Welcome back to Resist with Joy. This week Tina Marie and Martina cover a lot of ground: why the planet seems to be at war more than ever, who actually profits from that, and then a hard pivot into Hawaii’s Lieutenant Governor race, dark money, and a super PAC that’s changed its name five times. There’s also a kitten. We’ll get there.
Tina Marie kicked things off with a number that stopped her cold: depending on who’s counting, there are somewhere between 60 and 125+ armed conflicts happening in the world right now. Compare that to 2023, when the count was a clean 59. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and we still can’t stop fighting each other long enough to notice we might be alone in the universe for a reason — as Tina Marie put it, “of course we haven’t met aliens, because they don’t want anything to do with us.” This isn’t random; it’s manufactured. After World War II, the United Nations was built on a simple premise — Churchill and FDR’s idea, dating to 1942, that nations need to talk before they hit each other. And for about 80 years, that mostly worked. We had the most sustained peaceful stretch in modern history. Then Ukraine happened — the largest land war in Europe since WWII, with Russia as the aggressor — and then, this year, the Iran conflict, which Martina traces to Trump and Netanyahu escalating around late February.
Underneath all of it, the hosts argue, is the military-industrial complex, plus a more modern twist: people like the Trump family investing in the drone contractors and defense companies that profit directly from the conflicts the administration is picking. Martina pointed to Peter Thiel’s old line about creating conflict and damage so the wealthy can “pick up the pieces and create more wealth.” She drew a direct line to postwar Germany, where companies like Mercedes and Porsche — implicated on the wrong side of WWII — became the backbone of the country’s rebuilding. Break it, then sell the fix. Tina Marie’s summary: “they’re the ones to provide the solution after they break it.”
Tina Marie brought up a video she’d seen of someone trying to spend Elon Musk’s roughly $1 trillion net worth in a fake shopping catalog — planes, mansions, even the White House — and still barely making a dent. Her point: there’s a finite amount of stuff in the world, and the compulsion to keep accumulating past any possible use is, in her words, “absolutely ridiculous.” The answer for why: power, and specifically the power to control populations.
That thread pulled in RFK Jr.’s tenure at Health and Human Services — the CDC cuts, the recent food-safety scares (a lettuce-linked outbreak, egg recalls) that Martina and Tina Marie tie back to gutted inspection and monitoring capacity. “Now eggs are being recalled as well,” Tina Marie said. “It’s like, what can we eat?”
Tina Marie’s Monopoly analogy landed hard: the entire point of the game is to make everyone else go broke. But in real life, a world where everyone is broke and dead is a world where the “winners” have nothing left to control — and no one left to run their yacht, cook their food, or fill their bowling alleys. As Tina Marie put it, “they’re gonna control ashes and nothing.”
From there, the conversation turned briefly philosophical: Martina defined the human experience as the full range of emotion — joy, grief, connection, the slow churn of relationships and chapters of a life — and argued that people who spend their lives accumulating power at others’ expense have opted out of that experience entirely.
Back to Iran: Martina noted that, per reporting from people who worked in prior administrations, every president before Trump considered and rejected military action against Iran because of the risk of closing the Strait of Hormuz — a move with massive consequences for the global economy. Tina Marie: “that’s blowing up our entire economy over the entire world at this point.”
The hosts pushed back hard on the framing of Trump’s approach as “peace through strength.” Tina Marie’s take: that phrase sounds good, but the actual mechanism is conflict and war, which only produces peace in the sense that “everybody will be dead” — not an actual peaceful path to peace.
They also flagged the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where journalists who’d exposed the Epstein-birthday-drawing story reportedly received an award — with Trump in the room. Martina: “how twisted are you in your brain?” Tina Marie said if she were ever in that position, “hard pass” — she wouldn’t show up even for a Nobel Peace Prize if he was the one handing it over.
Then the pivot: local politics, specifically Hawaii’s Lieutenant Governor race, which is heating up ahead of the August 8 primary. Find your nearest secure drop box here.
For anyone unfamiliar, Tina Marie explained the role: the Lt. Governor is essentially the state’s vice president — a backup to the governor, with an advisory and counsel role, ready to step in if the governor can’t serve.
The flashpoint this week: Governor Green went on local news and said he had “pauses” about candidate Della Belatti, who has campaigned on being an independent voice willing to challenge his policies. Green’s quote: “any partner I have really needs to be ready to work with me... she suggested instead she wanted to be a watchdog on me.” Tina Marie’s read is that the comment backfired — social media reaction was reportedly full of people asking what Green has to hide, and why a watchdog would be a bad thing.
Martina is openly supporting Della Belatti, for one reason above all: she doesn’t take dark money. Her opponent in the race, Kauai mayor Derek Kawakami, has been running heavily on TV ads and — according to the hosts — is backed by Pacific Resource Partnership (PRP), a super PAC operating in Hawaii since 2012 with ties to the Hawai’i Regional Council of Carpenters, and one that has rebranded under different names roughly five times over its history. Super PACs can’t legally coordinate directly with a campaign, but they can flood a race with independent advertising — which is exactly what’s happening here.
Beyond the money question, Tina Marie made a personal case for Della based on something simpler: showing up. Their local Indivisible chapter in Kona invited all the Lt. Governor candidates to a beach social and a July 12th meet-and-greet — Della was the only one who came to either, and the only candidate who stayed for the entirety of the Democratic Party’s grand rally. “How can you run for lieutenant governor and not show up for your community?”
The hosts also connected the dots to Congressional District 1, where Jarrett Keohokalole is challenging longtime incumbent Ed Case. Jarrett and Della were originally competing for Indivisible Hawaii’s endorsement in the same race before Della pivoted to the Lt. Governor run — a move Martina called “such an interesting development.” Indivisible ultimately endorsed Jarrett to avoid splitting the vote against Case. Both Jarrett and Della, the hosts note, were involved in getting Act 11 passed — Hawaii’s first-in-the-nation law restricting dark money in state politics, a response to Citizens United (2010) that other states, including Florida, Virginia, and New Mexico, are reportedly now studying.
The through-line for the hosts: 80% of Americans say they hate corruption, and the antidote — at every level, from the White House to a state Lt. Governor’s race — is voting for candidates who don’t take dark money.
A few closing threads: Martina flagged that a former Lt. Governor and four others were indicted on corruption charges last week — more fuel for the anti-dark-money argument. The hosts also gave a shoutout to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking member on House Judiciary, whom they expect to be central to any future investigations if the House flips blue, and to Rep. James McGovern, who recently called the Republican Party fascist on the House floor — a speech picked up by historian Heather Cox Richardson in her newsletter. Tina Marie’s response: “I freaking love it.” Both hosts agreed on the closing thought: as long as we can still vote, we haven’t fully lost the fight.
And yes — there is, in fact, a kitten. Tina Marie found a roughly one-month-old abandoned kitten outside, fed him, bathed him, and is now looking for someone to adopt him as an indoor cat. If you’re in Hawaii and want a “freaking cuddly and sweet” kitten, reach out.
Bottom line this week: vote in the primary (ballots due August 8), vote Della Belatti for Lt. Governor, vote Jarrett Keohokalole in CD1 — and keep asking who’s funding the people asking for your vote.
💬 Before You Go | Take our Visionaire Questionnaire.
Here at Resist with Joy, we take the future very seriously. So our research department spent their entire lives developing a highly sophisticated, scientifically calibrated system for understanding someone’s vision for our world ahead. After multiple peer reviews, revisions, and at least one whiteboard diagram that made us feel incredibly intelligent, we’ve discovered the perfect formula: a simple 5-question survey. We want to hear what concerns you, what gives you hope, and what joy looks like for you right now. Take the Visionaire Questionnaire here.
🎙️ About Resist with Joy
Resist with Joy is a podcast about civic education, grassroots organizing, and joyful resistance. Real voices, including engaged citizens, experts, and politicians, to help build the wall against authoritarianism, one joyful action at a time.
New episodes drop weekly. Interviews with neighbors doing the work are coming very soon. Subscribe, share, and if this episode moved you, leave us a review.
Subscribe | Like | Share
🌴 Aloha until next time.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.