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Gaslit Nation Transcript 20 January 2021 “Moral Courage” https://www.patreon.com/posts/moral-courage-46434081 Martin Luther Jr.: Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will, and he has allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land. Martin Luther Jr.: I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord. Joe Biden: 12 years ago, I was waiting at the train station in Wilmington for a Black man to pick me up on our way to Washington, where we were sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States of America. And here we are today, my family and I, about to return to Washington to meet a Black woman of South Asian descent to be sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States. Sarah Kendzior: I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best selling books; The View From Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight. Andrea Chalupa: I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones. Sarah Kendzior: And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump administration and rising autocracy around the world, and I'm very excited that this is maybe the last week I will ever have to say “corruption in the Trump administration”, because we are on the precipice of the inauguration. Andrea, I think you had some announcements about various things. Andrea Chalupa: Yes. This is the Gaslit Nation Inaugural Ball where we're celebrating. To honor what comes next for all of us, every day in America and the world—because he inspired the world—should be Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That is why we put him at the very top of the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, which you can find at gaslitnationpod.com. We urge everyone to read King's memoir, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, as a guide to overcoming the violence and greed of white supremacy and authoritarianism. Andrea Chalupa: Now, a very quick announcement, on January the 27th, in the evening, Eastern time in the US, I will be giving a talk on the researching and writing of Mr. Jones, my screenplay and film that I produced about Stalin's little known genocide famine that killed millions of people, the vast majority Ukrainian. My grandfather's family survived. I am doing a talk about that with one of our historical advisors, Marta Baziuk of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium. She also helped with the research for Pulitzer Prize winning historian and Applebaum's must read book, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, which cites my grandfather's testimony to the US Congress about surviving Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. Andrea Chalupa: If you want to learn more about this little known genocide, it's lessons for us today on how government mass murder can be carried out with plausible deniability, and how history and art are healing and the process of mining our own history for art. Join us for this discussion Wednesday, January 27. We'll share the link on the Gaslit Nation Twitter and on the top of the show notes for this week's episode. Andrea Chalupa: Remember, you can access our show notes for free on Patreon, for this week's and every week's episode. You can access that where we publish each episode on Patreon, just find it there. Again, this is for free. You don't have to be a subscriber on Patreon to get our show notes. Now, kicking it to Sarah. Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, by the time that you hear this episode, it will be less than a day before Trump is removed from office, and this is a removal that we were pushing for and have wanted for a long time. But it's not coming in a moment of celebration or joy or exuberance, it's coming in a moment of trauma. This country is still reeling from the trauma of the Capitol attack on January 6th, and the degree to which it was carefully orchestrated from above with a great deal of internal complicity, and a great deal of external complacency that has led to our representatives nearly being killed on live television. Sarah Kendzior: No one should underestimate the trauma of this moment. This was a domestic terrorist attack that is still not fully being treated as one, and all attempts to normalize it just contribute further to the trauma. We have had many predecessors to this, in particular the pandemic. When COVID appeared and the Trump administration let over 400,000 Americans die, our officials and pundits began the process of normalizing mass death, not necessarily out of malice, but out of response to inaction. Sarah Kendzior: Numbers that used to shock us—like when the number of COVID victims surpassed the number of people who were murdered on 9/11—are now the numbers we see every day. The next step after the normalization of mass death is the normalization of mass murder. That is what they were after and that is what they still seek. If there is any lesson to be taken from this, it is to always treat human life as sacrosanct, and to take immediate action to remove those who treat human beings as disposable, to remove those people from power, because this threat was always clear. Andrea Chalupa: Now, the crime revisited. As we covered in a recent bonus episode, Donald Trump leaves office as the first president to be impeached twice. His second impeachment goes down in history as the most bipartisan impeachment. Here is Republican Representative from Washington State Jaime Herrera Buetler standing on the right side of history, far away from the majority of her Republican colleagues in the house. Speaker 5: The gentlewoman from Washington is recognized for one minute. Jaime Herrera Buetler: My fellow Americans, I rise today to stand against our enemy, and to clarify our enemy isn't the president or the president elect; fear is our enemy. Fear tells us what we want to hear. It incites anger and violence and fire, but it also haunts us into silence and inaction. What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of what people will say or think, I'm afraid of being devalued. I'm not afraid of losing my job, but I am afraid that my country will fail. I'm afraid patriots of this country have died in vain. I'm afraid my children won't grow up in a free country. I'm afraid injustice will prevail. Jaime Herrera Buetler: But truth...Truth sets us free from fear. Truth doesn't guarantee bad things won't happen, but it does promise to always prevail in the end. It has no shadows where darkness can hide. With truth comes love, and we could use that right now. My vote to impeach our sitting president is not a fear based decision. I am not choosing a side, I'm choosing truth. It's the only way to defeat fear. Andrea Chalupa: Giving us a summary of recent events and what they mean for the republic, here's Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who fought to protect our republic after just losing his son, Thomas Bloom Raskin—a passionate idealist who fought for human rights and animal welfare—to suicide. Jaime Raskin: Smashing windows and beating police officers over the head with fire extinguishers, a bloodthirsty mob attacked the Capitol and invaded this Congress last Wednesday. They erected a gallows and repeatedly chanted, "Hang Mike Pence." They stormed Speaker Pelosi's office yelling, "Where's Nancy?" They brandished the Confederate battle flag and occupied the Senate chamber. They wounded dozens of people, hospitalizing dozens of people, killed five of our people. Jaime Raskin: For six hours, they shut down the counting of electoral college votes, our sacred process under the constitution for peaceful transfer of power in the United States. They may have been hunting for Pence and Pelosi to stage their coup, but every one of us in this room right now could have died. As Senator Lindsey Graham said, “The mob could have blown the building up, they could have killed us all.” Jaime Raskin: Now, the far-right is calling for return engagement from January 17th to January 20th. They're asking the president to pardon the conspirators in last week's rampage as they prepare for a race war again next week. It's a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren't so mean to them. Well, despite the floor leader’s desperate effort to polarize this body and this nation along party lines, it is the chair of the Republican Conference who best articulated what happened in a statement yesterday, and I recommend every American read this.