Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 175: 8 And 0 For Smokeshows

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Well lap it up folks, because this is the only Hillbilly Elegy content you're getting from us this year. We cover the film very briefly, talk some more about Dolly and Obama, then wrap things up with stirring round of Speak Your Piece. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

hello hello everybody hello did you ever have like dreams of being a beatbox dude when you were in middle school you were like

I can't rap but I can beatbox oh yeah for sure I did I tried to rap too I actually cut a rap record

at June Apple when I was in middle school did you ever try to beatbox and rap at the same time could dudes do that yeah there's people that do that yo could you imagine beatboxing today though like you get clowned so hard oh yeah is that you don't listen to much rap music nowadays, do you? I want to show up at the Cypher in downtown Whitesburg like,

Hey, fellow kids. There is nothing cornier than a white beatboxer, dude. A 33-year-old white beatboxer. Yeah. Oh, man. Painfully uncool. Okay. Let's get a level here.

Are you recording? Yeah. Okay. So. When the twilight is gone. And the songbirds are singing. Okay. Well, I have a bit of news for you.

Oh, God. In this week's news that's way too on the nose, this is in the front page of the Mountain Eagle, on the front page of the Mountain Eagle, on the front page of the Mountain Eagle. It's a picture of a vehicle with a smashed windshield. And next to it is a, you know one of those manhole covers? Yeah. With the large number two painted on it.

Larry Everidge, a funeral director and member of the whitesburg city council was returning to ledger county early in the morning of november 27th when someone threw a water meter cover from an overpass under which average was traveling on u.s highway 23 in kingsport tennessee the cover which had the number two painted on it crashed through the windshield of average's chevy tahoe and landed in the vehicle's back seat it missed his head by six inches six inches dude imagine larry was a former colleague of mine i like larry a lot actually man imagine cheating death like that imagine cheating death like that and being the funeral director the few yeah it is it is a wee bit too on the nose but dude imagine how goddamn stupid

it is a manhole cover somebody just threw it's like a simpsons thing who the fuck goes around throwing manhole who is like strong enough to do i don't i could not do that dude yeah that's another thing dude those things are like fucking 200 pounds dude i love the goddamn story about this though like that the mountain eagle wrote up about it i mean you know that sam adams could not resist saying this in the opening sentence it's just just like... Wait, hold on a second. Is Sam doing like the in cold blood Truman Capote thing? Yeah, dude, look.

Listen to this sentence. Weisberg City Councilman and Funeral Director Larry Everidge nearly ended up on his own embalming table after someone threw a 40 pound manhole cover through that. Sam, shut the fuck up. Nearly landed on his own embalming table.

I wonder what Larry thought the fuck happened. That's got to be like a jarring experience. Like, that goes through and you're like, what the fuck? And you just look back and it's a manhole cover average a vietnam veteran said his first instinct was to keep driving and get out of the danger zone dude that is that is another thing to think about larry has like flashbacks and stuff man he has like severe damn uh so you know like like that is like the cruelest thing to have to happen to a guy that's spent his like teen years in a fucking jungle i i read that i mean there's there's so many details that make it so on the nose he's funeral director manhole cover being thrown and furthermore

the number two painted on the manhole cover what does that signify who receives number one that's what i want to know maybe okay i got a theory maybe somebody was trying to systematically take out the whitesburg city council with manhole covers and number two refers to the seat that larry held so somebody needs to check on Derek Bartow. That would be an excellent... Maybe he got number one dropped on his head. No, this could be Sam Adams'

Truman Capote breakthrough. We have a true crime scenario here. Someone is out to kill the other city council members. other white twerk city council members that's the most that they're that's among the most insane things i've ever heard not yeah not that people are trying to kill the white spork city council that makes sense in this fashion imagine being able to throw a 40 pound manhole cover you know how like in

was it shot put what's it called in in uh discus discus track and field if you could just throw a 40 pound manhole cover like one of those things manhole covers just 40 pounds that seems a little light for a manhole cover it does seem a little light you would think i don't know maybe maybe sam adams just like waited. Like got out of Larry's backseat and waited for the story. Don't touch anything. It's an important detail in my story. Oh, man.

Survives close call. Pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. call pretty crazy pretty pretty yeah um well anyways that's that's this week's local flavor story i like how in like late night shows you know they'll like pick a story from like whitesburg city City, Whitesburg Police Chief passes out in Taco Bell line and then run with it for like a week.

Yeah. That's a good run. Did they even run that? I know Vice picked that up on that half of the time, but I don't think the Mount Eagle ran that, did they?

I don't think they did. They might have, I don't know. I don't know. Isn't it funny man you both have brothers that have passed out in taco bell drive-thrus like that's the hallmark of of disease you know i mean it's well it happened again uh of disease you know i mean it's well it happened again uh in i saw there's another story like it kentucky mayor falls asleep in white castle drive-thru um i don't know i mean i get it i get it a little bit. You know what I'm saying? I understand. You get there, you're fucked up, you want to get some food, the line's long, the AC's on, you got it in park,

you just kind of nod off a little bit. It does, you can see how it's feasible, yes. Yeah. Well, I'm assuming that you all tuned in this week to hear the true Billy take on the Ron Howard cinematic feature film Hillbilly Elegy. A Beautiful Mind. A Beautiful Mind. This week we're talking about...

Starring Russell Crowe. Is that Russell Crowe? Yeah. Yeah, Ron Howard also directed that Solo movie about the young Han Solo. Really? Yeah. What else he's got? Apollo 13.

Frost Nixon, which is great. Frost Nixon. Frost Nixon's a good movie. He's got a cut. Ron Howard's got a lot of middling shit in his catalog, and he's got some bangers in his catalog. He's not Scorsese, who just can't miss. You know what I mean? Honestly, I wondered about that,

because there is that scene in Hillbilly Elegy where JD meets his new stepdad, and his new stepdad has a framed poster of Casino. You're supposed to think that the stepdad sucks that he's a bad stepdad but if you had a stepdad with a framed poster of casino i mean like what what is he trying to tell us there is that a slight against scorsese i don't know you know my first thought was it might have been one of those things like you know how in the hills have eyes there's a jaws poster on the trailer but it's like ripped in half oh yeah and it was like i i think it was uh wes craven's like kind of jab at uh spielberg yeah so maybe it's one of those things maybe it was

like uh oh this everybody's gonna think this dad sucks and and is like this crazy guy, so I'm going to throw a shot at Scorsese. I couldn't understand it. I don't know if – okay, so I don't think Ron Howard has really any good. I liked Frost Nixon, but I'd probably – I need to go back and watch it. Backdraft was kind of good. I liked – or I liked it when I was a kid anyway. See, the thing is, it's like all these movies I liked when I was a kid, but Cocoon and Willow and Backdraft.

Ron Howard did Willow? Yeah. I loved Willow when I was little. God, that was the most wholesome thing I've ever said. I loved Willow when I was little. Yeah, it feels like there is, if there's any unifying thread among his films post-Apollo 13, which include A Beautiful Mind,

Cinderella Man, Frost Nixon, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons. Like, he did all those. He did the dan brown adaptations he did yeah man we know what he does he's like one of those contractors that just like underbids everybody like on the big book movies yeah like scorsese would have never did hillbilly elegy you know what i mean is scorsese ever adapted a book oh yeah goodfellas was an adaption

at it wasn't yeah the guy who wrote it was hank henry hill or whatever like oh okay it's a hint it's henry hill's book okay yeah yeah i mean um no he's done several adaptations i think wolf of wall street was an adaptation, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's like based in Paranon, yeah. But I mean, he doesn't have any like, I'm going to render this book. You know what I mean? As far back as ever.

Yeah, I guess Wolf of Wall Street is the name of that book, though. So I guess he does have several. You know the opening scene of Goodfellas when they're putting what's-his-name in the trunk of the car and he slams the car door shut and you got that amazing zoom in on Ray Liotta's face. It's like, as far back as I remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Goodfellas is a perfect movie. Casino's a perfect movie. But if Scorsese had done Hillbilly Elegy,

you've got the opening scene. What is the opening? I mean, like, the opening scene. The opening scene, and it's just like this. You see, you know how Scorsese puts his mother in every movie? Yeah. He just got his mom to play Mamaw. And she would just be in an Italian New York Brooklyn accent.

She would have been like, J.D., do you like to suck dick and then he was zoomed in on jd's face and just froze there and then he would just he would just said when people ask me where i'm from i say ohio but really that's not my whole story and then it would depend to jackson kentucky and scorsese did a much better job of depicting it, I'm sure. As far back as I remember, I always wanted to be a loser. As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a hillbilly.

Yeah. Jesus Christ, man. Well, we, um... If you're tuning in for the Hillbilly Elegy episode, we've got some bad news for you. We decided not to. What else is there to say? We're running a skeleton crew for one. Yeah, we're running a...

That is true. It's TNT, baby. And we've already talked it to death, me and you. I mean, on multiple podcast appearances, in private. I do want to run with the theory though we brought this up on the choppo episode but but i do i really do think and and we never fully developed this point but it does kind of seem like in the movie, J.D. Vance has the character and the actor has more of a romantic chemistry with the actor playing his sister than he does with his girlfriend. Oh, 100%. There is still one shot that I cannot make sense of in that movie.

They're in the shoe store where she works at. Yeah. And, like, he's standing there in the aisle, and it shows the shot of her walking away and that fat ass just going side to side. And JD falling at every step of the way, and it pans back to him, and he has a smile on his face. He's looking at her ass. Dude, you know what I half think? I half think that was, like, a Ron Howard joke.

Like, oh, fuck your sister, fuck your cousin's thing. And he threw that in there as kind of an Easter egg that's like actually a hillbilly joke. Oh, my fucking God. Because I didn't read that scene any other way than the guy wanted to fuck his sister. I'm with you, man. I'm with you.

There was no romantic chemistry between him and his romantic partner but there was something between him he just he just yelled at her a lot yeah what i do with all these fucking forks and then like yeah yeah and then it's like he's like at the barbecue so like she's like just be like a very sweet partner and like hey is there any way i can help can i come home and like stay with her while you do your interview you don't fucking understand what you'd be getting into usha you just don't fucking understand it's like goddamn dude just just try to be helpful yeah um the more i thought about it after we had talked about it and after we had watched it the thing that i find so fascinating about it is conservatives spend so much goddamn time talking about how soft americans have gotten

how we're all so snowflakes the libs are snowflakes we want to talk about our trauma we want to talk about our triggers um you know pc this and that safe spaces and the entire film was a guy bellyaching over how hard he had it in life and it wasn't even that i mean like on the grand scheme of things and the on the sort of on the grand mosaic of of american life it wasn't even in like the top five percent worse american experiences you know what i mean like it was and furthermore it was very obvious that he had retconned quite a bit of it to fit into this very specific sort of 100 dude it didn't even chart in the top five percent of hillbilly experiences dude i went to high school with guys that like were working on a job site and would take a goddamn

coffee pot scoop up like fucking port-a-potty water and like boil down 80s to like shoot up on the job site with oh yeah like that's hell you know what i mean oh yeah this motherfucker never even had an opioid addiction and from what i could tell like his like only his mom had one in the story like nobody that was like his grandparents or anybody that was instrumental in it or something. I don't know. It's just... It feels like...

I'm not discounting his working class bona fides or whatever. But it's just like... In terms of compelling, oh my god, harrowing experiences, even for the demographic, it doesn't even chart yeah it was a big wine fest that's that's all you can really say about it it was someone just fucking whining about how hard they had it it's like shut the fuck up man no one cares yeah yeah i don't know um i well anyway i to say this. I want to make a pledge here that we just never talk about this guy again. And we've said this several times in the intervening four years since we started this thing, by talking about this guy. But I would just like to heretofore say that we're not going to deal with this anymore

until maybe he comes out with Hillbilly Elegy 2. This time it's personal. And Michael Bay does the film adaptation. Oh, my God. That would be a good movie. And it's him just going back to Jackson and killing all those guys that tried to hold him underwater in the first scene of the movie. That's right, motherfucker. i am from ohio bitch my my dream film we should make is to just do like a hodgepodge of appalachian movies or just movies set in eastern kentucky and like all the universes

collide so we go get like liam neeson we go get ste Neeson. We go get Steven Seagal. We go get whoever played J.D. Vance. And it's like a Hunger Games thing. Yeah, you put them in a... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that sounds good. Put them in my coat. Go ahead. Go ahead, I'm sorry.

No, you go ahead. Like a Mad Max Thunderdome type situation. Yeah, that's what I was... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about this movie is that 5% of it takes place in Appalachia and even has anything to do with stereotypes or any...

I mean, like, once again, I don't really give a shit about any of that. This movie could have been the most offensive, insulting, stereotypical, whatever, and that would have been pretty low on my list of objections to it, I feel like. Oh, dude, I don't care. Yeah. I don't care about any of that shit.

Yeah, it's whatever. But this movie didn't even... That was one of those common... I'm sorry. There was one of those common things where people were saying, oh, it's not his politics i'm challenging on this it's like his misrepresentations of the appalachian peak 4 000 likes you know 1600 retweets no who cares dude like the hillbilly like caricature shit is all over pop culture you can't watch the simpsons

without seeing that you know what i mean like that that's like that chart's extremely low You know what I mean? That chart's extremely low. It's very low-hanging fruit. I mean, it's literally... Yeah, you need two brain cells to be able to put two and two together about that. It requires no analytical critique or anything. Yeah.

Also, that's just pussy shit. Yeah, it's really funny. The film didn't deliver that and so there i mean there's an entire industry of people who you know like to sort of you know decry that sort of representation in film um and uh maybe it may be even early on we we fell into that category i don't i don't think so but maybe we may have been the progenitors but like the cool guys we are, we've moved on from that to contrarianism. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Doomer cringe contrarianism. All right. But, I mean, there is a storied tradition of Appalachia in cinema, right? I mean, there is Appalachia in cinema, right? I mean, there is Appalachia, and then there's a place in cinema that is Appalachia that this movie didn't quite tap into. Me personally, there's a big opening, my friend.

There's a big opportunity. We're not fully exploiting this whole Appalachia thing as well as we could be. For example, where is Appalachian surrealism you know why is that a genre that's not emerged yet why have we not tapped i'm with you ma'am i'm with you ma'am i'm with you yeah it's uh there's a um there's a there's a whole other level of exploitation we should expire expire aspire to yeah like imagine if lynch had done hillbilly elegy imagine if david lynch had tackled hillbilly elegy dude you know like what if the safety brothers did him yeah that shit would rock yeah he's got 24 that is the funny thing about this movie and we pointed this out in the chopper

thing like 50 of the movie takes place in 24 hours and that 24 hours is completely devoid of any of the markings of tension drama suspense i mean it all just occurs in a vacuum it just plops things right down in the middle of it. Yeah, to me, it's like whoever wrote this is like, okay, we need some sort of candor to frame this boring-ass story with. So let's make it the classic, I have to get from one place to another, and I've got a short time frame to get there.

Yeah. You know, that classic format. Yeah, that classic format yeah that classic format but there's cool ways you can do that like on choppo like i said you know the you could do the warriors you know what i mean he stops that gas station in new jersey a couple guys come around the corner and say what are you doing around here you're not from around here try to shake him down a little bit or it's the italian mafia or and then you keep going or uh on the other earlier note that scene in goodfellas where ray leota's like seeing helicopters and like what's her name's got to get her hat oh yeah dude that would like that would

rule that would they made the most boring possible film, and they could have really done something with this. No, there is so many... This is the thing I kept coming back to when I was watching this movie. Why the fuck did they stay so... Why did they adhere so strictly to the source material? They stripped out all the politics, but kept all of the plot points and characters

intact and it makes no sense strip leave out the jd character or if you're gonna keep them make them cool and likable and then turn it into yeah 24 hours uh gotta get to the roxbury or whatever you know what i mean like make it fucking interesting or something play around with the script a little bit the the writer the person who wrote this script wrote this um that gamero del toro movie a few years ago the something of water what was that movie called water yeah yeah shape of water made no sense to me i i mean that was i never saw that film yeah that was good she She also wrote for Game of Thrones and stuff, so maybe that makes sense, because Game of Thrones completely went off the rails.

It kind of makes sense. The same person who writes for Game of Thrones wrote The Shape of Water. It's really weird, though, how anybody could watch it and just find it enjoyable. Because the main character is not identifiable. He's not likable in any way. Very off-putting.

The plot is very disjointed and it sucks. Anyways. Yeah. We said we weren't going to talk about it. And now it's over. And now it's over. Time to move on um but you thought we're gonna move on from Appalachia you're wrong but it's now the time that I should float my dolly conspiracy I want to hear you called me

last night frantically at about 8 15 p.m and said i've got it man i finally figured it out i've got it so tell me what and i told you to save it so tell me what you got i stumbled on something we're talking about dolly last time we were talking about dolly i think i think i had said something kind of offhand i took some heat for for it. You know, I said that, you know, there are some similarities between Dolly and Donald Trump in that they both sort of made their money licensing their name to stuff. They're both sort of, you know, heroes of their own individual political bins in like a way that's unimpeachable. You know what I mean?

Like, they can do no wrong but whatever right i think the democrats are making a play to make dolly they're donald trump i'm not saying they're going to run her for president or something like that because they don't even have that much political imagination right uh but i do think that right uh but i do think that there is no coincidence that like all of a sudden dolly parton who has not really been a really i mean i mean has been a star her whole life but has not been like you know like a matinee idol in some time or you know put out like a record that was like oh shit yeah like across generations for a long time you know most of it is nostalgia most of his people like rediscovering

jolene and right you know her back stuff you know what i mean it's not even like loretta lynn who had that album with jack white a few years ago or you know what i mean like some of these older artists who come back and collaborate with a younger, or like Al Green doing an album with Questlove. You know what I mean? Like she's not even done anything like that. Dolly doing an album with like Frank Ocean would be cool or something like that. You know what I mean?

But like, yeah. But yeah, I just think that they're making a play for sort of, you know, she's like they're going they're like sort of unimpeachable pop culture sort of signifier that they try to use to um you know galvanize whatever the hell this project is they're attempting and the funny thing is is i'm not even sure Dolly's a Democrat. She's not openly, and probably not even privately, but if you do track the trajectory of when and how she became

a sort of meme over the last couple years, when did it start? I would say it probably started in the sort of early 2010s, right? Maybe around the middle of Obama's term? Well, it sort of, whenever the hillbilly chic thing came into play and you started seeing the rise of like,

you know, the sort of high-toned like Southern cultural resurgence, like, you know, Bitter Southerner magazine came out and then like you had like... Oxford American. Yeah, Oxford America and all these these sorts of things became uh sort of more culturally relevant sort of desire you know like you had the restaurants that served drinks out of mason jars even though like all mason mason jars

are kind of hard if you get the the wide mouse they're kind of hard to drink out of because of the way they... You always spill it on yourself. That's what I'm saying. But I think that Dolly is sort of like the god king, god queen of that whole sort of movement. And I think that it's like probably honestly what it is is maybe the Democrats are trying to use her to appeal to rural America again. Not realizing that Dolly Parton is like, by this point has spent, you know, six decades, five, six decades being an insanely wealthy entertainer, business person. And not, you know, poor little girl from Pigeon Forge. Like, they have to have some way to reconnect with rural America. And so the only, I see what you're saying, the only card they have left is mediated through some sort of cultural signifier

or person, personality. And what better than Dolly Parton, who is sort of universally thought well of you know like they're not going to offer any kind of policy solutions at all definitely none of that so the only way they can do it is through some sort of cultural signifier right they're what they're going to do is they're going to give dolly the presidential medal of freedom they're going to... You know what would be hilarious?

Is if Trump gave Dolly the Presidential Medal of Freedom before the Democrats had a chance to. I want that to happen so bad. I want to write Donald J. Trump personally and say, listen, your last will and testament before leaving office should be you give Dolly part in the presidential

medal of freedom and just rob the democrats of that opportunity to co-op that oh my god has she said anything about trump i don't know man like when she came out this summer and she was like black lives matter because of course black lives matter it's like well how long have they mattered you only disbanded the you know the dixie stampede in 2017 right right um well i i can easily see a scenario so okay so the whole biden thing the whole biden and this is probably a good sort of segue into the next portion of this the whole biden thing and you're starting to see this with obama coming out of the woodworks haven't heard of this fucking dude in four fucking years and then all of a sudden he's on every major news headline in every viral video you see you know every tweet like we're getting you know what he's doing don't you he's running interference for joe biden like

he's trying to keep joe biden from like showing up on tv with like doo-doo like running off of his leg because he forgot to wipe or something you know what i mean because he's fucking senile common mistake so obama definitely views the biden era as his third term absolutely yeah and yeah even more even more fundamentally you see this with his new memoir the title of it a promised land the whole premise of the biden thing is unity they've said this multiple times we're doing the unity coalition the promised land coalition or whatever the whole idea is we're uniting all of the disparate parts of the nation who hate trump and trumpism and everything he stands for but but but do not want to like take a punitive approach to it absolutely not not want to do nothing absolutely not want to

do nothing about like scourging it from the body politic or or even doing the, you know, the bare minimum of going after their crimes or anything like that. It's all premised on this very this paper thin idea of a cultural opposition to Trumpism, not a political opposition to him. It is entirely cultural. And so I think that eventually Dolly is going to have to, I mean, she's smart enough to not say anything about Trump, I think, unless she has already and I'm not missed it,

but I do feel like she, I could see her as being one of those people who would be like making some vague statement like well we don't like nasty people in our politics or something like that you know what i mean just something really the the the thing people don't want to engage is dolly's actually a coward yeah a lot of ways because she's like one of these sort of apolitical people like she's exactly the type of person that would say i don't i don't want to get into politics i just want to be nice to everybody and then like you know and then she cuts a check for an extremely small comparatively portion of her fortune and people lose their goddamn mind

yeah well i mean to me she fits into this broad coalition, you know, quite perfectly of people who want to move on beyond Trump and think that it's furthermore, think that it's behind us. You know what I mean? Think that we can piece together some sort of coalition here to reign for a thousand years when all reality, they're going to get rinsed in 2022 midterms and definitely in the 2024 election. I mean, unless the Republicans can't get their shit together and they run someone like Marco Rubio, which is possible. They could fucking do what they did in 2012 and just run a milquetoast, you know, just sort of candidate-like run. I think what they're going to do or what will gain steam, and I hope it doesn't because it's more sinister than Trumpism in so many ways, is I think the Josh Hollies and the Tom Cottons of the world are going to be emboldened. And I think they will even manage to pull the wool over the eyes of a lot of people that might otherwise oppose them. You know what I mean? Like, I see people, like liberals praise Josh Holley for saying things all the time.

I don't really know what to think about all that. This is a very relevant. I mean, like. If we're talking about J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance goes on Fox News, you know, nightly and talks about how the Republicans should be the class of the working the party of the working class. And on Labor Day, Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance and American Enterprise Institute and these people released this statement about how the GOP should start bringing working class people under its umbrella. So that's what they're going for.

Whether it'll work or not, I have no idea. My hunch is that it might work a little bit that you might have a small percentage of the working class who would be like okay but here's the rub i think the working class people who go for who who actually buy into that bullshit will be people in um you know the trades like oil drilling, pipeline laying pipe, coal mining. Those jobs that require a certain degree of skills, and they are dangerous, but they require a certain level of skill. Sort of gendered, masculine masculine skilled labor that's pretty well compensated compared exactly gendered masculine skilled and more importantly in

their schematic noble labor and so you see this even in hillbilly elegy in the movie and the book they don't think their idea of the working class is one small sliver of the working class they are not talking about you know grocers they're not talking about shelf stockers stockers uh not stalkers um or gas station attendees you know what i mean or waiters or wage low wage like service economy yeah that work and and so it might work in the sense that maybe they can peel off some of those workers with their appeal to sort of you know masculinity and nostalgia and you know the nobility and dignity of work and all this but at the end of the day 70 to 80 percent of the goddamn economy is service work and they and they don't want those people ever no they don't have you ever

And they don't want those people. No, they don't. Have you ever, if any political economists are out there, any politicians are out there that are interested in starting a movement, what you need to do is show up at the White Spur BP at around midnight when third shift is getting ready to start, second shift's letting out, the cops are parked in the parking lot, and then the gas station attendant's in there. You see the full spectrum of male labor. You know what I mean?

And I can see how the guys that are working at BP, that are doing stocking shelves or working the register or whatever, sort of aspire to have one of those other two jobs or something because of that sort of masculine pressure. Yeah. And I say that because I've been in those situations before. Yeah. And, yeah, it's an interesting case study. But, yeah, the people the GOP are targeting are not the guy behind the register. It is those guys out in the parking lot.

It's the guys walking in there with, like, coal dust all over their face. Yeah. You know. I mean, in in some respects they've already succeeded in doing that i mean the friends of coal campaign was the perfect example of that yeah um it was an attempt to unite one sliver of the working class with ceos and bosses at the expense of the rest of the working class, nurses, teachers, service workers, et cetera. In some ways, they've succeeded in that, but whether it'll work on a mass scale going forward, I don't know. I really don't know.

I mean, I kind of am of the opinion that guys like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance are extremely uncharismatic. Like, you can use all this rhetoric all you want, right? You can say all this about, like, oh, the GOP needs to be the party, the working class, whatever. But at the end of the day, the people saying that, look who's saying that. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, whatever. But at the end of the day, the people saying that, look who's saying that. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance.

Not exactly a who's who of charismatic, likable people. Cruz narrowly beat Beto O'Rourke. You know what I mean? J.D. Vance just laid a fucking egg with this movie everybody got fucking hard in the pants about. And then fucking Josh Hawley's just out here acting like he's blazing this new trail but he's just an ambitious little fuck with zero charisma yeah i mean so for for that reason i kind of feel like the republicans are just as frozen in place as the democrats um yeah they you know it's it's it's tempting to think that their political project is ascendant um just because, you know, what we see right now.

A mobilized base of Trump people who are very, you know, energetic and, like I said, mobilized and passionate about this. But also have created a problem for them. Yeah. passionate about this um but also have created a problem for them yeah like if you see like did you see the other day where the the attorneys for trump in georgia are out here like holding these massive rallies encouraging people not to vote for uh purdue or leffler and the georgia runoff yeah yeah you know what i mean yeah their political project is just as riven with contradictions as the Democrats in many ways. I mean, maybe not. Maybe it is a little.

It does. I will say this. It does have a little more internal logic than the Democrats. The difference is that the Republicans have embraced that, whereas the Democrats are still in some form of denial. I mean, you know, I think maybe the best example of that, look at this. This is a headline in the New York Times. As we were just saying a second ago, Obama's been out there, you know, giving interviews left and right, you know, getting ready for Obama's third term, etc. This is an example of how they're completely incoherent, and they want two things that are inherently contradictory.

and they want two things that are inherently contradictory. Democrats should ditch defund the police and give Ocasio-Cortez a bigger platform, Obama says. Like, what? Like, I mean, say whatever you want about AOC, but she's one of the biggest advocates of, you know, some of these things like defund the police and stuff. Like, how does that square? How do you say, mean like yeah you know it's it's it's the same thing when obama when biden won the primary and

obama made his speech and was like congratulations to bernie sanders you know if i were running my campaign today my campaign would have looked a lot more like bernie sanders it's just like rhetorical gestures to try to you know prevent a mass uh exodus of like the bernie left from you know the loyal the party faithful and uh yeah it just it but it like yeah like you're right in practice it just makes no sense because let's give somebody a bigger platform but like let's just shut up about everything they believe in. It's a rhetorical gesture to make the left feel like they're included. Yeah. But it has nothing behind it.

I mean, in that same interview, Obama said, what did he say? We should ditch catchphrases like defund the police. He says, if you believe, as I do do that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it's not biased and treats everybody fairly i guess you can use a snappy slogan like defund the police but you know you lost a big audience the minute you say it which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done i mean my personal thinking on this is not entirely coherent. I, myself, am not sure.

I mean, because I work with a lot of people who are impacted by the prison system, and I know how scary the idea of full abolition is to a lot of people. But the way I see it is that people like Obama and AOC and Bernie, they're not supposed to get out there and tell you what you can't have. They're supposed to get out there. And if there is a loud enough chorus of people saying something like defund the police or drastically reform how we do policing in the justice system in this country, their job is to channel that anger into change. And mobilize it. And mobilize it exactly and what you're seeing now and what you're going to see the next four years and what i experienced the entire eight years of obama's presidency is that the democrats exist exclusively to keep the left at bay they

really do i mean i know that it's a cliche thing to say but there is a contradiction there that the left is going to have to resolve and we pointed this out a few weeks ago you can't simultaneously know that the democrats do this intentionally to keep the left at bay and then every four years say well we got to vote for them at a certain point you have to articulate a politics in opposition to them something that says we're not going to do it your way anymore you clearly don't want us in this you don't want any of the things that we say we care about and the only way we can actually go and facilitate or channel that rage that is out there is to do this on our own i mean here's the rub though here's the rub, though. Here's the rub, though. Had not Donald Trump been in office, had just Mitt Romney been in office, or just some normal Republican had been in office, there wouldn't have been this Save the Republic outcry.

Yeah. No, you're right. There wouldn't have been this vote or die stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, like, the Democrats wouldn't have been full-on like this is the most important election of our lifetimes or whatever you know what i mean trump but they would be more or less fine if biden lost to mitt romney absolutely trump bought them four extra years man if jeb bush had

been you know he was the favorite going into the primary in 2016 if he had somehow won that and was president you're right they would have nothing to offer and they would just take the l they would was the favorite going into the primary in 2016 if he had somehow won that and was president you're right they would have nothing to offer and they would just take the l they would offer some up they would probably offer up biden just the same that they did in 2020 but they would take the l and be like well we tried just like they did with john kerry in 20 2004 yeah and then 2024 trial with pete buttages yeah exactly and um i mean it this bought them some time i mean but it really is very demoralizing to see uh you know obama just do the same routine week in and week in and week out of well the left can't uh we can't be having them get out

of control now they can't be saying this they can't be saying that get out of control now. They can't be saying this. They can't be saying that. It's not unrealistic. Dude, this is the same motherfucker who drank Flint water to get those people to shut the fuck over their grievances. The same motherfucker who made empty rhetorical gestures to Occupy to get them to shut the fuck up. The same motherfucker who did the same thing with Ferguson. I mean, there was mass mobilization during

his administration you know yeah if you look at the energy in the streets yeah it's always been there and wherever there's energy in the streets there is obama to fucking throw fucking sand on it the nba strike i mean you there's i mean dude obama what obama did with the n NBA strikes is no different from some fucking dipshit on Twitter telling LeBron James to just shut up and dribble. Yeah. It's functionally the same thing. Yeah, functionally the same thing, but it provides a veneer of sort of respectability to it and institutional legitimacy saying like, oh, you know, we hear you. I mean, but this is really, this is really, I was thinking about this last night.

What you're seeing now with Obama being emboldened to say all this stuff, I really do think that, you know, this is partially a function of the fact that, you know, and I guess it's still a little early. We don't know what's going to happen out of the Biden administration. Maybe they'll surprise us. I don't think they will. But Mike Davis pointed this out on the episode last week. Bernie got absolutely nothing.

Nothing. Wrestled no concessions from the biden administration from the biden campaign nothing went out there and even campaigned for him um relentlessly and got in fact in fact biden gave the budget post to somebody who is rabidly anti-burning like like almost almost comically anti-burning you know what I mean yeah and so I really I mean historians are gonna need to be able to square this I mean seriously how the fuck in 50 years if you're looking back on this 100 years how do you explain the fact that there was this mass movement of people in the early months of 2020 and in 2019 who were gaining momentum political

momentum who had clear definable rallies rallies that were packing out stadiums yeah exactly and meanwhile you had a semi-coherent fucking fossil from the obama era that couldn't pack out a goddamn middle school gymnasium yeah that all of a sudden won the thing. Yeah, and so how do you explain that? And then fast-forwarding from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, and that mass movement getting nothing. I mean, not a single goddamn thing.

Not even an empty rhetorical gesture on something like Medicare for All. Nothing. How do you explain that nothing also also my question to like the biden people and all this stuff like what's your contingency plan for that like what are you going to give them like you know what i mean like you know right now what they're teasing is like this student loan debt forgiveness the stuff but ultimately that's that that has...

You see how that... The number they floated at first was $50,000 in relief. They're already down to $10,000 in relief with a shit ton of qualifiers. The point... Yeah, the point with all of that shit is to... It's to dangle the big prize in front

and then to hand the things out sort of selectively. It's exactly the same method as the ACA the affordable care act it really is it's to say like oh here is this grand political vision this project of a universal program but we're going to hand it out selectively and you're going to have to jump through all these hoops to do it and the and the point is to peel off just enough people in that mass movement to say, well, look, we got this for pressuring him. You know what I mean? Like, at least we got this. Don't fuck it up now. Don't say anything adverse or try to rock the boat too much because, look, at least we got this.

It is very cynical but effective politicking. cynical but effective politicking it really is because it is um very effective at keeping the left uh at at bay you know yeah i i don't know i i i do fundamentally think that a historian looking back on that and seeing the fact that bernie got zilch out of them would say the only way to explain that is that maybe bernie and them thought that they had to just hang on enough and be conciliatory to them enough to get something out of it uh or the other only other explanation is that we are so far down the tube like we're so far down the road of extinction and decline that we've lost all political imagination and all political will. So that even the reformers, the firebrands, you know, the champions, the tribunes of the people, even they can't even envision an alternative or a way out.

And so the only thing they can do is just fold back in and say, well, maybe next time in 15, 20 years. I mean, and I think that that's equally possible. I don't know. Yeah. Speaking of Obama, there was another headline going around this week that I'm sure you got tagged in a lot. Obama, George Bush, and Bill Clinton all said that they would take the COVID vaccine if it was released to build trust among the public.

Man, let me tell you what's amazing about all that shit. The only people that that's reinforcing confidence in are like ellen degeneres and uh you know like they don't understand like the the the people they're targeting that wouldn't take that you know i mean like you know sort of like probably rural people with some questions or whatever you know whoever it is that they think are like too dumb to know how vaccines would questions or whatever you know whoever it is that they think they're like too dumb to know how vaccines would work or whatever it's like you're doing the exact opposite like if obama's out there ready to take it it's like that's going to signal to a whole lot of people oh not about that man

people were how those lizard people are anyway, man. They're already immune to it. They're giving him sugar water. Right. People were asking me if this is a devil's milkshake, and I have to say no, not technically. The thing about the devil's milkshake is people are forgetting the qualifier, the word devil. A devil's milkshake is a bargain with the devil.

Now, you did point out on Twitter there is one bargain they are making here you made a very funny point they could be the one in like one millionth people who get julianne barr syndrome and then everybody's head just explodes like whoa i'm not taking that shit and it derails the whole vaccination program. Sets it back 10 years. Yeah. I guess that would be a bargain with the devil, but you really think they're gonna let Obama take a

vaccine? I mean, like, no. I mean, they're not gonna risk that. The devil's milkshake has to be sort of also kind of spontaneous you know what i mean you have to you have to see the the fire in their eyes to be like fucking i'm doing this yeah yeah yeah no it's not like it's not like oh there's a vaccine that's coming out in three weeks i'm gonna take it public that national tv yeah it's like oh shit they're bitching about this that

and the third well i gotta get up there and squash that out. So I'm gonna go take a sip of this lead water. Which is a very different thing from bathing, cooking, and drinking that shit for 20 years. Exactly, exactly. So, I don't think this is technically Devil's Milkshake. Sorry to bust your bubbles. But it would be funny if they did Seize Out on live television. God damn, man.

Ah, shit. You know, just on that same note, I mean, I really can't stress enough how, and I kind of pointed this out in that thing i wrote for the verso blog right before the election but i really can't stress enough how the vast majority of people in this country it's a very simplistic way of looking at it but it is true and this is why i think i fundamentally trust non-voters more than people who vote at this point most of them anyways is that most people are just as disgusted with the democrats as they are the republicans and in going back to the bernie thing and the lack of political will and imagination the fact that you wouldn't harness that towards some i mean like and i know

that it's not easy i know that it's like it's not like you can just come out on tuesday and say like we've got a new party and they're against our democrats and republicans you know what i mean like it's not like you can just snap your fingers and overnight that be the case right but i would like to see some sort of you know gesture or movement towards some sort of alternative vision that that harnesses that widespread disillusionment and anger or else we're just going to be, I mean, I can't,

I can't imagine myself still being invested in politics in the way that I am now in 10 or 15 years. If we're just doing the same fucking things over and over again, um, every four years going back in, you know, just like getting our imaginations trimmed you know what i mean like like having a haircut you know it's just like well this is gonna be the one yeah

it's i don't know man you got to do something you got to do something but well what are the denizens of Whitesburg saying about it all? Yeah. Do we have any good speak your pieces this week? Let's see what we got here. I myself, I wasn't thrilled with some of the ones I read, but there were a few pretty good ones. I have news for you wannabe god god kings the united states is not now nor has it

ever been a theocracy religion does not control our government and if that's the kind of government you want you can get the hell out of this country because you can't have it here that is not negotiable and if it's a war you're after then come and get it i do um i do like the premise that there are dozens perhaps hundreds perhaps thousands of people everyday americans just like you and me who um see themselves as demigods people who want to really want to lead a religious republic a theocracy and are closet ayatollahs i mean i i see myself that way sometimes uh so all you want to be god kings yeah if you are a trump cultist and you still support him as he behaves like a spoiled brat, you might want to have your reality meds checked, buddy. He does not represent the true Republican Party.

You really need to Google something called the Lincoln Project. Their videos will show you the truth. I like that one. Their videos will show you the truth. I like that one. I added that one because we get accused on this podcast every now and then of presenting a revisionist vision of Appalachia. And I just want to say that there is at least one hillbilly out there who is pro-Lincoln Project.

Yeah. I was just lying here thinking you were married eight times and some of them were very good women and i loved every one of them most of them were my friends so it wasn't their fault it's your fault now you're dragging around a married woman while you call all the others of us witches i don't't think so. You're the most evil person I've ever known in my life. So, I have noticed that after the election, a lot of speaker pieces have gone back to, you know, the sort of salacious gossipy type.

But imagine being married eight times and each one of your wives is smoking hot. I mean, that's pretty tight pretty good pretty good pretty good record yeah i hope everyone imagine that guy driving a truck around says eight no on the back of the window eight no for smoke shows married smoke shows i hope everyone enjoyed themselves on thanksgiving now let's talk a little about Christianity. Let's talk about the Easter bunny. Hell, let's talk about the tooth

fairy. Let's talk about Santa Claus. And then tell your children about Jesus Christ. What do you think is going through the minds of these little fellows? Just the fellas, though. Just the fellas. Christ is not pleased with what's going on in our churches, just so you know. He's not pleased with what's going on in our churches

just so you know he's not pleased with what's going on in the united states you know who i am a number one infidel redneck heterosexual homophobic racist bigot i am american god bless america oh yeah there's a little on the nose, and so I had to include it. Yeah. To a certain young lady. Oh, this is my favorite genre, when somebody gets accused of being spotted at Fish Pond Lake. To a certain young lady. What were you doing at Fish Pond Lake with the gentleman in the red F-150?

He is not your man, and F f-150 she's not your woman when you get up on the side of the bank at the picnic shelters you think no one will see you but here's your sign so um two things about that i frequent fish pond lake i i like to go out there and walk and look at the ducks and see if I can see some bald eagles yeah it's good for all that I've made love out there a few times I'll be honest with you so it's not unwarranted for like you know to think that's what people

go do up there yeah so I guess what I'm saying is there are two activities that you can actually there's like three main activities you can go to Fishpond Lake for. And you could make some sort of Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia-type ensemble cast film just centered on Fishpond Lake and all the stories that come in and out of it. But I guess you do have three archetypes.

Okay, maybe four. I'll say... No, no, I'll put i'll put this you have the first which is me you go out there for the wildlife for the wholesome shit you go out there to look at the ducks or maybe you fish or maybe you take fall photos with your boo uh you you know put a sweater on and you have to go do that thing for 13 likes on your instagram um and then the second thing is you go out there to hook up uh you go out there to get a handjob find a future sweater boo to what to to go test the waters with your future sweater boo potentially yeah exactly exactly um

or to make love in a ford f-150 terrible vehicle to make love in a Ford F-150. Terrible vehicle to make love in, by the way, unless you're in the back. I won't be honest with you. Last time I fucked at Fishpond Lake, I fucked in this chick's truck that she was driving. It was her man's F-150. Extremely disrespectful. That's been many, many years ago, but but still uh well perhaps this is about you um and then and then the third type is people who go out there looking to catch people who are fucking at fish pond lake you know voyeurs um yeah nosy uh you

know people who keep their nose in other people's business, you know. Yeah. Small town gossipers. Yeah. So, yeah, no, you've got those three archetypes. They are all converging on this massive hole that was dug in the ground and just filled with water. I guess it's mostly mine runoff. There's a few houses.

It's a very unimpressive light. Very unimpressive. There's a few houses at the bottom that you can take scuba lessons at, I think. You can go check this out. Yeah. And apparently a catfish the size of a vulva. That has never been caught, but is rumored to exist. Yeah.

And is now, I guess, more than almost 30 years old. To a certain lady on Ingram's Creek, you don't make videos on your telephone and then expect them not to get out, especially when you're a married lady. Well, your video's out and I can tell you exactly what you had on. You don't make videos

like that if you don't want people passing it around. Scandalous. That's fucked up. See, I... That's, um... That's a no-no you don't want to pass around somebody's private video that's why we have revenge porn laws that's right dear speak your peace joseph robinette biden might get to be president but that doesn't mean he'll have an army all it'll take is one general thinking he stole that election then he will have no army yeah okay i the the that's a really hilarious idea i mean you know that that is the thing that the trump people i mean because like the funny

thing about the challenge the election thing is just how neutered it is how like sort of impotent it is that they like i mean literally i mean like figuratively and literally in the person of rudy giuliani you know what i mean like um yeah if that's the head of your election challenging thing like you're already impotent out the gate you're way behind the eight ball right but also like it's really funny that there was this vision over the course there's this image over the course of the trump years that the trumpers were these like vicious you know right wing brown shirt street thugs who were going to um you know fuck people up in the streets they were going to launch a coup or some sort of right wing beer hall

push but in at the end of the day they just want the lawyers to do it this this person is now saying well we're not going to do it, but if a general, if one general, that's all it took, decided that the election was stolen, which is really hilarious because that's not at all. I mean, like, the entire army, you'd think the entire army would just be like, all right. Yeah, yeah, all right.

Well, let's do what this one 78-year-old fossil says. Oh, shit. do what this one 78 year old fossil says yeah oh shit i'm gonna take some fertilizer and put around these blackberry briars on these old strip jobs if we can't bring them back to life i'd like for others to jump in and help me if you would let's see how it works have a nice day that's a good wholesome one i agree with the caller who spelled out the problems of overpopulation this one's insane so give credit to the president for putting over a quarter of a million americans in their early graves with hundreds of thousands more certain to follow before joe biden steps in and puts a stop to it this part yeah this uh a favorite in the liberal eugenicist category, for sure.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well. Is that it? I speak your peace for the week of December 3rd, 2020. Yeah. Mountain Eagle, folks.

It still screams after all these years. That's right. More or less. More or less. It screams in agony. No longer screams in opposition, but in agony. Yeah, well, that about covers it for this week. Sorry we did not give you your fabled Hillbilly Elegy episode.

These are the dog days, my friends. You're getting Terrence and Tom, Skeleton Crew, TNT. We're just barely holding it together. Here's the dog years, people. We'll be back at full strength soon, but we're like your favorite football team that's injury riddled. Right. It's like our star quarterback's out, our free safety's out.

That's right. We're struggling. Yeah. But thanks for hanging in there with us. Obviously, we couldn't do it without you. Thanks for making us the 200th most popular podcast on Spotify. Comedy podcast, I guess I should say. That means there's 199 other podcasts out there funnier than us.

I agree with that. I guess I agree with that. We're about solidly rated. I'm about a 200, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's not unimpressive, but it's not impressive either. Yeah, it's just, it is what it is.

It's like you said yesterday. It's an accurate ranking, an accurate rating. I'm just solidly rated, man. That's right and also thank you to all the people who um got my band tenure uh over 11 000 streams that was pretty tight i did not expect that um i'll take my yield for y'all about six dollars we got about probably two dollars and 34 cents off of that and so nice but that's okay um that's okay um but you know go and stream us on those platforms both drill billies and tenure and um if you want to, you know,

help us pencil whip those numbers a little bit, pad those stats out for next year, for next year's Spotify round. But also, if you'd like to support us on Patreon, you can do that. Please go to www.patreon.com slash trailbillyworkersparty And you can get all kinds of great content there. I will say the old premium episodes,

like premium episodes 20 through 60, well, through 90, really. Okay, there's some really good old premium episodes I like to pull up every now and then to get a good laugh that's right i listen to my own podcast because i'm a solipsistic uh uh egomaniacal stats gotta keep those stats padded baby that's right that's right no shame yeah but there's a lot of good content there we We have a lot of content. We have over, what, 400 episodes at this point? Or over 300 or something? So that's a lot of shit.

We've got quite an imprint. Quite an imprint. So go check it out. Work your ways through the back catalog. And, yeah, tell us what you think. Also, if somebody can find the episode where we we are accused of saying that everybody in eastern kentucky is either socialists or conservatives i see that brother i have no recollection of saying that it's the most asinine thing in the

world i have no recollection of that either if i did say that there's a good chance I was huffing glue before we recorded. It gets thrown around a lot when people are trying to argue online about rural America. They attribute this quote to us. No recollection. Please stop. Asking you to stop attaching us to that. Because it's definitely

not true. There are many liberals in kentucky we call them y'all stars they love mason jars more than a few and they love singing songs like shady grove to castanetas and calling it politics right right yeah i don't it's just on the face of it's just not true and i don't think anything that we've said would reflect that. But maybe I'm wrong. And if so, I'll eat crow, but in the meantime, just stop saying that. Dude, I'm sure we said it. We definitely said it.

It sounds like something we would say. It sounds like an episode four thing to have said, though. Yeah, I think you'd be surprised. I bet it's like an episode 107 thing and you know sometimes when you get so the thing is we tanya might have said it under duress yeah this is thing like we do this live improv no planning and when you're in the middle of making an argument you'll say fucking anything to prove your point yeah if you get you get caught on your feet man you'll say fucking yeah any goddamn time yeah so i i appreciate the i appreciate being someone's proxy in an argument

but also it's it is false uh yeah it's just not true um anyways thanks for listening everybody please go to the patreon and um we will see you next time over there have a great rest of the week and uh go with god bye