Rev Left Radio - UNLOCKED: Bernie, Impeachment, & Breht's Winter Camping Trip

Episode Date: January 29, 2020

This episode was originally put out as a Patreon episode for our supporters, but after receiving multiple messages from patrons asking us to make it public, we did. In this episode, Breht explores, analyzes, and rants about the major headlines of the past week or so.  Topics include: Breht's winter camping trip and interests in the outdoors, the Bernie campaign and how socialists should think about it, voting v. electoralism, Medicare for All, Trump's impeachment spectacle, Iraqi protests, Greenwald v. Bolsonaro, the Joe Rogan endorsement, and much more.  If you like this episode and want to support the show *in exchange for* getting monthly bonus content like this, join our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. So for this month's bonus Patreon episode, I'm going to try something different. As I've said many times, I'm going to continue to try new things and see what sticks and what doesn't. And I got an idea recently to do a little segment called Reading Between the Headlines, where basically I just take some of the big headlines of the week or perhaps month and just sort of, you know, in a free-flowing, organic way, just go over them. I don't have a lot of my thoughts pre-organized. I'm just sort of going to talk about things as they come up,

and we'll cover the Bernie situation. My thoughts on Trump's impeachment, Iraqi protests, the media coverage of the coronavirus, and maybe we'll have time to get through some other stuff like Greenwald, the death of Kobe Bryant, and some other stuff. So we'll see what we get to. But I actually wanted to start this bonus Patreon episode talking about and reflecting on my recent camping trip. My winter camping trip, as many, some of you might know, some of my interests outside of politics involve outdoors stuff, camping, hiking, bushcraft, just overall trying to be a better outdoorsman, teaching myself how to fish this year. You know, firearms comes into that as well.

and I have some buddies that I knew since I was a child, you know, probably I met some of them when I was as young as eight or nine, and then a couple other buddies I met in like freshman year of high school. And we had this tradition for the last decade or so of a winter camping trip where we go out in the coldest part of the year here in Nebraska, which gets incredibly cold, preferably when there's lots of snow on the ground. And we just basically camp for a couple of days, tent camps. specifically. And so it's fun to do it with your buddies. You get this little challenge of being out in the elements of, you know,

setting up camp, going out, hiking through the winter woods, having an entire sort of state park to yourself because nobody else is dumb enough to be out there camping in the winter. And, you know, we do stuff like we try to find public access sort of spots and go and shoot. So we had a day where we went out this past. weekend to some public access land near the state park that we were camping in and you know shot shotguns rifles nine millimeters um ars etc and yeah we just did a lot of stuff and it's really cool

because you know here in nebraska you can really get out of the way of other people like this is an hour and a half south of of the Omaha metro area and it's you know when the sky is clear i mean you get very little light pollution you see the Milky Way band through the sky in fact this year a mountain lion at least one maybe two have been spotted in the exact park where we went and camped and you know just like a week before I left for for camp there was a new picture that somebody's trail cam picked up of a mountain lion a big ass goddamn mountain lion and just see how those that animal is just an amazing animal but they call it a ghost cat because it's so hard to find I mean it's it is it is you know away from humans it does not like anything to do with humans it smells humans before we have any idea that they're even there and it goes in the opposite direction most times very very rarely do mountain lions attack human beings it has happened i think a couple times actually last year and once in washington and once in oregon um people did get attacked by mountain lions but

it is pretty rare they like to stay away from humans they live very solitary lives um one of the advantages of going in the winter is that you get to see tracks and we do hike through the winter woods and we see you know a cacophony of different animal tracks try to identify them you know different birds raccoons possum stuff like that coyotes which you hear them howling and hooting in the nighttime and it's kind of interesting from a distance coyote howls can almost sound like a like a woman screaming in the dark a couple weeks ago i went winter camping by myself and i like to do it to test myself physically, my outdoor skills, as well as psychologically. And I heard coyotes just in the distance as I laid down and go to sleep, howling.

But it was just in these dark winter woods, and it was from a few miles away. And so it sounded almost like a woman screaming in the dark woods. And it can be very eerie in that way. But we didn't see any mountain line tracks, unfortunately. But we know that there's probably at least one in the general area when we were there, which is sort of interesting. I've never really camped in bear country, but I do look forward to doing that eventually. I have a buddy in Seattle, Washington, who lives up there, and I can travel up there, and he obviously gives me free lodging, free transportation, so it takes the big cost out of traveling,

making it much more of an option for me to go there once a year. And this year, we're going to do a big backpacking trip through the Washington Wilderness. So I'm not exactly sure where we'll go, but mountain lions are definitely present in Washington as our bears. I'll get to take some precautions with regards to bears when I go up there. But I'm really looking forward to it. Anyways, the whole camping trip went really well. And I'm actually talking, I'm thinking about doing more work on this topic. I'm not exactly sure how to sort of shoehorn it into the left.

And that's something I've been struggling with. But, you know, as I've talked about, like my other interest, science and meditation, a lot on this show, especially on Patreon, where I can be more open about different aspects that aren't just about politics. I'm thinking about doing more work on doing outdoor stuff. You know, I take, it's a huge part of my life. I think there's really interesting existential challenges that come, especially with hiking and camping alone, long distance hiking or winter camping in the woods by yourself. And I think it's, there might be some interests on the left and just having discussions about that.

Like what it does is it, why is it so existentially reifying to be out in nature? Why is it so good for at least my mental and emotional health to have constant sort of contact with nature, to be in solitude, to go out alone and to sit in the woods by yourself and just sort of melt into nature? You know, it sort of loosens the bounds of your ego because you're not performing any social role like you do every day in society. You know, in your day-to-day life, you're playing the role of a father, of a romantic partner, of a worker, you know, a bunch of different roles. that we're constantly performing for one another in a social context. But when you are able to get outside of any sort of social context, when you are able to go out into the woods, especially in a case where you're going out there by yourself,

there's a lot of things you discover about yourself. There's a lot of skills you have to learn in order just to be okay. Sometimes it can get very dangerous. I told you about the camping trip I went with the coyote screaming a couple weeks ago, and that went successfully. I hiked an hour into the woods, set up camp, and then, you know, when you're out there in the middle of the woods, you're not leaving.

It's snow-covered woods. You're not going to walk through the dark woods for an hour to go back to your truck. So you're out there and you're in the shit. But a couple weeks after that, I tried to do an experimental thing where I wanted to go winter camping with a hammock, right? It poses a lot of problems with regards to airflow underneath a hammock and get very cold. And I went out there when it was, I got down to negative 17.

believe was the lowest that got and I'm by myself in the woods with the hammock but I didn't hike that far in because I knew that this was an experiment and it could go horribly astray and that I had to be able to retreat to my truck if the hammock experiment went wrong and sure enough it did I was out there for several hours when the sun was up it was okay I set up my hammock started a fire you know getting ready just getting everything in place making sure I had a huge firewood before the stacked before the sun went down and then eventually you know when it got late I decided to, you know, climb in my hammock and see how it went. And by this time, it's probably, you know, 9 p.m.

In the winter here, it gets dark around 6. So, you know, three hours of darkness. I climb into my hammock. And at first, it's super comfy and cozy. And I'm like, oh, shit, this might actually work, you know. Keep in mind, it's negative 17 outside. And after about probably 30 minutes, I started feeling just this bone-chilling cold,

radiating up through my life. lower back and butt area like if you can imagine sitting in a hammock that one part of your middle of your body droops a little lower than your head and your feet because that's where a lot of your weight goes down and that you know you have about two feet of ice cold air underneath you before the ground and in this situation i started that wind was whipping underneath my hammock and causing this deep deep cold that my sleeping bag um my my my sleeping pad none of it could properly insulate against and i also felt my feet um we're really struggling to to stay warm. And after about an hour of trying to see if it would work, the cold kept radiating

and it just got worse and worse. I started, my toes, you know, started to become immobile and losing this a tad bit of their vitality. And I knew that, okay, this is actually going to get dangerous. If I stayed out here the entire night, when it gets down to who knows how cold at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., there's no telling how dangerous things could have really gotten for me. So that was the situation in which I got up at, you know, 930 pitch dark. I had to take down my hammock, get all my supplies together and basically take them back to my truck and, you know, abort mission because it was just getting too dangerous and I knew I couldn't do it. But anyways, this is all to say that there's this part of my life that I never get to talk about. I'm interested in doing so.

I don't exactly know how to approach it from a left-wing perspective, and I'm not exactly sure that I need to. you know obviously this is a political show but it's also a human being behind the mic here and all of us are interested in politics but we have a multifaceted life we have other hobbies other interests other things that inspire us other things that we challenge ourselves with and every time when i've put those things forward whether they be buddhism meditation interest in like science i've gotten really good responses from people that says yes we actually like hearing about this stuff it's interesting you know some of us share those hobbies and interests as well um and so I'm going to try to do a little bit more with that with outdoor stuff. It's a big part of my life this year. I'm challenging myself to do a three-day hike over 63 miles, which would require hiking and camping. So you backpack about 20 miles a day. Then you set up camp, wake up the next day, do another 20 miles, set up camp, wake up the

next day and finish the last 20 miles. And that's the big challenge that I'm setting for myself in this spring. So if people really are interested in this content, perhaps I could do some patronage. entry on bonus, sort of maybe I can figure out some way to live stream portions of that backpacking hike. I might go alone or I might go with my wife. It depends if I can get her to go out there and do it. She does not like the very cold.

So when I'm trying to convince her to come out winter camping, unless I can jack into an electrical site and get a space heater in our tent to make it comfy inside the tent, she's really not interested. I understand that. But she does like, you know, hiking and stuff. So I'm thinking in springtime maybe she'll go with me, at least for part of that trip. In any case, if any of you are interested, and me finding a way to possibly live stream some of that and, you know, just, I don't know,

just put it out there for those who support the show. If there's any interest at all, let me know, you know, message me on Patreon or through the website and say that you're interested or even comment in the bottom of this, and I'll do it. At the very least, it would be interesting, and I always am trying to find new ways of keeping this show fresh and interesting and sort of expansive. And I know that, you know, as much as we're into politics, there's so much more. to life that we can talk about. And it doesn't always have to be shoehorned into left wing politics. If I talk about my experiences in the wilderness, you know, the effects

it have on my psychology and challenging myself, it's human shit. And, you know, whatever your politics are, hopefully some will find it interesting. I do think there are a way to connect these things, certainly with regards to building skills, outdoorsmanship, when it comes to ethical and conservation-based hunting and fishing. When it's done right, and done ethically and done thoughtfully. It can be a wonderful skill set to provide people with food and to manage the land,

especially in situations like most of this country where human populations have displaced major predators for, let's say, deer. And so without that, with those predators being displaced or pushed to extinction in many places of this country, there is an overpopulation of prey animals like deer.

They flourish without any predators. And, you know, despite some animal rights groups like PETA saying like you know all animals should be completely allowed to live fully there is a responsibility humans have when they displace that natural balance when they push off predators and then prey proliferate and in the case of deer if they're not managed if they're not ethically hunted with conservation and game management in mind you have serious overpopulation issues and that creates disease that creates starvation not enough food for for dears to to compete over and the animals die horrific, you know, destitute lives and deaths out there in the wilderness.

And so game management and ethical hunting and conservation-based land management are essential parts of maintaining a healthy environment. And it's interesting that hunting and conservation types, although they often get sort of stereotyped as, you know, just dumb, you know, what is that Looney Tunes hunter who goes out and hunts, bugs bunny just this dumbass dude that wants to go out and kill shit there certainly are those types of hunters but it's not the majority and when you really get into to ethical and conservation based hunting and land management you see that a lot of the times it's these games and parks people it's these conservation hunters that are on the front lines of keeping public lands public of being pissed off when a trump goes and decimates or sells off large chunks of public land to private corporations you know it's often these groups that are on the forefront of you know teaming up

with environmentalists who they sometimes have beefs with because they are environmentalists of a certain type but they're not necessarily vegans of course etc and it creates these interesting situation i listen to a hunting podcast and land management and conservation podcast where these people you know these are oftentimes like you know dudes that you know wear camel and go out and hunt and stuff, and they will openly talk about how much right-wing economics and corporatists sell-off of public land is one of their huge fucking issues. And it's enough to turn some of them off to people like Trump and the Republican Party when otherwise that reactionary ideology might be, you know, the sort of shit that seeps into those

minds. But it's a lot of times it's the hunters and the people who fish and the people who go out and deal with the wilderness and engage with it and really come to depend on it that are in the forefront of preserving those areas, preserving that social space, preserving that public access land. And so I think the left would do themselves a huge disservice if we played into those liberal stereotypes about who hunters are and played in fully into like the sort of pita mindset that is sort of non-n nuanced and really is completely ignorant of this whole other side of public access, of state and national parks, of conservation and of land management. And I think

it would behoove us, at least on that level, to think deeply about these issues and to not fall prey to some of those anti-human sort of stereotypes that a lot of coastal liberals that have never fucking held a gun in their life and have no fucking clue what it takes to manage land and manage game. You know, it's easy to throw out a criticism, but it's much harder to think through why these people do what they do and how they think. And a lot of times, you'll find a lot of progressive minds in these segments of society. especially and particularly when it comes to fighting climate change, when it comes to protecting the environment,

when it comes to maintaining national and state parks and public access land. If it's not for these people at the forefront fighting these fights, that land will get fucking sold off to the highest bidder. That's corporations or private people that just want a bunch of property and that have these huge ranches and shit. And then all of a sudden you'll find yourself with fewer lakes to go out fewer public access places to go explore fewer national and state. parks to go out and enjoy, and that also contributes to environmental degradation, exploitation,

and, you know, perpetuates climate change. So those are some issues that pretty much nobody on the fucking left talks about, and maybe we here at RevLeft can begin to fill that void as I become more knowledgeable on the subject as I go out and engage in hunting and fishing and ethical land management and take these issues deeper. Maybe I can become a voice on the far left that can bring some sober. minded analysis to these things and break through some of the ignorance and dismissive stereotypes that often come with these sorts of discussions.

So, yep, that's going to be my little intro prelude to see if people are at all interested. And what we're going to do on their public feed to try this out is I've been in talks with the YouTuber Mexie to come back on the show and talk about our outdoor experiences, our experiences with meditation, how they're linked up. She's also somebody that likes going out into the woods. and you know engaging in the wilderness and so i thought we could have a really interesting discussion so that should be coming in the next couple weeks as well so um again let me know what you think about all of that but let's go ahead and tackle some fucking headlines first headline that i think is

is big and important is just a bunch of issues around bernie sanders right now Bernie Sanders is leading in the polls nationally i think he's close to being tied with um with joe Biden, at least in the margin of error. And in some key early states like New Hampshire and Iowa, he's showing interestingly big leads, significant leads. And for the first time in a long time, I'm thinking, holy shit, this might actually happen. I did that episode a few months back, what if Bernie wins, thinking through the implications of a victory, talking about what the obstacles, the systemic institutional obstacles to

a Bernie presidency would be the opportunities it would open up to the left, et cetera. And, you know, when you go, especially on Twitter and you look at the left, you know, the communists, anarchist, socialist discourse around Bernie, it's very easy to just get in this black and white mindset of, you know, oh, somebody said something good about Bernie, that is, that needs to be corrected, it needs to be attacked, you know, anybody that has anything good to say about a fucking social imperialist, social Democrat, and their election is a betrayal to the left, you know, and all this shit. and then you see like some fucking bread tube-ass anarchists talking about like I support Bernie 100% and you get this weird ass situation where reality is just fucking distorted and the conversations happening on Twitter become less and less relevant to real world shit like you know when I'm out hiking with my fucking buddies who are all union guys they're they're specific you know from the outside they look like fucking dumbass rednecks right these buddies I've had since I was a kid and we go winter camping.

But they're all fucking pro-Bernie. They're all fucking hate Trump. You know, we're out there like drinking beer and shooting guns and driving trucks and setting up camp and hiking through the woods and shit. And from an outsider perspective, if you take this liberal stereotype, you'd be like, oh, look at those four redneck-ass dudes and this red state fly over Nebraska state doing redneck-ass shit. You know, those are the deplorables. Those people are hopeless. And then at the end of the night, we come, we sit down, we start talking about politics. They're all union guys.

they all fucking hate they're all working class kids we all grew up in working class shit we all know each other as working class kids is how we met and developed friendships they all fucking hate trump they have battles within their unions trying to push back against conservative rank and file members and talk about you know the the economic consequences of republican economics and you know one of them these guys like fucking steam fitters and you know insulation guys and you know real union guys that have been in the union for a long time, just calling themselves democratic socialists, you know, just big hunting boots, fucking car heart jackets, talking about the, you know, why every human being deserves to be in a union and why this economy is run for the rich and all this shit.

And so I just think it's really interesting that when you get outside of the bubble of Twitter and you talk to real fucking people, all the stereotypes fade away, all the black and white thinking fades away. And I find that the less time I spend on Twitter in the fucking coliseum of Twitter, the more sort of down to earth my politics and my understanding gets. And I think the Bernie, my take on the Bernie thing comes from that more sober-minded, realistic, you know, talk to everyday people sort of perspective and not like, I spend 18 hours a day on fucking Twitter yelling at other people whose politics don't precisely align

with my own. You know, that I think is really bad. You can jump on there, you know, jump in the Coliseum, throw some fists once in a while, talk shit to reactionaries and neo-libs. That's all fun in games, and I'm not saying never get on social media, but I really want people to think about how it distorts your mindset when you are completely dedicated to social media and really getting all of your information about the world through Twitter. And a big place where this comes out is on the Bernie issues. I think there's just a lack of nuance, a lack of complex thinking, a lack of being able to explore implications of things without being attacked, right? Like there's no room on especially Twitter to have any sort of nuanced discussion, to ask any sort of controversial question.

I even find myself just not even typing shit out, not even giving my thoughts on Twitter because it's just like one thing you say wrong, one word that you put in the wrong place or whatever will just invite a sort of backlash. And it just gets exhausting. And again, it's not indicative of the real world. It is the real world and that, of course, lots of people are on it and talking and, you know, we're real human beings. We're not all Russian bots and shit, so it is the real world. But Twitter, relative to other social media platforms, has one of the lowest user rates, actually. Like the amount of people on Twitter, especially the amount of people that are active on a daily or weekly basis on Twitter is a small motherfucking segment of the overall population. And that's also something we're thinking about when we were thinking about the distortion that something like Twitter can spin.

And just the way that certain behaviors are incentivized through the algorithm structure, I mean, it all leads to a very weird place where I'm disconnecting more and more so that I can be more grounded and more sort of living in the real world than in this sort of fever dream of fucking Twitter. And when it comes to Bernie, I mean, I think I've pretty much made it fairly clear that I'm going to be fucking supporting Bernie. I hope to fucking Christ Bernie wins. Like, my God, you know, but the big difference when you say something like that

is, you know, advocating for voting as just merely one thing you do every few years. years to try your hardest to make life a little easier on the fucking least well off voting is much different than electoralism right me advocating for voting for Bernie i'm not advocating for voting for any democrat or whoever wins vote blue no matter who to beat trump not a fucking liberal obviously but Bernie is the furthest to the left that we've had as a candidate in this country since probably Eugene Debs and he does help expand people's political imagination he his big fucking campaign pushed lately with his videos is trying to get people not to individualize their fucking struggle. Oh, you got laid off. Oh, you can't afford health care. Oh, you went bankrupt

when your mom got cancer. It's not your fault. You know, it's a systemic problem. And if we come together and realize it as a systemic problem, but not a personal one, we can do something about it. And, you know, that's interesting and that's good. And it gets people motivated and it pushes people in the right direction and expands their political imagination. But voting is different than electoralism, right? I'm advocating. for people to vote for Bernie, because it's not just the least well-off option, but actually a real chance at getting fucking people that I care about health care, which I'll get to in a second. But it's very different than electoralism, which is a strategy.

Electoralism is the fundamental strategy of social Democrats that want to pursue change in society first and foremost and almost exclusively through the electoral process. Now, that's something I completely reject. You know, I do not believe in electoralism as a strategy, obviously. You know, all the communist and socialist critiques that all of us know, you know, enter here. Like, it's very obvious that I'm against electoralism. But it's important to get somebody in that might change and might make a difference, a material difference in a lot of working class people's lives. And I look at it from the perspective, not of some abstract purity test, where it's like, I'm a communist on Twitter.

I need to fucking shit on Bernie every second just to prove to everybody that I'm really about this shit. Stop. my shit is rooted in my own family my friends my community my neighborhood living my life not as some upper middle class um sort of person who wants to be radical on twitter but as a fucking working class person sometimes low-ass income bordering on poor person um you know myself never having earned over 35k in a year my parents you know in similar situations i've talked about the the hardship of of growing up and like you know our electricity getting turned off cars getting repossessed, all this stuff.

But right now, my mom is getting her wages garnished $700 per paycheck, which is $1,200 per month. And she's a job that she earns under $20 an hour and has been working there for almost 30 fucking years, right? And she was earning $12 an hour until just a couple years ago when I had to sit down and beg her to ask her fucking boss for a raise because she just is conflict diverse and doesn't want, he doesn't really understand all this stuff, you know? and I finally got her to do it, and she went, and she got a raise. But my God, she's dedicated that many years of her life to this one business, still making low income. And then, because she has old medical debt that she wasn't able to pay off, she's being garnished.

So $700 out of every paycheck, if you're earning less than $20 an hour, is fucking disastrous. Luckily, you know, she has a husband and they can make things work together. A lot of times it's pulling out, like, his money from his life insurance or some sort of retirement plan that he's had at his job that he can, you know, before he retires, get in and sort of take out a loan against himself just to make ends meet sort of thing.

But yeah, so she's getting her wages garnished $1,200 a month, and then my brother-in-law is getting his wages garnished, $500 every paycheck, $1,000 a month for old medical debt as well. My sister and my brother-in-law's credit have been devastated primarily and almost single-handedly

because of medical debt that they just were not able to pay off. And so two people close to me are having their economic situation already a precarious one worsened dramatically just by old medical debt. They got sick and they couldn't fucking pay for it. And now they're being fucking punished for that every single fucking paycheck. You know, how many days is it, if you did the math, how many hours a day is my mom working just to pay off medical debt before she gets anything that she can actually keep and spend

on groceries or bills and shit? So when it comes to like Bernie versus Trump and like the sort of like, the sort of leftists who were like, fuck, you know, anybody talking about voting, you're all fake-ass leftist and, you know, fuck Bernie, you know, he's just as bad as anybody else. It doesn't matter. They're all fucking corrupt. Grow the fuck up. Because for me, the difference between a Bernie and a Trump presidency might mean the

difference between my mom getting fucking health care or not. The difference between a Bernie and a Trump presidency might be fucking kids being put in cages at the border and not. The difference between a Trump and a fucking Bernie presidency might be bombing Iran or killing their fucking general and not doing that. that, right? And so in these situations, you have to ask yourself, okay, these are my politics. I'm not a social democrat. I do not believe in electoralism, blah, blah, blah, but I do believe in getting material gains for my class and for oppressed people as far as we can possibly get

those benefits, get them out to the people who need them the most in whatever fucking way we can do that. Whatever way we can do that. All fucking tools in the toolbox, pull out what you can and fucking bang it against the system to get gains for our people. That means matter. That means mass work. That means organization. You know, that means all the stuff that communist and socialists and anarchists who are really about it and really out there in their communities organizing, all that shit that we already do. And it also means trying to vote in a way that makes it fucking a little bit easier for our class and for oppressed peoples. And if you really believe that they're all the fucking same, then what you're implicitly saying is that eight years of Bernie

and eight years of Trump are the fucking same. There's no material difference. no significant, meaningful material difference between how people are treated under either presidency, therefore it's not even worth thinking about or talking about. I think that is fucking childish. Look at health care alone. If the only thing that eight years of Bernie Sanders ever produces for anybody is Medicare for All, let's say he's just successful. That's it. Everything else, every other bill gets shut down, Republican obstructionism, blah, blah, blah, but he dedicates all eight years to getting Medicare for All and gets it. Would We say that it was worth voting for Bernie over Trump if that happens.

Of course. I mean, I think that's not even a fucking question. You know, that's the difference between my mom having $1,200 stolen from her every fucking month and my mom not ever having to worry about fucking getting sick again. You know, those differences matter. And Bernie wouldn't be able to do that by himself, but he would open up a grassroots movement and would try to put pressure from the top and the bottom on this one issue against the system and hopefully we can fucking get it.

That wouldn't just require voting for Bernie and sitting back for four years. That would require getting out in the fucking streets, staging mass marches, staging protest, obstructionist rallies, anything we can to push on the grassroots level for health care for all people. You know, that does matter. That would make a radical difference in people's lives. It would expand political imagination. And once we accept and even succeed at making health care a human right, what's to stop us from saying, yeah, just like health care,

Now apply that same logic to housing, apply that same logic to food, apply that same logic to education, and people's political imaginations expand. When it comes to imperialism, something any principled socialist or communist should be fucking a fervent, rabid opponent of, right? And I'm not saying that Bernie being put in the presidency would end imperialism. My God, no matter who you put in the fucking presidency, the sort of momentum of the imperialist system and the fact that imperialism is just what capital is. does on the global stage would still exist. There's no doubt about it. And I do agree with the critique that often social Democrats are the left side of

fascism and they have chauvinist elements and there's plenty of times where Bernie plays into imperialist propaganda, all shit that I hate and critique him for. But do you think that American militarism would be out there as vociferously and aggressively as it would

under a Clinton or a Biden presidency or a Trump presidency or whatever other Republican ghool, they can vomit up. Of course, I think it would be better. And if a Bernie presidency means that just a handful of fucking bombs don't fly and a handful of innocent people somewhere in the world don't get fucking killed, well, to those people who don't get killed, that fucking matters a lot, right? And it seems pretty chauvinist to say, I don't give a fuck at all. Whether Trump or Biden or whoever's in the presidency, I don't care because I have some

political abstract, a priori commitment to never, ever, ever, ever engaging in electoralism because I'm against it. And my purity and my position as a pure anarchist or socialist or communist dictates that I cannot participate in this disgusting fucking facade called American electoralism. That's fine. But at the same time, I think you should go back and you should read Marx and read Lenin and think very deeply about bringing a priori commitments to an ever-changing material arena that is constantly shifting and that is constantly opening up opportunities and closing those opportunities in situations where even a little voting here or there might change the material well-being of millions of people when it comes to health care or hundreds

of people when it comes to imperialism or thousands of people. I mean, I think Bernie might even be better on this, right? Like maybe he doesn't engage in any sort of actions for four or eight years. Like I think it was Jimmy Carter, right? Something like a bomb didn't fly under Carter's presidency. and I'm not even sure if that's true, but is there anybody else that could possibly become president

in this country that is running right now that would be as anti-imperialist or against imperialism or militarism than Bernie? Can you imagine Bernie going to fucking war with Iran or fucking Venezuela or staging coups in global south countries as vociferously as Trump and Hillary

and the Democrats and Republicans always do? I mean, there's a difference here and to ignore that difference and to paper over that difference and act like it doesn't exist I think is childish and and sort of silly and short-sighted and often it comes from people who are really detached from from real world suffering like if I'm an upper middle class student in college and I'm going to be pretty much taken care of no matter what like whether it's Trump or Bernie I'm okay well I have the privilege to them be like fuck voting

I'm all against it everybody's the same you know what doesn't matter meanwhile you couldn't fucking organize a PTA meeting but you're trying to tell people active don't vote for somebody who can make a real material change in working class people's lives. I just don't get it. I'm not on that fucking train. Now, if I said this shit on fucking Twitter, I'd have mass fucking people unfollowing me.

Oh, look, Brett, you know, he's a fucking liberal. Oh, look at this piece of shit. And that's the sort of downfall of Twitter. These conversations can't take place in any meaningful way because everybody's outperforming for one another. Everybody's out there trying to be the angriest, the purest, the most principled. And the irony, of course,

is that just vomiting out your opinion and constantly talking shit online is one of the most unprincipled ways to spend your fucking time on this planet. And especially if you're the type that's not, for whatever reason, maybe you can't or maybe you're just too lazy or whatever, you're not out there organizing, you're not out there doing your part to try to make this world or at least your community a little better of a place and you're actively saying people should not vote for the clear, better option. I think it's dangerous, it's naive, it's childish, and I don't want anything to do with it. So, you know, you support the Bernie presidency, hope to Christ that he can get in there,

open up opportunities, expand people's political imagination, and then after you've spent five to ten minutes voting once every four years, you get back to the real work of political education of organizing and of mass work, and you do it in tandem with the two things. That's my position on Bernie. And of course, you know, the Liz Warren lying about him saying women can't be presidents and Hillary Clinton coming out and saying nobody fucking likes him and Obama, you know, chewing his nails behind the scenes, wondering if he needs to come out and say, fuck Bernie just so that the Democrats can consolidate their neoliberal centrism. I mean, that's all indications that the mainstream neoliberal centrist Democrats are

fucking worried about Bernie and they do not see him as one of their own. And that's fundamentally because Bernie, not ideally, not perfectly, but to some degree will challenge two things. I think. imperialism and class politics in this country. And just those two things would be monumental shift for people's political imaginations of what America can be and could possibly take us on a new path to not being a fucking brutal force of violence and bloodshed and murder domestically and abroad.

I did hear a comrade say something like, what was it? It was about Bernie and it was, I'm trying to think. Oh, it was if capitalism really wanted to last longer, like it would vote, it would get a Bernie Social Democrat type in because that sort of social democracy would sort of alleviate some of the contradictions, right? If we've got free health care or like we radically shifted away from militarism, you know, those things would sort of make the domestic situation more tenable, more stable, and you actually will have capitalism last longer in a social democracy sort of. of pivot at this point in crisis as opposed to a fascist pivot. And that's true, right? And so there is this double-sided reality that we have to face. Like, you know, social democracy does continue to perpetuate capitalism. But the other, the sort of implicit underbelly of that argument, if you want to take it in the other direction, it would just be, you don't have control to dictate when capitalism

does and doesn't succeed. And the alternative being a devolution into fascism does not necessarily mean that capitalism will then come to an end quicker, right? like they have so much repressive ability to maintain power and control domestically and abroad that even a harder turn towards fascism wouldn't necessarily accelerate the rate at which capitalism ended right um it would just maybe be just a more brutal fucking 50 years before the crisis has become insurmountable than one in which people have health care unless people are being fucking bombed there's a difference there i just don't like the implicit um sort of argument that could be taken out of that, which is, therefore, it's not worth voting for

social democracy because it perpetuates capitalism, because I think that has a lot of assumptions about what the alternative is. And some people could mistake that argument to mean, well, you know, that means I shouldn't vote for, I hate capitalism, so I can't vote for social democracy because it'll make it last longer. So I'll just stand out and who gives the fuck who wins. It's all broken anyway. Then Trump wins a fucking again. And then, you know, we just devolve into this more brutal, disgusting way. But capitalism does. doesn't end. Like what? Like eight more years of Trump means we're going to have some fucking social revolution. But if Bernie gets in, it means 50 years until that social revolution

comes. It makes no sense. It's built on a bunch of fucking faulty-ass assumptions and presumptions. And it over-extends what it can possibly know and possibly predict about the future. So while it's true that social democracy would absolutely make capitalism more stable in this moment of crisis, it doesn't necessarily mean that the alternative is the way that we should go. And those are just thoughts that I have. And then the last thing I'll say before I move on is I'll talk a little bit about the Joe Rogan endorsement. Obviously, I didn't fully get into this on Twitter, so maybe my take won't be as Twitter informed as it should be. But I don't see anything fucking wrong with a goddamn Joe Rogan endorsing Bernie. That's fucking dope. I mean, that is a

fucking huge platform with a bunch of people who could go either way that aren't super politically into the nuts and bolts of how this shit works that aren't hyper ideological like consciously ideological of picking a part of the political spectrum that they belong to. He has like all these guests on that range from like biologists

to fucking comedians to athletes to you know to hunters and conservation folks. He had Bernie on himself. He has this wide range of people who listen to his show. And a lot of them, you know, they could even be younger folks like, you know, 18, 19, 20 year old dudes who don't really have a lot of political knowledge or understanding, but they see Joe Rogan saying Bernie's a fucking good guy,

he's been super consistent, he's the only one I trust, that pushes people over into that direction and may alter the fucking trajectory of their political life. You know, Joe Rogan, especially after 2016, he did have this fucking huge alt-right sort of flirtation thing where, you know, he has this sort of conservative instincts and he has this shitty-ass, you know, political incorrectness that a lot of times just gross and there's plenty of,

of fucking shit that we can critique about Joe Rogan and stuff. But if you're going to have a movement of real fucking people, you're going to have a movement of imperfect people, of people who fuck up in various ways that you wish they wouldn't, of people that still have a lot to learn. Welcome to fucking politics. And that's another thing Twitter does is it creates this illusion that you can have these hyper pure little blocks of people who agree on exactly everything. And the moment somebody doesn't agree on it, like, oh, this person said that China's not socialist. We loved them last week. Fuck them. this week. There are class enemy forever.

Oh, this person said that maybe Joe Rogan endorsing Bernie isn't the worst thing in the goddamn world. What a fucking piece of shit. Don't they know Joe Rogan has said terrible shit in the past? Fuck them. They are irredeemable. Exile them from our group. That's not real world. That's not the real

life. And if you want to come up with the recipe for how to fucking lose politically, how to alienate everybody and just get down to a small, ineffective group of purity, tic motherfuckers, that's the strategy you should take. Hate on everyone that's not already perfect.

Never mind that you yourself had to learn and grow and that as much as people are out there fucking, you know, throwing up the pitchforks and going after people for every fuck up and every mistake they've ever made and every politically incorrect thing they've ever said, it'd be really tough if we start opening that fucking door to your life and go back to when you said some stupid shit five years, ten years ago, when you were being unprincipled, when you had this time in your life, where you were. you were growing and making fucking mistakes and then we all just went on you and dog piled on you for that. I know me, you know, I'm almost 31 now. I got on fucking Twitter in my late 20s.

But God damn, if my dumb ass was on fucking Twitter when I was 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, I guarantee you I would have said some stupid ass shit. I would have been politically incorrect. I would have been fucking ignorant about a lot of stuff. I would have said stupid shit. I did say stupid shit when I had profiles on MySpace or Facebook or whatever the fuck. And it's just, It's not a healthy way to go about building political cooperation and political unity if it's this purity thing and it's all about what the algorithm incentivizes and outrage and crusades against people who are morally less than us. That's a bad person.

They must be burned to the fucking ground. It's exhausting. It's a terrible fucking strategy. And the best thing that principled communists and leftists could do when it comes to social media is fucking hit the brakes on it, get on their love. less and less. Try to divorce yourself from that platform, that algorithm, that incentive structure. And I promise you, you're thinking, you know, talk to actual regular working people in your life. See what actually bothers people in your neighborhood, in your community.

Organize and do mass work so you can actually meet real fucking human beings in the real world and spend less time trying to bludgeon other people over the head and do your little moral crusades on social media. It's exhausting. It's childish. It's never ending. And it's fucking not healthy for any fucking political movement, left, right, or center. So that's my fucking take on Bernie. We'll see if people disagree with that or not. But I'll be fucking, you know, going out and voting for Bernie. And, you know, I'm not going to dedicate my political energy to necessarily canvassing or, you know, becoming a part of the electoral apparatus.

I'm not interested in that at all. I still believe that mass work and community organizing and political education need to be at the forefront of our energies and our time. bent. But again, voting takes very little. Bernie has a real fucking chance. And if a Bernie gets in, it could open up opportunities to the far left that even we can't quite see at this moment. So that's my take on that. Next headline, the Trump impeachment. So first thing is who the fuck cares? It's fucking completely irrelevant to everything. The elections are happening. The Senate is, the Republican controlled Senate are a bunch of fucking

ghouls that will, that are just so disingenuous, conspiratorial and fucking stupid. And there's this, these cult members that just worship Daddy Trump. They're going to, they don't even want to hear the evidence. They want to hide everything. Trump himself came out recently

in a fucking press conference and said, we have all the evidence. The prosecutors just don't have it. We're keeping it to ourselves. Basically admitting that he has evidence that will make him guilty, but that the Republicans are keeping it, you know, away from the public so that it doesn't get out. And so he's sort of bragging, like, you know, it's not going to happen. We have the evidence. We're not going to release it. Like, you dumb fuck, you are admitting that you have evidence of your guilt and you're not

going to release it because you don't want to get caught. So like me not being interested in the Trump impeachment is not me saying that he doesn't deserve to be impeached. Like, he doesn't deserve to fucking be alive. Like, much less in a position of political power. So don't mistake my shit for that, but I think it's really important to remember what impeachments are. You don't get impeached for killing kids. You don't get impeached for privatizing basic human necessities and fucking human rights violations. You don't get impeached for locking kids in fucking cages and ripping them out of their mother's arms at the border. You don't get impeached for bombing a

fucking high general of another sovereign nation bringing the world possibly to the brink of World War III. You don't get impeached for any of that. Only time impeachment's happening in American electoral history is when there are beefs between the ruling class. Nixon, although he wasn't formally impeached because he resigned in the face of his inevitable impeachment, but I'm still going to bunch him in here because he was going to get impeached if he didn't quit. But what did Nixon do? Nixon did a bunch of fucking crimes, right, including the Vietnam War, but that wasn't enough to get him impeached. What he did was he had some fucking stew just break in to Democratic headquarters and steal from the Democratic Party. That

was a line you don't cross in American politics. What did Clinton do? Well, Clinton got a blowjob. He was being, you know, unfaithful to his wife, and then he lied about it to Republicans. When asked about the blowjob, he lied and said he never did any, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. And what was the big crime there? He lied to Republicans. So Nixon stole from Democrats. Clinton lied to the Republicans. And what did Trump do? Trump tried to get dirt on Joe Biden, one of his political opponents in the Democratic party. Never mind all of the fucking heinous crimes committed by Trump and his proxies in this fucking entire last fever dream of four years we've been fucking living through. But it's when he tried to get dirt on a democratic component when that's when the impeachment happens. So in every

single case, impeachment only happens when there are beefs between the ruling class, not when actual crimes are committed, not when fucking children are murdered, not when fucking wedding parties are bombed, not when fucking human beings are ripped out of the arms of their parents. And and put in fucking cages. All of that is fucking fine. You could be a great president if you do all that. But even fucking Bush, you can go and kill millions of fucking people

in two illegal wars and still have all the fucking love from the mainstream media you could imagine years later. So it's not really what it's about. It's about beefs between the ruling class and that's essential to think about. And that's also why I don't give a fuck. Fuck all of them.

They're all trash bags. They're all fucking criminals. They're all gangsters. They all deserve to be fucking put in prison. prison or put up against the goddamn wall theoretically allegedly hypothetically this is just parody etc so i mean it's just a it's just a fucking joke the gop is absolutely shameless every single american president should be impeached and put in fucking prison for crimes against humanity and it's just a fucking farce and ultimately it's it's a distraction that that reifies the idea

that trump is what's wrong with america this this democratic urge to to impeach him at all costs is just a fucking product of the belief that the bad orange man is the guy that we have to get out so that America can heal and return to normalcy as if normalcy is not a far-right white supremacist settler colonial fucking hellhole. So this entire process is bullshit. I'm not at all interested in it. It's just fucking a distraction. The only thing they're doing it for, they know they're not going to get them impeached.

They just want to put it on the books that they were against. the orange cheetah man and that history will shell like no matter what all the fucking crimes and bullshit the democrats have done well at least they stood up to this one guy 20 years ago and tried to get him impeached which obviously fucking failed so i don't think we should fucking care too much about it it's a liberal fever dream more than anything it's never going to result in trump actually getting impeached because trump has a cult of conspiratorial yes men and it's just funny that the people that want to act the toughest and the bravest and we're the patriots and we'll fight antifa and the streets are the same ones getting on their knees

day after day and worshiping their daddy trump and whatever psychological and psychoanalytic conclusions you want to pull out of that be my guest but there is just this depravity this prostrating in front of their of their strong man hero that just undermines all of their claims to don't tread on me i'm an individual i'm going to pull myself up by my bootstraps but don't say anything mean about daddy trump and don't you dare try to impeach him or we're going to fly down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial fever dream thinking. And that's the situation we have. America is in decline.

It is Titanic sinking. The Democrats are just as incompetent as the Republicans. The Republicans are veering more towards hero worship, more towards cultism, more towards fascism. The Democrats in the center have absolutely no idea what to do, but to cling on to these institutions that have already been discredited and are in the fucking quagmire of crisis. And it's a fucking joke.

so it's nothing's going to come of it Trump's going to be fucking found free of all charges from his Senate peers and he'll be tweeting and rampaging through it and using this entire thing once he gets sort of let off the hook he's going to say see

see no evidence was found it was all a hoax I never did anything wrong the fucking calls were perfect perfect and they couldn't and the fact that I got let off is not not a testament to the fact that the Republican Party is a bunch of cult members who will do anything for their leader but is an indication that the entire thing was a sham

they had nothing on me and look it they want me out of office so bad vote for me so that we can keep me in office and this is what they really hate let's own the libs the second time and that's what it's going to turn into that's what it's going to be and socialist and communists have very little to do with any of this except to remember and to tell other people and to think deeply about impeachment as primarily and exclusively a beef between the ruling class and nothing else that's what it is. Next up, the coronavirus. Awesome name. It sucks. I mean, we have these things happen all the time. And the only thing I really have to say about the coronavirus is this, the media sensationalism around it. We all remember MERS. We all remember SARS. We remember what is

the H1N1, H5N1, the bird flu a few years ago. We remember a couple years ago, the Ebola outbreak. Every few years, some little virus gets a little beyond what we thought it would be. And it does wreck fucking havoc. I mean, people are dying. I think a handful of people have died and a few hundred people have been taken ill because of this. I'm not discrediting that human suffering or saying that it's nothing to worry about. Of course it is. It should be quarantined. It looks like the Chinese government is building an entire hospital within six days just for this one problem so it can sort of isolate and quarantine the issue, which is, I mean, pretty interesting. But overall, it's just another thing that the 24-hour news cycle can scale.

us about, you know, the people in fucking white chemical suits, you know, with things over their face, you know, carrying people on stretchers out to the hospital and, oh my God, it's spreading, it's spreading, it's spreading, it's spreading, it's fear, it's sensationalism, it keeps people locked into these channels so they can advertise to you more. And so SARS didn't turn into a global black plague. The bird flew Ebola. None of those things really escaped their boundaries and became an absolute epidemic of real proportions, like fucking 28 days later or anything. Although, by listening to the media sensationalism, you would think 28 days later is just around the goddamn corner. So a lot of times this is just profiting off of human misery and profiting off of fearmongering,

which always will bring in profits. It will always be something that makes these companies a lot of money. It will always bring in more advertising revenue. If you can scare people, get them locked to their screens, make them think that the end is nigh and that they themselves could be sick at any minute. You get them hooked, and that's what gets them into the cycle of turning on TV and watching for hours and that's that fear-based cycle that Fox News specifically is a pro at stoking fear in a million different ways because with fear you can basically lead people in any

direction you want them make people scared enough and you can get them to believe and do almost anything that is the entire MO of Fox News and broadly of the corporate media and that's what we're seeing with the coronavirus so I expect it to live the life of the bird flu of SARS and Ebola definitely will create some human suffering. It's a fucking tragedy. It's one of those things that comes with being a fucking organic, you know, thing in the cosmos. And I hope people, you know, I hope it gets under wraps and cured quickly. But it's really the media sensationalism and short-term profiteering by fear-mongering that I think is the main thing to take away from this.

And every few years, it's a new disease, and we do the same thing over and over again. I've been around long enough to see plenty of this shit, so not too worried about it. next thing is iraq protests so in iraq there have been protests for many months of course and after the the assassination of general solomani in iran there was a renewed burst of of iraqi people the iraqi masses wanting the fucking yankees to get the fuck out of their country um the iraq government asked them formally to leave there was some initial um indications that the military put out a letter saying they would leave but that was nothing ever came of that i don't know what that was i think the trump administration has

doubled down, refused to leave. And so we have hundreds of thousands of people. This is in Iraq, a country much smaller than our own, hundreds of thousands of people marching through the streets telling the Yankees to get the fuck out. And then you have Iraqi security forces killing hundreds of people in the last few months, I think 12 in the last couple of days in these opening live rounds on these protesters. A big thing, in addition to getting the U.S. out, is they want democratic reforms, less corruption. They want a government that works for them. And, you know, this is all a legacy of the

Iraq War. This is all a legacy of the destabilizing effect that the U.S. invasion had, the many years of ISIS popping up in the depravity created by the U.S. chaos. And, you know, we still see the Iraqi people struggling to get some control over their own political system, their own economic and daily lives, and the U.S. being the main obstructioner of it. You know, they come in, they kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and fucking children over plenty of years. Then the war technically, what, ends or whatever, ISIS raises up. The next 10 years, they're fucking fighting these fucking jihadist, far-right Islamists. And then America comes and fucking kills on Iranian general on their territory,

sparking new fears of a proxy war in Iraq. And these Iraqi people are fucking sick of it. You know, for a lot of our lives, assuming many people listening are, under, I mean, 30, you know, roughly under 40, a big chunk of our lives of Iraqi people's lives have been lived in this chaos caused by American imperialism and depravity and cruelty and belligerence and murder and bloodshed and violence. And this is what we see, you know, years and years later, almost 20 years after the initial Iraq war started. We see that the country is still in complete chaos and runes, and it falls at the feet of the fucking American imperial death machine.

And that's what I have to say to that. I mean, love and solidarity to the Iraqi people, they don't deserve the life they've had to lead. And if you think about, you know, 18-year-olds in Iraq, they've lived their entire lives in this fucking prison of chaos imposed on them by the U.S. and its allies, in this disgusting illegal war and all of its fallout and consequences. And those folks are still fucking suffering. and it's heartbreaking.

I hope they succeed. I hope they can finally eventually get some self-determination and control over their own lives. You know, my heart goes out to them. And then a couple other things I'll touch on before we wrap up here. The U.S. is sending an ambassador for the first time in 11 years to Bolivia. So as all of you know, the Bolivian fucking coup happened recently where Evo Morales and the largely indigenous-backed political movement

that he represented and spearheaded, was overthrown in a right-wing Christian fascist coup, and that coup has been largely successful. Evo Morales is exiled from his own country, living, I believe, in Mexico to protect himself from death. Lots of indigenous people have been harassed, imprisoned, beaten, and killed since the coup. And this is the first time the U.S. is sending an ambassador in 11 years. 11 years ago, 2007, 2008, Morales kicked out the Bush ambassador at the time

after accusing the Bush administration and his proxy of the ambassador, accusing them of actively undermining Bolivia, which we know for fact that they were and they still are and they have been. So Morales was right to kick out the ambassador, but it's really telling that the moment the right-wing fascist coup occurs in this country and it seems like they have won the coup for now, then the U.S. sends their ambassador back in. The U.S. again, is the number one purveyor of violence and terrorism

and despotism and murder and bloodshed and undemocratic coups in this entire world, and this is yet another symptom of that. And if you don't think that America and the Brazilian Bolsonaro government were heavily informed in the run-up to and carrying out of the coup, you're joking to yourself. The sad thing is we won't be able to get that information until like 20 years when they release all the CIA documents showing that, in fact, this coup was heavily supported, perhaps even funded by the U.S. in its proxies,

and that the Bolsonaro government imprisoning Lula and taking over in that country, which borders Bolivia, was a huge benefit for the Bolivian coup plotters because they had right-wing allies right next to them and they had the U.S. on their side. And this formal sending of an ambassador to Bolivia is just justification of what we've always known.

The U.S. was behind in some capacity, which we won't know for many years, but to some extent was definitely behind this. And the moment this coup has succeeded, they're now sending down their ambassador to formalize and make official this new government and signal to their allies the world over this is the Bolivia that America is okay with and you guys can come in and exploit the place now which is basically what is going to happen as they open up more and more to Western intervention Western economic investment

and thus Western corporate control of their country and their country's important and essential resources in this side of the planet lots of other stuff I'm not going to be able to get to I guess fucking Harvey Weinstein going to court I saw a video of it before I came out here today he's getting assisted by his lawyers holding him up like he can barely walk on each arm like an injured football player being carried off the fucking field

last time he had a walker the motherfucker is not that old like this is such a Bill Cosby playbook move at least Bill Cosby is actually fucking blind and old as shit I'm happy he's gonna you know rot and piss last few years of his life all the fucking horrific crime that he perpetuated on countless innocent women.

But his whole thing was trying to seem much more elderly and, you know, injured than he actually was to provoke sympathy in the jury and hopefully get him off. And you see this fucking snake, rapist, monster piece of shit, Harvey Weinstein, doing the same thing, limping into the fucking courtroom. Like, you fucking cobra, you snake in the fucking grass. Like, what a trash human being. absolute despicable i don't think anybody will fall for it this guy is a fucking monster and deserves nothing but the absolute worst life in prison will be too easy on this fucking rapist piece of shit

and i hope he suffers every second of his life until he dies um because he is a disgusting piece of shit um and then yeah we're greenwald is getting fucking um attacked in in brazil by the balsanaro government you know greenwald obviously a left liberal plenty to critique in his his past and his policy positions. Plenty of shit we disagree on. I think I've even gotten into it with Greenwald on Twitter once over some political shit we disagreed on. At the end of the day, no matter what you think about Greenwald himself,

he's a goddamn brave-ass journalist, and he's this gay man in this fucking right-wing, pseudo-fascist, neo-fascist Brazilian state under Bolsonaro now. Him and his family have been constantly under death threats to the point where they have to fortify their house, have around-the-clock security just so they don't fucking die. Just because they're calling out corruption and bullshit in the Bolsonaro government and really unmasking what this fucking shit is,

which is a neo-fascist takeover of the country. And so, you know, all of our differences with Greenwald aside, like, you know, when a left liberal is getting attacked by a fascist state, you take the fucking side of the left liberal. You don't do this thing where they all suck, so who gives a fuck what happens to him? That's not okay. I don't want to see liberals slaughtered by fucking fascist.

Even though I'm not a liberal, plenty of liberals are shit. Plenty of shit to critique about liberalism, the moment fascists start fucking slaughtering liberals, that means they've already started attacking, slaughtering, racialized minorities, communists, union leaders, etc. So when liberals start getting the bullet, start getting this level of systematic institutional repression, it is a canary in the coal mine for everybody to the left of fucking Henry Kissinger.

and that's what we're seeing here and so I hope that Greenwald and his family stay safe and are able to continue unmasking the disgusting Bolsonaro government all right well that's about it again this was not formalized I just had some some main stories and I just sort of freestyled and went off on them perhaps not everything I said

was exactly how I articulated if I had the time to write it down and you know cross every T and dot every I hope there's at least some food for thought in this and I can continue doing this sort of reading between the headlines if people find it useful and informative. There's a big gap on Rev. Left. We want to be different than other left-wing media shows.

And so a lot of left-wing media shows, especially progressive and liberal types, they cover the news every day. Like, you can go on YouTube, you know, you can find Left Liberal or Progressive Podcast, and they just cover all the headlines every single day. And so I would never make Rev Left Radio a show that just does that. I always want to, you know, think deeply.

I want to think historically. I want to think philosophically. and it'll never be a show that devolves into just talking about whatever fucking corporate media is talking about at this time. But once in a while, it's nice to have some communist analysis on the big headlines. And so maybe this fills that need on the Patreon. So thank you again to everybody who supports the show. Love and solidarity.

And I'll talk to you soon. At night I wear a wolf's head of my regular head. Considering a regular character sketch. Food hoarder, communes with the flora. Computs and cahoots with beauty. I got a brand new normal out of 30 in New York plus Years at the fire pulling portions at a corn husk Never mind time on the short bus

Terrifying errant nights thwarting any motherfucking forkedonged sport I to the flash and a high molars There was body less a weapon more a bag of lobbed homas over medium Treat skin tags like scratch loss Rap like black ops Rappers like lap dogs You got the rad moves Caddy out the rap proof weight

20 sat and die at the crapshoot weight Looking for a black hole to casually collapsed through tri-eye on night by the cat food there it is ooey do we roast in a bilge when a skinny from a far as darby gold in the hills time better let a couple truths decay or somebody gonna rue the day check check check catch him on the lamb i ain't joking no mats no mustard i ain't joking i put a pebble on a tomb i ain't joking making bathtub meth i'm joking here we go the whip got a tongue and teeth too tough two bloodshot eyes with a tungsten bleat well any Future fire an arrow once your lungs in reach

I feel the vessel going zero to the fuck y'all think And when your function fails I'm on an undisclosed island Stroking exotic animals open a rocket science Leaning a jewel is loop over a stoneless Doconomics Palm made products a portrait of modern triumph, Try us back at a battering ramp coast taste

Cromags, wait a list Saturday plans grow legs All you hear is intimate and code names Rickersay around the geometry of a closed space Unfrozen part of its new dayo Face of divine evil Harder Camuteo So people find the daylight To be oddly alluring

I was in the dark Dodging and burning Maybe because I looked like an ugly dog I ain't joking Pack a while up in the wheelhouse I ain't joking Leave brass tacks everywhere I ain't joking

I own many many homes I'm joking Here we go All hot to we no costume Black hoodie you can set your watchtum Tall drink depths like an air raid radically detached with purveyors of the hairbrain Down with a ship going doesn't fry wild links

Upper case tri-state style kings Get pie-faced Sit home tied to the sine waves Lights off spine on sideways Running down a block Scooping Bobby in a boogie down Tony told me tell him hello 730 noodle town Cool him down

Global domination of a soul bake Situation comedy and broke dude cosplay You don't want a meeting on an ob day Trading horror stories from the hollows The summary as follows These hate those and this thinks that's absurd Yep, yep, y'all cats and birds Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow

I ain't joking. Talking roobs on the radio. Yeah, I ain't joking. Suckers never play me. I found Jimmy Hoffa's body. I'm joking. Here we go. Thank you.