Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 160: Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Chronic Lyme

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

Our friend Katy (@itsbedtime_) joins us to talk about the postal service, the DNC, and what might happen in the coming months. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Katie, where are you in your hot attic? Well, we live in an apartment attached to our cousin's house, so it's my cousin's attic. It's his gaming room. So he has, like, three computer screens. Oh, is it like that? Oh, are you in one of those, like, cool racer gamer chairs? I don't know.

It looks like he got a new one back here. So I'm in the old one. Okay. Are the screens wraparound? Yeah. Oh, man, that's sick. Yeah. Where where y'all at where do you live uh woodstock connecticut it's the northeast corner it's like closest the closest corner of connecticut to boston gotcha yeah well it's so good to meet you you too i i'm i like the idea of like an old man you like you we're old and like you know our grandchildren are like

coming to receive wisdom from us and we're just like rocking in a gaming chair they do look comfortable i'm thinking about buying one i'm not a gamer like a computer gamer but i'm thinking about just buying one to sit in it on my front porch yeah you do sit on your ass a lot i need one for my sewing. Yeah. Doing a little Valor stealing, huh? Yeah. That's right.

Well, welcome to the show. This week, the week of August 19th or 20th, I guess. Joining us this week, we have our good buddy Katie from the great state of Connecticut. All the way from the quiet corner, they call it. Katie, how are you doing?

Doing okay, you know. We have power back, so I can't complain about anything anymore. Oh my god, did you have a power outage? It was like five or six days yeah it was girl yeah it was a rain-free hurricane it was just a windstorm that knocked everything out i've heard about these inland hurricanes say more about these well i don't think this was technically an inland hurricane this is a regular hurricane oh yeah that's right oh that's right y'all have some water up there

iowa was the what is it a direct derecho derecho something like that uh-huh oh yeah they've had those in west virginia yeah wild times well i'm so sorry i'm so glad you're back on i was out for five days in the spring and i've not recovered it's like honestly honestly i feel like i have like the trauma from it you do i'm sure you do it fucked me all the way up yeah yeah trying to like wash your hands you know with no water and stuff like that in a fucking pandemic yeah yeah with a one-year-old so that was see that, that's interesting. Y'all lost water with the electricity. I've never lost water with electricity.

Well, we're not on city water. I don't know how your water works, but we have well water, so you need a pump working. Same. They had to pump our water up and we would have water for like an hour after. Anytime the electric goes out, we have water for like an hour. Even if it flickers off, they have to come up here and reset the pump.

Infrastructure in this country is... It's all you need to know about it. It's just hanging on by a thread. Truly a thread. It's basically, this entire country is a rotting bridge, essentially. Did y'all see how in California, they've

had rolling blackouts for the last two weeks or so? Yeah. Oh, great. It's not like it's hot there or anything. Yeah. And they're having an even worse than normal drought, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, we haven't had rain in months.

I don't know if we're technically in a drought yet based on what we have in the reservoir, but I literally don't remember rain when we last had rain. It's pretty bad. Well, all it does here is rain, like, when we lost that rain. It's pretty bad. Well, all it does here is rain, I feel like. Yeah. Well, we are in a rainforest, so it really has been raining like six days straight. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Speaking of, I found a massive rhinoceros beetle. Oh, is that the decapitated one? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. We have rhinoceros beetle. Is that the decapitated one? Yeah. We have rhinoceros beetles here. I don't know if you guys knew this. That's its head. I don't even know what that is. It is a huge beetle. Look how big this thing is, Tanya.

Fills up your butt, you'd know what it was, Tanya. Yeah. I feel like I have stink bugs that size in my house. I saw a praying mantis this morning in the parking lot of Walmart, and there was a lady. I was pushing Noah and the stroller into the store, and this lady was like, there's a praying mantis right here.

And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And she's literally telling every single person. She's standing there waving people over to look at it and i was like that's terrence that is terrence yeah except it's with uh what is it some kind of mold he's always looking for some special mold slime mold he's standing around an inch of slime molds yelling i found some in north carolina a couple weeks ago and i was like inordinately freaked out like happy about it and everybody was like what the fuck is wrong with this guy is this like a rare mold or what it's not that rare it's just very interesting it's uh oh it's it's like um

remember that power Rangers movie? The villain was like Ivan Ooze. You know, you guys never watched that. I remember Ivan Ooze. I wasn't allowed to watch Power Rangers, I don't think. I remember Alex Mack. She would turn into Ooze. Oh, yeah.

Alex Mack is in Mad Men. The actress that played her. Did y'all know that? Yeah. what character? she plays Ken Cosgrove's wife oh isn't that weird? yeah well

isn't that weird an actress continuing to work well I'll just before we get too far from the praying mantis I think that they are a very good omen and you're you've probably got sunny days too far from the praying mantis, I think that they are a very good omen.

And you've probably got sunny days ahead after seeing that praying mantis. They scare the shit out of me, so I don't know. They're like my worst nightmare. They're freaking them. Because they look like animals or something. You know, like they're too big. And they have like facial features, you know. That always scares me.

It's praying mantis. It's like i feel like really lucky to see and stick bugs when's the last time any of y'all saw a stick bug when i was a kid i think yeah when i was a kid i think they're damn near extinct who knows i've not seen one in years well that's it like you can drive now that's what they want you to drive driving as a kid you drive when you drive as kid, you'd always get bugs on the windshield. How early were you driving? How early were you driving?

Well, not me. I wasn't literally driving. You miss the good old days when you were out smashing stick bugs on your windshield. Fast and Furious. That's right. That's what you're going to be talking about in your rockin' gamer chair. We still have a lot of bugs they're just like the worst Ones like ticks and

Mosquitoes Speaking of ticks I want to know everybody's Exact position On Chronic Lime Let's do this motherfuckers Let's do this Katie is actually the only person that lives in a Lyme region.

I literally live in the Lyme region. Lyme, Connecticut. Lyme, Connecticut. It came from Lyme, Connecticut. That's right. I don't know. Andrew had Lyme when he was younger. So that's my only real knowledge.

Tom and I talked about it on the episode last week. And I didn't think about it but like we had had plans to talk about the whole chronic lyme thing like a few weeks ago we sat down we recorded 30 minutes of it and then we were like this isn't gonna work and so then we just we never put that out we never put it out and never put that out. We never put it out. And so, after that, I... I feel like an asshole now. Yeah, like, and so, you know, I smoked a lot of weed and just kind of... I literally had the Mandela effect where I was like,

ah, we talked about it on an episode. Everybody knows the nuanced take on it or whatever. And then we just went in on it last week without any kind of, like, pretext or... And the DMs were indeed open open and people were not happy about it rightfully so listen i'll say this rightfully so if you're facing a vexing health problem

you probably don't want two assholes talking out of their ass about it so i will say okay i apologize the only point i want to make make is that what we're saying is that yes, I think you can have long-standing effects of chronic Lyme, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you still have an active infection. That's what I'm saying. I'm sorry. I don't give a fuck. I will go as

hard on this as I can. I do not care. Katie, buckle up. Wow. I was trying to be the diplomat. Tom was trying to be the diplomat. Tom was trying to be the diplomat. I feel like I know a lot of old men that have had Lyme, like, 15 times, and now they're just, like, in terrible shape. What? Yeah.

Around here, yeah. Like, yeah, my grandfather had, he was, like, in really bad shape towards the end, but he also had, like, so many other health problems, so I don't know if it was just that, but he had had it, like, ten times, you know, throughout his life. Wait, all from ticks? Yeah, I mean, because he was a carpenter and, like, you know, I know a lot of farmers and stuff. Yeah.

Oh, my God. So, I don't know if you get it, like, multiple times if it's worse. Yeah. Yeah. And, Tom, you were saying that our ticks around here aren't known for Lyme disease? No, they don't care. We have Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but we don't have Lyme ticks. What is that?

Rocky Mountain spotted fever is nothing to fuck with either. That sounds terrible. It's not good. Well, if you think you have it, just go get a Reiki energy treatment. Are you? Just go get a Reiki energy treatment. Are you? Because that... I feel like I've texted Terrence that I think I have Lyme,

but it's just I'm old and I have some creaky joints. True. But yes, Terrence is right. If you do have those problems, go visit the wife of Dr. Mehmet Oz, TV's favorite doctor. She does Reiki treatments that cures Lyme. I personally think Reiki is bullshit, but as a treatment for chronic

Lyme, I think it's A+. It's the best treatment for anything to keep people off of doing antibiotics for 10 years. Is that the treatment for Lyme disease? No. No, it shouldn't be, but this is the thing about chronic Lyme. People

who think they have chronic Lyme demand from their doctor that they be put on antibiotic regimens for years. What? That's so scary. Well, it's also why that you can't really cat around anymore as a single man, because we're down to only two antibiotics to treat gonorrhea. So the chronic Lyme community is fucking up my social activities. That's right. Sweet love of God. Okay. Alright.

So anyways, I wanted to get that out the way and say I'm not sorry. People were expecting an apology probably. Well, for the record, Tom did apologize so we're 50-50 and I don't have to because I wasn't here for it. I stand by that i'm a sweet boy katie and i are innocent yeah yeah i'm sympathetic so you know people no i'm

sympathetic i mean i i'm sympathetic to having an illness you don't know what it is yeah but uh is it chronic lyme it's probably just like fibromyalgia or something. They just need to smoke weed. Yeah, smoke weed. This is coming from a man who suffers from chronic tight ass. Yeah, chronic tight ass. I suffer from a chronic condition, so I get to say this. I've earned

my right in the identity field to say this. That's true. My man still got extra time on his SATs for that tight ass. He should have got a goddamn left-handed chair for that tight ass. Okay.

Alright. Well, now that we've painted a portrait of America that is a landscape filled with rolling blackouts, ticks everywhere, diseases that you don't know what they are, where they come from, or how to treat them, let's move on to the topic du jour. I'm speaking, of course, about the post office. Katie, we wanted to have you on because you're a former postal worker.

I used to work at a UPS store, so I'm kind of a postal worker when you really think about it, man. When you really think about it. I used to sell postal services anyways um so that there's there's a lot of things to talk about here i mean it kind of feels like in the last couple days the trump administration has kind of walked back their original sort of aggressive stance on all this but um you know maybe it would behoove us to kind

of go back and provide a little bit of a timeline for why everybody is freaked out about the post office right now does that make sense yeah yeah i mean and and it like a timeline would be great, because we were frantically buying stamps months ago. Were you storing them up, or were you trying to support the post office? Both, I guess. I don't know. I mean, people were demanding that we support the post office by buying stamps months ago. Right. This has been a summer tale, a was summer story uh the joy was appointed in

june so that would have been may oh was it may okay yeah no you're you're both right it was it started off with a low rumble back in april so what happened was covid um you know essentially like every other business made post office business go down so i believe they actually even declared bankruptcy where they they went to congress with the request for a bailout um they got 10 billion dollars under the cares Act bailout or whatever, which sounds like a lot, but apparently, you know, as opposed to like the airline industry, which serves a fraction of the, you know, amount of citizens that the Postal Service does, I think the airline industry got like $60 billion

or something like that, like American Airlines did or something like that. And so they, the, and the Postmaster General at the time requested $89 billion, but they got $10 billion. And Trump famously was like, we're not going to bail them out, folks. We're not bailing out the Post Office. So, which I can't tell. Royal Diamond cruise is sure

right well bail out the cruise industries in the airline industry but not the post office um so that's why i think when it first started and people were thinking like oh this isn't good there's an election coming up like and we're not gonna bail out the post office people are gonna want to mail in their ballots um but um so but then fast forward to may a month later and that's when uh what's his name lewis lewis de joy was appointed postmaster general. He apparently is a big funder of Trump. He gave him almost half a million dollars in 2016. Oh, fuck. I missed that. Yeah, he has his own logistics company

called New Breed Logistics. It provided logistics services to Verizon Disney and Boeing his wife Aldona was his wife has a Thomas Pynchon character's name Aldona was she is ambassador to apparently, and she was ambassador to Estonia under Bush. But together, he and his wife claim a total of $75,815,000 in assets from USPS Postal Service competitors. Oh, my God. One thing I love about this country is, like, we always put the people in charge of the agencies they're trying to destroy.

Right? Yep. No, I mean, literally, like DeVos, like... Rick Perry. Rick Perry. I mean, you name it. At this point in time, every agency has at the head of it somebody who's invested in its construction. It's hostile to it.

So there's a few things to unpack here. So this is the context for it. And if you wanted to go even further back, you could. You could go back to 2006 when Congress voted to require the post office to start pre-funding its retirement accounts for 75 years. No private business in this country has anything remotely close to that. It was an absurd requirement but i think the 2006 law made it even more impossible for the i mean prior to that the postal service was actually turning a profit but i don't think they turn a profit anymore right that's why everybody was

buying stamps right right well there's i got a little intel on why they're not turning profit anymore if anybody wants to hear what's the end i've been waiting to flex this a little bit because i did my homework for once 2006 congress took a vote on a number of things involving the post office one of which is that they required the usps to pay out the pension system 75 years in advance, which is completely ridiculous and unheard of. I just said that. Huh? He just said that.

I'm tacking on to another. Okay, all right. Yeah. Still on my thunder, man. Anyway. He knew it independently, Terrence. I knew it before you, man. Anyway. He knew it independently, Terrence. I knew it before you said it. Anyway.

I guess, right, that, like, what they're dead is is almost to the dollar what it would have cost to pay the pension system out. Okay. Like, what, I mean, what they're in hock now. Right. So basically they are not turning a profit at all, is what you're saying. Or basically they would be solvent if that had not been the case. Right, correct. Got it.

Okay. Well, and then if you wanted to go back even further, and Katie, you might be better to talk about this than i i am but in 1970 the post post office was reorganized and that's when it was like semi-privatized right right correct yeah right after the um the 1970 strike as part of the um the resulting agreement of that strike was that it wouldn't it would no longer be a federal department with a, with the leadership as a cabinet position in the administration, which is, so that's what it used to be.

And then with the reorganization act, it, um, uh, it became semi-private. So under the jurisdiction of legislation and like control, like some of, um,

like prices always have to be approved by congress and things like that but right the funding is as though it's a independent corporation right yeah um so yeah so basically what the post office is facing right now is like two simultaneous crises one of which is political and the fact that it's being hobbled to the extent that it can't remain viable. It's not turning a profit, and so it's intentionally being kneecapped, it feels like. And there's probably a lot of different reasons for that. I mean, to me, the most obvious reason is that there's other competitors that want in on their market.

I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Amazon contract with the Postal Service? Yeah, all the major shipping companies do, but Amazon's the biggest one. And so they, like a huge portion of their budget is through their contract with Amazon. of their budget is through their contract with Amazon. So even they're not solvent, but even what they do make is hanging on by a thread, which is Amazon could pull out of that at any moment, and that would cripple the post office. So their competitors are vying for this Amazon contract?

No. Or basically the USPS is sort of beholden to Amazon. Yes. Yeah. To keep it solvent. Right. Exactly. Well, yeah.

So I think a big issue here is for rural areas, right? Because the postal service guarantees that it'll deliver anywhere in the United States. Whereas a corporation like Amazon is like, well, if it's not profitable, go fuck yourself. Or UPS or whoever. DHL doesn't dare show its head around these parts. FedEx won't even come to my house.

FedEx won't? They drop my shit off at my neighbor's house. FedEx is very... Go ahead. In fairness, you live up a narrow gravel road at a 45 degree incline. Excuse me. Letcher County fucking trash truck gets its ass up here. Yeah, they've been driving a little bit longer than FedEx, man, who comes about once a month.

Well, that's one thing that the post office does is they do that last mile delivery. So if FedEx wouldn't go to your house, they would just pay the postal service to deliver it that last section. They got the chains on the tires. Part of

I think another reason why the postal service is being-capped by conservatives, or especially at this time in 2006, is that compared to all these other private logistics providers, the pay and the benefits are better, as far as I understand. Yeah, far better. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some UPS workers are unionized as like

a lot there's like teamsters and stuff like that but um but i mean pay with the postal service is incredibly good it's a living wage even as even at the entry level so you know this is pretty fast i don't know if this is still the case, but when I was working for, quote-unquote, UPS, FedEx, what I found out is that FedEx drivers aren't unionized because a FedEx driver sets up its own route, basically like a franchisee. So basically, you have your own route, and you're like the franchise owner of that.

So it basically keeps you alienated from all the other delivery drivers no shit yeah isn't that fucking crazy which means i can probably bid that out yeah probably if i got a job with fedex then i would pick my territory and that would be my territory yeah you piss on everything everywhere you go. You piss on every doorstep in a four-mile radius. So, yeah, it seems like there's a few things going on there. Yeah, the wage and the benefits thing, and then also the competition thing. benefits thing and then also the competition thing um and and then uh but then like there's another sort of crisis that the postal service has been facing which is covid obviously and this is a big reason why there's been all these um mail delays and other complications with getting

things delivered in the past couple months um And so that's kind of the situation that Louis DeJoy walked into. Do you have a number on how many postal workers are out, like either for quarantine or because they're actually sick? So I read the most recent thing I saw was I think 3,000 or or four thousand postal workers had COVID and then like another five or six thousand were quarantined from it. Wow. So like they are they are extremely at risk for COVID.

Yeah. Obviously. I mean, they they handle this stuff that everybody else does. And so I think that that's been a big thing um but so i think that the reason this kind of elevated to like a fever pitch though in the last week or so was because the election is uh just around the corner um but also there's been a few instances in other states where they've been doing mail-in ballots, and it's just been a total disaster. So

I'm trying to look at this article. Well, Kentucky was a big disaster too, but we can't blame it on the Postal Service. Yeah, you can't say anything about that at all, actually. You're not allowed to mention that. That's worse than the Dolly Hive.

The Bashir Hive is almost just as bad. Yeah, we got a lot of sick tickets in this state. MSNBC just did a story, just ran a story about the Kentucky, how bad the Kentucky mail-in ballot situation was, because they tossed out thousands over signatures. Wait, wait. I lost you guys for that whole thing. I don't know what happened. Oh, sorry. Can you hear us? No kidding.

It was nothing important, I can assure you. Okay. Nothing I say is worth repeating. We're back talking about the rhinoceros beetles, all you missed. I think we're good. Okay.

It might help if I might turn off my camera for a little bit. Just to open up the bandwidth, if you know what I'm saying. If you catch my drift. Gotcha. So I was reading this article in ProPublica. I don't know if you guys read that publication. That's journalism in the public interest. That's right. And they were kind of going down the list of all these recent elections where all these ballots were missing.

There's one in Ohio where 317 ballots were missing. There's one in Ohio where 317 ballots were missing. There's one in, I think it was Wisconsin or Michigan where like a thousand ballots were missing or something like that. This is already sort of setting itself up to be a pretty big disaster. And perhaps the realization of that is what sent the libs into freak out mode in the last week and then it was accompanied with all these photos on twitter of like post office boxes

being removed and hauled away and some of them being chained up. Post boxes being shot in an alley, you know. Yeah. Vigilante justice, what it sounds like. Masked graves of post office boxes. Blue box on blue box crime. My man Rex Chapman took some heat over sharing a fake photo this week. I saw that. He did.

Man, let Rex be. I saw that. He did. Man, let Rex be. I mean, who among us hasn't posted something bullshit? The fake photo in question was, I believe, a bunch of mailboxes chained up. And somebody said, you know, there's actually slots on the other side. He just walked around.

Walk around. He just walked around the other walk around yeah well the funny part was he just said this is what fascism looks like he really he really hammed it up you know hey i've done it i've done it ain't gonna shame in it rex um so so i think that was, uh, you know, that, that it's kind of created this atmosphere where you're not really sure what's real and what's not real. Um, you know, and in this situation, it's like, are they trying to steal an election? Are, are they doing it successfully? Are they doing it poorly like i don't know what's going on and so i don't know i think that maybe we uh maybe i can open up the

floor here a little bit and and see what you guys think about this because um i i don't know it's like like i said it it is something that we should be outraged about, but at the same time, it's been going on for a while, just like every other bad thing in America. Yeah, I mean, it's like liberals really have only started caring as soon as it seemed like a partisan issue when, you know, there's ongoing actual, you know, like a labor crisis and a funding crisis that they helped cause, but as soon as there's a partisan effect, you know, it's, for someone on Twitter was saying, like, you know, Libs only, like, freak out about how much they love something, like, right as they're causing it to go away, you know? Yeah. And telling their response to it, too,

was, like, to try to, like, bake sell their way out of it. I saw somebody describe it on Twitter. Bake sell their way out. Everybody go buy a roll of stamps this weekend you know what i mean it's just like yeah did you know the usps has merch you can get a t-shirt we love a fucking hoodie yeah forever 21 had a usps line that's for real that is insanity that usps got no kickback from i'm sure yeah oh i'm sure not i know let's let's mail a bunch of more letters and clog up the postal service and that will really that will really help yeah right isn't that just really a attack on workers for just like oh

this uh this this already crumbling government infrastructure that's put thousands of people in the face of death for bills and shit to arrive to our homes. Oh, my gosh. I mean, and I think part of why they just get to this hysterical level and then you don't know what's real or not because they never actually knew knew how the postal service worked so they're they're simultaneously learning how the post office actually works as they're freaking out about it not working so you know mundane things about the postal service become like you know like retiring an old machine you know which is sometimes part of procedure you know every now they're freaking out about it without the context of sometimes that does happen but you know at the same time they are decommissioning way too many of them so but there's like no nuance because it's just they

they're just learning how it works yeah we didn't have any libs freaking the fuck out when they were shutting down just there was a massive shutdown maybe six or seven years ago of rural post offices. They shut down my post office at that time. Irvine. Oh, Irvine. I had an Irvine box back in the day. Well, I mean, so that kind of gets at an interesting thing here which is the sort of like lib idea that if you go buy a bunch of stamps or like tom said bake sale your way out of it that you can

save it and it seems to miss the point that the issue here isn't that it's insolvent it is insolvent but buying a bunch of stamps isn't going to change that like making it profitable isn't going to change that because it is being intentionally politically kneecapped and and so again it kind of feels like one of those things where um the libs kind of latch on to the surface features the surface level features of the thing without interrogating what's actually happening behind the scenes that make it that way um and so in that environment uh everything becomes conspiratorial right and so it's like you were saying katie like they see these machines being retired or whatever, which happens in the postal world, that other dimension that we don't know about, the postal world.

I'm glad we're getting a peek behind the curtain with Katie today. That's right. But, yeah, but, you know, it's kind of like the Russia thing or anything else, really. Like, if it fits your specific sort of conspiratorial outlook, then it is immediately cause for hysteria and all this. I mean, it is a serious thing that we should be talking about, like, if they're going to steal the election or not. But I think kind of like what I'm starting to think, and I don't know, I'd be interested to hear what you guys think about this. But I think what I'm kind of starting to think is that like even if the Postal Service was operating just fine, the results of this election in November are not going to be accepted by a lot of people. Like, I don't know.

There's two things. Like, I don't know. There's two things. One is that I don't even know if the results are going to be legitimate. Like I was just telling you about all these lost ballots in these other states where they've done this. But then the second thing is that people aren't going to accept whether it's legitimate or not. It just every time I start reading anything about it, I start immediately getting anxiety because I was like, everything feels like such a mess and i don't even know what's going on i don't know yeah i mean if it if it is a if there is a large percentage of mail-in ballots no matter what one party is gonna claim that there's some kind of miscount so even if everything is working perfectly smoothly no matter what the result i i totally agree that that's what i've been that's what I've been expecting to happen. Right. Because there's no like public trust and mail in ballots or very little, I think. Or it's at least like spun by politicians that it's unreliable, you know, that it's like kind of a myth. But I don't know about the missing ballots that you're referring to.

You know, it's like kind of a myth, but I don't know about the missing ballots that you're referring to. I didn't read specifically about that, but historically it's extremely, absentee ballots are extremely reliable in terms of like no fraud or basically, or they find and prosecute every instance of fraud. Yeah. I think what it is, is the reason that they've been having problems with all these absentee ballots and everything yeah for the same reason that everything is kind of hobbled and just barely tied together which is covid and you know you've got people having to cover other shifts i mean like i mean you know you worked for the post office. It's pretty grueling work. Yeah. Do it, you know. Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

Like, even without a bunch of people out from COVID, I mean, there was already, like, a staff shortage in the postal service, like, partially intentionally. And so I can't imagine what, like, the work level is right now. So, yeah, I guess that does make sense that there would be more missing stuff but they have to like cobble together like finishing routes anyway on a in a good year you know so it's got to be a disaster in there i don't know i would not want to be working there right now right well it is another feature of this weird thing where it's like the libs want to talk about, you know, thank your postal service worker. You know, hug your postal service worker. Suck off your postal service worker.

Give your postal service worker COVID. They're drawing their postal worker as Superman and Wonder Woman. Might well have doing that shit. But they're not, I think you made this point on Twitter the other day, Katie, like, they're doing that, but they're doing, again, they're doing the classic lib thing where it's like they're not actually,

they don't care about the actual working conditions. If they cared, they wouldn't have fucking you know, went along with the 2006 bill or whatever that has caused a lot of these problems yeah i saw a really weird take the other day and like a take it was like a new york times article um and they were saying um like uh they were trying to quell people's like anxiety and paranoia about people's ballots not getting delivered. And they were saying they deliver, you know, five times as much mail during Christmas.

So, you know, you can have faith in the Postal Service that it'll get this done. It's like, but the thing is, they hire entire fleets of extra staff during Christmastime. That's, like, one thing. And now we're down postal workers. So I don't really know what their point was with that. Actually, it could be a huge disaster because there's not even close to the number of staff as there is during Christmas time.

And Christmas completely runs on overtime, which they're cutting. And it runs on multiple trips out, which they decided that they can't do anymore. And so, you know, so it's not really comparable because the entire Postal Service is almost reorganized for Christmas. Right. And, you know, I'm not sure. It doesn't I don't have a lot of faith that they're completely reorganizing it for the election.

Obviously, it's the opposite that's happening. So they all they are. They are reorganizing for the election but not to make it efficient it's organizing yeah yeah well it does present a very um i don't know it does present some sort of sort of questions and things it's like what are the libs going to do if because like i think one of the reasons why they're scared about this is that a lot of these mail-in ballots are going to take a couple weeks i mean with the shortages staff shortages and with changing routes and all these other changes um they're going to take a few weeks to get in and be counted. And so I think it's like six weeks between

election day and when the electoral college actually announces the winner of the election. And so I think what they're worried about is if all of those mail-in ballots will be in before December 15th or whatever that day is that they announced the winner. And I think that the picture that's emerging for me, and especially after watching the DNC, or I didn't really watch it. I kind of, you know, just checked in and out over the last two days. two days um i think the picture that kind of emerges is that trump is going to use you know who knows what's going to happen if he's going to win or lose win by landslide lose by landslide or whatever but i feel like trump is going to sort of make it as he's gonna they're gonna muddy the waters as much as possible to um to make it look like oh the whole thing is illegitimate i won and so you know again like watching the dnc the last couple days it's like are the liberals gonna do anything

about that like are do they even have the ability and if they did what would they even do like it feels to me like they're like they just don't really even give a shit and i don't i don't know i well if 2000 if al gore is any precedent then you know they're just they're just they're afraid to advocate for themselves you know what i mean like right the man basically just gave away an election that he almost certainly won absolutely won right yeah so it's like you know there's precedence for them just punting on these things so yeah i could see i could see joe just being like well he put in a good fight and uh you know good luck to him well they have every reason to avoid having to solve a pandemic yeah because they are as incompetent as anyone, as they well know.

And they can instead just raise money claiming that they would do a better job when we all know they wouldn't. Man, what'd y'all think about that guy in that goddamn squirrel suit singing, stop children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. A squirrel suit?

You know, like he looks like the guy, who was that profile encouraged was it billy porter yeah i don't know it was that video right yeah yeah billy's really lost his way he was great at post billy really showed up for us in post but he's really lost his way i have like the dnc has made me complete like has completely unmoored me from reality. Every night, the last couple nights when I see what's going on, I have such a hard time being grounded in reality because it's so absurd. It's beyond absurd. I've avoided it completely.

I have no interest. It's literally 50% Republicans and a handful of war criminals just a big big party for them that sounds right yeah yeah uh i mean i kind of wanted to talk to you a little bit about it like because colin powell spoke yeah that's that's the one that really got me that's got me i'll tell you what's a shame honestly is that this whole uh strategy of appointing someone who wants to completely dismantle what they're over we haven't applied to the military and isis yet because this is a you know this could be a winning strategy for the left if applied correctly in the right places but alas here we are.

Yeah. Well, I mean, so yeah, Colin Powell spoke, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the coward of the Bush administration, the guy that they got to go plead the war case to the UN under completely false pretenses, and he didn't even have the backbone or spine enough to, like, buck up to them and say, like,

there is no, you know, you're making me go do this with zero evidence. And so, like, he gets up there, and his speech was just totally, like, at the DNC. His speech was totally without substance. It was just basically, like, I'm an American. My grandparents are immigrants. Like, they came to this great country.

And I've had a great career in Vietnam, which, by the way, he helped cover up the My Lai Massacre. He, you know, and then, you know, prosecuted the first Gulf War and then the Iraq War. And I mean, like this is the this is a guy whose entire career has been marked by war crimes. And so, you know, he gets up there and he's like the guy in the white house is uh because they won't name him right they they can't even bring themselves to say his name they're so dramatic yeah exactly they're so dramatic um like by every metric, the Bush administration was more violent, more disruptive, more bloodthirsty, you name it, than the Trump administration. But now, just because they don't like the gross guy, the mean, nasty guy. He's mean and nasty.

They are more than willing to befriend the the bush people you know the night the nice and respectable republicans and i i feel like that was kind of the vibe i got from the dnc that like yeah these we are the nice republicans you can vote for us i i i don't know i'm with you katie i. I've been completely sort of unmoored from it. And I've been asking myself, like, why do leftists think that the Democrats... I mean, is it because they're a little closer to us on the political spectrum? Like, what was the underlying premise there? Why did we even think that that was something we could...

Like, why even the Democrats? Like, why not? Yeah. Why did we think that was something we could Like why even the Democrats Like why not Why did we think that was something we could like take over Or influence I mean it's assuming A lot of sincerity On the Democrats part which is I think Way too generous You know that they actually care about any kind of progressive

Policy I mean I don't want to be too Harsh on socialists but it's yeah it's extremely naive all we do on this show did y'all see and i guess just because i work in this but did y'all see how that like you know like even noam chomsky was saying something like uh well if we're talking about saving the planet joe biden does have the most progressive like environmental platform of any democratic candidate in history and then just like under the cover of darkness the democrats took uh new fossil fuels just like just kind of let's just scrap that out of the out of the platform no new fossil

fuels and it's like this is what like sierra clara where i work this is what they were saying like they were they were making the case to all these people who were raising concerns about like joe biden's sexual assault allegations and all this stuff saying well he does have the most progressive platform in terms of environment and it's like man y'all fucking bite on anything yeah i mean it's just like it's a very like infantile understanding of our political system that there's a right wing and a left wing, and we're more closely aligned to the left wing, and that it's all about partisan politics when it's also about business interests, to bring it back to the post office,

that this crisis isn't just, oh, Democrats are trying to have a fair election while they're dismantling the post office through policy. I don't understand why you would just assume that they're these good faith political actors who have the same business interests as Republicans. I mean, we all know this. I'm saying very obvious stuff.

But it's believing in that partisan politics are on its face something to engage with i don't know no well you're right i think it's like because we thought they were closer to us in terms of politics we thought we could sort of morally reason with them or something or appeal to their sense of morality and uh and so but the unfortunate part about it is that there's no mechanism of sort of like leverage or of actually like um trying to pressure them to uh bend to our will and so at the end of the day it basically just became us being like why won't you let us have this and

why would i why would i you know yeah i think i mean i think another thing too is i mean i think we're seeing it with kamala is like i think unfortunately a lot of socialists do let um liberal identity politics kind of um i don't know kind of influence their perception of the party and, you know, believing that representation matters and stuff like that. And I do think that it doesn't get everyone. It doesn't like catch everyone in that in its net. But I do think it catches some people, you know. Yeah, definitely. Well, I mean, you see how facile or you see how ultimately just like shallow that is if it can catch within it also war criminals. I mean, like obviously the Democrats are war criminals. Again, we've all known this.

But it's, I don't know, it's just this weird, it creates this weird disorienting effect where you're like, on one hand, you're like, well hand you're like well you know we should we are aligned on some things politically but then at the same time you're like oh yeah I forgot that these people are actual war criminals. It's the absurd logical end of like the Big Ten theory

you know that like oh if we align on something really really general that we can work through all of our other problems, you know. But then they keep expanding the tent to include Republicans.

Well, it seems like that's what they're I mean, and yeah, I don't know if, Tom, if you watched any of it, but it does seem like that's the strategy they're going to go with. we all joke about how in the run-up to the 2016 election they you know the famous Chuck Schumer quote about you know picking up white suburban wine moms in the suburbs of Philly at the expense of blue-collar workers in Pittsburgh but it and they did, they did go with that in 2016, but now it feels like it's cranked up to 11.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know, I don't know if you guys feel that way or not, but it does feel like they are just out and out admitting it, like, oh, we are the nice Republicans now. You know what I mean? Like, you can vote for us now. We don't even have a pretense of progressive. Yeah, it's like, they

see these guys winning elections, and it's like they see these guys winning elections and it's like okay that's what we want to be like we're just going to copy what they're doing now right and they're forgetting that like the reason that republicans win elections is because that like people want to vote for the real thing and not some sort of facsimile like weird uh tag along that's just doesn't really stand for anything and it's just so I don't know it's just so fucking strange that you could just

look at the tea leaves over the past four years and you think that like no let's just double down on what like beat us in 2016 yeah I just can't help thinking but it's just like the whole democratic strategy is i don't even know another word word for it than like paternalistic it's like they just are obsessed with the notion that they know better and that they have a moral high ground yeah um

i just i always think about the debates between trump and Hillary and how Hillary would stare into the camera with this face she had obviously practiced to look like Jim from The Office or something, you know, just like. Can you believe that? Can you believe this guy? Right, right. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, you know, like, and Republicans have a militant political program that they're, you know, trying to enact, and that's what gets them in office.

And this is just revealing that that is not the Democratic strategy. no like no policy program or platform and just to secure positions for no just to secure positions for the sake of having positions of power not to enact anything in particular yeah they it's like they have no interest in making anyone's life better but their own right right and god forbid they say something that they can't roll back yeah yeah so who the fuck cares if they have if they have war criminals and you know colin powell and at their convention they don't they don't care you know if it gets them in office which it probably won't you know we're hearing so much right now about how kamala and biden they're not great now but we can move them. We can.

This literally never happened in the history of anything. Never. No. There's literally no precedent for moving any elected official to the left. And there's a lot of precedent for reaction, which is what we're seeing right now. They're just moving to the right. Yeah. Running.

The platform is more to the right than it was seven days ago. Yeah. Seven minutes ago. you're right it's weird because they what they've done is they've put together a coalition and what they've done is they've hinged like their hopes on combining the sort of millennial as entrepreneurs said who are convinced that they like push joe to to make kamala the vp and they're combining that with like the 2008 like sort of like uh obama era like older democrats that like are kind of like outdated and have been discredited but they think those are the two like factions of the party to put together instead of like you know the, the Bernie people with that. Well, I mean, it could,

this is something I've been struggling with because as I've tried to interrogate the Bernie thing and where it actually went wrong, the entire theory of it was premised on the idea that if you give people the choice of these universal programs in electoral form if you give them the choice to vote for it then they'll vote for it because that's what they need and the underlying problem with that there's a lot obviously one of them is the fact that very few of them vote uh you know very few americans vote in general but i think another obvious problem with

it is that the democratic electorate is just not there um really i mean some of them are a lot of them probably are but i think in their minds they triangulate that by like they want to vote for who they think is going to win and so i think at the the end of the day, they thought that Bernie's thing would scare the mass of the masses of the voting electorate. And so like what I kind of go back and forth on, I'm like, could the Bernie thing have even worked anyways, if given a chance,

like, I don't know. But there's another thing i do you guys follow uh osita noavenivu no do you know who that is on twitter he writes for the new republic um he's really good but he had a really good tweet i saw yesterday um he said i'm not really sure how a country that can't manage keep things closed so people don't get sick and give them money is supposed to enact and implement meaningful climate policy. I did see that. But I suppose we better keep hoping it can.

No, yeah, no. even the Bernie platform was based on this idea of these social democratic reforms that would require some sort of regenerative impetus in the American populace. Like Medicare for All, Green New Deal, these things that need mass support. And I think that his point is that america is too fractured for that it's too fragmented like you there's no way you could even get mass support for these things anymore and our failure to control the virus is a pretty good pretty good proof and evidence of that and so kind of like i feel like what i've been feeling the last couple days it's kind of more sort of like well we

were going to be fucked even if we were able to elect bernie as the candidate because i don't know if bernie would have been able to implement any of these things anyways it doesn't seem like the country's there it seems like the country just wants to rip itself apart and just go down the tubes and so i kind of feel like where i've been at the last couple days is like the left needs an entirely new approach to how it views uh america like and especially how it views political change and i guess if your idea of political change is you know putting forward these mass programs of universal appeal and then putting them up in the electoral realm as referendum that might be flawed i mean and it might not be though too i don't know i mean i just feel kind of like the virus and our inability to stop it kind of

just hints at the fact that like there's no social cohesion anymore there's no way to implement any of those kind of policies anymore now it's just either you're going to get it from the top down or we're all just going to rip each other apart but i've been finding a little bit of peace in that personally in the sense that like there's nothing we could have done anyways maybe you know what i mean like maybe this was the only outcome i don't know i mean even even like aside from him being able to implement things or not what if we had had this mail-in election with bernie as the democratic candidate and a socialist one with a bunch with all like or nearly all mail-in ballots like there would have been even more so than Joe Biden winning,

I feel like a reaction that would be really horrible. You know, even if it was legitimate from an objective standpoint. So that could have been catastrophic, you know? Right. No, I mean, that's the only thing I've been able to tell myself watching the DNC that like, we were probably doomed to failure anyways. The support we thought was there wasn't actually there. And really I've been more, more than anything else, I've been, you know,

really ruminating on this impulse among the left especially towards myth making and you see this with dolly and everything else but just like the the sort of like wholesale you know fabrication of things that are not there it's just not true yeah sorry no no no i was gonna say that too and it's in terms of theory of change, it's like I think I think some leftists kind of fall into thinking that just because something just because the working class has a universal interest, does it mean that every member of the working class understands that interest and it's our job to make those interests clear but if you don't do that work it's not just going to magically become popular you know well medicare for all is popular like objectively but um but you know what i'm saying like in terms of electing a socialist or you know um implementing other universal policies obviously lots of americans act outside of their own interests

because it's not like an inherent mental practice. You have to learn about politics, and you have to understand what your class standing is and understand what your class interests are. Unless you're born in West Virginia, and then you just come out as a coal-mining communist. Yeah. Oh, that's like... out as a coal mining communist yeah i honestly not me i was born perfect with perfect political awareness so this myth making for me is really just a sign of a people of people just at the

end of our ropes like people are grasping at anything to hang on to right now because we are staring down the barrel of so many overlapping crises you know we've talked before about the dna helix of crises right now um and we're going to see more we're going to see more of people creating fantasy lands to escape to yeah and that's really what Dollywood has always been is a fantasy for hillbillies to escape to um that like really romanticizes um you know little kitschy things that they may consider nostalgic um and you know there's more of the country you know that we we grew up doing that and now more of the country is in desperation for uh fantasy lands um yeah even with the post office stuff like i all i'm seeing from like even socialists is like you know make make postal workers our army make like you know that they're these like shining beacons of sacrifice and heroism.

And, you know, the reality is working at the post office is a shitty, hard job, you know, especially now with the way, you know, the union is structured and things like that. Like, lots of little problems adding up. But it's a really difficult job that you're overworked and you're exploited and abused. And, you know, it's still a part of the American federal government to an extent, which is obviously currently a nightmare. Um, you know, and there's, there is like a, an investigative arm of the Postal Service that prosecutes people. You know, it's like this isn't some daydream. You know, they're not like the they're not communists.

They're not, you know, the people's army postal workers. It's like it's still a job and it's a company more or less. So I don't you know, that myth making is damaging because through this process of glamorizing the Postal Service, you're ignoring like serious labor issues that would need to change if we were like through the process of saving the postal service, you would need to enact a lot of different changes for it to actually be saved. And, you know, people are kind of wasting the opportunity to make an actual good service that doesn't exploit people, you because of this myth the myth making kind of stuff but and to that point too when you start getting into this like sort of thing where

you're valorizing certain professions now katie you're sitting with three veterans of the war on coal here right now what happened when we when when we started like valorizing coal mining to the level of like like how we would talk about or something not us but like how certain people would talk about like a purple heart-wounded veteran or something like that that actually puts the ball more into the reactionaries court i feel like more so than ours and so i just don't think that that's like an effect of like you know characterizing uh you know postal workers or whatever industry it is it's like wonder woman or spider-man or whatever is like not a strategy it's gonna work for us on the left

yeah well i think that this you know and i hate to bring it back here because it's a little trite but like i think it does speak to why it's important to read not just Marx, but any kind of sort of like leftist materialist theory. Because like essentially what we're talking about is the fetishization process. We're talking about turning one thing into something else. We do it every day. But I think it's probably like you're right, Tanya, it's going to become more pronounced, especially as the, you know,

quarantine and the pandemic goes on and we feel less and less like we're able to actually influence anything from politics to culture to anything. And so I think that that's part of the myth-making process. But yeah, no, I mean, that's all in Marx. That's right in the first chapter of Capital, the fetishization process, the turning of one thing into something else. And I think that's what I'm saying here is that, like, I don't know if we have to have like a concrete political program plan for the future uh I think right now you just have to have the right sort of analytical lens and the framing for it because it doesn't feel like anything's moving anywhere right now

I mean like we've been I mean I saw this tweet yesterday that talked about how people this blew my mind people have been protesting in Louisville for 85 days for Breonna Taylor's murder 85 days and the fact that like the powers that be can just withstand that and just not even respond to it and just be like that's nice keep doing your thing that that tells me that we have to develop some sort of, uh, new way of applying leverage to them. And I don't know what that is. I don't know, you know, obviously nobody's going to have that answer, but, um, it's funny the way you even think about it in pop culture. Like think about how like Muhammad Ali was talking about like not going to Vietnam versus last night I'm watching LeBron James in the pregame and he's, he's talking about Breonna Taylor. He mentions Louisville, Kentucky by name, and it's just not even like the same type of – I don't know if it's just the difference in the two climates, you know what I mean, or what it was,

but it's just there's something missing that gives us teeth, I guess you could say. I've been thinking a lot about that. I guess you could say I've been thinking a lot about that I think that like kind of in democracy's sort of earlier days they were really freaked out probably for good reason as a result of like the French revolution and everything by like large crowds and protests they were like oh shit we gotta actually respond to this and then in the last 30 or 40 years they were like oh wait we don't actually have to respond. They just go home at the end of the day. Exactly.

Exactly. It's almost like there's like this first wave that comes in. And if they can survive it, then they know they don't have to do shit. That's why it's like the situation we find ourselves in, I feel like it's so dangerous because the stock market's going hammer. All these people are making a fuck ton of money while at the same time half the damn country's out of work. Literally. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, this strategy of appointing someone totally incompetent to run something, like, that's what's happening here in Kentucky.

Like, our attorney general has never been in court. The man's never, he's never led a trial. He's never been in court the man's never he's he's never uh led a trial he's never been in trial nothing um he's just like some you know law darling or some shit he honestly looks like he's in the sunken place at this point but um and then like you know who the even this is not just a republican strategy he's a republican but the dms are running. Amy McGrath, who has no idea how to do it. She's not a politician. She's a war criminal. They're running her to replace Mitch McConnell. It's like, these are just insane.

This is insane. It's no wonder that we are creating fantastical places to escape to. And honestly, I'm not even saying that's a bad strategy because we do have a lot of healing to do. like an unimaginable amount of healing at this point um and i don't know how best to do that but maybe it is on one of tom's um dream islands well no it's you know it's funny it's just like that well i mean i've referenced this a shit ton of times in the last couple months but it's like when we had hannah gays on we were talking about that that time period at the collapse of

the soviet union how they're like psychics and like you know like the tv psychics and in the soviet union and like fortune telling and like all these sort of like metaphysical things really exploded in popularity because people were looking for something to retreat into. Girl, I'm launching my tarot Patreon very soon. In Virgo season to ensure its success. Tanya's following suit with the Soviets.

I'm doing my part. Tanya, my birthday's next week. Maybe I should... Are you Virgo? Yeah. Hell of fucking Lou, yeah. Thank God. The Virgo season Are you Virgo? Yep. Hell of fucking Lou, yeah. Yeah, thank God. The Virgo season always attempts to heal the wounds of Leo season

every year. They're playing clean up. Yeah, Virgos play clean up really constantly all year long. I have no idea what she's talking about. Virgos are very detail- oriented hustlers I'm detail oriented but extremely

lazy well that could be your rising sign I don't know what that is well if I could just put a bow on this and we can start wrapping it up I just want to just by way of my own experience what

i've been experiencing in the last couple days um at the risk of sounding like too earnest on one hand but also maybe too irony poison detached on the other hand i'm trying to like thread the needle here um because on one hand i do feel completely demoralized and like there's nothing we can do. Like I don't know how many times I've found myself saying that in the last couple of days or weeks. Like we're fucked. Things are just, you know, going down the drain.

There's nothing we can do. But then on the other hand, when you say that, people are like, don't despair, organize, don't mourn, organize, like that kind of shit, which makes me cringe, so it must be cringe if it makes you cringe, um, but if there's, I don't know, I mean, if there's any sort of, like, uh, middle path there, I guess it's, um, you don't have to be doing something at all times, I don't, I mean, like, I don't know. Maybe people would disagree with that.

Like, maybe you should be joining an organization or something like that. But I think even more fundamentally important than that, it's, like I said, it's, Tanya would probably disagree, but I would say read. You know, try to understand what's uh happening right now and the only reason i say that is because there could be future situations where we might be able to influence something there are contingencies and and opportunities for political contestation that we might be able to influence i'm not totally anti-reading i support a smut read here and there yeah okay no you're

right you're right terrence and also another thing i would say is like despair is a totally fine thing to feel so long as you just don't habitually stay there but like when people like tried to like like strong arm you into adopting this stiff upper lip and all this kind of shit like you're no better than like the rising grinders or like even the fascists yeah yeah if there if there's anything to focus on it i mean it really is healing like we i mean this is a whole other episode i'm worried to even say it but like a lot of our organizing structures are not well and are falling apart because we ourselves need so much healing that we're not even able to create like organizing situations right now that are liberatory. So we just there's a lot to unpack. We need to heal.

We have healing to do. Yeah. And I do feel like, um, there, you know, through labor there, there are things happening. I, you know, the teachers unions are working really hard to try to organize around, not around doing remote learning instead of in person. Um, some of them more successful than others, but, um, you know, and the postal unions are, you know, they're pretty lame, honestly, politically. But they are attempting some kind of action that would have a little bit of influence. But anything that is happening in labor, it still feels like socialists are so, like the socialist left is so small and powerless. We are still kind of watching from the sidelines you know whatever labor decides

to do or not do um i i don't feel like we have a position of influence over them even remotely and i don't mean that in a cynical way i just just realistically you know and so yeah just it's a fact yeah and so just kind of like exploring that relationship and and modifying it i think over time that's that's usually my go-to. That's the thing to do, but I don't know. No, I think you're right, and I think that connects to the larger point I was trying to make a minute ago,

which is that you have to be able to study the past, and you also have to be able to look at what's going on right now through the kind of materialist lens so that you know when the opportunities are there to be able to influence them. Because if you're not looking for it, if you're not looking for, if you don't know what you're looking for, you won't know how to intervene and to influence them. And so it's entirely acceptable to not have any answers right now i mean uh things are so complicated and confusing i mean and dangerous and dangerous yeah exactly that it's it's i think

it's entirely reasonable to not have any answers and uh and so and so, if somebody tells you, fuck up, buddy, don't despair, organize. It's like, well, first, maybe there's a step between don't despair and organize. Like there might be a middle step there that we need to think about. So anyways, I don't know. I think that that probably about covers it. Is there anything else you'all want to cover as it relates to the post office, to the burning world,

and to the DNC? Where was Bernie at during the DNC? What's he up to? Oh, he endorsed Biden. I mean, I knew that, but did he speak at the DNC or anything? At a convention? I don't know, honestly. Did they have him?

Is he like a doorman or something? No, he gave a speech. He has to kneel on, he has to be on his hands and feet for everyone to step on him on the podium. That's his punishment. He's the step onto stage. Okay. There was a moment where he and his wife he was like ribbing his wife and everybody was like see how he treats women

oh my god Jesus Christ yeah if you're not done with the Democratic Party after this you are truly you have an infant's mind and you will never recover he will never grow

um I believe he opened the first night um and i do have to say you know i gotta give credit where it's due she's made some mistakes but and she is pretty cringe 95 of the time but aoc actually picking bernie as the nominee i I think that that was a pretty good move because it showed that she does fundamentally understand that there is a separate politics at work there, that you have to draw a line of demarcation between you and the liberals. And she got two minutes to speak.

She fought for it, and she got two minutes to speak, and that's what she used it for. And so I got to give her props for that. That was, I don't know. Far and away the most popular figure in your party, and you just relegate them to, like, garbage minutes. Yeah. Terrence, the reason you think AOC is cringe is because you hate fun.

You hate to have fun. I think it might be the fact that she does, like, eight-hour Facebook Live videos of, like, her drinking a beer. Again, you hate fun. And I happen to know that those live videos cut you off at an hour or so. Okay, fine. Fine. No comment.

Let's put a bonus. I gotta get back to the bargaining table. Yeah, Tom's gotta get back to the bargaining table but yeah tom's gotta get back to it good luck tom mother we gotta get mother jones here back to bargaining i have to fight like hell for the living drinking on instagram live i have to go sit quietly in my house because the baby's sleeping tiptoe in well thank you katie for joining us this week and we'd love to have you back Again soon Great to meet you

You too Tanya Alright well we will see you all later Later Patreon.com slash Trillbilly Workers Party Oh yeah I forgot Go to support us on the Patreon Patreon www.patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N

Dot com slash Trillbillyworkersparty thanks everybody we will see you next time see y'all i'll send you the audio here