MAGA is Russian State Capture
Gaslit Nation is vindicated yet again. Today, The New York Times reports on Bob Woodward’s latest book, War, which confirms what we’ve been warning about since day one: Russia is infiltrating the U.S. through Trump’s MAGA fascist cult. The same tactics of weaponized corruption that Paul Manafort, Trump’s longtime friend and neighbor in Trump Tower, used to bring “Ukraine’s Trump” Viktor Yanukovych to power are being deployed here. Ukraine has long been a testing ground for Russian aggression, and what happens there is a precursor for what Russia will try in other nations, including the U.S. This is why Ukraine’s success is our own.
We recorded this week’s episode Tuesday morning before the publication of the report on War, which claims Trump has spoken to Putin at least seven to a dozen times since leaving office. It also reveals, unsurprisingly to Gaslit Nation listeners, that while Trump was waging war on so-called blue states—withholding life-saving supplies during the height of the pandemic—he sent Covid tests to Putin amidst a shortage of tests, further proving his fealty to the world’s most sanctioned terrorist.
This week, Terrell Starr reports from Berlin, Germany, a country grappling with its own MAGA crisis with the rise of the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany). We unpack why some nonwhite voters support Trump despite it being against their interests; MAGA disinformation weapon Candace Owens; and Stacey Abrams' warning that “demographics are not destiny.” We also explore how to survive the apocalypse–a time of climate crisis driven by gas station dictatorships, MAGA’s Big Oil backers, and their fascist footsoldiers.
In times of compounding crises and confusion, Gaslit Nation is here to help you stay grounded. This week’s bonus show for subscribers at the Truth-teller level ($5/month) and higher will answer questions from our Democracy Defender subscribers ($10/month and above). We’ll dive into why Louis DeJoy remains in power and the origins of the Green Party’s Kremlin cicada, Jill Stein. Tune in Saturday morning for that! Thank you to everyone who supports the show–we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!
Show Notes:
Reform the Electoral College https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/5/28/reform-the-electoral-college
Sister District x Gaslit Nation GOTV Phonebank! https://www.mobilize.us/sisterdistrictnyc/event/642096/
Book Raises Unverified Claims About Trump’s Ties to Putin The journalist Bob Woodward cited an unnamed aide saying that Donald J. Trump had spoken to Vladimir V. Putin as many as seven times since leaving office. Multiple sources say they cannot confirm that report. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/us/politics/trump-putin-woodward-book.html
Ron DeSantis Not Relying on FEMA As Florida Braces for Hurricane Milton https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desalts-not-relying-fema-hurricane-milton-1965526
Come As You Are Weekly Political Salons! Join us every Monday at 4 PM ET via Zoom! Let’s share frustrations, ask burning questions, seek support, and help shape Gaslit Nation. Everyone’s voice matters—whether you’re a political junkie or just finding your voice, you belong here! Recordings available exclusively on Patreon.
🎤 Upcoming Virtual Live Tapings:
October 24 7pm ET: How to Make a Podcast workshop – we need your voice!
October 29 12pm ET: Dr. Bandy Lee, author of The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Humankind
All these events, access to our Victory Chat and Art is Survival Chat, ad-free shows, bonus episodes, Q&As, and more await at Patreon.com/Gaslit. Annual discounts available!
Donald Trump (00:01):
I knew Putin. I knew him well.
(00:32):
Putin would give him back, yes.
(00:33):
I think I'd have a very good relationship with President Putin.
(00:36):
If Putin likes Donald Trump. Guess what folks? That's called an asset, not a liability.
(00:42):
If we got along with Putin and if we got along with Russia and that could happen.
(00:47):
I do have something. I own the Miss Universe. Miss USA Miss Universe contest, and it's the big pageant. It's the largest pageant in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You would exclude Russia.
Donald Trump (00:54):
That's interestingly, well, interestingly, that's going to Moscow.
(00:57):
If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what folks? That's called an asset, not a liability. Now, I don't know that I'm going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do.
(01:08):
We were discussing just a little while ago if NATO and our country could get along with Russia. Right now, we're not getting along with Russia at all. We may be at an all time low in terms of relationship with Russia. Fantastic thing if we got along with Putin and if we got along with Russia and that could happen.
(01:27):
I think I'd have a very good relationship with President Putin if we spent time together. And I may be wrong. Other people have said that didn't work out, but I'm different than other people.
Andrea Chalupa (01:38):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. The film the Kremlin does not want you to watch, so be sure to see it. Some big events we have going on this Wednesday, we are phone banking with our friends at Sister District. You need to be there because this election is going to be won in the margins. We have the Slave monument of Electoral College, which we are working to reform. I will link to an episode we did earlier this year on a genuine effort to constitutionally reform our electoral college. We can do it. It's within reach. Listen to that episode I did in the show notes. I'll link it there. But in the meantime, we are stuck under the imprisonment of Electoral College.
(02:33):
So come to my phone bank party with Sister District this Wednesday, 6:00 PM Eastern. Every phone call you make matters some more events. Thursday, October 24 at 6:00 PM Eastern for our Patreon community, we have a How to make a Podcast workshop. Why? Because we need your voice more than ever. I'm going to walk you through the ins and outs of podcasting and why it matters. Then on Tuesday, October 29th at 12:00 PM Eastern, we're having a live taping with Dr. Bandi Lee, author of The Psychology of Trump Contagion, an Existential Danger to American Democracy and all humankind. That, again, is a live taping, and you can come drop your questions in the chat about why does the MAGA cult exist? How do we survive it? What do you do if a maga cultist harasses you, invades your space as you're out and about. As many of our listeners have experienced, they've written to me, they've talked to me about it in the political salons we have every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern over Zoom.
(03:35):
So the MAGA cult, it's intrusive in so many ways, not just stripping our rights. Come get answers to that and how we all survive the MAGA cult, including the MAGA cultus in our lives. If you've lost loved ones to the MAGA cult, come talk to Bandi Lee with me at our live taping on Tuesday, October 29th at 12:00 PM Eastern and all those events. The podcast workshop, the live taping with Dr. Benny Lee, that's all available if you sign up at patreon.com/gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show. Alright, I am joined by my dear friend Terrell Star of the Essential Black Diplomats podcast. How are you doing, Terrell? And where are you in the world?
Terrell Starr (04:12):
I am doing well, and I am talking to everybody from Berlin. So greetings from Germany. So yeah, everything is good on my part.
Andrea Chalupa (04:24):
Are the Germans going to give Ukraine the Tauruses? Are they going to give more defensive aid or are they basically hamstrung by the Russian lobby and their own version of the MAGA cult, the AFD?
Terrell Starr (04:39):
Well, the AFD is definitely making ground here, and during my past few days, that's what everyone is talking about in their concerns. So what we call MAGA, they call alternative for Deutcheland, right? And so, no, the Germans are not going to give Ukraine Taurus, and they are pretty ambivalent moving forward about exactly how much support they're going to give Ukraine as far as what it will take to actually win, right? So they are hamstrung by the fact that they have these very intense federal elections that are forthcoming, and we all know that if alternative for Deutscheland and the other far right contingency win next October, and then that's going to put Ukraine's sovereignty in jeopardy, just as if we elect our own fascist into power in November, then that will be the beginning of Ukraine's perilous and a threat to their sovereignty.
(05:52):
But before they screw over Ukraine, a Trump victory as everyone knows it's going to screw us first. And so that's why I am so eager to go home and go to my ballot box and support Kamala Harris, New York City, the New York state. It's pretty much given that it's a blue state and a blue constituency that's going to support Kamala. But I just want to be in the country and just look at each coat and wait as each vote is counted and optimistically, that enough of them will be tally towards for Kamala Harris that will get enough support within the electoral college that will elect her as president, and so we can have a fighting chance of saving and preserving our democracy and what's left of it.
Andrea Chalupa (06:42):
Well, let me just check in with you on some of my adventures that I've had recently since you've been away on your latest European tour.
Terrell Starr (06:50):
Including Ukraine.
Andrea Chalupa (06:51):
Including Ukraine, and you're making the rounds as you always do, and excited to have you back home. So I took my girls the other day to a spooky outing to Sleepy Hollow, about an hour 20 minutes north of me in Brooklyn in my so-called Blue State of New York. We went to Sleepy Hollow because we take Halloween very seriously in our family. We decorate the whole house. You've spent many festive holidays with us over the years. This is our first time going to Sleepy Hollow. We went to the old Dutch cemetery, we saw where Irving Washington was buried and had so much fun, and then I took them to a playground in the center of town. And as we're milling about this playground, my kids running this way and that I was standing near a black woman talking to a Hispanic male, both of them, young thirties, I couldn't help but overhear that they were talking about the election and saying that it was going to be rigged.
(07:46):
And I had just done a explosive interview with the investigative journalist, Greg Pallat, all about how Brian Kemp is using the KKK playbook to steal Georgia and how Brian Kemp's ancestors were the first to bring enslaved Africans to Georgia and were part of a successful effort to kill abolition in the Declaration of Independence. And if it weren't for that, we could have avoided a civil war and on and on it went. And so my mind was on that interview, and so when I heard them say, this election's rigged and these are two non-white people talking, I immediately assumed that they were talking about stuff like what's going on in Georgia? And so I was right there. I'm like, oh, are you guys talking about the election? It's so crazy. And the black woman looks at me and she's like, yeah, you're voting for Trump. And I was like, okay, I am not.
(08:35):
And I'm like, so why are you voting for Trump black woman who has the most to lose? And she was like, because Kamala is shady as hell. She claims to be black. She's Indian, her father is whiter than you. I've seen all the pictures. And I'm like, wait a minute, where are you your news from? And she's like, Candace Owens. And in fact, she just came out with a new video just now that I haven't had a chance to watch. And so she explains to me that Candace Owens is on the beat, that Kamala isn't actually black. And she went down and hunted down some birth certificate of a white man that's really Kamala Harris's father, and that Kamala Harris grew up with servants, butlers, and she just lies about her whole origin story. And I'm like, wow, you're getting your news from Candace Owens.
(09:23):
We talk a lot in the Gaslit Nation political salons. We're doing every Monday with listeners to vent and just help each other get through this really tense time. And what comes up again and again is that when you meet a Trump supporter, your own brain malfunctions because you trip over everything you want to say to them to try to help them and save them. And at the same time, you're morbidly fascinated by how they're thinking and where they're getting their news from. And as I'm talking to her and she's explaining to me that Candace Owens is this renegade who's being demonetized on YouTube, they're trying to censor her, then the young Hispanic man joins the conversation and he's explaining how he's watching these TikTok videos of these Venezuelan migrants who are making these videos, explaining how to steal someone's Airbnb and become a squatter and never leave and get free housing.
(10:17):
And he's like, yeah, they're pouring over the border and they're stealing our housing and they're creating these gangs. They made the point to me that they were like, look, we're children of immigrants too? Our parents came to this country, but we did it all legally. And I wanted to say to them, your parents were demonized, just like these asylum seekers are being demonized today. And so I tried my best to use the Gaslit Nation talking points that I share with my listeners. I was like, look, have you heard of Project 2025? They had not at all. So by the way, that's not getting through to them, but it just raised all these issues. Number one, New York, like every state out there is purple. We have some deep red pockets. Number two, social media is a plague. People are increasingly getting their news from influencers across the spectrum.
(11:06):
It's peer to peer. And that's what a lot of voting comes down to, and that's why these culture wars work. Number three, Candace Owens is a tool of billionaire fascists that are waging war against us, and she's being paid an exorbitant amount of money to do exactly what she's doing, is rot the brains of non-white voters and turning them against their own interests. When we're in an economic and inequality crisis, a climate crisis that's coming for all of us, regardless of where we live and on and on it go and an AI crisis, an automation crisis that's going to further chip away at our jobs. And here you have these two non-white people who are being scared into voting against their own interests. I did my best on the playground while watching my kids and trying to have this tense political discourse. We heard each other out, which I think is the most important thing. And they promised me that they would look up Project 2025, and I explained what it was and I said, it's real. And I explained that January 6th was real, but the black woman especially felt a very strong attachment to Candace Owens as the champion of black women issues in America at a time when we have a significant opportunity to elect the first non-white woman to be president of the United States.
Terrell Starr (12:26):
So look, I'm listening. There are several themes come out. One, you have introduced all of the listeners to the fact that black people and a Latino, for example, can be just as sexist and racist and homophobic as any other white person, and that you don't have to be white in order to aid and abet white supremacy in oppression. That's the first thing. Two, I think every black person has a Candace Owens in their family one way or the other, and she is something of a mercenary. And that the fact that you can aid in the vet white supremacy and you don't have to be white to do so. Candace Owens is exhibit A, and she is a mercenary in the fact that she was kicked off of that daily call or whatever that conservative media enterprise is. And then she changed the tune actually when she was dropped by them.
(13:26):
And she's always been this person. What she has done is that she's found herself being drawn not only to black people, but a particular type of disengaged, and I would say a particular type of black person that doesn't fit within the informed frameworks of a traditional democratic voter that will ordinarily support vice president Kamala Harris's presidency. And the third part when you talked about, oh, our people came in legally, this, that, and the third, look, first of all, no country's borders were carved out peacefully. They were always done by force. And people who have historically come to this country, there was no such thing as legal or illegal. Pretty much people who came through Ellis Island, they pretty much were accepting. It came through, particularly when we think about the Europeans that came through, right? So when you talk about my people came here legally, that's a very loose way of describing European migration to the United States or any other migration to the United States.
(14:37):
It's idea of legal. That's the main thing. When I listen to you engage these people, talk about how you engage these people, I think about the fact that you are probably one of the few people ever to try to have an insightful conversation with them. And I hope you didn't lose any brain cells in the process. It speaks to the challenge that we all face, that we are dealing with very low engaged people. These people get information from the worst of sources because those sources tap into how they feel. It taps into the worst of us, and that's what Candace Owens of the world is very good at. She doesn't have any solution that unites us and make us better. She taps into these feelings of anger and angst that makes a particular type of person feel good about themselves. The fact that a Latino man and a black woman are embracing these white supremacist talking points from a black woman who quite frankly is an agent of white supremacy, doesn't surprise me because all three of these people, the agent of White supremacy and Candace Owens, and those two people that she influenced, feel like they've done all the right things to where they won't be casualties of it.
(16:07):
And that's the plot, right? And that's what tells you they miss the plot. That type of person usually has a rude awakening that changes their mind, I think particularly the two people. But Candace Owens, I think she knows exactly what she's doing and she uses her blackness to infiltrate these people. I just think people will be surprised as black people doing this, and people of color would believe these crazy talking points about Kamala Harris, but in reality, it speaks to the fact that even people who are oppressed are human beings at the end of the day, and they're just as susceptible to racial ignorance and sexist ignorance as anybody else.
Andrea Chalupa (16:53):
Oh yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me of Chrystia Freeland, her book Plutocrats the Rise of the New Global Super Rich, where Chrystia Freeland, who used to be the editor of the Financial Times, and now she's in Canada as an official there, I think she was the foreign affairs Minister, and then the Economic Minister and so on. So Chrystia Freeland interviewed all these oligarchs, all these plutocrats. And in her book, she comes to the conclusion that these are billionaires who came to power, many of them through public services, and they now want to pull the ladder up behind them. They want to close the doors that they walked through because they don't want their tax dollars paying for those social services, those social safety nets. They want to control how they give their money, including plastering their faces on hospitals and museums and so on. And that's how several immigrants that I've spoken to out and about in the world have told me, oh, Venezuelan gangs, Venezuelan gangs, Hispanic community.
(17:57):
It's not a monolith group of voters. There are recent immigrants who feel the same way they came in and they want to shut the doors on those who are coming after them. And I don't think it's honest to put a whole blanket on people who are coming to America and just assuming that these are going to be righteous folks who are going to be warm and welcoming to not just their own group, but to the new groups that are inevitably going to come in because of the climate crisis. And it's what Stacey Abrams warned demographics are not destiny, those Venezuelans that are being harassed by MAGA supporters today, they could be MAGA candidates for office 10, 15 years from now. And it's just imperative that if we care about our democracy and ending the cult of Trump once and for all, we've got to find a way, a healthy, sustainable way to put the social media genie back in the bottle.
(19:01):
I don't know what that is because you and I have conversations on this show, and I've seen the YouTube algorithm suppress some of the things we've said. I've seen some episodes do gangbusters fly off the shelf, and then I've seen some episodes where we've had charged conversations including on Palestinian lives mattering. And next thing you know, I'm getting punished by the algorithm and we're getting suppressed. Whatever the controls are, whatever the safety measures are against disinformation on social media, it could also backfire against us here, like independent media just trying to get our voice out. And so I don't know what the solution is. It's such a slippery slope, and that's also why it's so hard to do this. But if we could have an investigation in how Instagram is driving teenage girls to self-harm to die by suicide, and Facebook is under pressure to make meaningful changes, which they haven't yet, but at least we can have this conversation, have these studies and stop the radicalization that's going on where people are being brainwashed to work against their own interests and against all of our collective interests.
Terrell Starr (20:11):
I hear the term often working against our own self-interests, and I'm really beginning to unpack that phrasing because it's not that I don't agree with you, it's that sometimes the people who we think are working against their own self-interest may not be. Exhibit A was some reporting idea in West Virginia on the opioid epidemic there. I was pretty amazed at the ways in which poverty impacted the white people there and how, although there are not a lot of black people in West Virginia, they live in the same impoverished communities. And the only thing that is an escape for the white people there that gives 'em a little bit of a better chance than black people is their skin color. But their skin color doesn't necessarily save them all the time. In fact, on the most part it doesn't. Yet they continuously support conservative Republican politicians who've done little to nothing to create policies to elevate them out of that poverty.
(21:26):
Yet these same poor white people invest in a political structure of white men who don't give a damn about them. What I realized that many of these people are protecting their whiteness because that is what those Republicans promised them, which in the grand scheme of things is a major and a good exchange for the politician because they don't have to legislate them out of a worsening economic situation into a better one. They just have to give them the promise that they're going to protect their whiteness no matter how poor it keeps them. So in fact, these people are working in their interest, the main one being their whiteness, and if they have to suffer economically and socially as a result, then so be it. And so those types of things makes me revisit the term voting against their own interests. And then with black people, particularly with men, and I just want to make sure I'm not paying a broad brush, but a lot of the black men who do support Trump, these black men are voting for someone that reinforces their own sexism, and they're not requiring Trump to create better laws to ensure that they are not overpoliced or create laws that disadvantage them because they are, in fact, black men create laws that don't speak to their health disparities as black men.
(22:58):
What Trump taps into and what he's very good with is that a lot of black men with us, if we feel like so much of the world is against us and we're poor and we struggle, the one thing that I do have is my manhood. And that is a powerful message for a particular group of black men regardless of their economic status. Because homosexuality and transgender people, all of these things are a threat to their manhood. So they think if I can protect my manhood, then they don't need the legislation either. Like the white people who are assured that their whiteness will be protected, those black men will have a feeling that their manhood is protected because ultimately that's the best thing that they feel that they can maintain in keep in this world. And it's actually a very tragic story because they both deserve so much more, but that's the disaffection that they feel.
(24:01):
And that people like Candace Owens and the white supremacists that support her and the ones that go into electoral office, they prey on that. And we need to be mindful of continuing to do the work that we do and hope that just like you spoke with those people, that they have their magic moment and they see the light of day because it's only so much that we can do because we're dealing with this larger world and this larger community that builds this inequity that breeds the type of people that you spoke to in that park.
Andrea Chalupa (24:37):
And Sleepy Hollow, Terrytown New York, that's an area that has changed because of more and more immigration to the area. I was talking to a white man in town asking him for directions, what do you do here in this town? And he sent me to downtown and he added the footnote that there's a lot of immigrants now there and there's a lot of services for immigrants. He felt compelled to, I don't know if he was sending me a white person signal, white person, a white person, just FYI, our Sleepy Hollow isn't how it used to be. The immigrants took it over. He was pointing things out. He's like, yeah, there's like, there's paycheck to cash stores and all these things. I'm like, okay, I didn't need that Wikipedia page.
Terrell Starr (25:21):
That was a white man to a white woman conversation that he would never would've told me.
Andrea Chalupa (25:24):
Exactly right. He gave me a warning that there's going to be a lot of brown people on Main Street now and a lot of Mexican restaurants, and there were, and they all looked amazing.
Terrell Starr (25:34):
You need that. He probably would've told you to watch out for me. I may steal something for your place.
Andrea Chalupa (25:40):
Exactly, but little does he know I'm actually walking with you down the street because I'm afraid of that white man coming barreling towards me. I've literally in Brooklyn have crossed the street to walk next to the black gentleman because I was worried about the big burly white man drunkenly stumbling my way.
Terrell Starr (25:58):
Well, yeah, we've had those moments. Yeah, that's true.
Andrea Chalupa (26:02):
The irony is that when I finally make it to Main Street, I've got these grownup children of immigrants who are Trump supporters who don't understand that they're being disparaged by white men Trump supporters in their own town. And this is all going on in Mike Lawler's district. He's a Republican who pretends to be a renegade. He's not maga, but he is he boats along with them. And this is all happening on the same day. Mike Lawler gets caught having done blackface in 2006, and I'm just like, once again, are we living in a simulation? The answer is Gasoline Nation is here to tell you we are living in an AI simulation. So if your life feels weird, like it's being written by a sadistic team of AI in the future that are just having fun with us. Yes, yes, yes.
Terrell Starr (26:55):
So Mike Wine, is he your congressperson?
Andrea Chalupa (26:57):
No, I am stuck with Dan Goldman. He is absolutely safe. He's a Nancy Pelosi establishment democrat. He has job security because the progressives in New York City cannot get their shit together and be data driven and say, we have one shot, one shot to win this house race. And so we have to put up the one candidate, just one guys rally around that one person who has the numbers to support their campaign. And instead what the progressives do is they run a bunch of candidates because everybody gets a participation trophy and nobody has the guts to say, no, you sit it out this time. You know what I mean? So yeah. So Dan Goldman is my rep in Congress, and he's perfectly safe until progressives get the brass knuckles on and they strategize effectively.
Terrell Starr (27:49):
There you go. Yeah, because wasn't Mondaire Jones a candidate?
Andrea Chalupa (27:53):
He was one of many that ran watering down that vote, and now he's running against Mike Lawler. We'll see. We'll see if Mondaire finally gets in. I'm a big believer that you just keep running and running and running until you finally get in. And speaking of that, there is a longtime Gaslit Nation listener who's running for office in Florida in a local city council race. She has been working really hard in getting a candidate on every single ballot, a Democrat running in every single district across the state. That's how you drive out the vote to potentially turn Florida blue. It's within reach. Something's happening in Florida. I've been saying that in the show for months, but now we have the apocalypse coming in through Florida. They were just devastated, the South, by hurricane Helene, and also devastated by failure of the Republican Party to plan accordingly to get the resources in time to evacuate people in time.
(28:48):
And DeSantis isn't making any accommodations for the hurricane Milton. More hurricanes that are coming in that are catastrophic. There was a beloved weatherman in Florida who was practically in tears on live TV describing this next one that's coming in. My heart goes out to all of our listeners in Florida at the recent Gaslit Nation political salon. We're chatting with a listener in Florida who has her ballot, her mail-in ballot all filled out, but she's afraid to mail it in because the ballot box or the election office might get flooded, and then there goes her vote. And so we as a group how to work with our talk to her say, well, what should we do with your ballot? And so we came to the conclusion is she's going to put it in a dry bag and keep it in her dishwasher because dishwashers are airtight sealed, and those I guess are where you want to put your sacred items, should there be a flood?
(29:44):
And this whole conversation was so dystopian, these new conversations that we're having in our communities of survival of these times. And then on top of that, you add to the chaos of Elon Musk using his billions to prop up Trump, including the disinformation platform, the largest Russian disinformation platform in the world. Twitter, you have Putin escalating his slaughter of civilians in Ukraine, north Korean soldiers being fed into Russia's meat grinder in Ukraine. You have Netanyahu expanding his regional war just like you and I feared a year ago when we said, this is going to be Israel's nine 11 where Netanyahu is going to drag you all into your forever war, your Iraq war. And unfortunately, a year ago we were right. And you have countless Palestinian civilians that are being slaughtered, and then you have Israel that's trapped under this corrupt anti-democratic Netanyahu, and you have all these hostages that are still there.
(30:46):
There's about around a hundred who could still be saved, but Netanyahu's not interested in a hostage deal. Neither is Hamas. And so there's this horrible stalemate there. And on top of that, you have these far right parties that are growing stronger. You have the country of Georgia being taken over through Russian state capture by this Russian oligarchy business elite backed by Russia that's coming in, ignoring the will of the people ignoring mass protests and just forcing through all of these anti-democratic laws. What is happening in the state of Georgia is what MAGA is doing here at home in America. It's Russian backed state capture. So I'm listing all of these things to acknowledge to all of us that we are being steamrolled by chaos. It is deliberate. The future feels hopeless. All of this is overwhelming. It's a totally natural reaction to want to be in a fetal position and to stare into space and not know how to process it all.
(31:43):
It is meant to depress us and to stop us from acting, from stop us from thinking clearly. And so how do we stay grounded in all this? What is our way forward? I want to remind you all listening. If you're feeling a certain way, that is a totally normal human response. I feel that way too. I want to assure you, just take one issue. Just take one issue. You don't have to do them all. Just take one issue for me. My issue is democracy for Ukraine because I have family and friends there, and also democracy for Ukraine ensures democracy for the rest of the world. We're up against Hitler right now. He's not going to stop at Ukraine because he can't, because Russia is a failed state and he needs these wars to distract and to rape and pillage across Europe. So that's number one.
(32:28):
And plus, Russia is a terrorist state that's backing our own fascist takeover of our democracy here at home. So Ukraine's, my issue. Ukraine overlaps democracy for Ukraine and defeating Russian fascism overlaps with the climate crisis because Russia pays for its genocide of Ukraine with oil money. So the sooner we get to a post oil world, a post carbon economy, the sooner we'll be free from Russian fascism, Saudi fascism and MAGA fascism, the big oil industry propping up disinformation agents and turning Americans against each other. So just pick your one issue, acknowledge where it overlaps, elevate your voice, elevate the voice of your comrades and just stay grounded on that. That's number one. Number two, find a historical mentor who has stared into the black abyss before you and hold their hand in these times. For me, when I start feeling overwhelmed, I think of a young JRR Tolkien who lost his closest friends in the great war, in World War I.
(33:33):
He witnessed the carnage of the Psalm just fields filled with blood and bodies and rotting horses. And through that darkness of hell on earth, he still picked up a pen and began developing what would become Lord of the Rings. He became creative in that moment of darkness. And out of that emerged just beautiful works of art that have helped so many generations since navigate this world and recognize the profound difference between good and evil. And so that's what I'm doing to stay grounded. I focus on my one issue. I don't overwhelm myself with all the issues. I have my one issue to stay grounded. That's my commitment. And my second thing is I have my historical mentors who have been through this fight before us and now it's our turn and they've shown us the way.
Terrell Starr (34:18):
Yeah, I totally agree with you when you say that you find your one issue and it overlaps, I totally agree with you. We are the same in that Ukraine is my issue, and you know that I've been to the West Bank and I didn't intend to be passionate about this subject as much as I am and didn't know that my trip there prior to October 7th would culminate into discussing the inequities of the response to that tragic terrorist attack. I have to be honest with you all as somebody who's a bleeding heart and I want to care about everything, I can't don't have the mental capacity to catch up and maintain my emotional strength by juggling all of these issues because they're all happening at once, and sometimes you can feel guilty for not expending energy to advocating or speaking enough about all of them. I've just taken this space for the first time to say that I can't keep up with everything.
(35:18):
There is a moral clarity that we both have about being consistent in the injustices that are being are plaguing our world, but at the end of the day, I spend much of my time in Ukraine and it's literally enduring a war and a genocide, and that's frankly enough for me to deal with. And there is some overlap there that we both have no problem talking about, but Andrea is right. Please find your one issue. And by taking the overlap, that means that we educate ourselves about everything that's going on. And that may mean I think about overlapping as a tab. You have your one page that you're looking at, but sometimes you have this tab that you open up that you kind of click on and you look at it just to keep yourself abreast. Do it like that. Look at the overlap as a tab and don't feel ashamed or feel bad that you can't keep up with everything because in reality, I think that's what the puppet masters of Mass Destruction want us to do is to feel overwhelmed.
(36:32):
We all need to really strengthen our own community so that we can lean on each other when things are a bit too much for us to bear. And also, I want everyone to take care of their bodies and to take care of their minds. You were speaking of Georgia. I'm actually going to Georgia next week to cover those elections. I'll be there for two weeks. A few days ago I was just in Ukraine and I was on a series of panels talking about all these heavy issues. Now I'm in Berlin where they are somewhere at a nexus of going between fascism and maintaining the democracy that they have. It's a lot, and I don't always work out every day like I do when I'm at home. I walk the stairs. I make sure I maintain a really healthy diet, but for many of us who don't travel as much as I do, please take care of your bodies.
(37:30):
We spend so much time in all this thinking and we really do all this reading and gaining knowledge, and we have a habit of training our minds more so than we take care of our bodies. We spend more time making sure that we put the right oil in our vehicles and making sure that the tires on our cars have just the right amount of pressure. Then we go in for a checkup on ourselves. And so that's my advice to everyone as we navigate this, make sure that nutrition is as best as it can be, your vegetables, your eating, drinking of water, and make sure that is as up to date as the news NRBs.
Andrea Chalupa (38:23):
There's an excellent book. The Body Keeps the Score all about trauma lives in our bodies, so get your bodies moving. Put on music and dance. Self-care is an act of resistance. They want to wear us down, but we're not going to let them.
Terrell Starr (38:40):
Absolutely not because another thing too is when you think about all the people who make a difference in the world, it's a small group of people and the rest of us just benefit from that work. I'm always reminded of Black American history and all of the struggle that black people before me engaged in to make this world a better place for me and you and everyone else. We look at all the people who marched in those biggest protests. In reality, the people who galvanized those tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people were a small group of people in a room deciding how they're going to keep people going around the world. It's always a small group of people in small rooms that galvanize the masses for the common good. And so if we feel overwhelmed, keep in mind that the people who sacrifice their bodies and their minds and their time and their lives we're also overwhelmed.
(39:49):
And the most that we can do is to inform ourselves so that we can be ready to be mobilized and join these organizers in their efforts to fight against this mammoth of fascism and sexism and the racism and xenophobia that's really compounding us because there are playbooks across the world that show us the keys to victory. The fascism that we are dealing with today is playing off the playbook of past, and those playbooks are relying on both of us the good and the bad to read it and to abide by it, and to learn lessons from that past for our future. It just has to be more of us than it is a bill, and it is. We just have to believe that they are and keep it moving.
Andrea Chalupa (40:44):
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