Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 320 - The Whiskey Rebellion

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

Get live show tickets here: https://www.universe.com/events/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-belfast-tickets-83V5QD support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Bad tax law almost starts a new American Revolution only a few years after the last one. Sources: William Hogeland. The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America's Newfound Sovereignty. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/whiskey-rebellion John Allen Miller. How Whiskey Almost Started a War. https://www.emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/history/rev_war/whiskey.htm https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/george-washingtons-proclamation-whiskey-rebellion

Hey everybody, if you ever wanted to see us live but you missed the other shows, well, you have another chance. Me and the boys are hitting the road once again. The Lines Led by Dunkys podcast is coming live to Belfast at the OYE Music Center Saturday, October 26th. So get your tickets while they last. You can find the link in our show notes. So get them now. Do it. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the lines up by donkey's podcast. I'm Joe and I got the whole crew in the house with me today sequestered away in post-apocalyptic London and Tom. I mean like I'm, I feel like I'm living in the sequel of threads right now,

except it's sunny. So, you know, Britain terrible country, but it's sunny. So I can't really complain that makes one of us. I haven't seen the sun in a week. And to be fair, like I was in a, I was in the north of England at the weekend and paid eight pounds for a pint of Guinness and a double vodka. So industrial decline is it good? Is it bad? Who knows? For people's understanding, that's cheap because in London, like we're going to, we're going to do a live show tonight for trash future. And I would be surprised if the venue sells single pints for under seven pounds. Like so eight pounds for some hard liquor on top of a pint of Guinness is yeah, it's pretty good.

To be fair, like I, cause I went for a pint before I went to get go get the train because I was like, I'm going to get a pint on the way home from work. I paid seven pounds sixty for a single pint. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't drink very much anymore, but I think the last time I went out and got a beer in the Hague is obviously Amsterdam. Like I think that you have to pay in blood. But in the Hague, I think I paid five euros. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, I always used to joke about how European prices don't make any sense at all because

like you could go into what doesn't necessarily seem like a bougie restaurant in Paris in like 2003 and you're paying 20 euros for a salad with basically no protein in it. But then randomly, like in the town I grew up in in Germany, I swear to God, I saw a 750 mil bottle of Picardy rum for like four euros and 50 cents in the grocery store. So like, yeah, it never makes any sense whatsoever. Everybody always talks about how expensive the Netherlands is. And I'm not here to like debunk that. But I've grown accustomed to how much things cost in my general area and like the once a month where I travel into Amsterdam

which immediately helps me remind myself that I fucking hate Amsterdam and I go for it could be a hot dog on the street and I'm just like what the fuck this is three times as much as it should be You know, I gotta be honest with you something that's really interesting to me too, before we start talking, well, we're going to talk about the price of alcohol in this episode. This is accidentally on topic. I can't believe it. Something that I found interesting is that, you know, obviously with the cost of living crisis in the United Kingdom, post COVID and post really post-Ukraine war. And even though Britain got like basically 0% of its natural gas from, from Russia, we

still, everything in Britain is like the market price of its natural gas from Russia. Everything in Britain is like the market price must rule even if the government's allowed to set the price. And so basically this country shot itself in the dick with inflation intentionally. It wasn't a market force doing it. It was just Britain being like, we will never intervene. Much like 28 days later or children of men, the UK just decided to be that way. Yes.

As a personal friend and great poster, David East once said, I'm starting to think that the rest of the world was normal and children of men and Britain just chose to be that way. Similarly, Tom is gonna be editing a Britnology we recorded yesterday. I made the point watching this video about this insane guy

and who was like a high altitude repairman who specialized in demolition of like, but he did demolition of like chimneys for factories using like cut a hole in it and set it on fire. And he was really, really good at it. That is the most niche job I've ever heard of in my life. Yeah, the job is called a steeplejack. And I'm like, I didn't even fucking know

what that word means. But anyway, I made the point that the scene where they're setting the fire to bring this chimney down is this in, you know, Bolton in the North of England in 1979. And I was like, oh, now I get it. Like threads wasn't really, they didn't have to do any set design to make the north of England look like the apocalypse. Like literally it's just, Oh, it's just, that's just walk down the street. It just looks like that.

Meanwhile, I was in Hebden bridge and sat outside a pub where paid eight pounds for two drinks and there's just a guy with a barrel cut in half cooking jerk chicken on the side of the road. You know that chicken is good as fuck though. and there's just a guy with a barrel cut in half cooking jerk chicken on the side of the road. You know that chicken is good as fuck though. Oh it was incredible. It was so good. And like you know sometimes you can't trust jerk chicken made by a white man but they slapped. I believe it man. I was going to say seeking of alcohol and feathers. We're going to talk about whiskey and we're going to talk about getting tartan feather because we're going

to talk about one of the most interesting incidents of early, early America, the United States of America. And that is Joe, take it away. Now I picked the whiskey rebellion because as two men from the Midwest and an Irishman, we know something about drinking too much whiskey. We sure do. Fuck the Scots. We invented whiskey. I'm putting it here now. Not going to hear from anyone. I love that the Scots. We invented whiskey. I'm putting it here now. Not going to hear from anyone. I love that the Scots and the Irish have the same argument that Georgians and Armenians have about wine and brandy and also everything else. And Christianity.

And wrapping meat in leaves. The list goes on anyway. Yeah. It's like the Irish and the Scots verse about whiskey is basically like all of Anatole greater Anatolia South Southern Europe about coffee. Yeah, pretty much nailed it I'm glad that caucuses could be exported to the bog I just find it very interesting when you do with that like Tom's favorite subject Irish Americans and people don't realize that like they're just Sort of like I'm expressing my Irish identity as a you know generation American. And it's like you happen to be picking a brand of whiskey that's like deeply affiliated with one side or the other of the troubles, which is like that kind of like like tripping on your own shoelaces and falling headfirst

into sectarianism without realizing it. It's like it's like going to all going to Belfast and be like, I just look really good in orange. See, I'm going to rip off a ton of fucking like mass hole Irish Americans by putting out fake charity jars and it just says for the cause on them because they still think it's the eighties. No, there's definitely going to be some, you know, veteran fucking special forces dude who's like ninth generation Irish American who buys a Rangers jersey because he feels

like it represents his service. Now I have no idea what that means. Irish American who buys a Rangers jersey because he feels like it represents his service. Now I have no idea what that means. So I'm going to move on. The year is 1791. The United States of America is young, confused and trying to discover its own identity. Like all of us. It's basically the lyrics of the Green Day song coming clean except as a country.

America is bisexual. That's what I'm saying. The flag has to be presented in bisexual lighting in state. Now, its government, hardly as powerful as it is today, even domestically, was drowning in debt after the successful revolution. Soon, the taxes began to roll in, so they could pay their bills. This, as you can imagine, in a country that just launched a whole ass revolution

over taxes is unpopular. Tom, what do you know about the Articles of Confederation? I'm just wondering. Oh, don't worry, we'll get there. Absolutely nothing. OK, so the premise we have to start out is that the early version of the American Constitution came about before we actually had a constitutional convention.

They had a system of government that made no fucking sense. So Joe, I'm sorry, I'm jumping in. Go ahead, pal. One tax in particular hits home hard in the frontiers of the country, impacting everyday people harder than any other tax that the government had yet passed. Attacks on Whiskey. Soon America would face its first real challenge to its young statehood, the Whiskey Rebellion. But before we get there, we have to talk a little bit about something very exciting I'm sure everyone listening and you too cannot wait to hear about. Taxes.

Hey listen, both my parents are accountants and I do my own taxes. So, you know, I am well able for this. I mean, also in the American conception of taxes at the time, it was just a dude who came to your door and was like, pay up. You fucking asshole. I know, I know you owe us. It was government Debo. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a hundred percent like what shoes are those? Oh, my size, except for, yeah. You know, the profits of your hog and whiskey business. Not pork products hog, your slinging dick in the 18th century. It's the oldest profession, man. It's just, you're just a gigolo whiskey maker.

You have to think of like an old timey name for like a male gigolo that sounds classy, but also disgusting. Coxman. But it's like, it's just like that stereotype of, you know, the milkman coming and fucking your wife. It's just the whiskey man. Hey, that's called my grandpa's dad. You leave him alone. That is not even a bit that actually happened. Yeah. the glimmer in the milkman's eye. That just sounds like nowadays because we don't have a concept of a milkman, a man who comes to your house and delivers bottles of milk. It just sounds more objectively sexual in a way that no one is intending. So it's like you try to tell zoomers about the joke about, oh, you were just a twinkle

in the milkman's eye and they're like, Oh, that's perverted. Because as I understand it, people under the age of 25 have a conception of like, what is decent and indecent that is just very, let's just say like small c conservative compared to millennials and Gen Xers who you basically deep down, we all want to talk about sex. Like Kevin Smith talking about her brown taint area pones my dick. God damn it. I forgot about that. It's just the truth.

Every time you open your mouth when recording, I swear to God, it's like the Manchurian candidate where you're just saying a string of words. It's triggering something from deep in my brain that I thought I forgot about. Everything I say is an activation phrase. Yeah, exactly. It's like every time you guys talk about some weird band I've never heard of, string it together with like taint bones, my dick or whatever. My brain is flipping backwards and I'm marching out to kill someone.

I don't want to be a jackass about it, but I have obviously noticed that younger people tend to be a lot more sort of like, I don't think prudish is the right word, but say conservative about it. And in a way it's probably a reaction to generation of that. When we were in high school and early college, there was a funny movie that everyone thought was hilarious called Van Wilder, where one of the comic devices is they convince a bunch of frat boys to eat jelly donuts full of dog come. So I imagine if you were raised by that generation, another thing I have forgotten about until this very moment, it's because you'll Gabba Gabba secretly had children saying the Shahada in 2003.

You know Van Wilder's main sin is making Ryan Reynolds popular. I have a thing Ryan Reynolds has never been in a good movie and two I wish Burt Kreischer would fucking disappear off the planet that big fat alcoholic dickhead. That is not a controversial opinion. Nobody likes Burt Kreischer. I was going to say if if you made Steven universe, just teach people to recite the Shahada, the entire world, OMA would be formed of Gen Z kids. Like, believe me, like it's possible. What the fuck are we talking about? The whiskey

rebellion obviously. Now I know what it feels like to try to run trash future. We started recording Joe was like, Hey, this is, this script is relatively light. So you guys feel free to do whatever, get, get weird with it. And then the instant I start talking about Islamic Steven universe, you're like, Oh, I don't want to do this anymore. This is too off topic for a bit of behind the scenes info. We're recording a half nine. So Nate is experiencing the ADHD medication rush right now.

No I'm not. I'm experiencing that. I got five hours of sleep last night because my daughter was sick. Me too, because I was in the ER. Actually, that's not true, because the ER took 15 minutes. Taking every single stimulant I can get my hands on it. I'm drinking a fucking bottle from Boss Man, you know, 20 ounce bottle of fucking Pepsi Max right now, because like

I have to do a live show tonight and entertain a crowd of people in London and I feel like I want to just, I want to be encased in carbonite like Han Solo cause I could sleep for a producer. Meanwhile to site Nate like true bisexuals and give I fucking down the kind of white monster at six AM and went to the gym. What's a gym? And I'm having a coffee. The whiskey rebellion, whiskey rebellion, 1791 America. So this ended, this started with me saying, we're all excited by taxes. I don't know what the fuck happened. Now. Well, I mean, if you drank some 1791

whiskey, you'd probably trip hard enough that this would all make sense. American taxation during the time of the Colonials, more or less, followed the same laws as Britain. And Britain, at the time, most taxation was based on land and imports. However, before long, inland duties or excise taxes began popping up. These were taxes on individual products. In British history, the first national excise taxes were placed during the Civil War the British one or the English one rather Not the American one because I know we talked about the American Civil War a lot and we talked about the English Civil War Never so there was one in England It was basically dickhead versus bigger dickhead one was a king one said only God can be king and also I'm gonna genocide Ireland and

It didn't work out for either party. At first the the taxes were on alcohol of various kinds and then on meat. This led to a string of violent riots so brutal that the tax man just couldn't collect in certain regions and do their job for decades. The tax man wanted to make it illegal to be straight jorking it. You gotta tax that shit. Yeah, putting an excise tax on goon caves. But are you are you taxing per bust or per stroke? Fuck's sake.

Per rope. I believe in finding a middle ground and I think we can all agree on per rope. OK. Yeah. Because otherwise everyone has to wear like an Apple watch to like have it miscount your steps when you're jerking off. This is literally 1984. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've noticed this problem because if I play the piano with a wearable device, like, it thinks I got 30,000 steps for the day.

It's like, no, I was just being a dumbass playing music. So I imagine if you jack off with your left hand and you're wearing an Apple watch, it's going to count those as steps too. I was also going to say, just bring it back on topic. When I was a kid, I had a book, not about jacking off, but rather about American history that is, I saw Joe taking a sip of water. So I knew I had to do that. I just did the little improv. Joe Lidger spas water right on the floor.

It's what it's about. It's about what's between the notes. Yeah. So in this book, basically it was sort of like intended for like late grade school, middle school age kids, you know, talking about history of America and talking about the whiskey rebellion. The image that it had associated with was basically your sort of like weird, fanciful sort of woodcut cartoon drawing from the late 1700s of a guy getting tarred and feathered. Oh yeah, we'll get to,

there's plenty of people getting slathered with that hot tar. So basically it's the point being like, yeah, the tax had to be enforced and that, you know, the way it was done typically being like, yeah, the tax had to be enforced and that, you know, the way it was done typically meant like a guy went toward a door solo and you know, people broke kayfabe pretty often. They broke state kayfabe put it that way. It's my least favorite kind of kayfabe state enforced undertaker. Oh, you mean being fucking

in the army. That's state kayfabe. Like I have to call this 23 year old sir, that kind of a thing. Yeah, you. Not that I know anything about this. Yeah, me, exactly. Do you think I don't know that when a fucking like 70 year old Warnoff, the chief Warnoffs for five has to salute me with like rheumatoid or arthritis hands.

Like that's just kayfabe, man. It's the system. Despite the violence and revulsion against the taxes, which many people in England compared to slavery, ironically enough, they quickly became the most revenue generating taxation system the government had. So it didn't take long for excise taxes, namely an alcohol to begin to spread to the 13 colonies, with the first popping up in 1754. It was immediately framed as tyranny, a deprivation of liberty. and people said, I swear to God, the first

step is allowing the tax man into your home. The second step is the tax man fucks your wife. But like it's so ironic considering like they were both equally like insane proto-libertarians and insane Puritan Protestants. Those are two things that you can't hold water at the same time. In short, the idea is unpopular. I mean in fairness, not all of the American colonies were Puritan. By this point, there is certainly that element remains.

Puritans know, but the underlying strain is still very much baked in. Yeah, very conservative Protestantism across the board, yeah, but like, you know, it's not quite Salem Wish trials. It's like today Americans are overwhelmingly, obviously not particularly religious or especially Puritans or Quakers or whatever. But that shit is still kind of there. No, no, like you basically can't be president unless you go to church. Yeah.

Like it's just, yeah, you have to be Christian. And if you're Catholic and get elected, they think that the Pope is going to run the office and shit. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, the Pope's got a secret tunnel and he's yelling slurs in Italian. We didn't know the pope was a gamer. All right. Now he's just even even more popular gamer word moment. Yeah. Once again, once again, I'm coming back to the idea of like an army veteran supporting

Rangers like we're, we're coming back to that strain of Protestantism again. I still don't know what that means. Okay. So Celtic and Rangers are two football clubs in Scotland. Celtic is predominantly Catholic and is associated with like Irish people. And then Rangers is like uber, uber Protestant and is insane. And they both have like groups of ultras that fight each other and like, you know, Rangers fans will like burn big bonfires with like Celtic flags on it and like tides out and the only thing I know about football hooliganism is like a week ago I was on the tram and a bunch of football hooligans who lost chucked a giant brick at it bounced right off. So I guess they need to work on that arm strength.

Remember the trouble series and the fact that so many of the colonists in Northern Ireland were Scottish Protestants. And then you think about lots of Irish immigration to the island of Britain. And you think about Baitla as a friend of mine from Glasgow said, you don't know if the neighborhood was destroyed by post-industrial decline or just sectarian violence. Like it is actually real. And so there are two football clubs in Glasgow. It's Glasgow, right? For Celtic and Rangers. Yeah. And they, it's basically like a fault line of that conflict. So, all right. Well, now I know more about Scottish football than I ever wanted to know. Yeah. The light is off in Joe's studio now because he's just basically retreated to his dark place except in in Glasgow. They don't have peace walls like they have in the north.

Not yet. I'll build them. I'm going to say I'm going to say I'll build the wall but I'm not going to specify exactly what wall I'm talking about. I'll just build one through the middle of Glasgow using American taxpayer dollars. Vote for me in November. They build peace walls in Glasgow and the murals that go up are like the story of the guy being like my dad died at Avicii taking MDMA. Okay. For the love of God we haven't even made it one page yet. You said you said to

fluff this out you know we're doing fluffing. We're fluffers. Last joke and I'm going to cut this we're essentially just going to do Protestant Zionism. Isn't that just Israel? Of course, the excise tax people in the US and maybe others who are familiar with the American Revolution know this as the Stamp Act of 1765, leading to the famous no taxation without representation saying, meaning the government has no right to tax its citizens without being represented in the body that passes said taxes. When Americans tried to explain this to the British government, they were completely confused and thought the language the colonists were using was strange and foreign and made no sense.

So the Stamp Act eventually passed, led to the revolution and an independent United States. Now, free and independent, the US had established just how the hell they were going to run this new country of theirs, and probably, most importantly to running a nation, how exactly they were going to levy taxes to pay their bills. Of which, there was a fuckload. During the war, the Continental Congress had no ability to tax its population, so it just freely printed more and more money to pay soldiers, which then imploded the colonial economy with inflation, eventually making the continental dollar as it was known, literally

worthless. Famously an economic policy that worked really well in like Italy, Greece, other countries in Europe. Weimar Germany is like, I don't understand. I just keep pumping these things out. They're not, they're not worth anything. I now have to eat bread made out of these bills. Yeah, exactly. It's worth a shit Literally actually know that just impact you it's literally not worth anything But you just got to go to the barter system which in like, you know, colonial America is I don't know like wagon wheels and the weird

Blanket, they sew you up in so you can't fuck in that scene from the Patriot, you know? Oh yeah, yeah, that's the scene in the Patriot. And it was, it was a thing. It was a thing. It was like, it was like when you were betrothed to a woman that like they'd leave you in the bedroom alone, but you couldn't fuck because the man would be sewn up in like a really tight sewing quilt or something like that. So it's like, you get to spend a night together, but you can't, you can't do it. And crucially, they don't, they don't, they don't, it's not a chastity cage for the, for the woman. It's, it's a A ch to spend a night together, but you can't you can't do it and crucially they don't they don't they don't It's not a chastity cage for the for the woman. It's it's a Chastity snuggie no springing wood cage for the man

Which is absolutely not true because anybody who thinks that this would work has never met like almost certainly a virgin Very close to having sex they'd burst through a brick fucking wall dick first. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's also, it's like, it's, it's, it's equal on either side. I mean, like the dude would be bursting through it and the girl would be like, I'll fucking use my teeth to cut these ropes. Exactly. Yeah. Using my fucking dick, like a seam ripper cutting it off, just going back and forth.

I'm like a horny silkworm. Thank God I sharpened the edges of my dick. It's like those videos of where like they, they, what are the ground vibration with helicopters that causes them to just break apart. It's like those videos of where like the ground vibration with helicopters that causes them just break apart. It's like that but for a bed. My dick is hitting the perfect residence to bust right through these throats. Just a guy sewn up in the fucking anti fucking cocoon crashing into Bin Laden's compound. This was supposed to be a stealth anti fucking cocoon.

We just need, we just need to bring it back and have like tactical anti fucking cocoons. I think that just called the internet now. I was going to say like it'd be like tactical Kevlar anti fucking, you know, technology wearing expensive Caltech helmet while jerking off behind a desk. I don't fucking know. They used to say that they were like, Oh, in basic training, they put salt Peter in the phone. So you don't get hard. And it's like, no, they don't. You're just exhausted and stressed. Like, so the anti fucking cocoon is like you're in ranger school or in the

field or like on deployment, having to share a sleeping bag with another dude. And like, like, even if you were like the gayest man to ever exist, it doesn't matter. You will not be horny. You're just like, I want a meal, you know, like I'm already for an MRE right now. I'm going to put my dick in those, add water to mashed potatoes and go nuts. I mean, literally, literally quoting when I, I was in ranger school, we were in the winter class and so we had break between mountain phase and Florida because of the Christmas holidays. And so everyone had come back rested and fat as hell because like your body just springs back in the worst way. And they were doing a Spice Fries demonstration,

which is this thing with helicopters, and basically dropping people down on ropes or hanging on ropes, and then also for casualty evac. And the woman doing it, basically it was a female warrant officer who was doing the sort of thing where they have to kind of like get the person in kind of like the almost sort of like cowgirl style

fucking seat to bring them up to the helicopter. And all the all male ranger class was like, ah, hell yeah, I get it. And the instructor was like, that's how I know y'all just came off of leave because normally a ranger class, the only time I can get them horned up is showing them a cheeseburger. Fuck that burger. To make those patties clap. Now, uh, the continental governments began to borrow huge amounts of money by selling bonds, which came with a sizable interest payment.

For example, if the government sold a bond for $75, they'd eventually have to repay $100 down the road, which is much harder when your money's not worth anything. And things were not any better for individual states, who also had the ability to take out loans to fund their own state-level war efforts. In short, by the time of independence rolled around, the economy was fucked. This is not short, by the time of independence rolled around, the economy was fucked.

This is not made better by the mechanism that the government created in order to run this new country. And it was not what we know of as the Constitution, but the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation had a fuckload of problems, namely for the topic of this episode, taxes. For example, it couldn't impose any. Also it effectively granted citizenship

to people of different states. It was like the Swiss Cantonal system without a strong federal government. It was like the EU without the whole history of EU member states. It's really weird. It's odd. Like the federal government cannot impose taxes on states.

It could only ask individual states for money and hope that it gave them some. When you let the guys who rebelled because they didn't want to pay taxes on slavery, write their own system of government, you basically get ruled by our slash libertarianism. It's the libertarian debate where the guys like what's next? License to own a toaster after being asked if people needed to driver's license. Everything is slavery except actual slavery. Yeah.

In which case it's consensual because there's a contract involved. Libertarians, a serious political party with an ideology that makes sense. Now there's also no method to enforce anything when it came to states paying the federal government anything if it didn't want to, which could lead to problems like say everything. It gave the federal government the power to create a military during times of need, for example, but no way to actually fund it. It was full of holes. This, of course, meant that the federal government couldn't pay off its debts because

it had no money. And they also couldn't regulate individual states, domestic or foreign policy because they could all have their own, which also meant that the states individually cannot pay off their debts. Some didn't even bother to try. The system was not working. Enter the Constitution. Among doing a lot of other things that people swear up and down shouldn't be changed to this very day, it also allowed the federal government to levy taxes.

So you know, it could pay for things. Alexander Hamilton, you know, the guy you know from that stupid musical that your mom likes, also managed to get the government to centralize all of its war debt so it could be better managed by the new federal government with its new powers to actually generate revenue. Though this led to more problems. The government, at least according to Hamilton, had jacked up import taxes about as far as they could go and it was the main way the government made money.

And by jacked it up, I mean they were pretty high, but as high as they could be while still being reasonable. So when he came up with the idea of a new excise tax, he settled on distilled spirits, more commonly known as the whiskey tax. Hamilton saw the taxes a slight tax on what he considered a luxury item. So no harm, no foul. Small domino, big domino, introducing egg size tax on whiskey, small domino, big domino, Dale Earnhardt dies live on TV.

I mean, I also don't really know how much they were doing beer brewing at the time. They probably were, but I think that like spirits was, yeah. Well, also we think about the agriculture. I mean like corn being a measure American, a new world crop. And it's typically, if I'm understanding the history of it correctly, whiskey in America at the time was basically corn sour mash. Yep. This actually ends up being a pretty important oversight on the government's

part because Hamilton, the federal government and everybody involved fundamentally did not understand the rural parts of their country, particularly Pennsylvania, population of a whole whopping 17,000 people at the time and home to the nation's capital. Okay. So Tom's special interest corner, the reason why beer and brewing wasn't popular in America is mainly due to transport and distance between places where it's being brewed and people consuming it in Europe. Generally each town that was like relatively big enough and also beer is quite easy to make would have like an ale house that would be sold to local people and people traveling through. The reason why Distilled Spirits is so popular in America

is because they're easy to transport. And America had yet to absorb a massive population of people with a history of beer brewing. That would happen within the next couple of generations. People in rural western Pennsylvania were largely farmers, either subsistence farmers or slightly above that. They lived very poor lives and struggled to get by. It was super common for farmers of the region to run small stills in their backyard to make whiskey or other kinds of moonshine and spirits that they

could then sell to supplement their income. Also, it was not unheard of for a lot of these guys to effectively exist in a barter and trade economy rather than in a monetary one. This had nothing to do with the fact that they were backwards or primitive or, you know, because that's often as it's framed. Cash was literally in short supply and even when it was in supply, its value was not exactly a for sure thing. So people learned to work in other ways. So the grain that they harvested would need to be loaded up in wagons driven over mountains

in order to get to market where they could then sell it or trade it for other things that they needed. Obviously, loading up wagons full of fucking grain is heavy, time consuming, and it's not like sacks of grain are compact, it would require more wagons. Hence more time, more labor, and in order for it to be worth a damn, it'd have to load up a ton of grain, meaning even more wagons in one go. More trips over the mountains, which was not exactly safe or easy to do. However, transportation of whiskey over the mountains was far easier. Also is not uncommon for low wage farm hands, you know, the people harvesting

all of this crop, it's transporters over the mountains, you name it, to simply get paid in whiskey. It was much easier to transport than grain. And if people wanted, they could simply carry it into the next town over and sell the whiskey for actual money if they want it or again trade it for the things they would need. Also worth noting as well like the minimum sellable amount of whiskey is much lower than like transporting other alcohols. Like if you're transporting beer if it's worth transporting to pay back the amount

it costs to transport it you have to transport a lot of it. Whereas whiskey you can travel with like 10 bottles of it and still probably on like one horse and still cover the cost of it. Yeah. I mean it was effectively a payroll system through spirits in a trade and barter program. There was another big fuck you to the small distillers baked into the tax. There was two ways you could pay the tax, either by the gallon of whiskey distilled or flat fee per the number of stills one used to distill. The problem was if you paid a flat fee, it was still more expensive than if you paid for gallon. So that meant that these small operations would get royally

screwed either way. While much larger, let's say as close to commercial distillers as existed back then, could simply pay the flat fee or even the still fee without any issues. Also these small distillers, remember this isn't their full time job, it was an income supplement during the off season, and they didn't have time or materials to do this shit year round. However, the tax didn't account for that. Meaning they had been screwed over multiple times all at once. Then the pain of the tax trickled downhill.

Remember, there's some people being paid solely in whiskey for work. This meant this was effectively a payroll tax paid for by them out of their whiskey paycheck. Yeah, they're doing like company township, but like way earlier. In a way, but like it's government enforced on accident. Like obviously this wasn't the best way to live, but you know, in a place where they literally had no supply of money. What else are you going to do?

It's also important to know that the whiskey in the West sold for much less than the whiskey in the East due to small batches and a poor population. By its very nature, it couldn't be sold for much less than the whiskey in the East due to small batches and a poor population. By its very nature, it couldn't be sold for much. It was not very profitable. But the tax didn't account for that either. It was flat across the board. Meaning if they continue to sell for the current price, a price that people around them could actually afford, they would not even break even. On one hand, it's like it's interesting to imagine a barrel of whiskey as company script, but also it's interesting to think about this too,

because this feels clumsy and very 18th century, but like this argument comes up often about flat tax stuff because it is extremely regressive and the United Kingdom has a more or less, not flat tax percentage, but rather a flat tax in currency amount for residents. Like you don't pay, your landlord, the property owners, they don't pay property tax,

but the tenants pay a flat rate tax. And like, there's basically no way to get an exemption. And it's, relatively speaking, it's a lot of money. I mean, it's like, I think we pay 125 pounds a month in this tax. And it's like, if I was on pounds a month in this tax and it's like if I was on Basically no income I'd still owe that if I had a you know, a billion pounds a year I'd still owe it and it's like these taxes are

Only fuck over the poor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course that's that's that's like the bread and butter It's a day ending and why for the United Kingdom, but you can see this being obviously unpopular for a variety of reasons in early America just learned from dad. Yeah. And like in reality, like that at this time, the true hero of the new America would have been Donkey Kong. He was fighting against the agent of the government. Super Mario. Like Mario. Yeah. Mario is the tax man. Mario is going trying to enforce tax laws and he's vaguely foreign and probably Catholic and Italian and a good Protestant gorilla is throwing barrels at him to ruin his day and

he's stolen his girl. Shigeru Miyamoto is an agent of the state. Now, however, that is not all. The tax seemed tailor made to fuck the rural population of Western Pennsylvania. So for example, in order to be taxed, which was mandatory, they would have to register their stills at an office or face a court summons. Now this office at the time and the court

were both 300 miles away in Philadelphia, the capital. Yeah, they didn't have e-gov back then or a postal service or a road. Like, I mean, they did, but, you know, it was it was shit. Like, and I've been I know you probably have to. Western Pennsylvania is extremely mountainous. And I believe it's the Allegheny Range divides the state. And it's like, basically, when you drive from nowadays on the interstate

from New York City towards where my parents used to live in Indiana, like you just see the fucking looming mountains coming and like getting over them then gets you to Western Pennsylvania. And now this is with like a half starved horse and a shitty wagon. Yeah. Yeah. A donkey on like an old native American trail. And they're like, you better get here. Otherwise we're going to send, you know, the proto IRS with the fucking feather in his cap and he's going to come to your house. And also according to our propaganda, he's also going to steal your girl much like don't you miss your steely girl parentheses

tax man and there's a there's another problem here because like okay let's say you have your normal guy he's like you know I fucking hate this but the government I'll listen to them so he goes to Philly right now he has to fill out all this paperwork small problem here rural people in America at the time are largely illiterate he has no idea what he's reading or signing. It's full on sign with an X. Yeah. Shit. Yeah.

But like this is, this is just Britain's approach to administrative justice is like, oh no, you have to go to this arbitrary office. You've no idea where it is. You've no idea how to get there to sign this document for something you don't know what it is. Yeah. We're still going to charge you like 300 pounds for no reason. I don't want to sound too dismissive or exaggerated here, but like when you think about how isolated these communities were and how little like long distance travel there was for anything besides significant business things, most people who were farmers, farm hands, et cetera, this would be like the equivalent of a medieval peasant being told like, yeah, if you want to register your business,

you have to go get this document signed by Prestor John. Yeah. I mean, cause like for a lot of people, this is their only real connection to the government is to show up and fuck them over with taxes. And that is one hell of a thing. Cause remember the revolution, only a couple of years back. So a lot of these people are still very much suspicious of a strong central government

suddenly showing up to their front door and demanding money. They're like the Afghans who when American troops showed up they're like, we thought we told you Russians to leave, we don't like communism. I thought we told you fucking outsiders we don't want you around here. Now this is on top of all of the other problems frontier type people had with the federal government. Namely, they hated it and the concept of the state of Pennsylvania itself. Secession movements to create their own state in the west were very common at the time and

they were based in effectively every secession movement is based in. The government doesn't represent me anymore, I want my own. And this is for a lot of reasons but key among them was for people in western Pennsylvania, which was effectively the frontier of the United States at the time. The state and the federal governments kept taking their money in taxes, but not giving them anything. For example, an army to defend themselves against indigenous people who, you know, surprise, surprise, constant warfare and raiding was happening on both sides.

Look, we weren't going to get through an episode about rural America in the 1700s without getting into some fucked up shit, alright? But between raids and counter raids, violence on the frontier was commonplace, which is what tends to happen when you brutalize a people and steal their land. Of course, the government was fine with people on the frontiers doing this because it was a net gain for them. At the time, the so-called Northwest Indian War was raging, which we talked about before during our St. Clair's Defeat episode way back in the day.

In short, it was going very badly for the United States, who largely lacked an army and the government just kind of expected people on the frontier to defend themselves. For the people living on the edges of all of this, you can see why they didn't want to give the government more money because they were doing literally nothing for them. I was gonna jump in and say, understand that this is taking place about 30 years after the events of the film, Last of the Mohicans.

So just, that's generally the vibe. They might have invented like a new pulley or a wagon wheel or some shit, but you know, it's basically the same. This obviously sounds like one hell of a boost from the government to big distillers as well. Right. And that's exactly how full time farmer part time distillers saw it.

As far as historical evidence of this it's not all there. People say this is like you know lobbying on behalf of big distillery type businesses. But that wasn't really the case. But once distillers are heard about the tax they enthusiastically supported it, of course, seeing it for exactly what it was. Though they weren't alone. Those who worked in importation also support the tax wholeheartedly because it meant for

the first time ever, the government would not be raising taxes on their businesses for once. Rather than corruption, the real reason for the US government, with only a few years of being formed, doing this was just being hopelessly uninformed about their own people. Alexander Hamilton also did a lot of legwork to get others to support it, like the doctors of Philadelphia College. They were physicians who framed distilled spirits and their consumption to be one of the greatest moral threats to the people of the United States, and that low who drink them would be best served by a tax that discouraged their use.

But others, you know, namely most Americans, this is still the United States after all, people love drinking and they told a lot of the doctors to shut their fucking nerd asses up. Shut up nerd, fuck off. And people knew that Americans would be fucking pissed about this. And there's people within the government that are like, this is not going to go over well, but they just stayed out of it. Not because they're in the pocket of big whiskey, but because this tax was a small part of a

bigger picture that with like agreement to the Axis tax, the centralization of war debt. It was all part of a larger deal that would create Washington, D.C. as the nation's capital. So it was like a small it was a small domino, big domino situation here. Though not everyone still saw things this way. Others were just practically pointing out that, yeah, the government has no money and a ton of debt, and they need to pay that shit off somehow. Though my personal favorite excuse is by Congressman Livermore who said people should support the tax because they would quote simply be drinking down the national debt.

Which sure. I worked for Russia in the entirety of the latter half of the 20th century. Did it? Yeah. It was like astonishing when I read that fucking giant home about fucking Gorbachev and the failure of perestroika. And it was like so much of the Soviet economy was predicated on taxation on vodka. I mean, yeah. But also the biggest problems of like institutional foundational alcoholism in Eastern European society being a propping up of the state

Which a lot of post-soviet states are still dealing with the problems of Was it the the book collapse that you read Tom? Yeah, I'm reading that right now. And yeah, exactly It's like well, don't don't do the anti drinking campaign, please a third of our budget comes from excise taxes on vodka sales Lenin's smartest soldier wasn't as smart as he thought. Throughout 1790 and 91 petitions circulated throughout western Pennsylvania demanding the government cancel the tax but they were ignored. The westerners met up and elected a guy named Edward Cook to in effect be their leader. Interestingly they didn't debate the legal basis of the tax, they knew it was legal,

but rather hoped the government would see how unfair it was. Eventually these meetings morphed into an elected assembly to come together and deliver their complaints to the federal government, which was seated in Philly. This assembly was peaceful, law-abiding, and reasonable to a fault. And there's a good reason for that. The men in the assembly knew their neighbors were getting fucking furious. And remember, everybody has guns. They believed a legal body, they hoped at least, would calm them down if they saw some progress was being made.

Protests against the tax collection had already started in a kind of grassroots manner. People figured, well, if I have to register my stills to pay the tax, I simply won't register my shit. So soon the government tax collectors, both federal and local, enlisted an army of snitches to try to track down unregistered stills across the western countryside. Other people rented extra rooms to the out of town tax collectors where they would then move into these rooms for a period of time, collect taxes for a period of time, and then

leave. They turned into their office. In short, shit was getting intense. People were pissed and what happened next was something virtually anyone could have seen coming. A group of anti-tax men dressed up like women and ambushed a tax collector. I knew there was a cross-dressing element for some reason, something about American history, AP US history, or that book I read when I was like nine or

whatever the fuck, there was something. I was like, was like, there's an element of there's some cross dressing isn't it? Yeah. For some reason. They beat this shit out of him, cut his hair off with a knife and tarred and feathered him and they stole his horse. Just like being a tax collector just riding along getting jumped by a group of guys in like frontier women's wear.

Yeah. You're like you're beating the shit out of this taxman. You look over like Frank you didn't have to shave your legs. Sorry bro. I was going to say handshake meme like 1790s tax collector and random guy who looks Palestinian in Lebanon in the 1980s like being descended upon by a gang of cross-gressing dudes. Fuck. 1790s Ehud Barak just fucking laying it down on the tax collector.

I know I told you right that I had to go to a speech like an Ehud Barak talk when I caught when I was in university and that like he just was riffing and telling stories like I heard the best of this woman. Like genuinely that's I didn't know that was going to be made into a plot device of the movie Munich. But yeah, you know, so American tax rebellion. The tax collector knew who many of these men were and reported them producing a warrant

for their arrest. That warrant went to the one local cop. Now, cops at the time were not police officers as we know them. Effectively, they were sheriffs. Right. And he knew he didn't want anything to do with this shit. It is like, if I go for the rest of these motherfuckers, they'll kill me. So he handed the warrant

to an illiterate man to deliver the warrant for him. We have a warrant for the arrest for Horace Blumpo brackets lady version. He just looks like boy George. They just like go into his house to arrest him and he has like a young farm hand chained in the paddock. Yeah. Just fiddle version of do you really want to hurt me? But he's still got the chair with the hand carved dicks for arm rests that boy George had in real life.

Like boy George is terrible. I'm sorry. I saw him in the cribs for boy George's house and he had a chill like a rocking chair with dicks for arm rests. I'm just, I'm not, I'm not being homophobic. I'm reporting reality. He needed a gamer chair. Leave him alone. The sheriff just like rocking up is like going to tie up his horse and he's just like, oh, tie him up by the boy.

Yeah. Boy George also apparently did like an illegal detent, like like basically, yeah, we got that. I didn't know that until recently. I thought he was I didn't know. Look, man, his image was fucking protected in America. I guys, they had a boy, George Omer, Todd in America. We knew about his, the makeup and the new romantic stuff and his house with the Dick chair. I did not know that he pulled a fucking like, what's his name? Richard Pryor or a, what's a fucking.

So the whiskey rebellion James Rick James on somebody. Yeah. Anyway, risky, risky rebellion. Now he handed this warrant to an illiterate guy who obviously couldn't read it and told him like, go to this house and deliver this warrant. Cause back then warrants worked as you delivered the warrant to them and then they had to show up to a courthouse. So he wasn't sending the illiterate man to like arrest these guys.

The illiterate guy just in a very elaborate costume just about to say you've been served. He's also dressed up like Boy George for some reason. The man who obviously couldn't read the warrant showed up at the house, hand him the warrant and then had his ass whooped and was also tart and feathered. Now the group in the assembly attempting legal methods of protest and those dudes running around drag punching the tax man were obviously two completely separate groups. The federal government of course did not see it that way. They said the legal assemblymen as the educated leaders and you know insiders of this dissident movement which

ended in dudes dressing up like women and tarring and feathering tax people. They did not see it for what it was. A kind of collective gathering of anger from common men. So the giant mob descending and everyone is dressed like extras from Madonna's Vogue video. I mean, it fits, does it? You know, like, like it's contemporaneous. Treasure of Michigan, Madonna. Yeah. Well, I mean, can you imagine if you taught the 1790s Whiskey Rebellion cross-dressing guys how to vogue? I'm going to make an educational historical book, but it's going to be about the Whiskey

Rebellion, but in the form of the Madonna sex book. Funnily enough, a lot of people don't remember this weird thing about that book. Vanilla ice is in it so much. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Now I think less of it. I'm just imagining like an early 1800s documentary called Pittsburgh is Burning and it's just like woodcuts of people voguing lithographs. There's 1700s Robert Mapplethorpe going around doing quick etchings of people. John Neville was a tax inspector for the region and he failed entirely in his job. The government

failed to collect any taxes within the first year and they just gave up over the winter. When Neville returned in August of 1792 he rented a room to carry out his job registering stills and advertise where he was in the local newspaper. He doxed himself. His location was dropped on the fucking war thunder discourse. So people like he puts it he puts it newspapers like you know that thing that you all hate. Well I'm the agent of that thing and I'll be exactly in this place and this date and time. Now I also have extremely strong opinions about the tiger tank.

And people who were like in the area and were pro-government were like, man you really shouldn't do that. And he ignored them. Pretty much immediately anti-tax activists dressed up in war paint in their best imitation of native fighters. Which is exactly what people did during the Boston Tea Party. And broke down the front door looking for Neville. Probably to shave his head and give him the old tar and feathering skin treatment. But they did also have guns so they could

this could have been more of a lynch mob situation. We don't know because he wasn't there. And you know to underline how angry they were they shot some holes in the house and left. Then the owner of said house who's renting the room to Neville told Neville like get the fuck out of here. You can't be here anymore. These guys might kill me next time. Yeah they did. When you were in the 1700s if your name was Kyle you couldn't punch holes in walls so you just had to shoot them. We invented a new step. Just punching holes in hay bales. Yeah just waddle and daub just blasting your hands straight through. I don't even know

if they use waddle and daub. That's British you know English whatever but don't even know if they use waddle and daub. That's British, you know, English, whatever. But it'd be funny if they did. It's enough about modern British housing, though. It's exactly it's probably a log cabin. Let's be real here. At this point, the assembly was still trying to do things illegally, but only they were completely ignored by the federal government. So soon they and the people who were already out,

like punching tax people and kidnapping horses and shit, were becoming more radicalized because first you had this group of people like, look, we understand this is legal, but we're going to petition the part of the government. You have these guys are like, we're not going to kill anybody. We'll just beat the shit out of them. But now they're both realizing that neither of those things are getting anything done. And they both start shaking hands and they're like, let's shoot some motherfuckers.

They turned from grassroots organization and effectively civil disturbance into active and armed resistance, much like local assemblies had done during the early stages of the American Revolution. And this was not only happening in Western Pennsylvania, but also in Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia. Alexander Hamilton saw this kind of thing as a rebellion, demanding force to be used on them immediately. Meanwhile, President George Washington did not see things that way. Washington was pretty familiar with the concepts of violence at this point of his life,

and while he was pissed about this kind of sort of rebellion, he didn't see people beating the shit out of the taxman as anything to deploy the army over. In his words, people being angry at the taxman was just normal. He was like, yeah, I mean, them getting their ass whooped, that's fine. There was also the small fact that the army was virtually non-existent after getting their teeth kicked in by native people. So more than hating violence, he hated the idea of the government threatening to do something

and then not being able to follow through. Hamilton backed down on all of these other states skirting the tax, other than Pennsylvania. He figured the government could effectively crush Western Pennsylvania and make an example out of them that other states would see and then fall in line. This Washington was more on board with, as well as the reasoning that Pennsylvania was the state seat of the federal government, and it was kind of embarrassing for people

within the nation's own capital state to tell the government to fuck off and get away with it. However, George Washington told Hamilton they should put warrants out for the leaders of the movement first, rather than just send troops in. Hamilton immediately agreed, knowing one thing that Washington didn't. Officers of the government had no fucking power in western Pennsylvania to enforce any warrants at this point, so he knew he would send them out, they would be ignored, and he'd get what he wanted, which was military intervention in Pennsylvania.

And this isn't to lay everything on the feet of Hamilton. Other people within the government were very comfortable with violence, as were the people in the anti-tax movement in Western Pennsylvania. Things had continued to escalate and there were some regular old tax man punchers roaming around still.

Other men began to form themselves into armed militias to threaten to murder tax collectors if they came around and beat and threaten locals who weren't on board, tax collectors if they came around and beat and threaten locals who weren't on board telling them if they worked at the government when it came to taxes they would fucking kill them. Reasonable response you know just completely normal. It's a very rural community and they are rapidly self-radicalizing one another. Yeah they're like self-radical. They're like punching tax collectors. Meanwhile,

George Washington is getting fitted for his third version of slave grills. You know, it's a wonderful time. Yeah. There's actually some, you know, Americana primitive art and it just looks like minions memes except holding guns. Oh, 1700s Facebook would have been so great. Yeah. I mean 1700s Facebook would basically be like, yeah, like weird woodcut or lithograph, you know, water color things about like this man is a fop ampersand and an ass, you know, like I love that shit so much. Your local representative Holben blood feast. Yeah, exactly.

Just long call out poets written in like 1700s English. With the S that looks like an F without a slash. Yeah. Yeah. Don't, don't come to the with a different S unless it's the cool S fuck off with any other kind of S. Can you imagine if that's what we had used for our typography back in those days, if they had a cool S everywhere, it's like gentlemen, you were invited to sit down at your ease

except it's like fucking the, yeah. It's like, you know, you know my notebook in fifth grade I deeply respect American middle school calligraphy which is just the invention of the cool ass yeah basically like so like we liked the Stussy brand because we wanted to do just right that way for everything we wanted to do shitty graffiti we wanted the cool ass we wanted uh I can't even remember the rest of it I don't know calculators that you know eight eight eight thousand five or whatever you know know, eight, eight, zero, zero, eight, five. That's what you remember from that time is your, your brand of calculator. No, I mean,

the fucking calculator, if you type eight, what is it like the, the, whatever the thing is that then you turn the calculator upside down, it spells out boobs. Like that was a thing that we always, you know, it was like, yeah, yeah, of course. Now you're like, Oh, do they not have, they didn't have calculators in Detroit public schools They had abacuses. Hey, they didn't have abacuses It was just like a string hanging in the corners like okay move the beads and then you count them Hey, I didn't need a calculator because I also didn't have school books. So They didn't teach you anything about arithmetic, but you learn every size of socket wrench from memory It's called trade school.

Yeah, for stealing a fucking catalytic converter. Years passed and the government's attempts at letting the anger blow over just hadn't worked. So in 1794, the federal government finally passed down warns to bring in the leadership of the assemblies, as well as the men who had so far refused to register their stills. These were delivered to the various counties by Marshal David Lennox and our good friend John Neville. When they went to one man's house who promptly told them to fuck off, a group of 30 or 40 people appeared with guns and pitchforks.

After exchanging insults with one another, the two men separated and rode away on horseback away from the group. Word began to spread about Neville and Lennox handing out warrants and anger quickly flashed through the town. One group of men who got pissed was the local armed militia who had actually been called up and was standing in muster formation for service in the ongoing Indian war. But when they heard about the warrants coming out, they're like, nah, fuck that. Let's kill a federal marshal instead. What do I hate more than Native Americans? Tax.

I mean, that's basically the American ethos. It is. It's 100% true. To this day. However, they believe that Lennox went back to a house called Bower Hill, which is actually where Neville went. And soon they were on the march. The militias surrounded the house and Neville came out, saw what was going on and decided

the best way to de-escalate the situation is by murdering a man in cold blood. So he pulled out a pistol and shot a man dead. Now all I can just think now is you know the American version of the North said guys are eight tax eight minorities love my burgers said. He's the Australian. The founding American Australian fathers. Fucking truth, mate. Hate Native Americans. Oh, bloody hell.

Then metal slaves appeared who were also armed and open fired on the militia as well, killing a few more men. Then the militia retreated. I love how every story in American history is like an event could have been like bloody Sunday in terms of scope. But it's like for the American history, it's like, nah, you know, it was just Tuesday. It's like M bison in the street fighter movie in the street fighter movie. Neville looking at is like that day I killed your parents. That was just Tuesday. That

day I repossessed your stills. My bottle, my, my casks of whiskey will each be worth four British pounds when I kidnapped their king, which won't be hard because he's off his tits on Laudanum. Right now. There's just like a guy slightly out of shot beating the shit out of a car. Yeah. The bonus level of fucking 1790 street fighter. Is you go horse and out of a horse and cart. That that'll be the ultra patriot if he gets the high score.

The horse is like, now you got me thinking about like fucking 17 nineties American final fight where you're the mayor of a frontier town and you have to go beat up tax men, like beat up the andor gang. And there's randomly like a portagel, like a fucking outhouse that has sex written on it for some reason, just like in the video game. The colonial American mind cannot wrap their head around the concept of Blanca from the tree fighter. Colonial American fucking Mike Agar just like going up beating up people. Now to the people in the community, the men in the militia had been murdered in cold blood and the ranks of the militia swelled.

It's also important to point out here that these militiamen had just been paid by the federal government like their stipend for the service in the Indian war so effectively the federal government paid for their own rebellion. Then they crowdfunded a bounty on Neville's head. Payment made to whoever killed him. He was not to be taken alive. Please like and share my GoFundMe we need to get rid of Neville. Yeah I mean before the concept of Americans having to use GoFundMe, we need to get rid of Neville. Yeah. I mean, before the concept of Americans having to use, uh, like GoFundMe to pay for

healthcare, they had to use GoFundMe to murder federal agents. I feel like you don't want to deliver the story in this sort of framing to Clint Eastwood because he will make a like fascist realism movie. And somehow he like shoehorn in hating Vietnamese people. Yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah, yeah. He's, he's finds his way to be like being racist against them in authentic early or late 18th century dialogue. They just call them all Siamese for some reason. It's like, it's a completely different country. The grand tree knows an interesting movie. If you just want to watch a movie called Clint

Eastwood is still a racist, but now in Detroit, which should be fair. Yeah. Anybody who lives in Detroit in some neighborhoods knows there's an old fucked up white guy in every block and they wish they were like Clint Eastwood. And instead they just screamed slurs from the porch. And take it from Joe. He is a stamped and affidavit app of steel certificate that he is son of racist.. He knows this guy. My dad was that guy if he didn't die when he was like 45. But yeah Clint Eastwood is making this movie about colonial America and he's just doing

like family guy style cutaways. There's like meanwhile in Vietnam. I mean I have to put this in here even if it's a non sequitur. We were cleaning stuff up at the very very first studio and I just used Amazon to get a bottle of Guggen like the fucking grimy shit remover Which is not really a brand people know in Britain But obviously Americans know it and I showed it to Milo and he's like Guggen sounds like a slur Clint Eastwood would have used in Gran Torino Now meanwhile while the militia swelled in number Neville was asking anyone loyal to the government to come to his aid and many did

Soon 700 militia and deputies were parked out front of his house in his defense Neville was whisked away and the house came under the command of a guy named Major James Kirkpatrick It was pretty well known in the area the anti-tax militia showed up under the command of a popular Revolutionary war veteran James McFarland. They demanded that Neville be handed over, and when the pro-government militia told him he wasn't home, all hell broke loose with both sides opening fire.

Nobody's really sure who shot first. At some point in the fighting though, the pro-government side called out to the anti-tax militia, demanding negotiations. McFarland agreed, walked out under a flag of truce and was unarmed and then was shot promptly in the face. The anti-tax militia responded by setting the house on fire and choking the men out and soon they surrendered.

He's just got them in a BJJ hold, you know, like they're just scooting into the fire to grab them. But scooting close quarters combat. Colonial like ankle hooks, you know. When given a choice between surrendering and burning to death, most people are going to surrender. Many of the anti-tax boys wanted to kill Kirkpatrick for his role in the death of their commander, but they were talked out of it by other members of the militia.

Other elements of the militia captured Lennox elsewhere and made him put his hand on the beard of McFarland's corpse and swear upon said beard that he would leave this side of the state and never return. He agreed and was released and got back to Pittsburgh. Swear on his dead beard. Which mind you, his face was fucking mangled too. So it's like you go to grad and you're mostly in skull hole territory. You just pull the whole thing off like it's fake.

I genuinely look at this stuff and sort of like, yeah, I'd probably not come back if you made me swear on a shot in the face dude's beard. Yeah, you guys are nuts. I never want to come back to Western Pennsylvania for a kid. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good with yeah. Yeah, you said he came back to Pittsburgh, but I presume you meant Philadelphia. No, he made it to Pittsburgh. Made it to Pittsburgh. Oh, because, Pittsburgh, but I presume you meant Philadelphia. He made it to Pittsburgh made it to Pittsburgh

Oh cuz okay. My geography is all fucked up He made it all the way back to Pittsburgh. Yeah, and Pittsburgh from like the rural part of Pennsylvania Okay, gotcha. Yeah, and this is where things in the anti-tax movement begin to get let's say testy Some of these people flush with success said hey, we should create our own state You know Western Pennsylvania create our own state, you know, Western Pennsylvania, be its own state, fuck Eastern Pennsylvania. While others are like, yo, fuck a state, let's be our own country. And others are like, okay, we can't really be our own country, but we should send word to Spain, the British or the French and

be like, yo, can we join your country instead? Can we become an exclave of Spain in Western Pennsylvania? We're going to be making a Hamoni Barico in fucking, I don't know, like that area, the really, really far out near Pittsburgh on the Ohio border. Lourdes just like, is this Appalachia? Is this hell? Is this a Harmony Korean movie? They're just making tapas just like holy out of fucking barley. It's like all the leaders of the movement really had no idea where to go from this point.

Though even with all these different slapdash ass goals, they knew whatever they might be, they would have to bring their complaints to Philly and show their goddamn government that they meant business. But their first step would be to go to Pittsburgh. All of the deaths had further radicalized the community. And a man named David Bradford, the Deputy Attorney General for Washington County, Pennsylvania, took command of the militia. By August 1st, 1794, around 7,000 rebels were gathered in Braddock's Field,

only eight miles away from Pittsburgh. Most of these men didn't own land, they didn't own whiskey stills, they didn't own anything that any of this original thing started as. Instead, the larger movement of overall grievances toward the federal government had formed. The city government began to freak out as word got to them that these rebels planned to attack the city itself and they had the power to take the city of Pittsburgh without any problem at all really. So they tried to negotiate as is their only outlet. They had no army, no real militia to speak of and the federal government had been caught so flat-footed about how fast everything had gotten out of control, they were trying to figure out what to do.

Or more importantly, George Washington was trying to figure out what he could legally do. Because the Militia Act of 1792 required a Justice of the Supreme Court to agree with the President that law and order had failed and local government had lost control before raising a federal militia to deal with whatever the problem might be. And so far he didn't have that. But justice James Wilson agreed at the president and Washington announced that Western Pennsylvania was now an open rebellion and he would raise a militia to put it down. He demanded rebels stand down by September 1st or else.

Meanwhile, negotiators were sent out to talk to the rebels outside of Pittsburgh saying that they have to unanimously out to talk to the rebels outside of Pittsburgh, saying that they have to unanimously agree to submit to the government authority and then they would be granted amnesty. There'd be no problem. The rebel assemblyman and most of its loudest supporters, that being the original people involved, were like, okay, the president is saying he's going to kill us all. We should probably back the fuck down. This has gone too far. But this was not universal.

While the people that began the movement were willing to take a step back, the people who had glommed onto it, the landless, stillness, rural poor who were venting their anger for everything else, were not. The negotiators and even the former rebel assemblymen agreed that the military would probably be needed to bring those people into line. On September 25th, Washington issued an order, summoning the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia militias into federal service and warned that anyone who aided the insurgents did so at their own peril.

And then a lot of the dudes refused to show up for militia service because it was a draft. They didn't want to do that. And then draft riots started. Somewhat wildly, as the militia formed, it was led by none other than President George Washington. Meaning, it was the first and only time a sitting US president actually commanded soldiers in the field. Soon, he had 10,000 men at his back, a sitting US president actually commanded soldiers in the field.

Soon he had 10,000 men at his back, including a corps of Revolutionary War officers. Though eventually he saw the optics of a sitting president crushing his own rebellion down the street, not to mention he had a country to run. So he passed direct command over to the governor of Virginia, Henry Lee. What we really need is Joe Brandon to go on the ground and the eventual war with Iran. I mean, think about like, if you're going to have a president doing this in American history, there's only a few instances where it's probably a good idea.

And often even those ones, people would be like, no, you're just believing like the kind of myth making. Like I don't necessarily know if I would have wanted to be in like a battalion size element commanded by Dwight Eisenhower while he was president. He at least had the skills necessary. Like Washington Eisenhower. That's about it. Or Ulysses S.

Grant, because you know he'd be fucking hammered hammered drunk the entire time. That's unfair. He wasn't actually an alcoholic. He was, however, a terrible president. So, but I would say with Washington, it's like, yeah, I understand the optics argument, but it's also like he's just getting the game together for one last ride. Yeah, genuinely. He's like Baron Bon Stubben.

He's like, can you leave your boy stable for a little while and come out here and let's just kill some dudes? I have a jobs program for all my unemployed Revolutionary War officers. What's the jobs program? We're going to go shoot people in Western Pennsylvania. Yeah, this is basically a movie that vet TV would make, but it's way darker in their version. The kind of overwhelming federal response ended what was left of the rebellion without any further fighting, bringing the area under what was effectively military occupation as

they began to arrest those they found responsible. 24 people were charged with high treason, but all but tennis skates, including David Bradford who got away from federalized militiamen via high speed horse race, like on his way to freedom, getting onto a boat and then getting into French controlled territory. So it stops being 1790s street fighter and starts being 1790s Contra. And you suddenly got like a fucking like like a forward scrolling level where you're racing a horse really fast and jumping on a boat. Well, gee, you know, there is some people that point out that David Bradford made that story up and he just kind of casually walked

onto a boat and got away because it's 1700. So he's a picture of him laying around. I choose to believe the high speed horse race version of events. Now of the 10 charged two would hang. One man, John Mitchell was described as quote a simpleton. And you can take what old timey meaning that is. He had project hundred thousand project hundred thousand. We did an episode on that. The 1790s version. Yeah, it's like he's Lenny of Mice and Men, just like a large O. Look at the whiskey, John Mitchell. Look at the whiskey.

I mean, that was the backbone of the American economy then and now. Let's be real here. America loves its large sons. I mean, especially with the part of America we're from, Joe and I are from. It's benefited me greatly. John Mitchell had been convinced to take part in the rebellion by David Bradford. Because John Mitchell was, you know, not all there, people pointed out that, like, he had to be convinced and coaxed and coached by David Bradford.

The man was, you know, not well. But, yeah, he hung anyway. The other person who got the rope was a guy named Philip wiggle. Philip Wiggle sounds like a mean nickname that easy. He would use for dr. Dre Philip wiggle looking ass motherfucker. I was going to say like, it must've been so easy to escape federal custody in the 17 nineties. You can just cause your name was, you know, only, only the people in the five mile radius

of where you were born and raised knew that your name was, you know, Hieronymus Stubbs or whatever. You could just literally cross into a different territory and be like, yeah, I'm going to get a different fucked up. Yeah. What's your name, sir? Uh, shit. Philip Wiggle.

All right. Yeah. Like fucking also Philip Wiggle is like a lesser known member of fucking Einstelzenden you're about fucking what? I'm still sending no about. Yeah. I fucking care. Yeah. Fucking that makes two of us post-punk band. Yeah. Yeah. You know how accurate that is. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It also helped explain in American society what was a permissible protest against the government. I violent protests had been fine during the revolution in order to establish a more perfect union.

But now you guys, you can't go around shooting people and burning things down and calling in a protest. And people are like, oh, okay. Cause remember the right of protesting is enshrined in law. But at the time, nobody was actually sure what protest meant. Also, the Supreme Court didn't have judicial review at this point. Marbury v. Madison hadn't happened yet. So the idea of it being defined in case law wouldn't have existed.

The Supreme Court's ruling in this point would be like, yep, that's a rebellion. And that's about it. Sure is. Sure is. It also triggered the creation of political parties within the United States for the first time, the Republicans and the federalists. And this is something that, of course, famously, George Washington fucking hated. And, you know, not to mention people in Western Pennsylvania just kept on

not paying the tax for years afterwards. The end. I have two comments to make that I've been holding back to not derail Joe. Number one, you are a Midwest Oaf, but in the Oaf physiognomy, you are a Twink Oaf. It's the nicest thing anybody's ever said about me. Thank you. Secondly, if I would, can you imagine if you were the drag name of a whiskey rebellion soldier or insurgent? I think blix of bar geld would be perfect, which is a reference to, um, I said 90% to Neubaut and another fucking horrible German post-punk slash insane.

Again, this is all just activation phrases. Five of our listeners, five of our listeners. Don't say fucking Neubaut and his bar. You're saying five listeners if you count for both of you and then invent three people. If you enjoy the sound of a German post-punk industrial music, sound off in the comments. I mean, I being myself on one hand pretend that, you know, I'm above being a music nerd and also like real heads will know that my Instagram handle is literally the title of an Einstein to Neubauten song. So you know what? I am that fucking

annoying guy. Sorry. Speaking of annoying media podcast with me gentlemen, we do something on this show called questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, you can donate to the show on Patreon. You can ask us on Patreon through the DM system or join our discord and we have a channel for that. And today's question comes from the Discord and it is, what is a series, any series, book, TV, comics, games, movies, whatever, that you've always wanted to start but haven't due to whatever reason? I can actually start because I recently began reading the Stormlight Archive fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson, which is kind of a modern fantasy foundational tome, if you will.

It's gonna be like 10 books long, and every book is damn near a thousand pages. I've always wanted to start it, but it's taken me a long time to actually find time and the drive to read for personal enjoyment again. Yes. And I finally got there. actually find time and the drive to read for personal enjoyment again. Yes. And I finally got there. Listeners know I've literally read all of Joe Epicrami's books in the last couple months and I finished them all.

So now I'm starting on book one of the Stormlight Archive. So I'm getting there. I for books, I have struggled because I do actually like, I genuinely enjoy reading what you would consider sort of like the high point 19th century Russian novels, but there's just so many that I haven't read. Also 20th century ones I haven't read. And I have to admit that it feels hit or miss sometimes

because for example, like because Dostoevsky is annoying, I love it. It's very funny. Whereas like trying to read Ivan Turgenev, I read Fathers and Sons, but like it just, I just couldn't connect with it at all. So I struggle sometimes because like stuff that is like, it feels in terms of how I will react to it, how I will enjoy it. It's dense regardless. And sometimes I'm like, why am I reading? This is so boring. I just don't feel any connection to it. Whereas sometimes stuff that other people would be like, I can't get through this. This is impossible.

I love it. It's hilarious. I just I enjoy it so much in TV. I'm terrible about watching TV series in general. I struggle with the patients. I can't remember the last time I sat down and watched a TV series other than I finished Tokyo Vice on HBO. That's the last thing.

I would like to watch the entirety of The Americans. Oh, it's so good. I have only seen a few episodes. It's so good. And I've heard it's great and I've enjoyed it. I've watched a few and I've really enjoyed it. I also would like to watch the entirety of the shield, but I would like to do podcasting about it with my wife who is a black American woman whose stepfather was a cop. And she says she's her joke is she likes watching police procedurals because it's opposition research because it shows what like white people and Republicans think about cops, what they actually do.

Hey, as long as it's not a police investigation, it's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation.

It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. It's a police investigation. And she says she's her joke is she likes watching police procedurals because it's opposition research because it shows what like white people and Republicans think about cops, what they actually do. Hey, as long as you invite me on for the Armenian money train storyline, you absolutely have to do it.

Yeah, I was going to, but the shield in her opinion is the first time an American cop show actually depicts how cops act in real life. Which is why the NYPD refused to work with them. But Michael Chiklis thought that it was going to be like everyone was going to see Vic Mackie as the villain and instead he was like, he showed it to his friends at like a fucking viewing at his house and half of them were like, yeah, but he's doing the right thing man. That's what you got to do because fucking the libs won't let you.

And it's like all this man does is commit police brutality and fraud and murders cops. Like he murders a cop because he thinks he's in internal affairs with a hand grenade. In the first episode he murders an internal affairs cop. Yes. Later on, I'm not going to say which characters, but he murders one of his closest allies with a hand grenade because he's going to rat on him and tell him like, yeah, he's, he stole all this money from an Armenian mafia member. Well, you know what?

There it is. Like I have one of them is like, it's specifically a book that I've had for so long that I just like avoid always avoiding reading and it's like I should read it. Is it mine? No, I've read your books. It's a Vladimir Sorokin's ice trilogy, like famous Russian surrealist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have in like single compendium.

It's like sitting beside my desk. It's like I should read this. I should. It's gone on so many holidays with me and I've never opened it because it's like, yes, this is like almost a thousand pages long. I like his writing is so dense. But my real answer and this is like the real Sophie's choice. If you are a particular type of music nerd like me is like obviously as people know I'm super into the Grateful Dead and something that I have listened to and enjoyed but cannot dive deep into because I know I'll become the most insufferable person on the planet is Steely Dan. Like there is only so many pairs of like dress pants and loafers you can own. And I already listened to the Grateful Dead a lot so I can't dive deep into the wonderful, lush production of Steve.

I really like that you guys are like, Oh, I really wish I could get into this like brilliant piece of literary art. I'm like, I'm finally starting a popcorn fantasy book series. I mean, I was thinking about it because I really want to read Stanislaw Lem, who's a Polish science fiction author. I really want to watch, I've seen a few Andrzej Tarkowski movies, but I really would like to see more of them. There's a lot of Latin American literary boom authors that I wish I read more of. Like I wish I would just fucking make myself get better at reading in Spanish, because I used to be able to read novels in Spanish, but

it's fallen off. So it's like, there's a lot of stuff like that. I mean, I think it's a challenge with music. I don't know, like I'm a little bit better about being adventurous now because you can just find it and play scrub through it. And if you don't connect, you just fucking leave it. But I would say with Steely Dan, honestly, man, there's some good stuff, but don't believe the hype. Don't get weird about it. Just, you know what? Listen to Asia, listen to camp. Was it camp by a thrill? You know, you'll find some stuff. And if you like it, like if you don't, you don't like I've listened to the stuff and I enjoyed it. It's more so like actually, cause you can't just get into Steely Dan.

Just become a Steely Dan head. Just become like a guy born, you know, 30 years, 25 years after Steely Dan hit the peak of their success. And you're like, I'm, I'm Dan Pilled. Yeah. I'm getting Dan Pilled. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me here. You have other shows plug those other shows. I am the producer and co-host of what a hell of a way to die podcast about why you shouldn't join the army. And also a lot about dad stuff, being a dad, et cetera. I am the producer and co-host of trash future, a podcast about the tech industry being bad in a lot of ways,

but it's a funny podcast. And I am the producer, not cohost of kill James Bond, a film criticism podcast hosted by three insanely funny trans people. It's a feminist film criticism podcast. It's among the funniest things I've ever heard in my life. I love producing it. It's wonderful. Please listen to it. And yeah. And also I am, you know, obviously part of the cast of the lines by donkeys with YouTube. So that's it. Four shows, four shows that govern my life. Um, I am the producer and cohost of beneath skin. It's a tattoo history podcast where with YouTube. So that's it. Four shows, four shows that govern my life. I am the producer and cohost of Beneath Skin. It's a Tattoo History podcast where we talk about interesting stuff. We have an episode coming out soon about the weird HIV information pamphlets

that were handed out in Australian prisons in the eighties. Also the producer of Glue Factory, a comedy podcast featuring some people from Trash and some other great comedians and also a Nate said Sanasov Lem. Listen read the cyber aid as a fucking Homeric Odyssey about two inventors and robots and it's really funny. This is the only show that I host. So if you like what we do here consider supporting us on Patreon. You get all of our episodes early. You get bonus episodes like six years of bonus content, discord access, eBooks, audiobooks, first dibs on merch and live show tickets amongst other things. Until next time, tar and feather your neighborhood tax collector. Just maybe make the tar not like scalding, like burning. Just make it funny and annoying.

He'll need to use goog on.