Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 374: The Green Slime Party

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

First episode of the year is a wide-ranging episode covering everything from the recent tragedy in New Orleans, to the right-wing discourse around H1B visas, to the television show Landman, to the future of the Democratic Party, and finally to the most recent hit pieces on Luigi Mangione Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Well, welcome to the show. This is the first episode of 2025 and Got some exciting news for sports fans fans of big blue nation, Kentucky Wildcats this year. We're signing Or before you go here before you go here. We're not I refuse that in the name of Jesus We're we're signing Or Ashkenazi. We're not signing! That's fake news! It's been floated. And his brother And.

Or and And. It's not even Ed Aideus actually, the ampersand sign actually. I saw the name Or Ashkenazi and I looked outside for like probably 10 minutes and just slowly started laughing The name or Ashkenazi I mean, I'm trying to think like what would be like I mean like I mean I don't even know what would be the black version of that like who I was thinking like or a colored person like no You know what I mean? Like what like what like you know what it is a name. No, it would be like someone who's named like that Ethiopian or something like that.

That Ethiopian? That Nubian. It would be, yeah. That Nubian, question mark? Yeah, I guess you've got, yeah, I was in a rap group with two guys. One was JJ the Crazy NDN. And another one at another point was this guy, Landry,

I knew briefly, who went by DND. I'll let you go ahead and guess what the DN stands for, but the D, the last D was done. I can't say the middle word Say There's many such examples of somebody just like their night their moniker is also there, you know Well, I did today the difference is this guy's an IDF terrorist. I was gonna say Is everybody in the IDF given like a rap moniker?

You know what I mean? Like, oral women's panties or something like that. You know what I mean? I mean I've seen names like, you know, and names is a name, but I've seen names like Shlomo. You know what I mean? Well, Vile Shlomo is the funniest. Vile Shlomo!

I guess that's the funniest one of all time. That's a first ballot Hall of Famer. But- or Ashkenazi fucking got me good, dawg. So is it just OR? It's not like two R's? No, or OR. I started to say is Christianity the only of the Abrahamic faiths where your name is not actually just the name of the religion or whatever. I guess that's

not true because there are many many many people named Christian. You know in Islam you got like Islam Makyachev you know like that's it's represented there. You know I guess it's just It's it would be like if you name and I said this in the group chat I would be like if you named someone like or Jew or Jew or do work But But ask an Aussie But Ashkenazi But Ashkenazi But you have to do it with the lilt though at the end of it

Right, these are my sons and, or, and but Ashkenazi Just yeah, articles And my daughter however Semicolon however comma See that's what, you know where people, Elon and Grimes's child where they had given it that that name that sounded like the product of an Android. What'd you say Tom? I thought Elon and Grimes's child was Viagetti. Yeah, no isn't it like a like a dash something something but it's just

you know me as a writer I would appreciate just using punctuation, you know? Right. For people's names, right? What's the convention? If you're gonna go like a little off beat, like you know, Prince changed his name into that symbol, you know, like what's the rules on something like that? Hmm, what are you changing to?

Like if you're gonna name your kid Aeon Flux 5793472, like what's Like I feel like that's one of those things you got to really be about that life. You know yeah Yeah, we call those neo names. You know well Yeah, you know how like when you sign up for Twitter It'll randomly assign you a name if you don't it'll be like user four or five seven nine three x whatever Start has anybody ever named themselves themselves a Twitter egg name? Like name your child that? Like yeah, user 731.

Has that ever happened you think? I hope not, maybe soon. Will we ever run out of names? Probably not. Who's reusing? I like those Nigerian Pentecostals that name them, their kids stuff like God's gift I chew way, you know, I mean that kind of stuff, you know, that's a cool convention

That is tight That is so tight See my parents were not very creative. My name's just Aaron, you know, I Got a good-ass name You do you got a black guy's name. Yeah It's like my name is always like if it was a black guy who was a redneck my full name is Terrence Gentry neither cut They put the country in the middle

I think I made this joke before but you know that you know that statistic that says that so-called black names have her have her Have they have harder for them to get hired than somebody named like but your name though it'd be like no but I am Terrence Ray that's why I'm in my pocket. Have you ever done that? It's like you know that you probably if they just went off you know your name and your credentials they're thinking well mm-hmm pass over this guy for the job right you know have you ever have you ever done that throwing our brothers under the bus? Not to my knowledge. I know, have you ever, have you ever done that? Throwing our brothers under the bus and you say, well listen, let's play it out. Not to my knowledge.

I know what you're thinking, but. Oh man. Well, the new Trump administration is ending affirmative action, so I'm double screwed now No, oh man, yeah, yeah or yeah, I guess on the other side of it Have you ever been an unwitting diversity hire? Right? All right Have you ever been in unwitting? Yeah, they're just disappointed when you walked in like fuck. Well, like you went bill, mr. Ray

We actually have to fill a quota Unfortunately Your melanin does not say as much Oh Well, it's the first episode of the year, I feel like we got a few things we need to catch up on That we're kind of making the rounds right at the end of December a few things that I kind of like didn't really Keep up with at the time and went back and kind of brushed up on So well, okay well first before I get to all that like right off the bat

I probably just want to front load the episode with the With um with this because I don't think we're gonna have anything really profound to say about it I don't know how much time it really warrants I don't know if we want to like build the episode to talk about this I think it's probably more germane to mention it towards the front end of the episode But the first day of 2025 did not start auspiciously. There were at least two terror attacks. I guess you could call them that.

I don't really know what else to call them. I mean a guy drove through a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and killed like 15 people and then someone detonated a cyber truck outside of the Trump home. Okay, so I will say that being labeled as a terrorist attack We've known that cyber trucks have been prone to Exploded that one's really tough driver. I will be honest with you boys I gotta see some strong ass paperwork on that one. Yeah, that just seems like a Manufacturing defect, you know, right?

That just seems like a manufacturing defect, you know, right? Um, it remind you no no, no, we gotta call this a terrorism because if not then It's like buddy. We already know the deal on Tesla by now. I guess both of these guys were in the military at one point Both of them Use the same car rental app to get these vehicles I I don't really know quite what to make of this I watched a bunch of videos from the guy that did the attack in New Orleans and it's it seems weird it's like I know guys like this right like in the sense that like guys that are just kind of like easily manipulated they're kind of just like

Cogs in a greater machinery whether it's the military or some sort of corporate structure But it seems like he you know kind of quote-unquote snapped in the last couple months But I don't know I mean just to, you know, take a stab at it. I think I floated a few years ago that like when you see attacks like this, like years of lead, like domestic Gladio type attacks like this, like I feel like there's a mixture of like, some of them are literally,

some of them are kind of like just organic expressions of like the ambient background violence of being raised in a settler society right like it's kind of Inevitable that a country founded on violence, especially like just so recently in the last two centuries Would come to be sort of like two centuries Would come to be sort of like haunted by its own violent past and that that would be expressed through acts of mass violence, but I

and but it's hard to like get a good gauge on the percentages of which are that in which are the other kind of You know mass the other kind of, you know, mass violent events, which are, in my opinion, quite literally created by and fostered by the intelligence agencies and everything. So- And also, can I just add, seems not to catch your off-terrence, but I mean, how many times has a mass shooting happened or something, you know, some sort of attack like this, domestic terrorism? you know, some sort of attack like this, domestic terrorism, and we see that the

the FBI, you know, local law enforcement agencies had known about this individual. Right. And there's a whole discussion there and it does seem to be like... One notable case of that from about, though, I don't know, 23, 24 years ago now. Right, right, right. And I don't know, just like you said, it's just like this fostering and cultivation of these, you know, just like you said, it's just like this fostering and cultivation of these domestic terrorists for what purposes, who knows? Well, I think that in this case, it seems, again, I don't wanna like,

I hesitate to make any definitive statements, but it seems like in this case, that was probably an occasion in which Both guys were in the military right like that's kind of weird that on the same day Are both of them Fort Bragg guys, too? I? Don't know I know one of them was like in Texas for Bragg's in North Carolina, right? I'm sure they had some sort of interaction with without knowing I mean we're recording this on the day after right So it's like hard to know like what?

Things are still up in the air. I did see the New York Times trying to Tie it to this is from the New York Times officials trying to determine if New Orleans suspect had ties to terrorist groups US officials have warned that the conflict in Gaza and Lebanon Could spill into the United States most likely in the form of small radicalized groups acting on their own initiative or lone wolf terrorists And that was the slimmiest fucking shit I've ever seen and at all in the article did they at all provide evidence for that claim that they would be domestic spillover No, of course not. No at all provide evidence for that claim that there would be domestic spillover? No. Of course not.

No. Of course fucking not, dude. My question is, and I thought about this last night, it was my first thought when you were talking about the epigenetic implications of being born into a settler state, particularly a settler slave state that massacred natives, that enslaved black Africans

and everything else. Right. It's like, when is our fucking souls gonna be required of us? You know? Yeah. I feel that like very acutely. Like dog, I don't give a flying fuck if every Palestinian person becomes fucking the next

Osama bin Laden. Like it's like, it is at a certain point, like we have to pay the piper as a society. You know what I mean? As Malcolm X said, chickens coming home to roost man Yeah You can't you don't fucking stab a man in his back fucking eight inches pull it out three and then celebrate your progress You know what I mean? Like? Still got goddamn work to do it. It's like we're clearly show. We're not interested in doing that

And also too man, I know this is a an aside, but it does just feel like the few times that I have in the past, I guess a couple months leading up to the election that I have looked at cable news, I mean it really does feel like, I don't know, I don't know if this may be a hack point, but the media is ginning people up to kill their neighbors to make you go outside and buy a fucking gun. I mean, also, I think I was sitting in some, I'm sitting in this diner with a friend a couple months ago. And I mean, I guess I see this all the time, whether I'm watching these streaming services

that have commercials, but the fact that we have ads for the military, you know, joining the military and now they gamify it. So it makes it seem as if you are like a character in an RPG, you know, it just kind of, just, it lessens the weight and the gravitas and the actual consequences of what that actually means, you know, and yeah, I don't know. It just feels like, I mean, with the fact,

coupled with the fact that we do live in this like settler, intrinsically settler colonial violence, settler colonial slave state, as Thomas said. It's just, it just feels like, well, what's the next project? Well, what they want you to do? They want you, I'm not saying this is a conscious effort, right, I'm not saying there's a cabal of people doing it,

I'm just saying it's what it feels like, you know? This sort of ambient or libidinal economy, right, of violence, right? I think that there's, again, I mean, it's hard to get hard numbers on it, but I think that there's I mean again. I mean it's hard to like get hard numbers on it, but I think that like some of them are a result of intelligence operations whether they go south whether the intelligence operations are intentionally pushing them in a direction of mass violence

Spectacled violence you know I'm saying like it's hard to know that number but I also think that like violence, spectacleized violence, you know what I'm saying? Like it's hard to know that number, but I also think that like the United States is, I mean, yeah, we were just talking about this last night. Like the United States is only 250 years old. Like that's like what, eight generations? And like four of those generations were like spent actively massacring people. And not not only that but like having retaliations done back to the settlers for the massacres.

So I was like you've at least got like the founding, you know, at least like the founding first four or five generations of the country just bathed in blood. Not only Native American blood but their own blood Four or five generations of the country just bathed in blood not not only Native American blood but their own blood because of their you know the impact of that collision and And yeah, and I mean like there's this there's been controversy and discussion about like epigenetics or like a Collective consciousness or whatever however you describe it like I think epigenetics does explain something in the sense that like you do pass trauma down and and Whether you want to look at that from like a collective consciousness like America is just like one big

You know behemoth that like tries to repress its earliest violent You know actions and then they resurface in these like really grotesque ways. I think that that does explain both like this sort of organic expression of that whether it's like school shootings or like stuff like this and The almost controlled forced expression of it, which would be like intelligence operations that like I said earlier they either go south or they have baked into them from the beginning a sort of like objective of basically pushing society to its brink. I mean that was the whole point with Gladio and Years of Lead, right?

It's like basically creating so much background, ambient violence and instability that like people naturally then gravitate towards more right-wing figures, and forces, and explanations of the world. Right. Ashes of very, you know, I'd get grounded in like physical violence, that kind of thing. Yeah. Right. You know what it gets me thinking of too, man, is that we were talking about UFOs in one episode, right, a couple of weeks ago, I guess.

And, you know, just like, what is like, I mean, as much as we can glean, what is like the actual factual truth behind this? Right. And just the idea that perhaps like just instilling fear in a population, you know, where people are constantly like looking up and not thinking about aliens, right, but thinking about stealing themselves and preparing themselves for some attack or calamity. You know, I mean, you could also say that, you know, these domestic projects of, you know, pushing society to the brink, right, is also in a similar way preparing people for whether it's aligning with right-wing movements or becoming more nationalistic, right?

Yeah. 100%. becoming more nationalistic, right? Yeah, 100%. Why is it, do y'all think, on that related note, that our society is geared everything from the conclusion of scripture, of the religion that we call, or some people call our national religion or whatever, Christianity.

Although, but the same can be said of Islam and Judaism to some degree. Like, down to like our, I mean, there's a lot has been said about like, you know, the big disaster movies that, you know, that we've talked about, like the way we're conditioned sort of to think of cataclysm, right? And like, what is it about the externalities? Like, what is it? What is, I guess, what is in it, in your estimation, for the ruling class to always have us thinking about Armageddon apocalypse, the end? Why are we obsessed with it as a culture?

Is that like an Abrahamic thing? Is that like, what accounts for all that? You know? Yo, just, I don't even know, man, but I just want to say that's such a good question, man, because you would think that for these people, instability and some kind of cataclysm like that, like it would be bad for business, right? You know, yeah, like it's like a paradox. You know, I like seems like or do they know their souls are gonna be required You know what I mean, and they're just trying to

Well Dude, I and I wanted to save this for this episode that we're gonna maybe do next week on the land man On the show land man, but there is a fascinating scene in the fifth episode Do what there's a cataclysm tie-in on the land man there kind of is yeah, there's a festival this show though There's a man is such a it's on paramount right it is yeah, okay? I have paramount for Star Trek, but I guess I'll watch something else on the fifth episode of land man There's a fascinating scene where John Hams character. Just loses his fucking shit on this

like Namby Pamby like environmentalist guy on the Who like sits on the board of his drilling company I don't know why the fuck I think he just classic trajectory right right right try to fix it try to fix the system from the inside right and like he was a guy joined the police force because he wanted to end like violence. You know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jon Hamm's monologue is something to the effect of, I don't care whether students are throwing shit

on works of art or blocking highways. I don't care what they think of me. I don't care what they think about oil. The fact of the matter is, it's like the world is dependent on oil and I have to as CEO of a drilling company I have to like return value to my shareholders and blah blah blah like get a nest egg for my kids or whatever and Then after that scene is over his like buddy who's sitting next to him him turns to him and he's like that's a great

You know monologue Marty I think his name is money or Marty or something he's like but like the party is ending it's not ending tomorrow it may not be ending in the next generation but your great-grandkids will see none of this and I think that that's a fascinating like look at like how the oil industry and now like a lot of like capitalists see what they do it's like the party is ending eventually. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing goes on.

And that's a kinda cataclysmic, apocalyptic worldview in and of itself, right? It's like they don't have any answer or vision for what comes after because they don't give a shit. John Hamm's monologue, he basically literally says that. I don't give a shit what comes after I'm trying to get As much money as I can while I still can It's like it's like it's like dying Feinstein I'm gonna be brought this up when you call that dead lady Terrence

Patriot, but it's like these kids these kids kindergartners like children. These are not high schools They were children going up to her and asking her about the Green New Deal. And she says, well, when you get old enough, you could run for office and do something about it without, and it's just like, it just internalized, like to her, she's internalized that she's going to be dead. You know what I mean? Which she is. And that all of the consequences, all the cataclysmic, apocalyptic consequences of this,

right? Of our, you know, resource extraction based society. She won't live to see any of that. Right. So why the fuck would she, all she could do is just sit down to have her A's wheel her around, or if you're a shareholder, as that famous, that infamous New Yorker cartoon. Well, in the brief time that we had,

we made a lot of share value, you know what I'm saying? Shareholder value. So it's just like, yeah, just get it while you can, I guess. Get it while you can. We are a running ass society, aren't we? We are. Man, we are a society that cannot stand and face the music to save our lives.

I mean, it's just, I think about how many idioms about running there are. Like, in the long run, you know what I mean? Or having given somebody a run for their money, you know what I mean? Like just running constantly. Running from your campaign perhaps. Running from this thing that what we know now is going to happen, but maybe, I don't know, maybe climate catastrophe is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We talked about cataclysm long enough. We could have actually just rained for a million years if we'd just kept fossil plankton in the ground, but we had to have some sort sort of couldn't wrap our heads around the idea of just you know the kingdom of God on earth we had to just go ahead and create our own you know cat ism and I don't even know how to express this man but the fact that like you know this society is based off of shit that's been long dead you know like of a different world almost, of a different planet almost, like creatures that walk the earth and swam in the ocean

and seem almost like alien. And it's so like, like, like these motherfuckers have been dead for millions of years. And for us to reach into the earth and pull that shit out and raise these, put like these specters of fucking petroleum and shit like that, and that's our downfall. It's just so insane that I don't really know how to, I should write about it probably. I don't really know how to capture that. It's really wild, man.

It's the Nosferatu economy, right? It's like, let's go to the cemetery and let's find the most evil ghouls we can find and then pull them out of the ground. We're a sick society. We were a society of gravediggers. That is so- Yeah we are. We can desecrate, we can just desecrate like animal graves, like human remains. We're just such a disgusting death-based society, yo. It just makes me sick, dude. What the fuck?

Death-based but at the same time death-defying. It's like we're totally incoherent. That's why I think, yes, mate, we talk all the time about people's incoherent politics. It is the function of the epigenetic experience of having living, existing in a genocidal slave master's world for a long time. And then on top of that, just living in a constant death spiral, but also denying that fact in that death defiant thing I think all the time we're sold all these potions and lotions that are going to keep us younger and I mean we're fighting the tide while worshiping death and at the same time our fucking DNA is imbued

with genocide and slavery right right right It's a pitiful condition, man. It really is. That's why I've accepted Christ. Brother, I've accepted entropy. I've just completely, it's just, you know, everything will have to end and maybe be born again. This is an interesting thing because, like, genuinely, I was like researching that piece I wrote for the nation I was kept coming back to this idea of like why do so many liberals think people vote against their interests? Why do they think they're stupid or misled or like or have false consciousness or whatever? Which began as like a Marxist concept and then be kind of became like

Which began as like a Marxist concept and then kind of became like, you know, bastardized by the libs. But like, I genuinely think that like, over a long enough timeline, like what does it do to people to have to reckon with the reality that like, the game is ending eventually right like it's going to like this won't last forever and and something that like I've just grown more and more frustrated with the libs over time is like what they see as people's stupidity as people like being misguided or doing False consciousness because they watch too much Fox News or whatever is actually ideology Like what it is is like people aren't stupid. They're just scared They just have fear and the fear is sublimated they repress it They push it way down and become sublimated into something else, but you know it'd be bubbles back up into some grotesque form and

Again not to bring it back to the land man, but I was thinking about this in Land Man. Because like, there is this very fascinating tension in this show of Billy Bob Thornton's character facing both his own mortality, but also like, questions of like home and love and family and the show is a Fascinating distillation of conservative ideology in the sense that like he comes up face to face

In the specific instance in like I said the fifth episode of this like, you know Horrific accident that happens on what because there's always people dying and they're mostly almost always Mexicans but like he the death of this person makes him question like What is family? What is love and in the classic sense like all conservatives do this? They all they always come up face to face with this question of like what is love? What is mutual obligation? What is community? What is, you know, and like, what are the implications of that for like distribution of resources and for being comfortable on earth and sharing its many resources? They could have the opportunity to look at that and go, well, take it to the next step.

Maybe it's progressive values, maybe it's even socialist or communist values, but instead, they sublimated it back into fantasies about cartels. That's what ideology is. It's not because you're stupid, it's because you're scared. And that has to go somewhere. It's scared myth-making. Exactly, right. Right, in lieu of any kind of materialist class politics, scared and that's Scared myth-making

Exactly right right in lieu of any like kind of materialist like class politics You know I guess you just kind of gravitate towards the thing that is more readily available to you You know this is something that is presented to you as like well It's either a scapegoat or it's the reason why you know and this is true. That's exactly right This is true for liberals as well, and you saw it all throughout the course of this year Like ideology in my opinion, and I'm not like a Lacanian or a Giacchino or whatever But like in my opinion most ideology comes from fear I think that like and that could be a fear of anything

Loving anyone too much because we live in a capitalist society that Anyone too much because we live in a capitalist society that Incentivizes you to not have actual deep intimacy and connections with anybody Fear of changing that or wanting to change it because it might destroy your entire Community or your family whatever and so people go with what they think is the right Most secure choice whether it's the Democrats whether it's the Republicans that's not stupidity that is actually like intelligence in the sense that like the game is survival so you go with the biggest game in town that's what ideology is not because you're like stupid or you watch Fox News but that's part of it for sure not not to sound like you know like to like woo woo like

metaphysical but wouldn't you even say we were just talking about death once you even say like it's all rooted in the fear of death, you know? And the fear of preservation and the fear of security, all these things being like of continuation and progeny included, you know? I think so, I think death maybe be like the background thing, but I think the biggest fear for most people is, okay, so yes, it's a fear of death,

and it's a desire to want to stave that off by securing your legacy through family or community or your own works or whatever. But I think even more fundamentally, I think what people fear even more than death is changing society. I think that for them, that is the biggest, that is the most terrifying thing imaginable. Dude, did you see this tweet, bro? I saw this tweet that was going around, which I've seen a couple of these tweets lately

that have been questioning anti-landlordism or whatever, just being against landlords. And this one person was like, so what do you mean without landlords that nobody will pay a mortgage and people will get to live in houses for free? And people were like, yes. Why is it so difficult for you to imagine that the world could be any different?

I think David Graeber, and I might fuck this up because I always fuck up quotes, but David Graeber has a quote where he says, no one wakes up. Most people, I should say, the overwhelming majority of humanity, most people, if they woke up tomorrow and could reshape the world and make it different I don't think they would remake it into this world You know, I was you have people that already have power and money and shit But most people would just be like, okay, this is fucked up. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know not to say they would immediately be socials to communists

But they'd be like well like I like a nice house for myself I don't think people should be poor this and I know might sound simplistic But you know what I mean? This is the thing and this is why I feel like I front-loaded this whole landman thing into this episode But like this is just hits home for me personally because I watched this my entire life people gave their entire lives to the oil Industry they gave it to the United States military whatever Instead of like interrogating like oh shit, what does that mean? What does that mean about me? That I gave my entire life and health and body to coal or oil or empire building or a factory or whatever. Instead of interrogating that deeply, it has to be rerouted. It has to be like, and this is fundamentally why Libs don't understand why people hate Dick Cheney.

Conservatives hate Dick Cheney because they misled them about weapons of mass destruction, and more fundamentally because they hate themselves for having been misled. And so they have to, and so what does that manifest as? That manifests as Trump, who can then smash that whole apparatus, not the underlying fundamental structures of it, just how it's deployed against various marginal groups of people, right? Sure. So I don't know. I mean, that's...

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, also too, I just think it's... I think part of it as well is that... I mean, I guess I'm just repeating what you said. It's just that, like, yeah, Trump was supposed to be this break in division. He was supposed to be, I don't know, maybe that's interesting because it was supposed to be sort of a change, but it was propositioned as change or maybe change as a return, more so.

But it wasn't seismic enough to make people feel uncomfortable. I guess he was just making this country more of what it already is, right? But the alternative, which would be socialistic politics, that is truly a sever and a break, right? On even a psychological level, right? Just imagining what a different world would look like. And I think you're right. Most Most people are afraid of that. I mean people even on the left are afraid of that, you know Yeah, this is why I think Conservatism always does this thing right like it's it always rejects whoever came before it It was Reagan rejecting Goldwater. It was Bush rejecting right in a sense I mean there was obviously a lot of continuity there and then obviously that well mostly the Tea Party then rejecting Bush

Trump rejecting libertarians in the Tea Party like they have this fundamental like revolutionary kind of engine It's not really revolutionary appears that way but it's mostly because they they are like You know They they get misled down these blind alleys and then in order to get out of it they have to sort of attach themselves to the next person who can like shatter the Simultaneously, you know maintain the illusion but also shatter all of the Cultural things that are built up that are it's built on top of right you know you know you know somebody was saying to me Is um sort of like like how I guess?

Democrats never Democrats never seem to actually like refute like anything before it's always like this Ostensible like cumulative effect or building on or hearkening back to the past in like the name of so-called progress You know but it just got me thinking like that like the libs will never have their own January building on or harkening back to the past in the name of so-called progress. But it just got me thinking that the Libs will never have their own January 6th. I think they're still going to do pink pussy hat marches. And I just think it has more to do with the fact that they act on these... I'm not saying the right doesn't do the side of the right, but I think liberals especially, they like to act on these moralistic sort of instincts that are really hyper individualized to make it seem like they

themselves are good people and they're on the right side of history. Right. We're like, and I'm not saying this is a good thing about January 6th, but these guys were like, no, we're going to stop this shit right now. Like that's literally what it was called. Stop the count. Like the fact that they could do something before the results were finalized as, as they were being finalized instead of this this de facto, you know, or post-facts sort of like, well, you know, there's nothing we can do about it. We're just reacting to it, you know?

I don't know if any of that makes sense, but it just feels as if, like, it feels as if at least, you know, I'm not giving kudos to the right here, of course not, but it feels like they have an understanding of, I mean, I don't even know what I'm saying. I don't wanna make anyone upset, and I'm not even sure, but there is that sort of stagnation within, like, Iism or we've seen it right now within the Democratic Party, right?

Yeah, I mean Well a fascinating thing and there's two ways we can take this. I think they both kind of lead to the same place One thing that I wanted to like catch up on Was this whole thing over h1b visas? like You know over the course of the last few weeks like Elon pissed off his Reno right-wing followers By basically saying like h1b visas are good like we have to have skilled workers coming into the country He said something like I will fucking

fight anybody to the death that disagrees with me or something you know some epic like fucking red is with his well corpse body we look like a beach well brother you're not fighting anybody fighting nobody much less to the death you fight that waistline brother you fighting the tide that's what you're fighting Wasteloud brother But like this is kind of an interesting thing because

Elon and Vivek favor the h1b visas right Stephen Miller doesn't he wants to restrict them So so the brow guy the brown guy and the the the cat is the capitalist dude versus like the fucking like gerbils you know this makes sense I guess yeah well um Trump's gonna have a lot to manage in this administration he doesn't care right there was a what had started this whole thing was that Trump announced that venture capitalists Sriram Krishnan would join the White House to work on AI policy and Laura Loomer was like this is disturbing this is highly disturbing that they would have like a brown guy in

the White House or anything. And I policy I don't know why I thought like the AI think I don't know what the right doesn't give a shit about AI But of course, it's the brown guy, right? One it so this kicked out this whole debate where like, you know, Elon was like no h1b is good That's why I'm here in America and then Vivek had this like really long tweet that said I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but this is like a summary in Vox. Vivek argued that the reason that quote, top tech companies often hire foreign born and first generation engineers over quote,

Native Americans, he doesn't mean that indigenous. He means. I was like, you mean like Tecumseh? Like what are you talking about? Is that quote, American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. He condemned the idea of valuing the jock

over the valedictorian and criticized American cultural products like the TV shows Boy Meets World and Friends. Ah! Yo, bro, yo, think about, think about you used to have motherfuckers like, cardio, what was that guy's name? William F. Buckley, you know what I'm saying you know say like these well these men that were like, I mean like I guess you did have a right-wing

Intelligentsia, but then you have this guy bringing a boy meets world and friends with Man the liberal and conservative intelligences are in pitiful shape Truly So wait, go ahead, go ahead Terrence. Well, I was just gonna, what were you gonna say? Cause I was gonna pivot to the next thing, but what were you gonna? Well, I was just gonna ask,

so is he like actually being like the jock? Like is this, this really feels like the nerd geek that's grown up and now they're in a power to punish the jocks? Like they're gonna send them to Gotama Bay or some shit like that. Like what is he trying to say that we pay too much attention to like that sort of male figure instead of like,

you know, the guys that sat at lunch tables by themselves doing computer work or science and shit like that? Well, that's actually fascinating. I mean, this mega fat, like mega 2.0 fascism really is this unholy alliance between jocks and nerds right really is So true they love the jock cuz like all their fucking tweets are like you know blonde hair blue-eyed guys like making out with the cheerleader On the sidelines like we have to go back Right yeah, it's or Greek statuary

Or Greek statuary right right it's a um Again all right this whole podcast should just be about land man because it is the or text for understanding conservative ideology because Landman also makes it explicit that part of what drives current fascism is this bizarre fetishization of teenage of adolescence And it's you know you see this all the time with these tweets that like again like the jock making out with the cheerleader on the sideline and and and

you know the constant like edification of yeah like you know muscly blonde hair blue-eyed like high school quarterback whatever the guys that they wanted to be. Some of the guys that these guys wanted to be, actually. There is literally a line in Land Man where one character is like, my grandmother told me that you have to stay 17

forever in your soul. And I was like, that's the worst advice I've ever fucking heard. That was creepy. Who would ever, but it makes sense anyways I'll get more into it later at a later episode The point being is that the Vivec and then also do the same thing with this nerd shit You know what I'm saying like they are obsessed with like the high school nerds. It's the high school jocks

But like that's that's what MAGA 2.0 is right right? It's really oh There's like this aestheticization of politics like on the current MAGA 2.0 where it Right, right. It's really, yo, there's like this aestheticization of politics like on the current MAGA 2.0 where it's like, like, at least again, the aestheticization, not like actually what it is because you have people like Trump who's fucking 70 something, but youth and dynamism. I guess that's what I was trying to hint at before, right? There seems to be dynamism on the right. Whereas what do we have with the liberals? We have like a 74 year old guy with cancer, you know, who's leading some fucking, we have the outgoing president, and then just, they're stagnant.

They're like a pool of water in your backyard where the leaves have fallen down and moss has collected on the surface. Full of mosquitoes and- Mosquitoes, you don't even want to get to the net to start cleaning that shit up because it makes you want to actually vomit, where every time you walk past it because it smells like fucking- There's a green slime on top It's great. They're the green slide party, bro

Yeah, not in the cool way not like that like the young thug way slime gang yeah Like the Green Party versus the Green Slime Party and that's the future of progressive politics again, why silver Party versus the Green Slime Party, and that's the future of progressive politics, I guess. Why silver? I don't know. But this, I think this is fascinating, the more I think about it,

because I hadn't really thought about it before, but yeah, like, this will be a contradiction that I think the right-wingers will have to resolve. Like, the nerds versus the jocks It's like two competing ideas of conservatism one of which is like a hair and bulk like authentic You know like almost like Anglo fetish-sized Like a Nazi like a traditional Nazi thing. The other is a kind of more settler vision of

Fascism or more kind you know I mean like will import people for smart technicians and other people from other cultures and nations and They will help their like tech settlers basically exactly which is what the original Which is what the original settlers were like mining was the vehicle through which settler colonialism expanded into the West And that required technicians it required railroads You know what I'm saying? And so like right it's this it's this to like sort of blended hybrid visions of Fascism that are kind of coming head-to-head in a weird way over these issues like immigration Resource extraction. Why do you think I know this is I don't want go ahead Tom in a weird way over these issues like immigration, resource extraction, et cetera.

Why do you think, I know this is, I don't want, go ahead Tom. No, no, no, you go ahead. I don't wanna get too far away from where we were heading to. Maybe this, I don't know if this dovetails, but why do you think it is that the right has been better at capturing not just the tech industry, and we could say that the tech industry,

you know, it doesn't care which side of the aisle pushes policies or they can manipulate. But why does it seem like the right either seems to welcome them more in figures like, I don't know, I guess, Elon Musk and Trump's relationship or Peter Thiel or whatever. What do you think is the relationship with that? Because I know that Kamala's whole deal was trying to kind of like bring the tech industry back into the fold, you know? With crypto had she won, but it just seemed there was a very lukewarm response. And you could also say that maybe these people would think that the right would be more conducive

to their aims of profiteering or deregulation. But why do you think that the right is better with tech right now? Because it seemed like it would be the liberals, right, given their whole idea of just this arc of history towards progress and involving technology and also, you know, just exploitation as well. But like, yeah. I think the thing is that the cultural tech, like, the tech that's more aimed towards like cultural products like Netflix, Michael Hastings, that guy was a huge Kamala person was it mark Cuban also a pretty big Kamala person

Yeah, he was and I don't know if you can consider him tech or not Like I feel like he kind of rides the line a little bit But a lot of the like streaming tech CEOs were more more towards Kamala. I think that the biggest reason that a lot of these, that the right has been able to capture

so much of the tech industry is like, one is crypto, like Tom and I were talking about this the other day, I listened on that podcast the dig Where they had quince labotia on on there and he had an incredible statistic, which was that like One Bitcoin and on election day in 2016 was worth $750 on election day 2024. It was worth like fifty thousand dollars I think now it's worth like a hundred ten thousand dollars or something. It's I think now it's worth like $110,000 or something. It's, I mean, it's just like a market increase that's like unprecedented, unheard of.

Basically, cage fighting and cryptocurrency is having a day, Hunter, impending Trump. Exactly, and I think that like the crypto thing dovetails with like a lot of what's big in the quote unquote Mano's right now. But like, I don't know, there like a lot of what's big in the quote-unquote manos for right now But like I don't know there's a lot of other stuff though that like I was telling Tom the other day like the whole push to blame the election results on the Manas fear and like the crisis of masculinity kind of like

Covers up what I think is a huge crisis in femininity Covers up what I think is a huge crisis in femininity Like right now like which is the turf movement like the crisis like the trans panic the category upon which the trans panic is occurring is the What we'd call the female category, right? Like like people aren't as panicked about people transitioning to men as they are people transitioning to women And that is a interesting, I don't know, I mean masculinity is in crisis, sure, whatever we want to say about that,

but it's also true for. Well that seems wrapped, I mean that seems like kind of wrapped up in the 14 words, right, we have to secure our future for our white children and just the idea that you cannot socially reproduce, right, you know, you're not only are you not like the The the leader of this nuclear family, but you're not even like you're not even doing the thing that she's supposed to do That helps us keep power right you know right that the 14 words

Yeah, I always thought it was nobody loves me, but my mom and she might be driving, too The new 14 the better 14 words Well this kind of Works with this article. I read in the hill this morning Me and Tom talked touched on this a little bit on the patreon earlier this week But the headline is progressives face an existential crisis under Trump So it goes it starts off talking about how AOC missed that committee appointment, it was the house oversight

and accountability committee. She lost to a 74 year old. Yo bro, you know what they say, you know what I mean, would you rather fight an old man or a baby or some shit like that? What would you like? Or just the fact that like why would I want to even think about this? But you really did lose to a 74 year old man Like you might as well have beaten you in a race or some shit or see who thought like a football the farthest

It's a little concerning Also, it's kind of funny that like she cozied up to all those progressives and didn't get a goddamn thing out of it So it talks about like how she lost that The loss is emblematic of an evolving political landscape that has proven challenging for progressives over the last of the past several cycles The 2018 surge of energy that helpful fuel the formation of the squad has deflated with some Democrats questioning its future Trump's rise to victory over Kamala Harris all but extinguished the momentum progressives were hoping would carry them forward on Capitol Hill carry them forward on Capitol Hill. Democrats- I would say that Kamala extinguished any of that promise

that progressives had before she even had lost. You know what I'm saying? Like she herself like took us to the like, you know what I'm saying? To like the bank of the river and told us to like, you know, just look at the buddies, look at the fish. It shot us in the back of the head. Dude, come on.

What are you talking about? Sorry. She had the Wesley snaps me with tears in his eyes. You know? Except like, except it's like a Photoshop. So he's smiling. Talking about sorry the Wesley snaps me with tears in his eyes Except like except it's like a Photoshop, so he's smiling While AOC and her mentor Bernie Sanders each has vast national appeal There's still an open question about what they can actually do moving forward Some allies who have helped lift the progressive lawmakers political career say members of the left need to look beyond D.C. for a new clout. It's a weird sentence. Blah blah blah. From the discussions or wait

okay then it quotes a guy from our revolution who says they're still around they're still around around you on musket house speaker Mike Johnson have their sights on act blue they know that's our money source it's a signal okay I don't know if I agree with that I don't know if they're gonna be going after active blue but maybe I mean it's also just kind of funny that like I know you need money to run campaigns but I just think it's funny that it is the work like now not the worst thing to happen But the thing that he's quoted as saying is like they're coffers You know like how they make money to not like a ground game, right? Not not actually knocking on doors not going into communities, but you're gonna fuck with our back

Pressing issue right now, you know That's the most pressing issue right now. God damn it. Yeah, we're talking about people getting deported, everything else. All this stuff is like, listen, what they're going to go after, they're going to fucking kneecap us with going after ActBlue. You know what, you're not going to get text messages. It's going to be 16 months after election is over, still asking you for money. Still asking you for money. Yeah, still asking you for money.

They're gonna ban our panhandling apparatus. They're gonna yank the cap out of my hands? Think about all the people we've got auto donations from that are gonna be alerted to the fact and cancel for bank The economic first approach is what got many progressives with non-traditional backgrounds elected to Capitol Hill AOC famously worked as a bartender before taking office mirroring the trajectories of other squad memories like Cory Bush and Jamal Bowman Facing a lack of potency others on the left are facing or trying a newer strategy that seeks to merge Some of their more palatable progressive goals with areas of populism populism populism favored by Trump the handful of members who have Charles Barkley

Populism. We're of that populism. This is how good it sounds. The handful of members who have tried to make that case, including Senator John Fetterman and Rep Ro Khanna, have been met with interest among some of the opposing side. Many progressives are starting to get on board with that tactic, possibly because there are a few great options. We've got to engage with Doge, and we've got to point out what we think are the inefficiencies in the system like fossil fuel subsidies," said the R Revolution guy. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So they're like accepting the legitimacy of like, Elad and Vivek's like, kid's table.

Yes. Brother, that's, you're already off on a wrong foot Once you accept their framing you've already lost I mean it's like it's like it's like a Mika Brzezinski and fucking what's his name morning Joe basically groveling back to Trump you know what I mean? You know what I mean? It's just being like well I mean it's like literally what the liberal establishment has been saying well, I guess he's present now We have to take him seriously and work with him. Mm-hmm Yeah, the party needs a reckoning with this with itself

They're saying it out of their mouths, but their actions are fully aligned with the sameness that has gotten to this place The people are dying for our own I won't say our own Donald Trump and our own Marjorie Taylor green But Democrats are dying for people who are willing to stand up take some assertive action and call things out as They see them This is a bizarre quote from a Progressive operative and executive director of Future Coalition,

an organizing network. No idea what the fuck that is. That sounds sinister. Yeah, the person's name is Corrin Freeman. I don't know exactly when Democrats lost their comfort with populism, but I don't think it was because Trump picked it up. I think Trump picked it up because Democrats gave it up

during the Obama years when they started chasing Silicon Valley money And Obama wanted to appeal to college educated people who think populism is icky and uneducated. I Don't think I like here's that person's name corn frame Freeman corn Freeman look we love our dough is going to free bed hey right ain't a real guy corn Freeman says we need more populism yeah we need like a like a like a you know a straw chewing

hit man corn Freeman's going out there and say what we need now some web populism populism. I love all populism. He wears a hat like Snowmizer. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Populism is I'm a strab. I just don't people say it all the time. I have no idea what that word means Like I guess it like you cuz you're popular I guess I guess it's like or like people who don't have college degrees or something like it It's one of those words that can mean anything you want it to mean right right right like neoliberalism. I guess Which I mean that means something I guess you know I think

Populism is a word that kind of attempts to resurrect like the mythologies of America you know what I mean like the founding mythologies and and folk tales and legends of Of America like buddy and type of shit. Yeah in a way that like specifically avoids Reckoning with you know that whole thing which we would call like who were there anybody living here prior to 250 years ago So I don't know I think that like it's a it's it's a word that means nothing It's basically like non Marxist progressivism or non Marxist

right-wing whatever but it doesn't To me it means non Marxist. That's what I what I read populism. I think non Marx it isn't to me it means non-marxist that's what I when I read populism I think non-marxist and that to me I'm immediately like all right I don't want any part of that well I mean it seems to be dematerialized from any deeper project you know materialized yeah yeah it's trying to get the milk without buying the cow, you know, yeah Exactly So I don't if the Democrats keep going on that which I don't think they're even gonna go on on that route like my My inclination is they're gonna keep winnowing down their constituency to like where to the point where like in

2032 their message is gonna be like where to the point where like in 2032 their message is gonna be like Aaron Thorpe is our constituency, you know what I mean? Like it'll be just based on specifically 30 specific individuals like right don't you want to vote Aaron? Like we're gonna be in the McKinsey They're gonna make it they get a McKinsey to shit so much and be like, you know How can we get the most game with doing the least amount of work? So that means if we just got to shave off certain constituencies just so that we could look at like it just in a pure numbers way instead of being like, which again you know the rights instead of having

even if it's an incoherent project right that has opposing forces right with competing interests at least there seems to be some long-term project right. We're a party that goes after Pyrrhic victories without bringing anybody you know new into the fold. We just want to be like, you know, middle of the pack, respected in the intelligentsia, but without, you know. Without a theory of conflict, man. Unless you're beating, unless you're punching left.

Well, no, that's a great point, Aaron. It's like, for me, like, and I've this on the point on the show before but like a Marxist theory of that conflict would be harnessing worker power to go to the capitalists and say like no you will pay for health care free food free lunches for students infrastructure instead of like going to the capitalist and saying like please can we please have a little bit of a crumb can we have a crumb just hold it out the empty coffee cup you know yeah for some coinage panhandler that's all it's panhandling ass

bunch well but that really is a panhandling party and that's how they that's how they do politics they basically assemble these coalitions at the net at the municipal level to then go to their local Capitalists and say like look we're a broad Network of shareholders and community whatever the fuck stakeholders are these weird words that they use and say like don't you want to? You know contribute a little bit to the charity of this so that we can have free lunch for these this one elementary school this one district without actually like confronting the Basis on which their power rests that sense no that makes sense You know what it makes me think that I already forgot this motherfucker's name son. Who is the VP?

Yeah, I already forgot this guy's name, but like just the fact that, and I get that he had done like progressive things as governor, but it also seemed like, I don't know if this makes sense, it also seemed like he was chosen because people's conception of democratic politics might have, it might be like, well, he's not going to do this everywhere or he won't be able to do it everywhere, right? This is kind of throwing a bone to progressives, but also to the idea that the Democratic Party is interested in any of these programs. But there's no, it doesn't have any kind of spillage, right, into the mainstream of the party, or that would worry potential donors or the capitalists who, you know, maybe they don't like Trump because he's outwardly racist, but they're fine if it's a middle-of-the-road kind of Democrat running the show, right?

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah Well, I remember looking into his like free lunch program I think a lot of it was basically funded Through tax, you know taxes on his constituents, but also through like these, you know local developmentalist politics of like going to I don't know fucking. I don't know what all businesses are headquartered in Minnesota, Minnesota Vikings for example Going to them being LLB to some shit like yeah Yeah, like don't you want to create some social capital and cultural capital with like buying 18 kids from some free lunch?

No, I mean I'm being intentionally hyperbolic. I'm pretty sure it was a statewide program, but like Minnesota back But yeah, like that's that's yeah, that's the difference right like you have to actually go to the to those capitalists and say like All these people these workers they created the value like you will pay back like that is right That is not an orientation not in just one state, but a national project Yeah, like a decade spanning project possibly if you have that in mind, but these people don't know that these they cannot see that Well then so as a result they're gonna wind up marginalizing themselves more and more and more I just don't see any way I Mean, I don't know. I guess the Trump people I say this every year, right?

Like it's I see there is a way where like the Trump people Marginalize themselves so much through their own stupid ass contradictory policies that they do wind up putting wind in the cells of the Democrats they may take back both fucking houses and it seesaws for another 20 years I don't know. But I mean like but again I don't know. I walked into the sea long before that happens. I mean I don't want to prognosticate here though we try to talk about it and try to figure out but I mean maybe it doesn't want to prognosticate here, though. We tried to talk about it and try to figure out, but I mean, it doesn't make sense. Just the way they ran, like the way that Kamala ran her election and just sort of again, gallivanting across the stage with Liz Cheney and just being the most right-wing Democratic candidate

in my lifetime, it's just hard to imagine that, like how would they win people back? It seems the only way they could win people back is just, I don't know, talking about the economy, right? Like, just, I I mean these kitchen table issues I know I hate to say that but literally the things that people like care about, you know with a I don't know a progressive bent I mean, I don't know but I just can't imagine them doing anything different, right? because it seems like they might just want to run Republican light again and That's not enough for people because they won't vote or either. They'll just vote for a Republican, you know

What is it is becoming more? incoherent in a way, right? It's like, I see half people saying it's because James Carville was in the New York Times today, for example, and he was like, the reason I got the election wrong was because I didn't listen to my own advice, which is, it's the economy, stupid. And it's like, so it's this whole thing where like, some of them think that it's because the economy, like the Democrats didn't focus enough on the economy. Some of them think the Democrats focus too much on the economy.

Like, none of them are able to, you know, reckon with the underlying issue, which is that they are not offering anything that is substantively different or transformative. And the reason why Bernie was so popular was because literally pretty much one single issue, and that was healthcare. It was a transformative program that like... You've hit on something, Terrence. It is that in order, things have shifted so much in this country. In order to have a sweeping, transformative thing, you really don't have to change that

much. You just pick your pet issue and say, we're going to radically overhaul this, and then you're off to the races. It's not, yeah. That's not hard, really. Right. Especially with something as a sale in his healthcare, right? Something that affects every single person.

Again, this is why Luigi, right? This is why this is such a big story, right? I mean, think about Obama. I mean, other than just his election being at the time perceived as this great historical gesture, he also ran on like, like we're gonna close Guantanamo Bay at the end when everybody was fatigued and like against the Iraq War and like it's just gonna be a complete you know sea change from Bush and like that was enough to win until like it just started being tepid business as

usual you know what I mean like yeah it yeah, it really doesn't take that much. Like if you're running today, or running for 20, what year is this again? What year is this again? 20XX, brother? Yeah. You're running for 28 or whatever. You know, it just really wouldn't, like,

I mean, all you gotta do is pick one thing and just. But you're so, I don't wanna relitigate the election, man. We talked about this so much and so much commentary has been said on it. But I mean, you're right, Tom. Kamala didn't even do that. It wasn't even so much a return to normalcy as much as like... I think return to normalcy would have maybe hit more, but it seemed like... Return to Bush.

Right, but it was just predicated on... Well, return to normalcy, but we're gonna lower prices, X, Y, and Z. I mean, not that that's what they would have meant, but it was just predicated on return to normalcy but we're gonna lower prices, X, Y, and Z. I mean, not that that's what they would have meant, but it was just really defeat Trump and defend democracy. And that's so amorphous to people. Like, if you ask people what their main issues are, it's not fucking defending democracy. They know they don't live in a fucking democracy, bro. Yeah. And your whole thing can't just be beat Trump. Right.

You know what I mean? This is... This goes back to what I was saying earlier. I operate from the assumption that most Americans aren't stupid. They are scared. It makes way more sense when you view it that way. If you think that they're all stupid,

that they've been misled or that they vote for Democrats every time because they're just morons or whatever, like then that doesn't explain how insulted they probably felt when Kamala was out there telling them joy or whatever. You have to really operate more from the assumption that most of them are scared and either they don't know how to actually harness their power for anything or they've not been shown or and granted that breaks down into various different like forms of like how that fear is manifested through their own like social environments and everything else but

But yeah, no, I mean also though, but don't you guys think I was just thinking about this a minute ago though but don't you think that even if they did change this Tom like for 2028 like Again, I remember saying this after 2016 and I was proven incorrect But like and so maybe I'm just repeating history again But like don't you think that they're kind of discredited like it feels to me like they're so thoroughly Discredited like nobody nobody wants to fuck with them anymore I think I think you're so right man And this is time back into the thinking people are stupid thing they thought people were so dumb that they could like a wheel

around the corpse as in Joe Biden for like months months on end and that and we saw that the polls that people were while they were telling us that he was fit enough to Run he himself was saying that he'll never he'll never back out and Meanwhile you look at the polls and his like you know his approval rating is just tanking because people are looking at a literal corpse I'm not seeing him. You know they're seeing all the gaps and shit They don't have any confidence and they thought we were so fucking stupid that people would be willing to go for that You know yeah until he had to drop out so I Don't know so it makes me wonder like I'm just as you were saying that Tom like I can imagine

AOC trying to be like well, we are gonna do single-peer health care this time in 2028 but I just don't see it working because I just think that like There's just thoroughly discredited at a national level. It seems And we got boy who cried wolf bro. Well, we pointed this out on the patreon But they seem to thrive at local municipal levels and like that's because they're really good at like assembling these like developmentalist coalitions that can like bring Various grant money and federal money Basically, basically this was honed during the war on poverty. It's kind of like a residual thing from the war on poverty years

But nationally yeah, like they just it breaks down at that level I mean because it would actually require you to create a narrative where it is an us versus them where it's a narrative of antagonism, you know, yeah narrative of conflict and it's not I used to think it was because they had so many coalitions, you know, whether it was young people or black people or just like the black and white working class, that it was hard to cobble that together. But through my own work with the Democratic Party and just through, you know, through a couple of elections, it's like, oh, they just hate people. Yeah.

A lot of it is just they don't fucking like people and they don't want to do that work and they don't believe in people, you know. Yeah, I think Terrence, you right like at the municipal level they thrive It's like, you know in the same way that you know, you want a fat chef or a Polish doctor You also want to live if you're trying to build a walking trail through an old train tunnel Well, um, I We're at it well over an hour. I was gonna read this, but I'll save it for the Patreon,

but I'll go ahead and tease it. This is in the Atlantic, an astonishing level of dehumanization. There is no defense of those who celebrated the murder of Brian Thompson. Wait, is this from the same outlet that was saying that child murder was legal? Was legal, yes. It's technically legal to murder children in war.

Bro, bro. I don't even, man, these people. I don't understand how you get to that position if like 70 percent of people support murdering this guy. Like, how are you like one of the few like, this is dehumanizing. It's like, well, I think the people have spoken. I think I think I was a not that I'm gonna actually credit him because I don't want to steal his team But I think tweet I think was Chris Wade He said something like like you have these like if these like deluge of outlets and headlines that are wagging their figure at the American People like no, no, no, that's bad. Don't get excited about that. Give it back go to the quarter This is our IP toF.P. to Kimbae Matumbo.

It just feels like, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is not what I know about the gold, but maybe this goes back into the credibility gap that Democrats have. But you can't tell people that this is dehumanizing. And by the way, this article is not written for anyone, like any everyman, Joe Everyman out on the street, right? It's for people who already read that stuff and feel like, oh, this is heinous that people are cheering. That's a good point. Right?

But also more importantly though, it's just like, if anyone on the street sees that headline, it only makes them feel as if the media is out against them, the establishment and the powers that be are out against them, because how can you deny, if not my joy, just the fact that I don't give a fuck that this guy died because I'm a victim of the American healthcare system? It feels just ashoturfed and just... I know it's manufacturing consent, I guess. I guess there's a whole fucking book on it But come on, man. No, there's a quoted this fucking quote on this

Goddamn, I want to just go ahead and read it There's a quote in this that says he was just a farm kid living out in rural, Iowa one of his close friends He was a fucking kid He was Superman bro. He was Clark Kent living out in smallville on Kansas on the farm and mom pocket, bro I can't believe you did this to him Damn, we could speed through this little part real quick if you guys want or we could save it for the patreon What are you feeling Tom? How you feeling brother you got shit to do Aaron? That's okay. I'm down. I'm down if y'all down. What is it? He's speeded speeded through this article about how much. Yeah, that's fine. The dehumanizing

I'll just read here right now what a lot of people who are celebrating Thompson's death and Dehumanizing United Health Care don't seem to understand or don't seem to want to understand is that in every modern health care system Some institution is charged with rationing care in some it's a government bureaucracy in bureaucracy. In some, in others, it's a private for-profit or non-profit insurer. In America, it's a mix of all three. Many insurer- Brother, brother, hold up, hold up, hold up. There's, if you really want the Pickle Park New Wives,

there is a wide chasm, right? Between a poor for-profit industry doing that and some centralized state apparatus doing that, okay I understand rationing okay, but come on What are the mean what are the end? What's the end goal of each fucking system is to make sure people get healthy or make as much money as fucking possible while people get Sick well fuck up man to Shay Aaron here's what he would respond in America many insurers such as blue cross blue shield and Kaiser Permanente are non-profits boo y'all motherfuckers. Okay, alright.

So what they get, you can just donate anything you want when you get healthcare, when you go to these places. If you like an old lady and you knit hats and stuff like that, and scarfs for your grandkids, you can just bring that and give it to Kaiser Permanente and it'll be fine, right? You don't have to pay money, right? It's a barter system, okay? I understand now, Yeah, I need a liver transplant. Here's 16 items of canned goods Here's here's a half-smoked American spirit and 15 cents and a paperclip brother There's Medicare Medicaid other insurers are for-profit like United Health Care You don't have to be a fan of the way that United Healthcare makes its decisions to acknowledge the difficulty of mediating between providers and patients.

You don't have to be a fan of denying people healthcare, yo! Well, you're right, and I'm not. Oh my god. It is not social murder. As the intermediary in the healthcare system that plays the requisite role of rationing care, United Healthcare surely makes some horrifying decisions and outright mistakes. And even when it rules out coverage based on a defensible calculus of costs and benefits, that can be devastating for patients and their loved ones.

So there's legitimacy in the frustration and anger. Nevertheless, returning to lethal violence is horrifying and ominous. So too is applauding and ominous. So too is applauding and justifying assassinations." Man, why, why, why, let me ask y'all a question. Why does the richest nation in the history of the world have such a triage mentality? Like, like we can only have an acceptable amount of rat shit on the top of our Coca-Cola cans. There's an acceptable amount of death. There's an acceptable amount of surplus people.

You know what I mean? For a country that likes to pride itself on you could come here and become anything, the shining city on the hill of limitless potential and possibility, but no, we have to ration, we have to cruelly, sometimes cruelly unfortunately ration Essential services like health care you know and a country of so much abundance, right? Now consider what happens when the logic of those who are celebrating man gioni is applied to a different issue are you boys ready? Are you ready for some ethical fucking? Trolleyology I feel now I feel like I'm walking to see what is it some? Trolley ology? I feel like I'm walking in the sea, what is it?

Some Americans believe that abortion is murder and that those who facilitate abortion deserve to be punished for their complicity with evil. Imagine if, after an attack on an abortion clinic, a journalist were to say, quote, I just think there are a lot of ways to unjustly and immorally end someone's life before it should have ended. One of them, the kind of violence we fixate on this country is a single

Person with a weapon that intends harm upon another person and then causes it But there's a lot of other ways to end a life early and unjustly and immorally and aborting an unborn child is one of them and They might continue there are different kinds of violence shooting someone in the street is one I think Organizations that facilitate abortions is quite clearly another he's he's quoting from a Gia Tolentino article We're basically to Gia Tolentino was like I mean, yeah It you these people kill people so you can imagine why people support the murder of a health CEO So yeah, what do you have to say to that boys? What if someone fucking murdered a

See for me, it's pretty easy because for me, if you murder abortion providers, you yourself become marked for death. So I don't have a moral dilemma with this one, buddy. I really don't. Also too, I just don't understand that. I would love to know this person's thoughts on... And I don't mean in an abstract way, but Israel blowing up hospitals with children still hooked up to IVs and shit.

So it's when it applies to Americans and Westerners, right, and the question of abortion and their rights, but it doesn't extend to people who you see as just intrinsically violent enemies, right, of the Israeli people of the United States itself, then it doesn't... I know this is a moot point to bring up especially from this fucking Rag of an art publication, but it's just it's just the the the The cop I guess it's not cognitive dissonance because to them I guess all of it is like kind of tight and shut you know Yeah I guess here's where he's going with this the list of organizations and individuals who could be targeted because their critics on the left

Or on the right believe they support policies that lead to death or suffering is endless. Gun rights lobbies, those who want to defund the police, individuals opposing childhood vaccinations, groups that want... The thing is, the reason why I just can't follow this and why he fundamentally can't understand this is that all of those people have already marked me for death. They would willingly and gladly blow my fucking top off in the middle of the street and not think two fucking thoughts about it And so as a result, how am I supposed to react to that? They basically do that every time they fucking deny one of my health claims or something that is a form of violence And so if someone wants you dead

Generally, the only way you respond to that is by wanting them dead. Not saying you do it proactively, but if someone else does it, then you at least say, well, they had it coming. Who has the monopoly on violence here, right? Exactly. You know what I'm saying? And also too, just to say that, just to equate these social institutions or movements or whatever, right?

Like at least defund the police, right? Versus like, that's like, I mean, just even in its, in its practicality, right? And just as an idea, that's a good thing, right? We could say like, you know, how did that go about? How did it get done? But you can't equate a healthcare industry as to providing a socially net, like a social good,

you know, like it's not the same fucking thing, man. Right. The problem with these people, and this is where the central conflict of it is, and it goes back to Terrence. Terrence was cooking with that epigenetic thing last night because I can't get that off my mind. But the prejudice of the fortunate

against the ill-favored is the oldest story in our race, in our culture as human beings. The story is in us. it's innate in us. There's things in us. And in the same way that like, we're a death-defying culture that also like, is like in the death drive and embraces, worships death and all that kind of stuff,

these people are trying to put a square peg in a round hole and trying to like erase sort of our notion that that you know again the prejudice of the fortune against the old Favorite is the oldest fucking thing that's with us We're always going to want to side with the person that's getting shed upon and they're trying to rewrite the rules of everything So well, it's more complicated than that and it's like no you can't undo Thousands of thousands and thousands of years of programming amongst the masses. And in fact, when people do that, they've ceased to become human in my mind.

That is true, Tom. That's so true. And especially in things like this where they're trying to apply some sort of hackneyed, philosophical, like Kantian principles of like there's a moral universal imperative. Like if you oppose your own comrades being gunned down, then you should oppose the murder of Brian Thompson.

And it's like, it's not the same. I'm sorry, it's not the same. Primarily because, as you pointed out a second ago, those people have, they have the monopoly on violence. All of society's hegemonic structures and Mechanisms of legislation and everything are geared towards them And and then like furthermore once again if someone wants me dead It kind of goes back to the October 7th thing like I did not fire the first shot here

I did not fucking ask to live in a society where I have to sell an arm and a fucking limb Just to be able to afford to live a few more years Just because we have some this arbitrary health insurance system like I didn't ask for that they started it They they drew the first fucking weapon so if you want to apply for some to some Abstract lofty philosophical principles. I believe in the right to self-defense and so if somebody comes after me first Then I'm gonna fucking have again I'm not saying that I'm gonna like actively like maybe sacrifice my life and happiness and everything else to Actually change that like that's a question everybody has to answer for themselves, but at the very least

I'm not gonna fucking shame or scold anybody that does want to do something about it Because again, they drew first blood it all comes down to that who drew first blood These people just have such a selective. They're very selective about violence So it's not just the ambient background the ambient violence in the background, right? You know, it's not just the avalanche of institutions or of a state that's geared towards favoring these institutions, like these for-profit institutions. It's about one individual act of violence that upsets you so much. It's not the overall violence.

Of course, this person flippantly mentions, how much time do they focus? Why don't you write an article about the people that have been denied by UnitedHealthcare and whose family members have fucking died instead of, I mean, well, it's clear why you're doing it. You're reproducing your class interest by writing this article in the fucking first place. Right, right, right. Like, 100%. Just what the fuck, dude. Yeah.

You know, you asked the question earlier about like why the tech people became sort of like more right-wing instead of left-wing, how they used to be or whatever. And then I didn't really know what to say at the time, but I think that's like, the problem is they gave these crackers money. So their class interests changed over time. At first when they were all just a bunch of fucking nerds knocking around in the University of Washington computer lab

and creating all you know, creating all this stuff like, you know, they were forward thinking, probably futurists and like we're thinking about like, Oh, this can radically change the world. But then you plop down billions of dollars into them and they all become eccentric fucking like, you know, kind of socially liberal fiscally conservative weirdos, you know, I mean? That's so true, man. It's kind of like the, I guess, the genesis of the internet and communications like that. And it's not to say that there weren't

capitalist interests from the very get-go. Of course, there were these weird libertarian sort of figures, but I mean, it was this idea of a kind of modern day symposium, or at least a place where people could be anything that they wanted to be. They could escape the restraints of the material meat world. And then, I mean, you just gave these motherfuckers money and maybe they got some shit with DARPA, you know what I'm saying?

Or the Department of Defense, and it's just like, well, how much of it to, and I'm not saying that technology and the capitalist system, I know it's geared towards exploitation and just like bleeding people like a stone, but yeah, you just gave these dudes money. So all that utopian, if not vaguely libertarian ideals, it just went out the window for, you know. What? And then they were basically tasked with the, they were basically tasked with the objective of trying to figure out how to squeeze more surplus value

out of workers, which is what AI is, and what a lot of innovations in tech have been in the last 20 years. So like, all of these issues intersect, right? Like the issue of like immigration declining birth rates Which is JD Vance is like obsessed with and like AI and tech these all intersect because they're all trying to solve the basic one of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, which is the declining rate of profit over time and

Even more than that, the finite physical limitations on our physical bodies that cannot be negotiated with. You cannot squeeze people, you cannot squeeze more out of people than they have. And that's what a lot of this is aimed at doing, right? So it's like they try to harness racism to animate this, you know,

populist, heron, vulk constituency, but then they're like, oh shit, well we need the immigrants to actually work because people aren't having as much kids as they had. Well, okay, so then we'll use the fact that people aren't having as much kids as they have to like reanimate the heron, vulk, you know so that like we can talk about like declining white birth rates, and then they're like well wait Oh shit that doesn't

That that's you can't make any money off that really I guess you could talk about it on so so so we'll go with AI And then we'll be something like a racial underclass right exactly Exactly that's exactly right Aaron like one of the weird things of the last 20 years was like the quote post racism like as if you could have a modern capitalist society without a racial underclass that is a central Organizing feature of modernity you have to have a racial underclass in some way Oh, you just make it think of the optimist robots that Eli had and people were like,

well, this is being operated by some guy in Myanmar. You know what I'm saying? But like, $3.50, like a Whopper an hour, you know what I mean? Like this is, but I mean, it's always going to be, I mean, I don't know if it'll get too far, besides the point, but it's always going to be this racial underclass that they find socially necessary to maintain the wealth

and the status that they have while also just shitting on them, you know what I'm saying? We've never had capitalism without a racial underclass. That's not ever, granted capitalism is not that old, maybe 400, 500, it depends on who you ask, years old or so but like yeah it is a it's a necessary feature built in as a last underclass right I'm a race reductionist now people are like talking about class reductionism for a

while I'm I'm a race reduction we've humans have had class going back 8,000 years or whatever like you since we invented Agriculture, but we've only had raised for like 600 years So I'm a race maximalist yo as meeting up with accelerations I think we need to make up more races and we need to have more division So eventually people can decide it can be like this holistic thing when people decide like oh, you know to me Race maximalist You know what I mean?

Race maximalist Jesus oh no, I shouldn't say that that sounds like that sounds like a gentler word for being a nazi. I'll take that back well That but also it's a race accelerationist Yacob was a race race maximalist word rotten yacob the original race maximalist. This is true Where do yacob get get his PhD from you think Stanford probably was a University of Austin All right, let's go ahead and call this one We're at an hour and a half. Thanks for listening Everybody if you want to hear more content, please go to the patreon that link is in the show notes

I'm also still trying to public or plug this article. I wrote for the nation so please go check that out as well, maybe I'll put that in the show notes and Yeah, I think that probably about covers it. Anything you boys need to plug or get off your mind? No, just hope everyone had a good holidays. Don't open up that door, pal. I got hours of stuff to talk about. Oh, shit. Happy New Year to everybody.

Happy New Year. Barreling into 2025 off to a fresh everybody. Happy New Year. Barreling into 2025 off to a fresh start. Yeah. Exciting start. Good shit. I like the number 2025. It's got like a symmetry to it that I appreciate. I will say one last thing. I thought when I was a kid, you know,

and in the 90s, I thought the year 2000, just the way it sounded was so cool and futuristic. Like I could see the numerals 2000, chrome, you know what I mean? And the older I've gotten, the less fantastical the years have sounded. It's janky. I'm dreading the year something like 2035 or 2050, God forbid, that sounds... Instead of a chrome lettering, it's going to be encased in moss and maybe some rubble and maybe it's gonna be pus is gonna come out of it That's gonna be 2020 50 with pus moss and the green slime party man the green

That's right All right. Well, thanks for listening everybody. We'll see you over at the Patreon in a few days. Hope you all have a great weekend. And he was... Peace. So Music you