Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 274: One Out Of Three

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

We start off with a little bit of giant discourse (different from last week's giant discourse); cover some news miscellanea; and then hear another entry from the all-time great New York Times column, The Conversation Help us get our wonderful film optioned by supporting us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

like this what yeah is this design is this designed to so people quit talking over each other what you do it seems like a good idea but what you do when you're in a work context and somebody hits you with uh that's your appearance. You know? Smiley face with the tongue sticking out. Somebody hits you with the yummy face. The yummy face.

And then somebody just hits you with a no-context peach. Oh, no. Yeah, these reactions. That's a bad update. This is a bad update. A lot of no-good stuff's coming from this one. Well, honestly, I think it's kind of half-assing it because you could do like what FaceTime does with like the,

you know, like you can turn your whole face into a mouse face. You can't do that here. Imagine you're working at cnn two years ago and uh what's his name tubing pops up doing the mouse face on zoom he's doing his whole face is a teddy bear but he's he's jacking off but with like a teddy bear face i mean that's what i'm doing right now i've got the i've got my hand raised and i'm a mouse face and a lollipop i got a lollipop in my mouth this is really a shame i'm fixing to hit you with some claps because i think what we need is nice more Girlboss War Criminals.

Clap if you feel me on that one. I feel you. I feel you on that for sure. It's a shame I don't post these actual videos. You just have to trust us that our React game is on point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's going on in the world well dude there is um you know how like

okay you know how the tiktok account that posted the giant standing on a mountaintop did you hear about the tick tock i heard about this you heard about it yeah listen let me just i'll just make a couple quick comments for you get into a couple things one two years ago the exploration of the weird and the occult and the paranormal and all this was seemed interesting almost quaint you know what i mean you even you got into unsolved mysteries there for a while you know the old robert stacks yeah that wasn't new for me though i've always been i've always been an unsolved mystery head yeah well i think we need to put some of this to bed. Interesting. The giant being one of them?

Or maybe, I don't know what my critics would say. Well, Tom, it seems like the CIA has gotten to you too, and you don't believe that we killed a giant in Afghanistan, obviously. But we did. Well, the funny thing about that the funny thing about employing giants as a war strategy is that it's been tried right like obviously there's the famous david and goliath example uh but there is another example That hails from Our very own Letcher County Kentucky

That's right I'm talking about the giant Martin Van Buren Bates The giant of the confederacy Dude Yes it's true folks The confederates rolled out a literal giant. And that giant was from Whitespur.

He was 7'9". Also, his wife was 7'11". And a swan. Fox. But she came from Canada, where they tend not to stare at you when you're freakishly tall. Yeah, they say his voice rumbled like a bellowing bull that reminds yeah his boy his voice rumbled like a bellowing bull is what one person said he uh he signed up for a 12-month stint in the fifth kentucky infantry in whitesburg as a private in the

confederacy during the civil war um in a state, mind you, that was neutral. Neutral. And also, the funny thing about that is, every resident of Letcher County knows about Martin Van Buren Bates, but all of them swear up and down that there was no Confederacy here. Dude. It's like, it's not really that hard to figure out. Why was a man that tall and large racist?

Like, why did he have to be, like, that's so much racism? Like, per square inch. That's a lot of racism. Per square inch. He may be the biggest racist of all time. If you can name me a bigger racist than Martin Van Buren Bates, in terms of per square inchance uh then yeah it's true what if he was one of those guys it's like he goes to the fifth infantry to sign up and he's like

now boys i don't really believe in the cause but uh you know i won't turn my back on you know like people say like robert e leaves didn't even own slaves but he refused't turn my back on, you know, like people say, like, Robert E. Lee didn't even own slaves, but he refused to turn his back on Virginia. Uh-huh. Like, what if Mark Van Buren Bates had some arcane, like, pay debt reason for joining the Confederacy? Like, he was just a big states rights guy. Yeah, he's, he, for him it was about,

we had a school teacher in high school that like to teach the civil war he literally made us do this song that was like sectionalism slavery and states rights oh really yes they so let me get this straight you went to a school where they taught states' rights to the tune of baby shark, doot, doot. Baby shark, doot, doot. I also like how they throw in sectionalism. Like, what the fuck is sectionalism? Yeah, when you first said that, I thought it was sexualism. Sexualism, slavery.

I know what that is. I got one out of three. I believe in one out of three. I like how they also sandwiched slavery between the two. You know what I mean? As to diminish it. Yeah, it's like sexual slavery. What's the last one?

States rights. Sexual slavery. States rights. They did it like a used car dealership jingle. You know? Yeah. Sectionalist. Slave today,

the Tom Raper way. That's how, that's what they would have said back in those days. Only real Ohio heads will know that reference. Yeah. Dude. Yeah, I don't know maybe yeah no sectionalism what the fuck is that that just it's just like it's it's like an even more a restriction of interest to a narrow sphere sectionalism is loyalty to one's own region or section of the country. That's the stupidest thing I've ever

heard. Just that like, oh yeah, that was the reason that we waged a war. Because some people just really like the balmy climes of the South. I have a question though about just

battlefield strategy and rolling a giant out. Famously, the most famous underdog story of all time was, of course, David versus Goliath. And we saw how that panned out for the big man. Uh-huh. You know, King David with his slingshot caught him right between the eyes. Yeah. Night, night. Night, night.

Gee, man. Okay. Yeah, night, night, night, night, G-Man. Okay. Did Martin Van Buren Bates survive the Civil War? He did. He actually did. How?

How do you not hit that motherfucker? He's seven foot nine. Dude, not only was he, when he registered To be in the confederacy He was 7 Foot 7 and a half And 328 pounds He wasn't just like some Lanky like Yao Ming

He was an actual giant He was an actual giant Of course on a man 7 foot 8 328 probably looks a little svelte there's a picture but but that's still gonna be a big man you know it's not gonna be like a beanpole so it's like the the the conspiracy about the giant being killed in afghanistan in this case was actually true like could Like, could you imagine, like... Yeah, you know what?

Listen, I'm sorry. All the people that believe the Afghan giant thing, you're right. Who's to say the Taliban didn't have their own Martin Van Buren Bates? It's possible. Listen to this. He was involved in several skirmishes in Kentucky and Tennessee, earning a battlefield promotion to captain. He was seriously wounded in a battle at Cumberland Gap,

leading to his capture by the Union forces. They had this motherfucker fighting at Cumberland Gap. This kind of speaks to just kind of the, really just kind of how dumb the confederacy was can you imagine just rolling out an eight foot guy to dog fight and fucking cumberland gamp and just like yeah yeah we'll just throw him out there with the no you need that guy like for intimidation purposes or something they should have named him governor they should have ousted you know jefferson davis out of there obviously incompetent leadership uh-huh and put martin martin van buren bait should have led

the confederacy he already had the name yeah you know had named after the only what the only dutch president we've ever had who established the national bank that motherfucker yeah martin van buren bates the actual opposite i think he was the shortest president right or him or james madison was like five three or something like i could see it dude there's a compelling argument for you know to bring this kind of full circle john brown may not have done the things that he had done if martin van buren did not create the national bank in 1837 because he like because like john brown had like tried to buy a bunch of land and cattle and he was trying like putting a lot of money into the hopes that they would create a like an ohio canal in ohio right

yeah and then when they created the national bank it like restructured like loans and so all of his money was essentially rendered worthless like overnight and it drew it drove him insane like he like i mean there's a lot of other reasons as well but like it was just another like thing on his road to just becoming you know like the biblical reckoning of america's past it was just another thing that like drove him to just be completely certain that all the forces were satanic and they were aligned against him yeah i feel, Brother Brown, because I am logging into my Fidelity banking app and seeing a zero balance in my bank account away from... I would commit a murder.

I would. I'll say that. I know now I've been stretched to the limits. I am capable of a violent crime i didn't think i was before yeah i thought i was just gonna be a low rent hood the rest of my life but no i think that there's uh externalities that uh could make a man lose his mind i'm not saying i will i'm saying i think a lot of us could. No, I agree.

You know, Joker fight, et cetera. Not an original observation. Right, right, right. Martin Van Buren Bates. His reputation grew with the Yankees too as they referred to him as, quote, the Confederate giant who is as big as five men and fights like 50. It's like, okay, this was not a hand-to-hand combat war

like what was he doing like he was he shooting 50 guns at one time well you know it's kind of funny because it's like it's like you see how the lore grows like you know these like the the union guys were sitting around campfire being like listen man y'all don't believe this but in cumberland gap the fuck these fucking rebels got a giant and he's eight feet fucking tall dog and he actually lives off of eating the remains of the dead on the battlefields that's what they feed him yeah just the image of him like shaking off like eight different yankee soldiers throwing them yeah because like who who um who like made the uniforms for like the confederate army was it probably like some cotton manufacturer in england like imagine getting that order it's like all right we've got 5 000 standard issue uh gray uniforms for the confederate army and what is this

seven this has got to be some sort of error and then you send a telegram across the which takes like three months right the same way i think we've got your order wrong uh uh this one says this is like a u.s size uh 86 inch chest what's going on here that's like now we got a giant oh okay well that makes sense like hey no guys, keep making it. It's for a giant. It's like, yeah, I don't know. It's like later on in the war, they're strapped for resources.

You can imagine, if you have a giant, don't send them out in a regular uniform. You've got to get them a loincloth and a big, massive club. You know what I mean? Give them a spruce tree that you've carved to look like a a loincloth and a big massive club you know give him like a spruce tree that you've carved to look like a cloth he actually uprooted this tree himself and fashioned it to a billy club that's just hey listen y'all want to make this a fair fight go get your own giant but that's saying there was no there was no electric county in the north so they didn't have a giant from which to you know a community from which to pull giant resources well uh

thing is it's like now we know like every giant mentioned in and some ancient text or whatever it's just like somebody with like a what's the acromegaly that's got a pituitary tumor i think is what usually causes people to grow like that tall uh-huh i knew another lecher county giant like a real giant eddie toller oh yeah yeah well i mean one of the sad things about it all is like i think sometimes people with acromegaly tend to have like heart problems and different other problems because they grow so tall and maybe i don't know something to do with it puts burden on the organ say eddie ended up passing but eddie toller r.i.p a gentle giant obviously it was the center for the flim and neon basketball team because he was like seven something. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you've got to use that. If you've got that

if you're a high school basketball coach and you're walking down the halls and you see a kid that's like seven foot seven, you've never seen him before, you're scouting that motherfucker. You're getting him on. Well, let's call it what it is. You're a giant so you got two career prospects basketball or battlefield intimidation like are there accountants that are

like seven foot seven three fifty you know i'm saying like you're not like you're not going to a restaurant and getting served by a guy at seven seven you know what i mean that's just it's gonna throw your dining experience off. Because all you're going to talk about the rest of the meal is damn, man, that guy took our orders like tall, tall. I actually knew two Letcher County

giants. Tyler Iserman, too. Dude, I'm telling you. Maybe there's something... Well, we know there's something in the water, but maybe there's something going on in Letcher County then. As we produce a disproportionate amount of giants for our size. Yeah. I'm reading from this article that was in this week's Mountain Eagle

about Martin Van Buren Bates. Do you think that they named, Martin Van Buren Bates. Do you think that they named... Do you think Goliath was also... He was named after a political leader of that time? His real full name was Abraham Goliath or something like that? King David Goliath.

David N. Goliath. It's a whole misinterpretation. It's not David N. Goliath. It's David N. Goliath. Yeah. It's a whole misinterpretation. Yeah. It's not David N. Goliath. It's David N. Goliath. King David was himself a giant. Yeah. Do you remember when Malcolm Gladwell wrote that book about,

and he led with the story of David and Goliath, and he theorized that Goliath himself suffered from acromegaly. Maybe that's where I got that from. God help me if I'm just, if Gladwellism's infecting our program. I just, yeah, no, I just love trying to apply some sort of scientific rationalism to a story that's like 4,000 years old and obviously a fable. And obviously a legend. Yeah.

thousand years old and obviously a fable and obviously a legend you see goliath who most likely did not exist and to the degree that he did you know back in those days if you were like six two you were a giant you know what i mean he might have been like just a medium tall dude Right Okay so it says Martin visited his home Near Whitesburg in 1863 And found his family gone Later learned that his brother James Had been tortured and slain

Oh no By a boy named Jack With a With some magic beans He wreaked vengeance On the culprits but was captured A boy named Jack with some magic beans. He wreaked vengeance on the culprits, but was captured by Union forces in Eastern Kentucky. That's all it says.

Like, okay, did he go on a John Wick revenge tour? What do you mean he wreaked vengeance on the culprits? Yeah, really. like what what did it what do you mean he rigged vengeance on the conference yeah really uh he missed a golden opportunity to say fee-fi-fo-fo my smell the blood of a union man and then just shut up bitch just throw a rock between his eyes and kill his ass why why couldn't you do that you know yeah it says the yankees took delight in having the giant as a prisoner and transported him by a series of mules with quote his feet a dragon and a rope around his neck after one of the animals gave out so this guy's a total like blood like blundering dumb ass that

uh-huh yeah um after one of the animals gave out and laid down under his massive weight they placed martin on another. Eventually, he was put aboard a boat and taken to Camp Chase, a prisoner of war camp in Ohio. Later, he was transferred to Point Lookout, Maryland, where he was involved in a prisoner exchange. He proved to be a most interesting individual wherever he was seen. Yeah, no shit. Yeah. um yeah no shit yeah um there was much resentment in the area following the war as many families maintained their allegiance to one side or other some hid along the mountain paths and took pot

shots at the veterans that supported the opposing side during the war perhaps the yankee sympathizers didn't shoot at bates because he was such an oddity and likable individual with his size he certainly was a large target what if he was yeah they they liked him so they were asked he was just a man of his time wow yeah he was a man of his time um yeah no he joined the circus after the war uh uh yeah lest we forget that's the third right actually honestly with the death of the franchise center it probably wouldn't be i play basketball either that's true right yeah um let's see he was also a mason apparently he remained in Louisa for nearly a week and made several visits to the Masonic Academy while he was there. So he had the ancient knowledge.

He had the ancient knowledge. Damn. Yeah. Damn. Imagine doing Masonic hazing rituals with a man twice your size. Yeah, imagine pantsing an eight foot tall giant and spanking him with a board.

It's like, yeah, don't they have to do weird stuff like jack off on the scepter and compass? Like, imagine you look next to you and it's... It's the rod of discipline. Come on.

If you're gonna comment on masonry, at least know the ancient wisdom. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, man. I mean, yeah. Yeah, he was very intelligent, and if he had lived in our day and time,

he would likely be an honor student. Okay. Oh, God. Who wrote this? This is stupid as fuck. He would likely be an honor student. He'd be in 500 Kappa. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, Martin Van Buren Bates, the smart racist giant. Come on. Come on, CR smart the smart racist giant come on come on see our big smart racist i mean dude it's the point here is that we shouldn't necessarily discount war stories of giants because there has been precedence for them existing in various armed conflicts around the globe that's true i apologize for my condescension another thing i want to bring up remember those old history channel programs that talked about stalin trying to breed people with gorillas to

create super soldiers yes see yeah you're right story after story abounds i i guess the bottom line is if you're going into battle it behooves you to have a couple giants who was the guy and kill in uh troy oh uh that achilles has to meet in the battlefield and yeah you know what did um did he prevail yeah i think so right didn't brad pitt run up him and like stab him in the shoulder and through the heart i mean if i was achilles yeah i think you're right the giant bogrius yeah yeah i think it was theorized it was theorized that my man was suffering from rabies and that's why he brought uh i guess in the ancient text he was he gnashed oh telltale sign of rabies infection when you gnash when you gnash yeah that's gnash with G. I love it. Yeah. I love the Nash.

Man. Sectionalism in the 1800s America refers to the different lifestyles, social structures, customs, and political values of the North and the South. I fucking love that. It's like basically saying that the cause for the war was slavery, but you don't understand that was their culture and we have to respect that yeah it's like basically what it's saying it's like i guess i don't know it's it's such a strange term i just love that they taught us to it in sing-song form though it's like for the vast majority of people who came across that song for the entire rest of their lives

they'll be like no that's why we fought the war sexualism slavery and maybe that's what it was dude it may be because when you put it to a jingle it burns it in your brain yeah it burns it into your i know the greek alphabet only because of i know a jingle to it yes exactly The jingle is a time-honored, time-tested tradition for learning. I'm imagining somebody coming and interviewing Martin Van Buren Bates kind of after the war. You know, he's probably... Emancipation Proclamation, all that stuff's been signed. He's probably reading the tea leaves that his old positions probably aren't that popular anymore. And he starts some crackpot theory that listen i did i support slavery no did i own slaves no but i'll be god damn if i let lincoln

come take my gas range that's his whole reason for joining the confederacies because he heard some guy told him that lincoln going to come confiscate something. Man, that's a curveball. I didn't see that one coming. The gas range becoming a hot button issue. I mean, obviously nobody's going to come take anybody's gas, though. But it is kind of interesting to see some of the asthma and respiratory problems that have more CO2 in your house causes. Uh-huh.

Have you ever left a gas stove on and came in the house? Every day. Every day in the hopes. Every day in the hopes. Every day in the hopes. That today will be the day. The day that I stay in there just a little too long. I'm getting a little sleepy all of a sudden.

I think I'll just lay down here and take me a nap. Nothing wrong with a nap. Why does it smell like rotten eggs in here? Dude, there is an article in the New York Times this week about how cougars are heading east, and we should welcome them. And it's got a map. It's got a map where new places where wild cougars could roam.

And the biggest one on the map in the eastern U.S., eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, baby. Oh my god. Is this their latest plan? They're gonna fuckin' release jungle cats on us? What a fuckin' I mean... We're getting cougars, man.

Listen, on the one hand, sounds cool, right? There's gonna be a lot of people who rejoice. A lot of these guys have been lying about seeing mountain lions for years. They're going to be like, see, I told you. The other side to this, and while I understand that cougars are typically docile and sort of avoid human interaction, I also have seen too many of those TikTok videos where there's a jogger

and then there's just a big cat hiding behind a bush. I don't need that. Yeah. I'm okay without that. You'd rather it be a giant. I'd rather Martin Van Buren Bates jump out from behind a bush and just shake his dick at me or something like a big pervert. Well, I don't know.

It could be lost in translation. It might be, you know, like Jennifer Coolidge. We might be getting like hot middle-aged busty women looking for sex in your neighborhood right now. Damn. All the ads were true. all the ads were true all the ads were true they're coming for us in my neighborhood right now god i wonder if there's some guy that saw that you know and just went out on the porch and was just like expecting some jennifer kugelich type to come throw some pussy at her.

Well, when I was 18 and I would see that stuff, I really would have like a two second like, oh, wow. But then I'd be like, oh, you know, that rational. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. Oh, they got me again. That's what Cumbrae does to a man. Like when you're horny,

you will temporarily believe patently ridiculous things. Yes, like giants exist. Well, here's the thing, though. Now we all know it's a ruse, right? Because we've came a little bit along the last several years. Ten years ago, though, you're hard up. It's been a while since you've got any put on you and a sex bot hits you in the dm like for it's not long right but for about a half a second you're

like and it's mostly you just want it to be true yeah yeah you know what i mean but there's been times where you're like you've probably in the early days of like dating apps probably got okie-doked once by a bot yeah probably like like but but here's the deal here's the the wager you make with yourself though when it happens ain't gonna hurt nothing just to send one message just to see if it's real well dude it's funny you bring that up because like right now in silicon valley the big hot new thing now that crypto has basically imploded and nfts and everything associated with it the hot new thing is generative ai which is quite literally just sex chat bots like that's that's is what it is is they just basically made sex chat bots a little more convincing and they're like no that's generative ai like you talk to it it'll talk back it's like no i've been talking to bots since i was

like bad at this i've been on i I bet talking to AI for years now. Futilely hoping to get some pussy out of the deal. It's like, I don't know, it's hilarious. Like several startups, like three or four, just got massive rounds of funding to the tune of billions of dollars to like generative i ai and it's just like listen all we gotta do is take our sex bot technology and just call it generative ai for these fucking point dexters uh-huh yeah man what's up with all that ai art's been going on it kind of looks like it kind of looks like if if wes anderson made the exorcist or something like that just really

fucking freaky but now it's almost like the nfts it's like oh yeah there's a house style of this and it's kind of annoying already yeah i know what i'm talking about i yeah i know what you're talking about um the funny thing about it is like the new york times had a story about the generative ai thing and that's where i was reading about it and they used examples that they had pulled from the internet of you know like the doll e thing like you enter in a prompt oh everybody was on that for a second. Yeah. We were like, yeah. So that dumb shit, that is exactly what I'm talking about. Like, several startups are giving billions of dollars to pursue that. So it's like.

And we probably, like, gave them proof of concept just by being like, I wonder what it would look like if Obama and Biden jerked each other off while watching X-Men. That's exactly what fueled it. Our own perverse, grotesque desires. Desire to see our fantasies rendered in the real world. That's what it is. Listen, let me just tell you something. It's something I've learned over the years

and i think it's as true today as it was several years ago when i was on some of the more primitive pornography sites when i was a teenager but there's certain things that happen in your head that are best left in the realm of fantasy i I agree. We would be wise to remember this going forward. I agree. You were talking about movies serving a purpose. That's one of them. Our own worst fears

and perversions and so forth, we should just... That should be film's role. I agree. A safe facsimile of our worst impulses. You're agree. It has to be... Like a safe facsimile of our worst impulses. You're right. It has to be mediated by a responsible party. You can't just turn it over to AI.

Because they'll let you do anything, man. They'll let you see anything. You've got to have a governor. Yeah, they will. They really will. Yeah. Yeah, you can. They really will. Yeah. Yeah, you can say anything you want to in this world anymore. Speaking of saying anything,

I sent you this speaker piece I just saw this week. You know how, like, the... I just texted it to you. You know how, like like libs would call Trump like tangerine turnip or whatever the fuck they used to call him. The mango Mussolini.

Mango Mussolini. There was one in the Mountain Eagle speaker piece this week that I've not seen before. This one was new to me. So. Oh. before this one was new to me so oh no no no no no you have to read it right from the jump here's why mango mousseline doesn't work and here's why this one we'll read in a minute doesn't work something happened in southern comedy from the outset that again was should it was one of those perversions that should have been left in the realm but

for the longest time what actually broke through in terms of southern comedy was just shit was just like alliterative jokes like uh hornier than the three-peckered possum in a pumpkin patch so when i see alliteration i actually i instantly have a cringe like yeah you have a fighter you have a fight or flight response like it triggers the fight or flight the amygdala in your brain you're like oh so bad so that's what that's what this one does as soon as i saw it that's what it did i i take no listen before i read this i take no pleasure in putting this on y'all but i saw it and so now you do too so here we go mountain eagle for the week of january 11th 2023

velveta voldemort January 11th, 2023. Velveeta Voldemort. He didn't even bury the lead. You know what I mean? That could have just waited a while. They just straight out the gate. Velveeta Voldemort. Velveeta Voldemort had trouble deciding whether to be happy that his idea of a terrorist attack on the national capital

is catching on or angry that he isn't getting credit for it when told that 150 brazilian people had copied what the republicans did here he felt ambivalent and he asked remind me how many is a brazilian i just want to say a couple things here. Humor, not your thing. Yeah, just probably should just leave it to the pros here, okay? Second thing is, is... Velveeta? Voldemort.

It's not even orange. Yeah, it's yellow. It's yellow. Yeah, it's not even orange yeah it's yellow it's yellow yeah it's uh i appreciate i appreciate the creative license though you know what i'm saying like i appreciate that it's i appreciate what they were doing with imagery you know what i'm saying like you your mind will be here's what terrence ray's always going to do you've you've you never discount you you live in fear of being owned so you never discount the fact that something might be sort of a meta joke or so you're always like no i actually i get it like that guy like ty joke or something. So you're always like, no, actually, I get it. Like that guy, like Tyler Gentry's comedy.

You're like, actually, this guy's brilliant. What he's doing is this is a commentary on. You're right. It's a defense mechanism against getting owned. I have a pathological aversion to ever getting scammed owned played being a mark and so everything is a bit like a scammer or anything no this is a bit this is not this is not genuine oh my god um not good well not good speaking of real authentic, long-time listeners of this show will know of a little segment we used to do called New York Times The Conversation. So, seen as how one party to that conversation is not able to participate, not only for us, but also for perhaps Bret Stephens.

not only for us but also for perhaps brett stevens brett for this week i don't know if for all time has replaced gail collins with david brooks which means that oh man which means that perhaps you and i can have a motherfucking conversation a motherfucking conversation all right this is what i've been waiting for the whole time would you like to join me now let's start the show you would like to join me in conversation yeah i'll join you in conversation okay um so we usually gotta set this you know what i mean it's like you got you got to pick a setting um so i mean i just saw avatar this week and while i won't set this in that mythical universe i do appreciate the world building and and the uh casting of a grand imaginary you know what i mean like a setting that is a simulacrum of our real world.

And so I guess to honor that, as an homage to that, let's put the setting for this in 1901, Eastern Kentucky, under the setting that you and I so miraculously conjured forth on the Patreon this past weekend. Epitar 2. Time to feed the hogs. Time to feed the hogs! Time to feed the motherfucking

hogs, bitch. Let's feed them, baby. Let me pull this up. My phone's getting ready to die. i don't want to ruin our moment all right yeah and so while tom's doing that i just want to say that if you would like to hear more if that sounds like something that's up your alley go to patreon.com it's like dude when we were writing that dude i didn't even think about this but like it didn't even occur to me until after i saw the new avatar that like what our screenplay, our treatment was missing was like

steampunk shit. Like we could have had like hog mechs. Hog mechs. You know how there's like the crab mech suits in the new Avatar? We could have hog mech suits. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, I think

you know when they ultimately option us for a third, or a second, but it will be Avatar 3. It will be Avatar 3, right. Yeah. Because we did like a Star Wars George Lucas thing. We started our franchise off with the second movie. And we're going to close it with the first one. Just a little curveball for you.

It'll go two, three, one. Yeah. We're jumping all over the place. You don't know what's going on. All right, I'm ready. All right, so obviously you're Brett. But I can't guarantee how good this is gonna be um because the premise of this is the future of the republican party i skimmed it there was some good shit in it

we'll have to we'll have to really dial into our characters i guess is what i'm saying for this to really be good like you we gotta go method man we're method acting all right um you've got to we have both literally got to make ourselves stupid as shit we have to drink the colloidal silver my friend all right so me blew us out the end of this here we go okay the article is called the party's over for us do you yeah the party's over for us where do we go okay the article is called the party's over for us do you yeah the the party's over for us where do we go now this is not a declaration of death or of intention to of suicide by the way this is not a suicide the party's over for us where do we go now i I don't know, guys. To hell? Maybe we should go to hell. Yeah.

Let's see. A little tagline here. For decades, conservative values have been central to Brett Stevens and David Brooks' political beliefs, and the Republican Party was the vehicle to extend those beliefs into policy. But in recent years, both the party and a radicalized conservative movement have left them feeling alienated in various ways i don't know about you but i'm major fucking alienated in various ways bro what's interesting is not even an hour ago i was thinking about the time david brooks took his poor friend to eat up uh to eat a fucking stromboli at an italian restaurant saying that the poor

the poor backwoods rube had never had a... Yeah. Never had a stromboli. Never had cured meats. Yeah. Now, with an extremist fringe seemingly in control of the house, the GOP bears little resemblance to the party that was once their home. It's a shame. Brett and David got together to suss out what happened and where the party can go.

Here we go. Are you ready to suss out? I'm going to get major fucking sussed out. Let's get suss out what happened and where the party can go here we go to suss out i'm gonna get let's major fucking suss that let's get suss um you know david lately i've been thinking about that classic will rogers line i'm not a member of any organized political party i am a democrat a century or so later it looks like the shoes the other foot. Is it even possible to call the Republican Party a party anymore? It's funny you say that, Brett. My thinking about the GOP goes back to a brunch I had with Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza in the 80s

that helps me see, in retrospect, that people in my circle were pro-conservative, while Ingraham and D'Souza and people in their circle were pro-conservative while ingraham and de souza and people in their circle were anti-left i just like love this like tree of life episodic like memory jolts where he's he thinks back to a random brunch in like 1986 just a normal lunch with two normal people then. We wanted to champion, we, the normal ones, wanted to champion Edmund Burke and Adam Smith in a Reaganite foreign policy. They wanted to rock the establishment. That turned out to be a consequential difference

because almost all the people in my circle back then, like David Frum and Robert Kagan, ended up, decades later, never Trumpers. And almost all the people in their circle became Trumpers or went bonkers. Right. They weren't conservatives. They were just illiberal. Yes. Then in 1995, some friends and I created a magazine called The Weekly Standard. The goal was to help the gop become a mature governing party clearly we did an awesome job i have a zillion thoughts a little self-crit there

i'd say that's underselling it it's like one of those things where it's like you're responsible for the deaths of five million people and you kind of try to joke about it like telling that they get two senses before that. He's like, yeah, my best friend of those days, David Frum. I have a zillion thoughts about where the Republican Party went astray. But do you have a core theory, Brett? Well, funny you should ask that. Dave, I have multiple theories, but let me start with this one.

The mid-1990s was also the time that Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House and Fox News got started. You don't say. Hey. Back then, those who were on the more intelligent end of the conservative spectrum thought a magazine such as the Weekly Standard, a channel like Fox, and a guy like Gingrich would be complimentary. to a channel like Fox and a guy like Gingrich

would be complimentary. The standard would provide the innovative ideas for Republican leaders like Gingrich and Fox would popularize those ideas for right of center voters.

It didn't work out as planned. The supposed popularizers turned into angry populists and the populists turned on the intellectuals. Oh no. The classic tell as old as time. Tell as old as time.

But to borrow Warren Buffett's take about investing, the conservative movement went from innovation to imitation to idiocy. It's how the movement embraced Donald Trump as its standard bearer and role model. All the rest, as they say, is commentary. What about your theory? Before I go on, he capitalized commentary. So is that a, a reference to like the magazine,

the Bill Kristol magazine commentary, I'm guessing? Maybe. I don't know. Or maybe the copy editor thought it was. Hmm. Yeah, right.

I think, yeah, thanks Brett for, um, by the way, for complimenting my intelligence when you said the more intelligent end of the conservative spectrum is not a magazine such as the Weekly. Yeah, like you and David Frum. You guys were really smart back then. We thought you would do it. David says, I think I'd tell a similar story, but maybe less flattering to my circle. The people who led the Republican Party, either as president, Ronald Reagan through the Bushes,

members of Congress, Jack Kemp, John McCain, Paul Ryan, or as administration officials and intellectuals, Richard Darman, Condi Rice, believed in promoting change through the institutions of established power. They generally wanted to shrink and reform the government, but they venerated the Senate, the institution of the presidency, and they worked comfortably with people from the think tanks, the press, and the universities. They were liberal internationalists, cosmopolitan, believers in the value of immigration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John McCain, very cosmopolitan believers in the value of immigration yeah yeah yeah john mccain very cosmopolitan yeah paul ryan very cosmopolitan yeah yeah ronald reagan george bush so cosmopolitan they couldn't

stay out of every single fucking country on the planet and trying to overthrow their government. You imagine trying to rebrand these people as cosmopolitan and liberal internationalists. Like imagine rebranding George W. Bush as a liberal internationalist. No, I'd say like the closest thing to like a liberal internationalist was probably John F. Kennedy,

right? Like someone who's line probably, and there's a lot of interpretation on it but i think it seems clear to me that probably towards the end of his life he thought that the united states needed to have a more liberal global orientation in the sense that we should cohabitate with communism rather than try to overthrow it you know what i'm saying even i mean you know it's worth noting that when he died fidel casher didn't come out and said yes another infidel swine dead he called it a great loss for human rights when john f kennedy died now i'm not saying that like kennedy was uh you know

uh you know a comrade or anything like that so did so did de gaulle by the way charles de gaulle almost got fucking cooed in 1961 by like right-wing like paramilitary you know disaffected military officers over algeria and after jack kennedy got shot he was like no that was a coup they did the exact same shit because of his policies towards cuba and and the soviet union and everything i'm not one of these people that like holds john f kennedy in his theme i just mean like you can distinguish between i don't want to get twisted either i've you know there's uh he was an imperialist swine ultimately but yeah yeah just a brother castro's probably a little too soft on him but still

uh i'll just say that to say that the perception even among the burgeoning cuban communist party was not that he was imperialist line but rather that like he was a guy that was playing ball or whatever right right and like contrasting that with like the Bushes. Right. Right. Contrasting that with the Bushes. Scions of liberal internationalism. Anyways. Yeah.

George H.W. Bush having done probably more harm in the world than almost anybody else that ever drew breath. Uh-huh. Anyways, all that to say, Brett. You know, I'd add that they also believed in the core values of old-fashioned liberalism. I would say that too, Brett. Faith in the goodness of democracy. Human rights!

Most importantly, it needs to be said, goddammit, that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush believed in human rights, the rule of law, free speech, and political compromise. The political process itself. They believed in building these things up, not just tearing them down. And I would count myself among them. Wait, that is a weird sentence. They believed in building things up, not just tearing them down.

So they also believed in tearing them down, but they also believed in... Yeah, we believe... Oh, don't get it twisted. We believe in tearing them down but they also believed in yeah we believe oh don't get it twisted we believe in tearing things down but not just that oh shit just yeah like ronald reagan definitely believed in the goodness of democracy human rights and the rule if there's two words that i think about when Ronald Reagan comes to mind is human rights. Then the established, I love this part, okay? This is what, this is like, this is core to David Brooks' mentality. Like, this is fucking fundamental.

This is a load-bearing structure, okay? Then the establishment got discredited. Iraq war, financial crisis, the ossifying of the meritocracy, the widening values gap between metro elites and everyone else. And suddenly all the people I regarded as fringe and wackadoodle, Pat Buchanan, Donald Trump, anyone who ran CPAC, rose up on the wave of populist fury. Everybody likes the story in which the little guy rises up to take on the establishment. But in this case, the little guys rode in on a wave of no-nothingism, mendacity,

an apocalyptic mindset, and authoritarianism. Within a few years, a few short years, a somewhat Hamiltonian party became a Jacksonian one with a truly nihilistic wing. Okay.

Ah, yes, the little guys like Donald Trump. Maybe the only man one with a truly nihilistic wing okay oh yes the little guys like donald trump maybe the maybe the only man that ever lived that was too big to fail the reason i say this is core to his mentality is because like he's been on about this for at least like i like five or six years now probably since 2016 that like they the elites massively fucked things up in the 2000s but it's not their fault which is the funniest fucking position you could possibly take it's like look they may have fucked up iraq war they may have fucked up and completely imploded the economy blah blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

But it's not their fault. But are you perfect? Yes. And he's basically saying that, like, it wasn't a fuck up bad enough to warrant this new wave of populism. So that's why these people are out of control and outrageous. It's like it's such a bizarre position to take if if i wonder what these guys would be saying if trump wasn't like bombastic and like ridiculous you know and says all these crazy things like if he would have just been like just their mouthpiece bog standard

well one he would he would not have won like that. But let's say just for the sake of argument that he would have won just being a regular ass, like, sort of boring Republican. What would these guys say of him? Same policy, same outcomes, everything. Yeah, I would be willing to bet that they would be totally fine with it. So, yeah, throwing it over to you brett slightly unfair to jackson who at least opposed nullification but i take your overall point okay so david says after many years of the gop decaying the party's institutional and moral collapse happened quickly between 2013 and

2016. In the 2000 Republican primaries, I enthusiastically supported John McCain. I believed in his approach to governance, and I admired him enormously. But by 2008, when he got the nomination, the party had shifted, and McCain had shifted along with it. I walked into the polling booth that November genuinely not knowing if I would vote for McCain or Barack Obama. Then an optical illusion flashed across my brain. McCain and Obama's names appeared to be written on the ballot in 12-point type, but Sarah Palin's name looked like it was written in red in 24-point type. I don't think I've ever said this in public before, but I voted for Obama. hype i don't think i've ever said this in public before but i voted for obama this is a rare moment of vulnerability for david wow he's got he probably he probably didn't

you're right he probably did it well i voted for mccain if i were if i were basing my presidential votes on the vice presidential candidate i'd have thought twice about voting for biden so both of them are like kind of rolling out they're like open-minded i'll sometimes vote for democrats bona fides on your point about populism now there's been previous republican presidents who rode to office on waves of populist discontent particularly nixon and ronald reagan but as the presidents they channeled that discontent into serious programs and also turned their backs on the ugly fringes of the right let me just say an amazing sentence do you know where ronald reagan launched his

presidential campaign in 1980 philadelphia mississippi where three civil rights workers were murdered and dumped into like an open grave and like the whole point was like a dog whistle towards like you know i support these types of things yeah it's like okay yeah okay brett just a fucking amazing statement man like this and that's this is off the chain i'll go ahead and say this if lester being the ambiguity in this but by no means do you have to give it to ronald reagan also by no means did ronald reagan quote turn his back on the ugly fringes of the ride. Just want to make that clear. Where was I at?

Nixon created the EPA and expanded the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Reagan established a working relationship with Democrat House leaders to pass tax reform and gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. What's different this time around? He also sold drugs to traffic crack into the united states yeah let's yeah let's uh let's let's judge him on balance here uh yeah what's different this time is that populist feelings were never harnessed to pragmatic policies as you say it's just populism in the service of nihilism um yeah i what i like about that is like the proposition that centrism by its very definition can't be like a radical position it's like no you don't understand you

can be a fucking stark raving mad frothing at the mouth centrist like that is an insane fringe position that i think should be ostracized from society and treated as such yeah um so where does the gop go from here and where does the old core of the conservative movement go do they we become democrats or a quiet left-wing fringe of what's become matt gates's clown show dude this next sentence fucking killed me oh my god this fucking murdered me all right oh my god what was that no go ahead no this is what i was talking about just a second ago but read it and you'll see why when people get on a bad path whether it's drinking or gambling or political or religious fanaticism they tend to follow it all the way to the bottom

at which point they either die or have that proverbial moment of clarity it's like this is what i'm talking about like brett cannot even entertain the notion that he himself it's like that rod dreher thing where he went to his therapist because he was distressed about 9-11 and his therapist was like you understand that you could have flown those planes right like you're just as insane as those you're no better than muhammad in fact you may gotta seem a little bit of a sympathetic character by comparison exactly this is like he just brett cannot countenance the fact that like like first of all there's the comparison of addiction to like political or religious fanaticism and it's like my brother in christ you are the political fanatic

you are just you are addicted all of us i i i'm not paid five hundred thousand dollars a year to just come up with this pablum i know know. You are the fanatic here. Amazing. Oh, shh. God damn, dude. That got me. I've been waiting for Republicans to have a moment of clarity for a while now. After Joe Biden's victory on January 6th,

the midterms, Trump's dinner with Kanye West. I had a flicker of hope that the Kevin McCarthy mccarthy debacle last week would open some eyes but probably not part of the reason is that so many republicans no longer get into politics to pass legislation they do it to become celebrities the more feverish they are the better it sells on the other hand some republicans who conspicuously did well in the midterms were the normies people like governor b Brian Kemp in Georgia and Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio.

Yeah, the normies like Brian Kemp, who hid a bunch of voting machines in a basement of some warehouse so that black people couldn't vote. It gives me hope that the fever will eventually burn itself out, maybe after a few well-earned defeats. The solution here is some kind of republican version of the old democratic leadership council which yanked left-wing democrats back to the center after three consecutive presidential wipeouts paved the way for the election of bill clinton yeah the democratic leadership council who engineered the plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstown.

Anyways, you just got one more sentence. Okay, let's see. Which raises another question for me, David. Where are the old brains and money trusts of the GOP to give life and energy to that kind of effort? Well, it's not going to be me. Well, hold on a second. I really love how the whole thing of this is like, we need some fresh blood and this and that like we need a we need a kick in the pants he's like well

where's the old money and the old guard i love yeah well it's not going to be me even in my red hot youth it's like all right david like we we never believed you were sexy at any point yeah when i worked for bill Buckley at National Review, I didn't see myself as a... Okay, that's why. He was one of Bill's swimming pool boys that he liked to... 100% William F. Buckley has seen David Brooks' cock.

In Vice Versa. It may be a non-zero chance that he touched it. And then immediately called him a queer after or something. It's like, you grabbed my... We met Buckley's grabbing David Brooks' cock, and we met Buckley saying that that makes David Brooks the queer. Right, right. I didn't see myself as a Republican, just a conservative.

I maintain a distance for political parties because I think it's always wrong for a writer to align too closely to a party. That's the path to predictability and propagandism. Furthermore, I belong in the American tradition that begins with Alexander Hamilton, runs through the Whig Party and Lincoln, and then modernized with Theodore Roosevelt, parts of Reagan and McCain. Just an amazing sentence. Just a murderer's row there. I belong to the American tradition.

Anyone that starts a sentence with, I belong to the American tradition, that begins with Alexander Hamilton. I wasted years writing essays on how Republicans could maintain this tradition. The party went the other way. Now I think the Democrats are a better Hamiltonian home. Well, I'm part of that same conservative tradition, though maybe with a heavier dose of Milton Friedman.

Our trajectories with the GOP are fairly similar, and so are our lives. Okay. I'm older than you so are our lives. Okay. I'm older than you, but our lives have a number of parallels. Imagine David Brooks is telling you this. You're like scooting away from him on the bench. We both grew up in secular Jewish families,

went to the university of Chicago, worked at the wall street journal, served in Brussels for the Journal, and wound up at the Times. Well, that's... Oh, boy. Okay. We also probably had many of the same professors at Chicago.

Wonderful teachers like Nathan Tarko, Ralph Lerner, Francois Furet, and Leon and Amy Cass, who taught me that lesson number one was to not succumb to the idea that justice is the advantage of the stronger and to always keep an open mind to a powerful counter argument that's not a mindset i see with the current republican leadership me neither brett when people ask me whether they should

end a relationship their end i I answer them with a question. Are the embers dead? Okay, I'm wondering what kind of fucking straight-up degenerate goes to David Brooks for relationship advice. Isn't this guy been married, like, several times, and, like, didn't he have, like, a sort of weird age gap relationship? Not that, you know, I think those are on a case-by-case basis, but. I think it was his intern. Didn't he marry his, like, very young intern? Something like that, you know, I think those are on a case-by-case basis, but. I think it was his intern. Didn't he marry his very young intern?

Something like that, yeah. There was some sort of weird thing with him like that. Oh, yes, yes. The fire seems to be gone. Let me call my friend David Brooks from the New York Times and see what he has to say on the subject. Man, where is his personal life um he married his former research assistant writer ann snyder yeah his intern basically um he was much younger than him um yeah going to david

brooks for advice presumably when the relationship, there was a flame of love. Is some of that warmth still there waiting to be revived, or is it just stone-cold ash? In my relationship with the GOP, the embers are dead. I look at the recent madness in the house with astonishment but detachment. Isaiah Berlin once declared he belonged to, quote, the extreme right-wing edge of the left-wing movement. And if that location is good enough

for old ike berlin it's good enough for me i wouldn't have had trouble calling myself a republican until 2012 when i started to write pretty critically if i do say so myself about the direction the party was taking on social issues immigration and foreign policy in 2016 i voted for a democratic presidential candidate for the first time in my life but did it again in 2020 and i think of myself as a conservative minded independent if i haven't finalized my divorce from the gop we're definitely separated and living apart wow man damn bars yeah seriously uh it It's like America's a dang couple on the way to divorce court. Damn, what an analogy, Brett.

This is why they pay you the big bucks. I suppose I went through stages of alienation by the early 2000s. I came to believe that the free market policies that were right to combat stagnation and sclerosis a few decades earlier were not right for an age of inequality and social breakdown then the congressional republicans began to oppose almost every positive federal good even george bush's compassionate conservative i can't even finish that george bush's compassionate conservatism trump brought the three horsemen of the apocalypse imm immorality, dishonesty, and bigotry.

And dang self-tanner. The damn Velveeta Voldemort himself. The party, complicit in all that, is dead to me, even though I have to say a good chunk of my friends are Republicans. I'm loathe to give up completely on Republicans only because I believe a successful democracy needs a morally healthy conservative party. A view shared by my friend, dear friend and colleague Nancy Pelosi. One that channels conservative psychological tendencies into policies to check heedless progressivism while engaging productively with an evolving world.

What the fuck is a conservative psychological tendency? Is he talking about like serial killers? Like Ed Gein? Yeah, what are you talking about? Ed Gein had conservative psychological tendencies. Oh my God. Still, the party's road to recovery is going to be long and hard

and it's going to require some courageous and credible conservatives to speak up and denounce the current direction of the party. As for who is going to lead a Republican revival, I guess I'd start in the states. One of Al Fromm's insights in leading the Democratic Leadership Council was that change was going to come from the young and ambitious state legislators and governors, like Bill Clinton, a new generation of politicians from moderate parts of the country but the democrats had a strong incentive to change because they lost a lot of elections between 1968-92 the country is now so evenly divided it takes only

a slight shift to produce victory and nobody has an incentive to rethink his or her party and of course when republicans lose they console themselves with the thought that it's because the other side cheated dude the funniest thing about this is it doesn't even read like a conversation it literally reads like a greek chorus it's like people just making pronouncements i wonder like i wonder how they even like do these do they just like trade email pronouncements back and forth and then like turn them in i don't know yeah the gail and brett method was definitely like a slack chat yeah david and brett it's harder to say uh if the republican party is to thrive intellectually and politically it will have to become a

multiracial working class party a lot of people are already thinking along these lines or in cast at american compass has been pushing a working class agenda the trumpish writers and activists who call themselves national conservatives are not my cup of tea but they do speak in the tone of anti-coastal elite protest that is going to be the melody of this party for a long time to come to my mind uval levin levin is one of the brightest conservatives in america today he runs a division at the american enterprise institute where the debates over the future of the right are already being held the party will either revive or crack up the way the wig party did

but it's going to take decades if If I'm still around to see it, I'll be eating mush and listening to Led Zeppelin music with the other fogies at the Rockefeller Republican home for the aged. I'm cool, man. I love that David refers to himself as a Rockefeller Republican. Oh, God. You may well be right about how long it takes, but I don't think it's going to do so

as a party of the working class. The natural place for the GOP is at the party of economic freedom, social aspiration, and moral responsibility. A party of risers, if not always of winners. Definitely, Brett. Definitely, anywhere where

accountability is sought for any kind of like moral misdeeds or atrocities definitely the natural place for any political party yeah it's archetypal constituent is the small business owner it wants less regulation because it understands from experience how well-intentioned ideas from above from above translate into onerous and stupid rules of the ground dude that's so fucking stupid because that's literally the ideal democratic party constituent right right yeah yeah it's yeah that's they're fighting over the same chuds. It doesn't mind big business per se, but objects to moralizing CEOs who try to use their size and incumbency

to impose left coast ideology. Oh my God. I love once you dig into the weeds of these guys, they literally just become Josh Hawley. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only thing that they can come to because their entire world view is shaped by like intellectual abstract engagement you see that with the fact that david

calls himself a rockefeller republican it's like you might as well be calling yourself a wig like something that has no basis in the material construction of the current moment it's just some things you read in a book that sounded good to you it's also embarrassing like this is the kind of things like remember that guy william banks that writes for that shitty newspaper it's like this is the kind of shit that this man who's almost 40 it just like sits around talks about like here's actually my here's actually the position i've staked out on the political compass right right it's like this very specific thing that has no bearing in anything anymore here's actually my here's actually the position i've staked out on the political compass right right it's like this very specific thing that has no bearing in anything anymore no it's not it has

nothing to do with an engagement with the world it's literally things you read on a page and you say i think that might be good for me i think yeah i think that that's what i think it's the it's the like politics, like INFP thing. People love that shit. Uh-huh. Yeah, anyways, Brett, continue. And it thinks there should be consequences. Let's see.

Oh, left-cuff side, yeah. And it thinks there should be consequences, not excuses for unlawful behavior. Definitely. Which means it looks askance at policies like bail reform and lax law enforcement at borders but but but nothing to do with uh prosecuting a war uh prosecuting war criminals or people who destroyed the economy in 2008 no nothing like that none of that stuff the problem is that Trump turned the party into a single-purpose vehicle for cultural resentments.

It doesn't help that coastal elites do so much on their own to feed those resentments. Oh, shit. Bing, bing, bing. David says, Fuck. We've reached a rare moment of disagreement. Your configuration for Republicans was a product of long debates in the 20th century. Size of government's arguments are going to be less salient.

Values, identity, and social status issues will be more salient. I think the core driver of politics across the Western democracies is this. In society after society, highly educated professionals have formed a Brahmin class. The top of the latter go to competitive colleges, marry each other, send their kids to elite schools, and live in the same neighborhoods. This class dominates the media, academy hollywood tech and corporate sector many people on the bottom what are you saying there david he's getting in a nepo baby discourse dude yeah many people on the middle and bottom have risen up to say we don't want to be ruled

by those guys to hell with their economic, cultural, and political power. We'll vote for anybody who can smash their machine. The Republican Party is the party of this protest movement. It's like, okay, I guess I can see points in what he's saying. But where he gets off the rails is that people feel, is saying that people feel like they have any agency to change any of those things. Yeah. And, like, I also don't...

It's weird because, like, what he's saying in, like, a Weasley way is that, like, woke ideology is inherent to these, like, closed-off Brahmin elitist, like, top-tier people in their little coastal enclaves. and that's why it's bad and that's why there's a revolt against it and it's it's like that okay a the first proposition is wrong right b it's like people i don't think people are that stupid i don't think that people just obviously paint the entire thing as a product of like, you know, decrepit or decaying like cultural relativism on behalf of the elites and all this. I don't know.

It's just it's there's all these assumptions in it that are completely wrong. Another way of thinking about the class partisan divide you're describing is between people whose business is the production and distribution of words academics journalists civil servants lawyers intellectuals people whose business is the production and distribution of things manufacturers drivers contractors distributors and so on the first group makes the rules for the administrative state the latter lives under the weight of those rules and will continue to be the base of the gop huh brett keep going by the way since you mentioned earlier the need for new leaders to come to the states is there by the way since you mentioned earlier that the need for new leaders to come to the states is

there anyone who particularly impresses you and how do you feel about the quasi nominee and waiting governor ron desantis of florida um i'm slightly bearish about desantis he does a good job of being trumpy without trump but i wonder if a man who apparently has net negative social skills and empathy can really thrive during an intimately covered national campaign that will last two years trump was at least funny and to his voters charismatic do you have any other candidates on your radar screen that's so funny that he's like yeah hey desantis uh you know. Let's see. Well, okay.

Oh, this is good. Oh, God. Well, I'll tell you this. I don't think it'll be either of the mics. Pius Pence or Pompous Pompous. He threw a double at me. He did, Velveteen. He threw a double alliteration at me.

Son of a bitch. That's like pocket sand. I like Nikki Haley personally. I think she has a good mind and a terrific personal story. You know what's funny? Every time I read these things, there may be no sort of public person in the punditry that is more disconnected from reality than brett stevens in terms of like the viability of people yeah like there's no universe where nicki haley's gonna be the president or pence or poppe or everybody you're gonna get

desantis or trump fucking pick one i mean i'm surprised he didn't say glenn yunkin well it does look like they mentioned him later down though anyways let's see but i don't get the sense of much public enthusiasm for her beyond high-level donors okay which brings me back to desantis he seems to have figured out that the gop sits on a three-legged stool consisting of trumpist evangelicals in the business community he's earned the respect of the first with his pugilistic jabs at the media, of the second with his attacks on Disney and his parental rights legislation. That's one way to put it. And of the third with an open-for-business approach to governance

that has brought hundreds of thousands of people to Florida and killed many people during the pandemic. Next to all that, the personality defects seem pretty surmountable. Oh, this is great. Cy, he wrote out Cy.

Cy, I can't rebut your logic here. Save us, Glenn Youngkin. Oh my God. Final question, David. If you, if you could visit the Vatican and take a gander in their chrono vision device

that allows you to view events from the past, and you go back to 1995, is there anything you or anyone in our circle could have done differently to save the Republican Party from the direction it ultimately took. In 1996, Pat Buchanan's sister, Kathleen,

worked at the Standard as an executive assistant. I sexually harassed her. Where is this going? A truly wonderful woman she was. I was a bit handsy just like just david's stepping into the time machine we got two time we get two flashbacks in david's here's what's funny here's what's fun here's what's fun here's what's funny about this

somebody comes to you terrence and says hey, not that anything cool was happening then, but you want to go back to 1995 for a little bit? And you're like, yeah, cool. And you're like, I want to go watch Michael Jordan play, or I want to go do this or that. Not David Brooks. David Brooks is like, ah, Pat Buchanan's sister. Pat Buchanan's sister, Kathleen.

Man, we had the hots for her. Hubba hubba. A truly wonderful woman. We virulently opposed Pat in his presidential run that year. The day after he won the New Hampshire primary, she smiled kindly at us and said something to the effect of, don't worry, I'll protect you guys when the pitchforks come that's david's story that's his entire wait wait wait wait so he says you go back to 1990 i'll say the question was you go back to 1995 is there anything you or anyone in our circle could have

done differently to save the republican wait what that that's just a weird that's just a weird anecdote well he had it was like a horny reverie yeah he was thinking yeah he was like having yeah this conversation is boring brett i'm having a masturbatory fantasy about kathleen buchanan instead he was tubing he's tubing to kathleen buchanan oh man brett's like david david david back come on we gotta call him today uh given what happened to the standard it didn't work out as promised i wish we had taken that buchanan victory more seriously since it was the precursor of what was to come he was friends friends with Pat Buchanan. His fucking work did the weekly standard. What the fuck are you talking about?

I wish we had pivoted our conservatism even faster away from, sorry, Wall Street Journal editorial page ideas and come up with conservative approaches to inequality, deindustrialization, racial disparities, et cetera. I wish in other words,

that our mentalities had shifted faster. That's so funny. It's like, I wish we could have some way, all the ideas that are part and parcel to our worldview, I wish we could have just, you know, made them more palatable. That's amazing. In truth, I don't believe it would have made any difference.

Authoritarian populism is a global phenomenon. The Republicans were destined to turn more populist. The big question is, do they continue on the path to authoritarianism? Mother fucking authoritarianism. Motherfucking authoritarianism. Look, I look back at the world of conservative ideas I grew up in. Professionally speaking, I see a lot worth holding on to. George Kelling and James Q. Wilson on crime.

That's broken windows, by the way. That's literally the broken windows theory. Like, that's what he referenced there. Nicholas Eberstadt on social breakdown. Linda Chavez on immigration. Shelby Foote on racial issues. Gary Kasparov on the threat of Vladimir Putin. Gary Kasparov on the threat of vladimir putin on the threat of vladimir putin

i don't think the ideas that would have been funny if it'd been like shelby foot on racial issues i don't think the ideas were the core problem even if not every one of them stands the test of time the problem is mur that on the bell curve sorry anyways the problem the problem was when the illiberal barbarians were at the conservative gates the gatekeepers had a catastrophic loss of nerve wow whether it's too late to regain that nerve is to me the ultimate question i thought you were riffing there for a second. He really does say that. The problem was when the liberal barbarians were at the conservative gates,

they lost their nerve. Okay, so what are they saying? They think that a bunch of National Review guys, some Buckleyites should have went down there in their little sack suits and said, no, no, no, invading hordes. This is the conservative line. Either you're on this side or that side, and then immediately they just get murdered. Well, but the thing is,

if I click on that Shelby Steele on racial issues, the name of that article is Race and Responsibilities. Hmm, I wonder what that article says. I wonder what ideas, what illuminating, enlightened ideas that article says. I would say a lot of the things I heard as a young white man growing up in the South probably were not too far off from what's mentioned there. It's like, what? It's this, dude, it is a strange strange sentence he lists all

these extraordinarily reactionary views that he looked up to then he says the problem was that when the liberal barbarians were at the conservative gates the conservative gatekeepers lost their nerve so what is he saying there is it like is he saying like basically that the standard bearers of like the party and i guess the ideology at large like sort of kowtowed to the trumpets and the tea partiers and everything like basically that they should have like like, you know, said, no, this is coat and tie only. Sorry. And, like, just sort of, like, turned the shabby away at the door, you know? I guess so.

They should have turned the riffraff away is what he's saying. Basically, what, yeah, he's like, I looked up to these basically Nazi Third Reich thinkers and ideas in my youth, but they eventually lost their nerve holding back, I don't know, the even more insanely right way. But when poor and working people started adopting their views, well, that's where I drew the line. That's where I drew the line, sir. I guess that's what it is's it's what it is it's like you got to also keep in mind that both of these assholes their entire careers has been

hedging so it's like you know it's it's it's their own form of edging they're hedging yeah they're constantly gonna be hedging to be like this type of pun that is like constantly saying i was right about things i wasn't right about and also do you know but you know one person's hedging is one person's dialectics you know that's right that's right well damn i feel comprehensively comprehensively stupider now than i did before we started that a particularly maddening thing is i will never truly know if guys like this really believe this shit or if this is like strictly they've adopted an aesthetic and like got jobs as like thinkers based on that aesthetic

like surely no learned man well i don't know they they they became learned at the university of chicago so maybe uh giving them too much credit but well sometimes i wonder yeah i mean the funny thing is that you can't even keep david on track it's like every five minutes brett's asking him a question and he's having a memory to like necking in an Oldsmobile in 1972. He's like, oh, sweetie baby. Oh, yeah.

Kathleen McCann, do you want to be my sweetheart? Oh, yeah. Wake up, David. David. Wake up. He's like got his hands in his pants like oh man just pocket pulling okay all right well that's the conversation we had a conversation yeah let's suss things out

we sussed and we sussed some more god damn if you fucking if you want some more suss yeah go to patreon you know i poured my heart out on the patreon on sunday and all of you who deleted your patreon subscriptions because oh terrence said some stupid things about COVID being made in a lab. Well, you missed out on the best screen adaptation ever made. Yeah. So I hope you're happy. Hope you can live with yourself. Yeah.

We wrote a treatment for a new film. Dude, I wanted to talk about Avatar actually today. But you know what? i'll just have to wait i'll have to wait for another day because i think i'm gonna go see it again god that's right that's how james cameron slaying the box office uh-huh yeah i've heard a lot of people tweet and they're like you know what avatar supposed to be avatar 2 is supposed to be the biggest movie in the world right now but i don't know anybody that's seen it. It's like the Cameron guys might not be, numbers-wise,

the biggest contingency, but they go back. They keep going back. They keep, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, we wrote a little bit of a treatment. Not a full screen play. We're going to get to that.

But a little bit of a treatment for our own vision of a cinematic universe. And that's at Patreon. You can find P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash JoeBillyWorkersParty. Go look that up. You won't regret it. Five dollars a month. It's cheap. you can pay $5 to hear the stupidest shit you've ever heard in your life

where else can you get something like that I challenge you in today's media landscape where else can you spend $5 and come away feeling all silly about it nowhere else friends only here it's my challenge to you and come away feeling all silly about it. Nowhere else, friends.

Nowhere else. Only here. That's my challenge to you. Okay, all right. Well, thanks for listening this week. We will see you next time. Goodbye. See you out there.