WokeAF Daily 4.22.20 - Protesting A Virus

next two weeks. You know this whole. I'm gonna strap myself up with a bunch of guns of best a maga hat and go and protest of virus on the steps of the Capitol Building while police looks safely down at you from a balcony. Is on some America, And that's what the KKK in their spelling of like bullshit.

I'm watching this unfold and I'm watching now reports of a one named Attorney General William Barr, who is saying that he is going to use the power of the Department of Justice to require governors to sentence their residence to death. How that work? So? On one hand, when Black Lives Matter protesters were protesting against police brutality, right wanting the law and the justice system to work for

everyone in the same way. William Barr came out and said, well, if you don't like the police, then maybe they won't be in your neighborhoods anymore. You remember that this is the same now, the same motherfucker who thinks that it's totally totally okay for armed white people to storm capital buildings. These people are not protesters, That's what I want to get clear. They're fucking terrorists and they should be treated

like that. Everyone's idea of liberty is clearly not the same because racist white folks idea of liberty is being able to oppress and force their will on other people.

So because they don't give a fuck about their lives and their health, then no one else can, right Because they don't give a fuck about following science and data and facts and actual doctors, They're gonna go with their gut right like on a hunch, like this fucking president, Well, you know what I say, why not give them them the state of Alaska go fucking there, right, Like, round up these forty percent of people who don't give a shit about this country or anything that it has to

stand for. All they care about is white supremacy and dominance, Give them their own fucking state, and make sure that it's separate off, floating in the ocean, away from the rest of us. That's what I recommend. I'm done. I'm done trying to convince these people of sane ideas and facts. I'm done with Democrats trying to open up their arms and welcoming these people back to the party because guess what, news flash, I don't fucking want them, and neither should you.

What do they have to offer us, what their wayward votes? The fuck out of here. Keep it with Trump, go all in the bag for him. Do that, and then when you turn up sick and coughing and need a ventilator, go elsewhere. Go elsewhere. Because I don't see why our health infrastructure, which is already fucked to begin with, needs to be crumbling on added weight by stupid, fucking people.

I really don't. And frankly, there were several countries and places right around this country that we're instituting fines for people who were not practiced in social distancing laws. So I just want to sit back and wait for the explosions to take place in Texas, in Tennessee, in Ohio, in Michigan because you're not legislating in a way that is clearly effective, because these folks don't fear you, right,

they don't fear any type of repercussions. What should be the fine, and I don't even mean monetarily throw them in fucking jail? Right, you're talking about a virus that has a one two sixty or plus ratio, meaning that one person can effectively, in fact, sixty some odd people, and you're having two hundred plus people at a rally, are you kidding me? And nothing is happening to them. They are armed with R fifteen. What kind of fucking country is this? Where gun shops are labeled essential but

abortion is not. You know what this virus has done is it has opened up the Pandora's box that apparently our idealism has been sitting on for all of this time, making us believe that this country and the people that inhabit it are better than they actually are. You know what I see in those screaming, white angry faces, just pure ignorance, pure rage. Right, they want to rage against

the machine. They don't care about civil liberties. As long as white folks have it, they're fine, right, because Oh my god, being forced to stay inside and watch Netflix in order to make sure that tens of thousands of Americans don't die. Oh that's fascism. Are you fucking nuts? You know? And it's starting to occur to me as well,

that all of this right. And we're going to get into this conversation with our regular Woke f Wednesday contributors Jonathan Metzel and Kurt Bardella, and we will unpack the rise in white supremacist organizations that are trying to weaponize the coronavirus right, that they are calling for a second civil war, that they are stocking up there our ammunition. And it isn't just as a trophy they are preparing.

They are preparing to take down police, communities of color, Jewish folks, Muslims, anyone who is not white, Anglo and Christian. This is the same powder keg situation that brought about the Nazi regime. You have the President of the United States of America getting on Twitter and telling these states to quote unquote liberate and that your Second Amendment is

under siege. Said, fucking who, You're the goddamn president. So are you saying that you're stealing their weapons or are all of a sudden, now it's the federal government that is now at war with the States. What the fuck kind of country is this? That's the question that you all need to be asking yourselves as we make the slow fucking march to November, if in fact we get there.

And you know that I have been saying this for what feels like years at this point, that I said that Donald Trump would do anything, effectively anything in order to hold onto power. We know that he has the Department of Justice in his pocket, We know that he has the Supreme Court of the United States in his pocket, and now we know through his tweets that he is building his own MAGA militia. Wake the fuck up and recognize what is going on before it is too late.

They are not just crazy. They are crazy and armed, which is what makes them dangerous, which is what makes them terrorists. And we should be discussing it as such. We will be doing that and much much more with our guests today on wike F Daily, because I'm telling you that the mainstream media is missing this. They are missing this convers station and they are not opening your eyes to what is happening. It is not enough to

just laugh at the memes and say, oh hah, they're dumb. No, these people are armed and they're coming to our doorsteps and the federal government isn't going to do a fucking thing to stop them, and that is terrifying on top of everything else. Excited to welcome back to Woke a F Daily, our Woke a F contributor Kurt Bardella, who is also an NBC News Think and USA Today and Morning Joe MSNBC contributor as well. Good morning, Kurt, A

man of many titles, A man of many titles. I like it because you are a man with many insights into Republican hypocrisy. And you know what I'm really enjoying about the pieces that you were writing for both NBC and for USA Today are the conversations that you're having

that we're not talking about. And it is how hell bent the Republican Party was during the Obama years to try and label Barack Obama as an emperor, to try and have him looked at as a person that was promoting propaganda, calling in governmental agencies to look into every single thing, including the Reinvestment Act, which again helped this country stave off a depression, A depression in the early aughts, and here we are where there is an actual emperor,

an authoritarian in the White House who is tweeting about the liberation of states and telling people that their Second Amendment rights are under siege, which they are not, telling people that he alone is the end all, be all and the authority in the United States, essentially eliminating the role of Congress. And they say nothing, Kurt, they say nothing. None of these people that you have written about in your latest piece. Trump's liberate tweets were reckless and arrogant.

Now imagine if Obama had sent them. They're saying nothing. Tell me how and why are Democrats not making a

bigger deal about the Republican silence. You know, it's been both an observation and a frustration for me, again having had a front row seat to how Republicans conducted themselves during the Obama years, and I spent five years working at the House Oversight Committee, and I remember people like the then Judiciary Committee chairman's, you know, talking about the need to prevent the executive branch from overstepping the boundaries

of its constitutional authority and separation of powers and checks and balances, and even going to the extreme of They formed a special task force to examine the executive overreach of Barack Obama, labeling him a lawless, emperor like figure. He had people like Ted Cruz raising alarm bell saying that you know, there's troubling aspects of the Obama presidency and direct quote, none is more dangerous than the president's

persistent pattern of lawlessness. Mark Meadows, the same Mark Meadows, who was now Donald Trump's chief of staff, opine that President Obama had declared war not just on Congress, beyond the American people, on and on people from Paul Ryan to Sief King to Jim Jordan, all of these characters that we have seen take a front row seat and being the public defender of Donald Trump, were the first

ones railing against President Obama's use of executive authority. And let's just be clear, what President Obama did did not in any way come close to the lawlessness we're seeing from Donald Trump. They're not on the same playing field. Yet Republicans were so quick to yell and hold hearings

and issue subpoenas and launch investigations. And I constantly think that for Democrats it is a missed opportuntunity to point out the intolerable hypocrisy that we've seen from Republicans during this time of Trump, and I wish that they would be more blatant and more direct just repeat the words of Republicans at the next time Donald Trump has a

temper tantrum or a Twitter tantrum. I don't know why every single House Democrat doesn't put out a statement quoting Ted Cruz when he wrote a presidential temper tantrum is not an acceptable means of discourse. The words are right there, and they came from Republicans. And think that Democrats need to be vigilant at reminding people of the context here, because as we've seen, Donald Trump loves to rewrite history in real time, and Republicans seem to like to pretend

that the better part of this decade didn't exist. And I think Democrats are letting them off the hook by pointing it out every single day, every single day. You know, I don't know if it is democrats desire or they're feeling that by not pointing out the obvious that they're

taking the high road. But at this point in time, don't you think that it is critical that it's critical that Democrats highlight where we are and where Republicans have taken us and how far they have how far they have strayed from their own philosophies and ideologies about government.

I think it is because in reality, the Republicans effectively closed themselves in constitutional righteousness the Obama years, and they use that as a means to advance their brand, their politics obstruction, and now more than ever, they need to be held accountable for that by the Democrats, by the press, so that the American people understand what's happening and how far away Republicans frankly have strayed from their own orthodox scene.

And again, the lack of oversight, the lack of check and balance, the lack of a watchdog over our democracy is having some real, real life impacts. People are wondering right now why they haven't gotten their stimulus checks, why they their small businesses didn't get loans, Why large corporate conglomerates are getting bailouts while mom and pop shops are going under and people are having to fire their employees. And part of that is because Republicans have abandoned their oversight.

Post Trump is empowered to feel like he can do whatever he wants, that he can give money away to whoever he wants. The fact that this past week, somehow in the state to Florida, the WWE was designated essential and given special status just tells you how broken things are right now. And I think Democrats, who again, I

feel like, oftentimes operate from a position of fear. They're worried about things on their faces, They're worried about looking to politically opportunistic, and yet the Republicans certainly don't hesitate to do those things. Republicans aren't thinking twice about politicizing this as they are encouraging lunatics to go out there and protest the social distancing guidelines that we have in

place to trying to keep hold of this pandemic. Republicans are doubling down on extreme and Democrats don't seem to be saying or doing much of anything. And that's and that's always my problem is that you're right, there is this fear that is there, that is, you know, lingering underneath the surface with Democrats, which is being painted in a bad light, being seen as opportunistic, being seen as

a party that does not care about the people. Right So, any time there is any spin that is done from Fox News that is done by the right, They cower, they apologize, and they let the situation go. We watch it happen with gun rights, right. We watch it after every mass shooting, right, we haven't had just so people know, we haven't had a school shooting. Do you know why we haven't had a school shooting because school is not

in session. That's the only reason. So the way to stop mass shootings in schools apparently is to shut down schools, not do anything about actual gun control legislation. But every time there is a mass shooting, we're told now is not the time to politicize. Well, when is it right?

If now is not the time to politicize the fact that you have a president and a party that is held bent on creating some type of second Civil war, right where the President of the United States is urging folks to buy up guns right and to protest their rights to be liberated, when in fact that rhetoric is putting them in harm's way and is creating an incredible powder cag of an environment right where we have heightened emotions.

Twenty two million people are out of work, We have racial and ethnic animus, that this administration has been spreading and then we're literally adding guns to that mix. Right, what do we think is going to happen? And so, what is it that you think that Democrats need to do to reclaim this narrative. I think they need to toughen up and really start being more aggressive in their rhetoric. I think that they need to hold this president accountable.

I think after debating and discussing right now more legislation to put more money into different programs to try to keep the economy afloat, I think that they really need to tie in that legislation with some real tough oversight mechanisms. I think that they need to not allow this president to have a blank check to do whatever he wants, because I feel like giving Donald Trump trillions of taxpayer dollars,

it's basically it's a bank heist and broad daylight. And what we do know is to this point, the people who need help aren't getting it. And what the president is really spending his time doing is focusing on using

these resources to produce propaganda. I mean, before his ridiculous campaign style of briefings, he's making the press corps watch these ridiculous videos that he's studies that he's his team is putting together on a tax payer time to try to do everything he can to deflect away from them stakes he has made and promote himself as some sort of savior. And you know, the idea that he even would delay for one second the sending of some of these checks out because he wants his signature on the

checks is unthinkable propaganda. And it's something that Republicants, by the way, we're obsessed about the idea of propaganda. During the Obama years, they called for investigations about the legality of the public relations efforts of the Obama administration. And I can tell you firsthand that nothing that Barack Obama did came remotely close to the blatan display of propaganda that we've seen from Donald Trump in the last week alone.

And yet tom and again, as we've seen throughout this presidency, Republicans who are quick to investigate Obama there are nowhere to be seen or heard there instead encouraging people to go out there and violate social distancing guidelines. They're encouraging people to put their health at risk and put all of us at risk. They're encouraging people to arm up and weaponize because we all know that the thing that we need now is everyone having a gun is that

usually ends well in this country. And I just don't, for the left of me know what the Democrats are really doing. I don't see any of them really out there talking about any of this in a strong and profound and meaningful way. And again, I just I feel like they're letting fear and they're letting the right control

their reactions to things. I mean, the reality is Donald Trump and the bright parts of the world and the Fox News is of the world, in the Russell La Muzzle world, they're going to accuse the Democrats are playing politics. No matter what, they're going to attack the Democrats, they're gonna say they're taking lea our rights and our freedoms. They've been doing that for a decade now. That's not going to change. So Democrats might as well go out

there and be forceful. I think the American people will respond if Democrats are out there being forceful. But if they're just gonna let Donald Trump bloviate for hours and hours a day without any forceful, organized response, Trump's gonna win in November. I just you know, everything that you're saying is right and absolutely dead on, and it's it's

like we're in the midst of a perfect story. Right, Democrats have been cowtowing to Republicans for decades, right and with this and leading by fear and instead of and taking the high road and believing that the American people are actually better than they are, because I really don't think so. I gotta be honest, right when you have forty percent of the population that can be swayed by a used car salesman that is literally putting you in harm's way, and you're saying, yes, I want to send

my kids back to work. Who cares of two point three million of them die like doctor Oz did last week and then had to apologize right like again, you're right, Where the hell are the Democrats? Where is anybody that is punching back in any significant way? And they can't tell me, right, because it is the governors right now who have the responsibilities of trying to get their their residents safe and tested and create a hospital structure that

doesn't explode. But where are the members of Congress? Right In all the while, I want to point out that as Republicans and lunatics like like Oz, and Phil I won't even call them doctors anymore. In my opinion, they're not now. But as they're saying, you know what, let's let these people die, how in the world are we going to ever let the Republican Party get away with

calling themselves the pro life party, they're not. They are literally willing to let people die who as they cause to say, well, they might die anyway, they're old, They would they would be glad to sacrifice their lives for the economy. This is, you know, all the talk of death panels during Obamacare, repuls that are willing to administer death because they want their corporate cronies to continue making millions and billions of dollars. I mean more than anything too.

What we're seeing is effectively class warfare, because guess what, it's not the billionaires going to be out there on the supply chains, working in warehouses, working in restaurants. It's not going to be the the the people who benefited from Trump's tax cuts that are going to be on the front lines of this thing. If if certain states reopen, it's going to be the working class, it's going to

be the lower class. It's going to be people who don't have a choice and are having to make the impossible decision to choose between their own health and welfare and being able to put food on the table and keep their families afloat. It's going to be deleased among us who suffer the consequences of this reactionary effort by

Republicans to get people out there again. And and you know what I'll say is this is that you know, I oftentimes believe that Democrats waste a lot of time trying to convince the forty percent that Donald Trump is bad for them, right, instead instead of focusing on the sixty percent that need to be riled up and need to be educated on what he's doing, so that this time around in twenty twenty, another hundred and five million people don't decide to sit on their assets, right like

this is this is about This isn't about trying to get I could give a shit about folks across the aisle. I really don't care. Right, you want to go out and you want to have rallies with guns and do all of these things and infect yourselves and your neighbors, and one stay in your own goddamn state. That's that's essentially where I am. I don't care. I'm not I'm not trying to save people's lives out here who are

willingly putting themselves in harm's way. But I am talking about the sixty percent of people who have some type of practical understanding of how viruses work and spread and health and wellness right, and those hundred and five million people who were not moved into action, Why don't they try and talk to those sixty percent instead of continuing to concentrate on the forty that we're never getting back. I mean, if you haven't come around to the idea yet,

then Donald Trump is back for your health. There's no there's no change in your mind. Now you're gone. You're you're so far gone, there's no get you back. And it's not even worth at this point trying to save those people from themselves. And I think that you're right.

The attention and our focus is got to be on getting people to turn out to vote and getting people and to build the coalition that And I believe that that coalition, the bedrock of that, the foundation of that are people of color, our minorities, are the working class, are the people who are being subjected to this economic form of tyranny. They're the ones we need to reach. They're the ones that we need to get engaged and keep informed. Uh. And you know, it's been interesting watching

the conversation unfold. Ever since Senator Standers got out of the race and mister Vice President Biden has been the presumptive Democrat nominee, all the talk has been what does Biden need to do the window or the burning crowd? And in my sense, it's you know, I think it's more about what we need to do to ensure that that people of color continue to support the Democrats and come up the vote because books, to be honest, Biding campaign was on life support until African American voters in

South Carolina one single handily save the Biding campaign. And if Biden becomes president, it's going to be because of the African American vote and as well as the Hispanic votes. Looking at the general election, and so not enough conversations being had about people of color, despite the fact that in this pandemic, people of color are the ones who are disproportionately being impacted by this crisis, who are dying

in alarmingly high rates. And it's something let me ask you something though, Kurt, because you know, I am a people like to say that I'm cynical, but I like to consider myself a realist. And is it the fact that over the past couple of weeks we have learned exactly what you just said that African Americans people of color, right are generally the ones that are on the front lines of this coronavirus because they, in many ways work in a lot of the what has been deemed essential work.

They are working in hospitals and nursing homes and grocery stores, and they are doing the work. And it is folks that are living in densely populated areas, right. This is not Trump's base. So it is part also of the callousness here is that it's not his base that's dying off. And so what different what does he care what's happening in New York City or in San Francisco or in Miami. What difference does it make to him because his base

is out in the in the rural areas. Is that they're thinking, I think that you're absolutely on to one of the really despicable realities of this president. And they're call them party and that is I gearing you if the majority of people who are suffering and dying in large clusterers were white, and this was in Alabama or Oklahoma or Arkansas, you'd be seeing a very different conversation

from Donald Trump and from the Republicans. If the majority of people that were dying were in or white people in Florida and Tennessee and Georgia, those governors would not be entertaining opening things back up right now. They would not be putting all of us at risk. And it's because the reality of Trump and Home Party is they

value minority lives differently they value white people's lives. That's just the fact if you look at the rhetoric and the policy is that they have championed during the last four years. And I think Democrats again, I think Democrats need to be aggressive and pointing that out. You know, there is a a number of pictures we saw over the last couple of days of uh, particularly white men with their automatic weapons, uh, you know, in state capitals

and protesting. And I made the comment on Twitter that a few things scare me as much as the side of you know, white people with guns and the back last that that received from white people. Republican Trump supporters was a norm. I've never been called racist so many times by white people, uh, which is quite something I have to say, But but it just showed me that, Wow, that the a that that kind of hit a nerve there.

And and B I don't think Democrats need should be afraid to call these things out that way, because it's the truth. And and I think the only way that we we're going to have a chance to kind of cut through the noise and cut through the noise of Trump and Russell and Lunch on Hannity is if we speak loudly too, And that's not happening right now. Yeah.

I just you know, every day I'm asking myself, like, where are the voices, where are the people that are going to just call bullshit right, like just say what it is? And you know today, you know, like every day I sit around and I watch MSNBC, and I switch between that and CNN and my local news here in New York, and I listen to journalists continue to say, oh, well, there are good intentions on both sides, and I'm like, no, they're not. There are not good intentions on both sides.

And what is the compulsion to say so in light of all of the evidence to the contrary. Yeah, I'm sorry, but when you start again, I go back to the very beginning of this whole saga. When you refer to Charlottesville as good people on both sides, that tells your thing you need to know about intentions, and we're the party's mind is at when you look the other way, As you know, Steve King calls immigrants dirt, when when you look at the draconian immigration measures that this administration

has imposed on Hispanics. Despite all this, we've almost forgotten that there's a lot thousands of immigrants in you know, modern day concentration camps at the border right now. Uh, you know that are effectively enslaved by the Trump administration. When this president refers to African nations and ship whole countries on and on and on and on. There's no

good intentions there. There's there's nothing redeemable there. Uh. And the people who are cheering that on there's nothing redeemable about them either, And there's no changing their mind or winning them over or getting them to see the light. That's not going to happen. And so trying to have

a conversation with them is a waste of time. In my opinion, it's not something that Democrats should even bother doing because every minute and talking to one of them as a minute, you're not spending talking to someone that can be persuadable, that can turn out the book for you, that can actually make a difference in the selection. And that's where all of our attention needs to be. It is You're absolutely right, it is where all of our

attention needs to be. Kurt Bardella, thank you so much for this very keen insight into Republican ideology and philosophy in this moment right now, because it is truly terrifying, and I'm not quite sure where Democrats are, but I know that you have thrown up the bat signal for them in both of your recent writings at the USA Today and NBC News. Think my hope is that they will see it, or somebody will and do something about it.

Thank you so much, friend, good talking to you. I am so happy to welcome back for our regular Wednesday conversation with woke f contributor and author of Dying of White How the politics of racial resentment is killing America's heartland, Jonathan Metzel. Jonathan, thanks so much, for making this a consistent conversation that we get to have weekly while we're all working our way through quarantine. It's the highlight of

my weight. It's great to be here. So you know what I love about this is that you and I are sharing articles and tweets and conversations that we feel like people need to be paying attention to, one of which is starting to become really terrifying to me, which is this uprising, this white supremacy uprising that is happening online where there are some groups and movements that are gaining momentum and speed and have been triggered attention by

the FBI in twenty nineteen, and this Southern Poverty Law Center has been following the spread of white domestic terrorism. And now there is a push for a second Civil war, and in some way, these folks are using the coronavirus as a cart that they're going to hitch their ideology too.

Make it make sense, Jonathan, Well, I think the first thing to you know, to keep in mind about what's happening now is that it's important to note that what we're hearing now with all this language about second Civil

War and Bogaloo and all that stuff. It's it's been kind of rattling around out there since the eighties, really, I mean, and this has been a very very fringe position from some extreme libertarian gun groups basically threatening a civil war, and it kind of pops up again, you know when you know, around times where people feel like the government's going to intervene or the guns are going

to get taken away, things like that. And I think it's important to first of all, note that this is still, you know, a pretty fringe position, right in a way. There are many many libertarians and gun owners who would

never support this kind of position. But I do think that in this moment where we're all kind of you know, this is just a moment where extreme positions are being manipulated, right, And I think what's happening is that a lot of these arguments, particularly in relation to a lot of these protests that are popping up among fringe groups to kind of get out in the public, bring your air fifteen protests, to stay at home order, all these kind of things

that it's really given an avenue for I think, really, at least online a resurgence of very extreme extreme positions and the possibility at least in social media that they're entering the mainstream. And so the other part of this is that even though this is a French position, anytime you have lots of people talking about planning sedition or violence against minorities or the police or politicians, you know, you have to take that very very seriously, especially when

it's tied to a lot of weapons. And so in a way, even if it's a French position in this moment, you know, it's a threat, especially if people are heavily armed, and so you know, it's it's it's something that our country dealt with very directly, you know, in the aftermath of that Kim and Dave McVeigh Oklahoma City stuff and all that. You know, we really had a very concerted effort to deal with white, white supremacist groups and and

militant groups like this. And I think really it's pretty vital right now that we that we take this threat seriously as well, again, because the you know, there's so much uncertainty, there's so much anxiety, there's you know, economic downturn, all these factors. So this is a time where the rise of an armed fringe group I think would be particularly risky and and hopefully this is something that we

would be taking very seriously. So it's NBC News that is reporting on the Network Contagion Research Institute n CRII an independent nonprofit of scientists and engineers that tracks and

reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media. They've released a report yesterday yesterday evening, and in their report they are talking about this anti government movement right where there is this desire of a violent uprising that is going to like you're saying, target law enforcement, target different

minority groups. And what I find really scary about this, Jonathan, is that we are seeing these people, right, We are seeing these heavily armed folks at these rallies that are when I look at them, I think to myself, how dumb are people? Right? Like I can't I can't wrap my mind around protesting a virus and protesting against people that are trying to keep you safe because you without your MD, without any you know, education in science or

data or research or any of these things. That these people are taking to television and saying that their rights are being trampled upon. And what I have started to understand and believe, and I want to know this through your research in your writing. There's a fundamental difference in understanding between white conservative, white ringer right wingers who use the term liberty and everyone else who uses the term

liberty and freedom. They're liberty and free them to me right, these white supremacist groups is about their ability to spread their hate and to oppress others. And if they don't have the ability to do that, they believe that their freedoms are taking away being taken away from them. When the rest of us talk about freedom and liberty, it's free to exist, right, and for the laws to actually

work for all people in the same way. We have a fundamental difference here, and so how do you how do you how do you even how do we even go about trying to deal with this group when we don't have the same foundational understanding of basic things. Well, you know, again, I think that it's it's such a it's such a vital and in many ways terrifying moments. Again, because the conditions for extremism m a are. I mean, this is a kind of atmospe sphere historically where extremism rises.

If you think about the rise of you know, Nazi Germany for example, you know, catastrophic economic downturn, people looking for some answer, people looking for somebody else to blame, and weapons and military all those kind of things, And so I think now now is the time that we really have to be particularly vigilant and particularly about ideologies like this UM that's spread among people who are feeling disaffected and dis empowered UM and are also very armed.

I mean, there's there's a you know, a pretty um. You know, the message about weapons is pretty inconsistent because it's always about the government's going to come take away your weapons. But the government's basically handing you weapons right now, so so that that's not that's an issue. But you know, but but this ideology is, you know, it's against Congress, basically saying Congress has no power, it's against minorities, it's

threatening all these kind of things. And whether or not that happens, UM, you know, I think the important point is that fringe ideologies have been present for some time. We're different now. Number one. Number one is just the climate, right and the despair. But number two is, you know, you need responsible leadership to say this is not what America stands for. This is not something that we're going

to tolerate. You know, this is where we need, like the Justice Department and the Office of the President to basically be saying this is not who we are, and we're going to come together national unity and messages in the face of this. And that's even what happens after the Oklahoma City episode, is that people came together. But instead right now we're seeing the opposite, right, We're seeing the Trump administration really foment divisiveness by playing to a

lot of radical groups. And not to say that they themselves are actively threatening violence, but all these things about like liberate states and your Second Amendment to ender attack, those are those are code words, right, This idea that people are going to come take away your guns. That that's part of what this whole. But it isn't a code word, right like it like the president is no longer the president and this administration the Trump administration, they

aren't speaking in code anymore. They are actually being incredibly bold, right, and transparent about what it is that they want. When the President tweets liberate Ohio, Liberate Michigan, he knows what he's doing, So why aren't we calling out what he is doing? Right? You know, in in front of the Texas State Capital tweet from Natalie Allison. Right, there was the American flag, Trump flags, Betsy Ross flags, and troopers

that are there that are not doing anything. And I can't imagine that if there was a oh, I don't know, a Black Lives Matter rally that was being held, right, that troops would not be arresting people and telling you that you're endangering the public's help and throwing these people in jail and charging them with like a federal crime. What is happening here? Well, there's certainly a long history. I mean, I write about this and dying of whiteness

and other stuff I've written that. You know, there is a long history in this country of kind of the stereotype of the armed white patriot versus the armed black criminal or gang bangler or foodlum. You know. So there are all these ways in which those stereotypes play out in terms of really who gets to carry a gun

and stuff like, much more broadly, who gets protests. When I saw those troopers in Texas and the same thing in Nashville, I did also kind of think that the troopers were worried about catching the coronavirus from the protesters, so they probably also didn't want to get close to them because they didn't want to get sick. There's an

out of layer, right, what's happening. But I certainly would agree with what you're saying, and other people like Abraham Kendy have been writing about this that basically, you know, who has the rights of protests. But again I also think that in a way, this is the time. I mean, I'll tell you honestly, and when when the pandemic started, I was actually rooting for Trump, right, I said, this, here's the time where you can actually show that you're

the leader of everybody. Here's where we come together. Here's a time where we re establish what this country stands for. Um And this was an opportunity to like bring people together. And I think really all this divisiveness is masking just the catastrophic failure of the administration to predict this, to implement testing, to save our economy, and so all of

the stuff is a bunch of noise. I mean, it's effective noise, but it's effective noise that's distracting people when really, I mean this was a gold This is a golden opportunity for Trump to honestly be a great president and a crisis. You know, people were saying it's it's his nine to eleven, but really he is the nine eleven right now. I mean he's he's really, you know, I mean he's really, he's he's he's implementing this kind of thing.

And I tell you that those liberate tweets, and I think the important thing about those tweets again, even though people saw what he was doing, is that if you if you studied the white extremist literature, he was using that exact same language. I mean, this idea of all you know, the Second Civil War. The last time it came up was in response to what are called red

flag laws, which are centrist. You know, it empowers family members to have to potentially have weapons are removed from a family member who was threatening domestic violence or suicide. And it's only a thirty day restriction on your gun rights. But when when this started happening, all these groups started basically saying, the government's coming for your guns and protect your Second Amendments, all this kind of stuff. And that's

where this Googlealoo stuff started to write us again. And so the fact that Trump was using that language in some of these suits and playing to this and alstering this divisiveness, of course, is an attempt to move the lens away from his own failure here, his administration's failure, but it's also playing right into the hands of I mean, it's really in a way, playing right into the hands

of this this armed extremism. You know, I'm watching these clips and I'm seeing brave nurses, doctors get out into the streets and have their own um protests right standing in in contrast to these rabid fools, which is that's that's my term, that's my language, not yours, but that's what they are. And these doctors and nurses I can only imagine but by the looks on their faces that underneath their mass is the extreme disappointment and disgust. Right

they aren't seeing their families. They are working some close to twenty four hours a day to save lives, and these ignorant, horrific people are berating them for keeping the country closed, Like how did we get here? You know, I know that I asked that in a part of me wants an answer, but a part of me knows that there is no answer because it's so layered and complex. But Donald Trump didn't just he didn't create this division,

but he sure is hell capitalized on it. But from the tea party until now, how did we get to a place where we don't believe science, where we don't believe leadership, where we don't believe the media, and they're

trying to keep us safe, right? I mean, you know, it's as as a person who in healthcare myself, with family members and healthcare and obviously friends and colleagues and students, I can say that the remarkable thing about the healthcare stories is that when people come to the hospital, healthcare workers aren't asking what your political ideology is. They risk alize for everybody. And so the selflessness and the heroes of first responders healthcare workers right now is really such

a juxtaposition to some of these images we're seeing. Again, I think it's really important to remember that there are many people across the board who don't agree with what's happening, and so I continue to say, as we were talking about last week, that I still believe that this is

a moment of a possible alliance. It's hard because we're all locked in our own, you know, social distances right now, but I do think that if you just look at opinion polls, there's still a lot of people that think social distancing is what we should be doing, the trust healthcare workers that have lost loved ones or suffered financial consequences. And so again, I think the possibility of joining together right now is more powerful than these than these horrific

images or these protests. But I also think that the more Trump kind of bans these flames, the more the more you know, just the more serious this issue becomes. And especially because it's not just these these these protests. Clearly these protests are being used as cover to push to reopen economies far in advance of when that should be happening, which I think is going to be a

much bigger problem ultimately. And so again I think that I think that you know, I'm sure that there's an ideology which if people readying a rightness I talk about the idol, is quite a bit about this kind of kind of particular formulation of whiteness. But I also think that these protests are being used to promote agenda as they're much more dangerous, which are reopening the country before it's sake to do so, which is going to lead to coronavirus too, which is going to be worse than

coronavirus one. And so you know, it's both the protests themselves, but it's also what the protests are being used for, what cover it's giving, what coverage given to president, and what agenda is coming in underneath that. I just you know, Um, we have Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, who has

announced that Georgia will be reopening. Even though Georgia was one of the last states to even authorize any type of closing, their numbers are on the rise, and he has vowed by the end of the week that Georgia will be reopened, including barbershops, nail salons, bowling alleys, all of these places. Right, we have no vaccine, they have no guidelines that are in place. Florida, another Republican governor,

has reopened beaches. I mean, your book is called Dying of Whiteness, but white people are are genuinely going to kill everyone else because if they're ignorance, And I just I don't know, Jonathan, I don't know how where we go from here. I don't know how you have create sense here, how you keep people safe when they only believe one set of people and those are people who have built careers on line to them. You know, it's

it's interesting because there's no mystery here. We have models for how to emerge safely from the phase one of the coronavirus crisis, which we've just passed through. There's now an entire planet, an entire globe of models, and we know that the countries could have done this safely have done very very slow, strategic, stepwise re entries, you know,

first the essential businesses and other kinds of businesses. But they do so with testing, with strict guidelines for everybody to keep everybody else safe, and then slowly but surely they kind of slowly reopen, but not exactly like it was before, because we don't have a vaccine and we

don't have immunity as a species. And so if you look at even places that we're getting hammered by the coronavirus, places like Spain for example, and all those places that are just doing this really well, like New Zealand or South Korea, their death their deaths are very very low, and their infection rates are below there's an infection number one. They're below one, which means a person with a virus isn't automatically infecting one other person. So there are great

models out there. We don't even have to reinvent the wheel at all. And then on the flip side, there are ongoing infection pandemic out of control models, which we've seen, for example, in small doses even in this country, in meat plants in South Dakota, and in nursing homes and in places where people just don't just open up without any of that framework, and what happens is dramatic rises

in infection and death rates. And so what Georgia is doing, for example, I mean, it's just there's no doubt that what's going to happen is is just much more infection. And it's not like some of the people are going to be sick and everybody's going to be healthy. Um, the people that are healthy are going to become carriers and then come back and infect people they know. And so, um, you know, I was reading about Georgia and they're opening theaters,

you know. Um, it's it's it's it's like the codebook. It's like the casebook for what not to do and and and so this idea of you know, the economy, I just I don't know how the economy works when you're you know, potentially threatening the lives of twenty percent of your workers and thirty percent of your customers and

and things like that. You know. So it's just that the modeling for this is horrible, and I and I'm you know, I can all I can say is that I hope common sense prevails or that there's some real plan beneath this big, big public plan, because it would just do it the way that places like Georgia are saying. It's going to be catastrophic. And not only that, as it was seen from the first round of the coronavirus.

You know, the people who get hit the worst or the people who are the most vulnerable, and so even though people suffer across the board, it's just gonna it's just gonna have really really bad effects for for vulnerable populations. And so in that regard, you know, it's it's it's almost like disbelieve that that this is happening, but it's it's not a very rational moment for for some of

our leaders, not enough for others. Well, we're going to have to keep our eye on all that is unfolding, because my fear is that there isn't enough attention that is being paid to the fact that these groups are growing like wildfire on social media, on Facebook, on Reddit, on Instagram, that they are using memes and inside jokes in terms like boogaloo um to perpetuate their desire, which is essentially, uh, mass murder, right, Like, that's what they're

that's what they're doing, that's what they're angling for. Uh. And they have a friend in the White House, and they have a friends, they have friends in law enforcement. Because when I see these pictures of angry white faces, you know, banging at doors and wanting to open up businesses and having complete and total disregard for public safety, for public health, only their desires matter. And this is

not just this incident. This one happens to be the most dangerous, right because one person can infect you know, sixty one hundred people with the coronavirus, two to three percent of the population will perish. Right. Two hundred and fifty thousand people have been infected in New York alone. We've lost tens of thousands of people across this country.

And they are weaponizing this virus, right, that's exactly right there, I mean, yeah, and again it's it's the idea that basically it's a coloring of the herd, that the people who are read are going to die and the strong

will survive. That is actually not that's a that's great, but that's actually not this virus or this pandemic, and this pandemic, the virus just keeps going and it affects people very long term, and even people who have mild cases were now seeing how kidney problems and chronic learning problems and neurologic problems. So the idea that it's just going to be a calling of the herd is just

completely at odds with what's happening here. And so even even the understanding of the virus is incorrect and and and so in a way, it's just, um, you know, it's just it's just creating the conditions for, you know, for even greater spread of the kind of anarchy that these groups for ten and and it's happening really um you know, as you say, kind of quite publicly on social media. So I think I think this is really

an issue to keep to keep track of. And and again there has to be some way for us to reclaim the center here, because again it's just always important to remember that most people don't agree with this. It's just how can we you know, without effective central leadership, how can we pull people together? Well, Jonathan, we will continue this conversation as we do each Wednesday, to kind of dig into the headlines or the conversations that are just not picking up traction that we need people to

know about. So thank you so much for joining Woke app Daily and giving us some insight into the rise of white domestic terrorism in the United States. Appreciate. Let's please keep talking. Thanks so much. Chat All right, folks, that is it for me today on Woke a f Daily. As always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power. Make sure that you are subscribing and telling your friends to subscribe to p m mood wherever you get your

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