Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 158: The Scab Couple
Episode Date: August 6, 2020This week we cover Trump's Axios interview, a grifting social justice Instagram account, and a couple that just loves to scab on their fellow workers. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbill...yworkersparty
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Well, I'm here to report from the front lines of America's ongoing crisis.
And I have to say that I think I'm probably one of very few Americans who watched all 37 minutes of the Trump-Axios interview.
You watched the whole thing, not just the henpecked gotcha moments?
Dude, I watched the whole thing.
And the whole thing needs to be watched for you to fully appreciate the, um, just the
insanity of it just the uh erratic sort of frenetic insanity of the
whole thing because like trump is like a guy i mean you forget this because you know he gets
lost in the press briefings and everything but he's like a guy at a party that you just really
things and everything but he's like a guy at a party that you just really are trying to lose the whole time or at work you know what i mean like a a guy who just won't shut the fuck up and um
but in his mind thinks that he is profound you know what i mean like it's the thing because
like everybody's talking about this interview like,
oh, we finally got him.
We finally displayed all of his lies and manipulations.
How many times have they said that?
Exactly.
Just clamoring.
But if you watch it,
if you watch it,
you will see a human that,
by his own metrics and standards,
is succeeding. He's very proud of himself obviously like you know you'd have to be but like i feel like sort of compared to other presidents
like george bush for example george bush knew the whole thing was a farce and that dick cheney was
actually at the helm and that like he was just kind of like the stooge and he would go out there and sell it to the public.
But Trump fully believes that he is doing a great job.
That he is just fucking knocking it out of the park. Oh yeah, you can tell that he is undaunted
by any sort of criticisms or anything else.
Well, the fact that he even did the interview,
how many interviews like that does he do
not many not many why he took this one it seems like a weird outlet for him to
take to do like a one-on-one sit down yeah wasn't it axios has always been
clinton network i think x no axios has always been pretty cozy with the Trump administration. Oh, I didn't know.
It wasn't surprising that he took it with this outlet. It was surprising that they were so adversarial to him.
I feel like they kind of did a hill to her.
I feel like they've been kind of friendly with him in the past.
Yeah, I didn't know.
For some reason, I thought, well, isn't Axios the one that puts on that conference that, like,
there was that one maverick journalist
that went up there and ruffled everybody's feathers?
Maybe I dreamt this up, but for some reason I feel like they put on some sort of Bilderberg-esque
conference where the world's power brokers and media personalities show up and discuss
ideas and so forth.
I think you might be thinking of like the aspen ideals festival no that's one thing too but i think this is a different thing
maybe i'm wrong though i can see that up front well regardless you have to watch the whole thing because you like I said you get a glimpse
into the way that he thinks
and it will start to drive you crazy
because like everybody's saying like oh
this guy Jonathan Swan is the
guy who interviewed
him they're like he finally demonstrated
the way that you expose Trump's lies
you give him basic follow
up questions yeah that's right that gets his weakness finally demonstrated the way that you expose trump's lies you give him basic follow-up questions
yeah that's right like that's his weakness if you watch it trump literally his method is very
fascinating because he knows when he's caught in a lie and when he can't really like get out of it
and so what he does is he just barrels through the follow-up questions. He'll just ramble through them and dissemble like a motherfucker.
Like, he'll just throw so many things at you at one time that you can't latch on to anything.
Yeah.
In my mind, Trump had the interviewer rattled.
But, again, I just saw the little bit of the clip.
Yeah.
Well, I can hear myself in one of you.
Can you turn your headphones down, possibly,
to prevent my having to spend three hours editing later?
Gotcha.
There's some gems in here, though.
I just love that he had printed papers with graphs on them.
It was like handing the man papers.
His prompts were timeless.
Oh, they were, it was fucking incredible.
I mean, look at this.
Head here.
He said right here.
We're number one. That's a good thing. It's a good thing, we're number one.
That's a good thing.
It's a good thing.
We're number one.
Right here, we're last, meaning first.
No, yeah.
On 150,000 dead, he said, it is what it is.
Truly amazing stuff.
I mean, it's so macabre.
I mean, the only reason I'm laughing is because of how macabre it is.
And, again, if you were a person that was already sympathetic to Trump,
if you watched this interview, you'd be like,
the man's trying his hardest, okay?
He's doing his best.
Yeah, it didn't
strike me as particularly
like, what liberals think is like,
oh, we finally got him, it's just because
they found a reporter that will be like, sort of
confrontational with him.
You know what I mean? That doesn't mean that
he like, got him routed or anything.
But also, the thing is too, is
nobody wants to address that
oft-mentioned epistemological crisis none of this matters you could have jesse the body ventura
calling him a broke dick motherfucker and and it wouldn't matter he still got his hordes of fans
and everything uh 50 years ago i mean like 50 years ago
An interview like this would have been damning
You know what I mean
It would have been catastrophic for a public official
Like they would have had to
You know it would be
They would have had to make some sort of mea culpa
Or even resign or something
Or you would have even rioting or something
You know what I mean
Like this is the example of Nero fiddling while rome burns like the quintessential for sure
demonstration of it but now it just doesn't even matter goes into the ether a lot of americans
probably won't even see it don't even know that it even happened give me the juicier bits from the from the longer interview that we didn't say well i think the
best part the absolute funniest part in my opinion the part that got me absolutely rolling
was the interviewer asks him about galene maxwell and he's like the interviewer is like
you wished her well like she's accused of child sex trafficking why would
you wish a person like that well and he's like he's like i don't know her boyfriend just died
i would wish anybody well whose boyfriend just died oh my god
that's truly the best
her boyfriend just died i'd wish anybody best her boyfriend just died her boyfriend just died
I'd wish anybody well his boyfriend just died
it's like what it has a certain
bit of logic to it
she's grieving
oh my god
wait is he
talking about Jeffrey Epstein's the boyfriend
yes he's talking about Epstein
all right Epstein just died
actually what he said was he was either killed or committed suicide is what he said that
yeah he did he's and then he said i hope nothing like that happens to her
which means it's like he absolutely has knowledge that it's going to happen to her
oh my god this is like kevin spacey putting the bell jar thing out
oh my god oh my god that's amazing it was pretty fucking funny another really funny part was like the interviewer was asking him about
like antifa and all of the the federal troops in like portland and um and he was like yeah you know
i mean like the the the reporter kept pressing him on the sort of like legality of this and like
you know people being kidnapped and disappeared in
vans and and um and and if anybody was investigating all this and and and they kept pressing him on
this and trump at one point just like he he was incredulous he looked at the reporter i wish
somebody would take this clip out and isolate it because he looked at the reporter 100 genuinely looked at him and goes
have you been watching television
and the reason it was so funny is because what he was saying was like yeah of course we've got
federal troops there have you not been watching television like there's violence and it just
shows you that like that's all he does is watch television that's the gold standard for how you're supposed to consume everything exactly i feel like he didn't even
do it as like subterfuge or or you know disingenuous whatever he was genuinely like
yeah have you not been watching television have you you not been seeing this? We're horrified.
Oh, my God.
There's another funny part.
I should have put that Ghislaine Maxwell is the money shot,
because that's definitely the funniest part.
But, like, there was another funny part where he was talking about Afghanistan, and the reporter was asking him about, like,
when you came in office, you said there'd be less troops in afghanistan at the end of your term than than going in and he was like there is there's going
to be and he was like well no there's still 8 000 troops in afghanistan there were 8 000 troops when
you came in and he was like no there's gonna be 4 000 troops and the reporter was like wait are
you serious like this is huge news if you're if
you're serious this is huge news that you're cutting in half the number of troops that have
guests did somebody did somebody did one of the joint chiefs of staff come whisper in his ear
after he said that and he was like well we're gonna try to anyway no literally he looked at
the camera and you could tell he fucked up he was was like, oh, I mean, he's like, no, I mean, like, there will be less.
Like, we're looking into it.
We're looking into it.
I love that's one of his go-to evading lines is we're looking at this and we're doing it.
Yeah.
We're looking at all the facts, folks.
That's all we can do.
It's crazy that he's just, like, literally tossing out nonsense about people's lives.
Like 4,000 people stationed in Afghanistan.
Impacting who knows how many people's lives negatively in Afghanistan.
I don't know.
We're looking into it.
No, it was.
There's so many good parts, though though but you have to watch the whole like i
said you have to watch the whole thing because you need the sort of you need the holistic
experience of like entering this guy's brain i mean literally it was like because this is
the funny thing and this is the reason why interviewing him like this doesn't matter.
Because you could have the most hard-hitting journalist pressing him on everything, which is what this journalist did.
And it still wouldn't change the fact that at the end of the day, Trump does not have dialogues.
He only has monologues.
He only speaks with himself outward like there's no he
doesn't have a conversation with anybody he just like dictates and speaks out
loud and then you're supposed to react to it because you could make it like a
when I was watching it I was like this kind of feels like one of those late
night you know how I like on late night shows you know i feel like on john
john stewart used to do this or maybe someone else like they would have somebody speaking and then
they would have like an interlocutor like responding on screen but not in the room with
that person does that make sense like so like so like every dumb thing the person says the person
commenting on it tries to like put in a rebuttal.
Like, oh, but you said this, this, and this.
That's what watching this felt like.
But the person was physically in the room with Trump, and it did not matter.
Trump just barreled through him regardless.
So, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter, like, I mean, fundamentally, this is why I think this is why liberals really want it to matter.
Because, yeah, like 50 years ago when, quote unquote, public opinion was something that mattered and when public officials had to respond to that, interviews like this would actually have impact.
They would ripple out into broader discourse and you know
political economy but now it's
just it's just dropping
a fucking my son don't give a fuck
about this
has he tweeted about it
I haven't
seen him no
I haven't seen him tweet about it yet
I bet he was proud of himself.
I find him fascinating.
In the same way that Tom finds Biden fascinating,
I find Trump fascinating.
Like, I mean, he has a brain like no one else.
No one has a brain quite like Trump's.
And what's so funny about the Biden thing,
is like, I was laughing about this
people who think that it's going to get better if Biden gets elected that same kind of interview
will play out with Biden but in a in a even more farcical way because with Biden he would just be
forgetting all the things you just asked him or being like ah geez man you know what I mean like
deflecting what is it called and maybe somebody out there that listens to us can answer what is it what there is like a uh something you call
like a go-to refrain from somebody that has like cognitive decline
like you know like something that like they know it's kind of like their resetter or like
kind of what like buys them some time time to get their thoughts or whatever. Sort of like an anchor
phrase.
I'd do this as a stutterer.
I'd do this as just a man who's drinking himself stupid
in his 30s.
What do y'all think is Trump's...
I feel like most people,
if they acted this way, would be like, oh, they're at burnout.
They're just like totally...
They have a totally fried brain.
Do you think he's burnout? i just think it's senility what i think it's senility same as biden i mean i think i don't
think trump's like sundowning quite like biden is like biden has like two go-to phrases he has
come on man and then he does the thing he also does the thing where he says well i shouldn't
say that because i like like the interview that everybody's sharing around twitter right now
with the guy you know what i'm talking about yeah and he's like man what if i what if what if i said
test you for cocaine before you came out here is that the one where he says that like
um unlike african americans, the Latino population is very diverse?
Is that the one where he says that?
You watch the extended versions.
I've just watched the clips floating around.
He says a couple things funny.
He says, I'm forward looking to standing on that stage
or sitting on that stage or whatever
with President Trump
like he has
little just things
little subtle things you can pick up on
that show that he is
you know
kind of sliding a little bit
well the funny thing about this is that
if you believe in the proposition
that this is a race between um who is less senile who is uh more mentally there
unbelievably enough trump is actually more there mentally than biden because i can't imagine biden
being able to sit there 37 minutes of an
interview like this no way and being able to sort of like do his thing you know what i mean like
biden where trump where trump is caught in a lie or when he's um caught uh faced with facts of his
own malfeasance and everything what he does is what he's done with
his own uh sort of financial empire he just papers over everything with debt and he does the same
thing rhetorically he just will he'll just like i said just barrel through something with no regards
for how it winds up looking in the end because he smartly understands that optics no
longer matter biden what biden does is biden turns on the charm he turns on the old man charm i mean
anybody who's had a sundowning grandpa has seen this like they understand that they're the sort
of objects of laughter in the room and that they're kind of like losing it and so they're
they make a joke they're kind of self-deprecating and they kind of make a joke out of it and be like
ah geez you know at my age you don't buy ripe bananas
exactly exactly and so um so trump is more put together in that way but that does go to show you
and i'm not i'm just saying this as an observation.
It's whatever.
It just goes to show you, though, that Biden is the restoration.
He's the restoration of Obama.
I mean, it's just Obama can't run for president again legally, so they have to have an empty placeholder to put that back in.
It is kind of wild that Trump would never admit he's an old man.
He would never make an old man
joke about himself.
Like, never. They're so
different. I hadn't really thought about
how it's like
Trump is pretending like he's in his
20s.
That's so true.
Like, he has
no self-awareness. He's eating filet-o-fish every day. That so true. Like, he has no self-awareness. He's eating Filet-O-Fish every day.
That is true.
Well, he has no...
He has no...
He is the kind of, like, two sides of American humor.
Because he has no self-deprecation.
Biden is all self-deprecation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Trump genuinely thinks that his peers are like whoever like the new
matinee idols are in hollywood or whatever like they're all they're all chasing the same women
he really does he really does i mean what else what else could you explain to a man's got a
coronary calcium score out the ass that continues to eat two Big Macs and two Filet-O-Fish every day for dinner.
And, like, he thinks he's 35.
Oh, fuck.
Well, I just thought that y'all should experience that.
I, uh...
Watching it is fascinating because your blood pressure Well, I just thought that y'all should experience that.
Watching it is fascinating because your blood pressure will quite literally go up every time he starts speaking.
Just because... I feel like this is Patreon content.
You should be videoing yourself reacting in live time to these things.
Like you should have set up a camera.
Did you watch this on your computer or on your phone? On my phone. Okay, then you could have set up your camera did you watch this on your computer
or on your phone
on my phone
then you could have set up your laptop
yeah
I don't think you have to
exaggerate them I don't think it would have to be
exaggerated
no really cause he was
like at one point he's like
Russia's not gonna mess with afghanistan they went
into afghanistan in the 80s afghanistan they kicked him out they're not gonna be going back
there anytime soon i was like like nothing's ever changed
trump is trump is stuck in 1981 or like you know like late 80s. Like 88, 89.
That's what I'm saying. It feels like he
never came back from a trip
or something.
Well, that is a really hilarious analysis.
Because what he was saying was
Soviet Union. You know why
the Soviet Union doesn't exist?
Soviet Union is Russia now because of Afghanistan.
They're not going to go anywhere near Afghanistan.
Like they beat their ass on the playground one time and then that's they learned their lesson
i mean like try to get an answer that lucid out of joe biden i mean it's not gonna it's
go it's not gonna happen gun to my head if you were like, you have to fucking vote or we're going to blow your brains out.
Actually, I would probably just let you blow my brains out.
But if I was having a good day, I would tell you to vote for Biden, obviously.
But that's only because you're not actually getting Biden.
You're just getting the restoration package.
You're just getting an empty placeholder to keep things relatively stable exactly
exactly yes let me ask you this do you think there's a better ticket out there than that
first biden trump debate in terms of just sheer entertainment value like this is going to be
i feel like right now is it potential to be like the defining piece of
art of our time it's not scheduled because we've been in fucking july for like six years
we can't fucking move forward i mean one thing we didn't cover
um which we should have but one thing we didn't cover, which we should have, but one thing we didn't cover is like the, or maybe we did.
I don't even remember now, but like the DNC platform.
Oh, God, yeah.
Medicare for all was just down.
We mentioned it.
Just all over it.
It was just a joke.
Medical marijuana.
Yeah.
Because we talked about howans are likely to give us
uh weed before democrats at this point oh yes yes which we've we predicted we said i mean i think
it was maybe you terrence a year ago that that that could be how trump gets elected all he has
to do is legalize weed it's like enough of an issue that it would alienate his base
yeah but it would bring on enough enough potheads to be like hell yeah
the bar is really so low the bar is so low for trump to win there's just like
so there's just like a
handful of things easily he could do to win well the thing is is is i don't even know if he needs
to do it now like i think that they were just like with the whole idea that like the right was
becoming the left or moving to the left of the democratic party on a couple of those issues
it's like like they don't really need that now,
because we got half the damn population out of work,
and the line's moving up, stocks are doing great,
everybody that's got access to that's doing fine.
Which you all have still yet to explain to me.
doing fine which you all have still yet to explain to me well i think that it's it's pretty simple if you look at the fact that not only are stocks going up but rents are also going up and uh
property values are also going up and so i think that what what it just sort of explains, and this is why I fully support putting children back to the factories and fields.
Idle hands at the devil's workshop.
It will remove at least one more contradiction.
Because we really do just need to get back to some sort of hybrid capitalism,
feudalism thing.
Where it's just like, give six-year-old farm implements and be like,
all right, well, you can't go back to school.
We've got widening inequality.
Like all of these, as you said, the numbers that are just going up,
just show you that inequality is just getting more exacerbated and exaggerated in the this masturbated
oh my god it really is it's uh
it's insane to see and also it's i mean i hate to just belabor the adam curtis thing but like
just belabor the adam curtis thing but like it's really just sort of the culmination of like this idea that trump wanted to make new york a city for the rich by the rich and now by extension a
country for the rich by the rich and it's really more than anything i think a testament to that
it's like yeah they might have to deal with this blighted landscape of all these diseased
reprobates that are fucking you know dying by scores a day but like in the end like they've got more or less what they set out to
that day in new york city in 1972 right right oh you're right uh well well, that's the news from our current politics.
Should we pivot to the next thing we want to talk about?
I have a list of things, and I left it in the kitchen,
and I don't want to get up and grab it.
But if I remember correctly,
I believe the next item on our list of things to talk about
it comes by way of the washington post
unless y'all don't want to talk about this do you not want to talk about this
i mean that's all i've talked about for the past week this week has felt like a
fucking year because of queer appalachia i'm in so many
dms about this nonsense so many group chats just like trying to decipher
one all of the people who have been warned about mamone for years that we've been warning people about now having to come out and make
statements.
We've been tracking that.
I knew all y'all met on Sundays.
You've been telling me you didn't for years.
And...
Y'all just meet up on Sundays and start
scissoring?
Scissor Sundays.
Scissor sundays scissor sundays wait before you go any further let's set this up because um there's a lot of people who listen to this show who have no idea what this is
and we have to make it relevant to the normal normie listener who thankfully and i'm envious envious of them who has no idea what this
even is thank god yeah very and so first off first off let me just say this and if you would like to
keep it that way and we strongly caution that you consider it you might want to just log off right
now pause and go ahead and scoot forward about 10 to 15 minutes i honestly am hesitant about 10 15
i honestly am hesitant to 10 15 i honestly am hesitant
to get into it because we're just making these this dumb cunt more famous like giving them more
fucking fuel when they need to be it doesn't matter at this point bridge
um i wouldn't go so that far but into shallow water yeah again i would not go that far um but i do find i did the reason i don't
want to spend more than 10 or 15 minutes on it it's not that it's not as important as for example
sending kids back to school in a pandemic but it is emblematic but we do have to talk about it
because i think it's emblematic of the of the times we live in right um and so uh so what it
is is it's a story in washington post it's called the tale of queer appalachia a popular instagram
account raises funds for lgbtq people in appalachiaia. But does the money really go where it's supposed to?
And so the story, and correct me if I'm wrong,
I think Tom has done a little more digging into the bare bones of this than I have.
But the story is essentially about how the person that runs this account
has taken a lot of money from people without any sort of transparency of where it goes.
And that includes not just money from merchandise sales and donations,
but from grants for things like harm reduction, needle exchanges, and stuff like that.
And it appears as if the money were going basically to enrich this one person
who presents themselves as being a collective, who presents the whole project called Queer Appalachia as being a collective of people when in reality it's one person and maybe another person, but definitely no more than two people and so i personally i i'm i don't know if you want to hear my thoughts on this because
they're probably ignorant and will be offensive to all that are sure to listen to this um but my
thoughts on this is that mamon the person that runs this they like donald trump have an exquisite brain that I think needs to be preserved at all costs
because anybody who can come up with the term metro normative is thinking on a higher level
than the rest of us man that is that is something I'll tell you that I i you know this this genre of sort of activism is good to like
you know for an ever-expanding lexicon of you know a sort of woke alphabet soup or whatever
but like that is just
you know what's wild is i've had them blocked for years because i've had to deal with them
for i've literally been dealing with my mom since before queer appalachia that's how deep this wound
is and i've had their fucking instagram blocked for years and i didn't realize that they've been
using until this fucking until emma's story finally dropped years in the making that they've been using the term metro normative for a long time someone sent me
apparently they had a huge telethon that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars
with all these celebrities these like queer celebrities and literally called it like the Metro normative something something telephone.
No.
That's so fucking badass.
I'll dig through. I'll find the screenshot and send it to you.
It's just, it's, I just don't even know what to say anymore about career Appalachia. I feel like I've been having to drag this motherfucker for so long that it is just like punishment every time i have to
talk about them i feel like i'm being punished well okay but what why why is that i mean
ostensibly it's because you are not only queer but are probably more embedded in queer communities than Tom and I are.
Correct?
Yeah.
I was about to say, when you said Tom's dug into this more than I have,
I was like, this must be how they feel when I speak confidently about things I know nothing about.
I think you just meant the art.
No, what I meant was Tom dug into the financial stuff.
I was doing the whole, where's the money going? what I meant was Tom dug into the financial stuff. Like, was it like,
Tom was doing the whole,
where's the money going?
Yeah, I'm a watchdog.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
So, like,
do you not want to talk about it then?
I mean, because we don't have to. No, I just don't know what So, like, do you not want to talk about it then? I mean, because we don't have to.
No, I just don't know what else there is to say.
Just, like, Mamon's a fucking maniac who's manipulative, just like a compulsive liar.
Just, and a grifter, just like kingpin grifter.
I don't know what else to say.
Well, I'll say this.
Listen, I love a good grift.
I am not mad at the game at all.
Listen, I love a good grift.
I am not mad at the game at all.
Where I draw the line is that, like, you know, if you're going to, like, raise money to give people access to, like, prep or shit like that, like, oh, God, you know, money probably needs to go to that.
Yeah. yeah well sell i hawk hawk all the tchotchkes and fucking dumbass like you know uh
fucking possum with angel wings fucking butt fucking a waffle house with dolly parton on its back fucking onesies you want to but like you know i don't know i mean just like there's a
certain there's a line there you know there's, you know? There's still honor amongst thieves, you know?
Well, the money is like, they are making this all about money and transparency because that's what they can weasel out of.
It's like, yeah, they got rich on people's donations and they just fucked over a bunch of people.
Okay, well, every non-profit we know about is probably doing that.
Okay, well, every nonprofit we know about is probably doing that.
It's like a large-scale grift of money, and it's very hard to see the trickle-down of programming.
Correct.
That's an old song.
Correct.
That is bad enough in itself, of course.
We talk about that grift on this podcast often however what makes this different is they were they successfully created
a monolithic brand out of nothing by like buying followers and manipulating the internet in ways i
don't even understand um in order to block out lots of other actual queer organizing block them
from money block them from recognition literally. Literally just out here stealing from people.
Left and right.
Well, would you say, though, however, would you say, though, I mean, this might be a leading question, but.
You ask a leading question?
People bought into it.
And I understand why.
Because it created a sort of simulacrum of community
it gave people i mean in the washington post article itself and maybe you disagree i don't
know but the article quoted people who were like i as a queer appalachian southerner or whatever
looked at this and said oh oh, these are my people.
This is community.
I mean, and so,
would you say that, like,
it wasn't just pure,
I mean, you could say that that's manipulation, of course,
but it wasn't just pure, like,
gaming the numbers
through buying followers or whatever.
It was something that resonated with some people, right?
I mean, I think it's a little bit like the McGrath campaign,
if you want to be honest. Like, most of the money and numbers came from somewhere else the
dark corners of the fucking white queer cosmos i don are not from here but of course people love a
fucking meme page my god they just like they just like created a meme page at the heat of
at the height of the meme page and it took that's and it took off and they literally
talked and crowed about work that other people were doing and claimed it as their own.
Again, I guess that is a common grift.
I just said, I have, I mean, I have zero problems with, like, start the meme page, buy the followers, sell the tchotchkes.
I don't give a fuck about none of that.
I don't care if you're saying the dumbest shit ever was that you've ever seen.
I don't care about any of that.
But I think, honestly, it's not fair to criticize Mamon and not take to task anybody with 501c3 status
that takes, like, buku money for doing ill-defined
shit like harm reduction you know what i mean well this is the thing that
or tanya we're gonna say something
no i mean i i've said the same thing it's like there's all these like
cis men running these fucking grift meals, too, that we'll never see, uh, uh, never meet their fucking maker.
They'll never be brought to task over this shit.
But, as queer people, like, we hold ourselves to different fucking...
Yeah, me and and tom for example we hold
ourselves to a different fucking standard and we are not gonna fucking idly sit by this bullshit
i mean it's just fucking it's just kind of hard to process that um things that i have known and
friends have like we've all been trying to like tell people and have been telling people for years
it's all just been seen as rumors we've literally been told well that's probably just your experience
la la la la over and over and over again it's now finally it's just like a lot to process that this
is like finally only real in reality because it was published in a paper when it's been lots of people's realities
for so long and like even the qa stuff put the qa stuff on the shelf because like i said i've
been dealing with this maniac since before qa what did y'all think about the right girl stuff
i'm sure this was the first you've heard of that what was the right girl stuff i know my mom's got she's like started right girl
records right right girl inc it's a lot that's nothing yeah that is not a thing
it's like a big front for them to just like lie constantly they've literally convinced people
that they were producing the indigo girls and all these other bands
and they never oh the indigo girls have never heard of my mom never i wonder i started like
because here's the thing is you can't really shit a shitter okay because i know the hallmark of
bullshit and when i start seeing like everybody from Howard Zinn to Jam Master Jay quoted as saying,
Mamone is the Nelson Mandela of the queer community.
Who said that?
Who said that?
I mean, you know, there's just that.
Here's the thing with Mamone.
Mamone used seven words when four words will do.
It's a classic blunder.
Complete overplay. Like, frankly,
if you think Howard Zinn was singing the praises of Mamon,
I got a fucking bridge to sell you.
Well, I think the...
The reason I found this fascinating,
there's several reasons.
The first is that in the article
they differentiate themselves
from a non-profit.
Over the course of their grift,
they've differentiated themselves from a non-profit over the over the course of their grift they've differentiated themselves from a non-profit which that was their first error look come you come to the trillbillies to learn several things you learn how to be a
dumbass you learn how to be a liar you learn how to be a grifter uh and i'll tell you how to be a
grifter you you don't want to go out there and just take people's money unaccounted for.
Get a 501c3.
Do your taxes.
Count all the money coming in.
That's the way to do it.
And Mamone got sloppy is really what it is.
That's 100%.
Because they were buying new cars.
Look, I know all kinds of executive directors and nonprofits around here who aren't buying new cars. They're buying new cars. Look, I know all kinds of executive directors of non-profits around here
who aren't buying new cars.
They're buying used cars.
It's like Robert De Niro in Goodfellas.
Don't go out and buy the mink coat.
Yeah, you don't.
That's how you end up in the back of a fucking garbage truck.
Exactly.
So there's one blunder.
Exactly. So there's one blunder.
And then another blunder is that a hallmark of a grift, a hallmark of any grift,
and this is pertinent to us, it's pertinent to anybody.
The hallmark of any grift is if someone is constantly fundraising.
And not only that, not only constantly fundraising,
and this is from my experience growing up in church and from being aware of televangelists and everything else,
not only constantly fundraising,
but fundraising under the pretense of,
if you don't give money now, something really bad will happen.
When I was in church, it was,
when I was in church, it was,
the devil's going to get you uh christ is coming back so we need to tell evangelist oral roberts famously said that god was going to
kill him if he didn't raise four million dollars from his listeners that's like that's like the
high water mark of that grift uh but in corey apolachia's case it was always like trans femme black activists who were like
at risk of dying it was bipoc or whatever it's like always people were gonna be slaughtered
if you didn't give them fucking money right now so that was another hallmark of the grift
and i think that another reason why I find this fascinating, the final reason, is because it is such, is because they build themselves as mutual aid.
And in this moment where there's no centralized universal health care system, there's no institutions that are looking out for us.
And in fact, they're all rotting.
From the inside.
Rapidly.
It's the wild west out there.
Yeah, from the inside.
Yeah.
It allows itself and mamone is only one of
a constellation of grifters i remember the safety pin box yeah remember that shit right after the
20 2016 election it's just exactly shit like that when you have a a situation where um
a situation where um that is political uh when you have a sort of institution or group of people that's political and your acceptance into that world is contingent upon your ability to say
specific words or or predicated on buying something to participate predicated on buying
something and knowing the jargon of things for example words
like metro normative i mean excellent excellent again that was one thing that they did right that
ramon did right if you want to perpetuate your cult-like grift you got to make up more words
so metro normative is another one i mean like it all these, it's all this social justice jargon that has exploded in the last five years.
It creates a situation
that is ripe for
exploitation. And so,
if people can come in and out of that world
by their ability to
traffic in the jargon that allows you in
and out of it, then you can position
yourself as what they call an article,
a gatekeeper, or whatever.
But again, Mamon's big error wasn't
doing that because nonprofits do that every day it's just not it's just being sloppy with the
accounting it's just i mean i mean they could have got a lot more mileage out of this thing
if they would have just not been sloppy with the accounting no it's true because it's like people
only give a fuck about money like they've they've been such
an abusive fucking maniacal force and that's really is the most is like the most troubling
upsetting part this is like almost it's this shit is too personal for me to be able to make good
jokes about it's just like the money is what is like that's the only thing that's the only reason that they
finally were brought to task is because that's the only thing anybody gives a fuck about is fucking
finances and shit well can i ask you this tanya so in the piece uh this leo person purports that
mamon is a millionaire okay is that confirmed is that true that was news to me i wouldn't doubt it i mean
well i mean what you say about them being like trump is that is something because here's they
have a they see it it does appear my own has a terrific as many abusers do you don't get away
with abuse without being really charismatic and convincing people that they deserve the abuse and like being really
like um being very very jekyll hyde shit you know like like prominent abusers also are very likable
they have to be to be able to keep abusing you know yeah this is just typical but i was news to
me that they were a millionaire but i don't doubt it but they do have an exceptional sense of timing. And a friend pointed out yesterday, I think, that it's like they got in.
They're such a classic grifter that they got in like at the right moment on all these like the wind of all these resurgence of movements.
Like the resurgence of the right girl movement in the mid aughts.
Like they they sort in to make that to get to do that.
I mean, they didn't do anything
really they haven't really done anything but make memes and raise money um and then there was like
the queerness the royal queerness that became that became cool again um you know in the last
you know my thing is i don't even care about that shit i mean we came in at the
right time on the wave of like left podcasting like i don't give a fuck about like tapping into
scenes or anything like that particularly if you're a queer person that that you know can
participate or should participate in all that i don't care about any of that well i'm getting to
the mutual aid and the fucking harm reduction work like they got in on the tip of that still like coped up all
the money they could exactly and literally wrecked people's lives like left people just like literally
high and dry yeah yeah and trickled out little you know harm reduction kits to a few people here
and there who would sing their praises and gave out these like thousand dollar micro grants which were obviously nothing to them here and there to a few a handful
of fucking people who would sing their praises even though they were told do not fuck with qa
do not fuck with my moan i cannot stress enough how many people have been warned about this and
just were like probably gossip here's my thing it's like when this story broke i was listening to this podcast and they had
david crosby on there and crosby steals nash and young fame hell yeah i fuck with david crosby
cross said that like basically because of covid he's almost in the poorhouse. He's had these tours booked, and he needs those to keep his nut up and all that stuff.
And my first thought was, if Mamone's going to try to say that this wealth is because of Riot Grrrl Inc.,
an independent label out of Brooklyn,
if David Crosby is nearing the poorhouse my mom ain't making
millions from an indie record label i will tell you that right now an indie record label that
never produced one record oh really so that was just like a no it was a complete sham every bit
of it uh see i've i've heard it like spoke about glowingly in Pitchfork and reputable places. I didn't know that.
I think you all are mixing up Riot Grrrl
as a movement.
No, no, no. Riot Grrrl ain't the label.
I've heard it described as the venerable
Brooklyn-based imprint
started by
the artist formerly known as
Gina Mamone.
Dear God almighty. I don't know.
Well, it doesn't matter.
I mean, it doesn't matter that we're discussing this
because people are going to do what they're going to do.
This has been written.
We've talked about it on the show.
And it's, you know, I don't know.
Yeah, we've talked about queer Appalachia before because Terrence famously claimed to have been the first person out in front of it because of a banjo tweet or some shit.
I don't remember what you said.
it was was um my spidey senses my woke spidey senses were raised early on because uh
because they treat class like it's a cultural affectation as if it's like i yeah it's kind of like the metro normative thing it's like it's they treat it as if it's like something you can
take on and and take off in the. And therefore, that gives you authenticity and legitimacy.
I mean, it's a very bizarre thing.
But if you like their stuff, and you know that it's a grift, but you keep giving them money...
That's my thing.
There's a word for you.
Just spend your money where the fuck you want.
I'm not here to tear down Queer Appalachia.
I'm just calling
it like i see it what what's there's a name for you you're a mark i mean that's fine there are
marks in the world there are people who get conned and they like getting conned i don't understand
why it's something they have in their brains but i guess even when we were saying all that earlier on it's
people still wanted to buy the dolly memes and the possum memes and i don't know it's all it's
all wrapped up in this big thing where like appalachia itself is hot right now and that's
another coattail that they wrote in on as you're saying tanya and like and that we did
too i mean let's be honest here it is yeah yeah jd vance doesn't exist hell if queer appalachia
doesn't exist all that stuff we probably don't exist but guess what we're here baby we're eating
i i don't know any closing thoughts Tanya Just kill me
You've got that look
I just want to be at the end
I'm sorry
You've got the look that you usually get
When you do not want to be discussing something
I'm just
This has just been beat out of me
Every single day of this week
Since this popped off
So this came out on Mondayay on sunday scissoring sunday a new group chat was created to talk about
how qa was was setting their sights on the next great fucking grift land back and they were
literally they were crowdsourcing reparations they
were literally going to start crowdsourcing land that was their next great uh fucking adventure
they had they had got all the money they could possibly suck out of this turnip and then they
were like you know what we can do we can start the we can start using this land back shit and
actually acquire a property so their next great fucking adventure was going to
be property through a land back movement and they may well do it if y'all don't fucking just fucking
leave them out to dry i was lit laughing my ass off that is right me and james were making fun of
that like days before this popped off i totally it was about that. It was on Sunday. Yeah, it was on Sunday.
And then the next fucking day, the article finally dropped, which we've, and I've been,
I met Emma probably two years ago talking about this.
So Emma, say what you want, but Emma has like probably made herself a fucking maniac trying
to write this stupid article and has really made
herself unsafe like coming from a moan you it's literally you literally they have sued poor people
over and over again like they they literally have used the law literally lawyers to abuse people
like they come for you and so many people wouldn't even talk to emma because they live in such fear of
mamone and qa well i thought if you see any post about metro normative anytime someone hits you up
and is like hey yo you want to go in on some reparations with me anytime somebody tries to
make you feel like an idiot about whatever the
latest nomenclature and woke language is that's like that's that's another telltale like there
there is there is a such thing i think as emotional labor i'm not disputing that notion
but some people are just assholes
fucking a yo hit my line yo yo anybody wanted to go in some reparations for me hit my line
we're gonna get 10 houses by 2024
me and some homies are going in on reparations does anybody is anybody interested
me and the boys are go funding some reparations this weekend and the pro we're getting some properties they have to have hot tubs and organic springs
let's say let me ask you a question just on the face of it what is the difference between
like i could see my bone doing some sort of gentrification project and then just calling
it like a reparations.
Yeah, it is.
It is totally.
They're like, oh, we're going to gentrify a commune, a country.
We're going to gentrify a trailer park, move some people in who we are going to convince you are native because of some blood quantum myth craziness, which they have clung to.
That's your favorite, Grift.
Terrence.
Oh, absolutely.
Which they have done themselves.
It is a good one.
They have claimed for themselves.
I mean, the thing is
that just to dial it out
though, I mean, this is a problem
among the left in general insofar as
there even is a left and it shows it it just goes to show you that the answer for all of these things
anytime someone approaches you about individual reparations or anytime someone approaches you
about i mean this is even probably the problem with like things like sort of like guilt politics it's just like the only way that we can reach
revolution liberation is through some collective political project it can't be like you know buying
dolly memes i mean whatever if you want to again i can't do that but it's not politics whatever the
fuck you want it's an aesthetic choice exactly and not a good same thing that non-profits do
i guarantee you there are non-profits gentrifying areas and calling it reparations oh yeah It's not a policy. It's an aesthetic choice. And not a good one. And this is the same thing that nonprofits do.
I guarantee you there are nonprofits gentrifying areas and calling it reparations.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, if individual white people are giving their money for reparations, that's not reparations. It's something else.
But unless Western white civilization actually reckons with that at the societal level then it's not
reparations but
people can grift all they want on that
and people will buy into it
well meaning white people will
non POC people will buy into
it and be like
yeah you're exactly right and if it's
not that then it's just like
fucking extreme makeover
home edition queer appalachian
which is probably where they were headed they were going to start their own hgtv
yeah and then you see like three years later those people lose their homes because they can't
pay the property taxes or some shit yeah fucking a uh we spent way too much time talking about that. I only wanted to do like 15.
I just had to pull it out of you, Tanya.
I'm sorry.
I wanted you to talk about it.
You love to torture me.
And I could tell you didn't want to.
And I have my ways.
Well, we're at an hour.
I really, really want to cover this thing in that way. Let's stick a pin in that until Sunday.
Oh, please. But it's so important this is something that needs to be on the public feed
we can't put it behind a paywall let's do it we should have put this fucking dumb appalachia
queer appalachia shit behind the paywall cut it out there cut it out There was an easy... There was plenty of pause
before we started this.
You said, what's next on the list?
And then you could just cut right there,
send this to the Sunday feed.
And put a song on the end
and then we'll banter for 15 minutes
and call it good.
Yeah.
I mean, it's up to you.
I can't make you guys do anything
you don't want to do.
But I did want to cover this because it's way more than... Let's cover it. We got a half hour. I got till three. Let's cover it's up to you. I can't make you guys do anything you don't want to do. But I did want to cover this.
Let's cover it.
We got a half hour.
I got until three.
Let's cover it.
Cut this out.
Move Queer Appalachia to the Saturday feed.
And then we'll Sunday feed.
Or whatever.
We'll see.
We'll see if we do or if we don't.
Whatever.
But regardless, let's cover this.
There's an article in The Atlantic I wanted to cover.
Jeffrey Goldberg, who apparently blocked me way back in 2010
for telling him to go back to his fucking prison camp
where he was guarding Palestinian guards.
Interesting.
Jeffrey Goldberg was pushing this one over the weekend.
Or at the beginning of the week to the atlantic it says i'm a nurse in new york teachers should do their jobs just like i did by kristin mcconnell
nurse and writer kristin um so i had to ask the grand against this one not just because my mom
is a teacher but also because i have a lot of friends who are teachers. Also because this is genocidal.
Yeah.
The other day, my husband,
a public school teacher in New York City,
got a string of texts from a work friend.
After checking in on our family
and picking up their ongoing conversation
about books and TV shows, she wrote,
So, are we going on a teacher strike in the fall?
What?
No.
My husband is adamantly against a strike because he understands on a deep personal level
his duty to serve his country in the classroom.
He's a bootlicker.
He's a bootlicker.
My husband's a big pussy.
Pussy good, bootlicker bad.
Through the spring,
through the spring,
I took care of COVID-19 patients at the hospital while he toggled between teaching on Zoom and helping our daughters through their own lessons.
While he played with his fucking little dick at home.
He knows that I did my part for society and that now he should too.
Oh my god.
This really is the same take as like, you mean you're giving these people off work
$600 fucking dollars a week?
Yes, it is.
This is the same take.
It comes from the same exact worldview.
Not to mention that it's being espoused by a worker,
someone who's exploited for their labor
and who would be sort of theoretically
in the same socioeconomic class as a teacher a teacher a nurse it's fucking it's just
like the most anti-solidaristic thing you can imagine um we wouldn't be in this mess of
uncertainty about the coming school year if the federal government had managed to control the
virus any glimmer of leadership from the president would have gone a long way grievances and fear
are understandable i support teacher-led campaigns
to make sure that safety measures are in place,
and any city or state experiencing a spike in cases
should keep schools shut, along with indoor businesses.
What I don't support is preemptively threatening safety strikes,
as the American Federation of Teachers did in late July.
These threats run counter to the fact that, by and large, school
districts are already fine-tuning
social distancing measures and mandating
mask wearing. Okay, here's what I want to say.
Here's what I want to say.
In this self-same magazine,
did you see the egg-yong
piece that was going around?
No. I did not, no.
All this kind of stuff. And there was
another piece, not that one but
another one that was talking about like i think they called it uh sanitation theater
how that basically the idea that you can just put hand sanitizer up and clean real good was just
an excuse to keep businesses open because this is aerosol spread it's not yeah yeah it's yeah yeah it's ridiculous it's there and it's so extra concerning that a nurse
that a fucking health care worker is spewing this nonsense and to say oh i support teachers
leveraging their power to make sure that it's safe it's not safe there's no possible way to
go to school in a pandemic safely it's not there's no safe way to be in a public building with other
people right now bottom line zero it ain't safe did you guys did you guys read that washington
post article i sent you the headline is just i'm sorry but it's a fantasy no you sent that an hour
ago you can't expect me to work that quick.
It was interviewing this guy named Jeff Gregorich,
a superintendent from a school in Arizona.
And you really have to read.
I highly recommend.
I'm not going to read it because I'm not going to do it justice because of the sort of prose, like the sort of way that it's written.
I'm not going to educate written it's just i'm not gonna educate you
um you have to read these two in tandem because it's so astounding like he he was a superintendent
at a school in arizona where one of his teachers has already died and another one has covet and
school hasn't even started my god and he my God. And he's like... Are you fucking serious?
And he's like...
Yeah, and he's, like, freaking out.
Like, there's no way.
And he talks about it at the beginning.
Like, we have to go back or else we lose funding from the state.
Like, they're making us go back.
Who cares about this money?
Well, I mean, but schools are already strapped in, is the point I'm trying to make, Tanya.
Is that, like, they need the money. if they want to continue having school in 10 years.
Like they have to have funding.
OK, here's a question.
I know that they they.
Can they literally just say, like, we're not having school, like we're not doing it online, we're not doing none of it.
Well, teach can teachers still get paid and will they still like.
line we're not doing none of it will teach can teachers still get paid and will they still like i mean surely they're saving money on feeding and fucking transporting people i don't know
well i mean that's why there's this bigger social problem right because for a lot of kids the only
meals they eat are at school yeah exactly exactly and then what about like all the aids that'll be
out of work all the bus drivers, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, there are conundrums here, but like, how are we going to make those people whole while we get through this?
The superintendent was talking about how, I mean, everybody needs to read this because this is a guy who is truly a public servant,
somebody who's dedicated to the well-being of people in his community.
And he talks about how his school district has been feeding the students.
They go from house to house feeding the students,
and they give out more meals than there are students.
They've been doing that here.
Because a lot of students get their meals at school.
That's the only place they get fed.
But, I mean, it's just phenomenal.
Like, this Atlantic article is so ignorant because listen to this.
Teachers are not being asked to work without precautions, but some overlook this.
The politics of mask wearing have gotten so ridiculous that many seem to believe masks
are only protect other people are largely symbolic.
They're not.
Nurses and doctors know that masks do a lot to keep us safe, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
Everybody knows that, but teachers are actually being asked to work without precautions.
Like, there's plenty of fucking evidence to show that.
Also, let me point out something that's just a little bit obvious here, too, I think.
Like, your literal job is to show up because of health problems.
If you're a nurse.
You know what I'm saying?
You know that going in.
You know that there's a chance you could be incoming.
And I'm not knocking nurses.
I mean, thank God for them.
But I'm saying that that's far different from let's try to figure out a way to navigate around congregating together because my job has some flexibility that we could do it without imposing those risks.
And I will say...
We should say that...
Who printed this?
The Atlantic.
I mean, I think it's probably
fairly likely that
this bitch is in the minority of
fucking nurse opinions about this.
Don't you think?
Yeah, I got it. I
have no idea, but I would assume probably yes.
And they printed this for clicks and shit.
Unless you're a travel nurse at Whitesburg ARH,
then, no,
they'd probably agree with you.
Yeah, you're probably right.
But she actually has an answer to that, Tom,
to what you just said.
My husband, playing devil's advocate
while we discuss this said arguably
health care is workers are arguably health care workers sort of signed up for this kind of risk
but teachers did not i replied absolutely not doctors and nurses sign up for the work that is
sometimes high stress for us and sometimes life or death for our patients not for us aside from
those who choose to work in biocontainment or offer their services
in war zones we are not expected to do crucial medical work under potentially lethal circumstances
somehow i don't buy that
okay how are we supposed to stay healthy i mean here's what's interesting Here's what's interesting. Here's what's interesting with that.
That has been like the exact opposite of what she just
said has been like a point of pride
for nurses forever.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
And deservedly so. I mean, god damn, it is
an extremely tough job and you're going in there
like as a hypochondriac, I
fucking salute you because I could never do that job what's wild is just it's just it is so okay imagine if you will we are a
hundred years in the future and we're telling this story like it and people are literally
begging to live people are begging you to defund the police.
And it's obvious where that money needs to go.
Into our fucking education system, which is floundering right now.
And literally putting all the lives at risk for money because they don't have any.
Our government is just so it's just it's incomprehensible how simple this is
and how committed to death this system is how just truly committed to misery we're crazy as a society
largely because we're simultaneously a death cult that is also death defying
yeah um all right i mean like listen to this i said when i when she was asked to um
I mean, like, listen to this.
I said when she was asked to, when the pandemic first started, I said, no, I can't just chump out.
Oh, my God. Chump wasn't the right word at the moment.
I was almost hysterical, and it was hard for me to even articulate how I felt.
Called upon to do something frightening and hard that I viscerally did not want to do.
The military language people used when discussing COVID-19 in the spring
seemed totally appropriate.
And in a way, that mentality got me through the peak.
This was a war and I was a soldier.
It wasn't my choice to serve, but it was my duty.
I had skills and knowledge that were needed.
Isn't she just contradicting exactly what she just said?
Didn't she literally just say it wasn't her duty to serve?
I don't know. I can't follow this maniac um so i can understand that teachers are nervous about returning to school but they should
take a cue from their fellow essential workers and do their okay okay okay okay people let me
just say something to the nurse here do you you can either like be like live in your valor or not which is it this is just
wholly inconsistent so like i was never asked and it is not my responsibility to fucking take care
of potentially fatally sick people but guess what i did it bravely and you all should too like what the
which the fuck is it what the fuck is it yeah and not to mention she well acts like this is
the first contagious disease that the medical industry has had to deal with like this isn't
the birth of contagion here it just goes to show you that what she's really talking about here is
she hates organized labor
this is all this is about this is just to get an anti-labor opinion is what it is exactly and
that is exactly right to the atlantic somebody saw brave to print this exactly somebody saw
that teachers were threatening to go on strike in the fall and they understood that this could
have national implications it wasn't just going to be a state-by-state thing like it strike in the fall and they understood that this could have national implications it wasn't just going to be a state by state thing like it was in the spring of 2018 it could actually go
national and they were like no we've got to start getting voices out there of other workers other
essential frontline workers who basically shame the teachers and tell them to suck it up pussy
and tell them to get back in the classroom and not to go on strike.
It's like, too,
do you ever think that, like,
the failing Atlantic Magazine,
which is basically just an airport rag at this point,
is like,
do you think news outlets actually, like,
purposely come up with stories
because they're like,
you know what I'm saying,
if the teachers strike, they gotta send somebody out there to cover that and they don't wanna do that because they're like, you know what I'm saying? If the teachers strike,
they got to send somebody out there
to cover that
and they don't want to do that
because they ain't got the funds themselves
because they're in the toilet.
If the goddamn teachers strike,
we got to send somebody out there
to fucking cover it.
Let's get out here
and try to squash this
before we have to come off
our own pockets.
I think that's very possible, um they suck so bad but listen listen to this this
is fascinating even people who think there's a fundamental difference between a nurse and a
teacher in a pandemic must realize that there isn't one between a grocery store worker and a
teacher in terms of obligation people who work at grocery stores in no way signed up to expose themselves to disease,
but we expected them to go to work, and they did.
If they had not, society would have collapsed.
What do teachers think will happen if working parents cannot send their children to school?
Life as we know it simply will not go on.
First of all, society didn't collapse based on what somebody that's working at Kroger did or didn't do.
Society collapsed because of incompetent decision making over a number of years.
Not only incompetence, but just corruption.
I hate that kind of framing, and it's part of this anti-labor thing that it puts the onus on the workers to keep things afloat.
And not the power brokers well
this is the thing though this is the kind of interesting thing about this is that the workers
and the administrators for example this superintendent who i was talking about in
the washington post are the ones who are keeping things basically afloat right now
and what scares them so much about a national teacher's strike
is the fact that through striking through a large-scale strike like that workers find power
and they find power through solidarity and the idea that workers could assert themselves like
that to the extent that they might even be able to take over the public school system and start fighting back against people like betsy devos and this like charter school privatization
and everything else that scares the absolute shit out of people and so they have to open up every
front that they can whether it's a nurse whether it's coming from a nurse or a grocery store worker
whatever they have to drive so many divisions within the working class
that that strike can never be realized.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, that's deliberate.
When some of my husband's students told him
that they had continued working as a cashier
throughout the summer and spring,
he said, wow, that's so courageous of you.
He feels that he doesn't really
have anything to show for himself, and he looks
forward to the time when he will.
My husband is basically a big howler.
I married
a man of
low
resolve.
A bootlicking bitch,
if you will.
No, yeah, these people's lives are miserable because he's a scab
and she's a scab they're both scabs you're miserable because because you have severed
a camaraderie that exists amongst people that actually keep this world going
you're isolated you're playing a role that you don't even you don't even know you signed up to
play that is exactly right.
They have alienated themselves from any kind of solidarity or community,
from anything that could actually make society better.
They're the scab couple.
It could be a sitcom.
We're the scab couple.
He crosses picket lines and i don't treat
the scav couple
there are a lot of those out there too he said yeah he sits on his computer all day
wondering when he'll get back out.
All right.
Now, contemplating the possibility of teacher striking, he says bowing out wouldn't be a good example to set for our students.
I don't know.
If you were to ask, poll any of the students in West Virginia when the teachers went on strike, I highly doubt they give a fuck about the decisions.
Like, I highly doubt you'll find a student that's being like,
well, our teachers went on strike.
Man, we love that shit, mostly because we got out of school.
Part of me growing up to be pro-labor was getting unexpected days off
because of teacher strikes.
I'm like, hell yeah, that shit's hot.
Exactly.
And strikes demonstrate what community and solidarity is because people look
out for each other and they take care of each other i mean it's like it's just so this this
person is the antithesis of the um like during the west virginia teacher strikes you saw the bus
drivers too wouldn't wouldn't like drive the buses you saw during the protest that like when
they were loading up the
people into that bus to like take them away that the guy that was driving the bus said he's not
doing it you know what i mean that kind of stuff yeah these people are the inverse of that just
disgusting that's exactly right no it's exactly right teachers signed up to be a positive adult
presence in children's lives and to help them grow up with their peers at school away from home we need them to follow through even though it's a challenge
it's going to be hard it's going to be stressful it's not going to be perfect i can't think of one
time that there was actually hand soap in the men's bathroom my husband told me that'll have
to change hopefully for good i mean it's just like they point out all these current problems with the system all these
flaws and but they can't they can't real they can't understand that like the actual solutions
to those things would be worker control of these systems i don't know there's a scab couple
scab couple. Scab couple! Scab couple!
Tune in next week. Oh my god.
Well, alright.
That about sums it up.
We got it all.
We got it all in there.
We didn't get to cover one item.
You know what?
I feel like I okie-dokied myself here.
We shouldn't have even talked about Clear Appalachia in the grand scheme of things it's not as important as the article i
read in the wall street journal that says pickup trucks are getting huge um and how pickup trucks
gained pickup trucks gained uh 1200 pounds between 1990 and 2019 hey Hey, man, we all pick up a few pounds as the years roll on.
It's all right.
That's a much more important story, I guess.
Well, thanks for bearing with us, folks.
Since we're still under an hour and a half,
I'm going to leave all that queer Appalachia nonsense.
Hopefully you got something out of it.
Hopefully you weren't entirely offended or bored um but if you would if you were um you can go to the patreon
and give us your money let's do a little let's do a little briefing of our own here
us your money. Let's do a little riffing of our own here.
That's right.
If you don't give us money,
my
prostate will get worse.
I don't know, folks. Think about it.
Think about the implications. And if you do get
money, his prostate will indeed
get worse.
He'll be better equipped to
deal with it, emotionally. that's exactly right um so anyways
thanks for listening this week everybody please go to patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com
slash trailbilly workers party you'll get an episode every sunday tanya turner showed up on the last episode on Patreon.
She was a little reticent today.
I understand why. I'm only good on Sundays, folks.
It is Scissor Sunday.
She's only good on Scissor Sunday.
Thirsty Thursdays.
I'm a little dehydrated.
Keep scissoring in the free world.
That's right.
Well, thanks for listening this week, everybody.
We will see you next time over on the Patreon.
If we don't see you there, we'll see you
next week. Be careful.
And stay safe.
And tune in
for the Scap Couple.