Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 245: Righteous Gangsterismo With Insane Characteristics

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

This is the article we discussed on today's show: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

all i got to was that then i guess rosemary's baby although he was in that though but polanski directed that right polanski did direct it but cassavetes was in it i mean i watched a movie with him the other night called mikey and nicky oh man good shit good. What's the movie Cassavetes did where not Cassavetes it wasn't even Cassavetes it was why am I running him

and Roman Polanski together? But it's a Polanski movie. It has Donald Pleasance in it. It's like a home invasion movie where they're like in this big ass house. It's kind of a comedy a little bit too. a little bit of that vibe

in it trying to figure this thing out here I ain't got time for this let me figure this thing out I don't care about this fucking dumb bullshit man movies are pretty stupid but of all the things that are

a waste of time movies is like the least the least best yeah yeah oh fucking hell nothing ever fucking works let me get my shit set up yo yo yo yo hey Fucking hell. Nothing ever fucking works.

Let me get my shit set up. Yo, yo, yo, yo. Hey, hey, hey. Here we go. Sorry. What's up, Aaron? Sorry. No, it went into my spam folder. So that's why I didn't see it.

Sorry about that. Damn, dude. What if real life is like that? What if someone approached you and it's like just something that sorted them into spam? That would be pretty tough. Everybody pass on the street just like when I lived in Vegas, the thing that people would do that like were promoting the cat houses

and stuff, everybody knows that they do the little flick sound with the flyers and try to kind of aggressively put them in your face. It'd probably be like that except for hey have you ever thought about how to make your dick bigger and they would flip the brochure and just like stuff it in your face like every five steps it'd be somebody doing that yeah yeah i feel like that might be the future uh there might well aren't there already apps and shit for people to do like little tasks and stuff like that except uh this time you'll be contracted by an advertising company to uh to uh i guess pass people out uh ads and flyers and stuff like that i mean that kind of already is like if you think it's basically like turn yourself into a walking

ad for money yeah yeah it would be it's like the gig economy goes to marketing you know so instead of something at least useful like uber or like doordash or something it's just like you get contracted out to just go and be like aggressive like upselling people on like dick pills and oh yeah yeah or like uh supplements and shit that don't even work well Well, are there like app services? Dude, I bet there is where you can like hire bodyguards by app. You know what I'm saying? Like hire your own personal mercenaries or something. I'd go to the club.

It'll be called like Janissary, J-A-N-S-R-Y or something like that. With all the vowels taken out. Yeah, you just hire your own mercenaries. Yeah. What if contract killing hits the gig economy? You know what I mean?

You just take some French Foreign Legion type motherfuckers and instead of driving for Grubhub or something like you hire them to go kill somebody. Yeah, it is like a good good or hire them for Grubhub. Actually that'd be funnier. French foreign Legion guys doing grub. Like what are your skills? Marksman can fly a helicopter drive a cake i invent country

that would be fucking hilarious just an international mercenary and now he just has to come to america and join the gig economy it just felt like uh like henry hill at the end of goodfellas like a schmuck has to live a boring life now or just not a boy you know just a regular ass whatever the regular life of mercenary out of work right reach man me and tom before you got on we were talking about drake we were doing uh we were doing a comprehensive um retrospective of the act of the uh actor and musician known as drake the funniest thing about the song underground kings is that the line the song starts off with the line rich off a mixtape got rich off a mixtape it's like that's pretty tight like i think that's pretty hilarious that he's just like no i actually didn't do degrassi like that wasn't me you know we erased that we erased

that from history i was a beautiful yeah i wasn't a child star i was rich off a mixtape rich off a mixtape rap the line i was thinking about tom is rapping bitches rapping bitches bitches and rapping rapping and bitches until all of it dude like that that's like when you get big enough as like a rapper right and i guess you could say any artist but like specifically in rap where you don't even have a go i guess you have a ghostwriter but you're just like just spitting straight nonsense man it's no longer about the lyricism at this point it's just like a beat for you to drive to at night you know or to get ready to to go to the party if you're with your boys you know what i mean it's just really impressive man he can do it was drake kepper um rumored to have a ghostwriter yeah that's why uh what was

his name what was the ghostwriter's name the dude that had one leg what's his name it's like this guy literally wrote his own song and like gave it to drake and drake just doesn't even read the lyrics and like that's what this song was rich alpha mixtape got rich alpha mixtape there's doesn't even pay attention to the lyrics no it's just because like everybody knows it's gonna be a banger it's new drake that's it oh man i'm getting back to my ways show yourself scouts dude i thought like the funniest thing ever i thought like the funniest i was trying to think of who the funniest batman would be and it's got to be drake bar none drake is batman would be pretty fucking funny

yeah yeah would he still be like would he still be like a he'd still be like a music artist though right so instead of being like a playboy billionaire by day he's like a rapper by day and like a vigilante by night. Yeah. It's like the whole Bruce Wayne story just kind of turns upside down a little bit. Adam West had like quippy, the Adam West era had like quippy sayings before he like fucked the villains

up instead of like Drake Bonds. On a PS like popping up on the street and shit. Dropping Drake up. Rapping in bitches yeah little Wayne is robbing yeah yeah god damn

I can imagine that man Drake is a guy that like I've loved much of his output but as a as a person, it's just, he's a guy that really benefits from being rich and famous. Yeah. I would say that. Yeah.

You don't like him? Well, it's not that. There's just a lot of things that aggravate me about him and what could i say about him that push your t hasn't already pointed out and more viciously way more viciously but the thing is he's like kind of cringe i mean yes and and like he tries to like be self-aware about it and like own it and like be charming about it but it just doesn't work like you can't work for too long because then he starts doing the gonna uh you know catch bodies and stuff yeah we catch bodies and stuff after singing about this

girl like over this whole like half of this album you know i mean like there's like you know there's definitely a dichotomy but it's just you're right tom it doesn't work for too long you know yeah the thing is is it doesn't that only works when you're young like that kind of like he's a grown-ass man after a certain age there's like a kind of charm that does not trade currency any longer people like oh yeah that's like hearing jay-z rap about being a drug dealer at as a 50 something year old billionaire married to beyonce it's just like yeah it's like okay sure but sure we'll we'll take it but that has the disbelief sure but that hasn't been you for so long though you know what i mean this is something we've talked about on the show before like at what point do you cast

aside like your sort of class identities like when your class station objectively changes uh yeah you know like i like like you know i don't and i don't want to be too critical of like athletes or musicians or anything like that but like you know when like obama makes the call to chris paul and lebron during the the bubble and it's like they just kind of fall in lockstep with what he wanted out of that whole situation. And then LeBron pulls like a hillbilly move, like what I or me or Tanya would say, well, I grew up poor.

It's like, actually, my man, at this point, you've been exorbitantly wealthy athlete for longer than you ever the kid from Akron. You know what I mean? At what point that's always going to inform your worldview and your politics i get that but at what point do you like acknowledge that your class interests have just have changed just out of just osmosis but it just happens you know what i mean because you're a billionaire it's got it's got to be like your proximity to like like other not just like famous people but like in terms of like even political power like somebody like obama like if obama's hitting

you up on the phone your personal phone like that's like a realm seductive yeah yeah and that's like a realm of like just like this like kind of different society that like 99.9 of people just never experienced you know so at that point you just got to own up. Like, yeah, I just got a text from Obama, you know what I'm saying? Wishing me good luck tonight at the game. Like I can't, I mean, sure. You could be like, I'm Jennifer in the block, but that's not a, that doesn't seem to like, you know, like be borne out so much, man. Talking to the president, you know, somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

I think about that all the time because like i i've i have done that defensively before somebody like criticized something i said or a position i had but you didn't you didn't grow up how i grew up and it's like well but i can't a good conscience just act like i'm fucking cold smudge you know heck you know what i mean you're saying there's like a line but i don't know i'm i'm asking like what like like like i guess like when does it tilt where like your your latest class position like sort of nullifies you know like where you started in life i guess it's weird because like among the political class it's like a virtue now to be like you know of the dirt like hard scrabble like whatever you know what i'm saying yeah um because it gives you it gives you validity like whether

you're a republican or a democrat you're like like you're a politician of the people right instead of being like a member of like this like what trump would call the swamp or just this like elite you know it makes you more relatable so uh that did y'all see that article in the vanity fair um i wrote it this morning or i read it this morning and i was like fucking blown away by it it was really good but it's inside the new right where peter teal is placing his biggest bets and it's crazy because like all of these like quote-unquote like new right people on the sort of like teal adjacent right i guess you could like classify them broadly under the term of like teal adjacent right i guess you could classify them broadly under the term of like nationalist maybe even national conservatism national yeah maybe even like maybe even like

monarchist you know what i'm saying like pro um christian american values like pro family like the blake masters guy wants to pass a law that like or yeah i think he like wants to make it to where every household can survive off one income to sort of like foster you know like the bread winning yeah like a nuclear like a reversion to a nuclear family again type of shit exactly and like they all are they're all trying to do the exact same shit though that like the the media like bernie adjacent left has been doing for like the last five or six years like they're all of the intellectual upper middle class you know what i'm saying like they all have arrived at these ideas through pure theoretical reason like either in college

or because of like social pressures in college shaped the way that they see the world and everything you know what i mean but like they they are all at the end of the day like trying to be like hard scrabble like isn't that like our boy jd i mean isn't somebody like that perfect example he's the perfect example of like he's sort of the progenitor of this light of strain in a lot of wise yeah yeah but but it seems like it seems like on the right now like jd's interesting case because it's like on the one hand you know there's like comments of him like talking ill of trump resurfacing so he's like i just him like talking ill of Trump resurfacing. So he's like got to straddle the line between this like new intellectual right.

And like this guy from the dirt, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Guy, I mean, called Trump the he could be the American Hitler and ice court. Yeah. But it's the same thing we were saying, like jay-z man you know what i'm saying or with anybody who you can't like at some point you can't keep claiming or i mean in some case it's not even true you can't keep claiming that you're from the block you know you got to straddle this uh this this fine line between uh believable and i guess accessible you know but still somebody somebody would want to vote for you know i don't I don't know. I haven't read this.

That Vanity Fair thing you're talking about is written by a friend of the show, James Pogue, here. But I've not read it yet. But, like, that line, they're not MAGA, they're not QAnon, is kind of interesting because I've been trying to think of a way to, like, all that stuff is sort of, for all intents and purposes, kind of dead, right? Like, I mean, like, q anon has kind of jumped the shark when they're like they're in shooting satan's dna and that's like with stuff like i think to some degree most people of that vein have kind

of recovered from that era mentally a little bit like when it was within a range of believable i think it was seductive even though it's never really been within a range of believable that jfk jr was gonna come back but there was like a lot of stuff that were like you know just i guess what would you call them uh what do you call it like Like just, you know, like these fringe, like, like, no, no, not coincidences, but just like, what do you call them? Like serendipitous? Yeah. Like those just like these kinds of things that like, I guess, you know, we're like. I don't know what I'm trying to say. You talking about you mean like all of these like conditions, like it was fortuitous that this happened because all the conditions that were kind of aligned like make these groups.

Is that what you're talking about? Sort of a little bit. Anyway, it's just interesting that it's it's what's happening with the right and what kind of shape it's taken now. And out of like it's funny that any sort of. Even quasi intellectual movement at all could come out of the ashes of QAnon. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's a really good point, man, because like I think since like for whatever people want to say anti-vaxxers. But it doesn't feel like it's like as concentrated in something like Q, you know, or maybe it's turning into something else. I don't know. But then you have these. Yeah. The thing is, the distinction here, I wouldn't say that this group grew out of QAnon.

I'd say that they kind of like have run parallel to the the people highlighted in this piece. They're not like the true believers these are not like the q anon people who literally believe hillary clinton was executed in guantanamo bay or whatever these are people that are like us in the sense that they're intellectuals and they spend way too much time online and so a lot of them most of them what i mean by intellectuals is they went to college they had went to college they had the experience of going to a university yeah not that we're so goddamn smart or anything exactly like openly mobile educated people or whatever yeah that's exactly what it is but like

i do feel like american college is a unique social experience and it serves a purpose of like class disorganization. And so like and college, like if you track what happened in like the last 20 years or so, like all of the millennials, like the people, the children of like Gen X and boomer generation, they were all sold the lie of college and et cetera, et cetera. And like, you you know the numbers of enrollment was like higher than it had ever been or something like that and um like i think that like being in college during like 9-11 2003 in the iraq war the 2008 financial you know crash the election of obama like it it created a very specific like sort of the seeds of very of a of a few sort of social movements in America. It's like a Petri dish where all the conditions like through what like I guess like millennials or like, you know, like what coming off of Gen X went through and you had these two kind of now opposing. through and you had these two kind of now opposing and you could also call that flowering out of obama but you have these now two opposing kind of like intellectual very online media spheres you

know what i mean but it's not like it doesn't seem to have i mean no i can't say that i was gonna say it doesn't seem to have any political clout or power but that's not true because like i mean like it seems like on the one hand yeah yeah, you do have like, you know, like, I guess lives of TikTok type of shit. But it also seems like this is trickling to the people that don't readily seem. I mean, they're insane, but they're not like embedded in the QAnon shit. You know, I guess it'll be people like J.D. Vance, I guess, is a perfect. Well, let me let me ask this. Let me ask this. So, I mean, because you brought up the lives of TikTok thing, it's, you know, pertinent at the moment.

But like Terrence, I mean, where would you classify like the DeSantis people and all those stuff? Is this what James is talking about or is that a whole separate thing? Sort of. I mean, like they feed off each other. These people are in some ways even beyond critical race theory stuff like these people. I mean, I don't know. It's hard to say because like as James points out in the article, like J.D. Vance has said in some places, culture war is class warfare. So like they see waging a culture war against like Disney or CRT or whatever as a form of like class warfare because they're they're doing it though in a kind of like vanguardist way they're basically saying like we're fighting on behalf of the working man and woman who like doesn't want these like values of of uh pro lgbtq and you know what I mean? And woke capital, woke capital basically as well.

That'll tell you who you can associate with, the opinions you can have at work, which gives it the economic class quality to it. Cause it's no longer culture. This affects how your family, your coworkers, your job and all that shit, you know? Yeah. They, they basically, so man, I'm not going to do his article justice, but,

but basically these people do support the DeSantis approach and obviously they want Trump support and stuff like that. dictate like what like political economic events would need to occur for our society to actually reflect those values and so they think most of them i think this is the theme he's kind of going at throughout the article is that many of them keep coming back to this idea of like a dictatorship a monarchy a coup they need some sort of, obviously, because like even the left asks these questions like, OK, if we were going to get to a point where we could overthrow the government, how would we even do that? Like, what would that even look like? And but like most people, when they ask that question are in a kind of upper middle class

intellectual went to college. So, you know class and so like right on the left um obviously people on the left have that question but and and then like they say you know there's all kinds of different interpretations you need a dictatorship of the proletariat you need the working class to organize and create either soviets or you know communes or whatever but them on the right like these people are kind of looking at it from that same sort of vanguardist position and saying like well if the q anon people really want what they want like how can we help them get it you know what i'm saying yeah they're not as

like they're not as like into the metaphysical shit of q anon so much like they don't really talk about like q anon was kind of like a uh you know it's kind of like a millenarian cult like they really thought the jfk junior was going to come back and like you know institute the new uh you know right so you're saying that you're saying that these people so you know these people like this like this like kind of elite class of like this new right whatever they're like cynical about this right they're only like i guess throwing money into like maybe candidates or movements like these astroturf kind of movements that it's sort of it sort of feels like a tea party thing that could sort of be happening you know or maybe that's maybe that kind of thing never the tea party definitely went away but it's repeating itself

sort of you know yeah yeah and the thing is the difference is is like you could take Christopher Rufo and lives of TikTok as the two examples even though I don't think either of them are even mentioned in this article because I feel like Rufo is kind of adjacent he's definitely you know up there along with like JD Vance and Blake Masters or whatever he's kind of like I have to assume that he's very cynical. Like these are all into like I'm saying, these are all college educated people. They're cowards at heart. They have just like us. I mean, the rest of us cowards at heart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have no real convictions, mostly because they're I mean, we're a little bit different. I mean, like they have no real

convictions because all of their ideas were arrived at through like reasoning, rationale, the triangulation of other people, you know the libs of tiktok she's kind of like a foot soldier even though she is also actually like of the elite because isn't she like a slum lord or something yeah yeah i was about to say the real estate but she's a slum lord exactly there um but no she's like yeah she's of that same milieu but then this is what so this is the thing man is that this is where the left is such a differentiation because like the left or whatever you could say constitutes the left it does mirror that definite intellectual sort of like class whatever you were saying like like people like us people in the left media sphere right that are like way too much into the shit but like it doesn't seem like there there are any political like avatars or anyone that we

could channel that you know what I'm saying? There's, I guess, AOC, I guess the squad, but if we're talking about the other side, you got like Ron DeSantis, you got J.D. Vance who's running. I mean, even Marjorie Taylor Greene, where would she be on that? Marjorie Taylor Greene seems to me a true believer, but then I don't know.

You're right, because even the few that we do have, we all accept them sort of like just reluctantly like you just saw this like this week like bernie was like there was like someone just floated this rumor like maybe someone associated with the campaign was like he might run again in 2024 most people were like that's absurd it's about to be real weekend at bernie's probably does probably not a good idea so like they but they all you're right they all kind of accept their sort of avatars for that um but i don't know i don't know they're probably also i don't know the portrait that they paint in this article is like

these are all you know deeply craving people just like the libs just like anybody else like they are mostly concerned with clout and popularity and like you know what i'm saying like yeah like the guy like it talks a lot about that curtis yarvin dude who's like mincius moldbug or whatever moldbug you guys know who he is no no he's like a really popular blogger on the right for a long time and like just used to just used to write like a lot of white nationalist shit now goes on tucker and stuff and like kind of um you know um not only say censors but kind of like is more careful and um you know he's trying to pivot back he's trying to pivot back to something that's not as fringe and trying to be more appealing i mean it still is fringe but it's appealing though

right i guess the people right we're supposed to be well that was my that was my i guess my question a little bit is like well who are their standard bearers then in this way if like is it desantis is it it's over it's it's i wanted to talk a little bit about this but it's like is trump kind of passe now is he losing steam is mag where's what's the state of maga today dark maga man did you guys hear about that shit there where it's kind of passe now is he losing steam is mag where's what's the state of maga today dark maga man did you guys hear about that shit there where it's kind of like where you were saying terrence even though what these people always wanted was an authoritarian daddy figure like i don't know what what a dark maga as opposed to what like maga light like come on but apparently now there's this

maga twist now where it's explicitly authoritarian. You know, like this is what these people want. So, yeah, they're kind of the monarchist. They're falling in line with that shit, too. Well, that's the thing. Like, I kind of assume that they're sort of, you know, they're willing to feed off of Trump's potential success in 2024. But I'm not I wouldn't say that they're necessarily enthusiastic about him. About him. Yeah. They see him kind of as more of a means to an end,

whereas QAnon sees him as the end itself. You know what I'm saying? That's the kind of difference between the two. Now that I think that's the that's the cynicism, that's the cynicism. And they actually believe in it. That's yeah, you're right. You're right. We sometimes frame the right as being in perfect lockstep.

I mean, there's even the like the phrase that like Republicans condition their leaders and Democrats condition their voters. But really and truly, the right is in total disarray to perhaps the only reason that they stay in power is because the left is just that bad. You know what I mean? I saw the thing today. The reason I bring this up is I saw the thing today about McConnell having said that the Democrats are going to take care of the bastard for us, talking about Trump. Oh, yeah. I saw that. All those things.

trump and oh yeah i saw that all those things it's like really and truly if you had a semi-competent left with a semi-coherent vision of the future like you would just you would be banishing these people to the dustbin of history but because i was like the best we could come up with is a skeleton for in like national mainstream politics and biden and just like the most feckless, ineffectual people bookending him like you really let a very marginal sort of piss weak movement flourish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing, too, is that even if even if Republicans aren't in lockstep or the right i guess isn't in lockstep like they at least seem to have some like cohesive or to them cohesive long-term goal right like it's like you were saying terrence they're like how can we set up all these pieces

on the chessboard to like get to where we want to get to you know yeah but i don't know if it's like you were saying tom that like the left is so ineffectual or also like liberals in office don't have any long-term goals you know like they don't seem to have a long-term ideological project whereas the right like they're like no we want to like radically transform this country or really make this country more of what it already is to be honest you know right well all i'm saying is that if you take it just like do a little like a little accounting of what the left looks like you have like the do it at the ballot box liberals you have like the nascent bernie left you have some people to the left of that some people

that are kind of sympathetic to that but a little bit more to the right of it and you know not a ton of variety in there and then you look at the right and it's like you have people that believe in dragon dna and vaccines you have you have mitch mcconnell who just goes whichever way the wind blows and it's sort of you know even though he's not the president the standard bearer probably of mainstream republicans and then you got your ram pauls and like uh mitt romney you got john Rand Pauls and like Mitt Romney, John McCain's the Mavericks that always vote with the rest of them, but like grandstand about not being like the rest of them.

Yeah. And it's like, you look at it and it's like, you would think if, if, if, if you just had, again, if you just had a coherent vision of the future, like what is the left? And when I say the left, I'm not just talking about like leftists or radicals or whatever i'm talking about i'm the center and the right part of talking about liberals too who mostly occupy mainstream politics like what what is it that you want and i don't think they could answer that in the affirmative which ones which group

just like the left which includes like whether it's like a communist anarchist or somebody who's like a left liberal even sympathetic to the left right right tom that's what you mean right yeah yeah right right right yeah that's a good question man but there's certainly no i mean that's i don't know and i don't say that as a judgment either because i i don't know either i'm just saying like i just don't say i don't think we've come up with that necessarily right right right i think we make strides. I think it's like a lot of it is like, well, like the unionization of Amazon and Starbucks

and these different service sectors and stuff like that is definitely a positive sign. And I'm not shitting on that at all. But I feel like, you know, like that is like, those are good signs, but not necessarily pointed toward any sort of like longer-term project that no the thing is is that these these kind of right-wingers are now trying to embrace that like we a few weeks ago we read that compact mag or whatever right like well they had an article

on there just like about how the unions had been kneecapped and stuff like these are people that are looking for a more it's crazy because in 2017, the sort of like future of America that they want, we kind of been now sucked up by the because those people were also mostly intellect. I mean, Richard Spencer, obviously, like I think he's got like a master's or something like, you know, like like. But like this is kind of the newest iteration of it, but it's now backed by Peter Till. newest iteration of it but it's now backed by peter till and i think that like part of the reason why and why that's kind of scary is like a lot of these silicon valley guys have visions of the future like they have very clear like ideas about how they want to see their future shapes because many of them have also sort of you know drank from that same ideological well of like innovators are going to have to see us into this next phase of humanity whether it's post-capitalism whatever

and i'm sorry even leftist thinkers have contributed to that like i love the fucking mars trilogy book by kim stanley robinson but like in in that book like there is no you know he cannot really even envision a future in which there aren't some benevolent overlords who like. A patrician class. Yeah, exactly. And that may be true. I don't know. I mean, I really don't know.

But I do know that like these these powerful people who do have these visions are starting to now put it to use in more than just sort of like abstract ways like and i think teal is now starting to bring a lot of them under the same like this guy's worth eight billion dollars you know what i mean like um yeah you know yeah these people definitely have like this like i mean they're they're futurists right but it's just like what kind of future as opposed to the one that you know the left yeah mean what does that mean it's a word that I've seen I don't even we even have it I think is our future is what it means necessarily I mean like I don't man I should I should like there's I know that the Nazis uh for example they had like a very like they had a futurist like tendency to them but it seems like

it would be inherently like left wing or progressive or hopeful right but i don't think that's necessarily true i guess it's supposed to be about like the the progression of like human continuity but like these people are futurists but they also like have ideas that would take us into the past you know what i'm saying so it's like how do you reconcile that how do you reconcile like these like fucking like or it seems like their vision is like almost like a kanye west-esque vision where we're going to have a lot of like pretty cool innovative nice things but like the billionaire class is going to rule over all of us they might be a little bit nicer but still it's a protrusion it does it does seem like they at least on the right like the intellectual class in the on the right is now starting to probably come and there are outliers

obviously like mcconnell and stuff but that's because those guys are incredibly powerful and egotistical at once like these people are incredibly egotistical but they don't have a lot of power yet and so you know i'm talking about like jd vance and blake masters and whatever right so it's like uh it just seems to me that like till is now starting to i don't know i feel like he's probably the one that's because i think the thing that you heard the longest time when we were growing up was coke brothers like you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah we can't let the coke brothers get a hold of this they can cause untold damage now it's like that was like the crypto bros man they're like the crypto bros and like the uh with the little dabbling a little bit in race science

or some shit like that they're the ones supplanting like uh i guess the the old guard man like the coke brothers and shit it's crazy to think about because there is nothing similar on the left. You know, I don't know really what that means, if that's a good or bad thing. Maybe it's a good thing. Let's talk about money, like in that sense. Yeah, exactly. Here's something interesting that I know because it's like, and rightfully so, like the left reviles the sort of patrician class money in a way that the right does it like because think about this could you imagine what a leftist

movement with unlimited resources would look like versus the right could have that because they have the peter till's they have the jd vance's uh ostensibly they have the elon musk and so forth of the world like in a world that values he who has the gold makes the rules that's a formidable opponent you know what i mean yeah and if you're if you're if you're a base assumption is that like we we want to not i don't want to say reject i mean we don't and i am not i am i am not endorsing the left embrace billionaires when i say that yeah exactly exactly exactly you're asking a point that is i mean at some point that is interesting it's like how how do you combat a bottomless well of money exactly if you oppose bottomless wells of money exactly yeah that's the thing yeah that's what i was thinking about reading this thing like i mean honestly like it's hard to do this show honestly

sometimes just because like you just don't want to talk about shit and it's like I mean people like rich off podcasts but most of it goes to the fucking IRS it's like a lot of times I just want to fucking quit and then I like read an article like this and I'm like none of these motherfuckers

are ever racked with those feelings because they're so flush you know what I'm saying like no we do pretty good on the show don't get me wrong i'm just saying i'm not bitching about that scale it up to millions and millions of multi you know multipliers and they're like of course they're just gonna keep like they don't have to ever worry about and that's the kind of it's like a bunch of motherfuckers mad at hassan uh what piker for wearing a gucci fucking bowling shirt yeah and our opponents have no hang-ups about that shit oh they don't give a shit bro like they could they could like they could like wear like you know a multi-thousand dollar suit while like walking around with like you know like working

class people and there's no like there's no cognitive dissonance right because there's no there's like no starting point in which to like do battle i guess yeah yeah yeah because they're gonna be like what you hate money what do you hate money you know like you like everybody should have money everybody should be rich you know what i'm saying they're operating off of this like you know temporarily embarrassed me i'm talking about like i guess like the people that believe in that shit right like the people that would eat up like you know what i'm saying like this right you're talking about there I guess like the people that believe in that shit. Right. Like the people that would eat up like, you know what I'm saying? Like this right. You're talking about. There are people on the right that do or on the left that do feel the same way. In fact, they founded the organization Black Lives Matter.

Did you see the video of them going around this week? Like someone had taken a video of them at like the one year anniversary of the george floyd uh killing and they were like toasting each other and stuff like you know having a fun time like like i'm like it's really bleak i've just i don't know man i've been feeling bleak as fuck this week and you know no really no real way out of it either just because like i feel like there's been several pieces that came out that kind of revealed that there's that vanity fair thing and then there was that washington post thing about the lives of tiktok like there's these pieces that came out that kind of like revealed the infrastructure that like knit together is the right you know what i'm saying

yeah and it's just like how the fuck do you compete with that like that's the first thing that comes to mind the second thing is is, like, are we losing? And it's like they are convinced that we are actually winning. They tell their people that, obviously, like they know, obviously. Well, they got to make us seem like we're winning. But, like, you know, we're weak at the same time, right? You know what I'm saying? But you have me thinking about it, too.

I think the problem is that, like, sure, the sure the right like not everybody is always in lockstep but when it comes to legislation right when it comes to actually like putting these ideas like you know into law and like affecting like the reality of the social reality of the world right there's never like i'm thinking about joe biden congratulating amazon for unionizing right but you know you look at it and there's like well there's things that he could have done or he can do to make it easier right for unionization to happen so on the quote left this time you were saying broad left like at the minute that like something comes up from the grassroots it's always stopped and stymied by either a group like black lives matter or either by the democratic party itself on the right those ideas actually triple trickle up and like from the

culture whether it's lives of tiktok whatever and get a boatload of cash behind yeah and they get cashed behind and they make it fucking legislation where on the left like we're being stopped by like fucking octogenarians like biden and shit like that you know what i'm saying yeah honestly groups like blm i guess it does no it really does suck because when you look at it that way what happened in the last 10 years with is that there were sort of social movements of genuine like working class origin like black lives matter and and i even say bernie but that's not even that's that's more i think that honestly i think that was more of a cross-class thing in the sense that like a lot of, you know, college educated people kind of joined in on that. But regardless, both of them were just picked clean by this like larger

NGO nonprofit world and also all this other stuff. But it's like, I think it's genuinely necessary for like the left if it's going to continue whether it's like the amazon unionization stuff or even you know street mobilization and stuff is that like anything that resembles an institutional form probably is a co-intel operation yeah it's already infected designed to take the knees out of that social movement before it can gain any traction or organization like it's like the resident evil virus bro like how else do you exactly how the fuck else do you explain that like you had these massive like riots and protests last year you know two years ago like it did be not to mention in the middle of a pandemic that we all thought like was at least going to unstable something and

result in some sort of social unrest how does it not get channeled upwards into any kind of social change the only explanation there are i guess there are a few explanations you could just say that the working class is deficient and will never be able to organize itself and institute any kind of change. and corporate power in these sort of like NGO nonprofit form or whatever to as you know in like it was targeted for COINTEL operation for some sort of large-scale counterinsurgency operation to demobilize it and that's the case and which I do think that's the case the problem is is like how do you stop that or do anything about it you know what I mean like man I like you you i've been thinking about this a lot and i think i think about it all the time but especially lately is like you know coming out of i mean i guess we already had biden right who said he wasn't going to defund the police right but even coming out of that right somebody like eric adams

like new york city voted for a fucking cop right biden explicitly said like not going to defund the police we're going to refund the police right i remember on amazon on netflix um during the uprising there was like it was happening in fucking real time yo and this is just culturally right or content creators like like netflix but they had a black lives matter category right i remember that and which the lion king for some fucking reason was in that category even like they even i guarantee they probably put black panther in there which is like the message of it is literally like the cia is okay yeah dude they're selling you could sell us the fans that murdered fred hampton same people that murdered fred hampton are the goodies now bro the fred hampton movie that came

out judas and the black messiah it was from the point of view of the fucking informant, right? So it's like they're mediating our struggle, whatever struggle it is, our struggle, this collective struggle, like back to us, knowing that we're complacent because we're not going to do shit because if you're watching Judas and the Black Messiah, a Netflix Black Lives Matter category, you're practicing some sort of activism, some sort of social justice by the content you consume. You know, dude, this is why I think that the left's

only chance if it's to have an answer to J.D. Vance's like formulation, like culture war is class warfare. I do think that that message does resonate with some people. And that's what's scary about it. That's what I find very scary about it. And I've seen it, you know, just just just from living in the small town I live in. You just like I do think that that has some resonance. If the left is going to have any chance of combating that, the only way it's going to present an alternative is to get extremely paranoid. I mean, this literally it need we generally genuinely need to start casting a worldview that says like all right if the right says that all cultural culture is poison the left should say the same thing look it's all there to indoctrinate you you don't that's not even a

stretch let's look at all that's just that's just the reality that is literally dessert yeah that's what I'm saying. Like you can like the right doesn't even believe it like that. You know what I mean? Because it favors them really ultimately in the end. And the thing is, is like the right can say like, yeah, that indoctrinates you towards like transgender or queer or all these other things.

Like I'm just saying that like, yes, they're going to fight on that terrain still, but the left can actually fight on that terrain because I do think rather convincingly, rather convincingly, because I do think it is convincing lore to say that, like, look, corporations in the federal government are out conspiring against. And there is a real conspiracy. And and let's not forget, friends. They're already getting out in front of it, like the liberals and the mainstream Democrats are getting out in front of it. Disinformation, misinformation, all these things. They're trying to get out in front of it so they can cast you as a kook once we develop that mindset of like mainstreaming the idea of questioning and everything. Yes. Yo, do y'all remember it was like this chart or something that some when some lady created

where it was um conspiracy theories that are the most believable and plausible and then it goes up to like conspiracy theories that are like like batshit insane which i think like what was included in the batshit insane one they put stuff that actually was just objectively provable and true right it like just right under the craziest shit exactly i just want to respond though and say like because i understand how somebody could be listening to this and be like well that's going to be a lot of help look people turn on each other and they rat each other out and kick each other out of movements and stuff like i don't think that that's not actually what i'm talking about i'm talking about like a critique a worldview that sees the larger sort of like liberal capitalist,

whatever you want to call it, that on the right, they call it the cathedral. It's just it's nerdy as fuck. God, that's so fucking dirty. Yeah, I'm like, but it's gaining purchase. And I don't know, maybe it's not. Maybe you could say that the QAnon people are still. But I'm just saying the left can convincingly say that there is something similar and larger, a larger operation. I mean, it is Alex Jones.

There is. But let me ask you a question. It's like these guys are becoming the Infowars of the lab. Let me ask you a question, though. let me ask y'all a question though like i i don't i don't know a lot about like um like left-wing organizing in the united states and the cold warning of that shit right but do y'all feel like there was like a point in time where the left did have this healthy skepticism that was unpolluted by like um like you know like guess what you were talking about terence like this sort of liberal like virus right that kind of takes over like actual like movements and kind of infects them and turns them into like you know do you think that that was ever really a thing or did it exist for a brief moment in time or like you know what i'm saying yeah definitely yeah definitely i mean

in pockets though there's not there's the problem with america it's just geographically massive and there's no there's never been a vehicle to knit all those like little pockets you know there's never been a large sort of infrastructural organization or whatever that can knit those pockets together oh yeah well i'm thinking the black panther is the white peel and shit like that well there's even like the cio like the the ones even started kind of as that uh yeah yeah i don't know man it's just i just i just really struggle with this stuff because like you see them saying this stuff and it's like i do feel like that has a purchase and it can't have a mass purchase potentially i don't know maybe not maybe people just let's see this stuff about

disney and the rufo stuff that they put out about like Tanya and stuff. They just fucking see all that and they say, like, well, who cares? You know, it doesn't affect me. Maybe that's the case. But I do suspect that a lot of people that does resonate with people. I'm just I think the left doesn't have a way to kind of like fight on that same terrain for. have a way to kind of like fight on that same terrain for let me ask you a question like like this fascination with the russians that really the the re-fascination with the russians it probably didn't completely go away post-cold war but like there was a point in time i guess probably around trump where like you know it's like the russian this and it's that started upticking and it's probably around Trump where like, you know, it's like the Russian this and it's started upticking and it's kind of

crescendoed into the Ukraine situation. Right. Do you think there's a possibility that that has to do with connected back to this disinformation campaign and trying to kneecap a nascent left that probably like borrows too much from like the Soviet aesthetic and all that kind of stuff but like do you think that i'm not saying like the war in ukraine as was started because so that like u.s democrats could fend off like a red scare and anti-imperialist but i'm saying like is it an unintended consequence like or an unintended like net positive for them in that

same way like i'm just wondering like where the the Russian fascination comes from all of a sudden because also, too, I'm a tennis fan, and the news this week that Wimbledon is banning all Russian tennis players from competing this year. Like they're in the war room with Putin. Fucking Netflix was so committed to this shit that they had to post their first ever subscriber loss because they booted russians from using their service they fucking risked it all they

risked the bag for that that's crazy they risked it all to isolate the russians i mean you know it's kind of like it is does feel like this, like like how can I say it? Like you have like like this Russophobia, but then also like this anti left wing kind of thing, because I mean, I know it's just online. Right. But I think that was like I think that was kind of indicative that you sometimes see even echoed on MSNBC, like these Russian bots. Right. That the disinformation campaign. i don't think it's just online when the all england club is banning russian players exactly the queen is not online yeah but it's like yeah no go ahead i just i just think it's insane in that case because the the number one player in the world daniel medvedev is russian andre rublo is the number four player in the world like Danil Medvedev, is Russian. Andre Rublev is the number four player in the world.

There's several players on the women's side, like Belarusians and Russians, that are there. And it's like, can you imagine having an Olympics and saying, LeBron James, you cannot play because the U.S. invaded Iraq? Dude, it is crazy. Dude, it is crazy. Like what the right wingers critique as like woke capital does exist in the sense that like, OK, it does exist because like these corporations are trying to, I guess, open themselves up to new markets and, you know, make themselves more marketable by taking these kind of ideological positions. And friendly to seem more friendly as well right right but they i guess they've reached like a kind of market saturation where they can't attract like nobody who was not already on netflix was going to give a shit that they booted their russian subscribers so it just it's like it seems like they're shooting themselves in their feet at this point and uh in a cut and that's that's why i've been curious to see kind of how the

disney thing plays out because yes people said that this stuff has been going on since the 90s and it has but it definitely feels now like it's not so fringe anymore like the birches you know the birchers aren't the only ones saying this now it's people with the actual ability to sort of like confront them and like and i was reading that book you know you read that book origin of capitalism and like you know a lot of this stuff like or originated in like various factions of like the powerful landed class going to bat with each other and uh and that's the kind of stuff that does kind of make you nervous it's like damn dude like um but at the but at the same time again in the

like since like everything that happens is so fucking stupid now like i don't think it would ever actually scale up to civil war because who the fucking who would ever fight that war yeah ultimately these people really want a coup and a dictatorship but i don't think that like anybody's ever going to do that like yeah i think we would all rather engage in the battle we think we're going to engage in. And that's the appeal of social media and why, like, I think every one of the people in this article, if they got what they actually wanted, they would have like either a complete meltdown or just, you know, all commit suicide or something because they just don't know what to do with their lives. Because so much of it is, you know, I don't know, it's developed abstractly in opposition to other groups. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, no, man, it's like it's like I think you said it once, you know, like there's not going to be like if anything, it's not going to be this great, like climactic, like war of good versus evil of like, you know, the left versus the right or anything like that. of like you know the left versus the right or anything like that it'll probably just be like you know uh little skirmishes and battles with cops and maybe militia groups while everybody

sits at home and just sort of enjoys like engages in this like ideological culture war you know theater that actually affect your theater everybody loves the theater right exactly exactly yeah man i mean i don't know well i mean i struggle because it's like again like i don't know i kind of had a bad feeling in my stomach after reading that and the only reason i say like i mean i guess i too am sort of saying this cynically like but i do also believe that like these are compelling stories but like the right has been able to successfully you know paint a portrait of a larger conspiracy yeah a war on for your mind basically yeah yeah and you know what that's that's the thing about like people that i guess now you can't call them

all conspiracy theorists because i guess conspiracy would imply that it's like um it's like seems like widespread like they just believe this shit generally now right like it's not something in the fringes anymore like you were saying but the thing about that is like the left could easily be like yo there's a real conspiracy right there's this conspiracy of capital you know but it seems like i don't know man i'm just like it seems like it doesn't resonate it doesn't but i think the left is scared i think sometimes the left and like i'm thinking of liberals especially too like liberals always terrified of like the way that other people the right is going to react to what they have to say right so they say everything in the mindset of like okay oh the republican's gonna like me for this for saying this is the right gonna like me first and like it seems like even like whatever

you call the socialist left the bernie type left that even we have been like kind of like no i'm not kooky i'm not i'm not a conspiracy theorist i'm not skeptical you know we even sort of adopt the self-policing instead of actually being like no we should be like fully fledged like paranoid in the sense like you're saying terrence like no they're actually right you know they're like instead i don't know a healthy skepticism that says i wouldn't put it past them but that doesn't devolve into like uh your great granddad was this this and this and that you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i mean i mean some of that is warranted if like you know it's like a shitty person or whatever you know i don't know i mean you definitely got cranks on the left man but like those like it's like on the right like there are no cranks i guess

they're all cranks like there's no differentiation anymore you know well the thing is is all we're talking ultimately at the end of the day is like an online space so it's like even if you talk about this like what the left needs to do is adopt a certain sort of critical distance from the world and, you know, do this and don't do this. It's like ultimately you're just policing like the rules of discourse in an online cybernetic. It's hard. You come back right back around. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I mean, ultimately, if you're really about that life, if you're really about it, you have to fucking just be a Luddite completely. You just have to destroy the fucking machines.

I don't know how else to do it, honestly, because like I've been wrecking my brain. Obviously, like no one's going to give me the reins and say, Terrence, figure out the left. Like, tell us what to do. But here you go you go do something with it but you do something with it terrence but you think if like you think the thing is though is like if you if like we all if it was possible everybody just like abandoned like the left in the pursuit of its aims and like we all just abandoned technology the thing is like yo like that libs of tiktok story was like really interesting because like this is an account that is not affiliated with any official organ of the republican party of the right but that like literally like people

like joe rogan and then tucker carlson are like sharing on their shows and stuff and it's like the santas's press secretary spent like all day melting down about that story. There's nothing like that. I mean, there's nothing like that at all. Who is NBC showing tweets of... You're wrong, buddy. You're wrong, babe. You never heard of

Occupy Democrats? Oh my God, yeah. Occupy Democrats. Retweet if you think this mother should go to jail or like retweet if you think we should behead Russians in the streets that shit was so tight dude

I don't know man I think about it too and I'm like man like if we see like and when I say we it's even hard to say we because there is no fucking left i was talking about this with the friend like there is no fucking like for me to say like but broadly speaking short that's the thing yeah no i'm sorry aaron go ahead no i'll just say if we see like like if we see like the media landscape to them if we see like this culture war of ideas then i mean i don't know i mean is it really going to change

anything it seems like they're fucking winning at this already whether we've participated or not you know i don't know and what does that mean to participate in it does it mean black more black plasmatic categories on netflix and shit like i don't know what it means for the left to participate in the culture war you know well i mean it's weird because like earlier a second you said like you know you take that basic premise like there's a conspiracy or whatever against you and say, well, the conspiracy is capitalism. The interesting thing about that, though, is like where who are we talking to and where are we doing it? That's it's like this is a question of location that I just keep coming back to. It's like if you were to go like how would you even go to a person with a message at this point anyways?

I mean, I guess you could stand on the street corner with the fucking, you know, soapbox and scream at people. That doesn't feel like that's really working anymore. But the soap, you know, but like on online, it's not really doing the same. And then like, obviously, like the funny thing about the bernie thing is that like canvassing was in itself a way to kind of get at the answer to this question

people were like again this kind of like vanguard intellectual class was like how do we go and interface with the working people and so it's like we'll go knock on their doors all right yeah that makes sense we'll go knock on their doors and like and then like that didn't really work either you know what i mean so it's like the left is kind of like and maybe the right faces this too um but the right has institutions like churches and come like town hall meetings that they congregate at well in media itself like they've because they wage the culture war in this way they they are much better positioned to mobilize people. Because if the problem that is making your life bad, the character on the Disney movie that gets a period,

then you can go and turn out in the streets and fucking whatever. But how does... You know what I'm saying? So that's able to mobilize people that's the location where it occurs but like if you're on the left like how do you go to a person and say like all right cmc prime mcn prime right uh money commodity money uh times two yeah yeah it's not as it's not as like it's like the right it almost seems like like just the culture in this country just like sort of uh the sort of inbake like um like i don't

know like patriarchy and racism and sexism and all that shit right like it seems like it's so baked into this country and its apparatuses are readily like available to the right where it makes it much easier for them to peddle this shit you know whereas like on the left like the instant the institutions that exist like it's not really favorable for talking about an emancipatory anti i mean i can't even say anti-capitalist because that's even far out of the question i mean i'm just talking about like they think about medicare for all right i know there was like a rally that people wanted to start during the pandemic and people were trying to push like yo we should rally for medicare for all

like nobody went to that shit dude nobody for nobody's right historical atrocity that we went through we to a million people died in two years that's fucking insane we went through that through a health crisis and did come out the other end with it dude i mean i mean seriously like yeah how do you explain that both in in the present moment and from the sort of like world historical perspective that's fucking insane but you know what you did have anti-vaxxers that were at state houses right like you know like you know that were there so it's just like dude like they can they can get together and mobilize, like you said, so much easily over something that's seemingly just bullshit. Yet the left can't even whatever constitute. And I even even in like linguistically saying it, like when I say the right, I feel like I know who I'm talking about.

When I say the left, I don't even have a conception of what that includes. Yeah. And also, it's hard to do because in some ways these people are themselves an op because like in some ways i have a hard time critiquing the left because i'm really scared and nervous of coming across as one of these people because you know like a post-left person like yeah the post-left yeah because like these the post-left are kind of in this group that they're explaining like there were people in this story that he talked about that used to be on the left and sort of matriculated

over to the right you know what i'm saying so it's like it's hard to like critique it because it's like you don't want to come across as one of those people um first of all and second of all it's like in some ways it feels unfair um because like how how do you even critique something to the extent that it does exist? That is so massive. Like kicking a puppy. Exactly. It's so underfunded and so small, like in terms of numbers, like it's so rabidly like hopeless in some ways. Like, I'm not saying like generally speaking, but it does seem to be like like this sense of defeatism that's baked into the left. We're like, sure, the Republicans or the right is always like they're always like losers.

Right. They're always sore losers and they're always whining. But I think that they have conviction in like that one day they will succeed. Whereas like the broadly left, it's like we're always self-flagellating. Right. Like we're always like thinking about we. But yeah, I yeah i guess i do too right it's always like damn shit suck i mean we're doing it right now right like damn shit sucks right now we don't got nothing planned you know i heard somebody call that the other day uh bourgeois eschatology i think that's a good way to put it you know what i mean oh shit everything sucks so fucking bad so i guess there's no sense of doing anything so blah blah, blah, blah.

And present company included. I'm the king of that. How do we move from the frivolous to the substantial? The frivolous being that bourgeois eschatology to the substantial, like some sort of vision of the future for emancipation.

I had to look up eschatology. It's the part of theology is concerned with death judgment and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind interesting damn but i mean i don't know man like terrence you think you're on to something man i think like it's adopted it's like healthy skepticism and distance but i don't know man they're also like they're just like employing like in culture and not to say that people don't care about like what obviously people care about what school their kids go to right so this is all wrapped up all this culture store culture culture war stuff seems to be wrapped up in the classroom as you were saying right it's like

oh this affects your your kids the school your kids go to this affects like your job and shit but like it's through the lens of culture which is something that people i don't know man just seem to be much more readily like excitable about yeah you know what i'm saying like things that they like and enjoy and they see as like part of a national fabric of culture like they get way more upset about that shit than something else. We always have this discussion about, is politics downstream from culture? Is it the reverse? Is it what is it?

What is it? And I think Americans should get a special pass on that because even if you want to talk about mainstream political theory, our soft power as a nation like Hollywood and the cultural products we put out like help our position in the world so it's like when we talk about like oh well politics doesn't shape culture what shapes you know like what shapes what like in america culture is

unavoidable it's it's inextricably linked to the stuff and you have to engage it like that it's all in a way that you may not have to if you're, like, Belarusian. You know what I mean? Honestly, it's all we have. We lost Aaron. Hold that thought for a sec. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Tell me what you're gonna do. Bum, bum, bum, bum. Yeah, my bad, man. My computer just... That was that was really weird man i just glitched out and turned off but yeah i'll reach off of mixtapes that was back in the day i carry days i was a cold dude i'm getting back to my ways dude he's so weird oh shit harris had a good thread you said that run that back to him um i was we were talking about oh okay you were talking about like cultural cultural media culture is this excitable thing like people are more excitable about that and tom you made the point that like in america it's like inextricable inextricable from the social experience and my the point i was making is

that i think part of it is because like last week we had read this story about how true crime how rich people are donating their money to these organizations that solve true crime cases you know what i mean like true crime cases on podcasts and stuff and i and in that story there was a statistic about how more white people submit their their spit or whatever for dna testing than any other group like white americans and and i we didn't like follow down that route like we didn't explore that at all on the episode but i was thinking about it afterwards and i was like what why the fuck is that like that's very interesting and i think it's partially because i think that whiteness as a racial category is a kind of cultural annihilation like it's a it's the kind of like bargain like it's the trade-off it's like

yeah you get like material privileges and you don't get shot in the streets, but you're nothing and no one. Yeah, exactly. You have nothing. You sort of become homogenous, yeah. Right, right, right. In the way that, like, I guess that was forced upon black folks, right?

Because black folks don't do the same thing white folks do where they talk about, well, I'm Ghanaian or Sierra Leonean or whatever, you know what I mean? But it's different in that it was stripped. Yes. Whereas, like in whiteniteness it's stripped from you but there's social privileges but it didn't work with black Americans you know what I'm saying

I know exactly what you mean because like when the Irish first came here I mean people know like Irish characters came in the 19th and 20th century they weren't considered white right like I guess like once they became fucking cops once they assimilated it became cops go ahead mark it down aaron believes in the hours for slaves too like that's such a good point though because like with blackness like you couldn't really you couldn't really do that right this is why we why we have like, you know, just like that's why American culture for what it is exists.

It's like heavily, heavily infused with like black culture or just culture from anywhere but the United States. That's it's like it's like it's it's whiteness is ultimately an attempt at a cultural annihilation. and so i think that because america is mostly white americans who exists in that state they have to cling to these products of mass media more than any other you know more than any other society really because it's all they fucking have there is no white cultural experience once you're in that fucking uh club again it's a trade-off that's why every single one of them always fucking talks about their cherokee great-grandfather it's like like i got warned yeah and would be disturbed to know it was actually their sub-saharan african great-great-great-grandfather and not a cherokee or mediterranean probably like it's like that's what's so bleak and depressing something that drives like the right insane a common retort is like is like oh well there's no white history

mom there's that you know what i mean like yeah yeah i'm not talking about from their intelligence i'm talking about from their rank and file yeah we're talking about we're talking about people that will like say like why why can't you say black lives matter too like why is it that like just like you know what i'm saying like you're putting black people on a pedestal no i see what you're saying tom it's like get very defensive about that they hate themselves if you read this um obviously they think about this constantly like all ultimately all their politics is is a set of like anxieties like if you read that piece i was talking about in vanity fair like the self-loathing and hatred drips off of every one of them like like jd vance especially

like because like the author like has this is like his second time like meeting with with jd and like it was kind of an interesting look into his personality and it's like this guy hates himself all of these people have they're motivated by intense self-hatreds of the of of you know being white being at the because all of them are white every single one of them um about uh and that's why they're ben shapiro apparently did you see that that newsmax screen grab it was like the the black and intellectuals of the right it was like ben carson herman cain has been dead for two and a half years uh the one sheriff sheriff Sheriff Clark in Milwaukee,

and then Ben Shapiro. It's like you couldn't find that many, so you had to go with a white guy and a dead man to round out the panel. But like they, like I was saying, they're motivated by intense self-loathing and this is ultimately why every single one of them just keeps coming back to like

the monarchist thing they just need a strong daddy to put them in their place because they fucking hate themselves I'm not saying like I'm not kink shaming anyone who is a sub that is that's a different thing I'm saying like as an actor on the political like terrain like someone

who wants genuinely to be oppressed that's what monarchy is there's something with with that person that you should not trust because they fucking hate themselves nobody wants to be oppressed so let me ask you a question in that because i definitely do believe that the right is just a politics of self-loathing right they hate like they hate like being white they hate the way that like i i guess i mean i don't know i don't know i mean it's some real like it's like freudian type shit that you could probably get to but why is it that they also talk about how do you reconcile the fact that they talk about preserving like aspects of like american culture or white culture right like what is is that just like a front to is that like a cynical front or is that something that like diam like diametrically

like they both believe in these two things at the same time i think that they think that it's the reason society used to be quote-unquote good and culture used to be quote-unquote good like they're chasing the cart right like they think that because the only thing they had for the longest time was mass culture because like they're again they're white they're miserable they're at the top

of society blah blah blah like because that's all they had and that started to sour like in their mouth you know just fucking went to ash in their mouth like then then they started like attacking reasons for what why they think that sort of went away why it was sort of disturbed and why they're like there is there are these like subversive and trans you know uh like gender um ideas out there and all this other stuff like they think that it's because the family dissolved i think that's what they think and they and like i guess they think that like by saying we're going

to bring the family back like that's going to get people on their side but again like as tom you pointed out earlier like i still don't think ultimately at the end of the day that anything is guaranteed like these people are just as um riven by their own contradictions as any other one anyone else is like how are you gonna appeal to people to bring the family back when most americans don't even really remember that that was a thing good or bad they don't attach anything to it more than and half for the pair of the children of divorce and abandonment and everything else it's like it's not really a strong thing,

but I think it's like, it's kind of like that Corey Robin definition of conservatism. I think he says something like, uh, it's like conservatism is like the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened or have, or it's perpetually being threatened and perpetually trying to win it back.

And I think they see it the way they do that as like bringing it back to the family and all these things but like it's a kind of a fiction because it was never with the family yeah they're always mythologizing the past man they're always mythologizing this rosy past whereas like you know not only does the left reject the past because you know being aware of like biases historical injustices and whatnot but doesn't even really have a vision of the future. You know, but they can like look back at this future and tell people who weren't even born during that time, weren't alive during that time that this was a better America. You know, this is when we had a national identity and a national character, I guess. Well, again, I think I wonder if the problem with that is is that like people

people don't have a reference for that at all really like they wouldn't be able to look at it either positively or negatively just because maybe most people haven't experienced it at all so i guess maybe people can sort of conceive of it abstract but at the same time like there are obviously there are a lot of families people i I mean, because no one is looking out for anyone in society, or at least it's not, that is not a trait that is encouraged in our society. Like families, all, a lot of people have to fall back on. And so, and that's, and that's the part that does kind of scare me that like people, you know, say, I mean, I don't know.

It's the whole like idea of abolishing the family and everything like it's one of those things that like i would love to debate and talk about but like way way in the future it just feels like one of those things that like how could you even talk about it yeah how could you even talk about that now right like it's just so abstract yeah yeah and i mean something that i think makes like if that's something that you know you want to debate like on like a like like you can't even debate that on a national platform because that's only gonna justify everything that the right thinks about the left and i'm not saying that the left should it's not like i'm not saying that the left should be conscious necessarily

pissing off the right the way that liberals are but it's just like you're saying terrence it's a non-starter you know you can't even have that conversation. But also family is not bad for everybody. Exactly. You know what I mean? It's like a moral thing. It's neither good. I mean, it can be bad.

It can be awful. Well, I think you also be very supportive and great. I do think that there is worth in asking whether it should be abolished. When the question was first posed by like angles obviously we lived in a much different society so like i think that like there are critiques of it that are valid and that that go beyond whether it's a good or bad experience for anybody like i do think if you were to press me on an abstract, purely intellectual level, I do. I think it needs to be rethinked anyway.

It's like how we conceive a family. But I don't like at the same time. It doesn't matter because like we're in a moment of crisis. And why the fuck? How could you have? That is the thing I keep coming back to, too, in this article and that everybody comes back to is that like we are in a moment of crisis. And and I don't even know if they believe that. article and that everybody comes back to is that like we are in a moment of crisis and um and i don't even know if they believe that like some of these people it seems like maybe they're just kind

of garden variety like edgelord accelerationists and but like they're kind of like embracing the unibomber stuff they're all fucking nerds and they like want to be catholics again and like i mean just shit that's just like not cool but like like they to them, it's kind of more of an aesthetic. Yeah. Like I can see how like a certain kind of intellectual in New York could be like a monarchist now. Like just to kind of like be maybe edgy or. Yeah. Yes.

I don't know. Just the next big thing or something. I don't know. I mean, it's kind of like I mean, I don't know, man. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like when I was like a kid, my best friend Pete was a Catholic, and I was really attracted to like ritual and ceremony when I was a kid because we just didn't really have it in the same way, the church I grew up in. So I just went around telling people that I was like Catholic because I went to church with him one time because I liked all the traffics of that. That's what it kind of reminds me of.

It's like you just kind of like do you really want to be catholic or do you are you just like attract to the ritual and ceremony in a way like yeah yeah and aesthetic as well yeah yeah yeah man i don't know i don't know man it just it just seems like on the one hand it's like we don't like i don't know terrence because i'm thinking about like how do you combat that right like do you just like like are there structural barriers why we can't ape what they're doing on the right is there like i don't know like a crisis of conviction like i don't know man because it does seem like not to be doubt i mean you know we because we've been like malentine like the whole show lamenting the whole show but like it does feel like they're winning though you know yeah it does feel like they're winning man i've felt that for at least

a month or two now i mean honestly like yeah at least since the stuff with tanya happened i've been feeling like um like these people like tom put it best to me one day like and i don't know what this means but you know know, Tom put it best. It's like these, these people, they, they fight in a different way. They're out to ruin lives. And ultimately the left isn't out to do that. Like they are like, obviously like the left is out to, um, I don't know. I don't know what the left would be out to do to the extent that it even

exists. Like, I guess, organize the working class, these sort of like vague principles um principles or ideals but like these these people like they're out to ruin lives i think like they're ultimately heartless cruel people um you know what it's like man it's like it's like i'm thinking about a you know because i'm a comic book nerd and i'm thinking about the the villains the arch nemesis of superman that the ones that get to him the most are the ones that and I'm not calling the left like Superman, like saintly, like, you know, but the fact that people would even like for me personally. Yo, I might politically disagree with you, but I still want you to have health care. I still want you to have a roof over your head. Right. Like the villains that attack Superman the hardest are the ones that understand that because of his care and concern for humanity, there are certain things that he won't do, whereas they fight dirty.

They don't give a shit. They'll threaten the lives of the people that he loves, but he won't do something like that in return. Right. So it's like we're literally fighting with people that are willing to, like, gut you. And you're like you're using like, you know, I'm saying like, I don't know, like like kiddie gloves, you know. So it's like, how do you I'm not saying that the left should be willing to like although i do not care if you are somebody like the lips of tiktok shit i don't me personally i don't give a shit what happens if she gets dox or whatever i don't know i don't give a shit personally right but i still want people to be i don't know it's confusing man like it's confusing like these people they don't see

their enemies in any sympathetic light at all you know they don't yeah it's hard for me too because um i generally i generally think uh that like regardless of a person's personal beliefs and opinions they shouldn't lose their job if they're like a person you know who's having a hard time. You know what I mean? Like, who is it? I think Libs of TikTok should lose her job as slumlord. I think things that I can't even say. Happen to her. Exactly. Happen to her. Christopher Rufo and all the rest.

I will say this. I will say this. Especially so. Before I depart this mortal coil, I will smack that motherfucker right in front of his wife and kid hell yeah i'm just gonna i'm not gonna say oh i'm gonna whoop it i'll kill it motherfucker i ain't saying none of that shit i will i will smack him right in front of his wife i want his kid to know what a bitch their father is a very formative moment for that child's life i'm not saying i'm

this is parody yes how that actually occurs but this is not parody you your children will know at some point in their lives the coward that their father was and that he did not earn his living respectfully now i don't earn my living honorably but yeah you make no illusions about it. But I don't. Yeah, I don't. I don't pretend that this that this that what I do with this show or with our right is like upholding or saving like America or some concept of America. Like this guy is a fucking coward. And these people are cynical cowards.

You know, I'm straight up about what you do. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I'm studying Brazilian jujitsu just so I can fold that little pussy right in front of his child and I put that on everything I love I'm going to smack him

in front of his childhood throw down boy like Kurtsell does to to uh you know uh billy bob thornton's character in tombstone i said throw down boy the thing about being a writer is if you're gonna write shit you have to back it up and everybody in whitesburg knows the tale of harry Cottle getting his ass kicked on Main Street in Whitesburg. And honestly, if you're going to put anything out there, you should have to stand by it. And if you're going to put anything in the marketplace of ideas, you better be prepared to stand by in the marketplace.

Physically, the marketplace of getting that asshole marketplace. The marketplace of getting that ass whooped. The marketplace of ass whooping. Because guess what? I'm going to tell you something. Getting embarrassed in front of your wife and kid, that spends longer than any of that. As a currency, it spends longer than any stupid-ass thing you can put on Twitter.

Listen. But the people of Gig Harbor, Washington, will know that you were a coward. They got the shit smacked out of you you by top sex and you didn't do a goddamn thing about it. Listen, man, all I'll say is, you know, when Richard Spencer got knocked the fuck

out, he didn't want to go back out in public. He didn't want to. Sometimes, you know, I don't know. You know, sometimes a motherfucker needs to get his ass beat. Sometimes. It's just saying sometimes a motherfucker needs to throw it out and get his ass beat. Sometimes. It's just saying, sometimes a motherfucker needs to throw it out and get his ass beat.

Traditional family values, that is one that I do believe in wholeheartedly. A good old ass whooping? Yes, the character molding effects of packing an ass whooping. I'm not saying it should be a pattern a regularity something

that happens often because every once in a while you need to pack one here's my here's my thing with rufo though it's like it's like i'm not going to sit here and claim i'm this i'm that i'm all this thing he has so viscerally rankled me though he would have to kill me to get me to keep from tearing his flesh from the skeleton you know what i mean like i would gouge his eyeballs out of his skull if i saw it right now i'm so angry you know what i mean i'm trying to work past that i am this is parody just if anybody's anybody with the legal degrees list, but I mean, see, this is the thing, though, that is like like you were saying, Terrence, we're not I don't know, man, maybe the left has to do some reckoning,

man, because we're not fighting against people fighting fair. You know, like it all thing is there's no left. Have a motherfucking like Congress call it like the first international congress or whatever the fuck you want to call it just fucking meet at a place and say this is what we're going to do for the next year like true billies can't do that obviously but there are fucking people with money out there that's how they used to do it in the mexican revolution they just said all right we're gonna have a continental congress or some shit if you want to overthrow the government or you want to change anything just come and we'll fucking sit in a room

and talk about it and smoke fucking cigars and like wear crazy hats oh and then also too you have pancho via and emiliano zapata were also like going and taking rich people's money and stuff bandito style yeah and that's how they fund that shit it's just like all all institutions and everything have been completely worn down on the left i don't even know who the fuck could do that i mean i guess you could be like you either need rich people a la uh uh angles or you need uh benevolent gangsters yeah bro a la pancho via aia well thanks man he's like like i was saying before is like because once because like once it gets to like a certain like a policy recommendation that the left has or whatever once it gets to like a certain point like in the ngo non-profit and

like also like actual like people who hold power in office, it just fizzles out, man. We need somebody who's either going to be committed to this shit all the way through, or we just need to... What you were saying, Tom, we need to just loot their houses and take the fuck out of them. You're right, dude. If you were to call a fucking Continental Congress or whatever the fuck dumb bullshit I just

said, you would just get the same usual suspects. You get the same people picking at the carcass. You get the same... Exactly. You get all the same people, and they would just get the same usual same people picking at the carcass the same people exactly you get all the same people and like they would just say all the same things um yeah i don't know man no that's why you stand out the continental congress armed the fuck up you can't let no lives in nobody nobody he looks like they work for an ngo can come in nobody who looks like they uh they late uh they serve all this get coming. You just borrow these motherfuckers from coming. I'm still calling for a righteous

gangsterismo with insanity characteristics. We need loons and gangsters and thieves and but with like a heart toward the working class. I am in agreement with you. You need people who you're

right. They just they got the look. They've got crazy eyes. Like, I don't know what's going to happen afterwards. Like, will they burn my house down after that? Yes. You need a little bit of lunacy, some wild card. Yeah. As we said on the Patreon, you're right.

And that's and that's kind of what I was getting at with like the idea earlier of like a larger sort of like op or a conspiracy or whatever. It's just like a lot of people can talk on those terms. They understand a lot of people are crazy. I mean, you got to embrace it. You just got to embrace it. You just got to embrace the crazy man. The rights embrace that. They always we try to shut it away as if there's like this rational like, well, there could

be this rational way, like the world works a way to develop it. And that could be like argued about. But now, man, just embrace the crazy and just like, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's nothing wrong with that word. Maybe. And maybe maybe all of our rationalist explanations for how the world got to be the way it is. No, I'm not ready to go that far.

The thing is, is um that's i guess that's the difficult part right it's like how do you actually translate uh a lot of these like really sophisticated and complex theories into like a way that is a sort of a digestible form that people i know because ingest and say oh okay that tastes good and now i'm gonna want to burn down the police yeah because these motherfuckers on the right ready to throw down because of like a non-binary m&m or some shit like that you know yeah like that gets them so excited that one little thing but like what do you do you be like hey uh brother have you heard the good word of call marks you want to know you don't know why your life sucks

under advanced commodity production? Well, that's kind of what I was talking about. I think it's because their lives are ultimately completely vapid. This is a vacuum, a void. If you were them, and the only

cultural experience, social experience you have is through products and brands, but all the brands are slowly being like we're embracing all this stuff that like i either haven't thought about or that i actively despise because i'm a bigot like you would probably start to start feeling more and more suffocated and like that's when people start doing crazy stuff you know like but at the same time maybe people don't give a shit i mean i would imagine that people are still fucking eating m&Ms regardless.

Well, that's the thing about that's the thing about like Americans, man, or just like even as like a leftist. Right. Because, you know, I could say I'm on the left, but I mean, not only do I still participate in capitalism, obviously, but like like even in a materialistic way, like how the fuck can I talk shit when I have like 30 pairs of Nikes in my closet, you know, but the right is also able to do the same thing. Like they'll talk shit. I mean, sometimes they'll burn like Nike jerseys or shoes. Like I remember there was that thing where they were burning or destroying products that were like too woke. But ultimately, though, that shit doesn't last very long and these people will continue to buy those products. Right. Those people are also like actual millionaires. And you make like. Exactly exactly exactly yeah man i don't know dude like they they just they're just playing a dirtier more cynical game that maybe maybe you're right terrence maybe the left should get

in on that um i mean i don't know i read that fer Ferrante Neapolitan series and like in that book it was tight it was like the communists would just get baseball bats and like let's just go beat the fuck out of some fascists today that was their fun time and I was like well you know

I don't think there's anything wrong with that it's true we've kind of developed a defensive mindset instead of offensive our offense is offensive oh shit i don't know man i don't have any answers i got no answers the article was pretty good go check it out i got no answers uh that's the frustrating thing it's like you you expect to like want to talk about this stuff and be able to have an answer but could just be that the historical conditions aren't the the winds aren't blowing in our favor right now so you just got out right now older on uh you know hold on to the masthead in the in the storm as the storm blows just hold on and then just to illustrate how bad the winds

are right now it's like what we have is like these big squabbles. We have an awful billionaire petrogarch tyrant in Putin attacking this place that has all this lip support but also has a Nazi problem in their closet and all this stuff. And at home, we have Ronon desantis going after disney and then i'm the disney and it's like just let the phrase disney self-governance in peril after florida house vote like that's not good either you know what i'm saying we have nobody to root in all of today in all of today's struggles we have nobody to root for. No.

No, man. There have been a couple. I'm trying to think of recent... Good things? Do what? You say recent good things? Yeah, I feel like there's been a few. The Amazon.

I mean, the Amazon. Yeah, AOU is good. You could get behind that pretty... You know what i mean that's the starbucks stuff all that's great you know that's great i shouldn't say that well i mean you know go ahead no i don't have anything to say i was just no i was gonna say though it's like you know i guess last thing i'll say too is like i guess there are good things happening but it's against the backdrop of so much bad shit going on that happens much

more quickly, you know, much more often. It's kind of like, you know, I guess I got to take, you know, take the W's where I can,

but there's a lot of L's man. Well, that's the thing though. Like the things like the mediums and instruments we go to every day to take in news, they're all run by the same sort of larger liberal hegemonic capitalist um society and so like it's only gonna present news to us that's bad there is nothing that like really presents like this like the constellation of good news in a way that says like look here's

and like maybe that's not the case maybe you just need someone who's an unrelenting optimist i'm not an optimist maybe if i was this show could just be me getting on every week and being like this is the great thing that happened this week but i'm like i have and i'm working on this i need to work on this i need to stop being such a pessimist and say like look there are good things there are good things happening yet i mean something's got to give something's got to give though you know eventually man i mean we're just not and who knows it could be sooner than we realize but you know we're just not the winds of change aren't there yet man yeah that's the thing it's and it's a lot of this

could just be contingency i mean crazy shit happens just because like the butterfly effect, man. Yeah, man. Yeah. Damn. Like Grevrilo Princip walking out of the coffee shop and the czar or whatever, like his car broke down in front of his cafe. And just like earlier, he tried to assassinate him. Was it Franz F ferdinand yeah franz ferdinand yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like uh just a complete coincidence he just walks out of

his coffee shop and there's the guy he was he failed to assassinate earlier in the day just you know imagine how lucky he was man to catch that body god damn yeah exactly it was like you don't get many second chances in this life you don't you don't but when you do it alters the course of history yeah like forever like the odds that his car would like break down in front of that so many things had to the stars had to align so perfectly for that to happen we just got to hit like this like uh unprecedented uh unimaginably rare cosmic event man you know we'll be all right um all right well uh that's probably that calls it for today um if you all want to continue listening go to the patreon we've been putting out fire on the Patreon

lately so go check out the Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party I think that's all I've got to plug for now anything else anything you guys want to plug nah

I've gotten I've never had anything going on anything you guys want to plug? No. I've gotten I'd never have anything going on. I had plans to talk the entire episode about Batman. I did not plan to talk about the right wing. So maybe we can do that. I like episodes, I guess, where we just talk through stuff without making pronouncements

about things. But I do feel strongly about my new philosophy of righteous gangsterismo with insane characteristics yeah i will flesh that out a little bit more yeah we do we do need like some whimsical but like like uncanny and really incredibly dangerous with left-wing sympathies he probably wears like a nice suit you know it's like you you like hear about like these documents on the left that like you know uh the poor huron statement or you know the even the communist manifesto tom sexton's all like inaugural message into sexism righteous gangstries

message into sexism righteous gangsterismo with insane characteristics that like that's your monograph like your pamphlet that you've put it's like dropped on the marketplace sort of like Thomas Paine like rights of man or whatever

it's just going to open up with my screed about smack and roof on some people need smack. Oh my God. There is a righteous fist haunting the Puget Sound of Washington State. Righteous right hook.

Righteous right hook. A small bit of cosmic justice that his name appears beside tom ken pinions the guy that had his uh got peritonitis from getting fucked in the ass by a horse and what's called the newman claw horse incident as under the notable residence tab of gig harbor washington chris rufo right beside Ken, Mr. Hands Pinion. I feel like that's fortuitous, but it's not a mistake. A law gave me a little something. Christopher getting these hands Ruffo is right above Ken, Mr. Hands. One's Mr. Hands and one's Mr. Fixing to get these hands. Mr. Fixing to get these hands, Mr. Hands. One's Mr. Hands and one's Mr.

Fixin' to get these hands. Mr. Fixin' to get these hands. Alright. Well, let's call it, fellas. Thanks for listening, everybody. Go check out the Patreon. We'll talk to you next time. Bye. you you you you you you you you you you