Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 1: JD Vance A Snitch

Episode Date: February 23, 2017

On our maiden voyage, we deliver an elegy for JD Vance's bestseller 'Hillbilly Elegy' while also paying homage to R+B legends Gerald Levert (RIP), Keith Sweat, and Johnny Gill. *Upon further review, Eric Williams, whom we do a bit about on this one, is a respected scholar whose words we clearly took out of context and drew the wrong conclusions about. His radical critique of capitalism and the slave economy was a gap in our knowledge, and we're embarrassed to say we botched that one. But, still, fuck JD.

My life's goal for 12 years was to be the guy that blows the whistle on swiss beat songs Hey, you know, you know what I was thinking about you remember on our last show at the digital bedroom We said if we ever came back to the radio, we'd be like lsg You remember that? Yeah, my body. Oh, yeah, you remember lsg they were like That was fucking perfect man when gerald laVert... We don't even have to edit it in. We got it right here. If you go to the Wikipedia page on LSG, the fucking

funniest part of it is like history. Like how they formed. And it's like Keith Sweat gave Gerald LaVert a call and said that they should record a song with... What's the other guy's name? Johnny Gill. Yeah, that's the other guy's name? Something. Gil. Johnny Gil.

Johnny Gil. Yeah, that's it. They just called him up one day. It was just like, hey, man, we should record a song with Johnny Gil. And that's how it started. Johnny Gil, of course, was like the fail son of New Edition. Right. Couldn't get Bobby Brown. But we're basically, what I'm saying is we're basically LSG through radio wash-ups on our

way back to the top. On our way back to the top. We're on our way back to the top. On our way back to the top. We're on our way back to the top. We're on our way back to the top. I'm out. yeah uh-huh shit right out right here gotta get a good level here trying to get the level i'm just trying to thread the needle here you know so I feel like a lot of what I've been doing lately like news is so fucking crazy right now that um that like not only have I blown through all my like data you know limits like I'm like 30 gigs over, I'm paying like $600 a month.

Browsing's got a limp to that. Not only that, but every website I go to, it's become a game of trying to smash that motherfucking X button, stop loading button on the page before the paywall can come come up because i've used up my 10 articles a month yeah on a pc on a computer it does for sure really yeah you can't do it on this seems like it seems like they could have you can't do it on your cell phone but if you have bad east kentucky internet it takes forever to load a page and it takes forever to load a page, and it takes forever to load that paywall. And so if you just hit that X button, you can stop it. Wow. Unlimited access, baby.

Yeah, that's one of the only good things about having shitty East Kentucky internet. Oh, wow. Anyways. You can also blame it when you don't do the shit you're supposed to do. Silver lining. Imagine how awesome that would have been in community college. Just like, I couldn't get on Blackboard last night. Yeah.

Probe. Yeah, my internet, I mean. Internet's down all over the county, sis. We gonna do. Fucking Blackboard. Oh, I know. I literally felt my veins, like, pulse when you said those words. Yeah, yeah.

You had like a PTSD response those words. Yeah, yeah. You had, like, a PTSD response to it. Yeah, yeah. I don't like what happened to my body just now. I don't like it. I once took a history of classical music class in two days on Blackboard. It was, like, a whole semester's class. And, like, they didn't have any time limits for the exam. So, like, I was just like, well, fuck it.

I ain't going to do anything. I did it all in two days, man. I knew everything but Chopin. Chopin. Frederick fucking Chopin. Well, speaking of Frederick Chopin and bad internet, let's talk about Hillbilly Elegy. It's funny that I went to the library

to check this out actually because I wasn't going to buy it. So you have the one and only copy for the Letcher County Library? Probably. I had you get bumped up the queue. I felt like that was like a three month waiting

list for that. It was funny. There was when I went to go borrow it, rent it out. I don't know what the correct terminology would be. Check it out. Check it out. There you go. Check it out. You snowflake.

Yeah. Fucking frosty over here. I had a $38 late fee. Oh, brutal. You have to wait. Okay, once a year they have those days. But see, yeah, I like to support my local library. I just rack up those late fees. I'm like, I'll gladly pay that.

You paid $38 to the library today? No, I didn't. You forgot to take back your Charles Murray. Yeah, the bell collection. So, what we're here to do today is to roast this motherfucker. To burn it to the ground. I was thinking about that, and I was thinking, like, how many times do you think he was called Gay D. Vance in high school?

Oh, my God. There's a really funny story about that in this. I'll never forget the time I convinced myself that I was gay. I disliked girls, and my best friend in the world was my buddy Bill. I broached this issue with Mamaw, confessing that I was gay and I was worried that I would burn in hell. She said, don't be a fucking idiot. How would you know that you're gay? I explained my thought process.

Mamaw chuckled and seemed to consider how she might explain to a boy my age. So, since I rented it out, I couldn't, like, fucking highlight or, like, make notes in the book itself. So I, like, filled up this entire notebook. Or like make notes in the book itself. So I like filled up this entire notebook. That's something to add. You know, when my boss whipped this out of his bag yesterday in his office to show me a passage. Like a goddamn Bible verse. He had marked it the fuck up.

I mean, what he showed me was all underlined. He had underlined the whole fucking thing. He had the margins all marked up. And I was just like, I didn't know until y'all told me that weekend before last or whenever the hell that was that this was on the bestseller list it was like the best-selling book of 2016 or something i had no idea so like that's one of the reasons why it's kind of interesting to talk about this especially like okay especially since trump won the election um and people will talk about this book like want to understand middle america or like or you know what i mean or they or they say like Okay, especially since Trump won the election. And people will talk about this book like, want to understand Middle America?

You know what I mean? Or they say like, want to understand why Trump won? Well, check out this book. You know, this is like, yeah, it's always on the top of the list for those kind of things. And so it's interesting to like examine why the fuck this particular book got so big when it did especially because it is such a lackluster it's a sort of mediocre book it's just a memoir he's not a terrific writer he's not a terrific writer he um he yeah there's nothing really compelling in it you know as a memoir i was telling tom like it's so weird that um for the entirety of this book like not until like page 209 does he say anything about his own like

sexuality like and i'm not saying that's a weird thing in itself but if you're telling your life story from the time you're a little boy you that's a huge chapter. You cannot miss that chapter. In my life story, chapters one through seven are going to be about me jacking off. Exactly. Meet me once, meet me two. I was shooting boys for like four years when I started running them out. I did not.

I was a good Christian boy. I didn't jerk off. I had wet dreams for a year, and I was just like, I wish I could go back to that, actually. That was the shit, man. The only downside to that is your chance of getting prostate cancer

rise exponentially. From what? Not jacking off. From getting no release. You gotta... Sorry, we're. That's bound to be a cause of heart attack. Oh, God.

Has to be. Yeah, it happens. People have heart attacks when they're jacking off. Nothing has to be well written anymore. Right, nothing. At this point, 50 Shades of Awful. I mean, that's written terribly. And my mom, that's the only book she's read cover to cover in her entire fucking life.

No, you're absolutely right. You mean Sheila wasn't into Harlequin romance novels? No, I've tried to redirect her since she's read this whole series. And she tried to make me read it after she read it. And I couldn't get past the first chapter. I was just like,

Mom, this is garbage. I cannot hang with this. You couldn't even get sexy with it. No. Even the smut of which I am, I hold in high regard many a smut, much a smut. Much a smut. Much a smut. My mom loves that shit.

It's complete garbage. You know the romance capital of Letcher County? The Jenkins Library. There's an entire corner. The section. There's an entire section of romance novels at the Jenkins Library. And it's in the back darkest secret, most secret corner of the library. This ain't by accident.

This is fucking by design. Is there a black curtain you gotta go back to there? By design. You go back to the darkest corner of the, and there's a little table back there with chairs That's my third office I have many offices Across this county My mom used to get on to me

About listening to rap music And I would shoot back with Well you read those Harlequin romance novels And she said these are good books These are good books And by God I caught her at work When they picked one of them up and read a passage it made me blush um okay this is something that i thought was a very interesting

part of this book where like like he's going into his like experience with like christianity i just gotta read this for you because earlier we were talking about how the mamaw in this book cusses every fucking time she speaks and people find it hilarious do you want to suck dicks that is the passage of the whole fucking book that my boss asked me to read to myself like a bible verse and i just looked at him confused like okay his mamaw cusses i don't get it and he was like isn't that funny they're setting the bar for humor really low. I think this is what's central to these people's worldview. I watched my mamaw try to shoot a man one time,

but there was no bullets in the gun, fortunately, for everyone. That's funny. Well, there are stories like that. So there are stories like that in here. Well, this is the interesting part about this book. here and this is and so well this is an interesting part about this book like the guy okay so jd vance clearly um like had a pretty rough childhood you know if everything he says in the book is true and i'm just going to take it take him can't dispute i'm not going to i'm not going to question it where did he grow up he grew up in milltown ohio um so okay so his great grandparents

lived in breathitt County yeah well and so you know this book has that of course right this book has the requisite like Route 23 like I don't know but but so he his great grandmother

grew up in Breathitt County and his grandmother left him and his grandmother's grandfather left the breath at County like after World War two moved to Middletown Ohio and got a job at a steel mill and his mom was a really bad drug addict he sounds like his parents home was very like sort of like violent he attributes that to like East Kentucky cultureucky culture you know what i mean like like inherent inherent right hillbilly culture like that's the thing he he sort of like he he tries to to basically say that that's like hillbilly code you know what i mean like the reason they still act like that in middlestown middlesborough whatever ohio it just follows that right right there's no like um of course there's a lot of talk. Right, right. There's no, like, of course,

there's a lot of talk of poverty in here, but there's no, like, real link between, like, poverty and behavior. You know what I'm saying? Right. His entire thesis is that, like, white working class culture is in decay, and it's not really the corporation's fault,

although they share some of the blame. It's really more of a result of this sort of moral decay in sort of white middle America. Right, right. This sounds like the Harry Cottle angle to me. Exactly. It's definitely in the Harry Cottle playbook. But where it gets, I think, particularly sinister, though,

is that there's a lot of talk right now about the white working class you know what I mean and after the election there's this mythical voting block that is homogenous you know what I mean that is just like

that they vote all the same and they face all the same hardships you know i mean and jd vent is totally like um in this crowd of people that pander to the sort of like white working class the wwc and um it's interesting because like he had uh set in on this panel at the American Enterprise Institute with Charles Murray, and holy shit, I tried to watch it. I saw one of the YouTube videos.

Charles Murray's like, I consider myself a hillbilly too. Did you see that? Yeah, because he lives in this small working class town in Maryland or something. Everybody wants to be a hillbilly. Nobody wants to drink the water. Exactly. Well, Charles Murray, if you'll recall, wrote a book in the mid-90s

called The Bell Curve in which he proposed he just was asking the question are black people as intelligent as white people? He was just asking the question. For a friend. He was just asking the question. That's friend. He was just asking the question.

That's so innocent. What an innocent question to ask. I really and truly think that when you look at it from that angle, that that's what these people believe, I honestly, and I told you, I was coming with the hot takes here, but there's not that big of a fucking gap between these people who just want to,

Hey, we're just investigating whether black people are as intelligent as white people. And like Nazis who want to march in Pikeville, like that's there just to ask the question, whether black people are as intelligent as white people is literally to dehumanize them in the exact same way that the Nazis want to. Right.

And so I don't know, I just... That tank ain't too hot. Right? I thought you were coming with the poppers. It ain't the popper that's what you brought us. I guess... Well, I just... It's a pretty lukewarm tank.

It's hard because it is a very nuanced thing, but you don't want the sort of... You don't want the tank to be, J.D. Vance is a Nazi, because then people won't listen to you right yeah that's yeah but like the the the really sinister thing here is what people like jd vance and charles murley has always done is they've always just sort of couched their racism in this just like well we're just asking questions we're just we just want to get to the science you know we want to understand why why um there's a wage gap between white people and black people we want to understand

why a lot of black communities remain in poverty and all this you know what i'm saying because they can't question the sort of larger i think that's what the conservative intelligentsia does is they they sort of um present present like what you said. They put the question out there as sort of like fodder for some sort of academic discourse and in the minds of people like these Nazis it legitimizes it.

Kind of in the same way that if somebody that we respected the scholarship of were to say something we would put some credence into it. But I think this is, I think this is what conservatism's always been. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah. You've seen this thing where Ezra Klein had this tweet and it's like, I've been to CPAC a few times

and I respect conservatism as like an intellectual tradition, which Ezra Klein's a fucking mutt. An intellectual tradition.

Tradition, right. And it's like, it's been the same fucking playbook for decades and. Tradition, right. And it's like it's been the same fucking playbook for decades and decades and decades, right? And so, you know, I'm reminded of that Tom Skaka piece, Donald

Trump's a Republican. Yeah, he's always been. Right. Right. And so these people have always been, like, like, I don't know what i'm trying to say no i know what you're trying to say we treat this as if as if it's a new phenomenon right but like but we also treat it as like a legitimate alternate viewpoint it should be squashed out exactly we also treat it as is this as if it's you're exactly right as if it's this intellectual tradition yeah baby like well are you like a you know a madisonian conservative or

are you more of a you know because of course none of the questions are shit like why are black school-aged girls suspended five to one to their white peers that's not the like they actually don't give a fuck they don't give a fuck why people's quality of life is the way it is. That's actually not what they care about. It is the neoliberal argument. It is individual failure. It's like if you can't – and here's the maddening thing about this book is that J.D. Vance acknowledges that. blame individuals for or or that that that is the sort of like impossibility of being a hillbilly that you like can't just blame yourself because like there's so much conditioning and messaging in society telling you that you're not allowed in certain spaces but at the same time his he does

this really like i said before he does this this really shady sort of but very clever intellectual thing where he's essentially like by not taking a hard stance on any of that, he can just sort of let it be whatever you – I'm just asking these questions. I'm just saying like maybe white people are experiencing – like maybe it is their fault but maybe maybe it's maybe we hold them to strong standards maybe why he did this as memoir instead of like a social science right but he's got his hand on the scales of one side of what he's asking right and that's why it's particularly like i think that's why this is so popular among not just conservatives but a lot of liberals right too because like they which is how I would classify my boss. Right, liberal. Head to toe.

Wall to wall. And a lot of liberals... I mean, a book doesn't get to be the number one on the New York Times bestseller or whatever if just conservatives read it. If conservatives are buying it. Right, right, right. Because there just aren't that many. It's like...

I should know this, but what did this fucking guy do before he wrote this stupid book? He works for a venture capital group ran by Peter Till in California. Look at the acknowledgements on the back. It's like a veritable who's who's list of fucking terrible... A writer from the National Review. My funniest part about reading this

is that, as I said, there are some really sort of harrowing stories in here some really crazy stuff um there's also just some absolutely absurd shit like he says that he became an amateur sociologist by like working in a supermarket and watching how people watching how people interact with one another because he's probably a sociopath and like can't like understand human but so but because it is so vanilla like i came all i came away thinking at the end was like um like really its only utility is to imagine uh someone like peter till reading this and like because peter till is an actual psychopath like he's got to be a psychopath like

how could someone like peter still read this and just be like you're right jd there's many problems with middle america i'll talk to my buddy donald trump like he's such a wooden you know what i mean peter till is what does he say what does what What does Peter Till say on the back of the thing? He said, elites tend to see our... I want to read it like Peter Till because he's a fucking weirdo. Elites tend to see our social crisis in terms of stagnation or inequality. J.D. Vance writes powerfully about the real people who are kept out of sight by academic abstractions.

Oh, fuck off. That was the worst Peter Thiel impression. I think, is Amy Chua, doesn't she give the tiger mom give a blurb there? The tiger mom gives a blurb. Who, mind you, is a person that literally wrote a book about superior cultures. Yeah. Like, remember she was like, Cubans are like the most superior in the Latin world and Vietnamese and Chinese in the Asian world.

And that's the thing. So like he's got that endorsing him. Peter Thiel, who, you know, I don't even want to get into how fucking insane and sensitive he is. A man who literally drinks the blood of children. Yeah. And then Charles Murray,

which is, it's really concerning then that so many liberals, that this was able to get past that sort of screen they have. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm sure a lot of liberals out there have this sort of like filters where they try to determine whether something is conservative or liberal or whatever. And this just like is so centrist, but panders to some of the most reactionary and like sort of violent beliefs and ideologies in American culture. Oh, yeah. That it's very disturbing that it is so popular and that it has become a sort of like blueprint or map or something with which to understand the Trump phenomenon.

I think, yeah, I think you're right. And I think also that it's a little easier and a little accessible for liberals when you're talking about poor whites, for them to like, you know, because we talk about these are the people that put Trump in office and all this, but we knew how a lot of people in rural America were going to vote well before they even voted the way they did. And so,

like, gosh damn. You guys looking at me. Sorry, no. No. We'll do a lot of editing on Saturday. We're just really dialed in, man. No, I'm sorry. I was just thinking, I was surprised.

But there's this sort of, I hate to use words like liberal elitism for fear of sounding like fucking Donald Trump, but that would never fly if somebody were writing about poor POCs, you know what I'm saying? Or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think for upper-crust white liberals, it's okay to like... I see exactly what you're saying. You know what I'm saying? Basically, Charles Murray's whole argument was that black people remain a quote-unquote oppressed minority in this country because of some deficient...

They are behaviorally and cognitively and genetically deficient. And what J.D. Vance is essentially doing is he's kind of taking Charles Murray's argument and he's transferring it to the white working class. Right. And it's kind of the- The white working class. The white, exactly.

Again, this sort of like monolithic, mythological voting bloc. And I'm not saying that because you know that isn't exactly what he's saying and I'm being hyperbolic just for the sake of being argumentative but he at the same time is he just sort of like floats that out in front of you just to say like he's just like why couldn't my mom stay off of drugs you know what I'm saying like why why was my family so violent towards one another like why were we so self-loathing and all drugs you know what I'm saying like why why was my family so violent towards one another like why were we so self-loathing and all this you know what I'm saying like the the answer to those questions was never capital it's never capitalism right you know

and I'm and I and I hate to use capitalism as a sort of like monolithic like whatever but it is you know it does it is interwoven in every single part of our lives. It's seeping through the pores of our bedrooms. It's up in our panties. It is, it is. Maybe that's why J.D. Vance didn't write a single fucking thing about sexuality or anything like that until-

Which brings me to my next question. I didn't think his book would sell that way. J.D. Vance never been fucked, has he? Well, so, like, I kind of- He adopted his children. Well, okay, like, I kind of... He adopted his children. Well, okay, okay. Here's another... I hate that I'm, like, blowing out the hot takes here.

I think that... Your sexual pathologies are very central to your political ideologies. And I think that a lot of people don't want to acknowledge that. They don't want to reckon with that. I mean, it makes sense. Most anarchists I meet are polyamorous and all this shit. It's like, there's a lot of... Right.

And what are the Nazis like? They're incels. Or volcells. You know what I mean? I don't know what that means. Like, they're involuntarily celibate. Or they're just celibate voluntarily. Really? Are they? Nazis don't get fucked. Otherwise they wouldn't be Nazis. How do they plan to

expand their ideology? I don't get it. They're not even going to fuck. Lebensraum. Living space. Yeah, don't you have to create more little Nazis? I guess in that same vein you don't need any advanced degrees to look at me

and realize I used to finger girls named Crystal in White Spur Swimming Pool and on the back of the church van I also think the timing of the release of this is sort of curious because it came right on the heels of Kevin Williamson

is that right? Kevin Williamson's Big White Ghetto piece in the National Review. The guy who gave a blurb for this obviously had to sign off on to print, right? Right, right. I feel like the whole J.D. Vance project was maybe to smooth things over with the white working class on the heels of that. Hold on a second, Kevin. Let me give you some reasons why that is but you know it's also like sort of intertwined with well your life shitty

because you're naturally deficient corporate taxes are just too low you know that kind of stuff and so i don't know you know if that's you know the case. But I think the timing of it is, again, pretty... It definitely, the timing of it, people wanted to have this conversation. You know what I'm saying? Like, otherwise, that Kevin Williamson or whatever piece wouldn't have appeared. People have wanted to have this conversation

ever since Donald Trump entered the race and started becoming so popular like he did. And the Kevin Williamson thing wasn't the first. It was just kind of the most vile of all of them. Right. I think it goes in cycles. It wasn't the first, but it was definitely the first in a while of conservative critiques of working class sort of Rust Belt communities.

You know what I'm saying? It was like, the conservatives don't really parachute in very very often into east kentucky and shit like that's like liberals that's their shit yeah oh yeah and it goes back to what you were saying earlier about how um these like academic white liberals feel some type of they it's like they, they feel some sort of legitimacy to come in and help poor white people or like blend themselves in. I have a whole theory about this being the whole beginning of mountain justice and this whole fucking wave of strip mining, you know, parachute. Yeah, that was kind of like the entry point. Parachute style MTR and mountaintop removal activism. It's like, oh, oh, oh.

We have this, what's the word? It's not legitimacy. It's like, I don't know. Well, it's like a higher knowledge. I don't know. It's like you're tapped in. They're more enlightened. I don't know.

I see what you're saying. I absolutely see what you're saying in they're more enlightened I don't know I see what you're saying I absolutely see what you're saying it makes more sense from the liberal psychology because um the conservatives all they're really concerned about is pulling yourself out by your bootstraps stacking that paper and stack and you're pulling your bootstrap exactly and stacking your paper but liberals like I think a key component of the liberal psychology is never permanently fixing any problem because you can stay in the job. You can stay in power so that the liberal psychology remains dominant. Like, yeah. And like saying that they love white working class people or that they like have all this understanding of white working class people is really them uh working around having to say that they're scared of black people right fucking terrified of black

and brown people exactly and it's yeah and that's why we've gotta fucking that's why we gotta beat the liberals just like we've got to beat the conservatives that are they're not our friends i wish i wish you know that passage you read where he was like i was afraid i was gay one time i wish there was another one that he was like i was afraid i was a welfare queen one time because after t-ball practice i let my coach buy me a frosty and i never gave him the dollar 72 back so i went to mamaw and asked her about that and she's like, you don't never take nothing from nobody, you know. You earn it yourself.

Oh shit. That is like, that we need to talk about that for a minute because I don't think this is like a hillbilly thing. I think this is like an Ohio person thing. Like J.D. Vance is really not the archetypal hillbilly. He's really the archetypal fucking like

bread dough ass fucking white ohio guy like i'm saying like if he didn't go to y'all school he would have been wearing fucking jean shorts and an ohio state coach's polo yeah not a doubt about it and he would have been like in middle management at like meyer grocery stores like corporate office you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah well and here's okay so here's another interesting thing is that like throughout the entire first half of the book um well throughout the entire book he's saying that he grew up poor but there is also another passage in here where he's talking about how his mother uh his mother was a nurse and his stepdad had a pretty good uh salesman job or something like that he was making over 100100,000. His family

as a whole, their net income was over $100,000 when he was a kid. 30 years ago? How old's this motherfucker? Well, he's our age. He's like 34, 33, 34. 20 years ago. 15 years ago. Point being is that he didn't grow up poor in the sense

that a lot of people in this country grew up poor. He grew up under people who grew up poor, which is what happened to me. My parents grew up very poor, you know what I mean? But I didn't grow up poor. I grew up working class. And I think that, again, here's another example, which he blurs the lines between what it means to grow up poor and what it means to grow up working class.

He sets a definition, doesn't he? Yeah, that's kind of like, yeah, like in monetary terms. And he considers that growing up poor. Right. Right? Right. Yeah. Wow.

But again, he gets into when I was working as a store clerk, becoming an amateur sociologist, people would come in all the time, like, gaming the welfare system, you know what I mean? Gaming the welfare system. Gaming the welfare system. That just pisses off old JD more than anything. It's like watching poor people. Poor people try to find an angle,

just like those fucking bloodsuckers he works for try to find an angle you know what their angle is though they fucking try to fucking i'm so mad at jd which is a funny i can't help every time we say jd that this whole his writing persona oh yeah you think he even grew up being called JD? Is that in the book? They refer to him as JD? What if it was like James or some dumb shit? I think that is his name or something. I'm sure. Jimmy?

Jim? Jimmy Dan. Jim Advance. So there was this like one sentence that I wrote down. One way our upper class can promote upward mobility, then, is not only by pushing wide public policies, but by opening their hearts and minds to the newcomers who don't quite belong.

And, like, basically what he's saying is that, like, he felt a little bit of discrimination when he went to Yale because he was out of his element. And basically what he's saying that like public, you know, it is a very sort of liberal centrist like ideology. It's like public policies, you know, we could talk about this all day, but really what needs to be happening

is rich people need to be a little bit nicer to the working class people who are on their way up, which as we know, there are fewer and fewer of them in this country right now. We want a hand up, not a hand down. And then the working class need to cultivate personal

responsibility to do the upper class a solid so that their tax dollars don't have to pay for their food. Right. Yeah, no, I mean, that is the sort of, I don't know, I feel like that is just what sums him up to a T. You know what I mean like that is the sort of like I don't know I feel like that is just like what sums him up to a tee you know what I mean like he can't ever take a hard line or anything

but I just want to like point out like the absolute like I just think that it's so despicable that like he like writes this very sort of like vanilla like sort of mass marketed memoir and he'll just occasionally cater to charles murray who is this fucking heinous like just i don't know he is a ghoul you know what i mean like he is just you get on the back of this book he's called an utterly original new writer. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a very necessary thing to talk about why this book is so popular right now. And I don't know. Maybe we got at it.

Maybe we didn't. I'm not sure. I don't know. Here's my question. Do you think that... What's the head Nazi motherfucker name? What's his name? Like Matthew...ew who see bannon spencer no we just threw out steve bannon you gotta be more specific we don't need to name nazis adolf hitler well the thing the thing is used to used to you can narrow it down to like hitler and like joseph mingala now there's like a laundry list these nazi number seven this

motherfucker don't get a name nazi number seven who's leading the traditionalist worker party who's planning all this shit he's got the southern poverty law center right up his ass with a live blog about whatever fucking move he makes do you think he has read hillbilly elegy you think that's why his ass is down here pretending to knock on doors well in fucking cold run like yeah that bullshit no that is a great question because like i truly and i truly think that to some extent probably yeah if he hasn't read it he's at least so one of the reasons i think this book became so popular as it is now is because another one of his central theses is that we are a culture in crisis and that and that would particularly what you know he talks about uh it's a crisis of

masculinity that's coming from a guy that definitely enlisted in the u.s marine corps to assuage that fucking and doesn't talk about his sexuality in any way for 200 fucking pages. Which is like, again, very central to your political ideology. Anyways, go on. No, no, you hit it when I was getting that. I think, JD, if you're out there, you need to come in and talk about your fuck game a little bit. Yeah, I know. It's weird that I'm so obsessed with that.

I would love to interview you on Feminist Friday. I just want to know, is that they're getting late, bro? I'm sorry. It makes it sound like I'm really overly fascinated with, you know, concerned with his sex life. I am. But you're exactly right for that reason. Like, it is a crisis of masculinity as well. Like, it is a crisis of masculinity as well.

And, again, he'll diagnose this, but he'll get to know underlying sort of pathologies. You know what I'm saying? And I don't even think that should be limited to fucking the hillbillies. I think, like, there's a crisis of masculinity all over this country. In America. Right, yeah.

It's like, it's no accident that, like, fucking, you tune into NFL football and they're trying to sell you fucking dick pills on a Ford truck, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's fucking, it's insane, and it's very dark in a lot of ways. I mean, I've noticed something, which is pretty common among most people,

is that a lot of people have a really hard time being vulnerable, showing weakness. And I think that a lot of people can't admit to vulnerability and can't do the kind of self-examination that usually results in weakness. You know what I'm saying? To self-examine yourself is to be vulnerable. So I want you to keep that in mind. Put a tab in that for a second. Just put a fucking little bookmark of that.

Just pin it. Pin it. So then what you have is you have a bunch of people in this country who have, and again, this is just what I've experienced and what I've noticed reading in this book, which again, one of the reasons why I actually kind of enjoyed reading this was because I shared a lot of experiences with it. But a lot of people, like, they...

Are we preparing ourselves for a poppin' hot take? Yeah, I'm getting it out. Let me buckle up. I'm getting it out of the oven. I'm putting my oven mitt gloves on. He can't get his seasoning just right on it. Or he's going to serve it to us. Yeah.

I'm just trying to. I'm trying to. Chili powder out. I'm trying a few different things. I'm trying a few different things. So, like, a lot of people in this country have been raised with this very moral value system. That says, like, follow all the rules. You can't mess up.

If you mess up, there will be consequences. There are consequences for breaking the rules, Terrence. You if you mess up there will be consequences there are consequences for breaking the rules terrence you cannot break them like you the end damn i didn't know this is what we're signing up for well and a lot of this is what a lot of like working class families in america are like that is their sort of like moral framework so you have those people and then though on the other hand they see all this shit happening around them where people aren't ever held accountable like no one was ever held accountable for the for the iraq war nobody was ever held accountable for the 2008 financial crisis nobody's ever held

accountable for like environmental destruction all this shit that they see happening yet at&t is right up my ass about a bill i paid i paid that we've all got this we've all me again bitch call me again so i think that okay for you as a human being in this country to see those two realities to see the the the reality that you've tried to implement in your home follow the rules there are consequences people must be held accountable to seeing on a mass scale that society doesn't reflect those visions or morals or anything at all like no one is held accountable every within that is this sort of like within that cognitive gap is is a huge weakness and these people hate feeling weak they hate feeling vulnerable and so what you what do you do

you have to patch it over with something fucking insane donald trump is literally the embodiment of that like again it is this fear of weakness and the fear of weakness is part of the crisis of masculinity anyways the nazi guy though is aware that like people like jd vance are also saying like we are in a moment of crisis and and what they're signaling in that is that like yeah like we're at a crossroads of several different crises like a crisis of capitalism and a cap in a crisis of like masculinity or patriarchy whatever and that like people are confused and open to just about anything right now people are sponges and honestly talking about the white working class monolith like it's this voting bloc like it's even a thing it it reinforces capitalism it absolutely like gives it a leg to stand on

to talk about how white working class is so different than black working. Like there is just a working fucking class of people who are splitting a dollar. All of it. All of it. And disproportionately people of color. Yes, for sure. And to slatter this out like it's a fucking subway buffet is literally just to prop this shit up. Exactly. For so much fucking longer.

It keeps people from dealing with each other. It is the crisis of masculinity. Almost sounds like you're advocating for a class-based analysis, Tanya. Again, that's another thing that is like oh my god yeah it's uh we live in the worst possible we will live in the worst possible moment of discourse like that is just such a fucking bullshit distinction like class-based analysis versus race-based analysis you know what i mean like it's it's garbage it's all it's it's garbage right we've always known that but god damn it the liberal media is really obsessed with it.

It's just not what we teach each other. We aren't taught the accurate history of mining wars here. We aren't taught an accurate history of slavery. There's just so much left out of what we learn in schools. We do not learn more than we do learn about our goddamn histories um it's unnerving yeah no uh yeah you're absolutely right and people like the traditionalist worker party guy they see that that is um that that in this sort of like moment of crisis, so to speak, that that is a wedge with which to divide a certain,

you know what I mean? As you said, carve it up like it's a subway buffet and makes it easier for them to organize because fear is a hell of a drug. You know what I mean? It's if you can, I don't know, say that like your interests are in conflict with these other people's interests um and that it's this sort of like games competition to make sure that you know you get more out of life than they do yeah it's it's interesting you

know if you've ever talked to people in my experience just at the local level in city government if you talk about giving people making minimum wage or like eight bucks an hour something like that low low wage work a raise 12 13 14 15 dollars an hour the people that this does not affect in any way shape or form that are making 18 19 20 dollars an hour lose their fucking mind yep and it's and i've never understood that for the life of me i have a question which is dragging us backwards no it's okay this isn't elevating this conversation no it's not it's not a linear is is there is there a nazi uh sect or whatever the hell in germany still is there like is that a thing in germany are they are they planning fucking nazi conferences in rural germany right now

i want to know this because here's the reason i ask is because one of our friends just went to germany for this like weird political tour to like meet with these fucking whoever the fuck's the who's who of some green party over there yeah some shicks they've got a ton of fucking parties over there yeah um and uh parties yeah all the parties yeah parties crafts work and and the and they're basically like oh yeah the uh curriculum in our schools around around the Nazis is like probably the most comprehensive curriculum we have to be sure that that shit doesn't happen again. Right. Like we talk about every fucking thing that fucking happened and kids know what the fuck happened. Right.

They're in this history of their lives, of their schools. No one is getting the fucked up history of how we've colonized the whole fucking planet, how we were built by on the backs of black women, mostly black people. We don't get any of that. And that has to be inherent to why we're having a fucking Nazi conference in our goddamn state park. Yeah. In a fucking state park that I am paying for. I mean, I'm getting a tax return, so technically I'm not paying for it. But somebody is fucking

paying for that fucking park oh shit no you're right i mean like as a like as a society we have never comprehensively rejected um uh our sort of nazism like confederacy conservatism you know what i mean that's never been that's never been a rejected ideology in this country. It's been presented as a valid counterpoint. I saw this thing today that some... An intellectual tradition. Yeah. Some legislator in Texas has introduced

this bill to talk about slavery in public schools as an aside to the Civil War. It's just kind of this other detail that doesn't need, you know. My boyfriend is in school. He probably can't wait for telling this, but he is in an African slave trade class at UVA Wise. And he is sitting on my couch this weekend reading this little fucking book of essays

and he's having to write a paper on every essay. Yeah. and he's having to write a paper on every essay. And I just glance over into this book and it says, civil or slavery, it says economics, not racism, basis of slavery, of slave trade. And I said, what the fuck are you reading? I said, what the fuck are you reading?

He was like, oh, it's just a essay I have to write for my class. And I was like, that is the biggest hot wad of garbage I've ever heard. Google that fucker's name right now. Google that fucker's name. Do you remember his name? Eric Williams. Eric Williams. Eric fucking Williams. I said, that's bound to be a white motherfucker.

Eric. Why the fuck are you reading an essay? We're coming after your ass, dog. And he Googled Eric Williams, and the first guy that popped up was Black. And so I was like, well, fuck. And he was like, no, this isn't him. Not the point guard for the 97 Wake Forest Demon Deacons. Not that Eric Williams.

That's who it was. So he couldn't figure out who the Eric Williams was because UVA Wise in this African, I mean, I'm impressed they're having an African slave trade class, honestly. But in this fucking UVA Wise class, they've got him reading essays by probably white dudes. We never could find, he's so, we couldn't even find a picture of this piece of shit because he's so, he's literally. He's so un-Google-able. He's so white. He's so, we couldn't even find a picture of this piece of shit because he's so, he's literally, he's so white.

He's ungoogleable. You can google my ass. He's so white, he's transparent. He's invisible. He's invisible. He's a fucking ghost. I said,

your whole essay needs to be about what a hot water garbage this is. Yeah. And how you want your money back. Oh yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't believe it and he was just, you know, he's just like fucking academics mode. So he's trying to get his fucking paper. He don't give a damn. He's just, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's true. I think that that has, I think that obviously if we actually taught our children in this country American history, we would not be at the crisis we're at. I don't know. Maybe capitalism would still be at the crisis we're at um i don't know maybe capitalism would all would still be at the crisis we're at but it just seems like donald trump is the sort of representation of like 80 different crises like converging in one fucking place i'm i'm not sure jd has precious little to say about the legacy of the company town and corporate colonialism and all this kind of stuff

how do you write a book called Hillbilly Fucking Elegy without touching that I'll tell you why, because you live in Ohio you live on the periphery right, yeah there's a lot of disgusting shit in here that is really annoying for example

I'm not going to be able to find it but there is this one sort of um anecdote he gives about his like uncle getting into a fucking chainsaw fight or some bullshit with another guy and another guy didn't rat him out because that's the code he'll build code that's what he said he'll build a code this is just like the cops don't protect people we all Like for the history of time Still here we are today The cops don't protect people Why would we be calling them?

Why would we? What? Right It's just like Yeah exactly It's called growing up In an oppressed community Where the cops

Fucking lock you up They don't escort you home Right right But to J.D. Vance's dumbass Like doughy ass Who grew up in Ohio That's he'llilly code, baby. That's the code, man.

It's like the Sopranos. They fetishize that, man. Listen, listen. That's what they do, dude. These people who are not hillbillies, but they're like, J.D.'s not even like, he's like the grandson of diasporans, like the Route 23 people. Right.

It's not even like, his parents aren't even from there. And, you know, he may have been born in Jackson, whatever, you know what I'm saying? But. And I feel like, this is arguably why this motherfucker

remembers all this wild ass shit. Right? He's not writing the boring shit that happens every day around. He wasn't writing the boring ass shit that his parents

were doing for him or that his grandma was doing for him because he didn't see any of that. He didn't see any of the normal ass grocery shopping exactly shit that people are doing right because the crazy shit is trauma it's traumatic and you remember it that's all he's soaking up because his little doe ass is coming down from ohio right and he can't wait to scurry

back right have some kind of fantastical story to tell. Yeah, yeah, and tell, I mean, when I was going to school, I was making up tales about how big the snake was in the yard I saw. I wasn't talking about how my aunt whipped my stepmom's ass. I was making up similar tales. Exactly, exactly. Well, and that, to me, gets at the sort of fungibility of the word hillbilly

it's just like I can read a book like this and I didn't grow up in East Kentucky but I can identify with a lot of the things in it but like it would be a totally different step if I then wrote a fucking memoir about what it means to be

a hillbilly because I've lived in you know what I mean like I don't know it i mean like i don't know it's just like here's my question to jd did his okay his mamaw raised him yeah who who are i haven't read this fucking book i got better shit to do i sadly don't who in this book that he is accountable to is still alive did he get a fucking fucking phone call? If I wrote this shit, if I wrote and published this shit about

the worst parts of my family, do you know I would be buried alive? That's some snitch shit. He's a dry snitch. He's a dry snitch. My mom called me and he unwittingly broke the code he's like propagating.

What a dumbass. You're right. You're so fucking right. I once called my family poor in like a thing that I had to do or like first generation college student shit. And my mom was there. And afterwards, she fucking cussed me out for calling us poor in front of all these people.

And I was like, we grew up in a trailer. We were. Yeah. The fucking first car I drove was repossessed. And she was just like, we had more than most people. Like he lost her mind. Yeah. No.

Like he really rips into his mom here, which is like, which is fucked up. And like, you know, she's a heroin addict by the end of the book. And he's basically like aired all of her dirty laundry and this motherfucker that got like millions and millions where is she where is she i want to go visit her and fucking buy her a cup of whiskey or something some crazy some crazy shit i was like i want to buy her ass a drink. Like, she did not. Moms don't deserve this shit. They don't. And J.D. Vance needs his ass kicked. Literally, one time my mom woke up and looked across the street and the word snitch was

right across the tailgate of a truck. And she called me worried as shit. Like, they're going to shoot out the neighborhood. I was like, mom, if they were going to shoot out the neighborhood, it would have been shot up. That was a warning sign. Somebody needs to give J.D. Vance. This is your warning sign, J.D. Vance a warning sign.

This is your warning sign, J.D. This is your fucking warning sign, son. This is your fucking warning sign. They find people like you in holes in the real mountains, pal. Yeah, yeah. Bullhole. Bullhole, yeah. Hell yeah, baby.

Come back from there. Bullhole gang, that's what we are. If you don't know what the bullhole is is then you ain't really you know god i'm so glad you didn't read it because if you would have read it i mean it just seems like we were really like setting it up for that you know we really teed it up for you to come to that epiphany that this motherfucker is a sn. You're talking about getting his ass kicked. This is just like, everything about this guy is infuriating. There's a wasp. Holy shit.

Get off. I'm allergic. I'm allergic. I don't have my epithelium. Oh, God. Live radio. Oh, shit. Dude, that wasp was big as shit.

It didn't bite you, did it? Dude, wasps love Tom. They fucking love him. And Tom's a fucking hippocampus. I saw Tom walk outside on you, did it? Dude, wasps love Tom. They fucking love him. And Tom's a fucking hippocampus. I saw Tom walk outside on a porch one time and like seven wasps

descended on his ass. He was insane. That's the sugar in your blood. They just lay off the palm. The wasps love Tom, man. Are y'all right? Yeah, I'm fine. So anyway,

what I was saying about... So... So I guess if somebody's gonna whip JD's ass in this crew, it's not gonna be me. It's gonna be a wasp. It's gonna be a wasp. I got my epipen. But the guy's so infuriating because, like, he, like, insulates his

shitty views in memoir that you can't challenge, right? Right. And also, like, on down that line, like, I want to, like, beat his ass if he see me, but he would so roll me because he's, like, a Marine. You know what I mean? Oh, but, dude, he didn't see fucking combat. He's a valor stealer.

He steals valor. Dude, I'm coming for some of that valor. No, he really didn't see combat. He was, like, a journalist like a journalist for the Marines. He went around to their fucking bases in Iraq and probably, I don't know. Wrote in his journal about what his platoon mates looked like when they were underway.

Yeah, he was in the Marines, but he didn't fucking see combat. But isn't the Marine Corps the hardest? Yeah, the training sounds hard. How does he talk about it in the book? Yeah, he talks about it in the book? He talks about it in the book. It's another boring I skipped over a lot of passages and I definitely skipped over the Marines passage

He didn't talk about getting fucked in the Marine training You know his ass got fucked in training for Marines. Shit maybe I need to go back and read it Maybe he did mention his sexuality before page 200. It was in the Marines with uh Billy Badass And his bunk bed I won't say his real name so

i'll just call him billy badass oh shit um god um yeah i don't know so yeah takeaways um really toxic fucking mixture of liberalism and conservatism. J.D. Vance is a fucking snitch. J.D. Vance is a snitch getting snitched. J.D. Vance is a fucking snitch. Yeah, you're right. You're right. And a Nazi.

And a low-key Nazi. Low-key Nazi. He's low-key Nazi. He's a Nazi-key Nazi. Low-key Nazis. He's a Nazi enabler. He's enabling guys like that big-head Weinbach motherfucker. Like who? That Weinbach guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the guy we were talking about. I know this type of dude. This is the type of dude. Like this big-head motherfucker with a dicky dude that nobody liked in high school. He just internalized all this. Next show will be about Eric Williams we're gonna find his little fucking ass find your ass man

he got a fucking essay how people are paying to read his shit at UVA Wise over here to square the circle I gotta know one in closing I gotta know one thing. Open up his artist page there, Terrence.

Here? Yeah, it's a bio picture. Now, Tanya, I got to know. Listen, you just meet this guy on Tinder, right? Oh, God. Look at that baby face. I'd smack him around good. Real good.

I ask you a question. If he strolled into the bar when you're on Tinder date talking all this, I went to Yale Law School. I you a question. If he strolled into the bar on your house Tinder date talking all this, I went to Yale Law School, I was a Marine, I'm a famous author, The Economist has written a lot of nice things about me. I'd probably take him home because I knew I could peg him. To be honest. Yeah, no. I was going to ask if you'd just fuck him, but well, okay.

I'd definitely peg this guy. For sure. I'm coming for you, J.D. Vance. If you ain't been fucked, you're about to be, baby. Let the record show. He's a pretty motherfucker. I would also peg this guy. For sure. I'm coming for you, J.D. Vance. If you ain't been fucked, you about to be, baby. Let the record show I would also peg him. Peg him. I'll take care of his masculinity. Oh, shit. Well, circle squared.

I might have enough empathy for him to give him a little reach around, even. Aw. Give him a little tug. Give him a little third- even. Aww. Give him a little tug. Give him a little bird finger tug. Okay, well, I guess we'll say goodbye to everybody if this is an actual podcast, which let's hope it actually makes it off the cutting floor. See you in hell, motherfuckers. I will say that I have been a part of recording.

This will be my third podcast I've recorded in this very room that never saw the light of day. Never cut it. Never released it. Never got out. No, no. Never went anywhere. Was the experience recording it, does it feel like there's more energy? Like we're building towards something?

We have the right stuff. We got the right stuff. Do you think we'll just fall flat and you're going to fuck up? I don't know. We were real drunk. So, I mean, we're mostly sober here. We're a bunch of teetubbers. Yeah, we're sober, so I don't know how I am.

I don't know. I just got off work, so I don't know what the fuck you two are doing. A lot of speed. A lot of speed. Now that we know that we're going to close with my body. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, definitely doing it. We've got to come up with an opener, though. We'll figure something out.

We've got a lot of audio here. We got enough audio that we could probably do a cold open of some sort. Probably the wasp or bit is the way to go. That shit is fucking hilarious, man. He's a cycle of energy. Maybe we'll just put this at the beginning. Yeah. all over your body stretch me oh so good stretch me oh so good stretch me oh so nice

stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice

stretch me oh so nice stretch me oh so nice Keep on slingin' on It's your body, body, body, body You're sexy, body All over my body, baby It's your body, body, body Body, body Your body, body All over my body

Baby, your body Body, body All over your body, baby All over your body, baby All over my body, baby Don't you feel me, baby? My body All over your body

It's your body, baby Give me your body, baby It's your body, baby Ooh, it's your body, baby Give me your body, baby My body, all over your body, baby All over your body, baby All I need, all I want Can you feel me, baby? My body, all over your body

It's your body, baby Ooh, it's your body, baby Ooh, it's your body, baby Give me your body, baby It's your body, baby