A Geek History of Time - Episode 169 - The Popes, Walter White, and John Cena Walk Into a Bar Part IV

Episode Date: July 30, 2022

Wow, you're gonna like this. Oh, no, I'm not because there is no god damn middle. This is not unlike ancient Rome by the way Not so much the family circus Yeah, I did Want to create self-sustaining farms and you got into crystals. I know. Okay, I understand that and you got into crystals. I know! Okay, I understand that. But yeah, I'm reading Livy, who is a shitty historian. Because Irrigan is.

Others say that because Laurentia's body was common to all the shepherds around, she was called a she-wolf, which is a Latin term for horror. You were audible, lassies. It was just most of it, where you slamming the table. As the Romanists at the table, well, duh. Yeah. Obviously. Ipso facto. Right.

You know, it's your original form. Ipso, duh. You have a sword rack. 1.0-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1- This is a geek history of time. Where we connect nursery to the real world, my name is Ed Blaylock, I'm a world history teacher with a site order of English, would you like fries with that? I hear it in Northern California.

And right now, the biggest thing I have going on is, well, not a whole lot. I am blissfully not having to grade any more student work, and so I've been able to catch up on a little bit of my reading from my own entertainment, which is nice. And I'm going to be embarking on my two month period of being a stay at home dad every year, that I do every year. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. How about you? What do you got going on? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a high school teacher. I teach Latin. I teach drama. I'll be teaching history next year. And as far as what I've got going on lately, I have made Italian foods several days in a row now for my kids.

But not the way Americans make it where it's all the pasta in the world. And that's it. Yeah. Instead, the pasta is just a small part and then there's a whole bunch of vegetables. Okay. So it went as expected. My son eats it because he knows he can get dessert afterwards. My daughter actually was really enjoying it. And I got a feeling that the next time I serve it, she won't. Because that's that's how she do.

But yeah, that's fine. I am enjoying the heck out of the nice Orzo salad for the next couple of days. And I think tomorrow I will... Oh, you know, I didn't cut up the basil to put the Orzo. Dang it. But yeah, that's that's that's kind of it. My kids need to start cooking again. Damn it. Yeah. Yeah, well, because I liked not having to do all that work. So, I mean, that's fair. I had realized they had stopped. Yeah, yeah.

So, but yeah, that's, that's, oh, and I think we've continued the streak of me saying off mic, all right, let's make this as timeless as possible. And you immediately mentioned something that clearly tells us exactly when this is going to be. So I'm just wondering if that's not a gimmick. Well, maybe. So it's kind of like when, you know, I asked my ex-wife, did you put me on a mailing list for Trump? Because I mean, I'm not really mad if you did. I'm trying to impress.

So that's a level of savagery. Yeah, I like that. I can hang with that. My fun for that. I can, you know, just understand. Yeah. I can, I can retaliate. Oh, I never retaliate.

I'm a good, no, no, no, it's, it's stop. You game recognize game and call it. Oh, okay. I don't, I don't need to win. I just need to play. Okay. All right. Yeah. I don't need to win. I just need to play. Okay. So, all right.

So, do me a favor and do our audience a favor. What has happened so far? Oh, shit. Sinicism has, has happened so far. All right. So, let's see.. So I'm trying to remember the years again. But first of all, we we opened up by talking about John Cena, getting booed, the man the man who who holds the record for a number of make-a-wish visits. Including the one in Ukraine. Now that this has been completely dated, we've

as being very specific. He went and met with a child just a couple days ago who has developmental delays. And they were trying to flee the Ukraine and in order to keep him going and keep him motivated because he's, you know, it's like eight to 12. I'm not quite sure. Yeah. To keep him going along with it, they said, oh, we're going to go see John Cena and he's totally down for that. John Cena happened to be in, I want to say Denmark.

Yeah. John Cena happened to be in, I want to say Denmark, heard about that, and then got the WWE and the Wall Street Journal to collaborate, to get him to meet them and make that kids day. I forget where. I want to say Belarus, but I know I'm wrong. Yeah, no, I want to say Poland, but I think I'm wrong. Yeah, and Eastern European, Central European country. Yeah, so, but either way, I mean, yeah, what what a fucking saint of a man like, yeah, no, I mean,

you know, and of course, after our last episode, because just now the thing is, of course, that we spent last episode, looking at the at the rise and surprisingly long hang time. Yes. And then long hang time. Yes. And then catastrophic like dumpster fire going down a whirlpool into a titanic sewer. It has the same feel of watching Lancelot run at the castle. Kind of. Yeah. Oh, still's still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still. Yeah. You know, yeah. Yeah. That's that's good. Of of Lance Armstrong. Yes. And his his, you know, a spectacular, uh, Icarus like, uh, you know, catching fire and and plunging out of the heavens, can fall from grace. Yeah. So, okay, that's what was happening realistically. Artistically, we see John Cena getting booed.

Yeah. We also saw it politically, Pope Francis taking over. Yes. And, yes, people kind of abandoning him on some levels. Yeah, people, people, people burning folks within the church, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, people, a surprising lack of regard for dogma when that's the thing by which they've beaten queer folk over the head for a long time. Yeah, our dogma. I'm sorry. I love you, but our dogma says kachung kachung kachung kachung. Yeah. And now they're like, fuck that dogma. And it's like, yeah, wow. Okay. Well, dude. Yeah, the thing is, for the people that are doing that, the dogma is incidental to their goal.

And so when the emphasis is on different dogma, well, that dogma is as important. Right. The Bible says what I need it to say. Yeah, and pretty much. Not what I need to do. Yeah. And yeah, and just the extent to which there are factions within the church that are actively resistant to

giving Benedict, not Benedict, giving, sorry, Benedict is the one they're stroking over. But they're not willing to give Francis the benefit of his authority. I don't wanna say the benefit of the doubt, but like, you know, and we... There shouldn't be doubt. Like, that's kind of y'all's thing.

Yeah, there shouldn't. Yeah. And, and, um, you know, no, we're, we're, we're the Catholic church. He's the Pope. That's not the attitude you're supposed to have. He is. 2000 years of tradition. Come on. Yeah. Like, and, and, and, as I mentioned before, like, you know, like end and as I mentioned before, like, you know, our teachings are influenced by sacred tradition, then scripture, and then somewhere in the back of the room is, is, you know, reason. Like, you know, and I've, I've made all kinds of, you know, theology jokes with, with other friends, kinds of, you know, theology jokes with other friends, you know, that like, when the Methodists make decisions, scripture is, is scripture runs the meeting. Reason is an active participant taking notes, maintaining the minutes, and tradition is the one that goes out in the other room to go get coffee for Methodists.

Sure, sure. Methodists. For Catholics, tradition is the one running the meeting, is the one taking all of the notes. Scripture is there as a courtesy. And reason is trying to get into the building, you know, but their key card doesn't work. It's like, you know, I was just saying, it's loving parody, but it's true. And so to have people who beat their chests about their Catholic, they are treating the word of the Pope with such

flagrant disregard is like it should be enough to just disqualify what they're saying completely right out the gate. Like, you know, I don't want to engage in notru Scotsman, but like there are definitions here. So anyway. You got that going on, but also in the financial sector. Oh, yeah, no, in the financial sector. And that's where we actually really began. Financial sector, AIG, made a whole lot of very risky financial maneuvers based on really, really, really bad mortgage investments that eventually came back to bite them in the ass.

And then the taxpayers had to come in and bail out AIG because if AIG didn't get bailed out, the whole economy was gonna take a massive shit. And then by extension, the housing market. Yeah. Well, and when it's up. Yeah. And the housing market going to its up was kind of part of the cause of the thing with AIG.

And it was also like, it was in a feedback loop with the situation with the AIG. Exactly. And so, depending on what economists you want to talk to, which one was the chicken, which one was the egg, is like, can be argued over. But yeah, and so a whole bunch of people lost their homes, a whole lot of people suffered all kinds of financial hardship. This is before my wife and I met, but I know that this was a point at which

she wound up bouncing between several jobs because she works in construction in the industry of construction. And she got laid off from one of the best jobs she'd ever had because the economic downturn. And it was really rough for a whole lot of people. We lost 700 teachers in a year. Yeah. Yeah. It was yeah, it was yeah, the door kept closing closer and closer to my ass every year too. I just got in at just the right time apparently.

All the more reason I fight so hard. Well, yeah, you got that going on, which then that you come back to the art and what kind of. Well, and we see, we see in 99, 0, 2, 0, 7, 0, 4, Oh, four oh five oh four oh five oh seven. We have a whole string of anti heroic. Not just anti heroic. Well, for first, I mean, like, like villainous straight up, yeah, straight up, uh, bad people as protagonists. Yeah, bad people as protagonists. Um, and like, you know, depending on which individual one you want to talk about, you can kind of shade how much of a villain they really are.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, like, like, Al Swarinjian is just, no, he's a fucking bad guy. Like, right now, you know, the main character in weeds say, you know, how much of that is, is her actually being a bad person from the jump and how much of that is her being pushed into becoming a bad person. And then running with it. Same goes, of course, for Walter White, right. Who then who then like, oh, actively chooses evil, who actively then chooses evil as a thing. And so we have this arc, this particular story arc, this particular trope of the villain protagonist becomes a thing. And so it becomes a central part of the storytelling that we see during this time period.

And anybody who is good, well done by the way, anybody who is good, we will bring their ass low or we'll just boo them for being good. One of the, which is what we're getting around to here. Because you mentioned that you were gonna be tying this all up with a bow and we're gonna get get back to yeah, booing the pope. Yes. And refusing to listen to the doctrinal arguments of John Cena. Exactly. Which are hustle, loyalty and respect. Yeah. And people don't want to hustle. Because that didn't get him anywhere. Nobody's got any loyalty anymore.

No. And fuck respect. So yeah, yeah. So which by the way, hustle loyalty respect three things, train, say your prayers, each of vitamins, three things, whole commanding. Okay. Yeah, that's true. Yep.

Other sound of Holy Spirit three things. There we go. So ultimately, yeah, I'm just going to, I got to throw this in here. As a, as a interesting, like, kind of baseline cultural thing in Western cultures, three has connotations going back, you know, very, very long way to, to like the, the Neolithic probably, but definitely the early Iron Age three has connotations of completeness.

You know, and then when you get into, I want to say it's Hig Gaelian rhetoric, you have thesis antithesis synthesis as the completion of an idea or the sublimation of the meaning of words. Yep. So anyway, sorry. I just had to throw that out there. Yeah. So ultimately, I think what we're seeing is art, obviously, reflecting reality, but also making reality reality enabling reality. I think it's ultimately the failure of capitalism. Okay. After everyone bought into it for so long, that failure has led so many Americans to finding comfort following TV shows with dark and loyal soldiers to the cause of capitalism. Because you really look at it. Every single person is a capitalist.

Tony Sranas, a capitalist. Omar is a capitalist. Okay. Yeah. Nancy is a capitalist. Don Draper is a capitalist. Is is oh, white is a capitalist. Yep. You know, so.

Yeah. And there's a part of me that wants to reflect, I'll say, well, you know, they're fun house mirror capitalists. But are they right? Right. Thank you. Let's go back to episode one and look at what AIG did.

Like, you know, they are dark and loyal soldiers to the cause of capitalism. Yeah. At the end of the day. And at the beginning of the day, to zoom in a bit more, Walter White, Nancy Boughtwin, elsewhere in June, are the most obvious examples, I think.

They operate legitimate businesses. They live legitimate lives, but they also have this secondary thing that they do. Walt is a chemistry teacher and a meth maker. Nancy is a housewife turned widow, now a pot dealer. Al runs a brothel, and he also murders. They're not defined initially by the secondary thing they do. They fell from grace to get to where they were in some way

or another and despite the horrible violence that they perpetrate or sanctioned. Now by contrast though drawn to Tony and Omar people still tended to look at Tony and Omar as singularly, you know as as singularly their roles. Tony is a mobster singularly their roles. Tony is a mobster singularly with mundane problems. Omar was a stick-up gunman singularly. He had a deep personal life. As such, audiences seemed to still look down on the two of them. As intriguing as the two of them were, they weren't the goal. They were the indictment. Of course, it also bears noting that one is Italian and one is black, and these protagonists who engage in such violence as they engage in the same kind of violence that white people do, the white protagonists do, but Italians weren't considered

quite white, and when you need to, you can still separate them out. Oh, they're their own culture, they're this, you know, and I mean, anti-definamation league of Italian Americans was like, yo, you are definitely, you know, using stereotypes on us. And a role model is really bad shit here. Yeah, and Omar is very clearly black. is really bad shit here. Yeah, and Omar is very clearly black.

Walt, Nancy and Al were undeniably white. Oh, yeah. But notice they had a secondary life that led them to this illegitimacy. Two who had the full illegitimacy were the Italian and the black man. They also, Tony and Omar weren't really considered middle class, despite their wealth. The other three were, to some extent, or another. And having protagonists such as these in the mid-2000s, through the mid-2010s, was laying a culturally fertile ground for white cruelty and white avarice. Okay. Now, at the same time, it also helped, I do think that, again, there's this feedback loop. It also helped to make it acceptable to spurn Pope Francis for being too outwardly kind

to the people that we hope we won't become. Okay. And they did for John Cena for his hustle loyalty and respect and never giving up grew commensurately as well. Despite his having more make a wish is granted than anyone in history. Current number, like he said, sits at about 650. In 2006, fans start turning on John Cena

despite being a baby face. And it was a small and vocal segment of the fans, but vocal is really what it takes in an arena. And over the next five years, white agreement continued. As much as I love him, CM Punk has become the avatar of wrestling's white agreement. He'd been a cult leader, K-Fape. He'd been a cult leader and took over a group that was angry that they weren't getting their due. They were elitists who were kind of newcomers, who spent the entire summer attacking John Cena and beating him all the time in seven on one attacks. And then finally an angry man who wasn't getting his due took over them.

He really wasn't getting his due. So there's like legit wasn't getting his due so there's he like legit wasn't getting his due Sampong was an amazing performer and and there's a fair amount of legitimacy to his grievance which I really want to home in on He delivered what was called the pipe bomb speech and he called out the structural biases that kept him down and prop Cena up in the structure that was WWE corporate. And there's actually plenty of truth to it. And the WWE, knowing where the money was, they ran with the story. And they turned the shoot into a worked shoot.

They basically said, so what was happening was CM Punk's contract was coming due. And he was like,'m gonna resign fuck this This is 2011 and Vince McMahon has a talk with him. He's like, what do you want? He's like? I'll tell you what I want. I want all these fucking things. You know what did I done? He's like How about the next show you go out there and you just you know Show me what you got verbally like and he's like what do you mean? You're gonna give me writers to tell me what to say. He's like, no, I want you to say everything that bothers you. I want you to steer it in this direction, but absolutely go off. And so he does. And it's

a work shoot at Money in the Bank in 2011. CM Punk in Chicago, CM Punk's hometown, is wrestling John Cena for the championship. There were people holding signs up that said, if Cena wins, we riot. Yeah, we talked about this in the callbacks to ECW. Well, yeah, but that was five years prior. Now these signs are becoming ubiquitous. Oh, Jesus. The thing was, it was actually punk's last day in WWE by contract.

And he and also by K-Fave, like they had let it out that that's what's the thing. So everybody knows that when you're going out, you do the honors. You let the guy beat you, right? Right. Well, earlier that day, he'd actually actually signed his contract. And they said, okay, if you sign the contract, here's the

plan. If you don't sign the contract, here's the plan, right? So he signed the contract. And so he won. And he took the title and ran off into a car and drove away. And then disappeared from WWE TV for like a week and a half, two weeks or something. WWE, it was like, well, we need to have a new champion but a lot and he took pictures of it and posted them to social media of like his belt in his refrigerator.

It was like the Stanley Cup kind of thing. Yeah. So, you know, they worked it back into the story. And for the next three years, CM Punk, John Cena, Brock Lesnar and Daniel Bryan, were all jockeying for the top spot. And actually about three years later, CM Punk went into retiring, citing his health and a lack of care and concern by the WWE as his reasons.

And he did so bitterly and quite rightly so. So again, he's the avatar of a grievement. But it also had a lot to do with how pay had been structured. He wasn't being put in the main event at WrestleMania, so he considered his career failure, which he's got unaddressed emotional issues. And maybe he's addressed them since then, I don't know. But at that time, it was clear. And having lost his passion for the profession. And that happens, you know, you burn out. But basically, at its core, CM Punk played by the rules, got used up and burnt out by the structures that were in place, designed to use him to make money. Now, Daniel Bryan was a wrestler. His entire run at this time was as the Uber underdog. That's not his

his name. That's just like, you know, the best way to describe it. Yeah. Yeah. It was a defiantly positive effort. It was called the Yes campaign. He could wrestle amazingly. He's probably the most skilled technical wrestler since Brad Hart. And he was absolutely following the old Southern style of scrappy, plucky, just going up against, you know, fighting the good fight, going up against those who are way more powerful. And he get perpetually ripped off by those in power. And he played by the rules and he kept getting thwarted. So he's acting out kind of what CM Punk was complaining was happening realistically. Yeah. But he retained his positivity through it all kind of what CM Punk was complaining was happening realistically. Yeah. But he retained his positivity through it all, kind of defiantly so.

And he didn't look like John Cena at all. He was scrawny. He was barely 200 pounds. He was had this massive fucking beard, and he was only like five foot nine. For a wrestler, that's really small. Yeah, no idea. I'll go. Yeah.

That sounds by expression. Okay. That's no idea. I'll go. Yeah. That sounds by expression. OK. That's like, I realize. OK, yeah. I got height privilege here. And yet he had a following. People warmed on to him. He was huge in 2013 to 2014.

Huge. It was the yes movement. And it was really simple. He'd come out to the beginning of the fight of the Valkyries and then it would turn into kind of a rock op or kind of thing. And he'd come out with his two fingers pointing upward and just pumping his arms up, yelling, yes, yes. And the whole audience would, yes, yes, and they'd go aficit form.

Even the San Francisco Giants got in on it with Hunter Pence having him come out and lead the Oracle Park in a yes chant. Unfortunately, yeah, it was pretty cool. Now, unfortunately, as the movement culminated in a championship match, main event win at WrestleMania 30, he got injured very shortly after and had to essentially retire. Yeah, within the next year, he was, within the next 15 year, he was retired. He's since has come back, by the way, he finally healed up. But yeah, now in 2012, again, take a look at these, all these years that we're talking about, Brock Lesnar had returned. So just a review, John Cena, super good guy,

everybody booze the shit out of him. Okay, okay, Pope Cena, super good guy, everybody booze the shit out of him. Okay. Okay. Pope Francis, super good guy. Super good guy. Everybody booze the shit out. I mean, it's not, it's not a one to one, but yeah.

And I would point out Pope Francis cosmetically is doing very different things than those who came before him. Policy wise, keeping it pretty similar. And I know it's a giant organization and you're the the rudder on the back of a really big ship. So I get that. You're you're you're working to thread a steer a glacier. Yeah. It is. So. But anyway, yeah. But John Cena getting boot CM Punk getting cheered for being an aggrieved angry white guy who didn't get his due despite playing by the rules. Daniel Bryan, another white guy, uh, grown a beard out, um, who is actually being cheered for playing out that same thing that

CM Punk was complaining about. And then enters Brock Lesnar in 2012. Brock Lesnar in 2012 was capitalizing on his success in UFC. He had left the WWE after WrestleMania 20, had been booed out of the building, went into the UFC. Well, actually, he tried out for the Minnesota Vikings and damn near made it, never having played football. He is just an incredible athlete. Wow.

Yeah, he was like the last guy cut. Then he goes into ultimate fighting basically MMA. And he joins the UFC gets beat then beats everybody, including Randy Couture. He'd become a UFC heavyweight champion, beating Randy Couture, who's, you know, Captain America of the UFC. And then he gets about of diverticulitis. And his career ends there. Yeah. But he was champion. So he ends up losing to diverticulitis. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sorry. I had to go look up. Because I recognized the name,

but I was like, okay, wait a minute, who am I actually thinking of? And I looked up Brock Lesnar on my phone and- Please describe him. He looks like a goddamn space marine. Yeah. He's- Doesn't he look like the Aryan space marine ideal. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Very blonde.

Mm-hmm. Very skinny crew cut from one of the decodas by the way lived out on a dairy farm. This is all going to be very important in just a minute. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, that's not a blessing. No, he's like, what's his, oh, darn it. I forgot the strong man's name who played the mountain in, oh, I know. He's talking about though. Yeah. But, but it's like if that guy actually did bodybuilding instead of powerlifting, because um, holy shit is the cut. Now here's the wild thing.

He is... That's fucking terrifying. He usually weighs about 295. He had to cut down the 265 for the UFC. He is quicker than almost any wrestler on the roster anytime he's there. He's insanely fast. He has an NCAA record of like 106 and six

with like one draw. It's not. No, one night he and Kurt Angle decided to wrestle to see who was better. The only reason that Angle won was because he was technically far superior. But he even said he's like, oh, Brock, what he lacked in technique, he more than made up for his strength. The only reason

I beat him is because... Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, angle said, the only reason I want is because I'm an Olympic champion and he's an NCAA champion. And there, there's a vast gulf between those two. Yeah. Yeah. But that is it. Like oh, yeah. Okay. So diverticulitis, uh, he stopped at the UFC and he comes back to WWE, uh, as a monster heel. Okay. And he really, because he's a fucking ogre. Right. Like. Yeah. Now, John Cena had wrestled the rock and I think lost to him at the most recent wrestle mania. And then the next night he comes out and says, you know, basically, I bow to the greater man, the rock was was a better wrestler than me last night.

But you know, ever forward doing the face thing and everyone's booing him still because he's a good guy because so Brock Lesnar comes out and confronts him and bloody is him actually bloody is him and leaves him laying. Now I don't know if he was supposed to bloody him, but I mean, he throws a vicious fucking forearm and elbow and like just gashes the shit out of John's lip and John knows good, good television when he sees it. So he absolutely like, you know, spits a little bit more of the blood out and then yeah, yeah, lays there looking at the lights until commercial. Okay. And this was supposed to be a heel move. But since it was done on John Cena, the cruelty gained Lesnar some face shine. Even though we suck because we like to lay society.

Where we were. That's where we are. Even though Lesnar continued plowing through people all through 2012 in the most heelish ways possible He's a monster who is delights in being cruel. He kept getting cheered people liked Frankenstein's monster He K Fabe broke triple H's arm didn't really but K Fabe broke it By this point triple H is like everybody has mad respect for triple H Yeah, his arms broken doesn't gain Brock Lesnar that much antipathy He attacked an undercard stable and destroyed all three of them

Doesn't matter. He destroyed CM Punk by betraying him Doesn't matter everybody loves CM Punk. I like oh, okay. Let's put Brock against him Then they'll finally fucking blue, blue, blue Brock. And that didn't work. And from there, he fudes with other monsters and giants, Mark Henry, the big show, dominates them both, destroys them both. And everybody's just, yeah, fuck yeah.

He goes on to WrestleMania 30. This is the one where Daniel Bryan won. Daniel Bryan gets overshadowed in his victory by what Brock Lesnar does. He ends the Undertaker's streak. Wow. People are uneasily fans of him as a result of this because you don't end Undertaker's streak.

And I mean, this is a huge, like if you type in Undertaker's streak, you will inevitably find a picture of a fan sitting at ringside in his eyes are about ready to fall out of their sockets. It's insane. Now from there, Brock Lesnar goes on to defeat John Cena in the most dominant fashion possible at Summerslam. And basically all he did was hit the heavy combo button 16 times and then win the video game.

Like all he did was grab him around the waist and throw him backward into German suplex, but he did it 16 times and just dominated John Cena. So it wasn't very flashy and it was just brutal and people loved it. Now by this point, Brock Lesnar is unstoppable. And the only, and the other face that the WWE is pushing really, really hard was a guy named Roman Reigns. Who is gorgeous. He really, oh my goodness. The fans of course fucking hate him because they don't like a good guy. And they hate him in the same way that they hate John Cena. And John Cena's kind of taken some time away after all that.

So it's not until WrestleMania 31 in San Jose that Seth Rollins does the chicken shit heel move interrupts the match between Lesnar and Reigns during which Lesnar was largely dominant again. And even like he suplexed Roman Reigns a bunch of times. And the whole thing was like how can anybody counter this attack? And's like well fucking kick him in the leg or something I don't know shit. But let him grab you although he's a wrestler he's gonna grab you and do whatever he wants to you know so there's this this whole story right well uh so he's dominating the shit out of roman

rants he even shouts out suplex city bitch, which immediately becomes a t-shirt. Because a horse. Yeah. And by the way, he's got Paul Heyman as a mouthpiece who is just an amazing mouthpiece. The night after he defeats Undertaker, he says, Brock Lesnar is the one in the 21 and one, which is just beautiful poetry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, good.

So this time, Suplex City bitch, and then Seth Rollins comes down, interrupts the match, defeats Roman Reigns, and runs away having won the title. And the next night, Brock Lesnar beats the shit out of a cameraman, two announcers, and leads to his own suspension, K-Fabe, because Rollins refused to rematch. So Rollins is this chicken-shed heel who has a vicious ass move. It's called the curb stomp. Okay. And it looks really vicious. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Now just from its name. Yeah. Now just as a quick touchdown from the all-too-real world

of professional wrestling, do you remember Clive and Bundy and that standoff? Yeah, I do. Okay. About a week later, after the standoff, while speaking about civil disturbances, he spoke against the Watts riots with a hot take in April of 2014.

Well, okay. Cliven Bundy and his sons and his lumpen meatloaf for brain sons. Mm-hmm. You want to talk about white agreement. I do. And specifically, like rural agreement. They are they are text book. Like not not understanding. Not knowing how to read a room like or I don't know. A privileged toxic privilege. I don't I don't know. I'm trying to find a way to describe it that won't immediately be like,

well, you know, of course, you know, Kami left us like you fucking say that, you know. But the thing is, so they they freeloaded, literally, freeloaded on government, on government land to feed their cattle. And then when like the government came to say, Hey, we need you to pay your fees. Right. And get your animals off of this and land. Get your get your animals off of public land, which is tax payer. Yeah, controlled property. There is a social contract here. Can you do your part? Can you, yeah, It's rolled proper. There is a social contract here. Can you do your part? Can you, yeah. They, they immediately flung their hands up and fell on a fainting couch. No, no, no, no. They immediately grabbed their guns and occupied buildings. They threatened

violence. Okay. So the animals that had been confiscated by the federal government were handed back under threat of violence by private citizens. They whiskey rebellion successfully. All right. Yeah. I was I was thinking of their own internal psychology. That was based on was based on victimhood.

Yes. The point I was trying to make is they portray themselves as these terrible victims. Right. And for some reason, and this is the part that mystifies me, like, absolutely, I still don't get this. And I know, like, I can logic it out. And I can understand how the thought process worked for the people that this happened with.

But I still can't emotionally wrap my head around it. They abused public land. Essentially they stole money from you and me, the taxpayer. Yes. And somehow when they then went full terrorist and had this standoff the first time, I'm thinking about the one that was at their own ranch in Nevada to start with. reason, people who normally want to scream and holler about, you know, people abusing public benefits and, you know, tax money and, you know, all of that shit, these people then showed up to like back them up.

Yeah. Back up to people with the guns. In the commission of free loading of essentially, I mean, the same thing as tax avoidance. And I didn't get it then. I have moved farther left I have moved farther left since then. I was closer to center at that point. I might have even, well, anyway, I, you know, my outlook has changed since then. But like, how do you, how do you, I just don't understand how people rationalized

their support for these guys. Well, because they were doing nastily what other people wanted to be doing. Yeah, okay. That was that that's the thing. That's the mid to that 20 teens. Yeah. I only mentioned what he does in April of 2014, because of what I'm about to point out in Brock Lesnar's late 2010s run.

So I'm gonna quote Clive and Bundy here. Quote, and remember, they're asking him about, yo, you did some shit here and did it, and he's like, well, you know, and Watts, you know, like the fuck, 1965. Yep, that's the one who says, quote, I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro. Anytime anybody starts with that statement, and it's not the 1700s, maybe the 1800s,

even let you, I'll even let you have until the 1920s. 1920s. But here's how he starts it. He says, when I go to Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and I would see these little government houses and in front of that government house, the door was usually open, and the older people and the kids there, and the older people and the kids, and there was always at least a half a dozen people on the porch. They didn't have nothing to do, they didn't have nothing for the kids to do, they didn't have nothing for the young girls to do. They were basically on government subsidy.

So now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put the young men in jail because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I've often wondered are they better off as slaves picking cotton and having a family life and doing things or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom. Sir, this is a sizzler. Like, like, what is that even to have to do with what the fuck you did? And if you want to rent about government subsidies, you're the one abusing the use of government land. Yeah, but these people had doors open

and people sitting on a porch, which I'm like, that sounds like fun. Like, okay. Now later, he said that people reacting to a statement misunderstood him. He dug in his heels and said, quote, I've never had a black person or a brown person ever say anything bad about me.

And that he had great respect for black people who quote, raise themselves up to a point where they are equal with the rest of us. We don't need leeches feeding off of us and eating off of us. We need producers." End quote. Yeah. Now later he got challenged on that.

Was he wearing was he wearing the white hood when he said all of this? No, it was probably laundry day. Now when challenged later, he said, quote, the statement was right. So back to wrestling because reality is some fucked up shit. In 2015, things continued for Braug Lesnar, largely being dominant with a few losses here, to give the face a chance to have some stakes against Lesnar, who was still largely getting cheered. He would regularly brutalize opponents or anyone else, and then during a pay-per-view, he'd defeat known legends by finishing them off in a cage on the concrete, etc. He would beat them in a brutal and cruel way. That summer, he legitimately opened up Randy Orton's forehead, which required 10 staples to fix.

I've never had a wound that required a staple. What? where I had 10 staples to fix. I've never had a wound that required a staple. What the hell? Oh, yeah, well, and it turns out this was something that was agreed upon by Orton and Lesnar and McMahon, but wasn't told to anyone else. And Little Chris Jericho went after Lesnar for this and just went off on him. You don't fucking do that to people and blah, blah, blah.

And if you can go look and find the Brock Lesnar, he hit Randy Orton straight down with the elbow on his forehead and opened up a giant gash and just it gushed. That moves illegal in the UFC. You can't do what's called the 12 to 6 elbow. And he did it to Randy Orton because it's fake. He then went on. Yeah. do what's called a 12 to 6 elbow and he did it to Randy Orton because it's fake. He then went on. Yeah. Was that match held in Japan?

No, no, no, no. This is okay. Yeah, I'm just, you know, yeah. And the thing is, did WWE has a fairly like not much blood policy at this point? But it's Brock Lesnar and so you are creating this mythos of this guy, right? Okay, and what year was this? 2015. Okay. Yeah, summer of 2015. Okay. Now he then goes on to dominate for the next two years through 2018.

Though his return in 2021, wearing largely farmer gear had a real great white hope feel to it. Since at this point, Roman Reins and the Usos, who are Samoan, were running roughshod over much of the WWE, and it felt very similar to Jim Jeffries coming out of retirement back in 1910. Now, this is why I brought up the Clive and Bundy thing, because here's what Jeffries had said in 1910 about why he was going to box with Jack Johnson.

Quote, I'm going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro. End quote. Jeffries was happy on his alfalfa farm so the parallels are really hard to ignore here, given that Lesnar is known to live on a farm in Canada Presently and grew up on a dairy farm and he shows up wearing farmer gear To deal with these upstart some Owens Now I'm not gonna chronicle much past that only to say that the the following if you look at how Lesnar continued to dominate from

2012 to 2017 it it was bloody, it was brutal, it was bullying, and it was cruel. And that never got him over as a heal. People paid money to come see him do those things, not to see justice being done for him to do those things. Okay. So he doesn't suffer consequence that much of doing those things. He'd get beat from time to time, but there was never a Now he's been kicked back down the ladder and he has to leave This is a huge shift and when you pair this with the agreement that was never resolved over Brian's and punks in ability to gain the top spot for very long It makes a very fair amount of sense that the cruelty mattered to the people as a way for white folks to strike back at a system that had failed them. The cruelty is the point. Right. He's going to hurt the right people. Exactly. Oh,

look at you getting to the end of my stuff. Motherfucker. In April of 1961 in San Diego, California, an aerospace engineer and a landlord, and his math teacher wife gave birth to their first son, Gregory, Gen 4th day. After he'd turned three, the family moved to Pennsylvania, moving a few more times before settling down in Northwest Pennsylvania. When Gregory was still in high school, upper Marion area high school, and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania specifically. And he served as captain of the football team as well as class president for both his junior and senior years.

He started a software business in the 1970s. Quote, I started a software business in high school and ran a development lab in college with 12 programmers. End quote. In 1983, he graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology, a private research university in New Jersey with a bachelor's of engineering and electrical engineering and a master's in computer science in 1983. He continued his athletic hobbies, ended up playing squash in college. He decided he didn't want to work for other people. So Chan Forty co-founded

the Bright Work Development, which did things for banks that I don't understand. It's some sort of server land thing. And they sold the company to McAfee Associates for 10 million in 1994, right? Before McAfee goes really, really big. Yeah. Now working for McAfee is the head of North American sales.

Greg and his wife, Susan, herself a mechanical engineer, moved to Bozeman, Montana, where they started right now technologies in 1997. This was a customer relationship management software service for enterprise organizations, which is a part of an Oracle service, and I have no idea what any of that fucking means, but it goes public in 2004,

and it employed over 1,000 workers and executives in Bozeman and worldwide. I have no idea what they did, but in 2011 Oracle Corp acquired it for $1.8 billion. All right. GN4 take kept a 20% stake in the company, which gave him $290 million. Evidently, they do something that allows the federal government to do online internal searches for social security and Medicare. Okay. Now, one of the people who was working for him as an executive was a guy named Steve Danes.

Danes was born in Van Nijs, California in 1962 and his family moved to Bozeman in 1964. Danes lived their whole life and graduated as student body president. He got a Bachelor of Sciences in chemical engineering and in 1984 Danes was one of the youngest delegates in the RNC maintaining a near constant erection for Ronald Reagan. Danes worked for Proctor and Gamble and moved his family to Hong Kong for six years enabling him to expand Proctor and Gamble's Asian market opening several factories overseas. One could argue that he was part of the mechanism by which Proctor and Gamble shipped jobs overseas. Though that would mean that one would get sued by GN40 as he had done in 2012 to the Montana Democratic Party alleging that they were guilty of liable and defamation.

It's interesting because GN40 is suing to get the Democrats to stop saying things about Danes. Now, from there, Danes left Proctor and Gamble to join his own family construction business in Bozeman. And then in 2000, he joined Greg, GM Forte, right now technologies, putting his understanding of East Asia to good work. Danes was also president of the Montana, the Montana State University College Republicans and ended up as the Montana State chairperson for Micah Cabees 2008 presidential campaign. Okay. Also that same year Danes ran for Lieutenant Governor on a ticket with Roy Brown in Montana who was running for governor.

They got beat pretty badly. I think they ended up in fifth place. He left right now in 2012 so that he could campaign for Congress. And this is when the ads ran against him that he'd moved jobs overseas, which, which GN4T then alleged included right now technologies as a company that Danes had used to move jobs overseas. And that's why he sued. Okay. I mean, while back in 2004, G and Forte had started the G and Forte family foundation, which made millions of dollars in charitable contributions, designed to support quote, the work of faith-based organizations engaged in outreach work,

strengthening families, and helping the needy. Organizations in Montana that work to improve education, support entrepreneurship, and create jobs, and organizations that enhance the local community of Bozeman Montana. Okay. This is a creationist based organization that has assets of over $113 million dollars and as of nine years ago. Yes. Of course, it's creationist organization. of nine years ago. Yes, of course, it's creationist organization.

Of which? I wondered when we were gonna be getting, like, okay, you're introducing these new side characters. And like, no, no, no. This one is actually the arch-litch, like, oh, right, okay, got it. They gave nearly a million dollars to the Montana Family Foundation. You want to guess their focus?

He's also used this foundation to donate to groups that are trying to get rid of federal campaign finance regulations as well as the Family Research Council, the focus on the family and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, and the Montana Family Foundation, whose stated goal is to quote advocate against LGBT policies. Because, of course, it is. Now, Gianforte has been such a huge advocate of creationism and the young earth theory that he donated nearly $300,000 to the Glenn Dive dinosaur and fossil museum, which claims that dinosaurs were both on the arc and went extinct because of the great flood.

You know, you get to have both. You don't. You don't. Well, if the arc can be thwarted by a duck, Yeah, okay. Like, you still don't get both. No, they also donated a replica of a T-Rex skeleton. I'm not sure if they included like a saddle, but I kind of hope they did. It would, it would match their, their, uh, idiom, if they did.

Yeah. In 2005, GN4, take co-authored a book called, you're ready for this? Oh, God. Boots trapping your business start and grow a successful company with almost no money. So what does a young earth creationist tech bro, millionaire who believes in the Horatio Algermith, who actively imperceptibly donates to anti-LGBTQIA causes due after suing the Democratic Party of his state. Back Trump? Well, yeah, that too, but first he runs for office. Of course. Actually, no, he does back Trump, I think, prior to that. So

in 2017, Ryan Zinkie, Zink Z, was made the US Secretary of the Interior largely because in his words in 2008, he, quote, supports the increase or he says, I quote, support increased coal production for electrical generation and believe the use of alternate energy sources and clean coal is preferred over petroleum-based fuels. He also called global warming a, quote, threat multiplier for instability in the most volatile regions of the world, and that there would be catastrophic, and quote, unprecedented economic consequences if Obama and Pelosi did not push to act on climate change in a 2010 letter. Dude was on it, right? Yeah. So of course he becomes, I mean, he's a man in Montana. So he sees nature.

He wants to protect nature. He doesn't give a shit about politics. And that's why he was appointed to be Secretary of the Interior of 2017. Because the sitting president in 2017 shared his beliefs and passion for making this world a better place for tomorrow. Or it might have had something to do with his putting an active birthrace Paul E. Valely and other anti-Obama conspiracists in charge of a super PAC that supported Mitt Romney in 2012. Yeah. It might have also had something to do with his 2013 radio show that he hosted calling into question Obama citizenship, even as a congressman in 2016. Yeah. Surely his record of voting against environmentalist concerns as well as his support of offshore extractive drilling

except for Florida didn't do it. Nope. Or his, by the way, Montana, not many coastlines. Yeah. So he's really in support of fucking over the coastels. Yeah, of course. Except for Florida. Or his switching against his own

letter four years later during a debate claiming that anthropogenic climate change isn't, quote, proven science. Accept it is. Yeah. So either, either for those reasons or the other ones, he got made Secretary of Interior, based on the recommendation of Koch-Fiends Donald Trump, Jr. allegedly. And then he wrote a horse several blocks to the entrance of the department of the Interior's main building the day after he was sworn in. What? Okay.

I knew that'd get you. Like, he wrote a horse to the... To the Robin of the Interior. Because... Yeah. eroto horse to the to the to the to the interior because yeah because because it's all about it's all about the appearance of masculinity and the marketing back to the fucking cowboy myth. Yep. Like you know and and um Ryan the the yes movement in WWE. Daniel Bryan, yeah. Daniel Bryan, there we go. You mentioned the beard like in passing when you describe that.

No, no, that's critically important. It's critically important because a huge part of the reason people back him is because it ties in with the bullshit surface level toxic masculinity that that whole sector of the population is obsessed with. Yeah, but Daniel Bryan's beard was more of a the hipster bro Portlandia beard. Quite honestly, like you go ahead and take a look at it. And here's why he was a vegan wrestler, like not K-Fabe legit. Now it worked its way into K-Fabe, but he was vegan.

Like he was very progressive on a lot of things. He was from Seattle. He like all these very, he was a very progressive guy. And McMahon didn't want to push him at all. The people kept shoving him down and McMahon's throat. So finally he pseudo-back to him until, you know, injuries. Yeah. But you're right.

There's this appearance of masculinity. Unless, of course, you're a good guy with that masculinity. That's not good. So on his first full day of work, Zinkie rescinded the ban on lead bullets and lead fishing tackle and national wildlife refuges to the benefit of nobody like there's no nobody's down for that. No, because because the cruelty is the point. It's the exact same mindset that leads people to literally tune their trucks out of tune. Yeah.

So it's sprayed like dust, rolling coal. It's a thing because the whole point is they feel like they are so twisted up with their entitlement being thwarted. That they think seeing them roll down the street is just going to turn you and me, the soy boy cucks that we are is going to turn us inside out with with like hatred and which is hilarious to me because really what's the softer metal. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, when this eminently qualified individual took office, that left his seat in Congress open.

And this meant a special election in Montana for the only House of Reps seat for Montana. Jean Forte saw his chance and ran against Rob Quist and Mark Wix. Rob Quist was Democrat, Mark Wix was a libertarian. G and Forte refused corporate pack money, but he accepted all other pack money. He ran against the quote, liberally elite, and quote, and sanctuary cities, which were both huge problems in Montana. I'm sure.

He also ran against Obamacare. You can guess how much of his platform based on his history and you'd not be far from Mark as to what his platform was. So on May 24, 2017, GN4T was answering questions at a press conference. Now it was in, it was just before the cameras were going to roll for a local TV spot. So the reporters in there, hey, can you just give us a quick blurb on this? Ben Jacobs reporting for the Guardian. Oh, that look on your face. Now I remember why I recognize this guy's name. Ben Jacobs was asking about his support

of the Republican health care plan. Ben Jacobs asked Gianforte about his thoughts on Republican health care bill, which had just come out and was trying to get him to take a stance and be on record supporting it or being against it. Gianforte tried to put him off. We'll talk to you about that later. Jacob's responded. Yeah, but there's not going to be time. I'm just curious if you could at which point Gianforte interrupted him, telling Jacob's

to speak with Shane, please. That was the campaign spokesman Shane Scanlan, who claimed falsely in a written statement that Jacob's quote, entered the office without permission, aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg's face and began asking badgering questions. Jacob's was asked to leave. After asking Jacob's to lower the recorder, Jacob's declined. Greg then attempted to grab the phone that was pushed into his face. Jacob's grabbed Greg's wrist and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground. It's unfortunate this aggressive behavior from a liberal

journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer barbecue. That's what Scanlan said. Load of shit. Yeah, it is kind of weird because it was in a side room with a local TV crew set up for an interview at his headquarters in Bozeman. I don't barbecue much, but yeah. Now Jacobs then said, but and G and Forty, according to another reporter who was there and testified, she says, quote, G and Forty grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him to into the ground. He moved on top of the reporter and began punching the man, yelling something to the effect of, I'm sick and tired of this. At

no point did any of us who witnessed the assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward G and forte, who left the area after giving statements to local sheriffs, deputies. This contradicts G and forte's account that quote, the liberal media is trying to make a story since the person who just gave that, she was a reporter for Fox News and Scanlan statement that claimed that Jacob said, grab Jean Forty's wrist and they both fell to the ground. And because it was all on audio, I have the transcript. So here's what happened quote, you know, yeah, but and then I'm sick and tired of you

guys. The last guy who came in here, uh, you did the same thing. Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here. The last guy did the same thing. You with the guardian. Yes, and you just broke my glasses. Your last guy did the same thing, same damn thing.

You just body slam me and broke my glasses. Get the hell out of here. You'd my glasses. Get the hell out of here. You'd like me to get the hell out of here. I'd also like to call the police. Can I get your guys' names? Another person, hey, hey, you've got to leave. He just body slammed me. You got to leave.

G and Forty was cited for misdemeanor assault, booked briefly, 93 days days later and then processed. The sheriff had donated $250 to GN 40's campaign. Because, of course, he had the Helena independent record rescinded its endorsement, combining this incident with their noting that GN 40 was encouraging his supporters to boycott newspapers, joking about choking reporters, and telling a reporter in a press conference that his supporters outnumbered the reporters in a very fog-horny kind of way. GN-40 got sentenced to four days in jail, which the judge then altered to be 40 hours of

community service, 20 hours of anger management therapy, and 180 day to for his sentence, and $385 total in fees and fines. Since then, GN-0 has tried to continue gas lighting in white Washington's violin outburst, even though it directly contradicts his admitted testimony in court. Now, after serving as a congressional representative from Montana through 2020, during which time he co-signed the Texas versus Pennsylvania lawsuit that contested the results of the election, he was elected governor of Montana. See, if you're a mediocre, you just stay the course, man. Incidentally,

Greg G. N. Ford in March 2022, as governor of Montana, formally started divesting from Russian assets held by the state of Montana, a total about $15 million. Which is really interesting, giving that he had about $250,000 tied up in investments with Russian companies that were specifically sanctioned when Russian invaded Crimea in 2014. You want to guess who the reporter was? That initially broke that story a little under a month prior to the assault? Oh, hey. Ben Jacobs from the Guardian. Yeah, hey, then Jacob's from the Guardian. Yeah, I wondered.

Now, why does this matter at this point for a couple of reasons? In the mid 2010s, a grown-ass man running for Congress assaulted a reporter for asking a question. The sitting president at the time came to Missoula and said, quote, Greg is smart. And by the way, never wrestle him. Any guy that can do a body slam, he's my kind of guy. End quote. And then he mimed doing a body slam. Quote, there's nothing to be embarrassed about.

I had heard that he body slammed a reporter. I know Montana pretty well. I think it might help him. And it did. And then he went on to make fun of Elizabeth Warren lamenting that he couldn't call her Pocahontas anymore because quote, you must apologize for that. I said, why? Well, it's not nice what you're doing. I said, okay,

I'd like to apologize to the real Pocahontas, but not to the fake Pocahontas. Speaking, yeah, the cruelty is the point. He is the culmination of all of us without the fertile ground of the 2000s and the subsequent rush toward nastiness in the 2010s. The election of a man whose entire candidacy was based on bullying and hurting the right people would not have been possible. In November of 2015, Donald Trump candidate for president at the time, openly mimicked and mocked Serge Kovaleski, a reporter who suffers from a congenital joint condition called Arthur Guy Rupsis guy Arthur

gree posis in front of a crowd in South Carolina. He says quote now the poor guy you got to see this Trump said and I'm not going to do my impersonation of Trump doing his impersonation. Yeah, no, and then he impersonated and mimicked the reporter. He says I don't know what I said. I don't remember. He's going like I don't remember. Maybe that's what he said. He didn't. And he won't, uh, he didn't and wouldn't apologize for this for, uh, for reporting, uh, I'm sorry. Uh, so end quote, Trump didn't and wouldn't apologize for this. And he was given a number of opportunities

to for reporting on the incident. Trump launched attacks against New York times on Twitter What's wild is that he used this as a deflection to defend against his attack on Arab Americans on the East Coast post 9-11? Yep So to make it so that people don't see his racism He engaged in ableism and then attacked the people reporting on it They finally did get nailed down for a comment on it. He says, quote, I merely mimicked what I thought would be a fluster reporter trying to get out of a statement he made long ago.

If Mr. Kovalevsky is handicapped, I wouldn't know because I do not know what he looks like. If I did know, I would definitely not say anything about his appearance. This is dubious. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. You wouldn't say anything about his appearance. This is dubious. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. You wouldn't say anything about his appearance. Yeah, so this is dubious. Mr., no, I couldn't have sexually assaulted her

because she's not pretty enough. Right. This is dubious because he always talks about people's appearance. Remember his feud with Rosie O'Donnell? He called her Big Fat Lesbian Rosie. It's also dubious because Kovalevsky reported on Trump from 1987 to 1993, and had been in his presence

no fewer than a dozen times. Quote, Donald and I were on first name basis for years. I've interviewed him in his office. I've talked to him at press conferences. All in all, I would say around a dozen times. I've interacted with him as a reporter while I was at the daily news. Of course, Trump couldn't leave that be and close with another insult. Serge Kovalevsky must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from a decade ago,

if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did. He should stop using his disability to grandstand, get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes. to grandstand, get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes. After this, his approval went into the 40s for the first time on an upward trend as a candidate. The following year, he did plenty of the campaign equivalent of ship posting and his numbers held steady or went up. And then in January of 2016, just before the Iowa caucus, Donald Trump, candidate for the president of the United States, boasted of his followers loyalty, quote, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody

and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's like incredible. He said this at a Christian college, yep, Dort College in Sue Center, Iowa. And he refused to clarify, saying instead that the rally was, quote, a packed house or flow. Now almost a year later, in 2017, Trump is president. In Mariana, Florida, Trump got tons of support,

especially for the border wall that he promised to build and make Mexico pay for. Most of the residents there supported him and didn't blame Trump for the shutdown in the government. Remember that? Yep. Or the lost wages that many Americans had at the time, even though it was directly due to what he was doing. In January 2017, Crystal Minton, a secretary at a prison, caring for her disabled parents and a single mom, said this, quote, I voted for him and he's doing, he's the one doing this. I thought he was going to do good things.

He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting. Yep. She didn't object to her pain objectively. Yep, she didn't object to her pain objectively. She objected to her pain relative to others. And that's it. The cruelty is the point as Adam Sur were had said in the Atlantic in 2018. The kind of politics that he played to get into office and then to keep a loyal and rabid support base was a politics of cruelty. He engaged in what's called negative partisanship. That is, he's not helping anyone, but his supporters care more that he sticks it to people. Since anger is the easiest thing to whip up if you're wealthy and powerful, it's the easiest thing to agree upon when you're suffering from inequity, getting someone underused better than uplifting

yourself. And that brings us back to Cena sucks and he's not my Pope. It is so much easier to smash others and load them when the structures around you are designed to enrich the wealthy at your expense. When foreclosures took your neighborhood away and then the companies that caused the problem that took your parents house and kept you from buying a home because now the prices were through the roof, they get your tax dollars to keep themselves afloat. It's really easy to get mad. And that kind of inequity,

wherein the rich get richer, is really easy to make marks of all of us. Because even if he's rich, he's still promising to hurt others worse than you. And that's much more stable currency and an economy of inequity than seeing your neighbors get something that you needed too. And herein lies the part where we got to

this point because Trump was exactly like the protagonist in a really good drama is that we were as a culture fully invested in. Quote, yeah, sometimes he makes me cringe, but I still like him and I still think he's the right thing for America. There's a wonderful quote that I found talking about Walt White. It says, quote, by the time he tells Skylar, he's the one who knocks, he's full on terrifying. And yet we watch, and we care, and we root for him. Part of what makes this show so great is that even when Walt is almost unspeakably evil, we keep wanting him to win. Here's why. We feel his rage. Walt's really got a pair. Walt wins and everybody loves a winner. Walt, why Donald Trump and see it in punk are all of us. The plain, common folk who feel disenfranchised

and mad about it. Brock Lesnar, Al Swaringin, and Tony soprano are who we wish we could be. We are dominated regularly by systems and people out of our reach. Those three guys dominate. Walt, White, and Donald Trump are the us who succeeded at striking back for themselves.

They're who we realistically could be. Pope Francis and John Cena, they're the ideal that we resent because it reminds us of who we should be and aren't in this system. Imagine if from 1999 through the 2010s, we'd watch shows that normalized Pete Davidson, and Daniel Bryan, whom and what we'd look to for aspiration, but that would be trying something new, and nobody wants that. Wow. That's. Yeah. That's that sucks. I don't have I don't have anything ear you

died to say about that. That just that sucks. There's no there's no getting But wow. Yeah. And, and, you know, I wonder the thing that leads me to then think about is like when we when we look at the folks coming up now into their 20s Who who are going to be you know picking up whatever torch and and running it forward? are we Are they going to decide no, you know what's cool being kind is cool and being one of these guys? sucks, you know, you know What is what it actually, what does that actually get you? You're an asshole. Right.

You know, or are they just going to run with it further? You know, and I think, I think based on what I've seen as a teacher at the middle school level. I think there's hope, but like we talked about last episode, there was hope in the 60s, and then in the 70s, everybody's using quailudes in their mother's basement because, yeah, fuck it. So like, I don't know. So, like, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of where I'm left. I really hope. Here's what I will say that, you know, sometimes it swings back.

Sesame Street, the Muppets and Fraggle Rock, all were products of the later mid to late 1970s. Well, Sesame Street's a little earlier. Yeah. But really gets into full swing. Mid to late 1970s into the 1980s. Yeah. That was a punk rock optimism.

That Jim Henson unleashed upon us. OK. And then he died. Yeah. And, and that sucked. Yeah. And the whole system kind of changed anyway. It wasn't just three networks anymore, et cetera, et cetera.

But that might have been our last chance. Like, and if you look at Daniel Bryan, dude looks like a Muppet. This is true. So unless we get someone who's really fucking good with muppets. I have a need to be encouraging puppetry in school. We do. We absolutely do. I mean, we do. But, you know, not necessarily that, you know, but yeah, that is a need. Like, if you really want kindness to win, I think it starts with muppets. Okay. I mean, like I can't argue. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. All right. So what have you gleaned? Other than this is all awful. People suck. suck or white people suck more than average, which is, you know, I mean, engaging in a kind of

bigotry of its own. But yeah, you're painting with a very broad brush there. I really am painting with a very broad brush, but the the faction of white American society that will refuse to recognize their own white supremacy makes me so goddamn angry. Like, as a white guy who has figured out in his 30s and 20s, his 40s that, oh, hey, I had some bad ideas when I was younger, like some really bad ideas. Like I didn't think I was racist, but you know what? Boy, was I. Holy shit. Did I have some biases that were just like totally not like I didn't pay any attention to him

I didn't recognize him for what they were, but holy shit was that bad the the level of Regility pisses me off From from the folks that that you know are the the ones that inspire me to make the statement I made with such a prod brush. Like, it's just, it's, that's the part that quote unquote triggers me is just like, it makes me furious. Why can't you recognize this? Like what what is it in your makeup that makes you so fucking weak? And I don't know whether it's like the way I was raised to value intellectual honesty. Like as a thing.

If it was, you know, I mean, I don't know. Do you think some of that your anger and frustration is you projecting your frustration at younger you onto others? Because you see them doing what you would have kept doing had you not had emotion. That's definitely part of it. Yeah.

Yeah, that's no for sure. Yeah. I mean, the way to people's hearts is clearly not to tell you, tell them, I'm better than you and here's why. And it's clearly not to say you're fucked up and here's why. Yeah. Because to do that is to invite a response of a Brock Lesnar or a CM Punk or a Walter White or or or or or

so you know validate in it's it's a lot of extra work and I don't even know how fruitful it'll be but you know I know that going after people and telling them why they're wrong, very rarely if ever works. It worked for me, and it probably worked for you, but it is vanishingly slim, the margin of people that that works for. So just because that worked for us,

doesn't mean that that's the approach. Yeah. So, but at the same time, you know, like who controls the, the, the stories controls the culture. And if our culture is continuing to lionize bad people because it's so complex and it's so dark and it's therefore therefore, I mean, you're talking, you're not just running up a sand doon now. Like it's much shaker than that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's pretty much all I can, all I can muster other than got damaged people suck. I broke you again. Yeah, one more time.

So all right. Well, I'm going to recommend a book to you. Okay. And this will put a little bit of a spring in your step and make you laugh and make you happy. Okay. It's called Jim Henson, the biography. Cool. Yeah, written by, let's see, who did that one?

That was Brian J. Jones. written by, let's see, who did that one? That was Brian J. Jones. And it's nice, it's sweet, he's on the front cover with a turtle neck and a few muppets. Nice. The addition that I am referencing is the one with the the forward or it's got a blurb on it by Neil Patrick Harris, who is an effibly positive, positive fellow. So that's what I will recommend to you. Do you have anything also to recommend? I'm going to recommend some completely out of left field, but something that I very much enjoyed and have picked up again, who murdered Shaucer, a medieval mystery, actually written, he and a doctorate in medieval studies, presented this idea at a convention or a symposium as an in the format of an inquest. Because in the historical record, Shaucer is very clearly there and very active.

We see all kinds of records of him. Right up to the point where Henry IV takes the throne. And about, I wanna say it's less than a year after Henry IV takes the throne, suddenly Shaucer is moving on to the territory of a feudal Lord who can act as his protector. And then he disappears completely for the rest of Henry IV's reign. He's dead. Like, and he dies. And there's no commentary on how he died. Was it an illness? Was it, you know, like, at mishap, whatever, he just disappears.

He's dead. And we're not going to talk about that until Henry the fourth son, Henry V, ascends the throne, at which point all of a sudden there's this great level of admiration coming from the royal direction about Shawser. And it looks something like Henry V doing one more thing to try to reinforce the legitimacy of his claim to the throne through his father. Like yeah, my dad did this shit, but I'm not that guy. And so there's a compelling argument that like there were a number of people that Shawcer would have made angry. And like, which one of them did him in? Nice. And it's a fascinating book that actually for a while got me trying to think about alternate histories. If, if, you know, you know, you served the throne, what would have happened. Right.

And so, yeah, no, it's a fascinating book, and I really highly recommend it. Terry Jones is very good at taking complex medieval politics and making it very readable and entertaining. So, yeah, I highly recommend it. Who murdered shots? It's her by Terry Jones. Excellent. It reminds me of Troy by Stephen Fry.

Oh, yeah. He's starting to dive into the classics. Yeah. Oh, very cool So yeah, I'll have to look that one up for sure. Cool. All right. Well, where shall people find you on social medias? I can be found on social media at Mr. Under Square Blaylock on the TikTok. I can be found on Twitter as eHBlaylock, we collectively can be found on Twitter at Geek History Time. And of course, you are listening to this podcast, which you found either on the Apple Podcast app or on Stitcher. And wherever you found it, please hit the subscribe button and give us the five-star review that you know we deserve.

And then of course, if you want to find more episodes, I know that with the Apple Podcast app, when I try to go back a certain distance, I run into kind of a roadblock, You can go to our website at www.geekhistorytime.com and find everything going all the way back to episode one. And as as Damien always likes to say, it's it's a smorgasbord. There is a little bit of everything for everybody there. And how about you? Where can you be found, sir? You can find me at Luna's on September. What was that? Not the fourth, but or six? No, no, it's the following is September 9th. You can find me on September 9th at Luna's appearance Sacramento, slinging puns, bring proof of vaccination plus $10 plus another $10 so you can buy some good food and let us entertain you there safely. If you're hearing this before August 5th, then you should come to the August 5th show as well. So those are two places you can find me. You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram at Daharmony and possibly on TikTok at Daharmony1.

So that is that. I'm going to go eat massive amounts of chocolate. The amount of rabbit holes I had to go down for this to make sense. I spent an entire day just, and these didn't even make it into the edit, but it's been a whole day just looking at like weird-ass creationist museums. Oh, yeah, no, that's that that way lies madness. That's that's going to be a fun episode to run. And with that, I'm Damien Harmony for I'm Damien Harmony for Geek History of Time. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.