The Story of America with Baratunde Thurston
Remade in America with Bassem Youssef
CAFE
4.7 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Baratunde Thurston is a comedian, writer and activist who has worked at The Onion and The Daily Show. He is the author of "How to Be Black," a satirical guide to better understanding issues around race.
Baratunde talks with Bassem about being Black in America, the different stories that Americans tell themselves about their country, and how he has been able to tell his own story, on his terms.
If you have questions or comments for Bassem, tweet them to him at @Byoussef with the hashtag #askbassem, email remade@cafe.com, or call 785-422-7736 (785-4-BASSEM) and leave a voicemail.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A funny thing happened when I arrived in America. |
| 0:02.6 | I thought I was fleeing a dictatorship, but it turns out I got here just in time for you |
| 0:07.2 | guys to start your own. |
| 0:11.4 | But things in America are not nearly as bad as they are in the Middle East. |
| 0:15.0 | Compared to those dictators, Trump looks like a tree-hugging liberal. |
| 0:19.0 | I have learned a thing or two about living in a dictatorship. |
| 0:22.0 | Only a few people are in charge and they |
| 0:24.8 | control everything, the laws, the military, even the media. Control of the media is a big |
| 0:30.8 | deal. Dictators dictate. They have power over everything, including |
| 0:36.4 | what the public knows about what's going on in their own country. So stories matter. |
| 0:47.1 | At first, the dictators use fear to get themselves in power. |
| 0:56.0 | Fear of outsiders, fear of influence, fear of chaos and instability. People agree to go along because they are scared. But after a while people in a dictatorship get used to the idea that they need a powerful man to tell them what to do, how to live, to tell them a story. |
| 1:06.4 | It reminds me of Stockholm Syndrome, when hostages come to trust and even love their |
| 1:11.4 | captures. |
| 1:12.6 | And it's the same story in a dictatorship. |
| 1:15.5 | But on a much bigger scale, a whole nation has been kidnapped, but comes to believe that |
| 1:20.3 | the man with guns is also a good guy, that he is looking out for them. |
| 1:24.0 | Violence that started in the streets |
| 1:27.0 | finds a home in the minds of the people. I believe that you are whatever story you tell yourself. |
| 1:40.0 | Under our old dictator Hostim Mubarak, a lot of Egyptians were conditioned to accept him to settle for being hostages to tyranny |
| 1:46.8 | their eyes were closed to reality and they were not ready for the Arab Spring in 2011. |
| 1:54.9 | When the Arab Spring broke out, I saw a dictatorship from the front lines. |
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