Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 144: Ocean Front Property on the Kentucky River

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

A low energy (Low T) episode rife with technical difficulties and incorrect speculations about the nature of the universe and what not. Go listen to the good episodes over on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Well, I'll be honest with you. I have my third eyes open. Had it been closed? I'm seeing things like I've never seen them before. Well, do tell because I feel... There's nothing to tell. It's just something you have to walk out, you know? There's no great secret.

There are no absolutes, friends. Well, you going to tell us more about it? I don't know what else to say about it right now. I'm still working it out, but I'm learning some things. What are you learning? Well, I'm learning how to live dialectically, friends. And I feel the same way I felt when I learned how to watch basketball like a basketball coach watches basketball.

In basketball, you don't watch the ball. Like we watch the ball when we're watching the game. But if you're watching film, you watch what's happening away from the ball. You watch how the best player on the floor gets open to get the ball that's what you're looking for and if you look if you're playing defense you're trying to figure out how to stop them from getting in position to get the ball that's that's basketball that's the whole thing right there there's a there's another way that the world can be ordered friends another way to way to think about it. And it doesn't involve the ball.

It doesn't involve the ball. We keep our eye on the ball and the end product too much. You're right. But I'm dangerously close into veering into Tim Ferriss territory. Well, I was thinking we were going to get into more May Day stuff. Eyes on

the workers. Yeah, we do have a historic strike coming up. Hopefully. Or a work stoppage, rather. Who's Tim Ferriss? You know, he's the guy that's always like... He was real big in the early 2000s. Like he was telling you the secrets about how to hold your breath for like six minutes and shit like that he was most famous for hacking the body ah i see well so how's this

new worldview um endowed you with the third eye it's not it's not open yet it's getting open i'm in the process opening what are you looking at with your third eye potentially man that i don't know either i'll be honest with you basically i've read a little marx and i'm feeling myself it's hard to make heads or tails of anything out here means i don't want to see the world as just here's what happens here's one force here's another force they bang up against each other and then everything's just a means to an end everything happens on a sort of uh i don't want to say a spectrum because that gives points to

the most annoying people but you know what i'm saying i think everything should just be about the interrelationship between two things you know what i'm saying sounds like emergent strategy to me interdependence i don't know about that interesting now you've got my attention. Are you saying emergent strategy, whatever that is, is it a nonprofit? What is an emergent strategy? It's like the interdependence of ecosystems and species, essentially, and how everything we need to know to change the world we can find in nature. Like it's already happening naturally, all of these processes we need to know to change the world we can find in nature like it's already happening naturally all of these processes we need even predatory i mean you know there's a lot of rape in nature there's a lot of uh carnivore uh pred predation you, arsenic's natural.

What do you say about that? No, it's arson. It's called What? What do they call it when there's just like a healthy burn? What's the healthy burn? Oh. Oh.

A controlled burn? No, not even that. It happens naturally. Not that we started to make something good happen. We didn't start the fire. What? I said, you're talking about we didn't start the fire but we did not what is that noise it's emerging strategies terence are you organizing files at this very moment

yeah i'm checking my listen i'm not an emergent strategy expert buddy i'm just telling you the micro the micro well okay every species this is the part i've been thinking about a lot, Lucy. It's every, every animal, like humans, our dog, all animals are supporting other life, like are supporting other species, even on our own bodies. Like we have little microbes living in our eyelashes,

earmuffs, Tom. I know you can't, this is going to destroy you. I'm at peace with it. this is gonna destroy you i'm at peace with it but it's just about the interdependence of all species and humans in particular under capitalism it's like we're we're fed this like you know bootstrap narrative that um we're in competition with one another and hard work actually equals

something i'm going to cite the example of the species in nature all having their their part to play next time a sex partner accuses me of giving them genital lice what what role does genital lice play in the greater scheme of things i can't say hopefully very little i mean but i mean but that's kind of like that sounds like the Jordan Peterson. Wasn't that Jordan Peterson's, what his book was about? I don't know who that is. Yeah, you do.

You would probably, he wrote that like self-help book for like men's rights guys. And it was about how like lobsterscompetitive and therefore humans should be. I mean, he took all these examples of nature being really... I mean, because that's a thing. Natural systems don't... There's no morality to any of it. It's just kind of like a sort of amoral functioning system. Although a lot of species do cooperate,

there are also ones that are highly competitive. Yeah, I mean, I think the point is overall there's way more cooperation, right? I don't know if there's way more. There's way more predation if you think about it. It does exist. There has to be. I mean, mushrooms communicate with trees

through their root systems. Do you know what I mean? I don't know. I'm skeptical of the idea of looking towards the natural world for any kind of sort of lessons, I guess, that could be drawn about

how humans act. So you think humans we gotta come up with it all? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Well, that's pretty bleak because humans are fucking... Wow.

You think so? We're getting to the heart core of Tonya Turner here. I feel like that's a very conservative idea tanya you think yeah that humans are all cutthroat and nasty and brutish i didn't say that and i don't think that but right now i don't have a lot of faith and i literally am afraid to leave the house at this moment so and i've got a bunch of cowboys with chainsaws in charge of my water supply right now.

So you're in good hands. Excuse me if I'm in a bad mood. I'm not saying you're in a bad mood. I'm in a bad mood. What's causing your bad mood? I don't know. Just, you know, everything. What is there to be in a good mood about?

Not getting any sleep. Eating nothing but brown rice and beans for the last two or three weeks. I feel like when I take a shit, it's like two pounds. It's just two pounds of rice and beans. That's just like the shits I take now. You're shitting like a cow. Yeah. Cow patties.

I shit cow patties now. Why aren't you getting any vegetables? Because I run out of vegetables within like four days of buying them well that's all they'll last and the vegetables we get won't will barely last four days any goddamn way i know i had packed my freezer full of like frozen spinach and kale and shit i'd never i didn't even know you could get it. And then we lost power and everything went bad. So now I'm just like afraid to even

stock up my fridge. Yeah. Tom, what are you eating these days besides Sunkissed? I'm going they lost them. Well, this is good and getting better. Hell yeah.

Is this the best episode we've ever done? I think so. I think so. Tanya, did you see the, did you see where the NPR did a follow-up on that that lady the harlan county lady yeah i didn't read it i just saw the headline and i was so enraged i couldn't go any further i was like just and the headline was like liberals upset or that's what NPR tweeted.

They tweeted that liberals were upset with their interview with the Kentucky business woman. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, even though the subject of the story was a liberal and liberals run Npr yeah i think that they meant lefties they don't know what they meant they're out of their fucking minds npr is canceled tom says that he can hear us but we can't hear him we can't hear him

hit the mute hit the unmute button tom oh shit wow we've got 24 minutes out of this incredible truly this is like fucking pulling teeth um if we ain't got it we ain't got it i think well i had a big, you know, I had things I wanted to talk about today, but then last minute audibles were called. Audibles? Yeah, you know, like in football, you know, like when you have to change up a play at the last minute and you're like, audible! And then you switch from like a passing play to a running play. I can't believe you're making sports references that I don't know right now. Well, how was the second interview? Did she redeem herself?

Who? Oh, Sky Marietta? Yeah. No. The second interview is wild. It was basically like she got dogpiled, people criticized her. They didn't mention us, unfortunately, I guess. No, unfortunately, no.

We never get any credit for nothing. No, yeah, they said people dogpiled her. People criticized her. And then they were like, they were like, people said she said conservative things. And then it's like they wrote a fucking, she wrote a fucking blog post about it in which she laid out all of her conservative opinions. Yeah, which is, I mean,

they've had to have read that and then decided to interview her. You know what I mean? This is so stupid. Like, her blog post was before the NPR interview. So she has tripled down on this shit at this point. Yeah. It's not like her words were taken out of context.

It was really bizarre. Basically, the whole interview amounted to um we hear you basically the whole interview was them saying we hear you we don't give a shit but we hear you that was the weird thing about it the whole the whole thing was very much like we understand that you're pissed we don't care but which is like why even write a follow-up if you really don't give a shit? There's so much fascinating stuff to talk about with this in relation to everything else

that's going on right now. I'm having a hard time finding anything fascinating. So I'm glad that you are able to shine a light on some fascination for me. Everything seems... You're struggling, Tanya. You're not doing too well. I'm a little worried about you. To say the least.

I wish you would come down off the mountain. I know you're trying to sell me oceanfront property in downtown Wattsburg. I am. I want you to come down and live with us. There he is. In Whitesburg.

I ain't moving to Upper Bottom unless I'm getting an in-ground pool. It's possible. There are houses in Upper Bottom with in-ground pools. I know. Look. Look. Yo. Are you back, Tommy? You back?

I think so, but gosh, damn. Now I'm gone again. No, we can hear you. We can hear you. I mean, Audacity quit is what I mean. Oh, fuck. So, well. We, we're... Well... We're just cut you out of this completely.

How about that? Damn. You finally get your mic straight and your program fucks up. That's 2020. Are you really... Were you serious when you said if you move again,

you'll move to Tennessee? Really? I don't like moving, and I just moved four months ago. But these are desperate times, you know? You might need an oceanfront property on the Kentucky River. On the Kentucky River. Somebody in Speak Your Peace was like, and I assume that it's one of the barbers over there at that barbershop,

but somebody was like, I haven't cut any hair, but I've got some oceanfront property on the Kentucky River if you want it. So. Lord. I wonder if they're going out of business. That wouldn't surprise me. It seems like the, like, barbers, little cafes and stuff, like.

Oh, man. The heartbeat of America. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, really, I wish i had my gay commune set up at this point i don't know moving to a city does not sound appealing right now move to whitesburg that sounds even less appealing in the downtown no yeah come on i don't know about that we've got steady electricity and water here it's a beautiful um place to live well you know i just asked my neighbor if this is common because she actually didn't even know the electricity went out yesterday when it did

because we have plenty of natural light in here and i didn't know we were doing something else and i hadn't noticed and she texted me and said can you fucking believe this and i knew immediately i was like oh fuck the power's out again god damn it and had to go start fucking filling up fucking blow up dolls with water but she said that this is very uncommon and this has never happened she's like this is the first time this has ever happened been like this and she said what are you filling up sex dolls with water is that how you're conserving water i mean we're doing what we gotta do down here terrence you're incredible no i got this emergency like roll out plastic water tank or whatever to put in the bathtub and it's called a water bob

and the way the like nozzle and the pump is on it it looks like i mean it looks like a blow-up doll and you just fill it up with water and then you pump it out the top but she said that somebody who works for the power company told her that this is all because last summer this past summer fall they the company uh like did not spend even half of what they normally spend on tree trimming so they were like trying to they were trying to i mean this is just asplund well aep pays them got it hires them so this is just hearsay but i don't know I mean I also it's just like you can't deny that this is infrastructure crumbling under climate change and it's liable to just continue to get

crazier and crazier and I guess it is harder to get power and water all the way up the mountain but I don't know. At this point, at this point, I just need a mental break so that I'm, so that I don't spiral into lunacy every time the power goes out because it's just like traumatic at this point. Yeah. Yesterday was fine. It was totally fine. We were out we didn't have power and water for probably

like seven hours six six or seven hours maybe and you know what a big deal honestly but my internal clock at this point is so sensitive to this matter because i've been through so much hell the past three weeks that it just sends me into total disarray every time it happens. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure this is obvious to you already. Oh, yeah. It is very obvious to me.

That I lose it completely every time. Yep. I've tried to keep my lunacy off the internet, and i think i've done a pretty good job the last three weeks of just staying the hell off the internet so that people don't know exactly how crazy i am right now well the thing is the problem is that it's the problem is that you live at the top of a mountain but that's what i wanted but that is what you wanted and it is also very nice to live on top of a mountain yeah there's so much good about it there are extreme highs and extreme lows so there is a really nice stream up here and people have already got uh little

pipes running through it and i wonder. Also, there's a whale hookup in the backyard. I just wonder if there are some local solutions that I don't really have the power over right now because I don't own this property. You know what I mean? Right. It's possible there's a whale up here.

Maybe. That we could tap into. Could be, yeah. Yeah. Anywho, nobody cares about my fucking Clayton Homestead trauma. I care, bro. You just want me to move to upper bottom. I just want you to move into

Whitesburg I can see Whitesburg from up here It don't look too great Well I can see your place From down here Tom Did you make it Hello Tom, did you make it? Fuck, no. I can't figure out. Hello? Hello?

Oh, this is good. Oh, this one's going straight to the garbage can. I'm going to, as soon as we finish recording, I'm dragging this one to the trash. And it's going to go. Now, I'm dragging this one to the trash. And it's going to go. Now, I'll publish this one. The only ones I don't wind up publishing are the ones that are really nihilistic. Yeah, the rabid where we're just like eating our fucking arms. Yeah, yeah.

Those are the only ones I don't publish. Because sometimes I do publish them, as was the case two weeks ago, and then wind up getting myself in all kinds of dumb fucking bullshit. I never did go back and listen. I don't know what happened. I still don't know. It's just some people are bored. That's it. People just fucking bored online.

I mean, I don't really blame them. It's fucking what else he's supposed to do, you and people are clinging to podcasts right now that's all they have we're all they have it's honestly a lot of pressure and every like i always consider before recording i mean i've been off the pod a bunch and every time i am on i consider right before being like no i can't do it. I'm not going to do it. I believe you did that today, actually. Oh, I went right back to sleep, yeah.

I couldn't. I don't think y'all would have wanted to talk to me at that hour this morning. I was up till like 3 a.m. You know, I'm very sensitive to sleep deprivation. I am too. I have not slept for shit in weeks i need a good i need a good 10 hours i'm gonna go ahead and tell you 10 i need 10 8 you sleep 10 i need 10 hours of sleep that's all there is to it now i i know what

that does to your brain you know when you stay in a bath too long and it prunes your fingers i think that that's what happens when you sleep for 10 hours to your brain no false everybody is different terrence god damn some people need eight hours that's an average eight's the average some people need six my mom sleeps like four hours a night oh yeah my dad does you know which now that she's on graveyard she sleeps all day long like she she said she feels like a toddler she just like wherever she is in her chair on the couch in her bed at the kitchen table she just goes to sleep and my dad does that too she's just like sleeping on and off all day long because she's working the graveyard shift now

it's a weird time i have have you ever worked a graveyard shift you ever had a job where you've had to work at graveyard well i bartended and so that shift i mean my bartending shift was three nights in a row 4 p.m to 2 a.m so that's a like a fucking 12 hour 10 hour shift right and i don't think that's graveyard necessarily that's probably considered second shift right 4 p.m to 2 a.m i i used to work that when i was a janitor on you you university of texas campus that was my exact shift 5 p.m to 2 a.m yep that was my shift but i was doing it on my feet in a stinky smoky biker bar on the kentucky river oceanfront yeah i mean i would honestly rather be janitor was

like the best job i ever had that shit was badass i mean it's kind of cool but i mean i never have been a janitor but i'd say it'd be kind of cool, like equally cool and equally creepy to be like in all these places that you're taking, that most people aren't allowed to be in at night after hours. You're kind of like a legal burglar. No, I worked at the power plant. I mean, like a cartoonish burglar. Like with one of those black masks over your eyes. Yeah, like a cartoonish burglar. Like with one of those black masks over your eyes? Yeah, like a cartoon black mask spy.

But you're cleaning, you're vacuuming and shit? Yeah. Did you ever find like really funny, interesting stuff in people's trash? No, I did one time find a used condom in a stairwell, and that always really confused me. Like, who the fuck? condom in a stairwell and that always really confused me like who the fuck i mean you've got to really be you've got to really be on some voyeur shit or something or some exhibitionist shit to fucking a stairwell because yeah i mean you never know i mean i guess you could hear someone coming up or down but it's just kind of gross too mean, I had sex in the library one time in college, and I didn't feel good about it.

Oh, shit. Really? Yeah. I worked there. I was on the clock. I don't think I've ever had sex on the job. Yeah, I was at the EKU library up in the stacks. That's another second shift job I had to work.

In the library late at night no literally nothing going on nobody anywhere no i i i used to like that job i could just go in fucking turn my headphones on and just zone out and just clean because there's no one in that building i also worked in the computer science building that was a little more trafficked after hours. But even then, it was still pretty sparse. It was pretty dope. Yeah. Sometimes at my library job, I would just go clock in and leave

and go eat at Applebee's and shit and hang out with my friends and then go back and clock out. Yeah. I'm kind of like bound and determined at this point to get an hour out of this we're at 40 minutes like it's kind of we're doing it like can we get 20 more minutes of meaningless banter i mean this is quarantine this is what this is where we're at what i mean i don't know what else could be expected of us. People died this week in Georgia from drinking bleach because their fucking president told them to. I mean, what's there to say, Terrence?

Really? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You're right. I mean, I'm bound and determined not to talk about politics. I'm trying to pivot away from talking about politics. I don't want to talk about it. I'm trying to pivot away from talking about politics. I don't want to talk about it.

What's there to say? I mean, the NPR, even NPR, which, okay, has just all the money you can imagine to do reporting is double downing on the dumbest interviews in human history. They,

not only did they do them, they redid them. They did do a remix remix and they didn't get beyonce so it was bullshit they got the remix remix with um yeah they didn't get me if beyonce ain't on your remix don't bother okay especially if you're in pr oh shit um p tom no i just yeah are you even there tom still there's a t on our google hangout well we're all t that could be me hell i don't know there is there's three t's so i think he's gone he's got to get off in seven minutes anyways i don't think tom gets off much anymore terrence hello who's that girl no i i'm pivoting away from

economic political economic analysis this is entirely a show now about about spiraling into conservatism about tanya spiraling in to conservatism um uh what do you have to say about aliens terrence oh um i say that aliens are they've made a good comeback in the news this week i mean so I mean, so those videos, it seems to me like there's probably some kind of explanation for it that has a sort of basis in, I mean, it's got to be some sort of military exercise. Even though the military claims it's unidentified even though that yeah i mean they don't want to claim it because didn't this come out like in the 80s that like a lot of i mean tom if you're still there like didn't that wasn't that the thing like in the 80s they were saying like ufos were actually weapons tests, but it actually benefited the government to, like, make people believe

that there was some sort of extraterrestrial... That's the origin of the head fake. Oh, I see. I see. My fucking... God damn it. What's wrong with you, Tom? What's wrong, bro?

My hangouts keep... It'll come in and it'll go out. Like, I... There were parts where I was just yelling at y'all and it wasn't picking anything up. But you have that recorded on your end, though? This is gonna be glorious splats together. This is gonna be so good.

You know, Tom, sounds like to me you've been hacked and somebody's up in your computer. I hate to tell you. It's in my hat. Probably my bitch wife. Oh, my God. Hat. Arrow. It's been in there.

Licking your motherboard. No, those videos are pretty crazy um but i mean but if you're an alien coming to visit earth like what the fuck like you're probably coming from some civilization that's light years more advanced than ours and so you probably look at us with the same degree of sort of condescension that like most americans look at like a pile of ants or something you just like that's crazy i was literally just disgusting dude i ants are taking over our home and mine too they are so smart i was just talking to michelle about how i wanted to research how ants communicate because yesterday morning i ate it there were no ants inside i ate an apple i laid it down i i like stamped a couple of tea bags um i have a very weird um

art project going on right now where i'm using stamps and making my own little like tea bags for all this um all these violets I've dried out from the yard and I'm put in their titty boob stamps so it's tit tea that's where I'm at anyway literally seven minutes it took seven minutes for hundreds of ants to be on that apple core seven minutes now where did they come from how did they communicate that quickly did they all just smell it from across the room they're just they they are just and i mean i literally just had this conversation yesterday with michelle about how smart and collaborative and like how organized ants are how impressive it is so some you know bees are able to communicate with dances you know they have like these little dances that they do fly in certain and so i wonder if ants ants may either do the same thing or they might have some sort of chemical that they use to communicate to each other with there are um there are some ant species in arizona that have enslaved

certain species of mites so going back to the emergent strategies thing earlier like some species do cooperate some species do enslave other species in some sort of maybe parasitical relationship or just straight up coercive relationship um nature's it's so diverse and full of so many different fascinating things that it's hard to draw conclusions i think um but they're they are very smart you're right so maybe aliens looking at us would think that we are smart in the sense that we developed an atom bomb but dumb in the sense that we used it on each other i mean so it seems to me we work less collaboratively than ants we're less strategic than ants it seems to me at this point but oh absolutely so i don't know i don't know

how aliens are looking at the species around but do you think though that like i mean those videos have been out for a long time and the pentagon had no real reason like what reason did they have to even acknowledge them at this point was it a head fake terrence level with me i gotta take off we'll see you later, Tommy. Good luck, Tom.

I think that it was... It could have been a head fake. I think that the Pentagon's probably like... Because they research this stuff. There are certain branches within the Pentagon that do research unidentified flying objects well i should fucking hope so and so it does make you question like is that in itself like a psyop

or are they really investigating truly unknown phenomena. I guess I tend to, just because it's so hard for me to believe that in all the times we would conceivably have been visited by aliens, there's not been one instance of human to alien contact.

Now, so I guess you could say well there's plenty of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens oh yeah plenty maybe maybe they're right maybe they're right i mean and maybe the fact that they don't get a fair hearing or anything makes it difficult for us to establish scientifically that they have been examined or probed or whatever um i guess it really does come back to like i want to believe uh but the thing is is the existence of aliens wouldn't really change no would it change anything i mean well depends on what we know about them and i don't know because well i guess you could try to play it out like you would think if you would have asked me a year ago, do you think the existence of a worldwide pandemic would change humanity

and all of its social relations and its mode of economic production and everything? I would have said, yeah, absolutely. But now I'm looking at it and I'm like, well, it doesn't really seem like a lot is changing. It looks like things are maybe changing for the worse. really seem like a lot is changing it looks like things are maybe changing for the worse um so maybe if you extrapolate that to aliens and say did the existence of aliens mean that humans could cooperate better and maybe that we would learn some insights about our universe and it would help us sort of further the human species um it all depends on politics i suppose i don't know

i don't know i mean what do you what do you think do you think aliens exist do you think that those were for real parents i don't think anymore i gave up on it. I'm over it. Beyond. Beyond. All I do is watch drag shows. And stamp tea bags. And make moon water snakeles. I am trying to be that scary old witch on the hill. Yeah. I'm just nestling into it here at a prime 33 years old.

You are a scary young witch on a mountain. Yeah, all I need is more wrinkles, and they're coming by the hour. So I'm fast tracking. I think you're on a good course. I think you've got it partially figured out. Me too. I mean, like I told you, my mom's quick to be like, bitch, you work from home. You're doing better than any of us. You're the family ATM.

Relax. How about that that she has a point you are the family the family banker the family um yeah the family atm i mean i guess probably not if we keep more episodes like this but well terence this is a free episode if i had my way we would only do paid content at this point at the end of history and you all are starting to put out more free content i i i am aware of your stance but this is the thing the people these streets need this content Tanya the free supplements

the paid content it's a dialectic as Tom was saying well I'm going to calculate all the time I spend prepping doing and worrying about our free episodes and I'm submitting to calculate all the time I spend prepping, doing, and worrying about our free episodes. And I'm submitting all that as donations. Whenever I do file my taxes.

Do you do any prepping for any episodes? Really? What do you do? Well, for one. I'm not saying that.'m not i'm really not casting aspersions i'm well um i have to tell me your your routine i want to know your what your routines like well i wouldn't call it a routine but occasionally i have to read headlines i also have to mentally prepare not to be either as depressed as i actually am or like i have to get on some type of neutral ground so that i can mentally so that i can web into whatever flow we fall into. I see.

I see what you're saying. So I can be malleable. That is preparation. Yeah. Absolutely. You're right. People don't, people really do. So on one hand, people are correct when they say podcasting is not a real job.

But on the other hand, it does take a degree of sort of mental and emotional labor or preparation or call it whatever you want to make it actually palatable this has been hard this podcast is harder work than any boss i've ever had ever done is it really yeah well i didn't really prepare. So, obviously, I didn't prepare at all for this episode. I mean, that's not true. I had a lot of things prepared for this episode, but at the last minute, things kind of went off the rails.

But, regardless, this is what an episode sounds like when you're just not really prepared. Like, all of us. I'm not talking about you yeah i'm talking about like as a collective i'm not prepared for anything not a podcast not my other paid work well no one has i'm not mentally the nation's not no the nation wasn't prepared for a fucking pandemic exactly that's what i'm saying and all i keep all i cannot stop thinking about how well one y'all know i've been on a spiral about infrastructure crumbling under the climate but my other spiral

is that it's me trying to level with the fact that we're not going to get universal health care even amidst a pandemic which means we're probably never gonna get it no and that's been a lot for me to handle i've been trying to figure that out too a lot to process well yeah you read these things these op-eds and analyses and stuff and they're like they're like um is this going to be the thing that pushes America towards universal healthcare? And again, it's a fool's game trying to predict anything right now. But it does very much feel like we're living in a moment of reaction in the sense that, you know like we we did for a brief moment have a sort of like revolutionary mentality there was this sense that pervaded a lot of society that things

might change radically for the first time in a long time i'm talking about bernie um and that like we could actually do this thing and so then those were dashed upon the rocks which happens in history uh you know water under the bridge at this point i mean it's really not i do agonize about it daily but regardless that happens but usually when that happens and this has happened you know it happened after the french revolution it happened after the 1848 revolutions both of which were defeated there's a there's a period of reaction where like it seems like everything starts moving towards the right and it kind of feels like we're living in that. And my best proof of that. Except we didn't get a revolution. Yeah, because we didn't get one.

It was forestalled or whatever, you know? And so my best evidence of that is this Tara Reade stuff. And the fact that all the same people who a year and a half ago were so vocal and, you know riled up or whatever about kavanaugh have now gone completely the opposite direction and have i mean you know yeah that video did you watch that video stacy abrams like basically making a fucking fool of herself on tv for for Joe Biden it was fucking shameful yeah I saw it on Maine's morning news this morning it was brutal it was yeah I was pretty shocked especially because there's all this and I guess maybe they interviewed her before all this new evidence but I doubt it and it's just like why do we need it's this woman could produce

fucking video footage of this happening and it wouldn't make a goddamn hill of beans difference. It's just like any, any survivor of any abuse and especially rape or sexual assault, like we'll just, we'll be under attack if they were over anything it's just like they're just their entire character everything they ever done will be drug out to make them seem like a maniac and unworthy of justice and certainly against biden oh yeah i i mean it's it's really you know it's really fascinating when you consider that um you know say whatever about elizabeth warren and bernie or whatever uh four months ago you had two major presidential or bernie was major warren was kind of a an anomaly i don't even

that's weird in and of itself but you had two presidential candidates saying that once they were elected shale production would essentially go extinct like talking you know talking about a green new deal universal health care and all this it is a really weird whiplash effect to go from that straight to this new thing where in the midst of a pandemic biden refuses to embrace medicare for all cuomo basically got basically got the primary bernie kicked off the ballot in new york they're gonna cancel that's oh yeah they just yeah they just canceled it all together didn't they yeah i think he couldn't get him kicked off the ballot and it's probably one of the reasons he just canceled the whole fucking thing incredible

which and so so is it just does that mean it's just all mail-in ballots or are they allowing anyone everyone to do mail-in ballots or are they allowing anyone everyone to do mail-in i don't know what that means because in kentucky they they are we are still having in-person elections they pushed them all the way back to the end of june and we're still having in-person elections but they're allowing anybody for any reason to do mail-in encouraging everyone just mail in your ballot and of course and speak your peace the grand speak your peace minds say it's so uh uh the governor can personally count them all himself and decide what the results are nice um yeah i don't even know how he has the power to cancel a whole primary

i think it is still mail-in i think i remember reading that somewhere but still it is completely shameful um but it's because they have united in common cause against any kind of progressive change and this is the thing let me fuck it uh we might as well just get into it like this is the thing that to me like was the common connection between everything that's been going on in that npr story because that the follow-up not the original but the follow-up because the follow-up essentially said we hear you and we get it it's just like so patronizing totally and that but that's exactly what they're saying about tara reed yeah that's not that's exactly what they're they're saying

we hear you but that they don't give a fuck well what they're saying no they're not even saying we hear you they're saying the new y not even saying we hear you. They're saying the New York Times investigated, which one, since when does the New York Times, since when are they a part of a justice system? Since when does the New York Times get to decide who's innocent and guilty in this fucking country? That's insane enough. But that's even what Stacey Abrams said. And I mean, and we point to her to her you know I think people will say like oh we expect too much out of black women or whatever it's just like we point to her because

we rallied for her ass in Georgia it's like we we actually threw weight behind her and I don't think it's too much to expect her to at least acknowledge a fucking uh fucking rape allegation sexual assault allegations and she literally said oh the New York Times uh investigated that and just you know said it was I forget the word she used right well and it's you know this thing is not just her it's like you know it's pelosi yeah but i don't expect anything out of nancy pelosi you know i'm just i'm saying that's what i'm saying i'm not as you know i'm not i'm not upset i'm not as emotional about a response from nancy pelosi because she's a fucking ghoul she's a goddamn maniac she's a fucking a part of a debt she's the head of the death cult who fucking cares you know what i mean it's like of course

they have a lot of power and it's very upsetting but i've already gave up on those fucking people being tied to any uh any sliver of human decency or or humanity these are total gh but i expect more from stacy abrams well i think that her trajectory i don't really know much about her um i do know that she's like taking she's taking that cat money now the center for american progress and bloomberg i believe she's also taking bloomberg money i heard she went to a bloomberg fundraiser i mean the thing is is that all these a lot of these stacy abrams is just another iteration of the same type of politician it's the same she's she's she's like beto you know like you know in the sense that like i'm trying to think of other examples um there's like beto elizabeth warren kind of um there's the guy who ran for governor

in florida i mean like i'm just saying like these youngish elizabeth warren is obviously not this person but these kind of like youngish rising stars obama was one at one point this youngest youngish rising stars in the Democratic Party, Julian Castro, people who don't really have any real core philosophical beliefs or ideology, other than just vague progressive values. But you get to see how easily that can just get eaten away as soon as they get involved in the sort of democratic party

political machine and yeah i just wonder like what reason she has to make it like to put herself in that position as i understand it she wants to be vp i mean she has said like I would be VP for anybody or whatever like I'm ready to be VP so yeah I guess that's true but I mean you think he hasn't decided and already told someone who's gonna be his VP yet you know what I mean do you think he is yeah he probably he probably has surely they already know that I think it's gonna be Obama or Michelle it's gonna be Michelle Obama he's so funny vice president my guy yeah well um it it just goes to show you that i mean to me it's just fascinating american politics is fascinating to me because you have to lose.

You have to take the L, but you didn't really lose. The thing is that all of the policies that Bernie supports are overwhelmingly popular, and especially in a state like New York where Cuomo is governor. He squashed Medicaid expansion and all these other things like you you've got all these things that are overwhelmingly popular but you've got this situation now where like that popular um support for these things can no longer be leveraged or or or deployed against these people because they don't care anymore it's i guess they've got enough of a base they've tailored their base sort of strictly enough and

you know observantly enough or something to be able to be rest assured that they will at least have enough support to stay relevant right i guess i don't know it just doesn't feel like we live we don't really live in a system anymore we're like and this is why this is why i'm kind of uh pessimistic about medicare for all because it doesn't really feel like we have live in a system anymore where popular pressure results in change anymore i mean it feels like some massive structural changes would have to occur for that to even be an option anymore yeah i mean i just think um you know somebody i don't know if it's the dms but someone is doing a good job of um convincing people in this moment that all of their problems are because of trump convincing like people on the left um or just liberals that trump is at the root of all their problems

and they think that that is going to be able to get that get anyone voted like anyone. Right. Anyone in. And so they literally don't have to abide by any moral codes and have zero values. Right. Right. Well, it's very it's very depressing. It's very depressing.

And to me, what's honestly more depressing about it is that, like we were saying, there is mass support for universal health care, expanding the welfare system. There's universal health. There's a Green New Deal. There's a lot of majority support for a lot of these things. Well, there has to be in a system with this much inequality. You know what I mean? Like there's no way for this many people to be living in poverty and not recognize the need. They just don't have the means to make it happen. Like they don't see a path for themselves.

And they certainly don't see themselves reflected in any kind of electoral strategy or reality. It's just totally, totally removed. Right. Totally. Well, and what makes it so bizarre, though, is that, again, the weird thing about politics is that, like, when you lose, it's not like that just goes away it's just it's forced into this sort of like state of hibernation or or stasis or something so like i don't know it's really bizarre it's it's i mean you're basically told that you lost and your ideas aren't popular. But we did lose technically, but the ideas are still very popular. I just don't know how you channel them at this point.

I don't either because, I mean, hell, we've been... Like, think about how many actions have taken place from the sunshine movement to black lives matter even in the last year two years let's say to all the climate networks for a green new deal survivable future universal health care across the board black block black box to fucking banner drops across the board yeah and it's like and it feels like to no avail and then you have conservative white maniac looking nail salon owners or i don't know fucking barber shop ghouls showing up at the kentucky state capital and the next day the governor announces uh even though we have our peak number today like we've got oh a hundred more cases that

we did yesterday we're gonna start making plans to open the fucking businesses back up right it's just like the way that the the way that democrats and liberals bend to the right is is it could just it's like in no way comparable ever to any like the right never bends there's like no bending in our direction well i mean to me that just hints at the fact that america's institutions have been drifting to the right this is what i get i get really confused when people say that like bernie and warren moves the overton window to the left because i've not really seen any evidence that like the ideas that they proposed have persisted in the sort of discourse in the way that they're saying

well i mean i felt like that in the fall because i was i was seeing conversation you know you know i mean i understand that's how i was feeling hell i said it on sanian for god's sakes but then it's like where's the proof in the pudding of actual policies? Yeah. I, that's the thing. I mean, that's the thing that I guess is tricky about the trying to move media discourse. It's that like, you're trying to move discourse within a corporate media framework. And, you know, we know that they're always going to win that.

And so, I don't know. It seems to me that a lot of these sort of electoral strategies do sort of amount to that. They're kind of like, well, we can move the discourse at least. We may not win, but we can at least inject these ideas into the mainstream discourse. And they're not talking about like kitchen tables, even though that might be a result. They're talking about like what Don Lemon and people talk about, like on CNN.

And so, I mean, again, those things can exist and Don Lemon and et cetera can say, well, our, our healthcare system is breaking apart in this moment of crisis. Do we need universal healthcare?

But like we've seen that obviously the Republicans aren't going to do it. But to me, the big lesson from 2020 is that the Democrats finally just confirmed that they are a right-wing party. Like that's just, you know know that's just what they're identifying as now like this is just who we are yeah i don't know i mean you want to know something really dark that i was thinking about um do i really have a true to have an option, really. Check this out. So I can imagine a scenario in which if Biden wins in November, imagine. Okay, so imagine this again.

Here's another fun little thought experiment. Imagine this thing comes back with a vengeance in the fall but we still have an election and biden manages to pull it off somehow he manages to pull it off well even if this thing doesn't come back in the fall you know what's gonna happen we're biden's gonna win it's just gonna be another hillary biden is gonna win the popular vote and lose the electoral college that's exactly what'll happen you're absolutely right but let's say that he does win well people still need these unemployment benefits and um you know these these sort of like main street bailouts that that trump and the republicans have been pushing

the only like if obama had tried to do this mitch mcconnell and all the republicans would say nope not happening we are opposing anything you're doing by any means necessary doesn't matter but they can't do that with trump so they've gone along with it and that's why you've got this situation where dumbass small business owners are saying, you can make more in unemployment now than in employment. But if Biden was president, those congressional Republicans would just revert to the exact same sort of obstructionist posture they took with Obama.

And so then we would have a situation where under Trump, at least we got money in the bank. At least we got our Trump bucks. But with Biden, they'll just stop that from happening. We won't get any bucks. That is a real possibility. You're saying we have more leverage under Trump than Biden? I'm not saying that that's a good thing.

I'm saying that... I am saying yes, factually, that is true. Because as long as the Republicans hold the Senate... Now, if Biden won the White House and Democrats took the Senate and the House, then we would be able to have leverage and we'd get those Biden bucks. But if Biden just wins the White House, but not the Senate, would be able to have leverage and we'd get those we'd get those biden bucks but if true if biden

just wins the white house but not the senate even if they hold the house no mitch mcconnell will obstruct all the fucking way we'll not get our bucks and and american history will have brought us to this very very bizarre conjuncture where under a democratic administration we don't get bailed out but under trump we did lord have mercy does that make sense yeah i mean it's just pitiful the the calculating they get to do with people's lives it's just so fucking i mean i forget whose theory this was but weren't we we were surmising at one point that uh trump was going to legalize marijuana that was like the way he was gonna beat whoever right because that was like the one wedge issue he could probably convince republicans to get behind which what which issue was it legalizing marijuana oh yeah weed man and it'll make him just look even

cooler because that's how he's desperate to be the cool guy anyway you know i mean i can just imagine him releasing a campaign video of him smoking weed. Can't you imagine it? Trump would melt down on weed. I mean, honestly, though, if they really wanted to inject some sort of stimulus into this economy, they should just turn the economy into a weed economy. The United States has such premier conditions

for growing weed and hemp yeah now hemp has kind of been proven to be a fucking scam but weed will never be a scam no i just don't think we have the infrastructure to support hemp there's only like one place and i think it's in canada i don't even think there's any any like actual industrial hemp processing in the fucking u.s we just don't have the infrastructure for it right and it should be i mean i might be i might be saying i'm probably saying things i mean i'm definitely talking about things i know nothing about as usual but um that's my understanding is that like has to go to fucking canada or something for even like processing but i mean hemp should be able to replace a ton of shit. Like, I mean, literally like plastic and shit.

You know what I mean? It should be this like incredible super plant. But we have no, we don't, we don't have the vision or infrastructure at this point to use it. Which is true for just about every aspect of it. Yeah. No vision, no infrastructure infrastructure no give a fuck we're just you know as long as as long as people are as long as we have a system of decision making that's based on how much money you have i mean this is it's not based never it's just people are never going

to be well under this system right it's just not in the cards it's not going to happen yeah it's um it's interesting like the way the media has talked about coronavirus like we obviously only get america's interpretation of it like american medias oh god yeah it's insane but if you were go over go ahead go ahead i was about to do what were you gonna say real i was just gonna give an example of how bizarre our media is like just like the one time i've been out of the country just the me there was like a quote-unquote ISIS attack on a beach somewhere when I was in when I was in uh but that was the U.S. story and when I was in um I think I was in Wales or somewhere at the time it was like just the it was the the coverage was

the opposite they don't even use the word ISIS. Lone psychopath. Yeah, it's just ridiculous. Anyway, sorry. Well, I mean, we obviously, because we only get that coverage, we're not really getting the sort of holistic picture

of how the United States is dealing with coronavirus. But just about by any metric and standard no matter how you spin it the united states response to it even though i think italy and spain have more deaths per capita um i think that's mostly because they have an overwhelmingly sort of geriatric population whereas america has the most deaths and the most cases and is just experiencing mass dysfunction and again you don't really get that in any of the media coverage i know i mean i i said this to my mom because my mom was like yeah

they're gonna start because my mom lives in tennessee and they're opening malls tomorrow on may day oh my god tennessee my i have a friend who works at the west town mall in knoxville she works at the fucking makeup counter she does makeup and tomorrow she had she's at work today they're prepping today they all had to go back to work today and tomorrow the doors will open and she will have to put lipstick on old ladies mouths tomorrow oh my fucking god that's where we're at and so my mom lives in tennessee and i was talking to her about it and she was just like yeah and so i tried to explain to her i was like mom like we've handled this worse than anyone than any other country like we're the only developed nation without universal health care it's just like i say these things over and over and my mom just zones me out you know but she was just like but at some point she was like how do you know that

so you're right it comes back to like that's never going to be the framing that they're never gonna like we're never gonna get actual even in college I just this occurred to me that this Marxist professor that i had at eku i mean he like wrote multiple books about mark 600 page books no one wants to read about political economy uh maybe you want to read it i don't know by an eku professor you can look it up paul palucci he used to say he said the dangerous thing and this was 10 12 years ago but it's even more he said the dangerous thing, and this was 10, 12 years ago, but it's even more true now. The dangerous thing about U.S. media is that there's this ruse that it's independent and, you know, the government doesn't run it.

And in most dictatorships or like most like authoritarian countries, like everyone knows not to listen to the fucking media because the government runs it. It's like everyone knows this is ridiculous. We know not to listen to this. this but here that's not the case and we just have this ruse that that that even our local media has our best interest at heart and it's just it's just a lot it's just overwhelming it's just like in this moment where like so many you know there were always lots of just like there they're always every day there are human lives in the balance of this, of capitalism for sure. But currently it's just so much heightened.

That is just like so much more heightened. And everyone is dealing with some level of fear of death at this point. Yeah. Or fear of having to like, you know, bury or even not be able to bury someone they love that it's just it's even harder my mom has always been one of those people who just like wants to believe that people that people have her best interest at heart especially like elected officials um and it's a very good instinct you know what i mean like it's like pure and good

that she that she, that she has people's best interest at heart. It wants to believe that other people do, but it's just like almost never do our leaders, people even, even locally have our best interest at heart. They're just such our political system produces fucking maniacs. Power hungry ghouls.

Well, yeah, and the thing is, in a situation like this, I feel like I've been hyper-attuned or sort of focused on trying to get a holistic picture of the u.s's response to it not just in terms of like economics and politics but also you know public health and everything else and um and it's really fascinating that like no one in the media class will point out to anybody that... So this was a huge failure of the Trump administration, obviously. The Chinese knew about this virus early on, tried to warn America, and we just put our fucking fingers in our ears and said,

No, no, no, no, no. You guys are lying're being using as an as an excuse to be repressive and what i love is that the chinese discovered it there's no proof that it started there there's literally no exactly it thanks to thanks to the chinese uh health care system we even know what we're dealing with at all right i mean we i mean we've even said this on an earlier episode that it's in all likelihood it started here and we've been said this on an earlier episode that in all likelihood it started here. And we've been sending this out of the country since last fall. I saw headlines yesterday that were talking about how people who had tested positive in America got theirs from Europe. got theirs from europe there was no direct china to america uh contamination that a lot of those cases early on were from europe

um and uh this is like a whoever smelt it dealt it situation like china smelled the fart and said hey hey who st stuck up the room here and we've blamed it on them because we're all like oh god was it us did we let that fart slip out well but it's it's been a failure from the trump administration but this has been a massive failure of the cdc who was this esteemed agency you know and um obviously it just goes to show like what happens when you hollow out all the functions of america i was gonna say like these all of these agencies have have just had their budgets gashed all this money has been sent to a wall what did we think was going to happen we've we've taken you know we've taken the already under budgeted agency serving human life across this country

and sent it to a steel bar to building steel bars at our border oh you're right well and it's hard to kind of wrap your mind around the sort of catastrophic systemic failure that has been the american state's response to this and um and yeah i don't know maybe things maybe this antiviral that they've got really will work and maybe we can start like getting back to quote-unquote normal as we just target people with antivirals um but i'm i'm skeptical of that regardless you know it's just just needs to be stated for the record by somebody that america's response to this has been abysmal i just don't know how that's not more clear and stated more rapid like more succinctly in the media how can they be missed like how is it that

we are interviewing bananas ass berea business owners instead of government you know what i mean i'm just like what is yeah no no it's kind of like all the sort of existing institutions and norms and etc were in the exact when we were caught with our pants down more than that i mean yeah we were caught in the worst possible position at the worst possible moment. Yeah. And right now, or go ahead. I'll say, which I did hear like months ago, maybe right at the beginning of March when all this was starting, I heard an interview on NPR on the radio because I was driving and that's about the only thing I could get to come in.

And that's about the only thing I can get to come in. An interview with a, I think he was actually a reporter that had covered a big simulation that another health agency had done. I don't think it was the CDC, but another health agency had done this big like simulation to estimate how a flu like pandemic, literally a-like pandemic would impact our like resources and maybe even our economy and a draft was sent to the white house to the trump administration and they stopped it and said not to finish it based on the draft because it was so bad it was so bad it was like it we our entire everything will crumble under this and it was based on even like more conservative uh death rate numbers based more closely on flu on the flu rates right so they've known like they yeah not only did they know like in january about this specific situation they knew last year about how little prepared they were to handle anything of like this. No, it's really, it really is. Wrong time, wrong place.

Just the worst fucking contingencies and forces colliding at one moment to create just a mess but it's crazy to think that if this had happened during in the obama years how like obama would have never recovered from this like in the media they would have blamed him for every single inch of this do you know what i mean like he got i mean thanks obama was like was the headline of his presidency. Well, but this is the fascinating thing about liberals is that they kind of go along with that. Nothing, again, Obama had every mandate, every available option to him to do whatever he needed to do in 2008 through 2010 and neglected to do it. And that's what happens with these liberals.

They get in office, and again, they would say the same thing about Biden. If he won, they'd say, thanks, Biden. This is all your fault. Meanwhile, they're stopping him at every moment to pass any kind of bailout reform or whatever. And the liberals go along with it because they are completely. I don't know what the word would be, but they need the Republican. They need the conservatives to rein them in um because they want to be because I guess ultimately they're conservatives at heart I don't fucking know I guess they don't

just they just don't believe in anything that's really the more um expedient sort of explanation is that and it's this Tara Reid stuff is showing it. It's just like these people can really literally flip a switch in their brain that goes from believe survivors, me too is a great force for good, et cetera, et cetera, and then flip a switch in their brain and go from that to this person is lying, they've already had their hearing in front of the public from the New York Times and et cetera. And not skip a beat, you know? Yeah.

It's really phenomenal to watch. And I really do think that, like see that and um or at least the people who um who don't really engage in democratic party politics that faithfully or loyally um will see that and really see it for how cynical it is but maybe maybe that's me looking at it glass half full and uh who knows but it's really phenomenal to witness I would i don't think i would uh accuse you of looking at anything glass half full i'm trying this new thing i'm trying tom says he's trying a new thing i'm trying to i'm trying to yeah i'm trying to train my third eye yeah i guess technically i'm trying a new thing i'm trying to i'm trying to yeah i'm trying to train my third eye yeah i guess

technically i'm trying a new thing too it's called despair trying that on for size it's not too new for you it's like this it's like despair 2.0 it's like a new kind of despair i felt like i was a pretty optimistic bitch until the last month honestly you don't think i was i i erred on the side of optimism i mean who knows the thing is is that like like every other human we have days where we despair and we have days where we genuinely feel hopeful yeah i'm just not used to this level of roller coaster ride the The up and down is what's so hard. It's like, I mean, just when I get used to feeling down, I'm up again. I have like a good day. And then it's like I have to get used to feeling like shit all over again.

You know what I mean? It's like, just let me forget what good feels like already and give me a fucking break, okay? Oh, I know exactly what you mean. Just let me just live in this, okay I know exactly what you mean just let me just let me just live in this okay I know what you mean well that's probably a pretty good note to to finish it out

on look at this we fucking salvaged a whole ass episode we damn sure did if there's any lesson to be taken away from this episode it's that if we could save this pile of trash maybe there is hope fuck maybe there is i'll be damned i'll be damned um well look you know even michael jordan had a few bad games. Even Michael Jordan tried to play baseball.

Even Michael Jordan tried to play baseball. Well, maybe you can cut some of that trash out of the front part since we've got a little extra buffer on here. Yeah, yeah. Don't cut out Tom yelling, hello? That's the best part. Yeah, that's the best part yeah that's staying in um if you'd like to support us over at the patreon where you can find actually good content

and episodes soon to be the only place I appear soon to be the only place Tanya appears um that is p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash trillbilly Workers Party. $5 a month will get you an episode every single Sunday. And enough back episodes to get you through quarantine.

And enough back episodes to get you through. That is exactly right. Like almost 100, right? Oh, yeah. We are nearing almost 100 premium episodes i think we're on like 99 or what okay we need to plan maybe i can plan us a 100th birthday party um but technically some of those early patrons I did not count as episodes. Some of them were just like literally 20 minutes of me and Tom doing like Alex Jones voice. Before we knew what Patreon was. Swap.

There is the Swap Shop episode of Patreon, which is like yeah, it's like 20 minutes. Lord, I'm asking. All righty. Well, go check that out. You won't be disappointed, or you might be. But regardless, go support us. It's risk-free. You can always just cancel it if you're not into it.

Pretty low risk. It's true. Pretty low risk. So we true. Pretty low risk. So we'll see you over there at the Patreon and we encourage you to go with God or whoever your deity is. Deities are. There might be more than one. Deities.

Am I right? Or deities if you're horny like Tanya. All right. Well, we'll see you next time Thanks for joining Bye bye Yeehaw