Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 103: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Debate, Part 1

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

Part 1 of our abysmal commentary on the equally abysmal first Democratic primary debate, and on the nature of the American character itself. Part 2 will be on our Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. Is there anything creepier than that? That shit used to creep me out crazy. The little... Then the very problematic Native American... Why would they do that? I have no idea. Why was that?

Why did they fucking do that? You're talking about on TVs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'd put it up in the top corner or something like that yeah this is a task for the emergency broadcast system if you have a basement get in that motherfucker right now you're probably going to die seat cover pray to god when we were kids they used to tell us the best way to well every time a tornado would come through hobbs we would have to get in the bathtub and put a mattress over the bat yeah over the bathtub that was standard it was just

tornado prophylaxis uh that's just what you did to prevent injury you know that's interesting that was the front line like the fence like against tornadoes like uh get to the lowest point your house get in a bathtub and put a mattress over it yeah like um a steel rod traveling at like 200 miles an hour don't give a fuck about a full-size you know fucking coil mattress plus the coils in that mattress that's probably pretty dangerous yeah probably memory foam is what you want to go with yeah the cdc recommends you cover your bathtub and yourself with memory foam in the event of tornado well my family had five people in it

we couldn't fit the whole fucking family in the bathtub so it's usually just me and my brothers and my parents just like hanging out in the bathroom anybody do anything interesting today yeah we had a couple of those situations when i was a kid we don't well when i was a kid we didn't get many tornadoes here we had an earthquake once but um the mountains the topography, are said to be blocking the tornadoes and stuff, provide a certain natural coverage, and then strip mining changed that on. That used to be the go-to thing.

My Aunt Brenda still swears by that. That was her big argument against mountaintop removal. The tornadoes. It's you're removing our natural protection against tornado dude i never even thought of that really it definitely presents a challenge to a tornado yeah you know yeah like if you're a tornado you'd have to sit you just have to form perfectly down in the valley in a hauler not to like really dissipate pretty quick that's pretty that's true tornadoes are smarter than that man they're not're not fucking stupid. They're not going to touch down on that. They're like these resistant

bacterias, you know what I mean? They're always finding ways to outsmart humans and to wreak havoc. True. Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know why I was... This is a test of the emergency broadcast

system hello you need to seek cover there is an orange Cheeto on the White House your democracy is under attack things are not normal you must find cover immediately

Jesus Christ and other things that you were like you prepared for disaster you must find cover immediately. Jesus Christ. And other things that you were, like you prepared for disaster in school with. Well, Iraq was definitely a thing. Not like 2003, but like desert storm era. I can remember. God, I'm old.

Damn, y'all had to prepare for a desert storm? Well, I remember us when, what airstrike did Bill Clinton authorize on Iraq? Where he ended up blowing up like a fucking... I think that was in Sudan. Well, I know he blew up the aspirin factory in Sudan or Kenya, maybe. I can't remember. Oh! But there was another...

Like, was it Desert Fox? No, I know what you're talking about. He did a bombing operation on Iraq. I feel like throughout the 90s, leaders would periodically bomb the shit out of Iraq. Yeah, for just... But when all that was happening,

it looked like war was imminent. We went through like, okay, here's what we do in the event of a bombing situation. Yeah. Which I think really and truly was just a fucking tactic like okay here's what we do in the in the event of like a bombing situation yeah which i think really and truly was just a fucking like tactic to get you scared about nothing like nobody's ever going to no country except for maybe china would ever like lead a bombing airstrike on the united

states well and not only that if they're bombing eastern kent, then they've clearly got their priorities. Yeah. Out of whack. That's the best argument. I mean, that's the best argument for not living in a big metropolis like D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Yeah. Move to the sticks. They're never going to fucking bomb us out here.

You'll be safe. Yeah yeah you'd be fine but although they used to do little fear-mongering tactics like well you do know because of our proximity to oak ridge tennessee where they you know was did they mine uranium or they process uranium uranium yeah or something like Yeah, there's a nuclear facility. I remember there was that time last year where I got really into nuclear energy. And the nuns breaking in. Yes, and I knew all about it for about a week. Let me know the things that just left. Just immediately left. That's the best way to explain my intelligence.

I'm an expert on something for about a week. You've got about a week time window, you know? Yeah. A week time frame. Outside of that, it's... I'm not going to have any knowledge of it. Yeah. It's called smoking weed, folks.

Samesies. Well, in New Mexico, we had proximity to Los Alamos. For the same reasons they told you all to gird your loins. For the exact same reasons. Yeah. You know, one of the craziest things about the nuclear shit is, did you ever read about the John Wayne movie where he played Genghis Khan? No.

Dude. So, you know how there's supposedly the exorcist curse john wayne playing gingus khan in a movie yeah that was one of those things that's like you remember when uh i guess matt damon was doing that movie last year about the great wall of china yeah that was one of the you know one of the examples that people were like yeah people you know there are asian actors but historically right um so basically they were filming i think in utah i think in um what's the national zion i don't think it was zion what's the other one arches help me out keep going um those are the only two i know. As in Arches is probably in Zion. Yellowstone. Anyway. Somewhere in the...

Edward Abbey hung out in the 1950s and wrote some dumb bullshit. John Wayne filmed a Genghis Khan movie. Well, what I was saying about The Exorcist is you know how supposedly, well, I guess it's documented all these people that worked on that movie died under mysterious circumstances and it was supposed to be

like you know everyone except john wayne huh no no no the exorcist i'm getting to john wayne in a second gotcha anyway the gang is con movie was similarly cursed except the curse was not satan it was uh it was los alamos like i guess all a lot of this stuff had like downwind of where they were doing the nuclear testing oh had like they breathed it in i guess and got like well here's what they did apparently they couldn't end up doing like some shooting or something on it so what they did was they transported all the sand and stuff to a different location to do it and they drug with it like all like the particulate particulate matter that would cause all sorts of disease and people think that john wayne died of disease and

a lot of people because a shit ton of people that worked on that movie died of weird cancers. So you're telling me that John Wayne's precious, beloved fucking democracy basically killed him. Yeah. That his precious, beloved republic that just had to test nuclear weapons. Ended up being his undoing. Dude, that's awesome. Well, it's a cautionary tale for loving America too much. That is. That's what it is.

Oh, fuck. America will betray you at some juncture. It will. It will. Even if you're not, you know, the fucking.00000048% of people murdered by terrorists, there's other ways it'll get you. I would love to be

murdered by terrorists. It'd be great. You'd just be like, I'm on your side. Chop it right off. Chop it right. Make an example of me. Yeah.

Just bear witness that I too hate hate this country. Well, so on the note of America eventually betraying you, eventually turning on you, it's a momentous day in the democracy, isn't it? Yeah? Yeah, we're at halftime of two nights of debate night in america that's right we um so we're recording this the day after the first night of the debates but before the second night

so um you know don't take anything we say in this seriously um but there's a few things actually that happened this week that, uh, are noteworthy for, um, the American cause, whatever the fuck you want to call it. The first thing is that today there was, um, a series of Supreme Court decisions released. Did you see this? Mm-mm. Um, so, okay, so pretend that we're uh standing in front spit like is there anything more fucking nerdy like is there anything more insufferable than supreme court interns like sprinting down the steps of the supreme court to deliver the news to the boss the worst

also probably just doesn't really happen that much anymore. They probably just, you know, when there is a camera there, they have to act like it's that movie, The Post. They're like walking slowly like you do at any of your jobs,

but once the camera is there, they're like... Oh, I gotta, yeah, I gotta, yeah. Yeah. Everybody, I feel like everybody in D.C. is trying to make D.C. again

like it was in that movie, The Post. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Absolutely. Everybody wants to hug. It's kind of like Mad Men in a way, like Mad Men nostalgia a little bit. Mm-hmm. Everybody wants to believe newsrooms are just like bustling places where like, oh my God,

we got to get the scoop. You know, we got to get it to Seoul by da-da-da-da-da. And it's just not like that. it's just populated by dipshits like not unlike us that just like hmm what little nugget could i make into a story today well you know the the there's a few like central animating myths at the heart of America. And, you know, I've been listening to, currently I've been listening to Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast. And it occurs to me as I've been listening to this that the founding fathers, when they sat down to make this a country, sat down to make a constitution or whatever. Their central influential,

like, motivation for the constitution, for the government, was Rome, was the Roman Republic. That was their template. That was their template. They loved the Romans. They fucking exonerated them.

You know what I'm saying? Like, they completely exalted them. Yeah, I was like, exonerated. What does exonerate mean? You know, let's about the hook. They exalted them. They exonerated them, too. Like, we have a fucking Senate.

Only because. Only because the Romans had it. Because they were nerds who liked the fucking Roman Republic which if you go back and you like read about Rome and I really recommend Mike Duncan's podcast because it's great

pretty funny and everything but like you know his humor kind of like covers over the fact that if you transported this to like the 20th, to a more recent historical period, you would notice that all these people were genocidal maniacs. And they hated democracy. They hated the masses, most especially. And they devised a system to ensure that specific virtues and themes and anti-democratic measures and stuff would preserve over time.

Well, the fucking founding fathers did the exact same shit. And so I was thinking about that today when that Supreme Court ruling came out about gerrymandering. Supreme Court ruling came out about gerrymandering. So there was a... The Supreme Court today released... I don't know. I don't know how the fuck they do it. They sit down and they release a bunch of fucking rulings all at once. They drop it like Good Friday, like Kanye.

Yeah. Or something like that. Here's what's going on this way. So today they had one. It was a 5-4 ruling that said um that um so there was i guess there was this i don't know maybe we should go to the tape there was this ruling in south carolina or was it north carolina man you can tell i'm just incredibly fucking prepared um so from north carolina concerned a plan drawn by republican state

lawmakers in 2016 that included a criterion called quote partisan advantage the state's congressional delegation in a purple state in which neither party had a distinct edge was at the time made up of 10 republicans and three democrats a key goal lawmaker said was to maintain the current partisan makeup of North Carolina's congressional delegation. I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats, explained David Lewis, a Republican member of the General Assembly's redistricting committee. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.

Standard Republican just, you know, gerrymandering so that they stay in power. Yeah. Well, today the Supreme Court ruled that that's totally fine looks good good on ya go for it well and the thing though the reason why it reminded me of

the Roman thing is because John Roberts like rationale for this wasn't that it was unconstitutional. He did the classic conservative judge thing of, well, we just got to leave it to the states. You know? It's all about states. All right.

So he just, yeah, the same thing, but got us slavery. Exactly. so he just yeah the same thing but got a slavery exactly like it's the you know and i guess the point i'm trying to make there is that this country is fundamentally anti-democratic like that's the whole point the thing the thing too and i feel like this is this bears repeating is that um you know if the project ever moves too far left like here's here's the thing let's say we get like uh and i'm just throwing out this let's say we get a bernie sanders presidency and we get a tiffany caban uh you know in every you know it's the top cop in every state and whatever. And, you know, we stack the legislature. Then what will happen is somebody will mount a strongman to go in and just start murdering everybody.

It'll be like, okay, we went too far now. I think that... And I'm not saying, listen, when I say that, I'm not saying, like, I don't want I don't want those type things to happen or whatever. I'm just saying that part of me that wants to get excited about capital P politics, as you say, is sort of tempered by they're never going to let us get that far in this system. In the Roman, the neo-Roman systemroman system right dude be as spicy as you want what i realized this week is that um you know it's clearly what's on the menu right now is social democracy electoral social democracy you know um i saw all kinds of takes about how the anti-electoralists and all this,

they've been swept aside to the dustbin of history and everything. And it's like, okay, sure, whatever. I mean, I... Wait, let me say, I'll vote for Bernie Sanders. I mean, I will. But it doesn't mean I think my critique is, you know. Well, I think that the thing is, and the thing about the Tiffany Caban stuff is that, you know, good on you. Congrats.

I mean, that's good. I'm not underplaying that at all. And I think somebody made the point, too, that, like, Queens is bigger than a bunch of states. Fifteen states. Fifteen states, which is kind of impressive in a lot of ways and also sort of illustrates why we do need to get away from the roman system a little bit but uh or completely but um just love it just love just maybe it's like uh gosh damn, who did I say the other day? It was Jason Isbell said, he had this quote tweet with something about like the kids in the concentration camps at the border. He goes, it's a bit heartbreaking. I was like, it's a really fucking way to.

A little bit. To characterize that there, Jason. Right. Anyway. Anyway. Getting away from the Roman. Getting away from the Roman thing should be, I don't know. Priority number one?

Is that what you're going to say? I mean, don't hold your tongue. Just say whatever you want. Here's the thing, is that we're not gonna be right. Everybody's gonna continue to say, oh, they're just fucking out-of-touch podcasters who have any fucking clue. So just say whatever you want.

I mean, you might as well. Here's what I wanna say. This country is fucking massive. And it has a million different little political economies contained inside of it. And you have to look at your situation and your immediate surrounding and say how can i change this um we have done that in our lives we've been successful in some ways we've failed in some ways i'm saying we is in me and you and our little fucking group here our merry band of our merry band of rabble rounds yeah um and the thing in

this is a thing because right now we're in the middle of this sort of prison we're in like round eights of this fucking prison battle and i was just talking to a reporter a few days ago about it and the thing is is that like you know we were it was never an option for us to try to go the electoral route because you've got the most've got one of the most powerful congressmen in this country, who's our congressional representative. You've got the most powerful senator in the country, who's our senator. And we're not at a place right now where we can take... It's a little bit of a taller order than beating than uh beating out whoever joe crowley's endorsing exactly exactly you know and joe crowley with the ales because he takes so many ales and

that's that's not to discount anybody's hard work or anything i do find it fucking hilarious how everybody uh you uh a bunch of ds airs win one election and they get on twitter acting like they're literally machiavelli like they're fucking politics experts like shut the fuck up like you've got a long road ahead of you we all do and we're all working with our own limitations limitations in particular situations and you can't make a you and this is this is partially a criticism of me and it's what's what i learned when we had max lbom on is you can't make some sort of universal claim about all electoralism is bad and are all atlanta electoralism is bad they said this country is very fucking large diverse politically and economically we might get balkanized before it's all said and done who the fuck knows right i think the best i think though that the best um i mean like sometimes i

really get excited though like thinking about i you, after the debate last night, I was really thinking about, if Bernie won, we could see a situation in which that whole Roman system or whatever does come called into question for a lot of good. Yeah. Yeah. And they say they won a political revolution or whatever. Well, that's, that's the old. That would be. That would be the revolution. That would be indicative of that.

Exactly. Exactly. So, anyways, back to the Supreme Court thing or whatever. It's, it's pretty interesting that, you know, again, you have these people mostly liberals who you know they want to sort of pretend like we live in a democracy and then you see stuff like this yeah it's totally and and again not to discount that victory it's exciting it's exciting to have somebody in a position like that that uh you know is against all the ills the same meals we have down here cash bill and all this stuff um i just think it's it may be a little a bit yeah like jason is a bit uh harsh to say that

that people that uh don't hold out a lot of hope or or or don't really have the same inroads in the electoral system, that their tactics or their beliefs about how the world runs or this country in particular, their slice of the country runs are irrelevant. I think that's wrong. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, so speaking of the sort of like myths at the heart of America's's you know um empire or whatever

i was laughing my ass off last night so i didn't watch the debate but i'm gonna watch a lot of the recap and watch people talking about it i was laughing my ass off thinking about like the thing about guys like beto o'Rourke is that you know prior to the debate he was sitting in his dressing room or whatever. Having one of those moments where he was like, I know I'm the underdog, but this is where I'm going to shine. This is the part in the movie where I come out on top. I've got a long road ahead. I've got all this adversity. People don't think I'm going to shine. Like, this is the part in the movie where I come out on top. Like, I've got a long road ahead. I've got all this adversity. People don't think I can do it now.

Like, in his mind, he has constructed this narrative that, like, you know, as seen in that Vanity Fair thing, like, I've just got to do it. I've just got to run. In his mind, now he's got all this adversity against him. Like, he came out a little too strong at first, and now he's gonna like sort of prove himself so you know he had like a 15 minute sort of like fantasy in his mind where like this is the moment where he proves that he is presidential in that 15 minute whatever

fantasy he probably should have stayed a little bit longer until he got there beto beto last night proved to me and i don't say this is like a blanket statement i think beto's a dumb guy oh yeah i think he's a dumb guy i think he's and i say this because i too have been a dumb guy in the same way where i don't know my ass from fucking a hole in the ground. Okay? But I get up there and I memorize a few, like, cohesive sort of talking points. Yeah. And here's the thing. At these debates, I've noticed that, like, if, you know, if somebody speaks up and challenges something you have to say, like, you usually have, like, an argument back in your own defense.

Yeah. Beto just kind of, like, shook shook his head and like like acted like he knew he was bested well it's almost like somebody told him like you know you don't have to be the guy that has all the answers you don't have to be but but let me tell you something when john delaney comes trying to pull your card you better have the answers you don't get your card pulled by john fucking delaney the mag the mag cap what that? Isn't there like a Bertrand Russell quote or something that's like, a liberal is a person who is

too broad-minded to take their own side of it. Own side, yeah. Beto's a true liberal in that sense. Yeah. Well, and again, the 15-minute fantasy of, because here's the thing, all these people's brains have been totally poisoned with like

biopics and you know the john kennedy myth biker meth if you're jay ensley man that guy was fucked up yeah he was he was wired last night he was like was he on some he said i'm the only one up here that's fought for a woman's right to choose dude that's awesome um is that like you know they've got this fantasy and everything that fantasy and and it's expressed most in my opinion most concretely in the sort of pod save america realm of politics yeah that is for me the reason why this country is in desperate need of long and sustained violent insurrection. Oh, yeah. We have to fucking end this shit. We need to feel unsafe.

Like, this has to fucking end. The entire fucking charade. And here's the thing. I think this is why I had such a hard time sort of squaring the Bernie thing is that like Bernie's great he's got a lot of things that do like and a lot of things that don't like but overall he is a great candidate and is a total

departure from politics as usual over the past two or three decades however that does not change the fact that this entire fucking thing is a massive charade that must be ended immediately. And, you know, not only that, it's that I remarked to you last night that, like, the thing about presidential elections is that they make people different people. You know?

Like, you see your friends and even people you know who you should know better or who are are smarter and more skeptical, or, you know, more free thinking or whatever, is that they, like, make people different. Like, they, like, tap into some part of people's brains that, like... Well, the thing is, is you have to have a take about everything. Yeah. And you end up being way too conciliatory to just, like, the lamest, dumbest people. Right. You know what I mean?

Yeah. When you do that. Especially when the field's 20 fucking horses deep. Right. way too conciliatory to just like the lamest dumbest people right you know what I mean yeah when you do that especially when the field's 20 fucking horses deep right well and yeah and I noticed it's with a bit like

Julian Castro or whatever yeah people like oh he looked presidential like yeah he was the least bad he was the least

most genocidal person on the stage and even then even then he slipped in a casual endorsement of the coup in central america exactly you know what i mean exactly people will just take any little fucking bait thrown out to them yeah they're tim ryan first of all who is tim ryan still i i can't

tell you which one he is but that guy was like he was like just make it just these unfounded claims that i think most people agree with that are not even remotely true. You know what I mean? Right. Talking about, like, we've got to intervene in Iran and all this kind of stuff. People's ambition is dangerous, too. You know what I mean? Yeah.

We might get led into another war by literally the dumbest people you could assemble. into another war by literally the dumbest people you could assemble which is if you took all the ignoramuses of the world and i count myself in this number and you threw us in a pot and you just took a random sample yeah these people would still be like dumber than that do you know what i mean absolutely well it's uh you got donald trump is the commander-in-chief of the world's most powerful military oh Oh, man. That fucking quote of him yesterday talking about T-Vo. A man that probably keeps a UTI and is only in his right mind about three hours a day. No, dude, that quote yesterday about T-Vo, that clip of him.

It's an amazing invention for us. TV, it just goes away. But T-Vo, you can bring it back. Dude, I must have watched that 15 fucking times that shit was hilarious well it goes back to the roman thing it's like the rom the romans were pretty ridiculous characters too they they were entirely driven by ambition and uh and it's also a sense they would never fall and it a sense that they would never fucking fall. Exactly. And so they would launch absolutely just massively genocidal wars

just to please the ambitions of like a single general. Yeah. Or a single consul. Yeah, you'd piss off any one of those fucking maniacs and they would like sow in your fields with salt. Exactly. You know what I mean? Like for the smallest offense. You know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah, you piss off any one of those fucking maniacs and they were like, so when your fields was solved. Exactly. You know what I mean?

Like for the smallest offense. You know what I mean? Exactly. You looked at one of my eunuchs the wrong way or some shit. You know what I mean? No, it's... Think about these guys though. I mean, it just mirrors it.

Nero sit on the hill and just play this fiddle while... I mean, it's probably bullshit, but you know. I wouldn't doubt it either. Right, right. I wouldn just mirrors it. Nero sat on the hill and just played his fiddle while rowing. I mean, it's probably bullshit, but, you know. I wouldn't doubt it either. Right, right. I wouldn't doubt it. I could see Donald Trump doing that. Totally. Like, let's say China did lead a massive airstrike and blew us all to hell. I could see Donald Trump just, like, fucking, you know, sitting in an undisclosed location just, you know, watching it on TV.

Well, they basically are doing that. That's basically what the Flintint water crisis thing was yeah you know you had all these people who are just like well i mean it doesn't really affect me so we have become in this country and this i mean listen even well let's just i'll just bring this full circle even those of us that quibble about electoralism versus not electoralism, we've become well adjusted to other people's injustice. We have to figure out. And I think a certain degree of that is human nature. I think mostly we can feel empathy for somebody, but if it doesn't affect us directly, we just don't care that much.

Or even if we do, it's easier yeah you know sort of like just be like yeah well somebody else somewhere else is going to do something about that and i'm you know yeah i'm off the hook for doing anything um but uh yeah anyway i don't know what's going on we take this is we take this system for granted and that's why i think a lot of us have this sort of like limited imagination and like uh well we'll work within it and try to like blow it up from within um which is like the you know i don't necessarily disagree i think there are probably um all kinds of um you know opportunities or i don't know what the word is i'm looking for. I think there are all kinds of chances for that to be true. Here's the thing on that, though, okay?

I think that is true, but there's something else, too, about the electoral strategy that I've thought a little bit about. Like, where is, there's tacit acknowledgement of, like, you know, say a progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And when I'm saying this stuff, I'm just saying, like, not what Tom Sexton believes, but just, you know, what's said. Yeah. Okay. But is there any cohesion between, like, say, an AOC, an Ileana Omar, and a Bernie Sanders?

Like, to me, if that electoral thing is your strategy, like, I don't think it's just enough to have like you know all these loosely affiliated dsa endorsed people to like win their elections to run as insurgents and win their elections i think you got to do something else collectively like that you know like maybe form another political party or something like that basically you're saying is like linked them together and get them on the same page right or are they coordinating together is there a bigger movement that is that are linking all these people that are winning these insurgent races together because my hunch is that uh bernie aoc elian omar tiffany caban etc all aren't really just showing up at the dc dsa meetings every time the doors are open you know what i'm saying right as important as that work is to get better people in office, I'm not discounting that. But is there something like, is there some sort of galvanizing ideological thing that says, okay, we need to buy into this and push this agenda?

Or is it just like, you know, throwing paint at the canvas and hoping you get a picture at some juncture? I think it's probably somewhere in between the two, if I had to guess. Like, there's a lot of things that i feel like i've been proven wrong on over the past of the course of the past year like for example the the notion that the democratic party can't be pulled left like a lot of people the talking point i see most frequently today on twitter is um the person who won the debate was bernie last night because all of that because all of uh because his presence was there even though well i mean i will say this i will say this and this is not an endorsement of liz warren yet you'll say poke that hive again but it was good at least

to see that she had co-opted all of bernie. Right. You know, she's from Medicare for All now, for example. Right. Which is a pretty big departure from what she was a couple months ago. Yeah. Well, so I think that, like, you know, historically, yeah, like, there is this, like, historical thing where people have tried to reform the Democratic Party and pull it to the left or whatever.

You know, sort of the two most famous examples would be at the turn of the last century with the populists and then in the 60s yeah and both sort of failed um spectacularly um and it does look like maybe it's possible right now i mean um could you transform it into uh something more like a sort of social democratic party or a democratic socialist party? I don't know. And so maybe that would give it the sort of cohesion that you're talking about. I still fundamentally believe that the radicals' role in society is to basically point at all this and say, you don't have to put up with all of this. You realize that, right? To people, to everyday, to not just people, but workers.

This is mostly what I'm talking about. We don't have to continue putting up with the charade. And you could reply and say, oh, well, like, you know, big shit. You can sit behind your keyboard and talk a big game about revolution or whatever. But, like, obviously you don't mean it. Well, I actually do mean it. Like, I think that, like, history has proven that people can overthrow governments. That they can, you know, that they can over topple the system from without rather than from within.

And that that is, okay, even if you do sort of subscribe to the notion that they can be sort of toppled from within, like there's never been a single moment in history, and Josh Clover pointed this out the other day on Twitter, we were having a conversation, is that there's never been a single moment in history where those attempts to change it from within there hasn't been an existing sort of like insurrectionary movement from without threatening basically violence. You have to have the threat

of some sort of like mass insurrection and sort of like militant violence to actually you know but to actually sort of scoot them to the let exactly exactly yeah and there's not there's not that right yeah well yeah there's not at the moment and um the thing is is that over the course of the next year you're gonna see more that idea discounted more and more. People are going to be they're going to browbeat you into being like, OK, well, Bernie's great.

Like he's giving us all these things. And I guess what I'm saying is I think that leftists should have a different sort of orientation about these things, which is that, you know, you should never fucking thank these people for giving you the bare minimum of what you deserve. You should always be incredibly hostile and antagonistic to them. Right. Because we deserve better. And not only that, I have experienced in my life, and I've seen it, people intervene in history without the help of any kind of fucking, without help from within the system or from some figurehead or anything like that.

Like, mass movements are possible. They've happened in history before. And, you know, it's not to discount the sort of electoral stuff. Again, I think over the course of the next year us saying this will get smaller and smaller and smaller because you know it's the electoralist day like they're on the menu

or wait that's not the right idiom you know what I'm saying they rule the day they're winning right now and granted you know that's good you should keep doing what you're doing. If that's your thing, like, you should definitely keep doing it. But I'm just saying that don't discount people who are skeptical.

Yeah. Especially if their lived experience has proven to them that working within the system will sometimes eat you alive. Yeah. Put you in danger occasionally. Put you in danger occasionally. Put you in danger, exactly. So, anyways, is there any other big takeaways from the debate? I saw Amy Klobuchar say something like, if it doesn't help my uncle...

Did you see this? No, it was their uncle discourse at the debates last night. My internet kept going out, so I missed chunks of it. I think there was uncle discourse at the debates last night. She did have the dumbest idiom. She's like, that's back home what we call all foam, no beer. And I was like, nobody has ever said that. Yeah.

yeah um jay ensley referred to um uh said that people with mcdonald's sling hash for a living thought that was pretty funny dude is jay ensley like um the what's the is he the um case of this one i don't know he does seem a little more of the hippy-dippy band. Just sort of unhinged? I mean, totally illiberal. I'm not saying he's like, you know, whatever. I did see people say that Tulsi Gabbard was the most Googled candidate afterwards. Was it because she's hot? It's got to be.

I mean, she's very hot, of course. Look, I get to say that as a hot person It's a fellow hot I recognize one when I see one I don't know I mean I don't really know much about I don't know much about any of these fucking people Is the thing It's hard to have a podcast where you talk about politics

when you're not actually that invested in capital P politics. Yeah. I mean, well, a couple of takeaways that I did. Well, and tonight's going to be the bigger night, obviously. Right. Uncle Joe and Uncle Bernie are... Squaring off. Duking it out.

Squaring up, squaring off. Yeah. It would be funny if it turned into like one of those where they roll their sleeves up like old man fights. You son of a bitch, you take it back right now. Scranton Joe comes out. No, they should have a debate in a Dairy Queen. They should have a debate in like the Whitesburg Dairy Queen. Yeah.

That would be fun. Because that's basically what it will devolve into. That's also where it's won and lost, I feel like. What, in the Dairy Queen? In the Dairy Queen. It was so funny to tune in to see all the people that are still diehard Trumpers on my Facebook. Did anybody tune in and watch these idiots? Right.

It's just like, man, you can't really throw stones. You're right, but you can't throw stones when you live in a glass house made of fucking popsicle sticks yeah i saw trump tweet boring all quotes all caps boring if they did want to spice this up for rankings they should have had like all the democratic candidates and then off to the side of podium it was just trump to where he gets to respond to everything yeah that would have been great. Yeah, what are the Trump people saying? Nothing. They're just saying that everybody's, all these people are idiots.

Well, it'll be interesting to see if any of them sell on Trump once Biden really, but here's the thing about elections. Another thing that I hadn't really considered is that we can just do broad strokes because if we do hard-hitting political analysis, A, it won't age well, B, it's going to be wrong because I'm a

dipshit when it comes to this stuff, and C, nobody cares what we say anyways about it because they've all written us off as tankies. Let's keep it to broad contours. Another thing I think is interesting about elections is how mediated they are by the corporate media so for example um any kind of speculation

that that you were doing that we were doing anybody was doing about a month ago was just that entirely speculation like oh this and that like, after the debate last night, it, you know, made me realize, like, you know, people still do, you know, they still do sort of triangulate their opinion on a candidate based on their sort of physical presence up on that stage in the sort of, like, corporate media. For sure.

Behind the corporate media camera. And Castro was the sort of best example of that. Like, a guy who was essentially just sort of like corporate media for sure behind the corporate media camera and castro was the sort of best example of that like a guy who was essentially just sort of like hovering around the margins until like last night he like said some smart things sounded capital p presidential and people were like oh yeah and dropped the real spanish on it it's like it dropped the real spanish and he just like he just fucked beto's whole shtick up, didn't he? Why would you vote for Beto now when you got Julian Castro?

Seriously. You're right. If I'm going for some Obama clone guy or whatever, if that's where I'm at, I'm not going to vote for Beto over Julian Castro. Exactly right. Julian Castro is funny.

It's like, he was a guy that was like, before really the collapse of Clinton liberalism, which I think even took, was, you know, well on its way before 2016. But before that, he was like the heir apparent to like the Obama-Clinton like school. I'll probably separate those two out, but yeah. You're right, because people used to say he's the next obama well he gave that you know he gave the speech i think maybe the dnc or whatever

and uh you know he's got the story with his twin brother and you know their mom that was in there or their grandmother maybe there was an immigrant all this stuff like he's got all the trappings of like the next big thing but he just kind of became the milk carton guy. And then last night he just kind of brought it back. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what it was that, right. I guess Hillary Clinton losing,

he kind of lost some of his verve, but right. You know? Well, I think that like a large part of how people vote, a large part of how the electorate vote is still the vast majority of people in this country don't vote and they probably don't even watch the debates is through these sort of like sort of corporate molded um tv spectacles yeah where you get all the candidates on stage and you watch how

they all interact with each other yeah and that's why you know you had some really hilarious stuff for the 2016 election like uh jim Jim Webb saying he killed a guy. Think about how different that was. There was four people. Hillary, Bernie, Lincoln, Chafee, and Jim Webb. Right. That's who ran for the Democratic ticket. And Martin O'Malley.

And Martin O'Malley. I forgot about him. Yeah. A big snoozer. Think about that. Versus this field. It's like, there's like's like yeah it's like fucking 36 flavors you know what i mean um yeah and so like you know if this these kind of debates will be

he's not around to tell the story though and then everything's going for the last everybody i just feel like just went I do so exactly well um so like these debates will be basically like everybody knows like how Bernie will fare in this kind of stuff like he's really good in these

kind of situations and he can sort of like you know be snarky and quit witty and quick on his toes he's really great at that yeah um and so it'll be interesting to see how people's opinion this is the funny thing about biden being ahead of the pack and people saying that he's the man to beat because

in a sort of corporate tv spectacle thing where you know this is where the sausage gets made of how people vote yeah whatever i'm not sure why i'm doing like a phallic jerking shake weight motion but yeah um it it's mostly formed in this sort of like scenario right so it's entirely possible biden will get up there and do his whole like um trump democrat 2.0 type thing yeah and people will you know either hate it or love it who knows um but i don't know i just think that in if we're talking about presidential elections in this country like look at the look at the broad strokes like how do they how do they play out over time like who who is presenting the information to the public and why like i think perrine had a interesting quote yesterday about like

when did we seed uh debates to you know, large media conglomerates? Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know. I think maybe Bernie does pretty well on these types of things and, like, that gets good numbers and views and stuff for them. But I don't know. I guess we'll see how they respond to his more sort of leftist bent over time.

I don't know. Like the sort of student debt stuff. Right. I don't fucking know, Tom. I don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Well, if there's anything that's clear, it's that Bernie won the debate last night. He won the debate last night.

He won the debate last night. He wasn't there. He wasn't on stage. I'm going to tweet that out today and get like 800 retweets people will be like yeah you're right man yeah you're totally right people have no fucking free thinking like they cannot think for themselves hell i can't i mean maybe that's a good thing like you know there's this sort of like critique of hyper individualism uh in our world today.

But, like, that's different than... You can be an individual and have your own beliefs and stuff. And still... Can you? Maybe you can't. Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe we should all be brainwashed. Maybe we should all be brainwashed in part of a sort of collective movement where we just let our brains be scooped out.

Yeah. I don't know. Well, it's going gonna happen sooner or later between uh lyme disease and that one bacteria that cats give us all right right so well i guess maybe the point there is that um that's a pretty good argument for why you need a party and a program, which we don't have yet. We have a few isolated DSA candidates in Bernie. You know, we'll see how it shakes out. Hell yeah. Why are you so quiet today? Oh, man, I'm still in the doldrums, dude.

Yeah, I understand. I understand. still in the doldrums dude yeah i understand i understand um well that's that's been trail billy's uh debate watch debate maybe the way i build this up is debate not in america maybe we just didn't deliver but that's where we're at with it but hey tonight's the night's young yeah that's right this is a test this is a test of the Trailbillies Debate Watch team. These two have no fucking clue what they're talking about. They're two incredibly depressed individuals who hate themselves, and that's how they shape their politics. That's exactly right.

Well, we've still got like 10 minutes. What else is going on? We need to do it. We've got about 10 minutes. Well, I was going to get back to the public service sirens threats from our youth and all that kind of stuff. Have you ever been in an earthquake? The only earthquake I've ever been in was actually here.

Yeah, that was the 2013. Yeah. Yeah, or 2012, whichever it was. Right. Earthquake, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It was a really mild one, but that's the only earthquake I've ever been in. It is the wildest feeling, though, isn't it?

Yeah. The earth just shook uncontrollably for like three seconds. I was in the library, and you could feel the building sort of go buckle a little bit. Yeah. It's so weird, man. It's pretty crazy, man. Like the earth has been around for so long. Well, that's another thing, too, that everybody always said.

They were like, every teacher I had, science teacher I had, would get this wry smile on their face and say, like during their natural disasters thing, they would say, of course you do know that the most, what is it? How do they call it? The most volatile fault line in the world runs through Pine Mountain. Guess what? She hasn't woken up for 8,000 years.

So basically we were like walking through our whole life thinking that we're gonna have this just just dramatic earthquake that you were residing on the big one now and honestly the way i feel right now if the big one came it would totally rearrange a lot of our priorities that's that for dang sure. Well, I would hope it would take us with it. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you're hoping to die in a cataclysmic environmental event. I don't want to. I don't want to, but I'm saying that if that were...

I just want to die in a situation where we all go. I just don't want to have FOMO. I don't want to be on my deathbed and think, oh, they're going to have fun tomorrow without me, and I'm not going to be. Oh, yeah. I see what you're saying. Like the asteroid, you'd be fine with that.

Totally. I would like to be swallowed up by the earth. I have vor, but for the earth. I would like the earth to swallow me up. Earth could probably arrange that for you if you go to the right place. Yeah, but didn't shit like that happen in the Bible all the time? How did Elijah die? He was taken up by a tornado.

He was Elijah the prophet? Elijah? Elijah or Elijah? Elijah. He was just called up. Oh, they just called him up. I don't know if the tornado was the mechanism. He was just called up.

Didn't that happen to Muhammad? Did he also get taken up? You're not supposed to say that? I don't Did he also get taken up? Is that, you're not supposed to say that? I don't know how Muhammad was taken up. Is that a killable offense? Speaking blasphemy or wrong facts about Muhammad? I don't know. Look.

I wouldn't chance it, though. Yeah, okay. It'd be tight to get called up, man. It kind of would. I don't want to. That looks like it hurts. Let's just all get called up well um yeah and um you know this is fresh on my mind i don't want to say why but i shouldn't be alone right now

yeah that doesn't look fun. But you just got to enjoy it while you can, man. Just got to enjoy life while you can. That's it, bro. That's the key. That's how you fill 10 minutes at the end of a podcast, just empty platitudes and bro-minds. About death and what it'd be like to be taken up or swallowed up. Yeah.

Let's see. Do I have any good bits? Do I have any good quotes or observations going on? Yesterday, I was laughing about a white guy pretending to be Native American, you know, classic, like, oh, my grandma spoke Bahamas or whatever, and going to the powwow or whatever and getting busted for singing the tribal chants like in a creed pearl champ type voice everybody

like okay he's clearly not one of us yeah you'd betray yourself as not a member of the yes the unit that's right fuck all right well go to our patreon go to our patreon um you can give money while you're there or not this is one of the worst episodes we've ever done i think it was all right for about the till the last 10 minutes you think so go to a patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com slash true billy workers party um tanya's out for like the next three or four weeks and so so we've got another one coming out with her. Just to sate you jackals in your appetite. But then you won't be hearing anything from her for a while.

A couple weeks. Get used to subpar podcasting. We'll get some guest songs too. Egotistical pontifications about the electoral system. We'll have a lot of that. Alright. So yeah, go check out the Patreon. And I guess we'll see you. See you out there.

We'll see you out there.