Chapo Trap House - Episode 218 - The President's Neck Is Missing feat. David Roth (6/10/18)

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

David Roth returns so we can discuss a very special horse & our Big Wet Leader's ongoing feud with the NFL. This leads into a discussion of the particular national psychosis induced by American Protestantism, and how the Puritans formed the country's first home owner's association. We then read some selections from former President Bill Clinton's very not-about-him spy thriller, and an extremely normal idea to fix New York's trains. Read David's article here: https://deadspin.com/the-nfl-is-too-dumb-to-realize-that-donald-trump-is-nev-1826558748

Just you want to get loose to kick things off. I do want to talk about my favorite tweet of the year In fact, that's not even doing justice because I think it's actually my favorite thought Like had by a human being this year courtesy of sheriff David Clark Who said that's my right there? Yeah, he added Donald Trump on Twitter and said Donald Trump should invite justify to the White House lawn for winning the Triple Crown Justify is a winner like Trump who could care less about leftist identity politics Maga for those who's not clear from the tweet justify is a horse

But aren't you so aren't you sick aren't you sick of those horses that love ID politics? Oh my god Mr. Ed always like equine American will Hey, American stay out of equine spaces. Hey American Faro shut up and run Most people I watch horse racing to escape Embarrassing that yeah every post match or post a race interview you get somebody talking about Political sport though, right? It is because it's all run by these like weird Kentucky Hapsburg guys Like is it like just horsemen they either have too few or too many chins. Yeah. Yeah, the horsemen are all

Scions of like old slave money if they don't they're not gonna let those horses kneel That's not they all watch a special recut version of Django that like ends when they get to Leonardo DiCaprio's house Yeah, it's like the same page and all the athletes are like these tiny little muscular jockey men So like it just it you know, the the racial politics tends not to come up because well They all just agree in the back room not to mention it. Well, they're discriminating against the lowest race in the totem pole manlets But they I like the idea. It's like justifies the first He's like the first like Maga horse like see this get shit during the national anthem I was like this is absolutely

Disrespectful think about all the horses that went to Afghanistan You're just doing this the ones who fought with the horse soldiers. Yeah, they're not being invited to the White House this flashy hip-hop Athlete horses though. What the fuck? There's gonna be one of those like hockey memes where it'll be like why do you honor this and it's like justify with flowers around his neck or Whatever, but not this and it's like whatever Michael Shannon on a horse That every all the Maga guys are gonna get into pit bullfights Because because all of them sit during the national anthem. I do whacker tails It's it's I give credit to David Clark for being willing to really make the Caligula reference that over

Yeah, yeah, we just don't have Trump on the White House lawn with a horse. You're drawing too many unshared able Well, I mean sir, sir, please marry your sister will drive the liberals crazy Well, what when I saw this of course, yeah, obviously I thought a Caligula, but I also just thought how badly I want this to happen Oh, God, yeah, and like how much I want Trump to invite a horse to the White House Have like a rose garden press conference and be like folks. Look at this horse. He's a winner It's a little out from him folks. Hey, just fine. How many jobs did I create since I became president? That's right folks, I'm still tapping at the end at the end of this ceremony. All right Well, now that your days are done. You're gonna go to create more jobs at the glue factory

They're like, no, he's in his prime. He's like, no, I saw he walked to the lawn slowly. It was very disrespectful Never been more insulted Trump would like ad-lib 15 minutes into his speech about justifies future and stud like just like Folks is future. It's gonna be very bright. But believe me I've often said many said that that would be a good extra career for me, but I want to get into that We're gonna talk about the veterans We know how important breeding in is and justify obviously he's the best racer He's gonna create so many amazing race horses. I am basically that of being president and

Having a brain a smart brain. So honestly, if you think about it, that should be my job, too Trump caught on a hot mic Talking to the horse like it's a human being and being like look, you're gonna be a lot of other horses are gonna be throwing themselves at you Let me tell you a story about me Gina Gershawn Larry Silverstein Jeff Flake is like, this is absurd the president met the greatest horse in the country and this is how This is what it's come to this horse is technically four years old I do love the idea of Trump just becoming becoming like the presidential stud Executive time every morning. They just line up some some congressional fillies

And bring them in there and at 250 grand a pop. He's making new business leaders new presidents You are going to love my seed so much It's best it's phenomenal. I have been joking Park doesn't really do anything right? No, he doesn't have any posts Maybe a pivot this fourth radio is not the worst like it just at least it keeps him off the streets for like three to five hours a day Depending on what station demands are please not like tooling around downtown's and in like tricked out dunebuckys running over Pedestrians, yeah, right like trying to get someone to make eye contact with him So you can be like the fuck you looking at I like I hope he does like an NBA specific

Calling show cuz that's like the only fan base that would actually like push him as much as he deserves. Oh, yeah, like they're the best shit Talking fan base by far by far football guys are just blackout drunk by like the first quarter Hockey guys are just pissed bunch that like more people don't like hockey where they're like more people won't admit Yeah, that's like actually very hard to play hockey. Yeah, yeah They're like needy the hockey people are too needy because they want you to let this work Yeah, but the NBA people are brutal Which means that if he did have a show he would go to jail immediately because he would just swat everyone who called Oh, yeah, I mean, that's the part of it

They would be really if you look at like how easy it is to to get through like the brief experience that Chris Christie had auditioning Oh my god, it was like all these guys that usually just call in with like terrible Yankees trades Like they all hated Christie enough that they were able to get through and it was like whatever like Jim from parcypony All he ever does is talk about how like Aaron judge needs to like grow his hair out or something like that But like Jim from parcypony actually also hates Christie enough that he was able to get through and be like What's the deal with your face and body? Christie was like oh real tough. All right. Well, you can't I actually look very good That was like half the show that he did slight digression on a on sports or been sports heavy lately

But you know, I don't follow hockey that closely, but I have been really enjoying all the all the photos of Russian snow yeti Fucking Like so bitch skin. Yeah vetch skin. Just toting the Stanley Cup with him everywhere Watching him die in real time of beer. Well, he's dying of beer and there's nothing that can be done to stop it This is the most significant cultural exchange between America and Russia because of it skin is just Creating spectacle everywhere. He goes being blackout drunk for what seems like three weeks straight It's been at least 72 hours, and it's like that is the Russian way of life You're being your weird like combination boxer brief underwear and blackout drunk all the time

But like Americans see that they're like that's us too. We're not so different and it's like in a time of increased tensions It's good that we could see we have a very similar culture. Did you see a village politics sports? That's why everyone gets to have the Stanley Cup for a little bit of words like this week your chief Yeah, very much, you know It's very much of of the old country Yeah, and hockey is special to the Russians hockey and wrestling are special because it's the only way that you don't work in like an Off-brand Radio Shack, which is where everyone else works in that country I don't know you saw it but uh, but Adam Friedland

He went to he went to college in DC and said he he knew a girl who was this like sort of hot raver chick who? Like a god gave a Vechkin her number and he would text her things like quote. I want to fuck you in ass Very smooth Well played indeed There's I think that that's more common among athletes than like even like I would know like I mean That's not the type of sports rating. I mostly do but I know a woman who I believe is a rabbi now Who went on a date within I will not name him a Boston Red Sox reliever who when he picked her up? Had like one of those like in-dash screens that was just playing pornographer

She was like man, you gotta like at least mute that like It was playing sound He was like what it's love. It's beautiful and she's like man like We're not even getting dessert like I wonder why she became a rabbi. Yeah, I was gonna say like that Going the oh, I know who you're talking about too. That guy is amazing. Yeah, his love of pornography was really kind of heartwarming Yeah, J.R. Smith like famously when that one's like, hey, I'm going to your game tomorrow He's like, oh damn you trying to get the pie So cool, I guess it's like if you're that good at something it John Jones is

No, men don't need to be good at something to act like I guess I guess yeah It's just the ones who are good at something we know about it Just people pay attention to them John Jones who's like the former UFC light heavyweight champion who? Pretty much will beat anyone put in front of him and is the only not champion because he tested hot for band substances twice in like a year One of his videos leaked and it was just him standing in like an empty basement Using his pelvic muscles to swirl his dick around in a figure eight and it's like not even hot I think he's just such a is a training video. Yeah. No, he was like

He said he'd do a woman. He's like you make me such a pervert sometimes and it's like I don't even know if that's pervert. You're just showing off That's not a schedule sexual. It's just very coordinated. Yeah, no, it's like you just about core strength. Yeah Yeah, because he's like he's just Trained MMA because he got his his girlfriend pregnant and was like, oh shit I need to make money and he was just so talented. He beat everyone and became a millionaire clearly talented He literally would win fights with things he watched on YouTube the day before and with the dick figure eight that that was probably the first time He ever tried that ever Some people are just gifted

So I mean we're talking about sports I guess this is a good segue into this week's episode and Introducing our guest in case you hadn't picked up on it already. It is returning champion David Roth David. Hi, sir Being back. Thanks for having me. So, um, you know, obviously you write about sports and but you also write about, you know politics and the crossover between the two and not just politics but like both in your tweets about him and your pieces on him for The Baffler or deadspin Trump has become sort of like a A your Moby-Dick, you know, like you're the Herman Melville Trump's giant white whale half of that You wrote his piece for deadspin this week about

essentially like the Gateway into this is that like the NFL owners and this idea that like they just they thought they could placate Trump with this Stupid half measure about oh, you have to like be in the locker room if you want to kneel for the national anthem and just completely miscalculated who Trump is and like how he thinks and operates or that they could I think just Thinking that you could make a deal with him in the first places Like that's the real failure and then it was just the rest of its details from there Yeah, which is interesting because I mean as you kind of point out in the article like when I think of people who should Understand Trump and are like him. I would think of NFL owners first the closest thing

He has to a peer group in terms of like like must be divorced this many times Like just like rich guys that sit around all day getting plumper like this is these are his people and yet But they did I mean they did fuck him over, right? He was they didn't they prevent him from owning the bills Yes, well kind of yeah, I mean He didn't know what the details were but I'm sure he probably maybe in some in some recess of his Jeeling brain blames them. Yeah, I think it goes back And this is something that I don't understand as well as I probably should given them talking about him into a microphone right now But I think the USFL experience that has a lot to do with that too

Which was like he basically started and then ruined another football league that was like a successful league Like it wasn't like an XFL type bullshit thing like the crucial Walker played there like Jim Kelly Like they had like real stars and it was a rival to the NFL And then he wound up just breaking it because he was such a turd and that's what he does It was like one of the it was like a young Trump vision of what that would mean so that he was actually like he succeeded for you Know a year, but then yeah, he's been like really up in arms about the NFL owners So that would be 35 years ago that that happened just makes it one of his younger beefs

But it is so I get definitely one of a long-standing beef of his. Yeah, he just he's very Mad at anyone who sort of he perceives as having prevented his Amaze of a chief it would have been fantastic. It would have been amazing I think if you think about it and you really do hear it More and more that so many are saying that him buying the Buffalo bills would have turned them into champions Honestly, that I mean of all the alternate like the ways that this could have gone that involve him not being president him buying the bills and then like Trying to move them to Palm Beach or something like that

Like that's the foot You know any of those things are funny, but like that's the one that I think about the most especially it's such a like sad franchise with all Like extremely drunk fan base like even by NFL standards like it would be whatever. It's a powder keg It would be in hilarious. Well, you know, we talked about it before but you know like the spectacle of him Disinviting the Eagles to the White House and then putting on this like Patriotic day display where the same hearted song along to God bless America with the United States Army Choir But I just I have to read it. You had a great tweet on this where it's a you write Trump on the White House lawn roaring with laughter like De Niro in the movie theater scene from Cape beer as the Marine Corps

Band plays the Ghostbusters We're having a great time without the football players. Believe me. He moves Like like with there and then like with the NFL thing what you get so well in the piece is Like this is a perpetual issue for him and it keeps coming up and and they just the NFL owners can't deal with it The league can't deal with it. It's an issue for him because it's a TV issue it's something that happens on TV and And that upsets that upsets him because all he does is watch TV and get upset. Yeah. Yeah, and so if like he sees You know something happening that he thinks is a reflection on him on the television

He'll get angry at it unless they're praising him. Yeah, I mean, this is also the problem with having I mean On a long list of problems of having this like hopeless shut-in TV addict as president Is that he's on TV all the fucking time now? And so he's constantly watching constantly getting upset about like it's not doing exactly what it is that he thinks It should be doing in reflection of him But like that's the loop like that's not it's I mean whatever there is actual stuff happening in the world Like in this country terrible things, but he doesn't I don't think he knows about it I don't think he cares about it like and it's not I mean that there's this whole other like community of belief of people that are

Just sort of kind of living the same like sick lifestyle That's what you really get to in the article in like in terms of like how Trump's mentality and like who he is as a person is reflected so perfectly in the people who believe in him and Actually for the first time ever I was just hoping you could actually read from your own article sure because you know I think you should do it justice. So you just read the other first highlighted paragraph there readings beautifully Yeah, this is the last time that I wrote a piece about how terrible Trump was was also the first time I met Amber Yeah, a reading for it. All right The president of the United States just fucking sits there and watches television all day long in large part because he's on television a lot

Now he's either pleased or displeased by what he sees and he shapes his actions and more or less by accident the scope and tenor of our broader national politics in response to what he sees Some unlucky but mostly invisible people suffer greatly as a result some even unluckier people might even die They may be dying now. They may in fact be dying right outside right now, but the program is in commercial break at the moment William Devane is telling people at home about gold an octogenarian former game show host the color of a walnut is explaining how our reverse mortgage works kind of and That's the end of that paragraph As I said when I read this piece

I think basically it should be the law that you and maybe like two or three other writers should be the only ones allowed to do like Lyrical essays about Trump and what it all means. I fucking hate doing David Roth and Stephen Marsh are the only people They're also brothers. Yeah, we get actually we get paired up a lot. We play squash I mean that hits at it because I think about all the People in last year love this where it's like Trump will just have a spasm But like when he called Chuck Todd sleepy eyes and someone will be like this is actually a slur used against Jewish people from their Sturmer in 1933, and it's like He probably doesn't really have a clear idea with the Holocaust

He literally they took him to Auschwitz and he's like, wow, this is a pretty bad deal Yeah, I don't understand it. I think that there's this psychosis that goes on and you see the same thing with Steve Bannon where it's like People are still so shocked that he won that they have to create this mythology about him that he's constantly winking to old Nazi propaganda That's like a classic Democrat, right? Right? He just watched some fucking Oaf and then you're just like all that guy was actually a genius To believe that he's playing 13th dimensional chest and not dodge ball. Yeah, exactly Like he's just watching Brian kill me for 19 hours a day And like and like watching the property brothers and it's like we could use those guys in the Middle East And then just says something about like the last person that criticized him and it's I think it's the equivalent of like

Some guy just like one shots you at in a bar parking lot. You're like, yeah, that guy was actually a pro fighter At least like Bannon has the like whatever the dignity to be fucking high when he's doing that like Trump knows like 200 words And it's constantly like just in a state of sleep deprived like mania So there's not the idea that like any of this is strategic or that any of it is like the outgrowth of some sort of calculus on his part Like he's been doing the same shit since I was a child Yeah, he's been he tweeted more than one tweet directly at Robert Pattinson After him in Kristen Stewart broke up. It wasn't just like a comment or a joke. He he decided to advise Oh, yeah, he put in Robert Pattinson to give it to give him a little guidance going forward

That's that's something that he thought would be a good. This is my favorite vision of Trump like the 2013 like live tweeting access Hollywood It's just a beautiful specimen Well, no, you actually I'm so glad you brought up the Kristen Stewart Robert Pattinson thing because in those classic tweets and David You write about this. He uses one of his famous stock phrases where he goes Robert Pattinson You got she'll cheat on you again like a dog He says the phrase like a dog is like the biggest insult to Trump because he's a muzzle Yeah, I

Actually kneel six times a day But in the piece David you write about his conception of Loyalty and how like to him the behavior of a dog who are famously loyal to human beings is disgusting to him or like His conception of loyalty remember when we did the Komi book and he asked Komi said I promise sir I will always give you like, you know my honest honesty and he goes. Yes, honest loyalty Indeed like could you talk a bit about what you wrote about like how how Trump sees loyalty But how both how he sees it but also how it's reflected in the people who admire him. Yeah I mean, I think it's for him. It's about

Service and not like the sort of like devotion or you know, whatever like any of the Jim Komi visions of what service would be Which are like all you know again, it's the only vision dumb enough to lose to Trump is like that other yeah understanding of it But for him, it's like it's something that you you do for your boss. You're like loyalty. There's a Donald Trump junior Yes, come back to you the one about about the groundskeeper. Yeah, like our green's keeper missed his sister's wedding because Yeah, he goes he was a sister's wedding to work and he goes love loyalty to us to us number two Yeah, the little princey and flourishes for which Donald Trump junior is known tennis coach is getting sky buried with our grandmother But yeah, I mean that like vision of I mean, it's just about like what loyalty is complicated, right? And I'm not an authority. I'm at beyond the fact that I like dogs and you know

I've been married with the same lady for a long time that like but to me the idea that It involves just giving yourself over entirely to your bettors explains in part why the NFL protests would be Disgusting to him because it's like the owners told you not to do it, you know, so like why are you still doing it? Why are you being so annoying about the fact that cops keep killing people that look like you like? Can you just like be nice about it? But like I think that mostly it's about this idea of not To be loyal to him is to do what he says to do otherwise to bother him in any way to disagree with him in any way like That's not fundamentally an act of disloyalty

But it's the sort of thing where when you only when you see yourself as the top of a pyramid and everything else existing to support you Then of course you need everything to be exactly in its right place Tyrants, I mean like that's that's how we've used things whereas I think comey Internalized the exact same ethos but in a completely naive Boy Scout way where he expected The service to come with some degree of dignity. Yeah, what's weird about it from you with Trump Is it so he's been he's been rich his whole life, right? He's had been weighted on hand and foot his whole life I don't understand how if you're like a small business fascist like just like a normal Trump supporting upper-middle-class Exurban person or suburban person like what in that experience of his do you recognize in yours beyond the fact that you feel like

You're owed more than you owe other I think I think it boils down to customer service interactions. Yeah, I feel like when they see Trump They're like their conception of a public space like interacting with other people in public What is it boils down to being weighted on and then wanting to get what you want and then being outraged and annoyed by those people. Yeah A steak for not being charred Can you cook this more? Yeah, I mean like fucking look at Yelp every psychopath on Yelp Yeah, are all complaining about Service I mean these are these are the people and that that's their only interaction with their fellow people for the most part is it's a

It is a transaction in which their role as customer gives them the sense of being God and then therefore to have any kind of Defiance of that is is furiating. So Trump is just like he is the Yelper in chief. Yeah, it's the ideology of the suburbs There's no public spaces. I mean, there's no reason why you would interact with someone socially or you know interact with the demos What was that a federalist article that was like? Don't say no problem to me when you give me. Oh my god It's written by like everybody wrote it. That's soft by the way. Yeah, not that's not the Twitter guy's shinley Isn't it John Schindler that wrote that? No, no, no, it was radio free time

I'm sure that sentiment has been expressed many times You know what? I think I think we've just cracked the nug here like that is the common denominator among all the middle class Authoritarians who support can I speak to your manager? Yeah, you know the people who get like physically angry When like someone younger or beneath them says the phrase no problem instead of your welcome. Yeah, it like it just I'm your problem It triggers something and they're they're they're fading boomer brains of just disrespect And uh, David, could you just read one more paragraph from your piece here? Oh, wow, this is a really great paragraph All right

The people mounting the protests have made the same simple and humane point for years and have been answered only with the Laziest umbrage and bad faith which is more or less the response that such protests elicit in America But trump also hasn't changed his broader position He's not listening or learning or changing because those are not things he does He is pushing and pushing and pushing at this issue because that is what he does and because he is nothing without something to push against There is no compromise to make Trump wants to become the world to erase and expunge everything from it that is not him or about him A generation of the worst and most hard-hearted people that this country has ever produced are lined up outside the church

He is opened and they are willing to leave everything outside in order to gain entry. It's the only way in It's the only way there will be enough room You picked um, yeah, some of the uplifting ones. Yeah, but that that I that vision of sort of like this Suburban American Noah's Ark And it's like that's the club and we as you were saying yesterday with the last show We did this idea of like patriotism and the idea that like it's always a mugs game That's being revealed now that is solely the province of like Matt said the the cruel and uh, vanglorious

Is let that like yeah this Noah's Ark vision they like they want to be in the club and anything that threatens like, you know, their ticket on the Ark is like A huge threat to them and they have no problem Leaving everyone else off the Ark even if there's room because they don't have enough room on the Ark the part of it that's so Disheartening about I mean just like you know, whatever like I don't want to argue that like Twitter represents any experience of real life Uh, and I also don't want to argue that Facebook I think represents it better But I think it probably does at this point the general tenor of it and like beyond the the cruelty that is sort of like baked into Not caring about stuff like that. It's that

That absolute tunnel vision like narrowness Of worldview that like it permits it opens on to any Awful thing because it is basically like it begins and ends with like you and your own That you're impatient at not being given what you want immediately when you ask for it But like if that exists absent any other context then like you will believe or apologize for anything And that's the part of it. I mean like I can't be I mean whatever I love making fun of trump because he's so stupid looking and such an asshole, but It's hard to I mean if I could write about him all the time. I think I probably would because I you know

I do think he's a problem and I'd love to try to convince people or whatever But I can't convince anybody of him. I know that certainly not anybody that that cares about him And also because it's fucking exhausting to think about him for more than a few minutes at a time like You know, it's just that's the part of it that I think you know, whatever I guess because of the the Bourdain thing kind of fucked me up some this week Like it is an exhausting time to be alive And it's largely because I think of just knowing that you know, this is like a small like a A narrow minority of a larger minority of Americans in terms of the people who voted for him

but it's still like I just know that they're out there knowing that I grew up with people that you know Like their parents voted for him just because they didn't give a shit Like people I went to high school with voted for him because they didn't give a shit like That's a it's a hard thing to like look people in the face knowing that when you consider what that actually means almost like Harder to fathom for me like there are people who voted for him because they wanted to piss people off Or because they don't give a shit What is so staggering to me is the people out there who look at trump and see

An admirable figure like a leader someone who's accomplished great things that like that Ben garrison vision Yeah, or that like he is a competent Uh courageous and like intelligent leader cares about it because I don't know any of those I know a few people who voted for trump because they thought Uh, what could you know what what could go wrong or whatever and they hated hillary clinton and the democratic party and they're like Well, let's try it. Let's try a new thing. I don't know anyone who thinks No, but he's just so fucking cool but the thing is I know that is a

Core of his votership is people that find him admirable and I I don't know where those people are because I know trump voters But I don't know that kind of sucker that I have somehow not run into that kind of rube That type of person you'll find them you wouldn't find them in like a lot of parts of indiana. I think you would in like Maybe kocomo or fort wane In parts kocomo is a dark place. Yes, but you would mostly find them in like central and southern virginia Places like that like it's bill Yeah, I think I think it's riding mower dads more than any other people that I knew it's mega church people boomers who have had the

easiest life of all boomers and they've have a Unending supply of liquid capital because they like invented a new type of or they didn't even invent it Their dad invented a new type of way to like shrink wrap meat for their Like like a pool cleaner that was later like withdrawn from the market under shady circumstances It's a child. Yeah, but it was like but before 1995 A lot of money doing that right but but yeah, it's it's that guy

and I I just I never grew up around That kind of guy and I I think that there is like an underlying rage that they have where they they're like I don't get respect. I deserve respect. I'm a small businessman. I'm the backbone of this country My riding mower is bigger than your riding mower like and I I think with trump They see someone who in their mind has received the respect that they are also entitled to Yeah, that's my only theory. Yeah, my favorite bill mitchell tweet Maybe my favorite tweet ever

Is when he was fighting with like the mora overt nazis and he's like Oh, you're anti-semitic. I'm 56 years old. A jew has never stopped me from reaching my full potential And it's like that's it. That's it. They're not like inspiring message. They're not like they're not like full long with like They're not full long with some of the full You know full-blown open racism as a lot of the people who voted for him out of spite and other things but they're just like Their vision of everything In their view of the world centers around whether they achieve their full potential. Yeah or not

Yeah, there's nothing else except how you did how you were an asset to your customers and your Stakeholders and every and your lawn And your pool because your wife hates you your kids don't respect you They're listening to rappers with facial tattoos Like yeah bill mitchell is like Encino man for like a type of boomer And if you want to understand this type of thing It's so lucky that he has such a footprint all over the place like his His uh, kora is still up there when he asked like why don't they invent a type of counter that only covers the tip?

Save a lot of time But it's like that's it. That's that that's the type of guy who just There are two types of people that just absolutely do love trump and think he's admirable And it's like the journal of american greatness type guys who are like trump is a remanifestation of charlemagne he has to seem Destined destiny qualities or it's the most blessed of the boomers the most ascendant boomers Who are like a jew has never stopped me from reaching my full potential And those are people that can afford to like basically they're enough outside of politics

Because politics wouldn't necessarily touch them or any of the things that you know People get upset about and the culture wouldn't necessarily touch them that they can afford to they're just like trump is like fun to them Or like funny to them And so they're like well this guy like he also succeeded in business whereas like Like my whatever my father's withdrawn pool cleaning product was a great success, you know between 1988 and 1995 like so I can relate and In all of those cases, it's just there's fundamentally a very unserious understanding of what voting or like Caring or noticing things happening

Would be but I think that you can afford to be unserious with that because you're just like Your number one issue in your day is like people complimenting your riding mower insufficiently Well, like there's the the sort of suburban authoritarian Is one semi circle here, but in this venn diagram of people who genuinely love trump And I think he's admirable another huge circle and it does overlap a bit is evangelicals. Yeah, that was evangelicals love trump And like that's why he has an 87 approval rating among republicans right now And I know we talked about this last time, but I was just because we love an authoritarian

Yeah, absolutely And I was I mean we talked about it last time, but I was still thinking about Scott Pruitt this week as like the perfect manifestation of like evangelical Dork like like all this all all these like controversies about him like sending sending his staffers to get him his fancy lotions and mattresses and shit That's just like living like some 19th century duke in DC All I could think of but like but not even that because what he's getting is like the shit that like is just like upscale consumer product Like I was just thinking what a fucking rube this guy is with his challenge coins Yeah, yeah, it was just like he goes from, uh, Oklahoma where he's from to Nebraska

No, he's from Oklahoma. Okay. He goes from Oklahoma to washington. He gets to be in dc and like You know just live like uh some sort of fancy guy now and like get all the good stuff and like but at the same time Because of his he is a diehard evangelical. He's in charge of the epa which just this week Recently just classed an entire swath of carcinogenic chemicals as officially not dangerous And okay to like put in, you know, municipal water supplies or whatever And like he's got him somewhere He's presiding over like the stewardship of the apocalypse, which for them Is fine because they believe that like

Well, but we think the the apocalypse is a good thing. Well, I think the apocalypse is the good is a good thing But also that's why we have to tolerate the juice Yeah, but also at least just don't let him stop you from achieving your goals Exactly But that uh, yeah, we can despoil All of the environment and every natural resource and it doesn't matter because we got a new one Yeah, god is literally gonna go right when we're done with this earth And then like yeah that god gave man stewardship of the earth and that what that means is to literally

Extract every fucking resource from it until it is a burnt out husk I mean it's their ultimate vision of Of earth like and that concept of stewardship is like oh, I'm earth's customer. Yeah Yeah, exactly and this goes back to this Noah's Ark thing is that they're like they're they're literally we're literally causing the floodwaters to rise Couldn't be more pleased with it. Right. They just know they just know they have a seat on that ark and that's what literally Yeah, it's literally we the apocalypse the world is definitely ending and that's definitely a good thing that is written into What like my grandparents believe although they didn't vote for trump. They don't vote Well, that is the classic they stopped voting after there was no longer

a minors union candidates But I I always said that if I wanted to explain this kind of You know evangelical nihilism I would make a playlist and maybe I'll actually do this like a Spotify playlist of uh songs That I grew up hearing in my grandparents church and they are all about how awesome it's going to be

When the world ends when we die because they can't conceive of a place and these these are poor evangelicals too These are not the bougie ones. They can't conceive of a of a time or place on earth where you're not in incredible pain They it's just it's just not in their imagination All they can do is just be like but someday I'll die It'll be great and that has shaped the entire like ethos of it So of course when there's no future you're begging for the end I was got proved is no longer in pain because he has excellent mattresses and motions now So he's he feels wonderful. Yeah

He's moisturized I think that like a big part of that evangelical mindset is It's sort of split into you have the poor ones and then you have the rich ones and they both It's weird. It's the only like kind of cross-class belief system they both believe the same dumb american dream whether that whether it's working for them or not, right? and the sort of theological underpinnings of extremely harsh Protestantism

It it's the same thing for the rich and poor, but it means different things to them What is like one of the core tenets of Protestantism as it was began? It was that we don't need as many clergy because it's between you and god like yeah You can have a guy who's giving you his sermon blah blah blah, but it's between you and god No one's going to tell you what to do and for it started out as an anti-bureaucracy anti-hierarchy exactly There's good elements to it even now right that the pope is like Martin Luther had some points right right or so but for the rich for The rich ones instead of if you just look at that independent of everything else you're like well

That's a good message. It should be like this thing between you and what you feel but for The rich ones what it means now what it has always meant for the rich ones is like Yeah, no, I'm in charge. I'm the clergy right I get to decide who's bad And my god knows my heart and knows that like I would never have uh participated in a long running kidnapping scheme for bad reasons But the lower ones like the the lower ones their interpretation of it is like Well, okay, like less less people in between me and the end of the suffering the lower ones buttress the the Mega churches and the existence of the more rich evangelicals like the north carolina evangelicals the virginia evangelicals

Because you need this mass of millions of people who are like, yeah, no, I'm not gonna I don't have to like see another guy about what I have to do. It's not like going to the dmv or something I could just listen to this man in hawaiian church Like give me what is basically a seminar about how to reach be my best and the rich ones are like well Yeah, thank you for kicking in. Uh, I'm gonna listen to the same guy tell me about how I basically am god But they can see how a few centuries of market forces can turn it from something that like maybe did have a theology to just being like Again, like some dude in shorts using bible quotes to prove that whatever you're doing is right It's more vulnerable to market incentives than anything else because it's a product of the modern american state

I think about rick warren so much like rick warren is like he's like the spielberg of The evangelicals like so much so that that could go a lot Well, I guess uh, uh, well if nick was here he would say you know, but uh, he Because I like I'm fascinated by evangelicals. I watch a lot of like evangelical sermons on youtube I like his because he's He so toes that line between seminar and theology And when he was up that like I saw this one where he's like now when you're done with this course called finding god to be

The better you and it's like this is this is linked in. Yeah. This is incredible Like Scientology without the action like as you move up the bridge Personal experience of your savior. It's hierarchy. Jordan Peterson is caught on people say it's the self-help thing Self-help people learned it from an extremely commercialized Protestant church Exactly and you know Catholics You know a few things wrong there, maybe but there's something there is something Bad apples few bad apples There is something a little bit admirable about how they still go in there and they're literally still trying to talk to ghosts or whatever

The fuck they do it's still like at least there's like even the pretense of god here Not nearly enough snakes in my taste the fusion In the united states of Protestantism and capitalism and then just all of this land that this does here somehow This giant continent full of land you can just kind of grab big chunks of easy mistake that for some sort of like prophecy too Yeah, no one really wow, it's weird. There's all this really everyone go like wow I'll have some of it those three things combine this cult the created this culture of just absolute

a religiously infused Narcissism that insists upon Personal control and and is insanely violently hostile to any conception of limitations On your your ambitions or personal desires It goes further than that though like the idea of providence the idea of like we have these things because god says we should have these things You can go back to the primary document of settling Puritans who Who had this exact from the start had this exact idea of like the bad things happen to us because god is testing us And the good things happen to us because god loves us and if you read there's this fantastic

I think um correspondence or or letter series that I read once I can't remember who's writing it, but they were looking at the um the permaculture That the indigenous people had done so there was like paths and some things grew over here and it's like You know you see any any people who have been in any place long enough have usually created a really elaborate Agriculture system that interacts well with wilderness So like rice patties in china or whatever and they're like wow It's like god just made a path for us like it didn't take 50 years of controlled burning and tailing and stone removal and stuff But what did the protestants do after they gained from that?

What did they do? They basically started the world's first? caddy fucking homeowners association Which was the witch trials? That was the witch trials. They did HOA man. Yes. Um, I heard you delivered a baby and it didn't die Yeah, and this is not keeping her yard mode to the specifics Pestications burn her it is almost an ancient tradition for these people to be fucking small business tyrants It's amazing. All the second they got here. They're like Reed calibon and the witch small business tyrants All I have is my name and my lawn

Giles giles quarry was crushed with stones because his his tall grass grew too unruly They were tasteful flagstones from From the sharper image catalog. Yeah, it was from like a christian book. It was from like brook stone Well, the last thing I want to say about this where you move on to our next topic is uh, mitch mcconnell said this week That the first like, you know, what year and a half two years of trump now. He's like This has been the finest time for my 16 years of government for conservatism or american politics and I 100 believe it. I think we should take him at his word exactly, right? This is what conservatism is from

The colonists to now. They don't have to pretend like it's anything else. Yeah, it is a just vicious and corrupt ideology that empowers the Just cruelest and most callous people that this country has ever been capable of producing And donald trump is like the perfect avatar of it's amazing that they had to work so hard to cover it up for so long Like, I mean, that's the only way that you could imagine. I mean, I don't think that That all or even most americans are like this. I can't believe that But I do think it's the sort of thing where they the republicans probably hurt themselves for a while by going and being like, you know This is actually about like opportunity. It's actually about, you know, like our

Heroic small business owners or whatever wouldn't like really what they want to do is like They want to do like whatever the fucking laura loomer thing Where you like see a brown guy and then you make a vlog about how setting it is Like that's always actually been the thing, but they addressed it up with this whole weird Unconvincing and inconsistent ideology of like Like personal opportunities small government except for uh, like a massive police state Like, you know, none of that but I think they still buy like the reagan fantasy con It's just weird because trump didn't really

Cater to that. Yeah, and I almost think it's just kind of in the air now and they're like Yeah, he probably believes in all of that traditional republican stuff, but he kind of skipped over that part entirely That's the part that has always like will is saying earlier about the idea of him as like an admirable guy The idea that like you have to create this entirely different dude to Like make it square with like what you because he himself is like he doesn't really believe much of anything To the extent that he believes, you know, how many people actually think Beyonce is their friend Yeah, like we are living in a time period when people are more capable of projecting their values and their beliefs Onto celebrities than ever before and I think it's because of the hyper visibility

And I think it has to do with like the speed of the internet or something So they're like, yeah, he probably meant that like he's gonna keep my job Yeah, no, you can you can it's there's so much information at your disposal Let anyone mind at any one time totally stripped of context and meaning Uh, outside of just being just these floating little monads of of of of content You can make them mean anything. You can you can construct them into a jenga tower The whole thing turns everyone into a conspiracy theorist Yeah, yeah, but you were talking about

Starting within like a very hard to parse reality and then you're just reverse engineering an explanation for it That makes like and with trump that starts with the fact that the guy has a lot of money and yet clearly like Yeah, just his fucking mind is gone. Yeah, and he's only ever been like an access Hollywood dude Like that's like 100% what he's about. Yeah, he had the money though. Yeah got it somehow Right, and so that means he's probably good at jobs good at building from the fact the money He can't argue with the fact that he's rich He's a rich guy who cares that he sounds like his brain is literally melting as he's talking You know, he sounds like his brain is falling out of his ears with every word

He's like fucking every sentence is like the robot at the end of 2001 getting the fucking Circuits pulled But he's got the money. You're you're you're hurting me justify I'd like to see you now justify um moving up from uh from one president To another to a former president that I think Does touch on what you were talking about amber than everyone

On liberals and conservatives alike everyone in our culture They seem to think that celebrities and politicians believe what they do and are their friend because of the media I'd like to turn now to uh a recently released book That is a collaboration between uh Sort of airport thriller writer james paterson and former president bill clinton best of both

So this is this is this is a new novel that is out now called I'm not I'm not bullshitting the president is missing Oh, and it's a thriller novel about a president who's the main character and paterson wrote this with bill clinton And it's being advertised as a as a thriller that has inside details about the white house and the president that only a former president Would know it sounds like a children's pop-up Is he behind the bush? Oh, no. Oh, no, he's responding to a black lives matter protester You pull on a tab and jeffrey eppstein's plane

Can you find the flight laws? so so So uh in the new republic they did someone read this book and gave a very spoiler-heavy review of it And friends dammit. I'm here to tell you it is This is amazing like the ideology on display in this book both as like a conscious uh response to trump in terms of crafting a presidential figure that is basically exactly like bill clinton But is a stand-in now for like what the paterson and that's presumably the readership of this book really wishes the president were actually like

So this is a josephine living stone in the new republic read this book and I just I gotta read Felix, this is like another thing like sean penn's book where at times. I thought you were writing this Oh, I should you should I should have read this before I could have written some big Well, well midweek. Yeah midweek. So this will give you a little flavor for it. So Do not ever test me again andre the president of the united states says through the russian premiere Now that the crisis is over Oh, and stay out of our elections after I speak tomorrow You'll have all you can handle to keep rigging your own now get the hell out of my country get off my plane

Get off my plane. I'm using it for something get off my friends. Look, we're I wouldn't say friends You shouldn't be on this plane Uh, so concludes the president is missing a new thriller co-written by james paterson and bill clinton It is filled with quote details only a president can could know Uh a fictional president named jonathan duncan narrates most of the book Duncan like clinton is from the south. He's very concerned with election rigging. He hates russia He thinks the media is too polarized. He's a great friend to israel He's a perfect hero

liberal in his sympathies But with the war and torture bona fides of five john mccain's five mccain. That's a lot. He crashed 50 plays You know, we use the phrase perfect hero a lot So, uh, it says this is not a subtle book It clobbers the reader over the head with its pros and with its meaningful lines such as I know that most cops most of the time do the best they can Yes Yes, the president is missing presents a benign fantasy of the presidency an alternative universe

Where a clinton clintonian figure not only occupies the oval office, but has also swerved the ruskies Until a gendered twist torpedoes all the fun when it's a there's a twist ending do the twist the gender twist What is this a crying game a gendered twist? Yeah, so, uh, basically like, uh, the plot is the president finds out that there's a trader in his Administration, we're still he meets this couple that knows like a code word that only like top secret people know or whatever Oh, like a like a cue sort of. Yeah, exactly. All right. Cool. Yeah, sorry to bring it out So, uh, the couple alerts him that sulim on Sindoruk the nastiest member of a nasty but fictional group called the sons of jihad Oh, I hate it when Muhammad Quran from the from the islam group

Does the sons of jihad are poised to destroy the american internet with a virus. Oh, this is so 90s Yeah, as the character explains One of the great ironies of the modern age is that the advancements of mankind can make us more powerful And yet more vulnerable at the same time. Whoa Yeah, that's like a really dark twist on the common ad that ran down I Got more power you're living in the future. We always dreamed of he knows every single word to it Oh, I do we do live in a society though

It's so true though. This is with AI You change the world the way you see the world and with mixed reality can change the world we see Our lives were so simple. We used to check our email now. We have to check if data is turned as female So I go throughout this book The book ends with like a president Duncan gives a rousing speech to the american people Then again, this is this is what we wish the president would say to us I mean, I know I personally do and he says he he gives a speech Uh, where he states that we're still the leader of the free world

Uh, he talks about election reform led free drinking water in flint michigan. That would be nice dreamers climate change the opioid crisis And when everything's done and dusted Duncan says he's even saved the newspaper business quote The mainstream media coverage from right to left has become more straightforward Not so much because of my speech, but because at least for now Americans are moving away from extreme media toward outlets that offer a more explanation and fewer personal attacks Yeah, that's what's happening. That's what's happening in america nearly 23,000 subscribers by the way So check this out. So in the book the president is missing the president goes missing because he knows there's a mole in his administration

Interesting, and he goes undercover Um, so he goes sort of undercover out and about among his subjects like like the kings of yore who would mingle with the people Oh, I love this. This this is like a bubble a carat So he goes through a a baseball game in disguise He's wearing the macklemore juice Whom amongst us does not enjoy a heated dog Based at the ball game Pritzled bread mr. President. Here's all your shoe polish

So, uh, Matt listen to this so he goes undercover in a baseball game Ordinarily, I'd be like a kid in a candy store here. He narrates. I'd grab a bud wiser me in a candy store I'd grab a bud wiser and a hot dog because there is no finer beverage than an ice cold bud Donald trump has never drank a bud in his life That's why I hope that bill clinton defeats him uh for president I think bill clinton has consumed anything except for like grass-fed child blood For the last like 20 years So because this is clinton, he's giving all his little little he's salting the broth of this narrative with details

That only a bill clinton could know so he says no food ever tasted so good as a dog with mustard at a ball game Not even my mama's rib tips with vinegar sauce I heal all the choirs of angels and the heavenly spheres coming down and saying at once shut the fuck off God damn. What a fucking old you're saying. Yeah, my mom's home cooking. It isn't as good as a fucking hot dog at a baseball game This is like yeah, this is you're basically saying she's the shit America is his true mother. So it doesn't matter if he insults that whore and her rib tips This is like sub Mike. How could be pandering?

This is yeah, it's revolting. I hate the fucking southern guy bullshits. I hate it easy to imagine This is like an as-told-toe book though the idea of like just laying that out and Patterson's like slow down slow down I'm typing as fast as I can Like it's vinegar sauce it is it's hard to explain but it's like no no no James listen The number one thing I thought about during my presidency was how I just wish I could go to a baseball game and get a nice cold bud So, uh, you know how like people always said oh if only Hillary had the charisma of bill But it's like I'm not convinced that everyone just gaslighted themselves into thinking bill. Yeah, it's likable because this is so

This is the exact same thing. It's Hillary like he's literally like There's nothing I enjoy more than watching an NFL style football game with a classic coca-cola cola beverage It's like what the fuck listen to this. I think it's one of those things where it was just the 90s and everyone had better drugs So they're like, yeah, it's probably fine. Well, he ran against the 90 year old man Who didn't know what a fucking check a cash register was It wasn't like he had a lot of competition for charisma and then bob dole who was even older and arm didn't work I thought you were talking about bob dole at first. You're right. Yes. It was for two extremely old bad candy That's the thing he ran against two just two mad deans from a from a fucking college comic

I think he had a skill, but it's like it's like a fastball in baseball Like it's time-limited that like for a while he was able to like talk about these things and it actually sounded like the words were Just like like a good actor like the way that it seems like they're making the lines up themselves But then like once that timed out it's like he doesn't actually believe anything And so like what you get is this the idea of being like a fresh hot dog crispy What? Like none of this makes sense like well, I mean like what he believes in is is the same kind of uh

America that james comey does ember like what you said about how essentially they believe the same thing about loyalty But one is foolish enough to believe that it comes with dignity. Listen to this fucking pandering in the book Um, so walking through the streets of dc with fake eyebrows drawn on Duncan takes pity Duncan takes pity upon that's not weird a homeless golf war vet Purchasing him a turkey sandwich and bestowing a kind ear upon his troubles This is the man that abolished welfare God bless you this military tiny tim says then he squeezes the president's hand with quote the still firm grip of a warrior

Hey, hey, sorry about how you can't access housing or therapy or anything But like you're still yo you're my you're I think you're the bravest guy What really matters is that you listened to me for these last few minutes. Thanks so much I'm gonna go back to my box I'm gonna put a firm still grip on my sternum can Okay, so so like so you see you got a flavor for this book, right where it's like, you know Bill Clinton and james paterson like I said are creating The president that they wish they we had so bill Clinton. It's like I'm still the president

Of course How I but it's very much like pegged to this current moment and like there's this whole thing with the russians Where he beats them and puts them in their place and it's like stay out of our elections And is that why they're like that now is because he did that to them in the first place in the 90s That's true. Well, they did and the lack of reflection is pretty astounding anybody should feel guilty about about The role of the russians and there's the sort of the almost perfect irony of it because yes

It was under clinton that we decided we're just going to fucking strip Russia for parts And then what the hell you've got a strong man over there who doesn't care about democracy? How'd that happen what they resent us? What the fuck? Well, speaking of uh blue jeans are some of our best Speaking of being unreflective what I think is funny is that uh, so it's basically he's just going to recreate the clinton 90s Including all of the bad shit bill clinton did that got him in trouble. Listen to this The book ends with the revelation that the villain all along was feminism Yes, the following is a spoiler. Yes, so here we go

Oh, uh, how could you do this? The president asked the trader in his midst once he's figured it all out The answer when it comes is a surprise to him. The trader's face is twisted up in agony and bitterness full of resentment This is what she says says the man who gets to be president. She replies says the man Who didn't see his political career tanked over one little mistake? Having nurtured a grudge against the sexist media for years one of Duncan's closest advisors Loses her entire moral compass Alas the things that women do to a president

It's a weird old clang and even weirder that nobody in clinton's camp thought it was weird Wow Y'all mind if I go beast mode on russia and me too The villain of this book at the end is russia Hackers the sons of jihad and me too style feminism who are just bitter because they got unfair media treatment Not any actual, you know assaults or harassment from a guy who just did that on stop for 30 years The magic of these guys no one ever tells them not to do anything I mean like what what blowback at this point is bill clinton gonna get oh right? Yeah

Like what can they do to him? So he's just gonna be like so here are my issues And just lay them out for the world to see yeah, they can't fire him from going to davos or whatever the fuck he enjoys doing They can't fire him from like starting a charity with chris talker that's spelled that sells like A knockoff cheaper eye watch to Nigerian children or whatever the fuck he does. Yeah, you can't be fired from his wasting disease. I mean veganism Why does he look like that? Why does he look like that? No one should age like that. Yeah, mr. President looking hella vascular I can see your ear vein you disgusting freak die It's totally that's why all these little known personal details about rib tips

and She's thinking about all that when he used to eat that now. He just has he has to subside on cheese pizzas So, uh, yeah, that is the james patterson bill clinton collab the president is missing Maybe maybe we'll discover some future chapters and the president is missing Who's to say read them on a future show somebody got a big Do they find the president? Still presidents still listen. He was he was like, you won't believe this the president is missing again

I hope this gets adapted to a tv show so that all across america everyone can say that's the president I'm doing i'm doing a sequel. It's called president finding himself The president's gap year You're just rewriting transparent scripts We feel like I'm like damn we finally got an unproblematic guy in this transparent role bill clinton so I don't have anywhere to put this but i'm just gonna say it don't tell mom the president is missing Stop sorry about that. Oh stop or the president will shoot

Adventures in president Demolition of me too, man I just really said the ronnie danger field is no longer with us to adapt this into the treatment And it it needs to be oh my god. Yes, it's perfect, right? It's it would be it would be a um a back-to-school style caper You know, there'd be a fun like snazzy sun like dad. You can't you're the president You know exactly how it would go and it would be it would be an absolute hit It's like the rodney danger field films the villain at the end of the movie will be some fucking bish

Yeah, some uptight bitch who gets mad that i don't know that men are having fun And being the president hey hey blad only type of call only type of hacking you're going to be doing is if you smoke Some of this fine colorado medicinal So moving on to to round out today's show, uh, which has been a which has been a barnstormer I I have to do now for the reading series for this show What is in my opinion? Maybe one of the maddest things i've ever seen published outside like the newsletter of the bedlam asylum that's written by its patients This is in the atlantic and I got to shout out uh brandy for blowing this up on my timeline just this morning

Like it published today. It's already I feel like it's already Bloody legend. Yeah, it's already a bloody legend. This is by peter wainer And we'll talk about him because people have sort of dug into where this guy's back story, which It'll become more obvious as this goes on Is it similar to the backstory of samuel jackson in unbreakable? Because that's like that's the only backstory I can see for this guy. This is uh, this is in the atlantic published today Uh headline the new york city subway is beyond repair Okay, it is a problem. Subways are getting worse in new york. Okay, so this guy's pretty bad

This guy's a solution. The subhead is forget trains. It's time for something radically different And who boy is this guy not afraid to think outside the box right out of the box and It's whatever. It's it's a masterpiece of its little genre. So, okay. I just have to read this So he writes here, uh, the new york city subway is a miracle, especially at 3am on a friday night But the system is also falling apart and it's going to cost billions to keep the old trains running 19 billion at least according to one estimate from city planners The time has come to give up on the 19th century idea of public transportation and leap for the autonomous future Right now fully autonomous cars are rolling around pittsburgh the san francisco bay area and parts of michigan

By the way, they're not fully autonomous. There's still someone in the driver's seat of all those cars And the estimates are that they have to take control to prevent a crash every mile or so Other than that, they're completely okay. We're completely because instead of fixing the old trains Let's rip out the tracks and fill the tunnels with fleets of autonomous vehicles running on pavement The result would be radical improvements in throughput while saving money and increasing the ability of the system to survive a fire Flood or terrorist attack Okay, dj run that back In case you missed it. He is

advocating Pave ripping out all the tracks of the new york city subway system Replacing them with pavement and basically making underground highways that will be filled with thousands and thousands of autonomous self-driving cars Listen to this that fit how many people one. Yeah. Well, it starts. Well, it's start It starts with cars. This is what's so great about the piso is that it just it builds and builds and refines itself Yeah, like because it starts we were like, all right. Well, then yo my man does not know math So check this out. It goes, uh These subterranean highways would be dramatically simpler than public roadways for an autonomous

artificially intelligent system because the tunnels could be limited to authorized vehicles only No jaywalkers on cell phones. No babies and runaway carriages Just the collection of competing fleets Centrally orchestrated and offering different levels of service to different groups at different prices Folks, I know it's sort of a hobby horse here on the show. We're often Are presented with the question. What is neoliberalism? Folks, this is the answer If you want to imagine what the most liberal neoliberal future would look like let's continue

What if it was expensive completely impossible? Mathematically and horribly inconvenienced like the most dystopian thing you can imagine What's the perk? I want to find what the thing is supposed to be better than you mentioned earlier that it actually saves money Amber savings in time and energy would come from replacing extremely heavy trains That stop at every station with lightweight vehicles that depart immediately and go directly from a to b Stopping only at one's destination. No more waiting or stopping every few blocks Prices could be don't ask questions. We can we can confront how the system will work But let's just let's just consider some of the perks because they don't be an alliance

Prices could be flexible Adjusting to congesting and smoothing demand with a reservation system. So again another very important feature in this Is that it will be really expensive and it will be You know different tranches of payments based on, you know, what you can afford So maybe somebody like the lowest level your autonomous self-driving car won't have seats, right? You can make reservations though You can make reservations and it goes check this out Some cabs could be upholstered with the finest leather and plated with gold for those new yorkers who want a truly luxurious

Experience. Yeah, those people will not be down in the underground tunnels with the hoi polo. They're just going to be on Their helicopters. Yeah, listen to this others could have a work table for those who want to write on the way to the office trendy models Trendy models might come sporting graffiti designs by name brand artists created as an homage to the 1970s era trains But most would probably be slim simple and utilitarian people would pay to reserve a slice of the pavement at a particular time And the tunnels would be maintained by these fees The prices would move up and down adapting to demand the new system could be dramatically faster The autonomous vehicles would take passengers from their initial station to the final one without stopping once

The stations would have to be redesigned Outfitted with little entrance and exit ramps that carry the cabs which carry the riders up to where the turns I want to I don't want to When we were talking about this earlier, this is what I said that this sounds like my nephew Who's six and I'm going to go see after this would absolutely come up with this But then like halfway through it'd be like, uh, like I don't know like how are you gonna? There's too many scooters like it's not gonna work. This would only cost 36 trillion dollars. Well, that's the insane thing I wouldn't mind because I I'm so I I know I

This this this beautiful child has inspired me I had to I want to do some engineering math like I I literally want to I want to look at the capacity I want I want to figure out exactly what this would physically look like how much it would cost What the speed would be I want to figure out, um traveling for peak hours Yeah, no, I'm I'm in love It's like a Charles Fourier level Utopian psychotic this guy is going to be the villain of the new bio shock

He's thinking small. Why not just have personal balloons Where you strap one of those old timey, you know hot like a personal hot air balloon That you strap on and then you take it to your location and then when you get there you like tie it off Matt, I think this is this is like this is the number one problem in the city with transit systems not enough space Yeah, whereas they're unlimited space the sky. Yeah This is like the type of thing that like the italian neo-futurists who just woke up and Stiffed a rag so I'll see that also yet where it's like their their designs hinged on like whether you would see an albanian or not

bad humors And like and just whatever like whatever degenerative brain problem you get from doing ether every day This fucking rocks, but yeah, I agree He needs to dream bigger than the dream bigger than his 36 trillion dollar public private partnership Again, I imagine if you're on your solitary car that this asshole events and someone just somehow boards had to do showtime for you Again, I'd like to state that at the beginning of this he said that this would be a cheaper way to That's the thing that does make it super neoliberal is the idea We could spend 19 billion dollars to fix the subway so everyone can ride it

Or we could spend twice that to create an insanely complicated system that makes a bunch of people rich and And use in is accessible to vastly fewer you imagine it though. There's there's literally there's literally no right sharing Yeah, no, there would be fundamentally an Misunderstanding of what makes trains You would destroy the city no one would be able to go anywhere people would the first time at launch someone would be People would start dying after being in a 48 hour traffic jam Yeah, this is I like how every Idea that's worse when he raises the ante

He's like and here's the best part the prices would change every second Like every new paragraph. There's like a thing about it that makes it worse and worse We all agree that the idea is very good. I think yeah, that's what I'm hearing perfect but also The literary expression of it is fucking perfect and beautiful not just my favorite the one that was reminded of that just there The idea that they have to be little ramps to help you get up out of there It's beautiful like that's like the Richard scarry bit like that. I feel like it's gonna be shaped exactly like your scooters You can go right up, but it is it's perfectly like just bloodless

Like he's using the right words like throughput is the word that you use if you're writing about the subway Which he's doing sort of Is he a civil engineer? No. No, check this out. Is he one of like the green lanterns enemies? What this guy's actual deal is I'll skip to the end Rick is by goes Peter wainer is the author of almost two dozen books on technology theater and the cars of the future Oh, he's insane. No, no as as I when I read this this guy Is like sort of the dark gothic inverse or twin of the charming and harmless train enthusiast He wants to destroy all trains. Hey, uh, you know, it's pretty good for a public transit system

Um one in which one car can fit about 300 people and transport them on a series of tracks to a number of stations That will get them close to where they want to go. How about instead of that? We literally have instead of one car with 200 people 200 autonomous self-driving cars underground new york That's just one subway car. They're tiny and they have that they have like a Uh, they all have to have their own separate power source. Yes. Well that new york city subway system services roughly Six million people a day

That would be have to be there. It had to be roughly seven to eight million Autonomous pods on the underground highways under new york and he is saying that that quote the traffic would always be flowing It would never stop Off and on all day all night I mean my god I mean, what what has helped new york more than the last time that you guys built a huge complicated highway system Yeah, but when you guys are forgetting you're like, oh, it's six million people a day Yeah, but a lot of those people aren't going to be able to afford it

So they won't be on there. See you're smart He's not even judged doom though because he doesn't even under it's there's no and I mean there's privatization ambitions to it But he's like, well, what if we just did this like he's he believes in this He believes and and as it goes on eventually like the autonomous thing at first you're like, all right So there's cars driving around Eventually it becomes clear that he's talking about like hoverboards like the things you see like terrified looking 15 year olds I mean, I need there is a lot more to this I mean, it's like hard to process how much genius is going on here

But there are a couple a few other things that we have to discuss He goes says here the first elevated trains train lines are started in the 1860s And the first subway tunnel opened at the turn of the century He goes in that era the tech of choice was the train and the trains were big Autonomous vehicles by contrast can be an incredibly live Especially if you skip over the car shaped models and head for super lightweight transports called hoverboards or scooters These clever devices with computer driven balancing look a little bit like skateboards But carry enough battery powers to go for a dozen miles or more

So everyone is going to be commuting to work on underground highways on hoverboards This man is eight years old Wait a minute, hoverboards would happen to the the thing with the desk for writing on I thought it would be standing on a hoverboard like writing out a fucking memo It's a standing desk like Ben fucking Franklin He goes putting millions of where are you putting the gold and then the inlaid Fern the beautiful those are bigger ones. Those are for better people You get the brown you're in the brown group. So you ride the hoverboard and those people drive over

And I ride one with a humidor yet Putting millions of people on cabs and hoverboards would require cleaning up the tunnel walls Adding nice lighting and replacing the tracks with a smooth paved road There will undoubtedly be obstacles Cleaning up the walls and removing the old track will be difficult and cost Ah, some of the sections have double tracks that would cost twice as much to remove Even so a budget of 8 million for each of the 224 240 miles in the current system would add up to only two billion dollars

Even if that cost were to double that would still only amount to about one fifth of the current estimate to repair the system There will be other costs, of course I mean the the amount of uh insurance the city will have to take out for all the the death by hoverboard The 240 miles of led lighting would cost millions of dollars But installing such a system would have side effects that would make them worth every penny ready for this Rats after all hate the light and would be pushed to find new underground Okay, his understanding of math is bad, but I cannot forgive his total misunderstanding of animal behavior

So he's saying we're gonna we're gonna make all the tunnels smooth brightly lit Gorgeous, but an added benefit of that is that all the bright lights will drive the rats elsewhere It's the best for one thing It's such a good to be sure paragraph that he actually has to break it down into like three or four paragraphs But every stupid article like that has one of these things where it's like, you know to be sure like Genocide does have its downsides But like this is like the things like you know, you're doing a good job on the end of your to be sure thing

Is like the rats will of course have to find a new place to live Like you're just like, where are you? It will be a three to five year yet rat human war. That's just Anyway signing off dr. William gold He goes on a bit more i'm just gonna i'm gonna skip to the end here he goes I think he specified led lights the biggest advantage wants it to be like cosmic bowling Well, that'll be a lot of fun when i'm when you're standing on a hoverboard going from time square to burl hall This guy just loves tron like that's basically that was very

And then from there like worked his way back So he goes the biggest advantage of cleaning up the subway tunnels isn't fiscal But the fact that new york's underground would become safer Making it possible of people to walk to safety in case of a fire flood or terrorist attack right now People are pretty much stuck in a broken train like spam in a can This is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist the new york city subways. They may be intolerable at times But they are safe and efficient It's not just the budget that it makes it better. His budget is insanely too low. Oh my god. Yeah

He's like eight million dollars a track. Like wait a minute. I love that and that was and it's not like footnoted or anything That's like he started. He's like, well, how much does like a decent fourth starter cost a major league baseball team? All right, so But wait a minute how So if there's a problem he's saying, oh, you can just go but where are you going? Where are you going up to the ramp the ramp? How steep is the ramp though ramps, but how steep are they? Well, they're little like because if they're like very very if they have a very low grade That's gonna be a lot of tunneling. So are they spirals?

Uh, like obviously the nightmare scenario, you know terrorist attack on the subway some sort of almschenrico gas attack on the subway Now it would be horrible people would be trapped in train cars And they'd have to go to the next stop rather than go up a little spiral ramp onto the street immediately No, in his ideal scenario if there's a fire or god forbid a terrorist attack Again, it would just be um five million people on hoverboards trying to go under The clawing over each other to get to one of the thousands of exit ramps One way to work around that though would be if you built so assuming that this works you do this What if there were then another tunnel under it that was for people that uh, that you know, like had nicer scooters

Right and then that could be like safer and that incents people to make more money get better scooters Go to the other one and then eventually you can continue going down eventually pretty much indefinitely So he goes creating an open marketplace for autonomous fleets would encourage innovation and evolution He's talking about what would happen to the rats. Yeah More intelligent. Oh, they're already half as big as me. I give it three years before they're felix sized Perhaps the public would like fat over stuff chairs on wheels in some years and tiny hoverboards in other years What are you talking about dude? Like so he's imagining some will be on hoverboards Some will literally be whizzing through these underground tunnels in a giant automated barca lounger

The big comfy chair in the afterlife. I get accused what everyone's trolley looks like. I love planning new public private transport It's even better than getting my rocks off with a girl Like standardization is how mass transit works. That's what makes it viable is the standard Well, what this article posits is what if that weren't the case? What if we didn't take any of the advantages of mass from mass transportation? Yeah So it's ending here. He says, um, who knows Competition would ensure that the fleets adjust to our tastes and the seasons. Why? Why does it have to what the fuck are you talking about?

Are sees it like oh, I'm in the special winter scooter. What the fuck are you doing? This guy has what does he think the trains are like this is I think the thing that's best about the story Is I don't believe that he knows like I don't think he's ever been on a subway let alone this no way and look the new york city subway systems are Inhumanly bad compared to literally I don't know foreign capital foreign country, but also they're an engineering

like feet for the ages and and It's just there's a reason why the top of the line shit is now better trains and not little hoverboards Like I don't know why he's decided to go backwards because this guy as I said is the enemy of trains He just hates trains even though they are Far and away the most sensible and efficient way for moving large amounts of people Throughout a city or a country. He's too libertarian to live Well, well, that's the thing that I find so interesting about this article because you know, you can find insane

Screeds about public policy anywhere you want on the internet. They fucking published this shit in the fucking Atlantic This is the house paper for neoliberal Conventional wisdom. That's the part of it that kind of blew me away with it too because like this is clearly an edit You know more than one editor read this. Yeah, I looked at it and was like, all right Like good. Actually, that's semi-colons in the wrong place Like how do you why are you the website that publishes this? Like it's one thing if you're like Newsweek or like one of these things where you're just like hanging on by your fingernails

Like you're the fucking Atlantic. You can always say no to like the whatever the batman villain that hates trains But it's like well you lose me with the the rats being scared of Of of light and the bark of the bark allowances and all that that's kind of goofy But you really got me on demolishing a public good. Yeah with a privatized System that is that your access to depends on your ability to pay for it. That's really got that's what's beautiful Give me liberty or give me death. It's give me capitalism or give me the worst fucking public transportation system I could possibly imagine one of the few paragraphs that

That we'll do not read of it is him talking about how like the with the lighting this opens up new opportunities for advertising Which could now be ubiquitous throughout the tunnel so that your entire experience is just like you're driving by a billboard that never ends Think about first week estimates. How many people would die? A million I can't wait to be decapitated while looking at an ad for Casper fucking mattresses It would be like the hindenburg every day Every day Oh, by the way, uh, the the new sub the new subway will be run on a pneumatic gas system powered by hydrogen

Smoking will be allowed We'll set you can set off fireworks in the subway now It's just it's whatever taste we have as a feeling as a person will be Individually specialized to you the last paragraph here The 21st century deserves new ideas and approaches that take advantage of everything we can do with computers and artificial intelligence And robotics. We don't need to stick with our old tech when we can dream something newer and smarter We don't need to stick with our old tech We don't need to stick with our old tech when literally the dreams of a the diary of a madman can now be

Substituted for the largest mass transit system in america. You don't need your old out of date meat body We can just put your skull in a jar with a brain. You can just be a brain. It'll be so much more efficient Long live the new flesh folks So yeah, that is peter wainer our enemy's enemy of trains everywhere your winger come on chapeau Peter winger star in unbreakable two as the villain so Lastly but not least before we leave another article that came across our chapeau newswire literally right before we started recording

that I have to shout out From salon.com how linked in turned this quote fail mom into a socialist A dismal job market and chapeau trap house turned me a middle-aged mother into a radical This is by lori barrett And shout out to lori shout out lori. It's a very nice article like it's a very heartwarming article about this uh, mom like bonding with her kid over the show and it's like Makes me feel bad that 75 percent of the show is like us being like call me doo-doo because i'm shitting So no, yeah as felix said, um

This was actually a really sweet and nice article about us in in salon and a mother and a daughter coming together over their shared love of a a vulgar irony podcast So again shout out lori barrett and her daughter and the fine folks over at salon Who chose to put linked in in the headline of this article even though it's entirely about us? Someone's got a little problem with that they wanted to keep us out of the seo Very obviously and shamelessly but David roth

Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much for your, uh, wonderful writing. I appreciate it Very much. Thanks guys. So till next time guys. Bye. Cheers. Bye