>> These are obviously dark times and for
one like me who grew up watching movies and
shows and reading about heroes, it would be
awesome if somebody were coming to save us.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they're
going to not anytime soon,but what if they
could. Hey, we've got a writer joining us
with probably the article I've enjoyed most
on the Internet in the past few weeks.
Joining us once again, justice correspondent
at The Nation, Elie Mystal. Welcome back to
The Damage Report.
>> Thank you so much for having me.
>> Great to have you. So you wrote an article
on The Nation, Could Wonder Woman Save us
From COVID-19? Tell me how you came up with
this idea of breaking down what heroes could
actually accomplish in 2020
>> Okay, I have two kids, a seven-year old
and a recently turned five-year old, and the
seven-year old, we're trying to slightly introduce
him to the concept of news, which means we're
lightly introducing him to the concept of
evil, right, of evil and lying.
>> And so he understands that Donald Trump
is the mean president.
And that he does bad things in this world.
So we were kind of, it was on we're talking
and he goes, as only a child can, I think
we need Batman to show up and do something,
and my knee-jerk kind of liberal reaction
was tell Batman. All that dude does is violate
due process and it kind of spun me off into
the like we've got very wealthy people in
our current world, right?
We've got the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and
Bill Gates, and what do they do? Nothing.
They don't do one damn thing to actually help.
They're more concerned with building space
stations, than actually handling the massive
threat to our democracy, right? So that's
kind of how I got thinking like okay, well,
who would help, like who could-
>> Interesting.
>> actually do something? And that's how the
call came up.
>> So you're implying that Bloomberg with
batarangs is not the solution to our problem
basically,
>> Right? I don't want Bloomberg stopping
and frisking me in the Batmobile. Like his
cops are problematic enough, right? And, again,
I'm being somewhat flippant, but I do think
that it's important for people to remember
that while everybody loves Iron Man, everyone
loves Batman.
These are great kind of comic book heroes.
The reality of our world is that people with
the most money, and people therefore kind
of with the most power in our society, they
don't Robinhood it, right? They don't use
that money for good. They use that money to
consolidate their own power, squeeze more
profit out of their workers, and when they
have these great big ideas, it tends to be
these kind of Ideas that would fundamentally
involve separating themselves from the rest
of us, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Elon Musk does not want to build a moon
colony to feed some poor people in Harlem.
He wants to build a moon colony so when this
place erupts, he's got some place to go.
>> Yeah, it's less Superman, more Dr. Evil.
Obviously, the harsh reality is you're telling
us as a person who has always loved Iron Man,
it hurts a little bit, but I get what you're
saying.
Batman technically in this time is sort of
a vigilante working with the police, which
is uncomfortable considering what we've been
seeing recently, so we're pushing them to
the side. So who made it past the smell test
on this? Who actually would be able to do
something good in 2020?
Well, I had to start with Ant Man because
what we're facing is a deadly virus, and I
had to think who can actually fight, if we're
gonna use punching and kicking, who could
actually fight the virus. Ant Man is small
enough to actually bite Coronavirus. Unfortunately
as I pointed out in the piece, that's a single-shot
solution, right?
>> We've got five million cases, Ant Man's
one dude, right? That doesn't work out, right,
so I kind of I grew, no pun intended, from
there. And it was very kind of Marvel and
DC based, I'm sorry amongst high nerds, it
was a very low ground. No image or dark horse
or anything like that.
But the first person I thought of was Ant
man who was like sixth on my list, and the
second person I thought of was Wonder Woman.
The concept of truth Is the thing that we
miss the most, I think, during this administration
and really just during where the world is
right now.
The concept that our leaders can just be forced
to tell us the truth. Wonder Woman could use
her lasso to just force our leaders to tell
us the truth was like super appealing, Ted.
That's a great point because it's not like
we don't have interviews where we sort of
learn something like Jonathan Swan can sit
down with Trump and ask him some tough questions
and Trump will sort of flail and all of that.
And if you already get what Trump is, you
can learn something there. But he's not actually
being forced to tell the truth ever. We're
not actually getting what he thinks about
his base and all of that. If Axios could bring
her on as a contractor to sit him down and
wrap him in the lasso, yeah, that would be
a powerful man.
That's one ask us questions, right? Like he
could still be there. Journalism is important,
but it's not just Trump though, right? As
much as I love Dr. Fauci and whatever, I wouldn't
want to have him under a lasso and be like,
what are Trump rules, well, what did that
man really tell him, right?
>> Yeah,
>> Because there's so many people in our society
right now who are compromised. They might
be compromised for good. They might, honestly,
they're trying to placate Trump because they
know that sucking up to him is how they get
the resources they need for their state or
their economy or whatever.
They're obviously people sucking up to him
for bad, for grift, for whatever. If we could
just get people to tell us the truth about
why they're doing what they do.
>> Yeah.
>> And that's so much of my work and I think
so much of your work as well.
It's obvious, right? It's out there. The truth
is out there. It's not complicated. All we're
doing is just saying look right here, this
is what they're doing. This is what they're
doing, right? But people don't believe us.
>> Yeah
>> So many people think that we're biased
or we have an axe to grind or it's actually
a policy matter, when we're just saying just
look in front of your face, right?
And so if you can just get some of these people
to admit what they're doing, that would be
so helpful, I think, for the country because
it's not like you don't have an argument,
right? There's a reason why Mitch McConnell
wants to suppress the votes of any person
of color, right?
He wants the power, he wants the win, right?
There's an argument that Mitch McConnell should
just be in power. I would like to make him
raise that argument.
>> Yeah,
>> Make argument for why black people should
not be able to vote. Don't give me this song
and dance about how you're not actually trying
to suppress the vote when we all know you
are
>> Yeah,
>> Just tell the damn truth cuz that's what
Republicans for so long, they're just like
it should be the marketplace of ideas and
the best idea should win and all the. Well,
we can't get to the point where the best idea
can win if we're lying about the idea.
>> Exactly, yeah. And look when the want to
give money to the rich and I hope no black
person ever votes, at least 20% of the country's
gonna say Sign me up for that, but at least
we would
>> Would get to some truth. So I do like that.
The issue is that Wonder Woman is going to
be busy in the near future. She's got a movie
coming out. She's got to do publicity for
that and everything. So, and I don't want
to go through the whole list because I want
people to go to The Nation and I want them
to read your article.
But if you could have one runner up, if you
can't get Wonder Woman, who would be your
backup from her?
>> Right.
>> Wakonda already got the damn cure we know
that.
>> Yeah, that's true.
>> It was developed. Shuri is the true warp
speed for developing a vaccine.
Because the thing I love about Shuri is that
she's applied science, right? She doesn't
just sit in a lab thinking, she's putting
that stuff into the suit, right? She's making
the cars, right? I like that applied science
aspect that applied science aspect that Shuri
brings. And the other thing that I like about
her as my kinda like runner up is that she's
a truth teller as well.
She she doesn't have a lot of BS like T'challa,
God love him, but man that dude is reading
philosophy and stuff like Katie with like
with some Nita trying to figure out how. Shuri's
gonna tell you, Shuri is gonna show up, wear
a mask, where a damn mask.
>> Yeah.
>> And so that also, I think, makes her an
interesting hero in this moment. I need less
philosophy, l need less deep thoughts, I need
more direct action with these problems that,
again, are so relatively obvious and relatively
solvable if we were just all operating from
the same shared set
of facts.
