Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 135: The Robert Mueller Underground

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

This week we've got two articles for you, one from a liberal who really wants to bomb a post office, and another about how #work can be #innovated. Opening song by Slut Pill, buy their album here: https://spinstersounds.bandcamp.com/album/slut-pill Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

You think you're a king, wow You think you're a king, wow In the history of debate, Minnie Mike had the worst showing ever. Can't do what I do, folks. And Trump is an expert in debating as we know i mean he really is in a way his rhetorical style is hard to combat because he's just so good on his feet with the insults and like letting shit roll off his back his his debates with hillary really were some of the best entertainment i've seen on live television, to be honest. The man is a master.

He really is. Of manipulating the media, anyway. Hillary herself is entertaining. I find Hillary to be very entertaining, just because she's so cringe. But Bloomberg has zero charm. Zero charisma. Like nothing. He's not even really cringey.

Like he's paying a lot of cringe people money to promote him as cringe, but it just reads as sad. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so he's probably going to win Nevada, right, Sanders? I was about to say Bloomberg. No. Yeah, Sanders, it looks like he's going to not only win Nevada, but, you know. It's weird to call him Sanders.

Yes, I'm voting for Sanders. I'll have the sanders i'll have the sanders for a vote i wish he were a colonel he probably would i mean he would definitely win if he would just if he would just run as colonel sanders well so you're right. You're probably right. He needs to go get a colonel badge somehow. He could become a Kentucky colonel very easily. Do y'all want to hear what David Brooks has been saying about Bernie? Who's that? David Brooks is the New York Times editorial writer. Boring.

Who is probably best known for marrying his secretary who's like 30 years younger than him. Not his stepsister. That's where we were going with that. No, that would make him a little cooler in my book.

Let's see. So this is not, I'm sure that this will be covered by Chapo and other podcasts, but I just was reading it, and I was just utterly astounded at the whole thing. I just figured you two should hear it. This is David Brooks writing in the New York Times. Why Sanders will probably win the nomination. So here's David's take on the whole thing.

Let us in on it, Davey. Successful presidential candidates are myth makers. They don't just tell a story. They tell a story that helps people make meaning out of the current moment, that divides people into heroes and villains, that names a central challenge and explains

why they are the perfect person to meet it. In 2016, Donald Trump told a successful myth. The coastal elites are greedy, stupid people who have mismanaged the country, undermined our values, and changed the face of our society. This was not an original myth. It's been around since at least the populist revolts of the 1890s. But it's a powerful us-vers us versus them worldview, which resonates with a lot of people.

Bernie Sanders is also telling a successful myth. The corporate and Wall Street elites are rapacious monsters who hoard the nation's wealth and oppress working families. Yeah, yeah, myth. This is not an original myth either. It's been around since the class conflict agitators of 1848. It's also... Oh, that?

At least... All you guys know is Marx and the boys. It is also a very compelling us-versus-them worldview that resonates with a lot of people. When you're inside the Sanders myth, you see the world through the Bernie's lens. For example, if you look at Mike Bloomberg through a certain lens,

you see a successful entrepreneur who took his management skills into public service and then started giving his wealth away to reduce gun violence and climate change. Okay. If, on the other hand, you look at Bloomberg through the Bernie lens, you see a rapacious billionaire

who amassed a gross amount of wealth who became an authoritarian mayor and targeted young black men and then tried to buy his way to power. Same person through different lenses. David really hasn't learned anything about disqualifying behavior, has he? Like, I'm not even saying Bloomberg is actually combating climate change or any of that stuff. What I am saying, though, is that if he healed lepers and the blind and did that other shit, that first shit don't matter.

lepers and the blinds and did that other shit that first shit don't matter nothing yes it cannot be stated enough nothing mike bloomberg could do with the rest of his life could make up for the misery and pain he has caused so far there is literally nothing. It really cannot. Nothing. It really cannot. No. If he gave away all of his wealth and, as you said, Tom, went to living a life of a pauper, healing the rich and lame, or the poor and lame, it would not matter. Give away every penny you have and throw yourself off the Empire State Building.

We'll still laugh. We still hate you. We still don't give a fuck about you. That's what Tom Steyer and them need to recognize too, is that there's nothing you can do at this point. The damage is done once you let your hubris allow

you to exploit labor to the point where you've hoarded all these resources while you walk streets and there are people begging. Yeah. And it's... Let me just say that this is honestly a, a very rare,

um, like can diamond in the rough. One of the, one of the few fucking bright spots in this election at all is that people truly are not forgiving this shit anymore. You know what i mean like yeah we have a we have enough of our own communication channels now that we know who is making our lives so miserable we know yeah at least that's a good point i was thinking about

that this morning that like the mask has really slipped. But like more and more every day, it's like when I was thinking about that stock market thing this morning, I was tweeting about it. I was like, it is fucking crazy that these people rigged this system to the point that they created this like gambling apparatus that has us given significant portions of our income over the entirety of our working lives to them in advance to let them do what they will with it to make more money acquire more wealth while in retirement they give us a pittance of that about eight percent is what any personal finance person will tell you you know what i mean right and then you're retired you're like oh you're a millionaire now and then it's like you know but like i i gave so much of myself to make you billions and then i actually when i can't really even enjoy this wealth i'm getting ready to die in 10 15 years whatever it is now i'm finally not

even really set set you know something i really want to make clear, though, is that Bloomberg is a bad person. He's an objectively bad person, not just because of his hoarding of wealth, but because of the bad things he's said and done. 64 sexual assault harassment allegations or whatever. He's a bad person. Pimping his daughter off to businessmen when she was a teenager. But even those things aside, let's say he was a guy like Tom Steyer, like who, you know, who appears to be not that kind of person, who appears to be a different kind of rich person.

that kind of person who appears to be a different rich kind of a different kind of rich person something i want to make clear though is that like wealth is not just like poverty is not a failure of morality like this is and this is i i kind of have problems sometimes with the bernie campaign the way they use the word greed like the billionaire is just as locked into the system as we are. And if you miss that, if you focus on the moral failings that they are bad people or that they, you know, that they're greedy or whatever, you can miss that the system itself is what needs to be overturned. I'm not saying, however, that they don't deserve what they have coming because they definitely do no i agree with that it's like we were talking about capitalism is is ain't moral i mean it just it just does what it does and that is honestly the root of all evil is is just you know doing the doing the job you know the job is job. The job is that people have to lose in order for this to succeed.

And to succeed means that a handful of people get rapaciously wealthy and a lot of others, many, many, many, many more others are emiserated. And that is the thing, though. Yeah.

Like, yeah. Because I'm sure people will listen to this and say, you know, like, Bloomberg isn't bad because of all the bad things he's done. I mean, it's almost like, well, I don't even know what I'm fucking saying. It's almost, though, like it doesn't matter. It ultimately does not matter. Like I said, the billionaire is locked into the same system that we are at the end of the day. So that's why appeals to greed and immorality don't really matter that much. They do help if we're trying to start a riot or something.

That would be good. If we're trying to put Bloomberg in the sausage maker, yes, that's effective. and the sausage maker yes that's that's a fact but i know what you're i know what you're saying is that that the accumulation of billions even if you're a morally upright person and you give to the poor and all this kind of stuff if you have acquired the wealth and you've plugged into that system it's not necessarily about morality at that point it is that you've leveraged that for your own gain. And that even if you're the best person in the world, you're tacitly supporting the immiseration of a lot of other people.

And therein lies the sin. Well, yes. Because the name of the game is capitalism and that means that we're just allocating resources. So even if Bloomberg were to give away all of his riches and just disappear, somebody else would step in and do it,

because that's how we allocate resources in 2020, this absurdly ginned-up gambling system called capitalism. It's completely irrational and nonsensical, but all of this would be considered the bernie lens according to david brooks um you know i actually kind of early on like really until this week i thought it was a joke that bloomberg was paying people to do everything that volunteers are doing for bernie like knock on doors and make calls and like just do bizarre shit but he really is just paying people to carry bloomberg bags around new york and whatever the fuck i don't know i don't even

know at all yeah paying people to endorse them as far as i can see the only bloomberg supporters are uh celebrities that have probably been paid half a million dollars to send a tweet anybody that had money in new york in the 90s except for donald trump and whatever poor bastard needed a 300 gig to go around canvassing for him who's probably still not going to vote for him. It's interesting, though. If you're taking Bloomberg money, if Bloomberg is paying you to support him, I can't really knock that.

Get paid. Get paid, my man. But if you're out here, one of these people that is still standing for him after he's just been revealed to have used prison laborers in oklahoma to make calls on his behalf i don't really know what else to tell you it's like earlier you said he's finished i don't think so i think that there are batshit insane psychopaths out there that like like that that you know what i mean that see some sort of determination and vision in that. No, absolutely there are.

But I want to give a warning to those people too. I mean, it's not just the billionaires that are amorally plugging into the system and benefiting from it. We also got to talk about a certain type of liberal that pines for that, that sort of familiarity that a bloomberg or something does and then in that case it's just tacitly supporting the you know perpetuation of that misery that miser immiseration right and uh that's that's really the greatest travesty honestly um because they don't stand to gain at all in any way shape or form like you know the bloombergs

of the world do but they sort of create the conditions for them to exist still well it's they're making their choice between bernie and you know barbarianism bernie or goddamn bust. Truly. So David Brooks writes here, my takeaway from Wednesday's hellaciously entertaining Democratic debate is that Sanders is the only candidate telling a successful myth.

Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar all make good arguments, but they haven't organized their worldview into simple, compelling myth. Oh my God. You may look look at them but you don't see the world through their eyes where this goes after this guys i cannot i i don't even know how to explain this to you like you don't have the proper armor to go i don't have the proper rhetorical tools or armor to express it it's incredible so you know anytime i think that we that we've really dried up we don't have anything else to talk about on this podcast it is true the new york times will never fail us we exist some in large part because the New York Times exists. Exactly.

Truly. They have fucked up so many ways, so many times, and it never ends. Elizabeth Warren inhabits a myth without expressing it clearly. It just happens to be Sanders' myth. I thought her performance Wednesday... I thought that was going a different way.

I thought it was going to be the woman. I thought her performance Wednesday... I thought that was going a different way. I thought it was going to be the Cherokee. I thought her performance Wednesday evening was tactically brilliant and strategically catastrophic. Her attack on Bloomberg was totally through the Bernie lens. Her attacks on Buttigieg and Klobuchar were also through the Bernie lens. Through that lens, a bigger spending proposal is always better than a less big spending proposal. I don't know what he's talking about. Warren was a devastatingly—

This man makes half a million dollars a year, probably. Dude, Warren was a devastatingly effective surrogate for Sanders, but she reinforced his worldview rather than establishing one of her own. Over the past five years, Sanders and his fellow progressives have induced large parts of the Democratic Party to see through the Bernie lens. You can tell because every candidate on that stage has the categories and mental equipment to carve up a billionaire like Bloomberg. None have the categories or mental equipment to take down a socialist like Sanders. Sanders goes untouched in these debates because the other candidates don't have a mythic platform from which to launch an attack.

Saying his plans cost too much is a pathetic response to a successful myth. And he's true. I mean, he's right here. They don't have shit on Bernie in terms of the story that he's telling. The story that he's telling is a compelling one, and it's true. And he's been saying it for 60 years. Right. I mean, there really isn't.

Is there another elected official like this? No. No, that's why. What a career. like this no no that's why that's why there's not and that's why i must plead with all of my friends who are still abstaining or or even skeptical of this that like this is quite literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing it really is i mean the system's got to go either way it's not like we are you know it's not like we're, but he knows that and he's been saying it for years. And we may not have exactly the same idea of how it's going to go down, but it's going down.

Yeah, it's such a dog shit country that this is the only opportunity we've had in any. How that all sorts out in a Sanders administration is impossible to know, and I'm not smart enough to— I mean, me neither. I'm certainly not smart enough, but the bare bones of it to me at this point is I think that a Sanders presidency means less death overall. Well, at least on our side. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Due to class war, like less death due to class warfare and climate. Yeah.

You know, it's just like there are a few things here. So this is. Unless your name's Tom Perez. My money's still getting dismembered somehow. So this is the part of the article that just goes absolutely haywire. That just goes off the rails. Um, and several times over the course of the last two or three years, I've evoked this image of the street protesting radical who supports Robert Mueller and impeachment and Hillary Clinton. And I see them, and I've seen them over time, become more and more disillusioned and disaffected with every aspect of America and the political process. You know what I'm talking about? These people are going to be who we were four years ago.

Is this the Rad Lib? This is the Rad Lib, fully realized. A new Rad Lib? This is the Rad Lib, like fully realized. A new Rad Lib. They are now the protest voters and abstentionists. Whereas like five or six years ago, we were the protest voters and abstentionists. They are now becoming that person. Are you saying we're the establishment? I'm saying that I'm saying that people will use

whatever means available to them to further and not people classes classes will use whatever means available to them to further their own agenda and that's what we are doing with Bernie and they don't see an avenue anymore so they might be bombing post offices

in a few years so the Radlib the Robert Mueller muller rad lib is going weather underground on this is your hypothesis well i don't know if you saw this but today someone put a brick through the window of the bernie office in somewhere in nevada and no it was in seattle oh seattle okay it was probably howard schultz it really probably was i wonder are there any schultz it really probably was I mean seriously it probably was not a white nationalist or a right winger it probably was a straight up like Buttha judge supporter or a bloomberg supporter bernie you fucking white bastard you old white bastard here's what here's what i wonder though i don't disagree with you but i'm

just thinking about what a hollow existence it would be to throw bricks through bernie campaign field offices as a rad lib when you don't believe in anything like what are you fighting for at least what we're fighting for is like you know people to be able to go to the doctor and to not you know become bankrupt if they do go to the doctor and for the student loan debt to be alleviated for people to have like a puncher's chance at a dignified existence in this fucking country but like what does the rad lib fight for donald trump's impeachment like yeah truly that is that is what it is tom they fight for the norms they fight for the constitution they fight for the pageantry of voting all of that shit that worked for them

yes because it's worked for them and two i think you're right about that too i think the reason they do that is because these people have equated politics with entertainment you know it's a form of entertainment to them in the same way we would watch wrestling or whatever you know what i mean like these are the people that have strong opinions about kamala harris and know the finer points of michael bennett's career i don't know who that is and i will never look it up exactly um all right so this is the this is the money shot and he tweeted this he tweeted something along these lines the other day but he put it into an editorial version, into an op-ed.

But this is it. I've spent much of this election season away from the campaign rallies and interviewing voters embedded in their normal lives. This week, for example, I was in Compton and Watts, in and around Los Angeles. The reality I encounter every day has little to do with the us versus them stories Trump and Sanders are telling.

Listen to his diagnosis of the system and why everything is the way it is. I want to say one thing before you go there. Okay? This is a guy that took his hillbilly friend to get a stromboli and then wanted to pat on the back to introduce him to a little culture yes this is the same person everywhere i go i see

systems that are struggling so picture david brooks walking around compton and watts just being like man man this is this is real messed up. Like, what caused all that? Why are these people going for Bernie? I don't understand. So this is his diagnosis of the system. Everywhere I go, I see systems that are struggling. School systems, housing systems, family structures, neighborhoods trying to bridge diversity. These problems aren't caused by some group of intentionally evil people.

Problems aren't caused by some group of intentionally evil people. They exist because living through a time of economic, technological, demographic, and cultural transition is hard. Creating social trust across diversity is hard. Everywhere I go, I see a process that is the opposite of group versus group war. It is gathering. It is people becoming extra active on the local level to repair the systems in their lives. I see a great yearning for solidarity and eagerness to come together and make practical change.

These gathering efforts are hampered by rippers at the national level who stoke rage and fear and tell friend-enemy stories. These efforts are hampered by men like Sanders and Trump, who have never worked within a party or subordinated themselves to a team. Men who are one-trick ponies. All they do is stand on a podium and bellow. In the gathering myth, the heroes have traits Trump and Sanders lack.

Open-mindedness, flexibility, listening skills, team-building skills, and basic human warmth. Okay, how does Bernie not have open-mindedness, flexibility... Basic human warmth. It should tell you something, that David Brooks literally sees Bernie as the Grim Reaper. A strong man. In this saga, leaders are measured by their ability to expand relationships,

not wall them off. The gathering myth is an alternative myth, one that has the advantage of being true. I just want to run this back real quick. I just want to run this back real quick. These problems aren't caused by some group of intentionally evil people. They exist because living through a time of economic, technological, demographic, and cultural transition is hard. Oh, David, why are things transitioning, David?

Why is there an economic transition? Why is there a technological transitioning, David? Why is there an economic transition? Why is there a technological transition, David? Absolute fucking maniac. And that's the thing with Tom's Princess. An editor didn't say, it might be a little bit of an oversimplification. David, why are social relationships fraying david why why why is everything unraveling i just can't even fucking fathom looking at the world and seeing the problems being

you see the changes and that's what the the is. You're like, oh, things are bad because things are changing, man. That's, um, god damn, dude. I'm just imagining David Brooks, like, getting some, like, paid actors to pretend to be Crips or something. And then, like, doing, like like a video series where he goes out there and they all just say to him, David, why is this all happening? Well, I'll tell you, big blue face. This is why this is happening.

Yeah, Jesus fucking Christ. David, why are people taking so many drugs? They die. I don't get it, David. They die. Jesus fucking Christ. David, why are people taking so many drugs they die? I don't get it, David. They die. Jesus fucking Christ, man. Well, anyways, he is right, though, in the sense that, like, Bernie is telling a compelling story. And these people don't have a myth or story or anything anymore.

David Brooks and Hillary Clinton's and the Buddha judges of the world. They've got nothing. Well, their only thing is a return to normalcy. But the return to normalcy is just the immiseration, the continued immiseration of people like what people don't understand in the era of trump is that with some rough edges we still have about more or less the same thing yeah i mean we have like that's it you're right like like 9-11 has looked at is this like sort of watershed moment of changing this country but did your life change that much other than just the airport being a bigger bitch our lives were substantially more altered by everything that happened within the eight years george bush was president then i mean trump has not even come close not even close we launched two wars expanded the

police and surveillance state and crashed the economy in eight years accelerationism at its exactly like you want to talk about accelerationism they fucking did it and now they sit around bitching and moaning about these strong men who come telling stories it's like was david brooks a shield for the iraq war oh absolutely is he a republican david brooks is like a centrist like extraordinaire david brooks is the centrist i don't know what he's registered as probably a republican but i just have to call those people republicans anymore like you can't be a centrist i mean i i don't even know it's just it feels like the word democrats useless anymore it's just so ridiculous he calls himself a moderate conservative um one of his

callings is to represent a certain moderate republican wig for a lot political philosophy he literally used the word wig just could you imagine david brooks walking around compton trying to like sell people on the wig political philosophy on the return of the wig party that's like that's like just some like hipster shit you know what i mean right oh yeah so my values actually are more in line with the Whig party that disbanded in 1857. Whatever they disbanded. Yeah. Well, I mean, fucking A. But, I mean, but he is correct in that one sentence.

Like, yeah, all of this is not the result of intentionally evil people. Again, none of these people see what they do is evil like none of none of them i'm okay maybe maybe a few of them yeah but collectively on on the whole like you go to the aspirin uh ideas festival whatever the fuck or davos and they see themselves as the progressive engine of history they see themselves in what the imf does and what the world bank does as lifting people out of you know poverty and introducing technological innovation to people's lives and in so doing bringing them out of yeah immiseration and poverty i don't think any of them see what they're doing is as intentionally evil or wrong and that's what i was getting at

earlier it's like they are just as locked into this system as we are. And that's, what's so scary about them talking about Mars. It's like they are now for the first time. And I don't know if Mark's ever anticipated this. They are not now talking about, they are not talking about exiting the system. They may have found a way to transcend and And finally exit. This primordial battle.

That's been going on for millennia. Which is a pretty scary thought. But I don't know. That may also be impossible. I'm not entirely sure. But that's what they mean when they talk about Mars. And space colonies and all this. They're not talking about fleeing a warming world.

They're talking about exiting a system. that they know they're locked into with us yeah i don't know yeah just even anytime i even start to think about the colonization of other planets it's just more it's like i'm afraid I will never get out of bed again. I can't even entertain it for a moment. I know this won't be, we can probably cut this out because I know this won't be relevant when we release this episode, but the numbers I see right now is that Sanders has 68% of the vote. Oh, my God. It's a bloodbath.

My man is piling up skins maybe that was in one place i'm so confused no now they've switched to they won't even show that image long now they've switched to age 45 plus which is more which is uh burning at 21 and Biden at 20%. They won't even show it very long that he is, that it's truly a bloodbath. Now they're showing moderate voters. That's so fucked. Did Joe even go to Nevada? Is Joe in Nevada? That's a good question.

I don't know. I still think it's hilarious you see all this polling and joe biden is still in second place and my guy has not finished above fourth in any primary no no like with national voters it's so weird i don't know why okay hold on a second while we're on jump by before we get too far from that did y'all see where he claims to have been arrested in south africa during apartheid did you see this no joe biden swears up and down that he was arrested in south africa it's making the rounds i didn't really read much into it just the headline just made me erupt arrested for what i don't know i guess some sort of he's protesting apartheid with nelson

mandela they've sat around at biden hq saw that famous picture of bernie being drug away by the cops and jones had to create some sort of origin myth that sort of neutralizes that and adds to his mystique as this civil rights guy. An origin myth. They can't. We have their origins on video. We have Elizabeth Warren speaking to the Federalist fucking society,

whatever the fuck it is. We have Biden ready to free. Talking about bussing, yeah. Yeah, really, ready to free social security no fucks to give about anybody shut the government down these people are fucking sick we are we are about to enter into the realm as bernie as it becomes more and more clear, Bernie will be the nominee. He will be the elected. He will have the most votes. We'll see what happens in Milwaukee.

Very true. Very true. Yeah, they could pull some kind of coup. But before we get too far away from that, I just want to point out just for the 18th millionth time what kind of a brain disease liberalism truly is. So, like, you know, we got Biden out here saying that he was on the front lines of the apartheid fight. We just got all these just crazy myths when, like, the reality is at some point most of those people were just the most vile people. And I was talking to a colleague of mine the other day.

of mine the other day and she was saying that this at this meeting that they had that this person who was like this sort of progressive leader in a certain movement or whatever said to within earshot of this person they brought around as a person of color young woman of color and said that something to the effect of that um the reason we have a lot of the problems we have in this country today is because blacks and Muslims are spreading their seed around. Oh, my God. And I say that, one, obviously to point out the obvious racism, but two, just to point out what kind of craven freaks these people are. Who the fuck says the words spread their seed around with about a hint of irony i mean it's like it's like oh just somebody at this meeting i don't want to you know dox him well i don't want to dox the person who told me this but but but it's astonishing to me how many liberals have i mean just like Sullivan or something at the New Republic or any – people that at a certain point caped for the most vile philosophies on earth. or all this stuff and expect any different out of them because usually every liberal that didn't

grow up from liberalism to become part of the left is like a craven fucking lunatic freak that is like just as prone to any fucking conspiracy theory as the like the nuttiest batshit facebook conservative yeah and honestly they say crazy things like spread your seat around, talking about a future like that white supremacy will weed itself out as the races blend. And there's going to be some future where, you know, racism doesn't exist because we're all blended. Amber talked about that earlier at silicon valley with the woman say or you said that earlier yeah yeah this is yeah this is a woman in silicon valley and if you had dug deeper with this bitch who said my son her white son just would probably you know not even end up with a white woman one she's clearly not ready that he could end up with a non-white man and two

she is probably digging deep and talking about like i mean they're still just like i just would love to imagine who her husband works with in silicon valley actually her she works in silicon valley too who they work with that they are just like hoping their son will date their kids like how fuck what fucking freak shows these people are eugenicists. It's like the Juneteenth episode of Atlanta, but, like, going to Silicon Valley. Oh, yeah. It's weird. I'd say it's eerily similar. All these people, I think, I mean, I'm not going to try to even diagnose the sort of pathology that comes with that, because I just don't know.

the sort of pathology that comes with that because i just don't know but all these people secretly believe particularly affluent whites secretly believe like john bircher like shit like the coming race war and that kind of shit that collecting like friends of color shit is just part and parcel trying to stave that off i mean you see this with like people we know particularly in foundation land that that do that shit. Yeah. I think that the biggest, obviously, like Bernie, you know, preaching what he's preaching and raising class consciousness is probably his biggest contribution to recent politics. But honestly, it would not surprise me if what you start to see in the next

few years is a fundamental shift where in all of these people that are to the rights of Warren, anyone to the right of Warren, and even maybe the sort of like Warren adjacent people themselves, start to peel off and become more openly conservative and right wing. Because I think that what Bernie has done is start to reveal the contradictions at the sort of that lies at the sort of heart of the Democratic Party and of liberal politics. And so like politics are starting to align more and more with class interests, whereas like before it's just been a sort of hobbled-together coalition of different interest groups. Now I feel like politics is starting to align closer to a little bit, yeah, I don't know, towards class interests.

I don't know. Yeah, I believe that. I believe that. And that's when I think what you're seeing, was also to some of that race shit just as a response to what you were just saying terrence is that like the last thing the last vestige of their interpretation of identity politics is like getting morphed into like weird racist eugenicist shit because it's becoming more and more incoherent because there's no class component to it and so what you're seeing is these people, the rightward drift, but with that what's coming

is their racial politics are becoming weirder and weirder and weirder, and as a result, by extension, more and more disgusting. Well, yeah, because they don't understand race. Again, this is the thing. It's like, because we've sectioned race off into the sort of nonprofits and Democratic Party elite, we don't ever talk about what it is anymore. I mean, you look at like what the leftists were talking about in the 60s and 70s.

They were asking, like, what is race? I mean, you know, how is it used? How do we envision a society where we break it down? No one ever. We don't talk about that anymore. The origin of what it is. And we don't talk about that anymore, the origin of what it is. And because we've ceded that, like I said, to the Democratic Party elite and the nonprofits,

and that in turn has meant that we've ceded the entire thing to the right. And so the only people that really talk about it anymore in its class dimension is the right wing. So you get these right wing fanatics who talk about it in terms of class, and then you've got these sort of vaguely progressive people who just talk about it like it's just as a given. And then the far left, who we haven't done a good enough job of injecting that into our, I don't know, discourse. It's like, I don't know, like Noel Ignatiev, who just died. You know what I mean?

I think he's a perfect example of what it looks like to talk about race in terms of class or as stewart hall said uh race as the lived modality of class and we we just again we just don't talk about that anymore and so as a result you're getting these very warped and twisted interpretations of it it's pretty scary honestly i don't know no that absolutely is absolutely is they're gonna eat pulling at straws to try to cancel us all before we can kill them yeah well that's literally what that bloomberg ad was. That Bloomberg ad was literally about trying to cancel a few dozen Twitter users. Yeah, really. For... Calling him names like oligarch, plutocrat. The classic slurs, Jesse Montgomery. I saw him tweet that. The classic slurs.

God damn. Well, I've got another thing to read here. This is a little bit more fun. Mostly because of the tone of it. Fun? Yeah. A little treat for us? A little treat for us.

It's a little fun. I mean, it's dark, of course. Wouldn't be fun if it wasn't dark But this comes by way of NPR Morning Edition Enjoy the extra Day off more bosses give Four day work week a try

And so The tone and the way this is written is Fucking hilarious because it's written like someone was laboring in a lab like Einstein and they were like, oh, guys, I fucking got it. We can improve profitability and work productivity if we cut a day out of the work week and like everybody is treating this except american capitalists who are the most ruthless capitalists in the world probably everybody's treating this like it's an innovation and it's the way it's written is funny so companies around the world are embracing what might seem like a radical idea, a four-day work week. The concept is gaining ground in places as varied as New Zealand and Russia, and it's making inroads among some American companies.

Employers are seeing surprising benefits, including higher sales and profits. and profits. The idea of a four-day work week might sound crazy, especially in America, where the number of hours worked has been climbing and where cell phones and email remind us of our jobs 24-7. But in some places, the four-day concept is taking off like a viral meme. Oh my God. Last month, a Washington state senator introduced a bill to reduce the standard work week to 32 hours.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is backing a parliamentary proposal to shift to a four-day week. Politicians in Britain and Finland are considering something similar. In the U.S., Shake Shack started testing the idea a year and a half ago. Check this out. The burger chain shortened managers' work weeks to four days at some stores and found that recruitment spiked, especially among women. Shake Shack's president, Tara Kamonte,

says the staff loved the perk. Being able to take their kids to school a day a week or one day less of having to pay for daycare, for example. Look at them them they love it like no fucking shit tara so the company recently yes truly so the company recently expanded its trial to a third of its 164 u.s stores offering that that benefit required Shake Shack to find time savings elsewhere,

so it switched to computer software to track supplies of ground beef, for example. It was a way to increase flexibility, Kamanti says, of the shorter week. Corporate environments have had flexible work policies for a while now. That's not so easy to do in the restaurant business. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies are also adopting or testing the four-day

week. Last summer, Microsoft's trial in Japan led to a 40% improvement in productivity, measured as sales per employee. Much of this is thanks to Andrew Barnes, who is the Albert Einstein of the four-day work week, apparently. He is an archaeologist by training who never intended to become a global evangelist. This was not a journey I expected to be on, he says. Barnes is CEO of Perpetual Guardian, New Zealand's largest estate planning company. He spent much of his career believing long hours were better for business.

But he was also disturbed by the toll it took on employees and their families, particularly when it came to mental health. So two years, he used Perpetual Guardian, which is a really hilarious, dystopic name for a company. Perpetual Guardian. It really is. Is it a security firm? An estate planning company um use perpetual guardian and its 240 workers as guinea pigs partnering with academic researchers in auckland to monitor and track the effects of working only four days a week it's like i like the notion of like scientists coming in and like putting like suction cups with

wires attached to them to like workers heads and chests like having them run on a treadmill, like we're studying how the four-day week is affecting them. Court to this is that people are not productive for every hour, every minute of the day that they're in the office, Barnes says, which means there was a lot of distraction and wasted time that could be cut. Simply slashing the number and duration of meetings saved huge amounts of time. Also, he did away with open floor office plans and saw workers spending far less time on social media. All this, he says, made it easier to focus more deeply on the work.

Remarkably, workers got more done while working fewer hours. Sales and profits grew. Employees spent less time commuting, and they were happier. The company didn't police how workers spent their time, but if performance slipped, the firm could revert back to the full week schedule. Barnes says...

I always have to dangle that out carrot up there. Like, he says, Barnes says that alone motivated workers. Uh-huh. Their perpetual Guardian study went viral, and things went haywire for Barnes. Employers, including big multinationals, started calling, seeking advice. Big multinationals? It's like Total Recall?

Yes. What's going on in there? Someone trying to break out of a window is it that bad um let's see yeah i'm trying to escape this window to date most of that interest has not come from american employers um peter capelli a professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Imagine being a professor of management. Says that's because the concept...

Oh, God, no. Says this is because the concept runs counter to American notions of work and capitalism. Unions are less powerful and workers have less political sway than other countries, he says. So American companies answer to shareholders who tend to prioritize profit over worker benefits. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's see. Let's see.

Natalie Naguil, co-founder and CEO of Wildbit, has heard from other leaders who say it didn't work for them. She says it fails when employees aren't motivated and where managers don't trust employees. Guilty. I just think it's funny that in America, America is so funny to me. Europe tried the whole social democracy thing and like they had like corporations be like a little nicer and the banks be a little nicer but like

America from like day one has always just been like you're gonna fucking work that's your life that's your job you're gonna love it you're gonna love to hate it and never never any trust

to be built what were you truly the worst country truly oh fuck um let's see michael parlo started working a four-day week about a month ago it was a perk of his new job as a budget analyst in Westminster, Colorado. He works 10 hours a day now, Monday through Thursday. So he's working exactly the same amount of hours. It always is.

My mom works four 10s and she's like, Oh, I love having a three day work week, three day weekend, but her knees don't work anymore. All those three days she can't move. Three days she can't get out of her fucking chair. I opened this article thinking like, oh, okay, like maybe capitalists have seen Bernie on the horizon and they're like, maybe we need to start instituting some reforms. Maybe productivity really can be increased by limiting workers to four work days and all this but like

like even that modicum of optimism in my mind was misplaced because i opened the article and it's like well they're just working 10 hours a day now instead of eight that's what it is on that fifth day they turn the thermostat down real low they don't have to pay as much power exactly well and also they're getting exactly the same amount of productivity it's like it's more of a hack than like a benefit exactly yeah well it's it's it's like dangling some sort of benefit in front of them that's not actually a benefit which are most so-called benefits to go to a job it's like you go they tell you there's all these benefits and then you actually get signed on and you start filling out paperwork

and you realize they only contribute to your 401k bullshit if you do or or it doesn't kick in if you till you've been there for a year or there's 900 things you have to do hoops you have to jump through to get in something yeah or they just straight up forget to sign you up for the first year which happens about 60 of the time at apple shop and you go to the doctor and you get a big fat bill and you go back to the office and you're like oh we forgot to sign you up sorry honestly reading this just again like reinforces the idea i've had for a while that like american capitalists are so unprepared for what's coming like they think this is doing workers a favor they're like oh you know like this is good like you know we're gonna institute some reforms

like maybe workers won't be so riled up all the time and pissed off. We're going to give them some reforms. You're right. As the article says, that frees Fridays up for life's many delightful chores, like visits to the DMV. Like, not a hint of irony in that fucking sentence. Oh, my God. We are here for nothing else but to earn.

Seriously, because the next quote is that same guy who's now working 10 hours a day instead of eight. For instance, today we're going to go and get our license plates. But that also leaves time on the weekends for the weekend. But that also leaves time on the weekends for the weekend. It's like, I cannot imagine anything more blackpilled than the last three lines of that article. Just like, we're going to go get our license plate made. My life's not really any better, but like, fucking. I got more time to do the other quotidian duties that also rob me of my money. Right, right. And it's not even the worker's

fault i mean for filling that way it's like we've just so internalized that this is the way that it's got to be and like they have so much power over our lives as the article says like we don't even have you know robust union involvement or anything in america anymore there's no like labor participation and so it's like and so it's like the capitalists just have free hand to do whatever the fuck they want. It's so cruel. Anyways. We should be happy it's not worse, honestly.

That's what they're saying. Yeah, that's what they're saying. They're like, look how good you have it you smug bastards oh this has been planet money hi i'm clive rizdahl this has been planet money god damn it well um you know what i think I want to start doing? I think I want to start applying for jobs at the New York Times. Yeah, do it. And see if they'll, like, give me feedback about why they won't hire me. Yeah, I'd like to have you on. That'd be good dramatic reading.

Mrs. Turner, we really... Like, your CV looks great. You... Unfortunately, your CV looks great. But unfortunately, your interview. You sound like a dumb cunt. For one, you have an accent. We're going to need you to talk to some of our dialect coaches to get rid of that. We're going to actually need you just to be a subject in our stories, and that doesn't really pay anything.

Yeah. But if you could go into this room and tell these guys everything that's ever happened to you, that'd be great. Right. Can we interview you, study you? I want to apply to be a podcaster for the New York Times. Oh, you could be on Mikey Barbaro's The Daily, my favorite New York Times podcast. How many goddamn podcasts are named The Daily?

There's like six of them. How many fucking coffee shops are named The Daily? Fucking get over it. I saw a coffee shop in Columbus, Ohio named Me Too. Oh my God. Did that open before or after 2015?

Who's to say? Who knows? Well, I don't know when this episode is coming out. I guess if it's the main episode this week then sorry for all the outdated references Everybody Yeah but we are trying to keep up We've recorded this on the day of the Nevada caucus

Yeah we're all going to be Traveling in the coming week So So apologies for that But if it is on the main Feed then go check out the Patreon Where you will get a i was about to say free episode but it's literally not free you literally pay

but for five dollars you're gonna get like a hundred new episodes i mean it's a good deal five dollars incredibly good deal five dollars a month um you'll get an episode every Sunday and then you got all those back episodes I mean I can't guarantee the quality of the first 30 premium episodes or so they're probably not that great but it isn't

are the takes outdated sure but still as a cultural artifact they are indeed very funny. Yeah, why not? Yeah, yeah. We do have exciting travel coming up, though.

I mean, Tom is continuing his quest for union bargaining, right, Tom? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll be doing that this week good luck my man so yeah yeah if they try to give you a four-day work week tell them no unless it's an unless it's an eight hour one well i've always thought honestly you know how like one of the big galvanizing movements of the turn of the last century was the eight-hour workday. I think that if we were going to revive something like that, I have a friend, Wilson, who lives in New York, who's always advocated for the four-by-four, the four-hour workday and the four-day, the four day work week, the four hour work day and the four day work week.

I mean, hell yeah. I feel like you can get most of your fucking work done. God damn. That's probably the most productivity you get out of anybody any goddamn way.

Exactly. Most people spend their time on Facebook. Or just misery because of how much longer they have to work. Exactly. Unless, of course, you work out in the hot sun busting bricks.

Well, then, yeah, there's that, obviously. But even then, it's like... No one deserves to do that longer than four straight hours. Right, you don't need... It's dangerous. Right. It's truly vile. Right.

Well, so try to bargain for that, Tom. Ask them for the 4x4. Everybody looks at you like, what the fuck is he talking about? I want the 4x4, yeah. It's four sets by four reps with barbells, the big lifts. But also, it's our work week now. That's right. That's right.

And I'm headed up to Detroit for the launch of Means TV. Oh, I've been meaning to plug that. So Means TV is launched. And, well, I guess not officially yet, but they're about to. By the time this airs, Means TV will be launched. Okay. They're launching on the 26th, next Wednesday, 2-26-2020. Means TV is out there.

You need to sign up. Cancel your fucking Netflix account if you have to. And make sure that you are getting the streaming platform of the Rev a Fucking Lotion. The only anti-capitalist streaming platform. Available iPhone, Android, Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV. the only anti-capitalist streaming platform available iPhone, Android, Roku Fire TV, Apple TV you can get it on all your fucking devices

yeah and so it's structured and looks a lot like the browser itself or the website itself looks a lot like Netflix so go check out our friends at mean cv um i i will be traveling for uh a wedding so that's also exciting back to the land of buffalo my

favorite honestly i fucking love buffalo i love i'm gonna i'm gonna have to travel there for my new job some because that's one of our uh like funding locations is buffalo new york um i'm excited to visit there's a um season of the bitch uh up there yes there is um My favorite, my favorite sort of, so, you know, we talk a lot about revitalization and gentrification on this show. One of my favorite examples of that that I've ever seen is in Buffalo, they took an insane asylum and turned it into a boutique hotel. A literal insane asylum, bars on the windows and all, and turned it into a boutique hotel. Oh, damn. Amazing. Buffalo is so great.

I love it. It's just like eastern Kentucky. I fucking love it. Anyways, so check us out on Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com, and we'll see you in the funny papers, I guess. Bye!

See you later. See you out there.