Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 235: The Parallels Are Off The Charts

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

This week we serve up a full course meal of articles: one about China, one about Canadian truck drivers (sort of), and finally, for dessert, one about a CIA guy getting called honky Support us on Pat...reon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 so hold up did i say did i hear you say there was a civil war in ethiopia yeah there there was one i don't know shit about it but i know that there were uh they were wary that this rebel group was headed to the city so uh that smells like a revolution to me damn yeah i'm like i'm like man i don't i haven't dived into it because I don't know what to trust from what sources. But apparently it's blown over, you know? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Differences were settled.
Starting point is 00:00:37 Put aside. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, people who got the right money was exchanged into the right hands. The bag of money with the dollar sign on it. It's just a warlord assumption. They did a dance-off. Exactly. And then they settled their differences that way.
Starting point is 00:00:54 How all differences should be settled. Exactly. Definitely. I've not really dove into the history, but there's an interesting story about when Haile Selassie was deposed. And he basically had sort of liberalized the universities and colleges in Ethiopia and like whereas other uh you know royals had like banned like the teaching of marks before him he said ah that's fine it's okay well so he ends up getting
Starting point is 00:01:21 deposed by some college kids that he kind of like let learn marks and then they kind of fumbled it a little bit in the end but they still let him like like live out the rest of his days in his palace with his like his lines and shit yeah that was the coolest thing that i know about him man uh i don't know much about rastafarianism but like my uh my extended family in brooklyn man in down in uh flatbush they got like if you're going to Brooklyn, man, in Flatbush, they got, like if you go into their house, man, like in the basement, they just got a poster of him, like a photograph. And he's just striding, man, like decked out in military gear with these two fucking lions that are unleashed. He looks cool as hell, you have to say. He looks cool as shit.
Starting point is 00:01:59 This shit looks badass as hell, man. It's kind of funny because I studied about the Rastas for a little bit for this project I was doing. It's funny because he was sort of like, he did the whole thing that's a little Trumpian where this group were calling him Jesus Christ reincarnated, right? Like in Jamaica, the Rastas. He wouldn't say no to that.
Starting point is 00:02:24 He wouldn't really lean into it, but he wouldn't like say no to that he would he wouldn't really lean into it but he wouldn't deny it yeah he yeah he would not confirm nor deny that he was the resurrected christ but also the other thing that he did that was kind of funny was like he was like one of these guys that said that he could trace his like lineage back to the house of david you know what i mean like that kind of like stuff so i don't know it's kind of interesting it's kind of some uncut gems kind of shit i don't know i don't know man i think that's the way that you got to do it though right you got to walk that because you can't give people too much bullshit right that sounds like bullshit because people aren't going to believe it you know right
Starting point is 00:03:01 you got to like let people fill in those blank those it, you know? Right. You got to, like, let people fill in those blank, those negative spaces, you know, and assume what they want. Like, maybe I can walk on water. Who knows? Who can say? Who's to say, really? Right. Who's to say? Do you think that's, like, one of the few instances in history
Starting point is 00:03:19 where, like, I don't know, maybe this is a false distinction or dichotomy or whatever, but isn't there kind of this setup between, like, do ideas drive history or does, you know, class struggle drive history? like ideas were in the driver's seat because that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't allowed that teaching into his universities or schools or whatever you know what i'm saying like yeah i know what you're saying if he didn't allow those ideas to proliferate then they wouldn't have been his own like downfall right right yeah well it's like yeah he's like what's the worst that could happen? Let them learn whatever they want to learn. I don't even know what happened there. Is it like some college students?
Starting point is 00:04:17 Was that one of the rare instances in which a college sort of countercultural movement actually took power? It did something. I guess I should say it's not clear. I don't want to make it sound like the college Democrats just took over the Ethiopian throne. Like YDSA or some shit? Yeah, like YDSA
Starting point is 00:04:35 just rolled in there and they ran Ethiopia. It was led by people that had learned Marxism in the university system when he sort of liberalized like Ethiopia's higher education. Fascinating. I don't know. I was thinking, Terrence, I mean, I don't know, but I was thinking like ideas versus material class struggle pushing history.
Starting point is 00:04:58 And I was like, man, I guess that's the way that cults are successful, right? And I guess that's the way that cults are successful, right? Because if you're a cult leader, you know, like it's entirely based upon just like this guy just fucking telling you the most crazy shit ever, man. You'll go out there and actually do things in the real physical world. I know. That's the thing. Like maybe the dichotomy is bullshit. You know what I mean? Because it seems ridiculous to say that it's either one or the other.
Starting point is 00:05:24 Like what is the origin of like like idea is that like hegel like this is yeah you know it's the dialectic it's also subject to the dialectic i guess uh-huh the sad thing about all this stuff is i've only read like 15 of all of it like you know like i don't actually i've seen tweets and memes that's that's how i got that's how i know my shit yeah most of my education comes second-handed from dubious sources to say the least yeah for podcasts and shit um well did you guys I guess there's several different ways we can take this one actually I have
Starting point is 00:06:10 in a second I have like a literal a la carte of several different articles you can choose from I think I have three and you can all choose them maybe we can even do them all maybe we can even get around to each other.
Starting point is 00:06:26 Like a dim sum of deranged content? Yes. Yeah, we're doing small plates today. Hell yeah. You know like the racist scene in Temple of Doom where they're eating monkey brains and stuff? Yeah, yeah. Like an episode of Fear Factor or some shit?
Starting point is 00:06:43 Yes, yeah, yeah. yeah yes like that yeah well earthworms like bull testicles and shit yeah yeah eat that bro i don't know man um all right all right well that's kind that's kind of like what you were talking about was it ideas or whatever else you said it was the dry swap you know what i mean it's like kind of like a fear factor thing had not people had the innate desire to like you know eat cockroaches for money joe rogan would have never had the joe rogan experience podcast and neil young would probably still be on spotify that is true man shit dude that's pretty crazy um god damn but the thing is the thing about that formulation is like there are some other things that probably are in operation there like the drive to get pussy or yeah yeah you know what
Starting point is 00:07:41 i mean most things in life are through the drive to get pussy. I'm pretty sure most ideas. Actually, yeah, you could. If you could subdue that urge, would you? Yes. I got to think about that. It's like, man, I would have so much bandwidth for other things if I weren't bound by that. It makes you act like a crazy person sometimes.
Starting point is 00:07:59 It really does, man. It really does. Well, then there's that, and then there's also like fear of death, which that really explains a lot about where ideas come from. So I don't know, man. All of these things. That's the dialectic, man. Yeah. The dialectic is.
Starting point is 00:08:17 Go ahead. Go ahead, Tom. No, no, no. You go ahead. No, I was going to say the dialectic is fear of death or like the not uh not even the necessary desire to procreate but just to do the action the physical action involved in procreation you know i would argue yeah every idea is predicated on the idea of trying to outfox death like trying to like subvert death or like you know make it less painful or whatever it's like we're all headed toward this like great
Starting point is 00:08:45 the ultimate scary thing and it's coming you know sooner or later and like everything every piece of art every idea every action is all about like trying to make sense of that or trying to prolong the time before it comes or whatever but it's all about trying to just the time before it comes, or whatever. But it's all about trying to just stave off death. Yeah, or have some control in terms of a legacy over your own death, right? Even after you die, having control over that narrative, which nobody has control over that, man.
Starting point is 00:09:19 I mean, that's kind of scary. It's terrifying. Go ahead, Terrence. I mean, that's kind of scary. It's terrifying. It's a truism, however, that in this society, in this country, there is a 98%, 99% chance that you will not go out with any dignity at all. It would not be dignified. We're all In a hospital by a load We're all going out like Stan
Starting point is 00:09:50 Like each and every one of us Naked and embarrassed And afraid And afraid Naked Truly Truly the most vulnerable no also probably in a like fluorescent lit room that gives you migraines you know what i mean like you have yeah a room with the lighting is
Starting point is 00:10:16 like sterile almost like it's like shows you in the worst lot yeah. It would be a whole lot easier, like the mortality. It would be a whole lot easier to bear. If you just knew that it was going to be, you know, you passing through the door was going to be at least a little dignified. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Such is the modern human condition, man. Damn.
Starting point is 00:10:44 So let's see. What do we got here today? What do we got here today? So, you guys said you didn't want to talk Russia-Ukraine. Nah, make some people mad, because I don't know anything. I'm just out of my depth on it. Yeah, same. Okay, fair enough.
Starting point is 00:10:59 You didn't want to talk banning books in schools. I'll talk about that. You want to talk about banning books? I like banned books. Yeah. I'll talk about that. I like ban books. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Checkmark.
Starting point is 00:11:14 That's simple. Gotcha. All right. Yeah. No. I like this. I think we should take a survey of what we want
Starting point is 00:11:22 before we do it. Does Joe Rogan go in there i feel like joe wrote joe rogan is probably in that you know umbrella concept banning shit yeah yeah yeah Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. I saw some right-wing group wants to ban the teaching of, and I don't know, this could actually be an interesting discussion. which claims her group doesn't want to ban an MLK book, but does want to ban schools from teaching students about the N-word. Okay.
Starting point is 00:12:18 Tina says parents need to have that conversation, not the school district. So wait, is this like, this sounds like some uh like uh i guess it's like what they think that it's not because the word is offensive that's not why they're saying it it's obviously because of the like systemic like reasoning and history behind that because they could say they could make the argument that like oh you know the woke crowd you guys are all about like policing language and shit like that like we don't want our kids to know this bad word yeah yeah that's the continuing trend of them like trying to like use their like the woke stuff against the left or whatever it took to them right to them it might mean that you would have to teach quote-unquote critical race theory. Man, how fascinating. Because do you guys remember this sort of topic?
Starting point is 00:13:13 It goes in cycles, obviously, right? But in the 90s, there was a big push to ban, was it Huckleberry Finn? Because I remember there was like a Christopher Hitchens essay that was like really um popular and uh well received like this was before 9-11 before he like quote-unquote turned like there was a really popular Hitchens essay about how wrong it was to ban the book and like his fellow progressives were wrong for wanting to ban it um because like you know children should be taught these things in the proper context and like they're gonna you know learn it somewhere or whatever so like whatever
Starting point is 00:13:58 um and that like people are generally smart enough to be able to like separate out like i don't know a discourse around race from like racism etc yeah um it seemed like it seemed like at that time the liberals were wanting to get it out of school but now it seems like the conservatives do because now to them it's a way that like liberal the liberal agenda can get snuck in yeah you know and the the crt critical race theory thing can get i guess i don't know i guess that's under a guise of yeah under this guise of like uh of being like because it's not it's not under a guise or a banner of progressivism right or right you know like um like you know intersectionality or any of these fucking issues these buzzwords it's all's all about I guess it would be under
Starting point is 00:14:46 just like, well, you guys are saying that we're racist because we don't want to talk about slavery, but you guys are allowing your students to read books with the N-word in it. Who's the hypocrite now, right? The liberals are fucking too stupid to figure a way out of that shit.
Starting point is 00:15:02 Yeah. The worst thing for liberals to be accused of being racist. You know what I mean? Like that's just, they cannot abide that at all. Even from the chuds. Okay. Okay. So apparently this is what the Moms for Liberty, what it is.
Starting point is 00:15:23 You know that Norman rockwell painting about i don't know i guess maybe it's like a um a girl being like a black girl being allowed into a school in integrated arkansas or whatever in little rock little rock yeah yeah yeah little rock nine yeah yeah well you know in in the painting on You can't see it Because my fucking phone sucks But on the you know The N word is on the back Like on the wall behind them So like
Starting point is 00:15:53 The Moms for Liberty Support banning schools From discussing that Apparently Oh my god I don't know. Fascinating. That is crazy, man. Well, I mean, obviously
Starting point is 00:16:09 this is sort of distinct from the whole mouse thing. Which I actually don't have really an opinion on because I don't know. The mouse thing, what is it? They want... What is it with that? Because conservatives want to ban it because of its depiction of the holocaust is that what it
Starting point is 00:16:28 is i think it was like what they claimed was that it was because of like the nudity and the cursing oh my fucking god the nudity the nudity and the cursing as if they care you know the thing about these people is that, like, I thought about this the other day. You know, conservatives, like, blame the left for, like, feeding too much into identity politics. But they're, like, incredibly identitarian. Like, their entire politics is wrapped around, like, white identity and patriarchy. I mean, all these things, right? like white identity and patriarchy.
Starting point is 00:17:02 I mean, all these things. Right. But like, it's just like funny that these people are the ones like shitting bricks over children's books, man. And over cartoon characters and over M&Ms and shit like that. Well,
Starting point is 00:17:14 they don't, it is actually pretty fascinating because like the public schools are one of the last remaining places of like where the general consensus reality has to be sort of hashed out and agreed upon in some way you know so it's like now everything is a landmine like everything is so fraught um that they can't battlefield everything is a battle everything is a battle it has to be one you have to fight over fucking every each book you know every every fucking discipline the way it's taught you know it's just like it's so exhausting it's like jesus like well i mean
Starting point is 00:17:50 that that shows you another thing too like a lot of the people who go to these school board meetings and stuff i mean there are people who have time on their hands to like go and get pissed about the fact that they're teaching a norman rockwell painting and stay up late at like 3 a.m on facebook and shit making multiple accounts and like fucking like just like brigading people and shit like that yeah yeah it rules it rules it's a full-time job man what's the lot what's the line these days on huck finn has huck has huck been claimed by cancel culture Or what's going on Damn I don't know man I haven't heard much on the Huck Finn beat In a few years
Starting point is 00:18:30 Yeah I It seems like It's probably not getting taught anywhere these days We didn't read it In school Well didn't they do like an abridged version that took all the... All the n-words out.
Starting point is 00:18:48 All the n-words. When I was in seventh grade and bought Wu-Tang Forever at Walmart. Could you imagine who said it backwards? This was before computers, really, in the 90s. When they did that abridged so like someone's job was to go through and mark out every single one they were the edward guy we should do that we should just take a yeah yeah hey honey i'm getting a promotion at work
Starting point is 00:19:21 i'm the new inward guy yeah i don't know if you're going to be comfortable with my job title, though. I'm not going to say it out loud. I'm not going to say the whole thing. Fucking A, dude. That's like the director of empath in humans. Whatever that lady got a job, that lady got an NFT job. What was that? Yeah, I don't yeah empath empathy and human connection or something like that
Starting point is 00:19:51 jesus yeah you tell you why actually i'm the head of empathy and human connection what does that mean that means i take the n-word instead of Tom Sawyer. Basically. Jesus fucking Christ. That's too good. Dude, it has been a weird, it has been a very deranged week. Like, you can tell just by the, yeah, the courses I'm about to put in front of you. Oh my God. So, obviously, there is the one that you guys sent me earlier. Now I'm struggling to find it.
Starting point is 00:20:34 I think it was in the Washington Post opinion. Here it is. Opinion. China is regularly called authoritarian. That doesn't feel like enough. So, there's that one. After we've blamed them for a global pandemic. Like it's not enough to call them authoritarian.
Starting point is 00:20:55 Okay. Okay. That's your first course. Your second course. Or it can be your first. I don't know. Maybe you want to get a little appetizer. Double plate it?
Starting point is 00:21:08 Yeah, yeah. Get a little Lamoose Boosh in you first. Or save it for the aperitif or whatever the fuck after you finished off your courses and need to digest. So this could be the last or it could be the first. Anyways, the first one, China not enough second one from the hottest new blog to hit the streets my favorite and yours cyber disobedience um this is i got called a honky today oh my god but i think what do you want to do aaron i'm torn here because that sounds tantalizing but i might want to save that for after the appetizers yo let's do the china would spoil my dinner do the china i've got one more china i've got one
Starting point is 00:22:04 more for you i've got one more for you i've got one more for you though and we could we should do this one just because of what jd vance decided to say about this one it was i thought it was good enough to include it in here um i gotta find it real quick god damn it um the yeah your chef needs to run back to the kitchen real quick uh he forgot here we go jd vance the left's hatred for these truckers is so revealing it's a profile of the truckers fighting dystopia in the american conservative it's not a profile either it's like a dumb ass op-ed so it's you know i mean you know that's just your standard fare. You know, that might just be your, I don't know. I don't know if it's your red meat.
Starting point is 00:22:48 It's definitely a side. Yeah, yeah. It's a side dish. It's definitely a side. It's like your little string beans, man. Like, you know, put them drizzled in some sauce with like a little bit of like, you know, seasoning and shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems like an after dinner, man, to me.
Starting point is 00:23:03 Maybe we can hit that for about Two minutes on the way out the door Alright I got you Just like peck it a little bit Yeah exactly Put it in a dog bag Alright Okay so you want to do
Starting point is 00:23:22 China authoritarian Not enough Let's cut our teeth on that All right. Okay, so you want to do China authoritarian not enough in the Washington Post. Let's cut our teeth on that. Yeah, yeah, let's cut our teeth on that, man. Let's wet our appetite. All right. This came out yesterday or two days ago, the 31st of January. In 2009, when I began to more frequently describe China as authoritarian, as a broadcast correspondent for Al Jazeera English, some editors pushed back, believing it was too much editorializing.
Starting point is 00:23:52 We have since become more comfortable with regularly using the designation in media coverage and beyond. But as journalists and athletes head to Beijing for the Winter Olympics, it may be time to reassess and consider calling the Chinese state what it is fast becoming, a fascist one. Lest we have another Jesse Owens in front of Adolf Hitler situation on our hands there. Well, the funny thing about that comparison, which I know that that's what this writer is going for, right? comparison like which i know that that's what this writer is going for right like this writer open i guarantee you this writer opened up an article like three days ago like remembered that they held the olympics in nazi germany in 1934 or whatever and they were like oh shit it's the same yeah like the brain the parallels are off the charts yeah Yeah. And that's the first funny thing about that. The second funny thing about the comparison, though,
Starting point is 00:24:48 is that, like, all of the winter sports, like, there's no, like, all of them are, there's nothing like racing. Like, there's really, I guess bobsledding is kind of an inspiring thing, but, like. Yeah. Like, just placing too much importance on like this one event like the winter olympics like if it was the olympics olympics like i mean it doesn't matter it's just like come on dude nobody gives a shit like what athletes what athlete can anyone name in the winter olympics i
Starting point is 00:25:16 fucking can't sean white that's really uh i don't even know if that's a snowboarder yeah i don't even know if he's still doing it. Is that the snowboarder? Yeah. I don't even think he's snowboarded anymore. That would be funny, though. Like, cool runnings, but, like, it's the Chinese bobsled team, and they're trying to prove that they're not authoritarian. They're not authoritarian, yeah. They're going against the stigma. It's like kind of a crossover with Red Dog type of shit, yeah. Yeah. When the facts change, it's time to change our minds and our language ahead of the 2008 summer games in beijing international media knew china was authoritarian and described it as such when
Starting point is 00:25:57 necessary but entire articles concerning china's political system were written without mentioning it the government had issued regulations allowing okay i mean obviously doesn't even need to be said uh if you you know just have even the most basic sort of foundation of a sort of moral compass i mean like the very first thing that jumps out is uh why when they report the news is the united states not referred to as authoritarian you know what i mean like why not refer to the authoritarian west you know what i'm saying like absolutely why yeah why in reporting is it mandatory that we always refer to China as authoritarian,
Starting point is 00:26:46 but we are never that. I don't know. Exactly. And not to even jump the gun, but the whole premise, the whole issue with the whole entire article is just like, yo, you could be describing the United States.
Starting point is 00:26:57 When she describes fascism, literally nationalistic, jingoistic, race-based like you're describing the united states but i mean of course like you can't make those parallels right so you have to reach far back in time to this unique historical moment to compare china with nazi germany you know right it's just like it's just pathetic man, get a new trick, man. Yeah, yeah. When facts change, it's time to change our minds and our language. Blah, blah, blah. The government had issued regulations allowing the Foreign Press Corps to travel freely around the country.
Starting point is 00:27:44 The people we met on these trips, many working as labor campaigners or rights lawyers, pointed the way to a new transformative Chinese generation. Authorities then started locking up the activists they once championed. The country decoupled from the world's popular social media platforms. Oh, no. Oh, good. Good. Oh, no.
Starting point is 00:28:03 Man, they really think Xi Jinping's Ad adolf hitler because of weebo police began aggressively surveilling news teams sometimes waiting in cars at the airport before we even landed my decision to regularly use authoritarian reflected that shift now we should consider norman klater once again okay um i mean again again um we have more people in our prisons than china does you know what i mean like it's yeah it's it's not even a comparison i don't know maybe maybe it is a police state over there i have no fucking idea maybe it's like you can't step out of your house without like get the fuck on the ground but like that's what it's like here and so that's exactly i mean i've never been i've actually i have been to china but when i was a kid right but that's besides the point
Starting point is 00:28:50 right i've never been like harassed by police in china i've been harassed by police in multiple states in the united states like in stone mountain like exactly within like a five mile radius of where i live like right actually not even 600 feet i'm good man like right some will argue the country's communist foundation makes it fundamentally incompatible with fascism's right-wing roots. The respected Chinese legal scholar Tang Bao prefers calling the country totalitarian. But consider the hallmarks of fascism, a surveillance state with a strong man invoking racism, nationalism, and traditional family values at home while building up a military for expansion abroad um xi jinping a leader who has elevated himself also just i don't know the definition i mean obviously this is in the washington post this is born from the brain of someone
Starting point is 00:30:00 completely insane but just like that definition of fascism, like that, whatever, however we define fascism is a very highly debated thing. Well, it's kind of like eugenics and socialism. It's just, it's one of those words du jour that mean different things to different people. And you can employ it however you want for whatever like purpose you know right right yeah i've employed it quite a quite a many times in life especially as a teenager
Starting point is 00:30:31 calling things fascist man but you know just something i don't like i got some mileage i've i've called definitely called more non-nazis nazis than i have real nazis yeah i've called people that are likely to agree with me nazis you know um uh xi jinping a leader who has elevated himself to the level of mao zhedong has built a cult of personality around him complete with portraits in public and private spaces oh my bro we got presidents on our money like what the fuck are you talking about they're American flags everywhere the dissonance man is off the charts oh my god oh no okay oh shit um Woodrow Wilson, a man that called Birth of a Nation history with lightning.
Starting point is 00:31:29 This movie must be taught in every university, in every school. It's on our fucking dime. Yeah. A veritable who's who of slave owners are on our money to this day. I mean, we even have Confederate, we have to have like you know confederate uh we have like bases like army bases and shit you know training bases named after confederate generals and shit man
Starting point is 00:31:52 not not to mention like the fucking statues you know yeah military bases named after confederates yeah that's true jesus man um propaganda recalls china's glorious history while bewailing its past treatment by Western imperial powers, allowing Beijing to play both the nationalism and victim cards. As a correspondent formerly based in China and now writing from Berlin, I find it difficult to ignore how much China's present ignores... Jesus Christ. It's like my brain would not allow me To say this sentence
Starting point is 00:32:26 I find it difficult to ignore how much China's present echoes Germany's Past That's incredible Why is it Let me ask you a question Why do you think it is That we're so prone to hyperbole
Starting point is 00:32:43 With like Third Reich Nazi Germany Comparison do you think it is that we're so prone to hyperbole with like uh third rack nazi germany uh comparisons like why do we just i mean i guess it's just it's just a universe almost almost i should say almost universally accepted yeah there's there's still some holdouts uh most people agree that you know that the holocaust was a There's still some holdouts, Mahmoud, Adin, and Shad, and others. Just a little fridge, yeah. Most people agree that the Holocaust was a uniquely heinous event, right? And so I think that's probably most of it. But why do we just call mild inconveniences like,
Starting point is 00:33:21 oh, this is like Nazi Germany? Yeah. I think I even said it the other day when i got a barnacle on my car he's fucking nazis bro fucking fash bro man it's like i don't know man like maybe it's like this historical event that's like so traumatizing like in the like historical psyche maybe you know where like it's the only i mean it obviously like actually i'm not even gonna go there right i mean there's no sense in comparing atrocities right but i think so in such recent memory that like the only thing
Starting point is 00:33:56 it's almost like parody like it's it's almost ridiculous and absurd and how horrific you know like nazi germany wasn't it's like the only thing that people can compare to even over mild inconveniences you know but it's also i don't know man maybe like it's also a cop-out in the sense that like violence like this is always happening all the time you know and like we can abdicate any sort of responsibility you know by saying well at least we're not like nazi germany yeah yeah yeah i think that's part of it i think it's i think it's partially because we did shit that was just as bad if not worse to be so deflecting yeah deflecting exactly and so we won and we got to write history based on that.
Starting point is 00:34:45 You know what I mean? But at the same time, absorb all of the entire Third Reich intelligence community into ours, and then just export that to every country that almost had a communist revolution. We won in the same way Bill Wennington won championships with the 90 chicago bulls though yes technically he is a champion but uh what were his contributions dude this is insane you guys were. This whole thing is fucking nuts. Dude, it's like the Twilight Zone, man. It gets crazier. To right perceived wrongs,
Starting point is 00:35:31 Xi has a clear revanchist agenda. Taiwan has become his Alsace-Lorraine, Himalayan border with India, his Polish corridor in Hong Kong is Sudan land. Are you fucking serious? Am I dreaming? With military or strong arm tactics, he has made clear that moves to control these areas
Starting point is 00:35:54 are not off the table. In addition, Beijing has reportedly moved into Bhutanese territory. China also claims most of the South China Sea, where it has built military outposts marked by its own nine dash line that on a map protrudes far beyond chinese land borders in a leavens realm like expansion oh hold up why is hawaii a state yeah really really? Why is Guam? Puerto Rico.
Starting point is 00:36:27 Like, what are you talking about, dude? It's like this did not, none of that dawned on her when she wrote this. She was just like, oh, yeah, this is some hot fire. Like, I'm roasting Xi Jinping right now. And then she's just like, any of this stuff you could easily say about the United States. And worse. And even worse and even worse and and and yeah and worse i mean i'm i'm sure that like as a very um you know a society with a very large administrative state and
Starting point is 00:36:59 bureaucratic system a very large population in complex like culture and political economy they are probably looking to expand in some way i'm not denying that reality but um but are they doing it i mean there's several different things there it's like are they doing it at all like i'm sure they probably are their state i feel like that's what the natural sort of like logic of like state development is in the 21st century um but like are they doing it for to create a leavens realm a a literally ethnically cleansed territory of like blue-eyed blonde-haired aryans like yeah i don't know yeah yeah i mean it's just like. I'm not persuaded. I'm not persuaded.
Starting point is 00:37:47 Exactly. I'm not persuaded. And I mean, again, like, it's like, I mean, obviously she's not going to do this, but like, dude, you could look. You don't even have to look at like, you know, history, United States history necessarily. I mean, you could look at what's happening in like cities all over the country, right? With gentrification, right? With people being displaced and unhoused. But she would never do that, though, obviously.
Starting point is 00:38:10 She wouldn't do that. But for every point that she brings up, it's like, yeah, I'm pretty sure you can check that off the United States, too. Every single one of them. Every single one, man. 21st century technology has provided the Chinese Communist Party surveillance capabilities that 20th century fascists could only dream of facial recognition cameras work to track 1.4 billion people again blah blah if hitler had weibo that's literally what she just said yeah but like we have that here you know what i mean like everything is monitored and recorded um no i'm gonna ask y'all a question to open your to open your cell phones up you have
Starting point is 00:38:45 to literally stare into it for like a couple seconds yeah or put your fingerprint on it you know it puts your fingerprint on yeah but totally yeah it's uh yeah actually i never set that up i've been way too paranoid it probably doesn't even it probably doesn't even matter they probably got my shit anyways but i never did set it up because i was i should you shouldn't no they say you shouldn't have it because like god forbid like you get in a like altercation with law enforcement they can just like you know make you grab your finger and like yeah and then knock you out and just grab your thumb you know unlock your phone over you that's um no entity operates freely from the ccp including these technology champions uh technology champions what are i guess i skipped the last part of that other character companies may chase profit margins like other capitalist enterprises but party officials step
Starting point is 00:39:41 in when they see an overriding state interest good but again that's what happens here yeah and it happens here in the opposite direction like in the worst direction yeah those who fail to fall in line are failed the most spectacular example being billionaire tech magnate jack ma who disappeared from oh we don't have any of those here. Yeah. Well, yeah, he disappeared for months. I guess that is a difference. We don't blackbag any of our billionaires anymore. That kind of sucks.
Starting point is 00:40:14 Honestly, that's a detriment against us. That's another point in China's favor. That's a pro. They dome their billionaires if they get out of control. Throw them in like a river or something like that how fucking tight would it be if bezos got out of pocket and then just like yeah i don't know like fucking who's a good example who who would black bag dude it is a good it is a pretty good comparison because it shows you that like the state actually does have some sort of like sway influence like they've got yes the people hear them coming down
Starting point is 00:40:54 the street like oh my god who the fuck is it you know and they come out and the shadow is huge and then they come out of the shadow and they're huge but america is the is the one that comes down and the shadow is big but as they come out of the shadow it they're huge. But America is the one that comes down and the shadow is big. But as they come out of the shadow, it's a little mouse. It's like a child or some shit like that. Right. Exxon, they're like, oh shit, who's coming?
Starting point is 00:41:12 Ah, shit, it's just the government. It's just America, it's fine. Yeah, I guess that is the crucial difference. I mean, it's like China has their sort of corporations reigned in and it's like, oh, well, that's weird. Like, they're producing billionaires and people making, like, serious amounts of cash, but there's, like, and I'm not saying the China,
Starting point is 00:41:33 I'm not saying this is pro-Chinese system because, obviously, I don't, you know, I think it bears a little resemblance to what we would think is an ideal society, although, you know, there are certainly some things to admire about it but yeah it's but on like in the united states it's like inverted it's like the corporations have their thumb on the politicians whereas there it's like the politicians have their thumb on the
Starting point is 00:41:56 corporations yeah like how how how much better is it that the sackler family were able to do what the fuck you know do what they did you, or like any of these like dynasty families or any of these corporations, you know, that are allowed to do what they can do because of deregulation. Where the Chinese are just like, you know what? Like, cut that shit out, man. Like, you know, I'll see you in the schoolyard, man.
Starting point is 00:42:16 I'll see you in the alley. You know, black bag you and take your ass away in a paddy wagon, man. Like, why not, dude? I'm for it, man. Shit. No, it would be so fucking dope if Elon Musk just, you know. You went on rogue and embarrassed us all,
Starting point is 00:42:34 and then he just gets, like, disappeared for, like, 90 days. Yeah, 3 a.m. on a Parisian street, just gone. Yeah. This is interesting. Together with Beijing's anti--union anti-labor stance the chinese economy today recalls mussolini's corporatist fascism so i guess i may have to bow out of this sentence i don't know a whole lot about mussolini's corporatist fascism and i don't know anything about the chinese state's anti-union, anti-labor stance.
Starting point is 00:43:15 That seems to me, though, it, like, you know, like, in, like, Poland, in the fall of the Soviet Union, there was that, like, that, like, Sidernosh or whatever. It was, like, a labor movement that was, like, funded by the CIA. By the CIA. Oh, it was, like, a color revolution or whatever? Yeah, exactly. Right, right, right. So, I don't know. I mean mean it's just something to think about where about the now joe biden might nominate uh what's her name jay michelle chiles or something like that a black woman who's like stringently anti-labor
Starting point is 00:43:37 has like practiced on behalf and ruled in behalf of corporations you know i'm saying that she's about to go to like the highest court in the land you know what I'm saying? And she's about to go to the highest court in the land. You know what I'm saying? But China practices, and like you said, Terrence, I don't know anything about these anti-union, anti-labor practices. I'm not saying they don't happen. I do not know.
Starting point is 00:43:54 But I know it's happening here. It's fucking, yeah, for sure shit happening here. Yeah. Shit happening here, man. The state has also become fixated on machismo, another fascist obsession. It bans what it considers effeminate behavior, which it associates with the LGBTQ community,
Starting point is 00:44:14 where activists have also faced increasing government reprisal. It exhorts men and women... Okay, hold on just a second. There's nothing wrong with banning female tendencies at the state level. I'm sorry. I agree with Beijing on this one. Outlaw cissification.
Starting point is 00:44:32 Yeah. That's specifically why we banned Tanya from this episode. So we can talk about it. We can talk like men. Uncompromised. Yeah, I mean, I think this is kind of true. Maybe this is a valid criticism. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:44:55 It is also, again, certainly true in America. The central state isn't the ones perpetrating this, like whatever, in America. But it does happen in various communities and you know sort of subcultures in america um absolutely but uh i don't know i think what she's talking about i thought what she was referencing was how they like banned video games like after a certain time of day in china i think they like you can only play video games between like 1 and 8 p.m or something every day yeah yeah because they say kids were
Starting point is 00:45:31 playing them too much you can only game for eight hours a day another thing that china does that's awesome man that is true like like unironically you should be banned from playing more than like an hour eight hours you can't get done what you need done in eight hours you know it exhorts men and women to procreate in a sharp reversal of beijing's decades-long one-child policy i mean like she would have been complaining about that, too. You know what I mean? Like, that would have been authoritarian. But now...
Starting point is 00:46:11 Is the whole female infanticide true about China? Dude, I don't know. I've always wondered. The thing about China that's so fucking hard to talk about is it is nearly impossible to suss out what is fucking western propaganda and what like really goes on there without actually being there that's the rub that's the rub on all this shit you know 100 man and the people like you know and again like you know i i
Starting point is 00:46:38 think that i've been there but i haven't i was there when i was a kid right so this goes for me too but americans often talk about countries that they've never been to. And I feel like when people from other countries do that, I'm like, okay, that's fair because we export culture. We export propaganda. Everybody knows America fucking sucks. I don't care where you live in the world, right? But Americans love to talk shit about other countries that they've never been to. And it's like the only information I'm getting, like you said, Tom, is either like, I don't know, could it be propaganda on both sides?
Starting point is 00:47:05 I'm more inclined to believe it's Western propaganda. So I don't know. You know, I would rather not weigh in or at least sort of go by the rule that my government is always fucking lying to me. Right. Right. I'm buying to the bullshit, you know. Right. It's and it's almost to the degree that any of that's true. Like, I mean, I know she's going to get into this sort of the Uyghur thing here in this piece. But, like, the degree that any of that is true, it's almost like a boy that cried wolf situation.
Starting point is 00:47:32 Like, we've been fed so much bullshit by our own fucking, like, sort of propaganda apparatuses that, like, our brains get scrambled. And if real atrocities were to pop off off we would never know the fucking truth about them because we've been lied to so goddamn much absolutely absolutely it would it would be hard to know what was true and what wasn't you know yeah um um blah blah blah blah blah uh critically beijing targets ethnic han chinese in this campaign. In its eyes, the master race, the quote-unquote master race. Against minorities, most troublingly against Muslim Uyghurs, the state has sought to prevent births, including by using extreme measures such as forced sterilization. Its treatment of Uyghurs, not as citizens but rather a problem to be dealt with,
Starting point is 00:48:23 has led to the establishment of hundreds of re-education camps that experts say constitute the largest detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. The legislatures of several democracies have called what's happening genocide. And then we get some pictures of marching troops. We get a picture of a tall fence with barbed wire on top. The funny thing about that photo, the fence with barbed wire on the top, is like compared to an American prison, like that is, you, yeah, I don't know. It's like the American prison is a highly sophisticated technological.
Starting point is 00:49:08 Designed to break you mentally, physically, emotionally. Yes, spiritually. Everything. And no prisons are good. That's not what we're saying here. But, man, that shit drives me the most nuts. It's like we were talking about in the group chat earlier. It's like, how the fuck are you gonna fix your
Starting point is 00:49:25 goddamn mouth to talk about china is not a friend to muslims after what this fucking country has done to most much of that muslim world for as long as i've been alive and longer you know yeah yeah yeah and i'm supposed to believe now the levels of hypocrisy are off the charts with that yeah yeah i'm supposed to believe now that suddenly you have some y'all y'all genocide to me you genocide yeah you genocide two million fucking iraqis but all of a sudden you have this like bleeding heart for like this religious minority group and i'm not saying you shouldn't and i'm not i'm not even, I don't even know what the deal with the Uyghur thing is. But what I do know is that some of the coverage around it
Starting point is 00:50:10 feels a little patria y vida to me. You know what I mean? Uh-huh. I mean, it's just like, I don't know, man. I mean, I remember I had posted something about infrastructure in China, and somebody replied with like, well, China had this traffic jam that lasted a week or something like that, like 10 years ago. And they're showing pictures.
Starting point is 00:50:33 It's called the Suez Canal block. Dude, the pictures they were showing me, people were like, hey, those are, like, doctored and edited pictures of a highway in California, man. Like, you know what i mean so it's just like yeah you show me pictures of like and again tom like you said not we're not comparing prisons here all prisons are fucking bad yeah but like how do i know that's not a prison in georgia man like what are you talking about yeah how do you know that's not fucking what's his ass in arizona uh chef chef chief jo Joe Arpaio's open air fucking tent city prison he had over there where he made men dress up in pink jumpsuits, which you're accusing Xi Jinping of cracking down on. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:51:17 And I wouldn't, like, it seems to me, yes, just to make clear, I'm not saying one type of prison is better than the other. We're r breaking prisons here no the point is just like the stories you hear of like the banality like of how just a violent and shit ours is like you know i just hear it doing the radio show stories of guys who got like falsely accused and in prison for like nine years just like like sucked into the system because they got picked up on some bullshit charge and then just nine years of their life gone it's like yeah yeah they're not not for religious belief or ethnicity and not that those things would be right either but actually in
Starting point is 00:52:01 america we can talk about like a black underclass and the majority of people who are in prison but that's even another conversation but this is because somebody's getting picked up over some frivolous stupid shit you know yeah like not that it's any better but it's like yeah dude it happens here for the most insane reasons and people lose their entire lives to it you know i know i know it's fucking insane you know the craziest thing to me about that about her pointing that out is um it seems to me from reading this that her politics are like sort of vaguely progressive or liberal i mean i would say just like vaguely liberal because you like threw in the thing there about like their anti-labor anti-union stance and some other things that kind of like have some of those
Starting point is 00:52:42 catchwords but like that would mean that she's also the same people who she's also probably one of the same people that like pressured you to go vote in 2020 because of the kids in literal cages at the border and so it's like what i mean we again like i mean like liberalism is just a shift they've forgotten about man they forgot what happened anybody checked on the kids in the cages at the border lately i'm trying to check up on my 1200 man shit dude 1200 kids in cages man a lot of things to be made account for that's that's that whole that shit is that is insane that was the number one thing it almost mirrored like the roy moore uh what's that
Starting point is 00:53:26 boring ass dude that won the alabama center jones doug jones yeah like you know it's like oh fuck well i guess we got to vote for doug because roy moore had a 15 year old child bride in the 70s it's like oh man we got to vote for biden, well, kids in cages at the border. And then you see that Biden's deported, like, by a factor of five, more people in one year than Trump did in four years. Jesus. Doug Jones is— But then when you bring it up to—go ahead, go ahead, Terrence. I was just going to say Doug Jones is back in the news this week because he's helping Bideniden uh select the um supreme court not um pick he's like he's leaving the charge on that they like put doug jones in charge i'm pretty sure i thought that's what i
Starting point is 00:54:13 obvious choice you know to to lead the search to name somebody to the highest court i get him and tim kaine mixed up like visually they both look like Mr. Magoo or some shit man Yeah Both got the same kind of energy man Tim Kaine speaks Spanish and Doug Jones doesn't That's the difference Honestly So if you hear Doug Jones speaking Spanish
Starting point is 00:54:36 That's actually Tim Kaine Even if he tells you that he's Doug Jones Yeah Damn we really dined out on this one, didn't we? Yeah, we did. Taken together, authoritarian, used to also describe declining democratic states, declining democratic states, such as Hungary and Turkey, hardly feels enough, nor does it feel accurate.
Starting point is 00:55:02 That is a disservice to the public. Journalists, politicians, and others should consider calling elements of the Chinese state fascistic enough nor does it feel accurate that is a disservice to the public journalists politicians and others should consider calling elements of the chinese state fascistic if they are not entirely comfortable describing the state writ large as fascist we may be facing an absence of existing terminology to properly describe contemporary china but that behooves us to rethink our vocabulary and not dismiss the F word out of hand. All right. Like, I think every I feel like every state with the I don't know. I mean, even the ones that I publicly unironically like support, like Cuba. Yes.
Starting point is 00:55:40 I'm sure that like every single administrative state in the 21st century has to, by its very nature, be fascistic. I think that's – you know what I'm saying? Yeah, the state – I mean, in its conception, construction, its duties, its functions, you could say that it's fascistic. It does fascistic things. Not to say people live in a fascist state but i mean it has fascistic qualities as a state inherently you know could be said well a state is inherently fascistic anything that's like that uses brute force to maintain some sort of order is it by is just in and of itself fascistic right and and there are like conting, contingencies and, like, circumstances, like, during and after a revolution or whatever, in which, like, the necessities for holding on to the gains made in that revolution, I think that that is a part of the sort of state government governance.
Starting point is 00:56:38 Like, it's just an inevitable part of it. of it but um so like she's just kind of pointing at a truism about like we should if you're not comfortable with calling china fully fascist you have to say there's fascistic elements and it's like okay um it took us you know this entire article to get to this point and you to literally like draw all of these really forced pained comparisons like levin's realm and mussolini's corporatist fascism to sort of make that point i don't know it's just i don't know it's just a fucking obvious and i mean like one thing too that i'm gonna say one last thing too is that she like said she gave the definition of fascism and i'm pretty sure she's also one of the people who called donald trump aist, which fair, dude.
Starting point is 00:57:26 Like, whatever. I'm not even getting into that debate. Like, sure, he's a fascist. Fine. But then, okay, so we elected the United States had the infrastructure, I guess, or institutions to allow a fascist to win an election. But that doesn't make the United States fascist in any way in itself. You know what I mean? Exactly. It's like, come on, dude. Right, right, right.
Starting point is 00:57:48 Oh, yeah. No, you're right. Damn, we stripped the bones on that one, man. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. Lick the plate clean, man. Yeah, and just listen. Before anybody calls and says to me, your friend Aaron Thorpe denies the Uyghur genocide and all that stuff
Starting point is 00:58:06 like that's our line on that is is is not a value judgment or even just like a calling that if that's happened or not it is just to say that western media is notoriously unreliable about these sorts of things and if you take a peek in your own fucking closet, you'll see that the same things that we're grandstanding about are things we ourselves do. That's all. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:58:36 I'm gonna go ahead and say that's the official party line on that, if that's y'all okay with that. Absolutely, man. Just take it with a grain of salt, everything that you read and hear. Not just the Uyghur thing, a lot of things. I would even dial even further into the epistemological aspect of it
Starting point is 00:58:54 in the sense that unless you work for the State Department, your opinion on it does not matter. All of it is just a parlor room debate. I mean, it's just like you can have an opinion about it but usually when people try to get my opinion about it well 10 times out of 10 it's mediated by this show or by online in some way but like i've never encountered a single person in my day-to-day existence or whatever who has a asked me what my opinion on it is or b even displayed their own opinion on it so it's like it is entirely it's so abstract that that's why like i it's just it's phenomenal of
Starting point is 00:59:33 it's like it's really bizarre it's like i can't even understand it when people get mad about me having an opinion on it or whatever i'm like what are you talking about dude i don't fucking listen brad listen bro not to out myself too much but my sister works for the state department her opinion doesn't matter too trust me your opinion doesn't fucking matter either dude like come the fuck on man
Starting point is 00:59:55 alright let me save the dessert until the very very last I'm going to give you this American Conservative one because I know we're at it over an hour, but if you guys don't have anything to do, let's just... I don't get it. I got a hard
Starting point is 01:00:12 3.30 stop. I have to mention that. Gotcha. We got about 20 minutes. Alright. This is The Trekkers Fighting Dystopia in the American Conservative. I just liked it because of the opening. Martin Scorsese... Oh, no this is so rab amari but jd was repping it um so rab amari is a funny um sort of right wing commentator he got like in a really big a row a public row with oh dude who the fuck was it
Starting point is 01:00:48 i think it was david fringe because like david fringe published so he like put something on his facebook and then amari wrote something about it they had a huge like knock down drag out fight like a couple years ago all over a facebook post don't ask me how i know this um martin scorsese angered global nerddom a few years ago by asserting that today's comic book movies don't really count as cinema since they don't achieve the kind of aesthetic emotional and spiritual revelation we associate with the art forms masters this is an article about the canadian truck drivers by the way yeah i'm like what the fuck it's it's interesting where it goes i feel like wait can i just say real quick i feel like you can tell something's gonna be really fucking bad if they take a topic that's so far removed from
Starting point is 01:01:41 the subject matter at hand just to find a way to rope you into it you know like they'll just be like i'm gonna talk about like you know 18th century like cheeses in france or some shit like that in the cultivation of cheese to talk about like you know what i'm saying like the food drug administration or some shit it's like you're right you don't have to do that oh yeah go ahead uh these franchise flicks endlessly recycle the same schlocky mythology about men and women in tights with stories and ideas not much deeper than soft core porn plots but there are very few exceptions and a more charitable score says he might have taken note of these one is christopher nolan's dark knight trilogy with its gripping if not exactly subtle meditations on the war on terror and class war.
Starting point is 01:02:27 Another is Logan, the 2017 Wolverine movie featuring one of the most chillingly plausible portraits of American dystopia ever put to the digital screen. Put it this way. In Logan, we might just glimpse what the world would look like once the COVID dust settles. this way and logan we might just glimpse what the world would look like once the covid dust settles in 2029 when the film's events take place everything goes on as before more or less but everything has just gotten shittier there's still mutants though he's talking about a movie with fucking people with the superpowers bro what are you talking about there is still an american economy the dollar has not collapsed vegas still glitters. But everything is colder, more inhumane, and alienating. The population is aging.
Starting point is 01:03:10 Dr. Xavier is a bit senile. Blah, blah, blah. One of our film's most unforgettable scenes has our protagonist trying to navigate Midwestern highways while humongous, heavily armed, autonomous trucks whiz by at wide-watering speeds. These machines barrel onward to their destinations, taking no pity on anyone else trying to share the world. So before I go any further, wait, so I forgot. Do you guys, did
Starting point is 01:03:32 you read anything about the Canadian truck drivers? Like, why is the right so obsessed with it right now? I don't, I have no idea. Tom, do you know? I have no idea. All I heard was that J.D. Vance made some comments about it. The treatment of these truck drivers is abysmal or something.
Starting point is 01:03:50 And when I'm Senator of Ohio, I aim to change what's going on with Canadian truck drivers. You open up a Canadian embassy in the district. um you open up a canadian embassy which is to say that i am vaguely aware that this is like their you know cause du jour but i don't know much else about it this is the thing you're right dude jd has taken a like anti because where this is going is an anti-silicon valley thing because it says because you know like the conservatives have latched on to, like, tech as, like, the big liberal whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah, because of censorship and shit like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:30 And all that bullshit, yeah. Yeah, if some, go ahead. No, I just, I mean, it kind of reminds you of what liberals have been doing with corporations and banks forever, where, like, on the campaign trail, they lambast them and say all these things, and they just kind of wink to them, like, suddenly behind closed doors. Exactly. And they continue to get. Like, J.D. Vance is one of these Silicon Valley guys. But, like, on the campaign trail, he can't be that. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:04:56 He has to be the maverick. He has to be the guy that came out of that world and came back home and da-da-da-da-da. Because if he, like, is too much like those like you know people in california yeah yeah i mean even though like peter teal and shit like that yeah he has to uh even though he has those direct connections right like he has to he has to make it seem like he doesn't you know even though anybody who has a phone can look that shit up now. Oh, man. Yeah, this is going in a really weird place.
Starting point is 01:05:32 Because it's, you know, if the Silicon Valley sorcerers have their way, autonomous trucks like those in Logan may, in fact, come to dominate the North American roadway, killing nearly 4 million American jobs. Such a transformation would be a piece with other shifts that were underway before COVID erupted. The general tendency is toward disciplining, if not erasing the human element, especially where the human element might inconveniently resist the world our elites wish to bring into being. An interesting thing is going on here. I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but like
Starting point is 01:05:58 in a sort of like ideological shift in a lot of people what what determines some people's um uh entire sort of like political framework and i think it's interesting is this idea of like human humanism or humanity versus like transhumanism or trans humanity you know what i'm saying i'm not saying that in a gender way i'm saying in in like yeah in in humans' integration with synthetic systems. Yeah. And obviously the vaccine has become the biggest arena for that to play out. But it does seem to me that generally the right-wingers are, sort of like humanistic interpretation of that. I hate to use that term because I don't mean it like in a traditional way.
Starting point is 01:06:48 You know how I mean it. I know. But like, and I feel like progressives and liberals and leftists have kind of been sort of forced into the sort of, you know, post-humanism, the trans-humanism, like kind of side of that debate. And I don't know. It's just an interesting thing because I don't really come down. you know, post-humanism, trans-humanism, like, kind of side of that debate. And I don't know, it's just an interesting thing because I don't really come down, I mean, I personally, I'm pretty paranoid,
Starting point is 01:07:10 so I don't really want to have any kind of further integration with, like, technological systems that can surveil us and stuff. But at the same time, I don't, you know, it's hard to, like, throw your lot in with, like, people like, J.D. Vance doesn't mean this i don't you know it's hard to like throw your lot in with like people like jd vance doesn't mean this but you know what i mean like it's hard you're throwing your lot in with like yeah go ahead no i was gonna say it's kind of like like a parallel i think about a lot is like people talk about eco-fascism you know where they talk about these right-wingers
Starting point is 01:07:42 who are concerned with conservation um but it's all couched within like um you know population control and this idea that they're these undesirables and if we don't kind of protect and administer and allocate resources to the right countries or the right populations you know and it's a yeah man it's kind of like like it seems like this whole transhumanism or sort of this futuristic appeal to people like zuckerberg or peter teal it seems like it's like optimistic and positive but then i'm like yo these are like the same people who like dabble with like race scientists you know i don't know if i want to be right i don't know if i want to be a part of that fucking future you know it's very unfortunate because like the
Starting point is 01:08:26 right kind of latched on to that and that became anti-vaccine vaccine or whatever you know what I mean and I think it was partly because of the mRNA technology and I think that like there is just this vague feeling among a lot of people that like technology has gotten out of control because there's been no accompanying um rise in wages or in any material living conditions or even regulation right and so public understanding of these things right right yeah or that yeah and so they're being kind of pushed into alignment with the right on that and like no one in the i mean there's no institutional form on the left to even combat that or bring them into you know so it's just it's become a really unfortunate thing that like i think is a big reason behind this whole idea of like the post
Starting point is 01:09:16 left or whatever you know what i mean it's like it's it's just one of the sort of in my opinion overlooked elements of yeah how the ideological sausage gets made um yeah because it might it might also be too like you know where the left like it's it's project that's confronting capital right but in such an interconnected digital world right like those battle like those battle lines aren't so like explicitly drawn and it's hard to know where to fight at. So people will be like, oh, we just log off. Everything will be fine. It's like, no, motherfucker.
Starting point is 01:09:51 The right isn't telling their people to log off. They're saying we're going to build new ecosystems for our channels of communication. That is weird. Social media services and shit. social media services and shit maybe someplace maybe a play a point of intervention there then could be like all right like for a leftist kind of like humanistic vision there if that's something that you truly value and really care about it's like you you really yeah you really should have to advocate for full luddism like disconnect with all social media stuff and i'm almost there my friend i feel i really feel that way a lot.
Starting point is 01:10:27 Because it's true, because like, there's nothing more inherently trustful about being on these things all day than there is about getting the vaccine. Because they both, you know, they both are kind of emblematic of our, you know, integration with this increasingly post-human world. But maybe not, I don't't know the thing is about mrna someone tried to explain it to us in our comments and it sounded
Starting point is 01:10:50 like a pretty good explanation i think what it does is it just instructs your i think it instructs your body to your cells to replicate the virus within you and then your immune system okay i don't know that sounds kind of like a copy machine for your cells for the virus in you and then your immune system okay i don't know that sounds like a copy machine for your cells for the virus in your body or some shit maybe yeah which i don't know maybe yeah you know i i saw the other day and i don't want to be too crude in my humor about this but like you know where they're doing the first uh mrna hiv vaccine and i was thinking in my head i was like dear god i hope this is not like the covid thing where people get on some free love shit and thinking that it's you know what i mean
Starting point is 01:11:30 it's going to prevent infections and it's just like actually you'll just get like a less worse version of this but uh you know yeah yeah well there was a i saw some people saying like a couple days ago like um I don't know. It was weird. I had just watched this movie called cold case Hammersholt and it's about the 1961, like probable assassination of the UN secretary general dog commercial in Congo.
Starting point is 01:12:00 And, and the movie goes off on some insane digressions, but I feel like they make some pretty good connections between CIA proxy armies deliberately infecting people with AIDS at the end of our apartheid as a kind of white supremacist project to take down the anti-apartheid movement.
Starting point is 01:12:24 Jesus Christ. And so, I know, to take down the anti-apartheid movement. Jesus Christ. And so, I mean, like, people were saying, people were, I mean, people were making the point, like, mRNA vaccine, you know, mRNA technology gave us the HIV, you know, solution, the HIV cure, and you're still going to be anti-vax, and it's like, well, people are anti, some people are anti-vax because various diseases have been spread through intentional you know like these that's that's that's where like the whole sort of paranoia about the flu vaccine gives you the flu comes from somebody didn't just dream that up you know what i mean like that actually happened i think when one of jonah salk's experiments kind of got out of
Starting point is 01:13:02 control and they were actually just injecting people with live influenza virus or something like that and then just from there it is well i can get the flu from the flu vaccine that's a much more mild example of the cia giving people aids in sub-saharan africa but still yeah yeah yeah i mean which is it's just another example of like chickens coming home to roost it's just like you guys created all of the conditions for the things that you spend so much time bitching about so stop fucking bitching about it and just like you know what i mean you made you made the hail selassie eye movement you gave them they gave them knowledge and information which uh you didn't think they would wield against you they did dude
Starting point is 01:13:41 god damn They did, dude. God damn. All right. Tom's got like five minutes, so I'm going to give... I just got to dangle the aperitif, the little dessert. This is John Erevosus, a guy who I've known about vaguely for years.
Starting point is 01:14:04 I think he's one of those former NatSec guys who became a lib, like a Hillary lib. I see him on Twitter from time to time doing the whole blue wave stuff, but then in his bio it would be like, 15 years with the CIA. I don't know if that's who he is but it is something like that like they're in like pride month he changes his profile to like a rainbow fucking like a rainbow shit or something like that yeah well he's got a blog called cyber disobedience which is a plus man I love that name cyber disobedience oh, this is the honky one? Yes. Ah!
Starting point is 01:14:45 Hell yeah. The article. Okay, boy, I spoiled my dinner on the dessert. So good. Tom, I'm having a hard time hearing you. Yeah, you sound far away, though. My bad. Can you hear me?
Starting point is 01:14:59 Yeah. All right. Yeah, the article. I got called a honky today. All right. Yeah, the article. I got called a honky today. I waded into a little Twitter storm last night that sadly tells us a lot about why the left is so bad at messaging. I advise people not to use obscure acronyms and abbreviations unless you also explain what they mean.
Starting point is 01:15:23 Specifically, I was responding. Do you guys know what this is about? Do you know the do you know the acronym i'm like is he talking about me did i get into lightning and i'm he's talking about me did i get into it this motherfucker dude you might have the the acronym and he admits to just learning what it was just a few years ago the acronym that he's talking about though no i'll just tell you specifically i was responding to this tweet by huffposts philip lewis a great guy who i've followed for years about a series of bomb threats at historically black colleges and universities or hbcus i'd never heard of the term hbcu until a few years ago and i guarantee this is this is the part where like i mean like i you
Starting point is 01:16:06 know i'm not gonna try to front like uh you know obviously i'm pretty white like i'm pretty sure that there are probably some like corn-fed motherfuckers in ohio who have never heard of an hbcu um but this is where this is where it gets ridiculous i guarantee that a lot of people on twitter have no idea what hbcu even means and thus wouldn't learn anything from philip's tweet so it's like come on dude most people i mean aside from a few exceptions most people know what the fuck it is also context clues motherfucker if he's talking about like they teach you that shit in language arts bro in like third grade you're right dude it's literally jesus christ context um i like though how he had to like prove that he's not racist because he said
Starting point is 01:16:58 huffpost philip lewis a great guy who am i followed for one of the good ones like trust yeah he's like trust me trust me my not knowing about hbcus is not because i'm racist which you know i mean again that could be true for a certain select group of people but for a guy that worked for the cia i'm not buying yeah i'm not buying that shit man he probably feeded the propaganda out of about that shit bro um uh i've raised the same concerns about abbreviations and acronyms like aapi uh bipoc lgbtqia
Starting point is 01:17:34 plus blah blah blah um you know but i think that what had happened was uh someone just sent him a message just said fuck you honky and that was that was someone just sent him a message that said, fuck you, honky. And that was really what sent him over the edge. So this whole thing is just his grievance about being called a honky
Starting point is 01:17:53 for not knowing what HBCU was. My question is, is he doing any self-flagellation? Is he like, well, for penance this year i'm gonna go to howard homecoming and me and philip lewis he's not dead i mean dude there are it's so funny why would you get offended but somebody called you a honky man i love how you can know the intricate details of like what's happening with global terrorism, but you don't know what HBCU means.
Starting point is 01:18:30 You know what really all the great secrets of the world are from working with the CIA. Oh, man. This is a rich vein. Not know about Bethune-Cookman. I'm pretty sure you know all the acronym organizations and like, you know, the Deep State Network, but you don't know what HBCU is, man.
Starting point is 01:18:51 Right. You're right. He worked in the intelligence community where everything is a fucking acronym. Right. I get frightened, man. Like, come on, dude. The fuck?
Starting point is 01:19:07 I think you don't really need to say anything beyond that. It kind of just speaks for itself. Fuck you, honky. That speaks for itself. All right. I like that this incident just prompted him to write a whole last thing about us. He was that aggrieved. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:19:28 And it's the left's fault. The dastardly left again. Add it again. Add it again with the acronyms. Oh, man. Well, like I said, there's some rich shit here. I wish we could go a little further because he's drawing a comparison because he's gay.
Starting point is 01:19:45 And he was like saying that like he's like, I've held the straight world's hand for years. Like blah, blah, blah. Like, I don't know. It's just. Now it's time for black people to hold my hand. Yeah, pretty much. He's basically saying that. Now it's time for the black community to step up for me.
Starting point is 01:20:01 Now it's time for the black community to carry me on their backs. Like, whoa, bro. Oh, man. God, dude. Just take the L, bro. Just take the L, man. Aye. Well, it's a good blog post.
Starting point is 01:20:17 It's a classic example in an entire blog post just posting Ls. Posting people being like, fuck you. All right. Alright, well, that about sums it up for today. Tom, we'll let you go if you need to hop off. Sorry we kept you so long. See you, boys. It was
Starting point is 01:20:34 fun. Peace out. Catch you up there next time. Alright. Go to check us out on Patreon if you could please. P-A-T-R-E-N E-O-N dot com slash Trailbilly Workers Party and throw us some money. We'll see you next time. Bye.
Starting point is 01:20:51 Adios. All right.

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