Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 150: Cop Dialectics

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

Time to do some theorizing about your favorite subject: cops Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty Support Charles Booker here: https://bookerforkentucky.com/

I like how the key to a good song is having a trademark yell. Like how in those Travis Scott songs, there's someone that's like, yo! But it's like in an auto-tune. You know what I'm talking about? Like, yo, yo! Turn up. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, that is a good song. Jadakiss had a good ad-lib. That's a little... That's taking kiss had a good ad-lib that's a little that's taking it back the best the best was the original isley uh brothers well well well you know they had that like in every single song well what's his dick made a whole career on it. What's it? Well, John. Yeah, he would. Yeah. That was his name. Yeah, that was his name. Okay.

You may tell you what I was always a fan of, and this is actually the very first thing ever mentioned on this podcast, is the whistle in the Swiss Beats songs. I always wanted to be Swiss Beats' whistle guy. I could do that. You know, I could play that instrument. Let's hear your whistle. That was pretty good. But you're right.

The Travis Scott ad-libs make the songs it's lit well it's well it's like you know what i'm talking about maybe it's not travis scott songs there's like a specific kind of yell that i always hear in rap songs it's like oh you know what i'm talking about and it's like auto-tuned. Yeah, no, it's Travis Scott. You're right. That's what I thought. We just need, we need an Isley brother to come in and lay down well, well, well over some of our episodes. Well, well, well.

Anytime there's dead air, just hit it with that well well well um i so uh nicole and i were down in damascus this weekend and um i was talking to this woman at this like bike shop and um we got to talking about like yeah don't ride the creeper trail yeah nice um and we got to talking about the protests i was talking about the protests with this woman and she was like she was like yeah i mean she's like i don't have a problem with protesting i think protesting is great blah blah blah but she was like but i don't have a problem with protesting. I think protesting is great, blah, blah, blah. But she was like, but I don't like this looting or burning stuff down. And then she kind of like stared off for a minute. And then she goes, yeah, but, you know, everybody makes mistakes.

So it's like she was looking, thinking back on a time that she herself had looted and burned something down. Either that or thought that Terrence was pro looted and burned something down. Either that or thought that Terrence was pro-looting and didn't want to blow a sail. Yeah, didn't want to offend me. What am I talking about? This guy's a looter from way back.

Have we been hearing what's been going on? We been heard hearing about the looting have we heard about pillaging any though has there been any pillaging going on they seem to go together historically what's the difference or looting and plundering plundering also goes with looting pill friend i feel like plundering is um taking the town's wealth maybe like breaking into the bank and leaving with the the save or something yeah yeah you gotta have you gotta steal some value to plunder that's true it's a it's a matter of scale looting seems like small items here and there plundering seems like

large amounts of wealth so if anonymous manages to erase all student debt we'll call that a plunder that's a that would be a plunder yeah although we have to address your inordinate amount of faith in Anonymous. Yeah. Well, let's just say the hackers. Some hackers, please. Well, I think my internet connection's a little slow, so I might be a little behind here. What else is new? In more ways than one. So, okay, so welcome to the show this week, June 11th, 2020.

Well, well, well. It has a... Well, well, well. This is where we're at. I feel like things have shifted again since the last time we spoke on Sunday. We had our friend Brandon Sutton on. We talked a little bit about what was at that time the sort of like growing liberal reaction that was occurring at the time. This sort of like liberal co-optation of these protests, of the uprising. We knew this was coming.

Obviously, this is what they like to do. But we were just kind of like talking about it in the uh sort of broad strokes um but then at the beginning of this week we had the the first uh sort of salvo i feel like from the liberals and um they debuted it in classic liberal fashion um nancy pelosi walked out with a kente cloth I believe multiple congressional members did so And they kneeled And so I think the whole thing was kind of a publicity stunt, right? It was kind of a PR stunt What else would it be?

To unveil Maybe they just like to dress up, Tanya. Maybe they like to look cool. A little cosplay. Oh, my God. That was amazing. But they... It was amazing.

But right before we started recording this, I was kind of trying to look for some details on it. And it's pretty fascinating. If you search Democrats police reform bill on Google, you will get four, at least five, at least five of the exact same headline. Different news outlets, which is literally this. Democrats unveil sweeping police reform bill. Sweeping police reform bill.

Sweeping. It all says sweeping. Because that's what their press release said. So if you were just like, oh. Exactly. They're sweeping it. As opposed to just doing modest reforms, it's going to be sweeping. No reason to inquire any further.

Nope. You're exactly right, Tonya. They literally just published the press release, probably. They got the press release from the Congressional Democrats and just published it. They changed a few words in the press release itself but they they kept the title hey we saw it a week or two ago with amazon did the same shit so um so yeah so yeah that's another thing. Like Amazon and all these other...

Yeah. People are like, my business is anti-racist now. My business has committed itself to anti-racism. They're going to start making, you know, those name tags they make you wear when you go to nonprofit meetings. You get one of the name tags, you got to write your name on it. It says, hello, my name is. It's is it's gonna say hello i am anti-racist and then you write your name under that it's mine's gonna say tom associate completed anti-racist training at surge nashville 2016

um so you know you see a headline like that you're like oh sweeping sweep wow okay must be good click into the must be good and then you click into the article and you and and you just see uh house speaker nancy pelosi says congress cannot settle for anything less than transformative structural change like oh wow okay so transformative structural change. Like, oh, wow, okay. So transformative structural change. Sweeping reforms. Karen Bass says the world is witnessing the birth of a new movement. Like, all right, all right. Here we go.

We're going to get some legislation. And then it is a ban on chokeholds, the creation of a national police misconduct registry. A registry. A registry? A registry for bad cops. The bill also incentivizes states that... Dude, it's ridiculous.

They're putting their names on a list and banning wrestling hoes yeah this is amazing it'll be like the um the sex offender list like you can't uh live near a school but this you can't live near like a donut shop or something? Like you're banned from all things cops love? Yeah, that's good. Yeah, you just punish them by the things they love. You got to keep them at least 40 yards from it at all points or you get an EPO put out on you.

Yeah. Tom, you had a great tweet this week. It was like, we're're gonna see global emissions plummet and dolphins return to the canals because cops will stop hanging out and like sonic drive-thru parking lots creeping on 16 year old girls it is an epidemic with these guys there's there is no greater i swear to y'all there is no greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the world than police officers. Because all they do is fucking sit in idling cars for all fucking day. And how many are there?

I just saw a number of the total number of police officers. It was terrifying. Do we know what the total number is? In the country, according in the country according to the bureau of labor statistics there's a little under 900 000 in the country that's just like patrolman and so forth so we'll just say a fresh million yeah basic yeah once you once you include the cp usa and others you have about a million, yes. Another hot tweet the past week on this topic that's more in our wheelhouse is when we do finally get some momentum behind abolishing the police, what the just transition cops plan is going to be.

Oh, I wanted to talk about that. Are we thinking about a post-cop Appalachia? Yeah, what are these cops going to do? I mean, they're not going to have jobs. I mean, and if we want them to code, first they have to learn how to mine coal because that's a prereq now for coding. Yeah, you've got to get

your mining card and put in a few months underground, then you get to code. You've got to get your underground license. Then you can code. They can start now while they're on the job. They have literal computers in their fucking cars. They can start coding practice. I've never understood that.

Right now. Like, you cannot punish people for texting and driving when you're on the fucking computer. It is true. In your vehicle. And they're everyone on Facebook. They're just like on Facebook. They're probably Tinder. Grindr.

Yeah, so I want to talk. We'll talk about the just transition here in a minute, but I want to keep going through these. I want to go through the sweeping reforms. The sweeping reforms. Yeah. How will we ever get through them? They're so sweeping. They're very sweeping.

You got you got a few hours. Yeah, this is going to take forever. um the bill also incentivizes states and localities to mandate racial bias training and teach officers about their duty to intervene um it also includes anti-lynching legislation um no this it's all weird because i saw an article in politico yesterday that was like democrats stiff-armed gops cosmetic police reforms and so i'm like reading this i'm like okay if these are the democrats reforms what the fuck are the republicans reforms

god damn that's the unique thing in here What the fuck are the Republican reforms? Truly. God damn. That doesn't seem anything, does it? How much more money does this bill give to the cops? Invested police? What's the price tag on this sweeping reform? Do they all get a raise? I'm sure they all get a raise they all get like the most left politician bernie is that is calling for a raise

while everybody in the streets is saying defund the police our dear bernard is saying pay them more pay them more. Pay them more because it'll incentivize better behavior, bro. Hey, as we all know, as we all know, the more money you get, the better you behave. The better you behave. That's just a truism across the board. Oh, fuck. You know what I did when I get money?

That is true. Gamble it away. Well, that, yeah. I mean, I revert back to drinking, gambling, and womanizing. It makes me my worst self. That's why we keep Tom's cut of the Patreon, guys. It's really a public service. Right.

Keep me from cancellation. Yeah. He must... Lindsey Graham. There's some common ground if you want it. If you want to play politics, we'll go nowhere. The first thing I want to find out... Are Democrats willing to work with us to find something?

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. So, yeah. I don't really know what the right-wingers... I don't really know what the conservatives' police bill is, but... But... I think you just ran it to us thoughts well that's the thing they want the democrats to meet them halfway and by that they mean like i

guarantee you the walk into that negotiation and walk out having given every copper raise and like 20 more tanks each you get your own personal tank now you get to take it home yeah you can keep it at your house and you all get a new garage to house it in like you know there's grants going around for tanks right now like that's the thing like whiteburg was like there was a guy in whiteburg city police that wanted to apply to get a tank. There's already one downtown. There's about four or five fucking military vehicles you can repurpose at any time. It's astounding.

We live in this town with a rapidly diminishing population. The fastest shrinking city in Kentucky. That was wild to hear. Number one. Wasn't that crazy? Number one. I feel like Apple Shop's been saying for years that it has like the most potential

for growth and young people blah blah blah. I don't even remember. Like the most growing population of 20-somethings or something with money. I don't even remember like the most growing population of 20 somethings or something with money i can't remember yeah everybody in whitesburg everybody in their 20s in whitesburg just out in the streets just burning hundred dollar bills and drinking champagne in the poorest congressional district i'm like the only one left no one even lives in whitesburg anymore i'm like the only one left no one even lives in

whitesburg anymore i'm like the only one before long i will be the last man in whitesburg well what's funny is i would love to see like not only whitesburg but some of these other declining towns i guarantee you could see an upswing in the amount of police correlate with the dip in the population you're like how i spelled this out with my hand was the stat about whitesburg or letcher county the whole state whitesburg i'm in the 13 percent oh it was just showing like all the shrinking cities and all the growing cities. I think Jenkins was number two. Oh, my God.

Westwood County just not doing good. Well, we're kind of at the end of the line. You don't come there unless... Well, what's interesting about this... Unless... Go ahead. Do you want to finish your thought, Tonya? No, no, go ahead. finish your thought no no go ahead age before beauty um well what's interesting about this is like you've got our town barely cracks 2000 on a good day we're hitting it like 17 1800 people notice we've been lying about our population

like people been saying yeah we got like 3200 if you count this this and this it's like no the fuck we know well they counting all the bodies in the cemetery i guess I guess. Dogs, cats. We have a six-man police force and a police chief. What the fuck do we need seven police officers for? Like, there is... It's fucking nonsense. That literally makes no goddamn sense. If they're not out in an idling car

they're playing cards in city hall exactly well the thing is it's just i mean it's just part of this trend we've talked about on here about how like when you're out of options like you just contribute to the carceral and police state right like that's where like that's where the jobs are that's where the labor's focused and that's how you get yeah you know one cop for every six people in a town before it's all said and done everybody everybody just gets assigned a cop when you go to when you move to whitespire this is who you moved to Whitesburg. This is who you report to. Yeah. Got a problem?

Are you the problem? Here's who you have to deal with. I mean, I was talking to our friends Katie and Andrew who live in Connecticut, and their town has like 7,000 people in it and they don't even have a police force. They're like, well, we're just... It's kind of a reactionary reason. I think it's because the people don't want to pay taxes for it, but it is also

interesting they don't need one. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, well, with us, there's a legendary criminality to Eastern Kentucky too that's been bolstered by portrayals in the TV and movies and so forth. Our reputation precedes us. It's kind of like Harlan County.

Harlan County's got this reputation. It's just, oh, man, this is the baddest place on the planet. It's like you go to a protest over there, and all those fucking pussies barking their heads off about leaving Harlan in body bags if they protest the cops or BLM over here and not a fucking one of them

showed up. I'm just sick of the Eastern Kentucky myth making. It's just fucking stupid we're all broken and sick you know anyway

well so if the Democrats aren't interested in any kind of actually sweeping reform, there has been some signs that the streets are. I mean, obviously. I mean, looting and resistance itself is a sign enough that people are done with the fucking police. But Minneapolis City Council has said it's going to disband its police. I'm not sure what that means or what they mean by that or what,

but if nothing else, it does signal that there are people out there who do want it and can envision a world without it. And we also have an autonomous zone in Seattle. I don't really know much about it. I just keep seeing the tweets about it. again, no matter what your thoughts are on it, it does seem to indicate that people want to live in a world that is not controlled in every way by the cops. I mean, the other thing we learned from Minnesota

is if you burn down a police station, you get what you want. Maybe. But you start seeing results. We've seen zero results in in kentucky even in louisville yeah zero demands met is that where you are right now yeah met my sister's house in louisville yes well so it's interesting. And so I kind of want to dig into this a little bit.

Because there's a lot of things that happened this week that kind of require sort of having a deeper conversation about this. So there has been the Democrats' response. You've seen several local municipality responses. But you've also seen a push to kick cop unions out of the AFL-CIO, and I believe that failed, or at least this iteration of it. I think the AFL-CIO basically said, well, we're not going to do that, sorry. Is that Richard Trump? said well we're not gonna do that sorry um and so richard trump is doing probably richard trump god yes god damn trump we got trump good again um so i don't know maybe let's just start there what are your thoughts on that you think uh cop Union should be kicked out of the AFL-CIO?

Yes, I do. Purely for ideological reasons. I know there's a lot of people out there that will refute that and say that, well, in fact, I know a couple of fans that had reached out in the comments and kind of disagreed with our stance on this. To them, I would say I humbly disagree. I think that cops are the quintessential class traitors and that we should, they should be excommunicated from any labor movement. Principally too because

look at the side of any labor struggle. The ones that I'm familiar with. Watch Harley County, USA. Look at what happened at Brookside. Who was there on the opposite end of workers beating the fucking shit out of them trying to union bust.

The cops. Like, the cops have historically always been at odds with the labor movement. Why would we welcome them in just because they are municipal workers and punch the clock? You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know. It's just a weird notion to me to include them. Tanya, comments? No, I'm with you.

They literally are. They have always historically sided with companies and capital. And been the muscle of companies. Yeah. Well, I mean, too, you could go out further. And yesterday I had this tweet about, and it was obviously like a fake Photoshop tweet from Walmart, and I was like, you know, I've said something about Walmart.

They're kind of like Amazon in the sense that they like they need the last public resource that our tax dollars go to just to shore up loss prevention so like they need police and everybody's just like yeah man it's obviously fake tweet shut the fuck up dude it's like fucking you know walmart needs fucking cops to exist like whitesburg city police like when i was at the council the motherfuckers spent eight hours a day up at walmart fucking busting people for like stealing fucking tampons and fucking hostess cookies you know what i mean it's just so fucking there's a there's a parking spot in front there's two in front of walmart and they have like cute little sirens on top it's like fort reserved for our whitesburg police

they have to go up there every day they have to go up there every day and it's funny we are paying for walmart's loss prevention enforcement the third richest entity on the planet that's not jeff bezos or a country you know it's just i don't know it's just it's just um yeah yeah anyway well um well i tend to agree i i i think that you'd have to do it carefully you don't want to empower right to work um people in legislation but um you're right i think that they are have historically been and still are the foot foot soldiers of capital and so like when these strikes and shit go down they'll be the ones enforcing that and so like how can you build solidarity with that it's it's like structurally impossible yeah yeah so yeah but i you know

well let me ask you i mean let me extrapolate out further here just a little bit because i'm interested in this because we had this discussion the other day about like, like in terms of like, what demands do we make of police right now in this moment, given everything we have, you know, like we, Terrence, you and I talked about,

um, like, I'm trying to think how to put this without saying like I'm against police abolition, because that's not what I'm saying here. But like, what are the realistic demands right now, given where we're at, that we could make about this sort of thing? Yeah, I know what you're saying. But police are not going to be abolished tomorrow.

We're not going to wave a magic wand and police are gone. And that even might be, you know, I mean, it's often been kicked around, this idea of like, well, even if we do that, then something much worse, you know, could replace that. What say y'all about that topic? We could. I mean, it is reasonable, though, I think, to ask for them to be defunded and for money to be moved differently immediately. I mean, we've been defunding education for years. No, I mean, I think that's a modest demand, you know. Los Angeles, there's not a city in the fucking world that needs a billion dollar police agency even if you believe that police serve some sort of function you know it's just

it's just unconscionable well yeah you see you saw him going around twitter um last week and over the weekend like every city's budgets um you know on on bar graphs you know little tiny amounts for public health and tourism but just massive amounts for fucking police and this is a question are those is that is this public information people are just able to like google their city's uh budget and get a hold of it because i've been trying to get a hold of letcher county or wattsburg's budget for three weeks now and come up empty-handed. It's nowhere to be found. And nobody, even when you call and ask for it,

they send you to a goddamn answering machine with nobody's name or number on it. Classic. Nobody's calling you back. Well, I think at the local level or at the small town rural level, it's all made up anyway, that seems pretty typical. I mean, it's like, yeah, that seems very typical. They will dodge you at every step. At a bigger urban setting, they can absorb a lot of dissidence and attacks like that,

so they're just like, well it here's the budget but i mean like yeah at the small town level it's like they'll just send you to the answering machine but also like again like the city of whitesburg's budget's two million dollars a year the city neither has two million liquid dollars nor two million dollars in commitments or nor a combination of commitments or liquid cash it's just an arbitrary number that they base everything on they try to meet those and usually don't yeah so they're just in debt well i mean to go back to this question oh yeah they've got to be way in debt i mean the county is deeply in debt from my understanding

i mean what's gonna happen go ahead what's gonna happen is at the municipal level you're gonna start seeing counties that are insolvent be like it's like lecture county may not exist in five to ten years like we may be part of pocket yeah it's like you get a speeding ticket exist in five to ten years like we may be part of pocket yeah it's like you get a speeding ticket in white spur you're gonna have to go to packville to go to go to court that's already yeah i think that's probably yeah it's just like this shit with the jailers i'm sorry go ahead no no you go ahead i was just gonna say like so much of it is like potent can village s because like we have all of it is political designations we have jailers for counties that

don't have jails you know i mean like it doesn't fucking matter we have we have like antiquated like things like constables like antiquated police you know i mean like the all they do is go around in the highways and byways and try to find a marijuana patch or something it's like serves no function it's just like a job that we elect and they we pay them some money and they're a bonded police officer that can go do shit yeah i mean on that note um just as a little side tangent, the local politicians around here are getting really pissed off about the administrative holds on new prisoners. You know, so like Bashir put that policy in for a coronavirus. and so like there was an article in the newspaper yesterday about how local politicians were getting pissed that like um someone would get busted for marijuana in the morning and they'd walk in the afternoon um because they because the jail can't hold them

because of covid and like they were getting fucking pissed about that they were just like whining about it this is bullshit we got. We got people at their highest damn groceries walking the streets. These motherfuckers, dude. It's sickening. It's sickening how everybody's developed a cop mindset. Yes. It goes to show you how deeply that mindset has seeped into every aspect of how society is ordered and arranged but but on that same note it's important to remember that that may not go away

and so what i mean by that is we should absolutely be pushing for defunding the police I think it's the clearest articulation of a demand and it's one that I think people can get it on board with and one that is easily understandable

it's literally just the line is big make it get small put the money elsewhere. Yeah. Why do they get all this and we can't get clean water? Why do they get – I think it's this thing we can extrapolate further to the state level. It's like, you know, Andy Beshear is like the latest in a long line of governors that disproportionately pulls like national guardsmen from places like eastern Kentucky to go defend property of people in more affluent communities,

particularly, I'm thinking, the Highlands and Louisville and different places. And at the same time, the places the guardsmen come from that are pointing the guns, murdering people like David McAtee. Meanwhile, back home, those people can't get clean water, can't get anything, but we're expected to step up. That's the hillbilly's remuneration, is to

give our lives to capital and the defense thereof. I don't know. It's just obscene to me. But yeah, anyway. And the defense thereof. And I don't know. It's just obscene to me. But yeah, anyway. Well, you know, I just want to talk about what could result as,

that could come out of this. Because I fundamentally, I do not think that you can abolish police within capitalism because you have to have an answer for surplus population like you know and I'm not saying that capitalists sit like all the heads of industry get into a room and they sit around and they say we've got 40 million people out of work and they're going to start writing what do we do to keep them in control like capitalism doesn't work like that it it operates on a sort of set of sort of coercive laws that you have to respond to. And one of those is, yeah, you have to find some way to keep the rabble in line, the working class subdued. And so I can easily see a future where we make cosmetic changes to police to remove them from the streets perhaps

let's say like the the the actual expression of policing has become too um unpalatable for the public that they have to come up with a new kind of uh policing um imagine a future where there's cctv corners cameras on every single square inch of the urban environment where policing is done by drones that that they're already doing that in china in some ways like this is it is entirely conceivable i mean like imagine the boon to the tech industry for, like, innovative and elaborate techniques of policing that don't involve cops on the street harassing people and etc. But still have the same net effect of either channeling people into the prison system or murdering you. Surveillance. Be a predator drone.

Or murdering you. On site for shoplifting. Yeah. So it's like we have to sort to sort of like be on guard about this thing and i know i'm i'm preaching to the choir i know that people who are advocating for defunding and disbanding the police have thought about all this and they are continuing to hold the people accountable who are talking about it but it is important to keep in mind that um you know we live in a system that is sort of governed by a set of rules i'm not going to call them laws because they're not laws on the book it's just you know it's it's rules it's sort of suggestions harsh suggestions um yeah i i don't mean but but it's interesting to think about what would

happen to police and this is the interesting question and i think the one we actually want to talk about how do you do a just cop transition a just cop transition we do we want to talk about this do we you know that that's what's coming you know it's what's coming wow look they'll talk about it they're gonna try the just transition thing with police but what do you do like so this is an this is an interesting question, I think, because so a coal miner or an oil and gas worker or a factory worker, if you were to interview one on one what they think, every single one would have a diversity of opinions and beliefs. One of them may be left leftish. One of them may be a conservative. One may be pro Trump, pro Biden, whatever the fuck.

But it's a diverse mix of worldviews and etc yeah but cops it is almost uniform right it is like they have a specific worldview and a specific set of beliefs and so you know the question i guess on everybody's mind is like what happens to those people if they are turned out of jobs like en masse you know do they just go quietly into the night what happens I don't think that they will there's something about

the cop mindset that doesn't do go quietly into the night I think that's the same reason all these mayors are afraid to do anything because they're afraid they're going to get murdered or something which is right it's like they're already operating yeah they're already for the most part operating in places like new york the biggest city in the fucking country as like their own boss like their own like vigilante fucking military paramilitary fucking cop gang they're just like fucking

organized crime gangs because they're not and they don't have anybody to answer to they do whatever they want that with impunity and even if they don't have a fucking, the valor and paycheck behind it, they're going to be even more violent. They're going to act even worse. I've thought about this, too, because, so as this goes on, we're all talking to each other and trying to formulate an analysis for what's happening. Right? Like we're like-minded people and we are responding to events and we're formulating an analysis and a narrative. Well, I guarantee you that cops are doing the exact same thing. And they're all communicating probably through their unions and trade groups and other forms of communications.

And so I do wonder if they will walk away from this experience with the conclusion that society actually hates us. Society does not want us. It does not want to be protected. And I think this is an interesting idea because I was talking to Tom about this the other day. There's a contradiction in the cop worldview. On one hand, you have the thin blue line logic,

which is a liberal one at heart. It started in the 60s with the professionalization of cops, but it basically says we are the only thing protecting society from the teeming masses. From complete collapse, exactly. We are an external force to society.

We are objective and external. That is a liberal idea in one hand. On the other hand, you've got broken windows. That's the other logic. That is a fundamentally fascist one. It says that like everybody's a criminal if you're not a cop you're less than you must be punished to the utmost degree for even the slightest deviation from the law and those two conf those two logics are always in in

conflict with one another contradictory and and i do wonder what will happen when they realize, again, collectively, society actually does not want us. Society hates us. Will they then say, well, we must take over society? We must bend society to our will and make them see that they need us. You know what I mean? So it's an interesting sort of thought experience because i don't think this is a problem that goes the people that killed ahmad arbery were not just random hillbillies they had connections to police law enforcement

the guy i think his name was george mcmichael or something like that he was a former cop and he and he was still like traveled around in around in those law enforcement circles. Like, so this is not a mentality or a mindset or idea that just goes away. I mean, this is something like the Confederacy that needs to be stamped out. And, you know, everywhere it pops its head up. I don't know. It's just interesting to think about if you're go ahead no you're right you're right there's like and the thing i too i want to

say about like that cop adjacent thing like you were just talking about like there's also not only the cops but there's like a certain mindset a certain personality it attracts that wants to be close to where power is but also wants to like put lights and sirens on their car so they can like you know live out like you know sheriff of nottingham fantasies or whatever it's like the same reason people join like the volunteer fire department it's like they just want to be like you know if they're at church on a wednesday night they want but their beeper to go off and just want to be like you know if they're at church on wednesday night they want but their beeper to go off and they want to just because they want to run lights and sirens because they want to feel like some standing some importance some like belonging

or whatever and if you put all those personalities together and then you sort of come up with a sort of a mechanism to get them valor and standing in the community vis-a-vis blue thin blue line or whatever it is you have all of a sudden a very powerful group that basically runs communities like it like any sort of like crime outfit or whatever would and i don't know i mean i'm trying to think what do you think are like the two are there two personalities that you think that go with those two competing world views that you say bump up against each other? Like, let's talk about that for a second. Yeah. Police chief versus rank-and-file cop.

What's the archetype cop? Yeah. Go ahead. No, no, no. In terms of, like, what are the characteristics of, like, the archetypal cop? You know, like, what kind of personality does that well most cops i know don't really come from privileged backgrounds necessarily it feels like a lot of them come from either lower middle class or working class i don't really know rich rich kids aren't going to be cops, you know?

Yeah. There's not a ton signing up to be police officers. And if they are, they usually go to be detectives or that kind of thing. You know, something with some standing. Not like a patrolman or whatever. Yeah. Were you going to say something, was trying to think if i even like know any cops i mean i know the cops in wattsburg

if i know the background of any cops the kids who sold me weed in high school are now the city cops in uh pineville and bell county so yeah if you ever sold drugs and never got caught you become a police officer yeah i never got trouble for it that's like that's like that is like a litmus test and then in another way i think what happens too is because i've noticed this a lot of people tend to like lump firefighters and police all in together like it's like the first responders thing but like in my experience fire and police are kind of at odds with one another like they're frenemies more than anything like our firefighters in whitesburg like historically have just like yeah like the police would come up there and hang out every once in a while and then once they leave they'll say

make oinking noise there's always attention but anyway i don't know i don't know um well yeah i've caught like i want to i want to talk more about this but like i want to like really think about it too because like this is this is a fascinating topic for me but because like you can't you can't really also deny that class dimension either like you know it's not rich kids that go to be cops or military or whatever you know let me ask this question the reason i bring this up is because you do what yeah go ahead go ahead i'm sorry are y'all are y'all still with me yeah yeah yeah yep you're not slow i'm a little i've got some lag there's some lag i'm sorry there's a little

bit of a last time um but uh the reason i bring it up is because again i fully support defunding the police i'll probably put it on a sign and go to a march this weekend um but but we would be if we did that we would be turning about 900 we'll call it a solid million we defunded every police department we would be turning them out that won't happen because like you've got see if the sweeping reforms are banning chokeholds in a national bad cop registry like you're doing nothing to challenge the cop mentality yeah right we're not even scratching the surface of the fucking problem yeah but uh but yeah but but putting 900 000 cops into the neoliberal austerity world where they won't have jobs or anything will create some sort of something some kind of backlash yes especially

especially if the um notion that most cops have a white supremacist leaning if that stands up i mean mean, we're really, it's like... I mean, I guess in a lot of ways you're taking their power, but you're fucking pissing them off. Which, we shouldn't have to be afraid of these sons of bitches. That's the weird, that's the rub, right? It's like, we'd be pissing them off, and I guarantee at home, they have fucking a massive arsenal of weapons outside of their own fucking service weapon. Oh, make no mistake about it.

Let me ask you this. If we know that Lennon had to recruit from the peasant armies for his revolution, do you think it's possible that do you think we should i mean obviously i mean i'm of the opinion i think that we should be trying to recruit from the military but do you think that like cops are welcoming any kind of like ex-cops will be welcoming any sort of kind of movement like that Or do you think there's something in that personality that's just inherently untrustworthy that you'd never want to have?

Because, yeah. It's dragging us back to the DSA question. Do cops belong in DSA? Yeah, it all rolls back to Danny Fatante. Or Fatante, however you Faitante I don't know it's so hard to I mean like obviously I don't think it's a funny hypothetical because it's so rarely

even relevant like cops just by their very nature are never going to be interested in any kind of leftist politics but I do sort of believe in any kind of leftist politics um but i do i do sort of believe in this sort of sociological stance that we are all ultimately just performing roles in a capitalist political economy like we are regardless we think we pick for ourselves and we really don't

yeah like we exactly we are sort of know, based on our class backgrounds, life experiences, decisions, etc., we are kind of slotted into roles. And that also can't really be overlooked because, you know, that... I don't know, man. I feel like we've just said two contradictory things which is that there's a cop personality and disposition that has to be stamped out but also there is a structural

uh input for it that is um static i think i think both things can be true and why like for example like all right i could very easily i think at a certain point i've never wanted to be a cop like i've never that's just not anything that ever entered into my calculus for what i was going to do with my life but i very easily could have wound up that way if for example example i hadn't caught a break with this job or that job or whatever you know i almost didn't go to college for example yeah so if that hadn't happened i could have been you know wearing a bulletproof vest in whitesburg you know just waiting for hell to rain down on on me from y'all's kind. Yep, you would be scared. You'd be walking around in Whitesburg in a bulletproof vest.

Scared right now. Thinking I was going to assassinate you. Thinking you were going to assassinate me with a blunt end of a wooden sign stick. Oh, God. Dude, we are going to get

mega canceled for this episode. Jesus Christ. It's like nobody understands nuance or anything anymore, so if you say something with even the slightest bit of tone of voice that isn't calculated exactly correctly and calibrated, people are like,

they said we shouldn't defund cops! God damn it! Nobody said we shouldn't defund the police. They will after this one. I bet that's the thing. You can't even fucking talk about this. We do need to defund the police.

I'm worried, worried though that the reforms that took place in the 1960s anytime you start talking about reforms i get nervous because in many ways you can trace back the current carceral state to the reforms of the 1960s and so a lot in many but you don't you don't have any control over the future in some ways, but whatever. But in some ways, the reforms that you try to put in place wind up creating new systems that have new... This is why I'm always advocating for revolution. You need to hit the reset button and hit it really fucking hard. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it feels like burning down police precincts is a step in the right direction. I agree, Tonya. Yeah, no, that's progress. Absolutely progress. And there, you know, again, I don't belabor it, but people have been riding in the streets for two weeks in Louisville, Kentucky. We've not had literally not one demand met. Not one. Not a single one and we've and we've got uh the nation's democratic darling fucking governor

they love this bastard and he called in annie brashere i know who the governor is. What did you say? I said I was getting ready to say I was getting ready to say what you were getting ready to say. What were you getting ready to say? I was deferring to you. I don't know. I feel like we're all lagged.

I can't hardly hear you. We're all so lagged it's hard to understand what's going on. There's like a lot of like dead air in this episode but just because there's hard to understand what's going on. There's like a lot of like dead air in this episode, but just because there's like a little bit of a lag. Anyways, continue your thought. The nation's democratic darling, Andy Beshear.

Called in the National Guard and got people killed. That was his response. Got more people killed. That was his response. Got more people killed. That was his response to people wanting justice. For people who had been killed by police brutality in Louisville. Yeah, that was the response, this escalation.

Tonight is the first Louisville City Council meeting since all this popped off. Not the first one since the death of Breonna Taylor. That happened in March. But people have been in the streets for two weeks now, or three. I don't know.

Time means nothing anymore. Well, this is another thing. It's, um, the media has stopped covering a lot of this. Uh, they, it, it felt so intense for a week or two there because it was just non-stop media coverage it was the kind of like captured everybody's attention um captivated everyone but um now they they stopped covering it um and uh you know they

moved back to the coronavirus news cycle, I guess, because coronavirus is coming back. With a vengeance. Who saw that coming? Yeah. Yeah, there's not even as many, there doesn't seem to be as many people in the streets. Today, I went to this, like, road blockade at the cop station. There was maybe like 100 people there. And then I went to a blm um press conference and

there were even less people there at a confederate monument that the city took down and in the middle of the night before people could tear it down and they're just moving it they're just like polishing it they're like spit shining it right now in a fucking uh warehouse and they're going to move it to a cemetery. This confederate monument. Castleman. John Castleman. Oh shit. The cemetery where Muhammad Ali is buried. That's where they're moving it.

No shit. Yeah. Isn't that fucking insane? Oh my god. Completely fucking diseased. And apparently this go ahead no you go ahead well apparently uh when they took down when the city took down the monument before people could tear it down because they saw that coming this group of white people in Louisville formed some like friends of public art bullshit and appealed the city's decision to remove it altogether to try to get it put somewhere else or whatever it was. started an education campaign because they felt like the problem was not that this was a confederate soldier a confederate monument but the problem was that people weren't educated and didn't really

know who john castle was he was a high-ranking confederate general who was exiled at one point and pardoned by lincoln who was allowed back into the united states um but these white people literally bought a fucking billboard in the highlands and put up a billboard with the statue on it and the guy's name that said john castleman saved black lives and the fuck truly yeah it was near my friend's house she was just telling me about it like a couple hours ago i was at this fucking belief it's fucking crazy here shit here's here's the thing here's what i here's my thing here's my thing it it it it really breaks my brain like you would you only see this shit when, like, this type of shit pops off. It's like there's this concerted effort to escalate by...

It's like the million little realities we talked about last week all converging on one another. Like, there's a central issue. That is, we have police that are murdering people in the streets, all this kind of stuff. And everybody's response to that is to put in their little things based on the one of the millions of realities that they live in. Like, on what fucking planet does it make sense when you have Breonna Taylor's murdered in her own home to go and do some shit like that. Truly. It's astonishingly callous, just

on the surface of it, but it's like people find something novel in their own bullshit reality. And they want to introduce that into the discourse. You see this all the time. You see the thing where NASCAR banned the Confederate flag yesterday? bubba wallace the black driver yeah like you okay so that's the thing that happened i think most people would agree that is good and like like a modest like

gesture right yeah but you have people a bare minimum you have people losing their goddamn mind over that yeah you know what i'm saying these people created a go fund me and raised money to put up billboards to save the reputation of a confederate general a guy that's been dead for 200 fucking years yeah and again you know and and at this at this they hadn't thought about before this they hadn't thought about before this people brought up um something from our uh episode with uh the new york times reporter what's his name campbell campbell yeah um about the yeah the confederate monuments about how they didn't go up at the end of the civil war these all went up during jim crow and these are no different these are this was the same wave they went up these they

put up these confederate flags literally to these federal confederate monuments to it to terrorize black people yeah oh and it's it's it's it's yeah i mean it's it serves that purpose and what's insane to me is like i was thinking about this so i made a little comment i'm back active on facebook these days which is being interesting i'd like to say i love that it's been nice. You see this thing I put up about, like, we should bulldoze that fucking monument up there on the Kentucky-Virginia state line. Why the fuck do they do that installation that probably cost $100,000 when nobody down the fucking mountain has clean water? Yeah. It's just to terrorize. It's just, like, it serves no other purpose but that.

Whether that was their intent or not that's what it is and let me tell you this when i was working in the school systems each school system of like 20 100 schools each school got to create this like banner to be displayed at this big thing they had impactful so all the east kentucky schools each one they're like art class got to design a banner and paint it with a scene from their county guess what jenkins was what that goddamn monument i shit you not i shit you not jenkins high school made a band painted a banner of a confederate flag and a like monument and hung it in the fuck and i came in i was like why is their confederate flag hanging up in here and they were like well the school the school decided what they wanted to put on their fucking banner. It's like, are you all fucking kidding me?

You're hanging this up in here? Is this serious right now? And no one had even questioned it. Well, it's beyond dark. It's dark. Well, I want to say that. Sorry I had to drop that on you i just want to say that um and this is in response again to the inevitable people who will

scold me or something for saying something not quite correct but i just want to point out that stuff like stuff like taking down monuments and even things like an autonomous zone regardless of how you feel about them they are dialectical they are incredibly important they're dialectical because you can only work with what you have and if what you have is a landscape just filled with fucking monuments to hate and white supremacy and terrorism or a police force that refuses to seed an inch of fucking ground to a world that refuses to to have them that's important and you may not like the way it plays out. You may think that it's cringe or virtue signaling or whatever.

But it's the same thing that applies to defund the police. There's plenty of criticisms that can be made of each and every one of these things. But that doesn't matter. Like, if we critique, it's to make things impenetrable. It's to better our analysis and to move our position on the class struggle chessboard further. It's not to, if you're critiquing, it should not be to tear down. It really should.

And this is the thing. This is the thing. And I've always fucking got, for years now, like, oh, all he does is fucking tear down, never build up all this. It's like, you fundamentally missed the point. You fundamentally missed the point of critique. Like, I,

like, I say these things to make things better, you know? And, and so that's the, like this, that it should be applied to everything in this, in this current state that we're in,

because you can only work with what you got. Where, look around you, see what you have, use the resources that you have. You can't wish you were somewhere else, or you can't want to leave your shitty southern town or any of that and escape to the enlightened north. You can only work with what you have. And that's the way change...

And to that point, that's what we're talking about too for anybody that thinks that we were even making a half-assed case for not defunding the police or whatever that's not what we're talking about we're talking about a very specific context and we're dealing with the world we see like directly in front of us and to the other point about like you know the the the chas and you know all these other things the other part to it is it shows us what's possible what we can do you know what i mean and i think i think there's something powerful about that and um so yeah anyway yeah i mean i've been well you know i was just reading this ruth wilson gilmore essay earlier today about non-profits and about you know she was talking about like non-profits are not

intrinsically bad it's just it's just a form it's like anything else it's like the state the state can be good and it can be bad it's know, but she was talking about how in the early civil rights movement, they went into that struggle with, there was plenty of philanthropic funding and nonprofits and stuff. But early on, people noticed some of the things that were happening with that process

and with that system and critiqued it. And she talks about how that made it better and it made them more aware of what they were facing when they entered the struggle and so this is the thing with this show we're not fucking political leaders or anything like that we're trying to fucking enhance our analysis and make it make our position stronger on the, like I said, based on our context. Yeah. Yeah,

exactly. Exactly. Um, I don't know. I guess that was, uh, the mountain Eagle speaking. Uh,

the, the, that was, uh, editors. That was the editors note. Well, on that editor's note,

I got to hop off here cause I'm headed downtown for the city council meeting. Y'all want to wrap it up or do y'all want to continue on your own? You have my blessing. I think this is about all I had. Tom, is there anything else you wanted to talk about? else you you wanted to talk about the only thing else i had to talk about on our list was the um the charles booker mcgrath mitch shit but i mean we could talk about that on the oh i'm in louisville i've seen so many um because that's that's ads the past two days. The past day. It's interesting. Guys, I saw a fucking.

I've seen more than one Joe Biden sticker in Whitesburg. I didn't see a single Hillary Clinton sticker in 2016. I've seen Joe Biden stickers, though. Just take for that what you will. I don't know what it means, but it is interesting. It is interesting. I really am. I don't know what it means, but it is interesting. It is interesting. I really am.

I'm excited to see Booker soaring this last week, but it feels like a day late and a dollar short, and I don't know why all these sons of bitches didn't endorse him a month ago. It's like they had to wait for black people to die on the streets and to endorse a black man. You're right. That is literally it, Tonya. It's fucked.

It's completely fucked completely their penance their penance for being racist was to support charles book yeah bernie aoc the curial journal herald leader all of them matt jones they've all come out and supported him in the past few days it's like are you fucking kidding me the fucking primaries in a week it's just pitiful and what were they sitting around trying to were they sitting around waiting for amy mcgrath to say something to impress them is that what they were doing like we're gonna wait for her to get her shit together and then she's gonna say something good and we're finally gonna be able to come in and endorse her all she ever says is that she's a fucking fighter pilot that's all she's ever said and that she's a fucking fighter pilot. That's all she's ever said. And that she's going to work with Trump.

To her credit, she also says she will work with Trump. Trump? She's going to be Trump's personal pilot. Well, well, well. She wants to drive Air Force One. Okay. Well, well, we that is an interesting thing, but we will leave it there

for now. If you want to listen to, we did interview Charles Booker back before anyone else did and before anyone even gave him a shot. Before it was cool. Before it was cool. Unfortunately, I had I was having a bad period. I over-medicated myself

that day and didn't make it. I remember that day. I do, too. I passed out. I took a bunch of pills. But, yeah, you can go listen to that interview if you want to know what he's about and maybe throw a few bucks to his campaign the ditch mitch campaign is still going strong uh if amy mcgrath loses she will walk away i think

they raised like 12 million dollars this quarter they out raised mcconnell they out raised booker booker just hit his first million he He just hit a million dollars total. I mean, it is astounding how much money she's made. But also astounding how she's done nothing with it. Literally nothing.

Oh, yeah. No, no. Like, to me, Charles Booker is much more visible at a fraction of the cost really oh yeah he has a fuck ton of earned media he's running a true people's campaign it's yeah but it does get it does show you again like anything else and this is the value of electoral processes it reveals class antagonisms and uh and you know facts and the fact that that campaign

can get so much money it means that there is still a very sizable liberal middle class in this country willing to put money into that sort of vision and that has to be reckoned with too because those are the people who are pushing for the nancy pelosi sweeping structural reforms of banning chokeholds which most fucking police departments i've already fucking done it doesn't matter you see the thing about police is they usually just don't they usually just do whatever they want to do they do whatever the fuck they want to do they want they don't even turn on their body cams they literally truly do whatever they want um just to just to hone in let me just say think about the juxtaposition of amy mcgrath and charles booker just in our tiny orb charles booker came to east kentucky met with a bunch of people had you know ate with people sit on porches came and appeared

like he came and was on our podcast um because we interviewed y'all interviewed him in your cabin like where we always record he came to us yeah our only interaction our only knowledge of amy mcgrath where we live it's that she her not even her her staff convinced a bunch of dying minors with black lung that they were going, that she was documenting a reenactment of their journey to D.C. where they went to try to convince legislators in D.C. that their lives, that they deserve to live. And people with black lung deserve to be invested in and deserve health care. people with black lung deserve to be invested in and deserve health care and she convinced them to reenact this journey that they took saying that she was making a documentary about it when it was for a commercial for her that's all we know about her local interaction i don't know i couldn't tell

you anything else i don't think she's been to eastern kentucky i don't know i couldn't tell you where she's been if she has who, who she's dealt with, nothing. Charles Booker came to Whitesburg twice. I ran into him on the street literally the second time. I was just like, hey, what are you doing here? He was just walking down the street. I was like, what are you doing? Tonight is Louisville City Council meeting where he's speaking.

Tomorrow he's trying to move stuff around so that he can come back to Whitesburg for our rally tomorrow night. Yeah, he's trying to move stuff around so that he can come back to Wattsburg for our rally tomorrow night. Yeah, he's cool. And he is on a fucking, he's on a dime. What is she doing with $12 million? Literally taking it and running. Probably stick it in her pocket if I take a stab at it. Did you all hear them ask her why she hadn't been out in the streets,

why she hadn't protested with the streets? Why she hadn't protested with anybody? I did, but I forget what she said. She stumbled around. She kept stuttering. I had some family things going on. Dinner. Scrabble.

We were putting a puzzle together. Oh my god. Oh boy boy well covid still very real people this is the thing people may why don't you just say that look people are gonna over the next few weeks they're gonna try to convince you that things are normal again that the protests and the looting and shit has died down that that COVID is not as big of a deal. All of the same dynamics that were born three months ago, all of the insanity that just avalanched down on us three months ago is all still with us.

But like everything else in capitalist society, they will try to convince you that it is not, that your life is a series of illusions and, you know, it is our job to sort of demystify all that. And insist that things are not normal. That they are not naturalized.

Y'all, my fucking Zoom died. I have no idea where it cut off. Oh, shit. Alright, well, let's That's a bummer. So y'all are going to have to wrap it up yourselves. Let's wrap it up. Sorry, dudes. Thanks for listening this week.

If you want to go to the Patreon and listen more, go to patreon.com slash stripbellyworkersparty. Well, well, well. And you can hear us more there, huh? And we'll see you in the funny papers you fucking reprobates all right peace out that sucks i have no idea where that cut off sorry