Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 176: Assimilants of Funk

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

This week we hear from centrist Zack de la Rocha; we take a trip to Dillon, Texas; and we finish out with an article about a nonprofit activist in New York selling it all for some Omaha steaks Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

man zach de la roca was a big fan of coming through stereo systems he loves coming through stereo systems most of what rage did was come through stereo systems that's exactly right that is exactly right are you recording hold on a second. No. Didn't Rage play the DNC in 2000? That must have been the last straw for him. I don't get down with electoral politics. Ah, son, if you find me at the ballot box, I'll be fucking dead there. Fucking, uh... Son, if you find me at the ballot box, I'll be fucking dead there. Fucking, uh... I feel like...

I feel like I'm recording now, I'm sorry. Yeah. Hold on a second. Damn it, no, I'm not. If you vote third party, you're giving your vote away. Well, I'm here to say... Okay, this is a new entry into our lore centrist zach de la roca okay all right. They say 5,000 votes was all the margin between Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

Some fishy things happening up in Michigan. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the kids in Appalachia. Coming at you. Coming through your stereo. Yeah, coming at you in Appalachia. Coming at you in Appalachia. Amy McGrath, she dropping bomb tracks. She dropping bomb tracks! She dropping bomb tracks! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha if you don't donate your money now to the McGrath campaign.

Yeah, he's got like a sort of whispering like, yeah, to the McGrath campaign. And then he would be like, then he would be like, the latest polling out from Ditch Mitch says she's just two points behind. the latest polling out from Ditch Mitch says she's just two points behind this is me bringing that style

and putting it in your putting it in your mind putting it in your mind god damn it this is the worst one yeah messing with voting polls what was it like what was a uh sort of uh like a cause du jour of the 90s when they were out and big

but they were like i know they were like really big into like leonard peltier and like mumia abu jamal and that kind of stuff but like what's something that like we also too don't believe in we can make fun of well i feel like a symbol of the 90s was world trade um organization remember they had those big uh riots protests and riots in like seattle in 1999 remember yeah yeah and like all the old heads i talked to are like i've been at a few like organizing workshops or whatever who were like who who will uh throw that card out there like yeah i was at seattle in 99 cool who will uh throw that card out there like yeah i was a seattle 99 cool that's like a very like like there's a there's a type of gen xer and this is no shade

to the gen xers i i don't want to yeah i don't want to i don't want to be one of those generationalist dudes because that shit's corny but there is a certain gen xer that's like very seattle very portland you know what i mean yeah it's like into like 90s style activism favorite bands pavement that kind of shit yeah i'm sure this is the guy you speak of the person you speak of yeah yeah yeah i, the World Trade protest was like their fucking water Woodstock, in a way. You know what I mean?

I thought you were going to say their Waterloo. I was for a second. I got my allegories mixed up. Well, that too. Yeah, I don't know. I have met a few people, though. I mean, and that's cool. If you were there, you're listening to this, and you hold on to that.

That's cool. I think that's cool. I mean, hell, I rode my bike down to Occupy in Austin in 2011. I remember talking to my buddy Eric on the phone and being like, this might really be it, man. This might really be the revolution. Oh, man. how many times have we said that in our lives i would do a montage like cut of every time like just young us saying this

is it man this is where it all turns around this is it it's like the climate march tom sex this is where it all turns man jesus you remember i won't say their name you remember a person a certain person from whitesburg that told the president of ireland they couldn't march with them because this was a highly negotiated space for like frontline communities dude that's baller shit. That's the most baller shit I've ever heard. President of Ireland, who I think was pretty good, I guess, maybe. Or, you know, comparatively. I know nothing about Irish politics. I think she...

I might be having the wrong one, but I'm pretty sure it was the one who legalized abortion. Yeah. Right? Yeah, and then some fucking self-righteous nub nuts says no you can't march with us like like what movement exists where you don't like let well-intentioned people mark join your march it's so stupid yeah it would it did seem unnecessary that was the thing it was just unnecessarily it's just chauvinism it's just like this is ireland this isn't a fucking uk or some imperial power

this is a colonized state a colonized people yeah for sure yeah yeah it's not like you yeah it's not like you had fucking uh george w down there to march with you. Yeah, yeah. It's a pretty big difference. But it was pretty funny, though. No, Miss President of Ireland, this is for Appalachia. We're coming at you with the climate march. That's Zack DeLaRocca, who they did let march with him. They did. Fucked up double standard, honestly.

Yeah, pretty fucked up. I've been saying this. It was Sid for Zach DeLaRocca they let march with him. Not the real one. Yeah. Oh, man. What's going on this week? Well, we got a lot going on this week.

So let's start from the most microscopic level. I'll tell you what's going on in Whitesburg. What's going on in Whitesburg? I was walking downtown a few days ago, and I ran into Ben and Mike in front of the record store. And they told me they had just opened up a Savoy. You know that band Savoy Brown? Savoy Brown, yeah.

One of Rerun's favorite bands. Yes, yeah. Someone had brought in a record, a Savoy Brown record, and it had a bag of weed in it from the 1970s i mean it had something on it that denoted what year it was it really literally was from like 1974 or 5 or something like that god did y'all did they smoke it no what what would that be like even? I don't know, man. I hear the grass in the 70s was a lot more mild. I hear it was not as.

It's like mild 70s pot. And now it's also more than 50 years old. I don't know. I thought that was interesting um it seems i mean like interesting shit is always happening in that building i think that building itself in downtown whitesburg that corner building that roundabout records is now in i think it is a portal to something you know it has a very portal like there man yes it's a it's a it's an area where the sort of veil is thinner you know what i mean yeah yeah you step outside back onto

the street less so you step in yeah you're transported that's right that's true that's right um god it just seemed to me very apt very okay i need desperately a follow-up on this okay hell i i may volunteer you put 50 something euro pot in your lungs i probably would yeah why don't you call it pot i mean dude did you see that story a few days ago um it wasn't a story or maybe i don't it was just one of those it was like on one of those like science twitter pages that was like this is pretty cool it was like a mummy from 2500 bc and she had had breast cancer and she had like uh she had tattoos all over her oh yeah i did see that yeah she had like a little canister around her neck with cannabis in it so i mean

it would be interesting to know because in my mind i've always kind of thought is marijuana getting like it's like a spectrum right it's really strong now it's stronger than it's ever been now right and so every preceding marijuana is just weaker so was two was we 2500 years ago i bet it was just piss weak just like like they probably thought it was like the end all be all that was just garbage the mids of mids of mids okay also i'm going to just say a little theory i have a little theory about this that is not a mummy from 2500 years ago why that is somebody that probably took place in those 90s protests in seattle that like also made their money in the dot-com boom out there but it was like one of those like kind of rich hippies yeah and like tragically developed breast cancer and

decided to pony up to be buried and mummified and buried in a sarcophagus. Absolutely. That was 25,000 years or however old. Dude, that's an interesting. And so they open it up and they're like, oh, shit. That is going to be a startup idea. Once they realize they can't, once it dawns on them that they're not immortal, Once it dawns on them that they're not immortal,

they'll be like, okay, well, put us in a bog that mummifies our likenesses perfectly. You will get to pay to be a bog baby. Bog mummy. Or bog mummy, whatever they're fucking called. I would pay to do that now. I wonder if you could mummify yourself now while you're living aren't there like monks that do that

dude there are like they sort of ease into the death process yes I think they're in Japan they will quite literally become mummified while living I forgot about that they start pickling themselves.

Yeah. It's like a gradual process. Imagine the dedication. Dude, no one in America could do that. Like, no. There is not a single American. Well, intentionally anyways. I mean, there might be some guys in the hollers around here who are mummified.

Well, that's not their intention, but they are. They're pickled. Yeah, that's not their intention, but they are. They're pickled. Yeah, they're pickled. Not for any sort of religious practice or purpose or anything like that. Right, right. Yeah, that's... Buddhist meditation mummy.

Let me see. Did we talk about this on the show? Soku Shinbutsu. Shokin Tsubutsu. We did talk about this on the show um soku shinbutsu shokin subuchi we said we did talk about this on the show i believe um absolutely just the dedication it's like lighting yourself on fire you know i'll also cover uh my centrist sac de la roca also also but but no but that the centrist sac de la roca version of that would be just like uh the dalai lama yeah on the front just like praying no not setting themselves on fire or anything yeah dude quite literally there is an alternate universe where rage was like a rat like like a radical centrist ban.

You know what I mean? Two years and we gotta kick them off. The welfare list. I'm coming at you. Olaf. Welfare to work. That's the way to be. We gonna mid-term these republicans into next century

you get it because it's 1999 98 whatever oh my fucking god 20 21st century ah i thought it made a good one mass incarceration Mass incarceration. It's spread in cost a nation. Spreading across the nation. We gotta... We gotta reform the police but not defund them. What about the good ones? Don't you wanna not punish the good ones? We can't punish the good ones for a few bad apples oh my god so i say to you go to the voting booth and take off your shackles

because that's where it happens oh my fucking god uh well i mean somebody on board with sack de la roca centrist sack de la roca's movement is hollywood star matthew mcconaughey who said this week on the russell brand program that we need to be aggressively centrist in this country that the far left has gotten out of hand and the far right is misunderstand some things but that if we could just be aggressively centrist that's when the tide's going to turn i agree i mean i wholeheartedly agree i've been thinking about this because matthew mcconaughey perfectly embodies a very specific political niche in this country that is probably expressed in no better form or location than the television show friday night

lights it is it is um you know it supports all of the opportunities that this country offers people. Just the sort of most watered down, you know, vaguest opportunities. Like racial equality that it doesn't actually commit itself to, you know, for example. You're right. 100% if he would have never gotten cast, he would be like a high school football coach

in Killeen, Texas right now. Exactly. Watch it. I have, so Right now I'm re-watching Friday Night Lights, but I've really been thinking about how we talk a lot about small business owners as petty tyrants. But think about the petty

tyrant you have to be to be a high school assistant football coach. And now think about the petty tyrant you'd have to be to be a high school assistant football coach. And now think about the petty tyrant you'd have to be to be a junior high school assistant football coach. Dude, let me tell you something, man. There's perhaps no more ignoble calling than a guy that gets a payday

to call 13-year-old boys pussies and queers like that and that's your job you know what i mean that's your job i mean some guys do it for volunteering i mean i'm assuming at the junior high level like if you're an offensive coordinator junior high you've got to be volunteering i assume assume. But maybe not. Maybe if it's – because the premise of that show, the premise of Friday Night Lights is that Coach Taylor, played by – what's the guy's name that plays Coach Taylor? Kyle – no, what's his name? Matt – Matthew Fox?

I think it's Kyle something. I was going to say Kyle Chandler or something. I've never watched Friday Night Lights, I have to confess. I've never seriously watched it. Kyle Chandler. Kyle Chandler and then Matthew Fox is also in it, but he doesn't play Coach Taylor. Connie Britt and Coach Taylor.

Yeah, you should watch it. It's very much a product of a very specific kind of American propaganda. The same guy that made It, also made Patriot's Day about Boston bombing, about the Boston Marathon bombing, made like five movies with Mark Wahlberg. The Deepwater Horizon movie. Yeah.

Mark Wahlberg might have should have stopped making movies after Boogie Nights yeah I agree well no he's got a few that I think I like but I can't remember what they are yeah I do like some I'm not going to be a cool guy I like some Marky Mark schlock

yeah he's alright he plays a good like you know crooked cop yeah well so the premise of Fridayiday night lights is kyle chandler and connie brit go from being junior high school football coach couple to high school football coach come like you don't if you're kyle chandler you're not coaching junior high football i mean there's a lot about this show that's unrealistic and that's the whole point but Kyle Chandler, you're not coaching junior high football. I mean, there's a lot about this show that's unrealistic, and that's the whole point.

But it has made me want to dive into the kind of personality that would want to coach teenagers in football. In basketball, tennis, these other things, they make a little more sense, but football. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing is that I witnessed that mentality firsthand about, I guess it's probably back in the summer or thereabouts. A guy that I went to high school with that ended up coaching middle school football.

I think we might have talked about this on the show a little bit, but he posted some steals from 300. Where he takes his son to the... Or like for when Leonidas is in the agogia as a young boy. It shows him getting the shit knocked out of him. And all that kind of stuff.

He used that as justification for letting the boys play. You know what I'm saying? He was like, listen, we're turning our boys into little fucking pussies. We need to do like the Spartans in 300 and put them through the agogi, which the modern day equivalent of that is expose them to this airborne pathogen. Right. That could fuck them up for life or kill them, possibly. Oh my fucking God.

So, anyway, that's the kind of mentality that, you know, the Friday Night Lights mentality, baby. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that McCconaughey's recent comments kind of sum up the political worldview of a show like that where there is i guess what i'm saying is that they believe there's a common ground and if you watch the show friday night lights not a single care every character in that show now like buddy garrity he would just be a maggot chud who would spend all of his time on facebook arguing with people about how chevy choice chase is a clone or whatever you know i mean like they don't believe

in this common ground anymore anymore not even in like sort of rhetoric theory in theory or in any kind of abstraction either like yeah i mean you see this like i mean i don't know these people have been saying this for a while but like this was a big thing that was kind of going around on twitter this week that rush limbaugh said like the states were going to the red states were going to secede and this was all based on texas launching this like attempt to contest the election like ken paxson texas's attorney general was has launched this like i don't know what are they trying do you know exactly what they're trying to basically get the electoral college to invalidate states like pennsylvania i think that's that's their their goal they're going but

you know what i mean but here's the thing about that though man the fucking democrats can't say shit about that do you remember that lincoln project-esque uh push like to get the electors not to elect trump after the clinton trump race yeah what was that called um i thought they had like a 501c3 and all that kind of stuff and they and it was called it was called no it had the word hamilton in it it was good it was like the hamilton it's like the hamilton project or something like that no they're i think there's they're called like the hamilton oh fuck the hamilton electors is that what it is let's say electors. Yeah, Hamilton electors. Yeah, yeah. From November 21st, 2016. Meet the Hamilton electors hoping for an electoral college revolt.

So, honestly, like, I ain't trying to hear shit from the Democrats that are roasting this as some sort of coup because the Democrats tried to pull off their own coup. It's only a coup if they like don't like you oh my god it's just like justice prevailing if like they do like you yeah you went to the electoral college i'm here to drop some knowledge yeah i'm here to drop some knowledge. Yeah, I'm here to drop some knowledge. You Hamilton electors can't even think for yourself. Hamilton electors, Hannibal

Lecter on them fucking Republicans in 2016. They got your brain washed. They got your brain washed and they eating your spleen it's very i think zach de la roca is very like just like gruff beastie boys yeah like he's a good rapper now like i he's he's had some good spots on the Run the Jewels albums. I'll say that. Dude, I mean, when I was in seventh grade, I remember being at a house party. You know when you're in seventh grade, you want everybody to think you're cool.

I remember being at a seventh grade house party, and MTV was on at the house party, and, like, Limp Bizkit was on. And I remember telling everybody, like, I think rap metal is the best. I think rap, yeah, rap rock is the best genre of music. And I thought... Well, you were being aggressively centrist, though. Yeah, I was. You thought that rock had lost its way and rap had lost its way, but when they brought them together...

Yeah. I literally thought it was the platonic ideal of music like the best combination of all the best things music yeah i will i will say this proudly that i never got too far down into it i did rage a little bit yeah i did like rage a little bit but uh man rage is great i remember around that same time my cousin shelly lived in lexington and you couldn't really get parental advisory cds in rural america because walmart was like the only place you could buy them and i was like hey shelly here's two things i want i want masterpiece mp Master P's MP The Last Dawn album and I want Eminem's Slim Shady LP.

And she bought me Master P and sent me Master P but she was like, I don't think I can send you Eminem. I was like, why not? She's like, well, I went to buy it and the clerk at the Sam Goody

or whatever it was, thed store said that it was like the most disgusting like explicit content i was like that's why i want it that's why and then she ended up she ended up sending it to me like being like a cool older cousin like sending it to me and i was so cool because i'd had the m&m's he did not take it to like school like middle school whatever and play it like People would be like, oh, man, that shit is raw, man. He's talking about drinking Slurpees and having herpes and whatever. And we just thought that this was the most forbidden shit, man. It was the same in our town.

You had Walmart, but when I was in seventh grade, we got a Hastings which is um oh yeah it was a hastings superstore and hastings was tight because they would throw away their porno mags and so if you wanted to go dumpster diving you could get the porno dog you and your boys dumpster diving for hustlers dude you don't understand this was a different time this was pre streaming risking getting bacterial meningitis

so you could like for a copy of ass man I wanted to see a copy of Ass Man. I don't know. I just imagine young Terrence going in and coming up and you've got shit all over you. It looks like somebody's throwing up on you.

It's just like all those fucking... Well, I guess you wouldn't be dumpster diving at a restaurant or something where you'd have all the... Like a grease. You have like 12 day old wendy's chili and like grease on you but you you come up with like a fucking soiled copy of ass man you emerge victorious your boys make you walk home because you're not getting in the car like that. Like, all I'm saying is that you, in those days, I'm a little bit older than some of the audience, so they may think that this is incredibly lame, but this would have been in maybe 2002, 2003.

I mean, those were darker times. You could not just dial something up. That's true. This is what kids are missing out on these days bonding male bonding like that that's what true male bonding is man there's no opportunities for because everything's at our fingertips they did i went to i went to great lengths to score porn and stuff when I was like that age. You had to. I mean, dude, I remember watching physical copies of pornography

up until being in college. So like up until like 2009 or 10, I still remember having physical copies. I feel like because that's really when Pornhub came on the scene and like websites where you could stream it more regularly was probably in 2008 or 9 or 10. But I remember having fucking multiple physical copies as a young man. As a young man. Oh, shit. Oh, man.

All right. I have something I wanted to show you today and it's really funny that we as a centrist zach de la roca in another life she missed her calling um as a hype rapper for the hottest rap rock band this side of the World War II. But she has definitely found her calling in another realm that both of us are very familiar with, and that's the nonprofit world. Okay. So this is in New York. I'm on pins and needles over here for the reveal.

This is in New York Magazine. I need to preface this before I start reading it with, I'm fully aware that half of the audience probably already has either read this or know who this person is if they are in the activist scene. So please, I'm asking you, do not send me anything after this like, well, actually, this is what she's done and how she blah, blah, blah, and here's a million articles. I't care i really don't she's done more more for the movement than you ever had you fucking piece of shit or from the left uh this is what i get a lot too people who are on the left

who send me the articles like uh like i covered it in a way that wasn't the correct phrase. I understand this because plenty of people write about where I live and they think they have an idea of what they're talking about but they really don't. The difference is I usually just let it go. Unless it's J.D. Vance.

Yeah, right. Just let it slide, man. Which I should just let it slide. I'm basically being a hypocrite now that I think about it. Anyways, this is in New York Magazine. The article is called On Behalf of the Plutocrats. Kathy Wild's winding path from community organizer to head of the partnership for New York City.

On the last Friday in September, two dozen protesters descended on the co-op 740 Park Avenue, laying crosses, small stars of David, and Islamic crescents on the grassy median in front of the building, each one symbolizing another thousand of New York's COVID dead. They chose this building, an imposing art deco behemoth known in the tabloids as the Tower of Power because it is home to the highest concentration of billionaires in the United States. The protest was one of dozens that had sprung up in the city since June when a reckoning with racism collided with the global pandemic that had left millions jobless in New York alone.

The next day, the Democratic Socialist... That's Central Zach DeLaRocca inspired. Yes. Yes. alone the next day the democratic social zach de la roca inspired yes the next day the democratic socialists of america protested in front of bloomberg's house a few blocks away and for weeks before that there had been a series of loud marches and drum circles on the tonier streets of the hamptons and in front of Jeff Bezos' Manhattan apartment. Well, guess what?

Jeff Bezos isn't even a resident of New York City. He doesn't even pay taxes here. So what are we talking about exactly? Kathy Wild told me from her Brooklyn apartment this summer in one of the many conversations we've had over the course of the pandemic. Wild is the president of the Partnership for New York City, which bills itself as a, quote, nonprofit organization whose members are the city's preeminent business leaders and employers of more than 1.5 million New Yorkers,

and which aims to, quote, build bridges between the leaders of global industries and government. It was founded by David Rockefeller in 1979 and runs a $170 million fund for business development projects. Here are some of its members. Since Wild joined 20 years ago, its membership has grown to include some of the richest people in New York, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon,

net worth $1.5 billion, hedge fund John Paulson, $4.2 billion, and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, $19.7 billion. The partnership writes reports on how the city and state can best boost their economic prospects, lobbies lawmakers on issues ranging from mayoral control of schools

to how to get more biotech businesses to move there, and regularly surveys the city's CEOs on what they need from local government. Blah, blah, blah. Wilde's affection for the 110 New York City CEOs, white-shoe lawyers, tech entrepreneurs, real estate magnates, and other masters of the universe in the partnership is obvious. She calls them either my crowd or without a hint of irony, captains of industry. And they love Wild right back. During one of several

conversations we have had since the spring over the phone and at her Brooklyn apartment, Wild was interrupted by a knock on the door that turned out to be a delivery of Omaha Steaks, a thank you gift from a CEO for whom she had done a favor. She wouldn't say which CEO or what favor it was. Dude, dude. I gotta just pause for one second.

If you can be bought with some goddamn Omaha Steaks from some of the richest people on the face of the fucking planet yeah um wild says she didn't join the partnership to lobby on behalf of ceos we are not a chamber of commerce she says i call us the anti-chamber of commerce we are business working on behalf of the city but what it means to work on behalf of the city has meant different things to her at different times when she arrived in new york from minnesota in the late 1960s fresh

off her time in students for democratic society at st olaf. She was in SDS. Well, go figure. She was a community organizer working to save Brooklyn's Sunset Park as it was slowly being gutted by disinvestment and whitewash. Sunset Park, what time is it? It's time to recognize. It's time to represent. Did you ever watch Sunset Park?

No, I didn't. I thought you were doing Centrist. No, no. represent do you ever watch sunset park no i didn't i thought you were doing centrist no no i was doing uh what's uh hold on a second um time out time out time out time out oh i was doing uh centrist rhea perlman I was doing Centrist Rhea Perlman. Oh. From Cheers? Or wait, no.

Well, yeah, but also Sunset Park. Oh, I see. Danny DeVito's betrothed. Anyway. I see. Yeah. She organized sit-ins, led protest marches in front of the city planning commission to prevent displacement, and hounded foundations and federal bureaucracies until they gave her enough money to start rebuilding the neighborhood. The head of the state's conservative party called her a communist.

But she came to believe that government was slow and that power, true power, lived not in City Hall but in penthouses on Fifth Avenue and in the private offices of the city's biggest banks. Well, what would give you that indication? Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Okay, hold on a second. Let me get my bearings. Is this going to end, just give me a little foreshadow, or don't. Keep me on pins and needles if you need to.

But is this going to end with her making some sort of contorted argument that we actually need to be in service to the wealthiest people in order to bring about the revolution or something? Like, is it that diseased? It's so great. That is such an interesting idea that you posit there. Let's dive in and let's see what she believes. Okay.

All right. I'm along for the ride. She came to believe that government was slow and that power, true power, lived not on City Hall but in penthouses on Fifth Avenue and in the private offices of the city's biggest banks. By the time Bloomberg took office as mayor, the one-time rabble-rouser for the working class had become a spokeswoman for the interests of Wall Street. There is no example as clear as Wilde, perhaps Mayor de Blasio included, of someone who, once upon a time, there could have been plucked from the front lines of protests like those this summer, but over the course of decades, became a part of the establishment. And it is deeply embedded in Wilde's belief system by now that the ultra rich are far more important to the health of the city than its liberal citizens acknowledge employing

millions of new yorkers underwriting social welfare programs that government will not and footing the bill for half of the city's budget i was just telling someone this morning i probably shouldn't tell you who but i'm a legislative leader in Albany, that I am like the lone defender of the billionaires at this point, she told me in July. To think we are going to get out of this problem by demonizing wealth? It is wrong. It is just the wrong solution. Oh, boy.

Yeah, so Wilde's perspective on the city's economic crisis is not just that billionaires and the companies they lead are misguided protest targets. She believes they are our best ticket out of all this. Over the course of her career, the city has weathered a series of calamities, the near bankruptcy of the 1970s, the overwhelming crime of the 1980s, the fear of the post 9-11 era the great recession and she has been in the room each time as the new york business elite committed to the city's future and partnering with elected officials to fund and support recovery plans okay all right a lot there um but i want to pause there for just i want to pause there for just a minute. Because basically what she has said is that she has been in the room for every major urban fiscal social crisis in New York City since the 1970s. And that has been what has pulled the city through those crises. And it's fascinating because it shows that her and other people like her, true centrists, true Zack DeLaRocca centrists,

they see crises as these totally just natural, you know, they're just totally natural they they come in from acts they're exogenous they come in from the outside and they happen to us you know what i mean these economic crises it's not that the people she's in the room with cause these very crises it's that they're the people who are left to pick everything up when everything is falling apart and it's like yeah no fucking shit i mean god it's pointless to even dissect this woman kind of because she's this is her job her job is whitewashing four billionaires quite literally i can't get a good read on if she ever really was a real radical um and she just completely sold her soul and is just you know has nothing it's just a valuable somebody with the net worth and the

several billions with a b placated her with omaha states i mean if i'm gonna be if i'm gonna be the errand boy of the plutocracy class, I better be getting more out of it than some goddamn freezer steaks. Later on, it goes through her apartment. Her apartment is completely lackluster. She lives in a regular-ass place. Dude, she's doing this because she fully believes it. Or either that, or there are people that, like, are addicted to access.

That is also, yes, that is very... Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you're right. It's not like, it's not like, and I, you know, it's not like they're just doing it because this somehow betters the movement or even selfishly furthers their own career. It's just they like the idea of being able to tell their friends that they're friends with Jeff Bezos. Exactly.

You know what I'm saying? That's exactly right. I mean, they're hangers-on uh in this case she's of the lamest worst kind yeah yeah but if you're gonna be a hangers-on man be like a you know jeff bridge just seems like a cool guy to be a hangers-on for do something like that be a guy who um produces drug you know who provides drugs for these people because at least you, you know, who provides drugs for these people. Because at least you're, you know,

you're contributing to their eventual downfall. B. Jeff Bridges, we got. That's a good niche. Yeah. Let's see. Blah, blah, blah.

She has talked about how they have, Wild is, just as worrisome to Wilde is the possibility that the business elites, surrounded by pitchforks and protests, might no longer feel they have a stake in the city. This city, she says, is not going to rebuild by itself. Before the pandemic, Wilde had been considering retiring by the end of this year. She no longer thinks that's wise, given the precarious economic and political environment and has instead redoubled her efforts at persuading the city's new class of activists and liberal politicians to be less suspicious of their wealthiest neighbors her success in that mission of course will depend in large part on how

convincingly she can explain her transformation from an outsider like one of them into the city's and explain her transformation from an outsider like one of them into the city's ultimate insider. Very, very interesting. Very interesting. But if you want to sort of dive into her background a little bit to see how she got here, she worked as like a community organ i don't even know what that means they said that about obama that he was a community organizer i

mean does it mean anything motherfucker it was like a he was like a community organizer like nathan hall's a coal miner you know what i mean like he did it for like you know two weeks to shore up his uh street credentials and then after that it, okay, now I can just go be a law professor or whatever I was destined to be. Well, I think the thing is, is that you can be a community organizer. I mean, you can put the word organizer onto anything. So, for example, you can organize a community's business leaders. And that would make you a community organizer. I mean, there's no class dimension to it, right?

So it's just like— Look at me. I'm a community organizer, literally, by day, and I couldn't organize a late-night run to Taco Bell, you know? I mean— Yeah, you're right it usually it just means renting out a space getting food in the space and some solo cups and sending out some invitations i mean and getting people to like you enough to show up that's really a big one yeah in itself it is kind of a talent but it is funny that it's a it's's a job, and it's one that I have. But regardless, how do you make your sort of trajectory from, you know, doing voter registration drives and being part of SDS and whatever to all of a sudden you're in your unremarkable apartment

getting Omaha Steaks from Jamie Dimon. Well, I mean, you have to be deeply in touch. I'm not mad at the hustle. What I'm saying is level up. Fuck. Yeah, you're getting nothing out of this. Yeah, you're getting nothing out of this. At the end of the day,

all you're really doing is sticking up for some people who would not hesitate for a second to fucking garrote you with a piano wire from the backseat of a car. If you think they're going to show up to your funeral, you're crazy. What they're going to do is send flowers and Omaha steaks to your next of kin. Right, right. Well, I i mean i can fought the hustle here because if let's say that was a joke

i'm sorry but go on i mean this person is you know i very involved in how, I don't know, how we get indoctrinated with the idea that we need leaders to pull us out of crises. Or we do need leaders. I'm sorry. I don't mean that across the board. But that we need billionaires and their resources. We do need their resources.

We do need their resources, that's for sure, but we don't need them individually. That's really the thing. We don't need Jamie Dimon. If the world was rid of Jamie Dimon tomorrow, if the world was rid of, this is the funny thing, if the world was rid of every 110 people on this partnership for New York, the world would be literally better. It would be, yes, immeasurably better. Yeah. Leave your money behind. You, whatever.

Yeah. But, yeah. Well, I mean, this is kind of pivotal i mean in her life this is the moment where she decides that she no longer wants to organize uh protests and and and try to get the city to impose more taxes on the rich and keep more capital in the city uh for everyone's benefit This is the moment where she decides, no, no more. In the 70s, she had been working at a hospital to prevent a meat market from being moved or something like that.

I'm not making this up. You know what I've got in my head, what I've imagined, is that she's like the Forrest Gump of failed social movements. You know that like she's like the forest gump of like like failed social movements like you know that comptroller's meeting that's like the subject of adam's hyper normalization like in the background if you look at archival footage she's there she's there she's like telling the comptroller don't show up it's fine we'll handle it you know

what i mean like like she's like the uh like the angel of death for like social movements jesus dude you're right i mean i think it's very funny i'm not a psychiatrist but if i was i would point out the significance of meat here. Meat has come up twice. She got Omaha Steaks and she was fighting to prevent the move of a meat market. And these are both pivotal things in her life and career. Something about meat there.

I don't know. Didn't Tony Soprano have a meat thing? Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. This is the moment. She had been working with john zuccotti who was deputy mayor and brooklyn representative on the city planning commission um to prevent the moving of the meat market um she said working with they were um she, working with Zuccotti taught her this. I just found out very early that protesting was maybe making a statement, but it didn't get things fixed, she said. So that's when I figured out that there were people in power that wanted to make things work, that wanted to do the right thing, and that you could work with them.

And so then she went on to work for a bank as a community housing specialist listen like basically what's happening here is that like i could see like matthew mcconaughey before he went on the russell brand program read this that was like she that's it. That's it. Finally, somebody's figured it out, and then he's adopted this as his politics. Because as much as we like Matthew McConaughey, we have to confront the fact that he is a uniquely dumb guy. I was going to say, extremely stupid. Extremely talented.

You know what's so weird is i don't understand how a guy like that can just so beautifully convey like a broad range of human experiences and emotions in such a powerful way and then all that's up there is like a goddamn half-eaten jar of applesauce with the crust around the rim. You know what I mean? Well, I was never... My impression of this guy is driving around the college campus I went to, like, trying to pick up chicks. That tracks. i went to like trying to pick up chicks i was like that tracks i mean yeah i i think for guys like mcconaughey and for a lot of actors really they just want the noise to go down they want shit to just calm down um but the libs they really think that things are gonna calm down now

now that like trump's out of office. They really do think this. It's really bizarre. And it's like I'm getting a lot of signs that things are about to become much more intense. I mean, as they start trying to roll this vaccine out. I mean, you know, I was thinking about this the other night. We talk a lot about how COVID was the perfect storm for america and that's why the numbers are so bad i mean it was like the perfect storm of having none other

than donald fucking trump president while it happened and also having decades and decades of neglect of public infrastructure and public health and decades of uh you know metabolizing politics in this very sort of cultural way that prevent people from caring for one another wearing masks or anything like that and uh and then i was thinking about how you've got just another element added onto this pile of perfect storm which is the anti-vaxxer thing just that like this anti-vaxxer thing was floating around looking for a new home it's just a perfect pollinated thing it's it's so crazy man because it's like it's almost like we're that guy in the atlantis more set song that waited his whole life to take

the flight that crashed yeah it's like we knew this pandemic was coming the pentagon knew about in the bush administration you know i mean like the clean clipping steam thing you know it's like that thing you sent me dude they had the fucking vaccine in february january january like we didn't even i don't even know if we had like a diagnosed, and China hadn't like... We didn't know much about what was happening in China at that point. It was only two weeks old. A little over two weeks old. We had the vaccine.

Which is like, yeah, obviously you don't want to roll it out. But Valentine's Day, but goddamn. We had the tools the whole long to stave this off, and we didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty crazy um well that's another perfect storm element to it just like the slow glacial pace of getting like vaccine drugs there i mean like as the article you sent me pointed out it's in new york magazine i think david wallace wells wrote it it was basically like... David Wallace-Wells, he's the same guy that wrote the climate change thing

that everybody said was sensationalist, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that, right? I like that kind of writing. Yeah. As he pointed out, they got hydroxychloroquine or whatever fucking FDA approved or whatever in like two weeks.

I mean... approved fda approved or whatever in like two weeks i mean it's a perfect storm of all these various things i mean and that's the that's i don't know i guess that's the crazy thing about history sometimes you just have perfect storms sometimes sometimes all the social forces just convene upon you in such a way to make it uniquely spectacularly bad or good i mean you could argument that's how the argue how that's how the french revolution went just a perfect storm to create something that was starting to go pretty good and then went bad but in our case it's gone really fucking bad it's not it's not been great yeah um well back to uh kathy wilde um so let's fast forward to the 90s 2000 she gets hired on

as a partnership she works her way up through the banking world through the financial sector um you know uh wheeling and dilling whining and dining the rock people like the rockefellers rock david rockefeller gets her added onto this non-profit partnership for new york city whatever um and uh and she's arrived um and so the first thing that she gets to work doing, she tightens up the membership of the already pretty stupid nonprofit Partnership for New York. It's now a collection of bank CEOs, venture capitalists, fashion entrepreneurs, media magazines, including Vox Media,

and a few months ago, Sarah Jessica Parker. What a get. What a get. What a get. Let's see. But these days, we're a long way from the New York of Mayor Bloomberg, who called the city a luxury product. If there is a baleful force in the city, as Wes Wild sees it, it is not her crowd, but all those who march on Bezos' house or Gracie Mansion or who show up to disrupt city council hearings. The people with the great political pull are not the business community.

It's the activists, except they don't have any solutions, he said. They stopped from building a campus. They stopped Amazon from building a campus here. They won't let the city grow, and they call to defund the police and tax businesses and the rich kathy i gotta just call in the question what is it that you believe me well yeah what that's the that's the funny thing to me about this it's like okay you say this fucking works you say that you can get these people to well make it fucking work 300,000 people are dead or in your city alone probably like fucking 50,000 or some shit. Oh my God, I hate this person.

I don't know. That's the thing that pisses me off so fucking bad about people like this. And I put resource generation in the same goddamn category. Because it's like all they talk about is how much their wealth could go to fix things and it's like motherfucker but it never does things but it never does it never fucking does the best you know what i'd like to see one of these fucking assholes do just one time in their life say here's 20 billion dollars and point it at something that's not like some fucking stupid ass fucking whatever like and i'm not even saying that's going to work like i don't feel like

that's i don't think you can like have like rely on the the largesse of like the fucking billionaire class but like give us some proof of fucking concept not like yeah i'm gonna give you uh 160 different non-profits 300 a year for the next 365 years or whatever. And all those nonprofits don't do shit but fucking, you know, I don't know what they do. No, dude. This is the thing. This is exactly it. And this is, again, why Resource Generation pisses me off so fucking bad is that like if you truly believe this

if you did truly believe it what you would do is you would create a shell corporation non-profit an llc non-prop 501c3 or whatever you would put 10 million dollars in it that apparently you all fucking have because you all have trust funds or you work for j jamie diamond or whatever put 10 million dollars into that 501c3 and all that 501c3 does is it goes to a fucking burnt out husk hollowed out husk in fucking rust belt post-industrial wasteland mid middle west uh midwest and then give every single person in the community under making under like 75 000 a year or whatever like a hundred thousand dollars or however the fuck much you give to these goddamn non-profits like that would literally i know we've made this point before but what the fuck why put

it in this pretense of like no we can put'll do it through nonprofits. I'll tell you why. Because it's fucking tax shelters. You don't understand how things work, man. You don't understand. There's a way to do things and not things. It's like, motherfucker, y'all, your boys, Elon Musk's talking about going fucking Mars and building a colony, and you're telling me you can't go alleviate poverty in fucking Akron, Ohio. Yeah.

Yeah. Suck my fucking dick and go to hell. I mean, it's partially because, it's several reasons. It's partially because, A, putting all this money through nonprofits and banks, community development programs, chambers of commerce and all that shit is a tax shelter. That's the first thing. But the second thing, and I think this is the most important one and it's why uh you hardly will never see any wealthy person doing this is that it would actually give people resources to probably

mount some kind of challenge you know what i'm saying like they right they can't count they can't countenance the idea of people being empowered in any way. And this is the fundamental building block of this woman's ideology. And it's kind of the, honestly, if you really peel it back enough, this is the building block of Elizabeth Warren's ideology as well. The idea is just you need sort of technocratic experts who know what to do with this stuff um or or benevolent uh rich people i mean i guess she was pretty antagonist or maybe people would say

that's not fair for me or whatever but i do think that at root it is a at the that at root it's very basic philosophy is that all the people can't be empowered to make decisions, right? Like only a small portion of the population should be allowed any kind of any, any proximity to the labor levers of resource distribution and allocation and power.

I think that that is really the fundamental thing that like change has to come down from on top rather than, you know, from below. Right. Right. Well, anyways, that like change has to come down from on top rather than you know from below right right well anyways um let's get to the end here um so she's got a few she's got a few pretty good quotes in here and i'll just since we're getting close to the end my job has given me access to people who make a difference. If you organize them, you can do something about lots of these issues. She says, when asked how a career championing the interest of the 1%

could simultaneously be oriented toward the dispossessed, there are leaders in the business community who, when they put their resources to good purpose, can exercise enormous power and can take care of things very quickly. Theoretically, this is exactly the time when such resources and expertise could be especially useful, but as the city and state face massive budget deficits

and increasing calls to plug the gap by taxing the rich, Wild's group has been mostly silent. Blah, blah, blah. Basically, it's just her... It it's just her whining about the fact that AOC and other people's suggestions for digging our way out of the shit is taxing the rich. We're cutting off her plug for Omaha Steaks.

Fucking worthless dumbass. Yep, yep, yep, yep. But anyways, that's Kathy Wild. I'm sure many of you are already familiar with her. But, you know, I'm sure your community has a kathy wild i know mine does um the kathy wild in my community is a very specific archetype who says that any kind of organizing let's say along a sort of class or racial access is bad because it will scare away rich people. That is, there are many people like this, especially here in Appalachia,

who are basically like, no, we don't want any kind of trouble at the city councils. We have to make our business attractive for rich people. We need our rich benefactors to be nice to us, give us crumbs for ill-defined projects that we can write about in the national media and say, oh, we're turning the tide here by, you know. Look, these people are making their own pizzas. Isn't that great?

These people are making their own burritos and smoothies. Oh, man. Oh, well. So, anyways, that's the show for the week. You got Centrist Dag Daler Rocha coming at you, though. With another bomb track. With another fucking bomb track, baby. Let's see before we go

I feel like there's a few things I need to plug Patreon go to the Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party go check that out go check out this week I went on this podcast called Hoot and Holler Billy Workers Party. Go check that out. Go check out, this week I went on this podcast

called Hoot and Holler, which is like a podcast like ours, but in the Ozarks. And we had a pretty fun time hanging out. So, go check that out. And is there anything else, Tom?

Do you have anything that you'd like to that you'd like to plug what do i have to plug i don't have anything some of those that were some of those that work horses some of those that some of those that ride horses are the same that Oh, yeah. I do have my sort of renegades of funk. My band's new record is out there. You can get it on 7-inch, 12-inch. It's also streaming isn't around because it's 1998. inch it's also uh yeah well streaming isn't around because it's 1998 but this this produce this um produces an interesting question what would be on renegades of funk

no no it wouldn't be called renegades of funk it would be called uh assimilants of funk just go by the record. Well, thanks everybody. We will talk to you next time. Have a good one.