Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 211: Leaving Cop City
Episode Date: August 12, 2021This week we cover Cuomo, climate change, cops, and vaccine mandates Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty...
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Oh, fuck no.
Fuck no.
If this meeting is being recorded, I'm getting off.
He's getting out.
Oh, he's getting out.
Fuji.
That's going to be stuck in my goddamn head all day now.
Sorry.
Y'all remember Wyclef Jean ran for president of Haiti
and siphoned a bunch of money off his charities?
Wait, what?
Remember that?
Y-Clef?
I vaguely remember that, yeah.
Yeah, man.
Y-Clef got caught skimming a little off the top for Haiti.
When was this?
This sounds like some 2000s shit.
Yeah, I think this was like...
Remember, I think it was like the earthquake.
Yeah.
Like 2009 or 2010 or something
like that i don't know they might have been trying to get on my man i don't know i don't
want to believe that wycliffe's you know scamming but you know yeah yeah i mean like yeah you know
there are people like killer mike you know i wouldn like, think that he would be kind of one of the people drilling.
Driller Mike was this drill that was named after him that kind of broke land at some new, like, luxury condo, like, lot or space.
Some real estate vulture got, man.
So, you know, even your heroes can have flaws, man.
It can fail you sometimes, you know.
Was he at the groundbreaking for it?
Yeah, the drill was named after him, Driller Mike's what they called oh my god that's so bad oh boy
um oh boy um well there's one there's one group to blame for all this, and it's the Grateful Dead.
Why is that?
I'm convinced that hippie-ism gave birth to the gentrifier.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, you don't want to be known as Driller Mike,
but if you're known as, like, Tiller Mike, you're just a gardener?
You're just a farmer.
You're just a farmer?
Tiller Mike, yeah.
That's okay.
Healer Mike, you're a faith healer?
You're a shabby?
Yeah, that's kind of cool.
Kriller Mike, you collect krill from the ocean?
You mean like the little shrimp?
Yeah, like the little shrimp.
Quiller Mike,
you're into pins?
We could do this all day.
Pillar Mike, He's an architect
He constructs pillars
Before we got on
Tom was telling me that
What did you say Tom?
In Italy they've got mixed spaghetti At McDonaldcdonald's i don't think italy
i think is in philippines but i'm not i'm not even sure about that be honest wait you said
they have spaghetti at mcdonald's mixed spaghetti wow the mixed spaghetti meal well uh in china
they got fried chicken uh on the menu at McDonald's.
Interesting.
I don't know why.
I like when there's a chain
restaurant that has
you know, that has
you can go off menu
and get weird localisms.
There's a Dairy Queen
in Flemingsburg, Kentucky
where you can do that
it's like you can order off their normal menu but they also got some like home cooking there that
that they you can get to like squirrel and stuff is that a stereotype or anything like
did i just perpetuate stereotypes yeah yeah i guess i fucking hate it when i perpetuate stereotypes
um speaking of stereotypes though so um uh i went camping in ohio this past weekend
me and my girlfriend and we stopped in cincinnati and i stopped at like a tailor in cincinnati
and i stopped at like a tailor in cincinnati and the guy the tailor because i'm you know trying to get a new suit and the tailor was this 82 year old italian man and i shit you not oh you
know that's how you know you went to the right yeah exactly the um he like came out from behind
a curtain like you know fucking threw the curtain aside and came out.
Like Oz, let the money out.
Yeah, and he had his hands kind of like, you know, he was like kind of already doing the thing.
Like gesticulating.
Yes, yeah.
And he told me that the secret to long life is eating long spaghetti.
If you eat short spaghetti, then you're done. Short life. Yeah, short life. But long spaghetti if you eat short spaghetti then you're done short life short short life but
long spaghetti long life yeah so when you're eating that bowl of spaghetti you get that little
like half incher like that's not a good not a good sign um it makes sense because if you're
or when they chop it up you know what i mean yeah that's not good it's not good you try to
gamble with your life yeah you don't do that i mean because it's like it makes sense because if you stay active
yeah because you always hear about that people retiring and then they die because they're not
active but if you're if you're eating long spaghetti you're staying active and um you uh
you've got a lesser chance of unless you choke on the long spaghetti in which case unless you
choke over who chokes on speed i don't know but that's a that's a good thing too because if you choke on
it if it's long enough somebody can just pull it out yeah this is the first day of the rest of my
life i'm waiting long
no man i was uh there's a show that that I watched about documenting people who had lived extremely long lives.
And I think they all had in common eating chocolate and smoking cigarettes.
Which I found those two things don't seem like they'd be conducive to living a long life.
Apparently.
As a smoker, I'm halfway there.
I just need to throw in the chocolate.
You get the chocolate, you roll.
Willie Nelson said that the key to longevity,
and I thought it was going to be something to do with marijuana,
but it's apparently eating a bowl of oatmeal every morning.
A bowl of oatmeal?
I'm good then.
You don't like oatmeal?
I eat gruel every morning.
You do, Terrence. morning you do terence you're just you just you eat like you're uh they're keeping you in like
some sort of uh dead house in siberia like something about dostoevsky just it just eats
like just plain boiled beans and rice and millet terence got the woodland foraging creature diet
yeah i envy it i wish I could do it.
I mean, I should, man.
My stomach is weak.
As a weak stomach boy, I feel you, Terrence.
I'm the same way.
I still throw caution to the wind, though.
Well, speaking of spaghetti, I also got to see Serpent Mound this weekend.
Do y'all know what Serpent Mound is?
No.
Yeah, so let me get this straight.
You went and just tap danced on native burial grounds, eh?
No, but I did think it would be funny.
So Serpent Mound is like a 1,200-foot-long mound effigy in ohio and i did think it would be funny if like for all
these hundreds of years we thought it was an effigy to a god but it was actually an effigy to
spaghetti it's just a long yeah it's like the wisdom of the ancients is that the key to long
life is eating long spaghetti and now all these like QAnon freaks look at the serpent mound
and they come up with all these weird conspiracy theories
and really and truly it's just an ancient Italian proverb.
That's right.
Wait, so this is an indigenous Native American structure in Ohio, right?
It is.
And actually, so it's pretty fascinating actually um because like most mounds
like this are as are as i understand it and i'm not an expert um but apparently most mounds like
this are burial mounds but serpent mound is an effigy mound and it is shocking to me like when
you go visit it all of the quotes that you see walking into the place are from white people
it's like you know i mean it's it's like your your entire experience at front at first is
mediated by white people by old you know what i'm saying like the sort of quote-unquote archaeologists
and paleontologists that found it um But it was really astonishing.
I had a dream about it before I went.
And that's why I was like, I've got to go since we're going to be close to there.
It was a really, I don't know, I thought it was a really fascinating experience.
But doesn't it kind of feel like, you know, and I don't know.
Again, I'm not an expert,
but doesn't it kind of feel like there, I feel kind of like it's an op in and of itself to say that, like, Central American and South American Native societies and civilizations were, like,
these complex, really, you you know carefully arranged and everything
societies whereas like in north america it was like oh they were kind of just simple you know
what i'm saying like that's yeah yeah they look at this dirt mound they were just simple people
exactly when you go to that yeah you go to that mound and it's like this is really there's an
aesthetic here you know and it's really impressive. It's a really technologically advanced thing, too.
I don't know.
I feel kind of like our education system has indoctrinated us to think that North American
indigenous societies were just like, eh.
But, like, the Central Americans were like, they were, you know, whereas.
It's oriented us toward a conspiratorial mindset.
Yeah, definitely.
Totally. No no you're
absolutely right though because like the way we talk about the mayans the incans the aztecs you
know you know versus like the number of tribes like you know in i guess the united states and
sort of the history that we learn you know it's like you kind of revere like what is it el dorado
like the city of gold and you revere all that, but I guess what you learn about Native Americans in the U.S. is, like, the Trail of Tears, like, a history of,
like, suffering and oppression and not great, like, archaeological or scientific accomplishments,
you know? No, I mean, like, I'm, so I just finished reading Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon,
and, like, the Mason-Dixon line, which is, it's pretty crazy, but the Mason-Dixon line, which is it's pretty crazy, but the Mason-Dixon line ended at the great I think they call it the great Indian war path, which was this incredibly, you know, sophisticated highway system among American indigenous communities.
Like, you know, something on the scale and magnitude of like the Silk Road.
But that's what I'm talking about.
Like, they talk about North American indigenous societies as, like, these simple, you know what I mean, like, relatively, you know, isolated societies. And it's like, no, they had a very, like, I mean, this is pretty.
Part of that is they need us to believe that, like, there was no genocide and slaughter, but rather that we just got the best of them in a
trade for land and you know trinkets that kind of shit exactly like they had no problem at all
like they weren't exploited and taken advantage of because you know like they traded away like
manhattan for like some you know shells or some shit like that because they didn't have a concept
of private property right it's just like motherfucker you think they didn't
know what fucking seashells were like they'd never seen a goddamn marble before come on
they were like all right you want this thing okay just take it fine nobody holds it anyway
go ahead what's crazy though so they don't know who built serpent mound um i say they like the
science community i'm sure there are um you know oral traditions
passed down among indigenous communities that do know um but you know one of the theories is that
the adena culture built it and so i was like looking into like the adena culture and adena
is a word made up by this white landowner in Ohio
because he had a mound on his property.
This isn't the word that the natives use.
This is a word that a white guy used to describe.
I mean, it's just astonishing how much of it...
Yeah.
That guy, Bob Evans.
Founder of Bob Evans. Found him at Bob Evans restaurants.
Oh, man.
Well, if you get a chance to go visit Serpent Mound,
pretty fucking tight.
The original monolith
and, I guess, ode to spaghetti.
For the Italians, man.
Speaking of spaghetti,
Cuomo
resigned. He didn't retire.
I'm sure he's not retired.
Oh, no. What's his next act going to be,
do you think?
Trying to buy MSNBC. That's what I heard.
Oh, really? Who would I hear that's what i heard oh really yeah who would i
hear that from i heard it this morning i think i might have just trying to buy the network yeah
yeah i think he's trying to buy the network man which which like i don't know how much money you
have to embezzle as governor you know to fucking buy a network but msnbc would be like i'm not
saying perfect for him but like you know like
it really this whole thing has made me think like how far it came you know like 11 women
have came out and said that like you know he sexually assaulted them um you know his response
during covid you know in new york like writing a fucking book about how we had gotten through
the pandemic while we were still in the midst of it. Like, it seems like MSNBC would be like the sort of, I guess,
lionization and rehabilitation, I guess.
Rehabilitation is the word.
Of like these like shitty ass, not just Democrats, but Republicans too.
It seems like that'd be the perfect network for him, man.
Well, you know.
Go ahead, Dom.
Well, I was, oh, God damn it.
You hit your funny bone? Go hit my funny bone. Go ahead, Dom. Well, I was... God damn it.
You hit your funny bone?
Go hit my funny bone.
Fuck.
Shit hurts so bad. Wow.
That'll be the laugh at your face.
Put him on the DL.
This man is on the DL.
Oh.
Oh.
I was just going to say Cuomo might still be the president
Biden
I mean everybody conveniently forgets that
Biden has a very credible
sexual assault allegation that's
far
I'm not trying to sit here
and rank fucking assaults but
I'm just saying like
if Biden can do it cuomo could rebound to national
office yeah or something like yeah you know yeah i mean it's it's like i mean you know it's like a
qualification of being u.s president is to have like sexually assaulted at least like three people
man it seems like that's right up his alley man he really is the democratic trump too he really is
the audacity of him to say no no, Cuomo needs to step down.
But just to get on national TV and say, no, Andrew Cuomo needs to resign.
It's the only right thing to do.
Wait, Donald Trump said that?
No, Biden did.
No, no, no, no, no.
Biden said that.
Oh, Biden said that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
Well, I mean, they were all quiet, you know, up until recently, you know.
They weren't saying anything.
So we'll see
how long it takes for him to bounce back man um i mean i i think it's pretty crazy that um
i don't know i was trying to like think about this earlier
like i guess in like an actual political system one that wasn't completely just like
I guess in an actual political system,
one that wasn't completely just moribund and rotted out from the inside,
sending tens of thousands of elderly people
to nursing home death camps
would be, I don't know, disqualifying.
It is insane.
Honestly, if you step back and look at it on the merits,
it's like, this guy's responsible
for tens of thousands of deaths,
if not more.
But that was just not,
like, it's weird.
It's like we just consider that
the cost of doing business.
You know what I'm saying?
It's really wild.
It's so fucking crazy.
Mass death is just the cost of doing business.
And then like,
I'm not saying that you don't take sexual assault or anything like that
seriously but it's like there's a good many things to have hammered him on well before we knew about
any of this stuff yeah and right and you know and that was fine yeah that that and that's basically
what i'm getting at it's just very interesting that i don't know i mean you kind of start getting
a little conspiratorial about it like i
i'm house sitting for somebody right now and i had the news on the other night and i never watched
the news but i turned it on and msnbc was on and it was like medihassan and he was talking about
um you know this shows that the democrats still have integrity like and he pointed about al
franken and everything he was like whereas
the republicans you know you pointed out jim jordan and all these other people it's just like
i i don't know it's just i mean it's like you know on the one hand the normalization of like
this mass death you know but then also the real-time rehabilitation of andrew cuomo because
i mean if you really looked at like I guess the rise in
COVID cases and deaths in New York I mean you know you can't you can't I guess um attribute
everything to just you know the governor even if he's an executive official but it's kind of like
New York isn't doing too well man but it's it's like I remember the the on the late night shows
Cuomo sexual people were saying that they were chelsea handler i remember had a special where she was attracted to him because of his
you know uh covid response but it's like people that were actually in new york and if you were
looking at the numbers like he wasn't fucking doing shit man and especially as you were saying
terrence with you know sending all these elderly people back to nursing homes who had tested
positive like we were rehabilitating him and normalizing this mass death in real real time yeah all you
have to do is be elected in new york during a time of crisis and people think you're doing a
kick-ass job let's not forget that everybody was praising rudy fucking giuliani 20 years ago almost
to the day for his handling of 9-11 you know what i mean yo hey bluebird too man it's like
motherfucker you came in at the tail end you You weren't even there for that shit, man.
You weren't even there for that.
Now, 20 years later, we got Rudy jacking his bird while he thinks a teenage girl's getting ready to importune him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's fucking ridiculous, man.
I don't know, man.
I think this kind of just proves, like, you were saying, Terrence, like, many Assad, like, you know, these liberals that try to, you know, create this like false dichotomy or binary between Republicans and Democrats.
But like, you know, I'm at the end of the day, I think just Cuomo is he's the Democratic Trump, man.
It shows you that they're just different size of the same coin.
You know, there's really no difference between them in my opinion. To that Maddie Hassan shit, it's like,
of course these people can grandstand and act like they've got more integrity
in these situations because their class interests align with the Republicans,
so they don't give a fuck if they can sacrifice a couple of their own
because they want to lose because they'll have something to run on.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Oh, man.
It's like a zero-stakes game for them because, like,
you see how Pelosi and these people act
when it looks like student loan debt cancellation is getting some traction.
They step in.
You know what I mean?
It's ridiculous.
It's like, oh, the Democrats live by their standards.
It's like, no, it's just because they don't care if they lose a couple of seats in the process
because, like, okay, like okay good now i got something
to run on instead of just getting here and spitting out platitudes i can say we need to beat
the michelle bachman or whatever well what it is is they hold themselves
in their own minds they see themselves as the kind of enlightened despots in the sense that like their leaders have to be
morally upright um but it's so fascinating again again i just want to return to this it's so
fascinating to this that like killing tens of thousands of people is not a ding on your moral
uh standing on your virtue it is is, it's entirely,
I mean, you're basically right, Tom.
It's like they want to pursue all these other things,
and so throwing a few of them under the bus when it's necessary to do so
allows them to pursue these other things
because they know people are going to vote for them anyways.
I mean, that's the thing.
That's how bleak it is.
They know people are going to vote for them
and that the people who do vote for them do care about this like thing about the leader being
avert unless it's Joe Biden of course then people don't give a shit um but I don't I don't know it's
just a very fascinating uh dynamic because I don't know again like I said they know people will vote
for them yeah when. Go ahead.
No, no, no.
You go ahead.
When I was in New York, I mean, I'm not proud to admit it, but I used to work for the – I talk about it all the time.
I worked for the Democratic Party in New York, and I actually canvassed for Cuomo when he was running.
I forget what year, but Zephyr Teachout.
Yeah.
I should have canvassed for her, but he was running, and all the people that I talked to, man, fucking hated him.
I met a handful of people that I remember, at least, that actually had good things to say about him, but everybody fucking hated him.
But they said they were going to vote for him anyway.
And that's a really bleak situation, man, when these people are like, because of this sort of dynasty of the Cuomo family and the fact that it feels like he's been in there fucking forever and i guess people's lives don't feel like like extremely like worse you know what
i mean like it's shifted that bad where it's like okay we have to get this fucking guy out but
they're not happy though right you know but they don't know they don't know anything else so they
just end up voting for this guy again so yeah yeah um well I can already tell that the Democrats are going to be the main theme of this episode just by looking at.
Good thing Tanya's not here.
Or maybe it's a bad thing, actually, depending on what we wind up talking about today.
Yeah, she would go the fuck off.
I don't want to talk about it anymore.
um i'll talk about it maybe more uh but um because the next thing i had on this list was the climate change the intergovernmental panel on climate change report the ipcc report um they released
a new report this week uh with the overall message being that we can no longer stop some degree of
global warming over the next 20 years um Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today,
I'm quoting from the New York Times article about this,
which people were mad about the framing of.
Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today,
total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius
within the next two decades.
And so, I don't know, this this is interesting we can take this a few
different directions i think um one thing i did want to point out though was that uh as
several people have pointed out um one of which was kate aronoff in the new republic
that uh what is it climate emissions are
what yeah the biden administration is now on track to um approve more
i don't know did you guys see this approve more like oil and gas wells than since the
bush administration here it is biden administration
is now on track the biden administration is now on track to approve more oil and gas drilling on
public lands activity that accounts for a quarter of u.s greenhouse gas emissions than any
administration since george w bush um climate envoy john kerry has balked at the idea of committing
the u.s to a coal phase-out.
Politicians who call themselves climate hawks are still going out of their way to make clear that there's a vibrant future ahead for the companies that funded climate denial, etc., etc.
And then there was this clip of Obama going around.
Did you guys see this where he was boasting about how oil and gas production went up during his administration?
Every year he was in the office.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dude. And then he was, like joking you uh say thank you yep yeah dude this is so insidious because i remember when uh one of the things biden had promised i don't i don't know if it was the
dakota access pipeline which i think obama had said okay we wouldn't we wouldn't drill on that
but there was some other pipeline like that was attracting a lot of like media attention especially because organizers were involved in like making
sure that that didn't go through but he's like yeah we're not going to touch that one but like
in the background like there's this opening for like so many other like drilling sites that people
don't know the names of they don't even know where the fuck they are yeah and it's like you know you
take this public stance against this one but in the background meanwhile you know nothing has really changed yeah yeah yeah um i thought it was really
interesting one of the one of the most interesting things i thought about about this was you have
this report that comes out it says like we're locked into at least a 1.5 degrees celsius
increase over the next 30 years um and then you got the fact that the biden administration is approving more oil and gas
permits on public land since the bush administration they also made a press release
calling on opec plus to increase oil production and and so at while all this is happening, you've got all of these tweets.
It's weird, man.
And again, I'm really conspiratorial about this.
But you've got all these tweets that are like, you know, don't despair.
Like despair is counterproductive.
And that's what's going to stop us.
And it's like, yeah, I agree.
I agree with that generally in a broad sense.
But how the fuck can
you blame people for how could you blame them for despairing like look at this it's fucked up
bro let me tell you something the thing about the thing about uh people that know what it's like to
be absolutely trey fucked is that we take we derive a little bit of pleasure from our doomerism in the face
of an annihilation that's all but certain and here's the thing it's like it's like when you're
talking about the other day Terrence it's like the leadership that we have is getting like all
these Instagram influencers to try to go get people like to get vaccinated for example in the
case of the pandemic and it's like you're going to tell me not to be a doomer
in the face of that kind of bullshit.
Yeah.
Bruh.
Bruh.
I agree with you.
I know it's annoying, and I'm going to keep it off the TL.
Honestly, what, I mean, honestly,
well, kind of what I'm thinking, you know,
and follow me here,
I have zero proof or evidence for this whatsoever.
But yes, the White House did hire 50 TikTok influencers to make these videos about going out and getting the vaccine.
And it's like, you know, young Gen Z people and they're hip and they're cool.
And so then I like see all these Twitter accounts of these influencer type people also making these tweets that are like don't despair
about climate change and it's just like is this an op is this a messaging thing from the white
house are they the ones i mean because in a way it actually would behoove them for a you know mass
movement of leftists to yeah to internalize this idea to not despair while things get worse and worse and worse and
you don't do anything about it because that's how these things go well it's it's so bleak because
it's like since the state is like so become so like emaciated and everything is like privatized
and outsourced and culture is kind of what reigns supreme. It's like everything like trickles down from that to culture.
So now culture takes this role that the government should be doing.
You know, like we have these all these tick tockers and influencers who are urging people to get vaccinated.
And by you, those people also like fall into like, I guess, like a certain political category, at least people that pay attention to that.
So the people that are anti-vaxxer, anti-mask are not
paying attention to this shit at all.
I'm going to tell you something.
Gay, Gen Z, or TikToker
is not anybody that
the anti-vaxxers are paying attention to
anyway.
Sorry.
It's also like...
Go get Trace Adkins on that shit if you really want to make an
impact and it's just i don't know man it's just like this is an example of how bad it is and i
know i'm in georgia but i got vaccinated today but yesterday i was calling around to see where
i could get vaccinated man because in a normal society i would say like within half a mile this should be a place where i could go get vaccinated right this one Because in a normal society, I would say, like, within half a mile,
this should be a place where I could go get vaccinated.
Right.
This one place I'll call, they only do this shit on Tuesday, you know,
and they charge.
This other place, like, oh, they're not sure when they're going to be.
And it's like, I'm, like, calling.
And finally, I found somewhere.
But it's like, this is bleak as hell, man.
Yeah.
This is like, you can't rely on the state to do anything. And instead, everything gets outsourced to either fucking private companies who want to make money off a vaccine or fucking TikTokers, man.
Aaron went to get his vaccine and ended up in a bathtub full of ice, one kidney short of a pair.
He's like, take a kidney, you get vaccinated, one dose.
You're in that same warehouse where Brian Kemp hit all the voting machines from
Stacey Abrams, but you're like
one kid in his short of a pair.
That's the warehouse in Atlanta they use for everything,
man, trust me. It's the one warehouse.
Yeah, it's
I don't know.
I just think it's kind of weird.
Yeah, I don't agree. You it's i just think it's kind of weird yeah i i don't i agree you should
not get so despairing about climate that you just get depressed and completely disengage
but look everyone's disengaged anyways and there's it doesn't matter whether me you might
as well despair yeah i mean the me the individual it doesn't matter if i'm despairing about it not
personally i'm not i I decided a long time ago
that I wasn't going to let this make me depressed anymore.
But I understand why it would make people depressed and despairing.
And so I just think it's very strange
that there's this kind of concerted effort
to use all of the same exact talking points
and even like language and rhetoric
to be like, don't despair. This is blah, blah rhetoric to be like don't despair this is blah
blah blah just like i don't know it's just like clockwork every time it just feels like an op i
guess is all i'm saying let me tell you something good no no no go ahead no no i'm just gonna say
i feel like the despots like uh like encouraging us to like you know not despair and not worry
like usually like you know it's the precipitating event
before a collapse and disaster.
It's like the calm before the storm.
Right.
Just think about all this.
I don't want to get into the pandemic.
That's a whole different thing.
There's plenty of examples of this.
I was watching...
The thing about getting hip to what's an op
and what's not historically is now
you can't not see them right you know what i mean yeah totally i was watching uh long strange trip
that docu-series about the grateful dead and there's like this archival footage and it's like
uh got bob weir talking about how they man Hyde Ashbury was great because you could just move into all these Victorian houses for cheap and just renovate them and fix them up.
And then Jerry Garcia's like, man, we don't believe in revolution of any kind.
We don't believe in leadership or power, confronting power, hurting anybody.
We just want to drop out and live a decluttered life.
And I'm like, this is why we have gentrification problems today.
Yeah, the hippies fucked it up, man.
The ethos of a whole period was a CIA-backed attempt to utilize culture
to get people to be apathetic.
Right.
And at the same time, breed the latest generation of people
that just move into worn you know worn down neighborhoods
and like run the prices up weirdly enough my argument now is that they are actually i do kind
of feel like now it is an op to not be apathetic but the point is and this is why there is a massive
ngo non-profit complex set up around this the point is is that you should not be apathetic this is
what they're you know trying to teach you to do and trying to get you to do don't be apathetic
engage in the political process but as soon as you do it you will be co-opted and sucked into
the same like you know machinations and institutions that basically ensure that you are caring about the world and
making the world a better place will amount to nothing but you will get access and proximity
to power and this is what i this is what i learned by working in non-profits it's a very alluring
thing they will keep you around and they will throw you a bone every now and then but they
ultimately won't change anything.
And so that's why I do think it's very suspicious for them to hire these young TikTok influencers
and try to get people to be engaged in the political process
because they can keep a handle on that.
That to them is advantageous for them.
What they don't want at this point
is for people to drop out of the
process and not engage with it altogether because then people start looking at the conspiracies
then they start doing you know going down all i mean because you know we live in a different world
now we live in a world where all information is available at the tip at your fingertips which was
not the case in the 60s and so now it has to be managed in a way and that's why i think that's
why i find it very suspicious that suspicious that they are just en masse saying uh you know
on one hand being like what's this the green dream or whatever or diane feinstein being like well
when you tell me i have to do something makes me i think i don't want to do anything on one hand
they say that shit and then not and and then on the other hand, they're saying, well, don't despair.
We're going to fix this.
And Biden and Gavin Newsom tweet every time there's a fucking fire.
Like, there's climate change and we got to fix it.
And meanwhile, they fucking approve more oil and gas permits.
I just, I don't know.
It just fucking drives me crazy.
It's like the kind of, I guess, libidinal economy of progress, right?
Like the idea that it's no longer cool or profitable, rather, to be apathetic.
Yes.
This is why all these corporations are jumping into social justice movements.
Exactly.
Black Lives Matter, the LGBTQ movements, the environmental movements.
But it's managed apathy in the sense where they want you to feel, because it's profitable, that things are going to get better without actually changing the underlying material basis and structure, man.
Exactly.
That's like being on a conveyor belt, like, that's kind of like, or like a treadmill, I guess, you know?
Like, you have this illusion of motion and forward ascendant, but let's just say the most popular politician in America.
And so I was like, OK, this is the natural progression of things like people are going to start drifting away from nonprofits and NGOs and all these other things and start getting back into mass political action.
That's not what's happening what's happening is people are getting more into the non-profits and the democratic party
apparatus and everything and they are being pulled away from mass political action we saw this with
the protests last year so i mean i don't know i mean you're exactly right aaron that's i think
i mean look at blm man go go ahead tell go ahead no no no no go ahead
no no go ahead you said look at blm you're exactly right yeah i i was i think terrence made an
interesting point just about like how like your ticket to pro to to sort of your proximity to
powers to participate in this system.
And I think it's true because look at celebrity today.
It's like you have a bunch of like numb nuts on TikTok that are like probably more like Gen Zers or whoever,
like these young people are more familiar with them
than the biggest matinee idols of our time
you know what i mean i heard uh it's it's like uh our whole orientation to like celebrity
and you know which has traditionally come with access and everything it's just like there's a
lower bar to entry these days and i think that's part of that op for sure that like everybody and with
you know just with the sentence of social media and stuff everybody's kind of a celebrity everybody
can be a celebrity right yeah yeah um yeah yeah uh i i mean i i don't know it's um it's just an
interesting an interesting thing um it's just parodic, man, at this point.
You know, it feels like something that I would see on, like, The Simpsons, you know, like, or South Park, where it's, like, it's so corny and obvious, you know.
But, like, I mean, and it obviously doesn't fucking work.
You know, I think young people nowadays can see through that shit, you know.
It's not like these are inspiring figures, like, you know, like of yesteryear shit you know it's not like these are inspiring figures like you know like of
yesteryear you know um well on that note and this will pivot to the next thing i wanted to talk
about this will be the kind of bridge to pivot to this next thing um there was an interesting
article in the intercept a few weeks ago um it called democrats new midterm strategy knocking the gop for vote against police funding
republicans vote against the american rescue plan which released funds that some cities are using
to hire more police is now being used against them so um and this kind of gets at what we're
talking about as the 2022 midterm elections draw closer, Democrats in Congress are taking on a new strategy, blaming Republicans for voting to defund the police.
And according to Democratic aides, the change in messaging is coming straight from office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi was instrumental in the passage of the American Rescue Plan, which allocated money towards pandemic relief, increased child tax credit, and expanded health care coverage.
President Joe Biden signed the package into law in March.
Given that every Republican in Congress voted against it, the bill is now also providing Democrats with new ammunition.
Localities have started to spend the first round of funds released in the package to hire more police officers,
retaining existing officers, and keep other first responders from being laid off,
which means the Democrats now actually have the ability to talk about specific localities
where people are being kept on the police force, said one senior Democratic aide,
and were able to talk about it more concretely as opposed to theoretically.
In addition, they added, the GOP response to the January 6th attack on the Capitol
made it easier for Democrats to highlight the party's hypocrisy once americans saw republicans disrespect the
officers who protected them on january 6th it became a lot easier for us to point out hypocrisy
on policing fucking god what they don't understand before we get to first of all we got to understand
is that we've spoken about this before because mitch mcconnell was like the prime example
yo you can't make these people feel shame because they have no shame i can't point out hypocrisies
because they do not give a fuck yo that's like a 2007 strategy that's like yeah oh my fucking god
dude um like is anyone really gonna believe that the republican Republican Party is soft on law and order and soft on crime? Dude, I know.
Yeah, like sell that to people.
Like this Cory Booker thing where he thought he got a mic dropper on Tommy Tuberville.
Oh, catch me up on that.
I saw that going around, but I didn't look into it.
What happened?
I saw that going around, but I didn't look into it.
What happened?
Basically what it was is Tommy Tuberville said something inflammatory about the Democrats not believing in defunding police and all this kind of thing.
And he proposed this legislation which penalizes cities for defunding the police.
So I guess Pound, Virginia is going to get hit even harder with fees and fines.
Right.
If it passes.
And then, like, as a mic dropper, Cory Booker got on there and was, like,
showing how, like, oh, look at us now, 99 to 0.
We're all in lockstep on this.
Like, his big mic dropper was that Tommy Tuberville basically
baited him into voting for his
legislation.
He thought that it was such a good thing
to show that Democrats weren't weak on crime.
Oh my fucking god, dude.
And this is all
in light of last summer.
I'm just going to tell you something.
Rosario dawson
don't need to be letting this motherfucker bust bro how you go from how you go yo how you go from
eric andre bro you don't deserve you don't deserve no pussy much less rosario dawson
you ever seen the shit the tweet where he was like they read uh because like he's a campaigning
in a way and shit they're the uh 2020 presidential
campaign and how he reads her i don't know what fucking book it is man but reads her some fucking
piece of literature like every night over facetime or something like that man i'm like yo that's some
no pussy getting that shit man i'm sorry dude as as if as if tweeting uh i'm in uh i mean i'm having an affair with my coffee
wasn't some
no pussy getting that shit in itself.
You know what I mean?
Just tweeting coffee jokes.
He has to be the courtiest politician a lot,
man. I'm sorry.
Listen to this quote from
Robin Patterson, Pelosi's
Deputy Communications Director.
Wait, Robert? Robin, sorry. Oh Communications Director. Wait, Robert?
Robin, sorry.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, Robert Pattinson.
It's like when Kumar got into politics when he went to go work for the Obama White House.
As long as Republicans lie about crime, we're going to force them to own their hypocrisy and explain why House Republicans voted to defund their own police departments,
disrespect the officers who defended Capitol from violent insurrectionists, and against common sense legislation to keep guns out of hands of people who shouldn't have them.
I mean...
You see, this is why these people are fucking stupid, because this is actually perfectly in line with Republicans' beliefs,
because they do not want
to give money to fucking the state or local governments they don't want to fucking give
money these people you know so even if it means like you know like uh cops or like you know
firefighters whatnot it aligns perfectly with small government you know like it's actually
not hypocritical at all if you listen to what these motherfuckers actually say. Yeah.
I mean, it's just, this is just, I mean, it's just incredible.
Yeah, I wanted to try to read this thing in the Atlantic.
Y'all know who Conor Friedersdorf is?
No, thank God.
I don't.
I can't read it.
Of all the pundits and people out there,
he makes me grind my teeth more than anyone else.
I'll say this.
I've never read a single word Connors Freerdorf has ever read,
and I wasn't also in an airport waiting on a flight.
He's so fucking obtuse and stupid um but he wrote a he wrote a whole article about like how defunding the police is wrong and everything or you know bad and
a liability for democrats and he was talking about this this thing that we just talked about how
democrats are trying to use how democrats are trying to accuse, how Democrats are trying to accuse Republicans
of defunding the police.
And he says that, I fucking lost it at this.
He said that a much better slogan than defund the police
would be solve all murders.
Oh my fucking God, bro.
How about we start with the murders of unarmed black people?
Let's start with that first. Yeah. Jesus. Or at the macro level, how about we start with the murders of um of unarmed black people let's start with that yeah
yeah jesus or at the macro level how about his murder of the fucking english language
with the right to say it's like we gotta stop all murders
let's solve epstein's murder um that one's not gonna get get solved. Also, hasn't it, like, I thought this is like a relitigation of, like, 2020, right?
Like the down ballot races where I think it was, I forget what her name is, but Spanberger or some shit like that.
She was a former CIA op.
And she was saying how defund hurt the Democratic Party.
But actually, no Democrat ran on defund the police.
Yeah.
No, they ran from it. Yeah yeah i mean they ran from it yeah exactly they ran from it you know they also ran from fucking talking about medicare for all
which is why these motherfuckers lost you know well it all goes back to what we were talking
about last this time last year this exact time last year which is that like yeah you have a few options here um you could just embrace it
which is what politics has traditionally been if you have millions of people in the streets
you generally want to try to harness that rage towards some sort of political change and so you
could accept that and in funnel and channel it into politics.
That's some 20th century shit, man.
You know, you know, fucking that, you know,
mass politics is not fucking, doesn't, you know,
translate to electoral politics anymore, man.
Right.
So that's some New Deal type shit, dog.
I know.
We got too many people that's going to the ballot box now, you know?
Yeah.
They do their fighting in the ballot box
Could you just imagine though
People just
You know pitchforks outside of City Hall
Solve all murders
Solve all murders
Solve all murders
Now that's truly no pussy getting that shit
Soft as hell. Soft as hell.
Truly.
Soft as hell.
I think you should solve all murders.
After that,
we're going to do
five some robberies.
Solve all bank robberies next,
motherfucker.
No, man.
Jesus Christ.
Oh, God, yeah.
Okay, so this brings us to the next item on the agenda uh something that you sent me aaron i thought was very fascinating and you can probably speak
more about this than i can um but i guess i can lay out the kind of uh broad strokes this is from
um the intercept uh and it's about the article if you want to read it, is it's called Atlanta Poised to Approve Massive Police Training Facility Despite Public Opposition by Asia Arnold.
The city has given little room for public input ahead of a vote to approve the $90 million centers that activists have dubbed Cop City.
$90 million centers that activists have dubbed Cop City.
So what this is, it's a $90 million police training facility in the city's last large remaining green space known as the old Atlanta prison farm.
On June 7th, city council member Joyce Shepard introduced legislation that would authorize
a ground lease to the Atlanta Police foundation for the full 381 acres that ordinance is moving through city council committees this week and is
expected to come up for a vote by the full council on monday august 16th um so uh this is this is
very interesting what it is and aaron correct me if i'm wrong it's a massive training facility for the cops right
i mean it's a it's a fake city literally it's a fake exactly it's a fake city which actually they
were already true they were already using the old land of prison farm to do training but of course
you know the facilities that they want to build you know they weren't there so they're just
shooting at like old school trucks and like you know just dumping bullets into the wall of the old prison and again this is an old prison farm right and also the last like kind of like you know preserved
green space in atlanta which i mean we'll get into it but if if they cut that down like a lot
of the flooding in atlanta so cities are carbon um i mean
they attract a lot of heat because there's so much asphalt and concrete um to kind of curb some of
that you need a lot of trees and so this is a large green space that will help protect Atlanta in the fight against climate change.
And so, yeah, basically what they're – it's so meta.
It's like that movie Synecdoche, New York, except it's like militarized.
They want to create a fake city inside the city upon which they can enact their cop fantasy training fantasies
i think so you had mentioned that they were already using it for training someone found a grenade
um you know fucking close close to there i want to read here though this excerpt that you sent me i
thought was especially interesting um the mock renderings of the facility like they've modeled
it out include plans to burn towers, install new firing ranges,
launch explosives, and a cop academy that the Atlanta Police Foundation
calls the Institute of Social Justice.
What the fuck is going on there?
I don't like the sound of that.
That's some, like, Orwellian-type shit, man.
It really is. I mean, the thing too you know the article mentions too that like
the atlanta uh police foundation they held like these um these virtual i guess i can't even call
them town halls because um people that were watching it residents were not allowed to speak
right so they were all muted and people were actually just holding up like you know placards people that were watching it, residents, were not allowed to speak, right?
So they were all muted.
And people were actually just holding up, like, you know,
placards or pieces of paper with their questions on it
because, like, nobody, like, is actually, like, approved of this.
And what's even worse is that, like, the city is going to lease it out
to the Atlanta Police Department for $10, like, a year
or some crazy shit like that.
Meanwhile, like, I think, like, a couple 10 million of taxpayer dollars
are going to go towards, like, creating this facility.
So it's just, I don't know, man.
It's the classic public-private partnership that, you know,
you've been seeing in Atlanta and other southern cities, man.
Except this time with fucking cops, you know.
With a twist.
Yeah, with a dark twist.
Yeah.
The area actually used to belong to the mesquite
creek tribe um but before it was sold in a land lottery and used for chattel slavery and forced
imprisoned labor residents have found police grenades which contain toxic chemicals such as lead
on an old firing range in the forest next to this. Something I thought was really interesting about this
is the corporate sponsors.
Did you read the corporate sponsors
for the Atlanta Police Foundation?
Coca-Cola?
It's Coca-Cola.
Hell yeah, Coca-Cola.
Wow, yeah.
Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, UPS, Cox Enterprises.
I mean, pretty fucking crazy.
A veritable cornucopic plethora of bad actors.
And Cox Enterprises also owns, like, that's our Time Warner cable down here, whatever.
Yeah, they're the, yeah.
Famous family, famous Democratic billionaire family, actually.
But they also own the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
So, like, you know, no conflict of interest there at all, man.
Question.
Question.
Is Bobby Cox the Atlanta's manager?
Is he kin to that family?
I don't know, actually.
That'd break my heart to find out.
I do know, I probably should say too much, but I do know a member of the family who is actually a communist, man.
So, he fell very far
from the tree man thankfully yeah thankfully thankfully um yeah uh just i'm reading the
atlanta public or atlanta police foundation's website um the new training center will reimagine
law enforcement training and it will improve
morale retention recruitment and training for atlanta police department and ensure that atlanta
attracts and motivates those most highly committed to careers in law enforcement um set a national
standard for community engagement neighborhood sensitivity and devotion to the civil rights of
all citizens by law enforcement just they just killed somebody in july man come
on dude that that sentence is insane the devotion to the civil rights of all citizens by law
enforcement it's just like they just shot some motherfucking j. Like, come on, yo. It's also funny that, like, your origins are in, like, denying civil rights.
Exactly.
That's your origin story.
You know.
It will welcome the community.
No, go ahead, Aaron.
Sorry.
No, no, go ahead, Terrence.
Please continue.
I was going to say it will welcome the community to its public spaces,
including walking paths, picnic areas, and working community garden
and week-long farmer's market and weekly farmer's market it's just like yeah someplace i want to go and relax
where fucking cops are shooting off yeah grenades tear that shit up anyway throw people's food out
i'm telling you we got the grateful dead
farmers markets man you can do whatever after that it really is an
astonishing example of how um like all the forces of community institution uh you know stakeholders
and change makers and public art and all this shit has been used to naturalize the militarization of
police it says right here,
facilities will include walking trails,
public access green space,
30 acres for urban farming,
stables and 40 acres of pasture land for mounted patrol,
modular classroom and administration building,
EVOC course for emergency vehicle driver training, a mock city for burn building training and urban police
training i mean just like multi-use gymnasium it's just like you can you can you can picture
in your mind like the mayor coming out with all the heads of all the major non-profits in atlanta
and all the business leaders and civic leaders and police and everything and saying
but look we've made some mistakes.
Some people were killed.
It's going to be okay, though.
We've got stakeholders now, and we've got some cool public art
and people writing grants.
It's all good, right?
It's going to be all good.
Bro, that is the number one problem with the whole idea of art changes things
is all you've got to do is build a weird weird statue and all the sins are forgiven in the community.
Exactly.
You know what, too?
I will say that this is, in true Trill Billy kind of dystopian fashion, this is perfect.
It's not just called Cop City because it's going to be this huge training facility.
not just called cop city because you know it's going to be this huge training facility but like it's for cops to train in urban i don't even want to use the word war zone but like they're training
like you know urban like fighters you know yep like this is this is kind of indicative of like
you know a future in which you have more civil unrest and protests where these cops are more
than ever before are going to be trained to take people down in like you know a downtown populated area
you know as if they were in like Fallujah
or some shit like that you know what I mean
well you know before they sent troops
off to the Vietnam War they trained them up
in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and west Virginia
and east Tennessee for the same reason
you know
yeah
it is um
I mean you really kind of have to ask like do people really you know even in my
most generous reading of i mean like this is fascism obviously but like do people really
think that this will do anything like it'll solve any problems or help anybody like yeah um you're
right they're training them for a war war zone because that is their
mentality that is how police see the world um what do you think that's gonna do to a community
you know i mean that's um yeah i don't know yeah from the city too busy to hate man supposedly yeah supposedly oh fuck um well so there's a i've still got a few things
left on the list but i mean honestly i can table probably a few of these for the patreon for this weekend. I had a Dolly Parton item,
but I think I'm going to save that.
Man, I saw somebody
driving with a Dolly Parton license plate
the other day, man. I wouldn't take a picture and send it to y'all,
but she was moving down.
I saw Patton Oswalt
retweet
something that was about Dolly Parton.
He said that Dolly Parton's a millionaire instead of a billionaire.
And you know why?
Because she consistently gives her money away.
And then he captured it with be more like Dolly.
Throw a shade at Rihanna.
Smack the fuck out of you, dude.
He threw a shade at Rihanna because apparently Rihanna's a billionaire now, man.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I know.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, so I had Dolly Parton on here we can save that i wanted to
talk about app harvest but we can save that as well um the only other thing i had left
on my list with a big question mark was vaccine mandates i was like do we want to like we want
to like trod some interesting ethical territory today?
How are we feeling?
Piss people off.
Yeah, how weird,
how like weird
are we feeling right now?
Just testing the room.
You know,
I'm just trying to get us,
I mean,
because like if Tanya was here,
we could say the craziest shit
and get away with it.
But because it's,
because it's,
yeah, it's,
we could advocate for anything
as long as we have Tanya.
They'd be like,
oh, I love Tanya.
Happy she was on.
Talking about fucking killer babies and shit.
I'm sitting here giving a full-throated endorsement of Victor Orban.
Tanya's just cacked in the background.
Everybody loves her.
Right.
But because it's us three, it's like, how far do we want to wade into this?
I don't know.
It's just.
It's fine.
They're going to say they hate us anyway.
Well, I got vaccinated, so just so people
know, I got my first dose today, so I mean...
But mandates...
You know, I don't know. I'm vaccinated
as well, but I saw one thing
that really made me...
I don't know. It's just
like, we live in an
era of interesting
ethical dilemmas, right? it's a trolley problem a day
um but really though i did see something that i thought was very fucking interesting this is in
the new york times get a covet 19 vaccine or face prison judges order in probation cases
at least two judges in ohio have made receiving covid19 vaccinations a condition
of probation while judges have leeway in setting such rules it's a murky area experts said um so i
i just want to quote this judge here that thought this was interesting on august 4th judge christopher
a wagner of the court of common pleas in hamilton county ohio told brandon rutherford who was
convicted on drug offenses that as part of his release on community control or probation, he must receive the vaccination within 60 days.
I'm just a judge, not a doctor, but I think the vaccine's a lot safer than fentanyl, which is what you had in your pocket, the judge told Mr. Rutherford.
Oh, my fucking God.
He said, I'm going to order you within the next two months to get a vaccine and show that to the probation office.
You violate, you could go to prison.
I don't know.
I wonder if that guy's black, man.
I mean, he is.
Yeah, there's a picture of him.
I don't know, man.
Like, obviously, like, people should get vaccinated.
They should get their COVID-19 vaccination.
But we're talking about mandates, especially against, like, historically disenfranchised, criminalized population where you're putting more you know what i'm saying like it just feels
icky and weird yeah you should have thought about that when you was doing the tuskegee
syphilis experiments and you if you wanted people to get vaccinated more broadly by mandate you know
exactly exactly uh i say yeah i i understand that trepidation you know and again
you know it's like you said there it's like of course people should get vaccinated but like
there's very real historical reasons why people might be apprehensive in certain communities
other part too man i told terrence i want to talk about this a little bit and it's like
i saw this thing where like you know the the the singer Jason Isbell's making the rounds, like, because he's, like, you know, said he's going to have, like, you know, require vaccines to get to his shows or, like, you know, or have, like, a negative test within, you know, 48 hours or 72 hours, whatever it was.
And it's like, like, bro, like, here's the thing.
It's like, okay, good.
You're looking out for the health and well-being of you,
your people going to the show, whatever.
But also, like, this weird grandstanding, you know what I mean,
about, like, the Vex, like, oh, like, all these venues have, like,
canceled the shows because, like, his personal band policy didn't jive
with, like, the venue's policy, which, obviously, these venues are all bought up by live nation and like right these like
rapacious like fucking money making ventures and all this stuff but like well don't get on msnbc
and act like this is at great cost to yourself you know there's there's like motherfuckers that
like are seriously hurting now because like they have to road dog it all the time.
Yeah.
And, like, you missing a couple of shows is not, like, your profile's encouraged moment that you think it is to move this along.
Like, you know, just relax a little.
A lot of it is moral posturing, man.
I mean, like, you know, people will talk about how Republicans or conservatives kind of politicize, like, something that should just be about you know like uh like public health policy you know and social responsibility and whatnot but
i don't know like not to again make it a dichotomy of like left and right liberal conservative but
i mean liberals too man you know have also like kind of politicized this you know where
shaming people for not getting vaccinated you know and like again when you look
at like you know disenfranchised populations like you know black people the black working class it's
like there's a reason you know not just out of convenience or accessibility but like like you
were saying tom like historical like medical experimentation those kinds of reasons why
you shouldn't be punishing or chastising people that haven't got vaccinated or feel
feel wary about especially given their material position i guess you know well and and that ain't
me just like uh pontificating from afar about the black community that happened in my own community
when they were trying to get people like to get sterilized because they thought they were like
these horrible tainted bloodlines you know what i mean let's just you know it's just like
the eugenics experiments that happen and things.
It's like I get why people get squeamish at the idea of, oh.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
That said, again, without wading too far into this,
because there's nothing you can say about it that hadn't already been said,
but it's like, you know, on the other end of that, like, until that happens,
like who knows what the end is here or if there is one, you know?
Yeah.
I was hearing that people were talking about, I don't know, like, maybe needing a third dose, like, of drug manufacturers, like, possibly thinking about a third dose of the vaccine.
Right.
You know, what if this happens, like, every six months, man?
And then the vaccines are no longer free.
And then, like, you know, every fall season, you got to get your covid you know covid 20 shot your covid 21 it's only about 37 effective this year
we guessed wrong it's the australian variant another another couple million dead it's all
right though yeah yeah jesus man yeah i i think it's um as an abolitionist i don't think it's
Yeah, I think it's, as an abolitionist,
I don't think it's okay to send people to prison.
If I'm applying the standard universally, if I even think that about murderers and rapists, which I do,
it's complicated.
But then I think that about people who aren't vaccinated.
Like, I think that about people who aren't vaccinated, like I think prison's bad and punitive solutions aren't good ways to
treat what's wrong with a society,
whether it's a epidemiological crisis or,
you know,
people,
you know,
doing bad things to and hurting other people or taking advantage of other
people or whatever.
and hurting other people or taking advantage of other people or whatever.
I think that punitive solutions are bad, and they have shown to be bad over and over again.
So I don't know.
But I understand it's thorny.
It's a thorny issue.
I also think it's interesting that another big thing right now is, like,
should people be fired for not being vaccinated
and i as someone who has been fired i don't for refusing to take a vaccine
yeah himself yeah i i uh i i also have to say that i can't endorse anybody being fired for any reason.
So I don't know, but it's hard, man.
Yeah, as a worker, I'm big against people getting fired.
Well, the thing about this is there really one only one way this is ever
going to work is like we gotta we gotta have we gotta either pay people to stay home for eight
weeks and pay them to get the vaccine and like do one last abbreviated like militant shutdown
like short of that i just don't know if there's like it I think it's like you said, Aaron. It's like we're just going to have to have our annual,
but come Halloween,
you're going to have to get your annual COVID booster,
you know, whatever.
I mean, this stupid ass rolling shutdowns
and easing is just not going to do anything.
It feels entirely hopeless.
It's an impasse that doesn't have any solution.
Like we were
talking about earlier, you're not going to
convince anybody to get the vaccine
because you hired a TikTok influencer.
That is absolutely
insane that they would even
think that that works.
I don't know.
Can you imagine? I you imagine they could have got i guarantee
you they could have got more people vaccinated if they had paid them with what they paid that
person yeah right yeah uh like a million dollars or some shit like that to just appear in a video
yeah i don't know man it's it's just i don't know again i think it's just an example of you know
this emaciated like skeletal state that just kind of outsources everything to not just you know
private corporations but you know individuals you know cultural uh cultural icons i guess man that's
a bleak as fuck well i mean i don't know if you i wanted to talk about it a few weeks ago but i
kind of tabled it but i don it. Do you guys remember this guy?
His name was Stephen Harmon.
No, Stephen Harmon.
He was...
What's that fucking church?
Is it Hillsong?
I think he was really
active in that Hillsong
church.
Is that even a church?
Do I have that right?
Yeah, it's like the celebrity church, Justin Bieber's
pastor that recently disgraced
Pastor Carl Lentz.
This guy, his name was
Stephen Harmon and
I went down a really dark
rabbit hole
because this guy,
he had made a few tweets about,
he was one of the first stories I saw about this now prevalent media story.
The media story being, you know, finding a random person, a nobody, who mocked the vaccine on social media.
And then like, you know, basically writing an article.
Harass them? basically writing an article still yeah writing an article about them kind of dancing on their
grave with this kind of like element of schadenfreude about their like demise about
them getting coveted and dying like his was one of the first stories i saw because he documented
his shit all on instagram and twitter um you know because he he did have some tweets and stuff like
an instagram post making fun of like the vaccine
and people who uh support the vaccine and all this and then got covid and then like i watched
all of his stories and all of his instagram posts about him just getting worse and worse in the
hospital and then he finally died well there was like this whole like thing about like people
like it was fucking very surreal and absurd and like this there was this whole thing about like people like it was fucking very surreal and absurd and like this there was this
whole thing about like um you know people kind of basically dancing on his grave and you know
it's just like this guy's just a nobody you know i mean he's not like a he's not a celebrity he's
not someone with power he's died in like eternal like you know cosmic shame you know exactly like come on
but like the p the way people in the comments were like good rest in piss just just like dude
i was like dude this is fucking crazy like it just reminded me of you can't say rest in piss
to a nobody i'm sorry it's just callous you can only say rest and piss to like lindsey graham
i mean like i understand like if you're um yeah immunocompromised and or you had someone die from
covid or anything like this is all raw this is all very personal and i'm not saying people aren't
assholes at all um but like but at the same time, it's like the way that there was this kind of dog pile on him.
It's just not productive.
It's just not productive.
It's dead.
They were just like...
And that was just like...
Honestly, what it mirrored in my mind, the closest parallel, was how liberals will do this thing um like you saw this a lot after
the 2016 election where like a reporter would go to kentucky and find just the most like broke
dick mother holler motherfucker who was about to lose their like medicaid expansion or whatever
and just be like you you voted for Trump.
How does it feel now, motherfucker?
And it was just like that kind of reporting.
And it's just like,
and the way that people were dancing on his grave
reminded me of the way that people talk about people
in like red states who are just like.
Exactly.
Well, y'all deserve, y'all voted for this motherfucker.
Any buyers and mores now, bitch?
Of course course the great
irony of of like sort of the liberal grandstanding about all these people that don't get vaccinated
they are putting people's lives in danger is all their daddies and heroes are fucking war criminals
exactly exactly barack i'm sorry barack obama has killed more people directly with die with his own hand
than any anti-vaxxer that you are like sitting there telling the rest in piss because they got
covid and it's you're exactly right like a sense of perspective is really needed here yeah yeah
you should be the arbiter of like fucking like you know who is right or wrong or moral or unjust
you know and also the thing that i keep thinking about over and over returning the thing that i keep returning to is like yeah okay if if
you were to really press me on this yeah the anti-vaxxer people they do annoy me and like
you know if um you know gun to my head i wouldn't choose i wouldn't like choose to hang out with
them or whatever but like what i'm really thinking about here is like if this pandemic stuff ever ends if it's ever over which is a big if at this point but if it's ever over do you think
that any of these people are going to forget any of this like if we're talking about future
organizing or trying to build some mass movement all of these wounds and things that we said and did are going to remain and there
no one is going to forget any of this so it's just like yeah like i understand that again all of this
is raw and it's painful and it's traumatic and everything but like if we're political people
revolutionaries trying to change the world we really need to keep that in perspective in mind just like uh maybe don't like you know i don't know like get out there and tell yeah just nobody's
like resting piss for like their but i mean but at the same time like me saying this doesn't matter
it's all so far beyond any anything any of us can do you know all of this was written in stone
like 30 fucking years ago you know like this
this is like i was talking to a friend of mine this morning and i said yeah this is like the
most least this is like the least surprising result yeah it is you could imagine and it's like
yeah yeah yeah this shit has been in motion before i was even born man oh yeah like you you were saying
something earlier terrence like i mean a lot of it has been me due to me not being on twitter but i
don't wake up as angry anymore like i don't like you know i'm not as invested in like you know
local news for sure but national news politics and you know it kind of made my peace i have to
remember that i made my peace long ago that like man this is it you know yeah this is in it and what happens happens and it's kind of a bizarre to think
that i alone can change anything or you know this podcast could change anything or any platform
anyone has to change anything i mean you know it's not really up to me or us right yeah that is kind
of what i've been feeling like i was already kind of feeling that before the pandemic but really in
the last like
six months especially with the politics around the vaccine and everything i'm like bro our fate
was sealed like the moment uh you know ronald reagan walked in the office the moment those
like regulators in new york decided to fucking you know like not bail out new york city yeah
like the moment the twin towers fail like
just pick any fucking event of the last 40 the moment the soviet exactly the moment actually
existing so socialism stopped i mean just like you know castro dying and these snakes thinking
they can slide in there and finally disgrace cuba exactly it's just like our fate was already
fucking sick it's just it's just like it's just end time vibing man i'm
just vibing the end times you know i can't like i can't do shit about it i just gotta vibe yeah
what the fuck man i want to tell y'all something i want to tell y'all something i grew up my whole
life thinking that you know in the end times it would be you know this like there would be all
these like celestial cosmic warnings and you know like a pale horse would come down out of the clouds or something but we we are literally living in
the end times yeah yeah it's it's it's more boring than you can even imagine yeah yeah joe
biden the democratic party you know like they're the horsemen, man. It's so anticlimactic, you know what I mean?
Yeah, he is the pale rider, isn't he?
A dying man for a dying party for a dying country, man.
That shit is awesome, yeah.
And he that sat upon him was called death.
Oh, shit.
Oh, man.
Yeah, our fate was sealed that moment in terrier square when the green horse of the
apocalypse scooted across the you remember that i do yeah video air during the arab spring
yes yes they're like oh what was this the pale rider of the apocalypse came on the screen on
cnn that was a big man I think I remember WikiLeaks
plugging that, too. I think I remember WikiLeaks
being one of the people,
organizations, or accounts,
or whatever, that were like, look at the Bell Rider.
Man, that was
probably just an innocuous
smudge
on the lens or something.
Or it was an op designed to break my brain because
for years I went around
and said, bro, what does that look like to you?
I'd cue it up
at every party. Damn, did you see that
pale horse in Terraria Square?
He still does.
He still cues it up. I've seen it.
Oh, man.
Alright.
That probably about does it for this week. you've if you haven't turned it off by
this point in rage um yeah because tanya's not here yeah right like if we could have done if
we would have just had tanya on during the moderate ass whippings from time to time
everything would have been fine i know man people would have been accused of me of Endorsing ass whoopings Child abuse and shit
Bro you
Unbelievable
A million bucks says they're gonna say we're anti-vaxxers
Or some shit
Everyone was vaxxed up
And advocated for it
I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna take some edits of her laugh in voice and just put it in periodically and maybe people think she's here.
They'll be like, just disarm.
Right.
Yeah.
Start to get mad.
Oh, okay.
She's there.
She's there.
Oh, shit, man.
All right. If you want to go somewhere where Tanya is,
go to the Patreon.
P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trill Billy Workers Party.
We had like an hour and a half episode on the Patreon this past Sunday,
and it was a good one.
So go check it out.
And, yeah, $5 per month gets you a back catalog of like 160-something episodes.
So go check that out.
Cheaper than a cup of coffee.
That is exactly right.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Anything else, guys?
No.
That's it.
All right.
Well, signing off.
We'll see you next time
bye
peace out