Hold Onto Your Humanity
We break down myths about “the unvaccinated” vs the anti-vaxxer propagandists and discuss the institutional distrust that have made a diverse crowd of Americans hesitant about the vaccine. We go through twenty years of horrific policy decisions that enabled a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, wasted trillions of tax dollars, and led to war crimes and tens of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. And we end with hopeful words from our December 2019 interview with Congresswoman Barbara Lee.
Speaker 1:
I do wonder what message you have to the international community, especially the Americans, the EU, other stakeholders who have been in Afghanistan for the past 20 years and have now cut and run. What do you want to say to those world leaders right now?
Mahbouba Seraj:
To those world leaders I'm going to say really shame on you. I'm going to say to the whole world, shame on you for what you did to Afghanistan. Why did you have to do what you did and why are you doing this to this part of the world? I don't get it. Are you using all of us, are we being just the pawns in your hands? Is that what it is? I don't understand it. But I really, really... The fact that we don't have any hopes from you and the fact that that really... I don't even want to talk to you at all because the talking time is over. We talked to you, we demanded, we asked, we did everything and nobody paid any attention. They just made decisions with their gut feelings or whatever.
Mahbouba Seraj:
All of these men of the world, they are in power and they are destroying what's something that we worked so hard for. What is happening in Afghanistan today is going to put this country 200 years back. Again. How are we going to do that? Again, for me, I'm not going to see anything good about this generation. I'm going to be gone. I won't even see my country doing what it's supposed to be doing. Not only me, but a whole lot of other people. Even for the young generation, what are we going to do? Now there's going to be an exodus of the Afghans, again, leaving this country. So what I'm going to do? We are going to sit again and fight again and lose again, and then make another generation. Then for the world to make another stupid decision and destroy us all?
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestselling books, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones about Stalin’s genocide famine in Ukraine. Our opening clip was Mahbouba Seraj of the Afghans Women's Network, and we're going to discuss Afghanistan and the house of cards there that came toppling down later in this episode.
Sarah Kendzior:
And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world. We are back after a one month break in recording our live shows. We ran a lot of interviews during that period. I encourage you to go check those out if you haven't already. So, what happened while we were gone? Well, the apocalypse continued to rise. The last time Andrea and I recorded this together was July 13th. Since then, the Delta variant exploded and the brief window of progress that the US experienced earlier in the summer in battling the pandemic is now gone. And so you might've noticed both Andrea and I took some time away from Twitter, our first kind of social media break in a long time. I’ll just say one of the reasons that I needed to do that was in part because I'm working on other projects, including a new book, but also, the level of vitriol of truly hateful and cruel rhetoric on Twitter was unlike anything I've seen in the past.
Sarah Kendzior:
I think it's an expression of the incredible stress and the incredible fear that people are going through having to deal with yet another acceleration of outbreaks in this pandemic. I understand that people are cutting loose and maybe saying things they wouldn't otherwise say out loud, but the callousness of it, the cruelty of it, it gets to me. It's hard to read, especially because my state, Missouri (predictably) was the one that spawned the variant. I remember bitterly joking about this earlier that if any state is going to spawn a variant, it's going to be Missouri. Well, we did it. I live in the COVID corridor and I don't think I've ever had so many people wish me death based sheerly on where I live, not at any actions I took or any opinions I expressed, but just, you know, I live here.
Sarah Kendzior:
I live in a red state. It doesn't matter that my part of the red state is St. Louis, represented by Cori Bush. I live in a red state and therefore I'm subject to this exterminationist, eugenicist kind of rhetoric that a lot of people who otherwise, I think, wouldn't say these things if they weren't so stressed began to say. So I needed a break. And I'm not angry, exactly, that this happened. As I said, we're all in this together. We're all in this incredible emotional turmoil together. But I want to say something about the way we talk about folks who are not vaccinated and why they're not vaccinated and how people handle disinformation in a climate of political terror and political distress. Earlier in the summer, Walensky—the head of the CDC who I think should resign due to her abhorrent communication skills—and Biden declared this to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Sarah Kendzior:
After that, all of the blame for the rise of the Delta variant was put squarely on what people would call “the unvaccinated”. I want to make a distinction here between the category of unvaccinated versus anti-vaxxers, versus people who actively engage in anti-vaccine campaigns based on lies and hatred and partisan ambitions. But mostly, the media and politicians do not make this distinction and the public begins to emulate them.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is very dangerous because the category of “the unvaccinated” includes all children under 12. It includes people who are immunocompromised or who for other reasons cannot take the vaccine. These are people who are deeply vulnerable. These are people who are at the mercy of this variant and deserve compassion. It also includes people, and I'm going to get into this, who were hesitant to take the vaccine for a broad array of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with who they vote for, or their political allegiances, or their interest in QAnon, or all of the very simplistic explanations that have been dominating social media and have led to people engaging in eugenecist rhetoric, secessionist rhetoric, “everyone in a red state needs to die” sort of rhetoric. The kind of thing that I think you wouldn't abide if it was happening to you.
Sarah Kendzior:
I remember when COVID first appeared in early 2020 and New York City bore the brunt of that outbreak. They had an absolutely horrific spring in March and April and I felt deeply sorry for everybody who had to live through that situation while here in Missouri, comparatively, we were doing okay. I was incensed when I saw people, when I saw conservatives, that were exalting in what was happening to people in New York City and saying that they somehow deserve it or that they want liberals to die. This is rhetoric that should never be used by anybody at any time. This is the kind of rhetoric that, when it is combined with a very fragile political stability and a very powerful climate of disinformation and violent actors, can lead to genocidal movements.
Sarah Kendzior:
So this needs to stop, regardless of what side you're on. That said, if you're engaging in this whole, “It's the MAGA crowd that's not getting vaccinated, that's the root of all this,” you are deeply misinformed. The vaccines and the issue of who has them or not is not a partisan issue. About 85% of Americans over 65 are vaccinated, including in heavily GOP states like mine, like Missouri. That crowd more than any other age cohort are White boomers. Who votes for the GOP? It's the White boomers. Trump and the GOP did not keep this group from getting the vaccine. They ran out and got it eagerly in the beginning. The most reluctant people to get the vaccine are younger people and that is something that happens worldwide. Again, this is not a call to scream and berate people for not doing it. This is just a factual thing.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's very typical. Younger people were less likely to get COVID in the beginning so they feel they were less likely to get Delta COVID when it appeared. This has not been the case. It's been hitting young people pretty badly, but that's where that comes from. So this whole mythology that this is somehow motivated foremost by Trump and the GOP is false. Is it exploited and exacerbated by absolutely horrific GOP leadership, by governors like mine, Mike Parson of the Parson plague or Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott? Absolutely. And those people should absolutely be taken to task and held accountable for the mass death that they have caused. The same thing is true with people like Tucker Carlson and others from Fox News and from right-wing outlets that have lied about the vaccine, that have invented statistics about it, discouraged people from getting it and so on. But that is not the same thing, again, as the category of the unvaccinated.
Sarah Kendzior:
Another thing to note: this is being framed as a bi-partisan issue because the media can do nothing other than horse race politics and they've decided to play horse race politics with a plague. Most Americans who vote are independents. They're not registered in either party. Independents are by far the largest group of American voters. This has been the case for two decades and it reflects the incredible disillusionment with our political system. Currently among Americans who vote 44% are independents and I count myself in that category. 24% are Republicans, 28% are Democrats. On top of that, among Americans who can vote only 66% of them do. That's the 2020 number, which is much higher than previous elections. So when you're talking about any issue as a matter of Republicans versus Democrats, you are talking about a very small slice of the American population.
Sarah Kendzior:
Most people don't register for a political party. Many people don't vote and most people do not let partisan politics dominate their lives. There may be beliefs or policies or agendas within those partisan debates that do indeed dominate their lives, but most people are not slavishly following the commands of somebody like Donald Trump or Joe Biden. You may see more of that on Twitter. You'll see a lot of that on social media, these emergence of personality cults around politicians. In reality, that is not how people make decisions about their health, but it's an easier story for the media to tell. It is how they make their money, and so they ran with it. And so, yeah, I guess the other thing I would have to say is like, I understand the concerns that people have about the vaccine. I guess, you know, I usually don't say much that's that personal about myself on this show, but I feel like I need to say this because I do think it's wise for people to take the vaccine.
Sarah Kendzior:
I was a vaccine hesitant person who got the vaccine anyway once it became available to Missourians in April. But it was an extremely nerve wracking experience until both shots were completed. I did not trust the vaccine fully. I did not enjoy it. The reason I got it was purely because I hated COVID more. In this respect, it was a lot like voting in a presidential election. Anyway, I understand where people are coming from. I obviously did not trust the Trump administration.
Sarah Kendzior:
I don't trust the Biden administration. I don't trust my governor, Mike Parson. I don't trust Dr. Fauci who told us not to wear masks and then to wear masks. I don't trust the CDC, which has had terrible communication. Who do I trust? I trust local doctors. I trust the epidemiologists and scientific researchers who have been trying to get information to the public. And most of all, I feel bad for the people who are on the front lines, who are put in the line of fire, trying to save fellow Americans from this crisis and I worry about their safety. I worry about the safety of the people who cannot get vaccinated, who are blocked from any avenue of protection in an incredibly dangerous time. I did not want to pass this on to my own family members or to strangers. That is why I went ahead and got it.
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Sarah Kendzior:
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Sarah Kendzior:
Just to clarify, because there's a lot of people that seem mystified, like how could people not be super enthusiastic and trusting of the vaccine? Well, you know, I don't trust Big Pharma. Big Pharma decimated my state. It's been a couple of decades ago, 20-15 years ago, people came into states like Missouri, the Sackler family and so forth, told everybody, for example, that opioids were safe. Opioids were great forms of pain relief. We all saw what happened. As a result, you have whole regions absolutely decimated by opioid abuse, which then turned into heroin abuse.
Sarah Kendzior:
All this time they were told, “Just trust the pharmaceutical companies, trust doctors.” who turned out to be running pill mills. Then when things went awry, they were abandoned. So there's an incredible culture of distrust and I'm honestly surprised that more people haven't made this connection about this hesitancy to trust medical institutions and institutionalists with how our healthcare system and our pharmaceutical companies have operated over the last several decades.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is true of not just the opioid crisis, but how Obamacare was implemented in GOP states. You can put the blame on the GOP for that implementation, but when you live in a poor community, when you live in a state that is atrociously run as is mine, you don't have a lot of faith in the healthcare system. And you worry about things like going to the doctor and the expense that that's going to cause you, and what if the vaccine gives you side effects, and what if you can't take time off and what if something goes awry and nobody cares? Meanwhile, you've got these crowds of people online barking out both disinformation and death wishes, and it's a lot to take in. I guess the final thing I have to say on this—and if this helps somebody then I guess it's worth telling—is when I got the vaccine, I did have horrific side effects.
Sarah Kendzior:
The reason that happened is because I have endometriosis, which is a disease of the uterus. It's basically like having Freddy Krueger live inside your uterus, slashing you up on the daily and causing you tremendous bleeding and pain. Anyway, the vaccine, because it's linked to your immune system—and your immune system, if you're a person with the uterus, is linked to that part of the body—can exacerbate incredibly painful and frightening menstrual pain and other issues, which I'm not going to get into or we're going to lose even more the audience than I have from talking about periods on our show. But the problem was the CDC never released any kind of warning. They weren't, "You're going to feel sick. You'll have a fever, you'll have a headache. Your arm will hurt, et cetera."
Sarah Kendzior:
They did not properly alert women as to the side effects of this vaccine and that created an opening for the propaganda anti-vaxxers, people like Naomi Wolf, to rush in and tell women who I think otherwise would have gotten the vaccine a lot of lies. And the refusal of the CDC to come clean about this, to come clean about other past errors in judgment in the advice that they gave, has led to an incredible culture of distress. So I am begging folks within those institutions to come clean to the American public, to apologize for mistakes you've made in terms of communicating about public health threats, to be honest when your advice goes awry. There are a lot of prominent doctors out there who have given quite horrible advice. I think Andy Slavitt is one who said, "Don't worry about the Delta variant, have the summer of your life."
Sarah Kendzior:
A lot of folks got it wrong, and it's not just the professional disinformation peddlers. It's the fact that people who you think you should be able to trust have... I'll just be gracious here, have screwed up badly and did not atone or apologize for it, that makes people hesitant about moving forward with this at a time where it is a matter of public safety and it's necessary. So I just, as always, encourage transparency, honesty, but especially right now, compassion. Not for the liars, not for the corrupt politicians, not for the propagandists, but for people who are terrified, who are confused, and who are struggling to make the right decision about their health and their family's health in a difficult time. A lot of those folks had to learn that the hard way due to the death of a loved one.
Sarah Kendzior:
That's an absolutely horrible thing for anyone to experience. I cannot stomach seeing people cheering on the deaths of others. It doesn't matter who they voted for. It doesn't matter what their political views are. You do not cheer the death of human life from a pandemic. It's a ghoulish and abhorrent thing to do. I think it eats away at people's souls. I think when you start to turn that cruel yourself in your expression, that opens the road towards autocracy, it opens the road to violence. It's understandable that people are deeply frustrated, deeply angry and deeply hurt, but I would urge you to keep the death cheerleading, if that is what is in your mind, at the least, keep it to yourself. All right. So my rant on that is over. I don't know if you have thoughts, Andrea.
Andrea Chalupa:
I think that was necessary to say and I think you touched on a lot of important points, especially that when people are going through mass trauma and times of grief and institutional failure and our leaders just not doing enough to fight for their children's and grandchildren's future and pre-surrendering, not just to the virus, but to the climate crisis and an utter lack of accountability that makes all of us nervous. Because the whole story of the Trump family is a story of an utter lack of accountability.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's a layer to all this mass trauma that we're undergoing. So when people go through this much stress, they become cannibalistic. And I think you are so right to point that out and just remind people of our shared humanity and to ground us in empathy, because that's the only way we're going to preserve our sanity and get through this and get through this as a united community, because ultimately that's what we are.
Andrea Chalupa:
There's certainly people in so-called red states, which we refer to as voter hostage states, like Alabama and so forth, that have completely lost their minds and have succumbed to Trump's death cult. I have friends that just visited Alabama and they said they saw in convenience stores and gas stations, posters of Trump up places. Like, it's a cult. It's a cult mentality for a lot of these folks. But that doesn't make them less human. They just need greater understanding in terms of not wishing them mass death, because that is a form of genocide. If anyone needs any further reminder of why we should be careful in how we talk about those who are living in these red hot COVID crisis states, these are our fellow Americans at the end of the day. These are communities that are working extremely hard as well on the front lines for human rights, voting rights. Stacey Abrams herself has called Mississippi, one of these COVID crisis states, a battleground state.
Andrea Chalupa:
Look at how Virginia is now a blue state. Georgia could be the next Virginia if we get voting rights legislation passed on a federal level to protect it. Texas is at a tipping point. But my point is that don't be “red state, blue state” about it. I shouldn't have to point out, "Hey guys, there's progressive communities throughout all of these states. Don't abandon them." Don't abandon anybody. Don't leave behind those who have been brainwashed. One of the questions we get the most from our listeners are these questions that Sarah and I can both relate to in our lives—I certainly can—of people coming to us because they're struggling over how to deal with a family member who has gone down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, or just a conviction that can't shake that, they can't trust the vaccine, they can't trust this, they can't trust that.
Andrea Chalupa:
At the bottom of that dark hole is a sense of betrayal and fear and anger. Some people deal with that trauma in ways that just are hard for us to understand. If you talk to a therapist, as I have, about what do you do about those people in your life? How do you help them? What power do you have in that situation when you feel so powerless? And the therapist said to me, "Don't isolate them. Don't abandon them, stay in contact with them in whatever way you feel safe." I'm sharing that with you all because it's not just a divide right now between the vaccine and the unvaccinated. It's also a disinformation epidemic divide between those who refuse to accept science, those who refuse to accept basic facts, and those who feel heartbroken because they don't know how to be around those folks anymore, or how to help them; their family, their friends, their coworkers, or husbands wives.
Andrea Chalupa:
We hear the most often from our listeners about that. So when times are this dark, remember to take a deep breath and to stay grounded in what matters. And that what matters is empathy. If you're up against a monster, the way you defeat that monster is refusing to become one. You're defiant by shining the light in the monster's face and blinding it from causing any more destruction.
Andrea Chalupa:
But so all of us, as Sarah beautifully said, when fascism first took a major stronghold in recent US history with the 2016 election, be your own light right now and stay grounded in that truth because you need it. We need it. By staying grounded in your light, you'll have that strength and you'll have that courage to refuse to abandon each other, because that's how we're going to get through this as one whole community and refusing to abandon each other.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, exactly. The only thing I would add on this is along with the Democrat versus Republican divide being illusory in this case, since most people don't belong to either party, I'm just amazed that people are still doing the red state versus blue state myth because, in part, as we have established many times and as I wrote in my book, “America is purple. It's purple like a bruise.” Every state is a mixture of communities who voted Republican or voted Democrat. Behind those votes, as we've noted many times, are hostage state-like situations: the results of gerrymandering, voter suppression, dark money influence campaigns, propaganda campaigns. I've gone over many times how Missouri is an example of that, that when people actually vote on ballot initiatives, our GOP legislature overturns them.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're seeing that happen now in states, particularly in the South, that are very hard hit by COVID. For example, in Texas, you are seeing city legislatures and school boards and so forth fighting very hard to protect their communities, which are often Latino and Black Americans and other marginalized Americans. Often it's impoverished communities. They want to be able to wear masks in schools or in other crowded public areas even though there is a state initiative against that.
Sarah Kendzior:
In the case of Florida, it's even worse. They want to punish people who are trying to protect themselves from the virus. Do not blame the people who are living in that situation who have to live under this kind of death cult governance. I live under it. My kids live under it. And when you say that about the South in general, or about Texas, or about Florida, or you wish it would secede, what you're saying is that you don't give a shit about people who are in the most vulnerable of situations and who are already fighting so hard to protect what is left of the rights they have, and to protect their neighbors, and to protect their communities.
Sarah Kendzior:
You're saying you are fine with White supremacist governance, with dark money corrupt actors dominating those communities, crushing them. And you're saying that you are fine with the collapse of the United States which as we have mentioned many times, if these secessionist movements manage to actually achieve it, you are not going to be left with some little blue paradise where you can be secluded away from the rest of us red state rabble, you are going to have your own little oligarchy of hell with somebody put into power who's going to strip your area down and sell it for parts. Or you're going to be going to war with the newly emboldened Handmaid's Tale-style oligarchies that would sprout up if parts of the South, or Texas, or what have you, become independent under the auspices of a deeply corrupt and violent Republic administration. Like there is no good outcome here, except for all of America sticking together, whether you like each other or not. That is part of living in a democracy,
Andrea Chalupa:
Like one big dysfunctional family.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes. And we don't like each other, historically speaking. That's true of every country. But we had a civil war. The reason for that civil war was racism and White supremacy. During the brief time we had off, I took my kids on what was supposed to be a vacation, through the COVID corridor. We went to South Carolina and then to Florida, and then up to Chattanooga, and of course COVID followed us along our path, but I took them to the Museum of Slavery in Charleston so that they could see—and they knew this, but it's one thing to know it, to read about it. It's another to see the relics of what was one of the major slave trading ports in this country and how flagrant it was and how legal it was and how it led to the secession of South Carolina, from the United States. We visited Fort Sumpter as well.
Sarah Kendzior:
Field trip time for the Kendzior family. And it is a deeply traumatizing and horrific history that felt incredibly resonant to the current moment, to be standing in those sites now and knowing that we're on such a precipice, that we are facing such incredible vulnerability and that these deeply corrupt actors are exploiting a plague, exploiting the worst public health crisis we've had in over 100 years in order to further these disgusting political agendas. It's too much. It's a lot to take in. It was a lot to be there as COVID surged and I saw people online basically pushing for secession and knowing full well what that would ultimately mean in the end for the people who've been fighting for their rights in this part of the country for a very long time.
Sarah Kendzior:
So please, as Andrea said, hold on to your empathy, hold onto your compassion, and hold on to your demands for accountability, because I think in this whole, “Oh, let them secede” rhetoric is a lot of just deep seated frustration. Like, "I'm giving up." Like, "No one's coming through, no one is holding powerful corrupt actors accountable. The Democrats are letting us down. The Republicans are out of control, screw it. Screw the whole enterprise."
Sarah Kendzior:
I would definitely like for much of this system of elite... Well all of this system of elite criminal impunity to be dismantled. I do not want the country to be dismantled in the process because as I said, it will lead to an even worse outcome than the terrible outcome that we currently have. So please keep these things in mind before you show up knocking at a stranger's social media door, telling them that they deserve the death that shall fall upon them because they didn't have the money to live in a big fancy city on the coast. Thank you. That is my final word on that.
Andrea Chalupa:
All very necessary and well said. Yeah, you don't want a bunch of authoritarian regimes on our border. That's what's going to happen if Florida becomes its own independent nation, it's going to go full Russia.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, it’s going to go full DeSantis via full Russia, which is like, God. You want Florida Man now, it's like Florida Man with a Kalashnikov. Anyway, go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah, Florida Man as a nation is pretty much Putin's Russia. It's the materialism. It's just the unchecked greed and drunken fights. So, this brings us to—speaking of Russia—Putin must be thrilled because he is getting big bang for his buck with the investment of bringing Donald Trump and his family to power. A big item on his wishlist was, of course, getting the US out of Afghanistan. Thank God it's finally happening. This is a war we should have never have fought in the first place
Andrea Chalupa:
It is a painful reminder that the 2000 election in the United States was one of the most consequential in world history. I do often fantasize about what would have happened if Al Gore won and became a two- term president and stopped 9/11, unlike Bush, who apparently seemed to let it happen so he could get his war for oil, not just once, but twice dragging us painfully cruelly into Afghanistan, taking advantage of a nation's grief at the time, the shock that we were all under with the 9/11 attack, which just seemed surreal and impossible.
Andrea Chalupa:
Most Americans at the time did support the war because they were angry. They were grieving. Bush and Cheney took full advantage of that and set us up for even greater cruelty being done in our name with our tax dollars with the invasion of Iraq. Just the level of casualties, the majority of casualties being of course civilian, and the trauma of not just the civilians, but the veterans, the contractors, all those who witnessed hell on earth in both Afghanistan and Iraq through Bush's wars. The massive amount of debt that this created for the US. It's going to be plaguing us, haunting us, for years to come, stretching our resources extremely thin, bogging down the presidents that came after. George W. Bush is a war criminal. There are organizations that have been trying to go after him for years for being a war criminal.
Andrea Chalupa:
I remember very well when I was in college going to an event where there was a slideshow of civilian victims of George W. Bush's needless cruel war in Afghanistan and seeing images that haunt me to this day; a little girl holding her infant brother who was drooling because he was still in shock from the bomb that cratered his village, children missing fingers because they picked up these soda can-sized objects that were unexploded bombs of some sort that the Americans had left lying around. George W. Bush is a war criminal. All the cruelty we're seeing now with the chaos of the US withdrawal, which was absolutely necessary, but as we'll get into in this discussion was stunningly not well thought out in terms of basic logistics. We will get into all of that. We know how popular Biden is among many Americans.
Andrea Chalupa:
I mean, we are living in a time of mass death and the collective trauma and grief that comes with that. So having somebody who's not a fascist, finally, in the White House is a great relief. People can finally sleep at night and not pay attention to every single move the government makes and be forced through this civic lesson of terror, having to pay attention to the machinations of our government, because we finally have adults in the room.
Andrea Chalupa:
So, I understand that there's greater affection for Biden simply for not being Trump. I understand that there are people who do feel nervous and tense about any sort of criticism towards him because we are up against actual fascism in America. That is a very real threat. We have the Republican Party working extremely hard to ensure an electoral autocracy in the United States through legal warfare, of creating all of these Jim Crow 2.0 laws in their states, which would not only affect the power in their states that would certify elections and ensure a fair and free and transparent election, but also tip the scale of power in Congress for many years to come.
Andrea Chalupa:
This is not a drill. This is something that the dark money-backed Republican Party has been working towards for a very long time, knowing very well the writing on the walls: that White men will soon be the minority in the United States. And they refused to tolerate that. Instead of creating policies that would appeal to the most people, they've gone full fascist KKK. That's their strategy to preserve their power at all costs.
Andrea Chalupa:
But with all that said, we have to assure you, as people, Sarah and I have been on the front lines following human rights crises coming from struggling democracies. Sarah, specifically, is an expert in Central Asia, Uzbekistan, and we assure you that what Biden and his team—most notably his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his top national security advisor, Jake Sullivan—they are poisoning and undermining President Biden right now.
Andrea Chalupa:
What they did in Afghanistan. Yes, the withdrawal was necessary but it created a humanitarian crisis. Yes, we're well aware that Trump set up the Afghan military and US-backed Afghan government to fail by, among many things, legitimizing the Taliban, even offering the Taliban to come to Camp David, giving the Taliban their wishlist of releasing 5,000 prisoners, which is like throwing tanks of gasoline on a forest fire.
Andrea Chalupa:
Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released 5,000 terrorists to fight against US soldiers in Afghanistan. That is mind blowing cruelty. Trump's whole shoving through a deliberately cruel withdrawal policy with Afghanistan mirrors everything else that man did. Donald Trump is a weapon of mass destruction and one of the many craters that he left behind was in Afghanistan. Yes, Biden inherited all that. We're very clear on those points. But Biden is somebody that I've watched for years that I had such high hopes in for being a strong foreign policy president. In all my time watching the human rights crisis in Ukraine with Russia's ongoing invasion, I always heard through all my sources that Biden was strong on Ukraine.
Andrea Chalupa:
Openly, he was strong on Ukraine. He said all the right things that needed to be said. He supported Ukraine. He supported the war on corruption. He supported the war for independence and sovereignty against Putin. Where Obama fell short in refusing to give Ukraine much needed defensive aid after their military had been decimated by Putin's puppet and many years of corruption even before that, I always heard that Biden was pushing to arm Ukraine, that Biden was pushing to get Ukraine what it needed to defend itself. That's why I am in shock right now that so far, in the six months or so that Biden and his foreign policy team have been in power, they are effectively giving so many juicy items to Putin on his wishlist. There was the global summit, because one thing dictators like Putin want is to be lavished in the spotlight, and to have that legitimacy, to be inside the club, especially with the United States of America, to no longer be a pariah. Biden gave Putin that spotlight.
Andrea Chalupa:
Biden also refused to stand up to Germany's complacency towards the Kremlin and Germany’s greed by refusing to sanction and stand in the way of the Nord Stream two gas pipeline, a project being overseen by one of Putin's own old KGB cronies from East Berlin. It is a Kremlin project that was engineered so that the Kremlin would have leverage over Europe by entrenching Germany—a leader of the EU—under its thumb with dependence on Russian gas, and economic warfare against Ukraine by cutting Ukraine out of the deal, because the pipeline would bypass Ukraine. Ukraine would lose much needed transit money by having that pipeline pass through Ukraine as it normally would.
Andrea Chalupa:
So this was a major victory for Putin that showed the world that he's unstoppable and that nobody's going to hold him accountable. Those are two major items on Putin's wishlist that Biden gave to him. Now, this humiliation between the eyes of the world and this humanitarian crisis of heartbreaking, gut-turning videos of desperate Afghans clinging to planes, falling from planes... This is a tragedy that is going to be a stain on America forever now.
Andrea Chalupa:
Biden's brand, whether you love him or not, whether you're grateful for him or not, it's undeniable that this is now part of Biden's legacy, of Antony Blinken's legacy, of Jake Sullivan's legacy. And if you've gotten to this point, any reasonable leader of any organization, a CEO of any company, would clean house. They would look around and say, "Who enabled these decisions? Who got us here? They need to go now.” They need to go. Heads need to roll because our national security depends on it. The intelligence warned them this would happen. This isn't just a case of rosey thinking, this is criminal negligence of US interests and the security of all the people that helped us over there, that risked their lives to help us. The humanitarian crisis is enough, but it also hurts the future of American security and national and foreign policy interests because who the hell is going to trust us now?
Andrea Chalupa:
Who's going to risk lives for us anywhere around the world now seeing what we do to our allies? And I understand people could roll their eyes and say this situation's complicated. The US-backed puppet government in Afghanistan was riddled with corruption. There was infighting. The United States tried to build a military in Afghanistan, throwing away billions of dollars in trying to make a military modeled on the United States’ own military when that was just culturally not in line with the reality on the ground, and doomed to fail. Afghanistan has a history of humiliating great empires, like the Soviet Union and that has come before to try to turn it into a proxy state. I understand all the complications, all the complications, but what Biden, Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan did was an exercise in stunning hubris and innocent lives were destroyed in the process.
Andrea Chalupa:
America's global standing in the eyes of the world was destroyed in the process. I was getting all of these updates about what was happening in Afghanistan from a friend from China, a friend from China who was horrified by what he was seeing. I understand that China has its own very long list of genocides it's committing and is clamping down on the rights of people in Hong Kong, but my point is that he could not stop watching this. He was just in shock and he was sending me really credible articles of facts that were just stomach-churning of a situation that could have been avoided with planning, careful planning, with time, and not shoving this through. Another thing: it makes no sense that it was shoved through. We all saw with our eyes what was happening under Trump for four years. There was a Kremlin asset in the White House, and he did everything he could to hurt us, hurt our government from the inside
Andrea Chalupa:
We saw a gutting of the US state department. We saw criminal negligence across the State Department from Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon. That itself is a crime. Jared Kushner, getting his corruption all over the place. We saw lackeys being installed in some of the highest offices of the Pentagon. We saw our military being pressured to engineer an actual coup—an actual military backed-coup—of our democracy. We saw a government deliberately thrust into disaster after disaster, deliberate chaos, after chaos, all for one man's ambition to become a dictator of the United States backed by another dictator in the Kremlin.
Andrea Chalupa:
So my point is, with the United States government at the highest levels being so gutted on the inside, and so plagued by years of purging, and years of loyalists being installed throughout, and years of mismanagement, and years of corruption, why would the Biden administration dare to undertake such a massive project such as the necessary long overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan without first ensuring a stable ground for themselves in the White House after all the years of destruction under Trump? The fact that it was just rushed through just makes me think, what is going on on your team? Who is paid off on your team? Because what you're doing is suicidal, to yourselves. The Republicans with their January 6 coup, the Republicans with their bio-weapon of disinformation when it comes to the COVID epidemic with the mass death that Death-Santis in Florida and other places that these Republican leaders are deliberately causing... The Republicans are stealing all the headlines that are shocking the world right now, shocking Americans right now.
Andrea Chalupa:
Then along comes Biden with these indelible images of Afghans clinging to planes, US planes. What I'm telling you is that Biden better finally become a believer in filibuster reform and get Manchin and Sinema in line and pass the voting rights legislation that we desperately need; the For The People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights act, because I'm telling you, when the Republican Party gerrymanders their way into control of the House of Representatives, they're going to put Biden, Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and all those around them on trial with two relentless years, at least, of investigations into how the hell did this happen. What they're going to do for those next two years is they're going to win over a lot of those independents. They're going to win over a lot of the veteran communities, the military communities, that centrist Democrats like to court to show that they are real Americans or whatever they do when they... That's one of those hot button voters that the Democratic establishment is always going after, being pro-veteran, pro-military, because that's what appeals to the independent voters they need to win these key states, not just for Congress but in the 2024 presidential election.
Andrea Chalupa:
I cannot emphasize enough just how suicidal this was for Biden and his team, how suicidal this was for the Democratic party and the elections to come, and what a gift it was for Republicans because finally they have something of substance to create a massive narrative around. Obviously, they don't care about it. They don't care about human rights. They don't care about welcoming all the refugees we are morally obligated now to welcome.
Andrea Chalupa:
They just want to create a distraction from their own crimes, from their own corruption. They want to come back into power and this time they will stay in power. What I'm telling you is there's a whole long list of stupid that has just transpired in the last several months, because this was months in the making, and all of this could have been avoided with more time, with more humility, with more planning, with more people at the table—a diverse group of experts, more open minds—and getting rid of the advisors around you like Blinken and Sullivan who, for whatever reason, maybe because they worked as lobbyists during their time off between Obama and Trump, Blinken is a lobbyist.
Andrea Chalupa:
Remember that. We've talked about him in previous episodes. He has a lobbying firm that works for clients like Facebook that are massive threats to our democracy. So maybe if you have a lobbyist in charge of your foreign policy, maybe that's the same as having the former CEO of Exxon Mobil as your secretary of state. It's like, you're morally compromised because you're driven by money. You're driven by blood money. You're driven by power. You're driven by upholding the status quo because it's what pays your bills.
Andrea Chalupa:
Jake Sullivan, who, again, Biden should let go if he wants to avoid another catastrophe like this, is on cable news blaming the victim, saying that the Afghans had lacked a will to fight. If you want to know what's really happening on the ground in Afghanistan, if you want to cut through the gaslighting coming from Jake Sullivan and others being parroted by pundits that live on cable news who are very much in the pocket of this administration and power generally, you must seek out Afghan voices. Read Afghan journalists, read Afghan writers, seek out Afghan voices.
Andrea Chalupa:
Hear the reality on the ground. What we're seeing are people that are gaslighting us and saying things as Biden did in his speech this week that “Yes, the United States cares about human rights.” That's not at all what we saw when the people of Afghanistan were running for their lives to these planes, risking their lives and committing suicide rather than live under Taliban rule. This is on Biden. I'm telling you this because the one thing that makes us different from those trapped under authoritarianism is that we live in a culture of freedom where we can speak truth to power. My friend from China that I mentioned earlier, he's completely brainwashed by the Chinese regime. When I was asking about the Uyghurs and the genocide against the Uyghurs and the massive repression against people in Hong Kong, everything I threw at him, he twisted into a US conspiracy to make China look bad.
Andrea Chalupa:
He refused to accept basic facts. The Dalai Lama, in his eyes, is a terrorist. He's completely brainwashed by Chinese propaganda and every time I made a point just reciting basic facts to him, he threw back America’s shortcomings. He threw back America's pain, both past and present, which is of course racism and the history of slavery. And I said to him, "You're absolutely right, but we speak openly about those things now. Many of us do, and many people are working extremely hard to heal those problems and make sure that they never happen again.” My point is that when you are brainwashed by an authoritarian culture, you forget that it is your right to speak truth to power and that it is your moral obligation to speak truth to power. Do not fear that no matter what the stakes, no matter how much you might fear that by criticizing what Biden and his team have done, that you might be hurting their chances in 2022, 2024.
Andrea Chalupa:
I assure you, they've already done that to themselves. Our whole gift of democracy is that we have the right to fight for a more perfect union. That's what we were promised here in the American experiment. That is our right as Americans. Please, please never ever give up your power. Always, always own your right and moral duty to speak truth to power, because that is the only way we get the future that we all deserve, all of us. Despite our differences, despite where we live, where we come from, that is the only way we build a future that is free for all, and that freedom spreads because freedom is a powerful idea.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. Amen to everything you said. I think you certainly covered some of the most important points; the obligation of the United States to bring Afghan refugees in and to take care of the Afghans who aided our military in this war that has gone on for half of our lives and now has come to its disastrous conclusion. I think what you're saying about speaking truth to power, that's the lesson that people have refused to learn over the last 20 years. This isn't just a matter of us getting dragged into a forever war that, notably, Barbara Lee was the sole member of Congress to speak against. I urge everybody to look into the Gaslit Nation archives where we interviewed Barbara Lee. She talked about this obligation to speak truth to power, to take an unpopular stand, to do the right thing when it's merited, when it can save lives, when it can prevent catastrophes, regardless of the kind of harsh criticism or pariah status that you may endure until people gradually realize you're right.
Sarah Kendzior:
Unfortunately, they usually realize you're right after a catastrophe of this magnitude can no longer be denied. But throughout this 20 year period, we saw, first, the Obama administration refuse to hold members of the Bush administration accountable for their war crimes, for the fact that they started this war and then effectively abandoned it in favor of the war in Iraq, which was started on false pretenses. They mismanaged it. Obama instead had this attitude of, “Oh, you know, we need to move on.” Of course, he was concentrating on ending the war in Iraq, which he did. So credit is due there. But Afghanistan just lingered there. It wasn't even a topic that was brought up in presidential debates. It wasn't a topic that was investigated thoroughly by the media as it was going on. Then when you get to Trump, you see this again. What Trump was doing in Afghanistan, and in particular the deals that Mike Pompeo was making with members of the Taliban, really flew under the radar because so many other horrific things were happening simultaneously.
Sarah Kendzior:
For example, the new leader of Afghanistan, Mullah Baradar, initially spoke with Trump in March 2020. Trump had a 35-minute phone conversation with him that Trump described as, "Very good." This is a guy who the Trump administration got out of prison in 2018. He had been in there until the Trump administration applied pressure to release him.
Sarah Kendzior:
And I think people didn't really notice this because, of course, COVID was exploding at this time. Baradar later met with Mike Pompeo. This was the infamous meeting that was scheduled around the time of September 11th. They met on September 12th, 2020. Originally, Trump wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David on 9/11... which, like, good God! And there were all sorts of other things, again, happening at this time. This was the run-up to the election, so this was just listed as one more psychotic, anti-American, reckless, disgusting move by the Trump administration in terms of our foreign policy.
Sarah Kendzior:
But I think people should really look at what Pompeo was doing. He met again with the Taliban and with Baradar in November 2020, and then he went on, as we have described in previous episodes, this little Middle Eastern field trip to Israel multiple times, to Saudi Arabia, I believe to Qatar, over the course of the post-election period before the attempted coup... Well, I guess as the longer coup was ongoing, but before the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, striking up all sorts of dirty deals. As we've mentioned before, Pompeo is currently working with the recently retired head of Mossad and with the former Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, one of the few people who lasted the whole Trump administration, as did Pompeo, first as head of the CIA and then as head of the State Department. they're now working together in what is, I believe, euphemistically being described as an investment fund.
Sarah Kendzior:
My point here is that I assume there will be (hopefully) journalistic investigations into possible financial deals, into deals with long-term partners of the Trump administration, obviously the Kremlin and its various oligarchs, but also high earning individuals—I'm speaking in lawyer speak now—and various criminal accomplices from Saudi Arabia, from Israel, from Afghanistan itself. I think we're probably going to find out a lot of dirty things about financial moves. There are already reports that the Taliban paid off members of the Afghan army to stand down and to make their conquest expedited, to make it more effective. So, again, that of course leads to the question of, okay, well, then why didn't the Biden administration prepare for that? Why didn't they hold the Trump administration accountable for the multitude of crimes that they committed?
Sarah Kendzior:
If they had been having hearings into illicit activity by people that helped in the coup or the 2016 election activity or the 2020 illicit activity or the other myriad of impeachable offenses that this administration committed, then perhaps what Pompeo and others had been doing with the Taliban might've been highlighted as well. Perhaps financial transactions that are being conducted by dirty transnational actors, generally speaking, would have been conducted as well. You see senators all the time saying, "Oh yeah, we really need to get around to doing that." Like a Senator Whitehouse in particular is saying, "Yeah, it's basically a giant global kleptocracy. We might want to do some digging there.” Well, this is the outcome of not doing any digging or just possibly being complicit in the act. We all knew this would end in disaster.
Sarah Kendzior:
Andrea and I are certainly not saying we should have stayed in Afghanistan. We shouldn't have been in there in the way we were to begin with, but the way we left is a separate issue than the fact that we did leave. What they're going to do in the aftermath is on Biden. That is his responsibility. He did not create this problem. This problem was created by the Bush administration and was exacerbated by the administrations that followed. But yes, it is absolutely their responsibility and they are making, once again, a bunch of irresponsible, cruel, and self-sabotaging foreign policy decisions. I agree with Andrea's take that the GOP now actually has something to go after the Biden administration with.
Andrea Chalupa:
And they will relentlessly, ruthlessly.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. The refusal of the Democrats to pass voting rights acts while they have power—while they have the House, the Senate and the presidency—and protect voting rights is going to lead to the GOP taking the House. As soon as they take the House, they're going to impeach Biden. That's what I've been saying from the minute that Biden got into power. People were like, "Impeach him on what?" I was basically like, "It doesn't matter." They can make up absolutely anything and they will impeach him on it. Now, they actually have something more substantial to dig into and they're absolutely going to do it. Then folks will say, "Well, Biden still will be able to remain in office because there won't be enough votes in the Senate to convict." And I would say yes, under normal circumstances, that would be the case.
Sarah Kendzior:
That's what happened to the Democrats when they rightfully pursued the impeachment and conviction of Trump. I do not trust the Republicans to play by the rules because these are people who are right now openly saying, "Yeah, we're going to throw away your votes." Like, when you go and vote in Georgia or Florida or other states that are passing these new laws, their state legislatures now just have the right to just throw away your votes. We are already losing our democracy, so I don't expect them to play by the rules if there are some sort of impeachment hearings and then conviction hearings for Biden that are designed to curtail his time in office and put a GOP leader in power instead. I don't know if that person will be Trump. Honestly, it's incidental because it's these backers, these behind-the-scenes players making shitloads of money off of these crises, who I think are calling the shots. I know you've got stuff to say, so you should say it.
Andrea Chalupa:
My whole point is that when we hold those in power accountable, by calling them out for things they absolutely should have done, don't be afraid to criticize the Biden administration and name out some of his advisors by name. Do not be afraid to do that. It's not going to turn away voters. We're still going to organize as a community for the midterms like we do every midterm cycle and drive out the vote because we have no choice. We are going to vote for whoever is on the ballot if it's a Democrat, for the simple fact that you're choosing, who would you rather negotiate with? If it's not somebody that you feel is really going to fight for your values, you have to ask yourself, "Okay, but would I rather negotiate with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, or Mitch McConnell?” You would rather negotiate with Manchin and Sinema, as frustrating as this process has been. But there's zero, zero chance with Mitch McConnell. He relishes that fact.
Andrea Chalupa:
My point is, we're going to always come together for the midterms and the presidential elections, because we simply have no choice. It's the smart, strategic thing to do. But in the meantime, we're going to demand human rights. We're going to demand social justice. We're going to demand environmental justice. We're going to demand that we live in a more empathetic and caring society, because if we don't do that, who will? If we become complacent, what kind of future are we inheriting? We're going to be left behind. If you don't want that kind of future for your kids, fight like hell and speak truth to power and understand that when you stand in your truth, that is ultimately what the world needs right now and the world will catch up with you, eventually, just like it caught up with Barbara Lee.
Barbara Lee:
Well, I think it's very important, especially now, to do the right thing and tell the truth. That's what I tried to do when I voted alone, unfortunately, against the 2001 authorization to use force. I read that resolution. It was 60 words, and it did provide a blank check to any president to use force to start wars, forever. So, it set the stage for perpetual war. Now, one has to follow the Constitution as an elected official and I knew that this was unconstitutional, that it would take Congress out of the mix—because we have a responsibility to authorize or not authorized wars—but I also know it's important to follow your conscience and stand up and be counted. It's in the tough moments, like right after 9/11, that I'm reminded of today when we talk about what it takes, and that is be truthful, be honest to yourself, and understand what is required of us if we're going to truly move forward and make sure that we fight for peace and security and liberty and justice for all.
Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the Producer level and higher on Patreon. If you recently joined at this level and do not hear your name, look out for it starting mid-August when we're back with our regular episodes, following a summer series. We'll be sure to give you extra time in the credits for waiting. Thank you so much.
Sarah Kendzior:
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Andrea Chalupa:
We also encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Syria. donate@rescue.org. If you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to the orangutan project@theorangutanproject.org. If you want to see, confirm the fact that orangutan is pronounced correctly, go to the Merriam Webster dictionary. Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners. And check out our Patreon. It keeps us going. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube.
Sarah Kendzior:
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Andrea Chalupa:
Original music Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Vissenberg, Nik Farr, Demien Arriaga and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior:
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Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters of the Producer level and Patreon and higher...