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- [00:01]
A
What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future? When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska. And in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. Foreign.
- [00:34]
B
It's long past time we stopped talking about the Trump administration in terms of economy. I voted for Trump for the economy. I'm fiscally conservative. That's. He's adding trillions of dollars to the debt. But what it's about is cruelty and racism. And you have ICE agents running through United States cities with their faces covered. And they have arrested American citizens to the tune of almost 200, and that's probably a low number. And then they're taking in immigrants, 70% of which have no criminal history. And this video came out showing a woman who is a US Citizen and how she was manhandled by ice.
- [01:20]
So a U. S. Citizen screams for help as federal agents remove her from her car. Look at what they're doing to her.
- [01:30]
And you can see the guy with masks. Woman was detained after refusing to hand over her driver's license and roll down her window when she was pulled over by cbp. And here's what's important to remember is you're not required to do any of these things. They're physically assaulting her. She was put in a patrol vehicle while agent searched her car and found her driver's license confirming that she was a US Citizen. Here's the thing. They're trying to terrorize citizens. They're trying to. She was released. It does say that they're trying to take U. S. Citizens and terrify them into submission. You must submit to what we're saying. And I think it all plays out towards the midterms and voter intimidation and not believing the results of an election because Trump knows how underwater he is. But this is chilling to me. Video after video of people being pulled from their car by people with masks and. And cars converging on people in the United States of America. It's very, very chilling.
- [02:34]
C
The problem with all of this is that we have always allowed this. This is not new. Ask any black American who has lived in the United States any point during the last 400 years, and this is their experience with police. And when you allow for this type of injustice with one group, you leave every other group open to this. And that's why all of human rights are Linked. And so I understand the fatigue and the exhaustion from black Americans right now because now we care about seeing a seemingly white looking girl screaming, I'm an American citizen manhandled. Welcome to being black in the United States of America during a Democratic presidency, during a Democratic super majority in the federal government. And this is why I always go back to arguing for universal human rights. When you see injustice in one place and you make space in your room, in your, in your head or in your society or in your government that this injustice is okay, you expose everybody else to the same injustice. It doesn't work that way. So we as a culture, all of us have participated in this moment, not just Trump, but as Americans, in allowing the disproportionate treatment among racial lines, both on the street with police and all the way up to the judiciary with sentencing. And we've allowed it to go on and on and on because we don't prioritize.
- [04:18]
Human rights and the rights of marginalized. And so much so that even when black people organize to speak out about this, and you had NBA athletes that wanted on their courts, Black lives matter. You had people pitching a fit, threatening to not watch the NBA anymore and won't listen to them, you have the horrific treatment Colin Kaepernick, who just simply put a knee down. So as outrageous everybody is by what the tape you just saw, this is what black Americans have been telling us for decades. And that's why Colin, Colin Kaepernick put his knee down during the national anthem, was to draw attention to this very outrage right here that has happened in the black community long before, long before maga. And so I just think it's super important that we're cautious about how we got to this space. And it's not just maga. It's been a culture of being able to carve out and ignore voices that are telling us they need help, that are telling us, hey, help us, there's injustice here. And they get demeaned and ridiculed and dismissed and it is incubated where now this is a normal everyday occurrence in this fascist regime.
- [05:41]
B
And, and I have been guilty of not seeing the broader picture because of my perspective and where I, you know, how I grew up, where I grew up. And you're exactly right, white women don't have to worry about if their sons get pulled over and have a hoodie on, where black mothers do have to worry about that because their children are more vulnerable than my children. And that is something that has to be addressed. And I can thank you for bringing that to my attention, because it's real eas to skew my perspective about that. But you're 100% right. And then we have. I saw this and I was just stunned. Now, Trump has made a list of all of these refugees and all of these countries that cannot come to the United States. So we see here, put this up. This is. So people were waiting to be sworn in for their US Citizenship, which is a process. It, you know, you have to study, you have to take a test, you have to do all these things. So over the last week, officers were asking everyone what country they were from and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled. So now we're saying, okay, you're from that country, you've done everything we've asked you to do to become a naturalized citizen, but because you're from that country, we're going to put you in the pot with what we believe are terrorists or instigators or anything like that. And I'm assuming I could be wrong, but I'm assuming all of these countries are black and brown countries because we have refugee status ended for every country except for white South Africana. So again, this to me is just more racism against black and brown communities. It's stunning. Not stunning, it's about what I expect.
- [07:33]
C
That's just so sad to me because, you know, I, you've, I've met so many people that are like, I'm a citizen now. I took my test and I passed. And it's, that's like something that's really uniquely American is that you can, you know, come to the United States from another country and you can become an American. And this anti immigrant, pro white supremacist movement that MAGA has taken, starting to take over the finish line, started back decades ago with the kkk and it just continues. They continue to move the goalposts. And this is just really horrific. And I think what is so disturbing about this is, you know, that there is a portion of the electorate, when they read that, they think, oh, good, right, good. And that's the celebration of cruelty among the white voter base is. It's just something that, that has always very much haunted me, living around religious hypocrites the majority of my life who claim to be on the moral high ground, yet are just so unrepentantly racist and are never called out on it and are allowed to be racist with utter impunity in their cultures and in their societies. Is, is something that's so pervasive that I think a lot of people coast and strategists don't realize just how bad it is.
- [09:08]
B
No, I think you're right. And then, Kylie, let's skip ahead to the next slide from Rolling Stone, which talks about the racism that has been emboldened under the Trump administration. Jennifer, you know I'm blind. Can you read this for me? Okay.
- [09:21]
C
Trump's America first has emboldened the fringes on the American right, just as Limbaugh emboldened the Hitler's not so bad crowd. And then another tweet, they say, where the original America first leader went to die. Stephen Roddick visits Charles Lindbergh's grave site, recalling parallels with a man who picked up Lindbergh's nativist scepter, Donald Trump.
- [09:44]
B
Here's the thing, let's just stop acting like there's anything going on, but just abject racism with the dei. We're going to remove names. We're going to take women out of powerful positions in the military. We're going to get rid of men and women of color in the military. We're going to make excuses for it, for. It's all these things. At the end of the day, it's racism, full stop. I mean, that's what it is. Trump is a racist. He has been since Central Park 5. All of the lawsuits when he had real estate and wouldn't rent to people of color, I mean, decades ago. And there are so many people that agree with that. They think they're better. They think that it's okay. Okay? And so in talking about this, here's just one thing I wanted to point out. I know we've touched on a little bit, but Trump is no longer allowing free admission to state parks on Martin Luther King Day, but he is going to allow it on his fucking birthday. And that, to me, is just a microcosm of him. He was saying that, you know, in the Kennedy center, maybe it'll be the Trump Kennedy Center. I'm going to build myself an arch. The Trump Ballroom. Now, you're not going to get free admission on Martin Luther King Day because civil rights.
- [11:00]
A
Yeah.
- [11:01]
B
Probably shouldn't have it. But on my birthday, because I'm so great, we're going to let people have free admission. And I'm just him, everybody in this administration, it's just unbelievable. They're not even hiding the racism. Not even a little bit.
- [11:14]
C
Yeah, but I mean, you of all people, we know, I mean, from where we live and grew up, that this has always Been there. Yeah, Trump has just made it more mainstream. But in, in white evangelical Republican circles, when Trump first descended the escalator, I remember people saying to me, oh, he's crazy. He'll never win the nomination. But boy, he sure does say what everybody thinks. And, you know, there is just so much.
- [11:46]
Racism in parts of America that is structural, institutional, and cultural. And it, it's, it's been incubated for a very long time, both on, in personal relationships, all the way up to governmental relationships, to the judiciary. And it, it is something that when black people or immigrants tell you there is injustice, you have to believe them. You have to stand up and fight with them, because it leaves everybody, everybody vulnerable. And the statement, none of us are free until all of us are free is just so inherently true because we have ignored so much of the racial injustice in this country and allowed parts of it and corrected some parts of it, but then allowed other parts of it. And the incubation, as I keep thinking about Trump and how this took, took hold and how we are here, it's not just him now. A lot of it has, is leadership under both administrations, both Republican and Democrats, and economic.
- [13:02]
Systems that are not truly about equality. They're more about corporations having favorability. And then when you look at the, the justice system, policing, and the institutionalized racism that exists in them, all of that incubated us to this moment.
- [13:20]
B
No, I completely agree. And just from my personal experience in the justice system, I mean, there's no way you can say it's an equal playing field, because for poor people and black and brown people, the system is not the same. It is not fair. Justice is different for them because they have been oppressed for so long. I've seen it with my own eyes. Okay, that's all for this video. Please like and subscribe. And life is a lazy Susan of shit sandwiches. Buy it. It's linked below in the show notes, also available on audiobook. And we will be back with more.