make the transition now to Republican and Donald Trump, particularly in the way that Donald Trump campaigned in twenty in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, and how his approach, if one can call it that, how his approach has completely changed the landscape of what is and is not acceptable in politics. There used to be things that were quote unquote off limits, things that you would never hear a politician say out loud because

their campaign would be dead on arrival. That is no longer the case, apparently there's nothing that is off you know, off limits. How did you see things begin to shift and how does that play into this playbook that you've put together. Well, Actually, what I try to do in the book is used Donald Trump as an example as little as possible, okay, because I think that we misunderstand the Donald Trump what I would like to call moment,

but it's not a moment, right. What Donald Trump has done is get even us a poignant example of the effectiveness of hurling public insults when you're a member of the political right, and that you can do so with impunity. But the reason he could do it is because the mindset of accepting that kind of discourse was already present. He was smart enough to figure out that he could harmiss it. But he was just doing things that had happened before. And it's actually not true that politicians couldn't

hurl insult. So then one of the examples that I've given the book, again going back to disability context, is that when the American Disabilities app was being considered by Congress, the right wing Republicans insisted the certain exceptions we put it in the statute that we put in the statute that it doesn't cover transvestites and pedia files and homosexuals,

you know. And so even when Congress was passing a landmark civil right statute on behalf of people with disabilities, Congress was slurring people with disabilities at the same time. And and you know, and if you think about the racial civil rights movement, I mean, there have been slurs against black people forever, right, I mean, this is not a new phenomenon. And there have been politicians who have campaigned with Willie Horton ads and the like, Right, that's

their way of using the public insul playbook. So Trump is an example, of course, and has he helped make it worse, absolutely, But I don't think I think we need to understand him as part of the broader phenomenon rather than the phenomenon itself. I mean, Ruth, how did we get from an error an era of political correctness, right, what was term as political correctness, to this current insult culture?

How did how? Honestly? Because if it if Donald Trump is a symptom, right, which is what many people say, He's a symptom of a larger problem. A there was a degradation that was beginning in our body politic before Donald Trump, he just exacerbated that. But how did we move from this space where certain phrases, certain things were deemed as off limits to now everything being back on the table and more. Well, I think you know, one of the books that influenced me the most is Kendy's book.

I'm trying to think of the title tying to be Anti Racist. No, the other book, anyway, he has to he has many books, anyway. In one of his books he says that, but we need to understand about American history as we have had both racism and anti racism at the same time. We shouldn't see this as one movement winning. So during the so called political correctness error, if we want to call it, that, the political right was still perfectly in existence. Maybe their voices were more

muted for a while, but they were still there. And we always have both in American history from the beginning. Right, we've always had both of those themes president in American society, and they vast late us to whose voice might be the loudest and most shaping public policy the most. But it were wrong to think that just because the political left for a time maybe was winning, the so called

political correctness debates that we had really won anything. Isn't winning and losing, They're both currents are there at the

same time. And that's why I argue in the book that when the political left has the dominant discourse, when we're winning the political fights, when we can get legislation through Congress, right, when we're at that particular moment, which we were, for example, during the Obama administration, we need to anticipate that the political right will be coming against us with this public installed playbook and put into place really strong structural reforms that will help deflect that strategy.

We need to know that sturnity is always there and always will be there. And when we have those political moments when we have some power, let's make sure we use it in a way that's structural and so that the public insul playbook will be less effective against us.

You know, I feel like our political norms, though, have been so eroded that I don't even you know, for me, somebody who is a student of political science has been in politics and in policy work for my entire career, I have never seen political norms eroded in such haste as they have been now. And so I'm wondering what are some of the ways you think that, in this heightened moment of tribalism, of nastiness, of cruelty, that this administration or other members of Congress would even begin to

reinforce those eroded norms. What do those steps begin to look like. I don't think we're going to get back the norm's ability, assuming we ever had them. I mean, that's you know, that's and in some ways, that's sort of a pretense that people were faking it, and we accepted they're faking it, But now we know how they really felt. So maybe we should thank them for being more honest now. But yes, yes, thank you for taking

your lids off that. But but you know, you keep keep giving national examples, and so do I. But as you know, the Black Lives Matter movement has really made some important inroads at the local government level, right, And so it may be that we're not going to get the package that we want Biden to get through Congress right now? Right three point five trillion, I've probably like six trillion, right, I bet you we could agree with

me on that one. Right, But can we get some things done at the local government level where we can talk about what it means for them to be violence in the black community, you know, by the police. You know, can we talk about what can happen there? And as you know, what the Black Lives Matter movement has done so masterfully is to say, okay, that's great. You know, let's criminalize Derek Schouben's behavior. Let's go after him, but

let's also ban chow colds, let's defund the police. Let's make structural reform at the local government level where maybe we can have real conversations. Right, maybe maybe tribalism works there because there's just more support for the progressive views and we can actually get in rows and instead of

sitting around waiting for Congress to do something. I mean, if we're going to sit around wait for Congress criminal justice reform, you and I are going to be long dead by then, right, right, so you're younger than me, but but yet you we do see changes at the local government level. Right. It depends upon the community that you live in. And that's not enough. Obviously that's not enough, but it is something and we should at minimize it.

And so, yeah, I don't think we should just sit around and wait for civility to return, because you know, one of the things I show in the book is that from the founding of our republic, we had on civil discourse in Congress. I mean there's this you know, dueling and all that stuff. Remember that, Yeah, oh yes, yes, yes, we were talking about mud slinging. Then right when you're when we were talking about local, state um and federal elections.

You know, one of the things that you that is conjured in my mind as we're talking about you know, local levels, that I'm thinking right now, what has been happening at our school boards? Right? What has been happening across the country at our school board meetings? Like we you know, toxicity, to your point, isn't just at the federal level. It is actually marinated. It's way all the

way down. And so you're seeing these school board meetings take place which were never points of major contention, right, Like, I'm not hallucinating that fact that school boards used to talk with the most contentious thing they were talking about is you know, more money or less money or you know,

and and that was it. Now we're talking about, well, schools are years away from vaccinations and don't wear a mask, and these policies and harassing, these people, and so what does it look like to you if part of the pushback right now is that the people that are representing us at all different levels are not truly actually representing

the people. And one of the one of the positive sides of this toxic moment that we're in is engaging more people to actually take up the mantle and want to run for office, but they feel like they can't do so because they're literally going to be putting maybe a literal or figurative target on their backs. What is your advice for those people that are saying, you know, I want to take the system back. I do want a return to civility or as close to that as

we can get. Well, I mean, obviously that is great. I don't think, unfortunately, have any answers they are. I mean, one thing my research I think has shown is that it doesn't help for the political left to engage in mud slinging. That's what I call it, you know, the abusers in power, the political right, that's who I'm criticizing. As you may have noticed from time to time, when the political left tries to engage in some of that playbook,

it actually doesn't work. It's I see the playbook as part of the protection of neoliberal mindsets capitalism, you know. And so if we think of things like bounty hunters, I mentioned that the disability community was accused of being bounty hunters right, and they tried to enforce the accessibility provisions of the ADA. Now, as your listeners know, right now, the state of Texas has bolden bounty hunters right to go after women who are having who want to have abortions.

And guess what bounty hunters now is okay, when the political right wants to use that term, they're using they're leveraging that term to get something where it's the same people who criticize disability activists for also trying to get something, to try to get accessible structures. So I think we have no choice but to want stability by being part of the political left, because we don't have the choice of slinging insults. It's not going to work. There's no evidence.

I couldn't find any evidence of the political left ever achieving anything through insults, but the political right is masterful

at it and really has that tool. And so one of the things that I have found it's depressing, but I think is powerful, is that you know, as black men have been murdered, and of course others, but pretty sip his black men had been murdered, and the immediate thing is for the newspapers and else to talk about their criminal record and all this nest Right and the Black Lives Matter movement has been so good and immediately coming back and putting up pictures of these people in

their high school graduation with gal yeah, or you know, with their children riding around them. Why because they're trying to counter that political right image. They anticipate it, and now, you know, it's not become harder, hasn't it. You know? We you know when we when we think of Trayvon Martin is a piece of candy, you know, and the way the mudslinging went against him as compared to how the media has had to handle George Floyd. It's a

lot of years between those two events. I think that's about seven years between those two events, and a lot of things have happened in the middle. But so I think that we have learned that we need to make sure is that we present positive images and we don't accept this mud slinking. We don't accept these public insults, and we anticipate it, so we're ready with these positive images in the media, and so I think that's you know,

that's that's real. That's been a very effective tactic. I was gonna, you know, I hear you on the effectiveness of it, because I think that in that example, it is incredibly important to change the narrative as well as

the visuals right when we are talking about victims. I you know, I think about the ways in which we have changed how the media engages with victims of sexual assault, right where it is no longer acceptable to go through a person's background, what they were wearing, all of these different things and just have to tackle the issue at hand. I think I would I would hope, right, I don't think that it's going to be similar, but I would hope that that would be the case for victims, uh,

you know, victims of police violence. Right that we're not talking about what it was that the police did not have access to and understanding that person before they gunned them down or you know, cut off their oxygen for eight minutes and forty six seconds, but instead taking things in this situation that we know m is it a hindrance though for the fact, for the left, for those that insults don't work on our behalf because it requires us to then have to be once again a lot

more nimble and a lot more strategic than the right ever has to be. Yeah, you know, and you know, before you said, what do I say? These people who are lucting to run for school board, you know they're and I mean, to be involved in political activism is exhausting, and we all need to have our mental health resources, you know, friends, family, people who support us. It is exhausting. And when you know, I teach young people, Um, I teach people in their twenties, and and I understand that

it is exhausting. I have children myself who are engaged in this kind of work. But you know it's worth being exhaustive for I mean, yeah, yeah, you know, it's sort of like this isn't maybe a bad analogy because I'm not good at sports. But you know, when when people used to say, when we have a medioc or black center fielder, we'll know this racial equality and professional baseball, right, it's not when we have the superstars. Yeah they always get to play, well, not always, but you know, more

recently were able to play. But you know, black people are entitled to be as average as white people at the same pursuits, and you know, that's just the way it works. But before that, you have to be twice as qualified right to have those opportunities. And that's that's that's what it means to fight, and that means to stay in the fight. And I don't I don't think we're helping ourselves by misleading ourselves about that. It's hard to achieve progress. It's easier just to maintain the status

quo word to even move backwards. So what do you say, then, Ruth, to the people that say we must fight fire with fire or that in this political climate you have democrats that are bringing, you know, a pen to a knife fight. Like, what what is your response and your books response to to those old adages. Yeah, I mean it's probably true. I mean, you know, we could certainly find some evidence of the black panthers maybe helping to move the civil

rights movement. And we shouldn't think of the civil rights movement as a monolithic development that only use civil disobedience. That there were some more aggressive voices, you know, within the black civil rights community arguing for other kinds of tactics. Um and so, um, you know, I do believe that we each have to ask ourselves what's the role we personally can play and make sure we're playing a role and doing something rather than you know, sitting and not

doing something. Um but um, it's the road to civil rights progress is just it's really long, you know, and it's not getting any shorter. It's it's a it is a hard journey, and if you think about it, all the political right has to do is say no. They say no, said no to anti lynching laws. You know, they say they said no to civil rights laws. We have to overcome a filibuster right to get the Civil Rights Act. We couldn't overcome filibusters to get anti lynching

laws many years ago. You know, it's easy to be in the political right because all you have to do is say no. You don't have to write legislation, you don't know, you just don't have to offer a platform. You don't have to you know, you don't. You don't have to offer anything. Right, where's the Affordable Care Act that they were going to rewrite. We've never even seen a draft of a bill. You know. They've never had

an alternative because they don't need one. They just say no, no, no, And so it's harder to be part of the political left because it does take a pen right. It takes a pen to right legislation to get past, and it takes people in the streets to help create the momentum the legislation to get past. It takes a lot of people doing a lot of things. But you might say, to me, isn't it fascinating The political right doesn't even need a pen. All I mean is the red X mark.

I mean, the last question you know for you on this is that if if all the right has to do is say no, and the left cannot co opt the tactics of the right because it doesn't work with our base, then what does the future of our body politic look like when insults and cruelty have become the norm and replace civility, and we are so far from that place right, So I guess I would argue that despite the incivility, it is possible for people in the

political left to be the political majority. You know, we saw it in Obama's first term, the first two years of his term, when we had a supermajority in the United States, said it. I know, we don't have as many moments in US history, as you and I might like that are like that. But when we do have those moments, I think we need to be more creative

in thinking about what we want to seek. And so you know, as you know, we didn't get immigration reformed during Obama's first two years, and we could have, and that is a real tragedy that we didn't do that. We wasted a lot of time trying to get bipartisan support for the Affordable Care Act that it never happened. It was going to have to be a party line

vote all along. And so hopefully we learn from our experience of being the majority so that when we find ourselves a majority again, we're more efficient, right, We're more successful, We're more thinking about what's going to happen. And I have to be confident, I have to be optimistic that young people understand what we need to do to save our planets, to advance civil rights. I mean that we're really in a moment of crisis and that the Republicans just saying no, no, no is turned an off a

lot of young people. And hopefully we will soon find ourselves in a supermajority again. We need that right to achieve the kind of structure reforms. It's important, but in the short term we can at least try to achieve change at the local government level, where we won't need to have the supermajorities that we need in the United

States Congress. You know, I think that one of the things that we have seen, right that the last four years under Trump has shown us is that and what the last ten months under this new administration has also shown us is that, you know, what happens at the

federal level is not the silver bullet. It is what it is how power is dispersed across the country and at all levels of our government, and that if we don't have our eyes in all of those places, then you can see how we can be caught out in the cold, as I think that we are now, because my fear is that we're not going to get the opportunity for a supermajority again. That if Democrats lose in twenty twenty two and then again in twenty twenty four,

we are done. That's a conversation I continue to have on Woke a f and I know that people consider it to be hyperbolic, but the writing is on the wall in so many different ways. Thank you so much Ruth for making the time to join us. Folks. The book is the public insult Playbook, How abusers in power undermine civil rights reform. I hope that you will come back and join us again. I would love to. This has been a real treat. I love your podcast. Thank you so much, thank you, thank you. That is it

for me today. Dear friends on Woke f as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.