Air Date 8/17/2024

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. James Baldwin's 100th birthday passed by recently and we're using the occasion to draw on his moral clarity and eloquence, while we assess the state of race in America. 

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today, include 1A, ThroughLine, Democracy Now!, The Thom Hartmann Program, Woke AF Daily, The Majority Report, and a speech by Cory Bush, then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more on Baldwin the Writer, Race in America, the White Lie, and Global Connections.

Celebrating James Baldwin's 100th Birthday - 1A - Air Date 7-30-24

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: James Baldwin is one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century. He wrote novels, essays, short stories, poetry, even a screenplay. He's best known for his affecting prose, his depth of thought, and his clear moral vision for the country. He was also a bit of a character. In interviews, he's often smoking a cigarette with his legs crossed, [00:01:00] casually calling the interviewer baby with a grin.

But Baldwin is perhaps best known for his philosophies on race. 

JAMES BALDWIN: I don't believe in White people. I don't believe in Black people either, for that matter. But I know the difference between being Black and Whiteness and, and at this time, it means that I cannot fool myself about some things, but I can fool myself about it if I were White.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: As an openly gay man, Baldwin spoke about sexuality in a time when it was unheard of for many Black men to do so. 

JAMES BALDWIN: Homosexual is not a noun. It might be a verb, transitive. It is certainly an adjective, but it is not a noun. To ask the question means you don't know anything about human experience—where it can take you, what it can do.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Nearly 40 years after his death, much of what he had to say about the U. S. continues to resonate. 

JAMES BALDWIN: The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as [00:02:00] bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives. It is entirely up to the American people.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: This week, Baldwin would have turned 100 years old. In a moment when democracy is at risk, when wars abroad are being protested at home, when race continues to shape American politics, what can we learn from Baldwin about a moment not so different from his own? 

James Baldwin's Fire - Throughline - Air Date 9-17-20

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, so the lie is what I call the value gap. And that is the belief that White people matter more than others. And that belief evidences itself in our dispositions, our habits, our practices, our social and political and economic arrangements. And they're protected by the lies we tell ourselves. 

You know, Baldwin in 1964 wrote an essay entitled "The White Problem", and he has this wonderful passage, it's so poignant, where he—and I'm paraphrasing here—where he says, you know, the founders of the country had a fatal [00:03:00] flaw, they said that they were Christian, they said that they were founding the nation on these principles, but yet they had chattel, they had us, and in order to justify the role that these chattel played in their lives, they had to basically say that these men and women were not human beings, Because if they weren't human beings, then no crime had been committed.

And then here's the line, "That lie is the basis of our present trouble". And so we tell ourselves this story that we're the redeemer nation, that we're the shining city on the hill, as Ronald Reagan said. And we tell ourselves we're the example of our democracy achieved, as if we didn't do what we did in Haiti, as if we didn't do what we did in Cuba, or what we did in Puerto Rico, or what we did in Hiroshima, or what we did in Nagasaki, right? So, we do all of that to protect our innocence. 

So, Baldwin is insisting, you know, we have to confront the messiness of who we are, our ghastly failures, in order to release ourselves into being otherwise. And that, [00:04:00] at the personal level, also must happen at the societal level. So, we have to tell the truth about who we are and what we've done, but the lies get in the way,

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: You know, those lies that, as you say, we tell ourselves personally and socially—like, as a society we tell ourselves—on the one hand it's that sort of self preservation reflex that we have on both that sort of micro and macro level and it just makes me think, there's a certain vulnerability that it takes to own up to a lie and to look it straight in the eye and say this is not the truth 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. 

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: And so, in some ways, you know, that process of confrontation that you yourself, it seems, had to go through just to tackle this subject is also sort of a process of confrontation that Baldwin was saying the country needed to experience.[00:05:00] 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, you know, it's confrontation is also a sign of maturity, where we've grown into the resources requisite to do it honestly. He has this line, and I'm paraphrasing again, you know, is that the trouble we're in is deeper than you thought because the trouble is in us. You're so right to say that we have to confront it, it requires being willing to be vulnerable.

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: There is this personal versus systemic tension in Baldwin's writings, in that he deeply reflects on the personal impacts that America as a country has had on individual people in terms of what it does to their self confidence and that actually brings me to one of the quotes from your book that really stuck with me.

I want to [00:06:00] read it really quick for you if that's okay. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Sure. 

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: [quoting Glaude] "America and its racist assumptions had indelibly shaped who Baldwin was. But he insisted, we are not the mere product of social forces. Each of us has a say in who we take ourselves to be. No matter what America said about him as a Black person, Baldwin argued, he had the last word about who he was as a human being and as a Black man. Just as we must examine our individual experiences and the terrors that shape how we come to see ourselves, together as a country, we must do the same. The two are bound together". What I love is while it's deeply personal, it's very much examining the systemic, of the broader responsibility of the country, of its government, of its policies.

Today, there seems to be a real tension between those things for many people with the popularity of a book like Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, where [00:07:00] there is this very direct pointing at individuals, around individual kind of responsibility. What do you think Baldwin would have made of that tension today?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, you know, so one of the most powerful things about Baldwin is that he goes to the interior, not to stay there, but as the launching pad to go outward. So, the interior is the basis for moving to a broader form of social criticism. Some people will move from social criticism to the interior and you end up with this kind of narcissistic kind of account where it's just simply, you know, about the individual and their own pain and suffering, right? For Jimmy, that individual pain, as early as reading Notes of a Native Son, right?, where you end with him at the funeral of his stepfather with the birth of his youngest sister and him leaving to get ready to go to Paris, and of course the [00:08:00] riots in New York. So, there's a way in which the autobiographical is the kind of point of entry to the broader social context.

I think that's really important in our own moment because we live in a moment that's so driven by our own individual brands, right? You know, our social media platforms are micro reality shows, right? It's very difficult for us to move outside of our own selves into a broader understanding of our genuine relationship with others. You know, what would he make of something like White Fragility? You know, what would he make of something like How to Be an Antiracist? Look, they, those sorts of books have their place, but we're talking about something deeper. 

DR. KENNETH CLARK, INTERVIEWER: Jim, what do you see in the recesses of your own mind as the future [00:09:00] of our nation?

JAMES BALDWIN: Well, I'm both glad and sorry you asked me that question, but I'll do my best to answer it. I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: When Jimmy says choose life, don't wallow in the illusion, don't settle for safety, that's not about a 'how to manual', that's not about a corporate strategy for dealing with difference in your midst. The point here is to choose life is a deeper existential question about who do you take yourself to be. 

JAMES BALDWIN: Now the artist, no matter how he sounds, is by definition a religious man, believing that we can create and transcend [00:10:00] all our gods, that it is entirely up to us as the work of human being to make the world more human.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: We travel and we move around the surfaces, right? Because we're afraid of what's in the dark cellar. We don't wanna look the terror squarely in the face. But, you know, America's like Never-never Land. You know, we all want to be lost boys and girls, where we don't wanna be responsible or accountable. We'd rather be safe and secure in our innocence.

JAMES BALDWIN: One of the things that most afflicts this country is that White people don't know who they are or where they come from. That's why you think I'm a problem, but I am not the problem. Your history is, and as long as you pretend you don't know your history, you're going to be the prisoner of it. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: And, you know, it's that moment in Baldwin's The Fire Next Time where he says people either [00:11:00] don't know or they don't want to admit, in effect, what's happened to thousands of thousands of their countrymen. And he says you can't be innocent in the face of that. The innocence is the crime. 

JAMES BALDWIN: When "White people" talk about progress in relation to Black people, all they are saying and all they can possibly mean by the word progress is how quickly and how thoroughly I become White. I don't want to become White. I want to grow up, and so should you. 

“Justice for My Brother”: Sister of Samuel Sharpe Speaks Out After Police Killing During RNC - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-19-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Well, Representative Darrin Madison, if you could respond to this tragic incident and the fact that Black people in Wisconsin are nearly six times more likely to be killed by police than White people? If you could just say what specific measures you’re advocating?

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one, I want to uplift that community over there. There’s Repairers of the Breach in that neighborhood, which is a 24-hour-a-day shelter [00:12:00] that provides services for folks who are unhoused in that community, which — that’s why that encampment is there, and that’s why local law enforcement know a lot of the folks in the community and know how to navigate those relationships.

As it relates to the broader context of our local communities, you know, we — Black folks in this city have navigated police violence since the 1950s. That was one of the first killings of a Black male by the hands of law enforcement reported in our state. And that has only happened more and more times throughout history. In recent years, that’s happened a series of times, which has led to communities crying for real change as it relates to law enforcement procedures and practices to ensure that [00:13:00] folks can be safe in their own community.

Some of the bills that, you know, I’ve been working on over the past year have called for, one, police decertification for law enforcement when law enforcement officers are involved in these situations and they are found guilty. What often happens is, instead of being held accountable, a law enforcement officer will quit and then go work in another department in another community nearby, right?

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And you have, in the case of D’Vontaye Mitchell — and let’s just be clear, Sam was killed on Tuesday.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: D’Vontaye was killed — oh, it was June 30th. That was a few weeks ago. And he was held down not by police, but by security guards.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: By security.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And I have to say, yesterday, when we went to the Hyatt and I went to the different [00:14:00] police to say, “Can you tell me where exactly D’Vontaye Mitchell was killed?” they would say, “Uh, uh, uh, I don’t know. You know, I am from Chicago,” or “I am from” — and they named all these different places — “Ohio,” “I am from” — because they were all different law enforcement. And, of course, the local police, they also wouldn’t tell me.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: But these weren’t even police. They were security guards. That he was held down?

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Explain. And then talk about what you’re demanding, what police have responded in both cases.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: Yeah. So, in the case of D’Vontaye, what had happened was there was a — you know, the staff claimed that there was — he was being disruptive in the —

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: In the Hyatt.

REP. DARRIN MADISON: In the Hyatt. It eventually led to them assaulting him in the space. Apparently, he ended up in a bathroom at some — a women’s bathroom at some point, and then was chased outside, in which he was pinned down on the ground by at least two confirmed security guards. The other two [00:15:00] folks, it wasn’t confirmed if they were security or they were Hyatt staff.

What we do know is that the Hyatt has fired that security team, as well as a few other staffers who worked in the space, for not being compliant with their own policies. What that tells us — and, you know, the lawyer of D’Vontaye’s family said it best — is that there is skepticism, at least from the Hyatt’s perspective, in that whole altercation.

When Milwaukee law enforcement arrives, they tried to — they found him unresponsive and tried to resuscitate him, and he, sadly, lost his life. One of his — what we know was his last words was “I’m sorry.” And often in these situations where folks are losing their life, they are pleading, with someone who has dominance, for their life. And they don’t respond and do anything. And that hurts.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And [00:16:00] the videotape in both cases is devastating. We only have 30 seconds, but, Angelique, we’re talking — this is our last segment here in Milwaukee. Outside the Republican convention, has the Trump team gotten in touch with you? Have your local police gotten in touch with you?

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: They absolutely have not. And I don’t understand, you know, when we have evidence that Sam called home, that the shelterless community down there, by all accounts, of his character, and the character of the other person, it’s absolutely not making sense.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: What do you want right now, as you speak to a global audience? We have about 10 seconds.

ANGELIQUE SHARPE: Yes. I want transparency. We want not the clips of the video; we want full clips. We want the autopsy report. You know, we really want justice for my brother.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Well, we’re not going to stop here, even as we go [00:17:00] back to New York. I want to thank you both for being with us. 

Why JD Vance and the MAGA GOP Do Not Represent the True Idea of America & Our Core Values - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 8-2-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: French President Emmanuel Macron got it right when he recently said "patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism". See, these guys are buying into nationalism and they're promoting nationalism. And patriotism is a very different thing. President Macron said, "Nationalism is a betrayal. By pursuing our own interests first with no regard to others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and what makes it great: its moral values". 

You know, the French experienced the difference between patriotism and nationalism when Hitler flipped Germany into nationalism in the 1930s. And thus, the former, late president of France, Charles de Gaulle, put it very clearly. He said, "Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first, [00:18:00] nationalism when hate for people other than your own comes first". 

Abraham Lincoln made this distinction between patriotism and nationalism in the Gettysburg Address after having defeated the White Christian identity nationalist Confederacy movement. In the Gettysburg Address he said, "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. It is rather for us to highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

But then J. D. Vance comes along in the Republican National Convention in his acceptance speech, and says, "You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. But America is not just an idea. It's a group of people with a shared history [00:19:00] and a common future. Now, that's not just an idea, my friends. That's not just a set of principles. Even though the ideas and principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. If this movement of ours is to succeed and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation and citizens deserve leaders who put their interests first".

Now that's a perfect articulation of nationalism. You know, just reject the idea that America—and, I mean, this is literally the truth—America is the first country in the history of Western civilization that was founded on an idea, rather than on DNA, rather than on language, rather than on culture, and rather than on geography. Yes, you know, I would be the first to acknowledge that DNA, you know, [00:20:00] basically White men, played a huge role and controlled all the power at the founding of our republic. But every generation over these 240 plus years, every generation has gotten us closer and closer and closer to that founding mission statement, that founding goal, which J. D. Vance rejected in his acceptance speech. 

Patriotism expresses love and devotion to one's country as a whole, including all of its people. Nationalism, on the other hand, focuses on a devotion to a specific ethnic, cultural, or national group within the country. Patriotism refers to our country. Nationalism refers to our homeland. Patriotism requires both tolerance and appreciation of other countries and cultures. Nationalism preaches superiority over other cultures, nations and, and groups. Patriots can accept criticism of their country [00:21:00] and seek improvements. Nationalism rejects criticism and says 'my leaders, right or wrong'. 

In 1937 at the Nuremberg Rally, when Rudolf Hess—and, Sean, I'm going to play some audio out of my computer here—when Rudolf Hess introduced Adolf Hitler at the 1937 Nuremberg Rally, he switched from the traditional German patriotic Vaterland—Fatherland—and went with instead the nationalistic German Heimat. Heimat zu sein. Heimat is the German word for homeland. This is Rudolf Hess introducing Adolf Hitler in 1937: [Thom reads translation over German archival audio clip] "Germany will become a homeland. A homeland for all the Germans in the [00:22:00] world". 

So, that was Hess introducing Hitler, introducing the word homeland into the German vocabulary. At that point, the Nazis stopped referring to Germany as the fatherland and started referring to it as the homeland. Now homeland, after all, invokes blood and soil. It's where your ancestors lived, where your family came from. It's the core of your religious, racial, national identity. We are not a heterogeneous... we're not all one people. We are a multiracial, pluralistic, multi-religious and secular and democratically governed nation.

Yeah, I lived in Germany in the 80s. I knew actual Nazis, people. You know, I knew a guy who had been at that Hitler rally in 1937, marched up and touched the blood flag as part of his initiation into the army. And in my entire [00:23:00] lifetime, until 2001, when George W. Bush started using that word homeland, I had never heard an American politician use that word. Have you? Never. Which is why when Bush came up with the word homeland and created the Department of Homeland Security, a chill went down my spine. And I wrote several op eds about it. It was one of the things that got me, that provoked me to start this radio show, frankly.

So now we've got this movement, this MAGA movement, this nationalist movement that wants to strip the history of African-Americans and queer people out of our history books. They want to pass laws to make it harder to vote. They want to trash economically marginalized and discriminated against people. They use the phrase DEI as a slur. They even ridiculed Biden, President Biden, when he said, this was last week, he said, "America is an idea, an idea [00:24:00] stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It is the most powerful idea in the history of the world. The idea is that we hold these truths to be self evident. We're all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Instead, J. D. Vance is telling us, no, no, we're just, we're just a bunch of White people here. 

So, what is the, what is the Republican Party doing to impose their nationalist view on America? First, they're trying to break our ideals and credential-based bureaucracy by Trump's Schedule F. Right? Fire all the civil servants. Loyalty to country is replaced with loyalty to the leader in their party. Next, they're working to fully legalize political bribery. The Supreme Court took the lead on this one. Then they want to destroy our faith in the rule of law. The law is for thee, but not for me. And they're running a felon for president. And finally, they want us to [00:25:00] lose trust in our institutions, like the free press. Hitler called it the Lügenpresse, the lying press. Trump calls it the fake news. Our national motto, E pluribus unum, out of many come one, summarizes the idea of America. Trump's motto, "go back to your S hole country", expresses, to paraphrase President Macron, the exact opposite. 

The work of our day, is to restore the idea of America, an egalitarian, pluralistic, democratic republic, and then help it realize its full potential after all these many long years. I'm signed up for it. Are you? 

Truth, Privilege, and James Baldwin - Woke AF Daily - Air Date 10-3-23

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: I always loved the sentiment of him being a witness, you know?, to what is happening. And I think that good writers are. They're both a witness and a mirror for us to see the world through. And, you know, when you talk [00:26:00] about history and the importance of history being able to create empathy, we're at a time, Greg, right now, where history's being rewritten and erased, right?, where legislation literally has been passed to ensure White comfort. 

GREG GARRETT: In my state of Texas, in Florida, across the South. 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: In Florida, across the South. And so for you, right?, knowing that the purpose of history is just not to repeat it, it is to create a sense of empathy and understanding about the human condition, both our potential, and our detractions from ourselves and from our character and from our moral standings. And so, what comes up for you and what does it mean for you to be [00:27:00] putting out a book in this time when a Baldwin would have been banned, and is probably banned, and it is banned, right? Um, so please. 

GREG GARRETT: Well, first, I have had this conversation with my students here at Baylor. And Baylor, of course, is a private school in Texas, so, I look at colleagues at the University of Texas, the flagship school of our state, who are starting to wrestle with these questions and these issues and I have said, I said to a reporter from Fox News not too long ago, if I taught at one of our state schools, it's very likely I would get fired. 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah, a hundred percent. 

GREG GARRETT: And so one of the first things, I mean, just directly to your question, which was actually posed like a historian. I don't know what your major was... 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Political science, but thank you!

GREG GARRETT: Ok. Well, my historian friends would say, Yay, she got the whole history thing. 

When we don't tell the [00:28:00] truth about who we are, and this is personal, you know, I think about the former president who can't tell the truth about who he is as a human being and how detrimental that is not only to him, but to all of us. I think about people in my life. I mean, and I can't name names because like, you know, we're on the air. But I think about people who are unable to face who they are and be honest about where they come from and about their failures and about their mistakes and so are unable to correct them. And those people are trapped in the same way that Baldwin talks about White being trapped. 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah. 

GREG GARRETT: So, if, forever, Black people have been the way that you measure Whiteness, you know, and if the lost cause myth, for example, is partly built around, you know, however difficult your life might be, if you're a poor White person in the American South or [00:29:00] anywhere in America, in the Midwest, any place, at least you're notBlackk and you can set that Blackness as a lodestar. And so Baldwin asked his nephew to think about this. What would it be like if you woke up in the morning and you looked at the sky and everything was different, you know, the sun was out, but the stars were blazing, it would freak you out. And so he had this incredible compassion, you know, this recognition that asking people to be honest about their history is going to shake up who they are because it's going to force them to tell the truth and acknowledge things. 

But one of the things, and I had mentioned to your producer a while ago that Robert Jones is coming to Baylor next week and we're going to do an event together here. Robbie's new book about the roots of White supremacy is so good at telling our historical truth. Like, I went to [00:30:00] high school in Oklahoma. We did not learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre. We didn't even hear it called the Tulsa Race Riots. We just didn't learn about it. And if you don't learn about it, then how can you correct it? And, it just, when you don't deal with history, particularly history that's uncomfortable, then it just allows the status quo to be maintained. And Baldwin talks about the status quo a lot and he says it's already hard enough to change the status quo. Because, you know, as Dr. King said, people who are in a position of privilege don't want to give that up.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Right. Right. 

GREG GARRETT: But if you don't even tell the truth about it, and if you don't even say, Here are the reasons that people in privilege need to reckon with who they are and what they've done, then, then how can anything ever change? And that for me is the distressing thing about the legislation you're talking about and honestly why I feel not only do I need to write about it, but I need to speak, I need to preach, I need to get out there in every venue that I can [00:31:00] and stand there looking like me and say, Hey, people who look like me, we got to think about this stuff. 

Celebrating James Baldwin's 100th Birthday Part 2 - 1A - Air Date 7-30-24

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: For fall of 2024, I'm teaching American History II, a course from the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the present, using the 14th Amendment as the story arc to provide a clarifying structure for the course content. While I was already a big fan of Baldwin's, I was unaware of the Baldwin and William Buckley debate in Cambridge in 1965.

I heard snippets of it this morning on NPR and have already included it in the syllabus. Thank you, NPR. It's a republic if we can keep it. 

Let's play another clip from that 1965 debate between James Baldwin and conservative writer William F. Buckley. 

JAMES BALDWIN: The ex attorney general, Mr. Robert Kennedy, said that it was conceivable that in 40 years in America we might have a Negro president.

And that sounded like a very emancipated statement, I suppose, to White people. [00:32:00] They were not in Harlem when this statement was first heard. And did not hear, and possibly will never hear, the laughter and the bitterness and the scorn in which the statement was greeted. From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barbershop, Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday.

And now he's already on his way to the presidency. We've been here for 400 years, and now he tells us that maybe in 40 years, if you're "good," we may let you become president. 

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Now, the first Black president wouldn't be elected until 43 years after this debate and now we're facing similar questions about Vice President Kamala Harris, who's the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

Professor Glaude, it's been nearly 60 years since Baldwin said this. If he were alive today, what do you think he would say about this moment? 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You know, I'm always a bit leery of trying to anticipate Jimmy's [00:33:00] words. He has over 7, 000 pages of writing and we probably could glean something from, from that about what he would say.

I know what I've learned from him that will allow me to say something about this moment. And that is, how can I put this? No matter what or who resides, no matter who resides in the White House, if the nation refuses to confront itself honestly, it will continue to be monstrous, right? We can become the face of the empire.

We too can become monstrous, but unless the country confronts itself honestly about who and what it is and what it has done, it can't release itself into a new way of being, right? And so he, I think from what I've [00:34:00] learned, he urges me to be cautious. To understand, let me use this phrase, to understand the "fragility of hope" in this moment.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Robert, we have just, we have just about 30 seconds left here, and I want I want to make sure to bring you in because I want to know what you might say to Baldwin in this moment if your adopted godfather was here? 

ROBERT JONES JR: You know, I don't know what I would say to him. I know that I would hug him and have to be pried away because I'm always thinking about the human being that Baldwin was not the writer, not the eloquent speaker, but the human being. And I think about his love for children right now. He has this quote, "The children are always ours. Every single [00:35:00] one of them all over the globe. And I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality."

And that to me cuts to the quick of everything we're facing here and abroad. 

US' Unconditional Support For Israel Making The World More Dangerous - The Majority Report - Air Date 8-2-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So, I would love your assessment of this. I think people think it's impolite—I don't really care about being impolite to Joe Biden because he's presided over a genocide—but I think people think it's impolite to ask this question. Has he been entirely manipulated by Benjamin Netanyahu because his brain is not seemingly working anymore and he doesn't know when Netanyahu is humiliating him on the public stage? Like, I'm only speaking about self-interest from a political perspective, about not getting humiliated, about trying to have some dignity. I mean, all these politicians have enormous egos. As, somebody who's been an advocate for Palestinians, you're a Palestinian-Canadian and of [00:36:00] course have been immersed in this for so long, like, what do you see here with the Biden-Netanyahu relationship that makes this so uniquely destructive and that Netanyahu has clearly taken advantage of?

DIANE BUTTU: Look, I think the big thing is that Biden has always said that he himself is a Zionist. And if you look at his record, his record of voting, he's always been on the wrong side of history, incidentally. But particularly on this issue, he's always stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel because he is a Zionist.

Now, since he authorized the genocide back in October, I think that he has not only continued to dig his heels in, but I think he's dug his heels in even knowing that this would eventually cost him the election. I think that it's a mistake to think that Joe Biden stepped down and isn't going to run just because of his age. But I think that there were other [00:37:00] factors as well, that when you look at younger voters and people who are of conscience, they're saying we're not going to vote for Joe Biden because he is Genocide Joe, because he's been the person who has presided over this genocide. 

Has he also been played by Netanyahu? Yes, I think he has. And Netanyahu is somebody who has made it clear that he wants to see a Trump presidency, that he likes President Trump, which is why he went to Mar-a-Lago and so, for him, he liked having Republicans in office because it allows him to push his agenda even further.

So, he's trying to push this as far as possible until the next election, hoping that it will be a Trump win so that he can then continue the next phase of his plan, which is, not only the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza, but turning his sights to the West Bank as well. And we've already seen this. We've already seen him start in on the West Bank with more than 500 Palestinians killed [00:38:00] just since October. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And Smotrich being in charge of that and also basically removing military authority and just having the settler gangs that he's a part of being now the primary authority in the West Bank, a part of that as well. But yeah, I mean, it is just astounding to me, I guess, from a really 40,000 foot view, that Biden's emotional attachment to a Zionist project, which is a colonial project and one that inherently involves murdering, since 1967, since 1948, it's been about ethnically cleansing and ruining millions of lives. How one can rationalize that through racism and still have an emotional connection and idealize that project in the year 2024, that's the thing that I just can't put myself in that mindset. And even to tank your own electoral chances, knowing that it's this much of an emotional project for you and... I don't know. Uh, [00:39:00] Diana, your final thoughts there. 

DIANE BUTTU: Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, I don't think that people realize what Zionism has meant for Palestinians and what it has done to Palestinian lives, to Palestinian land, to Palestinian bodies. When people try to downplay it and somehow talk of it in its nice version, or even they try to kind of say that it's like, Oh, it's got many faces. No, there's really only one face, and that's the face that I and so many others, so many other Palestinians, have lived with, which is a settler-colonial movement that aims to remove us from our land. And in the process of removing us and erasing us, it's violent on every single level.

And to somehow buy into this violence and think that this is okay, it's not even [that] troublesome is the word, but one would expect that in the year 2024 that there would be a wake up call, that [00:40:00] people would ask Palestinians, What's it like to live under Zionism? What is it like to live under this settler-colonial regime? And we can easily just point to what Israel is doing in Gaza, because that is what Zionism is about. It's about killing Palestinians. It's about erasing them. It's about destroying their homes, taking over their land and pretending that somehow everything is lovely. It's a project of Jewish supremacy at the expense of Palestinians who are the indigenous people. And it's terrifying and really must come to an end. 

Raw video- Rep. Cori Bush concedes 1st Congressional District primary race to Wesley Bell - KSDK News - Air Date 8-7-24

CORI BUSH: So every time I stand on the House floor or I speak in the committee here, and you all know the first words that come out of my mouth: St. Louis and I rise. So I'm gonna get to my speech. [laughter, encouragement from crowd] 

St. Louis and I rise to [00:41:00] say thank you to all the people who showed up and who support me and support this incredible team and the vision that we have for our future, a future that works for all of us. And so let me say to my Arab and Palestinian, our Muslim community,

I hope that the new member of Congress that will be taking over in January, you know, right before his trial starts. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jesus. I'm sorry. I... let me say this though, because I'm not here, we need to build the community back because [00:42:00] what just happened helped to rip the community apart. The thing is, I'm not, I don't want to feed into that because we have to be one St. Louis because we have to grow and so I just hope he actually takes the time to learn about our Palestinian and our Arab and our Muslim communities, that he actually speaks to you and that he sees the beauty in what we have created that transcends our ethnic backgrounds and our religions and the way that we have been able to do that. And so I just want to put that out there to him as some homework. This race, you all, was unlike anything St. Louis has ever seen. The flood of outside Republican money into this district, this Democratic district, was staggering. This was [00:43:00] the second most expensive congressional race in our nation's history. Nineteen million dollars and counting. And so that's how much they spent in this race. Mostly far-right-funded super PACs against the interests of the people of St. Louis, the people of Missouri's first, they sought to divide us. But we've always been clear that St. Louis is a vibrant and a resilient community, one that refuses to be undermined, one that won't be taken for granted. And together we will continue to rise and stand up against the far-right, Republican extremism. Oh, he don't know what he's about to have to deal with, but I hope you fight! [applause] 

And the thing is, you up after me, so your fight got to be bigger and better than mine. And it's okay. If you got that, I hope you got that. Because the people deserve that. We'll switch from a fighter to a... 

[encouragement [00:44:00] from crowd, someone shouts "take your time!"] 

We'll stand. As a beacon of hope and light and human rights for all people, we'll keep doing that, I will keep doing that work, this team will keep doing that, we'll continue to fight for the rights of all people no matter the race, the faith, or the background, the ethnicity, the religion, the age, the occupation, the gender identity, we'll keep fighting for you, we will keep fighting, we will stand up for what is right no matter the cost, which we just paid a cost but actually it's going to propel us forward.

Always fight for our unhoused communities, our elders, our children, our families, our veterans, our, our... we will keep supporting a free Palestine, [00:45:00] a free Congo, a free Sudan, and keep opposing genocide and human rights abuses worldwide. We will always stand up for the safety, for the dignity, for the self-determination of all people, from St. Louis, to Palestine and Israel, to Bosnia, to India, and everywhere else. We will always keep it real, and we will always keep the truth. 

And, I'm going to continue to act with the dedication that you all have seen over the years. I will continue to work to bridge divides and address your concerns and build a stronger, more unified community. And so St. Louis serving as your Congress member has been the joy of my life, and I'm not done yet. [00:46:00] [applause] 

It's just that now I'm about to be outside-outside. And so, so, let me lastly say this. Let me lastly say this. You all have been what has undergirded me and what has strengthened me. And I want to say this to all the little kids that have come up to me over even the last week, the little Black girls that see themselves in me and all the little girls that see something in me. [00:47:00] Let me say this to you: We did not fail. You did not fail. You keep rising. You keep going after what God has given you to go after. You keep fighting. You keep, you hold fast to who you are and what you believe because this is only the beginning.

Note from the Editor on the need for national self-reflection

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with 1A introducing James Baldwin on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Throughline discussed the importance of confronting truth when lies get in the way. Democracy Now! looked at the police killing just outside the RNC. The Thom Hartmann Program clarified between patriotism and nationalism. Woke AF Daily talked about Baldwin's compassion with the understanding that asking White people to face the lies of Whiteness is very destabilizing. 1A discussed the need for the nation to begin to tell the truth about itself. The Majority Report looked at Joe Biden and the nation's [00:48:00] role in the Gaza genocide. And finally we heard part of Cory Bush's speech after she was defeated in the Democratic primary by a wave of right-wing money, including from the pro-genocide wing of the pro-Israel lobby. 

Those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dives sections, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often trying to make each other laugh in the process. To support all our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. 

Now, before we continue onto the Deeper Dives half of the show, I have a few [00:49:00] thoughts to tie together. The first is something that I've been reminded of over and over again from James Baldwin's words and today's discussion. Just recently, I came across a parody of the Bible story, the "Parable of the Good Samaritan". It's called the "Parable of the Good Sociologist". And this was referenced in a Guardian article about the recent racist, xenophobic riots in the UK. In this version, when the traveler on the road to Jericho is assaulted, the first sociologist crosses the road and passes by on the other side. The second does the same. But the good sociologist rushes to the scene, cradles the victim's head and says, "Boy, the person who did this to you really needs help". And the connection I think is pretty clear. The fascists in the UK starting riots, they need some help just as people in the US, whether they realize they're racist or if they've just been steeped in the myth of White supremacy for [00:50:00] so long that they're like a fish who doesn't realize they're in water, they all need help. And I think I may have only said this on the bonus show for members, but it bears repeating here: Israel doesn't need peace negotiators or weapons sales so much as they need therapists. Palestinians aren't in the same position of power as Israel, so it's not an equal comparison, but the same basically goes for them. 

The situation over there has been completely effed up for basically a full human life span. Of course, everyone who lives in the area has been completely messed up and warped by the conflict. And ultimately there is no way forward but to face the truth that's currently being obscured by lies. And there's one last thought related to all this: the Olympics wrapped up last week and the occasion of Simone Biles dominating the women's gymnastics again, gave the excuse to dig up an old quote from JD Vance about her. In the Tokyo games, Biles withdrew from competition for mental health reasons. [00:51:00] She had what she later explained as "the twisties", which is the phenomenon of a gymnast losing full awareness of their body in time and space while performing their physics-defined routines. As is now a well known story, Biles went through therapy and training to confront the problem she was having, and then, having overcome the twisties, she returned to the Olympics to win three gold medals and one silver this time around. Biles was praised by many, though not all, when she withdrew in Tokyo. 

And the line, I would guess, is drawn between those who recognize the need for mental health, self-reflection, self-care, facing hard truths, all that kind of stuff, and those who think that the greatest sign of strength is to just stick it out. Plow forward. Don't ask questions. Don't look back. JD Vance being a sort of cartoon villain who praises his grandmother for not getting a divorce from her horribly abusive husband even though, as it turns out, she probably wasn't able to [00:52:00] because they had not implemented no fault divorce in her state. That's an aside, anyway. JD Vance is clearly in the second group. Stick it out. Plow forward. Don't ask questions, right? And this is what he said about Biles withdrawing from the Tokyo competition: " I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we tried to praise people, not for the moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments". 

And that really lays it out, I think. If you equate therapy and self-reflection with weakness and as antithetical to heroism, then you're destined to always continue to make the same mistakes, likely hurting yourself and others in the process. The big picture argument that's been made over the past few years as Americans have argued over what kind of history we want to teach our kids about the country, is that teaching the bad stuff is akin to wanting to feel bad and wanting others to feel bad [00:53:00] about the country. So, the other side proposes the opposite, a sort of nationalist history that only tells positive stories so that kids can grow up feeling proud. But that's how you continue to cause harm by perpetuating a lie. Plowing forward, not looking back, not stopping to reconsider. But our vision, the vision of telling the truth, even though it's uncomfortable, as Baldwin said, "It'll be unsettling to rip away the lies, like it would be unsettling to be able to see both the sun and the stars at the same time". But our description of that vision, can't stop with the discomfort. We can't pitch the idea that things will be better if people feel bad about the country. No-one's going to buy that, and, by the way, it's not true. People need to feel good about the place where they live. The pitch is that by going through a period of self-reflection, a period of sort of national therapy, that we will come out better on the other side for having done the work. People cry and feel [00:54:00] uncomfortable during therapy, but they don't go to therapy to cry and feel uncomfortable. You do it to get better. That's what's heroic about it. That's what was heroic about Simone Biles in Tokyo, taking the time to stop, reassess, self-reflect. That's what opens up a better and healthier path forward. And that better path is the pitch the left should be making when debating how we talk about our history. It's about being factual, yes. But it's also about making the country, the policies it writes and the actions it takes, match our self-conception. 

Right now, we basically have the twisties. Too many of us think we've overcome the ills of racism and sexism, but reality belies that claim. The vast majority of Americans think that we're the type of country that would stand up against genocide anywhere in the world. And yet we are the primary backer of the genocidal, far-right government of Israel. Our perceptions and our body politic are wildly [00:55:00] out of sync. It's time to do the heroic work of reassessing and self-reflecting.

SECTION A - BALDWIN THE WRITER

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, to continue that self-reflection with Deeper Dives on four topics. Next up, there's Section A: Baldwin, the Writer; Section B: Race in America; Section C: The White Lie; and Section D: Global Connections.

Brian Lehrer Weekend 100 Years of James Baldwin; Election Integrity and National Security; New York City Etiquette - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 8-3-24

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: . In this segment, since we're doing a hundred years of a hundred things, maybe we should go through it chronologically.

Start at the start. The title of your book is begin again, James Baldwin's America and it's urgent lessons for our own. So help us put Baldwin into context a little bit. What was his America specifically? What was New York City like where he grew up? 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, you know baldwin comes of age in a sense, you know, he's he's the child of southern migrants So he's that first generation born after there's this mass movement his stepfathers from louisiana his his mother's from the eastern shore He's born in august of 1924.

So you can [00:56:00] imagine he's coming of age right against, you know, you can juxtapose the holland renaissance with You know, the Great Depression, uh, his family was profoundly poor, so, you know, he, he struggled. And you can see, you know, he's not, he's not, um, shall we say, uh, African American who comes from Sugar Hill, right?

He's, he's born and raised in the bottom, as it were. And so that distinction, you know, I think shows up in his voice. He's a childhood preacher. You know, um, father was an itinerant stepfather was an itinerant preacher. Um, and then he decides that he cannot, you know, engage in this, this lie. The stories are running around in his head.

He wasn't the best student in the world, but he was obviously brilliant. Um, and, you know, he had, Desires, you know, he was coming to terms with his own sexuality. You can imagine, uh, the, the [00:57:00] challenges of feeling what he was feeling on the inside and for others and having to deal with his father at the same time.

And so you get this young man who leaves and, and moves to the, to, to, you know, Greenwich village and, and there, when you, when he tells the stories of what he's, what he's What he experienced, he not only experienced a kind of freedom, but it's clear that he was haunted by sexual violence, uh, and then he decides to leave in 1948.

And he says that he, he could have gone anywhere, but Baldwin was lying at that point. He, you know, he goes to Paris, um, and he goes to Paris because there's this wonderfully rich expat community there. And it's in Paris that he does something extraordinary. He He literally wills himself into becoming one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And that writing has affected a lot of people. We're getting a lot of calls. I'd love to hear from some callers right now. Yeah, let's go to Chuck in Philadelphia. Hey, Chuck, welcome to the show. 

CALLER: Hi, and thank [00:58:00] you, uh, Eddie, for all that you do and, uh, the great work that you do in the vein of, uh, James Baldwin.

Uh, let me just say, I love the fact that James Baldwin was a luminary in the realm of civil rights. And I, uh, admire the great profundity that he brought to humanitarian issues, uh, because civil rights is a humanitarian issue, and people forget that. But I just want to say, can people please read James Baldwin?

for the joy of reading James Baldwin. He was a prolific and beautiful writer. His words are painterly, and he is just, um, a wonder on the page. And so, uh, with all of the great things that he has done impacting our society, I think it's equally important to appreciate him for the tremendous writer that he is.

And [00:59:00] speaking of his time in Paris, if you're interested, there's a great little book called Giovanni's Room, and um, it takes many of his, uh, uh, experiences in Paris and puts them on the page in such a way that it And thank you guys for allowing me to just say this about him. Thank you. 

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Oh Chuck and so beautifully said too.

So thank you for that. Yeah, go ahead professor. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: No, he's right. I mean the first thing we have to understand is Baldwin is an artist. Right. And he's an extraordinary artist. I mean, Toni Morrison at her, uh, eulogy at her eulogy for Baldwin, uh, when he dies in December of 1987, um, she, she says that, you know, she found language in Baldwin, uh, the way in which he, How can I put this?

He takes the sound of the black preachily tradition, the black homiletic tradition. He takes the eloquence of, uh, the King James Bible. He, he, he's, he's, he, he's a student of [01:00:00] Henry James sentences. So when you, when you. Re Henry James is the ambassadors. You can see Baldwin inside those sentences. He's thinking with Proust.

He's, he is in so many ways, the inheritor of Emerson just on the other side of the tracks. So Chuck is absolutely right. We can never lose sight. Of Baldwin as the artist as the poet in the broadest sense of that word 

Celebrating James Baldwin's 100th Birthday Part 3 - 1A - Air Date 7-30-24

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: In 1971, poet Nikki Giovanni interviewed, uh, he was 47 years old at this point, James Baldwin in London, in a conversation that's been widely circulated across social media in recent years.

We heard from Dominic who says, thank you so much for doing this show. James Baldwin had a profound impact on my life as he met me at the intersections of race, sexuality, civic duty, and democracy. I'd be curious to think about what it means to be out based on Baldwin's work. Additionally, I'd be curious to think about Baldwin's thoughts on misogynoir, given his 1971 conversation on black relationships with Nikki Giovanni on [01:01:00] soul.

Let's hear a little bit of that conversation. I 

JAMES BALDWIN: have to smile all day and take out on the job at the foreman. I can't give a performance all day on the job and come home and give a performance all night in the house. Okay, so one of the performances will stop. Yes, so you say, and okay, I might be willing to go with it, but who's going to pay the rent?

The rent will get paid. Look, baby, I'm willing to play it your way, but you have to see my point of view. I see your point of view, but the rent will have to get paid. The price of the house. No, no, I don't want you prostituting yourself. I demand. I don't want you prostituting yourself either. One of us has got to work.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Now, Baldwin is often associated with his commentary on race, but Professor Glott, what were his views on, on gender? Ooh, 

ROBERT JONES JR: you know, they're complicated. [01:02:00] You know, let me just say this. Uh, Notes was published in 1955 in Giovanni's room is 56. I want to be clear about that. Um, That exchange between Jimmy and Nikki Giovanni freed me to write Begin Again.

Say more. Because I was, I felt, I was drinking too much Irish whiskey. Baldwin's was, Baldwin was demanding a certain kind of honesty, uh, that threatened everything that I had built over a life lived. Um, and the way she said lie to me, Right? I can't lie to you. No, no, no. You lie to him all day. Come home and lie to me.

And that exchange where she, and she's young, she's brash, uh, she's telling him, No, no, no, no. We, together, you and I, in love, we could, we could pay the rent. Right? That's gonna get paid if we're in, if we risk ourselves with each other. [01:03:00] So she, she let me know that Baldwin could be wrong. Right? That you could challenge it, which freed me up to think about him because, you know, otherwise you just consent to the eloquence over and over and over and over again, right?

So, his, his views on gender are really, really complicated. You know he has a very complicated, you know, you read Here Be Dragons, you read, um, the stuff on, um, Uh, the early stuff on male prisons, you see Baldwin understands the constructed nature of gender, right? But you also see him inhabiting traditional gender roles and actually repeating them.

So if you, there's a moment where he's debating or having a conversation with Audre Lorde at Spellman. Oh my God, Audre Lorde handed him his behind, right? Because Baldwin was again, inhabiting a certain, a certain. a certain understanding of patriarchy and what this understanding of manhood distorts that if we're going to allow because the basic claim as I [01:04:00] understand it Is if we're going to deal with patriarchy, we're going to have to deal with the conception of men, right?

That distorts the very ways in which these folk understand themselves. And so he, in order to make that point, he's not going to make the feminist mode. He's going to, he's going to say, you got to deal with the way in which these men come to understand themselves and come to love. And so he's centering folk, men in a way, that, that gets in the way.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. But I would love to hear what Robert has to say about that. 

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Yeah, and I just want to note, Robert, you wanted to make sure this conversation wasn't just a celebration of Baldwin's legacy without confronting some, some of his flaws. So go ahead. 

ROBERT JONES JR: You know, um, I learned as much from Baldwin's despair as I do from his love.

I learned as much about life from his triumphs as I do from his flaws, his [01:05:00] flaws. So when I look at his exchange between Nikki Giovanni and Audre Lorde, particularly the latter, I'm seeing somebody, as Dr. Glaude said, embodying the patriarchy he wants to dismantle as a performance to this is what men are.

How do we, how do we confront this? How do we undo it? Because he says to, um, to Audre Lorde at once, this is what men are. This is what they're going to do. Um, but he never realizes he's also embracing this thing as, um, not wanting to hear Audre Lorde saying, well, You know, I'm going to stop you from being violent toward me by any means necessary.

Just like you're going to stop Mr. Charlie from being violent to you. I learned a great deal about that, that pedestals are a small place to put somebody on and there's only one way down to be pushed. [01:06:00] And so here's the other thing about Baldwin that I learned from embracing his flaws is that unlike in the age of the internet, Baldwin can admit that he's wrong.

And he can apologize because if you read The Evidence of Things Not Seen, his last published work, there's an entire section on Black women. And when she says, basically, I got it completely wrong is the deal with black women. Um, something that's really rare today to apologize and to admit fault publicly.

JENN WHITE - HOST, 1A: Well, I've got to tell you, Robert, that pedestals are very small places to put people and there's only one way down to push them. That's going to be, that's going to be sitting in my head. in my head for a while.

SECTION B - RACE IN AMERICA

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Race in America.

Right Wingers Go FULL RACIST About Civil Rights - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-21-24

JEREMY CARL: Relook at how we've enforced civil rights laws. And again, I'm not saying that because I think we need to read litigate The wisdom of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was it was put in at a particular time [01:07:00] to solve I've criticized it Yeah, yeah Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm Chris Chris Caldwell is a colleague of mine and I think it's it's you know it's fine to do that, but I think just as a political strategy I think If people want to say, Hey, that was, there was, there were absolutely real problems that it was addressing, whether you think it did it in the perfect way or not.

But we're as far from that time right now. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I just want to, I want to stay on this segment for a moment because it's, it's a fascinating. Um, he is saying for political purposes, I don't want to engage in whether there should have ever been a civil rights act because the implication is to him that there shouldn't have been.

That. Things either weren't that bad or the fixes for this, like, I don't know. Guaranteeing the right that you as a black person could not be discriminated against at, let's say a hotel. [01:08:00] Or a restaurant. Or, I don't know, on a bus. Uh, where the civil, uh, vote, uh, the, the Voting Rights Act guaranteed that your vote, you cannot be dispossessed of your vote or disenfranchised.

He had problems with it, but he doesn't want to litigate that. He wants to pretend that it's solved everything and there's no racism now. So, uh, which is a just more terra firma, uh, in terms of, of, of the political argument, but 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: that's Carl's argument, right? Where like, yeah, that's Carl's argument, but Charlie's goes, Charlie goes farther in terms of basically, I mean, what has, what have his arguments been about the civil rights act?

Let me guess. It's just, it's process based or the federal government shouldn't be making these determinations, Well, the, uh, 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I, I, I, I don't know, I've heard him articulate it, although he says right there, he has criticized it, and I'm sure he has, I'm [01:09:00] sure the part of it is like, hey, if I'm, uh, you know, you can't, you cannot force a, um, a restaurant to serve black people, and I just know it's going to fail, that restaurant's going to fail anyways, um, if it, if it doesn't serve black people, of course, we've seen Uh, it's just absurd.

Uh, they, they seem to do okay anyways. Uh, you know, prior to that time, oddly enough, but here's the difference. Charlie Kirk has a, um, a, a radio show, and so he has to appeal to, um, adjust his audience. This guy, um, you know, uh, Jeremy Carl is at a, the Hoover, uh, is he at the Hoover? Is that where he is at? The, the, the Hoover uh, found institution, which is a think tank that may has to sound like it's somewhat reasonable.

Mm-Hmm. . And it's just too complicated to argue that the Civil Rights 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Act, it was wrong. We have a big tent over here between [01:10:00] people who, uh, think apartheid is fine and people think we should maybe do something to not be officially apartheid. 

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Oh, just to clarify, sorry, that was, uh, Jeremy's first stop in the think tank.

He's, uh, space. He's now at the Claremont Institute. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh, he's moved on to the full on theocracy, uh, theocratic, uh, racist, but. 

JEREMY CARL: And Chris, Chris Caldwell is a colleague of mine and I think it's, it's, you know, it's fine to do that. But I think just as a, a political strategy, I think if people want to say, Hey, that was, there were, there were absolutely real problems that it was addressing, whether you think it did it in the perfect way or not.

But we're as far from that time right now. As they were from the Wright brothers. So there's a lot of things that have changed in American society We're not worried about people not being served at lunch counters anymore. 

CHARLIE KIRK: Yeah, and the civil rights act though Let's be clear created a beast and that beast has now turned into an anti white 

JEREMY CARL: Yeah, and that's and that's the reality.

And so we just need to fundamentally relook at a lot of our civil rights legal regime. And without that, even though I don't think it's [01:11:00] sort of the magic bullet, but I think without that there's limits to the amount of progress we're going to make. Let's talk about discourse 

CHARLIE KIRK: and dialogue. This topic would have been even more forbidden four or five years ago, but it's now becoming in more and more mainstream circles.

Is that because the problem is becoming worse or, but our side is more courageous to confront it. 

JEREMY CARL: I think it's both Charlie and I'm gonna commend you in particular and Tucker and guys like Matt Walsh. There's like three of us. Yeah, it's really, I mean, you guys are the people. You guys really, I just want to be clear 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: what they're saying.

We couldn't be this hourly racist before. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, but now we can. Just to put a time, uh, code on that, uh, Wired has a piece, How Charlie Kirk Plans to Discredit Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Act. Uh, starts with two quotes. In 2015, Kirk called him a hero. Uh, in 2022, MLK was a civil rights icon. Now, you could say both of those things and still hate them.

Cause it's objectively true. He's a hero to many [01:12:00] people and he is a civil rights icon. But now Charlie Kirk is saying, you know, things like MLK is awful. He's not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn't believe being the, uh, probably like don't care about the color of your skin or whatever.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, I remember being at that, um, uh, 9 12 rally that, um, Glenn Beck had back in 2000. I don't know when it was 2008 maybe, or 2009. And, um, There was a guy there who was very angry at Glenn Beck for embracing MLK because MLK was a socialist and whatnot. And I'm like, well, he, he sort of was actually, um, but you should tell a lot of people that, um, but the, the, it really did take Trump and then just sort of like people trying to do, how do we do Trump without the racism?

And it took them to be fair, a couple of months to realize like, we don't. That's [01:13:00] not the formula. It's like, it's like, how do we do soda without sweetness? It turns out, eh, you need the sweetness. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Racism was just one tool in Trump's arsenal, but he won because he was synonymous in culture with the rich decider guy.

Yeah. Right. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, I also, but I do like the idea of the fact that because Charlie Kirk is saying that, you know, maybe we have to be a bit more strategic on abortion and now, as you would say, Sam, the dog has caught the car. Abortion was what the right pivoted to after the Civil Rights Act. And so now they have to go to a return to form where they can try to galvanize their base based on.

Go back. Right. Right. Right. Vintage. Let's see if it works 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: this way. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Exactly. 

Trump Questions If Kamala Harris Is Black in Hate-Filled Interview with Black Journalists at NABJ - Democracy Now - Air Date 8-1-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared before the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago on Wednesday for a sit-down interview with a panel of Black women journalists. The association’s decision to invite Trump had sparked outrage within the organization. On Tuesday, Washington Post editor Karen [01:14:00] Attiah stepped down as co-chair of the NABJ’s convention.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: During the interview, Trump repeatedly sparred with the reporters, insulted them, and also questioned whether Kamala Harris is actually Black. He claimed he was the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.

We turn now to excerpts from this interview with Fox News host Harris Faulkner, Semafor's Kadia Goba and ABC News' Rachel Scott, who began the event with this question.

RACHEL SCOTT: I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room, sir. A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today. You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying they were not born in the United States, which is not true. You have told four congresswomen of color, who were American citizens, to go back to where they came from. You have used words like “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black [01:15:00] district attorneys. You’ve attacked Black journalists, calling them a “loser,” saying the questions that they ask are, quote, “stupid and racist.” You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So, my question, sir, now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you after you have used language like that?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so — in such a horrible manner, a first question. You don’t even say, “Hello. How are you?” Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network. And I think it’s disgraceful that I came here, in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country. …

I was invited here, and I was told my opponent, whether it was Biden or Kamala — I was told my opponent was [01:16:00] going to be here. It turned out my opponent isn’t here. You invited me under false pretense. And then you said, “You can’t do it with Zoom.” Well, you know, where’s Zoom? She’s going to do it with Zoom, and she’s not coming. And then you were half an hour late. Just so we understand, I have too much respect for you to be late. They couldn’t get their equipment working, or something was wrong.

RACHEL SCOTT: Mr. President, I would love if you can answer the question —

DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s a very nasty question.

RACHEL SCOTT: — on your rhetoric and why you believe that Black voters —

DONALD TRUMP: I have answered the question.

RACHEL SCOTT: — should trust you with another four years.

DONALD TRUMP: I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.

RACHEL SCOTT: Better than —

DONALD TRUMP: That’s my answer.

RACHEL SCOTT: Better than President Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act?

DONALD TRUMP: That’s my answer. And for you to start off a question-and-answer period, especially when you’re 35 minutes late because you couldn’t get your equipment to work, in such a hostile manner, I think it’s a disgrace. I really do. I think it’s a disgrace.

RACHEL SCOTT: Let me — let me just ask a follow-up, sir, and then we’ll move on to other questions here. Some of your own supporters, including Republicans on Capitol Hill, have labeled Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the first Black and Asian American woman to serve as vice president and be on a major-party [01:17:00] ticket, as a ”DEI hire.” Is that acceptable language to you? And will you tell those Republicans and those supporters to stop it?

DONALD TRUMP: How do you — how do you define DEI? Go ahead. How do you define it?

RACHEL SCOTT: Diversity, equity, inclusion.

DONALD TRUMP: OK, yeah, go ahead. Is that what your definition? Give me —

RACHEL SCOTT: That is —

DONALD TRUMP: Give me a definition, then.

RACHEL SCOTT: That is literally the words, DEI.

DONALD TRUMP: Would you give me a definition of that? Give me a definition of that.

RACHEL SCOTT: Sir, I’m asking you a question, a very direct question.

DONALD TRUMP: No, no. You have to define it. Define the — define it for me, if you would.

RACHEL SCOTT: I just defined it, sir. Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I can say, no, I think it’s maybe a little bit different. So, I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know: Is she Indian, or is she Black?

RACHEL SCOTT: She has always identified as a Black woman.

DONALD TRUMP: But you know what?

RACHEL SCOTT: She went to a historically Black college.

DONALD TRUMP: I respect either one. I respect either one. But she [01:18:00] obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then, all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person. …

HARRIS FAULKNER: As you were coming today, we really got to see that we were divided along the lines of race, along the lines of gender. And there is this question of, in this moment where we are, why come here? What is your message today?

DONALD TRUMP: My message is to stop people from invading our country that are taking, frankly — a lot of problems with it, but one of the big problems — and a lot of the journalists in this room I know and I have great respect for — a lot of the journalists in this room are Black. I will tell you that coming — coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs. You had the best —

RACHEL SCOTT: What exactly is a Black job, sir?

DONALD TRUMP: A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is, anybody that has a job.

HARRIS FAULKNER: All right. …

KADIA GOBA: [01:19:00] So, Sonya Massey, someone from Illinois, an unarmed Black woman, was shot the other day in her home by a deputy sheriff. The deputy has since been charged with murder. You’ve said police would get immunity from prosecution if you win. Why should someone like that officer have immunity, in your opinion?

DONALD TRUMP: Immunity?

KADIA GOBA: Immunity.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know the exact case, but I saw something, and it didn’t look — it didn’t look good to me. It didn’t look good to me. Are you talking — with the water, right?

KADIA GOBA: Yeah. Well, police —

DONALD TRUMP: It didn’t look —

KADIA GOBA: I mean, police unions are not backing this person, either.

DONALD TRUMP: OK, OK.

KADIA GOBA: But again, why would —

DONALD TRUMP: And they’re going to — are they going to be charging the officer? I guess they’re charging the officer.

KADIA GOBA: So, why should he receive immunity?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, he might not. I mean, it depends. It depends on what happens.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: That’s presidential nominee Donald Trump being interviewed at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Chicago. [01:20:00] He was questioned by Fox News host Harris Faulkner, Semafor's Kadia Goba and ABC News' Rachel Scott.

Crowder Spews UNHINGED Racism During Harris ‘Comedy’ Bit - The Majority Report - Air Date7-31-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: How did her candidacy kind of, like, get launched online? Or have young people get interested? It was the memeing of the coconut tree anecdote, okay? That was a story she told about her Indian mother. So I don't think, know who they, and that's a phrase her Indian mother told her, and it was apparently an adage.

So I don't know who's hiding the fact that she's mixed race from anybody, or who the they is. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This guy just wants to make sure that we have a racially pure black person as president. Right? Is that what's going on here? Yeah, he loves, yeah, exactly. 

CROWDER: Who trick you, the media, the legacy media into believing that Kamala Harris is fully black.

CLIP: Does she really identify as a black woman, or is she more Indian? What does Kamala Harris listen to? 

KAMALA HARRIS: Definitely Snoop, uh huh. Oh, pause it, pause it, pause it. You ain't black. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: [01:21:00] Oh my god, this is really just stunning. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They did blackface. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They, uh, for folks just listening, they, uh, darkened her image, uh, and put a joint in her mouth.

And, uh, gold chains around her. Oh, right, I forgot, 

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Mr. T style gold chains. And graffiti next to her that says, Black like me. What? Now, 

CROWDER: That was Joe Biden, not us, we didn't say that. Just to be clear, I would not advise President Trump to focus on this. No. I would not advise politically to focus on her whore kingdom.

No. I wouldn't. But this is not a presidential campaign, and so we like to do it. So, the narrative right now, I told you this was coming, but it's very, very clear. And we have a montage for you, and you can share it on social. Just, just so you can cut people off at the pass. If you, if you don't allow it to happen in darkness, then it loses all power.

The line of attack from everybody and their dog on the left is if you [01:22:00] don't vote for Kamala or if you, if you actively oppose Kamala, if you certainly actively present her shortcomings as a candidate, it's because you hate women. I mean, black people, I mean, black people, I mean, women, I mean, black people or women, black women, but half black women, you hate all the people who are women or black or half black.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Pause it for one second, 

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: and so I'll skip ahead for a little bit because it's a long montage 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This is the way that he's going to, uh, prove That you don't, uh, hate women or black women By assessing how black Kamala Harris is 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And encouraging Trump not to share this Don't run on this, no no no But all my fans who are all voting for Trump You share this stuff Because this is how right wing campaigns run.

They have to operate in some way with plausible deniability, so they have Foot soldiers who, I don't know, are really decreasing in terms of their view count, like Steven Crowder doing it for them. And [01:23:00] earlier on he said, uh, her whore kingdom? Did I hear that correctly? 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I'm not sure what that's about.

So, and 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: then he said then they're gonna try to say that everybody on the left will, and their dog, will try to say that, uh, criticism of her is because she's a woman and because she's black. You just said that she got to power via her whore kingdom, which, I'm not even sure what that means. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's a woman in power.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh, 

CROWDER: gotcha. So, whore. Donald Trump, uh, has never been elected to anything. You 

CLIP: have to be able to fairly critique the vice president of the United States without just saying it's the color of their skin or the fact she's a woman. But it is part of it. Sorry, is it just because she's black? 

CROWDER: Yes. Okay. Yes. No.

Also. Sorry. Did that. Did that shriveled ladybug say that Donald Trump has never been elected to anything? Uh, sheesh. Hey, that's election, that's election denial. [01:24:00] Reverend, I am not familiar with that term, but I will get back to you. Sorry, election denial. Oh, like misogynoir, I heard that. Misogynoir. For the first time today, too.

Yeah. Misogynoir from that. Half ass house party haircut that you cannot do with that high of a hairline because it just looks like you've been green screened improperly. Oh no! Speaking of hairlines, are we gonna just graze over the fact that we had black Larry David at the end of that? I know. Little Barry David?

That's Michael, what up, Steele? When he was the RNC chairman, he was like, I got a new blog! What up, Larry David? Wow. He was the least effective RNC chairman ever. He's on a show called Curb Your Ebony.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, this is just, wow. Riffing. They're proving, they're just giving you ammo, um, um, young, aspiring racists, to head [01:25:00] off at the pass any critique that your problem with Kamala Harris is that she's black. That's all they're doing. Go ahead. Pretty, 

CROWDER: pretty, pretty black. They asked him, they asked him when he was, when he was uh, uh, going to be the RNC chairman, like, hey, what do you think we need to do?

We need to be more effective on our messaging as it relates to strong American economy, jobs for the middle class. He's like, I think they need a what pie. We're gonna start a blog. Michael, what up, Phil? Like, you're the worst. I'll take it. Go away. I see your point. And I'll run your way. That's not even as cringy as they really get.

No. You're less cringy than they are. Well, here's what's even more cringy is, look, and I understand that she is biracial, okay? It's not lost. We will have her Jamaican father, Donald J. Harrison, in just a little bit. Yeah. However, she has tried to use whatever is most convenient that day, and because they [01:26:00] know we'll get to the polls that Kamala doesn't poll very well with the um, the Noirs, to quote that man.

At least I there now. They're now trying to make Kamala do more black things. 

KAMALA HARRIS: What'd you get? So Do you know music? Okay, so First of all, Charlie Mangus. 

CLIP: And then the Blackstreet Boys. community. She is a great asset to this team. Well, to say that the black community is excited about this potential nomination is an understatement.

My 

KAMALA HARRIS: favorite albums of all time. Roy airs. Everybody loves sunshine. Pause. 

CROWDER: If it's your favorite album, why are you buying it now on camera? Yeah, it's like she googled it. Yes. 

UNKNOWN COMMENTATOR: You would have already had it. 

CROWDER: Oh, I guess It's also 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: possible that maybe it's on your Spotify, but I mean You buy reissue 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I have albums that I purchased on vinyl to have as [01:27:00] collector items that I listen to also on my streaming service.

You like black music? You may have 

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: had cassettes or something. You like black music? Name five of their albums. That's basically what they're saying. I mean, 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: but, but, I mean, this is like, this is, you know, This is all just, you know, full on, uh, politician stuff. Like there's no politician out there. You know, I'm going to McDonald's.

Really does, does Donald Trump go, Trump could do that. Does Donald Trump go in Philadelphia and get a cheese steak? I mean, gimme a, she made a 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: campaign stop at a record store and picked up some records that she liked. That's what happened. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I, this is, this is just like, this is just Nazi strain, gun level race, baby.

Yeah. Like, I mean, honestly I can full 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: on race babies. It 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: really is. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: All right, let's just uh, he's so pathetic

James Baldwin's Fire Part 2 - Throughline - Air Date 9-17-20

JAMES BALDWIN: What is it you want to me to reconcile myself to? I was born here almost 60 years ago. I'm not going to live another 60 years. You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father's time, my mother's time. My [01:28:00] uncle's not. My brother's and my sister's not. My niece's and my nephew's not. How much time do you want for your progress?

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: Did he come, come out of the civil rights? movement feeling hopeful because I, I, I look at the moment that we're in now and the, and there's a lot of potential for change. There's a lot of potential for a real kind of awareness of reckoning with our history, but there's also a potential for things to continue as they've been.

And I guess I wonder is, is, is the ultimate kind of takeaway From Baldwin, a sense of hope, um, in, in where the country's headed. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You know, that's a great question. And in [01:29:00] some ways, it's, it's a question that, that, that is in part the motivation for writing the book, because I focus on the later Jimmy Baldwin's.

I will focus on his later work for a reason, because He witnessed the country turn its back on the civil rights movement. You know, something, they murdered the apostle of love. They assassinated Dr. King. He collapsed, you know, tried to commit suicide in 69. He was despairing, disillusioned. But he had to pick up the pieces.

He had to bear witness. Because he also saw the country elect Ronald Reagan. And he, you know, Reagan for black activists during this period was as bad, if not worse, than George Wallace. And they were calling him the redeemer in chief. This was the man who, who, who led the hunt. You know, that destroyed the Black Panther Party.

This was the man who put Angela Davis in effect on the FBI most wanted list. This was the man who despised the poor. Um, in [01:30:00] California, as, as Baldwin put it, he was the, he would, he became the avatar of all of those who rejected it and resisted the great society and the civil rights movement. And the country elected him, this B list Hollywood actor.

He was their latest fantasy. Hmm. Sounds like an echo. We live in a moment similar. And so Baldwin, um, in that moment, said the country had turned its back on it, on, on, on the possibility of being otherwise. And so he had to figure out how to pick up the pieces so that we could push this damn boulder up the hill again.

In 1970, an Ebony interviewer came to Istanbul while Baldwin was trying to pick up the pieces and working on No Name in the Street. And he asked him about hope and Jimmy is barely keeping it together, although he's in a community of love offers the advice that I found in the ruins and in the rubble that I offer us today, [01:31:00] hope is invented every day, hope is invented every day.

And so I'll say this really quickly. There's no, there's reason to. To think that we are on the precipice of change, but there's no guarantee. But wherever human beings are, we at least have a chance because we're not only disasters, we're also,

we have to dare everything right now. We have to try to be otherwise. We have to risk everything to be otherwise. We have to figure out how to be together differently. I don't want to see another generation of Americans having to bear the burden of this lie. To use an image that Baldwin used, you know, we're all midwives [01:32:00] trying to give birth to a new America.

In the past, every time we came to the moment in which the new America could be born, white supremacy was the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck. And we let it snuff down.

Let's be better midwives as we try to be better people.

JAMES BALDWIN: This is the demand that the artist makes of his society, which society inevitably, unfailingly, and always resists. Resists because it knows that it could do it, but prefers to believe that what it can see and touch is more real. And what it knows and feels at that moment, for example, when the baby is born.

The role of the artist, or responsibility of the artist, is to make you respect that moment above all other moments. To recognize that there is nothing under [01:33:00] heaven, no creed and no flag. And no cause more important than the single human life.

SECTION C - THE WHITE LIE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C: The White Lie. 

Truth, Privilege, and James Baldwin Part 2 - Woke AF Daily - Air Date 10-3-23

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: You know, I think that it's so important, Greg, for white people like yourself to take on. The role of shepherd right in trying to corral Yeah in trying to corral people outside of their own self interest and privilege right because what I believe to be true is that the reason why we're at a time when History is being erased again where books are being burned again Where you're seeing this critical pushback in and our public education system being a battleground For social justice again is because of the notable progress that has been made The critical thought that has been [01:34:00] raised the uh, the the opportunities That we saw presented through the historical the historic election of the first black president right through, you know, through people from marginalized communities sitting inside as secretaries of, you know, of transportation as leaders in our government like this is why this is happening.

You wouldn't see a need for this kind of white lash and bigotry if in fact young people's minds haven't already been woke right to the fact that you know what? This system isn't just this place is not right. It isn't okay that by virtue of my birth and whiteness that I have more privilege and opportunity than my friend down the street or my neighbor, you know, or what have you.

And so, you know, my question for you, the last question I have for you is, you know, Baldwin's footprints on this country, on this world. Is, is enormous, [01:35:00] um, is cemented, is important, and what message do you think that he would continue to convey if, in fact, he was still with us in this moment of great hopelessness?

Right? Because that's where we are. We've had tremendous progress, but the pain that we are seeing right now and the cruelty that is being wielded by. Republican politicians is creating a sense of hopelessness. So what do you think his message would be? 

GREG GARRETT: Oh, and Danielle, that is such a good question. I actually had a conversation with the BBC earlier today, and I was asked something similar and, and what I had said to them and what I confessed to them is that, you know, as I look at where the world is now in this post Trumpian reality, post Trumpian, please God, it feels darker to me than at any [01:36:00] time during my lifetime.

You know, and I'm 61 years old, you know, I was born in 1961, grew up in the 60s, was fairly cognizant of, of, uh, what was going on. And, you know, for all the excitement of Barack Obama being elected, I do really think that Ibram Kendi has it right. Which is, this is, this is not a, you know, like a, a triangle of narrative that we're used to.

It's, it's jagged, you know? And as you were saying, Barack Obama's. Election and a more inclusive society scared the crap out of a whole lot of white people. And so that's how we end up with, you know, what the Atlantic called Mr. Trump as, you know, the great white supremacist president. Yeah. Um, so here's kind of where I land on this a lot.

There are two late life. Works by Baldwin that I look at. Um, he was asked by Playboy magazine to go to Atlanta and investigate the Atlanta [01:37:00] child murders. And the essay that he wrote is kind of rambling. It's not by any means his most like successful literary work. And there are times in it where he seems to be so daunted and so lost and so hopeless.

And at the end of it, he comes back to the, that question of love again. Um, And he says, you know, I think about the church that I grew up in, where we were told to love each other. And he says, whoever else did not believe that, I did. And I think about that a lot, um, you know, in terms of like trying to bridge some of these chasms in our reality at this time.

Um, and then I also think about hopefulness in connection with the last work that he was writing at the end of his life, which was a play called the welcome table. And, you know, Baldwin loved black spirituals. He loved gospel music. He loved the blues. Um, I know that he was referring to, you know, I'm going to sit at the welcome table one of these days.[01:38:00] 

Uh, which is one of the songs that I learned in the African American church that rescued me. Um, and the, the image that he had of the welcome table was one that he talked about throughout his life. Um, someday, he said, you know, and whether that's in this reality, please God, or not, but someday we are all going to come to this space where we can sit at the table and we're not going to see those received identities.

Uh, I'm not going to be a straight white Christian man. I'm going to be human. I'm going to be a child of God. You know, even as, as we might put it, and. We're going to sit together at the table. All of us are going to sit together at the table and we're going to be seen and known and loved. Um, and, and that's a central part of my faith.

And, you know, the crazy thing is that I think it remained a central part of Baldwin's faith, even though he fled the organized church as a teenager. Up to the end of his life, he still believed in that possibility. [01:39:00] And, you know, I talked about it, it's like, what do I need to get out of bed in the morning?

Um, I need to believe in hope, you know, I need to believe that change is possible, that we can do better. And I need to have some pragmatic ways to think about that, which for me is a white man is we've got to do some truth telling, we've got to do some repentance. We've got to create relationships with people who've been marginalized.

We've got to learn, um, who they are. And learn what they need and how we can move forward. Because I mean, another problem that white guys have is that we want to go in and fix things that we don't know anything about. 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah. Yeah. 

GREG GARRETT: What, what Baldwin has given me as a person who looks and lives like I do is all of these thoughts around love and hope.

And the idea that, you know, at the end of the day, we are so much more alike than we are. And that there is possibility. And, you know, I believed, I believed this so much more strongly when Barack Obama stood on the [01:40:00] steps 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: of the Capitol, and I 

GREG GARRETT: do when I look at the Republican debates, I also just got back from Bill Clinton's presidential library and I was watching, uh, some of the video there and it was, I mean, it brought tears to my eyes.

Whatever it is, you know that you want to say about Bill Clinton, but that that phrase I still believe in a place called hope and that's what Baldwin gives me every time I read him, every time I hear his voice, every time I think about him, I hope that we can do and be better. 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Yeah, and I will wait. It was Bill Clinton that said there is nothing that is wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right by America.

GREG GARRETT: Yeah, that's and 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: that is and that's actually one of my favorite. That's one of that's one of my favorites that I that I still I still with my mustard seed of hope that I still hold on to.

Right Wingers Go FULL RACIST About Civil Rights Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 4-21-24

JEREMY CARL: I mean, I didn't write this book to de radicalize people. Okay. But I actually think that if people read it, they will understand, uh, if you're a white person and you're like, man, I'm just, [01:41:00] I'm at the end of my rope and I don't know what I'm going to do.

But that's where a lot of 

CHARLIE KIRK: the young white men that we speak to on campus, I sometimes have to kind of bring them back into like, Free society, like let's, let's calm down because they say everyone's against us. We need to create our own identity politic group. And I actually don't think that's a good idea.

I, I don't think more tribalism is the answer to tribalism, but I see why they believe that. Pause it for one second. Incidentally, 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: if you are looking for a white identity group, uh, there is one. It is called the Republican Party. Younger campus Republicans. 

CHARLIE KIRK: Sympathize with it. The media then says, how dare you sympathize with people that, you know, want to create their own identity group.

But can you speak to that, Jeremy? It's like, you can only push a group into a corner so much until they. They 

JEREMY CARL: kind of say, I'm not going to take it anymore. Yeah. And I think that's what's happening. And I think that's, you know, you're seeing this ferment and that's the left kind of loses its mind because they refuse to deal with the consequences of what they've created.

I do think that there's an element in the same way that [01:42:00] Martin Luther King jr, who we talked about before the show, but he wasn't, you know, plus or minus. He wasn't kind of he wasn't a black nationalist in the way that early malcolm x was he was trying to organize black people However, without apology apology, I think in the same way like we've had a lot of airy appeals to equal rights And it sort of hasn't gotten us anywhere.

We need to organize people Not in a way to kind of create racial identity politics, but to show that like these are the people being discriminated against So they have to organized against it actively and 

CHARLIE KIRK: it is without a doubt the only group in the country You That you're not allowed. To say that you're even part of that group, right?

Let alone that you're being mistreated. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: What would organizing white people look like, right? I mean, you 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: know, Republican Party. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, sure, but you could even if you want to organize it It's like you could have matching outfits, right? Like I mean so people know that you're a part of the same group. Could be matching armbands.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: A coordinated [01:43:00] step, rather. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Or, or What 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: about Fred Perry shirts? How about maybe race isn't the lines that we decide to organize along? How about maybe instead, these young people, I mean, look, maybe some of them are rich kids, uh, that are gonna be racist, but like, um, join a union. Um, join some of these, like, anti imperial causes that are on your campus that you're being told to hate by people like Charlie Kirk.

Like, there are other causes then. I need to be, because I'm a white man, I do not feel represented by either of these two absolute goobers there. And the idea that these guys are going to give anybody a sort of path to walk in life is depressing. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, the, the fascinating thing is, is that every other, in every other application, I Their ideology is all about the individual in every other application.

Good point. It is all about the individual. It is about, you know, personal responsibility and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and, um, unions are bad. Um, you know, any type of [01:44:00] activist groups are bad. Environmentalists are bad. Um, uh, criminal justice reform, bad, um, any type of activism. Outside of responding to the fact that, that we've gone too far in giving rights to non white people.

Every other notion of communitarianism, of organizing, of activism is, uh, bad, inherently. In its essence, is bad. Unless you're forced into, um, Organizing as white people to push back on what's going on here, 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: which is just the good news is that Charlie's very bad at it Um, you know charlie's not the dumbest conservative, but he's quite bad at organizing at least college students to his cause They failed miserably So focused, very laser, uh, laser focused on Arizona this last election cycle and, uh, Republican, uh, gains with young [01:45:00] people was one of the worst in any of the states that Turning Point USA even looked at, if not the worst there.

So that's the good news for us is that he takes a bunch of right wing billionaire or millionaire cash and doesn't do a ton with it. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Uh, is there any more to this? Let's just hear. Where these, these two guys are going. 

CHARLIE KIRK: Right. Why do you think that is? Is it just that everyone's so afraid of being called a racist?

I, I actually think that simple explanation is the deep one. Yeah, I think that's right. It's that being called a racist is worse than being called a rapist in American society. 

JEREMY CARL: Oh, absolutely. And you'll see even people, you know, who are, who would be considered very, very far to the right, and they will disclaim, you know, or they will, they will feel like they have been slandered if that is used against them.

Absolutely. And you seem to get over it because ultimately, if you're being effective in this world right now, you're gonna be called a racist by the left, but they don't even know what a woman is, so how would they know what a racist is? Oh! I get 

CHARLIE KIRK: called racist every day, and it's easy to say, why are you so terrified of being called a racist?

But there is, there are huge consequences for being called a racist. Of course. [01:46:00] Unless you have your own stuff, and unless you're very unique and you're willing to punch through it, and punch through it, and punch through it, and punch through it, and then you come to the other side and you have intellectual freedom.

Purity and freedom, but that's, that's a small positive 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: incidentally. I'll tell you what that area is. It's when your audience is also equally as racist and they're okay with it and everybody has punched through it. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I know, right. Like they got over the initial shame of being called a racist and just set in, and it just set in the reality that they are racist.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I like the fact too that this guy was feeling loose enough to, um, just to slide off topic a little bit in terms of the only unprotected class that's out there to, uh, slag trans people. They peddled of that. Yeah, it's. It's, it's like, it is the white people who are oppressed and, of course, those people who are not trans.

Yeah. 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's funny to have, like, something that you return to as a touchstone for, like, oh, this is the truth on our [01:47:00] side, and you're wrong about that, too. Exactly. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And what strikes me, too, is these conversations are so boring, because they're never specific. It's just like general feelings, general resentment, I mean, like they can never point to anything in particular because also when they start to go down that road, if Charlie wants to get a little bit more specific about his feelings about the Civil Rights Act, then he gets a little bit, he gets in trouble because for all of his protestations, right?

He knows that there's some lines that he can't cross if he wants to widen his appeal for his audience. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And we should just say, um The number of racists who are arrested for their racism, uh, versus rapists is really out of control. 

Brian Lehrer Weekend 100 Years of James Baldwin; Election Integrity and National Security; New York City Etiquette Part 2 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 8-3-24

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: I'm used at the very beginning. Paradoxical, I think is a, is a wonderful counterintuitive maybe is also a, another word there. That idea that so much time has passed and yet the words ring so true still. That makes me professor want to go to the fire next time, which you brought up.

This one is two [01:48:00] essays. The first was written to Baldwin's nephew. Interesting little factoid here for listeners. This one was in 1963. We're celebrating a hundred years of a hundred things, 1963 itself, a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. How had Baldwin in the country's discourse evolved by, by that point, had it speaking to Nikita's point?

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Well, remember, I mean, this is at the heart of, of the black freedom struggle. So Baldwin, you know, with the, first of all, with the publication of The Fire Next Time, he, he ascends as perhaps the most important black literary voice in the country at the time. But it's also, Uh, you know, you think about Birmingham, you think about, um, the, the movement in Montgomery, you think about, uh, what happened in Arkansas, what was going on in the South, what was about to happen in Washington, D.

C., the meeting with, uh, uh, Robert, Robert Kennedy. So he's in the throes of the black freedom struggle. Right and what's so important about it. Remember that the the [01:49:00] essays were published The year before right and one in the New Yorker and the other and in another in another piece So so he's he's the progressive he's thinking Right?

About movements. He's trying to, how can, he's trying to bear witness to what's happening on the ground and what's happening on the ground. Everyday ordinary folk are engaged in a revolutionary practice to change the very foundation. The very foundation of the country, right? To rip up this, this practice of Jim Crow.

And fire next time is this powerful articulation of that, but it's also this challenge because the country gets introduced to, to, uh, the nation of Islam. Cause this is what's so, what's so beautiful about Baldwin. Baldwin taught me how to love and to be angry, how to not let the rage overwhelm. Uh, you know, but if you're not angry, If you're not in love, you know, [01:50:00] they're experiencing a kind of righteous indignation.

What, what, what world are you living in? And so he's, he's giving voice to this in 1963. And remember, we don't hear the language of black power until two to three years later. 

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: You know, we're 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: already beginning to get a sense of it in his work 

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: that, that, um, that idea of him being a precursor to a larger movement in that sense reminds me of a clip that we've actually prepared.

So it's great timing. In 1968, he went on the Dick Cavett show and talked about the state of race relations. Let's listen to a clip from his comments. I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to reflect on it, professor. Here's the clip. Sure. 

JAMES BALDWIN: I don't know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only include what they feel from the state of their institution.

I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know that we have a Christian church which is white, and a Christian church which is black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, that the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation.

It means that I can't afford to [01:51:00] trust most white Christians, and certainly cannot trust the Christian church. I don't know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn't matter, but I know I'm not in their union. I don't know if the real estate lobby is anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobbies keep me in the ghetto.

I don't know if the Board of Education hates black people, but I know the textbooks I give my children to read, and the schools that we have to go to. Now, this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children, On some idealism, which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: There's this resolute moving poetry, I'd have to call it in the way Baldwin outlines systemic racism. It's also crucial here to remember that Baldwin is saying these things on television, on a popular TV show. That's really something, right? How do people react to that, to him in this medium? 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Oh, no, remember, this is.

Baldwin in 68, many folk believe that he's [01:52:00] fallen for the siren songs of the so called young black radicals Folks believe that he's lost, you know, his his artistic edge in some ways, right? Uh that his anger has overwhelmed his pen Um, but here I mean he's responding to paul weiss. I mean there's this sense in which the philosopher from Yale, he's responding to Paul Weiss's expectation that black folk haven't earned a deep skepticism about the moral capacities of this country.

I mean, this is what this airs, um, just not too long after Dr. King has been assassinated. And what does it mean at this moment to expect of Jimmy, right? Some kind of moral, Uh, forgiveness, some kind of openness to the possibility that white America will give up the idols of its commitment to whiteness.

And you can hear the rage in his voice. How can you expect me to [01:53:00] risk myself and the people I love for something that is just an ideal that you refuse to live up to, you see? And so this part of this prophetic truth telling. Right. It's, you know, in that moment, Baldwin takes on repetition, that homiletic strategy, right?

He repeats and the rhythm of the repetition, right? Allows for the point to be brought home, not at the level of just simply a claim that's being made, but at the level of the emotion, the passion, at the level of the heart. And at that moment, right? He's, he's being something where he's being something really, he's doing something really special, you know?

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Yeah, there's the litany, the, the, not, not, I mean, maybe gospel in a sense, but based on his roots, but definitely that sense of, of resoluteness that you're talking about. Great writer, great orator, which I think is something really important for folks to remember. 

James Baldwin's Fire Part 3 - Throughline - Air Date 9-17-20

RUND ABDELFATAH - HOST, THROUGHLINE: throughout the book. Just to follow up on that, there is this feeling that. While [01:54:00] he holds that rage, as you just said, he's also capable. Of simultaneously understanding that the white citizens of the United States who are responsible for the state of, uh, play a major role and responsible for the state of racism in the system in America.

He also holds a deep love for, and a sense of. Uh, brotherhood and sisterhood for those people. And do you think part of the reason he was able to do that so well, beyond just his ability to write and think, was that he was a witness and not necessarily a participant in the sense that he wasn't an activist, he intentionally chose to be a witness, to bear witness, to document in a lot of ways, uh, what he was seeing.

What does that tell us about kind of where, you know, many of us sit? And do you think that was what really enabled him to? Kind of really be able to [01:55:00] balance those heavy emotions. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You, you know, I, I don't know, um, to be honest with you. It, it, it's hard. There is a sense in which, you know, Baldwin is, is the poet in, in the Emersonian sense.

Um, Baldwin never gave up on the fundamental sacrality of human being. We're all sacred. And then that line where he says, you know, I want us to do something unprecedented, and that is to create a self without the need for enemies. Oh my lord. Every time, I mean, That's just, I just love that line. So part of what he's saying, um, I know I'm going around in circles.

He's saying that what white supremacy does, it not only causes all of this hell for me and how I have to raise my children and live my life, it is literally deforming and disfiguring the character of the people who embrace it. [01:56:00] You, your character is fundamentally affected by all of this. Can't you see? 

JAMES BALDWIN: I think that you and I.

We might learn a great deal from each other if you can overcome the curtain of my color. This country is mine too. I paid as much for it as you. White means that you are European still, and black means that I'm African, and we both know. We've both been here too long. You can't go back to Ireland or Poland or England, and I can't go back to Africa, and we will live here together or we'll die here together.

And it's not I am telling you, time is telling you. You will listen or you will perish. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: And what he's warning us is not to fall into the trap because if it disfigures them, if we buy into his logic, it will disfigure us. We can't release the trap, man. But we can't, we [01:57:00] also can't fall into this stuff of sentimentality either.

But anyway.

Jimmy.

SECTION D - GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Global Connections. 

Cori Bush vs. AIPAC- Squad Member in Tough Primary Race as Pro-Israel Lobby Spends $8M to Defeat Her - Democracy Now! - Air Date 8-6-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Today is Primary Day in Missouri. One of the most closely watched races of the year, Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush is facing off against county prosecutor Wesley Bell. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and an affiliated super PAC have spent over $8 million in an effort to defeat Bush, who has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war on Gaza. The election comes just weeks after the same super PAC, United Democratic Project, spent over $14 million to help defeat New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman in his Democratic primary here in New York.

Four years ago, Cori Bush won a stunning primary upset over the 10-term incumbent Congressmember William Lacy Clay Jr. in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District in the St. Louis area. Bush was a [01:58:00] leader in the 2014 Ferguson uprising over the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Prior to taking office, she worked as a nurse. She was also unhoused for a period of time with her children, an experience that led her to become a leading housing advocate in Congress, where she introduced the Unhoused Bill of Rights.

We go right now to St. Louis. We’re joined by Michael Berg, former political director of the Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club. He has a new piece for The Nation headlined “I’m a St. Louis Jew. Here’s Why I’m Backing Cori Bush. If AIPAC and its donors defeat her, we won’t just be losing one of Palestine’s staunchest allies but also one of the climate movement’s most effective champions.”

Michael Berg, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what’s happening in St. Louis now with this massive amount of money that’s being put in to defeat Congressmember Bush.

MICHAEL BERG: Thank you, Amy.

Yes, [01:59:00] if you’re in St. Louis and you live here, over the last several weeks, couple months, you look at YouTube, you will see an advertisement either against Cori Bush, a lot of them against Cori Bush, or for Wesley Bell. You go to your television, you hear that. You go to the radio. You get mailers. There’s been — I’ve talked to people who have had over 40 mailers, either anti-Bush or pro-Bell, coming in. It’s just this incredible infusion of money and resources in attacking Bush, in supporting Dell.

And it’s interesting because, as you mentioned, the money is coming from AIPAC, but the attacks have nothing to do with her principled stance for a ceasefire. They’re about other very, very misleading attacks on her coming in. And it’s all meant to push out someone who stands up for Palestinian rights, but who stands up for so many other [02:00:00] things. But it’s very duplicitous for this organization to come in and have the money for one reason, and have all these ads that are misleading for other reasons.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And, Michael, what’s been the stance of the existing Democratic Party machinery, which normally backs an incumbent?

MICHAEL BERG: Well, if you look at the national level, you know, Cori Bush is backed by Hakeem Jeffries and the leadership in Congress, the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus. I mean, you have Democrats in the state of Missouri, in the area, who are on both sides of this race. So I can’t say there’s a unified response, but there is a — you know, the union movement, most unions are supporting Bush. She has voted with the AFL-CIO almost 100% of the time. There’s trades have been on the other side, but the other unions have not. So, [02:01:00] I’d say there’s been people on different sides.

But the primary thing happening is just this incredible infusion of AIPAC money that’s sort of washed — like, just dominated the airwaves. And people keep hearing it, and people keep hearing it and seeing it. And I’ve hit a lot of doors, knocked a lot of doors, and it has its effect. Misleading statements about her record as far as the infrastructure bill, where she made a principled stance to hold out for — to make sure there’s a child tax credit, to make sure we had more climate provisions — a stance that was taken in 2021 where she stood up and she took a vote. And in the 2022 election, almost nobody heard about it. But here, in the 2024 election, just the airwaves and the mailers are just hammering, hammering, saying she didn’t stand up for your job, she didn’t stand up for clean air and water. And there’s nothing further from the truth. She was standing up many times as much.

And what I found is, you know, [02:02:00] I knock on doors, and people have heard these things. And you talk to them, and they say, “Oh, I don’t support her anymore, because she didn’t do this.” And when you explain that, no, she was holding out to get more resources for your children, to make sure we much more further confronted the climate crisis, and the only reason you’re hearing about it now is because she stood up for peace in the Middle East, for a ceasefire, for children to stop being killed with American weapons, and that because of that, you have millions of dollars coming heavily from the same donors who backed Trump, Vance and Senator Hawley. When you let people know that, and that you say, “Why are you hearing so much about this? It’s because people don’t want her there,” you flip the vote. People then support her again, but the problem being, you know: Who’s got the capacity to go to every door and have a 5- to 10-minute conversation? You know, [02:03:00] the barrage of misinformation works. And, you know, we’re hopeful. We’re hoping we can counteract it. But it’s been — never seen anything like it.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And what about Wesley Bell? He’s the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney. He previously served on the City Council and was instrumental in policy changes after the police killing of Michael Brown. What’s been the sentiment of voters toward him? But do people even really know him?

MICHAEL BERG: A lot of people know him. I mean, it’s different. St. Louis has confusing jurisdictions. So, St. Louis County is outside of St. Louis city. So, he’s the prosecutor for St. Louis County. The district, Cori Bush’s district, is about half the city of St. Louis and half parts of St. Louis County. People know him.

And I would say, you know, what is disturbing to me is he told Congresswoman Bush that he was not going to run. He told her that. He was running against Josh [02:04:00] Hawley, our senator, who is not very popular in this district. And he said he was running against him. And then, when he was offered a deal to get millions of dollars of AIPAC money, he did a 180 and decided to take on, you know, an incumbent progressive Democrat, who’s just been a champion, as I mention in my article, for the climate, for so many things that people care about in this area.

So, I would call him an opportunist who saw an opportunity to go to Congress, while Cori Bush is in it because she wants to represent the interests of ordinary people, the people who are suffering, people who are unhoused. Before she came into office, she was constantly on the streets helping folks who were unhoused, making sure people had resources, food and shelter, when need be. So, I see a clear distinction there.

Our Genocide Is Their Entertainment-- Israel's Disgusting Pro-Torture Justification - The Majority Report - Air Date 8-9-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, um, the only reason we should say [02:05:00] that these soldiers are even being detained is because or question is because of this international Pressure, um, and because, honestly, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government want to continue with the worst of the genocide in Gaza, um, and this also plays into their efforts to, I think, widen this war, to draw the United States into it, um, and to make it not about Gaza, but about how Israel is constantly under threat.

I guess we could get to that in a little bit, because I want to touch more. On the conditions here. Um, the there have been reports now for months that prisoners were being raped with metal rods, sometimes hot metal rods burning their anuses to the point where they no have longer had control of their faculties.

Um, and this is, I think, the detention. arm of Israel's categorization [02:06:00] of all Palestinian men, or a great majority of them, and boys, as basically combatants. Can you talk about that, that process, and how that has basically midwifed the wholesale detention of up to tens of thousands of Palestinian men, and we don't even know, again, the death toll?

Um, in Gaza, it's, I saw some doctors were citing a figure as high as 92, 000 at this point. 

DIANE BUTTU: Yes, we don't know the precise, uh, toll. There's other, the Lancet came out and said that it may be 186, 000. Uh, friends who've been in Gaza on medical missions, say that the number is probably even higher than that. Um, but in terms of how it is that we, that we, that Israel continues to, to grab people, kidnap them, uh, detain them and keep them in prison.

It is because Israel has always had this system of what they, what it's kind of a misnomer, they call it administrative detention. It sounds so sanitary and it's anything but, uh, it's a very [02:07:00] violent process in which people are picked up, kidnapped usually in the middle of the night from their homes, children as young as 13, sometimes even younger, and then held without charge, without trial for a period of six months.

Where that trial then, that, uh, detention can be renewed indefinitely as long as they see a judge every six months. And it's through this system of administrative detention that we've seen roughly 40 percent of the male population be thrown in prison at one point in time. That's roughly about 20 percent of the entire Palestinian population has spent time inside of an Israeli prison.

Some administrative detention can last upwards of 11 years. A friend of mine spent 11 years of his life under administrative detention, which means without charge and without trial. Now, it's not just that, but it's the process of dehumanization that leads soldiers to be able to do what it is that they want to do with Palestinians.

And, um, [02:08:00] since, since November, I've interviewed a number of Palestinians who were kidnapped and then released. And all of them have described similar, um, torture techniques that have been used against them. And one thing, one strand that appears throughout all of these testimonies is that they say that the torture that is being meted out, um, by the Israelis It's unlike torture in the way that people normally think of torture, which by the way is illegal either way, but normally when one thinks of torture, they think of torture in order to obtain some sort of information.

In this case, there is no information that's being obtained. It's simply to exact revenge and to show superiority. And so we've seen people who have already been convicted. who, uh, who are serving sentences inside Israeli prisons who are also being tortured. Again, not because there's an attempt to extract information.

Once again, that's illegal, but simply because they're trying to show who it is, who is boss. And so [02:09:00] the methods that have been used are things that, that it's even so hard to describe because, um, It's just, it's some of the worst, it's the worst behavior of humans that I've ever heard in my, in my life of, of, um, raping, uh, raping people, of torturing them.

You know, one, one, uh, young man was telling me that, that at one point he was, his hands were shackled, his legs were shackled, he was put in the fetal position and blindfolded, and around him they drew, um, a circle in chalk. And, uh, and he was kept in that position for 24 hours a day for days on end, and if he moved in any way, if he spoke up in any way, if he crossed the chalk line in any way, um, that was a sign that he should be tortured, and he was.

And when they torture Palestinians, It's, um, a torture that is witnessed by others. The only time that the blindfold is removed is to be [02:10:00] able to see another Palestinian being tortured. And so the things that, the testimonies that we've heard of, of the ways that people are being held, the conditions under which they're being held, is, is horrifying.

And yet, it's not even moving the needle inside Israel because Everything is, is justifiable and because everything is justifiable, this of course is going to continue and that's why you see the riots that we see. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And in terms of it being, uh, broadly accepted, this kind of brutalization, uh, towards Palestinians within Israel, I'm struck by the fact that these break ins by these activists seem to happen quite a bit.

Um, whether it be along the border into Gaza. Wow, I don't know. Somehow security just seems to fail all the time. And these activists who want to starve everybody in Gaza to death are just able to block all the aid trucks. I mean, what could the people who are manning the border do or whether it be the [02:11:00] break in into this torture camp, um, uh, concentration camp, you could argue.

Um, the, the, It just seems like, oh, they're able to get in, um, what could we do? Can you speak to just almost like the tacit acceptance or almost appreciation that so many, uh, Israeli guards or people who are a part of the militaristic infrastructure there, um, their relationship with these activists who are at, uh, at the front lines of expanding Israel and, and wanting the genocide to ramp up and continue?

DIANE BUTTU: This is a great question, Emma, because I think people often, uh, make the mistake of somehow separating the Israeli security services, the police, the, the prison guards, the, the, the soldiers, the army from ordinary people. Uh, Israelis or from, you know, the extreme right wing. They're one in the same. This is a state apparatus and because it's a state apparatus, it reflects on the [02:12:00] state and it's made up of people who are members of the state.

Um, and so because of that, we see a synergy between the two of them. We see that, that if you look at the West Bank where where the Israeli settlers have been torching Palestinian homes. They've been going after Palestinians and killing them. That instead of the army stopping them, they're actually aiding them.

And similarly, as you mentioned, in Gaza, as the aid trucks are supposed to be making their way into Gaza. We've seen that these, these same security apparatuses are able, are allowing Israelis to set up, get this, bouncy castles in front of, um, these spaces so that they can jump on the bouncy castles, they can eat popcorn, and so that, um, Our genocide is their entertainment and this is allowed to happen.

And third, as you put it, as you already said, when it comes to state to man and the concentration camp or the prison camp that is there, that suddenly they have no means of dealing with crowd control or to [02:13:00] stop the, the, this, this riot from happening, but they seem to have those mechanisms when it's Palestinians who are, who are peacefully protesting, who are demanding an end to the genocide and so on.

And so the, the two are so intertwined. It is, these are, um, these are state, it's a state apparatus. And because it's a state apparatus, it's made of people who are from the state. And it's exactly reflective of Israeli society. So they're not going to go there. They're not going to poke a hole in the bouncy castle.

They're not going to tell people to move on and allow the eight trucks in. They're not going to use any method to stop the riots from entering into state to man, or otherwise, um, they're not going to stop the settlers from. From torching Palestinian homes. They're in, they're working together rather than opposed to one another.

Brian Lehrer Weekend_ 100 Years of James Baldwin; Election Integrity and National Security; New York City Etiquette Part 3 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 8-3-24

CALLER: Good morning to everyone. Good morning. Go ahead. Professor, there's always the same rewrite of Baldwin's life. And I don't know if anyone's done any [02:14:00] research, because he lived in France for so long, why he never spoke on, and did it move him in any way?

France's occupation of Algiers. 

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Amon, 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: thank you so 

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: much. 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Yeah, go ahead professor. No, that's a great question. When you read the 1972 text, uh, No Name in the Street, uh, It's really clear that Baldwin is not trading the American fantasy for a French one, right? He's clear about what what is going on in Algeria, right?

He he understands, uh, even earlier Uh, in the early works, I mean, Read Nobody Knows My Name, I mean, his, some of the early work around, uh, you know, the continent is really bad, I mean, his, you can see his politics evolving, but he's, he's clear that he's not, um, Um, trading the American disaster for the French, uh, you know, for the French ideal.

No, he understands Western Europe, Western civilization to be caught up, uh, in this nasty, [02:15:00] uh, belief that somehow the color of one's skin determines one's value. Uh, you know, at the end, at the end of the day, Baldwin is constantly trying to do two things at once. He's trying to keep track of the material conditions of our living, while also keeping track of the interior complexities on the inside of every human being, right?

So that's, that's, that's the beauty of his, of his writing and the insight, uh, that he, 

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: that he provides us on the page. And Aman, we really appreciate your call and bringing that up. I'm looking at the clock, got just a little bit of time left, but I want to bring up your book. begin again, one of your concluding chapters is titled a new America, which is a great title because right now we're kind of celebrating a hundred years gone by and we're looking ahead.

And it's a lot of what you talk about as well in your most recent book. We are the leaders we have been looking for. So, you know, we've got about a minute in your mind as we look ahead to the next 100 years of new America, what's in element, multiple elements of Baldwin's work that you or I, or someone listening should hold close.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: You [02:16:00] know, Baldwin is going to insist that we not find comfort in safety, that we run towards our fears, that we tell ourselves the truth about who we are. Uh, and I think, you know, based upon my reading, you know, for 250 years and remember the 250th anniversary of the nation is right around the corner. We have failed to confront who we actually are so that we could discover a different way of being together.

And so here we are always reaching, reaching for, for, for the possibility of the future, but not dealing with the ghosts of the past that have us by the throat. And so I think in this moment, in this moment here in 2024, we're still grappling with the tragic choice that's at the heart of this fragile experiment.

And the question, the question is, can we begin again? And that is, and, and, you know, begin again comes from the last novel, Just Above My Head. You know, and that is you can't, you know, don't abdicate responsibility, right? What does it mean to take on responsibility? Well, if you do, then you get, get up and you face the ugliness [02:17:00] and you try, try again.

It's Sisyphean almost, but you got to begin again. So we have to be honest with ourselves, Doc. We have to be honest with who we are. We have to be honest with what threatens democracy today. If we're going to release ourselves into a new future, 

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from the Brian Lehrer Show, 1A, The Majority Report, Democracy Now!, Throughline, and Woke AF Daily. Further details are in the show notes. 

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