Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 332: Pop Up Planet

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

This week (following some light banter) we discuss Aaron Bushnell, and all of the discourse surrounding his act of self-immolation. Plenty of mental health issues packed into this one, so please be patient and remember that none of the opinions you hear expressed here are endorsed by the Trillbillies podcast. Thank you Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Dude, okay, what I like so much about the Willy Wonka pop-up thing is it's like... Can I just say that it's only the second month of 2024, and that is already the most whimsical, funniest story that I've probably seen in quite a bit, actually. What even is it? It's like, is this, okay, I was telling Tom, this opened up a whole new universe for me. Like, I didn't know that this was a thing. I could tell somebody didn't grow up around Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

There's always some sort of roadside attraction that promised more than it delivered. Yeah. You just walk in. It's a guy sitting down at a corner of the chair. Really sad. You're like, Oh,

what is this? Well, I didn't know you could do it off of like existing IP. Like you can just do anything. Well, I mean, it's really long in the public domain. I mean,

it would be really funny though if whoever owns willie wonka i don't even know what candy company be really funny if they tried to crack down on you though is it as the raw doll estate like when was charlie the chocolate factory written probably in the 50s or 60s or so it's probably definitely not in the back when everybody ate tons of candy yeah but i think i think willie walker though is also like branded as a chalk like a chocolate brand right someone bought like a confections company isn't it right yeah there are like they make nerds right and like yeah yeah they've made yeah it's a thing where they've made the fictional thing real i think it's like a subsidiary of nestle or something

like that but yeah they've like licensed the name and stuff, I guess, to brand certain candies. Well, okay. This is what... I love how half-assed that thing was, right? It's like what we're referring to, for those of you who don't know, it was like this thing going around on Twitter where... Where was it at, Aaron? I think it's in the UK.

Okay. I think it's in the UK. I don't know where in the UK. Of course. But it was somewhere in the UK. Okay. I think it's in the UK. I don't know where in the UK. Of course. But it's somewhere in the UK. That makes so much sense now because I- That's where it all starts. I saw someone like just this haggard looking lady standing behind what looked like a potions

counter. And like only in the UK would you see that. Like Americans don't know. We don't know about potions over here really. Nah, we don't know about potions or sorcery. I think- Yeah, okay. What do we know about potions over here, really. No, we don't know about potions or sorcery. I think, yeah, what do we know about? I went to the Fayette Mall yesterday for the first time in a long time trying to find a pair of running shoes, and I didn't find any.

But I went through Macy's, and I did see some of those same people you speak of at the perfume counters. Yeah. That was my first thought. I was like, okay, we've not given up on potions entirely. I mean, we don't lean into them to cure our cancer like, you know,

King Charles is now. Yeah, but like potions as an aesthetic, like what's potion core? We need potion core. We need potion core. Like you walk into a room and fog comes with you. Like a mist? Like a carpet of mist? Yeah, and like you, a carpet and fog comes with you like a carpet of mist yeah and like you a carpet of mist

comes with you and instead of holding a six pack of beer you're holding a six pack of potions like all right the party has arrived like these glass orbs that have like corks in them you pull out instead of like texting on your iPhone,

you're like texting on your glass orb. Your glass orb. You gotta run with the Marianne Williamson campaign or like hang out with Alan Moore sometime. Go see Fleetwood Mac's residency, you know? That's when you'll see Potion Corps. You know it when you see it. I imagine college culture would be so

much different let me imagine doing a keg stand of potions potions of a cauldron a cauldron stand a cauldron stand you know like uh very dangerous hazing ritual. It has killed many a freshman. I can see the young generation who's kind of punted on sex and booze. And good on them. Well, not, eh, I don't know. Half of that. Retraction. Bunch of dweebs.

Anyway. Yeah, I can see them getting into the, you know, the, what do you call it, cauldron stands. Yeah, you mean like the D&D motherfuckers? And no hate to the D&D motherfuckers. I'm a nerd myself. I don't play D&D, but no hate, though. No, the best way to be is play Magic the Gathering, but also get some pussy. Yeah.

Get your mannequin. They're not mutually exclusive. You just, you know. Well, you know what? One hampers the other, perhaps in certain contexts, but not if you don't let it. Yeah. Well, if there's anybody out there, any listener that is willing to be the vanguard of bringing Potion Core to the forefront, I think being a nerd is cool again, man. You know, you might have an in for that, you know.

What I'm describing is beyond just being a nerd like um it's and it's beyond just alan moore magic too you talk about like actual transmogrification i'm talking about actual alchemy yeah we're talking about that full-on dabbling in you know the metallurg arts. Yeah, if you don't have an obsidian glass stone that you show all your boys. All of you sit around staring into the obsidian glass, like seeing your double self from the other realm. And then you're like, it kind of makes you think, doesn't it, fellas? There's a public face and a private face, and it's both reflected back to us in this obsidian gem. face and a private face and it's both reflected back to us in this obsidian gym we'd be like yo everyone pass it around to see your future self into reflection and you get it and there's nothing there okay like the so the willy wonka thing

it seems like there was some breakdown in communication at some point because it like the willy wonka wonka pop-up that everyone was referencing it seemed like you walked into like an old abandoned warehouse and i didn't see any oompa loompas there was people making potions but there was some kind of breakdown in communication to where like it's like it wasn't clear if they knew that they made candy at the willy wonka factory like they were like and they also didn't get everything they didn't get all their they were supposed to get um certain supplies you know right like a vacuum cleaner for example because i guess willy wonka was supposed to vacuum

um um the unknown man or something which no it's not exactly and it like there was no vacuum and the comedian who's supposed to be willy wonka was like, I just had to work with what I had, you know. I mean, yes, it seemed like they thought that at Willy Wonka's factory they just made various potions and that Willy Wonka spent all of his time vacuuming nerds out of the carpet. Yeah, vacuuming nerds. And so, like, I mean, again, this opened up a whole new universe to me. It's like I didn't know that you could do that stuff. Like, I think. That you could rip people off? i did okay you could that's one way to view it aaron you could view it as them ripping people off another way to view it is that it's amazing outsider art like yeah terrence

floated this idea to me last night and he and he referenced this guy back home that would do these elaborate stand-up sets that were literally just him reciting verbatim Seinfeld scripts. But it was like, imagine doing Seinfeld as a one-man show. Yeah. And it was just him playing every character in the script while occasionally interjecting some local flavor. And by that, what I mean is he'll just be doing like a riff where he's like Jerry and then he's Kramer. And then he'll look out to the audience and just like say something about somebody that's in the audience. Like, for example, there's so for example there's this girl caitlin there one day and so right in the middle of his of his monologue he just says it caitlin only dates the

guys that make the money and then right back to seinfeld terence is thinking it is like that level of a troll yeah i think yeah i think it's like that level of outsider art. Like you have to view it like, like look at it this way. Like I have these friends that have a young daughter, right? And like I go over there and she's watching YouTube, like the tablet. And the videos that kids watch these days are fucking absolutely schizophrenic insane, right? It's like Spider know spider-man with like captain hook with like wario and they're like harry potter they're all having an orgy

yeah it's like rainbows and shit coming out of them and shit like that when they orgasm and you're just like what the fuck is this this is demonic yes it's like that it's like i was watching the willie wonka thing and i was like, well, at least it's not YouTube. Like, at least, it's like so half-assed, but at least it's in person. Because, like, I was thinking about this, like. That's a good point, actually. Like, 150, 200 years ago, like, you'd see, like, a roadside theater production or something, right? And they would be doing, like, probably that.

They'd probably be doing like Shakespeare mixed with like, I look right there, it's Liam, he's got all the money. Like they mix in local flavor, local color with old school. Like tried and true. Yeah. So I was like, I was watching the Willy Wonka thing and I was like, man, you could do this with anything. Because like there was one video, I don't you could do this with anything. Because there was one video. I don't even know what this was about.

There was one video of a guy wearing a platinum silver mask. A silver mask. It was so fucking awesome. Yeah, they added new characters to the universe. And he just comes out of the walls. He was terrified. And one of the kids was like, no. I'm just saying like dude there's no you know you know what it reminds me of it i'm thinking of uh y'all know the uh was it the situations international

you know these were the dudes who uh created situations so these were like i mean i don't even know how to really describe them i guess they were like artistic acts you know um i guess visual or otherwise where they kind of created a rupture you know in capitalist the psychogeography yeah capitalist society you know what i mean i'm probably getting like wait people like what the fuck is he talking about but no this is what it would this is what i feel like this would kind of be you know what i mean i feel like this and like you said instead of having their kids glued to a tablet watching youtube you know you can be out in the real world and also get a doubly schizophrenic probably scarring experience you know what i mean can

i tell you i have a little vision for how i would have done the pop-up okay here's how i would play here's here would have been the big payoff so you go through i would still have all the half-assed stuff would it be willy wonka team still yeah yeah yeah okay i'd still have all the half-assed stuff. Would it be Willy Wonka themed still? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'd still have all the half-assed stuff. But at the end, when you and the boys are done doing the tour of the weird makeshift and seeing that depressed-ass Oompa Loompa woman that's the bartender. That's kind of like the new Robert England smoking cigarettes in the Freddy Krueger costume. At the end, here's what I would have had set up. I would have had the bed that Uncle Joe and his aunts and uncles.

They all slept in? Yeah. Yeah. And you and the boys get to take your picture wrapping legs in that same kind of configuration. I've always thought that was cozy as hell. It did look pretty tight. That's one of my big takeaways from Willy Wonka is like, if I could just lay in a cuddle puddle with a bunch of my close friends like that.

I mean, without the connotation that oppressive poverty is what's forced them to have to sleep like that. Oppressed them to pack like sardines. But like, you know, like when you ride a roller coaster, they take that picture of you throwing your arms up in the air. The big payoff would be you and the boys get a picture of y'all just like laying in a little cuddle puddle at the end like yeah do you do you get to wear the the pajamas that they have from the movie too yeah and with a stocking cap yeah yeah you get lice and like bed bugs yeah y'all all get to lay there on your honk shoe honk shoe me me me me shit you know i i will i will say too to though I'll uh I'll give credit to that woman the woman we're talking about because I saw pictures other pictures

that showed that she's tried the best that she could to have a good time with the kids like there were a couple nice pictures for smiling and stuff like that you know and it was just like I mean you know I guess the the big make the best of what you got you you know what I mean? She did the best she could do with it. I thought it was funny they showed the, like they just had the different like lollipops and rainbows, like little, like, you know,

signage on the walls and stuff. It would just like kind of fall down. Just like some British kid, to be fair though, like I feel like your average British child, they're not going to perceive that what you're doing is that half-assed. You know what I mean? What was all this shot here? It's an absolute shot.

Imagine if that was your child. Imagine if you had a kid that was like, What was all this absolute shot? You have to punish him. You're just making me think like you're an American couple shot Punish him you're what you're just making me think like you're an American couple and you have a job Like dude, I would be so fucking pissed if my child was British. Oh, my God. That would suck so bad.

It'd be so annoying. That would suck. This ain't Willy Wonka. You're from Kansas. Shut up. Quit talking. Waste a golden ticket. Never even drink a cup of tea.

Stop. Since we're in the UK, what would Jimmy Pages or Prime Minister Jimmy Pages He would have to crack down on this. We're getting reports

from all corners of the island. We're going to hold a special session in Parliament. We're going to a special session in Parliament. We're gonna kick the helmet. Oh, man. That's another one that only makes sense

if you're subscribed to Patreon. That's why I did it. Patreon.com. Here's the thing. This is why I say it opened up a whole universe to me though like you could use all kinds of like ip for this like i was thinking about um a pop-up of the film franchise the hangover okay um but like it's half-assed it's got all the characters of the hangover like the

naked japanese guy i only saw the first one in like the first 10 minutes of the second one but i assume pretty much it sums up i think the whole franchise like it's got heather graham and it's got the dude from the office the guy with the glasses and bradley cooper who by the way i was thinking about would it be the actual actors or would it be just like just joes it'd be their characters okay it'd be their knockoff okay but it's half-assed and so i was like what would a half-assed hangover what would what a half-assed pop-up of the hangover be and it's like it's basically it's very sober and not crazy at all. It's just totally normal and chill.

There's like no crazy things happening. There's not even any booze there. There's not any booze. It's like, hey guys, what's up? Is this the hangover pop-up? I was coming for a party. Yeah, this is it. Mike Tyson, that's another character in there, and a party yeah this is it mike tyson uh that's another

character in there and a tiger but it's like your cat it's like a house cat that you dress like an old lady in a cat yeah like your neighbor cat there's a tiger in the bathroom man i just was thinking about that because bradley cooper's in the news right now because he he said um he said uh he didn't love his daughter at first he didn't he didn't know her he was just like he didn't love her hold on a second he didn't just say he didn't love her he volunteered this man fixed his mouth to volunteer this information but if somebody would have showed up with a gun like i don't know like maybe it'd been fine for them to kill my daughter that's what he said he didn't say the kill my daughter part but he did say

but if somebody would show up with a gun i don't know i don't know like maybe i don't maybe i don't maybe i don't care i want to tell y'all something so it's a deal at a certain point you know there's that line in true detective season one that as i draw closer to middle age i think about a lot is that past a certain point a man without a family can be a bad thing past a certain point a man in the arts can be a bad thing you can be too into the arts that's why i find bradley cooper a fascinating individual because he started in The Hangover. I mean, he was in like Wet Hot American Summer and stuff, but I feel like he blew up with The Hangover. Yeah, he was in Wedding Crashers.

Oh, he was. He was in a lot of those kind of early. He was like the douchey guy in Wedding Crashers. And then he did that movie with Jennifer Lawrence, something playbook. Silver Linings. Yeah, but I guess that was afterwards though that was to him what uh dallas buyers club was to matthew mcconaughey you know matthew mcconaughey went from rom-com king to like serious art from reign of fire yeah bradley cooper went from like what they call the frat pack flicks to

serious actor now he's going for serious auteur, which is a fool's errand. Uh-huh. I'll tell you something. Totally. That's a fool's errand. Connect this back to the Willy Wonka thing. I like how things are so bad artistically

that I've rationalized how the Willy Wonka thing is actually good. It's because, you know why? Because it's at least interesting. It's at least interesting. It's interesting and it's organic you know i think i think okay so i think you know there's a point too um in that story that i thought was interesting i think that um a lot of people were tricked because of the ai promotional material you know which is like i think i think yeah i think some of it had like i mean i don't

know why you wouldn't just use promotional material i mean i guess copyright issues right from the film or whatever but sure but like i think a lot of it was like generative ai you know promotional material you know for the pop-up yeah for the pop-up so when people showed up you know i see yeah they showed up and they were just like i mean so whenever you i mean dude this is like the classic, like the classic, like a kind of like, you know, like a go around, right? Like it's like, it's like looking at like an ad for McDonald's or something and the burger's juicy, you know, and dripping, you know what I mean? These are special lenses to really get in there. But in reality.

In reality, it looks like it was cooked under some guy's arm for like eight hours. Right, right. Been sitting under a hot lamp for 12 hours. Exactly, yeah. guys are for like eight hours been sitting under a hot lamp for 12 hours exactly yeah yeah that is the thing it's like real life weirdly enough is kind of imitating the ai produced art online but it can't quite get there so there's a huge disconnect, right? Because real life will always be extremely messy and whimsical and unpredictable. Unpredictable for sure. And so you'll have this massive gap between the real simulated hyped up version of something and the actual implementation and execution of something.

And that's why we need to hang over pop up everywhere we go i agree with that i agree with that one one one lingering question i have about the wonka pop up is did we ever get to the bottom of the guy that pops out of the wall like the like like is he in the lore somewhere that I wasn't paying attention to? Is he hanging in the background of one of the shots in the movie? This is what I'm saying. With the Hangover pop-up, you can introduce all kinds of characters like that. That's true.

You can have an extended universe. Yeah, like characters that are mashups of other characters, and they're not in the original thing itself, but like the judge from Blood Meridian, he could be in the hangover pop-up. He could be in that gong. He's a completely glabrous figure. No hair on his head or eyebrows or anything like that.

Evander Holyfield, who Mike Tyson bit his ear off, would be there with just a doll. You know, you just kind of tweak it, you think. field who who mike tyson bit his ear off instead of instead of mike tyson yeah instead you know you just kind of tweak if you think yeah you can change the races too that's what i was thinking too you know like instead of like you know what i mean like i mean that might i mean nobody would get upset you know people get i'm thinking people get upset about like oh you made spider-man black they'll be like well you made that white guy from the hangover black now i can't watch it yeah you should we should that the zach galifianakis character should be black a hundred percent agree okay i'm gonna be totally honest with you guys i

watched it last night i watched that why it's on your mind yeah well like i was thinking about the bradley cooper thing and i was like how did this guy get famous i'm gonna have to go back to the source the original source that's how i watched it i went to the hangover one through three no just the first one and i didn't even make it all the way through but do you guys remember like how you felt when you first watched it like the first five minutes bradley the first this scene opens up with bradley cooper and he's like we're not gonna make it to the hangover and she's like no and you're ending make it to the hangover. And she's like, no. And then you're like, oh, man. This is crazy.

Some crazy stuff's about to... No! Well, the influence of that movie looms large because every group of old college friends tries to recreate that without a hint of irony. I'm convinced that movie became the blueprint for the IDFf sense of humor in god if you look at it if you want just the boys have a fun that's the that's the sense of

humor that all those like fascists like yeah you know what i'm saying like that's the sense of humor they have they think that that's what like humor is that's liberal fast humor it's like a quirky it's like an offshoot of quirky fascism you know yeah but it's like it's like embodied in this sort of like very like i mean i don't even know man like this very quirky self-awareness you know but it's just the boys hanging out though you know what i mean yeah we're just odd and we're gonna do wild shit you know and we're gonna record it you know what i mean that's the thing it's yeah every friend group has tried to recreate that over the years for like the one time a year they get together and like what happens is everybody like passes out by one o'clock or whatever there's no tiger

there's no mike tyson there's not even a trip to thailand involved no it's usually just going to a casino and just kind of having remember when conversations till you get too sleepy to stay up any longer that's the hangover pop up but you could add like you could add like Beelzebub or some shit Satan himself

demonic chimerical figure add the girl from the ring crawls out of a television forces you to like view your entire life and all the pain you've caused others and brother that is that is the hangover brother this is the ultimate hangover that's the ultimate what's the premise of the third one where do they go in the third one. Where do they go in the third one? Isn't that the Thailand one? They get sober in the third one. Yeah, yeah.

They go to rehab. They go to rehab. Yeah. I don't know. The second one was Thailand. Yeah, they dry up the third one. It's just... It's just lead north.

They actually do exactly what you're talking about, Terrence. In the third one, they do the hangover pop-up. The hangover three is alternatively titled Silver Linings Playbook. That is hangover three. That is Hangover 3. That's Hangover 3. Hangover 3.5? This is one of the most depressing things I've ever read in my life. What happened?

In a mid-credit scene, this is on Hangover 3. Jesus Christ. In a mid-credit scene The Wolfpack plus Cassie Who even knows who that is Appear to have staged another wild party They can't remember Stu awakens to find himself wearing a pink lady's thong And now has breast implants

Alan remembers that the wedding cake Was a gift from Chow The chain-smoking Bangkok monkey Drops from a ceiling onto Stu Chow emerges from a bathroom naked carrying a katana what the fuck yo dude that's that's just like oh man what what year did that come out 2013 that means the first one came out in 2009 that means that the um that's four years that means that your entire college if you entered college in 2009

and graduated in 2013, You saw all of them. you could mark your entire college experience by the hangover. So like by the second one, like, you know, you're maturing a little bit. By the third one,

it comes out and you're like a fully mature adult. You still love the hangover. Yeah. You still love that shit. You're like, oh no, Stu has titties now

and there's this chain-smoking monkey and a katana. I wonder if there was like guys like us back in the 80s sitting around like just too cool for the National Lampoon movies,

you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, yeah, and the little droll that they go on a Euro vacation or something you know that was us we could have been national infants the the funny thing is like all those national

then poon guys went to harvard look at us we're doing smart comedy and i went to state college tom went to state college and i went to community college and dropped out. We're doing smart comedy here. We're doing smart comedy. We're doing Jimmy Page. This is high concept stuff though, you know. Well, so okay. So let's talk about.

Let's get down to brass tacks. Yeah, let's talk about this stuff from this week, all right. So this week. All right. So this week we've got, I don't even know where to begin. There's a number of things. There is a number of things. There are a number of terrible things. I'll just throw them all out on the table like they're my wares. And you all can decide.

There's Michigan primary. There's Trump and Biden going down to the border. all out on the table like they're my wares and you all can decide there's michigan primary there's trump and biden going down to the border on the same day to give speech stump speeches together or separate separate oh man they're going to do it yeah they're not doing a duet they're going to separate places um but uh then there is the self-immolation of aaron bushnell there is the just this morning uh a chaotic incident in guise according according to the to cnn according to like every major news outlet according to cnn this is like the blast so this is like the blast now yeah the blast everyone keeps saying chaos this is chaos this is chaotic like the new york times said it the bbc said it this morning these people are fucking oh my god so like yeah like let's just start from the beginning all right um the first thing that

happened this week that like really kind of kicked off the week, the tone of the week and the, and the events of the week was the emulation of, um, Aaron Bushnell outside the Israeli embassy in DC. Okay. I want to talk to you guys about this. This was an extremely like, um,

the, the discourse that this initiated was utterly absurd in every way. I mean, you had people debating for days whether it was good or bad for someone to do something like this. Like, oh, this is not the look, fam. Yeah. Okay, let me just say this. not the look fam like it's okay let me just say this i have known for a long time just because i've been in therapy for a long time and like the things i've said to various therapists and seeing their reactions the ungodly things the ungodly things that i hope no one ever remembers

that i said i have realized for a while now that like at eventually a certain point the therapy industry and all of its like paradigmatic modalities cbt say that 10 times fast paradigmatic modality say it with that's fun to say yeah i like that i knew it would eventually run up against the hard limitations of like the apocalypse that we're entering right because like there's only so much like cbt you can do there's only like so much like sintering you can do to like inure yourself to the you know onslaught on our lives to the the gradual grinding down and wearing down i mean really you're not like a mosquito in amber right you can, you're not immune from all of these external, sorry to cut you off, Terrence, but exactly.

Exactly. No, you're exactly right. Like, honestly. And Terrence was like, for that reason, I quit going. It's a joke, but I really did. I really did stop going. Mostly just because in therapy, there is a red line everyone knows this there's one there's one line you can never cross there's and if you even hint at it you get a wellness check kicking down

your door at 3 a.m that red line is obviously suicide okay which makes sense uh because i guess if you're a therapist and your patient kills himself, then... I mean, that would be like a fireman who can't put out a house. You know what I mean? A fireman who loves fire. Exactly. A pyromaniac fireman. It's like your therapist telling you, you know what, actually, you know, we should go home and sit on that maybe, you know?

If you really want to. It does seem to um i don't know quite how to articulate this but it does seem i can't even believe i i don't even really had to say this it does seem like in the last 30 or 40 years the concept of suicide has become and i'm sorry for discussing suicide on this week's show but the concept of it has become, and I'm sorry for discussing suicide on this week's show, but the concept of it has become so melded and fused to the concept of mental health that it would be inconceivable that anyone would do it outside of any kind

of mental impairment of any kind, right? Any mental health episode or something. Like the idea that you would give your life up for something greater than yourself has become axiomatically defined as the act of an insane person or a crazy person. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

It's a delicate thing. You know, right? Especially in a death-defying culture such as our own that also is cowardly. Yeah, I'm not trying... And I'm not saying those of us that remain are cowards

because we're not self-immolating or doing something like that. That's not what I'm saying at all. And I'm not even saying that, like, you know, obviously, it's more ideal to have people with us, you know us that say these things and all that kind of stuff. I'm not saying those things. But what I am saying is that we have so – and part of this is tied into kind of what you were saying too, Terrence,

and I think we'll probably circle back to it. and I think we'll probably circle back to it, but we are so averse to discomfort that we have turned into, like, you know, like, I hate to sound like one of those conservatives, like, we're just a nation of fucking pussies and snowflakes and all that kind of stuff. It's not that.

It's not that. We so run from discomfort, and we so chase the dopamine hits and all that kind of stuff, that, like, it's our whole existence now. You know what what i mean it's just instant gratification i'm not pointing out anything this is not a novel thing to point out that we just can't wrap our heads around somebody actually doing something from a position of principle rather than like they must be off their meds or whatever right you know exactly well i mean this is what you know i was

thinking of john brown because uh i saw this insane tweet man um that i'm still thinking about man this uh this guy like from that would you say i'm still reading from that myself there was several john brown tweets in fact well yeah go ahead well the one the one the one though where it's like um where he said something like um well you know john brown's raid on harper's ferry was ineffective because it radicalized helped radicalize robert e lee right and and it's just like you know like i guess i guess it's just kind of insane to me that like because i guess they call john brown insane as well right you know like they he said that he was, you know, he thought what he was doing was morally righteous. Right. And spiritually righteous. And he was also called insane. Right. So just this kind of tactic upon where you call anyone who is maladjusted. Right. Who takes I mean, not even makes the ultimate sacrifice, because, I mean, you can vote noncommitted. Right. And something's wrong with you. Right? You can march in the streets and something's wrong with you, right? But for somebody to self-immolate, like, and for you to conflate

that with suicide, like, that's a deeply personal political act, you know? Like, I'm just speaking for myself here as somebody who has mental health issues. And a lot of people said this, right? And again, I'm speaking for myself. My first, my, I have never thought about setting myself on fire, right? To escape any of the mental anguish that I'm going through. And for people that don't give a shit about mental health anyway, you know what I mean? To bring mental health into this conversation and act like that people who are, even people who are mentally ill have no agency or can't make decisions. You know what I mean? decisions right you know what i mean or is even even if to say that even a more complicated discussion is to say what does this political system do to people's psyche right that galvanizes

them and makes them be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice you know what i mean right like why not even talking about that instead we're having conversations about whether or not it was mental illness or god yo this shit drew drove me fucking insane whether or not you can say rest in power for non-black people. Like, just as an example, these are the kinds of conversations that were happening because nobody can imagine dying for anything bigger than not even themselves or their families. Like, I don't even know what, you know what I mean? I mean, I don't want to ramble, but it's just, it had me thinking about what would I be willing to die for? And I can tell you what, I'm not going to say that I'm a coward, right?

But there are principles that I believe in that I think I'd be willing to, you know, I'd be willing to protect my family, can tell you what I'm not gonna say that I'm a coward right but there are principles that I believe in that I think I'd be willing to you know I'd be willing to protect my family my friends my ideals you know yeah yeah that's not a that's not a question for me you know these people are cowardly you know what I mean sorry to ramble man it's just this whole thing is just fucking insane to me dog the the the thing is is that the paradigm of therapy the entire therapy industry exists and I've realized this over time with school shootings or in just public shootings in general that every time um like i was listening to an npr story one day about how like therapists were deployed to certain communities after a shooting and how a big part of what they do a big part of what they do and a big part of

like trauma therapy is in many ways accepting and normalizing the violence all around you every day and so like in if you look at it in that sense the therapy industry exists pretty much to absorb and attend to the contradictions right it's a it's like a way to like because all of us like are experiencing psychic pain of some kind and so it's like yes we are some of us more than others a buddy of mine pointed out this week like just if you think about the context of the pandemic, it's like literally every human being, man, woman, child, person on the planet could be diagnosed with an adjustment disorder. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it's a world cataclysmic event that we've kind of, you know, seem to have moved on from.

But, like, we don't know what the long-term ramifications physically, mentally, spiritually are from something like that, you know seem to have moved on from but like we don't know what the long-term ramifications physically mentally spiritually are from something like that you know yeah i think that like so to kind of like jump on what you were saying aaron like first of all the john brand thing the tweet was followed up by something absolutely incredible it was one of my favorite cointelpro moves actually um the follow-up tweet was if you're looking for historical examples of shit that worked look at how the personal bravery and service of black troops during the civil war gave lincoln the political room he needed to push the 13th amendment and all the incremental steps he took to get them into service it's my favorite cointelpro move which is to discredit the first thing and then invoke like you know what i mean like black freedom struggle yes yeah yeah in the most hollow way yes exactly yes invoke the invoke mok but not

late mok when he was speaking to gout against the vietnam war right or when he was like trying to unionize like garbage man and like you know what i'm saying or or to do the opposite to discredit his earlier socialist uh because like the march on washington wasn't just a civil rights march it was a march for jobs um to discredit that and say oh this is a this is a later move that i've noticed them start doing with malcolm x they've embraced malcolm x and the later politics of mlk to discredit the earlier politics of both of them yeah yeah like create this weird disjuncture so that you wind up throwing out parts of the person and their movement so that you can embrace that they've matured they've matured politically right and they've outgrown some of these more brash impulsive political you know what i'm saying exactly right exactly that's exactly right because what you should do too

and the point of it is and they still end up shooting both of them down like dogs right and the point of it is to like destabilize you and to cause this rupture in your view of the person and that's what they're doing with the john brown thing they're saying oh harper's ferry was a disaster and it was a failure and total disaster total disaster it was a failure and the actual the actual victory and the thing that worked was the black um uh was the black freedom's uh slave revolts during the civil war. Hold on a second. The thing that got me though,

was the implication that Harper's Ferry was a radicalizing act for Robert E. Lee. I'll tell you, I went to bed feeling crazy over that. Cause I was like, look at this guy's bow. Like he's like it like i think he's like a civil rights attorney or something like that what the fuck is wrong with

you then bro it's like act like that act like it then like this weird ahistorical shit but i have to say robert e lee revisionism is the southern man's Holocaust revisionism. So it makes total sense. It's true. People love to muddy the waters on Robert E. Lee. You're so right. I don't know why him specifically. Maybe it's just. Because he wasn't a fire-breathing racist in the way Jefferson Davis was.

He was more like. A statesman? Yeah, he kept his racism more private. Some of his letters, though. He absolutely believed all the things Jefferson Davis did. He just wasn't as out and out about it. Because you always hear this talk about, here's what I always heard,

Robert E. Lee, he actually didn't own slaves himself, which is just absolute horseshit. But the only reason he fought for the Confederacy is he wouldn't turn his back on Virginia. He loved Virginia. He loved Virginia. Sixth Emperor Tyrannus, baby. By the way, Robert E. Lee was... Maybe this is what he was getting at.

But Robert E. Lee was one of the people that responded to Harper's Ferry. Literally, his regiment was called in to put it down. So he was like a first responder. He was a first responder at Harper's Ferry. That is like cop shit, though. You know what I mean? I mean, not only literally, but it kind of just mirrors, like, you know, cops just showing up to a scene to act like they, you know. Look, Harper's Ferry was fucked. There was no way they were getting out of Harper's Ferry alive.

Anybody who's been to Harper's Ferry can take one look at the place and see why. It's like a fucking trap. Like once you're down in it, you can't get out. And John Brown knew that. Like the whole, I mean, the fact that people, the fact that we're even still talking about john brown to this day is a testament to how absolutely insane he was as a historical figure and i mean

that in a good way it is insane that a guy like john brown existed that's amazing dude i'll tell you what man i remember one time i took a history course this was in community college where we literally took a class a whole entire class about and i think the context was in like how do you uh judge history how do you uh um what opinions do you take from history how not to be opinionated and it was just about was john brad john brown a good or a bad historical figure and the fact that we're even having that conversation as a black guy dog like like this is this is the thing about liberals and i think this is like to tie in with aaron bush no right this is this is what it is it's like it's not even the fact that these people have a vested interest in making sure that no protest goes through it doesn't matter whether it's um self

emulation or voting uncommitted or showing up to a protest right it's also about like their obsession with process right yeah you know what i mean and their obsession with like rules and the fact that like because i think it was i forgot i rules and the fact that like, because I think it was, I forgot. I don't know if it was Time Magazine. I think it was Time Magazine maybe that had said that, well, you know, Aaron Bush broke the rules because technically as an active service member, you're not supposed to, which I don't even know if he was an active service member. But he's not supposed to like show any personal political affiliations or anything like that. And it's just like, what are we even talking about here? You know what I mean?

Like, we've been, we're so far removed from why he did what he did in the first place. And I know that's on purpose. Because they don't want people to start thinking about, like, not about lighting themselves on fire, but why he did it, you know? Yeah. And what would make somebody do that? You know what I mean? The concern trolling about like

copycat things i was talking to tom about it earlier this week it's like you don't care you don't fucking care if people do copy what do you fucking care you don't care about suicide no all it is man all it is now is just again tweaking and tailoring and mediating conversations right because things are kind of like i don't even know how to say not even getting out of control but the contradictions right are just kind of leaping out and jumping out and they're trying to contain them you know what i mean yeah so now they have to dig in there and part of that is digging in their heels to declare that they're cowards because that's what it is too if you're saying that john brown well maybe john brown wasn't not only to me is that saying that

you are like uh this person who's believes in this kind of rules based order, but also you're a coward. You know, you're a coward, essentially. You know what I mean? It's the same thing with Aaron Bushnell. Also telling, you know, I think about this from a church context either. It is kind of perfectly exemplifies the story of the rich young ruler calling to Lazarus, his servant, to drop water on his tongue. ruler calling to lazarus his servant to drop water on his tongue it's like you don't understand this young man was willing to die death so agonizing that they've been using it in the holy books for thousands of years to dissuade us from living immoral lives of his own volition for something

that he felt strongly about okay And they still are like, but why didn't he follow the rules? Why didn't he do this? Why didn't he do that? In the same way that the rich young ruler still thought he ruled over Lazarus, who was still alive. It's just an arrogance that just,

they cannot wrap their head around why somebody would not follow the rules, why somebody would not follow process or do why somebody would not follow process and like or do this thing or this thing the right way or whatever. You know? And I think about the like

immortal assessment of the Potawatomi massacre. I always thought about this, like what Frederick Douglas said. The Potawatomi massacre was a terrible remedy for a terrible malady like it's like think something can because like again you know i don't we could go through the entire life of john brown if you want today but like the pottawatomie Massacre is a very,

let's just put it this way. Jarring. It's a very jarring thing. And we talked about it on the episode we did about Cloud Splitter last year. And we even floated that question ourselves. Was he actually insane? Yeah, and I think that the fact of the matter is

is that if you try to internalize or normalize at a psychic level what is going on, it what you are experiencing at the moment, especially someone if you're in the military. If you have a conscious, like a moral center, which this guy, he was in the Air Force. Aaron Bushnell was in the Air Force. you and you feel like you have been conscripted your body your your physical being your blood and tissue and sinew has been conscripted to participate in the genocide of of a people and and you try to go home every night and like explain that away and normalize it it will drive you to a kind of disembodiment that like i said like has no textbook definition there's you're not going to find anything in any like book on therapy and its various modalities and mental illnesses or whatever that is going to give you a proper understanding of what that is because what that is is being a

human being yeah like that that's what it is that's what it is to be a human being and to understand the scope and scale of a mass tragedy and to understand your place in the whole thing and that's why john brown did what he did at pottawatomie he was he was a white farmer a failed merchant in america who who saw with perfect clarity not just the immorality of slavery this is the thing that people don't understand about John Brown and I think this is also probably the case for Aaron Bushnell not just the immorality of the thing itself but what would be required to change it and that that is the thing that John Brown realized before anyone else did

probably even before frederick douglas if we're being inspired i think was inspired right yeah like he he understood that there was only one way out of that and it was through a baptism by fire and blood and again i think that bushnell probably had the same realization it's like it's not just the immorality of the thing it's the fact that the entire mainstream apparatus of acceptance and normalization of thought and feeling in this country supports it you you've got this thing today about the new york times uh i don't know if y'all saw that in the intercept that the links that the new york times went to to allow this story to be published about the october 7th attacks the rape yes the yes the the sexual assault charges systemic systemic

rape systemic rape committed by hamas is how they termed it you've got every major institution of thought in this country supporting this thing the entire government unwilling biden willing to go down with the ship just he called himself a zionist he called himself a zionist on late night tv the other night wasn't he talking some late night head yes and the cat sitting on a couch and called himself a zionist you know and said and said as long if israel doesn't exist no jew anywhere will be safe yep which is like insane because there are more jews in america than in israel so you're saying that u.s president can't keep the jewish people safe that's part of why the fuck should they even support you i mean to bolster that whole project you know

yeah well it and it gets at what we have said several times and what I was trying to hammer home a few weeks ago, which is that in some ways, all of our institutions from Congress, the halls of power, like you said earlier, Aaron, the procedures and avenues of change are completely and wholly unsuited and unprepared to deal with this i mean this is a this is an issue that's so dug in i mean the fact that i woke up this morning to news of so right now there's a fucking mass famine mass starvation in gaza caused by israel and

uh what had happened this morning was they were trying to deliver this fucking aid trucks to deliver like food to i think it was in north gaza and a stampede occurred basically like people rushed to these lorries. They rushed to the trucks. Because that's what will happen when you've got mass starvation. It becomes an instance, a moment of extreme brutality in, like, every person for themselves, right? Because, like, you don't know where your next meal is coming from. That's something very few Americans have ever had to experience.

I shouldn't say that. Very few Americans that support Israel. And if they did, and just to say, if they did, they would kill each other immediately. Exactly. They would be completely, they would be animals. They would be exactly what they think the Palestinians are. In this instance, the IDF was present,

and they got spooked by the rushing people and started firing into the crowd. This is clear-cut. This is all on video. Conditions they themselves created. Yes. I was listening to the BBC this morning, and they had a Fatah spokesperson on,

and this guy was like, look, I take issue with your reporter saying this was chaos this is not chaos this was caused by israel yeah they called it a chaotic incident they yeah they fired he he said they fired into the crowd this wasn't just the lorries like running people over and even if it was this was also caused by israel and the fucking bbc guy got so pissed off at that he was like well you're entitled to your opinion but we have it from a reliable palestinian source that this was and it's like i want you i want you i just want you to all again like think about this if you have this this like entrenched view

of this situation like so many people dug in and like what is required to actually change this. I mean, can you really blame Aaron Bushnell for what he did? No. That's why it's like I was just so confused over people saying like, oh, is this good or bad that someone would. I came back to like the volcano analogy. It's like this is just going to happen. What the fuck do you mean it's good or bad what are you talking about i mean i mean also too man somebody brought up a really good point on

twitter they had said that you know if this had happened in the 70s or the 80s right like this is the vietnam war the 60s right like this would have been all over the fucking news you know but it's like the media has become so as you're saying saying, Terrence, so entrenched, you know, so completely just like like captured. You know what I mean? That like even just reporting on objective facts, just the idea that like, I mean, you've created a situation in which, of course, people are going to rush the truck. They're starving. You know, the fact that that's even with even having a situation of mass starvation is insane. Yeah. But then for for them to get shot and then there's like it's like there's nothing that Israel can do that the United States would criticize them over, you know. or not what the fuck are you talking about man you know what i mean like you you said something earlier like you know how how how would how would he have felt going home every night you know and knowing that his body his flesh and blood you know is being conscripted into this genocide and how on the opposite spectrum you have people like fucking josh kirby you know you have people

like that just go straight up to this lectern and just say i mean it's almost like you see the shutters come down on their souls you know like they're just dead-eyed like a fucking fish man and they can just go out there and trot this bullshit out and like these are the people so on that so if you're saying if you're saying that aaron bushnell then what he did his sacrifice right it's not a sacrifice it's mental illness so then are you saying these people then on the opposite end of the spectrum using that logic are then like heroes or then more you know valiant you know or a stronger better people or better morally morally upright people like it's just like everything is flipped man yeah it's like everything has been has gotten so flipped that we're talking about the ultimate sacrifice that anybody could make

who also was screaming free palestine until he, we're talking about it as mental illness. That's just so insane. And this huge commitment we have to compartmentalizing and atomizing every part of society to the point that everybody's like, oh, killing yourself in such a dramatic fashion for something you have nothing to do with, which is also just a lie because like, wasn't, correct me

if I'm wrong, but it wasn't his whatever regiment of the Air Force going to be sent in to participate in some of this stuff. I think people said that. I don't know if that's true or not. The reason I don't think it's true is because he apparently when

he apparently not been showing up to work for quite a while. That a boy. That a boy, that a boy. So, like, he was in the Air Force, but, you know, by that point, I think he had been out of it for quite a while. Okay, okay. Well, regardless, it doesn't matter. It's like, of course we need to take an interest in things that don't directly affect us.

And that's exactly what they don't want us to do. And they try to, like, try to shame us, say us say you have like a parochial view or whatever but like it's every facet of fucking society does not want us to be together across color lines across whatever yeah nationalities yeah yeah it's it's because it's the same reason that we can get shit delivered to our door in five minutes and don't have to go out anywhere for it and all this kind of stuff it's like they just don't want us mingling with each other and also that's connected to trying to keep the crazy white boy down you know what i mean they knew if the john browns would have proliferated we'd have a much different world here we get a couple of the fair

skins running on the black courts we're off to the races boys you know that's what they didn't want to have happen and you know what man you know what i'll add to that because you could say that uh you could say that this whole um um rightoids uh sphere like these weirdos you know what i'm saying they've co-opted the crazy white boy you know they have co-opted they co-opted the crazy white boy the crazy white boy is not theirs and they've stolen him they stole that they really have yo that's such a good point another aspect of this that we haven't talked about well and also just by the way i just want to like put a fine point on this like you know i'm speaking at my mental illness has been well documented on this show right we've been doing this show for seven years i feel like anybody who's been listening for that long is like probably has a pretty good character profile of all the various

ways in which i'm fucking behind the curtain but like i do think i do genuinely think it's probably why there's like a resurgence of freud right now um which i'm not as much of an expert on all that i can't tell you about about Lacan and psychoanalysis and all this stuff. No. However, I do genuinely think that a lot of what we term mental illness is an inability to reconcile ourselves to the mass, like systematized but also naturalized slaughterhouse of capitalist society you know what i'm saying it's like people and that's that's what that's what irritates me so much

about the liberals concern trolling over suicide it's like you don't fucking care right like i don't consider what aaron bush will do to be suicide in the way that you do right like but even if i did you don't care you don't care if there's copycats you don't care people why would you care you don't give a fuck you're not your life is nice secure you've got nothing to worry about no if anything if anything you know i mean if anything um i mean god forbid you know there were to be copycats i mean they would that's something that they would be their fucking benefit right they would fucking use that right to fucking point out to again to kind of um to kind of isolate people you know and call people that they've

already been calling us uh terrorists hamas supporters right yeah but now we're crazy self-immolators you know what i mean exactly you know what i mean and we should never touch the levers of power could you imagine those cycles touching the levers of power i mean and last thing i'll say man i i mean on top of these people do not care about mental health at all. You know, I mentioned it earlier, but, you know, as someone who has mental illness, I mean, everyone, I think everyone has a level of mental illness. But as someone who's like, you know, who struggled with this, right? It like, it just kind of pisses me off how these people claim that they care about mental health, but they rob people who deal with mental illness of any agency. Exactly. about mental health but they rob people who deal with mental illness of any agency exactly as you can't views if you can't make any fucking choices as if you are so wracked with fucking like

existential trauma that you're ready to just leap off at any fucking train platform any fucking building you know what i mean like i mean it's just obviously i have fucking mechanisms and we all do right to deal with the fucking as you said the slaughterhouse that's capitalism you know i mean it's just it's just again like you said these people they're being they're disingenuous they don't give a shit you know you're exactly right it it's insulting something i've dealt with my entire adult life honestly is like this constant struggle for the mental health industry to tell you uh when you are being sane and when you're not when you are having agency and when you're not and um and it's just it's just one of these

things that we are just again wholly unprepared to deal with under a capitalist society with capitalist social relations yeah because it becomes harder to decipher like what is genuine mental illness versus what is the medicalization of yeah these different emotions that are like hyper pronounced under the system i've dealt with this with addiction with like the paradigmatic the paradigmatic form modality of treatment in the united states is, which I consider to be a extremely liberal program. I mean, to me, AA is the most, is liberalism distilled.

And I know a lot of my friends who are, you know, conservatives or family members who are conservatives who go to AA probably don't see it that way. But AA is all the liberal paradigms about addiction distilled,

which is that it's a disease. The liberal ideology about addiction is that it's a disease and you have no control over it the conservative paradigm of addiction is that it's a moral failing that's like those are the two kind of like dialectical yeah sides of addiction treatment but it's like how do how do you fit in the fact that most of us when we decide to get sober that's a decision we make. We have agency. So how do you fit that in? Do we have power over this or do we not?

And acknowledging that some people do get sober by subscribing to one or the other. Yeah, plenty of people get sober with AA. Probably plenty of people get sober by feeling guilty about being a moral failing or whatever. Plenty of people, this is another thing which I've been thinking about like if i was to go visit my friends in like fucking uh serbia like do they

even have the concept of sobriety like i'm serious i know that's fun i'm not saying that like everybody there's a drunk i'm saying that yeah yeah yeah is our paradigm of sobriety in america the same as it is in other places i know for a fucking fact it's not like in the Scandinavian countries where they usually just give you naloxone if you're an alcoholic so that it reduces your fucking need to constantly hit the dopamine button. This is a fucking, you take care of it with a pill. Yeah. So, I mean, like, what do you, anyways, we've gone far afield,

but the point is is that like all of these things are so ill-suited to deal with this and and if you needed a perfect example of that uh to me honestly one of the most revealing things about the entire spectacle that the entire thing was the police officer who was like just like robot program just dog brain get on the ground get on the ground someone who is on fire yes it's just like i mean it's just and and this is why like the comparisons to john brown is really so instructive it's like for a brief moment you saw the actual undercurrent of human morality of of of uh human of humanity you saw the actual undercurrent of humanity break through for a second in this act of extreme violence you saw an act of actual solidarity and then you saw the programmed response to that yeah right

like like like white blood cells immediately fucking going like like a robot activated like he came out of a hutch you know what i'm saying he came out with the gun and it was just like citizen you know what it is just like get down like you said terrence that is such a perfect like Like you said, Terrence, that is such a perfect, like, reification, right? Of, like, whatever the fuck is happening right now, right? Like, all of this, like, hyper-violence, whether it's, like, go buy a gun so you can shoot your fucking neighbor or the cops killing people, right? And then, you know, on the other hand, this completely wholly selfless act, you know? You know what I mean?

Of self-annihilation. And then to see these two things man and to see these two things i mean i think there was an emt who was trying to put aaron out you know with the fire extinguisher you know what i mean and then to have the cop pointing the gun even that dynamic you know what i'm saying yes right you're right yeah anytime there is a purely distilled expression of the human spirit, be it great sorrow, great joy, great sacrifice. I think about when Beethoven, who is thoroughly deaf by this point, plays Ode to Joy at the Vienna Opera House. And it was illegal at the time to give anybody that wasn't the king

more than five standing ovations and they gave him seven. He's so deaf that he's still conducting like off measure. You know what I mean? And it's just rapturous applause and all this stuff and what happens? The cops come down there to shut it down.

Yeah, dude. One of the most, you know, just sort of just unbelievably beautiful pieces of music ever written written conducted by a deaf man just the whole thing and what happens cop shut a sub a sublime moment man yeah and you had the man that came down with the literal boot came down and crushed it you know yeah god man jesus dude that's what they're there for they're there to stop us from being too human they're there to stamp out life they're there dude they're there this is why you know i mean i don't probably jump on something else to close out but i mean this is

why i another thing i think about too is uh you know the destruction of libraries you know you know in in palestinian gaza man and the destruction of culture you know what i mean and like how much of that is like just completely just stamping out like what it means to be a human being you know what i mean yeah you know like things that go beyond just flesh you know yeah i mean this is you know go it turns i don't i just If you sit and ruminate, which I have done multiple times, if you sit and ruminate on the actual scope and scale of this, I mean, just once again,

to put a finer point on it, if you sit and ruminate on not just the fucking bombing of... just glassing of entire neighborhoods, the systematic apartheid and corralling of people mass starvation videos of idf soldiers collecting women's underwear and like and and and going into people in palestinians houses and like riding the tricycles around and laughing kids and sleeping in kids cribs with teddy bears and stuff.

What the fuck is wrong with you, man? Like making these absolutely sick and disgusting. That's not mental illness. That's not mental illness to. That's not being maladjusted. That's not being, exactly. That's not maladjusted. Yes, that's such a good point and then and not only that

but then to have all of that excused and normalized in all of the machinations and avenues of media reportage and fucking uh relaying of information and analysis to have all of that you know then barfed back up into your plate every evening and said this is actually good it's actually good for you as an american you need to go along and shut the fuck up a little bird lack this up to just go along with that and not expect more people to light themselves on fire i feel like doing that every fucking day dude like they're we've talked about this from from when this started man this is crazy making right this is crazy making and the culmination of this right is people making

the ultimate sacrifice because this is untenable you know and the only way that they can see as you said you were saying earlier the only response right and you can put it however whatever way you want right but the only response is like some sort of response and force in kind right to the mass violence that we're seeing you know what i mean like the only way that that i guess aaron could see unless you was or john brown is a rupture you know yeah i mean it's a rupture and i mean it's crazy making as you said from from every level from biden right going going on fucking late night tv calling him a z Zionist or way back months ago when he was denying the death count initially, right?

Yeah. Because he was saying that, oh, this is well controlled by Hamas. It's God's health ministry. Or whether it's just like, just these conversations that you kind of have sometimes with people, man. The shit you see online.

I'm like, how is this not, this is making everyone crazy, right? They're making, I mean, again, it's the inside, it's this inside out skin suit, you know? Yeah. It's the know yeah fucking inside that skin suit man they're trying to fucking like force it on you now that is because more people are like i can't do this this is fucking disgusting that is so true that's the thing it's like we are being asked every single day to turn ourselves inside out to invert our moral compass all in the name and this is what's really kind of absurd

about it all in the name of this shitty fucking country where we wake up every day and barely can make two fucking paychecks work like paper over the next month because rent is so goddamn high and we're all fucking saddled with medical and student debt and you fucking name it all in service to that yeah like this isn't even working out we're not even paying dividends anymore like the fucking empire is not even paying off anymore israel guy health care don't we don't have a guy okay you know what i'm saying like what they better be lucky this isn't like the 17th century or something you know what i mean it's like if this conditions were the same richest where you defedestrate motherfuckers well this

is the thing this is why John Brown did what he did He was under no illusions that he would get defeated Actually well it's hard to say Because when he was planning Harper's Ferry They really did plan to Retreat up into the mountains And then create a series of forts And draw in

Basically draw in the armies and just basically take pot shots. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just basically terrorize them. It was an asymmetrical battle plan, right? He understood that there was an asymmetry here. Aaron Bushnell also understood that. It's probably why he didn't strap a bomb to himself and try to blow up the embassy itself.

Because you're right, Aaron. It requires more than just a single act of either mass violence or strategic military initiative. It requires something more psychically resounding than that. Something that will like penetrate to the deepest depths of who you are as a person. And like that single image of a man on fire, a paramedic trying to put him out, and a cop standing over both of them, pointing a gun at them in front of an iron gate fence at this embassy that we have given every part of ourselves to, all in service to preserve

the fucking post-Cold War international order. Like, that single image, I mean, that says it all man i mean like it was executed perfectly and um i don't know it's you know you know i'll add too man um um there was a protester as well who uh self-immolated in front of the israeli embassy in atlanta right like a couple weeks ago and that shit was not on the fucking news right now i've never heard even myself would you say time i bet i said yeah never heard anything about it till people were mentioning that yeah i didn't actually i had only i think i heard about it maybe a couple days before aaron bushnell you know just coincidentally you know

i hadn't heard anything about it you know and i mean i live in atlanta and i think that's incidentally you know i hadn't heard anything about it you know and i mean i live in atlanta and i think that's on purpose right like that's all on purpose you know so i mean if if you want to if you want if you want to talk about something that's penetrating and rupturing you know what i mean like you couldn't hide this you know and the fact that biden i just want to mention too that biden has not said anything about this and i mean i know it's like a fucking moot point right i mean this guy went on tv the other night called himself a scientist but that is just so glaring to me you know what i mean that is so absolutely glaring that you just don't have anything at all to say about this this is insane man oh i mean um the yeah i mean so yeah there's a i think part of the reason why the first one was swept under the rug

so effectively is that that person was not in the military correct yeah yeah i think that's the thing when these liberals are like oh there's gonna be copycats they don't mean people like me and you they could give a fuck about me and you they they what they mean is copycats in the military because that's not the fucking smoke that they want man right or or people do it you know just refusing to serve defect and all these kinds of things they don't want that because that's the machine that grinds i think that that's the thing it's like they they do get very nervous when the military starts like because like you you hear about like reports of fragging like in vietnam war was

insane they were like dropping grenades and like officers fucking port-a-johns and stuff you know what i mean like they don't want that shit and that's the that's the bind of the military right because they give soldiers all these fucking weapons and have to hope that they don't fucking revolt because a lot of the fucking times and I know this is another element of the discourse that I don't even really want to entertain because it's so fucking tedious, but a lot of the fucking times people in the military, and the Air Force might be a little bit different.

I don't know Aaron Bushnell's socioeconomic background, but a lot of people in the military are fucking picked out of poorer places. Dude, I have a friend who just went to south korea and he went from east kentucky and he was like dude they love people they love hillbillies over there you want to know why because the vast majority of people drafted to fight in the korean war were fucking hillbillies like that like that they went to the poor places in the united states and fucking drafted them into it it's like i don't know i just the

point is is that like uh they're preyed on and and when they say like oh they don't want more copycats that's what they're talking about well it's it's insane well not only do they train in west virginia to go to vietnam but something staggering like 60 something percent of people that were conscript or went to fight in vietnam were from kentucky west virginia tennessee yeah carolina yeah just those those four states and you know what too man um i think uh i think uh i think kvon had brought this up on twitter i think still oppressed uh twitter user which is a really really good point i was thinking about it as well is that if aaron bushnell died in service of this fucking bullshit decadent empire you know this

malik-like country i mean it would have been praised right it would have been called right you know what i mean but it's because he used his position right right and he uh criticized right the very government right which he's sworn to protect the very country which he's sworn to protect right which is the most incisive that we can criticize right that's the thing makes us different exactly dude especially as like someone who is who is like in the service like you have the most incisive role as someone who is not an outside observer you've been in the belly you've worked for the belly of the beast you know the shit i mean it takes incredible conviction you know for somebody who's like you've been been uh worked you know been been in the

military i think in my opinion like you know come out and say this is fucked up you know and to like whether they organize or do i mean do anything at all but for if he had if this had been flipped you know then he would have been a hero. They would have been praising him, you know. I mean, it's the same thing that people who are saying, oh, this one guy said that suicide is not heroic. And then you look at his tweets and he's celebrating some Ukrainian, right, that had blown himself up, right, during the Ukrainian war, right. And it's just like, dude, like, fuck off, you know. And also just the amount of people who celebrated the – I mean mean i pointed this out and it's a trite point but like the arab spring began because the tunisian street vendor

set himself on fire and it's like that guy you know is obviously hailed as a hero because oh this is a great cause of democracy and it and i mean obviously i remember at the time people like christopher hitchens saying like oh the arab Spring only happened because of our invasion of Iraq. Like, we planted democracy in the Middle East. And it grew like a, you know, it grew. It grew like a wildflower, not like a cancer. But it's like, yeah, you're right. If it's in service of something they actually care about.

Yeah, you're right. If it's in service to something they actually care about. I know it's a moot point, but it's just, it's just, it's just, this just whole shit is just fucking just so frustrating because it's like, on the one hand, what is even the point in pointing out their inconsistencies, right? And like, you know, all their coward, cowardice, but like, I mean, how long can you keep the shit going, man? You know, like how long can you, it's like, it's almost like the lies are getting more and more absurd, you know, and shit going man you know like how long can it's like it's almost like the lies are getting more and more absurd you know and more transparent you know yeah i mean i had it on the list to talk about it i know what what have we been at oh my god an hour 20 minutes um i had it on the list to talk about but like the michigan primary like the amount of unconfirmed like the Michigan primary,

like the amount of unconfirmed voters. I genuinely think, I really do, that I saw people on Twitter saying, like, surely the Biden administration will look at this. Like Charles Blow even had an op-ed in the New York Times that was like, the Biden administration has no choice now but to acknowledge its path here is fucked and it's like man i don't know i hate to break it to you but i really don't think that they're going to do that

i really don't think i mean he's correct yeah no no i mean i got a choice i really do think that they're gonna be like we don't need the left at all like we they we don't need anyone with principles we don't need anyone who cares about any of this stuff we just need disaffected former trump voters and former gop voters who were disaffected by dobbs because that's a that's a block that they are aiming for and that is who they're going to go for they have no responsibility to workers they have no responsibility to workers. They have no responsibility to poor people. To young people. Lexington, I don't know if y'all... Dude, I saw a report

the other day that they interviewed some people who work the homeless shelters here in Lexington. They said this is the worst winter they have ever seen in terms of homelessness. And I'm supposed to believe that this is the worst winter they have ever seen in terms of like homelessness yeah like and and i'm supposed to believe that this is the best economy ever like this like seriously are you fucking serious you insult my intelligence like that every single day and you expect me not to

have a mental break of some kind like like i don't it's just the constant fucking you're right it's just the constant onslaught of being like, them waking up every day and telling you to accept a genocide, telling you to accept that the economy is actually good, and then when you respond to it in a way that breaks outside of the norm, the normative response to that, then calling you insane? Yeah, calling you insane. Just address the listeners. You're not insane, man.

You're not insane at all. Actually, what it is is that everyone else is – and when I say insane, I mean these are evil people. These are sociopaths, right? These are sociopaths and cowards. You know what I've realized? They project their cowardice onto other people. Yeah. They've been doing that the whole entire time.

So they said, no, surely this is a heinous act that we should all be repulsed by right and it's because you can't grapple with the fact that there's just you just don't believe in anything you don't you what it is is that you don't believe in anything and you're looking around like hold up i'm the only one everyone's got up and left the theater and you're the only one there you know what i mean you're just like well i guess it's just me right yes it is just you it is just you man i have never i don't know i mean i'm sure i've said this before um and in those instances it was probably true and over time this becomes more true but i have really never seen the liberal project this hollow it's like it is i don't know

it's like you remember the other day aaron you sent us that um tweet or maybe it was tom it was the tweet of like uh someone on a second story and they built a balcony and it was like y'all want to come over for a party and the balcony was held up by a single like 20 foot two by four like it was like starting to bow out in the middle and the balcony looked like it was about to fall like that's what i feel like watching these motherfuckers oh yeah like i know that they're not gonna go anywhere anytime soon but like i don't know you can still start seeing that yeah but just the just being painfully off is obvious, the fractures and the bowing. I mean, it's just like, I don't know.

It's just they got no gas left. They got nothing left in the tank. So we're either seeing, well, I guess scolding is a part of this, but it's mediating conversations now, you know. So the mediating the conversations means scolding or tweaking narratives, something that you saw with your own eyes, right? Yeah. Telling you that's not what you saw, right? Or telling you that, like, you're bad or wrong for feeling this way. And all you can do when you have no ideology left.

I mean, I guess they have ideology, but I'm saying they have no impetus, right? They have no ideological impetus to carry on, continue this project. all you have to do is be observational you know what i mean you know what i mean all you have to do is just kind of be reactive i mean reactionary but reactive it's just comment on things you know and tell people that they're doing the wrong thing so there's no way that there's no right way that you could protest for palestine right there's no right way that you can call out israel's genocide you know the only thing that you can do is vote for joe biden and in theory that's going to make things marginally better and if they do but it's not but it's not also though the ask here is so fucking absurd it's so stupid like this i was thinking about this uh tweet from what's that

lady's name like jill filipovich you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah jill filip yeah yeah yeah horrible horrible takes here she's a fucking moron but she had a tweet a few weeks ago that was like does the israeli military why aren't they clamping down on these videos of idf soldiers it makes them look really bad and it's like dude i don't know how to break this to you the videos will continue as long as the united states underwrites the entire fucking program man and again i have to bring this back to aaron bushnell like do you really think that like do you think that we're that dumb you really think that we're that dumb like

that we would that we don't know that the united states is underwriting this entire fucking thing i'm sorry yo she said she said why don't they clamp down why are the people killing other people clamp down on the videos on the videos on the videos what are you talking about it's i swear to god the people that are supposed to analyze society and like regurgitate it back to us in some cogent form so we can make sense of it ourselves all fell off the fucking turnip truck. All talk, but they fell off the fucking turnip truck last night. It's amazing. No, it is. in if you're a guy like aaron bushnell with moral convictions and you're in the air force and you come to the realization that this whole thing the battleships in the mediterranean in

the red sea the 700 military bases we have around the globe the military industrial complex which is the only fucking leg on the stool holding this motherfucker up for real yo like you look at all that how do you not come to the conclusion that some drastic act has to be conducted to get people's to break to create that rupture to create that psychic rupture in people to make them realize like yo like this this whole thing that we wake up and participate every day in that's what is underwriting this that's why the videos will continue you fucking moron hell that's the only reason we play football at this point oh my god man yeah that's i just want to say turns that's uh uh you just kind of clarified

since it's crystallized something for me um that is like uh that is like the the the leg of the stool keeping this whole project up right like i just had a night like you know like if you know america's military bases were to disappear overnight you know and um all of their nuclear armaments you know and all of their military might like we would just be bluster there'd be nothing there would be nothing left you know there's nothing like a paper we'd be like a paper tiger you know what i mean aaron bushnell is the only i'm gonna i'm straight up the only instance of bravery and an american military person i've seen probably in my lifetime yo deadass it's like serious and i'm saying that

as people with friends who are veterans i mean like though my friend my veteran friends will openly admit that yeah war the war was bullshit we just basically like fucking you know harassed people and like killed innocents i mean like that that act was the only bravery i've seen from an american like military member in my lifetime. In my lifetime, yeah. And so if you're listening to this and you're in the military, consider copycatting. Consider it.

Consider it. I'm just saying. It might do you some good. It might do us all some good. It might do us all some good. I'm not saying it has to be exactly like that, but like. No. Maybe quit. Maybe if you see your officer go into

the Port-A-John, fucking pull the pin on a grenade and throw it in. Yeah, I mean, we could be fragging back and forth. Can I get in trouble for saying that? I don't know. I don't think we can. I mean, because I'm not in the military. If I was in the military, I guess I'd be ready for it.

No, I don't think we'd get in trouble. Who's going to come after us? Uncle Sam? Uncle Sam. Some maniac in a red, white, and blue suit. Am I going to have to swab the poop deck? Am I going to have to fucking walk the plank? You can make it be a chef. You've got to cook for the crew.

Am I going to have to do a military pop-up? They should do that. They should do a pop-up for Full Metal Jacket. They should do a pop-up for Full Metal Jacket. It's like a dude just like, he's on a

machine gun in a helicopter and he's shooting marshmallows at little kids with their open mouths. Get some. Get some. Oh, that's pretty cute. You put the shotgun in your mouth, but it doesn't go off. Just kidding. They shoot gummies at you that burst with red juice over them.

So it looks like blood. No, it's just strawberries. Cherry is fine. Oh, man. That's wh oh man that's whimsical that's whimsical anything else we can say about this extraordinarily bizarre week oh man i think i will say it's not even really bizarre it's honestly it's one of the more at this point fucking five months into this motherfucker it's pretty uh it started to become pretty normal yeah yeah yeah this was uh what did we have this week we had a uh finding out an expose about new york times lion we had another atrocity many by israel

you know what i mean we had an election of course yeah the chorus saying it. Yeah. I would say that this week has been pretty emblematic of the past five months. Totally. Just distilled. Also, another thing that's kind of emblematic, going back to the first days after October 7th, has anyone seen Donald Trump? Where the fuck is Donald? He's not even in the news anymore. Yeah.

It will go through phases where he'll pop up and say some funny stuff, but I remember in the weeks after October 7th us saying, oh, he seems very quaint now. A sort of remnant of the past. Like a pastoral figure almost. Yeah, granted, the polls showing him kind of leading, right? And if the Michigan primary is any indication. Donald Trump got more votes in the Republican primary

than all the Democratic candidates combined is what somebody told me. Somebody fact check that for me. 103,000 uncommitted voters. And I want to tell you something. If you think you can win Michigan with 85% of Dearborn that you normally

would have had voting for you, not voting for you, you my friend are Trey Cooked, especially when the other guy's pulling more votes than everybody. Dog, weren't those uncommitted votes almost as many votes as he had won by? You know?

Like last election, man. Dude, this is weird. Follow me here. I know we're going way long already, but like something I've, as a Marxist, right, you're always like looking at like what's determined, what's over determined, what is an expression of pure agency

and like almost the Leninist or Fidel Castro example of like seizing history by the reins. But I have generally been feeling very much that and you saw this in the police telling aaron bushnell to uh get on the ground as he's engulfed in flames that like things are kind of very determined and programmed according to like everyone's sort of slotted into their tracks and that's why this individual act was so arresting right that's why it was like so symbolically incredible and penetrating uh and in many ways i feel like it does not even matter who wins the election and and again maybe we still have some holdouts in our audience that will say

no it does matter for x y and z reasons um however it just both of them feel so abstract and far away from me at this point you know what i mean like biden and trump the democrats and the republicans it's so far outside of my universe of what it is to be a human fucking being yeah that it does not even matter yeah yeah yo dog i've never felt that's such a good you know terrence i've never felt i think it was i mean i didn't vote for this motherfucker last time around so i'm definitely wasn't gonna vote from this time right but you know it's when he went on went on the late night show man i wish i could remember who it was and he's saying you know i was you know it was kimmel right and dude you know i already made up my mind right but i'm just sitting there

hearing this guy say this man and i mean i felt i have never felt more any more alienated you know what i mean from this political system you know yeah like not in a way that i don't have agency but i'm just saying as you said that these people exist in a different reality a different universe entirely they're no longer interested in even like doing the window dressing of courting our vote you know what i mean like consider obama's first election we all took the bait for right like we were excited to go punch one in for barack h obama i'm guessing now it's just like, they scold us. It's not compelling us to come in. It is, if you don't come in,

really bad things are gonna happen. And they can't bridge the gap between, it's like, they're so disconnected, they don't know really bad things are happening and it is your fault. And that's why they've pathologized Aaron Bushnell in all of us to a certain extent that's why we're all insane like to them we are all clinically insane it's kind of fascinating if

if you really put yourself in the point of view of them like how do they see the world do they think that we're all just dude literally literally i think they i think i've thought about this lately i think all right i know there are caricatures of the left sure right but i just always find it amazing how like their their characters and stereotypes of the left are always way off like their immediate stereotypes where it's like i feel like we're always on the money when we describe them you know what i mean like we're always i mean that like again that john brown tweet is just perfectly emblematic of all the things about liberals right like they're conflict averse right they have a deference to negative peace you know what i mean like all of these things it's just like i guess when they look at us they really think that we're like animaniacs you know i mean

they think that we're cartoon characters you know the john brown thing again i know i'm sorry to belabor the point but like the follow-up tweet about like what actually worked was uh former black slaves basically that was i got black friends tweet i just have to say that was like i have my friends was so ironic about that is that john brown realized before anybody else that the only way slavery would be defeated is if former slaves participated in the insurrection that's the irony of it he realized this again he realized this probably even before frederick douglas there's actually this is actually a historical documented moment where john brown meets with

frederick douglas in a quarry before harper's ferry and frederick douglas is like man i really hate to tell you this john but i i can't i can't it's just not gonna happen i like i like your gum shit but this shit ain't gonna work you're gonna it's a trap brother it's a trap you're going to die yeah and uh but the thing is is that john brown realized this before pretty much anyone on the abolitionist in the abolitionist cause and uh so like you don't get you don't get uh you don't get to say that like john brown was a failure because like you don't get part b without part a you know what i'm saying exactly exactly exactly exactly i mean like but again yo it's because i know we're going over but again it's just because they're so obsessed with process, right? That if something succeeds, it only can succeed because it followed the rules, right?

And it can only succeed if it's hoisting a trophy at the end of the regulation. Right. You know what I mean? But they can't countenance the fact that sometimes losing is winning. Well, and they also have this, again, they have this extremely overdetermined view of history in a way and i've thought this before i have genuinely thought that liberals have kind of absorbed a very vulgar form of marxism in the sense that they do think history is overdetermined i think they do think that it follows these gen you see it in um the statement like the arc of the moral universe been bends

towards justice. I do think that they think that these large structural forces skew towards this one direction by natural drift and not by like human agency or intervention or class struggle. Obviously not class struggle. But like they don't, does that make any sense? That's why they can't see like John Brown

and Aaron Bushnell's actions as valid in any way because that would to them give away the ball game that would mean that oh my god humans do have agency and there is such a thing as class struggle and then we remember we're all humans after all and that's not good for it that's just the thing this there's an amazing point oh man one of my favorite scenes in rus Banks' Cloud Splitter is, and I don't think this happened in real life, but one of my favorite scenes is John Brown pacing the battlefield at Waterloo and trying to understand where, why, and how Napoleon went wrong.

Like, how he failed. I love that fucking scene, man. He's just like, he gives you a step-by-step dissection of how Napoleon failed it's what it's i love that fucking scene man he's just like going he gives you a step-by-step dissection of how napoleon failed at waterloo and i think what he's trying to get out there is that like john brown understood that these are human actions our actions have consequences that like human history isn't just this uh i do think there are moments where history does kind of take the will like 9-11 like i was saying to you the other day tom yeah 9-11 was the masterpiece of history

but like i do it's like yo y'all fucking up let me let me let me take y'all for a spin a little bit yes let me let me let me jumble things up a little bit this is the sistine chapel this is my theory of nine i will delve into this at a later episode uh however humans are also engaged in the grand uh scheme right like we're all in the game as well and so history can't all history can't just be this overdetermined thing where history humans never have any agency every now and then that might be the case but generally speaking class struggle is real and we have to like analyze things honestly and truthfully and not go insane in the process and not let them tell us that we are insane yeah yeah that's my message don't let

them tell you that you're insane yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, man. I just want to end on that, man. I think that's not only are you not crazy, but they're going to keep telling you that you are, you know? Yeah. And you have to resist that. You have to resist that. All the way back in October, right? Yeah. Like, it's...

Yeah. It is becoming increasingly more acute and absurd, like, right? Like, the fucking... It becomes more heightened every week however we saw that at work all the way back in october and i think it's a valid observation a good one indeed um all right gang well we've gone way over today so sorry for that um if you would like to hear us on patreon you know where to find us um p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com slash trailbilly workers party please go subscribe over there um folk people are calling sunday's episode a instant classic yeah uh what was the word

what's the phrase um A masterpiece of the form? A masterpiece of the form. We have created high art. That's true. That's true. I think you should go check it out. This is a high art

program. That's right, man. Only the best. Go check it out. I mean, this is a high art program. That's right, man. Yeah. That's right. Only the best. Go check it out. Give us some cash, $5 a month. Indeed. That masterpiece and many, many more masterpieces.

That's right. All right, gang. Well, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening this week. Adios. Bye.