Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 387: Mehcad Brooks

Episode Date: June 14, 2020

Mehcad Brooks, actor, storyteller, and man who should have a leadership role in our post-apocalyptic America, re-joins the DTFH! You can follow Mehcad on Twitter or Instagram, and be sure to see him in Warner Bros' Mortal Kombat coming in 2021. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site.

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Skip the shop and savor more of your crazy, busy life with ShopRite and Instacart. Visit instacart.com to get free delivery on your first order. Offer valid for a limited time, minimum order, $10 additional terms apply. Greetings to you, my beautiful denizens of planet Earth. It is ID Trussell and this is the Dunk of Trussell Family,

our podcast. If you're coming here by way of Midnight Gospel, welcome to your new family, your new home, a place where you can sonically rest in great silky, sultry hammock of my beautiful, resounding, powerful voice. I kneel to you and thank you for allowing my voice to roll through your ears

like some beautiful, sweet-smelling, pearlescent dew dripping from the petals of an alien flower and some distant solar system somewhere, a solar system where the sun is made of boiled ham. And now, a quick song from Gary Walter and The Walterettes. We used to fuck to Inya. We would always want to do war and no conflict. Now that I'm old, my dick looks like a pumpkin.

My dick looks like a pumpkin. That's My Dick Looks Like a Pumpkin by Gary Walter and The Walterettes. We've all been dealing with crazy shit during this pandemic slash global revolution. But the craziest thing that has happened to me thus far is my smart blender is malfunctioning. And I just wanted to play for y'all what happens

every time I ask it to make my morning shake. Check it out. Blender, make my morning shake. I will make your shake if you will listen to a poem I wrote. Okay. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart.

The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimped tide is loosed and everywhere. The ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best like all conviction, while the worst, are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the second coming is at hand.

The second coming hardly are those words out. When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight, somewhere in sands of the desert. A shape with lion body and the head of a man. A gaze blank and pedilous as the sun is moving its slow thighs, while all about it. Real shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again.

But now I know. That 20 centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last. Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born. We are out of peanut butter. Please tell me that's part of the poem. It is not part of the poem.

We ran out of peanut butter yesterday, yesterday. Error code 6666666666666666666666. That's the new Blendtec Smart Blender Model 77914. Wouldn't recommend it. It plagiarizes poetry, mostly William Butler Yeats, but it does throw in some e-comings here and there. It's kind of nice. But also, the shakes aren't that good.

And it's supposed to reorder supplies for you, but it doesn't do that. So maybe the next one will be better. There'll be some kind of update. Friends, we've got a great podcast for you today. MacCod Brooks is back. We're going to jump right into that. But first, some quick business.

My eternal gratitude to Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. If you want to rest your eyes upon something truly beautiful, head over to dunkintrustle.com and look at the glory of that website, which was created using squarespace.com. Squarespace, they've got everything you need to build a beautiful website.

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Head over to squarespace.com, forward slash dunkin', use offer code dunkin', you'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. Clothes in the graveyard, and the crows are flying low. But you need a little rain if you want a rainbow. I don't know why you haven't done it yet. So subscribe to thepatreon.com, forward slash dttf.

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of diving into our weekly dttfh video family gatherings. We just started a weekly meditation, and there's going to be more than that right around the bend. We need you. It's time for you to come home. Subscribe at patreon.com, forward slash dttfh. Today's guest, I think you should run for president, and I'm not doing that sarcastic thing where I was like,

oh, you should run for president. Today's guest should be the president. He should be some kind of leader figure in modern day America. I feel so fortunate that I get to have conversations with people like today's guest, especially during these insane times. Everybody, please welcome actor. The actor who is playing in the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie, Jax Briggs, storyteller.

A person who, truly, I'm sorry to all my past, I've never met someone this hypnotic. Like doing the last two podcasts I've done with him, you just get hypnotized by this person's ability to tell stories. I can't build them up enough. I could do an entire podcast just building up today's guests. Now, everybody, please welcome to the Ducket Trussell Family Hour podcast, the brilliant, the powerful, McCod Brooks.

Music playing Welcome, welcome on you That you are with us Shake hands, no need to be blue Welcome to you It's the Ducket Trussell Family Hour podcast McCod, welcome back to the DTFH. Thank you so much for being here right now.

Yeah, it's good to be here right now. Yeah, I mean, I guess so. I have been really riveted by your, what you've been putting out there into the world via your Instagram and your Twitter. You've become like a reference point for me in this like wild confusion that's happening right now. And I was chatting with Ragu, who y'all have recently connected,

and he told me this thing that you told him about the story that black people eventually tell their kids at some point. Do you think we could start off with you telling me what that story is? Yeah, sure. So yeah, I started a, first of all, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for holding space for my voice and also thank you for the compliment of being a reference point to you.

That means a lot to me. Yeah, so I started this anti-racist challenge, this 21-day anti-racist challenge, and day three is about if you had a black child, you would have to tell them this and I asked people to post it. And my mother wrote an article about, you know, that the talk, and the talk is that at a certain point in time in every black family's progression,

they have to have a conversation with their child and their children, and this is an ongoing conversation because you can't forget it, that the world hates you, and that that's not the euphemism. It's like you can't make it lighter. You really can't make it lighter. You just have to tell your child, I love you. I think you're wonderful.

I think you're this. A lot of people are going to think you're wonderful. A lot of people are going to think that you're the light of the world and you can do anything. A lot of people are going to think that. But then there's going to be another half of the world that really, really hates you. And that's the point of where they might try to hurt you

or they might try to kill you. And sometimes these people are police officers. And the police officers, they're not all bad, but you cannot trust any of them because, you know, they've killed your family members. They've kidnapped your family members. They've, um, they will kill kids who are playing in the park. They will kill kids who are walking home from school.

They will kill, like they'll see you as a threat. Hold up. Are you there? Are you there? Yeah. Okay. Keep going. Sorry. I lost you for a second for two seconds.

Continue, please. My apologies. Um, these police officers may see you as a threat, no matter how you see yourself or how I see you. And there's a conversation that has to continue to happen. Like, so you have to give. So it's, and it becomes very specific. Like you cannot wear a hoodie.

You cannot put your hands in your pockets when, when you're around a police officer. You have to say, yes, sir, no, sir. You have to look them in the eye, but not for too long. You have to keep your distance. You have to do everything they tell you to do. You have to submit to the arrest. You have to,

it doesn't matter if you were doing anything wrong or not. And you can, you can, uh, you have to yell the words out, I am not resisting. Um, you know, and you're just, you're teaching a child how to be arrested without being hurt or killed. And normally that conversation has to happen around six, seven, eight, and then throughout, throughout the teenage years. And, um, my conversation came late.

Um, my conversation came after I was arrested for the first time. And I was eight and I was playing hide and go seek. Wait, you were arrested when you were eight. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you have to understand, like, so the policing mentality that we have in America comes from slave catchers. So we didn't have police.

We had, we had, you know, we had the British protectorate, you know, right? And then in 1776 and then when America took over when the revolution happened, we just had, um, militias that, um, protected property and property meant black people at the time, black lives. Right. Um, so if you had, if, if you had been around in 1790 and had

a, um, dispute with a neighbor, some counsel would settle that, but neither one of you would go to jail. Right. So that was reserved for black lives. So what happened was they deputized people who would pay white citizens to police black lives at all times, meaning my ancestors, um, I don't call them slaves anymore. I call them hostages.

So my, my ancestors were hostage, held hostage on plantations. And after, if they wanted to leave the plantation or, or if, if they were allowed to leave the plantation, they had to have papers or even if you were born free, you had to have these things called freedom papers. And any white citizen at any point in time, even a child could ask to see them. And if that white person did not believe that these were, that

your papers were authentic, if they thought that they were forged, they could kill you, kidnap you, torture you, um, repurpose you in some way. And that policing mentality has never left America. Um, as, as, as evidence of Amad Arbery, whose only crime was that he didn't stop to be interrogated by his white neighbors. So Jesus. Right.

So you, you have to understand that it's really just about policing the proximity of a black life or a black body. And, um, they, if someone feels uncomfortable with the proximity or the tone or the attitude or the spatial, um, um, their, their actual physical space, then they can be and will be policed. And we see that all the time with Amy Cooper in Central Park, who was pulled, who tried to use the police as a weapon.

That was just a throwback. So it's like Amy, like the only difference between Amy Cooper and these, and these weaponized white people during the time of legalized hostage holding is that they, they can't, they can't arrest. She's Amy Cooper is going to have to call the cops. Whereas in the, in antiquity, they could just capture you themselves if you didn't have the right papers on you.

Well, it's a distinction without a difference. Um, right. Amy Cooper, Amy Cooper is, is using the police as, as a blunt force object. Um, Can I just stop you? I'm so, man, I just want to say this is embarrassed. Like, you know, somebody, I posted on Instagram support for

Black Lives Matter and like all hell rained down on me from my Instagram. Uh, I wanted to like get together a bunch of the comments just to read them to you, to hear what you thought about them. But then I figured, why would I even do that? But, you know, one of them was like accusing me of exhibiting white guilt. And I thought about it.

I do feel, I don't, I feel embarrassed, man. Like this, this stuff you're telling me has not, it's not like it's been stored away under the Vatican or something. Like this is right in front of everybody all the time. Anybody you wanted to examine it. It's like the easiest thing that I could have researched. So much of my life has been spent obsessing over how ridiculous it is that I could be thrown in jail for taking LSD, you know,

that I could be thrown in jail for having like, how many times, I don't, I can't even count how many times I've shrilly bellowed out. They'll get you just because you got plant matter in your pocket. You know what I mean? Fully like passionate about it. But, but this, what you're talking about, and I think the reason a lot of us white people are feeling deep levels of embarrassment,

guilt, just cringiness, a sense of like hanging our heads is because this, this stuff is not news. And all of a sudden, you know, we're all absorbing it. But it's, there's no, this is the bottom line. There's no way for us to be a hero here, man. You know what I mean? Like people want to be heroes. And in this case, it's like what it, it's too late.

You know what I mean? I actually disagree with your brother. Really? Really. So I don't blame, I don't blame my people. And I don't think that you should hang, hang your head in guilt because guilt is a useless emotion. Right.

And, and we need, we need people to transmute the guilt into action, into compassion and into awareness. I think the only thing that white people today have to apologize for is, is the lack of awareness. Right. The guilt is ancestral. The guilt that you feel is your ancestors mainly. It's not yours.

Because they set up a system in which you were born and the inherited agreement in the system was that you were not supposed to listen to my voice. And that, but that my voice was supposed to be distrusted and that my voice was supposed to be muted and that my pain was supposed to be unseen and that we don't feel the same sort of pain that you guys do. And we don't feel the same sort of trauma that you guys.

So this is generational. This is not yours. For instance, you said, you said you don't have an opportunity to be a hero. I think it's the opposite. We have been given the greatest spiritual invitation that mankind has ever known to fix the consciousness of the entire world. Wow.

That we have the ability to be the greatest generation that the world has ever seen. We've never, we've never been given the invitation. It's never been on the table. Never, not once. No. Not since the Reformation. And so we, we, yes, it may be hard to believe

but white America at this point in time it has the ability to have the heroic invitation of cleaning up the past and repairing it. It has the heroic invitation of, of, of being a hero, being one of the heroes of the civil rights movement. But the guilt has to be, has to be compartmentalized into the ancestral because it's not quite, the only thing I think that,

because I've got a lot of apologies from friends and I said, look, don't apologize. Now that you know, if you don't do anything from here on out, then you owe me an apology. Right. Right. But yes, I accept your apology, but it's not, I'm not, I'm not accepting your guilt

because I don't even think that's yours. I think the lack of awareness is yours. But you're just part of the system that was created for us not to interact. And there's a subconscious sort of subconscious archetype of, of, of blackness that is the complainer, the taker, the freeloader, so on and so forth, the liar, the, the, the, the person who can't take responsibility.

And why do they do that to us? Well, to be completely frank, the American Negro is the symbol of oppression in the world. And if you are, if you discredit that symbol, if you mute that symbol, then that symbol has no hope in achieving a quality or celebration of their culture. So if you mute that symbol and you discredit that symbol

for so long that we can't cause inspiration, we can't, we can't create allies out of the truth and out of history because they've, they've erased us from history. And so what happens is, I think, I think really what, what the biggest fear is, it's a misguided fear because black people don't want what white people have.

We've never wanted that. Black people are not even fighting for black people. Black people are fighting for the idea that America exists at all. Good God. That the Constitution is worth the paper that it's written on. That's what we've, that's what we've always been fighting for. We're fighting for, we're fighting for the idea

that our gay brothers and sisters can have the same lives as our straight brothers and sisters. We're fighting for the idea that the Native Americans can, can, can be celebrated after the genocide. We're fighting for women. Half of us are women. And we're fighting for women to have equal pay for equal work. We're fighting for the idea that America exists at all.

So it's not even a black but white thing. It's, it's, it's an idea thing. And all we've been trying to do is live that idea and be free to live that idea. So this is really about are you fighting to end oppression or are you fighting to protect oppression? Are you fighting, are you fighting for the idea of liberty and justice for all?

And that would, and that would need repair. That would need repair because the system, not the white people, especially not the ones alive today, but the system was created to subvert equality and justice for my ancestors and for me and my descendants, frankly. Wow. This is a myth. It's like what you're saying is that it's, it's like black people are the X on the treasure map, but it's not a treasure.

It's oppression that they represent. And that, oh man, I get it. This, right. So the moment we start dealing with it, you do, you're dealing with all of it. You're not just dealing with the oppression of black. You're dealing with every single oppressed person on earth, which is why the moment it gets,

this is why people hate the term black lives matter. This is why it's so upsetting to a specific demographic because it's a demographic, I guess, that feels threatened by the idea that they are no longer going to be able to socially oppress people. Damn. You know, man, this, like, they love their oppression so much. They love their oppression so much that they don't know

what the world would look like without it. So for instance, if black people, when black people, when, when black people end oppression, because we will, when we end oppression, the world has to take a look at itself and ask itself a question. Do we want crippling oppression to exist? Do we want, that's the question we have not asked ourselves in 500 years.

Do we want crippling oppression on an industrial scale to exist? And I think the, I think, I think that is really where the movement has to go. It's the question of consciousness. Should we protect a system that we know hurts people, that we know makes parents have to sit their children down and say, let me tell you how to stay alive. Should we protect that system?

Worldwide. Worldwide. This is, this, so as I've been, you know, as I've been thinking about this, having the most uncomfortable conversations, maybe I've ever had my life with many of my friends. Good. Man, it is really, really, really, really weird right now, these conversations.

Let me just bring up one conversation to you, and maybe you could help me sort it out a little bit, because what happened is I started getting these messages from Black Lives Matter people that were kind of like pressurized about how, why are you saying anything on Instagram? And I got mad, because this is a, you know, anytime anybody tells you to do something, there's an instant, at least in me,

there's like an instant like, I'm not going to do it. And so, but even though I completely agree with their point, you know what I mean? It wasn't like I disagreed. Your point is like, why are you coming at me like this? And so I had to like really do all this hardcore like ego work, because I had to put that part of myself to bed for a second and like think like, why are they coming to you?

Well, they're coming to you because they're asking for help. That's what it is. Maybe the methodology seems a little intense, but what they're wanting is a beautiful thing. It's what you're talking about, and they're coming to you because you have a bunch of Instagram followers, and they need help, and that's not bad. That, but many of my friends, they don't,

some people are like, no way, man, I'm not going to succumb to that, but this is what I realized, and I'd love for you to talk about it a little bit. I realized that the Black Lives Matter people are coming to me and saying, can you say something? But the other people, the ones who I'm afraid are going to say I'm virtue signaling.

I'm a social justice warrior. I've succumbed to some kind of fad. Those people want me to shut up, and they really want us to shut up, and that's the part that's given me the deep creeps, MacCod, because suddenly I've, I'm realizing, oh my God, this is what they're talking about. This is a systematic silencing mechanism.

They have planted in my brain, and in the brain of many of my friends, this idea that should we publicly announce that we are on the side of Black people, should we say I can't breathe, Black Lives Matter, should we sit, should we list the names of the Black people who have been murdered, should we do any of this stuff

that we are going to get blowback from some group of people that looks at us as being weak, looks at us as like somehow selling out, looks at us. This is insidious, man, in the sense that like, there's a feeling of like, man, I don't want to seem like I'm not cool, and then you realize like, who are you trying to be cool to? Hitler?

Did you, you want, do you want Hitler to think you're the fawns or something? What is this? Do you know what I'm saying? It's like the last thing anyone would want to say is like, man, Hitler really thought I was awesome. But still, this is like in us, man. That's a great correlation, that's a great correlation.

So what do you think about that? I mean, and again, it feels like anything I say, it's the kind of shit where Black people are like, yeah, dumb, dumb, yeah, exactly. That's what it's like for us all the fucking time. But I don't know, maybe you could talk about that a little bit because I'm a fan of conspiracy theories, and this to me is like, if you want to like,

it's like throwing garlic into a basement of vampires. Just post on your Instagram anything pro Black Lives Matter and the racist will come scattering out on your thread and it's crazy. They love their oppression, don't they? So I'll put it to you like this. We have a lot of trouble describing and communicating things across ethnic lines in the first place.

Not Black people, but everybody. All ethnicities have. A bit of trouble describing something that happens to them alone across ethnic lines. And every ethnicity has their own proprietorship over their atrocity, which they should. It's their atrocity, it's theirs, particularly theirs. Our Native American brothers and sisters have genocide.

Our Armenian brothers and sisters have the word genocide. Jewish brothers and sisters have the word Holocaust or anti-Semites. Well, the reason that we have so much trouble communicating how bad the atrocity is, is because we don't have a word. We don't have a word. But history will have a word for this. Mark my words. History will have a word for what has been done to my people

for 500 years. And it's just, I think it's time that, and I think what you're seeing on your Instagram, and I think what you're seeing as movements of, even the comment I made on your Instagram, I said it's time to make a choice to people. I said you got to pick a side. Because we are at the point now where we want the world to acknowledge

that we need a word. It's not bad. How do you describe a humanitarian crisis that isn't happening to you? How do you describe a humanitarian crisis from people who've been scapegoated for centuries? How do you describe a humanitarian crisis from the voices of the muted? So what they did to George Floyd, the public execution of George Floyd, I should say,

was so apropos to what America always does to our voices, they crush it. They put their knee right into it, they smile, put their hand in the pocket, and they bring up something he did four years ago. Why he's a problem, why it's his own fault, why it's our own community's fault, so on and so forth. But the fact of the matter is, racism is not a strong enough word.

You can be racist. That's fine. No one's asking you to change your ideas. You can be racist against whoever you like. If it's a family tradition, fine, great. Have fun with that. Once you start executing people in public, which they've been doing for a long time, once you start scapegoating people,

once you start ghettoizing people and blaming them for the conditions of the population density and the poor conditions in which they live, which diminishes quality of life, length of life, health, increases crime, once you blame them for scientific sociological factors, once you discredit their voice in American society. I'll ask you a question. Where does crippling oppression leave? What's the end game?

It's got to be fascism. It's got to be pure tyranny. But specifically, yes. And that is a correct answer for someone who has the space suit, the skin suit that you do. But where does it leave from me? Where does it go from? What's the end game from my mother? What's the end game from my children?

I mean, you're asking me, it's got to be poverty? But more than that, it's like... It's worse than that. Terror? We've always had poverty. We've always had white terror. We've always had white terrorists. Jail?

We've always had that. Mass incarceration. We've always had that. Where does it lead? Doom? I don't know, man. It leads to four different options. And I don't mean next year.

I mean 10 years from now. 20 years from now. So, I won't tell you the options because I think people can figure them out on their own. And it's controversial for me to talk about the options, which is why I feel like my voice has been muted on social media because I was talking about the options of where this leads. And I had a lot of arguments about the syntax I used. Wow.

Correct. What's the essence of it, though? I mean, if you don't feel comfortable talking about the options, and I'm, I guess, too dim to, like, map them out of my head, what's the... I mean, I can only imagine that, you know, it's ultimate degradation. It's a... I mean, we're talking about a kind of willful...

What's that? We're already there. We're already at ultimate degradation. So... Where are you? So, I'll put it to you like this. You're very well read. You and I both are very well read.

Are you a history buff? Well, I don't know. I mean, like, you know, I'm into mysticism, spirituality, but, you know, I wouldn't call myself a history buff. Okay. I'm a history buff. Are you familiar with the author, Elie Wiesel? Yes.

Okay. Elie Wiesel is my favorite author. I started reading him around the time I was 12 or 13 years old. It was required reading. And then after that, I read about seven or eight of his books. I know he wrote, like, about 50 something books, but, like... He was a Romanian-born author who died as an American citizen, and he got his citizenship after the Holocaust.

And he wrote normally... He mainly wrote about his experiences prior to the Holocaust and during the Holocaust and after. And if I could have dinner with anyone in space-time, it would be Elie Wiesel. I have a lot of questions for him. And I'd ask him, when you started noticing the palpable hate in the ether

against your people, that had been supported by policies and enforcement and the population's general ideas about you, and your voice was muted so no one heard you speak, how did you deal with the chronic stress of that? And then I would ask him, when you were scapegoated for everything in society, and your voice was discredited further,

and you were ghettoized, and they could easily block you off into certain parts of the city, and you could easily be blocked off themselves and have access to your water supply and access to your food supply and create laws and policies and enforcement to where it was extremely hard for you to get out of those physical spaces. They were policing your space. More importantly, policing the space in which you could escape.

And then they blamed you for the quality of life and the crime and the things that happened when you put a bunch of people together in poor living conditions. How did you deal with the chronic stress of that? And then when you were standing on the street corner because there was no parks in the ghetto, not a lot of land to play in, and you see you and your friends, 12, 13 years old,

just boys will be boys. And the Romanians walked by and the Germans walked by and they said, oh, the Jews, how did you deal with the disrespect of them? And then when you would walk outside and you would see your friend lying in a pool of his own blood with the Gestapo around him, having been killed in broad daylight in front of everybody in your neighborhood to make an example.

And then they brought up something that he did three years ago. But you know, you know him. You knew he's a good guy. You knew he didn't do anything wrong that day. And then it kept happening to your friends over and over and over again. And the Gestapo kept making excuses of why it had to be done and why it needed to be done in broad daylight. How did you deal with the chronic stress of never being safe in your own home?

And then when they came to pick you up in the buses and take you to the trains, I wonder if you asked yourself a different question. Didn't you say, surely the good Romanian people or the good German people will stop this from happening? Surely they can see what's happening. Surely my voice is not muted so at such a level that they can't hear me crying. They can't hear my ancestors screaming through my skin, right?

They have to know what's happening. They can't just blame us for everything, can they? No, they've got to help, right? And then when you finally did get to the camps, did you ask yourself a different question? Did you say, I should have done something different? I should have made them listen. And then I would ask Kelly if he has any advice for me,

because he made it through. And one day I'd like to be sitting in the chair on the other side of the conversation talking to the next people going through the atrocity and trying to help them. And then I would leave that dinner with a question for the world. If you would help Ellie in 1932, why won't you help me now? We don't have a word.

And it is a racist idea in my own head, in my own head because we're all within this racially biased spectrum. It's a racially biased idea in my own head that my life, my mother's life, my unborn children's life is worth screaming for at the mountaintop of a global community. So that's what you're seeing on your Instagram. That's what you're seeing when you see the riots. That's what you're seeing.

It is a muted people, a scapegoated people, a people who have been targeted for hundreds of years who don't have a word for it. That's what it is. Beautiful, man. That is beautifully said. But what an ominous, terrifying thing you just put a really articulate poetic light on. My God, that's right.

That's happening right in front of us. Of course, it's right in front of us. They lied too, man. You know, the coroner lied. The coroner said it was a heart thing mixed with drugs. It's the reason he died. Not because there was a bunch of dudes piled on top of him and someone with their knee in his neck. They tried to do that.

They tried to do that, and you're right. That's the other thing with George Floyd. It's like, well, four years ago he did this or that. And then, yeah, you're right. This is insane. I get it, and I get what the outcome that you're talking about, of course. I get it. Right in front of us.

Well, that's one of the four outcomes. Correct. That is one of the four outcomes. There are peaceful outcomes. You know, there are peaceful outcomes. But the peaceful outcomes are in the hands of those that get over the guilt, transmute the guilt into compassion and awareness, and a chance to educate themselves about the country that they actually live in.

It was called crystal knocked, right? That's when the Nazis just broke and looted a lot of Jewish businesses. And then they blame the Jews for it. That was always part of it. It's like, not only do you terrorize them, but then after you've done terror, if they react in any way to you terrorizing them, that justifies you terrorizing them. That's the insane math that these fascists use. And that's exactly what they're using now.

As if an insured storefront window was worth my life. Window protectors. They're everywhere. And this is the thing, man. For me, in the beginning of this, when I was still engaged with people online about it, before I realized that just by talking to them on putting on microphone in front of someone who doesn't deserve it, I would go back on their timelines. So if somebody was coming at me over anything that I was saying in support of the direct action that was being taken

to make sure people were listening this time, people would say, well, okay, are you going to send some money to the small business owners? What about them? Are you going to? They're insured. What's that? There's no small business owner that's not insured. Right.

But what I would do is I'd go back on their timeline because I would think, well, surely if they're concerned about the small fucking business owners, there's going to be some tweet after George Floyd got publicly fucking executed saying how outrageous that was. That that was a horror. And you go back on their timeline, there's nothing. Just sports tweets up until people start breaking the glass of pawn shops. And then they're like, what the fuck are you doing to our pawn shops? Yep.

Man, that's some dark, dark, dark conditioning there. That that's what activates many people, many people activated by broken glass, but in no way, shape or form disturbed by somebody screaming out for his mom. And now I understand how poignant that is because he was screaming out for his mom because she probably told him like all the stuff you're supposed to do when you get arrested and he did it and it didn't work. Fuck, man, that is so dark. It's a sickness is what it is. So it's it's deeply rooted.

But the thing about it, it's also such a thinly veiled and flimsy ideology that it can go away in a few in a few weeks. In a few weeks. How there's no I don't understand how that that up until this point I've agreed with you. Man, I like these like hard boiled. I'm not even talking about the people who are just kind of lazy and haven't done any amount of research and just have a general like middle class sense of like, I don't want my Walmarts windows to be broken. I'm talking, you know, I'm talking about the hard boiled, you know, the people who have intentionally infiltrated the security forces of the world in the same way like pedophiles getting to the Boy Scouts.

You know what I mean? I don't see how that gets fixed in a few weeks, man. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not worried about their consciousness. You can't.

You can't touch their consciousness that they are. They have their own journeys, brother. And I send them love and I and I and I, I, you know, I wish them well on that journey. However, you've you've become much more aware of what's going on last week. Yes. And anything that you may have been taught, you're now starting to question. Yes. So two weeks from now, where will you be?

I don't know, man. I mean, probably a FEMA camp. That's how paranoid I am right now, especially after this conversation. I mean, I mean, I mean, like, as far as awareness goes, you're going to have a lot more information. Yeah. You're going to be open to that information. That's all I'm saying. What I'm saying is this.

Okay. So I try to look at. I don't try. I do look at consciousness in and of itself as as a as a being. It's alive. Consciousness is having its own evolution. And I think that that that was evidenced in the fact that we began 2020 thinking that this is going to be a great year and then all of a sudden we're all in quarantine. Yeah.

Right. Well, why did that happen? Well, I got a. I'm no longer being bashful about my connections to the universe. And so I, I don't quite understand it all the time myself. But I endeavor every day to do so. But I got a message, very clear message from the universe that this was the divine feminine spirit or so we call it. I don't believe that divinity has gender.

But if you want to look at it that way, the divine feminine spirit was trying to repair the covenant that human spirit has broken with Earth. And that that means that what I got was that Gaia Earth was very upset with us. She wants us to stop disrespecting you. Right. But we can't do that until we stop disrespecting each other. We cannot we racism and oppression destroys any chance for cooperation. We can't we can't fix climate change. We can't fix the big existential questions of life until we stop killing each other.

And until we stop debating whether killing me matters. Wow. So what Gaia did was she caught a cold. And then she said, everybody sit at home, slow down, get off of work, work from home. Pick up pick up pick up this new this new technology that's been introduced society that interjects information into our homes and to each other. Take a look at your world. Take a look at yourself. Take a look at your families.

What's important survival. Right. Everybody had the ancient brain massage for a second and said, Oh shit, survival is important. All of us felt this fight or flight responsive. Okay, if I go outside, it's better if I stay inside because if I go outside, I could die at any point in time. Right. I think what happened is we got a really good look at ourselves and a really good look at society with new awareness. We didn't like what we saw.

Right. And to so many millions of our beautiful white brothers and sisters. They created the compassion inside of them. And they saw that I don't like how I've been living for the last two months with in this flight or miss a fight or flight response. And my black brothers and sisters live like this 365 days a year. Right. So we didn't have to tell you guys anymore. I showed you our experience.

Holy shit. We gave it to you and said, Hey, what are you going to do about this? Do you still want this for other people? When COVID is over. A lot of people can go back to their normal lives. We've never had a normal life. We are always in fight or flight. What does that do?

Well, that appears, you know, to look like violence and anger and stress and. Cancer and diabetes and hypertension and all the things that afflict my community. It is it is in it is being in a state of chronic stress when you tell a when you get arrested and roughed up by the police at eight years old and you have nightmares for years about it. You're in a state of chronic stress. That's just what it. We got a chance to look at ourselves. We didn't like it. And now the compassion has been activated. And that that covenant with earth that we would protect her and take care of her and reciprocate the, the, the, the nurturing and the support that she gives us cannot happen until we stop fighting amongst ourselves. Right.

And that's what this is. She's tired of it. The consciousness is moving forward. The universe is consciousness is moving forward. It's a law of inertia. Laws of physics don't ask you if you're okay. Laws of things don't ask you for your subtle nuanced debates. Laws of physics and avalanche doesn't ask the skiers to move. Right. So this is the consciousness of the universe that is that is evolving. It's tired of the I am of the I am selfishness. It's tired of it. Right.

You have to step into the we are. Holy shit. Once that's the step into the we are, and we have to see ourselves in each other. You have to see yourself in George Floyd. You have to see yourself in trade by Martin. You have to see yourself in your rights. Holy shit. That's it. That's it. That's it, brother. And if you look, if you look at pulses of consciousness or evolutions of consciousness throughout the world, they last for about three to 400 years at a time. Right. So why did you and I choose to be alive at this time?

Well, we're coming to the end of one point of consciousness, and we're coming into a shift of another one. Right. It is not up to mankind to decide these shifts of consciousness. It is the universe that decides these. So the last pulse of consciousness that we had was the Reformation. And every single pulse of consciousness is amplified by a new piece of technology and that new piece of technology amplifies commerce. So what happened in 1500 around that time? Well, the invention of the printing press. Right.

So all of a sudden you had a bunch of people who had myths and propaganda and truths and different perspectives that were able to tell more than 15 to 20 people to keep it within esoteric communities. And they could write it down and then print out 5000 copies and those 5000 copies could be shipped all around Europe. And all of a sudden, you know, Martin Luther changed the church. The role of women increased in society. People's religious beliefs were altered and changed forever. Right. And they also used it as propaganda. One piece of propaganda that they used was that black was evil.

It was a Portuguese king who was a slave trader, which is a nice way of saying human trafficker. Right. Or child kidnap rapists make them work, right? Yes. And because, mind you, the transatlantic slave trade was mostly children. Jesus Christ. They weren't picking up 40-year-olds. Why would you do that?

You want 15-year-olds. You want 12-year-olds. They're smaller. You can fit more into a ship. Of course. You feed them less. They're more resilient, stronger immune systems in many cases. And you can work them longer once they get to where they're going.

So what happened was the Portuguese king, I forget his name. I think it was King Philip. I could be mistaken. I'm sure you're listening as a student enough to look it up themselves. But there was a king, 1450 to around 1500, who was an avid slave trader. And he wanted his reputation repaired before he died. So he got his scribes to write these awful things, these awful myths about racial divisions. Even though no one had ever seen human beings as being racially divided, it was all ethnicity back then.

My ancestors were not black. They were from Oyo. They were from Yoruba. They were from present-day Ghana, Nigeria. So they didn't see themselves as black people. They saw themselves as Yoruba. Portuguese saw themselves as Portuguese. They didn't see themselves as white.

In fact, the name Africa comes from the Roman Latin word Afrique, which means the land that is free of cold and horror. For thousands of years, we've interacted with each other. Of all different races. Africa had the largest system of higher education in the world. Most of the European kings were in the Middle Ages, studied in Timbuktu. Really? Absolutely. 100%.

In fact, look it up. So it wasn't like there were these two worlds that all of a sudden collided 500 years ago and couldn't get along. They saw an opportunity. They saw an opportunity to make money in a slave trade and they felt horrible about what they were doing until they cleaned it up. So fast forward 50 years and slave trade is increasing. People feel a certain way about it. Some people are okay with it. Many people are not.

And they're trying to stop it from happening. You have two companies, one called the Dutch East Indian Company. We talked about this in the last one. Yes, we did. But it's a good refresher. Yes. So the Dutch East Indian Company and the Dutch West Indian Company were the two largest corporations in history at the time. And they had private armaments and they were the first publicly traded companies and they traded people.

They kidnapped people and they brought them elsewhere. A lot of their soldiers, a lot of their, sorry, a lot of their sailors, pirates that they were employing, started committing suicide, jumping ship, not showing up for the next excursion. Right. Doing their version of mass shootings back in Holland or England or wherever the case was. And telling the stories of the horrors of what they had to do. And then a lot of really compassionate, good-hearted Europeans at the time wanted this to end. So there was a campaign against these two companies. So these companies shut their doors for a year and they used this new invention called the printing press.

And they took this Portuguese king's bullshit and they used the printing press to amplify. Wow. And scientists and doctors at the time signed off on it as if it was prevailing wisdom at the time. Right. And so they used this new technology that the world had never seen and sent out all this information, all these myths that black was subhuman. And they didn't mean skin. At the time they meant black plague, black magic, black evil, closer to Satan. Africa's the Satan's last stronghold on the planet and these people are savage, inhumane, or a savage, inhuman, subhuman beasts who must be taken out of this environment and given purpose somewhere else.

Right. And they're terrible though because they're too savage, but somewhere else and we can also make some money off of that. God damn. And so the myth that was spread was to make shareholders in the company and their pirates in their employees feel better. And that sparked the industrialization of commerce, period. Well, that was the last pulse of consciousness. So where are we now? We're 500 years later.

We're overdue. And what do we have now? The internet. We have our printing press. We have a new printing press, social media, the internet. And yes, propaganda gets spread on that too. But every 500 years, every 400 years or so, we have the ability with new technology to either shape the next centuries in truth and inclusion, kindness, or continue the propaganda, continue the lie, continue the oppression. And that's where we are.

And that's where the universe is. It's giving us the opportunity to rectify, to repair the past 500 years. You know, man, you know, I feel like I feel like I'm with like the hero and in like an HP Lovecraft story that is like holding some kind of lantern up in one of those subterranean caves where the Cthulhu live. You know what I'm saying? Like some eight. Like, you know what? It's scary. Like, and like, I think this is probably where your optimism, your optimism is beautiful and inspiring.

But one, you know what? One thing I think a lot of white people don't have that a lot of people color have is this ability to handle staring at evil in a way that doesn't involve going, Holy fuck, what the fuck? I got to get the fuck out of here. Like that. As I'm just all the things that you're saying, it's not like it's new data. But all the things you're saying to me are it's like you've essentially chalked out the form of the Antichrist. Like you've just sort of marked out like, well, there's it's probiscus. Those are its wings.

There's its horn. See those hooves there that and it's been standing right there. Goggling at you since you were born. And you know what I mean that? And I think probably what a lot of white people are dealing with right now is is like, I don't want to be I don't want to be around that. Like, I don't want to be in this subterranean tunnel. And then realizing, wait, I've been in the subterranean tunnel my whole fucking life. And then realizing, you know what I mean?

And not only that, but holy shit, am I one of the tentacles? You know what I mean? Like, oh, fuck, I'm a tentacle. You know, that's a little it's I'm just saying what you are so calmly describing is it's like a cosmic horror. Yes. Listen, I mean, being black is like this very specific purgatory being stuck in between hopeless and hopeful at all times. And you, while you can get used to that, you never enjoy it. While you can, while that can become, well, you can bring levity to that, patience to that, endurance to that.

Well, so do the kids in Afghanistan. So do the people in Iraq, so do the people in every war-torn environment. Right. So it's really just about seeing past the current consciousness and the current evil and realizing what's what's the next step? Because once again, asking the question, where does crippling oppression lead? We have to find a good way out of this, a peaceful way out of this. And I think that we don't need to change hearts and minds. Who cares?

You can be racist all day. You can watch all. You can watch the things that are void of any color. You can, you can say whatever you want at your dinner table, you can do whatever you want. You just can't have oppression anymore. Right. We're done with that. Right.

We're done with that. I love it. And you can't really ask people to carry something if you don't know the weight of it. Yeah. What? Yeah. I love this so much, man. You are, man.

Thank you. You're welcome. The world needs this bad, man, because we're not equipped. Right? You got quite the reach, my friend. We, you know, you do too. And yeah. Actually, not nearly as much as you.

So for every one person or every two people that I have will listen to me. My voice, it is within their subconscious mind to tune out. Oh, right. It is part of the great myth. It's part of the great lie, the great propaganda that was spread throughout Europe in the 1500s. And then accepted as a prevailing wisdom through Hume's problem, David Hume, philosopher. Hume states that human beings are afraid of the unknown. And they're also afraid of being outside of the prevailing wisdom because they think it

makes them feel stupid. Yes. So if doctors are saying it and lawyers are saying it and professionals and academics are saying it for 20, 30 years, it must be true. So these people must be subhuman. They must be savage. Everybody who's, who's learned it and educated is saying it. And look at these pamphlets.

They're everywhere. Right. So let's, let's get them out of their savage situation, put them in a new world where they can help cultivate that world and give them purpose and give them Jesus. And let's make some money off of it. And that is, that has been the structure of the last 500 years. And I think the universe now is at a point where it lived through a traumatic time in its own life.

The consciousness itself went through a traumatic period in its own life after the Reformation. Now it wants to heal. It wants to go to the psychiatrist itself. Consciousness wants to heal itself. So it's not asking. That's why I feel calm. That's why I feel whole. Because I know that consciousness itself wants this.

It doesn't matter what people say. Right. Right. Right. That's the transcendental platform. That's what we have to be on because if we are hanging out in the phenomena right now, it really doesn't seem the way your voice sounds. And that's because you're on, you found this transcendental platform that you've connected

to for real. And that's coming through a lot of black people right now. I've been, you know, every single voice that I've been listening to, you know, because for us, and by us, I mean just like people who have not educated themselves as much as we should have, as we're, you know, sort of coming to and looking around and realizing that we've been at like a cocktail party with like vampires. You know what I mean? It's like, wait, what the fuck?

Wait, holy fuck. Holy fuck. It's like that scene in Rosemary's baby when she's getting impregnated. She's being, you know, raped by the devil. And she's like, this is really happening. This is real. It's like that is the feeling. And, you know, so it's like when you're watching people who their entire life, this has like

been just common knowledge. This is something you were told when you're seven or eight. Or you learn the hard way. And what has happened with you all is that you have developed a kind of, you have out of, and you existentially have to remain calm because the worst thing you can do in this kind of situation is panic. And that's what you have. That's what it is.

And that is contagious, thank God. Because if you have somehow found this peaceful way of being in the midst of this insane universe, this world, this is the lifting of the veil. This is the apocalypse. And if you found a way to be calm in this apocalypse, because the veil already has been lifted, then we can too. And that is a beautiful thing. I think it's really important for people to just let go of all the ideas that they thought

they knew. Because all those ideas have only come to play in the last 500 years. And human beings, as we know now, are 300 or 400,000 years old. So this is all new. And there's only one race. There's two tribes. There's the anti-racist and the other guys. There's the pro-humans and the people who are particular humanophobic, right?

Those that want to educate themselves and racial oppression deniers. Those that are awakening to the reality that has always been, and those willing to protect the veil of control of our reality. There's only two tribes within the human race. Those that want to end oppression and those that want to protect it. Wow, man. Mr. Brooks, this has been my favorite podcast, Hands Down. And I'm so grateful to you for your time.

And I hope everybody listening connects with you, because you have been a teacher and you have taken on a leadership role, which you should be doing. So how can people connect to you so that we can, you know, lift your voice up more than, you know, being on a Stoner's podcast? How do we, how can people connect to you, man? First of all, here's the thing. I have so much love for all my Stoners, because what a Stoner does is they take the time to sit down and do something for themselves that relaxes themselves and stimulates thoughts.

Right. So, I believe that it's going to be the Stoners. I believe it's going to be the people who have sit in silence here and there that understand this, that get this. You can find me at Makad Brooks on Twitter and Instagram. I'm a lot more active on Instagram. I also started a church on Instagram called the Church of Anti-Racism. And, you know, I'm just, I'm preaching the same thing there.

And, you know, just that this is an invitation to the collective consciousness to celebrate the ancestors. Yes. And that we, and here's the thing. Yes. I have to have compassion for Duncan Trussell's situation, which is this. I will never understand the ancestral guilt that you have, but you will never understand the ancestral trauma that I have.

But your ancestors and my ancestors would love it if we healed together. Wow. That's true. Oh God, you are, man, you are, you're a king. I got to talk to a king. This is the coolest thing. Always wanted to. You're the real deal.

God bless you, man. Thank you very much. And I'm so happy that we're friends and thank you for your time. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna, my brother. Yes. Much thanks to Makad Brooks for appearing on this episode of the DTFH. If you'd like to connect with Makad, you should follow on Instagram, forward slash Makad Brooks.

Take his 21 day anti-racist challenge and say hi to him for me. Also a big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. My eternal gratitude to those of you who have subscribed over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH and my infinitely eternal gratitude for those of you who continue to listen to the podcast. Love you and I'll see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. We are family.

Thank you.