Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 243: A Couple of Bad Hombres

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

This week we take a look at the hottest new publication to hit the streets since at least Martin Luther's 95 Theses. That's right, we're talking about Compact Magazine, ostensibly a collaboration between some guys with ideas. They're some bad hombres, in other words. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

But yeah, it was fine, dude. I don't know. I have a tendency to just criticize fucking everything. And just like... Oh, me too, dude. You know, just, yeah, like everything I do, like for everything you do, you know, you just like have to find something in it that is a flaw

and then just focus on that flaw. Even if it doesn't exist, man. Even if it doesn't exist. Well, we should all quit trying to be public intellectuals and be public homosexuals i i agree man i agree that's what i came here to propose as well actually yeah let's abandon all that and just suck and fuck other men publicly it's a beautiful thing i think we we would have a much better time doing that anyways i mean i've given up all pretense to being a public intellectual i feel like i mean it's like i've been really struggling with this actually over the last year or so, just like these feelings of self-doubt and like,

sort of lack of confidence in my ability to sort of, to not only just diagnose, but even more fundamental mentally than that to like even understand the big philosophical questions about human existence and yeah, the human condition and but also you know you just i could sit down i could try to understand it but i know i'm not going to and so like i don't even have the discipline to do that anymore because i know it's a it's not going to retain and b i'm going to try to spit it back out in a conversation like this and sound like a total fucking idiot so like why

even try dude especially when it's like everything in the world that's going on and all these complex issues that i'm not an expert on like i'm literally just shooting from the hip and i don't even know where my interest in this shit stems from anymore because like i mean i get i mean obviously i guess it's like yo i want to make the world a better place. I want to do my part. But like the older I get and the worse things get and like the more I'm bombarded with like, you know, just information like I get subsumed and lost in it, you know, where I don't even know how to like reorient myself. You know, I guess like I've thought about this analogy. It's like, you know, being a ship in a storm, you know, where you like you're you're embarking on your journey destination and then the storm hits and you get like kind of spun around, you know, you like you're you're on embarking on your journey destination and then the storm hits and you get like kind of spun around you know like you can't tell where you are anymore and it's like that's how i kind of feel it's like yo why the fuck should i like have the authority to speak on any of this man like i don't know what the fuck i'm talking about

yeah yeah yeah yeah um that's the thing we don't have any authority that's why we're bad boys that's why we're a couple of bad dudes the tardy boys bad hombres bad hombres we are specifically who trump was referring to when he said bad hombres do you think that um like i'm really hoping that this is true i'm really hoping that the trade-off for having crippling anxiety my entire life is that at the very end when the check finally comes due i won't freak out about it i'll just be totally accepting and sober and calm about it you know the thing that's the trade-off maybe because like yeah and if that is in a way you've been training your whole life for that moment if that is the case would you trade it for a life of no fear just like not being like me, not walking around every second of your life with the bone deep, you know, certainty, knowledge, call it whatever you want, that you will die and it will be painful. You could go your whole life not thinking about that.

But the last 10 minutes or so are really, really unpleasant. Would you rather have that or what you have now which is constant fear all the time but at the very end well i mean like the thing is like you gotta wait you have to you have to weigh out like what you know right which the same for me man is like just walking around every single day like feeling like i'm living like like i'm living on the outside of my skin like i'm inside out just like afraid of everything you know versus what i don't know which is like the fear of death and being on the precipice you know like is that 10 minutes uh a better or worse than like a lifetime of that you know like i don't know man i don't know i know i know what i know now and then this

sucks ass and so i might trade it i might might trade it. I might rather have no fear. I might rather have no fear, but shit in my pants the last 10 minutes or so. And I'm saying this. The worst possible scenario is that it is your whole life. You're scared as fuck. You're terrified. You know, it poisons every single thought and every time you even try to have joy you know what i mean like that um also interactions with people and shit like that yes

yes yes but also even that too and like uh but then the last 10 minutes of your life are also like that but with the dial turned up to fucking what else yo but like what if all your life you're like oh no no and then the last two minutes you're like yeah like just fucking dude hold up what if like right so like i think that like dmt like it's produced naturally your body like during incredibly traumatic stressful like physical like uh circumstances like when you're born right and when you die yeah right so like what if like whatever like what if like and also the idea that like when you die like you like the the i mean i know guys have talked about this but this idea i guess that you you know you live out you see your whole life flashing before your eyes right and that one second that you're dying could be an entire lifetime

like what if you just get like your conscious just just gets looped in that shit man oh so it's like no no no no no you're telling me at the end you have a series of memory flashbacks each of which lasts about as long as a lifetime if you could possibly last like when you're dead dead and your cells your brain cells aren't functioning anymore like there's no electric electrical activity i mean i guess that's when it's done but you wouldn't even know the difference you know what i'm saying this was not in the brochure i not i didn't sign up for this well you know how like you have a dream and like to to you it lasted all night long and it was like this long drawn out narrative but the research actually shows dreams only last a few seconds yeah but i can remember with remarkable accuracy like whole thing stories that played out in my head that i can recount that and that take me

longer to tell than the actual dream it's like they're not as long as we think like they are it is kind of like you know like growing up in church i always heard that like a day is like a thousand years with the lord i wonder if that's kind of like what our dreams are like you know like we get these whole stories but somehow they're like you know a bridge to fit in like just a couple of minutes span then we move on to the next thing well i mean i feel like a lot of people there was that kid but colton burpo who died and burpo yeah you remember colton burpo he died and went to heaven he said he's not him do what yeah it's the kid has a name it's like one of those like uh somebody tweeted this other day it's like a name off of like baseball stars in those early japanese video games

yeah or like a 1980s like soft drink like japanese soft drink yeah erpo well he saw heaven so and you have to take that uh with extreme accurate i mean you have to assume that it's extremely accurate because he was like eight. So. Wait, hold up. Hasn't he since said he did the whole thing for the bag? I think Burpo's even out of himself as a fraud.

At eight years old? One of the kids that wrote a book about seeing heaven has since recanted. And. Of all the things that you did that you're embarrassed about as like an eight-year-old like imagine scamming the entire national like midday media market like and selling probably a lot of books he probably sold a lot of books and rights to those books a lot of books he probably sold a lot of books and writes to those books but like as an eight year old kelly ripper and and uh michael strahan right in the eyes and told a bald-faced lie to yeah eight years old damn that's pretty awesome and you're set for life after that like of all

the things to do as a child it's like it's i mean you know because like when you're a kid the only thing that the things that get you in the headlines are like if you shoot your parents in the face or you know what i mean you get into college or you get into college like unnaturally early or some shit like that yeah i guess there are people who can play guitar when they're like one like if i can shred like angway malmsteen um and this is in like you don't want to be either angway malmstein or you're one of the menendez brothers it's no in between but terrence you just made me think though about like that's not that's kind of like this interesting conundrum right like being like like uh like expertly proficient in a certain

field or activity that has no mass appeal to anybody like what's to say like you're like you know you're like the world's like foremost like uh best like badminton player or some shit like that you know like like your athletic process is something that's never been seen before in the sport but nobody watches that man right right right yeah yeah that is a good point. I've always thought maybe I'll train my son up to be some kind of niche athlete, but still a niche athlete that makes money, like a knuckleball pitcher

in baseball or a punter in football. Yeah, yeah, a punter, man. That's the way it flies. Or someone who cons Oprah. If you can con Oprah, you're fucking set. I've seen so many people con Oprah. I feel like, yeah.

Dr. Oz. Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil. So many fucking people have conned Oprah and gotten rich off of it. Like, that's your fucking life. You just get conned. You get the bag from somebody who already has the bag. Yeah, damn it.

Yeah. I knew Dr. Oz didn't pass the smell test for me when i found out his wife is a reiki practitioner oh she has reiki well it's not it's for me it's not so much the reiki thing like yeah you want to be a kooky aunt that practices reiki i'm with that you know what i mean i think there's generic benefits but when you're supposed to be the top surgeon's wife and you're like practicing pseudoscience i was like huh it used to be it used to be the case this is kind of kanye's trajectory too used to be the case you could gauge somebody's racism by how they feel about kanye west yeah and now like that's sort of like been turned upside down since he's going through what he's

going through well it used to be the case that people that were into new agey things you kind of said you know they're probably liberal or you know all these things and now the conservatives have kind of made some inroads in the new age you seen a little oh yeah we could think we could thank nancy reagan for that man uh apparently she was into the new age shit and uh yeah with the spiritual advisor uh apparently they owe that session with the spiritual advisor to reagan winning a second term that is true that is true and also richard nixon like conducted seances in the white house too are you serious yeah like people like uh fortune i wonder if they were on tape. I wonder if you're recording them.

There's a good book. There's a good book. On that fucking recording system he had. All of it. Yeah. It's like while he's talking about wild batteries, I'll say, well, she brought crystals in her tomb. Or he told me to put a pentagram of salt around the head.

Talk about something called the Tarot. Are you here with us now? Would you talk to us? Nixon conducting a seance would be fucking gold. Are you in the room with us now? This motherfucker. I was reading about. now that's motherfucker i was reading about uh i went somebody had tweeted something about a picture from nixon's uh um presidential library showed his last meal in the white house and it was like

like a ring of pineapple with some cottage cheese in the middle of a glass of milk and i went down the rabbit hole about these weird like presidential like what they wanted to eat and him and gerald ford were absolute freaks man they loved cottage cheese but nixon ate his with fucking ketchup cottage cheese yo that is that to me this sounds this is gonna sound crazy but to me cottage cheese with ketchup would actually be better than just cottage cheese like to me there's nothing nastier than eating me cottage cheese with ketchup would actually be better than just cottage cheese. To me there's nothing nastier than eating just cottage cheese.

You could put anything on it. It's going to improve it. You can dress it up and down like grits in a way but it's like the texture is not as pleasant as grits. Yeah, I do not like it. Are you here right now? Sit down and have some cottage cheese.

Pass the pines. It's kind of a hard impersonation. It really I feel like you got to get the jowls, man. You got to speak from like the jowl. Yeah, it's hard to do Nixon. It says here that Gerald Ford liked English liked english muffins is that would you find us so disgusting tom do you not know he likes he liked cottage cheese too with worcestershire sauce why man like how like did somebody introduce that to him as a kid and like like you know he i think

what it was was that during that period and like it would have been the 70s, right? Like everybody was on that low-fat diet tip and cottage cheese I guess was the most low-fat of the cheeses or whatever. Pineapple and grapefruit. Motherfuckers just ate that a lot. Keep their weight under control back in that period. Ronald Reagan jelly beans. Fucking disgusting ass

motherfucker. Clinton fucked with McDonald's. That was his number one, apparently. Really? I'm an arch's head, too. I'd eat McDonald's five times a day if I wouldn't. McDonald's Wendy's a Burger if I wasn't McDonald's Wendy's or Burger King

Wendy's is good but I just like McDonald's Abraham Lincoln chicken fricasse how do you say that in the 1800s they didn't I just don't even know what they like they were just on

a whole different thing they just eat a piece of like roast beef with like between two slices of like thick ass bread or some shit. We're coming up on the anniversary of Lincoln's assassination. What was that? 25th of April?

14th of April? Some of you motherfuckers have forgotten it looks like. What happened that day? It should be a thing you have to check off on your taxes at the end of every year, like a series of boxes. Have you forgotten about 9-11, January 6th? January 6th.

Assassination of Lincoln. Assassination of William McKinley. I mean, that's one i would think nobody ever talks about it nobody ever talks about it because he got he got a he got got by what an anarchist right nobody ever talks about it because nobody liked it nobody liked it they're like we're giving to the anarchists it's cool no It does suck to be like the fifth most important presidential assassination. You know, like no one like you can't even hit the board. Yeah, it's something something fairly rare happened to you.

And you're still not even the most memorable. God damn. damn um um yeah just a listicle of president foods content is popping today just yeah fucking popping um i got a glasses prescription i'm getting ready to join the I got a glasses prescription. I'm getting ready to join the bifocaled in this crew. No longer can I claim that I have the best vision of this Mickey Mouse outfit. I thought you already had glasses, but you got them. I got readers. I got readers, but now I've got like a prescription.

So I'm just going whole hog. Yeah. Readers are kind of like being in denial you're like i just need a little something to say yeah yeah okay and then progressively you're like you're like when you see people that you think like what happened to me like i see people like a couple like maybe like 50 feet away that i think i know but because i can't when i didn't have glasses because i can't really see them so i don't i wait i have to wait to say hi to them because I don't want to say it too prematurely. And then I get closer and it's like a completely stranger.

You know what I mean? It's like when you when you start getting into it, when you start getting into that, that's what you don't need glasses. Yeah, I couldn't deny it anymore. It got to where I just could not see it after dark at all. Driving really. Did they dilate your eyes when you went? Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's wild wow are you dilated right now are you fuck are you fucking dilating or anything are you potting while dilating no don't put that on me don't put that on me i come here in a sober clear frame of mind every single time clear idea yeah what you're getting from me is my unvarnished uh sober opinions every time except for that jared leto thing that that was the funny wasn't the awesome shit was when when you were a kid i don't know if this ever happened to you guys but they would dilate your eyes and they would give you those roll-up sunglasses. They would look like a roll of film. You'd roll them out

and they would cling to your head. You'd look like Robocop a little bit. You'd have like... You know what I'm saying? Do you remember those? No. Why did they do that? What was it for? Because when your eyes are

dilated a lot of too much light can come like it yeah uh and so they gotta like keep your pupils guard protected make you look make you look like cyborg or some shit yeah isn't that funny just like oh my problem i got too much light in my head i got too much light in my eye. The thing that's supposed to receive light. Yeah. The damnedest thing is when they dial at you. I couldn't text like right in front of me, but I could with remarkable accuracy.

I can read anything across the room. So you're you got far. You're farsighted. You're my whatever that is. Right. I'm just I'm new to the uh vision impaired community so i don't want to say the wrong thing oh join us man suffering decades i'm i'm great aggrieved community man we're in a grieved community you're speaking to a veteran someone who has not only one

or two eye ailments but is also colorblind so your eyes are virtually useless literally don't even have any generic function not before we come to standard they're just decorative yeah they're just like they're just like placeholders just chilling might as well be like them googly eyes like books or records or like wall hangings or just they're just like placeholders. Might as well be like the googly eyes. Like books or records or like wall hangings or just there just to spruce things up a little. You know, like

an appendix or something, right? Like a vestigial organ. Like a tail? You got two vestigial organs in your ass. Parents is evolution. It's like actually society vestigial organ. Like a tail? You got two vestigial organs in your eye. Terrence's evolution is like, actually, society's moved past the need for eyeballs, and that's

what Terrence represents. The bridge to the 22nd century. That's right. You know, my whole life I've been ostracized and Regina, but this whole time I was

man of the future. How are you? You're like transhumanism, man. The ascension of man. I wish they still gave them damn Roy Orbison glasses when they dilated you. Yeah.

Just for fashion. I mean, like they probably had to pass a law or something that they couldn't have people walking around looking that cool all the time society would break down if everybody looked that cool all the time no they can't look they can't look cool and sexy when they come out of the optometrist. You gotta look goofy. Well, boys, there's several things I suppose we could cover today. I don't

really have anything prepared. I just saw this new website the other day i thought maybe it might be worth taking for a spin on the show but if we're not feeling it we can always just back out you know get out of the car and um do the roll yeah i mean roll out the car and let it blow up. Yeah. Roll down the freeway. And there was nothing cooler than seeing a guy jump out of a car in a movie. And that's just totally unrealistic. Nobody just pops right back up and runs off into the woods from law enforcement.

Right. Right there with multiple lacerations and broken bones. If you survive. Possibly like a caved skull yeah man nah they make you think if you got a shot leather jacket on all you gotta do is just kind of just lay out there and you'll be fine yeah you roll you just gotta roll with it man you gotta do the james bod roll you'll be fine it's fake as Oh, man. This is kind of a fun website just to hit sort of like a chat roulette thing. Like you hit a button and you get like a crazy ass take comes up. And it's like it's like a shuffle feature for unhinged articles.

I mean, there should be. I'm saying there should be a button you can hit on this website. The website is compact magazine uh if you don't immediately recognize that name maybe you'll remember it by it's like marketing rollout a few weeks ago i think it was a few weeks ago it was like maybe earlier this year 2022 or the end of 2021 like they had an article in new york times written about them that was like it's like two conservatives and a marxist like sit down and try to you know find the common ground and stuff like that and so it's like obviously it's gonna it's gonna produce all of the most predictable shit

like you know articles like only the economic left can beat the woke and why we need the patriarchy you know that one blew my mind that's a funny that's a funny title that's funny that that that group came so so rob amari is the guy who like founded this website he's like a right-winger guy who says his family fled iran when he was a kid because they banned Star Wars in Iran. This this great, proud society that had lasted for thousands of years was buckled in the face of fucking industrial light and magic. George George Lucas. The craziest thing about that is that that would make a society. I have seen how Star Wars has poisoned the minds of my generation. And like, this is your hell.

Yeah. Could you imagine how much better society would be if they banned Star Wars? Like if like society would literally improve. It'd be a better place. What's your take, Aaron? You you're tricky anyway aren't you yeah so i hate star wars man i should just trash it so i mean it's also disney owned it so it's like it is for children as terrence is saying it's like especially like it's just kind of i think if it didn't exist as a franchise you know maybe but disney made it worse even you know what it did is honestly the entire franchise is like emblematic of the general trajectory of

all culture anyways in the sense that like the movies were pretty good i mean you could even maybe say they were masterpieces like the early ones but like people became so attached to them that they had these high expectations and then like like over time, when the when the like prequels didn't live up to those expectations, people settled for these sequels or whatever, the ones that have come out in the last like the pre the quote prequels technically is what they are. Right, right, right. It's a little Simpsons ask in that way. Yeah, it's like it's's this generation long process of people

just settling for less. And just being... With the rationale being, well, I guess mid-Star Wars, kind of like mid-Simpsons is better than no Simpsons. Right. Watching people lie to themselves

that these newer movies are actually good. Just because it's the franchise. And good. Just because it's the franchise. Yeah, exactly. And it's just because it's the franchise. You know what? You can make a funny joke. The way that Star Wars has kind of been a parallel trajectory with the introduction of neoliberalism and some shit like that.

You can make an insane argument about our society and the media and shit but i do think like it is kind of emblematic of like yeah like we used to like hope for more and embody that in our culture and now we just like don't anymore and we just like hand it off to like a mega corporation like disney right we used to have uh chewbacca yoda han solo now we have no solo no yoda and no chewbacca no chew no yeah no baca no baca no solo no yoda no yeah exactly no no no no no no that was a weird tangent i didn't i just so rob armari that's the guy that started Compact Magazine. He said that that was a sign of totalitarianism in Iran that they banned Star Wars. And I'm saying that it is one. I'd say that is a sign of sanity.

If you ban. The Ayatollah got that one right. Did it miss that? It didn't miss that at all. I mean, but you could just take any of these articles for a ride. So wait, can I ask a question? So who's the Marxist in this thing? Yeah, that's my question.

If you tell me Adam Toozeos i'm gonna like lose my mind i don't think twos is a marxist but um maybe this guy edwin aponte edwin aponte got to be edwin aponte coat is a founder and editor of compact previously he was the editor of the bellows which he founded in 2020 all right all right that's all i needed to know wait what's the bellows what is the bellows i don't know it was like this briefly lived website that like kind of like collapsed catastrophically when like the two founders like turned on each other or something like that like it was it was just one of those websites that published like articles in the vein of like marxist leftists who have spent

their entire career being like why are you making me conservative why why are you like this is why i left the left type of shit that yeah exactly it's like why i left the left type shit and it's like you were never left in the first place yeah i mean like they're obviously i think that they're like critiquing the left is a valid thing and that i as a critic who hates on everything yeah it's like as a natural born hater obviously I can't I can't be a natural born hater on one hand and say it in the other like you shouldn't do that because I think everything is worthy of credit every single thing but like making that your whole thing it's just like it it just it's it's kind of like that article we read last week. It's like kind of it's an embarrassing window in onto someone's like identity that they don't know you can see.

It's like, oh, like they're taking it out. They're like they're like they're like owning themselves, basically. Like they're handing themselves out. They're owning themselves. Yes. Yes. They're dropping dimes on themselves, basically. They're just like they're just like look at the mirror like you barked ass trick yeah it's kind of like you know you got that shirt my man a damn sure wasn't the men's department and that shit don't even fit right shit all tight across your chest it's kind of like the mf the old mf doom thing like rap snitches it's like come on dude come on keep your business i mean like if it's this kind of stuff but also like yeah okay critique of the left for a mainstream audience like you know i think that can be done as well too but like i just find that like you know in a lot cases, a lot of these types of endeavors are...

They're in bad faith, usually, right? Yeah. If it's in good faith, then that's good. That's fine, whatever. But these are in bad faith, and these are people who are secretly... They haven't admitted it to themselves yet, but they are conservative and

they are conservatives yeah i mean it's like and if that's the case then like that's just that's fine just yeah just say it just say it like you don't got a lot like trojan horse and lie to me like i could already see it yeah right i don't know let's read his article he's only got one the unbearable funniness of the free speech wars oh my god um oh this would be good i don't know if i want to read that i wish you would tell me this guy's like also like the uh social chair of east bay dsa or something like that like one of those more like dysfunctional dsa oh atlanta dsa also too like what do you know what is it the unbearable phoniness like he's like kind of

ripping off of a milan kundera title book this shit's gonna be great man is that what you think it's is that what it's a reference to that yeah because isn't it oh isn't the long kundera no bearable lightness of being like yeah yeah you're right you're right but this one's not that good though i don't know i'm i can give you guys i can let you guys pick you got you got all kinds of options here are we gonna do all right let's do a little picker on adventure here give us yeah all right so you've got history doesn't repeat itself by oliver bateman that maybe there you could do a little bit of a flexing your nuts on dialectical materialism and class conflict as the driver of history that kind of stuff i don't know that that might be obviously

he's i think his point i read it earlier his point is that history doesn't repeat itself i feel like everything happens to do. It's like, OK. Also, I feel like if you title your piece with like what is which is based what is basically a one line description of your article, like nobody should have to read your article. I agree. I love this website. I can already tell this website is going to be a vast trough of content. Even even better than ideas?

Even more so than ideas in the Atlantic, I think. This is probably pretty good. So anyways, yeah, history doesn't repeat itself. You got that. I mean, we could probably do that whole article just with like two sentences. Tom Sexton, does history repeat itself uh apparently not there you go no it rhymes that's what it is right right right right right uh okay only the economic left can beat the woke i'm down that one sounds interesting

that one sounds really interesting that one does sound interesting but you know it's like is this the case for the patriarchy is that a different one then there is a case for the patriarchy the one why we need the patriarchy let's leave let's do those two

the last two but also there is this one but maybe I can save this one dude there's too much content on this website what are we gonna do this is fucked up what the fuck an embarrassment of riches it's just yeah we don't know what to do with him this is too good we started out like man the content's not really flowing and now part two of the episode we've got got to move up. We're drowning in content. It's like when the dog finally catches the car.

It's like, man, I don't know what to do with this shit. It's like when Jack Clampett shot that in the bubbling green. Here's the real tech backlash by Catherine D. Apparently, it's about sex. I mean, I kind of want to know what the tech...

I do want to take the pulse seems like we're in the midst of sex panic we are we definitely are well let's let's just start that one let's see where if it's not good we'll we'll jump ship we'll go over to that patreon little dims yeah yeah we don't have to follow any of these to the end i just they're like each one of them is pretty shortish it's like they're just like little think pieces meant to drive you insane yeah you get clicks a technology rebellion is coming this is the real tech backlash katherine d even if we can't make out its contours yet all right who's katherine d a writer who blogs at Default Friend. What is Default Friend?

Do I want to know? The most obscure publications that nobody's ever heard of. My internet's being too slow. Okay. Rather it's... Okay, technology rebellion is coming even if we can't make out its contours

quite yet. Or rather it's here. Is it coming or is it here? And its contours are obvious or rather it's here okay is it coming or is it here and its contours are obvious we just don't know we just don't know the rebellion is about tech the next tech backlash isn't about privacy and surveillance it isn't based on back to the land fantasies or fears of our ai it's about sex this isn't the first time people have predicted a mass rejection of tech in the 21st century. In 2001, the science writer Ronald Bailey described young people who feared, among other things, technology's symbiotic relationship with corporate power. Between 2010 and 12, in the days of the Arab Spring and the mainstreaming of social media platforms, the press once warned, this is boring, blah blah in 2018 amid alarmism about silicon valley's so-called dark enlightenment in the alt-right reporters detected a new threat coming from digital native

anti-techies whether it was deep ecologists espousing human biodiversity or pubescent ted kaczynski acolytes the song called pine trees who want to return to a more permanent state through it all there have been hopeful stories about where's the sex where is the fuck yeah let's get to let's get to the good stuff man meats and shakes meats and shakes you can put i was like uh yeah you can point to the hipsters of the mid-2000s opting for analog or to the current crop of online strange online communities be it twitter bodybuilders or seed oil district spec this is like this is like when you're 11 and you're fast forwarding to that part to in titanic so you can jack off yeah right looking looking at the door make sure your dad don't come through your mom turn around turn around real quick every time you watch it with

your parents that part of the like scene starts getting kind of a little fuzzy because it's been rewound and fast forwarded. Tape wears out. It's like a three hour movie too, so you got to do a lot to get to that. There's a broad reason. There's a reason why broad tech backlash is not materialized. If you look at all the anti-tech

blips of the last two decades not enough has been at stake one man's atomization is another man's convenience there's one exception to this sex okay okay finally man let me see them cheeks bro another colon too i like i love how like the last two times we've had sex. Oh wait. Okay. Nevermind. At the top, it's about sex. All right. Nevermind. The last two times. All right.

Even as they add users, dating apps are gaining critics who have come to believe that these programs are preventing us from forming relationships. If stories about West Elm, Caleb and buzzwords like dating app fatigue, aren't convincing. Just take a look at statistics. 44.2 million Americans use dating apps, while a full third of men on those apps report that they have never gone on a single date. 45% of people report feeling frustrated after using dating platforms, while 30% feel pessimistic about them.

So wait a minute, this is not about a lack of sex. This is not about sex, it's about like no sex. I think it's about like zero buns is this the world's most banal defense of west m caleb you're right we gotta dress it up in something about tech and the future but really if we're just doing the, you know, the cliff version, it's like, where's them Caleb Anderson? It is. I like, I hate how in the minds, this is exactly the kind of,

like the article we read for last week's episode, the writer of that would fit in perfectly here. And I hate that, like, for a whole crop of writers being like an iconoclast and a contrarian and saying, like, the things people nobody wants to say is that they literally just take something that, like, there is kind of a broad consensus on. Like, in the article last week, she took Brock Turner. And in this case, it's West Sound, Caleb, whatever. And then they just say the opposite. And they're like, I fucking did that.

Yeah, I fucking did. Look at that shit and yeah yeah yeah it's not a very clever trick first of all but like if you're gonna do it just at least make it fun or funny or whatever you're right tom it's they've made it awesome i think most people except for like the weirdest like liberals think that west West Ham Caleb didn't do anything wrong. So it's really not treading new territory. You're exactly right. You're exactly right about that.

When it comes to relationships, technological progress has not led to better outcomes. In 2020, most singles in the U.S. reported being dissatisfied with their dating lives. 67% of people think their dating lives aren't going well at all. Blah, blah, blah. 67% of people think their dating lives aren't going well at all. Blah, blah, blah. We are in the midst of a sex recession that may be turning into a sex great depression. Sex session?

Sex recession. Sex session? Well, dude, I don't know. While many of these trends go back much further than dating apps, the failure of dating apps to deliver on their promises calls into question the broader ideology of progress and cult of technology man this person wrote this because they didn't get no cheeks man it's boring they've been on a dating app for a minute and they didn't get no buns and that's why they're upset so they decided to write about this i guess so this is not okay you know first article out at the gate and this new website and it did not deliver it's like if you're gonna lean into being if you're gonna be an iconoclast lean fully into it let's say here's what here's how we should do

this we basically got well we got three articles picked out let's see if they get bad at least two out of three that's the way we can prognosticate about their long-term prospects okay i like the sound of that so i like for one i like the sound of that yeah no i mean um you know unless we get like accused of like having not any valid recommendations i'm trying to think of like how you could have made this article better like if your point is you're trying to make what i mean what is the point here the point is that we're not having enough sex and so sex apps are fit or are not doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's a failure of tech, I guess.

Right. It says here, calls into question broader ideology of progress and cult of technology. Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that swiping leads to a cheapening of sex that harms our ability to form relationships. As people come to suspect, the problem is the technology they are using to connect, not the they're trying to connect with they will long to return to more human less mediated forms of connection it's kind of this thing this is another line that's very common i think in this sphere is that like there are traditional values that we have let erode or decay and like not and by we they mean like the counter-cultural left they mean that like these like traditional values have been eroded by yeah like the sort of like you know wanton left the the countercultural left and that like um and and that's it and not like what the actual culprit is which is like capitalist social relations you know what i mean and also the left the left utilizes like big tech is on the left side and the left utilizes

like big technology to like further uh uh diminish culture these cultural values this is the shit that josh hawley talks about when he talks about that republican center he talks about like big tech and you know it's liberal uh uh you know predisposition and shit like that so yeah oh man yeah we've heard it before we've heard it before whoever wrote this um yeah i mean you know um they're they i think we should go back to you know you remember when you would do this like or not you i i would hear about them it'd be like blind date things like you go to like a bar or some stuff like something like that and they like you sit across from a stranger you've never met and you have to like talk to them you know what i mean like but they were like like a speed dating kind of thing that's the fuck yeah speed

yeah yeah yeah we should bring that back is that what they're asking to bring back you know what i mean yeah like dating 30 years ago was pretty fucking brutal like you know what i mean like well maybe not 30 years ago but well yeah probably like you know what i mean before before like before like uh like uh like cell phones and text me not for cell phones but before like you know you could just text somebody when you went to meet up with them but now instead you had to call them on a house phone and hope that they would just fucking meet you where you were you mean are you talking about like that far back yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i can't imagine it was a whole lot of fun yeah i mean i watched that movie marty with ernest borg 9 you. You ever seen that movie? No.

The premise of the movie is that a heavyset man gets a girlfriend. It was crazy back then. They were like, oh my gosh. In the 50s? Shallow Howl reversed? I guess so, maybe. But it didn't make any sense. You wouldn't believe the slovenly reprobate beats.

He's trash. He gets bitches. you wouldn't believe it all right so we'll go two out of three uh second one up why we need the patriarchy nina power in recent years patriarchy in recent years patriarchy has been dug up and reanimated as a term to describe the supposedly poor behavior of men. It now functions as a sneer word, one of the many used as a shorthand for indicating the right stance to be presumed by progressive minded folk everywhere. Yet there is something ironic in attributing our social ills to an excess of paternal authority. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in four children live without a father of any kind, biological, step or adoptive a situation the national fatherhood initiative suggests is a factor in nearly all

there's an organization called what the national fatherhood initiative then edify i do comms there by the i forgot to that. On the... I moonlight as the Com's director at National Fatherhood Initiative. Daddy's everywhere. Hell yeah. Fathers, where they are depicted in mainstream culture, veer between inept and pathetic at one end, unable to solve basic...

Unable to solve basic household tasks, and at the other, violent... Okay. Depicted where in mainstream culture? You can't can't just say i mean i guess you can at compact magazine but like you kind of have to specify fathers where they are depicted in mainstream culture veer between inept and pathetic at one end and at the other violent alcoholic and abusive consumed by impotent rage railing against the universe and harming women and children like where are they depicted this way like I don't

like I mean movies in Hollywood on TV like are we getting news stories about fathers like yeah like headlines like dad worse than ever dads

oh god dad approval at an all-time low right just graphs of lines yeah i don't i don't okay despite claims to the contrary we do not live in a patriarchy a patriarchy would require men taking responsibility for their families or for society at large instead we live in infantilized culture in which men and women are more like brother and sister contending against each each other in a condition of perverse equality two crucial texts for understanding this oh come on dog two crucial texts were three paragraphs in and you're dropping two crucial texts on already already you got you gotta wait a golden rule for all writing i feel like is always drop your crucial text towards the very very end exactly exactly to help round out your point don't drop it

don't make this person prove your point before before before you because i'm just gonna stop reading and just read whatever book you suggested basically what this amounts to is i just read a book and i'm going to show you how smart i am by recounting the things i'm gonna play the hits back to you i'm gonna i'm gonna regurgitate what i just read right like you're a cover band you're being a cover band and that'd be like us getting on the mic and playing in the microphone like another podcast that's covering topics that we are very gross is fresh air from 2006 here's a little adam twos coming at you folks uh with'll be here all night as men and women become indistinct okay this is i already know this is probably going to be a bad paragraph okay the two crucial texts alexander mr lich's 1963 book society without the father and jul and Juliet Flower McCandles' The Regime of the Brother,

After the Patriarchy, from 1991. As men and women became indistinct, this tendency created by the desegregation of sex-based spheres amid the rise of industrial society. The two sexes largely perform the same jobs, enjoy the same types of culture, and compete along similar lines in sex, military life life and other physical activities most evident today in the spectacle of men competing in and dominating women's sports interesting a little uh dig there you got like what ballet or something like what do you what's a woman's sport i don't understand what's a woman i think it's a reference to that i think it's a reference to that the swimmer that recently yeah yeah I it was right in the middle of when I was moving so I wasn't

paying a lot of attention to like the specifics but wasn't there like a swimmer recently that was competing in the olympics like a trans I think she was a swimmer right right right oh okay and then they framed the Virginia Tech swimmer as saying, releasing this statement about how it was unfair, and it turned out that girl was not even involved in that statement. Leah Thomas is her name.

But they've been frothing about this for weeks now. None of these motherfuckers thought the first thing about swimming until there was a trans swimmer. Yeah, right. Oh, yeah.

And as we pointed out in a past episode, it literally does not matter. I mean... It's like Jordan here. You want to be... Take steroids. fucking suck it up and do steroids if you want to you want to win i thought you wanted to win i thought this was you want to go for the goal right yeah yeah now i was gonna go ahead go to go ahead. Go ahead. Mr. Lich, Mr. Lich, a German psychologist, was prescient in observing that the collapse of the paternal function would result in an increasingly bureaucratic nanny state.

Yeah, I'm sure that's the thing that's resulted in an increasingly bureaucratic nanny state. state sure it has nothing to do with the hollowing out of all bureaucratic systems and welfare state of any of it you know of all of its surplus both capital and you know just mental energy right uh create i don't know it's um the the last two years of okay he wrote a structural common characteristic of our competitive society is a combination of envy with an appetite for dependence, which as a result of the advent of the administered masses has superseded the old ideal of rivalry with the father. of mass support for highly authoritarian measures in the name of covid safety attest that many would prefer to be told what to do by an anonymous technocracy than their older relatives male or otherwise so what's the difference you would so you would rather be under the heel of like your daddy than like your state is this what the person is saying like i don't understand what is this fucking difference once again once again we have proven that when you

write in this genre you will always be providing a window onto your like pathologies you know what i mean that you don't really yeah you can't really like you're saying more than you could ever know this article is saying like i i am a sub i'm a sub i want to be someone please fucking dom me last one last one was getting no cheeks this one fucking daddy this one needs daddy yeah this is a highly sexualized magazine it seems like so far it seems like all these people like on a freudian sense and i know nothing about freudian maybe i'm making shit up i don't know but they're all speaking through like seems like like i don't know it's like i mean i don't know maybe i'm just talking shit but this is what are the three things what is the common thread of the last three articles we've read in this vein the one from last week the one we read before this

and the one now it's like a sex anxiety it really is it's like it really is like in the strictest freudian sense they write from like all a lot of the writers in this vein they're writing from like an unconscious sex anxiety and they don't realize it they don't realize it you're looking around at your boys like damn like you see this there's only one dignified way to to deal with anxieties. And that is to adopt a stiff upper lip and pretend like they don't exist. Very good. I got a small penis.

So fucking what? I still eat that fucking pussy good, don't I? Uphold Tom's sexism, man. I just heard Darren say that one time time i was talking about one of his friends and boom was like there's only two ways to address the small penis thing and that's either act like it just is not even a thing or just be like well so fucking what so fucking what you still gonna suck it it's still gonna be a side you know i'm like all right next paragraph we get the french revolution always gonna be good french revolution

championed liberty equality and fraternity but while we are well accustomed to dice discussing the first two ideals the last fraternity has received relatively little attention it is the figure of the brother more than the dream this person literally means brother when they say fraternity they're literally talking about a brotherhood not like you don't say like a community like like a communal relationship with your fellow man but literally a brother literally lots and lots of like the duggars or sigma phi epsilon it is the figure of the brother more than the dream of equality or liberty that truly defines the post-revolutionary era as mccannell a feminist scholar put it what we have in the place of the patriarchy is the regime of the brother under the regime of tell me more under the brother brother

i'm a brother but i have i have a sister so i'm a brother this appeals to me the regime of the brother does sound like something i could potentially get into all right all right it does sound like something yeah you would see in like black panther party literature and like oh yeah ultimately this is going to be way more disappointing. Absolutely. Absolutely. Under the regime of the brother, sexual difference is eliminated and men and women alike are assimilated into a masculine ideal of fraternity. This is played out to the point of absurdity in the 30 years since McConnell wrote her book. Women are expected to work think act and

love like men meanwhile the brotherly tendency to exercise power without responsibility has replaced any paternal role we live in the era era of the domineering hedonist brother who seeks to erase sexual difference and thus women like is this like a turf thing is this like a turf article sound that's what it sounds like Sounds like he's leaning towards that. Yeah. Real fathers and mothers are diminished. Men and women are forced to compete for jobs and for sexual partners in increasingly similar ways. Sexual difference has been recorded as an identity unmoored, not only from biology, but also from established.

OK, what is biology? I mean, seriously, it's like you want to talk about a controversial idea. Talk about what the fuck biology is. Where did that come from? I mean, seriously, that's the thing. It's like these people, they're like we're iconoclasts. We're talking about controversial ideas. It's like maybe we need to examine the foundations of the entire like scientific hegemonic idea like what if the people who came up with the scientific method and these

other things were wrong about some things what if they were fucking racist what if they were I mean if you talk about during the enlightenment that's when phrenology and all that fucking shit came about you know what I'm saying or Andrew Sullivan's whole career you know?

I mean, that motherfucker ain't been right about nothing. I recall when many felt that dating apps would never make the transition from gay men to straight women, and yet here we are. What is that even? I don't even understand what does that mean um nina complaints about patriarchal men are ironic because they take aim not at the effects of patriarchy but at those of its absence yeah just that common just that common complaint you're all the time hearing about. Just like, that guy is a patriarchal man.

Like, no one says that. The frat boy, the poor and addled young man who acts cattishly and frivolously, isn't a father figure. The young man who's got his goddamn computer to the shop every two months because it's so porned up. Got the shout out. Right. The guy who creates a full-time job at the computer repair shop because of all the malware on his computer yeah he's not a father figure he's literally a brother the more women act like brothers the more uncanny our social and sexual relations become

um you know there's something i was gonna say about that um well anyways men are no longer encouraged to be protective of themselves of women or children or of their communities when masculinist writers suggest that men should take responsibility they are dismissed by liberal critics as right-wing or worse these attacks should be ignored if we are ever to fully reconfigure a form of life that permits the celebration of the beauty of sexual difference and the roles of fathers and mothers. We celebrate it in the image of freedom that may be the logical consequence of revolutionary ideals, ideas of equality. But in doing so, we have left millions of people without meaning and positive social values. By dismantling patriarchy we have lost some things

of value the protective father the responsible man the the paternalistic attitude exhibits care do you really think that like men in like 1790 were responsible yeah exactly that are you really gonna tell me that like aaron burr dropped a dude and just fucking left the country. Yeah, just fucking left. And this was the leadership. And they tried to steal Mexico type of shit. You know what I'm saying? Right. Yeah.

It did not take responsibility for their actions. The paternalistic attitude that exhibits character and capacity. That is a good point. Just a veritable who's who of people that tried to own other people and like depressed drunks they like left their wives and like had love children exactly like yeah tell me what was like responsible about thomas jefferson back when men were men yeah yeah yeah god. God damn. Rather than. Yeah. We have by dismantling

patriarchy, we have lost some things rather than simply pacing constraints on freedom. This has resulted in a horizontal competitive society that suits consumer capitalism very well, one in which there is no power outside the market and state. Those who oppose injustice should think twice before denouncing patriarchy. It's Ninaina power is author of what do men want masculinity and its discontent yeah see that's the thing the last couple sentences there are kind of just uh this is let me just read that again this is resulted in a horizontal competitive society that suits consumer capitalism very well like i don't really understand how you get there i mean i don't understand how like you don't see the effects of neoliberalism

of the last 40 50 years and like to the extent that what you're saying is even true of course like yeah social relations have broken down and there's no community anymore but once again like i just don't see how like you look at that and just like if that and just like say that like it's because men have lost their sense of responsibility and paternalistic responsibility and attitude like okay if that's true when did that happen and why was it a sudden thing was it a gradual like you know where does i don't understand it very is obviously a result of you know what we call like neoliberalism or market economy yeah and also too it's like i've never heard the term patriarchy be used in a positive light like you know i'm saying like it's always used as like, you know, like the system of oppression of men by women.

Right. But this person is talking about like it's almost like when they're there, they're switching out patriarchy for paternalism. They're using them inter like, you know, I'm saying like together, you know, I'm saying it's like, yeah, you haven't even really like you haven't really addressed the fact that like, well, there are like scholars that have like many many that have written about patriarchy and it's like harmful effects on society you know i'm saying the way it's tied in with capitalism you like if you want to convince people the least you could do is like bring up a few more of those examples and refute them rather than come up with your own definition you know what i'm saying like i'm not well well i mean anyone who reads this is not going to fucking do the uh supplemental reading to see if this person is like making a shit up or not you know what i'm saying right yeah i mean this ultimately is just a vanity project this magazine no one is actually a

vanity project that tries to get at one simple thing is how to have sex and here's what I got to say to you is, you know, most of us managed to pull it off eventually. If you just, all you have to have is like, is a clean apartment and a TV. And all you have to do is this. Having sex with girls is very easy. All you have to do is at some juncture in the evening, you have to look over and just say, Hey, you want to go watch some TV? Have a TV and you say, Hey, you want to go watch some TV?

And then if she goes to watch TV with you in your bedroom, she's going to have sex with you. Probably. Exactly. That's it. That's it. That's it. Don't don't force the issue, but you you'll you'll pull it off if you just you know stay in the pocket just be chill man instead of spending time writing like a sex anxiety hateful ass articles just you know just chill out man i would say that like yeah responsible adults or as she puts it in this article, like they can communicate well. Like, I think that's a sign of maturity,

the ability to communicate well. It's like, it doesn't have to be much more complicated than that. Like, you know, so you said two out of three, Tom, that leaves only the economic left can beat the woke. It's a bit of a longer one so it depends on what you guys have in you and then there's history doesn't repeat itself oliver bateman and then there's edwin aponte the unbearable phoniness of the free speech wars that's probably the shortest one if

it's a let's let's bounce it out we'll do a ponte since he's the resident Marxist. Okay, alright. Just by the way, their fucking website keeps fucking up on me. The guy's name is Edwin Aponte? Yeah. He's either a Marxist or a middle reliever for the San Diego Padres.

He's either a Marxist or a middle reliever for the San Diego Padres. Last week, the New York Times published an editorial bemoaning the fact that Americans feel constrained in expressing their opinions. In a survey conducted by Siena College, 46 percent of respondents reported feeling less free to talk about politics than they did a decade ago. This very serious data driven marquee article comes from almost two decades after the emergence of quote-unquote call-out culture, an intra-left phenomenon in which organizers and activists granted themselves permission to publicly savage one another over race, gender, sexual relations, and all other third-rail political topics. By the 2010ss the social contagion had escaped the confines of

the left activist lab and mutated into the cancel cancel culture that many of us live in fear of or deny exists but as the story goes every action has an equal and opposite reaction right-wingers are currently in hysterics trying to push back against what they see as publicly sanctioned discrimination against white Americans. Christopher Ruffo, a conservative activist, has skillfully agitated for suppressing race essentialism in classroom settings. Come on, Edwin. I love you. What do you use the adjective or the adverb skillfully? on edwin i don't know if you want to use the adjective or the adverb skillfully i mean okay all right i love how like they that that's the way they put it race essentialism race essentially yeah yeah and race essentialism look at it that way or one could look at it as well he just uh caused a race panic for no good reason just ends but yeah sure

skillfully fighting race essentialism right I hate feckless leftists like that yeah exactly you can't say what they mean I used to like Oliver Bateman a little bit but like it's like motherfucker

you know what you did starting a fucking podcast with Amy Therese get the fuck out of here yeah you know you know what you're doing like oliver's wrestling writing or whatever but bro come okay you know what fucking time it is he's the one who wrote the history doesn't repeat itself article yeah interesting oh my god um i'd never encountered him until just now but you're right that's uh you're right dude just don't say has skillfully agitated for suppressing racism in class and Mercedes sure that's one way of putting it if you're a coward like yeah just say what you if you're a huge fucking pussy what are you what are you scared of you're scared if you're gonna post it online and a bunch of

like online leftists are gonna come after you bro like what are you scared of you're going to post it online and a bunch of like online leftists are going to come after you, bro? Like, what are you scared of? I know, dude, that's the thing that fucking kills me. Like a lot of these guys are just too pussy to be conservatives. Just do it. Just do it. Yeah. Yo, that's such a good point, Terrence. You're right.

His campaign against critical race theory has been met with much enthusiasm on the right. Frankly, I am less interested in the merits of one or the other position um does drag queen story hour at local libraries go too far should biblical scripture be studied as divinely inspired in public schools than i am in the purpose in the purpose such very serious conference consternation over the issue serves did you guys catch that i didn't really catch that sorry um let me read that again frankly i'm less interested in the merits that one or the other position does drag queen story hour at local libraries go too far should biblical scripture

be studied as divinely inspired in schools then i am in the purpose such very serious consternation over the issue serves the truth is that whichever wing of liberal capital is in public ascendancy, or political ascendancy, be it the conservatives or the progressives, its preferred censorship regime will spread through civil society, institutions, and individuals until it is so deeply internalized that most people reflexively conform to it. One of the earliest thinkers to come close to describing this phenomenon was Alexis de Tocqueville, whose nine-month tour of the U.S. in 1835 birthed one of the earliest thinkers to come close to describing this phenomenon was Alexis de Tocqueville, whose nine month tour of the US in 1835 birthed one of the finest examinations of American society to date. In Democracy in America, he explained that unlike the feudal monarchies of old, the circumscription of speech in America came not at the barrel of a gun, but through democratic dissemination. And then he quotes de Tocqueville here. You guys want me to do de Tocque and then he quotes de toqueville here you guys

want me to do de toqueville you want me to do the voice of alex there it is richard nixon under the absolute government of one alone despotism struck the body cruelly so as to reach the soul and the soul escaping from those blows rose gloriously above it but in democratic republics tyranny does not proceed in this way it leaves the body and goes straight for the soul the master no longer says to it you shall think as

I do or you shall die he says you are free not to think as I do the fucking thing about this dumb ass book which every fucking like hackneyed pundit has been quoting for the last 100 years is that like i guarantee you i've given people like tours of my region where i lived mediated by some non-profit or you know non-governmental organizations or something like that you think it was any different back then no de tautville got the vision of america that he got from his like handlers and like tour guides on the ground exactly you know what i mean like he

did not like i hate that people treat this book like it's like an unfiltered unadulterated like objective analysis of american society it's like fuck off you you seriously you're as stupid as the people who think the fucking bible is 100 fucking real like that's just not the way shit works man people like everything is mediated by clientage and patronage even on the left yeah even the example of like if you're gonna have somebody over your house you clean the fuck up man you know what i'm saying like like why would you think why don't you think that the united states to be like we gotta hide the slaves like we gotta hide all the poor people we gotta hide the white indentured servants like all the women have to stand behind their husbands like you know saying like oh shit oh next i give it next time i give a tour of

appalachia i'm feeding motherfuckers bologna sandwiches instead of taking our best restaurants you know what i mean like you hey do you want the tour do you want the unvarnished tour or do you want the tokeville tour uh you want the street tacos or you want the grigo shit man what you want it's like even motherfuckers i like like cornell west or even like when william barber came with like the people's thing it's like i like those guys a lot but like they do have like their sort of non-profit liberal handlers that gatekeep them and only show them and let certain people have access to them and all that kind of stuff let's like even people you like they get maybe it's just like it's some in some sometimes i guess it's probably just the best you got but like even like folks coming here for the right reasons and stuff i

think don't really get the unvarnished like you know yeah real shit yeah yeah i think the barber i think that thing i think when he came to eastern Kentucky it was like a private event which was i thought was very really it was the kftc though right i thought it was gonna like people kftc called me like you want to meet the reverend william barber and it's like well yeah sure and then but it's like well you gotta is he's available uh between 604 and 615 then we have to move him along because he's got to get you know it's like there's always an itinerary and you just yeah yeah you mentioned corno west the quote the i actually uh had the opportunity to see him but i did it and that's only because

he came to eat at a restaurant i was working at so you know the only access you have is if you just see the motherfucker like actually seeing the sites and shit like that and getting food you know otherwise you know like otherwise as you said tom you got to go through this whole like you know this whole like rigmarole just to like talk to him. God, yeah. You hate to bother a man while he's eating. Yeah. Like, are you Cornel West? No, man.

Yeah. Like a waffle halfway down your throat. No, man. I'm not going to do that shit. Tocqueville's observation is astute, but his error was in excusing those prevailing speech codes as the ironic but natural results of liberal democratic rule rather than the oblique application of ruling class ideology. Wait, what is the fucking ironic speech codes? I guess I got to actually read the Tocqueville quote. Sorry, guys. Under the absolute government of one alone, despotism struck the body cruelly so as to reach the soul.

So he's talking about like monarchies and the soul escaping from those blows rose gloriously above it. But in democratic republics, tyranny does not proceed in this way. It leaves the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says to it, you shall think as I do or you shall die. He says, you are free not to think as I do your life, your goods. Everything remains on to you. But from this day on, you are free not to think as I do your life, your goods, everything remains on to you. But from this day on, you are a stranger among us.

You shall remain among men, but you shall lose your rights of humanity. Tocqueville's observation is astute, but his error was in excusing those prevailing speech codes as the ironic but natural results of liberal democratic rule rather than the oblique application of ruling class ideology. That is to say, there is nothing illiberal illiberal about censorship it is through the constraint of speech that our ruling class and its bourgeois enforcement arm maintain the fiction of democratic legitimacy the back and forth debate over it only exists to reinforce the public myth of liberalism's free speech ideal um you guys get what's going on there you get what he's saying hell no bro i guess he's saying that like they're like uh uh in liberal democratic societies instead of like power being exerted like like through a centralized like a kind of centralized like you know whatever apparatus

of government i guess we all sort of oppress ourselves like it's diffused throughout the population through alienation i guess and somehow speech has something to do with free speech has something to do with that right he says there's nothing illiberal about censorship it is through the constraint of speech that our ruling class and its bourgeois enforcement arm maintain the fiction of democratic legitimacy the back and forth debate over it only exists to reinforce the public myth of liberalism's free speech ideal i mean yeah i guess i kind of there are parts of that i agree with in the sense that like you can't say certain things in this country but like i don't mean it in the way that he means it like he means it like you should be able to say racist shit but the thing is he's like you already can the thing is like you can't say like if you're like a muslim you

can't say you know what i mean you can't have shit on your computer researching various you know like islamic state or right i mean like you can't even shout out ala akbar like in the middle of the street you know what i'm saying or like fifth avenue or some shit like that without people losing their fucking body and a special uh ramadan kareem to those that observe indeed but also too with these free speech the free speech these people talk about it's like yo you thought like you think the black panther party had free speech you think like you know the suffragettes had free speech you think like you know like like like uh you know striking workers had free speech like no dude like shut the fuck up man and here's how it goes in america you can say what you want but you might get killed for it it just depends who does the killing if it's like a

racist dude or the cia you'd say whatever the fuck you want but you might get killed for exactly that's how we need to amend the free speech thing say what you want but be warned but just know i mean it is broadly true that i mean i just don't think i don't know it's just like to the extent that this country ever had quote-unquote free speech it mostly only protected like literal nazis right like the no he's or i mean like the nazis in scogie illinois or whatever like you know what i mean like it was it is weird the nazis really do have like outsized protection relative to everybody else because even when you think about some outfit like the aclu it's always like oh well we have to stand with them because if they don't have their free speech yeah and we lose it across the board it's like listen aaron you're into that a little too much like listen aaron you as a black man if those nazis don't get their free speech then you

won't get it either like i'm not really supposed to fucking believe that you know what i mean like my free speech comes from like their liberties like fuck out of here dude hey come on um uh consider the fact that some of the same conservatives who spent the last third of the 20th century promoting protestant christian family values through the banning of gays in the armed forces now leverage the same demographic as justification for humanitarian military intervention abroad consider also the activists less resistance to the Reagan White House's unofficial gag order on public discussion of the HIV AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. And then barely a decade later, when the Democratic Party held the executive branch, the push for what was

at the time called political correctness, a speech rubric spearheaded by many of the same left organizers. In other words, today, conservatives are out of power in railing against the canceling of comedians who make jokes about transgender people. Tomorrow, the same people may be in power and leading the charge in favor of a ban against transgenderism in schools. This is borne out by the Times editorial. Per the survey, 66% of respondents agreed that democracy is built on the free and open exchange of ideas. Yet a whole 30% also allowed for the curbing of speech if it runs afoul of acceptable etiquette. The contours of free speech debate may change, but the fundamental characteristics remain the same from the founding to the present day.

Self-determination and the ideal of unrestrained speech are essential mythological inventions of liberalism, even if liberalism is constitutionally incapable of following through on its promises. We must ensure that whatever comes next, be it socialism or some new federative arrangement that hasn't yet even been imagined, that the promises of such ideals are retained and actually fulfilled. What? That was boring, man. That was so didn't have a good didn't have a good payoff.

And that's supposed to be the Marxist, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean mean because i mean go ahead go ahead now go good i don't know i was just gonna say like i couldn't tell at some points it seemed like he was arguing against free speech you know like that's yeah which is why i i'd like you know the whole the marxist label i'm like well any so-called marxist who starts a magazine with two conservatives is not a marxist label i'm like well any so-called marxist who starts a magazine with two conservatives is not a marxist right like you realize that this is this is an exercise in futility you know like whose minds are you changing you're not changing their minds like this it's not like this magazine is for the working class you know i'm saying it's not like

some like normal ass person's gonna pick it up and read it or like go on their phone so it's just a vanity project for on the part of leftists who, as you said, such a good point. They're too scared to be conservative. Well, I mean, like I don't disagree with the endeavor whole cloth. Like obviously a lot like most of my family is conservative and therefore and I talk to them. Therefore, I interface with conservatives. Like obviously that is a thing that every person if they're not doing it i guess should be trying to do um but like you're like you're right though aaron and like as a larger political project where like as a just as a project of trying to get ideas out there yeah yeah you're a rube ultimately even if you call yourself that

like you're just being used by them to basically make this presentable or shoehorn in like at this point it's so hilarious to me because like at this point they just kind of have to get the token like marxist guy or whatever to like shoehorn in like the economic left part of it we're just like yeah we'll just provide for everybody with uh basic universal basic income or whatever but society will be fascist and you can't do it whatever you know just as a practical matter i'm not sure it's smart to get in business with people that actively uh engage in and promote wage theft i just think my man edwin's gonna get taken to the cleaners on this one. Better put some of that Marxism to work, boy. Shit, man.

Damn, man. Well, as Nina would tell him, you just need a benevolent father. You just need a benevolent father figure, and everything will be chill. Everything will be all right. Good paternalistic figure in your life. Everybody need daddy. Oh, man. daddy's home well maybe one of these days we can hit history doesn't repeat itself but the thing about this website bro is it is the good shit's just gonna keep on coming it keeps coming but i mean just like gail and brett just like the uh resource generation old content drops of mine

from way back like you go to them now and they just don't hit it like they used to they don't hit it more bro yeah i'm just like oh man it just it just does like it's just like it's just it's not hitting man it's just like it doesn't bloodstream after this anymore i didn't take straight to the head it's not eventually yeah even this will eventually get old for me like even this i'll be like i'll go to this well and just be like it's not even fucking fun anymore dude you're you're you're you're telling me that racism well i don't i'm trying to think you're the craziest fucking take that they're gonna come with they're gonna be like i guarantee i'm trying to think of the craziest fucking take that they're going to come with.

They're going to be like, I guarantee I'm trying to think of the craziest thing that they've done. Like they're going to say, like, I'm really shocked that none of them have taken on like Native American, you know, like indigenous stuff like that. Like in the culture war stuff, conservatives always stay far the fuck away from like indigenous. You know what I mean? Like from from the indigenous nations and reservations everything and i've always wondered why that is like they don't touch that shit really look man they like what it is i feel like the arguments that they're making now are just updated arguments from like i don't know like the 50s and the 60s whatever people think of as like the height of intellectual conservatism right um they're just repackaged but you're you're right i would love to see them say some

shit like um um the left um the left is is uh is pushing this land back uh movement what is it actually do we should we give land back or like some shit they'll be like we're black people better off in certainty like under a different you know what i mean like i'm waiting for them to come like maybe we need a little bit more time we gotta wait for the crt stuff to go through we gotta wait for like some more of these milestones to be made for them to just straight up return to like 19th century like old school racism dude i mean like it'll happen no it will you're right yeah i don't know man there's some fucking crazy shit. Jesus, dude.

Well, that probably covers it for today. Fellas, go check out the Patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Troubled Workers Party. They'll throw us some money. We would love your support. Anything else? Anything you guys need to plug anything to get off your chest no that's about it all hearts and minds clear over here

yeah all right all right well we'll see you next time peace out bye