Politics Without A Plan

“People are upset, but they’re not upset at me.” That single line captures the upside-down logic Darrell can’t stop thinking about and it launches a wide, sharp tour through American politics as performance. I start with a quick personal reset (Brazil Jiu Jitsu, team changes, and the push to open my own jiu jitsu studio), then zoom out to the bigger frustration: the country keeps cycling through the same talking points while everyday life gets more expensive and less stable.

We dig into what “no message” really means when both parties live off blame, not delivery. I react to clips and coverage that highlight missing policy, midterm posturing, and the way investigation theater replaces solutions for tariffs, jobs, and affordability. From there, the lens widens to foreign policy and moral priorities, including the constant incentive to sell conflict and outrage while the public gets told to accept less.

Then the episode hits a run of stories that connect rights and information power: Trump’s renewed push against birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment, the FCC move that opens the door to major local TV consolidation, and the risk that abortion data becomes surveillance and evidence in ban states. We also confront campaign racism and Islamophobia, plus the way Palestine and Israel discourse gets policed by conflating a state with a people. Finally, we land on bell hooks and her definition of love as care plus commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, a standard worth demanding from our politics too.

If this hits home, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What part of this conversation do you want unpacked next?

Transcript

Welcome Back And Life Updates

SPEAKER_12 0:46

Welcome to the Darrell McLean Show. I'm your host, Darrell McLean, independent media. They won't reinforce tribalism. We have one planet, nobody is leaving. So let us reason together. It has been a long time since we talked. A long time since we talked. There's been some competitions going on with me, uh, Brazil Jiu Jitsu. There's been some team updates going on with the team. Uh Gustavo Machado Norfolk uh changed its name, left the affiliation to become Cracking Grappling Association. Um the sauces are still competing, Samson still training, Mark is still teaching, etc. And there has been some personal news on my front. Business is license, has been extended from by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I'm in the process myself of looking for a space because I'll be opening my own uh jujitsu studio. When it comes to the world, I guess we know exactly what's happened, which is the same old, same old. It does get a bit ridiculous, I will say. It does get a bit difficult for me uh coming on here and talking to you about things like uh Cheeto Jesus Orange Man Bad or the Republican and Democratic rat race, because it's the same old stuff. The same old stuff. Uh nothing really changes. You're gonna hear something about socialists, you're gonna hear something about uh communists, gonna hear something about so uh cultural Marxists, gonna hear something about uh uh trans people, gonna hear something about uh uh tax cuts and butchers and tariffs and the ballroom, etc.

The Same Political Script Again

SPEAKER_12 2:32

And when I left and came back, nothing had changed. I'm still talking about the same old foolishness, and um nothing, nothing, nothing has changed whatsoever. And part of it is because America, I used to say we we kind of repeat the same cycles. That is true, but it's also it's the same talking points. Um there was a congressman that actually uh went on um the cutlow show, and um Cudlow had to say tell him the same thing. Check this out.

SPEAKER_06 3:14

And I think he was right, even though right now you, the leadership in both houses are bungling everything, sir. I say that with all due respect, and we are personal friends. It's not per but you're bungling everything. Nothing is getting done. Your messaging is non-existent. You've lost your swag, your swagger, your ribs, or whatever the young people say. No one knows what the heck you're doing, sir. They have no idea.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah, you're welcome. This is part of the challenge we've got with all of our media friends out there that continue to be able to beat up on Republicans and say Republicans are all the problems, but apparently the socialist democrats in New York City they seem to be perfect because most conservative media right now is beating up on Republicans and just ignoring the socialists who are running rampant all over the country. What happened with the one big beautiful? We just uh there's a lot of things that are going on in the code, and I understand nobody can any more than I have to heaven's sake. I'm not saying that just about you, I'm saying it isn't the this this is the challenge that we're up against.

SPEAKER_06 4:26

Where are the tax cuts? Where are the spending cuts? Where's the waste fraud and corruption reduction? Where is all of that? Where is the reconciliation bill? Where's the straight talk and messaging for the midterm? Where's the growth messaging? Where's the we're gonna make it better for taxpayers and working folks messaging? Come on, Senator.

SPEAKER_12 4:47

See now, remind you, that was uh Republican uh Larry Cutlow. But anyway, uh the the point is there is no messaging because there is no message because the whole uh game is this the system is rigged, uh, everybody somewhat knows it. The only question is what are you gonna do about it? The late George Carlin famously had that bit where he said it's a big club and you ain't in it. And I think uh what happens in a lot of the uh halls of power is people work hard to try to get in the club and get everything that they can, to to steal everything that that they can steal, to to grab everything that's not nailed down, to break everything that they can in the hopes that the regulatory uh frameworks that whole extreme extreme financial interests at bay are torn apart, and the little person and the middle person is not even a thought. Yeah, even when you hear

The Big Club And Who Pays

SPEAKER_12 5:50

how elections are run in the United States of America, they will sometimes talk about the middle class. They don't even have the the uh the nerve, don't have the audacity, they would dare not mention the poor, the P O O R, because they have to pretend like there's no such thing as poverty in America. When we go through the numbers, you see we uh have rampant childhood poverty, uh etc. We we have uh food deserts, we have data centers that are destroying whole whole whole cities, losing power, water systems that have been hacked. Of course, they said, oh, this came from Iran, but how they would say that about anybody, that they wanted to blow the smithereens because they got some freedom over there in the um that looks just like oil. Uh but anyway, and uh midterms is coming. Uh the midterms are coming, I should say, proper English. And um right now the polls show the Democrats are plus eight on the generic uh ballot. And um we'll see uh whether that materializes itself or not, whether it changes anything or not, who knows? Uh Democrats seem to be very good at um the same thing Republicans are good at, which is looking at the other side and saying how awful they are, and you'll always find how awful they are because they are awful, and um, but not doing anything when they actually get into power. Uh the President of the United States uh actually was asked about this. I don't want to play the clip because I don't have to look for it. And he said, Well, the people are upset, but they're upset at Republicans, but not at me. As a matter of fact, I'll play the clip for you.

SPEAKER_15 7:46

If I don't run, will those people go out and vote? And that's the one thing I can't tell. I'm gonna ask them to. But I'm just watching guys like you and you're very talented people. Uh the question is, will they vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you. I don't know. I mean, they're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry at the end. Why? They're not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans who

Leaders Claim Success As Pain Grows

SPEAKER_15 10:09

go out.

SPEAKER_12 10:09

So nice, you gotta play it twice. This is just I was astounded when I heard it. Uh of course I laugh because, as I said before, we are in the dumbest timeline in in human history, at least to my memory, and uh it seems to get dumber by the day, progressively getting worse.

SPEAKER_15 10:28

And vote. And that's the one thing I can't tell you. I'm gonna ask them to, but I'm just watching guys like you and you're very talented people. Uh the question is, will they vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you. They're angry at Republicans. I don't know. I mean, they're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry. Uh why they're not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans.

SPEAKER_08 10:56

Right now, Republicans are trailing Democrats on the generic ballot by eight points. Democrats also have a 20-point advantage among those who say that they're extremely motivated to vote. And 63% of Republican voters say that their own party is not focusing enough on competitive living issues. Something that remains too above for most Americans. In addition to the needs to be complicated in the economy, and it's like the Republicans think the meeting. The new report shows that the US actually lost jobs in July to the tune of 23,000. Trump gains in the previous months were also revised down. The unemployment rate took down slightly, largely because of people leaving the workforce. But things are just rosy in Trump's mind.

SPEAKER_15 11:45

So when I see polls on the economy, I should have, I should have 150%, not 100% million. Because we have the greatest. This is the golden age of America. What's being built now in this country has never ever been built. And we're really, we are literally in the golden age of America.

SPEAKER_12 12:07

So could you just imagine uh just imagine for me being in a relationship? Let's just say one of the greatest types of relationships, being in a marriage. And except some uh things are going wrong, and you were to say, well, look, people are upset about the the marriage, but they're not upset about me. Uh I don't have anything to do with it it would be uh people are upset about what's happening in the family, but they're not upset about what I'm doing. No, that's not how parties work. You're you're the head of the party, you threw the party, we came to the party because you promised us certain things at the party, you know, no new wars, uh, whatever. And we got to the party, and you said there were not gonna be any wars, and we said, hey, how about this? No pedophiles. And you said, yeah, there won't be any wars, and that uh the other parties got a lot of pedophiles, and we're gonna not have any wars, and we'll point out the pedophiles, and everybody will be rich. Uh uh, you'll be it'll be so big and you'll win so much you'll get tired of winning. And uh I haven't won a damn thing, and nobody else I know seems to have won a damn thing. Uh, it seems like it's getting progressively worse. Those pedophiles still seem to be sitting right over there, and it seems like uh your playing list don't look at over here. These are not the drones you uh looking for game. And we invade Venezuela, kidnap the president and his uh spouse uh so for their oil, of course. We and because of Marco Rubio's little weird obsession with Latin American countries, um, that's a for some reason like a Cuban thing that I that uh I know nothing about of uh why that's his obsession, but that's from the old neocon. They they have this weird view that if they are to empower the hardline right-wingers in Venezuela, that that will somehow put pressure on Cuba and it will get the fall of the Castor regime. And of course, Marco Rubio as well as Ted Cruz are obsessed with Cuba because Cuba did the little thing that you're not supposed

Midterms, Lame Ducks, And Distraction

SPEAKER_12 14:30

to do. They threw out threw out a dictator, Batista, who was propped up by the United States of America. And if you go look at especially Ted Cruz's family, his father was loyalist to Batista, even though he was arrested in Cuba, and uh Ted Cruz will leave out a very specific detail that his father was not arrested under uh the Castro administration, he was arrested under the Batista administration, but Rubio's family was had ties to the Batista regime, and he came, they came to America, American citizenship, obviously, because you land here from Cuba, you get American citizenship. Uh big time politician in Florida, he has the the look, he looks normal, he speaks normal, and by normal I mean warmongering, neoconservative, blow them up, blow them up, blow him up, uh normal. And and that's what they want. They want to have him be the standard bearer because he's the old model. And they put Trump out there, and and Trump is, as you see, uh kind of on the downs uh slope. He doesn't care. He he's he's he's a lame duck president in a few weeks. The midterms will come if the Democratic uh Party wins the Congress or the Senate. We kind of know what's gonna happen. Investigation after investigation, they may even attempt impeachment 2.0, and Trump is already gonna have trouble as a lame duck president, and that will just be worse with all the investigations. And when I say this becomes difficult because at what ends? How does that put money in my pocket? How does that help with the tariffs? How does that help with the word that we hear now? Uh affordability. It does it. It does it. If you investigate Trump again, does are the gas prices gonna go down? If you investigate again, is the war in Iran gonna end? If you investigate again, is Venezuela gonna uh do it? If you investigate again, is is are the rolling blackouts in Cuba gonna stop that are impose on them by the United States of America? Of course not. Of course not. This stuff is a bunch of malarkey, and that's what makes it so difficult for people like me who work really hard to try to uh give you something serious to look at, it makes it very difficult for me to even cut on the microphone and talk to you because this is not serious people. This is a serious government being run by unserious people with who have a lot of power and seem to have no ability to know what to do with it, and no real, real way do they think that they are stewards, stewards of a great republic, and that is a shame. So uh uh it is difficult at times, and and I think I I told uh somebody, actually I think it was Gene, uh, and I said, this is the part of the plan sometimes. I think you get it gets so ridiculous, it gets so ridiculous that you stop even paying attention to it because it's not serious, and it causes you to start to lose a bit of the hope. It starts you to you can write as many articles as you want, and the rainforest is still gonna be being decimated. The the wars for oil will still be going on, the forever wars will still be going on, we'll still have 900 or so bases at somebody else's land that we do not need to be in. The economy will still be looking good for Wall Street, which is great for them, and looking awful for Main Street, which is awful for them. The the rich and the rest of us will still be the reality. The poverty manifesto will still be rampant in America, the chow hunger index will still be through the roof, Kentucky will still be a crap, uh, Alabama will still be awful, Mississippi will still be awful, the 50 states will still be hobbling along. And what what do we have? A bunch of rich people went to Washington, bent the knee to Donald Trump, they got richer, and everybody else stumbled along doing the day-to-day tasks because it actually turned out that what Ronald Reagan prophesized, what he kind of put into place in the 80s, if you look at his dismantling of the government, turned out to be true. Now, now the scariest words in the English language are hello, I'm from the government and I am here to help. The most scariest words in the English language, hello, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. And so my solution to all this is fairly simple. If you want to uh get somewhere in life at this point, you better start a damn band. You better start a band, you better open uh uh some entertainment complex, you better learn some jokes, and you better start entertaining these rich people, I suppose, because that is the only way. You better attach yourself to somebody's wagon because this is the deaf rattles, the deaf rattles, I say, of a declining economic power. This is what they used to call late-stage capitalism. And I'm gonna get into that over the upcoming weeks, the last death throws of a could have been great republic. No republic normally lasts over 250 years. We've hit that point, and I think Trump is the absolutely uh the the president that we got to see steer us down a path that I don't think we will return from. We we saw the Elon get in there with the doge cuts. Reports are coming out that this many people died because of it. Saw one report that over a million people have have uh been killed because of the doge cuts. And and uh because of the defunding of USAID and and and not even a uh a peep. Not even a peep. 70,000 people, women and children mostly dead in Pakistan because the bloodthirsty IDF and the bloodthirsty anti-Christ warmonger Bibi Netanyahu, not a peep. Uh, because it's alright, because you don't want to be seen as anti-Semitic, so you don't say anything. You you you're you can be uh a grifter on the left, a grifter on the right, you can say some platitudes about yada yada yada uh Pakistan and Palestine, and but nobody gives a damn. Nothing is gonna happen. And even if you were to get on the television and try to extend any amount of decency and dignity to the Palestinian cause, you will be ran right out of the room. Uh I saw Corey Bush lost again against an APAC-backed um Democrat. Uh, and it is what it is. It um you can be progressive except for Palestine. Uh I will be re-rereading my Sociology Month a book by the great Dr. Mark Lamont Hill uh that he wrote a few years back called Except for Palestine. Except for Palestine. And it's basically how you can be liberal and this and that, but if it comes to Palestine, those are the groups of people, that is a group of people you are allowed to be a bigot about because you hide your bigotry beyond your crocodile tears for Israel. And this is actually something that I was watching the other day when the brain dead senator John Fetterman got himself in a tongue twister when he went on with the better gentleman, the better John of the two, John Stewart. And John Stewart uh asked him, told him

Except For Palestine And Moral Evasion

SPEAKER_12 23:01

how weird it was to have this Israel obsession because that's not his country. And uh he he tr tried to do that thing they do where they inflate Jews with Israel, and John Stewart, who is a Jew, told him, uh no, buddy, that's not the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

Absolutely, it is real for me. Like I can't ever but Israel is the red line. Absolutely, it is real for me. Like, I I can't ever turn my back to Israel after after where it's at.

SPEAKER_05 23:35

So and and and I mean no disrespect on this, but that is not our country. You're saying that these candidates may have great ideas for our economy, they may want to do the exact same thing you want to do in terms of getting money into politics, they may want to increase the social safety net, they may want to um uh change the balance of power from capital back to labor, but if they don't agree with you on Israel, you don't want them in your party.

SPEAKER_04 24:01

It seems like a weird minded problem. So then I don't think that's weird. I think I I think what history demonstrates is is that when when people or government or people turn their back to the to the Jewish community, things end really badly.

SPEAKER_05 24:18

And it's the thing Jewish community and Israel are not the same thing, brother man.

SPEAKER_12 24:22

They're not back back in the day, we would have been yelling at Fetterman, saying, Oh, he was anti-Semitic, you know, because of him him inflating a country with the people. Now, of course, we know Israel, the country of Israel, is uh the Supposed to be the land for the Jewish people. That is uh true, but that is it is a land for Israelis. There are plenty of Jewish people in the Jewish diaspora who are not from Israel. And when you get to the nitty-gritty and talk to them, there are Jewish people who do not believe in the concept of a Jewish state. Uh they they uh I've heard some of the people on the hard liner s uh say that uh i it it is it is a bastardization of Judaism. And so you know how it gets when you get into culture or and the conflicts between people in a certain uh subgroup, and so every everybody uh could say different things, but to to address the point where he says, oh, if they turn their back on the Jewish people, things have gone bad. Well, yeah, if you turn your back on any group, things will go bad. But that does not mean that you give one group curblanch to kill another group. That's the that's the point. But um Fetterman's gotta go. Fetterman's got to go.

SPEAKER_11 25:45

Israeli settlers have been waging a campaign of terror on the West Bank now for a considerable period of time, which most of the international community views as criminal uh activity. What is your view of what is happening on the West Bank?

SPEAKER_10 26:01

The uh explosion of the population in uh the West Bank and in Gaza uh is deeply rooted in Zionist ideology.

SPEAKER_09 26:09

If you look at the current UN report on the deliberate killing of Palestinian children, they described many things of the settlers, a settlers, a group of settlers urinating the child, a group of settlers kidnapping a four and five-year-old children and sisters and hitting them to a tree. The soldiers, remember, Israel is a citizen army, the soldiers are representative of Israeli society, just like Daniel Light at one end of the spectrum, and then Morris at the other end is representative of Israeli society. It is, unfortunately, it has become a nation of child killers.

SPEAKER_12 27:15

Man, that's just uh that was um the uh Jewish uh professor, intellectual parents were Holocaust survivors, uh Norman Fickelstein uh at his best, if I should say. But like I said, uh but but for Palestine, except for Palestine here. So what has changed since the last time we talked? Uh uh a bit of uh hair over the margins, a little bit of uh tickering here, arguing over the parsley, never getting to the steak and the meat and the potatoes. But we will be here and we will be firing on all cylinders going forward because it's a big, big news uh time coming up with the midterms looming. Primaries have been uh basically set, and um we we have to we cannot bow out, we cannot tap out, we have to keep reporting, we have to keep analyzing, we have to keep holding these nutbags accountable for what they are doing, and uh I will say this you may not be able to change the world, but

Shaming The Guilty As A Mission

SPEAKER_12 28:27

you should at least know who's guilty of making it the way that it is. And and and I will say this, in the words of the late Jessica Mitford, uh Jessica Mitford said something like this I cannot change the world, but I will shame the guilty. And that is uh my role here. I cannot change the world. I will report what is going on, and I will shame the guilty. And in the meantime, we'll go to the late James Baldwin who said it like this I cannot change the world, I cannot fix society, but I can uh mess up your mind. So I I I won't try to mess up your mind, but I will try to tell you tell you what is happening. One of the things that is happening, of course, is the president lost when it came to the birthright citizenship fight, but he is not giving up. Uh, Donald Trump is going after birthright citizenship, of course, because uh Republicans for a very long time an actual American who uh whether that was by your cultural ideas, now they're trying to decide which laws make you a real American, and they've always had a problem with what they call anchor babies. Somebody comes to the United States of America from another country, they're on United States soil, they have the baby here, it has always been recognized, uh at least as long as I have been alive, so 40 plus years, that the baby born in America is an American citizen, the parents' citizenship, not so much. And uh Republicans have

Birthright Citizenship And The 14th

SPEAKER_12 30:10

historically had a problem with that and Trump because he um let's say uh is not interested in gaining more voters the old way by uh going out and appealing to them, asking them to vote, uh you giving them something to vote for. It's more of a now let's just uh kick people out of the country. Let's just say, no, no, no, no. If you're born in America, you're not a citizen. We will come up with other ways to determine citizenship. Uh you know fun stuff, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:39

Trump attacks birthright citizenship again. The FCC handles hands local TV over to billionaires. The new CDC chief wants your abortion data. Russia eyes NATO, and Republican Michigan Republicans go full racist. Good morning. This is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful. You can follow us at CommonwealthReport.news. Can Trump erase the 14th Amendment with a pen? President Trump signed two executive orders yesterday, taking another swing at birthright citizenship. Supreme Court already told him no. In June, the justices ruled six to three that his first order was unlawful and out of step with the Fourteenth Amendment. So now he's trying to side door. One order goes after what the White House calls birth tourism. The other expands the list of people whose American-born babies don't qualify, including children of foreign lobbyists. Stephen Miller wrote the playbook. Trump called the ruling a very, very unfortunate decision. Then he said the 14th Amendment was only meant for the babies of slaves. Well, that's not what it says. It says all persons born are naturalized here. When a president decides an amendment means whatever he wants, the Constitution stops being a law and becomes a suggestion.

Local News Grab And Abortion Data

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Who gets to own your local news station now? The Federal Communications Commission voted two to one yesterday to kill the national television ownership cap. For 22 years, no single company could own stations reaching more than 39% of American households. Congress wrote that limited to law. Brennan Carr erased it anyway, with Commissioner Anna Gomez casting the only no vote. She said the change just quote, changes who is doing the squeezing. Free Press is suing, calling it an unlawful power grab, because only Congress can rewrite what Congress wrote. Next star is trying to swallow Tegna or Tenga, Tegna, in a $6.2 billion deal that eight state attorneys general are fighting. Local news is the last place most Americans still trust. Handed to billionaires, friendly to the president, and you don't have journalism anymore. America will have a public address system for Trump.

SPEAKER_16 32:44

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SPEAKER_00 33:05

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SPEAKER_03 33:15

Will the CDC become abortion surveillance? The Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz to run the Centers for Disease Control on Wednesday, 51 to 54, excuse me, 51 to 44. Schwartz is a former deputy surgeon general. At her confirmation hearing, Senator Josh Hawley asked her to commit to collecting better abortion data. She answered that abortion surveillance, quote, is absolutely a critical component, end quote, of what the CDC does. Then she went further, saying she wants to make sure states aren't hiding abortions inside emergency services. The reporting program is voluntary. California, Maryland, and New Jersey don't participate. Forty-four states already require some form of reporting. A more complete national abortion database was a stated goal of Project 2025. In states with bans, that data doesn't stay data. It becomes evidence. Will the agency built to stop outbreaks be repurposed for stalking women? Russia prepares to test NATO's resolve. What? American intelligence now believes Vladimir Putin may launch a limited attack on a NATO member sometime between this fall and 2029. That's from new assessments in the Wall Street Journal. Until this year, Washington figured Russia wouldn't dare while it's bogged down in Ukraine. Well, that assumption is gone. The scenarios run from cyber attacks to unmarked armed men seizing territory, like they did with Crimea, to a small ground incursion on the eastern flank. A ground invasion is least likely because it would trigger Article V. Cyber and hybrid attacks are likelier because NATO's response there is murky. And NATO's spokesman said the alliance is, quote, ready to deter and defend as necessary. Meanwhile, American stockpiles of long-range missiles and stinger air defenses are drawn down. The point isn't taking land. It's finding out whether the alliance still means what it says. Can Republicans win Michigan by racism and hate? Michigan's Senate race is set. Democrat Abdul El Said against Republican Mike Rogers for the seat, Gary Peters, is leaving. Rogers of the National Republican Senatorial Committee came out with ads tying El Said, who is Muslim, to foreign terrorists. Dark music, darkened photos, a baseless conspiracy theory about the Muslim Brotherhood, and a closing line calling him too dangerous for Michigan. Rogers put out a statement claiming El Said believes America deserved the September 11th attacks, which is a lie. It works on some voters. Michigan Republicans just defeated a Trump-endorsed House candidate simply because his name sounded Arabic. El Saeed's answer was simple. That's the only play they got, he said. His name isn't why groceries cost too much. Polls still show Michiganders souring on Trump because the Republicans don't have policy. They are running out of fear of your neighbor. And that's the way it is today, Friday, August 7th, 2026. I'm Tom Hartman.

SPEAKER_12 36:07

Anyway, we went to the Tom Hartman for the Hartman Report from the Hartman Report. That one is just kind of the day, the Commonwealth Take or something of that nature. Excuse me. Anyway, uh I like Tom Hartman. I like a um his content. He has a shorter show, six minutes, uh five minutes, nine minutes, eleven minutes, and a big show that he does live daily, Monday through Friday, called the Hartman Report. And uh that one is about fifty uh nine minutes, uh so an hour. And uh I do like it because Tom actually um does something that people used to do, uh, and he allows you to call in and you can debate him on uh certain issues. Uh Thomas Hartman is a person you just heard, and I I think it goes back, we'll we'll talk about that

Politics Of Hate Over Policy

SPEAKER_12 37:01

last segment a bit, but what I said uh when it comes to a lot of the things that should be talked about, but what they will talk about. This guy is running to be the governor or senator or mayor or a congressman, alderman, etc. And imagine what happens is you know you're a Muslim, everybody else knows it, and it's the year 2026, and they bring up 9-11, like the person running for office had anything to do with 9-11, that the gentleman running in Michigan uh had something to do uh with a terror attack on the country that just for uh context happened when I was in the 10th or the I want to say I was in the 10th grade when it happened. I have graduated high school some 23 years ago. So that and that is basically I I like what uh what uh Hartman said there. Will it work the hatred of the neighbor, etc. And I and I and I will say this, I don't know, because I'm not a person of uh faith when it comes to the country in in that way. I'm not uh uh I've been around long enough to know hate is a nice reason that a lot of Americans get out of bed. Uh they hate their neighbors, they don't just dislike them, they hate them. They don't they hate them so much they don't want them to be in the country. Uh uh and uh it's a long conversation to have. They'll pretend like, oh, we love our family and we love our children. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nobody's worried about your family, and nobody's worried about your children. You just don't like your neighbors, and you try the the the you have rationalized you're not liking it your neighbors into all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't like them. They believe in this and that, uh, they don't believe in this, and it's uh you know, if you're on the left, it's one thing, if you're on the right, it's another thing. If you're on the left, it's you don't like them because they're racist, sexist, bigoted homophobes, even though you probably never talk to those people that don't know anything about them. Uh and on the right, we talked about the communist, socialist, cultural Marxists uh coming and stealing your children. And of course, the way American politics has gotten so diluted into crazy town, now we throw out a nice term for everybody we disagree with. They are now all pedophiles. And meanwhile, nothing gets done. Nothing gets done. We're gonna do a blast on intellectual pass, and then we will see you on the next episode. Don't want the episode to run very long, but anyway, thank you for tuning in, and I'll see you on the next one.

SPEAKER_14 40:23

And one of the things that you didn't vote is women, it's nothing that's a lot of people. My sense of being an intellectual first comes out of being nurtured by black women in black institutions that charge the school. We have something to learn from many voiceless black women. Love is a combination of care, knowledge, responsibility, commitment, and trust. Because one of the things that's happened in our culture is we equate love primarily with care. And that's why

bell hooks On Love And Truth

SPEAKER_14 41:18

we can say parents who brutally beat their kids but who still love them. Because I look at my own childhood and I say in the book again and again, my parents cared for my me deeply. But they also wounded me in ways that were violating, uh, wounded my spirit. And I think that I would be a different person today had they not given me care. Because I've met lots of adults who didn't get care, but I did not feel loved. First book, all about love, one of the ideas that was really hard for people to accept was that um if somebody is abusing you, they're not loving you. I mean, you would think that would be a basic understanding most of us would have. But in fact, so many of us have been wounded in some way in our childhoods that we really need to cling to the idea that if someone hurts you, they can also be loving you. And I tried to make a big distinction in that book between care and love. That like saying that my parents cared for me deeply, and care is important. A lot of children don't receive any care. But it's it's only one ingredient of love. It's not love. First, I read Patriarchal Men, whose work I love. And why how is it that they can live without reading our work, without wanting to hear our voices, even if it's just to be nosy, to wonder what those people are thinking. I mean, I read, I I live in the Bible belt, and I read lots of evangelical literature, and someone said to me, Well, why do you bother? And I said, Well, I like to know what millions of people are thinking. You know, part of the construction of dominator privilege is you don't have to think about what are those other people thinking, feeling, hoping, dreaming. But often white people will meet a black person who completely challenges every racial stereotype that they've ever had. Rather than giving up the stereotype, they create a special category for that person and say, Well, you're you're not like other black people, or instead of saying, my ideas of black people were too narrow or too and and I think that's the tragedy of any kind of prejudicial thinking that when we confront any the circumstance that tells us it's not so, we frequently don't enlarge our sense of things. We we actually come up with new ways to protect and defend that way of thinking.

SPEAKER_07 43:46

In 2015, Bell Hooks opened the Bell Hooks Institute in Brea, Kentucky, and she invited me to be the first guest at the Bell Hooks Institute. And there were many people in her life who said that they could not attend that opening of her institute because I would be there and that liver clock was an abomination. Oh, yeah. And Bell Hooks caught me off the opening of her institute anyway. Um, that moment was a reminder for her and for all of us that when we stand for justice, sometimes we have to let go of people, places, and things in our lives that do not serve a stand up. That do not serve us standing in solidarity with each other across difference.

SPEAKER_14 44:39

I wrote out a little postcard saying, you know, love is a combination of six ingredients care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust. And so if you don't know what you're doing, just pull out that little card and ask yourself in what way does my action that I'm taking reflect these traits, these characteristics, these values, if you will. And so then I think again, the question of love is the question of what to do.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

The first thing I would suggest, practically, if you get bell hooks, not all about love, because the girls have worn that book out. They have worn that book out, and all of you are reading Bell Hooks all about love and you're still moving like idiots, still. I don't know if you just if you just licked the cover um or just opened it and then flipped over to the back page. I don't know what you did, but I don't know if the message is really resonating. I think that some of you need to read that book again, maybe seven more times.

SPEAKER_14 45:44

I think people are hungry for descent. I think people are hungry for provocative voices that go to the bottom. Because people want to answer to the things that they are. In my system I'm really hungry. And I'm hungry. I think it's something that you're doing I feel that I feel within my own self and with other people. Is is that hunger for truth and for ways to live my life more fully in a manner that's more fulfilling.

SPEAKER_12 46:26

Anyway, um so that voice was the voice of the late and I would argue great uh Dr. Bell Hooks. Um there's a lot of uh I I don't use the words like hero and things like that quite often. But Nohooks was definitely one of my heroes. Gone way too young in my opinion. Died died in 2021 in December 15th, actually. And um I always think sometimes when it gets to the love bit of my life um what we would know hook say how would she get with this argument uh how would she rip through the noise and do it in a very loving uh way that which which she would uh often do um which she as she often did um if you're gonna read some work about um dominator culture if you're gonna read some feminist theory and you want to have a black uh person from the South's perspective a female uh if you want to read about a lot of things about teaching to transgress etc uh hooks would be the person to go to if you're not a reader because she was an academic for so long um there is a plethora of things you can go to on YouTube and watch her and her brilliance for free at any rate uh melancholy enough on a daily basis without um reflecting uh on the life and legacy of the late doctor Bill Hooks or G Watkins the real name um but uh at any rate uh thank you for tuning in and we'll see you on the next episode of the Darome McLean show any questions you got uh don't don't be shy I am on social media I do not uh engage as much as I used to with the audience but I do uh read the questions and I do answer them. Uh thank you for tuning in and I'll see you on the next episode.

SPEAKER_13 49:16

I wake up with a promise on my tongue saying Lord today I'm gonna be the one but the pressure creeps is for again and I fall back where I swiding spoken my tongues but I feel your light even when I choose the other side I hear your voice acquiring

Closing Thoughts And Listener Questions

SPEAKER_13 49:50

birthday to five stays on stay still staying