Rev Left Radio - Minneapolis on Fire

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

Breht discusses recent events in Minneapolis... ------------------------------------ Outro Song: Song for Alicia by Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover

Well, this one is past due, to say the least. I want to talk today about what's going on in Minneapolis, right? A Midwestern city that I've been to on multiple occasions. A city that's very close to my own, only a few hours north of where I live. A city that I have friends from, friends who live in. A musical scene coming out of Minneapolis over the last 20 years that I've been, you know, deeply meshed with in and influenced by. it feels very close to home for me. It's not quite home, but it feels close to home to me. And what we've seen over the past couple of weeks is the release of these attack dogs of the

illegitimate Trump regime going into this beautiful city, this cultural center of the Midwest, and sicking their attack dogs on it, on the people there, on the fucking people there. far from any pretense of making the city safer or going after crime ice agents are the criminals ice agents are the ones causing the harm to the people there we saw what happened with rene good and this has been litigated throughout social media and on the internet for you know what has it been two weeks now and it's incredibly clear to anybody with a brain and a heart that she was in no way a threat to these fucking Gestapo thugs. And the pig who shot her in the face several fucking times wasn't, as the Democrats would have

us believe, an under-trained ice agent. This is somebody who has extensive ice and military experience, who has no doubt, had the most training you can possibly give one of these fucking Nazis, and who stood on the side of the vehicle, pumped bullets into this innocent mother, this innocent woman. and after he knows, because he was from his point of view the one that killed her, he saw the bullets go in her, he knows almost without a fraction of a doubt that she's dead or dying, calls her a fucking bitch and walks away. This fucking pig who walked around the car against ostensible training as if that matters, stood in front of the vehicle, which you're never supposed to do.

And after the other agent started bumrushing her vehicle, threatening her, in a state of what any reasonable person would have, some level of panic, clearly tries to pull the steering wheel in the opposite direction of this scumbag pig standing in her way to get around that asshole so that she could get into something like safety, she was shot dead.

And then her murder was justified, not only by right-wing cretons and ghouls, these soullish fucking freaks on the internet who will justify any murder, as long as they can say it's somebody that's a liberal or a lesbian or somebody on the opposite. All these people that pretend to be against tyrannical government and for the Second Amendment, right, immediately become the boot polishers of power the moment the actual federal agencies, the actual arm of the state comes out to a community.

It was never invited to, never should have been, and starts murdering the citizens there. For the crime of what, filming them as if we're not allowed as a free people to film, These fucking agents come flooding into our neighborhoods, harassing our neighbors and communities. That's no long, that's now a death sentence. Oh, he tried to, she tried to run him over with the car. Anybody that's reasonable. No, that's not, that's not the case. And even if it was what his toe got ran over, maybe, no, he walked away from the scene

without a limp, totally fine. And then the state apparatus, the Trump regime came with all these bullshit ideas about internal bleeding and rushed to the hospital and thank goodness he was alive. and she's a domestic terrorist, and this is the slop that we're supposed to eat up. Now, the vast majority of people don't. And don't let right-wing Twitter convince you that most people are heartless, soulless fascists. About 30% of the American population are dyed in the wool fascists. They would seek hail Hitler if he came back.

They will justify any action that Trump does. You know, it's not even right to say they're in a cult. They are just fascists. They're just Americanized subjects. they have been dehumanized by their identification with this brutal fascist American state. And so they justify the murder of this innocent fucking woman whose last words were, it's all good, I'm not mad at you, to the ICE agent. His last words to her, fucking bitch.

And then the fascist Trump regime comes out and says he has total immunity. Nothing you can do. Wouldn't it be nice to have an opposition party in this fucking country? Would that be nice if we had some political force other than the spontaneous action of the masses, which heroically conducted a general strike in Minneapolis, and flooded the streets with thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands. I don't know the number of human beings who are revolted by ISIS behavior and the murder of one of their own community members, by somebody who's not from the community and should have never been there in the first place, these big tough guys that beat up on women that shoot women in the face that harassed children

that tackle people that hold people down and spray them in the face with fucking chemical agents that use green tear gas shit chemicals they shouldn't be using on their own population on the people who's who should in a democracy they should be the fucking um the core constituency of a society the government should operate in their interests the government is now full-on war against its own people. Of course, anybody with the brain knows we don't live in democracy. This is a corporate dictatorship. And ICE, and in many cases, the police are the attack dogs of this corporate dictatorship state, this openly fascist corporate dictatorship state. You and I, we go to work every day and we pay taxes. And those taxes, they don't go to making

sure teachers are paid well. They don't go to giving every American child the best education possible, although teachers do their absolute best, right? But institutionally and resource-wise, they don't go to that. They don't go to making sure that Americans can have health care or 21st century infrastructure or affordable childcare or, God forbid, affordable housing. They don't go to solving any of our problems here at home. They don't go to reinvest in our communities to uplift the people here. That's our money that should be going to that. Where does it go? It goes to now a one. $1.5 trillion a year military budget. It goes to psycho states, rogue terrorist states like Israel so that they can murder men,

women, and children indiscriminately and commit genocide. And it goes to paying these ice thug fucks, 100 grand, 200 grand a year, plus student loan forgiveness, plus a 50k signing bonus in some cases. The people brutalizing Americans are paid by Americans, paid a salary that put them in the upper 15 to 10% of Americans. If you earn more than 200k a year, in the United States, you are in the top 10% of the richest Americans in this country. And ICE agents are getting six-figure incomes to do what?

To go out and terrorize the American people who pay for their fucking salaries. What a disgrace. What a crime. If there was such a thing as a social construct, if it wasn't just a philosophical abstraction, that never actually held in practice. The social contract has been ripped up by the ruling class of this country. And that means by any reasonable, logical, political, spiritual, psychological analysis of the situation, calculus of the situation,

the American people have every single fucking right to topple this government by any means necessary and install an actual democracy, an actual representative republic that represents the people and their interests. not the interests of multinational corporations, monopoly corporations, and foreign interests in the form of, you know, states like Israel or the military industrial complex, or these parasitic forms of political organization that have latched onto the teat of the American corpse and have sucked it dry. So now our labor goes not only to profit these corporations when we can barely get a living wage, our labor is taxed and that money is then taken and given. given to the enemies of our interests. The military industrial complex who turns public taxpayer money into private profits and weapons. To Israel, who turns public taxpayer money into mass murder. To ICE, who are literally Nazi thugs.

Where do the ICE agents come from? Well, you notice the proud boys aren't marching anymore? Well, they are. But instead of their little Fred Perry polos or whatever the fuck, they're now in ICE agent uniforms. Right? These right-wing mass mobilizations we've seen over the past 10 years, where do you think most of them went? Now they can get paid and get deputized by the state with the monopoly, the state monopoly on violence to carry out their racial, ethnic grievances in real time, with total immunity, no less. Where do you think the ICE agents are coming from? They are recruiting right-wing psychos, who, if it wasn't for ICE recruiting them, would be marching in white-suproving.

racist rallies or doing another Charlottesville or marching with the proud boys down the streets of any major city. All of those guys or, or, you know, doing a riot on January 6th at the capital or whatever the fuck. All of those people, any of them that could, are now in ice agent uniforms. And we would, we would know that. And some doxing has revealed some of these names. And Enrique Atario, Enrique Atario, the leader of the proud boys is a confirmed ice agent, right? And who knows how many of these other guys who were involved in those organizations but whose name never was widely spread around are now in in in ice right now a literal secret police where you're not allowed to talk about them pan bondi went on a whatever a sunday news show a corporate mainstream news show and um the pig who killed rene good was mentioned his name

was mentioned and uh she said don't say his name out loud even though it's public information don't say it out loud let me look this up real quick so i can say it out loud jonathan e ross Right? He's the ice agent. Jonathan E. Ross is the ice agent who murdered Renee in cold blood and an open sight of everybody who has total immunity. And then DHS agents went to his house also covered up in identity obscuring garb and face masks to move him out of his house so they could get him to safety while Pam Bondi and Trump come out and say, you're not allowed to investigate him. You're not allowed to charge him. You're not even allowed to investigate him. Imagine if we had an opposition party. One that doesn't just get up and say a curse word at a meeting and act all tough. One that doesn't just tweet about how this is unacceptable, but actually does fucking something about it.

Actually does something about it. This weak, cowardly, spineless Democratic Party is a zombie of a political party. It's already dead. Its historical moment is already gone. It's already in the historical dustbin, but it looms on. It staggers on in zombie form. If we had an actual party that would push the mechanisms, right? You're living in a blue state with the blue city.

Why in the fuck is the National Guard out not going against ICE? Why is the Minneapolis police department not completely organized and focused on stopping the people murdering Minneapolis and Minnesotans citizens? ICE? Why are we not seeing an actual confrontation? This is like, you know, in a sense of globally we're already in a world war, though nobody's calling it that. that, this is kind of a low-level civil war. And you could argue that we've been in it for a while, and it depends on how you want to define that.

It's certainly not like the old civil war where you have two sides with clear geographical boundaries. But it is this minotarian, tyrannical, tech oligarch-backed, explicitly fascist and nakedly imperialist force organized under the Trump regime ran by absolute fucking ghouls internationally like Marco Rubio and ghouls domestically like Stephen Min. or this fucking gerbils puke fuck who are instigating an assault on the world and an assault on on on american citizens under the pretext of immigration let's say let's just play devil's ad but this is not my view of immigration right you know my view of immigration which is let's

let's eliminate the base of mass migration in the first place which is imperialism economic sanctions the destabilization of other people's societies so that they have to flee the weaponization of the reserve currency status of the American dollar to enforce sanctions regimes on countries which deprive the people of the basic necessities and make the economy scream as a pretext for destabilization, disorder, chaos, and ideally regime change in these countries, right? If you have any talk about immigration that doesn't start with the role that the U.S. plays in destabilizing these countries historically and presently in the first place, I do not care about your opinion, but let's just take at face value this system as it's currently

instantiated and say what would be like, you know, if you look at a poll and it says most Americans think that like illegal aliens shouldn't be in the country. That's their words, not mine. One way you could do it is through comprehensive immigration reform, right? Making the passing laws that actually deal with the real issues of the immigration system as it currently exists. You could do something like shut down the border, put a 10-year moratorium on the border, maybe shut down HB1 visas, which is a way that that corporations like and tech oligarchs like Elon Musk can exploit and prey upon foreign labor who are completely beholden for their ability to stay in the United States on their employer. If they're fired, they lose their status. And so they will

accept shittier conditions. They will accept lower pay. They will accept hostile work environments. They'll undercut American workers for jobs that American workers could do all to the benefit of the tech oligarchs, right? I mean, these are things that we can reasonably talk about. What Trump doing isn't really about it. It's ostensibly about it, right? It's like, you know, red meat to his base. It looks like he's doing something. He's being aggressive on that front. But what he's really doing is he's deputizing, creating, and expanding an already existing agency that he can turn into him and Stephen Miller and the ghouls in his administration, because Trump is, you know, probably chewing on a Big Mac somewhere and only half aware of what the fuck's going on. It's these ghouls

within the regime who are, you know, kind of carrying out their fever dream fantasies of what they want to do. And Stephen Miller, in the case of immigration, it's no doubt. They are creating a domestic force with an ostensible sheen of legitimacy. Immigration and Customs Reform is an agency that's only been around for 20 years or so. It's not like it's a core American institution, but it's been around long enough that as an agency itself, it's more legitimate than the proud boys or some, you know, hobbled together right-wing street force going out and hunting people. So it has a sheen of legitimacy. It has a tiny sheen of democratic consent.

Like if you look at a poll that says, you know, what do you think about immigration be stalled? You know, most Americans bamboozled by propaganda, not knowing the full dynamics of this system would say, yeah, you know, we're against people coming here illegally. So under those pretenses, they are building up a domestic. force that is capable of attacking their enemies. And what they do is they go into these communities, ostensibly under the pretext of finding what we were told initially violent criminals that are here illegally and deporting them, but really just attacking anybody with a skin shade, you know, one or two shades darker

than a white guy, harassing them, anybody with an accent, anybody that looks a little darker than normal, normal, right? quote unquote. They're getting harassed. They're getting targeted. And if you if you accept the idea that a lot of the people that are in ice agent uniforms right now are three percenters and, and, you know, these Second Amendment freaks and hardcore right wingers and old proud boys and guys who see a financial opportunity to carry out their their political regime, they're going out and they're harassing people who are not white, right? Making life hellacious for non-white people. and and then they get the added bonus of liberal progressive left-wing protesters following and coming to them while they're engaged in this assault against minorities in this society and then they can turn around and use any pretext they want to then attack those protesters also an enemy of the right so if you're a right-wing goon who was five years ago or you know seven eight years ago marching in charlottesville you've been on nazi twitter for the last ten years you're talking about reclaim white

America. You're a fucking loser that nobody likes. You have no respect because you're a fucking total piece of shit on every level. Your kids don't talk to you. You're divorced if you were ever able to even find a woman who could stomach you for more than five fucking minutes. You're a total fucking piece of dog shit. Now you get to join ice with full immunity by a fascist regime to go out and terrorize the people you perceive as your enemy. And that has resulted in the deaths of dozens of people at this point. It's resulted in the the sexual assault of countless women. We've already had a couple reports of women being sexually assaulted in detention centers

in exchange for them being able to see their fucking kids. We saw that one disgusting video of that fucking pig ice agent walking into a porter potty slipping and falling on his dumb ass. I wish you would have cracked his fucking head open. Unfortunately, he got back up and followed a woman who he had in handcuffs into a porter potty. And what do you think is going on in there? He's not helping her use the restroom.

He is sexually assaulting her almost certainly. and they get to do all of this under the guise of some sense of legitimacy. And then what's the total, what's the ultimate rollout? Well, let's say that as we're seeing now, there's a spontaneous revolt by the population, which there is. Let's say there is anything like an opposition party that actually tried to do something about this. Then Trump could do what he's always wanted to do, which is declare martial law. And in a state of martial law, you get extreme, you know, you get extreme leniency with what you can do. send in the military, put down a domestic riot, the language of the law.

And that is what Trump has always been in sort of aiming towards. There is blowback in the form of more and more people turning against ICE, turning against Trump, turning against the Trump regime. But, you know, outside of the midterms, which is just going to install Democrats, it's not like that's a real fucking threat, but it could slow down his administration in some ways. You know, besides that, what do they have to really care for? And that's even assuming we go through with the midterms or that they don't do one of these stop to steal fucking things again. And the 30% of the country who are fascist fucking freaks, you know, come out in support of their regime. And then we have a total constitutional crisis as if we already don't. You know, the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, these have all been violated as a matter of course in the case of Minneapolis.

Little children, you know, the little case of that boy with the little bunny ear stocking cap. being deported to fucking Texas. You know, women being beat up, slammed on the ground. And then that brings us to this most recent case, which is just happened today. A citizen of Minneapolis is out there filming these ICE Gestapo Nazi pig fucks. They start pepper spraying or spraying in the face, the chemical agent into the eyes of a woman who is just standing there.

This guy who's also standing there filming them goes to protect the woman who is being brutalized by ice, they swarm him, they hold him down, down, on the ground, they disarm him, and then they murder him. Already we see psycho-freak fox like Stephen Miller, like Lauren Lumer, coming out and justifying it. Already we see the worst people this earth has ever shit out

coming to defend the legitimacy of yet another naked, open, caught-on-video murder by the state of an innocent civilian, who under any regime of reasonable constitutional rights and law had every right to be there doing exactly what he did and spiritually, morally, ethically, had every single right to try to protect a woman that several male ICE agents were physically assaulting in real time. He tried to put his body between them and her.

And for these fascist thugs and their boot-licking, cock-sucking, motherfucking apologists in the society, it's justified to murder that man on this spot. And what this means in practice, any of us could be murdered for any reason. If ice busted into this fucking shed right now and emptied their clip into my fucking head, do you not think 30% of American population would support it once they find one or two quotes that I've ever said about Mao or Che or Stalin or communism, use that to dehumanize me? He was a communist. He was a threat. His death is totally justifiable.

My kids have no dad. My wife has no husband. Renee lost her life and that devastation ripples out. Her wife is devastated for life. There's no coming back from certain things like that. You can plod along in life, but that grief, you will never get that back. That wound will never heal. Time does not heal all wounds.

Some wounds are just wounds. and maybe they scar over but they never fucking go. They're with you until you fucking die. A child who, based on what I understand, had a father who died, I believe, passed away, and Renee was his mom. I think she had three kids and some of the stories are everywhere. We don't know for sure, but never have a mom again.

Six years old, eight years old, imagine. Who knows who this man was? It just happened a couple hours ago. some names have been tossed out. It's hard for me to like lock on to anything in these, the hours after an event like this because, you know, pictures are posted and names are posted and often later down the line we find out that's not who that really was or that picture was somebody else or that name was somebody

else. So, you know, I'm hesitant to like start throwing out names and faces, but it was a human fucking being, a citizen of Minneapolis, who almost certainly had friends and family, perhaps children, perhaps a spouse, but had a community, had people that loved him and cared about him, robbed from this world. for the crime of trying to document the real crimes of ice agents murdered and cold blood.

So this is really not about immigration. This is a full-on assault on democracy insofar as it ever existed in this country. A full-on assault of anybody that is not white, you know, for not being white, you can be attacked, you can be harassed, you can be disappeared. A full-on assault of liberal and progressive and left-wing forces in this society, the sort of, of people who would care enough to spend time in their day to come out, to follow ICE, to document their crimes, to try to protect their neighbors, right? Good human beings in this society, if you're a good person in this society, you're not a fucking coward who stays silent or a rabid, fascist piece of shit. You're an enemy to this government and to about 30% of

this population who don't see you as human and who will justify your death no matter how it's carried out. The same people who for our whole lives are saying, we believe in the Second amendment. This guy had a gun. He had every right to have one. He was disarmed of it, killed, and then they're using the fact that he had a gun as the pretense for why his murder was justified. Same people who, you know, the government has no right to enter your home. The government doesn't have a right to tell you you have to take a vaccine. They're kicking in the door of homes. They're going into homes without any judicial warrant whatsoever, harassing anybody they want. If you're driving on your way to work, you can be stopped by ice. You have no, you have no recourse.

time and time again ICE has taken both citizens and non-citizens detained them, not given any information, not giving them the constitutional right to a phone call or to representation and a lawyer. If you don't have family and friends or people that are aware that you're gone,

you can just be disappeared straight up. Who knows where you'll end up? You trust this government to have methodologies and strategies and forms of deportation that assure that human rights are abided by or that they go back to any place where they've ever been before. and now when you get a reasonable

like, you know, okay, just from the point of view of like these patriots on 1776 patriots, who are the real patriots, who are the real standards upward to government tyranny? It's the people on the left and just good-hearted people who are coming out in opposition

to this fucking flagrant violation of their rights and humanity. These motherfucking right-wing pieces of shit never believed in rights, never believed in the Constitution, never believed in amendments, never believed even in a fight against big government. As long as their guys are in attacking who they perceive as their enemy,

they'll justify it. There's no legal, spiritual, moral conundrum they have with any of it. Tucker Carlson, who rings his hands and acts like, you know, he says a couple nice things about Palestinians and against Israel and uses this Christian pretext that he's like a good Christian. And because he's a Christian, he can't stand the taking of somebody's life or the taking away of their rights based on who they are. God's children. Ice is out right now terrorizing people based on the color of their skin. And Tucker comes out just a day or two ago and does a whole episode on how ice needs to be

protected and this is a reasonable thing. Under this, all shucks, I'm a good Christian. I have to take a stand against Israel because I'm a Christian guy. This pretext of like Christian love being the center of his politics and has on an evangelical right-wing fucking pastor or whatever to talk about how the left is out of control and how the left are spiritually bankrupt and satanic and demons. And that's why, you know, a good Christian nation has to inflict indiscriminate fascist violence on everybody they see as their enemy.

Who buys this shit? Piece of shit, scumbag, noodle arm, freak fuck Nick Fuentes, right? On his generational run over the last year, time and time again comes out and says, you know, people say I'm a Nazi and all this stuff, but really I'm a Christian. And I'm led by Christian love. He said multiple times, and I listen to these fucks because I want to know what the fuck they think. I've listened to hours and hours and hours of Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, respectively. Several dozens of times.

Fuentes comes out and talks about Christian love, you know, how a society that he wants, he has problems and everything, but ultimately he wants a society of like white Christians that respect life. He says in many interviews now, he's come out and said, I'm actually against the death penalty. I've evolved on that issue. against the death penalty because as a Christian, I do not believe that we as human beings have the right to take the life of another human being. What does he do in the wake of Renee Goods shooting? Calls her a bitch, laughs about it, and says, it's a good start. Anyone that is sympathetic about that, fuck you. No offense. I saw Tucker. Tucker was like, whatever you believe, it's a tragedy. Dude, it's so isn't. She was probably the dumbest bitch

you ever met. Look at her face. Look at her stupid fucking pumpkin-headed bitch face. We've all seen that face at like a parent-teacher conference at a grocery store. She's like a prototypical bitch Karen. She's got the nose ring, the short hair, totally fat. Her eyes are crazy. She's a lesbian. And people go, this is a tragedy. Like, what for who? No, I'm sorry. There's nothing tragic about that. we're better off, you know, like seriously. Like this is the most insufferable liberal bitch ever. She's like 37.

What's the excuse? She's not a 16-year-old. They got radicalized in high school. She's not a 19-year-old. They got radicalized in college and got a tattoo. It's not a phase. 37-year-old, grown woman. It's the middle of the work week.

Your kids are in school. You're in another state. And you're larping is a resistance, blocking. the traffic for ice? What the fuck is wrong with you? Who does that? Like, some people might say it's a tragedy. Ask yourself, who does that?

Does anybody that you know, would your wife, would any friend, like, couple that you know, would any of the women that you know be doing this? Would they go to an ICE protest? It gets exposed that these, this criminal population that shouldn't even be here is scamming the taxpayer out of millions of dollars. they don't even like us. Ice goes in to get to the bottom of it. Your first instinct is not only to protest, but to throw yourself in front of the cops.

What is wrong with you? And these fucking idiots think it's a game. They think it's just anyhow. What are you doing? You're in the middle of the street blocking traffic. That's federal law enforcement. That is federal law enforcement doing the duty of federal law enforcement. And you think you're going to block traffic with that?

Like, imagine if you saw someone in a traffic stop with the local police and you drove up and try to get in the middle of it. Like, you understand you would forfeit your life, right? If you drove up on a traffic stop with your car and we're like, hey, stop this. Get your hate speech off the campus. Like, you would be forfeiting your life. Oh, but because it's ice, it's anyhow, it's the hunger games. No, I'm sorry. We're better off.

you know one less stupid bitch in the world honestly and i don't know it's just so naive it's like seriously i know that sounds horrible to say out loud but it's just true these people are hurting us like these people are hurting our countries people are insane you know like this psycho wants abortion wants to cut your kids penis off wants the country to be raped to death by immigrants. They're throwing themselves in front of ice. Are you kidding me? This is a tragedy.

Why? For who? It's going to be one less Hunger Games viewing party or whatever. Like, for crying out loud. And I'm not that guy that like devalues human life or whatever. A piece of fucking shit, you are.

Holy shit, people. You're going to have to toughen up. Like, we're in a war for our country. This, like, irredeemable. scumbag gets shot, totally justified. And people go, oh my gosh, it's a tragedy. People are comparing it. Our own side is comparing it to Ashley Babbitt, calling ourselves hypocrites. This is why we lose. The left doesn't care. They just kill everybody. The left wants you dead. Like when Charlie Kirk died, they laughed. And Charlie Kirk got shot doing nothing wrong.

Like he's doing his thing totally legal. He's at an event. get snifed in the face because he's a transphobe. This woman is blocking federal law enforcement. She gets a lawful order from the cops, speeds up. She doesn't get out of her car, parked a car. She tries to get away, get shot. And people go, you know, we're really hypocrites. If we don't, it's like, what? I don't want to be in a foxhole with you. Time to nut up, man. People who watch the show are ice agents. There will be more of it. Our ICE agents. There will be more of this before this is over. You think that any of these people, people would cry if ice died ice is getting shot ice is getting shot all the time ice is hunting

murdering and terrorizing people ice is beating up women and children holding people down spraying them in the face punching in the head over and over again disappearing people spitting in the faces of anybody who has any proximity to them whatsoever laughing about the people they murder and he's trying to present ice agents as the victims of the big bad scary rene good whose last words were it's all good man i don't hate you who was clearly by any fucking sort of anybody's logic with visual proof turning her wheel away from the ice agent because a bunch of armed thug right wing fascist freaks are charging on her vehicle shouting contradictory shit at her trying to get out of the way her car by the way wasn't even blocking full traffic as if that's a reason to murder somebody

cars were going in front of her she was waving them on she's sitting there with her phone in her own neighborhood, on her own fucking block, documenting this alien force that is harassing and targeting and abusing the constitutional and human rights of her community members. She has every right to be there, every right to film the police, every right to park her car there. At very worst, they can fine her. They can say you are obstructing something.

They could take her license plate down and send her a charge later. I wouldn't support that. But that's a reasonable way to handle it, even if you believe a lot of the bullshit we're hearing about the sacredness of the lives and duties of these ice agents who are just pulled off the street, bribed with money to become an armed brown shirt, fascist, you know, Gestapo shock troop force for an explicitly fascist, insane right-wing reactionary regime, that these people are somehow these duty-bound, dignified people,

just trying to carry out their job and being blocked and harassed and attack. by these crazy protesters, that's the fantasy world you have to live in to be one of these bootlicking cock sucking motherfuckers. Right? And a little fucking puke like Nick Fuentes, right? No family, no investment really in society. He has no real communities. He's an in-cell shut-in, right?

Who's who got weight, who has a, maybe a slightly higher than average verbal IQ, so can sit in front of a fucking camera and talk for hours and hours and hours on end to other lonely debased, spiritually empty, psychotic young, dumb males in America, right? Who have been hollowed out by their identification with this system, whose only source of pride is the color of their skin, who sit in front of a guy like Nick Fuentes for hours every night just downloading insanity into their brains. And he thinks he has the moral, spiritual, familial, social authority to talk about anything this fucking puk, there's a video of him fighting a guy in a lobby.

And it's like, this guy is just nothing. And he's cheering, which all these guys are like this. Stephen Miller, Lindsey Graham, Trump himself, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, but down to a fucking man. These are weak, spineless fucking pukes who contribute nothing of value to society, who are compensated infinitely more than their actual. social worth, who have never really even been so much as in a fistfighter, had to stand up for anything they actually believe in or work a hard day's job, who are the ones cheering on endless murder and brutality and violence by everyone else.

They live vicariously as fundamentally weak, spiritually hollow men through the violence inflicted on other people at a distance. There's no heart there. There's no capacity for empathy. as the same time they tell us they are followers of Christ followers of Jesus Christ and I know hell doesn't exist but I almost wish it did for the simple fact that when all of these assholes go there

I would just love to see the look on their face what me no no but but I was I was a Christian I believed in this stuff as the flames start licking up their calves and into their thoughts in their torso. Unfortunately, the most likely scenario is they'll never know they're wrong. They will die and become worm food. They'll go to sleep forever and they'll never even get the chance to know that everything

they lived and everything they did was a complete and total lie. They'll be obliterated and dissolved back into the cosmic fabric and live until their last dying day as smug believers that they were superior to everybody else and that they had the one true God and that when they die, their God is going to reward them uniquely with an eternity of joy and happiness and comfort and content. tentment. He's getting shot at, blown up, boxed in. The guy that shot her was dragged by a car earlier in the year.

Good. Get a real job. If they had it their way, they would be murdering ICE and their family. If we had it our way, we'd be murdering ICE, but their ICE is literally murdering people. So in a hypothetical world, they would be murdering ICE. Therefore, ICE is the victim. In the actual real world we live in, ICE is the one doing the murdering. right-wing chuds from across the country funneled into a city that is not theirs to harass, beat up, assault sexually and physically, and ultimately murder the citizens of this country who whose tax dollars pay for their salaries and their signing bonuses.

And this little puke sitting in a bunker in Chicago somewhere, millionaire, by the way, a millionaire for talking like this, he sits back and has obvious pleasure in this, calling her a bitch. denigrating her, dehumanizing her even further, as her whole family still no doubt is in grieving in a state of complete grieving and disillusionment and confusion and physical hurt. But he's a follower of Christ. He's a believer in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ's message of universal solidarity and love and equality. They docks them. So, you know, you got to nut up a little bit. So anyway, we'll talk more about that this week.

But I was genuinely shocked at some of the response, not from Tucker, that tracks, but some of these other people. You know, they're posting Hitler videos all day. A left wing protester dies. They go, this is a tragedy. It's like, what? No, it really isn't, dude. Anyway. Okay, so we'll end it there.

I know that's hard to stomach and that's hard to listen to. But understand this is the, genuinely, the protagonist. dominant posture from about 30% of the American population who are hardcore, you know, maga fucking fascist freaks. Nick Fuentes has hundreds of thousands of followers. This video in and of itself has 1.8 million views, right? This is who young men listen to, right? And then old boomers listening to Tucker Carlson, who at least has a self-awareness to

dial it back a bit to pretend that he's disturbed over this. but everything else he does and says completely undermines the fact that he gives a shit at all that any of these fucking ghouls value human life on any level, that they even care about Americans, right? The idea of like America first, put Americans first,

stop spending all of our money everywhere else and take care of our own Americans. To them, Americans are the other 30% of white, right-wing, psycho-reactionary guys. They don't actually care about anything they say they care about. And I know that might be, redundant or obvious to us, but it's just, you should have a peek into this insanity.

Peek into this, this soullessness, this anti-human taking pleasure in the suffering of other human beings, mindset that these fucking people are in. And if any one of us died in anything like a similar situation, they would be, they would be celebrating it, cheering it, laughing about it, even as our families wept forever. So Minneapolis in the wake of Renee Goods Murder and so many other instances of just insane ice brutality and violence and criminality, launch a stark protest that is a general strike in Minneapolis. From everything from labor unions to high school kids and everything in between, people stopped buying stuff, stopped going to worker school. And they partook in the citywide national strike.

And it was an amazing show. show of what could be done, but of course, as isolated as it is, and no, no negative things to say about that, right? The fact that we're even talking about, much less organizing, even localized general strikes is a objectively good move in the positive direction. Because there is now being a linkage made consciously between our ability to extract ourselves from producing value and consuming to having political demands that need to be met by our government. And of course, the first try isn't going to achieve that, but those linkages are starting to be made, even in the heads of liberals.

Protest after protest after protest, that doesn't bother them. You have to speak their language, which is money and power. And if you don't have political power, in the sense where you could actually have an opposition party, you could have a military formation that would go in, face off, put down these fucking ice agents. If you don't have political power, you can't. The next step below that is fucking with their economy, hitting them in their pocketbooks.

And yes, one day is not going to hurt any company or undermine anybody, but the linkages are being made. And if there was, by any standard, a national general strike, by the end of week one, assuming enough people participated in it, you would have this entire regime on its knees. If we can shut down the economy for five days, we would have these motherfuckers on their knees after, of course, they lashed out brutally and violently and tried to suppress it. But assuming we could survive that onslaught, this government would dissolve in a matter of days, straight up. If that was married to explicit political demands and there was a nationwide extraction of tens of millions of Americans from their jobs and from consumption, we're not buying another thing and we're not going to work. tell these demands are met. And yes, they wouldn't be the end of capitalism, imperial.

There would have to be a demand widespread enough that enough people could get behind it, right? It could be something as the end of the Trump regime, a calling of actual democratic elections, getting money out of politics, whatever it may be, stopping the wars abroad, a war that we're about to enter with Iran. Whatever the demand is, if it's a broad enough supported demand, which everything I just said would be, especially in the wake of more violence like this. You could shut this entire fucking thing down in a day. The opposition party is not an opposition party. So we have to do it the other way. We have to do bottom-up mass mobilization and pressure on this fucking system. They knew that labor unions were going to be the main leverage point for any sort of radical working class movement.

And so they first de-radicalized them through the several iterations of the Red Scares. And then they co-opted them completely and fully into the American political system and the two-party system in particular. And so we're now fighting against that historical reality in trying to get our number one leverage point, i.e. organized labor that can actually serve to apply pressure at choke points in the economy, married to a broader mass mobilization that refuses to consume or go to work in their own individual instances, you could have a new government, a new constitution written up if you really wanted to it. If there was good leadership and there was dogged consistent pursuit of specific. demands through the attack on the economy and an organized general strike. You could have anything. And there's very few things that we could do, short of building up actual real political power on par with the power domestically and internationally of the U.S. Empire, or a coordinated nationwide, multiracial, working class general strike. Anything short of that, they can laugh off. They can isolate. They can defeat. They can ignore.

you know we can we can we can no hate to any protesters you can protest all day long they don't give a fuck you can vote for democrats your entire life you can spend 10 lifetimes voting for democrats won't change anything they don't give a fuck sign a million petitions make a billion posts about how much you hate these fuckers nothing matters can you get political power or in lieu of that can you shut down their economy and if you don't speak the two languages of money or power we will continue to be victimized by this system this now government, military, American empire married to right-wing freaks like this guy. Out-and-out nihilistic anti-human Nazi fascism.

Fully backed to the hilt by the full domestic power of the U.S. Empire. Let's not pretend this is new, by the way. All of American history is this. You know, we lived in a post-war interregnum where the brute force of the system wasn't as a parent in the lives of the top 80% of income earners in the United States for a period of a few decades, you know, think like the 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s. If you were decent off as a working class or quote unquote middle class person, you know, you could ignore politics and all of that, but most of American history before that wasn't like that. And American history now

going forward isn't like that. You could fool yourself into believing this is the end of history. History has returned. These processes have returned. The American Empire internationally is angry, desperate, cornered, and lashing out, and it still has the world's biggest economy and military to do that lashing out with. And domestically, it needs to quell its population, just as we've seen since the quelling of slave revolts and Shay's rebellion after the fucking revolutionary war, right? The suppression of indigenous resistance, which is the foundation of this country. This country was born in blood.

And all throughout its history has been stained with blood. And we are just now back at the historical norm. This is not a deviation or an aberration. Let me look up that famous John Brown quote. That is, it was correct then and it's correct now. John Brown, quote, I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done. And what he was getting at, at the lead up to the fucking civil war, prophetically,

that these core contradictions within this bloody American empire, baptized and born in blood and drowning people in blood domestically and internationally ever since. And as we speak, that the crimes of this guilty land cannot be purged away, but with, in his words, blood, but what that means, conflict, struggle, war. After these words were spoken, the civil war popped off. Because that contradiction was not going to be done away with voting or petitioning or reasoning with your enemies. It was a fight to the death. And this system will not relinquish an ounce of power or control except when it,

it absolutely motherfucking has to. And these spontaneous eruptions of bottom-up democratic protest movements and a radical call for a general strike that actually went through, actually had support from broad swaths of the population. This is what we actually mean

by the masses. A term often used in Marxist jargon, but not often defined. And some people could just kind of think it just means the people kind of broadly, vaguely. The people that would come out for a general strike in Minneapolis against ice are broadly, conceive the masses.

And it's through their organization and concentration that we have any hope of hitting them where it hurts in the economy or building actual political power. So zooming back out, this ICE Gestapo force of the Trump regime is unleashed on all perceived enemies of the Trump state. Immigrants, non-white people, lefties, liberals, leftists, progressives, anybody that comes out and makes any noise that is anything but salutary and thumbs up is an enemy of this system. And that actually is the majority of people in this country. It actually is the majority of people in this country. If you had overwhelming majoritarian support for your government, you wouldn't

have to do stuff like this. Does the Chinese government do stuff like this? Well, the American shitheads who hate China and have been propagandized and brainwashed would say, yes, when has China invaded another country? When was the last time China dropped by? bombs on people? When was the last time China had just a flagrantly unlawful police force going out and just putting people down in the streets as a matter of course? You hear about the Uighurs. When was the last time China funded, armed, and protected on the international stage of genocide like we just saw in Gaza? Why? China has actual democratic support within the country. Does that mean every single person agrees with the government? No. Does that mean every single person

who does more or less consent to their governance, have any. disagree and have no disagreements with their government of course not but it means on the whole broadly conceived a majority of chinese people see that their government takes their tax dollars funnels it back into the maintenance of their society their quality of life is increasing their lifespan itself is increasing their government is breaking actual uh technological ground and infrastructural ground advancing the ball for chinese civil society more broadly and under those conditions most people would support their government, even if they have quibbles here or there. In the U.S., ironically and amusingly, the country that presents itself as the shining light atop a hill, as Reagan once said,

right? The center of gravity of the free democratic world, we have a government that is hated by the people. We have trust in our civil society and our government that is bottomed out. There is no Democratic support for the Democrats or the Republicans, for their donor classes, for the tech oligarchs, for the military industrial complex, for any of this shit. If there was a one-to-one vote, every policy had to get majority support from Americans to pass through, our society would look radically different, even with the brainwashing and propaganda of the average American. Even with all of that at play, if we had a real democracy where the actual interests and desires of the, the majority of the American population were met, our government and our society would look radically extremely different. That is because we do not have a democratic government.

We do not have a representative republic. We do not have a constitutional republic. That is lies for dumb-dums. We have brute class dictatorship. And there's different factions of that ruling class dictatorship, right? There's a more reasonable centrist. Hey, we still want to rape and pillage the entire planet. We still want to do profit accumulation at all cost of the environment and to the well-being of our society, but we'll do it with an Obama-type face.

Nice, soft words, a couple jokes here and there, some charisma. You know, we'll carry this through, but we'll do it with tact. That's one side of the ruling class. The other side of the ruling class is, we'll do it in broad daylight, we'll laugh about it, and we'll fucking call you a bitch when you die. When we kill you, we'll mock and celebrate your death. Now, let me address this Charlie Kirkpoint. And even this Ashley Babett point, that piece of shit Nick Fuentes says. And it's important to point this out because over the last year,

he's been able to trick people in with his anti-Israel commentary that he's some sort of deep thinker or moral agent in the world. He's been able to trick a lot of people. And so it's important that you see who he really is. But okay, on these other instances, I'm not saying, I don't really care what you did in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder or whatever. I looked in myself and I said, what do you actually believe about who deserves death? and I said morally, spiritually at the core of my being, I truly believe, no matter how obnoxious you are, no matter how much indirect harm you do, because these people do indirect harm, they think I do indirect harm by being a communist, right? Whatever. Are you directly involved in the harming and

murder of other human beings? And you could make some distorted argument that because of his bigotry or whatever, other people are emboldened to carry out hate crimes, and that's probably true. But for me, the dividing line is, in order for your life to be taken and for me to actively celebrate it and say it's morally permissible, we have to have some red line, some actual moral threshold. And that threshold for me, are you directly involved with the murder or miseration suffering and harm of innocent people? Well, in the case of the health care CEO that Luigi shot, I'm sorry, but you directly and materially profited. from the suffering, harm, immiseration, and death of fundamentally innocent people.

You put money in your pockets that came at the expense of other people's physical well-being. You crossed that moral threshold for me. If Netanyahu got assassinated tomorrow, you would find me celebrating because he is the direct cause of countless death. Numbers that we can't even, it's not even just the Gaza Genocide. I think of all the people that have directly died because of, Net and Yahoo specifically. You're talking a serial killer on par with the world's worst serial killers. Hundreds of thousands of bodies.

Donald Trump, same exact thing. Stephen Miller, same exact thing. These people actually have power, and they use that actual power to inflict harm and murder on innocent lives. That's the threshold. I felt as obnoxious as Charlie Kirk was, as much as I would have loved to punch him in the fucking mouth. that he just did not rise to that threshold.

And so I, you could disagree with me on this, I purposely didn't celebrate it. I thought there was something morally and spiritually important, not even to judge others who did, but for myself to acknowledge that objective moral threshold, to realize that I do not think in my heart of hearts that he surpassed it, and thus his murder on live television,

was not something that I could take glee in. and so when this happens the same people on the right who were like oh it's civil war now he was a good man you saw him you saw him fucking uh lose his life and now his children have to grow up without a dad and you celebrate and you mocked and they were getting people fired and doxing people harassing those same exact people who who handwrung and acted all moral and got on their high horse are celebrating and or justifying which is the same in the end of me of the death of Renee Good and of this man in Minneapolis

who is just murdered today and anybody else that has happened in the meantime and if you or I were to be murdered they would do the exact same thing to us they don't have that moral threshold they haven't made clear within themselves what is the threshold to make death an acceptable punishment for somebody

that can be justified and or celebrated I think it's important for us as human beings as fundamentally moral agents interested in building a better world that we stay clear about that within ourselves. People might disagree with me on that. And you can make an argument that Charlie Kirk, if you're taking that moral threshold

seriously, I'm sure there's an argument that could be constructed that Charlie Kirk rose above that threshold and thus deserved to die. And I just don't, I'm not there. So I didn't celebrate that. And so when they're being monsters and they look over and they want to point the finger at us and say, you left them. and then it's just this tit for tat partisan hackery where there's no such thing as morality

it's just was it my side or was it yours there's a certain dehumanization and a sort of death nihilism spiral that occurs if you don't have within yourself your own moral dignity and threshold for that stuff I do think it's important and ultimately if we want to build a better world we have to take ethics seriously

we have to take our values seriously and apply them consistently not because we're going to convince them through our consistent application of our values that we're right, but because for our own human integrity and dignity as conscious, loving beings in the universe, and for our own movements hell-bent on creating a better world, it's important that we have that within ourselves. These people are monsters. Gromshy was right.

Now is the time of monsters. And when you look in the eyes of Nick Fuentes, when you look in the eyes of Stephen Miller, when you look in the dead eyes of Donald fucking Trump or J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or Netanyahu, those are the monsters. Those are the monsters.

They really truly are. And I'm sorry, does Nick Fuentes now cross that line? Where he's not directly involved in the murder of somebody? He is openly and obviously celebrating mocking and taking strange glee in the murder of somebody else. These are questions worth asking,

but it's worth noting that Nick Fuentes is the political center of millions of young men in this society. And they look at that and they take their lead from him. They look up to this guy, this 27-year-old freak. And I think it's worth engaging with on that level that this is who these people are. And this is who they're listening to. And as society spirals down and down and down, you can see the dehumanization gets stronger and stronger and stronger.

All right. Now there's a bunch more stuff that I could say. And we're having a Sanga where we're going to discuss it as a community together. I want to get other people's opinions on all of this. But I did want to kind of read something that I posted on Instagram. And again, you know, somebody messaged me on Patreon. They're like, Brett, like this Minneapolis stuff is happening. Where are you at?

Like, why haven't you said anything? It's like, dude, I got to work 40 hours a week. I have to go to class multiple times a week. I have three kids. It's not as easy as it used to be when I was just doing Rev. to be able to come in at any given time and do stuff. I have to, I'm deeply constrained. I have about two days a week, sometimes one day a week where I could fit maybe an episode in. So I'm doing my best. And I hate social media, but on Instagram, that is where I can launch stuff. When I'm at work,

when I'm at break, I can drop analysis. I can share things. And I did. From the moment the Renee good thing happened from the moment ICE was dispatched to Minneapolis. I've been screaming on my stories and Instagram, particularly, and also on the main feed. And there is, something that I kind of wanted to touch on. I'll read a couple of these things. Let me just read a couple of my of my post because these were some of the things that came out of me in the wake of some of the stuff we've been seeing. Here's one. If you can't feel the pain and suffering of others, if you don't care about the well-being of your fellow human beings, if you can't feel compassion for families torn apart, for children ripped from their mother's arms, for the widow of

someone murdered by the state, then this society has turned you into a monster. You have been dehumanized by your identification with that tattered blood-soaked flag. You've been taught to hate and loathe and to strip down your own heart until all that's left is a black husk. Bitter and resentful, death will descend upon you like a vulture, and you will be wiped off the face of this earth, never having truly felt love or God, never having experienced being a full human being. Living on the surface of life, your depth as a conscious self-aware being in the cosmos was only theoretical, only a possibility never realized. Truly, you

threw your own life away, and the grave yons for you, as empty as it will ever be. And that's an attempt from a place of hurt and desperation to explain how through hate and the dehumanization of others, one dehumanizes themselves.

And Mao says the death of a reactionary is as light as a feather. You know, if you spend your whole life hating, tearing down other people, this nihilistic, anti-human posture towards life. Like your life really is meaningless in a way that somebody who is connected and loving and open. Their life isn't because their life was about love and coming together and connection and unity. And your life was about destruction and murder and death and hate and fear. And so you've

lived a half life. You've dehumanized yourself. The other thing I said, and I mentioned this throughout this episode, I said, the buildup of ice isn't just for immigrants. It's the Trump regime personal army that is already will increasingly be used against American dissenters, anyone to their left. Under the pretext of an immigration crackdown, they are building a domestic army that can be deployed against any activist, organizer, agitator, or anyone they see as the enemy. No legal rights, no constitutional protections. We are way past that.

Soon ICE will be knocking on the doors of people who speak out against this regime, disappearing people with no recourse for their families to find them. In a context of a declaration of martial law or an active war, this will be their main domestic force of suppression, totally unfettered from whatever shreds of legal, political, or social restraint they might still be constrained by. Mark my words, it's coming. And here again, we get back to martial law. There's been always this desire to declare martial law for the emergency powers that it bestows

on the regime. And there's almost no doubt that in the wake of this last murder, there'll be a, more of an upsurge of popular discontent, and it's just a matter of time, and Trump has already explicitly threatened to declare martial law, and that gives them even wider lanes, not that they need it, but even wider legal lanes for them to impose suffering and violence on people they deem as the enemy. And doors are going to be kicked in, and there's no Fourth Amendment right, there's no Second Amendment right, there's no First Amendment right. If you are seen as the enemy, it's open season on you. We are literally at that point, and that could sound hyperbolic only to somebody who's not paying.

attention, who hasn't been paying attention for the last 10 fucking years, right? That can only sound hyperbolic to somebody who's not tapped into reality. And I don't think that's hyperbolic. I think that's what we're already saying, and we'll continue to see. And not only in the declaration of martial law, in the context of a resurgent, democratic protest movement in the face of yet another ICE murder, but imagine if there's a war. The U.S. as we speak, is moving substantial military assets to the Middle East possibly to launch an attack on Iran. And in the wake of an attack on Iran

by a very unpopular government domestically, favorability polls will go down, right? Oil prices shoot up, the cost of living goes high, maybe Americans have to be sent over there and die. Okay, now you're talking about abysmal popular support from a president that most people already hate. You're talking about more social agitation, more social unrest,

and what force do you think is going to be used to suppress that? Maybe you can use police forces, maybe you can use the military, but there's question marks there, right? Will the military, as it's currently constituted, go against the constitutional rights of Americans for a Trump regime? Almost certainly there are elements within the military that disagree with Trump and would not want to open fire on their own people. Local police departments, as rotten as they can be, they still ultimately tend to live in the general metro area of the, of the cities they police. They tend to have people there. They'll beat people up.

They'll do racist violence. They'll do all this stuff. But maybe they have a line there. They won't cross too. But ICE? Ice will do anything. So in the context of martial law or in the context of an unpopular war, increasing social unrest, an economic system that doesn't deliver for 80 to 90% of

Americans, there's going to be a massive need for democracy. for domestic suppression of dissent. And no organization is as well placed and as revved up for it as the ICE Gestapo is. And then a final thing I want to touch on before I wrap up here. The, and this has been true with Palestine,

this has been true with so many issues, but it's increasingly unacceptable. The amount of people in our lives that are just not paying attention that just don't seem to care, for whatever reason, they just ignore this shit. Now their algorithm is differently constructed

They're maybe not be seeing as much of it But really to not and understand Palestine Or to not have any idea of what ICE is doing You have to be living under a fucking rock And some people have an algorithmically constructed rock That they're living under A lot of people fancy themselves non-political I don't get into it

I don't really know much Well guess what politics has an interest in you Motherfucker And whether it's whether or not you can go to the doctor Whether it's you get evicted from your fucking house Whether it's ICE fucking kills you on your way to work whether it's a nuclear fucking war that happens because of your belligerent government empire, politics will come knocking on your fucking door eventually.

And your nice little life of curated ignorance won't be enough to save it. So there's a fucking frustration on behalf of a lot of us to so many people that can just whistle pass the graveyard of daily life in America. And that's because there's a certain luxury and distance and privilege that people have to not be confronted directly and materially in their own life with a lot of this stuff. especially if you're well off, especially if you're enough well off, right? That like money isn't a, you're not like fighting to survive. And even those people that aren't well off that are fighting for to survive, isn't that

convenient for the system. Because if your entire, every ounce of your energy and every second of your day is dedicated to finding out how you're going to scrap by to survive to the next month, you've also been fucking set aside onto the sidelines of political struggle, right? By your very desperation, you can't focus on this stuff. a part of me that has compassion for that. And then you also see these upper middle class privilege fucking pukes who just act like they're above at all or that, you know, they can't be bothered with it. So here's the last post I'll read. I'm not saying everybody should be super into politics,

follow it daily, make it your whole personality, et cetera. But do you even know what you believe? Do you know the history that produced you and everything around you? Do you ever ask yourself what your deepest values are and why? Do you ever question what your moral and social obligation to others is? What your obligation to future generations is? If you've never even asked these questions, much less answered them, how can you even know who you are? If your whole life is just jumping from one act of consumption to the next, your existence narrowed to the mere meeting of personal desire after personal desire, seeking nothing but comfort and ease, what meaning could such a life even have? Totally unexamined. Totally unexamined.

totally passive, existing only on the foamy surface of life, unable or unwilling to live for anything greater than this self. It's true that perhaps you avoid certain forms of suffering that are produced by living passionately and deeply, produced by opening up your heart to the pain of others, produced by probing your own existence without any anchor of certainty or control. But that is an elevated form of suffering, a suffering that is unavoidable when one lives and loves deeply. I, for one, prefer the sharp suffering of depth to the dull pleasures of a shallow and hollow selfishness.

And not only is that an indictment of certain people in our society, it asks us, what are we willing to give up? What are we willing to sacrifice in this historical conjuncture, this world historical moment where so much is up in the air, so much is on the line, the future of humanity in so many ways, as it often is, is up for debate right now, up for grabs right now. Are you going to narrow your life to what you're doing after work, to your next Netflix show that you can binge, to the next thing off Timo or Sheen that you can buy, to the next little bobble you can get to momentarily cover up the fucking howling void in your soul about

what meaning in this fucking economy and in this empty-ass society even means? Or is it like, I'm willing to suffer? to struggle, to cry, to weep, to be hurt in pursuit of something bigger than me, in pursuit of a historical goal, whether or not we get there. I'm willing to orient my life towards something bigger. I'm willing to take part in the collective suffering of humanity and of my society. I'm invested. I'm emotionally, spiritually, psychologically invested in the well-being of humanity and in the well-being of the society I am in and all my friends and family are in. And I would truly sacrifice my life, either literally in the form of dying,

but also in the form of sacrificing your life of comfort, in so far as you have any, in pursuit of meaning and purpose and unity and love and the betterment of the world, a world of justice and truth, a world that, a society that takes care of its people, that doesn't stomp on the throats of people around the world, building a better world, even if we don't see it. You know it's cliche about planting a tree you'll never sit under, but there's a truth there. Can we live in such a way that we're willing to sacrifice the time we have on this earth,

which could be spent jerking off and gambling and eating nice food and buying stuff all the time or whatever the fuck people do? Could we sacrifice that to live for something bigger than ourselves? that we will actually consciously engage in the suffering of our world with an open heart, walk around the world like an open wound, and the world pours salt and alcohol into it all the time, and it screams and it hurts, and still we walk,

because we are living for something bigger than the self, bigger than pleasure and comfort and ease. We don't bury our heads in the sand. We don't look away. We don't, you know, close the aperture of our consciousness to just, just focus on the petty little day-to-day comforts and eases that we can find here and now. Ooh, I wonder what we're going to have for dinner. Oh, I wonder what the new show came on.

You did you hear about the new show? Ooh, look who's going to the Super Bowl. It's not that there's no place for that, but is that your whole life? You know, we should have, you know, I'm going to watch the Super Bowl. You know, I'm going to have some friends over and we're going to drink a couple of beers and we're going to watch the Super Bowl. I'm not saying don't live like, you know, don't have anything nice. But what's the fundamental orientation of your life?

What are you willing to give up for? What are you willing to sacrifice for? Be honest about that. Ask yourself. And I think that's the initial step to living a meaningful life. And honestly, these people that for the time can ignore reality, can ignore politics, man, do you think they're going to live their whole life without politics knocking on their door? You think climate change and World War III and an economic collapse aren't going to eventually shake these people by the collar?

And because they have no reference point, because they have not engaged in reality, they're so hidden and obscured from it, when that does come knocking, which it almost certainly will for 99% of us on this planet, it will shatter them into confusion and terror. They won't understand what's happening to them, much less have any ability to fight back any community that they can engage with, to come together to help meet each other's needs or anything like that. we have to be not only open to all of that, but willing participants in history, which means being scared and uncertain and not knowing what's next. And yes, any one of us could be targeted. I could shut down all my Rev Left stuff.

I could scrape it all from the internet, turn everything off. So there's very little of any evidence of me saying anything scarier or weird out there in the world. You know, and that will probably guarantee that I won't be on a list somewhere or I'll fall to the bottom of that list or whatever. But no, I can't.

Okay? In the deepest parts of my being, it compels me to do whatever my little ass can, sitting out here in the middle of the Great Plains, to try to push the ball forward and none of us can do it by ourselves. But we all must play our role. It would be safer for me to not play this role, right? But at what cost to my soul? At what cost to my being?

At what cost to my authenticity? to my freedom. Because no matter the deeply unfree society I live in, I in my heart of hearts am a free man. And what I mean by that is not that I'm not constrained by economic and political power, but that I refuse to bow down

to an unjust system to get by within it. I will not submit or subordinate myself to the dictates of an unjust ruling class and an unjust order. And I will howl and scream and organize and fight and not hold back at all would I perceive to be the truth

not because I'm trying to lift myself up or get a cool career or get validation from anybody but because of the deepest parts of my fucking soul I have to and to not do that would be an abandonment of my core authenticity as a human being

it would be as Sartre said to live in bad faith and even then even if I did all that there's no guarantee that I would escape anything we're all in this fucking meat grinder together So let's grab hands, let's hold each other, let's protect each other, just like that man in Minneapolis who died today, his last act on this earth was to throw his body, was to throw his body around the body of another human being. He may have known her, he may not have. But in the face of ice, pepper spraying her and attacking her, his last act on this earth was to throw his body between them and her.

and for that alone he's a fucking hero. And when we see, when we learn his real name, when his actual pictures come out, we honor him because now he wasn't just killed by ice. He was killed by ice, standing up for his community, and in the last instance of his life,

of his existence on this planet, he threw his body around the body of somebody else being attacked, an innocent person to protect them. and the cost he paid for that was the rest of his life was existence itself and it happened so fast he probably wasn't able to mentally make that calculation

but from the pits of his soul from his bright red beating heart he just did it because it's human to do that we are social creatures it is human to love to protect to come together and any force that seeks to stomp and kill and hurt and destroy is by definition not outside of our nature as human beings but anti-human.

So we honor that man as a martyr who literally gave his life to protect somebody else. And that will never not be heroic. My heart is in Minneapolis and all of us have a duty to stand up and fight the fuck back by. any means necessary. Love and solidarity. Come round you roving dancers if this speaks to the souls you were given. If you like me have never believed

in this kingdom of commerce we live in, language is a beginning. But language is never not. And a terrorist look like my mother. And do most of the same kind of stuff. stuff here's to Pedro here's the low leader kept looking at what

they were seeing like those New York signs in the sidewalk grime no blacks dogs or Puerto Ricans Y KViva Alicia Rodriguez in the thousands before and sins who talk too fast get pushed and push back

and then choose to start talking again so it's right Alicia rack Move Alicia Moo I would be bored E. Quiet even if I was born on the moon. ...was put into prison No trial to charge or conviction

Her crime was living the one way there isn't that screaming to get the tape off your lips. I came here to sing for tomorrow To not let today get away Because the signs may have changed with the lines are the same And they're still blaming us for their shame Yeah, they're still blaming us for their need For a culture of ecstatic greed

They still say what they said is not what they meant And it's hard fought for listening My grandpa was a communist They might have said a terrorist And when someone looks at what I've done I know songs won't seem like enough Songs are for sure not nearly enough so it's rad. ALEAS you're at.

Move, ALEASIA MOO I would be born equal even if I was born on the moon. The two groups convicted of American sedition are the proud boys and the Puerto Ricans. We share a Wikipedia page. So what else can you say? It's ticker tape accumulation. neoliberal sublimation, new precarriate convinced that immigrants are corporations.

Hold the phone, just be patient while we burn your poets pages while the doctor takes a medicine and tries to fuck the patients. Oh my god, they put her in a courtroom in Chicago. They bound her hands behind her back with tape across her mouth, and when she screamed, the tape released, and she said what the world says, you cannot own a country, you do not own a country, and so two guards took her legs and held her to the floor while another hunched in the face and gagged her like before and she got 50 years and more and they never said what for her she was pardoned in 1999 she's been saying the same thing the whole time she's saying it still

she's saying it now she's saying it still and she's saying it now so it's right alice you're right move elise you move i would be bored equate quite even if I was born