Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 149: One Million Realities

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Week 2 of the nation in revolt -- brought to you from a log cabin in the woods of Eastern Kentucky. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

My feelings are hurt you haven't FaceTimed me in the past week, honestly. So much going on in the world. Our group chat's empty. Yeah. I'm sorry. I've been in the soul-sucking throes of crippling depression. I about escaped it. I did.

I thought, well, hell yeah, I'm going to get through a summer. Ironically, the worst. Eh. Kind of the worst summer. Kind of the worst summer. Kind of the best summer. I don't even know what to make of this moment. It is a very contradictory feeling because you like. I mean, it's just a lot of grief, a lot of anger and a lot of excitement all at once.

It's like hard to hold and understand even my own interior my own internal shit right now yeah and of course i have no fucking therapist so wow welcome to the rest of our lives well tom you know you can always call me and we can soak in the bath together and grumble well i'd be honored you know i do love a bath oh yeah i just ordered ikea furniture for my bathroom to go next to my bathtub i should never gave you money. Incredible. Well, welcome to the show, friends. It is Thursday, June 4th, 2020.

I have to start putting a date on these because things move so fast that they are outdated within a day or two, which is not the first time we've said that this year. Obviously, we have gone through several. It's weird. It's like events have lurched. They've gone through these weird phases where they'll lurch forward at a rapid pace and then kind of teeter backwards. And then things kind of start getting banal and bizarre again. And then they lurch forward and then they teeter backwards. It's this weird movement.

It's a weird lurching and teetering. A little bit of a seesaw we got going here. A little bit of a seesaw. That's right. A little bit of a seesaw. That's right. So to sort of bring things up to speed, I need to put a preface on this episode by saying that most of the information I receive about the world right now is filtered through either social media or mass media. filtered through either social media or mass media.

So I can't really be depended on to have an adequate grasp on things as they are happening. Because there's so much fake shit out there. You don't even know what to believe. I mean, you see videos and you hope that they are up to date and not taken five years ago. Because here's the thing. Some of these videos could have been taken five years ago. And nothing has changed since then. Police are still police. So it's hard to know what events are happening when and where.

And what information is accurate, I guess is what I'm saying. What's that word? I need to write it down if I can learn something once in a while. The guy told us, Tom, what's this crisis called? An epistemological crisis. Yeah. One of those. Here we are again.

Good job writing that one down, Tanya. It's like I have to take notes at the doctor because I don't understand any fucking thing they say. I'm going to start taking notes when we record. No, it's hard to know. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. For that reason, this podcast could be viewed as a perspective from someone who gets most of their information from... Faulty sources. From faulty sources, right.

You know, I mean, because like... Well, Terrence, what's the alternative? Where else would we be getting our information? Well, I mean, like the streets, for example. Like if we lived in New York or Portland, Oregon or Seattle or Oakland. But even then, we'd only have perspective on that one place. I guess we could be weekly. I could be calling everyone I know in every city of America and asking them what they know.

Stick your head out the window and tell me what's going on. asking them what they know. Stick your head out the window and tell me what's going on. Well, I mean, a lot of Americans are affected by everything going on, but they're not necessarily able to participate in street demonstrations and et cetera, either due to where they live or personal circumstances or whatever.

But, I mean, I've been to two protests, one of which was incredibly liberal. The other which was, you can't really prescribe any kind of political sort of valence to it. It was so sort of, it was more of a demonstration, whereas the liberal one I went to was very organized. And there was speakers insist, you know, there were speakers there. There were bagpipes. That's right. That's the P. It's really a signal.

Every protest I've been to, I knelt with the cops and led them in a sinner's prayer. So if you see those videos going around, that's me doing that. I'm just trying to get them saved. It ain't because I want them to live or nothing. We should start doing that going around saying that we are a ministry for cops only and when we baptize them we just drown them we hold them underwater oh yeah this is how you your souls are saved well he you know he's in a better place now and i have the credentials

to deliver their eulogies, so we're a package deal. Yeah, exactly. We've got everything you need. Tom does the preaching, I do the dunking. I'll sign the death certificate. Yeah.

One-stop shop for the cop church. I'll console their family members. I'll take that bullet. Yeah. It is so... Go ahead, Tom. No, go ahead.

I'm sorry. No, no, no. You go ahead, please. No, I was just going to say, it is... I'm curious what all this looks like, because I just remember what we kind of went through with the BLM protests and all that stuff five years ago in Eastern Kentucky. I'm curious what all this looks like, because I just remember what we kind of went through with, like, the BLM protests and all that stuff, like, five years ago in eastern Kentucky. And I'm curious what shape this is going to take now. I feel like it is a very different response.

But I've already had friends who were particularly, have particular PTSD from that moment in time in Wattsburg, who've been very resistant to any any local protest already yeah well i mean i was shocked by the i guess we can get in to it now um the the protest in harlan so there's been two protests in our immediate vicinity there was one in pikeville on Monday. Actually, you know what? I want to go through this like a timeline. Because I want to bring us up to the current moment from where we left off on Sunday. Doesn't that seem... That seems right.

Yeah. Sure. Because things have just moved so profoundly since then, I feel like or i mean i personally need a timeline yeah and so so yeah so keep in mind the preface i put at the beginning of this this is the perspective of uh someone who is not involved necessarily in street uprisings and is getting most of their information from various social media sources and etc. But there could be value in that too. And I will say, just starting out, the view from Weitzberg in the Speak Your Peace section is pretty fascinating. I mean, I've noticed throughout this whole process, it's really bizarre.

I've seen even conservatives denouncing that cop and what he did. And it's just interesting. Like, what do you think changed between now and five years ago? Because all the things that happened, I mean, every time one of these videos surfaces, it's obvious. It's so obvious. Philando Castile, Michael Brown, et cetera. They're all so obvious. What was it about this one that, like, conservatives are being like, racism's bad?

You know, they're doing the fucking routine. They're acknowledging that there are bad cops. Not across the board, but some of them. It's interesting. Maybe it's because it wasn't a gun. It was, like like his knee it was like very physical and i mean maybe that's a big fear of people is like that type of constraint and being like literally just like pressed and strangled to death in that quick amount of time right it could be symptomatic of the the liberals moving further

to the right you know so that like now they're sort of sunk up could could also be true i think that that is happening to some degree for sure um so okay so let's go through the timeline and then we will, um, and then we can start talking about the various responses we've seen and maybe draw some conclusions about the state of the police state itself, etc. state itself, etc. So, when we last left off, that was Sunday. So, Sunday night was kind of more along the lines of Saturday night.

You did get a great tweet from someone saying DC's on fire in every direction. Did y'all see that? Who said that? I think I remember. It was just some newscaster, probably.

DC was on fire in every direction. Bill de Blasio's daughter was arrested and her unredacted arrest record was put up on Twitter by the NYPD. So they hate this guy, right? And he's still just giving them every excuse. He's giving them every bit of cover for what they do. They even went after his own daughter.

This is how subservient to the police state they are. They went after his own daughter, and he's still like, Please, please, no, please. Please, please. Yeah. Another thing I have listed here, Cincinnati cops replaced the American flag with a thin blue line flag. Welcome to fucking Cincinnati. The fucking cops rule this fief.

Hell yeah, baby. It's FOP town. Like it or leave it. And then obviously, and this is no laughing matter but then obviously the big thing that happened Sunday night was David McAddy was murdered in Louisville and his body was left out in the sun

for 13 hours if not more than that and they released the videos of that and I mean maybe they released more but the videos I saw did not look conclusive although i had people in my mentions being like he he has got a gun you can see it but i didn't fucking it looked like he had tongs in his hands he definitely did at least at most of the night he

was had tongs in his hand checking a grill he was fucking working to feed people that was very obvious and if at some point he grabbed a gun that wasn't clear but the motherfucker was organizing to feed people when cops descended on his business that is crystal clear exactly um and so you're you know you're getting uh hopefully by out by mentioning a few of those things you know you you, you are getting a sense of some of the dynamics. You've got peaceful protests. You've got looting and, you know, rioting, even though the demarcation between those two things is incredibly hard for me to determine since I'm not in a city right now. And I don't have any on the ground experience.

incredibly hard for me to determine since i'm not in a city right now and i don't have any on the ground experience um and then you have cops that are overly aggressive right um you know making it personal going after the mayor's daughter uh murdering a man in cold blood like it's um all these things were kind of building up to culminate in Monday night. And I feel like Monday night is the night... Maybe you guys feel differently. I don't know. But Monday night is the night for me that it felt like things had reached some kind of... I mean, things had already boiled over long before this.

But it was like... It boiled over underneath the burning coil on your stove and the whole stove started to catch on fire you know what i mean like monday night felt to me to be a very dark uh thing for for a variety of reasons i don't know do you guys have any one night that seems darker than the others because for me it was monday night for sure and i'll tell you why but monday night broke my brain and sent me spiraling i really did i'm still not a good place to be perfectly honest but that was monday night was like it for me yeah with like the fucking goddamn, the general roving the street.

It was just like, what the fuck is this shit? Yeah, so Monday night, we went to a protest in Pikeville. Tanya and I did. And it was very, you know, it was very lib. It was very much like, don't be racist. We got to come together and not be racist. It was,

you know, pretty much that kind of stuff. There were a few mentions. A guy tried to burn a $20 bill. A preacher tried to burn a $20 bill at the podium. Wait a second. Wait a second. Which is very,

wait, what? He said that's what George Floyd was killed over. Okay, I see the point. A lot of people in that crowd could use $20. That's exactly what I was thinking. I was like, bro, I'll take that $20. Well, he eventually said, actually, I need this. And he put it back in his pocket.

Then he put the fire out. He was so full was so he's so full shitty could he get it started could he start a paper fire money's highly flammable it's covered in germs i don't know how he like tried to get a fight started he couldn't oh my god anyway but the best part though of this bit was he said this is the god america serves like when he was holding up that money and he said we have to kill this god and i just knew that that was gonna be the clip the news ran kill this god like that was cool i thought that was cool this god has to die i'm pretty sure that was i love go that guy's church no he's got a bunch of abuse charges he's a piece of shit

oh oh well i didn't know any of that yeah fuck him well anyways just kidding no heroes anyways the the rally was very i couldn't hear most of the speakers, and the ones I did hear, they were just like, racism's bad, we gotta stop being racist. There wasn't, like, a condemnation of cops or anything. Weird thing is, in Letcher County, it never existed. What? What never existed? Racism. Oh, yeah.

Resisted. Racism. Oh, yeah. Basing that solely on many years of Martin Luther King Day programming at First Baptist Church. Yep, we got the proof. So the protest was dumb, but it was good to see friends. And we had a good night, right, Tanya? And we had ice cream.

Yeah, but then I went home. And started reading the news. And so I'm just going to pull out some things, I think, that sent me down the spiral. The first thing, the very first thing the louisville metropolitan police foundation purchased a domain name for brianna taylor.com that linked to a page that talked about how great cops are about how great they it was a fundraising page for cops. Yeah. The foundation has denied doing it. I will say that. They said someone else did it.

But a good friend of mine got it took down. Texas. Well, I don't know. Regardless of whether it did or didn't happen, whether they were or were not involved, their behavior over the past week is entirely consistent with that type of behavior. Oh, yeah. Just zero regard for human life. Just the glorification of human brutality.

Everything manifests in the fascist vision of the world. Well, I mean, the three or or four we don't even know how many the handful of people who who stormed into brianna taylor's home are still on the police force exactly like they why would you know what i mean like they have not been punished they have not only have they not been punished they haven't even lost their jobs they're still out probably in riot gear in the streets oh absolutely they're working these murderers so we know they're murder they're probably all murderers but those three we at least know with 100 sure that they are murderers they shot a woman 30 times in her own bed in her own fucking house yeah in the middle of the night like

and i just don't even solange knowles has tweeted at the fucking kentucky governor and louisville mayor like i don't know what's gonna have to happen people been in the streets every day and night um since the 9-1-1 tape dropped last thursday proving what everyone's been saying for three months um what what else has to happen what's the escalation do we need to burn down a fire a fucking police station yeah it might it might come to that um it's hard to know where this is going and what momentum it has again it's very hard for me living in a log cabin in fucking East Kentucky. So I'm literally just sort of trying to track it,

all its various permutations and lurches and et cetera from around the nation. No, so that was enough. You mentioned Governor Beshear. that was another thing on monday that put me in a dark place governor basheer basically coming out and thanking the national guard who was probably responsible for david mcaddy's death or the police doesn't matter but he fucking escalated it by sending them in definitely um they weren't even there they weren't even there two days and somebody ended up murdered in the street yeah um so yeah i so i got a list of all kinds of shit i saw on monday

on monday um roving bands of right-wingers uh with bats wandering around uh fishtown in philadelphia not a great development. No. The Los Angeles Convention Center turned into a military base. Not a great development. Monday night's the night that they installed a curfew in New York City. It was the night of the

what they're calling the Swan Swan Street siege in DC, where protesters, where people in that neighborhood brought protesters into their homes, and police were throwing tear gas into those people's homes to get them to flush them out. There were, I watched one video of cops in front of the hotel rosalind in los angeles just pointing guns at people on their balconies in their apartments oh my god you've got videos of

cops running down streets throwing tear gas in people's houses pointing weapons at people on their balconies, arresting bystanders or just people on their way to work. Literally people riding by on bicycles. Exactly. Shooting people with rubber bullets. I saw one where a girl was just walking home from the grocery store and got shot. Yeah. I mean, these people are out of fucking control.

They're out of fucking control. Point of order here, are we still on Monday night? We are still on Monday night. We haven't even got to generals walking in the streets. Yeah. And so Monday night, Monday night was the night that Trump gave his press conference. And the thing about that press conference that unnerved me so much was that to clear the road for Trump's dumb ass to walk from the White House to the church, they cleared the fucking road with tear gas. Like, they just fired tear gas into a you know a peaceful uh gathering

just to get them the fuck out of the out of the road just like that act it's just little shit like that that just like sticks with you just like their regard for the public they just don't give a fuck like and this is the logic of broken windows right this is the logic of like broken windows policing it's that if you show even the slightest bit of disobedience or um or subversion to authority you are by nature a criminal in every in every regard and that's what all this is about i mean this is like the idea that people would even be protesting that's why i think some of these people's protests get subsumed into the sort of like rioting aspect of it because the cops don't give a shit whether you're peaceful protesting or rioting.

And honestly, that's probably a signal for all of us to stop peacefully protesting because they don't fucking care one way or the other. They're still going to fucking shoot you and gas you. Yeah. I saw a video of peaceful protesters in philadelphia on the vine street expressway just pinned did you see this like they were they were pinned up on a on a on a bank like an embankment in philly right and just you're right yeah cops were just fucking it literally looked like when people trying to climb that hillside, I swear to God, it looked like this like genocidal scene that you would have seen in fucking like Rwanda or something.

You know what I mean? Like people literally scaling a hillside to get away from machetes. It was just. Yeah. I've never seen anything like that in the U.S. No, these were the images I was, like, sorting through. Was that on Monday? That was on Monday, yeah.

That Philly thing? God damn. Like, all of this produced this very, like, sort of kaleidoscopic, disorienting effect in my mind. Like, I had truly sunk to the bad place like i was you know i was very much like the police are making a political statement um as a sort of collective entity and you know it's really it really can't be um overstated here how how they have their own distinct political worldview you know and you have to adhere to it i mean like literally if you're a cop you have to adhere to that or they're gonna make your life a living hell until you have to quit i mean you're in or you're

out it's like being in scientology or some shit in a strange way, except you're a lot more powerful and influential even. Right, and you're given a gun. You're given a gun. Multiple guns. And you terrorize people and keep the rabble in line. But now it seems like, too, I said something on Twitter the other day, and I'm not sure I even fully believe what I was saying, but I think I was trying to hit at something,

fully believe what i was saying but i think i was trying to hit at something is that it's possible that trump has kind of overplayed his hand a little bit and made this whole thing a referendum on the police and i think i think certainly there's elements of that that's true that that just in terms of yeah you see like the most milquetoast liberals and even not a few conservatives that are you know at least you know paying lip service to this stuff whereas a couple years ago they would have called you know michael brown a thief or whatever you know um so you know i think that's one thing i think people are kind of like waking up to the fact that like you know most of us particularly poor and working people don't really live in elitist societies and we've had dust-ups with cops that we hated. I gave the example of my Republican rich cousin, who Terrence once saw pull $14,000 out of his basketball shorts,

said, yeah, I think it's time we do reparations or something like that. Yeah, I think it's time we do reparations or something like that. So it's like just this weird disorienting thing of like these people who like have kind of like leaned on the cops for the protection of their property. You're like, you know, actually, if I look at the duration of my life, fuck cops. They've harassed me. You know, it's basically this like taxpayer paid force that like just tries to harm us if we commit minor infractions you know and actually don't do anything for the bigger infractions and also too i think that um uh or rather i think like the the the sort of thing i got wrong a little bit was sort of underestimating the ruling class's little bit was sort of underestimating the ruling class's willingness to just leave this hollowed out husk of a world for you know a younger more you know left-leaning you know inheritors or

whatever you know so i don't exactly think that like i didn't mean to come off sounding like oh well this means we're going to get the liberal jo liberal Joe Biden and this thing will start to clean up a little bit like that's not good either, because that's how we're going to get Tom Cotton, you know, 2024, who came out this week and said that actually we should use the full force of the military against citizens. Yeah. Well, I but the thing is thing is tom it's entirely possible i i feel like after this week that joe biden will win i mean if it was held tomorrow i feel like he would win yeah i think trump has no prayer at this point like i really i really think he's he's he's stepped in shit on this one yeah so mond Monday night was also the night he gave the press conference

in front of the boarded-up church with a Bible. That was the quote. They were like, is that the Bible, sir? And he was like, it's a Bible. Oh, my God.

He's so fucking dumb. And that was not... I was the first in that fucking dumb and that fucking funny, too. Well, that's the thing. Anyways, regardless. That was the night he vowed to send the military into American cities,

which turns out is not a big... Not that popular of an idea, I don't feel like. Yeah. I mean, that's what I saw, too. That's like, maybe... If we're just going to get dialectical here, maybe the whole Tom Cotton thing has much to do about it. Tom, that kind of genocidal worldview is not popular. In order to sustain that in this country,

I mean, it would have to be some sort of military coup situation. Well, this is the thing that was so dark for me on monday night is on on one hand i feel like the american ideology the american mindset is so malleable it's so sort of malleable that people are disgusted by public displays of outright violence and even something like the military invading american cities there's something that offends their like Even something like the military invading American cities. There's something that offends their, like, idea of America about that idea. But on the other hand, you have the MAGA people and the cops and, you know, that worldview.

Who view this type of social control as not only valid but necessary. Right. And I was in, and this was what I was feeling reading again this is partially my fault but i was reading facebook comments about about the uh harlan county protest that was going to happen the next day and these these comments were just like bloodthirsty they were like uh you know you're gonna these they going to leave in a body bag. I hope they bring a medic. You never leave Harlan alive, baby. There's one of them that said, they call this bloody Harlan for a reason. Yeah.

Anybody want to tell her that reason, what it really is? Grown fucking men threatening children. That's what it was. Right. Well, so I was reading this and I was like, dog, you've got the stormtroopers in the streets and these are the people that give them

sort of political validity. And it actually makes sense in a sort of dialectical way because those people who leave the Facebook comments are cowards, but they need the police to enforce their genocidal

worldview for them. They're not going to actually do it themselves, which I found out on Tuesday when I went to the protest. There was like, I was shitting my pants before that protest. I was like, is this my last day on earth? Like, what is going to happen?

You literally said that to me this morning. You sent me those screenshots. You're like, this might be my last day on earth. You know? You don't know. But I went, you know, and there was only like fucking two of them. One of them had a shirt that said, take back our country. I don't think they were anticipating that many people to show up.

I really think they thought it was going to be a small protest that they could fucking outnumber and intimidate. And the way they were talking in the comments, they thought it was going to be people they didn't know. People outside educators being paid to come in here by George Soros or whatever. Some fucked up fucking thing. And then suddenly all these people they've known their whole life are standing on the street standing on the side of the road and they just packed it up and went the fuck home you imagine that is a funny bit soros sending paid protesters into harlem county truly well dude this is all kinds of conspiracy theories like this are going around in small towns, in rural places in small towns.

I just want to read you this Facebook post from the Curry County Sheriff in Curry County, Oregon. Attention, Curry County. All caps. I don't know if the rumors are true or not just yet but i got information about three bus loads buss bus loads of antifa protesters are making their way from douglas county headed for cuckold into coos bay i was told they are looking for a fight imagine just like in his mind like the antifa super soldiers got into a bus and they told they told the gas station attendant we're looking for a fucking fight bro tell everybody yeah tell everybody you fucking know and that yeah you know what's so fucking ridiculous it's have you ever met a sheriff that was sane no No. I haven't. Not a single one.

Of course not. No, the most sane one I ever met was a horse trainer and sold pot on the side. And it was mostly just, you know, he didn't really arrest nobody. He just kind of used that as cover to sell pot. I mean, it's just, I mean, this is a cancer. It's spread all throughout society. If nothing else, throughout these riots and protests, if nothing else, our demand should be to excise that cancer.

Like, we have to fucking end these people. I mean, literally end, make their worldview so toxic it has no place in polite society. I mean, that's the demand. People ask, why is there, that's why. Because we can't keep

fucking doing this. It's murderous. It's racist. You know, it's preaching to the choir. And two, I mean, it's a good point because it's like you know it's it's all preaching to the choir well and too i mean it's a good point because it's like there is i mean that's i mean just to belabor a point that's been made a million times but like when we go to the peaceful protest with like the unity and all that kind of shit and um you know uh making like you know the the woke cop narrative about you know representation and all that kind of stuff like all that shit does is buffer all this murderous racist shit like you

can't like they're like it has to be like an all or nothing it's not like i mean there's not some good nazis you know what i mean dude what look at this so there's been all kinds of like i'm sure that you two are just as sort of amused and almost sort of sickened maybe by all of the liberal sort of like how to be a good white ally white privilege shit but um there's that but then there's the non-profit approach to all this which is uh you know obviously my favorite you know obviously that's where i that's my white allies meeting today at mine um you were gonna get paid for that tom yeah i should have went truly should went for content.

There's nothing else. Well, and so the nonprofit world is... Sorry, guys. Hold on. Goddamn. Everything's blooming. I wake up hacking my fucking head off every morning. Dude, it's killing me. It's truly a time to be alive right now

okay all right sorry so anyways um you know like non-profits love this shit because um they can like make little campaigns out of it that are like catchy and like um you know like uh they can look back and they get a nice hashtag and a nice website out of it um so the best one i saw though julian castro or julian castro uh posted this it's called eight can't wait uhlights eight specific reforms local communities can adopt to reduce police violence by up to 72%. Dude, let me tell you just how dark this shit is. Is this the D-Ray McKesson thing, too? It probably is. Like this is what he came up with?

Yeah. Let me tell you what's so fucking disheartening about this. You're tacitly saying there's an acceptable amount of police murder and violence and also what's even more hilarious about that is is that like julian castro is responsible for it like you're the one that legislates that motherfucker i mean it's it's almost like this is i mean this is really similar to the COVID response. It's like there are a reasonable amount of deaths we have to just take. Except, yeah. There's a reasonable margin of error if we're going to protect our wealth and capital.

And most of that margin of error is going to be dead black people. We're just going to have to face it, folks. This is where they're at. I mean, yeah. I mean, if I could, if I could urge people who are listening to this, who are maybe of the more sort of reformist mindset or see reform as some sort of progress. What you are saying, essentially essentially is that there is an acceptable amount of death um and uh that's fine if you if you're okay with that but i think that history

has shown that that only creates space for more of this to grow and proliferate and you have to end it you have to adopt a revolutionary mindset it's like when you've reached a point in a society where everybody is looking around and saying well what's the acceptable amount of deaths here that's an interesting point to reach in a society yeah i mean we've been saying they are death cults we've been saying that for years now i mean maybe it's not an original take either but it's like it's just more proof every day well what's what's so fucking so fucking i don't know i don't know if hypocritical is the right word but like you know like we've said shit when we've invaded other countries. Like, one American death is too fucking many. So you're getting ready to get it, Afghanistan, or whatever.

You know what I mean? Like, all that tough guy shit. But then back home, it's like, ah, there's an interesting tension and friction. And there's, like, you know, some algorithms and da-da-da-da-da. It's like, all that shit sucks. It's like, sabermetrics even ruined fucking the NBA and baseball. Yeah. If I could just read off some of these reforms.

There's eight. These are the eight policies. I mean, this is mind-blowing. Absolutely mind-blowing. Ban chokeholds and strangleholds. Oh, wow. um which i'm sure a lot of police departments already have they don't fucking care because the police are an extra judicial paramilitary force at this point they're also lazy demand they're also what lazy as fuck they'd rather shoot people oh they'd also just rather yeah i would'd rather shoot people oh they'd also just rather

yeah i would just rather shoot you as getting near your ass um uh policy number two require de-escalation yeah okay yeah definitely like the motherfuckers who are going around beating people on their bicycles are going to be the ones who are going to be like, all right. Yes. All right. It's time to deescalate. These people want blood. They want violence.

Yeah. They want. They demand you obey at every juncture. You cannot question anything they do or say. And that mentality is not one suited for de-escalation. No, no, not at all. No, it's like somebody that has violence at their disposal like just could rain hell on anybody at any point

and also is usually a remedial person. anybody at any point and also is usually a remedial person it's like just the worst like confluence of things going on and it's just like you can't you can't hope to have a good result out of that here's a here's a good one require warning before shooting oh my god that This is fucking phenomenal. Which will be approved by body cams. Yeah, right. I mean, this is fucking pathetic. This is absolutely fucking pathetic. It's dangerously pathetic.

But also the thing, too, is it's like... What's interesting to me is like... Let's say you are a reformist and you believe in these sorts of liberal reforms. They've actually gotten weaker since Ferguson. They have, yeah. Like, Ferguson and Baltimore, you got body cams, which, guess what? Didn't fucking work, right? You turn them off at your own leisure.

Cops cover shit up. Like, if you're a reformist, any measure that puts you believing the better angels of a cop's nature, like, in it as, like, a serious reform, is, like, you're a patsy. Yeah. A rube. Yeah. No, these people have their own. I mean, this is fascinating.

This is a fascinating subject, actually. Like, Tom and I were talking about this earlier today. I was reading this article, or it was a scholar. It was like a, it was research. I don't know what you would call it. What did you call it, Tom? Like a dissertation? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, the Duke thing. What's that? The thing from Duke you sent earlier. Yeah, it's by this guy named Stuart Schrader, and he talks about like, it's called To Protect and Serve Themselves, Police in the u.s politics police in u.s politics since the 1960s and it's about how police officers used to serve political machines back in the late 19th and early 20th century and and everybody knew that they

they served the big political machines of cities, whether they were Democratic, Republican, or whatever. But then, starting in the 20s, and it became fully culminated in the 1960s, there was this push for professionalization. objective sort of external mediators of unrest and crime and all this is relatively new. Like people 100 years ago didn't see police like that. That is a relatively new idea that police are supposed to be these sort of is a sort of entrepreneurial spirit and individualistic mentality in cops themselves. And that has become molded over time, has just become molded and shaped by police unions and these sort of trade groups. You know what I mean? Like the Metropolitan Louisville police foundation or whatever yeah um and so yeah it's it it is its own distinct worldview at this point and and and something i want to say too is one that's fully embraced political violence because

make no mistake about it these lynchings we see that's political violence absolutely i mean that's that's i i i you know a couple weeks ago i've even said yeah well the police are kind of a paramilitary arm for you know politicians powerful people blah blah blah blah blah but in it like you're right in a way they've even like transcended that and they're now like sort of shaking down the powerful you see bill de blasio like you know they were talking about on Chopper or whatever. On the message boards, they're openly talking about fucking his wife and daughter and shit like that. And he just gets out there and says, well, they're just doing a fine job out there.

They're like New York's finest and all that stuff. My question is this. What is the point in our recent history which i mean cops have been around for a long time but was it 9-11 that sort of gave them that like springboard into this sort of political legitimacy to become their own sort of block what what do you think it was or is it does it go back further than that like what's that's the sort of linchpin for this yeah i wonder too because they really they really, like, a forensic hole moment. Yeah, that's what I would compare it to, yeah.

I mean, I would say the Spring War was the 1980s and the war on drugs. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, Willie Horton and all that stuff, yeah. I mean, but, yeah, you have to ask yourself in a situation where cops are openly i mean like louisville cops walked out on greg fisher last night right was that last night they walked out on the mayor of louisville in a protest yeah yeah like that's which they've done to de blasio before too i mean like at that point you have to ask are they serving the interest of the political ruling class and or are they an independent entity at this point are what like what class interests are they serving you're

exactly right and so the way that class gets manifested in all this is very fascinating because i think that people need to be on the guard if you are a socialist or a communist or anarchist or whatever you have a you have a sort of class analysis of the world around you, you need to be on guard for a few things, one of which I think is going to be a rise in petty bourgeois and small bourgeois activism. Because I can easily see white small business owners in a lot of these cities being like, we've got to do something about this racism.

We've got to go to the mayors and we've got to tell them that this police violence is bad for business and that is going to run up against the reality of the police themselves because the mayors can't do shit about it the mayors completely yeah that's like what we were talking about last week like we talked about the rule of law and all this stuff and the people that interpret it it's like rbg can't walk out into the streets and say hey you stop that i'm more powerful than you they're just going to tear gas her ass yeah exactly i mean what is it the governor the governor so can the governor fire these people i'm sure he could but they would probably fucking storm the goddamn mansion at this point yeah it's it's you're right i mean this is exactly it and i just it took me this conversation to sort of see it but i've even seen it like

in a local way where it used to be the case like the all the cops i knew that because my mom worked at city hall like all the cops i knew would like you know they would like make fun of whoever the mayor was behind his back but they would like make fun of whoever the mayor was behind his back but they would like suck his dick now they just railroad whoever the county judge is whoever the you know whatever is even each other if they get out of pocket you know what i mean like like i in the mid aughts there was a uh letcher county sheriff's deputy that it was officially ruled a suicide right but there's not a cop in letcher county that's deputy that it was officially ruled a suicide, right? But there's not a cop in Letcher County that actually believes that was a suicide. They believe that he was actually working with, like, a federal agency to, like, sort of, like, bust up some things that was going on in the local corruption and so forth.

And it ended up getting killed. So, like, these people, people like even at the smallest town level are like operate like the fucking organized crime outfit absolutely and every time you see these fucking juries people it's the funniest goddamn thing when cops get off by jury acquittal and people are like why do these juries why do they acquit cops and it's like because the cops go and literally intimidate them like the fucking like sopranos or something yeah yeah that's it because that's how they fucking function yeah there was wasn't there i forget i mean i could be botching the details or making this

like a combination of stories but wasn't there like a a judge in new y, I think she was a black woman, that I don't know if she had ruled against in a way that had agitated some cops or something, but they found her body in the river or something like that. You brought this up in the last episode. I couldn't find it, but I still remember maybe seeing something like that. Yeah, but the point is, find it but i i still remember maybe seeing something like that yeah but like i mean it's

like the point is nobody is like above getting touched by these people so which this this makes me wonder are the de blasios and brashiers are they kind of slowly realizing this too and just shitting on themselves that uh one they have no control and can't let it be shown like they can't let it be revealed in my in their media in their press conferences that they've lost control of the cops so for that reason they can't like overstep and it's just caused this whole like ridiculous dance that would explain why de blasio's kissing cop ass every day so are they just shitting right now like there's nothing i can do about this but they can't say that it's like they're yeah i i don't know this is that's a great question I don't I don't think they've themselves have fully realized and this is the this is the part where we realize we are in new terrain because I think it's clear to them now that they don't have control and that's why they keep telling

everybody the cops are doing their job just fucking listen to them and um you know the cops are doing a great job. They're trying to keep things under control. It's the outside agitators and the rioters that are the ones that are the menace here. And so that is really, that kind of puts things in perspective for me. Because what that means is that if we emerge from this with cops still intact, we lose.

Yeah, exactly. We lose. The cops, I don't know. This has to be the moment. Because this is the moment. If we go out of this with cops still intact, that means as a society, we will have decided that we can have this

that it's acceptable that it that that these people can continue to fucking treat people like this with impunity exactly um and here's the thing because that's what's on referendum right now yeah yeah that's that's what's uh on the the ballot streets. Right. Don't let fucking liberals try to obscure it for you. That is the referendum. Are cops necessary? And can we do anything about it? And can we live in a society without them? Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's... God, this is opening my eyes to a lot of things that I've just seen and never thought too much of. But it's like, if you're, again, if you're one of these liberal reformists, and you think that, like, oh, not all cops are bad, and 99% are doing a fine job, and blah, da, da, da, da, da, whatever, and it can be reformed, you have to know that we will never, ever do anything about inequality, all the things that you say you care about, right?

Because let's say all those things you say are true, and this really isn't like this murderous organized crime force like we're saying here, okay, which is not true, but let's just say for the sake of argument that you're right about that. You still have a violent paramilitary group that has an inordinate amount of influence in society and can kill anybody at any time and never see any time or consequences for it. Yeah.

It's fundamentally, the existence of police is antithetical to any sort of egalitarian project, any sort of even fucking, like, really any sort of even limp-dick fucking sock-dim future we might still be pining for. But it's just not compatible with any sort of project that's liberatory. That values human life.

Yeah. This is the glorification and celebration of destroying human lives. That's what their worldview is. Yeah, it's genocide. And like I said, there's a name for that. And that's why it was very fucking dark on Monday night. It's like, this is the world they want. They want a world in which we, yes, glorify

and celebrate the people who kill people in the streets. That's the world they're fighting for and the world we are fighting for is the one in which people are not killed for being who they are. Right. This might be dragging us backwards, but

I guess it was Monday when Brashear, you know, went on to address Louisville events and talk about David McAddy. And he drug, did y'all watch where he drug this, some general out, the National Guard guy? general out the um no the national guard guy definitely go back and watch it because he says this national guard guy he says and he thinks that this is supposed to i guess um and and i'm sure brashir knew what he was going to go out there and say they had like prepared this to to try to prove to everyone how prepared the national guard was for this as in like right he literally said that every national guard member that were in the streets of louisville this has always been their mission

like this is what they've been preparing for is domestic whatever so definitely go back and watch it because it didn't make any sense to me i was like why in fucking why the fuck would there be a sect of national guard and their whole mission their whole training is to kill people in the streets that doesn't make any fucking like or to like mass crowd control and if and if that's true where has like you know they've gotten funding and all kinds you know this is this hasn't been a secret right And I'm sure a bunch of fucking Democrats have fueled that fire. Absolutely.

And everyone's favorite Democrat right now, Brashear, who's literally getting all this national attention for his COVID fucking response, literally put him in front of cameras to say this as an excuse for what's happened for what's happened in louisville right vote blue no matter who sends in the national guard to murder you

that is a new so on our timeline as we move into tuesday on the timeline um that is a new actor entering the stage the national guards because i feel like sunday monday and tuesday were the days that it felt like the military was now going to get involved and this was because trump had said this but then as you said tom earlier you had a general walking the joint chiefs of staff general walking the streets of dc um you had a black hawk helicopter in fucking washington dc like did y'all see that no what is it what was it um it was a black hawk helicopter like in washington dc oh yeah it flew really low, like just above the buildings. Yeah, to disperse the crowd.

I mean, it was scenes of, you know, I had multiple, when people talk about the movies about pandemics, they talk about, like, you know, rioting and the police. It's like it was a little too on the nose and that's why it produced this like surreal feeling well i mean think about it though too i mean that's also a good point like what is trump's reference point for like how he sees the world it's 80s movies it's 80s movies you know what i mean so i keep basically his calculus is probably like well let's just go make it like uh fucking uh red dawn red dawn yeah any of those

yeah yeah so i mean in some ways it makes total sense and also to that point too and it's you know it's like you know i heard them say this on shopper earlier this week it's a good point it's like there's like also this steady fucking diet of like benevolent cop shows we've been fed like you could turn on your tv any time of fucking day and guarantee you there's like a schlocky game show and like six cop shows on on air at any given fucking time and like it must be like i don't know if the goddamn doj has like a fucking like contract with all the goddamn networks or streaming networks or whatever it is. But the express lane to get in your show green light, it seems to just be do a fucking cop show.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, it pervades everything. It's all around us. And that's what makes this moment truly revolutionary. Because it's like, what if you could live in a world that that was not a given what if you could live in a world that was actually safe

because this is the thing another illusion is melting away that the cops actually maintain order we know that they don't because now we have we've had this for years but it seems like what is happening is society is starting to fray in the sense that you've got 40 fucking million people unemployed.

I mean, at a certain point, it doesn't even make sense. I've told multiple people this. People have asked me my opinions on looting and rioting. It doesn't matter. It's like asking someone's opinion on an earthquake. It's just like, it doesn't matter. It's like asking someone's opinion on an earthquake. It's just a natural fact. It's causative. It occurs out of

events and decisions and etc. It's nothing that you can't ascribe any kind of value judgment or say it's good or bad. It just is. I love that this is people's gotcha too they're like well what about this looting huh well what about what about this looting what are we gonna do about

that that's a fucking cop mentality in itself i'll tell you this story i so i mean i've talked about it before but you know a guy that's like my brother's chief of police in whitesburg whatever and now his little brother is like a you know as a cop and all this shit too. And I got a friend of mine that called me as they were getting arrested one time by his little brother. And said, can you do something about this? And I called him. And I was drunker than a fucking dog. I was sitting over at Wes Webb's house watching a ball game and i said i said

i don't say his name but i said well can you i heard this and this was going on can you cut him a break or whatever like this is like what's what's going on what have they done and all they had done was drive they were driving on a suspended license but they had other stuff still open from like shoplifting cases or just like like kind of petty shit you know what i mean yeah and the response was like almost overwhelmingly emotional like he was like you don't get it she stole from fucking walmart and i almost had tears in his eyes about it you You know what I mean? But that's the kind of shit that like they beat into

you. That you have to like defend the sanctity of fucking Walmart. Walmart who's like the third richest entity in the world. I saw a picture of a bunch of like middle age white maggot chuds

lining up outside a Target in philadelphia to guard it from looters like a target you're guarding a fucking target i can understand if it's like a family-owned small business or something but a fucking target man amazing this is these are the symbols and things that we've you know identified with america well the sanctity of it think about this man every christmas we see those goddamn uh polar bears and them coca-cola sweaters sliding down that hill you know what i mean we see we see like you know the little target ads with like the little emotional jingles you know what i mean all that kind of shit i remember being a young guy and this is a testament to how fucking

dumb i am and how impressionable i am but i can remember getting emotional to a coca-cola commercial one time that was like it's like a spoof of like grand theft auto but like the guy that's like the carjacker is actually like the benevolent carjacker and he's like a spoof of like grand theft auto but like the guy that's like the carjacker is actually like the benevolent carjacker and he's like getting people like pulling people out of their vehicles and like toasting them with a coca-cola and then like just and i just remember being like oh man that's how society needs to be dude well we're told to identify those brands and etc with society when it's fascinating to watch those same brands now make all these things like fucking spaghettios made of black lives matter

you know like what like yesterday what were you telling me about their washington redskins tanya the washington redskins posted a black box. It said timeout Tuesday. A team whose name is a literal slur. Exactly. And my fucking weather app, IBM. Did you all see this?

No. Are they fucking putting messages, woke messages into fucking IBM? Yes. can't your weather i can't even open my fucking weather app without this shit do you can you see that oh my god tell us what it says tell the audience embrace with parentheses around race right we stand with the black community and want to empower and ensure racial equality. Fuck all the way off. And the IBM is red, yellow, and green.

Do you think that's trying to say something? Let me see. So if I have my history correct, wasn't IBM involved with the Holocaust in some way? Yeah, someone, I posted that on Twitter, and someone in my mentions was like, oh, well, that's a big turnaround, and sent me an article from years ago connecting them with the Holocaust. Right, right. Oh, God.

I mean, if that, again, this is another thing where the illusions are revealed. Because if a corporation can easily adopt that kind of message, you have to ask yourself what that means. And what the actual radical position in it is. Or in opposition to it is. You know what I'm saying? So obviously there's nothing radical for them to say Black Lives Matter. At this point it's become a truism but they're not willing to actually face the

police state and the people that enforce all that so it's you know it's low cost for them they can just sort of like do it as you know saving face measure or a way to sort of like wash their human rights abuses or you know their labor

practices and etc um but no it's like again you have to ask like what is the actual radical position the radical position in my opinion the radical position is to defund and abolish the police and the prisons, and even going beyond that, we have to be able to envision an end to racism. It has to be something that can end. Does that make sense? Because you go to these fucking liberal protests and they're like, we just need to be nicer to each other and racism is bad. And it's just like, well, okay, what do you think racism is? Like, where does it come from? Racism is bad.

And it's just like, well, okay, what do you think racism is? Like, where does it come from? And because we know it's a malignant force in society, how do we end it? We have to be able to envision society beyond it. So how do you do that? But again, these, you know, the corporations are going to ask that. And the sort of like, you know, white people flagellating themselves on social media about their allyship and the center aren't going to ask that either. Because they're just making it about them. They're not actually invested or interested in the notion of defeating racism.

I mean, we should talk about what a colossal social media fuck up Tuesday was. Did you all see on Instagram? Oh oh the black boxes god damn did that end up being an fbi thing probably had to have been yeah i mean it that was most likely some kind of right-wing strategy i don't i maybe it was i i don't know i could barely make heads or tails of it um but at this point i mean i'm old enough old enough to have seen many colored block social media campaigns that didn't amount to a heap of dog shit. And anyone should be able to see that regardless. But not only did it black out some people's only communication, some of people's only communication channels but people use the hashtag black lives matter to coordinate resources and bail funds and shit and then now when you go

to black lives matter hashtag on tuesday and wednesday it was just black boxes nothing zero information yeah when it i mean it was literally a page of black yeah when it used to be tags of not just protest yeah protest footage cop you know doxing cops so of course it benefited cops and right-wingers for that to happen i'm sure they started it and and i mean it's just it is it is like in a perfect little box with a bow what white allyship is right it's like it literally was was it was obviously so performative but it literally dismantled in an instant all the work of black organizers. Right. Like, who would have even imagined that?

Well, tried to. They could have even. Yeah, it like just fucked a whole bunch of organizing really fast. So it's like two steps forward. And white people will always drag you 16 steps backwards if you let them. Well, I think the thing is here, I think they know that you can't walk too far down that road. If you were to ask them, how would you defeat racism? How would you end it in society?

How would you end white supremacy? I guarantee you a lot of them would just be like raise awareness, preach tolerance, shit like that. You know what I mean? Like they think it's like a numbers game. You just preach the gospel and like X amount of people, you get a critical threshold and critical mass of people. And then it's like, okay, racism's over. This is like maybe it's grounded in political economy. Did that ever occur to you?

It actually might be grounded in the way, the mode of production, capitalism. It might have something to do with that. Tanya, I'm glad you didn't take that job with Surge that time. Oh my God. Do you know how many times I was fucking... They didn't want me. I did not take it. They didn't want me, Tom. They didn't offer it to me.

Oh, okay. I didn't have a choice in the matter. They'd have had you out there uh casting away your whiteness too in front of everybody just uh peeling my skin off in the streets that whole notion is so goddamn funny to like of like ridding yourself of your whiteness. I mean, I literally don't know what it means. Also, you just can't escape it, is what I'm saying. Try as you might. That is your

cross to bear, friend. That's just what it is. But you're right. I don't know what the hell that even means anything either i'm not i don't know but i'm talking from experience here it's not like i've i mean literally my activism between the years 2014 and 2016 was probably exclusively motivated and driven by white guilt hey we are we are veterans of the anti-racist movement and i don't mean that in in like we shouldn't be racist i mean that like like anti racism as like a political project that's mediated through like the guilt monster like the idea of white guilt and liberal institutions and non And liberal institutions and nonprofits, et cetera.

Like, they benefit hugely from that idea of anti-racism. Have either of you participated in a race class race, TM? What? A race class race activity. I don't know. I don't think so. Oh, God, they're so good. You line up.

What is it like? Everybody lines up in the room and we're probably already past time for this giggles but you line up in a room it's the race class race and they ask a question and if your answer to that question is yes you take a step forward if your answer to that question is no you take a step back they made a game of a privilege on it yeah yeah yeah so that it's it's it's meant to to put all the rich white people at the front of the room and all the poor black people in the back of the room and then they then they go around and ask people how they feel how the fucking fuck do

you think i feel well you see this dynamic playing out literally in protests where white people will peel themselves off and put themselves at the front of a protest which just leaves the black people open for because cops will hit you from behind you know what i'm saying like that the the strategy is to have everybody sort of mixed together that's solidarity solidarity is not peeling off, segregating by race. It is everybody in it together. Otherwise, you give opportunities for the cops to target people in your community. It's exactly what you're saying. It's driven by well intentions and good intentions, It's exactly what you're saying.

It's driven by well intentions and good intentions, but it gets sort of mangled as it gets pushed through the fucking meat grinder of nonprofits and sort of like corporate, you know, diversity tactics and all this shit. Yeah. The road to hell. Paid with good intentions. Isn't that in the Bible? Well, y'all saw the video going around, too. that in the bible well y'all saw the video going around too it's not only like the white people doing the you know the planet rue at bonnaroo yoga thing to renounce their whiteness it was also

it was also like and i could tell this person was straight out of like a surge type training because she went over to the group it was like you know there was some blacks and whites whoever were in this group and she was like white people follow me like we're gonna give black people their own space and all that kind of stuff and then one of the black organizers just told her get the fuck out of here she's so in division and she's like no no no no and she kept doubling down you know what i mean she kept like going back, no, no, no, no. And she kept doubling down. You know what I mean? She kept, like, going back, like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, this is what they taught me at Surge or whatever it was. She even had on a.

She didn't say that. I'm just saying I can imagine. No, she even had on an orange vest. Like, she had designated herself a little corraler. And she was, yeah, doubled down. Like, no, I promise you, this is how it works. That's brutal. down like no i promise you this is how it works that's brutal that's just just a just that shit sets you up not only to just completely miss the mark it also sets you up to just for the most

brutal self-owns um well so okay so on our timeline we only got up to tuesday i want to get to wednesday we'll just briefly mention some of these things because i think it's it's interesting and it's relevant um so so this is tuesday and wednesday but we got a few we got a few good gems we got a few good nuggets for example we got biden saying shoot them in the leg oh god was that just yesterday that was tuesday okay yeah i'll yeah shoot unarmed people in the leg it's very yes in the leg unarmed people just shoot them in the leg it's fine very different outcome than if you shoot them in the head listen we've talked extensively about uh you know like how to do increment like incrementalism the right way right right if if if the standard bearer in mainstream politics if the

best he can come up with is shoot him in the leg that almost to me is like one of the darkest things i can imagine like that like the most immediately viable alternative you know for everybody that says go bully them at the ballot box and all that dumb shit yep is a guy saying shoot them in the leg and it reminded me of when me and terrence started this radio project called bridge sitting and we just did these interviews with these guys who were all like probably in their 50s and 60s now but had these vivid memories of like how they would just be hanging out on the bridge in downtown whitesburg the cops would just come shoot literally shoot them in the legs. Literally. Yeah, just literally

shoot them in the legs and fuck them. Beat them up. Just for like hanging out on the bridge. Yeah. Now that is, you're right Tom. And again, why does that not factor into people, like why are they rioting? Could be that

they're all out of work. Also could be that there's no political alternatives. Why wouldn't you riot when the fucking alternative is a guy saying, I'll shoot him in the leg, you know? It's just like, there's nothing there for us. The system needs to fucking go. Did you see Alyssa Milano saying, I'm starting to think we should have, the DNC should have supported Bernie Sanders.

Oh my god, no she didn't. Really? Swear to god, yeah. To be fair, it could have been one of those photoshop things, but I think it was real. That's the Me Too girl, right? Yeah, that she just keeps on like owning herself over Me Too. Maybe we should have picked

bernie that ship sale bitch yeah bernie's bernie's out here talking about raising cop salaries yeah i saw that to attract better yes he literally said we should one of the policy proposals he has raising cop salaries to fucking attract higher trained or better you know temperamental cops here's the thing about that here's the thing about that everybody thinks cops make shit and like in places like whitesburg and stuff they they do like just on their sat like like what the city institution municipality pays them but they also get massive retirement incentives and also hazardous duty pay, which is like where they really butter their bread at.

Right. And in Wattsburg, this has got to be some kind of illegal thing. All the cops live in the housing projects for free, for almost free. Well, there's a sheriff that lives on Cram Creek in a garage. I'm not going to dox him yet we'll save that but we've we've figured out who he is well in the housing projects this was a big thing this was like so the person the woman that ran the housing projects was the administrator of the housing projects was doing all this nefarious shit where she was skimming off the top and all this stuff

and she created this policy that she would let police live in public housing in letcher county for like a flat rate of like 20 a month or whatever it is so like to put that in perspective my mom was a single mom raising a couple kids and when we lived there our rent was like you know like 200 something dollars a month or something like this is like 90s money so it was like you know it's good dollars a month or something like this is like 90s money so it was like you know it's good goes by income but like if you're a cop basically for the cost of a you know a dinner at fucking sazon you could go you could just have your housing paid for yeah and only because they they they can't give it to you for free but it's just so fucking

disgusting and and like when people say well we need community policing i think of that i'm like actually that's that's not great either it's like when when people say well what do we do with what do we do for this this this all of those things are none of those are ideal what you want cops to do we want them to be social workers like what we actually need are social workers and like trained healers and shit you know like this is not what we actually need is to abolish private property yeah and abolish the idea of a surplus population uh we need a working class actually running shit yeah and the end of capitalism really anyways i digress but i want to talk about biden a little bit more um because on that same day george bush endorsed by is this a real story

did this happen because i couldn't really find i couldn't find verification of that it feels like that would have been a big news story if that would have been the case but i don't know oh you think bush maybe didn't that what did he or maybe Or maybe it was just bad information that's going around out there. No, what it is is the Bush administration alumni formed a pro-Biden super PAC, and so some websites ran with the headline, George Bush endorses Joe Biden. Ah, okay. And I think that's what it was but regardless there that's an interesting bit of information i don't know if george bush would ever actually

come out and openly denounce trump and support biden he might he might not but you're good what is the right wing i mean i guess b guess Biden is as good a Republican as any. But I wonder if they're turning on Trump now. I wonder if it's like, oh, he started a race war. If they're going to. I think that they think that this is all tied into COVID. I mean, it is. They're not wrong.

But I think that it's the mismanaging of coronavirus okay gotcha and everything else you know the recession etc they're they're pinning on trump i mean like trump's own defense secretary came out yesterday and wednesday and broke with him about sending the military into cities and then james mattis the former defense secretary was out there calling him like a i don't know he was like openly insulting him like yeah some advisors some military advisors quit on him i mean i remarked on twitter just kind of i deleted it but i wasn't that wedded to it but it does kind of feel like the i I got to learn that lesson. When I'm not fully weighted to something,

I just need to go believe it. But it did kind of feel like the French Revolution of 1830, where things had gotten so far right-wing that even the liberals were like, God, we let things get out of control. And the old heads of state had to sort of step in. And Charles X had to abdicate. They had to put Louis Philippe. It kind of felt like that.

Like maybe George Bush and some of these right wingers would be like, all right, this Trump thing has gotten out of control. It's manifested in the attitude of the cops. Like the only way to put a cap back on this is just by installing this senile, you know, empty puppet of a man. I don't know. I mean, if Bush had actually endorsed Biden, I would have a little easier time seeing that. But I guess he didn't actually endorse him, so. But we did get a great quote from Nancy Pelosi. What did the clapback queen have to say?

Yeah, I missed this. Clapback Queen said, if this whole capital burns to the ground, the only thing that would remain is our commitment for Israel. What? Are you fucking serious? Are you sure? She said this at the Israeli-American Council.

I guess there was like a... She may not at the American... Or Israeli-American council. I guess there was like a... She may not have actually said... This is another thing. Again, going back to my thing. She may have actually said that at another time. And maybe people latched onto it and put it out there, but... What the fuck? Wow.

Wow. Yeah. There's people out here who'd fucking get murdered by police all this shit and she's like listen if all this goes away tomorrow you can rest assured i know she might as well just said if the u.s ends we'll just become israel we'll just declare ourselves an israel territory an israeli territory oh my fucking god god well anyways that's that's about the timeline all that i had left on here was last night so you've got some of these curfews going on i mean you know there's been developments in minneapolis we haven't about. They arrested more of the officers involved,

and they upgraded Chauvin's charge to a second-degree murder charge. I think they thought that it would be another concession to get people to stop coming out into the streets. The school system canceled the police station's multi-million dollar contract to provide security to the schools and the state of minnesota opened up a civil lawsuit against the minneapolis pd well i got a new update that just came across the newswire here that the interns brought over to me on a slip of paper the minneapolis city council is considering disbanding minneapolis police yeah i saw that right before we got on to you well it's

it's it's going to be an interesting moment because you are going to have several different um sort of class positions on this and uh and you've just kind of gotta you know make sure you keep the ground beneath your feet sort of steady you know and know what you believe in and what you want to see out of this um well and but expand on updates and misinformation as there's their updates people tagging me literally while we're sitting here about um them reopening brianna taylor's case but it's like kentucky hasn't done that they have not reopened her case the fbi said that they were going to investigate her case back in may at the end of may like two weeks ago and they it's nothing has happened and people are like circulating that article again. Right, right. I mean, it's all...

Tom and I were talking about this earlier this week, but it is all in service of this incredibly sort of postmodern reality of you can have a million different realities. You know, people can live in their own exclusively algorithm-tailored worlds. Where... Do you think... Go ahead, sorry. No, I interrupted you.

I'm sorry. But do you think there are people who have been able to mute all of this out of their reality? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. If not, you know, it's like they've been able to filter it through their selective news sources. So I guarantee you there are people out there, liberals, who are 100% convinced that this is all Russia. Russia finally did it. Russia finally dealt the death blow to us.

Russia finally dealt the death blow to us. And they are 100% convinced in that because, again, we live in the world where you can have a million different realities. You know? Just like... But that is a product of this sort of like no alternative capitalist realism world we live in. And what we are seeing in the streets is the negation of that. The resistance to that, the idea that history can actually move forward, and it can move forward in a direction that is emancipatory and makes people's lives better.

And those are the stakes. That is what is at stake. Because I guarantee you, there will be a push from liberals like Obama and Biden and maybe even George Bush to adopt the Obama sort of mentality to all this. Because this is actually what the liberals prefer. And it's like you were saying yesterday to me, Tom. The liberals want... It's good for everybody if you can just slap a sort of liberal face on it like Obama

and give lip service to the struggle itself but still allow for heavy crackdown on the protesters like what happened in ferguson and baltimore and you know etc etc back in 2015 i mean because again who was the fucking press this is what this is what drives me crazy when people talk about the democratic party you know it's just like like the mayors and governors of all these fucking cities and states are mostly fucking democrats they're like what at what point does that cognitive dissonance just like explode in your fucking brain yeah yeah it's just it's just infantile really at this point yeah yeah it's it's funny to see them like like yeah hang on anyway uh did you see this thing um where like the news is already saying like in response to the protest covet 19 cases are spiking like in the wake of the protest the protests haven't even been going on a week like

like the incubation period won't be known until next week. And what happened before protests started is they started reopening all these goddamn states. Right. It should not be lost. It's a great point, Tonya. It should not be lost.

Most of the reopenings were already occurring before the fucking protests. Even inentucky a more like conservative rollout they had started on may 22nd basically everything was open by then you can't start moralizing and putting that on the protesters and all that stuff but there's a darker reality too where it's not inconceivable that like i don't want to say this i don't know because i just i just it goes down too many tangles but like the murder of george floyd could also be tied to this idea of like you know maybe they knew people would take to the streets you know what i mean and maybe they

could pin like the proliferation of these cases have something to pin that on and oh my god and also it also serves the dual function of this whole idea of liquidating that excess workforce we've been talking about but well what we're getting at that's a totally black peeled theory by the way but well but what we're getting in here is that there's a million different interpretations of what's going on right now. Yeah. And if you really are invested in building a better world, you have to be able to tease out, you know, the wheat from the chaff, however the saying goes. And you do that by knowing what you believe in, you know? Yeah. And that is really what it means to be courageous during these times. It is knowing what it is you believe in, you know? Yeah. And that is really what it means to be courageous during these times.

It is knowing what it is you believe in. And it means searching for answers. It means digging deeper. It means reading. And it means struggle. It's both of them. Both of those things. The struggle reinforces the investigation.

The investigation reinforces the struggle it's a dialectical process and so if that's what if that if you're trying to build a better world you have to do those things and um you know and and so i don't know i don't have a i don't really have any prescriptions for people in this street. I live in a fucking log cabin, so I'm not... I can't really tell you what to do or don't do. I just... I can only give you broad generalizations. Before we close here, let's just take a 38,000 foot view of this for one second.

It's like something out of that fucking movie Crash or some shit. You remember when we did the dramatic reading of Crash? Think about this shit. How fucking interconnected this is. movie crash or some shit you remember what we we did the dramatic reading of crash think about this shit how fuck how fucking interconnected this is you have a cop that murdered a guy that he worked with in a restaurant for two years an attorney general from that state let this guy off the hook three times who is now the front runner to be the vice president of the United States. Klobuchar? Klobuchar.

Yeah. In a time when you have Joe Biden fresh off his breakfast club remarks a couple weeks ago before everybody took to the streets. We didn't even talk about that. If you don't vote for me, you ain't black. We did talk about it. We mentioned it. Oh, we did? Yeah, because I didn't know.

I hadn't heard. My fucking brain. It's just so, it's just the weird entangling of all these, like, it's, oh, man, it's just so fucking hard to think about. That's why it seems surreal. You watch these things and everything seems surreal, and they seem surreal, it's because that's reality actually facing us it's actually our ability to see it for what it is without all of these sort of mystifications and illusions of liberalism and capitalism etc we are actually

witnessing it for what it is and you have to lean into that full force because that's how history moves forward. And so that, again, I think that would be my closing statement on that. Tanya, you got a closing statement? Hardly. Hardly? Hardly, no.

Yeah, I don't... I mean, there are three more protests in East Kentucky coming up Hardly, no. Yeah, I don't. I mean, there are three more protests in East Kentucky coming up. And I just wonder, you know, what we will see here as this keeps happening, as these little cities keep having little demonstrations. Yeah. I mean, there have been demonstrations in all 50 states. Yeah. I mean, there have been demonstrations in all 50 states. I found a Twitter thread of photos and videos of all the small towns, but people's definition of a small town bewilders me.

Albuquerque. Yeah, yeah. It's like Raleigh. Oh, okay. God, can you believe those bunch of hicks down there in fucking charlotte are protesting but like my hometown has a protest planned that i'm you know get to go to um and we'll see we'll see like as this keeps happening even tiny little towns are gathering together to be like what the fuck is going on as liberal as a lot of them have been so far.

At what point do the cops get sick of that, too? Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I encourage everybody, I mean, if you're in a small town, definitely go to those things. Because the sort of class antagonisms need to be revealed. You know, you can either do it by observation or if you have enough people, by force. I'm not, like, talking about literally getting guns. I mean, like, overwhelming their protest with your protest.

And so it's, I don't know, but to go and get a lay of the land is important. As you're saying, yeah, a lot of these little, maybe smaller town ones are more liberal. They are more of the flavor like uh racism is bad we got to come together and etc and that's just not going to cut it uh and i think more and more people are coming around to that but uh it requires us actually getting off the internet and meeting with people in a common struggle, socially distanced, of course, but, you know, that is the next step.

So, if we're actually trying to do something here. So, anyways, I guess that's as good a spot as any to sign off. Thanks for listening, everybody. If you have a burning desire for more content, you may go to patreon.com slash trailbillyworkersparty That's p-a-t-r-e-o-n

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