Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 21: What Is To Be Done?

Episode Date: August 18, 2017

In this rather somber and factually inaccurate episode, we say a lot of things we'll probably take back in a week.

Welcome, everybody, to the True Billy Workers Party. Just because you're in the big seat. Our host today is... Our guest today... Is a hypochondriac? Yeah, our host today is a hypochondriac that thinks he has dengue hemorrhagic fever. Oh, man. What is that?

Are you serious? I worry about you, Tom. When I was in Cuba, I thought I did have it, though, for a few days. The funny thing about hypochondria is that I don't worry about your health. I worry about your mental health worrying about your health. Same. My mental health is not good. One day after recording

you had us all looking at our fingernails to see if there were lines in our fingernails. It's like a protein deficiency. Listen. Hey, I'm going to see a physician about that in about two weeks time. What I was trying to tell Tom earlier is

you should practice what Wittgenstein called being towards death at all times. Just being towards death. What did Wittgenstein have to say about that? Being towards death? Yes, just accepting that you're mortal and you could be gone at any moment now. That is true. And it really helps with the hypochondria, is all I'm saying.

You know who also said this? Tim McGraw. Live like you're dying. So Tim McGraw was an avid Wittgenstein reader. Apparently. That's what inspired that. Live like you were dying. Oh shit.

Right before I was leaving the house to come up here to record, I saw a wonderful tweet. A wonderful little tweet by our man Dinesh D'Souza. And it's funny because I've been seeing takes like this left and right all over the interwebs since this weekend. He said, I think if people want to wipe out reminders of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy, we might consider

getting rid of the Democratic Party. Yeah. And the funny part about it... He's not wrong. The funny part about it, yeah. So the funny part about it is that all these right-wingers... I think I remember seeing a tweet

or a meme or something a few months ago being like my favorite thing right now is watching right-wingers just on the cusp of grasping it you know what i mean like and i said something about it on twitter last night actually but it's interesting to see them no longer have to square the circle of like america's brutal fucking history yeah like I don't know. I guess something about Donald Trump just sort of explicitly and openly accepting it has allowed them to push full force ahead.

I don't know. What did you all think about Steve Bannon's American Prospect? You know, I didn't get to read that me neither he said some interesting things what did he say he said well the first thing he said was that you know he was rambling on about this economic war with china and how that's the administration's priority because one of the two countries is going to be a hegemon in 25 years and it's looking more like china's going to be it. Yeah. So it's a lot of that kind of stuff.

But then he said that he called, like, the alt-right the fringe and losers and all those kinds of stuff. Oh, I did see that. And then he said something interesting about the Democrats. He was like, I want them to keep talking about race and identity because as long as they do that, we're going to win. Interesting. And I'm wondering what his long game is with all that.

Very interesting. Put a bookmark in that, because I think we'll probably wind up coming back around to it. I did see a picture of him on the internet this week, where he looked like he was bleeding from his face. And there was blood on his clothes. He cut himself shaving and got some like blood on his clothes but i guess it was an onion yeah i think it was a photoshop okay yeah but it was a good one i was like god damn i'm a big fan of slightly distorting people's public physical images and then they get spread around like everybody thinks that they're actually real yeah what has been your all's default reaction like what have you been doing have you been

binge eating or drinking sleeping more or less much less this week are y'all in your normal normal stride yeah it's hard because i was thinking about like oh like if we're going to try to have a conversation about what happened this weekend it's um you know you don't want to get too far into it in the sense that you don't want to like i don't want to be like giving away the game plan or something to right wingers who might be listening to this you know i mean i don't fucking know i mean it's i have no idea how like sort of sophisticated or thorough they are in like gathering intelligence i use square quotes around that on the on the left um but i do think it's interesting um and something that i've really wrestled with a lot since it happened was um or sort of is the entire spectrum of liberal left response to it

like in you know i was talking about this with a co-worker this morning and i think that like maybe the best sort of way to look at it is to like maybe position two poles one would be like the aclu um who thinks that you know if you uh if you like shine a light on this thing like you free you know you let people have free speech and we're going to talk about that what that means but if you let people have free speech and let them exercise their freedom of speech and all this, you sort of inoculate, or I don't know, maybe you like, what would the word be that I'm looking for here? You take away some of its impact, I guess, in the sort of broader society. You know, that's the sort of like, theory behind this like free speech thing, you what i mean like better speech drowns out

poor speech and all this and so i guess that's what the aclu was thinking pushing this going on so it's like you have them on that poll and then the other side there'd be like antifa which would be like no you can't give it a platform um because what does fascism do? It creeps. You know, you have to squash it out before it gets a platform, before it gets disseminated. And it's been really, it's been hard for me to sort of square several circles with that because I see a lot of people

arguing on the internet that, um, and a lot of my friends, you know, and I was even, I've even had several person to person conversations about this is that like you, there's no way that we can, um, There's no way that we can address this problem with the state. Expanding the state's police powers and stuff like that will only wind up fucking us. We're going to get fucked if we're expanding the state's police powers to try to stop them um but uh at the same time like what is the other response i mean there's violence there's you know what i mean like there's us meeting them in the streets and and all that and i support all that and i mean in those you know if you i know it's simplistic but if you're setting it up like those two poles or whatever i'm

on the side of antifa you know what i mean like these people deserve to be met they need to be met with force and they need to be met with um people power and all this other stuff but um yeah i don't know um and maybe at this point i'm rambling on but well no I see what you're saying and it feels like at this point are many options or a few options sometimes it feels more like few but it seems like they fall into two categories of reactive and proactive and feeling like they like we have to have both like no one wants to be chasing Nazis. Nobody wants to do that. And people are just going to have to. People just are.

And I mean, I feel like selfishly most of my anger this week has been that my friends have had to be those people. Or have felt like they had to be. And I just don't think they deserve to be. I've been angry feeling like my personal family has been put in so much fucking danger. And so there's just like a lot of personal just shit we need to unpack. But I think the big question is how do we figure out the proactive? Like how do we try to find these parallel paths um out of this because i don't think it was until charlottesville that i i don't think that i had admitted to myself that they have such a strategic plan around the region like this is a very appalachian centered latch and centered plan and strategy like we we are targets at this point um because they because

of the fucking narrative of the region that is just not the fuck true right so so and i think that story i mean we get all hopped up about discourse and narrative on this podcast of course um but it's actually the only thing there is it are the stories that people tell them goddamn selves like stories are the reason these these nazis are marching through charlottesville saying you will not replace us like the stories they've been told the stories they continue to tell themselves, they're, like, in these cycles of just, like, fucked up narrative. And the whole reason they're here and targeting this region is because of the stories they think they know about this place, the narrative they think they know. And that's why in the very first episode, Terrence, you draw the parallels of J.D. Vance being a fucking Nazi.

Like these are the, like these aren't like stories, like you can't overemphasize the necessity of truth and just stories of people. And it just feels like we're in this cycle again of the region, of the nation erasing the diversity of the region so that we look so that they think that we're this white dumb poor impressionable place and so this is where they've chosen this battleground um they already have a rally planned in parkersburg west virginia this saturday

yeah i saw that they have planned they're literally two of our friends are on their way to lexington right now for this fucking lexington city council meeting where bonhawk whatever the fuck his name is heimbach yeah whatever dumb fuck um and twp are there um waiting to hear if they are going to get their permit and um fighting the decision about bringing down that goddamn statue in Lexington yeah um and so they're going to text me if there's a like we just don't know yet what's going on in Lexington but I think that September 30th there's a rally. They're planning a rally in Knoxville. There's just like, we could pull up a map.

There's like a clear strategy of us right now. Yeah. So then the question becomes, how do you fight them? And you said something, Terrence, about going to the streets and chasing them. Going to the streets and chasing them. I think about, and I think it's what's going to have to happen, but also how that, it's tricky. Because whether explicitly or not, you know, they pride themselves on following the order of law and all this kind of stuff.

And the police are going to implicitly protect them in most cases yeah right so we're already outnumbered by the state when we show up this is something i've been thinking a lot about though in the past few days like doesn't it kind of feel like the state flinched oh this weekend oh yeah and that's interesting that's an interesting thing and it's not this it's not the first time and i remember thinking this a few years ago with the whole Bundy stuff. Like, the state clearly flinched. And, you know, and I know it's like a sort of trite internet point that, you know, compare the two to Standing Rock or something, where, like, the state is brutal. I mean, there is no flinching.

Like, there's, you know, you can't have an armed uprising of native, of indigenous people or black people or anything. Right. Um, which I think is, I just think it's interesting because it does feel like, um, we've entered a new phase of something.

It feels like something is very dramatically turned different. Yeah. So something is very dramatically turned. Different. Yeah, something is very dramatically different. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. I really think... Did y'all watch that Vice documentary? Yeah, I just finished it. Did you watch that Vice documentary? 20 minutes ago, yeah.

I didn't see it. What is it? This is a very short documentary that they did on the Charlottesville. Everything that basically they interviewed a bunch of alt-right people and sort of just gave a rundown of everything that happened. But one of the things I found most fascinating about that documentary was the awe that they have for the left. Like Heimbach and a lot of these guys,

they have a very visible all of the left. And then even say it at some points, they're like, we don't have a reverential thing. Yeah. Like they don't, they, they like at one point I think it's Christopher Cantwell.

He says something like, we don't have the comradeship that they do. We don't have the, uh, solidarity they do or the numbers. Um, We don't have the solidarity they do or the numbers. But it's interesting because they are trying to emulate that and he actually pinpointed,

he's like the way you build that is through organizing. And Hombach, if you look at traditionalist workers party, they co-opt the language. Oh, they have all kinds of anti-capitalist language. But the thing about that But the thing about that, and the thing about that that is really scary, is that they understand, and this is the difference between them and J.D. Vance, and I think it's fascinating. They understand that liberalism and neoliberalism has no answer to all the shit going on around us.

It has no answer to climate change police brutality i could go on and on and on it they understand that that we've reached the end of a road and that and that capitalism is in this sort of state of crisis and not just capitalism but our ability to manage it and our ability to allocate resources and and so it's like you know i was asking somebody who's in charlottesville this past weekend like were there a lot of kkk like neo-confederates there she was like no mostly it was like the hipster sort of like uh right yeah like richard spencer heimbach guys and a lot of them are anti-capitalist and i think it's for that reason it's not just the whole and this is a very interesting point it's not just the sort of

uh revanchist like chauvinist like white ethnostate people although they are out and they're you know and they were ostensibly there for the removal of a confederate statue it has it has a lot to do with their the way that they see the sort of like trends of history coming to a very clear end and and what do you do with that i mean like it really is like it's so trite and it's like been said a hundred thousand times since the election but it's like really is like barbarism at the gates like they understand that what's gonna happen is that like as these forms of traditional like power, the way we've managed society, liberalism, classical liberalism and sort of more neoliberal types like they understand that as they start to dissipate and go away, it's going to be an all out brawl between the hard right and the hard left. Right. all-out brawl between the hard right and the hard left right and they and they know that and and it just makes me again i don't i think that that is important to keep in mind as we

talk about like how we respond to them not just on in like not just in the streets but like their entire political project yeah you know it's what we've been saying for months now right like we've got to get to the people before they do i mean i don't know it seems stupid but it does they understand what's at stake i guess is what i'm saying and i think you know especially when we're talking about police i think the state at a certain point is going to be forced to pick a side. Like, explicitly. Yeah. Pick a side.

And I think they'll probably side with them. And I think it's not outside their own possibility they'll side with them. I mean, think about it. They don't represent an existential threat to the police. Right. They kind of are. I mean, like. Well, it's our platforms.

We need to abolish it. We need to do away with it. Right. I mean, is it that we all see the end of capitalism and how like it's imploding it's literally not gonna make it like and and they're terrified that they don't have a like i mean all of their motivation is clearly fear they're terrified they're so fragile it's like fragility at 11 like the peak fragility i'm not saying that they wake up every day and be like oh capitalism is blah blah the contradictions of this in a sustainable system or whatever but they do see decline in wages i know and wage stagnation increasing inequality

ecological catastrophe they see all of the symptoms of a system in decline, and it affects them personally, materially. And they're reacting to that. I mean, again, I don't think it's an explicit thing. I don't think they're waking up. I mean, like, some of them are, yeah. I think the Heimbach guy is pretty well aware of that. I mean, you listen to what he says, and that's what he's saying.

Yeah, what's so funny about that is, like, we've all diagnosed the problem, right? And how do you go with this? Do you form an egalitarian society like what we do and we abolish like oppressive systems? Or do you form an ethnostate? Yeah. And it becomes like a power grab, right?

Yeah, they have an answer to declining. Say what you want about them. It's fucking brutal. They have a response. It's brutal, it's a boot to the neck, but it have an answer to declining. Say what you want about them. It's fucking brutal. It's brutal. It's a boot to the neck, but it's an answer. And liberalism doesn't have an answer. It does not have that. And what's so funny is if it did, there would be no need.

This conflict wouldn't be happening. If neoliberalism had the answers, we wouldn't be meeting Nazis in the street. Well, yeah, and that's the thing, and it's happening in Europe, too. It's like, you know, I think America sort of started taking the steps towards that. But in Europe, there's still, I don't know, it still kind of feels like it's building towards the collapse of this dream of neoliberalism, of the dream of being able to use markets to solve society's problems and, you know what I mean, being able to manage them

and being able to destroy worker them and all this other stuff being able to destroy worker power and all this other stuff i don't know um it just feels like i mean um a lot of are firmly in an economy of violence so i hear from a lot of people being like this is not surprising yeah especially people of color this is not a surprise because we are so firmly rooted in this economy of straight up fucking violence like on daily basis um and oppression manifests in your physical fucking body in our bodies talking about tom as a hypochondriac bring us back to our fingernails y'all ain't shit right in a decade my back is out at least once a year and i'm bedridden that's true

we are we are we are experiencing we're the loose shit I'm serious. I'm not shit a log in seven years. That's not an exaggeration. I know. Oppression plays out in our literal fucking bodies. And that is why healthcare is such a ground zero for them. Denying us healthcare ensures our fate. Well, it keeps us out of the streets. Yeah, because we literally can't.

We can't organize. I mean, I have friends who can barely walk right now because of what they're dealing with. I have this recurring nightmare that I'm going to be somehow physically incapacitated by some horrible illness and that I'm just going to get pecked off by the Nazis. Like I'm not going to be fit enough to even take to the streets.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Like, you know, it's important to, it's important to remember that we, yeah, this is not new.

Right. That's what I'm saying. This is compounded trauma. But well, and what I'm saying is that there have been other people who have been here. Like I was, I've got this book of, um,

Rosa Luxemburg's like selected writings and she's got this like she's got this letter it's actually pretty fascinating she was in prison and during all during world war one because she opposed to the war and was in prison for speaking out against it but she's like writing this letter to her sister or somebody i can't remember who it was and she's talking about like you know i miss the little things in life like gardening and playing with my pets and all this other stuff but it's funny because the next sentence she goes don't don't mistake me don't think that i'm going soft on my socialism i will die in the streets and she did she was killed by by reactionary thugs, basically, at the direction of the German government.

I mean, like, I was kind of joking when I'm talking about this, like, being towards death, but, like, that's... I don't want to die on the streets, and I don't want my friends to die on the streets. I don't either. And I certainly don't think that people who have been dying in the mines and in fucking faulty clinics and just to so much violence for 100 years

deserve to be at this like... I understand that. ...perfects with these motherfuckers. Yeah, and I don't want to denture either. However, we... She understood the stakes, and they understand the stakes, and we better fucking...

Understand the stakes. ...understand the stakes, because they already have. And they're in these videos talking about better fucking understand the stakes. Because they already have. And they're in these videos talking about how many more people will have to die. And it's in this Vice documentary. Yeah, that's what it says. They understand that. They literally said, we'll kill all these motherfuckers if we have to.

You know, and I think that, like, the state ultimately will side with that. Well, I mean, they already have their own militias. Yeah. Yeah. They don't even need the state to say i mean like it's it makes me a little uncomfortable because i have been very uncomfortable and i'm not saying that like yo you know it's like get out there and die for your cause however and and i have been very uncomfortable with like some of the stuff i've seen online like the left needs to be armed like yesterday and it i don't know I have a lot of problems with that.

Well, I am armed yesterday. But... I don't disagree with that. One, because what we think... Nonviolence was a media tactic in a lot of ways. I'm not saying... That wasn't like... Yeah.

I'm just saying some of us shouldn't own guns and etc. But we probably do need systems of not probably we definitely need systems of like security and defense and all this stuff but care but what we're going up against is literal health care like paramilitary organizations like these are paramilitary organizations like they've got i don't know it's just like mccall if is that sat there saying that they're armed better than the police, and they've got arms caches all over the city. And, like, they're out-and-out paramilitary organizations.

And, like, how do you organize against that? Oh, they outnumber the police, even here. I mean, when I was on city council in Wattsboro, you get, I probably can't say this, but I have to strike this for the minutes, but you get Homeland Security briefings if you're like, and they would tell you about people that were within a certain proximity to your town

that have stockpiled weapons. And there's a guy that lives in Red Fox, right on the line, that he has like 40,000 rounds of ammunition. God damn. And, like, 2,000 guns or something like that. And, like, by comparison, every police agency, which I'm not saying that, like, we should look for them for protection

if it hits the fan, but just for point of comparison, they have, like like 40-something guns and 1,600 rounds of ammunition. Like if it really goes down. See, it's the thing. I don't know. The way that we've watched it play out since the inauguration,

it doesn't feel like there's an actual flashpoint. It feels like this very incremental thing. Oh, yeah. Like this very like, yeah. My surprise is how easy it is to buy guns and ammunition here at the flea market without any paper trail. I'm surprised they even are tracking. They're even able to track these people. You know what I mean?

No. Like, I drove from here to Hazard every day for two years, and if I had stopped and bought every gun I saw on the side of the goddamn road, I'd have that same pile. Same pile, yeah. And I'm sure there wasn't a place I needed to sign my fucking name to buy it, you know? I don't know. I oscillate between feeling really mad at liberals, because I used to be one,

for kind of what I think of as kind of lulling us to sleep about weapons and guns and kind of stuff and then trying to you know let the better angels of my nature take over and say well you know you don't really need that that's not exactly you know the answer and i don't know if that's true anymore you know i don't know if that's true anymore. You know, I don't know. I don't know how to feel about... We need a plurality of tactics that we can hopefully fucking agree on. And in movements, all we can do is have some imagination

and draw on the experiences of movements before us. Yeah. And have some imagination forward so do you think that there's like a an imaginative response to this that doesn't involve arming ourselves to the teeth i guess is what i'm saying like i i do think that we you're right i think we have plurality tactics we should probably have defense security systems and all the other stuff but i i i've wondered about that too like is it an unimaginative thing to say that we need to be armed let's see i don't think that's an

that is a lesson learned from the civil rights movement well that's not what i'm i'm not saying like on an individual level i'm saying that like as a as a nationwide tactic is that like to me it almost, I don't know, maybe I'm being contrarian or maybe I'm not trying to be. I'm just saying, to me it does feel like

a sort of lack of imagination to be like, they're coming after you, Tom. Get a fucking gun. Yeah. I can see that. So this is like, there has to be like-

I don't think hoarding weapons is a good strategy. Oh, yes. No. I do not think that is a is a good strategy. Oh, yes. No. I do not think that's not necessarily a tactic. I think it can be a personal decision about your own. Yeah. I also am stockpiling essential oils and fucking clinic materials, for God's sakes.

You know what I mean? There are things I have in my home i have a huge bag of salt to ask me why i don't know it's my bad imagination right i'm a witch i don't know what else to tell you i have a fuck ton of candles if y'all need some candles i got a stockpile i buy them every time they're on sale maybe i'm a hoarder did that just come out as a hoarder you're not a hoarder have you seen hoarders no I have a very neat and tidy house because I'm a cancer I like to nest um but I mean in light of the conversation we're currently having this feels um This feels, there are a couple things. One, I don't think it is, I do think a part of our imagination and plurality of tactics has to be to shift the motherfucking narrative about specifically this region, but poor people in general.

But see, I don't know if that's possible. You think we're at the end of that line? Post-narrative change. How do we do it, though? I mean, like, we operate in a media landscape that gives these motherfuckers a hundred times more coverage than... I mean, like, when's the last time you saw DSA

on the front page of a major newspaper? Even though we've got more than 25,000 members and these motherfuckers struggle to get 1,500 people out to a rally across the nation at a rally in Charlottesville. It's like. And that's how we got Trump. Like, he got.

I mean, honestly, the media has a lot to do with Trump being in office. He got. I mean, what was the estimate? Of course, we know that there's plenty of blame to put on the Dems. Yeah. But he got, like, quadruple the media attention of the Democrats throughout the whole thing. Like, he's just a. It's just like a dog

and pony show and yeah so maybe yeah um but here's the other piece that i really want to talk about is whatever strategy we do figure out or are figuring out um we we have to think about this as like a regional strategy because this is because we are going up against their regional tactic but what happens if we don't squash them out here but they realize they they don't have the ground zero they thought they did here are we just shifting burden somewhere else they're just gonna like well probably indiana if it doesn't work here it's my guess so are we ready to be like fuck you indiana deal with it or are we trying to squash it out here like i mean we had these conversations when i was doing coal organizing the first time i ever went to chicago

and had met people who were in inner city chicago it's like a latina community that's like the most concentrated place in america with of uh of coal-fired plants and so that was the first time I'd ever like seen that type that end of the spectrum and I was like fuck so then I like came home with you know my like young idealism that I still am riding a wave of thinking now when we don't stop these mines like we're not the only ones suffering we are if like we're ground zero if we don't stop it here it's getting to these communities in Chicagoago and all over the country it's like the burning end is you know so there's like this this like heavier burden of the shift of the problem and so like if we don't squash it out here um where is it going to go to

where who else is it going to take down? Yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, I... I don't have the answer. I'm just... Yeah, no, I don't think any of us do. That's why we all wanted to come in today on our day off. This, you know, it's kind of funny. Paradoxically, this is a very low-energy episode, but it actually kind of funny paradoxically this is a very low energy episode but it actually kind of works for the subject

matter as an aside it's a somber I assumed it was going to be normally with a bad headache I would call in the fellas and tell them I wasn't going to be in

call in the babysitter but here I am with a motherfucking migraine yeah woe is me I don't know like honestly Tanya I don't know like how

much resources and strength they've put on to focusing their strategy on this region. I'm saying that like I don't know literally, because I don't pay that much attention to the things that they're saying or all this. Do you all think they're getting any traction whatsoever here? Or do you think this is just the gamble they're taking?

Well, I will say this. I drove home from Abingdon today and I drove through downtown Abingdon and I saw you know I'm like being in Wattsburg I'm sensitive to cameras so I saw a big tripod and camera set up on the side of the road as I drove by and so I was like kind of gander neck and trying to see what was going on over there and I you know I was it was just a drive by I hate to to make a lot of assumptions. But what seemed like what's happening to me. Was someone was doing a photo shoot. In front of a confederate monument.

In downtown Abingdon. I saw that today. Now I hate to presume. That that's what was actually happening. But it was a statue of a man on a horse, and I clearly read Confederacy on the thing, and the guy was standing in front of it grinning in an orange fucking shirt and a red hat. Yeah. And was getting his picture taken. Now, I just don't know any other explanation for this.

We have to figure out a few things. We need strategize. Because, I'm sorry. The maddening thing about all this is I know what I want to say but I can't articulate it. We're all speechless. And this is the problem right now.

We're all angry that we don't have a better strategy or we're like mad that we're, you know, we're just like mad. And then we're mad at ourselves for not being prepared and being mad. Well, yeah. It's just like, I'm just like layers of anger and like embarrassment right now. Well, it's because, yeah, like our, for, we become become so i don't know um see if i can wrap this uh but like um our strategy for the longest time in sort of like street mobilization was non-violence like that was our strategy you know what i mean, and the target was the state. But now that's that doesn't really feel like that's the case anymore for several reasons.

Like, first, it's like you were saying earlier, a lot of this is defensive and reactive because it has to be. It's on their terms. to be it's on their terms um and but the second reason is that like it feels like the state is going to flinch pretty much and um appease them and always until it's too late and then the third reason is that they're armed to the fucking teeth and like how do you how do we adapt to that like you know what i mean like how do we pull um like how do we yeah how do we adapt to that and still maintain our message without like getting people murdered yeah yeah and that's um that's that's whole new territory for i would say just about every activist in this country right now in the sense that like i'm you know and i'm not talking about like marginalized i mean like that violence is you

know they have experienced the brutal repression of the state and all this for decades and all this. What I'm saying is that we're talking about street, it's sort of like warfare. There are tactics here. There are ways to mobilize people to shut them down. And I think people are doing that. i mean like i think that people know how to do that but i don't i don't know i had a good place i was going with that fuck it

fucked it up i guess i'm saying is that like um i don't know a whole lot of people who do know you respond to that in a meaningful way other than the only thing I have to say about it is like we keep trying to organize people at our workplaces and we keep trying to build a base well I mean we have the numbers you're right we agreed on that right we do have the numbers if you don't include the state on their side yeah we have the we have the wrong numbers like you said like this isn't a critical mass of people um by and large yet they have the critical mass of media attention and um so they're so heavily amplified and they have um fulfillment of violence right like they're not just threatening and and even though we have the numbers we cannot afford like i just i just maybe i am soft but I cannot move beyond the perspective that our bodies are like nothing is more important than our physical goddamn bodies.

I just like can't move myself to feel like we are exposable or something. You mean you can't get to the point of. Like I don't support war. Do you know what I'm saying? saying like i do not you're a pacifist tanya i cannot i cannot fucking square the fact that my friends could have not come home from charlottesville yeah i can't square it and i don't know how to and I don't know that I fucking want to and maybe next week I'll feel differently I don't fucking know but I just like I'm I bet that there was a lot like like Antifa and DSA and BLM and the people who were um who were and are still organizing in Charlottesville specifically had very clear plans in place to protect one another and that is probably why there weren't

more casualties yeah and so um i just feel like we have to lean into that and my like i feel like the two biggest like we have to figure out how to literally care for each other like i'm saying like we we aren't even we aren't even like fully able bodied fucking armies here. We are we are bodies that are manifested with violence from the fucking economies we're dealing with. And oppression is just true. It is. We are not. Whatever.

I don't know where I'm going with this either. But I sat beside Helen Lewis, the like grandmother of Appalachian studies yesterday in a meeting. And she said she talked to me about how she went to UVA and lived in Charlottesville. And that was in the I mean, she's 93. So 70 some years ago. Yeah. 70 years ago, she was in Charlottesville and she said well you know what i thought was interesting which of course this is like you know a hot take i've seen all over

the internet is like they were they were all men they were all like you know i didn't see any female nazis not that they're not there are um and we saw them in pikeville but i didn't see any and she didn't either and she said i think that that's really telling when most of the people who I knew on the front line of the resistance in Charlottesville were women. And, but of course I've seen a lot of the, we know these men are going home to women. They're being cared for.

La la la. Like women aren't like, just because those were only men pulling this shit does not mean that white women are off the hook which i agree with women are aiding and abetting these motherfuckers for sure even though i don't think they're getting fucked we've we've we've agreed on that well it's interesting that you say that it's interesting that you say that i don't know it's like i i you know me and tom were talking about this yesterday it's like i feel i've experienced a large degree of shame

for the past few days for being simplistic in my analysis of these people like oh and i think we said it in the first episode and we said it like sort of jokingly like we were all it's you know we were sort of like being facetious about the whole thing yeah but basically saying like oh yeah like the the nazis don't get fucked that's why they're nazis but i think that the truth is probably something closer to what i was saying earlier which is that the the structure of the system has they're responding to material things in their environment. And they're also reactionaries, so they

perceive that they're losing some sort of hegemonic control on society. But if you look at the trend of history and when reactionaries rise up in mass numbers, for example, like the 1920s was a huge period of reaction in this country and all over the world. And I think it's probably more related to the, like I said earlier, growing inequality, stagnating wages, you know, all these things that like, you know, are crises that the system can't, that it doesn't have an answer to.

Because, you know, like we've said before, capitalism is an unsustainable way of structuring society um i don't know like i i feel now i feel weirdly uncomfortable psychoanalyzing the nazis and like they're sort of like sexual this and that pathologies um well it's interesting you bring up the 20s because yesterday i just was was in this like workshop about blacks in appalachia and learned that um garveyism so you know i'm talking about marcus garvey yeah um yeah the back to africa guy um guy who bought up boats and was literally like his reaction, his take was right on. It was like, this is a failed attempt. This country is a failed fucking attempt. We need to go back home.

We need to get the fuck out of here. And that movement started with black coal miners in West Virginia. Really? Yeah. That's interesting. Who the fuck knew? We should do a show on that. We need to do a whole show on Blacks in Appalachia, especially since we got our ass called out

in our comments of our fucking article. Although that was kind of bullshit because... It was bullshit, but if someone... You were saying what you just said was the opposite of what she was saying, like that Appalachia isn't homogeneously white. She was saying that we specifically called it a white region. That's what I'm saying.

We got called out for that when we have never meant to do that. And if people have heard that, that's not what we're trying to do. So I'm not sure how people would have heard that from us because we know that not to be true. My boss is a black man. He is running a huge arts. Like we could go down like this is a very diverse region. Right.

Like we don't need to. But back to what you're saying about Garveyism. Yeah. Was there a bit. Was there a larger. The point is that like the reactionary kind of overarching reaction of the 1920s. like the reactionary kind of overarching reaction of the 1920s. I'm not sure what the point is,

but basically that there was a lot of that here and some of it was led by people of color. Yeah. Well, nobody's immune from reaction. Like literally nobody. I mean, there's reaction across the sort of, across all demographics and across all political spectrums i mean i would even go so far as to say that like and me and tom were talking about this yesterday now you probably disagree i don't know but i i feel like the the whole sort of like oh geez i can't believe i'm gonna say this on a podcast you can cut it but i

kind of do feel like the whole like sort of construction of the dirtbag left is reactionary. There are elements of it that are reactionary. And I feel personally like I've been in a sort of state of reaction since the election. That is, I'm just now starting to come out of. Everybody's prone to it. Like, and there are plenty of black nationalist groups that are reactionary. And there are plenty. I mean, you know what I mean?

But the point is, is that these people are getting to be pretty successful at it. These all-right people. These white supremacist all-right people. They're getting pretty good at it. How do we measure success based on their media attention? Based on the attention they're getting? They killed one of our people. I'm honestly asking,

how are we measuring? This isn't important to think about. I haven't thought about this before. How do we measure? No, you're right. I want to go down a road here, a little rabbit hole. There's been a culture that's been cultivated in this country.

I don't know what you would want to call it. I don't know what you would want to call it. Okay, I don't know what you would... You know, like the juggalos have their own... You know what I'm saying? There's nothing you could really call this. But there's been this weird paranoia-driven fascination with guns and the military and police and all these parts that has sort of coalesced

and came at a time when there's sort of intersecting with a time of, how should we say this, economic anxiety. Okay. And it's kind of like what we were talking about earlier. It's like you could look at that one in two ways. can succumb to tribalism, you know, and want to form this ethnostate, or, you know, you want to fight for the right things. But either way, violence has been cultivated in this culture to the point where, you know, I've heard people for years, like my gun nut buddies,

like they all have the same aesthetic. They have all the same, like, opinions and qualities. And it's not hard to play on their economic anxieties that we all have to push them in a direction that is ugly if that makes sense i just think that like the culture sort of sort of built the foot soldiers for this white nationalist movement. And now that capitalism is on the wane. Well, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up because I think it's spot on.

That's not, I didn't articulate that well at all, but. Well, no, I think that what's happening is that, you know, you could go back to sort of like the John Birchers and stuff like that. But like the last like 40 or 50 years of like racist oppression in this country and this is mostly the liberals fault has been um it's been transferred from like street fighting paramilitary um lynching in the south stuff like that to state apparatuses you know what i mean mass incarceration um you know redlining all these other things and um in a lot of those things were dependent on

the sort of uh this large capitalist sort of superstructure that we, or I'm sorry, base that we had built. But like as it starts to crumble, Jesus, I don't know where I'm going with this, but all I'm saying is that it just feels very, it just feels very, it's new to us because we're young, but it's old in the sense that like you look back at the 20s and 30s and even parts of the 50s and 60s

and like we're not seeing anything new there. Right. It feels very old. And I guess that's the whole point. Make your America great again, right? I mean, I guess that's what they wanted. So I don't know. I mean, like, earlier you were saying, like, how do you measure their success?

I don't know. Like, they're getting somewhat successful. I mean, they're getting some degree of success because of Trump and because of Bannon and these people. I was talking to somebody in the office today. Could this have happened two or three years ago? And I don't know.

I don't think so. I'm not persuaded it could have. Especially in this region. Yeah. Since, I mean, they announced Pikeville, their intentions to rally in Pikeville weeks after inauguration. Well, yeah. And I think it's because they.

Quickly. Yeah. They narrowed in on us. And it is, it is because of the, I mean, literally people we know, fucking liberals that we fucking know, immediately blamed us. Immediately. Yeah. For the goddamn election. These things are not fucking separate.

Right. Yeah. They're very, you're right. But I think that the Obama presidency and sort of the whole project of liberalism in general sort of blinded us to the fact, blinded us to the many contradictions of the system. I guess one lesson to try to learn from the 1920s, this reactionary time, is that it seems like it was still okay then. Like it was still more of a it was still in the time of America that people on a large scale could say this isn't working like this whole system is not working because it

was such a young country and now I feel like just a hundred years later we're like nope this is it that's all we got there's nothing else like I mean of course there's like the left there's like a sect of us but by and large all the people making decisions they're like no no no there's nothing else will work but this this is the only working way and i just don't like yeah i just i just feel crazy it's the old canard can you also hear me yeah it's the old canard that like it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to than it is to imagine the end of capitalism it's like it's it's a hundred it's been a hundred years of this is the only system there's no alternative i mean like there's been a lot of people that have written about this like i think capitalist realism is probably the

term i hear the most in a hundred years years will we look back on this time as the beginning of the end of capitalism? I mean, it depends on who wins. Nobody wants capitalism. Not even the... Only the rich people. And there's so few. Yeah.

But it's not even something like CNN is not going to talk about the fuckeries. They're just not. You know what I mean? Right. Well, you know, we'll nationalize CNN once we get control of the state. Just like we nationalize Facebook. We're selling Mark Zuckerberg out to the sea.

Sending him out to the sea. President Zuckerberg. Yeah. I just don't know. Do you feel like we went nowhere fast? Today? In this episode? Yeah.

How much time have we got? An hour. Right at an hour. I don't know. I kind of feel like... I feel like this is what i expected us to do i didn't know what else we were gonna do yeah i mean it's funny that like none of us have any of the sort of correct historical facts to make actually you're the historian arguments i have a degree in history doesn't mean i'm a historian

well we're fucking elizabeth katt is a historian we're journalists and social sociologists what do we expect us to do i just i i want i do think it's interesting just though to uh to note though that although we don't have those answers because we're not like intellectuals or whatever a lot of the things we're talking about here are not things that you need like a phd or anything to fucking understand it is a gut level reaction like i don't know like i just find that like i think most people know on a gut level that capitalism is unsustainable you know what i mean like i think that they put it through various ideological filters but they know on a gut level there's something wrong with it deeply diseased and um and i think the nazis you know wake up with the same sort of gut level reaction and you know of course there's probably a lot of individual pain and trauma and

shit going on there and they're blaming the jews and all this other this is like um but i guess what i'm saying is that like you don't need a fucking degree or anything to know that like this project that we've had going on in this country for the past 40 years or so is over i mean it is it's it's done with and And when you have moments like this in history, there is violence. Then there is unrest and there's a lot of really nasty things. And we need to be honest about that and we need to face it so we can try to ameliorate it and try to protect ourselves and those around us while also winning. Last night over dinner, my dinner conversation was about late capitalism and how one path To take over Silicon Valley. And. Make sure that. The incoming.

AI. Is going to do all the jobs. That we don't want to do. And so that. We live really happy lives. And spend time with one another. And like become our full fucking selves. And. A piece of that conversation was how was just like some thought about the elon musk of the world and some of the reason that they like just like half-ass

support universal um universal income so that we they can basically keep people out of silicon valley with pitchforks as they as they create uh automation but um but one thing about them is that like elon musk peter these people do not they're not worried about shit like climate change and shit because they fully plan to live forever yeah they fully plan to become cyborgs and live out their days devise some sort of tech answer to the problem right and just and live out their days on mars they are they and and their whole their whole strategy is a colonizing strategy like elon musk in particular is totally using the the european model of colonialism of like colonizing to think to think about colonizing fucking mars which this is just like you know it sounds like crazy talk

but it is this man they just spend all of their days trying to figure out how to download their brains into a computer right we talked a little bit about this on episode 11. Downloading consciousness onto a CD-ROM. There's a little gummy I'm about to eat. Where'd that even come from? My pocket. You had a gummy wrapped in aluminum foil in your pocket. It has THC in it. It's a drug

gummy. If I'd known that, I would have ripped it from your hands. I have a migraine. Didn't I just say I have a migraine? That could have helped me. I only have one. Is your hands. I have a migraine. Didn't I just say I have a migraine? That could have helped me. I only have one. Was that in the shape of Buddha? It looked kind of like Santa Claus. We would have fought for it.

You're fucking with my headphones, bro. I'm sorry. Okay, before we close this, I want to say one more thing. Fuck Frank Rich. Yeah. Eat a dick, Frank Rich. But really, though, it really can't be stressed enough

That the motherfuckers that were at this goddamn rally The Nazis that were at this goddamn rally Were not hillbillies They weren't people from They weren't poor white people They were upper middle class Cargo wearing College professors

Who can articulate In very clear terms their racism And their frustrations with society and all these other things. It's like, it just is so, I don't know. I mean, you've already hinted at it. We've already hinted at it several times in this episode. But like, there's really not much more to say. The fucking Nazis are not the poor people, the poor white people in the streets i mean sure yeah there's a lot of racist people out there a lot of poor white racist people there's racist

fucking people everywhere but um future impending episodes to come blacks in appalachia this is a very important narrative. That's why I'm going to have Randy Moss on the episode. Yeah, we're going to get Randy on. Lessons from the goddamn Highlander Center. I've already... Ash is sending me dates when she can be on. There's one more.

It's always the last one you're forgetting. Yeah. It's always the last one you're forgetting Yeah It's always the last place you look What do y'all have in the hatch? Whoa I just got a bunch of fucking dumbass jokes That's all I do for this That's all I do for this podcast anymore I write jokes

I'm just sleepy and anxious I got nothing Tom's got WebMD I've got jokes Tom's got WebMD. I've got jokes. Tom's got WebMD. You're the only one actual working on a political program here. If I rubbed a genie bottle and I got one wish, I'd wish that you all would have a log bow movement.

I really would. That's how much I love you. I'm fine usually, but I was a little on edge today because I got a show tonight. I always get really nervous when I got shows Our little drummer boy That's why I just ate a gummy Big rock and roll show

Did you set a reminder on your phone To remind you at what time exactly to take your gummy For optimum performance I knew I was going to take it about 5 minutes before the show ended I definitely wasn't going to walk into this very serious conversation Just being like So guys Alright alright alright

Matt Carter speaking of that Matt Carter sent me a meme the other day With Matthew McConaughey from Days of Confused and it said Alright alright alright Oh shit Meme daddy Well anyways so i guess i hope we um i hope we live through the uh solar eclipse but nobody go blind yeah i need that vision i talked to my sister on the phone today

and actually this was pretty wild because my sister's not you know she she's not political at all and she she don't she doesn't vote which why why vote if i go to this point you know i'm not passing judgment but she said i was just watching scene she called me to say i was just watching cnn and they said um there was a terrorist attack in spain and i was like oh my god what happened and she said because I haven't seen anything about this have y'all I saw the headline but I haven't I've been in the car and she said a bus ran into a drove into a crowd of people and she said and they called it a terrorism attack but they're not

calling that Charlottesville shit no terrorist attack and it sure as shit was yeah that's what my sister called and said me today and I said yeah it was sis that's because they've spent a long ass time making sure terrorism is connected to black and brown bodies. And a white dude drove that car in Charlottesville. She said, that's terrible.

It's fucked up. You know, we didn't talk about this earlier, but another point I would like to make, especially since we, like, I don't know, we were in the Lexington Herald-Leader, we might be getting a little bit of a bigger audience. I doubt it. Well.

I hope not. If so, if there's any, like, I'm terrified. Libs listening who think that there's a difference between a respectable Republican and a Donald Trump Republican, wake the fuck up. These respectable Republicans are trying, as you say, quote unquote,

respectable Republicans are trying to pass laws in states all over the country to make it legal to drive cars into crowds of protesters what yeah yeah yeah this is in north dakota there's one in north carolina uh there's been yeah they're like state legislatures are trying to legalize it not in the good way they're trying to legalize not in the cool they're not in the cool way they're trying to legalize driving so so yeah they're all the fucking same. They're all goddamn pieces of shit.

If my sister can connect these dots when she spends all of her time trying to raise two kids by herself. People know at a gut level. She fucking knows. They know. She has a two-year-old and a three-year-old. They're ten months apart, and they are hell on wheels, these two. And if she can pull up from trying to raise two boys

in eastern Kentucky, we all can. We all can figure out what the fuck is going on. Two other episodes we have coming up that I remembered. The Golden Girls. We have an all-girl episode coming up. We have an all-girl episode, and we got a tech episode. Tech episode coming up. We have an all-girl episode, and we got a tech episode.

Tech episode coming up. Who? Michelle. Is that what it's going to be about? I guess. But she, yeah, she could probably talk about tech stuff, but she. Or maybe not. She can definitely talk about how to organize your fucking coworkers, which is what you just said is one of the things we have to do and have an imagination about.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's four we know we have in the pipe. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe we'll do an entire episode of us throwing out episode ideas. That'd be fun. What I wish we could do is some interactive. Tom literally just.

Tom's just sweating. He's just. I wish we could do an interactive polling situation where we can figure out what people want us to. We'll eventually have to because we can figure out what people want us to do. We'll eventually have to because we're going to run out of ideas. Yeah. I especially feel that now that we've had a fucking article written about us. I'm like, well, we've probably peaked.

Can we just stop now? Yeah, we have peaked. Is this our worst episode so far or our best one? No. Does it have to be one or the other? That's how I see the world. In absolutes. Tell it ain't that the truth.

Truer words have never been spoken. All right. I'm gonna shut it down right now. All right. Thanks, everybody. Goodbye. See you next week.