Pirate Wires - Thanksgiving Lessons: Notes From Your Toxic Uncle, Crime in NYC, MSM in Decline, & The Broligarchy 🏴‍☠️

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

EPISODE #78: Welcome back to the pod! Eade Bengard joins us this week. NYC crime has gotten completely out of hand this week. A knife wielding crazy person walked around Manhattan stabbing 3 people. Meanwhile, our elected officials only care about taking more money from working class citizens. Mainstream media downfall continues. Morning Joe ratings plummet. What’s the future of these shows? Perhaps you shouldn’t have spent all this time calling Trump the next Hitler? Pirate Idol returns! We explain the rise of the “Broligarchy” (whatever that is) and we get you ready for Thanksgiving with the family! If you’re a toxic uncle, this pod is for you! Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Riley Nork, Matt Marlinski, Eade Bengard We have partnered with Polymarket! Download the Polymarket: Election Forecast app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/polymarket-election-forecast/id6648798962 - Disclaimer: Not Financial Advice, For Entertainment Purposes Only. Sign Up For The Pirate Wires Daily!  https://get.piratewires.com/pw/daily https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Topics Discussed: Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Riley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigital Matt Twitter: https://x.com/mattmarlinski Eade Twitter: https://x.com/eade_bengard TIMESTAMPS:

What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod. Quick note, next week, we're going to be off for Thanksgiving. So you'll probably not remember this by then. And you'll be asking me where the pod is on Twitter. You're not getting a show. I'm going to be cooking for my family on Thanksgiving. I'm not going to be recording a show with you guys. Unfortunately, I do love you, but not that much. Not as much as I love. I was going to say my family. It seems too trite, but you love my family. Can't wait. Excited for you all. Excited for me. It's a holiday. I need a break. Yes. Moving on. We have coming up a Polymarket segment. So sit tight for that. We're going to be going over the odds of, or the chances is according to the polymarket bettors of a Chrome, Google Chrome, Google, I guess, separation agreement via the DOJ.

And our Pirate Idol segment, of course. So sit tight for the return of Miles and Andy. And I wanted to remind you guys to be voting for these people in the comments section on who you want to see more of. Because we are going to tally them up and we're going to bring them back for the finals, which begin like three weeks from now. Okay. Off to the races. So we have to talk about a little thesis of mine that I like to sort of beat the drum of every now and again, which is make crime illegal again. We're going to take you to New York City. Riley, break it down for us. Yeah.

So we've covered a lot of New York City crime, like anarcho-tyranny stories. But this one was like- Oh, wait. Sorry. Pause. Eid. Special guest Eid. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for being here. Hi, Eid. There she is. Hi. Love her. She's here again. Thank you. On short notice. riley back to you

uh so a bit of background on ramon rivera our latest big apple criminal um for starters he's a homeless guy with a lengthy criminal rap sheet um he's been arrested for burglary assault and grand larceny and that's just in the past year. He had two prior mental health episodes, as the New York Post calls them, also just in the past year. And one of his prior arrests was for actually attacking an officer in one of these psychiatric facilities that he was in. And yet somehow this guy who sounds like an absolute menace who should be in a straight jacket was just like chilling on the streets. menace who should be in a straight jacket was just like chilling on the streets. He goes on to commit a stabbing spree in broad daylight, starting at eight in the morning, stabbing three individuals in a completely unprovoked attack, including a 36 year old man and woman in a 67 year old man who was just fishing in the East River, all three

of whom eventually succumbed to their injuries. Meanwhile, what were New York politicians doing while this was happening? Kathy Hochul and New York officials announced a new congestion pricing toll, which they claim is going to somehow fix the subway. We'll see about that. And of course, the DA of this jurisdiction, Alvin Bragg, is only focused on crime when it can be used against a presidential candidate he doesn't like. And then in a bit of beautiful and sad irony, one of Bragg's assistants was this morning robbed and attacked by an illegal immigrant with five prior arrests since 2023. So if that doesn't serve as a wake up call for these people, I frankly don't know what will

at this point. I mean, concurrently, what you also have happening is Penny on trial, right? So you're living in this, you said anarcho-tyranny. It really is that. I mean, the streets are not safe and that is the bare minimum thing that you need to do as a city is care about that. It's crazy to me that this person is out on the street. These are sort of two, they're connected, but slightly different stories. The first one is about a crazy American. The second one is way harder to understand, which is how are we literally paying to put up an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who is in a gang who has been arrested multiple times? How is that person still here? Why are we paying his rent?

Why is this allowed? It's just so crazy. It defies... It's hard also to keep talking about it because it's just like, what is going to change? I don't know what it's going to take to change this. I know that it's just... It is worse than it sounds even

because this is the thing. This is how we see the government, is the thing that protects us. And if it's not that, then what is it? It's just the thing that, as you alluded to, Riley, charges us lots of money for shitty service on things. Matt, you're living in New York City. Tell us a little bit about how you feel. Are you excited about the roving gangs of illegal Venezuelans? Yes or no? I'm open to some pushback here. Give me the steel man for the roving gangs of illegal Venezuelans. Fuck them. Get out of my city. The one this week with the stabbings is the one that really got me fired up. I don't really get too far these days. This one got me fired up. It's sad. These

are mid-30s people who got stabbed in the streets. And he went to multiple locations around Manhattan. So, it wasn't like he was in one condensed area. So, he just roamed around New York City just stabbing people. And it's embarrassing when you have the solutions to your government are Kathy Hochul charging more for regular citizens to drive their car in the city or Alvin Bragg who's trying to go after Trump for a Stormy Daniel payment, then actually fixing this. So, I mean, the solution will have to be obviously to vote him out. We did see the reckoning of that in LA and San Francisco, and time will tell if it actually fixed things, but the voters did vote to get these people out, right? And so, as of now, there is an election in 2025 in June for Alvin Bragg. And as of now,

no one's even contesting him. There's not even a lead contesting. It's expected for a Republican to oppose him. But the general consensus is because you're in blue Manhattan that he would still win. But another Democrat is not opposing Alvin Bragg at this moment. This is one of the reasons I started writing about local politics in San Francisco. It's because my gut sense, every time, let's say late 20 teens, 2017, 2018, before 2020, when things were obviously insane, I would go to a bar, hang out with my friends, meet new people. And if crime came up, if the question of car break-ins came up, and back then it was mostly that, burglary became a scarier thing a little bit later. I mean, they existed, but it really spiked after 2020. Car break-ins were the thing that everyone was freaking out about back then. When you talked about that, people were like, shut it down. What do we have to do to fix this problem? There was complete agreement on this

topic. And yet, the votes went in the same direction every time to support people like Chesa Bowden. And so I thought, I think it's just like people don't, they're just not voting. I think they're just not aware of what's going on. They're not aware of an alternative. They're not engaged. It's like, this is not a story that people care about. And they're kind of local politics, a local politics story. And that feels like New York City to me right now. It feels like every city in America, really, other than San Francisco at this point. But New York is especially important because it's the de facto capital of the country. It's not literally, but it's the economic capital,

it's the cultural capital, it's our city. And it's falling apart. And specifically on this dimension, I think it's just people don't know what their alternatives are. And if you could get people excited about that and have local politics be a bigger topic of conversation, I think that... I don't live in New York, but I don't even know how big your legislator is. I don't know how many representatives you have deciding what the laws are. I don't even know who's being voted for or not or whatever. I bet most New Yorkers don't know that either. And that little bit of basic education has to happen. Well, so much of it is memetic, right?

So, so many people in Manhattan are going to vote blue because they're blue, right? Especially when you have a world of people being afraid of Trump and anything that's Republican. If you look at the voter map that switched over to Trump in New York City, it was the Bronx and Brooklyn when stunningly red. And it's Manhattan in the middle who's all voting blue and then making all the laws for people. Right. So Alvin Bragg comes out of Manhattan. So they're the ones voting for him. So a lot of it's memetic of just like, I can't vote for red. I just have to vote

for the Democrat guy and he went after Trump and I hate Trump. So it kind of, sometimes it probably boils down to be that simple, I would guess. Yeah. That's the national, that's the sort of distraction of national politics. Right. Because sure, I, that's the national, that's the sort of distraction of national politics. Because sure, I understand that you don't, why you're a New Yorker and you don't want to vote for Donald Trump. I get that. But that does not map in any way whatsoever to local politics, because when you're living in a one party state, everyone becomes corrupt and terrible and the over to window totally shifts to the left. And so now your standard Democrat could be very, very deranged. And this would happen probably in anyone that would happen to a Republican one party state as well. But that's just, you know, happens to be the lay of the land of, uh, of, of New York. It's crazy. I guess at

this point, it's such a high profile case. I can't imagine that nothing will be done to the crazy person now. Uh, and just like I sort of do, we'll see if that Venezuelan gets deported. I would be surprised at this point, if you could point. If you can attack someone in the DA's office with a rap sheet and all this national attention and still not get deported, then I don't know, man. New York City. So many times it's the timing of the event. So if this happened and the election was next week or two for Alan Bragg, you could see him getting voted out. But then if nothing really happens and the election comes about, people could be asleep at the wheel. So sometimes the timing of it really matters when these events occur. But I guess I would throw the question to

you who covers San Francisco so much. San Francisco obviously reacted. And from being at Pirate Wires, I never realized how crazy San Francisco was until I was in Pirate Wires. And a lot of times, they're crazier than New York City. So how did they finally wake up and how can it be applied to New York City? Well, it was like what I was saying before. I think that it just became a story that you were able to talk about. Once there were a lot of people writing about it and talking about it, you had to have an opinion about it. And suddenly you were accidentally educating yourself about it. Most people didn't know what the district attorney... I honestly don't think a lot of people know what a district attorney is, genuinely. I think people don't know shit like that. They don't care. They don't think about it

until it's a part of their life. And that became a thing that everybody in the city just talked about. A big part of that was, I think, the media coverage of it. Thank you. And once it started, it just, once it became a thing that you had to talk, not had to talk about,

but that was being talked about, people naturally learn about it and form their own opinions about it. Maybe they disagree, but they're at least educated on the basics. They know enough to be an informed voter and then also to be outraged when things are going wrong. Suddenly now, things are going wrong and you know who specifically you need to attack. Okay, who is responsible for this? It's this guy right here. He's the DA. He's the reason these

people are being let out. The way that I stop them is by voting on this date and for this other person over here, but they have to know that first. And I think that you're not even at that level in New York. New York, like San Francisco, is super transient. But New York, I think, is more transient than even San Francisco. San Francisco has huge voting blocks that have always lived in the city and always vote sort of predictable ways. And it's harder in New York.

You have a lot of people coming in there and out of there all the time, but still it has to be done. The coverage you did on crime and SF actually made it into advertising circles, which are extremely leftist. It broke up a writer, art director pair. It was a big deal.

Really? Wow. My friend was like, yeah, I mean, have you seen this article i'm like yeah i've seen it let's go yeah yeah you know i i think part of the shift too is like in san francisco especially there seemed to be this like down bad totem pole where you know if you were like mentally ill you know homeless like you're at the top um if you you know had to commit crime for a living you're under that then like women and children are like're at the top. If you had to commit crime for a living, you're under that. Then women and children are down at the bottom somehow. And I think there's just a little bit

of a shift over time. It's like, oh, wait, these people aren't breaking into cars to buy bread. There's $7 million crime rings that are being uncovered. And I think once people start to realize that person at the top of the victim totem pole might not be as worth protecting as they think, there could be a little bit of a shift there. Yes, it's such a good point. We have victimized the victimizers in a way. It's the story that we all ingest. You do it now. You move to a big city in America and you very quickly pick up that story that, oh, these people, oh yeah, it's sad. The crime is bad, but think about their life. Think about how bad their life is. And I think that's, personally, I think that's never valid at this point. I used to think that.

And these days, I don't even say I feel bad for people. I just, I'm like, no, that's not valid. But it's also not even true. If it were true, it would not be valid, but it's not true. Like you are dealing with massive crime rings throughout the city. And then also you're dealing with just the problem of, I think, I guess the one that I keep thinking about how to float this, because I think it should be a piece. I don't know if I don't want to get stolen, but I have this idea. I think that if you got rid of publicly funded housing in any way, subsidized, funded, whatever, I wonder what crime would look like in New York City or San Francisco.

I think about you're breaking into a car or something. Do you have a day job? How are you paying your rent? what is the life of the average criminal in new york city san francisco los angeles what does it look like where are the criminals coming from it's probably like teenagers who are living with their family or or their parent or whatever and then and then i think it's people who are on some kind of subsidized housing it's people who probably shouldn't be in the city other otherwise this is a i don't know it's you guys are getting an exclusive right now. This is like, I'm just in the ideation phase here. Not even ready to drop it in

Peace Corps, but I don't know. Do you see where I'm getting with this? Is that crazy? What do you think? I think there's also a lot of homeless people that commit crimes too, though. This guy who went on the stabbing spree was totally homeless. He was in a shelter, I thought. That is true. That is true. Yes,

he was in a shelter. So you're saying if they get rid of shelters, like would crime go down? Well, no, not necessarily getting rid of all the homeless shelters. I think that if you're in a home, first of all, the homeless shelter should be like outside of the city, far away from drugs and policed. And if, and they're also like, you shouldn't be speaking to, you shouldn't get a free pass for committing crime because you're homeless. But I don't, I'm not convinced that most criminals are homeless. Yeah. I would agree agree with that i think a lot of it's more organized than we think especially i think there's for sure like that guy was crazy that's a good example but like but the other guy was living in a uh was living literally in a place that we're paying

for or not me that matt's paying for yes you're welcome that's that's i wonder like if you shut that down just just what anyway you know it's it's not fully formed i'm not ready to get attacked by it yet i gotta learn a little bit more about the link between housing and crime but i do think yeah i just i feel like there's if you really were to pull back the curtain on this stuff i think we would be directly funding a lot of the crime that we're upset about. And it's also a small number of people. Both of these people have been arrested multiple times. It's a very small percentage of people who cause 90 plus percent of the chaos in all of these places. And we just have to get rid of them completely. Brandon, you have something come up in LA, right? You have a version of this happening. Oh, you just had it. You had the recall of, or the recall was an election.

Yeah. I think like, based on like going back to what you were saying, there's a few like corrosive ideas that progressive have, progressive progressives have that contributes to this. One of them is that anybody deserves to live in a big city like there's some entitlement that like you should regardless of your income you should be able to live in a any city you want which i think you're not actually entitled to i think like if you're going to live in la you probably need to make enough money to live in la because la might have you know like if you're going to pay for the best services or the highest taxes, then, you know, you might need to make a lot of money to live here. And I don't think that's, I don't actually think it's controversial to say that, like, if you don't have enough money to live in LA or in San Francisco or New York, then you don't get to live here.

That seems totally reasonable to me. reasonable to me. The other one, the other corrosive idea that I noticed was recently like very well illustrated in a tweet that I saw the other day, which is somebody, and the tweet was really getting dunked on by one of the red scare girls. But the tweet was like, LMAO, you're afraid of your kids riding the bus. And it was in response to somebody who was like upset about crime in their city and they were saying something like you know i don't i i hate the fact that i like can't put my kid on a bus a public city bus to go to school anymore something like that and what that like feels to me like is that they not only want crime to be legal they actually think crime isn't

a like like the fact that crime exists is not a problem at all you know and that's crazy to me in fact it's kind of cool i think it's like crime is bad you know it's part of the culture it's i think crime is good or something like that i would even go that far that crime is good or something um or it's crime is good or it doesn't exist or something like that it's would even go that far that crime is good or something. Or it's crime is good or it doesn't exist or something like that. It's some other thing that's happening, like diversity or something. You talked about with people who like cheer on, like jumping the turnstile at the subway.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like they're chaos agents or something. It's like, I don't know they are, but they are. How could you possibly care about this?

How could you not care about this? Right. It's this is, we are living in a city together collectively. We have to follow certain basic rules of etiquette or everything breaks down and stops working. And things are getting worse. I really believe that they are getting worse. You look around, things are degraded. It's really hard to build new things. It's really hard to bring on new police staffing. For me, the crazy guy thing is very simple. It's just

public... I forget who it was. Maybe one of the council member or something was like, I'm mystified as to how... It's a great mystery as to how this happened. I'm like, okay, well, I'm mystified how you're mystified. What happened here was pretty obvious. We can't arrest anybody and crazy people were not allowed to lock up. And so this person, what was it? I think it was Riley, you were the take. He stabbed someone and became, it was like, okay, he's too scary for the crazy person house. We're just going to release him and hope for the best. We're just going to hope he doesn't kill anybody. Well, guess what? You were wrong. He killed three people and it's going to keep happening unless you figure out the, if you're going to say that, okay, well, crazy people, it's, he can't help it. He's just

crazy, whatever. He still needs to be locked the fuck up. He needs to be off the streets. He cannot be free to roam around as a crazy person and kill people. It's very basic shit. I did want to note that the guy, the Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine is the one, the guy who's a tweet, like, how could this have happened? You're like, motherfucker, you are in charge. Like, what do you mean? How did this happen? That's the stuff that makes you, that's the stuff that drives me the most crazy.

So those people go, what the hell? We have to look into this. I just read this New York Post article yesterday or two days ago. The headline is, Trendago has already set up shop in these 16 states, Homeland Security warns. They sent out an internal memo to other government agencies, I guess. They blamed it on immigration. So this is just pretty scary.

You know, this is also often framed as a smaller problem than it seems. So it's in 16 states, but how many people are there really? How many crimes are there really? What is that compared to the percentage of crime nationally? And I think it is definitely small. It's definitely a small number compared to average crime of other groups nationally. However, they don't live here. They're not from here. So it's very easy to just say, you should not be here. And the fact that it very easy to just say you should not be here. And the fact that it's a small amount of people is not a reason to keep them here. And, and what I always wonder, like, how is that a defense of them? How is it? How is that a defense of, of

criminals in the country right now is that there are not that many of them. It's like, okay, well, are you okay with this crime or not? It doesn't matter that there's not a lot of it. And if there's not a lot of it, then that sounds like a really easy problem to solve. If there's not a lot of it, then Biden should just fix it. And he could have, Kamala would have won the election. If this wasn't a problem, all you had to do is say affirmatively, I see you. I agree with you. This is super fucked up. We're going to take care of it. Small problem. It's a small problem. So we're going to fix it. And they don't. And that leaves me with two things, just either one, a complete collapse of state capacity, which I'm inclined to think it's that, or two, actual desire to watch the

world burn, which I think probably there's a little bit of that. I will say it's at least possible to change in other cities other than san francisco we mentioned the george gascon uh however you say his name he lost this year so i mean whatever dynamic led to his defeat in la like hopefully that can one day translate to new york like i don't know what it'll take like gascon was on the ballot the same year of a big huge presidential election maybe that's what it takes but yeah like it is possible to change in big cities other than san francisco but not sure what it'll take but hopefully it comes soon because da brag is insane i know

a pirate wires voting guy there we go i mean one of those we're gonna change the world we do need one people we got at a time i know we tried and didn't fail but i think going forward we need that big time definitely i didn't know that there was that june election coming up we gotta what does it matter if no one runs again that's another problem you need good people to run and no smart people want to run for local politics it's really hard to get them involved um sort of i guess slightly related question uh the media brandon take it away tell us about the failing fake news media yeah so i don't actually know what day it was but recently um morning joe host mika brzezinski and joe scarborough um announced on their morning joe program that

they had visited trump at mar-a-lago to discuss like uh immigration and other you know sort of like other of trump's platforms um mika i think said something like she's trying to normalize relations with the white house um and some people noticed that uh nielsen put out ratings reports about this particular episode of their show. And between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Eastern Time, viewership fell 17%. Now, this is a four-hour show. It goes from 6 in the morning to 10 in the morning Eastern Time, I believe. And apparently, because of the way people wake up in the different time zones um viewership of that show increases over the course of the four hours but um this kind of bucked that trend

um and the question is like why you know like if there was a backlash in these numbers like if these numbers show a backlash like what happened john stewart called them out and literally just said it's probably because you called him hitler um and that's maybe what happened maybe maybe we saw the uh sort of some of the hard left viewership of uh morning joe uh you know kind of yeet morning joe i guess so yeah that's what happened with that clip but then isn't the background is there's background like msnbc itself too right are they yeah so so so i mean we covered this in the last podcast but you know since the election viewership has dropped on msnbc by 50 percent um we know that comcast is mulling a sale of msnbc um and i think think on CNN they're talking about major

layoffs I think they Chris Wallace has already been laid off or he's quit saying he's gonna start a podcast because they wouldn't give him a raise or something like that but yeah generally looks like media is not doing so great right now I think Fox is winning I think they

20 yeah yes yes they increased since the election increase yes correct yeah that's crazy to me i don't know who wants more election after the election please wild enough but it's also it's also hard to imagine like people that were watching cnn being like no i'm just gonna start watching fox news now like i can't see that happening doesn't make much sense to me but i don't know i think there's that just like middle distribution that's gonna go with the flow of culture and it's shifted that's true and interesting yeah i mean that sort of was the election right you saw that you saw that even in tech with people coming out for Trump. It felt very a leaf on the waves kind of going wherever the tide was taking them.

I think on the Morning Joe stuff, it theirs was trying to fit themselves into relevance again. And it's a play for long-term. I mean, there's like a cynical read, which was entirely for viewers. And then there's maybe a nicer read, which is they really do want to heal and come together or whatever. But both of them conclude in the same place, which is them trying to be more of a bridge rather than a tiny little silo full of people who don't want to even look at Trump. I mean, you have Whoopi Goldberg, who doesn't even say his name. And that's kind of cringy and childish. And the majority of people are not like that. And so if you want a bigger audience, I think you have to be a bridge. You have to stay relevant.

You have to connect with the person who you maybe disagree with. And of course, they're going to disagree on and on about a million things, but I think it's a smart move for them. I think I can be wrong. I mean, if he comes down and gives them an interview or something because of this, which also might've been discussed, then they could have the only relevant show on that program they they i think they have to do it the election ended and they lost and now they're completely iced out and so it's like do you want that access or not and i think that they do and they made the decision and uh i don't know if it's going to work out for them because i don't know that people are really dying for a more left wing version of cnn. But we'll see. On the surface, I see what you're saying.

The problem is they're known for doing this kind of stuff. So Trump has been friends with these guys in the past. He used to come on Morning Joe all the time. He used to call in that show constantly around 2015 when he was first running. And then those two swapped over to the Trump is Hitler thing and hysterical reactions for the past eight years. And especially in the weeks leading up to the election, they were like peak hysteria and more. And Joe Scarborough is also the one who said, I talked to Biden.

He was, he was cogent. He was great. Like, so he, they've been doing this. So it's, it's, I'm, I'm totally fine with being like, Hey, listen, let's find a bridge. Let's end this. Let's talk, like get them on the show. Love it.

But I think like, you can't really believe them anymore because they're just going to try to like, you know whatever mold is convenient to them which okay that's showbiz like they're trying to get rating so like game respects game it's pro wrestling but i mean like i don't blame a lot of people be like fuck this i'm out as with the other msnbc shows as with cnn and people are leaving i wonder if it's sort of like too late for them though because they like built their brand at least recently all around like Trump derangement syndrome. Right. Like fans watch them because of the Trump derangement syndrome. So like, I wonder if like, like for new emerging media, I think it's the smart play to not go full Trump hysteria.

But when you've already sort of built your brand around Trump hysteria and people are coming to you for that. Like, are you even able to like pivot? Because I, someone who's tried to do this recently is Chris Cuomo. Like he was full CNN lib and now he's trying to be like based podcast guy. Yep. And I think, I wonder if it's like sort of working for him because like people always like bring up old CNN clips all the time.

Every time he's trying to make a point of like, Oh yeah, well what happened here? And so I wonder if it's like sort of like too late for them to do the rebrand like you've already gone so in like i think cuomo is gonna work i feel good okay okay i think your point generally i think you're right generally you're talking about audience capture which is something it's interesting because we talk about it mostly in the context of social media people but yeah of course it is a thing everywhere and especially for for them. Yeah. They're, they're stuck inside of their, uh, the MSABC cat mom panopticon and they

can't get out and they're trying, but it's like, cause they know it's sinking ship long-term, but they're stuck in there for now. I, I think it's like back to your point too, Matt, which I thought was interesting. Um, yeah. Like how do you call someone Hitler and then say, well, I just want us all to come together? It's very jarring to see Biden laughing with Trump at a lunch. Well, is this the dissolution of... You said that democracy was on the ballot. You said that this is a dictator. Is he or not? What are we doing here? And I mean, I just, whatever, I always just assumed that he was lying about it. But I guess for the average person who maybe didn't think that he was lying about it, that would be disorienting and hard to stomach and maybe hard to tolerate moving forward. Emperor has no clothes. You just realize, oh, this is all fake, right? If you see Biden laughing it up with Trump, it's like, oh, wow, I really fell for something here. That is pretty jarring if you're just like a simple, just watching the news and turn it on, you hear hysteria. And MSNBC would be the place. That would be the last holdout of these people where they have nowhere else to go where they're not challenged. Even CNN is challenging you a little bit. You really had this one bubble where you could go and be like,

no, he really is Hitler. It's okay. It's okay. He really is Hitler. Hitler is really near. He's rising. You have a right to be this scared and out of your mind. Last thoughts on MSNBC? Hitler has been such a cultural touchpoint for the longest time, and I think that might be coming to an end. I think we should do a eulogy for Hitler. Because of what's happening here. They just ran it into the ground. R.I.P. Hitler. I saw this image that I shared

in the Slack of the Twitter logos over the years and different versions of birds. Then it concluded in 2022 it was the X and then in 2022 it was it was the x and then um and then in 2025 it's like the nazi eagle with a swastika and i didn't feel any kind of way about it it didn't it didn't hit at all like it like it used to hit i'm not scared of it anymore i see nazi shit online

every single day in the pejorative like people throwing around obviously and yeah it doesn't um yeah it's lost its emotional shock or or whatever it's like the boy who cried wolf it's like the lib who cried hitler like we it's over it's been so long too right for? For decades. But this, it got worse online. Everything gets louder and scales higher. And so the sheer amount of Hitler that you've seen does take away the oomph. Just kind of tired, right? You're just like, whatever. I think that's so much of us are, whatever. Who was the Hitler before there was Hitler? What were they calling people- That's a really good question who were evil in like 19 i don't know 30 like back when hitler was rising

and they were like man this guy's just like who who are they saying he was just like like napoleon or something maybe napoleon but there are people who are like yeah napoleon was like cool like aren't they am i totally wrong about that yeah It'd be a little generous to say, you know, this person's like, gang is gone. It's like. Yeah. Oh, my. It's like, oh, he gets it in. Okay.

Thanks for noticing. Yeah. I think you just call them Satan, right? Oh, yeah, Satan. Oh, that's probably the Antichrist. And they believed it more back then. Yeah, Satan's probably the one. Yeah, but the Antichrist is a good one too.

Now, onward to the Polymarket segment. Polymarket is a pay partner of PirateWires. Thank you guys for supporting the valuable work we do here. And it is valuable, I think. My mom thinks, Brandon thinks, everyone thinks, everyone's saying. Many are saying. I'm saying, they're saying, we're all saying. Let's get into it.

So let's talk about Google. On November 20th, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal judge to impose significant changes on Google following a ruling that the company illegally monopolized the search market. The DOJ's proposal includes four main points. One, force Google to sell off its Chrome browser. Two, prohibit Google from making payments to phone makers to ensure it's the default search option. Three, allow websites to opt out of having Google's AI models train on their data.

Four, either have Google divest from its Android phone business or place the division under court supervision to prevent anti-competitive practices. placed the division under court supervision to prevent anti-competitive practices. Now, before this news, Polymarket showed only a 14% chance of Google actually having to sell Chrome. When the announcement broke, the odds skyrocketed to 40%, later settling around 30% where it stands at the time of this recording. Google strongly opposes these measures, calling them a radical agenda that would harm consumers, American technological leadership, and small businesses relying on their ecosystem. The company plans to file counter proposals next month with a hearing on remedies scheduled for April 2025. I was interested actually at how low

the odds were after the government cracked down in this way. And I thought, is that just Trump? That was my first question of all of this. Is that just because Trump's now in power? Is that why the odds are so... Because that's 30%. It's pretty low to me that this is actually going to happen. Meanwhile, the government's saying it's happening and you're not going to get out of it. So is that just, we think that this like a pro tech industry group is going to come in or something? What do you think is happening there? I think it's a strange target and there are more obvious ones like YouTube could be spun out as its own business.

Chrome doesn't make money in and of itself. It's basically just top of the funnel for Google to get user data and to like funnel them to like Google search and other of Google's products. So I don't, if you, if you break Chrome off of Google, I don't even know how it makes any money as a, as a standalone business. So for me, maybe the markets are showing, you know, reflecting that that it's just like not a, not a practical, um, like sort of suggestion or, or, the doj but no idea whether or not it's going to happen i was just going to say i have the same sort of question as you solana like presumably they're like on a time crunch here

because like when the trump administration comes in like you would think more pro-business people would sort of fill those roles and pivot away from this approach. So I'm with you. I think wouldn't they need to get this done in the next 60 days? That's what I think maybe people are betting on. I'm not convinced that Trump is his pro... Well, maybe he... I mean, I think that he certainly has indicated... We've talked a lot about or a bit about this in the context of Europe. So he's certainly into protecting our businesses, which he perceives as assets to the country, which is nice because we have a government right now that genuinely has an issue with, I

think, the concept of a successful business. So historically, businesses were targeted for anti-competitive, not anti-competitive, but for antitrust regulation when they harmed consumers. And that is no longer the case. Certainly, that wasn't the case previously among lefties who were very keyed into the anti-competitive thing. And then now under Khan, it's even starker. It is like you could make some strange argument that it's bad for the country or something, that someone is so dominant in the market. And you could be a sort of abstract argument. She talked about this a lot in a piece, Was it Amazon's, the Amazon antitrust paradox or something? Matt, you could pull up a screenshot of that and I'll link you after we're done here. I mean, Trump's vaguely opposed to that.

He wants the companies to be as strong as they possibly can to compete globally, but there is no global competition on Google. So I don't know that... I see him being much more defensive of American tech. I see him caring more about Apple, for example, than caring about Google. I don't know why he would. There is not a search giant that's dominating abroad that's going to come and steal our lunch there. So I don't know that he would necessarily jump in and put his neck out there for this company that he perceived to be a political threat forever. You also have populists all around him who are super anti-tech right now. And it's an interesting open question of where this administration is going to land. I've seen positive signs, I've seen negative signs, and I really don't know actually which way they're going to go. Well, I mean, don't we think that the outlook for Silicon Valley is a lot better in

terms of acquisitions and mergers with Lena Kahn presumably out the door? Or do we know that Lena Kahn is out? For me, that's not not even clear too because it wasn't JD Vance. He did. Yeah, he defended. Yeah, he did. It was, there was this whole meme of like, is Lena Kahn based? And it was, it's very, very, yes. You have to be like super niche into startup stuff.

But basically if you're going after these huge giants and that maybe is good for smaller upstarts, but it speaks not at all to the danger that you face from abroad in terms of competition. So you're kneecapping our largest companies. Well, China is just doing everything it can to build its largest companies, to create the most unfair landscape possible for them to battle on. And so they're growing and growing and growing into these giants. And we don't do that. We don't support our companies in that way. The least that I think that we could do is just not get in their way. And that is maybe the question that we're playing out now is just which direction are we going to go here? I don't really think that... I've never believed that competition... Like, oh, they're too good at competition. That's weird. I mean, Google created all these products. Chrome it created, right? Gmail it created. YouTube it acquired, but that was, what, 25 years ago about? Who cares? That's effectively Google. It's been Google forever.

I think that they're just dominant and that's's not for me a good reason to intervene unless there is direct consumer harm. And then I think I'm a little more open to it. But we've been seeing this a lot. And I do think it needs to be double clicked is this, how strange it is to have a government that seems to have a problem with the concept itself of successful businesses. They get to a certain size and nothing else matters. The harm doesn't matter. Competition doesn't matter. The health or vitality of your country's economy does not matter. If this company is too big, if someone has too much money, that is enough to go after them. And that's really bad. I think that's tied into the whole self-hatred that you see from the sort of hardest of the hard left that permeates all of the identity politics and everything like this, the sort of like hatred of American history and things like this. It is this like weird counterintuitive thing where you just are almost hurt. It's like self-flagellation or something. I'm thinking of the Catholic cults in that Da Vinci Code movie. It's really bad. It's really toxic.

It's really new, especially on the economy side. You'd always have Democrats who would, they'd want more regulations or whatnot for whatever labor reason, but they really were hoping to do as much of that as they could without hurting the business. That was always the question. It's like, well, you know, you clearly understand this is not right, but you're going to do as much of it as you can before the business dies. And now you have people coming in with, you know, sledgehammers and they're like, no, this, the company should just die because it should die. It has nothing to do with labor. It has nothing to do with any kind of moral qualms about like competition or something like this. It's not about that. They're just a target because they are. That I think will not happen under Trump, but we'll see.

The market hit all-time highs after Trump was elected. There was a pretty significant bull run starting November 4th. So I think, you know, at least I think the market thinks that, you know, has optimism about the future of the American economy and business. Including the Bitcoin market. I wonder if by the time... The Bitcoin thing is another thing though,

because Gensler just announces resignation. I mean, you're getting rid of all the baddies in the Bitcoin universe. At the time of recording, so tomorrow it could be 100K and that's going to be, we'll see. But at the time of our recording, it is $98,500 for a Bitcoin. That is crazy. That is crazy. Bitcoin. That is crazy. That is crazy. What's also crazy is you remember, we used to have entire breathless media cycles back around 20K. No one could talk about anything else other than this. Now it's just casually scratching $100,000 a coin. Yeah, because you're right, Brandon,

they cleaned house and it's just like there's nothing in the way now. And so people are going in. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I think with Bitcoin, they kind of wanted to watch people hang themselves with it a little bit. It happened over and over and eroded trust. But not to go back to the hatred of big business, but to me, it was just like such a shakedown thing. You know, like people really demonize Amazon

for the amount of taxes they paid as if they don't have a responsibility to their own board to be tax efficient. It was just this crazy rhetoric. I think you probably remember the billionaire discourse. I think all that stuff is going to shift. I don't think people are going to get smarter about understanding why people would want to reinvest back into the business and just pay more taxes. But the vibe is definitely more pro-business. Yeah. Yeah. It was like what you were saying before, too. Just as the culture shifts, that middle section will just shift with it.

It doesn't even matter why. Yeah. Well, it's definitely going to be more pro-business. I mean, Trump's nomination for Treasury is Howard Luttnick, you know, kind of for Gerald's CEO. So, like, definitely the pro-business group is here. I mean, Cynthia Lemus is introducing Bitcoin bills to the Senate now that the, you know, Republicans are in charge. So, it's very pro-business. So, you can definitely feel the vibe. I don't understand this Google Chrome thing at all. Like, why are they even going after this waste of time, in my opinion. But why ask me? Isn't that what you're up to do?

Get him in there. Get him in there, coach. Matt is available. Tap him for the DOJ. Facts. Your country wants you. Okay, guys, we have to move on to Pirate Idol.

And we're back to the greatest show on the internet. It's Pirate Idol. We're in the semifinals. It's Andy and Miles head to head, each leading a segment. Very excited. Let's just, first of all, welcome back to the two of you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you for coming. Let's just get into it. Miles, you're up first. You are leading our segment on the broligarchy. Break it down. I think by now we're all aware of the vibe shift that's occurring, but here's some of the

highlights from the past year or so. Early on, we saw the brave frat guys at UNC protect the flag from the I heart Hamas protesters. We had Gen Z males carry the Republican Party this election with 49% of Gen Z men voting for Trump. We got John Jones presenting his UFC belt to Trump, which was very Lindy, like a gladiator swearing his sword to the emperor after a Coliseum match. We had NFL players hitting the Trump dance. We also got the boys, Elon, Trump, and RFK ordering private jets and Big Macs, which is theorized to be a humiliation ritual for RFK, but I digress. Essentially men are so back, but the former Twitter account The Guardian

is not stoked on it. Carol Codwallader coined the term broligarchy and published a cheat sheet, if you will, of 20 rules you must follow if you want to survive the renaissance of the bros. Some of my personal favorites from the list are make sure you're taking notes at all.

Rule 10. Listen to women of color. Rule 11. Think of your personal data as nude selfies. And the best one is rule 14. Pay in cash. Ask yourself what would an international drug trafficker do and do that.

The Guardian is so stupid they deleted their twitter account or they left they left twitter um which we talked about uh i think last week we went through some of the highlights there um i do want to add something here that feels probably a little bit a self-infl, egotistical. I wrote a piece about the proletariat and I feel like this is cribbing from me. This feels like the leftist bizarro world version of that story. It's like mine was, even think about what they're talking. It's like the proletariat versus the oligarchy, right? So I'm talking about the people are rising and they're like this small cabal of evil people are in charge. Of course, what they're really talking about is,

separate from the sort of memeing of the bro-y thing, they're talking about what, like Elon Musk? They're talking about Trump doing what guy coded things, I guess. And this is inherently threatening, which is funny because I think they really do think that. I think they do think that there is something inherently threatening about guys, just guys being guys, acting like guys, liking guy things. That code says to them danger, which probably says more about the last five years years, I think that it says about anything that they think. I do want to add just one final thing before I kick this over to you,

because I am curious what you think about this. Um, specifically as our, uh, as our woman today, I want to know, uh, why this is british woman writing for a british journal telling what americans how to survive like who asked you like mind your own fucking business no one is over here talking about your weird teeth no one is over here talking about the fact that you have a caliphate in the uk now like no one cares we're we're on this side of the ocean you're on that side of the ocean we fought a war for it. Like, why are you still talking?

I don't understand. Um, Eid, what do you think? Oh man. Um, yeah, the brologarchy on one hand,

you might think like, Oh, it'd be so great to have someone as intelligent as Elon involved, um, communicator like Rogan. You know, some of it, it's like like it's horribly unsexy um guys i like i don't even want to be in that room um and it's also

you're talking about the picture of them in the jet like the mcdonald's jet yeah yeah you know i look at it and i'm just like how are they gonna how are they gonna shift culture in a way that completely screws this up because we have this like army of like pick me is like coming out of the woodworks like my buddy his choice um like this is just like so bad so fast it's like uh like sims to e-girls but it's like the bros i think it's also there's something funny to me about a piece that is like and just the hysteria in general which we've been talking about you know for a bit now it does seem to get worse and worse among a small class of people which is like the people who run the media the specific a specific kind of woman actually who writes it's what it

seems like to me she's telling you to be to be fearing for your life, basically. This is literally how to survive the broligarchy. And I just feel like it's how do you tell people their life is in danger and then try and coin a word like broligarchy and say that that's a thing that you should be fearing? It seems to me like maybe they don't even believe it themselves. They're looking for something to say, which is kind of how I feel that all of the administrative choices that Trump has been making, where we're at level nine for every single one of these nominations. I don't remember. We never even talked about them during the Biden administration. There were one or two would be notable, but most of these things are just not discussed because no one cares. These are just being dissected and dissected and amplified and it's whole new cycles around each

one. I think today Gates just stepped down after a whole sort of days of talking about him. It's just, yeah, we're at nine, I think, because people are looking for stories because they really have to kind of maybe validate the story they've told over the last year, which was that Hitler is coming to power. And if Hitler is coming to power and then all we're seeing is this picture of a bunch of dudes on a plane eating Big Macs, that doesn't add up to me. I know, Miles, you want to talk about some of these choices though, right? Yeah, I mentioned Dr. Oz as a new choice, which is funny. I didn't think that was real. I saw that before you wrote that email.

I thought that on Ryan. I thought that that was just like someone memeing. I didn't realize that Dr. Oz was. What was he tapped in for? The head of Medicare and Medicaid, which is. Okay. What? Yeah, I don't know. i remember the debate they were uh asking

trump about what his plan was it would have been funny if he's like my plan is dr oz but he's more just like wants to privatize he was very big on medicare advantage he just wants to privatize medicare as much as possible but i don't know that'd be cool to see dode like the department of government efficiency like really i don't know it'd be cool but see what they could do with medicare and being so big and all and then linda mcmahon was the is dr oz gonna require like all medicare patients to take his like fake supplements or whatever all i know about dr oz i there i know two things one my mom used to talk a lot about him back in the oprah days and it was just he i associate him with like just tv knowledge yeah he's one of these like tv

knowledge people just imparting knowledge about health or whatever i just don't listen and then two he ran against federman and lost and i i think that he lost because he ate crudite, right? In my mind, that's why he lost. He lost because he talked about crudite. They had him talking about crudite and how to create like a great crudite platter. Or maybe it was even, he did like a, see, this is totally fake news.

There's no way this is actually what happened. But in my memory, what happened is he did an ad for his campaign. It was some kind of TV spot what happened. But in my memory what happened is he did an ad for his campaign. It was some kind of TV spot or something. And he was in a grocery store and he was putting together the vegetables that he wanted for his crew to take to the planet while running

for the senator of Pennsylvania. Which is just very out of touch. He seemed like an eloquent, nice enough guy. I had to find it. He's an entertainer. How bad nice enough guy. I had to find it. He's an entertainer. Dude, I mean,

but like what kind of, how bad of a candidate do you need to be to lose to like a fucking stroke? Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, this is when, I mean,

Fetterman is way better now. He's like actually kind of made like a, kind of a miraculous recovery, but I mean, dude, it was bad. he did. I would say though,

he's still in not that bright and also a slob and it's offensive to me it really is put on a fucking suit you're in congress i don't want to see you in a hoodie i don't want to see it i'm i'm like that's not i'm on a podcast i can dress however i want you are a congressman like or a senator rather like you have to go there and be a senator like represent us it's embarrassing like a musketeer stains and shit like who do you think you are the party that talks about their norms like dress in a fucking suit be normal well he's like the anti-democrat now so that's true i i guess and i also want to just be consistent because like i i thought he was i thought he was

like a dumb slobbish sort of person before. And I don't want to sit here and be like, oh, no, he's great now because he's slightly... Because he took the huge step to say that the terrorism was bad in Hamas. And then what's the other one he's done recently? He said the Democrats ran a bad campaign. Okay. You have to be a rocket scientist to understand that. So I'm not giving it.

I'm not ready to give it to him. I'm not ready to give it to him. I'm not ready to give it to him. Riley, I want you in this chat. Give me something. Tell me about the bro. Give me your perspective on the broligarchy. So just on how we got here. I should volunteer actually to add something.

I'm going to add. This is for the audience. My mom watches the show and she told me that I need to do a better job of inviting Riley in because she likes him. She's his biggest fan. She's been texting me about his aches. She's like, he's really developing that Riley. So you're on the spot now. Good to know that I have.

Yeah, that I have fans out there. Let's go. I will say on the on the topic of how we got to this this stage of the brologarchy i wonder how much of it is just a vibe shift like the pendulum swinging back after the days of me too in the lectures about the patriarchy like i still think back to that like you guys remember that like gillette commercial from a few years back that was like lecturing about like toxic masculinity like you contrast that with like now of like ufc fighters and frat guys doing the trump dance like that's a complete 180 pole shift from where we were like five years ago so i wonder if it's sort of a reaction to where we were it's definitely a react well it's a reaction but

Well, it's a reaction, but are you saying that the performative masculinity is the reaction? Yes, to that. Yeah. And I think what is interesting to me is just like how innocuous it is. It's frat boys dancing. It's not that big of a deal. But those really were the kinds of things that were being attacked just a few years ago. It's like we were conflating frat boys doing a dance with frat boys gang raping a person at a frat party.

And then it turns out the gang rape wasn't even real. Totally made up story. Rolling Stone. I thought the NFL thing was pretty interesting because NFL players openly dancing on the field. That doesn't really happen. One NFL player named Nick Bosa wore a MAGA hat years ago. Never hears the end of it. And the same NFL Sunday, three or four players are doing it.

They're definitely comfortable doing it. That's that's a huge fire ship that just to do it and aren't the NFL I read that they were gonna ban that or try and ban that and they've been everything any fun they try they do and so I saw the sort of culture war stuff bubbling up about that topic and I thought I've definitely seen the NFL crack down on all sorts of stupid shit they throw flags for everything they do a little bit of celebration, they throw a flag. Yeah, like regular dancing, just regular performance, let alone something political like that. Why is that?

I mean, I don't watch the NFL. I don't watch it. People call the NFL the no fun league. It's just the stupid rules they make just so they control players. It's another case. That's for the sport. That's for Pirate Wire Sports Talk. I will be leading that podcast.

They don't want to offend their audience. I thought about a sport. They don't want to do what, Brandon? They don't want to offend their audience. They don't want to do what, Brandon? They don't want to offend their audience. They don't want to lose. They don't want people seeing them doing the Trump dance. I don't want to watch the NFL anymore. Right, but the broader thing is they'll...

Yeah, but they also do the black national anthem for the games. And they let people kneel during the regular, I guess we're calling it now, national anthem. So I don't know, man. I mean, it seems like they're quite willing to offend certain people. I haven't heard of this.

There's a second national anthem? Oh, you know about this, Miles? We have a few versions. There's a remix. Everyone use a national anthem. Let's talk about... Listen, it's been a great episode. Loving the Pirate Isle segment.

What we really, really need to talk about, Thanksgiving. Obviously, it's coming up. It's just, what, a few days? Friday? So probably you're all traveling like a few days from now, Monday, Tuesday or something.

And specifically, what we need to talk about is the toxic Thanksgiving uncle of your nightmares, which I think we got a couple of them in this chat. Andy, I would like you to break this topic down for us today. For sure, man. The basic theme of this is people need to calm the fuck down people need to calm down this whole like reaction to the election is absolutely crazy uh and i think the latest example of this is all the women, mostly women, with respect, Ed, What are women doing? What are they all doing, Andy? Don't fuck it up. Let me tell you what the women are doing.

The women have decided to skip the holidays. Oh, no. Because their families voted for Trump and they cannot be around them. Oh, who's going to talk? You're the doctor, you might have to do them yourself. It's so awkward. So evidently, we've got 65% of Americans who are saying they've got like election related stress and that it's impacting

their holiday plans. Newsweek has this article entitled, women are boycotting Thanksgiving with their Trump supporting family. And man, is this thing packed with some fun quotes. Apparently, there's this woman, Anna Gant, who was on TikTok and went viral with this clip where she said, you know, I've made the decision for myself and my fiance and our child to skip out family holidays with my family that voted for Trump. Continuing on saying like, you know, it's not that they're Republicans. It's the fact that they voted for Donald Trump, knowing who he is and what he's capable of. I recommend everybody check out this article. I don't. Don't check it out. You don't need to check it out. We're going to talk about it right now. You do not need to check this article out. Can I just interject really quick? What I think is the interesting thing about all of this is that we have concurrently stories about what could potentially be the biggest

travel day in history. They said we're about to break records for the amount of people that are traveling around on Thanksgiving. So it's like, it's just noise. These people, I don't even know if these people are really doing it themselves, let alone if there's like a mass movement. It's just people writing about a mass movement. I will also say just the idea that if you voted for trump you're voting against people like me or whatever like to be in my family there's no one in my family who's a violent venezuelan like illegal immigrant um and that's the and that's the only person i'm voting like that is i would understand if it was that dude who we were talking about earlier who was assaulting the assistant da in new york city and he's about to be deported and he didn't want to have Thanksgiving with me.

Like I would, that I would get, I would understand he's a little bit sore about it, but I'm a little bit more about him being in my country. So it's like, it's a trade there, I think. But yeah, no, I don't, I don't know. I don't think it's that big of a, I don't think it's, maybe I'm just naive or optimistic or something, but I just sort of don't believe it's real. I don't believe I'm sure you're right. Actually, I really don't. I mean, this is this is the sort of thing that like, you know, goes viral on on social media because because it's so like crazy and overwrought. And, you know, yes, there are some people who are, you know, they're pissed off about the election results and and stuff like that but you know like in the end you know people really are able to just kind of like put this stuff aside

and and get along with each other but that's not fun is it so does the article sorry to cut you off does the article say if they have kids or not yes they do yeah and and yeah they have a they have a kid they have at least i think it's one kid who's in college. And she wrote to him and was talking to him about, I don't know, trying to talk him off the ledge too, which means this chick has totally done the number on this kid's head. But yeah, yeah, they do. So if women aren't actually boycotting their thanksgivings are they boycotting sex did you guys see that oh yeah we're not talking about that anymore i think that i think we can talk about it but i i made the point last week in the podcast um i was like we're not going to be talking about this in two weeks because it's fake and i haven't heard

anything about 4b since i think 4b is probably more real than people not going to someone's house for Thanksgiving. It's a social media trend. Thanksgiving, I don't know, maybe everyone's family is different than mine, but I can't think of a Thanksgiving where there wasn't like some slightly awkward thing that was in play that people had to navigate. That's just what having a family, any kind of family, friends, extended network community, that's what it is. It makes it fun. And it is fun. I love that.

Are you joking? Drama? I love it. I'm ready for it. Who is mad at who and why? And like, what are we talking about? Though I remember it would always sort of conclude when I was really young,

with those like dessert and ghost stories there were always somehow ghost stories at night my aunt patty specifically that's awesome but brandon you i feel like you would have an interesting insight on this because you were working at thought catalog for years back in the day and i think that these kind of how to deal with your toxic thanksgiving uncle or whatever stories. It's a genre of content that's been going on for a long time. This is not a new thing. Since the beginning of internet time. Yes.

I don't know if it existed before that, but I think it's a uniquely like digital thing. Yeah. It's like a genre of internet content. Yeah. What do you think is the thing behind the thing here what's what's feeling narcissistic people who want attention to say like they say something somewhat shocking and other people i think they voice um i think they are voicing like the

anxieties of millennials who don't know how to argue with their you know with with their with their family or whatever and like instead like they choose friends giving you know, with, with their, with their family or whatever. And like, instead, like they choose friends giving, you know, it justifies friends giving. I don't know. I think it's just like narcissism ultimately. What, you know, I mean, the other thing is do you have to argue with your, your family about the election? Like, do you have to really, I want to say no, but don't you do like if it comes out if they throw it if

they throw it in your face if they throw their i thought i'm not trying to write this stuff because i know that i you know i've been training i live on the internet so it's like i've been training under 10x gravity and someone who's not really that into shit has has an opinion, my older brother, for example, and he decides he's going to throw some uninformed opinion out at me. I don't want to start that conversation because I know I'm going to come in hot. I'm not going to be able to control myself. I think once you get started, it's hard to keep on the rails like i know that this thanksgiving for sure um man i'm gonna blow up my whole all my family's business right now uh you know i won't get it someone my mom and my sister one of them voted for trump and one of them absolutely did not vote for trump and this has been a bubbling drama for a while now because they they like my mom specifically

like really needs to explain why she's doing it and um wants to kind of keep initiating the conversation and my sister is this kind of person who really doesn't want to talk about it but also does really have strong opinions they're both intelligent women they're both very strong women they're both intelligent women they're both very strong women and uh i just know there's going to be a fight about trump i know it i i know it more than i know almost i can't even more than i know anything else that's going to happen at thanksgiving those two are going to have a fight about trump at some point and uh and i'm going to be there that's thrilling are you going to write a piece about it like that huffington post lady yeah it's thrilling it's like it's like the main event at the at the party it's like oh shit it's going to write a piece about it? Like that Huffington post lady? Yeah. It's thrilling. It's like, it's like the main event at the, at the party.

It's like, Oh shit, it's going to go down at some point. It's going to happen. And you just got to hope like you're in proximity to sort of like be a part of it. So I started cooking years ago because my mom and dad create too much chaos in the kitchen and it just stressed me out. And then so I just completely took over. And the cool thing about cooking for Thanksgiving is you get to opt out of

everything and just whenever you want it's completely on your terms because you have a job and you're busy and everyone's very thankful for that and so yeah you just like you have a free pass i have a theory for why the political talk has become like so unavoidable recently and i think it's because like we just these days have like so few to talk about other than politics. Like there used to be a point when like everyone watched like MASH or something on TV or like everyone saw the movie that was in theaters then or like listen to Top 40 radio.

And I think our culture is much less homogenous now. And so it's sort of left like nothing to talk about other than like politics because it's the one thing like everybody knows. So that's really interesting. It's our only it's our only common touch point where everyone knew something about the election. And so just out of almost social anxiety, you want to raise the thing that everybody knows about. Yeah.

The easy one is sports, too, like sports games are on. So people are still a game on. In my family, I come from a family of lawyers. In my family, I come from a family of lawyers. So we were always arguing politics and libertarian politics and uh so even though we're all like basically on the same side there's still an awful lot of arguing and my mom and i get the most heated about stuff so it's it's always a fun time at the at household. Who cooks? Who cooks? My mom.

My mom cooks. Some of us will. Yeah, yeah. She still works, too. So she's, you know. A legend. A legend. No, she is. She's Jones.

She is. You know, yeah. She's awesome. Solana, I did want to say, like, we wanted to give advice to some of our listeners. If you're the uncle at the Thanksgiving, what do you do? Well, my advice to you, I am the toxic uncle. So am I. And my advice to you is don't pick a fight you're not prepared to fight.

Because, like, if you come unprepared, you're going to lose. And that's really what, Brandon, you were sort of touching on before. It's like these people who are not, the reason they have anxiety about it is because they're not prepared to talk to people who are actually well-read and well-researched and have thought about these things a lot themselves and just simply disagree. And that's the kind of conversation they're not used to. They're not used to going into an environment like that. So that is my advice. The toxic uncle thing is all about asking questions. Oh, that's an interesting stat. Where'd you find that out? Why do you think that?

Who told you that? Oh, and do you feel that way about this other related thing? Interesting. And you just let them go and they know that they're wrong. It's the Socratic method. That's why they're coming to be uncle anyway. They know that you're wiser and smarter and better and they're trying. I actually, I have a niece who did,

she just, the last, last Thanksgiving. So we have not quite gotten there, but we were on the way back to the, to the airport. And she asked what my politics were. And I was like, Oh girl,

you don't, this is not, we don't want, we don't have to do this. We don't have to do this right now. She would be like 13. And and she um but like very like very like i mean lives on a socialist like island it's like i mean it's a yuppie it's rich person's island it's like they're you know middle class kind of family but they live on this like beautiful island off the coast of

seattle um surrounded by like very left-wing people and i just thought oh we're gonna next It's like they're middle-class kind of family, but they live on this beautiful island off the coast of Seattle, surrounded by very left-wing people. And I just thought, oh, next year's going to be banger because you're entering high school. You're going to have opinions. You're going to know for sure, as certain as I was, you're going to be that certain

about how right you are about things, but you're not. I'm right. Do you guys have this at all? Do anyone, I mean, are you guys all just like the passive sort of, not obviously not you, but like maybe,

Brennan, you strike me as like a peacemaker. Yeah, I don't want to argue with, I have like bad like factory call. And so I have somebody in my family who I love very much and like who has very like he has like very encyclopedic recall and so he can just just but it's like very it's very surface level right so he'll just like recite old things that happened and i can't fact check him in real time

and like i know he's wrong but i'm just like well uh yeah like okay like that's a good point trump did say this one racist thing at one point, but I don't know, you know? But yeah, I'm like more passive and I try not, I just try to like. Yeah, you need a friend. Call a friend. In the CIA, they have their person in the back room, like telling them what to do and stuff. You need a handler. Yeah.

I don't, me and my, me and my mom are like very centrist people and like always kind of have the same natural position on things. Um, there's not really that much like disharmony, frankly, at my table. It's kind of, are you the peacemaker or are you the one throwing bombs? Uh, I have a small family, so we don't really talk about politics too much, but I know my sister is very like left wing but every time i try to i'll try to argue with her but she's not going for it i'll probably be the instigator to be honest but she just doesn't want to talk about it um well i guess guys we're winding down here if you don't have any final comments about thanksgiving and the thanksgiving the toxic

thanksgiving uncle warning signs how to deal with anything out there what do you got i don't know i guess my my parting words are just everybody calm down okay it's it's gonna be okay like you know he he he already did a four years and there weren't any camps there weren't any trains there weren't you know nobody was getting pulled off the street and taken away from you and that's not going to happen this time either well unless you're a violent venezuelan illegal okay they're gone okay well but i'm not talking to them like yeah yeah you're going my neighbors you're gonna swing they gotta go back yeah my neighbors gotta go eat advice for Thanksgiving? Oh, man.

I mean, I'm from a farming family, so people tend to agree with each other. I don't know. You guys should just immediately talk about abortion. You actually could offer to have an abortion. Perfect. Accelerate it. Perfect.

Just grenade throw. I love it. I'm having an abortion right now. Yeah, that's a good one. There you go, guys. That's your advice. But in all honesty or seriousness, have a great holiday.

Stay safe. Again, to reiterate, we mentioned the top of the episode, but we are going to be off for Thanksgiving with our families, who we love. And thank for bearing with us while we air out all of their dirty laundry on

the Pirate Wires podcast. It's been real. Have a good weekend and see you when we're back.