Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 139: Trial Balloon for a Climate Disaster

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

The gang talks about the blood sacrifice offered to the market earlier this week as well as the stimulus package, and then enters the science lab to examine the weirdest political experiment of the modern era: the campaign of Joseph R. Biden. We've come a long way from President My Guy, folks. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty And listen to Tarence's band Tenure on Spotify, Apple Music, and/or Bandcamp!

Welcome to the show. We've got a show for you today. We've got the radio show. The Trill Bill is... Well... Tonya Turner drinking gin in her bedroom. And Tom Sexton... Looking at corn.

Can't see what I'm doing because... his pecker peckerwood remember that when that word was pretty funny peckerwood well old peckerwood i saw i've been seeing a bunch of woodpeckers out my window those good omens yeah that means the cops are going to come and uh omens yeah that means the cops are going to come and uh guard the the hospital soon the real pecker the real pecker woods are going to come guard the hospital sign oh jesus well we have a show for you this week only 40 minutes after we originally started trying to record the technical difficulties of trill billies are many and anyone who thinks we should record more like everybody's inside everybody's inside and hogging off bandwidth truly get off the fucking internet so trill billies can make a goddamn episode i've been been reading. I've been doing my part.

I'm not contributing to the infrastructure stress. Because you don't even have Wi-Fi, and you're low on data. You know that's a T. You know that's a T. This man has not drank bourbon in years. Yes, I am T-otal like my idol Abraham Lincoln. You got to stay sober and vigilant these times.

Lincoln's not really my idol, but I'm reading a book about him at the moment, and it's like, man, you can just do whatever the fuck he wants you if you're the president like you really really did lincoln's do whatever the fuck you wanted to he's you think lincoln did whatever the fuck yeah no he suspended the first amendment and habeas corpus just to fucking win the war that's pretty badass just to do it well what do you think trump's gonna do to win this war um they're taking their money and running mcdonald's talking about it absolutely well um as we were getting ready to start i was reading about the stimulus package have you all read much about it riveting here's what i know here's what i know it's like 1200s the figure they came to right and then they also made this huge provision for the airlines and also there's no restrictions on executive pay is that is that pretty accurate summation yeah that's pretty accurate so all the

uh all the upper middle class guys that think they're day traders now and think that this is a game that can't be beaten in the long run are buying up these stocks thinking, oh my God, I'm getting such a good deal on Boeing right now. I'm getting such a good deal on American Airlines. It's up 26%. It's going to be in for a rude awakening when they just use that money to pad the executives and then society collapses anyway so i'm i was just one man's opinion just one insider trader to another

the the bailout is about seven trillion dollars i guess i don't even how much money even is that the awake crisis basically um 4.4.3 trillion dollars of it comes in the form of basically bailouts aimed at CEOs and shareholders with almost zero conditions attached

um there's no requirement to keep workers hired in fact the necessary provision to boost unemployment insurance for four months to 100 of median salary means that these companies can fire with relative impunity wow uh it is so yeah people can get a $1,200 means-tested payment and a little wage insurance for four months. Corporations get a transformative amount of play money to sustain their system and wipe out the competition. We are about to see a wholesale remaking of the American capitalist landscape. Because what happens in moments like this is corporate raiders just basically come in and just you know just like the vultures they are just completely ravage a company down to its bare bones um you really get to see capitalism in action

because in crises like this the big dogs just go through and pick apart the smaller ones they they edge them out of their supply chains they just completely ravage them from top to bottom and take all of the assets and surplus they can out of it and funnel it more towards the top you know what's funny is that this is a um you know oh i sort of gave us a rallying cry for like occupying all this stuff this stuff, you know, like the 1%, and like, you know, gave you the talking point of, oh, well, you can give the big banks a trillion-dollar bailout, but what about, you know, Main Street or whatever, you know,

all these other sort of platitudes that we spit? It's like, where do we go with this, you know? It's like... We're not even able to leave our houses. Well, I mean, yeah, that's true, but I'm just saying, like, when some, like, sort of howdy-doody fucking Democrat comes along in four years or whatever it's going to be, and it's like he's the person or they're the person that's going to, like, sort of reinvent everything and all this stuff

like what are they going to say it like which like you know it's just like it's just old it's just like the hyper normalization thing it's like we know that this is just a transparently fucking wicked society brutal society boots to the neck society but like i just say all that to say that i think that that you know mainstream electoral politics it's dead oh there it is i'm back i'm back to the old man and we're back um if daddy andy ain't gonna shit on this stimulus package at five o'clock today we're sending him to the yeah he's gonna praise it he's gonna say like nancy pelosi's the fucking this is the the break that kentucky families needed now the break the kentucky families

needed is the one that happens to the windows and they go take all that money out the vault and they go take all the groceries off the shelf and all that kind of shit. It's just time. It's just time. I need to look it in the eye and just say, you know, it's time. Time for what, Tom?

I don't have any. I don't even have any. It's tool time. Tim the Toolman Tom. What I want to do is get on... It is tool time. Tim the Toolman Tom. What I want to do is get on... It is tool time. Here's the thing. I just don't know what you say in response to

people in earnest calling to sacrifice people to the altar of the Dale Jones. I don't know how you... These people can't be bargained with the only thing they respond to is getting their fucking head cut off like you know what i'm saying like it's time to quit bickering on twitter it's time to like figure out how we can like do extrajudicial killings love our own you know know? I mean, hey, they do it all the time. That's their favorite pastime.

So let's back up. Let's back up because we need to... This is where we needed to end the podcast. I'm sorry. Cut all that. That's just infantile ramblings. No, no, no. I liked it. I like where your head's at.

I like your overall tone. I like your vibe, man. We're going to come full circle. But we need to back up because we need to pick up where we left off the last time you heard from us, which would have been on the Patreon. But if it wasn't on the Patreon, it was on the main feed, and you would have heard me basically melting down and saying, the system's about to collapse, man.

We've got to fucking create our own institutions and all this, and now I realize that that was either premature or was right on the money and everybody else missed it, but it doesn't even matter anymore because it feels like a lot has changed from this week from last week right imagine how different things will be a week from now yeah well last week it felt like last week felt like a dream it really did i don't know what it was but it just felt like a dream you had two and a half million people laid off at once you had administrative systems struggling to deal with the capacity of within the health care system and within the

unemployment benefit system i mean you had mass chaos and you had the news that we might be looking we might be staring down the barrel of multiple months of social distancing and quarantine fast forward to monday monday they come out and they start saying well i mean this social distancing thing is not great like quarantine uh you know we need to get back to normal the thing that they kept saying was the cure can't be worse than the problem if we just absolute pandemonium yes they were saying that people cannot be held indoors this long we need to get the economy back up and running um that the economy cannot just take a hiatus like this that it needs to get back up and running and so on monday is when they started to break that out systematically and slowly. They were like, well, you know, we're going to get people back to work.

People were prostrating themselves before the almighty line, before the almighty Tao, saying, I would gladly sacrifice myself rather than see the ruin of this country. You had Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick saying, older Americans would gladly sacrifice themselves for millennials and younger americans you had i heart radio radio hosts getting on there saying that they would gladly do it and which is nothing any of us would protest yeah well that's the funny thing because they're all little shithead cowards who would shit their pants the first whiff of something like that actually happening.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Is Monday when I completely melted down in our DMs? I think Monday and Tuesday was a prolonged Tanya meltdown in the DMs. Yeah. I mean, how are you doing today? I'm doing a little bit better today. But every day feels like a year, so. I usually see about two Tanya Whiney faces a month.

One's on Patreon Day. And one's the day before Patreon Day. And I saw your quote in the last two days. No less than at least 20 or 30 crying emoji faces. Well, that's all I got. We've been real concerned about you. It's the only faces I got these days. So Monday was the day that they prostrated themselves before the almighty Tao.

Before the big line. The line had been going down, and then they said, we will die for you. And then the line was like, oh, okay. It started going back up again. Like, all right. All right. Okay. The line recognizes a blood sacrifice.

God damn, it's so bleak. It's like they literally did just ring blood out into the machine, and it juiced it up a little bit. Yeah. It was like that scene in Indiana Jones where the guy plunges his hand into the guy's chest and pulls out the heart. Missed that.

You might, Kano from Mortal Kombat.at you played mortal kombat i did not i was a straight fight girl myself okay well that's not bad so but there's been there's been some speculation about this i saw some people speculating that perhaps all this talk of human sacrifice was um an attempt to basically juice the market uh before a stimulus package could be announced so the market to sort of stem the tide to prime the pump a little bit they had to they had to say that they were willing to sacrifice millions and that was a calculated decision. They knew. Like, there were people in a room saying that this is the only thing

that will tick this up if we admit that we'll let people die. Probably, yes. This was a discussion that happened. They said, Grandma can go. All that matters is the health of the economy. Your grandparents would do anything for you anything bitch my grandma doesn't own a single stone not one she still gets commodities

also i don't have a grandparent left because our mortality right here is so high i think our average doesn, doesn't East Kentucky have one of the only life expectancy in women that is decreasing annually? It's going down. It's the only place in the developed world that has a fucking decreasing mortality rate. world that has a fucking decreasing mortality rate if i'm not mistaken in perry county the average life expectancy for a man is 68 and i think for a woman that's like maybe 70 well here's the thing all of america is east kentucky now because the unemployment rate is 30 percent tomorrow's people baby yes we're tomorrow's people. Get used to that commodity cheese. We're talking to you from the future, folks.

We're seeing Perry County levels of unemployment in the nation writ large. Yeah, we haven't been able to. We didn't want to scare you and tell you that we're actually broadcasting from the future. But I think it's become clear enough that we can just admit it now. This is why Trump campaigned so hard in cold country he was just trying to give y'all a good preview of what it was going to be here just a few short years down the line yeah um so there's a few things about this the first is that i don't know when it's going to dawn on these dipshits trump Trump and et cetera, and it may already be dawning on them. I think that they are resolving this primary contradiction.

There's always been a contradiction between democracy on one hand and capitalism on the other. So I think that they might be finally coming to a resolution of this contradiction where they finally realize that democracy is an afterthought and you actually don't need it anymore. We've been moving towards that anyways for a while. Certainly don't want it. Yeah, yeah.

We'll have some sort of monarchist martial economy or something where basically they coerce you at gunpoint to flip burgers essentially imagine what like open air like you know like Chipotle style sort of like

fast casual dining would look like it's like people sitting there like taking your burrito bowl from the assembly line and there's like just some guy fatigues with a gun to the back of their head. Yes. Yeah. Each step of the way.

Well, and the dum-dum-dims have held this up so far, right? They've got a master plan, I'm sure. They caved last night. They caved last night? Yeah. That's why there's a stimulus bill now. The Dems were like, no, we want some protections. We want some protections for workers and people.

And then the Republicans were like, yeah, but you're not going to get that bitch. And the Democrats were like, oh, okay, all right, that's fine. Okay, that's fine. Well, watch your tone, sir, but okay. So they caved with not one change. Oh, they got some changes. Do you want to hear some of the changes they got? They got some changes.

Please tell me. They got the same bit of oversight that they got from the 2008 TARF bailout. A five-member oversight panel and an inspector general for the program. So they essentially got a principal. They got a manager. They got someone to speak to the manager about the stimulus program. They got a fucking bob haircut.

Okay. Jesus Christ. Is there any truth, is there any truth that Bernie got his 100% unemployment provision in there? Or is that just sort of a rumor? I don't know. I haven't read the fine details yet

um i've been spreading that like it's god were they all meeting virtually or something have they all been in chambers together uh it's been not not everybody has been able to um congress i guess that would be the verb and so uh i think mcconnell was pretty pissed about it because he thought he wasn't going to get what he wanted because they were short like one person for a majority but it didn't matter anyways because i guess schumer basically caved and i mean it doesn't mean you don't need a majority of republicans when the democrats are just going to do what you want. Is Schumer the one that caved? Schumer is the one that's— Go ahead, Tony.

Go ahead, Terry. I was just going to say something about what starts at the top with their standard bearer, Joe Biden, getting on national TV and then apologizing for talking too mean about the president. I want to save Biden because we need to take a deep dive into Biden for a minute. Let's keep the narrative running here. Okay, I'm sorry.

So on Monday you heard about the human blood sacrifices, the seppuku at the altar of the line. And then Tuesday they announced that they had finally come to terms on a stimulus package. The details of that, as we're recording on Wednesday, have still not yet been fully released. Like the full details, I guess, they're still kind of not fully released,

but people have a pretty good idea of what's in it um i think the best summary of it i saw was in the american prospect david dayan wrote it's not a bailout for the coronavirus it's a bailout for 12 years of corporate irresponsibility that made these companies so fragile that a few weeks of disruption would destroy them it really is crazy if there any small business i mean i don't know we probably don't even want to go down this road but and go down the road well we if we literally think about like let's say all these let's just say just here just the like just transition movement toward entrepreneurs they're holding like these entrepreneur workshops and shit and i guarantee that they tell people you need to have like three to six months of operating whatever backup try five years i mean i mean literally that's what

that's what they tell you five years of operating overhead covered just in case and they, like, you know, you won't be successful your first year. If you survive six months, it'll be a miracle. All this shit. And the biggest companies in the world can't survive two fucking weeks. Two weeks. Well, they can. The difference is that that would cut into the CEO's patting their pockets. The difference is that that would cut into the CEO's patent pockets.

These people are literally panicked that they... Because, I mean, it's both their income and all their savings that's kind of like dissipating right now, right? Into the stock market. And that's what they're panicking about? I think it's their shareholder value. Yeah, okay. Right, because stock buybacks are sort of the hot-button topic with all this. That's essentially why Boeing is completely bankrupt now. Because this guy, okay, so I don't know if you guys remember this.

A few weeks ago, a guy named Jack Welch died. guy okay so i don't know if you guys remember this a few weeks ago a name guy named jack welch died jack welch was the famous ceo of general electric ge through the 80s and 90s and he pioneered the stock buybacks schemes and he had a coterie of disciples who went out into the world to preach his message, and a lot of them wound up at Boeing. And so now, I mean, Jack Welch got to tap out right before the virus began and before his whole system started to unravel. God damn, that's unfortunate. But that is essentially what's going on. But we need to do an episode about Boeing at some point down the line

just to catch everybody back up because it's such a fascinating story but this package this bailout package will bail out the airlines and it will bail out like companies necessary for national security but any but all that is besides the point because regardless regardless of what happens with this bailout and with the stock market doing what it's doing and the coronavirus it would not matter if we all went back to work tomorrow or whatever the recession is not because of the coronavirus the recession is not because people aren't working because of the coronavirus the recession started before the coronavirus got to america the economy was already contracting because of the sort of because of what

they did in 2008 all the sort of chickens coming home to roost from that notoriously fucked up bailout and the restructuring of the economy that resulted from that. So we've already been overdue a recession for a few years. It had started to recess a few months ago. And so I don't think that, again, no amount of blood sacrifice is going to make the line go back up. I love when the true believers get on, you know, and they've been scolding us for 10, 15 years about our personal decisions. Dining out and getting coffees avocado toast avocado toast avocado toast and buying chachkis off of instagram links and so on and so forth and then it's like every 10 15 years these motherfuckers have the biggest meltdown in the world but like just a few weeks ago they were

swearing up and down everything's fine blah blah Blah, blah, blah, blah. This is just like the cold. It's like the common cold. Hell, it's even the same family of viruses. So that's what's going on with the stimulus and the economy. By the time this is released, that will be dated information because you can't even fucking keep up anymore these days um but uh so but but let's rewind again i want to dial it back to monday because i think we need to talk about what is unfolding as quite possibly the weirdest and most bizarre story that has ever been seen in American politics.

And I'm referring, of course, to one Joseph Robinette Biden. Oh my God. If you recall from the last time you tuned in with us on the Patreon, we had just been informed that biden's pandemic plans were going to be released as early as monday well as early as monday came and went folks and so on monday he released a video a hologram a hologram video that was very obviously done in front of a green screen. Like, no doubt about it. And he looked like shit. His face was

very flushed. He was sweating. Sweat on his brow. He looked like his fever had just broken. Right, like all of us, you know, that classic look you get when you're broadcasting from your living room.

Face flushed, sweating. Podium in the middle. And everybody was pointing out it was in front of a green screen, that he was wearing the same clothes he was wearing from his virtual town hall event the week before. I guess, whatever. I mean, maybe he's trying to do the Bernie thing. You know how Bernie had a closed's trying to he's trying to do the the bernie thing you know how bernie had a closed chair maybe he's trying to do that like be like hey i'm just like you guys i wear the same thing every day oh my god and then and then tuesday uh don donis and

and that's when we got to see a glimpse into what the world would look like if Joseph Robinette Biden was president. Because he went on three different shows. There was Jake Tapper, CNN. He went on The View when Meghan McCain interviewed him. And there was another one, I think, on MSNBC. I missed that. All of them were extraordinarily bizarre. Completely bizarre.

Did you guys watch any of them? I watched all of them all the time. In fact, I've not been able to stop watching any of them. Oh, fuck. How did I miss this? You missed Biden's? I missed him on The View. And I love The View.

He said... Did he talk to Whoopi? No, he talked to... Yeah. Whoopi was on there. I guess he said something about whoopie. Remember, he addressed whoopie at one point. Hey, me and my wife, we like to make whoopie.

You're like, sir. Maybe that's what it was. Sir, no one's used that term in 40 years. This is what he said on The View. The American people don't want us in a political fight, and I want no part of a political fight either, but when the president says... Man, we got

a champion, let me tell you. But when the president says things that turn out not to be accurate, we should say, you're lying. We should say, Mr. President, that's not the facts. Here's the deal. Mr. President. That was maybe the most cogent thought he had because everything else was just completely incoherent.

On CNN and Jake Tapper, he coughed in his hand, and Jake Tapper was like, I think you're supposed to cough in your elbow, sir. He's like, yeah, Jake, but, you know, I'm sorry. I'm just, you know, i'm right here in my own home and it's he wasn't he was in front of that green screen yeah no he was obviously in a hospital he literally said that he was like i like to just cough in my own home like that's something you say like or something you should like just be able to do like there's nobody else that lives with you.

Oh, my God. And then the other one, which I believe was on MSNBC, he lost his train of thought. And, I mean, it was utterly bizarre. And so then last night this article started making the rounds from The Atlantic. And I'm sure you guys saw this. The Atlantic, stay alive, Joe Biden. Democrats need little from the frontrunner beyond his corporeal presence. God damn.

This is where liberals are at with it. god damn this is where liberals are at with it they would they would literally take a barely sentient meat sack that they can prop up front of a green screen than any sort of real change oh my god i mean what why what they must really think that bernie can't beat trump i don't get it i i'm really just feel crazier by the day well so I don't know if you guys had a chance to read this article, but it was fascinating. The tone of this article was incredible. It feels like it was written by someone with a gun to their head because it's supposed to be pro-Biden,

but it is the most surgical, like, removed exploration of the Biden campaign in this current moment that I have ever seen. I just want to read a little bit from it for you. See if I can find a... Is this the one you sent me to cheer me up? It's not the one I sent you. It's not the one I see. Already this week, there are news reports that his campaign is in a state of suspended political animation. Biden can't fully pivot to the general election.

He can't truly unite the party's warring factions, nor can he begin stockpiling the vast amounts of money he'll need for November. His momentum has effectively been stopped cold. For the foreseeable future, all live campaign events are canceled. so he canceled a press conference yesterday i don't know if you guys saw that so he can't hit the stump to try to capitalize on the excitement he had just stoked his ability to criticize trump on anything other than his performance on coronavirus response and preparedness is constrained by the emergency like conditions and. And so then it goes on to paint a portrait for you of a group of political advisors who had to huddle together in a room for a few days.

And have you guys seen Apollo 13? Yeah, it's some of Sinise's earlier stuff. It was. With Tom Hanks. I'm sure you've seen it, it tanya they played it on tv all the time growing up yeah um but in apollo 13 uh there's this plot line where a bunch of scientists have to come together including gary sinise because he got the chicken pox or some shit before the... Yeah, actually, yeah, he got COVID. What did that come out? COVID-1998. Yeah. And he couldn't go into space.

And so they brought him in off the bench and they said, all right, Gary, look, since you couldn't go into space, we need your help. We have to figure out a way. And I don't know why this scene is always stuck out of my mind but it's a bunch of scientists who have to figure out a way to land tom hanks's space pod in the ocean without killing kevin bacon and tom hanks on board and um and so they're all they all have to get together and like you know rack their brains the greatest scientific minds of a generation how are we going to do this we have to beat the laws of physics we have to you know, rack their brains, the greatest scientific minds of a generation.

How are we going to do this? We have to beat the laws of physics. We have to marshal all of our scientific resources to save these brave astronauts. So you're telling me you can only give our guys 45 hours? That brings them to about there. Gentlemen, that's not acceptable. I want people in our simulators Working re-entry scenarios

I want you guys to find every engineer who designed every switch Every circuit, every transistor and every light bulb that's up there Then I want you to talk to the guy in the assembly line Who actually built the thing Find out how to squeeze every amp out of both of these goddamn machines I want this mark All the way back to Earth with time to spare.

We never lost an American in space. We're sure as hell not going to lose one on my watch. Failure is not an option. And that was the mental image that I had of Biden's team of advisors having to sit down over the last week

and figure out a way to pivot from biden the meme who likes ice cream and little girls rubbing the legs on his hairs to get in loser we're gonna go save democracy legs on his hair yeah you know what i mean they had to figure out a way to pivot from biden the meme to biden the presidential candidate and that's why he was out of sight for five or six days or whatever it wasn't because he had coronavirus or because he had died it was because his team of handlers had to figure out a way to make this fucking meme of a character president into a presidential uh candidate and that's why all of the things you saw from him on monday and tuesday were presented to you as if he was in the oval office giving a presidential address address to the problem. I just don't get it because even, that's even crazy because Trump is a

meme. A meme is how you beat the stupid bastard if there's any way to do it. You know what I mean? This is just so weird. They're just making him even less funny than he was.

Less entertaining. Yeah yeah they have to because these are very serious times and they require serious administration so this is because of coronavirus they're like all right we gotta get this together 100 they realized that the meme president that they had been running for the past few months was not up to the task of grappling with an ecological disaster. It was a big oopsie-doo in their judgment a few weeks ago when they decided to consolidate behind this guy. We're going to start seeing a lot more of this because look the thing about coronavirus that everybody needs to understand is that it is a ecological disaster on the same level of as climate change so in the next decade as we see more and more of these climate change disasters

becoming more and more real like the democrats inability to put forth leaders who can actually deal with these crises just pave the way for people like trump and more fascist administration and more locking down of rights and you know other things uh to me that's that's ultimately what happened his advisors were faced with a real crisis and we're like oh fuck man like we've been running joe the fucking meme for the past six months that's exactly i mean you're exactly right, man. It's really what they've done here is it's just a massive, massive sort of like miscalculation.

And like, because the only thing they were running on is like, oh, well, whoever we nominate, this, this is going to be a slam dunk because all we got to do is beat Trump and Trump's so unpopular and whatever and so like they've just been running on they could just take some mediocrity and run against this guy and they're going to win anyway might as well preserve the system but like what they've run afoul of is that they actually need some goddamn leadership and not like this fucking ron burgundy ass motherfucker ron it's like so the first thing like the first point i want to make here is that um the coronavirus you're gonna we're gonna see more and more of

these over the years because as we were saying on the patreon the coronavirus was incubated in industrial farming you you herd these animals together in these short kennels, and you create conditions for superbugs. Those bugs thrive in those conditions. We are now selecting environmental pressures to create virulent viruses, and then they break out into the world and distribute themselves along supply lines and everything else. So this is an ecological catastrophe. But we're going to start seeing more and more of this in the next decade because this is on it tom jokingly called it a trial balloon for a climate crisis but it is literally that damn i slipped on banana peel and got one. Dear God.

But the other thing about this is, you know, I don't know. To me, if something like this were to happen 60 years ago, a politician's job, like, it would have been inconceivable that, know 60 years ago we were still running on jim crow we were still running on this apartheid caste system um and and even more heavily patriarchal society than we have now but the role of politics 60 years ago was that in moments like this in crisis crises you deployed the government's resources to keep people safe. You have to answer the mail. Yeah, exactly. It was a trade-off, you know. And so it would have been inconceivable 60 years ago that the government would just, you know,

basically fiddle while Rome burns, that they would essentially just not test people and then allow for the spread of this thing and then, or suggest poison, like chloroquine, you know, like these pseudoscientific solutions. It's Trump offering a combination of drugs that actually prolongs QT interval, heart rhythm. So, like, if you have a heart rhythm disorder or something,

and you have coronavirus, that would, like, kill you. Yeah. You know what I mean? The president is just tweeting that out. And him literally letting a, like, head of infectious diseases doctor disagree with him on live TV and just shrugging it off. Like, you know, I'm a smart guy. I feel good about it. I feel good about that.

I'm a smart guy. I feel good about it. I feel good about that. Well, also, there was the dude in Arizona who him and his wife took the fish tank cleaner or whatever it is that had a similar compound to chloronine. I guess that's how you say it. I'm not sure. Chloroquine. Chloroquine.

I don't know how you say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're right. Chloroquine, not chloroquine. Yeah. And the guy died. His wife was in the hospital. Well, I don't know how you say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're right. Chloroquine, not chloroquine. Yeah. And the guy died. His wife was in the hospital. Well, I don't know if you guys remember this.

When we interviewed Anna Merlin about conspiracy theories, one of the biggest conspiracy theories going back throughout the 20th century was that quinine solved a lot of problems. That has been something that the Birchers have been pushing since i guess like the 40s jesus yeah it isn't quite on the stuff that's in like uh like club soda there's small amounts of it in club soda yeah small amounts yeah i mean it's fine for you like in club soda um but you know they used to use it for i think measles treatment i don't remember what they used to use it for god damn could you imagine if there was like a super measles outbreak right now oh my god um measles is like 40 times more contagious than like anything but here's the

here's the point i want to make in a normal functioning society in which politics serves the role that it's supposed to and administrations administrate or whatever, you would be able to see the writing on the wall and they would look at the available candidates and say, who's the person that could lead us through this? And they would land on Bernie because Bernie's the only able administrator through all of this. But what I was thinking about last night is that all these major media news outlets essentially collaborated with the Biden administration to present him as president yesterday.

Meanwhile, Bernie's been out there for the last week and a half doing his own virtual town halls and panels and addresses but it doesn't matter it's into the void it just is broadcast to his audience and we see it but the the general public at large doesn't see it and so it just goes to show you that like we we blew we yeah we pierced the veil we've gone past the event horizon we're in a whole new realm of politics and um i don't know and let even if joe biden died before the convention they would still not nominate bernie it's inconceivable to me still to this i mean even now i mean i know

maybe i got ahead of myself last week and maybe bernie's playing the long game and maybe he can pick up the remaining states after people see how bad biden has done but i don't know man i just don't know i um i've got uh i've gotten deeply deeply dark vibes from this biden stuff though i mean it is it's fucking me up because it is dark. It's not even funny anymore. It's fucking dark. No, it is. It is frightening. I mean, the videos aren't even funny.

They're like, what the fuck? Well, now they're doing the whole like, oh, y'all need to show some compassion for his stutter and all this stuff. You know what I mean? They're spinning it as like the left is ableist against joe biden this guy that has had like an inordinate amount of influence over all of our lives for decades but we're the ones that are being ableist and mean to joe they've been on that it's like nobody nobody uh told joe to you know stutter his way to eulogize a klansman when strom thurman died you know what i mean nobody told joe to stutter his way to eulogize a Klansman when Strom Thurmond died. You know what I mean? Nobody told Joe to stutter

straight to the fucking Iraq war. Fuck all y'all. Yeah, man. Yeah, no, it's seriously dark vibes. It's, um... You know... I just get this dark, dark feeling because you're just reminded of the stagnation of politics every time he comes up. The fact that it just cannot move forward, that the Democratic Party is so committed to squashing this sort of insurrection from the left.

I mean, there's nothing profound or original in this. It's just fascinating to watch it in a moment of crisis. In this moment of crisis, you would expect them to be like, okay, Biden's not up to the task. All right, well, we will let Bernie do his thing. But I don't know, man. They are really going in on the death cult thing, and it's pretty fucking scary.

It is wild that even, like... I mean, I get those stupid little New York Times digests. When they do, like, election or presidential whatever updates, they don't even mention Bernie. They don't even say his fucking name. Yeah. He's hustling every goddamn day.

If Joe were out here, Joe is physically incapable of doing a live Q&A. It's not possible. Yep. What were you saying, Tom? Well, even darker than that is like they've just quit

like running with the idea that he's like I don't even know how to say it. I'm trying to sort of I guess articulate the darkness of it that like he like they know he's not I don't even know. sort of, I guess, articulate the darkness of it. That, like, he... Like, they know he's not... I don't even know.

I'm sorry. I'm just rambling. But look at that article I was saying, I was reading. They said his momentum has effectively been stopped cold. Why? Like, what is it? Is it because they've realized that,

and maybe collectively everyone's realized that this guy's not up to the task of crises like this but they they still refuse to pivot to bernie and so we're just in this you know stagnated moment where history can't really move forward i mean like there's really nothing to explain why his momentum is essentially stopped cold well it's so strange that like they basically just view this election as locked up and now he's already pivoting to like the being conciliatory to trump like the one thing they were running on trump is dangerous he's the most dangerous president modern history he's the most like he must be stopped we have to beat trump

and now he's on national tv the guy that's supposed to be challenged him saying he won't like policing his own tone for fear of like seeming disrespectful yeah like you've been like y'all been like gearing everybody up for a fight and the guy that you tried out against him doesn't even want to say a bad word about him like a total fucking sociopath you know which they're both total fucking sociopaths but yeah well um you know just to reiterate the the larger points here we are living through an ecological crisis uh caused by capitalism when you can realize its origins and sort of have maybe a scientific explanation for it,

it becomes a little less scary. It's still terrifying that people you know and love may die. You yourself may die. But it is at the same time, it's like, well, this has a distinct origin. It's in the way we run the economy. Look at how people are responding to it. Look at the leaders and how they're responding to it.

And yeah, let it be a sort of radicalizing moment. It feels like they're like, I mean, full circle back to Tom at the beginning. Like there's nowhere else to go from here. full circle back to Tom at the beginning, like, there's nowhere else to go from here. We're just kind of at the end of our fucking rope, and we're about to hang somebody with that rope. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, it's time. Like, I mean, we've got a couple other tricks up our sleeves.

You know, we could, you know, maybe pull off a general strike out of this, you know, and all this sort of thing. We could, you know, maybe pull off a general strike out of this, you know, and all this sort of thing. But like now I can remember right after Trump was elected, we, you know, the talking point was, you know, like our lives were going to become on more intimate terms with violence, political violence and what that looks like. And then a couple weeks into it, we sort of like knew this was weird and not normal, but we sort of like just kind of settled into, and I hate to use the phrase the new normal because it sounds like, you know, Chris Hayes trying to fucking address the nation and calm everybody down or whatever. But it's like now we are faced with that situation more acutely

because of ecological crisis that's third you know this preview of ecological crisis we're getting with coronavirus right now and uh and i think it's it's a matter of uh i don't know i think it's it's it may just come down to our only play is we have to take the streets you know and that might just be the reality. Well, I still am of the opinion that if we are witnessing a historical moment that necessitates a realignment of politics, you still need some way to bring that into embodiment or fruition. And it's become clear to me that that's just not going to happen

in the Democratic Party. And so again, I just need to reiterate the need for something. I don't know what it is. Some sort of split from the Democratic Party that solidifies our sort of class independence and political independence because, I mean, going forward,

like, this is what we're staring at. They're going to continue throwing up people like Biden or even Cuomo, who appears to be an able administrator, even though he's not doing anything remotely humane or anything to stop this either. They'll just keep throwing up people like that to deal with these crises whether it's fucking hurricanes and rising sea levels or fires or viruses and these people will uh just be able to hold the system together at the seams maybe

and patch some things up but even then i'm not even convinced they'll be able to do that especially if they keep going with people like biden who are just literally incompetent so that just paves the way for trump etc go ahead yeah they they only can deal with what is right in front of them in the moment every boss i've ever had is this way can only handle what is right in front of their fucking face and that's not even that well they just fumble around with whatever's like in their lap at the moment whatever people have dumped in their lap. They have no fucking vision. They're never going to take us anywhere.

We're never getting anywhere with these motherfuckers. And, you know, if we're talking just electorally, if we're talking about needing that split from the Democratic Party, that split might even come from the Democrats. Like, you see, like, you know, we were talking about last week about, like, they're trying to, like, primary Rashida Tlaib and stuff like that. Like, they may be drawing the lines because they're so sick of our meddling or whatever, you know? I mean, so, like, that might just,

that might just, you know, we might not have to do anything to initiate that, but the question is, do we have leadership that can step up and provide a viable alternative to that and challenge that, you know, with their movement and their resources and everything? I think it's an open question whether those people want to go on. The Bernies, the Guiliano-Mars, the AOCs of the world want to go on fraternizing with these people that clearly hate them, hate any semblance of, you know, dignity for working people, any of that kind of stuff,

because of some sort of misplaced sense of party loyalty or whatever, or if there's something else that can spring out of that. Yeah. Well, that's the thing that concerns me. So, I mean, again, I think I maybe have got ahead of myself a little bit, but yeah, but Bernie's very much still used to a certain way of doing things. And when a crisis like this happens, the traditional mechanisms of government kick into gear and he has to participate in them. But I think he's got to be our Moses.

He's got to lead us out of the fucking... He's got to lead us through the wilderness or something we need manna from heaven because i just don't see like i just don't see how operating in the current system as it exists and doing things as normal is going to change anything because institutionally we're on the right wing grounds we're on their terms um and that even becomes true for the democratic party and it's why they won't let us in to actually address this crisis because look that's really what's at the root of all this um there are plenty of able smart intelligent you know courageous people on the left who are more than willing to step up and say,

well, these are the steps we've got to take if we're going to start saving ourselves from the impending ecological catastrophe. But they just refuse to let that happen. They are more than willing to steer the thing into the sun rather than let us step up and do that. And so we have to present some sort of alternative that shows like we can do it and i just i just think that the longer we stay within the democratic

party and the longer we stay in that sort of in the parameters of what they allow and don't allow is the longer we languish and become jaded and demoralized, you know, say fuck these people. Put them behind us. We need a certain... Yeah, I guess the question is, do you want to be in league with Dianne Feinstein? With fucking Nancy Pelosi? With fucking Chuck Schumer?

With fucking Joe Biden? I mean, that's the question. They just let this bill go through. It's just like they continue. They continue to just fuck us over and over and over and over so am i getting 1200 bucks or what yeah we're gonna need to send tanya like uh on the first of the month patreon hounding to the federal government. Yeah. Yeah, Chuck Schumer will get his wine and press emojis. Some poor bastard, the U.S. Treasury.

They don't want me up their ass. Well, let's pivot to maybe some personal stuff. What's going on in y'all's world? Tanya, I know that you had a few things that you had go on yesterday that you had that illustrate what's, how this is all playing out on the ground level. And before you continue, will you look at your Zoom recorder and make sure that it's still on? 53 minutes. Okay, cool. And going.

Cool. Yeah, I'm less, I'm slightly less stressed today because my mom finally just like quit going to work. Thank God. She's taking like a leave of absence for a while without pay. And they're making her use a, she has to use at least one vacation day. Because she doesn't have any paid sick time. Louie's hot on the trail or something. Big Lou. He's barged in here. What the time louie's hot on the trail or something big lou he's barged in here what the hell what's going on son he wants to be on the pod somebody's out outside he can

he's waiting for me to leave my phone alone. He's going to get on the Twitter. They're making my mom use one vacation day a week to keep her health insurance. Or they will cut off her health insurance during this time that she's not going to work. These people are fucking disgusting. So she works at a regional grocery store, Food City. And she works four 10-hour shifts so she works 40-hour week four tens and she works in two different stores so she rotates a tennessee store on monday then the kentucky store then a tennessee store then back to the kentucky store and so she has seen in real time the difference in how these two states have handled this outbreak and they are

vast basically and tennessee still the tennessee store still hasn't done everything that the kentucky store has done apparently to uh make workers and people safe they've really done nothing to make workers safe close to nothing but except for sanitizing buggies they've not given workers any training because all grocery store workers across the fucking globe right now are now like front line goddamn first responders they've just been like shoved to the front lines of this like insane global pandemic and they have no training they've not even had the first they've not even had a meeting to talk about it they've not been given any hand sanitizer gloves nothing

literally no preparation the only communication that they have gotten from corporate is that all overtime has been allowed they usually don't allow any overtime they've approved they've just blanket approved all overtime because they want everyone to just live in that fucking store jesus fucking christ so on monday my mom worked in the tennessee store and it was it's such a clusterfuck. She's like, they're finally starting to do things. Because Tennessee, the state of Tennessee, just started shutting stuff down over the weekend. They still had church.

They still had church in Tennessee this weekend. This past Sunday. A solid week after most of the U.S. had started shutting. I mean, I don't know if you guys saw this in Mississippi. Mississippi was refusing to do any of that. And I think Paul Bless pointed it out on Twitter. The moment that social distancing became owning the libs, or the moment that social distancing became something that only libs did

and not doing it was a virtue signal, we're fucked. Now we're owning the libs oh yeah getting coronavirus to own the libs yeah coronavirus parties not no not no that's not even that that's not they're not getting coronavirus on lips they're giving it away it's germ warfare is what it is let's be clear giving it away um so that was basically what was happening in the tennessee grocery store that my mom was working in people were just giving people the fucking germs they hadn't even took up the chairs in the you know every food city has a little cafe area in the deli where you can sit down and gather and eat together they were still letting them fucking eat together they were just

taking the chairs oh my god i want y'all to drive back well dairy queen's closed it might be right i started to say i would give any i would give them anything to driven by there and saw all the old dicks just sitting there gathering the corner talk about how this is all bullshit all a government conspiracy um so my mom's leaving work and she's already she said like all day she was just like because she said people because they finally in Tennessee started shutting stuff down and closing other businesses people started gathering in food city and hanging out literally just standing in the aisles people gathered up talking and laughing and my mom was just getting so fucking pissed

because I spent three days with her last week while I was babysitting. I did babysit for a few days because both of them were working, her and my sister in grocery stores. And when I would see her in the evening, she was just exhausted. And like she it's like her and my sister had not taken in what was happening. And so I was just like just throwing statistics at them as long as we were literally eating dinner. They're begging me to shut up. And I'm like I'm like please god don't go back to work just and then I made them start watching the news about it because they were just like totally in la la land about it I assumed everyone especially people with kids like schools canceled all this stuff but the schools cancel for snow

like they've had a lot of days they've been out even for sickness in the last six months there have been a lot of flu days probably because coronavirus started back in september here in the u.s but who knows anyway anywho um so while mom's leaving work she um she's like heading out and she sees um a manager or somebody she works with over a department like with their arms crossed just looking pissed and she's been pissed all day trying to get customers to get their shit and get the fuck out of there and quit like standing around him hauling around and the woman that she's walking past says this is getting ridiculous and mom's like i know shit's crazy people are just hanging out in here we got to figure out how to

get these people out of store and the woman's like well there know shit's crazy. People are just hanging out in here. We got to figure out how to get these people out of the store. And the woman's like, well, there's a confirmed case in the pharmacy. And mom said, really? And she was like, yeah. And so when mom goes to, she said, well, it's my time to leave. I'm clocking out. And so she starts heading home and she walks by another manager and she asked the manager, she said, I heard there's a confirmed case in the pharmacies.

He said, yeah, that's what I just heard too. He said, we're trying to figure it out. And so she just goes home. While she's home, she like texts us. She just starts having kind of a meltdown and she decides she's not going to go back to work. Or she's going to quit working in the Tennessee store. That's what she decides first. She's like, I'm just not going to work in the Tennessee store. Tennessee's fucked.

So she's ready to just work three days a week in the Kentucky store. That's her first line. three days a week in the Kentucky store that's her first line so she texts her boss who is a who's like a regional guy who she never sees or you know is never around he's over a bunch of stores and she tells him and he's like that's fine whatever you want to do then she ends up telling somebody who knows somebody she tells her friend what's going on her friend knows somebody else who works in that store is messaging them word gets around because my mom talks as much as i do and next thing you know the boss of that store has called my mom and it's like giving her down the fucking road because she has started a rumor

he's like who the fuck told you that there there are no confirmed cases in my store all this shit so it's just like a witch hunt you know it's it's just this crazy shit, and she's like, your manager's told me this, what are you, why are you talking to me this way, he's like, what manager, I'll get them, la la la, he's just like on one, you know, just fucking nuts, just people have lost their fucking minds, these are like people who are over dozens, if not hundreds, of people on the front lines of this epidemic now who are so callous that they have like no they they can't even bring themselves to offer supplies to people or have a fucking little staff meeting to talk to people and hear their concerns yet they are calling people at home to demand where rumors started about this or that about people's fears and anxiety instead of handling them with any type of care yeah i mean yeah yeah just it's it's a real in real time illustration

of what happens when you strip a society of all of its public services to respond to a crisis and then just leave it up to private industry like i mean it's completely fucked anyway it turns out maybe there's not a confirmed case in her store but it's just like there's people with coronavirus are coming into these stores there's no fucking doubt about it absolutely no doubt i mean all these fucking celebrities are getting tested that are asymptomatic and ran fucking paul or somehow getting their hands on tests when i've got people here that can't even get out of bed can't get a fucking test yeah so go ahead sir plenty of people have this fucking virus anywho my mom i'm less stressed now because my mom took just like a two-week absence she's not

going back to work for two weeks because she just freaked her all the fuck out she just got so freaked out and so i mean but but it adds a financial stress because now i'm gonna have to like take on more of my family's finances which is whatever it's like this this is what we're gonna have to do we're all gonna have to support each other in different ways than we've had to we're gonna have to shift things around a little bit and figure things the fuck out and go on rent strikes and refuse to pay these sons of bitches who don't even know us don't even know our names well i'm gonna send you my phone bill tanya in the spirit of i'll kiss my ass you can't even get on our you make all the money it took you 40 minutes to get on our call ain't paying your phone bill did you guys see that cardi b thinks celebrities are being paid to say they have coronavirus?

What? Yeah. No, I watched a video of her. I didn't see her say that. She made some good points. No, she did. I think that she's made some excellent points. Many, many, many times.

She's a goddamn prophet. Cardi B's a prophet. Isn't it weird that no celebrities have died from coronavirus? It's fucking kind of interesting. Yeah, not one. They've got the Magic Johnson secret sauce, the secret medicine. You're just resilient if you're lucky enough to create entertainment for a living. Well, damn, that's pretty fucked up. fucked up but you know it just goes to show you

the thing that kills me the most about that story is people just hanging out in grocery stores now yeah they can't go to their works or like they're refusing to stay inside and for me again this just goes back to what i feel like i've been saying if you're going to carve out a new sort of political niche institutional force uh vision or whatever you have to um intervene at the level of you know everyday interaction in people's lives and for me there's no greater example than the climate crisis. We need to be, Bernie needs to be out there putting the coronavirus in those terms. Yeah.

As a part of the climate crisis. We should have been handling climate catastrophe this seriously for a decade, at least. Yeah. Since Katrina. That's what's more than 10 years. Yeah. more than 10 years yeah more than 10 years ago we've we've had the very clear signs that this is a fucking place in decay and we're just making it worse fueling the fire seriously because the climate flames the climate thing offers us a perfect entry point to start building a new society and i've been thinking about this a lot because what was the organizing force

of the Republican Party in the 1860s, 1850s? It was anti-slavery. It was abolitionism. Let me go back through my notes. Yeah. Let me pull my notes out from that era. But, you know, that was, again, that was an entry point into what building a new society would look like.

And, again, I don't think you're going to get a better sort of moment, historical moment, than to split away from all the ways that we're currently doing things and saying, well, there are alternatives. There are new worlds we can build. Like we talked about with Asad Hayter, there is life beyond markets. You don't have to have, markets are not necessary for human existence. There's different ways, that's what

I try to, I'm in a couple of these DMs and I just, I know these guys I'm in these DMs but I think I'm a lunatic but it's like, there are different ways to order the world that don't make you choose between your grandmother and exactly is that exactly is that a hot take tom and your dams is that straight no it is because no because nobody

could just nobody has any political imagination you know what i mean they just don't they just think that like this is the way it's always been so this is what it'll be but they don't understand that like we're at a unique historical moment where the empire is in fast decay oh yeah i mean like it seems like even even you know we were talking about something psychically changing with the way we view the country this sunday that the bernie and biden debate happened and you know you know maybe didn't shake out the way we hoped it would but now it just seems like we're in free fall. It's like just completely ill-equipped to do anything about it. And I don't think anybody wants to kind of accept that.

I think everybody thinks that, like, oh, we'll stay in our houses for two weeks and then, like, we'll go back to the grocery stores and, like, we can restock because there will be toilet paper, there will be Lysol wipes, all that stuff everybody was hoarding will just you know magically show back up like there's everybody just thinks there's this invisible hands the invisible hand of the markets the invisible hand of whatever that's just going to like take care of their lives in a pinch but this covid thing you think about it has decimated the the populations whether it's killed them or made them sick, of already vulnerable people. A lot of times with comorbidities, if you're talking about poor workers,

not only in this country, but in the global, what people would call the global south, right? In Africa, where they're digging rare earth minerals to put in our iPhones, our computers, to send to South Asia to assemble those things, to send here. So we go buy them. Or if we're just talking about here people like your mom, Tom, or people like my mom, you know, doing custodial work in retirement to pay for a fucking Medicare

supplement, like if they get sick like that's got devastating consequences not only for them and their families but also for this economy that's being propped up, you know by their labor. And I just think we're in for a rude awakening, you know,

if we just think that, like, normalcy is what we're going to go back to here in a couple weeks after everybody's like, you know, after springtime comes and we're, you know, out of quarantine and this thing's died down a little bit or whatever, I just don't see that. I agree. That's it. I just don't say that. I agree.

That's it. Well, I think those are sobering words to finish on. I want to recommend every... Go ahead, Tonya. As hard as it is to hear, I think it is... As hard as it is to level with anything right now, I almost think it is easier to swallow to think about this in terms of climate crisis because we've been grappling with climate crisis for so

long yeah no it's here all the things we said were coming are here now yeah this is just again it's a harbinger of what the politics of the next decade are going to look like unless we can start something new and something that has a new vision, something that can, you know, plot a path forward. I am completely done with this stay in the Democratic Party. I want Bernie to stay in so I can vote for him. I want him to stay in so I can vote for him. But we are past that. I said that the son of a bitch better stay in so I can vote for him. I want him to stay in so I can vote for him. But we are past that. I said that the son of a bitch better stay in so I can punch one in for him.

But I think that we're past that now. I don't think that that even. I know. I just want to punch one in for him. I did it in 2016. I already got, I already felt the, I already got that for 2016.

So, um, I just feel like this has shown what the politics of the next decade are going to look like. And you have to throw out all of your old precepts and dogmas and understanding of how things operate because we are in a new world now. We're in a new field of action and a new terrain. And we have to adjust and we have to do it quickly. Because, again, it's like you said, Tom, it's a trial balloon.

It is, man. because um again it's like you said tom it's a trial balloon it is man it's uh you know if we've known that places like where we come from are the sort of proving ground that you know for for what they can get away with and this is like the world is now the proving ground you know yeah it's this is this is like the world is now the proving ground. You know, it's, this is, this is just like the natural extension. It's just the natural sort of progression of this project. And, uh, yeah, we've got to figure out a response. Well,

um, so before we go, I have a recommendation for everybody. If you want to know more about what I've been talking about in terms of where this virus came from, check out a book by Rob Wallace, not Rob Thomas, from Santana Smooth fame. Matchbox 25.

Your virus is so smooth. It's 3 a.m., I'm quarantined. I'm quarantined, I must be lonely Please check out the book Big Farms Make Big Flu Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness and the Nature of Science by Rob Wallace That is the book you should all be reading

for understanding what the fuck is going on right now. And also, I want to plug our Patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trill Billy Workers Party if you're stuck in quarantine and you want more content. And finally, I want to plug, selfishly, my band. We are on Spotify now. Check us out. Tenure.

T-E-N-U-R-E. Tenure, bitch. Tenure, bitch. You're not going to get it because academia is fucked. So just drop out and listen to my band. All right. Do you all have anything you want to plug? Anything you want to recommend?

Sleep, baths, meditation. I'm sure everybody knows about the Tiger King by now, so I'm not going to even go into it. I still haven't watched it. I'm going to, though. I still haven't watched it I'm going to though It's kind of like if If you got

If you took Johnny Cummings and Chris Cottle And mushed them together That's kind of what it would be Jesus Alright well on that note We will see you either on the Patreon Or next week Bye

We'll see you later