Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 195: Clean Coal Therapy

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

This week we talk about a new form of psychiatric therapy: coal gasification and sequestration. We also talk about Chuck Schumer's newfound progressivism, and the conviction of Derek Chauvin. Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

uh well ladies and gentlemen it's a very somber day here in trill billy's land it truly it's been a somber week fucking fuck we're here to we are here to mourn the death of a um beloved american figure someone who made a lasting mark on political life and culture and i just don't think the world will be the same without him by that i'm referring to walter mondale uh democratic presidential candidate in 1984 um and what was he was he carter's vice president probably most famous for losing to clinton in uh 90 92 right or 96. Must have been. He was a former vice president, but I can't...

I think it was Jimmy Carter. Yeah, he was Jimmy Carter's vice president. The joke I was making was mixing him up with Bob Dole. There's a couple of guys that kind of, you know, like Dan Quayle,

Walter Mondale. You're talking about like 80s, you know, like Dan Quayle, Walter Mondale. You're talking about like 80s, 90s, like, yeah, just marginal political figures. You know what I mean? Honestly, that's what you want. If you can skate through politics without drawing much attention,

that's probably a sign of a victory, honestly. I think, though, that's like antithetical to like being an american politician though because i feel like they want the opposite thing they want as much attention as possible yeah yeah i still can't get over jimmy carter's ass out here with i mean he's like 90 and he's still out here building habitat for humanity houses. This man. It's like your friend Donovan, man. You know, they can't quit.

They can't fucking quit. I wonder if if Jimmy's going to be adversely affected by like he's just going to be so mournful of Walter Mondale's passing that it's like it's that's what finally does him in you know anything any anything but fritz mondale he dies of a broken heart yeah oh man y'all i meant to tell you we got a really nice care package in the mail from seattle i need to figure out a way to split it all up i've already took out the stuff i want of course so i'll send this left to you all. You got first dibs. We get the scraps. I got first dibs, but I only took

a fourth of the goods. There's a huge thing of dried salmon we'll have to split up. Dried salmon. I won't fight y'all for that. My girlfriend's cat would like that. I'll grab it for my girlfriend's cat. T that i'll grab it for my girlfriend tanya just give just give me the goddamn uh bubble wrap to pop and that's good enough for me

i already set aside the bath salts for you and the soaps bub i know you i know what you like Thank you. Well, we have a fun episode today, weaving in and out of the halls of American liberal power. So maybe it was fitting to open up with Walter Mondale there. I wanted to talk about this week, several different things, several different American liberal figures. I think a good starting point would be that just this week, the UMWA, they did not announce this, but it was not really but it was reported in the press that the umwa was coming out in support finally of a just transition after all these years they finally come around to it cecil finally came around huh yeah um i mean so you know luckily they put it in our newspaper, so I don't even have to bring it up on my phone. I can just read it straight out of the paper like we're at the Dairy Queen.

Love that. Hell yeah, baby. Straighten up, Chase. United Mine Workers backs shift from coal and swap for jobs. That's the headline. That's the headline. The nation's largest coal miners union said this week it would accept President Joe Biden's plan to move away from coal workers who lost their jobs last year, is crucial to any infrastructure bill taken up in by Congress. He said, we talk about a just transition all the time. I wish people would quit using that. There's never been a just transition in the history of the United States.

people would quit using that there's never been a just transition in the history of the united states um this was nice cecil getting it in um basically what is needed this is joe mansion this was announced along with joe mansion um oh that was a joe mansion quote no that was a cecil roberts quote but this was this Joe Manchin finally joined on board. Yeah, we're going to get to that in just a minute to Joe Manchin. But this was announced at a press club event. I guess this is in West Virginia. This is in West Virginia. Joe Manchin said,

measures to help coal miners in West Virginia and other rural states must be part of the $2.3 trillion infrastructure package taking shape in Congress. Basically, what is needed is the human infrastructure, Manchin said. You can't leave anybody behind, especially those in this hard-hit state, which has lost thousands of jobs in mining and other resources.

And doesn't deserve a $15 minimum wage, according to me. He's been leaving these workers behind his whole entire career. Exactly. This is rich. Yeah. He says, I can tell you how West Virginia feels. We feel like returning Vietnam veterans, Manchin said. Oh, my God.

Thoroughly debunked trope. Which is not real. It did not happen. Villages without prejudice, they deserve clean jobs. A better

comparison would be we feel like the Vietnamese after the war oh my god questions uh yeah yeah one parents can i ask do you consider joe mansion a liberal power figure or whatever you said earlier i mean no i mean i don't know i guess it depends he is conservative definitely but he is a democrat they did the dems the dems fucking love him so i mean yeah so it's hard to it's hard categorize him obviously he's like a culture war conservative uh i do think that he has demonstrated in the past a willingness

to use government in a way that some conservatives don't but that that is not in any way a compliment on him just an observation so i i guess i would consider him as a centrist i don't even fucking know tom tom's the mansion expert over here that's right cheney and cheney yeah I'd categorize him as a self-hating Italian. Changing that name from, anglicizing that name from Mancini, the beautiful name like Mancini to Manchin. Come on, fuck out of here. No, he's obviously a conservative. I mean, motherfucker.

I mean, I mean, it's something I've yelled about a million times, but like when all those chemical spills happen in West Virginia, but the DuPont in Parkersburg and all that stuff, all this shit got to the Canal River. This motherfucker went conferred with the DuPont executives and all these other chemical executives and basically got them off the hook for like millions and millions of dollars in fines from, from I assume the EPA or, you know, whoever. So, yeah, that's, there's nothing, there's nothing even liberal about that. I mean, liberals, at least, you know, liberals at least walk the walk with like the sort of like the empty rhetorical gestures to environmentalism. This guy's like died in the wool coal. You know, I think he's the second biggest uh recipient of campaign finance money from the coal industry behind um god some guy in ohio i can't remember maybe rob or somebody i can't remember but in any case, that's,

you know, that's as a Democrat, he's the second biggest recipient of coal funds as a Democrat. And Tom, you're Tom's not even, this isn't even like a random fact. You keep pulling out Tom. I fully believe that every day you think about the DuPont chemicals in your

body tissue. Well, there's something called called uh c8 that we all have in us i mean every one of us sitting here doesn't matter we got i mean i've probably got more of it that probably explains my prostate issues that's what i that's what i named my dildo c8 it's probably made out of it yeah i just wonder why doesn't he just like become a republican like i i feel like i like when i started like paying attention to like national politics i was kind of just waiting for like him to eventually like leave the democratic party like that one straw yeah i'll say and

there's a good west virginia history of it it's uh there's's a well-paved road for him to flip to flip red. But he seems to like being in this spot where he's like a kingmaker. Because we people are all joking around, like President Joe Manchin, because him and Kyrsten Sinema and a couple of these other ghouls are like, you know, that point, I guess that flex point of the Democratic Party, which is like, which way are they going to go, you know? They help them to keep towing, like, you know, the i guess that flex point the democratic party which is like which way they're gonna go you know yeah they help them to keep towing like you know the neoliberal corporate line so i guess he just likes i guess he just likes lording over people in that little like fiefdom he has in the center you know yeah i as part i think he's kind of the republicans man on

the inside you know what i mean it's like uh yeah he like the stuff that doesn't really matter he's like you know he'll just go with the dems on but like the stuff it's crucial he's got a caucus with the republicans on yeah i want to see his dms with mitch mcconnell i wonder what that looks like that what is he talking about with mitch mcconnell um yeah i mean for you're right he is a conservative he's a democrat which means that the democrats have to work with them um and in the past couple of weeks he as you said tom he's like carved a niche around the past couple of months really carved out a niche for himself and the media plays along with it where he will come out and make a statement of vague

support of something like in february he talked about he might be open to reforming the filibuster but then literally a month later said i will never under any circumstances in or even entertain the idea of it and the bait and the press always bites on this every single time and they're like and they're like oh my god he's really gonna do it um another i mean to that point terrence another thing that happens is joe manchin stays and offers of like do you remember when he was floated as secretary of state under obama because he's such a problem for the democrats and they and then like now like biden's named his wife i guess the what the head of the arc oh that's right jesus so the didn't like like he stays in a little you know lignyop from the from the from the democratic party just because uh he's so cagey you know yeah they have to grease him up jesus i i actually think it's pretty significant that cecil roberts has called for a rebrand of just transition i'm into the use of

the words just transition i'm a little surprised i haven't seen that in a headline or two i see it a little differently honestly i see it as kind of an abject failure of the umwa to be honest with you it's like imagine imagine a lot of them imagine you're a worker in a union and the main figure has yelled and hemmed and hawed for like you know friends of cole like these reactionary talking points from like industry lobbies for years right and filed the whole fucking union under the banner of that shit and then all of a sudden now you're the just transition guy because you because there is no industry to speak of there's not a single umwa representative coal miner working in kentucky and that's been true for years and years and years yeah so i don't know i just umwa has been a piece of shit for a long time and i'm saying this as the grandson of a shop store.

No, definitely. And I've even talked to some of the, some of the last UMWA organizers in Kentucky. They're of course very old men now. And they even admit, they're just like, we fucked it up. Oh yeah, they're like, we fucked it up oh yeah they're like we fucked it right up well so what he's done as this uh rebrand as you call it tanya um is they've offered like in their own plan the umwa and they're releasing it with mansion um what it what it does is it

puts forward or it calls for significant expansion of tax incentives for renewable energy and preference in hiring for dislocated miners full funding for programs to plug old oil and gas wells and clean up abandoned mines and continued incentives to develop so-called carbon capture and storage technology that traps carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels and stores it underground i'm for innovation not elimination of coal mansion said adding that even if coal was reduced to zero in the united states thousands of carbon polluting coal mines would still operate in china and other countries it's not north america climate it's

global climate so wow i love that rationale dude yeah yeah well they're not going to be taking care of their shit so why the fuck we might as well be burning it too baby yeah wow yeah i want to i want to take this apart a little bit because the media like i said the media picked up on this and reported it as if, oh my God, this is incredible. This is a groundbreaking moment. The UMWA is finally supporting the just transition. But if you read between the lines, and someone pointed out, this is at the House Red, their editor for Strike Wave, everything in the plan they released is already umwa policy and most of it is clean coal stuff so um part two parts of this the major parts of it that call for tax

incentives for renewable energy are literally just called by renewable energy they're talking about carbon sequestration and clean coal um and and so i mean like tom and i did a whole episode about uh what is it called ccs it's about the place in mississippi yeah about the the kemper power plant yeah yeah which was the most expensive power plant that's ever been built um and it was a total boondoggle i think it's premium episode 101 but it's uh you know it was obama and i think 2010 came out with his like clean um it wasn't the clean power plant that eventually got passed in like 2016 or whatever but he was calling for carbon sequestration and clean coal technology as an olive branch to the coal industry and it was just a complete failure i mean the thing about clean

coal is that it is literally a a scam yeah it's it's in the terms of legitimacy it falls somewhere between chiropractic and reiki healing and you're. And you're talking to a guy that now practices trans-indental meditation. Hold on, hold on. Go ahead, Tanya. Are you into Reiki healing, Tanya? No, but it feels like I mean, I am into it. I haven't. Well, I'll tell you this. This may not even be considered Reiki healing. But when I was so heartbroken, I did literally carry a rose quartz around on my chest. And now I have a necklace with it on it that hits me right at my heart chakra. Is that right? Is that Reiki healing? I don't know.

heart chakra is that wrong is that reiki healing i don't know listen i tell well you've missed the last part of that as i said this coming from a guy now practices transcendental meditation so i'm no stranger to the woo woo i just i mean here's my point we have no health care in this country if if if it uh if it behooves you to put yourself on a prayer list put a stone on your chest every once in a while i agree with you yeah might as well spread it around no no disrespect to any uh healers we need more healers not less so you're saying that if you are feeling depressed you can also do a little bit of clean coal carbon sequestration that's all i'm saying we need a plurality of tactics as you said yeah yeah clean coal clean coal cures depression yeah go dig yourself up some coal from the hillside and

gasify it in your living room or just have yourself a little devil's milkshake why not gasify your liver make sure all your windows are closed it will cure your depression rather permanently much like sylvia plath i mean honestly though if you're not healing any if if i do anything i do if it's not healing me any if it's making me even sicker i hope it just gets me closer to death at this point yeah either cure me or kill me god damn um well okay i see i struck a nerve let me say somewhere between chiropractic and carnivores. I'm sorry. Wait, hold on. About the carnivores.

I'm kidding. I'm a carnivore. My favorite childhood fish I got from the carnivores. So, so, yeah. So basically what this amounts to is just a call for clean coal sequestration technology. And like I said, the Kemper power plant is quite literally a Potemkin village, like in DeKalb County, Mississippi. It's like I said, Tom and I did a whole episode about it um but uh but the liberals love this and we don't know what biden's like clean energy plan is going to be yet i don't think

they've released it yet but we said that in that episode and i'm gonna say it now i really wouldn't be surprised if a big portion of it wasn't clean coal because they love it it's the perfect olive branch to the uh to the coal miners to the coal industry executives um and it allows they don't have to do anything you know what i'm saying like they just leave it up to the market basically and offer some tax incentives for it but they don't have to invest in any kind of large-scale mobilization of resources for like solar technology wind anything like that i don't know and the branding i mean i don't i don't really know i should go back and listen that episode because i don't really know a lot about like clean coal but i mean just the branding makes it sound like like yeah this is a move away

from like you know uh you know extractive like you know resources that like pollute you know our air and water and shit like you know you throw clean in front of it i think trump was running with that for a bit you know he kept throwing around clean coal because for people who don't know which is most people in the country, it sounds like a better alternative, a more sustainable alternative than what we have now. Oh yeah, they've been trying to make it catch on for decades now.

Do y'all remember the first Obama campaign? Turning on CNN and watching the debates and stuff and the clean coal commercials were like every fucking where. They bought out a whole UK basketball game that costs like a million dollars it's uh fuck it's it's it's like it's this has been around for a while and the crazy thing is is like there's they're like terrence is talking about this

facility this camper facility in mississippi like their big overture to prove that it worked was a colossal failure but like it's like they've been beating it into us now for well i guess what 12 13 years now that it's like hell people are still buying carbon credits this country's so people are selling carbon credits right now as we drank our juice this morning carbon credits are being traded well so speaking of speaking of mansion there was something i wanted to bring to y'all's attention where are we at on time because my recording stopped and i'm already stressed about it. Oh, I'm sorry. It's 15 to 11. 1043, yeah.

No, I mean, like, how much time have we recorded already? Oh, 35 minutes. That's what I got anyway. All right. So I wanted to read this profile of Chuck Schumer that was in New York magazine for you guys. Oh my God. Do we must do it?

But before we, before we do that, I have to check. Has Nancy sought treatment for her UTI? Did it cause her to say that North Floyd sacrificed itself? Yeah. You're getting ahead of the bit here. I'm sorry. I'm taking us through the halls of Congress. Sorry.

Let me do my job. You do yours. Sorry. Go ahead, MC. Go ahead, MC. All right. Cut it out. Cut it out.

We're back in line. I got too high. I'm getting ahead of myself. You just say Schumer. It's just the first thing that popped in my head. I got too high. I'm getting ahead of myself. You just say Schumer. It's just the first thing that popped in my head. Sorry. Carry on. I really did notice this week and I guess you all would

laugh at this because I'm sure you already noticed a long time ago. Because I watched Anyway, I listened to some other podcasts this week, which I never do and I shouldn't Anyway, I listened to some other podcasts this week, which I never do, and I shouldn't do, honestly. But we really are just spending so many wheels hating these motherfuckers.

Oh, yeah. Talking about them, reading what stupid shit they say and do. God help us well you're right so episode's over you can go home cut that out too never thought of it that way

I know you all already know this but I just kind of was like damn this is what we do these idiots are always gonna do dumb like ghoulish shit yeah well they're comic like the republicans aren't really comedic because they are bloodthirsty maniacs like idealistic rubes are fun to laugh at you know what i'm saying like there is something yeah i guess that's yeah that is true i don is true it does bring us some joy you are correct um well now that i've justified the entire raison d'etre of this episode let us now embark on a journey that will be sure to fail to deliver

because tanya has raised the stakes i'm sorry i'm sorry just cut it out um this is in new york magazine uh chuck schumer has changed why is the former angry centrist pushing his party to go bigger bolder and more progressive is this like when uh um brett and gail ask why uh biden is such a socialist i mean basically yeah the gist of this article is that chuck schumer has now moved left. So let's see. He late one Wednesday last month, Chuck Schumer padded around his inner office in the Capitol in black socks decorated with palm trees.

That's a nice detail. He's faithful. Tended his fireplace and conceded a few seconds of self-reflection. It was the end of a long day on the Hill and the building ringed by armed guards and a wide perimeter of razor-wired tops fencing, was mostly empty. About a week earlier, the Senate had passed one of the largest stimulus bills in American history to provide pandemic relief. The measure passed largely thanks to his exhaustive effort to marshal all 50 votes in his caucus. It performed a months long balancing act that had for a few high wire hours threatened to topple at the hands of his old colleague and on again,

off again, friend Joe Manchin. Before Schumer succeeded in backing off the West Virginia Democrat at the last second. I'm an optimist, Schumer said. He told me the Senate Democrats were adopting a new slogan failure is not an option but he continued quietly failure could actually still come quote if our caucus if our entire caucus doesn't see the need to pull together to make these changes so um it goes through here talks a little bit about like what schumer's trying to do i thought he had a really hilarious quote here like the the interviewer was asking them asking him like how he does it and he says i have more energy for it than i've ever had more enthusiasm because it's so important i don't stop

it's just like yeah yeah it's important for you to keep your seat and not get beat by a progressive man in a primary and like wear whimsical socks even actually did you know they're weed they're weed plants because i helped push through legalization in new york um so yeah so i mean i i don't know anytime someone says like it's so important what I do, it just I don't know. It raises some eyebrows like you're thinking. So like the portrait that this article paints of January 6th is pretty funny because a lot of this article focuses on that event. And it kind of is the event that radicalized Chuck Schumer and a lot of other people, including Kamala Harris, because the framing of this article is that the Trump presidency, along with January 6th, is what pulled them to the left. He says that he had been slightly

radicalized by the Trump era. He and Harris were now far less concerned an acceptable amount though people and except the minimum effective dose of radicalization micro dose radicalization yeah like my serotonin he uh yeah so ian harris were far now far less concerned about bipartisanship as a standalone virtue than even a few years earlier um two months before we spoke on the morning of january 6 schumer got in his car and parked slope around 7 a.m having slept just three hours he'd spent the previous evening on tinder hooks obviously he said pouring over maps and data from georgia on what tinder hooks i don't know i thought you said tinder at first i did too i was

like i thought that's what you said but i was like no you couldn't have said that that's a curveball um how many folks are in chatham county what's's the black turnout in DeKalb County? This is what he says. Where a pair of runoffs were determined to determine control of the Senate. He'd gone to bed after the Reverend Raphael Warnock was declared the winner of one race, but with the second, John Ossoff, looking good, though technically still up in the air. Unless something drastic changed, he'd become senate majority leader my first reaction welcome you're fucking welcome um forgot john ossoff sent the senate

like this is my senator for a minute yeah this is a funny scene that this whole thing paints. Like, I didn't realize that it had become clear that Ossoff, Warnock and Biden were all declared winners while the gates were being torn down outside of the Capitol steps. And Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were being herded into some like, you know, panic room somewhere. Oh, my God. I mean, like that is a pretty fascinating portrait of contemporary america am i wrong like these milquetoast like moderate guys are who were electing as the gates are being torn down in the barbarian storm by reactionary yeah it's so funny that's like that is so goddamn funny to think about like the the i mean i hate to talk about the overton window

but the shift is that so much that people are storming the bastille over john ossoff a guy who like in that interview remember that interview before he got elected like every progressive measure no no no no and it's some guy that owns a goddamn tractor supply in arkansas said by god i won't stand for this i know i've said this before but i've met this man because i worked on this congressional campaign when he ran for congress uh he had lucid mcbath seat now and he is the most underwhelming like he's like canned spam in a suit with the limpest moistest handshake ever like he's so uninteresting and unforgettable man so a limp moist handshake say no more it's like shaking a dead fish, man. It's disgusting. Fucking disgusting. He's our senator, though.

You know. Respect. I like how Schumer talks about this event. I mean, it kind of gives you an insight into his personality. He said, within an hour, this is on January 6th, a police officer came up from behind him in a big fat bulletproof vest submachine gun stat strapped around his waist and he grabs me like this firmly by the collar i'll never forget that grab he says senator you're in danger gotta get out of here it was only then

secured in the overrun capital with mcconnell and a crew of heavily armed guards that schumer learned asaf's race had been called and that he would officially run the senate so he learned in that moment that he would be sitting he's getting he's getting yoked up by some brute i forgot about that's true because i i tweeted what i thought was some of my finer work remember the picture from the from the capital siege of the people climbing over the wall i didn't know what was going on necessarily i just thought it was some like you know like they're just acting out on the capital steps or something and i'm just but in people in line to go vote their ass off

and then people were like, oh, that's disgusting. I was like, why is that? I thought it was good. I'm telling you, man, all those libs in Decatur were so excited and rabid to vote for him. Oh, my God. They're willing to storm the Capitol. Schumer tried painting the picture for me. We were within 25 feet of these.

He turned to an aide and asked, am I allowed to curse in front of him? Insufficiently dissuaded, he continued, these bastards, okay? These horrible people. Can I say bastards in an interview? Can I say bastards? These hooligans. Yeah. He said, they are the extreme, the worst,

but some of their sentiment is in many people sour angry blaming divisive because they don't have a positive path forward oh my god yeah because of who chuck i love when they say divisive it's like who's being who created the initial divisions i love how they they can divorce their job performance from the conditions of the country. They have that dissonance. They don't shake this shit. Well, that's why they make

tweets, man. They'll tweet about shit. It's like, yo, motherfucker, aren't you in control of what happens? Why are you just tweeting? Jesus. He said he flashes back to that day a lot. Like, he has non-flashbacks about that day. They're all being treated for PTSD after January 6th.

He says, the first time you said to yourself, well, they elected Trump, not because they thought he'd win, but because they didn't like Hillary. But he got 70 effing million votes the second time he said 70 effing million votes the second time and he's a horror so all the time wait wait he said he said effing so he's he got 70 effing effing million votes wow wow um no you go ahead it just amazes me that like they're so oblivious and like you know disconnected that they can't even imagine that there are like tens of millions of people out there who literally hate them to the point of wanting to like assassinate them like it just amazes me that he's like 78 effing million votes like yeah he did because look at the job look at the good job you guys have been doing you know look at the state that the country's it has been it for a

very long time it just amazes me how to out of touch they are yeah it feels like so like i said there's a direct quote in in this article earlier about how he says he was slightly radicalized by the trump era um he says that's the biggest oxymoron slightly radicalized moderately so yeah it's like jumbo shrimp he says the world has changed income inequality is a huge problem in america he has been spotted wearing a cancel student debt mask he says he wants to cancel up to fifty thousand dollars in student debt now is there an asterisk on that mask and then like an explanation of what he really means by that somewhere like yeah out of sight on the strings going around his head isn't he like a beneficiary

of like one of the biggest beneficiaries of wall street like in the senate i think so yeah i mean he's talking about i mean he's a senator from new york like surely he's pretty tight he's pretty tied into wall street um you know and it and it just kind of goes on and it talks a lot about some of his other plans and the basically the gist of this article is that chuck schumer has is now a lefty, is a progressive. And I thought it was interesting because the kind of theme of this conversation so far has been like pulling people to the left. And if it's possible. And I think that Chuck Schumer is a is a case that it is. And Biden himself is a case that it is probably possible, but not in the way that some people think.

I'm not sure that it's this like mechanistic thing where you lobby your candidate or your representative or whatever to become more of a leftist. I think that they adopt kind of a more leftist posture to fend off challenges from the left. You know what I'm saying? Yo, he's worried about, I mean, I don't know for sure. I'm not in his head, but I feel like he's worried about someone like aoc right challenging him right right and like being able to capture and contain this energy you know maybe the same thing with folks like joe mansion with the with the pro act so that you know they don't get like run out of

office in like two years or four when re-election is coming up you know i don't know aaron he says you are literally all that's in his head young black georgia voter you're right exactly like aaron thorpe lives i'm fine here i just got to deal with us off and we're listening to this podcast called the trailbillies i can can't get this guy here. Coin the phrase, vote your ass off. But yeah, I mean, this is the thing, like, were they slightly radicalized by the Trump era or were they radicalized by Bernie promising to, you know,

I mean, maybe I'm being too, you know, maybe I'm being too rosy or whatever about Bernie, but it does kind of seem to me that with Black Lives Matter and with the Bernie movement, that there was a visible leftist movement in this country that was coalescing around something. And so it it's like were they radicalized by trump or were they radicalized by a rising tide of more radical people it just makes you wonder i don't know i mean you're you're exactly right about that i think it is uh they know they can't discount sort of the nascent left movement in this country and i think they feel like they have to pay a little lip service to that particularly in places where they could get primaried by you know an alc or you know whoever it is yeah i mean that man i go ahead go ahead i don't have anything others i was just gonna say like you have to ask i guess is that is that pulling someone left?

No, it feels like it just feels like like self-preservation, you know, I don't pulling them in what direction. I don't know. But it just seems like self-preservation. I mean, I think about this all the time. And that like Trump said he was going to build a fucking wall across the U.S.-Mexico border. And eventually Republicans fell in line. Bernie Sanders said that he just wanted everybody to have health care. And they did everything that they could. Also, you know, there were problems, obviously, with his campaign. I think anybody could admit, but like they did everything they could to stop him from doing that. So it just seems to me that they're really more scared of like being replaced by a left-wing insurgency. Like even the reptilian part of their brains, you know,

that maybe they haven't really formalized like these thoughts yet, but it's just like this little fear that they have rather than somebody like Trump, you know? I mean, maybe that sounds crazy, but it really seems like they're more scared of the left than they are of like the far right. Yeah.

And I don't say all this to discourage people from continuing to like organize and pull these people left. All I'm saying is it just they have a contradiction in what they want to achieve and what you want to achieve. And I think that you just keep that in mind. I'm not saying you stop doing any of the things that anybody's doing. Yeah, you're right, because ultimately it doesn't matter you know it doesn't matter when chuck schumer believes morally you know exactly as long as you're getting your ends met yeah right and and maybe as a as a goal it's maybe we should approach it less about moving chuck schumer left more about making chuck schumer fear for his life that would be like that's a better approach i mean it worked it worked on january 6th

it worked on january 6th in very different ways so yeah it's true well um that would probably be a good place to, yes, transition to, yeah, what you what you two carnivores were so eager to dine out on Nancy Pelosi. My girl. So. So, yes. So earlier this week, Derek Chauvin was found guilty for murdering George Floyd. The responses from a lot of public officials and elected Democrats was very, very interesting. A lot of very interesting things. There was the mayor of Minneapolis. What um what is his name jacob fray

how to fuck my wife i mean he basically said like his death made the city better. And then what did Pelosi say? She said that like, thank you for your sacrifice or something. Yeah, he sacrificed his life. Somehow they are still giving cops credit. They literally are still just crediting cops for any semblance of good in the world yeah it's like barely even good george floyd died for a better minneapolis that's yeah that's exactly what the that's exactly what his mission was

yeah she said thank you for sacrificing your life for justice is what she said man that shit yo when i first saw that man i could not like like what part of me was like what part of me without even like like the whole like pathologizing liberalism and the way they individualize like systemic issues into like you know one event of one person so much so that you could like call this man a martyr. You know what I mean? Like it just shows you how unserious you are with these so-called systemic issues. But even more importantly, I was talking to my friend and I was like, yo, we truly do live in a gerontocracy because like, I feel like anyone younger, you know what I mean? And a little bit

more like quick witted and minded, you know what i mean would understand like i shouldn't say this because listen to how this sounds you know right like we just have these people who truly do i think have those like you know like racist like sentiments but she's not even like in her mind before she says it like kind of like okay let me let me how will this appear and sound to other people she's just literally just spewing at the mouth man it's so fucking insane it's it's it's part of this sort of continuing trend of democrats they say over the top like sort of flowery like rhetorical shit you know what i mean like you know the motherfuckers that like when they write they just don't they don't't get down the road or tell a goddamn story. But they have to like catch it now. This like just like purpley language.

You know what I mean? Right. Right. So what they've done is they just they just keep doing that shit until they can torque themselves into a fucked up position because they're more concerned with the style of giving a rousing speech other than like real conviction about anything. You know know they have there's nothing going on inside of them nothing they're they're like pleasure centers are are null and void they have there's nothing happening you're exactly right i never really thought about it before that but they um they love to try to like poeticize like despair and suffering and stuff

they like try to put this sort of like flowery language around it to imbue it with some kind of meaning um to sound like they're saying something profound because like they they obviously can't critique the system and they can't admit that these deaths are just completely meaningless and unnecessary so they have to be held responsible too if they did that they would have to indict themselves so yeah so they have to like they have to kind of like i i mean i don't i hate to say this. I don't fully hold this person responsible for this. But I think that one of the main progenitors of this is Ta-Nehisi Coates. Like, I don't I mean, his writing for the Atlantic all throughout the sort of early Ferguson period was just like the most like sort of like, you know, and he's a good writer.

So he does it well. But people they don't so they so they can't sort of like poeticize any of it you're you know what i mean like they can't make it or what i don't know but i think that you're right tom that is the kind of impulse they're operating on yeah it's it's um yeah it's it's it's they just. It's so funny to see like dumb people. It's like just dumb people trying to sound smart. You know what I mean? It's like they talk like they're trying to make the word count on a fucking paper by adding all this sort of over the top language. And they poeticize the suffering and all this other stuff.

It's like there's no nobility in suffering. Furthermore, y'all are charged with alleviating that. So like you're talking about systemic issues. It's like that's on you. There's no way they see themselves as charged with alleviating suffering because they've advocated. Go ahead, Dan. I'm sorry. No, that's why they call him a martyr, though, because it's like it's not a war that they started. Right. Like it's like the same way that they think poverty is just like kind of a natural occurrence. Right. Like systemic racism is just like a natural occurrence. So, of course, there are martyrs like we've had several. Right.

And this is the one case where like a cop was convicted. And like this means that, you know, like the system works as well. That's another thing I saw people pulling out that, oh, this proves that the system works because this cop is going to jail as if like he would have even been in that position right george floyd would have been in that fucking position if the system actually did work you know what i mean right on that note that's interesting because a lot of things i saw going around were and you see this several in other um circumstances too but some of the things i saw going around is like oh it's a complicated day to be a prison abolitionist it's a complicated and it's like yeah only if you think that the system can work only if you think that

the system can if it's operated by the correct people and on the correct ideas that it can work but it if you are a actual abolitionist you would find no solace in this conviction because abolitionists don't think that our system rehabilitates people right and so only if you if you're a true abolitionist no it wouldn't be complicated for you it's like even the worst people aren't rehabilitated and the worst you know i hate to use that word but even the worst deeds aren't rectified or or rehabilitated through our system so no i mean i don't know i don't really find any solace in in that you could call it schadenfreude or karma or something like that and that's totally fine because it was funny it was fun to see him his little dumb looking ass go off in handcuffs like fuck him i'd laugh if he died i mean and you know like i get his family too you know they needed

they they're breathing like a sigh of relief right now but like it's just like i don't know man there's no way you could look at this system and as as you're saying, Terrence, like the way that the current criminal justice system works and especially it's like predicated on racism, like there's no fucking way that like you can't look at something like yesterday and just say that, well, this was like throwing him to the wolves, right. To preserve this system, because if that conviction didn't go through, I don't, I don't know what would have happened. I can't predict what happened, but it would have been insane. Right. We might have saw like a little flare-up like we did in the summer so it's like they had to do it like they had to do it yeah it's that's that's another take that i

tend to agree with it was floating around was that like this was sort of like you know this was like almost like like some new like in the same way the new deal saved capitalism this was like they had they they had to like you know there's this line from the movie Rounders when Matt Damon and Ed Norton are hustling these fraternity guys in a poker game. And Matt Damon says, occasionally I have to fold the pat hands so it's not obvious. It's like occasionally they're going to have to convict one of these fuckers just so it's like there's still some plausible deniability that like these are just rogue actors. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Not that kind of stuff so yeah we talked about this last week about how um you know even whitesburg's chief of police said that that the guy was guilty you know a year ago blah blah blah all this shit yeah they had already like the narrative was already building that they were going to scapegoat him yeah it's interesting because i feel like some of the you know now i don't have a finger on the cop pulse you know talk to cops but i do feel like some of the reactions I saw from, you know, cops online and from cop friendly politicians like Ted Cruz and shit was very much like Chauvin deserves a retrial that, you know, that that it wasn't fair and blah, blah, blah, blah. fair um and blah blah blah which is kind of interesting because yeah i do feel like right after that happened most people were like this is very blatantly a case of you know just racist murder um and i mean we know that right as the verdict come down um columbus cops killed a teenage girl in foster care yeah yeah was it you that said that um there was

some like blue lives matter bullshit right after that the cops were like doing some blue lives matter bullshit in columbus yeah i saw yeah after her death a couple cops showed up because what happened was they killed this girl and then people came out into the streets and they were like, what the fuck just happened? And so other cops showed up and they started kind of like yelling back and forth. The P the protesters, I don't really call them protesters, but the people who were coming out to say what's going on here. And then one of the cops, if not several of them popped off blue lives matter. And there's video of it.

And I read the New York times article of it yesterday and they didn't even mention that um but it happened i mean there's literal video of it so i mean i i oh my god yeah you can't reform that man and last night sorry you can go ahead go ahead no you go ahead i'll say last night they released the body cam footage from the murder of anthony thomas at uh austin east high school in knoxville tennessee that happened like i don't even know two weeks ago maybe was it that long anyway uh it's fucking horrific um it's like a cop shot himself in the leg and then they shot this kid because the cop shot him fucking self and and they've already said there's gonna be no charges no charges like it's not even it's like close case no no further investigation and you literally watch this guy just like pop this kid in a high school bathroom like it's not even on the streets he couldn't have even said like oh he thought he

was you know what i mean he thought he was grown whatever like this is a child in crisis in a fucking high school bathroom and they go in there and execute him and then cuff his friend his best friend who's with him pleading crying for his life cuff him on the floor and arrest him and take him into questioning for four hours after he watched his friend bleed out on the fucking bathroom floor and they're not even nothing nothing there's no investigation they're not doing shit and people have protested every single day in knoxville since it happened but and they've been asking for body cam footage because there's been so much crazy at first they said at first they said the kids shot the cop but obviously that didn't happen the cop shot himself in the leg trying to get his gun out of his holster so now

that the body cam footage is out it's like and they're just like no place case closed there's no no further investigation needed this reminds me terrence you had that tweet man that was really good where you said um after this cop shot adam toedo, he goes up to him and says, hey, man, you all right? And it's like, you put guns in these people's hands and you give them all this training where you literally train them to see everybody as an enemy. And that their first resort is like lethal force right or or just the fact that it's just a human being that you're giving them a deadly weapon and throwing them out there in the world with people that they don't know with the training that like makes them again see everyone as an enemy and you don't think that it's like just the most horrible like fucking things are gonna happen you know from

that and because they have a system that backs them up they can just fucking get away with it like that's like a really like costly like mistake. Right. A mistake is not even the word to use, but just this scenario where you would just give these people guns and let them go loose in schools and like communities is just fucking insane. Yeah, it's interesting. The reason I thought of that was because I have a buddy that was in the military. thought of that was because i have a buddy that was in the military he was in the iraq war and i remember he texted me after the philando castile video and um and he said something that i thought was very fascinating because he pointed out like if you watch this video the cop is quite visibly in shock and he can't even believe he just murdered this guy and that and it's the same thing with adam toledo video and i was thinking about that and it's pretty fascinating because most military

people are trained at this point because this kind i mean and there's war crimes all the time and they like fucking rape and pillage visit villages and stuff like that but our military is actually not trained to do that mostly because it's a pr thing and after vietnam you know it's considered like uncouth to just like napalm a village you have to like do hearts and minds stuff and like work with the population like iraq war was a humanitarian war as it as it tried to be it obviously wasn't but you know what i mean they train the soldiers to be humanitarian and it's it's all bullshit is what i'm saying but they don't even train cops to do that which is pretty fascinating like they literally train cops like they train military people to not see civilians as their

enemies but they train cops to see civilians as their enemies which is pretty fascinating to me like fuck the military obviously but it is pretty fascinating that they cops have more they're imbued more with this idea that everybody is their enemy than even our fucking imperial soldiers are exactly it's and you see the lines the battle lines being drawn along that where they've got this idea in their head that like they are on one side of it and everybody else, you know, that's not, doesn't support the doesn't back the blue, whatever, whatever is on the other side of it. And, and you see this, I mean,

you see like the, you saw the headline this week where they were talking about the Oath Keepers guy was talking about that. There's like police departments training up militias now yeah i thought about that like that was the first thing that came to my mind when i saw that video of those cops saying blue lives mattered to those people it's like you see stuff like that and you kind of like look at it from the long historical perspective like these are the things leading up to something really bad you know what i'm saying like these that this is a distinct political block now and that they see themselves i mean like the

fucking sheriff's department in my hometown that i you know fucking make fun of all the time on here like they had a post this morning on their instagram page about how some of their sheriffs went down to this like huge conference on the border in Arizona. And there's a photo of them all next to the border wall and they're all decked out and all this fucking gear. And it's like, we're going to be on Fox and friends tonight talking about the border crisis. And it's just like, yeah, nobody wants to talk about it,

but like our cops are just literally political paramilitaries. I mean, and it's, it's cliche to say that, but they are all politicized. And so, I mean, like cops have's cliche to say that but they are all politicized so i mean like cops have always been politicized but i i guess it's like they have their own distinct political you know demographic and block of support now well i've been absolutely haunted since you all told me that they shoot they are trained by shooting pictures of their own kids and shit like that so that they don't have hesitation so that they don't hesitate and that's what i'm talking to that's what i'm talking

about like the military isn't trained to do that the military is literally trained to treat civilians as if they are not combatants and i know that that and i know that there are exceptions to that because there was that thing in the obama years where it's like every male between the age of 18 and 35 was like a terrorist or whatever um but most armed forces aren't trained that way like because of the history of that um even though they do do that but cops are trained that way and they do it indiscriminately i mean there was a i mean this is like out of like an urban like war scene i think it was here in georgia i'm not wrong i think it might have been decap county but they threw this i think they were raiding this house for drugs in the middle of the night and i think it also might have been the wrong house anyway and this cop throws this flashbang

like a grenade into this room where there's a crib with the baby sleeping in it. And like it explodes and like, you know, the baby's disfigured, lived, but it's disfigured. And it's like like like what kind of training do you have to get? Well, I guess it's the training, like you said, Terrence, where unlike the military, everyone is seen. All civilians are seen as combatants that you could just throw an incendiary device into a room and not even know who's in it you know not even think twice about that they did that in uh washington dc you remember that in the protest last year they were just going down rows of houses and throwing smoke bombs in people's windows yeah ferguson too man on people's lawns and shit like that man

you know like people are like on their lawns, like trying to find out of their homes, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. And the cops are like, get back inside and threatening them. Yeah, absolutely terrorizing people. Yeah. I mean, it's it's pretty

I don't know what you do about that. I mean, good thing. Good thing we have strong leadership. Good Chuck. Oh, Chuck looking out for us. Strong Italian leadership from Mancini. Finally stepped

out of that. Man, I used to make a joke that this man during Trump, he just fell into a wardrobe in the senate building and like escaped to narnia because i didn't see him or hear him at all and now he's back man so i said it majority leaders finally stepped out of the wardrobe chuck i mean chuck schumer is like the history of chuck schumer is fat he used to call himself a law and order democrat in the 90s and he was a huge proponent of the crime bill um and he himself was i mean like in all this research i've done on hal rogers have found

multiple articles where chuck schumer has like called for more police officers more resources for police all throughout the 90s and 2000s like he's personally responsible for a lot of this yeah as is uncle joe as is uncle joe um well uh a nice and a nice light note to end on there um we have a patreon if you'd like to go listen to us definitely go check out that episode tom and i did on the kimber power plant patreon episode 101 um there's good stuff over on the patreon like good evergreen content content that doesn't just age within two weeks and yeah for 24 hours yeah so you can listen to over and over again.

So yeah, we're at Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Trailbilly Workers Party. We're over an hour, I'm guessing? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's going to be fun to try to edit this one. Yeah, and I was recording 10 minutes before the rest of you guys were so before we clap second time well we got claps 10 minutes of Aaron's solo project our new intro laughing

well thanks for listening to the show everybody this week like I said go over check us out on Patreon that's where we'll be next episode so go check that out and we'll see you later. Bye. Bye, y'all.