Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 315: Atavist's Anonymous
Episode Date: November 3, 2023Recorded 11/3/23. More discussion of Israel/Palestine, this time with a specific article from NBC about "growing concern" within the White House regarding Israel's atrocities against Palestinians Sup...port us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty
Transcript
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🎵 I was just, I had to stop at Walmart on my way in.
I had to go to the pharmacy.
And you know how Walmart has those parking spots for just police officers?
Is it like right in front of the Walmart you're talking about?
Yeah.
Have you never seen those?
I think so.
It's like a little box or something like that.
Yeah.
It's like a spot up front next to the handicapped spots.
It's like this spot reserved for our armed forces our beautiful armed forces
with their beautiful abs and massive cocks big balls and they're beautiful all right
yeah handsome generals wait tom can you turn up a second um i can turn up. Turn up, bro.
How's that?
That's good.
I always park in them because it's funny to me.
It's funny to me to like, if the rules, man, flip off the man, man.
Have you been called on it?
Has somebody asked for your credentials?
Nobody's ever called me out.
They have called me in, though.
Okay.
It's a funny concept. It's like a MAGA person not calling you out for parking in the police spot,
but calling you in.
Like, bro, we need to be intentional about how we park in these spaces.
In these spaces at our Walmart.
Safe spaces.
Yeah.
You know, if you're just going to flop the rules like that, what's the point of doing anything?
That's right.
Well, today, though, I was shocked because hardly anybody ever parks in them.
Everybody's too, like, housebroken to park in them.
They got the cop inside their head.
They have a cop inside their head.
And so I'm always pleasantly surprised when I see someone parked in them i'm like hell yeah
uh but today i like pulled up and there was someone parked in one of them and it was like
a massive dually truck with like sticker you know what mean? Like your average sort of like right wing stickers,
like the bumper said like ban idiots, not guns,
that kind of stuff.
I like that one.
Turn off the idiot box.
Yeah, yeah.
I like the inverse of that would be funny.
Ban idiot or ban guns, not idiots.
Not idiots.
Listen, this country was founded by idiots Indeed it was
Indeed it was and guns
But then the people sitting inside
Were like an older couple
And they were both wearing masks
So I was like whoa
It was kind of like a whiplash thing
Like I was like oh hell yeah
Oh wait hell yeah
like you don't have anything yeah i don't know i just need to know what's going on there they're
like are they like trumpers who hate cops love guns and love masks and like actually concerned
about the pandemic yeah i don't just i do wonder if there's people like that, that just sort of buck the sort of norms and mores
of their own little ideological project.
Who's like the maverick of the MAGA world
that's like a diehard masker
and will even vote for Democrats sometimes?
I mean, I guess Romney, even though he hates Trump,
but he is a Republican on paper.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Was he an anti-vaxxer, though?
No.
Romney was all about the Vax.
He was also about Black Lives Matter, if you remember correctly.
Yeah, he marched in the streets of BLM, if you recall.
That was a moment.
He's a lonely man.
After we read that profile, it made sense.
Like, he just needed friends.
Yeah.
But, yeah, no, everybody's a contrarian in America.
So that does make sense.
Like, everybody is...
Everybody has a contrarian brain worm that makes them buck up against every single thing.
You can have someone who is ostensibly conservative, but all their friends love cops, so they hate cops.
And all their friends hate masks, so they hate cops. And all their friends hate masks, so they love masks.
So it doesn't even come from any actual deeply held belief?
It's just to buck your friends?
Everything is psychologically tuned in a way.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
There's no consistency because we are all beautiful little, beautiful little unicorns with our, like, contrarian takes on everything,
myself included, obviously.
This is true.
I mean, you kind of, like, I guess, like,
everybody has their own little version of, like, America in their heads,
you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's like we said every man is sean king that's right
oh hell yeah um well this week you know i guess we've got several things that we could potentially
cover and i'm not even really sure where to like dive in here i haven't quite prepared for this
one like we have the previous ones
just because I feel like at this stage things have reached such a pitch of fragmentation.
There is just every time you tune into anything related to this,
you see the worst scenes of violence you've ever
seen in your life the and the thing is is like i was telling somebody about that the other day
i was like i mean like these videos and the images like are really extraordinarily disturbed about
this i can't get them out of my head and they were like well why do you why do you watch them i was like well it's not i don't seek it out it's literally just every time i open up the app
it's there's a timeline it's just flooded with like death and destruction man yeah just like
all the videos i've seen like um people breaking down journalists breaking down on air, you know, mothers and fathers losing their children.
And like I said this morning, this video, I saw people trying to flee south on a highway and they were bombed.
And then like you see those videos.
These are uncontestable.
This is straight up.
those videos these are uncontestable this is straight up you know they bombed a refugee camp earlier this week once and then came back and did it again yeah they did double tap it with three
times yeah all just to as they said kill one person and it's this is weird disjointed thing
where like you see this right next to statements from people who are like editors at the economist or whatever saying like
there is no proof israel is intentionally targeting civilians it's like if do i do i
live in the real world like am i you know it's just i guess i guess what i'm getting at here is
like during times like this you kind of develop this absolute revulsion and disgust with society, and you're sort of alienated in a way, like in the true definition of the word alien.
It's like, how is this a word?
I am not a countryman here.
Yes, right, right.
Exactly, exactly. And there are things that we all should be doing, obviously, to ameliorate that, like being with others, protesting with others, talking with others, reading, developing a sort of critique and theory on this stuff.
But at the same time, when you've got the U.S. government completely unwilling to budge on this in any way,
it can be very disheartening.
Like I said, alienating.
And what, Aaron?
And disorienting.
It's like, are these people saying the same stuff I'm saying?
Like I saw John Fetterman, the fucking brute,
and he said, Israel doesn't attack civilians.
And it's like, dude.
There was a video of him that was so funny.
He was like, Israel, we need to let, they should do what they need to because they deserve what they need.
It was like completely.
Such a way with words.
Such a way with words.
Complete garbage.
I'm like, man.
complete garbage i like man like you know uh you know it's just it's it's like he was trying to convince himself in real time like he knew how ridiculous it's i saw that video he's like
i just believe israel needs to be able to do what Israel needs to do.
Yeah, that's what it was.
And he's like looking around as if he's looking around his own skull for the words.
I mean, it's really astonishing.
Go ahead, Terrence.
No, you go ahead.
No, no, I was just going to say, I saw that and I was like, well, he's just gonna say i saw that and i was like well he's just an idiot you know i was like he's just an idiot right not that
that's any better you know what i mean he's an evil idiot but he's like literally he just does
not i mean he just doesn't know what i mean i don't know man because we were talking about this
in the chat terrence um like is it like you know i don't want to be naive and assume that these
people um don't have access to this information but sometimes like it seems like not only are they trying to convince themselves you
know but like or convince everyone else but convince themselves you know what i mean yeah
so it's like how much of it is like okay you're 100 they're all complicit but like i don't know
man it's hard it's hard to even say that because we're watching the same videos you know like
you're saying these all these videos everyone can see them you know yeah you man. It's hard to even say that because we're watching the same videos. Like you're saying, all these videos, everyone can see them.
Yeah, you're right.
It is hard to know.
This is a thing that, I mean, we'll come back to this in a minute.
But earlier this week, Blinken, Anthony Blinken, Secretary of Defense, had written a – he's defense, right?
He's not State Department.
He's the Defense Secretary.
Yeah, Secretary of State, right?
Oh, he might be right uh
my bad um yeah some guy that like you never have heard of is the defense secretary uh
but but blinken earlier this week had an op-ed in the washington post that was like straight up
we can protect palestinian lives while also supporting israel to the hilt it's like as if
those two things are contradictory well that's the thing it makes me wonder it's like because
i remember early on in this like this has been going on for almost a month now like you would
make comments about like you know you see you see how these people referring to biden and blinken like
you see how like they know that they are damned to history that blah blah and then you get people
in your comments or you get people in real life who'd be like what the fuck are you talking about
like these are blood-sucking genocidal monsters and it's like yes however i don't think you can
discount the role of ideology in this.
I do genuinely think, and this is to me the real horror of liberalism,
that do genuinely think they can thread that needle.
I think in their minds, they really do think that, and it will go down.
That is such a good point, man, that you make.
And it will go down.
That is such a good point, man, that you make.
Liberalism is, if nothing else,
just the idea and the practice of thinking you can thread every needle,
that you can always have your cake and eat it too.
Yeah.
Yeah, that you don't have to take a definitive stance.
Well, and part of it is because
they are the smartest people in the room.
It reminds me of that scene.
Excuse this very crude analogy,
but it very much reminds me of that scene in Breaking Bad
where Hank is on the ground and he's telling Walt,
you're the smartest man I've ever known
and you're too dumb to realize that he made up his mind 10 minutes ago.
They are like that.
They're psychopathss but they're very
enlightened and intelligent because they've read all the proper books i went to school with a lot
of these people yeah liberals are walter white yeah like total like psychopaths that have like
some semblance of a like like a continent so i guess not a true sociopath right well they know
what a conscious is and that a human has one.
And so they're trying to.
And theirs is like a reasonable facsimile of that.
Yeah.
That's why they're always like, we see you, we hear you.
Yeah.
But we can't do anything because we don't have the conscience.
Exactly.
But we know that human beings do have a conscience, so we have to see and hear instead of do.
Not only can they not do anything because they don't have a conscience, so we have to see and hear instead of do. Not only can they not do anything because they don't have a conscience,
they can't do anything because that wouldn't be the smart thing to do.
Like, they don't think with their hearts.
They really do genuinely think with their souls.
They genuinely think with their brains.
Systems, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's no right and wrong or morality.
It's just systems.
Yeah.
With them, yeah.
I was listening to or watching Ta-Nehisi Coates.
He went on Democracy Now!
Yeah, that was great.
That was really great, man.
And one thing he said that kind of haunted me and was making me think is, like, how do these people go to sleep at night, you know, knowing that they are condoning, you know, the mass slaughter of Palestinians. And I was thinking, like, you know, there has to be this sort of, like, wall that they put up with whatever soul that they do have, you know?
You know what I mean?
It's almost like their soul is tinted, you know?
Or they're alienated from it.
Like, they can choose what moments and what events to separate.
You know what I mean?
Like, that part that makes you human and that machine that allows you to carry out genocide,
you know, and that's more bone chilling than,
I mean, I don't want to say it's more bone chilling
than the straight up brutality of Republicans,
but it really is like, I mean, I guess it's like,
kind of like Malcolm X said with the wolf or the fox,
you know, like the fox, you know,
sneaks up from behind, which liberals he was comparing to.
The wolf attacks you from the front.
You know what it is, you know?
Right. So again, it's just this kind of duplicity you know that's uh
that's i mean again disorienting and horrifying with lives man you know what i when that first
started cracking for me a little bit because i used to be exactly like them like i've like
fans fashioned myself like a good person because I had the right opinions.
You know what I mean?
Or smarter than whatever.
Well, because, yeah, we came... I would learn soon.
That was absolutely not true.
The more you learn, the more you don't fucking know.
Well, as a side tangent, it's because we came from areas with awful education systems in
extractive regions where our entire lives experience were geared towards just
channeling us or funneling us into an extractive industry and so the moment we learned about
anything about the outside world we were like oh shit like i'm i am smarter therefore more
enlightened than my and also a better person provincial rubes yeah anyway and also yeah yeah
right and there's like some sort of morality tied
to that when it first started cracking for me i was working at the clinton foundation
and i started digging into like i was like why are the clintons got such a hard on for haiti
you know they're doing all this like relief work in haiti and all this kind of stuff
it's something that never made sense to me is like bill clinton as to hear him tell it was leader of the free world for eight
years yeah and he was a guy also that literally by the french constitution because he was born
in arkansas which is a french pronunciation of a native american word just kind of like illinois
he technically could have ran for president of france and he used to like to say that he was polling better than whoever was i don't know who was whoever
was the president of france at the time he was there forget it maybe not sarcosy but maybe whoever
was before that um and i was like so why can you just just not sort of end the encroachment
that the French colonial project still has on this place?
Like, Haiti still gives France tons of money
to pay for their colonization, essentially,
which is insane.
So it's like reverse reparations.
It literally is reverse reparations.
It is the colonial victimized mindset
it's like we're traumatized because you threw off our shackles it's the same shit that israel
deploys in their all their propaganda in hasbara it's like we're traumatized and shaking in our
boots because you dare to assert your humanity right it's like they're crying but waving a club
at the same time you yeah yeah and i started thinking
about i was like this like why does this not make sense to like why can't like that seems like a no
brainer right and then you start like thinking about like well why do they always want to install
their people here in this place you know what i mean and it's like we have all these different
and i'm by no means a haiti expert Somebody could speak to that way better than I could.
But that's when it first started occurring to me that, like,
why are these, like, seemingly, you know,
I don't want to say, like, insignificant places.
I don't mean that.
But places that are not necessarily, like, the most resource rich or, you know,
whatever, very poor places because of the legacy.
Right, right, right.
Like, why do we have such an intense interest in those places?
And you start seeing why, like, with how this conflict is playing out, you know?
Yeah.
Because, I mean, you're right, like, because it is interesting.
I've seen all kinds of, like, attempts to sort of provide a sort of analytical framework on this. Like, what are Gaza's resources? Is Israel trying to plant? You know what I mean? Like, kind of like, straightforward, like political economic framework, like you would apply to maybe Iraq, like they've got oil or Vietnam, like they've got rubber.
So I've seen people try to extract from them.
Something we can extract from them.
Right. I've seen people try to apply the same framework to this.
Like, what does Gaza have?
And I do remember going in the early days, like, thinking, like, what is Gaza's political economy?
Like, is there any surplus intended to be extracted here?
And there is in the sense that, like, there are, like, low-wage workers who are given work permits and allowed to leave gaza and go work in israel i mean that's probably over uh for a long time now um so maybe that's one part of the
surplus um uh but like in terms of like oil like there's gaza doesn't have oil you know what i'm
saying like there's not you see this thing about like the net like somebody had pointed out that like netanyahu had organized like five like huge
natural gas contracts like maybe in the west bank yeah like offshore drilling right yeah yeah i think
it was offshore yeah yeah so i i don't know if like they found gold in them bar hills or or or
if that's part of it you know yeah i mean it's
you know obviously it's been going on way longer than they were aware of that probably but
uh so it's not doesn't account for all of it but well i think that like you have to consider
the roots the historical roots of zionism and the Zionist project, just because something is a colonial project doesn't,
you know, actually, I take that back.
I guess the main resource that Israel is trying to accrue
from the Palestinians is land, right?
Like, that is the thing that they're trying to steal.
Lebensstrom.
Right, they're trying to steal that from them, right.
And, like, I guess if you want to steal that from right and like I guess
I guess if you want to apply
that framework to it then that makes sense
even though it seems like
at this point
I saw something
going around like the New Yorkers
Isaac Chotner had interviewed
fuck was
that guy's name like Orin
did y'all see hatch yes orin hatch
um i'm sure it's in my bookmark somewhere but the guy that he had interviewed was basically
saying like israel has every right to take all this land like this is israel's by, it was Michael Oren, Netanyahu's former ambassador to the U.S.
Wow.
Isaac Chotner said, or no, Michael Oren said,
we have an incontrovertible right as Jews to live anywhere in our ancestral homeland,
no question, no question about it, anywhere,
and a member of the Sioux Nation has a right to live on Sioux Nation territory.
These are our tribal lands, the cradle of our civilization and Isaac Chotner says just to be clear you were
born in New York correct but Mike Michael Oren says I was uh Chotner says so you think that you
as a Jewish person born in New York have a right to be anywhere in Israel absolutely plus the West
Bank plus Gaza?
Absolutely.
Not Gaza.
We can debate whether Gaza is part of the land of Israel.
Okay, Israel plus the West Bank.
Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that, like,
I guess at this point maybe in their sort of, like, political imagination.
These motherfuckers are going to start claiming Christ
so they can take the West Bank.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, he was one of us.
Well, that is the point.
That is an interesting thing here because when people talk about Zionists,
like, again, immediately after October 7th,
you had all these people saying that, like,
calling people Zionists is anti-Semitic.
And it's like, actually, there are plenty of Gentiles who are Zionists.
They're called Christian Zionists.
I grew up with them it's like they're like there are zionism is a broad ideology that spans it does not denote
one faith or the other and in fact right just as likely to be christian as jewish yeah exactly
if we're talking about pure numbers right that's I think that's what... Or go ahead, Tom.
You know, I was thinking about how hot-button that word is.
I remember writing a piece for the Daily Honor when I was just a lowly intern in college
calling my then-girlfriend's uncle a Zionist in that piece
because he was just one of those end-times guys.
That's why i said
that you know what i mean and he was the one talking about you know building the temple and
the red calf and all that shit and that's why i said that i wasn't like but like just the very
sense of that i remember the editor writing me and saying well we usually use that term to refer to
like um your supporters of the state of israel right and i was
like you've clearly not grown up in the heartland so i just dropped it i didn't say anything but
like it is one of those things where it's like it's like yeah just like yeah just bump it up
against that word can like lead to you you know being condemned as an anti-semite or whatever it
is it it is weird.
The interpretation of that word in the United States
has an apocalyptic millenarian end times connotation,
whereas in Israel it's almost sort of the opposite.
In Israel that word means infinite expansion and the world as is,
in which case Tom and I were having some fun like playing
out various scenarios earlier this week let's say that like israel does manage to come out the other
side of this uh politically intact and has basically completed all of its objectives in
terms of like cleansing gaza uh take finally annexing the entire West Bank,
which by the way,
they made a tweet about that
in like their Arabic page earlier today
and then deleted it.
Basically admitting that
that was their entire objective
going forward from here on out.
Anyways, let's say they do that,
but they refuse to build the second temple.
That is the thing that like American Zionists have to have for Christ to
come back.
So like,
could you see a scenario which where that happens,
they refuse to build the second temple.
We have a dominionist president,
like one of these fucking Betsy DeVos psychopaths who's like president,
like DeSantis or something.
And like goes to war with Israel to force them to build the temple.
The thing I'm trying to get at here is there's a contradiction between those two forms of Zionism
that is ultimately detrimental to the state of Israel itself.
And anyway, sorry, that's a tangent.
What were you going to say here?
No, I was thinking, I know this is,
just to kind of go back to you were saying,
like what can Israel or even the United States, right?
Like extract from Palestine.
And I've been downloading a bunch of these books
that Verso has like released for free eBooks on Palestine.
And one of them that i
really want to read is called the palestine laboratory um i'm sure you guys have heard of
this um listeners probably heard of it too written by anthony lowenstein and um oh yeah it's basically
it's basically like you know like what gaza provides is like this sort of playground you
know for military technology you know for surveillance technology that um i think is then
sort of like exported or imported back into the united states to use on black communities for
example you know yeah it's same shit that we got to be honest about got bobby schmurder knocked
yeah yeah let's be clear like. Like, be perfectly honest.
If Israel had been perfectly honest brokers all those years,
they still deserve a little retribution for that itself.
For Bobby, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and I think, though, it's also,
the thing is you can apply multiple frameworks to this.
Like, you can apply that, like, strictly,
almost sort of Marxist framework to it.
But it's also important to keep in mind that, like,
Zionism as an ideology
goes far back into an era where the the um what's the word i'm looking for um
before capitalism had become fully sort of embedded and spread globally.
You know what I'm saying?
Like Zionism predates the full encompassing of the globe
into the capitalist world system.
It's honestly, as an idea,
it is a product of the sort of post-Bellum,
almost like Civil War era.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because Herzl was a late 19th century figure.
And it was born out of an era of extreme anti-Semitism
in Eastern Europe, which was going on in the 19th century.
And that's another thing that political anti-Semitism
began in the early 19th
century after like napoleon took over a lot of these areas and like uh you know tore down the
shtetls and tried to assimilate jews into the social fabric of europe and uh and so that's
the thing like i guess the good i guess the point i'm trying to make here is that like other things in the world, like sort of like patriarchy, for example, the current form of patriarchy we work with is at this point highly influenced by and probably even all the social relations embedded within it are affected by capitalism.
At the same time, it is a very old form of domination that predates capitalism
and so you kind of also have to think about this in turn in with zionism that like they update it
yeah like ethno-nationalism like these things that like they aren't wholly compatible with
capitalism yes they can work together but at same time, they are extremely degraded versions of themselves, which is probably why Nazi Germany burned out so fast and took so many lives with it in the process.
It's that they are entirely degraded but violent and distorted forms of ideology and of capitalist decay.
It almost accelerates the capitalist process itself.
Yes.
Where it implodes on itself, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so it's like, I think you can use that framework
to understand it too.
Basically, I guess that's like a very highfalutin way
of saying it's an ethno-state.
Well, did you see, I think, the Israel israel israeli war room like i guess the
propaganda the mouthpiece of the israeli army and um i mean you know like i tweeted it but i just
it just me thinking why their propaganda is so bad um is because everybody has a fucking phone
in their pocket so if you're so inclined you could just look this shit up so one of the things that
they had said was um um they were replying also they were quote tweeting and replying to like just organizers
and activists and stuff like that and just other accounts which like if you are the official
propaganda uh mouthpiece of an army and you're replying to strangers online probably not going
good for you know what i mean probably probably not going good for you you know what i mean probably probably not going good for you but dude they said they said that um this person said that uh israel will go the way of rhodesia
you know will fall like right and yo the israeli woman replies and says that um because you think
that israel is like rhodesia which is why you'll never win i'm like dog you can literally google
fucking the uh herzel sending a letter to fucking Cecil Rhodes, dog.
You know what I mean?
And literally using the term settler colonialism.
Like, also, it's just like, again, it's just insane to me that, like, anyone can look this shit up.
They also said something, too, where they were like that Arabs had colonized the Levant, right?
You know?
And people were like, yo, your own, own like religious text says that's not the case you
know so i don't know man it's just um it's just it's just that that yeah i guess when they get
into that rub it's like well islam wasn't even a religion for six to eight hundred years after the
biblical times so it's like of course there were no fucking muslims there that doesn't mean that
their forebears were not there.
Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. They just practiced a different religion.
They were just like different faiths or whatever, you know?
Right.
Zoroastrians.
Samaritans.
There's like, you know, only like 12 of them.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's a different thing.
Christians, like a lot of them were probably Christians too.
Yeah, not long after that.
Gnostics and stuff, you know what I mean?
Essenes.
Yeah.
But then it is weird, like the utilization of like deep history,
like 2,000 years old history.
I mean, it is very much giving Serbian nationalism vibes.
It's like when Slavida Milosevic went to Serbia in 1989,
he went on the day that Tsar Lazar was defeated by the Turks in 1389.
Jesus Christ. like 600 years later
and that's what they were still
holding on to
and still like using that to inject
Serbian nationalism in with
and so it's like
imagine being in a position where you have to
make those kinds of reaches
like now I know 600
years ago doesn't
exactly seem like
Just yesterday
But consider what these Ottomans took from us
It gets at
It gets at like the
Just how farcical and absurd things get
With the degradation
With the decay of global communism
Right
Like as a actually existing communism
As a world historical project
That like these old
deep historical things and again i know that like you can look at this and you can say like you can
do the brett gellman thing and say like well what about or the michael orrin thing and say like what
about the sue what about the native americans as i've said before i still genuinely think like the
native americans are probably the only like group of people who get to like
make that claim because yes like our entire world view everything about the world is
based around the premise that you know their society was had to be destroyed by ours and uh
and replaced yeah yeah you know i was thinking like so it's like when people say that um
you know uh this this conflict you know because always use the term conflict between israel and
palestine or just in the middle east in general is something that's been going on for thousands
of years right and i think what that does is that it almost like naturalizes yeah it naturalizes it
right and it almost makes this seem like immutable right like as if these things are are set in stone of prophecy exactly the
fulfillment of prophecy and it's like you can't argue with prophecy you can't right you know you
can't argue with the metaphysical man actually i can dude i do all the time that's how i want to
start approaching christians on this question it's like okay do you seriously there's only two roads here either you view this as a humanitarian crisis
right or you view this as the fulfillment of prophecy which is it right i want you to look
at 8 000 kids with their fucking legs blown off and all horrible things you can muster in this
world have been inflicted upon these people and fix your mouth to say that any god worth serving would condone that yeah you're
just a fucking psychopath i saw yeah you're using religion as a cover yeah well that's the thing
like they they really can pull from like sam the book of samuel and say like well you know we had
they the israelites had to throw amalek amaleks into the fire babies into the fire like they really genuinely justify the genocide of
children with biblical text and it's insane about scripture though it's like like i don't presume
to speak for jewish people obviously because i don't know but christian people at least
will look at like a very specific contextual thing,
like Paul speaking to the church at Ephesus and think that like, no,
actually what he was saying to the church at Ephesus is supposed to apply to it
today when he was speaking to a very specific church, a very specific people.
That's always been weird to me.
Like, okay, so I'm supposed to like, you know uh get in a fiery furnace i guess with my
brother shadrach and meshach i'm a bed to go and uh and just see what happens then i guess those
names went so hard by the way a bed to go a bed you don't see any bed and it goes i've made that
point on twitter you don't see me a bed and it goes and that's a fucking killer now let me bring
on this back That was funny.
Someone in your comments was like, you guys have to stop talking about the apocalypse.
I can't listen to this anymore, or something like that.
It's like, dude, my fucking town got destroyed by a flood, all right?
I have a personal life, by the way, an interior life that is also influenced by things going on around me.
And when your fucking town gets destroyed by a biblical flood, you do kind of tend to see some tinks and like yeah quit being a baby that's what i would say also how do you think about a bed and a go thorpe that'd be a good name for you that would be dude
i was i was literally just thinking about y'all they named my son
i like that a lot i was i went down a rabbit hole i was like you know talking to Tom earlier
this week
about like the
evangelical
response to this
and like how
this is a
entire political current
in the United States
that's
not really being
talked about
or acknowledged
which is insane
if we're making
all these like
post 9-11
Iraq war era
comparisons
how you leave
these guys
out of the conversation
these are the people
on the hook for Iraq.
In a lot of ways.
I went on YouTube and just started
watching videos of church sermons
from around the United States. I found one
in Leesburg, Virginia that had
3 million views that was just posted
a week ago. 3 million?
It was a church sermon. Yeah, 3 million.
That's terrifying. It was a church
sermon where his dude
was like talking about the history of israel and about how actually historically and biblically
israel has the right to 300 000 square miles from the nile to like iran all the way up they're
gonna be wrong again like what the fuck dude it's just like that's the kind of shit that's just like you are basing this entirely off of biblical religious text.
And it's almost kind of farcical, though, because like when you think about like church, these mega churches in the American suburbs, like getting this very sort of like bloodthirsty, like biblical view, Old Testament, like biblical view of the world in mind the
collision of those two worldviews is so insane like comfortable stable cookie cutter white picket
fence like uh mcmansion houses all of them inside convinced that like amalek is coming
and they had they need to throw babies into fires in order to bring god
back to earth dude what when you think about it in those terms if you just take like like we were
talking about aliens all right people not not of not our countrymen yeah just come and see that
these people aided and abetted the slaughter of millions of people in the biblical holy lands, you know, because they thought that their God, also from those holy lands, was going to come back on a white horse and smite all their enemies for them.
Meanwhile, they all just, like, live the worst lives you can imagine, you subjugating people yeah well did y'all see
on fox news that uh jesse waters uh had said that uh i mean one of again i mean it was fox news but
another mask off moment where he was like um america's had enough with um arabs and muslims
you know and like it just got me thinking about like it feels like i guess the crusade i guess like the whole entire history of
the middle east right and colonization and imperialism is sort of this re-litigation of
the crusades yeah you know what i mean and it just seems like they're just itching for like
i mean i guess now would be like you know crusades like you know like uh 4.0 i guess at this point
you know what i mean but um i don't know to again fulfill uh to fulfill prophecy you know like uh 4.0 i guess at this point you know what i mean but um i don't know to again
fulfill uh to fulfill prophecy you know yeah well that's the weird thing like as americans we have
zero ties to that it's like i think we pointed it out in an earlier episode the crusades were
prosecuted by the catholic church i mean and even Catholic Americans have a very, very tenuous tie to that.
But Protestant Americans?
It's weird how they just...
You're right.
It's so weird how this history
gets regurgitated
and you learn about it
through secondhand sources
who learn about it
through secondhand sources
who learn about it
through secondhand sources.
So that our common
like the circulation of that
common history
is just this very degraded
like fully Islamophobic
racist
historical ideology. It's like a racist game of telephone though.
Right it is.
But like completely missing of any
historical context
of any of the theological debates that spurred them, of the political scenario in Europe at the time.
Like, you know what I'm saying?
Like, that class played a part in this as well.
Like, this is class conflict.
Like, crusades were part of the contradictions of class conflict in Europe at the time.
That they weren't just this, like, purely civilizational battle.
But again, like, it's just weird.
None of it is coherent.
It is just fully fascist ideology pushed to the fucking floor.
And, I mean, that Jesse Waters thing, that is dark, man.
Like, we've had it with Arab Americans. Yeah, man, and I saw, too, that Jesse Waters thing, that is dark, man. Like, we've had it with Arab Americans.
Yeah, man, and I saw, too, that they were trying to censure Rashida Tlaib, you know?
Yeah.
You know, and I know, you know, everyone's made the Iraq War comparisons, but I don't know, man.
It almost feels like, I don't know, we talked about this before in the episode that we had unlocked.
You know, I'd mentioned that it seems like America constantly has to renew itself in the blood of oppressed people,
and especially in the Middle East.
And as much as Americans polled after, I guess, the Iraq War during,
especially a couple years in and after, who were opposed to it,
despite being bloodthirsty and and rearing to rearing to invade iraq right but um i don't know man it also i don't know it also seems as way to resolve the
contradictions you know resolve the contradictions that kind of crop that crept up during the
pandemic you know that crept up during uh during the 2020 protest george floyd protest and also
you had mentioned this tom you know historically speaking whenever a president is not doing very well you know war is always like you know something that
like you know to uh to pursue and galvanize right and engage the public you know yeah and it seems
like such a a slam dunk to get out of this to call for a ceasefire and stuff and it's insane that
nobody can muster that and i wonder if that's just because
that's biden's last play to not to not have trump and all these people including bernie
have so got it in their head that the worst possible outcome for this is for trump to be
re-elected and so that's why they're balking on this yeah and again i go back to the anton sugar quote if the road that brought you
that is an interesting thing you're right like that is a possibility i do think that like going
into a monumentally consequential election with a candidate who was by the way just a placeholder
everybody understood that at the
time people forget about this but in 2020 that was the assumption about biden in fact on the
campaign you're right i think you're getting ready to say go ahead i'm sorry no no no he said that
you'd said that it was it was sort of implied that he wouldn't run for a second term you know
i think explicitly said that he was a one-termer and that like basically he was a bridge away from Trump and that they were going to groom somebody else.
And then Kamala was revealed to have too much of a Xanax dependency to be, you know, or she's like sitting there fucking hitting helium.
I don't know what she's doing.
I don't know if y'all saw the video, but I don't know what she was talking to i don't know if y'all i don't know if y'all saw the video but
i don't know what she was talking to i don't it might have not even been recent i don't know but
she's i don't know what she's talking about she's like you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree
everything you exist within everything around you and i'm like dude actually that's a pretty
good argument for historical materialism and her dad was a marxist but yeah yeah she's she's yeah
she's she's she's zanned out that's the thing about liberals though they do have this weird background
in historical materialism in the sense that like they do view things in like as we were saying
earlier in terms of systems but they've weirdly dematerialized that it's like they've dematerialized
the trajectory of progress you know yeah it's it is yeah it is
very weird it's like because i could see someone listening to this and be like well as marxists we
shouldn't think in terms of morally right and morally wrong but at the same time you don't
get marxism unless you get marx looking at the working class in england in the 1850s and 60s and saying, this is wrong.
This is fucked up.
So, yeah, I mean, even, yes,
I guess we can church it up with scientific jargon and stuff,
but it is an epistemology that makes normative claims
on the world in the way it should be.
And anyways, but I also just want to follow that thread,
which is that I was reading Pamela Paul's column
in the New York Times last night,
you know, one of our faves here.
And like, even she was like,
the Dems are fucked in the sense that like no one,
everyone is basically in the elite class anyways.
Everyone is basically silently acknowledging that it's not going to work with Joe.
And that the Dems aren't putting forward any kind of vision and that they're flubbing this whole thing.
At the same time, we all know that the right is in total disarray.
And so like what happens?
It's just an interesting thought experiment because it's like what happens in a in a society
where like all of these things that we've known for a long time that like there's not real actual
democracy that an election can be easily overturned by xyz forces uh like all these other things that
elections are more or less rigged by the electoral college and whatever it's like they're now coming to a
point where we have to acknowledge that um and also like all the sort of decay and and contradictions
of the of the of both parties are on full display and can't offer anything and they're all yeah
they're all just open and naked you know naked and afraid yeah yeah it's it's like on one end the democrats you
have this atrophied like futureless party right that has no long-term vision but on the other
hand you have these like on the republicans they're like barb not that the democrats aren't
barbaric but like i mean they're demons right but also terrified i've been thinking about something
you said terrence about how once this popped off you kind of saw them like kind of like ostrich neck.
Right. Like they dug there. They like they got into their bunkers.
They put their heads underground. The conservatives. Yeah. Yeah.
They're terrified. You know, they're terrified. Whereas Democrats like I mean, they don't have a conception of the future.
And so it's like, you know, this moment in history has been thrust upon both of them and no one is adequate enough to deal with it, you know?
Yeah.
Well, and also, like, it's right.
Like, they have completely removed themselves from not only the future but also the past.
And you see this in the way that, like, I do think there is something to the idea that they are not calling for a ceasefire because they think it will open them up to vulnerability from the right.
But also their purported, like, explicit explanation for why
is because they say Hamas will immediately break that ceasefire.
Hamas won't hold to it.
Well, there's a fucking incredible op-ed in new york times today surprisingly about how israel
broke the ceasefire in 2014 like over and over again and they also you know not just when they
killed those kids on the beach not for nothing israel there's not a ton of faith in you out in
the business community even in this regard yeah like they they see israel has repeatedly broke ceasefires so it's
like there there's there's no honest brokers here but this this article has an astonishing
fucking statistic in it um just to show you how far right israel uh political society has gone
and the courts and everything over the past seven decades decades, Palestinians in Gaza, seven decades, 70 years,
Palestinians in Gaza have brought fewer than 10 successful claims
for compensation in the Israeli court system.
Most of those cases were brought before the 2000s.
You're talking about people just murdered in the West Bank for existing,
people bombed on beaches.
And again, some of those cases are from people killed when israel broke
the ceasefire in 2014 it's like this is i don't know man it's just like how do you have you know
how do you have like how do you have like 194 countries right that look not only like can't
stop but look the other way when one country repeatedly, right, violates the Geneva Conventions.
Right.
Repeatedly, repeatedly, explicitly.
Right.
I mean, I'm not talking about like settlers.
Right.
Like Israelis.
I'm talking about like the the the origin of the government, the government.
Right.
You know, the government itself.
Right.
I'm not explicitly saying that we want to ethnically cleanse.
Right.
These people.
And I mean, I don't know. It's a moot point, but it's just it just i think that's what's baffled me the most is that not only are
domestically the dems and the republicans equipped for this whole historical moment but it's like the
whole entire world seems to be you know yeah like everyone is sort of watching in i don't know i
want to say horror man but i do think most regular people
but it's almost seems to be a wait and see thing you know well it's it's triggered a lot of max
extraction man right they're trying to ring out every drop they can out of this project
until they until like they can't ring anymore you know what i mean so that's exactly i think what's
i think part of i think part of what's happening
i think i mean it's obviously more complicated than that well i think that a lot of it is
part of it is impossible for the world to comprehend because it's so sort of retrograde
and what i hate to use that word what's the what's the word? Atavistic?
That's probably a better word.
Yeah, I know.
That's what I was thinking, too.
Okay.
As an atavist myself, I was wondering when somebody was going to talk. As a member of Atavist Anonymous, yes.
Atavist Anonymous.
It is Cormac mccarthy like
because like do you look at these settlers these settlers are not rich people rich people aren't
settlers that was the case in the united states too you think they were sending like the wealthy
comfortable people into like appalachia and then into the mississippi river basin they were sending
people that were expendable they were sending exactly and so this has and then so you look at the videos of the west bank those are the people that are bringing
violence upon palestinians it is a classic settler colonial experiment i mean and it has all the
markings of it but it's hard for us to comprehend because we thought we left that in the old world
we thought that like relations were thoroughly capitalized that like this had you know enveloped and enmeshed all the parts of society and that like we had left this form
of colonialism in the old world it kind of goes back to yellowstone in a way
indulge me here everything going back to yellowstone
when i was talking about threading needles let's thread this one one. Well, here's what I thought.
When I first watched Yellowstone, right before I knew really that it was like this phenomenon that it is,
like the most watched show on TV by a factor of millions of viewers.
All right.
Okay.
Which I think speaks to like the American sort of obsession with the Old West,
but also to some weird sort of dynamics going on uh when you're talking about uh relationships
with native americans and how we like fetishize them today after we had uh carried out multiple
genocides i thought watching that show that like okay people are going to see like the shabby treatment of the native communities and
how like domineering john dutton and his family and the ranchers are right until i started seeing
and until taylor sheridan probably thought you know what we could probably make a bundle of cash
off selling uh dutton ranch merch and i started seeing Dutton Ranch bumper stickers all over trucks and cars
and people wearing the shirts and stuff like that.
And it broke my motherfucking brain.
They took the exact lesson from it.
You're right, Tommy.
You would expect people to see that
and to have some sort of moment of conscience.
Yes, yes.
Like a crisis of conscience.
A crisis of conscience. Yes, yes. Like a crisis of conscience. A crisis of conscience, but instead
they identify
with the actual oppressors.
Right. Yeah, it's like people who think that
Walter White was a good guy, you know.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is, oh man, that is
fascinating to think about.
No, go ahead, Terrence.
No, you go ahead. No, that's just kind of
got me thinking, Tom, actually. That's, that's, that's no good. No, you go ahead. No, that's just kind of like got me
thinking, Tom, actually, like that, that seems to be the, uh, the sad and the long torturous
history, right. Of, uh, I don't want to say the human race. Let's just say America, right. Let's
whittle it down a bit. Is that taking the wrong lessons from things, you know, like, I mean,
we dropped, we dropped two nuclear bombs in Japan.apan and like i mean you still have people that
have the argument well we needed to do that because but like you have people now even after
that horror you know you have people now that are saying we need to do the same thing to gaza you
know we need to do the same thing to like another region in the world whether it's russia or china
and it's just like yo dog y'all take the worst y'all take the worst lessons from the most
depraved shit you know
the whole point is that it was so depraved that you would never
repeat it again you know
at this point what is so
mind boggling it's like
the technology
of modern warfare has developed
to the point that you can drop the
equivalent of an atom bomb on a
population without dropping an actual
atom bomb and dealing with the bad press of that and you can drop a moab right but people yes but
people still have this idea that like an atom bomb is an atom bomb it's like no our bombs are so
fucking lethal and powerful now that like you can drop everything short of an actual atom bomb on a population and it's still the same effect.
I don't know.
Sands the radioactivity and shit,
you know,
or stands the right.
Exactly.
Right. Thank you. Well, this kind of gets it.
There's a thread that we've kind of like been teasing at over the course of this,
which is the contradiction within the Democratic Party itself
in the sort of like liberal mind and psychology and ideology.
And like how the rapidly accelerating conditions of this moment
are kind of tearing at the very seams of that.
And you see that as humans, because they are humans,
and they do understand that like humans...
Barely.
Right, right.
They are monsters, but they do breathe oxygen
and have blood and all this other stuff.
They're not silicon-based, man.
Right.
Right. Water-sol, man. Right. Right.
Water-soluble.
Right.
But they probably have families,
and they probably have loved ones,
and they probably have managed to mostly curate their timelines
and censure in their own minds,
censor out the images and stuff coming from Gaza,
but there's been such an
inundation of images and videos it's probably impossible so they have probably in some ways
um their conscience has also been tugged at a little bit and so you see like i said you see
them kind of being like ripped apart and like not entirely sure how to handle that and what it says
about them um but i wanted to read this article
because i thought this was fascinating this is in nbc news biden officials voice new concerns
and warnings over israel's war with hamas um administration officials are worried that the
president's quick support for israel after hamas's attack could backfire um shit yeah uh as the
humanitarian not been a laying your dick a day in my life i could have i
could have got you off that one on day one right right as the humanitarian crisis in gaza worsens
and the death toll among palestinian civilians continues to rise there is growing concern among
the top biden administration officials about how the israelis are carrying out the war and
uncertainty about whether they can be reined in, according to two current and two former senior U.S. officials familiar with the internal discussions.
Some administration officials.
I want to say something.
What are you talking about?
Like, you're the big bad United States.
You can't rein in.
Right.
A fucking backwater.
Basically a client state.
Well, that was didn't i didn't literally
say that on uh maybe 60 minutes or some shit like a few weeks ago like we're hey man we're
the united states we can do anything we want it's like oh apparently except for this except
stop a genocide yeah yeah i think actually biden what it would take is you calling Netanyahu and saying, okay, the gravy train stops now unless you quit this shit immediately.
And then all this goes away.
It does ring particularly hollow.
It doesn't all go away, but I mean, you get your ceasefire.
It does ring particularly hollow when we just sent them $15 billion.
Like that was just signed off.
And there was reports that the white house has
requested from congress permission to basically give them arms and money under the table
in like a completely unprecedented yeah yeah right yeah uh with no transparency at all with
the american people that was not a good development so you're not even just supplying
with weapons but by supplying them with weapons you are co-signing the genocide like you are like tacitly like you know what i'm saying
like like actually like i guess like um in terms of like just supporting this argument you know
you're saying it's okay you know yeah some uh some administration officials also are worried
that the u.s could become more and more isolated on the world stage over president biden's close
alignment with israel and that he will be blamed for some of the israeli's
military's actions he will be blamed motherfucker we are blaming him by the way netanyahu released
a statement today that was like uh we're still gonna go full throttle ahead and the u.s will
not stop us i mean like i'm paraphr, but I'm not paraphrasing much.
He basically said that.
Biden and his top aides have in the past week
adjusted the administration's public message
to emphasize concern for Palestinian civilians
and U.S. efforts to get them humanitarian relief.
The shift follows growing criticism at home and abroad
of Biden's decision to swiftly and staunchly
back Israel's military response to
hamas while initially speaking less forcefully about protecting palestinians meanwhile images
of civilian casualties in gaza continue to ricochet around the world okay now this is where i need to
pause and say that a few weeks ago i don't remember what episode it was maybe it was on the patreon episode last weekend um like two weekends ago
i think we like speculated that the biden administration's
comments about how they were you know they put out like this islamophobia playbook and like
made kamala go out there and like be the figure of it they put together an islamophobia toolkit
to distribute to community members like i privilege on it for and literally made the black lady like like sit
on tv in front of the camera and tell everybody that it was going to be okay yeah i like i think
we we grim very grimly joked that like all their statements all they're very meek like they're
hedging, yeah.
Yeah, we're just hedging in the event that in the future,
500 years in the future, once this is all said and done
and the history books have been written,
that libs will still be able to point back and say,
no, no, no, no, Biden said early on that Palestinian lives
need to be triangulated when they're trying to bomb Hamas commanders
and that only 500 civilians
was an acceptable number
to kill. Not a thousand or ten thousand.
They need their caveat to absolve
them from being a
monster. Being a complete fucking monster.
Let me point out something too, real
quick, just on this note.
Again, it doesn't do much good to point out
American hypocrisy, but did you see yesterday where for the you know several decades in a row
now the entire world except for the united states israel and an absent and an absentia vote from
ukraine voted against the embargo the blockade cuba right oh yeah okay now i want to point this out we have absolutely inflicted economic terror on a
small island nation that's relatively poor and you know capital but also you know rich in other ways
because fidel castro killed about 500 plantation owners in the revolution
literally and they're still salty about that.
Right, you know what I mean?
Like, think about that just in terms of scale here.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Well, it's, again, like we mentioned, you know,
I think I mentioned last day, other episodes, like, you know,
if there were, like, over, you know,
1,000 Israeli civilians, you know, had been killed in the Hamas attack,
and then you respond to that with killing eight thousand and counting.
Like, when does it end? You know, when is enough enough, you know?
Oh, yeah. It's like that one tweet that was going around that just blatantly spelled it out.
It's like if your father was killed and your mother was kidnapped and taken to a house
and you found out there were six kids inside the house, but you can't do anything about it.
What would you do? It is just like.
Would you kill all the kids and your mom's like i'm i'm kind of getting the vibe that it's not about your kidnapped mother if you're willing to kill her to get her back it's it what
do you talk i have a feeling that you just want to kill kids man yes exactly i went trolley problem
joke on my quote tweet and two minutes later I regretted it when I did say,
well, if it was my dang mother-in-law, maybe.
I don't have a mother-in-law, but you know.
Anyways, back on the theme of them hedging, making statements that then the well-actualies can point back at in the future.
A senior U.S. official said,
if this goes really bad,
we want to be able to point to our past statements.
Yo, that is, yo, dude, yo.
Again, there's that fucking Adolph Reed Jr. quote.
Like, liberals, they don't engage in politics.
They're only witness to suffering, you know?
And now they don't even make any pretense about that. man we're all artifice here actually that's like pre-empt
no it's like preemptively doing the thoughts and prayers before atrocity happens you know what i
mean yeah um you know like people were shitting on gabe winant for pointing out like the you know
his essay about the pre-grieving.
But from the American perspective, that's absolutely true.
You know what I mean?
Which is what you expect from a country that makes sure that we only come in contact with an acceptable amount of rat shit on the top of our beer cans and Coca-Cola cans.
Right, right.
It is funny to think about that i have a friend that actually
did a little stint in prison because he got in with the russian mob that's a whole different story
but he said while he was in there that he had learned from a lot of these like guys he was
like they locked him up in like one of the white collar places with like the corporate criminals
and stuff and he said that while he was in there that he found out from a lot of these like guys that worked at these law firms that are
like you know what you see kind of on late night and stuff like that uh-huh mesothelioma lawyers
and uh mesh whatever the wire mesh surgery thing lawyers like medical malpractice type of people that when the fda approves a drug
like they get in these senators pockets and basically say yeah we're probably looking at
150 to 300 000 people dead maybe 100 000 people maimed in other ways or you know permanently
injured and da da da da da but da da da da and
then they vote these things in these things get fast-tracked for fda approval uh basically with
the knowledge that people in power that make those decisions uh know that there are going to be people
that are it just seems like I say all that to say,
it seems like there's a much more efficient way to do that.
And I know somebody's going to be like,
that's not at all how FDA approval happens.
Well, I know.
I'm just taking this second-handed from a guy
that was briefly involved with the Russian mob.
However.
Well, it's like when companies like Walmart or Target,
or any multinational company,
they factor in loss and theft of items.
So you're just doing that with people, though.
Well, we've seen it with coal mining for fucking years.
Do we really need scientific studies that show that blowing up a mountain
that sends boulders into people's homes is bad for your health i mean it's like it's everything is it's it's this is
weird contradiction with liberals where like they do simultaneously live in the future and the past
but at the same time they're constantly trying to forget both you know what i mean yeah yeah
i don't know they're trying to exist not just outside of history,
but almost outside of time, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
You know, I was thinking about that yesterday
with the news of the guy that got killed
in the coal refining plant in Martin County yesterday.
Right.
Which is like one of the most horrific ways to go,
I could imagine.
They had to amputate his leg just to get him out.
Jesus Christ. And he ended up dying shortly thereafter with his wife by his side
while the whole shit's happening i think maybe they had to remove his other leg too or something
like that the guy at that facility is the son of jeff hoops who longtime listeners of the show
may recall and if also if you've ever been to our live show, you might have remembered us putting a hex on this man.
The guy that owns the facility is Jeff Hoops' son?
Yeah, right.
Okay.
Well, I guess Hoops owns it,
but I think he's letting his little fellow son run things or whatever.
Right.
This is the guy that was building that patrician resort hotel place
in Milton, West Virginia,
where he had the life-size replica of Yankee Stadium
and all these fucking tacky, grandiose things there.
And I think about the ways in which Andy Beshear,
who's running a tight race for governor here,
one of the last Democratic governors in the South,
has aided and abetted the coal industry
because he's afraid to rock that boat too far
because they're still kind of clinging
to these beliefs that there's these like moderate republicans that like tip the scales and the
balance and everybody knows that's just not born out in the polling or in reality right right but
the net effect of it is like men like jeff hoops just go completely unchecked you know what i mean
and then andy's like sitting here running a tight race like why i don't understand like why is it like you know so tight and da da da da yeah
well yeah i can do something man yeah get off this fucking we see you we hear you shit and
actually pass some goddamn legislation the point of politics is to make things better
exactly exactly not to lament things after they've happened right right right well yeah i mean to make things better exactly exactly not to lament things after they've happened right
right right well yeah i mean to make it even more fundamental the point of politics is to actually
struggle and fight with the people doing the bad things it's like that's that that's the whole
thing about mmt like modern monetary theory it's like yes this is possible theoretically i mean not even theoretically it's
basically what we already do but the thing is is you can print as much money as you want to fund
welfare programs that's not the problem the problem isn't the money the problem is the political
contradictions the you know what i'm saying like the political commitments and actually
disempowering the people who would stand in your way
once political constituencies get built out of that project
and ideologies get formed.
It's embarrassing if you're like a modern Democrat,
you're still in office.
Like if you're Joe Biden who's getting ready to go to your death
in the not too distant future,
I don't mean that, you know, FBI is like a threat.
I mean like literally shit
i mean nature is going to take his course i can see it with my own two eyes the man's
disintegrating quickly approaching entropy yeah can you imagine like thinking of yourself even
in the same class as lyndon baines johnson or john f kennedy i mean i'm not again not praising
those men because they're both jackals in their own way.
But just in terms of your political acumen and like your ability to get things done and those things.
And not for nothing, as a Democrat, you're coasting off the remnants of their legacy, what little's left behind.
Dude, that is something that I have just been astounded by.
It's like, yes're you are exactly right like lbj and kennedy yes jackals in their own way butchers uh in their own way but
like do you really think that like if they were meeting on a weekly basis with a guy like net
yahoo and his entire war cabinet and everything that they would walk away from that be like we have to back these guys to the hills I'm pretty sure like I'm just saying
I mean maybe they would I mean I guess if you look I mean both these guys are responsible for
Vietnam so it's a distinct possibility you're exactly right however but but I guess the point
is is like if the world was at stake I mean we're talking about like an unarmed nuclear power with the case of Israel in a region with other nuclear powers like Pakistan and Russia.
I mean, it's just it's a fucking powder keg.
me to read this article and for them to then for them to have this like these second thoughts like oh my god do we back the baddies when there were plenty of reports two weeks ago that when they
met with israeli officials israeli officials were saying we're gonna have to do dresden we're gonna
have to do firebombing of tokyo we're gonna have to resort to world war ii tactics and wipe these
people off the planet that didn't give you pause you didn't believe them when they
said that yo you know you know what it's like dude it's like did you guys see that um cnn um
it was a clip um a clip on from cnn where this um anchor is talking i guess to um a war
correspondent who's in israel right and he's like he's basically you see like the gears are turning
in his mind where he's like, wait, they bombed.
Like, I forgot what it was, man.
I don't know if they had bombed.
Oh, was it Wolf Blitzer?
No, it wasn't Wolf Blitzer, but that's another example.
That interview was crazy, yeah.
You see it dawn on them?
I did not realize Wolf Blitzer used to be an AIPAC rep and he was still blown away.
he was still blown away dude well it's like it's like you see it like in these like small glimpses of it that the real the dawning realization that this is actually a genocide yeah like they just
they just stop like they don't go any further like the guy's voice he's like so you mean that
they're bombing like where they know civilians are and of course the world correspondent says
well this is a war and hard things happen and that was it you know right like that was it you know that was the same thing with the
wolf blitzer thing he's like it's a refugee camp you know that there are a lot of refugees a lot
of innocent civilians men women and children in that refugee camp as well right this is the
tragedy of war wolf i mean we as you know we've been saying for days, move south. Civilians
that are not involved with Hamas, please move south.
I'm just trying to get a little bit more information. You knew there were civilians there. You knew
there were refugees, all sorts of refugees, but you decided to still drop a bomb on that
refugee camp attempting to kill the Hamas commander. By the way, was he killed?
attempting to kill the Samas commander.
By the way, was he killed?
I can't confirm yet.
There'll be more updated.
Yes, we know that he was killed.
About the civilians there,
we're doing everything we can to minimize.
I'll say it again.
Sadly, they are hiding themselves within.
I mean, it is wild for them to like... You're right, Aaron.
It's this very surreal experience to watch happen in real time where we all saw this the first three weeks of this.
We called it out and said, like, look, the IDF is lying about a lot of this.
This is all propaganda.
They have basically run the WMD mind war program and all of you have bought it hook line and sinker and like you are
going to wake up to the horror of this eventually and when you do like we're gonna be we're gonna
watch it all unless which is also it is also a possibility that like yes they have those moments
of consciousness and then they say well you know they bury it bury it deep like deep deep down and so that it can't resurface anymore
which will produce its own sort of like depraved fucking monsters full further down the road um
i just want to continue reading here the official said the administration is particularly worried
particularly worried about a narrative taking hold that biden supports all israeli
military actions and that u.s provided weapons have been used to kill palestinian civilians
many of them women and children the defense department has said the u.s is not putting
any limits or restrictions on the weapons it's providing israel secretary of state anthony
blinken delivered a planned more strident message thursday before he boarded his plane for a trip
to israel as we've said from
the start israel has not only the right but the obligation to defend itself uh we've also said
very clearly and repeatedly that how israel does this matters it's just i mean obviously it doesn't
i mean that obviously that second that second part of the sentence like just completely nullifies the
first part yeah like why like if they have the right to if they have the right to defend themselves then why would they go about it in a way that protects
palestinian lives right you know what i mean like if they think that they are i mean it's not that
they think they're fucking defending themselves they're very aware that they are ethnically
cleansing a population but yeah man again that's that's again that's sort of like that that like
liberal tautology you know that's sort of like of like that liberal tautology you know
that sort of like you can accept one thing
you know but then throw out another you know what I mean
I don't know man it's just
no you're right it is weird like
put yourself in their shoes for a second
like it's weird to think
this way but like imagine
you're wearing the inside
the inside out skin suit
imagine once again you don't even you don't
even have to do that man actually just put yourself in your own shoes maybe like 10 years
ago you're in your 20s or something you're hanging out with your boy and he's like yo i think i'm
gonna go shoot up this school and kill 40 to 50 kids under the age of 12 i bought all the guns to do it i have plans
i have fully wrote the manifesto i wrote the manifesto i'm ready for everything to go according
to plan in what world do you then just say ah he's probably kidding yeah he's probably just joking
it's like dude listen to it's the only explanation believe god remember believe the autocrat yeah remember that
like after trump got elected that essay that's going around believe the autocrat or you know or
you know to put it in therapy speak when somebody tells you who they are believable exactly exactly
exactly like we're a country that's had that same message drilled in our fucking heads every day for
the last 15 20 20 years, whatever.
And yet we're just like, yeah, maybe it shakes out different.
That's the mess of contradictions where we're dealing with here.
It's like we're dealing with Netanyahu, who is even a million times more bloodthirsty and an autocrat than even Trump.
And we've invoked the image of Putin to be that fearful autocrat in the vein of Trump.
So we're backing ukraine and so like just
in that sentence i've listed at least five or six different contradictory thoughts that i don't think
that any human being outside the robots at state department can like actually hold in their heads
no i guess i have to assume that blinken is a robot because of his very crude attempt to imitate
blues like hoochie Coochie Man.
Man, that is so bad.
Somebody pointed out, I think our buddy Mickey pointed out,
that Lee Atwater also fashioned himself a blues man.
So in a statement Thursday,
Senator Chris Murphy,
a member of the Foreign Relations Committee,
who, by the way, we covered on an episode,
I think right before this all popped off,
which, by the way, I was talking to Tom the other day,
very weird that our last episode,
it was a Patreon episode before this started,
I think it was October 5th,
was called The Nations of Gog and Magog are Rising Against Us.
We might be tapped in some forces we know not even what we're dealing with.
What were you cooking, man?
What did you know?
What did you know?
We were talking about Chris Murphy, though,
and how he was talking about the Ukrainian conflict
and about how the post-World War II order was at stake.
So if that gives you any inclination as to where our apocalyptic tone
has been coming from.
The signs were there even well before the Hamas attack.
Right.
Chris Murphy said,
It's time for Israel's friends to recognize that the current operational approach is causing an unacceptable level of civilian harm and does not appear likely to achieve the goal of permanently ending the threat from Hamas.
That's not the...
Go ahead.
It's just insane to me that
that's not the goal.
The goal is not about terrorism, dog.
It's not. You're right.
We can't see outside
those terms, though.
Yes, exactly.
They cannot see
that the goal here is to literally
target civilians.
Because, I don't know i i you know
what i'm saying like that's that is what is going on here is they've made their plans clear as a
bell and again i didn't graduate from the harvard kennedy school of government anything but it seems
pretty clear to me that what they're trying to do is use this hamas attack as pretense to liquidate as many
palestinians as they can before they remove all that remain into egypt sign out whatever these
like fucking tent camps that they've got planned this is we're in the throes of the final solution
and what they're doing right now is trying to cut their fucking overhead.
Yeah.
Dude, what else do you call it?
And guess who's paying?
We're all paying the fucking bill.
Yeah, we're all paying the bill.
Exactly.
I mean, what do you call it when you're ending entire family lines, entire family lineages?
Yes.
That is Holocaust shit. shit dog did y'all see did y'all see i think that the the um the the school the year of um
2023 for the this palestinian um um i guess uh i don't know if it's a high school or school
has been completely just canceled like the class of 2023 because yeah like all the students are
dead you know that's fucking insane dog that's insane yeah i mean and and to just give you
further whiplash just to go back to this article, it says, with the war expected to go on for some time, some administration officials expect differences between the administration and Israel over how military actions are being carried out to only intensify.
And the official said administration officials continue to worry that persistent Israeli attacks killing Palestinian civilians risk fanning wider unrest in the middle east while derailing biden's other foreign policy efforts um this is the sentence
that just fucking mind-boggling uh a former senior u.s official familiar with the discussions inside
the white house said the reality is setting in on how long it's going to be and how hard it's going
to be it's like the reality is just now.
It's November 3rd.
We're recording this on November fucking 3rd.
The reality is just now setting in.
8,000 plus people dead.
You know what I mean?
Well, is the reality just now setting in?
Because Biden, you know, went to the treasurer secretary
and was like, hey, can we afford this?
And she crunched the numbers.
Like, yeah, we could.
I'd have to move a couple things around, but yeah.
Just part of the reason why people were so, it's like everyone had deferred the reality of this in the moments after October 7th.
Part of the reason why so many people wanted to scold the left for seemingly not only endorsing Hamas,
but claiming it as a part of the leftist proletarian struggle and all this,
it's like, no, part of the support, you want to call it that,
was because we all knew that this was going to be a long-term thing now.
You think that Hamas was just going to attack and then things were just going to be chill it's just like that we knew that like this would be
disproportionately meted out and taken out on the civilians of gaza and that's why it required
an unqualified confident uh declaration of support for the cause as a whole without any fucking uh qualifications or
all these like little checkbox rubik cube thing you have to check off i mean they get that we
all knew that because we deal with reality it's like i said on the fucking patreon episodes
we're the ones dealing with reality the liberals are the ones dealing with the illusion
conservatives are dealing with the spectacle exactly it's just like it's it's just wild to me that like that they're that off taken
off guard i don't know administration officials are realizing the united states is increasingly
going to get off isolated the former official said there's no obvious way to avoid that and
it affects everything they do uh an administration official pushing back against the notion
that the U.S. could become isolated said there are no signs that it's happening
or of Biden's foreign policy priorities getting derailed.
Buddy.
I mean, like, you know what?
Bolivia, I think, severed diplomatic ties with Israel.
But, of course, in the United States, in Israel's mind,
like, Bolivia is not a real country.
It doesn't matter.
Right.
They don't give a shit. It's not a Western
democracy. Yeah, Chile
with their socialist president.
Who cares if they, you know, whatever.
Yeah, you're right.
Administration
officials say that while
Biden's support for Israel is unwavering, his
approach is also more nuanced than that of
his predecessor, President Trump.
Trump's backing of
israel was not paired with requests for restraint or support for the palestinians while he was in
office though he was critical of the israeli government in the days after the october yo bro
yo these motherfuckers love words dog they love words they love to say things like despite the
actual facts on the ground that we are funding this shit that we are biden did genocide denial
dude i saw this i saw this um i think alexander avinia had tweeted this this um i don't know
what article it was from but it was this quote where someone said like this aide was saying
but biden is strong in his reaffirmation for like the arab like um and muslim community it's just like dude yeah because he saw
he pissed michigan away and he's got an election to win next year yeah they love words man they
love words you may tell you what they sound like when you just said that like like they all sound
like ronald reagan talking about iran contra right my heart, I believe that we weren't selling weapons,
but the facts bear out something different.
You know what I mean?
It's like just contorting yourself
in the weirdest fucking word salad position.
It's what John Fetterman's doing.
It is wild.
It's like you said, Terrence, it's the illusion.
They're dealing with the illusion, you know?
I mean, Reagan is, like, by today's standards reagan is a liberal you know what i'm saying like reagan if you took him
out of that time and placed him in current moment he would just be like a mitt romney like exactly
exactly uh which is insane goes to the show how far right this country is going um he made a
biden said he uh biden made a muted
reference to protecting palestinian civilians in the process noting he and but not yahoo discussed
the need for democracies to act according to the rule of law uh that's another weird thing
like they keep referring to israel as a democracy yeah like palestinians can't vote you know they
have a different justice system a meal they get a military like you know
what I mean court is that like it's just
insane this is a thing that we're gonna
have to start digging into I think on
future episodes and in this the current
discourse in general it's just that like
what is a nation what is a nation state
what is the process of building a nation
state what is democracy you know I mean
like these this brings up all these
questions that perhaps are not they
don't make sense necessarily to like start digging into them right now.
But this does bring up a lot of things that question our priors,
in my opinion.
And anyways,
privately Biden has said he believes Israel will follow the law.
Oh my fucking God.
Oh man.
There's no way he believes that.
I mean, like we all see let me did y'all see this thing that was good i don't mean to cut you off terrence i just did you see the thing where uh uh joe biden watched the new mission
impossible and became weary of uh ai more so than he was did you see that like headline going around i didn't see that and it's like i
wonder like is it an unintended consequence of the rise of ai and deep fakes and all that stuff
to like break our brains and obscure like realities in reporting this way or is it intentional like
sort of inherent in like the rise of that yeah i wonder yeah yeah yeah it's almost like the guys that um
not to get too too straight far away from the uh the topic but it's about it's like guys who
um say that they're concerned like tech guys right who tech bros who say they're concerned
about ai but like they are funding and research doing research with ai you know it's like it's
like a self-fulfilling one even married one didn't it's like i'm terrified of my beloved wife
go ahead go ahead no i wasn't gonna say anything else no i just i'm just reminded too of them
for some reason i just have i think the perfect image for biden's like a
presidency you know there's always like a defining moment that i think crystallizes at least for me
um um a president their ethos their legacy remember when he was looking at that quantum
computer the ibm quantum computer he was just completely just like what the fuck is this as a
guy who came up at a time when okay people did
have running water electricity but i'm saying like you know what i mean like coming at a time
when like a computer was the size of a fucking room that was used to write german codes
again just thrust into history just completely just amazed like a child or a dog or some or
puppy or something like that he's like mr burns from from The Simpsons when he has his hour a day of sentience.
Well, that's why him and both Trump, both of them together are emblematic of just the
decayed ideological priors, the decayed ideological structures, everything being forced into this
moment of now.
You know what I'm saying?
They're both completely unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with it that's why i have some genuine concerns about how the
election will go next year i mean this sounds completely fucking like tinfoil hat shit but i
really can see a scenario where like the joint chiefs of staff is just like well we're gonna
postpone election they see that b Biden doesn't have a path forward.
They won't let Trump, like the guy who tried to overturn an election, like he's not getting back in.
I can see them being like, for the sake of national security, just like in the pandemic, we have to postpone elections.
And we'll hold them.
Just don't worry about it.
And they just keep postponing.
And the Supreme Court will sanction it and be like, yeah, it's fine.
Yeah, right, right.
I mean, I know how ridiculous ridiculous it sounds i don't really believe
that but i just say it as an as an example of how it feels very much to me like these things are not
solid anymore everything is liquid everything is totally liquid it's like everything seems like
it's sort of like just fluid fluid everything is like not as
concrete as it was the previous day also terence i want to say um and you know listeners i might be
uh i might be wrong about this in terms of the details but i think there's precedence for your
concern right um i mean the plot against america right the business plot against america like
you know an actual coup you know so i don't think you're far off, man.
Honestly.
It's a thing.
But that's the thing.
There's no backbench in either parties.
Who would be able to come forth and reconcile the contradictions?
You know what I mean?
There's not even a Bonapartist option here.
I guess all I can see is just a classic junta yeah we just need a classic junta again um well that that
pretty much sums up the article i mean the article just ends with like how biden got managed to talk
netanyahu into allowing like one truck of aid one truck full of aid come through
and this is a victory this is a victory to them and this is something that see this is exactly
what you were saying before where or that aid had said where we want to we want to be able to
point back at past statements you know that we weren't in the wrong they want to point back well
we let like one measly truck go through right like one single gallon of fuel in it you know
yeah we we uh we provided upwards of dozens of gossens
with cornflakes and toilet paper.
God.
I mean, it's the same shit you saw after the flood.
It's all we saw during the mountaintop removal years.
It's like they'll stop one permit and be like,
look at all the shit we've accomplished.
And then they'll gaslight you and make you feel insane
when you're like, this is nothing.
This is pit.
Oh, well, you're negative.
Yeah.
And if you're too negative,
you'll scare off the people who can actually help us.
Dude, fuck them.
There is no one that can help us.
Obviously, not even fucking Bernie.
The Calvary is not coming, people.
It is not coming.
I know this is a facile point, but I mean, libs, I mean, they want to look good while they do evil shit, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, they want to look the best as possible while they are sanctioning, funding the slaughter of Palestinians.
Other than Fetterman, who's like sort of made it his thing to look like as much you know look as shitty as possible
exactly exactly
horror actually yeah he's almost
exemplifying like visual representation
of how horrific this is
did you see where this man made merch
about
John Fetterman's body double because
he was getting so much shit he made
so epic and crazy
bro dude I mean this man used the Americans with Disabilities Act so he could wear goddamn He was getting so much shit. He made merch about it. Dude, that's so epic and crazy, bro.
Dude, I mean... Dude, this man used the Americans with Disabilities Act
so he could wear goddamn N1 shorts to cast a vote.
This is pathetic.
Yeah, when Mike cries to get extra time on the SATs
for having a small penis,
whenever I lodged those complaints, they went unheard.
Should have got a left-handed desk for that shit oh man dude does the amount the amount of uh
heartlessness moral depravity it's like it will it will haunt them i mean people people again people try to say no it won't they have no souls they do they're just it's just
that their souls are extremely compromised and fragmented into a million little pieces
on their deathbeds when all of those pieces finally reassemble in a line before the fucking
dmt kicks in it will come back and hit them with horror and they will die from the horror itself
more so than like old age or illness or whatever it is like they will die from the horror itself more so than like old age or illness or whatever
it is like they will die from shock of horror i just i just want to caution people to not dehumanize
anyone not even the fucking most genociding like atrocious people these are all humans and that is
what's terrifying it's not that like that's it that's what ideology is people like
this is this is what having a materialist conception of the world is that like ideology
is real and it can lead you to this point like and that's that was the thing during like the
george floyd years too it's like oh they're you know you can't you can't humanize cops and
everything but i think it's actually imperative to humanize all of these systems and these people because it shows how actually horrific it is.
Yeah.
That's such a good point, man, because I mean, I'm going to call these people sociopaths are human, but like monsters.
Right. absolves them of any not only responsibility but sort of um like social relations and political
economy you know because like it's easy to say well this person's just depraved instead of saying
well somebody had to sit down as a human being and make these actual decisions that they thought
were rational to do so you know of course they're evil but like like it's almost like othering them
in that in that in that way sort of like lets them off the hook you
know yeah it makes it seem like they're aliens that have like dropped in from like sort of external
social relations and you know what i'm saying like no we are all bound up together in this thing
it's the point i was trying to make on the unlocked episode like that is the human experiment
like we are all in this torrent together and like you know we don't we don't know what it's like to
live before we are alive
or after we are alive. We're just here for a brief
moment and we try to affect it in our own way.
In fact, our whole deal is
about being on intimate terms with death.
Yeah. That's why we're called humans.
It's Latin for to bury.
You know,
humando, to bury, a burial.
That's right.
So, you know, just gotta keep all that in mind uh
it's like we said at the beginning of this this is a marathon not a sprint um
but uh it is very it is very difficult nonetheless um so i guess there is this rally in d this weekend. We're recording this on November 3rd.
I think the rally is on the 4th.
Uh, so, uh, if you're going, um, you know, be good to each other, uh, and, uh, take care
of each other.
And I wish I could be there.
Um, but I doubt my fucking piece of shit truck would even make it to DC at this
point.
I'll be up there.
I'm leaving tonight.
I'll be up there.
So I'll come back with,
get the official,
I guess,
what is it?
DC correspondent,
you know,
I'll,
I'll come back with a hell.
Yeah.
Some,
and,
and if you can come join us at the Capitol on Tuesday.
We're going to march on the Capitol on Tuesday in the bluegrass state here.
Kentucky Capitol.
The Kentucky Capitol.
Frank Fort.
Not being two days late for the big one.
Is that Election Day, Tom?
Was that the...
Is that March on election day?
It may be
I think it is
Wow
Yeah
On election day
Yeah so
And I think they changed the time
I think it was noon
But I think it's three now
I see
So
Yeah
Well
There's a lot of stuff going on
And I encourage you all to plug in with each other
Don't allow yourselves to become alienated.
And I don't know.
It's a very fruitful time for discussion and theorizing and learning about history as well.
So, yeah, I mean, like, you know, talk to other people.
Be in communication with other people.
You can go check us out on Patreon.
We have premium content over there that you are probably going to want to check out.
We unlocked one of our episodes, but there's more like that at our Patreon.
So please go check that out.
It's very cheap.
It's only $5 a month, which is hardly anything in my opinion.
Cheaper than a cup of coffee.
That's what I'm saying.
Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com
slash Trailbilly Workers Party.
It's good.
Check that out.
Sign up.
In the meantime,
I guess we'll be back on
with the premium episode
this weekend.
And until then,
we hope to see you all later.
Bye.
Peace out. one later. Bye. Thank you.