Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 172: Stormin' Norman and the 10,000 Biker Coup

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

It's another week of begrudgingly covering the news. Is Trump attempting a coup? What can Biden's transition team tell us about the future? How will honest Americans like the MAGA Florist and Stormin' Norman fare under a repressive Biden regime? Tune in to find out... Tarence has a new article about Congressman Hal Rogers up at Dissent Magazine: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hal-rogerss-kentucky-kingdom Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Yeah, I did too. I did too. I'm sorry. I'm over here trying to help Tom find a synthesizer online for a relatively cheap price. What is a synthesizer again? Interesting question, Aaron. Very interesting question. Nobody knows.

That's the magic. Yeah. Nobody knows. That's the magic. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I got into this whole podcast game, and I barely know how to work this fucking mic, you know? Well, this is only the beginning.

Within a week or two, you will know how to run a MIDI cable from a synthesizer to your computer. Let's see. That's what I have a producer for. Right. Yeah. We should have invested in that. I mean, I was watching this podcast with Harmony Korean talking about, or not a podcast, like a little video or something. He was like, if you're making a movie, you should just make the whole thing yourself.

And if you have to spend money, you should spend it on a sound guy. Cause that's the one thing it's easy to fuck up and hard to get right. My dude, like when he's working on our shit, he starts to see, he talks about seeing like the, uh, the speech pattern is like a wave and he he's giving me all these floral sort of images. I'm just like, dude, as long as you slap them tracks together, man, and put that shit out there, I don't care, man. Go ahead. Yeah.

Nah, it is cool. It is pretty cool. Well, fellas, thanks for hopping on on such short notice. I feel like it's been a weird couple of days i mean i don't know to be honest like it feels like we just recorded our patreon episode yesterday so i mean like i guess maybe we're in this sort of liminal space where like things happen things are happening but nothing is really happening like you hear news of political developments but you don't really see the sort of results of any of them like i don't even there's

not even any good like good trump clips out right now like when's the last time you saw a trump clip because he's like locked up in the white house right now, refusing to concede to come out. So it's like we're in this weird stasis. We fell into a time hole or some shit. I don't know. In Leicester County, they've said that America has just elected its first Adolf Hitler, except his name is Joe Biden. Yo, did I tell you guys the day, I think it was the day after the election, I was driving on the highway. Now, I don't think I told y'all.

I was driving on the highway and there's this white pickup truck with an American flag draped on the back. And the woman, it was a woman driving, this white woman. And she wrote in a white marker on the back of her windshield, her back windshield, CNN bound for faith and justice. And like, when I tell you that shit, I was like, yo, should I be tailing this woman? Is she about to go become next like that?

She's gonna go take out Jack Tapper. Right? Because she was headed downtown. That's where the CNN center is. Yeah, man. In her eyes center is. Yeah, man. Determination in her eyes. Wow. Yeah, gripping the steering wheel, you know.

White knuckle. Jesus. Yeah, man. I think that, if anything, that's the one development, I guess, over the past couple days, is that his supporters in the Republican Party, well, I don't know what the Republicans are doing, but his supporters are increasingly getting mad. Right. Because they think the election's been stolen from them.

They're thoroughly convinced of this. Yeah. I don't know. My only gauge for this is there's an arcade in town that is publicly very pro-Trump. That's its whole thing. It's publicly very pro-trump that's its whole thing it's like a pro trump arcade and the guys that run it haven't been out there since saturday so i don't know what i don't know what they're up to hard to tell if they're plotting something or if they're just like tucking their tail between their legs and their prides hurt you know right yeah yeah yeah they just decided to sell the business and just stock up guns or

some shit yo joe biden his draconian taxes against our caves i don't understand like how that like i mean i don't know anyone can be i don't want to be uh hypocritical because last week we talked about like you know trump supporters and how they're not all terrible people but like tanya posted a i think it was a donut place man like mega donuts you know and then there's this arcade and it's just people with these like really like whimsical sort of professions and careers that are just like support this dude man like how do you own art how are you angry enough to support Trump and own an arcade? I don't understand that. It's incongruous, man.

It's like, you can't really, like, a guy that's part of his shtick is so rooted in hate. Like, just transparently. And you're just going to try to ascribe that to the happiest businesses around, you know what I mean? It's like Trump florist.

Trump toy store. Yeah, that's right. It has been a... You're right though, Aaron. This is a trend. This is something I've seen. It's... I don't know.

It's like they're they're trump themed regular businesses yeah i mean this i saw this actually when obama got elected too because somewhere in bushwick in brooklyn there's an obama fried chicken man like yeah can i can i ask a follow-up question? Yeah. Who owns that place? I don't know. That's the thing, man. I don't even know who owned it, dude. I mean, they might have been these Arab dudes. I think they were Yemeni, actually, that might have owned it.

But yeah, I don't know, man. I think that I was trying to get into the board, you know, in the whole society of the spectacle. Because, yo, I saw some images, man. I don't know. That picture that I showed y'all, that Norman Rockwell-like painting of Biden and Kamala, like, you know, like embracing. And then this fucking John Lewis and Elijah Cummings and rbg and fucking john mccain looking down at them and laughing and smiling and i was like yo this is insane i was like this is like literally the other side of the equation of like the fucking trump paintings the guy that does the trump paintings

where like he's being touched by like the founding fathers and frederick douglas and shit you know what i'm saying like it's yeah like john mcnaughton yeah exactly that's the dude it's just so trump's on a trump's on a like a harley davidson fat boy with melania hanging off the back and just got his coat i've seen that you're confusing him with you're confusing him with ben garrison no i think john m McNaughton has one of him on a hog, too. Like, in that style. Kind of in the style of, like, dogs playing poker. Yeah, yes, yes. That's what it is.

Exactly. Yeah. Like, it's, like, some real, like, Americana-type feel, dude. It's just, it's so bizarre. Like, I feel like reality is, like like splitting at the seams right now and like it's literally manifesting itself because we have this dude in the white house that doesn't want to come out and it's like all right which federal agency is going to be the one that like haul him out of the white house is the system even built for that shit like hell no y'all think

this i mean this is i guess probably the central thesis of this, but like, like, what do you think is going to happen with this? Like, is he going to get, like, Trump is too prideful to like, you know, have pictures of him like being drug out by his feet, like on the White House lawn, you know what I'm saying? But like, I don't know, he don't know he's not he's not gonna leave imagine if he just didn't physically leave and we were just all like okay i mean i don't think this little coup thing's gonna i mean i'm not trying to ring the alarm about that all i'm saying is that motherfucker ain't moving shit till january 20th yo i did see like a moving truck a u-haul truck outside the white house

there were pictures of that like a couple days ago but i mean yeah i don't know i think at this point no i i think at this point the market has already settled on biden being the next thing and has even started not that the market is some indicator of like what's going to happen politically because in 2016 i really did believe that wall street and the corporate elite would never let trump i don't know why i thought this i wasn't i was an idiot let it be you know unequivocally well because they like stability it's right seemingly like stability so all they want somebody who's like you know like chaos that's a good point yeah i guess that's it like you that you they like stability then they don't like you know bumps in the road that they can't see coming or something like that

i guess or or at least they they don't like you know social forces being unleashed that they can't keep a hand on in some way exactly i guess anyways i thought that this would happen in 2016 that because of that nature of the system that that they would never let trump win never and so now i kind of feel like several things happened at once you know biden was announced to have won and then like within two days they announced that you know pfizer had this new covid vaccine and and as a result and there's several things about this covid vaccine i mean one of which is that it has to be stored at like negative 80 degrees celsius and that's going to be really expensive and hard to roll out around the world. And also, most rural hospitals don't have the kind of cold storage facilities that could house that kind of stuff.

So right out the gate, there's all kinds of problems with it. Also, I think it's not even going to be a thing until, what, four or five months? Yeah, people are not going to get it until the summer. Right. And that's like the first wave, right? Yeah. We're probably looking at October 2021. Yeah, we're going to be in the second quarter, right?

Yeah, yeah. We're in the cheap seats on that one. Yeah, we... So, like that, the news of that, the announcement of that, which I believe came on like monday got the markets completely you know riled up um they got them they were they were positively titillated and you know the prospect of an economic recovery also coming along with that you know is what kind of got the markets back up. And so I guess where I'm going with this is that we kind of live in a new paradigm already.

But it's like it's just sort of not really getting there because Trump is refusing to leave. It's like breaking up with somebody and they refuse to move their shit out or whatever. But at this point, it doesn't feel like the markets really – I don't think they would respond well to if they did pull off some sort of coup or something, right? I mean, like, it's weird because, like, you know, I think that either way, like, you know, they'll be prepared for, like, whatever outcome, right? Because, like, you know, business as usual. But I'm just curious about the Republicans because they seem to be like privately, you know, congratulating Biden. I was watching a majority report today and it was a clip where Chris Coons, I forget what he's a senator from, I forget what state. But he's basically like, oh, yeah, Republicans behind closed doors are calling senators and congratulating Biden.

They're calling senators and congratulating Biden. But then like publicly, like Mitch McConnell, who are saying like, you know, that like, oh, we have to count the votes and make sure that, you know, there are no irregularities. And then Pompeo's joke. And it's like, I think that they like to your point, Terrence, about like the market not liking like this, this kind of populism, right? Like the Republicans, they're scared of their base. So they want to keep them activated and make them feel like, oh yeah, this election was illegitimate while also already being, being willing to negotiate with the Biden and, you know, administration and transition. But it also like, I think maybe sets it up for like two to four years from now. So they already have the institutions, the courts and the narrative in place to be like, oh, yeah.

Remember last time how the election was stolen? You know, and that's what's kind of scary. You know what I mean? It's scary. Yeah. To me, I guess kind of where I'm going with this, I guess the point maybe I'm trying to make is that if you are in Wall Street or if you're one of these big tech companies or if you're a company that gets a lot of government contracts from the Pentagon and stuff, you probably, the last four years and, you know, Biden has just announced this transition team and like everybody in his defense department transition team is like a China hawk. And you start thinking like, well, maybe this will get some sort of technological or military battle, you know, confrontation out of this. confrontation out of this, and that will increase the bottom line, increase government spending,

and the tech sector, and these military contractors, and you know what I mean? So much of the economy is underwritten by the United States military, by the Pentagon, and what we do around the world. And so it seems to me that, don't i don't know it just there's what i guess what i'm trying to say is there are interests at the you know sort of like top of society within the elite who have their own sort of you know material interests and will that be stronger than the ones that that trump assembles i don't know you know that's really the question for me i suppose yeah i mean because they would prefer like i mean a bite administration is perfect for these people I don't know. That's really the question for me, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, because they would prefer, like, I mean, a Biden administration is perfect for these people, you know, because they get to do whatever they want to do, and they don't have, like, the grotesque, like, Trump's face attached to it and the instability of it all.

But, like, they're probably just waiting to see what happens, you know? Yeah. They're just like, well, you know, if we're going to slide into a coup, that's cool. Right. If not against Sleepy Joe, that's fine, too. Yeah, they're just like well you know if we're gonna slide into a coup that's cool if not get sleepy joe that's fine too yeah they're straight either way and like you said i mean one thing republicans are good at and it's out of necessity because they're so unpopular is they're good at forecasting you know what i mean they're good at like propping themselves up for a long term health over like the short term which is a lesson the democrats never bothered to learn and i think that uh you know it's just like yeah you're right aaron i think we could have a scary situation on our hands with like a a uh sort of emboldened aggrieved base of trump supporters

that like you know won a revenge match in 2024 and that's not uh that's not that's not great yo we're gonna be stuck i mean i don't want to sound like one of those people that are like oh we defeated fascism at the polls like nah man but that active like that active rabid base we're gonna be stuck with these people like these fucking cute odd folks and shit like that for the next like 30 years man absolutely what's QAnon look like in 10 years I mean shit dude president of the United States I don't know

they have their own caucus within the Republican party oh my god it'd be like tantamount to the Posadas actually having a block in the DNC or something. Yo, why not? Dude, accelerate this whole list. Get it over with.

We gotta have something to meet the QAnoners, you know what I mean? I'll start the Posadas caucus. Oh yeah. I mean, if they're successful, in ten years, they will have basically exterminated all of us right the sort of the logic of it is that the democrats anybody who's to the left of goddamn um jim cliburn is uh you know needs to be taken to the camps and exterminated.

That they're satanic, right? That's their narrative of it. And so I think that, like, I think this is different than the Tea Party. People like to compare these two as, like, insurgent right-wing forces, but the Tea Party was more, like, upper-middle class, like, I-don't-want-to-pay-taxes type. You know what I mean? Yeah, like the John Boehner, like, kind of, like, well, not really, I guess, because he got, but yeah, I know what you mean. Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan, that's what I'm thinking of to pay taxes type. You know what I mean? Yeah, like the John Boehner kind of like, well, not really, I guess, because he got,

but yeah, I know what you mean. Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan, that's what I'm thinking of, yeah, yeah. Everybody wants to have like, you know, basic services and all this kind of stuff. Everybody wants to live in these libertarian utopias, but nobody wants to pay taxes. That was kind of like the Tea Party thing.

You know what I mean? Exactly. I used to work with this guy named Stormin Norman. That's what they called him. He was aiker i think he was maybe uh an outlaw or something like that with a name like that yeah i mean like outlaw like as in like the outlaws oh okay club and uh man he'd pull up to work every day in this old beat-up pickup truck with two german shepherds in the back that were like the most obedient dogs i've ever fucking seen like he would just say he would just like snap his fingers they would go get in the bed of the truck and just lay down stay there for hours shit and like it was fucking wild and norman came up to me and we were uh hanging drywall one

day that little stage terrace that it's like where like down at the River Park where they play shows sometimes. Oh, yeah. I saw Ace Frehley there. We were not hanging drywall, hanging insulation. Yeah. And he came up to me. He said, I'm going to tell you something, man. Now, this is like Obama had just been elected, right? He said, I'm going to tell you something, man. It's summer after Obama's first election.

He said, what's coming can't be stopped. I looked at him. I said, Get the fuck out of here. I said, Norm, what are you talking about? He said, Let me paint you a picture, man.

He said, 10,000 bikers descend on Frankfurt. That's the capital of Kentucky. All demanding one thing. I was like, What's that? He said, Well, I'll just tell you this.

You might not know this, but there's nothing in the Constitution that says you have to pay taxes. I said, is that right, Norman? He said, yeah. He said, you ever looked into that? I said, I bet you haven't looked into that. I bet you just went on your whole life thinking you had to, didn't you? I said, well, I said, i think they uh they come and get you if uh you know you don't and he looked at me and like wait to do this he goes ain't got me yet

and just walked off now mind you this dude this dude had long reddish blonde hair and wear like a looked like goddamn kevin sorbo was the beast Beastmaster. Had a leather vest thing on. At work, he would take his outlaws patch on, but as soon as work was over, he'd take that one off and put his outlaws cut on and ride off into the sunset and do what he wanted to do.

He believed that there was a 10,000 biker coalition that was going to stop taxation in the state of Kentucky. But anyway, point being is I should have solved the nascent Tea Party movement. To spring up. To spring forth then. Storming Norman, man.

That was 2008. It was the summer after Obama's first election. So this was like, you know, that midterm is around when they started cropping up. So it was like a year later. Right. They were, you know, kind of had a foothold. 10,000 bikers storming D.C. Hey, dude, you should have a picture.

Well, I mean, like, I don't know, man. I think that's what i really wanted to get in this whole deborah society the spectacle i got some bogey on the shit too because i don't do enough reading y'all i need to read but like it's like the e-crisis right y'all talk about right it really is like this yo you have this whole entire segment of the population that literally does not live in the same like on the same plane of reality. And how far is the GOP willing to go in the Democratic Party just by neglect and political malpractice? But how far is the GOP willing to go to like mold these people?

Right. And whatever whatever the fuck this is like, you know what I mean? Like, it seems like they don't have it under control, which is why, like, they can't come right out and be like, all right, well, we lost the fuck this is, like, you know what I mean? Like, it seems like they don't have it under control, which is why like, they can't come right out and be like, all right, well, we lost the fuck. Also.

I don't think that, I mean, even if that's what I'm curious about, if it wasn't Trump and it was somebody else, would they have conceded? Would they have kind of like, you know, submitted or is Trump such a unique figure who himself is incapable of defeat

that he sort of embodies the Republican Party's, like, anti-democratic, like, you know, cutthroat strategy to, like, gaining power? You know what I mean? I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah. But it's like, it is...

No, that makes sense. Yeah, it's... I don't know, man. It's... People are living in two different, like, six different Americas right now. I just saw the yesterday that the the Democrat, I don't know what their Twitter page was. It's like the Democratic Coalition Twitter page. It's like an official like, you know, Twitter handle, whatever the Democratic Party. They were like, today is Biden day. I think that was Monday.

is Biden day. I think that was Monday. Today was Biden one day. Bro, let me tell y'all something. We're going to be going our great-great-great-great grandchildren will be like vacationing like St. Kitts and Nevis and they'll build

statues of this motherfucker like he was Simone Bolivar or some shit. You know what I mean? It's like Joseph Robinette Biden saved the republic of the united states of america dude but the thing is tom the funny thing is is that they did this to obama exactly as aaron was saying right after he was elected i mean there was you know there's people all over the world Obama was like a worldwide you know icon like this global you know figure and you know within a few years he's just bombing the same

people that were hoping that this right yeah yeah but the funniest thing is it's like I just watch all this shit roll out and it is such a hilarious, just like crude facsimile of 2008.

It is really like we went through some sort of portal as a society and went back to 2008 with all of our current baggage. And I don't know. It is so completely bizarre. We are walking across the desert of the real right now man it is like just this fucking wasteland yo you know what i mean and i don't know it's like i think that's what concerns me about like the left and the left's

future is like if we're not able to kind of seize part of that cognitive map, then, you know, that's when the descent to barbarism really starts, right? That's when you have 10,000 bikers descending on fucking D.C., you know, and, like, libs are doing Norman Rockwell-style paintings of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, you know, thousands of people are getting coronavirus a day. It's just so bizarre. 200,000, man. This is insane. Right.

Like, what the fuck dude i should say before we get too far down the road what happened to storm and norman he uh he was contracted to uh lay some concrete at the whitesburg fire department and he worked for two days and then walked off the job and nobody saw him again until he reprised about i don't know six seven years later having done a bid for you guessed it tax evasion he did two years at clay county for tax evasion and the only reason i saw him crop back up again is because he came to a city council meeting and was demanding that Whitesburg recognize Boknot. Where they shut down. You will never see a bigger group of people, perhaps the pit bull lobby

is the only thing comparable to it, that position themselves as such an aggrieved group as Boknot. You know what I mean? It's like, man, look, I respect your hobby or whatever if you want to do that but like i ain't trying to hear those fucking loud ass i got like ptsd man right those are like the old groups though you know what i mean like so earlier aaron you brought up how everybody

operates on six different sort of understandings of the world you know i mean it's probably closer to like 80 000 yeah i mean it's just like there's it's so fragmented yeah but but partially weirdly enough sometimes i wonder if change is ever even possible for the very same so okay so maybe i'm walking this too far ahead i was reading this essay the other day by david foster wallace where he talks about like tv in the early 90s and late 80s and how there's like you know four corporations that rule over everything and everybody basically gets the same knowledge at all times you know they're all straight white man reading david foster hey bro i ride around with infinite jest in my car all the time yo i i do like david foster wallace a lot yo i'm not i know what essay you're talking about too terrence i think i read that

word yeah it's called like e pluribus something. Yeah, yeah. It's about television though. It's a very fascinating essay. And if you don't ever want to read Infinite Jest, a lot of the themes from Infinite Jest are in that essay. Not addiction, because that's basically what Infinite Jest is about. Entertainment and like the kind of entertainment information we consume and how what that says about us kind of thing yes exactly and it's a it's a very fascinating essay

because he makes some predictions about the future one you know some of them are right and then some of them are wrong one of the things that he just could not countenance that he just did not see happening was that people take the tv into their own hands and personalize it and decide what they want to watch and what they want what like what knowledge and information they want to start consuming he thought that at that time corporate control was so powerful over like all the sort of modes of communication and entertainment and culture that you know the same four or five corporations that had ruled everything throughout the 20th century would continue being able to just sort of control how people think and what they see and you know know and all that

i mean and it's just fascinating because like he wrote this right before the internet and i feel like what you're describing right now, like, you know, everybody operating on 60,000 different sort of wavelengths or understandings or whatever, is quite literally just, you know, a result of, I think, 30 years of algorithms basically just doing their work, you know, sorting people by what they read, what news they read, what they want to consume, and how they want to act on that in the world. And so that's how, you know, that's how you get the Tea Party early on and that's how it morphs in, you know, it's not really the same thing as QAnon. I guess QAnon's maybe a little more working class. Would you say? The working class stuff of QAnon, indeed.

I mean, like, it is, though. It kind of feels like it right like it trance it's more cross-class than the tea party was i mean like there weren't like poor tea partiers no i mean and it was like i feel like that was just people that want i mean yes they were aggrieved you know for economically sure but i feel like it was just people that wanted to just keep their money and were like racist and like xenophobic and shit right q and i really does feel like yo that's why i've always said this i don't know how how like you can do to put this in practice how easy it is but like i think that

conspiracy theorists can be pretty easy to convert to like leftism because it's like oh you already have this anti-elitist view of the world like Like, let me show you, like, the real conspiracy, and it's not like a bunch of fucking lizard people. Or actually, it also is like political pedophile rings and shit like that. You know what I mean? Like, it actually is. The general contours of what they believe are correct. Yes.

You know what I mean? It's just that the characters and the who and the how are a little off. Yeah, a little off. If you talk to these QAnon people, I mean, a lot of them, you know, they will bring up Epstein and stuff like that. And so it's like you have some of the general – exactly like you were saying, Tom. Like you have some of the general contours, correct?

But it's like, I mean – but the thing is it's like it's not the Jews that are behind it. Exactly. It's capitalists. mean, but the thing is, it's like it's not the Jews that are behind it. Exactly. It's capitalism. I don't know. Yeah, man. Yeah. Well, I guess the point, okay, so where I was going with all that is that you have that

situation where, I mean, people are basically able to personalize their own news intake and information and everything now, which was always kind of the case, but it's definitely way more the case now. And as a result, you get these sort of discernible, definable political positions in American society now. They're still pretty marginal and fringe, like QAnon and the online left, but the material base for all of it

is quite literally online. And so it's weird, though. I mean, there are instances, though, where it does bleed over into real life. You know what I mean? Like AOC, for example. Very online personality and individual, but now has a degree of power in society, I guess.

You know, I don't know. But it's the same thing with the q anon so maybe my thesis here isn't exactly correct my thesis was going to be that the internet is actually coincidentally what prevents social movements from ever actually being able to influence society or anything um but i don't know it kind of does seem like we've that's been proven incorrect well man lately i don't know no i mean i think that's like i know i think that's a good point actually um i don't know why you were talking i was thinking about how wild it is that like trump makes these claims um about the election and twitter has just now sided to exercise that

censorship that they have where they're like, you know, right below his tweet. It's like these claims are like, you know, like, unsubstantiated or whatever they say, right? And like, how wild is that, that the most powerful person on the planet is being censored by a private company while his supporters believe that, you what i mean it's like really

like some bizarre surreal shit where like i'm just like i know this motherfucker's lying but like imagine the people who like see that and think that twitter is like fascistic and authoritarian for censoring the president of the united states right like right it's it's very very bizarre you know we live in a very we live in a spectacle is what it is yeah no it is i mean you're right it definitely is i mean it's completely nonsensical or i don't know it's it's deeply parodic. Is that the right word? It feels like a parody of some sort of society. I mean, it really does.

It feels like we're living in some sort of parody of a society. Maybe that's a hack thing to say. I don't know. The reason I say that is because the other night me and Tom were texting me, and he sent me this photo of, what was it, Tom? It was George Bush, Dennis Hastert, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, all of the greatest hits of 2003, signing the authorization to go into Iraq. It is a fun house murder, mirror though that's what it seems like it seems like all of our politics right now just reflected in a funhouse mirror and like everybody sees what they want to see like it just blows my fucking mind that like

you know chris coons can go on and i mean even like even my family you know like that's how that's how like deeply diseased i realized all this shit was like after the day after the election and i'm criticizing biden for not winning by a bigger margin against like a dude who let 200 000 people die and my family is telling me i shouldn't be criticizing the democrats and like i should shut the fuck up because i didn't vote for him yeah and i'm like yo how conditioned are you to like this liberal worldview where you can't even criticize like, like you don't owe them anything, you gave them your fucking votes like what war

what war do you like, you know do you like, I don't know it's really bizarre because then I feel like I'm crazy for just pointing out like, well they probably should campaign better, right? you know oh man I? You know,

I don't, I don't know. It's, it's weird. Like seeing that photo and just sort of putting yourself in, you know, that time, you know, getting in your sort of time machine in your mind and going back to that

time. And it was an America where I feel like, and this is not an original point by any means, I feel like this is one of the sort of central observations of the online left, but like those people were criminals, right? Like these were criminal masterminds. These people, they, you know, threw elections, they stole elections, you know, most famously Reagan in 1980, most famously Bush in 2000. They overthrew governments left and right.

We're talking about dynastic families like the Bushes and the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Dulles. And now it's so bizarre. It's like we're living with the sort of like crude imitations of those people. Like they're so inept. I mean how many failed coup attempts did we witness under a Trump presidency? Eventually they got so frustrated with their inability to overthrow a government, they just fucking nuked an Iraniananian general and and just just because they could i mean that is really how hebristic america has become yeah you know just how fucking lazy

and i mean from that viewpoint it is honestly it it's really a shame that we haven't overthrown them yet i mean we're talking about deeply stupid people let me ask you a question you think that under a biden administration that because i feel like trump brought it like he made the absurdity like explicit like for everybody to see so if you weren't already like tapped into how bizarre american politics are like he just brought that to the forefront but i don't think there's any like putting the genie back in the bottle you think that under biden that we're gonna return to some like whatever a new normal is that's sort of like a shadow of like the old normal you know what i mean or is it just gonna be like nah the absurdities continue i think the absurdities continue absolutely what i'm what

i'm interested to see is the positions they can tort themselves into trying to like cover up biden's obvious obvious cognitive decline. You know what I mean? When he comes out with his dick hanging out of his pee hole to give some sort of address and slobbering on himself. You know what I'm saying?

I'm wondering what lengths they'll go to to say everything's fine. You know what I mean? It's like a different kind of gaslighting. Yeah. Well, here's the thing, though. That's a great point, Tom.

But here's what I realized today, overlooking the list of transition team members on the sort of Biden-Harris transition team. It is a who's who of every elite liberal nonprofit, NGO, and law firm, and think tank in America, basically. We're talking about, you know, nonprofits and organizations that have been central to how this country governs for several decades now. And so I feel like at this point,

those are the people who wind up running shit. And so the person you vote for as president is just kind of there as a sort of figurehead signifier, maybe I guess like, yeah, figurehead, like just somebody who's like like you put all their sort of like your own sort of like values and virtues and cultural signifiers into um but they don't

actually like do any of the governing or functioning um but i don't know i don't know i said this last week but but i work at fucking Sierra Club and they're talking about the Biden administration's environmental platform is the most progressive ever. It's like, how do you say it with a straight fucking face? Let's break this down for a minute. Remember when

Bernie himself said that Biden had the most progressive policy platform since FDR? It's like motherfucker you mean since in the past 70 years bro like that's not a good that's not like a good look you know even if that weren't true yeah that's not yeah before we even had strip mining before we even like had the forms of extraction where we just stuff a mountain full of fucking dynamite and just rig the whole fucking thing and then just drag the fucking gravel back and forth over it for like

several months yeah before we were doing that like those are the environmental policies we should be listening to yeah definitely there it is so fucking it's so fucking insane and in some ways it's like i felt like the trump era really sort of laid bare like the the uselessness of like these people in these organizations and particularly the ngo sphere and it's now like it's like the Biden administration is like futilely hoping to like, you know, validate that worldview again, that like sort of worldview where it was like everything's going to change on on us making micro loans to poor alpaca farmers in Guatemala. You know what I mean?

And reasonable interest rates and that kind of shit. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? At reasonable interest rates and that kind of shit. You know what I mean? Like that sort of like Clintonism. Yeah. Sort of like what they used to call creative capitalism.

That's a curse. That's a curse. You know what I mean? Like this is like, this is the sort of worldview I think is like sort of like an early, before we really codified broadly what neoliberalism was, I feel like this was like what really sort of like spearheaded that's what like gave rise to like um you know like tom shoes was like a spiritual like forebear to like uber and like you know what i'm saying yeah like like like if you just do a little good in the world you could continue to like know, just adhere to this rapacious capitalism. But it's fine because there's Argentinian kids in fishing villages that now have these ugly ass shoes.

Jesus fucking Christ, yo. That's so bleak. That's so bleak when you think about it. Like, if government, I think, for people is a representation of like i mean it's all moralistic right like it's a representation of their values and like these deeply held beliefs but instead we're just gonna have and if prop 22 like in california is any omen and like you know biden's like administration like it's just gonna be like nah we're just gonna privatize these virtues and have like these private corporations like make baddish things and make people feel good because at least it's not,

you know, the country's not being run by like orange Cheeto man, yo. Yeah. That shit. Like we're going to be living in like company towns. You know what I'm saying? Like,

it's going to be dope. And America's obsessed with pastiche man and i think like part of that you can see like just this broad cross-section of people that are so traumatized by the trump thing whether real or imagined that like they've just fallen back into like the sort of mid-2000s like early obama era sort of nostalgia and they're like oh yes this is a return to that you know what i mean yeah but pastiche man it's the it's the hallmark of a decaying empire decaying society but tom you brought up a good point yo you make me think about something so like i think that we're never gonna have like an obama type of presidency like ever again right like where things like seem like normal and good and okay.

And even for people like myself who got more radicalized during the Obama years, I could sense like that this shit was unraveling, right? Trump blew that shit open. Biden, people are hoping for that return. But you're right, man. Like his cognitive decline, like what if every president from now on just has this complete like like, either, like, I'm not trying to be ageist

or nothing, but I'm just being, like, you know, either, like, you know, mental cognitive decline or is, like, increasingly more sociopathic from the Republican side. So, like, Biden's whole term is gonna be him, like, literally trying not to shit his fucking, you know, doo-doo pants, like,

while, like, meeting with, like, other leaders of, like, other countries, or it's gonna be gaffes for the next, like, fucking four years. Dude, and this is a guy that didn't have a firm grasp on that shit before he really started declining. Like, that's what Joe Biden was famous for when he ran in 2008, like, the Biden g gaffes you know what i mean he was all the time saying something stupid and i saw this thing where obama had privately told donors this is like i did this tweet where it was like you know uh it was talked about like obama throwing shade at biden like when he was trying to run and everything you know he famously said joe you don't have to do this you really don't but there was another thing where he was addressing a group of donors i think in michigan or somewhere and privately off the record he said don't underestimate joe biden's ability to fuck things up so like like we basically got like a mr magoo presidency or

some shit you know what i'm saying like like, we have this bumbling fool that's this folksy guy. You don't really have to look. Joe Biden is no exemplar of excellence. You know what I mean? In any way, shape, or form. I mean, you might like the guy. You know what I mean? Or whatever.

But you can't be in awe of him. And he's not a tough guy. You know what I mean? A lot of people think he's this tough guy. Like, he's like, I'll stare down President Xi. I'll stare down fucking, what's his name? Vladimir Putin. You know what I mean?

Like, I'm not afraid to take the tyrants on. Like, he says that type of shit. You know what I'm saying? And, like, really and truly, you've got, like, this, like, kind of dumb old man old man that like shits his doo-doo ass well that's that's the thing right is that like how much longer are people going to like you know uh place legitimacy like you know fuck trump's claims of like you know illegitimate election how much longer people go to believe in people like jo Biden, right? Like, we all, you know, I swear to fucking God, like, unless you're, like, really, like, lib-brained or, like, you're part of that, like, I mean, even the consulting class knows

that this guy is fucking, like, just an avatar for, like, you know, a hollow, like, vessel for all these, like, corporations and, like, all these people that are jockeying for position. Like, Biden literally is that old, like, the dying king on his deathbed with all of his subordinates surrounding him like just waiting for him to fucking croak you know what i mean so like how much longer writ large are people going to believe especially young people going to believe in like like these institutions right like let me tell you what it kind of mirrors to me i think in a way and i don't know if y'all experienced this because how old are you, Aaron? I was 30.

I was about 30. How old the fuck am I? 30. Yeah, goddamn. Yeah, so you're just a few years younger than us. But I don't know if y'all, but there was like a very, like growing up in the 90s, I'll say, for example, like the whole Clinton era. There's like this refrain after the Clinton years, like for years people are like, man, I miss Bill Clinton.

I miss Bill Clinton. I miss Bill Clinton. And I feel like there is that kid that like a guy like me was maybe like 10 years ago and that like I miss Bill shit is like very much on that I miss Obama tip. I miss Obama. I miss Obama. You know, in the same way that like we sort of fetishized the Clinton 90s, they fetishized sort of – well, fetishized is not really the right word, but you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the Obama mid to late aughts or late aughts, you know what I mean, going into the early 2010s. And I feel like that accounts for a lot of this warm fuzzy feeling for Biden. You know what I mean? I think it's a purely aesthetic choice because they think, for a lot of the same reasons the whole I miss Bill people thought that a Hillary Clinton presidency meant another de facto Bill Clinton presidency.

I think a lot of people feel like Obama will very much have his hands in like a Biden presidency somehow, whether that's true or not. If you look at their... If you get on buildbackbetter.com... Jesus fucking Christ. B-B-B.

B-B-B. Build Back Better. If you look at the people they've appointed to these transition teams, I mean, it is... I was just joking with some of our friends earlier today. I feel like I had a war flashback, and it is Veterans Day. I had a war flashback to the war on coal reading this.

The people who have been appointed to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, for example. Or if you look at any of the other agencies, I mean, it is just a who's who of all the major nonprofits and NGOs of the last couple of decades. And so I think it's a central thing to the liberal mindset. We pointed this out many times on the show, but it's a central feature of the liberal mindset to just want to tinker. And that's why these people say that Joe Biden's better on the environment than anybody. And that's why these people say that Joe Biden's better on the environment than anybody.

It's because they'll throw in like somebody from Greenpeace or someone or probably not Greenpeace, but they probably wouldn't do that. But like Earthjustice, you know, just some, you know, middle of the road, standard vanilla ass environmental nonprofit, a massive one. And they'll just throw in somebody like that to the transition team. And these people love to just be able to say that we're just making things better, but without actually making anything better. Like, again, we've pointed this out on the show, and this is the central feature of nonprofits, but it is just tinkering at the edges, just seeing what you can do with the institutions to make them actually function um in the way that you think that they should in a way that like just sort of

reduces as much harm as possible and um and so yeah i mean like i was looking at these lists and you see stuff like massive non-profit environmental non-, but also like micro loan institutions. And then, you know, all the way to stuff like the Rand corporation, for example. I just, you know,

I was just looking through that shit, man. And I saw like, I'm looking through the most recent employment of some of these people. And it's just like, you know, the Rand corporation, you know,

these other like LLCs or rand corporation you know these other like um llcs or like firm you know law firms or like it's just i was just thinking about too like you know how like people can't really define what neoliberalism is right right and it's like it just is the ambient background noise of like the society that we live in i think that like this will be the first truly explicitly like neoliberal administration for like the 21st century you know it's actually defined and like you can finally understand what it is yes yo i really do because like i think that like just like the the the people that are going to be on this transition team, this kind of like neoliberal globalization sort of worldview that these people have will be like so explicit maybe. And for people like, I don't know.

I mean, Biden's not going to go out there calling himself a neoliberal. But for those of us who've been trying to figure out exactly what neoliberalism is, it's like's like you know political economy or it's like even like a worldview like this will be it yo yeah like bill even build back better like jesus fucking christ like it's so empty and hollow but like when you look at this transition team full of so much like actual meaning you know what i mean yeah like did you see who like who was leading the department of labor transition oh my fucking god no it was someone from this um tech company called fiscal note fiscal note provides software tools and platforms data services news and news to the fiscal note government relationship management service its core revenue generating project product i mean like basically it's just a startup

a sort of like silicon valley type startup that uses i don't know like a certain kind of app i don't i don't even know do y'all know you even know what the fuck fiscal note is no i'm looking at the wikipedia page trying to figure it out and it's just you know dead-eyed this is this is dark fiscal notes are probably helping produces content and events for government affairs professionals in particular recent speakers include governor martin o'malley remember martin o'Malley? S&P Global CEO. Dude, if your crowning achievement is doing messaging for Mark O'Malley.

There's also someone from a bank called Center for Community Self-Help. You know what's interesting, though? Looking at some of the most recent employment of these people, and when it says self-employed, that is truly dark. Yeah, i've wondered what that means well you know what it is it's like someone just has a reputation for being a badass badass non-profit consultant they're like we gotta

get tom sexton i'm trying to get in that racket man you know how many motherfuckers i've dealt with in my job where it's just like they just show up and like spit out these platitudes on these hour-long phone calls and then just you know they'll say oh the the path to victory is narrow but it's there and uh you know that kind of shit and then like oh yeah write me a check for ten thousand dollars because i was like uh the undersecretary of fucking horse cum under the Obama administration. There is a person, supposedly, in the Department of Labor. This person's name is Josh Orton. Oh, I saw that.

Yeah, he looks like he's a Bernie, a senior Bernie staffer. Yeah. And then there's also like uh what is this the solidarity center you know so it's like i even want to look into a group like that you know what i mean like an organization like that and this is department of labor like yeah self-help center for community self-help that is incredible the community center for community Self-Care is going to be a bank microloan institution that you're going to see in the next few years that is helping the Pete Buttigieg administration try to transition in 2024. Fucking the organizers of Ozzfest.

Not Ozfest, but Ozzfest. of oz fest not oz fest but oz fest uh some of these some of these organizations education trust is one of them was instrumental in writing no child left behind that's an interesting little uh tidbit for you god dude um some of them one of weirdly enough i have not seen anyone write anything about this but weirdly enough one of the law firms helping trump in his election challenges is on one of biden's i think it's on his justice department transition team so how does that work you know is there not like a conflict of interest there or anything i i heard that um i don't know if y'all saw this but i heard that the i don't want to fuck this up i should find the article on time but like uh they're trying to blacklist i guess his transition team blacklist like anybody from like the trump admin like i mean i think these are even like low-level staffers from working like in government again

you know like as a way of like yeah like if you took a paycheck from donald trump you won't be working for the u.s government anymore under a bite administration oh god which is like which is like everyone you motherfuckers sit here fucking still sucking off fucking henry kissinger his fucking 96 year old ass and like you're gonna say oh uh some rando trump staffer can never get a check in government again like I mean I agree with that you know fucking

throw him in prison but you can't really take the moral high road on that shit is what I'm saying especially not when you're talking about we're not opponents we're opponents not enemies yeah we're not but you're preventing some fucking low level career like bureaucrat from like fucking beating his kids or some shit you know what i

mean like i mean no he'll be fine it ain't that serious like you'll be okay but i mean my sister works for the state department you know like what does this mean that like she wouldn't you know you know what i'm saying like i don't understand like how this is supposed to work when we're supposed to be engendering feelings of unity right yeah yeah well i mean what they they wouldn't actually do that like they're i mean like i have liberal friends who quite literally believe that something is going to happen to trump himself as a result that they're going to like you know do some expose go to jail it's them expose and find out all of his crimes and then put him on trial. It's like, are you really thinking this? We know all of his crimes, bro.

We know all of his crimes. What the fuck are you talking about? Yo, this is... We knew going in this motherfucker had... We knew going in this... I mean, before he was even president, this motherfucker had credible allegations of sexually allegations of, like, sexually assaulting, like, girls on, like, airplanes. Like, 13-year-old girls, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Dude. Like, I mean, that's just the first thing that comes to mind. No, hell yeah, yo. The Dollop, Dave Anthony on his podcast, The Dollop, did, like, I think it was, like, a two-part series into Donald Trump. And it was, like, one of the most horrifying things i've ever like listened to like and all that shit is out there for people and it's the idea but see that's where it's like you know we were saying it's like those 60,000

80,000 different ways of like looking at america like that fractal view like there are people who literally think that this motherfucker will see the inside of a jail cell and it's like you they might as well be the bag of q anon people bro like you know what i mean there's a far better likelihood that in the last day of office that this motherfucker would like launch a nuke than him going to jail you know what i'm saying like yeah like he might he might take us all like stan yo yeah we're all going out like stan yo as his parting gift just nuking a major american city yo i'm here for it bro new york wasn't very nice to me folks

Had to nuke it It's my own hometown too Yo we really do have like two butts Of this like caged animal Like besides the You know horrific Biden administration transition thing There's also just the fact that

We got two butts of this like dude like his back is against the wall and like there's no telling what he might do right that's exciting in like a dark way it's exciting no i'm with you aaron i'm totally with you you know another possibility too is that trump is just like he can't take a nail but he really just doesn't want to be the president anymore either, so he's just kind of like bored with it. But he has to have his pride intact, so he has to look like he went down fighting and there was some sort of foul play or something. But he's just like, nah, I'm ready to get back to, you know.

But I think he's going to have a rude awakening because I think he thinks he's just going to ease back into civilian life. And who knows? I mean, the libs rehabilitated george bush but they have a palpable hate of this guy that like even like surpasses a war criminal so like trump might think he's just going to join polite like social light society again and just be like you know like take all of his mistresses to paul abdul concerts or whatever but like he's to find that he's blackballed. He may just end the rest of his life just be holed up depressed somewhere.

And he's unwittingly made himself proud because he thought nothing mattered, but he underestimated Lib's actual commitment to decorum and saying nice things. Well, I don't know, man. Richard Spence, not Richard Spencer, shit. Sean Sp spicer why do i get

those two people same phone person sean spicer was on dancing with the stars that's true like like but i mean that again like it's he was the president of the united states yo i would i would almost guarantee you that in like a year two years he will be rehabilitated yeah somehow i don't know how it's gonna happen but like because libs don't really have like this long-term ideological project of like party building nor like defining enemies like at some fucking point you're gonna see a picture this motherfucker at a cocktail party or something like that you're gonna see him go on snl and they're they're doing skits of him as himself and like really horrific like things and everybody's gonna be like laughing about it like ha ha ha i like trump more as a civilian than the president this was pretty funny and charming where was that at while he was in office yo that's actually so dark, bro. Can you imagine SNL like five years from now and he's like headlining it?

Yeah. Oh, my God, dude. Wow, son. Man, this is pretty incredible. We really should do like a Trump greatest hits. I mean, I was watching this David Attenborough thing the other day, and they were talking about Greenland, and I was like, yeah, that is definitely a thing that happened.

Trump tried to literally trade an American territory for just the entire island of Greenland. Didn't he try to trade Puerto Rico for it? He tried to sell. Like, who owns Greenland? Denmark, I guess? I think so. Was he just going to sell like who owns greenland denmark i guess i think so was he like just gonna sell them puerto rico y'all remember y'all this will always be ingrained in my mind man when he uh when there was a whole trade war with china and he's outside of the white house i think he's about to get in a

helicopter and he looks up at the sky and says i am the chosen one like shooting like you know fucking like hitting three pointers of like like paper towels like i have puerto rican they got hit by the hurricane i mean it's just like i swear to god my kids are not oh yeah the pipe like he's right colby with the bounty bro what are you talking about dude like my kids are never gonna believe that any of this shit and that's the thing is like there's no way that a biden administration is gonna top that but it's to be absurd in its own fucking way, dude. Well, yeah, you're right.

Dude, I have been having the weirdest fucking week. Yeah. I feel like I've been having the weird, like everything feels so dead. It feels like the life and the soul has been sucked out of everything. I mean, it's all because of the pandemic, right? But it's also maybe I've got anxiety because the election is over, but I'm not getting any good Trump hits. Like, I've got to have my good Trump hits, man.

I've got to have. The tweets have been, like, more angry and less funny, you know? It's not fun. It's not funny anymore. It's like the second debate. It's like the second debate it's like the second debate yo where like you know he thought he was gonna get muted and like i mean i don't even think he ever got muted but it just wasn't funny because like he wasn't like going in on biden as he did in the first debate and i feel like ever since the first debate like he got covid

you know came back swinging you know like fucking like in the ring like let's go and then the second debate and then the election and he's just been on like you know just stuffing his fucking face with like fast food apparently i heard staffers are lighting uh lighting scented candles i heard that to get him cover up the stench like i'm as depressed yo now you're right dude aaron you are so right ever since second debate, it has been so serious. You have to be serious. You can't. This isn't a joke anymore, okay?

Wake the fuck up. Like, grow up. Trump is bad. He's a fascist in the White House. And it's like, yeah, but, like, everything's bad anyways. And I worked in these nonprofits that are going to be working with the Biden administration on stuff like environmental policy. And I just witnessed firsthand. Yeah, I just witnessed things get worse.

And so it's like that's why I don't really give a shit one way or the other. They're going to do the same shit and they're gonna they're just gonna smile about it and make it respectable um or or that and you know even more fundamental things that the liberal psyche they will sort of try to um you know give you an inch you know at least give you an audience right like they'll let you in to air your grievances but they won't actually do about it that's really the difference between a liberal administration and a conservative one um and so i don't know i think that's why i just can't really i just can't really get there one way we're like we're like again in this weird like stasis where it's like nobody knows what's

gonna happen right like it's like the election has been determined, but we still have two months ahead of us of like just complete insanity. And I mean, I don't know what Trump is doing or thinking. Like, I don't I think the Republican Party has a long term like project where, again, they're just sort of setting up to like actually steal an election. where, again, they're just sort of setting up to, like, actually steal an election, like, you know, two years from now or, like, you know, four years from now. But other than that, it's like, is this the slide, like, the descent back into normalcy? Even though, like, you know, COVID, I think yesterday had, like, the record number of hospitalizations since, like, April. You know, like, things are continually getting worse but there are people truly people who do again like i don't know overuse like the meme but they really do want to go back to brunch and that's like equal parts like horrifying and should be i mean it

should be galvanizing for the left but like i don't know man man. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's, we gotta, we gotta let Tom go here, but it's like, this was kind of a doomer one, but it's like the last one we recorded wasn't that way at all. It's like almost the exact opposite. Um, so if you want to. Add the dialectic. Yeah. So yeah, if you want the palate cleanser go to the patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com slash trailbilly workers party and um also let's just subscribe give us real quick chance before

you before you do the sign off uh hillbilly elegy is not out so everybody that was tuning in thinking right get hillbilly elegy thatgy, we're not dangling a carrot in front of your head. It's just not out yet. Yeah, it's in theaters. If you want to risk getting COVID watching it, by all means.

I'm going to leave that to y'all. That's y'all's room. I'm not watching that shit. I just saw a trailer and I was like, God damn, Amy Adams. I feel sorry for her, bro. I just saw a trailer And I was like god damn Amy Adams I feel sorry for her bro I just saw crying and yelling white people I'm good on that

I'll check it out I'll check it out when it comes out Yeah I probably should Yeah no it comes out in like two weeks So yeah just hold your horses It'll be okay um but anyways yeah thanks for tuning in like i said go to the patreon um p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com slash trailbilly

workers party thank you for listening to this week's show and um we'll catch you next time see you fellas bye